id
stringlengths 9
9
| categories
list | date
stringlengths 10
10
| title
stringlengths 3
232
| abstract
stringlengths 4
42.4k
| keyword
stringlengths 6
360
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ny0148119
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2008/09/03
|
On First Day of School, Bloomberg Promotes Mayoral Control
|
As more than one million New York City’s schoolchildren returned to classrooms on Tuesday morning, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg led what has become his own personal post- Labor Day ritual: a highly choreographed five-borough tour in which politicians, union leaders and other educators step forward to praise his overhaul of the school system. Speaking at Public School 62 in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx, Mr. Bloomberg made clear that a focus for City Hall and the Department of Education this year would be renewal of the 2002 state law that granted New York City’s mayor control of its public schools. He said he was confident that legislators in Albany would realize that “we have solved many problems” in the schools and that with “a lot of information and prodding,” they would reauthorize the law, which is scheduled to expire in June 2009. Then, with emphasis, he added, “The alternative is too devastating to contemplate.” Mr. Bloomberg made an effort to point out the differences between the start of this school year and those before he was in office. Books, for example, routinely arrived weeks after classes started and budgets were not doled out fairly, the mayor said. Today, he said, “Accountability has been established at every level of our school system, and everything flows from there.” Mayor Bloomberg and the schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, are expected to promote mayoral control at every opportunity throughout the school year, and allies of the administration have set up a campaign-style organization to help, hiring a veteran operative and planning to raise up to $20 million for television advertisements, lobbying and grass-roots organizing. The group, called Mayoral Accountability for School Success, is officially headed by three well-known and respected city figures, among them a nun lauded for her work with struggling students and a popular Harlem minister. It filed papers in recent weeks to become designated a 501(c)(4), a nonprofit that can lobby and participate in political campaign activity. Renewal is crucial to Mr. Bloomberg’s legacy, since he has staked his reputation on overhauling the schools and has repeatedly argued that without City Hall at the wheel, the system would be doomed to fail. As the school year begins, every achievement, development or mishap is apt to be scrutinized as evidence of mayoral control’s success or struggle. The debate will also be watched nationally, as educators and politicians across the country look to New York as a model for how to reform an urban school system. “You want to make sure you get your message out, that parents and others know what’s at stake,” Chancellor Klein said in an interview last week to explain why the new nonprofit group’s advocacy was needed. “People who are happy with their schools right now, they should understand that if there is a change in governance, that will affect their schools. And therefore they should engage in the democratic process.” But for all of the new group’s trappings of a mass movement — organizers are hoping it will become known by the acronym MASS — the fate of mayoral control could likely lie with three men: Gov. David A. Paterson; the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver; and the State Senate majority leader, Dean G. Skelos. Governor Paterson has been supportive of the mayor’s education efforts, as have Mr. Skelos and his fellow Senate Republicans. So perhaps the most important — and unpredictable — players are Mr. Silver’s Assembly Democrats, who have voiced repeated critiques of Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein’s management of the schools. Although Mr. Silver has indicated that he does not want to return to the former system — in which an appointed Board of Education names a chancellor to preside over 32 community school districts, each with its own superintendent and board — he has also voiced skepticism of keeping power concentrated in City Hall. “As we review the issue of mayoral control, we are mindful of the real concerns of parents regarding the lack of parental input,” Mr. Silver said last week in a statement. “I anticipate an open, collaborative review process that will involve parents, educators, the community and other stakeholders.” In the coming weeks and months, lawmakers are expected to hold dozens of hearings on mayoral control, and several groups will issue lengthy reports dissecting its effects, starting with one assembled by Betsy Gotbaum, the city’s public advocate, which is to be released as early as this week. As the mayoral control conversation heats up, the parallel chatter over whether Mr. Bloomberg and the City Council should consider overturning term limits could complicate things by making a policy debate personal. “It makes it that much harder to imagine the abstract issue of mayoral control if we’re going to be continuing to talk about this particular mayor,” said Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, a political action committee and lobbying group that supports mayoral control. But others noted that Albany gave control of the city schools to Mr. Bloomberg specifically, after denying similar power to his predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani. “If it’s not Michael with the hand on the rudder, I would say that you’re open for a much broader renegotiation of mayoral control,” said Merryl H. Tisch, a member of the State Board of Regents who has supported Mr. Bloomberg but also publicly criticized some of his changes. “I think people have confidence in the job that he’s done.” In addition to the management overhaul, the mayor has altered the face of the New York school landscape by breaking traditional high schools into small, focused, thematic programs; expanding the number of charter schools; and pushing to tie student performance on standardized tests with pay and promotions for teachers and principals. While scores on state tests have steadily climbed, particularly in the elementary grades, middle school results have been largely flat on the exams known as the nation’s report card; graduation rates are up slightly since the mayor took over. Ms. Tisch said a supporter of the mayor approached her this summer to discuss the idea of raising money to campaign for continued mayoral control of the schools. She said she advised him “very strongly” not to “get down and dirty” with negative advertisements aimed at specific legislators, a tactic pursued by some charter school supporters two years ago. While backers of mayoral control embraced the new organization, some said privately that they were frustrated that the push had not begun earlier. The new group’s three-member board — legally required for the filing of a 501(c)(4), according to federal Internal Revenue Code guidelines — is made up of Geoffrey Canada, who runs Harlem Children’s Zone, an antipoverty organization that also operates charter schools; the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, which has extensive education and development activities; and Sister Paulette LoMonaco, executive director of Good Shepherd Services, a nonprofit group that has helped create several transfer schools for high school students who have struggled at traditional campuses. Running the operation as executive director will be Peter Hatch, 38, who worked as a senior adviser to Senator John Edwards in his 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns, has handled Congressional races for the Working Families Party and served as chief of staff for Councilman Bill de Blasio. Global Strategy Group, a large New York-based political consulting and public relations company, has been approached to create possible advertisements. Mr. Canada, who has publicly advocated mayoral control of schools since Mr. Giuliani’s administration, declined to say which private foundations he had already approached — or received commitments from — for money, but said he expected to appoint more board members and potentially hire more staff members. Through formal lobbying in Albany, television ads and a Web site, for starters, the group will try to spread the message that any effort to dilute the mayor’s authority could have devastating consequences. “There is no question that the mayor came in and said, ‘I am in charge’ — I think that level of accountability really sent shock waves through the system,” Mr. Canada said. “My biggest concern right now is, ‘Will the next mayor be able to continue the movement of education in the current direction?’ I am really terrified that we might slide back to the bad old days.” Mr. Canada is among dozens of philanthropists, business leaders and other supporters whom Mayor Bloomberg has invited to City Hall for a breakfast briefing on the school system Wednesday. Chris Cerf, a deputy chancellor, is expected to serve as an informal liaison between the Department of Education and the new group. Deputy Mayor Dennis M. Walcott said that he and other City Hall officials would have no formal role. “We didn’t ask for this to be created,” Mr. Walcott said, adding that he thought it would be an “extreme benefit.” While many of the top policymakers support the broad concept of mayoral control, the perception among many parents and teachers that the Bloomberg administration has stifled dissent and left them feeling powerless has led to a call for more checks and balances. For example, Ernest A. Logan, president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, the city’s principals’ union, said he planned to ask Albany to write into the law the establishment of an independent organization to analyze data pertaining to the school system, similar to the city’s Independent Budget Office. Assemblyman Mark S. Weprin of Queens, who has been a critic of Mr. Klein, is one of many who would like to see another independent body have more authority over the school system. “There was a desire for control, but what we have instead is a haphazard bureaucracy that has destroyed all the local school districts,” Mr. Weprin said. “There’s isn’t a structure anymore where there’s somebody on the local level who knows the local schools.” In the interview, the chancellor said that many of the mayor’s initiatives — like grading schools A through F, closing dozens of failing schools and giving principals more freedom — would have been blocked had the mayor’s authority been circumscribed. He pointed to the moment in 2004 when the mayor fired two of his own appointees to the policy panel just before a meeting in which they were to vote against his plan to hold back third graders largely on the basis of test scores. “All these things that people say, ‘checks and balances,’ are basically fundamentally an effort to impose different policies,” Mr. Klein said. “In the absence of mayoral control, I assure you, you’ll have paralysis.” Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a business group that pushed hard for mayoral control and has raised millions of dollars for some of Mr. Bloomberg’s education initiatives, said she hoped legislators could be persuaded that any shortcomings of the current system could be addressed within the current law. She said the city’s leaders should “listen to the concerns of the groups that are most vocal in opposition to mayoral control and address the issues they are raising administratively.” Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said she hoped for a “real policy debate” over control of the schools rather than a “shouting match.”
|
Education and Schools;New York City;Bloomberg Michael R;Principals (School);Politics and Government;Mayors
|
ny0033468
|
[
"world",
"americas"
] |
2013/12/19
|
Bolivia Accuses U.S. of Aiding in an American’s Escape
|
LA PAZ, Bolivia — A top Bolivian government minister on Wednesday accused the United States of being behind the escape from house arrest of an American businessman facing money-laundering charges — potentially creating a new strain between the two countries. The businessman, Jacob Ostreicher, who had spent 18 months in prison and a year under house arrest, apparently sneaked across the border into Peru sometime between Friday morning and Sunday. He flew from Lima to Los Angeles early Monday. After his arrival, Mr. Ostreicher was in the company of the actor and director Sean Penn, who had visited him in Bolivia and championed his case . Mr. Ostreicher’s escape was “planned, designed, executed, operationalized by the government of the United States,” Carlos Romero, the minister, told reporters. “We presume,” he added, that the United States Embassy was also involved. The embassy denied the charges. “Neither the United States Embassy nor the U.S. government had anything to do with Jacob Ostreicher leaving Bolivia,” said Larry L. Memmott, the chargé d’affaires at the American Embassy. Mr. Memmott added, however, that Mr. Ostreicher contacted the United States Embassy in Lima after he arrived in Peru. “We provided routine consular assistance from the U.S. Embassy in Lima to help him with his reservations and get him back” to the United States, Mr. Memmott said. Bolivia and the United States have not had ambassadors in each other’s countries since 2008, when President Evo Morales, who has long had testy relations with the United States, threw out the American ambassador and Washington responded by expelling the Bolivian envoy. Mr. Memmott is the top American diplomat in the country. Mr. Romero said that proof of American involvement could be found in an article in The New York Times that included comments attributed to unnamed sources, including an unidentified government official, who said that Mr. Ostreicher had left Bolivia with the help of a team of professionals experienced in such operations. “It is clear,” he said, that these professionals “could be none other than officials of the C.I.A.” As further evidence he pointed to a statement by the State Department on Monday that Mr. Ostreicher had arrived in the United States, as well as statements by Mr. Penn and Assemblyman Dov Hikind of New York on Mr. Ostreicher’s escape. Mr. Ostreicher went to Bolivia several years ago to manage a rice-farming enterprise in which he had invested. He was accused of laundering drug money and in June 2011 was sent to prison, although prosecutors never formally charged him. He was moved to house arrest last December, following appeals for his release by Mr. Penn. Mr. Ostreicher says he is innocent. His case led to the exposure of a ring of corrupt prosecutors and other government officials who had sought to extort him and other people accused of crimes. In a statement sent to The Associated Press on Tuesday, Mr. Penn said: “A humanitarian operation has been carried out to extract Jacob from the corrupt prosecution and imprisonment he was suffering in Bolivia. Jacob is safe, well and receiving medical attention. He asks that his location remain private. I am with him and confirm all above.”
|
Jacob Ostreicher;US Foreign Policy;US;Bolivia;Sean Penn;Diplomats Embassies and Consulates;Money laundering
|
ny0058572
|
[
"science"
] |
2014/08/05
|
A Nose for Their Favorite Foods
|
Q. Dogs have such exquisite olfactory abilities; do they also possess a superior ability to taste things? A. Their sense of smell may outweigh their sense of taste. Dogs indeed have 60 times as many smell receptors as humans do, said Dr. Ann Hohenhaus of the Animal Medical Center in New York, and they have 40 times as much brainpower dedicated to smell, allowing them to differentiate 30,000 to 100,000 aromas. “Thus, in dogs,” she said, “smell is likely the driving force behind food preferences and at least part of the reason dogs wolf down their food without savoring a bite.” She added that dogs had about 1,700 taste buds, compared with about 9,000 in humans — another suggestion that the chemical reaction in the taste buds may be less important to dogs. A dog’s sense of taste is present at birth but takes several weeks to develop fully, she said. The taste buds are programmed to distinguish amino acids, the building blocks of protein. “While it has been reported that dogs possess taste receptors for salt, sweet, bitter and sour,” she said, “dogs generally prefer meat or meat-flavored foods.” A complex neurological pathway goes from tongue to brainstem and finally to the cerebral cortex, Dr. Hohenhaus said. There, food sensations are “processed and perceived as tasty — or not — via the brain’s circuitry for reward and pleasure.” [email protected]
|
Dog;Taste;Sense of Smell
|
ny0144500
|
[
"nyregion",
"long-island"
] |
2008/10/26
|
After Ruling, Nassau to Post Only Photos of Convicted D.W.I.s
|
AFTER a judge ruled that a Nassau County Web page that featured photographs of drunken-driving suspects violated the due process rights of a Plainview woman, the county said it would post only photographs of those suspects who were convicted. “There was zero due process here,” said Brian J. Griffin, a Garden City lawyer who represented the woman, Alexandra Bursac, 27. “Not just a little bit of due process. Zero due process.” Ms. Bursac was charged with drunken driving and driving while impaired by drugs on June 10. Her photograph was posted on the Web page a week later, according to court papers. Mr. Griffin sued Sept. 29 after the county declined to remove her photo. The ruling Monday in State Supreme Court in Mineola was essentially a restraining order against Nassau to keep Ms. Bursac’s photograph off the Web page, called the Wall of Shame. In his ruling, Judge William R. LaMarca used a “stigma plus” legal analysis. Under that test, if a governmental action causes a person stigma plus some other negative consequence, the person has suffered a deprivation of liberty. Judge LaMarca wrote that while Nassau’s publicizing of Ms. Bursac’s arrest serves a legitimate purpose, using the Internet to publicize that information is a “plus” to the stigma because it might affect her legal status and the information might be available for her lifetime, regardless of the outcome of the case. Andrew R. Scott, deputy county attorney, said: “We don’t think that in the 21st century, we should be limited to 20th-century technologies for the dissemination of public information.” The county plans to appeal the decision. In the meantime, officials said they would publish only the names and photos of suspects convicted of drunken driving. But Thomas R. Suozzi, the county executive, said in a statement that suspects’ names and photographs would still be released weekly to the news media. “The objective of the Wall of Shame has always been to change the culture that exists,” he said. The program began May 25. In Ms. Bursac’s case, the drug charges were dismissed on Aug. 1 after a urine test for drugs was negative. The drunken-driving charges, however, are pending. But Mr. Griffin cautioned that even if Ms. Bursac is convicted, the county would be mistaken in thinking it could post her photo unchallenged.
|
Drunken and Reckless Driving;Fourteenth Amendment (US Constitution);Computers and the Internet;Nassau County (NY)
|
ny0029715
|
[
"technology"
] |
2013/06/18
|
Solar-Powered Plane Faces the Human Factor
|
CHANTILLY, Va. — Nearing the end of a cross-continent flight powered by solar electricity, the designers of the Solar Impulse airplane are looking at the challenge of flying around the globe but focusing on the weak spot in their cutting-edge technological effort: human frailty. The solution, they say, is more technology. Solar Impulse stands out among airplanes partly because its range is limited not by fuel but the stamina of the pilot. The single-seat airplane’s cabin is unpressurized, so the pilot must wear an oxygen mask. It has no bathroom. With a grand total of 40 horsepower, the average cruising speed is 38 knots, or about 44 miles an hour, so progress is slow. Even if a pilot can tolerate 26 hours in the tiny cockpit — the record so far — an oceanic flight is hard to imagine. “The seat is like a really bad economy seat on an airliner,” said Gregory Blatt, a managing director of the company, which is based in Lausanne, Switzerland. “The next version will be like a good business-class seat.” That version, which is supposed to be able to fly five or six days at a time, will have a bigger seat, a cabin large enough to move around in, some plumbing and various other upgrades, like an autopilot. But that means a heavier plane that will require more efficient solar cells, electric motors and other improvements. A Solar Impulse plane, an eye-catching proof-of-concept vehicle, arrived at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum’s branch at Dulles Airport over the weekend from St. Louis, part of a photovoltaic barnstorming tour. The plane’s designers say the successor airplane, already under development, needs crucial but incremental improvements. The four motors on the existing model, for example, are 90 percent efficient in turning current into torque, far better than most motors on the ground. But the new ones are 94 percent efficient, said Bertrand Piccard, chairman of the company and one of the two pilots. (Some inefficiency is desirable, because the energy that does not go into turning the propellers instead becomes heat, which is needed to keep the motors and the batteries warm at cruising altitude, around 29,000 feet. The batteries are tucked into the pods under the wings that hold the motors.) The solar cells on the wings and the horizontal tail, from the SunPower Corporation of San Jose, Calif., are about 22.7 percent efficient, Mr. Blatt said. New cells will be better than that, he added. The existing plane carries 11,628 solar cells. The existing cells are of a type already in use, but they are used in Solar Impulse in a new way. They do not cover the skin of the wing, but rather are the skin of the wing: thin monocrystalline cells, given a slight bend so the wing creates lift. The wingspan is huge, about the same as a Boeing 747. The whole plane weighs only about 3,500 pounds, so what aeronautical engineers call “wing loading,” or force of the air on the wing, is low. The lithium-polymer batteries, from Kokam, a Korean company, are also a commercial product. Ernest Moniz, the Energy secretary, who visited the hangar on Monday to look at the plane, praised it not only for using new technology but for integrating it into a useful package. “Energy efficiency and system integration are enormously important areas,” he said. Efficiency is crucial because the propulsion system is not quite as big as one on a large motorcycle. One innovation is the foam used in the structure of the plane, which has unusually small pores. Dan Reicher , a former assistant secretary of energy now at Stanford Law School, said that the foam had already found its way into refrigerators, because it is a better insulator. The plane is scheduled to end its tour at Kennedy International Airport in New York early next month, depending on weather. Because it is so light and has such a large wingspan, it is vulnerable to gusts at low altitude, said André Borschberg, the company chief executive and the other pilot. As a result, it takes off and lands at night, when there is no solar warming of the earth, which produces wind. And landing is an elaborate problem. Its main landing gear is a single wheel, and to keep its wing tips from scraping on the ground, the team deploys two people on electric bicycles to sweep in and hold the wings up as the plane touches down. With a touchdown speed of 26 knots, about 30 m.p.h., this is not difficult. But it requires a runway without much other traffic, or it becomes like riding a bicycle on an interstate highway. At Kennedy, the plan is to circle at low altitude near the runway until there is a big gap in the traffic, Mr. Piccard said.
|
Airlines,airplanes;Solar energy;SunPower
|
ny0165253
|
[
"science"
] |
2006/07/21
|
House Panel Inquiry on Global Warming Research
|
A House committee will examine accusations that political appointees in the Bush administration edited government reports on global warming to raise the level of uncertainty about research that points to a human cause. The Republican and Democratic leaders on the Government Reform Committee sent a letter to the White House Council on Environmental Quality requesting documents by Aug. 11 on the activities of Philip A. Cooney, a former lobbyist for the petroleum industry with no science background who edited climate reports while chief of staff of the environmental council. Mr. Cooney resigned last year shortly after the revisions were described in The New York Times.
|
Global Warming;House of Representatives;United States Politics and Government
|
ny0132134
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2012/12/09
|
Morsi Extends Compromise to Egyptian Opposition
|
CAIRO — Struggling to quell violent protests that have threatened to derail a referendum on an Islamist-backed draft constitution, President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt moved Saturday to appease his opponents with a package of concessions hours after state news media reported that he was moving toward imposing a form of martial law to secure the streets and allow the vote. Mr. Morsi did not budge on a critical demand of the opposition: that he postpone the referendum set for next Saturday to allow a thorough overhaul of the proposed charter, which liberal groups say has inadequate protection of individual rights and provisions that could someday give Muslim religious authorities new influence. But in a midnight news conference, his prime minister said Mr. Morsi was offering concessions that he had appeared to dismiss out of hand a few days before. The president rescinded most of his sweeping Nov. 22 decree that temporarily elevated his decisions above judicial review and drew tens of thousands of protesters into the streets calling for his downfall. He also offered a convoluted arrangement for the factions to negotiate constitutional amendments this week that would be added to the charter after the vote. Taken together, the announcements, rolled out over a confusing day, appeared to indicate the president’s determination to do whatever it takes to get to the referendum, which his Islamist supporters say will lay the foundation of a new democracy and a return to stability. Amid growing concerns among his advisers that the Interior Ministry might be unable to secure either the polls or the institutions of government in the face of renewed violent protests, the state media reported early Saturday that he would soon order the armed forces to keep order and authorize its solders to arrest civilians. In recent days, mobs have attacked more than two dozen Muslim Brotherhood offices and ransacked the group’s headquarters, and more than seven people have died in street fighting between Islamists and their opponents. As of early Sunday, Mr. Morsi had not yet formally issued an order calling out the military, raising the possibility that the announcement was intended as a warning to tell his opponents their protests would not derail the vote. The moves on Saturday offered little hope of fully resolving the standoff, in part because opposition leaders had ruled out — even before his concessions were announced — any rushed attempt at a compromise just days before the referendum. “No mind would accept dialogue at gunpoint,” said Mohamed Abu El Ghar, an opposition leader, alluding to previously floated ideas about last-minute talks for constitutional amendments. Nor did Mr. Morsi’s Islamist allies expect his proposals to succeed. Many said they had concluded that much of the secular opposition was primarily interested in obstructing the transition to democracy at all costs, to try to block the Islamists from winning elections. Instead, some of the president’s supporters privately relished the bind they believed Mr. Morsi had built for the opposition by giving in to some demands, forcing their secular opponents to admit they are afraid to take their case to the ballot box. For now, the military appears to back Mr. Morsi. Soon after the state newspaper Al Ahram suggested the president would impose martial law, a military spokesman read a statement over state television that echoed Mr. Morsi’s own speeches. The military “realizes its national responsibility for maintaining the supreme interests of the nation and securing and protecting the vital targets, public institutions and the interests of the innocent citizens,” the spokesman said, warning of “divisions that threaten the State of Egypt.” “Dialogue is the best and sole way to reach consensus that achieves the interests of the nation and the citizens,” he added. “Anything other than that puts us in a dark tunnel with drastic consequences, which is something that we will not allow.” If Mr. Morsi goes through with the plan, it would represent a historic role reversal. For six decades, Egypt’s military-backed authoritarian presidents used martial law to hold on to power and to jail Islamists like Mr. Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. It would also come just four months after he managed to pry power out of the hands of the country’s top generals, who had seized control when Hosni Mubarak was ousted last year and then held on to it for three months after Mr. Morsi’s election. The announcement of impending martial law marked the steepest escalation yet in the political battle between Egypt’s new Islamist leaders and their secular opponents over the draft constitution. Mr. Morsi said he issued the Nov. 22 decree that set off the crisis to prevent the Mubarak-era courts from dissolving the constitutional assembly and upending the transition to democracy. The terms of his concession were ill-defined; the new decree Mr. Morsi issued Saturday night said he retained the limited authority to issue “constitutional declarations” protecting the draft charter that judges could not overturn. Although the plan for martial law outlined in Al Ahram would not fully suspend civil law, it would nonetheless have the effect of suspending legal rights by empowering soldiers under the control of the defense minister to try civilians in military courts. Calling in the army could overcome the danger of protests or violence that might disrupt the referendum and the parliamentary election to follow. But resorting to the military to secure the vote could also undermine Mr. Morsi’s hopes that a strong showing for the constitution would be seen as a sign of national consensus that could help end the political crisis. Brotherhood officials cheered the military’s statements, noting they closely resembled the president’s own speeches about a “national dialogue” and moving forward toward democracy. But Moataz Abdel-Fattah, a former adviser to Egypt’s transitional prime minister who is close to Defense Minister Abdul Fattah el-Sisi, said that the military also sought to make clear it was not joining either camp. “The military is saying, ‘Do not let things get so bad that we have to intervene,’ ” Mr. Abdel-Fattah said. “In the short term it is good for President Morsi, but in the long run they are also saying, ‘We belong to the people, and not Mr. Morsi or his opponents.’ ” After taking office, Mr. Morsi spent months courting the generals, sometimes earning the derision of liberal activists for his public flattery of their role. And the constitution his supporters eventually drew up included protections of the military’s autonomy and privileges within the Egyptian government, despite the protests of the same activists. Those provisions suggested an understanding between the military and Mr. Morsi that may now allow him to call on the generals’ help. Under the president’s planned martial law order, Al Ahram said, the military would return to its barracks after parliamentary elections, which are expected to take place two months after the referendum if the constitution is approved. If the military does secure the polls, that would appear to undermine the opposition’s argument that the latest unrest had all but ruled out this week’s referendum. “Under the present circumstance, how can you conduct a referendum or an election when chaos is reigning and you have protests everywhere?” Amr Moussa , a former foreign minister under Mr. Mubarak and now an opposition leader, asked in an interview Saturday.
|
Mohamed Morsi;Muslim Brotherhood Egypt;Martial law;Arab Spring;null;Egypt;Constitution
|
ny0114563
|
[
"business"
] |
2012/11/07
|
F.D.A. Clears a Pfizer Treatment for Rheumatoid Arthritis
|
Regulators on Tuesday approved Pfizer ’s Xeljanz treatment for rheumatoid arthritis , one of the company’s potentially most lucrative experimental drugs, which is now poised to compete with Abbott Laboratories ’ top-selling Humira. The Food and Drug Administration said it had approved Pfizer’s pill for patients with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis who did not benefit from or were unable to tolerate the standard oral treatment, methotrexate. Xeljanz can be used by itself or in combination with methotrexate and certain other treatments. Industry analysts have predicted that Pfizer’s drug, which works differently from current treatments and is better known by its chemical name, tofacitinib, could eventually capture annual sales of up to $3 billion. The revenue is sorely needed, as sales fall of Pfizer’s Lipitor cholesterol fighter and other Pfizer medicines face cheaper generics. As a twice-daily pill, Xeljanz may be preferred by some patients over Abbott’s $8 billion-a-year Humira, which is given by injection every other week. But Abbott has said Humira sales will continue growing by leaps and bounds, despite competition from Xeljanz. The F.D.A. approved a 5-milligram dose of Xeljanz, given twice a day. But the agency said further safety data was needed to assess a 10-milligram, twice-daily dose, that Pfizer had also put before regulators.
|
Drugs (Pharmaceuticals);Rheumatoid Arthritis;Abbott Laboratories;Pfizer Inc
|
ny0260285
|
[
"sports",
"golf"
] |
2011/06/18
|
U.S. Open: A Normal Teenager, Who’s Playing in the Open
|
BETHESDA, Md. — A quick glance at Beau Hossler staring down the fairway for his second shot Friday at the United States Open revealed hints that he was unlike the typical player here. As a ray of sun shone down on him, his braces sparkled. Some acne reddened his cheeks. A few people in the gallery whispered about how young he looked. And their assessment was right. At 16, Hossler is the youngest player at the Open this week — and one of the youngest in Open history. Only two others younger than 16 are known to have competed in this event. Yet Hossler, who is from Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., will not admit to being even the slightest bit different from his competition here. “These guys I’m playing with are just regular guys, kind of just like me, so I’m not intimidated at all,” said Hossler, who shot six-over-par 77 on Friday and finished at 11-over 153. “I won’t let anything like that affect my game.” Hossler, who has dark hair, dark eyes and an easy smile, did not make the cut for the final rounds this weekend. But he did not seem fazed by it. He will not soon forget this experience. He said playing at Congressional Country Club with the world’s best golfers — including his hero, Phil Mickelson — was cooler than receiving his driver’s license, which he did two weeks ago. (But he has yet to receive the permanent documentation, so he still uses his Santa Margarita Catholic High School photo card as ID.) And it was even more special than qualifying for the United States Amateur in 2009, at 14, when he was just 5 feet 2 inches, 120 pounds and in eighth grade. He is now 5-11 after growing six inches in the last six months. Here, Hossler had the opportunity to play on the same course as Mickelson and enjoyed other perks of being a top golfer. He took advantage of the free massages, getting one every day, and every night he sat in the Jacuzzi at his hotel, soaking up both heat and the atmosphere. He relished getting the keys to a new Lexus, the sponsor that gives each player a car to use this week. He also got tips from pros like Ángel Cabrera, Anthony Kim and Camilo Villegas, who treated him just like any other colleague, Hossler said. Kim gave him advice on how to play very firm greens, he said. But Hossler’s mother, Amy Balsz, could still sense his nerves. “His first day on the course, I saw him looking over his shoulder a few times to look and see, ‘Oh my gosh, who’s that golfer?’ ” she said. “A few times I saw him notice how many people were following him and cheering for him, but for the most part he’s been pretty calm about all of this.” Hossler has always been mature for his age, said his stepfather, Matt Balsz, a real estate appraiser. When Beau was 5, Matt Balsz asked him what he wanted to eat for his birthday and he answered, “Crab legs.” “I was like, what, crab legs?” Balsz said. “What 5-year-old wants crab legs? But Beau didn’t want a hamburger, didn’t want fries. He was talking like an adult already.” Hossler started playing golf when he was about 7 or 8, using Snoopy clubs. He gave up baseball when he was 10 and turned down an offer to play on an all-star team to focus on golf, his mother said. In a jiffy, he went from wanting to be an owner of a BMW lot when he grew up to wanting to play on the PGA Tour. On a wall of his bedroom is an old black-and-white photo of Ben Hogan to remind him of his goal. But to get here, Hossler had to juggle a tight schedule, taking two finals — pre-calculus and Advanced Placement chemistry — a day after he qualified for the Open. Before saying how well he did on those exams, he checked to see if his parents were nearby. In a low voice, he said, “Not too good.” Still, his mother says that Hossler has a 4.3 grade point average and that keeping his grades and his golf at high levels eats up most of his free time. He has been so busy that he has not had a chance to get his braces tightened, so he may be wearing them well into his 20s, she said. But lately, there has been evidence that Hossler is interested in a typical subject for a teenage boy: a few girls have suddenly been seen hanging around the house, his mother said. At the Open, Hossler showed more signs that he is a typical teen. He shooed away his father, Beau Hossler Sr., when he suggested that Hossler introduce himself to Mickelson in the dining room at Congressional. “He was like, ‘Dad, no, get out of here,’ ” Beau Sr. said. “But I guess I’m just lucky that he still talks to me a little. That’s all you can hope for with a teenage boy.” Once play began, however, Hossler transformed into someone with as much calm and confidence as someone who has played on the Tour for years. It took only one shot for him to rid himself of the butterflies, he said. But for his caddie, his godfather, Bill Schellenberg, the gravity of the moment was too much. He said he felt faint as Hossler walked the green of that first hole and had to fall to his knee to compose himself. For Hossler, though, the experience of playing at the Open simply foreshadowed what life would be like on the Tour in the years to come. But his father wants to remind him that those days are very likely still far off. “On Monday, life will go back to normal,” Beau Hossler Sr. said. “He still will have to walk the dogs and take the trash out. No more free massages or driving his own new Lexus. He’ll be just a regular kid again.”
|
United States Open (Golf);Golf;Hossler Beau
|
ny0174979
|
[
"world",
"africa"
] |
2007/10/09
|
American Faces Espionage Charge in Nigeria
|
DAKAR, Senegal, Oct. 8 — A 60-year-old American aid worker arrested last month in the restive Niger Delta region of Nigeria while helping two German filmmakers was in possession of highly sensitive information that could jeopardize national security, a prosecutor at a Nigerian High Court said Monday. The worker, Judith Asuni, has lived in Nigeria for 36 years and runs a nonprofit organization based in the oil capital of Port Harcourt that works on reducing conflict in the Niger Delta. She was arrested along with a Nigerian colleague and two Germans on Sept. 26 and charged with violating the Official Secrets Act, a charge tantamount to espionage. According to court documents, Ms. Asuni and her colleague, Danjuma Saidu, helped the German filmmakers get visas to enter Nigeria under false pretenses, posing as academic researchers rather than documentary filmmakers. Ms. Asuni was helping the team research their film about conflicts in the oil-rich but deeply impoverished Niger Delta, according to the documents. The Germans, Florian Opitz and Andy Lehmann, were released on bail last week after pleading not guilty to charges that they endangered national security by filming oil pipelines and other facilities and that they lied to get visas to enter Nigeria. But Ms. Asuni and Mr. Saidu have been denied bail. The prosecutor, Salihu Aliyu, told the Nigerian High Court in Abuja that he possessed documents that proved that the two aid workers would be a danger to national security if released. The documents were not read aloud in court, nor were their contents discussed. Ms. Asuni has lived in the country for more than three decades and is a fixture in the tumultuous Niger Delta region. Her arrest has stunned the many advocates in the Niger Delta, where aid groups often help journalists and are usually given a wide berth to carry out their activities. Anyakwee Nsirimovu, director of the Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, an organization based in Port Harcourt, said the government should make its evidence known and ensure that Ms. Asuni and Mr. Saidu have access to their lawyers. “We really need to get to hard information on what the State Security Services have on her,” Mr. Nsirimovu said. Ms. Asuni is a close associate of the former president, Olusegun Obasanjo , and has worked closely with the governing People’s Democratic Party to broker peace agreements between the government and militant groups fighting for greater control of the region’s oil wealth. Like many advocates working in the Niger Delta, Ms. Asuni kept tabs on a large cast of shadowy characters, including militants, oil thieves, gang members and politicians, and she sometimes helped foreign journalists seeking to navigate the complex and violent politics of the region. Speaking to a Reuters correspondent at the court proceedings, Ms. Asuni said she was being made a target because of her closeness to Mr. Obasanjo, who stepped down in May. “I stepped on the toes of some top security agents and politicians who are threatened because I took information directly to Obasanjo,” she said.
|
Nigeria;Espionage;Documentary Films and Programs;Bail;Politics and Government;Classification of Information;Obasanjo Olusegun
|
ny0294236
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2016/06/24
|
Police Kill Movie Theater Assailant in Germany
|
FRANKFURT — A masked assailant apparently armed with a rifle attacked a multiplex movie theater in the German city of Viernheim on Thursday and took hostages before he was killed by elite police units that stormed the building, officials and the news media reported. There was no indication the attack was linked to a terrorist plot, officials said, despite initial fears that the gunman may have been tied to Islamist extremists who have carried out other assaults that have traumatized Europe. Officials also disputed early reports that up to 25 people had been hurt in the multiplex mayhem. Peter Beuth, the interior minister for the state of Hesse, said he had no information that anyone had been harmed. Some German news organizations reported that people had been injured by police tear-gas and that the assailant had carried a weapon loaded with blank cartridges. Mr. Beuth said the assailant had been armed with a long-barreled weapon, but it was not clear whether it was capable of firing live ammunition. “Because the attacker had taken hostages, the special forces moved in on him and he was killed,” Mr. Beuth told the Hesse state legislature. The assailant’s identity and motive were not clear. Mr. Beuth said the man appeared confused, suggesting he may have been mentally ill. The multiplex was showing four mainstream American films: “The Jungle Book,” “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” “Angry Birds” and “Central Intelligence.” It was not clear which theater the assailant entered. Bernd Hochstädter, a spokesman for the police command in Southern Hessen, told the N-TV private news channel that a special police team had carried out the action. He said the team had approached the gunman, supported by local police officers. “A person with a gun entered the cinema,” Mr. Hochstädter said. The police were alerted and immediately surrounded the center. A spokesman for the regional police authority in the Hesse city of Darmstadt said that investigators did not see any links between the assailant and Islam. The spokesman, who did not provide his name in accordance with German security protocols, said the total number of hostages who had been held was unclear. He said the assailant had fired four shots before he was killed. Viernheim is a city of about 33,000 people near Mannheim, which is known for its chemicals industry. The swift response reflected how Germany remains on edge with fears heightened over terrorist attacks in Europe. The country has not suffered attacks on the same scale as France or Belgium, but the police have foiled several plots and the country has been dreading that it, too, could become a target.
|
Germany;Kidnapping and Hostages;Guns
|
ny0257449
|
[
"science"
] |
2011/01/18
|
Dog Might Provide Clues on How Language Is Acquired
|
Chaser, a border collie who lives in Spartanburg, S.C., has the largest vocabulary of any known dog. She knows 1,022 nouns, a record that displays unexpected depths of the canine mind and may help explain how children acquire language. Chaser belongs to John W. Pilley, a psychologist who taught for 30 years at Wofford College, a liberal arts institution in Spartanburg. In 2004, after he had retired, he read a report in Science about Rico , a border collie whose German owners had taught him to recognize 200 items, mostly toys and balls. Dr. Pilley decided to repeat the experiment using a technique he had developed for teaching dogs, and he describes his findings in the current issue of the journal Behavioural Processes. He bought Chaser as a puppy in 2004 from a local breeder and started to train her for four to five hours a day. He would show her an object, say its name up to 40 times, then hide it and ask her to find it, while repeating the name all the time. She was taught one or two new names a day, with monthly revisions and reinforcement for any names she had forgotten. Border collies are working dogs. They have a reputation for smartness, and they are highly motivated. They are bred to herd sheep indefatigably all day long. Absent that task, they must be given something else to do or they go stir crazy. Chaser proved to be a diligent student. Unlike human children, she seems to love her drills and tests and is always asking for more. “She still demands four to five hours a day,” Dr. Pilley said. “I’m 82, and I have to go to bed to get away from her.” One of Dr. Pilley’s goals was to see if he could teach Chaser a larger vocabulary than Rico acquired. But that vocabulary is based on physical objects that must be given a name the dog can recognize. Dr. Pilley found himself visiting Salvation Army stores and buying up sackfuls of used children’s toys to serve as vocabulary items. It was hard to remember all the names Chaser had to learn, so he wrote the name on each toy with indelible marker. In three years, Chaser’s vocabulary included 800 cloth animals, 116 balls, 26 Frisbees and a medley of plastic items. Children pick up about 10 new words a day until, by the time they leave high school, they know around 60,000 words. Chaser learned words more slowly but faced a harder task: Each sound was new and she had nothing to relate it to, whereas children learn words in a context that makes them easier to remember. For example, knives, forks and spoons are found together. Dr. Pilley does not know how large a vocabulary Chaser could have mastered. When she reached 1,000 items, he grew tired of teaching words and moved to more interesting topics like grammar. One of the questions raised by the Rico study was that of what was going through the dog’s mind when he was asked to fetch something. Did he think of his toys as items labeled fetch-ball, fetch-Frisbee, fetch-doll, or did he understand the word “fetch” separately from its object, as people do? Dr. Pilley addressed the question by teaching Chaser three different actions: pawing, nosing and taking an object. She was then presented with three of her toys and correctly pawed, nosed or fetched each one depending on the command given to her. “That experiment demonstrates conclusively that Chaser understood that the verb had a meaning,” Dr. Pilley said. The 1,022 words in Chaser’s vocabulary are all proper nouns. Dr. Pilley also found that Chaser could be trained to recognize categories, in other words common nouns. She correctly follows the command “Fetch a Frisbee” or “Fetch a ball.” She can also learn by exclusion, as children do. If she is asked to fetch a new toy with a word she does not know, she will pick it out from ones that are familiar. Haunting almost every interaction between people and animals is the ghost of Clever Hans, a German horse that in the early 1900s would tap out answers to arithmetic problems with his hoof. The psychologist Oskar Pfungst discovered that Hans would get the answer right only if the questioner also knew the answer. He then showed that the horse could detect minute movements of the questioner’s head and body. Since viewers would tense as Hans approached the right number of taps, and relax when he reached it, the horse knew exactly when to stop. People project their expectations onto animals, particularly dogs, and can easily convince themselves the animal is achieving some humanlike feat when in fact it is simply reading cues unconsciously given by its master. Even though researchers are well aware of this pitfall, interpreting animal behavior is particularly tricky. In the current issue of Animal Behaviour, a leading journal, two previous experiments with dogs have been found wanting. In one report , researchers say they failed to confirm an experiment showing that dogs would yawn contagiously when people yawn. Another report knocks down an earlier finding that dogs can distinguish between rational and irrational acts. The danger of Clever Hans effects may be particularly acute with border collies because they are bred for the ability to pay close attention to the shepherd. Dogs that ignore their master or the sheep do not become parents, a fierce selective pressure on the breed’s behavior. “Watch a collie work with a sheepherder and you will come away amazed how small a gesture the person can do to communicate with his dog,” said Alexandra Horowitz, a dog behavior expert at Barnard College and author of “ Inside of a Dog .” Juliane Kaminski, a member of the research team that tested Rico, was well aware of the Clever Hans effect. So she arranged for the dog to be given instructions in one room and to select toys from another, making it impossible for the experimenter to give Rico unwitting cues. Dr. Kaminski works at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig , Germany . Dr. Pilley took the same precaution in testing Chaser. He submitted an article describing his experiments to Science, but the journal rejected it. Dr. Pilley said that the journal’s advisers had made valid criticisms, which he proceeded to address. He and his co-author, Alliston K. Reid of Wofford College, then submitted a revised article to Behavioural Processes. Dr. Horowitz, who was one of Science’s advisers in the review of Dr. Pilley’s report, said of the new article that “the experimental design looks pretty good.” Dr. Kaminski, too, regards the experiment as properly done. “I think the methodology the authors use here is absolutely sufficient to control for Clever Hans,” she said. The learning of words by Rico and Chaser may have some bearing on how children acquire language, because children could be building on the same neural mechanisms. Dr. Pilley and Dr. Reid conclude that their experiments “provide clear evidence that Chaser acquired referential understanding of nouns, an ability normally attributed to children.” But the experiment’s relevance to language is likely to be a matter of dispute. Chaser learns to link sounds to objects by brute repetition, which is not how children learn words. And she learns her words as proper nouns, which are specific labels for things, rather than as abstract concepts like the common nouns picked up by children. Dr. Kaminski said she would not go as far as saying that Chaser’s accomplishments are a step toward language. They show that the dog can combine words for different actions with words for objects. A step toward syntax, she said, would be to show that changing the order of words alters the meaning that Chaser ascribes to them. Dr. Pilley says he is working on just that point. “We’re trying to teach some elementary grammar to our dog,” he said. “How far we’ll be able to go we don’t know, but we think we are on the frontier.” His goal is to develop methods that will help increase communication between people and dogs. “We are interested in teaching Chaser a receptive, rudimentary language,” he said. A Nova episode on animal intelligence, in which Chaser stars, will be broadcast on Feb. 9. As with other animals for which prodigious feats of cognition have been reported, like Alex the gray parrot or Kanzi the bonobo, it is hard to place Chaser’s and Rico’s abilities in context. If their achievements are within the general capacity of their species, why have many other instances not been reported? If, on the other hand, their achievements are unique, then either the researchers have lucked out in finding an Einstein of the species, or there could be something wrong with the experiments like a Clever Hans effect. Dr. Pilley said that most border collies, with special training, “could be pretty close to where Chaser is.” When he told Chaser’s dog breeder of the experiment, “he wasn’t surprised about the dog’s ability, just that I had had the patience to teach her,” Dr. Pilley said. Dr. Horowitz agreed: “It is not necessarily Chaser or Rico who is exceptional; it is the attention that is lavished on them,” she said.
|
Dog;Language;Research
|
ny0020563
|
[
"business",
"global"
] |
2013/07/25
|
Glaxo Chief Executive Addresses China Inquiry
|
Andrew Witty, chief executive of the drug maker GlaxoSmithKline, said on Wednesday that the accusations of bribery and corruption against his company in China were “deeply disappointing.” But he said that Glaxo’s headquarters in London had not been aware of any fraud and that the executives under scrutiny in China were working “outside of our system of controls.” Mr. Witty’s remarks, in a conference call on Glaxo’s second-quarter earnings , were his most extensive about the scandal in China, where authorities have accused executives of using travel agencies to funnel illegal payments to doctors and government officials . “I am very personally disappointed with these allegations that have been made,” Mr. Witty, speaking in London, told reporters. “Clearly they are shameful allegations if they are true.” He revealed few new details about the investigation, but said that Glaxo was working with the Chinese government and that it had “opened up channels” with the British and United States governments. Glaxo disclosed in 2010 that the United States was investigating it over possible violations of its laws against bribery overseas. Mr. Witty said that the investigation by China was likely to affect sales there but that it was too early to know specifics. “We continue to see the country as a key place for further investment,” he said. Glaxo posted second-quarter net income of £1.05 billion, or $1.67 billion, on sales of £6.62 billion. That was a decrease from net income of £1.24 billion in the quarter a year ago, but sales were up from £6.46 billion a year ago. Image Andrew Witty, right, chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline. Credit Pool photo by Simon Dawson The company’s stock rose 0.39 percent to close at $51.66 Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange. Mr. Witty also sought to distance the company’s headquarters from the scandal, saying that it “knew nothing” about any fraud that had been alleged and that the executives accused of wrongdoing operated outside the company’s normal surveillance systems. Since taking over as chief executive in 2008, Mr. Witty has tried to promote Glaxo as a leader in ethical and transparent behavior. In 2012, Glaxo agreed to pay a fine of $3 billion to settle charges in the United States that it had improperly promoted its antidepressants and had not reported safety data about Avandia, a drug for diabetes. “To be crystal clear, we have zero tolerance for this kind of behavior,” Mr. Witty said. “I can assure you we are absolutely committed to rooting out corruption, and we are also absolutely committed to getting to the bottom of what has happened here.” The company’s response has evolved considerably since reports of bribery surfaced a few weeks ago. Glaxo officials initially maintained that it had not engaged in wrongdoing, saying it had investigated the claims and found them to be without merit. But it changed its tone after Chinese investigators raided Glaxo offices in Shanghai, detained four executives and went public with unusual detail about practices they said they had uncovered. Mr. Witty sent top management to China to meet with investigators, and he acknowledged that some executives there may have broken the law. The inquiry has expanded to include other drug companies. On Tuesday, AstraZeneca said some of its workers had been questioned in Shanghai, and Merck and Roche acknowledged over the weekend that they had used the same small travel agency that has been implicated in the Glaxo investigation.
|
GlaxoSmithKline;Andrew Witty;China;Corruption;Earnings Reports;Pharmaceuticals;Bribery and Kickbacks
|
ny0233192
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2010/08/30
|
Hotel Art Curators Are a Growing Breed
|
The James , a sleekly designed hotel rising over Grand Street in SoHo, will open for business on Wednesday with all the support staff a guest could expect: a concierge, receptionists, bellhops, chambermaids, parking valets. All that, and one helping hand a guest might not expect: a hotel art curator. Hotels have been hanging fine art on their walls for decades now. Ian Schrager commissioned a series of Robert Mapplethorpe prints for what is considered the original boutique hotel, the Morgans, in 1984; the Roger Smith , a small property in Midtown Manhattan, transformed its lobby into an art gallery and performance space as part of a 1991 renovation. But few have gone so far as the James, which hired a young artist, Matthew Jensen , to select original artworks to adorn each of its 14 floors of guest rooms. Mr. Jensen, 29, a photographer whose work was acquired this year by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, may have an unusual job description, but he is also part of a growing breed. As business and building owners look to inject their properties with a little artistic personality, a new class of curators — some of them contractors like Mr. Jensen and some of them staff members — has arisen to help. “There’s all these empty walls and there are thousands of artists out there who are living in the city and have never had their art seen by anyone,” said Leah McCloskey, who places works by students at the Art Students League in restaurants and apartment and office buildings. “It’s about connecting to that generation of artists and to what’s going on out there.” That connection has been particularly important in the past few years for hotels, which are increasingly seeking novel ways to distinguish themselves from a flood of competition. Responding to guests’ desire to have their lodgings project an image of who they are or aspire to be, hotels are taking their artistic endeavors more seriously, industry analysts say, using art to build an identity rather than just to make it look good. “Hoteliers are not only trying to come up with a theme or a style that attracts customers, but they are approaching it in a much more professional and involved way,” said Sean Hennessey, chief executive of Lodging Investment Advisors, a consulting firm in Valhalla, N.Y. “It used to be that you could get away with just slapping something up in the lobby,” he added, “but more and more customers are looking and evaluating it much more closely.” For the James, meeting that demand has meant trying to reflect the artistic microclimate of SoHo. Though many of the artists who once made the area a creative mecca have fled, an emerging art scene is still represented through nonprofit institutions there that support artists and show their work. Brack Capital Real is developing the hotel which will be operated by Denihan Hospitality Group. Denihan also operates another James Hotel in Chicago that is also dedicated to emerging art. At the Surrey, one of its New York hotels, work by established names like Jenny Holzer , Claes Oldenburg and William Kentridge nods to its location on East 76th Street, near major art showcases like the Whitney Museum of American Art. Mr. Jensen’s relationship with the hotel grew from a chance meeting last year with Brad Wilson, the chief operating officer at Denihan, at an exhibition for Mr. Jensen’s project “ Nowhere in Manhattan ,” featuring billboard-size photos of the borough’s remaining wildernesses that are meant to spur people to visit those places. “It’s a way to remind people in a subtle way, if they complain, ‘Oh, I never get out into the woods,’ well, you can just get on the A train to Inwood, or you can go in the other direction to the Rockaways,” Mr. Jensen said. The pictures appealed to Mr. Wilson — who hung three of them on the building facade when it was under construction — and Mr. Jensen’s job evolved from there. Once hired, he settled on the idea of using New York-based landscape artists working in different media, one per floor. Using an online database, he amassed a list of about 1,000 artists, which he whittled to the final 14 in three months, creating something that “kind of feels like 14 solo shows stacked on top of each other.” Taken as a whole, the installation, called “Stand Here and Listen,” is meant to play off the idea of travel, inspired by signs at revered destinations like the Grand Canyon that urge visitors to look out from a particular spot, Mr. Jensen said. One of the artists, Jessica Cannon , said the installation offered guests — perhaps more open to seeing things differently because they are removed from their everyday routines — the chance to experience art in a new way. “You can have this encounter with work that’s very intimate, almost like it’s in a home or an empty gallery, but you can have it on your own time,” said Ms. Cannon, a painter whose work imbues landscapes with a sense of an impending event. “If someone’s got insomnia at 3 in the morning, they can pace the halls and have a really intimate and personal encounter.” In addition to curating the hotel art, Mr. Jensen manages the studio of John-Paul Philippe , a painter and designer who created several decorative elements for the hotel, including the room numbers. Mr. Jensen has also been overseeing the installation of the collection — the hotel bought the works — and the text that goes with it, along with a potential catalog. Mr. Jensen said the curatorial foray, his first, took him to studios all over the city, exposing him to a whole community of artists. “It was pretty exciting to me to see how many artists are working, just like I do, like obsessively hard, in their own studio tucked away, but nobody’s really paying attention to them yet,” he said. “There’s a lot more emerging than established in New York — once they’re established, then they all move upstate. So everyone who wants to do it is doing it here.”
|
Art;Hotels and Motels;SoHo (NYC);Jensen Matthew
|
ny0079003
|
[
"sports",
"hockey"
] |
2015/02/20
|
Rangers, Again Prolific Late in Game, Are Beaten at Their Own Game
|
The Rangers were unbeaten on a four-game trip, scoring 11 third-period goals, including three in a come-from-behind 6-5 win over the Islanders on Monday. When they returned to Madison Square Garden on Thursday night, the Rangers netted two third-period goals but failed to maintain a late one-goal advantage in a 5-4 shootout loss to the Vancouver Canucks. Alex Burrows and Radim Vrbata scored shootout goals, and Ryan Miller made 30 saves, including stops on Mats Zuccarello and Derek Stepan and in the shootout, lifting the Canucks to their second straight win. Martin St. Louis and Carl Hagelin scored 21 seconds apart in the third, and Cam Talbot stopped 24 shots as the Rangers fell to 5-1-2 since goaltender Henrik Lundqvist went down with a vascular injury last month. Hagelin and Stepan each posted two-point games, with Stepan and Rick Nash scoring goals. “Any time you score four goals, you want to win the game,” Talbot said. “Four goals should be good enough most nights, and that’s on me. I have to come up with a way to make that extra save.” The Canucks tied the score with Miller sitting on the bench for an extra skater at the 18-minute mark. After Talbot stopped a Dan Hamhuis shot, Henrik Sedin collected the rebound and fired the puck into the vacant net for his second goal and forced overtime. “I feel like if he got all of it, it would’ve come off my pad a little bit hotter, and maybe Sedin wouldn’t have been able to handle it or it might’ve ended up in the corner,” Talbot said. Image Derek Stepan after the Rangers lost. Credit Elsa/Getty Images Despite dominating possession for much of the first two periods, the Rangers fell behind after a power-play goal by Sedin gave the Canucks a 3-2 advantage 3:55 into the third. But St. Louis knotted the score 1:08 later when he took Stepan’s cross-ice pass in stride and flicked a backhand shot past Miller. On the next shift, Zuccarello forced a turnover in the offensive zone, pushing the puck to defenseman Dan Girardi, who sent it toward Miller. Hagelin redirected it for his 13th of the season at 5:24. “Obviously it wasn’t a great effort or good execution tonight, yet you find yourself up, 4-3, there,” the Rangers’ Ryan McDonagh said. “You wish you could find a way to close it out for sure.” Nash put himself two goals behind the N.H.L. leader, Alex Ovechkin, midway through the second, recording his 36th goal and giving the Rangers a 2-1 lead. Derick Brassard head-manned a pass that sent Nash on a breakaway, and Nash beat Miller between the pads at 11:00. Slightly more than two minutes later, the Canucks tied it again. Center Bo Horvat finished a two-on-one break, redirecting Ronalds Kenins’s pass past Talbot. The Rangers’ first-period pressure panned out when Stepan opened the scoring with his 11th goal of the season and second in two games. After Miller stopped Girardi’s initial chance, St. Louis retrieved the puck and pushed it back to Girardi. Girardi crisply passed the puck back to St. Louis, who centered it to Stepan. He beat Miller to put the Rangers up at 11:39. After Vancouver recorded the first four shots — three coming in the game’s first 19 seconds — the Rangers took over, peppering Miller with 14 of the final 15 shots, including eight in a row. The Canucks evened the score early in the second period when Jannik Hansen forced McDonagh to turn the puck over behind the goal. The puck squirted off Talbot’s stick and the side of the net and right to Shawn Matthias. “We had a lot of guys that played all right but not good enough to win,” Rangers Coach Alain Vigneault said.
|
Ice hockey;Carl Hagelin;Martin St Louis;Canucks;Rangers
|
ny0028848
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2013/01/13
|
Russia Says It Supports U.N. Envoy for Syria
|
MOSCOW (Reuters) — Russia voiced support on Saturday for Lakhdar Brahimi, the special Syria envoy from the United Nations and the Arab League, but insisted that the exit of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, could not be a precondition for a deal to end the country’s conflict. A Foreign Ministry statement after talks in Geneva on Friday with the United States and Mr. Brahimi, who the Syrian government has said is “ flagrantly biased ,” reiterated calls for an end to the violence in Syria, where more than 60,000 people have been killed since March 2011. At the meeting with Mr. Brahimi and an American deputy secretary of state, William J. Burns , a Russian deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Bogdanov, “expressed unfailing support for Brahimi’s mission as the U.N.-Arab League special envoy on Syria,” the statement said. The issue of Mr. Assad — who the United States, European powers and gulf-led Arab states say must step down to end what has escalated into a civil war — appeared to be a sticking point at the meeting. “As before, we firmly uphold the thesis that questions about Syria’s future must be decided by the Syrians themselves,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said, “without interference from outside or the imposition of prepared recipes for development.” Russia has been Mr. Assad’s most powerful international supporter during the nearly 22-month conflict, joining with China to block three Western- and Arab-backed United Nations Security Council resolutions intended to pressure him or push him from power. In Geneva, Russia called for “a political transition process” based on an agreement by foreign powers last June. Mr. Brahimi, who is trying to build on the agreement reached in Geneva on June 30, has met three times since early December with senior Russian and American diplomats, and he met Mr. Assad in Damascus. Russia and the United States disagreed over what the June agreement meant for Mr. Assad, with Washington saying it sent a clear signal that he must go and Russia contending it did not. In Washington, a spokeswoman for the State Department, Victoria Nuland, said there had been some progress toward a common view at Friday’s meeting, but she did not provide details. Moscow says it is not propping up Mr. Assad and, as rebels gain ground in the war, it has given indications it is preparing for his possible exit. But it continues to insist he must not be forced out by foreign powers. Analysts say President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia wants to prevent the United States from using military force or support from the Security Council to bring down governments it opposes.
|
International relations;Russia;Syria;UN;Arab Spring
|
ny0245303
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2011/04/19
|
Pentagon Clears McChrystal Over Rolling Stone Article
|
WASHINGTON — An inquiry by the Defense Department inspector general into a magazine profile that resulted in the abrupt, forced retirement of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has found no proof of wrongdoing by the general, his military aides and his civilian advisers. Pentagon investigators said they were unable to confirm the events as reported in the June 2010 article in Rolling Stone, and found the evidence “insufficient” to demonstrate a violation of Defense Department standards. The inspector general’s report , released Monday, also challenged the accuracy of the profile of General McChrystal, who was the top commander in Afghanistan. The article, with the headline “The Runaway General,” quoted people identified as senior aides to the general making disparaging statements about members of President Obama’s national security team. The profile prompted a furious debate about whether the commander’s staff had used insubordinate language, and about the professionalism of General McChrystal’s team. He was recalled by the president, accepted responsibility for his staff’s actions and resigned. One aide was quoted referring to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. using the phrase “bite me.” Gen. James L. Jones, then the national security adviser, was labeled a “clown” by one aide, according to the article, and General McChrystal was described as reacting with disdain to an e-mail from Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, who died in December. The article did not directly quote the general as saying anything overtly insubordinate. Its author, Michael Hastings, and his editors have repeatedly defended the article’s accuracy. Eric Bates, the executive editor of Rolling Stone, said on Monday that the article was “accurate in every detail.” The Pentagon report disputed key incidents or comments as reported in the article. “Not all of the events at issue occurred as reported in the article,” it stated. “In some instances, we found no witness who acknowledged making or hearing the comments as reported. In other instances, we confirmed that the general substance of an incident at issue occurred, but not in the exact context described in the article.” In a statement later Monday on its Web site, Rolling Stone questioned the methods of the Pentagon inspectors, who interviewed 15 people but not General McChrystal or Mr. Hastings. “The report by the Pentagon’s inspector general offers no credible source — or indeed, any named source — contradicting the facts as reported in our story, ‘The Runaway General,’ ” the Rolling Stone statement said. “Much of the report, in fact, confirms our reporting, noting only that the Pentagon was unable to find witnesses ‘who acknowledged making or hearing the comments as reported.’ This is not surprising, given that the civilian and military advisers questioned by the Pentagon knew that their careers were on the line if they admitted to making such comments.” The inspectors did suggest that some version of a Biden slur may have occurred, although they said they were unable to establish the exact words and the speaker. “We consider credible a witness’ recollection that General McChrystal said, ‘Are you asking about Vice President Biden? Who’s that?’ and that a follow-on comment or rejoinder of some sort referring to Vice President Biden was made,” the report said. “Witness testimony led us to conclude that someone in the room made a rejoinder about Vice President Biden to General McChrystal’s comment, and that the rejoinder may have included the words ‘bite me.’ ” The White House and General McChrystal have taken steps recently to make amends. While the Defense Department inspector general’s report was only made public Monday, it was completed April 8. Four days later, the White House announced that General McChrystal had been invited back to public service to help oversee a high-profile administration initiative in support of military families. An administration spokesman said Monday that the invitation to help guide the new program was extended before the White House knew the results of the Pentagon investigation.
|
McChrystal Stanley A;Defense Department;Rolling Stone;Hastings Michael;United States Defense and Military Forces
|
ny0221261
|
[
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] |
2010/02/08
|
Undersize Ronald Moore Is Siena’s Basket Maker
|
LOUDONVILLE, N.Y. — In December 2005, Jim Donofrio, the basketball coach at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School in suburban Philadelphia, sent an e-mail message to Siena Coach Fran McCaffery about his point guard, Ronald Moore . Upset at the dearth of recruiting attention Moore was receiving, Donofrio felt McCaffery’s team would be a good fit. A reply came within hours. “Is Ronald still available?” wrote McCaffery, whose mother, Shirley, lived around the corner from the high school. “We thought he was gone. I’ll be down next week.” After watching Moore collect 15 assists in a game, McCaffery asked Donofrio for his office’s fax number. The scholarship offer would come the next workday. “I gave Ronald a scholarship and game plans,” McCaffery said. “I haven’t had to do much else.” Four seasons later, Moore, a 6-foot, 156-pound senior, has slipped through traps, knifed across the court and created opportunities for the Saints. His end-to-end speed has corroborated what Donofrio saw, and Siena has finished the last two seasons with N.C.A.A. tournament appearances. Moore, 21, leads the nation in assists per game (8.1), has an assist-to-turnover ratio of more than 3-to-1 and has the Saints (20-4) on a 14-game winning streak heading into Monday night’s game against Fairfield. “He’s an Energizer Bunny who can’t be worn down,” Iona Coach Kevin Willard said. Willard, a former Louisville assistant under Rick Pitino, alerted his old boss to Moore’s maneuvers last March before the Saints faced the Cardinals in the second round of the N.C.A.A. tournament. In a double-overtime win against Ohio State in the opening round, Moore hit clutch 3-pointers to end both the first and second overtime sessions. The CBS analyst Bill Raftery shouted: “Onions! Double order!” after the second shot as Moore pointed to the sky with 3.9 seconds remaining. Earlier that day, Moore learned that Madeline Willette, a family friend, had died, but McCaffery was not moved. “I was like, ‘How about you point to the sky when the clock reads zero, not 3.9,’ ” McCaffery said. “He never really rattles.” Against Louisville, known for its full-court pressure, Moore maintained his steadiness. By halftime, he was talking trash to Pitino. “You better try something else, Coach,” said Moore, who had 10 assists and 4 steals in the 79-72 loss. Moore’s mouth and motor continue to run at an unstoppable pace. Known to family and friends as Little Ronald, he had his head bloodied, a tooth knocked loose and his skin hardened in driveway battles against his brother, Chuck, who played at Vanderbilt, and his cousin John Salmons , a Chicago Bulls guard, as a youth. “He’d smile as long as he won,” said his father, Charles. The diminutive Moore outdistanced his competition. At 8, he ran competitively, specializing in the 800 and 1,500 meters. His mother, Rhonda Baker, took him to the Penn Relays and the Olympics in Atlanta. Along the way, he met the track stars Michael Johnson and Marion Jones. “I can’t recall any advice because I was awed, shaking my head, ‘Yes, sir or ma’am,’ ” Moore said. Still, well-paced speed was his specialty on the court. “Where did you get that burst from?” his mother asked. “You’re not a sprinter, you’re a runner!” He had a secret in his hands, too. One evening his father noticed him using a fork with his left hand and then holding a pen in the same. But when he went to play with his brother and cousin, both right-handed, he mimicked their motions. “Wow, he’s a copycat depending on the situation,” his father said. Forever undersize, Moore started halfway through his freshman season at Plymouth. He weighed 122 pounds but balanced all duties. For the next 115 games, no team successfully pressed Plymouth. Donofrio called him the Maestro. “He chased the game wherever he could find it,” Donofrio said. During one contest, Donofrio yelled out a half-court set as Moore dribbled by him on the sideline. Moore took two more dribbles and unloosed a 45-foot alley-oop. “O.K., Ronald,” Donofrio said. “That works, too.” When flowing, Moore says the court opens up for him. Though he has been held to 2 points or fewer five times this season, he has also doled out double-digit assists eight times, and he surpassed the 1,000-point mark in his career on Friday. “He’ll pass it to you and you might not know that you’re supposed to pass it to the corner, but he knows it and sees it,” Siena forward Ryan Rossiter said. Moore’s game garners praise from the past. Every third Wednesday, his uncle Jimmie Baker , who played in the American Basketball Association with the Kentucky Colonels, meets with great players of his era in a Springfield, Pa., restaurant. “Ronald’s from those good old days, back in the ’70s, man, when people had a fuller understanding,” Baker said. In his office last week, McCaffery recounted first meeting Moore. As he left his mother’s house, his longtime neighbor Phyllis Bucci, a holistic physician, asked why McCaffery was home. McCaffery explained he was seeing a prospect. By chance, Moore, who twisted his ankle that week, was in Bucci’s house, where she had “manipulated the ankle’s energy” to quicken healing. She introduced the two. “It’s a small world,” Bucci said. Donofrio said he believed McCaffery would need to undergo his own rehabilitation once Moore matriculated. When Donofrio lost Moore to graduation, his team struggled to advance the ball. The coach wanted help. “I might start the Dealing With Losing Ronald Moore support group,” Donofrio said. “Fran can call or e-mail anytime.”
|
College Athletics;Basketball;Siena College;Moore Ronald;McCaffery Fran
|
ny0008840
|
[
"sports",
"basketball"
] |
2013/05/14
|
N.B.A. Playoffs — Heat Roll Over Bulls
|
CHICAGO — A placard was laid on each seat at United Center before Game 4 on Monday night between the Chicago Bulls and the Miami Heat. In capital white letters on a red background, the words encapsulated these playoffs for the Bulls, an injury-riddled team that has made its way into the second round on grit and guile. “Next Man Up,” the placard read. Fans waved them during warm-ups and when the teams were introduced. They held them in their laps, ready to raise them again for much of the game. There were few chances. By the end of the Heat’s 88-65 win that gave them a 3-1 series lead, the placards littered the arena’s floor as Bulls fans trudged home after what could be the team’s final home game. Game 5 will be Wednesday in Miami. The previous two games of the series featured eight Bulls technical fouls and three ejections, but Monday’s contest was a much more staid affair. There were no elbows after the whistle nor highlight-worthy skirmishes. The only technical called on Chicago was for a three-second violation. After being bothered by the Bulls’ hard-nosed attitude for much of the series, Miami was the aggressor from the outset in Game 4. The Bulls scored the first basket of the game but never led again after the Heat responded with an 11-0 run. Image LeBron James had a game-high 27 points, and 8 assists and 7 rebounds. Credit Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press “They’ve been able to come out and jump on us,” said LeBron James, who led the way for the Heat with 27 points, 8 assists and 7 rebounds. “It was good to see us reverse that.” Chris Bosh chipped in 14 points. The Bulls looked little like the team that has repeatedly shaken off adversity and overcome long odds during this postseason. Chicago set playoff-record lows for points in a game, in a quarter (9 in the third), fewest field goals made (19) and lowest field-goal percentage (.257). “We didn’t execute,” center Joakim Noah said. “We didn’t play well tonight. Our energy wasn’t good. Mentally, we were a little drained because we weren’t hitting shots.” Luol Deng was active for the first time since having complications from a spinal tap after Game 5 against the Nets, but he did not play. Derrick Rose (knee) and Kirk Hinrich (calf) watched in street clothes from the bench. Without reinforcements, the catalysts from the Bulls’ surprising run struggled. Nate Robinson, the 5-foot-9 point guard who electrified the league with several memorable playoff performances, shot 0 for 12 from the field and did not score. “I just didn’t make no shots tonight,” Robinson said. “That’s all.” Jimmy Butler shot just 4 for 10 and scored 12 points. Noah, Chicago’s energetic leader who played through plantar fasciitis for much of the second half of the season, scored 6 points and was 1 of 6 shooting. Image Nate Robinson, left, battling for a loose ball, was scoreless on 0-for-12 shooting in Miami’s win. Credit Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press “They’re in a tough situation because of injuries and illnesses and whatever’s going on,” James said. “But that’s not for us to worry about.” Indeed, the Heat systematically built on their early lead. It was 21-15 after the first quarter and 44-33 by halftime. The Bulls hung tough for the first half with 10 offensive rebounds, but an inability to handle the Heat’s pressure defense took its toll. Miami put the game out of reach in the third quarter. Leading by 46-39, the Heat reeled off a 15-3 run that separated them from the lethargic Bulls. Dwyane Wade scored his only 6 points of the game during the run, which also included two baskets from Udonis Haslem and a James layup. Norris Cole beat the buzzer with a running 3-pointer to push the lead to 19 points. Wade left the game briefly in the second quarter after a turnaround jumper that appeared to aggravate a bone bruise on his right knee. The injury has bothered him in the regular season and during the playoffs. He returned to play 29 minutes. “Just a shooting pain,” Wade said. “It hurt, but eventually I was able to come back, retape my knee and try to finish.” Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra had spoken repeatedly about the need for his team to impose its identity in a series that before Game 4 had the Bulls’ fingerprints all over it. Whether Monday night was the result of the Heat’s presence, the Bulls’ exhaustion or a bit of both does not matter. Chicago is on the brink of elimination.
|
Basketball;Miami Heat;Chicago Bulls;LeBron James;Playoffs
|
ny0246110
|
[
"sports"
] |
2011/04/24
|
Jackson Leaves a Legacy of Big Talk and Bigger Horses
|
Jess Jackson looked like the longshoreman he once was. He was a big man with white hair and a sonorous voice. Wine was his primary business — he was the founder of Kendall Jackson Winery. Thoroughbreds were his passion, however, a lifelong one first sparked watching the great Seabiscuit run when he was a boy in Depression-era San Francisco. When he died from complications of cancer on Thursday at 81, he left a couple of fast horses that people will talk about for decades: Curlin, the Horse of the Year in 2007 and 2008, and Rachel Alexandra , the 2009 Horse of the Year. Curlin was a big, strapping horse and Rachel Alexandra was a big-hearted filly who played catch-me-if-you-can over a brilliant 3-year-old campaign. When Jackson bred those horses in February, he wondered aloud how the royal mating might produce another horse for the ages . Jess Jackson liked to make big pronouncements: Curlin was an iron horse. Rachel Alexandra was the best filly ever. He was not always appreciated by the hardboots in Kentucky or the thoroughbred aristocracy in New York. They thought he was a bandwagon owner who overpaid for the horse of the moment. In 2006, his longshoreman converged with his sense of justice honed from being a former police officer and lawyer. He accused some horse traders he had done business with of defrauding him . Since horse trading began in America, there have been whispers of false bidders who conspire with agents to run up horses’ prices as they pass through the sales ring, of back-room deals between sellers and the agents for wealthy newcomers to the sport. They agree on a price, say $250,000, entice the owner to pay $300,000, then split the difference. Jackson argued in a lawsuit that what a horse trader called commission to an agent for help in selling a horse was actually a bribe or a kickback. (The defendant settled out of court for $3.5 million.) Jackson testified before a legislative committee in Kentucky and helped pass a law there to protect horse owners from being fleeced in public and private sales. He could not have cared less what people thought of him. He bought Curlin with some partners after the colt roared to a 12-length victory in his debut. Then Curlin finished third in the Kentucky Derby and won the Preakness Stakes , the Jockey Club Gold Cup and the Breeders’ Cup Classic to receive racing’s top honor in 2007. Jackson did not retire Curlin, as the overwhelming majority of owners would have. He wanted to see him run as a 4-year-old. After Curlin won the $6 million Dubai World Cup and the Stephen Foster Stakes, Jackson tried him on turf, and Curlin finished second in the Man o’ War Stakes at Belmont Park. He did it on pure class, but it was clear he wasn’t a turfer. So Jackson aimed Curlin for the Breeders’ Cup Classic although he did not like the synthetic surface that was part of Santa Anita’s racetrack at the time. When Curlin, who by then had become horse racing’s career-leading money earner , finished fourth, Jackson growled, “The plastics got him beat.” Jackson had so much fun that the next year, he and an old friend, Hal McCormick, purchased Rachel Alexandra after she romped to a 20 ½-length victory in the Kentucky Oaks . He wheeled his prize filly back two weeks later against the boys in the Preakness , the middle jewel of the Triple Crown . Suddenly, horse racing was vaulted from the sports pages to national television and women’s magazines. Jackson’s confidence was rewarded when Rachel Alexandra held off the Kentucky Derby champion, Mine That Bird , to become the first filly to win the Preakness in 85 years. He managed the rest of Rachel Alexandra’s year cleverly, sending her to the Jersey Shore to beat male horses again in the Grade I Haskell at Monmouth Park, and to Saratoga Springs, N.Y., to face older horses in the Woodward Stakes . Her performance in the Woodward will go down as one of the greatest performances at Saratoga, which dates to the Civil War. She ran withering fractions, beginning with a 22.85-second opening quarter, and withstood the late-closing Macho Again to win. Rachel Alexandra advanced to the winner’s circle to a thunderous ovation from grown-ups, many with tears in their eyes. It was a performance that catapulted her over the great — and at the time undefeated — race mare Zenyatta for Horse of the Year. But Rachel Alexandra was never the same after the Woodward. She was beaten three times as a 4-year-old, each time prompting Jackson to wince and wonder. He told me once that he was a dedicated horseman, and was as much of a conditioner for Rachel Alexandra as was the filly’s trainer of record, Steve Asmussen, who is perennially atop the national standings. When Jackson finally decided that enough was enough for Rachel Alexandra in September 2010 , he sent her to his Stonestreet Farm in Kentucky to lead a less stressful life as a broodmare. “Rachel Alexandra owes us nothing,” he said. “As a 3-year-old, she set standards and records that no filly before her ever achieved.” Jackson, too, set some standards, one in particular that any horseplayer or horse lover can appreciate. He let his horses run instead of retiring them to the breeding shed and life as a pampered A.T.M. He ran them in the biggest races on the brightest stages. He didn’t worry if they got beat.
|
Jackson Jess;Horse Racing;Rachel Alexandra (Race Horse);Curlin (Race Horse);Triple Crown (Horse Racing)
|
ny0028578
|
[
"sports",
"hockey"
] |
2013/01/23
|
Brodeur Steady as Ever in Devils’ Home Opener
|
NEWARK — Cries of “Let’s Go Devils!” were followed by an obscene chant repeatedly aimed at the rival Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday night, leaving no doubt the N.H.L. had returned to the Prudential Center after a 119-day lockout. The Devils acted as if they never left, celebrating their home opener with a convincing 3-0 victory that allowed goaltender Martin Brodeur to extend his record with the 120th regular-season shutout of his career. Brodeur, 40, flashed midseason form in making 24 saves even though he was inactive during the labor dispute. “I’ve worked really hard to get where I am,” Brodeur said. “The team is playing really well and I’m just trying to play hockey.” His teammates were hardly surprised to see him play so well so soon as he added to another mark with his 658th regular-season victory. “I think he will always be that guy,” right wing David Clarkson said. “He finds ways to impress you every year. It’s like he’s 20 again. He makes saves and you say, ‘How did he do that?’ ” It helped that the Devils, off to a quick 2-0 start after Saturday night’s 2-1 road win against the Islanders, produced another dominant performance against a Philadelphia team they dispatched in five games in last season’s Eastern Conference semifinals. The Devils went on to lose to the Los Angeles Kings in six games in the Stanley Cup finals. “It was disappointing,” right wing Ilya Kovalchuk said of the end of last season, “but we took a lot of positive things out of it.” Image Devils defenseman Andy Greene, top, colliding with Flyers wing Scott Laughton in the first period. The Devils are off to a 2-0 start. Credit Ray Stubblebine/Reuters The Devils’ offense was considered suspect after the team captain Zach Parise, an explosive scorer, departed as a free agent to play in his home state of Minnesota, signing a 13-year contract worth $98 million with the Wild. Lou Lamoriello, the Devils’ general manager, responded to that loss with a move halfway through last week’s six-day training camp that already looks to be another in a seemingly endless list of shrewd transactions. He locked up center Travis Zajac with the longest contract a team is allowed to offer one of its players under the new collective bargaining agreement. The eight-year deal totaled $46 million. Although a left Achilles’ injury limited Zajac to 15 games in the regular season last year, he emerged as a key figure in the playoffs with seven goals and seven assists. Zajac is continuing that strong play in the early going of the abbreviated 48-game schedule. He scored the Devils’ first goal of the season Saturday. He also was the first player to break through against Philadelphia, at 1 minute 7 seconds of the first period. Zajac was in perfect position, camped alone at the right side of the net, to bang home a rebound allowed by goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov. The Devils were lucky and good when Clarkson tallied with 24.9 seconds left in the first. Clarkson flipped the puck in front of Philadelphia’s net, where the Flyers’ Ruslan Fedotenko had it inadvertently carom off his skate past Bryzgalov for a power-play goal. The Devils led, 2-0, despite being outshot, 9-3, in the opening period. Bryzgalov was no match for Kovalchuk after Kovalchuk was awarded a penalty shot 2:44 into the second period. Kovalchuk bore down on the net and adroitly shifted the puck to his backhand to beat Bryzgalov. It was the third successful try for Kovalchuk in four career penalty shots, and it came short-handed. For now, it appears the Devils can find enough offense without Parise. “You just hope it’s going to happen all year because we are going to need guys to step up and fill that void,” Brodeur said. “We’re not a team that relies on one or two players. When we got to be successful last year, it was because the depth of our hockey team was present.” Clarkson said: “No one can replace Zach. We’re not in here saying, ‘Who is going to replace Zach Parise?’ We’re going to play our game. That’s all we can do.” And, as always, they will look to the seemingly ageless Brodeur.
|
Ice hockey;Flyers;Devils;Martin Brodeur
|
ny0061965
|
[
"business",
"media"
] |
2014/01/16
|
AOL Finds a Partner to Run Its Troubled Patch Division
|
In May 2012, Tim Armstrong, the chief executive of AOL, promised restive investors that he would make Patch, the company’s local news division, profitable by the end of 2013. When the deadline arrived and Patch was still losing money, Mr. Armstrong promised to take on partners to share the cost. On Wednesday, AOL announced that it had done just that. Hale Global, an investment company that specializes in turning around troubled companies through technological innovation, would essentially take over the operation, AOL said. Hale’s intention for now, the companies said, is to keep operating all of Patch’s 900 sites. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. But the companies said AOL would put Patch into a new limited liability company that would be operated and majority owned by Hale. The deal effectively removes Patch from AOL’s financial books. Nevertheless, as a minority stakeholder, AOL could benefit if Hale were able to make Patch profitable. Patch’s traffic continues to grow and in November passed 16 million unique visitors. Hale is run by Charles Hale, a Wall Street executive who worked at the hedge fund York Capital Management, and who specializes in investing in troubled technology companies. Patch has been a personal passion of Mr. Armstrong’s , and also something of an albatross. He helped create the network while at Google in 2007 and, upon arriving at AOL, was behind the decision to buy it in 2009. But Patch expanded too quickly and became unwieldy. Over the years, Patch lost $200 million to $300 million and was the subject of a proxy fight as investors lost confidence. Mr. Armstrong had to promise to pare back his vision, and last year he laid off hundreds of staff members. No details on staffing plans were provided with the announcement of the deal with Hale. AOL said it had many interested suitors but chose Hale because the company shared Mr. Armstrong’s belief that local online news could be highly profitable. More details on the structure of the new entity will be revealed when quarterly earnings are announced next month, AOL said. In a note to employees sent out after the market closed on Wednesday, Mr. Armstrong said, “We are retaining a meaningful minority interest in the joint venture, and we stand to benefit from Patch’s pivot to platform excellence.” He added, “Hale will help Patch improve, and we will be partners with Hale in the next phase of the journey.”
|
Patch.com;AOL;Tim Armstrong
|
ny0058971
|
[
"business"
] |
2014/08/11
|
Treasury Auctions Set for the Week of Aug. 11
|
The Treasury’s schedule of financing this week includes Monday’s regular weekly auction of new three- and six-month bills and an auction of four-week bills on Tuesday. At the close of the New York cash market on Friday, the rate on the outstanding three-month bill was 0.03 percent. The rate on the six-month issue was 0.04 percent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.03 percent. The following tax-exempt, fixed-income issues are scheduled for pricing this week: TUESDAY University of Alabama, $215 million of revenue bonds. Competitive. Glendale, Calif., Unified School District, $70 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive. Minnesota, $849.5 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive. Washington State, $67.5 million of certificates of participation. Competitive. WEDNESDAY Louisville, Ky., Board of Water Works, $64.3 million of revenue bonds. Competitive. Spotsylvania, Va., $57.8 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive. Stamford, Conn., $50 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive. ONE DAY DURING THE WEEK Build New York City Corp., $68.7 million of university revenue refinancing bonds. Morgan Stanley. California Statewide Communities Development Authority, $116 million of senior living health facility revenue bonds. Cain Brothers. California, $120 million of senior living health facility revenue bonds. Cain Brothers. Ohlone Community College District, California, $75 million of general obligation bonds. Piper Jaffray. Frisco, Tex., $53.1 million of general obligation refinancing and improvement bonds. Wells Fargo Securities. Harris County, Tex., $230 million of unlimited tax road refinancing bonds. Goldman Sachs. Huntsville, Ala., $70.9 million of general obligation refinancing warrants. Raymond James. Idaho Health Facilities Authority, $166.1 million of revenue bonds. J. P. Morgan Securities. Lee County, Fla., School District, $72.9 million of certificates of participation. Wells Fargo Securities. Los Angeles, $85 million of special tax refinancing bonds. Piper Jaffray. Michigan, $266 million of debt securities. Citigroup Global Markets. New Haven, Conn., $92.5 million of general obligation bonds. Raymond James. New York City, $900 million of general obligation bonds. Bank of America. New York Port Authority, $833.9 million of debt securities. Citigroup Global Markets. New York State Housing Finance Agency, $55.5 million of affordable housing revenue bonds. Loop Capital Markets. Ohio Air Quality Development Authority, $241.2 million of pollution control revenue bonds. J. P. Morgan Securities. Philadelphia Authority for Industrial Development, $200 million of hospital revenue bonds. J. P. Morgan Securities. Raleigh, N.C., $86.7 million of limited general obligation refinancing bonds. Bank of America. Texas, $104.2 million of independent school district unlimited tax school building bonds. Robert W. Baird. Texas, $69.1 million of general obligation and improvement bonds. Raymond James.
|
Stocks,Bonds;Debt;Income tax
|
ny0120158
|
[
"world",
"africa"
] |
2012/07/21
|
In Zimbabwe Land Takeover, a Golden Lining
|
HARARE, Zimbabwe — When Roger Boka started his auction business in the 1990s, this city’s tobacco trading floors were hushed places, save the mellifluous patter of the auctioneer. A handful of white farmers, each selling hundreds of bales of tobacco, arrived in sport utility vehicles, checking into the city’s best hotels while waiting for their big checks to be cut. During this year’s auction season, a very different scene unfolded underneath the cavernous roof of the Bock Tobacco Auction Floors. Each day, hundreds of farmers arrived in minibuses and on the backs of pickup trucks, many with wives and children in tow. They camped in open fields nearby and swarmed to the cacophonous floor to sell their crop. The place was lively and crowded; two women gave birth on the auction floor. The most obvious difference, though, was the color of their faces: every single one of them was black. “You used to only see white faces here,” said Rudo Boka, Mr. Boka’s daughter, who now runs the family business. “Now it is for everybody. It is a beautiful sight.” Before Zimbabwe’s government began the violent and chaotic seizure of white-owned farms in 2000, fewer than 2,000 farmers were growing tobacco, the country’s most lucrative crop, and most were white. Today, 60,000 farmers grow tobacco here, the vast majority of them black and many of them working small plots that were allotted to them in the land upheavals. Most had no tobacco farming experience yet managed to produce a hefty crop, rebounding from a low of 105 million pounds in 2008 to more than 330 million pounds this year. The success of these small-scale farmers has led some experts to reassess the legacy of Zimbabwe’s forced land redistribution, even as they condemn its violence and destruction. The takeover of white commercial farms was a disaster for Zimbabwe on many levels. It undermined one of Africa ’s sturdiest economies, and as growth contracted and its currency became worthless because of hyperinflation, joblessness and hunger grew. Large chunks of land were handed to cronies of President Robert Mugabe , many of whom did not farm them. It spurred a political crisis and violent reprisals by the security forces that have killed hundreds of people. Yields on food and cash crops plummeted. But amid that pain, tens of thousands of people got small farm plots under land reform, and in recent years many of these new farmers overcame early struggles to fare pretty well. With little choice but to work the land, the small-scale farmers have made a go of it, producing yields that do not match those of the white farmers whose land they were given, but are far from the disaster many anticipated, some analysts and scholars say. “We cannot make excuses for the way it was carried out,” said Ian Scoones, an expert on farming at the University of Sussex who has been intensively studying land reform in Zimbabwe for the past decade. “But there are many myths that have taken hold — that land reform has been an unmitigated disaster, that all the land has been taken over by cronies in the ruling party, that the whole thing has been a huge mess. It has not. Nor has it been a roaring success.” The result has been a broad, if painful, shift of wealth in agriculture from white commercial growers on huge farms to black farmers on much smaller plots of land. Last year, these farmers shared $400 million worth of tobacco, according to the African Institute for Agrarian Studies , earning on average $6,000 each, a vast sum to most Zimbabweans. “The money that was shared between 1,500 large-scale growers is now shared with 58,000 growers, most of them small scale,” said Andrew Matibiri, the director of Zimbabwe’s Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board. “That is a major change in the country.” The new farmers are receiving virtually no assistance from the government, which for years poured money into larger farms given to politically connected elites. Instead, farmers are getting help from the tobacco industry, in the form of loans , advances and training. It is in Ms. Boka’s interest to revive the industry, so the company has invested heavily in helping farmers improve the yields and quality. Tobacco is a tricky crop, requiring precise application of fertilizer and careful reaping. It must then be cured and graded properly to fetch a top price. Recently, Alex Vokoto, head of public relations at the auction house, spotted several bales of desirable tobacco leaves cured to a honey color on the floor, and hustled the man who grew them, Stuart Mhavei, into the V.I.P. lounge for a cup of coffee and a chat. “This man is growing top-quality tobacco, and he has only been at it for three years,” Mr. Vokoto said. Mr. Mhavei, a 40-year-old tile layer, got a small piece of a tobacco farm several years ago in the town of Centenary in central Mashonaland, about 80 miles from Harare. “All the big guys who got land, they are doing nothing,” Mr. Vokoto said. “But these small guys are working hard and really producing.” Mr. Mhavei has steadily increased his yield, quality and income. So far this season, he has earned more than $10,000 on part of a vast farm that once belonged to a white family, investing the profits in a truck to transport his tobacco, as well as renting the truck to other farmers. Mr. Mhavei said that like many of the other people who got land, he supports Mr. Mugabe and his party, ZANU-PF. “Why should one white man have all this?” he asked, sweeping an arm across the lush, rolling farmland around his fields. “This is Zimbabwe. Black people must come first.” Charles Taffs, president of the Commercial Farmers Union, said that the industry could have been transformed to include more black farmers in a much less destructive way. “The tragedy with tobacco is that expansion, if they had the right policies, could have been done in the 1990s in conjunction with the commercial sector,” Mr. Taffs said. Instead, hundreds of thousands of workers have lost their jobs and the country has suffered huge economic losses as a result. The personal cost for white commercial farmers has been immense. One white tobacco farmer in northern Zimbabwe whose family purchased its land after independence described the slow, painful erosion of his family’s livelihood. “Now that we are down to less than 200 hectares, there isn’t enough income to support everyone,” said the farmer, who asked not to be identified because he feared seizure of even more land if he spoke out. A plot of 200 hectares is less than 500 acres. His brother had to leave the farm to find work elsewhere, and his own future was deeply uncertain. The farm employs far fewer workers. Yields are down since critical investments in irrigation and other infrastructure have been put off, he said. “We are Zimbabweans,” the farmer said. “We employ people, and take care of our workers. It is really painful to see this happening to our country.” The tobacco yield is still below its peak in 2000, when the crop hit 522 million pounds. But Tendai Murisa, a researcher who has studied tobacco farming since land reform, said that judging the success of land reform by looking at production figures misses a crucial point. “No one ever argued that this is a more productive form of farming,” Mr. Murisa said. “But does it share wealth more equitably? Does it give people a sense of dignity and ownership? Those things have value, too.”
|
Agriculture;Smoking;Zimbabwe;Land use;Jobs
|
ny0039143
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2014/04/16
|
New York Drops Unit That Spied on Muslims
|
The New York Police Department has abandoned a secretive program that dispatched plainclothes detectives into Muslim neighborhoods to eavesdrop on conversations and built detailed files on where people ate, prayed and shopped, the department said. The decision by the nation’s largest police force to shutter the controversial surveillance program represents the first sign that William J. Bratton, the department’s new commissioner, is backing away from some of the post-9/11 intelligence-gathering practices of his predecessor. The Police Department’s tactics, which are the subject of two federal lawsuits, drew criticism from civil rights groups and a senior official with the Federal Bureau of Investigation who said they harmed national security by sowing mistrust for law enforcement in Muslim communities. To many Muslims, the squad, known as the Demographics Unit, was a sign that the police viewed their every action with suspicion. The police mapped communities inside and outside the city , logging where customers in traditional Islamic clothes ate meals and documenting their lunch-counter conversations. “The Demographics Unit created psychological warfare in our community,” said Linda Sarsour, of the Arab American Association of New York. “Those documents, they showed where we live. That’s the cafe where I eat. That’s where I pray. That’s where I buy my groceries. They were able to see their entire lives on those maps. And it completely messed with the psyche of the community.” Ms. Sarsour was one of several advocates who met last Wednesday with Mr. Bratton and some of his senior staff members at Police Headquarters. She and others in attendance said the department’s new intelligence chief, John Miller, told them that the police did not need to work covertly to find out where Muslims gather and indicated the department was shutting the unit down. The Demographics Unit, which was renamed the Zone Assessment Unit in recent years, has been largely inactive since Mr. Bratton took over in January, the department’s chief spokesman, Stephen Davis, said. The unit’s detectives were recently reassigned, he said. “Understanding certain local demographics can be a useful factor when assessing the threat information that comes into New York City virtually on a daily basis,” Mr. Davis said. “In the future, we will gather that information, if necessary, through direct contact between the police precincts and the representatives of the communities they serve.” The department’s change in approach comes as the federal government reconsiders and re-evaluates some of its own post-9/11 policies. Although the police department’s surveillance program was far smaller in scope than, say, the bulk data collection by the National Security Agency, a similar recalibration seems to be unfolding. The Demographics Unit was the brainchild of the Central Intelligence Agency officer Lawrence Sanchez, who helped establish it in 2003 while working at the Police Department and while he was still on the spy agency’s payroll. The goal was to identify the mundane locations where a would-be terrorist could blend into society. Plainclothes detectives looked for “hot spots” of radicalization that might give the police an early warning about terrorist plots. The squad, which typically consisted of about a dozen members, focused on 28 “ancestries of interest.” Detectives were told to chat up the employees at Muslim-owned businesses and “gauge sentiment” about America and foreign policy. Through maps and photographs, the police noted where Albanian men played chess in the afternoon, where Egyptians watched soccer and where South Asians played cricket. After years of collecting information, however, the police acknowledged that it never generated a lead. Since The Associated Press published documents describing the program in 2011, Muslims and civil rights groups have called for its closing. Image Protesting the New York Police Department's surveillance tactics near Police Headquarters in 2013. Credit Seth Wenig/Associated Press Mr. Bratton has said that he intends to try to heal rifts between the Police Department and minority communities that have felt alienated as a result of policies pursued during the Bloomberg administration. The meeting last week put Mr. Bratton in the room with some of his department’s harshest critics. “This is the first time we’ve felt that comfort sitting with them,” said Ahmad Jaber, who resigned from the Police Department’s Muslim advisory board last year to protest the surveillance tactics. “It’s a new administration, and they are willing to sit with the community and listen to their concerns.” The Demographics Unit was one aspect of a broad intelligence-gathering effort. In addition, informants infiltrated Muslim student groups on college campuses and collected the names, phone numbers and addresses of those who attended. Analysts trawled college websites and email groups to keep tabs on Muslim scholars and who attended their lectures. The police also designated entire mosques as suspected “terrorism enterprises,” a label that the police claimed allowed them to collect the license plate numbers of every car in mosque parking lots, videotape worshipers coming and going, and record sermons using informants wearing hidden microphones. As a candidate, Mayor Bill de Blasio said he was “deeply troubled” by the tactic of surveilling mosques. Despite investigations that stretched for years, the Police Department’s efforts never led to charges that a mosque or an Islamic organization was itself a terrorist enterprise. The future of those programs remains unclear. The former police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, has said his efforts were lawful and helped protect the city from terrorist attacks. Last month, a federal judge in New Jersey dismissed a lawsuit over the department’s surveillance there, saying Muslims could not prove they were harmed by the tactics. Two other federal lawsuits continue to challenge the department’s tactics. One legal claim has been brought under a civil rights case that dates back to the Police Department’s surveillance of student groups and protesters in the 1960s and 1970s. Martin Stolar, one of the lawyers who brought that claim, maintains that the post-9/11 surveillance programs violate the court order in that case. A judge has not yet ruled on that question. Like Muslim community leaders, Mr. Stolar said he wanted to see exactly what the department had planned. Police officials have changed the name of the program before, he said. “I want them to say that they’re getting rid of not just the unit, but the kind of policing that the unit did,” Mr. Stolar said. “Is it still going to be blanket surveillance of where Muslims hang out? Are they going to stop this massive surveillance?” Based on Mr. Davis’s remarks, the Police Department appears to be moving its policies closer to those of the F.B.I. Both agencies are allowed to use census data, public information and government data to create detailed maps of ethnic communities. The F.B.I. is prohibited, however, from eavesdropping on and documenting innocuous conversations that would be protected by the First Amendment. F.B.I. lawyers in New York determined years ago that agents could not receive documents from the Demographics Unit without violating federal rules. Until Mr. Stolar’s case is decided, the police may not destroy any of the Demographic Unit files, he said. Beyond that decision, the future of the documents is unclear. Mr. de Blasio said in a statement Tuesday that the closing of the unit was “a critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve, so that our cops and our citizens can help one another go after the real bad guys.”
|
Government Surveillance;Muslim Americans;William J Bratton;Raymond W Kelly;NYC;NYPD;CIA;FBI
|
ny0059557
|
[
"world",
"africa"
] |
2014/08/19
|
Surviving Ebola, but Untouchable Back Home
|
DARU, Sierra Leone — The neighbors lined up, smiling and mouthing soft congratulations when the van pulled in bearing Jattu Lahai and her 2-year-old daughter. No one moved to embrace them. Nobody stepped out of the line of 30-odd people as Ms. Lahai, an Ebola survivor, walked to the room she shares with her husband. A conspicuous space formed around the smooth-faced 26-year-old woman and her baby, also a survivor, as she sat on a bench. “When I fell sick, everybody abandoned me,” said Ms. Lahai, in her darkened room for the first time since the ambulance whisked her away two weeks ago on a trip most do not return from. Crying softly, she wiped her tears with the hem of her dress and spoke a quiet prayer. “I didn’t think I was going to come home again,” she said, cradling her daughter, Rosalie. Here in the Ebola zone, the world is divided in three: the living, the dead, and those caught in between. For those lucky enough to survive, coming home is another struggle entirely. Ms. Lahai’s homecoming experience — muted and cool — has been shared by many of the survivors of the Ebola epidemic spreading across West Africa. Doctors Without Borders says only 61 of the 337 Ebola patients treated at its tent-camp treatment center in nearby Kailahun have survived. When they go home, some are greeted warmly, with hugs and dancing. But others, like Ms. Lahai, feel a chill of wariness, or worse. In some places, health workers said, the neighbors flee. “How long does the virus live?” a young man asked the health workers who brought Ms. Lahai home. “What will kill it?” another demanded amid a flurry of anxious questions. “How can you cure?” asked yet another. The worries are hardly confined to Sierra Leone, the country with the highest number of Ebola cases, 810. Some in the United States objected to the decision to take two infected American aid workers to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta for treatment, fearful the disease would be spread further. In some other places, any association with one of the affected countries, however remote, is enough to set off suspicion and ostracism. Image Jattu Lahai and her 2-year-old daughter, Rosalie, were driven home in a Doctors Without Borders van after finishing their treatment. “When I fell sick, everybody abandoned me,” she said. Credit Samuel Aranda for The New York Times For the last 10 years, MacQueen Farley has been living in a refugee camp in Ghana, a country untouched by the epidemic so far, where she makes a living by braiding hair for about $3 a person. But because she is originally from Liberia, she has had to deal with people’s fears, and has found it hard to find customers or even a bus ride to town since the outbreak in her home country. “So we find it difficult to eat,” she said. “They say, ‘The whole camp is covered with Ebola.’ ” She added: “Sometime, when I go to the market, when I go to buy food stuff, even when I’m trying to give the seller the money, they use plastic to receive the money from us. Yeah. They put plastic on their hands to collect the money from our hand.” Some of the other refugees living in the camp, who fled Liberia years ago during times of war, have said that they are now reluctant to go to the hospital for fear that they will be summarily quarantined as Ebola patients. International health experts have warned that the epidemic in the affected countries — Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria — is probably much worse than the official estimate of 2,127 infections and 1,145 deaths. Local health officials say they are expecting a surge in cases as the effort to root out hidden patients, many of whom fear that a trip to the hospital is a death sentence, intensifies. “Community members are going house to house,” said Mohamed Vandi in Sierra Leone, the government’s district health officer in the nearby regional capital, Kenema. “That’s why we will see a surge.” Many more deaths are now being reported to officials, he said, though few turn out to be Ebola-related. “Everybody is scared,” Dr. Vandi said. Roughly a quarter of Sierra Leone has been cordoned off by the government, enforced by roadblocks staffed by soldiers and the police who demand official authorization to pass. Ms. Lahai said she stayed at home sick for three days, with severe diarrhea, before being taken to the hastily set up isolation ward in the town of Daru. She said she had caught the disease from her husband, Lahai Kallon, 32, a teacher who became infected attending a funeral in a neighboring village. “The body was emptying,” she said of her intense illness. Then the medical workers in suits came to take her to the Doctors Without Borders treatment center in Kailahun. “The day I left, it felt like being in the war. I was very, very afraid,” she said. “I was thinking I was going to lose my life. It’s only thanks to M.S.F.,” she said, using the initials of the French name of the organization. Image Residents of Daru, Sierra Leone, listened as a worker for Doctors Without Borders talked about Ebola. The country has had the highest number of cases, 810. Credit Samuel Aranda for The New York Times Her husband survived as well, but the day Ms. Lahai came back to the world of the living, would she still be viewed as part of the Ebola universe, where at least half die, or would she return to being one of the neighbors in the low communal bungalow at the edge of this market town? The answer seemed unclear, for now, in the minds of many who turned out. No one ran away. At least 10 others have returned to Daru, said Ella Watson-Stryker, one of the Doctors Without Borders workers who helped bring Ms. Lahai back. But Ms. Lahai sat alone on the bench holding her baby, next to her husband. He did not embrace her. Her older sister came, but she did not touch her either. Instead, she smiled and said she was most glad to see Ms. Lahai again. Around them, questions about Ebola poured down on the two health workers, who exhorted the neighbors and relatives not to be fearful. The presence of the workers, in their white vests, helped to ease the re-entry, lending the young woman’s recovery some credibility in the eyes of her neighbors. “As long as you people escort them, we have no fear,” said Sakpa Sawi, a pastor, sitting at a table 10 feet away. “We were not expecting they would recover,” said Mohammed Kpande Yenge, a teacher, looking over at the couple. “The sickness is a sickness that has no corrective measure. Not too many people survive. So, we are happy.” Ms. Lahai, a soft-spoken woman with a shy smile and a light in her eyes, knew she was an exceedingly lucky case: a survivor with a family to come home to. In some households in this part of the country, entire families have been wiped out . In others, young children have been made orphans. Sometimes, the family breadwinner is killed off, leaving little but uncertainty for those who remain. In the city of Kenema, one young man weighed the relief of surviving against the grief of a life without the more than a dozen relatives he had lost. Ms. Lahai went into her room, sat on the edge of her bed in front of a jumble of possessions — toys, pots and pans, clothing — clasped her hands and bent her head. “Now I have come back, and I can start life again,” she said quietly. “Now, yes, I can go back to normal life. I am free.”
|
Ebola;Sierra Leone;Daru Sierra Leone;Epidemic;Doctors Without Borders
|
ny0214261
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2010/03/09
|
With First Signs of Spring, New York Diners Flock Outside
|
The snow has barely finished melting. The buds on the trees are clenched shut. . But the sidewalks are already dotted once again with tables, chairs and New Yorkers determined to get a taste of Paris along with their lunch. From brownstone Brooklyn to the Upper West Side, the weekend brunch crowd headed outdoors to eat, despite steady breezes and spots in the shade that never quite seemed to warm up. But what’s a little wind and chill when the sun is out and the temperature nudges above 50 for three days in a row, practically a heat wave after the frigid weather and record snow of the past few months. Diners piled into those sidewalk seats, some under sunlight and heat lamps that maintained an illusion of spring, which is not due for two weeks. Others huddled in their coats, hats and scarves, picking at so many plates of eggs Benedict with hollandaise congealed in the cold. “It doesn’t matter,” said Jane Wickstrom, who was eating outside Provence en Boite in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, with her husband, Ted Deignan, on Sunday afternoon. They were perfectly comfortable in their sunny seats, heat bouncing toward them off the sliding glass doors to the restaurant, even though she wore only a shearling-weight vest and he was in a long-sleeved cotton T-shirt. Indeed, Ms. Wickstrom said, she prefers street seating so much that the weekend before she bundled into a fur coat and braved the even colder air outside the restaurant. “It’s just so much more lively,” she said. As if to prove her point, a man stopped a few feet away and, balancing a book on his head, recited a few lines from “ The Rain in Spain ” before quizzing diners on the song’s origin. (Answer: “My Fair Lady.” ) Despite the dirt, exhaust, noise and unscheduled entertainment, outdoor dining season seems to come to the city earlier each year, with New Yorkers eager to take advantage of a growing number of outdoor options. As of January, the Department of Consumer Affairs had licensed 1,078 sidewalk cafes in the city, up from 761 at the same time in 2007. Although licenses are expensive — anywhere from a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars, including fees and security deposits — many restaurateurs say they are worth it because they significantly increase the number of available seats. “It can double the day,” said Jean Jacques Bernat, an owner of Provence en Boite, most of whose 24 outdoor seats were filled on Sunday, augmenting the 45 inside. “It’s a big boost.” And once a restaurant secures its license, it is good for two years, year round. So as soon as the weather offers the tiniest encouragement, the bistro tables can come out. The Bloomberg administration has added its own encouragement, opening hundreds of streets to small, unenclosed cafes and streamlining the application process from an average of 425 days, through multiple agencies, to just over 84 days through the Department of Consumer Affairs . “One of the signs of an early spring is an aggressive restaurant that’s got its sidewalk cafe open, first up,” said the department’s commissioner, Jonathan Mintz. “Even if it’s a little bit chilly, those cafes are out there and open, and I think it sends a great message to people about the dining options in the city. And I do believe it makes a street feel more like a neighborhood.” In the last year and a half, Mr. Mintz said, his department has worked with fire officials to allow the use of natural gas heating lamps to extend the season. Fewer than a dozen establishments are currently licensed by the Fire Department to use the lamps, which are permitted to run only between October and May. On Sunday at Ocean Grill on Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side, customers basked under heat lamps and steady sunlight. But across the avenue, Isabella’s was lampless and in shadow around 1 p.m., with a strip of diners huddled in scarves, knit hats and heavy coats. Lindsey Karl of West Hartford, Conn., rose from her meal and walked to the curb to catch a little warmth from the sun shining there. Her daughter Gelseigh Karl-Cannon, a junior at Columbia, stayed put, shivering in her overcoat and jiggling her legs — clad in long socks — to stay warm. Eating outdoors, she explained, had been her idea, and it was important to tough it out. “This is the first nice day of the year,” Ms. Karl-Cannon said. “I guess when you live in New York, you just get used to being cold a lot of the time. When my friends and I go out at night, there’s usually a stiff breeze blowing.” Her mother, looking unconvinced, suggested they move on. “This has been a pretty short brunch,” Ms. Karl said. A few hours later, in Brooklyn, where people strolled in T-shirts and cropped pants and women picked their way down the streets in flip-flops with freshly painted toenails, diners and drinkers alike were enjoying the novelty of an alfresco afternoon, expressing surprise it could come so early. “It’s great — these guys know when to come out,” Frank Johnson, visiting from Florida , said about a group of his friends as they shared a pitcher of beer in the backyard of the Wing Bar on Smith Street in Boerum Hill. “I was like, are you sure it’s not going to be too cold for this?” One friend, Derik Wingo, said he had not expected to be outside in a T-shirt just yet. “The nice thing about New York is that people appreciate the nice weather more than some place like Southern California where you maybe take it for granted a little bit,” Mr. Wingo said, adding with a laugh, “And the air’s so brown you can’t breathe without choking .”
|
Sidewalk cafe;NYC;Weather
|
ny0042658
|
[
"sports",
"soccer"
] |
2014/05/26
|
Countdown to 2014 World Cup in Brazil: Day 18
|
The 2014 World Cup begins on June 12, when Brazil plays Croatia in the opening match. Reporters and editors for The Times will count down to the start of the tournament each day with a short capsule of news and interesting tidbits. Half of the stadiums to be used for the World Cup will get the white-glove treatment from a top FIFA official this week as the clock ticks down to the start of the tournament. Jérôme Valcke, FIFA’s secretary general, spent last week touring six stadiums, including the still unfinished Itaquerao in São Paulo. The stadium, which hosted a Brazilian league match between Corinthians and Figueirense on May 18, will be the site of the tournament’s opening game between the hosts and Croatia. In the coming week Valcke will check in at Rio de Janeiro’s Maracanã, where the final will be played on July 13, then head north to Manaus, Fortaleza, Natal, Recife and Salvador. The delays and construction accidents, some of them that resulted in fatalities , have brought a cascade of negative stories leading up to the World Cup. “We’re very close now,” Valcke said Sunday in São Paulo. “Soon we’re going to hand the tournament over to the players and the 32 teams. There is very little left to worry about. We just need to make sure the teams arrive safely and get to their training centers so they can begin preparing for the tournament.” Image Jérôme Valcke, FIFA's secretary general, is making a final inspection tour of World Cup stadiums this week. Credit Hassan Ammar/Associated Press The statement contrasts with some made previously by Valcke that lamented, time after time, the inability of Brazilian officials to complete building projects within the promised time frame. Half of the 12 stadiums to be used for the World Cup were not finished by the end of 2013 as FIFA specified, and work at some stadiums and on various infrastructure projects is still underway Last week Valcke’s visits focused on some of the unfinished stadiums where temporary structures for the news media, sponsors and technical teams remain unfinished. One of those stadiums, the Itaquerao, has a capacity of 70,000 but only 40,000 tickets could be issued for the test match. Another run through will have to be held. “If the opening match wasn’t going to be held at the stadium, then perhaps we wouldn’t organize another test event,” Valcke said. “But it’s vital that we know everything is working properly. We don’t normally allow games at stadiums during the FIFA exclusive use period, but we changed the rule so we could test the temporary seating.”
|
2014 World Cup;Jerome Valcke;Brazil;FIFA
|
ny0105361
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2012/03/22
|
‘Etch A Sketch’ Remark a Rare Misstep for Romney Adviser
|
WASHINGTON — Eric Fehrnstrom is Mitt Romney ’s David Axelrod. He is the keeper of the candidate’s narrative, the guy who has been with Mr. Romney since before he was governor of Massachusetts and has stuck like glue through two grueling presidential campaigns. He has been the defiant defender of Mr. Romney when he has been accused of being a flip-flopper or having no core principles. And so it was curious that when Mr. Fehrnstrom on Wednesday reached for a word to describe how Mr. Romney might pivot to the general election, the one that came tumbling from his mouth was “Etch A Sketch,” the children’s drawing toy in which nothing is ever permanent. “Everything changes,” Mr. Fehrnstrom, 50, said on CNN, with a slight smirk that suggested he believed he was about to use a clever line. “It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.” Too clever, it seems. Within hours, Mr. Romney’s Republican rivals and his Democratic adversaries had seized on the all-too-obvious metaphors: Mr. Romney erasing his positions; “Mitt 5.0”; Mr. Romney “reinventing” himself. The Democratic National Committee sent out snarky e-mails hourly. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum even trotted out the toy at campaign rallies. For Mr. Fehrnstrom, the gaffe — and the Twitter-fueled media frenzy that erupted for a day — was the rare misstep for a normally disciplined communications strategist who has become part gatekeeper, part historian for Mr. Romney. A onetime journalist, Mr. Fehrnstrom joined Mr. Romney’s political team in 2002, quitting his job at an advertising agency on a day he was writing a press release about the spicy menu at Popeye’s Fried Chicken. He quickly became known for his aggressive manner with reporters. In a testy 2008 exchange with an Associated Press reporter immortalized on YouTube, Mr. Fehrnstrom chided, “Save your opinions and act professionally!” “Classic Fehrnstrom,” said Kevin Madden, another adviser to Mr. Romney. “He doesn’t hesitate for a second to defend his boss.” During a post-debate spin session last year, it was Mr. Fehrnstrom who twisted the knife after Rick Perry’s now-famous brain freeze. “Nothing I say could darken the night Rick Perry had,” Mr. Fehrnstrom deadpanned to the reporters around him. But Mr. Fehrnstrom’s role has expanded over the years from a public one into a backroom one. It was Mr. Fehrnstrom, aides said, who thought to dig into the financial records of Mr. Gingrich, where the campaign’s researchers found that the former House speaker had invested in housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That allowed Mr. Romney to later quip in a debate, “Have you checked your own investments?” Now, Mr. Fehrnstrom serves as a kind of validator for the many consultants and advisers who have been drawn into Mr. Romney’s presidential orbit. “When Eric trusts you, it helps you build the relationship with the governor,” Mr. Madden said. “Governor Romney holds out Eric’s counsel almost above all else,” said Gail Gitcho, the campaign’s communication’s director. “He certainly is keeper of the Romney record. He’s been there from Day One.” But Mr. Romney is no longer Mr. Fehrnstrom’s only focus, and that fact has proved problematic at times. After Mr. Romney’s failed presidential campaign in 2008, Mr. Fehrnstrom opened up his own political consulting firm called the Shawmut Group. His first client: Scott P. Brown , who — with Mr. Fehrnstrom’s help — claimed the seat of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy for Republicans. Last summer, as he prepared to help Mr. Brown begin his re-election campaign, Mr. Fehrnstrom secretly donned a fake Twitter identity to mock Alan Khazei, then a Democratic Senate hopeful. Using the handle “CrazyKhazei,” Mr. Fehrnstrom for weeks wrote mocking and sometimes nasty missives, anonymously. It was not until he accidentally tweeted one of his snarky notes about Mr. Khazei under his own, nonanonymous Twitter account that he was forced to fess up. The incident was a minor embarrassment to Mr. Romney, who shrugged it off, according to other close aides. Several people in the current Romney inner circle said Mr. Fehrnstrom’s “Etch A Sketch” comment prompted no dressing down either. Mr. Fehrnstrom continues to balance his duties to Mr. Romney and Mr. Brown. But it is Mr. Romney who is trying to become the Republican standard-bearer, with a shot at the White House. And so Mr. Fehrnstrom has become a target. In January, Mr. Axelrod and Mr. Fehrnstrom engaged in their first of what has become occasional Twitter wars, shooting mildly snarky messages back and forth. “Sometimes you don’t need a picture to tell a story,” Mr. Fehrnstrom tweeted to Mr. Axelrod. “The numbers speak for themselves — 1.7 million jobs lost under Obama.” “Dude, none of my business,” Mr. Axelrod responded. “But shouldn’t you be in debate prep instead of trying to explain yourself to me?” An overly modest Mr. Fehrnstrom had the last word: “Haha! Believe it or not, the economy is an issue where we don’t prep Mitt, he preps us.”
|
Presidential Election of 2012;Fehrnstrom Eric;Romney Mitt;Brown Scott P
|
ny0056689
|
[
"business",
"media"
] |
2014/09/10
|
Politico to Start European Operation in Partnership With German Media Company
|
The political website Politico will form a partnership with the German media conglomerate Axel Springer to start a European operation, headquartered in Brussels, with a presence in Germany and France, according to a message sent to employees Tuesday. “We can tell you this is a 50-50 joint venture with Axel Springer and will cover not just Brussels but European politics and policy more broadly,” said Politico’s founders, John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei, in the message. The new publication is a stand-alone enterprise, the two said, and will have a new staff, based entirely in Europe. Politico was founded in 2007 and rose quickly to become a player in the world of political reporting. It has recently been considering ways to grow and refine its journalism. Last year, it started a magazine that focused on deeper and more expansive stories. The site also hired an executive editor, Rick Berke, from The New York Times in October, but he resigned Sunday , citing differences with Mr. Harris and Mr. VandeHei. A replacement for Mr. Berke will not be named until a new strategy is put in place, Mr. Harris and Mr. VandeHei said in a separate memo to employees this weekend. Axel Springer, which is based in Berlin and publishes Bild and Die Welt among others, said last year that it was selling two regional newspapers and several magazines to focus on digital media. It invested in a United States-based news start-up, Ozy, earlier this year.
|
News media,journalism;The Politico;Axel Springer Verlag;John Harris;Jim VandeHei;Brussels;Europe
|
ny0198039
|
[
"sports",
"cycling"
] |
2009/07/20
|
With a Late Climb, Contador Seizes Control of the Tour de France
|
VERBIER, Switzerland — Alberto Contador, the man who came into the Tour de France as Lance Armstrong ’s biggest competition, could not sleep the night before the Tour headed into the Alps on Sunday. Instead, he tossed. He turned. He thought about how he would measure up to the strength of other cyclists in Stage 15, a mountain stage earmarked by riders as a potentially decisive moment of this race. As it turned out, though, Contador’s restlessness was needless. In a stage that may have revealed the rider who will win this Tour, no one came close to Contador on Sunday. He won the leader’s yellow jersey and may wear it all the way to Paris, where the race ends July 26. In the final three and a half miles of the 129-mile (207.5-kilometer) stage, Contador — who is known as the world’s best climber — made his move on the steepest ascent of the day. He began pumping his legs mechanically, as if the pain and the burning in his body were afterthoughts. And in what seemed like a second, he pulled away from the other riders, Armstrong included, as he pedaled uphill, with spectators crowding him on both sides. “Lance Armstrong was my idol, but dropping him today wasn’t important,” said Contador, the 2007 Tour champion . “He was just like any other rival.” Contador, a 26-year-old Spaniard, crossed the finish line 43 seconds ahead of the next rider, Saxo Bank’s Andy Schleck. With his speedy climb, he had taken the yellow jersey from Rinaldo Nocentini, the Italian rider on the AG2R-La Mondiale team. Nocentini, who had been the overall leader since Stage 7, fell to sixth in the standings, 2 minutes 30 seconds back. With six stages to go, Contador is finally in the precious maillot jaune, as the yellow jersey is known. He tried to win it on Stage 7 , another mountain stage, but fell six seconds short. This time, he rode with even more fire, to ensure the jersey would be his. When spectators came too close to him, he angrily smacked at them. Upon crossing the finish line, he raised his arms in celebration as a frenzy of fans rang huge bronze cow bells in his honor. Then he exhaled. After so much speculation over whether he or Armstrong would be the man to lead the Astana team, Contador said it was a relief to be able to show his supremacy. He beat Armstrong, the seven-time Tour champion, again at a mountain stage on this Tour, finishing 1:35 ahead of him. “The differences now are pretty big, and the team’s bet should now be me, no?” Contador said. After watching the stage unfold, Johan Bruyneel, the Astana team manager, said he did not need much more convincing about whether Armstrong or Contador should be the team’s No. 1 rider. “The race has been decided,” he said. “It’s Contador.” Armstrong, 37, rode most of the final ascent with his jersey unzipped, with his teammate Andréas Klöden nearby. He said he suffered and was nearly at his physical limit at the start of the final climb. He is now second in the standings, 1:37 back. Bradley Wiggins, a British rider on the Garmin-Slipstream team, moved to third place from sixth, 1:46 back. When the stage was over, an exhausted and sweaty Armstrong congratulated Contador, vowing not to attack him in later stages of this race. That drama between them was over, Armstrong said, adding that the team’s interests had trumped it. ”As far as I’m concerned, I’m happy to be a domestique,” Armstrong said, using the French word for servant, which meant he would work to help Contador win. “I’m proud of him.” Armstrong promised “fireworks” in Stage 15 on his Twitter page Sunday morning before the peloton headed from Pontarlier, France, into the verdant mountains of the Swiss Alps. “4 those who think it’s been boring, you’ll appreciate the final week,” he wrote. Armstrong was right. The final moments of Stage 15, which featured six climbs, were filled with attacks. With one week left in the Tour, the riders’ time to make a big move was running out. Schleck came into the race as one of the favorites. He took off after Contador on the final climb, which had a punishing 7.5 percent grade, but looked as if he were riding in slow motion as Contador ticked off mile after mile. At one point, Wiggins, the former multiple world and Olympic champion in track cycling, set off after Schleck, too. He did not catch him. But in the end, Wiggins said he was happy with his placement in the overall standings. ”It’s fantastic, but it’s a long way to Paris,” he said. “I’m not getting too excited.” Contador also said it was way too early to celebrate a podium finish — or a potential victory — even though he separated himself from the pack. Monday is the Tour’s second rest day, and there are three more mountain stages left before the final day next Sunday. On top of that, the grueling Mont Ventoux climb comes on the eve of the ride into Paris. “That last week is going to be brutal; anything can happen,” said Christian Vande Velde of Team Garmin, who fell in the overall standings to 12th from 9th (3:59 back) after a tough day. “Anyone within five minutes can still do something.” Still, Vande Velde marveled at Contador’s performance here. It was one to be remembered. “He went away very fast,” Vande Velde said. “What he did by himself, and the time he put into others, was remarkable.”
|
Bicycles and Bicycling;Tour de France (Bicycle Race);Armstrong Lance;Contador Alberto
|
ny0003249
|
[
"us"
] |
2013/04/05
|
How to Get Rich From the Eastward Tilt
|
NEW YORK — If you read just one book this spring to understand how the world is changing, it should be Mohsin Hamid’s new novel, “How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia.” The central theme of this funny and vivid work is familiar: the great shift in the global economy’s center of gravity from West to East. What makes Mr. Hamid’s tale so revealing is that he gets beneath the human skin of that tectonic lurch. Asia’s rise is a story of the eastward tilt of global gross domestic product, but behind those numbers are billions of individual lives that are being radically transformed. In particular, Mr. Hamid, who lives in Lahore, Pakistan, focuses on the rapid urbanization that is both a driver and a consequence of economic growth in the emerging markets. Mr. Hamid reminds us how epic that transition is for the people swept up in it. As he writes in his novel: “You witness a passage of time that outstrips its chronological equivalent. Just as when headed into the mountains a quick shift in altitude can vault one from subtropical jungle to semi-arctic tundra, so too can a few hours on a bus from rural remoteness to urban centrality appear to span millennia.” “There is a massive movement to the cities,” Mr. Hamid told me by telephone this week from Dublin. His novel chronicles a central result of this migration: the breakdown of the social and economic structures of the village and the frantic individual search to replace them with something else. “We are seeing a growing understanding that people need to be individual entrepreneurs, because the old rural networks won’t take care of them anymore,” Mr. Hamid told me. “In most countries across Asia, the state is still pretty weak; it can’t offer you much health care or security in your old age. So people have to fend for themselves.” The result isn’t filthy riches for everyone — Mr. Hamid described the invisible hand of the “ferocious” market economy as operating “with a carrot, but also a pretty big stick.” The individual response to both the peril and the promise is a surge of entrepreneurship. “People are out there as individual actors in this economy,” Mr. Hamid said. “They are all little individual businesses. Most people would say, ‘I work for me.”’ The world’s smartest investors have already figured this out. “The whole nature of entrepreneurship has gone global,” Bill Ford, chief executive of General Atlantic, a growth equity company that invests heavily in young companies in the emerging markets, told me. “That is a function of capital going global and of people knowing about entrepreneurship globally.” Mr. Ford, who describes the founders of the companies in his portfolio with palpable affection and admiration, said one of the distinguishing characteristics of emerging-market entrepreneurs is that they, like Mr. Hamid’s protagonist, are pioneers. “In the emerging markets, these are the first-timers,” Mr. Ford told me. “These are first-generation entrepreneurs. They are people who want to change the world.” Global corporations are surfing this wave, too. The chief executive of Starwood Hotels, Frits van Paasschen, who was born in the Netherlands and is based in the United States, spoke to me this week from Dubai, where he has relocated his executive team for the past five weeks. Mr. van Paasschen, who moved his corporate headquarters to Shanghai in the summer of 2011, told me that 80 percent of the hotels Starwood plans to open in the future are outside Europe, Japan and North America, so that’s where his team needs to be, too. “As urbanization takes place, hotels are part of that infrastructure,” he said. “The growth is just phenomenal.” Elmira Bayrasli, a project leader at the World Policy Institute in New York, is another student of these emerging-market entrepreneurs. She is writing a book whose title says it all: “Steve Jobs Lives in Pakistan.” Like Mr. Ford, Ms. Bayrasli believes that entrepreneurship has become a global phenomenon. “Entrepreneurship once meant Silicon Valley; it meant America,” Ms. Bayrasli, the New York-born daughter of Turkish immigrants to the United States, told me. “What I am trying to show is that the greatest dynamism of entrepreneurship now is global. That Steve Jobs’s spirit really has gone global. It exists everywhere — in places like Pakistan, Turkey and Nigeria.” The novelist, the scholar and the investor all see this entrepreneurial energy emerging in the space left empty by government, not in a space created by it. “I hope the role of government remains benign neglect,” Mr. Ford said. Ms. Bayrasli argues that entrepreneurship in poor countries meets needs that we once thought would be satisfied by outside aid. “You have a real pessimism about traditional development and foreign aid,” she said. “But there are still a lot of poor people in the world who need help. So now the blue pill is entrepreneurship: Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” For investors like Mr. Ford and corporate leaders like Mr. van Paasschen, the rising tide of emerging-market entrepreneurs is already yielding rich returns. Ms. Bayrasli thinks they are on the verge of having a direct impact on everyone. “They are on track to become globally competitive, rivaling the Apples and the Facebooks and the Googles,” Ms. Bayrasli said. “They are coming up with innovations that a lot of people here in the United States can benefit from.” Chrystia Freeland is editor of Thomson Reuters Digital.
|
Entrepreneurship;Third World;Steve Jobs;Apple;Facebook;Google;Pakistan;Starwood Hotels
|
ny0081586
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2015/11/02
|
Royals Run to a Crown No Longer Out of Reach
|
It is all over for the Mets, this season of triumph, this World Series of torture. The Kansas City Royals won the title at Citi Field in Game 5 on Sunday, earning it with a relentless brand of joyous teamwork. Baseball like it oughta be, as the Mets once said of themselves. “I remember as an area scout, one of the first things I was told: Pick players just like you’re in gym class,” said Dayton Moore, the Royals’ general manager, who patiently built a throwback champion. “We picked players that we liked watching play.” Only the most ardent Mets fans, feeling the thud of a fresh gut punch, might disagree. In the age of the strikeout, it is heartening to know that a team can still win with guile and gumption and extraordinary skill at the most basic of baseball tasks: putting the ball in play. The cold accounting for the Mets is that they lost three of these games after leading in the eighth or ninth inning. Jeurys Familia blew three saves, but the last two felt more like team breakdowns. That included the finale, when the Royals ran the Mets right into winter. The lasting image of the night will be Eric Hosmer, in a blizzard of dirt, erasing the Mets’ final lead of their best season in 15 years. Soon enough, the Mets descended into caricature. The Royals erupted for five runs in a sloppy Mets 12th inning to take the championship with a 7-2 victory. “We never quit,” said Royals catcher Salvador Perez, the winner of the Series Most Valuable Player Award, who hit .364. “We never put our heads down. We never think about, ‘O.K., the game is over.’ We always compete to the last out.” The Mets and their fans will dream in serial nightmares this winter. There was Alex Gordon’s game-tying homer in the ninth inning of Game 1. There was Daniel Murphy’s game-tying error in Game 4. And, on Sunday, there was Hosmer’s game-tying dash in the ninth. It came on a one-out grounder by Perez to the Mets’ captain, David Wright, at third base. Wright looked at Hosmer before throwing to first, but it was an empty gesture. He was not about to give Perez first base, and Hosmer held his ground. “That was kind of a weird play to begin with,” Wright said. “It was a jam shot that kind of hit and took a funny hop. You try to check him back as much as you can, but nobody can get over there to cover third for there to be any kind of real fake, to get him to freeze or go back.” Image The Royals celebrate after Eric Hosmer scores in the ninth inning of Game 5. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times It was classic Royals baseball. Put the bat on the ball, even against an elite closer, and something good can happen. The odds increase when the base runner forces the issue. Players talk about the importance of slowing the game down, keeping a calm heartbeat when everything seems scrambled. But the Royals scramble the mind and break the heart. As soon as Wright threw to first baseman Lucas Duda, Hosmer streaked for the plate. Rusty Kuntz, the Royals’ first base coach, said he had never seen Hosmer run so fast. “I had to do a double-take,” Kuntz said. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, did we pinch-run there, or what?’ It’s just an instinctual play. I’m sure when he was in Little League, he probably pulled that off — not in the World Series.” Duda said it had taken guts — actually, he named a different body part — for Hosmer to bolt when he did. “The game’s on the line,” Duda said, “and he went for it.” Duda said he did not know if he could have thrown out Hosmer, but it really did not matter. He should have made a better throw, he said, and offered no excuses. Kuntz knew it would have been close. “Some of the guys were saying, ‘Well, if he throws it right on the bag, he’s out,’ ” Kuntz said. “We’ll take that chance. This is the World Series. We don’t say, ‘Well, what if?’ We just go.” In the instant before Duda made his throw, was there really any doubt what would happen? The Mets had looked shaky in the field all series — remember Wright’s error, which put the winning run on base in the 14th inning of Game 1? — and this was another example. Even Duda had to glumly concede the difference. “The Royals played extremely clean, aggressive baseball,” Duda said, and it could not have been a surprise. But a scouting report and the real thing are very different. The Royals hit only one ball over the fence in five games. Yet danger lurked everywhere in their lineup. They stole bases in their game-tying and go-ahead rallies. They also bashed a double over the left fielder’s head — by Hosmer in the ninth, to drive in the first run — on the last pitch of Matt Harvey’s season. Manager Terry Collins and the pitching coach Dan Warthen let Harvey start the ninth inning, and they were right to listen to their ace. Through eight innings, Harvey had a four-hit shutout with nine strikeouts and 102 pitches. There was every reason to believe that Harvey and his rebuilt elbow, the source of so much intrigue this season, could survive the ninth. This was a brash star refusing to let a rival celebrate on his turf. It was the stuff of Jack Morris or Bob Gibson, demanding to finish what they had started. It just did not work. “I made my clear point that I wanted to go back out,” Harvey said. “One pitch here, or a fly ball, we’re out of that situation and the game’s different. I told both him and Dan that I wanted the ball. Unfortunately I just couldn’t get it done.” As it turned out, Familia faced six batters on Sunday and retired them all, despite losing the lead on Perez’s grounder. Yet the way Harvey was pitching, he was the Mets’ best hope to get the final three outs. Yet he walked Lorenzo Cain on seven pitches, the second night in a row that Cain had drawn a critical walk in a game-tying rally. Cain stole second and then scored when Hosmer stroked his double over Michael Conforto. Hosmer had spoken at length before Game 5 about the Royals’ motivation, about the way they used their Game 7 loss to the San Francisco Giants last fall as fuel for their encore. “We think about it quite often,” Hosmer said. “I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again: I think that’s kind of something that we all turn to mentally, to kind of — when there’s points in time during the season where your team is not going too well.” After all those seasons in the wilderness — no playoff appearances between 1986 and 2013 — these Royals have now matched their ancestors for autumn glory. The Royals of George Brett and Frank White also reached two World Series and won the second. “We still feel like we’re still in the heart of this whole thing,” Hosmer said. “We have a lot of guys that came up in the same years, and we still have a lot of years left with the team.” Maybe, but maybe not. Johnny Cueto and Ben Zobrist seem likely to leave as free agents, and possibly Gordon, too. These chances are precious. Ask the Mets of the 1980s how many rings they expected to win. The final tally: one, in 1986. It remains the last title for the franchise. The Mets’ young core should give them more chances to contend. But this chance is finished — emphatically, somehow, in a series that should have been closer. “They outplayed us,” Wright said. “As much as that hurts, as much as it stings, we can hold our heads high and take pride in what we were able to accomplish this year. We fell just short.”
|
Baseball;World Series;Mets;Kansas City Royals
|
ny0218620
|
[
"business",
"economy"
] |
2010/05/26
|
U.S. Consumer Confidence Continues to Rise
|
Americans’ confidence in the economy rose in May for the third consecutive month, fed by growing optimism about job prospects. Still, economists worry that improvements in the mood of shoppers may be reversed amid huge declines on Wall Street and fears that a debt crisis in Europe could thwart global growth. The Conference Board, based in New York, said Tuesday that its Consumer Confidence Index rose to 63.3 points, from a revised 57.7 points in April. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected 59 points. The increase was bolstered by consumers’ outlook over the next six months, one component of the index, which soared to 85.3 from 77.4, the highest since it reached 89.2 in August 2007, before the recession . The other component of the index, which measures how shoppers feel now about the economy, rose to 30.2 from 28.2. The index — which measures how consumers feel about business conditions, the job market and the next six months — has been recovering fitfully since hitting a record low of 25.3 in February 2009. A reading above 90 indicates the economy is on solid footing; above 100 signals strong growth. Economists watch the number closely because consumer spending, including spending on health care and other major items, accounts for about 70 percent of the nation’s economic activity. Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board Consumer Research Center, said on Tuesday that though confidence remained weak, it appeared “to be gaining some traction.” Economists contend confidence will remain weak for at least another year because of stubbornly high unemployment. Employers are expected to add 425,000 jobs in May, up from 290,000 jobs in April, but economists project the unemployment rate will be 9.8 percent, down only slightly from 9.9 percent. The Labor Department is to release the monthly job figures June 4. Adding to the dark mood was a downbeat report from an important housing index. The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index , released Tuesday, fell 0.5 percent in March from February, a sign that the housing market remained weak even as mortgage rates were near historic lows. The expiration last month of the government’s home-buyer tax credit could hurt sales in the coming months. The National Association of Realtors said Monday that sales of previously owned homes were the highest in five months and exceeded expectations. Buyers were rushing to meet a deadline for a tax credit. Stores had a solid spring selling season, but May is turning out to be disappointing. The Conference Board poll — based on a random survey of consumers sent to 5,000 households May 1-18 — includes volatile days in the stock market, but excludes the 376-point plunge in the Dow Jones industrial average last Thursday, the worst one-day drop in more than a year. “We were starting to see some good signs that we were building momentum” in spending, the chief economist at Gallup, Dennis Jacobe, said. “This has put a wrench into the works. The momentum has come to a halt.” Based on Gallup’s poll of 1,000 shoppers a day, consumers’ outlook has deteriorated from April, Mr. Jacobe said. The percentage of consumers who predict the economy will worsen is 60 percent, up from 54 percent in April.
|
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates);Housing and Real Estate;Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Home Price Index
|
ny0238550
|
[
"us"
] |
2010/06/25
|
Judge Won’t Stay Drilling Decision
|
The Obama administration’s efforts to suspend deepwater oil drilling were dealt another setback in court on Thursday when the federal judge who struck down the administration’s six-month moratorium refused to delay the decision’s effects. . The Interior Department petitioned Judge Martin L.C. Feldman of the United States District Court in New Orleans to grant a stay of his decision, which lifted a ban on new drilling projects and on work on the 33 rigs already in place in the Gulf. But Judge Feldman said he was denying the delay for the same reasons he gave for his June 22 decision: that the moratorium was doing “irreparable harm” to the businesses in the gulf that depend on drilling activity and that the government had not given sufficient basis for the moratorium. The White House imposed the moratorium in May, about a month after a fatal explosion and fire on April 20 on the Deepwater Horizon rig, which left an undersea well spewing crude oil into the gulf. The moratorium, intended to give time for improvements in rig safety measures, was “blanket, generic, indeed punitive,” the judge ruled. Judge Feldman said on Thursday that the Interior Department now had 30 days to comply with his June 22 decision, a longer time than the 21 days he originally specified in his ruling. The government’s appeal of the ruling will be heard by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Meanwhile, Ken Salazar, the Interior secretary, plans to reintroduce the moratorium in another version in the next several days, emphasizing why the moratorium is necessary in answer to the judge’s criticism. Judge Feldman’s ruling on Thursday, denying the stay, held few surprises, given his ruling on Tuesday, but it did not mean that drilling would resume immediately. “Does this mean companies are going to rush back to work?” asked Andy Radford, the senior policy advisor for offshore issues with the American Petroleum Institute. “There are probably too many unknowns to get a large-scale resumption of work at this point.” Mr. Radford said Mr. Salazar has been talking about a “flexible” moratorium that could be more beneficial than the original blanket ban. It could identify “a framework where companies can meet safety requirements and have equipment inspected and get back to work while we figure what exactly is going on,” Mr. Radford said. Judge Feldman’s ruling striking down the moratorium was divisive for environmental groups, politicians, and oil industry officials. Some environmental groups said that Judge Feldman may have a conflict of interest, because as recently as 2008, he owned stock in several energy-related firms, including Transocean, which owned the Deepwater Horizon rig. In a separate motion from the one for the stay, several environmental groups requested that Judge Feldman disclose a more recent financial statement. He granted the motion on Thursday, writing that it would be released by the office of the federal courts as soon as practicable. In the gulf, the efforts by BP, the company responsible for the stricken well, to collect the leaking oil struggled to get back to the level reached earlier this week, before the company had to remove a containment cap over the well on Wednesday. A remote-operated submersible had bumped a vent the day before, compromising the improvised oil-collection system, BP said. The company inspected and replaced the cap by Wednesday evening, and was able to collect and process 8,300 barrels of oil through it — roughly half what it been able to collect daily before the bumping mishap. Another 8,530 barrels of oil were collected on Wednesday using a second siphoning arrangement at the well site; that oil was burned.
|
BP Plc;Decisions and Verdicts;Offshore Drilling and Exploration;Obama Barack
|
ny0126623
|
[
"sports"
] |
2012/08/12
|
Horse Trainer Attfield Worries About Woodbine Track
|
Roger Attfield loves horses. He fell for them as a boy growing up in England, where he became an accomplished show jumping rider and steeplechase jockey. It was his love of horses that took him to Canada 42 years ago hoping to make horse training his livelihood. It was his devotion to horses that carried him through an illustrious career and made him only the second Canadian trainer to be inducted into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame . Yet, while he was being honored in a ceremony last Friday at Saratoga, receiving the highest recognition for North American thoroughbred horsemen — putting him in such distinguished company as Bobby Frankel, Charlie Whittingham and Woody Stephens — back at his home track, Woodbine in Toronto, there is little to celebrate because the future of horse racing in Ontario is in doubt. For Canadian horse racing fans, Attfield, 72, needs no introduction. He is the best of his generation. He has been named the country’s top trainer eight times and has won the nation’s most prestigious race, the Queen’s Plate, a record-tying eight times. He has campaigned three Canadian Triple Crown winners and amassed $90 million in purses and 370 stakes wins. The only other Canadian trainer to be inducted to the Hall of Fame was Lucien Laurin, the trainer of Secretariat. The award is doubly special for Attfield, who will be honored with jockey John Velazquez, who has been the pilot for several of Attfield’s biggest wins, including last year’s $2 million Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf with Perfect Shirl. “Johnny has ridden so many great races for me over the years, and I’ve always had great admiration for him,” Attfield said from London, where he was cheering on his girlfriend, Tinya Konyot, a United States dressage competitor in the Olympics. For Velazquez, the feelings are mutual. “What a great guy and a great person to be around, and a great trainer as well,” Velazquez said after last Monday’s win for Attfield with Kissable in the Waya Stakes at Saratoga. Attfield and Velazquez are joined by the 2004 Horse of the Year, Ghostzapper, Frank Stronach’s Adena Springs and the trainer Robert Wheeler. Attfield speaks with reverence about some of the great horses that passed through his barn. His favorites were Play the King, who won the Queen’s Plate, and Izvestia, the platinum gray who took the Canadian Triple Crown. Those horses went on to be named Canada’s Horse of the Year, as have four others under Attfield’s care. “They were just so professional and such interesting horses to train,” he said. “And their characters were wonderful and they always gave you their best.” Talkin Man offered Attfield his best chance at North America’s biggest race, the Kentucky Derby . He won two major New York preps, the Gotham and the Wood Memorial, but fizzled on the first Saturday in May. Although many overlooked Perfect Shirl at 27-1 last year in the Breeders’ Cup, her performance was vintage Attfield. But the tone in his voice quickly changes when he ponders the possibility of never having another chance at a Queen’s Plate or, more important, being unable to continue to do what he loves in the province where he has been so successful for so long. This year, the government of Ontario canceled its 14-year-old Slots at Racetracks program, a revenue-sharing agreement that transformed the province’s 17 racetracks into racinos by installing thousands of slot machines. In the agreement, the racing industry received 20 percent of slots revenue ($345 million last year), as compensation for gambling money lost to the machines. Since the arrival of the slot machines, Ontario’s racing industry has undergone a fundamental economic shift: it has become the envy of international horse racing, with inflated purses that attract some of the biggest names in the sport. A healthy Ontario sires program has made it possible for local breeders and owners to have a taste of racing’s riches. In turn, according to the Ontario Horse Racing Industry Association, the government was the beneficiary of $1 billion last year from the slots program. The province has a current debt of about $15 billion, and it is looking for ways to recoup money. Officials are developing a gambling strategy that involves pulling the slot machines from the racetracks, effective next March 31, and building casinos and slot parlors in higher-density areas with the help of private investors. With horse racing in steady decline, the government argues, if the industry cannot support itself, measures need to be taken to make it viable, including reducing the number of racetracks in Ontario. The horse racing industry is certain it will be crippled without the slots, jeopardizing the jobs of 60,000 Ontarians tied to racing. In June, Woodbine Entertainment Group’s president and chief executive, Nick Eaves, announced that without the slot revenue, Canada’s flagship racetrack could not afford to operate. Two standardbred tracks and Fort Erie Racetrack in Niagara Falls, the only other thoroughbred raceway in the province, have been stripped of slots and will be forced to close at the end of the year. A panel of three former politicians has been created to help horse racing become self-sufficient. For Attfield, the demise of Ontario horse racing would be too upsetting to bear. It would mean laying off 30 employees from his barn at Woodbine, and he fears most will not find jobs elsewhere. “Ontario horse racing was so very respected throughout the world, and it’s been such a role model,” he said. “We had such a great partnership with the government. It’s going to be devastating for the horse people if it goes through the way they want it to go through at the moment. It’s going to have a considerable ripple effect.” Michael Byrne, the owner of Park Stud, one of Ontario’s leading breeding operations and thoroughbred sale consignors, said that the horse people “are quite frightened.” “Everybody’s holding their breath because there are so many jobs at stake,” he said, including blacksmiths, and hay and grain suppliers who will all be effected by any drastic moves in the industry. “I’m optimistic that common sense will prevail,” he added. Ontario horse racing has significant history: the province’s fertile land is the birthplace of the sport’s most notable sire, Northern Dancer, whose legacy lives on in so many of today’s champions. Even an uncertain future cannot diminish Attfield’s accomplishments. And he shows no signs of slowing down. He still has his sights set on another shot at the Derby, and winning races outside North America. Whether or not that happens, Attfield said: “I want to continue enjoying being around horses. If a horse comes along, we’ll go wherever the limits are.”
|
Attfield Roger;Horse Racing;Jockeys Drivers and Trainers;Awards Decorations and Honors;Ontario (Canada)
|
ny0191040
|
[
"business"
] |
2009/05/14
|
L. William Seidman, Who Led F.D.I.C. During Savings and Loan Crisis, Dies at 88
|
L. William Seidman, a plain-talking accountant whose credibility and unflinching stance in political skirmishes helped him transform the unglamorous job of chief banking regulator into one of the most powerful positions in Washington, died Wednesday in Albuquerque. He was 88. The cause was complications from pneumonia, his son, Tom, said. Mr. Seidman worked for Presidents Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, but it was his tenure as chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation from 1985 to 1991 that defined his career. Then as now, the financial system confronted an alarming mountain of loans gone bad, the leftovers of a period of speculative excess in real estate. Under Mr. Seidman’s supervision, the F.D.I.C. closed hundreds of failed banks and savings associations as it attended to a debacle that cost taxpayers roughly $200 billion. He was so effective in stanching the damage that he was appointed the first chairman of the Resolution Trust Corporation, an entity created in 1989 to partly recoup taxpayer losses from the savings and loan crisis. The entity liquidated bad loans, junk bonds and failed real estate ventures left behind by defunct financial institutions. On Capitol Hill, Mr. Seidman used refreshing candor to cultivate rapport with lawmakers, dispensing unvarnished appraisals of the perils menacing the financial system. And an acerbic sense of humor — reporters were quick to seize on his frequent one-liners — helped him survive as the bearer of bad tidings amid a rising tide of red ink. During a single week in August 1990, as the S.& L. crisis neared its peak, Mr. Seidman appeared before the House Banking Committee on a Monday to proclaim that the bailout effort would cost $100 billion in 1991, more than double the amount expected a few months earlier. The next day, he told the Senate Banking Committee that the F.D.I.C.’s insurance reserves faced a $2 billion drain — a figure that grew to $4.1 billion before the year was out. A mere two days later, he was back in front of the Senate committee explaining that fraud had played a role in more than half of the 500-plus savings and loan institutions that had failed at that point. Despite his relentless trumpeting of bad news, Mr. Seidman — a Republican appointed by President Reagan in 1985 — was warmly received by legislators on both sides of the aisle. “One of the bright spots in this whole mess has been Mr. Seidman,” Charles E. Schumer, then a Democratic Representative from Brooklyn and now New York’s senior senator, told The New York Times in 1990. But Mr. Seidman’s eagerness to elaborate on the extent of the financial crisis drew little applause from the White House, where the Bush administration mounted an unsuccessful effort to push him out of his job in 1990, nominating a successor 18 months before his term had expired. Mr. Seidman rallied dozens of Congressional supporters and served out his term. He successfully resisted a proposal to fold the federal deposit insurance program into the Treasury Department. The flip side of his enmity with the Bush administration was the reputation that Mr. Seidman gained as a champion of the interests of bank depositors. He stymied a 1989 Treasury Department proposal that the government recoup the costs of the savings and loan bailouts by charging depositors through higher premiums on deposit insurance. “Instead of the bank giving you a toaster, you give them one with your deposit,” Mr. Seidman famously said of the plan to the White House chief of staff, John H. Sununu, in 1989. After leaving the F.D.I.C. in October 1991, Mr. Seidman embarked on a news media career, becoming chief commentator for the financial television network CNBC and publisher of a magazine, Bank Director. Mr. Seidman drew on his experiences at the helm of the F.D.I.C. to offer insights on the current financial crisis. In a column in The Wall Street Journal on Friday, Mr. Seidman expressed confidence that the current F.D.I.C. overseer, Sheila C. Bair, could expand her staff to supervise anticipated auctions of bad assets. “But take it from someone who has been at least partially there,” Mr. Seidman wrote. “It isn’t going to be easy. And it has to be done fast.” Lewis William Seidman (pronounced SEED-man) was born April 29, 1921, in East Grand Rapids, Mich., the son of Frank E. Seidman, an immigrant from Russia who became wealthy as a founder of Seidman & Seidman, an accounting firm that specialized in audits and taxes. His mother, the former Ester Lubetsky, was a Michigan native of Lithuanian descent. Mr. Seidman graduated from Dartmouth College in 1943 with a B.A. in economics and joined the Navy. He served as an ensign in the Pacific during World War II, earning a Bronze Star and 11 battle stars. He then earned a law degree from Harvard and an M.B.A. from the University of Michigan. Mr. Seidman joined the family firm in 1949, becoming a full partner five years later and its national managing partner in 1968. He oversaw an expansion that transformed the firm into one of the nation’s 10 largest accounting businesses. In 1958, he formed a committee to explore starting a liberal arts college in Grand Rapids, later securing a state charter for what is today Grand Valley State University, which opened its doors in 1963. Mr. Seidman was board chairman for 12 years. In 1962, he joined the ticket of George Romney, then a Republican candidate for governor, to run for Michigan state auditor general. Mr. Romney won, but Mr. Seidman narrowly lost, despite strong support from Mr. Ford, then a popular Congressman. Mr. Seidman worked for Mr. Romney as special assistant for economic affairs and was finance chairman for his short-lived presidential bid in 1968. In February 1974, Mr. Seidman went to work for Mr. Ford, then the vice president, in a temporary assignment as management and budget consultant. When Mr. Ford became president in August of that year, Mr. Seidman was named executive director of his Economic Policy Board and served as the president’s assistant for economic affairs until 1977. His longtime friendship with Mr. Ford gave Mr. Seidman an unusual degree of access; he played an important advisory role in major initiatives, including transportation deregulation, anti-inflation legislation and tax policy. Mr. Seidman left Washington in 1977 to become vice chairman and chief financial officer of the Phelps Dodge Corporation. In 1982, he became dean of the business school at Arizona State University in Tempe, where he remained until 1985. In 1983 and 1984, Mr. Seidman was co-chairman of a productivity commission appointed by Mr. Reagan; the post led to a book, “Productivity: The American Advantage,” written with Steven L. Skancke and published in 1990. His second book, “Full Faith and Credit,” published in 1993, recounted his experiences during the savings industry bailout. In addition to his son, Tom, of Los Angeles, Mr. Seidman is survived by his wife, Sally, the former Sarah Marshall Berry; five daughters, Tracy, of Wagon Mound, N.M.; Sarah, of Middlesex, Vt.; Carrie of Albuquerque, N.M.; Meg Williams of Red Lodge, Mont.; and Robin Volock of Corrales, N.M.; 11 grandchildren; and one great-granddaughter. Mr. Seidman thought of himself as an artist at heart. He made mobiles for friends and family, drawing inspiration from Alexander Calder. Mr. Seidman met Mr. Calder when the city of Grand Rapids commissioned the artist to create a monumental public work, “La Grande Vitesse,” installed in 1969. Mr. Seidman recalled that he had hoped to visit the artist’s studio, but Mr. Calder hesitated. “He said he had been worried about inviting me to his studio, because I’d see how he did his work,” Mr. Seidman said. “But after he saw my mobiles, he decided it was O.K. if I came to visit. I guess he didn’t consider me a threat. But then again, he hasn’t seen my latest work.”
|
Seidman L. William;Federal Deposit Insurance Corp;United States Politics and Government;Deaths (Obituaries)
|
ny0157073
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2008/06/23
|
Making Progress on Pensions as the Session Draws to a Close
|
ALBANY — Heading into the last day of the legislative session on Monday, Gov. David A. Paterson and lawmakers are close to agreement on a series of changes aimed at preventing abuses of the state pension system, people involved in the negotiations said. The legislation, drafted by Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo’s office and introduced by lawmakers late last week, would ban the widespread and costly practice in which school districts pay lawyers who do consulting work by enrolling them in the pension system. It would also prevent retired public employees from collecting their pensions even after they are rehired, a practice known as “double dipping.” The legislation comes amid an investigation by the attorney general’s office and actions taken by the comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, to curb pension abuses. Mr. Cuomo has said that hundreds of lawyers have been unlawfully added to the pension rolls by districts over the last few decades. Last week, he announced deals with two upstate law firms that required the lawyers to forfeit their credits and pay $600,000 to the state. “The systemic abuse my office has uncovered in the public pension and benefits systems has wasted millions of taxpayer dollars,” Mr. Cuomo said. “We will continue working to put an end to the abuse and an end to lawyers receiving public benefits they are not entitled to.” On Sunday, the governor, above, also announced completed deals that would ban the sale of recalled toys, cribs and other children’s products (no such ban currently is in place in New York), would impose new laws to prevent identity theft and would provide grants for making homes more energy efficient. “My colleagues in the Legislature joined in my shock as we learned how readily available dangerous and recalled toys are in stores in our state,” the governor said of the toy agreement, adding that a series of inspections last year found that about 400 stores were selling items that had been recalled. Critics have said that the legislative session has lacked urgency at a time when the state faces a $5 billion deficit in next year’s budget and when citizens continue to shoulder one of the highest state and local tax burdens, according to several studies. In addition, some of the more high-profile issues being negotiated appeared to be far from concluded. The governor’s proposal to limit the amount by which school districts can increase property taxes is considered all but dead, because of opposition among Assembly Democrats. Legislation to reauthorize industrial development agencies, which are used by hospitals, private schools and nonprofit organizations to finance construction projects, also appeared to be in jeopardy. A proposed overhaul of public authorities, which would tighten their oversight, also appeared to be in jeopardy, as did a proposal to advance efforts to clean up environmentally damaged land known as brownfields. One thing was clear, however. The temperature has been significantly lowered between the governor’s office and the Legislature since the exit of Eliot Spitzer, who resigned in March after reports that he was a client of a prostitution ring. Over the weekend, Mr. Paterson kept in contact with both Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader. The Assembly was expected to extend its session beyond Monday, while the Senate was not. “We all continue to meet in good faith on a wide range of issues important to the people of New York,” said Risa B. Heller, Mr. Paterson’s communications director. No Greater Clarity for Brownfields The future of a state program that provides tax credits for companies that decontaminate and redevelop polluted land appears to be as uncertain as ever. Talks over how to overhaul the Brownfield Cleanup Program were said to be at an impasse in recent days, people involved in the talks said, though negotiations can often turn around in the last 24 hours of the session. The major obstacle is the cost, which is hardly a small concern with the state’s financial outlook in question. Gov. David A. Paterson would like to see a limit set on how much each company can receive in tax credits, but Senate Republicans favor a less restrictive approach. This month a report by the state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, below, said that the tax credits could cost the state as much as $3.1 billion for the 200 projects currently in the pipeline. It also found New York’s benefits to be far more expensive than those offered by neighboring states like Massachusetts and New Jersey. How to keep the cost of the tax credits down was one of many unsettled issues during negotiations over the 2008-09 budget in March and April. When agreement on a bill proved elusive, the Legislature approved a 90-day moratorium on accepting new contaminated sites into the brownfield program. With that moratorium set to expire next month, and the Legislature set to adjourn for the year on Monday, the future of the brownfield program could remain in limbo for some time. That prospect has some of the program’s supporters anxious. “The failure to fix the brownfields program before the legislative session ends will be a disaster for desperately needed economic development in New York, and for families living next to these contaminated sites for years,” said Mathy Stanislaus, co-director of New Partners for Community Revitalization, a nonprofit that promotes environmentally friendly development. JEREMY W. PETERS Bloomberg Move Stalls Negotiation Negotiations over a broad overhaul of the state’s hundreds of public authorities, which critics have often called a shadow government, appeared to be in limbo. Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Westchester Democrat, who sponsored authority legislation, said that demands by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to have more power over his own appointees to authority boards — ostensibly independent — had put the negotiations in doubt. “The mayor has intervened in a very unfortunate way,” said Mr. Brodsky, left. “His proposals would make the authorities he has anything to do with an extension of his office. It’s bizarre.” But the city believes that limiting the mayor’s power will not help the situation. Farrell Sklerov, a spokesman for the mayor, said: “The City has serious concerns that this proposal would ultimately reduce public accountability and hamper economic development.” DANNY HAKIM Giving Nurses a Break Nurses at hospitals and other health care facilities will no longer be forced to work overtime under legislation that will take effect next year. “We cannot give patients the kind of quality care they deserve when we have exhausted nurses working well past reasonable limits,” said Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther, Democrat of Orange County and a registered nurse. Under the agreement announced last week, there would be exceptions for natural disasters, state emergencies or medical procedures in which a nurse is already taking part. DANNY HAKIM Bright Spot for Beer Drinkers Gas may be getting more expensive, but keg deposits could be getting cheaper. A new law passed by both houses last week would reduce the deposit amount for beer kegs from $75 to $50. “The beer sellers said that it was hurting their sales,” said Senator George H. Winner Jr., an upstate Republican who sponsored the bill. The lower fee, he said, “would still provide a disincentive for kids.” DANNY HAKIM
|
Law and Legislation;Albany (NY);Paterson David A;Medicine and Health;Politics and Government
|
ny0187520
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2009/04/17
|
Replicating Charm, but Losing Old Yankee Stadium Advantage
|
By the middle of the seventh inning Thursday, the Yankees ’ highly anticipated home opener had officially been declared a disaster. The Yankees opened a new season and christened a new stadium in the eerie shadow of the old. The home team trailed, 10-1, after a nine-run seventh by the Cleveland Indians on the way to a 10-2 loss. And Yankees players were showered with boos in the new $1.6 billion stadium. For most major league baseball teams, the home opener is the essence of the clean slate, the fresh start. For the Yankees, the idea of starting with a clean slate is daunting, like climbing Mount Everest. After they were pasted Thursday, the incline became a lot steeper. This was much more than a simple home opener: This was the opening of a lavish new Yankee Stadium, built by a franchise with baseball’s highest payroll, despite the economic collapse around it — a franchise accustomed to winning championships, although it hasn’t won a World Series title since 2000. Old Yankee Stadium represented one of the greatest, or at least one of the most storied, home-field advantages in North American sports. Visiting players routinely gushed about walking into the Stadium and soaking in its history. With a simple move across the street, that part of the Yankees’ legacy is gone and the franchise, payroll aside, is now on a level playing field with the competition. After Thursday’s game, pitcher C. C. Sabathia was asked whether the new Stadium, with its amenities, felt as special as the one he used to visit when he was a member of the Indians. “It still has that feel because the park still looks kind of like the old Stadium,” Sabathia said. “But it’s a weird feeling, too, going out with a clean slate and us starting a new era of Yankee baseball.” The focus on the Yankees’ mystique tends to be baseball-centric, but what gave the old Yankee Stadium its luster were classic championship moments that cut across sports. The old Stadium was a veritable museum of American sports history: ¶Knute Rockne’s famous “Win one for the Gipper” speech delivered at halftime of Notre Dame’s 1928 victory over Army. ¶Joe Louis’s 1938 victory over Max Schmeling in a heavyweight title bout. ¶The Baltimore Colts’ sudden-death victory over the Giants in 1958 in the Greatest Game Ever Played. ¶The string of World Series appearances through the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, then from 1996 to 2003. Before Thursday’s game, Derek Jeter, asked about the recent losses in Tampa Bay, including a 15-5 pummeling, said that a six-month baseball season was hardly over in April. Indeed, a month from now, the embarrassment in the home opener may well be a footnote. Manager Joe Girardi said that Thursday’s game was “hard to watch,” but he added that the Yankees’ fate and the legacy of the new Stadium wouldn’t be decided on the first day. True enough, though Thursday’s rout, three days after the rout against Tampa Bay, raises questions about how long it will take these Yankees to fill a new stadium with the sort of championship moments that made the old Stadium so special. Soon? Longer? Never? Before Jeter’s first plate appearance Thursday, a bat was placed across home plate. The bat, we were told, was used by Babe Ruth on opening day 1923, for the opening of the old Yankee Stadium. Ruth homered that day and the Yankees swept the opening four-game series against the Red Sox, then cruised to the pennant and the World Series title. On Thursday, Jeter flied out and the Yankees were pummeled. Asked what he would miss about the old Stadium, Jeter said, “You’re going to miss everything about it.” On its own merits, the new Stadium is a gem. Every effort was made to duplicate and, in many instances extend, the charm of the old Stadium. The signature frieze at the top of the stadium bowl is back, the manually operated auxiliary scoreboard is replicated, and a gap between the bleachers and right field allows us to get a peek at the No. 4 elevated train. But some crucial things did not make the trip across the street — and they never will. Mystiques are created by championships and championship moments: title fights, football classics and World Series victories. The old mystique is gone. You can argue that the mystique began to fade seasons ago. What will that legacy be? Who will be the first group to win a championship in the new Yankee Stadium? How the Yankees transfer that mystique from the old building, now gray and dark and awaiting its demise, to the new is Girardi’s challenge. The questions may not be answered for years. The architects and the Yankee organization did a great job of moving as much memory as they could into the new Stadium. Sadly for these Yankees, some spirits just don’t travel that well.
|
Yankee Stadium (NYC);New York Yankees;Stadiums and Arenas;Baseball;Athletics and Sports
|
ny0261144
|
[
"business"
] |
2011/06/21
|
Supreme Court Blocks Bias Suit Against Wal-Mart
|
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday threw out an enormous employment discrimination class-action suit against Wal-Mart that had sought billions of dollars on behalf of as many as 1.5 million female workers. The suit claimed that Wal-Mart’s policies and practices had led to countless discriminatory decisions over pay and promotions. The court divided 5 to 4 along ideological lines on the basic question in the case — whether the suit satisfied a requirement of the class-action rules that “there are questions of law or fact common to the class” of female employees. The court’s five more conservative justices said no, shutting down the suit and limiting the ability of other plaintiffs to band together in large class actions. The court was unanimous, however, in saying that the plaintiffs’ lawyers had improperly sued under a part of the class-action rules that was not primarily concerned with monetary claims. Business groups welcomed the decision, and labor and consumer groups strongly criticized it. But all agreed it was momentous. “This is without a doubt the most important class-action case in more than a decade,” said Robin S. Conrad, a lawyer with the litigation unit of the United States Chamber of Commerce , the business advocacy group. The court did not decide whether Wal-Mart had, in fact, discriminated against the women, only that they could not proceed as a class. The court’s decision on that issue will almost certainly affect all sorts of other class-action suits, including ones brought by investors and consumers, because it tightened the definition of what constituted a common issue for a class action and said that judges must often consider the merits of plaintiffs’ claims in deciding whether they may proceed as a class. “You will have people invoking the decision in lots of different cases,” said Brian T. Fitzpatrick, a law professor at Vanderbilt University specializing in class-action law. “The Supreme Court has said that it’s O.K. to look at the merits of the lawsuit to decide whether to allow it to go forward at the earliest possible moment.” Justice Antonin Scalia , writing for the majority, said the women suing Wal-Mart could not show that they would receive “a common answer to the crucial question, why was I disfavored? ” He noted that the company, the nation’s largest private employer, operated some 3,400 stores, had an expressed policy forbidding discrimination and granted local managers substantial discretion. “On its face, of course, that is just the opposite of a uniform employment practice that would provide the commonality needed for a class action,” Justice Scalia wrote. “It is a policy against having uniform employment practices.” The case involved “literally millions of employment decisions,” Justice Scalia wrote, and the plaintiffs were required to point to “some glue holding the alleged reasons for all those decisions together.” The plaintiffs sought to make that case with testimony from William T. Bielby, a sociologist specializing in social framework analysis. Professor Bielby told a lower court that he had collected general “scientific evidence about gender bias, stereotypes and the structure and dynamics of gender inequality in organizations.” He said he also had reviewed extensive litigation materials gathered by the lawyers in the case. He concluded that Wal-Mart’s culture might foster pay and other disparities through a centralized personnel policy that allowed for subjective decisions by local managers. Such practices, he argued, allowed stereotypes to sway personnel choices, making “decisions about compensation and promotion vulnerable to gender bias.” Justice Scalia rejected the testimony, which he called crucial to the plaintiffs’ case. “It is worlds away,” he wrote, “from ‘significant proof’ that Wal-Mart ‘operated under a general policy of discrimination.’ ” Nor was Justice Scalia impressed with the anecdotal and statistical evidence offered. One of the plaintiffs named in the suit, Christine Kwapnoski, had testified, for instance, that a male manager yelled at female employees but not male ones, and had instructed her to “doll up.” Justice Scalia said that scattered anecdotes — “about 1 for every 12,500 class members,” he wrote — were insignificant. He added that statistics showing pay and promotion gaps between male and female workers were insufficient to show common issues among the plaintiffs, because discrimination was not the only possible explanation. “Some managers will claim that the availability of women, or qualified women, or interested women, in their stores’ area does not mirror the national or regional statistics,” Justice Scalia wrote. “And almost all of them will claim to have been applying some sex-neutral, performance-based criteria — whose nature and effects will differ from store to store.” Joseph M. Sellers, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said the majority had “reversed about 40 years of jurisprudence that has in the past allowed for companywide cases to be brought challenging common practices that have a disparate effect, that have adversely affected women and other workers.” A lawyer for Wal-Mart, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., said the decision was “an extremely important victory not just for Wal-Mart but for all companies who do business in the United States , large and small, and their employees, too.” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy , Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined Justice Scalia’s majority opinion on the broader point. But the court unanimously rejected the plaintiffs’ effort to proceed under a part of the class-action rules concerned mainly with court declarations and orders as opposed to money, one that did not require notice to the class or provide the ability to opt out of it. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg , joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer , Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan , dissented in part. Justice Ginsburg said the court had gone too far in its broader ruling in the case, Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes, No. 10-277. She would have allowed the plaintiffs to try to make their case under another part of the class-action rules. “The court, however, disqualifies the class at the starting gate” by ruling that there are no common issues, she wrote. She added that both the statistics presented by the plaintiffs and their individual accounts were evidence that “gender bias suffused Wal-Mart’s corporate culture.” She said, for instance, that women filled 70 percent of the hourly jobs but only 33 percent of management positions and that “senior management often refer to female associates as ‘little Janie Qs.’ ” “The practice of delegating to supervisors large discretion to make personnel decisions, uncontrolled by formal standards, has long been known to have the potential to produce disparate effects,” she wrote. “Managers, like all humankind, may be prey to biases of which they are unaware.”
|
Supreme Court;Walmart;Lawsuit;Discrimination;Women and Girls
|
ny0056357
|
[
"us"
] |
2014/09/16
|
Observations on America's Middle-Class Malaise
|
Who is responsible for the elusiveness of the American dream today? Bureaucrats? Hedge-fund managers? Those who find it elusive in the first place? The filmmaker Richard Linklater recently walked into that fraught conversation — except few realized what he had done, because the movie he made was so artistically innovative. “Boyhood,” which follows a young man’s maturing, was made over 12 years, reportedly with 39 shooting days spread over 4,000 life days. Because of that extraordinary feat of filmmaking, adulation for the movie has tended to focus on form rather than substance. And yet Mr. Linklater has produced an important social chronicle: a portrait of a changing America in which middle-class life grows more precarious, more chaotic and less aspirational with each passing year, and in which stillborn masculinity is a big part of the story. The hero of Mr. Linklater’s self-styled “epic of the intimate” is, at the start, a 6-year-old boy named Mason Evans Jr. As in any epic, the hero faces trials. But in Mason’s case, they are the suburban banalities of growing up as a 21st-century American male. Many of them involve coping with flimsy, ephemeral adult relationships, in a society in which a majority of children born to women under 30 are born out of wedlock. Mason’s mother, Olivia, is steely and determined, and she dreams of self-improvement, reading to her children and doting on them. But she is also a single woman who, over 12 years, grasps and fails at four relationships. “I really enjoy making poor life decisions keeping us on the brink of poverty,” she says, exasperated, at one point. The men she loves, each different but all bad news, become to Mason’s growth what Calypso, the Sirens and the Cyclops were to Odysseus’s return to Ithaca: obstacles that test his character, and sculpt it. There is the footloose dad who is prouder than he should be of coming around occasionally. The boyfriend who screams at Olivia for tending to her children rather than partying. The professor she marries who represents stability and a path to upper-middle-class life, before he becomes an abusive alcoholic. And the hollowed war veteran, whom Olivia also marries, who finds in beer and shouting a palliative for his troubled postwar life as a correctional officer. The chaos that children must navigate is related to this seeming desert of decent men. In this era of wage stagnation, automation, Shenzhen prices, part-time work, foreclosures, deflated pensions and the volatility of freelancing, men can find themselves especially lost — and all this is occurring as their unearned privileges as men are starting to dissolve. In some ways, the movie is about various responses to this male confusion: rage and possessiveness, “Leave It to Beaver” patriarchal nostalgia, alcoholic escape, don’t-wanna-be-tied-down goldbricking — and Mason’s own resistance to traditional, heteronormative American maleness, when he experiments with nail polish, an earring and photography. America, in Mr. Linklater’s vision, is an ever more entropic place: parents too isolated and overworked to watch over children; intoxicants as an unquestioned, inevitable part of growing up; boredom in the suburbs; and the draining away of ambition and faith in education from many middle-class lives. Mr. Linklater brilliantly reminds us of this point by juxtaposing Mason and his sister with a Latino immigrant whom their mother once offhandedly advised to study when he was doing menial work at their house. He listened, and studied, and became a manager at a nearby restaurant. It is striking that he is the only character who lives a conventional “American dream.” In Mr. Linklater’s America, an economic precariousness made of forces beyond individuals’ control has combined with a social precariousness more of our own making, and the result is improbably hard middle-class lives. His work of art ought to be discussed and debated as more than a work of art, because its take on all this chaos is more nuanced and thoughtful than anything you’ll find in our think tanks or Congress: The story of American society today is neither about too few choices nor about poor choices, but about the perilous collision of both things. Join an online conversation at http://anand.ly and follow on Twitter.com/anandwrites
|
US;Movies;Richard Linklater;Boyhood
|
ny0120005
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2012/07/26
|
Kameron Slade’s Appeal for Gay Marriage, Once Blocked at School, Gets Council Audience
|
Wearing a pressed gray suit, black shoes and a purple shirt and tie, Kameron Slade, 10, fidgeted slightly before his name was called in the City Council chambers on Wednesday. He approached the microphone set before the room full of politicians, lowered his head to the papers he clutched in his hands and began to speak. “President Barack Obama recently talked about same-sex marriage with his wife and two daughters. Some people are for same-gender marriage, while others are against it,” Kameron said. “Like President Obama, I believe that all people should have the right to marry whoever they want. Marriage is about love, support and commitment. So who are we to judge?” Kameron was invited by the Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn , to deliver his speech, which he wrote two months ago for a student competition at Public School 195 in Rosedale, Queens. The principal, Beryl Bailey, deemed it inappropriate for the school, so Kameron was at first not allowed to deliver his speech on the topic. After NY1 and other local news media brought attention to Kameron’s story, he became an Internet sensation and something of a symbol for social acceptance and free speech. A video of Kameron delivering his speech has been watched more than 600,000 times on YouTube. He was eventually allowed to deliver the speech at a separate assembly at his school, after the Education Department stepped in. Kameron’s mother, April Grantham-Slade, said she sat down with him in May, when he first came home with his assignment from class. Ms. Grantham-Slade said Kameron told her he wanted to speak on a topic his fellow classmates had not discussed much. So they began to brainstorm. Earlier that month, Mr. Obama announced he was supporting same-sex marriage , a move seen by some as purely political but by others as an act of bravery. For Kameron, it was a prime chance to bring that national discussion to his peers. “Sometimes we’ll be walking down the street and we’ll see two men or two women holding hands; and he gets that,” Ms. Grantham-Slade said. “I want my children to be accepting.” Kameron recalled the time he and his mother went on a farm trip with two of his mother’s friends, who are lesbians, to the full Council chamber. “They seemed like any other family,” he said. “The only difference was that they were two moms instead of a mother and father.” After speaking before the Council, Kameron said he had been disappointed when he was forbidden from delivering the speech at school, but gratified with the attention his message has received since then, and that New York City’s leaders got to hear it. “I felt very confident when I was doing it,” he said. “I feel honored because not many people get to do this.” Council members thanked Kameron, who was joined in the chamber by his mother, father and grandfather, and encouraged him to continue expressing his opinions on issues. Ms. Quinn, a Democrat, who married her longtime partner, Kim M. Catullo, in May, noted that the meeting came one day after the anniversary of same-sex marriage legalization in New York State. More than 10,000 same-sex couples have been issued marriage licenses in the state since then. “I’m getting married on Saturday, in three days, to my partner of 13 and a half years,” said Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, a Democrat. “When I saw you on TV, I thought you were the most courageous and wonderful young man I’ve ever seen.”
|
City Council (NYC);Quinn Christine C;Same-Sex Marriage Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships;New York City;Education (K-12);Slade Kameron
|
ny0002644
|
[
"technology"
] |
2013/03/13
|
Fund That Subsidizes Internet for Schools Should Expand, a Senator Says
|
WASHINGTON — The $2.3 billion federal E-Rate program, which subsidizes basic Internet connections for schools and libraries, should be overhauled and expanded to provide those community institutions with new, lightning-fast connections to the Web, the chairman of a Senate committee that oversees the F.C.C. said Tuesday. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, a West Virginia Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said that the fund should be used to create one-gigabit connections to every school in America — a speed that is 60 to 100 times faster than most schools or homes now receive — and wireless connections in every school building. The initiative is one that Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. chairman, has already endorsed, but with a less-aggressive goal. In January, Mr. Genachowski called for the nation’s mayors to support bringing one-gigabit Internet access to one community in each state by 2015. With 92 percent of classrooms now having Internet access, up from 14 percent when the subsidy program started in 1996, “we need to think big about the future of E-Rate,” Mr. Rockefeller said. “As every educator knows, digital information and technology will continue to play an increasing role in education, so we need to think about how we are going to meet the broadband infrastructure needs of our schools and libraries,” Mr. Rockefeller said. The F.C.C. may itself restructure the E-Rate program, Congressional officials said. Asked at the hearing by Mr. Rockefeller if they supported the proposal, each of the five commissioners said yes. Congressional staff members said that Mr. Rockefeller hoped to gradually expand the amount of money devoted to E-Rate, providing for an additional $5 billion to $9 billion in total funds over the rest of the decade. The two Republican members of the F.C.C. also raised broader issues. Commissioner Robert M. McDowell said that the F.C.C. should first tackle the reform of the fund’s contribution system. A fee is assessed by the F.C.C. on the phone companies, but they almost universally pass the cost on to customers. Image Senator John D. Rockefeller IV said, “We need to think big about the future of E-Rate,” the F.C.C. subsidy program. Credit Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times The fee, noted on consumers’ bills as the Universal Service contribution, has more than doubled over the last decade, to about 15 percent, up from 7 percent in 2001. The other Republican commissioner, Ajit Pai, said he favored a much-expanded form of the E-Rate program beyond learning in schools to one that provides, for example, for programs that link rural communities by video to medical centers in larger cities to provide for long-distance medical care. The $8.5 billion Universal Service Fund comprises four parts. In addition to the E-Rate money, the fund includes the $4.5 billion high-cost fund, which subsidizes the provision of service to high-cost, mostly rural areas, and the $1.75 billion Lifeline fund, which provides telephone service to poor Americans. A small portion, about $100 million, is used for a rural health care project. In 2011, the F.C.C. voted to convert the Universal Service Fund from one that primarily financed the provision of telephone service to one that provided for high-speed broadband, or Internet, connections in high-cost areas for poor Americans and for schools and libraries. It renamed the Universal Service Fund the Connect America fund. Some of the changes that the F.C.C. could make in the E-Rate program include updating the types of equipment or services that can be bought with the E-Rate money. Generally, the fund pays for the connection but not the computers or other hardware needed to use the Internet. The oversight hearing included an exchange over whether the F.C.C. had the power to require that political groups disclose who paid for their advertising on broadcast television and radio. Requiring the disclosure of contributors to those groups would allow the F.C.C. to lift the veil on the anonymous donors who sponsored so much of the advertising during the 2012 presidential campaign, said Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat. Congress failed to do the same thing when the Senate could not pass the Disclose Act. Mr. Nelson said that the F.C.C.’s rules allowed it to require the full identification of “the sponsors of all political and commercial advertising.” He then asked each of the commissioners if they supported his view. Most of the replies were ambiguous. Mr. Genachowski and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, a Democrat, said that the idea should be considered. The other Democrat on the commission, Jessica Rosenworcel, said she agreed. The two Republican commissioners said they supported greater transparency, but one, Mr. McDowell, said that he would hesitate at placing the burden of election financing disclosure on broadcasters when it is also overseen by the Federal Election Commission and others. Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, had a stronger objection. He warned the commission that it should not try to “end run Congress and adopt a rule that would be perceived as being overtly political,” something, he added, that “could imperil the independence of the commission.”
|
FCC;Computers and the Internet;Tech Industry;US Politics;K-12 Education;John D Rockefeller IV
|
ny0195026
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2009/11/23
|
Twins’ Joe Mauer Expected to Win M.V.P. Honors by Wide Margin
|
Monday afternoon’s scheduled announcement of the winner of the American League Most Valuable Player award comes with limited drama. The Baseball Writers Association of America guards the voting results judiciously. But if Joe Mauer of the Minnesota Twins beats out the Yankees’ Mark Teixeira and Derek Jeter for the award, industry observers will not be surprised. Mauer , 26, won his third batting title in four seasons, and his .365 average set a major league record for catchers. Despite missing the first month of the season with lower back inflammation, he established career highs with 28 home runs and 96 runs batted in, and won his second consecutive Gold Glove. He became the 12th player, and the first since George Brett in 1980, to lead the A.L. in batting, slugging and on-base percentage. The bigger question is not whether Mauer will win it, but whether the Twins can keep Mauer, who will be a free agent after next season, in Minnesota. Or will he be the next big name jilting a moderately successful middle-market team to sign with the Yankees or the Boston Red Sox, attempting to hop a sidecar toward a potential World Series title? It happened this year with C. C. Sabathia, though never for Jason Giambi or Mike Mussina, whose tenures with the Yankees fell in the eight years between titles. In interviews over the last few months, Mauer, who was born and raised in St. Paul, said his goal was to win a World Series, preferably with the Twins. He has not threatened to leave, nor has he set a deadline for a deal. It is also believed that the Twins have not begun talks with Mauer’s agent, Ron Shapiro. Twins General Manager Bill Smith said that even when talks start, he will not discuss them. Still, Twins officials are hopeful that Mauer will stay, although on the open market he would probably command one of the largest contracts in baseball history. Mauer is entering the final season of a four-year, $33 million deal that will pay him $12.5 million this year, the second-highest salary on the Twins behind first baseman Justin Morneau ($14 million), and more than any catcher in baseball except the Yankees’ Jorge Posada ($13.1 million). Mauer’s local roots help. His brother, Jake, manages in the Twins’ minor league system. And in Shapiro, Mauer has an agent who represented Cal Ripken Jr. and Kirby Puckett, who played their entire careers with the teams that drafted them. In 1992, Puckett rejected a more lucrative free-agent offer from Boston to sign a five-year, $30 million deal with Minnesota that was the richest in baseball at the time. But Mauer would be enticing to the Yankees because Posada is 38, has been on the disabled list three times the last two seasons, and has never been great defensively. Posada’s contract runs through 2011 and includes a no-trade clause. Though Boston acquired the All-Star catcher Victor Martinez from Cleveland last season, the Red Sox could still pursue Mauer and shift Martinez to first base, with Kevin Youkilis moving to third if the Sox do not re-sign Mike Lowell. None of the possibilities are a given; the Twins appear more committed to keeping Mauer than they did Johan Santana or Torii Hunter, the most recent high-profile Twins to depart for richer clubs. The Twins’ payroll usually ranks in the bottom third in major league baseball; last season Minnesota was 24th at about $67.9 million, the lowest of any playoff team. The club expects a rise in revenue and payroll next season from a move into a new stadium. How much, Smith will not say. But it should leave the Twins in better financial position for a big offer to Mauer. Perhaps mindful of that, Smith appears reluctant to fill holes at second, third or the starting rotation with a long-term offer to someone else. Kevin Slowey, Boof Bonser and reliever Pat Neshek, who were all injured last season, are expected to be ready for spring training, and Smith thinks the Twins can find two starting infielders from among Nick Punto, Brendan Harris, Alexi Casilla and Matt Tolbert. In 2007, Santana criticized the front office’s commitment to winning after the club jettisoned Luis Castillo and two other veterans in an apparent salary dump. Since then, the Twins signed Morneau, closer Joe Nathan, right fielder Michael Cuddyer and pitcher Scott Baker to long-term deals after all expressed a desire to stay. And last season, when Nathan and Morneau hinted that Mauer might leave if the Twins did not aggressively improve the club, Smith acquired shortstop Orlando Cabrera at the trade deadline and relief pitchers Jon Rauch and Ron Mahay in August. All three helped the Twins overcome a seven-game deficit in the division on Sept. 6 to tie Detroit on the next-to-last day of the season, then win a tie breaker for the title. Mauer, though pleased, stopped short of saying the Twins had done enough to assure him he could win a World Series with his hometown team. That, according to those close to Mauer, is more important to him than money, and ultimately will determine whether he remains a Twin past next season.
|
Baseball;Mauer Joe;Minnesota Twins;Awards Decorations and Honors;Free Agents (Sports);Wages and Salaries;Trades (Sports)
|
ny0286195
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2016/09/23
|
Spending Bill Seems Likely to Take Up Ted Cruz’s Fight Over Internet Directory
|
A plan to help revive the Export-Import Bank seems to be headed for the legislative cutting-room floor. A Republican dream of weakening pesticide regulations has been scotched. But the short-term spending bill that Congress is set to pass next week, one that both parties tried to use to promote various policies, will most likely include a provision championed by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, a frequent troublemaker on all matters fiscal. His provision would hinder the federal government’s plan to transfer its oversight at the end of the month of the internet’s master directory of website addresses to a multinational private organization. Mr. Cruz is convinced that once this power is out of the United States’ control, the openness of the internet would be in jeopardy, with China, Iran and Russia poised to have undue influence over what content appears on the web. Technologists and administration officials say Mr. Cruz simply does not understand how the web operates. The government’s current job of domain name administrator is largely clerical and cannot influence editorial decisions on the web, they say. While many Democrats oppose the provision, it is not clear how many care enough to make it stop. Further, Mr. Cruz got an unexpected push for the provision this week from none other Donald J. Trump. “The Republicans in Congress are admirably leading a fight to save the internet this week and need all the help the American people can give them to be successful,” said Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s national policy director, said in a statement on the campaign’s website.
|
Computers and the Internet;Tech Industry;US Politics;Ted Cruz
|
ny0123210
|
[
"sports",
"football"
] |
2012/09/30
|
Jets Among Elite Company in Replacing the Irreplaceable
|
FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — The day after their Darrelle Revis sustained a season-ending knee injury, the 2008 New England Patriots heard their coach say his name — Tom Brady — once, but not again for four months. When the 2011 Indianapolis Colts learned that their Darrelle Revis would miss the entire season, their brain trust huddled to discuss the changes in philosophy and personnel that would be implemented to mitigate his — Peyton Manning’s — absence. Revis does not play the same position as Brady or Manning, two of the finest quarterbacks ever, but his value to the Jets is nearly tantamount. His shutdown skills at cornerback allow Coach Rex Ryan to play an unusually aggressive style of defense. Just as Brady and Manning each epitomized his squad’s character and offensive personality, Revis serves as the cornerstone of a team built on defense. Or rather, he did. Revis tore a knee ligament last Sunday against the Dolphins, forcing the Jets to confront a challenge of a magnitude that only two other teams of recent vintage — the Brady-less Patriots and the Colts without Manning — have faced. There is no template for regrouping successfully, for coping with the loss of a player whose superior skills — in Revis’s case neutralizing the opposition’s best receiver — come to define an organization. Even players who abide by the hoary next-man-up mantra realize that there is no replacing a Brady, a Manning, a Revis. The best they can do is try. New England, backed by a capable understudy and a deep roster, reacted by going 11-5 without Brady but missed the playoffs. Indianapolis, wrecked by further injuries and limited by an offense that did not fit its personnel, lost its first 13 games and went 2-14. “If you’re fortunate to have a franchise player, virtually everything is built around him and what he can do,” said Bill Polian, the former Colts president who drafted Manning and now works for ESPN. “And now you have to change that.” The Jets started planning for the post-Revis era on the flight home from Florida last Sunday night, hours after Revis’s knee buckled in the soggy grass of Sun Life Stadium. The defensive staff gathered to brainstorm. Mike Pettine, the coordinator, compared himself to a custom tailor, saying, “We’re making a suit each week, and we have to build a plan based on two things: the opponent and what they do, and what do we have available from our perspective.” He promised only “subtle” differences for Sunday’s game against San Francisco but added, “We’re not foolish enough to think that we can just continue to do what we’ve been doing.” Neither were the Colts, who discovered on the eve of last season that Manning would not play after having another neck operation. The team was making cuts, Polian said, when he was called out of a meeting to be notified. When he returned, Polian delivered the news to his coaching staff, and they started working on a plan. Unlike the Patriots, who are renowned for adjusting their game plans from week to week, the Colts ran the same system with Manning for 13 seasons. But with Manning out, the Colts chose to abandon the up-tempo, downfield passing game. In its place, a run-oriented offense with — gasp — a fullback. “That took a very long while to effectuate — very long,” Polian said. “The nomenclature, the way we blocked, the way we ran certain routes, the way we called plays no-huddle and all of that kind of stuff — the assistant coaches clung to it. It was what we did, but the guy who made it happen wasn’t there anymore. It’s just a monumental task. You don’t rewrite the playbook in a week.” Perhaps to its detriment, Indianapolis did not have a credible backup for Manning, and when other injuries struck — “all the bad luck in the world descended on us in one year,” Polian said — the team could not recover. The Patriots fared better without Brady in large part because of their balance — a shortcoming of the Jets, who have scored one touchdown in their last 22 possessions. Brady’s replacement, Matt Cassel, inherited a team that went 18-1 the previous season, its bid for perfection spoiled by the Giants in the Super Bowl . A solid offensive line returned, as did dynamic receivers like Wes Welker and Randy Moss; and the defense was bolstered by Richard Seymour and Vince Wilfork up front. At first, Patriots Coach Bill Belichick scaled back the offense, emphasizing the run and playing conservatively. Heath Evans, a running back, said he made sure to spend extra time in the backfield blocking on pass plays so Cassel was protected. But soon enough, the Patriots made another adjustment. Evans recalled standing on the sideline watching Cassel operate in shotgun formations, with three- or four-receiver sets intended to spread defenses and give Cassel more time to discern blitzes and pressure packages. “I remember after the game, I stepped back and was like, Wow, freaking Tom Brady, goodness gracious,” said Evans, who now works as an analyst for NFL Network. “We were 18-1 with this guy, what are we going to do? Then we came in on Monday and Bill had a whole plan.” In reflecting on the 2008 season, Tedy Bruschi, a linebacker on that team, said he thought they were well-equipped to absorb Brady’s injury because of the organizational philosophy that Belichick advocated: he never overemphasized the importance of an individual, a practice that his players recognized, appreciated and responded to when starters were inevitably hurt. Ryan, the Jets’ coach, has always taken the opposite approach when speaking about Revis. At his introductory news conference nearly four years ago, Ryan called Revis the top cornerback in the league. Since then, his admiration has only swelled; at times, Ryan has called Revis the best player over all. Noting how stricken Ryan appeared Monday as he announced Revis’s injury, Bruschi said he wondered whether his despair would trickle down to the players. “If Bill would have always talked about Brady being that guy who was irreplaceable, I don’t know how that would have affected us,” said Bruschi, now an analyst for ESPN. “But players listen when the words are coming out of a head coach’s mouth.” In that sense, Polian said, the Jets have an advantage. Ryan said he had been no more involved with the defensive planning than before, a sentiment corroborated by several players, but he did conceive this defense. He installed it. He knows its intricacies and his players’ strengths and weaknesses. “If you’re an X’s-and-O’s junkie, as I am, it’s going to be fun to watch how Rex does it,” Polian said. Bruschi said he was curious, too, but for another reason. “Revis is the Jets’ Tom Brady,” Bruschi said. “Of course I’ll be watching.”
|
New York Jets;Football;Revis Darrelle
|
ny0083758
|
[
"business"
] |
2015/10/31
|
Fiat Chrysler Recalls More Vehicles for Airbag Defect
|
While 12 automakers are still dealing with a deadly defect in millions of airbags made by Takata, Fiat Chrysler has been quietly grappling with a different chronic airbag problem: Since 2012, it has now recalled 1.8 million vehicles in the United States because its airbags may deploy without an accident. On Friday, it issued the most recent recall, for almost 316,000 2003 Jeep Liberty and 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee models, including 284,000 in the United States. The automaker said it was aware of seven injuries, including one concussion, with the others involving scrapes or bruises, a spokesman, Eric Mayne, said in an email. The recall was one of two the company published Friday on the website of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration . The airbags can deploy without the vehicle being in a crash when “electrical noise” overwhelms an electronic control module, the automaker said. This is the third time that the automaker has recalled vehicles for the inadvertent deployment of airbags. In January, it recalled about 753,000 vehicles in the United States, again citing “electrical overstress.” But the repairs have proved nettlesome. By the end of July, for example, the automaker had fixed only 223,000 of the 745,000 vehicles recalled in 2012, according to a report from Fiat Chrysler posted on the N.H.T.S.A. website. Mr. Mayne, the Fiat Chrysler spokesman, said the automaker was “working to remedy these vehicles as quickly as possible.” A spokesman for the traffic safety agency did not respond to a request for comment on the completion rate. In May 2014, the repairs attracted the attention of federal regulators, who opened an investigation citing concerns that the automaker’s efforts to rectify the problem were insufficient; six vehicles that had been fixed had their airbags inadvertently inflate again. That investigation remains open. The same problem has troubled other automakers using the same part, which is made by TRW, a major automotive supplier. Toyota, for example, recalled about 888,000 vehicles in January 2013. In the brake recall posted Friday, Fiat Chrysler is recalling almost 276,000 2012-15 Dodge Journey family vans in the United States. The automaker said water could get into the electronic component that controls the anti-lock brakes and electronic stability system, disabling them. The anti-lock brakes are designed to help a driver stop quickly and remain in control in an emergency. The electronic stability system is intended to detect and correct a skid. While those systems would be disabled, the automaker said, the brakes would still work. In addition, warning lights on the dashboard would illuminate. The company said it was unaware of any injuries or accidents related to the problem. In its report to federal regulators, Fiat Chrysler said it first suspected a problem in June 2014, based on warranty claims. But it took until August 2015 to be certain of the cause. This month it decided a recall was necessary. This year, Fiat Chrysler agreed to a settlement of up to $105 million over its handling of recalls. Federal regulators accused the automaker of failing to act promptly on safety problems.
|
Automobile safety;Recalls and Bans;National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
|
ny0175943
|
[
"us"
] |
2007/07/04
|
Screening for Brain Injury Is Set for Illinois Veterans
|
CHICAGO, July 3 — Frustrated with the federal government’s response to the mental health needs of soldiers, Illinois officials announced on Tuesday that members of the state’s National Guard would be routinely screened for traumatic brain injuries after serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. The mandatory program, which appears to be the first in the nation, will also offer the screening to other veterans in the state and will include a 24-hour hot line providing psychological counseling to veterans of all military branches. The program is expected to cost $10.5 million a year. “It’s been shown that the federal government simply was not prepared to deal with the number of war injured coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Tammy Duckworth, the director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs and a former Blackhawk helicopter pilot who lost both legs on active duty in Iraq. “This is a way that we in Illinois can react much more quickly,” Ms. Duckworth said at a news conference with Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, a Democrat. There are currently 1,100 members of the Illinois Army National Guard serving, or preparing to serve, in Iraq or Afghanistan. Traumatic brain injuries afflict 14 percent to 20 percent of military service members, according to the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, a federally financed program. The injuries, which are often caused by roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, are believed to be more common among soldiers who have served in those conflicts, the center estimates. Veterans hospitals screen patients, including those who have served in the National Guard, for traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder, said Maureen Dyman, a spokeswoman for Hines Veterans Affairs Hospital in Chicago. Anybody who registers for first-time care must take part in the screening, Ms. Dyman said. Ms. Duckworth said one goal of the new state program is to catch the milder form of brain injuries in National Guard veterans who show no other sign of injury and who would have no reason to seek care at a hospital. The program is mandatory only for National Guard members because the state has no authority over the military branches. “It is obvious to everybody there is a need for more psychological care for our service members,” said Ms. Duckworth, a Democrat, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress last year. Severe and even some moderate traumatic brain injuries are usually obvious and easy to detect, said Dr. Felise S. Zollman, medical director of the brain injury program at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, which will help the state carry out the new program. But mild brain injuries often go undetected, with their symptoms of irritability, headaches, dizziness and a foggy feeling in the head, Dr. Zollman said. The mandatory screening would consist of a written questionnaire, an assessment by a medical professional, and a professional interpretation of the results, Dr. Zollman said. Service members believed to show symptoms of a brain injury would be referred for assessment and further treatment at a veterans’ center. “This is really good news for veterans,” said Paul Sullivan, the executive director of Veterans for Common Sense in Washington, who served in the Army in the Persian Gulf war. “It’s limited in scope, but the State of Illinois is absolutely doing the right thing.” It makes sense for states to take on the responsibility for the screening, Mr. Sullivan said. “It’s much easier for the state to do this, because they only have tens of thousands — and in the larger states, hundreds of thousands — of new war veterans to deal with,” Mr. Sullivan said. “In contrast, the federal government has 1.6 million service members from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to try to screen.” About half of the $10.5 million cost of the Illinois program would come from the current state budget, Mr. Blagojevich said, and the remainder is expected to be allocated in next year’s budget. The Legislature has been struggling to pass a budget for weeks, and on Thursday it will begin a special session that Mr. Blagojevich said would last “however long it takes” to pass an approved budget. “Maybe I always see the glass as half full, but I can’t imagine why we wouldn’t get the money,” he said. The Army, in the battery of tests it conducts on returning soldiers, looks generally for traumatic brain injuries, known as T.B.I., but the screening does not focus specifically on them, officials said. “As the war has gone on and we realize that T.B.I. is one of the significant injuries of the war, we have put more initiatives in place to screen, diagnose and treat T.B.I.,” said Col. Elspeth C. Ritchie, the psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general. Soldiers returning from active duty undergo health assessments as well as reassessments three months to six months later, Colonel Ritchie said.
|
Illinois;National Guard;Mental Health and Disorders;Iraq;Brain
|
ny0140089
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2008/02/07
|
Losses Aside, Romney Puts Convention on Calendar
|
Mitt Romney is committed to staying in the Republican presidential race despite his losses on Tuesday, and has an eye on the long-shot possibility of a brokered convention fight, his advisers said Wednesday. A brokered convention, in which no candidate secures the 1,191 delegates required to win the nomination on the first ballot, may be Mr. Romney’s only remaining path to the nomination. Calculations by his own advisers made clear even before the final tallies from Tuesday’s contests that Mr. Romney faces a steep climb to win enough delegates in the primary process. But Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, delivered an upbeat pep talk to his staff on Wednesday at his Boston headquarters. His advisers are considering television commercials for some of the next states to vote. “They’re making phone calls tonight,” said Tagg Romney, a son of Mr. Romney who is also a senior campaign adviser. Tagg Romney said his father was still willing to plow his own money into his presidential bid, hoping that conservative alarm about the candidacy of Senator John McCain of Arizona would continue to grow, allowing the Romney campaign to “fund-raise outside as well as from my dad and make this a real battle.” Al Cardenas, a member of Mr. Romney’s national finance team and his Florida chairman, said the campaign could still achieve certain goals, including pushing a conservative agenda, while hoping for the outside possibility of winning the nomination. “You’ve got a chance to win the nomination based on either getting the required number of delegates in the first round,” Mr. Cardenas said, “or having a campaign that results in no one have the required number of delegates in the first round, which is maybe a more tangible goal.” Mr. Romney’s advisers had said that if he reached only 300 delegates by Tuesday, a threshold he fell short of, he would essentially have to win every remaining contest, often by large margins because most of them allocate delegates proportionally. Charlie Black, a senior strategist for Mr. McCain, put out a strategy memorandum on Wednesday that made a similar argument. McCain advisers said that, by conservative estimates, they expected to wrap up the nomination by early March. “I will not say, in order to stay consistent with my boss’s superstition, which I share, that it’s impossible for these guys to get nominated,” said Mr. Black, referring to Mr. Romney and Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, “but it is virtually impossible just based on the arithmetic of the matter.” But Mr. Romney’s advisers have been discussing three categories of delegates: those that have been already been awarded and bound to a candidate; those that have been promised but are not technically bound; and those that have not yet been allocated. The goal would be to continue to battle, hoping that Mr. Romney starts to sweep up states, and then arrive at the convention with no clear winner and the momentum to wrest some of those promised but not officially bound delegates into his column. Mr. Romney appeared to allude to this possibility in his speech on Tuesday night, promising to take the Republican race “all the way to the convention.” The latest Associated Press count, which includes delegates from nonbinding contests, puts Mr. McCain at 703 delegates, Mr. Romney at 293 and Mr. Huckabee at 190. The count by The New York Times, which does not include nonbinding votes, shows Mr. McCain with 689 delegates, Mr. Huckabee with 156 and Mr. Romney with 133.
|
Romney Mitt;Presidential Election of 2008;Republican Party;United States Politics and Government;Elections
|
ny0115992
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2012/10/04
|
Disappointed, Orioles Still Have a Game to Play
|
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. For more than a month, the Baltimore Orioles put a scare into the Yankees. They succeeded in filling the end of the regular season with tension, making it seem as if the playoffs had already started. In the end, though, the Orioles never did overtake the Yankees for first place in the American League East — not for a single day. They pulled even for 10 days, sprinkled all through September, and came here that way on Sunday night. They left here on Wednesday two games back, after dropping two of three to the Tampa Bay Rays , who got three homers from Evan Longoria in a 4-1 victory in the regular-season finale. The Orioles now head to Texas for the wild-card game against the Rangers on Friday. Had they beaten the Rays on Wednesday, the game would have taken place at Camden Yards. “There’s a little bit of disappointment,” said right fielder Chris Davis, a former Ranger whose streak of six games with a homer ended on Wednesday. “But at the same time, you can’t hang your head. You have to be proud of what you accomplished this season, and you’ve got to be ready to go to Texas and play nine innings.” The Orioles knew they would face a much tougher opponent than they had last weekend, when they swept the free-falling Red Sox at home. The Rays finished the season with 90 victories and the best earned run average in the majors, 3.19, holding Baltimore to 5 runs and 11 hits in the series. The Red Sox, meanwhile, capped their worst season in decades with three losses in a row in the Bronx, two by wide margins. The Yankees had the clear edge this week, and they used it. “We knew that game in New York tonight was a real long shot,” Orioles Manager Buck Showalter said. “There was some advantage to being able to win, regardless, but they’re looking forward to the opportunity. It’s a tough road, however you do it. We feel real good about the opportunity we have earned.” The Orioles will face Yu Darvish, the Rangers’ All-Star right-hander, on Friday, but they have not named their own starter. Showalter said it could be the veteran left-hander Joe Saunders, who is 3-3 with a 3.67 E.R.A. in seven starts since a trade from Arizona, or the rookie Steve Johnson, who is 4-0 with a 2.11 earned run average in 12 games (four starts) this season. Baltimore and Texas have identical records (93-69), but the Rangers will host on Friday because they won the teams’ season series. In that way, said the Orioles’ Adam Jones, the new playoff format is no different than the old one, at least in the American League. Had they finished with identical records last season, the teams would have still had to play a tiebreaker game for the right to advance to the division series. “Who matches up well with Texas?” Jones said. “They’re a major league team; they can be beat. They’re not easy to beat, but we can beat them. You’ve got to put up runs. They will put up runs in a hurry, and our team has to do that. We’ve got to get these bats going.” The Orioles desperately want a game at Camden Yards, which last hosted a postseason game in the 1997 American League Championship Series, when Jim Thome ’s Cleveland Indians won the pennant. “It was very hectic,” said Thome, now the Orioles’ designated hitter. “From a visiting player’s end, it was chaos. It was very electric, very similar to Cleveland when we first started going. “The excitement, the atmosphere, the adrenaline, everything was great. It’s a great baseball city, and it’s so great to see it now re-form itself again and come back. What has it been, 15 years? It’s been 15 years of, let’s face it, not so much fun. And I guess to have watched it back then, and then to see it go back to that, you root for cities like that.” Thome, 42, has done more than root for the Orioles this year. He has played a small part in helping them return to the playoffs, hitting .260 with three home runs in 28 games since a midseason trade from Philadelphia. Thome batted sixth here on Wednesday, going 0 for 3. The Orioles will be the fifth team Thome has played for in the postseason, after the Indians, the Chicago White Sox, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Minnesota Twins. He has never won a championship, and his pursuit of one led him last winter to the Phillies, his team from 2003 through 2005. “I signed with Philly to go back there, because I had history and I knew Charlie Manuel and I knew the organization, and let’s face it, they won 102 games,” Thome said. “That was a team that you looked at and said, ‘Man, they have a great opportunity.’ Then I get traded and you come over here and you go, ‘Wow.’ ” It has not been easy. It rarely is, for players his age. Thome has made history this season, setting the career record for game-ending homers, with 13, and climbing into seventh on the career home run list, with 612. But he missed eight weeks with a herniated disk in his neck before returning Sept. 22. Like Andy Pettitte with the Yankees, Thome did not choose to keep playing so he could spend his summer in the Florida humidity, recovering from an injury. But he has made it back in time for another chance at October, with his trademark enthusiasm intact. “Jim’s on every day, and it’s not anything phony,” Showalter said.“He’s on, and he’s fun to be around. His glass is always half-full.” Showalter used that phrase again to describe his own attitude after losing on Wednesday. The Orioles cost themselves a chance to play at home, but the delay might be only temporary. “We still have that opportunity,” Showalter said. “If we play well on Friday and win a game, that’s in our hands.”
|
Baseball;Baltimore Orioles;Thome Jim;Playoff Games;Texas Rangers;Tampa Bay Rays
|
ny0243785
|
[
"business"
] |
2011/03/12
|
AnnTaylor’s Profit Tops Forecasts on Higher Sales
|
The Ann Taylor Stores Corporation , the women’s apparel retailer, said on Friday that it earned $8 million in its fourth quarter, propelled by a 10 percent increase in sales, topping analysts’ estimates. The company said the profit amounted to 14 cents a share and came on sales of $515 million. The company earned $41,000, or break-even per share, on sales of $469 million a year earlier. Shares of Ann Taylor, which is based in New York, rose $3.08, or 13 percent, to $27.29. The company also said it would change its name to ANN.
|
Ann Taylor Stores Corporation;Company Reports;Shopping and Retail;Sales
|
ny0027562
|
[
"sports",
"soccer"
] |
2013/01/19
|
16 Teams Ready to Kick Off the Africa's Cup of Nations
|
LONDON — It is unthinkable that Africa’s Cup of Nations, which kicks off Saturday, can end anything like the event last year, when Zambia won the Cup. The sensation was not that Zambia emerged victorious. It was that destiny seemed to make it happen, that something more powerful than sport propelled Zambia to become the continental champion in Libreville, the capital of Gabon, close to where the country’s best players had all been killed when an airplane crashed into the sea in 1993. But there will be stories — there always are in Africa. The tournament, which starts in Johannesburg and ends there Feb. 10, will draw 368 of Africa’s players home. A few more than half of them — 51 percent, to be exact — are on leave from their teams in Europe, and the Europeans who mine Africa for talent are not happy to release them for the second successive year at a crucial time of the club season. Neither the paymasters nor the players have a choice. Africa was persuaded to move its tournament to odd years to avoid World Cups and European national championships — and FIFA decrees that the Africans have a priority call on their nationals for the tournament. South Africa, especially, will be grateful for the income it hopes to accrue as host to this 16-nation, 32-game event in stadiums expensively built for the 2010 World Cup and rarely filled since FIFA moved its tournament out at the end of it. Roads, rail, hotel and airport links are a positive leftover, while the government reckons that South Africans ought to be grateful for the “intangible legacy” of pride and unity in proving to the world that the country could stage a thoroughly modern, safe event. Now, though, there are plenty of people in places like Cape Town who question whether FIFA got the lion’s share of profit while they are left still paying the bills. The soccer legacy appears thin because the Bafana Bafana — the South African national men’s team — appear no better equipped to take on Africa than they were to take on the world three years ago. Pessimism, though, can evaporate when the next big show comes around, and despite the unpromising buildup for South Africa’s national team, a full house, more than 90,000 people, is expected to pack the giant stadium outside the township of Soweto for the opener Saturday between the host side and Cape Verde Islands. That game begins at 4 o’clock, Johannesburg time, and is to be followed in the evening by Angola versus Morocco in the same stadium. As a gesture to their supporters, the South Africa players announced in the past week that they would forgo any bonus payments in the first group phase of the tournament. “The players themselves decided they will only accept a bonus payment if they get to the quarter final stage,” said their coach, Gordon Igesund. “And if they reach the semifinal, they will again receive nothing unless they qualify for the final.” That gesture is an interesting precedent. But South Africa will rest and fall on whether it can produce players with the leadership that Lucas Radebe provided in 1996, or the wispy striker John “Shoes” Moshoeu, who danced through that tournament. It was held in South Africa before the stadiums were remotely the palaces they are today, but cheered on by Nelson Mandela, that team lifted itself and the nation to win the Cup on its soil. A repeat is as unlikely as it would be for Mandela — who has recently been ill and out of the public spotlight — to be fit enough to be in the stands again. Bigger teams, in size and stature, are in this to win it. Zambians can dream of the same team’s winning the event the second time around, but while its French coach, Hervé Renard, says his players are in better shape now than they were when they won it in 2012, he admits, “We cannot hide. We’re the defending champion, but people would laugh if we said we’re the favorites. Ivory Coast and Ghana, they are the favorites.” Renard does not lie. Ghana was far and away Africa’s best team at the 2010 World Cup, though it last won the African title 31 years ago and arrives at this event lacking some experienced players. Ivory Coast, the 14th-ranked team in the world, does have most of its name players aboard. Didier Drogba, who proved to be the man for the big occasion when he scored for Chelsea in the Champions League final against Bayern Munich last May, is back for one more tour of national duty. Yaya Touré, such a colossus in Manchester City’s midfield when his team won the Premier League last season, is back with the Ivory Elephants — as the team from Ivory Coast is known — together with his brother, Kolo Touré, and Abdul Razik, a next-generation player for Man City. Indeed, with all but two of the 23 players on the Ivory Coast squad employed by European clubs, Drogba is one of the odd men out. He is winding down his career with Shanghai Shenhua in China. Arriving in Johannesburg before the Ivory Coast game against Togo in Rustenburg on Tuesday, Drogba met head-on questions about his country’s failing to fulfill expectations in Africa. “We will win it one day,” he responded, “with or without me. But I have helped to build it over the last 10 years.” Then he offered a misguided analogy. “I must remind you,” he said, “of the Netherlands. They had a side everybody said was the best for years, and never won a trophy.” It was true of the World Cup. The “Total Football” Dutch team lost the World Cup final with Johan Cruyff in 1974, and without Cruyff in 1978, as well as the 2010 final in Johannesburg. However, Drogba forgets that the Netherlands did win the European Championship, the equivalent of the African Cup of Nations, in 1988. For Drogba, at 34, this might very well be the last hurrah in Africa.
|
Soccer;South Africa;Johannesburg;Manchester City Soccer Team;Ivory Coast;Africa Cup of Nations
|
ny0022214
|
[
"business",
"media"
] |
2013/09/07
|
Knopf Acquires New Paolo Bacigalupi Novel
|
Knopf has acquired a new novel by Paolo Bacigalupi, the science fiction writer whose 2009 book “The Windup Girl” sold 200,000 copies and was considered one of the top novels of the year. The new book, “The Water Knife,” is set in a lawless, water-starved American Southwest in the not-too-distant future. Knopf, the publisher of Toni Morrison, Robert Caro, Stieg Larsson and Helen Fielding, paid an advance in the high six figures. For Mr. Bacigalupi, it is a leap from a tiny specialty press, Night Shade Books, to one of the most highbrow publishers in the business, with a reach that could broaden his readership well beyond the sci-fi world. Tim O’Connell, the editor at Knopf who acquired the book, said he had been pursuing Mr. Bacigalupi for years, after reading “The Windup Girl” and becoming mesmerized by it. Mr. Bacigalupi’s agent, Russell Galen, brought the new book to Mr. O’Connell, who said he believed it would attract a crossover audience beyond Mr. Bacigalupi’s core readers. The book will be released in spring 2015.
|
Books;Science fiction;Alfred A Knopf Inc;Paolo Bacigalupi;Night Shade Books
|
ny0061509
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2014/01/20
|
In New Country, Mother Sacrifices Precious Family Time to Pay Bills
|
Antonia Caba did not have any tissues so she used a paper towel to dab away her tears, taking care not to smudge her meticulously applied makeup as she described how she had tried to provide for her children in this new country. After Ms. Caba, 33, took a night job at a call center in Manhattan, her four children settled into a routine in which they saw their mother for only a few minutes each morning. She would help them get ready for school, but a babysitter would pick them up in the afternoon and put them to bed at night. When Ms. Caba’s shift ended — at midnight — she would take the subway back to her Bronx apartment, then take a moment to peek in on her sleeping children before starting the household chores. Earning roughly $200 a week meant struggling to pay her bills, while still trying to make a better life for herself and her children in the United States. Ms. Caba was born in the Dominican Republic, the fifth of nine children, and grew up in an area known for its coffee, which her father would buy from farmers and resell in town. She described her homeland warmly, but said that her childhood was overshadowed by medical problems. “I come from a very poor family, and to pay for the treatments that I needed, they needed to sell land,” Ms. Caba said through a translator, speaking in Spanish. She suspects that some of her ailments may have been misdiagnosed or even fabricated, possibly as a moneymaking scheme, and her experiences made her distrustful of doctors. In 1997, she became pregnant with her first daughter and dropped out of high school. She married the father, an American citizen who lived in New York. For several years and through the birth of a son and a second daughter, Ms. Caba raised their children in the Dominican Republic while her husband lived and worked in the United States, returning to visit them for one month a year. She moved to New York in 2007 to be with her husband, but she had a difficult time adjusting, and missed her relatives. “I felt very alone,” she said. “I didn’t have a lot of contact with my family.” During this period Ms. Caba was pregnant with a fourth child and was suffering from kidney stones, which added to her physical discomfort. The couple shared a bedroom with her in-laws in a cramped Manhattan apartment, putting great stress on the marriage. Soon after, Ms. Caba and her husband divorced. But she and her former husband are “on good terms,” she said, adding that “he is very involved with the children” and does what he can to help, paying child support and occasionally dropping off food. He drives a delivery truck for a bakery, and often brings brown paper bags of leftover bread. Ms. Caba now lives with her children in an $1,100-a-month apartment in the Tremont section of the Bronx, but struggles to pay the rent. Despite $500 in assistance each month, and $469 worth of food stamps to help reduce her household expenses, she is $6,600 behind. Her landlord lives across the street, which makes her anxious, she said. She avoids walking past her windows when she knows he is in his apartment. “He has threatened eviction, but he’s also trying to be helpful and wait,” she said. One of the few jobs she could find was the night shift at the call center, and the low pay and late hours proved to be a hardship. Initially Ms. Caba could not afford to pay a babysitter to pick up her children from school each day, but the Human Resources Administration arranged to pay for one. “The children really care for her, and they love her,” she said of the babysitter. Ms. Caba’s tough financial situation means that there is little money for basic family expenses. Although the children have health insurance, visits to the doctor come with a high price. “Some of them have braces, some of them have glasses, so there’s co-payments for everything,” she said. Ms. Caba sent her youngest daughter, Kameron, 5, to a program at the Children’s Aid Society. There she met a family worker named Eileen Gonzalez, who took an interest in the family and learned about their struggles during a home visit. “Because of her income, she didn’t have enough clothes for her kids,” Ms. Gonzalez said. “There was very limited food. The children were sharing beds.” Ms. Gonzalez arranged for the Children’s Aid Society, one of the organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, to provide Ms. Caba with $1,800 from the fund for clothes and furniture. She was given gift cards to Marshalls, Payless ShoeSource, Modell’s Sporting Goods and Old Navy totaling $1,000, and $800 to buy a new bureau for the girls’ room, as well as a new bed for Kameron. “It was pink and pretty, and it was so Kameron,” Ms. Gonzalez said. Ms. Caba hopes that her days of measuring family time by the minute are over. In late December, she started a job at a nearby beauty salon, a fitting position for someone with so much experience cutting her children’s hair. She is delighted to have regular daytime hours at the salon, meaning that she can spend more time with her family. Ms. Caba showed off one of Kameron’s recent crayon drawings to illustrate what she had been missing. It was a heart, and the word “Mami.”
|
Philanthropy;New York Times Neediest Cases Fund;Children's Aid Society
|
ny0071706
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2015/03/21
|
U.S. May Stay in Afghanistan After '16
|
WASHINGTON — A White House official on Friday appeared to leave open the possibility that American troops could remain in Afghanistan after President Obama leaves office, in what would be a marked shift from the administration’s insistence that only a small force based at the embassy in Kabul would remain after 2016. With the Taliban insurgency still raging, the administration has been weighing options to slow the pullout of the roughly 10,000 American troops and thousands of contractors in Afghanistan. The number of troops was supposed to be cut by almost half at the end of this year, but officials have said in recent days that Mr. Obama was nearing a decision to keep much of the current force in place well into next year to continue training and advising Afghan forces. While most officials have said that the 2016 deadline for a pullout remains firm, Jeff Eggers, a senior National Security Council official, said Friday that discussions about what to do in the next year or so would lead to a decision about what to do in 2017, “given the intent to maintain this ongoing dialogue” with the Afghan government. However, he added, “it still remains the intent to consolidate and complete the retrograde down to a Kabul-based security cooperation office mission in 2017.” Retrograde is a military term for the withdrawal of troops and matériel. Separately, Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the council, said, “President Obama has not opened the door to anything larger than an embassy force after 2016.” Mr. Eggers’s comments are in line with what other officials say is being debated within the administration, even if Mr. Obama’s focus is currently on what to do next year, not afterward. Like so many of the plans for Afghanistan laid out in Washington since the war’s outset in 2001, realities on the ground appear to again be forcing American officials to consider revamping their strategy for ending the war. Peace talks appear to be a far-off possibility after a stretch in February and early March in which it appeared that the Taliban might be willing to meet with the Afghan government. So instead of talking about how to end the war, Afghan and American officials are preparing for violence to intensify as the snow melts in the high passes that separate the insurgents from their safe havens in Pakistan and what is known as the fighting season gets underway. Afghan forces, which have done the bulk of the fighting and dying over the past two years, are still very much a work in progress. They managed to keep the Taliban from making significant gains last summer only with help from the American-led coalition. The resilience of the remaining fighters from Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan has also surprised the Obama administration. Officials say that many of the roughly 2,000 troops currently dedicated to counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan are going to be needed well into next year, and that a larger force will allow for bases crucial to combating Al Qaeda and collecting intelligence in southern and eastern Afghanistan to remain open. The decision to slow the withdrawal in 2016 — and the debate about what to do in 2017 — is not being driven solely by grim battlefield assessments. Afghanistan’s new president, Ashraf Ghani, has proved to be a far more willing partner with the United States since he took over from Hamid Karzai in September, and American officials say they want to give him as much help as they can. Mr. Ghani is making his first trip to Washington as president next week, and plans for the coming years are expected to be the focus of his meetings with Mr. Obama and other officials. There is “a clearly positive vision now for Afghanistan that President Ghani holds,” Mr. Eggers said Friday. American officials are determined to “seize the qualitatively different relationship and that more positive vision,” he said. Mr. Eggers added that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ghani have begun discussing Afghanistan’s desire for more “flexibility” in the American drawdown plans for 2016. “It’s a wise move not to be boxed into a corner and commit to leaving,” said Seth Jones, an Afghanistan expert at the RAND Corporation. Still, former officials close to the Obama administration have sought to portray any residual presence in Afghanistan as in line with the president’s desire to leave office having ended the two wars he inherited in 2009. “The president wants his legacy to be ending overly long, overly costly and inadequately effective wars,” Vikram Singh, a former Pentagon official in the Obama administration. Mr. Singh said that having a longer-term troop presence in the country does not necessarily mean that the United States would be “at war” in Afghanistan, citing American military training missions in Uganda and the Philippines that have gone on for years.
|
Afghanistan War;Afghanistan;US Military;Pentagon;Barack Obama
|
ny0233479
|
[
"business"
] |
2010/08/24
|
‘Too Big to Fail’ View Hurts Small Banks, Hoenig Says
|
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (Reuters) — Thomas M. Hoenig, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, warned on Monday that landmark financial reforms may not end market perceptions that taxpayers will rescue the largest banks, and he cautioned against speculative investments in housing. Mr. Hoenig, testifying at a field hearing of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said larger banks perceived as “too big to fail” have a lower cost of capital, putting smaller banks at a competitive disadvantage and threatening their business model. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act intended to end Wall Street bailouts by giving regulators a mechanism to seize and shut down failing large institutions in much the same manner as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation can shut down smaller banks. Mr. Hoenig said it was not yet clear whether the overhaul would put big and small banks on an equal footing. “That can only happen if markets are absolutely convinced that too big to fail has finally been ended and only time will tell. It’s an open question,” he told the hearing in suburban Kansas City. Mr. Hoenig, the Fed’s lone policy dissenter in recent months, did not address the central bank’s outlook on the economy or monetary policy. He voted against the Fed’s decision earlier this month to reinvest funds from maturing mortgage-backed securities into Treasury debt to help push down mortgage interest rates further, citing a gradual improvement in the economy. He also told the House panel that housing was not suitable for speculative investments by consumers. “If the American people are looking for the housing market to be their investment opportunity, I think they’re making a mistake,” Mr. Hoenig said. He said community banks had been tested by the “abnormally slow recovery” that the American economy had experienced in the last two years and continued to face difficulties. “Commercial real estate, particularly land development loans, will be a drag on earnings for some quarters yet,” he added. Community banks are generally considered those with less than $10 billion in assets, which account for all but about 83 of the 6,700 banks in the United States, he said. All but three of the 1,100 banks based in the Kansas City Fed district are community banks. “Community banks will survive the recession and will continue to play their role as the economy recovers,” Mr. Hoenig said. “The more lasting threat to their survival, however, concerns whether this model will continue to be placed at a competitive disadvantage to larger banks. Because the market has perceived the largest banks as being too big to fail, they have the advantage of running their business with a greater level of leverage and a lower cost of capital and debt.” He said that despite provisions in recently enacted landmark financial regulatory reform law to seize and shut down failing big institutions, the markets will continue to perceive many large banks as too big to fail, giving them lower operating costs than community banks.
|
United States Economy;Banks and Banking;Economic Conditions and Trends;Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City;Kansas City (Kan)
|
ny0153407
|
[
"sports",
"football"
] |
2008/01/20
|
Super Bowl Luxury for a Price
|
PHOENIX (AP) — Fans have paid a couple of thousand dollars for their Super Bowl tickets and hundreds for the plane trip. So what’s $100,000 more? Real estate companies and enterprising Arizona homeowners are hoping that some Super Bowl fans heading to the Feb. 3 game will shell out big money for a weeklong stay at a stylish home, complete with maid services, a luxury vehicle and in some cases, home cooking. William Kerbs, a 34-year-old mortgage company owner, is renting out his suburban Fountain Hills home for $125,000 the week of the Super Bowl at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. His 7,200-square-foot home has two spas, a 1,000-square-foot pool, marble and hardwood floors, and four washers and dryers. Kerbs said additional negotiable perks would include a maid and the use of his 2007 Bentley. “My Realtor told me that Beyoncé rented out a house in Paradise Valley for $250,000,” he said. “I just said maybe we’ll just try it to see what happens.” If he has a taker, Kerbs said he would take his wife and three children for a vacation either in Las Vegas or in Cape Coral, Fla., where he owns a condo. “I think we have a 50-50 shot at it,” he said. “I’m sure there’s going to be some inquiries. It’ll just depend on how serious they are and where they’re coming from.” Luxury home rentals are being listed from $30,000 to $250,000 a week, said Shannon Martinson, an agent with Scottsdale Fine Properties, which has 30 listings for the Super Bowl on its Web site. “The thing that’s kind of driving the prices is location and amenities,” Martinson said. “People are throwing in daily housekeeping, transportation, chef services. So the more people are kind of throwing into the homes, of course the more they can offer as far as price.” Other homeowners are auctioning off weeklong Super Bowl packages on eBay or posting them to the online bulletin board Craigslist. David Moskowitz, a 42-year-old real estate investor, is including tickets to a Phoenix Suns game and the FBR Open, a limo for 12 hours a day and reservations at three upscale restaurants with his two-bedroom downtown Phoenix condo — all for $50,000.
|
Super Bowl;Housing
|
ny0135458
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2008/04/07
|
In Relief Pitching 101, Chamberlain Aces a Test
|
Chien-Ming Wang was a few steps from the Yankees ’ dugout, still soaking up the fading applause for holding the Tampa Bay Rays without a run into the seventh inning. But just before Wang reached the dugout, the decibel level suddenly increased. It had nothing to do with Wang. About 400 feet from where Wang stood, the already familiar gait of Joba Chamberlain was visible. Chamberlain loped across the outfield grass and arrived on a crowded mound as one of the most confident men at Yankee Stadium. At least that is the way Chamberlain typically looks and acts. Wang allowed two singles to start the seventh, putting runners on first and third, and putting a two-run lead in peril. Manager Joe Girardi had Chamberlain and the unreliable Kyle Farnsworth warming up. If Girardi had summoned Farnsworth, the Yankees might have wondered if their ill manager had been hallucinating, too. After Chamberlain surprised Willy Aybar with a curveball for a strike, he jolted him with a fastball that the stadium radar gun recorded at 101 miles an hour. Even if the gun reading was a bit generous, the 101 still appeared in big, bold numbers on a scoreboard above center field. Chamberlain then struck out a defenseless Aybar with a slider in the dirt. Shawn Riggans followed with a liner toward the middle of the infield. Second baseman Robinson Canó leaped to spear it and threw to first for a double play. Riggans came close to conquering Chamberlain, but Chamberlain subdued him, needing only eight pitches to navigate through a tense seventh inning. “It’s good to get in those situations and feel the pressure,” Chamberlain said. Chamberlain thrives in those situations because he is not unnerved by the pressure. He needed only eight more pitches to motor through the eighth before watching Mariano Rivera dominate the ninth for the save. Because Chamberlain and Rivera allowed Girardi to manage the last three innings on autopilot, the offensively challenged Yankees had a 2-0 victory that, believe it or not, was pretty important. Girardi acknowledged that there was a big difference between being 3-3, which the Yankees are, and 2-4, which they could have been if their bullpen had imploded the way it did Friday with LaTroy Hawkins and Farnsworth. With Chamberlain excelling as the setup man the Yankees desperately need, they could exhale Sunday and probably for days and weeks to come. Naturally, even one week into the season, the obvious question is: How can the Yankees consider moving Chamberlain out of this role in 2008? The Yankees insist that Chamberlain’s future is as a starter, but he might have to wait another year to join the rotation. Chamberlain has relieved in the Yankees’ three victories, and he looks indispensable. “What’s not to love about him?” Johnny Damon said. “He comes in and hands the ball to Mariano. I love it, too.” Girardi compared Chamberlain with the Rivera he caught in 1996, when Rivera was a brilliant setup man and the Yankees won their first World Series in 18 years. Even as Girardi was saying “there’s definitely energy” when Chamberlain enters a game, he also said he could still see Chamberlain as a starter. He then deflected the question of whether the Yankees could ever afford to move Chamberlain out of the bullpen. “That’s something we’ll cross someday,” Girardi said. “But it’s nice having him down there.” Nice? Girardi could have picked splashier words to describe how the Yankees feel about having Chamberlain waiting in their bullpen. Incredible or exhilarating would probably have been more appropriate. Chamberlain gives the Yankees an intimidator, someone to combine with Rivera and turn their games into six-inning contests. The Yankees are 20-2 when Chamberlain pitches. John Flaherty, a former Yankee catcher who is an announcer with the YES Network, said Chamberlain was best suited for the bullpen because he had already proved he could handle the intensity of pitching in New York. Farnsworth has a solid repertory, but mentally he appears to melt. Flaherty said there was nothing more demoralizing for a team than losing late-inning leads, something Chamberlain and Rivera could prevent. Chamberlain was not aware that he thrown a 101 m.p.h. pitch until his teammates told him. Aybar might have seen the three-digit number on the scoreboard; Riggans said he noticed it from the on-deck circle. Chamberlain said the legend of throwing 101 could help him if hitters were to dwell on it, but he stressed that he still must throw any fastball for a strike. “It can go in at 101, leave at 140 and go 500 feet,” he said. At one point, Chamberlain called himself “young and dumb” and said that helped him. At another point, he noted that he had never driven 101 m.p.h. No doubt the Yankees hope Chamberlain has not and never will drive that fast. But throwing that fast is fine, especially as a setup man.
|
Chamberlain Joba;New York Yankees;Baseball;Rivera Mariano;Wang Chien-Ming
|
ny0109634
|
[
"business",
"media"
] |
2012/05/31
|
Penguin and Macmillan Deny e-Book Price Fixing
|
The government’s complaint “piles innuendo on top of innuendo.” It is based “entirely on the little circumstantial evidence it was able to locate.” And it “sides with a monopolist.” These arguments were part of a response by two publishers, Penguin Group USA and Macmillan, to a Justice Department lawsuit filed in April that accused five major publishing houses of conspiring with Apple to fix the price of e-books. Three of the publishers, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and the Hachette Book Group, denied violating antitrust laws but agreed last month to settle with the government. Penguin and Macmillan, which declined to settle, filed responses in United States District Court in New York on Tuesday, not only denying that they had fixed prices but also taking direct aim at Amazon , the online retailer that has emerged as a significant threat to the longstanding business model for publishers. In its 74-page response , Penguin called Amazon “predatory” and a “monopolist” that treats books as “widgets.” It asserted that Amazon, not Penguin, was the company engaging in anticompetitive behavior, to the detriment of the industry. The Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit in April after a lengthy investigation of the publishing industry, saying that the five publishers had colluded with Apple to limit price competition and caused consumers to pay tens of millions more for e-books than they would have otherwise. Five of the six major publishers in the industry moved from a wholesale pricing model to a system known as the agency model in 2010, a move that allowed publishers to begin setting their own e-book prices. The court filings this week laid out the initial defense of Penguin and Macmillan against the lawsuit, rebutting the government’s charges that publishers had conspired in e-mails, telephone conversations and over lavish dinners in Manhattan restaurants. In Macmillan’s 26-page response , it said, “Absent any direct evidence of conspiracy, the government’s complaint is necessarily based entirely on the little circumstantial evidence it was able to locate during its extensive investigation, on which it piles innuendo on top of innuendo, stretches facts and implies actions that did not occur and Macmillan denies unequivocally.” Macmillan adopted the agency pricing model on its own, the filing said, because the previous wholesale model “led to Amazon’s monopolization of e-book distribution.” Penguin, in its response, denied a conspiracy and repeatedly pointed to Amazon, saying that the publisher’s own executives were “concerned that Amazon’s below-cost pricing strategy for certain new release titles would be detrimental to the long term health of the book industry.” Penguin and Macmillan declined to comment on Wednesday. Apple filed its own response to the lawsuit last week, denying that it was part of a conspiracy. In its filing, Apple also referred to Amazon, saying that the government was siding with “monopoly, rather than competition.” The response from Macmillan addresses one of the more colorful charges by the government: that the publishers met privately over dinner in upscale restaurants to discuss their conspiracy. John Sargent, Macmillan’s chief executive, “dined once or at most twice with peers from certain other publishing houses, but these dinners were social in nature,” Macmillan said in its filing. “No conspiracy was hatched over any such dinner.” John Makinson, the chief executive of Penguin Group, had a “social dinner” on Jan. 28, 2009, Penguin’s filing said, but while “general book industry issues and trends were discussed at high-levels of generality, Makinson did so pursuant to antitrust legal advice and avoided competitively sensitive topics like terms of trade, prices or confidential competitive matters.” Addressing the charge that Macmillan conspired with other publishers in late 2009 and early 2010, the filing from Macmillan said that no telephone conversation between Mr. Sargent and other publishers had involved collusion. “Indeed, more than half of these telephone ‘conversations’ lasted no more than a few seconds and were nothing more than missed calls,” the filing said.
|
Macmillan Publishers;Penguin Group;Justice Department;Book Trade and Publishing;Antitrust Laws and Competition Issues;E-Books and Readers;Suits and Litigation;E-Commerce;Amazon.com Inc
|
ny0051655
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2014/10/01
|
Kurds in Iraq’s North Make Gains Against Islamic State
|
BAGHDAD — Kurdish fighters opened offensives against Islamic State militants in several parts of northern Iraq on Tuesday, seizing control of a border crossing with Syria that has been a major conduit for the insurgents, officials said. In a predawn push, pesh merga forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government fought their way into the Rabia district, near the Syrian border, seizing control of two villages by late morning and, by day’s end, the border crossing, Kurdish officials said. The Islamic State , also known as ISIS, had controlled Rabia since early June, when jihadist fighters swept across the border from Syria and quickly overwhelmed Iraqi security forces throughout the region, including in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. The militants, who have declared an Islamic caliphate stretching across eastern Syria and western Iraq, have used a highway between Rabia and Mosul, 70 miles away, to transport fighters, weapons, armored vehicles and supplies freely between the two countries. “The militants showed fierce resistance, but pesh merga forced them to retreat to the center of the district,” said Helgurd Hikmet Mela Ali, a spokesman for the Kurdish force. Fighting between pesh merga and the Islamic State also erupted in Zumar, about 40 miles northwest of Mosul, near the reservoir of the Mosul Dam, officials said. Zumar has been the site of periodic clashes since early August, when militants captured the area. American warplanes conducted seven airstrikes against the Islamic State in northwest Iraq, destroying one armored vehicle, two transport vehicles and four armed vehicles, the American military said in a statement. Two other American airstrikes destroyed an Islamic State fighting position and an armed vehicle near the Mosul Dam, the military said. It was unclear whether those bombardments occurred in conjunction with the fighting in Rabia and Zumar. For the first time, British forces joined the airstrike campaign, with two Tornado attack jets striking militant positions in support of Kurdish forces, the British Defense Ministry announced . The planes blew up one of the group’s heavy weapon positions and an armed pickup truck, the ministry said. Iraqi and Kurdish officials also reported heavy fighting south of Kirkuk in Daquq, a district located on the main highway connecting the oil-rich area around Kirkuk with Baghdad. Islamic State fighters seized control of the area in June, commandeering the Kirkuk-Baghdad road along with two other major north-south highways and effectively halting ground transportation between central and northern Iraq. With the support of international airstrikes, Iraqi and Kurdish forces pushed into Daquq district Tuesday morning, Iraqi officials said. On Tuesday afternoon, the officials reported that the coalition of forces had taken control of the villages of Sa’ad, Khaled and Wadah, about 20 miles south of Kirkuk, and the district of Tazah, between Kirkuk and Daquq. How ISIS Works With oil revenues, arms and organization, the jihadist group controls vast stretches of Syria and Iraq and aspires to statehood. But late Tuesday, Brig. Gen. Hussein Mansour, a division commander for the pesh merga, reported that a counterattack by the insurgents had forced government troops to retreat from the three villages, allowing the Iraqi Air Force to conduct airstrikes on the militants’ positions. Iraqi officials also reported that Sunni tribal fighters allied with Iraqi government forces were fighting Islamic State militants in the Rashad district on the highway connecting Kirkuk with Tikrit. Any lasting success against the militants would be a significant boost for the Iraqi government, which has struggled to roll back the Islamic State’s gains around the country and, in places, has continued to cede ground. But should the coalition of Iraqi forces prevail, it remains unclear which unit would assume responsibility for holding Daquq and Zumar. Both districts fall within the so-called disputed territories claimed by both the government of Kurdistan and the central government of Iraq. The Kurdistan government exploited the power vacuum caused by the Islamic State’s routing of Iraqi Army units in June to progressively seize control of the disputed territories. In addition to Daquq and Zumar, which is also in the disputed territories, the pesh merga have been trying to drive Islamic State militants out of Jalawla and Sinjar. “The plan is to get our lands back, set the border, get our bunkers strong and then wait for orders,” Mr. Ali, the pesh merga spokesman, said in a recent interview. Mr. Ali also said that after suffering several humiliating setbacks soon after the Islamic State’s push into northern Iraq, the Kurdish forces were experiencing a rebound in morale. “If you compare the pesh merga today and a month ago, you can tell there’s higher morale, better readiness, and we’ve been able to take back some locations,” he said. But the gains have come at a cost, he said: Fighting since June has killed about 200 pesh merga soldiers and wounded about 1,000. In Baghdad on Tuesday, 26 people were killed and 85 wounded in a series of attacks that included three roadside bombs, three car bombs and two mortar shells, an Interior Ministry official said. Three mortar shells landed in the northern suburbs of Baghdad, killing six and wounding 14, the official added.
|
Iraq;ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State;Kurdish;Terrorism;Pesh Merga;Iraqi Army;Kirkuk
|
ny0139035
|
[
"business",
"media"
] |
2008/02/02
|
Profit Declines 31% at Gannett
|
WASHINGTON (AP) — Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper publisher, said on Friday that its fourth-quarter profit dropped 31 percent because of a decline in broadcasting revenue and weak newspaper ad sales. Wall Street had expected slightly lower earnings per share, and Gannett shares closed higher, rising 54 cents, to $37.47. The company said earnings were $245.3 million, or $1.06 a share, for the quarter ended Dec. 31, down from $353.5 million, or $1.51 a share, a year ago. Excluding a noncash impairment charge, profit was $1.28 a share down from $1.47 in the period a year earlier. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected net income of $1.27 a share. Gannett said 2007 earnings were down also because the 2006 fiscal year and fourth quarter were both one week longer. Quarterly revenue fell 12 percent to $1.9 billion. The company blamed lower advertising revenue, including a significant drop in political advertising for 2007. Analysts expected sales of $1.98 billion. Gannett’s newspaper revenue was $1.7 billion. Advertising revenue was $1.2 billion, down 12 percent from a year ago
|
Newspapers;Company Reports;Gannett Co;Advertising and Marketing
|
ny0110012
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2012/05/06
|
Obama Holds Large Campaign Rallies in Ohio and Virginia
|
COLUMBUS, Ohio — President Obama sought to rekindle the passion of his 2008 victory on Saturday with a pair of huge rallies in battleground states that signaled a new, more politically aggressive phase of the campaign and a sharpened critique of Mitt Romney . Mr. Obama, speaking to enthusiastic crowds here and in Richmond, Va., said the election offered voters a stark choice between an America “where everyone gets a fair shot” and the Republican vision offered by Mr. Romney, which he said was built on a credo of layoffs, outsourcing, tax avoidance and union busting. Seeking to link Mr. Romney to Congressional Republicans, the president said the presumptive Republican nominee was their candidate and could be relied on to “rubber-stamp” their agenda, “if he gets the chance.” “Ohio, I tell you what,” Mr. Obama said, his voice rising, “we cannot give him that chance.” The crowd of 14,000 supporters erupted into cheers and chants of “Four more years!” Hanging above him was a blue-and-white banner with the word “Forward” — a new slogan the president invoked as a reason to re-elect him and as a rebuke of Mr. Romney, who he said would drag the country back to what he called the failed policies that led to the 2008 financial crisis. “Governor Romney is a patriotic American who has raised a wonderful family,” Mr. Obama said, before painting the former Massachusetts governor as an out-of-touch plutocrat who he said lectures hard-working Americans on the need to be more productive. “I don’t care about how many ways you try to explain it,” the president said, mocking a line Mr. Romney once used while campaigning. “Corporations aren’t people. People are people.” Many of the president’s points were familiar, having been grist for remarks at countless fund-raisers. But these rallies — at Virginia Commonwealth University and Ohio State University — provided him with his first chance to shrug off the tension between governing and campaigning and plunge into campaign mode. Appearing without a jacket or tie, his preferred look during his first campaign, Mr. Obama spoke with a combative tone, his voice becoming hoarse toward the end, as he pleaded for support for another four years in office. As reinforcement, Mr. Obama brought along his wife, Michelle, to introduce him. The first lady, wearing a turquoise dress that almost matched the sea of blue placards, tried to warm up the crowd with a slogan from 2008. “It sounds like you all are already fired up and ready to go,” she said to a swell of cheers. “Let me tell you, I’m pretty fired up and ready to go myself.” Recounting the story of her father’s struggles to put her and her brother through college, Mrs. Obama said her husband was fighting for an America where everybody gets a shot at success. The atmosphere at both rallies was buoyant and the crowds were sizable, though in Columbus the turnout did not fill the Schottenstein Center’s 18,300 seats. David Plouffe, a senior adviser to the president, said he was happy with the crowds at this point noting that they dwarfed those that turned out for Mr. Romney. At times, the rallies had the feeling of a concert by an aging rock star: a few supporters were wearing faded “Hope” and Obama 2008 T-shirts, and cheers went up when the president told people to tell their friends that this campaign was “still about hope” and “still about change.” The rallies came at the end of a week that showcased some of Mr. Obama’s greatest strengths and most acute weaknesses: his national security and counterterrorism credentials — on display during a surprise visit to Afghanistan on the first anniversary of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden — and his stewardship of the economy, called into question yet again by Friday’s weak employment report. Mr. Romney did not campaign on Saturday, yielding the spotlight to the president. And Mr. Obama deployed the full trappings of his office, flying in Air Force One and riding in his armored limousine, flags flapping from the fenders. A Romney spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, said in a statement: “No matter how many lofty campaign speeches President Obama gives, the fact remains that American families are struggling on his watch: to pay their bills, find a job and keep their homes.” The president drew some of his loudest applause when he spoke of ending the war in Iraq and of the raid that killed Bin Laden. “By 2014,” he said, “the war in Afghanistan will be over.” He also struck a chord on women’s issues. “We don’t need another political fight about ending a woman’s right to choose, or getting rid of Planned Parenthood or taking away access to affordable birth control,” he said to noisy cheers. “I want women to control their own health choices.” While Mr. Obama defended other elements of his record, including the health care law that is in legal jeopardy at the Supreme Court, he devoted most of his remarks to trying to define Mr. Romney before Mr. Romney has a chance to define himself to voters. Campaign advisers said the president would hammer at his opponent in coming weeks. “For the American people, the next few months will be sort of an intense burrowing in on the candidates, though more on Romney than on us, because they know us,” said David Axelrod, a senior Obama campaign strategist. “Views will not set, but be hardened over the summer. By the time you get to Labor Day, I don’t think you’re going to be able to change impressions greatly over the fall.” In Ohio, digital gizmos lent the rally the techno-dazzle of an Apple product introduction. Attendees could have their pictures taken and posted on a giant screen during the rally. They sent text messages to register for “Backstage with Barack,” a drawing to meet the president. There was also a mobile field office, where supporters sampled life as a volunteer in a campaign office. No amount of show business, however, can replicate the euphoria of 2008, as some in the audience acknowledged. Roshni Patel, 19, from Columbus, said “the excitement is still high, though maybe not as high as four years ago.” But she said students credited Mr. Obama with trying to create jobs and fighting to keep interest rates low on student loans . “That means a lot to me personally,” she said. Ms. Patel said she had not really focused much on Mr. Romney, but was inclined to stick with Mr. Obama. “People really think he’s done a lot,” she said. “He killed Bin Laden.”
|
Obama Barack;Presidential Election of 2012;Romney Mitt;Ohio;Virginia;United States Economy;United States Politics and Government
|
ny0161475
|
[
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] |
2006/04/01
|
Underdog Has Already Beaten the Odds
|
INDIANAPOLIS, March 31 - Peggy and Mark Carlson traveled Friday from Boston to Philadelphia to Dayton to Indianapolis, all to see a college basketball player who is of no relation sit at the end of a bench. Makan Konate has played one minute in this year's N.C.A.A. tournament. He has scored one basket in his three-year career at George Mason. He is the most unlikely member of the most unlikely team in the Final Four. Without Peggy and Mark Carlson, the 22-year-old Konate probably would not be on this continent, much less on this stage. Konate is among the legion of young men who come to the United States from Africa in hopes of using their height and athletic ability to win a college education. But unlike his more celebrated compatriots, Konate was never all that advanced as a basketball player. When he first arrived in Massachusetts, prep schools passed on him because he could not speak English. Public schools made him sit out one season because he was a transfer. His name (pronounced mah-KAHN koh-NAH-tay) dropped from the prospect lists. The system might have given up on him if the Carlsons had not. A guidance counselor at Ayer High School in Ayer, Mass., told Peggy Carlson about a 15-year-old from Africa who played a little basketball and needed a place to live. "Everybody expected big things from him because of basketball," she said. "But more than that, he was just a really, really good kid." Fearing he had no place in the United States, Konate once tried to run away. He took a bus from Boston to New York and checked out a few flights back to Mali, where he was raised. But one of Konate's cousins in New York persuaded him to return. And the Carlsons persuaded him to stay. Their house in Shirley, Mass., in the countryside near the New Hampshire border, had just enough room for a 6-foot-7, 200-pound boarder. When the Carlsons, a family of four, went on vacation, Konate tagged along. When they celebrated Christmas, he was the one tall enough to put the angel on top of the tree. When he became eligible to play basketball as a sophomore, Peggy Carlson put him through shooting drills. "When I first moved in with them, I was very shy," Konate said. "I would just go to my room and not come out. They were the ones who got me to start talking and joking and enjoying it here. They became my second family." Still, he was consumed with his first family. In Mali, Konate's mother was found to have breast cancer. His father was killed by rebels in an ambush on a bus. Konate said his father was an aid worker trying to bring food to the Mali army in 2001. At some point during the bus ride, his father asked to sit next to a window so he could smoke a cigarette. He was sitting next to that window when a bullet tore through his neck. Whenever Konate thought about his mother and father, he felt as though he were getting kicked in the stomach, over and over again. Before his junior year of high school, doctors concluded that he was the one doing the kicking. Konate had bleeding stomach ulcers, partly because of stress, and he was ordered to sit out another season. Although Konate did not develop many post moves on the sideline, he learned enough English to enroll at Worcester Academy, where the team regularly contended for championships, and the players were often rewarded with college scholarships. The first time Konate was sent into a game at Worcester, he ran directly onto the court, too excited to check in at the scorer's table. Mo Cassara was Konate's coach at Worcester, and he also drove him home after late practices. Every time they drove together, Konate was sure he knew the way, and every time, they would get lost. "We couldn't tell the difference between one highway and another, between one back road and another," Cassara said. "It was a 45-minute ride that always turned into a two-hour adventure." Anybody who meets Konate cannot help but be patient with him. On Jan. 26, in the final minutes of a blowout victory over William & Mary, Konate sank a fadeaway jump shot that was meaningless only to those unfamiliar with his struggle. The crowd at George Mason's Patriot Center celebrated Konate's first basket as if it were a berth in the Final Four. Teammates rode on his back. Fans chanted his name. Even the coaches jumped up and down. "You should have seen it," said Tim Burns, a George Mason guard who went to Worcester Academy with Konate. "It was one of the highlights of our season." This from a team that has supplied highlights like few others in college basketball history. When George Mason received its bid to the N.C.A.A. tournament, Konate sent copies of the newspaper home to Mali. And when the Patriots cut down the nets Sunday in Washington, Konate, a junior, waved a piece of the twine to his older brother in the stands. Away from the excitement of the tournament, Konate has not seen his mother in two years. When he thinks about her, he sometimes feels the kicking again in his stomach. He talks about returning to Mali, not as a superstar, but as a community servant. He wants to get back on the bus that his father once rode, and deliver the food that his father could not. "I only wish my dad were here to see me right now," Konate said. "He's my idol. I just want to fill his footsteps and get the same job he did. I want to be an aid worker." Friends back home think Konate is a professional basketball star making millions of dollars right now. They do not realize that he is only the last player off the bench for a college team that was practically unknown two weeks ago. They do not understand the difference between the Final Four and the N.B.A. For Konate, and for the Carlsons, the road here was long and trying. The family drove Friday from Shirley to Boston, flew to Philadelphia, was set to catch a connection to Dayton, Ohio, and then drive 100 miles west to Indianapolis. They are going to sit in the family section at the R.C.A. Dome on Saturday night. They are going to wear T-shirts emblazoned with Konate's photograph. And they are going to cheer whether he gets off the bench or not.
|
GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY;UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA;KONATE MAKAN;NCAA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT;BASKETBALL
|
ny0096132
|
[
"world",
"africa"
] |
2015/01/24
|
Central African Republic: Kidnappers Free French Aid Worker
|
A French aid worker kidnapped in the Central African Republic and her co-worker have been released, those involved in the negotiations said Friday. Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius of France said that the aid worker, Claudia Priest, 67, had been released, and he thanked the Central African Republic authorities and especially the archbishop of the country’s capital for their help. Ms. Priest, who was working for a Catholic medical organization, was kidnapped along with her local co-worker when gunmen seized their vehicle full of medicine and medical kits, according to their driver. Christian militia fighters are believed to have kidnapped the two after the arrest of their commander, Rodrigue Ngaibona. The Central African Republic was hit by a wave of sectarian violence about a year ago when Christian militias were formed to combat a Muslim rebel coalition that had taken control of the country.
|
Kidnapping and Hostages;Rodrigue Ngaibona;Laurent Fabius;Central African Republic;France
|
ny0000496
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2013/03/18
|
Republicans Don’t Let Vote Get in Way of Confidence
|
WASHINGTON — A year ago this month, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin stood on the floor of the House and declared that the ideals of small government, privatized health care and rigorous spending discipline captured in the budget plan about to pass the House would and should be central to the 2012 election campaign. “It is so rare in American politics to arrive at a moment in which the debate revolves around the fundamental nature of American democracy and the social contract, but that is exactly where we are today,” Mr. Ryan said . Months later, his selection as the Republicans’ vice-presidential nominee would place the House budget, which he had devised, at the center of the policy debate in the presidential race. Then he and Mitt Romney lost — Mr. Ryan’s home state, every swing state but North Carolina, and 332 electoral votes. Democrats locked down control of the Senate, which they had once been expected to lose, and chipped away at the Republicans’ House majority, sending the Republican Party into a round of soul-searching that persists today — everywhere, it seems, but on Capitol Hill. “He got a mandate to be president. We got a mandate to have a majority in the House,” Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio said in an interview Thursday, dismissing any suggestion that election results should dictate Republican accession to President Obama’s wishes. “His idea of compromise is, ‘Do it my way,’ ” said Mr. Boehner, the highest-ranking elected Republican in the country. Mr. Boehner’s obligation, he said, is “to continue to fight for our principles as a party.” In Congress, Republicans are pushing an agenda that is almost identical to the one that their party lost with in November, with no regrets and few efforts to reframe it even rhetorically. The House will vote this week on the third iteration of Mr. Ryan’s budget, which would again try to turn Medicare into a subsidy for private insurance purchases, slash the top income tax rate and cut deeply into programs the president campaigned to protect. On Wednesday, Senate Republicans forced a vote to eliminate financing for the president’s health care law. The effort failed, 52-45, but it was at least the 54th time that one chamber or the other had voted on a proposal to repeal all or part of the law, which was enacted three years ago. On the Sunday political talk shows, a few conciliatory words from rank-and-file Republicans were all but drowned out by the resolute tone of Republican Congressional leaders. Mr. Boehner said on the ABC News program “This Week” that Mr. Obama had harvested the fruits of his election victory on Jan. 1, with a deal that allowed tax rates to rise on annual income over $450,000. That covered a smaller group than the $250,000 threshold the president campaigned on. “The president got his tax hikes on January the first,” Mr. Boehner said. “The talk about raising revenue is over. It’s time to deal with the spending problem.” Republicans in the House and Senate are standing firmly in the way of Mr. Obama’s second-term agenda, with a message that is striking when set against the results of an election just four months ago: Mr. President, you have to come to us. Representative Lynn Jenkins of Kansas, a member of the House Republican leadership, emerged from a closed-door meeting with Mr. Obama last week and declared, “I’m encouraged to have heard from the president today, but more encouraged that perhaps this is an indication he is willing to change course.” Which raises the question: What are elections for? “Continuing to double down on policies that have been firmly rejected by the American people flies in the face of everything the Republican Party said they would do in the aftermath of losing the popular vote for the fifth time in the last six elections,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama. Of course, Republican lawmakers interpret the last election differently. “I think they are claiming too much of a mandate,” said Senator John Hoeven, Republican of North Dakota. “Number one, it was a close presidential election. Number two, the Republicans won the House, and they can lay claim to the same mandate. So to me, that’s a wash.” Mr. Boehner said firmly that he did not believe that the ideals and programs pressed by Republicans in the past two years had much to do with the party’s electoral showing. Rather than change course, “we have to do a better job communicating our principles to hard-working taxpayers,” he said in the interview last week. “I don’t think we did a very good job of that in the 2012 election.” After President Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory in 1964, House Republicans ousted their leader, brought in a new generation and proposed a host of what they called “constructive alternatives.” In 1981, after Ronald Reagan stormed to power, Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr., a Democrat, lay low in the term’s opening months, watching an alliance of Republicans and Southern Democrats enact much of the new president’s sweeping agenda. The Republican losses in the midterm election of 1998 shocked the party and cost Newt Gingrich his speakership. But as convincing as it was, Mr. Obama’s victory in November did not compare to those political earthquakes, said Donald R. Wolfensberger, a senior scholar at the Congress Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. David Winston, a Republican strategist whose Winston Group conducts polls for the House Republican leadership, said: “One of the great failings of the Romney campaign was that they made the election a referendum on Obama, not a policy debate. There never was a real choice.” Republicans say they are being resolute in sticking to principles they believe in. But also at work are two political forces: the gerrymandering of Congressional districts, which has made most House members more concerned about primary challenges than general elections, and the coming 2014 midterm election, which Republicans believe will follow tradition and favor them. Only once since the start of the 20th century has the midterm election of a president’s second term cost the party out of power any seats. Even moderate Republicans in the House took away from the 2012 election a message very different from the one that Democrats say the electorate sent. Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania, said Democrats had attacked Republican House candidates mercilessly on their votes for the previous Ryan budget, focusing especially on its prescription to replace Medicare with a subsidy that seniors would use to buy private health insurance. Almost all of them survived. It did not hurt that Mr. Obama, who won 52 percent of the votes in Mr. Dent’s district in 2008, took only 48 percent last year after a Republican-controlled legislature redrew the boundaries. “What came out of the election that was useful was that we could talk about entitlements in a thoughtful manner,” Mr. Dent said. “We’re ready to have that conversation.” Representative Steve Israel of New York, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said he still believed Republicans would pay a price for not changing course. Historically, he said, two-term presidents have one bad midterm election, and Mr. Obama already had a catastrophic one in 2010. Last year, he said, Republican Congressional candidates could buffer Democratic attacks with the broader presidential election. “In 2014, they are uncloaked,” Mr. Israel said. “They have only themselves to run on, and we have only them to run against.”
|
Republicans;US Politics;Federal Budget;Obamacare,Affordable Care Act;Federal Taxes;Health Insurance;Barack Obama;Paul D Ryan Jr
|
ny0258951
|
[
"science"
] |
2011/01/06
|
Journal’s Article on ESP Is Expected to Prompt Outrage
|
One of psychology ’s most respected journals has agreed to publish a paper presenting what its author describes as strong evidence for extrasensory perception, the ability to sense future events. The decision may delight believers in so-called paranormal events, but it is already mortifying scientists. Advance copies of the paper , to be published this year in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, have circulated widely among psychological researchers in recent weeks and have generated a mixture of amusement and scorn. The paper describes nine unusual lab experiments performed over the past decade by its author, Daryl J. Bem , an emeritus professor at Cornell, testing the ability of college students to accurately sense random events, like whether a computer program will flash a photograph on the left or right side of its screen. The studies include more than 1,000 subjects. Some scientists say the report deserves to be published, in the name of open inquiry; others insist that its acceptance only accentuates fundamental flaws in the evaluation and peer review of research in the social sciences. “It’s craziness, pure craziness. I can’t believe a major journal is allowing this work in,” Ray Hyman, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University Oregon and longtime critic of ESP research, said. “I think it’s just an embarrassment for the entire field.” The editor of the journal, Charles Judd, a psychologist at the University of Colorado , said the paper went through the journal’s regular review process. “Four reviewers made comments on the manuscript,” he said, “and these are very trusted people.” All four decided that the paper met the journal’s editorial standards, Dr. Judd added, even though “there was no mechanism by which we could understand the results.” But many experts say that is precisely the problem. Claims that defy almost every law of science are by definition extraordinary and thus require extraordinary evidence. Neglecting to take this into account — as conventional social science analyses do — makes many findings look far more significant than they really are, these experts say. “Several top journals publish results only when these appear to support a hypothesis that is counterintuitive or attention-grabbing,” Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, a psychologist at the University of Amsterdam, wrote by e-mail. “But such a hypothesis probably constitutes an extraordinary claim, and it should undergo more scrutiny before it is allowed to enter the field.” Dr. Wagenmakers is co-author of a rebuttal to the ESP paper that is scheduled to appear in the same issue of the journal. In an interview, Dr. Bem, the author of the original paper and one of the most prominent research psychologists of his generation, said he intended each experiment to mimic a well-known classic study, “only time-reversed.” In one classic memory experiment, for example, participants study 48 words and then divide a subset of 24 of them into categories, like food or animal. The act of categorizing reinforces memory, and on subsequent tests people are more likely to remember the words they practiced than those they did not. In his version, Dr. Bem gave 100 college students a memory test before they did the categorizing — and found they were significantly more likely to remember words that they practiced later. “The results show that practicing a set of words after the recall test does, in fact, reach back in time to facilitate the recall of those words,” the paper concludes. In another experiment, Dr. Bem had subjects choose which of two curtains on a computer screen hid a photograph; the other curtain hid nothing but a blank screen. A software program randomly posted a picture behind one curtain or the other — but only after the participant made a choice. Still, the participants beat chance, by 53 percent to 50 percent, at least when the photos being posted were erotic ones. They did not do better than chance on negative or neutral photos. “What I showed was that unselected subjects could sense the erotic photos,” Dr. Bem said, “but my guess is that if you use more talented people, who are better at this, they could find any of the photos.” In recent weeks science bloggers, researchers and assorted skeptics have challenged Dr. Bem’s methods and his statistics, with many critiques digging deep into the arcane but important fine points of crunching numbers. (Others question his intentions. “He’s got a great sense of humor,” said Dr. Hyman, of Oregon. “I wouldn’t rule out that this is an elaborate joke.”) Dr. Bem has generally responded in kind, accusing some critics of misunderstanding his paper, and others of building a strong bias into their own re-evaluations of his data. In one sense, it is a historically familiar pattern. For more than a century, researchers have conducted hundreds of tests to detect ESP, telekinesis and other such things, and when such studies have surfaced, skeptics have been quick to shoot holes in them. But in another way, Dr. Bem is far from typical. He is widely respected for his clear, original thinking in social psychology, and some people familiar with the case say his reputation may have played a role in the paper’s acceptance. Peer review is usually an anonymous process, with authors and reviewers unknown to one another. But all four reviewers of this paper were social psychologists, and all would have known whose work they were checking and would have been responsive to the way it was reasoned. Perhaps more important, none were topflight statisticians. “The problem was that this paper was treated like any other,” said an editor at the journal, Laura King, a psychologist at the University of Missouri . “And it wasn’t.” Many statisticians say that conventional social-science techniques for analyzing data make an assumption that is disingenuous and ultimately self-deceiving: that researchers know nothing about the probability of the so-called null hypothesis. In this case, the null hypothesis would be that ESP does not exist. Refusing to give that hypothesis weight makes no sense, these experts say; if ESP exists, why aren’t people getting rich by reliably predicting the movement of the stock market or the outcome of football games? Instead, these statisticians prefer a technique called Bayesian analysis, which seeks to determine whether the outcome of a particular experiment “changes the odds that a hypothesis is true,” in the words of Jeffrey N. Rouder, a psychologist at the University of Missouri who, with Richard D. Morey of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands , has also submitted a critique of Dr. Bem’s paper to the journal. Physics and biology, among other disciplines, overwhelmingly suggest that Dr. Bem’s experiments have not changed those odds, Dr. Rouder said. So far, at least three efforts to replicate the experiments have failed. But more are in the works, Dr. Bem said, adding, “I have received hundreds of requests for the materials” to conduct studies.
|
Psychology;Journal of Personality and Social Psychology;Research;Psychic
|
ny0285547
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2016/09/21
|
Pakistan Grows a Baseball Team From Its Home Soil
|
Straight off a bone-wearying 24-hour journey, the Pakistani national baseball team went about its inaugural workout in the United States on Tuesday before the Coney Island backdrop of Nathan’s Famous restaurant and the Cyclone roller coaster. The Pakistanis were at MCU Park in Brooklyn for the qualifiers of the World Baseball Classic, which begin Thursday, and they were hoping to find their equilibrium on unfamiliar ground. “It’s like going from a black-and-white world to a world of color,” said third baseman Zubair Nawaz, speaking through his interpreter and manager, Syed Fakhar Shah. Image The Pakistani players at their workout Tuesday. The team had limited opportunities to practice in Pakistan. Credit Ryan C. Jones for The New York Times Unlike the other three national teams here to compete in the play-in qualifiers — Israel, Britain and Brazil — Pakistan fields no players born or raised in the United States. Nawaz, for instance, is something of a star cricket player back in Pakistan, still occasionally receiving the equivalent of $50 to participate in a single match at home. But since 2009, he has also been playing baseball, one of several converted cricketers nurtured by coaches whose main instructional tools were American baseball videos. “I’m a third baseman, but my favorite is Derek Jeter,” said Nawaz, 26, who dreams of becoming a major leaguer. “And the Yankees, of course.” Image Batting practice at the workout. Syed Khawar Shah brought baseball to Pakistan in 1992, hoping to participate in what was — and will be, again, in 2020 — an Olympic sport. Credit Ryan C. Jones for The New York Times While Nawaz was saying this, the founder of Pakistani baseball, Syed Khawar Shah, sat in the front row by the third-base dugout, proudly watching his team field grounders on the alien artificial turf. Khawar Shah is the secretary of Pakistan Federation Baseball and the father of the national team’s manager, Fakhar Shah. Khawar Shah brought baseball to Pakistan in 1992, hoping to participate in what was — and will be, again, in 2020 — an Olympic sport. Cricket and field hockey were then the country’s two major sports. Baseball teams were established in all four Pakistani provinces, with a championship tournament aired on a major television network. While cricket remains the most popular sport in Pakistan, Fakhar Shah insisted that baseball was competing with field hockey in terms of fan interest. He boasted of solid performers on his evolving roster, including a strong-hitting catcher, Umair Imdad Bhatti; a fireplug center fielder, the 5-foot-9-inch Muhammad Sumair Zawar; and a right-handed starter, Ihsan Ullah, who can throw in the low 90s. Difficulties remain, however. It was the rainy season in Pakistan last month leading to these games, reducing opportunities to practice. The federation’s finances are limited, and most important, there are no real baseball stadiums in Pakistan. Many players started training in the sport on one of the two fields at the United States Embassy. Fakhar Shah and others were forced to scout cricket matches for talent, though now there is an influx of younger players coming through the system and lifting the national team. Image Israel Manager Jerry Weinstein, far left, and Pakistan Manager Syed Fakhar Shah, foreground, at a news conference Tuesday. Their teams may play in the qualifiers. Credit Ryan C. Jones for The New York Times Travel remains challenging, for both economic and political reasons. Only 24 of the 29 Pakistani players were on hand Tuesday, while the arrival of others had been stalled until at least Wednesday because of visa problems. There was also a real chance that Pakistan, a Muslim nation, would face Israel during this modified double-elimination tournament, which would present obvious international intrigue. Officials in Pakistan, unlike those in Iran, do not ban competition with Israel. However, such a competition remains a delicate subject. “There are really just two countries in the world founded on religion, Pakistan and Israel,” said Fakhar Shah, who is a dual citizen of Pakistan and the United States and who lives much of the year in Danville, Va. “We are trying to keep this low. For us, it’s a game, and we feel positive about it. Major League Baseball is doing a good thing, bringing countries together.” Israel’s manager, Jerry Weinstein, a coach with the Colorado Rockies, said global diplomacy was the last thing on his mind. “I’m the most apolitical person in the world,” he said. “Playing Pakistan for me would be no different than managing in the Cal League, or any other game.” Fakhar Shah is proud that his squad comprises native-born players. The rosters from the other teams here are generously sprinkled with American-born or American-raised players, some of them minor leaguers and others former major leaguers. The World Baseball Classic, unlike the Olympics, does not require athletes to be passport-holding citizens of the nation they play for. Instead, they must merely meet the standards that would be required of them to apply for citizenship. Israel, which faces Britain on Thursday, has its own share of complications. Weinstein will field several fatigued minor leaguers who have already played a long season. Image Only 24 of the 29 Pakistani players were on hand Tuesday, and the arrival of others had been stalled until at least Wednesday because of visa problems. Credit Ryan C. Jones for The New York Times “There are all kinds of hurdles this time of year, especially with pitching,” Weinstein said of gathering the team. “These players have been through 140 games already.” The Pakistanis have imported a few American coaches for tutoring. Pete Durkovic, a former minor leaguer from New York, was throwing batting practice on Tuesday after offering to help. Fakhar Shah and the team coordinator Mohammad Muzamil Anwar, from the Bronx, are searching major league front offices for potential Pakistani-American contacts. Farhan Zaidi, the Dodgers’ general manager, is a Canadian-American with Pakistani roots. That is the sort of connection that Fakhar Shah hopes will make future recruiting easier. The publicity from this tournament also figures to help. Pakistani fans may be able to follow the qualifiers through live streaming on MLB.com. The opener against the higher-ranked Brazil team is not expected to go well, but then again, other things are at stake. “It’s not about the winning and losing,” Fakhar Shah said. “It’s about the learning.”
|
Baseball;Pakistan;World Baseball Classic;Israel;Syed Fakhar Shah
|
ny0249088
|
[
"technology"
] |
2011/05/12
|
AT&T and T-Mobile Testify About Merger on Capitol Hill
|
WASHINGTON — A few weeks ago, AT&T and T-Mobile were robust competitors. T-Mobile ads made merciless fun of AT&T’s reputation for dropped calls and sluggish wireless data connections while celebrating T-Mobile’s fast network and low rates. AT&T promoted superior nationwide service and its exclusive array of the sleekest, fastest smartphones. The two companies did not show up as rivals on Wednesday, however, at a Senate hearing on the proposed acquisition of T-Mobile by AT&T. Instead, the executives of AT&T and T-Mobile, after standing with hands raised vowing to tell the truth, warned that without AT&T buying T-Mobile, the growth potential of both companies was limited and their ability to meet customer demand for wireless Internet service was lacking. Actually, the two companies said, they are not really competitors — an assertion that one senator finally found too much to bear. “I mean, please,” said Senator Herb Kohl, the Wisconsin Democrat who is chairman of the judiciary subcommittee for antitrust and competition issues. “You both sell the same service, cellphone service, on a national basis,” Mr. Kohl said, looking at Randall L. Stephenson, the chairman and chief executive of AT&T. “Is it really credible to come up here and sit here and tell us that you and T-Mobile are not close competitors? Mr. Stephenson replied: “They’re not our competitive focus. I can tell you that.” While forecasting their misfortune as unmerged entities, the chief executives of the both companies parried skeptical questions from other Democrats and competing telecommunications executives. The proposal, which faces a nearly yearlong review from the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission, would create a carrier that controls an estimated 43 percent of the cellular-phone market. Together with Verizon, the two companies would control close to 80 percent of the national market. Those who looked skeptically on that potential dominance included Daniel R. Hesse, chief executive of Sprint Nextel, a company that T-Mobile and AT&T say is, in fact, a competitor. Mr. Hesse repeated the argument he has voiced almost since the day AT&T announced its purchase of T-Mobile. If regulators approve the deal, he said, “the wireless industry would regress toward a 1980s style duopoly.” Mr. Hesse said he believed that the combination of the two companies would reduce to three, from four, the number of major national wireless carriers, a group that also includes Verizon. That would be only a prelude to a further consolidation to two companies, as his own company would find it difficult to compete with the reach of AT&T/T-Mobile and Verizon. “I am not here to ask for a special break or to seek any conditions in connection with this takeover,” Mr. Hesse said. “I am here because Sprint believes in competition, which goes hand in hand with innovation.” Mr. Stephenson and Philipp Humm, chief executive of T-Mobile USA, said that they also believed in competition, and that the merger of their companies would do nothing to ease the battle for mobile phone subscribers. “We expect increased competition and lower prices for all customers,” Mr. Humm told the subcommittee. Republicans on the subcommittee expressed support for the deal. “I favor market approaches rather than government funding and intervention to build a national wireless network,” said Senator Michael S. Lee of Utah. Regulators, Mr. Lee added, “must be guided by what is best for consumers in prices, in service, in quality and ultimately in the range of choice” for customers. Several subcommittee members from Iowa, Minnesota, Vermont and Wisconsin asked the executives to explain the effect of the acquisition on rural cellphone service. Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, asked if it were true, as critics have said, that both companies had large blocks of unused spectrum — the airwaves on which mobile phone traffic travels — in rural areas, where there is often spotty service. Mr. Stephenson replied that without the merger, his company would not be able to expand its wireless broadband service to rural areas. Mr. Stephenson also made several references to President Obama’s goal of expanding wireless broadband service to as many Americans as possible in the next few years, saying that the combination of the two companies would allow his company to do just that. “This is a private market solution for a public policy objective,” Mr. Stephenson said. The president’s goal, he said, “could become a reality purely with private capital.” Mr. Kohl, in turn, scoffed at Mr. Stephenson’s repeated appeals to public policy goals. “You would almost argue to us today that what you are doing is in national interest,” Mr. Kohl said. “This is a business deal to make your company more successful and more profitable.” While Mr. Kohl said he did not have any problem with a profit-making company looking out for its own interest, “we should discuss it in that context, not as what is in the national interest.”
|
AT&T Inc;T-Mobile;Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures;Antitrust Laws and Competition Issues;Telephones and Telecommunications
|
ny0296722
|
[
"business",
"economy"
] |
2016/12/13
|
A Trump Economic Boom? The Fed May Stand in the Way
|
WASHINGTON — Investors in financial markets, and those predicting faster economic growth in 2017, would do well to remember the famous words that William McChesney Martin Jr. , the former Federal Reserve chairman, uttered way back in 1955: The Fed’s job is to remove the punch bowl just as the party gets going. President-elect Donald J. Trump’s promises to cut taxes and regulation and to increase spending on infrastructure and defense have convinced many that a sugar high in the near term will goose the economy. But Fed officials say the economy is already expanding at something close to its maximum sustainable pace, meaning faster growth would drive inflation toward unwelcome levels. To avoid overheating, the Fed could respond by raising interest rates more quickly. The more Mr. Trump stimulates growth, the faster the Fed is likely to increase rates. “I guess I would argue that I think people have gotten a bit ahead of themselves about what a Trump presidency would mean,” said Lewis Alexander, chief United States economist at Nomura. “If we have a big stimulus, the logical thing for the Fed to do is to raise rates faster. There isn’t a whole heck of a lot of scope to just let the economy run under those circumstances. There’s a big question about whether fiscal stimulus under Trump just leads to higher interest rates.” Underscoring that question, the Fed is expected to raise its benchmark rate on Wednesday for the first time since last December in light of new economic data. The rate sits in a range of 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent, a low level intended to stimulate economic growth by encouraging borrowing and risk-taking. Analysts predict the Fed will shift the range upward by a quarter of a percentage point, modestly reducing those incentives. Why the Fed Is About to Raise Interest Rates Federal Reserve officials have delayed raising rates this year as they wrestle with three critical questions. But they may soon be about to act. The rate increase is widely regarded as a foregone conclusion. The odds, derived from asset prices, topped 95 percent Monday , according to the CME Group. The looming question is how quickly the Fed will continue to raise rates in 2017. Economic forecasts always require large assumptions, but that is particularly true in the present case because Mr. Trump has provided relatively few details about his plans. Perhaps the most accurate thing that can be said about Mr. Trump’s victory is that it has increased the uncertainty of the economic outlook. “At this juncture, it is premature to reach firm conclusions about what will likely occur,” William C. Dudley, president of the New York Fed, said in a recent speech . During his campaign, Mr. Trump predicted 4 percent annual growth, and his actions since Election Day point to a single-minded goal of short-term job creation. “Our No. 1 priority is going to be the economy, get back to 3 to 4 percent growth,” Steven Mnuchin, Mr. Trump’s pick to serve as Treasury secretary, said last month. Many economists regard such growth predictions as fanciful; the economy has been mired in an extended period of slow growth and the reasons, including an aging population and a dearth of innovation, are unlikely to change quickly. Some think Mr. Trump is more likely to push the economy into recession than to catalyze a new boom. What Happens When the Fed Raises Rates, in One Rube Goldberg Machine Exactly seven years ago, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to almost zero in order to nurse the ailing economy back to health. Recently it changed direction. This is how it works. Even if Mr. Trump is right, however, the Fed does not want 4 percent growth. The central bank’s outlook has become increasingly gloomy. Officials estimated in September that annual growth of 1.8 percent was the maximum sustainable pace, and they predicted growth would not exceed 2 percent in the next three years. They will update those forecasts Wednesday, but large shifts are unlikely. Fed officials also are increasingly convinced that steady job growth has substantially eliminated the post-recession backlog of people seeking work. The unemployment rate fell to 4.6 percent in November , a level the Fed regards as healthy. For years, Fed officials urged Congress to increase fiscal spending. Now, Mr. Trump is promising to do just that — and the Fed has concluded that it is too late. Stanley Fischer, the Fed’s vice chairman, said last month the Fed might still benefit from fiscal stimulus because it could raise rates more quickly. That would increase the Fed’s ability to respond to future downturns by reducing interest rates. But such gains would come at real cost: A fiscal stimulus would increase the federal government’s debt burden, which already is at a high level by historical standards, reducing the room for a fiscal response to a future downturn. Janet L. Yellen, the Fed’s chairwoman, urged Congress last month to be mindful that the government is already on the hook for more spending as baby boomers age into retirement. “With the debt-to-G.D.P. ratio at around 77 percent, there’s not a lot of fiscal space, should a shock to the economy occur, an adverse shock, that did require fiscal stimulus,” she said. Image Steven Mnuchin is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to serve as Treasury secretary. Credit Mike Segar/Reuters The tension between fiscal and monetary policy is likely to unfold in slow motion. Mr. Trump has promised to press for rapid changes in government policy, but Congress is not built for speed. A similar effort to cut taxes at the beginning of the George W. Bush administration, for example, was signed into law on June 7, 2001. The impact of new cuts, and any increase in infrastructure spending that Mr. Trump can persuade dubious Republicans to embrace, would be felt mostly in future years. Mark M. Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, predicted that tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks and deficit-financed spending would fuel faster growth in the first half of Mr. Trump’s four-year term. But he said that the Fed’s rate increases, and restrictions on trade and immigration, would gradually begin to take a larger toll. By the end, Mr. Zandi predicted, the American economy would be “unnervingly close” to recession. “The Fed and markets in general will ultimately wash out any benefit,” Mr. Zandi said Monday. “The economy under President Trump ultimately will be diminished.” Other economists are more optimistic, predicting that the stimulus will not be fully offset by Fed policy. Mr. Dudley appeared to endorse this view in his recent speech, suggesting that the rise in financial markets was “broadly appropriate.” Some of Mr. Trump’s proposals also could increase the economy’s potential growth rate, for example by improving infrastructure or encouraging corporate investment. On the other hand, the Fed’s march toward higher rates may be amplified by the bond market. Rates are already rising, and investors concerned about inflation and larger federal deficits are likely to generate persistent upward pressure. Those effects are already visible. Stock prices have climbed since Mr. Trump’s surprising victory, increasing the wealth of shareholders. But borrowing costs also climbed. The average rate on a 30-year mortgage loan was 4.13 percent last week, according to Freddie Mac , up from 3.54 percent just before the election.
|
US Economy;Interest rate;Federal Reserve;Donald Trump
|
ny0143431
|
[
"business"
] |
2008/10/03
|
Two Online Health Site Operators to Announce a Merger
|
In a deal that threatens WebMD’s dominance in the health care space, Revolution Health Network plans to announce on Friday that it has merged with Waterfront Media, a publisher that owns several health Web sites. The deal, valued at $300 million, would give the combined companies enough traffic in the United States to compete with WebMD, now the market leader in the online health category. “We think we have the wind at our back, and can pass them,” said Steve Case, Revolution’s founder, referring to WebMD. He said the combined company could “really be the new leader in this category, which is a hot category.” The new company will operate under the name Waterfront Media. Waterfront, based in Brooklyn, runs several sites called the Everyday Health Network. The Revolution Health Web sites will be absorbed into that network. Benjamin Wolin, the co-founder and chief executive of Waterfront, will remain as chief executive, and Mr. Case will join Waterfront’s board. “This deal is, obviously, a great way for us to vastly expand the portfolio,” Mr. Wolin said. Mr. Case will continue to run Revolution L.L.C., which was the parent company of the Revolution Health Network, which is based in Washington, and will continue to be involved with health companies apart from the network of Web sites. Mr. Case, the co-founder of America Online, left that company in 2003 after selling it to Time Warner. He founded Revolution L.L.C. in 2005, and the Revolution Health unit in 2007. Revolution L.L.C., whose backers include Carleton S. Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, and Colin Powell, invests in a mix of companies, including Zipcar and Exclusive Resorts. Revolution L.L.C. will be a major investor in the expanded Waterfront Media. “Clearly, getting strong C.E.O.’s to run each of the companies is our strategy,” Mr. Case said. “Ben’s done a great job building a company.” WebMD has also been expanding. In September, it announced that it would acquire the site QualityHealth.com for $50 million and an additional $25 million based on performance. Mr. Wolin said that Waterfront was profitable on revenue of $50 million last year, though he declined to provide a specific figure. For 2009, he is projecting the company will have revenue of more than $100 million, and will again be profitable. The new company will operate 24 sites, including RevolutionHealth.com, and HealthTalk.com . The Everyday Health Network already includes EverydayHealth.com , along with niche sites like SouthBeachDiet.com and the pregnancy site WhatToExpect.com . Everyday Health was the second most popular health site in July 2008, with 14.7 million unique visitors, according to comScore Media Metrix. The Revolution Health sites came in third, with 11.3 million visitors. Though traffic varies month to month, the July figures would put the combined companies ahead of WebMD, which had 17.3 million visitors that month. In the last year, health sites have grown quickly. The number of visitors has increased 21 percent, outpacing the 5 percent increase in total Internet users United States, comScore said. Terms were not disclosed.
|
Revolution Health Group;Waterfront Media;Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures;WebMD Corporation;Case Steve
|
ny0291639
|
[
"science"
] |
2016/01/15
|
Searching for Cancer Maps in Free-Floating DNA
|
Loose pieces of DNA course through our veins. As cells in our body die, they cast off fragments of genes, some of which end up in the bloodstream, saliva and urine. Cell-free DNA is like a message in a bottle, delivering secrets about what’s happening inside our bodies. Pregnant women, for example, carry cell-free DNA from their fetuses. A test that analyzes fetal DNA has proved to be more accurate in screening for Down syndrome than standard blood tests. In 2012, Jay Shendure, a geneticist at the University of Washington, and his colleagues were able to reconstruct the entire genome of a fetus from cell-free DNA in a pregnant woman’s saliva. A team of Stanford University researchers collected DNA fragments from the blood of patients who had received heart transplants and managed to find DNA from their donated hearts . (Tellingly, levels were highest in patients who were rejecting their hearts.) These days, scientists are especially excited by the prospect of using cell-free DNA to test for cancer. Instead of relying on invasive biopsies, they hope to find blood-borne fragments that carry distinctive cancer mutations. Unfortunately, the genetic sequence of a piece of cell-free DNA doesn’t tell researchers where in the body it originated — a valuable clue for doctors looking for diseases. “Knowing the origin of circulating DNA is of great importance,” said Alain R. Thierry, director of research at France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research . All the cells in our body typically descend from a single fertilized egg, and they inherit all the same genes. The reason we aren’t uniform sacs of protoplasm is that our cells turn those same genes on and off in distinctive patterns, thereby developing into different tissues. They’re like musicians at a piano recital: They sit at the same keyboard, but they play different songs. But in a study published on Thursday in the journal Cell, Dr. Shendure and his colleagues took some important steps toward identifying the origins of free-floating DNA . To do so, they took advantage of a way that cells control their genes. DNA is wound around millions of protein clusters, resembling beads on a string. Some genes sit on stretches of DNA unencumbered by these clusters, called nucleosomes, but other genes are tucked deep inside them. By hiding genes, nucleosomes can silence them . As it turns out, different types of cells squirrel away different stretches of DNA in nucleosomes. One of Dr. Shendure’s graduate students, Matthew W. Snyder, wondered what happened to those nucleosomes in dying cells. A cell ending its useful life is shredded by enzymes. But nucleosomes, Mr. Snyder suggested, might shield the DNA they’ve hidden. If so, then much of the cell-free DNA that scientists collect from blood samples should have come from nucleosomes. They could reveal the pattern of nucleosomes in the cells they came from — and thus tell researchers which kind of cell produced it. Mr. Snyder and his colleagues put the idea to the test. They searched the blood of healthy individuals for cell-free DNA, and then searched a map of the human genome to figure out where each fragment came from. Much of the cell-free DNA came from regions in or around nucleosomes, just as Mr. Snyder had suggested. The scientists then looked at the patterns of nucleosomes in different types of cells. They found that all the healthy subjects produced cell-free DNA that mainly came from nucleosomes found in blood cells. But when they looked at cell-free DNA from people with advanced cancer, the picture was different. In a patient with lung cancer, for example, the team found that the cell-free DNA fit a different pattern — one belonging to a type of lung cancer cell. The researchers went on to match cell-free DNA in other cancer patients to the types of cancer they had. Dr. Thierry, who was not involved in the research, said the findings might eventually make it possible to use cell-free DNA to find important clues about diseases. Doctors might be able to use it to figure out the location of hard-to-find cancers, for example. It could provide clues to diseases other than cancers as well. Free-floating genes shed by the heart, for example, might reveal damage from a heart attack. Cell-free DNA from neurons might signal a stroke. William J. Greenleaf, a geneticist at Stanford, cautioned that the success of the new study owed much to the people Dr. Shendure and his colleagues had studied. It has long been known that people with advanced cancer shed a lot of cell-free DNA from their tumors. It may prove harder to trace the origin of cell-free DNA in people with other conditions. Dr. Shendure agreed, calling his study a proof of concept — far from a test ready for the clinic. “Obviously, there’s a lot of work from here to there,” he said.
|
DNA;Cancer;Cell Journal;Medical test;Jay Shendure
|
ny0091129
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2015/09/25
|
China to Announce Cap-and-Trade Program to Limit Emissions
|
WASHINGTON — President Xi Jinping of China will make a landmark commitment on Friday to start a national program in 2017 that will limit and put a price on greenhouse gas emissions, Obama administration officials said Thursday. The move to create a so-called cap-and-trade system would be a substantial step by the world’s largest polluter to reduce emissions from major industries, including steel, cement, paper and electric power. The announcement, to come during a White House summit meeting with President Obama , is part of an ambitious effort by China and the United States to use their leverage internationally to tackle climate change and to pressure other nations to do the same. Joining forces on the issue even as they are bitterly divided on others, Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi will spotlight the shared determination of the leaders of the world’s two largest economies to forge a climate change accord in Paris in December that commits every country to curbing its emissions. Mr. Xi’s pledge underscores China’s intention to act quickly and upends what has long been a potent argument among Republicans against acting on climate change: that the United States’ most powerful economic competitor has not done so. But it is not clear whether China will be able to enact and enforce a program that substantially limits emissions. China’s economy depends heavily on cheap coal-fired electricity, and the country has a history of balking at outside reviews of its industries. China has also been plagued by major corruption cases, particularly among coal companies. But the agreement, which American officials said had been in the works since April, is China’s first commitment to a specific plan to carry out what have so far been general ambitions. Video President Xi Jinping of China arrived in the United States on Tuesday for a state visit at a crucial crossroads in the Sino-American relationship. Credit Credit Wu Hong/European Pressphoto Agency Domestic and external pressures have driven the Chinese government to take firmer action to curb emissions from fossil fuels, especially coal. Growing public anger about the noxious air that often envelops Beijing and many other Chinese cities has prompted the government to introduce restrictions on coal and other sources of smog, with the side benefit of reducing carbon dioxide pollution. The authorities also see economic benefits in reducing fossil fuel use. The cap-and-trade initiative builds on a deal that Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi reached last year in Beijing, where both set steep emissions-reduction targets as a precursor to the global climate accord. Mr. Obama, who has made climate change a signature issue of his presidency, announced the centerpiece of his plan this year. With his announcement on Friday, Mr. Xi will outline how he will halt the growth of China’s emissions by 2030. “It increases our probability of succeeding, and it increases the likelihood that we will have a more robust agreement” in Paris, one senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because officials were not authorized to preview the agreement. Lu Kang, the spokesman for the Chinese delegation during Mr. Xi’s state visit, declined to confirm the climate initiative. He said only that the two presidents could “make further progress” in demonstrating that they were committed to dealing with global warming. The climate deal will be a substantial, if rare, bright spot in a wide-ranging summit meeting that is expected to be dominated by potential sources of friction between Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi. The two leaders began meeting on Thursday night with a two-and-a-half-hour working dinner at Blair House, across from the White House. The president plans to raise a number of contentious topics on Friday, White House aides said, including cyberattacks on American companies and government agencies, China’s increasingly aggressive reclamation of islands and atolls in disputed areas of the South China Sea, and Mr. Xi’s clampdown on dissidents and lawyers in China. Under a cap-and-trade system, a concept created by American economists, governments place a cap on the amount of carbon pollution that may be emitted annually. Companies can then buy and sell permits to pollute. Western economists have long backed the idea as a market-driven way to push industry to cleaner forms of energy, by making polluting energy more expensive. Mr. Xi will pledge to put in place a “green dispatch” program intended to create a price incentive for generating power from low-carbon sources, officials said. He will agree to help provide financing to poorer countries to help them pay for projects that reduce harmful emissions. And China, one of the world’s largest financiers of infrastructure projects, will agree to “strictly limit” the amount of public financing that goes toward high-carbon projects, another official said, in line with a 2013 commitment by the United States Treasury Department to cease public financing for new coal-fired power plants. In his first term, Mr. Obama tried to push a similar cap-and-trade program through Congress. But the measure died in the Senate, in part because lawmakers from both parties feared that a serious climate change policy could threaten economic competition with China. Now, however, China appears poised to enact the same climate change policy that Mr. Obama failed to move through Congress. China has been developing and carrying out smaller cap-and-trade programs for at least three years. In 2012, it started pilot programs in seven provinces, intended to serve as tests for a national program. Last week, Chinese officials met in Los Angeles with top environmental officials from California, which has enacted an aggressive cap-and-trade program. People who attended the talks said they were meant to pave the way for a possible linkage of the Chinese and California cap-and-trade systems. The Chinese announcement comes less than two months after Mr. Obama unveiled his signature climate change policy, a set of Environmental Protection Agency regulations that would force power plants to curb carbon emissions. The rules could shut down hundreds of heavily polluting coal-fired plants. They have drawn fire from Republicans and coal-state lawmakers, but international negotiators say Mr. Obama’s regulations have helped break a long deadlock between the United States and China on climate change. Image President Xi Jinping visiting a high school in Tacoma, Wash., on Wednesday, a day before he is to meet with President Obama in D.C. Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Yet the two nations are still deeply divided on other issues. American and Chinese officials have been in negotiations over cyberattacks over the past several weeks, an area where they are bitterly at odds after several major intrusions believed to have emanated from China, including a hacking at the Office of Personnel Management that allowed the theft of 22 million security dossiers and 5.6 million fingerprints. They are working to strike a deal that would reopen a high-level dialogue over cyberissues and set minimum standards, such as a mutual commitment not to attack each other’s critical infrastructure during peacetime. But they are not expected to reach any mutual understanding on cybertheft of intellectual property or personal information, one of the thorniest areas. Similarly, the two presidents are unlikely to come to terms on the South China Sea, where Chinese moves to build runways on artificial islands in disputed areas have raised American fears of a confrontation in a critically important waterway. The two presidents are expected to strike a deal on rules governing episodes involving Chinese and American military aircraft, building on past agreements that sought to avoid accidents or episodes that could escalate into confrontations.
|
China;Barack Obama;Xi Jinping;Greenhouse gas;Climate Change;Global Warming;International relations;Cyberwarfare;Office of Personnel Management;US
|
ny0069498
|
[
"sports",
"basketball"
] |
2014/12/15
|
Kobe Bryant Passes Michael Jordan and Leads Lakers to Win
|
Kobe Bryant moved past Michael Jordan into third place on the N.B.A. list for points in a career, and he had 10 points in the final five minutes to lead the Los Angeles Lakers to a 100-94 victory over the host Minnesota Timberwolves on Sunday night. Bryant finished with 26 points on 7-for-20 shooting and hit a 3-pointer with just over a minute to play that helped seal the victory. Shabazz Muhammad had 28 points for the Timberwolves. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (38,387) and Karl Malone (36,928) remain ahead of Bryant on the scoring list. WARRIORS 128, PELICANS 122 Stephen Curry scored 8 of his 34 points in overtime, and Golden State won its 16th straight with a victory over host New Orleans. Klay Thompson added 29 points for the Warriors, whose franchise-long winning streak includes a club-record 10 straight road victories. Tyreke Evans scored 34 points for the Pelicans, and Jrue Holiday had 30 points and 9 assists. THUNDER 112, SUNS 88 Russell Westbrook had 28 points, 8 assists and 8 rebounds, Kevin Durant added 23 points and 8 rebounds and Oklahoma City won its sixth straight game, beating visiting Phoenix. SPURS 99, NUGGETS 91 Kawhi Leonard scored 18 points and visiting San Antonio beat Denver. Arron Afflalo had a season-high 31 points to lead the Nuggets, who have lost six of their last seven games. BULLS 93, HEAT 75 Mike Dunleavy scored 22 points and Chicago overcame a sloppy start to beat host Miami. Chris Bosh, the Heat’s leading scorer, missed the game with a calf strain, and Miami shot a season-low 35 percent. WIZARDS 93, JAZZ 84 John Wall had 16 points, 8 assists and 6 rebounds, and host Washington overcame a sluggish start to put away Utah. Bradley Beal scored 22 points, and Paul Pierce added 15 for the Wizards. Alec Burks scored 19 points for the Jazz.
|
Basketball;Kobe Bryant;Michael Jordan;Lakers;Timberwolves
|
ny0125794
|
[
"business"
] |
2012/08/09
|
Macy’s Net Income Rises 16%
|
Macy’s reported a nearly 16 percent increase in net income for its second quarter on Wednesday, helped by cost-cutting and its strategy to tailor its merchandise to local markets. The company, which operates its namesake and Bloomingdale’s department stores, also raised its annual earnings guidance. Macy’s is the first in a series of major retailers to report quarterly results that will provide insight into how Americans are spending. The results from Macy’s may reassure economists concerned that shoppers may pull back just as the back-to-school selling season begins. Like many department stores, Macy’s suffered during the recession. But the retailer has been able to navigate through the slow recovery better than rivals like J.C. Penney and Kohl’s. Macy’s, however, acknowledged continued economic challenges. “Clearly, we are not operating in an ideal macroeconomic environment,” Karen M. Hoguet, Macy’s chief financial officer, told analysts during a conference call on Wednesday. “Issues like unemployment and housing prices continue to be on the minds of our customers.” Macy’s also conceded business was hurt in the second quarter by lower spending by international tourists and temporary disruptions related to major renovation of its flagship store in Manhattan. The company said its net income rose to $279 million, or 67 cents a share, for the three-month period ended July 28. That’s up from $241 million, or 55 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Revenue rose 3 percent to $6.12 billion from $5.94 billion a year ago. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had expected earnings of 64 cents a share on revenue of $6.13 billion. Revenue at stores open at least a year, an important gauge in measuring a retailer’s health, also rose 3 percent, helped by surging online sales. Sales have been uneven, with June’s sales below expectations followed by a July rebound, Ms. Hoguet said. Macy’s also said it expected its earnings for the full year to be in the range of $3.30 to $3.35 a share, an increase from its previous guidance of $3.25 to $3.30.
|
Shopping and Retail;Company Reports;Macy's Inc
|
ny0236657
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2010/06/20
|
Violence Up Sharply in Afghanistan
|
KABUL, Afghanistan — With an average of an assassination a day and a suicide bombing every second or third day, insurgents have greatly increased the level of violence in Afghanistan, and have become by far the biggest killers of civilians here, the United Nations said in a report released publicly on Saturday. The report also confirms statistics from the NATO coalition, which claimed a continuing decrease in civilian deaths caused by the United States military and its allies. At the same time it blames stepped-up military operations for an overall increase in the violence. Especially alarming were increases in suicide bombings and assassinations of government officials in a three-month period ending June 16, and a near-doubling of roadside bombings for the first four months of 2010 compared with the same period in 2009. “The number of security incidents increased significantly, compared to previous years and contrary to seasonal trends,” the report said, adding that most of this was a consequence of military operations in the southern part of the country, particularly Helmand and Kandahar Provinces, where increased NATO military operations have been under way since February. Most victims of the increased violence continue to be civilians, and the proportion of those killed by insurgents, rather than the government or its NATO allies, rose to 70 percent from mid-March through mid-June. In the previous three months, the United Nations blamed insurgents for 67 percent of civilian deaths. The most striking change has been in suicide bombings, whose numbers have tripled this year compared with 2009. Such attacks now take place an average of three times a week compared with once a week before. In addition, two of three of those suicide attacks are considered “complex,” in which attackers use a suicide bomb as well as other weapons. Half the suicide attacks, the United Nations said, occur in southern Afghanistan. “The shift to more complex suicide attacks demonstrates a growing capability of the local terrorist networks linked to Al Qaeda,” the report said. It depicted a concerted effort by insurgents to deliberately single out civilians. “Insurgents followed up their threats against the civilian population with, on average, seven assassinations every week, the majority of which were conducted in the south and southeast regions,” it said. This represented a 45 percent increase in assassinations over 2009. A third of all violent episodes were from improvised explosive devices or roadside bombs placed by the insurgents. The number of such devices rose by 94 percent from January through April 2010 compared with the same period in 2009, which “constitutes an alarming trend,” the report said. The decline in civilian casualties attributed to NATO and government forces continued a trend seen since last year, despite the increased tempo of the conflict this year, particularly in the south. Without providing statistics, the report singled out “escalation of force” episodes for casualties inflicted by the coalition. These are episodes in which civilians are killed at military checkpoints or near military convoys, often because they fail to understand or to heed orders. The report, which was released by the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, cited the military’s efforts to minimize such casualties, including a public information campaign, nonlethal warning methods and “a reiteration of the July 2009 tactical directive by the commander of the International Security Assistance Force limiting the use of force.” The commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, has emphasized the reduction of civilian casualties as a crucial goal of the war effort. Previously, airstrikes had been the leading factor in civilian casualties caused by NATO’s military forces, but there was no mention of that in the current United Nations report. General McChrystal has also sharply limited the use of close air support where there is a risk to civilians. In an unrelated news conference in Kabul on Saturday, a spokesman for NATO, Brig. Gen. Josef Blotz, gave a similar assessment, although it was based on a different set of NATO statistics on civilian casualties. During the past three months, General Blotz said, civilian casualties caused by the coalition over all dropped by 44 percent compared with the same period in 2009, while those caused by the insurgents increased by 36 percent. Perhaps more significant, the number of episodes involving civilian casualties caused by the coalition dropped 7.8 percent, General Blotz said. This suggested that fewer civilians were being killed in each encounter as well. The United Nations report also noted that 332 children were killed or maimed from mid-March to mid-June as the result of the conflict, mainly in areas where military activity had increased, including Helmand Province as well as eastern and northeastern provinces. Sixty percent of the children were killed by insurgent attacks, it said; 24 children died in cross-fire between the sides. In addition, attacks on schools increased throughout the country, most as a result of attacks by antigovernment elements, the report said. The secretary general’s report, which was given to the Security Council last week, also noted the Afghan government’s efforts to hold a consultative peace jirga and to prepare for elections in September.
|
Afghanistan War (2001- );Terrorism;Civilian Casualties;United Nations;Assassinations and Attempted Assassinations;North Atlantic Treaty Organization
|
ny0013020
|
[
"world",
"americas"
] |
2013/11/19
|
Chile: Former President’s Coalition Kept in Check
|
Former President Michelle Bachelet, a socialist who is favored to win a runoff election in December against a conservative candidate, Evelyn Matthei, was unable to elect enough lawmakers from her coalition to pass sweeping political proposals, but she still may be able to push through many of her social and economic policies if she is elected. Although the conservative Alliance bloc lost a considerable number of representatives in the lower house, its members retained their seats in the Senate, making it difficult for Ms. Bachelet’s New Majority coalition to pass constitutional amendments or overhaul the electoral system. Ms. Matthei’s far-right party, the Independent Democratic Union, suffered a serious blow in the lower house, losing nine of its 38 seats, while the Communist Party doubled its seats to six. Fewer than half of Chile’s potential 13.5 million voters turned out for the presidential election, the first one after voting was made voluntary.
|
Chile;Michelle Bachelet;Election
|
ny0123582
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2012/09/24
|
Angels Beat White Sox and Stay in Playoff Race
|
Jered Weaver kept the Los Angeles Angels in striking distance in the American League wild-card chase, posting his league-leading 19th victory Sunday at home with a 4-1 decision over the struggling Chicago White Sox . The White Sox lost their fifth in a row but still lead the Tigers by a game in the A.L. Central. Albert Pujols reached 100 runs batted in for the 11th time in 12 big-league seasons with a two-run double as the Angels remained two and a half games behind Oakland for the second wild-card spot. TWINS SWEEP DOUBLEHEADER Jamey Carroll hit a run-scoring single in the 10th inning, and Minnesota beat host Detroit, 2-1, on Sunday night, taking both games of a doubleheader to keep the Tigers from tying the White Sox atop the A.L. Central. Earlier, the Twins won, 10-4. RED SOX 2, ORIOLES 1 Cody Ross doubled in the go-ahead run in the eighth inning, and host Boston ended Baltimore’s six-game winning streak. The Orioles remain one game behind the Yankees in the A.L. East and lead Oakland by one game for the top A.L. wild-card spot. RAYS 3, BLUE JAYS 0 Jeremy Hellickson won for the first time in more than a month to help Tampa Bay beat visiting Toronto. It was the fifth straight win for the Rays, who stayed three and a half games behind Oakland in the race for the A.L.’s second wild-card spot. RANGERS 3, MARINERS 2 Ryan Dempster allowed two runs and six hits over six-plus innings, and Mike Napoli and Geovany Soto homered to help visiting Texas preserve a four-game lead in the A.L. West. INDIANS 15, ROYALS 4 Carlos Santana hit two homers and drove in five runs as visiting Cleveland routed Kansas City in its highest-scoring game of the season. The loss eliminated the Royals from playoff contention and assured them of another losing record. CARDINALS 6, CUBS 3 Visiting St. Louis won for the sixth time in seven games, holding its lead for the second National League wild-card spot. BREWERS 6, NATIONALS 2 Jonathan Lucroy had two run-scoring singles on the road to keep Milwaukee two and a half games behind St. Louis. Washington leads the N.L. East by four and a half games over Atlanta. The Nationals’ magic number to clinch the division remains six. DODGERS 5, REDS 3 Adrian Gonzalez hit a pair of solo homers off Homer Bailey, allowing visiting Los Angeles to remain three games behind St. Louis and a half-game behind Milwaukee. DIAMONDBACKS 10, ROCKIES 7 Aaron Hill hit a tiebreaking three-run homer in the eighth inning for visiting Arizona. Arizona remained four and a half games behind St. Louis. BRAVES 2, PHILLIES 1 Tim Hudson tossed two-hit ball over seven and a third innings to help visiting Atlanta close in on a playoff spot. A year after a drastic September collapse, the Braves can clinch during a six-game homestand that opens Tuesday. PIRATES 8, ASTROS 1 A. J. Burnett allowed one run in eight innings for his 16th win, and Josh Harrison tied a career high with four hits to jump-start visiting Pittsburgh’s offense. PADRES 6, GIANTS 4 Yonder Alonso’s two-run single in the seventh inning snapped a tie and helped San Diego beat host San Francisco, which rested its regulars a day after clinching the N.L. West title.
|
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim;Chicago White Sox;Baseball
|
ny0065345
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2014/06/19
|
Rebels Reject Ukrainian Leader’s Cease-Fire Idea
|
DONETSK, Ukraine — After Ukraine’s new president, Petro O. Poroshenko, told reporters in Kiev on Wednesday that he might soon order a temporary, unilateral cease-fire as part of a broader 14-point peace plan, it took all of several seconds for pro-Russian militants to rule it out. “I am a condemned man,” said a stick-thin fighter who, like many others here, identified himself only by an alias, Tarik, for security reasons. Sipping tea in the gloom of the lobby of Donetsk’s rebel-occupied administration building on Wednesday afternoon, he patted the magazine of the automatic rifle slung across his chest. Any cease-fire would certainly be violated by the Ukrainian Army, he said, adding that he and other pro-Russian separatists would be arrested the minute the government had the opportunity. “What peace can they possibly offer me?” he asked. “If they want peace, then they can leave.” Tarik and a dozen other rank-and-file fighters here reacted to Mr. Poroshenko’s proposal with a dark, belligerent skepticism. Most rejected the idea of disarming until a patchwork of amorphous conditions were met, suggesting that a truce would be awfully difficult to achieve. Some demanded that the Ukrainian military leave the region, called Donbass, while others wanted a war tribunal for Ukraine’s newly elected leaders. Most said they wanted the restoration of “stability,” the precise definition of which remained elusive. “Maybe there was a way back when this all just started, when the people were out here with the flags to make their point, and before the killing,” said Denis, a separatist fighter from Makeyevka, a depressed industrial town outside of Donetsk, when asked how and when the conflict might be resolved. Another fighter jumped in helpfully. “The Third World War,” he said to nods of assent. None said he was ready to lay down his arms. The responses seemed to afford little hope that, as Mr. Poroshenko urged, a cease-fire “should receive support from all participants in the events in Donbass.” Toward that end, the president’s office announced that Mr. Poroshenko would meet on Thursday with what his office called the “legitimate” leaders from the east, including mayors and business representatives. The Russian government has called repeatedly for Ukraine to stop its military crackdown on the separatists but has also insisted that it does not control, or speak for, the separatists. But rebel leaders, some of whom were in Moscow on Wednesday, quickly dismissed Mr. Poroshenko’s proposal. Denis Pushilin, one of the leaders of the political wing of the Donetsk People’s Republic, said in television appearances in Moscow that he thought it was “pointless,” suggesting that it was the latest trick by Kiev to subdue the fighters. Another rebel commander, Igor Strelkov, told Komsomolskaya Pravda, a Russian newspaper that regularly carries his statements, that Ukraine had already violated the cease-fire, though officially it had not yet even been declared. In Kiev, Mr. Poroshenko told reporters that he planned to announce the cease-fire as part of a wider peace plan to end the more than two months of fighting in eastern Ukraine, where, the United Nations reported on Wednesday, at least 356 people are known to have died. Mr. Poroshenko’s discussion of the peace plan followed a phone call late Tuesday with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, in which both sides said the cease-fire was a main topic. Other elements of Mr. Poroshenko’s plan include sealing the border with Russia and amending the Ukrainian Constitution to allow for a “decentralization” plan that will give more authority to local governments. The initial step, however, would be a halt to the Ukrainian military’s so-called antiterrorist operation against the pro-Russian militias, whose ranks include some Russian citizens who crossed the border to join the fight. Senior Russian officials have long insisted that any peace effort begin with such a step. Also on Wednesday, Mr. Poroshenko nominated Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Pavlo Klimkin, as foreign minister, and asked Parliament to confirm him. Mr. Klimkin, a former deputy foreign minister, had an important role in negotiating the political and economic accords with the European Union that Viktor F. Yanukovych, then the president, refused to sign last November after long promising to do so, setting off months of civil unrest. Mr. Poroshenko has vowed to complete those agreements in the coming weeks. Mr. Poroshenko also told reporters that he was awaiting a decision from lawmakers on holding early parliamentary elections, which he said were favored by 70 percent of Ukrainians. Even on the eve of Mr. Poroshenko’s statements, heavy fighting in the Luhansk region on Tuesday left 27 injured and several dead, including two Russian state television journalists, according to a police spokeswoman for the region.
|
Ukraine;Petro Poroshenko;Vladimir Putin;Gazprom;Luhansk;Pipelines;Sergey V Lavrov;Russia
|
ny0281877
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2016/07/02
|
In Fatal Shooting of a Pizza Man, New Brooklyn Gets a Glimpse of the Old
|
He was wearing flashy jewelry: No one took it. Same with the cash in his pockets: still there. Then there was the matter of the feud some years ago: A rival pizza maker had stolen the secret recipe for his sauce. Whatever the reason, Louis Barbati was dead, shot five times, the authorities said, in the balmy summer twilight on Thursday night. The killer had been waiting for Mr. Barbati, the owner of a well-known pizzeria, L&B Spumoni Gardens, at his house in Dyker Heights, in southern Brooklyn. The shooter was dressed in a hoodie that hid his facial features; it was unclear whether he said anything before he pulled the trigger. While the police believe it may have been a robbery gone wrong, why were Mr. Barbati’s valuables left behind? “It’s very confusing about what happened,” said a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case. And indeed, there was a twist. The official quickly added, “There’s been this ongoing dispute between him and some other guy who owned this rival joint in Staten Island.” Over the past decade, Brooklyn has become such a symbol of artisanal hipster culture that some outside New York may not know that the borough is not exclusively defined by kale or Lena Dunham. Yes, there are bohemian neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Bushwick. But there are also more traditional sections like Dyker Heights, where, to quote William Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Image Louis Barbati The police are trying to figure out if Mr. Barbati’s past — specifically, a feud connected to his restaurant — may have played a role in his demise. That dispute began in 2009 when a former employee, Eugene Lombardo, stole the recipe to Mr. Barbati’s proprietary pizza sauce and opened a competing pizzeria on Staten Island, according to Anthony Russo, a Colombo family captain who testified about the spat in court as a government informant. “The guy hung a sign in the window saying, ‘Best Pizza: Just like L&B Spumoni Gardens’ — it was shameless,” said Gerald McMahon, a lawyer for Francis Guerra, one of Mr. Russo’s former associates and another player in the fight. Mr. Guerra had once been married to a woman whose family owned Spumoni Gardens with Mr. Barbati. According to Mr. Russo’s testimony, he and Mr. Guerra visited Mr. Lombardo at his newly opened restaurant, the Square, after learning about the stolen sauce. “Supposedly, they threatened him to stop using the recipe,” Mr. McMahon said in an interview on Friday, adding that Mr. Guerra was acquitted of making the threat. At a news conference on Friday, Robert K. Boyce, the chief of detectives for the New York Police Department, said that Mr. Barbati, 61, finished work at Spumoni Gardens around 6:30 on Thursday night, then drove to his home at 7601 12th Avenue. As he got out of his car, someone was waiting and fired five rounds, Chief Boyce said; all five struck Mr. Barbati. Chief Boyce added that neighbors had seen a white man running away. On Friday afternoon, drivers cruised slowly past Mr. Barbati’s two-story house and peered at the tall white fence enclosing the backyard. A few holes — perhaps from bullets — could be seen in the house’s gate. The police said that Mr. Barbati’s wife, Joann, was home at the time of the shooting. One of her neighbors, who, like others, declined to give her name, said she had heard a woman hollering in grief around 7 p.m. Image L&B Spumoni Gardens, a restaurant known for its Sicilian-style pizza and Italian ices, was founded by Mr. Barbati’s grandfather in 1939. Credit Dave Sanders for The New York Times “We just heard screaming,” the neighbor said. “That was terrible.” Spumoni Gardens, known for its Sicilian-style pies and tart Italian ices, was founded in 1939 by Mr. Barbati’s grandfather, Ludovico Barbati, who began the business by selling ingredients for pizza from a horse-drawn wagon on the street. A business that began in one building, on 86th Street in the Gravesend neighborhood, has, over the years, eventually expanded to three. Mr. Barbati was remembered as a fixture in the neighborhood, a magnetic man with an infectious laugh and an encyclopedic knowledge of his trade. “Lou was basically the face of the place,” said Tony Muia, the founder of the pizza tour company Slice of Brooklyn Bus Tours . “He was just this big, friendly guy who was always happy. I never saw him without this amazing love for that business.” As the restaurant opened on Friday morning, a voice from inside, booming from a loudspeaker, told a group of reporters on the sidewalk to get lost. “No leaning on the fence,” the voice commanded. “Go take a walk somewhere.” Not long after, however, two men appeared from inside and apologized for the lack of welcome. Mr. Barbati’s death had left everyone a little raw, they said. “The family is really upset right now,” one added. At least three 911 calls were made as the shots rang out, the police said. The first call, at 7:03 p.m., was from Ms. Barbarti, who, the police said, was so upset that it was difficult at first to understand her. The others came within minutes. Although emergency medics arrived at the house by 7:09 p.m., Mr. Barbati was pronounced dead at the scene. Image Mr. Barbati was shot five times outside his home, at left, in the Dyker Heights section of Brooklyn. Credit Dave Sanders for The New York Times Gravesend and Dyker Heights are places where men can be seen in Sergio Tacchini tracksuits telling stories of glory from the 1980s. Both neighborhoods also have their share of Mafia history. A Colombo family soldier named Nicholas Grancio was shot behind the wheel of his car at Avenue U and McDonald Avenue in Gravesend in 1992. And for many years, a Lucchese family social club called the 19th Hole was in a nondescript bar across the street from a Dyker Heights golf course. By 1 p.m. on Friday, the lunchtime crowd at Spumoni Gardens was thick. Young people in shorts and flip-flops stood next to construction workers and contractors in a line that snaked through the distinctive red-colored tables. As word of Mr. Barbati’s death spread, local residents appeared to close themselves against interloping outsiders. Eric L. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, announced on Friday that he planned to hold a news conference at Spumoni Gardens but eventually canceled it out of deference to the family. Later that day, across the street from the Barbati family’s house, a young man was working on his car. From beneath the propped-up hood, he said he did not want to speak about his neighbor or what had befallen him. “It’s a sensitive topic,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
|
L&B Spumoni Gardens;Pizza;Louis Barbati;Murders and Homicides;Dyker Heights Brooklyn;Restaurant
|
ny0208063
|
[
"sports",
"soccer"
] |
2009/06/24
|
Xavi Is Spain’s Maestro of the Midfield
|
BLOEMFONTEIN, South Africa — In this, the hometown of J.R.R. Tolkien , it seems fitting that Spain’s attack is controlled by a hobbit-size midfielder. Xavier Hernández , known simply as Xavi, is only 5 feet 7 inches, but he exerts an outsize influence on a soccer game with his movement, his ability to play in and out of tight spaces, and his preternatural calm and anticipation. He takes free kicks and corner kicks and plays as a human accelerator, controlling the pace of a game by putting his foot on and taking it off the gas pedal. “It’s really important for a team to have a player like Xavi,” said Gerard Piqué, a central defender and teammate of Xavi’s with Barcelona and the Spanish national team. “You have confidence, because he never loses the ball.” Spain will face the United States on Wednesday in the semifinals of the Confederations Cup . The Americans are well acquainted with Xavi (pronounced SHAH-vee). He scored in a 1-0 exhibition victory over the United States last year . Weeks later, he was named the outstanding player at the 2008 European championships , having facilitated the winning goal in a 1-0 victory over Germany in the title game . Last month, Xavi was named man of the match in Barcelona’s elegant 2-0 victory over Manchester United in the European Champions League final . He and his central midfield partner, Andrés Iniesta, controlled the game like puppeteers, needing only their feet, no strings or wires, entertaining the crowd at Rome’s Olympic Stadium with a joy and tranquillity in their performance. Each assisted on a goal, Xavi’s scoring pass coming on a perfectly chipped cross in the penalty area to Lionel Messi. “He is so precise in the way he can find the little spots to get the ball, play the ball quickly, move, get it back,” Bob Bradley, the United States coach, said of Xavi. “His ability to control the game, to be on the ball, dictate the tempo, he’s tremendous in all ways. One of the best players in the world.” Spain is the No. 1-ranked team in the world , having won 15 straight games, an international record. A victory over the United States would extend its unbeaten streak to 36 matches dating to November 2006, surpassing a record set by Brazil in 1996. “The idea is to continue this run and try and make it better,” Xavi said. In three matches at the Confederations Cup, Spain has scored eight goals and surrendered none. Its only complaints have been about the dry field conditions, which slow the ball, and the buzzing of vuvuzelas, the plastic horns blown incessantly by South African fans that entertain some and annoy others. Iniesta is not here, shelved perhaps for two months with a recurrence of a thigh injury. But his absence has not been acutely felt, what with a Spanish midfield that still has Xavi, Xabi Alonso and Cesc Fàbregas to link with forwards Fernando Torres, who had three goals against New Zealand, and David Villa, who has scored in all three of Spain’s matches. “Their midfield is probably the best in the world right now,” Sacha Kljestan, an American midfielder, said. Xavi, 29, and Iniesta, 25, have been speaking by phone. Even apart, they are together. “I am missing Iniesta in the team,” Xavi told reporters last weekend. They have been teammates for so long, few can remember one without the other. Xavi joined the Barcelona youth system when he was 11, Iniesta when he was 12. They lived at La Masia, as the Barcelona youth facility is called, an 18th-century country residence located near Camp Nou stadium . And they learned the free-flowing style of passing and ball control that demands soccer be as attractive as it is successful. “At Barcelona, the physical aspect has never been the most important thing,” Xavi told the BBC recently. “The emphasis is always on technique. That’s why every footballer wants to play for this team. That’s why people go to the Camp Nou, why people take their children, their wives — because it’s enjoyment for everyone. It’s football for the people, and it means so much more when you win playing beautiful football.” The Spanish national team features four Barcelona players. The influence is so strong, Bradley said, that it can feel as if you are playing against both teams at once. Vicente del Bosque, the Spanish coach, said the United States should be a formidable opponent with its speed and its desire. Kljestan told reporters, “It’s time for them to lose one,” adding, “I think we can match them physically, some things with the ball in attack.” To attack, though, the Americans will need to possess the ball. And that is easier said than done against a team with Xavi in central midfield. When Manchester United surrendered the ball in the Champions League final, it often seemed to need minutes to get it back. “I don’t think Iniesta and Xavi have ever given up the ball in their lives,” Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager, said in appreciation and exasperation. “They get you on that carousel and they can leave you dizzy.” Iniesta has described the intricate system as “receive, pass, offer, receive, pass, offer.” Roy Hodgson, the manager of Fulham in the English Premier League, served on a technical study group of the Champions League final for UEFA, soccer’s European governing body, and considered Xavi to be the most influential player on the field. “Most important of all is the tempo of their passing and their ability to change that,” Hodgson told the UEFA Web site about Barcelona, remarks that also apply to the Spanish national team. “If you pressure them, they’re very good at playing it first-time and they’ve always got lots of players around the ball willing to receive it. But if you don’t get around them, they hold the ball and suck you in, and the moment you come forward, they pass it.” The United States had better be prepared to chase.
|
Soccer;Confederations Cup
|
ny0253431
|
[
"sports",
"football"
] |
2011/10/09
|
Facing a Sturdy Patriots Offense, Jets Focus on Exploiting a Shaky Defense
|
FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — The explosiveness of the New England Patriots ’ offense through the first four weeks has been startling. Their quarterback, Tom Brady , leads the league in passing yards and touchdowns thrown. Their top receiver, Wes Welker, is on pace for 160 receptions and 2,464 yards. Only one team — unbeaten Green Bay — has scored more points. Any hope the Jets have in toppling New England on Sunday rests with their ability to disrupt and harass Brady as they did during their playoff victory in January. But the Jets cannot win unless they score more points, a reality that this week in particular seems at once a monumental undertaking and a not-totally-unreasonable possibility. The same offense that has not scored a touchdown in more than six quarters, that has foundered behind a shaky offensive line and because of an invisible running game, will match up with what is right now a historically bad defense. The 1,910 yards allowed by the Patriots are the most through any team’s first four games since at least 1940, according to Pro-Football-Reference.com . “The numbers speak for themselves about how well they’re not playing,” said receiver Santonio Holmes, who presumably did not know that the Patriots’ defense ranks last in yards allowed per play (7.2), third-down conversion rate (48 percent), passing yards per game (368.8) and, according to the Web site Football Outsiders, yards per drive (45.95). Holmes may be more attuned to the miseries of his own unit, which ranks 30th in yards rushing per game (71.0) and per carry (3.1) and has committed 10 turnovers, including nine — five interceptions, four lost fumbles — by Mark Sanchez , whose 55.1 completion percentage ranks 27th among 32 qualifying quarterbacks. Not that the Jets would admit it, but they knew their offense would emerge as the weaker element, just as the Patriots — the same organization that featured Willie McGinest and Mike Vrabel, Tedy Bruschi and Richard Seymour — would field a defense that lagged behind its high standards. Both groups have, in a sense, struggled even more than imagined, potentially holding back teams with Super Bowl aspirations. The Jets, despite all their boasting, have yet to reach the Super Bowl under Rex Ryan . The Patriots have won three titles with Bill Belichick, whose championship teams all ranked among the top six in points allowed. His best defenses relied on veterans, but this year’s crew is decidedly young, having lost several important players — including Mike Wright, Myron Pryor and, most recently, Jerod Mayo — to injuries. One year removed from a Pro Bowl rookie season, Devin McCourty has surrendered more receiving yards than any cornerback in the N.F.L., according to profootballfocus.com . Almost as a concession, the Patriots abandoned their man-to-man approach and revisited zone coverage, which is not what they had in mind in training camp when they installed a 4-3 defense intended to put pressure on the quarterback. Through four games, New England has six sacks, fewer than all but four teams. “I know from past experience: just because a Belichick defense starts off slow doesn’t mean they’re going to end up that way,” Jets receiver Derrick Mason said. “I can remember playing them years back where their defense was struggling a little bit when we played them, but then they picked it up. You always expect them to play well against you.” The view espoused by Mason was shared by several teammates, placing Holmes in a vocal minority. Sanchez noted the Patriots’ stinginess in the red zone. According to Football Outsiders , when opponents get inside the 20, the Patriots rank second over all, and first in pass defense, allowing 1.9 yards per play (43 yards on 22 attempts) while grabbing three interceptions. They also stymied the Chargers and the Dolphins on goal-line stands, stopping them on fourth-and-1 plays. Center Nick Mangold characterized the Patriots’ wobbling as misleading, saying that their statistics did not correspond with what the Jets had watched on videotape, a sentiment echoed by the offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer. “A lot of times, they’re playing with a big lead so teams are having to jump into spread formations and throw it,” Schottenheimer said. Any way they can, the Jets want to keep New England’s offense off the field. Unless they abduct Brady — and do not think the Jets have not considered it — their approach will center on a more balanced game plan intended to re-establish a commitment to running the ball; Ryan decreed as much during Monday’s team meeting. The Jets have deviated from that strategy in part because they have been forced to play catch-up so often, trailing for almost half their season (117 minutes 49 seconds), which is something they cannot afford to do Sunday. What encourages them is their rushing output in the last five games against the Patriots, when they exploited favorable matchups to run for at least 104 yards every time, including 152 in their 45-3 loss last December. Matt Slauson posited that the Jets tended to succeed when New England employed a 3-4 defense because the Patriots “always leave big holes in the middle,” relying on their linebackers to fill them. That puts more pressure on the Jets’ guards, Slauson and Brandon Moore, but New England will be playing without Mayo, its superb middle linebacker, who will miss about six weeks with a knee injury. It can only help the Jets that Mangold is scheduled to return after missing the last two games, re-engaging defensive tackle Vince Wilfork in the middle. His presence will stabilize an offensive line that staggered in pass protection last week in Baltimore, but as the ESPN analyst Damien Woody mentioned on a recent conference call, Mangold hardly dominated the line of scrimmage when he was healthy. In other words, what was once a strength is now a flaw, something that the Patriots, above all, can relate to.
|
New York Jets;Football;Ryan Rex;Sanchez Mark;New England Patriots;Brady Tom
|
ny0044789
|
[
"science"
] |
2014/02/27
|
Stupider With Monogamy
|
Forcing male flies into monogamy has a startling effect: After a few dozen generations, the flies become worse at learning. This discovery, published on Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, isn’t a biological excuse for men who have strayed from their significant other. Instead, it’s a tantalizing clue about why intelligence evolved. The new study was carried out by Brian Hollis and Tadeusz J. Kawecki, biologists at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. They investigated a fly species called Drosophila melanogaster that normally has a very un-monogamous way of life. To find a mate, the male flies seek out females on rotting pieces of fruit. They often engage in battles to chase their rivals away, and then pick a female to court. “The males will do this wing song , where they use one wing or the other to generate a song,” said Dr. Hollis. This wing song may last from 10 minutes to an hour. Virgin females usually accept the overtures. But if a female has just mated, she will reject a new male’s advances. “If a male comes at her from behind and she’s not interested, she’ll kick at him with her rear legs,” said Dr. Hollis. If a couple of days have passed since her last mating, however, the female may choose to mate again. Seven years ago, while he was a graduate student at Florida State University, Dr. Hollis set out to study how the competition among males shapes their evolution. He began breeding two groups of flies — one polygamous, the other monogamous. In 2011, he took his flies to the University of Lausanne, where he met Dr. Kawecki, an expert on learning. The two scientists wondered if the different mating habits of Dr. Hollis’s flies had altered their brains. To find out, the researchers gave the flies a learning test. They began by teaching the flies to be scared of a particular smell. They would put a smelly piece of paraffin into the tubes where the flies lived, and after 30 seconds, the scientists gave the tubes a violent shake. After many such experiences, the flies learned to associate the smell with the shaking. An hour later, the scientists tested how well they had learned. The flies were put in a tunnel that ended with a T intersection. From one side they smelled the dangerous odor, and from the other they smelled a harmless one. Dr. Hollis and Dr. Kawecki then observed which way the flies walked. The results were stark. The monogamous flies were much more likely to wander toward the dangerous smell than the polygamous ones. In other words, they had done a much worse job of learning. “I think this is a compelling and interesting study,” said Emilie Snell-Rood of the University of Minnesota, who was not involved in the research. The experiment, she said, suggests that the struggle to find a mate favors the evolution of better learning. The evolution of learning remains a puzzle for scientists. A smart animal can learn how to find more food or how to avoid predators. But if learning were such an unalloyed good, then one might expect all animals to be as smart as we are. They are not because there is a cost to learning . Dr. Kawecki and his colleagues have found that flies that have been bred to be good learners are more likely to die when competing for scarce food with regular flies. Even when they’re not threatened with starvation, their life span is 15 percent shorter than average. Video Why are males aggressive? Researchers have found clues in the brains of fruit flies. It’s still not clear why that is so. Changes to the nervous system that come with learning may cause long-term damage of some sort, or learning may simply use up energy that could be directed to other uses. Because of the cost, evolution may increase learning only when its benefits outweigh its drawbacks — such as when it affects mating. Dr. Hollis and Dr. Kawecki suspect that fast-learning males may be able to swiftly recognize receptive females, and thus mate with more of them before they die. Forcing the flies into monogamy, on the other hand, gets rid of learning’s benefits, leaving only the cost behind. To test this idea, Dr. Hollis and Dr. Kawecki compared the mating prowess of the evolved flies. They put a group of male flies in a vial with one receptive female and five unreceptive ones and tallied how many mated in an hour. The scientists found that the polygamous males quickly zeroed in on the receptive female. The monogamous males, on the other hand, wasted time courting unreceptive females and being rejected. “They’re just not figuring it out,” said Dr. Hollis. While no one has yet carried out an experiment like this on other species, Dr. Hollis suspects that the relationship between sex and the evolution of learning might apply beyond flies — perhaps even to our own species. “I think it really can inform us quite a lot about what’s going on in nature, and why we have the brains we have,” said Dr. Hollis.
|
Fruit fly;Evolution;Reproduction;University of Lausanne;Brian Hollis;Tadeusz J Kawecki
|
ny0071109
|
[
"world",
"africa"
] |
2015/03/28
|
Australia Warns of Terror Threat in Kenyan Capital
|
NAIROBI, Kenya — The Australian diplomatic office in Kenya on Friday warned of a possible terrorist attack here in the capital, reiterating its recommendation that protests and political rallies be avoided. The warning came two days after the United States issued a similar advisory for neighboring Uganda. “Current information suggests that terrorists may be planning attacks against crowded locations in Nairobi in the near future,” said a statement from the Australian High Commission. In a separate statement on Wednesday, United States officials warned of a possible terrorist attack in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. “The U.S. Embassy has received information of possible terrorist threats to locations where Westerners, including U.S. citizens, congregate in Kampala, and that an attack may take place soon,” the statement read. Uganda is a close ally of the United States in East Africa. While the Australian and American statements did not specify the threat, attacks in the region in recent years by the Shabab , a Somali Islamist extremist group, have killed dozens of people. In 2013, an attack by the Shabab on the Westgate mall in Nairobi led to the deaths of 67 people. In 2010, 74 people were killed in an attack in Kampala as they watched the World Cup soccer final on outdoor screens. The Shabab, Al Qaeda’s Somalia affiliate, say they target the East African nations because Kenyan and Ugandan troops take part in African Union operations in Somalia aimed at combating the group. Kenyan officials have expressed displeasure with Western security warnings, which have hurt the vital tourism industry.
|
Kenya;Australia;Terrorism;Nairobi;Al Shabab;Al Qaeda;Kampala Uganda
|
ny0038537
|
[
"us"
] |
2014/04/02
|
Muriel Bowser Defeats Mayor Vincent Gray in Washington Primary
|
WASHINGTON — Muriel E. Bowser, whose activist father introduced her to signature-gathering and door-knocking as a girl, won a stunning upset on Tuesday in the Democratic primary for mayor in a race that turned on the integrity of the incumbent, Vincent C. Gray. Ms. Bowser, 41, promised a “fresh start” as she put the focus on Mr. Gray’s ethics and neutralized his advantage as leader of a city of increasing economic dynamism. Mr. Gray, addressing supporters after midnight before the board of elections had complete results, conceded to Ms. Bowser as he spoke of his lame duck status for the remainder of the year. “If I’m going to be in this job another 9 months, I’m going to work extremely hard in order to move this city forward,” he said. Image Muriel E. Bowser on Tuesday. Credit Cliff Owen/Associated Press Ms. Bowser appeared shortly after and claimed victory. She called the election “an affirmation that the status quo is not good enough for us.” Ms. Bowser won easy, taking 44 percent of the vote to Mr. Gray’s 32, according to the city board of elections, in a race with only light turnout. She won convincingly in an eight-way race in the affluent western part of the city and demonstrated solid appeal in the black majority neighborhoods of the east side, where she cut into the large majorities that Mr. Gray carried four years ago. Asked at news conference on Wednesday how she would introduce herself to Washington residents who may have little sense of her other than an anti-Gray, Ms. Bowser repeated her campaign theme to bridge the city’s haves and have-nots. “We are a wonderful growing city and I’m going to be very supportive of that progress, but I’m going to use every piece of apparatus and energy in the government to make sure we’re building a stronger middle class and a pathway to that middle class — that’s schools, that’s housing and that’s job training,” she said. Democratic Primary Live results from the Democratic primary for Washington, D.C., mayor. Speaking at the National Press Club, Ms. Bowser said that Mr. Gray had still not called to congratulate her. In the 41 years since Washington gained home rule, the winner of the Democratic primary has sailed into the mayor’s office thanks to the city’s liberal electorate. But Ms. Bowser faces now faces the most serious general-election challenge in memory, from an independent candidate, David A. Catania, who has won citywide elections as a council member. On Wednesday Mr. Catania called the primary “an election about who should not be mayor of our city" and said he would run hard in the general election. Ms. Bowser said if Democrats unite behind her, she will win. “If you believe the polls, it says we will do very well in that race.”
|
Mayoral races;Vincent C Gray;Muriel E Bowser;Washington DC;Primaries;David A Catania
|
ny0234644
|
[
"business",
"global"
] |
2010/01/16
|
Slump in World Trading Costing Container Shipping Lines Billions
|
From Loch Striven in Scotland to the Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia, more than a tenth of the vessels that transport the world’s manufactured goods in containers are idle. For most, orders to sail will not come for some time. Although world trade, which collapsed last year, is beginning to recover, driven by demand from developing countries, the recovery is being offset by added capacity in the large number of new container ships coming out of shipyards. Among those suffering the most are lines like the German carrier Hapag-Lloyd and the Danish group A. P. Moller-Maersk. Much like the giant banks crippled by the subprime mortgage crisis, the companies are now paying for having expanded too aggressively during the boom, according to analysts. Drewry Shipping Consultants in London estimates that the 20 or so major carriers, all Asian or European, lost $20 billion in 2009. According to Alphaliner, an industry information provider, seven smaller carriers shut down last year, including Contenemar of Spain. “We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Chris Bourne, executive director of the European Liner Affairs Association. “It’s the worst situation since the start of containerization in the ’60s.” Carriers have long had to adapt to economic cycles, shifting trade patterns and geopolitics. During the 1970s, they were hit by the oil shocks and the reopening of the Suez Canal, which cut demand for the supertankers that rounded southern Africa. Recovery took a decade, hampered by recession during the 1980s. The current slowdown is weighing not only on the shipping companies, but also on ports and shipyards, especially in Europe. According to IHS Global Insight, a research and consulting firm, the global liner industry — the companies that mainly transport cargo containers — is responsible for 13.5 million jobs directly or indirectly. The 400 liner services carry 60 percent of international seaborne trade, according to the World Shipping Council, which represents the industry; the remainder is carried mainly by tankers (oil and natural gas) and bulk ships ( coal , grain and heavy equipment). One key route is between Europe and the developing countries in Asia. China, which recently surpassed Germany as the world’s largest exporter, announced last Sunday that exports had risen 17.7 percent in December from a year earlier, the first increase in 14 months; imports rose 55.9 percent. Other developing countries are also seeing strong demand for freight, particularly products like cement or steel for building projects. But that mostly means business for tankers and bulk carriers, not container ships. Most analysts say that container traffic will probably not recover to prerecession levels until 2012 or later. Drewry Shipping expects a 2.4 percent increase in global trade volume this year, after an estimated 10.3 percent decline last year. “On the demand side, we do see some strength; we see continued strength in China,” said Vikrant S. Bhatia, chief executive of KC Maritime, a bulk-carrier shipping line based in Hong Kong. “The problem we see is really on the supply side.” Until 2008, the liners were cresting; shipyards were humming, building ever larger ships as ports expanded and new services opened, underpinned by low-cost finance. “Everyone thought they could walk on water,” said Jesper Kjaedegaard, a partner with the consulting firm Mercator International in London. “The container liners were like kids in a toy store.” Then, the recession led to a slowdown in trade, and underscored the overcapacity in the industry. Container carriers have responded by slowing their shipbuilding plans; analysts said that financing had yet to be arranged on most ships on order for this year and next. Some new ships have been deferred, almost certainly involving lost down payments, which are typically 15 to 20 percent — not an insignificant amount if the bill is $160 million. The privately held CMA CGM of France, one large carrier, recently said that it was discussing cancellations and postponements with shipbuilders in South Korea. Even so, shipbuilders are expected to deliver 371 container ships this year and 127 in 2012, according to Alphaliner. The container fleet will grow 14 percent in 2010 and almost 10 percent next, meaning that even more ships will be competing for cargo. Hercules E. Haralambides, director of the Center for Maritime Economics and Logistics at Erasmus University Rotterdam, said many Asian carriers were in a better position than their European rivals because government subsidies had allowed shipyards to shift canceled orders to domestic liners or owners at low rates. The European industry has been in decline for years. Italian and German shipyards have recently sought state guarantees, and the European Commission approved aid to the historic Gdansk yard in Poland last year. But government support runs beyond shipbuilding. Tens of billions of dollars were extended to the sector in Europe last year, excluding aid to banks most exposed to the industry, like Royal Bank of Scotland and Commerzbank. Berlin and Hamburg have already stepped in to support HSH Nordbank, the largest shipping finance bank, and the German government has offered Hapag-Lloyd 1.2 billion euros ($1.7 billion) in guarantees. CMA CGM has also opened talks with the French government, and French ship owners have requested guarantees to meet lenders’ demands. French and German executives have requested “bad banks” in which to unload problem debts. Fabio Pirotta, a spokesman for the European Commission, which polices competition policy in Europe, said approval of such aid for shipping companies was “still under assessment.” But some industry players and shippers are already crying foul. Anders Würtzen, head of public affairs at A. P. Moller-Maersk, said government aid to seaborne carriers was “always bad news, whether granted to European or Asian companies, to the extent that it is used to maintain vessel new-building programs that could otherwise be reduced or delayed.” That sentiment is echoed by shippers. Maersk, owner of the largest container carrier, Maersk Line, posted a first-half loss in 2009 of $540 million. Morten H. Engelstoft, chief operations officer, said the company had been shedding capacity, using “super-slow steaming,” laying up vessels and examining alliances to share routes, as long as they did not violate antitrust rules. The outlook is still “bumpy,” he said. “Despite the latest rate increases, the rates are below cost and clearly unsustainable.” An European Liner Affairs Association index of European import rates fell below 50 in March, from 100 in 2008, before recovering to 80 in the autumn. Further out, consolidation is unlikely until the market stabilizes further, and that will take time, said Mr. Bourne of the liner association. The near-term fix still involves mooring vessels offshore. At Loch Striven, Maersk has six ships idle; it expects them to remain there another year. The company has been trying to win over skeptical residents by arranging tours and reducing noise. Local anger is now directed at the port of Clydeport, for sending the vessels to the loch after Maersk had requested mooring facilities.
|
Ships and Shipping;International Trade and World Market;Recession and Depression;Maersk Line;Germany;Scotland;Spain
|
ny0102081
|
[
"us"
] |
2015/12/06
|
John Rassias, Who Pioneered Foreign Language Teaching, Dies at 90
|
John Rassias, a Dartmouth professor whose theatrical, immersive approach to teaching foreign languages rapidly, known as the Rassias Method, has been used by thousands of teachers around the world since the 1960s, died on Wednesday at his home in Norwich, Vt. He was 90. His son, Athos, confirmed the death. Professor Rassias (pronounced RAH-see-us) developed his method while advising the Peace Corps in the early 1960s on how to train volunteers assigned to French-speaking African countries. He brought to the task his own painful memories of the rote method. In fourth grade, he bit in half a pencil that a French teacher had stuck down his throat to elicit the proper pronunciation of a French “r.” Drawing on his experience studying acting in France, he put the teacher in the role of performer, acting out words and expressions in imaginary real-life settings and inculcating vocabulary and grammar through rapid-fire drills that gave students no time to think in English. He taught numbers by rolling dice and staged mock news conferences in which students questioned foreign dignitaries. He brought out a head of cabbage to illustrate the French expression “mon petit chou” — an endearment, like “sweetheart,” whose literal meaning is “my little cabbage.” In a favorite exercise, he blindfolded one student and had the others guide him or her through an imaginary minefield, blocked by chairs and desks, without using English. If they failed, he warned, the student would blow up. “The minute you begin to speak another language, it’s no longer foreign,” Professor Rassias told The New York Times in 1977. Over the years, Professor Rassias and his assistants taught Spanish to New York City Transit police officers, Japanese to business executives and German to American skiers preparing for a season of World Cup events in Austria, Switzerland and Germany. John Arthur Rassias was born on Aug. 20, 1925, in Manchester, N.H. His parents were Greek immigrants, and he grew up speaking Greek at home. After graduating from high school, he enlisted in the Marine Corps. He served in an amphibious unit and saw combat at the Battle of Okinawa. After earning a degree in French at the University of Bridgeport in 1950, he attended the University of Dijon as a Fulbright scholar and remained to complete his doctoral degree in 1952. On returning to the United States, he began teaching French at the University of Bridgeport, taking a year in the late 1950s to study at René Simon’s drama school in Paris and at the Phonetics Institute. In 1964 he began working as a consultant for the Peace Corps. Two years later he was asked to develop its first pilot language program for Africa, training volunteers heading to Ivory Coast. His language-teaching method was adopted by the Peace Corps and formalized, after he began teaching at Dartmouth in 1965, as the Dartmouth Intensive Language Model, which was used throughout the university. In 1978, Professor Rassias was named to President Jimmy Carter’s Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies, which developed national policy guidelines for improving foreign-language study in the United States. He founded the Rassias Center for World Languages and Cultures at Dartmouth, which offers intensive language courses using his method. His daughter Helene Rassias-Miles, executive director of the Rassias Center, recently brought his program to more than 2,000 teachers of English in Mexican public schools. In addition to his son and his daughter Helene, Professor Rassias is survived by another daughter, Veronica Markwood, and nine grandchildren. His wife, the former Mary Evanstock, died in 2012.
|
Obituary;John Rassias;Language;Dartmouth
|
ny0009303
|
[
"science"
] |
2013/02/05
|
Recent Developments in Science and Health News
|
Tuesday in science, sharks with an image problem, good teeth get more dates, dog geniuses and remembering your dreams. Check out these headlines and other science news from around the Web. Supersonic Skydiver: Skydiver Felix Baumgartner was faster than he or anyone else thought during his record-setting jump last October from 24 miles up. The Austrian parachutist known as “Fearless Felix” reached 843.6 mph, reports The Associated Press. Stress Through Generations: For the first time, genes chemically silenced by stress during life have been shown to remain silenced in eggs and sperm in mice, possibly allowing the effect of stress to be passed down to the next generation, reports The Washington Post. Man Bites Shark: A new study refutes the shark’s reputation as a bloodthirsty stalker of humans, reports Reuters. There’s no basis for believing that sharks have a taste for human flesh, the study argues. Human swimmers, often dressed in black wet suits and looking like seals, are instead mistaken for sharks’ usual prey. What Singles Want : Good teeth, grammar and humor are important to singles, a new USA Today survey reports. The Farmer’s Workout: Farmers -- the people counted on to feed the nation -- are facing weight gains of their own, reports Gannett News. Yes, They Do Windows: The Wall Street Journal reports on window-washing robots. Staying In: To keep patients out of the hospital, health care providers are bringing back revamped versions of a time-honored practice: the house call. Spill Your Secrets: Teenagers who share their secrets in confidence with parents and friends have fewer headaches and depressed moods and are more confident in social situations than those who keep secrets to themselves, according to a report in The Journal of Adolescence. Drilling on Mars: NASA’s Curiosity rover, the S.U.V.-sized robot exploring Mars, is getting ready to spin its drill bit for the first time, reports The Christian Science Monitor. Couch Potatoes: Men who watch a lot of television have lower sperm counts than those who don’t watch any, reports ScienceNews.org . Dream a Little Dream: Anyone who has ever awoken feeling amazed by their night’s dream only to forget its contents by the time they reach the shower will understand the difficulties of studying such an ephemeral state of mind, r eports New Scientist. Smart Dogs: Scientific American explores the science of dog intelligence.
|
Agriculture;Mars;Doctor
|
ny0079556
|
[
"us"
] |
2015/02/10
|
Gay Marriage in Alabama Begins, but Only in Parts
|
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Despite a federal judge’s rulings legalizing same-sex marriage, most probate judges in Alabama on Monday refused to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples, escalating a legal showdown that echoed the battles over desegregation here in the 1960s. Although court officials in some of the state’s largest cities — including Birmingham, Huntsville and Montgomery — quickly issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples, up to 52 of Alabama’s 67 counties, according to the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign , declined to process the required paperwork. It was unclear how many of the judges were acting out of overt defiance and how many were simply weighing how to navigate a freshly jumbled legal landscape after Chief Justice Roy S. Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court on Sunday ordered the judges not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. “We’ve got Alabama’s chief justice issuing an order, and we’ve got an order out from a federal judge,” said Judge Greg Norris of Monroe County, who is also president of the Alabama Probate Judges Association. “It’s just a very difficult situation.” The day of escalating events began when the United States Supreme Court said it would not block the ruling by Judge Callie V. S. Granade of Federal District Court, who last month declared Alabama’s marriage restrictions to be unconstitutional. Image Tori Sisson, left, and Shante Wolfe after being married in Montgomery Ala., where same-sex marriages went forward after the United States Supreme Court denied the Alabama attorney general’s request to further delay a ruling that overturned the state’s ban on gay nuptials. 1 / 8 To some, including Justice Clarence Thomas, who offered a spirited dissent, the failure to order a stay was the strongest signal to date that the court is likely to establish a nationwide right to same-sex marriage. “The court looks the other way as yet another federal district judge casts aside state laws without making any effort to preserve the status quo pending the court’s resolution of a constitutional question it left open in United States v. Windsor,” he wrote, referring to a 2013 decision. “This acquiescence,” Justice Thomas added, “may well be seen as a signal of the court’s intended resolution of that question.” Clarity was hard to come by in Alabama, however. At the Jefferson County Courthouse here, Judge Michael G. Graffeo of Circuit Court officiated, at times tearfully, at the civil wedding of Dinah McCaryer and Olanda Smith, the first to emerge from the crowd of same-sex couples on Monday morning. “I now pronounce Olanda and Dinah are married spouses, entitled to all rights and privileges, as well as all responsibilities, afforded and placed upon them by the State of Alabama,” Judge Graffeo said. On the other hand, in Florence, in the northwest corner of the state, Judge James Hall of probate court explained to Beth Ridley and Rose Roysden that he would not issue a license, saying, “I’m caught up in the middle of this.” The emotional couple said they would drive to Birmingham, and marry there. At the center of the turmoil was Chief Justice Moore. On Sunday, less than 12 hours before many courthouses here were scheduled to open, he ordered Alabama’s probate judges not to comply with Judge Granade’s rulings, which he said were incompatible with the scope of her authority. His position on the balance of state and federal power is one that is deeply felt in a region with a history of claiming states’ rights in opposition to the federal government, and in a state where, more than 50 years ago, Gov. George C. Wallace blocked an entrance to the University of Alabama in a failed bid to block its federally ordered integration. Scenes of Same-Sex Marriage, and Rejection, Across Alabama New York Times reporters have fanned out across Alabama to explore and explain how the same-sex marriage process is playing out in a handful of locations. Although Chief Justice Moore’s Alabama is a different state from the one Wallace led, the state’s top jurist used a stream of letters, orders and opinions to insist that in the same-sex marriage cases, Judge Granade, an appointee of President George W. Bush, had moved beyond her jurisdiction. The chief justice’s opposition helped fuel a debate here in recent weeks focused, in part, on religious values, the state’s place in history and how to square its mistrust of the federal government with the orders that made it the 37th state to allow same-sex marriages. “This case is about the federal court’s violation of their own rules,” the chief justice said in an interview on Monday, a day after he urged Alabama’s Republican governor, Robert Bentley, to “ensure the execution of the law” by probate judges. In a statement, though, Mr. Bentley said he would “not take any action against probate judges, which would only serve to further complicate this issue.” But even before Mr. Bentley’s support for the probate judges became public, some had already concluded that they would flout the chief justice, who was ousted from the bench more than a decade ago after he refused to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from a Montgomery building. (He won an election in 2012 and returned to his post.) “At the end of the day, it’s still a very simple legal analysis: You’ve got a federal court order,” said Judge Alan L. King of Jefferson County, who added: “This is a happy day for all of these couples, and if you can’t be happy for people, then I’m sorry. If someone can’t understand the joy and happiness of others, then I don’t know what else I can say.” David Dinielli, the deputy legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center , said, “The chief justice has decided to make a spectacle of himself, the Alabama judiciary and the state.” Image Same-sex couples waited for the Jefferson County courthouse doors to open on Monday in Birmingham. Credit Hal Yeager/Associated Press But the chief justice’s order reverberated elsewhere, in places like Elmore County, where Judge John E. Enslen said he would not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. “The federal judiciary has no authority under the Constitution to inquire into a state’s reasoning for its public policy positions on marriage any more than the federal judiciary could question Alabamians’ selection of a state bird,” Judge Enslen said in an email. In many counties, judges said they were out of the marriage business — for anyone — for now. “We don’t have any appointments, and we have a sign up saying that we aren’t issuing any licenses at this time,” Probate Judge Wes Allen of Pike County said. In Mobile County, two lawyers asked Judge Granade to hold Judge Don Davis, who said he was “committed to applying the law in all judicial and ministerial actions,” in contempt because he did not open his office’s marriage license division on Monday. (She refused, saying that Judge Davis was not a party to the litigation before her.) Although Monday’s tumult and theatrics summoned recollections of Alabama’s failed quest five decades ago to repel federally ordered desegregation, legal experts said the situation here was unlikely to become a full-scale and enduring repeat of the disputes that shook the state then. “The principle has now been well established that the states are subject to the superior command of the federal Constitution,” said Dale Carpenter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota. “Southern states will be reluctant to be seen as returning to the civil rights-era confrontations with the federal government.” Tracking Where Same-Sex Marriage Is Being Refused Counties where probate judges are declining to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Alabama, according to Freedom to Marry. For many couples, some of whom joined lines outside courthouses before sunrise, the legal questions about matrimony were distant. A few protesters sometimes drew close in a state where, in 2006, 81 percent of voters approved a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. “Turn to Jesus, my friends,” David Day, 38, shouted in Montgomery. A woman moments away from marrying, Tori Sisson, replied, “We love you!” And even some of those buffeted by the chaos felt relieved by day’s end. Ms. Ridley and Ms. Roysden, the couple who had been turned away in Florence in the morning, indeed made it to Birmingham later in the day. Holding hands and grasping bouquets — pink roses for Ms. Roysden and white for Ms. Ridley — the couple stood in Birmingham’s Linn Park and exchanged vows. “I now announce you, finally, partners forever,” the Rev. Stewart Russell, the celebrant, said. The women, who exchanged identical diamond bands, shared a quick kiss and smiled before Ms. Ridley’s 8-year-old daughter, Sadie, jumped into her mother’s arms and cried. “Oh, I’m glad you’re happy,” Ms. Ridley said.
|
Alabama;Same-Sex Marriage,Gay Marriage;Supreme Court,SCOTUS;Roy S Moore;Callie V S Granade
|
ny0213745
|
[
"sports",
"golf"
] |
2010/03/28
|
Els Takes One-Shot Lead at Palmer Invitational
|
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — After going without a victory for two years, Ernie Els is in position for his second in a row. Els made a 10-foot putt to save par on the 18th hole for a three-under 69, giving him a one-shot lead Saturday over Ben Curtis in the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill. Els broke 70 for the third straight round and was at 10-under 206. “There’s a lot of work left,” said Els, who won two weeks ago at Doral. Curtis had a two-shot lead until he chopped up the par-5 No. 16 — probably the easiest hole at Bay Hill — from 60 yards short of the green. He bladed a wedge about 70 feet long and three-putted for bogey. Then he went long on the par-3 17th and chipped off the green for another bogey. Curtis had to make a 6-foot par putt on the 18th to finish with a 70. “That last putt on 18 was big,” Curtis said. “You always want momentum going forward.” Els and Curtis will be in the final group Sunday with Chris Couch, who was headed for a double bogey on No. 18 until he was saved by three big bounces. His approach ricocheted along the rocks framing the green, and the third bounce sent the ball onto the green. Two putts later, Couch had a par and a 69 and was at 209. The final round will start early to avoid predicted bad weather; the players will go off in threesomes.
|
Golf;Els Ernie;Palmer Arnold;Curtis Ben;Couch Chris;Orlando (Fla)
|
ny0120140
|
[
"business",
"global"
] |
2012/07/21
|
China Will Investigate U.S. and Korean Polysilicon Imports
|
BEIJING — China will open investigations into imported U.S. and South Korean solar-grade polysilicon, the country’s trade ministry said Friday, in the latest instance of growing tensions between major solar manufacturers. The Ministry of Commerce issued the decisions in two statements on its Web site, citing preliminary evidence from several companies: GCL Poly-Energy Holdings, LDK Solar, and Daqo New Energy. Chinese officials have threatened to impose trade duties on U.S. shipments of polysilicon if the United States penalized Chinese solar companies. Early this year, the United States put two new import duties, totaling about 35 percent, on solar equipment from China, citing what it said was the country’s unfair support of its industry and what it said was illegal dumping of inventories in the U.S. market. China’s solar manufacturers, including Suntech Power Holdings, Yingli Green Energy, and Canadian Solar, have criticized the tariffs set this year as a threat to their young industry that will slow its growth by raising costs. If punitive tariffs are adopted, they would most likely affect importers like the U.S. polysilicon maker Hemlock, the world’s largest, and the largest South Korean producer, OCI Corp. Though not in a trade war, China and the United States are vocal in their criticisms of each other’s trade policies. Washington says China’s attacks are largely tit-for-tat retaliations to valid U.S. complaints, while China suggests the White House is simply “China-bashing” in an election year. The analyst Felix Fok at the research firm JI Asia said customers who used the material, like wafer manufacturers, would struggle if China passed on the import tariffs against polysilicon imports. “China is doing this because some of its companies are basically on their knees,” Fok said, referring to more than a year of losses suffered by the sector. Western solar companies have been at odds with their Chinese counterparts for years, alleging they receive lavish credit lines to offer modules at cheaper prices. China’s solar companies hold more than 60 percent of the global market. The U.S. market alone accounts for about 20 percent of sales of China’s largest solar panel manufacturers. The Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy , a U.S. group that represents solar installers, urged both the United States and China to avoid duties, saying tariffs from either end cost jobs and make solar energy less competitive against fossil fuels. “Lowering, not artificially raising, the cost of solar should be a global goal,” the group’s president, Jigar Shah, said in an e-mail.
|
China;Solar Energy;Protectionism (Trade);Customs (Tariff);United States;South Korea;International Trade and World Market
|
ny0001256
|
[
"business"
] |
2013/03/19
|
Questions for Public-Private Pact That Led to Xeljanz
|
WASHINGTON — With automatic spending cuts cascading through the government, lawmakers are calling for a review of federal policies they say have allowed businesses to profit on government research with limited return for taxpayers or consumers. That re-examination could be particularly intense in federal science, once a corner of the government with bipartisan protection that has become something of an orphan caught between Republican efforts to protect the military and Democrats’ defense of Social Security and Medicare. Now, advocates for creative new funding policies might have an example for their cause, a new arthritis drug called Xeljanz that got its start in a taxpayer-financed laboratory at the National Institutes of Health. “Just from the standpoint of sequestration, this is going to make the need for effective use of research dollars more important than ever,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon. “I can tell you people are talking about it.” In 1994, the National Institutes of Health approached the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer with a plan to work together on promising new research on inflammatory diseases like arthritis. At the time, it was the research agency’s policy that the price of any resulting product would have to reflect the taxpayers’ investment and “the health and safety needs of the public.” Pfizer declined. The next year, the agency scrapped that pricing clause, and in 1996 Pfizer jumped. This year, Xeljanz hit the market, a potential blockbuster arthritis pill that had its start in the laboratory of the federal scientist John O’Shea. Its price is eye-popping at $2,055 a month wholesale — $24,666 a year — a direct cost to Medicare if, as expected, it takes off with older arthritis sufferers. Image Xeljanz, a new arthritis drug from Pfizer, costs more than $2,000 a month wholesale. On Friday, Senator Wyden sent Francis S. Collins, the director of the institutes, a formal letter requesting documents about the Xeljanz collaboration “to gain an understanding of what the public can expect as a return on its research investment.” “In the face of this difficult economic climate and the increasing scarcity of research dollars it is time to revisit the idea of striking a better balance between encouraging profit, innovation, accessibility and affordability,” the senator wrote in a letter intended for public release on Tuesday. “N.I.H. should convene an outside panel to re-examine the pricing of medicines and treatments developed with public funds.” The research agency is hardly the only part of the federal government that is dealing with the repercussions of decisions made in better budgetary times. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, military and veterans’ benefits were expanded. Expensive new weapons systems were begun, like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Children’s health insurance was extended, paid for by tobacco smokers, who were declining in number. But with some of its fiercest allies gone, like the late Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, advocates for federal science are feeling particularly vulnerable. Federal research and development spending, already down 10 percent since 2010, faces an additional 8 percent cut, or $54 billion, through 2017 under the automatic cuts, known as sequestration, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. That would set total federal science spending back to 2002 levels, said Alan I. Leshner, chief executive of the association. Sequestration pulled $1.6 billion — or 5 percent — from the research agency’s budget for the rest of the fiscal year, and unless reversed, it will slice the budget by 8 percent, or $11.3 billion, through 2017. Image John O’Shea of the National Institutes of Health helped develop the drug Xeljanz. Credit National Institutes of Health “We are eating our seed corn,” Mr. Leshner, a former N.I.H. institute director, said. Pfizer played down the role that federal science played in the development of Xeljanz. The company said it first became aware of Dr. O’Shea’s work in 1993 at a public conference, but that research — published in 1994 — was in the public domain. A company official said “to our knowledge” the cooperative research project did not yield any patentable intellectual property. “Over the course of 20 years Pfizer invested more than $1 billion into the discovery, development and commercialization of Xeljanz,” a company statement said, referring to the screening of hundreds of thousands of compounds and a decade of clinical trials. “It was the culmination of this work undertaken by Pfizer that led to the drug now known as Xeljanz.” Senator Wyden acknowledged the expenses of drug discovery and clinical development. But in December, after the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug, the federal research agency hailed the decision as a victory for itself, and Dr. O’Shea as “the N.I.H. researcher who discovered the JAK3 protein and established its role in inflammation.” The cooperative research agreement “allowed teams from both organizations to work together toward the common goal of finding a new immune-suppressing drug,” the research agency said. No longer preoccupied by cold war research, government scientists have pursued collaborations with private industry. Dr. O’Shea’s team began trying to isolate a protein, called JAK3, that latches on to some immune cells. Scientists hoped to control the behavior of the immune cells, and in turn help control autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, colitis and myositis. Pfizer was intrigued, but at the time such cooperative research and development agreements were governed by the pricing policy. The company backed off, a development that was reported earlier this year in the trade journal Nature Biotechnology. Image Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has questioned the rules that govern public-private partnerships. Credit Alex Brandon/Associated Press An official who was involved at the time said it was not just businesses that were spooked. Scientists did not know what such a “reasonable relationship” was, and they too wanted their work to get to the market. “The ‘reasonable pricing clause’ did have a chilling effect on the desire to work with our collaborators,” said Dr. Kathy Hudson, deputy director for science, outreach, and policy at the N.I.H. Harold Varmus, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and the research agency’s director at the time, scrapped the clause in 1995, and Pfizer joined forces in 1996. Xeljanz, the first commercial drug that targets the JAK3 pathway discovered by Dr. O’Shea, has the potential to be a blockbuster, said Tony Butler, a pharmaceutical industry analyst at Barclays Capital. Unlike other new arthritis drugs, it comes as a pill, not a shot. Mr. Butler said he expected peak sales to reach $1.9 billion by 2020 or 2021, and that was just for rheumatoid arthritis. Other autoimmune conditions could expand the market. “This is a pill, and patients like pills,” said Les Funtleyder, a health care strategist at the investment firm Poliwogg. The drug’s hefty price has not made some members of Congress happy. “American taxpayers are entitled to realize a return on their investment in N.I.H. research resulting in this — or any other — breakthrough drug. Surely price gouging isn’t what they expect or deserve,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and a longtime critic of the pharmaceutical industry.
|
Pharmaceuticals;NIH;Pfizer;John J O'Shea;Federal Budget;Research;Ron Wyden;Arthritis
|
ny0071160
|
[
"us"
] |
2015/03/17
|
Curtis Gans, 77, Is Dead; Worked to Defeat President Johnson
|
Curtis Gans, who helped organize a quixotic crusade to depose President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 and transformed the movement’s improbable electoral success into what became a lifelong object lesson in the virtues of voting, died on Sunday in Frederick, Md. He was 77. The cause was lung cancer, his son, Aaron, said. Mr. Gans was introduced to national politics in 1967, when he and Allard K. Lowenstein, a kinetic architect of what was then called the New Politics, organized the Coalition for a Democratic Alternative, a group opposed to the war in Vietnam. It evolved into the Dump Johnson movement, with the presidential campaign of Senator Eugene J. McCarthy, a Minnesota Democrat who declared his candidacy on Nov. 30, 1967, as its vehicle. Mr. Gans, who was 30 and would become national political operations director of the McCarthy campaign, was widely credited with mobilizing thousands of college students to join the effort, many of whom shaved their beards and trimmed their hair in a “clean for Gene” crusade for New Hampshire primary voters. The senator captured 42 percent of the state’s primary vote to Johnson’s 49 percent — a stunning rebuff to an incumbent president. On March 31, after Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York also challenged Mr. Johnson for the nomination, the president shocked the nation by announcing that he would not seek re-election. On April 2, with Mr. Gans again in charge of the campaign, Mr. McCarthy won the Wisconsin primary, with 56 percent to 35 percent for the president, whose name had remained on the ballot. Later, as co-founder and director of what is now known as the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University in Washington, Mr. Gans became an expert resource for scholars and journalists and a determined advocate for greater voter participation and what he called “the religion of civic duty.” “We’re one of the few democracies in the world that puts the entire burden for registering on the citizen and not on the state,” he once said. He unrelentingly lamented the decline in voter turnout, which has hovered at roughly half of all those eligible since about 1980, and the resultant shrinking mandates for winning presidential candidates. Mr. Gans blamed several factors: state and local bureaucratic obstacles to registration and voting; a growing barrage of demagogic campaign advertisements on television; even early projections of the results on Election Day, which he said discouraged last-minute voters. “Every year, the nation seems further and further from the political comity, cohesion and consensus that makes possible the constructive address of citizen needs,” Mr. Gans wrote in The Washington Monthly in 2000. “The nation that prides itself on being the best example of government of, for and by the people is rapidly becoming a nation whose participation is limited to the interested or zealous few.” Curtis Bernard Gans was born in Manhattan on June 17, 1937. His father, Kurt, was a coffee merchant. His mother, the former Irene Katz, was a masseuse. He attended the Riverdale Country School in the Bronx and graduated from the University of North Carolina, where he majored in history and philosophy and was editor of The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper. He later worked as a reporter for United Press International and was in Dallas the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. He was introduced to student activism through the civil rights movement and eventually became national affairs vice president of the National Student Association. (He was among the association’s officers who demanded an accounting of subsidies it had surreptitiously received from the Central Intelligence Agency.) He participated in protests against racial segregation at the Woolworth store in Greensboro, N.C., and represented the student association at the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In the early 1970s, Mr. Gans helped found the nonpartisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, which later became part of American University’s Center for Democracy and Election Management. He was the author of numerous articles and a book, “Voter Turnout in the United States, 1788-2009.” In addition to his son, he is survived by a half brother, John Laton. His marriages to Shelley Fidler and Eugenia Grohman ended in divorce. He lived in Lovettsville, Va. As the McCarthy campaign demonstrated, Mr. Gans’s passion for voter participation represented a commitment to democratic ends, not merely a scholarly abstraction about means. Reviewing a primer by the community organizer Saul D. Alinsky for The New York Times Book Review in 1971, Mr. Gans cited the potency of single-issue causes, like the civil rights, antiwar and Dump Johnson movements in which he had participated. “Perhaps the most important and potentially revolutionary impact of those movements was the emergence of thousands and perhaps millions of people who could be motivated to political action by self-interest defined in terms of the best interests of the society,” Mr. Gans wrote. “This potential community of the committed offers the hope for a truly powerful national movement for social change.”
|
Obituary;US Politics;Lyndon Baines Johnson;College;Eugene J McCarthy;Manhattan;American University;Coalition for a Democratic Alternative;Curtis Gans
|
ny0004642
|
[
"sports",
"hockey"
] |
2013/04/21
|
John Tavares Lifts Islanders to Key Win Over Jets
|
The schedule said it was Game 45, but it felt like the playoffs for John Tavares. And when Tavares, the Islanders’ 22-year-old star, scored the winner in a 5-4 shootout victory Saturday, he put a serious dent in the Winnipeg Jets’ playoff hopes. “There’s a team right behind us,” Tavares said. “There’s a lot on the line. I think we knew it would have a playoff atmosphere. You could sense it in the locker room before the game and during the game.” The visiting Islanders, who extended their point streak to 10 games (8-0-2), passed Ottawa for sixth place in the Eastern Conference. Toronto remained in fifth, 2 points ahead of the Islanders. The Jets have 49 points and are 1 behind the eighth-place Rangers. Winnipeg’s Bryan Little tied the score, 4-4, with 2 minutes 1 second left in the third period, seven seconds after Islanders defenseman Lubomir Visnovsky was called for an interference penalty. A rebound sent the puck toward Little’s left skate, and he kicked it to his stick before beating Islanders goalie Evgeni Nabokov. In the shootout, Tavares and Brad Boyes beat Jets goalie Ondrej Pavelec, and the Winnipeg captain Andrew Ladd scored against Nabokov. Michael Grabner gave the Islanders a 4-3 lead at 9:13 of the third after taking a pass from Andrew McDonald. Grabner stood at the edge of the crease and redirected the puck past Pavelec. The Islanders’ Frans Nielsen and Josh Bailey each had a goal and an assist, and Matt Martin also scored. Kyle Okposo and Visnovsky each added two assists. Kyle Wellwood scored two goals for Winnipeg, and Zach Bogosian had one. MAPLE LEAFS 4, SENATORS 1 James Reimer made 49 saves, helping Toronto win at Ottawa to clinch a playoff berth for the first time since 2004. James van Riemsdyk scored twice for the Maple Leafs. “It’s unbelievable,” Reimer said, adding, “It’s been a long time coming now, and this is a market and a group of fans that definitely deserves to have this team in the playoffs and competing for a Cup.” DEVILS 6, PANTHERS 2 Patrik Elias scored twice, helping the host Devils recover from a 2-0 deficit to keep their faint playoff hopes alive. David Clarkson, who delivered a powerful check that seemed to ignite the Devils’ rally, scored the go-ahead goal in the second period after assisting on one of Elias’s goals. Ilya Kovalchuk, an offensive catalyst who had missed 11 games with a shoulder injury, returned for the Devils but did not have a point. Florida, which scored two goals against Martin Brodeur in the opening 7:05, finished with only 13 shots and lost its fifth straight. The Devils must win their final four games to have a chance of making the playoffs. They will visit the Rangers on Sunday. PENGUINS 3, BRUINS 2 In a game postponed one day by a manhunt for one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Pittsburgh won at Boston to clinch home-ice advantage throughout the Eastern Conference playoffs. The Penguins’ Jarome Iginla broke a 1-1 tie with a power-play goal early in the third period, and Kris Letang added a power-play goal less than four minutes later. Fans returned to TD Garden one day after the capture of the bombing suspect Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, in nearby Watertown, Mass. Before the game, Bruins players wore baseball caps of the state police and the Boston and Watertown police departments, and Penguins Coach Dan Bylsma wore a black T-shirt with the words Boston Strong over his shirt and tie. CAPITALS 5, CANADIENS 1 Troy Brouwer and Alex Ovechkin each scored twice, leading Washington past slumping Montreal. The visiting Capitals, who won for the 13th time in 16 games, stretched their Southeast Division lead over Winnipeg to 3 points with three games to play. COYOTES 3, BLACKHAWKS 2 Mikkel Boedker and David Schlemko scored shootout goals, and visiting Phoenix remained in the playoff chase. FLYERS 5, HURRICANES 3 Wayne Simmonds recorded his first career hat trick and added an assist, leading Philadelphia to a win at Carolina.
|
Ice hockey;Islanders;Winnipeg Jets;Brad Boyes
|
ny0266594
|
[
"us"
] |
2016/03/26
|
California: Navy Captain Gets Prison in Bribery Case
|
A federal judge in San Diego on Friday sentenced a Navy captain who oversaw operations in the United States Pacific Fleet to 46 months in prison for providing classified information to a Malaysian defense contractor in exchange for luxury hotel stays and the services of prostitutes. Capt. Daniel Dusek is the highest-ranking officer charged in the bribery scandal. Judge Janis L. Sammartino also ordered him to pay a $70,000 fine for giving ship and submarine schedules to help Leonard Glenn Francis carry out a scheme in which his company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia Ltd., overbilled by more than $34 million.
|
Daniel Dusek;US Military;Classified Information;Defense contractor;Bribery and Kickbacks;US Navy
|
ny0029982
|
[
"sports",
"golf"
] |
2013/06/11
|
U.S. Open — No Flags at Merion, But Wicker Baskets Instead
|
ARDMORE, Pa. — There is no more recognizable golf course feature than the flag that adorns a green. It is a signature symbol and a beacon, golf’s version of a lighthouse — sometimes barely visible from the tee box but ever more noticeable as the golfer draws closer. In practical terms, the flag is no mere adornment. With a glance, the flag tells the golfer the wind direction and how hard it is gusting, important factors as the next shot is assessed. The flag also has figurative powers; its fluttering is like a wave to the wayward golfer that beseeches, “This way, over here.” But for about a century, there have been no flags at the Merion Golf Club’s East Course, where the holes are instead festooned with hard, egg-shaped wicker baskets attached to steel sticks. The device stuck in a hole at Merion is known as a standard, an appropriately eccentric term at a golf club that is anything but standard. As the 113th United States Open begins Thursday, the wicker baskets are sure to be an emblem of the championship and of the television broadcasts. Historic Merion in general is nothing if not idiosyncratic, and it starts with the bulbous, unwavering red and orange wicker baskets — red for the front nine holes, orange for the back nine. “The baskets are different and they could affect play, but I’m glad they’re here,” Jason Day of Australia, the runner-up at the 2011 United States Open, said Monday as he stood alongside a practice green. “It’s what’s known about Merion, and it’s what makes them different. So I’m glad they stuck with it.” Louis Oosthuizen of South Africa, the 2010 British Open champion, did not disagree, though he found the baskets mildly amusing. “I’ve never seen anything like them in my life,” he said. “There must be a good story about how they came about.” There used to be a good story. Now there is something better: a mystery. For years, it was presumed that Hugh Wilson, Merion’s architect, had visited England for design ideas, which would have been customary, before the 1912 opening of the East Course. There was even a meticulously detailed tale of how Wilson was spending time with the American ambassador at the Court of St. James’s, where there were three small putting greens. The ambassador’s wife had put three shepherd’s crooks topped with flower baskets in the holes, as the story went. For decades, that was supposed to be the genesis of the wicker baskets. But research in Merion’s prized and extensive archives revealed no trip to the British Isles by Wilson before 1912, and his name could not be found on the manifests of any ship sailing there. Video Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pa., is hosting the United States Open, but the grounds are so small, it’s like bringing the Super Bowl to a small college football field. Additionally, it was learned that the wicker baskets were not in use when the course made its debut in 1912. What is known is that by 1915, Bill Flynn, then the Merion superintendent, applied for and received federal patents for wicker baskets for golf holes. The baskets, also known as wickers, were not uncommon at golf courses in England and Scotland in the mid-1850s, so it is likely they were the source of Merion’s now-distinctive design feature, but officially, there is no proven provenance. That has not stopped there from being another story about how the baskets came to be created. In this account, Wilson got the idea from Scottish shepherds, who carried walking sticks topped with baskets, where they stored their lunches. For most of the professionals playing to the Merion baskets this week, all the folklore is not food for thought. They have practical considerations, like trying to figure out how the wind at the green might affect their shots. “The baskets could be a factor if it gets a little windy,” said Zach Johnson, the 2007 Masters champion. “I’m not a big fan of them because it’s not consistent with what we normally use. I’m not anti-Merion, but we’re so used to seeing flags.” Which could have been Wilson’s — or Flynn’s — point. Unlike most golf courses, Merion also does not have yardage markers. Range finders are not allowed for the members, either. On the devilishly difficult East Course, the idea was to make the golfer use strategy in every way possible, and that apparently included conjuring shots without a flag to help gauge wind direction and velocity. Told of that theory and how it probably dates to 1915, Oosthuizen smiled and said: “I wasn’t playing back then. But I’ll adapt.” Day suggested that he might aim near the baskets but not at them, fearful that hitting one might cause a long ricochet away from the hole. Citing Tiger Woods’s rules violation after a flagstick rebound ended up in a pond at this year’s Masters, Day wondered if there was a rule for what to do if a ball ends up lodged inside a Merion basket. The rule calls for the ball to be placed on the lip of the hole, without a penalty stroke. There were some golfers practicing on Monday who seemed unruffled, and unsurprised, by the baskets. Rickie Fowler, who was undefeated in his four matches during the 2009 Walker Cup at Merion, said the baskets “should be no big deal.” “It’s still a target; it’s still a place to aim,” he said. “I’ve had other guys asking me about them because they’ve never seen them. I told them two things: don’t worry about it, and it wouldn’t be Merion without the wicker baskets.”
|
Golf;US Open Golf;Merion Golf Club Haverford Township Pa
|
ny0078721
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2015/02/05
|
Rail Crossing Accidents Decline Nationwide, but Less So in New York Region
|
Railroad crossings, with their flashing lights and descending gates, are a fixture of suburban living. The hundreds of crossings along commuter rail lines in New York and New Jersey can be a nuisance for drivers whose journeys are being interrupted, but they are also something to be feared, crossroads that can easily turn dangerous. Accidents at railroad crossings happen with surprising regularity in the region. Since 2003, there have been 125 grade-crossing accidents on New Jersey Transit lines, 105 on the Long Island Rail Road and 30 on Metro-North Railroad, according to the latest available Federal Railroad Administration data. More than half of those 260 accidents resulted in injuries or deaths. In all, 73 people were killed and 148 injured. Nationally, the numbers of accidents and fatalities at rail crossings have fallen steadily, as grade crossings have been eliminated and safety improvements made, according to safety groups. There were 3,085 such accidents across the country that killed 371 people in 2004. Those figures dropped to 2,096 accidents that killed 288 people in 2013. But grade-crossing accidents on the three major commuter rail lines in the New York region do not appear to have declined as steadily. There were 26 in 2004. The figure dropped slightly for several years before rising to 28 in 2013. (Both the national and New York-region statistics include some suicides, which the railroad administration began identifying separately in 2011.) The crossing where the fatal Metro-North crash on Tuesday took place is on a bend in a quiet road, Commerce Street, which snakes through a cemetery in Valhalla, N.Y. Notably, the crossing is less than 200 feet from the busy Taconic State Parkway. With a traffic light at the intersection, for cars heading east toward the parkway, as the driver in the crash was doing, there is only space for a few vehicles on the roadway before traffic becomes backed up, potentially into the crossing. Commerce Street was busier than usual on Tuesday night because of an accident on the parkway, said Alex Athanasatos, the owner of Valhalla Deli, who was driving four or five cars behind the woman who was struck by the train. “There was so much traffic, people started cutting through the cemetery,” he said. Augustine F. Ubaldi, a railroad engineering expert who is not involved in the official inquiry, said investigators would examine , among other factors, whether the crossing was properly synchronized with the traffic light to keep traffic moving. Although the line of sight at the crossing was not ideal because of the curve in the road, he said the lights and the gate were sufficient to make it clear that a train was coming. Mr. Ubaldi said he was more concerned with finding out why the woman stopped on the tracks. In such a situation, he said riders should break through the gates if necessary. “The gates are designed to break,” he said. “If you get stuck at the crossing, floor it. Smash the gate. It’s a far less severe consequence than staying on the crossing.” The crossing where the accident occurred on Tuesday, however, has long been a serious concern for some drivers in the area. Investigating the Metro-North Crash Details from the preliminary report on what happened in the Metro-North crash that killed six people on Feb. 3. Lance Sexton, 31, an electronic equipment assembler who commutes to Valhalla from Manhattan, said he was venting just last week with co-workers about the railroad crossings in Valhalla. He said he worried about how quickly the trains pass after the gates come down. But they all agreed that the Commerce Street crossing was particularly dangerous. “We know that coming down the hill of the cemetery, you have to put the brakes on earlier,” he said. “There’s a bank there that always collects water, making it even more dangerous.” As for the driver who found herself on the tracks there, Mr. Sexton said: “It happens, man. It happens.” The last accident that took place at the crossing occurred in 1984, according to the railroad administration’s data. A Metro-North train struck a truck, also at the height of the evening rush, killing the 21-year-old driver, Gerard Dunne , a new father who had been responding to a call for work, his sister Barbara Kehoe said. There were no gates at the crossing at the time, she said. He was unfamiliar with the crossing, and with foliage obscuring his view, he did not see the train coming. He died three weeks later. “It was very eerie last night hearing about the crash,” she said. “It kind of brings it back. I immediately think of all these families, and it’s just tragic.” Ms. Kehoe, 46, who lives in Stony Point, N.Y., said her brother and his wife had a 6-month-old baby at the time of the crash. The gates were put in at the crossing in response to her brother’s death. A lawsuit was filed, but Ms. Kehoe said she could not discuss the specifics without talking to the rest of her family. On Tuesday night, she said, she wondered right away whether the crossing was any safer now. “How safe is that crossing — for this to happen again?” she said. Since 2003, the most accidents at a single Metro-North grade crossing is five, at the Riverbend Drive South crossing in Stamford, Conn., on the New Canaan branch of the New Haven line, according to the railroad administration data. No one died in those five crashes, but four people were injured. Even at crossings where lights flash and gates are dropped, as they did on Tuesday night, there are frequently collisions. About half of all collisions at grade crossings happen when warning devices are in place, according to the railroad administration. Metro-North has 126 grade crossings, Long Island Rail Road has 294, and New Jersey Transit has 330, according to the transit agencies. In an interview on NY1 on Wednesday morning, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that eliminating all grade crossings would be prohibitively costly. “In theory it’s a nice idea,” he said. “In practicality, do we have the money, do we have the time? And is it one of the top priority safety projects? I would say no.” But Joyce Rose, president of Operation Lifesaver , a rail safety education group, pointed out that even with the decrease in accidents nationally at grade crossings, “every three hours, a person or a vehicle is hit by a train.”
|
Train wreck;Metro North;Valhalla NY;New York Metropolitan Area;New Jersey;Fatalities,casualties
|
ny0046992
|
[
"technology"
] |
2014/11/18
|
F.T.C. Penalizes TRUSTe, a Web Privacy Certification Company
|
The Federal Trade Commission on Monday penalized TRUSTe, a company that certifies websites for compliance with various privacy standards, saying it had deceived consumers about its recertification program and allowed itself to be falsely portrayed as a nonprofit corporation. TRUSTe, whose formal name is True Ultimate Standards Everywhere Inc., will disgorge $200,000 in profits to the Treasury as part of a settlement for failing to annually recertify the privacy practices of companies in more than 1,000 instances while claiming on its website that it did so each year. The TRUSTe symbol has become the equivalent of an Underwriters Laboratories safety seal or a Good Housekeeping seal of approval, signaling to consumers that a website follows privacy practices like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and the United States-European Union Safe Harbor Framework. “TRUSTe promised to hold companies accountable for protecting consumer privacy, but it fell short of that pledge,” Edith Ramirez, the F.T.C.’s chairwoman, said in a statement. “Self-regulation plays an important role in helping to protect consumers. But when companies fail to live up to their promises to consumers, the F.T.C. will not hesitate to take action.” The commission said that from 2006 to January 2013 TRUSTe failed to conduct annual privacy checks on some of the companies it certified. The company also failed to require companies using its seal to indicate after 2008 that the company was no longer a nonprofit corporation. Started in 1997, TRUSTe converted to for-profit in 2008. The company advertises itself as “the #1 privacy brand” and requires sites that wish to display its seal to verify their practices, including meeting requirements for transparency and for consumer options about how personal information is collected and used. In a statement, TRUSTe said that the companies it failed to recertify annually were among those with multiyear contracts, and that those instances represented “less than 10 percent of the total number of annual reviews the company was scheduled to conduct” from 2006 to 2013. In a posting on the company’s blog, Chris Babel, TRUSTe’s chief executive, said 90 percent of the multiyear clients signed two-year contracts and so were reviewed every other year. “We have taken swift action to address the process issues covered by the agreement” with the F.T.C., Mr. Babel wrote.
|
TRUSTe;FTC;Consumer protection;Privacy
|
ny0257314
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2011/01/20
|
Bloomberg’s State of the City Address Is Local and Low-Key
|
There was barely any nod to Manhattan. Nor any mention of the economic virtues of Wall Street, or much talk about national politics. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg sought on Wednesday to shore up his relationship with his constituents and make the case that he was still fully engaged in his third term. In a speech notable for what was not said, Mr. Bloomberg, delivering his 10th State of the City address, went out of his way to keep the theme distinctly parochial by highlighting neighborhood projects, unveiling proposals aimed at helping small businesses and pledging not to raise taxes. Mr. Bloomberg also made a concerted effort to rebut criticism that he was ignoring the boroughs outside Manhattan. Beyond paying homage to the refurbished St. George Theater on Staten Island, where he delivered his speech, the mayor referred repeatedly to his administration’s efforts to revitalize Brooklyn (a new amusement area in Coney Island), Queens (a real estate project at Hunters Point) and the Bronx (a new fishing pier at Hunts Point Landing). But the mayor did not utter a word about the snowstorm last month that unleashed widespread criticism when streets in many neighborhoods went unplowed for days. The address was devoid of big, sweeping initiatives, in part because of Mr. Bloomberg’s admonition that “money is tight — very tight.” But in one of several small-scale initiatives that dominated his agenda, he promised to spare restaurants that received an “A” on health inspections from being fined for any violations uncovered by the inspection. Mr. Bloomberg, stepping up his populist attacks on Albany and public-sector unions, also vowed to push even harder for pension overhauls. He pledged not to sign any labor agreement that included salary increases unless it was accompanied by a promise to cut benefit packages. Not only did Mr. Bloomberg mostly avoid two favorite topics, Wall Street and national politics, he also tried to be a bit self-deprecating — hardly a familiar character trait — by opening with a light-hearted video of the Staten Island groundhog that bit his finger in 2009. “He is my good friend,” the groundhog said, in a voice-over provided by a human actor. Given the frequency with which Mr. Bloomberg mentioned neighborhood issues — including a much-publicized proposal to allow livery cars to make on-street pickups outside of Manhattan — it seemed, at times, almost more of a State of the Borough speech than a citywide one. Mr. Bloomberg may have been trying to prove to his naysayers that he was not aloof, distracted or out of touch, as he has been recently portrayed. One recent poll indicated that Mr. Bloomberg’s popularity had tumbled noticeably in the wake of his administration’s response to the Christmas weekend blizzard, a payroll accounting scandal and his selection of Cathleen P. Black, a publishing executive with little education background, as the new schools chancellor. Still, on Wednesday, Mr. Bloomberg did not apologize, though he has done so in the past. And that was disappointing to some, including Bill de Blasio, the city’s public advocate, who said that the mayor had missed an opportunity to regain confidence. “It’s part of leadership to acknowledge mistakes,” Mr. de Blasio said. “It would have been cleansing.” Instead, in an address that ran about 45 minutes, Mr. Bloomberg did offer a low-key, and less grandiose, presentation than he had earlier in his tenure. He proposed, for instance, to construct family centers at Rikers Island and improve the juvenile justice system. He also proposed, under a plan led by Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, online forums for city employees to exchange ideas to improve services or save money. He was most impassioned when talking about immigration reform, and beseeching Albany lawmakers to allow the city to manage more of its affairs on its own. And for his long-running battle to reform the pensions system, he announced that he had enlisted the help of former Mayor Edward I. Koch. Union leaders did not take kindly to Mr. Bloomberg’s words. Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said he was disappointed that the mayor spent little time talking about education. He also took offense at Mr. Bloomberg’s warning over contracts, considering that the teachers’ union is now in the middle of negotiations. “It shows a lack of professionalism,” Mr. Mulgrew said. “I think he was trying to get cheap political points considering what’s happened with his administration recently.” Harry Nespoli, chairman of the Municipal Labor Committee, the umbrella group of unions representing city workers, said, “Lowering benefits, changing layoff seniority for teachers and returning civil service to the Tammany Hall era will not produce one job.” Some elected officials were dubious of Mr. Bloomberg’s sincerity. City Councilman Daniel J. Halloran, a Republican from Queens, said: “The outer boroughs need more than livery cabs. We need the attention of city services. We need capital investment, better school funding, and to be treated as equals with the inner borough.” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that Mr. Bloomberg had unveiled “an innovative and realistic agenda” and that “he rightly recognizes that government has to do more with less and that during these difficult times, tough choices and sacrifice are required.” City Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., a Queens Democrat who had criticized Mr. Bloomberg over the snowstorm response, said: “The mayor laid out a very powerful agenda which reminded people why they elected him. He didn’t give a ‘feel good’ speech; he gave a ‘get real’ speech, which New Yorkers needed to hear.”
|
Bloomberg Michael R;New York City;State of the City Message (NYC);Politics and Government
|
ny0244842
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2011/04/11
|
Obama to Call for Broad Plan to Reduce Debt
|
WASHINGTON — President Obama will call this week for Republicans to join him in writing a broad plan to raise revenues and reduce the growth of popular entitlement programs, as the battle over the nation’s financial troubles moves past Friday’s short-term budget deal and into a wider and more consequential debate over the nation’s long-term fiscal health. In a speech to be delivered at a university here on Wednesday, Mr. Obama will in effect come off the sidelines on the debate over reducing the nation’s debt, which is reaching dangerous heights as the population ages. After months of criticism that he has not led on budget talks, Mr. Obama will urge bipartisan negotiations toward a multiyear debt-reduction plan that administration officials said would depart sharply from the one proposed last week by House Republicans. The Republican plan includes a shrinking of Medicare and Medicaid and trillions of dollars in tax cuts, while sparing defense spending. Mr. Obama, by contrast, envisions a more comprehensive plan that would include tax increases for the richest taxpayers, cuts to military spending, savings in Medicare and Medicaid, and unspecified changes to Social Security . In his remarks, which come after Friday’s bipartisan deal to cut domestic spending by about $38 billion for the remainder of this budget year, Mr. Obama will not offer details but will set deficit-cutting goals, White House officials said. The numbers were still under discussion on Sunday. “He’ll lay out his approach this week in terms of the scale of debt reduction he thinks the country needs so we can grow economically and win the future — a balanced approach,” David Plouffe , the senior White House political strategist, said on “Fox News Sunday,” one of four talk shows on which he appeared Sunday. “Obviously, we need to look at all corners of government,” Mr. Plouffe said, adding, “We’re going to have a big debate.” Until now, Mr. Obama has avoided prescribing specific changes to entitlement programs like Medicare, beyond those contained in his health care overhaul. Indeed, few of the recommendations made by his own bipartisan fiscal commission were included in the budget he presented to Congress in February. What is more, while Mr. Obama proposed a five-year freeze on the growth of domestic spending, he recommended increases in education, research, infrastructure and clean-energy programs — emphasizing that although deficit reduction is important, so are investments to create jobs and skilled workers. The growing debate over federal spending and taxes is certain to ripple from the White House and Congress to the 2012 presidential campaign, helping to shape voters’ assessment of Mr. Obama’s record and challenging rivals for the Republican presidential nomination to respond, even as they court conservative voters who oppose any compromise with Mr. Obama. Whether anything tangible comes of the debate, it will contrast the parties’ visions of the role of government. Republicans reacted skeptically to word of Mr. Obama’s speech. “I sit here and I listen to David Plouffe talk about, you know, their commitment to cut spending and knowing full well that for the last two months we’ve had to bring this president kicking and screaming to the table to cut spending,” Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia , the House majority leader, said on Fox. The timing of Mr. Obama’s remarks reflects a White House strategy devised late last year after Republicans won their House majority, together with the confluence of four events, two last week and two ahead. Friday night’s 11th-hour agreement on spending cuts, which averted a government shutdown, removed what had been a distraction for months over this year’s unfinished federal budget . Administration officials said they also hoped that the compromise helped build trust with the House speaker, John A. Boehner , that would carry over to the larger debates about long-term spending and the national debt. Some lawmakers said Sunday that they opposed the compromise, but leaders in both parties remain confident it will pass in the House and Senate this week. Also last week came a moment the administration had been awaiting for months: Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin , the House Budget Committee chairman, outlined House Republicans’ long-term budget plan. Mr. Ryan said it would cut $6 trillion in the coming decade, though budget analysts questioned some of the claimed savings. The plan would turn Medicare into a voucher program for future generations and slash spending for the need-based Medicaid program and other domestic initiatives, while largely sparing the Pentagon and cutting $4 trillion more in corporate and high-income taxes. The White House settled on a strategy in December by which Mr. Obama would wait for the House Republicans to lay down their cards before he proposed major reductions in popular entitlement benefit programs, according to interviews with administration officials at the time. Mr. Obama’s budget waiting game, however, has helped to fuel widespread criticism by Republicans, pundits and some Democrats that he has failed to lead. Another impetus to Wednesday’s move is the White House’s belief that a bipartisan “Gang of Six” senators will announce this week that they have reached agreement on a debt-reduction package similar to that of the president’s fiscal commission. After months of private discussions, the tentative agreement among the three Republican and three Democratic senators would cut military and domestic programs and overhaul the tax code, eliminating popular tax breaks but using the new revenues to lower income-tax rates and reduce annual deficits. It would be the model, if not in all details, for Mr. Obama’s own goals, Democratic officials say. Perhaps the biggest prod for Mr. Obama to act, however, is the need for Congress to vote to raise the legal limit on the federal debt, now $14.25 trillion. The government will hit that limit on its borrowing authority in as few as five weeks, the Treasury Department has said. Without an increase by early July, the government cannot continue to make payments on its existing debt, potentially forcing it into an economy-shaking default. Speaking on Saturday in Connecticut , Mr. Boehner said Republicans would not agree to raise the cap “without something really, really big attached to it.” Unlike the recent spending-cut negotiations, in which Mr. Obama was not active until the final days, “he knows he has to take a greater role from the beginning” on the debt-limit measure and any companion plan for reducing debt, said an adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Several presidential advisers interviewed in recent weeks said Mr. Obama has been torn between wanting to propose major budget changes to entice Republicans to the bargaining table, including on Social Security, and believing they would never agree to raise revenues on upper-income Americans as part of a deal. Three House Republican leaders, including Mr. Ryan, were on the fiscal commission; unlike the three Senate Republicans, they opposed the recommendations because they raised revenues and did not cut enough from health care. The risk to Mr. Obama includes further alienating liberals in his own party. Progressive groups have formed coalitions to oppose any changes to Social Security, for instance.
|
Federal Budget;US Politics;Barack Obama;US National Debt
|
ny0150090
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2008/09/15
|
One Is Killed as Ferry Sinks Off Turkish Port
|
ISTANBUL — A ferry leaving the northwestern port city of Bandirma for Istanbul sank on Sunday, killing at least one person and leaving some 20 others unaccounted for, the local governor said. The governor, Selahattin Hatipoglu, told a television station, NTV, that of the approximately 100 people on board, 67 had been rescued as an intensive search continued late Sunday. About a dozen others were taken to nearby hospitals in Bandirma, news reports said. Relatively rough seas “might have caused loss of balance on the ferry,” Mr. Hatipoglu told NTV. There were 73 trucks and 2 taxis aboard the ferry, which was run by 27 crew members, local authorities said. “It completely sank in about half an hour,” Bulent Gun, a guide captain at the Bandirma Public Transportation Agency, told the private CNN Turk network. The ferry, operated by Orion Asya Istanbul Shipping Company, was right off Bandirma harbor as it sank, the state-run Anatolian Agency said. Local coast guards, rescue teams, divers from nearby towns and local fishermen were mobilized, Mr. Hatipoglu said. The crossing between Bandirma and Istanbul, through the Sea of Marmara, is a popular ferry route.
|
Turkey;Accidents and Safety;Ferries
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.