id
stringlengths 9
9
| categories
list | date
stringlengths 10
10
| title
stringlengths 3
232
| abstract
stringlengths 4
42.4k
| keyword
stringlengths 6
360
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ny0227351
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2010/10/14
|
Executive Held in Hungary Sludge Spill Is Freed
|
BUDAPEST — The managing director of the company linked to Hungary ’s red sludge disaster was released from custody without charge, his lawyer said Wednesday, citing a lack of sufficient evidence. Janos Banati, the lawyer, said by telephone that a judge of Veszprem City Court in west Hungary had decided to free the director, Zoltan Bakonyi, after finding that prosecutors had not made a convincing case. The court had met to review possible charges that negligence by Mr. Bakonyi — including what his critics contended was a failure to prepare emergency warning and rescue plans — had contributed to the calamity. “The court ordered the immediate release of Zoltan Bakonyi from custody. The decision of the court is based on the fact that in this early stage of the process not even the suspicion of a crime can be verified,” Mr. Banati said. A week ago, nearly 200 million gallons of caustic red mud — a byproduct of the conversion of bauxite to alumina, for aluminum — poured out of a reservoir after part of a containing wall collapsed. The cascade killed eight people and injured hundreds. Hundreds more have been forced from their homes, and tens of millions of dollars in private property has been destroyed. Some critics of the government had seen the arrest of Mr. Bakonyi as a politically motivated act carried out under pressure from the prime minister, Viktor Orban. Mr. Bakonyi is the son of Arpad Bakonyi, a businessman who played a central role in the privatization of the country’s aluminum industry and is the largest shareholder of the company now under scrutiny, the formerly state-owned MAL. The elder Bakonyi is also a close business associate of a former prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, who is Mr. Orban’s political archrival. On Monday, the government took control of MAL, the Hungarian Aluminum Production and Trade Company, and it has appointed a state commissioner to manage the company and its assets. As custodian of the company, the government has vowed to make sure that it pays damages to those affected by the caustic red sludge spill. The government is currently reviewing whether to resume production at the factory to avoid putting thousands of jobs at risk.
|
Hungary;Floods;Metals and Minerals;Environment
|
ny0007416
|
[
"sports",
"hockey"
] |
2013/05/26
|
Patrick Roy Will Face Challenges as Colorado’s Coach
|
Shortly after Memorial Day, the Colorado Avalanche will introduce Patrick Roy as their coach, a hiring the team announced Thursday. He will also be vice president for hockey operations, sharing roster decisions with Joe Sakic, his former Avalanche teammate, who was named an executive vice president earlier this month. Neither has previously held a major management position in pro hockey. Sakic had been an adviser to Avalanche executives for the past two years. Roy and Sakic were cornerstones of the franchise’s glory days after it relocated from Quebec in 1995. Drafted by the Nordiques in 1987, Sakic was the team’s captain. Roy, acquired in a trade with Montreal in December 1995 after a public spat with Canadiens Coach Mario Tremblay , was the fiery goaltender, a strong-willed veteran leader who propelled the young Avalanche to the top. They led Colorado to two Stanley Cup titles and four other trips to the Western Conference championship round from 1996 to 2002. Roy retired in 2003, ending a Hall of Fame playing career, and the Avalanche became increasingly irrelevant; they have won only three playoff series since and missed the postseason five times, including the last three years. The team sold out 487 consecutive home games from 1995 until October 2006, an N.H.L. record, but attendance dipped below 77 percent of capacity in 2009-10 before a modest rebound. By bringing Roy back, the Avalanche hope to reconnect with their fans as well as revive their competitive fortunes. But in addition to lacking N.H.L. management experience, Roy has also never coached in the league. For the past eight years, he has been the coach and general manager of the Quebec Remparts of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. Roy has done well in his hometown, compiling a .640 winning percentage with the Remparts. In 2006, he guided them to the Memorial Cup, Canada’s major junior hockey championship. But it is rarely easy to go directly to the N.H.L. from junior hockey. The last coach to do so was Dale Hunter, who left the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League to take over the Washington Capitals in midseason two years ago. Hunter was accustomed to the autocracy that comes with owning, running and coaching a junior team. He clashed with Washington’s star, Alex Ovechkin, whose ice time he cut. The results he achieved with the Capitals were little different than those of his predecessor, Bruce Boudreau. Hunter returned to London after the season. “Junior hockey is a dictatorship, and the N.H.L. isn’t, for the most part,” said Devils Coach Pete DeBoer, who made a similar jump in 2008, from the Kitchener Rangers, where he had been coach and general manager, to the Florida Panthers. When it comes to the game on the ice, DeBoer says he does not believe junior coaches have difficulty making the transition. He also said Roy’s transition could be eased by his playing experience and by his ability to connect with players. “Patrick’s got a leg up on where I was because, while I had played pro hockey, I hadn’t played at the N.H.L. level and he obviously played for a long time,” DeBoer said. “So there’s a lot of things I dealt with for the first time that he’s already got a good handle on.” If there is one adjustment Roy will have to make, DeBoer said, it will be working within a system that does not allow him to act autonomously. “You have total control,” he said of those who are both coach and general manager in junior hockey. “If you don’t like a player, you can trade him. You had a hand in drafting him. That’s something you don’t have at this level, and that’s something I’m sure he’s going to miss a little bit. “It’s a different business in junior hockey,” he continued, noting that N.H.L. clubs have a full staff to administer contracts and the collective bargaining agreement provisions. “You don’t have one-man operations any more at the N.H.L. level,” he said. “In junior hockey, you’re drafting kids, and they’re stepping right into your lineup that fall. In the N.H.L. you’re drafting kids, and some of them you’re not seeing for six or seven years.”
|
Patrick Roy;Joe Sakic;Ice hockey;Colorado Avalanche
|
ny0065362
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2014/06/19
|
A Rare Double, Even by the Mets’ Standards, Helps Prevent a Sweep
|
ST. LOUIS — There is an old baseball saying that goes something like this: Every day at the ballpark, you might see something new. What transpired in the Mets’ 3-2 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday qualified, and it was a sight to behold. It felt rarer than a no-hitter, more special than a player’s hitting three home runs in a game or hitting for the cycle. Bartolo Colon doubled. Yes, Colon bent his knees, swung his hips, reached out his bat and pulled a fastball down the third-base line. He carefully rounded first and jogged to second as his teammates waved towels from the dugout. This was his first hit in nine years. He had only 10 hits in 122 career at-bats entering the game, all singles. “Take three! Take three!” his teammates shouted, hoping for a triple. Colon cracked a smile. But he did not have much time to catch his breath: The next batter, Eric Young Jr., doubled, too. Colon chugged around third, his stomach bouncing as he ran, and cruised home standing up. Colon, listed at 5 feet 11 inches and 285 pounds, took his time walking back to the dugout, where Bobby Abreu fanned him as his teammates laughed. Here, finally, was a moment of levity in an unforgiving season. The Mets could forget how desperately they needed that hit, which spurred a two-run rally. They could simply marvel at Colon, who held the Cardinals to one run in eight innings as the Mets avoided a three-game sweep. The Mets had lost 11 of their previous 14 games, and their identity had started to take firmer shape: They could go as far as their starters would take them, hoping for some sort of help from the offense and the bullpen. That help had been sparing. Entering Wednesday, the Mets ranked 23rd in runs scored, and their bullpen had blown 12 saves. Colon has been pitching better of late, as if he realized he would have to win all on his own. In his last six starts, including Wednesday’s, he has a 1.66 earned run average, and the Mets have won five of the six games. Colon made his only mistake Wednesday against Matt Carpenter, who hit a leadoff home run. The game-time temperature was 91 degrees, but as the game wore on, Colon showed no signs of tiring and needed only 86 pitches to cruise through eight innings. The day before, he told Manager Terry Collins, “I’m going nine.” Again, Colon was defying logic — that someone at his size and his age (41) could pitch so well. Should he continue, the Mets, drifting out of the playoff race, might be forced to consider trading Colon, who signed a two-year, $20 million deal in December, to a contender. Sandy Alderson, the team’s general manager, made a similar move last year, sending Marlon Byrd and John Buck to Pittsburgh. In the meantime, though, Collins has repeatedly said the Mets’ goal is to win now. The topic was broached again before Wednesday’s game when Collins was asked about Wilmer Flores, a top prospect who was recently relegated to the bench but ended up starting against the Cardinals. “We got to start winning — we don’t have time to develop players right at the moment,” Collins said, adding, “Unless the time comes where, all of the sudden, hey, we’re going to go with our young players and get them better, right now we’ve got to try to win some games.” The offense and the bullpen nearly spoiled Colon’s outing. In the top of the ninth, because the Mets led by only 3-1, Collins replaced Colon with a pinch-hitter. Jenrry Mejia came in to close the game, but the Cardinals’ Allen Craig hit a two-out, run-scoring single to cut the gap to 3-2. With the potential tying run on first, Collins turned to Dana Eveland, a left-handed journeyman, who got the left-handed-hitting Matt Adams to ground out. Despite the late drama, Colon remained the center of attention. Through an interpreter, he said he had been sitting on the fastball, which drew laughs from reporters. He said he remembered the only other time he had scored a run, in 2002. He had forgotten his last hit, on June 10, 2005. Collins stressed the importance of the victory to stop the slide. As his players left the field, inspired by Colon’s effort, Collins had told them, “Let’s go win 10 in a row.” Now, Collins gushed over Colon’s two sacrifice bunts and the hit. “I’ll tell you, that’s a big swing for us,” he said, serious as could be.
|
Baseball;Mets;St. Louis Cardinals;Bartolo Colon;Eric Young Jr
|
ny0231998
|
[
"us"
] |
2010/08/04
|
Taxes Don’t Cross New England State Lines, but Controversies Do
|
BOSTON — Every day, countless cars with license plates from neighboring states pull into New Hampshire’s state-run liquor stores, looking to stock up on tax-free alcohol. “We like that,” said Jeffrey Meyers, legal counsel for Gov. John Lynch of New Hampshire, which has no sales tax. “It’s business. There are tax-free liquor sales every day of the year here, and it’s something we offer everyone.” In New England, state borders are not far apart, but the tax systems within them are, leading to competition for sales, businesses and other sources of revenue. The proximity, and conflicting tax codes, can result in uncomfortable arrangements for some residents. Last week, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts voluntarily paid state officials more than $400,000 in sales tax on a nearly $7 million yacht berthed in Rhode Island, which has no sales and use tax on pleasure boats. The announcement of his decision to pay Massachusetts came after the issue turned into a political lightning rod for Mr. Kerry, who was accused of dodging a tax bill on his 76-foot yacht. The Boston Herald broke the story. Mr. Kerry said that he had not taken final ownership of the yacht, but that he had always planned to pay Massachusetts taxes when he took possession of it. “Senator Kerry and his family always comply with tax law,” Jodi Seth, a spokeswoman for Mr. Kerry, said in a statement. The ship was built by a Rhode Island company, she said, and “is based in Newport at the Newport Shipyard for long-term maintenance, upkeep and charter purposes, not tax reasons.” Navjeet Bal, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, said in an interview that “a tax return with respect to that boat has been filed.” Michael J. Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said New England offered opportunities for tax maneuvers that were less common elsewhere. “Across the country I think you always have border wars, if you will, around taxes,” Mr. Widmer said, “and in New England the states are obviously very close to each other. I think the possibilities become greater than out West, where you’re not going to drive three hours to fill up your car with gas or buy a washing machine and pay a lower or not pay sales tax. That sense of proximity opens up possibilities.” Mr. Kerry is not the only high-profile person to draw attention in Rhode Island. Last week, the former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling announced that he was moving his video-game company, 38 Studios, to Rhode Island from Massachusetts after that state gave the company a $75 million loan guarantee on the condition that it bring 450 jobs to the state over three years. Massachusetts officials said they wanted to avoid a “bidding war” with the company. Rhode Island, which has the fourth-highest unemployment rate in the country, was willing to make a large investment in one company. Keith Stokes, the director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation, said the state used a big part of a job creation program passed by the legislature this year to bring the company to the state. The move by 38 Studios caused controversy in both states. Timothy Cahill, an independent candidate for governor in Massachusetts, said his state should have done more to keep the company, while Lincoln Chaffee, an independent candidate for governor in Rhode Island, questioned whether the state should take a gamble on an individual who does not have a long track record in business. Rhode Island, which has been economically hobbled by the recession, is changing its business and economic climate to make it friendlier to businesses, including nearly halving its personal income tax. But there is at least one area in which Massachusetts can compete. “In Massachusetts we don’t have a sales tax on airplanes,” said Ms. Bal, the revenue commissioner.
|
Taxation;New England States (US);Kerry John;Schilling Curt;New Hampshire;Massachusetts;Rhode Island;States (US)
|
ny0048030
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2014/11/07
|
New York Judge Dismisses Murder Indictment Against Man Accused of Vigilantism
|
The case drew attention because law enforcement authorities accused a man, who shot and killed a rape suspect he had been trying to take to the police, of engaging in vigilante justice. But on Thursday, a judge in Orange County, N.Y., threw out the murder indictment against the man, David Carlson, saying the prosecution prejudiced its case by not allowing the grand jury to hear Mr. Carlson’s statements claiming the rape suspect had lunged at him. The judge, Robert H. Freehill of State Supreme Court, also said the prosecution did not correct an investigator’s misstatement that Mr. Carlson never saw “any aggressive movements” by the suspect. “The failure to provide the grand jury with an accurate version of defendant’s statements undermined the integrity of the presentation,” the judge said. Mr. Carlson had been indicted on a first-degree murder charge. On Oct. 11, 2013, Mr. Carlson, a carpenter and father of three who was 42 at the time, killed Nelson Acosta-Sanchez near his home in Sparrowbush, about 90 miles north of Manhattan. Mr. Acosta-Sanchez, who had been doing odd jobs for Mr. Carlson and his neighbors, had been accused of the statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl, but had slipped out of the police’s grasp after Mr. Carlson had helped to capture him. On the day of the killing, he turned up near Mr. Carlson’s home. Mr. Carlson has said he trained a shotgun on Mr. Acosta-Sanchez and forced him to walk to a neighbor’s house so Mr. Carlson could phone the police. Mr. Carlson told the police that when Mr. Acosta-Sanchez lunged, he fired one shot at his captive’s arm. When that did not disable him, he fired again, hitting him in the head. The case was originally presented to the grand jury by Orange County prosecutors but was later turned over to the office of Janet DiFiore, the Westchester County district attorney. Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for Ms. DiFiore, said her team had 30 days “to decide whether we will appeal the judge’s decision or re-present the case to a grand jury.”
|
Murders;Sparrowbush;Vigilante;David Carlson;Orange County NY;Robert H. Freehill;Nelson Acosta-Sanchez
|
ny0203296
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2009/08/09
|
On Staten Island, a Tiny, Historic Gem of a Neighborhood
|
Many visits to Staten Island go like this: Ride the ferry from Lower Manhattan. Catch a free glimpse of the Statue of Liberty. Disembark. Take the next ferry back. But the tiny, historic neighborhood of St. George, where the ferry docks, is worth exploring, even if the bleak landscape just outside the terminal suggests otherwise. Get a map at the terminal’s passenger office, and after your amble in St. George, consider a four-minute ride on the S40 bus from the terminal to the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden , at right, 1000 Richmond Terrace, (718) 448-2500. It is 83 acres of Greek Revival buildings and paradisiacal gardens that will make you feel like you stepped into an E. M. Forster novel. 10:30 A.M. Ride the 1, N, R or W train to South Ferry, and get on board. The ferry is free and leaves Manhattan and Staten Island every half-hour (with variations after 1 a.m., on weekends and during the weekday rush). If it’s a nice day, ride on the upper deck for the fresh air and panoramic views of New York Harbor, Lower Manhattan, Governors Island and the Brooklyn and Verrazano-Narrows Bridges. 11 A.M. As you disembark from the ferry, Staten Island’s stately Borough Hall , will be in front of you, a French Renaissance-style structure built between 1904 and 1906 and designed by Carrère and Hastings, the architectural firm behind the New York Public Library. Go left on Bay Street and walk five minutes to the Everything Goes Book Cafe & Neighborhood Stage , 208 Bay Street, (718) 447-8256, a cozy, welcoming used-book store and community gathering spot run by Ganas, a local commune (it’s closed on Mondays). Tasty, affordable coffee and organic baked goods are for sale, accompanied by live music weekend nights. Ganas also runs a nearby vintage shop, Everything Goes Clothing , 140 Bay Street, (718) 273-7139, closed Sunday and Monday, where one recent offering was a thick Pucci-like shift that felt like a bath towel and cost $14. NOON Head to the Cargo Cafe , 120 Bay Street, (718) 876-0539, for cool ambience — exposed wood beams, peeling red walls, shabby chic chandeliers — and cheap lunch: $4.75 for a burger, fries and a soda; the weekend brunch starts at $7 and includes muffins and a cocktail or coffee (open Tuesday to Sunday at 11 a.m.; Monday at 5 p.m.). 1:30 P.M. Walk along Central Avenue to Hyatt Street, and visit the St. George Theater , 35 Hyatt Street, (718) 442-2900, an 80-year-old former vaudeville house that was recently restored to its over-the-top baroque glory. Cyndi Lauper and Rosie O’Donnell appeared there last week; Toni Orlando is scheduled for Sept. 10. Be sure to see the auditorium’s glorious, spotlighted dome ceiling. 2 P.M. Time to view some fancy local houses — from the outside; people live there. Map in hand, head up Hyatt Street, take a right on St. Mark’s Place, a quick left on Fort Place and then a right (stay with me) on Daniel Low Terrace to gaze at some very pretty Tudor-style mansions and well-kept flower gardens. Just off Daniel Low Terrace is Fort Hill Circle; check out No. 22, a castlelike house built in 1930. 2:30 P.M. Walk downhill to the Staten Island Museum , 75 Stuyvesant Place, (718) 727-1135, a tiny repository of local history, assorted animals preserved in jars, cool glow-in-the-dark rocks and a portrait of St. George’s namesake, George Law, who, as it turns out, wasn’t a saint at all. Admission: $2. 3 P.M. If you’re peckish again, or thirsty, try Beso , 11 Schuyler Street, (718) 816-8162, a tucked-away tapas bar that also serves Cuban pressed sandwiches for $7.95; glasses of wine start at $7. Or head to Enoteca Maria , 27 Hyatt Street, (718) 447-2777, a modern, authentic Italian restaurant, open Wednesday to Sunday, that has food critics and local folks swooning with its rotating cast of female chefs from assorted regions of Italy. 4 P.M. Take the ferry back to Manhattan. If you skipped the wine, the tapas and the Italian fare, the ferry snack bar sells pretzels and $3.50 domestic beer.
|
Staten Island (NYC);Historic Buildings and Sites
|
ny0290666
|
[
"world",
"africa"
] |
2016/01/21
|
Tunisia: Protesters Demand Jobs
|
For a second day, the police clashed with protesters demanding jobs in Kasserine on Wednesday, and one police officer was killed in Feriana as demonstrations broke out in other cities and towns across Tunisia, residents and officials said. The government said Wednesday that it would seek to hire more than 6,000 young unemployed people from Kasserine and start construction projects in the region.
|
Tunisia;Civil Unrest;Jobs;Kasserine;Feriana
|
ny0069979
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2015/03/03
|
Under Law, Christie Can Use Exxon Settlement to Help Balance Budget
|
A debate over New Jersey’s proposed $250 million settlement of what had been an $8.9 billion pollution lawsuit against Exxon Mobil Corporation has highlighted an obscure provision of a state law that would appear to allow Gov. Chris Christie to apply most if not all of the settlement toward balancing the state budget. The current state appropriations law, as proposed by Mr. Christie last year, says that any funds beyond the first $50 million collected in damages or other environmental recoveries shall go to the state’s general fund. When state lawmakers tried to amend the proposal to steer more money back toward environmental restoration, Mr. Christie vetoed the effort. The proposed settlement, which was first reported by The New York Times on Friday, came after a legal battle that has lasted more than a decade and that had been aggressively litigated by the administrations of four New Jersey governors. The state’s Department of Environmental Protection sued Exxon in 2004 to recover damages for the contamination and loss of use of more than 1,500 acres of wetlands, marshes, meadows and waters in northern New Jersey. The suits focused on oil refining and other petrochemical operations in Bayonne and Linden (known as Bayway) that dated back decades. “Spilled materials from pipeline ruptures, tank failures or overflows, and explosions have resulted in widespread groundwater, soil and sediment contamination,” a report by state-retained experts said. Last year, with Exxon’s liability no longer in dispute, the state attorney general’s office went to trial seeking the damages, and a judge was expected to rule soon. The state had fixed the cost of primary restoration of the sites at $2.6 billion, and had demanded an additional $6.3 billion for compensatory or “loss of use” damages. Exxon argued that the state’s arguments on damages “ignore the evidence, science and the law,” and contended that it should not pay damages. State Senator Bob Smith, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Environment and Energy Committee, said “taking $250 million is immoral” when there are billions of dollars in restoration and other costs. The debate over the settlement has put a focus on a state law that put a cap on the amount of damages and other recoveries in environmental lawsuits that the state could put toward hazardous site cleanups and other restoration costs. Mr. Smith said in a phone interview on Monday that he introduced a resolution last year that would have preserved more money for environmental concerns under the current state appropriations law. Under his proposal, the state’s general fund would get only half of all the money in excess of that first $50 million; the other half would be earmarked for environmental cleanup and related costs. Mr. Christie vetoed that provision, using his line-item veto power, saying at the time that the language was removed “to preserve the original intent” of his budget recommendation. Mr. Smith said that his intent was to balance the state’s needs against those of the contaminated areas. “The shame is, that still wasn’t good enough for him,” the senator said of Mr. Christie, seen as a potential contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. Several New Jersey state politicians have sharply criticized the governor since it became known that his administration had negotiated the $250 million settlement with Exxon. “My concern is that it’s selling out the state on 3 cents on the dollar when we ought to be getting billions,” said State Senator Raymond J. Lesniak, a Democrat, who grew up in the Bayway section of Elizabeth, N.J., in sight of the Exxon refinery in Linden. Mr. Lesniak, calling the deal “grossly inadequate,” said that he would challenge the proposed settlement, which is to be submitted for public comment, and later for court approval. Kevin Roberts, a spokesman for Mr. Christie, said he had no comment on the criticism of the settlement agreement. An Exxon spokesman also declined to comment on Monday.
|
New Jersey;ExxonMobil;Environment;Chris Christie;Water pollution;Budget;Lawsuits;Department of Environmental Protection NJ;Bayonne NJ;Linden
|
ny0273538
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2016/05/12
|
$1.1 Million Brooklyn Dock, Built for Public Use, Sits in Storage
|
It is not exactly accurate to say no one uses the $1.1 million public dock that was installed off the shoreline of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, two and a half years ago. It was praised by city officials for the access it would give local residents to the shore and for the resiliency of its construction, but it closed after one season when the gangway snapped off and was never repaired. Then the pilings holding it to the bay floor started bending. Today, it sits more than seven miles away in Sheepshead Bay, where it was towed for storage, lashed to a bulkhead and kept behind a gate. There, it is in almost constant use — a flock of swans and sea gulls have colonized it, coating it with feathers, feces and bits of fish. “It’s always a pit in my stomach when I bike past it, to see the Eco Dock missing,” said Roland Lewis, the president and chief executive of the Waterfront Alliance, an advocacy group for water access that facilitated the dock’s installation in October 2013 at the American Veterans Memorial Pier . For one summer, it was a home for historic ships and hosted school groups taking kayaking lessons. “The real shame of the situation is how loved and used the dock was for the time it was up,” he added. Intended as a way to connect people who live in Bay Ridge to their underused bay, the 40-by-60-foot dock was the culmination of years of planning and over $800,000 in financing provided by Councilman Vincent J. Gentile, a Democrat who represents the neighborhood. (The remaining amount was provided by the offices of Michael R. Bloomberg, then the mayor, and Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn borough president at the time). And for a season, as school children and residents took to the water off the dock, Mr. Gentile, said, “We realized that dream.” But attached to the end of the 69th Street pier, which juts out about 600 feet into Upper New York Bay, the dock was buffeted by waves from passing commuter ferries and the currents sweeping underneath the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. That is probably why the metal gangway attaching it to the pier split from the dock in November 2014, according to a timeline provided by the Waterfront Alliance. But other nearby docks that appear to be of similar size, including one operated by the New York Fire Department just across the bay on Staten Island, seem to be holding up, Mr. Lewis said. He theorizes that the Bay Ridge dock was poorly designed by Ocean and Coastal Consultants, a nautical engineering company in Connecticut, which was contracted by the city to build it. It is now part of an engineering firm, COWI North America, which is based in British Columbia, Canada. Philip Chan, a spokesman for COWI, declined to discuss the dock’s condition, including the quality of the work. New York City’s parks department, the agency responsible for the dock, could not provide a date for when it would be repaired. “The timeline for replacing the dock is contingent upon a design,” Maeri Ferguson, a spokeswoman for the agency, said in an email. “The gangway will be included in the re-engineering of the support pilings.” The gangway was never fixed because of the long review process city projects must undergo, the department said. “What was all that wasted money for?” said James Aponte, 26, who lives in East New York, Brooklyn, and goes to Bay Ridge regularly to fish for bass and flounder from the 69th Street pier. The dock could have kept children “out of trouble,” just as fishing did for him, he said, by introducing them to the serenity of the water. Though it is a waterfront community, Bay Ridge has few of the aquatic amenities of other coastal Brooklyn neighborhoods, like Brooklyn Heights, where a new marina recently opened in Brooklyn Bridge Park. But the gangway became the least of the dock’s problems when it was dealt another blow the past winter, this one fatal: Around January, the pilings that anchored it to the bed of the bay, called spuds, bent. The pilings were no longer deemed stable, and the dock was towed by the parks department to its current swan-filled location in Sheepshead Bay, where it lingers, just across the street from the giant lobster-shaped sign of Randazzo’s Clam Bar. What bent the pilings, which are made of solid steel and 26 inches in diameter, is a mystery, even after the company that designed the dock sent a team of divers to inspect it, according to a report filed with the parks department by Stephen A. Famularo, the chief project manager for the company. Something may have smashed into it, the findings indicated. “While there were no indications of impact on the dock or the piles,” Mr. Famularo wrote, “the force required to displace piles of this size is significant.” The report said it was prepared by Ocean and Coastal Consulants on behalf of COWI. Mr. Lewis, of the Waterfront Alliance, says he does not believe the dock was ever hit. “It was not designed well enough for that piece of water and the beating a structure takes in that location,” he said. His organization has drafted a letter but has not yet sent it to COWI demanding that the company make the needed repairs. “They said it would withstand the storm of the century and it didn’t,” Mr. Gentile said. On the 69th Street pier on a recent warm afternoon, Jonathan Nolan, 51, a construction project manager, sat fishing a few feet from where a green-and-white parks department sign read “Eco Dock,” attached to a metal gate beyond which lay nothing but water. “It would have been nice,” Mr. Nolan said, “to have something for the people in Bay Ridge.”
|
Bay Ridge Brooklyn;Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn;NYC Parks and Recreation;Boats;Coast
|
ny0237836
|
[
"science"
] |
2010/06/08
|
A Mission to Sequence the Genomes of 100,000 People
|
Traditionally, biology is about taking apart things like cells to better understand them. For the geneticist George M. Church, the main objective is to put the pieces back together. Strolling through his laboratory, one of the larger ones at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Church, 56, points out benches where students and colleagues work on everything from basic genetics , proteomics and biocomputing to synthetic biology and the impact of the millions of microbes that inhabit our guts. “I’m a polyglot who believes in integration,” he said. “That’s my specialty.” Dr. Church — a tall man with a long graying beard and rumpled clothes — oversees 45 students in his lab and has co-founded or advises some 22 businesses, many of them startups that focus on things like synthetic biology, genetic sequencing and companies that provide genetic testing to consumers. His most visible work is the Personal Genome Project , which has 16,000 volunteers, 12 of whom have had their genomes sequenced and made publicly available. These include science and technology celebrities like the Internet pioneer Esther Dyson and the Harvard psychologist and best-selling author Steven Pinker. Eventually Dr. Church wants to sequence the entire genomes of 100,000 people — nearly every one of the six billion As, Cs, Gs and Ts that occur in a human. “The goal of getting your genome done is not to tell you what you will die from,” he said, “but it’s how to learn how to take action to prevent disease.” So far, the science of predicting a person’s health future using genetic markers has not produced much useful information for common diseases, although Dr. Church believes that this will change. “We need full genome sequences to understand what is really going on genetically,” he said. “Until recently, this wasn’t feasible.” The project is becoming possible as the speed and efficiency of sequencing increase dramatically, and the once-prohibitive costs drop from millions of dollars for a genome two years ago to under $10,000 today. Ultra-low sequencing costs will also allow researchers to study interactions between genes and environmental components — microbes, allergens, viruses, toxins, autoimmunity. Typically, Dr. Church has been at the center of the development of the technologies that are making this possible. He advises or has licensed technology to most of the companies active in this field. This makes his potential conflicts of interests almost byzantine, since many are rivals, particularly in the hotly competitive field of genetic sequencing. But he is undisturbed and open about his various commercial and scientific involvements — and seems to be like Teflon in avoiding the sort of criticism that other scientists often face for such entanglements. Indeed, he starts his frequent lectures with a disclosure slide packed with the logos of companies he is involved with — among them LS9 ( biofuels ), Knome (personal genomes), Alacris Pharmaceuticals ( cancer ) and Joule Unlimited (photosynthesis). “I want to move the science into application,” Dr. Church explains, “and I’ll support anything that gets it there. I won’t support one over the other. If they tell me something secret, I can’t tell anyone until it comes into the public domain.” Dr. Edward R. B. McCabe, a geneticist and physician at the University of California, Los Angeles, said: “George has been an important figure in molecular genetics and its evolution, including genomics and bioinformatics. If we are to understand the complexity of biological systems, then integration on the scale George recommends will be essential.” A leader in the Human Genome Project during the 1980s and ’90s, Dr. Church first came to prominence while still a graduate student, for developing some of the earliest genetic sequencers. These machines and processes combined a love of computers, engineering and science that began in high school. “I always loved computers — it’s something inside you,” he said in an interview. But as a boy growing up in Clearwater, Fla., Dr. Church did not have access to computers. “So I made one myself,” he said. Later, when his mother married a physician, he became interested in biology. As an undergraduate at Duke University, he majored in zoology and chemistry and worked in a lab that used sophisticated X-rays to identify the shapes of crystallized proteins. “I got to use math, physics, chemistry and computers,” he said. “This was also one of the few areas of biology at the time that used robots.” As scientists go, Dr. Church is an active public figure who gets more than his share of news media attention, which he clearly enjoys and takes in stride. In fact, little seems to disrupt his equilibrium. “I’m pathologically calm,” he said — which may be one reason he has ruffled so few feathers in the hypercompetitive world of high-stakes science. His lab includes cold rooms filled with tissue samples, machine shops with clamps and drills, and benches overflowing with electronics equipment. He points out where teams are studying antibiotic drug resistance, microbial fuels, metabolic engineering and epigenetics (the turning on and off of genes, usually by environmental influences). He presides over his bio-empire with a tiny Sony laptop that he carries like someone else might cradle a baby, or a poodle. Shuffling from bench to meeting to lecture, he mostly listens to students and colleagues, asking a few pointed questions while multitasking on his computer. Sometimes, Dr. Church seems to veer into science fiction. At a dinner a few months ago, he sat with colleagues discussing a project that involves “mirror biology” — the creation of DNA, cells and organisms that are exact opposites of the natural versions. He explained that this was like building a replica of an old-fashioned clock by looking only at its reflection. “The copy will predictably tell time, but the numerals will be flipped and the hands will rotate counterclockwise,” he said. “While mirror life may look identical to current life,” he said, “it is radically different in terms of resistance to viruses, pathogens and enzyme digestion, among other things, because molecular interactions of life are very sensitive to the mirror arrangement of the atoms.” Dr. Church expects to have a proof of concept — a functioning mirror cell that serves some useful purpose — in two years. “The mirror project is challenging because it requires building an entire cell from parts,” he said. He added that this was more complicated than creating, say, the entire genome of a microbial organism and inserting it into a living cell — a feat recently announced by the geneticist J. Craig Venter. When a student stopped by his small office to chat about a just-published study in Science about the genetic sequencing of a Neanderthal, he said playfully, “Maybe one day we’ll make Neanderthals.” Maybe so. He prizes imagination in his students and associates. “I like to keep the median age in my lab low because they will indulge me in my dreams,” Dr. Church said. “They don’t yet think things are impossible.”
|
Church George M;Genetics and Heredity;DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid);Science and Technology;Medicine and Health
|
ny0241558
|
[
"business",
"global"
] |
2011/03/02
|
German Push to Impose Discipline on E.U. Hits Snag Over Taxes
|
BRUSSELS — A push to align European corporate tax systems has emerged as the biggest obstacle to a German-inspired plan to impose more fiscal discipline on the 17 countries in the euro zone. At least five smaller nations voiced reservations about changes to corporate taxation outlined in a new European Union blueprint discussed Monday by governments, according to officials and diplomats speaking anonymously because the talks were confidential. By contrast, France and Germany are likely to argue that the proposals do not go far enough, the officials and diplomats added. The proposal, which softens several ideas put forward by Germany, won a better reception than that which greeted the German chancellor, Angela Merkel , and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy , last month, when they were accused of presenting a fait accompli to other countries. The two leaders want euro zone leaders to agree on March 11 to the so-called pact for competitiveness, before inviting the 10 remaining E.U. members to join. In Berlin the pact is seen as a precondition for bolstering the €440 billion, or $608 billion, backstop fund for euro zone countries and making it permanent. Moves to flesh out the pact came as the Union’s executive, the European Commission , raised its economic growth forecast for 2011 while warning of the possible impact of higher oil prices because of instability in the Middle East. Gross domestic product in the euro area is expected to increase 1.6 percent in 2011, above an earlier forecast of 1.5 percent growth, while inflation will average 2.2 percent this year, an increase from November’s estimate of 1.8 percent. Predictions are based on the assumption that oil is selling at around $102 a barrel, though Brent crude oil futures traded above $113 a barrel Tuesday. Speaking in Brussels, Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, said work on the pact would “translate the political intentions of the member states into concrete political action.” The proposal, discussed Monday and seen by the International Herald Tribune, was drafted by officials of the president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, and the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso. They have made plans more acceptable to critics of the French-German plan by giving countries much greater latitude to set a series of objectives. But corporate tax remains contentious. Germany and France have long favored harmonization, complaining that they are undercut by lower rates in countries like Ireland or Slovakia. The paper highlights a European Commission plan, due March 16, “for a common consolidated corporate tax base in the coming weeks.” If needed, it adds, this might be agreed to by a smaller group of countries. For about a decade Ireland has resisted this, arguing that it could lead toward harmonizing rates. But, seeking to negotiate a softening in the terms of its €85 billion bailout, the new Irish government may come under pressure to agree a common base. At the meeting Monday, the Irish official criticized the “obsessive focus” on corporate tax, while representatives from Netherlands, Malta, Slovakia and Cyprus also voiced reservations, officials speaking privately said. Many member states jealously guard their right to set taxes. Meanwhile, although the new paper says that “member states of the euro area will agree at the highest level on a set of concrete deliverables to be achieved within 12 months,” it adds: “The selection of the specific policy measures to be implemented will remain the responsibility of each country.” Small countries generally see the commission as an ally and several worry that it would be bypassed under the new plan, but the paper seeks to reassure them by making several references to the commission’s role. Last month Germany suggested that wage indexation be ended, an idea flatly rejected by Belgium. The paper says wages should be assessed in the light of “productivity developments.” There should be more “decentralization in the bargaining process” and “wage restraint in the public sector.” Germany’s idea of aligning retirement ages is refined, too. The paper suggests an assessment of “whether debt levels are sustainable based on current policies, notably pensions schemes and benefit systems, and taking into account demographic factors.” Proposals to require nations to keep their public finances in check are made more palatable, too. “They should retain the choice of the specific national legal vehicle to be used,” it says, “but should make sure that it has a sufficiently strong binding nature (e.g. constitution or framework law). The exact formulation of the rule should also be decided by each country.” Meanwhile, two senior members of the European Parliament, Elmar Brok and Roberto Gualtieri, threatened to hold up plans to change the E.U’s governing treaty, a step that has been deemed necessary to create a permanent bailout fund for the euro. The two deputies want assurances that the new plans for the euro will not bypass the existing E.U. structures, concentrating instead on cooperation directly between national capitals. The Parliament has the ability to delay a deal if it does not deliver an opinion on the proposed changes. “This is an important moment,” Mr. Brok said Tuesday. “We have to defend the classical European integration process against those people who do not have a historical understanding of it.”
|
European Union;European Commission;Germany;Merkel Angela;Sarkozy Nicolas;Taxation
|
ny0211532
|
[
"business",
"media"
] |
2017/01/17
|
Jerry Seinfeld Takes ‘Comedians in Cars’ to Netflix
|
Jerry Seinfeld is moving to Netflix. New and old episodes of Mr. Seinfeld’s show “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” will move to Netflix later this year. The move is a blow to Crackle, Sony’s streaming service, which has run the show since its debut in 2012. In addition to “Comedians in Cars,” Mr. Seinfeld has also signed a production deal with Netflix, which will include performing two stand-up specials, and developing scripted and nonscripted content. In recent months, Netflix has been gobbling up comic talent, including Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle and Amy Schumer, all of whom are performing stand-up specials for the service. Netflix has been spending lavishly to bring them on: Mr. Rock’s two forthcoming stand-up shows cost Netflix a reported $40 million. Terms for Mr. Seinfeld’s deal were not disclosed. “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” started on Crackle four and half years ago, and is the highest-profile offering on the service. Last year, it was nominated for an Emmy for best variety series. But Mr. Seinfeld grew distant from Crackle after Sony’s television chairman, Steve Mosko, left the company last year, and “Comedians in Cars” has been on the market since at least October. Hulu was also involved in negotiations for the show. In a statement, Mr. Seinfeld said, “When I first started thinking about ‘Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,’ the entire Netflix business model consisted of mailing out DVDs in envelopes. I love that we are now joining together, both at very different points.”
|
Web television;Comedy;Netflix;Crackle.com;Sony;Jerry Seinfeld;Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee
|
ny0161108
|
[
"business"
] |
2006/04/29
|
Trading Frenzy Adding to Rise in Price of Oil
|
A global economic boom, sharply higher demand, extraordinarily tight supplies and domestic instability in many of the world's top oil-producing countries -- in that environment higher oil prices were inevitable. But crude oil is not merely a physical commodity that fuels the world economy; powers planes, trains and automobiles; heats cities; and provides fuel for electricity. It has also become a valuable financial asset, bought and sold in electronic exchanges by traders around the world. And they, too, have helped push prices higher. In the latest round of furious buying, hedge funds and other investors have helped propel crude oil prices from around $50 a barrel at the end of 2005 to a record of $75.17 on the New York Mercantile Exchange last week. Back in January 2002, oil was at $18 a barrel. With gasoline in the United States now costing more than $3 a gallon, high energy prices may be a political liability for the Bush administration. But for outside investors -- hedge funds, investment banks, mutual funds and pension funds and the like -- the resurgence in the oil market has been a golden opportunity. "Gold prices don't go up just because jewelers need more gold, they go up because gold is an investment," said Roger Diwan, a partner with PFC Energy, a Washington-based consultant. "The same has happened to oil." Changes in the way oil is traded have contributed their part as well. On Nymex, oil contracts held mostly by hedge funds -- essentially private investment vehicles for the wealthy and institutions, run by traders who share the risks and rewards with their partners -- rose above one billion barrels this month, twice the amount held five years ago. Beyond that, trading has also increased outside official exchanges, including swaps or over-the-counter trades conducted directly between, say, a bank and an airline. And that comes on top of the normal trading long conducted by oil companies, commercial oil brokers or funds held by investment banks. "Five years ago, our futures exchange was a small group of physical oil players," said Jeffrey Sprecher, the chief executive of Intercontinental Exchange, the Atlanta-based electronic exchange where about half of all oil futures are traded. "Now there are all sorts of new investors in trading commodity futures, much of which is backed by pension fund money." Such trading is a 24-hour business. And more sophisticated electronic technology allows more money to pour into oil, quicker than ever before, from anywhere in the world. In the Canary Wharf business district of London, for example, the trading room of Barclays Capital is filled with mostly young men in identical button-down blue shirts, staring intently at banks of computer screens where the prices of petroleum products -- crude oil, gasoline, fuel oil, napthene and more -- flicker by. Occasionally a trader breaks from his trance to bark instructions to a floor broker a couple of miles away, delivering the message through a black speaker box. Above them is a television screen, where President Bush this week was telling America to "get off oil." Experienced oil traders are in heavy demand, and average salary and bonus packages are close to $1 million a year, with top traders earning as much as $10 million. The rush of new investors into commodities has meant a rash of new clients for banks like Barclays. Lehman Brothers and Credit Suisse have recently beefed up their oil trading teams to compete with market leaders like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. "Clearly the big attraction of commodity markets like oil is that they've been going up," said Marc Stern, the chief investment officer at Bessemer Trust, a New York wealth manager with $45 billion in assets. "Rising prices create interest." This year alone, oil prices have gained 18 percent; they were up 45 percent in 2005 and 28 percent in 2004, a performance far superior to the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, whose gains in these years have been in the single digits. And to some extent, the rising price of oil feeds on itself, by encouraging many investors to bet that it is likely to continue doing so. "The hedge funds have come roaring into the commodities market, and they are willing to take risks," said Brad Hintz, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, an investment firm in New York. Energy funds make up 5 percent of the global hedge fund business, with about $60 billion in assets, according to Peter C. Fusaro, principal at the Energy Hedge Fund Center, an online research community. The gains on the oil market have attracted a fresh class of investors: pension funds and mutual funds seeking to diversify their holdings. Their investments have been mostly channeled through a handful of commodity indexes, which have ballooned to $85 billion in a few years, according to Goldman Sachs. Goldman's own index holds more than $55 billion, triple what it was in 2002. Pension funds have been particularly active in the last year, said Frédéric Lasserre, the head of commodity research at Société Générale in Paris. These investors, seeking to diversify their portfolio, have added to the buying pressure on limited commodity markets. While all this new money has contributed to higher prices, by some estimates perhaps as much as 10 percent to 20 percent, the frantic trading ensures that even the biggest players -- including the major oil companies -- cannot significantly distort the market or tilt it artificially in their favor. It also makes oil markets more liquid, meaning a buyer can always find a seller. "The oil market has been driven by speculators, by hedge funds, by pension funds and by commodity indexes, but the fact of the matter is that it's mostly been driven by the fundamentals," said Craig Pennington, the director of the global energy group at Schroders in London. "Prices are supported by the fact that there is no spare capacity." The inability to increase output fast enough to keep up with global demand accounts for most of the oil price rise over the last three years, analysts say. And until more investments are completed in oil production and refining, markets will remain on edge, with the slightest bit of bad news likely to push prices up further. "The reality is that the world has no supply cushion left," said Edward L. Morse, an executive adviser at the Hess Energy Trading Company, a New York oil trading firm. Political strife and circumstance played major parts as well. A crippling strike in Venezuela's oil industry in 2002, the invasion of Iraq, civil unrest in Nigeria, and last summer's hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, among other things, have all contributed to pinching supplies. "If we didn't have politics," said William Wallace, a trader on the Nymex for Man Financial, "we'd be like corn." According to Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy consulting firm owned by IHS, Iraq is 900,000 barrels a day below its prewar output; Nigeria has shut 530,000 barrels a day; Venezuela is still 400,000 barrels below its prestrike production; and the Gulf of Mexico remains down by 330,000 barrels a day. In all, this amounts to more than two million barrels of disrupted oil, Cambridge Energy estimates. The latest reason for gains on energy markets is the growing fear that the diplomatic standoff between the Western powers and Iran over nuclear technology will get out of hand. "All the risk," said Eric Bolling, an independent trader on Nymex, "has been on the upside." One characteristic of today's futures market is the sharp increase in volatility, which industry insiders largely attribute to hedge funds and other speculators looking for a quick profit. "It is the case," complained BP's chief executive, Lord Browne, "that the price of oil has gone up while nothing has changed physically." In the end, supply and demand call the tune. "The idea that speculators can systematically push the price up or down is wrong," said Robert J. Weiner, a professor of international business at George Washington University and a fellow at Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan think tank. "But they can make it more volatile. They can't raise water levels but they can create waves." Not all bets have turned out to be profitable. Veteran commodity market traders have been stymied by the high prices of oil, which have exceeded their expectations, and many now predict a steep decline in prices is ahead. But they have been wrong so far. "We found the last 18 months difficult," said Russell Newton, director of Global Advisors, a New York and London hedge fund with $400 million in assets under management that had a down year in 2005. In one often cited example, the Citadel Investment Group, a Chicago-based hedge fund, lost tens of millions of dollars after betting oil prices would fall just before Hurricane Katrina struck. "Everybody is jumping into commodities, and there is a log of cash chasing oil," said Philip K. Verleger Jr., a consultant and a former senior adviser on energy policy at the Treasury Department. "The question is when does the thing stop. Eventually they will get burned."
|
NEW YORK MERCANTILE EXCHANGE;BUSH GEORGE W;OIL (PETROLEUM) AND GASOLINE;PRICES (FARES FEES AND RATES);FUTURES AND OPTIONS TRADING;HEDGE FUNDS;COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET
|
ny0057013
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2014/09/21
|
Explosion Rocks Eastern Ukraine Hours After an Amended Cease-Fire Is Signed
|
DONETSK, Ukraine — A giant explosion shattered the stillness of an early fall morning here just hours after Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels signed the latest version of their cease-fire accord, illustrating the fragility of a truce agreed upon two weeks ago. Although shelling and other violence continues daily, both sides maintain that the agreement is still in force. The amendment signed overnight Friday into Saturday was meant to strengthen the truce by requiring both sides to move their artillery nine miles back from the front lines, forming a buffer zone clear of heavy weapons. Although the artillery fire on Saturday violated the original cease-fire, it was not a direct breach of the new provision because of a 24-hour grace period for its implementation. The artillery struck a dynamite factory that had served this region’s mining industry, with predictably dramatic results. Two powerful explosions lifted a towering cloud of white smoke over the site that was visible from miles away. “What sort of cease-fire is this if every day they shoot at us?” asked a rebel soldier at a checkpoint near the factory, who gave only his first name, Sergei. Image Captives from the Donetsk People's Republic following an exchange with captured Ukrainian soldiers on the outskirts of Yasinovataya. Credit Mauricio Lima for The New York Times Ukraine and Western governments have accused Russia of sending soldiers and weapons to back the insurgency in eastern Ukraine; Russia denies that but says Russians have volunteered as private citizens to fight. If the cease-fire holds, European nations have said they will repeal sanctions imposed on the banking and oil industries in Russia. If it breaks down, the separatists say they intend to expand their territory. The rebels have been using the relative lull in the violence to regroup, melding together disparate groups of fighters. Under the new agreement, neither side is to try to advance beyond positions held as of Friday. In fighting on Friday and Saturday, separatists tried to advance into the villages of Novoselovka and Putboyoviky after shelling them, but they were repulsed, a Ukrainian military spokesman said. In combat in various places in the east over the same period, one Ukrainian soldier died and seven were wounded. From the rebel-controlled areas, truce violations were also evident. The Donetsk mayor’s office reported that artillery shells or rockets had struck four residential buildings in the city from Friday into Saturday, though nobody was harmed. It was unclear which side had targeted the factory, or whether it had been hit inadvertently. Through the afternoon, sporadic explosions rang out nearby. Some residents said that in addition to the explosions at the factory’s TNT production line, a fire had spread to a warehouse used as an ammunition depot. From a vantage point about two miles away, on a dirt road at the edge of a cornfield overlooking the burning dynamite factory, regular blasts from artillery could also be heard. Image Prisoners from the rebel Donetsk People’s Republic waited to be traded for Ukrainian soldiers. Credit Mauricio Lima for The New York Times Smoke rose from the area of the Donetsk airport, which is held by the Ukrainian Army and has been the site of near-daily artillery exchanges in spite of the cease-fire. Tank or artillery shells were being fired toward the airport from rebel-held areas of the city. Given all the artillery fire, the top NATO general, Philip M. Breedlove, told journalists on Saturday, “Basically, we have a cease-fire in name only,” The Associated Press reported. General Breedlove, who spoke after an alliance conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, said it was unclear how many Russian troops remained in Ukraine; the cease-fire required that they leave. Also emblematic of the fragility of the cease-fire, a provision requiring an exchange of all prisoners has broken down, with each side trading detainees on a piecemeal basis. Behind separatist lines, Ukrainian prisoners of war, haggard and filthy, are openly being put to work clearing debris from war-damaged buildings. In Snizhne, one group cleared debris from a destroyed building beside a main road. Pvt. Vladislav Marinenko, who turned 20 on Thursday, said he had been captured by Russian paratroopers in the village of Dzerkalne in late August and later handed over to local pro-Russian militiamen. Image Four captured Ukrainian soldiers rested as they cleaned up a building damaged by shelling in Snizhne, eastern Ukraine. Credit Mauricio Lima for The New York Times His unit’s tanks were destroyed and surrounded, he said. A Russian officer crossed the lines carrying a white flag and offered the Ukrainians the option of surrendering. Some Ukrainian soldiers tried to escape on foot through the cornfields, while others surrendered, Mr. Marinenko said. Asked why he had not yet been traded, he said: “How should I know? I’m just a little guy in all of this,” as he chucked another brick off the pile of debris. During the lull of the cease-fire, the separatists have regrouped as the Army of Novorossiya, or New Russia, uniting the forces of the previously distinct rebel states of Luhansk and Donetsk and a multitude of pro-Russian militias such as the Vostok Battalion , the Russian Orthodox Army and the Army of the Southeast. The new name bears within it a threat: The land referred to as New Russia extends well beyond the boundaries of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to all territory conquered by Catherine the Great in the 18th century: now eight eastern and southern provinces in Ukraine. “If they violate the cease-fire, we will keep going” beyond the Donetsk region, a rebel commander who goes by the nickname Dushman said in an interview. On Saturday, a third convoy of white-painted Russian military trucks arrived in Donetsk carrying what the Russian government said was humanitarian aid such as sacks of flour, electrical generators and warm winter clothing. The Russians said the aid would alleviate difficulties the population faces, while Ukraine said shipments that crossed border posts controlled by separatists violated its sovereignty. The trucks drove along the roads in eastern Ukraine with Russian flags attached to their rearview mirrors.
|
Ukraine;Russia;Explosions;Bombs;Donetsk Ukraine
|
ny0249605
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2011/02/04
|
Wal-Mart Skips Hearing on Its New York City Plans
|
It was a moment long planned and carefully prepared for — a moment that had twice been delayed by snow. But when the moment finally arrived, the main protagonist was missing. The City Council held a hearing on Thursday afternoon to examine the economic impact Wal-Mart would have should it succeed in opening its first stores in New York City. But Wal-Mart’s official representatives were no-shows, which was something company officials had made clear would happen weeks ago when the hearing was first scheduled. So critics, from council members to representatives of small businesses, had no one to direct their anger at and spent hours making the same familiar arguments — the death of family-owned businesses, poor labor practices by Wal-Mart — to a mostly sympathetic audience. The reason no one from Wal-Mart accepted an invitation, a spokesman for the retail giant said, was that it felt it was being singled out unfairly in a city full of big-box stores, including Home Depot, Sears and Target. “Our decision not to attend today’s hearing has nothing to do with our willingness to answer questions or our belief that our stores would be good for New York City,” the spokesman, Steven Restivo, said, “and everything to do with the hypothetical nature of the proceedings and the fact that it ignores the hundreds of similarly sized stores that exist in the city today.” The Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, wasted no time pointing out Wal-Mart’s absence. “I want to say how deeply disappointed I am that one very important part of the equation, Wal-Mart, decided not to join us here today,” she said as the hearing began. She said the company’s “refusal to attend, sadly, only leads me to be further skeptical about them as a company.” Several council members said they shared her misgivings. “My community needs jobs, but even if you’re hungry, someone shouldn’t feed you garbage,” Councilman Jumaane D. Williams of Brooklyn said. The verbal volleys against Wal-Mart started early. At a rally on the steps of City Hall before the hearing, a crowd of more than 300 people waved anti-Wal-Mart signs as the public advocate, Bill de Blasio, called the company destructive and a “Trojan horse.” And Councilman Charles Barron, who represents the East New York section of Brooklyn, one of the places where Wal-Mart is considering opening a store, called the store “a plantation.” Two hours into the hearing, Andy Sullivan, the founder of a group called 911 Hard Hats and a union construction worker who had come to testify in favor of Wal-Mart, stood up and complained that no one on his side had yet had a chance to testify. When it was his turn, Mr. Sullivan noted that Wal-Mart had recently made final a deal with a politically powerful construction union, the Building and Construction Trades Council, promising to build and renovate its stores in the five boroughs with union workers for five years. Wal-Mart used the same strategy to gain support for stores in Chicago several years ago. “The pain is here, it is now,” Mr. Sullivan during his testimony, citing what he said was a 30 percent unemployment rate among unionized construction workers. “It’s not being caused by Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart’s not here!” Charles Fisher, the chairman of the Hip-Hop Summit Youth Council in Harlem, also spoke in favor of Wal-Mart. Last year, Wal-Mart flew Mr. Fisher down to its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., at the company’s expense, for a three-day “stakeholder summit” of community leaders from around the country. Instead of speaking directly to the Council, Wal-Mart, which has not announced a specific store opening in New York, has begun an all-out publicity drive, with direct mailings, radio advertisements and a Facebook page. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has said that New York should be open to any legal business that wants to come here, was asked by a reporter on Thursday about the hearing and if it was in the city’s best interest to let Wal-Mart set up shop. “You should let the marketplace decide,” he said. “Anybody who has tried to manage the marketplace, it has not turned out very well. I think the Soviet Union is as good an example as you’d ever need of that.”
|
Shopping and Retail;Wal-Mart Stores Inc;City Council (New York City);New York City
|
ny0259284
|
[
"business"
] |
2011/01/12
|
At Auto Show, Discarded Brands Seek Rebirth
|
DETROIT — In early 2010, General Motors kicked its Saab brand to the curb as part of its postbankruptcy reorganization. And that was, literally, where Saab showed up at this week’s Detroit auto show , showing off a half dozen models outside the convention hall on a concrete terrace across the street. The display was sprinkled first with artificial snow, before getting a solid coating of the real thing when a storm blew in Tuesday afternoon. Saab, now owned by a Dutch carmaker, was among a cadre of brands conspicuously absent from the Cobo Center after being discarded during the shakeout of the American auto industry. Some, including Pontiac, Saturn, Hummer and Mercury, were nowhere to be found, having been sent to the scrap heap as General Motors and Ford streamlined operations. Several others — Volvo, Jaguar and Land Rover, all of which were sold off by Ford — remained but without the protective cover of their former parent’s exhibit. Mazda, too, was on its own after Ford divested most of its stake in the Japanese brand. Much of the North American International Auto Show here has been focused on big companies trying to become even bigger. Chrysler’s chief executive, Sergio Marchionne, said six million in annual sales was the ideal size for an automaker, and Volkswagen made no secret of its ambition to become the largest car company in the world. But at the same time, the small brands seeking rejuvenation under new owners were also trying to not be overlooked — even when relegated to the sidelines. “Saab was perceived to have died with old G.M.,” Victor Muller, the chairman of Saab’s new Dutch parent, Spyker Cars, said. “People mentioned Saab in the same breath as Hummer, Pontiac and Saturn. But in fact we were the company that got away.” Saab survived, but its position is the most tenuous of the orphaned brands, particularly in comparison to its fellow Swede, Volvo. Volvo’s sales in the United States were down 12 percent, to 53,948, but Saab’s were down 37 percent, to just 5,445. At Volvo, now owned by the Chinese carmaker Geely, it was “so far so good,” said Jesse Toprak, vice president for industry trends and insight at TrueCar.com , a Web site that tracks industry sales and pricing. Mr. Toprak said Saab’s future is cloudier but holds promise. “It’s got a cult following,” he said. “There’s good potential for them to build the volume back with a couple of new products.” Saab has several new models coming soon, including a redesigned 9-3 sedan that Mr. Muller calls the first “Saab Saab” in many years. It also plans to begin an advertising campaign next month aimed at convincing consumers that it is still alive and plans to stay that way. “The buyer needs this confirmation that he’s not an insensible person if he actually buys a Saab,” Mr. Muller said. Mr. Muller said Saab had a rough go in 2010 because G.M. had shut down its factory; restarting production and in some cases reopening dealers took months. But he said the brand can become profitable in 2012, by increasing global sales to 80,000 this year and 120,000 next year — ambitious goals from last year’s total of 31,696. Volvo, which swung to profitability in the first quarter of 2010, also revealed plans for a big marketing splash. Its chief executive, Stefan Jacoby — a German in charge of a Swedish brand owned by the Chinese — said the company would spend more money on advertising in the first quarter than it did in all of 2010. Ford sharply cut back on its promotion of Volvo before completing the sale to Geely last August. On Tuesday, Volvo made the unusual move of unveiling a crumpled C30 electric hatchback to demonstrate its crashworthiness. Mr. Jacoby said Volvo intended to capitalize on its reputation for building safe vehicles by focusing on that aspect of the C30 as it brings a test fleet to the United States later this year. Mr. Jacoby said Geely has given Volvo more autonomy and is not taking an active role in the company’s operations to avoid squandering its positive attributes. “They are very much aware they need to maintain Volvo as a premium brand,” Mr. Jacoby said. To be sure, executives at the brands that were cut loose say they have benefited from being able to make their own decisions rather than being constrained by an often distant parent. But the flip side is less ability to weather lengthy unprofitable periods. “You control your own destiny, but you’re also more accountable for yourself,” said Stuart Schorr, a spokesman for Jaguar and Land Rover, which Ford sold to an Indian company, Tata Motors, in 2008. “It’s emboldened the whole organization.” Together, Jaguar and Land Rover, which lost money for years under Ford, have been profitable for three consecutive quarters. G.M. and Ford have said they had little choice but to unload brands that were not central to their business. Those that were affected are often missed for nostalgic reasons, but not when it comes to the bottom line. “I think we’re down to a size that’s much more manageable,” Stephen J. Girsky, a G.M. vice chairman, said. “I think it’s the evolution of the company to lose some of these brands.”
|
North American International Auto Show;Saab Automobile AB;Volvo Car Corp;Automobiles
|
ny0078157
|
[
"business",
"dealbook"
] |
2015/05/13
|
Owner of Anonymous Hackers-for-Hire Site Steps Forward
|
He calls himself an ethical hacker who helps companies and individuals fight back against the bad guys operating online. Over the years, Charles Tendell also has emerged as a commentator in the news media about the threat posed by overseas hackers and is a former co-host of an online radio show about security. But behind the scenes, Mr. Tendell, a Colorado resident and a decorated Iraq War veteran, started a new website called Hacker’s List that allows people to anonymously post bids to hire a hacker . Many users have sought to find someone to steal an email password, break into a Facebook account or change a school grade. Mr. Tendell, 32, who owns a consulting firm in Denver called Azorian Cyber Security , confirmed on Tuesday that he was the sole owner of the website. He said Hacker’s List, which began as something of an “off the cuff idea,” grew far faster than he anticipated. “I never expected it to turn into what it is,” said Mr. Tendell, a graduate of the University of Phoenix who became certified as an information systems security professional and an ethical hacker in 2011. “I was testing the waters and wanted to see if it works.” The verdict is still out on whether Hacker’s List, which started in November, will work as a business. The propensity is for people to use it as a way to search for hackers willing to break the law as opposed to doing legitimate online investigations and surveillance. The website has caused a stir in the online world because of its unusual approach to matching ordinary people looking to do a bit of private espionage with so-called hackers-for-hire. The company, which collects a fee for every completed assignment, has garnered considerable news coverage, including a front-page article in The New York Times in January, with much of the coverage focusing on the dubious legality of the requests. Until now, the identity of the founder of Hacker’s List had remained a mystery. An employee of Hacker’s List named “Jack” had said on a number of occasions that the owner was not ready to talk. The lack of disclosure surrounding Hacker’s List is one reason the hackers-for-hire service has drawn considerable scorn from security consultants, who say the website is an invitation to illegal and unethical behavior. Some lawyers have said the owners could be civilly liable for maintaining a service that permits customers to seek to hire hackers for illegal activities. Others have wondered if the website is an elaborate online joke or a sting operation set up by federal authorities. The website’s rules of operation repeatedly note that the service does not condone illegal activity, but that appears to have done little to stop people from seeking to hire hackers to carry out tasks that most would say break the law. But Mr. Tendell said much of the criticism of Hacker’s List was misplaced. He noted that even if an illegal job were posted by an anonymous user, it would not necessarily be carried out. He said clearly illegal job postings were removed if someone complained, but he said what mattered were the jobs that were completed. “No one is going to complete an illegal project through my website,” he said. Still, Hacker’s List has had its share of operational hiccups since its debut, and its website has crashed a number of times. A few more than 4,000 potential jobs have been posted on Hacker’s List, but many of them have not received a bid from a hacker. Mr. Tendell said about 250 jobs had been completed since the website went online. Some hackers have tried to disrupt the service, and more recently the service has banned hackers who were looking to defraud job posters. A few days ago, Twitter suspended the Hacker’s List account, which automatically sends out new job postings. Twitter would not comment on the suspension but many of the account’s tweets promoted jobs like “hack a PayPal account.” Mr. Tendell said he did not know why Twitter suspended the account. (On Tuesday evening, Twitter lifted its suspension of Hacker’s List account, @hackerslist. A Twitter spokesman declined to comment.) Mr. Tendell’s role in setting up Hacker’s List was unmasked in part by Erik Solomonson, a blogger who lives in New York and works for a web hosting company. He decided to do a bit of digging into the formation of Hacker’s List. Mr. Solomonson unearthed an archived domain registration statement for Hacker’s List from October, just before the website went live, that listed Mr. Tendell as the administrator and contact person for the site. A few weeks later, Mr. Tendell’s name was removed from a revised domain registration. The name that replaced his was David Harper, who is said to live in New Zealand and could not be contacted. The older domain registration for Hacker’s List also suggested there might be a tie-in with Neighborhood Hacker, another online hackers-for-hire firm that is also based in Colorado. Mr. Tendell said he had done work with Neighborhood Hacker but was not an owner of that company. Mr. Solomonson said Mr. Tendell’s involvement with Hacker’s List pointed to how difficult it was for consumers to assess the legitimacy of firms that say they offer legal hackers-for-hire services. It’s inappropriate for someone like Mr. Tendell, who calls himself a “white hat hacker,” to be involved in any way with an operation that potentially is profiting from illegal activity, Mr. Solomonson said.
|
Hacker (computer security);Hacker's List;Charles Tendell
|
ny0178549
|
[
"sports",
"othersports"
] |
2007/08/03
|
Skateboarding’s Mega Ramp Is a Draw, but Also a Danger
|
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 2 — At 62 feet tall and 293 feet long, the Mega Ramp is so massive that its events may be among the few spectacles held in the Staples Center for which the best seats are those farthest from the floor, in the arena’s upper deck. From any closer it is almost impossible to take in the full scope of the setup. For the first time at the X Games, the Mega Ramp has been shoehorned into an arena for the skateboarding and BMX freestyle Big Air events. It had been set up outdoors since the Big Air discipline was unveiled at the Games three years ago. Although its dimensions have remained roughly the same over the years, the ramp looms larger under the arena’s roof. Before the Games began Thursday with skateboard Big Air, several athletes said the ramp seemed to cast a bigger shadow, too, eclipsing them and their sports. A ride on the Mega Ramp begins by taking the arena elevator to the top floor. From there, riders choose to plunge down either a 60- or 80-foot roll-in that resembles a ski-jumping ramp, which launches them over either a 50- or 70-foot gap. After landing, they ride up a 27-foot tall quarterpipe ramp that sends them soaring as high as 50 feet. Their height is measured by a rotating lighted sign that looks like something borrowed from the Las Vegas strip. Runs are judged on difficulty and execution of tricks done over both jumps. The inherent danger associated with riding the ramp was on display during the finals Thursday night when the skateboarder Jake Brown fell more than 45 feet during his fifth and final run. Brown was in first place at the time, but attempted a series of difficult tricks. After landing a 720 — two full rotations — he prepared for what looked like a 540 on the quarterpipe. As he reached the lip of the ramp, Brown appeared to lose control. His momentum carried him away from the wall of the ramp and over its flat section. He fell about 45 feet, landing on his feet before falling to his back. Brown lay motionless on the ramp for several minutes while he was tended to by medical personnel. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” said Pierre-Luc Gagnon, who wound up finishing third in the event. “That was the gnarliest slam I’ve ever seen in my life. I thought he was dead.” Much to everyone’s surprise, Brown walked off the ramp afterward with assistance and was seen talking. Bob Burnquist was in second place at the time. After Brown walked off, Burnquist took the final run of the competition. He pulled a switch-stance backside ollie over the 70-foot gap. On the quarterpipe, he landed a switch-stance frontside 540. It turned out to be the winning run. “It was really hard to go after that,” Burnquist said of Brown’s fall. “I thought he died or was paralyzed.” Brown wound up finishing second and Gagnon, third. It was the worst fall any of the skaters could remember since the Mega Ramp debuted at the X Games in 2004. Burnquist became only the second skater to win a gold medal in skateboard Big Air. Danny Way had won the previous three but missed this year’s Games with a knee injury. Without Way, Burnquist was the favorite. He built a Mega Ramp in his backyard last summer, the only permanent structure of its kind at the moment. But not all athletes have embraced the Mega Ramp like Way and Burnquist. Shaun White, the 2006 Olympic gold medal winner in snowboarding and a professional skateboarder on the halfpipe, has no interest in riding the Mega Ramp. “I just hate anything that can be defined as more spectacle than sport,” he said. “Just like any other athlete, it takes a certain skill to do our sport.” The BMX freestyle rider Ryan Nyquist, a multiple medal winner at the X Games, was invited to compete in the BMX Big Air event Friday, but declined. “As big as that ramp is and as fast as you’re going, it just doesn’t impress me all that much right now,” Nyquist said. “I feel like it’s more the ramp that’s on display than it is the riding on it. Then there is the danger of flying so far and so high. Bucky Lasek said he was dreading riding the ramp because he had little time to practice because of a nagging knee injury that was aggravated by riding it. Ever since the X Games debuted in 1995, action sports athletes have tried to shed the stigma that they are glorified stuntmen. To some, the Mega Ramp with its combination of risk and spectacle reinforces unwanted stereotypes. As Lasek summed it up, “Evel Knievel is going to be stoked.”
|
X Games;Skateboards;Stadiums and Arenas;Los Angeles (Calif)
|
ny0106603
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2012/04/19
|
Former Army Chief Elected President in East Timor
|
JAKARTA — José Maria Vasconcelos, a former military chief and rebel commander, claimed victory Wednesday in East Timor ’s presidential election, with preliminary results showing him well ahead of his opponent. “You have shown to the world through your activism, discipline and engagement that we are ready to assume responsibility over our own future,” he told supporters. “Therefore, I humbly stand before you to state that I am ready to accept the responsibility which you have bestowed upon me through a free and democratic election.” Mr. Vasconcelos, popularly known as Taur Matan Ruak, or “two sharp eyes” in the local Tetum language, had 61.23 percent of the vote in preliminary returns, compared with 38.77 percent for Francisco Guterres, known as “Lu Olo,” the head of Fretilin, the party that led East Timor’s first government. The final round of voting was held Monday. If official results confirm Mr. Vasconcelos’s victory, he will succeed President José Ramos-Horta, who placed third in the first round of voting March 17. Before heading the country’s military, Mr. Vasconcelos was a rebel commander during the 24-year fight against Indonesia for independence. In May, East Timor will mark 10 years of independence following its separation from Indonesia in 1999 and three years of U.N. administration. Although the president can command moral influence, the post has little real power. Parliamentary elections will be held July 7. Together, the elections are seen as a test of stability in a country with a history of violence. In 2006, the United Nations sent in a 1,200-member stabilization mission after fighting broke out between police and military forces, leaving 37 people dead and displacing more than 100,000. The United Nations later recommended that Mr. Vasconcelos be prosecuted on charges of illegally distributing arms to civilians during the crisis. He never was. Mr. Vasconcelos campaigned for a veterans’ benefits system and mandatory military service to combat high youth unemployment. He wore military fatigues on the campaign trail and ran on the slogan, “Together with you in the past, our blood intertwined towards our independence. Again with you today, together we toil towards a better future.” Analysts said his linkage of the two causes appealed to voters weary of the largely foreign-educated elite who have led the country. “Ruak has really capitalized on the idea that he’s been outside politics, and the idea of a return to the simplicity of the resistance has dovetailed nicely with that,” Cillian Nolan, a Southeast Asia analyst at the International Crisis Group, said Tuesday. Despite East Timor’s revenue from offshore oil and gas reserves, little of it has gone to develop villages still reliant on subsistence farming. Nearly half the population lives in extreme poverty. High rates of malnutrition and a dearth of private enterprise remain obstacles to growth. A successful transfer of power is expected to lead to the withdrawal of the U.N. peacekeepers , plus another 460 troops from Australia and New Zealand.
|
East Timor;Elections
|
ny0246795
|
[
"world"
] |
2011/05/03
|
Bin Laden Killing Raises Concern About Reprisals
|
PARIS — The death of Osama bin Laden prompted a range of speculation around the world Monday: Could it lead to a faster withdrawal by NATO countries from Afghanistan? Could Western triumphalism lead to revenge attacks? But one consensus emerged: The end of the manhunt helped burnish the image of the United States. ‘‘They did it, and they did it in the most classical, manly way,’’ said Dominique Moïsi, senior fellow at the French Institute of Foreign Relations. ‘‘It wasn’t a drone, it wasn’t technology, it was man vs. man.’’ One European ambassador to an Arab country put it this way: ‘‘No other country could have done this.’’ President Nicolas Sarkozy of France issued a statement hailing Bin Laden’s death as ‘‘a victory for all those fighting terrorism,’’ while Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy called it ‘‘a great outcome for the United States and for all democracies.’’ In a joint statement, the presidents of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, said Bin Laden’s killing ‘‘makes the world a safer place’’ and hailed it as ‘‘a major achievement in our efforts to rid the world of terrorism.’’ Amid the many congratulatory statements, there was also caution. Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain urged vigilance, suggesting that, in the short term, security concerns were greater rather than reduced. ‘‘There’s no doubt that Al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us,’’ Mr. Cameron said in a statement. He alluded to the 67 British deaths from the attacks in the United States and the 52 from the suicide bombings on the London transit system on July 7, 2005. In the hours after President Barack Obama broke the news, the worries about revenge attacks had begun. U.S. embassies around the world were placed on a higher security alert, while the British foreign secretary, William Hague, said he had instructed British missions to maintain greater vigilance. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said Bin Laden’s death did not change the need for tough measures against terrorism. But her partners in a coalition government, the Free Democrats, who have a tradition of defending civil liberties, have not agreed to extend a controversial antiterrorism law, said Gisela Piltz, vice chairwoman of the Free Democrats in the Bundestag, in a statement. Concerns were also voiced at NATO headquarters in Brussels about the future of the war in Afghanistan. In many countries, including Germany and France, the enduring deployment of troops is deeply unpopular, polls show. Diplomats in both countries privately expressed hope that Bin Laden’s death would provide the occasion for President Obama to wrap up the war. ‘‘This is the opportunity for the Americans to say ‘mission accomplished’ and to leave Afghanistan,’’ said one European diplomat with extensive Middle East experience. ‘‘There is no military solution to the problems there. We couldn’t leave before because it would have allowed the jihadis to proclaim victory. But now we don’t have that problem anymore." Perhaps anticipating calls to speed German withdrawal after Bin Laden’s demise, political leaders took pains Monday to again justify the German presence in Afghanistan. Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said: ‘‘We are not in Afghanistan to fight one man. We are in Afghanistan to keep it from becoming a refuge for terrorists.’’ Mr. Sarkozy said his resolve both in the fight against terrorism and in Afghanistan was undiminished and that France ‘‘will continue to fight.’’ Australia, which is among the coalition of forces fighting alongside U.S. troops in Afghanistan, also said it would continue its operations there. The discovery that Bin Laden was hiding out near Islamabad deepened suspicions about senior Pakistani officials’ commitment to fighting terrorism. ‘‘Some of them have been complicit in concealing Osama bin Laden for a very long time,’’ alleged Sir Christopher Meyer, who was British ambassador to the United States at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks. Pakistan disputed that view, saying it was committed to the fight. ‘‘Pakistan has played a significant role in efforts to eliminate terrorism,’’ the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. ‘‘We have had extremely effective intelligence sharing arrangements with several intelligence agencies including that of the U.S. We will continue to support international efforts against terrorism.’’ In Russia, where the authorities in Moscow have long contended that the insurgency that has simmered in Russia’s predominately Muslim North Caucasus has been masterminded from outside the country, a statement from the office of President Dmitri A. Medvedev called the U.S. raid a ‘‘serious success’’ against international terrorism. The Kremlin has angrily rejected Western claims that Moscow’s heavy-handed counterterrorism tactics have fueled popular resistance in the North Caucasus. ‘‘Russia was among the first to face the dangers posed by global terrorism, and unfortunately, knows firsthand what Al Qaeda is,’’ the statement said, offering to cooperate in ‘‘a united war with global terrorism.’’ Ten years ago, the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks marked a high-water mark in cooperation between Moscow and Washington. Vladimir V. Putin, then Russia’s president, offered sweeping support for U.S. operations in Afghanistan, including help in securing bases in Central Asia. But that support curdled over the years that followed, and Mr. Putin was sharply critical of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Many Europeans expressed hope that the shared joy over Bin Laden’s death would also help salve difficult relations with the continent’s 15 million Muslims. ‘‘Few will mourn the reported death of Osama bin Laden, least of all Muslims,’’ said Farooq Murad, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain. ‘‘Many Muslims will reflect on the 10 years that have passed in which our faith and our community have been seen through the prism of terrorism and security.’’ But some people warned that excessive triumphalism and celebrations like those in Washington and New York after the news broke would be counterproductive. Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of Britain’s Ramadan Foundation, likened some of the images beamed across the world to those of some Muslims celebrating after Sept. 11, 2001. ‘‘From my heart I felt uncomfortable seeing those celebrations in Times Square; they were quite crude and insensitive,’’ he said. ‘‘This man was responsible for killing thousands of people. It wasn’t an occasion for this kind of street party, but for reflection and sadness.’’ That assessment, widespread among Western nations, found an echo in comments from militant figures such as Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed, the former head of the Al Muhajiroun group, who said Bin Laden was ‘‘now a martyr and he will be a role model to Muslim youth.’’ A British diplomat with experience in the Middle East said the language used by Western leaders in the days and weeks to come would affect how people there reacted to Bin Laden’s death. ‘‘The key for the West is to get the tone right — the focus must be more on sorrow than anger: this was an evil man who killed people of all nationalities and all faiths,’’ the diplomat said. ‘‘Our reaction can’t be too gun-slinging or triumphalist. The most important thing is that we don’t help Osama bin Laden to become in death what he failed to be in life. ‘‘Al Qaeda,’’ he added, ‘‘is a franchise, not a Fortune 500 company.’’
|
bin Laden Osama;Terrorism;September 11 (2001);International Relations
|
ny0150542
|
[
"business"
] |
2008/08/03
|
The Stars Have Yet to Align for Stocks
|
CONDITIONS are most ripe for a bear market to end and a new bull market to begin when investor sentiment and fundamental and technical factors are all in alignment. Unfortunately, the rally that began three weeks ago is fully supported by investor sentiment alone, suggesting that the bottom of this bear market has not yet been reached. First, consider the technical evidence. Compared with the initial rallies after previous bear-market bottoms, the rally that began in mid-July has been disturbingly weak. In fact, during the first days of the climb, a relatively large number of stocks actually fell. That has led many analysts to conclude that the upward trend is likely to fizzle. Take note of one particular indicator — based on the proportion of shares trading on the New York Stock Exchange that rise in price in a given session. If July 15 were the bear-market low, according to many technical analysts, there should have been at least one trading session in the subsequent rally in which at least 90 percent of total trading volume was from shares rising in price. Martin Zweig, president of Zweig-DiMenna Associates, a hedge fund firm in New York, calls such days “9-to-1 up days.” In his 1986 book, “Winning on Wall Street,” Mr. Zweig wrote that “every bull market in history, and many good intermediate advances, have been launched with a buying stampede that included one or more 9-to-1 up days.” The market’s rally over the last three weeks hasn’t satisfied this precondition. This may seem surprising, because there have been three days — July 16, 17 and 29 — when the Dow Jones industrial average has risen by well more than 200 points. But the volume of rising shares on the Big Board never exceeded 82 percent on any of those days; on one of the three, July 17, it reached just 71 percent. Now consider the stock market’s fundamental foundation: stocks are still not cheap, at least in relation to corporate earnings. On the contrary, the market remains more expensive than it has been at most other times in recent decades. This is well illustrated by the price-to-earnings ratio for stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index. It is now at 20.0 when calculated on the basis of trailing 12-month earnings, according to Clifford S. Asness, managing principal at AQR Capital Management, a hedge fund firm in Greenwich, Conn.; that is higher than 73 percent of the readings dating back to 1965. To be sure, corporate earnings are typically depressed during bear markets, thus inflating the P/E ratio. But even when taking this tendency into account, the market’s current ratio is well above historical norms. This is demonstrated by the ratio of price to an average of inflation-adjusted earnings over the trailing 10-year period. Such a metric was proposed more than a decade ago by Robert J. Shiller, the Yale economics and finance professor, and John Y. Campbell, the Harvard economics professor, in part to sidestep the complexities caused by artificially high P/E ratios at bear-market bottoms. Using that 10-year measure for the S.& P. 500, the ratio is now 21.8, or higher than 66 percent of comparable readings back to 1965, Mr. Asness said. CLEARLY, stocks are not as overvalued today as they were in early 2000, just before the Internet bubble burst and the bear market of 2000 to 2002 began. Nevertheless, the market remains far closer to the expensive than to the cheap end of the valuation spectrum. Investor sentiment is the one arena that provides strong support for a new bull market. Investment advisers are now more pessimistic than they have been since early 1995, according to Michael Burke and John Gray, editors of Investors Intelligence, a newsletter based in Larchmont, N.Y. This is an encouraging sign, they wrote to subscribers in late July, because market bottoms are typically accompanied by exceptionally high levels of despair. Sentiment alone, however, is not a strong foundation for a bull market. History suggests that when this bear market hits bottom — whenever that may be — stocks will have more attractive valuations and the subsequent market rally will be broader than the recent surge.
|
Stocks and Bonds;Economic Conditions and Trends;Dow Jones Stock Average;United States Economy;Recession and Depression
|
ny0083835
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2015/10/30
|
Albany Plan Would Expand Conflict-of-Interest Policies
|
ALBANY — With corruption and the policing of government still pressing issues in New York’s capital, state ethics regulators have proposed that state elected officials be barred from accepting and asking for campaign contributions from any person or group under investigation by, or involved in legal action with, their offices. The proposal, made this week by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics , which investigates violations of state ethics and lobbying laws, would extend current conflict-of-interest policies that apply to state employees to also include the governor, the state comptroller, the attorney general, state legislators and their re-election campaigns. Specifically, the proposed change involves a 1998 decision by a now-defunct ethical oversight entity, the New York State Ethics Commission, which ruled that state employees who chose to work on political campaigns were not allowed to solicit campaign funds from any person or entity with past, present or potential future business before their agency. But in a footnote, the 1998 decision exempted statewide elected officials running for re-election, arguing that “such officials are in a unique position, as they both hold elected office and are simultaneously engaged in political activities.” On Tuesday, however, the Joint Commission, known as Jcope, issued a five-page advisory opinion that said that while statewide officials did in fact “wear two hats,” they should still be subject to the same rules as the lower-ranking officials and employees. “The ethical standards of conduct carry greater, not lesser importance, when an elected official solicits members of the public for political support,” the commission wrote. The proposal comes even as two longtime leaders of the State Legislature, Assemblyman Sheldon Silver , a Lower East Side Democrat, and State Senator Dean G. Skelos, a Long Island Republican, are preparing for trial on federal corruption charges. On Thursday, initial reaction from major elected officials was muted. Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for the governor, said his office was reviewing the opinion, a position echoed by the state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli. The state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, had no comment. All three officials are Democrats. Established in 2011 by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the State Senate and Assembly, Jcope oversees the state’s executive and legislative branches. A 14-member body selected by the governor and legislators, it has a unique structure , often criticized, in which votes regarding investigations of lawmakers can effectively be vetoed by as few as three members. The future of the proposal, which is open for public comment , is not clear: The next commission meeting is Nov. 17, and requests for a comment from the commission were not answered. But in its opinion, the commission seems ardent about its role even as advocates for reform continue to grapple with the impact of money in politics. “It is the duty of the commission to uphold the public interest in avoiding even the appearance that an elected official can or will use the powers of his office to influence prospective campaign donors,” it wrote. “Or that an elected official can be influenced in his official actions by the prospect of a campaign contribution.”
|
Ethics Misconduct Malfeasance;Campaign finance;New York;Joint Commission on Public Ethics NYS;Corruption
|
ny0119908
|
[
"us"
] |
2012/07/19
|
Service Members Punished in Prostitution Scandal
|
The United States military announced Wednesday that nine service members had received punishments for their roles in a prostitution scandal in Colombia before a summit meeting in April. Another service member received a “letter of reprimand” and was not punished, and two others remain under investigation, according to military officials for the United States Southern Command in Miami. The service members were in Cartagena, Colombia, as part of an advance team for President Obama’s security detail for the meeting. After a Secret Service agent got into a dispute with a prostitute at a hotel in Cartagena about how much money she was owed, the disturbance alerted American officials to the fact that Secret Service and military personnel had been with prostitutes. Ultimately, nine Secret Service personnel resigned, retired or were dismissed.
|
Secret Service;Prostitution;Cartagena (Colombia);United States Defense and Military Forces
|
ny0128791
|
[
"sports",
"golf"
] |
2012/06/28
|
U.S. Ryder Cup Assistants Named
|
The United States Ryder Cup captain Davis Love III has selected Fred Couples and Mike Hulbert to be two of his assistant captains. Love and Couples were one of the toughest teams in World Cup history, along with being Ryder Cup teammates. Couples was captain in the last two Presidents Cups, both American victories. He was selected as Presidents Cup captain again for 2013. The Ryder Cup is Sept. 28-30 at Medinah. Love, as the home captain, also decided that the competition would start with the foursomes format.
|
Ryder Cup (Golf);Golf;Love Davis III;Hulbert Mike;Couples Fred
|
ny0239775
|
[
"sports",
"hockey"
] |
2010/12/26
|
Junior Hockey Tournament a Major Happening in Buffalo
|
BUFFALO — It often feels extremely Canadian in this border city, where the Maple Leaf flies alongside the Stars and Stripes in front of City Hall, the average attendance for box lacrosse is 18,000, and the Sabres dominate the wintertime sports news. But now the transformation is complete. Buffalo is full of Canadians, here to join this city’s already hockey-crazed populace for the world junior tournament, and it is a perfect storm. The tournament, an international sports event that annually draws Canada’s biggest television audience, starts Sunday in the city with America’s highest annual television ratings for hockey. “People in the States don’t understand what this means to Canada, but I think they’re going to find out,” said Larry Quinn, the managing partner of the Buffalo Sabres, whose HSBC Arena is the main site of the tournament, which opens Sunday and runs through Jan 5. “To them, it’s like the N.C.A.A. basketball Final Four is to Americans.” Some 320,000 tickets have been sold for the 31 games of the I.I.H.F. World U20 Championship , as the tournament is officially called. About 63 percent have gone to Canadians, according to Tom Ahern, director of arena services for the Sabres, who are handling the tournament logistics and ticket sales. An estimated 11,000 hotel rooms have been booked in the region over the course of the tournament, a big rise over usual occupancy levels. More than a quarter of the rooms were booked by teams and delegations from the 10 participating countries, including the defending champion Americans and the 15-time champion Canadians. Buffalo and Niagara University in Lewiston, N.Y., are the hosts for the tournament. It is only the fifth time in the 35-year history of the world juniors that the United States has played host, after various sites in Minnesota in 1982; Anchorage, in 1989; Boston in 1996; and Grand Forks, N.D., and Thief River Falls, Minn., in 2005. But the geography and culture of Buffalo make this edition of the world juniors different. “There’s no question about it,” said Quinn, responding to the idea that Buffalo is in many ways a half-Canadian city. “One of the ways we’ve made this N.H.L. franchise work is to pretend there isn’t a border,” he said, referring to the Sabres’ marketing outreaches to southern Ontario, a far more prosperous neighboring region that accounts for about 15 percent to 20 percent of the club’s business. “Of course there are cultural and perceptual differences and different cable TV regulations that prevent us from having it seamless,” he said. “But with a tournament like this, it’s the single biggest event in Buffalo history that can break down that border. More than anything we’ve ever done, this works toward our vision of this as one region.” The Buffalo area has been producing N.H.L.-level players for about 30 years, including the Stanley Cup winners Patrick Kane, Brooks Orpik and Todd Marchant. And now local fans are excited at the prospect of witnessing a competition that has unveiled such stars as Pavel Bure, Eric Lindros, Jaromir Jagr and Peter Forsberg, who holds most of the single-tournament scoring records. “It’s a big thing for the people here — this is definitely a hockey city,” said Digger Kennedy, 51, who played for South Park High School here in the ’70s and whose son, Tim, played for the Sabres and is now with the Rangers’ A.H.L. farm team in Hartford. “And with all the Canadians coming in for this, it’s going to be great.” The Canadian influence on Buffalo hockey history is deep, of course. When the Sabres came into existence in 1970, their coach and general manager was Punch Imlach, who had coached and managed the Toronto Maple Leafs to four Stanley Cups. But perhaps surprisingly, Buffalo has exerted its own profound influence on Canadian hockey history. As a boy in the early ’70s Wayne Gretzky would sit in his living room in Brantford, Ontario, watching his favorite player, the slick-skating Sabres center Gil Perreault, on Buffalo television. Gretzky idolized Perreault and vowed to be as creative a player — a decision that had huge implications for Canada and hockey. Another important Canadian figure, the Hall of Fame defenseman Tim Horton, spent his last two seasons as a Sabre. Still playing at 44 and making the 90-mile drive to Buffalo late at night after the Sabres had played in Toronto, he died in a car wreck about halfway between the cities. People in Buffalo and Toronto alike, if they are old enough, can remember the eerie feeling the next morning of hearing the jingle for Horton’s chain of doughnut shops still playing on the radio. The world junior final on Jan. 5 is expected to pit Canada against the United States. Whether celebrating or drowning their sorrows afterward, Canadian fans here will once again feel right at home, because the best-selling beer in Buffalo is not Budweiser or Miller. It has long been Labatt’s.
|
Hockey Ice;Amateur Athletics;Children and Youth;Buffalo (NY);Canada;IIHF World U20 Championship
|
ny0275068
|
[
"us"
] |
2016/02/28
|
Sam Beall, Farm-to-Table Restaurateur Right on His Farm, Dies at 39
|
Sam Beall, who turned Blackberry Farm , his parents’ country inn in Walland, Tenn., into a national destination for fine dining and a leader in the farm-to-table culinary movement, died on Thursday in Vail, Colo. He was 39. A spokeswoman for the farm said he had died in a skiing accident, but she provided no further details. Mr. Beall (pronounced Bell) spent his earliest years on the farm, in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains in eastern Tennessee. His father, Samuel E. Beall III, known as Sandy, the founder of the Ruby Tuesday restaurant chain, bought the property in 1976 and ran it, with his wife, Kreis, as a small country inn. After studying at the California Culinary Academy, Mr. Beall worked in the restaurant of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in San Francisco, at Cowgirl Creamery north of the city and at several California wineries. He also served a brief apprenticeship at the French Laundry, Thomas Keller’s culinary shrine in Yountville, Calif. While living in California he developed a passion for heirloom ingredients, fine wine and artisanal food. Image Credit Kreis Beall and Heather Anne Thomas Returning to Blackberry Farm, he embarked on a series of transformations. He added the Barn, a fine-dining restaurant; the Wellhouse, a spa and health center; and, within the main house, a more casual restaurant, the Dogwood. He also created an ambitious wine program. Both restaurants draw on the farm’s vegetables, pigs, chicken, cheeses and other ingredients. The farm employs a master gardener, baker, cheese maker, butcher, jam maker and chocolatier. In 2011, the readers of Travel and Leisure voted Blackberry Farm, which is part of the Relais and Châteaux chain of luxury properties, the top resort in the continental United States and Canada. Two years later, Bon Appétit rated it the best food lover’s hotel in the United States. Mr. Beall used the term “foothills cuisine” to describe the style of cooking at his restaurants. “There’s this one little mountain range that separates the wilderness from civilization,” he told House Beautiful in 2013. “On one side lies everything rural, on the other is everything urban. Our food kind of walks the line between the rugged and the refined — or rustic country fare and haute cuisine.” He was the author of a cookbook, “The Foothills Cuisine of Blackberry Farm,” published in 2012. Samuel Erasmus Beall IV was born on Aug. 21, 1976, in Knoxville, Tenn. When Morrison, a company based in Mobile, Ala., bought the Ruby Tuesday chain in 1982, his father took him to Mobile, and he grew up there. During the summers he worked in his father’s restaurants. He attended Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia and graduated from the University of Tennessee. In addition to his parents, he is survived by his wife, Mary Celeste; a son, Sam; four daughters, Cameron, Rose, Josephine and Lila; and a brother, David.
|
Obituary;Restaurant;Local food;Blackberry Farm;Sam Beall
|
ny0140877
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2008/02/13
|
New Home for Mets: On Time, On Budget
|
Standing in the numbing cold amid fluttering snowflakes, Jeff Wilpon expressed few warm, fuzzy feelings for Shea Stadium on Tuesday as he led a guided tour of Citi Field, the adjacent future home of the Mets . The new stadium, more than a year away from opening, has taken shape in Flushing and can easily be envisioned complete. Citi Field was largely monochromatic, with concrete and snow dominating the site, and the boxed-off area that home plate will occupy was serving as a makeshift garbage bin, littered with empty beverage bottles. Still, in some ways Citi Field already has more charm than the stadium towering next door. “There isn’t that much of Shea that we want to bring over,” said Wilpon, the Mets’ senior executive vice president. “Shea was a dual-purpose stadium in the ’60s, and it served its purpose.” Wilpon said that the home run apple, a fan favorite at Shea that many feared would die along with the old stadium, would be about the only holdover to survive the move. He did say, however, that the apple may have a different design. Also, the spots where the bases and home plate are at Shea will be marked in the parking lot that will take over that land. The major news, however, was that there was no news. Citi Field is on schedule (set to be completed by Jan. 1, 2009, and open in April 2009) and on budget (about $800 million). Last week, during a similar tour of the new Yankee Stadium by members of the news media, the club revealed that its project’s budget had increased and is now at about $1.2 billion. Citi Field’s first light tower, designed to symbolize the steel trusses of the city’s bridges, recently went up, and 85 percent of the overall structural steel frame is complete. The risers for the right-field porch and the club level are set, as is most of the promenade level. Much of the brick facade of the Ebbets Field-inspired rotunda is in place as well. “I think when our fans come back opening day, they’re going to say, ‘Wow,’ ” Wilpon said. Wilpon led the tour out onto the right-field porch, his favorite spot in the stands that will hang over the outfield 8 to 10 feet beyond the field-level seats. He said he had already reserved seats for himself in the front row of the porch because he loves the vantage point, something he took from Tiger Stadium. “You can feel how close to the action you are,” Wilpon said, standing on the bottom edge of the section. “If you went straight down, you’d be in fair territory.” Wilpon said the more intimate feel and better sightlines of Citi Field, which will hold 45,000 people, were major reasons why he would not miss Shea much, even though he has a personal connection to its beginnings as well. “I’m not that nostalgic for Shea,” he said. “Although I was at Shea’s groundbreaking in my mother’s belly.”
|
New York Mets;Stadiums and Arenas;Baseball;Shea Stadium (NYC)
|
ny0279380
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2016/10/05
|
Ken Thompson, Brooklyn District Attorney, Says He Has Cancer and Will Take Leave
|
Ken Thompson, the Brooklyn district attorney, said on Tuesday that he had recently learned he has cancer and would take a sick leave. Mr. Thompson said in a statement that his chief assistant, Eric Gonzalez, would take over as interim district attorney during “the absences occasioned” his “treatment and recovery.” “As a man of intense faith, I intend to fight and win the battle against this disease,” Mr. Thompson said. “I humbly seek your sincere prayers as I confront this challenge and respectfully ask that you honor my family’s need and wish for privacy during this time.” Mr. Thompson has been absent from his office for about two months, and had received the cancer diagnosis around August, according to colleagues who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Neither his spokesmen nor several of his friends would disclose what type of cancer Mr. Thompson has. The news of his illness comes three years after he was elected, becoming Brooklyn’s first black district attorney. He defeated Charles J. Hynes, an incumbent of more than 20 years who had been weakened by accusations of favoritism toward political supporters in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community, and of allegations of campaign-finance improprieties. Mr. Thompson, 50, a Democrat, had previously had a successful private law practice; he represented Nafissatou Diallo, a Manhattan hotel housekeeper who, in 2011, accused the French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her in a case that was eventually dropped by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Mr. Thompson had also worked as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn and delivered a memorable opening argument at the trial of Justin Volpe, a police officer who pleaded guilty in 1999 to torturing a Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima, with a broken broomstick in a Brooklyn station house. Having run on an agenda of reform and racial justice, Mr. Thompson, once in office, earned a reputation as both an advocate for minority communities in a section of the city known for its divisions between black and white residents and, simultaneously, as a tough law-enforcement officer who concentrated on cracking down on gun crimes and violent street gangs. Brushing aside the resistance of the New York Police Department, he announced in July 2014 that his office would stop prosecuting most low-level marijuana arrests. He also put in place an amnesty program for people with outstanding warrants. Among his best-known efforts was the creation of one of the country’s most robust internal units dedicated to reviewing wrongful convictions, which in the past two years has exonerated 20 defendants. Perhaps the biggest case of his tenure was the prosecution of Peter Liang , a former police officer who was found guilty in February of manslaughter in the shooting of an unarmed black man, Akai Gurley, in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project. The shooting, which took place just days before a Staten Island grand jury elected not to indict an officer involved in the choking death of Eric Garner, placed enormous pressure on Mr. Thompson , who had to balance his campaign promises to Brooklyn’s black neighborhoods with his close working relationship with the Police Department. Though he did not shy away from mounting an aggressive case against Mr. Liang, after the trial was over Mr. Thompson decided, in Solomonic fashion, to seek no prison time for the former officer, a move that enraged Mr. Gurley’s family and led to bitter protests by criminal-justice reform activists . One took place early in the morning outside Mr. Thompson’s home in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. For weeks, Mr. Thompson’s illness had been a closely guarded secret, known only to a small circle of friends and associates. On Tuesday, public officials such as Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo issued statements wishing him well. In an email on Tuesday, Douglas H. Wigdor, the co-founder of Mr. Thompson’s private practice, said, “As Ken’s former partner for over 15 years, I have no doubt that he will tackle his illness with the same determination that he has shared with his clients, the people of Brooklyn and, most importantly, his family.” Another close friend, Arnold N. Kriss, a lawyer who has served as an adviser to Mr. Thompson over the years, said: “Ken is doing a remarkable job rebuilding the Brooklyn D.A.’s office. There is no doubt he will successfully continue to fight his illness and, at the same time, fight for the people of Brooklyn.”
|
Kenneth P Thompson;Brooklyn;Cancer;District attorney
|
ny0237402
|
[
"business",
"global"
] |
2010/06/19
|
Walkout Closes Another Toyota Supplier in China
|
TOKYO — Workers at an auto parts factory in Tianjin, China, run by a Chinese subsidiary of Toyoda Gosei, which is 42 percent owned by Toyota Motor , went on strike Thursday and have not returned to their jobs, a Toyoda Gosei spokesman said Friday. The factory, one of two run by Tianjin Toyoda Gosei, produces plastic parts for a FAW assembly plant operated by Toyota in Tianjin. It has been closed since Thursday morning, when some of the company’s 1,700 workers staged a walkout, the spokesman, Shingo Handa, said. Tianjin Toyoda Gosei’s other factory in the city, as well as its six other plants across China, are operating normally, Mr. Handa said. Talks are under way between the company and the striking workers in Tianjin, who are demanding higher pay, Mr. Handa said. It is unclear when production will resume, he said. “Our priority is to reach a swift resolution and minimize the effect on auto production,” Mr. Handa said. “Talks are continuing.” The latest strike is similar to work stoppages that have forced Honda Motor to suspend some of its operations in China over the past month. It is another blow to Toyota after months in which it has had to acknowledge manufacturing a raft of defective vehicles and has paid $16.4 million in fines in the United States alone. The strike follows a one-day walkout over pay at another Toyoda Gosei auto parts factory and Toyota supplier, Tianjin Star Light Rubber & Plastic. Employees there agreed to go back to work Thursday after the company said it would review wages for the plant’s 800 workers, Mr. Handa said. A Tokyo-based spokeswoman for Toyota, Mieko Iwasaki, said that the automaker's assembly plant with FAW in Tianjin had closed Friday afternoon but hoped to reopen on Monday. Toyota operates 10 factories in China, and many more are run by Toyota subsidiaries.
|
Toyota Motor Corp;China;Strikes
|
ny0150539
|
[
"business"
] |
2008/08/03
|
An S.B.A. Lender, Uncensored
|
WITH the American taxpayer assuming responsibility for all manner of bad loans made by reckless lenders, it is puzzling that a scathing 2007 audit of the Small Business Administration ’s oversight of one of its top private lenders remains hidden from view. As indictments keep coming out of the Eastern District of Michigan — where the United States attorney is investigating $76 million in fraudulent S.B.A.-backed loans made by that very lender — taxpayers would seem to have a right to know the extent of the agency’s oversight failures. The S.B.A. lender whose operations are under scrutiny is Business Loan Center, a unit of Allied Capital , a business development company in Washington, D.C. Business Loan Center, now known as Ciena Capital, was one of Allied’s largest portfolio investments until last year and was a top-10 S.B.A. lender. It is no longer making new loans. If Allied Capital has a familiar ring, it may be because of its attacks in recent years on short-sellers, investors who made negative bets on its shares after uncovering evidence of dubious lending practices at Business Loan Center. Business Loan Center was a major participant in the S.B.A.’s Preferred Lenders Program, a streamlined process under which loans of $1 million to $5 million need not be preapproved. They are backed by taxpayers, packaged into securities and sold in the debt markets. The S.B.A. was created in 1953 as an independent agency of the federal government to help small businesses. It has a loan portfolio of $85 billion. As of May, it had guaranteed $66 billion in loans. Allied acquired Business Loan Center, known as BLX, in 2000. The next year, BLX was the nation’s second-largest small-business lender under the S.B.A.’s most popular loan program, according to Allied’s regulatory filings. Through 2006, BLX was one of the S.B.A.’s top 10 lenders based on dollars disbursed for these loans. The S.B.A.’s own Office of Inspector General examined the agency’s oversight of BLX. That inquiry preceded the federal investigation of the company in Michigan, which found that BLX’s operation in that state had made $76 million in fraudulent loans. Last year, Patrick Harrington, a former BLX executive, pleaded guilty to fraud. Since then, 35 people not employed by BLX have been indicted and charged with being co-conspirators, Michigan prosecutors said. The inspector general’s audit, covering 2001 to 2006, was released last fall. But many of its crucial findings were blacked out. Entire passages were blackened, as was tabular data, and four of five appendixes. Three recommendations that the inspector general made to remedy the S.B.A.’s lapses were also blacked out. As a result, taxpayers on the hook for loans guaranteed by the S.B.A. have little knowledge of the shortcomings uncovered at the agency. THE audit identified significant problems with the S.B.A.’s tracking of performance and compliance related to loans made by BLX. Between 2001 and 2006, the audit states, the S.B.A. bought $272.1 million worth of BLX loans. According to an uncensored version of the report, which was obtained from a government official, the redactions were suggested by the S.B.A.’s general counsel, who argued that the report was similar to bank examiner data that is considered privileged. The inspector general’s office agreed to censor the text, the report said, but did not agree with the extensive nature of the redactions. BLX also asked that the report be redacted, arguing that it disclosed trade secrets. “Since 2001, S.B.A.’s oversight activities have identified recurring and material issues related to BLX’s performance, credit administration, asset quality, and compliance with S.B.A. regulations,” the 39-page report stated. “Despite these recurring problems, S.B.A. continued to renew BLX’s delegated lender status and S.B.A. took no actions to restrict BLX’s ability to originate loans or to mitigate financial risks through the purchase review process.” BLX consistently failed performance benchmarks, the report said, and a regional unit of the S.B.A. recommended against renewal of the company’s preferred lending status in the three most recent time periods that the audit covered. The company was cited for material deficiencies in five consecutive on-site examinations and was placed in the highest risk category for eight of nine rating quarters from June 2004 to November 2006 under the S.B.A.’s loan and lender monitoring system. When the time came to renew BLX’s preferred lending status for the three recent renewal periods, S.B.A. did so in spite of negative evaluations from a majority of the agency’s reporting field offices, the report stated. And as the agency continued to honor guarantee requests on BLX loans, it failed to increase its scrutiny of BLX’s purchase requests, the inspector general wrote. Echoing the subprime mortgage mess, BLX didn’t verify its borrowers’ representations, the report said. Tax returns that showed no interest income or dividends didn’t support borrowers’ claims in loan applications, for example. Also under wraps in the public report was S.B.A. management’s view that it should not suspend BLX’s preferred lending because that would “immediately put BLX out of business.” The inspector general, by the way, disagreed. The report concluded with five recommendations. Here are the three that were blacked out: to set performance goals for BLX to show improved lending practices; to reduce S.B.A. guarantees for new loans originated by BLX until it met the new goals; and to suspend BLX’s preferred lending status until the goals were met. (The two uncensored recommendations were general guidelines about clearer standards for suspending S.B.A. preferred lending authority and procedures for addressing potential conflicts that might arise from the S.B.A.’s mandate to generate loans.) Asked why so many of the report’s findings were kept from the public, the S.B.A. said disclosure threatened open and frank discussions on policy matters within the agency, risked premature disclosure of proposed S.B.A. policies and created possible confusion resulting from information that the agency decided not to use in the case. Eric Zarnikow, associate administrator in the S.B.A. office of capital access, said the agency has improved its lender oversight since the report was issued. He said the agency conducts on-site reviews to evaluate lenders’ compliance with program requirements and has tripled the number of on-site exams to 230 a year. It has changed the unit that approves preferred lenders, assigning that process to a credit risk management team. Ronald Machen, a lawyer for Ciena, said BLX was victimized by a fraud scheme in Michigan and has set aside more than $18 million to reimburse the S.B.A. for any losses incurred on those loans. He said the inspector general’s report reviewed previous audits conducted on the S.B.A.’s behalf and focused only on negative findings. An independent review of the audits, he said, gives a completely different impression of BLX, “one that demonstrates the company was a safe and sound lender under the S.B.A. program.” The report nevertheless suggests that the S.B.A. is more interested in loan volume than loan quality. Because BLX was a top 10 lender, the inspector general wrote, actions the agency took to reduce risks associated with BLX, such as suspending its preferred status, “would have been detrimental to achieving S.B.A.’s loan production goals.” Perhaps the S.B.A.’s new policies will improve its oversight. But taxpayers, faced with the prospect of covering mortgage-related losses, have a right to some skepticism. And the S.B.A.’s efforts to keep much of this revealing text secret do little to win taxpayer trust.
|
Small Business Administration;Banks and Banking;Allied Capital Corporation;Ciena Corporation;Small Business;Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
|
ny0020594
|
[
"sports",
"football"
] |
2013/07/25
|
Belichick Speaks as Patriots Camp Opens, With Focus on Hernandez
|
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — When asked about players who are no longer with the New England Patriots, Coach Bill Belichick usually says he will discuss only the names on his roster. Until Wednesday, Belichick had not spoken publicly about the arrest of Aaron Hernandez, a former Patriots tight end, on a first-degree murder charge last month. But the start of training camp presented an opportunity to address the Hernandez case, which has stunned the N.F.L. and shaken up the Patriot organization. Belichick read from a statement for roughly seven minutes and took questions for 15 minutes, although he said he was unable to answer many of them because of the continuing investigation. He mentioned Hernandez’s name once and did not mention Odin Lloyd, whom Hernandez is charged with murdering, by name. “I extend my sympathy to the ones who have been impacted,” said Belichick, who described the situation as sad “on so many levels.” He added: “A young man lost his life, and his family has suffered a tragic loss. There is no way to understate that.” He also addressed, at least in a passing way, the fact that the Patriots drafted Hernandez after others around the league questioned his character. “As the coach of the team, I’m primarily responsible for the people that we bring into the football operation,” Belichick said. The Patriots released Hernandez shortly after he was arrested but before he was charged with first-degree murder. Hernandez also faces five gun-related charges and is being investigated as the possible gunman in a double homicide in Boston in July 2012, a month before he signed a contract extension worth more than $40 million. Hernandez was scheduled for a hearing Wednesday in his first-degree murder case, but it was delayed to allow the prosecution to collect more evidence for presentation to a grand jury. The next hearing is scheduled for Aug. 22. Hernandez is being held without bail in a county jail in North Dartmouth, Mass. Belichick said he learned of the situation while he was out of the country. “I and other members of the organization were shocked and disappointed at what we had learned — having someone in your organization that’s involved in a murder investigation is a terrible thing,” he said. “After consultation with ownership, we acted swiftly and decisively.” Image Aaron Hernandez in court Wednesday. A hearing in his murder case was delayed until Aug. 22. Credit Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Associated Press When asked about defensive back Alfonzo Dennard, a felon still on the roster, Belichick declined to comment, again citing a continuing legal case. In February, Dennard was convicted of assaulting a police officer, an episode that occurred a week before the Patriots drafted him in 2012. He is to serve a 30-day jail sentence in March. Two weeks ago, Dennard was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence, a possible parole violation. He is scheduled to have another hearing Aug. 27. “Our players are generally highly motivated, gifted athletes who come from very different backgrounds,” Belichick said. “They’ve met many challenges along the way and have done things to get here. Sometimes they made bad or immature decisions.” He added: “We try to look at every single situation on a case-by-case basis and try to do what’s best for the football team and best for the franchise. Most of the decisions have worked out. Some don’t. Over all, I’m proud of the hundreds of players that have come through this program.” Referring to the Hernandez case, Belichick said, “I’m personally disappointed and hurt in a situation like this.” The team’s owner, Robert K. Kraft, recently said, “If this stuff is true, then I’ve been duped.” Belichick, when asked if he felt the same way, declined to comment. Belichick also declined to say whether he had retained legal counsel or had been subpoenaed. He said the team had not been aware until recently of the July 2012 shooting being investigated for a possible link to Hernandez. The team’s methods for evaluating players, Belichick said, have been in place since 2000. He said he was comfortable with the methods but might make a few minor changes. “Obviously, this process is far from perfect, but it’s one we’ve used from 2000 until today,” he said. “Unfortunately, this most recent situation, with the charges that are involved, is not a good one on that record.” No players spoke to the news media Wednesday, but quarterback Tom Brady, when asked this week about Hernandez, told Sports Illustrated, “I have moved on.” Belichick expressed similar sentiments. “We’ll learn from this terrible experience and become a better team from the lessons that we’ve learned,” Belichick said. He added: “My comments are certainly not in proportion to the unfortunate and sad situation we have here. It’s time for the New England Patriots to move forward.”
|
Football;Hernandez; Aaron;Patriots;Bill Belichick;Alfonzo Dennard;Murders;Odin Lloyd;Boston;Massachusetts
|
ny0203005
|
[
"sports",
"golf"
] |
2009/08/10
|
Can a Little Help for an Amateur Become Too Much?
|
Kevin, Rickie and Morgan are junior golfers who enter junior and other competitions. All three incur significant costs to travel to and play in the competitions. Kevin plays only in competitions limited to junior golfers. A local insurance agency provides money directly to him to enable him to compete. Rickie works during the summer and is able to play only in the United States Amateur Championship and his state amateur championship. A local department store has provided money to Rickie’s local golf association for his expenses. For the expenses he incurred to travel to and play in the competitions, Rickie takes receipts to his local golf association. Morgan has been playing golf for a year and needs additional equipment to play in the competitions. The golf store in his town has provided Morgan with free balls, clubs and shoes. Which golfers have forfeited amateur status? a) Kevin and Rickie b) Kevin and Morgan c) Rickie and Morgan d) None The correct answer is d. A junior golfer (i.e., Kevin) may accept expenses directly from a sponsor to participate in competitions limited to junior golfers. A junior golfer (i.e., Rickie) may accept expenses from a sponsor to participate in competitions not limited to junior golfers, provided the expenses are approved by and paid through the golfer’s local golf association. A junior golfer (i.e., Morgan) may accept equipment free of charge from a dealer or manufacturer of the equipment. In all three cases, however, the golfer must not do any advertising for the sponsor and the sponsor must not indicate support of the golfer. With respect to equipment, the player must not be required to use it and must not sell it. Contributed by Bernie Loehr, the manager for the Rules of Golf and amateur status at the United States Golf Association.
|
Golf;United States Golf Assn;Amateur Athletics;Loehr Bernie
|
ny0039398
|
[
"sports",
"hockey"
] |
2014/04/17
|
Rangers vs. Flyers: First-Round Series Preview
|
When the first-round playoff series between the Rangers and the Flyers begins Thursday at Madison Square Garden, the assumption is that Philadelphia will try to thump, crash and physically intimidate the Rangers. The evidence? First, the Flyers accumulated the most penalty minutes in the N.H.L. this season, while the Rangers finished 22nd. And then there is the whole Broad Street Bullies tradition. “They have a big alumni program there and they’re always around, so it’s always kind of in your face,” said Rangers forward Daniel Carcillo, referring to the Flyers’ frequent evocation of their brawling Stanley Cup teams of the mid-1970s. He would know, having spent three seasons as a Flyers tough guy. “It’s been a while for them,” Carcillo said. “I’m sure they’ll be hungry.” That’s it in a nutshell: two teams that started the season poorly but, using different approaches, finished strong. It’s run and gun versus smash and grab. The Rangers rely on puck movement and balanced scoring while playing “between the whistles,” as their playoff-seasoned coach, Alain Vigneault, puts it. The Flyers also rely on balanced scoring, but under their rookie coach, Craig Berube, they emphasize “being physical.” This series will probably not be as over the top as the 10 previous playoff series between the teams, which raged between 1974 and 1997. They included such touchstone moments as the Flyers’ Dave Schultz pummeling the Rangers’ Dale Rolfe in 1974; Rangers Coach Herb Brooks’s Smurfs, as Philadelphia Coach Bob McCammon derisively called them, sweeping the Flyers in 1983; and Eric Lindros’s Flyers sweeping Mark Messier’s defending Cup champions in 1995. The teams split the season series, 2-2, with the home team winning every game. Home-ice advantage could be critical for the Rangers because the Flyers have not won at Madison Square Garden since the 2010-11 season. Here’s how the teams match up: FORWARDS Chris Kreider (hand) remains out for the Rangers, but Derick Brassard, the team’s top playoff scorer last year, said he was ready to go after leaving practice early Tuesday with a back problem. Even if Rick Nash breaks through in his third career playoff appearance and Martin St. Louis recaptures the magic he left behind in Tampa Bay, the Rangers may be outgunned by Claude Giroux (86 points) and the six other Flyers who scored 20 or more goals. Edge: Flyers. DEFENSEMEN Ryan McDonagh will return to the Rangers’ lineup after a shoulder injury. McDonagh, Dan Girardi, Marc Staal and the rest of the defense frequently locked things down this season, helping the Rangers outshoot their opponents in 54 games. The Flyers have less mobile defensemen. Edge: Rangers. GOALIES Steve Mason is out with an upper-body injury for Game 1 and perhaps longer, so Ray Emery, with his shaky .903 save percentage, is in goal. Henrik Lundqvist and his backup Cam Talbot give the Rangers a big advantage. Edge: Rangers. SPECIAL TEAMS The Rangers and the Flyers are top-10 teams on the penalty kill, and are also fairly even on the power play. At equal strength the Rangers have a big edge, finishing plus-10 this season to Philadelphia’s minus-4. Edge: Rangers.
|
Ice hockey;Playoffs;Rangers;Flyers
|
ny0121029
|
[
"sports",
"olympics"
] |
2012/07/15
|
Faith Is Central to Marathoner Ryan Hall’s Approach
|
REDDING, Calif. — Ryan Hall rocked slightly, palms up, closing his eyes or singing softly to lyrics projected on giant screens at the evangelical Bethel Church. Other worshipers jubilantly raised their arms and swayed and jumped in the aisles. A band played onstage and a woman waved a fabric flag like a rhythmic gymnast. Thin and blond and boyish at 29 — flight attendants still asked his age when he sat in an exit row — Hall wore jeans and a blue shirt labeled with the shoe company that sponsored his running. At the 2011 Boston Marathon, he ran a personal best of 2 hours 4 minutes 58 seconds. No other American has run faster. The Boston course is not certified for record purposes because of its drop in elevation and its layout. Still, of the 29 fastest marathon performances in 2011 , Hall’s was the only one by a runner from a country other than Kenya or Ethiopia. His next marathon will come Aug. 12 at the London Olympics. On a Sunday in March, Hall firmly believed he could challenge the East Africans for a gold medal. “Light a fire in me for the whole world to see,” he sang. The Bible downloaded on his iPhone , Hall read along with Psalm 68: “Let God arise and his enemies be scattered.” He took notes as Bill Johnson, the pastor, casually hip in a sports coat and jeans, spoke to hundreds of worshipers about risk-taking, saying, “If you live cautiously, all your friends will call you wise, but you won’t move mountains.” The sermon seemed particularly resonant with Hall, a Stanford graduate with a degree in sociology, a surfer-dude mien and an approach to running that is experimental and unorthodox. He has pushed the boundaries of conventional training, seeking to confront the dominant East Africans and the unforgiving way that the fastest marathons have become something like 26.2-mile sprints. He coaches himself, running alone instead of with an elite training group here in Northern California, two hours above Sacramento, where the flat land of the Central Valley begins to buck and heave like a rodeo bull. For the Olympic marathon trials in January in Houston, Hall trained entirely at sea level, contravening a widely held belief that altitude training is necessary to increase oxygen-carrying capacity and enhance performance. Although he has incorporated some altitude training for the Olympics, Hall has headed to the highlands of Flagstaff, Ariz., for weeks, not months, at a time. He runs 100 miles a week instead of the typical 120, taking one day off each seven days. Every seven weeks, he runs once a day instead of twice, the standard regimen. Hall has yet to win a major marathon. He finished 10th at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. After taking fourth at Boston in the spring of 2011, he finished fifth at the Chicago Marathon last fall. His preparation for the London Games has been complicated by foot problems, disappointing tuneup races and an acknowledgment that his initial training strategy — to try to shatter the world record — did not work. But Hall remains flexible, adaptable. He has four weeks until the Olympic marathon to refine a new approach begun over the past month. “Sometimes, you have to fail your way to the top,” Hall said in his open, easy manner in March. “Thomas Edison found a thousand ways not to make a light bulb before he got it right.” Underpinning his running is his faith. The marathon is so isolating in its training, so impossibly fast at the elite level, so restricting to two performances a year for most top runners, that many athletes seek a purpose larger than themselves, something to believe in more than the numbing miles of roadwork. For some, it is their families or an escape from poverty. For others, it is their religion. “If you run without any reason, you are just chasing the wind,” said Wesley Korir, the reigning Boston Marathon champion from Kenya. During the 2011 Chicago Marathon, Hall began singing praise to the Lord. Freestyling, he called it. Korir joined in. “Come Lord Jesus, come,” the two runners sang as they ran. “Come Holy Spirit, come.” After finishing second at the 2011 United States half-marathon championships, Hall went to drug testing, a standard procedure. Asked on a form to list his coach, he wrote: God. You have to list the name of a real person, a doping official said. “He is a real person,” Hall responded. Conversing With God Bethel Church, formerly affiliated with the Assemblies of God or Pentecostal faith, is a charismatic evangelical Christian fellowship with more than 3,000 congregants. It promotes a direct, personal relationship with an unconditionally loving God and what it calls supernatural signs and wonders. These include speaking in tongues, prophecy, healings and miracles that are said by church officials to include the curing of cancer, regeneration of limbs, mending of broken bones and raising the dead. After the Sunday service in March, some worshipers came forward for healing ministry. Prayer teams circled them. Hands were laid on the spiritually and physically ailing. A few collapsed in apparent rapture in the presence of what they believed to be the Holy Spirit. “Just what Jesus demonstrated in the Bible , we really do believe it; we’re seeing it,” said Eric Johnson, 35, the senior leader of Bethel Church and the son of Bill Johnson, 61, the senior pastor. Eric Johnson also spoke of “a culture of honor,” serving your fellow man and living as Jesus lived. Hall donates prize money from his races to a nonprofit organization founded by himself and his wife, Sara, the national cross-country champion. The nonprofit, called the Steps Foundation , is dedicated to fighting global poverty through improved health. The Halls have financed running programs in the United States to help mentor disadvantaged youth and homeless adults. They have also worked with Korir to build a hospital in Kenya’s Rift Valley. As part of the so-called renewalist evangelical Christian movement, Bethel Church subscribes to a relationship with God that is not distant but intimate. Through prayer, charismatic evangelicals train their minds to converse with God, not unlike athletes who train their bodies to run marathons. They speak to God and believe that he speaks to them in return. “There’s a verse in the Bible that says we have the mind of Christ,” Sara Hall said. “When you believe you have the mind of Christ, God can work in your own thoughts. His thoughts become your thoughts.” At Bethel Church, God’s presence is felt in a number of ways, including what is said to be the appearance of feathers from angels’ wings and the manifestation of what is called a “glory cloud.” Hall said he and his wife had experienced a glory cloud on New Year’s night, likening the phenomenon to fireflies or the flashing of tiny fireworks. Others say it resembles gold dust. He had seen a YouTube version of the glory cloud and was somewhat skeptical, believing that it might be simply a cascade of dust from the ceiling of the church. His skepticism faded when he saw for himself. “I feel like I’ve experienced God in a lot of ways, but I’ve never seen a sign like that in such a tangible way,” Hall said. “I was like so sure it was God, that it was him doing it, because there was no explanation. I almost feel like we’re kids and he’s our dad and he’s kind of like having fun with us.” It is while running or thinking of running, Hall said, that he feels most conversant with and dependent on God. And it is through this professional excellence that Hall believes he is best able to show God to the world, to display his goodness and his love. Joe Bottom, who won a silver medal in swimming at the 1976 Montreal Games and attends Bethel Church, compared Hall’s Olympic pursuit to that of Eric Liddell , a Christian runner from Scotland who won the 400 meters at the 1924 Paris Games. Liddell’s story was featured in the movie “Chariots of Fire.” In the movie, Liddell is portrayed as saying, “I feel God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.” Bottom said in an e-mail: “It’s fulfilling, even exhilarating, to feel God’s pleasure in our willingness to pursue and occasionally fulfill the dreams He puts in our hearts and the purposes He built into us. Cooperating with that purpose and those dreams is the greatest fulfillment that one could experience.” Hall said that God spoke to him regularly, giving him training plans, even a race strategy for the London Olympics. He does not hear a voice; rather, he will pray or scroll through workouts in his head and a heightened thought will give him a sense of peace, grace, empowerment. Or a passage from the Bible will seem particularly relevant and urgent. Hall is still learning to distinguish his own thoughts from what he believes are God’s words to him. And sometimes, he has done workouts that in retrospect seem unwise — a thigh-shredding hill run in Flagstaff, a bicycle time trial a week after the Boston Marathon. But Hall has also found biblical reinforcement for his training. He takes one day off a week, just as God rested on the seventh day. Every seven weeks, for restoration he runs only once a day instead of twice, an allusion to Exodus 23:11 and the admonition that farmers should leave their fields fallow every seventh year. At night, he rubs his legs with anointing oil, another reference to Exodus and the belief that the human body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Hall bought — but did not immediately use — a weighted vest for uphill running, an idea gleaned from Judges 16:3 and Samson hoisting the doors of the city gate of Gaza on his shoulders and carrying them to the top of the hill facing Hebron. In spacing three days between his most arduous workouts, Hall refers to the Holy Trinity and the time that Jesus spent in the tomb; for him, this period represents resurrection, completeness, new life. “The Bible is not going to tell you how to be a good runner, just like it’s not going to tell you how to build a computer,” Sara Hall said. “I don’t think Ryan is looking at the Bible for a formula, necessarily. There are certain things that God highlights for him that he applies to his training. The majority is what he hears from God.” Some elite runners seem taken aback by Hall’s faith-based training. “So he really thinks God is saying, ‘Run 10 times 1,200 meters today,’ or ‘Take tomorrow off’?’ ” said Dathan Ritzenhein, who finished ninth in the marathon at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, one spot ahead of his countryman Hall. “Wow.” Hall’s belief in a direct conversation with God was not a fringe occurrence, said T. M. Luhrmann, a Stanford anthropologist who spent a decade researching charismatic evangelicals and wrote a recent, critically acclaimed book, “When God Talks Back.” Polls have shown that about a quarter of Americans have reported a direct revelation from God or have experienced a voice or a vision through prayer. “Just the way a well-parented child will carry with them the soothing voice of their mother and father, these folks are really trying to build God as that kind of personal relationship,” Luhrmann said in an interview. “It really does give an emotional buffer to people. It seems people are able to carry with them a sense of comforting reassurance and a sense of inspiration. So it’s not so alien as it seems.” A Runner’s Inspiration On Aug. 24, 2008, Hall reached the starting line of the Olympic marathon in Beijing, expecting, along with many others, that pollution, heat and humidity would slow the race. A moderate time of 2:09 might win the gold medal, he thought. The temperature at the start was 70 degrees, with 72 percent humidity. Through the race, the temperature rose to 84 degrees. Anything above 55 was considered less than ideal for a marathon. Still, Hall had anticipated this moment since he was a short, skinny eighth grader in Big Bear Lake, Calif. At the time, baseball was his passion. He wanted to emulate his father, Mickey, who was a pitcher at Pepperdine and was drafted by, but never signed with, the Baltimore Orioles. His father ran, too, as a triathlete. Ryan had loped through a mile in physical education class, but he dreamed of a career in baseball spikes, not racing flats. Mickey Hall said, “Every time Ryan went for a run, he’d come back and say, ‘I’m not a runner.’ ” Then, as Ryan rode with his teammates to a basketball game one day, Hall experienced what he described as a vision from God, urging him to run around the lake at Big Bear. The family was deeply religious, belonging to a Pentecostal church. The next weekend, wearing basketball shoes, Ryan and his father covered 15 miles. His father tried to dissuade him, but Ryan persisted. “He kept bugging me till he drove me crazy,” Mickey Hall, a teacher, said with a laugh. “I finally said, O.K., but this is a bad idea.” Ryan eventually grew tired, and his father stopped for cold drinks. Ryan remembers soaking his legs in the cold water of the lake. When he got home, he collapsed on the couch, exhausted but changed. Soon, Hall gave up other sports. He was now a runner. He went on to win multiple California high school championships, and an N.C.A.A. title at 5,000 meters at Stanford. “I felt like God was saying, ‘I’m giving you a gift to run with the best guys in the world, but I’m giving you that gift so you can help other people,’ ” Hall said. At a young age, he said he did not understand about helping people. But he understood, “O.K., I’m going to run in the Olympics one day.” That day had come in Beijing. Hall was considered a medal candidate. But he felt sluggish and when the gun sounded, his race plan crumbled. Sammy Wanjiru of Kenya had an entirely different, unanticipated strategy. He went out at a searing pace. This was a marathon, but it felt like a 10k race. “It’s like if you were to come out in a boxing match, kind of hoping to work into things and the guy comes out and, bam, pops you,” Hall said. He kept checking his mile splits. He was running fast and yet drifting so far back. “What’s going on?” he wondered. He felt dazed, hoping the lead pack would come back to him. It did not. Hall grew discouraged and quit checking his splits. A helicopter providing a television feed of the leaders kept moving farther down the road. Dejected, Hall finished 10th in 2:12:33. He was unable to watch a replay of the race for three years. Emotionally scarring, he called it. At the dining hall in the athletes’ village, Hall sought consolation by stuffing himself with cookies and other junk food. He saw the celebrative Wanjiru walking out with a handful of fruit. “I was like, ‘Just salt my wounds,’ ” Hall said. That night, he attended the closing ceremony at Bird’s Nest stadium. He found himself perhaps 50 feet away from the medal podium as Wanjiru had gold placed around his neck, Jaouad Gharib of Morocco received the silver, and Tsegaye Kebede of Ethiopia was awarded the bronze. “Man, I’m going to get myself there in four years,” Hall told himself. It would not be easy. Marathon running became something different in Beijing. Wanjiru broke the Olympic record by nearly three minutes, winning in 2:06:32. It was Kenya’s first gold medal in the marathon. Given the oppressive conditions, some considered it the greatest run ever. A certain fear of the distance had been lost. The best runners no longer thought they had to hold back at the start to conserve energy. Wanjiru would not live to defend his Olympic title in London. His personal life grew messy. He drank heavily by many accounts, and he died last year after a fall from a balcony at his home in circumstances that have never been resolved. Still, his effect on the marathon has been sweeping. Of the 24 sub-2:05 marathons that have been run internationally, 20 have come since Wanjiru’s blazing victory in Beijing. The current world record, set last September in Berlin by Patrick Makau of Kenya, is 2:03:38, a pace of about 4:43 per mile. At least one scientist has predicted that a sub-two-hour marathon is possible by 2015. “It’s almost like how we measure time — before Beijing how the marathon was and after Beijing how the marathon is,” Hall said. “People stopped being afraid. They are much more aggressive now. Guys just go for it.” Eventually, that defeat in Beijing changed from deflating to liberating for Hall. He embraced risk and lost his fear of failure. “I don’t see failure as a negative thing at all anymore, which is a huge shift for me,” he said. “I just see that as part of my training, my process, learning, experimenting, getting it wrong so that I can get it right.” ‘Pioneering a Movement’ The chill lifted on a March morning, and Hall removed his shirt under a bright sky. He loosened his legs with a three-mile run through a forest filled with fat, spiky pine cones. Then he began a steep trail climb. Power lines hummed above him. Pickup trucks labored behind on the rutted road. The descent became so precipitous that a bicyclist carrying water for Hall flipped over the handlebars and cut his head. Hall ran for 12 miles up and down the trail, his stride so light and long and elegant that he appeared to hover above the ground. Sometimes when he ran, he conjured the voice of British announcers: “He must be in a dreadful amount of pain now, but he must keep pushing.” Hall had begun to reassess his outlook toward running as he prepared for the Chicago Marathon in the fall of 2010. He felt fatigued, unable to complete his workouts. Later, he discovered that he had an underactive thyroid. He said that his longtime coach, the highly regarded Terrence Mahon, began to question his motivation, suggesting, “Maybe you just don’t want it the same way that you wanted it before.” Mahon said he believed Hall simply wanted to train alone, as he had as a young runner. In any case, Hall withdrew two weeks before the 2010 Chicago Marathon, worried that his career might be at an end. He left Mahon and his training group in Mammoth Lakes, Calif. “Once I knew he kind of lost faith in me a little bit, that was a real shifting point,” Hall said. “My coach has to believe in me. That’s the most important thing, probably.” About that time, Hall also began to feel what he called a “desperation for God,” a desire to make God a more constant part of his daily life, “to step out in faith and take risks with him.” At Stanford, with school and running going poorly, he had taken a semester off in the winter of 2003 to help redirect his life. “I was a runner who happened to be a Christian,” Hall said. “I needed to become a Christian who happened to be a runner.” Last August, Hall and his wife moved to Redding and joined Bethel Church. They had met at a meet in high school, both signing autographs annotated with biblical verses. They dated at Stanford and married shortly after graduation, nearly seven years ago. In 2009, Sara Hall first visited Bethel Church, frustrated over the inability of sports science to heal a bothersome injury to her Achilles’ tendon. She said she spent a few minutes in one of the church’s “healing rooms.” Hands were laid on her feet, prayers were said. Comforting words were spoken: “God just delights in watching you run; it doesn’t matter which place you finish.” Sara said she went for an hourlong run and her foot felt fine. The next day, she tested the tendon with repeats of 200 meters. Again, it was fine. The tendon problem has not returned. “I don’t even remember which one it was,” she said. Four afternoons a week, when in town, the Halls attend Bethel’s School of Supernatural Ministry, which is devoted to worship and the study of healing and prophecy. Before the Olympic trials, classmates ensured Ryan that he would qualify for London and told him, “You’re not running a race, you’re pioneering a movement.” Since moving to Redding, Ryan seemed happier, full of energy, free to improvise in his training and not so slavishly devoted to a particular workout schedule, Sara Hall said. “He used to say he was a dead man walking,” she said. The life of an Olympic marathon runner resembles a battery for a laptop computer. Each day is consumed with a repetitive draining and recharging of energy. The perfect athletes, Hall said, are his dogs, miniature huskies named Dash and Kai, who “do their morning stretches, eat right after they run and lay around and do nothing all day, conserving energy.” Hall loads up on carbohydrates immediately after his workouts and follows advice given to him by Mark Plaatjes , a native South African who became an American citizen and won the 1993 world marathon championship: eat as much as you can. “There are a lot of good runners who weigh more than 120 pounds,” Hall said. He visits a massage therapist and a chiropractor weekly and spends 90 minutes or more each day on what he calls self-therapy. He loads a sermon on his television or iPad and watches while he rolls his back and hips over a softball or lacrosse ball to relieve the tightness; stretches his left foot to manage swelling known as plantar fasciitis; rubs his legs with a tool that resembles a cake cutter to smooth the connective tissue surrounding the muscles; uses resistance bands for leg lifts; and strengthens his abdomen by exercising on blowup balls. Ryan and Sara sometimes run together on his easy days. Hall also trades ideas with his father, who coached him in high school. The risk of coaching himself is a lack of objectivity, Mahon, Hall’s former coach, said at the Olympic marathon trials. “It’s not easy to say, ‘I screwed up,’ ” Mahon said. “It’s easier when someone else says, ‘This is why, and we can change it.’ ” But some other elite marathoners coach themselves, including Makau, the world-record holder. “You can listen to your own body and take time to recover after training,” Makau said. “Sometimes, a coach pushes you too much.” Many elite marathoners would not dare skip altitude training, as Hall did for the Olympic trials. “We’re going to compete against those guys from Kenya” who grow up at altitude, said Meb Keflezighi, the 2004 Olympic silver medalist who defeated Hall at the 2012 trials . “Altitude’s important.” After the trials, Hall reconsidered and decided to do a limited amount of altitude training. At sea level, he can run faster and says he recovers quicker and sleeps better. And his church is at sea level. He has some fellow believers among American marathoners. Desiree Davila, who finished second at the 2011 Boston Marathon and will compete in the Olympics, does no altitude training. Scientists debate its effects. The variables that determine performance are complex, said Tim Noakes, an exercise physiologist at the University of Cape Town who served as an altitude expert for FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. “If you look at the literature, some people benefit and some get worse, and the general result is no effect,” Noakes said of altitude training. The placebo effect, though, can be significant, Noakes said. He urges those who believe in altitude training to continue and those who are skeptical to skip it. At the elite level of marathon running, he said, psychology probably plays a more crucial role than physiology. “The more stable you are as a human, the better you are as an athlete, and religion is a very stabilizing force,” Noakes said. “You don’t have doubts. God is looking after you. That’s incredibly powerful. If Ryan finds special strength in his religion, it’s much more important for him than training at altitude.” As his training for London began, Hall planned a longer, more gradual buildup to these Olympics than for Beijing. For the first time, he used a bicyclist as a pacesetter. And he skipped early speed training, feeling that interval work deadened his legs. Instead, he favored free-flowing, undulating runs, each meant to simulate race day. His workouts were infused with rest to keep his legs fresh. Hence the 100 miles of running a week, instead of the standard 120, and a rest day each seven days, rare for a marathon runner. “I’ve learned to challenge some of the things we just do blindly,” Hall said. “I feel like a lot of mileage just kills people. I wonder how many great runners are covering up their talent. They don’t have pop in their legs because they’re running a lot of junk. The marathon today is so fast, you’ve got to be fresh enough to run really fast in training.” God had given him a specific race plan for London, he said in March. He was reluctant to discuss the strategy at the time, saying only that it was rooted in the Bible and based on surprise. “I feel like the vision God has given me is like a golden puzzle, and all the pieces are coming together,” Hall said. But the pieces never quite meshed. His original plan, Hall said last week, was for an ambitious, even astonishing, breakthrough. He had intended to train to run the Olympic marathon at 4 minutes 40 seconds per mile, about 3 seconds faster per mile than the current world record . His plan was based on workouts his father had given him for a 2:02 marathon. And on confiding words from a friend in Redding, whose own conversations with God had revealed an astounding Olympic possibility. After all, in 2007, Hall had become the first American to run a half marathon in less than an hour (59:43). But he pushed himself too hard in his buildup toward London and his body stopped responding. He found it difficult to sustain his desired pace beyond four miles. “What I learned from this buildup is how to take prophetic words,” Hall said. “It’s more speaking of your potential than fortunetelling.” Shortly after the Olympic trials in January, Hall fasted for a week. Usually, he would have begun to gain 5 to 10 pounds, knowing that they would melt off when training resumed. But Hall was seeking more clarity in his communication with God before preparing for London. While he sensed a closer spiritual connection during his fast, he also lost weight and felt his body “got into a little hole.” His hormone levels were affected. In retrospect, he believes he remained too lean for a pair of poor tuneup races — a 10k in New York in mid-May and a half marathon in San Diego in early June. Upon further biblical reflection, Hall noted that in 1 Samuel 14:24, King Saul proclaimed a fast as Israel faced the Philistines in battle. But Israel’s victory was incomplete because its army was left in a weakened state. Hall’s pastor had admonished that fasting before such physical exertion was not the right approach, Hall said. At 5 feet 10 inches, he hopes to race at 138 pounds in London. “I had the right intention, but maybe I went about it the wrong way,” he said. Hall also came to believe that his lack of intensive speed work, based on 5k and 10k training, was detrimental to his Olympic marathon preparations. At the San Diego half marathon, he finished in 1:05:39, more than five minutes off his personal best. “In hindsight, I would have incorporated a lot more 5k and 10k training,” Hall said. He has begun doing more speed work in the past month, realizing “how important it is and how behind I am.” In San Diego, too, Hall reported a flare-up of plantar fasciitis, a painful swelling of the connective tissue on the bottom of his left foot. It had bothered him for two months leading to the Olympic trials. In March, he had a magnetic resonance imaging test. He also saw a podiatrist, who prescribed stretching, icing, an arch support and sound-wave therapy that causes microtrauma in the tissue and stimulates a healing response. By early May, Hall said his left foot still became tight and sore sometimes but that it was gradually improving. “I’m not really worried about it anymore,” he said. By early June, though, the injury was “worse than before.” He had begun favoring his right leg, and the imbalance led to discomfort in his right hamstring and hip. He had gone to a healing room at Bethel Church, seeking relief. One day, while Hall filmed a commercial, a police officer laid his hands on the sore foot and prayed for healing. Hall also continued shock-wave therapy, and by mid-June, the plantar fasciitis seemed to run its course, like a prolonged fever. “It’s a huge relief,” Hall said last week. “My stride is more normal. I feel I’m getting better pop off the ground.” Peers Weigh In Other American runners watch from afar with some mix of intrigue, admiration and skepticism. “When he decided to leave Terrence, we were all like, ‘Ooh, I don’t know how that’s going to go,’ ” said Kara Goucher, who will run the women’s Olympic marathon. “But Ryan has really impressed me with his consistency. He believes in what he is doing. As an athlete, that is everything. If you don’t, it’s a disaster.” It is O.K. to experiment, “but the racing has to back that up,” said Bobby Curtis, who finished 15th at the 2011 New York City Marathon . “He’ll prove everybody wrong if for the next three years he’s the same Ryan Hall . But it will be fuel for the fire for a lot of people who are critical of him if he doesn’t continue at that same level.” Among the most interested observers is Alberto Salazar, a former American marathoner who now coaches elite athletes. He, too, is a renowned tinkerer whose Catholic faith played a significant role in his career. Salazar said he had the utmost respect for Hall, but also believed that God wanted his followers to take responsibility for their daily actions and “not depend on him for the answer to everything.” “I don’t believe God is necessarily interested in what workouts I should give my runners,” Salazar said. At the same time, he said, “I may not understand how Ryan believes, but what I respect him for tremendously is that he has the guts to share his faith.” Hall does not appear defensive about challenges to his beliefs. Instead, he seems to relish the discussion. He does not view his reliance on God as an abdication of responsibility but as a means of empowerment. “I’m my own toughest critic,” Hall said. “I’ve messed up, but the mistake wasn’t on God’s end. I really believe God is always wanting to speak to me and reveal secrets to me and tell me what I need to be doing. I just mess it up sometimes. “I’m very open about saying I don’t have it all figured out,” Hall said. “I don’t necessarily feel I’ve hit a marathon completely right yet. But I don’t think that’s a reflection of some character flaw. I’ve learned to see myself as God sees me. We believe God sees us as perfect, almost as if we have a Jesus suit on, because he died for us and took away our sins. “If that’s how the creator of the universe sees me, that’s a very honoring thing,” Hall said. “It builds your confidence. It makes you see yourself in a very good light. I don’t have a lot of issues with my identity.” He has begun to compress his training, placing two days between his hardest workouts instead of three. And he has quit wearing a watch while he trains, so he will not be discouraged by slow splits or inhibited by fast ones. He says he does not plan on wearing a watch in London, either. He feels unbound this way, running for the joy of it, more closely connected with God. What to expect now at the Olympics? Hall admits that he is hopeful and uncertain. He had hoped to be further along in training. It is difficult to gauge where he stands. But his marathon preparations usually coalesce in the final month. His wife did not qualify for London in the steeplechase, so Hall will skip the opening ceremony, spending extra time at altitude in Flagstaff. He said he would arrive at the start line with “no expectations and zero limitations.” His spiritual growth, he said, has freed him from caution and a dependence on results for his happiness. “It’s going to take a special day,” Hall said of his gold medal chances. “But I feel like I went for it, regardless of how the race goes. I’ll always look back on this as a season of joy. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s part of the fun of life, taking some chances and seeing what happens.”
|
Hall Ryan;Hall Sara;Olympic Games (2012);Marathon Running;United States;Christians and Christianity
|
ny0164714
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2006/10/19
|
Clinton Reflects on His 2 Terms and Hits Hard at Republicans
|
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 — With fewer than three weeks until the midterm elections, former President Bill Clinton resumed his role as chief communicator of the Democratic Party on Wednesday in a speech that wrapped policy objectives in soaring rhetoric about bringing Americans together behind a single purpose. Under the banner of securing the “common good,” Mr. Clinton reflected on his eight years in office as a time of effective governance and pressed Democrats to fight back against Republican claims of moral superiority. In a speech designed to commemorate his policy addresses from his presidential campaign 15 years earlier, Mr. Clinton did not prescribe remedies for his party or give expansive advice about the 2008 presidential campaign. And his advisers insisted that the speech, at Georgetown University, was not tied to any presidential aspirations of his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton . Instead, Mr. Clinton’s advisers said, the address was an effort to convey the purpose of his two terms under a single heading. Mr. Clinton reviewed many of the themes of his own political career, especially that of leveling the economic playing field for all Americans. He portrayed Republicans as reactionary extremists who have been effective at winning elections but not running the country. And he urged greater dialogue between the two sides, to reach consensus and hear each other’s views. “Not that we want a bland, mushy, meaningless politics — we like our debates,” Mr. Clinton said. “The country has been well served by its progressive and conservative traditions. We understand that campaigns will be heated, but we want it to be connected somehow to the real lives of real people, to the aspirations of ordinary Americans.” He continued: “This sort of politics — striving for a common good — for me stands in stark contrast to both the political and governing philosophy of the leadership in Washington today and for the last six years.” “The more ideological, right-wing element of the Republican Party has been building strength, partly in reaction to things that happened 40 years ago,” Mr. Clinton said. The speech, delivered at his alma mater, was the keynote address at a seminar sponsored by a research organization, the Center for American Progress, directed by Mr. Clinton’s former chief of staff, John Podesta. John Halpin, a scholar at the center who worked on the conference, said Mr. Clinton’s message helped fill a void left by Congressional Democrats, who have, in recent elections, failed to put their messages under a single, comprehensible umbrella that voters can understand. “I don’t think we’ve gotten a lot of foundational leadership from the Hill on this,” Mr. Halpin said. “I think a lot of people are still stuck in this mindset of projecting a litany of policy solutions.”
|
Clinton Bill;Democratic Party;Clinton Hillary Rodham;United States Politics and Government
|
ny0283640
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2016/07/06
|
Baseball Is a Frustrating Sport. Sometimes, the Players Need to Vent.
|
Professional sports are emotional by nature, adrenaline pumping during high levels of physical exertion. Baseball, a sport that revolves around failure, is particularly emotive. “You’re out there giving 100 percent, and when things don’t go your way, it gets frustrating,” Mets starter Jacob deGrom said. Consider the case of Wilmer Flores and his helmet. Before he turned into Ted Williams on Sunday as the Mets capped a four-game sweep of the Chicago Cubs, they trailed by two runs in the fifth inning of Thursday’s game. Flores scorched a line drive that could have sparked a rally, but Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant snared it, diving to his left. In the Mets’ dugout afterward, Flores cracked, and so did his helmet when he furiously slammed it against the bat rack. “It split open,” Flores said later, smiling. “I don’t know how it broke, but for my next at-bat I had a new helmet.” In a sport in which even the best of hitters fail most of the time, managing emotions is a daily struggle. Baseball history is littered with memorable moments of anger-letting: David Ortiz demolishing the bullpen phone at Camden Yards with a bat; Paul O’Neill pummeling the water cooler in the dugout or taking a bat to the toilet paper dispenser in the Yankee Stadium bathroom; Bo Jackson breaking his bat over his helmet ; Kevin Brown breaking his hand by punching a clubhouse wall. Image A heavy bag in a dugout tunnel at Turner Field in Atlanta. The Braves’ longtime visiting clubhouse manager, John Holland, installed it after seeing an angry player use one in Milwaukee. “We’re tying to minimize the damage,” he said. Credit James Wagner/The New York Times The 2016 Mets have not been immune to such moments. “We’ve hit some coolers, we’ve kicked some trash cans and we’ve sat down and dealt with it,” Mets Manager Terry Collins said before adding this about the home dugout at Citi Field: “We’re very lucky that we have a stairwell that goes down and has a nice big space where there are some frustrations taken out once in a while.” During the past two months of inconsistent offense, the Mets have visited two stadiums that have built-in spots for venting. Hanging from the ceiling of the bathroom of the visitors’ dugout at Miller Park in Milwaukee is an old Everlast heavy bag, a piece of equipment usually associated with boxing. “I’ve beaten that bag up a few times,” said Mets second baseman Neil Walker, who made many trips there in his years with the Pittsburgh Pirates. There is a similar punching bag in the visitors’ dugout tunnel at Turner Field. The Atlanta Braves’ longtime visitors’ clubhouse manager, John Holland, installed it almost 10 years ago after seeing an angry player use the bag in Milwaukee. “We’re tying to minimize the damage,” he said. The punching bag is so hard that warnings cover it. “Be Careful” and “No Direct Fists!” are written on one side in permanent marker. “Use at Your Own Risk!” is written on the other. “You can kick it,” Walker said of the similarly hard bag at Miller Park. “You can hit it, just not straight on.” Braves outfielder Jeff Francoeur knows about both punching bags, but he prefers another way to release his emotions during a game. “I go down the tunnel, find a wall and I just throw my bat,” he said. “I don’t do anything else because I don’t want it to hurt. I just let it snap and then I’m good. It’s the bat’s fault, not my fault.” The danger in losing control of one’s emotions is injuries. Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper needed stitches in 2012 for a cut above his left eye when he slammed his bat against a wall at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati and it recoiled. Three years later, his teammate Drew Storen, a relief pitcher, broke his right thumb when he hit his locker after giving up a go-ahead home run to the Mets slugger Yoenis Cespedes as the Nationals were swept in a key September series. “In this game, you’re going to have failure,” Nationals starter Max Scherzer said. “It’s going to be in your face, and how you’re going to handle it is how you’re going to get better. Kicking stuff, breaking stuff, breaking your hand, that’s somebody who can’t handle the failure properly.” When he was with the Detroit Tigers, Scherzer was so mad about giving up a home run on an outside pitch to his nemesis Shin-Soo Choo that he kicked a table in the clubhouse between innings. He felt something in his left ankle but finished the game without any problems. From then on, Scherzer vowed to kick only air-filled elastic workout balls — and he said he had not even done that in a while. “We’ve all had our moments when we’ve gone nuts on something somewhere,” said Kelly Johnson, a veteran utility player for the Mets. DeGrom said that he was usually able to rein in his emotions but that he, too, fell into the same trap as Scherzer: He punched a plastic cooler with his throwing hand after a start last season. “If I broke my hand, was it really worth it?” deGrom said. “After you do that, you realize it’s dumb. What happened out there is already over with.” Image Yankees pitcher Kevin Brown spoke to the news media in 2004 after he injured his nonpitching hand by punching a wall. Credit Bernie Nunez/Getty Images With time, Mets shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera said, players learn to minimize their waves of frustration. Early in his career, he said, he threw his helmet or bat. Now, he takes it out on his batting gloves. He wants to set a good example. “I have a kid who watches my games,” he said. “A lot of kids watch the games. I don’t want kids to see that anger. We’re stars for them.” Francoeur said misbehavior after failure could linger into future at-bats. Cespedes, who has had a lot of success in a Mets uniform, said he preferred to be constructive after mistakes rather than destructive. “I go sit down and think about what I did wrong so that the next time I can do better,” he said. Some players simply have different personalities, like the Cubs’ veteran starter John Lackey, who is known for yelling at himself, his manager and his opponents while on the mound. After infuriating starts, Lackey said, he has had to tip the clubhouse assistants for damaging tables and chairs. “I’ve been doing this a long time,” he said. “I’ve done all kinds of stuff.” In a recent Mets moment of futility, the struggling outfielder Alejandro De Aza popped up a bunt, did not immediately run because he was tossing his bat, and was thrown out at first base for a double play. For the first time in his nine-year career in the majors, De Aza said, he flipped out and screamed in the dugout tunnel at Turner Field. He forgot about the punching bag. Had he remembered it, he would have used it. “The helmet was going to pay a price, but it slipped out of my hand when I wanted to throw it,” he said.
|
Baseball;Mets;Kevin Brown;Alejandro De Aza;Bryce Harper;Jeff Francoeur;Jacob deGrom;Yoenis Cespedes;Emotion
|
ny0202797
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2009/08/16
|
Moussavi Forms ‘Grass-Roots’ Movement in Iran
|
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The Iranian opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi announced the formation of a new social and political movement on his Web site on Saturday, following through on a promise made last month and defying a renewed government campaign of intimidation aimed at him and his supporters. The movement is not a political party — which would require a government permit — but a “grass-roots and social network” that will promote democracy and adherence to the law, Mr. Moussavi wrote in a statement on his site. It is to be known as the Green Way of Hope, in deference to the signature bright green color of his campaign for the June 12 presidential election, which he maintains was rigged in favor of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The announcement was Mr. Moussavi’s first major public statement since the Iranian authorities stepped up their pressure on the opposition by opening a mass trial two weeks ago . Prosecutors have accused Mr. Moussavi’s campaign of links to a vast conspiracy to bring down the Iranian government. After he and many others denounced the trial, the chief prosecutor issued a stark warning that anyone questioning the trial’s legitimacy could in turn be prosecuted. Since then, a stream of hard-line lawmakers and clerics have called for Mr. Moussavi and other leading opposition figures to be arrested and tried. Mr. Moussavi said little in his statement about the mission and activities of the new movement, perhaps to avoid giving pretexts for a further crackdown and to keep its potential membership as broad as possible. In recent weeks, outrage about the abuse of jailed protesters — including some who died in custody — has spread from opposition members to many conservatives. The controversy has grown even more volatile in the past week, since the reformist cleric and presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi first raised accusations that some male and female prisoners had been raped. Hard-line clerics and the speaker of Parliament have vehemently denied the claim , and there have been calls for Mr. Karroubi to be arrested, too. A third session of the mass political trial was set to begin Sunday morning, with 25 new defendants, Press TV reported. Previous sessions have included confessions by prominent reformists whose friends and relatives said they had been coerced through torture. Last week, a French researcher and an Iranian employee of the British Embassy in Tehran were forced to take the stand and apologize for their efforts to report on Iran ’s turmoil, prompting angry protests from Britain and France. In his announcement, Mr. Moussavi countered efforts to portray him as a tool of secular foreigners, affirming his support for institutions like the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij militia, despite the fact that they are widely believed to be in charge of the current crackdown. But he also lashed out at the recent threats aimed at him and his supporters, saying, “Instead of accusing this millions-strong group, you should look to those who have created a poisonous propaganda war that served the interests of the enemy.” Also on Saturday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appointed Sadeq Larijani as the new chief of the judiciary, replacing Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, a conservative. Mr. Larijani, another conservative and member of Iran’s powerful Guardian Council, is a brother of Ali Larijani, the Parliament speaker. The appointment came as Ayatollah Shahroudi’s term ended and does not appear to be related to the recent controversy over prison abuse and prosecutions of protesters.
|
Moussavi Mir Hussein;Politics and Government;Iran;Demonstrations and Riots
|
ny0288834
|
[
"business",
"dealbook"
] |
2016/08/13
|
Foot-Dragging on Volcker Rule Gives Banks’ Critics Ammunition
|
Wall Street’s procrastination only gives opponents another reason to act. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and other banks want the Federal Reserve to give them until 2022 to offload investments banned by the Volcker Rule. They have already had six years to do so, during which time the stock market has doubled. Asking for such a long delay may lead to unwanted consequences. The request may have its merits. Many of the holdings are harder to get rid of than run-of-the-mill stocks and bonds. They also may be subject to contractual obligations that limit how and when they can be sold. And there is a chance that next summer’s deadline might force banks to accept discounted prices. That is a concern for shareholders, however, not regulators. The $7 billion of affected investments at Goldman and the $3.2 billion at Morgan Stanley would hurt earnings if sold at a loss, but should not put a strain on capital. The broader issue is that banks have had plenty of time to get their houses in order. The Volcker Rule was part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank legislation aimed at reducing risks banks pose to the financial system. Although it did not take effect for another few years, most institutions quickly closed other affected units, such as proprietary trading. Further delays will come off as banks again trying to avoid rules and oversight. They already have the likes of Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders pushing for breakups and both political parties talking about reinstating the Depression-era Glass-Steagall law that separated commercial and investment banking. By dragging their feet on the Volcker Rule, bankers may give those initiatives momentum.
|
Regulation and Deregulation;Goldman Sachs Group;Morgan Stanley;JPMorgan Chase;Dodd Frank
|
ny0249327
|
[
"world",
"americas"
] |
2011/05/14
|
Poet Javier Sicilia Condemns Mexico’s Drug Violence
|
MEXICO CITY As a poet, novelist and essayist, Javier Sicilia tapped a deep strain of Catholicism to obsess over “the mystery of God in a broken world,” as he put it two years ago when he was awarded Mexico ’s top poetry prize. Now that his own world had been shattered by the killing of his son in March — an innocent, the police said, caught up in a drug-trafficking attack that captivated the nation — Mr. Sicilia, 56, said he had kept his faith but had felt it sink to a “dark, deep place.” So he turned to that other mystery, poetry. After burying his son, Juan Francisco, 24, a university student who was found bound and shot along with six friends in the city of Cuernavaca, Mr. Sicilia stood before well-wishers and read his latest work, an ode to his son: The world is not worthy of words they have been suffocated from the inside as they suffocated you, as they tore apart your lungs ... the pain does not leave me all that remains is a world through the silence of the righteous, only through your silence and my silence, Juanelo. Then, Mr. Sicilia, one of the country’s most acclaimed poets, told those who had gathered that they had just heard the last poem he would ever write. “Poetry doesn’t exist in me anymore,” he explained later in an interview. But that does not mean Mr. Sicilia has any intention of remaining quiet. Since his unlikely tragedy, he has led two marches with the slogan “¡Hasta la madre!” — which roughly translates as “We have had it!” — and has issued a series of public denunciations, providing an exclamation point to this country’s campaign against drug cartel violence, which has left nearly 40,000 people dead in the four years since President Felipe Calderón began a crackdown on organized crime. “What my son did was give a name and a face to the 40,000 dead,” Mr. Sicilia said. “My pain gave a face to the pain of other families. I think a country is like a house, and the destruction of someone is the destruction of our families.” Previous mass demonstrations here claiming to be the vanguard of a new movement against violence eventually petered out, with mixed results. Mr. Sicilia’s own call for the resignation of Mr. Calderón’s public safety director went nowhere. But Mr. Sicilia, not a household name here but well known in political and media circles through his literature and regular columns in Proceso magazine, has achieved what others have failed to do: he has provoked serial public responses from the Calderón administration. Mr. Calderón appeared on national television a couple of days before the most recent march, on Sunday, both to defend his policies and express sympathy for the victims, including the more than 300 whose bodies have been dug up from mass graves in two states in recent weeks. As he left Monday on a trip to New York and Washington, Mr. Calderón issued five messages on Twitter expressing solidarity with the marchers. “I celebrate the March for Peace, and its legitimate and just intentions to put an end to the problem of insecurity,” said one. Others called for a national dialogue to find solutions to the crisis. Mr. Calderón also met privately with Mr. Sicilia more than a week ago, and Mr. Sicilia said he had extracted a confession of sorts from the president. “He said, ‘I agree I made a mistake but I can’t go back now,’ ” Mr. Sicilia said in an interview. He said Mr. Calderón agreed that he should have focused more on rebuilding the nation’s social and judicial institutions than on battering the cartels with the military and federal police. A spokesman for Mr. Calderón gave a different account, though, saying he might have critiqued a policy point or two but had never expressed regret over his strategy and remained committed to it. WHATEVER the case, Mr. Sicilia has kept up his campaign, which seeks a “pact” between citizens and political leaders to thoroughly investigate the drug war deaths, de-emphasize combat with cartels in favor of fighting corruption and impunity, and put more attention on youth and social services. He has called for the legalization of drugs (though, contrary to reports on social networking Web sites, he said he did not smoke marijuana or use other illicit narcotics), scolded the United States as not doing enough to curb consumption and halt the flow of guns to Mexico and suggested that the government negotiate with cartels to leave civilians out of the conflict. Mr. Sicilia is a somewhat unvarnished, reluctant figurehead leading the charge. At a news conference on Thursday, balding and bespectacled and wearing a rumpled checkered shirt, he took several puffs from a cigarette as he spoke before more than a dozen cameras (and later smoked several more during an hourlong interview). He said he did not belong to any of the major political parties — “I am an anarchist, in the good sense of the word” — but had participated in demonstrations before, mostly for causes dear to the left. Until a few weeks ago, he did not even have a cellphone, but one now trilled incessantly as he made plans for the next step, including a caravan to Ciudad Juárez, the border city that is Mexico’s most violent, next month. He admitted to being anguished that he had never received this kind of notice for his works. Mr. Sicilia said that growing up in Mexico City, the son of a poet who was very pious, he considered the priesthood but that literature pulled him harder. He has thought of his writings, particularly his poetry, as a form of preaching, and figures with conflicted souls permeate his works. They include the poetry collections “Gold” in 1990, “Trinity” in 1992, “Resurrection” in 1995 and “Desert Triptych” in 2009, which won the Premio de Poesía Aguascalientes, one of the country’s most prestigious literature prizes. He has also been a political analyst for Proceso and other magazines, hurling darts at leaders of almost all political stripes. HE declined to single out any work as his masterpiece — “They are like children, you cannot say you prefer one over another” — but he said his current circumstances reminded him most of one of his novels, “Reflection of the Dark,” published in 1997. It tells a story of redemption and faith through a lawyer bent on saving both the neck and soul of his client, a materialistic young man facing death for killing a police officer. “It reflects the theme of pain in a crime’s wake,” he said. Mr. Sicilia was at a literary conference in the Philippines when he received word of his son’s death. He reached for and nearly smoked a pack of cigarettes on the spot and looked skyward with the inevitable question: Why? “There is no response to ‘why?’ ” he said. “It is part of the mystery to me. It is only revealed when you die.”
|
Javier Sicilia;Mexico;Drug Cartels;Poetry and Poets;Politics and Government
|
ny0173742
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2007/10/20
|
After Bombing, Bhutto Assails Officials’ Ties
|
KARACHI, Pakistan , Oct. 19 — Looking pale and shaken the day after she survived a suicide bomb attack, the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto said Friday that she had warned the Pakistani government that suicide bomb squads were going to go after her on her return to the country and that it had failed to act on the information. Ms. Bhutto did not blame the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf , for the bomb blasts and said extremist Islamic groups who wanted to take over the country were behind the attacks, which killed 134 people. But she pointed the finger at government officials who she said were sympathetic to the militants and were abusing their powers to advance their cause. She did not identify them on Friday, but said she had in a letter to the government this Tuesday. It was not clear if she was implicating the officials directly or accusing them of dragging their feet on her warning. “I am not accusing the government, but I am accusing certain individuals who abuse their positions, who abuse their powers,” she said at a news conference of hundreds of journalists in the garden of her home in Clifton, an upscale neighborhood of the southern port city of Karachi. “I know in my heart who my enemies are,” she added. “There is a poem that says that even if you hide yourself behind seven veils, I can still see your hand.” While it was not possible to assess the veracity of Ms. Bhutto’s charges, she has long accused parts of the government, namely Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, of working against her and her party because they oppose her liberal, secular agenda. Aides close to Ms. Bhutto said that one of those named in the letter was Ijaz Shah, the director general of the Intelligence Bureau, another of the country’s intelligence agencies and a close associate of General Musharraf. Mr. Shah hung up when asked by telephone for a reaction to the allegations. Ms. Bhutto seemed careful on Friday not to implicate General Musharraf, taking pains for the time being to preserve the power-sharing arrangement that allowed her to return to Pakistan, and which may make her prime minister for a third time after parliamentary elections in January. She spoke to the president by telephone on Friday. The ISI has for decades backed militant Islamic groups in Kashmir and in Afghanistan in pursuit of a military strategy established by the former military dictator, Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, in the 1970s. “I know exactly who wants to kill me,” Ms. Bhutto said. “It is dignitaries of the former regime of General Zia who are today behind the extremism and the fanaticism.” Before her return, she said a “brotherly country,” which she did not identify, warned her that several suicide squads were plotting attacks against her — one from a Taliban group, one from Al Qaeda, one from Pakistani Taliban and one from Karachi. That friendly government, she said, had also supplied Pakistan’s government with telephone numbers the plotters were using. “I would hope with so much information in their hands the government would have been able to apprehend them,” she said, “but I can understand the difficulties.” Aware of the risks she faced, she said she sent General Musharraf the letter two days before her return, naming “three individuals and more” who should be investigated for their sympathies with the militants in case she was assassinated. She added that there were more plots against her, including one to infiltrate police guarding her homes in Karachi and the rural district of Larkana in order to mount attacks “in the garb of a rival political party.” Ms. Bhutto said the street lamps had been turned off Thursday night as her cavalcade inched its way through Karachi, amid perhaps as many as 200,000 supporters and party workers who had turned out to celebrate her return after eight years of self-imposed exile to avoid corruption charges. The darkness made it difficult, she said, for her security officials to scan the crowd for possible bombers. She did not accuse the government of turning off the lights, but demanded an investigation. A security official said the government was investigating which group was behind the blasts, and said that five groups of militants from Pakistan’s tribal areas, on the Afghan border, had trained and dispatched suicide bombers for her arrival. The details of the attack remained disputed on Friday. Ms. Bhutto implied that the two blasts were set off by two bombers. Government officials, who updated the toll to 134 killed and about 450 wounded, said the explosions were caused by one bomber on foot who first detonated a grenade and then blew himself up, scattering a lethal mix of screws, pellets and shrapnel into the dense crowd massed around Ms. Bhutto’s armored truck. “We have no doubt it was a suicide attack,” the home secretary of Sindh province, Ghulam Muhammad Mohtarem, a retired brigadier, said Friday at a news conference, flanked by the Karachi police chief and other high-ranking police officials. The target, he agreed, was Ms. Bhutto. “It can’t be definitively said which group was involved but it is one of the extremist groups,” he said. Baitullah Mehsud, a pro-Taliban militant commander from Pakistan’s tribal areas, who has been accused of threatening to send bombers after Ms. Bhutto, denied that he was involved, Reuters reported. Ms. Bhutto said the attack was more than an assassination attempt on her, and represented the broader aims of Islamist terrorism. “The attack was not on me,” she said, “the attack was on what I represent, it was an attack on democracy, by those who are against the unity and integrity of Pakistan.” The blasts killed 50 of the security guards from her Pakistan People’s Party who had formed a human chain around her truck to keep potential bombers away, Ms. Bhutto said. A woman and a small child were among the dead, she said. A number of senior officials on the truck were also wounded. Officials said six police officers were killed and 20 wounded. Ms. Bhutto said she had been sitting down at the back of the truck to relieve her swollen feet, and to go over a speech with her political assistant, and so had avoided the force of the blast. She vowed that she would not be deterred by the attack. “They are saying peace-loving people are not safe to gather,” she said of the militants. “A minority wants to hijack the destiny of this great nation. And we will not be intimidated by this minority.” “I know who the forces are of militancy, and I know they want to kill me because they are cowards,” she added. “They cannot face the people of Pakistan in the political field.” She said she had thanked people in the government who also have given her warnings of plots. She appealed for them to continue passing her information. General Musharraf called Ms. Bhutto on Friday, expressed his “shock and profound grief” and prayed for the safety and security of Ms. Bhutto, the government news agency, the Associated Press of Pakistan, reported. “The president expressed his firm resolve that all possible steps would be taken and a thorough investigation would be carried out to bring the perpetrators to justice,” the news agency said. It added that the president had ordered law enforcement authorities to track down the mastermind of the bombings within 48 hours, and had offered a force of special services commandos trained by the United States to Ms. Bhutto for her protection. Karachi was almost deserted Friday in the aftermath of the attack. Almost all shopping malls and business centers closed for fear of more violence. A crowd gathered at the scene of the blasts to offer prayers on the blood-stained median dividing the road. The heavy smell of dead bodies hung in the air. At a morgue run by the Edhi Foundation, a private relief organization, bodies wrapped in white shrouds were brought in from hospitals around the city. Distraught relatives milled around to inquire about the dead and missing, covering their noses to escape the stench. Ali Muhammad, 45, a driver, was standing with reddened eyes near the information room on Friday at noon. He said his 18-year-old nephew Zohaib had been missing since last night. “We searched in every hospital,” he said, close to tears. “We inquired from every police station. It’s only just now that we have located him here. The body is all blood.”
|
Pakistan;Bhutto Benazir;Bombs and Explosives;Politics and Government;Terrorism;Musharraf Pervez
|
ny0000921
|
[
"sports",
"rugby"
] |
2013/03/16
|
England and Wales to Settle Six Nations Championship
|
Joseph Mallalieu, the noted former British Labor Party politician, journalist and author, once said of a Wales-vs.-England rugby match: “A supreme moment in international rugby football, but it comes only once every two years.” That supreme moment will come Saturday in Cardiff, Wales, under unprecedented circumstances. England has been visiting Wales for 131 years but has never had the chance to clinch a Grand Slam — winning every match — on Welsh soil. Nor has Wales had the chance to thwart its ancestral rival on its home territory. By itself, that would be enough to make the match the biggest in Europe this year. But it has another dimension. While England leads the European Six Nations championship with four victories out of four, Wales can still snatch the title for itself under the points-difference tiebreaker, if it wins by seven points or more. Should Wales achieve that, it will claim consecutive titles for the first time since 1979, at the end of one of its two acknowledged golden ages. It is an outcome nobody thought possible after Round 1 of the tournament. Wales had been beaten 30-22 at home by Ireland, taking a losing streak begun last summer in Australia and continued through a gloomy autumn program to eight matches. “You don’t become a bad team overnight,” said interim coach Rob Howley, pointing out that most of the same players reached the semifinal of the 2011 World Cup and won a Six Nations Grand Slam in 2012. But some wondered whether it might have happened over eight matches. In any case, with three consecutive road matches to follow, Wales’s title defense looked over before it had started. But it won all three — first beating perennial contender France in Paris, then Italy and last week, Scotland. But it has not been pretty. Wales, which traditionally prizes attractive rugby, has instead taken “winning ugly” to new levels. But a physical game based on unrelenting defense has proved ideal for the conditions — rain, wind and Arctic cold. Wales has not conceded a try since Brian O’Driscoll crossed for Ireland just after halftime in Cardiff, 277 minutes or nearly three and a half matches ago. “Rob has done a strong job, and I am staggered he was ever questioned,” Shaun Edwards, Wales’s smart, chippy defensive coach, said in the past week. “But Rob is a very resilient person, which you have to be in life and sport.” Edwards himself is English, but the contribution of his defensive strategies to two Grand Slam-winning Wales teams, in 2008 and 2012, and his part in the transformation this season have made him a Welsh hero. His England counterpart, Andy Farrell, was his teammate in the legendary Wigan Rugby League teams of the 1990s, but both have played down any rivalry. “Andy and I are not playing,” Edwards pointed out. “It’s a player’s game and always will be. It is not about us.” In considering the players, Edwards noted that the Welsh have much more big-match experience. Twelve of its 15 starters for Saturday played the Grand Slam clincher against France a year ago. “Most of our team has played in a Grand Slam game, some two or three, and also in a World Cup semifinal,” Edwards said. “I’m pleased we’ve had the experience and hope it helps us.” Wales will be led by its third captain of the tournament. The veteran prop forward Gethin Jenkins has taken over after a shoulder injury to Ryan Jones, who succeeded Sam Warburton earlier in the tournament. England has been the best, most consistent, team so far. However, its 18-11 victory over Italy last Sunday was its weakest performance. It has been 10 years since England last won a Grand Slam — with a team that went on to win the World Cup that year — and two since it got close, falling at the final hurdle in Ireland in 2011. Only a handful of players survive from that near miss. “It is going to be a very tough, physical battle, especially with what is at stake,” said the England center, Brad Barritt. That includes not only the Grand Slam and title, but places with the British and Irish Lions all-star squad to tour Australia. Its coach, Warren Gatland, said in the past week that about a third of the 37 tour places could still be up for grabs. Wales hopes that the most fervent crowd atmosphere for any Six Nations match-up works in its favor. A near-deadheat in head to heads — England leads by 56 victories to 55 — makes rugby a rare field in which it can demand respect from the much larger neighbor that defines its national identity. “There’s always pressure on the home team,” said the England center Manu Tuilagi, hoping instead to see Wales inhibited by the enthusiasm of its fans. As he pointed out: “We haven’t lost away in the Six Nations for two years.” The South African-born Barritt spoke for all of England when he said that getting so close and not winning the Slam “would be a massive shame.” One quite likely outcome would disappoint everybody — a narrow Welsh victory denying England the Slam, but leaving the host without a prize except for thwarting the old enemy.
|
2011 Rugby World Cup;Rugby
|
ny0084998
|
[
"business",
"international"
] |
2015/10/22
|
Bank of England Chief Takes Cautious Tone on E.U. Membership
|
LONDON — On the same day that an important business group announced its full-throated support for continued British membership in the European Union, the governor of the Bank of England gave a positive, if more cautious, assessment. Speaking on Wednesday at Oxford University, the central bank’s chief, Mark Carney, stressed that he was not giving an overall verdict on membership but remarking on its implications for the bank. The question of staying in the union will be determined by a referendum before the end of 2017. “Overall European Union membership has increased the openness of the U.K. economy, facilitating dynamism but also creating some monetary and financial stability challenges for the Bank of England to manage,” he said. “Thus far, we have been able to meet these challenges.” Mr. Carney said that after the euro crisis, Britain’s openness had made it vulnerable to shocks and that the union should have “clear principles to safeguard the interests of non-euro member states,” like Britain. Aside from his status as a central bank governor, Mr. Carney may prove to be an influential player in the debate partly because, as a Canadian, he is a relative newcomer to Britain’s agonized internal debate about its place in Europe. Opinion polls tend to show Britain evenly divided on membership of the European Union, and a study this week by Natcen , a social research institute, said that younger and better-educated voters tended to be more opposed to British withdrawal. Those campaigning for Britain to stay in the European Union pin many of their hopes on an economic case. On Wednesday, Britain’s main business lobbying group, the Confederation of British Industry , laid out its case for staying in the single market and for being able to influence the rules and standards that apply in that bloc. “Alternative arrangements to full membership either have serious downsides or are surrounded by huge uncertainty,” the group said. It conceded that some of its members “recognize that there are disadvantages to E.U. membership,” and called for the regulatory burden on smaller businesses to be lightened, as well as for measures to increase competitiveness in Europe. But it said that membership in the bloc remained in the national interest. “For business, the benefits of full membership outweigh the disadvantages, but the European Union must work better,” the confederation’s director general, John Cridland, said. Vote Leave , one of the groups campaigning for a withdrawal, rejected that point of view. “We want to end the supremacy of European Union law and regain the ability to make our own trade deals,” it said in a statement. “There is only one way to choose our future, and that is to Vote Leave in the European Union referendum.” Both sides have started publicity campaigns in recent weeks, and while big business appears more favorable to the “in” campaign, there are also some significant figures in the business world who want Britain out. They say that Britain could forge advantageous trade deals outside the bloc and free itself of ties to sluggish European economies. Prime Minister David Cameron says he intends to renegotiate important aspects of Britain’s membership before the referendum. If those changes are approved, he would use them to persuade Britons to stay in. Under pressure from several European allies, including France, Mr. Cameron has promised to give more information next month on the types of changes he wants. But on Tuesday, Britain’s minister for Europe, David Lidington, suggested this would not amount to a detailed list. Progress in these negotiations will determine the timing of the referendum, Mr. Lidington said.
|
International trade;Referendum;EU;Bank of England;Confederation of British Industry;Mark Carney
|
ny0279477
|
[
"us"
] |
2016/10/02
|
A Rabbi’s Enduring Sermon on Living Your Last Five Minutes
|
Thirty years ago, amid the somber prayers of Judaism’s holiest day, Rabbi Kenneth Berger rose to deliver the Yom Kippur sermon. He spoke to his congregants about a tragedy many of them, including his daughter, had witnessed eight months earlier in the Florida sky: the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. Rabbi Berger focused on one particular detail, the revelation that Challenger’s seven astronauts had remained alive for the 65,000-foot fall to the ocean. He called the homily “ Five Minutes to Live ,” and he likened the crew members to Jews, who are called during the High Holy Days to engage in the process of “heshbon ha-nefesh,” Hebrew for taking stock of one’s soul. “Can you imagine knowing that in a few moments death was imminent?” Rabbi Berger said at the Congregation Rodeph Sholom in Tampa, Fla. “What would we think of if, God forbid, you and I were in such circumstances? What would go through our mind?” Not quite three years later, Rabbi Berger was on a flight to Chicago from Denver returning from a family vacation. The plane’s tail engine exploded en route, crippling the controls, and for 40 minutes, the passengers prepared for a crash landing. The rabbi’s wife, Aviva, fainted from the shock. Rabbi Berger reached across the seats and gathered the hands of his daughter Avigail, 16, and son Jonathan, 9, trying to reassure them, Avigail would later recall. The plane burst into flames after it hit the ground in Sioux City, Iowa, killing 112 people, including the rabbi and his wife, both in their early 40s. As Jews enter the Days of Awe, which begin at sundown on Sunday, Rabbi Berger’s sermon on the Challenger has achieved a piercing and eerie kind of immortality. Between its eloquence and its prophecy, “Five Minutes to Live” continues to be cited, written about and delivered as a tribute, especially during Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. Both the sermon’s theme and its presentiment of the rabbi’s death resonate with the theological essence of the High Holy Days. In his sermon, Rabbi Berger plucked several well-known sentences of the liturgy, rearranging them for heightened effect: “Who shall live and who shall die? Who shall attain the measure of a man’s days and who shall not? On Rosh Hashana, it is inscribed, and on Yom Kippur, it is sealed.” “People are hungry for guidance in living a life that matters,” said Rabbi Edward Bernstein of Temple Torat Emet in Boynton Beach, Fla. “Rabbi Berger, in his words, inspired people to action. And his death made those words holy.” Judaism is hardly unique among world religions in urging its believers to undertake a moral inventory. Catholics participate in confession, formally called the sacrament of reconciliation, while Muslims call the process of repentance by the Arabic word “tawbah,” which means “turning back.” What is unusual in the American Jewish idiom is that heshbon ha-nefesh is addressed by rabbis on the two holidays each year when synagogue attendance grows exponentially. Mindful of another autumn ritual, Rabbi Berger called it “the World Series.” Image Rabbi Berger’s daughters Avigail Needleman, left, and Ilana Glazer. Avigail was in the plane crash where her parents died. Credit Nate Pesce for The New York Times Kenneth Berger, who grew up in suburban Philadelphia, was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and took on the pulpit of Rodeph Sholom in 1983. There he made his reputation as a trusted confidant for congregants in crises who could also code-switch into donning a Big Bird costume to entertain the children. He boiled down Judaic erudition to aphorisms like “There’s no roof overhead unless you build it.” Invariably chewing a straw and clutching a pen, he drafted his sermons on a yellow legal pad, and then read them over the phone to his father in Pennsylvania. When the rabbi’s words really connected to his synagogue audience, he would permit himself a brief moment of ego, telling his children, “I hit a home run.” On Sept. 16, 1986, the day Rabbi Berger delivered “Five Minutes to Live,” the Challenger tragedy was fresh in the minds of his congregants. From that shared memory, Rabbi Berger extrapolated in both prosaic and profound directions. He touched on the ordinary ways that people forget to express love for their families, blithely assuming there will always be another day. He recounted the story of a Jewish father, facing imminent death during the Holocaust, who bestowed a final kiss on the young son he was sending away to safety. “That scene still haunts me,” Rabbi Berger said as the sermon closed, returning to the Challenger. “The explosion and then five minutes. If only I… If only I… And then the capsule hits the water, it’s all over. Then you realize it’s all the same — five minutes, five days, 50 years. It’s all the same, for it’s over before we realize. “‘If only I knew’ — yes, my friends, it may be the last time. ‘If only I realized’ — yes, stop, appreciate the blessings you have. ‘If only I could’ — you still can, you’ve got today.” After Rabbi Berger and his wife died on July 19, 1989, his brother Samuel and sister-in-law Trisanne stepped in to take care of the family. The rabbi’s middle child, Ilana, then 13, had been at camp at the time of the crash. Avigail spent a month in a coma from her injuries, awakening to the absence of her mother or father at her bedside. Jonathan suffered lesser injuries. Samuel Berger found the text for “Five Minutes to Live” while cleaning out his brother’s office. The sermon made its way to Avigail, who laminated it and keeps it in her jewelry box. The sermon also took on its public life. Rabbi Michael Swarttz of Temple B’nai Shalom in Braintree, Mass., quoted large portions of it in his homily on Yom Kippur in 1989. Rabbi Larry Pinsker of Congregation Beit Tikvah in Baltimore assembled a “book of remembrance” about Rabbi Berger, in which many contributors mentioned the sermon. Rabbi Mel Glazer of Colorado Springs, Colo., included part of the sermon in his 2013 book, “A GPS for Grief and Healing.” Twice in the last two years, Rabbi Bernstein in Florida has referred to “Five Minutes to Live” in online essays — one on the 30th anniversary of the Challenger tragedy, the other after the mysterious disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines flight in 2014 over the Indian Ocean. “I find it in hindsight even more moving than when I heard it,” said Marty Solomon, who was president of Rodeph Sholom in 1986. “As much as anything else, it’s a living legacy from Kenny. It’s universal and it will be forever.”
|
Judaism;Rosh Hashana;Yom Kippur;Death;Kenneth Berger;Plane Crash;Space Shuttle Challenger
|
ny0216668
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2010/04/08
|
Arkansas: Probation for Ex-Aide to Bill Clinton
|
Betsey Wright, chief of Bill Clinton ’s staff as governor and a senior member of his presidential campaign in 1992, was fined $2,000 and placed on a year’s probation after pleading no contest on Wednesday to two misdemeanor charges involving prohibited items that were taken from her at a state prison where she visited death row inmates in May. Security guards seized a box cutter, a pocket knife and needles from Ms. Wright, a vocal opponent of capital punishment.
|
Capital Punishment;Prisons and Prisoners;Fines (Penalties);Wright Betsey;Clinton Bill
|
ny0053466
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2014/07/16
|
Whisked Away for Tea With a Rebel in Ukraine
|
LUHANSK, Ukraine — The pro-Russian rebel with bad teeth and aviator sunglasses was trying to help me. We had been waiting at a checkpoint on the side of a highway just a few miles from the entrance to this rebel stronghold of wide streets and Soviet-era buildings. My credentials had aroused suspicion, though whose was unclear, and we had been waiting for almost an hour for a higher-up to appear with the answer. The rebels had been fighting with Ukrainian regulars just a few miles away, and at first their mood was sour. But they were local residents and as often happens, they opened up after some chatting. We talked about what Americans thought of the war here, and why President Obama was supporting a government they said was shelling its own people. If it were up to them, they said, they would let me be on my way, but they had their orders. Eventually, a brown Lada with tinted windows screeched up to the checkpoint. A man got out. He was wearing a maroon-colored beret and black leather fingerless gloves. His shirt was sleeveless, revealing arms slathered in tattoos. He had long black eyelashes and little patience for the men who had been chatting with me. Strangely, they appeared not to know one another. “What’s your contact at least?” one of my rebel friends said to the man, who looked at them placidly without saying anything. He then opened the back door on the left side and indicated that I should get in. The rebel then told me to write down his name and phone number just in case. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “They’re just going to check you out.” What happened next was a strange slide into a Wonderland world, where fact was hard to tell from fiction and reality and absurdity came in equal portions. The man drove for 15 minutes wordlessly and improbably fast for the condition of the car — the speedometer registered more than 100 miles an hour. We came to a stop outside a five-story apartment building rimmed by trees and benches. He then turned to me and introduced himself. He said his name was Denis and that he was the head of an intelligence group in Luhansk. (These were strange admissions: Rebels rarely divulge their names, or intelligence work.) He said that he should be checking my documents in a more formal place, but that he was tired, and so he would be doing the checking in the apartment of a woman he described as his fiancée. We climbed the stairs to a dingy one-room apartment, where a woman in sweatpants with her hair in a towel offered us tea. She put cookies and small sausage sandwiches on a small table in front of us. Another woman, who introduced herself as Tamara Vladimirovna, exclaimed at the pleasure of having such a lovely guest and shook my hand warmly. Denis looked at me and asked what I was doing in Luhansk. I began to talk nervously about civilian casualties, and how a stepped-up war was having disastrous effect on families here. I said it was unclear what Ukraine’s strategy was and whether the government was worried about civilian deaths. “This doesn’t matter to me,” he said, staring at me, his face impassive. I froze, thinking something bad was coming. Instead, things got curiouser. “I’m a mercenary from Russia,” he said, seated on a bench next to me in the tiny kitchen. “I don’t give a damn about any of this.” I nodded as if I understood, but inside, I was utterly confused. Why would this man be telling me this? Who is he really and what does he want? How much of this is he making up? The strangeness of the situation eclipsed any fear. The man had ordered me into his car, but at no point had he threatened me or taken my phones. He was clearly interested in having his girlfriend meet an oddball foreigner, and I was beginning to get the impression that he was simply bored. It got weirder. He explained that he had gone from war to war for most of his 34 years, most recently to Syria, and that he was one of about 50 Russian citizens here being paid for supporting the fight against Ukraine’s government. He did not say who paid him, but said that the group formed the heart of the rebel forces by default. Most of the insurgents here — about 80 percent in his words — were scrappy locals, taxi drivers and coal miners who had never before seen battle. An additional 20 percent were better because they had fought in Afghanistan. There were other manpower problems, he said. A lot of local people signed up in a burst of emotion and then quit after a few weeks. And so many fighters were now assigned to the border areas and the outside edges of the city that there were very few left to protect Luhansk itself. To their advantage, he said, was the fact that Ukrainian soldiers also seemed to be afraid to fight. I asked him timidly what the prognosis was for the fight in Luhansk. “Honestly, they’re going to come in,” he said, referring to the Ukrainian military. “Fifty people is not enough,” he said. I asked him how long it would take. “No one can tell you that.” Tamara Vladimirovna returned to the kitchen, holding a frightened-looking black rabbit. She said she had found it in one of the shelled areas of the city. “Poor thing,” she said, stroking its ears. She then asked Denis if he had a new automatic gun. He said no, but that he did have a new pistol. He pulled it out of a holster and put it next to the cookies on the table. They all noted that it was made in Ukraine. The teacups were empty, and Denis stood up and put on his beret. He gave me back my credentials (he had already returned my notebook), then we got back in the car and drove away from the apartment at roughly the same rate that we came. I remarked on his speed, and he said he had a BMW at home in Moscow that he loved to drive fast along the city’s deserted streets at night. Back at the checkpoint, a man in unusually clean cut fatigues walked up to us and asked if I had been checked out. “Yes,” Denis replied. “Everything’s in order.”
|
Ukraine;Russia;Luhansk;The New York Times;Sabrina Tavernise;Military
|
ny0250487
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2011/02/17
|
Heftier Chamberlain Arrives With Thud at Yankees Camp
|
TAMPA, Fla. — Joba Chamberlain arrived at the most important spring training of his young career listed at 230 pounds , just as he was all last season. This would not be a problem except that Chamberlain weighs more than 230 pounds, and the Yankees are hardly pleased that he does. Asked Wednesday morning for his impression of Chamberlain, General Manager Brian Cashman said: “He’s heavier. Let’s just leave it at that.” Told that Chamberlain has said he packed on muscle, Cashman said: “He’s obviously heavier. That’s as much as I’ll say.” Asked if he expected Chamberlain to lose weight by opening day, Cashman only repeated, “He’s heavier.” Exactly how much heavier was unclear, considering Cashman, when asked, would not say, and neither would Chamberlain, who tired quickly of the questioning. Saying he felt “great,” “awesome” and “stronger physically,” Chamberlain suggested his weight was not a fair indication of his physical condition. “I’m in better shape than I have been in a couple years,” Chamberlain said. The 6-foot-2 Chamberlain is big to start — with a barrel chest — but he appears considerably larger than his listed weight. If Chamberlain actually weighed, say, 231 or 232 pounds, Cashman probably would not have spoken up. Every player is asked to come to camp at a particular weight, though Chamberlain declined to say whether he exceeded it or whether the organization had asked him to slim down. As a result, the focus over the next six weeks will be as much on Chamberlain’s weight as it will be on his pitching, which was already under scrutiny. Chamberlain is competing for a spot in the Yankees’ revamped bullpen, which added a setup man in Rafael Soriano, but he will have to overtake Dave Robertson in the right-handed hierarchy to assume more than a middle relief role. “I’m not going to sit here and argue and stomp my feet like a little kid and pout about it,” Chamberlain said. “I’ve got the opportunity to win a job and help us have one of the best bullpens in baseball. I’ve got to take that and not worry about the other stuff.” C. C. Sabathia has always said that when he pitched well, he was told that he was just big enough. When he pitched poorly, he was called fat. Sabathia recently lost 25 pounds , but the extra weight did not affect his performance. The Yankees do not know whether a heavier Chamberlain will be any more or less effective, but they are wary of what it may represent. His role gradually diminished last season, from an eighth-inning reliever in April to a middle reliever in August to a hardly used reliever in the playoffs. With his appearance now, however, Chamberlain may have to fend off questions about his commitment. “You think about it as a manager, you think about what it says,” Manager Joe Girardi said. “As I said, Joba is going to be pretty much evaluated on how he pitches. That’s the bottom line. We’ve been very pleased in what we’ve seen so far.” Over the off-season, Chamberlain installed a gym at his Nebraska home so that he could better follow the workout program assigned by Dana Cavalea, the team’s strength and conditioning coordinator. Girardi said Chamberlain had, without exception, been completing all of the Yankees’ end-of-workout conditioning drills, and that he had looked stronger during his bullpen sessions. “He wouldn’t be able to do the running that he’s doing if he didn’t work out,” Girardi said, “and he wouldn’t be able to throw the baseball like he is if he didn’t work out.” It is accepted that Chamberlain will never throw the baseball the way he did in 2007, when he dominated out of the bullpen ; a shoulder injury in August 2008 sapped velocity that has yet to return — and most likely will not. “The stuff used to be equal,” Cashman said. “It’s not equal anymore.” Which is why the Yankees are adamant that Chamberlain’s days of shuttling between the bullpen and the rotation are over. He is, once and for all, a reliever, and one who still has value. He led the team with 73 appearances last year , and his peripheral statistics — strikeout, walk and home run rates — improved enough to give Cashman hope of a turnaround. If he can better minimize damage, Chamberlain can be an asset once more. If not, it would be just another thing to deal with. He has the practice. “You get built up, you get torn down, you get built back up again, all those things,” Cashman said. “It’s our job to worry about the mental and the physical, and keep these guys pointed in the right direction. That’s the constant challenge. On a yearly basis, the people might change, but the effort is always there to get maximum value out of all your assets. He’s a good kid. He does work hard, his bullpens look fantastic. But yeah, he’s heavy.”
|
Chamberlain Joba;New York Yankees;Baseball;Weight
|
ny0181529
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2007/06/23
|
Day of Grief in New Jersey After Violence Claims 3 Lives
|
MONTCLAIR, N.J., June 22 — It was hardly a new path that Thomas Reilly traced from his native Ireland to northern New Jersey , where after two decades of hope and hard work his immigrant aspirations had seemingly been fulfilled. He was a successful business owner. He had married. He had two adorable daughters. But in recent months, things began slowly peeling apart. He was working two handyman jobs to support his family. He separated from his wife, Theresa, and, under the terms of a court order, was allowed to see his children three times a week. “He was just trying to do better and move up the ladder,” said Assemblyman Thomas P. Giblin, a friend of Mr. Reilly. “I know he had friends who were telling him to stay strong.” But according to the authorities, Mr. Reilly hit bottom Thursday night when, the police said, he drowned his two daughters, Meghan, 6, and Kelly, 5, in the bathtub of his apartment here before hanging himself. “It’s a nightmare of every kind,” said Deputy Chief Roger S. Terry of the Montclair Police Department. The apparent double-murder and suicide has jolted this upper middle-class suburb about 12 miles west of Manhattan, where before Thursday night’s carnage there had been one homicide in the past two years. “You know it can happen anywhere,” said one resident, Kerry Kosick, 52, “but you never think it’s going to happen in Montclair.” And, friends of the Reillys said, it appeared just as unlikely that a family that seemed so stable could splinter so violently. But in a news conference on Thursday, the authorities said the Reillys’ marriage had grown strained and taken a bleak turn in recent months. Mr. Reilly, who was 46 and the former owner of the Irish Cottage pub in West Orange, was arrested in March and charged with simple assault in an attack on his wife. Mrs. Reilly had successfully sought a restraining order against her husband, and he moved from the brick ranch that they shared in Verona to a first-floor apartment in a three-story Victorian on Claremont Avenue here. The restraining order spelled out the times Mr. Reilly could visit his children: Tuesdays, Thursdays and one weekend day. The authorities said that the schedule caused an argument between the couple Thursday afternoon: Mrs. Reilly had wanted to pick up the children earlier than scheduled, and Mr. Reilly wanted to keep them longer than agreed. That evening, Mrs. Reilly called the police after going to Mr. Reilly’s apartment to retrieve the children and not getting an answer at the door or a response on the telephone. “When officers arrived, they observed a light on in the first-floor bathroom,” Chief Terry said. Officers rang tenants’ doorbells about 7:20 p.m. and a neighbor, on the second floor, answered. When officers entered Mr. Reilly’s apartment on the first floor, they moved from room to room and found them empty. But in the bathroom, they found Meghan and Kelly, clad in T-shirts and shorts, in a full tub. “The crime scene is very horrific,” Chief Terry said. “One of the girls still had her sandals on.” Officers then began to search for Mr. Reilly, eventually finding his body hanging from an electrical cord that had been looped around one of the rafters on the unoccupied third floor of the building. Then they had to inform Mrs. Reilly, who was sitting in a car parked by the curb while the police conducted their search. Robert Denco, 55, who lives in an apartment building next door to the Victorian where Mr. Reilly lived, had come outside when the police arrived and watched as an officer — Chief Terry said the officer was herself a mother of young children — broke the news. Almost immediately, Mr. Denco said, Mrs. Reilly began weeping and let loose a loud, plaintive wail that filled the stretch of Claremont Avenue. She was so distraught that the authorities took her to Mountainside Hospital for sedation; she was released by Friday afternoon. “That scream,” Mr. Denco said, “will live in my memory.” There was another unforgettable image, Mr. Denco said. He described how those standing in the street watching the police also could see Mr. Reilly’s body — backlit by police flashlights — through a third-floor window. “You could see his arms dangling,” Mr. Denco said. By Friday morning, a lone officer stood patrol outside the home making sure that the curious kept their distance. A roll of unused police tape sat on the front steps. Traffic slowed along Claremont Avenue as drivers pointed and stared. About a mile away, over on Witherspoon Road in Verona, neighbors recalled the Reillys as a pleasant family. Jasper Powell, who lives across the street from the family, talked about how the girls waved at everyone who passed by. Another neighbor, Beth Shabazian, remembered how Mr. Reilly had built the cedar swing set for the girls that sat in the backyard. Another woman, who said she had been Meghan’s kindergarten teacher at Our Lady of the Lake School in Verona but spoke on the condition that she not be named, said that Mr. Reilly had recently attended the school’s year-end recital. “I don’t know what could have hardened his heart to make him do that to those two little girls,” she said. Back on Claremont Avenue, one passer-by, Jacqueline D’Arcio, stopped her black Infiniti and regarded the tan Victorian. She talked about marriages gone sour and closed doors and two terrified little girls in a bathroom. “It affects you,” Ms. D’Arcio said of the crime. “It affects you if you have kids, it affects you if you’re in the neighborhood, it affects you if you’re a human being.”
|
Murders and Attempted Murders;Montclair New Jersey;Suburbs;Families and Family Life;Suicides and Suicide Attempts;New Jersey
|
ny0194063
|
[
"business"
] |
2009/11/16
|
Little Benefit Seen, So Far, in Electronic Patient Records
|
The nation is set to begin an ambitious program, backed by $19 billion in government incentives, to accelerate the adoption of computerized patient records in doctors’ offices and hospitals , replacing ink and paper. There is wide agreement that the conversion will bring better care and lower costs, saving the American health care system up to $100 billion a year by some estimates. But a new study comparing 3,000 hospitals at various stages in the adoption of computerized health records has found little difference in the cost and quality of care. “The way electronic medical records are used now has not yet had a real impact on the quality or cost of health care,” said Dr. Ashish K. Jha, an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, who led the research project. The research is to be presented on Monday at a conference in Boston. It is a follow-on study to a survey of hospitals’ adoption of electronic health records, published this year and financed by the federal government and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Karen Bell, a former senior official in the Department of Health and Human Services and an expert in health technology, said she was not surprised by the research. “Very few hospitals today are effectively using the capabilities of electronic health records,” she observed. “There will be no clear answers on the overall payoff from the wider use of electronic health records until we get further along, five years or more,” said Dr. Bell, senior vice president for health information technology services at Masspro, a nonprofit group. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t go forward.” The study is an unusual effort to measure the impact of electronic health records nationally. Most of the evidence for gains from the technology, Dr. Jha said, has come from looking at an elite group of large, high-performing health providers that have spent years adapting their practices to the technology. The group usually includes Kaiser Permanente, the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic and Intermountain Healthcare, among others. But the new study, led by Dr. Jha and Catherine M. DesRoches of Massachusetts General Hospital, suggests that these exceptions mostly point to the long-term potential of electronic health records, properly used. The research also underlines the challenge facing the Obama administration as it seeks to accelerate the adoption of electronic health records through 2015, even though only about 20 percent of physicians now use them. And the research shows that installing the technology does not necessarily mean that the hoped-for gains in quality and cost containment will follow quickly. Under the administration’s plan, doctors and hospitals will receive incentive payments for “meaningful use” of “certified” records. The standards will not be complete until the end of the year, but they will include requirements for reporting, data-sharing, alerts and decision-support features that get more stringent year by year. The new study placed hospitals into three groups: those with full-featured electronic health records, those with more basic ones, and those without computerized records. It then looked at their performance on federally approved quality measures in the care of conditions like congestive heart failure and pneumonia , and in surgical infection prevention. In the heart failure category, for example, the hospitals with advanced electronic records met best-practice standards 87.8 percent of the time; those with basic computer records, 86.7 percent; and those without, 85.9 percent. The differences in other categories were similarly slender. Reducing the length of hospital stays, according to many experts, should be a big money-saving payoff from electronic health records — as better care aided by technology translates into less time spent in hospitals. For hospitals with full-featured digital records, the average length of stay was 5.5 days; for those with basic computer records, 5.7 days; and those without, 5.7 days. The differences, Dr. Jha said, were “really, really marginal.” To Dr. Bell, the results of the study suggest that government policies should focus on helping physicians, hospitals and the public health system use the technology more effectively. “It’s not going to be easy or quick,” Dr. Bell said, “but the better information at the point of care, the better health care we will have.”
|
Electronic Health Records;Health Insurance and Managed Care;Medicine and Health;Doctors
|
ny0020868
|
[
"world",
"americas"
] |
2013/09/05
|
Vatican Removes Its Envoy to Dominican Republic
|
The authorities in the Dominican Republic said they would look into rumors of child sexual abuse involving the papal envoy there after he was abruptly removed from his post by the Vatican. The nation’s attorney general, Francisco Domínguez Brito, said Wednesday that his office had not received any accusations about the papal nuncio, Archbishop Josef Wesolowski, and was aware only of rumors. A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, confirmed that Archbishop Wesolowski had been removed from his post a few weeks ago and that the church was conducting an investigation of him. He declined to provide any further details. Pope Francis in July approved legislation criminalizing child sexual abuse and other sexual crimes. It applies to Vatican employees as well as diplomatic staff members. The location of Archbishop Wesolowski, who is 65, was unknown. A woman at the nuncio’s office in Santo Domingo said no one was available to comment.
|
Dominican Republic;Catholic Church;Priest;Child Abuse;Rape
|
ny0248714
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2011/05/06
|
Hilfiger Plans a Manhattan Hotel
|
Tommy Hilfiger, the designer known for his blue blazers and varsity sweaters, has signed a contract to buy the landmark Metropolitan Life clock tower for $170 million and plans to convert the building into a hotel, according to an executive briefed on the deal. Mr. Hilfiger, who sold his apparel company 14 months ago to Phillips-Van Heusen for $3 billion, had been scouring the city for a suitable building for almost a year. He had looked at the former headquarters of The New York Times on West 43rd Street before moving south to the clock tower, which overlooks Madison Square Park. In recent years, a string of developers have sought to convert the MetLife tower , at Madison Avenue and East 24th Street, which was modeled after St. Mark’s Campanile in Venice, to condominiums. Mr. Hilfiger has another idea: a hotel. “It’s certainly a landmark in a neighborhood that’s become more hotel-friendly in recent years,” John Fox, a hotel industry specialist at PKF Consulting, said. “On the other hand, I’m not sure what a Hilfiger brand hotel is. I assume it’s something with a preppy look to the design.” Mr. Fox said the hotel market was digesting the addition of 5,000 hotel rooms last year, and hotel room rates are rising. The deal was reported Thursday on the Web site of The Wall Street Journal. It is not expected to close for at least 60 days, said the executive briefed on the deal, who had no authorization to discuss the matter and was granted anonymity, and the agreement could still fall apart. Mr. Hilfiger would not be the first clothier to turn to hotels. Giorgio Armani has his name on, and is said to be designing, a chain of luxury hotels , starting with the Armani Hotel Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. The MetLife clock tower, which is 50 stories tall and capped by a gilded cupola, was the world’s tallest building for a few years after its completion in 1909. It has changed hands several times in recent years. SL Green bought the property from MetLife in 2005 for $150 million. The following year, Ian Schrager and RFR Holdings bought a 70 percent stake in the building, with plans to create luxurious apartments. In May 2007, the Israeli businessman Lev Leviev of Africa Israel USA bought the tower and additional development rights, saying he would spend $110 million on a condominium conversion. But the recession dealt a heavy blow to Mr. Leviev’s highly leveraged company. Africa Israel had also bought the former Times Building, and last week it sold 11 floors in that building to the Blackstone Group, the private equity company, for $160 million. “A hotel play is much safer than if he was planning a condo conversion,” Ben Thypin, director of market analysis for Real Capital Analytics, said of Mr. Hilfiger. “There’s a lot of development action around Madison Square.”
|
Hilfiger Tommy;Hotels and Motels;MetLife Inc;Manhattan (NYC)
|
ny0094430
|
[
"us"
] |
2015/01/27
|
Plan to Protect Refuge Has Alaskans Offended and Fearful Over Money
|
ANCHORAGE — Bitter reaction here to the Obama administration’s proposal to protect a huge portion of the Arctic goes beyond political divisions over oil and environmental policy, to questions about how Alaskans are perceived and respected in their sometimes awkward long-distance relationship with the rest of the nation, residents and political leaders say. That President Obama blindsided the governor and angered Alaska’s congressional delegation on Sunday with a proposal to ban energy exploration on 12 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to be designated as wilderness proves that Alaska simply does not matter to Washington, some residents said. “He just alienated an entire state,” said Stephanie Kesler, 56, a telecommunications technologist here in Alaska’s largest city, who said she had twice voted for Mr. Obama. It’s not about the oil for her, she said at a downtown coffee bar on Monday. Before Sunday’s announcement, she said, she was “on the fence” about how best to protect the 22 million acre refuge. “But without talking with any of us, just doing it by fiat — that’s not how you lead,” she said. Political leaders from the state hammered home that same sentiment, and vowed to fight the measure in Congress. The president’s proposal requires congressional approval, and given that Republicans control both chambers, that outcome seems unlikely. Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican and chairwoman of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, called the announcement “a stunning attack on our sovereignty.” Senator Dan Sullivan, a Republican who only recently took office after defeating Senator Mark Begich, a Democrat, called it a declaration of “war against Alaska families.” Gov. Bill Walker, in a news conference here on Sunday, said that he first heard the news on Sunday morning, and that only afterward did he receive a call from Sally Jewell, the secretary of the interior. He said their hourlong conversation “didn’t go well,” and he repeated moments from it when, he said, Ms. Jewell seemed uninformed about Alaska. Mr. Walker, a former Republican who was elected as an independent, said he had asked her at one point for an address in Washington to which he could send a bill. “I need to send you an invoice,” he said he had told Ms. Jewell. “You are taking away our ability to earn a living.” The future of the refuge, a remote area in Alaska’s northeast corner, has been a political point of contention for at least a generation, since President Bill Clinton vetoed a bill in 1995 that would have allowed oil and gas exploration there. Sunday’s announcement also came as the state is feeling economically vulnerable. Taxes paid by oil companies are the state’s lifeblood, accounting for about 90 percent of operating revenues. Tax revenue has fallen by more than half over the past six months as oil prices have plummeted around the world. Governor Walker and the State Legislature are battling one of the biggest budget shortfalls, at least in percentage terms, in the nation, with a $3.5 billion shortfall expected. In a speech last week, Mr. Walker said oil development in the refuge was a long-term goal and priority. “This means, at long last, responsibly accessing the vast oil reserves under ANWR,” he said. “We can. And we must. It’s beyond time.” Mr. Walker, a generally soft-spoken lawyer, said he was angry and frustrated at least in part by feeling misled. He went to Washington after his election to meet with the president and other officials and specifically asked whether any surprise announcements affecting his state were coming and was told no, he said. “It is clear that our interests are not of much concern,” he said. The governor said that he had consulted with the state’s attorney general, but that a tentative plan to move forward was not through the courts but through politics. Mr. Walker said he would “aggressively” reach out to other states to create kind of a unified front about the decision, but declined to say more about what the response would be. Steve Wadleigh, 45, an accountant in Anchorage, said the monetary issue was important to him. “If we have the oil here, why not get what we can?” he asked.
|
Alaska;Arctic National Wildlife Refuge;Land use;Oil and Gasoline;Offshore drilling;Lisa Murkowski;Barack Obama;Wilderness;Bill Walker;US Politics
|
ny0034412
|
[
"us"
] |
2013/12/23
|
John Eisenhower, Military Historian and Son of the President, Dies at 91
|
John S. D. Eisenhower, the son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower who forged a reputation in his own right as a military historian, died on Saturday at his home in Trappe, Md., on the Eastern Shore. He was 91. The death of Mr. Eisenhower, who had been the oldest surviving child of an American president, was announced by his family. Mr. Eisenhower was an Army officer in World War II and the Korean War and a national security adviser during his father’s presidency, but at that point he was still viewed primarily as the son of Ike, the American hero. When he graduated from West Point on June 6, 1944, photographers gathered for an image of Mr. Eisenhower, the new second lieutenant, with his mother. But he was seen as a footnote to a historic day: Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander, had just announced the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy. Mr. Eisenhower’s public image began to change in 1969 with the publication of his first book, “ The Bitter Woods ,” a history of the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. It was a best seller, and he later wrote about the Mexican-American War and World War I. Dwight D. Eisenhower died in March 1969. Two months later, John Eisenhower took up duties as ambassador to Belgium. He was appointed by President Richard M. Nixon, the vice president under Eisenhower and the father-in-law of John Eisenhower’s son, David, who married Julie Nixon. After two years as an ambassador, John Eisenhower published his memoir, “ Strictly Personal .” “ So Far From God: The U.S. War With Mexico, 1846-1848 ” was his first book with no connection to his father’s career. When it was published in 1989, Mr. Eisenhower, a reserved figure who bore a strong resemblance to his father, reflected on how his life had invariably been defined. “I was patted on the head as the great man’s son,” he told USA Today. “I said: ‘The hell with it. I’m going to do something my old man couldn’t get into.’ ” The book was well received, prompting him to remark, “God, it feels great.” John Sheldon Doud Eisenhower was born in Denver while his father was stationed at an Army post in Panama. As a child, he toured World War I battle sites with his father, who was writing an Army guidebook to them. He attended high school in the Philippines during his father’s tour there and followed his path by entering West Point in July 1941. Image John Eisenhower in 1990. Credit Associated Press When Mr. Eisenhower graduated, Gen. George C. Marshall, the Army chief of staff, directed him to spend his brief leave with his father to help him cope with the tensions arising from the Normandy invasion. Mr. Eisenhower was soon thrilled to be aboard a Flying Fortress bomber, heading over the English Channel to visit the battlefront. But, as he recalled in his memoir, “I was not only his son; I was a young lieutenant who needed on occasion to be straightened out.” At one point, he wrote, “I asked him in all earnestness: ‘If we should meet an officer who ranks above me but below you, how do we handle this? Should I salute first and when they return my salute, do you return theirs?’ “Dad’s annoyed reaction was short. ‘John, there isn’t an officer in this theater who doesn’t rank above you and below me.’ ” Mr. Eisenhower hoped to see combat as an infantry platoon commander, but his father’s fellow commanders, Gen. Omar N. Bradley and Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr., feared the impact on his father if he were killed in action or captured. He was assigned to intelligence and administrative duties in England and Germany. He later earned a master’s degree in English and comparative literature from Columbia University, taught English at West Point and finally experienced combat at the beginning of a yearlong tour in the Korean War. Just after his father won the Republican presidential nomination in 1952, Mr. Eisenhower discussed his coming deployment to Korea with him. Writing in The New York Times in 2008, he recalled that his father had accepted his decision to seek combat but “had a firm condition: Under no circumstances must I ever be captured.” That, he said, was because his father could have been forced to resign the presidency if the enemy had threatened him with blackmail. “I agreed to that condition wholeheartedly,” Mr. Eisenhower wrote. “I would take my life before being captured.” Later, he came to believe that the son of a president or a vice president should not be allowed to serve in combat, in order to free the parent of “worries about an individual soldier, especially a child.” Mr. Eisenhower was a White House adviser on national security affairs during his father’s second term as president and later worked with him on his presidential memoirs, “ Mandate for Change ” and “ Waging Peace .” He retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel in 1963 and became a brigadier general in the Reserves. President Obama said in a statement on Sunday that Mr. Eisenhower had lived “a big and quintessentially American life — one of patriotism and character, learning and teaching, and a deep and abiding sense of service to his country.” Image Mr. Eisenhower with his wife, Barbara, and his parents, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Mamie Eisenhower, on Jan. 21, 1957. Credit Associated Press After serving as ambassador to Belgium from 1969 to 1971, Mr. Eisenhower resumed a writing career with his memoir. He edited “ Letters to Mamie ” (1978), a collection of his father’s letters home during the war years, to rebut longstanding assertions that his father had had an affair with his Women’s Army Corps chauffeur, Kay Summersby, while he was the supreme Allied commander. Ms. Summersby’s memoir “ Past Forgetting: My Love Affair With Dwight D. Eisenhower ” had been published in 1977, two years after her death. Mr. Eisenhower’s “ Allies: Pearl Harbor to D-Day ” (1982) drew in part on his father’s unpublished manuscript recounting the American-British alliance. In “ Yanks: The Epic Story of the American Army in World War I ” (2001), he told of the Army’s emergence as a modern military force. Writing in The Times , Richard Bernstein called Mr. Eisenhower’s description of Western Front battles “complex and gripping” and said, “The overall effect of his sober and careful book is to highlight how much easier it is to create heroic myths than to win battles.” Mr. Eisenhower reflected on his father’s association with major military and political figures in “ General Ike: A Personal Reminiscence ” (2003). The Journal of Military History called it “wise in its appraisal of both accomplishments and failures” and “well-researched and beautifully written.” Stephen E. Ambrose wrote in his biography “ Eisenhower ” that when John was a child, his father gave him “sharp verbal dressing downs for transgressions, which, given Eisenhower’s standards, were frequent.” But, Mr. Ambrose added, “over all they got along fine,” and later “Eisenhower included his son in as many of his activities as possible.” In his final years, Mr. Eisenhower joined family members in opposing the design for a proposed memorial to his father near the National Mall, saying it was too extravagant. The project’s fate is uncertain. In addition to his son, Dwight David Eisenhower II, known as David, Mr. Eisenhower is survived by his wife, Joanne Thompson Eisenhower, who collaborated with him in writing “Yanks”; three daughters, Barbara Anne, Susan and Mary, from his marriage to his first wife, the former Barbara Jean Thompson, which ended in divorce; and eight grandchildren. John Eisenhower was the second child of Dwight and Mamie Doud Eisenhower. Their first son, Doud Dwight, died at age 3 from scarlet fever. In his memoir in 1974, when he was only beginning to earn a reputation as an author, Mr. Eisenhower told how he had briefly taken up flying, a hobby that, he wrote, “remains extremely important in my recollections.” “Almost everything else I have done during my adult years has been affected to some extent by my name — by my father’s position, if you will,” he wrote. “But in the air I had no name; to the Federal Aviation Agency I was simply Comanche Nine-Nine POP. The quality of my landings, navigation and judgment were mine alone.”
|
John S D Eisenhower;US Army;Obituary;Books;Dwight David Eisenhower;World War II
|
ny0165847
|
[
"business"
] |
2006/09/15
|
Guidant Settles Device Suit
|
The Guidant Corporation, the maker of implanted heart devices, settled a fraud suit over its recalled defibrillator for an undisclosed amount, a plaintiffs’ lawyer said yesterday. The trial in the civil suit brought by two plaintiffs, Beatrice O. Hinojosa and Louis E. Motal, was scheduled to begin Monday in Corpus Christi, Tex. The plaintiffs claimed the company failed to warn them that their implanted heart devices might fail. A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Mikal Watts, said there had been a confidential settlement. Guidant recalled thousands of defibrillators, which use electrical shocks to correct abnormal heart rhythms, in June 2005. The Boston Scientific Corporation, Guidant’s parent company, has said it expects as many as 3,000 product liability claims related to the defibrillators. Shares of Boston Scientific rose 19 cents, to $16.40.
|
Guidant Corporation;Suits and Litigation;Defibrillators;Liability For Products
|
ny0030072
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2013/06/29
|
Zoilo Almonte Gains Attention for Hot Start and His First Name
|
Baseball has had at least 22 players go by the nickname Heinie. There have been three players named Urban, three named Hideki and three with the first name Rogers. But until Zoilo Almonte was summoned to the Yankees from the minors, there had been only one Zoilo. While Almonte, a 24-year-old from the Dominican Republic, surprised many by getting off to a hot start for the Yankees, batting .318 (7 for 22) in his first eight games, he has a long way to go to catch up to Zoilo Casanova Versalles . A Cuban shortstop for the Minnesota Twins in the 1960s, Versalles is generally talked about for two reasons: being one of the least famous players to win a Most Valuable Player award and having one of the game’s most unusual names. Now, with Almonte around, the name is getting a second chance. It is natural, of course, for the name to feel unusual: Zoilo has never been among the top 1,000 baby names in the United States, according to the Social Security Administration . Most baby name sites list Zoilo as being of Spanish and Greek origin and being the male equivalent of the more popular girls name Zoe. One site estimates there are fewer than 1,000 Zoilos in the United States. Zoilo, which means life, is more popular in Spanish-speaking countries. But despite a large Hispanic population in baseball, Versalles, who died in 1995, had stood alone in baseball’s archives. Image Zoilo Versalles, shown on Oct. 6, 1965, was a shortstop for the Minnesota Twins in the 1960s. Credit Associated Press In 1983, it certainly seemed as if a tide could be changing for the name. That year, there were three Zoilos in the minor leagues. Zoilo Martinez was a utility player in the Pittsburgh system who was playing in the Carolina League. Another Zoilo Martinez , this one a third baseman in the St. Louis system, was playing his lone season of rookie ball in the Appalachian League. Zoilo Sanchez , an 18-year-old infielder signed by the Mets, was in the first of his nine minor league seasons, playing rookie ball in the Gulf Coast League. Alas, none of those Zoilos had what it took to follow in Versalles’s footsteps as a major leaguer, with Sanchez making it the closest when he spent parts of two seasons at Class AAA Tidewater. Versalles was a two-time All-Star and had his best year in 1965, when he led the American League in at-bats, runs, doubles, triples and extra-base hits. He also won his second Gold Glove (despite leading the majors with 39 errors) and edged his teammate and fellow Cuban, Tony Oliva for the M.V.P. Before the World Series, the bespectacled Versalles got the ultimate validation of that era, making the cover of Sports Illustrated . Versalles is unlike some other obscure M.V.P. winners because his victory has stood the test of time: his 7.2 wins above replacement were the most among American League position players that season. His decline, however, was swift, and he never again had more than 1.3 WAR. It is hard to say how long Almonte will stick with the Yankees. Entering Friday, he had gone 0 for 10 in his last three games, and he is not among the top 10 prospects in the Yankees’ system, according to Baseball America. Regardless of the length of Almonte’s stay, Versalles finally has some company in baseball’s record books for the first time since his debut for the Washington Senators in 1959.
|
Baseball;Zoilo Almonte;Zoilo Casanova Versalles;Personal name;Yankees
|
ny0279528
|
[
"sports",
"ncaafootball"
] |
2016/10/02
|
Clemson Slows Lamar Jackson and Halts Louisville
|
CLEMSON, S.C. — In a matchup between division rivals both ranked in the top five nationally, Clemson beat Louisville on Saturday night by 6 points, 42-36, but also by about one yard. In the up-and-down affair, No. 5 Clemson went ahead by 28-10 and then ceded 26 unanswered points in the second half before coming back to take that 6-point lead. Then No. 3 Louisville drove down the field with time about to expire. On a fourth-and-12 from the Clemson 14-yard line, Louisville quarterback Lamar Jackson, a sophomore who is widely considered a Heisman Trophy front-runner, completed a pass in the flat to James Quick, who caught the ball near the sideline, spun and was pushed out by Van Smith for an 11-yard gain. That gave Clemson the ball and the victory. The orange-clad crowd rushed the field. The words just below the upper deck on each side of Clemson’s Memorial Stadium read, “Clemson Welcomes You To Death Valley,” and while the sentence extends the hospitality on which this earnest Southern fan base prides itself, it also pledges the demise that the Tigers somehow exacted. Clemson improved to 5-0, and Louisville dropped to 4-1. The victory gave Clemson pole position for capturing the title in the Atlantic Coast Conference’s Atlantic Division, and the conference itself, as well as a spot in the four-team College Football Playoff, in which it lost to Alabama last season in the national championship game. From before Saturday night’s kickoff, the clamorous capacity crowd of more than 83,000 made it clear that there would be no escape from the Tigers’ home field for Jackson and the Cardinals. Amid the fans’ roars, Louisville committed two false starts before getting off its first clean snap. Although Louisville scored first, early in the second quarter, Clemson took a 28-10 lead by halftime and was able to finish the rollicking game as the last team standing. Clemson finished the first half with a four-play, 73-yard drive that ended in a touchdown just before time expired. Entering the game, Jackson, a sophomore, had been responsible for 25 touchdowns (passing or rushing), more than nearly every other entire team in the top tier of college football. His showcase game was the Cardinals’ 63-20 beat-down two weeks ago of Florida State, the dominant power in the conference over the past couple of decades, in which Jackson passed for one touchdown and ran for four. On Saturday, he completed 27 of 44 passes for 295 yards with one touchdown and one interception, and he rushed for 162 yards and scored two touchdowns. Clemson quarterback Deshaun Watson, a junior who was a runner-up for the Heisman Trophy last season, seemed to upend the consensus of who the A.C.C.’s premier quarterback is. After initial discomfort — through three drives apiece in the game, he and Jackson had combined for one passing yard — Watson had a series of spectacular plays in the first half, including touchdown throws of 33 and 37 yards to wide receiver Deon Cain, a sophomore. Watson finished 20 of 31 passing for 306 yards, with five touchdowns and three interceptions. It was his 20th consecutive game with a passing touchdown, the longest active streak .
|
College football;Clemson;University of Louisville;Lamar Jackson
|
ny0120007
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2012/07/26
|
N.Y.U. Expansion Plan Wins Final City Council Approval
|
As opponents shouted “Shame!” from a City Council balcony, New York University won final approval on Wednesday for a huge expansion plan that will change the look and feel of Greenwich Village more than almost any other project in decades. By an overwhelming 44-to-1 vote, the Council approved a series of zoning amendments, permits and map changes that will allow the university to erect four buildings that together will add a skyscraper’s worth of classrooms, dorm rooms and office space to a leafy 12-block parcel occupied by two university apartment complexes — Washington Square Village and Silver Towers — south of Washington Square Park. Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn applauded the new plan in remarks before the vote, saying that while she understood residents’ concerns, “I think this plan appropriately balances the need of an important university to grow and expand — which is good for our city — with the historic neighborhood it’s in.” As the Council started its session with ceremonies and proclamations unrelated to the expansion plan, 50 of the plan’s opponents — faculty members critical of it, residents of the apartment complexes, and neighborhood activists — glared down silently from the balcony overlooking the Council chamber while holding yellow signs saying: “NYU 2031 Wrong for NYC. Wrong for the Village. Wrong for NYU.” When the vote on the expansion neared, several opponents shouted out “Shame” and other expressions and, after warnings, sergeants-at-arms cleared the balcony. The opponents headed out to hold a news conference on the steps of City Hall, where they argued that the plan would do irreparable harm to the charm and low-rise character of the Village by overwhelming it with bulky structures and thousands more students and workers. “It’s a very sad day for Greenwich Village,” said Terri Cude, co-chairwoman of the Community Action Alliance on N.Y.U. 2031. But John Sexton, the college’s president, celebrated the action in a statement calling the vote a “great day for N.Y.U. and for New York City,” one that he said would lead to thousands of construction jobs and permanent university positions when other sectors of the city’s economy have been shrinking. Work is not to begin until 2014. “It is a plan that strikes an important balance: permitting N.Y.U. to maintain academic excellence by meeting our educational- and research-space needs on our existing footprint over the next two decades, while at the same time addressing the concerns of our neighbors on such issues as improving access to open space,” the statement said. The university, which has 50,000 students and 17,500 employees, contends that it needs new classrooms and dormitories to accommodate a steadily burgeoning enrollment and to allow it to compete with other prominent universities. If the university could not build in the proposed footprint, officials said, it would have had to continue buying up, tearing down or converting neighborhood buildings, which would further damage the bohemian and raffish charm of the South Village. Many residents of the apartment complexes — 40 percent of the university’s full-time faculty members live in the two complexes — dread the noise, dust and disruption of 20 years of construction and worry about a loss of trees and strips of parkland. Neighborhood activists said the university could have met its space needs by expanding to empty office space in the Wall Street area or Downtown Brooklyn. The plan was whittled down, first by the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, then by the City Planning Commission and then by Margaret Chin, the councilwoman who represents the area, from a proposal that would have added an Empire State Building’s worth of floor space in between the seven buildings that make up the apartment complexes. Ms. Chin said the final plan was 26 percent slimmer than the original.
|
New York University;Zoning;City Council (NYC);Greenwich Village (NYC);Colleges and Universities;New York City;Area Planning and Renewal
|
ny0160170
|
[
"sports",
"basketball"
] |
2006/03/28
|
Reality Check on Road to Stardom
|
Correction Appended Martell Webster found himself staring out the bus window for seven hours, watching his career crawl past desolate farms and dried-up rivers. The unexpected detour through Texarkana during his rookie season in the N.B.A. became educational for Webster, the Portland Trail Blazers' first pick, and No. 6 over all, in the 2005 draft. "Usually, you don't have time to ponder, but when you're on a bus, you just check things out," he said. "You can't do that at 35,000 feet." That is where the N.B.A. charters roam, in the rarefied air that Webster had experienced for his first three months in Portland. But he had played little, and the Trail Blazers decided in January to assign Webster, a 6-foot-7 swingman who arrived directly from high school in Seattle, to their N.B.A. Development League affiliate in Fort Worth. "At first I was mad," Webster, 19, who rejoined the Trail Blazers in February, said in a telephone interview from Portland, Ore. "I thought it would be a waste of time, but it definitely was not." Before this season, a rookie like Webster would get coaching from his N.B.A. team but not much playing time. Now the N.B.A. has an affiliate system with the D-League, so teams have another option for preparing players. Unlike years past, when the D-League's purpose was to provide N.B.A. teams with reinforcements, the N.B.A. is nowusing its eight-team minor league as a farm system. After initial hesitation over supervision, facilities and the D-League's negative connotation, many N.B.A. executives warmed to the idea of giving their draft picks and free agents a place to play. Of the N.B.A.'s 30 teams, 19 have sent at least one player to the D-League, for a total of 29 players, including 5 first-round draft picks: Webster, Boston's Gerald Green, Denver's Julius Hodge, Washington's Andray Blatche and Dallas's Pavel Podkolzin. Fifteen D-League players have been called up to the N.B.A. this season. "I would not hesitate to send people again," Portland General Manager John Nash said. "The competition isn't as good as summer league in Vegas because in Vegas you have N.B.A. players. But this is the next best thing. "Martell played effectively there. I just didn't want him to languish here on the bench. I wanted him to get a taste not just of the competition, but get a perspective. I think you can be a little surreal in your approach coming from high school to the N.B.A." Next season, when the N.B.A.'s age requirement increases to 19, the D-League plans to lower its limit to 18 so players wishing to bypass college will have an alternative. Players who can qualify academically will probably opt for a college program that offers more exposure. "For business reasons, it would be good for us if everyone who didn't come to the N.B.A. went to college," N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern said. "If I had my druthers, this league would be for N.B.A. players who just needed a little more time." Stern has a goal of increasing the D-League to 12 or 13 teams next season and perhaps ultimately to as many as 30. That means the ever-shifting landscape of minor league basketball could change again next season. The Continental Basketball Association has had discussions the past five years about merging with the N.B.A.'s developmental league, and the sides are closer than ever to having some C.B.A. teams join the D-League. Jim Coyne, the general manager of the Albany Patroons of the C.B.A., said his league could survive defections. "It's going to have a few bruises when that happens, but if we lose some, we can replace some," he said in a telephone interview. "We wish them well," he added about the potential of teams leaving the C.B.A. "I don't understand the rationale. They have to pay a higher franchise fee, they don't have control of the players. I like to help place players and make winning teams and not depend on somebody feeding us players. That's why we're still committed to staying the long haul. If there wasn't any C.B.A., then the D-League would be the only feeder." The N.B.A. still partly supports its league, even though it owns only two franchises (it wants to sell the Roanoke, Va., and Fayetteville, N.C., teams to have local ownership of every franchise). The D-League has five new teams this season and is struggling to break even. Average attendance is just 1,966. "If we were bringing minor league baseball, people knew what it meant," said David Kahn, a former Indiana Pacers executive who owns four D-League teams in the Southwest. "Minor league baseball has 100 years of history. It will take us at least three years. I think we're very much in the catch-up phase as people figure what this is about." Each D-League team is shared by three or four N.B.A. teams. Players can be sent down and recalled three times in a season. "It's been utilized much more than I think we hoped for and were ready for," Stern said. The D-League teams are expected to absorb the N.B.A. players immediately. "My policy has been pretty straightforward," said Sam Vincent, the Fort Worth Flyers coach and a former N.B.A. player. "This is the N.B.A. developmental league, and if at any point we get N.B.A. players, they get preferential treatment." Most N.B.A. teams have sent staff members to the D-League affiliates to monitor the players' progress. The Blazers sent Bill Bayno, the former U.N.L.V. coach who is now an adviser, as a personal coach for Webster and their former second-round pick, Sergei Monia. The Celtics' president, Danny Ainge, accompanied Green for a few days. "In retrospect, we probably would have used it earlier," Celtics Coach Doc Rivers said of the league. "It's a good experiment. I hope the D-League grows in size so teams can have one or two teams per N.B.A. team and they can run something that you're doing." Green, 20, went to the Celtics from high school and has played far more for the Fayetteville Patriots in the D-League. "In those three or four weeks, I felt like I was a whole lot better, just because I was playing," he said. He offered advice for future first-round picks. "Don't take it as a bad thing," he said. "Go in there and use that as motivation. Work hard and show your team that you're ready to come back up." That was Webster's goal. He played eight games with Fort Worth, worked out twice daily, picked the brain of his coach and picked up the tab for his teammates on the road. "Taking those long bus rides, it makes you appreciate coming back to the N.B.A," Webster said. PRO BASKETBALL Correction: March 29, 2006, Wednesday A sports article yesterday about the National Basketball Association Development League misidentified one of the five first-round draft choices from 2005 who have played in it this season. He is Sergei Monia, now of Sacramento, who was sent down by Portland -- not Andray Blatche of Washington, who was a second-round pick.
|
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSN;MINOR LEAGUES;DRAFT AND RECRUITMENT (SPORTS);BASKETBALL
|
ny0166432
|
[
"sports",
"othersports"
] |
2006/08/01
|
New Finding Challenges Tour Champ’s Claim
|
Tests performed on the cyclist Floyd Landis’s initial urine sample showed that some of the testosterone in his body had come from an external source and was not produced by his system, according to a person at the International Cycling Union with knowledge of the results. That finding contradicts what Landis has claimed in his defense since the disclosure last week that he had tested positive for an elevated ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone during the Tour de France. During a news conference in Madrid on Friday, Landis said, “We will explain to the world why this is not a doping case, but a natural occurrence.” He explained that the testosterone levels throughout his career were “natural and produced by my own organism.” Landis, 30, the third American to win the Tour, captivated fans with an improbable comeback. He provided the urine samples at the center of the doping inquiry after winning Stage 17 in the Alps with a long solo attack. That performance set up his victory, as he climbed to third place over all after struggling and plunging to 11th the day before. His urine sample from that day was divided into A and B samples. Confirmation of the A sample result is needed for a doping violation to occur. If the B sample comes up negative, the case is dropped. But the finding disclosed yesterday, based on a more sophisticated test, shed new light on Landis’s failure to pass his initial screening, and he could be subjected to punishment because he had a prohibited substance in his body. If the B sample comes back positive, Landis will face a two-year suspension from the sport. He will also be stripped of his Tour de France title. The French national antidoping laboratory in Châtenay-Malabry performed a carbon isotope ratio test on the first of Landis’s two urine samples provided after Stage 17, the person, who is in the cycling union’s antidoping department, said in an interview yesterday. That test, which differentiates between natural and synthetic testosterone, was done after Landis’s ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone was found to be more than twice what is allowed under World Anti-Doping Agency rules, the person said. Regulations limit the ratio to four to one. The range for an average person is between one to one and two to one. Landis’s personal doctor, Dr. Brent Kay of Temecula, Calif., said he hoped that the results of Landis’s carbon isotope ratio test and of the initial T/E test were false positives. He did, however, acknowledge that the initial test found a ratio of 11 to 1 in Landis’s system. He and Landis are seeking an explanation for that high level. “I’ve seen bodybuilders with numbers 100 to 1,” Kay said. “Although Floyd’s was elevated, it’s not off the chart or anything.” Kay said there could be many explanations for Landis’s high ratio, including a naturally high testosterone to epitestosterone level, bacterial contamination, alcohol consumption the night before the test or contamination of the specimen during testing. He could not say why synthetic testosterone might have been in Landis’s system. He said both tests could have been inaccurate. Landis, who was in New York after canceling or postponing several talk-show appearances, could not be reached for comment yesterday. His spokesman, Michael Henson, said that Landis sent a request yesterday for the French lab to test his B sample. Landis had five business days from last Wednesday to do so. Pat McQuaid, the president of the cycling body, which is known by its French acronym, U.C.I., said last night that the organization had contacted the French lab at 5 p.m. in Paris to see if Landis’s request had been received. When the lab said no, McQuaid said U.C.I. asked the lab to analyze Landis’s B sample, which he said was allowed under the organization’s rules. McQuaid wanted the test to be concluded before the lab closed for a two-week vacation this Friday. If the tests cannot be finished before then, the results may not come until late August or early September, he said. “It’s a two-and-a-half-day job, and it’s imperative that the B test be done this week for the credibility of our sport, but also for the public interest,” McQuaid said. “This needs to be put to rest because there is too much innuendo, too much talk, too much damage being done to our sport. We have to get this process done quickly, so we can move on.” The lab agreed to conduct the tests Thursday through Saturday, McQuaid said. That means that Landis’s fate may be known by the weekend. Dr. Gary I. Wadler, a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency and an associate professor at New York University School of Medicine, said that the result of the carbon isotope ratio test already proved that there was synthetic testosterone in Landis’s system. He said that the test needs to be done only once, on either an A or on a B sample, particularly if the athlete’s testosterone to epitestosterone ratio is found to be high or if that elevated level is inconsistent with previous test results. “The rules say that it is a violation, but if you can show that the athlete had no fault or no significant fault, there could be a mitigation of the sanction,” Wadler said. “No matter how it got there, the athlete has to show how it got into his or her body. It could have been sabotage or contaminated dietary supplements, or something else, but they have to prove how the testosterone got there.”
|
Landis Floyd;Tour de France (Bicycle Race);Testosterone;Tests and Testing;International Cycling Union;World Anti-Doping Agency;Laboratories and Scientific Equipment;Bicycles and Bicycling;Madrid (Spain)
|
ny0169298
|
[
"us"
] |
2007/03/08
|
Suicide Shootings at Schools in Michigan and Texas
|
CHICAGO, March 7 — A 17-year-old shot his ex-girlfriend four times Wednesday as they talked in the parking lot of her central Michigan high school and then fatally shot himself in the head, the authorities said. The incident was one of two suicides at an American high school on Wednesday. Earlier in the morning, a 16-year-old boy shot himself at his high school in Texas and later died at a hospital. The police in Midland, Mich., identified the gunman there as David Turner and the victim as Jessica Forsyth, also 17. Ms. Forsyth was flown to a hospital in Flint, 50 miles south, where she was in serious but stable condition, a hospital spokeswoman said. Nancy Cook of Cadillac, a great-aunt of the victim, who was at Ms. Forsyth’s bedside in Flint, said the teenager had gunshot wounds to the arm, chest and back, but was “alert and oriented.” “She’s doing quite well considering all she’s been through,” said Ms. Cook, who is also a registered nurse. She declined to comment further about the nature of Ms. Forsyth’s relationship with Mr. Turner. The police said Mr. Turner arrived at her high school on Wednesday morning asking to speak with Ms. Forsyth. When school officials turned him away because Ms. Forsyth was not in school, he contacted her at home, and the two arranged to meet in the school parking lot, said Deputy Chief Robert Lane of the Midland Police Department. Ms. Forsyth’s mother drove her to the parking lot, Deputy Chief Lane said. As the teenagers talked, Mr. Turner, who was wearing a backpack, reached inside and pulled out a gun, the deputy said. He shot Ms. Forsyth four times before shooting himself in the head. Mr. Turner, who lived in nearby Coleman and did not attend H. H. Dow High School, where the shooting occurred, was pronounced dead at the scene. The police said they did not know what had motivated Mr. Turner. “We’re still working on the investigation and are trying to discover why this whole thing happened,” Deputy Chief Lane said. “Obviously there won’t be a prosecution now. Now it’s just a matter of lessons learned.” The shooting in Midland occurred hours after a 16-year-old boy in Greenville, Tex., fatally shot himself shortly after 7 a.m. in the band hall of Greenville High School, according to a statement by the Greenville Independent School District. He died at a local hospital, said Lori Philyaw, a spokeswoman for the city, which is about 50 miles northeast of Dallas. The student, whose name was withheld, was taken to the Dallas County medical examiner’s office for an autopsy, Ms. Philyaw said.
|
Education and Schools;Violence;Michigan;Texas;Suicides and Suicide Attempts
|
ny0043626
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2014/05/23
|
A Prisoner’s Unflagging Claim of Innocence Meets an Unexplained Intrusion
|
How does time pass for a person in prison who says he is innocent? On Wednesday afternoon, a man named Everton Wagstaffe stood outside his cubicle in a dormitory at Greene Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison in Coxsackie, N.Y., 120 miles north of New York City. For three hours, according to an account Mr. Wagstaffe gave to his family and lawyer, he watched as a corrections officer methodically searched the room, big enough for only a twin bed and a locker. Scant attention, if any, was given to his personal belongings, his toiletries and clothing. Instead, the officer went through every page of Mr. Wagstaffe’s legal papers, a mighty stack reflecting years of litigation. Mr. Wagstaffe, 45, is in the 22nd year of a 25-year maximum sentence for a kidnapping that led to the death of Jennifer Negron, 16, in the East New York section of Brooklyn. From the beginning, he has maintained his innocence and, during the last decade, has turned down multiple chances to walk free because they came with requirements that he express remorse for the crime. An investigation of the convictions of Mr. Wagstaffe and his co-defendant, Reginald Connor, has been underway for about a year by a special unit in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, following reports in The New York Times of two new witnesses who support the men’s claims of innocence. State appellate judges heard arguments in December on their motion for a new trial. So why were Mr. Wagstaffe’s files searched? A spokesman for the state’s Corrections Department cited a general directive that said supervisors could authorize searches only if there was “reasonable suspicion” of contraband. Mr. Wagstaffe has had no disciplinary infractions in more than a decade, and only minor ones — like being late to a prisoner count — before then. The search yielded nothing, state authorities said. The Brooklyn district attorney’s office claims no credit or blame for the search. During a visit with Mr. Wagstaffe last year, he told me that he had fought to keep his bearings over the decades by reviewing every syllable committed to paper about the case and by soaking up works of philosophy and literature. His reading included “A Confession,” Leo Tolstoy’s memoir of his struggles with midlife despair. “What is my life about?” Mr. Wagstaffe asked. “All this stuff, all this evidence of innocence, has been brought forth, and I think, ‘Yes, this is it — straight to the point, no way around it.’ But here I am, all these years later.” Mr. Connor, who also insists on his innocence, accepted parole, including a condition that he register as a sex offender, strictly limiting where he can work and live. Ms. Negron was apparently forced into a car after midnight on Jan. 1, 1992. Around dawn, her body was discovered about a mile away, beaten and partially stripped. There was evidence of a struggle; her hand clutched strands of someone else’s hair. Years after the convictions, DNA tests showed that the hair and scrapings from under the victim’s fingernails did not come from either Mr. Wagstaffe or Mr. Connor. Like many crimes during that violent era, the investigation relied on an informant and threadbare supporting evidence. Mr. Wagstaffe and Mr. Connor were identified by a single witness — the informant — a troubled woman who supported her addiction to crack with prostitution. Held in a hotel by the authorities to ensure her court appearance, she testified that she saw Mr. Wagstaffe drag Ms. Negron from the sidewalk outside her home and force her into the front of a car driven by Mr. Connor. The witness also testified that a third man was in the back seat, but no one else was ever charged. Her account was buttressed by the discovery of a car that she and another witness testified they had seen Mr. Connor in earlier that night. An aunt of the dead girl testified that a headband in the back seat was very much like the one worn by her niece. But the detectives kept no records of interviews with the owner of the car, and the defense lawyers did not speak with her. After the conviction, the owner said that she and her daughters had taken the car to a New Year’s church vigil and that it had not been moved the entire night. An alibi witness, whose name Mr. Wagstaffe provided within minutes of being arrested, says she was never interviewed by detectives, prosecutors or defense lawyers until last year, after she had spoken with me for an About New York column . “I have to generate patience and perseverance,” Mr. Wagstaffe said, adding a biblical citation: “ ‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’ ”
|
Prison;Everton Wagstaffe;Informers;Criminal Sentence;Crime;False arrest;Jennifer Negron;Murders
|
ny0012946
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2013/11/19
|
Songs of Remembrance for Voices Now Silenced
|
The photos showed them as they had been: Arash Farazmand, 28, bent over his drums; his brother, Soroush Farazmand, 27, with his guitar; their friend and roommate, Ali Eskandarian, 35, smiling as he sang into a microphone. Candles burned below their names, illuminating messages of love and remembrance left for them in English and Persian: “I love you”; “thank you for the beautiful moments”; three hearts. In the Williamsburg basement bar where they had rehearsed their post-punk rock soon after arriving in Brooklyn from Iran, the surviving members of the Yellow Dogs — the band fractured last week after a gunman killed two of its members, as well as a friend, Mr. Eskandarian — gathered with dozens of friends for a silent vigil Monday evening. The mourners cupped their hands around candles and clutched white daisies as they walked, two by two, to the Brooklyn Bowl, to hear a benefit concert in the dead musicians’ honor. “It’s moments like these that really make you see how hollow words are,” said Johnny Azari, a friend of Mr. Eskandarian’s and the first musician to perform. But he proceeded to read a poem for his friend onstage, saying, “He died striving for the ideas he loved and lived.” Mr. Eskandarian’s songs played as his family and friends gathered for a memorial service in Texas on Friday, said Jordan FeRoss Hashem, 35, a close high school friend of his. Mr. Eskandarian was born in Pensacola, Fla., but his father, an Iranian air force officer, soon moved the family to Iran. After Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died in 1989, they sought political asylum in Germany and made their way to Plano, Tex., where, Mr. Hashem said, Mr. Eskandarian’s father became a part owner in several restaurants. Image Dozens marched to the Brooklyn Bowl for a concert honoring Ali Eskandarian, Arash Farazmand and Soroush Farazmand. Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times Mr. Eskandarian used to work at one of the restaurants, often singing pitch-perfect U2 songs for customers during karaoke night. He attended a local community college but moved to New York in 2003 because, Mr. Hashem said, his talents were “too big for Texas.” Surviving in New York could be difficult, emotionally and financially, as Mr. Eskandarian recounted in a semi-autobiographical serial novel, “Golden Years.” But he had found some success, touring with the singer Peter Murphy, of Bauhaus, and releasing an album with Judy Collins’s Wildflower Records label. “My heart wonders if he was scared at the last moment of his life,” Mr. Hashem said last week, through tears. “But I don’t know if I want to know the answer.” The Farazmands’ bodies arrived over the weekend in Tehran, where they were to be buried in a large cemetery in a section reserved for artists, said Golbarg Bashi, a friend of their mother’s family who said she had been authorized to speak for the family. As a tribute to their sons, their only children, the Farazmands’ parents want to found a Tehran music school for disadvantaged children, she said. The Farazmands grew up in an intellectual, progressive neighborhood of professional middle-class families, said Amir Khosravani, 26, a childhood friend and fellow musician. They grew up playing basketball, skateboarding and going to one another’s houses for jam sessions. Though their father had Parkinson’s disease, their parents supported their plan to flee Iran, selling “the carpet from under their feet” so they could leave, Dr. Bashi said. Video The Iranian indie band the Yellow Dogs fled Tehran so that they could live and play their music free of fear and repression. But in New York, two of the band's members met sudden, violent deaths. Credit Credit Dave Sanders “They’re heartbroken,” she said. “Why did their boys have to come here, to this violent country that is filled with guns? “This Ali Akbar guy obviously was influenced by this culture,” she said, referring to the gunman, Ali Akbar Mohammadi Rafie, who killed himself after killing the others. It is a question the victims’ families and friends keep coming back to: How did Mr. Rafie, who was eking out a living as a bike messenger, buy an assault rifle? The police have said they traced the gun to a store in upstate New York that went out of business in 2006, complicating efforts to learn more of its history. Back in Iran, weapons are not so easy to come by. “I knew I was in a free country, but I didn’t know everything is free,” said Pooya Hosseini, a member of the Free Keys, another band made up of Iranians. Once confident in the freedom and safety of his adopted country, he said, he now becomes skittish at even small noises. But the United States had at least allowed the men to pursue their music — something Iran, with its restrictions on musical and personal style, had never done, Dr. Bashi said. “These boys, you people forced them out of their homeland,” she said, railing against Iran’s government. “They should have never had to leave.”
|
Funerals;Murders;Ali Eskandarian;Soroush Farazmand;Arash Farazmand;Williamsburg Brooklyn;Ali Akbar Mohammadi Rafie;Music
|
ny0275622
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2016/02/21
|
Fiji Declares a State of Natural Disaster After Fierce Cyclone
|
SYDNEY — Government officials declared a state of natural disaster in Fiji after a cyclone tore through the archipelago on Saturday, destroying villages and leaving five dead, Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama said on Sunday. Mr. Bainimarama described Cyclone Winston, a Category 5 cyclone with winds up to 143 miles per hour and gusts up to 202 miles per hour, as the most powerful such storm in the country’s recorded history. “The damage has been widespread,” he said in a statement. “Many are without power and full access to water and are cut off from communication.” Aid workers said roofs had been blown off houses, power lines were down, roads were blocked by trees and some villages had been flooded by heavy rain. At a hospital in the western district, patients were evacuated after a ward lost part of its roof, and at a hospital in the central district, an intensive care ward, operating room and maternity ward were flooded, Fiji’s national emergency operation center said on Sunday. An elderly man died on Koro, an island to the east of Viti Levu, the main island, after a roof collapsed. Ewan Perrin, a spokesman for the prime minister, said that four other people had died but that the government would not release details until their next of kin had been notified. Mr. Bainimarama said a curfew would remain in place until Monday morning to allow emergency workers to clear roads of fallen power lines and building debris. Most of the buildings in Suva, the country’s capital on the island of Viti Levu, appeared to have only minor damage. A CARE Australia aid worker, Anna Cowley, said in a telephone interview from Suva that power outages had hampered aid efforts. “There is still a power blackout across the main island, Viti Levu, which has stopped water pumps from working,” Ms. Cowley said on Sunday, adding that patchy communications with outlying islands had made assessing the damage there difficult. In a statement, CARE Australia said Cyclone Winston had also caused severe damage to houses and crops in Tonga, which lies to Fiji’s southeast.
|
Cyclone;Fiji;Frank Bainimarama
|
ny0000263
|
[
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] |
2013/03/05
|
Notre Dame Subdues UConn in Third Overtime
|
SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) — Skylar Diggins scored 29 points and sparked a decisive run in the third overtime as No. 2 Notre Dame beat third-ranked Connecticut by 96-87 on Monday night to win the Big East regular-season title outright for the second straight year. “We were done in regulation and the first and second overtimes,” Irish Coach Muffet McGraw said. “We just kept clawing away and got them to miss some free throws. “What a battle.” The Fighting Irish (28-1, 16-0) were undefeated in the conference for the first time since joining in 1995-96 and became the first team to win six of seven games against Connecticut (27-3, 14-2) in more than two decades. Kayla McBride added 26 points for Notre Dame before fouling out. Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis led UConn with 26 points and Kelly Faris added 21. Stefanie Dolson added 12 points and 11 rebounds before fouling out in the final minute, and Bria Hartley had 10. The Irish won despite shooting 1 of 12 from 3-point range and being outshot by 46 percent to 39 percent, but they forced 35 turnovers. The Huskies had chances to put the game away in the first two overtimes. Morgan Tuck missed a free throw late in the first overtime that could have given the Huskies a 4-point lead. McBride then hit Notre Dame’s only 3-pointer with 8 seconds left to tie the score at 71-71 and force the second overtime.
|
College Sports;Basketball;University of Connecticut;University of Notre Dame;College basketball
|
ny0040225
|
[
"business",
"media"
] |
2014/04/01
|
Beware the April Fools’ Jokes Coming From Madison Avenue
|
SOCIAL media like Facebook and Twitter have been given credit for reviving interest in watching television live so comments about unbelievable catches, undeserved awards, unexpected plot twists and unfashionable dresses can be shared in real time with family and friends. Those social platforms also seem to be having a stimulative effect on the interest along Madison Avenue in April Fools’ jokes. In the last three or four years, the ranks of pranksters seem to have grown, partly because of the ability of social media to rapidly communicate and amplify messages. For instance, a trick pulled off for April Fools’ Day last year by FreshDirect — the introduction of a blueberry and banana hybrid called a “bluenana” — was “a hit with our customers, garnering lots of buzz across social media,” said Jodi Kahn, chief consumer officer at FreshDirect. So this year, “we decided to take another ‘fresh’ twist on April Fools’ and are looking forward to adding a little more fun to the day for everyone who shops with us,” Ms. Kahn said. The jest for 2014: a new offering, “eagle-caught salmon, sustainably harvested in the wilds of upstate New York” by eagles that are sponsored by FreshDirect and “tied with green and orange ribbons” — the company’s logo colors — “for tracking as well as a bit of flair.” Image FreshDirect has plans for an imaginary new product, “eagle-caught salmon.” Those who do not figure out the joke from that description, or the information that the salmon is “biked in daily from the banks of the Salmon River in Pulaski, N.Y., straight to New York City’s Pulaski Bridge,” may realize their legs are being pulled by FreshDirect’s recommendation that the salmon ought to be cooked by “tucking butter into the talon holes” and served with “a freshly popped Zima” — the malt beverage that Coors stopped selling in this country in 2008. The Ely, Minn., chamber of commerce “got a lot of attention” last year, said Kelly Plummer, a spokeswoman, with an April Fools’ trick centered on a make-believe ban on social media . The tomfoolery this year will be centered on the Ely Channel, an imaginary cable network with programming like “Log Cabin Log-In” and “Sauna Wars” and its own social media hashtag, #ChannelEly. The agency Publicis Seattle intends to announce on Tuesday the creation of BrandDrops, billed as “the world’s first branded aromatic rain.” The make-believe droplets are to be described as a result of a collaboration with scientists to develop a way to inject water molecules with scents that can be customized for marketers. Suggestions will include rain that smells like a hamburger and fries, for a fast-food chain, or rain with the aroma of a car brand’s new-car scent. The prank includes a hashtag, #BrandDrops; a website ; and a video clip . Publicis Seattle is part of the Publicis North America division of Publicis Worldwide, which is owned by the Publicis Groupe. Image "Sauna Wars" is part of the programming in the Ely, Minn., Chamber of Commerce April Fools’ Day campaign. Another effect of social media on April Fools’ Day is that many tricksters seek to take advantage of the always-on nature of social platforms by promulgating their pranks before April 1 , hoping to generate word-of-mouth that will build before the day’s arrival. This year, examples include the American Eagle Outfitters retail chain, which said on March 24 that it would bring out a line of canine clothing under the American Beagle Outfitters banner. Among the elements of the practical joke are content on a section of the American Eagle website and a video clip that is being called a “dogumentary.” (Puns are usually a giveaway that an April Fools’ jest is on its way.) Each April Fools’ Day, there are some things that sound like pranks but are not. For instance, on March 17, CBS said that Drew Carey and Craig Ferguson would swap jobs for April 1, with Mr. Carey hosting “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson” and Mr. Ferguson hosting “The Price Is Right.” Also on Tuesday, the National Geographic Channel will turn over three hours of prime time to the merry band of pranksters behind “Mystery Science Theater 3000” and RiffTrax, who will provide their humorous commentary during episodes of classic series like “Honey Badgers” and “Swamp Men.” Time will tell whether any of the jokes for 2014 will rank among the funniest — and most successful in fooling consumers — of previous April Fools’ Days. Among those was a “left-handed” Whopper from Burger King in 1998 and an announcement in 1996 that Taco Bell had bought the Liberty Bell and renamed it the Taco Liberty Bell.
|
Hoaxes and Pranks;April Fools;advertising,marketing;Social Media;FreshDirect
|
ny0267930
|
[
"us"
] |
2016/03/13
|
Recall Effort in Michigan Intensifies Pressure on Gov. Rick Snyder
|
DETROIT — Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan hired a law firm using up to $800,000 in taxpayer money to help his administration navigate through a throng of civil and criminal investigations. Both candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have called for him to resign. On Thursday he faces a grilling by a congressional committee in Washington. And as voters went to the polls on the state’s Primary Day last Tuesday, a group led by a Detroit pastor began an effort to recall him in a statewide referendum, a repeat of the movement that in 2012 targeted a fellow Republican, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin. For a man who swept into office in 2010 by promoting his résumé as a no-nonsense accountant and businessman who was above politics, Governor Snyder now finds himself in the middle of the kind of bitter partisan warfare that he has long disdained. Many Michigan voters now blame him for how he handled two of the state’s biggest debacles, the tainted water crisis in Flint and the tattered Detroit public schools. Though he is subject to term limits and cannot run for re-election in 2018, Mr. Snyder is now under threat of a recall, an effort that began in full force on Tuesday. At school and library polling stations in Detroit, volunteers handed out literature, recruited help and urged voters to support the petition drive when signature collection begins later this month. “He’s shown us that he’s just a businessman, not a governor,” said Wanda Jan Hill, 65, a Democrat and retired city employee, as she distributed leaflets outside a community center on the east side of Detroit. “He knew what was happening in Flint, and he did nothing. Where is the compassion?” Emails showed that a series of government errors surrounding Flint’s switch to a new water source were compounded by a lack of response over many months, despite growing evidence that the water was unsafe with high levels of lead. Image Gov. Rick Snyder at a news conference in January about the water crisis in Flint, Mich. Credit Sarah Rice for The New York Times Mr. Snyder, 57, has repeatedly apologized for his administration’s slow response, saying it was a failure on every level of government, and has voluntarily released thousands of pages of emails in an effort at transparency over the matter. On Friday, he expanded the investigations into the crisis, calling on the state’s auditor general and the inspector general of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to look into the health agency’s actions. But recently Mr. Snyder has also begun to fight back. During a Democratic debate on March 6 in Flint, Hillary Clinton, courting the state’s liberal voters, made a sharp call for him to step down, echoing the sentiments of her opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders, as well as those of many residents and lawmakers. While the Democrats were still on stage, Mr. Snyder fired off posts on Twitter defending his record, saying that political candidates “will not be staying to help solve the crisis, but I am committed to the people of Flint.” He also posted online a bullet-point chart that attacked Mrs. Clinton and laid out “fact v. fiction” on Flint. Mr. Snyder declined a request for an interview. But a spokesman, Ari Adler, reiterated Mr. Snyder’s pledge to stay and fix the Flint crisis, despite the recall effort. “Governor Snyder is fully committed to staying in office and putting every effort he can into restoring clean water for the people of Flint and correcting the mistakes in the government bureaucracy that caused the crisis in the first place,” Mr. Adler said. “After the political rhetoric from presidential candidates has blown into another state, Governor Snyder will still be here in Michigan, and specifically in Flint, working hand in hand with city and state leaders to move Flint forward.” Some prominent members of his party have rallied to his defense: Senator Marco Rubio of Florida said in a Republican debate in Detroit this month that Democrats were unfairly politicizing the issue. Mr. Snyder’s opponents have said that the governor’s political crisis is one of his own making, the result of a disconnected management style and lack of knowledge of the workings of government. “I like the guy,” said Reginald Williams, a substitute teacher, as he left a polling place in Farmington Hills, Mich., on Tuesday. “But the way he’s handled Flint is sloppy. You see people holding up bottles of gold water, you check it out. The fact that he didn’t do that shows his level of neglect.” Image Mr. Snyder’s opponents protested before the Democratic debate in Flint, Mich., on March 6. Credit Rebecca Cook/Reuters Mr. Snyder was elected in a robust year for Republicans, when they took control of statehouses and governor’s offices across the country two years after President Obama’s election. Michigan was hit particularly hard at the time, reeling from depopulation, stagnant economic growth and the loss of manufacturing jobs. Mr. Snyder had spent most of his career working at an accounting firm, as a computer executive and as a venture capitalist, and highlighted his expertise in business during his campaign. He floated above traditional finger-pointing politics, vowing to fight for all Michiganders, not just fellow Republicans. “This campaign is about creating a positive future for Michigan where all Michiganders can win together,” he said in 2010 after winning the Republican Party’s nomination for governor. That mind-set stayed with Mr. Snyder after he was elected. “He’s not a political animal — it has been a pure business approach,” said John Truscott, who was press secretary to former Gov. John Engler of Michigan, a Republican. “He’s had an attitude of, ‘Just fix the problem. I don’t want to get involved in the politics.’ ” However, Mr. Truscott added, “you can’t take your successful business approach and necessarily translate it to a successful government approach.” Paul F. Welday, a political consultant and former chairman of the Republican Party in Oakland County, said Mr. Snyder’s lack of experience in politics has been “a challenge” for him, as he struggled to connect with lawmakers. “He has a very hands-off approach to dealing with the Legislature,” Mr. Welday said. “He’s not particularly engaged on a personal level. If you’re going to be a good politician, you’d better understand politics. You can’t disregard it.” The political pressure on Mr. Snyder has been building. The state Board of Canvassers has so far approved two petitions to recall Mr. Snyder ; the groups may work together to collect signatures. If the drive is successful in gathering the signatures of 790,000 registered voters in 60 days, the issue could go to a vote in November. The Detroit public schools have been under state-appointed emergency managers for years, and officials have warned that the district could be insolvent within weeks. Image Detroit’s public schools have been under state-appointed emergency managers for years. Credit Laura McDermott for The New York Times Representative Tim Greimel, the Michigan House minority leader, said he was spurred to urge Mr. Snyder’s resignation last week after reading recently released emails that revealed there were several close aides to Mr. Snyder who were concerned about Flint’s water in 2015, long before residents were told to stop drinking it. “He is too aloof when it comes to the details and the nitty-gritty of both policy and politics,” Mr. Greimel said in an interview. “It is inconceivable that the governor did not know about the seriousness of the Flint water. If he didn’t know about it, then he’s the worst manager in the history of the state. If state government were a corporation and Governor Snyder were the C.E.O., the board of directors would have fired him months ago over this.” In February 2015, Dennis Muchmore, Mr. Snyder’s chief of staff at the time, expressed his worry in an email to colleagues . “Since we’re in charge, we can hardly ignore the people of Flint,” he wrote. In an email a month later, he wrote, “If we procrastinate much longer in doing something direct we’ll have real trouble.” It was unclear if Mr. Snyder was informed of Mr. Muchmore’s concerns. The governor has said that he was not briefed on the magnitude of the Flint water crisis until September 2015. “Basically every single person in his inner circle knew about it and talked about it on some level, and chose not to make it an issue,” said State Senator Jim Ananich, a Democrat whose district includes Flint. “It’s pretty clear that he knew or he went to great lengths to not know. Either way it’s troubling.” Marcia Rivard, after voting near her suburban Detroit home on Tuesday, said she was a staunch Republican who had voted for Mr. Snyder twice. She opposed an effort to recall him, but said she was frustrated by the situation in Flint. She believed someone in government, though not the governor, should be found criminally liable for the tainted water supply. A number of investigations are in progress, including by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Michigan attorney general. The Rev. David Alexander Bullock, the pastor who is leading a recall effort, said the group would begin collecting signatures on Easter Sunday. “The governor is now trying to rehabilitate his image, trying to make the case that he’s the right one to fix the problem,” he said. “But the Flint water crisis happened in many ways because of his leadership style.”
|
Rick Snyder;Michigan;Flint Michigan;Lead;Water;Referendum;Gubernatorial races;Detroit
|
ny0269267
|
[
"world",
"americas"
] |
2016/04/28
|
A Former Girl Soldier in Colombia Finds ‘Life Is Hard’ as a Civilian
|
CALDAS, Colombia — Mélida was only 9 when guerrilla fighters lured her away with the promise of food as she played on the floor. For the next seven years she was held hostage by the rebels, forced to become a child soldier. Her family thought she had died in battle. Then Mélida suddenly returned to her village at 16, carrying a pistol and a grenade. Only her grandfather recognized her — from a birthmark on her cheek. The very next day, the military surrounded her house, called by an informant seeking the bounty on her head. “I found out my own father had turned me in,” she recalled. Colombia is nearing a peace agreement with the rebels to end a half-century of fighting, one of the longest conflicts in the world. More than 220,000 people have been killed, leaving a country bitterly divided over what role, if any, former rebels should play in society once they drop their weapons for a new, unarmed life outside the jungle. That includes thousands of rebel fighters who were raised since childhood to carry out armed struggle. Many of them know little else but war. “There are times when I think about returning to the guerrillas because this life is hard here,” said Mélida, now 20, who, like other former child soldiers, asked that her last name not be used because she fears reprisals over her links to the rebels. She is now caught between two worlds, she says, belonging to neither. “True, we were children waiting for our deaths. But I’m always thinking about returning.” The rebels, known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, say they don’t recruit children. Yet during a recent visit to a FARC camp by The New York Times, a half-dozen soldiers as young as 15 said they had been recruited by the rebels only months earlier. In government rehabilitation centers throughout Colombia, minors told similar stories of being spirited away to camps by rebels. Now they face a future for which they are thoroughly unprepared. Growing Up in Violence Fabio said he was kidnapped by rebel fighters at the age of 9. By the time he was 13, he said, his commanders began sending him on solo missions to slit the throats of government soldiers as they slept. He said his own family did not look for him or inform the authorities of his abduction. Image Fabio, 19, and Dora, 64, who rents a room to him in Caldas, Colombia. She worked in the kitchen of the center for demobilized children where Fabio was sent, and lost her son, Hector, to FARC sniper fire. Credit Juan Arredondo for The New York Times “They would have been killed,” said Fabio, who is now 19. Freddy said he joined the FARC at 14 to avenge the killing of a cousin by paramilitary forces. He deserted at 16 with two dozen other soldiers. But he said his aunt, fearing reprisals from the guerrillas, told him never to return to his village. Finding a place for these former soldiers is vital to the success of any peace deal, analysts say. “If poor or botched reintegration programs fail to offer opportunities to former child combatants, Colombia’s powerful paramilitaries and trafficking groups may offer them a tempting alternative,” said Adam Isacson, a senior analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America , a human rights group. At the rebel camp, one FARC commander, who goes by the name Teófilo Panclasta, defended the use of child soldiers, saying that many joined to escape trouble at home. “If a girl comes at 15 as a prostitute and wants to join us to stop being a whore, what are we going to say?” he asked. Mélida said that when her captors came to her house along the river, they drew her attention by saying they had soup in their canoe. The guerrillas brought her up the river until they reached a distant camp. She woke up alongside several other children, each around 10 or 11. Their first lesson was hiding in trenches during bombings by the military. Mélida’s father, Moisés, a traditional healer of the Amazon’s Cubeo group, was away at the time and did not return to their village for another month. He quickly left again to find the girl. Moisés went to the guerrilla camp near the village and asked to meet the commander, a tall FARC fighter in fatigues. “I said, ‘I came for my daughter,’ ” Moisés recalled. “He said she wasn’t there.” In the camp, Mélida had been renamed Marisol and began her schooling. A Dutch woman who had joined the fighters and spoke broken Spanish taught lessons on the history of communism, the FARC and Darwin’s theory of evolution, something Mélida had never learned in her indigenous village. Mélida was also learning to make land mines. One “looked like a fish” and was triggered with a tripwire made of string, she said. Another was called the “quiebrapatas,” or the “leg-breaker,” because it maimed rather than killed its victim. “I said, ‘I want to go home,’ ” she remembered saying. “But they told me, ‘Once you enter a camp, you cannot leave.’ ” Mélida said she saw the fate of runaway fighters firsthand. Once, a 20-year-old and his 14-year-old sister disappeared before dawn and soon found themselves trapped on the edge of a muddy river. They had not learned to swim. Image A rehabilitation center for demobilized children in Caldas, Colombia. Credit Juan Arredondo for The New York Times Mélida joined the search for them. When the pair were found, they were shot dead. “First the brother, then the sister,” Mélida recalled. She remembered feeling no remorse that day. “I said to myself, ‘Yes — yes they should be killed.’ ” She was 12 years old. ‘Best to Forget’ Years after she was kidnapped, FARC rebels passed through her village and mentioned Mélida to her family. “They said she had died in an attack,” her father recalled. “After that, I just forgot about her. I thought it was best to forget.” In reality, a commander in his 40s had taken an interest in her. At first, he followed her around the camp. Then one day, when she was 15, he asked her to wash his clothes in his tent. “Give me a kiss,” she recalled him saying. “I don’t know how,” she said. “Then I’ll teach you,” the commander said. She was later given a birth control implant in her arm and the commander forced her into a relationship, she said. “Imagine waking up next to someone who was that old when you are that young,” she said. At 16, she asked the commander if she could visit her family. She was surprised when he agreed. Carrying the pistol and the grenade, she made her way back home for what was meant to be a short reunion. The village was unrecognizable. A warship was now stationed near the dock. The home from which she had been abducted was abandoned. “I told the first person I saw that I was Mr. Moisés’ daughter, and they said I couldn’t be because that daughter was dead,” she said. Mélida says she does not know why her father turned her in to the military the next day. “He wanted me not to go back perhaps,” she said. “He wanted the best for me.” But Moisés, sitting in his daughter’s living room on a recent afternoon, offered another explanation. Image Deyanira, 19, and her friend Freddy, also 19, in Caldas. Both had fought for the FARC as children. Credit Juan Arredondo for The New York Times “I wanted to buy a motorcycle,” he said. After a moment he added, “They never gave me the reward I was promised.” The soldiers interrogated Mélida at one base after another, she said. What was her real name, they asked? Who were her commanders? Where were the FARC bases? After two weeks, Mélida was taken to a government rehabilitation center for indigenous youth who had left the FARC. It was on a mountainside in an alien part of the country for Mélida, who had never seen the Andes before she was captured. The center was home to about 20 other former child soldiers. Daily classes and chores, meant to adjust them to civilian life, were new to her. Other requirements, like another birth control implant, reminded her of the FARC. Love and Lasting Trauma War was constantly on Mélida’s mind. “When I would get up, I would reach beside me to take my rifle and realize there wasn’t one there,” she said. Víctor Hugo Ochoa, the center’s director, said Mélida arrived angry and often threatened to run away. “It was hard to intervene,” he said. “She formed her own constellation of kids who turned on us.” At night, Mélida began sneaking out of the center with a man named Javier, whose mother was a cook there. He was nine years older than Mélida, but the two would go out drinking and partying in a nearby town. Javier had a bad history with the rebels. In 2004, his brother, a soldier, was killed by a FARC sniper. His family never forgave the guerrillas, a tension at the heart of any peace deal. Despite this, Mélida and Javier realized they were falling in love. “Why did it have to be her?” he said. “From the people who killed my brother?” Mélida was forming another relationship — with her father, who began visiting to get to know her again. After turning Mélida in, Moisés now wanted a role in his daughter’s life. But even communicating was a challenge: Mélida had lost some of her fluency in Cubeo, the indigenous language they had spoken when she was a child. “She was just some young lady I didn’t know,” he said. The new ties were changing her, Mr. Ochoa said. She was getting to know her two cousins, María and Leila, themselves former FARC members who had left the center. Javier’s mother, Dora, was teaching Mélida to cook and clean, taking on a mother’s role. Image E., 16, who asked that her name not be used, at her family farm in the mountains of Cauca, in southwestern Colombia. She was persuaded to join the FARC at 14. Credit Juan Arredondo for The New York Times Dora took Mélida’s FARC history in stride. “My daughter is married to a policeman; another is with a soldier,” she said. “Javier is with an ex-guerrilla. The only thing we’re missing in this family is a paramilitary.” One day Mélida’s birth control implant failed and she became pregnant. Dora pulled Mélida aside. “I told her, ‘Now you have something to fight for that’s not the revolution.’ ” Her daughter, Celeste, was born last year. The daily tasks of motherhood consumed Mélida for weeks. But the anger remained. “She told me she was raised for war, not to care, not to be a lover,” Javier said. “She would tell me, ‘I love you, but understand my life hasn’t been easy.’ ” One day, Javier returned to find that Mélida and the baby were gone. Days before, Mélida had mentioned returning to rebel territory to see her sister, but now Javier thought it was a ruse to return to the FARC fold. It wasn’t the case. Instead, her bus had been stopped at a checkpoint by rebels who questioned each of the passengers. “I thought they would catch me again,” said Mélida, who realized then she did not want to go back, at least not that day. Mélida’s relationship with her father remains strained. They rarely talk about her life in rebel hands. On a recent day, Mélida was recovering from a blow to her face. “She started to argue with me and I hit her,” said Moisés, looking at the ground. Recently, Mélida’s cousin Leila, the former FARC member, committed suicide. Mélida sometimes travels to visit the unmarked grave. Dora says Mélida is too strong to take her own life. But she worries Mélida might return to the guerrillas. “She is a good mother and puts her daughter first,” Dora said. “But she also tells me she is bored and doesn’t like this life. And I tell her: ‘If you want to leave, then leave. But think of the girl. Leave Celeste with me.’ ”
|
Colombia;FARC;Kidnapping and Hostages;Amazon rainforest;Indigenous peoples
|
ny0174341
|
[
"us"
] |
2007/10/17
|
Habitat for Humanity Expels Several Affiliates
|
Habitat for Humanity International severed ties with 12 of its more than 1,600 affiliates over the summer, citing inactivity, lack of communication and failure to share part of their revenues with headquarters. The action comes as the organization, known for its grass-roots local operations that build and renovate houses for the poor, is adopting a more centralized businesslike approach, which has upset some affiliates. Habitat International, which is based in Americus, Ga., is asking all affiliates to sign a document of 23-plus pages to replace the two-page “covenant” that has governed their relationship with headquarters for decades, and some affiliates have resisted. It is also asking each affiliate to tithe — that is, to send the international organization 10 percent of its donations that are not earmarked for a specific purpose by donors. Elizabeth K. Blake, Habitat’s general counsel, said that what the organization called “disaffiliation” was a last resort. “It’s our goal to work with the affiliates to support them and help revitalize them,” Ms. Blake said. “Where we have disaffiliated them and taken that final step, there’s been no one at the receiving end who’s been responsive to us.” She said 61 affiliates had lost their ties to Habitat International since 1998, most of them voluntarily. “The affiliate volunteers and board members realize they are no longer as committed or are unable for a number of reasons to keep their affiliate going,” Ms. Blake said. She said the 12 recently affected affiliates were first notified in March 2006 that their status was at risk and were given six months to respond. They got a second notice in September 2006, and Habitat International staff members followed up with calls. Habitat International refused to identify the affiliates affected. But one of them, the Walker County affiliate in Jasper, Ala., was identified in a packet of information about the disaffiliations mailed anonymously to affiliates around the country. Ivan Chisolm, president of the Walker County affiliate, said the only notification his organization received was the final letter declaring it disaffiliated. Mr. Chisolm said he had talked with Habitat’s regional executive a few months before the letter arrived, “and he had just said that something might be coming down from main headquarters.” Ms. Blake declined to discuss what efforts Habitat International had made to reach Mr. Chisolm’s affiliate, saying, “Let’s stay with the hard facts, for example, that this Walker County affiliate had not tithed since February 2001.” Similarly, in the letter formally disaffiliating the Walker County group, Ms. Blake specifically cites its failure to tithe as among “a number of factors” leading to disaffiliation. Tithing, however, is not a requirement under the current covenant governing the relationship between the affiliates and Habitat International; it is merely “expected.” Habitat International recently began deducting 10.4 percent from every donation sent to it but designated for one of its affiliates, and it has grown more insistent about the tithe. An e-mail message on Sept. 4 from Rex Spivey, a member of Habitat’s United States Council, to an affiliate that inquired about the disaffiliations suggests that failure to tithe was the primary motivation behind the letters Habitat International sent out. “Several hundred affiliates had not sent the tithe money for some time,” Mr. Spivey wrote. “They were all sent letters, and almost all of them responded positively.” Ms. Blake defended the requirement to tithe, saying, “The covenant is signed by the executive director and members of the board, and the fact that we wouldn’t go to court to sue them over the tithe doesn’t mean it isn’t an agreement on their part.” Mr. Chisolm said the Walker County affiliate was largely inactive — “We’re all volunteers and we’re all getting older” — and received no income other than from payments that continue to be made on the seven houses built during its decade-long existence. “So there really wasn’t anything to tithe on,” he said. Ms. Blake noted that the Walker County organization built its last house in 2005 and that “it is not consistent to build a house and yet not have funds.” But Mr. Chisolm said money was specifically raised for that house, which was also underwritten with payments made on the previous houses the Walker County affiliate built. He said he was discussing handing over his affiliate’s assets to a larger Habitat affiliate in the area; Jasper is about 35 miles northwest of Birmingham. The Fuller Center for Housing, a nonprofit housing group established by Habitat’s founders, Millard and Linda Fuller, has also been wooing Mr. Chisolm, as it has many of the organization’s discontented affiliates. Mr. Fuller, who was dismissed from Habitat International in 2005 after clashes with its board, said affiliates rarely lost their ties to the organization during his tenure, and he disputed the numbers Habitat International supplied. “I don’t trust those figures,” he said. “How can you trust them either if they won’t tell you who they are? You can’t verify anything.”
|
Habitat for Humanity;Restoration and Rehabilitation;Company Reports;Environment;Alabama;United States;Birmingham (Ala)
|
ny0268445
|
[
"sports",
"hockey"
] |
2016/04/04
|
Penguins Rout Flyers for Sixth Straight Victory
|
Sidney Crosby, Beau Bennett and Patric Hornqvist scored to help Pittsburgh build an early lead, and the surging Penguins equaled their longest winning streak of the season at six games with a 6-2 victory over the visiting Philadelphia Flyers on Sunday. Crosby scored his 33rd goal, Bennett his sixth and Hornqvist his 21st as Pittsburgh jumped out to a 3-0 advantage midway through the second period. Carl Hagelin added his 12th, and Eric Fehr scored twice in the third period for the Penguins, who won for the 12th time in 13 games. They moved to 5 points ahead of the third-place Rangers in the Metropolitan Division. Pittsburgh, in the playoffs for the 10th consecutive season, reached 100 points for the 10th time in team history. “I think that when our team plays the game the right way, we’re as good as any team and we can beat anybody,” Penguins Coach Mike Sullivan said. Matt Murray stopped 28 shots for Pittsburgh, starting a second consecutive game for the first time in his career. He earned his first N.H.L. shutout Saturday against the Islanders, filling in for Marc-Andre Fleury, who is out with a concussion. Wayne Simmonds matched a career high with his 29th goal, and Jakub Voracek scored his 11th for the Flyers, who remained a point ahead of Boston for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. Steve Mason made his ninth consecutive start and second in two days for Philadelphia as Michal Neuvirth remained out with a lower-body injury. Mason, who had 33 saves, has nine wins in his last 14 starts. The Penguins are on their most recent run without Evgeni Malkin, who missed his 12th straight game with an upper-body injury. They were also without Fleury and defenseman Olli Maatta, who is week to week with a lower-body injury. Crosby has led the resurgence with points in 18 of his last 19 games, including the last six. BLACKHAWKS 6, BRUINS 4 Patrick Kane had three goals and an assist as host Chicago raced to a six-goal lead in the second period before hanging on for a win over Boston. Kane’s scoring spree gave him 100 points for the first time in his nine-year career. The win was career No. 800 for Coach Joel Quenneville. Kane, the N.H.L.’s leading scorer, was clicking with his linemates Artemi Panarin and Artem Anisimov in the club’s fourth win in its last five games. Panarin had a goal and three assists, Anisimov a goal and two assists. Patrice Bergeron had two goals and an assist for the Bruins. He and David Pastrnak scored 11 seconds apart late in the second period. Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask was replaced early in the second after allowing a barrage of goals. Brad Marchand scored on a deflection midway through the third to cut it to 6-4, but Chicago hung on. JETS 5, WILD 1 Mark Scheifele scored his team-leading 27th goal and host Winnipeg gave its fans something to cheer about in the Jets’ last home game of the season: a victory over Minnesota. The Wild a dropped a third straight game and squandered a chance to clinch a playoff spot. BLUES 5, AVALANCHE 1 David Backes started the scoring in a three-goal first period, Anders Nilsson made 19 saves in relief of an injured Jake Allen, and visiting St. Louis beat Colorado, which moved to the brink of postseason elimination. Magnus Paajarvi, Colton Parayko and Alex Pietrangelo also scored for the Blues, who are chasing Dallas for the Central Division title and trying to stay ahead of Chicago. Troy Brouwer added an empty-netter with 2:55 remaining. Colorado trails Minnesota by 5 points for the final Western Conference berth.
|
Ice hockey;Pittsburgh Penguins;Flyers
|
ny0155586
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2008/06/05
|
Nine Are Arrested in Sweeping Organized Crime Crackdown
|
A man who the authorities say is an acting mob boss and eight other men were arrested on Wednesday on federal charges accusing them of coast-to-coast Mafia crimes, ranging from gangland hits and the theft of fur coats in New York in the early 1990s to a home invasion by police impersonators in Los Angeles in 2006. Among those named in a racketeering indictment unsealed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn were Thomas Gioeli, known as Tommy Shots, who the authorities say is the acting boss of the Colombo organized crime family. Three others who are already behind bars, two in prison and one awaiting trial, were also charged, including John Franzese, 89, who is identified as the family’s underboss. After a predawn arrest at his home on Long Island, Mr. Gioeli, 55, pleaded not guilty to robbery, murder and extortion charges and was ordered held without bail. If he is convicted, he faces a sentence of up to life in prison. “He’s denied all the allegations,” Mr. Gioeli’s defense lawyer, Adam Perlmutter, said outside court. The arrests, after a three-month investigation, were part of a “relentless campaign to prosecute and convict the highest echelons of the Colombo family and la Cosa Nostra as a whole,” said the United States attorney for the Eastern District, Benton J. Campbell. Mr. Gioeli (pronounced Jee-OH-lee) was charged in three of four murders detailed in the indictment, including the killing of two men in 1992 during a bloody civil war for control of the family. A Colombo captain was accused of participating in the shooting and killing, also in 1992, of an armored truck guard who was delivering money to a cash-checking store in Brooklyn. The indictment also maintains that Mr. Gioeli participated in a holdup at a fur shop in 1991 in which he posed as a customer. In 2006, two other defendants flew to Los Angeles to try to rob a house where they believed there was $1 million in drug money, court papers said. Wearing hats and T-shirts with “DEA” on them and carrying a fake search warrant, the men burst into the house and pistol-whipped a woman there, but they never found the cash, court papers said.
|
Colombo Crime Family;Organized Crime;Long Island (NY)
|
ny0033476
|
[
"sports",
"football"
] |
2013/12/19
|
Fantasy Football: Week 16 Matchup Breakdown
|
Something we tell people all the time is not to overthink the matchups in fantasy football. Analyzing the matchups can help you make tough decisions between players of similar skill sets, but there are elite players who should be in lineups every week, players we like to call matchup proof. In this most important week of the fantasy football season, a week in which most championship games are taking place, it has never been more crucial to keep this advice in mind. Chances are, you have built your fantasy team around certain core players whose consistent production has gotten your team this far. These players need to be starting. Now is not the time to take chances on less proven players with better matchups. Take quarterback Drew Brees (NO) , for example. The Carolina Panthers present a daunting challenge for any opposing quarterback as the toughest matchup for the position. But Brees, fantasy’s second highest scoring quarterback, is the kind of player who, more often that not, will excel no matter the matchup. He proved this two weeks ago with 313 yards and 4 touchdowns against these same Panthers. Brees is a little banged up and has not been as good on the road as he has been at home, but anyone thinking about benching Brees in Week 16 (unless you happen to have Peyton Manning as well), should take a deep breath. Running back Marshawn Lynch (SEA) Lynch draws the toughest matchup for running backs, the Arizona Cardinals, in the most important week of the fantasy season. But fantasy’s fourth best back has scored fewer than 13 points in a game only once since Week 9. He also put up 15 fantasy points (93 yards and a touchdown) against the Cardinals in Week 7. Brees and Lynch join Cam Newton, Tom Brady and other elite players who have unfavorable matchups in Week 16, but who should not be left on the sideline with a fantasy football title on the line. If you have a tough lineup question for Week 16, see our complete Week 16 player rankings or ask us on Twitter. Follow us at @5thDownFantasy. Favorable Matchups Quarterback Tony Romo (DAL) vs. Washington – Despite Matt Ryan’s Week 15 clunker, Washington has surrendered eight multiple-touchdown games and an average of 21 fantasy points per week this season. Despite breaking several hearts Sunday (and not in a good way), Romo enters this game with consecutive 22-point fantasy games. Andy Dalton (CIN) vs. Minnesota — Dalton rewarded the few brave souls who started him last weekend against the Steelers with 23 standard fantasy points. This weekend the matchup is far less daunting, considering the Vikings (second best QB matchup) have coughed up an average of 27 fantasy points to the position over the last five weeks. Treat him as a high-end QB2 this week. Kirk Cousins (WAS) vs. Dallas — It was a tale of two halves in Atlanta in Week 15, making him too risky as a QB1 in a championship week. But the matchup might warrant the risk in two-quarterback leagues and daily salary cap players. The inept Cowboys defense sank to new lows last weekend, allowing 299 yards and 4 touchdowns to Matt Flynn. There has not been a better opponent for quarterbacks in fantasy than Dallas in 2013 (26 F.P.P.G). Image Kirk Cousins, who has replaced Robert Griffin III as the Redskins' starting quarterback, gets another favorable matchup in Week 16. Credit Scott Cunningham/Getty Images Colin Kaepernick (SF) vs. Atlanta — The 49ers’ receiving corps is finally close to 100 percent and, not coincidently, Kaepernick’s level of play is starting to resemble that of the player who garnered such high expectations last off-season. If it is not too late in your league, an outstanding matchup with Atlanta awaits, as Cousin’s 381-yard, 3-touchdown outing in Week 15 can attest (fifth best QB matchup, 22 F.P.P.G). Philip Rivers (SD) vs. Oakland — The Raiders have allowed 506 passing yards and 7 total touchdowns to Geno Smith and Alex Smith in the last two weeks and can now be considered the fourth best quarterback matchup. While the Chargers have been run-heavy of late, Rivers should still produce a worthwhile QB1-type start. Running Back Ryan Mathews (SD) vs. Oakland — A solid run defense for much of the season has begun to completely unravel for Oakland in recent weeks. For example: DeMarco Murray’s 112 total yards and 3 touchdowns in Week 13, Chris Ivory’s 76 yards and a score in Week 14 and Jamaal Charles’s epic Week 15 screen pass extravaganza that produced 195 receiving yards and 5 total touchdowns DeMarco Murray (DAL) vs. Washington — After a painfully embarrassing loss to the Packers in which the coaching staff failed to run out the clock with their running back, who was averaging a robust 7 yards a clip, we can assume that same mistake will not happen again this week against Washington, which has allowed 10 games of 15 or more fantasy points to running backs in 2013 and a league-high 19 rushing scores. Then again, the Cowboys’ football I.Q. has proved to be quite low. Giovani Bernard (CIN) vs. Minnesota — Averaging 15 touches in his last three contests, Bernard could be in for an even bigger workload the rest of the way with signs that BenJarvus Green-Ellis is starting to wear down (four carries in Week 15, no goal line attempts). Opposing running backs have gashed the Vikings for double-digit points in six straight games and over all are the seventh best matchup a running back can have this year. Maurice Jones-Drew/Jordan Todman (JAX) vs. Tennessee — With the Jaguars out of the playoff picture and Todman playing so well last week, it would not make much sense for Jacksonville to go back to a banged-up Jones-Drew, who totaled 74 yards and a score against the Titans in Week 10. Whoever gets the start will warrant RB2 attention against a weak Titans run defense that has yielded the second most fantasy points on the ground this year. Le’Veon Bell (PIT) vs. Green Bay — Pittsburgh’s rookie workhorse gets a crack this week at Green Bay’s abysmal run defense, which has been torched for an average of 27 fantasy points over the last five games. Five running backs have managed to eclipse the 100-yard mark against the Packers since Week 9. Wide Receiver Pierre Garcon (WAS) vs. Dallas — Garcon’s 7 catches for 129 yards, including a 53-yard score on a team-high 10 targets with Cousins at the helm, leads us to believe that he is a pretty safe start against the league’s worst secondary, which has surrendered a 25-point fantasy average to the position over the last five games. Mike Wallace (MIA) vs. Buffalo — Wallace is on a nice late-season run, averaging 83 yards over his last four games with 3 total touchdowns. Fantasy’s fifth best matchup for the position is up next, a unit he posted 76 yards and 5 receptions against in Week 7. Michael Crabtree (SF) vs. Atlanta — Crabtree’s 45 yards and a touchdown against Darrelle Revis and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers has certainly raised expectations for this week’s matchup with a generous Atlanta secondary that was just burned by Garcon for 18 fantasy points last weekend (10th best WR matchup, 24 F.P.P.G). Image Giovani Bernard should see an increased workload in Week 16. Credit Andy Lyons/Getty Images Kendall Wright (TEN) vs. Jacksonville — Despite ankle and shoulder injuries, and a stingy Arizona secondary, Wright hauled in 12 balls for 150 yards in Week 15. A lack of end zone targets lowers his ceiling in standard formats, but he should be in lineups against Jacksonville, which has allowed 651 yards and 5 touchdowns to the position over the last three weeks. Vincent Jackson (TB) vs. St. Louis — The Rams have allowed an average of 108 yards and 3 touchdowns to opposing WR1s over the last four weeks. Through 15 games, the Rams are the best matchup for WR1s, averaging 14.4 F.P.P.G. Tight End Marcedes Lewis (JAX) vs. Tennessee — With Cecil Shorts out, Lewis took on a bigger role in the offense and has found the end zone in three straight games. With Shorts out for the rest of the year, that trend should continue. Desperate owners should consider him against the Titans, who have surrendered an average of 8.9 fantasy points a game to the position in 2013. Delanie Walker (TEN) vs. Jacksonville — Walker lived up to expectations in last week’s meeting with the position’s most favorable matchup with 53 yards and a touchdown against the Arizona Cardinals. This week he gets the second most favorable matchup. Defense/Special Teams Detroit vs. Giants, Cleveland vs. Jets, Tennessee vs. Jacksonville, Denver vs. Houston Unfavorable Matchups Quarterback Cam Newton (CAR) vs. Saints — It’s true that he had just 160 passing yards and one touchdown the last time he faced the Saints, who have allowed the fifth fewest points to opposing quarterbacks this season. But if you’re playing for a championship this week, fantasy football’s fifth best quarterback deserves a lot of the credit. Unless you have another quarterback in the same tier on your roster, Newton has to be on your front line. Tom Brady (NE) vs. Baltimore — Another tough matchup for Brady, but as he proved last week, he can still put up QB1-type numbers without Rob Gronkowski against a strong pass defense. Julian Edelman, Danny Amendola and others still give Brady a good group of weapons to work with. Carson Palmer (ARI) vs. Seattle — After a nice stretch in which Palmer scored at least 24 fantasy points in each game from Week 11 to 13, he has cooled off and now has to deal with the toughest matchup for his position. The Seahawks have not allowed more than 20 fantasy points to an opposing quarterback since Week 9. Matt Ryan (ATL) vs. San Francisco — Ryan disappointed many owners who put their trust in him last week against one of the most favorable matchups in fantasy football for quarterbacks, so there is no good reason to start him this week against the 49ers, who have held opposing quarterbacks to a 10-point average over the last five weeks. Running Back Pierre Thomas (NO) vs. Carolina — It may surprise you to know that Thomas leads all running backs in receptions this season (71), which has helped him remain a viable flex option in P.P.R. leagues. But in standard scoring formats he has just 8 points total over his last three games. Next up is fantasy’s second toughest matchup, a Panthers team that he gained 28 total yards against the last time they met. Image Cam Newton has a tough matchup against the Saints, but he should still start in most leagues this week. Credit Mike Mccarn/Associated Press Steven Jackson (ATL) vs. San Francisco — Jackson has come on of late, scoring five touchdowns (his total for the season) over the past four games. All good things come to an end, and a matchup with the 49ers will pose a great challenge for Jackson. San Francisco held Tampa Bay’s Bobby Rainey to 27 yards last week and Seattle’s Lynch is the only back to top double-digit fantasy points against the 49ers over the last five games. Andre Brown (NYG) vs. Detroit — The Giants are officially a train wreck, and they are likely to be blown out early by the Lions’ potent offense, leaving the ground game irrelevant. Minus McCoy’s big game during the blizzard, the Lions have given up just 4.7 fantasy points per game to running backs over their last seven contests. Andre Ellington/Rashard Mendenhall vs. Seattle — Both backs were productive in Week 15 against Tennessee: Ellington in P.P.R. formats and Mendenhall in all formats with his two touchdowns. It was a rare case of Arizona’s running back by committee benefiting both players in fantasy. But Seattle has allowed a back more than 10 fantasy points just once over the past five weeks and over all is the third toughest matchup for running backs. Wide Receiver Steve Smith (CAR) vs. New Orleans — It has been a rough season for Smith as far as fantasy production goes, but even more so of late, with an average of 40 receiving yards over the last three games. Next up is a difficult matchup with the Saints, who yield the seventh fewest points to receivers. Larry Fitzgerald (ARI) vs. Seattle — The Cardinals’ top target has a lot going against him in Week 16. He is still seeking clearance to play after suffering a concussion in Week 15, and if he does play he has to face a team he caught just two passes against for 17 yards last time. Seattle is the toughest opponent for receivers to score against in fantasy football. Golden Tate (SEA) vs. Arizona — Of all the receiving options on the run-first Seahawks, Doug Baldwin, not Tate, is the most consistent option of late. Tate, who has not scored more than 6 fantasy points since Week 10, would be a risky WR3 start this week against the Cardinals, who have allowed the seventh fewest points to the position. Roddy White (ATL) vs. San Francisco — Since returning to the field in Week 10, White has just one touchdown and topped 10 fantasy points only once. We mostly blame his quarterback, Ryan, who has thrown for only two touchdowns over the past four games. The 49ers, who should have Ryan on the run Monday night, have allowed three WR1s to reach double digits this season and, through 15 weeks, WR1s are averaging 6.7 fantasy points per game. Steve Johnson (BUF) vs. Miami — Our condolences to Johnson, whose mother died Saturday. Though Johnson played in Week 15, his status for this week is unknown. If he does suit up, he will have a difficult matchup against the Dolphins, who have allowed the sixth fewest fantasy points to WR1s this season. Tight End Greg Olsen (CAR) vs. New Orleans — Newton tried his best to lean on Olsen the last time the Panthers played the Saints, targeting his tight end 12 times. But the result was only 40 yards. The Saints are allowing an average of 6 points per game to the position through 15 weeks. Tim Wright (CLE) vs. St. Louis — The Rams showed how tough they could be against tight ends last week against the Saints, holding Jimmy Graham to two catches for 25 yards. Over all, St. Louis is the fourth worst matchup for fantasy tight ends. Defense/Special Teams Carolina vs. New Orleans, Arizona vs. Seattle, Baltimore vs. New England, New Orleans vs. Carolina.
|
Football;Fantasy sport;Marshawn Lynch;Tom Brady;Drew Brees;Cameron J Newton
|
ny0155194
|
[
"us"
] |
2008/01/14
|
Search on Alabama Coast Finds Body of 2nd of 4 Missing Children
|
MOBILE, Ala. (AP) — The body of a 3-year-old boy was recovered Sunday in the search for four young siblings who might have been thrown from a coastal bridge by their father, the authorities said. The body was found by two men looking for oysters about five miles west of the Dauphin Island bridge, a three-mile structure over the Intracoastal Waterway that connects Mobile to Dauphin Island, said Sheriff Sam Cochran of Mobile County. The body of the 3-year-old’s infant brother was found Saturday by a duck hunter about two miles west of the bridge, the authorities said. Sheriff Cochran said the remaining two bodies might be in the same area or might have been swept westward by the current. The search, which will resume Monday and is expected to be concentrated on the marshes along the shore, was being expanded toward Pascagoula, Miss., to the west. As the search was conducted by helicopter and airplane, airboats also shuttled volunteers into the shallow, boggy shoreline. Some walked hand in hand, upending logs and probing debris left by the high tide. Mr. Luong, a shrimp boat worker who lives in Irvington, Ala., was being held without bail on four counts of capital murder. District Attorney John Tyson Jr. said Mr. Luong, 37, had confessed to throwing the children — Ryan Phan, 3; Hannah Luong, 2; Lindsey Luong, 1; and Danny Luong, 4 months — off the bridge after arguing with his wife. Mr. Luong later recanted, saying two Asian women had taken the children and had not returned them. A witness saw him on the bridge with the children, and another saw him leave the area without them, the police said. Mr. Luong’s appointed lawyer, Joe Kulakowski, attempted to meet with him on Sunday but said he was unable to arrange it with jail officials. Mr. Kulakowski said he planned to ask the court on Monday to appoint a Vietnamese interpreter to help him.
|
Children and Youth;Murders and Attempted Murders;Alabama
|
ny0166096
|
[
"us"
] |
2006/08/11
|
For Californians, Deadly Heat Cut a Broad Swath
|
BAKERSFIELD, Calif., Aug. 9 — On the last day of her life, Patricia Miller-Razor did the same things she did just about every other day in this sun-parched town, even as the temperature climbed. She wrapped herself in her signature sweatsuit. She rode her bicycle to the Green Frog Market. She pondered her oil paintings, and carvings fashioned from avocado seeds, all the while refusing the entreaties from her family to flick on her cooler in her sweltering house. Ms. Miller-Razor, 77, was later found by her son sideways across her bed, dead of heat stroke. Roughly 140 Californians met a similar quick and grim fate in last month’s heat wave, a death toll unlike any the state had seen from high temperatures since 1955, state officials said, before air-conditioning went mainstream. The extraordinary toll, in a place where most residents are accustomed to summer days in which the mercury hits triple digits, has shocked and unnerved state and local officials, leading Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to order up a task force of health and emergency service officials to study how to avoid such deaths. The length of the heat wave — it dragged on unabated for two weeks — overwhelmed county coroners, some of whom did not have the cots or refrigerators to handle the bodies; strained the state’s power resources; and caused costly damage to crops and livestock, in addition to the human toll. While some of those who died had much in common with those who perished in heat waves this summer in New York City and elsewhere — they were elderly or infirm or frugal about using air-conditioners — many others reflected the lifestyle and proclivities of people in the arid Southwest. There were five homeless people living in tents far off in the desert, who died in them. A half-dozen men were found dead after illegally trying to cross the border near San Diego. A tractor driver who had tilled a farm for decades, undaunted by long hot days in a long-sleeve shirt, died on the property. Summers are to the Central Valley of California what winters are to northern Maine; people who live here are used to them, prepare for them, and to some extent are not fazed by them. The valley is the agricultural center of the state, and people here are used to toiling on hot days in fields, knocking around in their gardens and generally going about their business, knowing that the nights will bring relief from the dry heat that sears the day. But for 13 straight days last month, things went differently. “This heat wave was marked by three things,” said Eric A. Weiss, a professor of emergency medicine at Stanford University Medical Center and an expert on heat-related illnesses. “There was the duration, which is always important because of the cumulative effect,” Dr. Weiss went on. “Two, there were the record temperatures. And three, it did not cool down at night.” He also said that some misinformation that had been spread about the signs of heatstroke might have caused further illnesses or deaths. While the elderly are always particularly prone to death in harsh heat waves, fewer than half of those who died in California were over 70, according to a compilation of the most recent coroners’ reports, most of which are not yet complete. In San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles, for example, the average age of the 10 who died was 45. There was a 49-year-old man who went to his car to listen to music, fell asleep and was found later, the car heated to 140 degrees. Two men in their 40’s were found outdoors. A 30-year-old construction worker who had headaches all week left his job site for the hospital and died there 20 minutes later. “That was surprising to us, a real eye-opener,” Sandy Fatland, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County coroner, said of the ages. “Perhaps when we are middle-aged, we don’t have people around who make us take care of ourselves; and left to our own devices, we don’t.” In a state where long hours are spent caring for and harvesting crops, often by young, illegal workers from Mexico, Richard Helmuth, who worked for nearly 60 years at the Del Ray Packing Company raisin farm just east of Fresno, stood out. The Fresno County coroner’s office attributed Mr. Helmuth’s death to his work; Gerald Chooljian, a co-owner of the farm, said Mr. Helmuth, who was 79, had gotten off the tractor and gone to sit in his car, where he was later discovered by another employee. Mr. Chooljian was well versed in Mr. Helmuth’s ways — his preference for solitude, his refusal to drink water that did not come from his home, his insistence on working without shade. “He wore long sleeves and said, ‘I don’t want the umbrella,’ ” Mr. Chooljian said. “And I thought, ‘O.K., you’ve been doing this for 50-odd years, I am 52 so I’m a pipsqueak comparatively. “He taught me how to drive a tractor,” Mr. Chooljian added. “I respected him. He was his own boss; he did what he wanted, when he wanted. He always said he wanted to die on a tractor.” Many elderly victims were doomed by personal choice. At the home of an elderly man in Bakersfield where the air-conditioner was found broken, sheriffs found $25,000 in cash. In Fresno, Araxie Long, 82, and her son Carl, 53, both died in the house they shared, where family members had begged them to turn on the air-conditioner. “They absolutely hated A-C,” said Diane Rowe, one of Mrs. Long’s daughters. “It wasn’t a matter of finances; they just couldn’t stand it. Now, all I can think about is their beautiful smiles.” Here in Bakersfield, Ms. Miller-Razor had long refused to use her swamp cooler, which works by evaporation, saying that the cold air gave her body aches. “She was going to do her thing her way,” her daughter-in-law Amy Razor said. “The house, the way it was locked up with two little six-inch fans, was probably between 125 and 130 degrees. She would tell us ‘I am in tune with myself. I know how to take care of myself.’ ” Some seemed to have no choice. In a Modesto apartment building with three units, two of the three residents — both older men who had few people to look in on them — died in homes with no air-conditioning. One was Eston Baker, 72, a veteran who liked to volunteer at the local retirement home; the other, Curtis Floray, kept a microphone at the front door for visitors to speak into. “It seems like the service guys, when they hit 65 or 70, they kind of fall through the cracks,” said Jeannie Riley, Mr. Baker’s stepdaughter, who also lives in Modesto. “I tried to get help from the county for him. They were a little slow on it. He didn’t have anyone. He didn’t have a family. I think that was why he was always around the older people all the time, because he was so lonely.” Death also claimed the most marginalized: people who came from Mexico and never made it past the border, felled by heat; and those who lived in tent cities in the desert without running water or electricity. Of the 10 people who died in Imperial County along the Mexican border, one was trying to sneak across the border; one was gardening; 3 lived in trailers; and 5 lived in tents, far from any town. One of the five lived in a big section of brush by the highway. “Some are known and classified as schizophrenics,” said Henry Proo, a deputy sheriff in Imperial County. “Some are out of the military and could never get back to society; some are drug addicts, and for whatever reason this is the way they live. You got to live somewhere, and someone gives them a tent and they put it under a shady tree.” Deputy Proo said the authorities were used to deaths in tents during hot summers, maybe one every week or so. “But no one,” he said, “remembers anything like this.”
|
Weather;California;Death and Dying;Aged;Air Conditioning;Agriculture
|
ny0256180
|
[
"business"
] |
2011/08/29
|
Irene Damage May Hit $7 Billion, Adding to Insurer Woes
|
The total damage inflicted by Hurricane Irene may reach $7 billion by the time the storm dissipates in the coming days, making one of the insurance industry’s worst years even tougher, according to an early estimate by the Kinetic Analysis Corporation in Silver Spring, Md. Most of the loss will very likely come from property in New York and New Jersey, according to industry experts. Although Irene had diminished to a tropical storm by the time it reached New York early Sunday, those two states have the most valuable coastal property on the Atlantic Coast. At $7 billion in possible losses, Irene would be among the 10 costliest catastrophes in American history, according to the Insurance Information Institute. The most expensive disaster by far was Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which caused $45 billion worth of damage, not counting costs that were covered by the National Flood Insurance Program. The second, at about $23 billion, was the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, which the institute counts as a single event. All but one of the remaining top 10 were hurricanes , ranging in cost from $22 billion for Hurricane Andrew in 1992 to $6 billion for Hurricane Rita in 2005. Insured losses in the Carolinas from Hurricane Irene were estimated Sunday at $200 million to $400 million by Eqecat, a company in Oakland, Calif., that models the effects of natural disasters. The company said that parts of North Carolina and Virginia had received 20 inches of rain, more than had been forecast, and that more than a million people were without power after Irene, which was ranked a Category 1 hurricane when it came ashore there. In the Caribbean, Irene caused an estimated $500 million to $1.1 billion worth of damage, most of it in the Bahamas, where it was a Category 2 hurricane, but also in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and other territories, according to AIR Worldwide, a Boston company that analyzes the cost of storm damage. Even before the current Atlantic hurricane season started in June, American property insurers had run through a typical year’s worth of catastrophe payouts because of an unusual string of severe natural disasters. Their losses could grow even more, because forecasters have been predicting an above-average hurricane season this year. The A. M. Best Company, which rates the financial strength of insurers, called the level of natural disasters this year “unprecedented” in a report on the American insurance industry issued last week. The company, based in New Jersey, said disaster-related losses this year had already exceeded the total for all of 2010. It estimated the losses at $27 billion through June 30, compared with $11.9 billion in the first six months of last year and $19.6 billion for all of 2010. The company based its findings on a survey of roughly 150 insurers, which it said accounted for 80 percent of the industry. A. M. Best said the year’s series of major disasters would hurt insurers’ earnings, but was unlikely to threaten their capital. It noted, though, that the industry would “be tested through the remainder of 2011, as budgets for catastrophe-related losses already have been exhausted.” Moody’s Investors Service said many property and casualty insurers were still profitable in the storm-ridden second quarter of this year, but their profits often shrank compared with the second quarter of 2010, and their reserves to pay claims had diminished and would have to be rebuilt at some point. A few, with large operations in the Midwest and Southeast, swung from profits to losses, Moody’s said, including Allstate, Hartford Financial Services, Travelers and Cincinnati Financial. Moody’s research covered only the publicly traded insurers, not mutual companies like State Farm, which has the largest share of the personal insurance market in the United States. State Farm has disclosed payouts of more than $2.5 billion through May of this year. Some of the losses for American companies grew out of catastrophes in other countries, including the powerful earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March and an earthquake in New Zealand in February that was followed by floods and destructive aftershocks. In the United States, there were blizzards in the Midwest, fires in the Southwest, severe tornadoes in the Southeast, a hailstorm in Oklahoma that did more than a billion dollars’ worth of damage and flooding along the Mississippi and other rivers. The worst losses arose from the tornadoes and hailstorms that hit in April and May, including the tornado that struck Joplin, Mo. , on May 22 and the one in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on April 27. Eqecat said tornadoes alone were costing insurers up to $18 billion so far this year, with up to $7 billion of that from just three days, April 25 through 28. Most of the claims involved damage to homes and cars, and companies that sell personal insurance are taking a bigger blow than those that sell coverage to businesses. Eqecat said those three days were “likely the most expensive tornado outbreak ever in the United States.” Property and casualty insurers are also having a difficult year because of low investment income, a result of the Federal Reserve’s efforts to use low interest rates to stimulate the economy. In addition, insurers have been struggling with what is known as a “soft” market, in which competition for new business is intense and companies have a hard time raising premiums enough to cover all the risks they bear. Some analysts have been wondering whether the year’s storms will be the catalyst that changes those market conditions. “To the extent that carriers perceive greater catastrophe risk, we expect that they will manage their exposures down,” Moody’s said in a research report this month. In other words, they would charge more, underwrite more strictly or buy more reinsurance so that some of their losses would be reimbursed. Although painful for insurers and property owners, hurricanes rarely cause more than a blip on the national economy. The biggest categories of loss are property damage and the disruption to business. For companies that suffer both, “there obviously can be some layoffs associated with natural disasters if businesses are forced to shut down,” said James F. O’Sullivan, chief economist at MF Global. For the broader economy, those losses tend to be offset by increases in spending from cleanup activity and rebuilding. With so many construction workers currently unemployed, rebuilding can provide short-term jobs. Allen L. Sinai, chief global economist at the consulting firm Decision Economics, said that with the potential for some companies to be shut down for up to a week after a hurricane hits, he would most likely downgrade his third-quarter growth forecast for economic output, or gross domestic product, between a half and a full percentage point. But, he said, “we’ll probably get most of it back” in the fourth quarter on the “rebound effect.” He said that insurance payments to cover repairs of storm damage would show up as extra economic activity after the storms. Any slowdown in the growth rate, of course, could have a further dampening effect by depressing already sluggish consumer confidence, which is hitting lows not seen since the middle of the most recent recession . In general, said Mark Skidmore, an economist at Michigan State University who has studied the long-term economic effects of natural disasters, wealthier countries tend to be able to recover quickly and relatively efficiently because insurance steps in. Haiti is still reeling from the 2010 earthquake, Mr. Skidmore said, in large part because the “economic base was so fragile to begin with.” Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist at MFR Inc., warned against those who argue that disasters can ultimately spur growth as cities and businesses rebuild. Some say that such activity actually leads to growth because governments, homeowners and businesses often install new technology or other improvements when they rebuild after a disaster. “The ultimate impact is still negative because you’re starting from a lower level of activity or assets and you’re repairing them,” Mr. Shapiro said. “If you’re looking at growth for the month or two afterward, obviously things are growing faster because it’s engendering all this activity, but you’re just trying to get back to where you were.” If it really were true that natural disasters led to growth, he said, “if you’re in the middle of recession you just wander around blowing up buildings and that would be your path to prosperity.” “And clearly that’s not the case,” Mr. Shapiro said. “It’s not the case with a natural disaster, either.” Charles C. Watson Jr., president of Kinetic Analysis, said Irene hit at a time when small businesses and homeowners “can’t handle another shock to the budget.” “Their reserves are lower than normal, insurance won’t be covering as much, government budgets are stretched, and there is a question mark as to if banks will want to loan money to repair or cover operating losses in vulnerable areas,” Mr. Watson said. “For coastal businesses dependent on tourism, losing this weekend and potentially the big Labor Day weekend due to cleanup could be devastating, given the tight margins this year.” Mr. Watson also said Irene was causing more than the usual level of uninsured losses, which meant governments, businesses and the public would bear a bigger burden than in other natural disasters. Much of the damage was being caused by rain-induced and coastal flooding, something private insurers seldom cover, he said. Also, insurance companies with coastal exposures have been shifting away from fixed deductibles on homeowners’ insurance , and replacing them with deductibles for storm damage that move up and down with the value of a home. This change means many homeowners will have to cover more of their repair costs themselves before their insurance kicks in.
|
Insurance;Hurricane Irene (2011);Hurricanes and Tropical Storms;Disasters and Emergencies;Floods
|
ny0214644
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2010/03/06
|
Priority Candidates Wants Graduates Off Sofa and Into Job
|
Lesley Mitler, a longtime recruiter for Wall Street and a former C.P.A., is a practical person, someone who describes herself as risk-averse. Why, then, did she decide that midrecession would be the right time to build a new luxury service? Even more unlikely, Ms. Mitler is offering a high-end service that hopes to find a thriving market in unemployed 20-somethings. For $400 an hour, she is coaching recent college graduates in how to land their first job. Her business, Priority Candidates , has teamed up with Greenberg Educational Group , a tutoring company in New York that already specializes in SAT prep and college advising. If Ms. Mitler’s model works, it will be because of those young people’s anxious parents, the ones who already have jobs, presumably good ones, and are tearing their nails out as their children move back in indefinitely. Everyone seems to know someone whose child graduated dean’s list and can’t find work fetching coffee. But if you want official numbers, here they are: Employers estimated that their hiring of recent graduates declined 21.6 percent in 2009, and that it would drop another 7 percent this year. Just under 20 percent of graduating seniors looking for jobs were lucky enough to land one. “You invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in your child’s college education,” Ms. Mitler noted. “If, at the end of it your kid’s sitting on the sofa playing video games, what was the point?” Wealthy New York parents’ appetite for paying to provide an edge over the competition now kicks in earlier than ever, with prep services for preschool admissions a growing field. So perhaps it’s inevitable that private tutoring extend into adulthood as well. Those panicking parents may intuitively know what is on the line with those first jobs, even if their children insist they’re perfectly busy, what with maintaining their Twitter feed and occasionally taking a glimpse at Monster.com . There is an article in the March issue of The Atlantic that outlines the various ways experts think long-term unemployment could damage young people, including mental health and future earnings. The author, Don Peck, also cites Jean Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University, who wrote “ Generation Me ,” about the people who graduated from high school in the 2000s — a group with high self-esteem, often regardless of accomplishment, thanks to the modern brand of ego-boosting parenting. She makes the case that that generation is particularly ill-equipped for a challenging job market: “There’s an element of entitlement — they expect people to figure things out for them.” People like ... tutors? In this economy, “only the most prepared will succeed,” Eric Greenberg, the founder of the tutoring service, wrote in an e-mail message that outlined his new affiliation with Priority Candidates. Actually, he used that phrase twice in the letter and underlined it once. Maybe the most prepared will get the job; whether or not they’ll succeed is a different question. IT remains to be seen just how much money can be made preying on parents’ fears that their children will never earn a dime. Twenty-five parents showed up for a 90-minute presentation that Greenberg Educational group sponsored in late January, and Ms. Mitler says she has three regular clients so far, one pro bono. One of the paying customers is Kim Bodson, 23, a Boston College graduate, who — she would now tell you thanks to Ms. Mitler’s coaching — is looking to shift from part-time work in music publishing to full-time work in music public relations. At a session this week, they went over her résumé and talked about networking contacts she needed to approach again. Ms. Bodson said she had shared a few of Ms. Mitler’s tips with her boyfriend, a college student who once managed a movie theater. “Did you sweep floors with someone?” she asked him. “Could that be team-building?” She credited Ms. Mitler with interview advice — talk about a passion of yours — that landed her the current part-time job. Private tutoring, in New York at least, has been one of the few recession-proof industries, possibly because some businesses have seen all the free-floating anxiety as a marketing opportunity. Probably the biggest risk the risk-averse Ms. Mitler will face is an onslaught of competition.
|
Labor and Jobs;Hiring and Promotion;Unemployment;Colleges and Universities
|
ny0173790
|
[
"us"
] |
2007/10/18
|
Abortion Charges Filed Against Kansas Clinic
|
A county prosecutor in Kansas who waged a vociferous battle against abortion in his former role as the state’s attorney general filed dozens of felony and misdemeanor charges yesterday against a Planned Parenthood clinic, saying the facility provided illegal late-term abortions, among other crimes. The prosecutor, Phill Kline, now the Johnson County district attorney, has a history of wrangling with the clinic, Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri. When he was the state attorney general, from 2002 until last year, Mr. Kline, a conservative Republican, developed a reputation for challenging abortion providers. In a suit that brought national attention to Kansas as a battleground for abortion rights, Mr. Kline sought the names and personal information of women and girls who had had abortions at the Planned Parenthood clinic and one other medical facility. Early last year, the State Supreme Court restricted the investigation, ruling that personal information must be removed from the records Mr. Kline sought. Mr. Kline’s effort to prosecute the clinics ultimately failed. In a statement posted on his Web site, Mr. Kline said he would not comment on yesterday’s charges, which included 29 felony counts of providing false information and 84 misdemeanor counts of failure to maintain records, failure to determine viability for a late-term abortion and unlawful late-term abortion. His office did not return a call for more information. A spokeswoman for the Planned Parenthood clinic, which is based in Overland Park, Kan., said the organization would not respond to the charges until its lawyers had a chance to review the county’s documents, which arrived late yesterday afternoon. But earlier in the day, Peter Brownlie, the president and chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, told The Associated Press that he had heard rumors for months that Mr. Kline was planning to file charges. He also said that the clinic did not perform any abortions past the 22nd week of pregnancy. “We always provide high-quality care in full accord with state and federal law,” he said. Ashley Anstaett, a spokeswoman for the current state attorney general, Paul Morrison, told The Associated Press that Mr. Morrison had already reviewed the accusations Mr. Kline’s criminal charges are based on and found no wrongdoing. “We are skeptical that these charges have any merit, and we continue to wonder how much politics influenced Mr. Kline’s decision to file these charges,” Ms. Anstaett said. Mr. Morrison, until recently a Republican, ran for attorney general as a Democrat and easily unseated Mr. Kline, who had been criticized for linking his campaign operation to evangelical churches. A Johnson County District judge set a court date for Nov. 16.
|
Kline Phill;Abortion;Planned Parenthood Federation of America;District Attorneys;Morrison Paul;Missouri
|
ny0172353
|
[
"us"
] |
2007/11/30
|
Food Banks, in a Squeeze, Tighten Belts
|
MANCHESTER, N.H., Nov. 26 — Food banks around the country are reporting critical shortages that have forced them to ration supplies, distribute staples usually reserved for disaster relief and in some instances close. “It’s one of the most demanding years I’ve seen in my 30 years” in the field, said Catherine D’Amato, president and chief executive of the Greater Boston Food Bank, comparing the situation to the recession of the late 1970s. Experts attributed the shortages to an unusual combination of factors, including rising demand, a sharp drop in federal supplies of excess farm products, and tighter inventory controls that are leaving supermarkets and other retailers with less food to donate. “We don’t have nearly what people need, and that’s all there is to it,” said Greg Bryant, director of the food pantry in Sheffield, Vt. “We’re one step from running out,” Mr. Bryant said. “It kind of spirals,” he added. “The people that normally donate to us have less, the retailers are selling to discount stores because people are shopping in those places, and now we have less food and more people. It’s a double, triple, hit.” The Vermont Food Bank said its supply of food was down 50 percent from last year. “It’s a crisis mode,” said Doug O’Brien, the bank’s chief executive. For two weeks this month, the New Hampshire Food Bank distributed supplies reserved for emergency relief. Demand for food here is up 40 percent over last year and supply is down 30 percent, which is striking in the state with the lowest reliance on food banks. “It’s the price of oil, gas, rents and foreclosures,” said Melanie Gosselin, executive director of the New Hampshire Food Bank. Ms. Gosselin said household budget squeezes had led to a drop in donations and greater demand. “This is not the old ‘only the homeless are hungry,’” she said. “It’s working people.” Lane Kenworthy, a professor of sociology and political science at the University of Arizona, agreed, saying: “The overall picture is that household incomes are kind of stuck. There’s very little way to increase income, and most people have a very heavy debt load. Any event that increases your costs is really, really troublesome, because you’re already stretched thin.” The food bank in Manchester delivers provisions to a housing project each week, and on a recent Monday, Matthew Whooley, 26, of Manchester, was waiting in line with his wife, Penny, and their four children. “Every week there’s less and less food,” Mr. Whooley said. “It used to be potatoes, meat and bread, and last week we got Doritos and flour. The food is getting shorter, and the lines keep getting longer.” In part, food banks are suffering because farmers are doing well. The food banks rely on supplies from the federal Agriculture Department’s Bonus Commodity Program, which buys surplus crops like apples and potatoes from farmers. “Right now, the agricultural economy is very strong and the surpluses aren’t available for us to purchase,” said Jean Daniel, a department spokeswoman. “Certainly we’re empathetic, but unfortunately we cannot count on those bonus commodities every year.” Supplies from the surplus program dropped to $67 million worth last year, from $154.3 million in 2005 and $233 million in 2004. Figures for this year are not available, Ms. Daniel said. Food bank operators are lobbying for passage of a farm bill currently stalled in the Senate that would raise emergency aid for food banks to $250 million a year, from $140 million. That figure has remained steady since 2002. Susannah Morgan, executive director of the Food Bank of Alaska said, “The biggest problem is that the federal government’s programs are dropping as need is growing.” Ms. Morgan said the decline has affected rural Alaska, where native tribes run most food pantries. She said about 10 percent of the state’s rural food banks have closed because there is not enough federal help coming in. “They don’t feel staffing and heating is worth it for the small amount of food,” Ms. Morgan said. Further complicating the picture, Ms. Morgan and others said, is tighter inventory monitoring, which has left many stores with less to donate. “They know exactly what they have, down to the can,” said Darren Hoffman, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, whose supplies are down 11 percent this year. “They can track a lot better and don’t order in bulk. Efficiency has kind of been the enemy of the food bank.” Extra food — items that are not selling or seasonal inventory that is no longer needed — is now often sold to low-cost retailers, said Tim Viall, executive director of the Greater Stockton Food Bank in Stockton, Calif. “We’re getting fewer canned goods than last year from retail grocers, because they’re selling it to warehouse food stores,” Mr. Viall said. “We’re putting more reliance on canned food drives, and we’re trying to ramp up the fresh fruit and produce. We are in the heart of one of the most productive agriculture areas in the world, and we’re trying to take advantage.” In places where community donations are down and there are no food manufacturers to solicit, pantries and food banks are making difficult choices. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul food pantry in Cincinnati is giving families less food this year because there is not enough. It has started to ask smaller families to take fewer products. “Donations are down, and people who need help is up,” said Liz Carter, executive director of the food bank. “So what are we going to do. We just made the decision that instead of giving people six or seven days worth of food, we’re going to give them three or four days of food, which is a drop in the bucket.” Ginny Hildebrand, executive director of the Association of Arizona Food Banks, said many pantries were facing similar situations. At a recent conference for food bank employees, Ms. Hildebrand said, “Everybody was saying the same thing. They’re all hit by an increase in demand, all hit by the impact of the higher costs of food, and all hit by federal reductions. We just don’t have the quantity of products available that we used to.” Ross Fraser, a spokesman for America’s Second Harvest, which distributes more than two billion pounds of donated food and grocery products annually, said the shortages at food banks were the worst the organization had seen in 26 years. “Suddenly it’s on everyone’s radar,” Mr. Fraser said. “Food banks are calling us and saying, ‘My God, we have to get food.’”
|
Food;Food Bank;America's Second Harvest;Agriculture Department
|
ny0225217
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2010/10/27
|
Ex-Staten Island Man Tried to Join Taliban, Authorities Say
|
A former Staten Island man who prosecutors said made repeated attempts to join the Taliban and other extremist groups overseas, even though he apparently knew that federal agents were closely watching him, has been charged with making false statements in a terrorism case, the authorities said Tuesday. The man, Abdel Hameed Shehadeh, 21, was arrested on Friday in Hawaii on federal charges that had been filed under seal in United States District Court in Brooklyn. The charges, which carry a maximum penalty of eight years in prison, were unsealed on Monday. Mr. Shehadeh appeared in federal court in Hawaii on Monday, according to a federal public defender, Matthew C. Winter, who said he requested that his client, a United States citizen, be taken to New York “as soon as possible” to meet with the lawyer who would handle his case. As of Tuesday evening, Mr. Shehadeh was still being held at the Federal Detention Center in Honolulu, officials said. The case against Mr. Shehadeh is based on statements he made to investigators over almost two years, when he tried to fly to Pakistan and to Somalia and tried to enlist in the United States Army in the hope of joining the Iraqi insurgency, according to prosecutors. Relatives said they were surprised by the charges. Mr. Shehadeh, who seemed “confused and lost,” according to one relative, was nonetheless keenly aware, as was the whole family, that he was being tracked by investigators. “He was trying to outsmart the F.B.I.,” said the relative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to bring attention to the family. “He thought it was a game.” It was not clear when Mr. Shehadeh first came to the attention of the authorities, but their first recorded contact with him was on June 13, 2008, when he tried to travel to Pakistan on a one-way ticket, according to a criminal complaint. Before he could board the plane at Kennedy International Airport — carrying a sleeping bag, two changes of clothes, three books and toiletries — he was interviewed by federal investigators and a New York Police Department detective. He told them “he was traveling to Pakistan to attend a madrasa,” and he was allowed to board the plane, the complaint said. When he arrived in Pakistan, he was refused entry and returned to the United States. Prosecutors said the purpose of his trip was actually to join the Taliban and to receive training in “guerrilla warfare” and “bomb making.” They said he admitted as much in a meeting with F.B.I. agents last April. His relatives said Mr. Shehadeh, born in Brooklyn and one of five boys in a working-class Palestinian -American family, played video games and basketball as a teenager and attended Tottenville High School. His father worked in a supermarket and his mother took care of the children. According to a former landlord, Bader Suleiman, Mr. Shehadeh spent 2007 recovering from a bad car accident. He broke both his hips and burst his spleen, Mr. Suleiman said. “It was tough; it took him six months to use the bathroom on his own,” he said. “He was happy to be alive.” By 2008, sometimes writing under the name Abul Qasim, he created Web sites that “advocated violent jihad against the West,” according to the criminal complaint. They contained speeches by prominent names in the jihadi world, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, Adam Gadahn and Anwar al-Awlaki. As the authorities monitored those Web sites, they kept close tabs on Mr. Shehadeh. F.B.I. agents interviewed him at his home on July 16, 2008, and he spoke with an Army recruiter about three months later, in October. He tried to travel to Jordan that month, but was turned back by the Jordanian authorities and was again interviewed by investigators when he returned to the United States. During that interview, he told his interrogators that he tried to e-mail Mr. al-Awlaki, but had received no response. Four months later, in another interview, Mr. Shehadeh asked the agent and the detective interviewing him why he was being followed, according to the complaint. “The agent and detective explained that they did not believe Shehadeh had been truthful in previous interviews,” the complaint said. Mr. Shehadeh tried to recruit friends from elementary school to join him, according to the complaint. In April 2009, he flew to Hawaii — without telling his family, his relatives said. He stayed for a year, where he had more meetings with federal agents, including one in which he requested that he be removed from the “no-fly” list. In another meeting, according to the complaint, he talked about the radicalization of young Muslims, and used himself as an example.
|
Shehadeh Abdel Hameed;Terrorism;Taliban;Staten Island (NYC);Hawaii
|
ny0080514
|
[
"sports"
] |
2015/02/23
|
Joey Logano Wins Daytona 500
|
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — The feel-good stories that Nascar hoped would dominate attention during its season-opening week, from Jeff Gordon’s final Daytona 500 to the $400 million makeover of Daytona International Speedway, had been overshadowed by the ugly suspension of Kurt Busch and a gruesome injury to Kyle Busch on Saturday. Those developments had cast a pall over the race, the organization’s showcase event. So on a sunny Sunday afternoon, Nascar was thrilled to see the focus return to racing. And amid the domination of Hendrick cars early to the three-wide, nail-biting, breathless final laps at 200 miles an hour, Nascar finally had the kind of story it so desperately needed: Joey Logano. Logano, the driver who was once dumped by Joe Gibbs Racing, then found a home at Team Penske and nearly captured the Sprint Cup championship last year, reaffirmed his place among the top drivers in his sport by winning his first Daytona 500 and securing his berth in the Cup playoff at the end of the year. He also delivered the second Daytona 500 victory to the team owner Roger Penske, who owns 15 victories in the open-wheel Indianapolis 500 as well. “I can’t believe it,” said Logano, who grew up racing quarter-midget cars in Connecticut. “This is absolutely amazing.” Logano, 24, held off a field of Nascar’s best drivers — from the powerful Hendrick Motorsports cars driven by Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr., to challenges from Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick in the latter stages of the race — to win under caution after a multicar pileup on the backstretch during the final lap. But as Hamlin said after the race, Logano is in that class now, too. “He’s really become one of the elite drivers in our sport,” Hamlin said. He had to be on Sunday to hold off the pack that was behind him in the end. For a time, it seemed this Daytona 500 would be the same old story for Nascar. The only question through much of the race was which Hendrick driver would win. Gordon led 77 of the first 100 laps. Earnhardt powered to the lead at Lap 114 and led for 32 more before a third teammate, Johnson, emerged in the final 50 laps and led for 39. Only a handful of drivers, including Logano, Harvick, Hamlin and Carl Edwards, were able to flirt with the Hendrick cars at the front. But Logano took the lead from Hamlin with nine laps to go in regulation and pulled ahead of the pack, seemingly on his way to the checkered flag. A wreck behind the lead group forced Nascar to wave a caution flag and extend the race an extra three laps to ensure a green-flag finish. On the restart, Logano’s No. 22 Ford received a shove from Clint Bowyer’s No. 15 Toyota, allowing Logano to outrace Hamlin for the lead. When the field crashed behind him and the yellow flag came out one final time on Lap 203, Logano had won. Image Logano burned some rubber to celebrate his victory in the 57th Daytona 500. Credit Sean Gardner/Getty Images Harvick finished second and Earnhardt third. “I can’t really put it into words,” said Logano, who collected $1.58 million for the victory in what is annually Nascar’s most prestigious race. “It’s something that you can’t describe. I keep reliving over and over again what it was like down the back straightaway when I came off of Turn 2 there, looking in the mirror, saw them crashing. “Man, you have a split-second after the caution came out, you think about it: Did we win? Then straight chaos after that. An amazing feeling.” Among those collected in that final wreck was Gordon, who finished 33rd in his final Daytona 500, a disappointing end to a race that he could have won. Gordon started the race with his No. 24 Chevrolet on the pole. “This is an amazing moment,” Gordon said before the race. “Like a storybook in the making, or happening live. This is a moment I will cherish forever.” He would have cherished holding the Harley J. Earl Trophy for the fourth time in his career even more. And for a stretch, it looked as if no one would challenge Gordon, except perhaps Earnhardt, who started third. Earnhardt spent much of the first half of the race on Gordon’s bumper. At the halfway mark, the top three racecars were all from Hendrick, including Gordon, Kasey Kahne in second and Earnhardt third. But after leading 87 laps, Gordon fell back into the pack as Earnhardt, seeking his third win in the 500, moved to the front. Harvick stayed with Earnhardt — and in position for his second Daytona 500 win. Tony Stewart’s chances of finally winning this race ended with a crash on Lap 41. He tried and failed to re-enter the race and wound up finishing 42nd. Regan Smith, who climbed into the No. 41 Chevrolet to replace Kurt Busch, who was suspended indefinitely by Nascar on Friday after a judge determined he had committed domestic assault last September, finished 16th. Matt Crafton, the Camping World Truck Series two-time champion who was tabbed to start in place of the injured Kyle Busch after Busch sustained a broken right leg and left foot in a wreck during Saturday’s Xfinity race, finished 18th. Both had mostly clean, uneventful races. After all that both teams had gone through the past few days, that was a victory in itself. NOTES The team owner Joe Gibbs met with the media before Sunday’s race but did not say how long he anticipates Kyle Busch will be out. Gibbs indicated Busch might have to have surgery on his left foot as well at some point. ... Danica Patrick, in the final year of her contract with her primary sponsor, GoDaddy, and needing to show improvement in her third full season in the Cup, finished 21st.
|
Car Racing;Joey Logano;Daytona 500;Hendrick Motorsports;Jeff Gordon
|
ny0084398
|
[
"sports",
"football"
] |
2015/10/24
|
Patriots Kicker Once Also Made Impression With His Arm
|
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — There was a hard and fast rule in the dugout of the University of Memphis baseball team: no cellphones. But on a Sunday in April 2006, Coach Daron Schoenrock allowed his No. 2 starting pitcher to bring his cellphone to the game. Schoenrock had told the right-hander Stephen Gostkowski to take the day off. Gostkowski’s family members were in town, and Sunday was looking to be an eventful day for them. Gostkowski would have none of it. There was a doubleheader against visiting Mississippi Valley State and he wanted to be there, even if he was not going to pitch. During the Tigers’ doubleheader sweep, Gostkowski’s cellphone rang and he went outside the dugout to take the call. He returned a few minutes later. “He was as white as a ghost,” Schoenrock recalled this week in a phone interview. “He said, ‘I just talked to Bill Belichick. The Patriots took me in the fourth round.’ ” They had indeed — at No. 118 over all — one of two place-kickers selected in the 2006 N.F.L. draft. The other was Virginia’s Kurt Smith, who went to San Diego in the sixth round. Smith’s next kick in the N.F.L. will be his first, while Gostkowski is still with the Patriots. He is the franchise’s career leading scorer, and will take the field with them Sunday when they face the Jets at Gillette Stadium in a game between the two top teams in the A.F.C. East. Image Gostkowski was originally a walk-on for football at University of Memphis, where he had been given a baseball scholarship. Credit Charles Krupa/Associated Press Gostkowski was originally a walk-on for football at Memphis — he was given a baseball scholarship — but won the kicking job as a freshman. “He was a very average kicker in high school with a strong leg who didn’t always know where the ball was going,” said Tommy West, his football coach at Memphis. “But you still saw something there. And he was a determined kid.” Over four years, Gostkowski made 70 of 92 field-goal attempts and 159 of 165 extra points. He showed his versatility by recovering his own onside kick and his foresight by using an N.F.L.-size tee on kickoffs. He left Memphis as the 13th most productive scorer in N.C.A.A. Division I-A history. Schoenrock thought football was Gostkowski’s best bet for the future. Nonetheless, baseball scouts had inquired about Gostkowski, impressed by his ability to throw hard sliders in the 90-mile-per-hour range and apparently undeterred by his career record of 7-22 with a 6.04 E.R.A. “It was harder for me with baseball,” Gostkowski said. “I didn’t do it year round.” Because of football, he missed the fall workouts with the baseball team. In the spring, during the baseball season, Schoenrock had his pitching coach bring a bag of footballs to practice. The Patriots were among a handful of teams that worked him out at the Liberty Bowl. They were about to part ways with Adam Vinatieri, their kicker since 1996. “I had no idea what was happening,” Gostkowski said. “They don’t give you any inclination. I thought I did pretty well. I didn’t do the combine. I went to the Senior Bowl. I pitched my last game a week before the draft. I was in my own world.” He is still very much in his world, one in which he has surpassed Vinatieri, a likely Hall of Famer, as the Patriots’ scoring leader. His accuracy is astounding. He has converted an N.F.L. record 432 consecutive extra points since his only miss, during his rookie season. He has made more than 87 percent of his field-goal attempts, including all 12 this season. Among them is a career-best 57-yarder. Not only is he the leading scorer in franchise history, he is No. 2 in continuous service behind Tom Brady and, at 31, second in age to Brady. A case could be made that not only are they the two oldest players on the Patriots, they are also the two most secure. Belichick has not even bothered to bring in a kicker during training camp to push Gostkowski. “One of the things New England asked him when they worked him out was whether he could take tough coaching,” West said. “You know, sometimes you don’t want to be too hard on kickers because they can go into a shell. With Stephen, the more you got in his face, the madder he got. And the madder he got, the better he kicked.” Gostkowski said: “I’m proud that I’ve been able to stick around in an environment where the media is tough, the fans are tough, the weather is tough and the coaches are tough. When you’re on a good team, you just want to do your part and know that they trust you.” That trust is implicit now. But in Super Bowl XLII against the Giants, during Gostkowski’s second season, Belichick chose to go for a first down on fourth-and-13 at the Giants’ 31-yard line midway through the third quarter. The Patriots lost the ball on downs. The Giants won, 17-14. Since then Gostkowski has become as omnipresent as a kicker can be. He has led the N.F.L. in scoring four times, including the last three seasons. “Steve has been tremendous,” said Josh McDaniels, New England’s offensive coordinator. “We know what we need to do offensively to give him an opportunity, and we certainly trust him to go out there and make it. He’s done that numerous times.” Gostkowski said: “As kickers, we don’t make our own opportunities. We take advantage of the ones we get. I don’t try to overthink it. I try to go out and make every kick I can and if I miss, I’ll try to make the next one.” Chances are he will get more opportunities Sunday against the Jets, and the numbers indicate he probably will not miss. By now, the routine, and the result, has almost become automatic.
|
Football;Stephen Gostkowski;Jets;Patriots
|
ny0236216
|
[
"world",
"americas"
] |
2010/01/22
|
Economy in Shock Struggles to Restart
|
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The price of candles in the teeming La Saline market here has climbed 60 percent since last week’s earthquake . A box of matches is up 50 percent. A package of Perdue Chicken Franks has gone up 30 percent. As Haitians begin to turn their attention to rebuilding a crippled economy, the rapid surge in prices of crucial products is just one of the many challenges they face. The port here was also knocked out of operation, hobbling exports. The banking system, largely shut down because of fear of robberies, is struggling to restart. The earthquake destroyed the finance ministry and part of the central bank, and killed senior financial officials including Jean Frantz Richard, director of the tax collection agency. “The shock to the economy is huge, affecting perhaps 50 percent of our G.D.P.,” said Daniel Dorsainvil, a former finance minister. “Banks are afraid to reopen because of security fears, and we may have to go through the Dominican Republic to start importing and exporting again. “Catastrophe is almost too kind a word for our predicament.” The disaster’s devastating blows landed on an economy about one-tenth the size of New Mexico’s that was already feeble and struggling before the quake. Still, some of the most immediate economic problems may be starting to ease. Gasoline is more readily available than in the first days after the earthquake, helping to relieve a thriving black market in which some street dealers were selling the fuel for as much as $8 a gallon. Remittances from Haitians living abroad have begun flowing here again after Western Union reopened some of its branches in the capital. Foreign and government officials here are seeking to address a number of other problems, starting with the lack of money in the economy. Eric Overvest, the Haiti director for the United Nations Development Program, said that a new program would pay Haitians $3 a day to work for two-week periods to infuse cash into the economy. Almost 400 people began the work this week, and with about $4 million to disburse the program is expected to grow into the thousands. The work involves clearing roads, ridding public areas of rubble and collecting corpses, some of which were being burned Thursday. “The economy is totally stalled,” Mr. Overvest said. “Giving a cash infusion means shops will open. The $3 will go to the shopkeepers, who will buy more supplies and the money will be passed along. It will have a tremendous catalytic effect on the entire economy.” Haiti’s economy was on rough footing before the quake, with more than 70 percent of the population surviving on $2 or less a day. But it was also showing signs of improvement, growing 2.9 percent in 2009, one of the hemisphere’s highest rates. Higher public spending, debt forgiveness by rich nations and an expanding textile industry, which provides more than 90 percent of export revenues, contributed to the growth. The earthquake effectively shut down most textile companies, many of which are in the capital to be close to the port. In what may have been the earthquake’s largest loss of life in a single location, at least 500 people were killed at a Palm Apparel T-shirt factory near the airport, hitting the business empire of Alain Villard, one of Haiti’s largest manufacturers. The quake also put into motion distortions like price gouging and an unexpected strengthening of the currency, the gourde, by more than 25 percent to a rate of about 30 to the dollar for some transactions. Fritz Jean, a former governor of the central bank, said the surge in the gourde’s value could be explained in part by the sharp drop in oil imports since the earthquake, keeping more dollars in Haiti’s economy. Haiti’s huge informal sector reacted faster to the quake than did established companies and banks. Outdoor markets like La Saline are already filled with goods from the countryside, including salt, cornmeal, fruits like mangoes and used clothing from the United States. Economists here said that skyrocketing prices for some items, notably ice, which has doubled in price in some parts of the city, are related to the continuing lack of electrical service and efforts to extract quick profits amid uncertainty over what lies ahead. “People want candles because they have no electricity or fuel for their generators,” said Manouchka Wendiwou, 21, a vendor in La Saline who raised her candle prices by 60 percent and made no apology for charging what the market would bear. Charles Castel, the governor of the central bank, said in a telephone interview that such distortions should ease as services returned and the banking system started functioning again. Banks were expected to open their doors again in the interior on Thursday and in the capital by Friday or Saturday, he said. Still, major economic challenges remain, including the damage to critical infrastructure like the port here, which is expected to partially resume operations in the coming days, and the displacement of as many as one million people in Port-au-Prince. The Inter-American Development Bank said it planned to finance as much as $300 million in recovery projects, focusing on constructing thousands of new homes, putting up new government buildings and creating industrial parks. The World Bank said Thursday that it would waive payments on Haiti’s debt for the next five years, and the International Monetary Fund proposed an interest-free loan of $100 million . “Right now people have to eat, and then they have to be able to find work,” Eduardo Almeida, a Brazilian who is the development bank’s Haiti representative, said. “We need to start creating opportunities for the population as soon as we can.”
|
Earthquakes;Haiti;Economic Conditions and Trends;Disasters and Emergencies;Prices (Fares Fees and Rates);United Nations Development Program;Inter-American Development Bank;Western Union Co
|
ny0074360
|
[
"world",
"africa"
] |
2015/04/21
|
Zulu King Tries to Calm Anti-Foreigner Violence in South Africa
|
The influential king of the Zulus, South Africa ’s largest ethnic group, sought to distance himself on Monday from anti-foreigner comments he made three weeks ago, which the authorities there have called the catalyst for a wave of deadly xenophobic violence. “We need to make sure no more foreigners are attacked,” the king, Goodwill Zwelithini, said in a speech at a stadium in Durban carried by South African news media . “We must stop these vile acts.” South Africa’s neighbors have condemned the violence, calling it a stain on the country’s image as the tolerant “rainbow nation” that emerged from apartheid. The king’s previous comments, made last month in Durban, a coastal city in the Zulu heartland, were part of what he has described as a broad criticism of lawlessness in South Africa. He accused the news media of focusing on a part of his remarks that appeared to blame poor immigrants from neighboring countries, whom South African citizens have periodically accused of stealing their jobs. “We ask foreign nationals to pack their belongings and go back to their countries,” the king said then. After that, increasingly violent mobs targeted shops and other businesses largely run by people from Zimbabwe , Mozambique , Malawi and other sub-Saharan countries. The violence started in Durban and spread to Johannesburg, the country’s largest city. At least seven people were killed and more than 300 were arrested in what has been described as the worst outbreak of xenophobic violence in South Africa in years. Other national leaders in South Africa were seen as slow to respond to the king’s initial remarks. Last Thursday, President Jacob G. Zuma condemned the mayhem and appealed for calm . While Mr. Zuma said South African complaints about immigrants and crimes committed by foreigners were in some cases justified, “it is misleading and wrong to label or regard all foreign nationals as being involved in crime in the country.” Under pressure from the government to join in condemning the violence, the king later announced the imbizo, or mass meeting, in Durban. Several thousand people attended the rally, where the king said his remarks had been misinterpreted. “This violence directed at our brothers and sisters is shameful,” he said. Denying that he had advocated attacks on foreigners, the king said “had I said that, this country would be in ashes.” Nonetheless, hundreds of immigrants have since left, fearful for their safety.
|
South Africa;Goodwill Zwelithini;Foreign Workers;Zulus;Immigration;Zimbabwe;Mozambique;Malawi
|
ny0292852
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2016/06/11
|
British Judge Orders Proper Pay for Exploited Migrant Workers
|
LONDON — A British judge ruled on Friday in favor of six Lithuanian migrant workers who said they had been lured to Britain with the promise of decent employment but ended up in conditions resembling servitude, catching chickens without adequate pay or access to facilities where they could bathe, rest, eat or drink. The judge, Justice Michael Supperstone of the High Court of Justice, found that the men were owed compensation because, among other reasons, they had not been paid the minimum wage for agricultural workers, had been charged illegal fees and had had wages improperly withheld. The case has been closely watched in Britain. Parliament last year adopted the Modern Slavery Act to crack down on the trafficking and exploitation of migrant workers and other laborers. Immigration has been a contentious and central issue in the debate leading up to a referendum, scheduled for June 23, on whether the country should remain in the European Union. The six men were employed at varying times from 2008 to 2012 by D. J. Houghton Catching Services in Maidstone, Kent, about 30 miles southeast of London. The company acted as a labor agent, sending workers to farms across Britain, where they caught chickens and loaded them onto trucks. The birds were taken to processing plants that slaughtered them for meat or gathered their eggs, which were sold to some of Britain’s largest supermarket and fast-food chains. The work is dirty and difficult, as the birds flap, peck, claw, vomit and defecate. A catcher can catch up to 1,500 birds per hour. The work usually takes place in the dark, to keep the birds as calm as possible. “At the heart of modern slavery is exploitation, including labor exploitation,” said Shanta Martin, a lawyer for the men. “Our clients were trafficked to the U. K. and put to work in appalling conditions and without proper pay. They are now in extremely dire economic straits. Today’s judgment is the most important step toward them being able to get their lives back on track.” The Ethical Trading Initiative, a British organization that promotes workers’ rights, called the decision a “landmark ruling.” The authorities raided the company in October 2012 and revoked its license. In March 2014, Paul Broadbent, the chief executive of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority , a regulatory body set up to protect food processing workers, called the treatment of the workers “horrific,” saying: “The exploitation of the workers was prolonged and disgraceful by anyone’s standards. Their working conditions were unsanitary, unreasonable and wholly unacceptable. They were vulnerable people who were severely overworked and grossly underpaid.” In some cases, the men could rest only as they traveled on minibuses for up to seven hours to start their shifts. They were often denied proper equipment or clothing. Some of the men also reported that they had been harassed, threatened and abused by supervisors. “The fact is that these workers were treated like slaves,” Mr. Broadbent said in 2014, adding that the agency’s scoring system “rated them as the worst U.K. gangmaster ever.” (A gangmaster is someone who oversees the work of casual manual laborers on behalf of another employer.) Although the agency took action against the company and the local police began a criminal investigation that continues today, the workers had to go to court to seek compensation, which they did in 2014. They ranged in age from 19 to 58. Justice Supperstone found that the men were paid for the number of chickens caught, rather than for the hours they worked, including travel time. While he found Houghton and its owners liable, the amount of compensation still has to be calculated. Ten other workers are pursuing claims against the company. David Wynn, a lawyer for D. J. Houghton and its owners, Jacqueline Judge and Darrell Houghton, did not respond to an email requesting comment on Friday.
|
Great Britain;Lithuania;Forced Labor;Immigration;Decisions and Verdicts
|
ny0036809
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2014/03/09
|
A Review of Mama’s Boy Southern Table and Refuge
|
Somehow I expected to find Mama’s Boy Southern Table and Refuge , a 10-month-old restaurant in South Norwalk, in a homier setting than the ground floor of a commercial building on North Water Street, diagonally across from the Norwalk Maritime Center. Like most restaurants today, Mama’s Boy is noisy, but if you request a table in the rear it is usually quieter. The chef, Scott Ostrander, with whom I spoke by phone after my visits, said that his aim, as well as that of the owners, Greer Peaches Fredericks and Amiel Dorel, was to offer diners a taste of Southern hospitality along with the Southern food. “It fills a gap in the current Connecticut restaurant scene,” he said. Mr. Ostrander spent 12 years working in kitchens in Charleston, S.C., Savannah, Ga., and Alexandria, Va. Image Southern dishes include shrimp and grits. Credit Andrew Sullivan for The New York Times My dinner was off to a good start, with freshly made miniature cornbreads, served warm with red pepper jelly and butter. That red pepper jelly was among the Southern touches I appreciated at Mama’s Boy, including the green tomato chowchow that came with the starter of heavily battered fried oysters, and the creamed corn that enhanced the lighter Charleston crab cakes, with house-smoked bacon, red pepper and green onion. The star appetizer was at lunch: she-crab soup, a South Carolina specialty — rich, creamy, gluten-free, delicately herbed with thyme, garlic and clam juice. I can’t say the same for what was listed as “low-country bouillabaisse.” If it had been simply called mussels stew, it would have been acceptable, but when you label a dish “bouillabaisse,” the diner expects at least a facsimile of what I consider the real dish to be. (For example, it normally includes assorted fish and shellfish.) We had ordered a half-portion and were delivered a smallish bowl crammed with mussels — several shells closed tight — a few white shrimp, house-smoked andouille sausage, baby corn and lots of potato chunks in a bland shrimp broth. Of the other entrees I tried, shrimp and grits was the real standout, embroidered with house-smoked Tasso ham in a spring-onion-accented pimento cream gravy. Again, a half portion (at $14) was ordered, but I could have tucked away a full plate (at $24). The Falls Mill grits from Belvedere, Tenn., were first-rate. You can also order the grits as a side, as well as fried green tomatoes, both tart and sweet, cornmeal-dusted in a tasty lemon herb aioli; collard greens with house-smoked bacon, vinegar and hot sauce; and several other tasty options. We also tried crispy pork shank — a monster portion, with Sea Island red-pea maque choux and herb-infused braising liquid — and very tender, espresso-rubbed short rib swathed in red-eye barbecue sauce, accompanied by grits, fennel, apple and mustard green slaw. Image Dishes include fried oysters, heavily battered and served with green tomato chowchow. Credit Andrew Sullivan for The New York Times At lunch, the house-smoked pulled pork sandwich on a brioche bun was really flavorful, as was the po’ boy sandwich, full of crisply battered oysters with romaine on a soft hoagie roll, massaged by a black pepper aioli. A meal-size B.L.T. salad had a couple surprises including fried-green tomatoes and honey-embraced bacon peeking from among the various lettuce leaves. Perhaps Mama’s Boy’s strongest suits are its desserts, house-made cakes in humongous portions. The creamy-rich carrot cake was good, though very sweet, but the light, fluffy coconut with almond slivers and seductively rich red velvet chocolate were as old-fashioned yummy as a talented home cook might bake. Sunday brunch is a big deal at Mama’s Boy, featuring live music. (There is also usually live music during Thursday’s happy hour, from 5 to 8 p.m.) A basket piled with house-made muffins, biscuits and cinnamon buns was a group pleasure at $12. We also let ourselves head Deep South with the buttermilk biscuits in a delicious sausage gravy. Its Cheddar and two eggs on top weren’t really necessary. We were underwhelmed by the rather boring stack of dry buttermilk pancakes and wished we had ordered the house-made sausage or bacon to perk them up. Even so, Mama’s Boy can be a guilty pleasure, and you needn’t have Southern roots to enjoy it.
|
Restaurant;South Norwalk CT;Mama's Boy Southern Table
|
ny0281039
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2016/10/06
|
Bangladesh Siege Recalled in Militant’s Words, and From Beyond the Grave
|
NEW DELHI — An Islamic State publication offered a detailed account of the bloody July 1 siege of a restaurant in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, including the use of religious tests to distinguish Muslims from non-Muslims, who would then be killed. The article, which appeared this week and also threatened further attacks in the country, bears the byline of Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury , a militant who was killed with two associates in a police raid in late August. Mr. Chowdhury, a Canadian citizen, had been identified by some analysts as the coordinator of the Islamic State’s activities in South Asia but had never been named by the group. It is unusual for the Islamic State to publish the real names of its fighters, said Amarnath Amarasingam, a fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. Mr. Amarasingam said the Islamic State has been eager to “take ownership” of the Dhaka attack, which came at a time of military setbacks in its core territory in the Middle East. Since Mr. Chowdhury’s death, there has been a lull in the small-scale attacks on foreigners, secular Bangladeshis and members of religious minorities that had occurred at regular intervals in recent years. The July attack, on the Holey Artisan Bakery, in which 22 people were killed, was the most complex and large-scale operation to date by Islamic militants in Bangladesh’s recent history. Among the dead were numerous foreigners working in Bangladesh’s garment sector or for aid organizations. In the aftermath of the attack, Bangladesh officials were under pressure to acknowledge that transnational terrorist organizations like the Islamic State were trying to build a presence in the country. The authorities in Dhaka are still investigating the attack, and said on Wednesday that they were analyzing the account in Rumiya, the Islamic State’s newest media product. “It is a long piece, with a lot of information to go through, so I cannot speak clearly now on things like authenticity,” said Sanwar Hossain, additional deputy commissioner of the counterterrorism unit in the Dhaka Metropolitan police. He said that the police also knew Mr. Chowdhury by the kuniya, or nom de guerre, cited in the magazine. “We have known for a while that this is how Tamim Chowdhury was referred to,” he said. On Sunday, police granted bail and released Tahmid Hasib Khan, a Bangladeshi man. A second hostage, Hasnat Karim, remains in police custody, though some of the charges against him have been dismissed in court. Image Tahmid Hasib Khan, center in checked shirt, a Bangladeshi man who had been held hostage and was arrested after the siege on suspicion of conspiring with the attackers, was granted bail and released. Credit Associated Press Sharmina Parveen Karim, Mr. Karim’s wife, said she hoped her husband would be released soon. “We are just waiting,” she said. “We can’t do anything but wait.” The article published in Rumiyah said the Holey Artisan Bakery had been selected as a target because it was “a sinister place where the Crusaders would gather to drink alcohol and commit vices throughout the night, feeling secure from the wrath of Allah that was awaiting them.” It said the attackers set out to kill only non-Muslims in the restaurant and sorted their prisoners by religion, asking “very basic religious questions whose answers any Muslim youth or elderly would know.” “Those who proved their Islam were treated with respect and mercy,” the account says, while those who did not “were treated with harshness and severity.” The account partially tallied with the testimonies of survivors . A Bangladeshi cook who survived said gunmen told him not to worry, because the attackers were killing only foreigners. Ms. Karim, who was dining at the restaurant with her husband and two children, said the attackers had targeted Japanese and Italian customers who were obvious foreigners at first, and later began to ask those who remained whether they were Bangladeshi Muslims. “They entered and started shooting straight away,” she said. “People were screaming, ‘Help, help,’ and fell to the floor once they were shot. Once they were certain that people were injured, they started to chop their throats, hands.” Ms. Karim added that as dawn approached, the attackers debated whether to kill the remaining hostages and decided against it. The article gives detailed biographies of the five attackers, noting that at least two had unsuccessfully tried to join Islamic State forces in Libya, Syria and other battlegrounds outside Bangladesh. It goes on to threaten further attacks on foreigners in Bangladesh, singling out “expats, tourists, diplomats, garment buyers, missionaries, sports teams and anyone else from the Crusader citizens to be found in Bengal.” Masudur Rahman, a police spokesman, said that the police in Bangladesh had killed at least a dozen known militants since the restaurant siege. “The way we see it, looking at the number of people we’ve arrested, and then adding that up with the number of people who have been killed in our raids, of course the militants’ operation is weaker,” he said.
|
Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury;Terrorism;Holey Artisan Bakery;ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State;Bangladesh;Dhaka
|
ny0211630
|
[
"business",
"media"
] |
2017/01/10
|
Breitbart News Hires Veteran Wall Street Journal Reporter to Run New Finance Section
|
Breitbart News, the right-wing news and opinion website that burst into prominence during the presidential campaign, has been aggressively seeking to capitalize on the victory of Donald J. Trump that its readers helped to propel. In recent months, the website has talked of expanding its coverage in Washington and elsewhere in the United States, and of opening bureaus in foreign cities including Paris and Berlin. In its latest push to extend its appeal and compete more directly with a mainstream media that had largely dismissed it, Breitbart has hired John Carney, an experienced business reporter from The Wall Street Journal, to run a finance and economics section that will focus on news, commentary and analysis. The addition of Mr. Carney — a former corporate lawyer who has also worked at Dealbreaker , an irreverent Wall Street blog; Business Insider; and CNBC — shows Breitbart trying to broaden its audience beyond its loyal, hard-right readers. Mr. Carney, 43, said in an interview on Tuesday that joining Breitbart was an opportunity for him to “challenge orthodoxies” and return to online journalism. Image John Carney will lead a new finance and economics section at Breitbart. “In some ways, I feel like I’m going back to my roots by going there,” he said. “You can do things at Breitbart that won’t necessarily work at The Wall Street Journal.” “I’ve always had an entrepreneurial start-up bit of my DNA,” he added, “and frankly, I missed the atmosphere of working at a small shop and producing things and getting to rewrite the rules about the way journalism can work.” Mr. Carney said he shared Breitbart’s message of populism and economic nationalism. “Frankly, that is my point of view, so I don’t have a problem with that,” he said. In a statement, Larry Solov, chief executive of Breitbart News, said of Mr. Carney: “There simply isn’t a better person in media to lead the economics section of an anti-establishment, center-right, global news outlet.” Mr. Carney’s move was reported earlier by Bloomberg . Breitbart, which embraced Mr. Trump during the presidential campaign, has already established a connection to the incoming administration. Stephen K. Bannon, the company’s former chairman, helped run Mr. Trump’s campaign, and in November was named Mr. Trump’s chief White House strategist. Breitbart is also among the news outlets that are part of the pool covering the president-elect’s transition. Mr. Carney said he did not intend to give Mr. Trump any special treatment and would hold those in power accountable. “My feeling is that to the extent that Trump lives up to the promise that got him elected — the idea that he’s going to look out for America and American workers — we will be cheerleaders for that,” he said. “To the extent that there’s any failure to live up to that, we will be critics.”
|
John Carney;Appointments and Executive Changes;Donald Trump
|
ny0044828
|
[
"sports",
"soccer"
] |
2014/02/27
|
Brain Trauma Extends to the Soccer Field
|
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease linked to repeated blows to the head, has been found posthumously in a 29-year-old former soccer player, the strongest indication yet that the condition is not limited to athletes who played sports known for violent collisions, like football and boxing. Researchers at Boston University and the VA Boston Healthcare System, who have diagnosed scores of cases of C.T.E., said the player, Patrick Grange of Albuquerque, was the first named soccer player found to have C.T.E. On a four-point scale of severity, his disease was considered Stage 2. Soccer is a physical game but rarely a violent one. Players sometimes collide or fall to the ground, but the most repeated blows to the head may come from the act of heading an airborne ball — to redirect it purposely — in games and practices. Grange, who died in April 2012 after being found to have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, was especially proud of his ability to head the ball, said his parents, Mike and Michele. They recalled him as a 3-year-old, endlessly tossing a soccer ball into the air and heading it into a net, a skill that he continued to practice and display in college and in top-level amateur and semiprofessional leagues in his quest to play Major League Soccer. Image Scans of his brain showed a buildup of a protein often linked to C.T.E. Credit Ann McKee, M.D., VA Boston Healthcare System/Boston University School of Medicine Grange sustained a few memorable concussions, his parents said — falling hard as a toddler, being knocked unconscious in a high school game and once receiving 17 stitches in his head after an on-field collision in college. “He had very extensive frontal lobe damage,” said Dr. Ann McKee, the neuropathologist who performed the brain examination on Grange. “We have seen other athletes in their 20s with this level of pathology, but they’ve usually been football players.” The damage to Grange’s brain, McKee said, corresponded to the part of the head that Grange would have used for headers. But she cautioned against broad conclusions. “We can’t say for certain that heading the ball caused his condition in this case,” McKee said. “But it is noteworthy that he was a frequent header of the ball, and he did develop this disease. I’m not sure we can take it any further than that.” Image Patrick Grange’s parents, Michele and Michael Grange, said they wished they had discouraged him from heading soccer balls as a child. Credit Mark Holm for The New York Times C.T.E. is believed to be caused by repetitive hits to the head — even subconcussive ones barely noted. Once considered unique to boxers, it has been diagnosed over the past decade in dozens of deceased football players and several hockey players. In December, it was found for the first time in a baseball player . Symptoms can include depression, memory loss, impulse control disorders and, eventually, progressive dementia, scientists said. Boston University researchers also found a severe case of C.T.E. in a 77-year-old former rugby player from Australia, Barry Taylor, who was known by his nickname, Tizza. A hard-charging sort, he played competitive rugby for 19 years, including 235 games for Manly Rugby Union, an Australian professional team near Sydney. While brain research involving rugby players is still in its infancy — partly because of the sport’s general lack of popularity in the United States, where much of the research occurs — Taylor’s condition may come as little surprise. Though rugby players do not wear helmets, their games, like those of American football, are filled with collisions, many involving the head. Taylor’s family noticed increasing cognitive problems when he was in his 50s. Within a decade, Taylor had severe dementia. He died in April. Image Grange was 27 when he was found to have A.L.S., a degenerative disease of the nervous system that is sometimes referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Grange with his two older brothers, Ryan, left, and Casey, right. At far left is Amanda Aragon, who was Patrick's girlfriend; then Ali Sward, Ryan's girlfriend. At right are Casey's wife, Melissa, and the couple's two sons, Addison and Michael. Credit Mark Holm for The New York Times “At one point, I took him for a walk, and I was getting a lot of monosyllabic answers,” said Taylor’s son, Steven. “I said, ‘What’s your name, mate?’ He looked at me and just shrugged his shoulders. That’s the point he got to. He didn’t even know who he was.” McKee found Taylor’s brain to be extraordinarily shriveled and deteriorated. His disease was diagnosed as severe Stage 4 C.T.E. “It was, in a lot of ways, a very classic case — the tearing of the septum pellucidum and lining of the ventricles, and atrophy of the central structures of the brain,” McKee said. “And then, microscopically, he had this tremendous buildup of abnormal tau,” she added, referring to a symptomatic protein, “and no evidence of any other disorder. It was a pure C.T.E. case.” Image Grange sustained a concussion and received 17 stitches in his head after an on-field collision in college. Credit Mark Holm for The New York Times The diagnosis came as something of a relief to Taylor’s family, including his daughter, Jennifer, and his son. But the regret is that the illness could have been avoided. “Both of us after talked about it and had this great relief,” Steven Taylor said. “It is not genetic. But there was a great deal of sadness, knowing it was preventable. It was a great waste, a great shame, knowing that the last 20 years did not have to be like this.” The findings are part of an updated version of the 2012 documentary “Head Games,” by the filmmaker Steve James. The updated film, titled “Head Games: The Global Concussion Crisis,” will debut Thursday at NYU Langone Medical Center. Dr. Erin Bigler, a professor of psychology and neuroscience and the director of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research Facility at Brigham Young, said he was not surprised to learn that C.T.E. was found in a soccer player. Image Boston University researchers found a severe case of C.T.E. in a 77-year-old former rugby player from Australia named Barry Taylor. “The brain is a very delicate organ, and it probably can withstand some injury, but the whole issue of repeated injury is a very different circumstance,” he said. “When it’s moving, it’s moving with its 200 billion brain cells. And those cells are being, in some way, mechanically deformed, some more than others, which gives you an appreciation of what’s going on with these collisions.” Bigler said he would not recommend that players, especially young ones, routinely head the ball. The brain is not fully developed until about age 25, he said, making it more susceptible to injury. Some youth soccer organizations have warned against practicing heading until players reach a certain age, usually between 10 and 14. Some scientists believe those ages are somewhat arbitrary, but they understand that parents want to know whether their children should be allowed to head soccer balls. “The cold, hard reality is that the data don’t exist to address that question,” said Dr. Michael L. Lipton, a neuroscientist and neuroradiologist at Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who studies the effects of heading. “We’re really in very much uncharted territory. So what should I do with my kid? That basically becomes the kind of risk-benefit assessment we have to make all the time in life.” Image Sections of Taylor's brain show the buildup of an abnormal protein called tau. Taylor’s case was diagnosed as severe Stage 4 C.T.E. Credit Ann McKee, M.D., VA Boston Healthcare System/Boston University School of Medicine Last year, the journal Radiology published results of a study by Lipton and others of 39 amateur adult soccer players, with a median age of 31, who had played soccer since childhood. It concluded that “heading is associated with abnormal white matter microstructure and with poorer neurocognitive performance.” Lipton said Wednesday that there was probably a reasonable threshold below which heading might cause few problems. “Above some level, heading is probably not good for anyone,” he said. After the 2002 death of Jeff Astle, 59, a longtime player in England’s top league who showed dementia-like symptoms in his final years, a coroner determined that heading the ball probably led to the damage found in his brain. The term C.T.E. was not in wide use at the time, but scientists believe Astle probably had it. Grange was a lifelong soccer player who starred in high school and played collegiately at Illinois-Chicago and New Mexico. He played for the Chicago franchise of the Premier Development League, a proving ground for future professional players, and in a couple of semiprofessional leagues. He coached and played at an indoor soccer complex in Albuquerque, his hometown. Image A hard-charging sort, Taylor played competitive rugby for 19 years, including 235 games for Manly Rugby Union, an Australian professional team near Sydney. Grange was 27 when he was found to have A.L.S., a degenerative disease of the nervous system that is sometimes referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Most people with A.L.S. are deep into middle age or older, with the average age of 55 at diagnosis, according to the ALS Association. Grange’s symptoms began with a sore calf. He soon struggled to walk, and the A.L.S. diagnosis followed. Grange had to use a wheelchair within six months. Paralysis soon made him unable to feed himself. He died 17 months after the A.L.S. diagnosis. McKee believes that the damage to Grange’s brain was at the core of his A.L.S. “We think the precipitating factor in his case was most likely the trauma,” McKee said. “First of all, he was absurdly young when he developed this disease. And he had considerable evidence of this trauma-induced tauopathy, or C.T.E.” In hindsight, Grange’s family said that he showed symptoms of C.T.E. beginning in high school. He struggled to balance a checkbook. He did not understand the repercussions of failing classes. He once left for Seattle to try out for a soccer team and returned to find he had been fired from his job waiting tables because he never asked for time off. Grange fought depression in the years leading to his diagnosis, his parents said. When he died, the Granges received a call from Boston University, requesting his brain. Learning that their son had C.T.E. was painful, but it brought some semblance of relief and peace. Like the doctors, they cannot be sure that their son’s death was precipitated by soccer, but they wish they would have discouraged his habit of heading the ball. “Every park you go by, kids are playing soccer,” Michele Grange said. “And they’re doing headers. And that really bothers me. When I see the little kids playing soccer, even my grandson, for one thing it reminds me of better days. But on the other, it makes you think of the consequences. And I hope that these kids and their parents are going to see to it that they take care of their heads.”
|
Soccer;Chronic traumatic encephalopathy;Brain;ALS;Sports injury;Concussion;Patrick Grange;Barry Taylor
|
ny0191891
|
[
"business",
"economy"
] |
2009/02/28
|
G.D.P. Revision Suggests a Long, Steep Downfall
|
The economy contracted at a far faster rate than initially estimated in the final months of 2008, the government reported Friday, suggesting a deeper recession that will further challenge the health of the financial system. Financial stocks led the market down on economic worries in general and concerns about nationalization, after the government announced that it was vastly increasing its stake in Citigroup. In the fourth quarter, the gross domestic product fell at an annualized rate of 6.2 percent, the steepest decline since the 1982 recession and sharper than the 3.8 percent reported earlier. Every major component of the economy shrank, except government spending. Economists said all signs point to a similar drop in output in the current quarter. “What a ghastly report,” said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics. “This will almost certainly be the longest postwar recession, and now potentially the deepest one as well.” The broadest measure of the country’s output of goods and services, the G.D.P., was expected to be revised down, but economists were projecting a decline closer to 5.4 percent to end 2008. The plunge was quite steep from the previous quarter, when the economy shrank 0.5 percent. Citigroup’s stock fell 96 cents to $1.50, an 18-year low, as the government said its stake would grow to 36 percent, and other preferred shareholders agreed to convert their holdings to common stock as well. Bank of America fell $1.37 to $3.95. The Dow Jones industrial average slipped 1.66 percent to close at 7,062.93, while the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell 2.36 percent to 735.09. Insurance companies plunged as credit ratings agencies downgraded many of them, and General Electric ’s stock slumped 6.5 percent to $8.51 after it said it would slash its dividend to preserve its triple-A credit rating. Even before Friday’s revision of the year-end numbers, economists had criticized government estimates as not fully reflecting the severity of the downturn. When the Obama administration released its budget plan Thursday, it used economic conditions and revenue projections that critics called optimistic, including an estimate that the economy would shrink by just 1.2 percent for 2009. “It’s getting to be less and less likely that things are going to be that rosy,” said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s, after Friday’s G.D.P. report. The biggest drags on the economy last quarter were exports, retail sales, equipment and software, and housing. The revision could be traced primarily to a contraction in inventories of unsold goods, which the government had previously said had grown. The trade gap was wider than had been reported, with fewer American goods bought abroad. Exports fell at an annualized rate of 23.6 percent last quarter. Some hailed the inventory decline as potentially good news. “The only plus to take out of this is that inventories weren’t as high, and that implies you don’t have to cut as much this quarter to get them back under control,” said Nigel Gault, of IHS Global Insight. Inventories remain too large, given the declines in consumer spending, he said, adding that companies will have to cut production further this quarter. In past recessions, inventories have declined much more than in the last quarter, said Robert Barbera, chief economist at ITG. “In terms of inventory drawdown, we ain’t seen nothing yet,” he said. “Historically, in a tough recession, inventories fall at four or five times the pace of the fourth-quarter decline.” A distressing aspect of the report was the lack of business investment, said Joseph Brusuelas, a director at Moody’s Economy.com . Investment in equipment and software fell at an annualized rate of 28.8 percent. “We’re not going to have a consumer-led recovery,” he said. He predicted it will be led by the technology industry and businesses spending on capital investments, which makes Friday’s figures for capital expenditures look “somewhat troubling.” Some economists said the price revision was the report’s biggest surprise. Prices fell, but slightly less than reported earlier. On an inflation-adjusted basis, that means consumers spent even less than earlier believed. According to a report released Friday from Reuters and the University of Michigan, an index of consumer confidence fell for the first time in three months, to 56.3, from 61.2 in January. The final revision in output for the quarter will come from the Bureau of Economic Analysis next month.
|
Economic Conditions and Trends;Gross Domestic Product;Recession and Depression;Subprime Mortgage Crisis
|
ny0016937
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2013/10/24
|
Year After Hurricane Sandy, Victims Contest Christie’s Status as a Savior
|
Hurricane Sandy turned Chris Christie into something akin to America’s governor, as the nation watched him express his state’s pain on the devastated shoreline the morning after the storm, then triumphantly cut the ribbons on reopened boardwalks on Memorial Day. “We’re stronger than the storm,” he proclaimed in television commercials that ran in other states all summer. But in the affected parts of New Jersey, Governor Christie’s storm campaign has not sold as well. With at least 26,000 people still out of their homes a year later, he has become the focus of ire for many storm survivors who say that the recovery does not look as impressive to them as it does to the rest of the country. Homeowners promised money from Mr. Christie’s rebuilding program say they have yet to see it; those who have been denied aid vent about the bureaucracy. Some criticize him for encouraging residents to build to new flood zone standards to speed recovery; homeowners now say they are being penalized, because anyone who started rebuilding is ineligible for a grant. Storm victims argue that the governor, who pushed fellow Republicans in Congress to pass a federal aid package, should be exerting similar pressure on insurers and banks to settle claims and prevent harm to the credit ratings of victims. And they accuse him of using the storm for his own aggrandizement, particularly after he spent $4.7 million in federal money to hire a politically connected firm to produce the television ads, choosing it over an agency that bid less but did not plan to show the governor in its commercials. At a legislative hearing on Monday in hard-hit Toms River, a crowd of about 200 residents bubbled with anger. “This is Republican country, and the governor won’t even come down here,” one man yelled. As a lawmaker promised that the governor would release money soon, another resident shouted, “Stop defending him!” It is not uncommon for a politician playing to a national audience to win better reviews from a distance than up close. And cleaning up after a storm as powerful as Hurricane Sandy is a messy business that always brings frustrations for those affected, many of whom focus their anger on officials. Already, Mr. Christie’s administration has begun buying properties in flood-prone areas, and on Tuesday it announced $57 million in federal money to provide vouchers to residents struggling with living costs as they wait to go home. The governor’s office noted that $8 billion in federal aid had already been distributed, and that the administration had established 17 federally approved assistance programs for victims. In answering the criticism at a hearing on Tuesday, his office said that 100 homeowners, out of 4,100 approved for rebuilding grants, had signed contracts with builders, suggesting that the logjam was slowly easing. Mr. Christie has blamed the slowness of federal agencies for delays in getting money to residents, and said that New Jersey was paying for the sins from Hurricane Katrina, as the Federal Emergency Management Agency put up hurdles to prevent fraud. There is little sign that the dissatisfaction could hurt his chances next month when he seeks re-election against his Democratic opponent, State Senator Barbara Buono. One recent poll , conducted by Rutgers University, showed that 74 percent of likely voters along the Jersey Shore are supporting him. Researchers said, however, that these tended to be Republican areas. Mr. Christie invited particular risk that he would bear the brunt of criticism from those most affected by the hurricane when he embraced the role of savior. He devoted most of his annual State of the State speech to the storm. He spent the weeks before Memorial Day and Labor Day at events along the shore, hosting Prince Harry of Britain and the “Today” show. A recent campaign ad indicated the thrust of his re-election bid: “When tragedy struck, he was there, every step of the way.” The afternoon that ad was released, Mr. Christie rushed to the boardwalk fire in Seaside Heights, calling Brian Williams on the “NBC Nightly News” from the scene. He set high expectations for recovery, initially promising that the shore would be open by Memorial Day, then pushing it to the Fourth of July, and only more recently saying that recovery would take 18 to 24 months. For months, some storm victims have hounded him on Twitter, complaining with hashtags like #redtape and saying that the shore is #notokay, despite the images of the rebuilt boardwalks on television. “Somebody needs to step up for us; I don’t think he’s done it,” said Gigi Liaguno-Dorr, who has been fighting with her insurance company to rebuild her restaurant, Jakeabob’s Bay, now in a rented spot in Union Beach. “If they have, you’d think there’d be some kind of magic happening, some kind of movement. Instead of hearing all the stories similar to my stories, you’d be hearing, ‘We’re good, we’re good.’ We keep hearing the same stuff: ‘Where’s the money?’ ” Housing advocates have sued the administration, arguing that the procedure for awarding the rebuilding grants has been opaque. Lost applications and other mistakes have been enough of a problem that the State Department of Community Affairs recently set up a team to look into errors that resulted in people’s being denied relief. Criticism of the governor crystallized this summer around the “Stronger Than the Storm” ads, intended to encourage tourism. The Asbury Park Press reported in August that the firm hired to run the campaign, a lobbying and public affairs company led by a prominent Democratic fund-raiser who had recently brought on well-connected Republicans, had been chosen over an advertising firm that had bid 40 percent less but that did not propose using the governor’s family in the spots. The firm chosen then hired an advertising agency that already worked for state agencies. Other residents complained bitterly after the governor offered a second round of relief money to the victims of the Seaside Heights Boardwalk fire earlier this month, while they were still waiting for the first round. “I understand that businesses have to get back up and running, but take care of your own first,” said Tom Waszkielewicz of Sayreville, who is waiting for a grant from the governor’s program. “Make sure there’s a roof over their head. I have tarps over my house.” At a hearing in Jersey City last month, Mary Chepulis of Union Beach told legislators of finger-pointing between FEMA and her insurance company, which had declined to pay even remotely close to what it would cost to rebuild her home. As they argued, Ms. Chepulis said, her mortgage went into forbearance, meaning that FEMA would no longer provide assistance for the apartment she and her husband are renting while they wait to build a smaller replacement home. Ms. Chepulis, who voted for Mr. Christie in 2009, wondered why he had not followed the example of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, a Democrat, in writing to credit card and mortgage companies asking them not to penalize people who had trouble making payments because of the storm. She had gotten no help, she said, from Mr. Christie’s program. “It’s just a big show,” she said in an interview after the hearing. Mr. Christie’s administration has declined to attend all four legislative hearings around the state. When Ms. Buono criticized him for choosing the higher bid for the tourism ads, he attacked her for “politicizing” the storm. But he acknowledged the criticism at a campaign event in Point Pleasant Beach last month. “When I say we’re stronger than the storm, when I say that New Jersey has made an extraordinary comeback in the last 10 months, it doesn’t mean for a second that I have forgotten those folks who still have a comeback due them,” he said. “There is not a night that I go to sleep that I don’t think about the people who are still out of their homes,” he added. “And I will not rest until each and every one of them is back in their homes.”
|
New Jersey;Hurricane Sandy;Chris Christie;Federal Aid
|
ny0268121
|
[
"business",
"dealbook"
] |
2016/03/22
|
Marriott Raises Bid for Starwood
|
Marriott International sweetened its bid for Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide with more cash, greater synergies and a higher breakup fee. That still may not be enough to deter the Anbang Insurance Group of China and its co-investors from making a counteroffer — yet again. Anbang, with the New York private equity firm J. C. Flowers and the China-based Primavera Capital, swooped in with a bid for Starwood last week, as the hotel operator was finishing the deal it signed with Marriott in November. That set Marriott in motion, with a new offer disclosed on Monday. “The proposal we signed last night is not as good for us as the deal we signed and announced in November,” said Arne Sorenson, president and chief executive of Marriott, in an interview with CNBC on Monday. “The deal we got in November, in retrospect, maybe was just too good a deal.” Starwood deemed Marriott’s new proposal as superior to the one brought last week by a consortium led by Anbang. Shareholders would receive $21 a share in cash and 0.80 share of Marriott for each share of Starwood, valuing Starwood at $79.53 a share, or $13.6 billion, as of the market close on Friday. In the agreement that Marriott reached with Starwood in November , Starwood shareholders were to receive 0.92 share of Marriott stock as well as $2 in cash a share. Based on Friday’s close, that initial offer would have been worth $11.7 billion, or 16 percent lower. Last week’s offer by the Chinese consortium of $78 a share, would be worth about $13.2 billion. Marriott’s proposed deal may not be on the table for long. The Chinese insurer and its co-investors may come back with another offer, analysts say, as they seek to diversify outside of China by buying assets in the United States. Morningstar said Anbang and its private equity partners would have to offer around $86 a share to be competitive with Marriott’s latest proposal. The structure of the new bid does not do much to deter a rival suitor, analysts said. Starwood agreed to increase the value of the breakup fee payable to Marriott to only $450 million from the $400 million from the original agreement. Starwood also agreed to reimburse Marriott for its financing-related costs, up to $18 million. “The breakup fee leaves the door open,” said Dan Wasiolek, an analyst at Morningstar, in a phone interview. “Starwood, that’s what they have to do on behalf of their shareholders, is leave the door open the best they can until the process is complete.” On CNBC, Mr. Sorenson said that he did not tell Starwood that Monday’s offer was the final one. But Marriott does not have much room to stretch. It is unable to offer much more cash because it wants to keep its investment-grade rating, said Mr. Wasiolek of Morningstar. It can increase its bid a little bit, but it is going to have to come from equity, he said. This is close to the final offer, he said. “We’re in overtime in the March Madness competition here for the Starwood title, with a minute or two left on the clock,” Mr. Wasiolek said. A representative for the Chinese consortium declined to comment on Marriott’s revised bid. Shares of Starwood gained 4.5 percent on Wednesday to $84.19. Marriott shares declined 1.2 percent to $72.30. Traders are accounting for the additional value Starwood shareholders will receive from the previously announced spinoff of its time share business, which is to be merged with the Interval Leisure Group. That deal is worth about $5.83 a Starwood share, based on Friday’s close. Accounting for both the spinoff and the Marriott offer, Starwood shareholders would be looking at a value of $85.36. A combination of Marriott and Starwood, whose brands include Westin and Sheraton, would create the largest hotel company in the world , with more than 5,500 owned or franchised hotels and 1.1 million rooms around the world. The deal is expected to be neutral to adjusted earnings per share in 2017 and 2018. Over the weekend, Starwood signed up to manage two hotels in Cuba, becoming the first American company to do so in more 50 years. Mr. Sorenson was also in Cuba on Monday, alongside President Obama on his historic visit. It was there that he took the conference call with analysts to discuss the deal on Monday, and was met with a unique set of technical difficulties, as the line kept cutting out. Marriott is the best long-term partner for Starwood, Harry C. Curtis, an analyst at Nomura, wrote in a note on Monday. If they go through with the transaction, the combined company will have the “largest hotel platform, which should help it capture more market share, as loyalty program conscious travelers are drawn to the most flexible and broadest system,” he said. Marriott said that it expected to achieve $250 million in annual cost savings two years after closing, compared with the $200 million in savings it had estimated in the original merger agreement. The combination of Marriott and Starwood has received the major regulatory approvals, but the companies must still obtain shareholder approvals. If the companies receive enough votes, they expect the deal to close in the middle of this year. Starwood shareholders would own about 34 percent of the combined company. Lazard and Citigroup are providing financial advice to Starwood, while Deutsche Bank is advising Marriott. Cravath, Swaine & Moore is providing legal advice to Starwood, while Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher is advising Marriott.
|
Starwood Hotels;Marriott International;Anbang Insurance Group;Mergers and Acquisitions;Hotels
|
ny0258516
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2011/01/09
|
At Rutgers, a Series With Powerhouse Writers
|
WHEN the novelist Jayne Anne Phillips began the Writers at Newark Reading Series in 2007, it was with bold intentions. Ms. Phillips, the inaugural director of the master’s of fine arts program in creative writing at Rutgers University at Newark, not only sought to attract internationally renowned poets and authors to interact with her students there, but she also wanted all of Newark to get something out of it, she said, and in a way that said something about the city. “I think a lot of M.F.A. programs have visiting-reader series, but I wanted this to be major, with more than just one or two or three writers coming a semester,” Ms. Phillips said. “And it needed to be diverse, not only in race but in age and life experience, because that reflects the diversity of Newark and the diversity of our campus.” added Ms. Phillips, who lives part time in Glen Ridge (she also resides in Boston and Manhattan). Since its inception, the series, which is free and open to the public, has attracted literary superstars including Chang-rae Lee, Richard Price and Junot Díaz. Usually, 16 authors — two each evening — fill out the fall and spring schedules. Readings typically draw 100 people to the Paul Robeson Galleries on campus, where the writers read for about 25 minutes and then take questions, Ms. Phillips said. The spring 2011 installation of the series begins on Jan. 25 with the writers Jill McCorkle and Randall Kenan, to be followed by Matthew Rohrer and the Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout on Feb. 8; the poets Erica Dawson and Mark Strand, another Pulitzer Prize winner, on March 8; and the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning Toni Morrison on April 26. “I’m so honored that Toni Morrison is coming,” Ms. Phillips said. “She’s a New Jersey person, and it was a dream of mine that she would come,” she said of Ms. Morrison, who is a professor at Princeton University. Cory A. Booker, the mayor of Newark, will introduce Ms. Morrison. “The mayor’s office is sort of co-hosting,” said Ms. Phillips, who is scouting for a larger on-campus site for Ms. Morrison’s reading. “I think we’ll need to prepare for a lot of people for that one.”
|
Writing and Writers;Books and Literature;Newark (NJ);Rutgers The State University of New Jersey
|
ny0218454
|
[
"sports",
"cycling"
] |
2010/05/28
|
Tour of Missouri Canceled
|
Organizers of the Tour of Missouri canceled this year’s race after state tourism officials declined to help finance it. Mike Weiss, the chairman of the race, said Thursday that organizers pulled the plug after Gov. Jay Nixon’s administration refused to support it. The race, which started in 2007, was considered one of the world’s top five cycling events outside Europe.
|
Bicycles and Bicycling;Missouri;Leipheimer Levi;Hincapie George;Contador Alberto
|
ny0057010
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2014/09/21
|
In Ruins of Ukrainian Town, Residents Crave Food, Water and Peace
|
LUHANSK, Ukraine — Rebel fighters picked their way through the debris of this city’s airport last week, pointing out the bloodstained stretchers and the corpse of a Ukrainian soldier tangled in the wreck of a burned vehicle. The battle for control of the city of Luhansk, one of the most ferocious of the six-month conflict in southeastern Ukraine, had left the airport and surrounding villages in ruins. The guns have fallen silent here since Russian artillery and troops helped break the siege of the city and led Ukrainian forces to abandon the airport on Sept. 1, but Luhansk remains on a war footing, without electricity and running water and with little food. Residents who survived the shelling in basements now spend their days fetching water, on bicycles and pulling shopping carts, and scouring the few stores that are open for food. Banks and offices are closed, and a mile-long line of cars stands outside the only functioning gas station. At the city hospital, 16 plain wood coffins buzzing with flies lie on the grass outside the morgue. With more than 500 dead in the city, there has not been enough space or electricity to keep them all in the cold room, workers said. “They had us by the neck,” said Nikolai Pesotskii, a hotel manager, who stayed in the city throughout the siege by Ukrainian forces. “I felt no one needed us. We were abandoned,” he said. “This was a ghost city.” The first sign of help, he said, came from a Russian convoy of aid, which entered Luhansk against the wishes of the Ukrainian government. “Without that, there would have been hunger,” Mr. Pesotskii said. A wealthy businessman, even he made use of a Russian food parcel, distributed from the local school, that contained canned meat, sugar and rice — enough for one person for 10 days, he said. As residents began sweeping up the damage in Luhansk, repairing roofs, replacing windows and taking stock of the calamity around them, many said they no longer cared about the politics that caused it all. Several suggested that President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine should just give in to the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, and cede this part of eastern Ukraine, the Donets coal basin, known as Donbass, in order to win peace. “Let Poroshenko give Donbass to Putin and let us live normally,” said a villager named Viktor, standing amid the ruins of his mother’s home on the edge of Luhansk. His mother died in the shelling, four generations who lived together in the house are now homeless, and the aviation factory where he worked was wrecked, he said. Image The wreckage of a Ukrainian armored personnel carrier. Credit Mauricio Lima for The New York Times Like many in the region, he said he had more faith in Russia than the Ukrainian government to come to their aid. “How many years of independence did we have as Ukraine?” he said. “And what did they do?” Neither he nor his sister, a peasant woman in a Russian-patterned head scarf, expected anything from the separatist leaders who have declared a Luhansk People’s Republic in the region. “Where will they get the money?” she asked. “If they had money, they could have already started construction brigades or something.” She declined to give her name, reflecting a common reluctance here to speak freely against the rebel authorities. “I don’t care what country we live in or what it is called; I just want peace,” she said. “I just want gas, water and school for the children.” The family was living with others in the basement of the village school. Her 5-year-old granddaughter, hollow-eyed and mute, could not sleep, she said, but they could not afford the fare to send her to her aunt in Russia. Already a region of high unemployment and poverty, southeastern Ukraine faces an economic and humanitarian crisis, with more than 3,000 civilians killed and possibly as many combatants, billions of dollars of destruction to private and public buildings, and more than one million people displaced. “We are not scared,” said Vladimir Titov, a former factory worker now volunteering with the rebels. “We want a free administration. We don’t want to be under Russia. We want our own state, and we will pay our taxes and keep the money here.” Russia is already helping with free gas supplies to rebel-held areas, he said. Yet despite the bravado of the rebels, there is a growing realization here that Russia is not going to annex the Donbass region, as it did the strategic Crimea Peninsula in March, and that it may not help much beyond limited handouts of aid. “There are six million people in Donbass, and Putin does not need us,” said Yevgeny, a retired doctor living in the mining town of Snizhne. “He just needs to stir things up here, and that’s not good for us.” “We are all hard workers, we can rebuild, but without help it will be hard,” said Aleksandr, a post office worker in Luhansk whose neighborhood, Yubileinoye, was hit repeatedly by artillery strikes from both sides. As they contemplated the disaster of the war, some people signaled that they regretted the rush toward independence and the rapid escalation into war. “We were led like sheep,” said one woman in the neighboring region of Donetsk, who admits she voted for independence in the May referendum. She immediately asked not to be identified for fear of trouble from the separatist rebels in charge in her town. Several people interviewed, who asked not to be quoted by name, said much of the population was scared of the rebels, some of whom have abused their power by robbing banks, stealing cars and arresting people. Even as the separatists accuse Kiev of being influenced by fascist groups, people fear the consequences of the rebels’ running their region. “People are saying, ‘Give us anything but this — Germany, Hitler, whatever,’ ” one resident of the Luhansk region said. “Right now, people don’t want to discuss political and ideological things; they just want peace,” said Enrique Menendez, a Ukrainian blogger and activist from Donetsk. (His name comes from his Spanish grandfather, who settled in Ukraine after World War II.) “They want to stop the fighting and force it to go to a discussion of peace. I think the desire for peace is much higher in Donbass than elsewhere.” Mr. Pesotskii, whose hotel in Luhansk has been occupied by rebel soldiers, warned that more effort was needed to bring peace. “We need intensive talks at all levels,” he said. Despite a two-week cease-fire, fear among the people was growing, said Konstantyn Savinov, the deputy mayor of Donetsk, the largest city in rebel hands. Townspeople continue to die from the daily shelling in Donetsk, he said, and suffer from the persistent sense of uncertainty. “People want work, fair pay, products in the shops, calm in the streets, their children in school, the elder ones in university and plans for the future,” he said. “And so far, that has not been possible.” A businessman until he joined the city administration four years ago, he has managed to keep the city hall free from rebel control and its 1,000 municipal employees working despite an almost total cutoff of financing to the city from Kiev. The municipal workers have become heroes to many in the city as they fix the electricity and downed power lines even under shelling. Mr. Savinov warned that he had not received a penny for capital repairs and said the damage ran into the billions of dollars in Donetsk alone. But finding a way out is possible, he said. “Everyone needs to work on it.”
|
Ukraine;Russia;Humanitarian aid;Luhansk
|
ny0012925
|
[
"sports",
"ncaafootball"
] |
2013/11/10
|
Georgia Tech Runs First, But Receivers Still Excel
|
ATLANTA — Georgia Tech loves to run. Even so, the Yellow Jackets keep turning out N.F.L.-quality receivers. After Calvin Johnson thrived in a different offensive system, there were Demaryius Thomas and Stephen Hill. And now, another unlikely candidate from the team’s triple-option offense — DeAndre Smelter, who joined the football team only this season after playing baseball for the Yellow Jackets for three years. The 6-foot-3, 220-pound Smelter has made several eye-opening catches and may have the skills to follow Johnson, Thomas and Hill to the N.F.L. if he keeps improving at such a rapid rate. “I’m definitely surprised at the level I’m playing at,” said Smelter, who leads Georgia Tech with numbers that sound modest — 19 catches for 312 yards and 2 touchdowns — until one considers how much this team runs the ball. The Yellow Jackets (6-3), who are off this week, keep it on the ground about 80 percent of the time, which doesn’t leave a lot of opportunities for the receivers. But when they do get their chance, it is often for big yards. Last week, Smelter leapt over two Pitt defenders to haul in a 42-yard pass that led to a touchdown in a 21-10 victory. “It’s a great offense for wide receivers,” Coach Paul Johnson said, using a refrain he often uses with people who think his scheme is outdated in a pass-happy era. “You don’t get double-covered. You get one-on-ones with nobody underneath. You learn all the basic skills and fundamentals you need to be a good player on the next level.” While Georgia Tech’s receivers may not run complex routes, they become more adept at blocking in the run game — a skill many N.F.L. teams seek. “I think you become a complete player,” Johnson said. That happened even before Johnson arrived as coach. Georgia Tech, with a different offensive strategy, helped launch Calvin Johnson toward N.F.L. stardom with the Detroit Lions. Thomas was already at Georgia Tech when Paul Johnson came in 2008. Knowing the Yellow Jackets would switch from a pro-style to option offense, Thomas considered transferring, but the new coach persuaded him to stay. “I knew I wasn’t going to get many passes, but I knew I’d have a lot of big plays,” Thomas said. “And Stephen Hill came actually with the triple option, and the same way with him. I guess it’s just about big plays.” Thomas had a breakout season as a junior, turning 46 receptions into 1,154 yards and 8 touchdowns. He entered the N.F.L. draft in 2010, was picked No. 22 overall by the Denver Broncos, and now plays a vital role in the Peyton Manning-led offense. Hill wasn’t quite as productive in college but did break his predecessor’s school record by averaging 29.3 yards per catch in 2011 — enough to persuade the Jets to take him in the second round. “If you don’t worry about catching the ball but want to make a lot of big plays, that’s a place to go,” Thomas said of his alma mater. “I’d rather have a couple catches and make big plays. I can go 5 for 125 or whatever it is. I’d be fine with that.” Smelter has taken a different route to the triple option — through the baseball team. Drafted as a pitcher out of high school by the Minnesota Twins, he didn’t turn pro but thought his future was on the diamond. That is, until shoulder problems halted his progress on the mound. Like those who came before him, Smelter is finding that the triple option is not necessarily a hindrance to a receiver. “There’s definitely room for success in this offense,” he said. “A lot of people just look at receiving from a catch-and-run standpoint. But there’s a lot of stuff that goes into it. There are a lot of good receivers, like Brandon Marshall in the N.F.L., who are great at run blocking.” Georgia Tech quarterback Vad Lee has been impressed with Smelter’s work ethic. Over the summer, Smelter was always quick to volunteer any time his quarterback wanted to throw some passes. Smelter kept it up on the practice field and in the film room, playing catch-up for those three years he missed. “He can improve with a lot of things,” Lee said. “But you can’t deny that he’s a playmaker and that he really wants to be good.” Smelter is still torn between baseball — the major leagues have been his dream since he was a child — and football. He plans to play both again next year, then see where the future takes him.
|
Georgia Institute of Technology;Football;College Sports
|
ny0007522
|
[
"sports",
"basketball"
] |
2013/05/21
|
Knicks Offer a Blunt Assessment of What Went Wrong
|
GREENBURGH, N.Y. — The youngest player on the N.B.A.’s oldest team offered the bluntest assessment of a season that ended too soon. “I think we failed,” Iman Shumpert said Monday, two days after the Knicks were ousted by the Indiana Pacers in the second round of the playoffs. “We know we were supposed to go farther, and we didn’t. I’d say that’s a failure.” Shumpert turns 23 next month and will enter his third N.B.A. season next fall. On a roster thick with seasoned veterans and imminent retirees, he represents a marginalized demographic: the prospect with upside. Already a defensive ace and a developing scorer, he also could be growing into the role of locker-room conscience. As the Knicks cycled through team headquarters for their annual exit interviews — first with Coach Mike Woodson and General Manager Glen Grunwald, then with the news media — Shumpert was by far the most candid player, and the most glum. Carmelo Anthony and Tyson Chandler stressed how far the Knicks had come in winning 54 games and a first-round playoff series, the franchise’s first such victory in 13 years. They spoke with the steady perspective of veterans who had had their share of success and disappointment in the last 10 years. Shumpert, whose boundless intensity made him the Knicks’ best perimeter defender, expressed no such satisfaction. He said the Knicks should have advanced “at least to the Eastern Conference finals” to play the Miami Heat. And he suggested that the Knicks had only themselves to blame for falling short. The slide began with a Game 1 loss at Madison Square Garden. They never led in the series and were eliminated in six games. Image The Knicks' Iman Shumpert said, "We got to hold each other accountable. And come next year, little things like not playing hard should never come into play." Credit Kathy Willens/Associated Press “We got to hold each other accountable,” Shumpert said. “And come next year, little things like not playing hard should never come into play. Letting a game slip at home should never come into play. Getting beat on the boards, when we know that’s a point of emphasis in the series, shouldn’t happen. We got to take care of the little things, and we didn’t. It finally caught up with us.” As he spoke, that Game 1 defeat played on a television screen in the press room. The process of unpacking what went wrong and how to fix it will play out in the months to come. Grunwald and Woodson will meet with reporters on Tuesday morning to offer their perspective. After a lost decade, the Knicks have firmly established themselves as a force in the East, a position they figure to occupy as long as Anthony is here and upright. Title contention is another matter. The Heat are still clearly the class of the East, and the pack of challengers will only get stronger next season, with Derrick Rose (Chicago), Danny Granger (Indiana) and Rajon Rondo (Boston) returning to their teams. “Everybody to a man is going to have to come back better,” Chandler said, “because obviously, we didn’t cut it this year — including coaches and everybody included.” Chandler, who faulted teammates for individualistic play during the playoffs, again hinted at concerns over the team’s makeup and strategy on Monday. “I would like for us to develop some consistency with the offensive game plan,” he said. “Right now, we’re a jump-shooting team. I would like us to have a free-flowing offense that we all can be comfortable with.” Chandler had a difficult postseason, after an illness in late April that caused him to lose more than 10 pounds and sapped his strength. But he said he has recovered from a bulging disk in his neck. The Knicks’ core will probably remain unchanged, but they do have significant bodies in play, including J. R. Smith, who won the Sixth Man Award, and 40-year-old Jason Kidd. Smith is expected to decline his $2.9 million option for next season and become a free agent. Although Smith has said he wants to stay, the most the Knicks can pay him, using “early-Bird” rights, is about $5.5 million, leaving the possibility that they could be outbid. Image Tyson Chandler (6), with Roy Hibbert (55) and Paul George, said the Knicks should adopt a more free-flowing offense next year. Credit Andrew Gombert/European Pressphoto Agency Kidd is under contract for two more years, but his decline in the postseason could push him toward retirement. Marcus Camby, 39, could also consider retirement after having hardly played this season. Pablo Prigioni, Kenyon Martin and Chris Copeland — all key rotation players — will be free agents. Martin and Copeland indicated a desire to re-sign with the Knicks. Prigioni has hinted that he might return to Europe. Other than minimum contracts, the Knicks have two salary-cap exceptions they can use this summer: the mini-midlevel exception ($3.18 million) and the biannual exception ($1.96 million), each of which can be split among multiple players. Several players declined to speak to reporters on Monday, including Amar’e Stoudemire, Kidd, Smith and Camby. Anthony made a pitch for Smith to return, calling him “a special player,” despite Smith’s horrendous playoff slump and concerns over his night life. “He’s made a huge step forward as a basketball player,” he said. Anthony said he would have his injured left shoulder examined in the next few days, but he said he was confident there was no major damage. The Knicks are 1-3 in playoff series since Anthony arrived in 2011, but he said this season was more like Year 1 — his first 82-game season in New York and his first with a stable, veteran roster. Although the Knicks had aspirations of knocking off the Heat, Anthony said, “I don’t think we underachieved.” He attributed the loss to Indiana to “little details.” “We kind of teased the city of New York a little bit, because now everybody expects us to play at this level, this high level,” Anthony said. He added: “We want to win a championship. That’s the goal, and we’re going to keep striving for that.”
|
Basketball;Knicks;Pacers;Iman Shumpert;Tyson Chandler;Carmelo Anthony;J R Smith;Jason Kidd;Playoffs
|
ny0232699
|
[
"business",
"global"
] |
2010/08/17
|
W.T.O. Rules Against Europe on Electronics Duties
|
GENEVA (Reuters) — A World Trade Organization panel gave broad backing on Monday to the United States, Japan and Taiwan in their complaint over European duties on electronics products, and told Brussels to bring its trade measures into line with international rules. The panel said the European Union had imposed the duties on flat-panel displays, multifunction printers and television set-top boxes in violation of the W.T.O.’s Information Technology Agreement. The European Commission had already criticized the 704-page ruling before it was published, repeating its view that negotiations on a comprehensive revision of the agreement were preferable to litigation on only a few aspects of it. “The report does not establish general principles that would imply any form of generalized conclusions,” it said in a statement. “Negotiations are the vehicle for mutually beneficial liberalization.” But it remains to be seen how seriously the European Union’s partners will take the call for negotiations on a revised agreement when they believe Brussels is not even living up to the existing one. Japan’s minister of economy, trade and industry, Masayuki Naoshima, welcomed the ruling and called on the European Union to remove the illegal tariffs immediately. And the United States trade representative, Ron Kirk, said the United States had won an important victory. “This ruling affirms the principle that changes in technology are not an excuse to apply new duties to products covered by the Information Technology Agreement,” Mr. Kirk said in a statement. The parties now have 60 days in which to appeal, but the European Commission said Brussels had not yet decided whether to do so. The Information Technology Agreement, which is voluntary, abolished tariffs among 72 countries on products like computer screens and printers to foster trade in high-tech goods. But the European Union argued that added functionality since the agreement was reached in 1996 meant that some products were now consumer goods rather than information technology, and so were not entitled to the zero tariffs under the deal. For instance, it said flat-panel computer displays could also now serve as television screens. The United States Information Technology Industry Council also welcomed the ruling and said it was encouraging that Taiwan and Japan had fully backed the United States.
|
World Trade Organization;International Trade and World Market;Electronics
|
ny0081900
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2015/10/04
|
Things to Do on Long Island, Oct. 2 to 11, 2015
|
A guide to cultural and recreational events on Long Island. Items for the calendar should be sent at least three weeks in advance to [email protected]. Comedy BROOKVILLE Tilles Center for the Performing Arts Whoopi Goldberg. Oct. 3 at 8 p.m. $48 to $111. Seth Meyers. Oct. 9 at 9 p.m. $53.40 and $83.90. Tilles Center for the Performing Arts, 720 Northern Boulevard. 516-299-3100; tillescenter.org. EAST MEADOW East Meadow Public Library Comedy show hosted by Mark Brier, featuring Rich Walker and more. Oct. 18, 2 to 4 p.m. Free. East Meadow Public Library, 1886 Front Street. eastmeadow.info; 516-794-2570. LEVITTOWN Governor’s Comedy Club Lavell Crawford. Oct. 2 and 3. $32. Ted Alexandro. Oct. 9 and 10. $22 Gilbert Gottfried. Oct. 17 at 7 and 9:30 p.m. $25 and $55. Governor’s Comedy Club, 90 Division Avenue. 516-731-3358; govs.com PORT WASHINGTON Landmark on Main Street Caroline Rhea, featuring Talia Reese and others. Oct. 3, 8 to 10 p.m. $35 to $55. Landmark on Main Street, 232 Main Street. 631-839-1942; landmarkonmainstreet.org. WESTBURY NYCB Theater at Westbury Russell Peters. Oct. 3 and 4. $52.50 to $84.75. NYCB Theater at Westbury, 960 Brush Hollow Road. 800-745-3000; livenation.com. Film BROOKVILLE Tilles Center for the Performing Arts “Small, Small Thing: The Olivia Zinnah Story” (2013), by Jessica Vale. Oct. 15 at 7 p.m. $8. Tilles Center for the Performing Arts, 720 Northern Boulevard. 516-299-3100; tillescenter.org. HUNTINGTON Cinema Arts Center “The Hunting Ground” (2015), a documentary by Kirby Dick. Oct. 8 at 7:30 p.m. $10 and $15. Cinema Arts Center, 423 Park Avenue. 631-423-7611; cinemaartscentre.org. PATCHOGUE The Plaza Cinema and Media Arts Center “A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Stage in Cinema.” Oct. 3 through 8. $11 to $15. “Gaslight” (1944), starring Ingrid Bergman, followed by a discussion with Peter Mascuch. Oct. 10 and 15. $11 to $15. “Opera in Cinema,” a screening of “Don Carlo” from the Salzburg Festival. Oct. 17 at 10:30 a.m. $11 to $15. The Plaza Cinema and Media Arts Center, 20 Terry Street. 631-438-0083; plazamac.org. ROSLYN HARBOR Nassau County Museum of Art “Edgar Degas: Of Dandies, Ballerinas and Women Ironing,” a half-hour film. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m., noon, 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.; Sundays, 11 a.m. and noon. Through Nov. 8. Nassau County Museum of Art, 1 Museum Drive. 516-484-9337; nassaumuseum.org For Children GARDEN CITY Long Island Children’s Museum “Perfect Little Pumpkins,” create pumpkin masks. Oct. 2. Free with admission. “Once Upon A Time... Exploring the World of Fairy Tales,” bilingual exhibit. Oct. 3 through Jan. 3. “Bippity Boppity Books,” create a fairy or wizard wand. Oct. 10, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Free with museum admission, $11 and $12. Ben Rudnick and Friends perform bluegrass music. Oct. 11 and 12. $5 with museum admission; $10 theater only. Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Long Island Children’s Museum, 11 Davis Avenue. 516-224-5800; licm.org. LINDENHURST Studio Theater “Rock ‘N’ Roll Cinderella,” a musical featuring 1950s rock. Oct. 3 through Nov. 14. $10. Studio Theater, 141 South Wellwood Avenue. studiotheatreli.com; 631-226-8400. NORTHPORT John W. Engeman Theater at Northport “James and the Giant Peach,” a play based on the book by Roald Dahl, with music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. Through Nov. 1. $15. John W. Engeman Theater at Northport, 250 Main Street. engemantheater.com; 631-261-2900. Music and Dance AMAGANSETT Stephen Talkhouse The Hackensack Men and the Trenton Horns. Oct. 2 at 10 p.m. $10. Nadia Kazmi, rock singer. Oct. 9 at 8 p.m. $10. Revel in Dimes, rock group. Oct. 9 at 10 p.m. $10. The Nancy Atlas Project, rock. Through Oct. 10. $20. Lone Sharks, rock. Oct. 16 at 11 p.m. $10. Inda Eaton, rock. Oct. 17 at 8 p.m. $15. Stephen Talkhouse, 161 Main Street. 631-267-3117; stephentalkhouse.com. BAY SHORE Y.M.C.A. Boulton Center for the Performing Arts Mike DelGuidice, singer-songwriter. Oct. 15 at 8 p.m. $25 and $30. Pat Travers, rock. Oct. 17 at 8 p.m. $30 and $35. Y.M.C.A. Boulton Center for the Performing Arts, 37 West Main Street. 631-969-1101; boultoncenter.org. BOHEMIA Connetquot Public Library Glen Roethel Covers the Beatles. Oct. 11, 2 to 3:15 p.m. Free. Vincent and Emily Ricciardi perform works by Andrea Bocelli and others. Oct. 18, 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Free. Connetquot Public Library, 760 Ocean Avenue. 631-567-5079; connetquotlibrary.org. BRIDGEHAMPTON Bridgehampton Museum Archives Building “The Heart of a Troubadour,” featuring vocalist Steve Washington. Oct. 16 at 7:30 p.m. $25. Bridgehampton Museum Archives Building, 2539-A Montauk Highway. 631-537-1088; artofsong.org. BROOKVILLE Tilles Center for the Performing Arts New York Philharmonic. Oct. 2 at 8 p.m. $57 to $111. Kristin Chenoweth: 35th Anniversary Gala, with Mary Mitchell Campbell, music director and conductor, and the Concert Pops of Long Island. Oct. 10 at 8:30 p.m. $50 to $750. “Music at Hillwood: All-Beethoven Program,” featuring Sirena Huang, violinist; Nathan Chan, cellist; and more. Oct. 11 at 3 p.m. $43. Tilles Center for the Performing Arts, 720 Northern Boulevard. 516-299-3100; tillescenter.org. COLD SPRING HARBOR Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Mei Rui, pianist. Oct. 2 at 6 p.m. $20. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1 Bungtown Road. 516-367-8455; cshl.edu. GARDEN CITY Adelphi University Performing Arts Center Larson Legacy Concert: Sam Willmott, songs and storytelling. Oct. 4. $25; Adelphi students, $5; students and seniors, $15. “Three Women and the Truth,” with performances by Mary Gauthier, Lori McKenna and Gretchen Peters. Oct. 10. $35 and $40. A Musical Morning with Naomi Cohen. Oct. 10 at 11 a.m. $10. Adelphi University Performing Arts Center, 1 South Avenue. 516-877-4000; aupac.adelphi.edu. HEMPSTEAD Monroe Lecture Center Theater, Hofstra University “An Exploration of the Late String Quartets of Beethoven,” a performance by the Hofstra String Quartet. Oct. 4 at 3 p.m. $12 and $15. American Chamber Ensemble Fall Concert, featuring Donna Balson, vocalist, and Tia Roper, flutist. Oct. 18 at 3 p.m. $15 and $20. Monroe Lecture Center Theater, Hofstra University, South Campus, California Avenue. 516-463-6644; hofstra.edu. HUNTINGTON The Paramount Timeflies, pop, presents the “Just for Fun Tour.” Oct. 11 at 7:30 p.m. $23 to $43. “Apollo X Tour” with Motionless in White, rock, and The Devil Wears Prada, rock, with special guests. Oct. 17 at 7 p.m. $20 to $40. The Paramount, 370 New York Avenue. 631-673-7300; paramountny.com. LAWRENCE Peninsula Public Library “Masterly Singing,” a recital featuring the vocalists Julie Meixsell and Ron Meixsell, and Aglaia Messina, pianist. Oct. 15 at 1 p.m. Free. Peninsula Public Library, 280 Central Avenue. 516-239-3262; nassaulibrary.org/peninsula. NORTH MERRICK Brookside School Senior Pops Orchestra of Long Island Concert, featuring music by John Lennon, John Williams and more. Oct. 11 at 2 p.m. Suggested donation, $5. Brookside School, 1260 Meadowbrook Road. 516-414-1831. PATCHOGUE Patchogue Theater for the Performing Arts Terry Lee Goffee and Josie Waverly, Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline tribute show. Oct. 3 at 8 p.m. $21.58 to $48.08. “Made in America,” the Atlantic Wind Symphony, featuring American band composers. Oct. 4 at 3 p.m. $13.10 to $29. Kansas, rock. Oct. 10 at 8 p.m. $45 to $205. Patchogue Theater for the Performing Arts, 71 East Main Street. 631-207-1313; patchoguetheatre.com. PORT WASHINGTON Landmark on Main Street Renaissance, rock group. Oct. 8 at 7:30 p.m. $42 and $52. Jonatha Brooke and Patty Larkin, folk music. Oct. 9 at 8 p.m. $42 to $52. Landmark on Main Street, 232 Main Street. 516-767-6444; landmarkonmainstreet.org. RIVERHEAD Riverhead Free Library Mambo Loco, Afro-Cuban. Oct. 4, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Free. Maxim Anikushin, pianist. Oct. 18, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Free. Riverhead Free Library, 330 Court Street. 631-727-3228; river.suffolk.lib.ny.us. ROCKVILLE CENTRE Madison Theater at Molloy College “The Marriage of Figaro,” the Long Island Opera Company. Oct. 2 and 3. $49 to $55. Brian Culbertson, jazz and R&B. Oct. 10 at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. $50 and $65. Madison Theater at Molloy College, 1000 Hempstead Avenue. 516-323-4444; madisontheatreny.org. SHELTER ISLAND Shelter Island Presbyterian Church Shelter Island Friends of Music Free Concert Series: Opera Classics and Broadway Favorites. Oct. 11, 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Free. Shelter Island Presbyterian Church, 32 North Ferry Road. 631-749-0805; sipchurch.org. STONY BROOK Staller Center for the Arts “Rock the Ballet,” featuring Rasta Thomas’s Bad Boys of Dance. Oct. 17 at 8 p.m. $42. Staller Center for the Arts, 100 Nicolls Road, Stony Brook University. 631-632-2787; stallercenter.com. STONY BROOK University Cafe, Stony Brook University Abbie Gardner, folk artist, and Pat Wictor, guitarist and singer. Oct. 4 at 2 p.m. $20 and $25. University Cafe, Stony Brook University, 100 Nicolls Road. 631-632-1093; universitycafe.org. WESTHAMPTON BEACH Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center Jonny Lang, blues. Oct. 3 at 8 p.m. $80 to $120. Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center, 76 Main Street. 631-288-1500; whbpac.org. Outdoors OYSTER BAY Oyster Bay Historical Society Walking Tour of Oyster Bay. Philip Blocklyn, historical society director, leads a tour of area historic sites. Oct. 10 at 3 p.m. $15. Oyster Bay Historical Society, 20 Summit Street. 516-922-5032; oysterbayhistorical.org. Spoken Word BOHEMIA Connetquot Public Library “Healing Power of Nature,” a lecture and slide show by John P. Cardone featuring Long Island’s waterscapes and wildlife. Oct. 8 at 7 p.m. Free. Connetquot Public Library, 760 Ocean Avenue. 631-567-5079; connetquotlibrary.org. LAWRENCE Peninsula Public Library “Frida Kahlo, Mexican Artists,” an illustrated art lecture by Ines Powell, an art historian and educator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Oct. 8 at 1 p.m. Free. Peninsula Public Library, 280 Central Avenue. nassaulibrary.org/peninsula; 516-239-3262. SAG HARBOR Canio’s Books Paul Moses discusses his book “An Unlikely Union: The Love Hate Story of New York’s Irish and Italians.” Oct. 10 at 5 p.m. Free. Canio’s Books, 290 Main Street. caniosbooks.com; 631-725-4926. STONY BROOK Charles B. Wang Center “Chopsticks: A Cultural and Culinary History,” lecture and book signing with the author Dr. Q. Edward Wang. Oct. 8 at 2:30 p.m. Free. Mondays through Fridays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. or by appointment. Charles B. Wang Center, Stony Brook University. thewangcenter.org; 631-632-4400. Image EAST HAMPTON “Cercles concentriques (1110)” (1973), gouache on paperboard, is in “Antonio Asis: Cercles Concentriques 1961-2011,” a solo show at the Drawing Room, 66 Newtown Lane, through Oct. 26. Information: drawingroom-gallery.com ; 631-324-5016. Credit Jenny Gorman WESTHAMPTON BEACH Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center David Sedaris, author and humorist. Oct. 11 at 8 p.m. $80 to $110. Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center, 76 Main Street. 631-288-1500; whbpac.org. Theater BELLPORT Boys and Girls Club Auditorium “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged,” by Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield. Oct. 2 through Oct. 4. $15. Boys and Girls Club Auditorium, 471 Atlantic Avenue. EAST HAMPTON Guild Hall “The Met: Live in HD,” featuring a screening of Verdi’s “Il Trovatore.” Oct. 3 at 1 p.m. $15 to $22. “The Met: Live in HD,” featuring a screening of Verdi’s “Otello.” Oct. 17 at 1 p.m. $15 to $22. Guild Hall, 158 Main Street. guildhall.org; 631-324-4050. EAST ISLIP BayWay Arts Center “The Tin Woman,” by Sean Grennan. Oct. 3 through 18. $18 and $20. BayWay Arts Center, 265 East Main Street. 631-581-2700; broadhollow.org. GARDEN CITY Adelphi University Performing Arts Center “How I Learned to Drive,” a play by Paula Vogel. Oct. 6 through 11. $20. Adelphi University Performing Arts Center, 1 South Avenue. 516-877-4000; aupac.adelphi.edu. LINDENHURST Studio Theater “What the Rabbi Saw,” a comedy by Billy van Zandt and Jane Milmore. Oct. 9 through 25. $25. Studio Theater, 141 South Wellwood Avenue. studiotheatreli.com; 631-226-8400. OAKDALE CM Performing Arts Center “The Addams Family,” a musical comedy. Oct. 10 through Nov. 8. $22 to $29. CM Performing Arts Center, 931 Montauk Highway. 631-218-2810; cmpac.com. PORT JEFFERSON Theater Three “ Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” book by Hugh Wheeler, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and based on an adaptation by Christopher Bond. Through Oct. 24. $15 to $30. Theater Three, 412 Main Street. 631-928-9100; theaterthree.com. SMITHTOWN Smithtown Center for the Performing Arts “Arsenic and Old Lace,” comedy by Joseph Kesserling. Through Oct. 4. $35. Smithtown Center for the Performing Arts, 2 East Main Street. smithtownpac.org; 631-724-3700. SOUTHAMPTON Southampton Cultural Center “The Fantasticks” (1960), with music by Harvey Schmidt and lyrics by Tom Jones. Through Oct. 18. $12 to $59. Mondays through Saturday, 11 a. m. to 3 p.m. Southampton Cultural Center, 25 Pond Lane. 631-287-4377; southamptonculturalcenter.org Museums and Galleries BRIDGEHAMPTON Silas Marder Gallery Solo exhibition of recent work by Mica Marder, including drawings, paintings and sculpture. Through Oct. 17. Thursdays through Mondays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Silas Marder Gallery, 120 Snake Hollow Road. 631-702-2306; silasmarder.com. CUTCHOGUE Alex Ferrone Photography Gallery “Globetrotting” photographs by Susan Dooley, Ray Germann and Dave Burns. Oct. 3 through Nov. 15. Alex Ferrone Photography Gallery, 25425 Main Road. alexferronegallery.com; 631-734-8545. DIX HILLS The Art League of Long Island “Under the Radar,” retrospective of works by Pat Ralph. Through Nov. 1. Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Art League of Long Island, 107 East Deer Park Road. artleagueli.net; 631-462-5400. EAST HAMPTON Ashawagh Hall “Plein Air Peconic 10th Anniversary Exhibition,” featuring landscape paintings and photographs. Oct. 10 through 12. Ashawagh Hall, 780 Springs Fireplace Road. 631-324-5671; ashawagh-hall.org. EAST HAMPTON Guild Hall “Roy Lichtenstein: Between Sea and Sky,” contemporary works. Through Oct. 12. Suggested donation, $7. Fridays and Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Guild Hall, 158 Main Street. 631-324-4050; guildhall.org. EAST HAMPTON The Drawing Room Works by Costantino Nivola, featuring sculptures and bas reliefs. Through Oct. 26. Free. Works by Antonio Asis, featuring gouaches on paperboard. Through Oct. 26. Free. Mondays, Fridays, Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Drawing Room, 66 Newtown Lane. 631-324-5016; drawingroom-gallery.com. EAST ISLIP Islip Art Museum “Compendium,” group show. Oct. 4 through Dec. 27. Reception: Oct. 30, 8 to 10 p.m., $15 and $25 admission. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 4 p.m. Islip Art Museum, 50 Irish Lane. islipartmuseum.org; 631-224-5402. GLEN COVE Hersh Fine Art at the Long Island Academy of Fine Art Selected Works by Cornelia Hernes, Stephen Bauman and Steve Forster. Through Nov. 30. Hersh Fine Art at the Long Island Academy of Fine Art, 14 Glen Street. 516-590-4324; hershfineart.com. HEMPSTEAD Hofstra University Museum “Doug Hilson: Urbanscapes,” paintings and drawings. Through Dec. 11. Daily, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Hofstra University Museum, Hofstra University. 516-463-5672; hofstra.edu/museum. HUNTINGTON Fotofoto Gallery “80 From the 80’s: Living and Dying in the Shadow of AIDS,” featuring photographs by Susan Dooley and Susan Kravitz. Through Oct. 31. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Fridays 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Fotofoto Gallery, 14 West Carver Street. 631-549-0448; fotofotogallery.org. HUNTINGTON Heckscher Museum of Art “James Rosenquist: Tripartite Prints.” Through Nov. 22. “Graphic Appeal: Modern Prints From the Collection.” Through Nov. 29. Wednesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Heckscher Museum of Art, 2 Prime Avenue. 631-351-3250; heckscher.org. HUNTINGTON STATION South Huntington Public Library Paintings by R. J. T. Haynes. Through Oct. 7. Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Wednesdays, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 5 p.m. South Huntington Public Library, 145 Pidgeon Hill Road. 631-549-4411; shpl.info. JAMESPORT Rosalie Dimon Gallery, Jamesport Manor Inn Paintings by Jerry Schwabe and photographs by Steven Schreiber. Through Oct. 28. Wednesdays through Mondays, noon to 10 p.m. Rosalie Dimon Gallery, Jamesport Manor Inn, 370 Manor Road. jamesportmanorinn.com; 631-722-0500. MASSAPEQUA Studio 5404 Art Space “Sub-Urban Art,” group show. Through Oct. 19. Studio 5404 Art Space, 5404 Merrick Road. studio5404artspace.webs.com; 631-748-4196. OYSTER BAY Collector Car Showcase “The American Hot Rod,” exhibition. Through Oct. 31. $5 to $10; free under 7. Collector Car Showcase, 85 Pine Hollow Road (Route 106).; collectorcs.com; 516-802-5297. OYSTER BAY Oyster Bay Historical Society “Light Over Water: Oyster Bay Harbor Scenes,” paintings, watercolors and drawings by Kirk Larsen. Through Dec. 23. Tuesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 4 p.m. Oyster Bay Historical Society, 20 Summit Street. 516-922-5032; oysterbayhistorical.org. PORT WASHINGTON Graphic Eye Gallery “The Music of Nature II,” an exhibition of Asian brush paintings by the Long Island Sumi-e Society. Reception: Oct. 4, 3 to 5 p.m. Through Oct. 25. Free. Wednesdays through Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Graphic Eye Gallery, 402 Main Street. graphiceyegallery.com; 516-883-9668. RIVERHEAD Thirty West Main “August Abstracts,” group show. Through Oct. 29. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thirty West Main, 30 West Main Street. 631-727-0900; eastendarts.org. ROSLYN HARBOR Nassau County Museum of Art “The Moderns,” selections from the Saltzman family collection and Long Island Collects Modern Art. “Posters of the Russian Revolution: 1917-1921.” “Frank Olt: New Works.” Through Nov. 8. $4 to $10; children 4 and under and members, free. Nassau County Museum of Art, 1 Museum Drive. 516-484-9337. nassaumuseum.org. SAG HARBOR Romany Kramoris Gallery “Shinnecock to Montauk,” featuring works by Franklin Engel. Through Oct. 15. Reception: Oct. 3, 5 to 6:30 p.m. Mondays through Sundays 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Romany Kramoris Gallery, 41 Main Street. kramorisgallery.com; 631-725-2499. SAG HARBOR Sag Harbor Whaling Museum “Barbara Hadden and Michael Butler: Our Town,” paintings. Through Oct. 15. $2 to $6. Mondays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sag Harbor Whaling Museum, 200 Main Street. 631-725-0770; sagharborwhalingmuseum.org. SAYVILLE The Sayville Historical Society “The Civil War: In Their Own Words” featuring correspondence of Long Island soldiers. Through Dec. 13. Suggested donation, $5. Saturdays 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Sundays 2 to 4 p.m. The Sayville Historical Society, 39 Edwards Street. 631-563-0186; sayville.com. SOUTHAMPTON Southampton Cultural Center Annual Juried Art Exhibition. Through Oct. 3. “Material Matters,” group show with works by Monica Banks, Patricia Feiwel, David Geiser, Alice Hope and others. Reception: Oct. 10, 4 to 6 p.m. Oct. 6 through Nov. 17. Mondays through Saturday, 11 a. m. to 3 p.m. Southampton Cultural Center, 25 Pond Lane. southamptonculturalcenter.org; 631-287-4377. SOUTHOLD Cosden- Price Gallery in the Reichert Family Center “Barns of the North Fork,” paintings by North Fork artists. Through Oct. 3. Thursdays through Saturdays, 1 to 4 p.m. Cosden-Price Gallery in the Reichert Family Center, 54127 Main Road. 631-765-5500. ST. JAMES Mills Pond House Gallery “Finely Crafted,” works by members of Long Island Craft Guild. Through Oct. 3. Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 4 p.m. Mills Pond House Gallery, 660 Route 25A. stacarts.org; 631-862-6575. STONY BROOK Charles B. Wang Center “Origami Heaven,” works by eight artists. Through Dec. 31. “Reality Override,” mixed-media works by Ren Zi. Through Dec. 31. “Explore History: Objects From Asia,” rotating collaborative exhibition examining Asian and Asian-American material culture. Through Dec. 31. Free. Mondays through Fridays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., or by appointment. Charles B. Wang Center, Stony Brook University. 631-632-4400; thewangcenter.org. STONY BROOK Long Island Museum of American Art, History and Carriages “Gilding the Coasts: Art and Design of Long Island’s Great Estates,” group show. Through Oct. 25. $3.50 to $9; members and children under 6, free. “Beth Levine: The First Lady of Shoes,” footwear, photographs, paintings and more. Through Jan. 3. $3.50 to $9; members and children under 6, free. Thursdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Long Island Museum of American Art, History and Carriages, 1200 Route 25A. 631-751-0066; longislandmuseum.org. STONY BROOK Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University “Manfred Mohr: Pioneer of Algorithmic Art,” Simons Center Gallery. Through Nov. 12. Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University, 100 Nicolls Road. 631-632-2800. SYOSSET Syosset Public Library Photographs of East African nomadic tribes by Gary Warren. Oct. 4 through 28. Mondays through Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Fridays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Syosset Public Library, 225 South Oyster Bay Road. 516-921-7161; syossetlibrary.org.
|
Long Island;The arts;Theater;Museum
|
ny0060604
|
[
"sports"
] |
2014/08/23
|
Japanese Swimming Has Momentum at Its Back
|
SOUTHPORT, Australia — In 2012, Michael Phelps saw the writing on London’s Aquatic Centre scoreboard. In the third of four preliminary heats of the Olympic 400-meter individual medley, the Japanese teenager Kosuke Hagino clocked at 4 minutes 10.01 seconds. Phelps, the world-record holder in the event since 2002, remembered cringing, because he was in the final heat and Hagino’s time was faster than he had expected to have to push himself. In the Olympic final, Hagino pushed Phelps off the medals podium and toward retirement when he edged him for the bronze. A year later, Hagino competed in six individual events and one relay at the world championships in Barcelona, Spain, and collected two seconds, three fifths and a seventh. Phelps, 29, who was in the stands in Spain, will get a much closer look at the Japanese version of himself on Sunday in the 200-meter individual medley. Hagino, 20, will put his world No. 1 ranking on the line in one of the more highly anticipated races of the meet. The last time they raced, in London, Phelps won his third consecutive Olympic title in the event while Hagino finished fifth. “It’s been fun being able to watch him,” said Phelps, who returned to competition in April. He added, “He’s definitely a very well-rounded swimmer.” Phelps praising Hagino’s versatility was akin to the writer-actor-director Tyler Perry hailing someone’s industry. “Michael Phelps inspired me,” Hagino said through an interpreter. “I’ve been admiring him so I’m really happy he would say that.” With Hagino at the helm, Japanese swimming is riding a wave of success that is expected to crest at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. On the first two nights of the Pan Pacific Championships, the Japanese men got victories from Ryosuke Irie in the 100 backstroke, Daiya Seto in the 200 butterfly, Yasuhiro Koseki in the 100 breaststroke and Hagino in the 400 I.M. They also came within 13-hundredths of a second of pulling off a momentous upset of Phelps and his United States teammates in the 4x200 freestyle relay. The foursome of Hagino, Reo Sakata, Yuki Kobori and Takeshi Matsuda held the lead for most of the race before succumbing to Conor Dwyer, Phelps, Ryan Lochte and Matt McLean. The Americans clocked 7:05.17 to the Japanese’s 7:05.30. It was Phelps’s second race of the night; he also finished fourth in the 100-meter freestyle in only his second attempt at a double since he came out of retirement. The Japanese women, while lacking the depth of the men, have Kanako Watanabe — who finished second to the American Jessica Hardy on Friday in the 100 breaststroke — and Nastumi Hoshi, who was touched out by the American Cammile Adams on Thursday in the 200 butterfly. Image Hagino on Friday in the 400-meter individual medley, which he won. He will face Michael Phelps in the 200 individual medley on Sunday, putting his No. 1 ranking on the line. Credit Rick Rycroft/Associated Press Watanabe, a slender 17-year-old, said one man deserved all the credit for her country’s ascendant performances. He was on the pool deck this week, but not as a competitor or coach. He is the television commentator Kosuke Kitajima, and he is more famous than any of the athletes he will interview or analyze. In 2004 in Athens, Kitajima became the first swimmer in Japan’s history to win two individual gold medals in a single Olympics with victories in both breaststrokes. Kitajima, 31, was also the first man to win both breaststroke events at the same Games, a feat he repeated in Beijing. A four-time Olympian, Kitajima raced in the national competition from which the Pan Pacific team was assembled but failed to qualify. Speaking through an interpreter, Kitajima said: “It’s true a lot of Japanese athletes have become very strong. From my accomplishments, a lot of the young students think they can compete on the world stage. And sometimes they can swim better than me.” How big of an imprint has Kitajima made? Tomoko Hagiwara, an Olympic teammate of Kitajima’s in 2000, said that after Kitajima’s success in Athens, swimming appeared for the first time in a top-10 poll tracking youngsters’ interests. In a more recent questionnaire, she said, respondents listed swimming as their No. 1 Olympic viewing choice in 2020. In response to questions posed to her via email, Hagiwara, an Olympic finalist in the 200 backstroke and 200 individual medley in Sydney in 2000, said of Kitajima, “He has become a guideline on how to compete worldwide.” She added, “I believe that he represents the theme that Japan has been working on: strength as a team.” At the Gold Coast Aquatic Centre this week, preparing the Japanese swimmers for their races was a collective effort. On deck there are team staff members who put the athletes through strength and stretching exercises using bands and medicine and abdominal balls; team staff members who stretch their limbs and massage their muscles; team staff members who videotape their strokes; and team staff members who deliver and oversee their water workouts. Five of the 22 members of Japan’s support staff here are affiliated with the Japan Institute of Sports Sciences, established in the early 2000s to help athletes incorporate advanced technologies and sound nutrition into their world-class training. “The country as a whole is supporting athletes a lot more in the last 10 years,” Kitajima said. Hagino is coached by Norimasa Hirai, who also oversaw the development of Kitajima. Under his guidance, Hagino became the first man to win five individual events at Japan’s nationals and the first man from Japan to break the 3:44 barrier in the 400 freestyle. His victory here in the 400 I.M. was his first major international title. On the first night, Hagino came within a tenth of a second of a victory in the 200 freestyle. He was all smiles as he accepted his silver medal and when he met with the Japanese news media later. Asked if he was always so happy, Hagino said through an interpreter, “Even though I lost, I really enjoyed that race.” He added, “I like to compete because that’s how I find my own weaknesses and what I need to improve on to be able to swim faster.” In Sunday’s 200 I.M., Hagino will be able to gauge his progress against the top two performers in the event, Lochte and Phelps. And he is not the only one who will use the race as a yardstick. “The Japanese have been swimming very well in a lot of different strokes,” Phelps said. “We kind of have to play catch-up.”
|
Swimming;Kosuke Kitajima;Pan Pacific Swimming Championships;Kosuke Hagino;Nastumi Hoshi;Kanako Watanabe
|
ny0147546
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2008/07/24
|
In First Meeting, Rice Presses North Korean on Nuclear Effort
|
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with her North Korean counterpart on Wednesday for the first time, and prodded the government in Pyongyang to move quickly to dismantle its nuclear arms program. The meeting in Singapore between Ms. Rice, President Bush’s top diplomat, and Pak Ui-chun, the foreign minister of the country Mr. Bush labeled as part of the “axis of evil” in 2002, occurred with surprisingly little fanfare, given the years of buildup. Bush administration officials said Ms. Rice and Mr. Pak spoke for a few minutes after an 80-minute official conference among the United States, North Korea , Russia, China, Japan and South Korea in Singapore outside a regional meeting. In their brief one-on-one exchange, Ms. Rice told Mr. Pak that North Korea should accept terms to verify the dismantling of its nuclear weapons program, Bush administration officials said. “We didn’t get into specific timetables, but the spirit was good because people believe we have made progress,” Ms. Rice said after the talks, The Associated Press reported. “There is also a sense of urgency about moving forward and a sense that we can’t afford do have another hiatus.” She characterized the meeting as “very good,” adding that “it wasn’t a standoff with people just stating their positions,” The A.P. reported. The meeting is the latest step in the Bush administration’s turnaround on North Korea, after several years of isolation that ended in October 2006 when the North Koreans exploded a nuclear device. Ms. Rice and Christopher R. Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs, subsequently convinced Mr. Bush that North Korea’s nuclear test had changed the rules of the game enough that the president should complete a nuclear agreement with North Korea and the four other countries at the conference, which administration officials hope will eventually make the Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons. In the accord, North Korea agreed to dismantle its nuclear program, in exchange for food and fuel aid. Mr. Bush also agreed to remove it from a list of state sponsors of terrorism. The spokesman for the North Korean delegation, Ri Tong-il, told reporters in Singapore that his country hoped that the meeting on Wednesday would build momentum toward the formal end of the Korean War. After the talks, Mr. Ri said that Mr. Pak had told his fellow foreign ministers that North Korea was willing “to implement its own obligations,” including verification, “closely following the implementation by other parties on the principle of action-for-action.”
|
Rice Condoleezza;North Korea;Atomic Weapons;Arms Control and Limitation and Disarmament;United States International Relations;Hill Christopher R;Japan
|
ny0079054
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2015/02/18
|
Reviving the Art of Debate in Israel
|
JERUSALEM — Until a few years ago, there was no Hebrew word for debate. Then in 2012, linguists adopted the term “mamat,” whose root means “confrontation,” which Yoni Cohen-Idov, an international debating champion, sees as symptomatic of what ails his nation’s political discourse. “Debate, the English word, consists of two elements — one is confrontation, the other is discussion,” he said. “If you’re rivals and you only shout at one another and make slogans, and you don’t discuss things in depth, that is not a debate.” Instead of using “mamat,” he conjugates “debate” in Hebrew, like so many English cognates that pepper conversation here. “I’m waiting for them to come up with a better word,” he said. He is waiting, too, for a real political debate between the major candidates for prime minister, something that has not happened in Israel since 1996 — before he was old enough to vote. And he is not alone: A poll published on Friday in the Israeli daily Maariv showed that nearly two-thirds of Israelis would like to see a nationally televised debate ahead of the March 17 elections. For now, there is the perennial debate over whether and how to debate. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his leading challenger, Isaac Herzog, have both declined Channel 2’s invitation to appear next week on a stage crowded with the leaders of nine other political parties. Mr. Netanyahu’s party, Likud, said he would only consider a one-on-two setup with Mr. Herzog, head of the Labor Party, and the centrist former minister Tzipi Livni, who have teamed up for this campaign under the banner Zionist Union and have promised to rotate the premiership. But Mr. Netanyahu will not decide until after his March 3 speech on Iran to a joint meeting of Congress. The Zionist Union said that it would prefer a head-to-head but that “it’s really important” the prime minister “faces his opponents, and the details don’t matter.” Political veterans credit Israel’s last real debate as one of the factors that propelled Mr. Netanyahu to his first term as prime minister, in 1996. His relative youth, aggressiveness and on-air savvy, 60 hours before the balloting, helped him squeak past Shimon Peres, who had taken the post after Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, by 29,000 votes. But three years later, a debate was part of his downfall. Ehud Barak of the Labor Party, the main challenger, chose not to participate, leaving the long-shot centrist candidate — Yitzhak Mordechai, Mr. Netanyahu’s own former defense minister — to rattle the master with vicious attacks. “Netanyahu, the television wiz, was beaten on his home court,” one columnist observed of the debate, which others likened to an episode of “The Jerry Springer Show” or a boxing match that defied the odds. A stunning 44 percent of Israeli households had tuned in. There have been four elections since then, but no full-fledged debates. Not when Mr. Netanyahu was returned to the premiership in 2009, and not when he sailed to a second consecutive term in 2013. Like incumbents everywhere, analysts say that Mr. Netanyahu is now loath to elevate challengers by standing side by side with them. “From his point of view, there’s nothing to gain and everything to lose from debating,” Gadi Wolfsfeld, an expert on political communication, said of the prime minister. Demanding to face both Mr. Herzog and Ms. Livni, he said, is an “impossible condition,” he added, that allows Mr. Netanyahu “to look like he’s agreeing without agreeing.” In the United States, presidential debates are a crucial introduction for candidates to vast swaths of an unengaged electorate. In Israel, voters tend to be conversant in even the nuances of political platforms. That does not, necessarily, lead to elevated discourse. “You notice it in everyday life, you notice on talk radio and on television, nobody lets the other person finish,” complained Mr. Cohen-Idov, who helped start a debating program now in place in 200 Israeli schools. “Elected officials and media people in Israel, they don’t even try to say anything too complex or too deep because they know for a fact they’re going to be cut in 20 seconds.”
|
Middle East;Political Debates;Israel;Tel Aviv;Election
|
ny0074970
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2015/04/23
|
U.S. and South Korea Reach Revised Nuclear Deal
|
SEOUL, South Korea — After four and a half years of low-key yet highly sensitive negotiations, the United States and South Korea announced a revised treaty on Wednesday that continues to deny — but not permanently rule out — South Korea the right to enrich uranium or reprocess spent nuclear fuel, even for peaceful purposes. South Korea has been prevented from enriching uranium and reprocessing spent-fuel, technologies used by countries such as North Korea to make nuclear weapons, under a 1972 treaty in which the United States helped South Korea build its nascent nuclear energy industry. The two governments started negotiations in 2010 to rewrite the treaty, which was originally set to expire in 2013. But their differences were too big to resolve , leading them to sign a separate deal to extend the expiration date. South Korea insisted in the talks that it needed to enrich uranium to produce fuel for its fast-expanding nuclear energy industry. It also wanted to reprocess spent fuel to reduce its nuclear waste storage. But the United States maintained that allowing South Korea to employ those technologies, even for peaceful purposes, would set a bad precedent and undermine its global efforts to discourage the spread of activities that can be used to produce weapons-usable nuclear materials. Both sides announced on Wednesday that they had completed the bargaining, with the United States ambassador, Mark Lippert, and Park Ro-byug, the chief South Korean negotiator, initialing the text during a ceremony in Seoul, the South Korean capital. The agreement is subject to review by the United States Congress. The new treaty does not allow South Korea to enrich uranium or reprocess spent fuel anytime soon. But it does not commit South Korea to legally renounce these techniques either. Video The American ambassador to South Korea and the chief South Korean negotiator discussed a deal reached between the two countries that included supplying fuel for nuclear power generation. Credit Credit Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press Instead, it leaves open the possibility that South Korea could enrich uranium for civil nuclear energy “in the future through consultations with the United States.” In the meantime, Washington promised to help secure a supply of nuclear fuel for South Korean atomic power plants, Seoul said in a news release. The deal also created the option for South Korea to have its spent fuel reprocessed abroad in countries that both Seoul and Washington believed posed no proliferation risk. The United States also promised to help South Korea find new nuclear waste management options that would be economically viable and more proliferation-resistant. As part of such efforts, South Korea said its scientists would be allowed to do early experiments on a kind of nuclear reprocessing known as pyroprocessing. The new treaty also establishes a high-level committee that will assess the implementation of the treaty. The United States hailed the treaty as reaffirming “the two governments’ shared commitment to nonproliferation.” Ju Chul-ki, senior secretary for foreign affairs for President Park Geun-hye of South Korea, said the agreement reflected his country’s status as a major player in civil nuclear energy. Lee Byong-chul, a senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation in Seoul, said the deal was beneficial for both countries, though it reminded South Koreans of the constraints placed upon their country’s nuclear industry. South Korea is the world’s fifth-largest nuclear energy producer, with 23 reactors providing 36 percent of the country’s electricity needs. It has also presented nuclear power plants as one of its new export items. (The country is building four reactors for the United Arab Emirates.) Yet the country currently has to import all of its enriched uranium fuel because of the obligations imposed under the treaty with the United States. After decades of running nuclear power plants, nuclear waste has also become a growing concern. In this small, densely populated country with an increasingly vociferous environmental movement, building a new, central repository for its spent nuclear fuel has become a huge headache for the government.
|
South Korea;Uranium;Nuclear energy;Nuclear weapon;Nuclear Waste;US Foreign Policy;US
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.