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ny0272579
|
[
"technology"
] |
2016/05/26
|
Europe Seeks Greater Control Over Digital Services
|
If European regulators get their way, Netflix may soon have to do more than just offer “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” with French subtitles. European officials proposed on Wednesday a new set of rules that could force Netflix and other video streaming services to carry a minimum amount of local content in individual countries, as well as to help pay for its development. The plan is intended to help level the playing field with national broadcasters, which are already required to fund television shows and other programming in their home countries. It is part of a broader effort to regulate how the 500 million people in the region can buy, get access to and consume online services like video streaming and messaging applications. The changes form the building blocks for Europe’s broad plan for a single digital market , a strategy that officials say they hope will help bolster the region’s sluggish economy. American technology giants are likely to be the most affected at first, since players like Apple, Facebook and Netflix still dominate much of the online world for Europeans. For Netflix and other streaming services, the proposals, which could go into effect next year at the earliest, might complicate their international expansion plans. Netflix, in particular, has outlined ambitious growth proposals for Europe and beyond, as the American market becomes saturated . The company said last year that it wanted to operate in 200 countries by the end of 2016, though it has faced challenges in signing up users in some markets. Netflix’s objections to the latest European plan are as much about profit as principle. The company already produces content in Europe, such as “ Marseille ,” a show about French politics that is similar to “House of Cards,” and the series “Suburra,” about organized crime in Italy. The company sees such shows, filmed in the local language, as a fundamental way to attract international viewers. But Netflix and others do not want Europe to set specific quotas for the amount of content, arguing that doing so would harm consumer choice as many Europeans want to watch American, not local, programming. “We appreciate the commission’s objective to have European production flourish, however, the proposed measures won’t actually achieve that,” Joris Evers, a Netflix spokesman in Amsterdam, said in a statement. Netflix and other American technology companies have found themselves at the center of the changing regulatory environment in Europe. How Europe Is Going After Apple, Google and Other U.S. Tech Giants The biggest American tech companies face intensifying scrutiny by European regulators, with — pressure that could potentially curb their sizable profits in the region and affect how they operate around the world. The company, among others, had previously benefited from a European move to change copyright rules to allow customers to temporarily view movies and television shows that they have bought on a digital service, no matter where they are in the 28-nation European Union. Previously, content makers, including Hollywood studios, had staggered movie openings across the region, and film and television licensing rights were typically sold separately in each country. Europe’s latest rule changes are more challenging for Netflix. European officials on Wednesday said they would give individual countries the power, if they so chose, to force video streaming services to help pay for the production of local content, like movies and television programs. “The way we watch TV or videos may have changed, but our values don’t,” Günther H. Oettinger, the European commissioner in charge of the digital economy, said in a statement on Wednesday. “With these new rules, we will uphold media pluralism.” Such rules already exist for traditional broadcasters, like the BBC in Britain and the TF1 Group in France. On average, they pay the equivalent of millions of dollars each year, or roughly 20 percent of their annual revenue in the countries where they operate, to support local content. European policy makers said that online streaming rivals currently invested only around 1 percent of their annual revenue in local content. Netflix has been able to sidestep existing funding rules, most notably in France, because the company’s European headquarters are in the Netherlands. Streaming services will also be required to ensure that at least 20 percent of their online content is from Europe, and that those movies and television programs are given prominence in their digital catalogs. A report funded by the European Commission recently found that both Netflix and Apple already met this requirement. The commission’s digital plans are subject to the approval of the European Parliament and individual member states, a lengthy process that could lead to significant changes. Europe’s proposals on digital services are only the beginning. The European Commission said on Wednesday that it would also propose new copyright rules in the fall that could force companies like Google to pay online publishers when using their content, including in its news aggregation service Google News. Officials also said that they were still reviewing potential new rules to control how so-called online platforms like Facebook and Amazon operate in the 28-member bloc. European officials said they were looking into making it easier for people to move their digital information between online platforms by the end of the year, giving them greater control over data that companies collected on their daily digital lives. “I want online platforms and the audiovisual and creative sectors to be powerhouses in the digital economy,” said Andrus Ansip, the European Commission vice president in charge of the region’s digital single market proposals. “They need the certainty of a modern and fair legal environment: That is what we are providing today.”
|
Video Recordings; Downloads and Streaming;Netflix;Europe;Regulation and Deregulation;Computers and the Internet;Tech Industry;Facebook;Apple;EU
|
ny0241472
|
[
"world"
] |
2011/03/05
|
Gates Attains New Level of Biting Candor
|
WASHINGTON — This is the season when defense secretaries typically sit for hours, hat in hand, before Congressional committees to plead for more money and then journey to the military academies to give perfunctory speeches about patriotism before young cadets. But this year, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has not followed the script. He sharply criticized members of the House of Representatives this week for spending money on Humvees that the Army did not want instead of buying surveillance systems needed to protect troops. In recent speeches, he has rebuked military leaders for clinging to ancient concepts of war — and by ancient he means before Sept. 11, 2001. And he has cited the painful experiences still unfolding in Afghanistan and Iraq to warn of grave risks if the military again intervenes in the Muslim world, this time in Libya, using tones far more grim than others in the Obama cabinet. Even for a particularly outspoken defense secretary, Mr. Gates has reached a new level of candor. Perhaps he feels liberated by the fact that he is retiring soon and leaving Washington, a city, he has said, “where so many people are lost in thought because it’s such unfamiliar territory.” Mr. Gates’s independence is a reminder that if he leaves this year — as he has insisted he will — his departure will kick off a search that will help define the administration. Will the president choose someone as outspoken, with a bipartisan pedigree that allows him to criticize the conduct of combat and makes him acceptable to Republicans? The next defense secretary will have to grapple with two wars and brisk budget-cutting battles that for the first time promise to involve the Pentagon. It is a military that has been at war for a remarkable 10 years, and with an all-volunteer force. For these and other reasons it is in the middle of a number of profound debates, including how technology is changing the very nature of war. If his recent public comments are any measure, Mr. Gates appears to be worried about how it will all go when he steps down. Before Air Force Academy cadets in Colorado Springs on Friday, the defense secretary said that starting three years ago, he “challenged the Air Force, and indeed our entire military, to do more, much more” to send surveillance drones to collect more information on adversaries in Iraq and Afghanistan. The process, he said, was like “pulling teeth” because the Air Force preferred white-scarf pilots at the stick of high-tech fighters to those sitting in trailers operating slow-flying drones. But the Air Force came around. “The versatility on display by the Air Force in combat theaters these past few years befits the greatest traditions of the force,” he added. Yet Mr. Gates said he was concerned that once he departed, and once American forces were drawn down in Afghanistan and Iraq, then too many would try and “get back to what some consider to be real Air Force normal.” That provocative assessment was mild compared to what Mr. Gates told the next generation of Army officers a week ago at West Point. “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined, as General MacArthur so delicately put it,” Mr. Gates said. Mr. Gates said his intention was to prod the Army to reshape its budget to slim down the number of armored units and prepare for the most likely challenges presented by terrorists, small rogue governments and upheavals in countries that cannot defend themselves. His comments were hijacked by the left and the right. Liberals cheered that Mr. Gates actually opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And conservatives warned that his comments might comfort the insurgency. Mr. Gates fired back on Friday, saying his remarks had been “distorted by some and misunderstood by others.” “During my tenure as secretary of defense, I have approved the largest increases in the size of the Army and Marine Corps in decades,” Mr. Gates said. “And I supported and have presided over the surges in both Iraq and Afghanistan.” This week, in warning about a no-flight zone over Libya, Mr. Gates seemed to take a position that was out of step with the rest of the administration. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said they wanted to leave all options on the table — including making it tough for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya to use jets to kill his own people. Mr. Gates made it clear, however, that any use of the military invited battle. “Let’s just call a spade a spade,” Mr. Gates told Congress. “A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses. That’s the way you do a no-fly zone. And then you can fly planes around the country and not worry about our guys being shot down. But that’s the way it starts.”
|
United States Defense and Military Forces;Defense Department;Gates Robert M;Afghanistan;Iraq
|
ny0153767
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2008/01/29
|
Snowstorms in China Kill at Least 24
|
SHANGHAI — Severe snowstorms over broad swaths of eastern and central China have wreaked havoc on traffic throughout the country, creating gigantic passenger backups, spawning accidents and leaving at least 24 people dead, according to state news reports. In many areas, where snow has continued falling for several days, the accumulation has been described as the heaviest in as many as five decades. The impact of the severe weather was complicated by the timing of the storms, which arrived just before the Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival, when Chinese return to their family homes by the hundreds of millions. On Monday, the government announced a severe weather warning for the days ahead, as forecasts suggested that the snowfall would continue in many areas, including Shanghai, which is unaccustomed to severe winter weather. “Due to the rain, snow and frost, plus increased winter use of coal and electricity and the peak travel season, the job of ensuring coal, electricity and oil supplies and adequate transportation has become quite severe,” Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said in a statement issued late Sunday. “More heavy snow is expected,” Mr. Wen warned. “All government departments must prepare for this increasingly grim situation and urgently take action.” The Ministry of Civil Affairs estimates the direct economic cost of the weather so far to be $3.2 billion and the number of people affected to be 78 million, including 827,000 emergency evacuees. The country’s transportation problems have been deepened by power brownouts in about half of the 31 provinces. Officials said Monday that the supply of coal for electricity had dropped to 21 million tons, less than half the normal levels at this time of year. As a result, 17 provinces were rationing power by Monday. The coal supply problems were themselves brought on by the heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain, which caused delays in distribution of the fuel by rail and truck in many regions. China is heavily dependent on domestically produced coal for power. In Guangzhou, the booming southern industrial city, authorities said they expected as many as 600,000 train passengers to be stranded there by Monday. The police were being deployed around the city’s central railroad station as a precaution to keep order. Guangzhou is the capital of Guangdong Province, home to millions of migrant laborers from faraway parts of the country lured by the prospect of jobs in assembly plants and other factories. State television showed scenes of would-be travelers milling about the train station, many of them migrants, and warned that food and sanitation facilities were inadequate. A power failure on Saturday night in Hunan Province was blamed for many of the rail delays, stranding 136 electric trains, scores serving the north-south Beijing-Guangzhou route. According to Xinhua, the government news agency, about 100 diesel locomotives were sent to help restore the stranded trains to service. Railroad authorities also said that large quantities of rice and meat, as well as 20,000 boxes of instant noodles, had been rushed to the paralyzed trains to feed passengers. To cope with the crisis, authorities in Guangzhou have ordered a temporary halt to the sale of train tickets and urged migrants from other provinces to spend the Spring Festival in Guangdong Province. At the earliest, normal train service is not expected to resume for three to five days. Air travel in the country has also been affected, with at least 19 major airports closed Monday and flight schedules severely disrupted at dozens of other airports because of the snowfall. About 10,000 passengers were stranded at Baiyun Airport in Guangzhou after 55 flights were canceled. For the stranded passengers, there are few alternatives. Long-distance bus travel has also been severely hampered by icy roads and overwhelmed by the huge numbers of passengers. For safety reasons, Jiangxi Province has halted all provincial bus service. In Jiangsu Province road networks are reportedly all but paralyzed by the heavy snowfall, while in Anhui Province, authorities have closed all public highways as a safety precaution.
|
China;Snow and Snowstorms;Weather;Roads and Traffic
|
ny0168254
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2006/01/22
|
Boys' Killing Motivated by Robbery, Police Think
|
Police in Stafford Township, N.J., said yesterday that robbery was one of the main motives behind the beating deaths of two boys by a man who lived in their home. The man, Richard Toledo, 24, had been living with Wanda Gonzalez and her two sons since October in the Ocean Acres neighborhood of Stafford Township, a small Jersey Shore community. On Thursday, the authorities said, Mr. Toledo beat the boys -- Karlo Gonzalez, 14, and Zabdiel Gonzalez, 7 -- with a hammer, killing them. The police said he then kidnapped Ms. Gonzalez at knifepoint, driving her in her minivan to an A.T.M. on Route 72, where he forced her to withdraw $500, the maximum amount the machine allowed. Mr. Toledo was taken into custody early on Friday at a rest stop on the Garden State Parkway. "Robbery is pretty much what we're looking at right now," said Capt. Charles Schweigart of the Stafford Township police. Mr. Toledo was charged with two counts of murder as well as kidnapping and robbery. He remained at the Ocean County jail with bail set at $2 million. The authorities said that Mr. Toledo was an illegal immigrant from Mexico who had drifted from job to job, recently working for a few weeks as a busboy at the Sea Oaks Golf Club in Little Egg Harbor Township. Ms. Gonzalez took him in as a boarder after meeting him at a cleaning service where they had both worked, the police said. It did not appear that there had been a romantic relationship between Ms. Gonzalez and Mr. Toledo, who has no criminal record or history of mental illness of which the police were aware, Captain Schweigart said. Captain Schweigart said the boys liked their guest. "They would play electronic games together," he said. After his arrest, Mr. Toledo admitted to the police in Spanish that he had killed the boys, the captain said. The authorities said the autopsy showed that the 7-year-old died of injuries to the head, and the 14-year-old died of injuries to the head, neck and chest. The Gonzalezes lived in a split-level house on Middie Lane, a normally quiet street. Yesterday, Ocean County Sheriff's Department investigators came in and out of the house, where the base of the mailbox at the edge of the front lawn had been turned into a makeshift memorial. Among the items placed there were a blue Detroit Lions teddy bear, a white votive candle and a baseball mitt with a white plastic ball inside.
|
NEW JERSEY;ROBBERIES AND THEFTS
|
ny0108870
|
[
"sports",
"tennis"
] |
2012/05/16
|
Petra Kvitova and Maria Sharapova Advance in Italian Open
|
The Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova and the defending champion Maria Sharapova won in straight sets to reach the third round of the Italian Open in Rome. Kvitova overcame eight double faults to beat Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia, 7-5, 6-4. Sharapova held off a strong challenge from the American Christina McHale, 7-5, 7-5. Top-ranked Novak Djokovic made a solid return to red-clay courts, dominating the Australian teenager Bernard Tomic, 6-3, 6-3, to open his title defense on the men’s side.
|
Kvitova Petra;Sharapova Maria;Italian Open;Tennis
|
ny0164093
|
[
"us"
] |
2006/11/18
|
Washington: Fines in Hanford Cleanup
|
The CH2M Hill Hanford Group, a contractor hired to help clean up the Hanford nuclear reservation, will be fined $82,500 for violating nuclear safety requirements, the Department of Energy said. The company is the primary contractor responsible for retrieving hazardous and radioactive waste from 177 underground tanks. The toxic stew was left from decades of plutonium production for the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal. The preliminary notice cited a series of violations associated with two events, during which employees were contaminated with radioactivity, one on Sept. 21, 2005, and another on March 6. The company voluntarily reported the events and took corrective action, leading the Energy Department to reduce the proposed penalty by 50 percent, said Mark Spears, the company’s chief executive.
|
Fines (Penalties);Hazardous and Toxic Substances;Energy Department;CH2M Hill Hanford Group
|
ny0206484
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2009/06/03
|
Prince Charles to Attend D-Day Ceremonies
|
LONDON — After a week of controversy over the failure of the French and British governments to include Queen Elizabeth II in the 65th anniversary commemorations of the D-Day landings in Normandy, palace officials announced Tuesday that they had found what amounted to a face-saving solution — Prince Charles would join this weekend’s commemorations in his mother’s stead. Nobody, at least for the record, was prepared to say whether an intervention by President Obama, who will attend the ceremonies with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France , played a part in the announcement. At a White House news conference on Monday, Mr. Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said that the White House was “ working with those involved to see that ” the queen was invited. This was widely interpreted as a diplomatic way of saying that the United States had asked Britain and France to rectify what many, at least in Britain, had seen as an insult to the monarch, 83, and her husband, Prince Philip, 87. Much of the blame was laid with Mr. Sarkozy, for having said through aides that France regarded the commemorations as “primarily a Franco-American occasion,” and Britain’s prime minister, Gordon Brown, who arranged to attend the commemorations himself, but never, by his own officials’ acknowledgment, thought to ask if the queen would like to go. The lack of an invitation for the queen has generated a torrent of criticism in Britain, stoked in part by the fact that the D-Day landings were, overwhelmingly, carried out by American, British and Commonwealth troops. Free French commandos did participate, but theirs was a small force. British veterans’ leaders vented much of their displeasure at Mr. Brown, a former student radical who has had a reputation in government of squeezing British military budgets, and of having an uncomfortable relationship with British military commanders. The veterans have made it clear that they care little for the idea of Mr. Brown’s stepping into the Normandy ceremonies in the place of the queen and her husband, both of whom served in uniform during World War II. The queen was an army driver, and Prince Philip served in the Royal Navy, participating in sea battles in the Mediterranean. For the queen and Prince Philip, the poignancy of the weekend commemorations was likely to have been enhanced by the reality that neither can be sure, because of age, of attending the next major D-Day ceremonies in Normandy: for the 70th anniversary, in 2014. They played a major part in past commemorations. Officials at Clarence House, Prince Charles’s official residence in London, were cryptic in announcing his attendance at the commemorations. The 60-year-old prince served in Britain’s armed forces, commanding a navy ship and qualifying as a jet pilot. But commentators said that the arrangement amounted to a diplomatic finesse by the royal household, signaling that the queen was not ready to travel to Normandy as a last-minute invitee, but was keen, too, to put an end to the controversy over the affair. Buckingham Palace moved to take some of the heat out of the situation last week by issuing a statement saying that the royal family had “never expressed any anger or frustration” over the issue. But the statement appeared to lend backhand credence to newspaper reports that the queen was, in fact, furious at her exclusion, by noting pointedly that she would not be in Normandy, “as we have not received an official invitation to any of these events.” The statement followed urgent discussions between the palace and the prime minister’s office, a relationship that British newspapers say has been cool, if not chilly, during Mr. Brown’s two years at 10 Downing Street. But even then, Mr. Brown appeared not to be too troubled. After officials in Paris backtracked, saying “the queen is welcome to participate” if she chooses, Mr. Brown followed suit, implying that it was up to the queen to solicit an invitation, not for Mr. Brown to arrange one. “Should the queen or any other member of the royal family wish to attend, we would of course do everything possible to make that happen,” Mr. Brown said in a statement.
|
Charles Prince of Wales;Normandy (France);Elizabeth II Queen of Great Britain;Great Britain;Veterans;Royal Family;France;United States International Relations;International Relations
|
ny0207172
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2009/06/28
|
Rahway High the Big Winner at Rising Star Awards in New Jersey
|
MILLBURN THE little old ladies gave it everything they had, thumping their walkers and stomping their orthopedic shoes in unison on the stage of the Paper Mill Playhouse . But in the end, a cluster of energetic dancing cowboys edged them out. The performances were more evenly matched than they sound: the little old ladies were costumed teenagers representing Nutley High School’s spring musical, “The Producers,” at the Rising Star Awards on June 16. And the cowboys were from Rahway High School’s production of “The Will Rogers Follies,” the night’s biggest winner, with four awards, including in the top category, outstanding overall production. Five other schools rounded out the list of nominees for that award — Cranford High School (“Anything Goes”), Gill St. Bernard’s in Gladstone (“Into the Woods”), Summit High School (“The Music Man”), Union High School (“42nd Street”) and Fair Lawn High School (“Thoroughly Modern Millie”). The Rising Star winner who may be nipping hardest at fame’s heels was not twirling a lasso or wearing a gray wig. She is Julia Knitel, 16, winner of the outstanding lead actress award for playing the title role in Fair Lawn’s spring production of “Thoroughly Modern Millie.” Ms. Knitel recently completed her sophomore year, but a long slog through calculus with the rest of Fair Lawn’s class of 2011 is not in her future. In July, she will start rehearsals for the Roundabout Theater Company’s Broadway revival of “ Bye Bye Birdie ,” which is scheduled for preview performances in September at Henry Miller’s Theater. Ms. Knitel has a role in the ensemble, and it precludes the daily commute to school, so she will be tutored through her junior year. The Rising Star program , begun in 1996 to recognize excellence in high school musical theater, awards more than $130,000 in scholarships to teenagers from across New Jersey. One hundred high schools participate in the program. This year, the awards also offered the chance for the winners of the top lead actor and actress prizes to advance to the National High School Musical Theater Awards in New York, a new event that ends with a performance tomorrow after five days of practice and rehearsals. Sixteen professional theaters from around the country, including the Paper Mill, sent 32 nominees to the national awards, and one actor and one actress will win four-year scholarships to attend the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Ms. Knitel said she would attend the event with Anthony Bruno, who won the Rising Star for outstanding lead actor. He is 18 and just finished his senior year at the Hackensack campus of the Bergen County Academies, where he played the role of the Baker in “Into the Woods.” Mr. Bruno, who is from Paramus, said he would skip his graduation ceremony to participate. “When I found out I was nominated and that the nationals were on the same day as graduation, I turned to my mom and said, ‘Um, if I win, does this mean you’d want me to go to graduation?’ She was like, ‘Uh, no!’ ” Mr. Bruno said. As he accepted his award at the Paper Mill, he was near tears: “After seeing all the great performances here tonight, winning blows me away.” Alison Dooley, the musical theater teacher at Rahway High School, who won the award for outstanding achievement by a director, was less emotional. Perhaps, she said, that had something to do with her having won the award for outstanding achievement in choreography once and been nominated four other times. Ms. Knitel was still bubbling the day after the awards ceremony. “I was so excited about ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ I didn’t think I was going to win a Rising Star,” she said in a phone interview. “But I’ve been coming to Paper Mill since I was 9, and, to be honest, it’s really, really the best thing imaginable.”
|
Awards Decorations and Honors;Theater;Education and Schools;Paper Mill Playhouse;New Jersey
|
ny0192785
|
[
"science"
] |
2009/02/24
|
How Do Photochromic Eyeglass Lenses Work?
|
Q. My photochromic eyeglass lenses are supposed to darken in sunlight. When I look out the car windshield on a sunny day they don’t get dark, but when I am outside on a very overcast day, they do. What is this all about? A. Photochromic eyeglass lenses respond to ultraviolet radiation, high at the blue end of the light spectrum, not to visible light. How dark they get depends on whether UV rays actually reach the lenses. Car windshields block a significant part of the UV radiation, so your photochromic lenses will not darken enough to make driving comfortable on a bright, sunny day. When you are outside on a day with significant cloud cover, plenty of ultraviolet radiation still reaches your lenses, and they darken even though you do not need dark glasses to avoid glare. How fast photochromic lenses darken and how dark they get also depends on temperature. Most eyeglass dispensers will warn you that they change slowly and do not get as dark on a very hot day, but work fine in the cold. Glass photochromic lenses have silver-based crystals embedded in them that change orientation when exposed to UV radiation. Plastic lenses usually have a film of organic molecules that change shape upon UV exposure, though some have embedded particles. The chemical reaction that makes the molecules change shape and absorb visible light is slowed by heat, which speeds up the recovery reaction that makes them transparent.
|
Ultraviolet Light;Eyeglasses;Science and Technology
|
ny0100285
|
[
"business"
] |
2015/12/20
|
Theranos Founder Faces a Test of Technology, and Reputation
|
It should have been Theranos’s moment to shine. Last year, as the deadly and highly contagious Ebola virus threatened to spread around the globe, Theranos, a Silicon Valley start-up, was scrambling to find a test that could quickly detect if a person was infected. This was exactly the sort of thing the company was supposed to do. Its fundamental promise was to revolutionize laboratory testing by offering hundreds of different blood tests that could be done through a simple finger stick for a fraction of the cost of typical lab blood work. More than that, Elizabeth Holmes, who started the company in 2003, had a higher-minded purpose. She also wanted to defeat epidemics. The company devoted significant resources to the Ebola effort. “We stopped everything for Ebola — for the world,” says Richard Kovacevich, the former chief executive of Wells Fargo, who joined Theranos as a director in 2013. And then, nothing. Even as other companies received approval from regulators, Theranos watched from the sidelines. “I have no doubt we would have” gotten the green light for the tests, Mr. Kovacevich said. But the crisis ebbed, and the company says getting approval for that test is no longer a priority. The Ebola test was not a make-or-break moment for Theranos, but it was suggestive of the larger predicament in which the company finds itself today. A Silicon Valley story with intoxicating appeal, Theranos by some measures has a $9 billion valuation because, in part, of its claims that its proprietary technology has the potential to disrupt the established players in health care. Its protagonist was inspiring. Ms. Holmes, a young Stanford University dropout who speaks Mandarin, applied for her first patent before she was 20 and fearlessly commanded any room she entered. Her board was populated with former diplomats and leaders of the Senate. But an investigation published in The Wall Street Journal in October changed the narrative by raising serious concerns about whether the company’s technology actually works. Image A digital drop gauge, which checks the dimensions of machined parts, at a Theranos lab. Credit Carlos Chavarria for The New York Times Now, after a surprise inspection last summer, the Food and Drug Administration is requiring that Theranos’s equipment and individual tests go through the regulatory process and get approval. This will determine whether its foundational technology is a reality — or, like that Ebola test, an unfulfilled grand promise. While Theranos says it has conducted millions of tests, largely through a partnership with Walgreens, the drugstore chain, no one from outside Theranos has ever verified the technology. Institutions whose names were often linked with Theranos, like the Cleveland Clinic, insist they have not yet had a chance to use the technology. It has struggled to forge business relationships with other potential partners, like Safeway. Ms. Holmes said that she needed secrecy to keep others from stealing her ideas, but several former employees say that Ms. Holmes’s steely focus on her mission — an attribute deeply admired by outsiders — made it difficult for her to acknowledge any serious shortcomings in the company’s products. They say she would become angry and sometimes fire people who pointed out problems. She often spoke as though the company’s technology already existed, they said, rather than as if it were still in development. During a two-and-a-half-hour interview in the company’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., Ms. Holmes, wearing her trademark black turtleneck and slacks and flanked by two recently hired media relations professionals, said the data Theranos had submitted to regulators was proof the technology worked. The challenge now, she said, is to make a range of tests widely available to consumers and to expand Theranos beyond its limited presence in states like Arizona, where it teamed up with Walgreens, and California, where it is based. “We know how to do this very well,” she said. “We can replicate it.” While Theranos awaits the F.D.A.’s decision, it is sharply limited in how it can use its proprietary technology and must rely to a large extent on commercial testing machines, the same used by rival laboratories. Ms. Holmes will not say exactly how the company is conducting tests at the moment, but she did acknowledge that Theranos must satisfy regulators. In fact it is at the agency’s mercy. The F.D.A has approved only one of the company’s tests — a fairly simple one for herpes — and the company’s future now rests on whether the agency will approve the equipment and 120 other tests. Image A Theranos blood-testing machine. Credit Carlos Chavarria for The New York Times If she is worried, she doesn’t let on. At a very young age, she persuaded powerful people to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in her mission. She is not accustomed to failure, and from the beginning, had family connections, powerful mentors and true believers all working to ensure that her mission would succeed. That success is no longer assured, and she can’t wrest back her story line so easily. Dr. Bill Frist, the former Senate majority leader from Tennessee who joined Theranos as a director last year, supports Ms. Holmes and asserts that “the data I have seen speaks.” But he also points out that the Theranos story has taken on the cast of a vicious political campaign and there’s nothing more appealing than watching a front-runner fall from grace. In that role, he said, “you have to take the arrows.” Raised to Succeed Elizabeth Holmes was raised in a family where failure was not an option. The family’s wealth, power and political connections date to the 1890s, when Christian Rasmus Holmes, a Danish immigrant and physician, married Bettie Fleischmann, heiress to the namesake yeast fortune and a Cincinnati socialite with a fondness for Chinese bronzes. Elizabeth’s father, Christian IV, grew up in California, raised by his mother, a former Powers model, whose second husband was a prominent San Francisco businessman. The family moved in powerful circles. Mr. Holmes took a Hearst daughter to a debutante cotillion in 1967. Mr. Holmes had a distinguished career in public service, holding a number of senior government positions in Washington. He took on important roles in international trade and disaster relief, and his daughter recalls a home filled with photos of her father in conflict- and disaster-ridden areas around the world. Image A sink where solvents are used to clean parts after machining. Credit Carlos Chavarria for The New York Times Her mother had connections, too. Noel Anne Daoust worked as a congressional aide to Representative Charlie Wilson, among others, although she took a dozen years off to raise her two children. In the early 1990s, Mr. Holmes moved the family to Texas where he worked for energy companies, including Tenneco and Enron. (Mr. Holmes has since returned to public service and now works at the United States Agency for International Development.) Ms. Holmes attended the private St. John’s School in Houston, where her former headmaster John Allman recalled her “tireless optimism and a particularly warm smile.” She also insisted on learning Mandarin. While Ms. Holmes always assumed she would follow her parents into public service, she became attracted to the idea of becoming an entrepreneur. “I became really interested in the concept of building a company that could be a vehicle for making a difference because you can control your outcome,” she said in the interview this month. Ms. Holmes says that from an early age, she was obsessed with going to Stanford, “a symbol of Silicon Valley and invention.” Image Aluminum removed during machining is recycled. Credit Carlos Chavarria for The New York Times As a freshman at Stanford, she camped outside the office of Channing Robertson, her chemical engineering professor, to ask to join his laboratory, something typically open only to seniors and graduate students. She more than held her own in the lab, recalled Mr. Robertson, and the following summer she got a position at the Genome Institute of Singapore. When she returned to Stanford in the fall of 2003, then 19, she laid a thick patent application in front of Mr. Robertson. “I truly was astonished,” Mr. Robertson said. She had come up with an idea for a drug-delivery system that would be able to detect drug levels in the blood and wirelessly transmit those results. “It had never even occurred to me,” Mr. Robertson said, adding that he considers being Ms. Holmes’s mentor akin to teaching Beethoven to play piano or teaching science to Einstein. Ms. Holmes convinced her parents that her tuition money was better spent on starting a company. They also put in some of their retirement money, she says. Image Former Senator Bill Frist is on Theranos's board. Credit Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press And, like that, Theranos began. Seeking Venture Capital Her tuition money and her parents’ retirement funds were a beginning, but not enough to get Theranos off the ground, at least in the way Ms. Holmes was imagining. She energetically turned her attention to venture capital firms — dozens of which took a look, and in early fund rounds the company was turned down by some of Sand Hill Road’s biggest names, according to former Theranos employees, none of whom would speak for attribution, fearing retaliation from Theranos. They said venture capitalists were put off when Ms. Holmes wouldn’t demonstrate Theranos’s technology. Ms. Holmes insisted that she was the one being choosy. She was looking for patient investors. “You walk in the room, and the question is, ‘What is your exit strategy?’” recalled Ms. Holmes of some of those visits to potential backers. “You want to talk about your entrance strategy.” Those investors did not understand the scale of her ambition, she said. They saw as far as a new blood sugar or cholesterol test, but, she said, “we want to build a whole new lab.” But when it came to fund-raising, Ms. Holmes had an ace up her sleeve: family connections. Timothy Draper, the well-known venture capitalist, had been a neighbor when the Holmeses lived in California. The children played together. “I gave her her first million bucks to get the business going,” Mr. Draper says. “She totally blows me away with her vision.” Another anchor investor was Don Lucas. Mr. Lucas is a godfatherlike figure in Silicon Valley who built his reputation by investing in a little start-up called Oracle. To get to Mr. Lucas, Ms. Holmes relied on an introduction from a former top banking executive who went to school with her father at Wesleyan. Image Machinists at the Theranos lab. Credit Carlos Chavarria for The New York Times Mr. Lucas, who wasn’t available for an interview, served as chairman of the Theranos board for a time and brought in Lawrence Ellison, the founder and chief executive of Oracle, as another investor. In short order, Theranos raised more than $400 million, giving it, at one point, a valuation of $9 billion. That is a remarkable valuation for a start-up, but it might be justifiable if Theranos executes on Ms. Holmes’s vision: to harness engineering technology to make laboratory testing radically cheaper and easier than tests from established behemoths like Quest Diagnostics and the Laboratory Corporation of America. Beyond cost, Ms. Holmes wants to allow people to bypass doctors and established labs to order and receive their own affordable diagnostic tests, accessible at the pharmacy down the street. (This spring, Theranos lobbied for and won a change in Arizona state law allowing consumers to order lab tests without a doctor’s prescription.) Additionally, the Theranos technology relies on pricking a finger, rather than using a needle, to draw blood. In effect, Theranos sees itself as akin to the personal computer, which displaced mainframes. Many of the company’s early efforts were far from successful, according to five former employees. Early on, Ms. Holmes courted pharmaceutical manufacturers, where the Theranos technology would allow companies to conduct clinical trials at lower costs. She had no trouble making deals with pharmaceutical companies. “She had every pharmaceutical company eating out of her hand,” one former employee said. But, ultimately, those deals went nowhere, as the technology worked inconsistently, they say. Image Richard Kovacevich, chairman of Wells Fargo, joined Theranos's board in 2013. Credit Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News Ms. Holmes argues that the company’s focus over time simply shifted away from the pharmaceutical industry, but it was able to successfully use its technology. “We can show you the programs we’ve done,” she said in the interview. But when pressed for examples, the company did not provide details. Pfizer said its work with the company was limited and ended years ago. GlaxoSmithKline also said it had not conducted any work with Theranos in the last two years and that none of it had involved its clinical trials. Another early idea was to create a sleek version of the Theranos blood analysis machine for the home, so that people could prick their fingers and the machine would send the results to physicians and caregivers. The company hired top designers from places like Apple. “The promise of what this could do in terms of personalized medicine was huge,” one former employee said. But it didn’t work. The machine at the time was simply too big, two former employees said, making it an unlikely consumer product. More recently, Theranos pitched a device to the military, but those attempts have also stumbled. In 2012, Theranos representatives visited Fort Detrick in Maryland. Theranos wanted its equipment to be used in the field with soldiers, according to one individual with direct knowledge of the meeting. But the Theranos equipment was heavier than the hand-held device the Defense Department was already using for some tests, and the Theranos tests still needed F.D.A. approval. Theranos says it never intended the meeting to be anything other than an informal demonstration of its technology. Ms. Holmes insists that the company is making steady progress toward developing tests that will allow people to begin to take control of chronic diseases like diabetes. “Eventually, we’ll get there,” she said. Image George P. Shultz, the former secretary of state, was recruited to Theranos's board in 2011. Credit Rex/Associated Press Ms. Holmes also insists that her employees do not hesitate to tell her when something can’t be done, but that she looks for people who share her sense of dedication. “It is very much to me about a mission,” she said, “not a job.” Taking Back the Story In recent years, Ms. Holmes says, the company’s sole focus has been to make lab tests widely available by teaming up with drugstores like Walgreens. Theranos prices, posted on the company website, are a fraction of prevailing rates charged by competitors. The big challenge, according to Mr. Kovacevich, was for Theranos to become a household name. As a young woman in technology, a female entrepreneur worth billions of dollars, Ms. Holmes was the perfect vehicle for getting the message across. “We didn’t need advertising,” Mr. Kovacevich said. “You’ll get the best publicity you’ve ever had.” And, in fact, Ms. Holmes appeared on any number of glossy magazine covers, including T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Though she now faces harsh criticism from the outside, she is still surrounded largely by true believers. Her younger brother, Christian Holmes V, is an executive at Theranos, as is her former Stanford professor, Channing Robertson. Her board of advisers, despite their impressive names, have had little say about how the company operates. Ms. Holmes persuaded George P. Shultz, the former secretary of state, whom she met at a conference, to join in 2011. He then contacted people he knew, like Henry Kissinger and Dr. Frist. “These were all just friends of George,” said Mr. Kovacevich, who was also introduced to Ms. Holmes by Mr. Shultz. At this point, her investors and the advisers seem willing to be patient. Elizabeth “will make sacrifices to go slow,” Mr. Kovacevich said. “She knows she has to make money. She wants to change the world in health care.” But that patience may be wearing thin. After more than 10 years, Ms. Holmes is talking about ways she can remain private — getting new investors to buy out the old ones. The company declined to provide financial information, but she was adamant that Theranos does not currently need more money. “We’re not in a position in which we need to raise equity capital,” she said. “We’re in a position where we will continue to grow from operations.” While Ms. Holmes argues that Theranos invited the F.D.A. review, the company seems to have been caught off guard after the F.D.A. unexpectedly inspected its manufacturing facilities, where it makes its proprietary equipment, in August and September. The agency told Theranos that it had to comply with its rules, rather than those of other regulatory agencies. According to correspondence made available through a Freedom of Information Act request, Theranos complained of “a fundamental policy shift that is uniquely and highly prejudicial to Theranos.” Now the company must get approval for all of its equipment — including the devices that are used to analyze and perform tests as well as its so-called nanotainers that are used to collect blood from finger pricks. Ms. Holmes insists, however, that the company can still rely on some of its technology, which she won’t specify. She is now trying to take back control of the Theranos story. She talks about publishing the company’s internal data, and the company has plans to hold a session with outside experts even sooner to try to convince the doubters. The Cleveland Clinic says it has not reached a final agreement to study the technology. And there is the matter of the black turtlenecks. She claims her mother dressed her and her brother in black turtlenecks when they were young and now she finds them comfortable. Moreover, she wanted to deflect attention from what she might be wearing. But now she admits she is frustrated about how to handle the media fascination they seem to have created. Perhaps, she joked, “I should bring them with me and give them to people as gifts.”
|
Theranos;Elizabeth Holmes;Medical test;FDA;Blood;Venture capital
|
ny0164524
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2006/10/03
|
Queens: Arrest in Fatal Shooting
|
A teenager was arrested yesterday and charged with murder in the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old boy in Far Rockaway last week, the police said. The suspect, Shakil Chandler, 19, of Far Rockaway, was also charged with criminal possession of a weapon. Investigators said he shot the boy, Mario Young, in the head on the night of Sept. 25 on Beach Channel Drive. The police said the two, both of Far Rockaway, were involved in a continuing dispute.
|
Murders and Attempted Murders;Queens (NYC)
|
ny0052833
|
[
"sports",
"worldcup"
] |
2014/07/05
|
World Cup 2014: Ángel di María Emerges as a Threat for Argentina
|
BUENOS AIRES — Argentina has been disjointed at the World Cup, relying heavily on Lionel Messi for its goals and a couple of narrow escapes. Messi’s fellow forwards, Gonzalo Higuaín and Sergio Agüero, have fumbled, and after Agüero was injured, his replacement, Ezequiel Lavezzi, played poorly enough that he was substituted. In recent days, however, it is not Messi who has monopolized the front pages of the nation’s newspapers, but rather the gaunt face of his midfield partner, Ángel di María. Di María is emerging alongside Messi as Argentina’s key to winning the World Cup. “When Messi or di María gets hold of the ball, the panorama changes,” Diego Latorre wrote in a newspaper column criticizing Argentina’s lack of collective strategy under Coach Alejandro Sabella. Di María, 26, was instrumental in Argentina’s final group match, a victory over Nigeria, but he became a national hero this week after scoring the late goal that beat Switzerland in the Round of 16. With only moments of extra time remaining, he galloped toward the edge of the area, received a pass from Messi and curled the ball into the bottom corner. Image Di María, top left, curled a low shot past goalkeeper Diego Benaglio to lift Argentina past Switzerland. Credit Pawel Kopczynski, via Reuters In its quarterfinal Saturday, Argentina will face Belgium, which beat the United States in the Round of 16. Messi and di María are from Rosario, home to Argentina’s most fervent fans and a breeding ground for soccer talent: Five players on Argentina’s roster were born there. Di María considers the city so important to his development that he tattooed a phrase of gratitude to its streets on his arm. Growing up in Rosario, di María was hyperactive. To channel his energy, a doctor suggested to his mother, Diana Hernández, that he take up a sport. The family briefly considered karate, according to an interview Hernández gave to a Spanish newspaper. But in Rosario, there was really only one option. “We preferred he play soccer,” Hernández said. Youth coaches molded di María’s restlessness into a valuable attribute. He is a tireless runner, and Argentina’s quickest player. Di María ran with such vigor during a World Cup qualifying match last year against Bolivia — played in the thin air of La Paz, 12,000 feet above sea level — that he needed to be given oxygen from a small cylinder. “It’s like he has four lungs, not two,” said Domingo Fleitas, 53, a street hawker in Buenos Aires who was selling plastic figurines of Argentina’s players. Fleitas had put posters of di María and Messi on the wall behind his makeshift stall. How Much Will Brazil Miss Neymar? Teams that have relied heavily on one player being involved in its scoring chances have fared much better than teams that have shared those opportunities more evenly. “The only player that can relieve the pressure on Messi is di María,” Fleitas added. Di María quickly drew notice, and Rosario Central, one of the two big clubs in the city, signed him from a neighborhood team, El Torito. Central agreed to pay with 26 soccer balls for di María, who was 6 then, but according to lore the balls never arrived. As he progressed through the Central youth system, di María also helped his father, a coalman, at work. He would shovel coal into sacks, then travel to training, arriving with blackened hands, according to Marcelo Trivisonno, one of his youth coaches. Di María did not astonish observers in the manner of Messi, a prodigy who left for Barcelona when he was 13 , or Agüero, who debuted in Argentina’s first division when he was 15. Instead, at 16, di María was a substitute for Central’s youth team. “He wasn’t among the best players,” Trivisonno said in an interview. But di María eventually earned a starting berth on the first team. Like most young talent in Argentina, he was briskly transferred to Europe. Di María signed with Benfica in Portugal when he was 19. He scored the winning goal for Argentina in the final of the Beijing Olympics (2008), won a league title with Benfica and then moved to Real Madrid in 2010 in a transfer worth more than $30 million. Best of the World Cup In these interactive graphics, videos, slide shows and articles, The Times covered the action on the field and far from it. Dig in, but be sure to save time for Spot the Ball. Last summer, when Real Madrid signed forward Gareth Bale — who, like di María, is left-footed — for a record fee of $132 million, it was widely expected that di María would be sold. But Carlo Ancelotti, the Real Madrid coach, liked what he saw in di María, and found a way to accommodate him in central midfield. The move was among the most important ones he made this season. Di María finished with 11 goals and 24 assists, and it was his penetrating run that led to Bale’s key goal in the Champions League final against Atlético Madrid. Di María was named the game’s most valuable player. “I don’t feel inferior to anybody,” he said in a recent interview, when asked whether he felt inhibited by Bale and another teammate, Cristiano Ronaldo, who was voted the world’s best player in 2013. Similarly, for Argentina, he might be considered the least fantastic of the “fantastic four” that also includes Messi, Agüero and Higuaín. But di María has excelled at the World Cup, where fans have chanted his nickname Fideo, which translates roughly as noodle, a reference to his lanky torso and lean face. Some people predicted di María’s influential performances. On the eve of the World Cup, Horacio Pagani, a renowned sports journalist in Argentina, explored how the country might win its first World Cup since 1986. “Argentina has Messi,” he wrote. “And it has di María.”
|
2014 World Cup;Soccer;Lionel Messi;Argentina;Belgium;Real Madrid;Angel Di Maria
|
ny0208506
|
[
"technology",
"personaltech"
] |
2009/06/25
|
Decoding Battery-Life Numbers for Laptops
|
This is a story of truth, greed and the American Way. Oh, and also laptop battery-life benchmarks. Two things about battery-life measurements for laptops: First, they usually bear little relationship to reality. I don’t know about you, but my “five-hour” battery often dies halfway between J.F.K. and LAX. Second, laptop ads always use that essential tool of wiggle-roomers everywhere, “Up to.” As in, “Up to five hours.” Folks, “up to” is one of the greatest cop-outs in the English language. You know what? I’ve got a laptop that gets “up to” 1,000 hours on a charge! Because “up to” just means “something below this number.” Well, so what, right? Why pick on laptop makers? Every industry does it, right? Wrong. In 2003, the digital camera industry had a similar problem. Every company was advertising its cameras’ battery life in overblown terms. Each had its own testing protocol, none representative of real life. Pretty soon, consumers realized that the battery statistics were basically meaningless. Eventually, CIPA (the Camera and Imaging Products Association), a camera-industry trade group, took action. It developed a standardized battery-life test. You take one photo every 30 seconds — half with the flash on, half with the flash off. You zoom all the way in or all the way out before every shot. You leave the screen on all the time. After every 10 shots, you turn off the camera for awhile. And so on. In other words, you test the camera pretty much the way people would use it in the real world, erring on the side of conservatism. Nowadays, all cameras are tested and advertised this way. And CIPA ratings now match up with reality. But laptops are more complicated, right? Many more factors determine battery life: what you’re doing, how bright the screen is, what wireless features are turned on, and so on. Yet other industries have faced this problem, too. Cellphones, for example: The battery dies a lot faster when you’re making calls than when you’re just carrying the thing in your pocket. Cars: You generally get much better mileage on the highway than in the city. Even iPods: You get much better battery life when you’re playing music rather than video. So their manufacturers do the only logical thing — they give you the worst-case/best-case numbers. When you shop for a cellphone, you see, “4 hours talk time/300 hours standby.” When you shop for a car, you see “26 m.p.g. city/32 highway.” When looking over an iPod , you see “24 hours of music playback/6 hours of video.” And everybody’s happy. But with laptops, what do we get? “Up to five hours.” This is important, because battery life has become a huge selling point. People have finally managed to unlearn the Megahertz Myth (hallelujah!), so they’re looking at battery life as a crucial buying factor. Why doesn’t the computer industry invent a standard battery test? Actually, they have. Those “up to” numbers are the results of a test suite called MobileMark 2007. There are a few problems with the MobileMark test. One of them is the identity of its inventor. It’s Bapco (Business Application Performance Corporation), a trade group led by Intel and composed primarily of laptop and chip manufacturers. Let’s see: a benchmark developed by precisely the companies who profit if battery life looks good. Isn’t that like putting the foxes in charge of henhouse inspections? Another problem: Unlike CIPA’s camera tests, the MobileMark test protocol doesn’t reflect real-world use. Consider, for example, the screen. It’s the most power-hungry component of a laptop, so specifying how bright it is during your test is extremely important. Well, the MobileMark test specifies that you have the screen set to 60 nits (a brightness measurement). Not to nitpick, but at full brightness, the screens on modern laptops put out 250 to 300 nits. The MobileMark test, in other words, specifies setting the screen at a fraction of full brightness — a setting that few people use in the real world. ( Advanced Micro Devices says that 60 nits is about 20 percent brightness on most laptops. Intel says it’s closer to 50 percent. Either way, it’s too low.) The MobileMark test, furthermore, doesn’t specify whether battery-eating features like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are turned on during testing. That decision is left up to the manufacturers when they test their own laptops. Hmm, wonder what they usually decide? Finally, there’s the actual MobileMark test. Actually, there are three of them. In the DVD test, you play a DVD movie over and over until the battery’s dead — a worst-case, shortest-life situation. In the Productivity test, an automated software robot performs business tasks like crunching numbers in Excel, manipulating graphics in Photoshop and sending e-mail. This ought to be the most realistic test — except that it doesn’t include any use of Web browsers, iTunes, Windows Media Player, online TV shows or games. Oops. In the final test, called Reading, an automated script pretends to read a PDF document, pausing two minutes on each page. This, clearly, is the best case; it’s not wildly different, in fact, from leaving the laptop unattended. So which of those tests gets reported in the laptop ads? Intel says it’s the Productivity test, but why aren’t we allowed to see all three results? All of this brings us to Advanced Micro Devices, which has spent several weeks blogging about all of this silliness and bringing it to the attention of tech writers like me. A.M.D. thinks that the industry should adopt a much more realistic benchmark for laptops — and then represent the results in a style that matches cellphones, iPods and cars. It’s proposing a new logo that clearly shows the best-case/worst-case numbers. Your laptop’s box might say, “2:30 Active Time/4:00 Resting Time.” This idea seems screamingly obvious to just about everyone who hears it. And yet, predictably, A.M.D. reports that it is meeting with “considerable resistance” from the big industry players. Intel, A.M.D.’s archrival, seems especially annoyed by all this muckraking. A spokesman, Bill Kircos, says that MobileMark is “a well thought, well debated and very sound benchmark.” Besides, if a shopper doesn’t like it, “there are a wealth of independent tests, reviews, magazine articles and company information out there to see what people are getting on battery life, in addition to the three-faced MobileMark benchmark.” Wait — consumers are supposed to make up for MobileMark’s failings by spending hours hunting online for realistic battery tests? Wouldn’t it save effort all around to have a realistic, reliable test? That’s how the cellphone, auto and music-player industries do it; why not computer makers? That one’s easy: because there are big dollars at stake. People pay more when they think they’re getting better battery life. By misleading the public with bogus battery statistics, stores and computer and chip makers make more money. No wonder cynics call it “benchmarketing.” (Intel’s spokesman also told me that A.M.D. has yet to propose a better battery-testing regimen to Bapco, of which A.M.D. is also a member. A.M.D. retorts that that’s not necessarily true: “All Bapco discussions are confidential. If Bapco is willing to waive these confidentiality obligations or make its meeting minutes public, A.M.D. will be happy to discuss what it has or hasn’t presented to Bapco.”) It’s pretty obvious why Intel wants to keep the status quo. But what’s A.M.D.’s motive in stirring up this hornet’s nest, anyway? According to tests by Laptop magazine and others, A.M.D. laptops in general have shorter battery life than Intel laptops. But in more realistic battery-life tests, the gap between A.M.D. and Intel laptops closes somewhat. So yes, everybody’s got an agenda on this one. But yours should be to support A.M.D.’s campaign It’s logical, it’s fair — and it’s long overdue.
|
Batteries;Laptop;Computers and the Internet;Advertising Marketing;Camera
|
ny0215644
|
[
"world",
"americas"
] |
2010/04/27
|
Noriega Extradited to France to Face Charges
|
MEXICO CITY — Two decades after United States troops invaded Panama and arrested Manuel Noriega , the country’s dictator, Mr. Noriega left federal prison in Miami on Monday and was extradited to France. After the State Department authorized his extradition, Mr. Noriega was put on an Air France flight for Paris, said one of his lawyers, John May. Mr. Noriega had lost a court battle seeking to be returned to Panama after completing a federal prison term. In 1999, he was convicted in France in absentia of laundering more than $3 million in drug profits by buying luxury apartments there. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. France has agreed to hold a new trial. Mr. Noriega was also convicted in Panama of ordering the murder of political opponents, as well as embezzlement and corruption. Despite the more serious charges there, Mr. Noriega, who is in his seventies, fought to return to Panama. Elderly prisoners there are permitted to serve prison terms at home. Convicted in federal court in Miami of turning Panama into a transshipment point for Colombian traffickers smuggling cocaine to the United States, Mr. Noriega was sentenced to 30 years in 1992. In federal prison, he was a model prisoner. The judge who presided over his trial declared him a prisoner of war, which allowed him privileges in jail, including access to a telephone. With time off for good behavior and other credits, he was scheduled to be released in September 2007. He remained in prison, though, as he fought extradition to France. Mr. Noriega argued that as a prisoner of war, he should be returned to Panama. But in January, the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal , clearing the way for his extradition. The United States military invaded Panama on Dec. 20, 1989, to overthrow Mr. Noreiga and bring him to the United States for trial. The Panamanian Defense Forces, which have since been disbanded, put up little resistance and Mr. Noriega took refuge in the Vatican Embassy. American troops surrounded the building and blasted heavy metal music to wear him down. He surrendered on Jan, 2, 1990, 10 days after he had entered the embassy, walking out to waiting soldiers who handcuffed him and put him on a plane to Miami, where he would spend the next two decades.
|
Noriega Manuel Antonio;Extradition;United States International Relations;Money Laundering;Panama
|
ny0051955
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2014/10/23
|
Kim Jong-un Gave Order to Free American, North Korea Says
|
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Wednesday that its leader, Kim Jong-un , had personally ordered the release of Jeffrey E. Fowle, an American, after considering requests from President Obama. Mr. Fowle, an Ohio municipal worker and one of three Americans detained in North Korea, had been held for nearly six months before a United States military plane picked him up Tuesday. He arrived Wednesday in Ohio, where he was reunited with his wife and three children, who rushed to greet his plane when he arrived at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton. Mr. Kim recently reappeared in state-run news media after a six-week absence, ending widespread speculation about his health and his grip on power. With the statement on Wednesday, North Korea appeared to be burnishing Mr. Kim’s image at home as a leader capable of doing a favor for the American president. Analysts also said the sudden release of Mr. Fowle might have been a conciliatory gesture from Mr. Kim to bolster his government’s efforts to engage Washington in a dialogue. The report was the North’s first public comment on the circumstances surrounding Mr. Fowle’s release. Washington has not offered an explanation, except for thanking the Swedish government, which maintains an embassy in Pyongyang and has represented the interests of Americans held in the North. The United States and North Korea remain technically at war after the Korean War was halted in 1953 in a truce. Mr. Fowle, 56, of Miamisburg, Ohio, was released while he was awaiting trial on charges of committing an antistate crime. He entered North Korea in late April on a tourist visa and was arrested in May after leaving a Bible behind. North Korea considers any attempt by an outsider to disseminate Christian messages a crime aimed at undermining its political system. The statement released by the family gave thanks to God “for his hand of protection over Jeff these past six months” and said that Mr. Fowle wanted people to know that the North Korean government had treated him well. The statement also said that although the family was “overjoyed” by his return, they were mindful that two other Americans, Kenneth Bae and Matthew Todd Miller, were still being held and understood “the disappointment their families are experiencing today that their loved ones did not return home with Jeff.” Mr. Fowle was present when a lawyer and family friend read the statement in front of his home, but he made no comment, only smiling when reporters asked how he was feeling. Few had anticipated his release. In early September, the North Korean government arranged American news media interviews with Mr. Fowle and the two other detained Americans in which they beseeched Washington to send a high-profile envoy to negotiate their freedom. But United States officials said Pyongyang had repeatedly rejected their offer to send a high-level representative. One of the Americans still in detention, Mr. Bae, was arrested in late 2012 and later sentenced to 15 years of hard labor on charges of trying to build an underground proselytizing network in a plot to overthrow the government. Last month, the North’s Supreme Court convicted the other American, Mr. Miller, on spying charges and sentenced him to six years of hard labor. North Korea later said that Mr. Miller, 25, of Bakersfield, Calif., had entered the country hoping to be arrested and become an eyewitness to prison life there. It said that Mr. Miller had torn up his tourist visa upon arriving in Pyongyang in April so that his unruly behavior could land him in a prison camp, where he hoped to collect evidence of human rights violations. The detention of the three Americans strained North Korea’s already rocky relations with the United States, which has been trying to isolate the country with the help of United Nations sanctions imposed for the North’s development and testing of nuclear weapons. Washington had accused Pyongyang of holding the Americans as “pawns” — human bargaining chips who could force the United States to make concessions, such as taking part in bilateral talks that the North has long sought. After Mr. Fowle’s release, the United States urged North Korea to free the remaining two Americans. Mr. Fowle’s release comes at a time when North Korea appears to be seeking a thaw in its relations with its neighbors after years of escalating tensions, marked by the nuclear and missile tests. A high-ranking delegation from the North made a surprise visit to South Korea this month and agreed to resume high-level inter-Korean dialogue, although the two Koreas later exchanged fire across their land and sea borders. North Korea has also agreed to investigate the fates of Japanese citizens allegedly kidnapped by its agents decades ago.
|
North Korea;Jeffrey Edward Fowle;Kim Jong-un
|
ny0018751
|
[
"sports"
] |
2013/07/28
|
Diver Secures China’s Eighth Gold Medal in Nine Events
|
He Zi claimed her second title of the world championships and kept up China’s dominance at the diving pool with an easy win in the women’s 3-meter springboard. She led after every round on the way to a total score of 383.40 points. The real drama was for the other spots on the podium. China’s Wang Han held on for the silver with 356.25, while Canada’s Pamela Ware pulled out the bronze with 350.25. China has won eight of nine events at the scenic Montjuic pool overlooking Barcelona, Spain. ■ Germany’s Thomas Lurz won another gold medal at the world swimming championships, touching first in the grueling 25-kilometer open water. Italy’s Martina Grimaldi claimed victory in the women’s race. Lurz, 33, took his second gold of the championships and seventh career victory at the worlds. He won with a time of 4 hours 47 minutes 27 seconds to beat Belgium’s Brian Ryckeman by 0.4 of a second, in essentially a photo finish after nearly five hours in Barcelona’s harbor. The bronze went to Russia’s Evegenii Drattcev, who edged out an American, Alex Meyer, for a spot on the podium by 0.1 of a second.
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Diving;Swimming;China
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ny0261758
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2011/06/24
|
Obama Speech Interrupted by Gay Marriage Supporters
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President Obama said he expected some heckling and he got it. More than 600 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people paid $1,250 each to attend a Democratic fund-raising dinner in Manhattan on Thursday and, to the vocal disappointment of some, they did not hear him endorse same-sex marriage generally or the bill that would legalize it in New York State. Mr. Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney, had said early in the day that the president would not announce any shift in his longstanding but “evolving” position on same-sex marriage — that it is a matter for states to decide. Even so, some in the mostly male audience at the hotel ballroom seemed to hang on his words as if waiting for just such a shift. Though it never came, Mr. Obama nonetheless got several bursts of applause and standing ovations along with the heckling — a mix that captured both the frustration of many in attendance with the administration’s policies on same-sex marriage and the recognition that Mr. Obama had achieved more than they would ever get from a Republican president. The “Gala With the Gay Community” was Mr. Obama’s first such fund-raising event as president. Both he and the people who introduced him — the actor Neil Patrick Harris and Jonathan Hopkins, a decorated veteran of three tours in Afghanistan who had to leave the Army last year because of the “ don’t ask, don’t tell ” policy — cited the repeal of that law, the passage of a hate-crimes law and other administration actions, evoking much applause. The first really enthusiastic response, however, came with Mr. Harris’s mention that Mr. Obama had made the first appointment of a transgender person to federal office. Mr. Obama was halfway through his nearly 25-minute remarks before he got to the subject of gay rights. “Ever since I had a memory about what my mother taught me, and my grandparents taught me, I believed that discriminating against people was wrong,” he said. “I had no choice, I was born that way,” he said, to appreciative laughter at his lifting a line from a song by Lady Gaga. “In Hawaii,” he added, to more laughter. When he continued, Mr. Obama came closest to suggesting support for same-sex marriage by saying: “And I believed that discrimination because of somebody’s sexual orientation or gender identity ran counter to who we are as a people. It’s a violation of the basic tenets on which this nation was founded. I believe that gay couples deserve the same human rights as every other couple in this country.” Even as most of those in the room jumped up to applaud, whoop and holler, a woman yelled out for the first of several times, “Marriage!” Several others took up the chant. “I heard that,” Mr. Obama said. “Believe it or not I anticipated that.” Mr. Obama briefly alluded to the bill in the New York Senate to legalize same-sex marriage . “Right now I understand there’s a little debate right here in New York,” he said. But he added only that “New York is doing exactly what democracies are supposed to do” by debating the issue.
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Obama Barack;Same-Sex Marriage Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships;Manhattan (NYC);Homosexuality
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ny0269278
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2016/04/28
|
For Dusty Baker, a Life in Baseball Trying Not to Be Defined
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WASHINGTON — The two labels we affix to Dusty Baker say more about baseball than they do about him. “The thing that really bothers me is how every time they mention my name, I’m either 66 years old or I’m an African-American manager,” Baker said before batting practice Tuesday, on a bench in the Washington Nationals ’ dugout. “Why is either one so important, you know what I mean?” This is how Baker talks: verbal volleys, back and forth, not so much a challenge but a checkpoint to make sure you understand him, to see if you have something to add. Why should baseball have just one older manager (the Mets’ Terry Collins) and just one other African-American (the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Dave Roberts) in that role? Experience and diversity ought to count for more. Baker is often asked to ponder these questions, but he would rather not. His job is to get the most from the Nationals, a team with immense talent but little to show for it: two division titles in four years, without advancing in the playoffs. Now they are 14-5, leading the National League East, showing none of the dysfunction Baker had heard about. A team stalked by expectations appears free of pressure. “If you think that having fun’s exhausting, try being miserable,” Baker said. “That’s a nightmare, am I right? Oh, boy, there’s nothing worse than being miserable where you work.” The Nationals lost to Philadelphia on Tuesday, 4-3, and starter Max Scherzer did not pitch well. He struggled to command his fastball and needed nearly 100 pitches to wade through five innings. Yet with the Nationals trailing by two runs and the pitcher’s spot due up, Baker let Scherzer hit for himself. “That fired me up,” Scherzer said. “I wanted to go up and get a knock, go out there for the sixth and try to pitch my best — and it worked.” Image Baker congratulated Daniel Murphy after he hit a two-run home run against the Braves earlier this month. Credit Greg Fiume/Getty Images Scherzer singled to start a game-tying rally, then powered through a scoreless sixth. Baker believed in him, proved it with his decision, and Scherzer — the $210 million ace of the staff — left the ballpark feeling better about himself. “Managers can say whatever they want,” Scherzer said, “but when they do something, that’s when everybody feels it.” Scherzer, who has played for four managers in the last four seasons, said Baker reminded him of the retired Jim Leyland, another skilled communicator who was almost disarmingly honest and direct. Of course, Leyland was also heralded for his in-game strategy, a skill for which Baker often gets less credit. Only one active manager, the San Francisco Giants’ Bruce Bochy, has more victories than Baker, who is 17th on the career list with 1,685 through Wednesday. Bochy has 1,714. “We know how he handles the clubhouse and how the players love playing for him — we all heard that,” said General Manager Mike Rizzo, who hired Baker last fall to replace Matt Williams, who had not connected well with players and had been too rigid with game management. “But what I have seen is: This guy knows the X’s and O’s of this game as good as any manager I’ve ever been around,” Rizzo said. “His preparation for a ballgame is unbelievable.” Baker prepared for 19 years as a player without even realizing it. He would pepper his managers with questions born of curiosity, not ambition. He was 37 when the 1987 season began without him, and a seismic baseball moment that April changed his life. Al Campanis, the Dodgers’ general manager, who had played with Jackie Robinson, said on “Nightline” that blacks might lack the “necessities” to be managers or general managers. The remarks, which led to Campanis’s resignation, had highlighted the institutional mind-set behind baseball’s poor hiring record for those roles. “I was surprised, because he was one of the best ones there,” Baker said. “I was like, ‘Damn, if he feels like that, how’s everybody else feel?’ Al was probably one of the most fair guys there.” Baker had always been viewed as a leader, in the Marines and in baseball. After Campanis’s remarks, he said, opportunities started to arise for him and a few others. When the San Francisco Giants offered Baker a coaching job after the 1987 season, he did not ignore the sign. This was a calling, Baker believed, and by 1993 he was managing the team. He was the N.L. manager of the year three times and reached the 2002 World Series, but that is as far as Baker has gotten. He led the Chicago Cubs and the Cincinnati Reds to the playoffs, but was fired by the Reds after losing a wild-card game in 2013. Baker spent the last two years at home near Sacramento, where he ran a vineyard, gardened, watched his teenage son play baseball and wrote a book, “Kiss the Sky,” about his weekend at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. He also analyzed the playoffs for TBS. Image Baker met with Angels Manager Mike Scioscia, left, during the 2002 World Series as manager of the Giants. Credit Jeff Haynes/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images “I still watched baseball, because I love baseball, but you don’t let yourself get lonely or unhappy,” Baker said. “I was going to have a good time no matter what, anyway. I’m happy to be here, but I wasn’t unhappy not to be here.” As opportunities go, his new job is hard to match. The Nationals have the reigning N.L. most valuable player, Bryce Harper, who appears poised for an encore. Their staff, under the new pitching coach Mike Maddux, has been dominant. The team is using more defensive shifts, blunting the notion that Baker would be resistant to data-driven strategy. Bill Walsh, the Hall of Fame football coach of the San Francisco 49ers, would tell Baker to keep evolving, to constantly seek what is new. It helps to have a 36-year-old daughter and a 17-year-old son, Baker said, because their ages bookend the ages on his roster. “You walk into his office, he’s listening to hip-hop music — today’s hip-hop music,” said outfielder Chris Heisey, who had also played for Baker in Cincinnati. “And then an old-school song will come on, and he knows that, too. So he’s well versed in a lot of different areas of life, and he’s got something in common with everybody. He’ll tell you, too: He knows a lot about a lot.” Baker knows enough not to be easily defined. He cares less now about outside critics, he said, and does not frame his job here by the pursuit of an elusive championship ring. “One wouldn’t satisfy me,” Baker said. “I always said if I win one, I’d want to win two. And then, who knows, I’d want to win three. I ain’t limiting myself.” For Johnnie B. Baker Jr., there will always be more frontiers to explore.
|
Baseball;Dusty Baker;Coaches;Washington Nationals;Black People,African-Americans;Aging
|
ny0177099
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2007/09/11
|
Clinton to Return Money Linked to Fund-Raiser
|
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton ’s presidential campaign announced last night that it would return about $850,000 to about 260 donors who had been recruited or tapped by Norman Hsu , the disgraced Clinton campaign fund-raiser who recently fled arrest and is now under investigation for his fund-raising practices. The Clinton campaign also disclosed last night that it would begin running criminal background checks on its bundlers — the dozens of individuals who raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors on behalf of a candidate, as Mr. Hsu had done for Mrs. Clinton. A Clinton adviser said that “vigorous additional vetting” of the bundlers, including the criminal checks, would begin this week, and that the campaign was hiring people for that purpose. Mr. Hsu’s legal problems have created the Clinton campaign’s first major in-house controversy. While Mr. Hsu donated $600,000 to an array of candidates over the last three years, he had become primarily a Clinton fund-raiser for this presidential cycle — one of the so-called Hillraisers who held events for Mrs. Clinton and aided her in the money race with a leading Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. The Clinton adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal campaign deliberations, said Mrs. Clinton, of New York, “did not want the Hsu issue to be a distraction for the campaign, and wants to make sure this doesn’t happen again.” “We wanted to get a few days ahead of any problems that come out, rather than be a few days behind them,” the adviser said. The adviser declined to comment on whether the Clinton campaign had determined that Mr. Hsu violated federal election law by recruiting people to donate to the Clinton campaign and then paying those people to cover their donations. Some generous donations associated with Mr. Hsu have been revealed to be from people who appear to be from fairly modest backgrounds. The New York Times reported on Sunday that a company controlled by Mr. Hsu had paid a total of more than $100,000 to at least nine people who made campaign contributions to Mrs. Clinton and others through Mr. Hsu. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun an inquiry into whether Mr. Hsu paid people to give money to Mrs. Clinton and other candidates, The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday, quoting anonymous sources. At least some of those donors may have been investors in a business venture Mr. Hsu was running. At the end of June, Mrs. Clinton had about $45 million on hand for her presidential campaign; $850,000 is less than 2 percent of that sum, but, her advisers say, it is a sizable amount that would have been welcome for advertising purchases ahead. A spokesman for former Senator John Edwards’s presidential campaign said that it began doing criminal background checks on bundlers after Mr. Hsu’s troubles came to light. An Obama spokesman said the campaign did its “absolute best” to vet all donors, but would not specifically say whether criminal checks were done for bundlers. Since last week, Mr. Hsu has been hospitalized in Colorado, where he surfaced after failing to show up for a California court hearing days before. Mr. Hsu had been wanted in California since 1992, when he missed another court date and apparently fled to his native Hong Kong, instead of facing up to three years in prison for a fraud conviction. The Clinton campaign made its announcement around 6:40 p.m., shortly after the network news programs had begun on the East Coast. The timing was roughly the same Aug. 29, when Clinton advisers disclosed that they were giving Mr. Hsu’s $23,000 in personal donations to charity. Clinton aides, who have been trying to contain the damage from the case, have been monitoring the number of stories the evening news programs have run on Mr. Hsu — only a handful thus far.
|
Hsu Norman;Finances;Clinton Hillary Rodham;Presidential Election of 2008;Elections;United States Politics and Government;Presidential Elections (US)
|
ny0132769
|
[
"us"
] |
2012/12/15
|
Catch Limits Put on Menhaden, Unglamorous but Crucial Fish
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BALTIMORE — Regulators on Friday voted to reduce the harvest of Atlantic menhaden by 20 percent, placing a broad catch limit on a critical fishery that has until now been largely unregulated. A small, oily fish — also called bunker or pogy — the Atlantic menhaden is rarely eaten by humans, and little known outside of coastal circles. But for the Atlantic ecosystem as well as commercial and recreational fishermen, it is an essential fish. The question of its management drew hundreds of fishermen, processors and environmentalists to mobilize for a showdown in a windowless ballroom here. “Menhaden’s one of the linchpins of the near-shore ecosystem in the East Coast,” said Peter Baker, the director of the Northeast fisheries program for the Pew Environment Group, who said that over the past 30 years, the stock of the fishery has fallen about 90 percent. The fishery had never been subject to catch limits along the entire Atlantic coast — a rarity in contemporary fishery management — allowing fleets to harvest virtually unlimited amounts from the ocean. “The Wild West fishery that’s been going on with menhaden — to have a fishery that’s essentially been unregulated, it’s unheard of,” said Darren Saletta, the executive director of the Massachusetts Commercial Striped Bass Association. This unglamorous forage fish eats phytoplankton, cleansing ocean water. In turn, its flesh nourishes bigger, more edible and lucrative fish — like striped bass and bluefish — as well as seabirds and marine mammals. It has long played a role in the American economy. Indians are said to have taught the Pilgrims how to use it to fertilize corn. Today, menhaden are important to commercial fishermen who use them for bait, as well as recreational fishermen who are after the species that feed on them. “When there’s bunker in the water, I have striped bass, weakfish and bluefish for my customers to catch,” said Capt. Paul Eidman, a charter boat captain from New Jersey and the president of the advocacy group Menhaden Defenders. “Without abundant menhaden in the water, my game fish go somewhere else.” The hallways outside the meeting here filled with chatter as commercial and recreational fishermen swapped anecdotes about what many claim is an obvious depletion of the species. “When we first started fishing for menhaden in Chatham, it was not a problem to go out with just a grappling hook and catch 20 in 20 minutes,” said Capt. Dale Tripp, who has operated commercial and charter boats in Cape Cod since 1973. “Now, you can’t go out with a gill net and catch 20 in two hours.” Many blame the “reduction fishery,” which harvests about 80 percent of the menhaden that come out of the sea each year. It is for the most part operated by a single company, Omega Protein, which grinds up the fish for use in fish-oil dietary supplements, fertilizer and animal feed. But Omega’s executives and fishermen say that they have not seen a problem with fish stocks and that overregulation could squelch industry jobs. “We’re catching more with less vessels, which, to us, means you can’t have a declining population if less effort produces more fish,” said Ben Landry, Omega’s director of public affairs, who said that the company supported a 10 percent reduction in the catch, but nothing higher. In 2011, stock assessments from the previous year led the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to commit to make reductions in the fishery, although they did not determine exactly how to do it. Questions about the long-range accuracy of the 2012 stock assessment, however, led the board to decide to take interim actions this year, and conduct another review when 2014 stock assessments are available. The opaqueness of the latest assessment fueled tension at Friday’s meeting. As the regulators debated catch limits ranging from 10 to 50 percent, commercial and recreational fishermen held up yellow signs in support of menhaden conservation, a group of Omega’s union workers — also clad in yellow — circled the room. The cut could be damaging to Virginia, where Omega is based, said John M. R. Bull, a spokesman for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. “This is a very deep harvest cut that’s being made in the absence of clear scientific understanding,” said Mr. Bull, who added that he hoped future stock assessments would vindicate his home state. And it will hobble the industry beyond those shores, said Robert Isaacson, a third-generation fisherman who, along with his brothers David and Richard, uses purse-seine nets to fish for menhaden off the coast of New Jersey. “It’s going to be less repairs on the boat, less buying new equipment. We’re going to have to work harder on nasty days, put our lives in danger,” Mr. Isaacson said. But many other fishermen at the meeting were heartened by the cuts. “It is absolutely crumbling, what’s happening to the fish,” said Chuck Howard, a longtime striped-bass fisherman from Rockville, Md. “Anybody who thinks it’s a better use to grind them up and send them to China, rather than have them swimming in the Chesapeake Bay and filtering our water, has to explain to me why that’s a good idea.”
|
Menhaden;Fishing Commercial;Fish Farming;Omega Protein Corporation;Atlantic Ocean;Fish and Other Marine Life
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ny0224650
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2010/11/25
|
British Students Protest Education Cuts
|
LONDON — Thousands of students in cities across Britain walked out of classes on Wednesday and marched to protest the government’s plans to cut education spending and steeply increase university tuition. It was the second such protest this month. The demonstrations were mostly peaceful, but here in London at least eight people, including two police officers, were injured in pockets of violence, and three protesters were arrested on suspicion of committing violent acts and stealing. Some protesters surrounded and vandalized an empty police van, breaking its windows, scrawling graffiti on it and trying to tip it over. And a group of demonstrators repeatedly tried to break through a police cordon in front of Whitehall, which houses many government buildings, throwing placards, smoke bombs and other projectiles even as officers held them back with night sticks. In other cities, including Brighton, Bristol, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Warwick, university students — in some cases joined by students from secondary schools who also walked out of class — marched through town centers or tried to occupy university buildings. Several dozen students occupied part of the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, and there were reports of occupations at other universities. The demonstrators were angry at government proposals to help reduce the country’s budget deficit by giving less money in direct grants to universities, and allowing the universities in turn to charge tuition of up to $14,400 a year, from the current cap of $5,624. Much of their fury is directed at the Liberal Democrats, whose party pledged to abolish tuition entirely during the general election campaign this past spring. Now in a coalition government with the Conservative Party, the Liberal Democrats are backing the new proposals, saying that British universities need to be able to charge more to remain internationally competitive. Until the late 1990s, British university students did not pay tuition, and the issue is highly sensitive. The number of protesters in London was much smaller than it was two weeks ago, when 52,000 marched through the streets and the demonstrations turned violent as the day wore on. The police, attuned to criticism that they were ill prepared the last time, deployed many more officers.
|
Great Britain;Demonstrations Protests and Riots;Tuition;Colleges and Universities
|
ny0288245
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2016/08/30
|
Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin to Separate After His Latest Sexting Scandal
|
It was supposed to be a quiet, late-summer weekend on the exclusive shores of the Hamptons. But on Sunday, Huma Abedin, the closest aide to Hillary Clinton, received devastating news. After accompanying Mrs. Clinton to fund-raisers, Ms. Abedin learned from her husband, Anthony D. Weiner, that The New York Post was about to report that he had again exchanged lewd messages with a woman on social media: the sort of behavior that destroyed his congressional career and 2013 mayoral campaign. Only this time, the online indiscretions included an image of Mr. Weiner’s crotch as he lay next to the couple’s 4-year-old son. Now, Mr. Weiner’s tawdry activities may have claimed his marriage — Ms. Abedin told him that she wanted to separate — and have cast another shadow on the adviser and confidante who has been by Mrs. Clinton’s side for the past two decades. Ms. Abedin was already a major figure this summer in controversies over Mrs. Clinton’s handling of classified information as secretary of state and over ties between the Clinton family foundation and Mrs. Clinton’s State Department. Mr. Weiner’s extramarital behavior also threatens to remind voters about the troubles in the Clintons’ own marriage over the decades, including Mrs. Clinton’s much-debated decision to remain with then-President Bill Clinton after revelations of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Ms. Abedin’s choice to separate from her husband evokes the debates that erupted over Mrs. Clinton’s handling of the Lewinsky affair, a scandal her campaign wants left in the past. Clinton advisers expressed only sympathy for Ms. Abedin on Monday and said they were confident Mr. Weiner’s actions would not hurt Mrs. Clinton, who learned about them from Ms. Abedin and offered support. But Mr. Weiner’s behavior quickly became fodder for Donald J. Trump, Mrs. Clinton’s Republican opponent in the presidential race. “Huma is making a very wise decision,” Mr. Trump said in a statement. “I know Anthony Weiner well, and she will be far better off without him.” Image Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin in Manhattan in 2013. Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times He then went further, claiming that the marriage’s breakdown was a matter of national security. Mrs. Clinton received her first intelligence briefing as the Democratic presidential nominee on Saturday at the F.B.I. field office in White Plains. No aides accompanied her to the briefing, according to a campaign official. “I only worry for the country in that Hillary Clinton was careless and negligent in allowing Weiner to have such close proximity to highly classified information,” Mr. Trump said, using language that echoed criticism of Mrs. Clinton this summer by the F.B.I. director , James B. Comey Jr. “Who knows what he learned and who he told? It’s just another example of Hillary Clinton’s bad judgment. It is possible that our country and its security have been greatly compromised by this.” A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Nick Merrill, declined to comment on Mr. Trump’s remarks. The spotlight on Ms. Abedin and her proximity to Mrs. Clinton has been an increasing distraction for the campaign. Several of Ms. Abedin’s emails on Mrs. Clinton’s private server have drawn scrutiny amid accusations that donors to the Clinton Foundation received special access to the State Department. And political opponents, including Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, have questioned Ms. Abedin’s arrangement to earn income privately while she worked for Mrs. Clinton at the State Department. In addition to being on Mrs. Clinton’s personal payroll, Ms. Abedin received money from the Clinton Foundation and Teneo, a consulting firm founded in part by Douglas J. Band, previously a senior aide to Mr. Clinton. Ms. Abedin, 40, has been at Mrs. Clinton’s side since she was an intern to the first lady in the 1990s. Now vice chairwoman of the Clinton campaign, Ms. Abedin, often described as a surrogate daughter, occupies an almost singular role as a trusted, and visible, confidante to Mrs. Clinton. Their lives took similar tracks, as both women, citing their religious beliefs, seemed determined to remain married despite their husbands’ sexual proclivities. Image Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner at the Met Gala in May. Credit Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Mrs. Clinton strongly supported Ms. Abedin when Mr. Weiner’s sexually charged text messages came to light in 2011, a year into their marriage, and again in 2013, when Mr. Weiner was running for mayor of New York. Friends of Mrs. Clinton said that she had spoken to Ms. Abedin at length about the marriage and that she supported Ms. Abedin’s decision to remain with Mr. Weiner and work on their relationship. The couple’s marital problems have been a subject of years of tabloid mockery and humiliation since Mr. Weiner resigned from Congress in 2011 amid revelations that he had sent sexual images of himself to women on social media. His 2013 campaign for mayor was damaged, too, when Mr. Weiner admitted that he had continued flirting with women online. By Monday morning, when the Post cover showing Mr. Weiner and his son, Jordan, hit newsstands, Mr. Weiner had left the Hamptons for New York City aware that Ms. Abedin planned to announce their separation, said two people close to the couple who discussed private conversations on the condition of anonymity. “After long and painful consideration and work on my marriage, I have made the decision to separate from my husband,” Ms. Abedin said in a statement. “Anthony and I remain devoted to doing what is best for our son, who is the light of our life. During this difficult time, I ask for respect for our privacy.” In the latest issue of Vogue , Ms. Abedin portrayed Mr. Weiner as a devoted father and their marriage as a true partnership. “Many working moms feel this way — there is a lot of guilt,” she said. “I don’t think I could do it if I didn’t have the full support system I have, if Anthony wasn’t willing to be, essentially, a full-time dad.” But the two people close to the couple said Ms. Abedin and Mr. Weiner had been growing apart for some time, with Ms. Abedin often on the campaign trail with Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Weiner at home with Jordan. They said the Post article had not caused a sudden and unexpected rupture to a happy marriage, but rather was the final catalyst for Ms. Abedin to move for a separation. Campaign officials had braced for new revelations about Mr. Weiner after The Post reported this month that a Republican had baited Mr. Weiner into a flirtatious online chat. Asked by The New York Times this month whether he was still engaging in the behavior that had foiled his political career, Mr. Weiner said, “I’m not going to go down the path of talking about any of that.” Mrs. Clinton had hoped to ride out the final week of August with limited distractions as she seeks to maintain her solid lead in national polls. On Monday, she attended three fund-raisers in the Hamptons, without Ms. Abedin, and spoke briefly on a conference call with policy experts and medical providers to unveil her proposals on mental health. “We’ve got to make clear mental health is not a personal failing,” Mrs. Clinton said. Aides said that Ms. Abedin’s marriage was a private matter and that her decision to announce the separation meant the frenetic news cycle would soon move on. “The best way to get rid of a problem is to get rid of a problem,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic consultant. “The end of that marriage publicly announced makes it impossible for Anthony Weiner to have anything to do with the campaign.” But unlike many political aides, Ms. Abedin has become a public figure in her own right, posing for Vogue, snapping selfies with voters on the rope line at Mrs. Clinton’s campaign events and hosting her own fund-raisers on her boss’s behalf. Hours after Ms. Abedin released her statement, Showtime blasted out a news release announcing the October television debut of “Weiner,” an unfettered documentary about the implosion of Mr. Weiner’s mayoral campaign and the couple’s interactions after his second scandal. In the messages reported by The Post, Mr. Weiner exchanged photos with a woman. She appeared in various bikinis, and Mr. Weiner was half-dressed, showing off his stomach or his groin — and they talked about sex. In one message, Mr. Weiner abruptly changed the discussion from massage parlors and reportedly wrote, “Someone just climbed into my bed.” “Really?” the woman replied. His response, in a screen shot dated July 31, 2015, showed a child curled up next to Mr. Weiner, who was wearing only white briefs.
|
Huma Abedin;Anthony Weiner;2016 Presidential Election;Hillary Clinton
|
ny0154526
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2008/01/30
|
An Appeal That Looks to (and Uses) the Spirit of the 1960s
|
This 30-second advertisement for Senator Barack Obama begins on Wednesday in Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and nationally on cable television. The spot, “Caroline,” is the first with Caroline Kennedy . PRODUCER The Obama media team. ON SCREEN The commercial opens with images of President John F. Kennedy and the Moon landing. Mr. Obama enters walking against a backdrop of an American flag and before a crowd of cheering fans. Photographs of Mr. Obama talking to voters fade to images of his speaking. It closes with an image from the endorsement on Monday in Washington, with Mr. Obama flanked by two generations of Kennedys, including Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Representative Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island. THE SCRIPT Ms. Kennedy: “Once we had a president who made people feel hopeful about America and brought us together to do great things. Today, Barack Obama gives us that same chance. He makes us believe in ourselves again. That when we act as one nation we can overcome any challenge. “People always tell me how my father inspired them. I feel that same excitement now. Barack Obama can lift America and make us one nation again.” ACCURACY This spot makes few claims that cry for verification. Ms. Kennedy implicitly appeals for voters to see in Mr. Obama what they saw in her father. One moment of accomplishment in the Kennedy administration highlighted is the lunar landing, leaving out other challenges of the time, including the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Vietnam War expansion. SCORECARD Ms. Kennedy’s appearance lets Mr. Obama link to the slain president without seeming hyperbolic or exploitative. The spot seeks to draw on the sentiment from one era to usher in a new one, But it does not explain why Mr. Obama offers inspiration. It merely states he does. Mr. Obama does not speak except to say he approved the message. The advertisement intends to touch an emotional level, particularly among women, whom Mr. Obama is struggling to connect with. Mr. Kennedy is not in the commercial, save a quick glimpse at the end, surrounded by his niece and son. And, of course, Mr. Obama. JEFF ZELENY
|
Presidential Election of 2008;Obama Barack;Schlossberg Caroline Kennedy;Advertising and Marketing;Elections
|
ny0120272
|
[
"us"
] |
2012/07/09
|
Grueling Course for Marine Officers Will Open Its Doors to Women
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QUANTICO, Va. — Under the searing sun of one of the worst heat waves in decades, a sweat-drenched Marine second lieutenant stepped from the woods on the base here and reported to an infantry captain standing on a dirt road. The captain handed the lieutenant a sheet of paper. “Write your name and the time on this card,” the captain said. “You have five minutes to take this portion of the test. Do not use any reference materials. When you are done, return this card to that captain” — he nodded to a huge, tattooed man a few yards away — “and he will tell you what to do next. Begin.” The lieutenant dropped to the dirt beside other sweaty young officers and removed a pen from his soggy uniform. Another officer, his time up, approached the second captain, who took the card, expressed disgust that the lieutenant had not written his name at its top and pointed him to a laminated sheet of paper displaying a grid coordinate. That coordinate was where the lieutenant was expected for the test’s next stage. When the lieutenant plotted it on his map, he saw that like many of the preceding stations, it was miles away. He shouldered his pack, slung his rifle and began to jog. The temperature hovered near 100 degrees. This was one sequence in the Combat Endurance Test, the opening exercise in the Marine Corps’ Infantry Officer Course — one of the most redoubtable male-only domains in the American military. And this session of the course could be the last male-only class. Beginning in September, the corps says, female officer volunteers will participate here, part of a study to gauge the feasibility of allowing female Marines to serve in more extensive combat roles. Col. Todd S. Desgrosseilliers, the commander of the Basic School, which oversees the course, said he had no special concerns as the course prepares to accept women. “Nothing more so with women than with men,” he said. “We expect them to be fit enough to go through the course when they get here, just like the men are.” The 86-day course, which meets four times a year, is called the corps’ most grueling school by its instructors and is intended to screen and train potential infantry officers. Its students are volunteers selected from lieutenants who have completed Officer Candidates School and the six-month Basic Officer Course, which trains all Marine lieutenants to lead provisional infantry platoons and in leadership, tactics, fitness and weapons. That school has been coed for decades. The experiment at I.O.C. could take a year or more; to obtain a statistically meaningful sample, the corps hopes to observe 92 female lieutenants in coming iterations and then, with information gathered from other studies and surveys, make recommendations about women’s service in so-called combat arms. The Marine Corps does not expect a flood of women to volunteer for the course, though more than one has for the next round. Women make up only 6 percent of the Marine ranks, and the school’s nature deters many Marines, no matter their gender. (This reporter graduated from the course in 1988; on the first day, a lieutenant regarded by instructors and peers as one of the most fit students suffered a heart attack and died .) The current course begins with the Combat Endurance Test, which was added in the 1990s. Last week’s test began in a classroom after midnight. A captain addressed 96 students, each sitting beside a mock M-16A2 rifle (real rifles are not issued until after the first test) and a backpack loaded with food and equipment. “Notebooks away,” the captain said. “No notes.” From this moment on, the captain said, for an amount of time unknown to the students, they would be continuously evaluated. Students who failed would be assigned a noninfantry job. After a lieutenant completed each leg of the test, the captain said, there would be another instructor who would explain the next task. The test was timed, but the lieutenants would not know how much time was allowed for many events, or over all. This uncertainty was intended to force every student to go as fast as he could, never knowing how much energy and food to conserve. No one was to help anyone else, the captain said. Speaking was forbidden, except when addressing instructors, with one exception. “If you are injured at any time, it is the only time you will talk to another Marine,” he said. “Legitimately injured,” he added, “As in, ‘I have a bone sticking out of my leg.’ ” Students are asked not to share details of this test and other exercises at the course outside the Marine infantry officer ranks. The officers who supervise the course allowed this reporter to move alongside the lieutenants and observe the test in its entirety on the condition that the test not be described in full, and that specific standards, durations and distances and the chronology not be disclosed. Maj. Scott A. Cuomo, the course director, also requested that one portion not be photographed, as, he said, photographs would unveil an essential surprise. (This was one of the most mentally disorienting and physical sequences, during which three students quit.) Throughout the course, the students carried rifles and packs, which visibly took a toll on them, stage after stage. Colonel Desgrosseilliers said their exhaustion was by design. “We’re primarily a foot-mobile organization,” he added. “So you have to be able to carry the equipment you need in the fight. And you have to be able to fight when you get there, and, if you are an officer, you have to be able to think and make decisions in that fight that will influence it in a way that you will win.” Throughout the course, students were stopped and given written or practical exams, testing their knowledge of fire support, land navigation, weaponry, tactics, communications equipment and more. Outside, Major Cuomo walked the trails in the heat, watching the lieutenants and occasionally offering encouragement. He explained what the course’s role meant to him: providing enlisted infantry Marines, who bear the brunt of war’s risks and privations, with officers they deserve. He pointed at a lieutenant ahead, his uniform blackened by sweat and dirt, headed uphill. He appeared to have entered a slow-motion mental zone. He was weaving on shaky legs, but progressing. “There could come a time when the Marines in a platoon will look at that man, and say, ‘I don’t know where he came from, and I don’t know what he knows, but we are in a big mess and he is going to do the right thing right now and make this right,’ ” the major said. “That man needs to be up to that task.” At one point, the students arrived at a swimming pool. They were ordered into the deep end with equipment, and told to swim a certain number of lengths and then to tread water for a certain amount of time. Already exhausted, the officers swam slowly, trying to complete the laps. At another station, each student encountered a pile of intermingled weapons’ parts — a jumble of bolts, springs, barrels, firing pins, stocks, hand-guards and other components. The lieutenants were told that the pile contained disassembled American and foreign infantry arms and that they were expected to reassemble them all and perform function checks. There was a time limit, which the students were not told. At another point, the lieutenants found themselves at an obstacle course, which they had to complete multiple times. One officer lagged, staggering. He stopped, continued, stopped. It did not look as if he would climb the last lap’s last rope. But he did. He shuffled past Major Cuomo, fell to a knee and vomited repeatedly. At one point he dropped to all fours. Medical staff watched him. It looked as if he might pass out, but a few minutes later he was standing. A captain pointed to another card. Major Cuomo was expressionless until the man had found his stride and headed into the woods toward the next task. “There are not a lot of places in the military where you can push a guy to that point, and not help him, and let a guy dig down and find himself,” the major said. “Fortunately this is one of the places where you can.” Shortly after the test ended, Major Cuomo shared the results. Of 96 officers who had started the endurance test, 76 passed, 7 quit, 7 were injured and 6 failed. Those who had succeeded were back in the classroom. A few applied dressings to bloody feet. Permitted now to talk, several admitted that they were not sure the test was over, and expected a captain to appear with more cards. More than 80 days remained. Soon after that, a new class would begin, coed.
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United States Marine Corps;United States Defense and Military Forces;Virginia;Women and Girls
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ny0268157
|
[
"world",
"africa"
] |
2016/03/22
|
Congo: U.N. Warns of Election Violence
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Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, warned on Monday of possible election-related violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where recent months have also seen a sharp increase in tribal and interethnic conflicts. Mr. Ban urged the Security Council and leaders in the region to help United Nations peacekeepers preserve political stability in Congo “by quickly finding a solution to the present deadlock” over the coming elections. Congo is scheduled to hold elections in November. The opposition worries that President Joseph Kabila, meant to leave office in December, will postpone the election to stay in power. The European Union has expressed concern over reports of intimidation against political opponents and the media. Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, told the Council that civil society in Congo is threatened and “democratic processes are being deliberately undermined.”
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Democratic Republic of the Congo;Ban Ki moon;UN;International relations;Security Council UN Parent
|
ny0245392
|
[
"business"
] |
2011/04/26
|
Piecing Together True Cost of Flights - On the Road
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FOR the last two weeks, I’ve been complaining about the fees and surcharges that some hotels add to the bill for things like maid service, bellhop availability and landscaping. But travelers have also been telling me to look harder at the fees the airlines are busily conjuring up. John Carrick, for example, said he was recently surprised to discover that transferring some of his wife’s American Airlines frequent flier miles to a daughter resulted in charges of $250 for the transfer of the mileage points, $30 for a “processing fee” and $18.75 in taxes. “I found the processing fee, which I had never heard of before, outrageous,” Mr. Carrick said. For some time now, the airlines have been adding fees for all sorts of things that used to be part of the ticket price. So figuring out the true costs of air travel has been baffling for business travelers as well as the corporate managers who pay the bills. American Express estimates that business travel accounted for $242 billion in domestic spending last year. Airlines, meanwhile, insist that they desperately need to increase revenue and control costs, especially as rising oil prices threaten to erase the recent but tentative gains in profits. It has gotten to the point that the price of oil is the first thing any airline executive thinks about in the morning and the last thing at night. Crude oil in New York was trading at about $112 a barrel on Monday. As of April 15, according to data from the International Air Transport Association, jet fuel cost an average of $3.32 a gallon in North America, a 45 percent increase from this time last year. What does this mean for business travel? Higher prices and less service, including more cuts in flight operations at airports that don’t generate enough revenue per passenger, said Michael Boyd, the president of the airline forecaster Boyd Group International. “Wake up and smell the gas pump,” Mr. Boyd said. Looking ahead, he said, “it’s going to cost you more to fly because no airliner in the world is designed for $3-plus fuel.” And as airlines adjust their fleet mix to maximize per-flight revenues, mothballing many less fuel-efficient 50-seat regional jets, service at many midsize and smaller airports will continue to shrink. Revenues are driving air travel strategy, Mr. Boyd said. In a recent earnings call, Isabella D. Goren, the chief financial officer at American Airlines, told analysts that “we continue to diversify our revenue stream and focus on growing our revenues from optional products and services, such as offering express seats.” That, of course, was an allusion to the complex puzzle of fees, which airlines have been assiduously adding onto base fares for about five years. In 2009, domestic airlines generated $7.8 billion in so-called ancillary revenue, according to the Transportation Department. Most of that revenue came from fees for checking bags and penalty fees for changing itineraries, but a good portion came from the extra charges for priority boarding, priority coach seating, in-flight food and even things like using frequent flier miles. The agency has not yet released data for fee revenue for 2010, but the Consumer Travel Alliance estimates the total will be around $9.2 billion. In their reach for revenue, “airlines have been taking fees they already have and making them more complex,” said Charlie Leocha, the director of the consumer association. An example, he said, are sliding fees for seat reservations and priority boarding, based on the length of the trip. Charges to use frequent flier miles for upgrades or for supposedly free trips are also proliferating. The airlines use the term “co-pays” to refer to those fees, “which didn’t even exist five years ago,” Mr. Leocha said. In an online survey of more than 2,000 travelers announced last week, TripAdvisor.com found that nearly 75 percent think that fee charges will rise this year, especially for priority seating and seat selection. Uncomfortable seats and limited legroom, by the way, topped the list of complaints about airlines. The annual survey helps TripAdvisor understand how its customers react to air travel costs and conditions, “and how they are changing behavior because of them,” said Bryan Salzburg, general manager of TripAdvisor Flights. He said many are driving, when possible, rather than flying. Travel behaviors definitely are changing in this new, puzzling era of air transportation. Next, I would like to hear from readers on how they are changing theirs.
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Airlines and Airplanes;Prices (Fares Fees and Rates);Business Travel;Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
|
ny0249350
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2011/05/22
|
Show for Black Artists, Even Those Who Dislike Label - Review
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Some of the knottiest issues in “Embodied: Black Identities in American Art From the Yale University Art Gallery ” don’t reveal themselves at the entrance to the show. Instead, they appear later, like in the “Viewer’s Note” on the wall next to Adrian Piper’s photographs from the 1971 series “Food for the Spirit.” Mounted next to three black-and-white photographs of the artist standing before a mirror, the short statement says that Ms. Piper’s “critique of identity politics and desire to distance herself from being categorized as a ‘black artist’ ” led her to refuse reproduction rights for the work to appear in the exhibition catalog. However, the work has been included in the exhibition anyway to “highlight the urgency” of issues around art and racial identity. Artists are regularly included in exhibitions dedicated to aesthetic movements or curatorial conceits they don’t agree with. It’s just that “Embodied: Black Identities” deals with a category — race — that historically defined one’s status, not just as an artist, but as a human being in this country. As it is, the exhibition is a small statement rather than a big one. Drawn from Yale’s collection and organized by graduate and undergraduate students from Yale and the University of Maryland, where the show appeared last fall, it comprises mostly modest works: lots of prints and a few photographs, bolstered by the paintings of Kerry James Marshall, Barkley L. Hendricks and others. It feels like a testing ground for young scholars trying on some ideas central to recent art, as well as the critical jargon. Works are grouped into three categories that look at the “performance of race through art and artifice”; the “absent or dematerialized body”; and “displacement” and its effect on “shared histories, cultural geography and national identity.” Mr. Marshall’s 1997 lithograph “Memento” includes references to the civil rights movement, with little texts citing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and others. Carrie Mae Weems’ s photo triptych titled “Congo, Ibo, Mandingo, Togo,” from the 1993 series “Slave Coast,” documents a fort in West Africa from which slaves were shipped across the Atlantic. Mr. Hendricks, known for his portraits that celebrate style as a form of black identity (the benchmark for Kehinde Wiley , a younger painter who, like Mr. Hendricks, is a graduate of Yale’s master of fine arts program), turns here to the European diaspora. His canvas “APB’s (Afro-Parisian Brothers)” from 1978, derived from a photograph Mr. Hendricks took in Paris, features two young men — contemporary versions of Baudelaire’s 19th-century Parisian flâneur, or dandy — contrasted visually against a pop-inspired flat pink-lavender background. Earlier works in the show cite the struggles of African-Americans in the Jim Crow era. Elizabeth Catlett’s linocut print, from her 1947 series, “The Black Woman,” reveals its approach in the title: “My Role Has Been Important in the Struggle to Organize the Unorganized.” The print borrows from the graphic style of Mexican revolutionary art — Ms. Catlett herself has lived in Mexico for many decades — and refers as much to labor organization as racial struggles. John Woodrow Wilson also adopted the lineage of Mexican revolutionary art: He studied fresco techniques with Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros at the Esmeralda School in Mexico in the 1950s. “The Incident,” a watercolor and ink on paper from 1952, takes as its subject the lynching of a black man by hooded Ku Klux Klan figures. Distinctly African practices, like woodcarving, are adopted in Alison Saar’s “Bat Boyz” from 2001. Eight baseball bats with men’s faces carved into their ends and blackened with pitch (black resin) are leaned against the wall, commenting on the discrimination experienced by black players in the early days of the sport. Nearby, a cane carved around 1867 by Henry Gudgell, a former slave from Kentucky, includes geometric designs and lizard and tortoise figures, common elements of the Afro-Georgian carving tradition. Other works resist any distinctly African-American identification. Howardena Pindell, another Yale M.F.A. graduate who has been working abstractly, for the most part, since the late 1960s, is represented by an etching and lithograph from 1980 based on a grid, one of the 20th century’s prime motifs of abstract art. Felrath Hines’s oil on linen “Piano-Forte,” from 1988, similarly resists any easy racial identification. Instead, its geometric forms were inspired by Josef Albers — who taught a famous color-theory course at Yale for many years — and Albers’s “Homage to the Square” series. More to the point, Mr. Hines, like Ms. Piper, did not want to be identified as a black artist. For that reason, he refused to take part in the 1971 exhibition “Contemporary Black Artists in America” at the Whitney Museum in New York. He died in 1993, so we don’t have his voice to bolster Ms. Piper’s sentiments — sentiments that are, in many ways, the perfect conceptual statement for this show, since they confront the scholarly and curatorial urge to categorize. Ms. Piper’s training in philosophy and her work — she is a successful artist with a long exhibition history and strong critical support — regularly question the Western tradition of thought that underpins thinking about race, aesthetics and categorization. (She has described her own life as the “gray experience,” rather than the “black experience,” partly because her complexion defies easy white or black identification.) And no matter how modest a show this might be, given the subject, nearly every work, from the smallest print to Ms. Piper’s more vocal gesture, contributes to that longer, larger and louder conversation about race in this country, which predates and eclipses any one artist’s effort.
|
Art;Culture (Arts);Connecticut;Blacks;Yale University Art Gallery
|
ny0150137
|
[
"business"
] |
2008/09/12
|
Washington Mutual Tries to Reassure the Market
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Can things get worse for Washington Mutual , the nation’s largest savings and loan? Trying to weather a rout in its stock, the bank provided an early update on its performance Thursday after markets closed, trying to convince its investors and customers that its capital was sound and that conditions were stabilizing. Moments later, the Moody’s rating service cut the bank’s investment rating to junk, warning its access to debt and equity markets remained limited at a time when many analysts say it needs to raise capital. The troubled savings and loan has contended it has adequate funding to support its daily operations, and disputed the decision to cut its rating. In Thursday’s update on its third-quarter performance, Washington Mutual said that expected charge-off rates would climb in the quarter — albeit at a slower pace than in prior periods. The bank also marked down its Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac preferred stock holdings by 90 percent, to $282 million, but did not provide write-off estimates. It raised the possibility that a good-will impairment might lower third-quarter earnings but not affect its financial condition. Washington Mutual plans to report its earnings on Oct. 22. JPMorgan Chase executives have been studying the company in recent weeks as they considered another bid, after approaching Washington Mutual in March. James Dimon, the bank’s chief executive, has long had his sights set on Washington Mutual for its big California branch network and its New York and Chicago operations. It is unclear if other buyers, like Wells Fargo or a foreign bank, might also be interested. But JPMorgan executives are not prepared to make an offer unless government officials request one, according to people briefed on the situation. A JPMorgan spokesman declined to comment. The news followed a 22 percent jump in Washington Mutual’s stock price on Thursday even as Lehman Brothers’ stock price plummeted on reports that it would soon be sold with the assistance of the federal government. Anxious investors may have been heartened that Washington Mutual’s performance was not as bad as they had feared. But whether the bank ultimately survives remains an open question. Shares closed down 3.5 percent Friday afternoon, to $2.73. Investors remain nervous about the bank’s financial health and whether Alan H. Fishman, its newly named chief executive, will be able to engineer a recovery. Mr. Fishman will be paid well if he fails, and even better if the company is sold — including a big severance payout. Mr. Fishman received a sign-on bonus of $7.45 million in cash, about 612,000 shares of restricted stock, and five million stock options subject to aggressive performance targets — a package worth about $11.5 million. He will also receive a $1 million salary, an annual bonus aimed at $3.65 million, and annual stock grants worth at least $8 million. But the drumbeat of bad news has rattled investors who believe Washington Mutual’s problems are worsening. On Monday, the bank was effectively put on probation by its regulator, the Office of Thrift Supervision, as it executes its turnaround plans. Then, Standard & Poor’s, a major rating agency, lowered the bank’s credit outlook because of concerns about the toll of a worsening housing market. And Sunday’s announcement of a new chief executive, coming just hours after the government bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, fueled speculation that the bank’s condition was deteriorating. Washington Mutual is now in a bind for some of the same reasons that it was a Wall Street darling. Under Kerry K. Killinger, who was ousted Thursday after 18 years at the helm, the bank plunged heavily into both the subprime mortgage and credit card business with a strategy that catered to lower-income, urban customers. But with the housing market in free fall and consumers strained by higher food and energy prices, losses are now rising. Charge-offs on credit card loans have swelled. And its big portfolio of mortgage loans could absorb $9 billion to $14 billion in losses this year, according to Morningstar estimates. Some Wall Street analysts believe the figures could be significantly higher, and the company might have to be bailed out or put into receivership and sold with the help of the government.
|
Washington Mutual Inc;Stocks and Bonds;Mortgages;Banks and Banking;Moody's Corporation;Fannie Mae;Freddie Mac;Fishman Alan H.
|
ny0223620
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2010/11/09
|
South Korea Abandons Apology Demand Over Cheonan
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SEOUL, South Korea — In a shift that could pave the way for new talks on the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, the government in the South has quietly abandoned its demand that the North apologize for the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel, no longer making that a condition for the nuclear talks or other future exchanges. President Lee Myung-bak, in an interview at the Blue House, the presidential residence, said he would instead be looking for “sincerity in North Korea’s behavior” before returning to the six-party talks on disarmament. When pressed about an apology as a condition, he twice declined to say it was still a requirement. “We lost valued lives, and that’s why the issue is so sensitive to us,” said Mr. Lee, who came into office in early 2008 on a pro-business and free-trade platform that also called for a new, hard-line approach to North Korea. “For the resumption of dialogue in any form, North Korea has to show genuine interest and sincere behavior.” Mr. Lee’s conservative administration had been adamant about an apology for the sinking of the warship, the Cheonan , which killed 46 South Korean sailors in March. The six-party talks, future government aid and a variety of inter-Korean exchanges were made contingent on a formal apology and North Korea’s punishment of those involved in the sinking. An investigation backed by South Korea attributed the sinking to a North Korean torpedo attack. The North has denied any involvement and called the South’s inquiry “sheer fabrication.” In July, the United Nations Security Council condemned what it called “the attack” on the Cheonan but stopped short of blaming North Korea. A senior official in Mr. Lee’s government, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the nuclear issue, affirmed that the South was still angry about the sinking, but that negotiations could resume without an apology. Like the president, he also used the term “sincere behavior,” but he declined to specify what that behavior might include. A top aide in the president’s office also privately confirmed the policy change, saying an apology was “not a precondition to resuming the talks.” The senior government official said there was no specific time frame for new six-party negotiations, although he acknowledged that South Korea was coming under increasing pressure to hold new talks. China, North Korea’s only major ally, is the host country for the six-party talks. The interview with Mr. Lee on Saturday came as South Korea prepared to host a Group of 20 economic summit meeting on Thursday and Friday, a first for an Asian nation. Mr. Lee is positioning himself and his country’s resilient economy as new leaders on the global stage. The North Korean nuclear issue is already on the agenda of various bilateral meetings planned during the G-20 gathering, the president said. The foreign ministers of China, Japan, Russia and the United States discussed the resumption of the six-party talks on the sidelines of a recent Asian regional summit meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam. The Koreas are the other nations in the talks, which collapsed in April 2009 when North Korea withdrew from the negotiations. Most political analysts in the South believe a North Korean apology for the Cheonan sinking is highly unlikely. But Mr. Lee said it was “possible.” “I think we shouldn’t rule out a North Korean apology,” he said, adding, “I wouldn’t be 100 percent sure” about not getting one. Mr. Lee suggested in the interview that an apology would be a wise “strategic decision” by the North, a move that could result in shipments of food and other humanitarian assistance from South Korea. His government has consistently refused to send large-scale aid shipments to the North, although small deliveries of rice and flour were recently permitted after droughts and flooding in the impoverished North over the summer . If talks were to resume, Mr. Lee emphasized, he would want to avoid the usual pattern of diplomacy that has dogged the nuclear issue: concessions by the North that lead to aid deliveries and new negotiations, which are then followed by new provocations by the North and the collapse of the talks. “What we need now is to ensure that the six-party talks will bring about substantive results, rather than just talks for the sake of talks,” Mr. Lee said, echoing language that has lately been used by senior American diplomats.
|
South Korea;Pyongyang (North Korea);Nuclear Weapons;International Relations;Cheonan (Ship)
|
ny0047549
|
[
"technology"
] |
2014/11/17
|
Privacy Concerns for ClassDojo and Other Tracking Apps for Schoolchildren
|
HUNTER, N.Y. — For better or for worse, the third graders in Greg Fletcher’s class at Hunter Elementary School always know where they stand. One morning in mid-October, Mr. Fletcher walked to the front of the classroom where an interactive white board displayed ClassDojo, a behavior-tracking app that lets teachers award points or subtract them based on a student’s conduct. On the board was a virtual classroom showing each student’s name, a cartoon avatar and the student’s scores so far that week. “I’m going to have to take a point for no math homework,” Mr. Fletcher said to a blond boy in a striped shirt and then clicked on the boy’s avatar, a googly-eyed green monster, and subtracted a point. The program emitted a disappointed pong sound, audible to the whole class — and sent a notice to the child’s parents if they had signed up for an account on the service. ClassDojo is used by at least one teacher in roughly one out of three schools in the United States, according to its developer. The app is among the innovations to emerge from the estimated $7.9 billion education software market aimed at students from prekindergarten through high school. Although there are similar behavior-tracking programs, they are not as popular as ClassDojo. Many teachers say the app helps them automate the task of recording classroom conduct, as well as allowing them to communicate directly with parents. But some parents, teachers and privacy law scholars say ClassDojo, along with other unproven technologies that record sensitive information about students, is being adopted without sufficiently considering the ramifications for data privacy and fairness, like where and how the data might eventually be used. These critics also say that the carrot-and-stick method of classroom discipline is outmoded, and that behavior apps themselves are too subjective, enabling teachers to reward or penalize students for amorphous acts like “disrespect.” They contend that behavior databases could potentially harm students’ reputations by unfairly saddling some with “a problem child” label that could stick with them for years. Image Greg Fletcher with his third-grade students at Hunter Elementary School in Hunter, N.Y. Credit Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times ClassDojo does not seek explicit parental consent for teachers to log detailed information about a child’s conduct. Although the app’s terms of service state that teachers who sign up guarantee that their schools have authorized them to do so, many teachers can download ClassDojo, and other free apps, without vetting by school supervisors. Neither the New York City nor Los Angeles school districts, for example, keep track of teachers independently using apps. If parents wish to remove their child’s data from ClassDojo, they must ask the teacher or email the company. “There is a real question in my mind as to whether teachers have the authority to sign up on behalf of the school,” said Steven J. McDonald, the general counsel of the Rhode Island School of Design and a leading specialist on federal education privacy law. “Since this is a free service,” he added, “one wonders if there is some other trade-off.” Sam Chaudhary, the co-founder of ClassDojo, said his company recently updated its privacy policy to say that it does not “sell, lease or share your (or children’s) personal information to any third party” for advertising or marketing. “We have committed in the terms of service to never selling the data,” Mr. Chaudhary said. “It’s the user’s own data.” The company plans to generate revenue by marketing additional services, like more detailed behavior analyses, to parents. But ClassDojo could make money from the information it collects in other ways. Another section of the privacy policy says the company may show users advertisements “based in part on your personally identifiable information.” Mr. Chaudhary said ClassDojo gave students feedback as a way of encouraging them to develop skills like leadership and teamwork. Some special-education teachers also use the program to set individualized goals with students and their parents. Image A screen shot from ClassDojo's website shows a demo of the negative behaviors the app can catalog. “Kids are being judged at school every day,” Mr. Chaudhary said. “They are just being judged on a narrow set of things. If we can broaden that set, it’s a good thing.” But critics say that the kind of classroom discipline that Class Dojo promotes is not made effective by packaging it in an app that awards virtual badges for obedience. “This is just a flashy digital update of programs that have long been used to treat children like pets, bribing or threatening them into compliance,” said Alfie Kohn, the author of “The Myth of the Spoiled Child” and other books on learning and child-rearing. Teachers who use ClassDojo can choose which behaviors to reward or discourage. Kelly Connolly-Hickey, an English teacher at West Babylon Senior High School in West Babylon, N.Y., rewards students who “brought in supplies” or “brightened someone’s day” while docking points for cellphone use. “Knowing that they are being graded on how they behave and participate every day makes it easier for them to stay on task,” Ms. Connolly-Hickey said of her students. She added that she had not read ClassDojo’s policies on handling student data, but that she had shown the principal of her school how she used the app. “I’m one of those people who, when the terms of service are 18 pages, I just click agree,” she said. Teachers can decide whether to display students’ points or to use the system in private mode. Mr. Fletcher, the third-grade teacher, said he used ClassDojo publicly in an effort to be transparent. He deliberately awards many more points for good behavior than subtracts them for being off-task. Image Mr. Fletcher said that in using ClassDojo he awards many more points for good behavior than he subtracts for being off-task. Credit Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times Last month, after a well-mannered class discussion about the motivations of characters in a picture book, Mr. Fletcher invited each student to the white board to award him- or herself a point for teamwork. With each point, the app emitted a contented ping. “I don’t ever award the kids points or take away points without them knowing,” he said. “What I am trying to do is put the ownership back on the kid.” Melinda McCool, the school’s principal, said she felt Mr. Fletcher used the app judiciously, and had asked him to show other teachers how he used it. But at least one school is concerned that the app could make a student feel publicly shamed. “I have told all my staff, ‘You cannot display this data publicly,’ “ said Matt Renwick, the principal of Howe Elementary School in Wisconsin Rapids, Wis. His school also requires teachers to obtain permission from a child’s parent before they start using any app that transfers the student’s data to a company. Parents are also divided over ClassDojo . Some like being able to use the app to follow their child’s progress and receive reports from teachers. “It’s a great way to get the prognosis on your child,” said Gabrielle Canezin, whose daughter is in Mr. Fletcher’s class. But Tony Porterfield, a software engineer in Los Altos, Calif., asked a teacher to remove his son’s information from ClassDojo. He said he was concerned that it might later be aggregated and analyzed in unforeseen ways. “It creates a label for a child,” he said. “It’s a little early to be doing that to my 6-year-old.” ClassDojo has received nearly $10 million from investors, including General Catalyst Partners, Shasta Ventures, New Schools Venture Fund, Paul Graham and Yuri Milner. Mr. Chaudhary says he and his team have studied ClassDojo’s effectiveness by visiting classrooms, conducting weekly phone calls with a few dozen teachers, and surveying 1,000 teachers. Such an anecdotal approach does not sit well with evidence-based educators. “That’s like polling people in McDonald’s about how they like the food,” said Brett Clark, the director of technology at Greater Clark County Schools in Jeffersonville, Ind. “They are not asking the teachers who looked at the app, walked away and said, ‘Not in my classroom.’ ”
|
K-12 Education;Privacy;Teachers;Mobile Apps;Sam Chaudhary;General Catalyst Partners;New Schools Venture Fund;ClassDojo
|
ny0195449
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2009/10/03
|
Brooklyn’s Other Museum of Brooklyn Tries to Save Admiral’s Row
|
The museum in the private house near the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway announces itself in blue letters spelled out in painter’s masking tape. “Don’t let Pirate Mike steal our heritage,” reads the sign, above a row of illustrations of gorgeous brick-fronted mansions and the legend “Landmark Admiral’s Row.” Not much more information is forthcoming until Tuesday nights, when Scott Witter sets a piece of slate on the doorstep of 109 Hall Street that says “B.O.M.B. Open” in the same blue tape and Brooklyn’s Other Museum of Brooklyn stirs to life once more. Thirteen blocks away, Admiral’s Row , the string of 19th-century Italianate officers’ quarters on the edge of the Brooklyn Navy Yard — to which Mr. Witter’s museum is a discordant but impassioned love song — crumbles on. The museum and the mansions lie in opposite corners of Wallabout, a sliver of a semi-industrial neighborhood wedged between Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and the Navy Yard. But while the museum — a collection of somewhat random artifacts including porcelain smoking pipes dug from a nearby backyard and an almost-drivable 1920 Briggs & Stratton Flyer — remains oddly vital, Admiral’s Row is just about out of time. The city, which owns the rest of the Navy Yard and is in the process of acquiring Admiral’s Row from the National Guard, says the houses, occupied until the 1970s, would cost too much to rebuild — $20 million or more. On Oct. 19, the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation will collect proposals from developers interested in knocking down 9 of the 11 buildings on the row and building a jumbo supermarket (badly needed in the neighborhood), plus more commercial space and a parking lot. This makes Mr. Witter, a 61-year-old architect, pack rat, gadfly and preservationist who lives next door to the museum, upset, to say the least. “The government has had the responsibility to maintain these buildings up to military standard, which they haven’t,” he said the other day, standing on Flushing Avenue outside the wire-topped fence that is as close as civilians are allowed to Admiral’s Row. “For 30 years, they’ve been derelict in their duties.” He is hardly a lone voice. The Municipal Art Society , the New York Landmarks Conservancy and the Historic Districts Council have all pleaded with the city to save Admiral’s Row. A Pratt architecture professor, Brent Porter, has released a model showing how the 6.5-acre site could be redeveloped without knocking down the residences. A 2008 report commissioned by the Army Corps of Engineers found the superstructures of the Admiral’s Row houses to be generally “sound, level and plumb.” None of which cuts much ice with the Navy Yard Development Corporation. If the federal government required the Admiral’s Row buildings to be rebuilt as a condition of transfer, the Navy Yard’s chief executive, Andrew Kimball, wrote in 2007, “neither the city nor the B.N.Y.D.C. are interested in acquiring and developing the site.” Mr. Witter says that the federal government’s decision this spring to condemn most of the row was made improperly, in violation of the National Historic Preservation Act process. He hopes to get it reversed. Late last month, Mr. Witter, in his ever-present skull-and-crossbones ball cap adorned with a full set of Admiral’s Row pins, led a stroll along Flushing. He paused in front of Building C, once a mansard-roofed beauty joined to its neighbor, now hardly more than a three-story ivy trellis. “This is the latest fiasco on the row,” Mr. Witter said. After a partial collapse earlier this year, he said, “the Fire Department came in and disassembled the thing to the ground.” He went down the line — Building H, the only limestone structure and fairly intact-looking; Building D, circa 1851, possibly built by Thomas Walter, designer of the United States Capitol dome; Building I, maple sapling sprouting from its smashed porch steps — doomed, doomed, doomed. Only the yard commander’s residence, with its grand ballroom and gardens, and the 1838 timber shed are to escape the wrecking ball. A few blocks east, though, the Marine Corps commandant’s residence is being turned into a Navy Yard museum. Mr. Kimball has said it might have an exhibit about Admiral’s Row. For now, and until Admiral's Row is landmarked, Mr. Witter says, there is the Other Museum, a five-year-old movable smorgasbord, now on the second floor of a sturdy 1876 wood-frame house with severely weathered shingles. It is open Tuesdays from 7 to 9 p.m. On Sept. 22, Mr. Witter opened promptly at 7:23 and launched into a guided tour, beginning with the metal practice bomb in the stairwell that he found in the Utah desert and that gave his museum its Gertrude Steinesque name. He moved on to the Flyer, a bare-bones motorcar that looks like a sled on wheels with a gasoline engine mounted on the back. “I flipped this on my dad’s lawn,” recalled Mr. Witter, who grew up outside Binghamton. The two seats of the Flyer were occupied by a poster of the local city councilwoman, Letitia James, who supports the city’s plan, and a Mickey Mouse head wearing a rat mask that is Mr. Witter’s symbol for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg . At 7:37, a guest arrived: Freddy DeChirico, 49, a retired handyman. “Do you want a beer, Freddy?” Mr. Witter asked, leaning over a bathtub stocked with Budweiser. “Sure,” Mr. DeChirico replied. “Sometimes I tell people, ‘I’m going to the museum,’ and they say, ‘What museum?’ and I say, ‘Brooklyn’s Other Museum,’ ” Mr. DeChirico said as he sat down next to Mr. Witter’s companion, Karen Polack. “People don’t know what I’m talking about.” Mr. Witter offered an explanation of his curatorial philosophy. “The museum is dedicated to landmarking and preserving Admiral’s Row and the sane development of Brooklyn,” he said. “But the stuff in the museum is just the stuff in the museum.” Later, as Mr. Witter stood on Hall Street in front of the house, another semiregular, Richard Cooper, wandered by. “Any women up there?” he asked. “Karen,” Mr. Witter replied, referring to his partner. “She’s taken,” Mr. Cooper noted. The conversation turned, as it often does, to Admiral’s Row. Mr. Witter was asked if his basement might someday hold pieces of it. Mr. Witter leveled his gaze. “They’re not going to demolish it,” he said.
|
Brooklyn (NYC);Historic Buildings and Sites;Brooklyn Navy Yard;James Letitia;Bloomberg Michael R;National Guard;Municipal Art Society;New York Landmarks Conservancy;Historic Districts Council;Museums
|
ny0140265
|
[
"business"
] |
2008/02/08
|
Three Natural Gas Traders Convicted in Texas
|
HOUSTON (Reuters) — Three former El Paso Corporation natural gas traders were convicted on Thursday of reporting false deals to manipulate gas prices from 2000 to 2002. A jury in Federal District Court convicted the men — James Brooks, Wesley C. Walton and James Patrick Phillips — of sending the publications Inside FERC and NGI false trade data to defraud the markets. Judge Melinda Harmon scheduled sentencing for May 23. The men face up to five years in prison and $250,000 fines on their convictions of one conspiracy count each, and up to five years in prison on each conviction on a false reporting or wire fraud count — 44 for Mr. Brooks, 22 for Mr. Walton and 20 for Mr. Phillips. In addition, they face up to $250,000 in fines, or twice the financial loss caused, for each wire fraud count and $500,000 in fines on the false reporting counts. “There will be an appeal. We think there are several issues,” said David Adler, who represented Mr. Phillips. Prosecutors argued that defendants’ intent was to defraud other buyers and sellers to enhance the profits of their trading operation at El Paso. Defense lawyers argued that while e-mail messages and other evidence made defendants look bad, the reporting system was flawed and defendants had no criminal intent. According to the indictment, the three conspired to send fictitious price and volume reports on trades to the newsletters, which publish indexes widely used to price gas. Since the market manipulation was uncovered, laws and systems have changed to limit trader ability to influence prices.
|
El Paso Corp;Decisions and Verdicts;Federal District Courts;Frauds and Swindling;El Paso (Tex)
|
ny0109138
|
[
"world",
"americas"
] |
2012/05/10
|
Slivers of Hope Amid the Melancholy in Ciudad Juárez
|
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — The crowd toasted with beers as first-time models strutted the makeshift catwalk in princess wedding dresses and Tarahumara Indian-inspired flower-print jumpers, all produced by local fashion designers bent on showing the world that their troubled border city is as much about hemlines as homicides. “The city has hope now,” said Eli Valle, one of the designers presenting her collection during a fashion show in Ciudad Juárez last month. “Businesses are opening. People have shed their fear.” This is still a terribly violent city — at least eight people were killed over the weekend, including a man bound and left in the street with plastic bags covering his face. But over all, homicide rates have decreased significantly from their peak in 2010, and young people in particular are stepping out, joining art collectives around town and even partying after dark at reopened nightclubs. The organizers of the fashion show, a group called Amor por Juárez (“Love for Juárez”), which has loosely based its efforts on the “I Love New York” campaign, are planning to open a clothing boutique in downtown Juárez next year. “It has a lot of value, in what it means to put it in a conflict zone, in an abandoned area, which is having a rebirth,” said Ricardo Fernández, president of Amor por Juárez. Fashion shows and art classes alone will not save the city, of course, and some skeptics call these efforts a sugarcoating of the deeper, more troubling problems of police and judicial corruption and ineptitude, as well as a fragile economy that is debilitatingly dependent on large manufacturing plants known as maquiladoras. “Let’s go for the fundamental, the transcendental, but that’s a hard sell because it’s intangible, it’s longer term,” said Lucinda Vargas, board member of Plan Estratégico de Juárez, a civic group. In a city where a mere 10 percent of crimes are investigated, Ms. Vargas said programs to teach youth about rule of law and civic rights were sorely needed. Gustavo de la Rosa, a Chihuahua State human rights investigator, likens current social programs aimed at the city’s youth to a caramel coating on a putrid candy apple. “Once the funds to entertain them are depleted and they have to face the bitter future of working for $60 a week, in the best-case scenario, they will find a different reality,” he said. Still, these are valuable first steps to take in a city that has left its young people to fend for themselves while local women operate nearby machines, churning out BlackBerry phones and car parts destined for foreign markets. “We have been able as a community to come together to focus attention on a subgroup of the population that had been neglected before,” Ms. Vargas said. The turning point came in January 2010, when 15 people were gunned down at a party in the Villas del Salvarcar neighborhood; most of the victims were high school students who had been mistaken for members of a rival gang. Since the Salvarcar massacre, hundreds of young people have formed a network that is rapidly expanding and gaining political clout as it seeks to create social programs for young adults. One day last month, 40 groups of competing graffiti artists filled an otherwise empty park armed with spray-paint cans. The designs that slowly emerged on the canvases demonstrated a younger generation concerned less with violence than with the environment and the plight of the region’s indigenous communities. On the fringes of town, a group of men in their early 20s have begun building a sustainable house for a single-parent family of nine. Children from the neighborhood help pile the dirt-filled sacks during the weekends. The group wants to spread this model — employing local people living in extreme poverty to build their own eco-friendly houses from dirt — around the city. Last month, three teenagers from the area waited to give an urban dance lesson in one of the city’s renovated community centers. Newspaper clippings of local tae kwon do students proudly holding up medals covered a wall in the adjacent building. But the community spirit does not reach everybody. Edwin Garay, 19, and Brisa Delgado, 17, survivors of the Salvarcar shooting, were transferred by the government to a distant neighborhood after they were wounded. Now, Mr. Garay, who received 12 bullets to the leg, and Ms. Delgado, whose head was grazed by a bullet, rarely spend time with people their ages. Neither has heard of the youth network or its projects, nor do they know of any community centers nearby. Despite the government’s recent claims of success in improving security, there are clear indicators that the trouble has not gone away. One out of four housing units remains vacant, while 10 percent of the city’s cars do not have license plates — a safety problem considering that vehicles are frequently used in violent crimes. In January, after gunmen killed eight police officers, the city had to temporarily house the police force in hotels to protect officers from attack. Just a few months ago, the skeletal remains of 12 women were found in the Juárez area. In the midst of this violence, Ms. Valle, who based her fashion collection on the idea of rebirth and emphasized the use of lace and see-through materials, considered her designs as part of the city’s transformation. “I want to incite the good side of people,” she said, “peace, no aggressive forces.”
|
Murders and Attempted Murders;Ciudad Juarez (Mexico);Mexico;Social Conditions and Trends
|
ny0082453
|
[
"us"
] |
2015/10/27
|
Death of Woman in Tank at a Nevada Cryotherapy Center Raises Questions About Safety
|
HENDERSON, Nev. — Chelsea Ake-Salvacion felt she was on health care’s cutting edge, working at a cryotherapy center in this Las Vegas suburb that promised to help clients burn calories, reduce pain, strengthen immune systems and halt aging by embedding them in freezing tanks for a few minutes at a time. In her off hours, she engaged in the practice, and dreamed of opening her own cryotherapy center once she had learned the ropes. But last week, Ms. Ake-Salvacion, 24, was found dead in one of the tanks, discovered by her colleague and friend Elise Iverson. After working an evening shift on Oct. 19 at the Rejuvenice spa here, which offers two forms of deep-freeze therapy, in tanks that can reach temperatures of minus 240 degrees Fahrenheit, she had stayed to give herself a cryotherapy session. She was found the next day. A local coroner’s office said the cause of death had not yet been determined. But Ms. Ake-Salvacion’s uncle said the coroner had told him his niece’s body was found “rock-hard solid.” “Something went wrong,” said the uncle, Albert Ake, 48. “What she told me is that there is nothing dangerous about doing this. That the only thing that could happen is you’re there a little too long and you get frost nip on your fingers.” The death raised questions about safety in the growing industry of cryotherapy , which is practiced by star athletes and celebrities but is rarely studied and not regulated by any one body. Today, there are cryotherapy centers in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere, though doctors do not agree on its benefits. In a statement, the owners of the center where Ms. Ake-Salvacion died — a two-store chain called Rejuvenice — said they were “devastated by this accident,” and that they were “voluntarily scrutinizing each and every one of our internal procedures to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.” The company’s website says that its chambers are “equipped with numerous safety features” and that doors are never locked, allowing clients to exit at any time. On Monday, a week after the accident, it seemed like business as usual at the Henderson store, a narrow storefront on a corner of a busy street of a Las Vegas suburb. There are two forms of cryotherapy offered: a one-person cryochamber, which requires the client to wear earmuffs, a mask, gloves, slippers, socks and underwear; and a three-person cryosauna, which does not require the mask or earmuffs. Cost is based on treatment and need, and the center offers a deal through Groupon, said Hailey Cap, office manager of Rejuvenice. Ms. Cap, who said she had known Ms. Ake-Salvacion for three years, said that she and other workers at the spa would often use the cryochambers, but never alone. “We always had someone with us,” Ms. Cap said. Ms. Ake-Salvacion was a Hawaiian who had moved to Las Vegas in recent years with her boyfriend. When her boyfriend returned to Hawaii, Ms Ake-Salvacion stayed in Nevada, eager to excel at her new job as a manager at the spa, said Mr. Ake, her uncle. “She loved that work,” he said. On Monday, Oct. 19, Ms. Ake-Salvacion was working a closing shift. About 7:30 p.m. she sent a text message to her boyfriend, telling him that her body was aching and that she was going to hop in one of the tanks for a bit. “That was the last she texted him,” said Mr. Ake. The coroner’s office told Mr. Ake that his niece died just minutes after getting into the chamber. Ms. Ake-Salvacion used to work out at a gym across the street from Rejuvenice, Ms. Cap said. “She was working out a lot,” Ms. Cap said. “She would post her workouts on Instagram.” Cryotherapy is billed as being excellent for muscle pain. “She must have been really sore,” Ms. Cap said. “I don’t know why she would go in there alone. We don’t do that.” One reason people do not try it solo, Ms. Cap said, is that the nitrogen gas used to chill the air can be debilitating. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, which responded to the incident, would not release an incident report, but in an interview a spokesman, Jesse Roybal, said that it did not appear a crime had been committed and that the case remained open. “It doesn’t appear to be suspicious in nature,” he said. The Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration was called to the scene, but OSHA officials decided not to open their own investigation. “Due to the fact that the employee was using the chamber for personal use, outside of business hours, OSHA does not have jurisdiction,” said a spokeswoman Teri Williams. Rejuvenice’s cryotherapy centers allow clients to spend a few minutes inside chambers full of air at below freezing temperatures. Last Tuesday morning, Ms. Iverson, the friend and colleague, arrived for her shift and found Ms. Ake-Salvacion dead. “Cryotherapy is safe treatment, it’s definitely safe but it’s not to be used alone,” Ms. Iverson said. “It was misused.”
|
Spa;Accidents and Safety;Chelsea Ake-Salvacion;Rejuvenice;Nevada;Henderson;Fatalities,casualties;Las Vegas
|
ny0191194
|
[
"sports",
"golf"
] |
2009/05/25
|
Not Scotland, but Closer: Golf in Nova Scotia
|
What golfer doesn’t dream of playing in Scotland , birthplace of the game? But what if you have only a long weekend for your getaway? What if you no longer have the budget for a golf trip costing thousands of dollars? Less expensive, less time-consuming alternatives are out there. You could buy a kilt, download bagpipe music to your iPod and take both down to the local muni as you pretend you are in Scotland. Some of your friends may pay to see that. Or you could plan a trip to new Scotland — Nova Scotia , one of the Canadian maritime provinces. Golf in Nova Scotia does not replicate golf in Scotland. But here are some of the province’s distinguishing advantages: it is uncrowded and unspoiled and has about 5,000 miles of seacoast, some of it lined with spectacular golf courses. When playing golf in Nova Scotia, you will never have to pretend you have left the United States . You will know it in dozens of ways, from the accents of a friendly host populace — a mix of Scottish, Acadian, English and native Mi’kmaq people — to the moose and bald eagles that frequent the golf layouts the way cart girls do at resorts in the United States. Several courses in Nova Scotia have a Scottish coastal feel, something the province promotes. But there are other appealing characteristics, chief among them a pristine environment lightly visited by traveling golfers. What you find in Nova Scotia, which is reachable by car, jet or ferry, are public courses with striking sea views that get about one-tenth of the play of many United States golf courses. Lodging is ample, Nova Scotia’s cultural history is preserved and engaging, and the dining choices — particularly when it comes to lobster , mussels and scallops — are plentiful. Hop on a one- to two-hour morning flight to Halifax from Boston , New York or Washington ; by the afternoon, you could be standing on the fourth tee at the beautiful oceanside Northumberland Links, where if you tripped backward, you would nearly fall into the picturesque blue water of the Northumberland Strait. Behind the green are the remains of a scuttled wooden boat, part of the hole’s design. In this majestic setting, water is visible from nearly every hole, as are Prince Edward Island and the Gulf of St. Lawrence beyond. A few minutes down the road from homey Northumberland is a dazzling golfing and lodging choice, the exclusive Fox Harb’r Golf Resort and Spa , voted the best new course in Canada by Golf Digest when it opened in 2001. Fox Harb’r is exclusive and pricey, with 1,100 gated acres that include not only championship golf but also a private beach, fly- fishing ponds, manor-style town houses, fine dining and an airstrip. About 250 miles to the northeast, and light-years away in atmosphere, is the Nova Scotia island of Cape Breton, where I was preparing to hit from the edge of a fairway one afternoon late last August when a 10-foot bull moose walked up and asked to play through. Actually, moose, at 1,200 pounds, don’t ask permission to do anything. But this one apparently liked golf. In fact, a minute after he quietly arrived, he meandered into the woods and watched me hit my shot from about 40 feet away. This, I discovered, will quicken even a lengthy preshot routine. Perhaps that’s why there is no slow-play epidemic in Nova Scotia. Or it could be that players do not want to waste time waggling a club when they could be taking in the views, the wildlife and the peaceful landscape. My moose encounter was at Highlands Links, an intriguing if occasionally raw course designed in 1939 by the Scottish-influenced Stanley Thompson. It has been rated one of the world’s top 100 layouts by Golf Magazine and is in Cape Breton Highlands National Park , a spectacular public playground spread across cliffs above the ocean. While there, stay at the Keltic Lodge, where doormen in kilts will greet you. Eat some delectable crab for dinner and attend a ceilidh, a traditional Gaelic music-and-dance social gathering. In the morning, stroll over for a tidy three-and-a-half-hour round of golf. You may not be in Scotland, but you will undoubtedly know you are not back home. The feeling will be much the same 90 minutes southward in the charming Cape Breton town of Baddeck, where the Bell Bay Golf Club has the ocean views and something more: finely manicured fairways and devilish, signature closing holes. The par-3 17th hole positions the golfer on a plateau tee box and asks for a shot through a narrow wooded opening to a terraced green on a perilous shelf. Don’t miss the green left, as I did. You’ll make a double bogey, as I did. Bell Bay also has a distinctive Canadian feature. Those little black things hammered into the cart path edges to act like rumble strips and keep the carts off the green grass are old hockey pucks. O Canada! Now remember, this isn’t Myrtle Beach . The golf season runs from about mid-May to mid-October. If you cannot fly to the province, the next best bet may be one of the many fast ferries leaving from Maine . If you want to drive, it’s about a 14-hour journey from New York City . An informative Web site, golfnovascotia.com , will help your travels. Is it Scotland? No, Scotland is a special golfing experience unto its own. It is Nova Scotia, the nearby new Scotland, where authentic discoveries can be made in the guise of a golf trip.
|
Golf;Travel,Tourism;Nova Scotia
|
ny0027009
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2013/01/29
|
Comptroller Criticizes Cuomo’s Plan to Cut Pension Costs
|
ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s plan to allow municipalities to defer more of their pension costs came under fire Monday from the state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, making him the second prominent Democrat to take aim at the plan. Mr. DiNapoli’s office said in a statement that it had “serious concerns” about the plan, in part because of its potential impact on the funding level of the state pension system and the balance sheets of local governments. The comptroller’s statement came as Mayor Stephanie Miner of Syracuse, the co-chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, continued to criticize the plan. On Monday, she did so at a legislative hearing here. “How do we know this plan is viable 25 years down the line?” Ms. Miner said, adding, “We might simply be financing another liability that we will not be able to pay.” Government pension costs have soared in recent years, putting enormous pressure on municipalities across the country. Mr. Cuomo has proposed allowing municipal governments to defer a portion of their pension costs by choosing a fixed contribution rate below the current one. The plan comes on top of another pension-deferment plan approved in 2010 — and backed by Mr. DiNapoli — that allows municipalities to borrow from the pension fund to pay their pension costs. Mr. DiNapoli’s criticism, however, could doom the plan, announced a week ago. The state comptroller is the sole trustee of the state’s $150 billion pension fund, and his support is needed for the plan to proceed. While New York’s pension system is generally viewed as one of the better-financed ones in the nation, the comptroller’s office is concerned that the new plan may pose a risk to that standing, said Jennifer Freeman, a spokeswoman for Mr. DiNapoli. The office is also concerned about a risk to the credit ratings of municipalities if they carry the additional liability of deferred pension obligations on their books. Allison Gollust, a spokeswoman for the governor, said, “We look forward to continuing to work on this with the comptroller to deal with his spiraling pension costs, and if he has any suggestions on how to deal with them, he should let us know.” New York City has its own pension system that would not be affected by the governor’s plan, but Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was asked about it nonetheless. “As a general policy,” he said, “postponing, down the road, expenses that you are going to have every year is not a good policy.” A number of local leaders support the plan. At the hearing, Rochester’s mayor, Thomas S. Richards, praised the proposal. “It’s going to help dramatically,” he said.
|
Pensions and Retirement Plans;Local government;Thomas P DiNapoli;New York;Andrew Cuomo
|
ny0014762
|
[
"sports",
"golf"
] |
2013/10/03
|
At 20 and in the Spotlight, Whether He Likes It or Not
|
DUBLIN, OHIO — Jordan Spieth’s mother had just finished telling a reporter about her son’s unease with being the center of attention at this week’s Presidents Cup when Spieth’s practice group arrived at the par-3 12th tee at Muirfield Village Golf Club. Stepping up to hit after a teammate, Tiger Woods, the 20-year-old Spieth sent his 7-iron shot toward the flagstick 173 yards away. From where she stood in the gallery, Christine Spieth could not see her son’s swing, only the flight of the ball as it tracked toward the pin. She watched as the ball landed a foot from the hole and trickled into the cup for an ace. Spieth’s mother excused herself to phone her father about Spieth’s latest attention-grabbing feat. By the time she dialed his number, it was too late. He said he was watching Spieth being interviewed on the tee by a Golf Channel reporter. Never one to parade his successes, Spieth suddenly finds himself on the PGA Tour’s lead float after a summer in which he has become in short order: the first teenager in 82 years to win a tour event; the first player since Woods in 1996 to start the season with no status and end it at the elite-field Tour Championship; and the first rookie to play for the United States in the Presidents Cup, after being chosen as one of the captain Fred Couples’s discretionary picks. The other Americans all want to be paired with Spieth, who will play in Thursday’s four-ball matches with 46-year-old Steve Stricker in a May-November pairing against Ernie Els and Brendon de Jonge of the International team. Brandt Snedeker described Spieth as having “that wow factor,” and his game, according to the 42-time tour winner Phil Mickelson, is far more advanced than his was when he won a PGA Tour event as an amateur at 20. The world’s news media want to hear from Spieth, who Wednesday afternoon was ushered to the microphone stand surrounded by the most cameras, the same stand that had been vacated minutes earlier by Mickelson, who appeared in his first Presidents Cup in 1994, when Spieth was barely walking. The attention, Spieth said, “is just what comes with it if you’re playing well, and maybe because of my age it’s added a little bit.” He added, “I don’t necessarily enjoy it or strive for it.” Spieth’s play, and his poise, have won him a bevy of followers, none as ardent as one of his first fans, his sister, Ellie. Born with an undiagnosed neurological disorder, she is 12 with the mental capacity of a 5-year-old. She has attended two tournaments this year, and he finished in the top four in both. Spieth lights up when he talks about his sister’s singular sense of humor and how hanging around her keeps him grounded. “When I’m upset at a tournament or don’t finish it off the way I should, it really does put things in perspective,” he said during the FedEx Cup playoffs. That was a crowd’s roar to his mother’s ears. “You hear something like that,” she said, “and you’re like, ‘Oh, O.K., he does get it.” Spieth, who was born and raised in Dallas, is the firstborn of Christine, who played Division III basketball in college, and Shawn, who played college baseball. The couple’s middle child, Steven, is a freshman basketball player at Brown. Spieth experienced success as a quarterback and as a left-handed pitcher before deciding to concentrate on golf when he entered his teenage years. His friends questioned his decision because they thought football and baseball scored much higher in the coolness factor than golf. “I think he kind of hid his talents from his friends,” Spieth’s mother said. “When he’d come home from tournaments with trophies, he wouldn’t display them and he’d say, ‘No, I’m not telling anybody what I did.’ ” This year, Spieth has heard from a few of the friends he made playing football and baseball. They have sent him e-mails and texts to let him know how cool it is that he is doing so well playing golf. The validation, he said, “is nice.” The main attraction of the game, Spieth said, is that nobody has ever recorded a perfect round, so there is always room for improvement. “I like controlling my own destiny,” he said. Raising a child with an undiagnosed disorder can leave a family feeling helpless, as if no one has any control. “There’s no plan of action,” Spieth’s mother said. “It’s a day-by-day, month-by-month, year-by-year progression of how Ellie does.” In high school, Spieth started helping out in his sister’s classroom once a week. His mother described it as “a turning point” for him. “He saw that we’re not alone, that so many families are going through this,” she said. Also, Spieth said, “I got to see her around her peers.” He added, “A lot of them are much smarter at certain subjects than we were at their age, and, you know, they just have some things that they don’t do quite as well, but it’s a lot of fun to be able to help.” When all three Spieth children were living at home, both parents rarely attended their son’s tournaments. Usually his father would accompany him while his mother attended his brother’s games and tended to his sister’s needs. Now, with their sons expanding their horizons, the Spieths have more freedom to stretch their schedules. On Wednesday, someone asked Spieth’s parents if they were planning to attend the winners-only tournament in Maui, Hawaii, in January. His father said they were. “We are?” Spieth’s mother said. “Oh, good.”
|
Presidents Cup;Golf;Jordan Spieth
|
ny0015806
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2013/10/17
|
Scattered by War, Syrians Struggle to Start Over
|
MAFRAQ, Jordan — Watering the plants on her balcony back home in Syria this spring, Wedad Sarhan took delight in how they were stirring to life after the winter months. A jasmine tree filled the small balcony with its sweet scent. An apricot tree, planted eight springs earlier, was blossoming for the first time. A rocket exploded on the balcony minutes later. Ms. Sarhan was standing inside. Two of her granddaughters were wounded. Their father, Hasan, quickly carried one girl to a nearby clinic, unaware that the other lay more grievously wounded under a pile of clothes. Ms. Sarhan found her. “I pulled her out by her shirt,” she recalled. “I took her in my arms, and then I started screaming, ‘There’s no leg!' ” That evening, the Sarhans fled Dara’a, their hometown in southwestern Syria, and crossed into Jordan, three generations of refugees. Their large clan, already torn apart by the Syrian civil war, was now scattered across Jordan and Syria. Today, the Sarhans in Jordan, like other Syrian refugees cast into an increasingly unwelcoming region , make vague plans about returning to a homeland that has all but vanished. But the war, raging just half an hour’s drive from here, relentlessly forces the Sarhans to remake their lives in this new home. They are venturing uneasily into their new neighborhoods, anxiously sending their children to new schools, reluctantly opening a new business. Updates from family members in Syria are gleaned from brief, shaky cellphone calls. “Our family story is just one of many,” said Noman Sarhan, Ms. Sarhan’s eldest son. “You can find Syrian families who have had an easier time than we’ve had, and others whose stories are more horrific. But almost all Syrian families have these in common: a relative who’s been killed or wounded, who is detained or wanted. Every family has suffered.” The Sarhans are among the more than two million people whom Syria’s civil war has so far spread throughout the Middle East and even into Europe . As the 31-month war has festered, growing ever more violent and deepening along sectarian lines, the number of refugees has swelled. An interactive feature on the Web site of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees presents the precise number of registered refugees on a particular date: 475,494 on Jan. 1, 2013; 1,078,881 on April 13, when the Sarhans came to Jordan. It is a dry, digital chronicle of a humanitarian crisis that the world body has characterized as the worst since the Rwandan genocide two decades ago. With an estimated 4.25 million Syrians displaced within their own country, the conflict has uprooted more than a quarter of Syria’s population. More than 100,000 have been killed. About 40 miles south of here, in the capital, Amman, Ms. Sarhan has been staying with one of her wounded granddaughters at a rehabilitation Image center. Ever the optimist, she appears cheerful at first. Yet a terrible grief comes over her when she recounts her family’s losses. Two of her children and nine grandchildren are safe in Jordan. But 6 children and 21 grandchildren remain trapped in Syria. A daughter has moved to an abandoned house with her family; another has sought shelter in a house under construction. Her youngest son was recently wounded in the leg by a sniper. Another is on the run, wanted by government forces for his activism. Two others are in detention, including one in a military prison in Damascus. That son, she says, has not been heard from in eight months. As for her husband, Hussain, 62, he is marooned in the family home, holed up in a rebel-held area that is the focus of regular shelling and rocket attacks. Fearing looters, he refuses to leave. When the fighting eases, he sometimes walks up a nearby hill for a cellphone signal. “I’m O.K.; is everybody O.K.?” he asks his wife before hanging up. An Eldest Son’s Burdens “Where are the Jordanians?” Noman Sarhan, 38, said, repeating a joke popular among Syrians in Mafraq. Most Syrian refugees have gravitated not into camps, but into cities like Mafraq, where the population has doubled to 250,000. With a reputation for being hard-working, resourceful and skilled at business, many Syrians have found jobs, sometimes at the expense of Jordanians. Others have started businesses, including Mr. Sarhan and his wife, Feda, who, with a $25,000 investment from a cousin, recently opened a hair salon. He stood in the middle of the city’s once quiet main commercial street, where the sidewalks and stores are now thronged with customers. He exchanged greetings with a Syrian carpet store owner from Homs. He talked to Syrian workers at a shawarma restaurant. Then, at one large restaurant, Mr. Sarhan casually asked the cashier whether it had opened since the arrival of the Syrians, a question that exposed the underlying tension between the refugees and their Jordanian hosts. The Jordanian cashier came out of his booth with a wide smile that was quickly belied by his body language, then words. “We opened seven months before the start of the Syrian revolution,” the cashier, Zeid Jabri, 24, snapped. “We were developed before you came here.” Mr. Sarhan fell silent. He quickened his pace. He stared ahead, avoiding the eye contact that would instantly draw store owners out onto the sidewalk. “I don’t like Mafraq,” he said finally. “There are too many Syrians here. The Jordanians don’t look at you as an individual but lump you in with all the refugees.” Noman was the first of the Sarhans to cross into Jordan, arriving with his wife and four children 13 months ago. They lived in an apartment in Amman until a few months ago, when they turned it over to his younger brother Hasan so that he could be near his wounded daughter’s rehabilitation center. Besides, Feda Sarhan has relatives in Mafraq, and the large Syrian population presented a business opportunity. “I’m not happy about opening a business in Jordan,” said Noman Sarhan, who was an aviation maintenance worker at the Damascus airport before the war. “I don’t want to put down roots here, but I have to consider all the possibilities.” He settled in at home, inside a large building where his family rents an apartment and space for the salon next door. Family life eases his nerves. When his 4-year-old son got a nosebleed, he joked, “Bashar shot me,” referring to Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. His 7-year-old daughter, who just started attending a $70-a-month private school, was the only one absent. In Dara’a, Feda Sarhan owned a popular hair salon that was looted and burned to the ground five months ago. Some of her old customers have started trickling in here, and word of mouth has drawn new ones. She is content with building a Syrian clientele. Jordanians have held protests against Syrian refugees in Mafraq, and she fears being caught in any trouble. “We don’t mix with the Jordanians,” she said. As the eldest son in the family, Mr. Sarhan grew up knowing that it was his duty to look after his siblings. But taking care of his younger brother Hasan and other relatives, as he was doing now, was threatening to sink him. The war’s shifting nature gave little hope of a way out, for him or for his country. Since early in the war, he has supported the Free Syrian Army, the Western-aligned rebel group, but he was now worried about the rise of Islamic militants. Early on, he believed that Sunni Muslims like himself and Alawites, members of Mr. Assad’s minority Shiite sect, were galvanized by a shared quest for democracy. Now he fears that the war has lasted too long, that too much blood has been shed, that too many will seek to redeem their losses. “I know that there will be revenge killings in Syria for the next 10 to 20 years,” Mr. Sarhan said. “Some of the rebel groups will take revenge against men, women, their children, the young and old. They will not leave one Alawite alive.” A Mother’s Anguish Wedad Sarhan, 57, was worried. Her husband had not called in two days, a sign of fighting in their neighborhood in Dara’a. Nor was there word yet of her third son, the one presumed to be still in the military prison in Damascus. But there was some reassuring news. After months of no communication, the younger of her two daughters managed to visit Ms. Sarhan’s fifth son, who has been detained for the past year. He was fine — and relieved. “My son thought I’d been killed,” Ms. Sarhan said, tears welling at the pain this belief had caused him. Ms. Sarhan, her sons say, is now driven by a sense of mission to protect her granddaughter Douaa, who lost her left leg below the knee in the rocket attack. Douaa, who was 17 months old at the time, successfully underwent two operations, and there is now talk of fitting her for a prosthetic leg. Born in Dara’a, Ms. Sarhan married Hussain Sarhan over the objections of her friends. A refugee from another era, he arrived in Dara’a at the age of 16 in 1967 with his parents. Driven out of their native Golan Heights after the Arab-Israeli war that year, they settled in a refugee camp occupied by Syrian Sunni Muslims on one side and Palestinians on the other. A Syrian Refugee Family’s New Life 7 Photos View Slide Show › Image Lynsey Addario for The New York Times The couple moved into a tiny two-room house in the camp where their eight children were born and grew up. Neighbors could look down into their home. Ants crawled across the gravel floor. Life in the Dara’a camp left her sons with grievances that, rightly or wrongly, they associated with Mr. Assad and his father, Hafez al-Assad, who seized power in 1970. “My father worked for 30 years in the army, but because of his low government salary, we were unable to escape the poverty of the camp,” Noman Sarhan said. “We suffered great injustices, economic and political. Syria is rich in oil, agriculture and water, but the people are poor. The people close to Assad controlled the economy.” In 2000, the Sarhans left the camp and managed to buy the third and fourth floors of a four-story apartment building on the outskirts of Dara’a. Around that time, the second floor was occupied by people destined to arouse the Sarhans’ suspicions during the war: a family from the Alawite sect of the Syrian president, noteworthy because of their scarce numbers in Dara’a. A west-facing balcony on the fourth floor — the same one struck by the rocket — was her husband’s favorite corner of the house. The balcony looked out over the city, the minaret of the Omari mosque rising in the distance. The apricot tree, just a few inches high when it was planted eight years ago, grew taller than the adults in the family. “He would say, ‘Now we are living, finally,' ” Ms. Sarhan recalled. “We spent 10 years in that house before the revolution, and they were the happiest years of my life,” she said. “My husband and I couldn’t believe we were that happy, and then the revolution destroyed us.” The war that has engulfed Syria began in Dara’a in March 2011 after some teenage boys spray-painted a school wall with antigovernment graffiti and Mr. Assad’s forces arrested and tortured them, setting off protests. Ms. Sarhan’s sons had taken little interest in politics in the past. But like many men in Dara’a, they soon joined the antigovernment movement, not fighting but helping organize protests. For that, they paid heavily. Two were detained and one went into hiding. With the mood increasingly menacing in Dara’a, Noman Sarhan — who had lost his airport job because, he believes, of his Dara’a roots — fled to Jordan with his wife and children. Wedad Sarhan is gripped by the conviction that her sons’ troubles came from within, that her Alawite neighbors betrayed them by acting as government informants. The soldiers’ detailed knowledge of the brothers’ activities and their whereabouts, as well as the Alawite neighbors’ eventual flight, left no doubt in her mind. “They sent my sons to their destruction,” she said. “If my sons are released, I could forgive them. But if they are not, I’m not sure what I will feel when I see them again.” A Younger Son’s Grief Hasan Sarhan, 29, was the only one of the six brothers who did not participate in the antigovernment movement. “My goal was to take care of my wife and children,” he said. “I saw what they did to people who were involved in the revolution. I wasn’t interested.” There was something else. He almost died from stomach cancer as a child and was ill for years. He never played sports and was exempted from military service. Before the war, he earned $6 a day as a taxi driver. It would take him a year and a half, he figured, to save for a down payment to buy his own car. To economize, though he was married with children, he and his family shared the fourth-floor apartment with his parents. Now, Mr. Sarhan and his wife, Lama, stay with their children in an apartment on the flank of a rocky hill in Amman. He takes his oldest girl to school on a city bus, but he rarely goes outside for anything else. He does not socialize with the other Syrian refugees in their neighborhood. “There is a Syrian man near here who lost a leg,” Mr. Sarhan said, lighting a cigarette. “What would we talk about? ‘My daughter lost a leg, you lost a leg.' ” At the makeshift clinic in Dara’a where his daughters were first treated, antigovernment activists filmed a gruesome 63-second video of the wounded girls. The older sister, Shahed, who was 4 when she lost a chunk of her right leg in the rocket attack, is aware and crying. Douaa, her white diapers spotted with blood, the remains of her left leg dangling below the knee, is fully conscious but eerily passive. His wife cried for three days. An intractable grief still overwhelms the Sarhans, one tinged with a lasting regret. The missing leg, they believe, could have been reattached within 48 hours. As it turned out, Mr. Sarhan’s father found the leg under a water tank in their Dara’a apartment 49 hours after the rocket attack. His father called from Syria, crying over the phone. “The leg is dead,” he said. While safe, Hasan and Lama Sarhan are still lost in the peace of Jordan’s capital. He speaks often of wanting to go back to Syria after Douaa learns to walk with a prosthetic leg, of returning to Dara’a, where water is plentiful and free, fruit is abundant and life is easy. His face comes to life, his eyes widening, his mouth forming an unfamiliar smile. He led a good life over there on the equivalent of $107 a month. Here, you barely survive on $570. He has been in Jordan for only a few months, so Syria’s pull remains strong, and perhaps its ability to play tricks on his memory, conjuring up a life that vanished 31 months and 100,000 deaths ago. Perhaps he is choosing to forget what he said just the other day. In Dara’a, he had recalled, he was detained for five days last year, picked up because his name matched that of a rebel wanted by the government. He was handcuffed to a wall for nearly two days, then put in a small cell with 90 other men. He was eventually released, but he could no longer drive a taxi because the name he shared with the wanted fighter remained on the list of every government checkpoint. He stopped leaving the house. “We can go back to a safer place in Dara’a,” he tells Lama. “We can lead a better life over there.” A Brother Asks, ‘How Long?’ A balcony in Hasan Sarhan’s apartment, this one also facing west, stares across a valley at a Palestinian neighborhood built on another rocky hill. Palestinian refugees settled there after 1967 and never left. Noman Sarhan, who lived in Hasan’s apartment until a few months ago, said: “When I came here a year ago, other Syrians and I joked that we would go back home after three or four days, one month at most. Now we joke about whether we’ll be here in 15 years and still be talking of going home like the Palestinians.” Recent news from home was grim. A cousin was killed by a sniper two weeks ago. Then there was the matter of their brother in the military prison in Damascus. A Dara’a acquaintance, with a relative in the same prison, sent word that the Sarhans’ brother had died. Noman and Hasan dismissed the information as unreliable. There was, though, a deeper resignation in Noman’s voice and eyes. “At this point,” he said, “I’m completely prepared to hear that one of my brothers has been killed.” His swelling debts — he owes about $8,000 to his wife’s cousin — made him doubt that he could support his younger brother in Amman for much longer. Perhaps not more than five months unless business picked up at his wife’s hair salon. “Sometimes I feel I’m drowning,” he said. “I don’t care who lends me a hand. I just want to get out of the pool.” Noman gave no hint of his worries as he and Hasan sat on the balcony one morning. Weeds had taken over two hanging baskets. A cactus, left behind by a previous tenant, sat in a corner. Lama served Turkish coffee. Perhaps because he felt guilty for burdening his older brother, Hasan started speaking again of returning to Syria. Noman dismissed the idea. Hasan lit a cigarette. “Maybe we can go back when the revolution is successful,” he said, as if musing to himself. “But how long will that take? We thought it was going to be over in months. Will it take years?” “Months,” Noman said, shooting a glance at his younger brother. Hasan did not return it. “How long,” he said, “does it take a tree to grow?”
|
Syria;Refugees,Internally Displaced People;Jordan;Dara'a Syria;Arab Spring;Amman Jordan;Mafraq Jordan
|
ny0028519
|
[
"business"
] |
2013/01/23
|
U.S. Trade Representative Will Step Down
|
Ron Kirk, the United States trade representative, will step down in late February, his office said Tuesday. Lael Brainard and Michael Froman, two top administration aides on international economic policy, are considered among the front-runners to succeed him, people knowledgeable about trade policy said. “From bringing home new trade agreements with Korea, Colombia and Panama and negotiating to open up new markets for American businesses to cracking down on unfair trade practices around the world, he has been a tremendous advocate for the American worker,” President Obama said in a statement. The White House did not say when a successor would be named to the job, a cabinet-level position that advises the president on trade policy and negotiates trade agreements. The next trade representative will inherit a full slate of issues. The administration is negotiating a free-trade deal with nearly a dozen Pacific Rim nations, including Canada, Mexico, Australia, Vietnam and Singapore, though not the regional powers of China and Japan. It is also edging closer to free-trade talks with the European Union. Mr. Kirk, 58, a former mayor of Dallas, made clear last year that he intended to resign. In addition to losing another cabinet-level assistant, Mr. Obama is also losing a favored golf partner in Mr. Kirk. “We have made great strides to bring about the president’s vision of a more robust, responsible and responsive trade policy that opens markets to products stamped ‘Made in America’ and enforces Americans’ trade rights around the world,” Mr. Kirk said in a statement. Mr. Froman, 50, who has known Mr. Obama since they attended Harvard Law School together, holds a joint appointment at the White House National Security Council and National Economic Council. Ms. Brainard, also 50, an under secretary at the Treasury Department and a contender for secretary later in Mr. Obama’s second term, is the country’s top financial diplomat. Mr. Kirk, Mr. Froman and Ms. Brainard are attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week, according to an official list of participants .
|
US Economy;Ron Kirk;International trade
|
ny0015421
|
[
"business",
"media"
] |
2013/10/11
|
Suit Filed Against Warner Bros. in Screenplay Theft
|
LOS ANGELES — Warner Brothers responded harshly on Thursday to a legal complaint over the authorship of its Clint Eastwood baseball movie, “Trouble With the Curve.” But its opponents did not back down. In an unusually sharp response to a lawsuit filed here last week, the studio publicly called the accusations of script theft “reckless and false.” The studio and several of its business partners also said they had overwhelming evidence that the original script was created more than 15 years ago, without foul play, by its credited author, a virtually unknown screenwriter named Randy Brown. But Gerard P. Fox, a lawyer for a plaintiff, instantly dismissed the supposed evidence as “manufactured.” Warner’s response was in part an attempt — probably futile — to stem Hollywood table talk and media fascination with a suit that charged wrongdoing by both the studio and Mr. Eastwood’s Malpaso Productions, though Mr. Eastwood was not personally included among more than a dozen named defendants. The suit portrays a web of duplicity unusual even for the film business, with shenanigans only slightly less colorful than those in Elmore Leonard’s movieland caper “Get Shorty.” Among other charges, it contends that Mr. Brown knew very little about baseball but was set up as a bogus screenwriter, while a script actually written by a hidden third party wound its way through talent agencies and low-level producers until it found its home on the big screen with Mr. Eastwood. In Hollywood, where everyone is eager to claim credit for a great idea, charges of script theft are as common as cocktail receptions, and usually as fleeting. Few lawsuits ultimately prevail, partly because claimants often overvalue an idea’s originality. But the aggrieved keep trying. Just last week, James Cameron was granted dismissal of a suit — one of several similar actions against him — that claimed he had misappropriated material in creating “Avatar.” Two days earlier, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal in a copyright case connected to the 1980 film “Raging Bull.” The complaint against Warner, filed in the United States District Court in Los Angeles, names Malpaso, the United Talent Agency and a series of lesser-known film figures. Those include Robert Lorenz, who has long been Mr. Eastwood’s producing partner, and who directed “Trouble With the Curve.” The suit was filed by Ryan A. Brooks, a former college baseball star who was scouted by the pros, but suffered an injury. Instead, he became a film producer successful enough to share credit for “Inocente,” a documentary short that won an Oscar earlier this year. In his complaint, Mr. Brooks said that Mr. Lorenz and others were engaged in a conspiracy to credit Mr. Brown, a cover-band drummer who had little experience as a professional writer, with a sophisticated script about baseball scouts and a failing father-daughter relationship. Image Amy Adams and Clint Eastwood in the 2012 movie, “Trouble With the Curve.” The film’s authorship has been challenged. Credit Keith Bernstein/Warner Brothers Pictures In Mr. Brooks’s version of events, “Trouble With the Curve” was actually written by Don Handfield, a former character actor, whom Mr. Brooks hired to write a script called “Omaha,” based heavily on Mr. Brooks’s knowledge of college baseball. According to the complaint, Mr. Brooks and Mr. Handfield researched baseball on trips together. They created a crusty old widower who was much like the aged scout portrayed by Mr. Eastwood in “Trouble With the Curve.” And they peppered their work with details — a clog-dancing scene, players who had to work as peanut vendors, a long, painful confrontation with a mirror — that also appeared in “Trouble.” “Omaha” particularly focused on a father-daughter story that, in Mr. Brooks’s account, was based on his mother’s experience with her own estranged father. In “Trouble,” Mr. Eastwood plays an aging father who reconciles with a daughter played by Amy Adams. “Trouble” opened to mixed reviews and modest ticket sales on Sept. 21, 2012. By then, Mr. Brooks and Mr. Handfield had parted in a business dispute, and Mr. Handfield had directed his own pet project, a football fantasy called “Touchback.” Yet Mr. Brooks, on getting a close look at “Trouble With the Curve,” became convinced that the film had Mr. Handfield’s “writing DNA” all over it. According to the complaint and subsequent interviews with Mr. Brooks and his lawyer, Mr. Fox, two prominent film experts — Sheril D. Antonio, of New York University’s film school, and Richard Walter, co-chairman of graduate screenwriting at the University of California, Los Angeles — are prepared to support the case by spotting strong similarities in the projects. Mr. Brown, who is in his mid-50s and appears to have no produced movie credits before “Trouble,” is represented by Charles Ferraro, a prominent agent at United Talent. So was Mr. Handfield, when “Omaha” was being written — and both Mr. Ferraro and the agency are now named as defendants in the lawsuit. The suit portrays a tangled series of connections that led to the charges of script theft, including Michele Weisler, a line producer who is represented by the Gersh Agency, which helped Mr. Handfield get “Touchback” made. According to her public interviews, Ms. Weisler worked with Mr. Brown to brush up an old baseball script he had written years ago, then helped get it to Mr. Lorenz. Along the way, she became a producer of “Trouble” — and now joins Mr. Brown, Gersh Agency and one of its agents as defendants in the current suit. But Matthew T. Kline, a lawyer for Warner and a number of the defendants, including Mr. Brown, fired off a letter on Thursday telling Mr. Fox the allegations of theft and conspiracy were nonsense. The letter also warned those who filed the complaint to agree by next Friday to withdraw it or face potentially crushing legal actions in return. Mr. Kline attached a draft of a “Trouble With the Curve” script that he said Mr. Brown had optioned to the Bubble Factory, a Hollywood production company, for an initial payment of $2,500 in 1998. The early script, which was markedly similar to the final Eastwood film, was accompanied by an option agreement that ostensibly showed it already existed when Mr. Brooks was still a young ballplayer. (In a separate statement, Mr. Brown called the suit “shameful, reckless and meritless.”) End of story? Hardly. “If this is the best they have, they don’t have much,” Mr. Fox said in a phone interview shortly after receiving the Warner blast. He said his investigators had found no evidence that Mr. Brown or anyone else had registered an early script with copyright officials or with the Writers Guild of America, which maintains a widely used service for recording the creation of potential film material. Mr. Fox said telltales in the supposed 1998 draft actually betray it as something that was “manufactured to provide a defense.” All will presumably become more clear in court. But likely not until the two sides have played some more hardball.
|
Lawsuits;Movies;Copyrights;Warner Bros;Ryan A Brooks
|
ny0050969
|
[
"business",
"international"
] |
2014/10/21
|
To Limit Risks as It Enters China, Costco Works With Alibaba
|
CHICAGO — By selling directly to Chinese consumers on Alibaba’s platform, a move announced last week by the American retailer Costco Wholesale, it aims to employ local knowledge and a low-cost structure to avoid missteps that caused even Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, to stumble in China. Many global retailers opening in China have struggled to find product mixes and store designs that appeal to local customers. In addition to Walmart, others like Best Buy and eBay have fallen short of expectations in one of the fastest-growing consumer markets. Costco’s virtual storefront on the Alibaba site Tmall is designed to help the company study consumer shopping habits with no brick-and-mortar costs and fewer risks, signaling a new approach to expanding in China. “This shows Costco has learned from the mistakes made by companies like Walmart and also those who were forced to exit the market, like Home Depot,” said Anjee Solanki, national director of retail services at Colliers International, a commercial real estate company. Walmart’s China sales in the second quarter of this year grew 1.1 percent, but same-store sales, a key figure of revenue from stores open at least a year, fell 1.6 percent. David Cheesewright, who heads the international division at Walmart, acknowledged at its recent investor conference that China remained tough even after 17 years. “We are still very much focused on building our foundations,” he said. Early steps at times have been shaky. Walmart stuck with its big-box format even though Chinese consumers prefer neighborhood stores. Its stores in China, including Sam’s Club warehouses, offered few high-margin goods from its own brand until as recently as last year. Even Walmart’s “Everyday Low Prices” slogan backfired. Chinese consumers equate inexpensive with unsafe and value quality as much as bargain prices, retail consultants said. Supply-chain problems came to a head in January when Walmart recalled its popular “Five Spice” donkey meat after tests found traces of fox meat. The recall followed episodes involving tainted milk and recycled “gutter oil” sold as cooking oil. Despite the difficulties, Walmart has become China’s third-largest retailer, behind the Sun Art Retail Group and China Resources Enterprise, a state-owned company, according to the consulting firm Kantar Retail. Walmart has made adjustments, too. In December, it announced plans to increase sales of house-branded products to 20 percent of the total within a decade. It has also built its own distribution centers to manage product quality. “We’ve done a lot of work on building trust,” said Mr. Cheesewright, the Walmart international chief. Costco’s decision to work with Alibaba is intended to bring local credibility. In July, iResearch, a Chinese market research company, forecast that the Chinese online retail market would generate sales this year of 2.76 trillion renminbi, or about $450 billion, up 46 percent from 2013. Virtual storefronts are a growing business on Tmall, which has a 50 percent share in China and is one of the world’s fastest-growing business-to-consumer marketplaces. Tmall lists more than 100,000 brands, about 2,000 of them foreign-made. “Digital storefronts are a powerful tool to help shape what a retailer might want to do with a physical store,” said Marcie Merriman, executive director of retail strategy and customer engagement at the consulting and accounting firm EY. Costco is opening in China with Kirkland, a well-regarded brand that includes products like men’s shirts and laundry detergent, aimed at quality-conscious Chinese consumers. Even so, price competition probably will be fierce with Yihaodian, a website in which Walmart is majority owner. As part of an introductory “Shopping Spree” on Tmall, Costco offered four packs of Sensodyne toothpaste at 145 renminbi, or $23.68, compared with 109 renminbi on Yihaodian. The Alibaba connection is not without risk. Costco’s plan to rely on Tmall warehouses to reduce logistics costs and shorten delivery times may risk creating logistics problems similar to those Walmart has faced. “Letting Alibaba handle a lot of their supply chain is a good short-term solution,” said Ms. Solanki, the Colliers retail services director. But product safety, she added, “is a big issue with supply chains in China, and that has to be managed well.” Rob Howard, chief executive of the delivery company Grand Junction, based in San Francisco, said the Alibaba partnership could put Costco in a system that often favors local players. “It’s more of a cobbled-together, relationship-driven infrastructure,” he said. “It’s hard for an external person to tap into that effectively, and Alibaba has that all nailed.” Nandita Bose is a Reuters correspondent.
|
Retail;Costco;Alibaba;China
|
ny0265271
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2016/03/04
|
Spain Seizes 20,000 Military Uniforms Bound for ISIS
|
MADRID — The Spanish authorities on Thursday announced the seizure of about 20,000 military uniforms that were being shipped from Spanish ports to fighters with the Islamic State and other Islamist groups, according to the Interior Ministry. The uniforms were part of a shipment declared as “secondhand clothing” to pass through customs, the ministry said, and were hidden inside three shipping containers intercepted in the ports of Valencia and Algeciras. Some other military accessories were also seized. The ministry said in a statement that the seizure was linked to the arrest in early February of seven people accused of operating a logistical support network that provided military equipment to the Islamic State as well as the Nusra Front, a branch of Al Qaeda operating in Syria. The Spanish authorities on Thursday released a video showing a large pile of seized camouflage clothing. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry later said that the uniforms were not made in Spain and that an investigation was still underway to determine where they came from. It was unclear whether the uniforms were intended to be used for specific operations. Five of the seven people who were arrested last month were Spanish citizens. The police said at the time that they suspected that the network had been sending military equipment to Islamist fighters under the guise of shipments of humanitarian aid. The seven were arrested separately, in cities in eastern Spain as well as in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa. The police opened the containers with the uniforms on Wednesday. The Spanish authorities would not disclose the intended destination of the containers.
|
Spain;ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State;Uniform;Al Nusra Front;Port;Valencia;Algeciras
|
ny0245439
|
[
"world",
"africa"
] |
2011/04/26
|
Violence Persists in Southern Sudan as Independence Nears
|
KAMPALA, Uganda — The persistent violence in southern Sudan has killed more than 150 people in the last week alone, the regional government said on Monday as it continued to struggle to control its own territory less than three months before independence. One southern Sudanese rebel leader, Gen. Gabriel Tang, surrendered Sunday night after months of fighting against the southern army, a southern army spokesman said, just days after 67 rebels were killed in the most recent clashes. At the same time, a different rebel group in a nearby region claimed victory over the southern Sudanese army in clashes near the town of Mankiem during which 84 people were killed, the spokesman said. He did not specify how many were combatants and how many civilians. “We don’t want wars on our borders,” said the spokesman, Brig. Gen. Malak Ajok. “For sure, we will be able to defend south Sudan.” But the closer southern Sudan gets to becoming the world’s newest country, the less stable it appears. Numerous southern Sudanese rebellions have broken out since voters overwhelmingly approved a January referendum on independence from the north, not including the unrelenting tensions between northern and southern Sudan in the contested region of Abyei. This month, the United Nations said more than 800 civilians had been killed in violence in the region since January, and the organization Human Rights Watch said last week that human rights abuses had been committed by both the southern Sudanese government and the rebels in recent fighting. “If the southern Sudan government wants a sustainable peace when it becomes fully independent in July, it should demonstrate its commitment now with a prompt and thorough investigation into human rights violations,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director for the organization. Both northern and southern Sudan were meant to demobilize tens of thousands of soldiers in a United Nations-backed disarmament program, but few have even begun the process , leaving many parts of this vast and undeveloped region volatile. Southern Sudanese officials have also been implicated in widespread human rights abuses against the government’s own security officers in a police-training program also supported by the United Nations. The southern Sudanese rebel groups are fighting for a variety of reasons. General Tang , also known as Tang Ginye, for instance, was a longtime foe of southern Sudan’s ruling party, accused of massacres in 2006 and of being a proxy of the north. Gen. Peter Gatdet, a rebel who leads the South Sudan Liberation Army, defected last month, and accused the southern Sudanese government of being dominated by ethnic Dinka.
|
South Sudan;Politics and Government;War Crimes Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity
|
ny0034401
|
[
"sports",
"tennis"
] |
2013/12/24
|
Turning Tennis Rackets Into Data Centers
|
When Paolo Palmero plays tennis, he knows his racket can improve his game, not by adding power and spin but by measuring them. Palmero was among 50 applicants chosen this fall to test the new Babolat Play Pure Drive rackets with sensors that measure power and spin as well as the contact point with the ball. Players can download the data to smartphones or computers using Bluetooth or a USB port. “It has given me a hard look at my game,” said Palmero, 40, who lives in Manhattan and works at the United Nations. “It’s a reality check.” The Babolat Play, which sells for $399, is the latest in a wave of racket innovation. Modest adjustments have been common in the past to increase sales of new models, but this year, more significant innovations have been made. Head introduced a material, graphene, meant to generate more power, and Wilson and Prince changed their stringing patterns drastically to generate more spin. “The tennis market is changing,” said Roger Petersman, Head’s United States product business manager. “It’s becoming more competitive, and consumers are smarter, so you need something new to grab their attention.” This month, the company introduced the $399 Head Custom Made, which allows consumers to select length, weight, balance, grip shape and material, and string pattern for their rackets. Each one will be customized in Head’s Austrian lab. “We know what the economy has done to retail,” Petersman said. “People need a reason to change rackets. This is for people who want the best, are very particular and are not afraid to spend money.” Eric Babolat, the president and chief executive of Babolat, said his company’s high-tech racket, 10 years in the making, went beyond individualization. “This is not a new page, it is a new book,” Babolat said, likening it to the way sound changed movies and predicting that all rackets would eventually be connected. A new International Tennis Federation rule will allow the Babolat racket to be used during tournament play but will prohibit players from looking at the data during matches. Babolat acknowledged the racket’s weaknesses, including its difficulty in discerning a first serve from a second serve. The racket’s timing mechanism and algorithms will eventually be adjusted, he said, and early adopters will be able to upgrade the app without buying a new one. “Until now, players have had no concrete information about their game,” Babolat said. “Type and number of strokes, spin level, ball impact location, total and effective play time, power, endurance, technique, consistency, energy, rallies — all of this is brand-new information that has never before been available to players. Babolat Play allows players to essentially take a picture of their game, and understand how and where they can make key improvements.” Testing revealed that players loved comparing measurements like power levels, Babolat said. The data allow comparisons among Babolat Play owners worldwide, and he said he expected that to be popular with younger players who gravitate toward using technology for social interaction. Image The Babolat Play Pure Drive racket records information such as shot power and spin level. Credit Benjamin Norman for The New York Times Although Fo Tien was among the Babolat racket testers, he said he did not feel he was ushering in a revolution. “It’s more of a novelty for me,” said Tien, 43, who works in finance and lives in Diamond Bar, Calif. He was shocked to find that his hardest shots registered in the 50s on the scale Babolat established. Rafael Nadal, by comparison, hits in the 90s. “But most of the data is confirming what I already knew,” he said, adding that he found the community aspects “hokey.” “I already know I hit my shots on the upper part of the hoop so the ball stays on the string bed a split second longer,” he said. Tien is a 4.0-to-4.5 player on the United States Tennis Association’s self-rating scale from 1.5 to 7.0. He said that the new Babolat racket could be good for beginners and for teaching professionals, but that it would be more helpful for his game if the information was broken down shot by shot. “This is still the first generation,” he said. “There’s a lot of opportunity there.” Palmero, a 3.5 player, said the Babolat racket was improving his game. The numbers provide reminders of his flaws and motivation to break his bad habits. “I’m not as fast as I used to be, so when I run around my backhand, I’m hitting more defensive forehands,” he said. “I’m also finding I hit more topspin on my backhand in practice, then I revert to slices during matches.” Goran Draskovic, 36, a software consultant in Orlando, Fla., said the racket was an effective coach and “a game changer.” Although he is a 4.5 player, Draskovic said he discovered that he hit more shots near the top of the racket and on the sides than he had thought. “I had no clue I’m that bad,” he said. “It’s helping me because I’m reducing the percentage of off-center shots.” Lavie Sak, a teaching pro with an engineering background, said tennis was starved for such data, but he was moving in a different direction. This year, Sak and Sergey Feingold founded Shot Stats to design a device to provide instant feedback on racket head speed and a shot’s rotations per minute. It will be small enough to attach to the strings like a vibration dampener, and they hope to make it available next summer. “It will be more accurate than the Babolat Play because it is closer to the contact point, and you will get instant data,” Sak said. Such a device appealed to Tien because it could measure his play with different rackets or the effect of adjustments to his racket. But Tien said much of what happened with the racket depended on the quality of a player’s footwork, so he suggested one more gadget: “Someone should invent a sneaker with an electronic impulse center that gives you shocks to keep you on your toes and moving your feet.”
|
Tennis;Sporting Goods
|
ny0220853
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2010/02/10
|
Plan for Euro Area Seeks Urgent Debt Response
|
STRASBOURG, France — With the European Union ’s single currency in the grip of the worst crisis in its history, the bloc’s new president is expected to use the growing alarm over debt levels to argue for a new form of “economic government” in Europe. Herman Van Rompuy, the new president, will present his proposal to the leaders on Thursday at a summit meeting in Brussels, now certain to be dominated by worries about deficit and debt levels in Greece. Mr. Van Rompuy’s proposal could take main responsibility for stewardship of economic coordination out of the hands of the 27 nations’ finance ministers, elevating it to the level of heads of government. The plan could also reduce the role of the European Commission , the bloc’s executive arm. According to a draft of one of two documents circulated before the meeting, Mr. Van Rompuy (pronounced rom-PWEE) will argue that “recent developments in the euro area highlight the urgent need to strengthen our economic governance.” “Whether it is called coordination of policies or economic government,” it adds, “only the European Council is capable of delivering and sustaining a common European strategy for more growth and more jobs.” Under the plan, prime ministers would be asked to sign on to national reform goals, to which they would be held accountable at least once a year. The goals would be agreed to by June this year, and assessments of progress would be made public. “Recommendations for the euro area as a whole and its member states should be strengthened, with a stronger focus on competitiveness and macroeconomic imbalances,” the draft says. “This would be in line with the importance of economic spillover effects in the monetary union and the challenges the euro area is facing.” Diplomats say that markets will expect a strong signal on debt levels in Greece, Portugal and Spain from the European Union leaders at the meeting and that the leaders will, at the very least, need to make a statement on the Greek situation. On Tuesday, the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso — whose second term in office was endorsed by the European Parliament in Strasbourg — insisted that the “euro area has the capacity to deal with the difficulties.” Though private discussions about a last-ditch bailout of Greece have taken place behind the scenes, the European Union leaders are hoping that they can reassure the markets that this will not be necessary . Some analysts have argued that the heads of government should use the summit meeting to draw up procedures and structures to deal with a potential default in the euro zone. But Mr. Van Rompuy hopes to use the crisis to focus on medium-term reforms. He is expected to suggest that leaders agree to accept a maximum of five overall goals. These, to be proposed by Mr. Barroso, are likely to include such areas as spending on research and development, objectives for the digital economy, energy and green growth and overall employment goals. Individual countries would eventually set out their own detailed objectives, differentiated according to their starting points. Governments and the European Commission would also identify “the most pressing bottlenecks and barriers hampering growth.” The billions of euros spent by the European Union in structural fund subsidies or lending from the European Investment Bank would be used as incentives, the draft says. Meanwhile, European members of Parliament formally voted a new European Commission into power on Tuesday, ending months of stalled policy making. By 488 votes to 137, with 72 abstentions, the legislators approved the new commission after more than three months of delays. The Parliament’s endorsement completes a long, bruising, personal battle for Mr. Barroso to remain in office. With his mandate now secure, Mr. Barroso has, in theory, more freedom to use the significant economic powers that the European Commission holds within the bloc, where it acts as antitrust regulator, trade negotiator and guarantor of the union’s single market of almost 500 million consumers. But, during a parliamentary debate Tuesday, Mr. Barroso rejected criticism from some deputies that he had been too reluctant to push European integration against opposition from national capitals. He was, he said, ready to be bold, but added, “The commission cannot establish its influence, its power, its leadership against the democratic member states.”
|
European Commission;European Union;European Parliament;Barroso Jose Manuel
|
ny0250523
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2011/02/10
|
Senator Jim Webb Won’t Seek Re-election in Virginia
|
WASHINGTON — Senator Jim Webb , Democrat of Virginia, has decided not to run for re-election, avoiding a blockbuster rematch with the man he beat in 2006, George Allen, and giving Senate Republicans another opportunity to try to reclaim the majority. In a statement, Mr. Webb said he had “decided to return to the private sector, where I have spent most of my professional life, and will not seek re-election in 2012.” The announcement is a disappointment to Democrats and a blow to President Obama and Tim Kaine, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who had urged Mr. Webb to run for a second term. There had been rumblings for weeks that Mr. Webb, a former Navy secretary who was once a Republican, would not continue in the Senate. But he and his staff had remained tight-lipped. In his statement, Mr. Webb, 65, cited his work on a G.I. Bill, changes to the criminal justice system and efforts to improve relations with Southeast Asia as accomplishments he was proud of. “Notwithstanding this decision, I have every intention of remaining involved in the issues that affect the well-being and the future of our country,” he said. Mr. Webb defeated Mr. Allen in 2006 in a race perhaps best remembered for an incident in which Mr. Allen, then the incumbent, was caught on videotape calling a young Democratic operative of Indian descent “macaca.” That controversy helped Mr. Webb win a narrow victory and ended Mr. Allen’s hopes of competing for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. But last month, Mr. Allen announced plans to challenge Mr. Webb to reclaim his seat. Mr. Allen now faces a challenge from a Tea Party supporter, Jamie Radtke, for the Republican nomination. In a statement, Mr. Allen said: “I respect Senator Webb’s service to our country and the very personal decision that he and his family have made. I did not enter into this race to run against any one person, but to fight for the families of Virginia to improve their opportunities in life.” On the Democratic side, attention now turns squarely to Mr. Kaine, who served four years as governor and whose popularity would make him a formidable candidate. Mr. Kaine has repeatedly said he would remain as chairman of the Democratic Party , but an appeal by the president and party leaders could change his mind. Mr. Kaine issued a statement Wednesday praising Mr. Webb’s service but avoiding saying anything about his own future. If Mr. Kaine does not run, the Virginia Democratic Party will need to find another candidate to challenge Mr. Allen. Brian Moran, the chairman of the state’s Democratic Party, said in an interview that “my life just got a little bit more complicated.” Among the possible challengers who have been mentioned is Tom Perriello, who spent two years as a member of Congress from Southern Virginia but lost his re-election bid last year. Also, some have suggested that Terry McAuliffe, who lost a bid to be the Democratic nominee for governor in 2009, could run for Senate, though he is believed to want to try again for the state’s chief executive job.
|
Webb James H Jr;Elections;United States Politics and Government;Virginia;Democratic Party;Senate
|
ny0143581
|
[
"nyregion",
"westchester"
] |
2008/10/05
|
After Earlier Expansion, Schools Worry About Future Lull in Spending
|
BUOYED by a hearty economy, generous state aid and predictions of increasing student enrollments five years ago, several school districts in Westchester undertook ambitious building programs to renovate old and outdated buildings and construct new classrooms. But the expected surge in enrollments failed to materialize, and the economy is now spiraling downward, leaving school administrators in districts like Irvington, Scarsdale, Chappaqua and White Plains pleased with the luxury of more, better-equipped and uncrowded classrooms, yet worried about an expected curtailment in spending. The building projects are complete and will not be affected by the current economy, but school officials said the school bonds that homeowners were paying off already would likely put a lid on any more spending in these economic times. Enrollment countywide has barely gone up in the last five years, to 148,500 from 147,800, the Westchester-Putnam School Boards Association said. In Irvington, the fastest-growing district in Westchester in 2003, the schools spent $57 million — most of it paid for through a bond referendum — to add a 126,000-square-foot complex that includes a state-of-the-art middle school, gym and theater. It is, however, no longer the fastest-growing district in the county, and enrollment in Irvington, which was 1,940 in 2003, has inched upward in the past five years by only about 10 students. What is more, projections now are that by the 2015-16 school year, enrollment will have dropped to 1,578. Enrollment is a factor in the state formula for determining aid for construction and renovation projects. “There’s been a lot of retelling of the story,” said Kathleen L. Matusiak, the superintendent of the Irvington Union Free School District. In the elementary schools, she said, there are four fewer teachers in kindergarten through fifth grade than there were five years ago, because of decreasing enrollments there. But all 20 classrooms in the middle school and the new space shared by the high school and the middle school — a cafeteria and a multipurpose theater-gym area — are being fully used, Dr. Matusiak said. Because residents are shouldering an increased tax burden to pay off the construction bonds, however, other items in the district’s budget have come under increased scrutiny, she said. One year recently there was a moratorium on buying computers and other technology equipment. In Scarsdale, where enrollment in 2002 was 4,512, — up 23 percent in a decade — the school district approved $58.8 million for new construction at the high school that included a 15-classroom wing with faculty offices, a library, an expanded cafeteria, science labs at the high school, and additions and renovations at the middle school. As elsewhere, though, enrollment growth has slowed in Scarsdale, said Linda S. Purvis, its assistant superintendent for business and facilities. “It’s certainly not trending now the way it was in the late 1990s,” she said. Enrollment at the high school in 2002 was 1,199 students; this year it is about 1,400. The projection five years ago was that the number would be closer to 1,600 students. Still the district has not overbuilt, Ms. Purvis said. “There isn’t an excess of space,” she said, “Everything is being used. But then, excess space is defined differently by different people.” Looking ahead, Scarsdale is not expected to take on any more building projects in the near future. Nor is it considering a hiring freeze if there are budget problems, she said. “We’ll turn to other solutions to maximize space if we need to, like rescheduling, and in the case of elementary schools, possibly redistricting, a most unpopular option,” she said. “In the period ahead, you will see most districts looking very hard at the different options on the table.” Scarsdale voters approved their bond in a referendum in June 2000, just before the period for enhanced state aid expired. Under that referendum, the district was eligible for 29 percent reimbursement from the state for many of the construction costs. The amount of state aid, which varies throughout New York, averages about 20 percent for new school construction in Westchester. Although the current state formula for reimbursements is likely to remain unchanged, even in the current economy, Ms. Purvis said, the Department of Education sometimes “tweaks the formula in the sense of paying aid out over a longer period of time.” In Chappaqua, new school construction five years ago relieved overcrowding in its Robert E. Bell Middle School, said David Fleishman, superintendent of schools. The district, where enrollment in 2003 had increased to 4,114 from 2,984 a decade earlier, spent $32.5 million on the 160,000-square-foot Seven Bridges Middle School, where in accordance with current education recommendations, fifth and sixth graders are taught in a separate area from seventh and eighth graders. Enrollment growth has leveled off — it is 4,241 this fall — but Dr. Fleishman said that if enrollment spikes in the future, the new construction has allowed for sufficient flexibility to accommodate it. For now, Chappaqua’s school budgets are passing muster with voters. Come next spring, though, Dr. Fleishman predicted that “the stuff that’s happening on Wall Street will have to get factored in.” He noted that already the Mahopac Central School District has frozen all spending and hiring because of concerns about expected state cuts for education. In White Plains, the school district spent $28.2 million about five years ago to build a 60,000-square-foot addition to its high school that includes a media-library center, a science wing and a cafeteria. It also replaced old windows and an aging heating system in the high school, which was built in 1965. “When I walk through the building now, there’s plenty of room,” said Timothy P. Connors, superintendent of schools. “It’s all very comfortable.” But comfort will most likely not be the top priority in the months ahead for school administrators like Mr. Connors, Dr. Fleishman in Chappaqua, Dr. Matusiak in Irvington and Ms. Purvis in Scarsdale. As Mr. Connors said, “In the months ahead, in contrast to five years ago, we’re all going to have to ask a lot of hard questions in keeping with the changing times.”
|
Education and Schools;Building (Construction);Economic Conditions and Trends;Westchester County (NY)
|
ny0166404
|
[
"sports",
"othersports"
] |
2006/08/08
|
Cheating Accusations in Mental Sports, Too
|
Accusations of cheating at the largest tournament of the year have the chess world buzzing — and have tournament directors worried about what they may have to do to stop players from trying to cheat in the future. The cheating is alleged to have occurred at the World Open in Philadelphia over the July 4 weekend and to have involved two players in two sections of the tournament. In each case, the player was suspected of receiving help from computers or from accomplices using computers. Neither player was caught cheating, but one player, Steve Rosenberg, was expelled. The other, Eugene Varshavsky, was allowed to finish the tournament but was searched before each round, then watched closely during games. Chess has always been considered a gentleman’s game, with an unwritten honor code. But the advent of powerful and inexpensive chess-playing computers and improved wireless technology has made it easier to cheat. Although rare, cheating at chess is not new. For years, players who wanted to cheat would leave the board and ask other players for advice, or consult chess books or magazines for suggested moves. Cheating at chess may seem like a twisted exercise in ego gratification, but growing prize money has made the rewards more meaningful. At the World Open, the total prizes were $358,000, with first place in the top section worth as much as $28,000. Bill Goichberg, the director of the World Open and the Continental Chess Association, an organization that sponsors many big tournaments, said that, if true, the incidents at this year’s tournament were troubling because of the players’ stealth and effectiveness. “Before, a player might have discussed the position with someone who is a grandmaster,” Goichberg said. “That sounds terrible, but if the grandmaster hasn’t seen your position, I don’t know if that is going to be much help. What is happening now is that the cheaters are concealing the fact that the moves are being transmitted to a computer.” Goichberg said the older methods of cheating were easier to spot, but there are signs to indicate when someone may be using a computer program. Programs often play sequences of moves that are different from what a player would do, and they rarely make mistakes. Another signal is if a player shows a significant improvement over a short period of time, something that is rare among adult players. Goichberg said that he became suspicious of Varshavsky at the Open because he displayed those tendencies. Varshavsky was among the lowest-ranked players in the top section of the tournament. In his first four games, he beat three high-ranked masters and played another to a draw. Then after losing to a grandmaster, he played almost flawlessly to beat another grandmaster in his next game. Larry M. Christiansen, a grandmaster who did not play at the Open, ran the moves of the game through a commercially available chess-playing program called Shredder. He found that the last 25 moves of Varshavsky’s win against the grandmaster matched those played by the program. Goichberg said that he asked to see Varshavsky before the next round but that Varshavsky hurried off to the bathroom. Goichberg waited 10 minutes outside a stall until Varshavsky came out. Varshavsky consented to be searched, and Goichberg said that no device or transmitter was found. Varshavsky was allowed to proceed in the tournament. Directors then went to search the bathroom stall and found it occupied. Goichberg said they waited 45 minutes before a director peeked under the door and saw Varshavsky’s shoes. After Varshavsky left the stall, nothing was found in it. In the last two rounds, Varshavsky played against two grandmasters and lost each game quickly. Attempts to reach Varshavsky by telephone were unsuccessful. Goichberg expelled the other player under suspicion, Rosenberg, because he was found with a wireless earpiece. Rosenberg, who played in a lower section than Varshavsky, was leading going into the last round. A victory would have been worth about $18,000. During the round, Goichberg said, a tournament director noticed that Rosenberg was wearing something in his ear and asked to see it. Goichberg said that Rosenberg told the director it was a hearing aid. The director wrote down the name and the Web address written on the device and looked it up on the Internet. Goichberg said the device was called Phonito and it was described on a Web site as a wireless receiver that was ideal for undetected communication between two people. Part of the paraphernalia of the device, Goichberg said, was additional equipment that had to be worn elsewhere on the body to boost and receive signals. Goichberg said Rosenberg was wearing a heavy sweater and declined to be searched. Goichberg said the information did not prove that Rosenberg had cheated, but he felt he had no choice but to remove him from the tournament. “He had things on him that could be used for cheating,” Goichberg said. Before the World Open, Rosenberg had been the No. 2 official at ChessLive, an online chess-playing site, according to Chris Fitzgerald, the site’s chief administrator. “I know Steve personally, from online use, and he’s basically a nice guy,” Fitzgerald said. After the World Open, Fitzgerald said, Rosenberg called him to tell him that he had been accused of cheating and to resign his position. Fitzgerald said that he spoke to Rosenberg and that he was not willing to talk to a reporter. Other efforts to contact Rosenberg were unsuccessful. Goichberg said he planned to take countermeasures to try to catch people who might be using hidden electronic devices but he would not be specific for fear of tipping his hand. Steve Immitt, another tournament director working at the Open, said that the latest incidents made him concerned about directing tournaments, particularly ones with bigger prizes. He said he expected he would hear more accusations of cheating and “it is going to be harder to dismiss those complaints.” In the end, he said, “It is going to be more and more unpleasant to direct tournaments.”
|
Chess;Cheating;Computer Software;Wireless Communications;Computers and the Internet;Bathrooms and Toilets;Philadelphia (Pa)
|
ny0255364
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2011/09/21
|
Lawyer for Man in Synagogue Bomb Case Represented Detective
|
One of the lawyers representing a Queens man accused of plotting to blow up a synagogue also briefly represented the undercover detective who helped bring the case against the man. But the lawyer, Lamis J. Deek , whose client Ahmed Ferhani , 26, is facing state terrorism charges, said on Tuesday that her brief representation of the detective did not present a conflict of interest because there were no privileged conversations between them. The detective, identified in a letter from Manhattan prosecutors as UC 242, was issued a disorderly conduct summons on Sept. 11, 2010, during a protest over the construction of an Islamic cultural center near ground zero. The detective, who went by the alias Ilter Ayturk, had embedded himself with supporters of the center, Ms. Deek said. The summons stated that he had failed to obey a police officer’s orders to leave a sidewalk, Ms. Deek said. Ms. Deek is known for working on civil rights claims, and she said the detective had come to her for representation. Each time she met with him, she said, at least three other activists who witnessed the encounter between the detective and the police officer were present. There was no retainer agreement, Ms. Deek said, and she was never paid for her representation. She appeared in court with the detective, and the case was dismissed because the arresting officer never showed up, she said. “There was no conflict of interest,” Ms. Deek wrote in an e-mail, “and there existed between UC 242 and I no attorney-client privilege.” She said Mr. Ferhani had known of her representation of the detective before retaining her. The prosecution raised the issue on Tuesday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Although prosecutors did not request that Ms. Deek stop representing Mr. Ferhani, they said they wanted to make sure that he was aware of the situation and that he would waive any conflict of interest. Mr. Ferhani and a co-defendant, Mohamed Mamdouh , 20, are charged with weapons possession and conspiracy as crimes of terrorism, and each faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
|
Ferhani Ahmed;Deek Lamis J.;Conflicts of Interest;Terrorism;Police Department (NYC);Bombs and Explosives;Synagogues;Park51;Mamdouh Mohamed
|
ny0271670
|
[
"sports",
"autoracing"
] |
2016/05/20
|
Racing’s New One-Day Wonder
|
For auto racing fans, the month of May is synonymous with two of the world’s most famous car races, the Monaco Grand Prix and the Indianapolis 500. A third exceptional race, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, then follows in mid-June. Those three races, along with Nascar, represent the highest level of car racing, and the events are grandiose, multiday, or even weeklong spectacles in which the cars are showcased through technical verifications, practice and qualifying sessions, and, finally, the races. This May, the Formula E series is also vying for the attention of racing fans with its Berlin ePrix on Saturday. Even though the horsepower and speed of the Formula E cars is far below the cars in other categories, some drivers say that the overall challenge of the electric series, now in its second season, is greater than that of other series. In Formula E, the track action — practice, qualifying and racing — and the drivers’ off-track appearances — for the media, fans and sponsors — all happen on a single day, Saturday. And while in all other series drivers have one car to race and set up, in the environmentally ambitious Formula E series, drivers must prepare and drive two cars because the battery charge is limited. They switch cars mid-race. “I love the fact that it’s only one day,” said Nick Heidfeld, a former Formula One driver who now drives for the Mahindra Formula E team. “The reason I like it is because my whole career was always Friday practice, Saturday qualifying and Sunday race. That was more sensible probably, because you have more time to work on the car. But this is just a huge challenge and completely different.” Fitting everything into a single day also allows the electric series to run its ePrix through the streets of major world capitals, like Berlin, Buenos Aires, London and Paris. Such cities might be less inclined to close off their streets if racing activities extended across several days. Arranging the workload within a single day means that drivers are on the go from the first practice sessions, starting at 8:15 a.m., to the post-race interviews with the media, ending around 7 p.m. During the day, they must also find the best setup on the car in practice, aim for the fastest lap in qualifying and then compete in the race. In between all of that, they have to meet sponsors, fans and the media. “Because it is done all in one day, the format of the weekend makes it tricky,” said Lucas di Grassi, another former Formula One driver, who won the Paris ePrix race last month for the ABT Schaeffler Audi Sport team and who is leading the series. “If we stayed here for five days testing and finding the limit, drivers who take longer to find the limit will come closer to those who find the limit earlier,” he added. “But because we have one hour of free practice, one lap in qualifying and then the race, either you find the limit there without crashing or you are going to be nowhere. The car is not the quickest, but it is extremely difficult to drive, the level of the difficulty of getting everything correct is very high.” As a result, he said, it’s necessary to be extremely precise in looking for setup tweaks. Any change is likely to stay with the driver throughout the race, and if it’s wrong, he will pay for it. Mark Preston, team principal of Team Aguri, said that this need for precision marked the entire day. “If you have a problem, just one problem — like a car stopping on track during one of the sessions — because you’ve only got two sessions of practice, then you’ve lost a quarter of your whole preparation for qualifying,” he said. “When we won the race last year it was one of those weekends where everything just flowed toward the end,” Preston added. “We had no problems on that car. And so you’ll see that if anybody can just go through the weekend with no problems, it’s that — you have to get it perfectly right. It’s not just all about a screaming fastest lap in qualifying.” Paradoxically, the challenges of Formula E car technology lend themselves less to this single-day format than the technology in other series might, Heidfeld suggested. “In Formula E, we need longer to charge the batteries, whereas refueling is much quicker, so this is also a limiting factor for us,” he said. “I don’t see a reason why this format wouldn’t be possible elsewhere,” Heidfeld added. “Because even in Formula One and other series, it is not as limited as in the past, where they had parts that lasted only one outing or one qualifying session. This has now changed, so the parts should last.” For Bruno Senna, another former Formula One driver now racing in Formula E, all of these factors mean that the electric series may not be the fastest, but it is one of the most exhausting and challenging series for a driver. “I would say that WEC is a much more relaxed championship than Formula E is,” Senna said, referring to the World Endurance Championship, of which the 24 Hours of Le Mans is the most famous race. “There, your workload is shared with the other driver, so you’re working together. In Formula E you have that one hour and 15 minutes of practice before you actually qualify and race.” “And qualifying is one lap, the race is also a short race,” he added. “So you don’t have enough time to feel yourself into a place. You go to all of these crazy new street circuits, they change every year. It’s a tough championship, extremely competitive for the drivers, not really relaxing, but fun nevertheless.” Ultimately, a single-day event is also much easier for spectators to commit to, which is one of the main goals of the ambitious, innovative Formula E series: to attract new fans. “It is good for the fans who get to see everything in one day,” said Oliver Turvey, a British driver at the NEXTEV TCR team.
|
Cars;Car Racing;Formula One;Berlin;Electric Cars and Hybrids;Le Mans Race
|
ny0037198
|
[
"us"
] |
2014/03/01
|
Ash Spill Shows How Watchdog Was Defanged
|
RALEIGH, N.C. — Last June, state employees in charge of stopping water pollution were given updated marching orders on behalf of North Carolina’s new Republican governor and conservative lawmakers. “The General Assembly doesn’t like you,” an official in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources told supervisors called to a drab meeting room here. “They cut your budget, but you didn’t get the message. And they cut your budget again, and you still didn’t get the message.” From now on, regulators were told, they must focus on customer service, meaning issuing environmental permits for businesses as quickly as possible. Big changes are coming, the official said, according to three people in the meeting, two of whom took notes. “If you don’t like change, you’ll be gone.” But when the nation’s largest utility, Duke Energy, spilled 39,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River in early February, those big changes were suddenly playing out in a different light. Federal prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation into the spill and the relations between Duke and regulators at the environmental agency. The spill, which coated the river bottom 70 miles downstream and threatened drinking water and aquatic life, drew attention to a deal that the environmental department’s new leadership reached with Duke last year over pollution from coal ash ponds. It included a minimal fine but no order that Duke remove the ash — the waste from burning coal to generate electricity — from its leaky, unlined ponds. Environmental groups said the arrangement protected a powerful utility rather than the environment or the public. Facing increasing scrutiny and criticism, the department said late Friday that the company would be cited for two formal notices of violating environmental standards in connection with the spill. It is not clear what fines or other penalties could result. "These are violations of state and federal law, and we are holding the utility accountable,” said the state environmental secretary, John E. Skvarla III. Asked for comment, a spokeswoman said Duke will respond to the state. Current and former state regulators said the watchdog agency, once among the most aggressive in the Southeast, has been transformed under Gov. Pat McCrory into a weak sentry that plays down science, has abandoned its regulatory role and suffers from politicized decision-making. The episode is a huge embarrassment for Mr. McCrory, who worked at Duke Energy for 28 years and is a former mayor of Charlotte, where the company is based. And it has become another point of contention in North Carolina, where Republicans who took control of the General Assembly in 2011 and the governor’s mansion last year have passed sweeping laws in line with conservative principles. They have affected voting rights and unemployment benefits, as well as what Republicans called “job-killing” environmental regulations, which have received less notice. Critics say the accident, the third-largest coal ash spill on record, is inextricably linked to the state’s new environmental politics and reflects an enforcement agency led by a secretary who suggested that oil was a renewable resource and an assistant secretary who, as a state lawmaker, drew a bull’s-eye on a window in his office framing the environmental agency’s headquarters. “They’re terrified,” said John Dorney, a retired supervisor who keeps in touch with many current employees. “Now these people have to take a deep breath and say, ‘I know what the rules require, but what does the political process want me to do?’ ” Image Gov. Pat McCrory has weakened the state environmental agency, once among the Southeast’s most aggressive, regulators say. Credit Cliff Owen/Associated Press Duke has apologized for the spill and says it is now committed to cleaning up some of its 32 coal ash ponds across the state. The company has also been subpoenaed in the federal investigation. A spokesman for Mr. McCrory said the governor had no role in the state’s proposed settlement with Duke. On Tuesday, amid continuing concerns about the threat of future spills, he took a tougher stance than in the past, writing to Duke’s chief executive that he wanted the waste ponds, some sprawling over many acres, to be moved away from the state’s waterways. The environmental agency’s embattled secretary, Mr. Skvarla, a McCrory appointee, pushed back last week on criticism of last year’s deal, under which the $50 billion company was fined only $99,111 for leaks from ponds at two power plants. The accusation that his department “and Duke Energy got together and made some smoky back-room deal with a nominal fine is simply not true,” Mr. Skvarla told reporters. The fine was determined by a formula in the law, he said. The agency reached a settlement that allowed Duke to study its coal ash ponds, rather than immediately remove the slurry of ash and water, because it wanted to avoid being tied up in court for years, he said. “Our goal is to clean up coal ash,” Mr. Skvarla added. “Our goal is to protect the environment.” But current and former agency employees said the treatment of Duke was typical of the pro-industry bias now in place under Governor McCrory, Mr. Skvarla and the General Assembly. Last year, the environment agency’s budget for water pollution programs was cut by 10.2 percent, a bipartisan commission that approves regulations was reorganized to include only Republican appointees, and the governor vastly expanded the number of agency employees exempt from civil service protections, to 179 from 24. Video An animated graphic by the Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability at Wake Forest University shows the aftermath of the coal ash pond rupture at Duke Energy’s Dan River Steam Station. The effect, said midlevel supervisors who now serve at the pleasure of the governor, is that they are hesitant to crack down on polluters who might complain to Mr. Skvarla or a lawmaker, at the risk of their jobs. Several spoke anonymously out of fear of being fired. “They want to have a hammer to come down on anybody who hinders developers by enforcing regulations,” said a supervisor whose department is supposed to regulate businesses under laws devised to protect water quality. “We’re scared to death to say no to anyone anymore.” A second supervisor, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said: “A lot of us never considered ourselves political creatures. What’s happened here has really blown us out of the water. People speak in hushed tones in the hallway to each other. We go offsite to talk. It’s totally changed the culture of this organization.” Mr. Skvarla said in an interview that he was “speechless” to hear such a sentiment, adding, “I think we have taken politics out of this agency.” He added: “When I was hired by Governor McCrory, he said, ‘I want you to do two things: I want you to protect the environment, and I want you to help us grow this economy. We have to help people through the regulatory maze.’ ” Susan Wilson, an environmental engineer who inspected storm-water runoff at factories and subdivisions, quit last year after her duties were transferred to another department with little expertise in the subject. She said the bureaucratic shuffle was meant to satisfy developers. Image People in Eden, N.C., last week during a town meeting with Environmental Protection Agency and Duke Energy officials. Credit Chris Keane/Reuters “Business is important, but there should be a balance between the regulated community and the environment,” Ms. Wilson said. “It’s all out of balance here.” Despite deep cuts from the state budget, the agency’s new leadership turned back $582,000 in grants from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to monitor wetlands and study the impact of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas on waterways. Amy Adams, a former supervisor who left the agency last year, said that the mantra of the current leadership was about “customer service,” but that did not include citizens who might live downstream from a polluter. She and others said they were told to stop writing Notices of Violation to polluters, which can prompt fines, and instead to issue a Notice of Deficiency, which she likened to a state trooper giving a warning instead of a speeding ticket. “I was asked directly by members of my staff, ‘Do we even do enforcements anymore?’ ” said Ms. Adams, who wrote an opinion column about the agency’s “soul-crushing takeover” for The News & Observer of Raleigh after she resigned. Ms. Adams, who now works for Appalachian Voices , an environmental group in Boone, N.C., said that since the Dan River spill, the state agency has engaged in “revisionist history” about its regulation of Duke Energy. Image Wet coal ash from the Dan River earlier this month. The spill coated the river bottom 70 miles downstream and threatened drinking water and aquatic life. Credit Gerry Broome/Associated Press The agency took action against Duke only after environmental groups filed notice that they intended to sue the utility to clean up the ash waste at power plants near Asheville and Mount Holly, N.C. The longtime practice of dumping ash waste in ponds became a major concern after a catastrophic failure of one in Tennessee in 2008, which is costing $1.2 billion to clean up. Under the federal Clean Water Act, citizen groups may sue polluters if state regulators do not do their job. But the law also allows states to intervene and take over the lawsuits, which is what the Department of Environment and Natural Resources did last year. Environmentalists say the state offered a favorable deal to Duke and blocked their lawsuits, which could have forced Duke to relocate the ash to lined pits away from drinking water. “They did a behind-closed-doors settlement with the lawbreaker, and it requires no cleanup of one ounce of pollution or movement of one ounce of ash,” said Frank Holleman, a senior lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center , which sued on behalf of environmental groups. “The state has been a barrier at every turn.” Mr. Skvarla, the agency secretary, said the deal the state reached with Duke in July was a more practical fix to the leaky ash ponds than what environmentalists sought. “Their only acceptable remedy was, dig ’em up, move them to lined landfills and cover them,” he said. “We’re talking 14 facilities and 32 coal ash ponds. I can assure you it’s not that simple.” The size of the Feb. 2 spill has been revised down from early estimates. As the federal Fish and Wildlife Service monitors the river water for long-term harm to fish and mollusks, attention is turning to a federal court in Raleigh, where employees of Duke and the environmental agency are to appear before a grand jury on March 18. Meanwhile, the agency has reversed its earlier positions on Duke and coal ash cleanup. On Feb. 10, eight days after the spill, the agency withdrew its deal with Duke. This week, it said it might order the remaining ash at the Dan River site, in Eden, N.C., to be moved and stored in a lined landfill — what environmentalists had sought all along.
|
Environment;Water pollution;Regulation and Deregulation;Duke Energy;Pat McCrory;Dan River NC;North Carolina;NCDENR;John E Skvarla III
|
ny0294529
|
[
"us"
] |
2016/06/13
|
Omar Mateen: From Early Promise to F.B.I. Surveillance
|
FORT PIERCE, Fla. — Omar Mateen’s life seemed to be on a successful trajectory a decade before he carried out one of the worst cases of mass murder in American history. He earned an associate degree in criminal justice technology in 2006. A year later, he was hired by one of the world’s premier private security companies, G4S. And then, in 2009, he got married and bought a home. Soon, though, signs of troubles emerged. His wife, an immigrant from Uzbekistan, divorced him in 2011, after he abused her. Two years after that, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was called in after reports from Mr. Mateen’s co-workers that he, the American-born son of Afghan immigrants, had suggested he may have had terrorist ties. The F.B.I. interviewed him twice, but after surveillance, records checks and witness interviews, agents were unable to verify any terrorist links and closed their investigation. Then, in 2014, the F.B.I. discovered a possible tie between Mr. Mateen and Moner Mohammad Abusalha , who had grown up in nearby Vero Beach and then became the first American suicide bomber in Syria, where he fought with the Nusra Front, a Qaeda-aligned militant group. Again, the F.B.I. closed its inquiry after finding “minimal” contact between the two men. After the terrorist investigations cleared Mr. Mateen, he maintained both his Florida security-officer license and his job. He also kept his Florida firearms license, and within the last few days he legally purchased a handgun and a “long gun.” The precise reason he walked into a gay nightclub in Orlando early Sunday morning with a handgun and an assault rifle was still under investigation, with law enforcement officials fanning out from the damaged nightclub in Orlando to residences in at least four states in search of clues. Labeling the attack an act of domestic terrorism, law enforcement officials said Mr. Mateen had called 911 once the attacks began and swore allegiance over the phone to the Islamic State. But Mr. Mateen’s father suggested his son was motivated by a different hate. His father, Seddique Mir Mateen , told NBC News that his son had come across two men kissing in Miami recently and was infuriated that his 3-year-old son had seen it, too. “They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, ‘Look at that. In front of my son, they are doing that,’ ” the elder Mr. Mateen said. Mr. Mateen’s father said the killing had nothing to do with religion, and he apologized for his son. “We weren’t aware of any action he is taking,” he said. “We are in shock like the whole country.” Equally stunned by the day’s events was Omar Mateen’s ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy , who said that he quickly became controlling, abusive and erratic after they were married. In an interview at her home near Boulder, Colo., Ms. Yusufiy said that when she first met Mr. Mateen online through Myspace in 2008, he was a funny charmer with a decent job and aspirations to become a police officer. Image Law enforcement officials checked for explosives on Sunday around the apartment where Omar Mateen is believed to have lived. Credit Joe Raedle/Getty Images But after they were married, he made her hand over her paychecks from her day care job, prevented her from calling her parents and hit her, sometimes as she slept, she said. He also kept a handgun in the house. “I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere except work,” she said. Mr. Mateen was an observant Muslim, but never expressed sympathies for terrorist organizations or radical Islamists, she said. He also made anti-gay comments when he was angry. “There were definitely moments when he’d express his intolerance towards homosexuals,” she said. Ms. Yusify said she left Mr. Mateen in 2009 after her parents flew down from New Jersey and rescued her from the marriage, and had no contact with him since, save for one time when he tried to message her on Facebook. “I thought I had closed the chapter on this horrible mistake,” said Ms. Yusufiy, who said she learned of the tragedy from her parents. After the shooting, law enforcement officials swarmed a condominium complex in Fort Pierce, Fla., where Mr. Mateen owned a unit that property records show he purchased in 2009. The complex, wedged between Interstate 95 and the shore, now sits among some of Fort Pierce’s working-class blocks. The authorities also focused on at least two other homes in the area, both in nearby Port St. Lucie, and spent hours canvassing a pair of properties connected to Mr. Mateen’s family. What Happened Inside the Orlando Nightclub Accounts of what happened from officials and witnesses. It appeared that Mr. Mateen may have contacted another Orlando club in the days leading up to the shooting. Micah Bass, the owner of the M Hotel and Revere , a large gay club in the area, said that someone resembling Mr. Mateen requested to add him as a friend this week on Facebook. He said he looked at the person’s picture and noticed that a lot of his friends had Arabic writing on their pages. Mr. Bass said he figured the request must have been sent in error, so he deleted it. After the attack this morning Mr. Bass thought the name of the man looked familiar. When he searched the name on Google he realized it was in fact the same person who had contacted him. At the Fort Pierce Islamic Center , the mosque Mr. Mateen attended as a child, the imam said that Mr. Mateen would visit three or four times a week, usually at night. As Mr. Mateen grew, the imam said, he became reclusive. “He was really quiet,” the imam, Syed Shafeeq Rahman , said. “He would come the last minute, and he would leave the first minute, and he would not talk to anybody.” The imam firmly denied that Mr. Mateen had heard any teachings at the mosque that would radicalize him. Mr. Mateen’s father is an outspoken Afghan political activist, but that played no part in the investigations of his son that the F.B.I. carried out in 2013 and 2014, a law enforcement official said. How They Got Their Guns A vast majority of guns used in 19 recent mass shootings were bought legally and with a federal background check. His father, Sediqque, hosted a talk show for a television channel broadcasting to the Afghan diaspora. Recently, the elder Mr. Mateen has taken to posting videos on his Facebook page where, dressed in a military uniform in front of the Afghan flag, he sharply criticizes the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani. Late on Sunday, Omar Mateen’s employer, G4S , acknowledged that it had learned in 2013 that he had been questioned by the F.B.I. “We were not made aware of any alleged connections between Mateen and terrorist activities, and were unaware of any further F.B.I. investigations,” the company said. The statement confirmed that Mr. Mateen had worked for the company since Sept. 10, 2007, and expressed the company’s sadness at Sunday’s attack. It also said Mr. Mateen underwent screening and background checks both when he was recruited in 2007 as well as in 2013, and nothing of concern surfaced either time. Yet the statement did not address whether company officials had ever asked the F.B.I. why it had investigated Mr. Mateen. The company also did not respond to questions about Mr. Mateen’s conduct raised by one of his former co-workers. The co-worker, Daniel Gilroy , said in an interview on Sunday that he had expressed concerns to G4S about Mr. Mateen’s demeanor when they both worked as security guards assigned to the PGA Village, a resort in Port St. Lucie. “He talked about killing people all the time,” said Mr. Gilroy, who joined G4S after a career with the Fort Pierce police and later left the security firm. He said he could not provide names of any other co-workers who could support his account of Mr. Mateen’s behavior.
|
Orlando Shooting;Omar Mateen;Orlando shooter;FBI;Terrorism;Orlando;Gay and Lesbian LGBT;Afghanistan
|
ny0222432
|
[
"sports",
"ncaafootball"
] |
2010/11/20
|
No Vuvuzelas at Harvard
|
Vuvuzelas, the plastic horns made famous during the 2010 soccer World Cup for their drowning buzz, will be banned for the 127th game between Harvard and Yale. Timothy Wheaton, Harvard’s associate athletic director, said in a statement this week that noisemakers would not be allowed inside Harvard Stadium in the interests of sportsmanship. The ban was bad news for the Yale freshman Jonathan Desnick. He bought 700 blue vuvuzelas with a big Y on them. Desnick said he planned to sell them while tailgating. The Harvard senior Collin Galster said he understood the need for the ban but saw it as another form of “social control.”
|
College Athletics;Football;Soccer;Harvard University
|
ny0016085
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2013/10/26
|
Chinese University Defends Outspoken Teacher’s Firing
|
BEIJING — He lectured students about the trespasses of the Communist Party, publicly belittled the country’s mighty propaganda minister and issued frequent demands for an end to single-party rule in China. But in voting two weeks ago to dismiss Xia Yeliang, an economist, from his teaching post at Peking University, university officials say, they weighed only one criterion: his performance as an academic. “He just wasn’t a good teacher,” Sun Qixiang, dean of the school of economics, said Friday in an interview. “Politics had nothing to do with this decision.” In the week since Professor Xia was dismissed, university officials have been buffeted by criticism that their decision was in retaliation for his activism against the government. The Committee of Concerned Scientists issued a letter condemning the vote, and faculty members at a number of educational institutions around the world have been questioning their colleges’ cooperative arrangements with one of China’s best universities. “A university is an open forum for exploring truth, and sharing opinions and academic freedom is the foundation for its existence,” a group of professors at National Taiwan University wrote in an open letter this week . “Suppressing that freedom by political means constitutes a major obstacle to exploring truth and destroys the spiritual cornerstone of a university.” But Professor Xia’s colleagues say such criticism is unfair, and insist that politics played no role in their decision. The vote was 30 against renewing his contract and three in favor, with one abstention, according to officials. On Friday, three economics professors along with Ms. Sun, the dean, gathered in a university conference room to defend their votes, saying Professor Xia, who had been teaching at the university for a decade, had been repeatedly urged to improve his teaching style, which they described as deeply unpopular with students. In recent years, they said, he had racked up more than 340 negative student reviews, earning him the worst teaching record among the university’s 60 or so instructors during three evaluations. They added that he had published only one paper in recent years, an important factor in determining whether to renew faculty contracts every three years. “We had hoped he could improve his teaching and research,” said Li Qingyun, a professor of economics who has taught at the university for more than three decades. “This is from the bottom of my heart.” In an interview on Friday, Professor Xia, 53, defended his academic performance and maintained his insistence that the vote was politically motivated, citing warnings from the university’s Communist Party secretary that mentioned his online pro-democracy writings. He said he was notified only once about his bottom ranking in teaching evaluations, not three times as university officials assert, and noted that 340 negative evaluations represented a small portion of the thousands of students he had taught over the years. “All such records are in their hands right now, so they can say whatever they want,” he said of administrators. He added that his name had appeared in a number of publications since 2008, including two articles that are readily available online. “They are lying,” he said. Image Xia Yeliang, an economist, has criticized China’s government. Credit Adam Dean for The New York Times There is little dispute that Professor Xia’s classroom style could be polarizing. Most of the 30 anonymous reviews posted on a popular teacher evaluation Web site, Pinglaoshi , or Judge the Teacher, were positive. “He’s a good professor with a conscience,” said one comment posted in 2007. “He’s brave and knowledgeable,” read another. But in recent days, a number of former students have come forward, most of them anonymously, to defend the university’s refusal to renew his contract. Valentina Luo, a former student who attended his class on principles of economics, said Professor Xia had spent more time boasting about his time as a visiting scholar in the United States than lecturing about the fundamentals of finance and market economics. “I don’t remember much of his political rants against the government, but he gives the impression that he doesn’t prepare for his classes,” said Ms. Luo, who posted her criticisms online. “He just reads the textbook word by word.” Another student who took the same class agreed. “There are many Peking University teachers who are also outspoken about their political views, but Xia is one of those that students don’t really like,” said the student, who asked that only his surname, Sun, be used. Such criticisms, coupled with Peking University’s strenuous defense of its decision to let him go, are unlikely to quell the widespread perception that politics played a role in his termination. Given the Communist Party’s control over the country’s universities and a continuing crackdown on dissent — including an ideological campaign against Western-inspired liberalism — Professor Xia’s supporters say it is naïve to rule out politics. Thomas Cushman, a sociologist at Wellesley College, which entered into an educational partnership with Peking University this year, said he remained suspicious, noting that the economist was the first professor to be dismissed from his department in more than a decade — a fact confirmed by university officials. “There are plenty of people who are bad teachers but who don’t get terminated,” said Professor Cushman, who helped organize an open letter in support of Professor Xia that drew the signatures of more than 140 faculty members. “What troubles me is that there is no verifiable information about his so-called bad teaching.” Although the letter calls on Wellesley to reconsider its arrangement with Peking University, Professor Cushman said he was more focused at the moment on helping Professor Xia. He said an interdisciplinary program he runs, the Freedom Project , plans to offer Professor Xia a two-year fellowship pending final approval from Wellesley administrators. “Given how vulnerable Xia is right now, I think the best thing we can do is to follow through on bringing him here,” he said. But officials at Peking University say Professor Xia has damaged its image at a time when it is trying to ascend to the ranks of the world’s top universities. “Beida didn’t consider politics when dealing with this issue, but now he is using politics to hijack Beida,” said Ms. Sun, the dean, using a common shorthand for the school. “We feel badly hurt.”
|
Xia Yeliang;Peking University;Communist Party of China;Performance Evaluations;China;College
|
ny0040712
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2014/04/12
|
City Accused of Dragging Its Feet on Settling Suit in ’89 Jogger Rape Case
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Mayor Bill de Blasio has long said that his administration would swiftly settle the lawsuit by five men convicted in the 1989 rape of a jogger in Central Park. “We will settle the Central Park Five case because a huge injustice was done,” he said in December. But now, one of the lawyers for the men whose convictions were vacated in 2002 after evidence pointed to another attacker says that the city’s lawyers are “dragging their feet” on settlement talks, and perhaps seeking to undermine the mayor’s call for a prompt resolution of the case. The lawyer, Jonathan C. Moore, said in an interview on Friday that the city’s Law Department, led by the corporation counsel, Zachary W. Carter, had not responded to a formal settlement demand that the plaintiffs made more than a month ago, nor had the Law Department responded more recently, when Mr. Moore said that he followed up. “I’m saying, you know, 100 days is long enough, should have been long enough to get this case settled,” Mr. Moore said. “And the fact that it hasn’t, the fact that we haven’t even met to discuss our demand suggests that they’re backing off from that, and I think they need to be called on that.” Mr. Moore said that what he feared was happening “is that there are forces at work, putting pressure on de Blasio, putting pressure on Carter, to try to minimize the kind of settlement that would be achieved in this case” or even, he added, “to try to derail it.” Mr. Moore said that he was concerned that the city’s lawyers were telling Mr. de Blasio that the plaintiffs were “not worthy of a large settlement because they must have been doing something wrong in the park that day and maybe they’re still guilty” of something. Representatives of Mayor de Blasio and Mr. Carter both declined to comment on Friday. In a March 17 letter filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Mr. de Blasio’s Law Department said it had held two meetings with the plaintiffs, and on March 7, received the plaintiffs’ initial settlement demand. “At present, this office is in the process of conveying plaintiffs’ settlement demand to the requisite officials and agencies, and formulating defendants’ response,” the Law Department wrote. The five men, who were imprisoned for from seven to 13 years, sought damages of $50 million each, alleging that they were convicted on the basis of confessions that they said had been coerced by the police. The men sued after a 2002 investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office found that DNA and other evidence showed that the jogger had been attacked and raped by only one man, Matias Reyes, who had confessed to his role. The Bloomberg administration fought the lawsuit for years. For example, in 2011, a lawyer with the Law Department, Celeste Koeleveld, said in a statement: “The charges against the plaintiffs and other youths were based on abundant probable cause, including confessions that withstood intense scrutiny, in full and fair pretrial hearings and at two lengthy public trials. “Nothing unearthed since the trials, including Matias Reyes’s connection to the attack on the jogger, changes that fact,” Ms. Koeleveld said. Mr. de Blasio took a sharply contrasting position. In January 2013, he said that it was “long past time to heal these wounds,” and added, “As a city, we have a moral obligation to right this injustice.” This year, on Feb. 4, the mayor said, “There’s going to be a swift settlement.” In an article on the case published this month in Playboy, Mr. de Blasio is quoted as having said in February 2013: “This is the kind of thing that in the first week in office, if I were mayor, I would order a settlement. I think if the mayor says that it has to be resolved, it’s solved. The Law Department doesn’t tell the mayor what to do; the mayor tells the Law Department what to do. I certainly would order a settlement immediately.” Mr. Moore declined to reveal how much money the plaintiffs were seeking in their settlement request. He said the plaintiffs “made a collective demand based upon the unique circumstances of each person’s case and relying on an analysis of settlements in other cases going back many years.” “Whatever that ultimate number is,” he added, “it’s worth significant money, and it’s unfortunate, you know, because it really shouldn’t be about the money. But you can’t give these kids their life back.”
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Central Park Jogger Case;Lawsuits;Zachary W Carter;Bill de Blasio;NYC;Rape;False arrest;Central Park
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ny0023769
|
[
"us"
] |
2013/08/02
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Florida Nuclear Project Is Dropped
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WASHINGTON — Duke Energy said Thursday that it had dropped plans for a $24.7 billion nuclear reactor complex in Levy County, Fla., on which the company has already spent $1 billion, most of it collected from customers. The company cited “regulatory uncertainty” after a change in Florida’s rules that cast doubt on whether a utility can collect money from customers for construction work before a project is finished. The decision comes at a time of low prices for natural gas, which competes with nuclear power in electricity generation, and generally slack demand for power. The project was started by Progress Energy in 2008, and was acquired by Duke when it merged with Progress last year. Duke said it would continue pursuing a license to build and operate the plant, but drop the contracts for completing the engineering work, acquiring components and building the reactors. “Duke Energy Florida continues to regard the Levy site as a viable option for future nuclear energy generation, and understands the importance of fuel diversity in creating a sustainable energy future,” the company said in a statement. By 2018, Duke will probably have to build a plant running on natural gas to meet demand, according to Alex Glenn, the president of Duke Energy in Florida. The announcement is a setback for the “nuclear renaissance” that the industry predicted a decade ago. Other than the reactors under construction, two each in Georgia and South Carolina, it is not clear how many projects will be started. Similar to the Levy County project is a twin-unit plant that Florida Power & Light is planning at Turkey Point, near Miami. Duke was planning to build two new reactors at its Harris site, in Wake County, N.C., but suspended plans there earlier this year . The company is still seeking a license for a twin-unit plant in Cherokee County, S.C. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is processing other applications, but some clearly lack the backing to be built. At the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade association in Washington, Steve Kerekes, a spokesman, pointed out that in addition to the four new reactors under construction, the Tennessee Valley Authority is working to complete a fifth on which work was halted some years ago. “Everything else is prospective,’’ he said. The economy is growing only slowly, and “we’ve got electricity demand that’s still below ’07, nationally,’’ he said. “We’ve got low natural gas prices in the medium term, and all this stuff is regional and based on specific company needs.” Another variable, he said, was whether federal policies on emissions of climate-changing gases from power plants encouraged new nuclear construction.
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Nuclear energy;Duke Energy;Florida;Nuclear Regulatory Commission
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ny0102496
|
[
"sports",
"tennis"
] |
2015/12/15
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Magazine Extols Serena Williams
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Serena Williams was named Sports Illustrated’s sportsperson of the year — the first female athlete honored on her own by the magazine since Mary Decker in 1983.
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Tennis;Magazine;Serena Williams
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ny0179213
|
[
"sports",
"tennis"
] |
2007/08/29
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Players Are Getting Bigger and Better
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A new era of tall, big-serving players may be on the horizon at the top level of men’s tennis. Three players who are 6 feet 6 inches or taller entered the United States Open after impressive runs. But yesterday, two lost. Sam Querrey, who is 6-6, lost to Stefan Koubek, 7-6 (1), 6-1, 6-1, and the 6-10 Ivo Karlovic lost to Arnaud Clément, 7-6 (5), 6-4, 4-6, 6-7 (6), 6-4. On Monday, the 6-9 John Isner won his first-round match against Jarkko Nieminen. Slower courts, the smooth all-court style of Roger Federer and the power baseline game of Rafael Nadal have all pushed the bigger servers to the background. But Karlovic, who proudly wears 6’10 on his shorts, has led the resurgence by winning titles on every surface this year. Lleyton Hewitt, who defeated the 6-5 Amer Delic yesterday, has recognized that the big are getting bigger — and better. “We’ve got a couple of big guys out there now that on their day are tough to beat on any surface,” he said. Hewitt should know. As the defending champion, Hewitt was upset by Karlovic in the first round of Wimbledon in 2003. But yesterday, 38 aces were not enough for Karlovic to overcome Clément in a match that lasted 4 hours 8 minutes. The most prominent nonverbal sounds on the court were the booming serves of Karlovic and the squeak of Clément’s shoes when he scrambled. Karlovic complained about the speed of the court. “I think the court was very slow,” he said. “It was slower than the French Open.” But he said the speed was not the reason for his loss. “I think I can play good even on slow surfaces. Today, how I played, I am not satisfied.” The era when the most successful taller players were in the 6-1 to 6-4 range — like Pete Sampras and Goran Ivanisevic — has given way to a game involving players who tower over the 6-2 Andy Roddick. But lack of height can also be an asset. Clément, who is 5-8, was bending so low on returns that he was sometimes holding his racket like a windshield wiper to punch back serves at the feet of a net-rushing Karlovic. “He has improved a lot; he doesn’t just have a big serve,” Clément said. “He can make a lot of mistakes, but he can also be very dangerous.” After the third set, Karlovic’s coach tried to get him to mimic Clément’s strength by whispering to him at the changeover. “Stay low,” he said. A FAN OF NEW YORK Top-ranked Maria Sharapova said her United States Open outfit was inspired by New York — it is red, as in Big Apple red — but her fellow Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova tried for some truly local flavor. She wore a cap with a Yankees logo after her first-round match, a 6-2, 6-3 victory over Klara Zakopalova of the Czech Republic. Kuznetsova, the surprise winner of the Open in 2004, has been an unabashed fan of New York since. She said she actually did go to a Yankees game in 2005, but could not quite pass herself off as a baseball fan. “I like the hats,” she said, laughing. “I know the rules of baseball more or less. If you hit it far, you’ve got to go run. But then another one catches.” Kuznetsova, 22, has not come close to the form that helped her capture her only Grand Slam title. She lost in the first round in 2005, when she was defending her title. She made it to the fourth round last year. But the bubbly Kuznetsova won over many hearts here in 2004 and said she looks forward to returning each year. “I love the crowd and I love that it’s this many people and I think it’s like showtime,” she said. “It’s sometimes a bit hard to focus, you know. Yesterday I came out on the court to practice on P-3 and it looked to me like a bit of a zoo because everybody was yelling. I just came from New Haven and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s too loud.’ But in a couple days you just get used to it and it’s just a great environment.” LYNN ZINSER GAMBLING IS A TOP TOPIC The buzz over the gambling investigation of Nikolay Davydenko has touched all levels of the ATP tour, from the 20-year-old Robin Haase of the Netherlands, who got into the United States Open draw as a lucky loser, to the player who beat him in straight sets yesterday, the 20-year-old Novak Djokovic, the No. 3 ranked player in the world. Djokovic was a bit more informed about the process. Yesterday, the veteran Paul Goldstein was quoted in USA Today as being approached sometime in the last two years to influence a match. Through the ATP, Goldstein declined to comment further. “When we receive any information as serious as that from any members, we look into it, of course,” Kris Dent, an ATP spokesman, said. Djokovic said that he had not been approached by anyone. “But I got the little note when I arrived in New York about the antigambling campaign,” he said. Djokovic said he was aware that officials for the United States Open had hired a private security company to monitor players for gambling activity. “I’m not the one to judge because I’m not doing those things, but looking at the problems, it’s a good step,” he said. “I cannot say which players are gambling or not gambling. I don’t know that, but for sure they should take steps to prove to the players it is really bad.” Both Djokovic and Haase attended an antigambling session during the tournament in Miami this past March, conducted by a former member of organized crime, Michael Franzese. “It was very interesting,” Haase said. “He worked for the mob when he was younger, was in prison, was one of the big guys. He told the story about the life in gambling, that everyone he knew was murdered. It was impressive. Once you got in there, it’s tough to get out. It was interesting to hear.” The ATP has a zero-tolerance policy on players and their entourages for betting on tennis. Despite the education efforts, Haase made a comment that seemed to indicate he had not gotten the message. “I mean, I think it’s not a big deal if you bet on like $50 — if you like that, I don’t know if it’s forbidden. But that should be O.K. If you’re talking about a lot of money, of course, the insiders, they shouldn’t do it.” When told that it is forbidden in tennis, he said, “I don’t even know the rules or the laws because I don’t even care.” LIZ ROBBINS
|
United States Open (Tennis);Men;Tennis;Athletics and Sports
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ny0197297
|
[
"business"
] |
2009/10/15
|
7,500 Disclose Offshore Accounts to the I.R.S.
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More than 7,500 American taxpayers have voluntarily disclosed secret offshore accounts to the Internal Revenue Service , which is cracking down on overseas tax evasion, the agency said on Wednesday. Those who have come forward have provided information about accounts holding from $10,000 to $100 million since the I.R.S. extended a Sept. 23 deadline for participating in the voluntary disclosure program, said Doug Shulman, the I.R.S. commissioner. People who come forward voluntarily can avoid criminal prosecution and their identities will remain a secret under federal law requiring tax records to be kept confidential. The partial amnesty ends Thursday and will not be extended a second time, he said. Americans with undeclared offshore accounts have been under growing pressure since Switzerland agreed Aug. 19 to hand over data to the authorities in the United States on as many as 4,450 UBS accounts. The move was to settle a lawsuit in which the United States had sought information on as many as 52,000 accounts. “We’re going to be scouring the 7,500 disclosures to identify financial institutions, advisers and others” who helped taxpayers skirt their obligations, Mr. Shulman said in a conference call. “This entire effort is not just about UBS and a single country.” It is not yet known how much overlap might exist between the names that UBS will eventually provide and the 7,500 people who have come forward to the I.R.S., Mr. Shulman said. The I.R.S. will open offices in Beijing, Panama City and Sydney in connection with the investigation, which has revealed accounts held in 70 countries and on every continent except Antarctica, he said. The agency also intends to add about 800 employees in the next year and add staff to eight existing overseas offices, including Hong Kong and Barbados.
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Internal Revenue Service;Americans Abroad;Tax Evasion;Taxation
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ny0280524
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2016/10/07
|
New York City Sells Landlords’ Debts, but Buildings Fall Into Limbo, Critics Say
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The apartment building on St. Johns Place in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn is a mess. Repeated flooding has curdled the paint and caused mold to bloom on the walls. The temperature inside is freezing in the winter and sweltering in the summer. New York City’s housing agency has sued the owner of the eight-unit apartment building nine times to try to force repairs. And the landlord owes $20,000 in fines and more than $235,000 in unpaid interest and water, sewer and other bills. In 1998, the city began selling off its overdue bills as part of a program started 20 years ago that allows the city to recoup at least some of what it is owed. The program works through a trust financed by the sale of bonds to private investors. The trust collects payments on the bills and can seize the property if the owners do not pay. But some properties like the one in Brooklyn that have gone through these sales have often fallen into a kind of limbo, where nobody is taking care of them or the tenants inside, according to a report expected to be released Friday by the city’s public advocate, Letitia James. A growing number of housing advocates and city officials, including Ms. James and Comptroller Scott M. Stringer, are urging the city to rethink the practice. Each year, the city sells off debts on thousands of properties. From 2010 to 2015, more than 15,000 properties with roughly 43,600 residential units were affected by the sales. But critics of the program argue that the city is squandering a valuable chance to improve shabby housing and hold onto affordable units. Mr. Stringer wants the city to foreclose on the properties and use the land for affordable housing. And Ms. James has proposed that the city sell the debt through a preservation trust to nonprofits, which would use their leverage with building owners to get them to fix their properties. The stakes are higher than ever. More than half of city renters are considered rent-burdened, spending more than a third of their income on rent, according to the United States Census Bureau. As part of a broader push to address growing inequality, Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, has made affordable housing a centerpiece of his administration, unveiling plans in 2014 to preserve 120,000 units over 10 years. “We have found that the lien sale program is an effective tool to collect delinquent municipal charges,” Freddi Goldstein, a spokesman for Mr. de Blasio, said, adding that the city will “continue to look at how all available tools can be used to create affordable housing.” Tenant advocates say the sell-off of the unpaid bills sometimes does more harm than good. When the bills are sold off, the debt often grows, inflated by interest that is tacked on. For already struggling owners, the ballooning debt can be crushing, leading them to scrimp on crucial services like heat, hot water and repairs. In its report, the public advocate’s office discovered dangerous conditions at 22 buildings that had cycled through the tax sales program many times. All the buildings had rent-stabilized apartments, one of the main ways for low-income New Yorkers to remain in the city. In total, the number of code violations at the buildings grew by 528 percent over the past six years. One building on Grand Concourse in the Bronx, for example, had racked up 265 violations from the Department of Buildings and the Housing Preservation and Development agency, the two city agencies responsible for protecting tenant and building safety. For tenants, those violations are more than just a number. A tenant in a building on Kingston Avenue in Brooklyn, for example, said her apartment had sewage backups, leaks that led her walls and ceiling to crumble, broken floors, mold, rats and roaches. Recently, she told investigators, she learned her son had lead poisoning. At a building less than a mile away, tenants complained of deep puddles of sewage on the floors and mosquito larvae in the ceiling. For Carmen Vega-Rivera, who is disabled, the worst days at her apartment on Grand Concourse Avenue are when the elevator gets stuck (like it did for an hour last week) or does not work at all (like last month). “It’s a disaster,” she said of her building, which has 238 violations for housing conditions. “Without a doubt, the city is missing an opportunity to preserve affordable housing and protect tenants,” Ms. James said in an interview on Wednesday. She said one building, churned through the tax sales, particularly rankled her because, as a city councilwoman, she had fielded complaints from tenants about conditions. Now, she said, the building is vacant. It is not the only one. Other buildings, still saddled with debt, are vacant because the city has said they are too unsafe for tenants, the report found. The report also found that the sales may create incentives for some building owners to push out low-income tenants in rent-regulated apartments to make way for higher-paying residents. Once tenants leave, an apartment can be renovated and rented out for much more money. At a building on Clifton Place in Brooklyn, the owner dragged almost every tenant to housing court in 2014 and accused each of being a squatter. The tenants sued the building owner for harassment in Kings County Supreme Court, records show. One tenant said the landlord kicked in her door. Another recalled that the landlord told her the “party was over” and that she would have to move out. Ultimately, the building owner, after trying unsuccessfully to quash the lawsuit, offered the tenants money to leave. They took the money.
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Real Estate; Housing;Landlord;Affordable housing;Buildings Department NYC;Letitia James;Scott M Stringer;NYC;Rent
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ny0029684
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2013/06/18
|
New York City Graduation Rate Remains Steady
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The graduation rate for students in New York City public high schools held relatively steady last year despite more rigorous requirements, according to city and state statistics released Monday. The class of 2012 was the first group of students who entered high school without the option to graduate with what the state calls a local diploma. Instead, they were required to earn a Regents diploma by passing five required state exams with a score of at least 65. The graduation rate did fall slightly, to 64.7 percent from 65.5 percent in 2011, but not as much as had been anticipated. “Everybody predicted our graduation rates would fall precipitously, and that did not happen,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said. The 2012 rate is a 39 percent increase since 2005. The dropout rate has also fallen significantly over the same period, to 11.4 percent from 22 percent. “More students are graduating better prepared for success than ever before,” Mr. Bloomberg said. But even with the higher rate, most students, according to the data, are not prepared for college or a career. Image Graduation rates provided by the New York State Education Department differed from those provided by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, which were slightly higher. Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times College-readiness statistics, called “aspirational performance measures,” released on Monday by the New York State Education Department, show that only 38.4 percent of New York City high school students who graduated in June are considered ready for college or a career. “The rates may be stable even with the increased rigor, but stable doesn’t equal success. This is an ongoing tragedy,” Merryl H. Tisch, the chancellor of the State Board of Regents, said in a statement. “And sadly,” she added, “most of those students who graduate aren’t ready for college or jobs that provide family-sustaining wages.” The numbers may vary depending on which month is being used as the benchmark. Calculating the graduation rate is an exercise in statistical gymnastics. Mr. Bloomberg’s office is using statistics from the August graduation rate, where students who did not finish in June can retake tests and redeem missing credit. Figures provided by the State Education Department put New York City’s graduation rate in June 2012 at 60.4 percent, compared with Mr. Bloomberg’s 64.7 percent for August. Both the June and August numbers showed a slight decline in the graduation rate. William C. Thompson Jr., the former president of the Board of Education who is running for mayor this year and who ran against Mr. Bloomberg four years ago, issued a statement Monday saying the decrease in the graduation rate indicated a failure of Mr. Bloomberg’s efforts to overhaul the schools. “The Bloomberg approach of teaching to the test is not working,” the statement said. “As mayor, I will provide the leadership for a different approach.” Mr. Bloomberg bristled when asked about what changes the next mayor might make. “If we had to roll back everything that has worked so well,” he said, “we would become the laughingstock of the country.”
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Graduation Rates;NYC Department of Education;NYC;Mike Bloomberg;K-12 Education;Tests
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ny0194973
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[
"sports",
"hockey"
] |
2009/11/24
|
Rangers’ Early Timeout Works Wonders
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Almost midway into the first period Monday night, it looked like another dismal night for the Rangers . They trailed Columbus, 2-0, and seemed headed to their fifth defeat in six games. Coach John Tortorella called a timeout, and the Rangers responded with a flurry of goals. One minute 57 seconds later, Marian Gaborik beat the unsteady Blue Jackets goalie Steve Mason; 2:08 later, Artem Anisimov scored; and 3:22 following that goal, Michael Del Zotto tallied. The Rangers would score four more times in the second period as they skated to a 7-4 victory at Madison Square Garden. “I told them to take a deep breath, because I didn’t think we were playing that badly,” Tortorella said. Tortorella’s use of a timeout had worked once earlier this season, after the Rangers had fallen behind, 2-0, in the first period at the Devils on Oct. 5, a game the Rangers wound up winning, 3-2. That time, he yelled at his players to snap them out of their funk. On Monday, he was calm and reassuring. “We got a couple of breaks,” Tortorella said before adding, with extreme understatement, “their goaltending wasn’t that great.” The Rangers broke a number of streaks. Anisimov’s goal was the first scored by a Ranger not named Marian Gaborik or Vaclav Prospal in the previous 212:19. Sean Avery scored twice in 51 seconds in the second period, his first goals in 16 games. Defensemen Marc Staal and Dan Girardi, who had been struggling of late, registered plus-4 marks — both single-game highs for a Ranger this season. Gaborik, who had two goals and two assists, has 18 goals, tying him with San Jose’s Dany Heatley, the N.H.L. leader when the night began. “Their goalies were kind of shaky, so we talked about shooting more,” Gaborik said. The Blue Jackets entered the game on an impressive streak, having taken points from 9 of their previous 10 games. They did so despite remarkably poor goalkeeping from Mason, who had a .889 save percentage — a far cry from last season, when his .916 mark earned him the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year and a nod as a finalist for the Vezina Trophy as the top goalie. Mason was played poorly on Monday, too, stopping just 14 of 18 shots, often just barely, before giving way to Mathieu Garon. The Rangers scored with their first two shots on Garon, but by that point, the Columbus defense had left the building. The deluge of goals temporarily solved a nagging problem for the Rangers, whose Gaborik-Prospal tandem had accounted for half of the team’s 16 goals over the previous eight games. Not only were the Rangers unable to get scoring from anyone else, Tortorella could not even find a right wing to skate alongside Gaborik and Prospal — a situation exacerbated by long-term injuries to centers Chris Drury and Brandon Dubinsky, both hurt during a Nov. 5 loss in Edmonton. “Sometimes you run into a goaltender who might be struggling,” Prospal said of Mason. “Quite honestly, we needed something like this.” Tortorella has given at least four different forwards a regular turn alongside his two stars. He tried Ales Kotalik there in Saturday’s home loss to Florida, then publicly pronounced it a failure. On Monday, he moved Christopher Higgins from center to Gaborik and Prospal’s right wing and he finished with two assists. He will probably stay there for Wednesday’s match at Florida. Drury, who is recovering from a concussion, practiced with the team for the first time Sunday and could see action Wednesday. “It was a weird game,” Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist said. “It got a little sloppy here and there, but we’ll take it.” SLAP SHOTS It is possible to gauge the relative glamour of a game these days by which Olympic team selectors are watching. On Saturday, the assistant coach of the Czech team, Josef Jandac, was on hand to watch the Rangers’ Czech contingent, as well as Florida’s Rostislav Olesz, Radek Dvorak, Kamil Kreps and Tomas Vokoun. There was no one from any national team to watch the Rangers and Columbus.
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New York Rangers;Columbus Blue Jackets;Hockey Ice
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ny0018959
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2013/07/10
|
Yanks Bring a Runner Around in the First and Then Lose Their Way
|
One run was a hopeful sign, maybe signaling the start of something grand for the Yankees in the first inning against the Kansas City Royals on Tuesday. Then that little number on the scoreboard evolved into a mocking symbol of the Yankees’ offensive futility, followed by so many zeros, so many lost opportunities. The Yankees’ lineup at first seemed to be at its slap-hit best, then returned to its slap-hit worst, as the team fell quietly to the Royals for a second straight night, 3-1 , at Yankee Stadium. They managed six hits, all singles. They scored in the first inning by bunting, running, spraying the field with hits — doing all their standard small-ball mischief to wring some offense out of a bone-dry lineup. But one small drip of a run was all that came. “I understand the effort that they’re giving,” Manager Joe Girardi said. “And that’s all I can ask.” Girardi has grown exhausted of excusing his team’s anemic offense for a while now. The trajectory, of late, seems to be heading only further downward. The Yankees have only three extra-base hits in the past five games. They have hit only 15 home runs in their last 30 games. They have dropped to 26th in the majors in on-base-plus-slugging percentage. The cleanup hitter, Travis Hafner, is batting .177 with 20 runs batted in since April 30. The leadoff hitter, Brett Gardner, was 0 for 16 before a bunt single to lead off the bottom of the first Tuesday. “We have not scored a ton of runs all year long, that’s the bottom line,” Girardi said. “As I said during spring training, we’re going to have to win a lot of close games. We were not going to score the runs we did last year. And that’s what we’re going through.” Gardner’s leadoff single was followed by a base hit by Ichiro Suzuki and another by Robinson Cano, scoring Gardner for a 1-0 lead against James Shields. A fourth single by Zoilo Almonte with one out loaded the bases. But Shields bore down, striking out Lyle Overbay and retiring Eduardo Nunez on a fly ball to deep center field to end the inning. And then the struggling Yankees settled back into hibernation against Shields, the familiar ace formerly with the Tampa Bay Rays, who struck out five in seven innings. After the first, only three Yankees hitters reached base off Shields, two of them on walks. They hit into two double plays. No runner advanced past second. “You want to cash in and get runs early against Shields,” Hafner said. “Once he gets into a rhythm, he can be tough.” The Yankees’ first-inning run was enough for starter C. C. Sabathia until the sixth, when David Lough hit a home run to right field to tie the score. An inning later, Billy Butler homered to left off a missed Sabathia fastball, giving Kansas City the lead. “I didn’t see the replay,” Sabathia said, “but I feel like I should’ve gotten it in more.” It was only the Royals’ third hit off Sabathia, who threw his 37th career complete game, allowing seven hits with two walks and six strikeouts. But he fell to 9-7 on the season. In the bottom of the eighth, Kansas City’s left-handed reliever Tim Collins allowed a one-out single to Gardner, then had to face Cano — representing the tying run — with two outs and Gardner on second. But after four foul balls, Collins struck out Cano on a 1-2 changeup. Greg Holland retired the Yankees in order in the ninth for his 22nd save. With their current offense scuffling, and Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez nearing activation, several Yankees acknowledged that it had been hard not to grow too anxious anticipating their return. It would seem that no time would be better than now. Leadership, Overbay said, is one thing the team has lacked without Jeter, its captain. “He’s got that ability where we can relax, he gets us going,” Overbay said. “We’re all kind of looking around at each other — we don’t have that. It’s those little things that I think play a big role.” But with that optimism, there is caution. Leadership aside, Jeter will not be able to hit 30 home runs, Girardi said. Rodriguez has not discovered any fountain of youth. But the Yankees are clinging to the hope that something, anything, will happen just by those two players finally stepping through the clubhouse doors. “Just having them in the lineup,” Sabathia said, “hopefully will change everything.” INSIDE PITCH ALEX RODRIGUEZ was 0 for 3 with two strikeouts and a groundout playing third base for Class A Tampa on Tuesday, his fifth rehabilitation game. Rodriguez is 1 for 12 combined with Class A Charleston and Tampa. Rodriguez is scheduled to meet with baseball investigators Friday to answer questions about his links to an anti-aging clinic in South Florida that is suspected of distributing performance enhancers to various players, according to a person familiar with the matter.
|
Baseball;Yankees;Kansas City Royals;Brett Gardner;James Shields;Ichiro Suzuki
|
ny0092599
|
[
"business",
"economy"
] |
2015/08/07
|
Jobless Claims Rise, but Less Than Expected
|
WASHINGTON — (Reuters) The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits rose less than expected last week, suggesting labor market conditions are continuing to tighten. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 3,000 to a seasonally adjusted 270,000 for the week ended Aug. 1, the Labor Department said on Thursday. It was the 22nd consecutive week that claims held below the 300,000 threshold, which is associated with a strengthening labor market. “The unemployment claims are consistent with continued solid job creation and a reduction in labor market slack over time,” said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York. Economists had expected claims to rise to 273,000 last week. The data has no bearing on the employment report for July, which will be released on Friday by the Labor Department. According to a Reuters survey of economists, nonfarm payrolls are expected to have increased by 223,000, matching June’s gain. Though job growth has slowed from last year’s brisk pace, the unemployment rate, at 5.3 percent, is near the 5 to 5.2 percent range that most Federal Reserve officials consider consistent with full employment. Last week, the Fed upgraded its assessment of the jobs market, describing employment gains as “solid.” The central bank, which is expected to raise interest rates this year for the first time in nearly a decade, also said labor market slack had diminished “since early this year.” The four-week moving average of claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends as it smooths week-to-week volatility, fell 6,500, to 268,250, last week. A separate report from global outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas showed planned job cuts by American employers surged 136 percent to near a four-year high of 105,696 workers in July. The United States Army, which plans to eliminate about 57,000 troops and civilian employees over the next two years, accounted for more than half of the planned job cuts last month. Economists, however, expect minimal impact on the labor market from the layoffs, as military personnel are not included in the monthly payrolls count. “The impacts are expected to be almost negligible given the size of the announced job cuts relative to the overall labor force, as well as the fact that unemployment rates for veterans tend to not be that much different than unemployment rates for nonveterans,” said Daniel Silver, an economist at JPMorgan in New York. Employers in the technology sector, including Microsoft, Qualcomm and Intel, announced 18,891 job cuts in July.
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Unemployment benefits;Jobs;US Economy;Labor Department
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ny0226517
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2010/10/30
|
Jonathan Motzfeldt, Greenland’s First Premier, Dies at 72
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COPENHAGEN (AP) — Jonathan Motzfeldt, the former prime minister of Greenland who spearheaded a drive for more self-rule and opposed American bases there, a semiautonomous Danish territory, died Thursday in Nuuk, Greenland. He was 72. The cause was a brain hemorrhage, the local government said. Greenlanders knew Mr. Motzfeldt as “Junnuk,” a pipe-smoking Lutheran priest-turned-politician, who led the mostly Inuit population on a path toward autonomy. As a member of the social democratic Siumut Party , he became Greenland’s first government leader after home rule was introduced in 1979. “Junnuk was for many years the pillar and beacon of the Greenlandic people, our national focal point,” Greenland’s prime minister, Kuupik Kleist, said Friday. Mr. Motzfeldt led Greenland’s government from 1979 to 1991, when he was forced to leave politics because of a drinking problem. He served again from 1997 to 2002. That year, he lost an internal party struggle to a fellow Siumut, Hans Enoksen, who replaced him as prime minister. Mr. Motzfeldt then became speaker of Greenland’s Parliament, but he resigned in 2008 amid allegations that he had groped a female civil servant. He denied wrongdoing and was never charged. Mr. Motzfeldt started his battle for autonomy in the mid-1950s with a group of young Inuit activists. Greenland, an Arctic island, was then a Danish province governed from Copenhagen. As prime minister, he opposed a 1951 defense agreement between the United States and Denmark allowing four American Air Force bases on Greenland. Most Greenlanders opposed the deal because they never profited economically from the bases, which were built rent free. All except the base in Thule, in northern Greenland, have since been shut down. Opposition grew after the Danish government admitted in a 1996 report that the United States had stored nuclear weapons in Greenland during the cold war, even though Denmark had banned nuclear weapons from its soil in 1957. Mr. Motzfeldt demanded that the Danish government renegotiate the defense treaty with the United States; it never did. Mr. Motzfeldt married Kristjana Gudrun Gudmundsdottir in 1992. They had no children.
|
Motzfeldt Jonathan;Greenland;Politics and Government;Deaths (Obituaries)
|
ny0130817
|
[
"sports",
"ncaafootball"
] |
2012/12/04
|
Manziel Among Heisman Finalists Named
|
Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel, Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o and Kansas State quarterback Collin Klein are the finalists for the Heisman Trophy. Manziel is the favorite to win Saturday night.
|
College Athletics;Football (College);Heisman Trophy;Manziel Johnny;Te'o Manti;Klein Collin;Texas A&M University;Kansas State University;University of Notre Dame
|
ny0276497
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2016/02/12
|
Taiwanese City Moves Against Builder’s Holdings After Earthquake
|
HONG KONG — The city government of Tainan in southwestern Taiwan announced Thursday night that it had identified at least 30 real estate holdings across the island belonging to the developer of an apartment complex that collapsed in an earthquake last Saturday , and had told local government agencies to monitor the holdings to prevent their sale. Information on the holdings was being given to families affected by the collapse who might want to sue the developer. As of Friday afternoon, rescue teams had pulled 93 bodies from the collapsed building, and an additional 29 people were missing and feared to be under the rubble. The quake claimed only two other lives elsewhere in the city. The developer, Lin Minghui, and two of his business associates were arrested Monday night and charged with criminal business misconduct causing fatalities, a specific manslaughter charge under Taiwanese law. As of Thursday night, they had not made any comment or entered a plea.
|
Taiwan;Earthquake;Lin Minghui;Buildings;Tainan Taiwan;Accidents and Safety;Fatalities,casualties
|
ny0157030
|
[
"business"
] |
2008/06/24
|
Bunge to Acquire Corn Products for $4.4 Billion
|
The fertilizer and oilseed processor Bunge said on Monday that it would buy Corn Products International for $4.4 billion in stock, seeking to better compete against other American agricultural giants. The takeover of Corn Products, which is one of the United States’ oldest agribusinesses, is yet another move by a food producer that is taking advantage of a rise in food prices . Many in the sector are scrambling for bigger scale to meet soaring demand across the world. It also represents the growing clout of international businesses. While Bunge has its headquarters in White Plains, its roots are in the Netherlands, Bermuda and Brazil. Corn Products shareholders will receive Bunge stock worth $56 a share for their current holdings, a 31 percent premium to Corn Products’ closing price last Friday, and will end up owning 21 percent of Bunge after the deal. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter, pending shareholder and regulator approval. Tapping into Corn Products’ customer base, which includes Coca-Cola and Kellogg, will give Bunge a huge foothold in the syrups and sweeteners business. It is the third-largest American agribusiness by revenue, behind Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland. The company said it expected to achieve annual cost savings of $100 million to $120 million. Bunge reported $778 million in net income last year, while Corn Products reported $198 million in profits. Bunge said on Monday that it was also raising its earnings guidance for this year.
|
Bunge Limited;Corn Products International Incorporated;Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures;Food;Prices (Fares Fees and Rates);Corn
|
ny0067723
|
[
"sports"
] |
2014/12/27
|
‘The Interview’ Inspires a Reporter to Run a Marathon in North Korea’s Capital
|
After the scarf, pistachios and white-noise machine were unwrapped, our daughter gave us the most exotic Christmas present — a streaming version of “The Interview,” Seth Rogen’s assassination comedy about North Korea’s authoritarian leader, Kim Jong-un. Despite a raunchy and mostly repellent start, the film had its absurdist charms, including Katy Perry’s music and Kim’s obsession with basketball. It brought to mind a 2009 article in The Washington Post , which noted that Kim, while attending boarding school in Switzerland, was quiet, was awkward around girls and “spent hours doing meticulous pencil drawings of Chicago Bulls superstar Michael Jordan.” The movie only increased my desire to run in what is sure to be the most fascinating sporting event of 2015: the Pyongyang Marathon , a four-lap race through North Korea’s capital on April 12. Beginning this year, North Korea opened the marathon — and a related half-marathon and 10-kilometer race — to amateur international runners. About 225 runners from 27 nations competed, according to news accounts. Tens of thousands of spectators lined the course, including women in traditional dress who held flowers. Of course, my entry is not exactly guaranteed. If I tell the North Korean organizers that I work for The New York Times, they may not let me in. If I don’t tell them, they may not let me out. But hey, a fellow can dream. Technically, I have never been inside the hermit nation. But I did visit the Joint Security Area inside the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea while traveling with the United States men’s soccer team at the 2002 World Cup. Only a concrete slab resembling a sidewalk separated the two countries. South Korean guards stood in a ritual taekwondo stance on one side, fists clenched at their sides, feet spread. Visitors to a conference room straddling the border were cautioned not to be alarmed if the North Korean guards offered a certain internationally recognized, one-finger salute. On several occasions, I have encountered the odd enterprise that is North Korean sports. During the 1999 Women’s World Cup in the United States, North Korea’s team exited in group play, but not before a number of players had taken advantage of free dental care. Four years later, the Women’s World Cup returned to the United States after a SARS epidemic forced the tournament’s relocation from China. At a hotel outside Philadelphia, I met up with the North Koreans, who were being hosted by a guy who ran a rib joint in Hackensack, N.J. Looking Ahead to 2015 in Sports Times reporters and editors share what they are looking forward to in 2015: the sports cathedrals for your bucket lists, the athletes on the verge of milestones or simply a wild and wonderful event. The garrulous chef, Robert Egan, was also president of a trade organization that sought to improve relations between the two countries. He cooked for the North Koreans that night, at one point sticking his head out of the kitchen and shouting, “Mr. Pak, have we solved the nuclear crisis yet?” Team officials broke into laughter. Egan also tried to land corporate sponsorships for the team, to no avail. Perhaps because his proposal for a soft-drink commercial featured a nuclear explosion that would detonate as a North Korean player kicked the ball. “Doesn’t anyone have a sense of humor?” Egan asked. At the 2010 men’s World Cup in South Africa, FIFA repeatedly intervened to prohibit questions about North Korea. Unanswered were such gems as: Was North Korea’s coach really receiving tactical instruction on an invisible cellphone invented by Dear Leader Kim Jong-il? A year later, at the 2011 Women’s World Cup in Germany, five North Korean players tested positive for steroids. FIFA barred the team from the 2015 tournament in Canada, even though North Korea devised perhaps the greatest excuse ever for a failed drug test: Its players had used traditional medicine involving musk deer glands after being struck by lightning. When Kim Jong-il — Kim Jong-un’s father — died in December 2011, his reported sporting exploits were recalled, including a perfect 300 in his first bowling match and five holes in one during his maiden round of golf. “Imagine the schedule he kept,” Brandel Chamblee, a commentator on the Golf Channel, told me at the time. “Eight to 11 — enrich uranium; 1 to 4 — destroy the world; 4 to 7 — play golf, shoot 11 holes in one and call it a night.” Given such possibility for weirdness, who could resist a chance to run in the Pyongyang Marathon? A four-day, three-night trip from Beijing for the 2015 race costs about $1,400. Runners will arrive on April 11 and compete on April 12. Tour promotions are unfailingly upbeat . The marathon will start after an energy-efficient breakfast! The race begins and ends before a crowd of 50,000 at Kim Il-sung Stadium! The course includes the Arch of Triumph, Kurung Tunnel (Nos. 1 and 2!) and the Dennis Rodman Eternal Life Tower and Tattoo Parlor! O.K., the Rodman part isn’t true. Writing for Slate about his 2013 trip to the race , Will Philipps, a freelance writer based in China, noted that Japanese and American flags were forbidden and that one runner apparently had to wear jeans because the shoe-company logo on his shorts was too prominent. One other thing: Forget about portable toilets on the course. “Instead there are a few strategic toilets marked along the route in public buildings and restaurants, some as far as 50 meters away from the course and one, unbelievably, on the second floor of a building,” Philipps wrote. Postrace in April, runners will visit Pyongyang’s Water Park for a swim and a frolic in the bubble pool. The New York City Marathon has many things, people, but it does not have a bubble pool. The next day, sightseeing runners will tour monuments; see a captured American ship, the U.S.S. Pueblo; and stop at the Foreign Language Bookstore to buy rare North Korean souvenirs not available anywhere but in North Korea! Take that, Barnes & Noble. I sent my application more than a week ago. Still waiting to hear. I hope I have a better chance to get in the race than Seth Rogen.
|
Marathon;North Korea;Pyongyang
|
ny0068771
|
[
"world"
] |
2014/12/09
|
A ‘Black Widow’ Case Strikes a Nerve in Japan
|
MUKO, Japan — When Isao Kakehi, a 75-year-old retired salaryman, was found dead on the floor of his home last December, the police at first believed the cause to be heart failure. But a sharp-eyed detective grew suspicious. He noticed that Mr. Kakehi, a longtime widower, had suddenly remarried the month before his death, and to a woman he had just met through a dating agency. When a test of the dead man’s blood revealed lethal cyanide, the police began an investigation of his bride, Chisako, now 68, on suspicion of murder. What they discovered would shock a country that has one of the fastest-aging populations in the world. According to the police and news media reports, Mr. Kakehi was just one of six outwardly healthy elderly men who died abruptly over the last eight years after marrying or starting romantic relationships with Ms. Kakehi. All were at least moderately wealthy, with homes and ample savings accounts accumulated over a lifetime of work in order to enjoy a comfortable retirement. Most died soon after drawing up wills that named her as the sole beneficiary. The lurid deaths, some spaced only months apart, have grabbed national headlines, prompting tabloids to call Ms. Kakehi the Black Widow , after the venomous female spider that kills its mates. But the case also struck a deeper nerve. If the police allegations are true, Ms. Kakehi preyed on one of the biggest fears of Japan ’s rapidly growing legions of retirees, members of a postwar mega-baby-boom who enjoy the longest life spans on earth — but are terrified of having to spend all those silver years alone. A former bank teller who looks more like an aging auntie than a femme fatale, Ms. Kakehi (pronounced Kah-kay-hee) met the men through the dozens of specialized dating services that have sprung up here catering to lonely older people. The police say she carefully screened her prospective partners, looking for relatively wealthy men left single by divorce or the death of a spouse. Once she found one, the police said, she showered him with romantic emails professing her love. “The elderly are an easy target because they have all the money, but they are also so afraid of isolation,” said Hiroyuki Kurokawa, a novelist who published a crime thriller this year that foreshadowed the Kakehi case. “This incident exposed the vulnerability of our aging society.” The Japanese news media have begun using the title of the novel “Gosaigyo,” or “The Second Wife Con,” to refer to the Kakehi case. Mr. Kurokawa said he had recently signed a movie deal. In recent years, Japan has grown fascinated with crimes against the elderly, even though police figures show that such crimes have declined as the society has aged. The most famous scam was “ Ore ore sagi ,” or “It’s me! It’s me!,” in which swindlers call old people on the phone, impersonating their sons while making tearful requests to send money. Partly, this fascination may stem from guilt. While adult children traditionally shared their homes with their parents, the custom has been discarded as Japan has embraced Americanized, middle-class lifestyles in which the elderly live alone. However, Ms. Kakehi has drawn particular attention because she is both elderly, and a woman. Some of her former neighbors in Muko, a small industrial suburb of the city of Kyoto, said that she may have been driven by economic desperation in a society where women still often earn less than men, including their pension payments. Image Chisako Kakehi Credit Kyodo News, via Associated Press “I think this is as much about inequality as aging,” said Keigo Sada, 51, a truck driver who lives two houses down from the small beige house where Mr. Kakehi died. “She was looking for easier ways to get money.” Then again, the possibility that Ms. Kakehi may have accumulated as much as $8 million from the deceased men, according to news reports, suggests that something else might have been at work. Last month, the police in Muko arrested Ms. Kakehi in connection with two deaths, that of her husband, Isao, and also a 71-year-old fiancé who suddenly fell dead off his motorcycle in 2012. A blood sample that a hospital happened to keep also contained cyanide. Last week, the police said they found a small bag of cyanide in a plant pot that Ms. Kakehi had tried to throw away. The police said they were still investigating her role in the other deaths, which had puzzled doctors because they came so suddenly to otherwise healthy men. But the police said it took them a long time to grow suspicious because of the relatively advanced age of the victims. “If an old person dies without signs of struggle or bruises, we don’t usually suspect a crime,” said Ryoji Nishiyama, a detective for the Kyoto prefectural police department, which oversees Muko city. Before her arrest, Ms. Kakehi denied killing the men, saying that she was the bereaved victim of a string of tragic misfortunes. Reporters who interviewed her said she alternated between warm and charming, and coldly calculating. They also speculated that she was frustrated with her lot in life: news media reports say she graduated from a competitive high school but was blocked from attending college by her conservative parents. Instead, she married a truck driver who later started a small printing company. He died suddenly in 1994 at 54. While the police now view his death as suspicious, they will not be able to prove it; he, along with most of the other victims, was cremated in accordance with Japanese custom. The next death came in 2006, to the 67-year-old president of a small drug company she had married two years before. All told, she has been linked by the police and the news media to seven deaths: four husbands, including Mr. Kakehi, and three boyfriends and fiancés. Some of these relationships overlapped, the police say. In February 2008, when she was married for the third time, to a 75-year-old landowner, she was also dating a clothing boutique owner in his 70s. The men died within two months of each other, in March and May of that year. The police said that at the time of her arrest, Ms. Kakehi was dating at least two other men, who were warned by the police of the danger they were facing. “People now fear it could happen to them,” said Mr. Kurokawa, the novelist. “Old age is looking increasingly vulnerable.”
|
Japan;Murders and Homicides;Chisako Kakehi;Isao Kakehi;Old age,elderly,senior citizens;Muko
|
ny0186505
|
[
"sports",
"tennis"
] |
2009/03/14
|
Mauresmo Advances at Indian Wells
|
INDIAN WELLS, Calif. (AP) — Amélie Mauresmo , coming back from yet another of the injuries that have plagued her in recent years, opened play in the BNP Paribas Open with a 5-7, 6-3, 6-4 victory over Anna-Lena Grönefeld in a second-round match on Friday. Mauresmo, a former No. 1 player on the WTA Tour, fell out of the top 20 last season for the first time in 10 years. She got her first tournament victory in two years by beating No. 3 Jelena Jankovic and No. 4 Elena Dementieva at the Paris Indoors in February. In 2007, Mauresmo missed four months of the season because of an emergency appendectomy and a right abductor strain. Last year, she was bothered by injuries to both thighs and her right rib cage. Asked why she kept pushing herself at this stage of her career, Mauresmo, 27, laughed and said: “I probably didn’t find the answer to this question. I found the answer to the other question, which was do I want to stop, which was no.” The seeded players in the women’s field began play after first-round byes. Top-seeded Dinara Safina of Russia beat Tsvetana Pironkova of Bulgaria, 7-6, 6-2. No. 4 Vera Zvonareva of Russia, No. 8 Victoria Azarenka of Belarus and No. 9 Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark also advanced. Shahar Peer of Israel defeated No. 10 Marion Bartoli of France, 1-6, 6-4, 7-5. In men’s first-round play, the American Sam Querrey was a 7-6 (2), 6-2 winner over Guillermo Cañas of Argentina, and Tommy Haas of Germany beat Oscar Hernández of Spain, 6-3, 6-3. Nikolay Davydenko of Russia , the No. 5 seed, withdrew with a left heel injury.
|
Mauresmo Amelie;Tennis
|
ny0181883
|
[
"business",
"worldbusiness"
] |
2007/12/05
|
Brazil: Arcelor Buys Brazilian Unit
|
ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel maker, will spend up to $1.75 billion to buy the rest of its Brazilian specialty steel unit. The company also agreed to buy the British steel distributor NSD. Separately, ArcelorMittal said its chairman, Joseph Kinsch, 74, would step down in May to be succeeded by Lakshmi Mittal, who led Mittal when it made a bid to acquire Arcelor.
|
ArcelorMittal;Arcelor;Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures;Steel and Iron;Brazil
|
ny0160334
|
[
"business",
"worldbusiness"
] |
2006/03/21
|
Global View Is Backed by Fed Chief
|
Ben S. Bernanke, the newly installed Federal Reserve chairman, suggested yesterday that the central bank would need to pay more attention to global financial conditions in setting interest rates, moving beyond its traditional focus on domestic economic forces. In a speech to the Economic Club of New York at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan, Mr. Bernanke said that to understand the reasons behind movements in American bond yields "an explanation less centered on the United States might be required." In only his third speech since being sworn in as Fed chairman last month, Mr. Bernanke was also skeptical about the argument that the economy will slow in the near future, a view that many investors may take as a sign that the Fed is not quite near the end of its string of interest rate increases. Mr. Bernanke built the prepared text of his speech around one of the most pressing puzzles in financial markets today: Why do long-term bond yields remain so low despite steadily rising short-term interest rates? Traditionally long-term rates have fallen when investors have anticipated a slowdown in the economy or a decline in inflationary pressures. But Mr. Bernanke argued that other factors --including a worldwide imbalance between abundant savings and less robust investment -- may be a more powerful explanation for the current phenomenon. Over time, however, the challenge will come in determining whether global forces are likely to push rates lower than otherwise might be the case -- or higher. The answer, Mr. Bernanke said, will be increasingly crucial to the conduct of monetary policy. If long-term yields are low primarily because investors are buying more long-term bonds -- be they Chinese central bankers trying to manage the yuan's exchange rate or global investors more comfortable with long-term securities because of a decline of economic volatility -- they would be adding an extra lift to consumer spending and business investment. That would tend to push the Fed to raise its key interest rate a little more than it might otherwise have considered appropriate. "If spending depends on long-term interest rates, special factors that lower the spread between short-term and long-term rates will stimulate aggregate demand," Mr. Bernanke said. Other things being equal, he added, this "argues for greater monetary policy restraint" and higher short-term interest rates. On the other hand, if the low bond yields are indicating that investors expect an economic slowdown around the corner, it might require the Fed to take a different tack. The behavior of long-term bond yields has perplexed financial investors for many months. Starting in June 2004, the Fed has raised short-term rates from 1 percent to 4.5 percent in quarter-point increments. Yet the 10-year Treasury bond yield has inched ahead only slightly, and is now less than a quarter of a percentage point higher, creating a pattern known as a flat yield curve. Financial investors awaited Mr. Bernanke's speech in hopes of combing it for signs of when the Fed might end its series of interest rate increases. The Fed is widely expected to raise its key rate another quarter of a point at its meeting next week, but analysts are divided over whether it will echo that increase in May. Yet beyond discarding the notion of an economic slowdown, Mr. Bernanke refrained from providing any precise indication of what to expect from the Fed. "The implications for monetary policy of the recent behavior of long-term yields are not at all clear-cut," he said. There was virtually no reaction in the bond market to Mr. Bernanke's speech, with yields on 2-year notes and 10-year bonds remaining nearly identical. "This speech is not going to change anybody's mind that the Fed will raise interest rates next week," said Ashraf Laidi, chief currency analyst at MG Financial Group in New York. "But it leaves up in the air what the Fed will do at its next meeting in May." Mr. Bernanke agreed that domestic factors were still highly important in determining long-term rates, pointing out that the drag on consumer spending from higher-priced energy and expectations that the housing market will cool might be keeping long-term interest rates low even as short-term rates rise. But he threw a new element into the mix: the possibility that what he has referred to as a "global savings glut" -- an excess in global savings over global investment -- might also be weighing on long-term rates, with ambiguous implications for American monetary policy. Considering all these elements left Mr. Bernanke perched on the fence. To the extent that lower long-term yields merely reflect investors increased appetite for long-term debt, he said, "the policy rate associated with a given degree of financial stimulus will be higher than usual." But "to the extent that long-term rates have been influenced by macroeconomic conditions, including such factors as trends in global savings and investment, the required policy rate will be lower."
|
FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM;BERNANKE BEN;ECONOMIC CONDITIONS AND TRENDS
|
ny0251721
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2011/02/14
|
Iranian Leaders Vow to Crush Pro-Egypt March
|
TEHRAN — The Iranian leaders who cheered the popular overthrow of an Egyptian strongman last week have promised to crush an opposition march planned for Monday in solidarity with the Egyptian people. “These elements are fully aware of the illegal nature of the request,” Mehdi Alikhani Sadr, an Interior Ministry official, said of the permit request for the march in comments published Sunday by the semiofficial Fars news agency. “They know they will not be granted permission for riots.” The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps was blunt. “The conspirators are nothing but corpses,” Hossein Hamadani, a top commander of the corps, said Wednesday in comments published by the official IRNA news agency. “Any incitement will be dealt with severely.” But opposition supporters, hoping the democratic uprisings sweeping the region will rejuvenate their own movement, insisted the march would go forward. “There are no plans to cancel it,” Ardeshir Amir Arjomand, senior political adviser to the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi, said in a statement published Sunday on opposition Web sites. The opposition also hopes to capitalize on the contradiction between Iran ’s embrace of democracy movements abroad — Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi referred Friday to “the brave and justice-seeking movement in Egypt ” — and its crackdown on a kindred movement at home. “If they are not going to allow their own people to protest, it goes against everything they are saying, and all they are doing to welcome the protests in Egypt is fake,” another opposition leader, Mehdi Karroubi, said in an interview last week. The United States has also seized on the apparent hypocrisy, issuing a statement on Sunday that seemed intended to encourage a revival of the protests in Iran. “By announcing that they will not allow opposition protests, the Iranian government has declared illegal for Iranians what it claimed was noble for Egyptians,” the statement, from the White House, said. “We call on the government of Iran to allow the Iranian people the universal right to peacefully assemble, demonstrate and communicate that’s being exercised in Cairo.” Even as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran was welcoming the emergence of what he called a “new Middle East” on Friday, his government had already taken steps to quash the protest planned here. In the week since opposition leaders filed the request for the march, the government has imposed restrictions on the communications and movements of Mr. Karroubi and detained at least 30 journalists, student activists and family members of figures close to the opposition leadership, according to opposition Web sites. There was also a vigilante attack on a senior reformist figure. While the pro-democracy movement here professes similar political goals to those elsewhere, the differences are critical. The so-called Green movement here is, as the government points out, inherently counterrevolutionary; while democracy movements toppled secular dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt, Iran’s Islamic Revolution did that here in 1979. The Iranian leaders praising the revolts of recent weeks claim them as their political progeny. The democracy movement here has also been shaped, and battered, by recent experience. After the disputed election of June 2009, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets in protest, deploying their own social networks in what was then called “the Twitter revolution.” By the end of the year, a government crackdown characterized by killings and mass arrests had largely curtailed the movement’s public actions. With those memories still fresh, opposition supporters are caught between fear and hopelessness on one hand, and the urge to seize what feels like a historic opportunity on the other. “Things are far more complicated in Iran than Egypt,” said an online activist using the pseudonym Zahra Meysami. “People need to believe that things are possible. We desperately need hope. People need to see, not just believe, that the movement is alive.” In the background has been a steady drumbeat of executions. International rights groups say 66 prisoners have been hanged this year, at least three of them arrested during the 2009 protests. Mr. Moussavi and Mr. Karroubi have condemned the executions for creating an atmosphere of “terror in society.” Some activists have called them a deliberate ploy to neutralize dissent. Still, opposition Web sites have announced protest routes for more than 30 cities. “The victory of the freedom-seeking movement in Egypt and Tunisia can open the way for Iran,” read a statement from an association of Tehran University student political groups. “Without a doubt, the starting point of these protests was the peaceful freedom-seeking movement of Iran in 2009.” But some of the movement’s foot soldiers learned other lessons from 2009. “Many people suffered in the 2009 unrest,” Leyla, 27, said. “They don’t want one martyr to become two. “This is my souvenir from the protests,” she said, pushing aside her hair to reveal a scar in the center of her forehead, etched by a police baton two summers ago. “My parents will be locking me in the house tomorrow.”
|
Iran;Demonstrations Protests and Riots;Egypt;Politics and Government;Ahmadinejad Mahmoud
|
ny0282606
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2016/07/17
|
France Agonizes Over Whether Truck Rampage Could Have Been Stopped
|
NICE, France — Returning home after an abortive trip to find some ice cream late on Thursday evening, Mario Aufiero, a French retiree, waited patiently on the sidewalk as a big truck lumbered down the short street he needed to cross to get to his apartment building just off the Promenade des Anglais. The truck, he said, displayed no unusual menace but upset him all the same as heavy vehicles are supposed to be banned from the sedate residential area at that hour. Moreover, it was moving in the wrong direction down the one-way street outside his apartment. “There was nothing I could do, so I went home to bed,” Mr. Aufiero recalled. The deeply uncomfortable question now confronting French leaders and the country’s security apparatus, however, is whether they, too, dozed off that night. Moments after Mr. Auferio got home, the driver of the truck he had seen remorselessly turned it into a killing machine. The truck ran over scores of people as it barreled down the Promenade des Anglais for more than a mile before police officers finally stopped it by shooting to death the driver, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian. Video A truck drove into a crowd during Bastille Day celebrations in Nice, France, killing scores of people and injuring many more. Credit Credit Sasha Goldsmith, via Associated Press As investigators try to piece together what drove Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel to such extreme and random violence, many people in Nice and around the world are asking how, in a country that has been under a state of emergency since November, a lone driver could so easily flout elementary traffic rules and then race unimpeded through throngs of people who had gathered to watch a Bastille Day fireworks display. As in previous years, security forces, worried about a possible terrorist attack on France’s national day, set up barriers to block traffic on the Promenade des Anglais, a crescent-shaped boulevard that stretches eastward from the city’s airport to its old port. But the barriers, crowd-control devices made of hollow metal tubes, started far to the east of where Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel entered the boulevard. The number of police officers on duty that night was more than usual, but nearly all were concentrated in the sealed-off area by the old port, where most people traditionally gather to watch the fireworks. This left Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel more than a mile of open road on which to crush revelers who had decided to stay outside the heavily guarded spectator zone — and build up speed before he reached the first police barriers near the point where the seaside promenade joins the Boulevard Gambetta. Such was the 19-ton truck’s speed that when it first encountered any obstruction by police, “it would have required a wall of concrete” to stop it, Anthony Borré, an official in the regional government, told local television. French leaders, including President François Hollande, who visited Nice on Friday, repeatedly praised security services for swiftly stopping the truck once they encountered it. Indeed, the truck advanced only 500 or so yards after smashing through the barriers near Boulevard Gambetta. But this was only a short part of Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s long and murderous drive. A Trail of Terror in Nice, Block by Block Documenting devastation along a one-mile stretch of waterfront. “Why was he allowed to drive so far without anyone bothering him?” asked Pierre Roux, who, from his balcony, watched the truck plow through the crowd outside his apartment. “This is a terrible screw-up,” he said after emerging from his home early Friday to put a candle on a bloodied white sheet covering a corpse. How big a screw-up is still being deciphered. It is not clear, for instance, whether the police tried to shoot out the tires before being able to shoot the driver, or whether smaller cities around France prepared for the possibility of a large-scale terrorist attack with the same vigilance as, say, Paris, the scene of two major attacks last year. There, in stages starting early on France’s July 14 national day, the police snapped in place a security perimeter extending many blocks from the fireworks display at the Eiffel Tower. They closed even major thoroughfares to vehicles, including scooters, and placed checkpoints at nearly each approaching intersection to search pedestrians’ bags. The question of whether more could have been done to prevent 84 people from being killed has been taken up with gusto by local leaders on the French Riviera, most of whom represent right-wing forces opposed to France’s Socialist government in Paris. “National unity does not signify national naïveté or, even less, national incompetence,” Éric Ciotti, the president of the department in which Nice is located, told Nice Matin newspaper on Saturday. ”Zero risk never exists, but it is our duty and our responsibility to limit it to the maximum.” France’s Socialist government has responded angrily to such criticism, insisting it did everything it could to prevent a terrorist attack. It pointed out that nobody expected a rampage by truck and that the attacker had never popped up on the radar of intelligence and other services that monitor potential extremists. Still, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced on Saturday that he was calling up 12,000 police reserves to augment security around the country. “When you are talking after the fact, you can always find solutions,” Stéphane Le Foll, the government’s spokesman, told Europe 1 radio on Saturday. “Those who, after a tragedy like this one, come and say that they would have had the solution, that with them, nothing would have happened, I leave them to their total lack of responsibility.” Image The attacker’s bullet-riddled truck was moved from the scene of the attack on Friday. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times The prefecture for Alpes-Maritimes, the department that encompasses Nice, added its own voice to the defensive chorus, issuing a statement on Saturday that said security for this year’s fireworks show had been increased with 64 national police officers and 42 from the city plus 20 soldiers. It said vehicles had been positioned to block the Promenade des Anglais beyond the closely monitored security zone but acknowledged that Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel had bypassed one of these control points by simply driving onto the sidewalk. Mario Aufiero and other residents in the area near a children’s hospital where the truck entered the promenade said they had seen no extra police in their neighborhood and nothing on the boulevard to impede Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s murderous progress until it was far too late. “Everything was like it always is every year on July 14. There was nothing to stop him until he got down to Gambetta,” said Pierre Devit, a resident on the promenade in the city’s Magnan district near the hospital. He also asked why it had taken so long to shoot the driver. “They should have opened fire as soon as they saw the truck approaching,” he said. Others, however, were more understanding of the authorities’ failure to quickly halt the city’s worst episode of violence since World War II. “People need to be logical. The truck was moving at 60 kilometers an hour, so what could anyone do?” asked Jeanne-Jacques Cuny, an employee in a foundry that makes the metal barriers studded along the seafront walkway. “We can’t put police every 10 meters. That would be completely unreasonable, and people would only complain.” The Islamic State on Saturday gloated over the success of what it called “a new, unique operation” in Nice. In a radio broadcast claiming responsibility for the attack, it warned: “Let the crusader states know that regardless of how much they mobilize their security capabilities and tighten their procedures, they will not be safe from the strikes of the mujahedeen, which will continue to beat upon their doorsteps.”
|
Nice Attack;Terrorism;Francois Hollande;Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel;Nice;Paris France;France;Security
|
ny0292198
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2016/01/25
|
China Considers Larger Role in Afghanistan Peace Process
|
BEIJING — As a bloody offensive by the Taliban spreads in Afghanistan and with American combat operations there officially ended, anxious Chinese leaders find themselves under pressure to take a more active role in the long-stalled peace process, according to scholars and current and former diplomats. For observers of Chinese diplomacy, that kind of commitment is surprising since China often tries to take a hands-off approach in regions and nations at war. “The big backdrop is that the United States will have withdrawn most of its troops from Afghanistan with the antiterrorism mission unfinished, which is leaving the country a mess,” said Du Youkang, who worked in Islamabad, Pakistan, as a diplomat and is now the director of the South Asia Studies Center at Fudan University in Shanghai. “Bombings have never stopped, even in the capital. Afghanistan shares a border with China, so in this case China must get involved to promote the talks and to secure the stability in the region.” Yet if China is to play a productive role in peace talks with the Taliban, the officials and scholars say, it will have to convince its ally Pakistan that an Afghanistan at peace and engaged politically and economically with all regional powers, including India, is in Pakistan’s interests. The Afghan foreign minister, Salahuddin Rabbani, begins an official four-day visit in Beijing on Monday, and the topic of bringing Afghanistan’s warring factions to the negotiating table is expected to be the priority in his meetings with Chinese leaders. Mr. Rabbani’s trip signals that China has a stake in the resumption of peace talks, which are still at an early stage and stalled months ago. One reason for China’s engagement is that a stable Afghanistan could become a critical transportation hub and market for Chinese goods, and, eventually, another investment opportunity for President Xi Jinping’s grand economic plans for Central Asia. Yet security concerns loom alongside the economic motive. China has become increasingly worried about the insurgent violence in its western frontier region of Xinjiang, and officials say that the Uighurs , a Turkic-speaking, mostly Sunni Muslim ethnic group, might be falling under the influence of radical elements from outside China, motivating some of them to carry out attacks in Xinjiang. Since 2001, Uighurs have fought in Afghanistan, and Afghan officials say they have told Beijing about the dozens of Uighurs that have been captured there recently, even if some foreign analysts say China’s expressed fears of organized terrorist violence in Xinjiang are overblown. Uighur militants in Afghanistan have not been neutralized yet, Mr. Du said, because “the government has not been able to assert control over all of its sovereign area.” China had long been reluctant to get involved in the Afghan war, not wanting to be seen as taking sides. But Afghan officials, beginning under the administration of President Hamid Karzai, have been insistent, pressing Chinese leaders at every opportunity to use their influence on Islamabad to curb the Taliban, which Pakistan had helped to create in the 1990s. Barnett R. Rubin , an American scholar of Afghanistan at New York University and a former special adviser to the United States and the United Nations, said the formation of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group , which is scheduled to hold its third meeting in Islamabad in early February, was significant because it was the “only institutionalization so far of U.S.-China political cooperation in Afghanistan.” “This means that the two countries are coordinating their policies much better,” he added. “There’s the U.S. with some influence in Kabul, and China with some influence in Pakistan.” Image Deng Xijun, China’s special representative for Afghanistan, listening last week during a meeting at the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, aimed at reviving peace negotiations with the Taliban. Credit Shah Marai/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images “One important role for China in the process is to provide reassurances to Pakistan,” he said. “If China were to support common positions of the U.S. and Afghan governments, it would be much more difficult for Pakistan to resist that.” While the talks at this stage are still aimed only at establishing a road map for future negotiations, there has been one significant accomplishment: winning China’s agreement that it would put its weight behind promoting face-to-face talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. A previous round of talks collapsed last year with the revelation that Mullah Muhammed Omar , a Taliban founder, had been dead for two years, causing a split in the ranks of the insurgency and uncertainty among participating nations. One expectation among negotiators is that eventually Pakistan will have to bring pressure on the Taliban, including militarily. But Pakistan has long treated Afghanistan as a strategic territory that must at all costs be kept from falling under the influence of its archrival, India. The question of whether Beijing can bring it around looms heavily in the minds of Afghans. “China needs a peaceful and stable neighborhood to advance its economic interests,” said Davood Moradian, head of the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies and an adviser to Mr. Karzai. He cited the new Silk Road initiative , Beijing’s quest to expand its economic influence westward toward Europe by increasing trade and development in Central Asia. Afghanistan could play an important part in China’s plans, if it can overcome the deadly strife that makes doing business there a near impossibility. China’s economic ambitions conflict with important aspects of its strategic vision, Mr. Moradian said, since Beijing sees its alliance with Pakistan as essential to building a regional bulwark against India and the United States, even as Pakistan uses destabilizing groups like the Taliban as “tools of foreign policy.” China could make a major difference if it pressed Pakistan to acknowledge its support for the Taliban, but so far both Beijing and Washington “have relied on a policy of appeasing Islamabad,” Mr. Moradian said. “I don’t think Pakistan is susceptible to that approach, and the Afghan government really has nothing to offer Pakistan in terms of incentives or pressure,” he added. “There is a certain degree of naïveté among Chinese diplomats,” Mr. Moradian said. “Only in the last few years have they started to understand the conflict. In the next few years they might have to distance themselves from the Pakistani narrative.” China’s economic incentives for helping with the peace process are secondary to trying to establish stability, Mr. Du said. The copper mine at Mes Aynak, operated by a Chinese state-owned enterprise outside Kabul, has languished mainly because of the unstable security situation and the precarious state of Afghanistan’s transportation network. “How are you going to invest in, excavate and ship out all that copper if the war has never stopped?” he said. Masood Khan, who previously served as Pakistan’s ambassador to Beijing and to the United Nations, said that China would play a “supportive and constructive” role in the talks, and that all of the participants saw its presence as “a confidence-building measure.” Li Shaoxian, a Chinese scholar and vice-president of the Chinese Association of Middle East Studies, said he believed it was important for China to establish direct contact with Taliban representatives. “I went to the country in 2000, and I have to say that the Taliban simply will not be wiped out, because they are deeply rooted in the rank-and-file of society and are a representative of the Pashtuns,” Mr. Li said, referring to the majority ethnic group in Afghanistan. “So now Beijing, Washington and Kabul have all accepted the fact that, well, we need to include them in the peace and reconciliation process.” Mr. Li said Taliban members had told him “China was trustworthy because it was historically the only country that has not bullied the Afghans.”
|
Afghanistan;China;Taliban;Muhammad Omar;Uyghur;Salahuddin Rabbani;International relations
|
ny0056411
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2014/09/16
|
Kashmiris Cope With Flooding, and Resentment of India
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SRINAGAR, Kashmir — When an Indian military helicopter hovered low over a relief camp set up in a mosque in Kashmir’s capital on a recent afternoon, a crowd formed on the ground below, but it was not the grateful, grasping crowd one might expect amid a natural catastrophe. The thudding rotors interrupted a speech after Friday Prayer by an aging leader of Kashmir’s separatists, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who was criticizing the government for not coming to the aid of the flood victims quickly enough. The helicopter dropped sacks of food aid into a graveyard, but there were few takers. People threw them to the ground, pouring the grain inside onto the grass between headstones, and hurled bags over the fence onto the street below. “We don’t want food from India,” some cried. Others asked where the relief had been for the past five days. It has been a week since the Jhelum River breached its banks and inundated Srinagar’s labyrinthine old streets, driving tens of thousands of families from their homes, destroying maize and paddy crops, and clogging stagnant waters with the carcasses of dead animals. Deadly flooding occurs regularly across India, and rescue operations are often slow and scattershot. But Kashmir stands out for its bottled-up tension. Government relief has been difficult to come by. Commentators here have already begun to compare this disaster to Hurricane Katrina, for its devastation of a famously picturesque city and also for its emotional backdrop: It is unfolding in a place where, for historical reasons, trust between the populace and the central government is so low that some relief deliveries have dissolved into open confrontation. For decades, India has maintained hundreds of thousands of security force members in Kashmir to fight an insurgency sponsored by Pakistan, which claims this border region. Though the insurgency is mainly vanquished, the Indian forces remain, occasionally facing stone-throwing revolts by young Kashmiri men who have grown up bristling under their gaze. Image A Kashmiri woman on Monday inside her house in Chak village, south of Srinagar, which had more rain on Sunday after flooding devastated the area last week. Credit Tauseef Mustafa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images “There is obviously this huge accumulated experience with the army, which is, of course, anything but pleasant,” said Parvaiz Bukhari, a journalist in Srinagar who was trapped in his home for four days before he was rescued by other residents in a canoe. He echoed the complaints of many of his neighbors, saying that the soldiers made it a priority to rescue the trapped families of the police and government officials, and avoided heavily Muslim neighborhoods. “For many, it was like these people were rubbing salt on their wounds,” he said. For the first week of the crisis, it was rare to find a police officer or a government official in the streets of Srinagar. Citizens organized themselves into relief crews, paddling homemade rafts or pleasure boats loaded with food and medicine. Today, water remains waist deep in some places, choked with empty bottles and plastic bags. Many remain in relief camps, wearing the grimy clothes they were wearing a week ago, but others have returned to half-drowned neighborhoods, preferring to rely on themselves rather than on the state. Government rescue workers, for their part, described trying to operate a convoluted supply chain while facing a panicked, distrustful public. One soldier pointed at a broken window on his truck, which he said was caused by a crowd of stone-throwing men, and said his team was finally forced to abandon a boat and withdraw from the neighborhood. He said Kashmiri civilians might have mistaken his uniform — he was dressed in fatigues, with a padded vest, and carried a rifle — for full combat gear. “It was a relief operation, not a tactical operation,” he said, a little sadly. A National Disaster Response Force raft sat idle in one of the capital’s residential neighborhoods. Gambhir Singh Negi, the deputy commandant in charge, said that he had been waiting to unload a truck of 50,000 parcels of food and drinking water that the central government had sent to distribute, but it had been stopped by a crowd on the way from the airport. The truck never arrived. Mr. Negi gave a rueful smile. He said he had spent five days in the flood zone, waiting, but had not yet received a single shipment of aid from the government. “The public won’t cooperate to allow us to reach the real victims,” he said, in an interview on Friday. India’s army has deployed 30,000 troops for relief operations in the affected area and has rescued 234,000 people, according to a daily update released by the Press Information Bureau, accompanied by a selection of photographs of marine commandos, in shorts and T-shirts, carrying stranded Kashmiris to safety. Top officials, asked about reports that relief crews were pelted with stones, have dismissed the reports as the work of separatist agitators. Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, remarked that “the usual elements are fishing in troubled waters, stone pelting and attacks are being provoked.” But he has acknowledged that the government was unable to respond adequately in any way during the early days of the crisis, in part because of failed telephone service. “I can’t remember a single natural disaster in the country where the government tasked with responding was so completely paralyzed,” Mr. Abdullah wrote in an article published Sunday in The Indian Express . “We had no way to communicate with anyone, and other than a walkie talkie set,” he continued, “we were totally and completely isolated from everyone and everywhere.” Though the episodes of violence may look familiar, Gull Wani, who directs the Institute of Kashmir Studies at Kashmir University, warned against assuming it represented separatist feeling. “At this point, anything coming from the government, a government vehicle passing through the street, would be pelted with stones,” he said. “It’s not necessarily for the old reasons, but because the government has not been able to deal with the current situation. The state government disappeared, because the state government were themselves caught in this disasters.” The few open roads in Srinagar are choked by people making long, grim marches from one side of the city to another, knee-deep in water. They carry jute sacks on their backs, gourds and apples in their arms. Some have taken the hourslong journey merely hoping to bring word back of relatives’ whereabouts. Near a bridge going into the downtown neighborhood of Batamaloo, one man said that he had carried two children on either hip and waded through waist-deep water to dry land. He collapsed on the road, and spent the night shivering on a grassy divider. Another said he spent his nights sleeping in his car with his father, mother and sister. A third said that he managed to make it back to his home on Friday to find everything — furniture, clothes, pots and pans — washed away.
|
Flood;India;Kashmir and Jammu;Rescue;Srinagar
|
ny0240946
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2010/12/14
|
Teacher Tenure Less Certain in New York City Schools
|
In most schools across the country, tenure is not something to be gained, but something to be lost. Virtually every new teacher earns it, including in New York City, where all a principal has had to do to give a teacher almost guaranteed lifetime employment is to check a box on a computer program. No longer. Under guidelines released Monday, principals are directed to base their decisions on an elaborate system that measures teachers’ success in and outside the classroom, including student performance on standardized tests. The principals then have to explain their recommendation in three paragraphs. The goal, education officials said, is to change the longstanding culture in which tenure is virtually automatic, a default next step after a teacher’s first three years on the job. “The current system of awarding tenure devalues great teachers by treating teachers as if they are widgets on an assembly line,” said John White, a deputy chancellor for strategy. “If we’re going to professionalize teaching, we have to reward teachers, evaluate teachers and develop teachers like the 21st-century professionals that they are.” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced the broad outlines of the tenure plan last year. The guidelines released on Monday provided more specifics on how tenure decisions should be made. Chancellor Joel I. Klein, who is leaving his job at the end of the month, has railed against the current system of tenure almost since the day he took office in 2002, saying it is a roadblock to creating a meritocracy among schoolteachers. He has fought with the teachers’ union to make it easier to fire tenured teachers, to little effect. The new chancellor, Cathleen P. Black, has already signaled that tenure will remain one of the Education Department ’s targets. But even as the chancellor encouraged principals to be pickier about tenure, a vast majority of teachers still are receiving it. In the school year that ended in June, out of the nearly 6,400 teachers who were eligible for tenure, 234 teachers were denied it, or roughly 3.7 percent, according to the Department of Education. Still, that was far more than four years earlier, when denials amounted to just 0.4 percent. The principals’ union welcomed the guidelines. Chiara Coletti, a union spokeswoman, said they instituted “a system of checks and balances that most of our membership will be behind.” The teachers’ union had a different reaction. “They put all this effort into talking about tenure and no effort in figuring out a plan of support for new teachers,” its president, Michael Mulgrew, said in an interview. The guidelines ask principals to give new teachers one of four ratings — highly effective, effective, developing or ineffective — in each of three categories: “instructional practice,” “professional contributions” and “impact on student learning.” To be considered for tenure, teachers must receive a rating of effective or highly effective for at least two consecutive years in all three categories. Teachers who earn “developing” ratings can have their probations extended, and those deemed “ineffective” will be denied tenure. But the city is not setting limits on how many teachers can earn each rating or how many can earn tenure. And while “impact on student learning” is based largely on how much students improve on standardized tests, the other categories are more subjective, including criteria like “commitment to improving instructional practice,” “contributions to the school and community” and “professionalism.” “This is in no way about one number or one data point on teacher effectiveness,” Mr. White, the deputy chancellor, said. A high school principal in the Bronx, who requested anonymity because he is not yet tenured as a principal, said there was another advantage to the new rules: By requiring principals to justify tenure recommendations, the guidelines will force them to be more careful about how they evaluate a teacher’s work. “I don’t like the extra paperwork involved,” the principal said. “But the reality is, it’s needed.”
|
Tenure;Education (K-12);Ratings and Rating Systems;Education Department (NYC);New York City
|
ny0222710
|
[
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] |
2010/11/11
|
Quintin Dailey, 49, Gifted but Troubled Basketball Player
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Quintin Dailey, a talented but troubled basketball player whose missteps, including a sexual assault conviction, contributed to the University of San Francisco’s decision to drop its storied basketball program for three years, died Monday in Las Vegas. He was 49. The cause was hypertensive cardiovascular disease, a spokeswoman for the Clark County Coroner’s Office said. Dailey broke scoring records and earned all-American honors at San Francisco, whose teams, led by the likes of Bill Russell and K. C. Jones, had won two consecutive N.C.A.A. championships and 60 consecutive games from 1954 to 1956 and 15 West Coast Athletic Conference championships. Dailey, 6 feet 3 and 180 pounds, averaged 20.5 points a game in his three years and 25.2 as a junior. He broke Bill Cartwright’s team record for most points in a season, 717, scoring 755. But Dailey’s aura was shattered in 1982 when he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a nursing student in a dormitory. The woman said he had been drunk and had threatened her with a weapon but did not rape her. A state court sentenced him to three years’ probation. A document in the case revealed that Dailey had accepted $1,000 a month from a San Francisco booster for a summer job he did not have to do. The university had already been placed on probation for violating N.C.A.A. rules in the 1979-80 and 1980-81 basketball seasons. For the university, the Dailey revelation “was the last straw,” said Dan Johnson, a lawyer for the university. In announcing the termination of intercollegiate basketball in July 1982, the Rev. John Lo Schiavo, president of the university, a Jesuit institution, said the program had become perceived as “hypocritical or naïve or inept or duplicitous, or perhaps some combination of these.” He added, “All the legitimate purposes of an athletic program in an educational institution are being distorted by the athletic program as it developed.” Basketball returned to the University of San Francisco three years later. Dailey said he had pleaded guilty to the assault charge mainly to get the matter out of the way before the N.B.A. draft , which was being held three days later. After the Chicago Bulls made him their first draft pick, he told reporters that he had pleaded guilty only to stay out of jail, that he felt no remorse and that he had “forgotten” the whole episode. The next year, in 1983, he was forced to remember. He settled a suit by the nursing student who had accused him of the assault, Vickie Brick, by paying her $100,000 and publicly apologizing. Nevertheless, women’s groups protested his arrival in Chicago; anonymous callers threatened his life, apartment complexes turned him down as a resident and fans booed him everywhere. “I can’t help believing that if Dailey weren’t a basketball player, if he were just another creep off the street, he would still be learning what a chamber of horrors the halls of justice can be,” John Schulian, a columnist for The Chicago Sun-Times, wrote. Dailey responded by making the N.B.A.’s 1982-83 all-rookie team. Over a 10-year N.B.A. career with four teams, he averaged 14.1 points a game. His most productive year was 1985-86, when he averaged 16.3 points a game for the Bulls. After four seasons with Chicago, he played for the Los Angeles Clippers, the Seattle SuperSonics and the Los Angeles Lakers. He had problem upon problem, many self-induced. He missed practices and games, gained 30 pounds in a single season, twice violated the league’s drug policy, once attempted suicide and took leaves of absence for psychiatric care. “I had to learn life by trial and error as I went along,” he said in a 1988 interview with The Los Angeles Times. “I erred a lot.” Quintin Dailey was born on Jan. 22, 1961, in Baltimore. His parents died within a month of each other when he was teenager. A stellar basketball player in high school, he was recruited by more than 200 colleges. At San Francisco, he majored in communications and was a campus disc jockey. Dailey’s marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his daughter, Quinci, and his son, Quinton Jr., who is a guard on the Eastern Michigan University basketball team. Dailey, whose last job was as a supervisor for the Clark County Parks Department in Nevada, had a penchant for pungent quotes. In 1985, he complained to The Chicago Tribune that Bulls coaches favored Michael Jordan over him. “I’m a player who likes to shine a little bit myself,” he said.
|
Basketball;College Athletics;University of San Francisco;Deaths (Obituaries);Chicago Bulls
|
ny0156880
|
[
"business"
] |
2008/06/01
|
The Trouble in Housing Trickles Up
|
Greensboro, N.C. WHEN Brandt and Tiffany Schneider put their brick colonial on the market for $1.2 million last April, they had every reason to be optimistic. The home, three years old and in a suburban neighborhood here, features a two-story great room with a stone fireplace and a leafy backyard. The couple’s agent told them she would be shocked if it didn’t sell within 30 days. After all, the Schneiders had owned five previous homes over the past decade, all of which had sold in the first month for more than the couple had paid. A year later, they are renting a house in Madison, Wis., where they moved to be closer to family, and are still waiting for a buyer for their old home. Despite Mr. Schneider’s new job as a manager at a logistics company, his family has had to cut expenses and eliminate vacations in order to cover the $2,500-a-month rent in Madison and the mortgage payments, taxes and utility bills still due in Greensboro. Half a dozen price cuts haven’t done much to generate more traffic — two months recently passed between showings — and the Schneiders are now asking $874,900. At that price, they would just about recoup what they originally spent buying and upgrading the house. “We’re hanging on by the skin of our teeth,” says Mrs. Schneider, 41, a stay-at-home mom with three children. At one point, the family held a garage sale to raise some extra money. “We put a lot of cash down, we didn’t take out a subprime loan. But we never thought we’d have a hard time selling a great home in a wonderful neighborhood.” Nearly a year after the mortgage meltdown became front-page news, the Schneiders’ travails reflect how the nation’s housing woes have moved beyond subprime borrowers in working-class neighborhoods and into the realm of upper-middle-class homeowners. Last week, a new report showed that house prices nationwide were off 14.1 percent from a year ago, while the Commerce Department said sales of new homes remained near their lowest levels since 1991. THE market here isn’t like those of Florida or California, which have followed a boom-and-bust pattern, or of Cleveland, where foreclosures have overwhelmed entire neighborhoods. Instead, what’s playing out here is a kind of paralysis, with wide swaths of the market frozen and only the very top end showing signs of life. This may hint at what’s in store for other real estate markets around the nation that managed to avoid the excesses of the last decade but still find themselves struggling now. Indeed, the recent economic trajectory of Greensboro, a city of 242,000 smack in the middle of the rolling Carolina Piedmont, has run parallel to that of the country as a whole. Sales of existing homes here are down 22.5 percent from the first quarter of 2007, according to G. Donald Jud, a University of North Carolina economist who tracks the market for local Realtors, compared with a 21.7 percent drop in home sales nationally. Unemployment in the Greensboro area averaged 5.1 percent in April, versus 5 percent nationwide. The mortgage delinquency rate of 4.04 percent, meanwhile, is nearly identical to the country’s rate, 4.35 percent. “In some ways, Greensboro got caught up in the national housing boom,” Mr. Jud says. “It was neither a bubble nor a bust, but people in the middle are now feeling the pinch from rising costs and getting overextended.” Greensboro has fared better than other places in terms of foreclosures, though they were up 23 percent in April, versus the same month a year earlier; nationally, the jump was roughly 65 percent. “But that’s still pretty high for us,” Mr. Jud says. “The market is still weakening, inventories are growing and sales prices are dropping.” Across the nation, foreclosures are expected to keep rising, flooding the market with more homes. In Greensboro at the end of the first quarter, nearly 2,500 homes were on the market, up nearly 12 percent from December. And it’s midprice residences that have been hardest hit. While sales of properties valued at less than $150,000 are down 13.3 percent from a year ago, sales of homes between $150,000 and $350,000 are off more than 27 percent. The one exception to this otherwise sobering picture is Irving Park, a gracious neighborhood where some of Greensboro’s original tobacco and textile heirs still reside. Like other wealthy enclaves such as Menlo Park, Calif., Irving Park has escaped much of the downdraft affecting outlying suburbs like Summerfield, where the Schneiders’ home is for sale. But over drinks in the wood-paneled dining room of the Greensboro Country Club, there are whispers that even Irving Park may be susceptible to the downturn. More properties are selling at substantial discounts, at least one member’s million-dollar home is in foreclosure, and a prominent local bankruptcy lawyer says he is seeing a new kind of client. As recently as two years ago, says the lawyer, Charles M. Ivey III, “I felt like I was a veterinarian for dinosaurs — clients were disappearing.” Now, he’s seeing more and more of what he calls “paper millionaires,” real estate investors who thought that the good times would go on forever. “Mostly they bought a slew of properties, hoping to flip them and with refinancing, they thought they could stretch it out,” Mr. Ivey says. “Hopefully, we can buy enough time to sell off their properties.” THE brick house on Robdot Drive in Oak Ridge is just a 10-minute drive from the Schneiders’ place in Summerfield, and it looks like any other of the prosperous homes that have sprung up like mushrooms from the red clay earth here over the last five years. Come closer and you quickly realize that something’s not quite right: weather-proofing peeks out from around the front door, and an open garage reveals that the interior of the house contains little more than bare wooden beams. Construction here stopped abruptly months ago, and now it’s just one of scores of McMansions nearby sitting empty and forlorn on what was farmland until a few years ago. Tobacco barns still dot the landscape, but the farms they once served are gone, paved over by developers and other speculators who figured that housing prices could only keep climbing. “It was like, ‘Build it and they will come,’ ” says Lewis Tillman, who, with his wife Tara, owns Westchester Realty. “Except they didn’t come.” To make matters worse, these outlying suburbs were built on the premise of cheap gasoline, says Keith G. Debbage, a geography professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro who tracks the local economy. With gas at $4 a gallon, he says, “travel costs are now a serious consideration.” Oak Ridge and Summerfield are bedroom communities, he notes, and many commuters drive 30 to 45 minutes each way to jobs in Greensboro and Winston-Salem. “People are doing a serious rethinking of where they live,” he adds. Now reality has caught up with the hopes that animated so many real estate markets around the country. When the Tillmans moved down to Greensboro from Cortlandt Manor, N.Y., four years ago and discovered these fast-growing suburbs, Mrs. Tillman says, “we thought we’d be flipping homes. Now there’s just so much inventory out there.” In one Oak Ridge subdivision, Mrs. Tillman’s client is asking $409,000 for a brand new four-bedroom with granite countertops in the kitchen and a Jacuzzi-style bath. She just marked it down from $422,000, but given the slow pace of sales in the neighborhood, that may not be enough. “Builders just kept putting up one spec house after another,” she says. About 18 months ago, adds Casey Durango, a broker at Yost & Little, builders could hardly keep pace with demand. “They were selling drawings,” she says. When buyers do turn up nowadays, she says, “they smell blood in the water and routinely offer 15 to 20 percent below the asking price.” ONE big reason buyers are being so conservative is that mortgage standards have tightened considerably. “We’ve kind of gone back to the old days,” says Christie Caldwell, who has worked as a mortgage broker in Greensboro since 1986. While some analysts say lenders have overreacted, Ms. Caldwell says they are simply being prudent. Traditionally, she explains, homebuyers who put down less than 20 percent were required to pay for private mortgage insurance. But at the height of the bubble, banks turned a blind eye as borrowers did an end run around the rules by taking out two mortgages, Ms. Caldwell says. That’s much harder to do these days, she says. Similarly, homebuyers with lower credit scores often have to put more down. Everything just seems more difficult, she says. “Before, we could quote rates without knowing credit scores, debt-to-income ratios and the size of the down payment.” The resulting crunch is now also affecting both white-collar and blue-collar workers who had depended on the real estate market for employment. Kavanagh Homes, a local builder that specializes in the middle and low end of the market, has cut its work force by half. “We’ve had to really pull our horns in,” says the firm’s president, John Kavanagh. One home appraiser in the area, Rai Alexander of Taylor Pope & Herring, says the first four months of 2008 “were the slowest I’ve had in my career, and I’ve been in the business since 1991.” The recent surge in gas prices has been an added burden, since Mr. Alexander covers the cost of fuel himself and typically spends $45 to $50 a week on gas. “I try to bunch up my appointments together so as not to drive back and forth to the office too much,” he says. To make extra money, he also works part-time as a bartender at the Greensboro Coliseum, a local arena, and, with his wife, Denise, has cut back on going out to restaurants. “It seemed like things just sort of stopped after Christmas,” he says. Mr. Alexander, 48, grew up in Irving Park and still enjoys driving past fashionable addresses like Country Club Drive, telling stories about Greensboro’s old-money families, like the Cones, who founded Cone Mills and made the denim for Levi’s jeans. Although Cone Mills went bankrupt in 2004, and other local textile makers have cut thousands of jobs, you wouldn’t know it from visiting Irving Park. It has long been among the wealthiest census tracts in the state, according to Mr. Debbage, with a median income of $122,052 in 2000. “New money has flooded into the neighborhood, with younger people buying older homes and tearing them down,” Mr. Alexander says. “I couldn’t afford to buy.” He now lives in Summerfield, the same suburb where the Schneiders are trying to sell their home. Sitting in the Sunset Bar of the Greensboro Country Club, Gary Jobe is still enthusiastic about Irving Park, especially the profitability of pulling down older homes on big lots and putting up one, or sometimes two, in their place. A third-generation Greensboro builder with a high-end clientele, Mr. Jobe’s business in Irving Park is thriving. Mr. Debbage says the very top end of the market in Irving Park is unlikely to feel anywhere near as much pain as newer, middle-class neighborhoods. “There’s a certain cachet and social prestige that’s hard to replicate elsewhere,” he says. “It’s been like that for a century, and it has built up over multiple generations. For those folks to be impacted, you’d have to see a very severe recession.” For those in Greensboro who are less fortunate than many residents of Irving Park, this is a time of waiting. Not just for all those empty houses to start selling again, or for gas prices to drop. Like the rest of the country, anxious homeowners who have no intention of moving are watching to see if the recent rate cuts by the Federal Reserve put a floor under falling real estate values. LOCAL residents are also talking up the opening of two projects they hope will replace some of the high-paying jobs lost when the domestic textile industry foundered. After 10 years of planning, FedEx expects to open a new hub at the Greensboro airport next year, which will eventually employ up to 1,500. Nearby, Honda Aircraft is building a new headquarters and factory. “I don’t know if it will be enough, but it will certainly help,” Mr. Debbage says of the new employers. Although it will be years before these projects begin to pay dividends, would-be real estate tycoons are still hoping against hope for a quick turnaround. Driving down the country roads near his horse farm in Oak Ridge late last year, David Tolbert spotted a sign announcing an auction by a local builder who’d run into trouble. He ended up buying the house — the four-bedroom that Mrs. Tillman is now trying to sell for him. “I bought it to flip, but the flippage part is not going so well,” he says. Like the Schneiders, Mr. Tolbert had always quickly sold his past homes for more than he’d paid. Now, with the carrying cost running at $2,000 a month, he, too, needs to sell and is considering a price drop — though he has already lowered the price once, to $409,000. “We’d hoped to make a profit, but if it doesn’t sell by late this year, my profit will evaporate,” he acknowledges. “It’s a pretty good deal, but I haven’t gotten any nibbles.”
|
Housing;Economic Conditions and Trends;Mortgages;Sales;Prices (Fares Fees and Rates);Credit;Suburbs
|
ny0233764
|
[
"business"
] |
2010/08/13
|
New G.M. Chief Known as a Pragmatic Leader
|
DETROIT — For the last year, General Motors has been under the leadership of a former telecommunications executive with no tolerance for indecision or distractions, Edward E. Whitacre Jr. In that regard, much will feel familiar when he is succeeded next month by Daniel F. Akerson , who was making a name for himself at MCI and Nextel as Mr. Whitacre was building the empire that became AT&T. Having held top jobs at a string of companies and more recently working for a buyout fund with a mandate to spot opportunities, Mr. Akerson has a knack for parachuting in, surveying the landscape and making operational and financial changes. He joined the automaker’s board just over a year ago as a representative of the government and remains largely unknown within the company. An outsider, he has bristled at what he considered some of the ineffective ways of the old G.M., say people close to the board. Mr. Akerson said Thursday that he and Mr. Whitacre “share a common vision” for G.M. and that the automaker was headed in the right direction as it reported its largest quarterly profit in six years. As the fourth chief executive for G.M. in less than two years, Mr. Akerson will need first to sell investors on the slimmed-down company’s potential and then eliminate the government’s 61 percent ownership stake. G.M. is expected to file soon for an initial public offering that could be one of the biggest in history, after its quick bankruptcy sponsored by the government last year. “Akerson is first rate in understanding finance, but he also is an operating guy,” said Howard Anderson, who has followed the telecommunications industry since founding the Yankee Group, a research firm, in 1970. Mr. Anderson, now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, named for one of G.M.’s founders, said he expected Mr. Akerson to put more fight into G.M., which for decades has watched smaller, aggressive companies steal its market share and profits. “The world is divided into defenders and attackers, and G.M. has been a defender,” Mr. Anderson said. “Akerson has run attackers. He is going to essentially turn General Motors into a next-generation attacker.” Those who know Mr. Akerson say he was driven by the challenge, perhaps one of the biggest in the business world today, and the desire to do something that would help the American government. “He thinks this is very much in the national interest,” said Kenneth I. Chenault, the chief executive of American Express, where Mr. Akerson has served as a director for 15 years. Mr. Chenault described Mr. Akerson as a quick study with strong strategic skills and a “fierce competitive drive.” “What you have in Dan is an outstanding leader who is just relentlessly focused on driving results,” Mr. Chenault said. “He’s willing to go against conventional wisdom, and I think that’s something that the automotive industry needs.” Mr. Akerson, 61, is now the head of the Carlyle Group’s global buyout business, the largest of the investment firm’s four divisions. He is one of several G.M. directors, along with Mr. Whitacre and David Bonderman, another top private equity executive, who were often critical of old G.M. practices and urged faster, more sweeping changes in management and business practices, according to people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to discuss the board’s deliberations. “Since joining the G.M. board, my admiration for this company and my appreciation for this industry have grown tremendously,” Mr. Akerson said Thursday in a conference call. “We still have important work ahead of us, but I am confident that we are building the foundation for G.M.’s long-term success.” Before joining Carlyle in 2003, Mr. Akerson held various top jobs in the telecommunications industry. He was chief executive of Nextel Communications and the chairman and chief executive of XO Communications, where he supervised a bankruptcy and turnaround. Earlier, at MCI, he oversaw the creation of marketing efforts such as the “Friends and Family” calling plan and 1-800-COLLECT. He also briefly worked at the buyout firm Forstmann Little, and during his stint there served as the chief executive of General Instruments. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy and the London School of Economics, Mr. Akerson was recruited to Carlyle by one of the firm’s founders, William E. Conway Jr., who also worked as a senior executive at MCI. Mr. Akerson began at the buyout shop as a senior adviser to the firm’s portfolio companies, as it began to bring in high-level executives with operating expertise. He soon became the co-head of the firm’s American buyout operations, and he rose to global head of the buyout business in July 2009. “Dan Akerson is one of the most exceptional executives in the country and will serve both G.M.’s interests and our national interest well,” Mr. Conway said in an e-mail. “He has played an incredibly valuable role at Carlyle. We will miss him.” The Washington Post, in a 2000 profile of Mr. Akerson, relayed a story about his once being so impatient with doctors who were treating his gall bladder at a German hospital that he removed the tubes from his arm, checked out and flew back home to the United States.
|
Akerson Daniel F;Appointments and Executive Changes;General Motors;Whitacre Edward E Jr;Executives and Management
|
ny0141580
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2008/11/27
|
Much Talk of Cuomo for Clinton’s Seat, but Who’s Talking?
|
Few events in politics unleash as much raw ambition — or unravel as many friendships — as the sudden availability of a seat in the United States Senate . Few Senate seats are as storied and prestigious as the one likely to be vacated next year by Hillary Rodham Clinton , who is said to be President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for secretary of state. And few relationships have been put under more pressure by Mrs. Clinton’s probable departure than the one between Gov. David A. Paterson , the man with the sole authority to pick Mrs. Clinton’s replacement, and Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo , the governor’s longtime friend but potential rival. In the days since word leaked that Mrs. Clinton’s seat would probably become available, Mr. Cuomo’s name has been widely mentioned as the obvious choice to succeed her — too obvious, in the estimation of some close to the governor. Two advisers to Mr. Paterson said on Wednesday that they saw Mr. Cuomo’s hand behind the drumbeat of news stories and political chatter proclaiming the attorney general as the only elected official in the state with the stature and popularity to serve effectively as New York’s next senator. That drumbeat was especially frustrating to the governor and his inner circle, the advisers said, given that Mrs. Clinton had not yet been offered the cabinet post, making it difficult for Mr. Paterson to talk publicly about who might replace her. One adviser, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about internal discussions involving the Senate seat, said of Mr. Cuomo, “He is not being helpful.” Mr. Paterson, to be sure, faces a difficult decision. His pick will draw national attention, because of Mrs. Clinton’s stature. But it is also likely to elicit criticism locally, since there is no obvious candidate who can satisfy each of the constituencies (principally Hispanics, women and upstate New Yorkers) clamoring to be represented by the governor’s selection. Asked at a news conference on Wednesday when he would make a decision, Mr. Paterson replied: “My first thought was that I wanted to get this over with quickly enough so that I can answer the phone and answer at press conferences and talk about something else.” Mr. Cuomo said in a television appearance on Tuesday that he was too busy being attorney general to think about any other job, making him one of the few potential replacements who is not lobbying — publicly, that is — for Mrs. Clinton’s job. A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo declined to comment on Wednesday about whether allies of the attorney general were quietly promoting him for the seat, despite his expressed lack of interest. Of course, Mr. Cuomo’s high name recognition and successful stint as a statewide officeholder make him a natural object of speculation — not just for the Senate job, but also as a possible future governor, whether or not he has to run against Mr. Paterson. Mr. Cuomo enjoys high approval ratings generally, while a recent Marist College survey showed him leading the pack of potential successors to Mrs. Clinton by a large margin. But Mr. Paterson’s advisers believe that Mr. Cuomo’s camp is complicating matters by promoting him as the front-runner to other officials and to the media. In particular, they cited an article in The New York Post shortly after news broke of Mrs. Clinton’s possible departure. That story quoted unnamed Democratic elected officials speculating that Mr. Paterson was considering appointing himself to the seat — which would amount to sidestepping the state’s worsening fiscal crisis — and that he would be better off appointing Mr. Cuomo. At a news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Paterson said that no decisions would be made until Mrs. Clinton had actually been nominated and confirmed for the cabinet post and had resigned from the Senate. He was pressed on whether he would name any kind of screening panel to choose a replacement for Mrs. Clinton. “One of the things I’ve learned about processes is the process becomes more of a problem than the selection,” Mr. Paterson replied. But later on Wednesday, the governor’s spokeswoman, Risa B. Heller, denied that Mr. Cuomo was part of the problem. “The governor and the attorney general have been friends for a long time,” Ms. Heller said in a statement. “The governor has been distracted by the volume of candidates and advocates who have called, but is not frustrated with anybody.”
|
Clinton Hillary Rodham;Senate;Cuomo Andrew M;Paterson David A;United States Politics and Government;Politics and Government;Appointments and Executive Changes;New York State
|
ny0275913
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2016/02/08
|
Italian Student’s Brutal Killing May Be Issue in Egypt-U.S. Meetings
|
CAIRO — Diplomatic meetings in Cairo and Washington this week are likely to further focus international attention on the death of an Italian graduate student whose badly beaten body was found in Cairo last week. A visit by the Egyptian foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, to Washington and a trip to Cairo by Sarah B. Sewall, the State Department’s top official for human rights, come amid mounting pressure by Italy for Egypt to find the killers of Giulio Regeni , 28, a doctoral candidate at Cambridge University who had come to Cairo to study informal labor movements. The Italian interior minister, Angelino Alfano, citing an autopsy carried out after the body arrived in Italy on Saturday, said Mr. Regeni had suffered “inhuman, animal-like, unacceptable violence” before his death. A person close to Mr. Regeni’s family said the autopsy showed that he had died from a fracture of his cervical vertebra, most likely caused by a violent blow to the neck. The Egyptian government, apparently alarmed by the angry reaction to Mr. Regeni’s death, has allowed Italian investigators to participate in the investigation into the killing, and officials have repeatedly emphasized their intention to cooperate with Italy. Italian officials have issued demands for “the truth” about what happened to Mr. Regeni, and while they have avoided making public accusations against Egypt, some have privately blamed the Egyptian security forces for his death. The meetings between Egyptian and American officials this week are likely to include discussion of Mr. Regeni’s case, seen by some in Egypt and abroad as another alarming sign of abuse by the security forces in a country where arbitrary detention and torture have become increasingly common, according to human rights monitors. In Washington, Mr. Shoukry is scheduled to meet with Secretary of State John Kerry, the president’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, and various congressional leaders, the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement. In Cairo, Ms. Sewall, the undersecretary of state for civilian security, democracy, and human rights, was to meet with Egyptian government officials. In a statement, Ms. Sewell, who previously headed the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, said she looked forward to “learning more about the challenges facing Egypt and the progress the country has made in addressing them.” American officials have previously criticized Egypt’s human rights record under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, most recently during a visit to Cairo by Mr. Kerry in August. Still, the Obama administration continues to give $1.3 billion in annual military aid to Egypt — a reflection, in part, of the country’s perceived strategic importance as a bulwark against Islamic State militants in the region, particularly in Libya. Italy, too, has strong ties with Egypt: Italy was the first Western country to welcome Mr. Sisi after the ouster in 2013 of the democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi; the two countries cooperate in the fight against Islamic militants; and they are coordinating over the discovery last summer of a gas field off the Egyptian coast by the Italian energy giant Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi. Even so, the stark details of Mr. Regeni’s death have plunged that relationship into crisis. On Sunday, the Italian ambassador to Egypt said that Mr. Regeni’s body had “clear, unequivocal marks of violence, beating and torture.” The ambassador, Maurizio Massari, who was the first Italian to see Mr. Regeni’s body, said in a television interview that Egyptian officials were initially of little help when Mr. Regeni went missing on Jan. 25 after leaving his apartment to see a friend in downtown Cairo. But then on Wednesday, hours after Italian officials appealed to Mr. Sisi in person and before a visit by an Italian trade delegation, Mr. Regeni’s body was discovered. “I think that Mr. Sisi’s intervention managed to move the Egyptian government machine a bit, and make the body come out,” Mr. Massari said. Mr. Regeni had already been dead for three or four days before his body was found, according to the findings of the autopsy, Italian news outlets reported on Sunday. Some observers have questioned how effective the Italian investigators will be when, to many Italians, the prime suspects in the case appear to be members of the same Egyptian security forces with whom they will be working. Mr. Massari said the extent of the Italian team’s collaboration with Egypt would become clear “in a few weeks, maximum.” Dozens of Egyptians, including Mr. Regeni’s friends and political activists, gathered outside the Italian Embassy in Cairo on Saturday to lay flowers and light candles. “The least we can do is stand here and say that we consider him to be one of us,” one friend, Sally Toma, told The Associated Press. “Unfortunately, he died the same way Egyptians die every day.”
|
Murders and Homicides;Giulio Regeni;Italy;International relations;Fatalities,casualties;Diplomats Embassies and Consulates;Torture;Cairo;Abdel Fattah el-Sisi;Egypt
|
ny0245030
|
[
"us"
] |
2011/04/16
|
Prosser Wins County Tallies in Wisconsin
|
CHICAGO — David T. Prosser Jr., a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice whose re-election became intertwined with the state’s battle over cuts to collective bargaining rights, won the race by 7,316 votes, results from the state’s counties showed on Friday. Like nearly everything about this race, which had once been expected to be a sleepy affair, the vote count itself had become the subject of much debate. The results came more than a week after ballots — nearly 1.5 million of them — were cast, after an early count had suggested Justice Prosser lost, and after a county clerk discovered that she had failed to report more than 14,000 votes. Still, the counting might not be over. The challenger, JoAnne Kloppenburg, has until Wednesday to decide whether to request a recount, after which the state will formally certify the results. Because the difference in votes between the two candidates is less than 0.5 percent of the total votes cast, Ms. Kloppenburg may seek such a recount at no charge. Her campaign manager said the campaign was weighing the option. Although the Supreme Court election was formally considered nonpartisan, it had become anything but in the eyes of many Wisconsin voters, who have watched in recent months as Republicans, who now control the State Capitol, passed legislation cutting collective bargaining rights for most public workers in the state. Justice Prosser, once a Republican leader in the Legislature, had been linked by his critics to Scott Walker, the Republican governor. The collective-bargaining legislation is stalled in the courts, and the State Supreme Court has been asked to consider legal challenges to it. Justice Prosser, who has served on the court for 12 years, has not said how he might vote on the issue if the court were to take it up, nor, he has said, would such an indication be appropriate. But Friday’s county-by-county results suggest that he will serve another 10-year term on the court, preserving what many had seen as a conservative majority there. The state’s Government Accountability Board was continuing an investigation into what went wrong in Waukesha County, where Kathy Nickolaus, the county clerk, failed to initially report some 14,000 votes because, she said, she neglected to hit “save” on her computer. The votes, once reported, decisively turned the outcome to Justice Prosser’s favor.
|
Prosser David T;Elections;Wisconsin;Organized Labor;Collective Bargaining;Supreme Courts (State);Kloppenburg JoAnne
|
ny0044068
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2014/05/14
|
Lane Closings Were ‘Idiotic,’ Christie Aide Testifies
|
TRENTON — The chief spokesman for Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey testified on Tuesday that he was misled about why lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge were closed last September, and was “shocked and disoriented” when he learned that the motive appeared to be political vengeance. The spokesman, Michael Drewniak, the most senior administration official to testify before the legislative committee looking into the matter, said neither the governor nor any of his closest advisers in his office were involved in the lane closings. “I can say with complete confidence and comfort that none of these people, starting with Gov. Chris Christie, had any involvement whatsoever in this reckless and perplexing episode,” Mr. Drewniak said. He also said he had not had a role in it. “I had no knowledge or involvement in the planning or execution of this strange, unnecessary and idiotic episode that brings us here today,” he said. “Nor did I play any role in any actual or perceived cover-up.” He also said that the working relationship at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey between officials from the two states was so toxic that it led him to dismiss concerns about the traffic jam. Mr. Drewniak offered the most detailed account to date of the series of warnings that were either dismissed or ignored by top Christie officials and ultimately led to a crisis that continues to threaten the Republican governor’s political future. Mr. Drewniak’s testimony was challenged, however, in statements issued later to The New York Times by the lawyer for David Wildstein, who at the time was the director of interstate projects at the authority. Mr. Drewniak, questioned by Democrats on the committee about why he used private email accounts for some of his exchanges with Mr. Wildstein about the bridge, said he used private and work accounts interchangeably, mostly because it he found it easier to respond to emails on his iPhone than on his government-issued BlackBerry. Mr. Wildstein’s lawyer, however, shared an email from Mr. Drewniak indicating that he had long previously instructed Mr. Wildstein to discuss politically sensitive matters only on his private Gmail account. According to the email, he was requesting information from Mr. Wildstein about the controversial toll increases that Mr. Christie had pushed through the Port Authority — which was the subject the legislative committee was originally charged with investigating. He instructed Mr. Wildstein and the Port Authority’s chief financial officer to share the email “gmail only” with Kevin O’Dowd, Mr. Christie’s chief of staff. “I need the toll hike schedule going forward in an email (gmail only) for O’Dowd,” Mr. Drewniak wrote. “I told him what your CFO was putting together, which he thought was a good idea (also via gmail only).” Mr. Wildstein’s lawyer, Alan Zegas, also challenged Mr. Drewniak’s statement that he rarely saw Mr. Wildstein socially. Mr. Zegas noted that Mr. Wildstein had been a guest — along with the governor — at Mr. Drewniak’s wedding in October 2012, and that as recently as Nov. 25, 2013, as the lane closings were beginning to attract more notice in the news media, sent Mr. Wildstein a photograph of a fish he caught on his vacation in Mexico, closing by saying, “Would love to get together when we’re back.” Mr. Drewniak acknowledged that from the moment the local traffic lanes in Fort Lee, N.J., leading to the bridge were closed on Sept. 9, complaints poured in to the administration. The lane closings backed up traffic for hours each day. On Sept. 12, with the lanes still closed, Mayor Mark Sokolich of Fort Lee made a frantic plea for help to the administration. On Sept. 13, Patrick J. Foye, the top New York official at the Port Authority, ordered the lanes reopened and sent a harshly worded letter to his New Jersey counterparts saying the closings were dangerous and possibly illegal. But even after Mr. Drewniak learned of Mr. Foye’s letter, several weeks later, no major alarm bells went off in the administration, he said. The poisonous relationship between officials at the bistate agency “colored” how he responded, he testified. Mr. Drewniak said it would be fair to characterize the relationship between top officials from the two states as one of hatred. Mr. Foye’s main antagonist from New Jersey was Mr. Wildstein, who was forced to resign from the Port Authority and has become something of a wild card in the scandal. After the scandal erupted in early January, his lawyer released a letter saying that “evidence exists” to show that the governor knew about the closings while they happened, contrary to what Mr. Christie said publicly. In his testimony on Tuesday, Mr. Drewniak described a dinner he had with Mr. Wildstein in December at which Mr. Wildstein claimed that he had told the governor about the closings when the two briefly met at a Sept. 11 memorial event. Mr. Drewniak said that when he told Mr. Christie about Mr. Wildstein’s claim after their dinner, the governor was incredulous. “He thought it was ridiculous,” Mr. Drewniak said. The governor said it was, perhaps, a “drive-by remark.” Mr. Christie has said publicly he does not recall any discussion with Mr. Wildstein about the lane closings. In previous hearings, much of the focus has been on Bridget Anne Kelly, who was Mr. Christie’s deputy chief of staff for legislative and intergovernmental affairs. She is the official who sent an email to Mr. Wildstein saying, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” He replied, “Got it.” She was fired in January by Mr. Christie. But on Tuesday, the focus was on Mr. Wildstein. Mr. Drewniak said he was surprised when emails were made public that indicated that the motive for the lane closings was political. He said it was “a deep betrayal on both a personal and professional level.” Someone he trusted had lied to him, Mr. Drewniak said. “I now know how badly, regrettably even naïvely, I misplaced that trust,” he said.
|
Michael Drewniak;Chris Christie;GW Bridge;Port Authority;Fort Lee NJ;New Jersey
|
ny0245382
|
[
"us"
] |
2011/04/26
|
Colorado: Link to Columbine Dispelled
|
An apparent attempted bombing at a Littleton shopping mall likely was not related to the 12th anniversary of the shootings at nearby Columbine High School, the F.B.I. said Monday. The agency did not release additional information. But it has alerted field offices to be on the lookout for Earl A. Moore, 65, who has been named the suspect in Wednesday’s fire at Southwest Plaza Mall, about four miles from Columbine. A pipe bomb and two propane tanks were found after the fire, raising fears that the episode was timed to coincide with the anniversary.
|
School Shootings;Colorado
|
ny0223080
|
[
"sports",
"ncaafootball"
] |
2010/11/17
|
F.B.I. Questions Ex-Quarterback in Cam Newton Inquiry
|
The various inquiries into the recruitment of Auburn quarterback Cam Newton continued Tuesday. Federal and state officials met with former Mississippi State quarterback John Bond in Mississippi, and news emerged that the N.C.A.A. spoke with a former Mississippi State employee with knowledge of Newton’s recruitment. Bond is one of the three people who have said that Cecil Newton Sr. was seeking more than $100,000 for his son to go to Mississippi State. Bond’s lawyer, Phil Abernethy, said in a statement that Bond “has been interviewed by a state regulator and federal law enforcement.” The statement added: “He has fully cooperated with both agencies and has provided them all facts known by him.” Also, a person with knowledge of the meeting said that the N.C.A.A. had interviewed an Alabama graduate assistant named Jody Wright, who was at Mississippi State during Newton’s recruitment. The interview, which took place in Tuscaloosa, shows the N.C.A.A.’s continued interest in the case ahead of next Friday’s game between No. 2 Auburn and No. 10 Alabama.
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Auburn University;Newton Cameron J;Frauds and Swindling;College Athletics;Mississippi State University;Federal Bureau of Investigation;Bond John
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ny0085912
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2015/07/29
|
Britain Is Losing Against ISIS Recruitment Tactics
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LONDON — When Tasnime Akunjee’s father, a university student from a middle-class family in Bangladesh, came to Britain in the early 1970s, he thought the streets of London would be paved with gold. Literally. “In those days, Britain had a powerful story to tell,” said Mr. Akunjee, a London-based lawyer. Once his father arrived, he said, he was shocked to find that he was walking on mere paving stones. But he quickly recovered. Golden sidewalks or not, Mr. Akunjee said, “he wanted to be part of it — they all did in that generation.” Even educated young men and women in Britain’s former colonies believed in a sometimes absurdly idealized marketing pitch of its former empire. Now, a different pitch, but one that is proving similarly alluring, has swayed hundreds of young British Muslims into believing the Islamic State’s vision of its self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Iraq. Leaving behind the Western opportunities their parents came to Britain for, those young Muslims make for a promised land of religious virtue, Muslim community and righteous revolution. Iraqi Army Retakes Government Complex in Central Ramadi Efforts to stem the rise of the Islamic State. “It’s the ultimate marketing success,” said Mr. Akunjee, who represents the families of three teenage girls who recently absconded to Syria. “They manage to sell a war zone as a Muslim safe haven.” So far, the West has not come up with a convincing counterargument. More British Muslims have gone to fight in Syria than are enlisted in the armed forces here. As Prime Minister David Cameron said last week: “We have to confront a tragic truth: that there are people born and raised in this country who don’t really identify with Britain.” Western officials have struggled to categorize the Islamic State. “You wouldn’t join a terrorist group unless you agreed with it 100 percent,” one senior British official said. “But you can be 100 percent behind the idea of a state and still disagree with some of the things it does.” That extends the pool of potential recruits well beyond those who condone beheadings, he said. Where ISIS Has Directed and Inspired Attacks Around the World More than a dozen countries have had attacks since the Islamic State, or ISIS, began to pursue a global strategy in the summer of 2014. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, plays on that ambiguity, appealing to not just foreign fighters but also women, families, teachers and doctors. Its recruitment videos have featured surgeons with stethoscopes around their necks. Schoolchildren reportedly get “I.S.”-branded school bags. “Brand Caliphate has done more for recruitment than anything else,” said Sasha Havlicek, director of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “It is about building the utopian vision, not just fighting.” For Raffaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute and author of “We Love Death as You Love Life,” a book on radicalization in Britain, the Islamic State appears more credible than other recent Islamist groups. How ISIS Expands The Islamic State aims to build a broad colonial empire across many countries. “The utopian vision was a hard sell with Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he said. “ISIS is much younger and global. It’s an internationalist organization. It thinks of itself as progressive.” “If you’re scrambling for your identity,” Mr. Pantucci said, “ISIS is the bright flame to follow.” Mr. Cameron is not the first prime minister to consider the meaning of “Britishness.” His predecessor, Gordon Brown, once floated the idea of a “Britain Day.” And even non-Muslim Britons are in a funk about national identity at a time of welfare cuts, stagnating wages and uncertainties including British membership in the European Union. In this context, strengthening a sense of belonging among Muslim Britons will require more than rhetoric and symbolism. Britain and other Western nations should address the grievances of young Muslims, from job market discrimination to Islamophobia, and offer positive ways of channeling their idealism, Mr. Pantucci said. Organizing aid convoys to Syrian refugee camps in Turkey and Lebanon would be one way. Being more consistent on foreign policy another. It has not helped that two years after Parliament rejected Britain’s participation in an air campaign against the Syrian regime over its use of chemical weapons, it emerged that Mr. Cameron had authorized British pilots to conduct airstrikes against ISIS militants as part of the American-led coalition. “If the West stands for justice against tyranny, then it needs to do that consistently, whether it is against ISIS or the Syrian regime,” Ms. Havlicek said. “The message we have sent is that we are O.K. with tyranny as long as it doesn’t undermine our interests.”
|
London;ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State;David Cameron;Islam;Great Britain;Syria
|
ny0254943
|
[
"sports",
"cycling"
] |
2011/09/04
|
In Vuelta, a First-Time Stage Winner
|
Rein Taaramae of Cofidis won the 14th stage of the Vuelta a España for his first victory in a major race, and Bradley Wiggins extended his overall lead in a grueling leg from Astorga to La Farrapona. Wiggins’s advantage over the defending champion, Vicenzo Nibali, increased from four seconds to more than a minute after Nibali fell behind on the last of three mountain passes.
|
Vuelta a Espana (Bicycle Race);Bicycles and Bicycling;Wiggins Bradley
|
ny0194752
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2009/11/01
|
Brian Schroeder Arrested in Minor Fire at Chapel Housing 9/11 Remains
|
The inside of a temporary structure where the remains of those who did not survive the burning World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, was itself set aflame on Saturday morning. A 26-year-old man was arrested. None of the remains themselves were damaged, but candles and mementos left by victims’ family members at the chapel behind the chief medical examiner’s office, known as Memorial Park , were either stolen or burned, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in a statement. “Anyone who would set fire to the inviolable Memorial Park chapel is craven and contemptible,” Mr. Bloomberg said. Brian Schroeder, 26, turned himself into the police and was arrested Saturday evening, the department said. Charges were still pending, but a police spokesman said Mr. Schroeder was likely to be charged with arson. Mr. Schroeder turned himself in as fire marshals and the Police Department’s arson unit investigated the scene, along Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive between 29th and 30th Streets. Mr. Schroeder’s motive was unclear, and no other information about him was available on Saturday evening. A Fire Department spokesman said firefighters responded to a 911 call shortly before 9 a.m. Saturday, and found mementos and a bench smoldering. There was little more than smoke damage to the structure itself, which Mr. Bloomberg said the medical examiner’s office would repair. In a letter sent to families of 9/11 victims, Nazli Parvizi of the mayor’s community affairs office said that a break-in had been discovered Saturday morning. “While the incident is still under investigation and details are sparse, what we do know is after the break-in, mementos were gathered and a fire was started in the chapel,” Ms. Parvizi wrote. Though the Memorial Park site is temporary and technically a tent, it is hardly a haphazard repository. The space had a $1 million renovation in 2006; more than 10,000 remains are kept in climate-controlled, walk-in containers, and there is a separate chapel with a fountain. The remains have been dehydrated until they can be identified with DNA technology, and they will eventually be moved to a memorial at ground zero.
|
Monuments and Memorials;World Trade Center (NYC);September 11 (2001);Schroeder Brian
|
ny0238718
|
[
"sports",
"football"
] |
2010/12/03
|
Voice Mails Cost Deadspin $12,000
|
Deadspin paid $12,000 for voice mails and photos that it said were sent by Brett Favre to Jenn Sterger, a former Jets game-day employee, said Nick Denton, the owner of Gawker Media , which owns the Web site. Deadspin says the photos are of Favre’s genitals. The N.F.L. is investigating Favre’s actions, which occurred in 2008 when he was a Jet. Fox Sports reported that Favre had admitted to sending the voice mails but not the pictures. Although Sterger spoke to Deadspin about the voice mails and photographs, she never authorized it to use them or her name. Deadspin used them anyway.
|
Favre Brett;Gawker Media;Voice Mail;Sexual Harassment
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ny0098413
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2015/06/26
|
Astros’ Starter Shines as Bats Fall Silent
|
HOUSTON — When Houston Astros catcher Hank Conger was acquired from the Los Angeles Angels in November, he was used to watching players like Mike Trout, Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton — established sluggers who were expected to hit the ball out of the park. Conger knew he was not one of them. So his ears perked up in the spring when he listened to his new manager, A. J. Hinch, emphasize that his players should not worry about striking out. “When you’re growing up as a kid, the first thing somebody tells you is if you get two strikes, swing at anything close and protect the plate,” Conger said. “So when your focus is on just getting a good pitch to hit, it gets rid of all that negativity and thought at the plate.” The Astros, who have struck out more than any other team in baseball, do not mind because they have also hit the most home runs in the majors. The Yankees are right behind them. Neither home runs nor strikeouts mattered much on Thursday — only the pitching of the Astros’ Dallas Keuchel, who silenced the Yankees, 4-0, in the opener of their four-game series. Keuchel struck out a career-high 12 and retired 15 in a row until Alex Rodriguez’s single with two out in the ninth. The Yankees loaded the bases in the ninth, but Keuchel retired Jose Pirela on a groundout to end the game. Manager Joe Girardi stayed with Pirela, leaving one of his best power hitters, Brian McCann, on the bench because the short left-field wall and the left-handed Keuchel did not play to McCann’s strengths. “You’ve got a short left-field porch,” Girardi said. “You know that he’s tired. You’re hoping you hit a home run.” For either team, it was a reasonable hope. Keuchel’s dominance was not a surprise because he has been one of the best pitchers in baseball the last two seasons, and Adam Warren was solid once again for the Yankees. But it hardly figured that this series would begin without a home run being hit. Nobody in the major leagues has hit more of them than the Astros, with 107, and the Yankees, who have hit 98. The teams’ ability to hit home runs — particularly in their cozy, hitter-friendly parks, one with a short fence in right, the other in left — has spurred offensive awakenings that have placed them among baseball’s biggest surprise stories this season. Houston, which had not won more than 70 games in the last four seasons, is in first place in the American League West, while the Yankees are a game and a half behind Tampa Bay in the A.L. East. Both teams have been on a power-hitting binge lately. The Yankees have hit 51 home runs in their last 31 games, the most in baseball over that stretch. Houston recently hit multiple home runs in eight consecutive games. “You pick up runs in bunches, and you pick them up quickly,” Girardi said, crediting the home run with being at the center of his team’s offensive resurgence. The Yankees were 13th in the league in runs scored last season (the Astros were 14th); this season the Yankees are second (the Astros are fourth). Girardi continued: “You don’t necessarily have to string a ton of hits together to score three, four runs. It can be a walk, a hit and a three-run homer. We’ve hit our share of multiple-run homers, too — a lot of them. That’s how we’re built and that’s how we play.” The Yankees’ power was not the only thing missing Thursday, when the left-handed hitters McCann and Brett Gardner were given the night off. So was their defense, with three errors, and their ability to keep the Astros from using their speed. Preston Tucker’s two-out double in the second inning scored Colby Rasmus from first, Jose Altuve took third and then scored on back-to-back fly balls in the fourth, and two errors aided by the Astros’ speed led to another in the sixth. Although Hinch suggested that the teams were mirror images of each other because of their ability to hit home runs, the game highlighted the differences. The Yankees field the oldest everyday lineup in the big leagues (31.6 years old), while the Astros field the youngest (26.8). The Yankees’ resurgence has been driven by the return to form of Mark Teixeira and Rodriguez, who are coming off injuries and, in Rodriguez’s case, a season-long suspension. But the Yankees players, for the most part, have established track records of hitting home runs. The Astros are at the forefront of using data to acquire the types of players who will project well for their team, which also leads the majors in steals. Sometimes that means drafting and developing players they expect to hit home runs, or acquiring ones who will fit their ballpark and philosophy. If there is a poster boy for Houston this season, it is Valbuena, a journeyman infielder who hit a career-high 16 home runs for the Chicago Cubs last season. He has hit 19 home runs for Houston and moved into the cleanup spot Thursday. He missed another by inches, pulling a pitch from Warren just outside the foul pole. His .199 batting average was met with a shrug from Hinch. “As long as he’s getting good pitches to hit and putting together good at-bats,” Hinch said. “You obviously take the difficult stretches of lack of hits with somebody who can change the scoreboard on any given at-bat.” That was the position the Yankees found themselves in at the end of the night — fortunate to have a puncher’s chance. “Look, you get in a situation where one swing can tie the game against a guy that’s dominated us for nine innings,” Rodriguez said. “You feel real good about even having that opportunity.”
|
Baseball;Dallas Keuchel;Joe Girardi;Astros;Yankees
|
ny0074227
|
[
"sports",
"soccer"
] |
2015/04/19
|
Chelsea Edges United; Arsenal Reaches Cup Final
|
Eden Hazard propelled Chelsea closer to its first Premier League title in five years on Saturday by scoring the lone goal in a 1-0 victory over Manchester United, pushing Chelsea to a 10-point lead atop the standings. Chelsea’s last five league wins have all come by one-goal margins, and it has a commanding cushion over second-place Arsenal with six games to go. Hazard was also likely to earn the league’s top individual honors this season, delivering another influential performance at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge. United had several opportunities in the second half, but it found no way past Chelsea goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois. United remained in third. ARSENAL REACHES FINAL Alexis Sánchez sent Arsenal back to the F.A. Cup final, scoring his second goal of the game in overtime to secure a 2-1 win over Reading at Wembley Stadium. Sánchez scored for Arsenal, the defending tournament champion, in the 105th minute when he cut inside and hit a low shot that went between the legs of goalkeeper Adam Federici. Arsenal will face either Liverpool or Aston Villa in the final. MESSI SCORES 400TH GOAL Lionel Messi set up Luis Suárez’s first-minute opener before scoring his 400th goal for Barcelona in a 2-0 victory over Valencia. Image Manchester United’s Marouane Fellaini, left, challenging Branislav Ivanovic during Chelsea’s 1-0 win at Stamford Bridge. Credit Ben Stansall/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Messi, 27, is the career leading scorer for both Barcelona and the Spanish league. His goal was also his 278th in La Liga. Suárez scored his 12th goal in his past 12 appearances, putting Barcelona ahead 55 seconds into the match at Camp Nou. Second-place Real Madrid topped Málaga, 3-1, at home when Ronaldo made up for a missed penalty by scoring in injury time to reach the 50-goal mark for a fifth consecutive season. Real Madrid remained 2 points behind Barcelona with six rounds left. Atlético Madrid’s Antoine Griezmann scored two goals as the team, the defending champion, strengthened its hold on third place with a 2-1 victory at Deportivo La Coruña. DEPLETED P.S.G. PREVAILS Despite the absences of two injured starters and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, its top scorer, Paris St.-Germain won, 3-1, at Nice and maintained pressure on Lyon in the French league title race. P.S.G. was a point ahead of Lyon with six games remaining. BAYERN AND DORTMUND WIN Shinji Kagawa sealed Borussia Dortmund’s 3-0 win over Paderborn, and Bayern Munich closed in on the Bundesliga title with a 2-0 win at Hoffenheim. Sebastian Rode’s 38th-minute strike and an own goal from Andreas Beck in injury time helped Bayern move another step closer to the league title. BIG VICTORY FOR JUVE Juventus defeated second-place Lazio, 2-0, at home to take another step toward its fourth straight Serie A title and bolster its confidence for Wednesday’s Champions League clash in Monaco. First-half goals by Carlos Tevez and Leonardo Bonucci allowed Juventus to open up a 15-point lead on Lazio.
|
Soccer;Arsenal Soccer Team;Chelsea Soccer Team;Manchester United
|
ny0226460
|
[
"us"
] |
2010/10/30
|
Obama’s Remarks on U.S.-Bound Explosives
|
The following is a transcript, provided by the White House, of President Obama ’s remarks on Friday about the suspicious packages originating in Yemen and bound for the United States: Good afternoon, everybody. I want to briefly update the American people on a credible terrorist threat against our country, and the actions that we’re taking with our friends and our partners to respond to it. Last night and earlier today, our intelligence and law enforcement professionals, working with our friends and allies, identified two suspicious packages bound for the United States — specifically, two places of Jewish worship in Chicago. Those packages had been located in Dubai and East Midlands Airport in the United Kingdom. An initial examination of those packages has determined that they do apparently contain explosive material. I was alerted to this threat last night by my top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan. I directed the Department of Homeland Security and all our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to take whatever steps are necessary to protect our citizens from this type of attack. Those measures led to additional screening of some planes in Newark and Philadelphia. The Department of Homeland Security is also taking steps to enhance the safety of air travel, including additional cargo screening. We will continue to pursue additional protective measures for as long as it takes to ensure the safety and security of our citizens. I’ve also directed that we spare no effort in investigating the origins of these suspicious packages and their connection to any additional terrorist plotting. Although we are still pursuing all the facts, we do know that the packages originated in Yemen. We also know that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a terrorist group based in Yemen, continues to plan attacks against our homeland, our citizens, and our friends and allies. John Brennan, who you will be hearing from, spoke with President Saleh of Yemen today about the seriousness of this threat, and President Saleh pledged the full cooperation of the Yemeni government in this investigation. Going forward, we will continue to strengthen our cooperation with the Yemeni government to disrupt plotting by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and to destroy this Al Qaeda affiliate. We’ll also continue our efforts to strengthen a more stable, secure and prosperous Yemen so that terrorist groups do not have the time and space they need to plan attacks from within its borders. The events of the past 24 hours underscores the necessity of remaining vigilant against terrorism. As usual, our intelligence, law enforcement and Homeland Security professionals have served with extraordinary skill and resolve and with the commitment that their enormous responsibilities demand. We’re also coordinating closely and effectively with our friends and our allies, who are essential to this fight. As we obtain more information we will keep the public fully informed. But at this stage, the American people should know that the counterterrorism professionals are taking this threat very seriously and are taking all necessary and prudent steps to ensure our security. And the American people should be confident that we will not waver in our resolve to defeat Al Qaeda and its affiliates and to root out violent extremism in all its forms. Thank you very much.
|
Obama Barack;Terrorism
|
ny0204211
|
[
"nyregion",
"long-island"
] |
2009/01/03
|
Christian Wölffer, a Long Island Vintner, Is Dead at 70
|
Christian Wölffer, the founder of Wölffer Estate Vineyard, a highly regarded boutique winery on Long Island, died on Wednesday in a swimming accident off the Brazilian coast. He was 70 and lived in Sagaponack, N.Y., on an estate that included the vineyard. Mr. Wölffer, who was vacationing in Brazil, was believed to have been hit by a boat, said Roman Roth, the vineyard’s winemaker and technical director. Spanning 55 acres, the vineyard was built on the site of a former potato farm. Mr. Wölffer, a German-born venture capitalist, began it in 1988 as Sagpond Vineyards. In 1997, with the opening of its 12,000-square-foot winery, it was renamed Wölffer Estate Vineyard. With its ochre stucco walls and terra-cotta floors, designed to evoke the rustic architecture of Tuscany, the winery is considered one of the handsomest on Long Island. Overseen by Mr. Roth, who is also from Germany, Wölffer Estate wines are often described as continental in style, richly fruity without being excessively sweet. The winery produces about 16,000 cases a year. (By contrast, a large winery like Robert Mondavi can produce several hundred thousand cases annually.) Among Wölffer’s best-known wines are its cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, pinot gris, merlot and cuvée sparkling brut. Reviewing the winery’s 1997 merlot in The New York Times in 2000, Howard G. Goldberg called it “bottled pornography,” adding, “its bouquet is so seductively full of jammy, sweet promise that a man in midlife crisis might leave his wife for this wine.” In 2002, another Wölffer Estate merlot, a Premier Cru 2000, set a record for the highest-priced Long Island wine, selling for $100 a bottle. A member of the so-called second wave of Long Island vintners — the first wave began in the 1970s with vineyards like Hargrave and Pindar — Mr. Wölffer was a highly visible public champion of the region’s wines. Often described in news accounts as a bon vivant who spoke six languages, he was for years a familiar presence on the East End social scene. His estate, 174 acres in all, includes not only the vineyard and winery but also Wölffer Estate Stables, a vast equestrian center. Christian Wölffer was born in Hamburg, Germany, on March 15, 1938. At 17, according to a biography on the vineyard’s Web site ( www.wolffer.com ), he took a job as a trainee at a bank and later worked for an import-export company. He went on to work for BASF, the German chemical giant, managing its sales force in Mexico. In 1971, he began his entrepreneurial career, selling Canadian real estate to European investors; he later became a developer of indoor tennis and squash centers in Canada. After moving to the United States in the 1970s, Mr. Wölffer founded Euro Investors Property and the Hampton Capital Corporation, venture capital concerns. Mr. Wölffer’s first marriage ended in divorce, as did his second, to Naomi Marks, whose family founded the Marks & Spencer retail chain in Britain. Survivors include a son and daughter from his first marriage, Marc and Andrea; two daughters from his second marriage, Joanna and Georgina; several siblings; and several grandchildren. Information on other survivors could not be confirmed. Though Mr. Wölffer was a staunch advocate for Long Island wines in general, he did not hesitate to point out that his winery was even more regional than most. While the island’s wineries lie overwhelmingly on its North Fork, Wölffer Estate Vineyard is one of just a very few on the South Fork. In interviews, when the talk turned to outstanding North Fork wines, Mr. Wölffer invariably interrupted. “East End, you mean,” he always said.
|
Wines;Deaths (Obituaries);Long Island (NY)
|
ny0121454
|
[
"world",
"americas"
] |
2012/07/25
|
In Mexico, a Restrictive Approach to Gun Laws
|
MEXICO CITY — Juan García relinquished his cellphone, walked through two metal detectors, registered with a uniformed soldier — and then finally entered Mexico ’s only legal gun store. To anyone familiar with the 49,762 licensed gun dealers in the United States, or the 7,261 gun-selling pawn shops, the place looked less like a store than a government office. Customers waited on metal chairs near a fish tank to be called up to a window to submit piles of paperwork. The guns hung in drab display cases as if for decoration, with not a single sales clerk offering assistance. The goal of the military-run shop seemed to be to discourage people from buying weapons, and even gun lovers like Mr. García, 45, a regular at a local shooting club, said that was how it should be. “If you want to stop someone who gets mad at their wife or the world from running out and buying a gun and killing everyone, you have to make it hard,” said Mr. García, who waited two months for the approval to buy a .38-caliber pistol. “It’s the only way to make people think.” Mexicans and Americans share many things — a love for pickup trucks, beef, national flags and family — but when it comes to guns, the two countries are feuding neighbors. Each has its own vastly different approach for controlling firearms, and while neither the restrictive gun laws in Mexico nor the more permissive model in the United States has stopped bullets from flying, people on both sides of the border always ask why the people next door are so terribly violent. Americans look at Mexico and see a country of relentless bloodshed, where heads are rolled into discos, where mutilated bodies show up a dozen at a time and where more than 60,000 people have been killed since the government began its assault on drug traffickers in 2006. But Mexicans see their northern neighbor as awash in violence, too. They look with amazement at the ease with which guns can be purchased in the United States and at the gory productions coming out of Hollywood, and they shake their heads at the mass shootings last year in Tucson and last week in Aurora, Colo. Why, Mexicans ask, don’t Americans tighten their gun laws? Doing so, they say, would stanch the violence both in the United States and in Mexico, where criminal groups wreak havoc with military-grade weapons smuggled in from the United States. President Felipe Calderón has in fact been hammering this message for years, with ever more zeal. In February, he unveiled a three-ton billboard in Ciudad Juárez — made from crushed, confiscated guns — with the message “no more weapons,” written in English, and easily visible from the Texas side of the border. This week, he also used Twitter to respond to the Colorado massacre with a similar demand. “Because of the Aurora, Colo., tragedy, the American Congress must review its mistaken legislation on guns,” he wrote. “It’s doing damage to us all.” The United States-Mexico gun divide was not always so wide. Article 10 of Mexico’s 1857 Constitution declared, much like the American Second Amendment, that “every man has the right to bear arms for his security and legitimate defense.” But since then, the country has veered from the American model. The 1917 Constitution written after Mexico’s bloody revolution, for example, says that the right to carry arms excludes those weapons forbidden by law or reserved for use by the military, and it also states that “they may not carry arms within inhabited places without complying with police regulations.” The government added more specific limits after the uprisings in the 1960s, when students looted gun stores in Mexico City. So under current law, typical customers like Rafael Vargas, 43, a businessman from Morelos who said he was buying a pistol “to make sure I sleep better,” must wait months for approval and keep his gun at home at all times. His purchase options are also limited: the largest weapons in Mexico’s single gun store — including semiautomatic rifles like the one used in the Aurora attack — can be bought only by members of the police or the military. Handgun permits for home protection allow only for the purchase of calibers no greater than .38, so the most exotic option in the pistol case here consisted of a Smith & Wesson revolver selling for $803.05. Mr. Vargas, like some other customers, said the rules were a tad overbearing. “It’s too hard to get a gun here,” he said. But he added, “In the United States, it’s far too easy.” Many Mexicans acknowledge that Mexican violence would not disappear even if American laws were more restrictive. “If the criminals didn’t get their guns from the U.S., they would just get them from somewhere else,” said Mr. García, the gun club member. The worst mass murderers in Mexico and the United States also look very different to people here. Gustavo de la Rosa, a human rights investigator in Chihuahua, the border state that includes Ciudad Juárez, said that the surge of mass killers in both countries was the result of societies that divide the population into winners and losers, in which “there are a lot of ways to lose and very few ways to win.” But he said, “The losers in the United States are condemned to lose — like in the Greek tragedies, they have no salvation — and they kill out of vengeance against the society that has beaten them.” In Mexico, Mr. de la Rosa said, “our monsters complete an objective,” killing because it is a job that helps them earn more money, rise from poverty or satisfy a boss looking to intimidate rivals in the abyss of organized crime. Regardless of motivation, Mexicans all over the country say this much is clear: Mass murders reflect and reproduce a culture of violence in which killing is glorified as a way to achieve fame, fortune or both. Even in Mexico’s gun store, and at the premiere of the latest Batman movie on Monday night in Mexico City, there was more concern about family values than gun laws. Many people said that the only way to stop severe violence was to make sure that in both Mexico and the United States, the costs of heinous crime outweigh the perceived benefits. “It’s an issue of collective conscience,” said Gildardo Olazaran, 31, Mr. García’s nephew, who accompanied him to the gun store. “Our best hope is to make it like tobacco — something that used to be cool.”
|
Gun Control;Law and Legislation;Mexico;United States
|
ny0130974
|
[
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] |
2012/12/02
|
‘Heartbroken,’ Hofstra Coach Says He and Staff Checked Recruits’ Histories
|
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — The Hofstra men’s basketball coach Mo Cassara said he was “heartbroken” by the news that four of his players were arrested Thursday and charged with taking part in a string of burglaries in campus dormitory rooms over nearly two months. Speaking after Hofstra’s 73-47 loss to Southern Methodist on Saturday, Cassara did not provide details about the individuals involved, citing the continuing investigation by authorities in Nassau County. But he did comment about how the case had affected him personally. “I love this place,” Cassara said. “There’s nobody that feels worse, that has slept less, that is more devastated about this than me.” Cassara, in his third year as the coach, said he and his staff had sought to dig as deeply as possible into the backgrounds of players he recruited into the program. The four players arrested were all new to the team this year: the sophomore Shaquille Stokes was a transfer from Hawaii; Jimmy Hall, Kentrell Washington and Dallas Anglin were freshmen. “We take every opportunity, when we recruit kids, to meet them, meet their families, meet the people that support them,” Cassara said. “That’s part of our job, and we do that to the best of our ability.” Hofstra Athletic Director Jeff Hathaway would not comment about Cassara’s past recruiting practices, only that he had followed Hathaway’s guidelines since he arrived in June. “He has done what I’ve asked him to do and that is to continue to dive into the backgrounds and surroundings and makeup of student-athletes we recruit,” Hathaway said. Hathaway said he met with Cassara early Thursday morning, shortly after the four players were arrested. Hofstra released a statement Friday saying the players had been suspended from the university and the team. All four players pleaded not guilty at their arraignment. Anglin posted $2,000 bond. The three others were being held at the county jail in East Meadow, N.Y. The police, in connection with Hofstra’s Department of Public Safety, investigated thefts from Oct. 4 to Nov. 5 in three campus dorms. The players are accused of stealing a Sony laptop, headphones, three MacBooks, two iPads, an iPod and cash, although the police were still investigating whether more items were missing. Several items were sold on Craigslist and other Web sites. Hofstra sent out a statement Friday afternoon rebutting reports that Cassara’s belongings were also stolen, although the coach did report several missing electronic items in May. A police spokesman said there was no known probable cause to charge the players in connection with that. The four players accounted for nearly half of Hofstra’s scoring output this season. The Pride (3-5) took the court Saturday with only eight scholarship players in uniform and played in front of a sparsely filled arena. Cassara said the team has three walk-ons and would look to add players to make practices more competitive. “Our guys are resilient,” Cassara said. Hathaway was the head of the athletic department at Connecticut from 2003-11. In 2005, two UConn basketball players were arrested on charges of stealing four laptops from student dorm rooms. One of the players, guard Marcus Williams, was suspended for 11 games; the other, A. J. Price, was suspended for the season but returned a year later. Hathaway would not comment on his handling of the UConn situation. “I’ve faced a lot of difficult situations, a variety of legal situations and disciplinary situations,” he said. “You do take something from each of those and you put that into your experience bank. And you draw off that.”
|
Basketball (College);Hofstra University;Cassara Mo;Robberies and Thefts;Dormitories;Anglin Dallas;Washington Kentrell;Hall Jimmy;Stokes Shaquille;Southern Methodist University
|
ny0076970
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2015/05/07
|
Mike Huckabee Seems to Be Going His Own Way on Social Programs
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Mike Huckabee drew roaring cheers from supporters on Tuesday as the latest entrant in a sprawling field of Republican presidential candidates by declaring himself the guardian of so-called entitlement programs, warning, “Let them end their own congressional pensions, not your Social Security!” But his pledge to fend off any tinkering with the popular Social Security and Medicare programs put him at odds with his Republican opponents, exposing growing fault lines in the party over an issue that has long been considered a political third rail. At the core of Republican concerns about the programs is a traditional distrust of big-government largess, coupled with growing fears about their long-term insolvency. Yet the party’s base of white — and often older — voters includes many blue-collar conservatives who mistrust the government but depend on its programs for older Americans. In defending the programs, Mr. Huckabee used fiery language more commonly aligned with the populist sentiments of Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts. Washington, he said in a video announcing his candidacy, “has done enough lying and stealing. I’ll never rob seniors of what our government promised them and even forced them to pay for.” But his pledges run up against the emerging orthodoxy of the party’s elite, many of whom have lined up behind the entitlement overhaul priorities of Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has also been out front on the issue, calling for gradually raising the Social Security retirement age and for means-tested benefits. And the issue could expose a structural gulf within the Republican Party. On one side are the party’s wealthy donors, whose views on reducing entitlements are helping shape the positions taken by establishment candidates, and on the other are the less affluent voters whose support candidates will ultimately need in a crowded field. It is not precisely clear what Mr. Huckabee has in store from a policy standpoint. Aides to Mr. Huckabee rejected repeated attempts to discuss his views, but his ideas may come into sharper focus in a speech Friday in South Carolina. Still, his stark language signals that the issue could become a politically delicate flash point at coming Republican debates, putting his opponents on the defensive on a bread-and-butter issue. “In many ways, Mike Huckabee is employing sentiments from independent voters who often say, ‘If you want to find waste and fraud to cut in Washington, begin with yourselves,’ ” said Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster who works with grass-roots candidates. Who Is Running for President? Donald J. Trump officially accepted the Republican party's nomination on July 22. Hillary Clinton was officially nominated on July 26 at the Democratic Convention. “He’s the first Republican presidential candidate to lay down the gauntlet on economic populism,” Ms. Conway said, adding that Mr. Huckabee has relatively little to lose given that he does not have major donors. Mr. Huckabee’s 2016 brand of populism is not unlike his 2008 version, when he last ran for president and won the Republican caucuses in Iowa. Without naming his rival at the time, Mitt Romney, Mr. Huckabee delivered a searing assessment in an interview with Jay Leno, saying, “People are looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them of the guy they work with rather than the guy who laid them off.” The entitlement issue could have particular resonance in states like Florida, a key Republican battleground as well as a swing state, where proposals to change the programs deeply concern retirees. But supporters of tinkering with benefits say they are merely ensuring the long-term survival of the programs. Pete Wehner, a former policy adviser to President George W. Bush, said that Mr. Huckabee is well to the left of his party on this front. “The Republican Party is becoming a reform party and that includes reform of entitlement programs,” Mr. Wehner said, “and he’s just on the wrong side of that.” In a sign of Mr. Ryan’s enduring influence with the Republican establishment and conservative thinkers, Mr. Huckabee’s criticisms last month of an entitlement overhaul ricocheted around conservative websites. (Mr. Ryan has argued, for instance, that the wealthy could pay higher Medicare premiums.) Mr. Huckabee’s language this week was more restrained than last month, when he criticized Mr. Christie’s plan to alter the Social Security benefits formula. He also took aim at Mr. Ryan’s call to change Medicare for people younger than 55. “I don’t know why Republicans want to insult Americans by pretending they don’t understand what their Social Security program and Medicare program is,” Mr. Huckabee said at the time, when asked about Mr. Christie’s proposal. Mr. Christie’s position has drawn the praise of many in the current Republican establishment. For well over a decade, and particularly since Mr. Ryan began advocating entitlement changes, party leaders have embraced the eat-your-spinach brand of governance urged by anti-tax groups like the Club for Growth. Yet Mr. Huckabee, his critics note with indignation, is now aligning himself more closely with Democrats, who have argued that the programs are more solvent than Republicans claim. It is too soon to say whether Mr. Huckabee’s positions will attract conservative voters in early nominating states like Iowa, a crucial contest for the candidate. But the Republican establishment was swift to rebuke him for championing the preservation of entitlements. “It seems to me like campaign opportunism or demagogy,” said David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth, a longtime critic of Mr. Huckabee’s record as governor of Arkansas. Yet Alex Castellanos, a veteran Republican strategist, suggested that Mr. Huckabee has a bit of a cushion from any criticism in his party, given that a Republican attack line on President Obama in the past five years was that his health care overhaul cut Medicare for older adults. “It’s a pretty long list of Republicans who attacked Obama for cutting Medicare,” Mr. Castellanos said. “They’re on record, all of those Republicans. No Republican who hopes to make it through the primary is going to attack Huckabee for defending Medicare.” There is some evidence that Mr. Huckabee’s positioning could strike a chord with some in the Republican base. Polling shortly after the Tea Party’s surge in the 2010 midterm elections showed that a majority of self-identified Tea Party voters wanted either no changes to Social Security or changes to be offset by increasing other retirement benefits. Highlighting the sensitivity of the issue, Republicans spent months during the 2012 election trying to neutralize criticisms of Mr. Ryan’s Medicare proposals in places like Florida when he was running for vice president. Still, the Republican policy debate has so far favored Mr. Ryan’s views on Medicare: that major changes must be taken for the program to remain solvent. Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a political ally of Mr. Ryan, said that Mr. Huckabee’s current approach is “basically telling people, ‘You can have your cake and eat it, too,’ and you simply can’t in this case.” “Entitlement reform will be job No. 1 for the next president if they want to get their fiscal house in order,” Mr. Cole said. “Chris Christie, right now, I think, is making some political headway by simply telling the truth.” Mr. Huckabee has changed his position on the issue before, previously endorsing Mr. Ryan’s Medicare proposals before changing his tune. Ed Rollins, Mr. Huckabee’s top adviser in his 2008 presidential campaign, bluntly said the candidate was looking to break from a crowded pack, and questioned how much forethought had gone into his policy positions. Since his last campaign, “Mike’s got a thousand statements out there,” Mr. Rollins said of Mr. Huckabee’s comments as a Fox News and radio show host. “Whatever his positions are out there have to be very consistent. I think he’s reacting to other players.”
|
Mike Huckabee;2016 Presidential Election;Medicare;Social Security;US Politics;Tea Party movement
|
ny0030622
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2013/06/26
|
At Least 32 People Killed in Iraq Attacks
|
BAGHDAD — At least 32 people were killed in Iraqi towns and cities on Tuesday, security sources said, the latest flare of violence in a country where sectarian attacks have become a frequent occurrence. Two suicide bombers detonated explosive belts, one after the other, targeting Shiite Turkmen who had cut off the road between Kirkuk and Baghdad to protest the deteriorating security situation in the district of Tuz Khurmatu, in the east of Salahuddin province. At least 16 civilians were killed and 53 were wounded, the sources said. The deputy governor of the province and the vice president of the Turkmen Front party were among those killed, they said. Security forces imposed a curfew in Tuz Khurmatu and ordered people to close their shops. Security sources also reported attacks in at least three other locations. In Mosul, in the north, a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt blew himself up inside a popular cafe, killing 10 people and wounding 18. In Babel province, south of Baghdad, a bomb targeted a bus carrying Shiite pilgrims heading to Karbala. Six of the pilgrims were killed, and 13 were wounded. In Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on a church in the eastern part of the city, wounding three policemen guarding it. The day’s violence followed a dozen bombings in and around Baghdad and north of the city on Monday, in which at least 41 people were killed and 125 wounded. As was the case on Monday, there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but security forces and Shiite civilians are often targeted by members of Al Qaeda’s branch in Iraq. More than 2,000 people have been killed in the violence in Iraq since April.
|
Iraq;Baghdad;Terrorism;Explosion;Sunnis;Shiite;Bombs
|
ny0290453
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2016/01/26
|
Unearthing the Past to Create New York’s Buildings of Tomorrow
|
Cherubs danced at the feet of muses as they plucked lyres on the domed ceiling of the old Steinway Hall on West 57th Street in Manhattan . Their joy was reflected in the face of Marci Clark, who stood below them last week, expounding on the grandeur of the 91-year-old room. “Done in the neo-Classical style, with marble columns, pilasters and cornice in a range of hues, this double-height octagonal space was the work of Walter L. Hopkins, who did some of Warren & Wetmore’s most distinguished work,” Ms. Clark explained, referring to the building’s architects. “The painting is believed to be mimicking the 18th-century Austrian painter Angelica Kauffman.” As an architectural historian, Ms. Clark, 30, has studied buildings throughout New York City in pursuit of her doctorate. Yet her research at Steinway Hall has a very different end: selling apartments. As she spoke, buzz saws and blowtorches growled in the background, preparing the foundations for a 1,428-foot tower to rise from what was once one of the world’s finest piano shops. Just over two years ago, Ms. Clark traded her mortarboard for a hard hat to work in the marketing department of JDS Development Group , where she is now a director. Her job involves putting together sales brochures, managing brokers and publicizing projects, but she prefers to spend her time in libraries and the dusty archives of architectural firms. There she unearths the blueprints, photos, maps and documents that guide JDS projects, whether or not they involve historical buildings. Old topographies might lead to better engineering; a salvaged grille could become a motif in a new kitchen. “It’s not just a token gesture or marketing ploy,” Ms. Clark said. “It offers information to our designers and brokers on what to do with the projects, with the interiors and detailing. It’s a means of inspiration.” Image At 626 First Avenue, a former Consolidated Edison site is becoming home to 800 units in a pair of cantilevered towers joined by a skybridge, as seen in a rendering. Credit SHoP Architects Whereas other developers might prefer to bulldoze the past, JDS has found that embracing it can be lucrative in a city built on both progress and nostalgia. “People really seem to value the authenticity of the work,” JDS’s founder, Michael Stern , said in an interview. “That often starts with Marci’s research and guidance.” In 2011, Ms. Clark was “a poor grad student,” as she put it, when she spotted an advertisement for a researcher on a bulletin board in the art history department at Columbia. The task was to help create an exhibition about the architect Ralph Walker , a master of the Art Deco style who was little known even in architectural circles because his principal works were telephone exchanges around Manhattan. JDS had recently bought the upper floors of one of these exchanges from Verizon on West 18th Street. With commanding views of the West Village and the Hudson River and a regal lobby hidden to all but phone technicians, the property offered a chance to effectively create a prewar apartment building from scratch. To establish the tower’s pedigree, Ms. Clark helped assemble an exhibition about Mr. Walker, highlighting his role as president of the American Institute of Architects and creator of such landmarks as 1 Wall Street and the Barclay-Vesey Building opposite the World Trade Center. The exhibition opened in the lobby of the building in 2012, a year before sales began. Mr. Stern saw it as a commitment to showcasing the site’s history, though it was also a canny move because the resurrection of Mr. Walker succeeded. (He had fallen out of favor in part for his rejection of modernist architecture.) A once-dowdy building suddenly contained apartments worth millions of dollars, including the $50.9 million penthouse , briefly the most expensive unit ever sold downtown. Image The lot at 626 First Avenue, highlighted in red, superimposed on part of an 1865 map of the city. Credit David Rumsey Historical Map Collection “It’s an interesting twist, and it’s marketing, but there’s also a real respect for the city you don’t often see,” said Francis Morrone, an architectural historian and author. “I wish more developers paid as much attention.” Ms. Clark worked with JDS on another Walker building, on West 50th Street. Among her contributions: uncovering drawings of Deco roof ornaments that had been removed, and which JDS recreated . By then, she was working on her doctorate at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her thesis focuses on another major New York developer, William Zeckendorf, and his work on urban renewal projects with I. M. Pei. Her academic and extracurricular interests made sense, as a daughter and granddaughter of contractors in Salt Lake City. Working for JDS, Ms. Clark felt she could have more than a theoretical effect on architectural history. “I think real estate in many ways is the story of New York, how the city grows and changes,” she said. Ms. Clark was hired as a marketing manager at JDS in 2013, and has quickly become one of the firm’s leaders. As soon as JDS considers acquiring a property, she heads to the archives at the Municipal Building, the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library at Columbia or wherever else she might turn up tidbits, to start developing a case for or against the project. Even buildings with no deep connection to the past can reveal secrets, such as 626 First Avenue . There, a former Consolidated Edison site is becoming home to 800 units in a pair of cantilevered towers joined by a skybridge. Ms. Clark found old maps showing that the property was once in the East River, which not only informed its foundation work but could also be seen as an echo of the pool that will exist atop the skybridge, 29 stories over Manhattan, and the river below. Image Left, a rendering shows a recital hall on the eighth floor of a condominium tower being built in the former Steinway Hall on West 57th Street. Archival photographs of the original, which was destroyed decades ago, right, are guiding construction of the near replica. Credit Left: HayesDavidson/Studio Sofield; Right: Steinway & Sons Archives And near the High Line, a 14-unit condominium designed by Roman and Williams is taking shape. “Since everything is so modern there, we thought it would be fun to do something a little different,” Ms. Clark said. The designers came up with a green terra cotta facade as textured as that of the Woolworth Building, giving the impression the 10-story project dates to a time when trains still ran along the elevated tracks. Stephen Alesch, principal of Roman and Williams, said it was six months before he learned about Ms. Clark’s background, which suddenly explained everything. “When we talk about our approach, we get a lot of funny looks, or the developers go white,” Mr. Alesch said. “With Marci, her eyes would light up.” On the more obviously historical projects, like the Steinway Hall conversion — developed with Property Markets Group — the new elements recall the past. The jagged setback of the tower, designed by SHoP Architects, evokes Jazz Age skyscrapers, while an old recital hall will be rebuilt on the eighth floor almost exactly as it was, thanks to photos Ms. Clark found. Once projects are underway, they are carefully cataloged with photography and videos for JDS’s growing archives — and for social media , of course. “It’s amazing to see the impact she is having now, which students will be studying someday just like she is,” said Marta Gutman, a professor at City College and one of Ms. Clark’s mentors. “I just wish she would finish her thesis already.” Ms. Clark says that is what weekends are for.
|
Architecture;Historic preservation;JDS Development Group;Marci Clark;Manhattan;Michael Stern;Real Estate; Housing
|
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