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ny0174626 | [
"business"
]
| 2007/10/26 | Merrill’s Chief Is Said to Consider a Bid to Merge | Facing billions of dollars in losses from the subprime mortgage crisis, Merrill Lynch chairman and chief executive, E. Stanley O’Neal , floated the idea of a merger with a large bank, a foray that angered Merrill’s board and could cost him his job, according to people close to the beleaguered Wall Street firm. Mr. O’Neal broached the possibility of a merger with Wachovia, the bank based in Charlotte, N.C., without first getting the approval of Merrill’s board, a major breach of corporate protocol at a time when directors were already concerned about the company’s performance, these people said. Merrill’s board was so upset with Mr. O’Neal that it even discussed the names of potential candidates to replace him, according to people with knowledge of the board’s proceedings. Candidates who were discussed include Laurence D. Fink, chairman and chief executive of BlackRock, an investment firm partly owned by Merrill, and John A. Thain, chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange. Jason Wright, a Merrill Lynch spokesman, said early today that there had been no contacts with any potential merger partners, but he declined to comment on whether there had been conversations with any banks. A Wachovia spokeswoman declined to comment. A Wachovia spokeswoman declined to comment. The board’s reaction indicates that a merger with Wachovia is not likely for now. But the fact that the chief executive of Merrill, one of the most prominent investment banks, even made preliminary contact with Wachovia underscores how much the subprime mortgage crisis has rocked Merrill. On Wednesday, Merrill reported a third-quarter loss of $2.3 billion and announced it would take a write-down of $7.9 billion on subprime mortgages and complex debt instruments, far more than the $5 billion it had predicted weeks earlier. The sequence of events began late last week, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. Just days before a Merrill board meeting scheduled for Sunday, Mr. O’Neal called G. Kennedy Thompson, Wachovia’s chairman and chief executive, to float the idea of a merger, people briefed on the situation said. Mr. O’Neal inquired, “Would you be interested in having a conversation?”, according to a person briefed on their discussion. Mr. Thompson expressed interest in talking, while acknowledging the difficulty of the deal. Mr. O’Neal, increasingly embattled with the bank’s growing loss, then directed Gregory J. Fleming, Merrill’s co-president, to follow up with Wachovia executives. Mr. Fleming has a close relationship with Mr. Thompson, and has represented him on many merger deals. A merger could help Merrill weather the deepening crisis and make Wachovia a much more powerful financial player. Though less prominent, Wachovia has a higher stock market capitalization — about $86 billion, versus $52 billion for Merrill. Wachovia, which became the second-largest retail brokerage firm after acquiring A. G. Edwards, has been much less hurt by the recent market turmoil than Merrill, whose stock price has fallen to $60.90 a share from a 52-week high of more than $98. Any merger between Merrill, with 15,000 retail brokers, and Wachovia, with 10,137 brokers, would likely face antitrust questions, and a deal would not likely be received well by Merrill’s brokers. In recent weeks, as the scope of the losses mounted, Mr. O’Neal has fired a number of executives, the latest round of firings he has made since taking the top job. Merrill’s stock has fallen almost 10 percent in the past two days as Mr. O’Neal has come under intense criticism for what analysts called a complete risk management failure. With billions of dollars shaved off of its market capitalization and analysts convinced that an additional write-downs might be coming, Merrill is an attractive target. Mr. Fink is widely considered to be the top candidate, should Mr. O’Neal depart. Merrill Lynch is a 49 percent shareholder in BlackRock, having merged its asset management business with Mr. Fink’s firm in 2006, a deal seen as one of Mr. O’Neal’s better strategic moves. | O'Neal E Stanley;Mortgages;Merrill Lynch & Company Inc;Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures;Banks and Banking |
ny0006834 | [
"us"
]
| 2013/05/16 | Tennessee: Home-schooling Family Is Denied Asylum | A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that a German family could not claim asylum in the United States because it would face penalties in Germany for home-schooling its children. The Romeike family wanted to educate five children at home “largely for religious reasons,” the decision stated, but were prohibited by German law and faced prosecution. The Romeikes moved to Tennessee in 2008 and were granted asylum by an immigration judge, but the Board of Immigration Appeals overturned that decision in 2012. The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, ruled unanimously Wednesday that the Romeikes could not prove that home-schoolers were singled out for persecution in Germany, and thus were not eligible for asylum. The family intends to appeal. | Decisions and Verdicts;Right of asylum;Homeschooling;Germany;Tennessee |
ny0254113 | [
"business",
"global"
]
| 2011/07/29 | Exxon and Shell Report Strong 2nd-Quarter Profits | HOUSTON — Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell reported large increases in second-quarter profits on Thursday, benefiting from oil and gasoline prices that have been propelled upward by political turbulence in the Middle East and North Africa. It was the strongest quarter for Exxon since it set a corporate quarterly earnings record in 2008, when crude oil prices approached $150 a barrel before collapsing as the world economy slowed. Exxon, the biggest American oil company, reported earnings of $10.7 billion for the quarter, up from $7.56 billion the year before, but a bit less than Wall Street had been expecting. Shell, the largest European oil company, posted profits of $8.7 billion, up from $4.4 billion a year ago. The results of Exxon and Shell, as well as ConocoPhillips and BP earlier in the week, highlighted the oil majors’ dependence on high oil prices for profit growth at a time when they are straining to pick up new reserves to increase or even sustain future production. Major oil companies are finding it difficult to acquire new reserves because countries rich in oil and gas have become increasingly grudging in their dealings with foreign companies, striking production-sharing agreements that offer them a smaller share of the profits. That is prompting oil companies to drill deeper below the ocean’s surface and explore in the Arctic for oil — expensive propositions that put pressure on profits — or drill for less profitable gas. “We are going into a world where finding the oil and gas is going to be more complex,” Shell’s chief executive, Peter R. Voser, acknowledged as his company released its results . “It needs more money.” Smaller oil and gas companies like EOG Resources and Cabot Oil and Gas have proved to be more nimble than the giants in recent years, moving into shale oil and gas fields in the United States and booking new reserves at a far faster rate. The major companies have tried to follow suit over the last two years, but a glut of natural gas from rising production has weakened the profitability of some fields. Growth in oil company profits for the rest of the year is uncertain, given that oil and gas prices are strongly tied to the health of the global economy. Demand in the United States for diesel, gasoline and other petroleum products has eased in recent months after starting the year strongly, and the growth in Chinese oil demand has slowed somewhat. “If the economy does not grow faster, earnings growth in the energy sector is obviously going to be limited,” said Fadel Gheit, a senior oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Company. “You can’t grow energy demand in a flat economy.” The Energy Department reported on Thursday that United States oil demand in May fell by nearly 2.5 percent from the same month the year before, representing a decline of 464,000 barrels a day. The department also reported that oil inventories last week were up by 2.3 million barrels from the week before, suggesting a less-than-robust summer driving season. Oil prices have eased more than 10 percent since the spring, when crude prices peaked because of the loss of 1.3 million barrels of oil a day of production caused by the turmoil in Libya and fears that instability could spread to major producers like Saudi Arabia and Algeria. Since then, increased production in Saudi Arabia and the release of oil from strategic reserves in the United States and other industrialized countries have helped prevent shortages. Even if oil demand and prices increase, large oil companies will strain to keep up production. ConocoPhillips reported a 90,000-barrel-a-day decline in oil and gas production for the quarter on Wednesday, though earnings were higher anyway as a result of higher oil prices. Shell also reported a decline of 100,000 barrels of daily oil and gas production for the quarter, in part because of permitting delays in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP accident last year. Exxon’s earnings were lower than analysts had expected despite strong revenue growth, reflecting a record $10.3 billion in capital and exploration expenditures in new oil and gas projects, up 58 percent from the second quarter of 2010. Exxon’s purchase of XTO Energy last year to become the nation’s biggest natural gas producer has been questioned by some investors in light of low gas prices, but the acquisition helped Exxon’s oil and gas production to increase by 10 percent from a year ago. Exxon is continuing to invest heavily in natural gas, purchasing 317,000 acres for $1.7 billion in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale field in June. It is also drilling deep in the Gulf of Mexico, and last month announced the discovery of a new deepwater field holding the equivalent of 700 million barrels of oil. Edward Westlake, an analyst at Credit Suisse, said Exxon profits were hurt by the shutdown in production in several oil fields and refineries around the world for maintenance reasons. He said he was optimistic about the company’s prospects because of an increase of annual capital expenditures from $21 billion in 2007 to around $35 billion currently, along with its aggressive acquisition of oil and gas acreage. “One day this will pay off,” Mr. Westlake added. While Exxon has tried to buy reserves, Shell has invested heavily over the last decade in complex projects, particularly in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. Its $20 billion Pearl project, which will produce liquid fuels out of natural gas on an enormous scale, has been going through final tests this year and should begin to produce profits in coming months. For Shell, “earnings and cash flow should greatly improve over the next few years,” said Brian M. Youngberg, an oil analyst at Edward Jones. | Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline;Company Reports;Exxon Mobil Corporation;Royal Dutch Shell Plc |
ny0244669 | [
"sports",
"soccer"
]
| 2011/04/20 | Newcastle Holds Manchester United to Draw | Manchester United ’s charge to the English Premier League title was slowed by Newcastle with a 0-0 draw that ended United’s run of three wins. Still, United moved 7 points ahead of second-place Arsenal. | Soccer;Manchester United;English Premier League;Newcastle United (Soccer Team);Manchester United (Soccer Team) |
ny0030345 | [
"sports",
"golf"
]
| 2013/06/17 | Player From Ireland Wins His First European Title | Simon Thornton of Ireland beat Tjaart Van der Walt of South Africa with a par on the first hole of a playoff in the Najeti Hotels Open in St.-Omer, France, for his first European Tour title. | Golf;Simon Thornton;Tjaart Van der Walt;Ireland;South Africa |
ny0207426 | [
"sports",
"autoracing"
]
| 2009/06/19 | The Williams Secrets? Love Racing and Never Look Back | Frank Williams, 67, began working in Formula One in 1969. He is the owner and director of the Williams team, which is also partially owned by Patrick Head. The team, created in 1977, is the third-most successful in history, behind Ferrari and McLaren, with 113 victories — the last was at the Brazilian Grand Prix in 2004 — and nine constructors’ titles and seven drivers’ titles. Its last title was in 1997, with Jacques Villeneuve driving. Williams, who became a quadriplegic in 1986 after a car accident, recently spoke with Brad Spurgeon of the International Herald Tribune. Q.You own one of the last independent Formula One teams. What drives you on that path? A. It’s all that I’ve ever wanted to do. I love what I do. All the people at Williams love what they do. Patrick, my partner, feels exactly the same — he just wants to go racing, winning. We’re very upset with ourselves because we haven’t done any real winning for a very long time. It’s now about 10 years or something. And it’s very embarrassing, but we have to live with that. It’s our own fault, nobody else’s. And we have to get the sun to shine again soon. Q.It’s an entirely personal thing? A. Also, we do have a very respectable business — 500 and more people. And I think we have an obligation, in a way, to keep that going rather than just waking up and saying, ‘Oh, I’m bored with this, get rid of it, close it.’ Q.There have been other teams, such as Tyrrell, which was a very successful team and stayed a long time, but in the final years it was fairly insignificant. How do you avoid that kind of situation? A. Reinvigorate and rejuvenate your company every decade. But it goes on all the time. Younger people turn up and two out of three don’t make it, disappear. But younger guys like Sam Michael have now replaced Patrick — Patrick has pushed himself to one side, keeps an eye on everything technical, advises Sam, but Sam is our technical director. And he is the new generation. Adam Parr is the real C.E.O. I always keep an eye on him, even though he is getting on very, very well. And that’s it, reinvent yourself every decade or two. Q.There is a “Silicon Valley” of motor sport around London and Silverstone. Why did the British become so strong in racing car production? A. I think the intensity of the engineering that was necessary to actually help them survive and win the war — apart from our American allies — spawned a lot of very clever engineering people. And some of these had a yen, had a desire, to experiment with road cars, which became racing cars. Formula One is a war. We’re fighting a war with each other all the time. And that is what speeds our development — intense competition. Q.Scandal and controversy have always been part of Formula One. Is it in the nature of the series? A. I don’t know about scandals so much, but controversy, yes, for several reasons: The rules are so technical, they are so complicated, and they control what you spend. So there are financial consequences to them as well. Some teams want to maintain a position where they can spend more money than others — quite understandable — others may say, ‘We’ve got the latest, very best active ride ever,’ and they don’t want to change that. So that’s why there’s always arguments. It’s just a bunch of hyper-competitive people — all want to win and all want to make some money for a change rather than spend money. Q.Where would you like to see the sport go in the future? Back how it was in the past? A. I never look back. I’m not interested. Q.You’d like to see it continue to grow? A. Grow in popularity, yes; to become more expensive than it is already, no. To become much cheaper than it is, a little bit, but not enormously. Otherwise, there are 50 teams turning up having a go. Q.You have generally valued the technology of the car more than the driver. What difference can a driver make? If your car is a quarter of a second, a half a second off the front of the grid and you have the world’s best driver, he’ll make a difference. But if your car is a second off the front, even he won’t make a difference — or maybe he will once or twice a season. So the car is of at least equal importance. And the trick is to put the best cars with the best drivers. What Williams is trying to do is to improve its technical performance and try to find one or two guys on their way up, like Nico Rosberg. Q.How do you keep your enthusiasm going after 40 years in Formula One? A. I don’t know! I’d love to answer. I just love racing, I love speed. I love the noise. One of the biggest thrills of my life was I went to Luke Air Force Base in Arizona and I watched from 50 meters to the right side of the runway, the flight of four F-15c’s at takeoff, two by two, the second just five seconds after the first, and the noise ! The ground shook! I was a guest of a colonel in the air force. I said, ‘Will you be using reheat?’ — which you call afterburn — and he said, ‘No, but if you want it, I can tell them.’ And I’ve never forgotten it. The noise! The power! And they got to the end and they went whoosh, it was almost vertical. Fantastic. Speed and noise. | Automobile Racing;Formula One |
ny0206167 | [
"world",
"africa"
]
| 2009/01/13 | Zuma Faces New Charges After Ruling | JOHANNESBURG — A South African appellate court ruled Monday that graft charges against Jacob Zuma , the leader of the governing party and likely to be the country’s next president, were wrongly dismissed by a judge last September, clearing the way for the criminal case to be reinstated. With elections only a few months away, and with Mr. Zuma’s party politically dominant, this creates a scenario in which he may well assume the nation’s highest office while facing 12 counts of fraud, two more of corruption and one each of money laundering and racketeering. Immediately after Monday’s unanimous ruling by a five-judge panel was read on national television, the African National Congress , Mr. Zuma’s party, issued a statement of support for its presidential choice, insisting that it would not allow “a decision democratically taken” by its members to “be reversed on the basis of untested allegations.” The legal hiccups in the Zuma case have been a riveting — and polarizing — national spectacle since 2002, with many of the episodes yielding enormous political repercussions. September’s ruling in Mr. Zuma’s favor led to the ouster of President Thabo Mbeki in little more than a week. In that earlier decision, Judge Chris Nicholson of the High Court ruled that the prosecution had mishandled the Zuma case, faulting it for skipping a procedural step by not allowing the accused to give his side of the story before being charged. But Judge Nicholson’s opinion roamed far beyond the immediate procedural question, using suppositions to chastise Mr. Mbeki and his government for political meddling in the prosecution of Mr. Zuma, his main rival within the A.N.C. Using that ruling as ammunition, party leaders then asked Mr. Mbeki to step down. He was replaced with a caretaker president, Kgalema Motlanthe. Now, a mere four months after that upheaval, the appellate panel not only said Judge Nicholson was wrong about the disputed procedure, it lambasted him for overstepping “the limits of his authority” in making “gratuitous findings” about Mr. Mbeki’s supposed meddling. “Political meddling was not an issue that had to be determined,” said the opinion, read by a Supreme Court judge, Louis Harms, in the city of Bloemfontein. “Nevertheless, a substantial part of his judgment dealt with this question. He changed the rules of the game, he took his eyes off the ball,” in rendering a decision that provided his “own conspiracy theory.” Mr. Zuma was not present to hear the reversal. One of his attorneys, Michael Hulley, later issued a statement saying that an appeal to the nation’s highest judicial forum, the Constitutional Court, was being considered. The National Prosecuting Authority was less ambiguous in its response. “Mr. Zuma is regarded as a charged person,” spokesman Tlali Tlali told reporters, indicating that the government would now seek a trial date. Timing is of great import. The date of the national election has not been announced, but is expected to be in March, April or May. The A.N.C. already has begun campaigning. Mr. Zuma keeps a hectic schedule, making promises to the poor and railing against crime and corruption. According to legal experts, the earliest a trial would take place is 2010, well into the next president’s term. The complications are not difficult to imagine. “It’s a full-time job to run a country and also a full-time job to be a litigant in a criminal trial where you face 15 years in jail,” said Paul Hoffman, the director of the Center for Constitutional Rights in Cape Town. “You have to present yourself in court every day, and the trial would be in Pietermaritzburg, and that’s not the seat of the nation’s government.” Lindiwe Sisulu, minister of housing and a Zuma ally, bemoaned this latest twist in what has become a tortuous legal and political saga, saying, “This prosecution has lasted seven years, and it is not in the interest of justice for any case to drag on so long.” The off-again, on-again prosecution of Mr. Zuma has been an odd affair from the start. Back in 2003, the National Prosecuting Authority announced a case against Schabir Shaik, a former comrade of Mr. Zuma’s from the liberation struggle who later, as a wealthy businessman, provided Mr. Zuma with about $500,000. Prosecutors considered this to be bribery in return for political favors, including sweetheart deals with arms manufacturers. For a time, Mr. Zuma, then the nation’s deputy president, was spared prosecution, though he was publicly tarred with guilt. The chief prosecutor stated that the government had prima facie evidence against him, but perhaps not enough for a “winnable” case. The cloud hovered. In 2005, Mr. Shaik was convicted of bribery. President Mbeki then fired Mr. Zuma as his deputy. Mr. Zuma was indicted on corruption charges later that year, but the case was dismissed on a technicality in 2006. By then, the A.N.C. was badly rent. A fault line divided Mr. Zuma and Mr. Mbeki, with the supporters of the former believing that the latter was maliciously pulling the strings on the prosecution. In December 2007, Mr. Zuma bested Mr. Mbeki in a vote for the A.N.C. leadership, positioning himself to be South Africa ’s next president. Ten days later, prosecutors announced they had revived the case against Mr. Zuma, leading to further accusations that the charges were politically motivated. The A.N.C. rift, like the Zuma case, lingers with a long-running plot line like a soap opera. After Mr. Mbeki was ousted from office, some of his supporters began a splinter party, now named the Congress of the People. While the former president has yet to comment about Monday’s resurrection of the Zuma case, the leaders of the splinter party clearly regard it as political manna, saying in a statement that “Mr. Jacob Zuma should proceed to trial without delay.” | Zuma Jacob G;Frauds and Swindling;Decisions and Verdicts;African National Congress;South Africa |
ny0221279 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2010/02/01 | Dorie Pearlman Fights for Compensation for Son’s 9/11 Sacrifice | In the days that followed Sept. 11, 2001, Dorie Pearlman of Queens tried to console herself over the loss of her son by focusing on the circumstances of his death. He was a volunteer emergency medical technician who headed to the World Trade Center after the planes struck the towers, intending to treat the wounded. In the months that followed, the authorities would find his attaché case in a police cruiser and his body in the rubble. He was 18. By any definition that Ms. Pearlman would use, her son, Richard, was a first responder. But she has yet to successfully make that case to the federal government. Of the hundreds of claims filed by the families of first responders who died on Sept. 11, the case of Richard Pearlman is the only one still open, according to the Department of Justice. Under the Public Safety Officers’ Benefits program, the Justice Department provides one-time payments to the families of first responders who die in the line of duty. Justice Department officials said that of the 436 applications stemming from Sept. 11 deaths, all but two were approved and the families were given $250,000. Ms. Pearlman’s application was denied. So was a claim filed by the family members of an emergency medical technician from Virginia who happened to be in New York on Sept. 11. Officials ruled that he was not serving in an official capacity when he was killed. Ms. Pearlman said her application was rejected for a similar reason. With some help from Representative Anthony D. Weiner , she has appealed the decision. Ms. Pearlman says she does not understand why she was rejected. She received a small sum from the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund , and was also recognized at a White House ceremony as the family member of a first responder who died. “They want it both ways,” Ms. Pearlman said. She was not aware of the first responders’ benefits program until a friend asked her about it two years ago. The deadline had passed, but the department extended it for her. Ms. Pearlman said officials rejected her claim because the Forest Hills Volunteer Ambulance Corps in Queens, where her son was a emergency medical technician, was not a public agency and because she could not prove that he had been called to ground zero by the authorities to treat the injured. On Sept. 11, Mr. Pearlman was dropping off documents for his boss at 1 Police Plaza in Lower Manhattan when the towers were hit. Ms. Pearlman, who traced her son’s steps on Sept. 11 through information from the authorities and photographs published by the news media, said there was an announcement that anyone with medical training should report to Police Headquarters so they could be taken to ground zero. Ms. Pearlman said that after her son offered a CPR and first aid card that showed his affiliation with the Forest Hills agency, the police took him in a cruiser to the towers, where he began assisting other medical personnel. “He got word that someone had a heart attack and, accompanied by a police officer, he went into the building,” she said. “And that’s when the tower collapsed.” On Tuesday, the Department of Justice held an appeals hearing for Ms. Pearlman at Mr. Weiner’s district office in Queens. Mr. Weiner, who said that he had become a “quasi advocate” for Ms. Pearlman, said he believed the original decision was a bureaucratic oversight. “It’s a case that’s not tough,” he said. Mr. Weiner says Fire Commissioner Salvatore J. Cassano has agreed to send a letter to the Justice Department confirming that the Fire Department sent out a call for all emergency personnel — regardless of whether they were volunteers — to come to ground zero to help. Mr. Weiner said this would prove that Mr. Pearlman was acting on behalf of the city. The Justice Department declined to address the specifics of the case. “The loss of someone committed to public service is a tragedy, especially someone so young,” the department said in a written statement. “Our sympathies are with Richard Pearlman’s family. Mr. Pearlman acted courageously and selflessly while assisting those who were injured in the World Trade Center. Although the initial ruling was not favorable, an independent hearing officer is currently considering an appeal of this claim, and there is an opportunity for further appeal should the family wish to pursue it.” Ms. Pearlman said the hearing officer told her that he would rule on her case over the next month. | World Trade Center (NYC);September 11 Victim Compensation Fund;Justice Department;Emergency Medical Treatment;Weiner Anthony D;Cassano Salvatore J;Manhattan (NYC);Queens (NYC) |
ny0083441 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
]
| 2015/10/21 | Russia Makes an Impact in Syrian Battle for Control of Aleppo | BEIRUT, Lebanon — Government forces across Syria — including army units, fighters with the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah and other loyalist militias — were trying to advance Tuesday on more than half a dozen front lines, with close air support in places from Russian warplanes and helicopters. Syrian Army troops and allied militias inched their way closer to the contested city of Aleppo, as a slowly developing offensive stretched into its fifth day. To the east of the city, forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad appeared to be pushing to retake a military airport surrounded by militants with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. There are indications that the most prominent members of a new pro-government alliance — Russia and Iran — are involved on the ground in Syria. Already, several high-ranking Iranian officers have been killed in the fighting, and on Tuesday pro-government military sources told Reuters that three Russians had been killed by a shell fired from rebel lines. The progress of the offensive has been halting, however, slowed in part by American-made antitank weapons supplied to insurgents by Saudi Arabia. Even so, weeks of military activity by the government and the latest moves near Aleppo illustrated the “dramatic impact” of the Russian intervention so far, said Yezid Sayigh, an expert on Arab armies at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. With relatively minimal effort, the Russians had managed to “boost regime and army morale,” and send a message to countries allied with the rebels, like the United States, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, that they will not be able to intervene militarily in the conflict, as the Turks had hinted they might earlier this summer. Syria and Rebels Battle for Aleppo as Cease-Fire Collapses A drastic escalation of fighting in Aleppo has shattered a partial truce. “Putin doesn’t need to do more,” Mr. Sayigh said. The government forces have scored some minor victories, reportedly capturing a few villages in the south. But it was still too early to tell whether the advance toward Aleppo was part of a broader attempt to encircle the city and dislodge the rebels or a more limited offensive to ensure the safety of its supply lines. Faraj Shahid, a Turkey-based rebel activist who is from the countryside south of Aleppo, said the area was the site of frequent attacks by insurgents on the government’s critical supply line from Hama in central Syria. Over the last four days, he said, government forces had taken control of at least three villages in the vicinity. Zakaria Malahifji, a leader of a Western-backed rebel coalition, said that the government “chose this front because of its strategic location on the supply route, and its easy geography.” He added, “Airstrikes can be effective because of the flat battlefield, and attack helicopters are present all the time.” Over the last few days, he said, “losses are heavy on both sides and the regime’s advance is very slow,” while tens of thousands of people are reported to have fled the area. In response to the onslaught, rebel commanders have sent out panicked calls to fighters to end their divisions in the face of the latest threat. A rebel operations room in Aleppo issued a statement over the weekend calling on the rebels to put their “differences aside and turn the table on your enemy.” It was not clear whether the exhortations had any effect. Some analysts have suggested that the Russian intervention might have exactly this unifying effect in the divided rebel ranks , welding together groups with competing backers and ideological agendas under the banner of fighting Mr. Assad. The battle in Aleppo may also help delineate the division of labor among members of the pro-government alliance, according to Mr. Sayigh, who said that the Russians, pursuing a limited role, were working principally with Syrian Army units at the level of battalion or brigade. There was a “high level of coordination” between the two, with the Russians providing close air support, attacking targets in front of army units with fixed-wing aircraft or helicopters. Untangling the Overlapping Conflicts in the Syrian War What started as a popular uprising against the Syrian government four years ago has become a proto-world war with nearly a dozen countries embroiled in two overlapping conflicts. The fight in Aleppo, by contrast, appeared to be coordinated by Iranian officers, working with paramilitary groups like Hezbollah and members of Iraqi Shiite militias operating in Syria. Despite persistent rumors that a large contingent of Iranian troops was fighting in Aleppo, Mr. Sayigh said he had seen no sign of them, either there or anywhere else in Syria. Hashim al-Mousawi, a spokesman for the Harakat Hizbollah al-Nujaba, an Iraqi Shiite militia, said that roughly 1,500 men from the militia were fighting in Syria, including alongside the Syrian Army in Aleppo. He said control of the city was “very important for us,” and would allow the pro-government forces to cut off reinforcements to the Islamic State from Turkey. A radio station in Iraq affiliated with the militia broadcast a message on Tuesday evening encouraging more volunteers to join and fight in Syria. Hasan Abdul Hadi, a spokesman for another Iraqi militia, Kitaeb Sayyid al-Shuhada, said that 300 to 500 of its fighters were split between battlefields in Aleppo and southern Syria. Iran was supporting his group and other militias with weapons and other supplies, he said. The latest fighting near Aleppo highlighted the failures of various diplomatic efforts to end the war in Syria, which has killed more than 250,000 people. A proposal to freeze the fighting in Aleppo last year, led by the United Nations special envoy, Staffan de Mistura, also faltered: United Nations interlocutors went to the city and found that any initial support for the freeze among rebel groups there was vetoed by the rebels’ foreign donors, according to several diplomats in the region. As one Western diplomat put it, the rebels were “not calling the shots.” The Russian decision to help Mr. Assad consolidate his control in pro-government areas had become the “driving force” for any future political solution, said the Western diplomat, who requested anonymity in line with normal protocols. Before the Russian intervention, the government was increasingly confined to a shrinking, defensible portion of the country. “Now, it will not shrink anymore,” the diplomat added. “The game is over.” | Aleppo Syria;Syria;Russia;ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State;Iran;Military;Terrorism;International relations;Free Syrian Army;Bashar al-Assad |
ny0057039 | [
"sports",
"tennis"
]
| 2014/09/21 | After Blazing Trail, Li Na Exits and Leaves a Gap | Despite all of her evident athletic talent and all of her personal sacrifices, Li Na was a late bloomer in tennis, which is one reason — but only one reason — it feels as if she retired too soon. In stepping away because of major knee problems at age 32 years 6 months, she lasted longer on tour than many of the best women’s players of the modern era: longer than Monica Seles or Steffi Graf; longer than Amélie Mauresmo, Kim Clijsters or Justine Henin. But Li had to wait to hit her peak, to shore up her once shaky forehand and confidence, to find the right blend of Eastern and Western expertise. To be frank, which is Li’s way, she never inspired complete confidence under big-match pressure. Even when she was in full flow, gliding powerfully into the corners and generating astonishing flat pace with her strong legs and quick hands, one could never rule out an abrupt shift of focus and fortune. Watching her could be both suspenseful and maddening, and one suspects that if she had chosen to wear a mood ring on court, it would have been flashing a new color with great frequency. In light of all this, she deserves only more credit for finding a way to punch through the doubts and the demons and win her first two Grand Slam singles titles after age 29, something no other woman has managed since the Open era began in 1968. Though she saved the best for late, winning the French Open in 2011 and the Australian Open this year, her timing was still impeccable, and she became a rich woman because of it. Chinese athletes who excel in sports that the West traditionally dominates have a special place in the pantheon: See Liu Xiang in the high hurdles, Yao Ming in the N.B.A. and now Sun Yang in the Olympic swimming pool. Li, once a badminton prospect, will always be the first Chinese and first Asian to win a Grand Slam singles title, and like Yao, she had a personality to which the Western world could warm. A language barrier was no obstacle to perceiving her sense of humor and mischief even if she also could be, on the rough days, as walled off as a hutong courtyard . Like many a funny person, Li had a flip side, as when she stared down a Chinese reporter for a minute that felt like an hour at a Wimbledon news conference in 2013. “She surprised people,” her agent Max Eisenbud said Friday, “because everybody has this stigma of what a Chinese athlete is or should be or should look like. And here she is with a tattoo and an earring on the top of her ear. There was a little bit of the maverick about her, and you don’t really expect that. Her personality, even her feistiness, she was very real.” It was hardly a given that Li would be the first Chinese woman to become a tennis superstar. Frustrated with the rigid national training system, she retired for the first time at 20 to go to college and live unfettered with her future husband, Jiang Shan. And though she later became the first Chinese player to win a WTA singles title, ticking that box in 2004, Zheng Jie, a sturdy and smaller counterpuncher who plays on at 31, blazed a few trails of her own. Zheng and Yan Zi became the first Chinese women to win a Grand Slam doubles title in 2006 at the Australian Open. And in 2008, Zheng, as a 133rd-ranked wild card at Wimbledon, became the first Chinese player to reach a Grand Slam singles semifinal. But Li ultimately won the biggest prizes first, with the help of European coaching, and had the personality to make it doubly memorable. “I think it was because of the whole package,” Eisenbud said. “If Peng Shuai or Zheng Jie would have done the same thing, I honestly don’t think it would have been the same.” We will never know, and though the natural conclusion is that young Chinese players inspired by Li will soon be holding up more major trophies, there are no guarantees. Germany once ruled the tennis world and marketplace with Graf and Boris Becker only to see the sport all but disappear from the radar in a hurry. Since Yao’s retirement, Chinese players are hardly taking the N.B.A. by storm. “The tennis boom in China is not a given,” said Paul McNamee, the former Australian Open tournament director who was part of that event’s push into China and Asia. “It will require nurturing and support. However, with the aura of Li Na and her desire to stay involved, I can see future Grand Slam champions from China within a decade.” Li does intend to remain involved: commercially, philanthropically and developmentally, with an academy in the works and IMG, the sports and media talent agency that has recommitted to tennis under new ownership, looking to leverage her success for the long term. But her forced retirement does once again deprive the WTA Tour of more star power and the opportunity to create what it sorely lacks: a genuine rivalry at the top. Serena Williams has seen plenty of prospects exit the stage earlier than could have been expected: Martina Hingis, Elena Dementieva, Dinara Safina, Henin and Clijsters. “Put it in chronological order, it’s pretty mind-boggling,” said Williams’s childhood coach Rick Macci. Li beat Williams only once in 12 matches and never in a Grand Slam. When Li lost to her for the last time in this year’s Miami final in a summit meeting between No. 1 and No. 2, Carlos Rodriguez, Li’s coach at that time, gave her another pep talk. “ ‘Listen,’ I told her, ‘You are evolving more and more,’ ” he said. “ ‘It takes time. You cannot do what you didn’t do in 17 years in a hurry. You have to believe in it, and if you believe, it will work.’ ” Six months later, Li, the late bloomer, has run out of time and the ability to play through the pain. But her career path was still quite an evolution, and it will be fascinating to see how the game she once rejected evolves from here: in China and beyond. | Tennis;Women's Tennis Assn;Li Na;China |
ny0006760 | [
"business",
"global"
]
| 2013/05/29 | China Divides European Union in Fight Over Tariffs | HONG KONG — Adroitly alternating the threat of a trade war with the lure of its huge import market, China appears to have driven a deep wedge between Germany and the rest of the European Union . And it may even have caused a rift within the German business world. As Chinese and European trade officials stare each other down over next week’s scheduled imposition of big tariffs on the $27 billion worth of solar panels China sells to Europe each year, Germany has come down on China’s side. Notably, Berlin is backing Beijing, even though Europe’s biggest producer of solar equipment, SolarWorld, is a German company that desperately wants the European Union to impose tariffs on the Chinese equipment. Unless the bloc backs off under German pressure, tariffs averaging nearly 50 percent would go into effect June 6, to punish China for the ostensible “dumping” of solar panels at below cost in Europe. “Europe cannot succumb to blackmail — dumping is illegal, and the E.U. is obliged to defend itself by applying the international trade law,” said Milan Nitzschke, a spokesman for SolarWorld and the president of ProSun, a lobbying group for the European solar energy industry. But many other German companies, which rely more heavily than other European manufacturers on China as a significant market for their exports — whether Volkswagen cars or Siemens factory equipment or various other goods — fear that the dispute over solar panels could lead to an all-out trade war with China, which would be disastrous for their businesses. So far, the German government appears to agree. And little wonder. Germany is China’s most important trading partner in Europe and China is Germany’s leading partner in Asia. The Federation of German Industry estimates that one million German jobs are dependent on exports to China. Of those, the German solar industry has about 99,000. For half a century, Germany has been one of the most loyal and enthusiastic supporters of European unity. And since the advent of the European Union two decades ago, Berlin has advocated giving Brussels greater scope in the range of issues it handles. But the solar tariff showdown illustrates the way domestic priorities can sometimes trump pan-European loyalties. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany played host last weekend to Prime Minister Li Keqiang of China. More than a dozen trade agreements were signed, including between VW, Siemens, BASF and their Chinese partners, all supporting further expansion for German industry in the Chinese market and further investment by the Chinese in Germany. Special privileges that China offered German companies in its agricultural and recycling industries were clearly aimed at trying to win Berlin’s support. After her meeting with Mr. Li, Ms. Merkel told reporters on Sunday that her government would lobby against the solar tariffs, saying the situation was “rather complicated.” “Germany will do everything possible to resolve the conflicts that we have in trade,” Ms. Merkel said, “through as many discussions as possible to prevent it from falling into a sort of conflict that ends in the raising of tariffs from both sides.” Germany’s economics minister, Philipp Rösler, said Monday that Germany had told the European Commission in Brussels that it was voting against the imposition of preliminary tariffs on Chinese solar panels. While the commission routinely consults member countries on preliminary tariffs, in the past that has tended to be more of a formality, and opposition has been infrequent. But on Tuesday, a trade official in Europe with direct knowledge of the matter said it appeared that a majority of the governments were officially opposed to preliminary tariffs on Chinese solar imports. And yet, the European commissioner for trade, Karel De Gucht, could still go ahead on June 5 and impose the preliminary duties the next day without any further approvals. That deadline was established at the opening of the commission’s investigation in September. Image Chancellor Angela Merkel and Premier Li Keqiang. Ms. Merkel said Germany would lobby against duties on Chinese panels. Credit Pool photo by Guido Bergmann Whether Mr. De Gucht proceeds with the preliminary duties remains to be seen. But he “will not be intimidated in any way” and “will not bend to external pressure,” Mr. De Gucht’s spokesman, John Clancy, said at the commission’s daily news conference Tuesday. Preliminary tariffs, which would last six months, in the past have tended to be imposed as a negotiating ploy before the European Commission decides whether to impose so-called final tariffs that last for five years. A voting majority of member nations could overturn the preliminary tariffs, although such a move would be unprecedented. Formal settlement talks with the Chinese could begin later in the year, even if Mr. De Gucht did impose the preliminary duties. “His door has been open for approximately one year in terms of trying to find an amicable solution to the solar panels case,” Mr. Clancy said, referring to the informal discussions Mr. De Gucht has held with the Chinese. “The door is still open.” The Chinese premier, Mr. Li, is clearly aware of Germany’s power within the European economic bloc. Germany was the only member country he visited during his first trip to Europe since taking office in March, spending three days in Berlin before heading to Brussels for what proved to be blustery trade talks. During his Berlin visit, Mr. Li said China was willing to offer preferential treatment to German investors in its fast-growing logistics, education and health care sectors. “China and Germany have a shared position of opposition to trade protectionism , and we have expectations that Germany will play an active role and promote a resolution of the frictions through dialogue and consultation between the European Union and China,” Mr. Li said. Zhong Shan, China’s vice minister of commerce and chief international trade representative, issued a strong warning to Brussels late Monday after his latest trade talks there failed to produce a compromise on solar panels. If the bloc proceeded with antidumping duties on solar panels, “the Chinese government would not sit on the sideline, but would rather take necessary steps to defend its national interest,” Mr. Zhong said in a statement. The trade office in Brussels complained publicly in a statement late Monday about China’s pressure on member governments. “It is the role of the European Commission to remain independent, to resist any external pressure and to see the ‘big picture’ for the benefit of Europe, its companies and workers based upon the evidence alone,” said Mr. Clancy, the spokesman. The United States, which has similar concerns, has already imposed tariffs totaling about 30 percent on Chinese solar panels. But the Obama administration recently decided to seek its own negotiated settlement with China to replace the tariffs. Such a settlement could take the form of setting high minimum prices for Chinese exports to the United States, a ceiling on the volume of exports, or both. A negotiated settlement with either the United States or Europe would force the Chinese solar industry to address production overcapacity, and the industry has not figured out how to do that, executives and officials in China said. Many Chinese solar companies are already struggling. Suntech Power Holdings, based in Wuxi, was once the world’s biggest solar panel producer but recently was forced to put its main operating subsidiary into bankruptcy. Other solar panel companies are trying to avoid similar fates. In Suntech’s case, the bankrupt operating unit has been turned over to a local government to manage while in receivership, and that government has been trying to protect jobs. But the European solar panel industry has its own struggles, and is not willing to let their Chinese rivals solve their problems by unloading their inventory too cheaply on the Continent. That is why European executives are pressing for the preliminary tariffs — to force China to the bargaining table. | International trade;EU;China;Solar energy;Germany;Tariff |
ny0094525 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2015/01/11 | A Review of Le Bon Choix in Ridgewood | Rotisserie chicken has become something of a food-world darling over the last few years, with renowned chefs like Marcus Samuelsson taking an interest in the once-humble weeknight dinner staple. Some trendy restaurants are even stuffing their birds with foie gras. The restaurant Le Bon Choix , which means the “the right choice” in French, opts for keeping things simple, and affordable. Regretfully, the service is not as streamlined. The 1,100-square-foot restaurant, which opened last April, is situated among a string of other businesses along the car-heavy Godwin Avenue in downtown Ridgewood. The décor is charming, featuring dark wood floors and furniture. The rotisserie oven, containing five skewers, is viewable from the dining room and can hold up to 30 birds as they rotate to a golden finish. The tables, 16 in all (19 on the weekends), are set with rolls of paper towels in lieu of napkins. Two overhead fans evoke a French bistro ambience. The diverse background music, ranging from the Beatles to heavy metal, ensures that the room always feels lively even when it’s not full of the families with children who tend to be the most frequent diners. Children even get a complimentary gluten-free sugar cookie to decorate with colorful sprinkles as soon as they sit down (the cookies are then whisked away to the oven during the meal and are presented afterward as desserts). And while there is an especially friendly staff, there are some lapses in the dining experience. Image The roast chicken with cornbread. Credit Susan Stava for The New York Times During one weekend lunch visit, for example, when we were the first and only customers for close to 30 minutes, our sandwiches took 45 minutes to arrive despite what looked to be four people working furiously behind the counter to prepare them. And when they appeared, our side orders inexplicably did not. On another trip, our dinner reservation was lost, and we had to ask numerous times for items like forks. But, given the hearty portions and wallet-pleasing prices, it might be best to focus on the fact that this place serves really good chicken, and that’s the reason to come. Ahmed Soliman, the 42-year-old owner, said in a telephone interview after my visits, “I want to marry the concept of a traditional French rotisserie with some Southern influences when it comes to sauces and sides.” Mr. Soliman hired Doug Riggs, 42, as the chef. Starters included a Provence soup with white beans and escarole, which we found overly salty on our visit, and a roasted beet salad with candied pecans, goat cheese and orange segments, which was light and tasty. There were also six sandwiches featuring bread from Balthazar Bakery; gluten-free breads were also available. As lunch options, the sandwiches hit the spot (the menu is the same for dinner and lunch). Our favorites were the Cote du Rhone, served on a thick brioche roll and filled with breast and dark meat chicken, crunchy coleslaw, Gruyère cheese and an espresso barbecue sauce; and the Lyon, with shredded chicken, white bean purée, green olive tapenade and salad greens, served on ciabatta. They were both delicious, but we waited a long time for them. Image The Lyon sandwich, with shredded chicken and a white bean tapenade spread on a ciabatta roll, served “Bocuse-style,” with a fried egg and crispy chicken skins. Credit Susan Stava for The New York Times On the other hand, the roast chicken, sold in halves for a single portion, arrived quickly and was so well-executed that wasting your appetite on anything else might be doing it an injustice. The kitchen team injects free-range birds from Goffle Road Poultry Farm in nearby Wyckoff with secret ingredients and roasts them for at least two hours. Served on a thick wood cutting board, they were tender and flavorful, not dry and bland like so many can be, and we quickly realized that the best way to savor every bit of them was to pull them apart and eat them with our hands. The Southern influence was evident with the choice of four accompanying house-made sauces: a ginger peanut; the barbecue infused with espresso; a white barbecue with horseradish, shallots and mayonnaise; and a mushroom gravy called chasseur. While these definitely added gusto, the birds were also tasty without them. Side orders were basic but good. The cornbread, baked daily in-house, seemed like the kind of bread you would want to eat every night with dinner; the mac ’n’ cheese with Gruyère, Parmesan and Cheddar was a winner with its creaminess; and the carrots and butternut squash were roasted but not mushy. As for desserts, the gluten-free chocolate chip cookies were soft and chewy, while the chocolate bread pudding, served warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, made for a more decadent finish. Overall, Le Bon Choix is worth visiting for the rotisserie chicken alone. Tolerating the slipshod service might be part of the deal, but at least it is service with a smile. | Restaurant;Ridgewood NJ;Le Bon Choix;Ahmed Soliman;Doug Riggs |
ny0124772 | [
"sports",
"soccer"
]
| 2012/08/18 | Money and Emotions Run High as Premier League Soccer Starts | LONDON — The English Premier League had two hugely defining moments last season, and each brought a reaction in the days leading up to the start of the new campaign this weekend. One was the night in March when Fabrice Muamba, an energetic midfield player for the Bolton Wanderers, suffered heart failure during a game at Tottenham in London. He was dead when emergency medical personnel, including a cardiac specialist, reached him, and clinically dead for 78 minutes. But through the wonders of modern science and the fact that a defibrillator was available to shock his heart into action 15 times, doctors were able to bring him back to life. Muamba is still a symbol of hope. Last month, he took a turn carrying the Olympic flame through East London, where his family settled after fleeing the former Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. He looked good, and he spoke optimistically of returning to an active role in the game. A checkup last week deemed otherwise. He might still have a decent life, but professional soccer is too great a risk. “While the news is devastating,” Muamba said Thursday, “I have much to be thankful for. “I thank God that I am alive and I pay tribute once again to the members of the medical team, who never gave up on me. Football has been my life since I was a teenage boy. Above all else, I love the game and count myself very lucky to have been able to play at the highest level.” Aged 24, and with a small son of his own, Muamba has other things going for him. He developed his academic as well as his athletic talents as a youth, and has a competent grasp of how to invest the insurance payout he qualifies to receive. And Bolton has pledged to keep him on, if he chooses, in roles in its community or junior coaching projects. The other defining moment of last season? The fact that the Premiership title went to the last day of its 10-month season, and to the very last seconds of injury time in the 38 games played by each club before Manchester City was declared England’s champion for the first time in 44 years. City and its more titled neighbor, Manchester United , finished all square on the number of games won, tied and lost. But City, the team massively invested in by Abu Dhabi’s royal family, eked out the prize because it scored two more goals than United over the season, and conceded six fewer. There has been a reaction to that aspect in the last few days of preparation for the new season. Alex Ferguson, who has managed United to 12 English league titles in his 25 years at the club, has beefed up his goal-scoring power. He signed Shinji Kagawa, a goal maker, from Borussia Dortmund during the summer. And he vied with City to buy Robin van Persie, the Premier League’s leading scorer by far last season, for £24 million, or nearly $38 million, from Arsenal . Arsenal in a sense had no power to keep van Persie. The Dutch player had only one season left to run on his contract and let it be known that he would not sign another one. Van Persie had been an Arsenal player for eight years but, having stabilized his previously inconsistent health problems, had run into such scoring form that he struck 48 goals, and hit the goal posts or bar 10 times, in his last 55 games. However, like Cesc Fàbregas, the Arsenal captain before him, van Persie concluded that there was a better team to play for than the one that developed him. Fàbregas departed a year ago, back to his boyhood team, Barcelona. Van Persie, now 29, released a public statement saying that wanted to win big trophies before his time ran out. He said he would always love Arsenal, but made it painfully clear that he felt the club’s purse, or its ambition, did not stretch to the ambitions he holds. It was not, he insisted, about money — not about personal payment anyway. United will pay him a reported £250,000 per week, the same that it pays its star player, Wayne Rooney. They will share an attack that now has four principal strikers — van Persie, Rooney, Danny Welbeck and Chicharito Hernández. This gives Ferguson a four-way option (five if you count Dimitar Berbatov, who has not yet been sold to another team) that matches City’s amazing quartet of Sergio Agüero, Carlos Tévez, Mario Balotelli and Edin Dzeko. With almost two weeks left in the European trading period, it is still possible that Berbatov or Dzeko will move on. And still quite likely that both Manchesters, as well as Chelsea , Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham, will remain open for business until the transfer window shuts. But on the evidence of last May, when the season ended so thrillingly, with only goal difference to separate the blues and the reds of one neighborhood, Manchester is setting the standards and the spending power. City and United finished 19 points ahead of the third-place Arsenal, 20 points up on Tottenham, 24 points ahead of Newcastle, and an astonishing 25 points above Chelsea. It isn’t exactly winner take all in a league that can, for example, win the Champions League with its sixth-place team, which is what Chelsea was when it won the European competition a few months ago. Chelsea’s response has been to pay £64 million in fees to purchase the Belgian forward Eden Hazard, the young German Marko Marin and the Brazilian playmaker Oscar. So far, the total expenditure by Premier League clubs in this transfer round exceeds a quarter of a billion pounds. Wages are extra. We might ask if England’s summer sport is spending money. Some of it is recoverable. Spain has deeper financial problems than Britain, yet Real Madrid is closing in on Luka Modric, the Tottenham Hotspur playmaker. As usual, the Spurs’ chairman, Daniel Levy, an accountant, is playing a waiting game — waiting until the buyer meets or nears the £35 million valuation he is holding out for. It isn’t about the money. We have the players’ word for that. | Soccer;English Premier League;Arsenal (Soccer Team);Chelsea (Soccer Team);Manchester City (Soccer Team);Manchester United (Soccer Team);Bolton Wanderers (Soccer Team) |
ny0153747 | [
"business",
"worldbusiness"
]
| 2008/01/29 | A Quest for Glory and a Bonus Ends in Disgrace | PARIS — When Daniel Bouton, the chief executive of Société Générale , announced that the venerable bank had lost more than $7 billion in unwinding the positions of a rogue trader, he called the culprit “a terrorist.” But Jérôme Kerviel, nicknamed “the mad trader” by the French press, told investigators that all he wanted was to be respected, and to earn a big bonus. Mr. Kerviel, the son of a hairdresser and a metal shop teacher from the provinces — a contrast to his pedigreed superiors — reported to work early, stayed late, and took only four days off in 2007, in a nation where six weeks of vacation is de rigueur. Starting in early 2005, he made small unauthorized trades, a strategy that ultimately wound out of control. At a news conference, Jean-Claude Marin, Paris’s chief prosecutor, said, “When you have been performing these operations for months without being discovered, there is a kind of spiral, where you ultimately think yourself much stronger than the rest of the world.” In 48 hours of intense questioning, Mr. Kerviel described growing increasingly daring after no one at the bank detected a series of small, unauthorized trades that he had placed. And Monday, pressure mounted on Société Générale and Mr. Bouton to explain how the bank had missed the illicit trades, and the red flags Mr. Kerviel set off, for so long. French authorities began to snap at one another Monday, even as they closed ranks, promising to repel any hostile takeover bid by a foreign company. Mr. Kerviel told prosecutors that other traders at Société Générale had used similar tactics but with smaller bets. He said that he eventually built up a lucrative position that would have earned the bank 1.4 billion euros, or a little more than $2 billion, if it had been cashed out by the end of last year. And he told prosecutors that he thought he deserved a bonus last year of 300,000 euros. Instead, he received 1,500 euros. Initially, his bets did pay off. The bank’s head of asset management, Philippe Collas, told Bloomberg News last week that Mr. Kerviel was “massively in the money” by the end of December. But then the European market turned down and his losses mounted. Over time, Mr. Kerviel had increased the size of his bets — he hedged his positions on paper with falsified documents and e-mail messages — but he remained convinced that success was just around the corner. “He bet on the return of the markets that were extremely low and he imagined that there would be a return of the markets just as large as the losses,” Mr. Marin, the prosecutor, said. “There is an addiction. There is a dependency on this complicated game of betting on the markets, and there is a sort of spiral into which it’s difficult to exit.” If he is found guilty of abuse of confidence, the charge carrying the most severe penalty, Mr. Kerviel faces a seven-year jail term and a 750,000 euro fine. Mr. Kerviel is also accused of forgery and unauthorized use of someone else’s password to access a computer system. He said he did not seek to keep any of the bank’s money. The prosecutor recommended keeping Mr. Kerviel in protective custody, in part because of the danger of suicide once Mr. Kerviel realizes what penalties he is facing. “One of our concerns is that he needs protection,” Mr. Marin said, adding that Mr. Kerviel had not received any threats. “He’s not depressed at the moment. But once the full measure of behavior hits home you know that the way that human nature operates means that he could take some kind of action.” Later Monday, Mr. Kerviel surrendered his passport and was released by a judge, who decides such matters separately from the prosecutor. Prosecutors immediately appealed the decision. Over the course of his interrogation by prosecutors, Mr. Kerviel admitted making deceptive trades. The trades were part of his ambition to succeed in the business and impress his bosses, and to lead them to recognize his “financial genius,” Mr. Marin said. Mr. Kerviel was striving to break free from his lowly beginnings in the bank hierarchy. He graduated with a degree in finance from a university in Lyon that specialized in training bank employees, and in 2000 he began work in the unglamorous back office and middle office, where trades are monitored. And once he became a junior trader, his salary of 100,000 euros was paltry in comparison with the bank’s stars. “He wanted to prove his competence,” Mr. Marin said, “and his capacity to act on the market. He was also seeking a bonus from his results.” Indeed, when Jean-Pierre Mustier, chief executive of Société Générale’s corporate and investment banking division, called in Mr. Kerviel for questioning on Jan. 19, the day after the trader’s faulty positions were discovered, Mr. Kerviel insisted for several hours that rather than engaging in wrongdoing, he had instead invented a new kind of trade that would make the bank money. The pressure to perform apparently took its toll on Mr. Kerviel. His family said they had detected signs that he was suffering under pressure from his job and that they had grown increasingly worried. During an interview with the French radio network Europe 1, Sylviane Le Goff, one of Mr. Kerviel’s two aunts, said he had suffered health problems because of his job. The family, she said, had urged him to quit, but Mr. Kerviel told them he did not know what else he could do. “He is a boy who is serious, honest and hardworking and is incapable of doing anything wrong,” Ms. Le Goff said, declaring that her nephew had been manipulated and that authorities should examine the actions of his managers. Mr. Kerviel still remains convinced that the positions he took would not necessarily have harmed the bank in such a drastic fashion if the company had not moved to unwind his actions into a volatile market that was already falling. “In waiting a little while,” he told the prosecutors, “there could have been fewer losses.” | Societe Generale;Kerviel Jerome;Paris (France);Stocks and Bonds;Frauds and Swindling |
ny0263065 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
]
| 2011/12/27 | Baghdad Hit by Suicide Bombing | BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber driving a car packed with explosives attacked a checkpoint in front of the Iraqi Interior Ministry on Monday morning, killing 5, wounding 39 and roiling a country unsettled by a political crisis and a wave of deadly bombings just days ago. As Baghdad’s rush hour was beginning around 7:30 a.m., the bomber tried to ram the car through one of the few entrances to a compound that houses the ministry, the country’s police academy, several jails and a hospital, according to officials. Security officers opened fire on the car and the bomber detonated the explosives, killing two of the officers and three civilians, the officials said. Many officers were among the wounded. “When the explosion happened it was so loud I couldn’t hear anything — I felt like I was in a different world,” said Ahmed Abed, 45, a taxi driver whose car was damaged in the attack. “What am I going to do now? I depend on this car for supporting my family.” The attack outside the ministry compound occurred just hours after two improvised explosive devices were detonated on Sunday night in the predominately Sunni area of Abu Ghraib, which is policed mainly by Shiite security officers. Four officers were killed in that attack and four others were wounded, officials said. The Ministry of Interior has symbolic importance in the political crisis that engulfed the country as the last American troops were withdrawing a little more than a week ago. The crisis began when a spokesman for the ministry, which is controlled by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki , publicly accused the country’s Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi , of running a death squad. In a televised news conference, the spokesman waved a warrant for Mr. Hashimi’s arrest in front of the cameras and played videotaped confessions of Mr. Hashimi’s body guards saying he was behind orders they received to kill government officials. The accusations were a tipping point in a widening rift between Mr. Maliki’s Shiite-led government and leaders of the country’s Sunni minority. On Thursday morning, a series of explosions across Baghdad killed more than 60 people, marking the deadliest day in the capital in more than a year and underscoring the country’s tenuous security. No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, or for those late Sunday and on Monday, but they were similar to others conducted by Al Qaeda in Iraq, the insurgent group accused of trying to plunge the country back into a sectarian conflict by pitting Sunnis and Shiites against one another. The bombing on Monday came hours after the Iraqi government announced an agreement to relocate 3,400 Iranian dissidents living at a camp inside Iraq ’s borders, potentially unwinding a standoff between Iraq and the camp’s residents. The exiles are members of a paramilitary group that has tried to topple Iran’s government and is listed as a terrorist group by the United States. They were given refuge by Saddam Hussein during his war with Iran, but the current Iraqi government, with closer ties to Iran, has vowed to dismantle the outpost, known as Camp Ashraf, by the end of the year. Mr. Maliki, who fled to Iran to escape a death warrant under Mr. Hussein, gave the group a six-month extension last week, suggesting some hope of resolving the situation. Under the deal announced late Sunday night by the United Nations office in Baghdad, the members of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran would leave Camp Ashraf, in Diyala Province in eastern Iraq, and move to a former American military base near Baghdad’s international airport. The United Nations refugee agency would then seek to relocate the residents to other countries, most likely as refugees. American officials and United Nations diplomats hailed the deal as a major step that could prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and avert a head-on confrontation between the camp’s residents and the Iraqi security forces stationed just outside its perimeter. In April, dozens of people inside Ashraf were killed after the Iraqi Army raided the camp. The United Nations said it had spoken extensively with the camp’s residents about the relocation, but it was unclear whether they would accept the deal. A spokesman for the camp said in a telephone interview on Monday that its residents had yet to see the terms of the formal agreement signed by the Iraqi government and United Nations, and did not know whether it would offer adequate security guarantees. “The most important thing is the protection of the lives of the 3,400 people at the camp,” said Shahriar Kia, the spokesman. “That’s the main priority.” | Iraq War (2003-11);Politics and Government;Iraqi Army;Maliki Nuri Kamal al-;Hashimi Tariq al-;Iraq |
ny0154092 | [
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
]
| 2008/01/19 | With Reminders of Past, Duquesne Moves Ahead | PITTSBURGH — Beneath the bed in his Duquesne University dorm room, Shawn James keeps a red and white, left-foot, size 13 Nike Air Force sneaker. It is not an unusual possession for a college basketball player — except for the bullet hole. “I see it every morning,” James said. The bullet was removed from his foot last season. Cold weather reminds him with “numbness in my big toe,” James said. “It freezes up.” James, a 6-foot-10 junior who excels at blocking shots, was among the least injured of the five players who were attacked in September 2006 by two men spraying gunfire outside a campus dance in a dispute involving a woman. James, Kojo Mensah and Aaron Jackson — all shot that morning — are three-fifths of the starting lineup for an 11-4 Duquesne team that has rapidly improved in two seasons under Coach Ron Everhart. The Dukes visit Fordham on Saturday afternoon. The other two shooting victims no longer play for Duquesne. Stuard Baldonado, wounded in the arm and lower back, was suspended from school after unrelated legal charges involving drugs and domestic violence. He is trying for a professional career and is suing Duquesne, alleging inadequate security for the social gathering at the Black Student Union. Sam Ashaolu, the most seriously wounded of the players, is still a student at the university. Ashaolu had fragments of two bullets in his head and still has pieces of one. He recently underwent another operation because of migraine headaches. Everhart was hospitalized about three months after the shootings, on Christmas Day, with a ruptured colon. Four months ago, he had another operation to remove part of his colon. He said stress contributed to his health problems, but he was reluctant to elaborate because, he said, other coaches may use it as a weapon in recruiting. “They’ll say, ‘This guy is falling apart,’ ” he said. Rivals, he said, use fear to discourage prospects from Duquesne. “Absolutely, without a doubt,” Everhart said during an interview in his office on Wednesday. “The moms and dads say: ‘Five basketball guys got shot? What’s wrong with that picture?’ ” The Dukes went 10-19 last season as James and Mensah sat out their transfer year while healing. This season, the Dukes are good enough to beat weaker teams, yet they have lost close games against Drake (77-73), Pitt (73-68) and Rhode Island (80-78). Mensah is the leading scorer at 14.3 points a game, and James is second at 13.9. The Dukes also get 8.1 points and 5.8 rebounds from the freshman forward Damian Saunders. Saunders replaced last season’s leading scorer, Robert Mitchell (16.4), who transferred to Seton Hall. Saunders chose Duquesne after he was turned away from Marquette for what he called academic reasons. Did Saunders hesitate about joining Duquesne because of the shootings? “Nah, it didn’t worry me,” he said. “I figured it was a one-time thing.” Duquesne, a private Catholic university of about 10,000 students, once was a basketball power. The wall behind the basket at Duquesne’s 5,358-seat A. J. Palumbo Center has a sign celebrating the team’s last N.C.A.A. appearance, in 1977. But in a city with three major sports but no N.B.A. team, the Dukes now trail the University of Pittsburgh in college basketball popularity. The Panthers routinely contend for Big East titles and N.C.A.A. tournament berths in their new arena about three miles away. The Duquesne athletic department is ambitious again, but the Dukes’ last winning season was in 1993-94. Everhart moved swiftly when he was hired in 2006, acquiring two Division I transfers: James, a forward from Northeastern, and Mensah, a guard from Siena. They were friends from Brooklyn and Notre Dame Prep in Massachusetts. They joined five junior college transfers and two holdovers from a 2005-6 team that went 3-24 under Danny Nee. The dance was the new group’s first social gathering. “In the big picture, God has blessed us,” said Everhart, referring to other, more violent, campus shootings. When a visitor suggested it could have been like last April’s one-man rampage at Virginia Tech that left 32 dead, plus the shooter, Everhart pointed to his framed Hokies basketball jersey on the wall above his desk. “My alma mater,” Everhart said. Ashaolu still stops by practice, where Everhart coaxes smiles from him with encouraging words and friendly banter. But Ashaolu sometimes lowers his gaze and shields his eyes from bright light. He has said he wants to play, but his brother, John, is concerned. “The doctors say the more stress, the more chances he could get a seizure,” John Ashaolu said. “He had a seizure last summer.” John Ashaolu said it was best that Sam “lives his dream” of basketball through his teammates and their younger brother, Olu, who plays for Louisiana Tech. “I know he is down about not being able to play,” John Ashaolu said. Everhart brought Ashaolu to Fordham on Friday for his first road trip — but not to play. John Ashaolu said he sympathized with his brother’s frustration. “I can just imagine being in his shoes,” John said. | Duquesne University;Basketball;Assaults |
ny0000666 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2013/03/11 | Problems Remain, but N.Y.C. Parks Receive High Grades in Survey | The conditions of more than 40 large parks in New York City have improved in the last two years, though problems — including a lack of resources and consistency — remain, according to a survey by an independent advocacy group. That finding is included in a new report card by the nonprofit advocacy group, New Yorkers for Parks , that assesses the condition of those parks. The parks scored better on maintenance than they had in the previous report card , earning a B-plus, up from a B two years ago. The report card looked at 11 indicators in 43 parks ranging in size from 20 to 500 acres. The features included lawns, drinking fountains, sitting areas, courts, playgrounds, trees and bathrooms. While the overall picture was encouraging, especially given the decrease in the parks department’s maintenance budget in recent years, New Yorkers for Parks cautioned that the positive grade belied larger problems in the system. “When you scratch below the surface, it’s clear that the parks department has been ensnared in a property management version of Whac-A-Mole: they fix one problem, and another emerges elsewhere,” Holly M. Leicht, the group’s executive director, said. “The pie just isn’t big enough.” For example, the worst-performing feature studied, drinking fountains, improved, on average, between the two reports. It rose from 64 in 2010 to 75 in 2012, when the group’s surveyors examined the parks. But there were 17 parks in which the condition of the fountains in 2012 was actually worse than in 2010. Similarly, individual parks showed improvements in one area but had setbacks in others. In Morningside Park in Manhattan, for instance, the lawns performed better in the most recent report card than in the last, rising to a grade of 98 from 85 in the 2011 report. So, too, did the bathrooms, which climbed to 100 from 92. But at the same time, the safety surfacing on playgrounds deteriorated, with the grade in the playground category falling to 64 from 91. New Yorkers for Parks focused on large parks because their size and variety of attractions, from ball fields to bodies of water, make them difficult to keep pristine. (The group did not include what it calls “megaparks,” 14 parks across the city that are more than 500 acres, because it lacked the staff to do meaningful evaluations.) So-called large parks have consistently fared worse than smaller parks and playgrounds on the city’s own evaluations. “Last year, 87 percent of small parks earned an acceptable cleanliness rating, while only 77 percent of large parks were deemed acceptable,” the report card noted. Still, the results were surprisingly positive in many respects. Of the parks surveyed, 88 percent scored an A or B, on average, and no park received a failing grade. Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem, which had scored a D on the last report card, raised its overall grade to 91. “Many problems that we identified in 2010 had been remedied, including broken benches in sitting areas and separating safety surfacing in the playgrounds,” the report said of Marcus Garvey. Across all the parks surveyed, 6 of 11 features — sitting areas, natural areas, courts, athletic fields, playgrounds and trees — scored 90 or better. Parks officials welcomed the results. “It shows steady improvement across the board in most areas and in most parks, and that’s what we’re striving for,” said Liam Kavanagh, the first deputy commissioner of the Department of Parks and Recreation. He pointed to the department’s own regular inspection system, which is conducted every two weeks in every park. “We use that to judge our performance and look to where we have to correct problems,” Mr. Kavanagh said. “Having it validated by New Yorkers for Parks is a testament to the men and women out in the field every day maintaining parks.” St. Mary’s Park in the Bronx received a perfect score of 100 for its drinking fountains, as it had in the last report card. But it lagged in other areas, earning a 63 for both its pathways, which were cracked and mud-covered, and lawns, which suffered from erosion. Seats were missing in the bleachers next to the baseball diamond, and a stairway had to be roped off for safety reasons. That brought its overall score to 78. The slight improvement demonstrated in the report card came despite a steady decline in the parks department’s operations budget since the financial crisis. The total expense budget, which includes maintenance, fell to $338 million in the current fiscal year, from $367 million in 2008. That resulted in the loss of hundreds of positions. And that decrease occurred despite the addition of 750 acres of new parkland. “Despite improved scores, the bottom line is that the parks department hasn’t had sufficient resources to keep up with the maintenance demands of 29,000 acres of parkland,” Ms. Leicht said. “We’re simply asking them to do the impossible.” The condition of parks could improve in the coming year, however. The preliminary budget released by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg called for 414 new positions for the parks department, mostly maintenance positions. Included among the new positions are 81 parks enforcement patrol officers. “I don’t think it brings us back to the level of 2008,” Ms. Leicht said, “but it is heartening to see.” Hurricane Sandy brought new challenges for the department, which closed many parks and playgrounds for weeks after the storm because of unsafe conditions. While the surveyors visited the 43 parks before the storm, they revisited more than half after the hurricane. Fallen trees and downed limbs were “pervasive” in parks, said the report, which called for more money for tree care. “While those funds increased in fiscal year 2013 and remain stable in the proposed fiscal year 2014 budget, they are significantly lower than in 2008,” the report said. | Parks;NYC Parks and Recreation;New Yorkers for Parks;Marcus Garvey Park Manhattan;Morningside Park Manhattan;NYC |
ny0179433 | [
"business"
]
| 2007/08/17 | Rate of New Home Construction Plunges | As more fallout from the mortgage market squeeze becomes apparent, there was yet another sign yesterday that the worst of the trauma in the housing sector may not be over. The pace of new residential construction and the rate of building permits issued fell last month to their lowest points in more than a decade, the government reported. The picture is even gloomier than it was a year earlier, when the housing market was already in a state of decline. The annual rate of building permits issued last month stood at 1.4 million, 22.6 percent lower than the rate last July. The rate of construction on new homes also fell to 1.4 million, which was 20.9 percent lower than a year earlier. “The bottom isn’t here. It’s not even in sight yet,” said Richard F. Moody, chief economist with Mission Residential, a real estate investment firm in Austin, Tex. Builders and developers are scaling back as Americans are finding it more difficult and more expensive to obtain mortgages. And as credit standards tighten across the entire lending industry, mortgage companies are finding it difficult to raise cash and to sell their loan portfolios. Countrywide Financial, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, said yesterday that it had tapped $11.5 billion in emergency loans from 40 of the world’s largest banks, seeking to shore up its finances. The difficulties facing mortgage companies have made builders anxious, and they are responding by cutting back, said Michelle Meyer, an economist with Lehman Brothers. “They’re aware of what’s going on in the mortgage market, and they’re concerned about it. And that’s adding to pessimism among builders.” The latest construction numbers showed that every region of the country has felt the squeeze. Compared with a year earlier, the rate of building permits issued in July fell 12.5 percent in the Northeast, 22.2 percent in the Midwest, 25.6 percent in the South and 20.7 percent in the West. New-home construction fell everywhere except in the Northeast, where it increased 6.1 percent at a seasonally adjusted annual rate, compared with last July. On an unadjusted basis, however, construction in the Northeast fell. In the Midwest, the adjusted rate of construction dropped 17.5 percent. In the South, it fell 26.3 percent; in the West, 21.5 percent. Economists worry about a ripple effect if the credit market gets tighter, cutting off loans for more individuals and corporations. Stricter borrowing conditions could cause home sales to fall even more, which could in turn depress prices further. And the effect of falling home prices could cut into consumer spending, which would harm economic growth. “The question is how long it persists,” Ms. Meyer said. “And timing the bottom is very difficult right now because of all the moving parts.” | Housing;Economic Conditions and Trends;Building (Construction);Countrywide Financial Corporation |
ny0123146 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2012/09/30 | Federal Judge Awards Some Damages in Song Dispute | WHEN Peggy Harley of Queens claimed in a lawsuit that a song she had written was recorded without her permission by another singer who was later nominated for a Grammy Award, she demanded millions of dollars in damages and a share of any profits. “My lifes work was stolen from me,” Ms. Harley wrote in a copyright infringement complaint that was full of grammatical errors and misspellings. She claimed to be “afflicted with pain and suffering and emotional distress.” Ms. Harley’s case was the subject of an article on Aug. 19 in Metropolitan, which detailed how Ms. Harley, who was acting as her own lawyer, stumbled for four years in court, showing up late for hearings or failing to appear at all. She was accused by judges of interrupting them, of filing frivolous motions and of refusing to participate in the discovery process. At one point, she was ordered to pay about $13,000 in sanctions because of her actions. On Sept. 21, Judge Katherine B. Forrest of Federal District Court in Manhattan, who had earlier found that there were “unmistakable and substantial similarities” between Ms. Harley’s song, “It Will Never Happen Again,” and the Grammy-nominated “ I Apologize, ” sung by Ann Nesby, ruled on how much money Ms. Harley should get. She said that Ms. Harley was not entitled to a share of profits because there were none; Shanachie Entertainment, the record label in New Jersey that produced “I Apologize,” had said that its revenues with respect to the song were exceeded by its costs. The song did not win the Grammy. As for damages, the judge awarded Ms. Harley $2,386.11 — the amount the company had said she would have been entitled to had the song been licensed from the beginning. Shanachie had asked that any damages be offset by the money Ms. Harley owed in sanctions, but Judge Forrest rejected that request and ordered Shanachie to pay Ms. Harley within two weeks. Shanachie’s lawyer, Roger Juan Maldonado, said the company “will abide by the court’s order and is grateful that it can now finally put this matter to rest.” Ms. Nesby has denied using Ms. Harley’s music, and Shanachie has said that any infringement was “completely inadvertent.” Ms. Harley has declined to comment on the case. | Decisions and Verdicts;Harley Peggy;Nesby Ann;Shanachie Entertainment;Forrest Katherine B;Music;Copyrights and Copyright Violations |
ny0034392 | [
"sports",
"soccer"
]
| 2013/12/24 | Arsenal and Chelsea Draw in Premier League | Arsène Wenger failed for the 10th time to get the better of Jose Mourinho as Arsenal was held to a 0-0 draw by Chelsea, missing a chance to return to the top of the Premier League. The London derby, played with rain swirling around Emirates Stadium, failed to produce the drama expected, with few attempts on goal. Chelsea came closest in the first half when Frank Lampard’s shot struck the crossbar, while Arsenal only threatened in the closing minutes when Olivier Giroud shot wide from a tight angle. In Mourinho’s two stints as Chelsea manager, Wenger has had five draws and five losses. “It is a solid point but 2 points dropped at home,” Wenger said. Arsenal is second in the Premier League, trailing Liverpool on goal difference, and is 2 points ahead of fourth-place Chelsea. ■ Tottenham appointed the inexperienced Tim Sherwood as the coach until the end of next season in a surprise move by the club, a week after André Villas-Boas was fired. He was named the interim coach a week ago. | Arsenal Soccer Team;Premier League;Chelsea Soccer Team;Soccer |
ny0253220 | [
"sports",
"football"
]
| 2011/10/17 | Giants Have Another Adventure in Sudden Reversals | East Rutherford, N.J. First down on the 27, already in field-goal range, the Buffalo Bills seemed to have the Giants right where they wanted them, where they were the previous week, about to cough up a close game at home. That’s when Ryan Fitzpatrick, the Harvard-educated quarterback, flunked the fundamental question on the deep sideline route. He underthrew his receiver, Stevie Johnson, leaving Corey Webster in prime position to turn around the game’s momentum, the disquieting mood at MetLife Stadium and maybe the Giants’ season — or at least the first half of it. “I wanted to get inside of him,” Webster said of Johnson, whom he was chasing on the left sideline, just inside the 5, with four minutes and change left in a 24-24 game. “Hopefully you get your head turned around and go for the ball.” Turn around and turnarounds. It was appropriate word play for a day on which the Giants’ defense began by surrendering 14 points on two plays that covered a combined 140 yards. When they remembered that defense does require tackling, the Giants reversed field and fortune in a 27-24 victory that sent them into their bye week at 4-2, thinking they had survived a brutal run of preseason injuries in pretty good shape. “To have the bye and to be an optimist, if I might, maybe we will get some guys healthy,” said Coach Tom Coughlin, whose team was without defensive end Justin Tuck again and running back Brandon Jacobs, among others. Coughlin hedged on the hopefulness because this is the N.F.L., where enduring parity has been achieved almost to the point of parody, where most games are as predictable as a gust and where Coach barely knows who will suit up week to week. A week ago, against Seattle, Coughlin must have felt mighty optimistic when the Giants were driving for a potential game-winning touchdown, only to have Eli Manning’s short pass to Victor Cruz turn into a pinball and run back the other way more yards than Coughlin could bear. Be it coincidence or karma, Webster’s fourth-quarter interception that started the Giants on a 76-yard drive resulting in a deciding 23-yard field goal by Lawrence Tynes was made in the general vicinity of the previous week’s Manning-Cruz crusher. On Sunday, Manning was mostly patient and pick-free while throwing for 292 yards. Fitzpatrick, one-time master of the Wonderlic, was perhaps left wanting to beat his own brains in for Webster’s interceptions. Especially the second one, unforgivable as it was given the circumstances. “I’ll take that matchup every time, and if I throw a good ball on that, Stevie scores and everybody is happy,” Fitzpatrick said. “It’s easy to second-guess it now, but I thought it was a great call and I thought it was the right play.” A debatable claim, to say the least. But that the Bills were even bidding for their fifth victory in six games was testimony to a crazy-quilt season that has already given us a stunning assortment of the ascendant (Lions, 49ers, Bills) and descendent (Eagles, Jets, Colts). In a league whose current champion is the municipally owned property of Green Bay, in which Los Angeles doesn’t even rate a team, a season’s overriding success is seldom linked to size of market or sexiness of franchise. It’s the beastly nature of the game, the uncertainty of Sunday, which has turned the N.F.L. into the envy of all competing sports leagues, especially the one currently in collective bargaining limbo. By themselves, the Giants have become a weekly soap opera. They were declared a disaster in the making after Week 1 at Washington, then a remake of “Little Giants” after they ran off three straight victories despite being patched together with sticks and glue, and a team on the brink of a nervous breakdown after the way they lost to Seattle last week. “We talked about positive energy, because there was so much negative out there,” Coughlin said. He was brimming with his own while praising Manning, Ahmad Bradshaw for his 104 yards rushing and 3 touchdowns, and the playmakers on defense who recovered from the unsightliness of Fred Jackson’s 80-yard touchdown run and Naaman Roosevelt’s 60-yard catch and run to the end zone about five minutes apart in the first quarter. Especially Jason Pierre-Paul, who sacked Fitzpatrick for a 9-yard loss at the Giants’ 37 midway through the second quarter, pushing the Bills out of field-goal range. On the Bills’ next drive, he and Osi Umenyiora stuffed Jackson for no gain on third-and-1 at the Giants’ 31, forcing the Bills to settle for a field goal. In a 3-point victory, the play, though forgotten by the finish, loomed large. “You never know what’s going to happen in this game,” Pierre-Paul said. “You give up a couple of big plays, but at the end of the day, you move on.” You take the fourth-quarter gift from Fitzpatrick, drive the ball down the field and cringe when Manning forces a pass to Mario Manningham on third-and-5 from the Buffalo 5. Cornerback Leodis McKelvin knocked it down, only a step from the unspeakable. “I tried to put it low and maybe squeeze it in,” Manning said. “It’s always a tough situation right there.” Could have been worse, much worse, a turnaround to turn the stadium upside down. But this week, the football gods smiled on them. Parity rules. | Football;New York Giants;Buffalo Bills;Webster Corey;Bradshaw Ahmad |
ny0115825 | [
"sports",
"ncaafootball"
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| 2012/11/25 | ‘Paterno,’ Once Ubiquitous at Penn State, Is No Longer Uttered | Every week now there are fewer flowers on the berm where Joe Paterno ’s statue once stood outside the football stadium at Penn State . When the statue came down in July, 12 days after a scathing report accused Paterno and top administrators of covering up the early signs of Jerry Sandusky ’s crimes, flowers marking the site grew into a mound several feet high. The plastic-wrapped roses, violets and carnations are mostly gone or withered. The berm itself has been sloped and manicured to blend in, not to call attention to the statue that used to be there. Make no mistake, Penn State will not forget Joe Paterno; many in State College, Pa., would still consider it a privilege to stand the disgraced statue in their backyards. But as the football team was ending it first postscandal season this weekend, Paterno had noticeably retreated as the emblem of a campus. In the Penn State community these days, if you ask people to talk about Paterno — to re-examine his decisions, to retrace his successes and failures, to rethink his motives and behavior — the response is increasingly no response. The topic once on everyone’s mind is no longer on everyone’s lips. If there is a consensus, or a most common response to a reporter seeking further reflection on, or examination of, the once legendary coach, it is this: Penn State is moving on without Joe Paterno. Not un-remembering him, just not summoning him, or his contested meaning, very much. The onetime king of Pennsylvania is like the statue that represented him: stored away, out of sight and, if not totally out of mind, in a dark recess waiting for an ultimate fate to be determined. “Some people at Penn State still want to discuss every detail — what did Joe know and when,” said Christian M. M. Brady, dean of the Penn State Schreyer Honors College. “But most here are done with that. They are tired of it. There is compassion for Jerry Sandusky’s victims and a passion to raise our awareness. There is a fatigue for the rest of it.” Larry Backer, head of the university’s faculty senate, conceded that in recent months, positions in the Paterno debate had hardened, changing the discourse. Paterno is still a saint to many in a region known as Happy Valley, and he is a sinner to others in the same community. People know which side of the debate they stand on, and minds are made up. What is the point of discussing it? “So there hasn’t been much talk about the former coach at all,” Backer said, choosing, in a first reference at least, not to use Paterno’s name. Paul B. Harvey, head of the classics and ancient Mediterranean studies department, interacted with Paterno over several years because Paterno and his wife, Sue, financed multiple undergraduate scholarships in his department. Harvey now rarely recounts his dealings with the Paternos. “People have stopped talking about Joe Paterno here because they are indeed ready to do just that — to move forward, to move on,” Harvey said. “But we’ve been told that when our students leave campus to interview at graduate schools or for jobs in the marketplace, they feel it is necessary to bring the scandal up even if it wasn’t brought up by the person interviewing them. That is telling on the grander scale.” At Penn State, the Paterno T-shirts that were once big sellers and prominently displayed in the windows of crowded apparel shops on College Avenue are now at the back of the store, and Paterno-themed souvenirs are far from the front-line attractions they once were. The investigation of Penn State’s handling of Sandusky, led by Louis J. Freeh, the former head of the F.B.I. and a onetime federal judge, damned Paterno and other senior university officials, as well as the “football first” culture that suffused the university. Paterno had not only failed to act to stop Sandusky from sexually abusing children, the investigation found, but had actively worked to hide his crimes. “He’s gone, and I’m sorry about that,” Harvey said of Paterno. “But we are not resurrecting the nuances and details of the case any longer. We know the harm that was caused, and no one shies from that. But there’s also sympathy for the Paterno family. Discussing it — bringing him up again and again — is only making it harder on them.” During interviews in recent weeks, Paterno’s associates, former co-workers and players — as well as alumni and his coaching brethren — were given a chance to discuss whether, in retrospect, there were qualities Paterno ever exhibited that might help make sense of his dealings with Sandusky. However, there was an almost universal disinclination to revive the man’s actions or be quoted on the record about him. Leave him be, they said. He has departed, and with him went the curiosity about his actions. Death had made it easier to not look back on a life. People occasionally told stories that may have been revealing, but few offered anything like an explanation. Paterno often bullied or manipulated aides, reporters and boosters, they said. Over time, he grew preoccupied with controlling everything within the Penn State football sphere, hence the public 2007 spat with Vicky Triponey, the former Penn State vice president for student affairs who wanted a role in disciplining football players for off-the-field transgressions. There were documented episodes of odd behavior, especially after he turned 75. Some people saw Paterno’s conduct as indicative of his domineering style and overprotective attitude toward the football program. Others said they were the acts of a cranky old man who had a reputation for being irritable even when he was not old. “There have always been Paterno haters,” said Lou Prato, Penn State’s best-known football historian. “The scandal only gives them more ammunition. It gives them something to run with bit by bit.” And there is the potential for more ammunition to come. On campus, there is a sense that the coming trials of the former president Graham B. Spanier, the athletic director Tim Curley and the university administrator Gary Schultz might prove to be the central examination of what Paterno knew and when, providing insight into his motives as well. At the same time, his many supporters hope the judicial proceedings will become the vindication of their hero. And some in the administration cling to the dream that a series of not-guilty verdicts could foster a period of reclamation for the institution’s reputation. But just as many people at Penn State, perhaps a majority on campus, will greet the approaching trials without any enthusiasm. To them, the tragedies of the scandal endure. The trials are just another bleak chapter. And while Paterno is on trial in some manner, he obviously is not charged, and never was. Most apparent to all, those being prosecuted did not engender civic pride since the mid-1960s. They are not Joe Paterno. As Harvey said, “Interestingly, in all of this there is very little sympathy for Spanier, Curley and Schultz.” Backer, who is a professor of law, said that the Penn State community may be in a stage of limbo. “It is possible we are a long way from being done with the narrative of Jerry Sandusky,” Backer said. “The trials of the former president and other officials may nudge out different views and details that change the discussion. It could be the jab that opens up the whole thing again.” Al Harris, a linebacker for Paterno in the early 1980s, has been asked repeatedly in the last year to explain the football coach he knew. A dentist in New Jersey, Harris gets the question all the time, from patients, colleagues and parents of patients. He is tempted to tell stories that still make him laugh, recalling, for example, when Paterno would charge across the practice field, his high-pitched voice squealing reprimands. “The veins would be popping out of his neck, and he’d be so angry the words would sputter out without meaning,” Harris said. “It was comical. We would have to turn away to keep from laughing in his face. But he also had a way of knowing everything about you that got your attention. “I remember him yelling at one player: ‘Your mother’s a lawyer and your father’s a doctor, but you’re an idiot.’ And that was a two-time all-American.” But Harris has had a difficult time talking about Paterno in the previous year, despite the number of times he has been asked to do it. “I think I went through the cycle of emotions as you do with any trauma,” he said. “First you deny it. Then you’re angry. Then you accept it. I still view him as a valuable, essential life coach.” Steve Manuel, a public relations lecturer at Penn State and a former spokesman for the Pentagon, is often asked to address groups about crisis communications. This month, a monthly forum sponsored by the Penn State faculty and staff asked him to speak. It was near the anniversary of Sandusky’s arrest. “I figured they wanted me to say something about the university’s crisis handling — about Sandusky, Paterno, the whole thing,” Manuel said last week. “And they said, ‘No, everyone is tired of that.’ People don’t want to bring it up.” Backer, the faculty senate leader, noticed as he watched Penn State football games on television this year that even the analysts working the games do not utter Paterno’s name. “If you had coached a team successfully for 40-plus years and then died, do you think your name would come up at least a few times when your team played on TV the next season?” Backer said. “Normally, it would probably come up often. That it does not now suggests the importance and complexity of the circumstances. “But if you listen closely, it stands out. People are very careful not to speak his name.” As on the site of the Paterno statue, what is missing is what is noticeable. At a berm where the flowery tributes dwindle with time, a famous presence diminishes. “Only Joe’s ghost remains,” Backer said. “It’s just not mentioned.” | Paterno Joe;Pennsylvania State University;Football;College Athletics;Sandusky Jerry;Football (College) |
ny0276055 | [
"business"
]
| 2016/02/06 | U.S. Export Sales Fell 4.8% in 2015 | The United States trade deficit rose in December as American exports fell for a third consecutive month, reflecting the pressures of a stronger dollar and spreading global economic weakness. Those factors contributed to the first annual drop in United States export sales since the Great Recession shrank global trade six years ago. The December deficit increased 2.7 percent to $43.4 billion, the Commerce Department said on Friday. Exports fell 0.3 percent. Imports increased 0.3 percent as Americans bought more foreign-made cars and petroleum. In 2015, the deficit rose 4.6 percent to $531.5 billion. Exports fell 4.8 percent, the first setback since 2009. Imports dropped 3.1 percent. | US Economy;International trade;Commerce Department |
ny0068006 | [
"sports",
"football"
]
| 2014/12/16 | After Two Straight Wins, Giants Recognize Their Deficiencies, if Not Themselves | The Giants have played well at times in earning consecutive victories, but it is difficult to know how much value should be attached to them after a disastrous seven-game losing streak and the team’s 5-9 record. Excitement created by a 36-7 rout on the road against the Tennessee Titans and a come-from-behind 24-13 victory over the Washington Redskins should be tempered by the opposition’s many deficiencies. Although Coach Tom Coughlin is not one to belittle opponents, the point is not lost on him. “You look at who we play, and we know what the records are,” he said on Monday during a conference call. Tennessee showed how feeble it is in bowing to the Jets, 16-11, at home on Sunday in a matchup of sorry 2-11 teams. The Titans extended the N.F.L.’s longest losing streak to eight games. Washington fell to 3-11 in remaining true to last year’s 3-13 finish. It was hardly surprising that Coughlin said the back-to-back wins were not followed by assurances of job security for him or his staff. In responding to a question about his future, he replied that 2015 had yet to be discussed and immediately changed the subject to Sunday’s road game against St. Louis, saying: “My concern is with our team, getting ready to play the St. Louis Rams. I’m sure that will be dealt with at the right time.” The perception of Coughlin and his players may change if the Giants can handle an improving Rams team that appears to be better than its 6-8 record and can defeat the Philadelphia Eagles (9-5) at MetLife Stadium to end a difficult season with a four-game winning streak and a 7-9 mark. Coughlin, a winner of two Super Bowls since he took over in 2004, insisted he remained focused only on his team’s remaining games. “We’ve got to be the best we can be in these next two games,” he said. If the Giants finish 7-9, it will match last year’s record but have an entirely different feel. The rise of Odell Beckham Jr. into a game-changing force at wide receiver already provides tremendous hope. Even though he missed the off-season and training camp with a hamstring injury, his 71 receptions are only three shy of the team rookie record set by tight end Jeremy Shockey in 2002. N.F.L. Playoffs: What Teams Must Do to Advance With two weeks to go, here’s the N.F.L. playoff picture for every team still in the hunt. With 12 receptions for 143 yards and three touchdowns against Washington, Beckham surpassed 100 yards for the fifth time, extending his Giants rookie record. It gave him seven games in a row with at least 90 receiving yards, adding to his N.F.L. mark for a first-year player. Coughlin is wary of heaping praise on Beckham, understanding how dangerous early success can be if a player should lose sight of what propelled him to an elite level. “You want to finish the season strong,” Coughlin said of Beckham. “You want to come back and have another one. You have to avoid all the things that can bring you down. We are very excited to have him.” The Giants’ progress on defense provides another encouraging element. It generated at least seven sacks in three consecutive games for the first time in franchise history, but it should be noted that they exploited injury-depleted offensive lines and young quarterbacks. The rookies Blake Bortles and Zach Mettenberger started for the Jacksonville Jaguars and Tennessee. The Giants sacked Robert Griffin III seven times on Sunday after Colt McCoy reinjured his neck on the opening series. Griffin has been slowed by two devastating knee injuries, one at Baylor and the other at the end of his dazzling rookie season in Washington. He dislocated an ankle in the second game this year. With 41 sacks, the Giants have already bettered last year’s total by seven. They have not allowed an offensive touchdown in the second half of the past two games. “We are getting contributions from a lot of people right now,” Coughlin said. He must hope that will continue, with the competition about to stiffen. EXTRA POINTS TOM COUGHLIN did not have a medical update on running back RASHAD JENNINGS, who aggravated an ankle injury and was replaced by the rookie ANDRE WILLIAMS. “Whether the injury is all the way back to square one, I don’t have any information yet,” Coughlin said. He noted that ELI MANNING, who made the injury report last week with a sore back, came through the game well. Manning is on course to make his 166th consecutive start. | Football;Tom Coughlin;NFL; Super Bowl; Super Bowl 2015;Titans;Redskins;Giants |
ny0226808 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2010/10/24 | A Good College Is Not the Be-All and End-All | THE woman corners me after I give a speech about college admissions. “My son isn’t the best student,” she begins, “but we think he has a good chance of getting into. ...” I can guess: Stanford or Duke, Yale or Northwestern. I’m sure I already know the story. The boy has a B-plus average and disappointing SAT scores, but Dad went there, and a family friend used to work in the admissions office. For seven years, I’ve crisscrossed the country, discussing what I learned while writing two books about teenagers. Help your children find their hidden talents, I advise parents. Teach your children to be independent. Don’t live your dreams through your son or daughter. As this mother shares her application strategies, I want to recommend that she let her son find his path. I stay quiet, though, because I’m struggling to follow my own advice. Somewhere in my files, I have a photo of my son, Benjie, and me on the steps of the admissions office of my alma mater, Brown University. We were framed by glowing yellow forsythia, and I was beaming. Benjie was 2 weeks old. At the time, I was a fellow at Harvard. Soon after, I did a brief teaching stint at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. I secretly hoped my son would go to one of those Ivy campuses. Maybe I saw that as the seal of approval for my parenting — my boy in Cambridge, Mass., or Hanover, N.H., or Providence, R.I. Benjie demonstrated, by his nature, that he had other plans. In kindergarten, he was the restless one who preferred exploring to listening to directions. When a private school turned him down for first grade, I felt I’d been gut-punched. The homework wars erupted in fourth grade — a 20-minute assignment stretched on for three hours, punctuated by cries of “I hate writing!” Later, while I tried to explain long division, he stormed out of the house. He stayed in the yard till dark, digging holes and watching birds. I pushed enrichment; he refused to try “stupid” scouting. He dropped soccer. Basketball lasted long enough for me to buy a uniform. Experts analyzed Benjie with standardized tests, and I fretted over his percentiles and hired tutors. At the same time, it seemed most of my friends’ preteens were doing genome research. Benjie is 14 now. At that age, I pestered teachers for extra-credit assignments. Benjie is satisfied with a C; he doesn’t understand why anyone cares about spelling words correctly; the notion of revising an essay is foreign to him. At 14, I knew I wanted to be a writer. When I ask Benjie what he sees himself doing in 10 years, he answers vaguely about working with animals. But he most likely won’t be a vet — too much chemistry and biology, he says. And yet Benjie has so much that I lack. As a teenager, I was a shy, awkward outsider. The other day, walking through Benjie’s school for a meeting, I saw him regaling a group of kids in the hallway with some fascinating tale. More important, he’s developed empathy. When he and six other students saw a classmate accused of shoplifting on a school trip, Benjie persuaded the others to avoid gossiping. Last summer, I envisioned Benjie toiling in a lab at science camp, but I lost the will to fight another battle. Instead, I sent him to stay with my brother and sister-in-law, who breed dogs. At their house, work begins at 5:30 a.m., seven days a week. Benjie would have to follow orders without excuses. Three hundred miles away, I waited for the call begging to come home. Instead, I got one-word texts like “awsomme” — misspelled every time, in true Benjie fashion. When the visit ended, my sister-in-law sent a note saying that Benjie had pitched in tirelessly with chores and even cleaned the yard after 17 spaniels dirtied it. He groomed dogs for two hours straight without getting antsy. “Benjie is an amazing kid and human being,” she wrote. “He is smart, funny, curious, caring.” Twelfth grade is a few years away, but I’m already imagining Benjie’s application essay: “My name is Benjamin but no one calls me that. I’m an animal-loving, cello-playing, cross-country-running nomad who has gone to six school districts in three states because of my dad’s stupid career.” I spend a lot of time in high-pressure communities, speaking to anxious mothers and fathers like me. We want our children to go to great colleges and prepare for a brutal job market. Still, I tell families to stop obsessing about campuses with marquee names. I’ve visited dozens of little-known schools where professors are far more engaged in teaching than members of Ivy League faculties. Also, in this economy, I can make a strong case for going to community college, mastering a trade or taking a gap year to earn money. Above all, I urge parents of high school juniors and seniors not to see their kids as SAT and ACT scores and G.P.A.’s, but as creative, unpredictable, unprogrammable teenagers with their own gifts. Like my son, Benjie. | Colleges and Universities;Admissions Standards;Ivy League;Grading of Students |
ny0149417 | [
"nyregion",
"nyregionspecial2"
]
| 2008/09/07 | Grapes of Gold | Bedell Cellars, in Cutchogue, fared best among Long Island vintners in the annual New York Wine and Food Classic last month. Its Bordeaux-style 2006 Musée ($70) was voted the state’s best red and best red vinifera blend. Osprey’s Dominion’s 2005 reserve merlot ($35) was chosen best merlot in the state. Paumanok’s 2007 semidry Riesling ($22) was designated best semisweet Riesling. Castello di Borghese’s 2006 chardonnay ($14.99) led its category, as did Macari’s 2007 Katherine’s Field sauvignon blanc ($18.99). The contest, sponsored by the New York Wine and Grape Foundation, a trade association, was held at the Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz. Of 242 producers statewide, 106 submitted 775 entries, with 27 of 50 East End producers competing. The so-called double gold medals (awarded when every judge on a panel gives a wine a gold) and single golds sent entries into the finals. The double golds included Bedell’s 2007 Taste White, a blend ($30); Macari’s 2004 Bergen Road, a red blend ($42.99); Osprey’s Dominion’s 2005 Flight, a red blend ($35); Pellegrini’s 2005 merlot ($19.99); and Waters Crest’s 2005 Campania Rosso, a red blend ($35.99). Single golds went to Bedell’s 2007 First Crush White and 2007 First Crush Red ($18 blends); Clovis Point’s 2005 chardonnay ($15); Lieb’s 2005 syrah ($26); Macari’s 2007 estate chardonnay ($18.99); Palmer’s 2004 cabernet franc, proprietor’s reserve ($18.99); Paumanok’s 2007 sauvignon blanc ($28) and 2005 petit verdot, Apollo Drive vineyard ($60); Peconic Bay Winery’s 2005 cabernet franc ($28); and Pellegrini’s nonvintage Finale, Bin 1333 (a $39.99 half-bottle dessert wine). The 2007 vidal blanc ($10.99) from Swedish Hill, in the Finger Lakes, was voted best of show. Small production may make some medalists hard to find. | Wines;Long Island (NY);Bedell Cellars;Osprey's Dominion Vineyards;Goldberg Howard G |
ny0044598 | [
"world",
"europe"
]
| 2014/02/20 | Resignations in Suspected Child Pornography Case Split Merkel’s Coalition | BERLIN — Italy has its chronic political turmoil, France a new chapter of presidential indiscretions, and Greece and Spain a seemingly unending stream of corruption cases. By comparison, Chancellor Angela Merkel has built a reputation for overseeing one of Europe’s most disciplined, tightly run and squeaky clean governments. So it came as a surprise last week that her inner circle, too, was afflicted by division and suspicion after the recent resignations of a prominent Social Democratic lawmaker and a conservative cabinet minister. Both men have become embroiled in a scandal related to an investigation of suspected child pornography, with the lawmaker having been named in the case and the cabinet minister having revealed privileged information about him. Coming just weeks into her third term, the affair has become a growing distraction as the chancellor tries to corral her broad coalition cabinet made up of both conservative allies and Socialist opponents. On Wednesday, lawmakers summoned several people tied to the case to try to untangle a web of events that unfolded over the past week, a day after Ms. Merkel convened leaders of the parties in her coalition for two hours of talks aimed at restoring confidence. “It is very much about trust in events and trust in the rule of law,” Ms. Merkel told a news conference before the meeting on Tuesday. “It is, of course, also about trust within the coalition, and we know that a coalition can only carry out its job when we view one another with trust.” That trust has been strained as lawmakers spent recent days mired in finger-pointing and trying to untangle who knew what and when related to the scandal. Image Sebastian Edathy quit as a Social Democratic lawmaker on Feb. 7. He has denied wrongdoing. Credit Maurizio Gambarini/DPA, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images What is clear is that a Social Democratic deputy, Sebastian Edathy, announced his resignation suddenly on Feb. 7, citing health reasons. But a week later, prosecutors in Hanover made public evidence that Mr. Edathy had purchased 31 products from an online site based in Canada that sold videos and images of underage boys and that they had begun a preliminary investigation. Mr. Edathy, who had previously gained prominence and plaudits for his work in uncovering a far-right network that killed foreign-born residents, has not been charged with any crime. It remains unclear that under current German law the material qualifies as child pornography. Mr. Edathy has denied any wrongdoing. Within days of the lawmaker’s resignation, Hans-Peter Friedrich, the conservative agriculture minister, also quit, after it emerged that he had informed the leader of the Social Democrats that Mr. Edathy’s name had turned up in an investigation. The tip-off came last year when Mr. Friedrich was serving as Ms. Merkel’s interior minister. Mr. Friedrich has maintained that he behaved correctly in telling Mr. Edathy’s boss. But his own resignation has left his party, the sister party to Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats, calling for retribution. The entire scandal has left Ms. Merkel, who is known to value both loyalty and discretion, working to restore trust within the ranks of her government, the aim of the emergency meeting on Tuesday night. Afterward, some lawmakers from the governing coalition seemed appeased. But opposition politicians from outside the government — already angered that they have so little clout — said more information was still needed. Several questions remain, said Jan Korte of the Left Party. One of those involves Mr. Edathy’s work laptop, which disappeared two days after the authorities searched his apartment and an office. “The resulting damage can not be repaired with resignations,” the Stuttgarter Zeitung said in an editorial on Tuesday. It would be better, the editorial added, if everyone in the coalition would “do what voters expect of them: serve the good of the people in this country and respect the rule of the law.” | Germany;Politics |
ny0034053 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
]
| 2013/12/08 | U.N.’s Nuclear Inspectors Arrive in Iran | TEHRAN — Atomic experts representing the United Nations nuclear watchdog landed in Tehran on Saturday to inspect a plant recently opened to them, after access was denied for years. The team from the International Atomic Energy Agency is to inspect the Arak heavy-water production plant on Sunday, after a November agreement between Iran and the agency allowed for expanded monitoring. The plant produces heavy water for a plutonium reactor that has not yet been finished. Iran has said the Arak plant is for energy production; however, if it became operational it would produce plutonium that could be used in a nuclear weapon. In the November accord, Iran agreed not to produce fuel for the plant, install additional reactor components there or put the plant into operation. The state Islamic Republic News Agency confirmed the inspectors’ arrival and said that Iran had provided research data on its new, higher-capacity enrichment centrifuges. In the November agreement, Iran committed to freezing parts of its nuclear program for six months in exchange for sanctions relief. The pause is intended to allow negotiators time to produce a more lasting agreement. On Saturday, President Obama said he could envision a final agreement that would let Iran enrich nuclear material for power production with enough restrictions and oversight to assure the United States, Israel and the rest of the world that it could not produce a nuclear weapon. But he said there was no guarantee that such a deal would emerge. “I wouldn’t say that it’s more than 50-50,” Mr. Obama said at a forum at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, part of the Brookings Institution, in Washington, “but we have to try.” Iran has continued to claim the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes; the agreement did not limit its ability to enrich uranium to low levels suitable for producing electricity. On Saturday, in an apparent effort to promote the agreement at home, President Hassan Rouhani told students in Tehran that Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges “would never stop spinning.” But in an apparent reference to the lifting of international sanctions, which have severely damaged Iran’s economy, he added that the “people’s economic lives should also continue to spin.” | Iran;International Atomic Energy Agency;Nuclear weapon;Sanctions;International relations |
ny0054561 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2014/07/06 | A Review of Han Asian Cuisine in Granby | A spot of bright style in a drab strip mall, Han Asian Cuisine is crowded on a Friday, on a Wednesday, even on a Monday. I’m guessing this popularity reflects the restaurant’s versatility. The big menu created by the chef and primary owner, James Chen, combines three cuisines, Japanese, Chinese and Thai — with a few Korean add-ons — and mixes corner-take-out favorites with more ambitious offerings. On three visits we divided these culinary inputs, in essence treating Han as three different restaurants. Japanese night began with a carafe of sweet and mild nigori saké (the most traditional form of sake, it is roughly filtered, thus “cloudy” in Japanese). From the sushi bar, we began with thickly sliced yellowtail sashimi. It was rewardingly fresh, but I confess to favoring sushi creations with all the bells and whistles — like the Godzilla roll I scarfed down, rice wrapped around bountiful crab meat and avocado, topped with smoked eel, brilliant orange flyingfish roe and sesame seeds. You can taste each of the elements, the savory and the sweet, even as they blend together in a harmonious whole — a subtle taste, despite the lurid name. Image The large menu includes the Godzilla maki. Credit Wendy Carlson for The New York Times The other Japanese-inflected offerings proved less satisfying. The brilliant-green seaweed salad could have been more vinegary and less sweet. Agedashi tofu was underfried, almost liquid inside, and a ginger and mirin-accented fish broth only accentuated its essential blandness. The thin-pounded beef shells in an appetizer of negimaki were tough and tasteless, though both the scallions inside the rolls and the accompanying sweet onions, sautéed in a smoky-sweet teriyaki sauce, were delicious. Steak teriyaki, nicely charred on the outside and cut on the diagonal, held its own. But a bowl of nabeyaki udon — noodle soup with seafood — proved a big disappointment, the poached egg overcooked and rubbery, the shrimp rubbery, too, and the broth bland in the extreme. A side of tempura shrimp and vegetables was terrific, though. Chinese night presented a big step up. We loved the pot stickers, thick, doughy shells stuffed with ginger-spiked ground chicken and fried to sizzling hot crispness. Ditto the shrimp shumai, light and fluffy fried dumplings accompanied by a gingery dipping sauce loaded with scallions. Pork ribs were meaty and sweet. Duck “fajitas” — actually moo shu but with larger wraps — combined a plentiful portion of sliced duck breast, optimally fatty along the edge, with bell peppers, onions, julienne bamboo shoots and a sweet, thick hoisin sauce. A wildly flavorful rack of lamb, roasted to a perfect medium-rare and coated in a sweet and peppery brown sauce, presented an unexpected treat, exemplifying the step Han has taken toward fine dining. Other offerings were plainer. Singapore noodles, while capably executed, were indistinguishable from good takeout. An order of General Tso’s chicken, sauced with a pleasing fiery sweetness, was too heavily battered, the chicken all but lost inside a chewy crust. But I loved the sautéed string beans, drenched in ginger and crispy-crunchy fresh. Image The rack of lamb. Credit Wendy Carlson for The New York Times Our final visit, to sample Mr. Chen’s Thai cooking, began with a pair of salads, one topped with chunks of salmon, the other with grilled shrimp, on chopped romaine with diced red bell peppers and shards of mango — the two salads interchangeable but for a tang of fish sauce, pepper and lime that amped the shrimp version up a welcome notch. As a second course we split a serviceable but unexceptional pad thai. Entrees included a massaman chicken curry, tangly with ropy sliced onion but surprisingly bland, its rich combination of spices all but obliterated by the coconut-milk-laden sauce. A similar coconut-rich curry sauce, sharpened by a salutary jolt of pepper, bathed the fire wok, a crowded compilation of seafood including a half lobster tail. And Mr. Chen’s version of Thai basil with pork, the classic stir-fry, was the best I’ve had in ages — perfectly cooked and seasoned, a lush mix of red onions, scallions, green and red bell pepper, fiery bird peppers, lots of Thai basil emanating that magical anise-like aroma, and big slices of tender pork. Best among the desserts was the mango sorbet, soft, cold and creamy, served artfully in a scooped-out frozen half mango, with raspberries and small mounds of whipped cream waving mint-leaf pennants. Nice touches like that lend pizazz to the same-old same-old at Han. An appetizer of chicken wraps comes with mint and cilantro and a stack of pickled carrots. Han reaches broadly and doesn’t always entirely succeed. But there are pleasures aplenty to be found in a restaurant that is jack-of-all-trades, master of some. | Restaurant;James Chen;Granby;Han Asian Cuisine |
ny0065731 | [
"business",
"international"
]
| 2014/06/09 | China Trade Figures Point to Weaker Domestic Demand | BEIJING — China’s exports gained steam in May, data showed on Sunday, but an unexpected fall in imports signaled weaker domestic demand that could hurt the world’s second-largest economy. Exports rose 7 percent in May compared with a year earlier, quickening from April’s 0.9 percent increase, while imports fell 1.6 percent, versus a rise of 0.8 percent in April, the General Administration of Customs said. China’s trade surplus widened sharply to $35.9 billion in May from April’s $18.5 billion, the customs office said. “We do not think the May trade data will change the policy stance significantly,” Louis Kuijs, an RBS economist in Hong Kong, said in a note. “While the export data is reasonably positive, the weakness of domestic demand implied by the import data may keep the pressure up for initiatives to support growth.” China’s Commerce Ministry had predicted that the trade picture would brighten in May as government support measures kicked in. Analysts have attributed weak trade figures partly to a rash of fake invoicing of exports last year, which artificially inflated numbers for that period. The authorities have sought to curb such activities since May 2013. “The data shows that the country’s export growth has returned to a normal level and will continue to improve,” a spokesman for the customs office, Zheng Yuesheng, said on state television. Exports to the United States rose 6.3 percent in May, slowing from a rise of 12 percent in April, while shipments to the European Union rose 13.4 percent last month, compared with 15.1 percent in April. Exports to regional countries rose 9.1 percent, quickening from 3.8 percent in April, the data showed. The pickup in exports follows a batch of factory surveys for May that showed improvement in activity as the government speeds up construction of railways and public housing and loosens credit conditions for selected banks. The government has also unveiled some policy support for exports, including more tax breaks, credit insurance and currency hedging options for exporters. Last month, a senior commerce ministry official suggested that China could miss its target for trade growth for a third consecutive year in 2014 as higher labor costs and weaker global demand hurt what had been one of the economy’s main engines. China’s combined exports and imports edged up 0.2 percent in the first five months compared with a year earlier, trailing far behind the annual growth target of 7.5 percent. Analysts say China’s property market could hurt growth even as global demand improves, as evidence mounts of a rapid cooling in what had been one of the few strong spots in the economy. The government will release inflation data on Tuesday, and industrial output, retail sales and fixed-asset investment on Friday. New loan and money supply data will be issued June 10-15. | China;International trade;Economy |
ny0145471 | [
"business",
"media"
]
| 2008/10/15 | Bloomberg L.P. Names Multimedia Chief | Bloomberg L.P. , the financial news company, announced Tuesday that it had hired Andrew R. Lack, the longtime media executive who was once the president of NBC News, to a new position as chief executive of its multimedia group. The move is part of a larger plan by Bloomberg to expand its reach beyond its core business of serving financial customers through computer terminals and reaching more general consumers through television, radio and new media. The company has about 300,000 monthly subscribers for its terminals. In July, Bloomberg, the company founded by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg , announced that it was dividing its business into three separate units: news, data and financial products. The news unit was then divided into two groups, one for financial news products, which includes the company’s wire service and magazine, and one for multimedia, which includes its television news channel. The news channel is now in about 250 million homes, 58 million of them in the United States. Mr. Lack was a central figure in the creation of another cable news channel, MSNBC, when he was president of NBC News. Before he became a corporate executive at NBC and later Sony, his career was entirely in television news, beginning at CBS News, where he was a producer and executive producer, most notably of the short-lived but highly regarded newsmagazine program “West 57th.” Mr. Lack said on Tuesday, “Plain and simple, this was all about getting back to something I love, news.” He said he had been impressed by the resources of Bloomberg, especially at a time when other news outlets were contracting. “The dominant idea here is to grow it,” he said. He added, “I’m sure they were interested because of my television experience.” Norman Pearlstine, the former Time Inc. and Wall Street Journal editor who is now the chief content officer for Bloomberg, said in an interview that he originally sought out Mr. Lack “for a list of names” to head the multimedia group. In the course of a conversation about potential candidates, Mr. Pearlstine said, it occurred to him that Mr. Lack himself possessed the precise credentials for the position. “I asked him if he’d be interested himself,” Mr. Pearlstine said. Mr. Lack said he felt that Bloomberg was providing the opportunity to “jump out of this closet I’d been in for a while, thinking about how everybody I loved was in the news business.” Most recently, he was chairman of the board of Sony Music (formerly Sony BMG), where he had been chief executive before being forced out in 2006. Mr. Lack, who always sought creative outlets even in his previous executive positions, has more recently turned to some smaller projects. He is a producer on a coming movie for Sony based on the life of Leonard Chess, founder of a Chicago blues record label, Chess Records. The singer Beyoncé has been cast as the singer Etta James in the film, which is titled “Cadillac Records” and is scheduled to be released Dec. 5. | Bloomberg LP;Executives and Management;Television;Hiring and Promotion;Bloomberg Michael R;Lack Andrew |
ny0278815 | [
"us",
"politics"
]
| 2016/11/15 | U.S. Hate Crimes Surge 6%, Fueled by Attacks on Muslims | WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. reported Monday that attacks against American Muslims surged last year, driving an overall increase in hate crime against all groups. The data , which is the most comprehensive look at hate crime nationwide, expanded on previous findings by researchers and outside monitors, who have noted an alarming rise in some types of crimes tied to the vitriol of this year’s presidential campaign and the aftermath of terrorist attacks at home and abroad since 2015 . That trend appears to have spiked in just the last week, with civil rights groups and news organizations reporting dozens of verbal or physical assaults on minorities and others that appear to have been fueled by divisions over the election. In its report on Monday, the F.B.I. cataloged a total of 5,818 hate crimes in 2015 — a rise of about 6 percent over the previous year — including assaults, bombings, threats, and property destruction against minorities, women, gays and others. Attacks against Muslim Americans saw the biggest surge. There were 257 reports of assaults, attacks on mosques and other hate crimes against Muslims last year, a jump of about 67 percent over 2014. It was the highest total since 2001, when more than 480 attacks occurred in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Attacks against transgender people also sharply increased. Blacks were the most frequent victims of hate crimes based on race, while Jews were the most frequent victims based on religion, according to the F.B.I. data. But the increases in attacks on these groups were smaller than the rise in attacks against Muslims and transgender people. Over all, 59 percent of the hate crimes that the F.B.I. recorded were based on the victims’ race, ethnicity or ancestry. Religious bias accounted for about 20 percent of all attacks, and about 18 percent of attacks were based on sexual orientation. Law enforcement officials acknowledge that the statistics give an incomplete picture because many local agencies still have a spotty record of reporting hate crimes, 26 years after Congress directed the Justice Department to begin collecting the data. “We need to do a better job of tracking and reporting hate crime to fully understand what is happening in our communities and how to stop it,” James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, said Monday. The F.B.I. regards the prosecution of hate crimes under federal jurisdiction as the top priority of its civil rights branch. Since the election, hate crime monitors like the Southern Poverty Law Center have reported a rash of verbal or physical abuse targeting minorities and others at schools, mosques and elsewhere. Some supporters of President-elect Donald J. Trump, however, say they too have been victimized. | Hate crime;2016 Presidential Election;Muslim Americans;FBI;Donald Trump;Terrorism |
ny0077875 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2015/05/15 | De Blasio’s Housing Push Spurs Anxiety Among Those It’s Meant to Help | When New York City planners unveiled maps charting a 73-block area in the Bronx to be developed with housing, they called it “Cromwell-Jerome.” But no one in that area seemed to know where that was. The city seemed to make it up, said Alvaro Franco, who lives in the Bronx and quickly organized protests after hearing about the development plans. Mr. Franco said it sounded like “the same revisionism real estate agents in the city use to describe neighborhoods that already exist.” City officials soon dropped the name. But the faux pas demonstrated the jitters among residents and the pressures on Mayor Bill de Blasio as he tackles the piece of his income-inequality agenda that, unlike his fights for preschool education and higher wages, promises to change many of the city’s neighborhoods. The plan, which calls for 80,000 new apartments, mostly for households with annual income of less than $69,000, requires an extraordinary amount of diplomacy, even with the mayor’s allies. Neighborhood groups and their City Council representatives, who must sign off on any rezoning, are anxious about taller buildings, more people and gentrification. Labor unions want assurances that they will have a bigger role in construction, even though it drives up costs. Perhaps the most vocal complaints are coming from affordable-housing groups that want the new homes that are designated as affordable to go to the poorest residents, as opposed to a mix of income levels, and that want to ensure that current residents will not be displaced as people with higher incomes move into the neighborhood and make it more upscale. While the activists acknowledge that they have enjoyed more access to a post-Bloomberg City Hall, they have also been conducting frequent protests there. At a demonstration in March, protesters yelled “Slow it down!” as Mr. de Blasio passed by them. “It hasn’t been easy for either side,” said Maritza Silva-Farrell, a spokeswoman for Real Affordability for All , a coalition of more than 50 housing and tenant groups. “It’s hard when you hear that a community is going to be rezoned and you don’t know what that means.” Administration officials have played down the anxiety, but there is obvious concern, and there are signs that the resistance is wearing on them. In an interview, Mr. de Blasio said he planned to go out into communities to “talk about the plan directly to the people.” “We have to show people in neighborhoods all over the city that this is a very different approach to development and one that protects their interests,” the mayor said. Alicia Glen, the deputy mayor for housing and economic development, is known among affordable-housing advocates and developers as a brusque-talking, no-nonsense negotiator. But she began tearing up in a recent interview as she described a housing plan she said was aimed at helping lower-income New Yorkers stay in the city. “It actually makes me cry saying it,” Ms. Glen said. “No other city has ever tried to do this. And the fact that people don’t get that just makes me really crazy.” Administration officials are seeking to remake poor corners of the city into economically diverse neighborhoods, and their blueprint would reserve 20 percent for the poorest households (annual income of less than $43,150 for a family of four); 58 percent for families making up to $69,000; and 22 percent for those with income of up to $142,400. Officials are also seeking to add more lower-rent units and senior housing by increasing height limits — by up to 50 feet higher than currently allowed in some cases, or about four floors — and remove what they call “unnecessary” rules, like those requiring off-street parking in buildings near subway stations. But in late March, at the first hearing on those proposed changes, so many residents turned out, particularly from TriBeCa, Chelsea and nearby Manhattan neighborhoods, that some had to watch on a monitor in an overflow room. Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation , organized a protest on the City Hall steps just before the meeting. “The argument about affordable housing is totally specious,” he said in an interview. Mr. Berman said the administration risked changing the character of neighborhoods for a few affordable housing units. “Look, if we were talking about changing the rules for bigger buildings with 100 percent affordable housing, this would be a different conversation,” he said. “We’re being asked to give up a lot and get little, if anything, in return.” Some of the new units will be in buildings where all or most of the units are affordable, but others will be in buildings where most of the units are market rate. Those projects help the mayor’s goal and require relatively few city subsidies. But neighborhood groups fear the encroachment of taller buildings and, in some cases, more affluent residents, who can cause quick gentrification and push out the poor and existing businesses, altogether transforming neighborhoods. Williamsburg, a Brooklyn neighborhood that seemingly changed overnight, is almost a dirty word among both administration officials and housing groups because many residents were left feeling the area did not get as many affordable units as it could have from new construction. Any displacement of current residents could also have racial overtones, since many of the neighborhoods in the mayor’s plan are mostly minority. The now-renamed Jerome Avenue corridor in the Bronx (Cromwell, the name of a neighborhood street, was dropped) is 65 percent Latino and 30 percent African-American, and the median household income is $26,226, compared with $51,865 citywide. The city has tools to help preserve neighborhoods as affordable, including financial incentives for landlords to keep rents low and a new legal fund to help tenants fight landlord harassment and evictions. But the most important anti-displacement measure, housing activists insist, is to have the new affordable units, and their rents, reflect the existing income levels of rezoned areas. That could be more costly for the city, however, since cheaper rents require more subsidy. “The housing should be built for the income needs that already exist,” said Susanna Blankley, director of housing organizing for CASA-New Settlement Apartments in the Bronx . Several housing groups have also joined with labor unions to push the city to hire unionized workers for the projects — another demand that Mr. de Blasio, generally known as pro-labor, is resisting, because it adds cost. James Patchett, chief of staff to Ms. Glen, said the city was negotiating with the labor unions on a slate of projects so that some would have union involvement and others would not. For now, it is uncertain how much new construction will take place, and what kind. The Furman Center at New York University found in a recent study that a common city strategy, letting developers put up taller buildings if they include affordable apartments, may not work in poorer neighborhoods unless the city also includes large subsidies. The city is also constrained by federal income requirements for new subsidized units, and by cutbacks in federal subsidies. It still needs to find $1.9 billion to fulfill the housing plan’s goals. “The biggest challenge we face is getting fairness from Albany and Washington to support this plan,” Mr. de Blasio said. But in his own city, he still has to win over political allies like Gale A. Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, and Councilman Jumaane D. Williams of Brooklyn, the chairman of the Council’s Housing and Buildings Committee. Mr. Williams said he planned to hold hearings to address complaints about a lack of neighborhood participation and to question the administration on the incomes being used to define affordability. Ms. Brewer said she would like to see limitations on chain stores where new buildings will go up. She also said increased height would be acceptable in some areas, but not others. “Everything has to go block by block to figure out what makes sense,” Ms. Brewer said. | Affordable housing;Real Estate; Housing;Bill de Blasio;NYC |
ny0047296 | [
"business",
"international"
]
| 2014/11/29 | India’s Economic Growth Slows to 5.3% | MUMBAI, India — India’s economic growth slowed to 5.3 percent in the three months ended in September from a year earlier, government data showed Friday, supporting expectations of a delayed recovery in Asia’s third-largest economy, after China and Japan. Figures from the Central Statistical Office indicated a significant deceleration from the preceding quarter, when gross domestic product expanded by 5.7 percent. One of the drags on growth in the September quarter was manufacturing output, which increased 0.1 percent, compared with 3.5 percent in the preceding quarter. Also, a delayed monsoon season and uneven rainfall caused agricultural output to slow to a 3.2 percent increase from a year earlier, from a 3.8 percent rise in the previous quarter. India has experienced a period of economic malaise, with the pace of growth below 5 percent for the past two fiscal years, the lowest since the 1980s. India’s fiscal year begins in April. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s landslide election in May was based largely on his promise to kick-start the economy, in part by increasing the ease of doing business and providing jobs to the young. India’s business community regarded his victory with optimism, and the stock markets reflected the enthusiasm, rising to new highs. The euphoria was tempered after it became apparent that Mr. Modi’s government was not going to rush to introduce big-bang reforms. In his first six months in office, Mr. Modi has announced some small measures aimed at improving business sentiment, like simplifying convoluted labor laws and deregulating fuel pieces. These steps have yet to have an effect on the ground, and economists and executives are looking for more sweeping reforms to reinvigorate capital investment, increase business confidence and encourage industry. Indian businesses are awaiting new legislation dealing with land acquisition, coal and power supply, transportation, simplification of taxation and foreign direct investment in the insurance sector, some of which might be taken up in the current winter session of Parliament. With weak economic growth in the last quarter and consumer inflation having slowed to 5.5 percent in October, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is expected to ask the central bank governor, Raghuram Rajan, to ease monetary policy and cut the benchmark interest rate from 8 percent. But most economists believe that the central bank will leave the rate unchanged at a policy meeting on Tuesday and wait to see if inflation rates can stay low even if global oil prices start rising again. | India;Economy;Narendra Modi;Raghuram Rajan |
ny0118243 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
]
| 2012/10/15 | Turkey Bans All Syrian Aircraft as Tension Over War Escalates | ISTANBUL — Turkey ’s foreign minister announced on Sunday a ban on all Syrian aircraft entering his country’s airspace, days after the authorities discovered what they said were Russian military munitions on board a passenger plane bound for Damascus. The announcement followed Syria ’s ban on Turkish aircraft a day earlier and became the latest volley in an increasingly aggressive dispute between the two neighbors over Syria’s devastating civil war. In televised remarks, the foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, accused Syria of using civilian flights as a cover for transporting military equipment. Turkey had already banned military aircraft from entering its territory. Last week, Turkish fighter jets forced a Syrian passenger plane to land in the Turkish capital, Ankara, on suspicion that it was carrying weapons. Turkish officials later said the plane, which was en route from Moscow, had been carrying Russian munitions, an assertion that both Syria and Russia have vehemently denied. Turkey and Syria share a 500-mile border that is quickly becoming a fault line in what many fear could be an expansion of the civil war into a regional conflict. Turkey has been a strong supporter of efforts by insurgents to topple Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad . It has harbored anti-Assad fighters on its territory and has hinted that it may take military action against Syrian forces. On Sunday, Mr. Davutoglu said Turkey would not be open for talks with Mr. Assad’s government unless violence against civilians ceased. Syria has responded to perceived Turkish incursions aggressively. In June, Syria shot down a Turkish fighter plane that it said had entered its airspace, killing two crew members. And last week, a mortar shell fired from Syria fell across the border in a Turkish village, killing five civilians. On Sunday, government forces pounded rebel strongholds with artillery, and rebel fighters continued a series of strikes in the heart of Damascus. A suicide bomber rammed a car bomb into a coffee shop in the upper-class neighborhood of Mezzeh in Damascus, Syria’s state news agency reported. The huge explosion caused no injuries or deaths, but was likely to further undermine the sense of security in the capital, where such attacks have become increasingly common. Video taken in the aftermath of the blast showed twisted chairs and tables scattered in front of the mangled facade of the coffee shop. Hours later, an explosion ripped through the car of a Syrian journalist, also in Mezzeh, wounding him severely, The Associated Press reported. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement that the journalist, Ayman Youssef Wannous, might have been attacked for his pro-Assad sympathies. Witnesses said a third bombing in the city injured a pro-Assad lawyer. Heavily armed security forces flooded the city, erecting checkpoints and conducting searches of anyone carrying bags. As many as 200 people have been killed in violence over the weekend, the Syrian Observatory said in a statement. In Aleppo on Sunday, where at least 22 died in fighting on Saturday, Syrian forces continued to bombard neighborhoods, killing fighters as well as civilians, the statement said. The Syrian Observatory also reported that Syrian authorities had for the first time conducted a prisoner swap with rebel fighters, releasing two detainees for the son of a prominent official. The details of the swap could not be verified, nor could reports of fighting because of restrictions on reporting in Syria. | Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- );Airlines and Airplanes;Turkey;Syria;Assad Bashar al- |
ny0274016 | [
"business",
"dealbook"
]
| 2016/02/03 | David Boies’s Dual Roles at Theranos Set Up Conflict | Theranos is in trouble, and David Boies , a star lawyer, has placed himself at the heart of it, a decision that he may come to rue. Theranos, a blood-testing start-up founded by Elizabeth Holmes when she was 19, is fighting for its survival. After reports in The Wall Street Journal raised questions about the company’s technology, Theranos has been in a tailspin. The company’s methodology and science are in doubt, a federal regulator found that one lab had violated several clinical standards and the drugstore chain Walgreens has suspended tests at a Theranos lab in California. Theranos is fighting back, claiming that its technology is valid and asserting that the facts will prevail as its technology is scientifically tested. At the center of the company’s defense is Mr. Boies, a founder and the chairman of Boies Schiller & Flexner. Mr. Boies is known as one of the smartest and shrewdest litigators in the country. He represented Al Gore in the 2000 presidential dispute, he litigated the Microsoft antitrust case for the federal government, and he is representing Maurice R. Greenberg, the former chief executive of the American International Group, in his suit against the government. In the wake of the questions being asked about Theranos, the company hired Mr. Boies. He had represented Theranos before and his firm’s ties with the company ran deep. The general counsel of Theranos is a former Boies Schiller partner. That Mr. Boies is representing an embattled client is nothing new. But this time, the lawyer has raised the ante by becoming a director of Theranos. Let’s stop here and note that this has the potential to blow up. Mr. Boies is taking on two different roles at Theranos. A lawyer represents a client — here Theranos — while a director, even at a privately held company like Theranos, represents the company’s investors. Depending on what unfolds at Theranos, Mr. Boies may be put in a position where he either has to protect the company (as its lawyer) or the shareholders (as a director). I asked one of my colleagues, Jo-Ellen Pozner, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in business ethics, about this potential conflict. She was skeptical of Mr. Boies’s dual role. “I have a hard time believing that an experienced litigator can adequately represent investors — one of the primary responsibilities of a director — while being attentive to potential legal strategies, which might cause him to privilege the interests of management,” she told me. “It just seems a difficult line to walk.” Image The lawyer David Boies represents the blood-testing start-up Theranos and also sit on its board. Credit Jabin Botsford/The New York Times No doubt Theranos waived the conflict in lots of documented forms. And the American Bar Association does allow this type of dual role. But just because a conflict is allowed doesn’t mean it will not lead to problems. If the technology of Theranos turns out to be not what it claims, investors would almost certainly seek to sue the chief executive, Ms. Holmes, and the company, as well as the board that allowed this to happen. This gets complicated for Mr. Boies, because Theranos is a corporate governance disaster. Ms. Holmes controls the company, and she solidified that control in 2013 by arranging for the company to adopt a high-vote stock structure that gave her most of the votes. This is a problem because the company is essentially Ms. Holmes, although it has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from outside investors. She founded it, had the idea and has led the technology. If the technology is shown to be flawed, she may not be quick to admit that to the benefit of the remaining shareholders. Mr. Boies, of course, is no expert in blood testing technology. But in evaluating the firm’s technology, he will get little to no help from his fellow board members. Before the first Journal article appeared, the board of Theranos had no outside scientific experience. It consisted mainly of statesmen, including two former senators and even Henry Kissinger. Most of these board members have now been demoted to advisers. The Theranos board is now five people, including Ms. Holmes and the company’s chief operating officer. None of the rest have scientific experience. Two other directors are a retired Marine Corps general and the chief executive of Bechtel, the construction company. Then there is Mr. Boies. This is, frankly, a weak board and another potential land mine for Mr. Boies, as the weakness of the board does not lessen the fiduciary duty he has to all Theranos shareholders. The potential for conflict is particularly great. What if Ms. Holmes resists changes that would be in the interest of shareholders? What if the board decides that it is time for her to go — and she stands her ground? The board could do little more than throw up its collective hands under the current governance structure. Mr. Boies, and the other outside directors, could resign in protest. But why would anyone, particularly Mr. Boies, be a director on a board that lacked the power to make fundamental changes? Indeed, what is Mr. Boies thinking? He may be paid lots of money for his roles, but for someone so successful and savvy to put himself in a position that is bound to be problematic is puzzling. A request for comment to Boies Schiller was referred to a representative who declined to comment. Theranos did not immediately respond to a request for a comment. There is also a lesson for those venture capitalists who invested in Theranos. The recent bubbly years when unicorns — start-up companies valued at $1 billion or more — seemed to emerge almost daily led venture capitalists to agree to governance structures that placed all power with the founder. After all, this is a structure that worked for Facebook. But Theranos is no Facebook. That Theranos had no real board in place and took repeated steps to place all power with Ms. Holmes may not have been a problem when Theranos was a start-up darling. But now, Theranos has fallen and will have to prove itself. Governance matters most in crisis times, and Theranos lacks it, to the chagrin of its investors. Even Mark Zuckerberg put together a real board and hired Sheryl Sandberg as a check. One has to wish Mr. Boies luck. If Theranos turns wildly successful, then there will be no problem. But if its troubles continue, he will have to do something he is less experienced at — be a director and corporate leader. The question will be whether the litigator in him will prevent that. | Conflict of interest;David Boies;Theranos;Elizabeth Holmes;Boies Schiller & Flexner;Medical test;Venture capital;Board of directors |
ny0028002 | [
"world",
"asia"
]
| 2013/01/31 | Myanmar Police Used Phosphorus on Protesters, Lawyers Say | BANGKOK — A group of lawyers investigating a violent crackdown in Myanmar in November that left Buddhist monks and villagers with serious burns contends that the police used white phosphorus, a munition normally reserved for warfare, to disperse protesters. The suppression of a protest outside a controversial copper mine in central Myanmar on Nov. 29 shocked the Burmese public after images of critically injured monks circulated across the country. It also gave rise to fears that the civilian government of President Thein Sein , which came to power in 2011, was using the same repressive methods as the military governments that preceded it. Burmese lawyers and an American human rights lawyer gathered material at the site of the protest, including a metal canister that protesters said was fired by the police. It was brought to a private laboratory in Bangkok, which found that residue in it contained high levels of phosphorus. Access to the canister and a copy of the laboratory report were provided to a reporter. “We are confident that they used a munition that contained phosphorus,” said U Thein Than Oo, the head of the legal committee of the Upper Burma Lawyers Network, which helped investigate. “They wanted to warn the entire population not to protest. They wanted to intimidate the people.” White phosphorus has many uses in war — as a smoke screen or incendiary weapon — but is rarely if ever used by police forces. Reached on Wednesday, Zaw Htay, a director in the office of Mr. Thein Sein, declined to comment on what kind of weapon was used. “I can’t say,” he said. “I can’t answer.” John Hart, a senior researcher at the Chemical Weapons Program of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said by e-mail that although white phosphorus was not considered a chemical weapon under a 1993 international convention, it was banned from uses that “cause death or other harm through the toxic properties of the chemical.” One of the monks injured at the protest, Ashin Tikhanyana, 64, has burns over 40 percent of his body and was flown to Bangkok by the government because Myanmar does not have the facilities to treat such a serious case. Two months after the crackdown, Mr. Tikhanyana remains in intensive care. In an interview on Wednesday in his hospital room, Mr. Tikhanyana described the moment that the police came to disperse the crowds before dawn on Nov. 29. “I saw a fireball beside me, and I started to burn,” he said. “I was rolling on the ground to try to put it out.” Dr. Chatchai Pruksapong, a burn specialist treating Mr. Tikhanyana, said it appeared that the monk was seared with something “severely flammable.” Mr. Tikhanyana’s wounds are similar to those Dr. Chatchai said he saw on soldiers injured by bomb blasts in Thailand’s southern insurgency. “Tear gas would definitely not cause this kind of deep wound,” Dr. Chatchai said. Myanmar government officials were initially quoted in the local news media as saying that police officers had thrown “smoke bombs” at protesters. The canister found at the protest site appeared to have “smoke” stenciled on it and looks similar in appearance to smoke hand grenades once manufactured by the United States, said a security expert and former colonel in a European army who asked to remain anonymous because he has dealings in Myanmar. Such smoke grenades emit burning particles within a radius of about 55 feet, he said. Roger Normand, the American human rights lawyer who helped investigate the crackdown, said a report from the lawyers would be released in the next few days. Mr. Normand arranged to have the canister brought to the Bangkok laboratory, which is run by ALS, an Australian company that specializes in testing samples for their chemical content. In an interview, Mr. Normand said it was “unheard-of” for highly volatile and dangerous weapons to be used by police forces. “This raises serious questions about who in the military chain of command could have given the order to use these weapons,” he said. The report prepared by Mr. Normand and the Burmese lawyers has been submitted to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi , the Nobel laureate and opposition leader, who was appointed by the government soon after the crackdown to lead a separate, official commission of inquiry. The precise mandate of the commission is unclear, as is the timing of the release of the commission’s findings. The government initially announced that the commission would report its work on Dec. 31, but that was delayed by a month. It may be further delayed because Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is on a five-day visit to South Korea. The controversy over the copper mine centers on the government’s effort to relocate villagers in order to expand the mine, which is co-owned by a Chinese company and the Burmese military. The government ordered the dispersal of protesters after several months of intermittent demonstrations. The controversy received widespread coverage in the Myanmar media partly because land rights have become a major issue as the country opens up to the world. But it is a measure of the villagers’ resolve that even after the violent crackdown they say they are refusing to back down. Aye Net, a villager who has helped lead the protest movement, said Wednesday by telephone that villagers were calling for “justice for all those wounded in the crackdown.” “And we still want the total abolition of the project,” she said. | Myanmar,Burma;White phosphorus;Buddhism;Thein Sein;HazMat |
ny0140211 | [
"world",
"americas"
]
| 2008/02/09 | In Venezuela, Faith in Chávez Starts to Wane | CARACAS, Venezuela — These should be the best of times for Venezuela, blessed with the largest conventional oil reserves outside the Middle East and oil prices near record highs. But this country’s economic and social problems have become so acute lately that President Hugo Chávez is facing an unusual onslaught of criticism, even from his own supporters, about his management of the country. In a rare turnabout, it is Mr. Chávez’s opponents who appear to have the political winds at their backs as they reverse policies of abstention and prepare dozens of candidates for pivotal regional elections. Mr. Chávez, for perhaps the first time since a recall vote in 2004, is increasingly on the defensive as his efforts to advance Venezuela toward socialism are seen as failing to address a growing list of worries like violent crime and shortages of basic foods. While Mr. Chávez remains Venezuela’s most powerful political figure, his once unquestionable authority is showing signs of erosion. Unthinkable a few months ago, graffiti began appearing here in the capital in January reading, “Diosdado Presidente,” a show of support for a possible presidential bid by Diosdado Cabello, a Chávez supporter and governor of the populous Miranda State. Outbreaks of dengue fever and Chagas disease have alarmed families living in the heart of this city. Fears of a devaluation of the new currency, called the “strong bolívar,” are fueling capital flight. While the economy may grow 6 percent this year, lifted by high oil prices, production in oil fields controlled by the national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, has declined. Inflation soared by 3 percent in January, its highest monthly level in a decade. In fact, some economists see a slow-burning economic unraveling playing out in a country flush with oil revenues. But as Mr. Chávez embarks on his 10th year in power, it is becoming harder for him to blame previous governments for the malaise. This holds true especially in poor areas where voters failed to turn out in support of the president in a December referendum on a constitutional overhaul that would have vastly increased Mr. Chavez’s powers, a stinging defeat from which the president has yet to recover. “I cannot find beans, rice, coffee or milk,” said Mirna de Campos, 56, a nurse’s assistant who lives in the gritty district of Los Teques outside Caracas. “What there is to find is whiskey — lots of it.” The contrast between revolutionary language and the consumption of imported luxury items by a new elite aligned with Mr. Chávez’s government, known as the “Bolivarian bourgeoisie,” has led to questioning of the priorities of his political movement. “Chávez’s revolution has stalled, but it can move forward if he can solve some problems,” said Daniel Hellinger, a political scientist at Webster University in St. Louis who follows Venezuela. “I don’t envy him the challenge of trying to make the country’s government more effective in people’s daily lives.” Mr. Chávez highlighted the challenge after his defeat at the polls when he called for a year of “revision, rectification and relaunching.” He issued an amnesty decree for opponents who had been charged with supporting a brief 2002 coup and shook up his cabinet, replacing his vice president and ministers in charge of the economy and fighting crime. But for each minor policy shift or good economic statistic from the government, Mr. Chávez has stirred deeper anxiety by intensifying threats to expand state control of the economy and society. For instance, Mr. Chávez warned Monday that he would nationalize large food distributors caught hoarding groceries. Pedro E. Piñate, an agricultural consultant in the city of Maracay, said: “We live in two countries, one inhabited by officials who think they can alter reality by sending soldiers to intimidate citizens. The other country is where the rest of us live in fear of being killed or kidnapped or of our businesses being seized.” This fear is reflected in a statistic that is illegal to publish in Venezuela: the black-market value of the strong bolívar, or bolívar fuerte, put into circulation at the start of the year to replace the old bolívar. Its value hovers around 5.2 to the dollar according to currency traders here, less than half at the official rate, 2.15. For other domestic problems, Mr. Chávez’s approach has been equally erratic. After the recent outbreak of dengue fever, which reached into his cabinet to infect Culture Minister Francisco Sesto, the president did not shake up the public health system. Instead, he called for an investigation of claims that the disease may have been altered into a more virulent strain as part of an attack on Venezuela by unidentified enemies. Enemies of Venezuela have rarely been more threatening than in recent weeks, according to Mr. Chávez, who has elevated a political dispute with President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia to the point of mobilizing troops. Last month, Mr. Chávez claimed Colombian military officials were conspiring with American officials in Bogotá to kill him. It was the 25th time that Venezuela’s government said that Mr. Chávez was the target for assassination since 2002, according to Tal Cual, a newspaper here. As these domestic and economic troubles accumulate, Mr. Chávez faces a new test this year in state and municipal elections, with a reinvigorated opposition. Mr. Chávez stands to lose some authority if opponents win just a handful of important states or cities, almost all of which are now controlled by his supporters. Even more unpredictable are the dynamics within the president’s own movement, with insurgent candidacies clamoring to challenge the status quo. “Chavismo is most vulnerable at the local and state level,” said Steve Ellner, a political scientist at Oriente University in eastern Venezuela. “That opens great opportunities for the opposition to erode Chávez’s power and influence, beginning with big gains in the elections held at the end of this year.” Amid growing calls for debate and the grooming of new leaders in the Socialist Party he created last year for his followers, Mr. Chávez is trying to instill discipline within its ranks. He called for party members to be expelled if they initiated candidacies too soon for coming elections. The rule apparently does not apply to Mr. Chávez, whose bid to remove term limits for the presidency, along with other proposals to transform Venezuela into the hemisphere’s second socialist state after Cuba, was rejected by voters in December. He mentioned a proposal last month to hold a vote in 2010 to allow him to run for re-election in 2012, when his current term expires. Billboards proclaiming “Por Ahora” — “For Now” — have gone up in the capital, reminding Venezuelans that Mr. Chávez will not give up his quest to reconfigure society. Mr. Chávez has also not given up on his efforts abroad to deepen alliances with like-minded leaders. For instance, even as Venezuela struggles with a shortage of oil-drilling rigs, the government has sent two rigs to Ecuador, whose president, Rafael Correa, is a Chávez supporter. This foreign aid, once tolerated by Mr. Chávez’s supporters, is emerging as a source of resentment among those left out of the country’s oil boom. “I see Chávez traveling and traveling abroad, and the money ends up somewhere else,” said Jesús Camacho, 29, who sells coffee on the street in Catia, an area of slums here, making about $8 a day. Mr. Camacho said he had always voted for Mr. Chávez but had recently lost faith in politics. “This situation will be fixed by no man,” he said. “Only God.” | Chavez Hugo;Venezuela;Social Conditions and Trends |
ny0067363 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2014/12/02 | Peek in Gramercy Park, Key No Longer Required | With its cyborg cars and omniscient backpacks festooned with cameras, Google has mapped out and photographed much of the planet. From the comfort of their browsers, people can now visit Times Square, Tiananmen Square or the Square One mall in Mississauga, Ontario. Starting this year, one of the most forbidden places in Manhattan became virtually accessible, too. And despite being off limits to outsiders, particularly those toting cameras, all it took was a borrowed key and a smartphone to let the world inside Gramercy Park . “When I found out where I was, I thought, ‘This has to be captured,’ ” said Shawn Christopher, a computer programmer and former Army sergeant from the Pittsburgh area who visited in May while on his honeymoon. “The Internet is all about sharing knowledge, especially these secret, hidden things.” Mr. Christopher took three 360-degree panoramas using Photo Sphere, a Google app, and then uploaded them to the company’s ubiquitous Maps site. He had gotten into the park using another of his favorite technologies, Airbnb, where the room he rented included not only fresh linens and Wi-Fi but also one of the 383 coveted keys to the park. Mr. Christopher was unaware at the time that guests had to be accompanied by key holders on their visits and that commercial photography was prohibited. Now anyone can get past the park’s wrought iron gates, and they do not even have to leave home. Unwittingly, Mr. Christopher achieved something not even Robert De Niro or Woody Allen could manage: shooting inside the park. Arlene Harrison, president of the Gramercy Park Block Association and its chief steward, said she gets two or three requests a day to take pictures inside, “and the answer is always no.” Image Shawn Christopher shared photos of the park online. Credit Jeff Swensen for The New York Times “You say yes to just one, and it’s all over,” she said. (Though Mr. De Niro and Mr. Allen were rejected, she said, Gregory Peck was able to sneak in a camera, for a documentary interview, and only because he lived on the park and had a key.) Mr. Christopher said he did not realize he needed permission, but he did not regret his decision to post the photos online. “I just really wanted to share this with other people,” he said. “It’s such a beautiful part of New York, and people shouldn’t miss out on that.” A Google spokeswoman said anyone could request a Sphere image be removed. Ms. Harrison said she had no intention to do so, though she also said she would have turned Google down had the company asked to photograph the park. Since it opened in 1831, Gramercy Park has been off limits to anyone but those living on the border of the two-acre greensward and their guests. Such luminaries and dignitaries as Vincent Astor; James Harper, the mayor and publisher; the Steinways; and Thomas Edison moved in, each receiving a key made of gold. Those have been replaced by special nickel-alloy keys specially made in Virginia, and they can now be found in the hands of Uma Thurman, Rufus Wainwright and, until he sold his apartment last year, Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel’s creative director. Like many of the rules within the park — no pets, no Frisbees, no smoking — the one banning photography, specifically commercial photography, is bound up by tradition as much as reason. “The park is for pleasant enjoyment,” Ms. Harrison said. Until 2010, wedding photographs were allowed, but now anything beyond a personal photo for the mantel is forbidden. Small signs in the flower beds at the north and south entrances show a few of the rules, with dogs, cigarettes, cameras and the like x-ed out, but there are no other warnings posted. Under most circumstances, none are needed. “There are people watching the park at all times,” Ms. Harrison said, sitting inside the small shed and holding the clipboard she carries with her at all times. “If something happens, if they see a camera or a ball, you better believe I’m getting a call about it.” (While she allowed a reporter into the park, a photographer was asked to remain outside during the interview.) Phyllis Herman, a key holder who lives on the north side of the park, was, like most of her neighbors, unfazed by the photos online. “I don’t consider it a violation, no,” she said. “All we do in there is sit around anyway, so a few people gawking online won’t change that.” Image Arlene Harrison, the president of the Gramercy Park Block Association, next to the park’s fence. Credit Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times Ira Fox, a photographer who lives on East 22nd Street who was walking his dog on the park’s perimeter, did register some jealousy for not being able to work in the park, since he could lose his key, but he was happy someone else had done so. “In the age of drones,” he said, “I think there’s only so much we can do.” Ms. Harrison agreed that with the proliferation of smartphones, there was only so much the trustees could do — when the park was built, modern photography did not exist, let alone the Internet. “If anything, it shows how vigilant we have been, that this has not happened sooner,” she said. Photo sites like Flickr and Instagram are full of Gramercy Park photos, though many could be taken using a popular trick — shooting through the fence. A few bloggers have also gotten in as guests of the Gramercy Park Hotel over the years. “The honest desire was thinking I found something no one else knew about or had access to,” said Rob Heppler, who paid a visit last summer and published his musings and photos on the Hundreds, a street culture website. “Posting is slight education concealed in a jealousy machine, which is the basic function of the Internet.” A more egregious violation — at least as far as the park’s guardians are concerned — is the fact that Mr. Christopher’s Airbnb host, whom he would not identify, gave him the key, a violation of park rules, and allowed him to go into the park unaccompanied, also a violation. At least two Airbnb listings on Monday offered keys to the park, and neither mentioned that the guest had to be escorted. If anything bothers Ms. Harrison, it is the appearance of Airbnb listings on the park, not the park on Google Maps. “People here, that’s just not who they are,” she said. “They would never let strangers into the park.” | Gramercy Park Manhattan;Google Maps;Computers and the Internet;Tech Industry;Arlene Harrison;Gramercy Park Block Assn |
ny0011227 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
]
| 2013/02/15 | Israel’s Prisoner X Linked to Dubai Assassination in New Report | JERUSALEM — The Australian-Israeli man recently identified as Prisoner X — found dead in 2010 in a maximum-security prison cell — may have been involved in the assassination of a Hamas leader that year, an episode that was among the most embarrassing in the history of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad. The Kuwaiti newspaper Al Jarida reported Thursday that Ben Zygier , who immigrated to Israel from Australia and apparently spent a decade working for the Mossad, was among the 26 suspects in the assassination plot, in which Mahmoud al-Mabhouh , a Hamas official, was drugged and suffocated in his hotel room in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Al Jarida, a liberal opposition newspaper, said that Mr. Zygier had provided the authorities in Dubai with “names and pictures and accurate details” in exchange for protection, but Israel kidnapped him from a hiding place and imprisoned him on charges of treason about a month after the Jan. 19, 2010, operation. The Dubai plot, for which Israel has never acknowledged responsibility, led to diplomatic sanctions against Israel because fake passports from Europe and Australia were used in the operation. Australian journalists reported Thursday that Mr. Zygier, one of several people under investigation by the Australian intelligence service on suspicion of passport fraud, was arrested just before he was set to disclose Israeli secrets about the passports to the Australian government or the news media. The reports quoted a security official with knowledge of the case as saying that Mr. Zygier “may well have been about to blow the whistle, but he never got the chance.” The Israeli prime minister’s office and the Justice Ministry declined to comment on the emerging details in a case that has dominated the news here for days, more than two years after what appeared to be the suicide of a man known only as Prisoner X was revealed in local news reports that the government immediately quashed. Politicians, journalists and human rights advocates have questioned the appropriateness of My. Zygier’s secret detention; the circumstances around his death by hanging, which was ruled a suicide despite his cell having been under constant surveillance; and the extraordinary court order that banned local reporting on the entire episode. “The Prisoner X affair is a classic story of Israeli failure,” read the headline over a column by Amir Oren in the left-leaning daily newspaper Haaretz. “The most sensitive agencies aren’t functioning,” Mr. Oren wrote. “In its 65th year, the State of Israel still doesn’t control the basics.” The news blackout was only partially lifted Wednesday evening and may have done more damage than it prevented. Much of the outrage revolved around reports, none of them true, that Prisoner X was denied visitors and that a lawyer, his family and the Australian Embassy were never informed of his detention. On Thursday, a lawyer hired by the family said he had met with Mr. Zygier a day or two before his death to discuss a plea bargain. “The crimes he was suspected of were serious,” the lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, told Israel’s Channel 10 news, refusing to elaborate. “He denied the charges,” Mr. Feldman added. In a separate interview with Army Radio, Mr. Feldman said that Mr. Zygier, a lawyer who worked for a year at a prominent Israeli firm, “had been informed that he could very likely expect to be sentenced to an extremely lengthy prison term and to be shunned by his family — and this affects a person’s soul.” It is unclear how a Mossad agent who had revealed details to a foreign government about an assassination, particularly one as fraught as the Mabhouh affair, would be eligible for a plea bargain. But if the secrets had not yet been shared, and they were limited to information regarding passport fraud rather than murder, a reduction in charges might be more realistic, experts said. Mr. Feldman said that Mr. Zygier, who was 34 and whose second child, a girl, was born four days before his death, had not shown any suicidal signs. “He sounded rational and focused and he spoke to the point,” the lawyer told Army Radio. “He did not display any special feeling of self-pity.” Mr. Feldman was one of many in Israel who called for further inquiry into Mr. Zygier’s death. “Those responsible for him should have taken clear steps to watch over him,” Mr. Feldman said. In Australia on Thursday, the foreign minister revealed that his government had learned of Mr. Zygier’s detention on Feb. 24, 2010, contrary to an earlier ministry statement that it had been unaware until the family requested repatriation of his remains in late December. The minister, Bob Carr, declined to say whether the government knew the specific charges, saying only that officials were informed that Mr. Zygier had been detained “in relation to serious offense under Israeli national security legislation.” Australia was one of several countries whose relations with Israel were strained by the revelations that the Dubai authorities made after the assassination of Mr. Mabhouh, a founder of Hamas’s military wing who played a role in the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1989 and who helped supply Hamas with weapons from Iran. In a confidential diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks, Australia’s Foreign Ministry told the United States Embassy in Canberra that the Dubai affair had made a coming United Nations vote more complicated. “Australian officials are ‘furious’ all the way up the chain of command,” it said. “In the wake of revelations from Dubai, the government is in no hurry to reassure Israel of its support.” The cable was dated Feb. 25 — one day after Mr. Carr said Australia was notified of Mr. Zygier’s detention. Gad Shimron, a former Mossad agent who wrote a book about the agency, described Mr. Zygier’s case as “so unusual and so extraordinary,” but not unique. “Throughout the Mossad’s history there are plenty of stories about people who at one point or another behaved in a way that is so bluntly different than the James Bond kind of manner they were expected to be,” Mr. Shimron said in a radio interview. | Dubai;Mahmoud al- Mabhouh;Hamas;Spying and Intelligence Agencies;Assassination;Mossad;Australia;Prison;Israel |
ny0154647 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
]
| 2008/01/08 | Suicide Bomber Kills Key Sunni Leader | BAGHDAD — Militants assassinated two key leaders of American-backed neighborhood militias in northern Baghdad over the past two days, highlighting the militants’ strategy of eliminating militia commanders who have embraced partnerships with American forces but who themselves remain vulnerable to attack. On Monday morning, a suicide bomber on foot killed Col. Riyadh al-Samarrai, a founder of the Sunni Awakening Council in Adhamiya, a Sunni stronghold that until recently was a haven for insurgents. The Awakening Councils are groups of Sunni — and in some cases Shiite — fighters who have renounced ties to insurgents and are now on the payroll of the American military, standing guard in areas that not long ago were controlled by militants. The bomber struck at the offices of the Sunni Endowment, one of the most powerful Sunni institutions in Iraq and an influential backer of the new Sunni alliances with American forces. The suicide blast and a nearly simultaneous car bombing just yards away killed 14 people and wounded 18 others. On Sunday, gunmen riding in a single car and brandishing pistols with silencers killed a founder of the Awakening movement in Shaab, Ismael Abbas, an Interior Ministry official said. Shaab is a large and predominantly Shiite district in northern Baghdad that is near Adhamiya. Over the weekend, militants distributed leaflets in Shaab warning that Awakening members would be killed for “protecting” the Americans. The killings punctuated a wave of violence that has unfolded in the capital and left more than 30 people dead over the past two days, chipping away at the relative lull the city enjoyed late last year. On Monday alone there were eight other bombings — in addition to the Adhamiya attacks — that killed at least four people and wounded 23. Gunmen kidnapped eight Awakening Council guards in Shaab, and over the past two days the police have discovered the bodies of 13 men strewn about the city who all appeared to have been killed at close range. Attacks are rising on Awakening Council members — fighters whose presence in volatile neighborhoods has been credited with helping bring about a sharp decline in violence. In another such assassination, gunmen on Sunday burst into the home of an Awakening leader in the volatile city of Baquba, north of Baghdad, killing him and his wife, according to the police in Diyala Province. “The suicide attacks will go on, because the enemy does exist and no one can neglect this truth,” said Bassim al-Azawi, a senior member of the Adhamiya Awakening Council. He vowed that despite Colonel Samarrai’s death, the “work of the Awakening will go on.” While there is no concrete evidence pointing to who is carrying out the attacks, the string of assassinations has come on the heels of Osama bin Laden’s condemnation of Awakening Councils and his warning that their members will lose “this world and the afterlife.” The most striking of the recent attacks was Monday’s killing of Colonel Samarrai. The militants were able to kill a skilled and experienced commander who had been entrusted with providing security for one of the most powerful Sunni leaders in Iraq. In addition to leading the Adhamiya Awakening Council, Colonel Samarrai was a close aide and security adviser to the leader of the Sunni Endowment, Sheik Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al-Samarrai. The sheik has angered hard-line Sunni leaders in recent months by openly promoting Sunni Awakening groups. Colonel Samarrai was also in charge of a detachment of government forces who guard the offices of the Sunni Endowment, which administers Sunni mosques throughout Iraq. According to witnesses and Awakening officials, Colonel Samarrai’s assassin, who appeared to be acquainted with the colonel, waited patiently inside the main gate of the offices of the Sunni Endowment. When Colonel Samarrai emerged from a meeting inside the building, the killer walked up, began to embrace him, and then yanked the trigger on his hidden explosive belt. Witnesses said the colonel’s bodyguards did not try to stop the bomber, suggesting that he was known to people at the endowment, and raising fears of complicity from within. “He reached him easily and was about to shake hands and hug him,” said Tariq Abed, a laborer at the endowment offices who suffered wounds to his face and shoulder. He said that judging by the ease of the assassin’s approach, he must have been friends with the colonel. The attack was closely coordinated with a car bombing minutes later outside the gate that killed several people who had rushed to the scene, and damaged trucks carrying victims of the first bombing to the hospital. Sheik Ghafour told Iraqi state-run television on Monday night that he believed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia was responsible for the attacks. Numbering well into the thousands, the members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia are overwhelmingly Iraqi, but American intelligence officials say they believe that the group has foreign-born leaders. Last week, Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner, chief American military spokesman in Iraq, said the pace of attacks against Awakening fighters was “perhaps one of the clearest indications of the importance that these Awakening movements and concerned local citizens are having on improving the security situation in Iraq.” Victims of the two blasts were taken to Numan Hospital in Adhamiya. Squads of Awakening fighters followed closely behind in pickup trucks. They removed wooden coffins and carried them inside the hospital to gather the remains of their friends. Fears ran high that another bomber would attack, and Awakening guards blocked even anxious relatives from entering the hospital. Family members stood outside, sobbing or talking on cellphones. One woman pleaded to see her son Ahmed, who she said was being treated inside. “He’s a young guy, and he’s never done anything bad,” she said. One of the Awakening guards did not want to tell her the grim news. “Poor woman,” he said, when she was out of earshot. “I took him to the hospital myself and he was already dead.” | Iraq;United States Armament and Defense;Sunni Muslims |
ny0236283 | [
"sports",
"olympics"
]
| 2010/01/25 | Australian Snowboarder Torah Bright Awaits Her Moment | GAYLORD, Mich. — It is not hard to find the Australian snowboarding star Torah Bright against the stark white canvas of a superpipe. She is the one practicing the toughest tricks, wearing shiny gold bindings, a baby pink jacket and her self-designed, gold crystal-studded ski goggles. With her sunny personality, photogenic and fashion-forward appearance, and world-class skills , Bright lives up to her expressive surname. And those traits, along with the coming Olympic visibility, could make her one of the more popular athletes next month at the Vancouver Games. “I’m not focusing on anything but doing my best,” Bright said. “I know everybody says that, but that’s how I always approach every competition, whether it’s the X Games or the Olympics or something else. I certainly hope people get to see me compete, see what I can do, and then want to know about me. I am myself. I am going to be the same person whether I am on the podium, or not.” Bright, 23, has been on a steady ascent since she turned professional at 14. Still, she remains relatively unknown outside of snowboarding. She has no major endorsements outside of snowboarding circles; her major sponsor is Roxy, the apparel company. “Torah has the athleticism and the technical ability to win; she clearly knows she is the favorite going into all of this,” said Bright’s agent, Circe Wallace. “I’m never worried about her being grounded. She’s focused in a positive way you don’t see from many in snowboarding, much less other sports. It’s refreshing for sure. “What’s coming up could be the perfect storm for making Torah a star beyond snowboarding. She has the talent, the personality, and the visibility is now coming. She’s poised to take off.” Bright won the 2009 Winter X Games, the 2008 World Superpipe championships and the 2007 World Snowboard tour championship. Bright became the first Australian snowboarder to win gold in the Winter X Games, when she won the halfpipe in 2007. Bright has consistently defeated top American boarders in the past two seasons, including the 2006 Olympic gold medalist Hannah Teter , and the silver medalist Gretchen Bleiler , as well as the 2002 Olympic gold medalist Kelly Clark . Bright finished fifth in the 2006 Olympics, and she said the biggest catalyst came after those Games, when her older brother Ben, also a world-class snowboarder, put aside his competitive career to coach her. The partnership clicked quickly, as Ben, now 25, understood what his sister needed — and how to push her. They are very close, slipping between roles of loving brother-sister to professional coach-athlete with ease. “She has the ability to break through all the barriers women have faced in this sport,” Ben Bright said. “I am not trying to overstate things, but she has it all: the ability, determination, intelligence, perseverance to take the women’s snowboarding to a new level. She’s just starting to come into the prime of her career. I can’t even imagine yet where she will go.” He came up with the idea for Bright to develop the double-cork, a high-risk, big-air maneuver performed only by male stars like the Americans Shaun White and Kevin Pearce. The trick involves two off-axis rotations, with the possibility of grabbing the board or adding other flourishes for more points. Team Bright broke down the trick into smaller elements, mastering each before combining them into the whole maneuver. They are keenly aware of the risk, especially in light of Pearce’s crash while practicing it Dec. 31. He is hospitalized and recovering from a severe brain injury. “There is risk involved with everything you do out there, so I need to be smart,” Bright said. “I am not going to try something I don’t feel confident about. There’s no reason to do that. You get hurt no matter what in this sport. I’ve had a concussion and many other injuries. You need to be very confident and practiced. I feel I certainly am.” Ben Bright added: “I am never going to put Torah at unnecessary risk. Never. At the same time, you do push the envelope to get the most out of your skills. You can’t move forward without taking some risks. I try to make the risks sensible.” She is spending much of her pre-Olympic training time in Gaylord, a tiny town four hours north of Detroit, because the Otsego Club, a private Alpine ski and golf club, has built a 22-foot Olympic-caliber superpipe. Bright and dozens of other Olympic hopefuls train in anonymity, pestered only by a handful of local youngsters. Ben Bright has laid down a very clear training agenda for the coming weeks: eat, sleep and snowboard. They both know this is the calm before the big storm of Winter X Games and the Olympics. Fitting into the quieter world of rural northern Michigan is not a problem for Bright. She is a Mormon, abstaining from alcohol, caffeine, smoking and premarital sex. She said her faith helped keep her steady under the pressure of her growing fame and the stress of competition. “I’m really happy right now and I feel like I am headed in the right direction,” Bright said. “I love what I am doing, my brother is helping me be the best, and all is well. I can’t ask for anything more.” | Snowboarding;Bright Torah;Olympic Games (2010);X Games;Teter Hannah;Bleiler Gretchen;Clark Kelly;Coaches and Managers;Bright Ben |
ny0184455 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
]
| 2009/03/05 | College Football Tugged at Chris Smelley, Then Baseball Pulled Him Back | TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — As a promising high school catcher, Chris Smelley once hoped to play in the majors, but football — the giant of the South — grabbed him and would not let go. The blasts of noise inside the colossal stadiums of the Southeastern Conference were exhilarating, the players were heroes and the teamwork necessary to win in a caldron of 80,000 fans sharpened skills. It all seemed so irresistible to Smelley, who happened to be a promising quarterback, too. “We wanted him, but it’s hard to give up being a quarterback at a big school in the South,” Jim Wells, the baseball coach at the University of Alabama , said recently. “Even Mickey Mantle had to think about what he was going to do. It is a hard thing to lay down, even if your future is in the other sport.” In February 2006, Smelley passed up a baseball scholarship at Alabama to play football for Coach Steve Spurrier at South Carolina. But after three fitful seasons with the Gamecocks, Smelley, 22, has returned home to play baseball for the Crimson Tide. He has also talked to Alabama’s football coach, Nick Saban, about the possibility of playing for him in 2010. “Most people wouldn’t have the chance to do what I’m doing,” he said. “I kind of feel lucky. It’s like I am getting to go to college twice.” The ethos of the two sports could not be more stark. On a cool night in late February, the Alabama baseball fans offered no postgame adoration. Smelley was behind the head of a push broom, sweeping sunflower seeds into a pile in the Crimson Tide dugout. It is what first-year players are expected to do. Alabama defeated Nicholls State, 8-7, before a scattered crowd of about 1,000, far from the masses who flocked to South Carolina football games at Williams-Brice Stadium. Smelley looked up after creating a nice pile of spent seed sleeves and dirt, and he smiled genuinely. He said he harbored no bitterness about initially choosing football over baseball. He had been an all-state catcher and an all-state quarterback at American Christian Academy here, playing on three state championship teams in baseball and two in football. He set a state record for career touchdown passes (134), and the tug of football proved greater than the pull of a baseball scholarship and the potential of playing major league baseball. Smelley sounds grateful for his time at South Carolina. Spurrier had an intense focus on detail, and Smelley said he developed inner strength by playing for a coach who tends to play the quarterback with the hot hand. “It was a kind of a roller-coaster ride during the season sometimes — a lot of good, a lot of bad — but that’s part of being in the SEC, the competition and then playing for Coach Spurrier,” Smelley said. “It’s not always something that you enjoyed, being on a short leash and not knowing what would happen.” Benched off and on by Spurrier, Smelley is now benched by an N.C.A.A. rule instituted this year that requires baseball players who transfer in the middle of the academic year to sit out the spring season. He can still practice. “He’s picking up things very quickly,” Wells said. “When he was out here the first week or so, he looked like a guy who hadn’t played baseball in a couple of years. He is in a perfect situation for us, not having to rush him in there.” At South Carolina, Smelley redshirted his freshman season, then became the on-again, off-again starter in 2007 and 2008. His best game came Oct. 4, 2008, at Mississippi, where he completed 22 of 32 passes for a career-high 327 yards in a 31-24 victory over the Rebels. That was a week after Ole Miss defeated the eventual national champion, Florida. The low point came in the final regular-season game against rival Clemson. Smelley threw four interceptions in a 31-14 loss, and Spurrier then picked Stephen Garcia, a redshirt freshman, to start the bowl game against Iowa. Some uneasiness remains when Smelley talks about his relationship with Spurrier. He starts to express himself, then reconsiders and backs away from the topic. Spurrier said he did not argue with Smelley or his father, Bart, when they told him in a January meeting that Smelley would transfer. “We thought he had a chance to be a good player, and he was sort of hot and cold, off and on, so I think he and his family felt like it was time to go back to Tuscaloosa, and I agreed with them,” Spurrier said. “I said, ‘If I was you, I would go back to Alabama — it’s where you belong.’ I think it’s a good move for him. It was time for him to go give baseball a good effort.” Football trampled on Smelley’s emotions once before. He received scholarship offers from a number of major programs, including South Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana State, Mississippi and Louisville. But Smelley was not offered a scholarship right away from his hometown university because Alabama was chasing Tim Tebow. After Tebow picked Florida over Alabama, Mike Shula, then the coach of the Crimson Tide, offered Smelley a scholarship. Smelley had committed to South Carolina, where he also hoped to try to play baseball. Ultimately, the demands of being an SEC quarterback prevented it. Smelley will still wear pads because he is a catcher, but the collisions will probably not be as frightful. “Glenn Dorsey got hold of me a couple of times,” he said, referring to the former L.S.U. all-American defensive lineman. “I guarantee nobody coming around third base toward the plate is going to be that big or that strong.” His broom put away, Smelley was the last player to leave Sewell-Thomas Stadium. Instead of being besieged for autographs, the way SEC quarterbacks are, he walked out alone. “There’s a big difference playing in front of 90,000 and playing in front of a few thousand,” he said. “That will be one of the things I miss.” | College Athletics;Baseball;Football;University of Alabama |
ny0170880 | [
"nyregion",
"nyregionspecial2"
]
| 2007/11/04 | Trees Dressed in Leaves, Even This Late | SHARON THIS long, slow fall season has led to many beautiful moments, with so many trees exploding into yellow and orange fire at once. But it also has been vaguely unsettling. It is unusual to have leaves remaining on the trees in late October, even November, especially in Litchfield County. Halloween is usually a time when children with treat bags slosh through drifts of fallen leaves, and bare limbs and branches are eerily etched against a moonlit sky. But this year, many trees held their leaves past the haunted hour — and some of the leaves were still green. Spooky. The fall — in the literal sense of leaves falling — was about 10 days to 2 weeks late. Are the trees a portent of something? “This has been a different season,” said Donald H. Smith, the state forester of Connecticut and director of forest management for the Department of Environmental Protection. “We’ve had very unusual October temperatures combined with two months of drought. The trees just don’t know what to make of it.” Dramatic colors result from the light-shortened days and cold nights, signaling to the leaves their time of turning. Not so this year. Warm days and warmish nights prolonged the season and kept the red and sugar maples from achieving their full glory. Mr. Smith added that many micro-climates — local weather conditions like wind and temperature that cause some trees to change more quickly, or, in an inland valley, to change more slowly — exist throughout Connecticut, leading to varying peak foliage periods. “I scrupulously avoid saying that this is about climate change or global warming,” Mr. Smith said. But last year, his department shifted its prediction for peak color, which appears on the state Web site, moving it back one week. “Always before, we had picked Columbus Day for the peak, sometimes earlier in the north. But consistently in the past 5 to 10 years, it’s always been later.” The peak period prediction this year extended to Oct. 31, about two weeks later than is traditional. Vermont residents have not been so reticent about linking the leaves to larger forces. The headline in an Associated Press article filed from Montpelier in late October read, “Climate Change Blamed for Fading Foliage.” Vermonters said the leaves were “duller,” not as “sparkly” and not as “riotous with reds.” Everything can be seen as a part of a given perceptual framework, just as ferocious hurricanes were woven into the global warming narrative after Katrina — and conveniently left out after two consecutive years of almost no hurricanes. There is science, and there is also subjectivity and belief — what you believe in your gut. Russell Russ, a forester with the Great Mountain Forest, a nonprofit corporation that maintains 6,000 acres of woodlands in Norfolk, near the Massachusetts border, spends a lot of time in the woods, giving seminars on grading timber and lately collecting leaves. He allows that this fall was “a little bit later than normal, about two weeks late.” The Great Mountain weather station, where Mr. Russ is the weatherman, has tracked temperatures for 75 years. Six of the top 10 warmest have occurred in the last 17 years, he said. His gut reaction? “It’s probably just a blip,” he said. Mr. Russ added that this year’s fall colors were better than last year, when the maples were more adversely affected by anthracnose, or tar fungus, which causes the leaves to turn brown and crumble before achieving their full blaze of color. If a tree could talk, what would it tell us? To a tree, it may seem like the best year ever — weather so warm you were still dressed with leaves at the end of October. Which brings up a paradoxical point: the longer a tree maintains its leaves, the longer it is engaged in photosynthesis, taking in carbon dioxide and churning out oxygen. Trees are kind of the ultimate carbon-sequestration devices. “The extended growing season could be seen as a buffer, a natural consequence of a warming planet,” Mr. Smith, the state forester, said. As a response to the warming weather, trees may be converting more carbon dioxide into oxygen for a longer time than normal. It’s just one way of looking at it. But isn’t it pretty to think so? | Weather;Environment;Connecticut |
ny0168166 | [
"business",
"media"
]
| 2006/01/13 | Hollinger Sheds Its Last Assets in Canada | OTTAWA, Jan. 12 - Hollinger International, once the dominant newspaper group in Canada, has shed the last of its Canadian publications, among them the newspaper where Conrad M. Black first entered publishing. In a statement to Canadian securities regulators, Hollinger said it had agreed to sell its remaining Canadian properties -- 25 small newspapers in British Columbia, two in Quebec and an assortment of trade publications -- for 121.7 million Canadian dollars ($105 million) to Glacier Ventures International of Vancouver, British Columbia, a bottled water company turned publisher. The statement was released late Wednesday. Under Lord Black, Hollinger once controlled the leading daily papers in most of Canada's major cities; The National Post, a newspaper distributed across the country; and dozens of weekly and small-town newspapers. The Quebec newspapers just sold include The Sherbrooke Record, the first paper bought by Lord Black. Along with F. David Radler and Peter White, he purchased the paper in 1969 for 20,000 Canadian dollars in mostly borrowed money. At The Record, the group struck on a formula they would later apply at numerous other newspapers. Lord Black focused on The Record's editorial content, expanding its right-wing views, while Mr. Radler largely devoted himself to cost-cutting measures, most memorably having reporters deliver newspapers. Mr. Black often used the paper to promote his political views, once writing an editorial that occupied a page and a half praising President Lyndon B. Johnson and his policy on the Vietnam War, both unpopular in Canada. Mr. Radler went on to become Lord Black's longtime deputy, but their relationship appears to have ended after criminal cases were brought against the two in Chicago. In September, Mr. Radler pleaded guilty to one count of fraud and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors who charged Lord Black with wire and mail fraud. Lord Black pleaded not guilty last month, and Mr. Radler is expected to testify against him. With its Canadian properties gone, Hollinger's operation is now largely based on The Chicago Sun-Times. "With the transaction announced today, we can now focus our efforts entirely on leveraging the strength of our more than 100 media properties across the Chicago area," Gordon A. Paris, the chairman and chief executive of Hollinger, said in a statement. In December, the privately held Glacier completed the purchase of another group of Hollinger papers in Canada as well as a financial information service in partnership with Jamison Newspapers. Glacier did not respond to requests for comment Thursday. | CANADA;HOLLINGER INTERNATIONAL INC |
ny0002228 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2013/03/24 | Man Detained in Fatal Coney Island Shooting | The police on Saturday detained a man suspected of shooting four people — one fatally — in an apartment at a Coney Island housing project on Friday. By Saturday evening, a police spokesman said the suspect, Joseph Brown, 29, had not been charged. The spokesman would give no further details. The shooting occurred just before 4 p.m. Friday at the Gravesend Houses, at 2703 West 33rd Street, investigators said. There, authorities said, Mr. Brown was allowed into a fifth-floor apartment after requesting to speak with a 24-year-old resident who was in his bedroom. Mr. Brown went into the bedroom and shot the man in head, wounding him critically, the police said. He then left the bedroom and shot three other people in the apartment: a 40-year-old man, a 62-year-old woman and another man who was shot in the head and killed. Two children and an 18-year-old woman who were also in the apartment were unharmed. | Murders;Coney Island Brooklyn |
ny0081455 | [
"world",
"asia"
]
| 2015/11/05 | In Heat of August 1945, Mao and Chiang Met for the Last Time | BEIJING — In August 1945, Mao Zedong flew from his mountain redoubt in Yan’an to Chongqing, the headquarters of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists and China ’s sweltering wartime capital. It was to be the last meeting between leaders of the Communists and the Nationalists, the rival factions then contending for control of China. The encounter turned into a seven-week round of talks brokered by the administration of President Harry S. Truman, which hoped to engineer a coalition government for a united China and ensure that the hard-won war against Japan would not degenerate into civil war. The odds against success were high, because the two sides were old enemies. In 1923, the Communists and the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, formed a united front, then split in 1927. They then fought for a decade, with the Communists retreating to the interior of Shaanxi Province on the Long March. With Japan’s invasion and occupation of Manchuria, Mao and Chiang agreed to a second united front in 1937 to fight the Japanese. It was an uneasy alliance, and during the latter part of World War II , the Americans — sometimes fitfully, sometimes with enthusiasm — tried to bolster the relationship between the Communists and the Kuomintang against the common foe. Image Mao Zedong arriving in Chongqing with the United States ambassador to China, Patrick J. Hurley, in a photograph published in the Aug. 30, 1945, edition of The New York Times. Credit Associated Press By the time Mao arrived in Chongqing, after the Allied victory over Japan, there was a slight thaw between Mao and Chiang. And Stalin, still an ally of the United States, had blessed the idea of the meeting. Mao was so nervous about flying that he asked the United States ambassador, Patrick J. Hurley, to come pick him up in an American airplane. It was Mao’s first flight, according to a textured account of the encounter between Mao and Chiang in “China 1945,” a recent book on America’s dealings with China that fateful year by Richard Bernstein, a former New York Times bureau chief in Beijing. When Mao arrived safely in Chongqing, wearing a military-style jacket and a topee hat — a guerrilla antidote to Ambassador Hurley’s drawing-room bowler hat and bow tie — he was asked what he thought of the airplane. “Very efficient,” Mao replied, according to Mr. Bernstein. Mao was then treated to a ride into town in the embassy’s black Cadillac. (There is no report on how Mao liked the limousine.) Then as now, there was close attention to protocol and who called whom what. Communist propaganda had softened a bit — Mao’s publicity machine was calling Chiang “president” rather than the leader of a “reactionary clique.” Image A map of East Asia in the Sept. 2, 1945 edition of The New York Times. Credit The New York Times The day after Mao landed on Aug. 27, he joined Chiang for dinner. It was the first time the men had met in 20 years, the New York Times correspondent Tillman Durdin reported at the time. Over the next seven weeks, the men held many private meetings, often walking in Chiang’s garden. Aides to both leaders toiled over documents that ambitiously envisioned a new, democratic China, with a national conference that would establish the rules for elections to a national assembly. They also proposed that all Chinese armed forces be unified under Chiang’s command. On Oct. 11, Mao flew back to Yan’an. A joint communiqué by Mao and Chiang was studded with phrases like “peace, democracy, solidarity and unity,” Hannah Pakula wrote in “The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China.” Yet a full settlement proved elusive. For Mao, though, the visit to Chongqing was worth the time. He had mollified the Americans, whom he wanted to keep on the sideline of the coming struggle with the Kuomintang. His strategy had been to “fight fight, talk talk.” Zhou Enlai, Mao’s partner in negotiations, had coined the expression, Mr. Bernstein said, to describe the Communists’ goal of buying time, deterring aggressive action by the enemy and then, when the time was ripe, going for all-out military action. By the next year, full-fledged civil war had resumed. And by 1949, Chiang and his Kuomintang forces had fled to Taiwan , and Mao declared the establishment of the Communist People’s Republic in Beijing. | Taiwan;China;Chiang Kai-shek;Mao Zedong;Kuomintang,Chinese Nationalist Party;Japan |
ny0176038 | [
"world",
"africa"
]
| 2007/07/18 | Libya Lifts Death Sentences in Child H.I.V. Infections | Libya on Tuesday commuted the death sentences of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor convicted of having intentionally infected hundreds of Libyan children with H.I.V. , the virus that causes AIDS. Libya changed the medical workers’ sentences to life in prison after the families of the infected children each received $1 million. The decision could pave the way for a deal in which the Libyan government transfers the medical workers to Bulgaria , where it is probable they would be released. Bulgaria has consistently said the medical workers are not guilty. “The Bulgarian state institutions have already started the procedural steps needed for the transfer,” said Dimiter Tzantcev, a Foreign Ministry spokesman. “The formal request will be made tomorrow.” Libya’s foreign minister, Abdel-Rahman Shalqam, told The Associated Press that his government would most likely grant the request, though he did not say when. “Issuing this decision automatically closes the legal case against them,” Mr. Shalqam said. “There is a legal cooperation agreement between Libya and Bulgaria, and we don’t mind that the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor benefit from it.” The decision by the Libyan High Judicial Council to commute the sentences was reported Tuesday by the country’s official news agency, JANA. The convoluted case, in which the medical workers were twice ordered to die before a firing squad, began in February 1998 when the nurses arrived to take jobs at Al Fateh Children’s Hospital in Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city. By August that year, children at the hospital began testing positive for H.I.V. Health authorities soon realized they had a major problem. Dozens of Bulgarian medical workers were arrested and a videotaped search of the apartment of one purported to turn up vials of H.I.V.-tainted blood. At least two of the nurses eventually confessed but said later that they had been forced to do so under torture. The Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, subsequently charged that the nurses had acted on the orders of the Central Intelligence Agency and Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad. A Benghazi court eventually convicted the five nurses and doctor of deliberately injecting more than 400 children with the virus, though international AIDS experts — including Luc Montagnier, the French virologist and a co-discoverer of H.I.V. — concluded that the virus predated the nurses’ arrival and was probably spread by contaminated needles. More than 50 of the children have died. The medical workers were sentenced to death in May 2004, but the Libyan Supreme Court ordered a retrial after an international uproar. That trial, too, ended with death sentences. Last week, the Supreme Court upheld the decision, leaving the High Council as the medical workers’ seemingly last hope. Beyond the legal maneuverings, though, the case has long been regarded as one that centered on money for the affected families. Colonel Qaddafi’s son, Seif al-Islam, who has acted as point man on many of the country’s most difficult international negotiations, said repeatedly over the years that the medical workers would never be executed. Under Libya’s legal code, which follows Islamic law, the families had the right to grant clemency in return for “blood money.” They demanded $10 million for each child infected, the same amount that Libya agreed to pay each of the families of the 270 people killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. Libya has accepted responsibility for the bombing. Negotiations over the payments have dragged on for years, and the international community has spent millions of dollars per child for medical equipment and medical care. Finally, last week, each family received $1 million in a deal worked out between them and the younger Mr. Qaddafi’s charitable foundation. They then dropped their demands that the medical workers die. It is not clear where the money paid to the families came from. The younger Mr. Qaddafi told France’s Le Figaro newspaper that Bulgaria, Slovakia, Croatia and the Czech Republic have forgiven some of Libya’s cold-war-era debts, freeing the cash that was paid as compensation. But those governments have denied the claim, news agencies have reported. “There is no decision to alleviate debt,” said Mr. Tzantcev. “It has not been discussed.” Bulgaria has staunchly refused to pay “compensation,” arguing that it would be an admission that the medical workers were guilty. But the country has committed to participate in an international fund set up in late 2005 to pay for the children’s medical care and to enhance Libya’s abilities to fight H.I.V. Bulgaria has put no cash into the fund, Mr. Tzantcev said. He said all of the country’s contributions have in medical equipment and training. The Bulgarian government hopes the medical workers will be transferred to its custody soon under a 1984 bilateral agreement with Libya that provides for citizens of one country convicted of crimes in the other to serve their sentences at home. In June, Bulgaria granted the Palestinian doctor citizenship to make him eligible for transfer under the agreement. “For us,” Mr. Tzantcev said, “the case will finally be closed when the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor step onto Bulgarian soil.” | Libya;Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome;Medicine and Health;Nursing and Nurses;Bulgaria |
ny0119895 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2012/07/19 | Audit Finds Bilingual SEIT and Preschool Billed State Improperly | The owners of a fast-growing Queens company that teaches toddlers with disabilities took nearly $1.5 million from a public preschool program, paying themselves inflated salaries and rent, and billing the government for their cars, children’s furniture and even cosmetics, a state audit has found. The company’s owners, who were once married, also violated tax regulations, gave the wife’s sister a no-show job and wrongly billed the state for utility expenses incurred by a private day care business they operate on the side, investigators said. Investigators for the state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, referred their findings in the audit, to be released Thursday, to prosecutors in the Queens district attorney’s office, his office said, and may also alert state tax authorities. State records show that billings by the company, Bilingual SEIT and Preschool , based in Flushing, exploded over the last decade, to more than $15 million in the 2010-11 school year, from $808,935 in 2002-3. Most of its revenue comes from employing “special education itinerant teachers,” or SEITs, who work one-on-one with children in their homes or in nursery schools. But auditors examining just two years of the company’s records said they found a wide array of overcharges and improper accounting: The executive director, Cheon Park, overpaid his wife, Hyun Ham, by more than $100,000 over that period, calling her an assistant executive director when she was really a payroll clerk. The two began paying themselves and other employees as independent contractors, avoiding payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes. And Ms. Ham, who owned the buildings where their company ran preschools, charged the state for the interest on her mortgages. Auditors said the couple, who have two school-age children, also billed the state during the 2007-8 and 2008-9 school years for a minivan and a Mercedes, for doll chests and expensive children’s bedroom furniture, and for purchases from Club Libby Lu, a chain, now closed, that offered makeovers to girls ages 4 to 12. “Special education services are critical for thousands of children, and every tax dollar meant for them should be spent on them,” Mr. DiNapoli said. “Sadly, my auditors have found that has not been the case at Bilingual SEIT and Preschool.” Mr. Park and Ms. Ham divorced in 2010, but auditors said they remained in business together. A lawyer for the company, Pamela Madeiros, declined to comment. The audit is the fourth of 18 under way examining the $2 billion preschool special education program , which relies on contractors to deliver services to more than 60,000 children ages 3 to 5 with physical, learning, developmental and other disabilities. Four contractors have been arrested. The program, whose costs are split between state and local governments, is far more expensive in New York than in other states, The New York Times reported last month . The number of children in the program is rising slowly, but expenditures have climbed rapidly as children receive more expensive services. Spending growth has been steepest in the SEIT program, which sends teachers out to work individually with toddlers, many of them autistic children who are given intensive behavioral therapy, as much as 35 hours a week in the most severe cases. In New York City, preschool special education costs annually have surpassed $1 billion, nearly double the amount six years ago. City officials say they are prevented from controlling costs by state regulations, and state officials complain that influential lobbyists for private contractors have blocked reforms in Albany. Contractors insist that malfeasance is relatively rare, and that the program makes financial sense because early intervention by specialists can avert more serious problems later. But auditors say the system encourages abuse. The rate at Bilingual SEIT, calculated by the state to cover the company’s costs, has been $49 per half-hour, but that could be lowered as a result of the audit. | Office of the Comptroller (NYS);Education (Pre-School);Frauds and Swindling;Bilingual SEIT and Preschool;Flushing (NYC);New York State;Special Education;New York City |
ny0245912 | [
"business",
"media"
]
| 2011/04/01 | Maurice Lévy of Publicis Says Big Bet on Digital Is Paying Off | WHEN Microsoft last month awarded a big portion of its North American advertising account to the Publicis Groupe, the marketing company based in Paris, the news felt like vindication for its chief executive, Maurice Lévy. In the tradition-bound advertising industry, Mr. Lévy has been one of the strongest advocates of new digital forms of marketing, and he has backed up his words by writing big checks. Five years ago, he spent $1.3 billion to buy Digitas, an Internet advertising agency, prompting rivals and some analysts to say he might have paid too much. Yet Mr. Lévy pushed ahead, adding other digital agencies, including Razorfish for $530 million in 2009. Now, as the advertising industry recovers from a deep downturn, with digital advertising leading the way, Mr. Lévy is not shy about saying “I told you so.” The company’s growth has outpaced the market, he noted during an interview, and the digital skills it has acquired are helping it with technology-conscious clients like Microsoft, for which Publicis will manage more than $600 million in North American ad spending. “We looked at digital and we invested in digital early on,” he said. “We then decided that the shift would be huge, so we invested massively. It happens that we were right.” After a 2009 that many people in the advertising industry would like to forget, Publicis, which owns agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi and Leo Burnett, reported in February an 8 percent increase in its revenue for 2010, after adjustments for currency fluctuations and other factors, and a 30 percent gain in earnings. The recovery, in which other advertising companies have shared, has prompted a sigh of relief across the ad industry. So much for the idea, in vogue not long ago, that the combined effects of the digital revolution and the recession would hasten the obsolescence of paid-for advertising, as well as the media that rely on it. Instead of killing the ad industry, the digital revolution has proved to be one of its primary drivers of growth. ZenithOptimedia, a media buying agency owned by Publicis, predicts that overall ad spending will rise about 5 percent a year worldwide over the next three years. Internet spending will rise a total of 48 percent during that period, the agency says. Mr. Lévy said he expected digital ads to account for a fifth of global spending within seven years, up from about 13 percent now. “Advertising came out of the downturn much more strongly than expected,” Mr. Lévy said. “Can it continue to grow? My contention is yes.” Digital business accounted for 28 percent of revenue at Publicis last year, putting it neck and neck with WPP, the world’s biggest advertising company. While WPP, based in Dublin, also invested in digital advertising, it did so less aggressively. But it, too, is reaping the benefits of the recovery, reporting solid gains in revenue and profit for last year. “What we have seen since the beginning of 2010 — it was almost like somebody turning on a light switch,” said Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, during a Deutsche Bank Securities conference in Palm Beach, Fla., last month. Nevertheless, the advertising turnaround has been uneven. While some traditional media, like print, continue to lag behind, spending has bounced back strongly on television. And emerging markets, which barely stumbled during the crisis, continue to push ahead. Not everyone in the ad industry is convinced that big acquisitions are the right way to prepare for the digital future. The Omnicom Group , the second-largest advertising company, has shied away from large-scale deals after overspending on digital agencies during the dot-com boom. John D. Wren, the chief executive of Omnicom, which is based in New York, has said it is unwise for ad agencies to commit large amounts of shareholders’ money to deals that turn them into technology hopefuls, while Internet companies like Google and Facebook retain the real expertise. Despite a smaller exposure to digital business, Omnicom was not far behind Publicis last year in revenue growth, and ahead of some other industry leaders. Yet as the market improves, other advertising companies are redoubling their efforts to expand their digital capabilities. Havas, which like Publicis is based in France, recently announced plans to spend $1.1 billion on acquisitions, with Internet advertising a main area of focus. Analysts say that even if agencies are playing catch-up with technology giants, it is important for them to appear up to speed with the latest technological developments. “It’s becoming much more of a determining factor in terms of who wins the new business,” said Conor O’Shea, an analyst at Kepler Capital Markets in Paris. Of Publicis, he added: “Their strategy certainly looks like it’s working at the moment, though they did have to pay for it.” The unexpected strength of the advertising turnaround has bolstered the cash position of Publicis, and analysts wonder whether Mr. Lévy may be planning to make another big purchase. There has long been speculation, for example, that he was interested in a bid for the Interpublic Group , the fourth-biggest advertising company worldwide, which is based in New York and has a strong digital business in the United States. While stopping short of ruling out such a deal, he questioned the logic at a time when Publicis was already enjoying the upswing in its fortunes. For the moment, Mr. Lévy said, the company was focusing on smaller, “targeted” deals. Since the beginning of the year, for example, Publicis has acquired four small agencies in Britain, each of which brings a specific area of expertise. “Some acquisitions are interesting to look at because of the scale they would bring to Publicis,” he said. “But it would be problematic to spend two or three years just building scale.” | Advertising and Marketing;Online Advertising;Publicis Groupe;Omnicom Group Incorporated;Interpublic Group of Companies Inc;Levy Maurice;Paris (France) |
ny0109304 | [
"world",
"europe"
]
| 2012/05/26 | In Europe, Divorce and Separation Become a Burden for Struggling Fathers | MILAN — The pain of Europe’s economic crisis is being felt sharply by a new class of people: separated and divorced men who end up impoverished or on the streets as they struggle to maintain themselves while keeping up child support and alimony payments. The number of fathers who find themselves in such difficulties is hard to pin down, and while it may not be extremely large, it is growing, according to researchers, government statistics and anecdotal accounts from social workers, particularly in Europe’s hard-hit southern tier. In Italy , where the phenomenon is perhaps most acute, it reflects a fearsome combination of forces as the four-year-old economic crisis meets the steady fraying of the social safety net and the slow-motion implosion of the Italian family. For some separated fathers, the burdens become unbearable as they find themselves jobless or unable to make ends meet as their children, facing grim economic prospects themselves, remain dependent on family support into adulthood. “The support that Italian families used to provide,” which essentially substituted for a welfare state, “is no longer something that can be taken for granted,” said Alberto Bruno, provincial commissioner of the Italian Red Cross in Milan. His volunteers, he said, have come across men living in cars, even in Milan’s Linate Airport, “mixing with passengers, dressed in their suits.” One volunteer, Gianni Villa, 25, who takes food, clothing and blankets once a week to Milan’s growing legions of homeless, said he was surprised at the change he had seen. “Before, men who lived on the streets were vagrants, people adrift or drug addicts,” he said. “Nowadays you find people there because of the economic crisis or because of personal problems.” “They don’t tell you they are fathers,” he said, “because they don’t want their family to know.” Franco, 56, who did not want to use his full name so as to avoid the shame of his wife and two daughters learning of his troubles, left his native Puglia in April after his business went bankrupt. He said he traveled to Milan to look for work, in part to keep up alimony payments to his wife of 34 years, whom he is divorcing. The couple separated about a year and half ago, he said. “In Puglia I was living day to day, but I couldn’t keep that up forever,” he said, adding that he was still supporting his daughters, both of whom are in their early 20s but unemployed. With no place to stay in Milan as of April, Franco said he was “very fortunate” to meet a man at a McDonald’s who gave him a blanket and showed him “the ropes of living on the street.” It was not long before he was sleeping on a box under the portico facing Milan’s stock exchange. Separations and divorces have steadily risen in this traditionally Roman Catholic country since divorce was legalized in 1970. In 1995, 158 of every 1,000 marriages ended in separation, and 80 out of 1,000 in divorce. In 2009, the last year for which statistics are available, the numbers had reached 297 separations and 181 divorces per thousand, according to Istat, the national statistics agency. Even though a 2006 law made joint custody of children the norm when parents split, Italian courts continue to make mothers the primary caregivers while fathers bear the financial brunt of the separation. Critics say the law, as it is applied, favors women, whose participation in the work force has steadily grown, reaching 46.5 percent, according to Istat. Still, more than half of women who are separated also see a decline in their economic conditions, Istat said. When Umberto Vaghi, a sales manager in Milan who was divorced last year, split from his wife in 2004, for example, he was ordered to pay her 2,000 euros, or about $2,440, each month for upkeep on their home and support for their children, then 10 and 8. Each month, Mr. Vaghi was earning 2,200 euros, or about $2,680. “I was attacked by the Italian justice system,” said Mr. Vaghi, 43, a board member of the Papa Separati Lombardia movement , a nonprofit that assists single fathers and lobbies to improve Italian family law legislation. “Society is changing, and with it the roles of the father as the breadwinner and the mother as homemaker,” he said. “Legislation should take that into consideration.” Unfortunately, “there isn’t much will to change things,” he added. He and others attribute the resistance in part to the still-powerful influence of the Catholic Church in Italy, as well as the fact that Parliament is filled with lawyers who have little interest in reducing litigation. In Spain, court filings against fathers who have not paid child support have risen sharply since the start of the economic crisis. Recent news reports in places like Navarra and Galicia describe fathers who have been jailed for failing to support their children. In April last year, a Barcelona judge denied parental custody to a divorced father, citing the fact that he had lost his job. Poverty among single parents is “a rising phenomenon,” said Raffaella Saso, who wrote on the “new poor” — separated fathers and single-parent families — for the annual report of Eurispes, the Rome-based research institute. Homelessness, too, is growing. In Greece, Klimaka , a charity group, estimates that the number of homeless has increased by 25 percent in the past two years. The trend is a concern in a country where traditionally strong family ties have usually averted such phenomena. A third of those who had registered as homeless were divorced or separated, and mostly men, according to a study published in February by the National Center for Social Research. In Italy, charities say that a growing number of those using soup kitchens and dormitories of churches and other agencies are separated parents. “An uncomfortable reality but easy to believe, considering that 80 percent of separated fathers cannot live on what remains of their salary,” Ms. Saso, the researcher, wrote. The Rev. Clemente Moriggi, who oversees the Brothers of St. Francis of Assisi, a Milanese Catholic charity, said that in the past year separated fathers, ages 28 to 60, occupied 80 of the 700 beds in the foundation’s dormitories, which do not house children. That is more than twice the number of just a few years ago. “These men earned average salaries that only left them tears to cry once they paid their alimony and mortgages,” Father Moriggi said. “They are the people who come to us. But this is not a situation where family life can prosper. They feel ashamed to see their children in these structures, and this makes them suffer. And makes relationships suffer.” In large cities like Milan, Rome and Turin, local administrators are becoming increasingly aware of the crisis. Two years ago, lawmakers with the Milan Provincial government inaugurated a housing project for separated fathers at the Oblate Missionary College in Rho, just outside of Milan. The men occupy 15 rooms in a recently refurbished 16th-century guesthouse that also caters to tourists and pilgrims. The lodgings are spare, but the exquisite setting, in a park, is welcoming for children to visit. Each month, guests pay 200 euros, or about $250, a month for lodging and assistance from psychologists and social workers, and the province pays twice that as a subsidy. Fabio, 51, has lived in the Rho facility since January last year, when he separated from his wife, who lives near Milan with their 13-year-old son. Fabio’s monthly salary of 1,200 euros, or about $1,500, earned as a bookbinder, did not go far once alimony and mortgage payments were made, so the housing has been a relief. Despite his hard times, he remains optimistic. “I hope to find a home for myself because I can’t stay here forever,” he said. | Italy;Economic Conditions and Trends;European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- );Families and Family Life;Divorce Separations and Annulments;Europe |
ny0275237 | [
"sports",
"tennis"
]
| 2016/02/17 | Del Potro Wins in Return in Florida | Juan Martín del Potro returned to professional tennis Tuesday with a 6-1, 6-4 victory over Denis Kudla in the first round of the Delray Beach Open in Florida. Del Potro was playing his first ATP match in 11 months after a left wrist injury that sidelined him following a first-round loss in Miami last March. Del Potro, 27, has had four operations — one on his right wrist and three on his left — since defeating Roger Federer to win the 2009 United States Open. Top-seeded Kevin Anderson quit his first-round match against 103rd-ranked Austin Krajicek because of an injured right shoulder. ■ Fifth-seeded Belinda Bencic, playing her first week as a top-10 player, was upset, 4-6, 7-5, 6-4, by Jelena Jankovic in the Dubai Tennis Championships in the United Arab Emirates. The ninth-ranked Bencic, 18, looked physically exhausted by the end of the 2-hour-31-minute match against the 20th-ranked Jankovic. ■ Rafael Nadal advanced to the second round at the Rio Open with 6-1, 6-4 win over Pablo Carreño. No. 2 David Ferrer beat Nicolás Jarry, 6-3, 7-6 (3), No. 5 Dominic Thiem defeated Pablo Andújar, 6-3, 6-4, and Federico Delbonis beat sixth-seeded Jack Sock, 7-5, 6-1. On the women’s side, top-seeded Teliana Pereira lost, 6-3, 7-5, to Petra Martic. ■ Fifth-seeded Gilles Simon fell to Teymuraz Gabashvili, 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (7), in the first round of the Open 13 in Marseille, France. Gabashvili next plays Nick Kyrgios, who defeated Vasek Pospisil, 6-4, 6-4. (AP) ■ Serena Williams withdrew from her second straight event, saying that she will miss next week’s Qatar Open because of the flu. | Tennis;Juan Martin del Potro;Belinda Bencic;Jelena Jankovic;Rafael Nadal;Gilles Simon;Serena Williams |
ny0166512 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2006/08/15 | Psychiatric Exam Is Set for Father in Murder Case | A man charged with stabbing his 1-year-old daughter to death must undergo a psychiatric examination before trial, a judge ordered yesterday. The man, Dwayne Palmer, 32, was formally charged in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn with second-degree murder and attempted murder in an attack on his companion, Natasha Martin, and their daughter, Samara Palmer, in Ms. Martin’s apartment in Canarsie early on June 19, during the night after Father’s Day. Ms. Martin’s two sons, who are not fathered by Mr. Palmer, were in the apartment during the attack but were not injured. Mr. Palmer, who was arrested later that morning at his mother’s house, gave a long statement to the police recounting feelings of alienation, routine miscommunications, money problems and perceived slights. In court yesterday, prosecutors filed a summary of his statement, written by the police. “Natasha picked Samara up while he was sleeping and no one said anything to him,” the police wrote. “So he spent Father’s Day by himself.” Mr. Palmer then went to Ms. Martin’s apartment to visit Samara, found the door bolted and “came to the precinct looking for a police escort but could not get one,” he told the police. He returned to the apartment alone and unlocked the door, using a key Ms. Martin did not know he had, prosecutors said. Ms. Martin tried to push the door closed; he was stronger. “He asked her if she loved him and she said no,” the police wrote. “He got a knife from the kitchen area from the knife rack (wood handle). When she said ‘No,’ that she didn’t,’ he snapped. She was on the bed with Samara and he stabbed them. She was telling him she loved him while it was going on. He then left.” In court yesterday, Mr. Palmer wore a trimmed beard, bright orange slippers without laces, and a T-shirt that asked, “Where you at?” He stood quietly and still while his lawyer, Michael A. Millet, entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf and requested the psychiatric tests. The lawyer described a series of hospital stays Mr. Palmer had undergone for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The judge, Matthew J. D’Emic, set a hearing for Sept. 7 on the results of the new psychiatric examination. He ordered Mr. Palmer held in jail, and he issued protection orders for Ms. Martin and her sons. “This is a murder case, Judge,” said an assistant district attorney, Cynthia Lynch, “of a child.” | Murders and Attempted Murders;Mental Health and Disorders;Courts;Brooklyn (NYC) |
ny0018261 | [
"science"
]
| 2013/07/18 | Changing View on Viruses: Not So Small After All | There was a time not that long ago when it was easy to tell the difference between viruses and the rest of life. Most obviously, viruses were tiny and genetically simple. The influenza virus, for example, measures about 100 nanometers across, and has just 13 genes . Those two standards, it’s now clear, belong in the trash. Over the past decade, scientists have discovered a vast menagerie of viruses that are far bigger, and which carry enormous arsenals of genes. French researchers are now reporting the discovery of the biggest virus yet. The pandoravirus, as they’ve dubbed it, is 1,000 times bigger than the flu virus by volume and has nearly 200 times as many genes — 2,556 all told. Making the discovery all the more startling is the fact that, of all the genes that pandoraviruses carry, only six percent match any gene known to science. “We believe we’re opening a Pandora’s box – not so much for humanity but for dogma about viruses,” said Dr. Jean-Michel Claverie of the University of Mediterranée, co-author of the paper that was published online Thursday in the journal Science. “We believe we’re touching an alternative tree of life.” Giant viruses would be important enough simply for the way they have blurred the line between viruses and the rest of life. But they excite scientists for another reason. Utterly unknown a decade ago, they turn out to be everywhere, including in our own bodies. What effect they have on the world’s ecosystem — or our own health — is anyone’s guess right now. It was the very giant-ness of giant viruses that allowed them to be overlooked for so long. Scientists first discovered viruses in the late 1800s when they were puzzled by a disease that beset tobacco plants. They mashed up wilted tobacco leaves with water and passed the mixture through fine porcelain filters that trapped bacteria and fungi. The clear liquid could still make healthy tobacco leaves sick. The Dutch botanist Martinus Beijerinck dubbed it “a contagious living fluid.” In the 1930s, the invention of powerful microscopes finally allowed scientists to see viruses. They found that viruses were unlike ordinary cells: they didn’t generate their own fuel; they didn’t grow or divide. Instead, viruses invaded cells, hijacking their biochemistry to make new copies of themselves. Being small and simple seemed like part of the viral way of life, allowing them to replicate fast. It wasn’t until 2003 that a team of French researchers discovered the first giant virus. They had been puzzling over sphere-shaped objects that were the size of bacteria but contained no bacterial DNA. Eventually they realized that they were looking at a monstrously oversized virus, containing 979 genes. Image Carl Zimmer Credit Earl Wilson/The New York Times Those first giant viruses were isolated from amoebae living in water from a cooling tower. Once scientists realized that viruses could be so large, they changed their search parameters and started finding other species in all manner of places, from swamps to rivers to contact lens fluid. And along the way the biggest viruses got bigger. In 2011, Dr. Claverie and his colleagues set a new record with megaviruses, a type of giant virus with 1,120 genes they discovered in sea water off the coast of Chile. They then dug into the sediment below that sea water and discovered pandoravirsues, with more than twice as many genes. Dr. Claverie speculates that pandoraviruses and other giant viruses evolved from free-living microbes that branched off from other life several billion years ago. “The type of cells they may have evolved from may have disappeared,” he said. The idea that giant viruses represent separate branches on the tree of life is a controversial one that many other experts aren’t ready to embrace. “They provide no evidence for that notion, so it seems a distraction to me,” said T. Martin Embley , a professor of evolutionary molecular biology at Newcastle University. Despite those reservations, Dr. Embley and other researchers hail pandoraviruses as an important discovery. “I think it’s wonderful that such crazy and divergent lifeforms continue to be discovered,” said Tom Williams , Dr. Embley’s colleague at Newcastle University. The new study also drives home the fact that giant viruses are far from rare. Shortly after discovering pandoraviruses in sea floor sediment, Dr. Claverie and his colleagues found them in water from a lake in Australia, 10,000 miles away. “It definitely indicates that they must not be rare at all,” said Dr. Claverie. Giant viruses may be so common, in fact, that they may be hiding inside of us, too. In a paper published online on July 2 in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, French researchers offered evidence that giant viruses dwell in healthy people. They isolated a new giant virus from blood donated by a healthy volunteer, and then found antibodies and other signs of the virus in four other donors. Giant viruses may lurk harmlessly in our bodies, invading the amoebae we harbor. Whether they can make us sick is an open question. “I don’t believe we have the proof at the moment that these viruses could infect humans,” said Dr. Claverie. “But again,” he added, “never say never.” That’s wise advice when it comes to giant viruses. | Virus;Science and Technology;Genetics and Heredity |
ny0137372 | [
"business"
]
| 2008/05/17 | Lowest Reading Since 1980 for Consumer Confidence | The confidence of American consumers tumbled to a 28-year low this month as rising prices strained household finances. The data on Friday also showed that consumers’ short-term inflation expectations hit a 26-year high, fueling worries that the United States could be entering a period of stagflation like the late 1970s and early 1980s, characterized by a sluggish economy and accelerated price growth. “The Fed has continuously said they want to contain inflation expectations — and they are not contained,” said Tom Sowanick, chief investment officer at Clearbrook Financial in Princeton, N.J. He added, “The Fed is going to have to address inflation expectations in some manner, whether they talk it down or they force it down, possibly by taking away the aggressive rate cuts over the last year.” The data, from the Reuters/University of Michigan index of consumer confidence, highlighted the threat to economic growth, dropping to 59.5 in May — the lowest level since June 1980. This is bad news for the United States, where consumers fuel two-thirds of national economic activity through their purchases of goods and services. “Consumer confidence continued to slip in early May due to surging food and fuel prices,” a statement from the Reuters/University of Michigan group said. “Record numbers of consumers viewed the economy in recession and saw little hope of recovery anytime soon.” Meanwhile, the report’s gauge of one-year inflation expectations surged to 5.2 percent — the highest since February 1982 — from 4.8 percent in April. Also worrying for policy makers at the Federal Reserve, five-year inflation expectations were the highest since August 1996, edging up to 3.3 percent from April’s 3.2 percent. The inflation measures challenge the Fed’s view that soaring commodity prices had not yet led to an increase in long-term expectations for price growth. | Consumer Behavior;United States Economy;Economic Conditions and Trends;Prices (Fares Fees and Rates);Recession and Depression;Consumer Price Index |
ny0268978 | [
"sports",
"basketball"
]
| 2016/04/11 | Fittingly, Knicks Fall in Home Finale | A few minutes before halftime in the Knicks’ game on Sunday night, Carmelo Anthony scrapped through a thicket of Toronto Raptors players to execute a tough layup. Anthony finished the move under the basket, and as the ball slipped through the net, he head-butted it back into the air, like a soccer defender clearing out a corner kick. The officials issued Anthony a delay-of-game warning, but he barely seemed to notice as he jogged back down the court, smiling broadly and holding his arms out in an exaggerated shrug. It was the Knicks’ final game of the season at Madison Square Garden, their second-to-last contest in a long-ago-lost campaign. The least they could do, it seemed, was have a little fun. There was not much else to smile about, anyway. The Knicks, who handed big minutes to their young players and reserves, lost, 93-89, dropping their record to 32-49. They have one more game, a meeting with the Indiana Pacers on Tuesday night in Indianapolis. Throughout the night, the organization and players made gestures toward the fans, thanking them for their patronage this season. Anthony played along, but he admitted the motions felt bittersweet. “Even though it’s Fan Appreciation Day and we’re thanking the fans for sticking with us, as players we want this to be a welcoming into the postseason,” Anthony said. “We want to be looking forward to gearing up and tightening up some screws preparing for the postseason. We shouldn’t get used to this feeling having Fan Appreciation Night this early.” Things did not get overly sentimental at the Garden on Sunday, and the tone at times seemed slightly tinged with apology. During a timeout midway through the second quarter, the Knicks played a video montage featuring their players expressing their gratitude to the team’s fans. “Thank you for sticking with us through this process, this journey,” Anthony (21 points in just under 25 minutes) said in the video clip. “We appreciate it.” Before the game, the rookie point guard Jerian Grant walked to center court with a microphone and thanked the fans for supporting the team during an “up-and-down year.” Grant told the crowd, “We really look forward to next season, and getting better.” Grant, a promising player picked 19th over all last summer, scored 7 points in the first quarter. He made a sneaky, hustling play midway through the second, stealing a Raptors inbounds pass for a quick layup. He finished the game with a career-high 19 points. Grant’s performance once again raised the question of whether the Knicks’ coaching staff did everything it could to maximize their talents this season, whether Grant could have played sooner. Through the team’s first 76 games, Grant averaged 4.8 points and 2.2 assists in 15.4 minutes per game while shooting 37.3 percent from the field. After coming off the bench the entire season, Grant started the Knicks’ previous four games and showed positive signs, averaging 12.5 points and 3.8 steals in 26.9 minutes while shooting 47.5 percent from the field. “It can build momentum into next year,” Grant said of his late-season playing time. Kurt Rambis, who took over as interim coach midway through the season and could potentially return as head coach next season, spoke at once about maintaining a long view and harboring hope that a turnaround could come more quickly than expected. To start, he asked fans to be patient, saying the players needed more time to practice together, to become a cohesive unit. “I know when you have been a Knicks fan for a long period of time and not making the playoffs for a period of years, they all kind of blur together,” Rambis said before the game. “But we’re looking at it from a standpoint of new management, new coaching staff, so last year was a year that I calculate as Year Zero, just trying to clean things up and move forward. This is our first year of really trying to move forward, and seeing what we have, and the direction that we want to go in adding pieces.” Yet when asked if Anthony, at 31, was the right superstar for a team trying to build itself from the ground up, Rambis rejected the premise of the question. “If we get the right pieces and continue to grow as a team and everything, we see this turning around real quick,” he said before the game. “When it’s a process, I’m not thinking 10 years from now. We’re all assuming it’s going to happen a lot sooner rather than later.” After the final buzzer on Sunday night, the capacity crowd offered the Knicks a round of tepid applause. Some players lingered to throw shirts into the crowd. An hour later, in the locker room, Anthony was asked what he might tell a frustrated fan, one who has seen the team miss three straight postseasons. Anthony said the frustration was mutual. “I don’t think it’s time to give up on us just yet,” Anthony said. | Basketball;Knicks;Raptors |
ny0037612 | [
"business",
"international"
]
| 2014/03/15 | N.B.A. Looks to Asia for Next Growth Spurt | HONG KONG — When the National Basketball Association commissioner David Stern spent a week in Beijing in the winter of 1987, he had to plead with China Central Television to broadcast N.B.A. games — and he eventually offered to provide content free. Now, the N.B.A. is one of the most popular brands in China, and the only American sports league with a significant following throughout Asia. The league has a combined 70 million followers on Sina Weibo and Tencent’s microblog platforms, compared with fewer than 400,000 followers for the National Football League The new commissioner, Adam Silver, who replaced Mr. Stern last month, is hoping to build off that success, with expansion plans across Asia. In China, the basketball league is expanding TV coverage and building lavish sports facilities. In India, it is promoting the sport through after-school programs. In South Korea, it is trading on basketball’s “swag.” He has big ambitions. Mr. Silver said that N.B.A. China, which had $150 million in revenue in 2012, enjoyed growth “greater than 10 percent” last year, and that he expected double-digit growth for the foreseeable future. While revenue in China is a small fraction of the overall business — the league will generate more than $5.5 billion in global revenue this season — Mr. Silver said the N.B.A. would eventually be bigger internationally than domestically, and Asia was the key factor. “The U.S. represents less than 5 percent of the world’s population,” Mr. Silver said. “And we have, along with soccer, the most popular sport in the world.” From the outset, the N.B.A. had to tweak its strategy for the Chinese market. Unlike in the United States, there have been no bidding wars for N.B.A. television rights in China, because CCTV is a monopoly there. Although the league and CCTV announced a multiyear deal in 2012 that offered more N.B.A. content to Chinese homes, it is unlikely ever to be as lucrative as the league’s American deal, an eight-year, $7.4 billion contract that expires in 2016. So the N.B.A. has largely had to rely on licensing and marketing deals. There are the digital operations, including partnerships with the Chinese Internet giants Sina Corporation and Tencent Holdings that provide live streams of games, and a popular online store on Alibaba’s Tmall site. It is developing the N.B.A. Center, a 130,000-square-foot structure that is part of a $1.5 billion complex being built by a Chinese company near Beijing and is set to open next year. The center will include a restaurant, merchandise store, fitness center and multiple full-size basketball courts. “They have a very strong presence on the ground in China, but their biggest obstacle has been the state-owned media market, and that the China sports industry is state-controlled,” said Terry Rhoads, whom Nike hired as its first marketing employee in China in 1994 and who now runs his own sports marketing agency. “But things are improving. China loves basketball too much to deny the N.B.A.” The league has also secured licensing deals with major companies. Anheuser-Busch InBev, which owns the Harbin beer brand in China, has N.B.A. logos on its Harbin bottles. They are also emblazoned on Mengniu Milk. “They’ve been making a lot of money from licensing its logo to a large variety of companies, and these products do very well because Chinese fans know the N.B.A. is the highest level of what they do, and not many brands can say that,” said Matt Beyer, who holds a government-certified sports agent license. The league has used its experience in China as a jumping-off point to the rest of Asia. In 1990, the league opened an office in Hong Kong to handle all business in Asia, including China, at the time just a single employee working out of an apartment. Today, N.B.A. Asia has a staff of more than 100 across offices in Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and India. “The definition of Asia doesn’t exist for us,” said Scott Levy, the office’s senior vice president and managing director. “We look at each country and see what our strategy is there.” For example, the league focused on pop culture in South Korea. Three years ago, the league signed a deal with the South Korean apparel maker MK Trend and gave the Seoul-based company freedom to alter its team colors. MK Trend’s N.B.A. apparel, with bright pastel colors and shiny “bling,” became a top seller in the country, and can often be seen on South Korean television, in programming like Girls’ Generation music videos and the hit show “Running Man.” “We took advantage of the N.B.A.'s image as a hip lifestyle brand,” said Michael Kim, chief executive of MK Trend. “Korean stars want to wear our N.B.A. gear, and that, in turn, leads to increased sales.” With South Korean pop culture influential throughout Asia, Mr. Kim said tourists from China and Japan turn up at his stores with photos of K-pop stars wearing N.B.A. caps and ask for the same item. MK Trend will branch out into China this May, with more stores in Macau and Hong Kong this year. Across Asia, the league is relying on grass-roots projects to help build awareness. Last month in China, the league began the N.B.A. Yao School, an after-school program named after the former basketball star Yao Ming that aims to teach basketball and life skills to children. Sony India’s chairman, Man Jit Sing, whose Sony Six channel broadcasts N.B.A. games, said the league had brought the game to Indians with Jr. N.B.A., which gives underprivileged children the opportunity to play basketball and aims to promote values like teamwork and sportsmanship. “The Jr. N.B.A. is in 150 schools right now, reaching over 200,000 children,” Mr. Singh said. “N.B.A. programs are our highest-rated programs behind cricket,” Mr. Singh said. “They can’t touch cricket in India — nothing can — but after that, they are the most popular.” Mr. Levy, who oversees the Jr. N.B.A. program in Asia, said the league was looking to expand such efforts. “We want more people to play basketball, because that will translate to more people following the N.B.A.,” Mr. Levy said. “We will have Jr. N.B.A. programs running all over Asia. We’ve been in the Philippines for seven years, and we’re rolling out these programs to Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia this year.” Sponsors have paid close attention to basketball’s growing popularity in the region. Nike and Adidas send their biggest N.B.A. stars on promotional tours in Asia every summer. Dunkin’ Donuts hired LeBron James of the Miami Heat and Mercedes-Benz signed Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers to promote their products in Asia; and Colin Currie, managing director of Adidas Group Greater China, said the company signed the Houston Rockets guard Jeremy Lin more for his Asian marketability than for his American appeal. Another Houston Rockets guard, James Harden, said there was “no doubt” that playing for the Rockets — Mr. Yao’s former team — had helped him and his teammates secure business deals in Asia. The ZTE Corporation, the Chinese smartphone maker, signed the Houston Rockets to a sponsorship deal last October. “Yao really paved the way and opened the doors for all of us,” Mr. Harden said. | China;NBA;Basketball;Trademarks;Seoul |
ny0257668 | [
"sports"
]
| 2011/01/11 | Cookie Gilchrist, Bruising Runner in A.F.L., Dies at 75 | Cookie Gilchrist, the Buffalo Bills ’ hard-charging fullback who became one of the early stars of the American Football League, died Monday in Pittsburgh. He was 75. His death, at an assisted-living center, was announced by the Bills, who said he had cancer. When he was playing in the Canadian Football League in the 1950s, Gilchrist owned a company that installed industrial lighting and trumpeted it with trucks emblazoned “Lookie, Lookie, Here Comes Cookie.” He was hardly likely to go unnoticed. At 6 feet 3 inches and 250 pounds or so, Gilchrist was an uncommonly awesome running back for his era, and he was an outspoken figure off the field. He was often involved in contract disputes with management, and he helped lead a boycott threat by black players over discriminatory treatment in New Orleans when they arrived there for the A.F.L. All-Star Game after the 1964 season, forcing the league to transfer the game to Houston. Joining the Bills in 1962, the A.F.L.’s third season, Gilchrist ran for 1,096 yards in 14 games and was named the league’s player of the year. He set a professional football single-game rushing record, since broken, when he ran for 243 yards and 5 touchdowns against the Jets in December 1963. Gilchrist led the A.F.L. in rushing again in 1964, his final season with the Bills, when he helped take them to the league championship. He was named All-Pro every season from 1962 to 1965. “Whoever’d run up, he’d run at him and then run over him,” his former Bills teammate Booker Edgerson, a defensive back, told Jeff Miller in “Going Long,” a history of the A.F.L. “A lot of guys said, ‘Why don’t you sidestep and run around?’ He said: ‘I want to teach them a lesson. If I run over ’em, they won’t come up anymore.’ ” Carlton Chester Gilchrist was born in Brackenridge, Pa., on May 25, 1935, and was nicknamed Cookie as a child. After high school, he played in Canada, starring for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Toronto Argonauts before joining the Bills. He is survived by two sons, Jeffery and Scott, and a daughter, Christina Gilchrist, all of Toronto, and two grandchildren. Gilchrist was among the A.F.L. players who were refused service by restaurants, nightclubs and taxis while preparing for the All-Star Game in New Orleans after the 1964 season. He was a leading voice among players whose boycott threat caused the shift to Houston. “He came to maturity at a time that coincided with the civil rights movement,” the former Bills quarterback Jack Kemp told Mr. Miller for his A.F.L. history. “And Cookie was a very proud guy. He didn’t take any guff from anybody.” After three seasons with the Bills, Gilchrist had two stints with the Denver Broncos and also played for the Miami Dolphins. He retired after the 1967 season, having run for 37 touchdowns and 4,293 yards. In 1983, when he was nominated for induction into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, he turned the honor down over his feelings that he had faced racism. “Cookie was the Jim Brown of the American Football League; he was the icon of the league,” Edgerson told The New York Times in 1994. “But the biggest thing about Cookie is that Cookie did not take any mess off of anyone. That’s his legacy.” | Cookie Gilchrist;Bills;Football;Obituary |
ny0211253 | [
"us",
"politics"
]
| 2017/01/11 | Trump Promises Fast Action on Supreme Court Nomination | WASHINGTON — Pledging to move quickly to fulfill what he has called the most important promise of his campaign, President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Wednesday that he would name a nominee to the Supreme Court “within about two weeks” of his inauguration on Jan. 20. At a news conference in Trump Tower, he thanked the leaders of two prominent conservative groups for their help in vetting candidates, a strong indication that his main priority remains choosing an unwavering conservative to fill the seat of Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last February. Democrats are promising a furious fight over any nominee they consider to be out of the legal mainstream, saying that Republicans effectively stole a Supreme Court seat from President Obama by refusing for almost a year to consider his nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland, a respected appeals court judge with a moderate record. Mr. Trump had not commented publicly about his plans for a Supreme Court nomination since his election, but in his remarks, he stressed the central role the court had played in his campaign. “I think it’s one of the reasons I got elected,” Mr. Trump said. “I think the people of this country did not want to see what was happening with the Supreme Court, so I think it was a very, very big decision as to why I was elected.” In the two months since the election, Mr. Trump and his advisers have been scouring the records and backgrounds of potential nominees, a transition official said. .They now have a list of about a half-dozen names, paring it from the 20 or so that they started with. The vetting process has sought to identify candidates who are old enough to have established a substantial and consistent record of conservative jurisprudence, young enough to be able to serve on the Supreme Court for two decades or more, and reliable enough not to drift to the left over the years. “I want someone who is not weak,” Mr. Trump told his team, the official said. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said last week that Democrats are prepared to try to keep Justice Scalia’s seat open indefinitely. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, responded that it had been proper to maintain the vacancy through Mr. Obama’s final year. But he said anything more was unacceptable. “Apparently there’s yet a new standard now, which is to not confirm a Supreme Court nominee at all,” he told reporters. “I think that’s something the American people simply will not tolerate.” Conservatives have repeatedly been disappointed by Republican appointments to the Supreme Court, including Justice David H. Souter, who joined the court’s liberal wing; Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor, whose votes could be unpredictable; and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., a conservative who twice wrote opinions rejecting challenges to President Obama’s health care law. Mr. Trump “wants someone strong, independently minded, not afraid to make tough decisions,” the official said. The leading candidates share the qualities Mr. Trump has said matter most to him. “The justices that I’m going to appoint will be pro-life,” Mr. Trump said at the third presidential debate in October. “They will have a conservative bent. They will be protecting the Second Amendment. They are great scholars in all cases, and they’re people of tremendous respect. They will interpret the Constitution the way the founders wanted it interpreted.” Some of the candidates alarm liberal groups, which say they will mount an all-out opposition if Mr. Trump chooses a “lightning rod” like one of the leading candidates, Judge William H. Pryor Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta. Judge Pryor has called Roe v. Wade , the 1973 decision establishing a right to abortion, “the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history” and has said courts have no business imposing their will on issues like school prayer and gay rights. Nan Aron , the president of the Alliance for Justice, a liberal group, said her allies were preparing for the possibility of an unsparing effort to stop some potential nominees. “This could be the biggest fight in the history of Supreme Court nominations,” she said. Mr. Trump’s advisers say Democrats would be wise to hold their fire, as his first appointment will merely return the Supreme Court to the status quo. Image Judge William H. Pryor Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, is among the potential Supreme Court nominees. Credit Cliff Owen/Associated Press In that case, Justice Kennedy would resume the central role he has long occupied, casting the decisive vote in many closely divided cases. Though generally conservative, he has lately voted with the court’s four-member liberal bloc in major cases on gay rights , abortion and affirmative action . Should Mr. Trump have the opportunity to replace a second member of the court, however, he could transform American jurisprudence. The prospect is real, as Justice Kennedy is 80 and the senior liberal members of the court are about the same age. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 83 and Justice Stephen G. Breyer is 78. “An entire century of progress could well crumble,” Ms. Aron said. Mr. Trump has repeatedly credited two leading conservative policy groups — the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation — with helping to draw up and cull his lists of potential nominees. The first , with 11 names, was issued in May and contains most of the current leading candidates. The second , with 10 names, was issued in September. John G. Malcolm , a Heritage Foundation official who suggested a number of names that appeared on the first list, said he was confident that Mr. Trump would pick a reliable and consequential conservative to replace Justice Scalia. “This is an incredibly important vacancy on the court because of the number of important issues on which the court appears to be evenly divided,” he said. Most of the leading candidates are federal appeals court judges. In addition to Judge Pryor, who is 54, Mr. Trump has singled out Judge Diane S. Sykes , 59, of the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago. She is a favorite of some Federalist Society lawyers, and she conducted a public interview with Justice Clarence Thomas at the group’s annual convention in 2013. But she is on the older side by the standards of recent nominees. Both candidates have backgrounds in state government. Judge Pryor served as Alabama’s attorney general, and Judge Sykes sat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Other federal appeals court judges under consideration are Steven M. Colloton , 54, and Raymond W. Gruender , 53, both of the Eighth Circuit in St. Louis; Raymond M. Kethledge , 50, of the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati; Neil M. Gorsuch , 49, of the 10th Circuit in Denver; and Thomas M. Hardiman , 51, of the Third Circuit in Philadelphia. No sitting State Supreme Court justice has been appointed to the United States Supreme Court since William J. Brennan Jr. in 1956. But Mr. Trump’s lists include several, among them Justice Joan L. Larsen , 48, of the Michigan Supreme Court, and Justice Thomas R. Lee , 52, of the Utah Supreme Court. | US Politics;Appointments and Executive Changes;Supreme Court,SCOTUS;Republicans;Donald Trump;Washington DC |
ny0285557 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2016/09/07 | Another Sunny Day on the Lower East Side | Dear Diary: Another sunny day here on the Lower East Side Walked over to the OST Cafe Ordered a Jade Cloud green tea and a blueberry muffin The credit card machine wasn’t working So my repast was “on the house” I dropped a single into the tip box Walked over to the 99-cent store and bought twelve pens to write poetry with Then headed over to the barber shop It is an Orthodox place and as I walked in A man with a flowing white beard handed me a Lubavitcher leaflet He soon said “Shabbat Shalom” to the owner and left the shop I said “just a shave” and the barber shaved me using hot towels and alcohol spray and a straight-edge razor He gave me a really smooth shave! He complimented me on the Star of David around my neck Walked home and switched on my TV to “Little House on the Prairie” Another sunny day here on the Lower East Side | Lower East Side Manhattan;Poetry |
ny0114553 | [
"us",
"politics"
]
| 2012/11/07 | On Fox News, a Mistrust of Pro-Obama Numbers Lasts Late Into the Night | Karl Rove was incredulous. His colleagues at the Fox News decision desk had called Ohio for President Obama, a move he insisted just a few minutes earlier would be premature. “We’ve got to be careful about calling this when we have 991 votes separating the candidates,” he scolded them. “I’d be very cautious about intruding into this process.” Silence settled over the set. “That’s awkward,” Megyn Kelly said, trying to break the tension. She and the co-anchor Bret Baier then offered to broker something of a compromise. One of them would walk down the hall and interview the number crunchers on the decision desk about why they made their call. And so ensued the most bizarre on-air encounter of election night: a network anchor interrogating Arnon Mishkin, a member of the Fox News decision team and a respected voting analyst, forcing him and a colleague to defend their news judgment against Mr. Rove, one of the most powerful Republican fund-raisers and strategists. However odd, the exchange perfectly captured one of the persistent sources of strain between the media and Republicans throughout the presidential campaign. Ever skeptical of a media bias toward Democrats, conservatives complained repeatedly that polls this year were showing an erroneous and biased edge for Mr. Obama. As Fox News’s own polling showed an advantage for Mr. Obama late in the campaign, commentators on the network questioned whether the news organization had its numbers right. (As midnight approached on Tuesday, Mr. Rove, who helped lead one of the most powerful “ super PACs ” aiding Republicans this year, did appear to soften his objections somewhat.) Some conservatives started trumpeting the efforts of polling aggregators like UnSkewedPolls.com , which purported to “debunk the media bias and shatter the false illusion being created by the mainstream media.” (The Web site employs a methodology that mainstream pollsters have said is not credible.) By early Wednesday, UnSkewedPolls.com had posted no updates and still had a headline about “Big Election Day Romney Turnout.” For much of the campaign, the story emanating from conservative commentators was one of mistrust. It was not only the polls that were untrustworthy. Those Labor Department numbers that showed a rosier economic picture in the final weeks of the election? The books were cooked by pro-Obama stooges, conservatives charged. Suspicion of the other side — by conservatives and liberals alike — was evident in media coverage as the minutes ticked away to Tuesday’s poll closings across the country. The one conclusion people across the political spectrum seemed to agree on — even before there was a clear winner — was that the other side had cheated, lied or intimidated its way to victory. Speaking on MSNBC, the former Vermont governor and Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean declared that the “only way” Mr. Obama could lose in Ohio “is if people are prevented from casting their ballots, either by voting machines that aren’t functioning right or other forms of harassment.” Web sites with large liberal followings like Mother Jones, Slate and The Huffington Post highlighted a video that claimed to show a “ Romney-loving “ voting machine in Pennsylvania that was converting Obama votes into votes for Mitt Romney. But the cries were louder on the right. Fox News Radio reported that a man in North Carolina claimed to observe a poll worker coaxing a woman to vote for Mr. Obama. And Fox News broadcast several segments about a mural of the president, complete with his campaign logo and the words “hope” and “change,” that greeted voters at a Philadelphia school, a possible violation of a law against campaign materials at polling sites. After Republicans went to court and won an order to have the mural covered, the network reported that the covering was insufficient . It failed to obscure the campaign logo and slogan. The Daily Caller led its Web site on Tuesday with a story about a photo from the James O’Keefe group Project Veritas that discovered a poster of Mr. Obama, Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks just a few feet from where voters were casting ballots in Newark. There were other scattered reports online of possible targeting of Republicans: the Michigan Republican Party claiming that a poll watcher in Detroit was threatened with a gun; a woman in Florida initially denied entrance to a polling site because she was wearing a T-shirt with “MIT” on it. Though some conservatives like Mr. Rove initially doubted the election’s outcome, by around 10 p.m. many in the media had turned pessimistic about Mr. Romney’s chances. John Ellis, who worked on the Fox News decision desk in 2000, was one of them. “Obama wins. Popular vote still unclear,” he wrote on Twitter at 9:54 p.m. Shortly after 10, Nicolle Wallace, a Republican analyst on ABC, talked of “soul-searching” ahead for the GOP; Alex Castellanos, on CNN, talked as if he assumed Mr. Romney was going to lose. “This is going to be a repudiation of the Republican Party,” he said. At 11:12 p.m., NBC became the first network to call the election for Mr. Obama, only 12 minutes after all the networks were able to call it for him in 2008. | Presidential Election of 2012;News and News Media;Voting and Voters;Fox News Channel;Rove Karl |
ny0069147 | [
"sports",
"skiing"
]
| 2014/12/01 | Mikaela Shiffrin, Still Struggling, Fades to Fifth | ASPEN, Colo. — Midway up Aspen Mountain, near the start of the race hill, lies the Champions Grove, a cluster of blue spruce trees planted in tribute to the winners of the World Cup giant slalom and slalom races held here annually the weekend after Thanksgiving. Once the snow melts in the spring, another sapling will be sowed in honor of Nicole Hosp of Austria, who won Sunday’s slalom with a time of 1 minute 44.90 seconds. “This victory is like my first victory,” said Hosp, who injured her knee in 2009 and had not won a World Cup race since 2008. “I feel like I’m back.” Hosp, who earned a silver medal in the super combined at the Sochi Olympics in February and a bronze in the super-G, had a blistering second run to surge from seventh place to victory. She held off Mikaela Shiffrin of the United States, who led after the first run and was favored to win but ultimately finished in fifth. Frida Hansdotter of Sweden was the runner-up, 0.19 of a second behind Hosp, and Kathrin Zettel of Austria came in third. For the past two seasons, Shiffrin, 19, has been nearly unstoppable in the slalom, winning the event at the Olympics and the world championships and capturing two World Cup titles. Her dreamy rise to the top of ski racing has had few setbacks. This season has dealt Shiffrin the first real disappointments of her career. At the opening event of the World Cup season, in Sölden, Austria, Shiffrin won her first World Cup giant slalom and seemed poised to make a bid for the World Cup overall title. She said she also dreamed of winning every race in a single discipline in a season, and based on her success last season, that goal seemed plausible. Since her victory in Sölden, however, Shiffrin has faltered. She finished 11th in the slalom in Levi, Finland — a race she won by a large margin in 2013 — and relinquished her lead on Sunday with uncharacteristic errors. Shiffrin was more nervous than usual heading into Sunday’s race, she said, and a stomach illness she dealt with before the event also affected her performance. “She was a little bit sick last week,” said Roland Pfeifer, the coach of the United States ski team’s women’s technical squad. “We didn’t train the amount we were supposed to train. Then she was not really pleased with her performance in Levi, and she wasn’t so confident as usual.” With a solid first run Sunday, Shiffrin seemed back to her winning ways, but mistakes in the second leg eliminated her chances for a podium finish. “I have a little bit of work to do on my slalom, honestly,” Shiffrin said. “I knew that coming into this race.” She added, “I’m really trying to get back to the skiing where I know that it’s good enough no matter what and I can step into the gate with confidence.” Now, Shiffrin must rethink her strategy for the winter ahead. Entering the season, she planned to start racing in the super-G, which would be her first foray into the speed disciplines on the World Cup stage. Pfeifer said in early November that that might happen as soon as Dec. 21, in Val d’Isère, France. “For sure, we will re-evaluate the plan,” Pfeifer said, “but we need to, first of all, calm down for a couple of days, then discuss things. She’s obviously tired and stressed out, so it would not make sense to do a speed discipline and jeopardize her health. In Europe, we’ll see.” After Sunday’s race, Shiffrin said that training in the other disciplines might have taken a toll on her slalom, an event that requires consistent practice in order to maintain the quick and finely tuned tempo. “If I’m not training a lot of slalom, then it’s not always on,” she said. “Slalom, I think, is the hardest event. You have to do it every day to feel perfect at it.” While Shiffrin’s confidence is waning, her rivals’ faith in her is not. “For sure she will get back to the top of the podium, because she is such a good skier,” Hosp said. “She is so young, and she has a long career ahead of her.” In fact, Hosp said she thought Shiffrin’s setbacks could help her in the long run. “You always learn more from your disappointments because then you have to fight more, push more, think more,” Hosp said. “Sometimes you have to take a step back.” | Skiing;Mikaela Shiffrin;Nicole Hosp;World Cup Skiing;Alpine skiing;Kathrin Zettel |
ny0083433 | [
"business",
"media"
]
| 2015/10/21 | TriPlay to Acquire eMusic, a Pioneering Digital Music Service | EMusic, a pioneering digital music store that has been adrift in recent years, has been acquired by TriPlay, a cloud computing company that lets people link their media collections across a range of devices. TriPlay, whose music service is called MyMusicCloud , bought eMusic for an undisclosed sum in a mixture of cash and stock, the company said. Started in 1998, eMusic was among the first sites to sell music downloads. It long had a reputation as a haven for independent music — in part because in its early days the major record companies would not license their catalogs to it. But in later years, as it was challenged by iTunes, Amazon and, later, streaming outlets like Spotify, eMusic changed its model a number of times and cut back on its editorial coverage. At its peak, eMusic was said to have had more than 400,000 subscribers, but that number was believed to have declined recently. In an interview, Tamir Koch, the chief executive of TriPlay, said only that the combined user base for eMusic and MyMusicCloud was “in the millions.” TriPlay plans to integrate eMusic into MyMusicCloud so that customers can buy new songs from its catalog of some 25 million tracks, and then add the songs to their online collections. MyMusicCloud lets users upload an unlimited number of songs and listen to 250 of them free across all their Internet-enabled devices, from phones and computers to televisions and cars. For a subscription fee of $40 a year, customers can listen to all their songs. Mr. Koch said that even in an era of streaming services, MyMusicCloud attracts customers who want to own music and avoid the complications of renting them through a streaming outlet. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, streaming accounts for about 32 percent of revenue from music sales; downloads and sales of CDs and vinyl records make up most of the rest. “The majority of the market,” Mr. Koch said, “still consumes music in a way that they buy it.” | TriPlay;eMusic.com;Music;Mergers and Acquisitions |
ny0034638 | [
"sports"
]
| 2013/12/12 | Madison Square Garden to Host Wrestling Championships | Madison Square Garden will host the 2016 N.C.A.A. Division I wrestling championships. It will be the Garden’s first N.C.A.A. title event since the 1950 Division I basketball tournament. | NCAA Wrestling;Madison Square Garden;Wrestling |
ny0159813 | [
"business"
]
| 2008/12/25 | Market for Corporate Jets Goes Into Free Fall | Maybe General Motors should throw in a fleet of Cadillacs. The automaker is dumping its corporate jets into what some participants say is the worst market they have ever seen. Just seven months ago, hundreds of mega-millionaires, including Ralph Lauren and David Geffen, were elbowing one another in the lineup to buy a $60 million Gulfstream G650, which was not expected to hit runways until 2012. It did not matter that $500,000 had to be wired to Gulfstream’s account at a Midwest branch of JPMorgan Chase at exactly 12:01 a.m. on April 15, or that bidders who secured a place in the waiting line could not sell their rights if they changed their minds, according to one bidder. Some eager moguls even tried to improve their chances of getting a jet quicker by opening accounts at Chase’s Midwest office. Among high-ticket status symbols, “me and my brand new jet” was it. But that was another era — before the credit crisis and before billions of dollars in corporate and individual wealth were lost. “The jet market stinks,” said Richard Santulli, the chief executive of Netjets, the private jet company owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company led by Warren E. Buffett. To control costs, companies including Citigroup and Time Warner are selling their jets. Alcatel-Lucent has allowed leases on two jets to expire without renewing them and has put its third jet up for sale. And the public relations fiasco that engulfed the chief executives of Detroit’s automakers when they flew to Washington on company planes to seek a government bailout has underscored how inappropriate such travel can seem in this recession. General Motors, which leases seven planes, put the majority of them on the market before the government said it must do so as a condition of government assistance. The automaker has also closed its air transportation services unit, which had 49 employees. “We could not justify an in-house aircraft operation,” a G.M. spokesman, Tom Wilkinson, said. “We are negotiating to transfer the remaining planes to another operator. Ford too has shut down its flight department.” Jet brokers, who normally have a worldwide clientele, say the market has constricted abroad in recent months as well. “Our inventory is up dramatically, and demand is way down,” said Josh Messinger, of J. Messinger Corporate Jet Sales, a jet broker. “The decline is particularly pronounced for those who bought more recently because prices had soared so much.” “I spent a week in Dubai, and the front page of the paper there had articles every day about their economy having issues due to real estate issues,” he said. Mr. Santulli said that the Russians had been big buyers of jets. “But the fall of the Russian stock market has had a huge impact,” he said. “The Indian stock market stinks, and the dollar has gotten stronger, which hurts airplane sales.” Because jets are priced in dollars, they become more expensive for foreigners as the dollar gets stronger. Among jets, the large-cabin, long-range segment of the market is suffering the most, said Bill Quinn, director of aircraft sales and acquisitions at Cerretani Aviation, based in Boulder, Colo. That includes planes from Gulfstream, Bombardier and Falcon. Carrying costs are high. A Gulfstream G550 costs about $47 million. Though expenses can vary by state, one mogul’s business manager estimated that annual costs run about $1.3 million, including $500,000 for property tax and $400,000 for pilots and stewards. Typical operating costs are more than $2,000 an hour in the air, he said. The corporate side of the business is particularly vulnerable because of public scrutiny. “They are not going to do employee layoffs and keep the jets,” said Mary Hevener, a tax adviser who specializes in executive compensation at Morgan Lewis & Bockius. Besides, Congress stripped away the deductibility of personal travel for executives in 2004 by allowing companies to deduct from taxes only the rough amount of a first-class ticket, far less than private jet travel costs. Corporate chiefs concerned about public scrutiny are more inclined to look for alternatives than to return to the airlines. Some are examining whether they should take delivery of planes already ordered. One company had been looking to upgrade its two planes. “Now they are weighing whether or not to buy new planes or keep what they have,” Mr. Quinn said. Some are downsizing. “Some of these guys just move the deck chairs around,” he said. “They get rid of the big planes and go to fractional ownership, or they go to charter, or they come back into the marketplace with a leased plane,” he said. But every part of the private jet industry has been affected. Netjets lets people buy a fractional ownership in planes, and it sells Marquis jet cards that give customers access to the fleet in 25-hour increments. Those businesses, too, are seeing a slowdown. “People have lost a lot of money, and are careful about how they spend it,” Mr. Santulli said. “I have never seen it like this,” said Mike Silvestri, the chief executive of Flight Options, which sells shares in jets as well as plans that cover a fixed number of hours a year of private jet use. “Customers are just not flying as much.” Some customers are stretching out the hours bought for a single year over a longer period. Flight Options has laid off 134 people, including 104 pilots, and hopes it will be able to bring them back. Mr. Santulli said that the jet market usually picks up three months after the stock market has reached a bottom. There is no indication of an uptick yet. | Airlines and Airplanes;Executives and Management;Gulfstream International Group Inc;Subprime Mortgage Crisis;Cerretani Aviation;Recession and Depression;General Motors Corp;Bombardier Inc;Flight Options |
ny0072762 | [
"business",
"media"
]
| 2015/03/12 | Global Movie Ticket Sales Rise 1% as China Surges | LOS ANGELES — The world movie box office was up 1 percent last year from 2013, but ticket sales in the United States and Canada fell about 5 percent as growth became concentrated in China, the Motion Picture Association of America said on Wednesday. The group’s annual statistical survey found that ticket sales rose to $36.4 billion in 2014, with $10.4 billion of that from the United States and Canada and sales in China reaching $4.8 billion, a 34 percent increase from the year before. The report brought few surprises, as the pattern of decline at home and growth abroad was clear through much of the year. But the survey spotted trends in ticket-buying habits that, should they continue, could provoke change in films or their marketing and distribution. In one notable shift, domestic per capita ticket sales rose last year to 3.1 tickets annually among viewers ages 50 to 59, higher than any year in the last five, and viewing rose slightly among those 40 to 49. Per-capita sales among those younger than 40 fell. The sharpest year-to-year drop, almost 20 percent, was among those 25 to 39. Over all, per-capita domestic ticket sales fell to 3.7, about 16 percent lower than recent peaks of 4.4 achieved in 2005, 2006 and 2007, the report said. While the number of 3-D screens in the United States and Canada reached a high of 16,146, up 364 from 2013, box-office sales for 3-D films fell 21 percent, to $1.4 billion from $1.8 billion in 2013. The 2014 sales were down more than 36 percent from their peak of $2.2 billion in 2010. In one sign of industry growth, the number of films released last year by major studios and their subsidiaries rose for the first time since 2006, to 136 from 114 in 2013. The total number of films released in the domestic market grew 7 percent, to 707, from 659, continuing a long-term expansion that has been fed by smaller independent movies that are often released in only a few theaters before moving to on-demand services. | MPAA;Movies;China |
ny0251220 | [
"business"
]
| 2011/02/06 | Work-Life Balance? Smartphones and Laptops Tip the Scale | GIVEN the widespread adoption of smartphones, text messaging , video calling and social media, today’s professionals mean it when they brag about staying connected to work 24/7. Technology allowed Karen Riley-Grant, a manager at Levi Strauss in San Francisco, to take care of some business with her New York publicist while she was in labor in the hospital last November. “I had time on my hands,” she says, and “full strength on my phone — five bars.” It once enabled Craig Wilson, an executive at Avaya in Toronto, to take his children to a Linkin Park concert and be able to duck out to finish a task for a client in Australia, he says, “without disruption to my family commitment or my work commitment.” And it recently gave Perry Blacher, chief executive of the social investing firm Covestor, a way to participate in a board teleconference while attending a christening celebration at a pub in England. But all of this amped-up productivity comes with a growing sense of unease. Too often, people find themselves with little time to concentrate and reflect on their work. Or to be truly present with their friends and family. There’s a palpable sense “that home has invaded work and work has invaded home and the boundary is likely never to be restored,” says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project . “The new gadgetry,” he adds, “has really put this issue into much clearer focus.” The phenomenon started with the rise of BlackBerrys and has snowballed with the use of more smartphones, social media and tablet computers. Employees are using their smartphones and other devices to connect with corporate e-mail, applications and data wherever they happen to be — whether at home, on the go or even on vacation. Now add the effects of the recent recession. Because jobs and promotion opportunities are scarce, many workers are worried that someone who is more connected and available could outclimb them on the corporate ladder, says Peggy Klaus, an executive coach in Berkeley, Calif. “Even if you have a career that is pretty solid,” she says, there is the feeling that advancement requires being plugged in at all times. But at what price? Ms. Riley-Grant, who is 35 and director of global consumer marketing for the Dockers brand, has felt the stress of trying to stay constantly connected — not because of pressure from her bosses, she says, but her own fear. “I love my job,” she says. “The decision to plug in or unplug is a personal one. My job is fast-paced and demanding. If I’m not paying attention during the off-hours, things could go south.” But even before the birth of her second child last year, she recognized that she needed to power down to achieve the right work-life balance. So with the help of Ms. Klaus, she made a plan to take small steps: she let her co-workers know that she would be turning off her iPhone for a few hours on weeknights and weekend days, and completely on certain Friday nights. She tries to communicate a need for balance to employees who report to her, too. “I worry about the speed at which they are going,” she says, adding that she wants them to “shut down” when needed, for the sake of their families and their health. The conversation about what’s expected of workers “after hours” is crucial to managing expectations, researchers and workplace specialists say. Mr. Wilson, 52, global director of strategic consulting for Avaya, a provider of business communications systems, says he is respectful of his colleagues who work in different countries and time zones. “If I e-mail someone at 7 at night,” he said, “it’s not legitimate of me to expect a response that night or at 7 in the morning.” TO a large degree, how workers incorporate devices into their daily routines depends on the individual. Some people insist on keeping work and life concerns separate, while others integrate components of both and manage them together. For example, Stephanie Marchesi of the marketing firm Fleishman-Hillard in New York developed a system that involves carrying four devices at all times: an iPhone and an iPad for family and social life and a BlackBerry and a laptop for work. “I can pull out one and pull out the other and check on both aspects of my life,” she says. Ms. Marchesi, 47, managing director and senior partner of global integrated marketing communications at the firm, says technology “allows me the flexibility I need to balance work life with personal life.” She maintains separate e-mail addresses and calendars because her company can access her work e-mail and calendar. “I want my personal life personal,” she says. “I have chosen to keep things separate. I don’t need my work to know when my son has a play date or dentist appointment. It’s not their business.” On a typical day, she says, she is up early at her home in Darien, Conn., to make sure that both her children get off to school. She catches the 7 a.m. train to Manhattan and immediately pulls out her Internet-connected laptop and BlackBerry. For the next hour, it is as if she is in the office, she says: “When I am commuting, I have not disappeared.” The same is true, she says, on the 5:57 p.m. train back home. Her only downtime is the 10 minutes it takes her to get to the station. In the evening, she allows time for dinner and family, but then she pulls out her laptop. Occasionally, the routine varies — she might have to take a child to the doctor, or attend an after-school conference — but the fluidity remains. On weekends, she works on the laptop and checks her BlackBerry. The entire routine “feels very natural,” Ms. Marchesi says. “I’m not a stressed-out person, nor am I this maniac. I am committed, connected and responsive.” Alan Atwell doesn’t keep his work and personal life on separate devices, but he does try to ensure that his work life doesn’t hold his personal life hostage. Mr. Atwell, 44, national leader for tax process and technology at RSM McGladrey, an accounting and business consulting firm in Charlotte, N.C., tries to be accessible when he is away from work. But only to a point. A few weeks ago, for example, he was helping to coach his son’s basketball team, and an important text message beeped in. He says he was able to answer it quickly without disrupting practice. “If something important comes up, if I need to step out, I can,” he says. “At the same time, I can wait if I am with my family or taking care of civic obligations. Generally, I try not to walk around staring at the phone. I do try to pick moments when I need to be present for whatever group I am interacting with.” One upside of technology, of course, is that it enables people to be present even if they are not in the same room. On a recent trip to New York, Mr. Blacher, 37, of Covestor, pulled out his Sony Vaio and started a video chat with his 2-year-old son in London. “It’s really hard to be away,” he says. “If you didn’t have things like Skype, I don’t know how I’d do it.” While on a business trip, Ana Dutra, 46, of the executive recruiting firm Korn/Ferry in Chicago, helped her teenage daughter at home pick out a dress for homecoming via Skype, text messages and photographs. She communicates this way with her other two daughters as well. “That’s actually wonderful,” says Ms. Dutra, “to be able to see them even if I am far away.” It would not be odd to find Ms. Dutra, chief executive of Korn/Ferry’s leadership and talent consulting business, answering an e-mail on her BlackBerry and talking on her iPhone at the same time. At night, she used to keep her phone on vibrate mode — and it would go off 20 times. “This is crazy,” she thought. “That’s the point, in my view, when instead of improving your quality of life, technology is destroying your quality of life. I was waking up tired every day.” So now both of her phones are on silent mode at night. She has instituted other changes, as well, to find balance. If she needs quiet time to meditate, she takes it. She also practices yoga , even if only for 20 minutes a day. “If you need some quiet time,” she says, “it’s up to you to not allow yourself to be bothered for an hour or half an hour.” Technology has afforded her more freedom, Ms. Dutra says, “but there’s a little bit more slavery as well.” “If you are available all the time,” she adds, “what does that mean?” John Lilly, the former chief executive of Mozilla, maker of the Firefox browser, recently pondered publicly what it meant to be so connected and decided to initiate a temporary reprieve. Mr. Lilly is by choice and necessity a power user of multiple gadgets and social media. As he prepared for his new role as a venture partner at Greylock Partners, the Silicon Valley investment firm, he announced on his blog that he was taking time “to be a little more generative, to think bigger, more original thoughts.” He said he would turn off Google Reader, Twitter and Facebook. “I’m really excited to have a bit of time to start 2011 to slow down, try to think longer term, and to slow down my clock,” he wrote. Mr. Lilly, 40, says he tried. But as it turns out, too much of his life was tangled up in e-mail and social networks. “I couldn’t figure out how to disengage from all that stuff,” he says. “More to the point, I didn’t really want to.” Still, in anticipation of his new job, he has slowed his pace, which had been in overdrive at Mozilla. “As an investor, the entrepreneur is the thing,” he said. “I want to get to a place to focus on them, to be present and listen and hear what they are about.” Since he has slowed down, he says, “I probably feel less twitchy — I don’t feel the need to check e-mail and Twitter feeds every five minutes.” “But I don’t like going days without it,” he adds. “I like being in touch with my friends, seeing what they are doing. I think of Twitter as my peripheral vision.” The good news about technology, he says, is you can be anywhere and still work. The bad news, he says, is that “anywhere you are, you have to work.” Too much connectivity can damage the quality of one’s work, says Robert Sutton, author of “ Good Boss, Bad Boss ” and a professor at Stanford. Because of devices, he says, “nobody seems to actually pay full attention; everybody is doing a worse job because they are doing more things.” Mobile devices and social media, he says, “make us a little more oblivious, a little more incompetent.” Just recall those pilots who overshot their destination two years ago because they were using computers, he adds. “The emotionally compelling nature of the device and live information it carries — and the intermittent reinforcement it carries, plus the pressure of living in a world where for many people ‘immediately’ now really means immediately — causes people to be entranced by their devices and to ignore real life as it unfolds in front of them,” Professor Sutton says. SOMETIMES avoiding real life might be part of the appeal. When Ms. Riley-Grant was in labor and tapping away on her phone, she was “in denial that my life and everything I knew to be real and true was about to change,” she says. “Going from one child to two can rock your world a bit — from what I had heard — and I don’t think I was ready. I’m still not ready! Working allowed me to hold on to my ‘old self’ before surrendering to a new life.” On leave, she has switched from using her smartphone for work to keeping up with friends and family. At the same time, she is bracing herself for technological re-entry and all its demands. “We’re in a technology tsunami,” says her coach, Ms. Klaus. “Whether you love it or hate it, ultimately we have to figure out how to survive it and make it work for us.” | Computers and the Internet;Careers and Professions;Social Conditions and Trends |
ny0096791 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2015/01/25 | Disparate Education Plans From Obama and Cuomo | Since President Obama announced his proposal this month to make community college free for two years for qualifying students, arguments for and against the plan have been abundant. Some have assailed the initiative as futile, maintaining that federal Pell grants already cover the cost of community college for most poor and working-class students, and that the real obstacle comes not in tuition but in living expenses and the high price of textbooks. In actuality, tuition covered by the new subsidy would free up Pell grants to help alleviate those burdens. Another strain of criticism revolves around the idea that notoriously low completion rates at community colleges, where nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates are enrolled, reflect the failures of our primary and secondary education system, making obvious the need for more useful public spending elsewhere. While there is no question that students need to arrive at college better prepared, there are currently more than 40 million Americans between the ages of 15 and 24, many of whom have been inadequately educated and cannot time-travel back to a better, revamped fifth grade where dazzling teachers offer engagingly contrarian interpretations of the Mesopotamian wars. “Even if you totally fixed K-to-12 right this minute and not one more student graduated from high school who wasn’t college-ready, there are still millions of people who need an education,” said Gail Mellow, the president of LaGuardia Community College in Queens and a national authority on community college issues. “There are the people who have dropped out of college; there are the immigrants who have gotten a high school diploma internationally who aren’t prepared for our system here.” A study from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce released in September 2013 showed that labor participation rates among young adults had fallen to levels not seen since the early 1970s. Over the past three decades, the age at which young adults typically reached financial independence had increased to 30 from 26; for African-Americans it had increased to 33. From 2000 to 2012, the employment rate for young adults declined to 72 percent from 84 percent. In the New York metropolitan area, the study found, the employment rate for the young was 67 percent, 11 percentage points behind that of Columbus, Ohio, and roughly on par with Detroit’s. What has stalled careers is the need for postsecondary learning. If nothing else, the president’s proposal has introduced a discussion about community colleges, institutions whose success is vital to reigniting economic mobility in circles where the subject has been largely dismissed or ignored. Talking about them in the bien-pensant world of affluent New York liberals, which I did a lot last year in reporting a series about the challenges faced by LaGuardia and community colleges generally, has the effect of telling people how much you like Hamburger Helper at Per Se . Instead, it is the near-mythic homeless-to-Harvard narrative that excites the upper classes, inspires so much educational philanthropy and seems to be gaining a foothold in public policy. The package of education ideas that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo endorsed this week — among them an allowance for more charter schools — includes a tax credit for charitable contributions to public, charter and parochial schools as well as for scholarship organizations that help poor and middle-class children attend private schools. The proposal, which James Parrott, chief economist at the Fiscal Policy Institute , has called “insidious,” would permit a donor to reduce his state tax liability by 75 percent of the contribution to a school scholarship fund or to an organization like Prep for Prep , which sends poor children in New York City to schools like Dalton and Trinity . The proposal, supported by religious leaders , would not only divert public funds to support private education, it would do so unnecessarily, given how much wealthy donors already contribute to the cause of pushing bright, underprivileged children toward the world of elite colleges and universities. This exercise in largess is longstanding in Manhattan, where in 1963, an investment banker named Michael Osheowitz founded an organization called Sponsors for Educational Opportunity to mentor poor minority students and gain them entry to Dartmouth, Smith, Williams and so on. It remains robust today. Programs similar to the governor’s proposed tax credit, born during a time of spending cuts to public schools, are already in operation in several states. In the 2011-12 school year, according to the organization Alliance for School Choice , the credits produced $350 million for private school scholarships for close to 130,000 children. President Obama’s community college proposal, whatever its kinks, is an avowal of public education at a moment when too many in political life seem to believe the solutions lie everywhere else. | K-12 Education;Community college;Charter school;College;Andrew Cuomo;Barack Obama;Private Schools;NYC;New York |
ny0154970 | [
"business"
]
| 2008/01/23 | Bank of America Joins Parade of Mortgage-Related Losses | The upheaval in the mortgage market, a slowing economy and an increasingly stretched consumer have made the last few quarters among the toughest since Kenneth D. Lewis, the chairman and chief executive of Bank of America , took over in 2001. So Tuesday’s emergency rate cut by the Federal Reserve was a “pleasant surprise” to Mr. Lewis, who said the move should help stave off a recession. “It was a bold and decisive move and was exactly what the market needed,” Mr. Lewis said in an interview. “Growth had become very sluggish. Absent any moves, we were very close to a recession. This gives us a chance not to have one.” Yet Mr. Lewis said the problems that banks — including his — have been facing would continue, and he predicted “anemic” growth in the first half of the year. He made his remarks as Bank of America became the latest financial institution to offer results that showed the depth of the problems in the credit and mortgage markets. The bank said net income in the fourth quarter tumbled 95 percent, to $268 million, or 5 cents a share, from $5.26 billion, or $1.16, a year earlier. Like other banks, a huge write-down for bad bets in mortgage-related securities cut deep into earnings. Bank of America, based in Charlotte, N.C., wrote off $5.28 billion in collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s, in the quarter. The bank still holds about $8 billion in C.D.O.’s. Bank of America’s results also reflected another troublesome front: problems with consumer credit. The bank doubled its provisions for loan losses to $3.31 billion from $1.57 billion a year earlier. The percentage of net charge-offs, or loans that the bank does not expect to collect, rose to 0.91 percent from 0.80 percent in the third quarter of 2007. Likewise, large write-downs in mortgage-related securities and the need to raise provisions for loan losses nearly wiped out all of the fourth-quarter earnings at the Wachovia Corporation , Bank of America’s cross-town rival. Wachovia reported net income of $51 million in the fourth quarter, or 3 cents a share, from $2.3 billion, or $1.20, a year earlier. For his part, Mr. Lewis sees no relief anytime soon from consumer woes from credit cards and home equity loans. “We think late payments, delinquencies will continue. There are several states that are causing most of the deterioration, such as California, Arizona, Florida and Nevada,” where housing prices have collapsed, he said. “There is a correlation between places where there have been housing declines and the spread of delinquencies into other products,” Mr. Lewis added. But for customers with good credit, Mr. Lewis said the bank was ready to make loans. “We have tightened standards across the board as we have seen deterioration in the market and our loss rates go up, particularly in small business,” said Mr. Lewis. “But to the extent that people do meet our standards, we’re open for business.” Wachovia shares rose $1.11, to $31.91, while Bank of America shares rose $1.42, to $37.39. Last week, Merrill Lynch, the brokerage firm, posted a $9.8 billion fourth-quarter loss, which reflected a $16.7 billion write-downs, while Citigroup wrote down $23.2 billion and reported a $9.83 billion fourth-quarter loss. JP Morgan Chase & Company took a much smaller write-down, but saw its net income decline to $2.97 billion from $4.53 billion in the period a year earlier. On Tuesday, Mr. Lewis also confirmed the bank’s plan to acquire the assets of troubled mortgage lender Countrywide Financial. In recent days, there has been growing speculation that Bank of America, the nation’s largest retail bank, might try to reprice or abandon its plans to buy the lender. When the deal was announced earlier this year, the stock deal was valued at $4 billion. “We did extensive due diligence. We had 60 people inside the company for almost a month. It was the most extensive due diligence we have ever done. So we feel comfortable with the valuation,” Mr. Lewis said. “We looked at every aspect of the deal, from their assets to potential lawsuits and we think we have a price that is a good price.” Still, one hurdle Mr. Lewis hopes to get over before closing on the Countrywide deal is shoring up crucial capital ratios that have tumbled in recent months at the bank. The bank hopes to raise at least $2 billion from the capital markets in the coming weeks. “It should be easy for them to raise the money, but it’s going to cost them,” as credit conditions remain tight, said Meredith Whitney, a research analyst at CIBC. Stock Options for Dimon JPMorgan Chase, the investment bank, granted its chief executive, James Dimon, two million stock options after he helped keep subprime-related write-downs to a fraction of those reported by competitors. The award was not part of Mr. Dimon’s regular compensation and is the first given to him since he took over the bank’s top job in January 2006, the company said in a regulatory filing. The options are worth at least $30 million, said Henry Higdon, a managing partner at consultant Higdon Partners. While JPMorgan this month reported its first profit decline since Mr. Dimon took over, the bank’s $1.3 billion subprime write-down for the fourth quarter compared favorably to others. | Bank of America Corp;Company Reports;Banks and Banking;Mortgages;Credit |
ny0057844 | [
"sports"
]
| 2014/09/15 | Rossi Prevails in San Marino Grand Prix | Valentino Rossi, a nine-time world champion, won the San Marino Grand Prix at his home track after Marc Márquez, the MotoGP world championship leader, fell and finished 15th. Rossi’s victory at the Misano circuit, near his hometown, Tavullia, was his first on Italian soil since 2009. | Motorcycles; electric bikes; electric scooters;Motorcycle racing |
ny0009842 | [
"world",
"asia"
]
| 2013/02/16 | U.S. Troops Leave Afghan Outposts, Still Facing Fire | STRONG POINT HAJI RAHMUDDIN II, Afghanistan — When the last American soldiers to occupy this squat, lonely outpost in southern Afghanistan pulled out this week, they left the same way earlier units had arrived: ready for a fight. They were leaving this violent patch of land outside Kandahar, the south’s main city, just as Taliban fighters were filtering back in from winter havens in Pakistan. It was, as First Sgt. Jason Pitman, 35, bluntly put it, “no time to get stupid.” The Americans knew they would be most vulnerable in their final hours after taking down their surveillance and early-warning systems. The Taliban knew it, too, and intelligence reports indicated that they had been working with sympathetic villagers to strike at the departing soldiers. Two days earlier, the militants made a test run against the outpost, taking the rare step of directly engaging it in a firefight, albeit a brief one, soon after the first radio antennas came down. On the same day that President Obama announced that roughly half of the American troops still in in Afghanistan would withdraw this year, and that Afghan forces would begin taking the lead in the war, the smaller-scale departure from the Haji Rahmuddin II outpost was an uncelebrated milestone. But it pointed at a harsh reality of the process: that some of the withdrawal will happen under fire in areas of the Taliban heartland where the idea of Afghan-led security remains an abstraction. With the start of the annual fighting season just weeks away, some of the hardest-won gains of the war are at risk of being lost. In the years since the Obama administration’s additional tens of thousands of American soldiers and their Afghan allies pushed into the grape fields, pomegranate orchards and opium poppy fields of southern Afghanistan, some islands of relative calm have been cleared. But even though this corner of Kandahar Province — the Zhare district — was also a focus of the troop increase, it is far from calm. And it is not unique: many areas in the south and east where troop pullouts are under way have had only tenuous security gains at best, despite years of hard-fought American-led advances. The Taliban here have not given up their fight, on ground where Mullah Muhammad Omar and his followers first rose up against a local warlord, in the movement’s genesis. In one telling indication of the level of strife in Zhare, even many Afghans are hesitant to make the hourlong trip from Kandahar to the district’s mud-brick villages, many of which stand semiabandoned after three summers of intense fighting. “My sons live in Kandahar City, and they do not like to come back here,” said Abdul Malik, an elder from Tieranon, a village in central Zhare. Once you are in the villages, he added, “anything can happen.” Image Credit The New York Times The American withdrawal is picking up pace regardless, and American commanders have begun to cede even the most contested of ground to Afghan forces. There are still places “that the Taliban can find sanctuary, and we still believe there is an informal network or support structure in place that they can rely on,” said Maj. Thomas W. Casey, the executive officer of the Third Battalion, 41st Infantry, which operates in the eastern and central half of Zhare. So the Americans are out on patrol alongside Afghan units here almost every day, and running larger operations on a regular basis. Last week, they used a weapon that shoots a line of explosives and is intended to clear mined roads to knock down roughly 600 yards of trees that could provide cover for Taliban scouts and attackers. On Thursday, they demolished a hill that the Taliban had used as a fighting position. Three huge explosions — 100 pounds of high explosives were used in each of the last two, which could be felt over a mile away — reduced the hill to dust and dirt. The Americans on the mission outnumbered Afghan soldiers nearly three to one. There are some things the Americans have to do solo because the Afghans cannot do them, nor will they be able to anytime soon, commanders say. One example is using high-tech surveillance — blimps, drones, cameras mounted on towers at every base — to help spot militants before they attack, and to direct airstrikes against them. They have launched numerous such attacks in the past month alone. The Afghans send out regular patrols on their own, and conduct a growing number of small, independent operations. Their fighting ability is getting close to where it needs to be, but the crucial back end of the army — the logistics and supply teams that get bullets, fuel, food and water to where they need to be — is woefully unready, American and even some Afghan officers say. The Afghan brigade based here, for instance, nearly ran out of fuel this week. It was down to a few hours’ worth when a supply came through after some behind-the-scenes prodding from coalition officers up the chain of command. But with fewer American troops here — the force level in Zhare and the neighboring district of Maiwand is down from a brigade of roughly 4,500 soldiers to two battalions totaling about 1,500 — Afghan forces have to fill the holes. “There’s no white space in Zhare — white space being the area that no one owns or controls,” Major Casey said. If an area is not occupied by American or Afghan forces, “it’s occupied by the Taliban. It’s red space.” Unless the Afghans can hold what the Americans give up, he said, “more space is going to turn red.” That is now the case in the villages that surround Strong Point Haji Rahmuddin II. As recently as September, the outpost was home to a company of roughly 120 American soldiers, along with a few dozen Afghan troopers. Transition in Afghanistan 14 Photos View Slide Show › Image Bryan Denton for The New York Times By January, its American force was down to a single understaffed platoon. Between watching from their four guard towers, running patrols, starting to break down the base and taking care of basic human necessities — eating, bathing and sleeping — the platoon was stretched thin. They did manage to find a few more minutes in each day about two weeks ago — after the showers were trucked away and not replaced. Hot food went next, and chow time became whenever rations could be grabbed. The soldiers here still manage to joke about it. Then the radio antennas were taken down. The brief Taliban attack followed, after which the battalion dedicated a single balloon camera to keeping watch around the outpost’s perimeter day and night, Major Casey said. The Afghan force at the base, now down to 16 soldiers, watched warily, telling the Americans that they had to stay. The morning of the Americans’ departure, the Afghan commander, Lt. Muhammad Mohsen, said in an interview that he believed they would come back. If not, he said grimly, the villagers would soon want them back. “We’ll have the freedom to do what we want,” Lieutenant Mohsen said. Those villagers who desired peace would get it. Those who did not, “maybe we can destroy their homes.” The Americans brought down their towering surveillance camera, one of the single biggest advantages for the defenders. At that point, security became “a huge concern,” Major Casey said. “We focused pretty much all our assets we had on watching that.” They had to watch a few hours longer than planned. Lieutenant Mohsen had left only three soldiers at the base, not even enough to put one man in each of the five towers he now controlled. The Americans sat for two hours past their appointed departure time waiting for him and the rest of his men to return. In the end, the Americans managed to vacate the outpost having faced just the one firefight — a relief after preparing for days for an attack. But Major Casey and other commanders said they expected the Taliban to learn from what they had just seen. The platoon that departed Haji Rahmuddin II will also be returning on a regular basis to work with the Afghan forces based there. The Americans would keep watching from the sky, as well. “The last thing we want,” Major Casey said, is “the Taliban successfully overcoming a strong point after we’ve left. That’s almost as bad as them getting ready to attack us as we’re leaving.” | Afghanistan War;US Military;Kandahar;Taliban |
ny0231917 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2010/08/03 | New York and New Jersey Trade Barbs Over TV Show | Time was when New York and New Jersey wrangled over things that mattered. Like Ellis Island, the former immigrant gateway to America. New York used to have it. New Jersey claimed it. The two states fought in the courts for sovereignty, and the west bank of the Hudson River won. Decades of history and nostalgia — New York’s long suit in that battle — carried little weight with the United States Supreme Court when it ruled a dozen years ago that 90 percent of the island was New Jersey territory. Or take the issue of spending by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. New York long believed that its airports got the fuzzy end of the lollipop. For years, Newark Liberty International Airport was spiffed up, while dowdy Kennedy International Airport looked more and more as if it were run by a team of engineers out of Bucharest during the worst of Nicolae Ceausescu. What do we have now? We have the governors of New Jersey and New York throwing spitballs over who should be blamed for “Jersey Shore,” the MTV show that validates the Mencken maxim that no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. It is about a group of young Italian-Americans, self-described “Guidos” and “Guidettes,” who enjoy the beach, a preference for the outdoors that spares their knuckles carpet burns. Italian-American groups, not surprisingly, admire the show about as much as the N.A.A.C.P. loved “Amos ’n’ Andy.” A few days ago, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey was asked what he thought of “Jersey Shore.” Not much, he replied. Mr. Christie came close to blaming New York for promulgating a negative stereotype of New Jersey, as if his state were shortchanged in that department. “What it does,” he said, “is it takes a bunch of New Yorkers — most of the people on ‘Jersey Shore’ are New Yorkers — drops them at the Jersey Shore and tries to make America feel like this is New Jersey." On the east bank, Gov. David A. Paterson refused to let the swipe go unanswered. “Well,” he said of the “Jersey Shore” cast, “maybe they are better when they’re in New York than they’re in New Jersey.” Nyah-nyah. My louts are better than your louts. In this epic battle, Mr. Paterson gained the upper hand over the weekend when a “Jersey Shore” star, Nicole Polizzi, was arrested in Seaside Heights, N.J., accused of behaving like a drunken boor in public. Ms. Polizzi goes by the nickname Snooki. She has skin coloring that suggests her tanning machine is set to whatever position is higher than George Hamilton. If you haven’t heard of her, you are in good company. President Obama said on “The View” the other day that he didn’t know who she was, either. As she was arrested (tastefully wearing a T-shirt that said “slut”), Ms. Polizzi was reported to have screamed, between obscenities, “Do you know who I am? I’m Snooki. You can’t do this to me.” Those words always endear someone to others. Definitely, in this cross-river match, the point went to the gentleman from New York. The shame about this dust-up is that it distracts from truly important issues that divide the two states. Like most neighbors — India and Pakistan, Serbia and Croatia, Archie Bunker and George Jefferson — they are destined to not always get along. They have long fought over sports teams, the latest manifestation being the planned move of the basketball-playing Nets from New Jersey to Brooklyn. Frankly, the suspicion here is that this is a Tom Sawyerlike plot by the Jerseyans to unload one of the worst teams ever on the big-city yokels. There are perennial disputes over which state has the worst seat of government: Trenton or Albany. On this one, New York wins again. Albany is demonstrably more dysfunctional than Trenton. New Jersey was at least able to pass a state budget. Another point of contention is whose politicians are, pound for pound, more corrupt. New Jersey is usually presumed the champ. But New York is a worthy contender, and it now has Representative Charles B. Rangel to put it potentially right back in the game. Still, a question lingers about what to do with Snooki and her friends. The feeling here, for what it’s worth, is that New York should take Mr. Christie’s words to heart and accept responsibility for “Jersey Shore” — but on the condition that it gets Ellis Island back. If Paris was well worth a Mass to Henry IV, surely Ellis Island is worth a dopey television show. | Jersey Shore (TV Program);New Jersey;New York State;MTV Networks;Television;Italian-Americans;Christie Christopher J;Polizzi Nicole;Paterson David A |
ny0250877 | [
"world"
]
| 2011/02/07 | Former WikiLeaks Colleagues Forming New Web Site, OpenLeaks | LONDON — As the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fights extradition to Sweden to face allegations of sexual wrongdoing, a dozen of his former colleagues are creating an alternative Web site for leaks to be governed by what they characterize as a revised vision of radical transparency. The new organization, OpenLeaks, will begin work in earnest this summer, said Herbert Snorrason, an Icelandic programmer who is involved. It aims, he said, to avoid the “influence of a single figurehead” by refusing to handle documents itself. Instead, it will act as a neutral conduit to connect leakers with media and human rights organizations. OpenLeaks emerges from the ashes of a struggle between Mr. Assange and many of his closest associates last September. About a dozen members of WikiLeaks left that month, accusing Mr. Assange of imperious behavior and of jeopardizing the project by conflating the allegations of sexual wrongdoing, which he denies, with the site’s work. The defectors, Mr. Snorrason said, decided to start their own project. “It’s no secret that we had disagreements with how WikiLeaks was being managed,” he said, “and a large part of what we hope to accomplish with OpenLeaks is to avoid those problems.” Mr. Assange has often said that he sees it as his mission, in part, to raise awareness of the material WikiLeaks releases by increasing its public profile. It is a strategy that has kept the documents he has released — including hundreds of thousands of classified United States government documents — on the front pages of newspapers around the world, including The New York Times. But it has also meant that Mr. Assange, a mercurial and charismatic figure with strong political views and a penchant for the unorthodox and newsworthy, has often become the story himself. Though those behind OpenLeaks are at pains not to criticize Mr. Assange, and have repeatedly made it clear that they do not see themselves as his competitors, their aims address many of the barbs leveled at him, the man who has defined a new era of online mass leaks. It is partly run by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a precise programmer from Berlin who was once Mr. Assange’s deputy. Since he left WikiLeaks in September, he has been working on a book which he promises will reveal “the evolution, finances and inner tensions” inside WikiLeaks. At a recent gathering of the Chaos Computer Club, a hacker community in Berlin, Mr. Domscheit-Berg said OpenLeaks would be neutral and would not rely on secrecy as WikiLeaks does. Those who seek transparency, he said, should “stand in the sunlight ourselves and enjoy that we are creating a more transparent society, not create a transparent society while sneaking around in the shadows.” The new site must not, he added, “contain any politics and personal preferences or personal dislikes about whatever you’re going to publish or what you must not publish.” OpenLeaks is not the only site inspired by the success of WikiLeaks. Dozens of smaller leaking sites — some focused on specific topics, like the environment, or particular regions — have sprung up in recent months with the aim of encouraging whistleblowers. It is, perhaps, the realization of a vision Mr. Assange outlined on his blog in 2006, the year he founded WikiLeaks. He imagined a world where “mass leaking” left unjust governments “exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance.” But the emergence of OpenLeaks may have taken a toll on its predecessor. In private, Mr. Assange has told reporters that the spate of defections shut down the complex computer systems WikiLeaks uses to process new information and make it hard for governments and corporations to trace its source. At a January news conference in London, he said that trouble with the site’s “internal mechanisms” had rendered it no longer open “for public business.” He said the site would continue to accept material in other forms, like computer disks. Beset by legal difficulties, working on a book for which he has signed a deal he says is worth as much as $1.7 million and managing his newfound celebrity, Mr. Assange has had less time to focus on repairing the systems, friends have said. But his struggles, lending him the status of a martyr figure, may paradoxically provide him a better platform from which to leak damaging information, said Evgeny Morozov, a researcher on the political effects of the Internet and author “The Net Delusion,” a book that is skeptical of the power of the Web to change governments for the better. “The reason WikiLeaks has been able to function operationally,” he said, “is that they have managed to monopolize public attention. If anything happens to them, it is a big story.” The challenge for OpenLeaks, and others who hope to imitate it, Mr. Morozov said, is to make the Internet infrastructure for leaking secrets more robust. “If anything,” he said, the recent blows to WikiLeaks have “revealed how easy it is to silence a publisher in the Internet age, and how little pressure you need to put on an intermediary to slow it down.” Late last year several companies, like Amazon, PayPal, MasterCard and the Swiss bank Swiss Post decided to stop providing financial and computer services to WikiLeaks in the wake of its controversial releases. While traditional publishers in many countries have well-established legal protections against governments who wish to stifle information, he said, sites like WikiLeaks and OpenLeaks operate in uncharted territory. Speaking of such challenges in a recorded speech played to a large rally in his adopted hometown, Melbourne, Australia, last week, Mr. Assange compared the struggles of WikiLeaks to those of African-Americans who fought for equal rights in the 1950s, of protesters who sought an end to the Vietnam War in the 1960s, to the feminist movement and to environmental campaigners today. “For the Internet generation,” he said, “this is our challenge, and this is our time.” Mr. Domscheit-Berg, in his speech to the Berlin hackers, studiously avoided such soaring rhetoric about OpenLeaks. But, he said, “I think it’s going to be a more effective process, a more efficient process.” | Assange Julian P;Wikileaks;Computers and the Internet;Classified Information and State Secrets;Hackers (Computers);OpenLeaks |
ny0138688 | [
"nyregion",
"thecity"
]
| 2008/05/25 | High Schoolers Match Wits in Robotics Competition | WHEN Rich Press, a photographer, first saw a high school robotics competition, he thought, “In high school, I never came across anything like this, but if I had, it would have changed my life.” Mr. Press was impressed with the students’ brilliance, but robotics culture thrilled him. “They turn the prevailing culture — where being smart isn’t cool, where girls don’t program computers, where inner-city kids don’t get many engineering scholarships — on its head. Here, these are the coolest kids in school.” Robotics competitions are organized by a nonprofit organization called FIRST — For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology — which has its headquarters in Manchester, N.H. The competition, which began in 1989 with 28 teams, has grown to 1,300 teams nationally. With engineer mentors, teams of 10 to 20 students form in the fall to compete in local, regional and national competitions in the spring. Each team starts with an identical robot kit and a challenge. This year, the robots were required to move large balls around a track to score points. The teams invented a wide array of devices for moving the balls: tongs, pincers, grapplers, scoops, even vacuum-powered suction cups. Of the 64 teams competing in the Northeast Regionals last month at the Javits Center, New Jersey teams took all the field performance awards, but two New York City teams — the Warriors from Alfred E. Smith High School in the Bronx and the Harlem Knights of Frederick Douglass Academy and Rice High School in Manhattan — won Judge’s Awards, which recognize a team’s “unique efforts, performance, or dynamics.” Everything about these competitions is photogenic — the game, the “pit” where robots are serviced, the referees and the judges. It is Mr. Press’s team portraits, however, that best tell these students’ story. | Robots;Scholarships and Fellowships;Science and Technology |
ny0035908 | [
"sports"
]
| 2014/03/29 | Another Title for Hanyu | Yuzuru Hanyu had a nearly flawless free skate at the world championships in Saitama, Japan, to become the first man in 12 years to win the Olympic and world titles in the same year. | Figure skating;Yuzuru Hanyu;Japan |
ny0229845 | [
"us",
"politics"
]
| 2010/09/20 | Tea Party Victory Opens Rift Between Moderate and Conservative Republicans | WASHINGTON — The few remaining Republican centrists in the Senate were eagerly awaiting the arrival of Michael N. Castle of Delaware, a longtime and reliable moderate voice who could provide some counterbalance to the wave of conservatives poised to enter Congress and the steadily rightward shift of party leaders. But Mr. Castle was defeated in his party primary on Tuesday by Christine O’Donnell , a Tea Party insurgent. And while the conservative wing rejoiced, the surprise outcome raised serious questions about the future place in the party of lawmakers like Senators Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and other Republicans in the Senate and House who are not lock-step conservatives. Senator Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Republican who has seen his stature rise through his support of conservative candidates, made it clear in the aftermath of the Delaware upset that he would prefer losing a seat to Democrats than having Republican colleagues who stray from the conservative line and erode party unity and image by voting for policies supported by the Obama administration. The ascendancy of the right is forcing even some of the most loyal Republicans, like Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the No. 3 Senate Republican, to defend their conservative bona fides. And it seems to be dashing the hopes among moderates that the prospect of winning a majority in the House, and a pursuit of independent voters, would push Republican leaders to the middle. “We can’t be a majority party if we can’t appeal across the spectrum, if we have an exclusionary approach in general,” said Ms. Snowe, who considers Mr. Castle a personal friend and was crestfallen by his defeat. “A 100 percent ideological purity test — I don’t live in that utopian world; it’s not reflective of the real world,” she added. “I hope that’s not the approach.” Ms. Snowe, in an interview, expressed surprise at the decision by Delaware Republicans. “He has just been the highest caliber, an outstanding public servant for the people of Delaware and the country,” she said. In 2008, Maine defied the national wave that lifted Democrats to big majorities in the House and Senate and re-elected Ms. Collins even as Republican incumbents fell in more conservative states like Alaska and North Carolina. At the time, she emphasized her independence and her willingness to work across the aisle and compromise, dispatching her opponent with ease. In the spring, Ms. Collins said that she hoped what appeared to be the virtually certain arrival of Mr. Castle from Delaware, on the heels of the election of Scott P. Brown in Massachusetts in January, would make the Senate a less lonely place for moderates and that Northeastern Republicans seemed to be “leading our party back out of the wilderness.” Ms. Collins, who provided a key vote in support of President Obama’s economic stimulus plan and backed the Wall Street regulatory overhaul, said Mr. Castle’s defeat had come as a shock. She attributed the rise of the conservatives to a backlash against Obama administration policies. “It is stunning that he could be defeated in a primary, and it is very troubling to me,” Ms. Collins said in the recent interview. “I believe it is a reaction of the overreaching of the Obama administration and people’s fear and worry about the economy.” But some Maine Republicans now say Ms. Snowe should be replaced with a more conservative candidate when she is up for re-election in 2012. And while other Republicans with moderate credentials, including Representative Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois, still have a good chance of winning in November, none would arrive in the Senate with the moderate stamp and stature of Mr. Castle, who has served in the House for 18 years, and is both well-known and respected in both parties. Though the number of moderates may be small, with the partisan margins certain to be much tighter in the Senate next year no matter which party is in control, centrists will still be able to wield influence given the importance of every individual vote. Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, who is retiring after this year, said that he, too, believed the primary voters were driven largely by frustration over federal spending and the economy. Mr. Gregg said that Republicans should focus on fiscal responsibility, which unites their party. “If we go on some tangent that has nothing to do with spending and debt,” he said, “that will be overplaying our hand.” While the two Maine senators are usually viewed as the Republicans most likely to cross the aisle, others have been known to break from the party’s generally conservative stance, including Senators Robert F. Bennett of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, both of whom were ousted by challengers from the right. Given the rising influence of the Tea Party, the votes of all Republicans are likely to be scrutinized and come under Tea Party fire if lawmakers stray. If Republican leaders in Congress are privately bemoaning the Tea Party insurrection that is toppling such established lawmakers, they are being careful not to show it. Virtually the entire Senate Republican leadership attended a fund-raiser on Capitol Hill last Thursday for Sharron Angle, the Tea Party candidate who won the Republican nomination to run against the majority leader, Harry Reid, in Nevada. Still, the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has stressed a “big tent” approach, saying the party welcomes and represents a broad range of views. But Mr. McConnell himself ended up on the losing side of the Senate primary in his home state, when he backed Trey Grayson, the state treasurer, over the Tea Party candidate and eventual winner, Rand Paul. Senate Republicans do not deny that Mr. DeMint has opened a rift. “It is a new and shocking development to have a member of our conference opposing incumbent Republicans,” Ms. Collins said, adding that she doubted voters in her state could be “influenced by the actions of a senator from South Carolina.” | United States Politics and Government;Conservatism (US Politics);Elections;Tea Party Movement;Republican Party;Castle Michael N;O'Donnell Christine;Collins Susan M;Snowe Olympia J |
ny0143756 | [
"world",
"asia"
]
| 2008/10/20 | Beyond the Current Crisis, Thai Tensions Run Deep | BANGKOK — Bangkok was on edge this weekend after the army chief told the prime minister on national television that he must resign and the prime minister — in office for just a month — said he was too busy to step down. The demand by the army chief, Gen. Anupong Paochinda, came Thursday, when he blamed the government for a violent crackdown on protesters and said, “You cannot be above the pools of blood.” His words raised worries of a military coup. But Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat brushed them aside, saying on Friday that he still had a job to do, and he turned his attention to Thailand ’s other, simultaneous crisis, the threat of a border war with Cambodia. Pressure has grown in Thailand since protesters barricaded the prime minister’s office compound nearly two months ago, leading the government to conduct its business in Bangkok’s former international airport. As the demonstrations continue, the divisions in society seem to be deepening, and the mood seems more confrontational and angry. On the surface, Bangkok appears unruffled. Office workers crowd the lunchtime food stalls, monks make their morning rounds, traffic sits and waits for the long red lights to change. Monsoon rains sweep through the city, then stop. But dozens of interviews around the city in recent days, as well as in the countryside, suggest that even if the political confrontation is resolved, the underlying social and political tensions are likely to continue. “The country is split right down the middle,” said Wiriya Sungkhaniyom, an editor and translator. “I’m surprised at all the passion. I didn’t realize that we were capable of such strong feelings. We are known for having short memories and prefer to go along and get along.” In a culture that prizes calm and accommodation, where even drivers in traffic jams rarely honk their horns, people are speaking more vehemently these days — and in louder voices — and they are showing less tolerance for opposing views. “If you aren’t with them, you’re bad — you’re a bad person,” said a woman at a music shop who was furious with the demonstrators. “Whatever the other side does, even the littlest thing, is just wrong, wrong, wrong. I hate them.” She said she was afraid to give her name because “they think they can do anything. They think they are above the law.” A colleague tried to quiet her, but she only raised her voice. “I have a friend, a friend of more than 20 years, she doesn’t talk to me,” she said. “She says, ‘You don’t know anything!’ ” At the moment, there seems to be no clear resolution of the political crisis or of divisions like this one. General Anupong has said he does not want to stage a coup because it would only create new problems. Other possible options seem no more likely to bring peace: the prime minister’s resignation, a new election or a violent showdown in the streets between the antigovernment protesters and a new, threatening mobilization of government supporters who have gathered not far away. The suppression by the police of an antigovernment demonstration outside Parliament on Oct. 7 at which two people were killed and nearly 500 were injured has only swelled the anger of the protesters and given them a symbolic focus. In its broadest sense, Thailand’s struggle pits the mostly rural poor against an established urban elite and middle class who feel threatened by their rising political power. The leaders of the protests, an antigovernment coalition called the People’s Alliance for Democracy, represent that establishment. But the protests have become a vehicle for a variety of grievances, and the city at large has fragmented into bitterly divided camps. The issues are personalized, pitting supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra against his opponents. Mr. Thaksin was ousted in a coup two years ago but remains a powerful, polarizing force from his self-imposed exile in London. During six years in office, Mr. Thaksin courted the rural poor with populist policies and forged a strong political base that continues to keep his supporters in office. The People’s Alliance for Democracy wants to dilute their electoral power by introducing a mostly appointed legislature. As the fault lines of confrontation spread through the city, they grow more complex, fragmenting campuses and workplaces, straining friendships and dividing families, and even sometimes turning husbands and wives against one other. “You have to be careful when you talk to people,” said Samran Chana, 43, a motorcycle taxi driver who is used to talking with everybody. “Thailand is divided. You might be sitting and drinking with some people, and they end up shouting at each other.” Duan Maringrot, 57, owner of the Louk Pla Noodle Shop, which is on a narrow lane near the business district, says she closes every day at 4 p.m. to attend the demonstration. Behind the cash register she keeps a shirt that is yellow — the color that represents the king — a plastic clapper to cheer the speeches and a yellow headband that reads, in English, “I love the king.” If she hears a customer taking the government’s side, she said, “I won’t sell anything to them, and if anyone from the government comes in I won’t serve them.” In the past when crises descended into bloodshed, the highly revered monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, stepped forward to calm the turmoil. He has no direct political role, but his moral power is enough to bring protest leaders and generals crawling to his feet. Several people said they were counting on his intervention, if things worsened, to return the country to peace. “At the end he’ll have to step in and say something,” said Charupa Suthikorn, 40, who owns a toy shop, as she petted a fluffy Pomeranian. “I am waiting to see how he will resolve this. If there is real violence, the king will have to do something. “It’s like a father looking after his children,” she said. “ ‘I want it like this.’ ‘No, I want it my way.’ If the children don’t stop arguing, the father will have to step in.” So far, the king has remained silent. | Thailand;Demonstrations and Riots;Bangkok (Thailand);Politics and Government;Coups D'Etat and Attempted Coups D'Etat |
ny0213295 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2010/03/18 | Stagnant Pay Upsets New York Sewage Workers | On a good day, the unpleasant byproducts of human existence simply flow tepidly beneath their noses. On lesser days, unmentionable objects block the huge grates in the sewer channels. The workers descend knee deep into the muck and scrape at the dripping clogs. The gunk drips to their shoulders and splashes on their faces, working its way into pores and psyches. But many of the nearly 1,200 workers who process some 1.4 billion gallons of New York City sewage every day say they can handle those indignities. What disgusts them, what has tested sobriety, credit ratings and marriages more than any stubborn stench, is the fact that their salaries have not budged, in some cases for as long as 15 years. “It’s disrespectful,” said Michael Enright, an 18-year sewage-treatment veteran. “I’ve got to change bearings and seals on million-dollar pumps with raw sewage flowing between my legs, and we make less than an auto mechanic.” In general, the city’s municipal labor force has enjoyed nearly a dozen years of steady wage increases from the Bloomberg administration and the second term of the Giuliani administration. Most have seen salaries rise at a pace faster than inflation and better than the national average for both private and public employees, according to the Citizens Budget Commission . But a few municipal unions, for differing reasons, did not catch that rising tide. And none seem to have fared worse than the workers who keep the city’s sewage system running. In the 1990s, two unions representing the sewage workers pulled out of negotiations for incremental increases and took a different route offered in state law: seeking a ruling that they were not being paid on par with similar jobs in the private sector. Last year, the union representing about 800 sewage-treatment workers, Local 1320 of District Council 37, thought that it had finally won and would soon see a raise of about 50 percent, to match the pay of some Con Edison workers who the city comptroller and an administrative law judge had determined perform similar work. But the elation, after nine years without a contract, lasted only days before city lawyers filed an appeal, stretching out the process again. “That was such a slap in the face,” Mr. Enright said. “We had guys who fell off the wagon because of this appeal.” Sewage-treatment workers earn an average of about $42,000 a year, a figure unchanged since 2001. Los Angeles pays a starting salary of $71,000 for similar work. The other union, Local 3 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, declined to discuss the status of its effort. It represents two categories of workers at the plants, including the plant managers, who have not seen a cost-of-living raise since 1995 and make an average of $59,600 a year — less than many of the people they supervise. “That’s a travesty,” said Frank Esposito, a plant manager who retired this month after 36 years with the Department of Environmental Protection. “But in the last 10 years, we turned around the Hudson River and the East River. And you never heard about us causing a job action. That’s what I’m proud of. We did our jobs.” The job today is a mix of old-world toil and a modern technician’s skills. Raw sewage flows into the 14 treatment plants scattered around the city’s waterfront. Solid matter settles in holding tanks and is sold as fertilizer. The remaining water undergoes treatment before being released into the surrounding waterways. The workers take federally required water and solid-matter samples at specific intervals. They monitor levels of dangerous gases, including methane and hydrogen sulfide, and handle chemical and biological agents. That predictable routine goes on every day. But the workers are also the jack-of-all-trades repairmen when something goes wrong. They perform emergency repairs on climate control systems, chlorination devices and huge pumps. Most come from construction backgrounds; they must have skills in plumbing, welding, masonry and carpentry. They take holding tanks off line and wade in to perform repairs. “I’ve been knee deep in raw sewage at 7:15 in the morning, and let me tell you, it don’t smell like Folgers in your cup,” said Anthony Mongiello, who has been in the job for nine years. “That is one of those smells you just don’t get used to.” They know their work is the opposite of glamorous. The first part of the e-mail address of James J. Tucciarelli, the president of Local 1320, is 1in2bus, short for No. 1 in the No. 2 business. Their unofficial slogan is a less delicate version of “Your poop is our bread and butter.” From surges in flow, they know the mundane rhythms of our collective lives, like when we rise, shower, do the dishes and go to sleep. They know when halftime starts during the Super Bowl. There are pieces of their lore that can sound as far-fetched as the fabled sewer alligator. Some say the smell of the plant takes root in a new worker’s intestines during the first year, and that surviving that year makes a soul hardier than most. “I’ve had like two common colds since I started in 1992,” Mr. Enright said. “What we work with at the plant just hardens your immune system.” But there are risks. In January 2009, a sewage-treatment worker was killed when a temporary conveyor belt collapsed at the Owls Head Wastewater Treatment Plant, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg called the worker, Gennaro Montello, 45, a married father of two, one of the city’s “unsung workers.” Mr. Bloomberg thanked sewage-treatment workers in December, when the city emerged from eight years under federal probation for ignoring federal environmental laws and, later, for failing to maintain backup generators at several treatment plants during the 2003 blackout, which caused the illegal discharge of 30 million gallons of sewage into the East River. The treatment workers were not feeling gratitude when city lawyers appealed the decision of the administrative law judge that would have ended their years without a raise. The city asked for a hearing in September, potentially stretching out the standoff further. But in late-night sessions on Monday and Tuesday, the city and the leaders of both unions reached tentative settlements, which must be ratified by each union’s members. Mr. Enright, meanwhile, is moonlighting as a caretaker at the home of a wealthy suburbanite. Another treatment worker is moonlighting as a school custodian. Mr. Mongiello said that inflation, combined with flat wages, had made him fall behind on mortgage payments. Several workers said they were angry that state law did not allow them to strike. Mr. Tucciarelli said he understood his members’ frustration. “I’ve got guys making $15.01 an hour doing skilled work that on the outside would be getting paid triple that,” Mr. Tucciarelli said. “I’ve got guys losing houses, going into bankruptcy.” Payroll records show how upside down salaries in the plants have become. Mr. Tucciarelli earns a base salary of $55,931 a year after 32 years on the job. His two sons work in the less-skilled title of construction laborer for the same department, and each has a base salary of about $73,000 a year. Martin McGuire, whose grandfather and father were city police officers, had been working as an electrician when he started as a sewage-treatment worker in 1992. Mr. McGuire said the wage then was a little less than those for the skilled trades, but it came without threat of seasonal layoffs. He now figures his counterparts in the private sector are making double what he does, without wading through raw sewage. “When I started, you could hold your head up,” Mr. McGuire said. “It was a great group of guys. But let me tell you, the morale? It’s over.” | Labor and Jobs;Sewers;Wages and Salaries;Waste Materials and Disposal;Citizens Budget Commission;Bloomberg Michael R;New York City |
ny0290152 | [
"sports",
"skiing"
]
| 2016/01/28 | Ligety Injured in Training | The Olympic and world giant slalom champion Ted Ligety said he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee during a training crash Wednesday in Oberjoch, Germany. The United States Ski Team said in a release only that Ligety had sustained a knee injury and would head home to be evaluated. ■ Javier Fernández of Spain took a huge step toward a fourth straight European title by winning the men’s short program on the opening day of the European Figure Skating Championships in Bratislava, Slovakia. Evgenia Medvedeva led a Russian sweep of the top three positions in the women’s short program. | Skiing;Ted Ligety;Alpine skiing;Figure skating |
ny0013839 | [
"sports",
"basketball"
]
| 2013/11/06 | When Injury Takes Chandler Out, the Knicks Come Undone | Amid an uneven start to the season for the Knicks, Tyson Chandler had been a source of stability. As Coach Mike Woodson sought to unearth some semblance of consistency from the rest of his lineup, Chandler was as dependable as a roll of paper towels: no frills, but effective. His value was especially apparent Tuesday night when the Knicks tried to cope without him in a 102-97 loss to the Charlotte Bobcats. It was a despairing crowd at Madison Square Garden that witnessed the wreckage, starting with the right leg injury that the 7-foot-1 Chandler sustained in the first quarter after colliding with the Bobcats’ Kemba Walker. Chandler disappeared to the locker room for X-rays that the team said were inconclusive. Chandler, who did not return, was scheduled for additional tests Wednesday. “We don’t know the severity yet,” Woodson said. The Knicks (1-3) had serious concerns before the game even started, their fragile frontcourt held together by strips of masking tape. Now, with Chandler’s status unclear, Woodson may need to search for even more solutions. Carmelo Anthony scored 32 points to lead the Knicks, but he struggled once again from the field, shooting 10 of 28. It was that kind of night, more demolition derby than Formula One. Raymond Felton played part of the second quarter with a tissue lodged in one of his nostrils after he bloodied his nose. “I believe we’ll get out of this,” Anthony said. “We got to remain positive. It’s easy to go into a dark place right now. It’s easy to listen to all the negativity that’s going to be coming our way. But we got to stay together.” The Bobcats (2-2) committed 22 turnovers, a prime reason the Knicks even had a chance. After trailing by 13 points in the third quarter, the Knicks worked their way back into contention in the fourth. After Anthony scored on a layup to trim Charlotte’s lead to 91-89, Felton had an open look at a 3-pointer but misfired. The Bobcats promptly scored on two putbacks to regain a 6-point margin with 2 minutes 23 seconds left. Woodson called for a timeout, but there was not much he could do, not with his limited options, not without Chandler. “Our defense — it stinks right now,” Woodson said. “In order for us to stay in the race, you have to defend and rebound the ball, and we’re not doing that.” Chandler sustained his injury when Walker (25 points) accelerated into the paint and tumbled into Chandler, who took the brunt of the blow. He limped to the bench as the training staff quickly wrapped his right knee and shin with ice. Three minutes later, Chandler retreated to the locker room with assistance. Chandler entered the game averaging 9 points and 11.3 rebounds. More important, he was a vital presence on defense — irreplaceable, even — and his absence underscored the Knicks’ absence of frontcourt depth. Amar’e Stoudemire and Kenyon Martin, both of whom are waging losing battles with age and injuries, had been platooning in back-to-back games. On Tuesday, it was Stoudemire’s turn. By the start of the second half, though, with the Bobcats feasting on the Knicks’ post defenders, Martin was pressed into action. Martin picked up four fouls in 18 minutes. Stoudemire had five turnovers in 11 minutes, and the postgame locker room included a familiar scene: his knees wrapped in ice. “He couldn’t handle the basketball,” Woodson said. “It’s tough because he doesn’t get a chance to practice a lot and get his rhythm where it should be. I’m just going to have to live with some of the mistakes, and hopefully the good things he does on the floor outweighs the mistakes.” Chandler’s injury also shined a spotlight on the underperforming Andrea Bargnani, who collected 6 points and 2 rebounds in his third start of the season as Woodson reiterated his goal of going with a larger lineup. In the coming days, Woodson may not have much of a choice but to give Bargnani more playing time. Bargnani appears much more comfortable on the perimeter, having grabbed eight rebounds in 84 minutes through four games this season. “I don’t buy guys not getting better defensively if they are willing to commit themselves and work, and that’s in any phase of the game,” Woodson said. “I think he’s mobile enough. He moves around well enough. I think he can get better.” Bargnani can stretch defenses with his outside shooting, but he is not a versatile defender. And in the game’s early moments, he was caught guarding Walker after an awkward switch. Walker created some space and drained a long jumper over Bargnani, a basket that was part of a game-opening 9-2 run for the Bobcats. The Knicks’ lineup at the start of the second quarter featured Beno Udrih, Metta World Peace, Pablo Prigioni, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Stoudemire. The Bobcats shot 56.8 percent from the field on their way to a 64-54 lead by halftime. “They were taking what was given them,” Iman Shumpert said. Cole Aldrich, a 6-11 center, was inactive for the Knicks. In hindsight, they probably could have used him. “I got a lot to think about right now,” Woodson said. REBOUNDS J. R. Smith is eligible to return from his five-game suspension for violating the league’s drug policy when the Knicks play the San Antonio Spurs on Sunday. Mike Woodson said Tuesday that Smith could start. | Basketball;Knicks;Charlotte Bobcats;Tyson Chandler;Carmelo Anthony;Mike Woodson;Raymond Felton |
ny0102884 | [
"sports",
"soccer"
]
| 2015/12/22 | Live and Kicking: Soccer Games to Watch This Week | If you took vacation this week, lucky you. Your first present arrives on Monday afternoon, gift-wrapped by your friends at NBCSN. England If Chelsea is the Premier League’s raging Dumpster fire and Manchester United is the nervous nitroglycerin factory next door, then what are Arsenal and Manchester City? A pleasant distraction, that’s what. Second-place Arsenal and third-place City meet on Monday afternoon in London (3 p.m. Eastern time, NBCSN) to determine who gets to be second to Leicester City on Christmas. (Yes, Leicester City, 5 points clear as of Monday morning, will sit atop the Premier League table at Christmas. What a time to be alive.) The result obviously has stakes in the title race, but also on the impending coaching carousel. The latest rumors? José Mourinho and Pep Guardiola to Manchester. Manuel Pellegrini to Chelsea. And Arsène Wenger? He never goes anywhere . Christmas? What Christmas? The holiday is usually a soccer-free zone — perhaps the only day of the year on which there are no top-flight games — but this year there are a handful. The problem is, if you are up for a little East Riffa vs. Al Hala in the Bahrain Premier League, you are probably going to have to get updates from someone at the game. Stunningly, it’s not on TV. On the Weekend It’s a little grim, with leagues in France, Italy, Germany and Spain on breaks of varying lengths. But NBC will go all out with coverage of the Premier League’s busy Boxing Day schedule on Saturday. It starts with Stoke-Manchester United (7:45 a.m., NBCSN), a game Louis van Gaal could need to win to save his job, and ends with the first NBC Premier League doubleheader: Newcastle-Everton at noon and Southampton-Arsenal at 2:45 p.m. | Soccer;Premier League |
ny0228076 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
]
| 2010/07/11 | ‘The Official Major League Baseball Opus’ Has It All, Almost | In the short history of sports megabooks, there has been a 75-pounder about Muhammad Ali, a celebration of Pelé that was a shapely 35 pounds, and a history of the Super Bowl that tipped the publishing scales at 85 pounds. To coincide with Tuesday’s All-Star Game, Major League Baseball on Friday entered the market with a 75-pound, $3,000 tome that traces the game’s history through 110,000 words and more than 1,000 photographs and illustrations. Like those before it, the leather-bound book, “The Official Major League Baseball Opus,” will come out in a limited edition (1,000 copies), packaged in a silk-covered clamshell case. The huge volume is aimed at teams, corporations, wealthy fans, museums and collectors. An abridged 26-pound version is available for $295. “I think we’ll sell 1,000 fairly quickly,” said Don Hintze, the vice president for publishing for Major League Baseball. “We think the smaller version, which is more for the masses, will do extremely well. We’ve gotten a lot of interest from clubs on the smaller book that they can sell to season-ticket holders, or give as gifts.” Even as it created a luxury product, M.L.B. bowed to the recession. It did not produce a special version like the $25,000 edition of the N.F.L.’s “XL: Forty Years of the Super Bowl,” that was signed by all living Super Bowl most valuable players. Four hundred copies of that version were produced; 19,600 unsigned books were priced at $4,000 each. “I just felt the high end should be $3,000,” said Mark Skelly, the president of Opus Media Group Americas, a specialist in jumbo sports books that paid M.L.B. a fee; the two partners will share in any profits. The 20x20-inch book is a chronological (if incomplete) history of the game, with features on streaks, the World Series, the All-Star Game, spring training, ballparks and all 30 teams. It includes new essays by writers like Roger Kahn, Robert Creamer and Steve Wulf. One advantage of an expensive book so weighty it might collapse a coffee table is the use of heavy paper stock that gives vivid new life to old photographs. “I don’t think any sport is more photographic than baseball,” Hintze said. The classic picture of Willie Mays making his over-the-shoulder catch in the 1954 World Series looks somewhat grainy in most book and magazine reproductions. But in “Opus,” the clarity is brilliant and the enormous page size shows reactions of fans in their seats at the Polo Grounds rarely, if ever, seen before. The book celebrates photographers like Ozzie Sweet, Walter Iooss Jr. and Charles Conlon, an early 20th century portraitist. Throughout the book, there are profiles of numerous players — Hall of Famers like Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, and current superstars like Alex Rodriguez and Albert Pujols. But the absence from this roster of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, who have both been accused of using performance-enhancing drugs, is noticeable, if not glaring. “There was no big conversation about it,” Skelly said. Their omission, he added, “might have been subliminal; Major League Baseball is very conservative and I didn’t think I’d be missing anything if they weren’t profiled.” Although there is a chapter on the Black Sox scandal, there is nothing on the steroid era. Hintze added: “We looked at the book as a celebration of the game. There will be other things that didn’t appear that someone can make a case for. There are controversial things in the book, but there wasn’t a conscious decision to leave Clemens and Bonds out.” | Baseball;Books and Literature;Photography;World Series;Major League Baseball;History |
ny0173717 | [
"technology"
]
| 2007/10/20 | AT&T Is Latest to Sue Vonage Over Patent | The Internet telephone company Vonage Holdings Corporation disclosed yesterday that it was the target of yet another patent lawsuit from a telephone company, in this case AT&T. That makes AT&T the third major phone company to sue Vonage, which until recently was a leader in selling phone service that rides the customer’s broadband connection. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Vonage said AT&T filed the lawsuit Wednesday in United States District Court in Madison, Wis. It said it had been in discussions with AT&T to resolve the dispute but could not guarantee the case will not go to trial. The single patent in question, filed in 1996, appears to broadly describe the idea of routing telephone calls over data networks like the Internet. The listed inventor is Alexander Fraser, AT&T’s former chief scientist. Vonage, which is based in Holmdel, N.J., settled a patent dispute with the Sprint Nextel Corporation last week for $80 million. A suit filed by Verizon Communications is still in the courts, but Vonage suffered a significant setback in that process in March, when a jury awarded Verizon $58 million in damages, plus future royalties, after finding that Vonage had violated three Verizon patents. Vonage denies infringement and says it has deployed ways to work around two of the patented technologies. And last week, Vonage settled a fourth legal dispute, with Klausner Technologies, a small company with patents on voice mail technology, for an undisclosed sum. Klausner had sued for $200 million. Stock in Vonage fell 13 cents yesterday, to $1.54 a share. | Vonage Holdings Corp;AT&T Corp;Suits and Litigation;Inventions and Patents;Computers and the Internet;Telephones and Telecommunications |
ny0006865 | [
"business",
"media"
]
| 2013/05/16 | CBS’s Schedule Adds 4 Comedies, Each Guarded by a Successful One | Four new comedies are coming to the CBS schedule in the fall, each guarded by comedies that are already successful, like “How I Met Your Mother” and “The Big Bang Theory,” the network announced on Wednesday morning. The network will add just one new hourlong series in the fall, a drama called “Hostages,” starring Toni Collette and Dylan McDermott. Large swaths of this season’s schedule are expected to remain intact next fall, like the combination of “NCIS” and “NCIS: Los Angeles” on Tuesdays, and its four franchises on Sundays, “60 Minutes,” “The Amazing Race,” “The Good Wife,” and “The Mentalist.” That’s because CBS is in an enviable position, with higher ratings than any other broadcaster and fewer failures from the current season. “This is a schedule built to last,” said CBS’s scheduling chief Kelly Kahl. The network’s plans for the fall were revealed at a news conference on Wednesday morning. The new shows will be previewed for advertisers at CBS’s annual upfront presentation in the afternoon. Nina Tassler, the president of entertainment for CBS, said her goal was “more originals, fewer repeats.” Programmers at the other major networks have spoken similarly, but it is likely to be easier for CBS to accomplish in the coming season because it renewed so many shows this spring, continuing a trend that is several years old. The first of its new comedies, “We Are Men,” will come on Mondays at 8:30 p.m., supported by the final season of “How I Met Your Mother” at 8. The second new one, “Mom,” from the uber-producer Chuck Lorre, will follow another of his shows, “2 Broke Girls,” at 9. The network’s other two new comedies, “The Millers” and “The Crazy Ones,” will be shown on Thursday nights, sandwiched between “The Big Bang Theory” and “Two and a Half Men.” The CBS fall schedule follows, with new shows in italics: MONDAY 8:00-8:30 How I Met Your Mother 8:30-9:00 We Are Men 9:00-9:30 2 Broke Girls 9:30-10:00 Mom 10:00-11:00 Hostages TUESDAY 8:00-9:00 NCIS 9:00-10:00 NCIS: Los Angeles 10:00-11:00 Person of Interest WEDNESDAY 8:00-9:00 Survivor 9:00-10:00 Criminal Minds 10:00-11:00 CSI: Crime Scene Investigation THURSDAY 8:00-8:30 The Big Bang Theory 8:30-9:00 The Millers 9:00-9:30 The Crazy Ones 9:30-10:00 Two and a Half Men 10:00-11:00 Elementary FRIDAY 8:00-9:00 Undercover Boss 9:00-10:00 Hawaii Five-0 10:00-11:00 Blue Bloods SATURDAY 8:00-8:30 Comedy repeat 8:30-9:00 Comedy repeat 9:00-10:00 Drama repeat 10:00-11:00 48 Hours SUNDAY 7:00-8:00 60 Minutes 8:00-9:00 The Amazing Race 9:00-10:00 The Good Wife 10:00-11:00 The Mentalist | Upfront;CBS;TV |
ny0005118 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2013/04/06 | Expansion of Public Corruption Unit Led to Arrests | The two federal cases that mesmerized Albany this week — a state senator accused of trying to bribe his way onto the New York City mayoral ballot and an assemblyman charged with taking payoffs to write made-to-order legislation — come as federal prosecutors in Manhattan have increased their focus on political corruption, officials said on Friday. The two cases, brought by the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, and in the works for several years, developed after the office’s public corruption unit had begun to grow and use more aggressive tactics, a process that began at least four years ago, according to Richard B. Zabel, the deputy United States attorney. The unit, which had about half a dozen assistant United States attorneys in 2009, now has 10; an additional 4 prosecutors work in a satellite office in White Plains, handling mostly political corruption cases, Mr. Zabel said. One of the White Plains prosecutors was involved in the case against the state senator, Malcolm A. Smith, a Democrat from Queens. Prosecutors in other units in the office, he said, also work at times on political corruption cases. “The growth was because we need to increase our enforcement in this area, we need more prosecutors to have more time to look at these cases,” Mr. Zabel said. Political corruption cases are hard to investigate because they usually involve conspiracies between two people, and unless one of them cooperates with the authorities and helps gather or provide evidence against the other, the government’s options are limited. These kinds of crimes often take place amid a constellation of regular, legal political deals that may not be easily distinguishable from those that are criminal unless investigators have inside information. And while the world of corrupt politicians includes those whose schemes sometimes seem so poorly thought through that they make investigators scratch their heads — like the plan Senator Smith is accused of to get on the Republican mayoral ballot — it is also populated by shrewd and savvy criminals wary of law enforcement and knowledgeable about how it operates. Mr. Bharara, sworn in as United States attorney in 2009, has said that public corruption cases are, along with terrorism and securities fraud, a top priority. His office brings such prosecutions, and to some degree oversees the investigations that lead to them. Most often, the investigations are conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the city’s Department of Investigation, and at times by some of the 16 investigators who work for the United States attorney’s office. In recent years, Mr. Bharara’s office, like that of the F.B.I. and his colleague across the East River, Loretta E. Lynch, the Brooklyn United States attorney, have been using increasingly aggressive tactics in public corruption investigations, as they have in securities fraud cases — tactics more traditionally associated with investigations involving drugs and organized crime. Mr. Zabel noted that the case announced this week involving the assemblyman, Eric A. Stevenson, a Bronx Democrat, who was accused of writing legislation to benefit a businessman in exchange for bribes, was handled in part by a retired police detective, John Barry, who works as an investigator in Mr. Bharara’s office and who for years focused on international narcotics traffickers. In that case, another assemblyman, who had been indicted on perjury charges by state prosecutors in the Bronx and was cooperating with Mr. Bharara’s office, wore a hidden recorder to gather information in the investigation, serving as a mole in the Legislature. But it was far from the first time that such aggressive tactics reached into the Legislature itself. In 2008, an F.B.I. undercover agent, working with prosecutors in Mr. Bharara’s office who were investigating Assemblyman Anthony S. Seminerio, met with Mr. Seminerio in his Assembly office and was invited to the floor of the chamber. George Venizelos, the assistant director in charge of the F.B.I.’s New York office, said the bureau had also increased its resources focused on public corruption cases. “They’re some of the most important cases the F.B.I. works, because it’s important that the government maintains the public trust,” he said, “because without the public trust, the government has trouble working.” | Corruption;US Attorney;FBI;Preet Bharara;Malcolm A Smith;Eric A Stevenson;NYC;New York;Bribery and Kickbacks |
ny0164195 | [
"us",
"politics"
]
| 2006/11/10 | Gain for Same-Sex Marriage in Massachusetts | Correction Appended BOSTON, Nov. 9 — Lawmakers in Massachusetts , the only state where same-sex marriage is legal, dealt what appeared to be a fatal blow Thursday to a proposed constitutional amendment to ban it. In a flurry of strategic maneuvering, supporters of same-sex marriage managed to persuade enough legislators to vote to recess a constitutional convention until the afternoon of Jan. 2, the last day of the legislative session. On that day, lawmakers and advocates on both sides said, it appeared likely that the legislature would adjourn without voting on the measure, killing it. “For all intents and purposes, the debate has ended,” said Representative Byron Rushing, a Boston Democrat and the assistant majority leader. “What members are expecting is that the majority of constituents are going to say, ‘Thank you, we’re glad it’s over, we think it has been discussed enough.’ ” The measure had been expected by both sides to gain easily the 50 votes required from the 200 legislators as the first step toward making same-sex marriages illegal. Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, which sponsored the amendment, called the recess vote a “travesty,” and, waving a copy of the State Constitution, said the legislators had “just said that it’s irrelevant.” As for whether the fight was over, Mr. Mineau said, “We’re assessing the situation.” Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican who opposes same-sex marriage, said the vote was a “triumph of arrogance over democracy.” He said that he would “explore any alternatives” to try to force a vote, but that “my options are limited.” Eric Fehrnstrom, a spokesman for Mr. Romney, said: “The fact that they put this off until the end of the year makes it easier for them to adjourn. If they were giving consideration, I think they would have recessed until tomorrow or maybe Monday or Tuesday next week.” The action on Thursday came two days after Massachusetts voters elected Deval L. Patrick, a same-sex marriage supporter, as the state’s first Democratic governor in 16 years. Democrats were also elected to all of the statewide offices, leaving the state’s Republican Party in shambles. But the fact that the amendment had enough supporters to pass the first 50-vote round indicated that the issue of same-sex marriage remains divisive three years after the state’s highest court ruled that such marriages were constitutional in Massachusetts. More than 8,000 same-sex couples have since married. To bring the amendment before the legislature, the Massachusetts Family Institute had gathered 170,000 petition signatures. If the amendment were to get 50 votes, it would then require the votes of 50 legislators in another constitutional convention in the 2007-8 legislative session. Then it would be voted on in a referendum in November 2008. Polls have generally found that just more than half of the citizens surveyed supported same-sex marriage, but about the same number wanted the constitutional amendment to come before voters. The vote to recess followed a day of intense politicking and strategizing by supporters of same-sex marriage. Many legislators, even supporters of such marriages, had said they planned to vote for the amendment for fear that if they did not they would appear to be shirking their responsibility. Gay rights advocates persuaded the legislators to first take up another amendment to ban same-sex marriage, one introduced nearly two years ago by a conservative lawmaker, but which was now considered by Mr. Mineau and other same-sex marriage opponents to be unable to pass constitutional muster because it would nullify the same-sex marriages that had already taken place. Because that amendment had been initiated by a legislator and not a citizens’ group, it would have needed 101 votes to pass. On Thursday it was defeated unanimously. Arline Isaacson, co-chairwoman of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, said the plan was to give the legislators political cover with their constituents, because they “can all point to the fact that they fully debated same-sex marriage and took a vote on it.” Same-sex marriage advocates also persuaded lawmakers to vote for a recess and not an adjournment because if they adjourned, Governor Romney could call them back into session. Representative Michael A. Costello, a Democrat from Newburyport and a strong opponent of the amendment, said: “The way I looked at it was that we would kill it with a handgun or a hand grenade. It’s never been proper to put civil rights on the ballot. So we killed it through procedure, rather than on substance.” The debate in the House was full of impassioned speeches. “I’m 3,000 feet to the right of Attila the Hun, they tell me,” Representative Marie J. Parente, a Democrat from Milford who had lost her re-election bid on Tuesday, told her colleagues. “But you’re not. You’re the other side. The gracious people, the liberal people, the socially conscious people.” For the 170,000 people who signed the petition and want a referendum, “does your graciousness end?” she asked. “Give the people the right to be heard.” Senator Jarrett T. Barrios, who is gay and married, told the chamber, “It’s time for a little straight talk.” Pointing to his wedding band, he said: “You don’t have to live next to us. You don’t have to like us. We are only asking you to end the debate,” so that “we will at least have the right to enjoy the same rights that the rest of you have enjoyed from time immemorial.” | Marriages;Homosexuality;Massachusetts |
ny0226189 | [
"us"
]
| 2010/10/07 | Deportations From U.S. Hit a Record High | Immigration authorities deported a record 392,862 immigrants over the last year, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday. About half of those deported — 195,772 — were convicted criminals, also a record, Ms. Napolitano said, and an increase of more than 81,000 deportations of criminals over the final year of George W. Bush’s presidency. As midterm elections approach, Obama administration officials are facing intense pressure to show they are tough on illegal immigration. States across the country have enacted laws to crack down, citing a failure of the federal government to do the job. An especially broad law adopted by Arizona drew a lawsuit from the federal government and an outcry from Latinos in the state, who said it could lead to harassment and racial profiling. A federal judge stayed central provisions of the law. In some races for Congress, particularly in the Southwest, a candidate’s position on the Arizona law has become a litmus test for many voters, especially among Republicans. Ms. Napolitano said the deportation figures, especially the criminals figure, reflected the Obama administration’s shift to focusing more closely on “removing those who pose public safety threats to our communities.” The overall figures for deportations increased slightly from about 389,000 in the 2009 fiscal year, also a record at the time. The surge in deportations of criminals came in part as a result of a program called Secure Communities , officials say, which allows local law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of every person, including American citizens, booked into a county or local jail. The identity check is based on comparing fingerprints of people arrested against prints in Department of Homeland Security databases. Initiated in 2008 in Harris County, Tex., which includes Houston, the program has grown to include about 660 counties and cities nationwide. Sheriff Adrian Garcia of Harris County said on Tuesday that since the start of the program officers there had identified more than 20,000 immigrants in the county jail system who were eligible for deportation. Many immigrants in Houston who were identified for deportation “didn’t come here to make a better life for themselves, they came to continue their criminal careers,” Sheriff Garcia said. About one-third of the criminals who were deported had committed the most serious crimes, including murder, rape and major drug offenses, according to the Homeland Security figures. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also conducted more than 2,200 audits of hiring documents at businesses to check for unauthorized immigrant workers, the officials said, bringing criminal charges against 180 employers and levying more than $50 million in fines. Officials said that many of the nearly 200,000 immigrants deported who had committed no crimes were fugitives from immigration courts or had recently crossed the border illegally. Immigration lawyers questioned that portrayal. “Were they immigrants who were just caught in the web of a very dysfunctional system?” asked David Leopold, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association . He said that repairing the system would require a broader overhaul to provide channels for illegal immigrants to gain legal status. “Everybody is behind smart enforcement,” Mr. Leopold said. “But smart enforcement without a comprehensive fix to the system is not smart.” Despite repeated pledges by President Obama, he has made no progress on persuading Congress to take up an overhaul. Researchers who study federal statistics said they could not dig into the immigration figures to learn more about the deportees who were not criminals, because immigration authorities had blocked them for the first time from receiving detailed data. “It is unprecedented what they are doing withholding data,” said Susan B. Long, a co-director of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse , a group that studies federal data. | Immigration and Emigration;Illegal Immigrants;Deportation;Immigration and Customs Enforcement (US);Homeland Security Department |
ny0275859 | [
"sports",
"football"
]
| 2016/02/09 | Sam Spence, Who Set the Fierce Dance of the N.F.L. to Music in Film, Dies at 88 | Sam Spence, a prolific composer for NFL Films who marshaled sawing strings, rattling drums, pounding timpani, resonant horns, twittering woodwinds and blaring trumpets to create a signature soundtrack for the quasi martial enterprise known as pro football, died on Saturday, the day before the Super Bowl , in Lewisville, Tex. He was 88 and had lived for most of his adult life in Munich, Germany. His son, Kim, who lives in Lewisville, confirmed the death. Mr. Spence wrote themes for hundreds of highlight reels and narrative documentaries that told the stories of N.F.L. games, players and seasons. He was the last survivor of the four men who are generally credited with popularizing the football highlight film and, in no small measure as a result, propelling the popularity of pro football itself. Along with Ed Sabol, who paid $3,000 to have his six-man company film the 1962 championship game between the New York Giants and the Green Bay Packers, the genesis of NFL Films; his son, Steve Sabol, who began working for his father as a cinematographer in 1964 and became president of NFL Films; and John Facenda , who narrated almost two decades’ worth of the company’s films in a baritone rumble that earned him the nickname the Voice of God, Mr. Spence and his music helped fashion an identity for the game that made it seem dramatic and inspiring. Mr. Facenda died in 1984, Steve Sabol in 2012, Ed Sabol in 2015. Mr. Spence worked with NFL Films from 1966 until 1990. Some football fans remember his greatest hits by film title — “The Pony Soldiers,” for instance, or “The Over the Hill Gang ” — but it seems fair to say that his entire oeuvre, more than any individual composition, was his signature. His music could be jauntily optimistic, as if the cavalry were arriving over the hill, or stately and forceful — an infantry battalion headed into battle, perhaps — or even propulsively insouciant, as if secret agents, fast cars and pretty girls were at hand. He was not averse to borrowing a melody from time to time — one of his better-known appropriations was from the folk melody that goes with the words “What do you do with a drunken sailor?” He certainly seized on the galloping and heroic melodic style of Hollywood movies. Melding opulent symphonic orchestrations, the drive of contemporary pop and the occasional swing of big-band jazz, he created a portfolio of scores meant to suggest a thrilling arena of brave, athletic men in cutthroat physical competition. “I wanted music that would speak to the passion of the game and that would also be contemporary,” Steve Sabol, who wrote, produced, directed and edited many of the films for which Mr. Spence wrote the scores, said in an interview with The New York Times in 1985. “Sam took hummable melodies, like British drinking songs, Irish ballads and Israeli wedding music, and updated them.” Samuel Lloyd Spence was born in San Francisco on March 29, 1927, and grew up in Salinas, Calif. His parents, William Spence and the former Mary Manning, bought and sold real estate. Mr. Spence studied music at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California, and served in the Navy at the end of the 1940s. He studied composition in Paris and settled in Germany in the early 1950s. In 1955, he married Friedl Körner. She died in 2014. In addition to his son, Mr. Spence is survived by a brother, William; two grandchildren; two stepgrandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. The first composer hired by the Sabols was Mahlon Merrick, who was the music director and composer for “The Jack Benny Program,” and who grew to be too busy to continue scoring football films. According to Kim Spence, Mr. Merrick recommended to the Sabols that they hire his friend Mr. Spence, who was writing for German television. His father, Kim Spence said, was a big football fan, so he took the job. Baseball was the so-called American pastime then; the first Super Bowl was still in the future. Mr. Spence could not possibly have known how his music would come to represent the most popular of American sports. “There are two sports that are set to music,” Steve Sabol told The Times in 1985. “One is bullfighting, with the traditional pasodoble song. The other is N.F.L. football. Music is as important to the game as the crack of leather or the sound of the referee’s whistle.” | Obituary;Football;Music;NFL Films;Sam Spence |
ny0072517 | [
"sports",
"hockey"
]
| 2015/03/24 | Kings Start Important Trip With Victory Over Devils | The Los Angeles Kings’ chances of reaching the playoffs to defend their Stanley Cup title may depend on their current five-game trip. The opener against the Devils got them off to a good start. Anze Kopitar had a goal and two assists, lifting the Kings to a 3-1 victory in Newark on Monday night. Andrej Sekera and Tyler Toffoli also scored for Los Angeles, which is outside the Western Conference playoff picture heading into the final weeks of the regular season. Marian Gaborik added two assists, and Jonathan Quick made 19 saves as the Kings won for the second time in five games. They will visit the Rangers on Tuesday and the Islanders on Thursday. “Every time you go on a long road trip, the first game is obviously very important,” Kopitar said. “It sets the tone.” Scott Gomez scored for the Devils, who lost their second straight and moved closer to being eliminated from the Eastern Conference playoff race for the third straight season. Cory Schneider made 30 saves for the Devils. The veteran center Mike Richards returned to the Kings’ lineup after spending 16 games in the American Hockey League. He did not register a point but set up a good chance by Trevor Lewis in the second period. Kopitar was instrumental in ending the Kings’ two-game skid. He earned the primary assist on the opening goal by Sekera and sealed the win early in the third period, giving Los Angeles a 3-1 lead by putting the rebound of a Jake Muzzin shot past Schneider for his 15th goal. Minutes before Kopitar’s goal, Quick kept the Kings in front, stopping the recent call-up Reid Boucher with a glove save and denying Jordin Tootoo and Travis Zajac in close on a power play. The Kings took a 2-0 lead in a one-sided first period as Kopitar assisted on goals by Sekera and Toffoli. On Sekera’s goal, his first in 19 games, Kopitar skated from the Devils’ left circle to the blue line and left the puck for Sekera, a defenseman, who skated back to the circle and ripped a shot into the top of the net. Toffoli’s 21st goal came with the Kings on a five-on-three power play late in the period. Gaborik held the puck in the right circle and made a cross-ice pass to Toffoli, who snapped a shot into an open net. BLACKHAWKS 3, HURRICANES 1 Andrew Shaw scored twice, and Chicago held off host Carolina to give Coach Joel Quenneville his 750th N.H.L. victory. Corey Crawford made 43 saves for the Blackhawks, who have earned at least a point in 18 of their last 21 games and are fourth in the Western Conference. SENATORS 5, SHARKS 2 Mika Zibanejad had two goals, leading Ottawa to a home win over San Jose. The Senators earned their seventh straight victory and jumped 1 point ahead of Boston for the final wild-card spot in the East with a game in hand. WILD 2, MAPLE LEAFS 1 Devan Dubnyk had 35 saves as he made his 32nd straight start, leading Minnesota past Toronto for its ninth straight road win. The Maple Leafs lost their sixth in a row. STARS 4, SABRES 3 Jamie Benn scored two goals and assisted on another as host Dallas edged Buffalo. DUPUIS OUT FOR SEASON Pittsburgh Penguins forward Pascal Dupuis, who has been receiving treatment for blood clots, was ruled out for the rest of the regular season and the playoffs. Dupuis, 35, has not played since November and is prohibited from contact while taking blood thinners to treat the condition. The Penguins initially hoped that he could return in time for the postseason. Coach Mike Johnson said in a video posted on the team’s website that it would be up to Dupuis and team doctors to determine when he could take contact. General Manager Jim Rutherford said he was confident that Dupuis would be back for the 2015-16 season. | Ice hockey;Devils;Los Angeles Kings;Scott Gomez;Anze Kopitar;Marian Gaborik |
ny0223383 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2010/11/21 | Lottery Numbers for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut | Nov. 20, 2010 Midday New York Numbers — 704; Lucky Sum — 11 Midday New York Win 4 — 5516; Lucky Sum — 17 New York Numbers — 687; Lucky Sum — 21 New York Win 4 — 4568; Lucky Sum — 23 New York Pick 10 — 1, 5, 11, 12, 13, 16, 18, 19, 29, 32, 35, 43, 45, 47, 52, 55, 59, 71, 74, 76 Midday New Jersey Pick 3 — 908 Midday New Jersey Pick 4 — 9967 New Jersey Pick 3 — 815 New Jersey Pick 4 — 7290 New Jersey Cash 5 — 8, 11, 14, 31, 34 Connecticut Midday 3 — 318 Connecticut Midday 4 — 0003 Nov. 19, 2010 New York Take 5 — 4, 7, 13, 16, 30 Mega Millions — 7, 14, 31, 51, 54; mega ball, 35 Connecticut Daily — 973 Connecticut Play 4 — 5618 Connecticut Cash 5 — 7, 18, 19, 27, 29 Connecticut Classic Lotto — 2, 11, 12, 20, 22, 27 | Lotteries;New Jersey;Connecticut;New York State |
ny0252604 | [
"sports",
"football"
]
| 2011/11/24 | Secrets of a Great Spiral: The Grip and the Release | Organized Thanksgiving football is believed to date to 1876, when the Intercollegiate Football Association decided to schedule its inaugural championship game on the holiday. The first professional game to be played on Thanksgiving came almost a half-century later, in 1920, when Fritz Pollard and the Akron Pros defeated Jim Thorpe and the Canton Bulldogs, 7-0. But all these years later, and for all the Thursday afternoon quarterbacks across the country — on N.F.L. fields and in Central Park and in backyards in Omaha — a single, essential question endures: How can I reliably throw a spiral? Considering the deeply embedded place in American culture that football occupies, one can only imagine that the well-known players of that era faced the same annoyance at this time of year that current ones do: an endless string of questions from scads of quarterbacks who are eager to battle each other (and indigestion) in backyards across the country. “Everyone wants to play and everyone thinks they can throw,” Giants quarterback Eli Manning said. Most can’t. Those who can still struggle with achieving the consistent spiral, or a legitimate approximation of one. “I get it all the time around now,” said Bret Johnson, a quarterbacks coach based in California who has worked with the Jets’ Mark Sanchez. “This is what they say: ‘Just give me two tips. Just two tips so I don’t look like an absolute idiot.’ ” Throwing a football, however, is not so easy. Even Archie Manning, who would seem to have a solid résumé when it comes to teaching the skill (what with two sons as N.F.L. quarterbacks), said he struggled to come up with a simple tutorial. Back when he was playing for the New Orleans Saints, Manning said, the Hall of Fame basketball player Pete Maravich — then with the New Orleans Jazz — came to a practice and wanted to learn how to throw. Manning played catch with Maravich, and while Maravich was perfectly adept at catching the ball, his passes were “not the best,” Manning said. “And I’m trying to be delicate.” Maravich returned to a few more practices, and each time he worked with Manning, who did his best to adjust Maravich’s grip and motion. Nothing worked. “He just couldn’t do it,” Manning said of throwing a spiral. “I remember thinking, At least he can dribble.” For the determined, there are at least a few basics to consider. The starting point, all successful passers seem to agree, is the grip. Unlike with, say, throwing a four-seam fastball in baseball, there is not one standard technique. Grips come in all forms, with some quarterbacks, like Eli and Peyton Manning, laying two fingers — the pinkie and the ring finger — across the laces of the ball. Others, like Eli Manning’s backup, David Carr, have only one finger — the ring — touching the laces. “It’s because I never had huge hands,” Carr said. Then there are the truly unusual, like the former Dallas Cowboys star Troy Aikman. Johnson played with Aikman at U.C.L.A. and recalled his reaction the first time he saw Aikman’s grip. It eschewed the laces almost entirely, with Aikman laying most of his palm across the strings so his fingers touched only leather. “Wait, how do you throw the ball, dude?” Johnson recalled asking Aikman. Eli Manning said he told most questioners to go with what felt comfortable. Some quarterbacks even prefer setting their fingers on the seam of the ball instead of on the laces. Just pick up the ball in your throwing hand and roll it until you feel ready to pass, Manning said. That is the grip to use. “The grip is personal,” he said. “The key, really, is not to hold it too tight.” Johnson agreed, and added that, despite Aikman’s success, most amateurs should think about getting their palm off the ball. Grip the ball in the fingers, Johnson said, and as a test to see if you are doing it right, try holding it above your head with the tip pointing down. The gap between the hand and the ball should be wide enough that the thrower can look up and see the sky. “It forces you to hold it lightly that way,” Johnson said. “And that helps get the action you want.” By action, he meant the pretty spiral that soars through the air and sends your shifty cousin on a deep route through the flowerbed and into the neighbor’s trash cans. To pull off the spiral consistently, Carr said, the release — more than the actual motion of the throw — is critical. The inclination for many, it seems, is to snap the wrist down and in — a pronation, Carr said, as if to try to force the ball to spin. In reality, a passer wants to do the exact opposite; let the fingertips linger on the ball as long as possible and finish with the palm going outward — a supination of the wrist. Carr said he advised focusing on the thumb of the throwing hand. If a passer pronates, the thumb will finish sticking up in the air; if he supinates, it will finish facing down. “If the thumb is down, you’ve got a chance,” Carr said. “If it’s up, you’ve got no chance at all.” Johnson, whose family runs quarterback camps in addition to working with professionals, added that he also harps on keeping the passing elbow high. Keeping the elbow above the shoulder, Johnson said, makes it easier to be consistent and puts less strain on the elbow. “The higher the elbow, the better the accuracy,” Johnson said. “But it’s tough to do.” Of course, those who struggle will be in good company. Even nonquarterbacks in the N.F.L. like to think they can throw a pretty pass, and it can take a long time before acceptance sets in. During casual, off-season workouts, the Giants’ linemen often take turns throwing, an activity that Rocky Bernard, a veteran defensive tackle, used to enjoy participating in. But not anymore. “I don’t even do it much,” Bernard said. “I’d probably break my arm if I tried now. I just can’t do it and I know it.” Carr knows that those who are committed to mixing stuffing and spirals this Thanksgiving may not give up so easily, and for them he suggested that there was no shame in using a Nerf football “or even one of those balls that has a wing on it.” If that does not help? Well, then, it may be best to consider the message the former Jets quarterback Ken O’Brien uses as his last resort. O’Brien, the highest-rated passer in the N.F.L. in 1985, said he attempted to be compassionate in such situations. “Look, it’s hard,” O’Brien said. “But sometimes you just have to say, ‘Maybe you should think about wide receiver.’ ” | Football;Manning Archie;Manning Eli;Manning Peyton;Johnson Bret |
ny0228113 | [
"us",
"politics"
]
| 2010/07/29 | Congress Moves to Narrow Sentencing Disparities for Crack and Powdered Cocaine | The House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday that would reduce the disparities between mandatory federal sentences for crack and powder cocaine violations, a step toward ending what legal experts say have been unfairly harsh punishments imposed mainly on blacks. The bill, which passed the Senate in March, was adopted by the House in a voice vote and now goes to President Obama for his signature. Administration officials have described the sentencing disparity as “fundamentally unfair,” and Mr. Obama said during the 2008 presidential campaign that it “disproportionately filled our prisons with young black and Latino drug users.” Under the current law, adopted in 1986 after a surge in crack cocaine smoking and drug-related killings, someone convicted in federal court of possession of five grams of crack must be sentenced to at least five years in prison, and possession of 10 grams requires a 10-year minimum sentence. With powder cocaine, the threshold amounts for those mandatory sentences are 100 times as high. In the bill passed Wednesday, the amount of crack that would invoke a five-year minimum sentence is raised to 28 grams, said to be roughly the amount a dealer might carry, and for a 10-year sentence, 280 grams. While crack use has declined since the 1980s, arrests remain common, and some 80 percent of those convicted on crack charges in recent years have been black. A growing number of criminologists have concluded that the sentencing disparity is unjustified and has subjected tens of thousands of blacks to lengthy prison terms while offering more lenient punishment to users and sellers of powder cocaine, who are more often white. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that under the new law, shorter sentences for possessors of small amounts of crack will save the federal prison system about $42 million over the next five years. | Cocaine and Crack Cocaine;Sentences (Criminal);Blacks;House of Representatives;Mandatory Sentencing;Law and Legislation;Drug Abuse and Traffic |
ny0171449 | [
"nyregion",
"nyregionspecial2"
]
| 2007/11/11 | Small Tarts Pack a Big Punch | Like eating just one potato chip, having just one of the creamy little tarts called pastis de nata won’t be enough for most people. I know of only one place in the county where this delicate, cup-shaped dessert — Lisbon’s favorite — is made. That’s Caravela in Tarrytown. No surprise, Fernando Cabral, a fine baker and the owner of this restaurant, comes from Portugal. The glass case at the restaurant’s entry displays all of Mr. Cabral’s desserts of the moment—perhaps a chocolate mousse, an apple pie, a meringue. Always on hand are one or two seasonal tarts. Blueberry, strawberry or perhaps a mix of whatever fruits are in season are set in custard, like cloisonné, gorgeous under a light shimmery glaze. Enticing and tasty as these gaudies may be, look for the less beautiful pastis de nata. Don’t be put off by the darkened tops, brown from brief caramelization. These are not your usual custard tarts but silken, weightless concoctions, the result of a magical mix of eggs, sweet cream and vanilla in a mere puff of pastry crust. But there’s a caveat. Pastis de nata are not always available here. They have a short shelf life and can’t be frozen without some loss of their appealing molten yet crisped texture. It’s best to call ahead. When they are available, do as the people of Lisbon do, and pair this traditional pastry with a cup of strong coffee. The sweet-bitter match is a perfect pick-me-up after a hard day or a movie, or for the finale of a meal. Large orders for parties can be arranged in advance. Caravela, 53 North Broadway, Tarrytown; (914) 631-1863. Lunch: Monday to Friday, noon to 3 p.m. Dinner: Monday to Thursday, 5 to 9:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 5 to 10 p.m.; Sunday, 1 to 9 p.m. | Bakeries and Baked Products;Westchester County (NY) |
ny0237216 | [
"business",
"economy"
]
| 2010/06/17 | U.S. Housing Starts Declined 10% in May | WASHINGTON (AP) — Home construction plunged in May to its lowest level since December, as builders scaled back after a federal tax credit to lure buyers expired. While housing faltered, manufacturing continued to show signs of recovery. The Federal Reserve said that industrial production rose 1.2 percent in May. Factories — the single biggest contributor to industrial activity — increased production by a 0.9 percent, the third consecutive monthly increase. The gains were broad-based, though mining output edged down by 0.2 percent. Production at utilities increased by 4.8 percent as warm weather created more demand for electricity. In a third economic snapshot released Wednesday, the Labor Department said that declines in the cost of food and energy helped to drive down wholesale prices in May for a second consecutive month. The housing report showed that building permits declined in May, a sign that the construction industry would not fuel the economic recovery. The Commerce Department said that construction of new homes and apartments fell 10 percent in May from April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 593,000. April’s figure was revised downward to 659,000. The results were driven by a 17 percent decline in the single-family market, which had benefited earlier in the year from federal tax credits of up to $8,000. Applications for new building permits, a sign of future activity, also fell. They sank 5.9 percent to an annual rate of 574,000, the lowest level in a year. The housing report missed Wall Street expectations by a wide margin. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters had predicted that housing construction would fall to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 650,000 and had forecast that building permit applications would increase to an annual rate of 630,000. In a typical recovery, the construction sector provides much of the fuel. But that has not happened this time. Developers are trying to sell a glut of homes built during the boom years. And they must compete against foreclosed homes selling at deep discounts. Home builders are feeling less confident in the recovery since government incentives for buyers expired at the end of April (buyers with signed contracts have until June 30 to complete their purchases). The National Association of Home Builders said Tuesday that its housing market index fell in June after two months of increases. Experts expect home sales to slow in the second half of this year. In addition, high unemployment and tight mortgage lending standards have kept buyers away. In its report, the Labor Department said wholesale prices dropped 0.3 percent in May after a 0.1 percent decline in April. Core inflation, which excludes energy and food, posted a 0.2 percent increase. Core prices are up just 1.3 percent over the last 12 months. The continued absence of inflationary pressures means that the Federal Reserve, which meets next week, can keep interest rates low to provide support for a recovery. John J. Canally, an economist for the LPL Financial, said that the producer prices figures implied a greater potential for deflation than point to any “big spike” in inflation. “The good news is that you got an increase in the core P.P.I.,” Mr. Canally said. “Even though it is above expectations, it is sort of comforting. It tells you there is enough demand to push up prices.” The statistics suggested that there was still robust capital spending in the economy. “You are just not seeing any pass-through at all of higher raw materials prices to the finished prices,” he said. “That reflects a lot of slack in the economy.” The producer prices figures, and those for consumer prices on Thursday, are being released just ahead of the Federal Open Market Committee’s two-day meeting next week, a period during which market speculation is heightened about whether there will be a change in interest rate policy or the language pertaining to it. Mr. Canally said the Federal Reserve would “take comfort from the fact there is not any pass-through” to consumers, and that it now had “extra wiggle room” if needed. In May, energy prices fell 1.5 percent, the biggest drop since a 2.2 percent decline in February. Gasoline prices were down 7 percent while home heating oil fell 7.4 percent and residential natural gas was down 1.1 percent. The lower prices reflect a continued decline in oil prices which have been falling because of concerns that the European debt crisis will dampen growth prospects. Economists expect energy costs will keep inflation low in June as well, given that gasoline costs are down significantly from a month ago. The nationwide average for regular gasoline is $2.70 currently, down from $2.87 a month ago, according to AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report . Food costs dropped 0.6 percent, the biggest decline since a 1.3 percent fall in July 2009. The decreases were led by an 18 percent drop in the cost of fresh vegetables, a category where prices had been driven higher because of damaging freezes earlier in the year in Florida. The 0.3 percent drop in the overall inflation rate for price index was slightly less than the 0.5 percent decline economists had expected while the 0.2 percent rise in core inflation compared to a forecast 0.1 percent increase. | United States Economy;Housing Starts;Producer Price Index |
ny0226379 | [
"us"
]
| 2010/10/31 | Parking Matter Still Festers | The money from privatizing Chicago’s parking meters is almost tapped out, but fights over the handover’s legality and fairness are still simmering. In his last budget before stepping down, Mayor Richard M. Daley proposed using $120 million from the meter deal to help erase a deficit of more than $650 million. Because the mayor also used the meter money to balance the budget the last two years, the latest proposal would leave just $76 million of the nearly $1.2 billion the city received for handing control of street parking to a private consortium until 2084. On Monday, Richard J. Billik Jr., a Cook County Circuit Court judge, heard arguments in a lawsuit alleging that the city illegally ceded its policing powers and its rights to set parking regulations to Chicago Parking Meters LLC, which now controls the meters. Under terms of the deal, the company is allowed to write tickets for meter violations and the city is required to compensate it when the city changes meter locations and rates. Judge Billik could rule on a motion to dismiss the suit as soon as Thursday, said Clint Krislov, a lawyer for the residents’ group that filed the suit in August 2009. In September, a separate lawsuit was filed in Circuit Court against William Blair & Company, the investment firm picked by top mayoral aides to advise the city on the meter agreement. Jennifer Bunting, a Chicago resident, and her lawyers allege that the firm provided “a grossly faulty and inaccurate assessment” of the meter system’s value, which the city’s inspector general argued was worth almost twice what the city received. Officials with William Blair and the city have said $1.2 billion was on the high end of their valuations. William Blair has filed a motion to have the suit thrown out; John S. Xydakis, a lawyer for Ms. Bunting, said he would file updated arguments with the Circuit Court next month. The meter deal has also reached into the office of the state’s top lawyer. In May 2009, a spokeswoman for Lisa Madigan, Illinois attorney general, announced that her office was opening an investigation into the meter privatization. The office has since been mum about the inquiry, and documents it produced in response to a request by the Chicago News Cooperative reveal little about its progress. On June 19, 2009, the documents show, the office issued subpoenas to Chicago Parking Meters and some of its partners asking for materials produced during the transfer of the meters to private control. The documents do not show how the investigation proceeded. In a letter to the Chicago News Cooperative, an aide to Ms. Madigan wrote that about 2,300 e-mail messages and 15 legal memorandums were being withheld because they were part of a continuing investigation and exempt from disclosure under the state’s Freedom of Information Act. | Suits and Litigation;Parking Meters;Budgets and Budgeting;Daley Richard M;Chicago News Cooperative |
ny0001945 | [
"technology"
]
| 2013/03/08 | Facebook Shows Off News Feed Redesign | MENLO PARK, Calif. — Hoping to tame the blizzard of information that has turned off many users and discouraged some advertisers, Facebook on Thursday unveiled a major makeover of the home page that greets users when they log into the site. The new design of the Facebook News Feed presents bigger photos and links, including for advertisements, and lets users see specialized streams focused on topics like music and posts by close friends. The changes are designed to address the company’s two most vital challenges: how to hold on to users at a time of competing, specialized social networks and how to draw more advertising dollars to please Wall Street. Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, said at a news conference that he wanted Facebook to be “the best personalized newspaper in the world.” And like a newspaper editor, he wants the “front page” of Facebook to be more engaging — in particular on the smaller screens of mobile devices. The topic-specific News Feeds could well persuade users to spend more time scrolling through various streams of content. And the redesign will offer bigger real estate for advertisers, including more opportunities for brands to feature bigger pictures, which marketers say are more persuasive than words. Facebook’s proprietary algorithms, which try to guess what every user will want to see, will continue to filter the items that show up on each person’s main News Feed. And users will be able to drill down into specific topics they are interested in, akin to the sections of a newspaper. For instance, they can switch over to specialized feeds that are focused on just the music they are interested in, or they can scroll through a feed that consists of posts from the pages of products and people they follow — a bit like Twitter. If they want to see everything that their friends have posted, they can choose to do that, too; those posts will rush down in chronological order, without any filtering by Facebook’s robots. Facebook introduced the new design to some users of the Web version of its service on Thursday, and will extend it to all Web users and to mobile apps in coming weeks. It’s unclear how users will react to the changes; in the past, major design changes have often been greeted by complaints, at least initially. Investors seemed to welcome the new look. Shares of Facebook rose 4.1 percent on Tuesday, to $28.58. But the company’s stock price remains substantially lower than its $38 initial public offering price last May. Facebook is clearly hoping the new format will encourage users to stay longer on the site. At the news conference to announce the changes, officials offered examples of content they hoped would be compelling: photos of a cousin’s babies on one area of the page, Justin Timberlake concert news on another, a list of stories your friends liked on National Public Radio on still another. Image A screenshot of Facebook's redesigned news feed. “The best personalized newspaper should have a broad diversity of content,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “The most important stuff is going to be on the front page,” he went on. “Then people have a chance to dig in.” The announcement met with swift praise from the advertising industry. In addition to bigger ad formats, the redesign’s specialized content streams could keep users glued to the site longer, marketers said. “This will result in more time spent over all on the Facebook News Feed — and of course, increase engagement with content and ads,” said Hussein Fazal, chief executive of AdParlor, which buys advertisements on Facebook on behalf of several brands. Facebook executives suggested that there would be no immediate changes to the number of advertisements that appear on the News Feed. Julie Zhou, the company’s design chief, said only that ads would be more visual. “Everything across the board is going to get this richer, more immersive design,” Ms. Zhou said. The redesign is also a nod to the ubiquity of mobile devices, which a majority of Facebook’s one billion users worldwide use to log into their accounts. Pictures will show up bigger in the News Feed. And there will be larger images of maps and links to articles. In that way, the new look is a nod to other social networks that are seeing viral growth, like Pinterest, which is built around large pictures. The new News Feed emphasizes the importance of photographs, which are one of Facebook’s most underexploited assets. Mr. Zuckerberg said that half of all News Feed posts are pictures, compared with about a quarter of all posts a year ago. Every day, 350 million pictures are uploaded to Facebook by individual users and brands. The new design is virtually identical on the desktop and on tablets and cellphones. Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Robert W. Baird, said that the changes were positive for the company. “We see this as more likely enhancing the longer-term value of Facebook for both users and advertisers rather than adding materially to financial performance in the very near term,” he said. Users weighed in on Twitter. “Not sure if @facebook is merchandising our attention or Zuckerberg cares about our reading habits,” Daixin Neill-Quan, a self-described Boston University senior, posted after the news. Others pointed out that Flipboard, a popular app, already offers a personalized newspaper in which users choose the topics and publications they are interested in. Siva Vaidhyanathan, chairman of the media studies department at the University of Virginia, said the redesign could help educate users as to just how much Facebook’s algorithms filter what they see on what they think of as their social network. “Users will at least be under less of an illusion that what’s happening on Facebook is merely a function of what their friends are doing,” he said. “Facebook is the puppet master of our social network.” | Facebook;Innovation;Mark E Zuckerberg |
ny0195369 | [
"sports",
"golf"
]
| 2009/11/22 | In the L.P.G.A., Some Players Are Struggling on and Off the Golf Course | RICHMOND, Tex. — Reilley Rankin is a college graduate who earned more than $400,000 two years ago plying her trade. Now she is merely another member of the L.P.G.A. ’s middle class trying not to slip through the economy’s cracks. With her work schedule cut drastically this year and the bills piling up, Rankin lost her financial footing. In late September, after she missed her third straight tournament cut, Rankin’s uncle Tom Reilley came to her rescue. Sensing her anxiety, he offered to cover her expenses for the last three events on her schedule, including this weekend’s L.P.G.A. Tour Championship at Houstonian Golf and Country Club. “She was broke,” Reilley said, “and my wife and I just made the decision that we cannot let this young girl with her ability not finish the season.” Rankin, 30, responded with her best showing of the year, a tie for ninth, in her first tournament after her uncle’s intercession. She was one stroke off the lead entering Sunday’s twice-rain-delayed second round in the tour’s season-ending event, which offers a purse of $1.5 million. The tournament has been shortened to 54 holes and will conclude on Monday, weather permitting. With a top-three finish, Rankin would climb high enough on the final money list — she is at No. 100 — to secure a spot into next year’s limited-field events. Anything lower, and she is staring at the prospect of receiving her first L.P.G.A. Tour paycheck next year in late March, at the earliest. The 2010 schedule will feature, at most, 24 tournaments, down from 34 in 2008 and 27 this year. The first two, in Thailand and Singapore, are limited to 60 golfers. “You could put a lot of pressure on yourself to do well now so you’re not playing catch-up next year,” Rankin said, adding, “I try not to think about it much because I’ll just put myself further behind the eight ball.” For the top five dozen women — the Lorena Ochoas and Michelle Wies and Natalie Gulbises — the shrinking schedule is less of a concern than an inconvenience, obliging them to grace tour stops they would have skipped in the days when they had more options. For everybody else, it is cause to consider taking a part-time job to help stay afloat. Tom Reilley and his wife, Diane, own five restaurants in the Hilton Head, S.C., area. Rankin said she was willing to work at one of them to supplement her income until the tour returns to the United States the last week of March, but her uncle will not hear of it. “She’s going to be spending that time working on her game,” he said. It rankles Tom Reilley to see the financial divide between the men’s and women’s professional golf tours. As a board member for the PGA Tour stop in Hilton Head, he has noticed that the No. 100 player on the men’s money list, Ted Purdy, has made $838,707 to Rankin’s $72,681. And the men’s money goes further. L.P.G.A. players receive fewer perks, so they spend more to play, roughly $100,000 a year. That is part of Reilley’s motivation in helping Rankin, a six-year pro. “I feel the L.P.G.A. is undersupported and underfinanced,” he said. The L.P.G.A. is a model of diversity and inclusion that has been at the forefront of globalization. And yet it is wobblier than it has been since its infancy in the early 1950s. In July, a player revolt led to the resignation of the commissioner, Carolyn Bivens, who had secured only nine contracts for 2010 events. The interim commissioner, Marsha Evans, logged about 45,000 air miles to clean up after Bivens and salvage next season. Michael Whan was named the eighth commissioner in the organization’s 59-year history in October and will officially take the reins in January. “I think that we should be commending Marty for making a difference in getting some relationships back on track,” Lorie Kane, a tour veteran, said of Evans. Whan, 44, met with the players last week and challenged them to channel the esprit de corps of the tour’s founding members, who did more than show up and play. They set up the courses, decided the pairings, signed the checks and tithed earnings to the tour. “We’ve got a responsibility to think like our founders did in the first five years,” Whan said Friday, “and understand that these are tough times, but they will not define our future. I need our players to show that same spunk, the same aggressiveness, the same long-term vision.” His standard-bearer could be Jamie Hullett, who carries a cheery bag with “Life is good” stitched across its front. Given the times, it looks as incongruous on the L.P.G.A. Tour’s fairways as a happy-face button at an antiwar rally. Hullett, who was paired with Rankin the first two rounds, is sponsored by Bert and John Jacobs, brothers from Boston who created Jake, the stick figure with the woe-eating grin who graces T-shirts and other items with the “Life is good” mantra. “Life does get tough, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good,” Hullett, 33, said. In these times, Hullett, another player being squeezed by the shrinking schedule, finds inspiration in the brothers’ mantra. Cold cash, too. Her family owns a store in Rockwall, Tex., that sells “Life is good” products , and Hullett will be working there the first three months of 2010 while the tour starts without her. At the store, Hullett said, she will fold T-shirts and listen to customers’ stories about relatives with cancer, husbands who have lost their jobs and others in need of a “Life is good” pick-me-up. Hullett does not mind the work. “I think it helps keep things in perspective,” she said. | Ladies Professional Golf Assn;Golf;Recession and Depression;Rankin Reilley |
ny0105973 | [
"science",
"earth"
]
| 2012/04/18 | Americans Link Global Warming to Extreme Weather, Poll Says | Scientists may hesitate to link some of the weather extremes of recent years to global warming — but the public, it seems, is already there. A poll due for release on Wednesday shows that a large majority of Americans believe that this year’s unusually warm winter, last year’s blistering summer and some other weather disasters were probably made worse by global warming. And by a 2-to-1 margin, the public says the weather has been getting worse, rather than better, in recent years. The survey, the most detailed to date on the public response to weather extremes, comes atop other polling showing a recent uptick in concern about climate change. Read together, the polls suggest that direct experience of erratic weather may be convincing some people that the problem is no longer just a vague and distant threat. “Most people in the country are looking at everything that’s happened; it just seems to be one disaster after another after another,” said Anthony A. Leiserowitz of Yale University , one of the researchers who commissioned the new poll. “People are starting to connect the dots.” The poll opens a new window on public opinion about climate change. A large majority of climate scientists say the climate is shifting in ways that could cause serious impacts, and they cite the human release of greenhouse gases as a principal cause. But a tiny, vocal minority of researchers contests that view, and has seemed in the last few years to be winning the battle of public opinion despite slim scientific evidence for their position. The poll suggests that a solid majority of the public feels that global warming is real, a result consistent with other polls that have asked the question in various ways. When invited to agree or disagree with the statement, “global warming is affecting the weather in the United States ,” 69 percent of respondents in the new poll said they agreed, while 30 percent disagreed. Dr. Leiserowitz’s unit at Yale, along with researchers at George Mason University, commissioned the survey, conducted by Knowledge Networks . That company surveyed 1,008 American adults by computer in the last half of March, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. While many online polls are not representative of the broad public, Knowledge Networks is noted for its efforts to overcome this problem, including giving computers to households too poor to have them. The survey reveals public attitudes that are at least roughly consistent with scientific understanding of how the climate is changing. For instance, when people were asked whether they attributed specific events to global warming, recent heat waves drew the largest majorities. Scientists say their statistical evidence for an increase of weather extremes is indeed strongest when it comes to heat waves. Asked whether they agreed or disagreed that global warming had contributed to the unusually warm winter just past, 25 percent of the respondents said they strongly agreed that it had, and 47 percent said they somewhat agreed. Only 17 percent somewhat disagreed, and 11 percent strongly disagreed. Majorities almost as large cited global warming as a likely factor in last year’s record summer heat wave, as well as the 2011 drought in Texas and Oklahoma . Smaller but still substantial majorities cited it as a factor in the record United States snowfalls of 2010 and 2011 and the Mississippi River floods of 2011. Those views, too, are consistent with scientific evidence, which suggests that global warming is causing heavier precipitation in all seasons. One of the more striking findings was that 35 percent of the public reported being affected by extreme weather in the past year. The United States was hit in 2011 by a remarkable string of disasters affecting virtually every region, including droughts, floods, tornadoes and heat waves. Dr. Leiserowitz said that recent events might be puncturing the public’s “very simplistic mental model of what global warming is supposed to be.” Past survey work had suggested, he said, that people tended to see the climate change problem as “distant in time and space — that this is an issue about polar bears or maybe Bangladesh , but not my community, not the United States, not my friends and family.” Because the survey questions are new, it is not clear how people’s views about weather extremes may be changing over time. However, more general polling by the Gallup organization suggests that public concern about climate change, which has waxed and waned over the years, may be starting to rise again. Since 1989, Gallup has asked, “how much do you personally worry about global warming?” The percentage of people saying they were worried peaked at 66 percent just before the recession , then fell to a low of 51 percent in 2011, as the economy overwhelmed other concerns. Gallup’s most recent survey , in March, showed an uptick to 55 percent. “It’s certainly possible that this is the start of a trend back up,” said Frank M. Newport, Gallup’s editor in chief, though he added that another year of polling data would be necessary to be certain. Advocacy groups seeking policies to limit climate change say that extreme weather is giving them an opening to reach the public. A group called 350.org is planning a worldwide series of rallies on May 5, under the slogan “Connect the Dots,” to draw attention to the links between climate change and extreme weather. (The group’s name is a reference to what it views as the safe upper limit for the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.) “My sense from around the country and the world is that people definitely understand that things are getting freaky,” said William E. McKibben , the founder of 350.org . “During that crazy heat wave in March, everyone in Chicago was out enjoying the weather, but in the back of their mind they were thinking, this is not right.” | Climate Change Global Warming;Weather;Polls;Greenhouse gas;George Mason University;Yale |
ny0213663 | [
"world",
"americas"
]
| 2010/03/16 | Killings Fuel Concern Over Mexico’s Drug Offensive | CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — The killing of an American consulate worker and her husband over the weekend in the shadow of the bridge that links this ramshackle city with the United States has become a public symbol of the mounting concern here that President Felipe Calderón’s strategy for attacking Mexico ’s drug cartels is veering far off course. The city braced for a visit on Tuesday from Mr. Calderón, who has been forced by the relentless violence here to recalibrate his approach and acknowledge that merely concentrating firepower on the drug gangs is not working. In an about-face, the Mexican government has begun refocusing much of its energy on attacking social issues in Ciudad Juárez, in what officials say privately could be an experiment for other Mexican cities that are consumed by drug violence. American officials say they have encouraged and supported the new approach, pointing to the lack of opportunity here. United States officials reiterated on Monday their support for Mr. Calderón’s battle against Mexico’s drug gangs, which first the Bush administration and then the Obama administration have backed with more than $1 billion in aid. The money has been spread across an array of agencies charged with fighting the drug war. It has bought helicopters for the army, X-ray equipment for customs, training for judges and a new police academy for federal police recruits. A State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, said during a briefing Monday that Saturday’s shooting underscored the common threat that drug violence posed to both the United States and Mexico. And he said the countries would continue to work together to fight back. “I don’t think anyone expected that this would be fixed in a relatively short period of time,” he said. “This is a long-term challenge.” Across the Rio Grande in El Paso — where the American consulate employee, Lesley A. Enriquez, and her husband, Arthur H. Redelfs, lived — their families waited on Monday to receive their bodies and make funeral arrangements. F.B.I. agents interviewed relatives. The couple’s 7-month-old daughter, who was in the car but was not hurt in the attack, wailed in the arms of her grieving uncle. The tipping point in the reconsideration of Mr. Calderón’s strategy occurred five weeks ago, when gunmen killed 15 people, most of them students celebrating a birthday party. After Mr. Calderón was forced to back down from his initial claim that the victims were gang members settling accounts, his government began to outline a list of social programs to help the embattled residents of this city reclaim their streets. Mr. Calderón has visited the city twice since then, facing the fury of mothers who have lost their children. He is likely to face more anger when he arrives on Tuesday. “There are two myths that have fallen here in Juárez,” said Lalas Tapia, a local teacher who will be organizing a protest on Tuesday with many families who have lost members to the drug wars. “It’s not true that the violence is just between the drug gangs,” he said. “And this will not end soon. It has already been two years.” Ms. Enriquez, 35, who worked at the fortress-like American consulate here, and Mr. Redelfs were killed in broad daylight on Saturday afternoon as they drove home to El Paso after a children’s birthday party. At almost the same time, Jorge Alberto Salcido Ceniceros, the Mexican husband of another consulate employee who had also been at the party, was killed as he drove home with his two children, ages 4 and 7. They were wounded and are being treated in a hospital in Juárez. Mr. Redelfs was an officer at the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, where he worked in the county jail. The couple, who was expecting their second child, had been married for several years, said Mr. Redelfs’s brother, Reuben. “He was a wonderful man,” Reuben Redelfs said. “We just regret this senseless act of violence.” American officials said they had several theories about the killings, but the strongest one was that the three were killed by a drug gang to send a message to both the Mexican and United States governments. Because the attacks occurred in Mexico, the Chihuahua state attorney general’s office is in charge of the investigation. On Sunday, the office put out a statement saying that it believed that Los Aztecas, a violent street gang working for La Línea, the operations arm of the drug cartel based in Ciudad Juárez, was responsible for the shootings. A number of United States agencies, including the F.B.I. and the Drug Enforcement Administration, are providing help to Mexican authorities, said Andrea Simmons, a special agent at the F.B.I.’s field office in El Paso. Few of the many shootings in Juárez get the attention being given to the consulate killings. Jahaziel Orlando Gutiérrez Márquez, 26, was shot and killed early Sunday morning as he was walking home from his mother’s house. He walked into a bar because he had seen a friend’s car parked outside, and as he entered he was shot by gunmen who were apparently looking for someone else, said his wife, Kauri Flores, 23. Ms. Flores, a local activist who runs a small community center, was returning from Mexico City with mothers of victims of drug violence who had gone to a rally when she got word of her husband’s death. “There’s no justice in this city,” she said. “It’s one more murder. I feel so powerless.” | Juarez (Mexico);Mexico;Drug Abuse and Traffic;Murders and Attempted Murders |
ny0194980 | [
"nyregion"
]
| 2009/11/23 | His Ethics Under Scrutiny, Rangel Is Frayed but Defiant | WASHINGTON — On the House floor during a debate over health care reform , he taunted a colleague who had been calling for his ouster. At a recent fund-raiser, he complained that the House speaker had made an end run around him and his committee. Confronted by a persistent conservative activist in a hallway, he let loose an expletive, telling the man to mind his own business. There seems to be little joy in being Representative Charles B. Rangel these days. As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Rangel, the proud and normally irrepressible clubhouse Democrat from Harlem, holds one of the most powerful positions in Congress. But as an ethics investigation into his financial dealings continues, Mr. Rangel’s once-considerable clout is diminished and his spirits are often gloomy, friends and associates say, even as he begins to fight back. Concerned that Republicans intend to use Mr. Rangel’s problems to cast Democrats as ethically lax — and unwilling to confront corruption in their own ranks — some Democrats are quietly edging away from him. House leaders have circumvented him on some major issues, including climate change and, to a lesser extent, health care. Donors, who once flocked to him, are not giving as freely. Officials at the White House have expressed fears that Mr. Rangel’s problems — one aide called them an “ethics anvil” — could hurt some of the party’s candidates in next year’s midterm elections. At home, he faces a crop of potential challengers, leaving him confronting what could be the biggest threat to his position in the nearly 40 years since he unseated Adam Clayton Powell Jr., a civil rights figure who was embroiled in his own ethics scandal. Among those lining up to challenge him are Vince Morgan, a former aide to Mr. Rangel, and Adam Clayton Powell IV, a state assemblyman from Harlem who is a son of Mr. Rangel’s predecessor. Now, after months of what friends say was his slowness to grasp the severity of his situation, Mr. Rangel, a decorated Korean War veteran, has begun a counteroffensive. He has hired new Washington-based public relations consultants to help him and his legal team shape a message as he awaits the outcome of the ethics investigation. He has reactivated his old campaign organization in Harlem to prepare for a potentially difficult election, doing so at the insistence of the veteran Harlem political strategist Bill Lynch, who has taken charge of the operation. He has summoned his old senior adviser, George Henry, from retirement to oversee his Congressional offices. And at age 79, Mr. Rangel has even begun a blog (“Blogging with Charlie”) and opened a Twitter account (“Did you catch me on TMZ?” he once wrote, referring to his appearance on the celebrity news program). His public position has been to ask voters to withhold judgment until the investigations are complete. When pressed, Mr. Rangel, who declined a formal interview for this article, strikes a defiant if exasperated tone. “Are you a psychiatrist?” he said the other day when asked at a public appearance if he was concerned about retaining his chairmanship. He went on to suggest that his position on Capitol Hill remained strong, noting that both President Obama and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, congratulated him on his committee’s role in shaping the health care legislation approved by the House this month. “President called me and said I did a great job; Pelosi called me and said I did a great job,” he said. “I’m doing a great job.” He also expressed confidence that his name would be cleared by investigations he initially called for, blaming his trouble on unfair news coverage. “My credibility has never been challenged except by a couple of reporters,” he said. His aides insist that he is no less influential than other House committee chairmen under the centralized leadership style of Ms. Pelosi. Nonetheless, Mr. Rangel is taking no chances, barnstorming his district as if he were a candidate who is down in the polls, attending rallies, visiting church groups and regularly checking in with local business and political leaders. “The dude just ate a fish sandwich at my political club,” said Keith L. T. Wright, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Manhattan and a state assemblyman. Bracing for a fight over keeping his chairmanship, he and his team of advisers are monitoring his support among two important Democratic blocs on Capitol Hill that could determine his fate: members of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition, a group he has plied with campaign funds over the years, and the Congressional Black Caucus, an organization he helped found and a vital part of the coalition that delivered Ms. Pelosi the speakership. After consulting with Mr. Rangel and his team, the black caucus inserted itself into the situation, sending a letter to Ms. Pelosi, urging support for him. So far, Ms. Pelosi has not sought to strip him of his chairmanship, arguing the ethics process must be allowed to play out. But many senior Democrats say Ms. Pelosi will come under pressure to take a stand as the election campaign gets underway next year and Republicans step up efforts to make Mr. Rangel a symbol of the Democrat’s failure to set new ethical standards. Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi, said she continued to appreciate Mr. Rangel’s contribution, especially on health care. He said she was reserving judgment on the accusations against Mr. Rangel until the investigations conclude. “He is very well liked and respected throughout the caucus,” Mr. Daly said, “and that’s why it’s a difficult thing for people.” Mr. Rangel, who appears to have lost weight, occasionally shares with friends the emotional toll all of it is taking on him. “He didn’t seem so much concerned about himself as much as the impact this had on his children and his wife,” said City Councilwoman Inez E. Dickens of Harlem, recounting a recent visit to his home. By Mr. Rangel’s own telling, he had a charmed rise from the streets of Harlem to one of the most powerful perches in Congress. His seat is considered one of the safest in Congress, a gift from Nelson A. Rockefeller, a patron who, as governor, handed Mr. Rangel a pencil and allowed him to determine the lines of his own district in the early ’70s as repayment for the up-and-coming congressman’s support, according to Mr. Rangel’s 2007 memoir , “And I Haven’t Had a Bad Day Since.” He gained admission to the coveted Ways and Means Committee in part through another patron, Hugh L. Carey, who agreed to help secure Mr. Rangel a spot on the panel in exchange for the congressman’s backing in that year’s governor’s race. Once he became the committee’s chairman, when Democrats won control of the House in the 2006 election, Mr. Rangel became a fund-raising magnet, attracting donations from a cross section of industries with a stake in the work of Ways and Means. Mr. Rangel has been under investigation by the House ethics committee since last year, when The New York Times reported that he rented four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem for thousands of dollars per month below market value, despite a rule forbidding members to accept gifts worth more than $50. The ethics committee inquiry — also looking into whether he improperly used his office to raise money for an academic center named for him — later expanded to include unreported taxable income from a villa he owns in the Dominican Republic. Last month, the ethics committee expanded its inquiry yet again after he amended his financial disclosure statements to account for hundreds of thousands of dollars in income and assets that he failed to initially report. In the meantime, his influence has been greatly diminished on several fronts, members of both parties say. Democratic fund-raisers say the ethical allegations have left many donors reluctant to give him money (his aides blamed the weak economy for the 45 percent drop-off in his fund-raising in this election cycle). Over the summer, he was largely sidelined as Ms. Pelosi and Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, negotiated crucial sections of a health care bill with the White House and the Blue Dog Coalition of fiscally conservative Democrats. At another point, Ms. Pelosi appeared to undercut him when she maneuvered to replace Mr. Rangel’s proposal for an income tax increase to help pay for the health care bill with a plan for a tax increase that would kick in at higher income levels. “She’s never discussed it with me,” Mr. Rangel said at the time. Ms. Pelosi also largely bypassed Mr. Rangel and his committee on a climate change bill that the House took up in the spring. Ms. Pelosi had Mr. Waxman’s committee write the bill and then moved it to the House floor with only cursory consideration from Mr. Rangel’s committee, though it had jurisdiction over the tax provisions of the bill. “I can’t believe that the Ways and Means Committee lets Nancy Pelosi determine what’s in a bill,” said Dan Rostenkowski, the former chairman of Ways and Means who was forced out and jailed after being indicted in 1994 on corruption charges. He noted that he continued to play the dominant role in President Clinton’s health care proposal in 1994 even as he was being served with subpoenas. At a fund-raiser attended by utility industry executives this year, Mr. Rangel complained that the way in which Ms. Pelosi pushed the energy bill through the House had effectively left his committee on the sidelines, a comment that surprised some in the room for its bluntness, said one attendee who spoke condition of anonymity. Ms. Pelosi was taken aback to learn afterward about his comments, according to two associates who spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they did not want to be seen as betraying a confidence. Matthew Beck, a spokesman for Mr. Rangel, said with the congressman focused on health care, he allowed Mr. Waxman’s committee to take the lead on the bill. He said that Mr. Rangel did not have enough of a consensus to move any legislation out of the committee within the time frame Ms. Pelosi had set, but that he had plenty of input in the bill produced by Mr. Waxman. Mr. Rangel showed signs of frustration with his situation when, unprompted, he lashed out at Representative John A. Boehner, the Republican leader, on the House floor as the chamber debated health care legislation two weeks ago. When Mr. Boehner tried to get Mr. Rangel’s agreement on a particular provision, Mr. Rangel sarcastically asked Mr. Boehner why he would trust his word, alluding to Mr. Boehner’s repeated calls for his ouster. “I think he might have been blindsided by some of this,” said Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, who said he thought any transgressions by Mr. Rangel were inadvertent. | Rangel Charles B;Ethics;House of Representatives;United States Politics and Government |
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