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ny0006943
|
[
"business"
] |
2013/05/28
|
Webdenda
|
Advertising Hall of Achievement, Washington, which honors industry professionals ages 40 and younger, selected its inductees for 2013. They are Adam Bain, president for global revenue at Twitter; B. Bonin Bough, vice president for global media and consumer engagement, Mondelez International; Robert Candelino, vice president of branding for skin care, Unilever; Tara Walpert Levy, managing director for ads marketing at Google and YouTube; Lynn Lewis, global managing partner, J3 UM, part of Universal McCann; Todd Pendleton, chief marketing officer at Samsung Telecommunications America; and Emmanuel Seuge, head of global sports and entertainment at the Coca-Cola Company. Ms. Lewis will also receive the Jack Avrett Volunteer Spirit Award, for public service. The honors are to be presented on Nov. 5 at a luncheon at the Beverly Hilton hotel. Amazon, Seattle, named Initiative, part of the Mediabrands division of the Interpublic Group of Companies, as its worldwide media agency. The assignment, with spending estimated at $300 million, had been handled by Mindshare, part of the GroupM division of WPP. Anomaly, New York, part of MDC Partners, said it would open an office in Shanghai, its first in Asia. The agency also has offices in Amsterdam, London and Toronto. The office is the second for an MDC agency in China; Allison & Partners has a global China practice based in Beijing. Apple remained in first place in the 2013 edition of the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands study, commissioned by WPP, London, and conducted by the Millward Brown Optimor unit of its Millward Brown division. However, the value of the Apple brand grew only 1 percent compared with 2012, according to the study. The rest of the top 10, in descending order, were: No. 2, Google, which was No. 3 in 2012; No. 3, I.B.M., No. 2 last year; No. 4, McDonald’s, again in fourth place; No. 5, Coca-Cola, up a notch from No. 6; No. 6, AT&T, up from No. 8; No. 7, Microsoft, down from fifth; No. 8, Marlboro, down from No. 7; No. 9, Visa, a gain from 15th; and No. 10, China Mobile, unchanged. Association of National Advertisers, New York, is offering for the first time an award that is to recognize leadership in using analytics to help produce successful marketing programs. Members of the association will be eligible for the award, which is being sponsored by MarketShare and offers a $50,000 cash prize. The first Marketing Analytics Leadership Award is to be presented at the association’s annual conference, to be held in Phoenix Oct. 3- 6. Clio Awards, New York, part of Guggenheim Digital Media, plans to produce a new event honoring creative excellence in the fashion and beauty industries, called the Clio Image Awards. Women’s Wear Daily, owned by Advance Publications, will be the founding media partner for the new awards. Entries will be accepted from November through March 2014, with the first awards to be presented in May 2014. Cramer-Krasselt, Chicago, kept a large account as its New York office won a large account. Porsche Cars North America, Atlanta, which is owned by Volkswagen, decided to keep its creative account at Cramer-Krasselt, which has handled the assignment since 2007. The decision came after a six-month review that also included four other agencies: Crispin Porter & Bogusky, part of MDC Partners; Droga5; McKinney, part of Cheil Worldwide; and Olson. Porsche Cars spends more than $20 million a year on advertising. And the Patrón Spirits Company, Las Vegas, named the Cramer-Krasselt New York office as the agency of record for United States brand positioning and advertising for Patrón tequila, in a decision that came after the agency created the Patrón Christmas holiday campaign last year. The assignment, with annual spending estimated at $20 million, had previously been handled by the Richards Group, Dallas. Effie Worldwide, New York, presented its annual awards for North America. The North American Grand Effie, the award for best in show, was presented to “The Vet and the N00b,” a campaign to promote the Activision Blizzard video game “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.” The campaign was led by 72andSunny, part of MDC Partners; the other agencies participating were OMD, part of the Omnicom Group; SapientNitro, part of Sapient; and Edelman, part of Daniel J. Edelman Worldwide. Also, based on an annual analysis of data about winners of and finalists for the North American Effie Awards, Procter & Gamble was named the most effective advertiser; Mizuno, most effective brand; Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, part of WPP, most effective advertising agency network; Ogilvy & Mather New York, most effective individual agency office; and Wieden & Kennedy, most effective independently owned advertising agency. Barry Frey joined the Digital Place-Based Advertising Association, New York, as president and chief executive. He succeeds Susan Danaher, to left to become executive vice president and chief revenue officer at Adspace Digital Mall Network. Mr. Frey had most recently been a senior adviser at Sonenshine Partners, New York, and before that worked at Cablevision. Marianne Gambelli joined Horizon Media, New York, as executive vice president and chief investment officer. She assumes duties from Aaron Cohen, executive vice president and chief media negotiation officer, who, the agency said, is moving to a senior advisory role, reporting to Bill Koenigsberg, president and chief executive. Ms. Gambelli had most recently been president for NBC broadcast sales at NBCUniversal, New York, part of Comcast. Jayne Jamison, vice president, publisher and chief revenue officer at Seventeen, New York, part of the Hearst Magazines unit of the Hearst Corporation, will also oversee Redbook magazine, taking the new title of vice president and publishing director for Seventeen and Redbook. She assumes the duties for Redbook from Mary E. Morgan, who had been vice president, publisher and chief revenue officer. Ms. Morgan resigned, Hearst Magazines said. Salar Kamangar, chief executive of YouTube and senior vice president for video at the parent, Google, will be honored on June 19 as the Media Person of the Year for 2013 at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The festival, the 60th, will be held in Cannes, France, from June 16 through 22. Kevin Kohn joined the New York office of Lotame Solutions in a new post, chief revenue officer. He had most recently been senior vice president and general manager of general markets at LivePerson, New York. JP Kyrillos joined The Daily Meal, New York, part of the Spanfeller Media Group, as president, filling a vacant post. He had most recently been publisher at Travel & Leisure magazine, part of the American Express American Express Publishing Corporation, which is a unit of the American Express Company and is managed by the Time Inc. unit of Time Warner. Late July Organic Snacks, Barnstable, Mass., chose Haberman, Minneapolis, to handle the brand’s 2013 campaign and social marketing expansion. Billings were not disclosed. There had been no previous agency. Jason Shafton joined Comedy Central, New York, part of Viacom, as vice president for brand marketing. He succeeds Deena Stern, who left in February to join the new Esquire Network, part of the NBCUniversal division of Comcast, as head of marketing. Mr. Shafton had been head of the Google Play product and social marketing at Google. Signature Brands, Ocala, Fla., chose Eric Mower & Associates, Syracuse, to help the company introduce Breyers Ice Cream Toppings. Spending has not been determined. Signature is using the Breyers name under a licensing agreement with the Breyers parent, Unilever. The account is being managed from the Mower office in Buffalo; many of the elements of the campaign are being produced agencywide. Traffic Audit Bureau for Media Measurement, New York, said that its board had approved financing for research into measurement of digital billboards. The organization already measures audiences for other types of outdoor signs as part of its Out of Home Ratings system. The goal of the new initiative is to find a way to report the audiences for each ad that appears on a digital sign rather than a rating for the sign itself. The organization will work with Inrix, which provides traffic information, and Perception Research Services, the primary supplier for the original eye-tracking study as the Out of Home Ratings system was brought out. Steve Woolway joined Aerify Media, New York, in a new post, chief revenue officer. He had been vice president for sales and business development at Mediaocean, New York. Jay Zasa rejoined R/GA, New York, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, as senior vice president and executive creative director for campaigns, which the agency described as a new role. He had been an executive creative director at the Barbarian Group, New York, owned by Cheil Worldwide, and before that spent five years at R/GA, most recently as an executive creative director.
|
advertising,marketing;Awards
|
ny0143916
|
[
"sports",
"ncaafootball"
] |
2008/10/27
|
Darryl Clark, the Penn State Quarterback, Was Held Out After Sustaining Concussion
|
Penn State took measures to protect the junior quarterback Daryll Clark after he sustained a concussion in Saturday’s 13-6 win over Ohio State, sidelining him with the Nittany Lions behind by 3 points. Clark was hit on a 7-yard run play late in the third quarter, when he collided with Nader Abdallah, a 300-pound defensive tackle, and tackle Cameron Heyward, who is listed at 287 pounds. Abdallah walked off the field after the hit. Clark played seven more snaps before the drive ended, then he was removed. Teammates said he was visibly shaken up and wanted to re-enter the game, but was not allowed. “The decision was easy in terms of trying to ask what you would want for your kid, my kid, any kid in that kind of situation,” Dr. Wayne Sebastianelli, Penn State’s director of athletic medicine, said Sunday in a telephone interview. “We know the stakes are high, but we’re pretty much dedicated to the preservation of an athlete’s well-being.” Asked if coaches resisted his decision to remove Clark, Sebastianelli said: “No one questioned it at all. We knew we had to find another way to win. That was it.” Pat Devlin replaced Clark and scored the go-ahead touchdown on a sneak midway through the fourth quarter. Clark, who was scheduled to be evaluated again Sunday, will be kept off the field on Monday and Tuesday but may return to practice by the middle of the week, according to his father, Daryll Sr. Penn State has a bye week and will play at Iowa on Nov. 8. In a telephone interview, Clark’s father said that the concussion was considered mild. He said that Clark spoke clearly and was not slurring his words during their conversation late Saturday. After the game, Clark was escorted off the field by team officials and was not allowed to shake hands with fans or the Ohio State quarterback, Terrelle Pryor. Clark was also not made available to speak with reporters. “It was a matter of having that kind of trust and that kind of relationship with everybody on the staff,” Sebastianelli said of the decision to keep a player off the field. “I have the benefit of being here for over 17 years. I want to win just as much as they want to win. They want to win the right away, with the right kids.”
|
Pennsylvania State University;Football;College Athletics;Concussions
|
ny0156622
|
[
"business",
"worldbusiness"
] |
2008/06/09
|
Industrial Nations Vow to Cut Oil Use
|
AOMORI, Japan (AP) — The world’s leading economies and oil consumers are pledging greater investment in energy efficiency and green technologies to curtail petroleum use. In a joint statement on Sunday, energy ministers from the Group of 8 countries, the United States, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada, joined by China, India and South Korea, also urged oil producers to increase output, which has stalled at about 85 million barrels a day since 2005. They also called for cooperation between buyers and producers. But with little prospect for a surge in production anytime soon, the focus of Sunday’s meeting was on what wealthy nations should do to rein in consumption, while reducing carbon emissions blamed for global warming . While the nations did not pledge specific amounts of money, they said they would set goals in line with International Energy Agency recommendations for a vast expansion of investment in renewable energies and energy efficiency. The G-8 countries said they would begin 20 demonstration projects by 2010.
|
Group of Eight;Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline;Energy Efficiency;Air Pollution;Production
|
ny0132636
|
[
"business",
"media"
] |
2012/12/24
|
News Blackouts, for Security or Serenity
|
With less than two weeks to go until the presidential election, Lloyd Grove had had enough. Responding to a video posted by the real estate mogul Donald J. Trump challenging the president to release his college records and passport applications in exchange for a $5 million charitable donation, Mr. Grove, an editor at The Daily Beast and a former New York Daily News columnist, pulled a rarely used card from the journalist’s deck: the media blackout. “Effective immediately,” he wrote in The Daily Beast , “in light of your latest foolish attempt at seeming important, we will ignore you and your hot air for the foreseeable future — or, at the very least, until after the Nov. 6 election.” Members of the media may declare blackouts for many reasons. Some are out of caution: in 2008, when David Rohde, then a reporter for The New York Times, was kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan, more than 40 major news outlets refrained from reporting the story for seven months, until he and a local reporter escaped . This month, NBC News asked other media outlets to hold off reporting that its chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, and his production team were missing in Syria where, it turned out, they were being held by a pro-government group. Most obliged, although last Monday, a day before most of the crew was released , Gawker, the media news and gossip Web site, posted an article that stated he was missing. But more often, the blackout is more akin to a boycott that, when made public, can be a tool for media outlets or commentators to raise the level of discourse, to focus the public’s attention elsewhere or to glean some attention from those they are barring. For eight days in 2007, The Associated Press quietly experimented with a Paris Hilton ban. “It wasn’t based on a view of what the public should be focusing on,” explained an editorial after the moratorium . “No,” it continued, “editors just wanted to see what would happen if we didn’t cover this media phenomenon, this creature of the Internet gossip age, for a full week. ” It ended when she was arrested for driving with a suspended license, a violation that led to a brief jail sentence. “One might call it a gimmick,” said the A.P. reporter Jesse Washington who, at the time, was the editor of the outlet’s entertainment department. He said he does not recall where the idea came from, but he petitioned his boss to put it in action, insisting that if something “really newsworthy” happened, they would cover it. For the previous decade, The A.P. had been adjusting to an increasing demand for entertainment-related news. There was frustration in the newsroom about reporting entertainment news, but widespread recognition that the industry was changing and that they had to reconsider what was newsworthy. “The A.P. was feeling our way through this transition,” Mr. Washington said. “What do we cover? What do we not cover? Do we dip our toe or go in waist-deep?” He went on to point out that reporters make decisions about what is news and what is not news every day, and that as the industry evolves, the types of news that are covered change. “Everyone knew that J.F.K. and Marilyn Monroe were sleeping together,” he said, “but no one reported it.” Of course, the subjects a news outlet refuses to cover can vary greatly for any number of reasons, including the outlet’s particular audience and concerns of national security. And announcing a ban can be self-defeating, placing more eyes on the subject meant to be played down. “In some ways, it’s commendable,” said Edward Wasserman, a professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University. “What they’re doing is making public the criteria they’re applying; they are inviting the public to consider whether the criteria they are applying are valid.” On the other hand, he added, “To say, ‘I don’t care what he has to say, he’s a clown’ — you run the risk of giving insufficient consideration to potential newsmakers.” Even blackouts for security or safety reasons are controversial. At the time of Mr. Rohde’s kidnapping, Bill Keller, then The Times’s executive editor, told The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz that although he recognized the danger of making the situation public, “it makes us cringe to sit on a news story.” When Gawker broke with the embargo over reporting about the missing NBC News crew, the writer John Cook said in the post that the story had been reported by Turkish news outlets and that it was spreading on Twitter. He also wrote, to widespread criticism, that he was not persuaded by the network’s rationale. “No one at NBC made a case to me that reporting Engel’s situation might cause anything concrete to happen to him, because they didn’t know anything about his current circumstances,” he said. Voluntary blackouts at least seem more fun. Mr. Grove imposed his Trump boycott after the developer and onetime Republican primary front-runner spent much of the 2012 campaign season hounding President Obama over his birth certificate. The $5 million offer, according to Mr. Grove, was the last straw. “I just thought that the guy was constantly screaming, ‘Look at me,’ ” he said in an interview. Mr. Grove issued a similar edict about Ms. Hilton in 2004. “In both cases,” he said, “there was a sense of weariness in having to write about these people.” Bemoaning the “media obsession” with the former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, Dana Milbank used one of his Washington Post columns to declare February 2011 a “Palin-free month,” and encouraged others — he named several commentators in various media — to join him. “I pledge to you: Sarah Palin’s name will not cross my lips — or my keyboard — for the entire month of February,” he wrote. “Who’s with me?” “I knew nobody else would follow it,” he said in an interview. “The point was whether you could get through a month. I picked the shortest month.” Ms. Palin — ever the apple of the critical eye of what she calls the “lamestream media” — appeared to be relieved. When she learned of the boycott eight days after Mr. Milbank’s column was published, she said she supported it. “Sounds good,” she remarked, “because there’s a lot of chaos in Cairo, and I can’t wait to not get blamed for it — at least for a month.” Her supporters online, taking the ban as an insult, redoubled their fervor. One blog declared that “Sarah Palin owns February,” and another started a petition to declare February Reagan/Palin Appreciation Month. Practitioners of media bans acknowledge their ineffectiveness. “Maybe if a news organization made that decision,” said Mr. Milbank, they might have a lasting impact, but “one columnist can’t alter the earth’s rotation.” Mr. Grove acknowledged his announcements were self-serving, but said he would still point toward the results. “After all,” he said, “do you read much about Paris Hilton anymore?”
|
News and News Media;Ethics (Institutional);Boycotts;Trump Donald J;Engel Richard (1973- );National Broadcasting Co
|
ny0166683
|
[
"business"
] |
2006/01/04
|
6 Ex-Putnam Officials Accused of Fraud
|
Six former officials of Putnam Investments, including the chief of its transfer agency, have been accused in a lawsuit of defrauding several mutual funds and a corporate retirement plan of $4 million to cover up an investment-processing error. The lawsuit, filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, stems from a one-day delay in the transfer of assets in a 401(k) plan of Cardinal Health in January 2001. After missing $4 million in market gains, the Putnam officials tried to hide the mistake and make its funds and the Cardinal plan absorb the lost profits, the S.E.C. said in a statement yesterday. The S.E.C. did not accuse Putnam, a unit of Marsh & McLennan, of misconduct because the company cooperated with the investigation, the S.E.C. said. The suit was filed Dec. 30 in United States District Court in Boston, where Putnam is based. Those named in the suit included Karnig Durgarian, former senior managing director and chief of operations at the Putnam Fiduciary Trust Company, the company's transfer agency unit, which handles administration and record keeping for its mutual funds. Mr. Durgarian, one of Putnam's highest-ranking officers, was fired in March 2004. Among the others named were Donald McCracken, head of global operations services; Virginia Papa, who was in charge of defined-contribution plan servicing; Sandra Childs, who was responsible for transfer-agency compliance; and Kevin Crain, who directed plan administration. Ronald Hogan, a vice president for new business, was also named. Lawyers for Mr. Durgarian, Mr. Hogan, Mr. Crain and Ms. Papa did not immediately return calls seeking comment. John A. Sten, a lawyer at Greenberg Traurig in Boston who represents Ms. Childs, declined to comment. Mr. McCracken plans to fight the S.E.C.'s suit and "maintains that he didn't do anything wrong," according to his lawyer, Gary S. Matsko of Davis, Malm & D'Agostine in Boston. Putnam dismissed Ms. Papa and Mr. Hogan in March 2004. It retroactively converted Mr. McCracken's 2002 resignation to "termination for cause," the S.E.C. said. A spokesman for Cardinal Health could not be reached for comment. The company is no longer a Putnam client.
|
PUTNAM INVESTMENTS;SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION;FRAUDS AND SWINDLING
|
ny0292603
|
[
"business"
] |
2016/06/20
|
Two Abu Dhabi Banks Confirm Discussions on a Merger
|
Shares in National Bank of Abu Dhabi and First Gulf Bank soared on Sunday after they confirmed discussions of a possible merger. A combination would create one of the largest banks in the Middle East and Africa. Both banks have close links to the Abu Dhabi government, which has been cutting costs and restructuring its assets to increase efficiency as low oil prices take a toll on its revenues. Analysts said a merger could start a wave of consolidation in the United Arab Emirates banking sector, which is crowded with more than 50 banks and squeezed by lower government spending and tougher global capital rules. In a statement on Sunday, the banks, Abu Dhabi’s largest and third-largest lenders by assets, said each had formed a working group to “review the commercial potential along with any legal and structural aspects of a merger or combination.” The groups would provide recommendations to their respective boards. Local investors welcomed the idea of an Abu Dhabi mega-bank, pushing shares of the National Bank of Abu Dhabi up by their 15 percent daily limit on Sunday while shares in First Gulf Bank rose 11.5 percent. Shares in other Abu Dhabi banks climbed on speculation that they might eventually be involved in mergers. The National Bank of Abu Dhabi is 70 percent owned by the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, and First Gulf Bank is controlled by members of the emirate’s royal family. A larger bank would help Abu Dhabi’s aspiration to become a major financial center. The emirate is starting a financial free zone, Abu Dhabi Global Market, to attract foreign investment. A merger would create a bank with assets worth around 627 billion dirhams ($171 billion), according to figures for the first quarter of 2016. That would exceed the first-quarter assets of the region’s current largest bank by assets, Qatar National Bank, which had 550 billion riyals ($150 billion) at the end of the first quarter. Qatar National Bank, however, completed its acquisition of Finansbank of Turkey last week, which could keep it ahead.
|
National Bank of Abu Dhabi;First Gulf Bank;Mergers and Acquisitions;Banking and Finance
|
ny0147444
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2008/07/06
|
McCain Battles a Nemesis, the Teleprompter
|
LAS VEGAS —Senator John McCain was performing relatively smoothly as he unveiled his energy plan. He managed to limit the mechanical hand chops and weirdly timed smiles that can often punctuate his speeches. He delivered his lines with an ease that suggested a momentary peace with his longtime nemesis, the teleprompter. (He relied on a belt-and-suspenders approach, with text scrolling down screens to his left and right, and on a big TV set in front of him.) But when Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, came to the intended sound bite of his speech — the part about reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil — he hit a slick. “I have set before the American people an energy plan, the Lex-eegton Project,” Mr. McCain said, drawing a quick breath and correcting himself. “The Lex-ing-ton Proj-ect,” he said slowly. “The Lexington Project,” he repeated. “Remember that name.” In a town meeting in Cincinnati the next day, Mr. McCain would again slip up on the name of the Massachusetts town, where, he noted, “Americans asserted their independence once before.” He called it “the Lexiggdon Project” and twice tried to fix his error before flipping the name (“Project Lexington”) in subsequent references. Mr. McCain’s battle of Lexington is part of a struggle he is engaged in every day. A politician who has thrived in the give-and-take settings of campaign buses, late-night TV couches and town meetings, he now is trying to meet the more formal speaking demands of a general election campaign. By his own admission, Mr. McCain is not a great orator. He is ill-suited to lecterns, which often dwarf his small stature, and he tends to sound as if he is reading his lines, not speaking them. His shortcomings have been accentuated in a two-man race, particularly because the other man — Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee — can often dazzle on stage. Mr. McCain and his advisers know that Mr. Obama’s ability to excite huge crowds will make for an inevitable podium mismatch for the older, softer-spoken Republican. “We’re going up against a guy who is off the charts,” said Mark Salter, Mr. McCain’s longtime Senate chief of staff and campaign adviser. To better compete, Mr. McCain is undergoing a subtle but marked transition as a political performer, said aides and people who have watched him. As part of a staff shakeup that was announced Tuesday, he brought in a new adviser — Greg Jenkins, a former White House official and Fox News producer — who will oversee the producing and staging of Mr. McCain’s events. Mr. Jenkins is considered an expert at political stagecraft, oversaw many of President Bush’s appearances and served as executive director of the 2004 inaugural committee. Mr. McCain is working closely with aides like Brett O’Donnell, a former debate consultant for Mr. Bush, to improve his speech and performance. He is working to limit his verbal tangents and nonverbal tics. He is speaking less out of the sides of his mouth, which can produce a wiseguy twang reminiscent of the Penguin from the Batman stories, and he is relying less on his favorite semantic crutch — the phrase “my friends” — which he used repeatedly in his campaign appearances. He also appears to be trying to exercise restraint, advisers and campaign observers say, when speaking off the cuff, wisecracking in town meetings and criticizing his opponent. In recent weeks, for example, Mr. McCain seems to have reined in the sarcasm he has directed at Mr. Obama. (In May, for example, he said of his opponent, “With his very, very great lack of experience and knowledge of the issues, he’s been very successful.”) Alan Schroeder, a journalism professor at Northeastern University, said, “There’s a danger of sarcasm becoming nastiness, and McCain seems to be conscious of that line.” Some McCain loyalists say he needs to be left alone and not burdened by his staff’s calculations about how he should be acting or what he should saying. “I think the depressingly self-absorbed McCain campaign machine needs to get out of the way,” said Mike Murphy, a longtime friend and media adviser who has no role in the current operation but who still talks to Mr. McCain every few days. “They need to just let McCain be McCain.” The more careful McCain, said by some to be overly scripted, has received some withering critiques. “His rhetorical style can best be described as ‘tired mayonnaise,’ ” the comedian Stephen Colbert declared on “The Colbert Report” before inviting viewers to enter the “Make McCain Exciting Challenge.” Peter Spaulding, the chairman of Mr. McCain’s campaign in New Hampshire, said he recently saw a McCain speech on television that was “just atrocious.” Dan Schnur, Mr. McCain’s communications chief during his 2000 presidential campaign, said, “Besides his convention speech, the only time I would even put him behind a podium at all between now and the end of the campaign is when he’s announcing a policy position.” Mr. McCain’s advisers, who bristle at the idea that they are trying to transform the candidate, say that his lack of smoothness merely reinforces his reputation for authenticity. “Voters are looking for credibility and are wary of polish,” said Mark McKinnon, a former consultant to Mr. McCain’s campaign. “At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter which candidate can more deftly read a teleprompter.” Indeed, Mr. McCain and his advisers seem to be trying to present him as a kind of anti-Obama whose weaknesses as a political performer underscore his accessibility to regular voters. “John doesn’t ever want to be something that he is not,” Mr. Salter said, including trying to pass himself off as a larger-than-life figure on stage. “There’s nothing in there about him that wants to be rarefied.” Mr. McCain and his surrogates appear to be taking a page from the primary campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, which made a point of praising Mr. Obama’s speaking skills both to erase any expectation that she could match them and to imply that Mr. Obama was more of a performer than a leader. Nicolle Wallace, Mr. McCain’s new senior adviser, said the campaign would focus on having the candidate interact face to face with voters, “not from a center stage in the middle of a stadium.” In an interview on his campaign plane, Mr. McCain said “my strongest environment is clearly the impromptu.” He added, “I don’t mean that in a way that denigrates Senator’s Obama’s speechmaking skills.” He shrugged when asked whether he is improving as a speaker. “It’s fine, it’s fine,” he said. “It’s coming along.” “I will continue to make mistakes,” he added. He said he was trying to be “extra vigilant” about not giving unnecessary offense, knowing that the wisecracking humor that might charm cynical reporters might not do the same for earnest voters. He sheepishly volunteered that he received complaints after a recent Newsweek profile of his wife, Cindy, said that he sometimes referred to her alma mater, the University of Southern California, as the University of Spoiled Children. Mr. Salter bemoans the current environment, in which, he said, “the press creates the expectation that you better not stumble on a word, or tell a joke that Mr. Rogers wouldn’t tell, or you’re going to be in trouble.” There are any number of Web videos of Mr. McCain to prove the point. They include the moment he playfully called a young man a “jerk” at a town-hall-style meeting in New Hampshire last year after he asked Mr. McCain if his age made him a candidate for Alzheimer’s disease in the White House (Mr. McCain typically uses jerk as a term of affection), or when he suggested to Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” that he brought him a special gift from Iraq — an improvised explosive device. Small misstatements become instant YouTube fodder — as when Mr. McCain vowed to “veto every single beer” that included lawmakers’ pet spending projects (he meant “bill”) or when he said the government should have been able to deliver “bottled hot water” to dehydrated babies in New Orleans. (It is fortunate for Mr. McCain that there was no YouTube in the 1980s when he jokingly referred to the retirement community Leisure World as “Seizure World.”) Mr. McCain speaks often about his love of the “give and take,” the “more informal settings where I think I’m at my best.” “It’s not an ego thing,” he said, “just where I think I’m most effective.” When asked if it would be possible to run “the town meeting campaign” that he credited with providing him a decisive victory in New Hampshire, where he held 102 such events, Mr. McCain said, “Absolutely.” The ease with which he presided over such a gathering in Cincinnati on June 26 was strikingly different from the difficulties he had with his speech in Las Vegas the day before. “I believe that town-hall meetings are the essence of the process,” Mr. McCain said to an audience at Xavier University, gripping his microphone with two hands. He talked about why it is important to engage with people across the political spectrum: “conservatives and liberals and libertarians and vegetarians ,” he said. A downside to such meetings is that they can become forums for people to ask about anything, including parochial concerns. One student, for example, asked Mr. McCain what he would do to ensure that commercial airlines continued to operate out of the Cincinnati airport. Mr. McCain managed to steer his answer to energy, the theme of the week. “This is the reason for Project Lexington,” he responded.
|
Presidential Election of 2008;McCain John;Speeches and Statements;United States Politics and Government
|
ny0014584
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2013/11/22
|
Facing Russian Threat, Ukraine Halts Plans for Deals with E.U.
|
MOSCOW — Under threat of crippling trade sanctions by Russia, Ukraine announced Thursday that it had suspended its plans to sign far-reaching political and trade agreements with the European Union and said it would instead pursue new partnerships with a competing trade bloc of former Soviet states. The decision largely scuttles what had been the European Union’s most important foreign policy initiative: an ambitious effort to draw in former Soviet republics and lock them on a trajectory of changes based on Western political and economic sensibilities. The project, called the Eastern Partnership program, began more than four years ago. Ukraine’s decision not to sign the agreements at a major conference next week in Vilnius, Lithuania, is a victory for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. He had maneuvered forcefully to derail the plans, which he regarded as a serious threat, an economic version of the West’s effort to build military power by expanding NATO eastward. In September, similar pressure by Russia forced Armenia to abandon its talks with the Europeans. European leaders reacted with fury and regret, directed at Kiev and Moscow. “This is a disappointment not just for the E.U. but, we believe, for the people of Ukraine,” Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said in a statement. Calling the pact that Ukraine was walking away from “the most ambitious agreement the E.U. has ever offered to a partner country,” Ms. Ashton suggested the country would suffer financially. “It would have provided a unique opportunity to reverse the recent discouraging trend of decreasing foreign investment,” she said, “and would have given momentum” to negotiations for more financial aid from the International Monetary Fund. Ukraine faces a growing economic crisis, and it is widely expected to need a major aid package soon. Others were more pointed in blaming Russia. “Ukraine government suddenly bows deeply to the Kremlin,” the Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt, wrote on Twitter . “Politics of brutal pressure evidently works.” In Brussels, Stefan Fule, the European Commission’s senior official responsible for relations with neighboring countries, canceled a trip to Ukraine that he had announced just hours earlier, suggesting that officials saw little hope in reversing the decision. “Hard to overlook in reasoning for today’s decision impact of #Russia’s recent unjustified economic & trade measures,” he wrote on Twitter . Ukraine’s announcement came in the form of a decree issued by the cabinet of ministers ordering the government “to suspend” preparations for concluding the agreements with Europe and instead begin planning for new negotiations with the European Union and Russia. At virtually the same time, President Viktor F. Yanukovich, who was on a visit to Vienna, issued a statement saying, “Ukraine has been and will continue to pursue the path to European integration.” In a move emblematic of Ukraine’s often inscrutable politics, Mr. Yanukovich barely acknowledged the developments in Kiev and, responding to a reporter’s question about the pacts with Europe, said, “Of course, there are difficulties on the path.” Because Mr. Yanukovich was supposed to sign the accords in Vilnius, some officials seemed to hold out the faint possibility he might find a way to resurrect the agreements. Those hopes seemed to fade Thursday night as the reactions in Europe grew angrier, and Russia said it would gladly join in negotiations if the accords were postponed. The decree by the cabinet of ministers followed the Ukrainian Parliament’s overwhelming rejection of legislation that would have freed the country’s jailed former prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, and allowed her to seek treatment in Germany for back problems. Ms. Tymoshenko is a bitter political rival of Mr. Yanukovich’s. The West has long criticized the conviction of Ms. Tymoshenko on abuse of authority charges and her seven-year prison sentence, saying they were a politically motivated effort to sideline her. Her release was widely viewed as a condition of signing the agreements, although the European Union never officially declared it to be a requirement. The Parliament, which is controlled by Mr. Yanukovich’s Party of Regions, defeated six different bills related to the treatment of prisoners that were intended to address Ms. Tymoshenko’s case. Opposition leaders in Parliament, including members of Ms. Tymoshenko’s Fatherland party and leaders of the nationalist Svoboda party, accused Mr. Yanukovich of torpedoing Ukraine’s chances for integration with Western Europe. “President Yanukovich is personally stopping Ukraine’s movement to Europe,” said Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, a former minister of economy and foreign minister, who is the leader of the Fatherland party in Parliament. Moldova, the poorest country in Europe, is expected to move forward with the agreements in Vilnius even though Russia has banned imports of Moldovan wine, one of the country’s most important exports, and has threatened other repercussions including an immigration crackdown on more than 100,000 Moldovans working in Russia. Georgia, which fought a brief war with Russia in 2008 and remains in conflict with Russia over the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, is also planning to move forward with the accords. At his inauguration on Sunday, the country’s new president, Giorgi Margvelashvili, said Georgia hoped to join the European Union and NATO. Ukraine’s domestic politics are deeply entwined with the country’s relationship with Russia, and Mr. Yanukovich is widely viewed as calculating the implications of his decisions for his plans to seek re-election in 2015. Mr. Yanukovich’s political base is in the largely Russian-speaking southern and eastern sections of the country, which generally favor closer relations with Russia. Younger voters, and those in the central and western sections of the country, are more likely to favor integration with Europe; he would need their support to win a second term. At the same time, Ukraine is facing severe economic problems and will probably need a large infusion of credit. Those problems were certain to worsen if Russia followed through with threats of wide-ranging trade sanctions as retaliation for signing the deals with Europe. It was unclear if the Kremlin had given Mr. Yanukovich any assurances of financial assistance. It seemed probable that Ukraine would face difficulties obtaining additional help from the International Monetary Fund after backing out of the agreements with Europe. On Thursday, several hundred protesters gathered in Independence Square in Kiev. Carrying European flags, they chanted, “Ukraine is Europe!” Linas Linkevicius, the foreign minister of Lithuania, which currently holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, said that if Ukraine passed up the chance of signing a deal at the conference next week in Vilnius, it would have very little chance of doing so in the future. “The probability is likely close to zero,” he said.
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Ukraine;EU;Yulia V Tymoshenko;Russia;International trade
|
ny0244575
|
[
"world",
"africa"
] |
2011/04/02
|
Gbagbo’s Rule in Ivory Coast Said to Be Near Its End
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DAKAR, Senegal — Reeling from mass defections among his soldiers and security forces, Ivory Coast ’s strongman, Laurent Gbagbo , deployed a dwindling but determined band of loyalists on Friday to defend his residence, the state television station and the presidential palace in an effort to hold on to power. Gunfire, explosions and the sound of heavy weapons could be heard throughout the day in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s largest city and economic capital, as forces supporting Mr. Gbagbo’s rival, Alassane Ouattara, who won the presidential election last year , stormed the city after a four-day lightning-fast advance during which most of Ivory Coast fell into their hands . The state television station , which had been a loudspeaker for Mr. Gbagbo’s defiant refusals to step down since he lost the election to Mr. Ouattara, changed hands amid heavy fighting, and residents throughout the sprawling port city, once a prosperous metropolis, stayed inside their homes. Diplomats suggested that Mr. Gbagbo’s struggle to stay in power — despite wide international condemnation, sanctions and, most recently, the opposition’s advance — was near its end. “We are moving toward a rapid denouement,” said Choi Young-jin, the United Nations’ special representative in Ivory Coast , speaking from the group’s Abidjan headquarters, itself a target of Mr. Gbagbo’s forces. “When depends on his will to resist,” Mr. Choi said, adding: “The trend is irreversible. He has no choice but to step down. They can’t recover from this situation.” Mr. Gbagbo’s whereabouts were unknown on Friday night. But several spokesmen said he had not left the country and had no intention of giving up. Mr. Gbagbo had “the upper hand,” his adviser Alain Toussaint told the French television network France 24 . Mr. Gbagbo’s foreign minister, Alcide Djédjé, reached by phone, said hurriedly, “I’m in a meeting with the president,” before hanging up. Mr. Ouattara’s followers said they were not surprised that Mr. Gbagbo had not surrendered, despite what appeared to be the collapse of his forces throughout the country. “With him, the knife must be on his throat,” said Apollinaire Yapi, a spokesman for Mr. Ouattara. “He is more afraid of prison than of death.” Still, there were indications that Mr. Gbagbo’s hours in power were slipping away. In the last week, an estimated 50,000 of his fighters in the army and the police have defected, Mr. Choi said. Key officers, including generals, have quit. Even his army chief of staff abandoned his post, to seek refuge with South African diplomats. Despite encountering resistance around crucial buildings, officials in Mr. Ouattara’s government said Abidjan was under their control. But there was some confusion, with one adviser saying that Mr. Ouattara’s forces had entered the presidential residence and another denying it. “There are not real battles in the neighborhoods,” said Patrick Achi, an adviser to Mr. Ouattara. “There are no longer neighborhoods under the control of Gbagbo.” Mr. Ouattara has also begun issuing orders — closing the country’s borders and establishing a curfew — that until recently had been Mr. Gbagbo’s strict purview. The fighting had died down by Friday night, but residents still spoke of a terrifying day spent hunkered down as gunfire and exchanges of heavy weapons could be heard all around. One man, speaking from the Adjamé neighborhood, was repeatedly drowned out over the telephone by the sound of gunfire. “Everyone is very frightened; we are forced to stay inside and lie low,” the man said, asking that his name not be used for fear of reprisals. “There are many of them, and they are heavily armed,” he said, referring to members of a pro-Gbagbo youth militia who have been armed over the last several weeks. “And they don’t hesitate to open fire. We’ve been stuck in the house for three days.” Mr. Yapi, the Ouattara spokesman, said that fighting between Mr. Ouattara’s and Mr. Gbagbo’s forces had taken place around the presidential palace; the headquarters of the paramilitary gendarmerie, which has been held responsible for attacks on civilians ; and Mr. Gbagbo’s residence. “The fighting is sustained,” Mr. Yapi said, “with all sorts of weapons,” including mortars. He said it had gone on all the previous night. “Now the question is, where is he? If his residence is being defended, one can suppose he is inside it,” Mr. Yapi said. In Geneva, the United Nations human rights office urged Mr. Ouattara’s camp to restrain its forces after what the agency described as “unconfirmed reports of quite serious human rights violations.” It also said there had been sporadic reports of pro-Gbagbo troops killing civilians. “We are trying to highlight to the Ouattara forces that they should avoid revenge and human rights abuses,” Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the human rights office, said in a telephone interview from Geneva. In Abidjan, the trend seemed clear. “Gbagbo is no longer in control,” said a diplomat who lives near the presidential residence in the Cocody area, speaking as the gun battle raged. “He’s lost power. The only power he has is in his place of residence, and protected by the force we knew would be loyal.”
|
Ivory Coast;Gbagbo Laurent;Ouattara Alassane D;Defense and Military Forces;International Relations;Demonstrations Protests and Riots
|
ny0011725
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2013/02/25
|
U.S. Confronts Cyber-Cold War With China
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WASHINGTON — When the Obama administration circulated to the nation’s Internet providers last week a lengthy confidential list of computer addresses linked to a hacking group that has stolen terabytes of data from American corporations, it left out one crucial fact: that nearly every one of the digital addresses could be traced to the neighborhood in Shanghai that is headquarters to the Chinese military’s cybercommand. That deliberate omission underscored the heightened sensitivities inside the Obama administration over just how directly to confront China’s untested new leadership over the hacking issue, as the administration escalates demands that China halt the state-sponsored attacks that Beijing insists it is not mounting. The issue illustrates how different the worsening cyber-cold war between the world’s two largest economies is from the more familiar superpower conflicts of past decades — in some ways less dangerous, in others more complex and pernicious. Administration officials say they are now more willing than before to call out the Chinese directly — as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. did last week in announcing a new strategy to combat theft of intellectual property. But President Obama avoided mentioning China by name — or Russia or Iran, the other two countries the president worries most about — when he declared in his State of the Union address that “we know foreign countries and companies swipe our corporate secrets.” He added: “Now our enemies are also seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions and our air traffic control systems.” Defining “enemies” in this case is not always an easy task. China is not an outright foe of the United States, the way the Soviet Union once was; rather, China is both an economic competitor and a crucial supplier and customer. The two countries traded $425 billion in goods last year, and China remains, despite many diplomatic tensions, a critical financier of American debt. As Hillary Rodham Clinton put it to Australia’s prime minister in 2009 on her way to visit China for the first time as secretary of state, “How do you deal toughly with your banker?” In the case of the evidence that the People’s Liberation Army is probably the force behind “Comment Crew,” the biggest of roughly 20 hacking groups that American intelligence agencies follow, the answer is that the United States is being highly circumspect. Administration officials were perfectly happy to have Mandiant, a private security firm, issue the report tracing the cyberattacks to the door of China’s cybercommand; American officials said privately that they had no problems with Mandiant’s conclusions, but they did not want to say so on the record. Image A building that houses a Chinese military unit on the outskirts of Shanghai, believed to be the source of hacking attacks. Credit Carlos Barria/Reuters That explains why China went unmentioned as the location of the suspect servers in the warning to Internet providers. “We were told that directly embarrassing the Chinese would backfire,” one intelligence official said. “It would only make them more defensive, and more nationalistic.” That view is beginning to change, though. On the ABC News program “This Week” on Sunday, Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was asked whether he believed that the Chinese military and civilian government were behind the economic espionage. “Beyond a shadow of a doubt,” he replied. In the next few months, American officials say, there will be many private warnings delivered by Washington to Chinese leaders, including Xi Jinping, who will soon assume China’s presidency. Both Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, and Mrs. Clinton’s successor, John Kerry, have trips to China in the offing. Those private conversations are expected to make a case that the sheer size and sophistication of the attacks over the past few years threaten to erode support for China among the country’s biggest allies in Washington, the American business community. “America’s biggest global firms have been ballast in the relationship” with China, said Kurt M. Campbell, who recently resigned as assistant secretary of state for East Asia to start a consulting firm, the Asia Group, to manage the prickly commercial relationships. “And now they are the ones telling the Chinese that these pernicious attacks are undermining what has been built up over decades.” It is too early to tell whether that appeal to China’s self-interest is getting through. Similar arguments have been tried before, yet when one of China’s most senior military leaders visited the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon in May 2011, he said he didn’t know much about cyberweapons — and said the P.L.A. does not use them. In that regard, he sounded a bit like the Obama administration, which has never discussed America’s own cyberarsenal. Yet the P.LA.’s attacks are largely at commercial targets. It has an interest in trade secrets like aerospace designs and wind-energy product schematics: the army is deeply invested in Chinese industry and is always seeking a competitive advantage. And so far the attacks have been cost-free. American officials say that must change. But the prescriptions for what to do vary greatly — from calm negotiation to economic sanctions and talk of counterattacks led by the American military’s Cyber Command, the unit that was deeply involved in the American and Israeli cyberattacks on Iran’s nuclear enrichment plants. Video David E. Sanger talks with Kevin Mandia, an Internet security expert, about new research linking cyberattacks against American companies to China’s People’s Liberation Army. “The problem so far is that we have rhetoric and we have Cyber Command, and not much in between,” said Chris Johnson, a 20-year veteran of the C.I.A. team that analyzed the Chinese leadership. “That’s what makes this so difficult. It’s easy for the Chinese to deny it’s happening, to say it’s someone else, and no one wants the U.S. government launching counterattacks.” That marks another major difference from the dynamic of the American-Soviet nuclear rivalry. In cold war days, deterrence was straightforward: any attack would result in a devastating counterattack, at a human cost so horrific that neither side pulled the trigger, even during close calls like the Cuban missile crisis. But cyberattacks are another matter. The vast majority have taken the form of criminal theft, not destruction. It often takes weeks or months to pin down where an attack originated, because attacks are generally routed through computer servers elsewhere to obscure their source. A series of attacks on The New York Times that originated in China, for example, was mounted through the computer systems of unwitting American universities. That is why David Rothkopf, the author of books about the National Security Council, wrote last week that this was a “cool war,” not only because of the remote nature of the attacks but because “it can be conducted indefinitely — permanently, even — without triggering a shooting war. At least, that is the theory.” Administration officials like Robert Hormats, the under secretary of state for business and economic affairs, say the key to success in combating cyberattacks is to emphasize to the Chinese authorities that the attacks will harm their hopes for economic growth. “We have to make it clear,” Mr. Hormats said, “that the Chinese are not going to get what they desire,” which he said was “investment from the cream of our technology companies, unless they quickly get this problem under control.” But Mr. Rogers of the Intelligence Committee argues for a more confrontational approach, including “indicting bad actors” and denying visas to anyone believed to be involved in cyberattacks, as well as their families. The coming debate is over whether the government should get into the business of retaliation. Already, Washington is awash in conferences that talk about “escalation dominance” and “extended deterrence,” all terminology drawn from the cold war. Some of the talk is overheated, fueled by a growing cybersecurity industry and the development of offensive cyberweapons, even though the American government has never acknowledged using them, even in the Stuxnet attacks on Iran. But there is a serious, behind-the-scenes discussion about what kind of attack on American infrastructure — something the Chinese hacking groups have not seriously attempted — could provoke a president to order a counterattack.
|
Cyberwarfare;US Foreign Policy;China;Barack Obama;Hacker (computer security)
|
ny0104786
|
[
"business",
"global"
] |
2012/03/06
|
In China, Sobering Signs of Slower Growth
|
GUANGZHOU, China — The nights are a little darker now here in the main metropolis of southeastern China, at the center of one of the country’s largest export hubs. It is but one sign of the slightly dimmer economic outlook for China that Premier Wen Jiabao forecast on Monday, when he reduced the government’s minimum growth target for 2012 to what would be, if growth fell that far, the lowest rate in more than two decades. Construction sites across Guangzhou used to be floodlit, so that work could continue through the night on the forests of new residential and office towers reaching toward the stars. But now, during a nationwide real estate downturn, builders are not starting projects or scrambling to finish ones already under way, so there is little need for night-work illumination. The Chinese economy, after nearly three decades of rapid, almost uninterrupted growth, seems to be settling down to a still strong but less blistering pace. But some sectors are struggling, including exports and luxury residential real estate construction. Premier Wen said in his annual report to the National People’s Congress on Monday morning in Beijing that the government had scaled its economic growth target back to 7.5 percent this year, down from the 8 percent that Beijing has set as a minimum growth target in recent years. If growth does come in at only 7.5 percent, it will be the slowest pace in 22 years. As Mr. Wen delivered his lengthy report, broadcast nationally and watched on countless TV sets in diners and shops here in Guangzhou, the mood at construction sites and factory districts seemed more downbeat than usual. Shop clerks in a wholesale market complained about the scarcity of customers. At a factory gate, workers said that few jobs were available except at the minimum wage. And at an employment office, the jobless fretted that even if they found work, they would have little hope of buying apartments typically priced beyond their means. Su Weizhong and three other clerks late Monday morning stood at a desk with little to do at a plumbing supplies store in the wholesale market. “A year ago, there were people in every shop, looking and asking about the prices,” Mr. Su said. “Projects are finishing, but there are absolutely no new projects this year.” With China having been the world’s main growth engine in recent years, a slowdown is hardly welcome news for the global economy. Neither is the prospect of a restive population — a continual worry for Beijing, if it cannot meet the aspirations of a rising middle class. In some ways, though, the United States could actually benefit from slower Chinese growth, many economists believe. China’s appetite for commodities has helped push up prices for everything from oil to iron ore. But those price pressures could ease, as China shifts toward an emphasis on slower but more sustainable economic expansion. And while less rapid growth could dampen China’s demand for imports, that would have little impact on most American businesses. Exports to China represented just 0.6 percent of the United States’ economic output last year. At its peak, in 2007, China’s economy grew at an annual pace of 14.2 percent. As recently as 2010, it was 10.4 percent. Now, though, the government is trying to guide the economy toward a minimum average annual growth of 7 percent through 2015. Slower growth partly reflects a government attempt to shift the economy more toward personal consumption, with less emphasis on exports and investment in big domestic construction and infrastructure projects. But government officials have given a series of signals since mid-February that growth may be slowing more than they intended. The central bank on Feb. 18 gave permission to state-controlled commercial banks to lend a larger share of their assets. The next week the commerce ministry announced that it was drafting plans to increase tax rebates for exporters, as financial troubles have weakened demand in Europe, China’s largest export market. The commerce ministry also said it was looking for ways to reverse a slump in foreign investment this winter from Europe and the United States. Shortly after Mr. Wen spoke on Monday, dozens of would-be workers waiting for job interviews milled around outside the gates of the large Liteon Guangzhou electronics manufacturing complex. Standing behind them were clumps of employment agents who had brought the workers in buses and were hoping for commissions from Liteon for helping to find labor. Urban minimum wages are rising briskly, particularly here in Guangzhou and elsewhere in the industrial Pearl River Delta region of southeastern China. And they are supposed to keep rising 13 percent a year under Beijing’s five-year plan. But many of the job applicants and their friends from nearby factories said that they did not feel they were benefiting from the labor shortage. “It’s hard to find a good job; it’s easy to find just any job,” said Gao Qing, a 21-year-old who was hoping for a quality-inspection position. Many of the available jobs pay only the local minimum wage, around $200 a month before overtime, and many of the jobs are at small factories with questionable reputations for paying workers on time. And some of the smaller factories have reduced or eliminated traditional subsidies for workers’ food, housing and other benefits to offset the cost of higher minimum wages, Ms. Gao and other workers said. At a downtown Guangzhou employment office Monday afternoon, Ma Yaoguang, an unemployed security guard, said he worried how he would afford rent of $30 to $45 a month for a tiny room even if he could find a job. Echoing a worry for tens of millions of young Chinese, Mr. Ma added that, “I cannot even dream of owning an apartment.” Exorbitant real estate prices are a national preoccupation. A 1,000-square-foot apartment in central Guangzhou costs about the equivalent of $300,000 — nearly 50 times the starting annual salary of a new college graduate with a marketable skill like computer engineering, although graduates who do find career-track jobs typically start receiving regular raises. The government is trying to engineer a decline in real estate prices to improve affordability, without damaging investor confidence so much that prices tip into a multiyear downward spiral of the sort seen in the United States. Down payments have been raised to 40 percent or more and many regulations discourage investors from buying more than one home. Government and private indexes of residential real estate prices in China suffer from many methodological flaws. But they now consistently show slightly weaker prices, along with a nose dive in transactions as buyers wait for further price declines. Two Guangzhou real estate brokers said that prices here had dropped by up to 20 percent over the last year. The nationwide slowdown in real estate cost thousands of agents their jobs and led to the closing of hundreds of brokerage offices. “There is no buying sentiment in the market right now,” said a broker here who gave only his last name, Leung, because he feared retaliation for publicly questioning government policies. The government has ordered a sharp increase in the construction of low-income housing. But in Guangzhou and elsewhere in China, there is considerable cynicism about whether political connections will be needed to buy such apartments, which are supposed to be priced at a little less than half the square-foot rate of commercial-market properties. Exports have also been weak this winter, a trend expected to continue in February statistics due out later this week, after adjusting for the Chinese New Year. Zhu Wei, the export manager at the High Hope Zhongding Corporation, a maker of festive lights and lanterns in Nanjing, said in a recent telephone interview that orders were down 30 percent from a year ago and still sliding, mainly because of the slack economy in Europe. Chinese business leaders complain that steeply rising wages and increasingly stringent labor and environmental regulations are driving up their costs and undermining their nation’s competitiveness, said Stanley Lau, the deputy chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Industries, a trade association whose members employ 10 million people in the Pearl River Delta region. “Minimum wage increases are too fast and too high, and we also worry about the new regulations being introduced — too many and too quickly,” he said.
|
China;Labor and Jobs;Economic Conditions and Trends;National People's Congress (China)
|
ny0126429
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2012/08/23
|
Limited Convention Coverage Will Leave Ann Romney Off Air
|
At 10:30 on Monday night, Ann Romney is scheduled to take the stage at the Republican National Convention, in Act 1 of her husband’s four-day introduction to the nation. But tens of millions of people will not be able to watch. CBS plans instead to show a rerun of “Hawaii Five-O,” its hit police series. Viewers of NBC will see a new episode of “Grimm,” about a homicide detective with the supernatural ability to sense evil. And ABC plans to show “Castle,” a series about a best-selling mystery novelist who helps solve crimes. The networks, which reap considerable advertising dollars even from summer reruns, have told the Romney campaign that they will broadcast an hour of convention coverage on the final three nights — but no more. Advisers to Mitt Romney , facing a blackout of the opening-night program they fastidiously scripted to soften perceptions of the candidate, are angry. “I don’t think it’s the decision that Bill Paley would have made,” said Russ Schriefer, a senior Romney adviser, referring to the executive who ran CBS during the days of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. The campaign is considering whether to move Mrs. Romney’s speech to another night, though it is proceeding for now with the Monday night plans. Four years ago, the conventions were filled with the promise of high drama not seen at a big party gathering in a generation — a possible fight over Hillary Rodham Clinton’s delegates, a speech by the country’s first major-party black presidential nominee in front of 85,000 people and the introduction of a vice-presidential nominee who electrified her party. By comparison, the events this year seem to lack the possibility of any electrifying moments. Add to that the overwhelming sense that the country is in a funk and that the presidential campaign cannot seem to rise above petty insults and blatant distortions, and there is a feeling at many of the news networks that Americans would rather be hearing about something — anything — else. In an interview last week, Brian Williams, the NBC News anchor, thought for a moment when asked if it was possible to recapture Americans’ interest in the presidential election. “I think if we could sprinkle in some Olympic events,” he deadpanned. “Floor vault is a personal favorite. Badminton, but it takes up a lot of floor space.” But, turning serious, he acknowledged that “people have had it up to here” with political news. “I’d love more coverage of the conventions,” he said. “I also live in the real world.” ABC, CBS and NBC are scaling back their televised coverage of both conventions from four years ago, when they went on the air live each night for an hour. Though there was lengthier coverage and huge ratings in 2008 — both candidates’ speeches drew nearly 40 million viewers, with John McCain’s getting slightly higher ratings — the overall trend for the networks has been to cut back and leave the gavel-to-gavel coverage to cable news. This year, the networks will broadcast three hours of live coverage for each convention, as they did in 2004. For the Republican convention, all three networks will broadcast an hour live Tuesday through Thursday. For the Democratic convention the next week, ABC and CBS will broadcast an hour Tuesday through Thursday. NBC will skip Wednesday night for an N.F.L. game and devote two hours of coverage on Thursday, when President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. are scheduled to speak. Political coverage this year has not always generated large audiences. In fact, it can drive viewers away, as ABC learned when it looked at the minute-by-minute ratings of “Good Morning America” and saw that people sometimes tuned out when political news was shown. More than ever, networks are also betting that their politically minded viewers will go to the Web to get their news. “You know, we’re going to be live-streaming, so there is available live coverage minute by minute for everybody in this country,” said Diane Sawyer, the ABC anchor, who will be on some of the network’s online broadcasts. “When you look back historically at the kind of coverage you were saturated in before, if you add in cable and online streaming and tweeting and blogging, pound for pound do we have less?” She ventured no. According to Nielsen Media Research, four years ago 99 percent of video was consumed through the television set. This year, that number has fallen to 94 percent, with 3 percent being consumed on computers and 3 percent on mobile devices. Not huge numbers, said Pat McDonough, a senior vice president at Nielsen, but figures that nonetheless show that people are not less interested in the news, but are just consuming it differently. “If you’re really interested in something, you’re probably accessing it somewhere else,” she said. For its part, the Romney campaign is looking for other ways to amplify its message beyond the network broadcasts. Mr. Romney will sit for two extended television interviews, one with Scott Pelley of CBS News, which is set to be shown in segments during the convention, and one with Chris Wallace of Fox News. Mr. Wallace’s interview, for which he was given rare access to Mr. Romney at his lakefront estate in New Hampshire, will be shown on Sunday. Mr. Pelley said that during its broadcast each night, CBS plans to show its own news stories when the convention programming gets too predictable. “We also want to cut away when it’s just the scripted, sort of — and I’m searching for a better word than propaganda — but cut away when the convention isn’t providing much information to the audience,” he said. Mr. Wallace said he was not anticipating anything like the electricity of the 2008 conventions. “Will Obama’s speech be the same? Probably not,” he said. “And I agree that as interesting a figure and as consequential a figure as Paul Ryan is, it won’t be another Palin moment.” Mr. Wallace recalled how conventions are not what they used to be. “My first convention was in 1964,” he said. “I was Walter Cronkite’s gofer — go for coffee, go for pencils. Those were the days of gavel-to-gavel coverage. Real business got done.”
|
Presidential Election of 2012;Television;Republican National Convention;Romney Ann;Romney Mitt
|
ny0251093
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2011/02/01
|
Making Money Off Snow in New York Area
|
The line for Louis Migliore between moonlighter and entrepreneur this winter measures nearly five feet deep. After checking the long-range weather forecast just before the start of winter, Mr. Migliore, a 22-year-old part-time college student and Zamboni driver, bought a used excavation truck and had a plow mounted to it. His intent was to start a modest snow-plowing business with his best friend to clear driveways in Yonkers. But the Dec. 26 blizzard quickly trampled the bounds of modesty, turning Mr. Migliore and his partner into extraordinarily busy men. “Oh, it’s been a great year so far, but it’s been a lot of work,” Mr. Migliore said last week on break from his Zamboni job at the Edward J. Murray Memorial Skating Center in Yonkers. With a list that has grown to nine clients, he has had few breaks between storms. “The past one, I was out for 15 hours a day,” he said. “The one before, 20 hours.” Mr. Migliore joins a select group of people who, rather than curse the cold and bemoan the slushy sidewalks, look forward to counting their windfall when they finally have the time: summer landscapers have turned into snow-plowers overnight; sellers of cross-country skis and plastic toboggans say sales have multiplied; hot chocolate makers have enticed more customers out of the cold. The conditions in Central Park were ripe for a rainbow-colored mob scene of saucers and sleds in January, with a total of 36 inches falling to break an 84-year record. Just a few blocks away, Gracious Home on Third Avenue and 71st Street had sold 315 plastic saucers at $7.99 each by Saturday afternoon, compared with 35 last January, and 327 toboggans at $14.99 each compared with 30 last January. The managers at Panda Sport in Bay Ridge, the oldest ski shop in Brooklyn, have seen a similar bounce. “We’ve been selling more cross-country skis than usual,” said Duke Johnson, a longtime buyer at the store. He said he sold 20 to 25 cross-country sets (boots, poles, skis) for $299 each this January. He sold none last February, even though the biggest snowfall of the season, about 20 inches, was late in the month. Mr. Johnson said customers were eager to explore the parks along the Narrows and even the golf course in Bay Ridge. “People are not going to drive miles up north to a touring center when they have the conditions right here and now,” he said. Jacques Torres, a chocolatier who has three shops in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn, estimated that he sold 10 percent to 15 percent more cups of hot chocolate this January compared with last January. “And that’s directly in relation to the snowstorms,” he said Sunday. Any colder than 20 degrees, however, he said, and people tend to stay home. The snow mounds prevent street parking and deter pedestrians, too. Mr. Migliore is used to clearing and dumping snow and ice in tight quarters, having driven a Zamboni for four years after his high school hockey days. “It’s pretty similar,” he said, “in that there’s patterns you have to follow.” Although Mr. Migliore said he and his partner, Anthony Barberan, a childhood friend, had grossed about $30,000, after expenses like sand and calcium (better for the asphalt than salt, he said), plus buying and maintaining the truck and plow, “we probably haven’t made that much.” Yet. Noting the forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday , he said gleefully, “There’s another storm coming.” For Dr. Steven Breines, a chiropractor in Staten Island, the winter has been a “good-news, bad-news situation.” “There’s been more snow-related complaints because we’ve had so many days of snow,” Dr. Breines said. “But there are people who physically can’t get out of the house. To tell you the truth, most of my colleagues say this has been a difficult year.” Jenaro Reino, who lives in Bedford, N.Y., cannot even get out to nearby Mount Kisco to see his chiropractor for a back adjustment; he is too busy plowing driveways for his customers and friends. “Everybody wants to be No. 1, the first one of the night, the first of the morning,” Mr. Reino said. “That’s just impossible.” He came to the United States from Galicia, Spain, and for 19 years his landscaping business has served many of the same clients he plows for. His three trucks are operating overtime for his 54 customers. He charges an average of $50 per driveway, which earns him about $3,000 per snowstorm. “It’s been a good winter so far,” he said. “I got no complaints.” But his wife, Maria, does. “It’s beautiful to make the money, but my wife calls it ‘bloody money,’ ” Mr. Reino said with a laugh. The phone rings constantly, and he is never home. “I have to wake up at 1 o’clock in the morning, and you have to be at every single driveway all at the same time.” “It’s enjoyable, but it’s hard,” he said, adding, “It’s not that I am jumping up and down with how happy I am.” Even if he wanted to, his back would not allow it.
|
Snow and Snowstorms;New York City
|
ny0060161
|
[
"us"
] |
2014/08/08
|
In Texas Panhandle, a Growing Need for a Shallow Lake’s Water
|
Water systems in the Texas Panhandle and South Plains started last week to draw from a once-empty lake that is now just over 4 percent full , an indication of how strapped the region is for drinking water. The Canadian River Municipal Water Authority, which supplies about half a million people in Lubbock, Amarillo and surrounding towns, began pumping recently from Lake Meredith for the first time since the summer of 2011. Unusually heavy rains in the last month have put close to 2.8 billion gallons of water back into the lake, still a relatively small amount given the area’s total usage. Last year, the water authority pumped more than six times that amount from the Ogallala Aquifer, which is losing more water than it is gaining. Only a little over 10 years ago, Lake Meredith was the area’s only water source. “We consider the Ogallala nonrenewable, and we consider the lake renewable,” Kent Satterwhite, the authority’s general manager, said. “We have a lot of groundwater, but it is a finite source, and it doesn’t make any sense to use it when there’s lake water available.” Not everyone is returning to Lake Meredith as a resource; a few of the smaller towns have said they would not use the water, in part because the shallowness of the lake means more sediment and a higher level of dissolved solids like salts. While the sediments do not impact human health, they can affect the water’s taste and could trigger additional treatment costs. The authority plans to blend the lake water with Ogallala water, which is much cleaner, so quality should not be an issue, officials say. “Dirty water’s easier to treat,” said Aubrey Spear, director of water resources for Lubbock. “It sounds illogical to the public sometimes, but dirty water, it’s easier to get all of the contaminants and so forth to cluster up and fall out in sedimentation.” Still, given that nearly all the reservoirs in the historically dry western portion of Texas — most of which were built after a 1950s drought — are dangerously low, it is unlikely that Lake Meredith will be any more of a sustainable supply than the Ogallala. The amount of water that planners will be able to draw from Meredith “is going down every year,” said Bill Mullican, a former water supply planner for Texas and the Lubbock area. With both surface water and groundwater in peril, Mr. Mullican said, the real water supply plan for the region will be a shift from irrigated agriculture to dryland farming, which relies solely on rainfall. But he also noted that “if you’d have been dryland farming for the last few years, you’d be in bad shape, because there was no rain.” That means cities like Lubbock, with a growing university population, will likely have enough water resources to continue expanding, but much of the rest of the region — still a major producer of cotton and corn — may go in a very different direction.
|
Water;Lake Meredith;Aquifer;Ogallala Aquifer;Irrigation;Agriculture;Texas;Lubbock TX;Amarillo
|
ny0098199
|
[
"world",
"africa"
] |
2015/06/10
|
SOCO Oil Company Paid Large Sums to Officer in Congo, Activists Say
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NAIROBI, Kenya — When a British oil company began prospecting for oil in Africa’s oldest national park , drawing worldwide concern and inspiring an Oscar-nominated documentary last year, the company was adamant in denying any wrongdoing. Though soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo may have engaged in a campaign of intimidation and coercion against nearby residents who are opposed to drilling in the park, the company said it could not be held responsible for their actions. “We can’t tell the army to go and kiss off,” Roger Cagle, the deputy chief executive director of the oil company, SOCO International, told The Telegraph newspaper in Britain. He said that the soldiers had been assigned by the Congolese government to keep the company safe. But according to documents obtained by Global Witness , an advocacy group, SOCO appears to have paid tens of thousands of dollars to a Congolese Army officer who has been accused of leading a brutal campaign against those objecting to the company’s oil exploration in the nature reserve, Virunga National Park . Over the course of two weeks during the spring of 2014, according to the documents, the officer, Maj. Burimba Feruzi, received at least $42,250 in payments from a local bank account associated with SOCO. That is the equivalent of 30 years of salary for the army officer, according to Global Witness. Copies of the checks made out to Major Feruzi, who is no longer with the army, list the account’s name as “SOCO EXPL ET PROD BLOC V / GOMA,” an apparent reference to Goma, the city just south of the park in Congo. Global Witness, which advocates transparency in mining, logging and energy, said it had obtained four separate checks made out to Major Feruzi totalling $15,600. The group said it had also obtained a copy of Mr. Feruzi’s handwritten and signed receipt for another $26,650, dated April 30, 2014. “These documents show that despite SOCO’s repeated denials, the company has paid tens of thousands of dollars to an army officer accused of bribing and intimidating those trying to stop oil exploration in one of Africa’s natural treasures,” said Nathaniel Dyer, head of the Congo team at Global Witness. “These payments may only be the tip of the iceberg.” The group called for the British and American authorities to investigate the company’s activities in eastern Congo. In a statement, the company said that it had never denied paying for the work of the Congolese Army in “providing a security escort.” “We strongly refute any suggestion that this funding was in any way improper or connected with alleged acts of intimidation or violence,” the company said, noting that the payments were being investigated internally. “The soldiers assigned to SOCO’s security escort were always under the full command and control of the D.R.C. army,” the company said. Image Global Witness says it has obtained documents proving that a British oil company, SOCO International, paid tens of thousands of dollars to a Congolese soldier accused of bribery and intimidation. The battle over the fate of Virunga offers a chilling look at how the tug of war between the forces of economic development and environmental preservation can turn deadly. Villagers living near the park who opposed SOCO’s operations have been beaten by government soldiers. Park rangers have come under repeated threat, one even being kidnapped after opposing the construction of a cellphone tower in the park. The park’s director, a Belgian prince, was shot and wounded shortly after delivering a secret report to state prosecutors on the company’s activities. A Human Rights Watch researcher, Ida Sawyer, was quoted as saying in The Telegraph last year that two fishermen who opposed SOCO’s presence were killed by soldiers connected to the company’s security. In the Oscar-nominated documentary, simply called “ Virunga ,” Major Feruzi was captured on undercover surveillance video offering a $3,000 bribe to a senior park ranger. The former officer could not be reached for comment. Stretching across over 3,000 square miles, Virunga became the first national park in Africa in 1925. Unlike national parks in the United States, Virunga is closed to all human activity not associated with scientific study. In 1979, the park was designated a Unesco World Heritage Site. There are vast savannahs, glaciers and two active volcanoes in the park, home to one of the few remaining enclaves of endangered mountain gorillas. Virunga’s Lake Edward is also believed to contain oil beneath its waters. In recent years, new technology has made it possible to tap into those resources. In 2010, SOCO was granted permission by the Congolese government to explore a block of land, part of which included Lake Edward inside the park. Congo’s prime minister, Augustin Matata Ponyo, told the BBC in March that despite the controversy, the country would not simply forsake a possible economic boon. “The necessity is to find a middle ground to see how to preserve nature but also to gain profit from resources so that the communities living there can see their living conditions get better,” Mr. Ponyo said. Unesco’s World Heritage Committee is scheduled hold its annual meeting at the end of the month and will seek to make clear what it considers the dangers of oil extraction. “It is recommended that the committee reiterate its established position that oil exploration or exploitation is incompatible with World Heritage status, which is supported by the commitments made by industry leaders such as Shell and Total not to undertake such activities within World Heritage properties,” according to a working document on the Unesco website. SOCO has said it is no longer active in the park, having completed an initial survey. The company has said it will abide by all decisions of the Congolese government and Unesco regarding the park. But Joanna Natasegara, the producer of Virunga, said that the newly released documents showed that there were still serious questions about SOCO’s behavior. And, she said, the battle over one of the world’s great natural wonders continues. “In terms of the danger to the rangers and the activists,” she said, “the situation in Virunga is as delicate as it ever was.”
|
Global Witness;SOCO International;Democratic Republic of the Congo;Virunga National Park Democratic Republic of Congo;Oil and Gasoline;Bribery and Kickbacks;Parks;Burimba Feruzi
|
ny0122104
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2012/09/11
|
In Lowville, N.Y., Lessons on Sustainable Living
|
LOWVILLE, N.Y. — “Has anyone here ever had canned beef?” Around the room, heads nodded, faces lighted up. Catherine Moore smiled. “Canned beef is wonderful,” she said. “It’s just the best.” But before she led the dozen or so hunters and cooks to the kitchen where pint jars were waiting, Ms. Moore, a dietitian, had some warnings: do not use mayonnaise jars; leave an inch for expansion; do not cheat on processing time. She flashed slides to drive home her point: a mathematical equation of multiplying botulism cells; an Oregon family who lost 12 people to botulism around 1924. “They think it was the green beans,” Ms. Moore said. Ms. Moore’s preservation class was one of dozens offered over the weekend at the Cornell University Cooperative Extension of Lewis County’s first Homesteading Fair, an event that drew 700 people to this small rural village about an hour north of Utica. The fair is among hundreds of similar events across the country this month, including goat-keeping classes in Cherry Log, Ga., and cheese-making workshops in Santa Rosa, Calif., celebrating International Homesteading Education Month , a project of Mother Earth News and Grit magazine. Whether driven by economic or environmental concerns, interest in sustainable living — canning food, using solar power to live off the grid, gathering honey from a backyard beehive — is booming. Michele Ledoux, executive director of the Lewis County extension, said the fair was meant to support landowners who are wondering how to start small farms, raise animals and learn the preservation skills of a previous generation. “So many people now are into learning back-to-land skills,” Ms. Ledoux said. “Maple sugaring is huge, canning is huge, what’s old is new. Here, we tried to offer a broad perspective of workshops to really educate so people will know what they’re getting into.” While speakers offered hands-on lessons — a horticulturalist layered lettuce and coffee into compost; a woman worked a spinning wheel for passers-by — the workshops focused less on the romantic realities of owning animals and working the land and more on advice: chain-saw safety, deworming goats and what to do when chickens get lice. By midday Saturday, Alexis Kadleck, 32, from Carthage, had heard about the basics of keeping sheep: the dangers of parasites, the need for fresh air and how to coax affection from the aloof animals (hand feeding them pretzels should do the trick). “We moved here from Texas to seek out a cleaner, more sustainable lifestyle,” Ms. Kadleck said. She and her husband, an aircraft mechanic at Fort Drum, are raising two daughters under the age of 3 with the goal of “living as close to the earth as possible.” She laughed. “If I could grow wheat I would,” she said. The fair, held in picture-perfect barns at the Maple Ridge Center, drew visitors from northwestern New York, as well as Connecticut, Massachusetts and even Long Island. Heidi and Andy DiGiovanni, frustrated by what they described as a lack of local offerings, drove six hours from Glen Cove, on Long Island, to attend. “We’re finding it harder and harder to try and sustain ourselves naturally,” Ms. DiGiovanni, 54, said. A mother of three, she, like many other visitors, bemoaned the high costs of fresh produce and heating bills. “I’m looking for different ideas that can work, that can raise the quality of life on Long Island.” More than 50 people packed back-to-back lectures on energy efficiency and simple living by James Juczak, a self-described King of Scrounge from Adams Center, in nearby Jefferson County, who built his house — round and topped with an earthen roof — from scavenged and castoff materials: a masonry stove made from scrap cement, interior beams from a bowling alley. Mr. Juczak spoke of his used $700 Mercedes, powered by vegetable oil, and the compost toilets he built in his guesthouse. He counseled the crowd to be aware of treasures too easily thrown away and then revealed a photo of his family’s bicycle collection, most of which had been found in trash containers, left there for the crime of having flat tires. Mr. Juczak shook his head. “I don’t know who these people are,” he said, “but I am really glad they exist.”
|
Sustainable Living;Agriculture and Farming;Canning and Preserving;Lowville (NY);Colleges and Universities;Cornell University
|
ny0269012
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2016/04/29
|
Student Journalists Get Obama Access That Professionals Might Envy
|
WASHINGTON — For most journalists who cover the White House regularly, the chance to question President Obama comes rarely, and the opportunity for a one-on-one interview with him almost never. Not so for a group of college journalists visiting the White House on Thursday, who were treated to a surprise presidential news conference in the White House briefing room. One of them even scored a tentative date to interview Mr. Obama on his campus next month. “I heard there were some hotshot journalists here,” Mr. Obama told the students, striding to the podium to interrupt a scheduled question-and-answer session by his press secretary, Josh Earnest. “Josh was speaking for me, and I wanted to make sure he was getting it right.” The president proceeded, over the next 40 minutes, to take a wide range of questions from the students, who were attending the first White House College Reporter Day, on issues like immigration, the water crisis in Flint, Mich., Syrian refugees, civic engagement and his proudest achievements. In between, Mr. Obama managed to sneak in some fatherly advice — “just never admit that you’re nervous, just pretend like it’s routine,” he told one anxious questioner — and some teasing as he made pitches for an expanded student loan initiative and the confirmation of his Supreme Court nominee, Merrick B. Garland. “Hey-ay,” Mr. Obama said, playfully cocking his head at a young woman who prefaced her question with a “Hey.” She asked Mr. Obama whether he planned to take additional executive actions on immigration while the Supreme Court decides the fate of his program to allow millions of undocumented immigrants to live and work legally in the United States. “Our hands are a little bit tied” on major changes, Mr. Obama said, adding that a future president could undo his executive orders, and that he was “not optimistic” that Congress would come through with legislation before he left office. Facing a roomful of students with politely raised hands, Mr. Obama modified some of his standard lines for a younger audience. Asked about his proudest achievements as president, he cited the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which has resulted in health coverage for 20 million Americans, but also mentioned his family. “Mainly as the assistant to Michelle Obama, I’ve raised two daughters who are amazing, and I’m really, really proud of them,” Mr. Obama said, adding that doing so while also focusing on his job was “something that I work hard on.” Answering a student who said the president’s chances of reaching his goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees by the end of the year appeared “iffy,” Mr. Obama said, “We’re going to keep on pushing.” Dan Corey, editor in chief of The Daily Targum at Rutgers University, where Mr. Obama is scheduled to be the commencement speaker next month, seemed to catch the president off-guard when he asked point-blank for an interview when the president comes to his New Brunswick campus. “That’s a good use of your time right there,” Mr. Obama said. He added that he usually vets interview requests with his press advisers, but, “I am favorably disposed towards giving you a little bit of time.” A journalist who asked for a picture with him after the news conference was not as lucky; Mr. Obama said that if he obliged, “there will be a long line.” But it was a student who asked about how to restore Americans’ faith in democracy who provoked the most animated response from the president, a former community organizer who campaigned on “hope and change” and has recently lamented his inability to change politics for the better. After a long discourse on what is broken in politics — gerrymandered districts, a flood of undisclosed campaign contributions and negative advertisements — Mr. Obama cited the low turnout numbers in American elections, especially by young people. “You can’t just complain; you’ve got to vote,” Mr. Obama said. “Don’t let people tell you that what you do doesn’t matter. Don’t give away your power.” “You got me started,” the president added. “I went on a rant, didn’t I?”
|
US Politics;Barack Obama;Illegal Immigration;Obamacare,Affordable Care Act;News media,journalism
|
ny0210180
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2009/12/23
|
Rudolph Giuliani Endorses Rick Lazio for Governor
|
If this was goodbye, an air of the desultory clung to it, as a man once seen as destined for high office stood in the basement of a Midtown hotel and endorsed another politician for another office — governor — once in his sight. From president to governor to senator, the list of powerful offices that the man, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani , once dreamed of capturing is long, and his longing now seems likely to go unrequited. In the past month he has forsworn interest in running for governor and for United States senator. After he endorsed Rick Lazio for governor, even the honorific shouted by reporters at the press conference on Tuesday — Mr. Mayor! Mr. Mayor! — had an antiquated sound to it. Mr. Giuliani, bald and a touch jowly and thick around the collar at age 65, insisted plausibly enough that he was quite wealthy, very busy with his consulting firm, his speeches, his television appearances — and that he was happy. “My life is interesting,” he said, adding that familiar pop of his eyes for emphasis. “It’s not as if I’m looking for something interesting to do.” Seen as a marketing play, his logic is unimpeachable. “He’s got a trademarked name that can’t be tarnished any more,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a political consultant based in New York City. “His emotional connection from 9/11 will not fade.” And yet, political mortality unsettles, perhaps particularly for a man whose visceral ambitions and taste for power were as pronounced as Mr. Giuliani’s. As a teenager, one of his former girlfriends once told The Daily News, Mr. Giulani would stand before a mirror and pantomime his presidential swearing in, beginning with “I, Rudy Giuliani.” As a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, he broke up cartels and took on the Mob, smashed corrupt politicians and threw a shudder into the insider-trading precincts of Wall Street (even if federal judges questioned his judgments and overturned some verdicts). If he was caricatured as a Savonarola for the 1980s, one could argue that the times required a harsh taskmaster. Who better than an Italian-American Catholic prosecutor to grind the Mafia chieftains to dust? He took to the task of running for mayor with a fervor that seemed woven into his being. He tutored himself in the ways of a wounded city, enlisting academics and community leaders as tutors. His political style lacked elegance; he preferred the scathing to the subtle, the head butt to the rapier. Yet for a few years he held this liberal city spellbound, doubling down, successfully, on his fight against crime and notching victories over a sclerotic bureaucracy. He lopped the welfare rolls nearly in half. And yet his foibles were as operatic as his strengths. He could bend departments and politicians to his will, but he could not play diplomat. He hounded schools chancellors out of town and pulled at the scab of race relations to little obvious end. By his second mayoral term he seemed unaware that his inner circle, as true-believing a cadre of crusaders as he could hope for, had decayed. (Of his original retainers, only Dennison Young, his former chief counsel, stood with him in the basement of the hotel, the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers, on Tuesday). He came to be surrounded by men and women who owed their careers, profiles and fame to him. He eventually appointed one, Bernard B. Kerik, as his police commissioner, and later recommended him as chief of the federal Homeland Security Department. These judgments would haunt his presidential run in 2008. Mr. Kerik pleaded guilty to eight felony counts in November. In 2007, Mr. Giuliani ran a fabulously awkward presidential campaign. He entered a putative favorite, burned tens of millions of dollars and careered about without winning a delegate. In January 2008, an adviser boasted that the former mayor’s lead in polls was proof of his momentum. Weeks later, Mr. Giuliani was political roadkill. “He wanted to get rid of the scourge of organized crime so Italians could feel free, and his dream was to be the first Republican Catholic in the White House,” Mr. Sheinkopf said. “Batting .500 is not bad in public life.” That he always will find a good table at a restaurant or a seat in a television studio is assured. But the political executive suite now most likely lies beyond his grasp.
|
Giuliani Rudolph W;United States Politics and Government;Politics and Government
|
ny0122694
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2012/09/19
|
Pakistani Government Relents in Judicial Standoff Over Corruption Case
|
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — After months of legal battles, Pakistan’s government relented on Tuesday to judicial demands that it agree to write a letter to the authorities in Switzerland regarding corruption charges against President Asif Ali Zardari . The decision, announced in court by Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf, appeared to offer a potential way out of a bruising standoff with the Supreme Court that has threatened to upset Pakistan’s fragile democratic order. Mr. Ashraf said the law minister was in principle ready to draft a letter to the Swiss authorities that could theoretically revive corruption cases against Mr. Zardari in Switzerland dating back to the 1990s. After deliberations among fellow judges, Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, who led the five-member bench, gave Mr. Ashraf until Sept. 25 to make good on his promise. If he follows through, the letter would effectively mean that Pakistan would no longer refuse to participate in the Swiss cases. The move represented a reversal for Mr. Zardari’s government, which had previously rebuffed court orders to write the Swiss letter, as it has become known, citing presidential immunity from prosecution. But analysts cautioned that the controversy would be resolved only after both sides agreed to the wording of the letter — a potentially fraught process that could reopen divisions. Even if the letter is written, it does not necessarily mean that Mr. Zardari will face prosecution anytime soon. Swiss officials have given little indication of whether they intend to reopen the issue, which relates to at least $12 million in kickbacks. Swiss legal experts say that for a variety of reasons, including the recent expiration of a statute of limitation on the charges in Switzerland and Mr. Zardari’s presidential immunity, the chances of a new prosecution are slim, at least while Mr. Zardari remains in office. One Pakistani newspaper recently reported that the law minister, Farooq H. Naek, visited Switzerland, ostensibly with a view to exploring the implications for Mr. Zardari of acceding to the court’s demands. Tuesday’s court hearing proceeded in a conciliatory tone, contrasting with the tense, impatient mood of earlier hearings. For almost two years, the Supreme Court has ordered the government to write the letter in a continuing confrontation that culminated in the dismissal of the previous prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani , in June. The court, headed by Mr. Zardari’s rival, Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry , argued that nobody in Pakistan should be above the law. The government accused Justice Chaudhry of abusing judicial powers to engage in a political grudge match. The tenor of the courtroom tussle sharpened dramatically this year, alarming senior lawyers and politicians. In January, it even excited rumors of a possible military coup. But over the past month, both sides have adopted a more diplomatic approach. After the hearing on Tuesday, Justice Khosa joked that he hoped the prime minister’s court appearance would be as successful as his recent visit to China. Later, Mr. Ashraf said that he was seeking a resolution of the controversy that “upholds the honor and sanctity of the court but also the honor of the office of the president.” The developments surprised the local news media, which had widely predicted in Tuesday’s newspapers that the government would stick to its guns. At the very least, it has saved Mr. Ashraf from the threat of the contempt charges that led to his predecessor’s dismissal and bought his government more time to deal with the problem. On Tuesday, the court excused Mr. Ashraf from further appearances in court on the issue. Speaking to reporters outside the court, Qamar Zaman Kaira, the information minister, said Mr. Naek, the law minister, would draft the letter. “We do not want any confrontation between institutions. We do not want to fight with the court. We have tried to find a way to resolve the issue,” Mr. Kaira said. “The air of uncertainty will now end.” Political considerations most likely played a major role in the latest effort to end the crisis. As Mr. Zardari’s coalition government nears the end of its five-year term in March, it has become clear that, regardless of the corruption cases, it is likely to stumble on. Analysts said the prospect of the Supreme Court dismissing a second prime minister for failing to follow its orders in the case could have badly damaged its authority among the public. Mr. Kaira said that general elections would take place as scheduled after March 2013 and “not earlier.” In a separate development, bombs tore through a market in Karachi, killing at least six people in a city with a history of violent attacks, news agencies reported.
|
Corruption (Institutional);Zardari Asif Ali;Pakistan;Ashraf Raja Pervez;Switzerland;Bribery and Kickbacks
|
ny0167968
|
[
"sports",
"football"
] |
2006/01/23
|
Outbursts Aside, Smith Is Silenced by Seahawks
|
SEATTLE, Jan. 22 - One of the great individual performances in postseason history got knocked off its route. It was jammed at the line of scrimmage, shoved to the turf at Qwest Field, swarmed by three different defenders at a time. It was covered and blanketed and intercepted. Steve Smith's magical playoff pattern was supposed to end at the Super Bowl in Detroit. Instead, it ended at the National Football Conference championship game in Seattle, cut off and cast aside by a defense that concentrated its resources on one man. Football's favorite one-man show was canceled Sunday when the Seahawks eliminated Smith and his Carolina Panthers, 34-14. Throughout the game, television cameras focused on Smith almost every time he walked off the field, as if they were waiting for him to fling his helmet or berate his teammates or curse his coaches. Predictably, he delivered. Twice, cameras caught Smith in a tirade on the sideline. Once, Carolina Coach John Fox appeared to restrain him near the bench. Smith, who can appear angry even when he is running free, had every reason to be enraged. "When it rains, it pours," Smith said. "That about sums it up. Some people think I'm getting upset when I'm not getting the ball. I get upset when we're not moving the ball. I'm not afraid to show my frustration." Irritated by the Seahawks' stifling pass defense and exasperated by the Panthers' inability to adjust, Smith finished with only 5 receptions for 33 yards, a long way from his 12 receptions for 218 yards last week in Chicago. Besides the opening game of the season, and besides a game last month in which Smith was ejected, this was his least productive receiving day of the season. At 5 feet 9 inches, Smith often bullies linebackers and outruns cornerbacks. But Sunday afternoon, a crowd of defenders dwarfed him. "When you've got a receiver like that, it takes more than one guy," Seattle cornerback Marcus Trufant said. "It takes at least two guys to slow him down." Smith's struggles were the latest reminder that a receiver cannot win a game on his own. In the early rounds of the playoffs, the Panthers kept opponents off balance with a respectable running game, allowing Smith to take advantage of single coverage. But when tailback DeShaun Foster broke his fibula last week and tailback Nick Goings left Sunday's game in the first half with an apparent head injury, Carolina became one-dimensional, and Smith was about the only dimension. With the Panthers down to their fourth-string tailback, Jamal Robertson, Seattle was free to key on Smith, double-teaming him with safeties and linebackers. On the Panthers' first two offensive possessions, quarterback Jake Delhomme did not even try throwing to Smith. On the third possession, realizing that he needed to find Smith to succeed, Delhomme forced a pass to Smith and it was intercepted. Asked the difference in Seattle's coverage, Smith said: "About three or four people. They had a lot of guys out there." Even though the Seahawks took Smith out of his offensive game, they could not remove him completely. Smith asked coaches to let him return punts, and shortly after one of his tantrums, he returned a punt 59 yards for a touchdown. On the play, the officials flagged Carolina, apparently for a block in the back, but then decided to erase the penalty just before it was announced. It was as if Smith was going to will the Panthers to victory, just as he did at Chicago last week and against the Giants the week before. After the punt return, Carolina trailed by only 10 points. Players were jumping up and down. Smith was animated as ever. Perhaps if the Panthers had Foster, or even Goings, they could have used Smith's spark to get back into the game. As it turned out, the return was among the lone Carolina highlights. Seattle scored the next 17 points, and by the middle of the second half, Smith had stopped shouting on the sideline. He sat alone on the bench, staring straight ahead, saying nothing. His electric route through the playoffs ended in the most unlikely way -- very quietly.
|
CAROLINA PANTHERS;SEATTLE SEAHAWKS;SMITH STEVE;SUPER BOWL;FOOTBALL
|
ny0192702
|
[
"business",
"economy"
] |
2009/02/06
|
Factory Orders Continue to Show Weakness
|
WASHINGTON (AP) — Orders to factories fell for a record fifth month in December, closing out the worst year for American manufacturers since 2002. Analysts say the deepening recession will mean further weakness in coming months. The Commerce Department said on Thursday that orders dropped by 3.9 percent in December, an even bigger decline than the 3 percent that economists had been expecting. The weakness was widespread with a range of industries, including autos, heavy machinery and computers, reporting big declines in demand. For all of 2008, factory orders rose 0.4 percent, the weakest showing since orders actually fell by 1.8 percent in 2002. Analysts are forecasting that manufacturers will continue to face hard times this year because of a deepening recession and weakness that has spread worldwide, cutting sharply into demand for exports. For December, demand for durable goods, products expected to last at least three years, fell by 3 percent, even worse than the 2.6 percent drop that the government initially reported last week. Demand for nondurable goods, products like food, paper and petroleum, fell by 4.8 percent in December after an 8.7 percent fall in November. The weakness last month reflected a 0.2 percent dip in demand for transportation goods as demand for commercial aircraft fell by 43.8 percent, the second big monthly decline. Faced with slumping sales of jetliners, the Boeing Company announced recently that it planned to cut 10,000 jobs. In another report, the Labor Department said that productivity, which is the amount of output per hour of work, showed a robust increase because the number of hours worked during the period plunged at a faster rate than output declined. That reflected the huge wave of layoffs that occurred in the quarter.
|
Productivity;Labor;Unemployment Insurance;Subprime Mortgage Crisis
|
ny0009085
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2013/02/03
|
In New Jersey, Making Mozzarella Is a Hands-on Affair
|
PRINCETON, N.J. — Dave Briegel, 54, knows that this is not the seasonally correct time to sit down to a plate of fresh mozzarella with tomatoes and basil. Still, he was happy that he and his partner, Ted Manzke, 67, were attending a recent mozzarella-making class at Olsson’s Fine Foods , a tiny gourmet shop here that specializes in cheese. The depths of winter seemed “a good time of year to do this,” Mr. Briegel said. By summer, when tomatoes are ripe and he and Mr. Manzke have had plenty of time to practice at home, “we might be good at making it ourselves.” The class, which is offered at Olsson’s year-round, lasted roughly an hour and yielded a half-pound of handmade cheese in a salty brine for each of the 10 participants, plus a half-pound of curds for take-home use. Jennifer Smit, 45, co-owner of Olsson’s with her husband, Rudie, said the class had been running for three years and had become so popular that they offer it about 10 times a year. Olsson’s, which moved to Princeton from the Trenton farmers’ market in 2011, is one of several places in New Jersey that regularly give mozzarella classes. And though there are other cheesemaking options — ricotta also can be learned in a morning or an afternoon — mozzarella may be the favorite. Image Desiree Macey, standing, guides participants through the process. Credit Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times According to Stacey Gentile, 29, who teaches mozzarella making at Cherry Grove Farm in Lawrenceville, that has something to do with the process. “With ricotta, it’s a lot of hurry up and wait,” Ms. Gentile said during a recent class. “You do a lot of ‘O.K., let’s talk and stir.’ With mozzarella, you’re more hands-on. It’s quicker and more intensive.” That has not deterred Cherry Grove from including ricotta in a cheesemaking class it started offering about once a month last year. The two-hour class is split between a segment on ricotta and one on mozzarella and burrata — just-made ricotta folded into a warm mozzarella ball. Because Cherry Grove is a dairy farm, with 480 acres, some of the mozzarella made by its students begins with milk obtained that morning from one of its 60 dairy cows, rather than with prepared curds. During a recent Saturday afternoon class for six students, Ms. Gentile and her cheesemaking assistant, Anna Bosted, supervised pairs of students as they took turns stretching two batches of curds, each in huge stainless-steel bowls. For one batch, the students used packaged cheddar-cheese curds made on the farm and sold in its on-site farm store. For the other, they started with mozzarella curds that the instructors had made from fresh milk. Image A cheesemaking class at Cherry Grove Farm in Lawrenceville, N.J. Credit Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times “We like to show people that you can use any good, fresh curd to make mozzarella — the Cheddar has a slightly different flavor and different color, but it tastes delicious,” Ms. Gentile said. The stretching technique differed. At Olsson’s, the instructor, Desiree Macey, 25, had her students push their curds together in vats of very hot water — they were offered rubber gloves, but nearly all refused — then form them into oblong tubes. “You should have one long, odd-shaped curd,” she said. Then the students stretched the curds and folded them over, end to end, repeatedly before forming them into smooth balls — the tricky part for students — and letting them rest in a salty brine. “The stretching is the longest part of the process,” Ms. Macey said. It lasted roughly 10 minutes. At Cherry Grove, where students took home roughly a quarter-pound of ricotta and a half-pound each of mozzarella and burrata, Ms. Bosted, 20, demonstrated a different approach. After the curds were “shocked” in 185-degree water, she quickly formed a lump of gooey curd, stretched it once or twice, gathered the goo into a warm ball and tucked the ends under neatly. If you stretch the curd too long, “it affects the protein structure and it doesn’t taste quite as soft,” she said. Moisture, but not flavor, is lost when the cheese is stretched for a longer period, Ms. Bosted said, explaining: “If you stretch it longer, you can make string cheese, or if you’re using mozzarella on a pizza, the benefit is it won’t be as soupy.” Each teacher said that methods varied and that no one process was “correct.” “It’s mostly intended to be just a fun outing,” Ms. Smit said of the class at Olsson’s. Image Chris Rogers and his wife, Jessica. Credit Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times A similar attitude governs the classes at the Grape Escape , a winemaking school in Dayton, in South Brunswick, that has been holding mozzarella classes for four years. The classes are held at least once a month, except in May and October when “we’re in winemaking mode,” said Thomas Nye, 44, co-owner with his wife, Nancy. The classes are about an hour and 40 minutes and yield about eight large balls of cheese per team of two people. “It’s my most popular food class,” Mr. Nye said. That is partly because of what he called “the food sophistication that has taken off, with so many people watching the Food Network,” and partly because “it’s casual and fun.” For example, “people struggle with forming the mozzarella ball,” Mr. Nye said, adding: “So what we do is we give out a prize for the best-looking ball and the ugliest” — typically, a bottle of olive oil or balsamic vinegar. “No one has ever given up or failed, and no one ever leaves without good-tasting cheese,” he said of the mozzarella class. ”You come and you learn something, and you leave happy.”
|
Cheese;Cooking;New Jersey
|
ny0012588
|
[
"business"
] |
2013/11/16
|
New Ticker Symbol for American Airlines
|
American Airlines says it will list its shares on Nasdaq under “AAL” after the merger with US Airways. American’s parent, the AMR Corporation, had been listed on the New York Stock Exchange as AMR until the shares were removed after the company filed for bankruptcy protection in November 2011.
|
American Airlines;US Airways Group;NYSE;Stocks,Bonds;Mergers and Acquisitions;Airlines,airplanes
|
ny0055760
|
[
"business",
"international"
] |
2014/09/02
|
China Authorizes Local Governments to Issue Bonds
|
HONG KONG — China’s Finance Ministry released on Monday a long list of amendments to the country’s budget law that included removing a 20-year ban on local and regional governments from issuing bonds. The amendments, among many initiatives approved on Sunday by the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, represent a fundamentally different approach to a chronic problem in China: how to finance the building of roads, bridges, subways and other projects without letting local and regional governments pile up unsustainable levels of debt. Since 1994, the national government had essentially banned local and regional leaders from issuing bonds and other forms of debt. That ban reflected a longstanding worry that these governments, if given a chance, might borrow recklessly and later ask the national government to cover their debts if revenues proved inadequate. But local and regional governments have managed to borrow heavily anyway, notably by using state-owned enterprises under their control to do the borrowing instead, often setting up legal entities for the specific purpose of borrowing more money for infrastructure. The result has been a surge in indirect borrowing by local and regional governments, which the National Audit Office estimated this summer as totaling $2 trillion, or 21 percent of last year’s economic output for all of China. Allowing these governments to start selling bonds and other debt could make it easier for the national government to track their indebtedness. Local and regional governments would require approval from the State Council, China’s cabinet, to issue debt. Finance Minister Lou Jiwei said at a news conference on Sunday that the new rules would “defuse financial risk.” He also said that local and regional government debt appeared to have stopped growing in the past year. According to Standard & Poor’s, these debts had been growing more than 20 percent a year from 2008 to 2013, although from a very low base before the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. The budget law revisions included a long list of other changes, such as requiring that local governments do more long-range financial planning and that they embrace accrual accounting, which involves recognizing revenues and expenses as they are incurred, instead of waiting for them to show up in cash transactions. The debts accumulated by local and regional governments are in addition to a rapid, continuing buildup in corporate debt, particularly at state-owned enterprises with the political connections to borrow large sums from state-owned banks. In China, overall credit as a share of economic output is approaching levels in the West, prompting some Western economists to worry that local and regional government debt might lead to a credit crisis someday. Chinese officials are much more sanguine, saying that local and regional governments have many assets valued on their books at a tiny fraction of their current value, particularly given that land prices and building prices have increased many times over in the past decade. Officials have given more attention lately to the real estate sector, as home buyers, developers and builders rank among the largest categories of bank borrowers, and many companies also borrow heavily to invest in real estate. The end to the ban on local and regional government borrowing received little immediate attention, even inside China, because it was overshadowed by a separate decision by the standing committee of the National People’s Congress to severely curtail a planned expansion in the ability of Hong Kong citizens to choose their next chief executive.
|
China;Government bond;Debt;Infrastructure,public works;National People's Congress China
|
ny0189654
|
[
"technology",
"start-ups"
] |
2009/05/28
|
New Flexibility at Music Labels Aims to Help Web Start-Ups Thrive
|
SAN FRANCISCO — With CD sales dropping fast, it is not hard to imagine how the major music labels could benefit from the growth of Web start-ups like Imeem. The company’s service lets people listen to songs, discover new artists and share their favorites with friends. And in return, Imeem owes the labels licensing fees for use of the music. But two months ago, Imeem’s founder, Dalton Caldwell, was ready to pull the plug. While 26 million people a month were using the service, Imeem owed millions of dollars to the music labels, and income from advertising was nowhere close to covering expenses. “It reached a point where it was not even clear it was worth doing any more,” Mr. Caldwell said. Then the ground shifted. This month, Warner Music Group forgave Imeem’s debt, and both Warner and Universal Music agreed to relax the terms of their licensing deals with the site. That allowed Imeem to raise more money from investors and plan for a profitable future. Imeem’s amnesty is one sign that a new accommodation is being forged between Web music start-ups and the companies on which they are almost wholly dependent, the major music labels. The recording industry is considering an all-digital future in which it needs popular Web services like Imeem, both as sources of revenue and as supplements to older channels of promotion like radio and MTV. As a result, music labels are now striking more favorable terms with Web companies, and the start-ups have come to realize they cannot rely on Web ads to support themselves. For example, as part of its new plan, Imeem will try to push users into buying more T-shirts and concert tickets, and will soon add its own MP3 download store similar to iTunes, sharing revenue with the labels. It is not yet clear whether any of this is enough to produce sustainable online businesses — or even to help mitigate the chronic pain of the music industry. But it is offering some hope. “We are trying to figure out how to restructure partnerships and develop a healthier ecosystem where entrepreneurs can continue to innovate,” said Michael Nash, executive vice president for digital strategy at Warner Music. “Entrepreneurs are also realizing they need to spend as much energy on their business model as they do on technological innovation.” The changes stem from an unavoidable and unpleasant reality facing the music business: the economics of offering music free on the Web do not work. Companies like Imeem, striving to create an alternative to Apple’s dominant iTunes Store, signed complex deals with the labels that required them to pay large upfront fees and then small royalties — typically a penny or less — each time a song was played online. Advertising recouped only a fraction of that considerable expense. As a result, the online music landscape is littered with the wreckage of failed or troubled music start-ups. SpiralFrog, a free music download service supported by advertising, went out of business in March, citing financial difficulties. And music executives have roundly expressed disappointment with the money trickling in from MySpace Music, their joint venture with the News Corporation, which started last year and was talked about as a savior for the music business. For many digital music entrepreneurs, there is new hope that music labels will now give them room to experiment and perhaps succeed. Last fall, Lala, a Silicon Valley start-up, introduced a distinctive service that lets people listen to a song once at no charge. Then it costs 10 cents to stream that song repeatedly on the Web and up to 99 cents to download it. Lala executives credit the labels’ cooperation in the unusual licensing arrangement and say they are selling hundreds of thousands of songs a month. In April, the mobile phone operator Vodafone introduced a music service in Spain that gives subscribers unlimited access to a broad catalog of songs on their phones for 16 euros ($22) a month. The songs can be played on the phone or transferred to a computer. The service was possible only because the major music labels altered the underlying economics of their licensing deals, said Rob Glaser, chief executive of RealNetworks, which is supplying the music service. “That flexibility wasn’t there in 2008 anywhere in the U.S. and Europe,” he said. Napster, a pioneer in peer-to-peer music sharing that became a paid music service owned by the retailer Best Buy, reduced its subscription rate to $5 from $12.95 a month last week as a result of new deals with the labels, according to Chris Gorog, Napster’s chief executive. Also last week, Pandora, the rapidly growing Web radio service, said it would increase the number of audio commercials on its free service and offer an ad-free version, Pandora One, for $36 a year. The founder, Tim Westergren, said he expected the company to reach profitability next year. “There was a generation of Web companies that signed up for deals that didn’t make sense, and unfortunately they set a precedent,” Mr. Westergren said. “Now that those deals turned out to be unsustainable, it made the labels realize that there was actually not hidden money they were missing out on. I think labels have a much better understanding of the economics of the business.” Another music start-up seeking to take advantage of the new environment, one that seems to be collecting ardent fans and skeptics in equal numbers, is Spotify, based in Stockholm. The service, which requires iTunes-like software that people download to their PCs, offers millions of free songs, supported by copious advertising and opportunities to buy merchandise, downloads and tickets. (A premium version, without ads, costs around $15 a month.) Spotify plans to enter the American market later this year, and its founder, Daniel Ek, says that the music labels have given the start-up flexibility because they are attracted to a service that, with its unlimited free music, could convert illegal downloaders into monetizable consumers of music. “This is what has been lacking for 10 years. The only way to beat piracy is by actually creating a legal service that is just as good,” Mr. Ek said. Spotify will not discuss the details of its arrangements with the European divisions of the music companies, and many music entrepreneurs and observers question whether Spotify — and other digital music start-ups, for that matter — can build enduring businesses. “Until we start seeing these guys living on their revenues, as opposed to their investment, we are not going to know how effective their business models are,” said Mike McGuire, an analyst at the research firm Gartner. ILike, a Seattle company that bills itself as a music discovery engine for users of social networks, has actually turned away from offering free music online in recent months, and is instead focusing on helping bands forge connections with fans and developing tools like applications for the iPhone . Ali Partovi, iLike’s chief executive, is not sure labels and start-ups have found complete harmony yet. “There is an ongoing tension between what consumers want and what music labels want,” Mr. Partovi said. “It’s hard to know what model will satisfy both, and what will work over the long run.”
|
Music;Computers and the Internet;Start-ups;Online Advertising;Imeem Inc;Warner Music Group
|
ny0138597
|
[
"technology",
"personaltech"
] |
2008/05/22
|
The Explore Memory Card
|
With a new memory card called the Explore, your camera can tell you where your photos were taken. The Explore is from Eye-Fi, which introduced a memory card with built-in Wi-Fi and automatic uploading last year. The card, with a capacity of 2 gigabytes and a price tag of $130, uses Wi-Fi to figure out your location. It works through a partnership with Skyhook Wireless, which has mapped Wi-Fi hotspots in the United States and Europe. When you take a picture, the card records which Wi-Fi signals are nearby. Skyhook attaches the latitude and longitude coordinates to the photo file. If you use a photo site that can handle geotagging, like Flickr, SmugMug or Picasa, it will pick up that data so you can plot the photo’s location on a map. The Explore, which will be available from major retailers next month, also uploads wirelessly to photo sites. Through a partnership with Wayport, which manages 10,000 hotspots, including those in McDonald’s restaurants and 700 hotels, the photos load automatically, with no need to sign in. One year of Wayport service is free with the card, after which the service is $20 a year. ROY FURCHGOTT
|
Wireless Communications;Cameras;Eye-Fi
|
ny0187929
|
[
"sports",
"othersports"
] |
2009/04/07
|
Under Investigation, Paragallo Says Some Horses He Owns Are Underweight
|
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is investigating whether Ernie Paragallo, a prominent New York thoroughbred breeder and owner, has neglected and abused horses on his Center Brook Farm. Ron Perez, the president of the Columbia-Greene Humane Society/S.P.C.A., said investigators had been on the farm in Climax, N.Y., south of Albany, within the past 10 days. He also acknowledged that a woman who had picked up two horses that were malnourished and infected with parasites filed a complaint with the state police on Saturday. The woman, Colleen Segarra, said she was allowed into a barn where at least 16 other horses showed signs of distress and neglect. She said they had no bedding, like woodchips, and were severely undernourished. “You could see their hips and spines and they had lice,” said Segarra, who is a member of the New York State Horse Council, an animal-protection group. “They were in debilitating condition.” Segarra said she offered to take more horses off the farm as well as to summon and pay for a veterinarian to tend to them, but was told by Center Brook’s farm manager that she could not without Paragallo’s permission. She told the police that the manager had said that he had not been provided with enough food over the winter and that he had trouble properly feeding the more than 125 horses on the 511-acre farm. Paragallo denied those charges and said he had spoken to and was cooperating with investigators from the S.P.C.A., a nonprofit organization that has legal authority to make arrests in cases of animal cruelty. Paragallo said he provided 14.7 tons of hay and 5,000 pounds of feed a week for his horses. “It was a rough winter,” Paragallo said Monday. “I’m not going to lie — there’s seven or eight that are maybe 75 or 100 pounds underweight. The investigators suggested we change our feed, and we’re doing so. There’s a mare there that we’re feeding three times a day.” Paragallo has been a fixture on the American racing scene since the early 1990s when he was a leading buyer of yearlings and 2-year-olds at auctions in Kentucky, New York and Florida. On Saturday, he was at Aqueduct watching his colt Cellar Dweller compete in the Wood Memorial. In 1994, Paragallo purchased Unbridled’s Song for $200,000 at a Saratoga Select Yearling Sale, and the colt went on to win the Florida Derby and the Wood Memorial, where he sustained a cracked hoof. That injury was blamed for his disappointing fifth-place finish in the 1996 Kentucky Derby , where he was the favorite. Still, Unbridled’s Song — of whom Paragallo owns half — is one of the most successful stallions in horse racing, commanding a $125,000 stud fee and producing more than 100 horses that won $1 million. Since 1996, Paragallo’s family-owned Paraneck Stable has been among the nation’s leading racing outfits, starting 4,686 runners that have earned $20.6 million in purse money. The S.P.C.A.’s Perez declined further comment because the investigation was continuing. In New York, a person found guilty of animal cruelty, a misdemeanor, can face up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine for each count. Several individuals and rescue groups have come forward with harrowing tales of horses under Paragallo’s care. Last month, four undernourished and neglected former racehorses belonging to him were rescued from a New York kill pen, one step from being slaughtered. They were among more than 20 horses from Paragallo’s farm that were sold to slaughter for $680. Paragallo said he had given the horses to a Florida-based breeder in December with the agreement that he could breed the mares back to one of his stallions based in New York or Florida. However, a horse transporter, Richie Baiardi, said that he had picked them up at Paragallo’s farm at the end of February with the intention of taking them to Florida but could not because of they were “bags of bones, literally walking hides,” and would not have survived the trip. All four mares are being rehabilitated by Another Chance 4 Horses, a horse-rescue group, at its farm in Bernville, Pa. Three other mares are recovering at a boarding and training center in Fulton, N.Y., operated by Lisa Leogrande, who discovered the horses in the kill pen. In January 2007, another rescue group, Equine Advocates, took three horses from Center Brook; they required more than a month in an equine hospital in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. The veterinarian who treated them, Dr. Bill Barnes, said the horses were “starving to death.” Another Chance 4 Horses and Equine Advocates have produced photographs that show the horses coming off the farm undernourished and unhealthy. Segarra said the two horses she removed Saturday, a mare named Hunter’s Circle and a yearling she produced by the Paragallo stallion Griffinite, were “badly debilitated.” She said: “The yearling looked like a weanling, and the veterinarian I had look at them said it would take at least six months to rehabilitate both of them. I wanted to take more with me. The ones I had to leave behind are haunting me.”
|
Horse Racing;Cruelty to Animals
|
ny0006268
|
[
"sports",
"tennis"
] |
2013/05/05
|
Jimmy Connors Memoir: From Lone Wolf to Open Book
|
Jimmy Connors showed signs of obsessive compulsive disorder and ocular motor sensory deficit as a child, long before he realized they were serious problems. He tried Gamblers Anonymous to curb a “fix” that still itches and took his grandmother’s advice as a mantra: “Keep a little mystery about yourself in life.” Connors has finally decided to let the real world into the sanctuary he created on and off a tennis court. “The Outsider,” an autobiography to be published by HarperCollins on May 14, is an engrossing five-setter on clay, with intense exchanges and no tiebreakers. Connors, 60, makes few apologies for his aggressive style and behavior, although he does acknowledge several indiscretions, personal and professional. Not surprising, he also lines up friends and foes — some based on loyalties and others on perceptions that only someone with his East St. Louis/Belleville, Ill., background and take it-or-leave-it mentality could justify. “The way I played tennis was very frequently selfish,” he writes. He also borrows liberally from his overly protective mother, Gloria Connors, and a loving grandmother, Brenda Thompson, whom he called Two-Mom and who repeatedly told him, “You can get away with anything if you win.” These strong, determined women, along with his wife, Patti, emerge as the foundations in Connors’s often turbulent life. How many wives would stand for their husbands’ squandering $70,000 in tennis winnings on one hand of blackjack? The Connors voice in this 401-page account can be brash and defiant, far different in tone and temperament from most traditional sports memoirs. But Connors is not Andre Agassi trying to chronicle a transformation; Connors even rifles a few crisp crosscourt passing shots at Agassi, whose 2009 confessional was No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list. Agassi, Connors writes, “was never my kind of guy,” labeling his substance-over-style turnabout “nothing but an act.” Image Jimmy Connors sometimes yelled at his mother, right, to “get out of my life.” Credit Associated Press Connors thrilled fans during his Hall of Fame career , which included 8 Grand Slam singles crowns, 109 tournament titles, 160 consecutive weeks as the No. 1 men’s player in the world and countless comebacks against players like Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe, and Mikael Pernfors and Aaron Krickstein. Those fans will feel rewarded with his I-did-it-my-way theme. The unconditional love for his two children and six dogs (whom he calls “in-house shrinks”), and the ability to rebound from assorted injuries and family travails, may even surprise and touch readers. Cynics who tired of his vocal and physical confrontations, crotch grabs, antiestablishment rationale (“I guess I can’t do things like everyone else,” he writes) and profane indifference will simply say, “I told you so.” That Connors now feels secure enough to tell us why he bounced balls so obsessively at the service line, repeatedly locked and unlocks doors and could not manage his mother’s difficulties accepting his wife until well into their marriage is worthy background. Whether he would have ventured down such a personal memory lane if his mother were alive is a more sensitive question. Tennis prodigies often share the benefits and burdens of parents who push and prod them, sometimes to excess, in pursuit of greatness. Gloria Connors, who died in 2007 , went beyond teaching her son the importance of preparation and footwork. She was involved in every aspect of his life, “and she paid the price for treading into that traditionally male-dominated territory by having some pretty aggressive criticism thrown at her by the tennis establishment and media,” Connors writes. Acknowledging that he would sometimes yell at his mother to “get out of my life” for interfering in his “extracurricular” affairs, Connors still defends her, a sentimental thread that enlivens his mundane recitations of tournaments, his lawsuits and his recurring rejection of other authority figures. Professional tennis today bears little resemblance to what was essentially a wild west show during the Connors years. The emergence of the Open era in 1968 united amateurs and pros and brought fresh money, lively personalities, cultural diversity and a lawlessness that left the governing bodies playing catch-up to rein in under-the-table payments, drugs, gambling and outrageous court conduct. Connors and his band of brothers (Ilie Nastase, Vitas Gerulaitis, Guillermo Vilas, Yannick Noah, McEnroe and Borg, among others) delivered unscripted excitement and color to a staid, all-white upper-class domain. Image Jimmy Connors said of romancing Chris Evert, “It wouldn’t have worked for us, and it was better that we figured it out early on.” Credit Leonard Burt/Central Press -- Getty Images Connors captures this public fascination, recalling a one-minute phone conversation with the actress Marlene Dietrich, who spotted him at her hotel in Paris and then had a framed photograph with a racy six-word inscription delivered to his room. Nastase, for all his much-publicized histrionics on the court, emerges as one of Connors’s closest confidants. Connors devotes a chapter to Gerulaitis and even blames himself for letting Gerulaitis leave a senior tour event in Seattle in 1994 for a charity appearance on Long Island, where he died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning at 40. He also recalls the ballyhooed 1974 Wimbledon “love double,” in which he and his fiancée at the time, Chris Evert, won the singles titles. He also discusses issues in the relationship that may have contributed to their breakup. “Can two No. 1s exist in the same family?” Connors writes. “It wouldn’t have worked for us, and it was better that we figured it out early on.” Is Connors among the top 10 men’s players in tennis history? With the quality and longevity of his game, consistently strong performances in Grand Slam events, a record number of singles titles and an .817 winning percentage in the Open era, he belongs in the conversation. Like the individualists Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra, Pete Rose and Chuck Berry, Connors was authentic. The book reflects that swagger, as do the lyrics to a classic Berry tune, “Johnny B. Goode.” His mother told him, “Someday you will be a man, And you will be the leader of a big old band.”
|
Jimmy Connors;Books;Tennis
|
ny0152339
|
[
"sports",
"olympics"
] |
2008/08/06
|
Worrying About Traffic, Not Who Wins the Gold
|
BEIJING — To say the capital is in the throes of Olympic fever would be a gargantuan understatement. Giddy volunteers clog the sidewalks, 40 million potted flowers help offset the Beijing haze, and there is no escaping the “One World One Dream” slogan on television and on billboards. The citizenry is still abuzz from the fireworks on Saturday night, an opening ceremony rehearsal that brought traffic to a standstill. “We waited 100 years for this moment, so we will sacrifice and endure any hardship,” said Guan Wenyu, 73, a retired textile worker whose tennis shirt, baseball cap and red armband ensemble identified him as a neighborhood “safety” volunteer. But poke a bit deeper (and put down the reporter’s notebook) and the sloganeering can give way to grumbling. Many complaints involve traffic restrictions that have forced drivers to give up their cars, or security measures that require subway riders to undergo bag searches. Taxi passengers must submit identification at random police stops, and an opening night performance of “Hairspray” was raided by the authorities late last month because the theater, they said, lacked an adequate security plan. Some of the city’s best-known clubs have been forced to go dark. Bars have been told to honor a 2 a.m. closing time — an existing rule that was rarely enforced. A bit hyperbolic, the tagline “no-fun Olympics” has become a cynical refrain among foreign residents and journalists. Of course, residents’ complaints about inconveniences to their lives are common in cities hosting the Olympics. But for the Chinese who live and work here, the new rules and restrictions have put an unmistakable dent in the city’s zeal for the Games, which open Friday. A ban on construction work and smokestack emissions has forced employers to pay furloughed workers. Countless others have simply left Beijing, giving parts of town the languid feel of Rome in August. A restriction on delivery vehicles means some restaurants and shops are scrambling for goods. When trucks do arrive, recipients often face a surcharge. “We are very excited for the Olympics, but we little guys are not going to get rich,” said Yang Yuwei, a noodle shop owner, who said the cost of raw materials had gone up by about 20 percent. It does not help that the number of customers has dropped by about 30 percent in recent weeks. When the Games conclude, she said with a smile, “we will be happy.” Some rules can be confounding. Qian Hai, who manages a fleet of gleaming rickshaws, said regulations that banned his vehicles from the narrow alleyways around Houhai, a lake that is a popular tourist destination, were hurting business. The 300 vehicles, all new, are restricted to the area’s main roadways, some decidedly lacking in charm. “Tell the government that if they don’t change the law, we will not make any money,” Mr. Qian said, standing beside a column of idle drivers in white uniforms. The most uncensored grumbling is on the Internet, where Beijingers can complain anonymously. They trade tales about the lack of mangos, empty “Olympic lanes” on the highway that squeeze everyone else into gridlock, and a favorite barbecue restaurant closed in the name of clean air — barbecue smoke was deemed a pollutant. One blogger, a Peking University student who goes by the name Fu Gui, wrote: “Originally I really welcomed the Olympics. But because of these unfair regulations and treatments, I’ve started losing my passion for the event, and I’ve become more indifferent.” Another blogger, whose online name translates as Speaking Against Injustice, wrote that the government’s relentless spending on road paving, flower planting and stadium building had soured his enthusiasm. “Does such an extravagant Games necessarily demonstrate our country’s strength and prosperity?” he wrote. “I think the so-called ‘century-old dream’ isn’t the people’s dream, and the so-called ‘best Olympics’ is nothing more than the ‘most costly Games.’ ” One story passed around on the Web is a satirical fairy tale that recounts the suffering of Old Zhao, a fictitious Beijinger who is trying to schedule elective surgery for his father, but is told it must wait until after the Olympics. (The Health Ministry has instructed hospitals to postpone all but essential procedures.) Back at home, he finds his wife serving a meal of shriveled kidney beans. The top-quality vegetables, she tells him, have been set aside for athletes whose produce has been irrigated with milk. Upon hearing this, Old Zhao nearly chokes. He feels that the five Olympic rings have become five loops that yoke his neck. Just then a neighborhood committee volunteer arrives with good news: the Academy of Sciences has a new pill that will enable Beijingers to hibernate for a month. Old Zhao and his family eagerly take the pill. When they awaken on Aug. 26, they are pleased to learn that China has won all the gold medals in table tennis and diving, that the Games went flawlessly and that “all the foreigners were awed.” The only unpleasant news? China’s star-crossed soccer team did not score a single goal, again. The story ends with a dollop of sarcasm. When Old Zhao goes outside, the verdict from his neighbors is resounding. “Our nation has finally become powerful,” they say.
|
Beijing (China);Olympic Games (2008);Roads and Traffic;Security and Warning Systems;Police
|
ny0184122
|
[
"us"
] |
2007/12/22
|
Milestone in Death Penalty Fight, but Still a Way to Go
|
Mario Marazziti’s name appeared in this column on Dec. 23, 2000, almost exactly seven years ago. An Italian journalist and spokesman for the Community of Sant’Egidio, a Roman Catholic movement of lay people known for its efforts on behalf of the poor and peacemaking, he had been bustling around holiday-happy Manhattan. He was not sightseeing or shopping for gifts, but advocating a United Nations resolution against the death penalty. This past week, Mr. Marazziti, now 55, was back in town to finish the job. On Tuesday, the General Assembly passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on the death penalty. The resolution was nonbinding. Mr. Marazziti called it a milestone, nonetheless. It sets “a new moral standard of justice,” he said at a small gathering after the vote, making it harder for nations to ignore. It stamps the death penalty as a matter of legitimate concern for the international community, he added; it calls for the secretary general to monitor and report on the extent of executions. And, he argued, it makes it easier for countries that are “de facto abolitionist” — which he defined as ones where no one had been executed in at least a decade — to chisel their practice into law. Tuesday’s General Assembly vote was 104 nations in favor, 54 against and 29 abstaining. Among the opposed, the United States found itself lined up with Iran, Syria, Sudan, China and North Korea. All European Union nations, almost all Latin American states and United States allies like Turkey and Israel supported the resolution. But the real vote had taken place a month earlier when the resolution was fiercely debated by the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee, often simply called the Third Committee, composed of all 192 member states of the United Nations. Opposition to the resolution had long been led by Singapore, Egypt and a few Caribbean nations like Barbados. They maintained that the death penalty was strictly an internal affair of criminal law and that the pressure to abolish it reflected a European-based form of neo-colonialism. An anti-capital-punishment resolution introduced by Italy was defeated in 1994. In 1999, faced with similar opposition, the European Union withdrew another such resolution. Islamic nations were also influenced by the argument that the death penalty was an intrinsic part of Islamic law and could not be renounced in principle, however flexibly it might be applied in practice. Working with other groups opposed to the death penalty like Amnesty International, the Sant’Egidio Community set out to counter Islamic reservations by urging a moratorium rather than outright abolition, thus setting aside the question of principle. By such intermediate steps, after all, Judaism long ago and Christianity more recently had moved away from biblical affirmations of the death penalty. To counter the accusation of European neo-colonialism, Sant’Egidio led a campaign to gather signatures from all around the world on a petition for a moratorium. Seven years ago, Mr. Marazziti delivered more than three million of those signatures to the United Nations. This November, he delivered the petition anew, now carrying five million signatures from 153 countries. Nations opposed to the resolution still tried to block it in November with crippling amendments. Egypt mobilized the support of primarily Muslim countries, for example, with a last-minute amendment extending the resolution “to protect the lives of unborn children.” Led by the Philippines, a number of countries, including many Latin American ones that ban abortions, replied that they would sponsor a resolution on that topic but that raising it now was only a distraction from the issue at hand. The Vatican ’s representative at the United Nations expressed regret that when the notion of a right to life was not applied consistently from the beginning to the end of life, the result was political maneuvering. Egypt’s amendments were defeated, and the Vatican welcomed the moratorium resolution, both in November and this week, after it was passed by the General Assembly. On Tuesday, Mr. Marazziti repeatedly spoke of the General Assembly’s action as strengthening the “culture of life,” a phrase that Pope John Paul II had popularized in connection with opposition to abortion. Asked whether he connected ending the death penalty with ending abortion, Mr. Marazziti replied that he and Sant’Egidio believed that “life should be defended from the very beginning to the end.” But abolishing the death penalty, for which there were plenty of nonreligious arguments, he said, would be an important step toward a “general culture of life as a new proposal for our time.” He recognized how far the world remained from such a culture. Not only was the United Nations resolution not binding, but the support of many countries stemmed from winning over the political elite, rather the public at large. The Sant’Egidio Community itself won over many officials in Africa. Of the approximately 50,000 members that the movement claims, one third are African; and a major program to deal with AIDS in 10 African countries has increased Sant’Egidio’s moral standing on the continent. “We cannot promise money or use power,” Mr. Marazziti said. So success rested on personal relationships and patient pleading, and he was not embarrassed by the focus on the political elites. “A leading class must sometimes take the responsibility of being a leading class,” he said. But he knew that the task of changing public opinion remained. Seven years ago, Mr. Marazziti was quick to admit that there were bigger problems in the world than the death penalty. On Tuesday, what with wars, terrorism and climate change , it was hard to argue that things had changed for the better. But what about for him personally? His response was instantaneous. He grinned, whipped out his cellphone and clicked on the picture of his 17-month-old grandson. Culture of life, indeed!
|
Capital Punishment;United Nations;Roman Catholic Church;Christians and Christianity
|
ny0131549
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2012/12/28
|
Iran’s Slowing of Enrichment Efforts May Show It Wants Deal
|
WASHINGTON — By subtly putting its hands on the brakes of its uranium enrichment efforts, Iran may be signaling that it wants to avoid a direct confrontation over its nuclear program , at least in the near term, according to United States and other Western officials. The action has also led some analysts to conclude that Iran’s leaders are showing signs that they may be more interested in a deal to end the nuclear standoff with the West. Evidence began emerging last summer that the Iranians were diverting a significant portion of their medium-enriched uranium for use in a small research reactor, converting it into a form that cannot easily be used in a weapon. One American official said the move amounted to trying to “put more time on the clock to solve this,” characterizing it as a step “you have to assume was highly calculated, because everything the Iranians do in a negotiation is highly calculated.” Israel’s departing defense minister, Ehud Barak, came to a similar conclusion when he said in October that his country could safely back away from threats of military action against Iran, at least until the late spring or summer of 2013. But White House, State Department and Pentagon officials all cautioned against drawing firm conclusions about Iran’s ultimate intentions. A new session of talks involving Iran and six major powers, including the United States, is expected next year, and American officials say they still cannot determine whether Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is ready to strike a deal. A quiet feeler seeking direct talks with Iran that the administration put out after President Obama’s re-election last month resulted in “no real response,” another senior official said, adding: “It wasn’t that they said yes or no. They said nothing.” These uncertainties underlie the hunger in Western countries to understand why Iran appears to be keeping its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium — which could be converted to bomb fuel in weeks or months — to a level below the amount necessary to build a single weapon. Evidence from a variety of sources, including the International Atomic Energy Agency , suggests that as Iran produced more uranium enriched to near 20 percent purity, a process that takes it most of the way to bomb-grade fuel, it began diverting some into an oxide powder that could be used in a small research reactor in Tehran. That diversion is believed to have begun in August. Iran had been complaining for years that the research reactor, which was supplied by the United States during the rule of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to produce isotopes for medical purposes, was running out of fuel, and that the West refused to sell it more. So it decided to make the fuel itself. Now, even though it has enough fuel to keep the reactor running for at least a decade, it may be making more, several sources indicate. The statistics released in quarterly reports by the atomic energy agency show that if Iran had not diverted fuel to that project, it would have enough medium-enriched fuel for one bomb and would be on its way to enough for a second. Instead, as of the agency’s last report, in November, Iran had enriched 232 kilograms (about 511 pounds) of the fuel, nearly enough to produce a weapon. But more than 96 kilograms (almost 212 pounds) had been sent off for fabrication into fuel plates for the reactor. Once turned to that purpose, the fuel is very difficult to use in a bomb. The diversion “was a move to take heat away so that things didn’t go over the tipping point,” said Olli Heinonen, the former head of inspections for the atomic energy agency, who dealt with Iran extensively. Mr. Heinonen, now a senior fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, said that since the diversion, the Iranians had continued to produce about 15 kilograms (about 33 pounds) a month of medium-enriched fuel. So unless they slow that pace, or divert more fuel to the reactor program, “they are going back up to the tipping point,” he said. Iran could use that to its advantage in negotiations. “I think it is hard to understand what Iran was doing if not sending a deliberate signal, signaling some cautiousness,” said Greg Thielmann, a former State Department intelligence analyst who is now at the Arms Control Association. “I think it is reasonable to see the diversion as a negotiating signal, and a note of moderation.” Ray Takeyh, an Iran specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that “the sanctions policy that the United States has pursued over the past decade is beginning to bear fruit.” He said that the steps, which have led to a huge devaluation of the Iranian currency and a sharp decline in Iranian oil exports, “have seemingly succeeded in convincing influential sectors of the theocracy to reconsider their options.” Some Arab officials agree, though they warn that it could be three years before the sanctions hurt Iran enough to bring about a change of position. “The problem is we don’t have three years,” a senior Arab diplomat said recently. The big question is whether any of this is more than tactical positioning. “Tehran almost certainly hopes the diversion will be read in Western capitals as a sign of its willingness to reach a deal,” said Paul R. Pillar, a former C.I.A. analyst who is now at Georgetown University.
|
United States International Relations;Uranium;Nuclear Weapons;Iran;International Atomic Energy Agency
|
ny0204758
|
[
"business"
] |
2009/01/11
|
Looking to Obama to Bring Logic to Food Safety
|
FOR reasons that defy logic, the nation’s food safety functions are split. The Agriculture Department inspects about 20 percent of the food supply (meat and poultry), and the Food and Drug Administration is responsible for almost everything else. And yet the Agriculture Department receives a majority of federal food safety dollars. The division of labor creates internal squabbling and some bizarre situations. Frozen cheese pizzas are inspected by the F.D.A., pepperoni pizzas by the Agriculture Department. Fresh eggs are under the jurisdiction of the F.D.A.; egg products go to Agriculture. That this makes no sense is no secret. It’s why Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, have raised again and again the idea of creating a single food agency — so far, though, to no avail. In 1999, the Government Accountability Office (then called the General Accounting Office) issued a report called “U.S. Needs a Single Agency to Administer a Unified, Risk-Based Inspection System.” “The fragmented system was not developed under any rational plan but was patched together over many years to address specific health threats from particular food products,” the report said. Efforts to address food safety, it says, are “hampered by inconsistent and inflexible oversight and enforcement authorities, inefficient resource use and ineffective coordination.” It went nowhere. In the decade since, the problems have only worsened. As food imports have soared, the number of inspectors has declined as budgets have been cut. There has been salmonella in peanut butter, botulism in canned foods and melamine in infant formula. Now comes Barack Obama , who as president-elect has vowed to cut programs “that have outlived their usefulness or exist solely because of the power of politicians, lobbyists or interest groups.” It would seem that the chances for a single food agency — which has the potential to cut all sorts of bureaucracy — would be better than ever. Don’t hold your breath. At least initially, Ms. DeLauro and others are calling for less-drastic changes, in part because the Obama administration has thornier problems to deal with first. In addition, some consumer advocates argue that the food side of the F.D.A., in particular, must be fixed before it can merge with the Agriculture Department’s food safety arm. “To build the house, you need the same foundation,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nutritional advocacy group in Washington. “Now you’ve got two legal foundations that don’t mesh well.” The problem at the F.D.A. is that while it is called the Food and Drug Administration, a vast majority of the attention and financing is directed at drugs. With a limited budget and a huge workload, the food side of the agency has lurched from one crisis to the next. Ms. DeLauro’s proposal to split the F.D.A. has won wide support among food-safety wonks. Under the new system, there would be a Food Safety Administration and a Federal Drug and Device Administration, with separate budgets and administrators reporting to the secretary of health and human services, who now oversees the F.D.A. “Food safety is beneath three levels of bureaucracy at H.H.S.,” Ms. DeLauro said recently. “It needs to have its own function.” She added: “There is no high-ranking food safety official in the U.S. government. There is no one accountable.” But a new agency alone won’t solve the problem, Ms. DeLauro and others say. It would need more teeth — both in resources and laws — to crack down on safety violations and to try to prevent them in the first place. As it now stands, F.D.A. regulators “don’t do anything until people get sick,” said Carol Tucker Foreman, distinguished fellow for the Consumer Federation of America. Tom Daschle, Mr. Obama’s choice to head health and human services, declined comment because he hasn’t yet been confirmed. A new F.D.A. commissioner has not yet been named. Tom Vilsack, the choice for agriculture secretary, couldn’t be reached for comment. Beyond the structure of the food-safety bureaucracy, there are all sorts of ideas for how the Obama administration could improve day-to-day oversight. For instance, many consumer groups say the F.D.A. should scrap voluntary food-safety guidelines that are issued to the industry and replace them with concrete rules, backed by tough penalties. IN addition, they say the F.D.A. and the Agriculture Department should have mandatory recall authority if a manufacturer refuses to pull bad food off the market. And they argue that food processing plants in the United States and abroad need to be inspected more often, which requires more inspectors. Bill Marler, a personal-injury lawyer in Seattle who represents clients in food poisoning cases, says the first thing the Obama administration should do is invest in better surveillance for food-borne illness, like a system that Minnesota uses. “If you are able to figure out food-borne illnesses quicker,” Mr. Marler said, “you are able to prevent people from getting sick and save lives.” Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food and Water Watch, says chronic staffing problems with meat inspectors at the Agriculture Department must be addressed. Vacancy rates are as high as 30 percent in some areas. “It has become evident that daily inspection is not occurring consistently across the country,” she wrote in a Dec. 3 memo to the Obama transition team. Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumers Union, agrees with many of the proposed changes. But he said it might finally be time to address the lunacy of splitting food safety among different federal agencies. “The most ideal thing is, they should have a single food agency,” he said. “Who knows? Times change. If you would have said six or eight years ago that Bush would almost nationalize part of the banking industry, people would have told you you were crazy.”
|
Food Contamination and Poisoning;Agriculture Department;Food and Drug Administration;United States Politics and Government;Obama Barack
|
ny0241983
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2011/03/11
|
Saudi Police Open Fire to Break Up a Protest
|
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Saudi police officers opened fire at a protest march in a restive, oil-rich province on Thursday, wounding at least three people, according to witnesses and a Saudi government official. The crackdown came a day before a planned “day of rage” throughout the country that officials have said they will not tolerate. Witnesses described the small protest march in the eastern city of Qatif as peaceful, but an Interior Ministry spokesman said demonstrators had attacked the police before the officers began firing, Reuters reported. The spokesman said that the police fired over the protesters’ heads, but that three people were injured in the melee, including a police officer. Some residents agreed that the police had shot above people’s heads. The clash with protesters in Qatif, located in a heavily Shiite region, underscored longstanding tensions in Saudi society: there is a sense among the Shiite minority that it is discriminated against by a government practicing a zealous form of Sunni orthodoxy. Mohammad Zaki al-Khabbaz, a human rights activist in Qatif who was reached by telephone, said that security forces fired tear gas and shot in the air trying to disperse the crowd. He said an official at a nearby hospital reported that two protesters had been wounded, one in the leg and one in the arm. Mr. Khabbaz said he was told that they were not allowed to receive any visitors. Another resident in Qatif who watched the march, Abdulwahab al-Oraid, said it was not clear why the police opened fire at what appeared to be a peaceful demonstration that started with 100 people and later grew to about 300. “There is a fear of Friday’s protests,” Mr. Oraid said. “We think this is a message: ‘Don’t protest in any Shiite areas on Friday.’ ” Witnesses were unclear whether the police fired rubber bullets intended for crowd control or other kinds of ammunition. A video posted online, which was said to be from Qatif, showed a group of young men chanting “The people want the release of the prisoners” and “Our protest is peaceful; Sunni and Shiites are brothers; we will never betray this country.” A few moments later, popping sounds are heard in the distance and protesters stop marching. Saudi Arabia has witnessed several small demonstrations in recent days and several protesters have been arrested, according to human rights activists. Residents across the kingdom said that the government had beefed up its security presence on the streets and closed access to major squares in big cities where protesters were expected to gather Friday. So far, 30,000 people have posted on a Facebook site dedicated to demonstrations, saying they would attend. “Streets are packed with police vehicles,” said Mohamad al-Qahtani, a human rights activist in Riyadh, the capital. “I have never seen anything like this. It says that the regime fears its people.” Residents in Riyadh reported that they had received text messages warning them against participating in Friday’s protest. The “day of rage” is modeled after other protests in the past two months in the Middle East and North Africa that have toppled leaders in Egypt and Tunisia. Tensions have been especially high in Saudi Arabia since protests began in Bahrain, an island nation connected to Saudi Arabia’s east’s coast by a bridge. Bahrain, a majority Shiite country, is governed by a Sunni monarch and protests there have been led by Shiites who say they suffer discrimination. Last month, the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah, announced a $10 billion increase in welfare spending to help young people marry, buy homes and open businesses, in what was seen as an attempt to head off unrest.
|
Saudi Arabia;Demonstrations Protests and Riots;Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )
|
ny0188586
|
[
"nyregion",
"long-island"
] |
2009/04/12
|
A Teacher of Basketball, and Its Life Lessons
|
Hempstead THE Hempstead- and Roosevelt-honed Julius Erving , better known as the Hall of Famer Dr. J, was weighing in by phone from Atlanta, where he has embarked on a Baby Boomer project that is easier on the knees than basketball: golf course development. Not an easy sell in this punitive economy, he said last week, even for an aging but high Q-quotient superstar with a low handicap and a lofty reputation. “The project has turned into a labor of love at this point,” he said. “I’ve been so busy with the business end, I haven’t had time to play golf in six months.” There was an audible sigh over the line. These are tough times for grown-ups. The moment begged for a speedy change of topic. Time to play the nostalgia card and ask Mr. Erving, 59, about Don Ryan, the volunteer Biddy Basketball coach at the Salvation Army’s Hempstead headquarters who was a teenager himself when he took Mr. Erving, a fatherless 12-year-old basketball whiz, under his wing 47 years ago and never let go. Mr. Ryan’s loyalty to his hometown (he is a village trustee after teaching business at Hempstead High for 33 years), to his Biddy Basketball players (in 2011 he’ll celebrate his golden anniversary as coach), to his mother, Teresa (at 95, she remains his teammate on the home front), is legendary. A gift from God to Hempstead is how Mr. Erving describes him. “Don was probably the first person who had a truly great influence on my sports career,” Mr. Erving said. “The Salvation Army motto was ‘Carry the books and the ball.’ Don was the guy who taught me about accountability: there were no road games if you behaved like a bad apple. He was a like a big brother to me and maybe at that time a father figure. He’s been a part of my life for a 50-year spread, never more than a phone call away, and I’ve made that call many times.” Which is why, on this Easter weekend, Mr. Ryan and his current crop of Biddy ballplayers, an excited group of 11 local sixth and seventh graders, are spending a fantasy holiday in Atlanta with Mr. Erving as celebrity host. On Saturday, at the Salvation Army Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center in Atlanta, two squads of Hempstead players were to compete in the Julius (Dr. J) Erving Biddy Basketball Tournament against all-star squads from the Boys & Girls Club and the Salvation Army. On Easter Sunday, they planned to wear their red warm-up suits and attend a morning church service with Mr. Erving, then hit the Six Flags Over Georgia amusement park. On Monday, they will visit the Celebrity Golf Club International as guests of Mr. Erving and test their prowess on the fairways before traveling to Orlando, Fla., for more games. “I can safely say that most of these kids have never been on a golf course before,” Mr. Ryan, 66, said last week while palming a basketball (he played guard here on the adult squad) on the same Salvation Army court where Mr. Erving and other notables, including Kenneth I. Chenault, now chief executive of American Express, practiced their dunks and jump shots. The best dunker that Mr. Ryan, a student at Adelphi University when he began volunteering in Hempstead as a coach in 1961, ever saw? A no-brainer. “Julius is the only N.B.A. player to come out of the program so far,” said Mr. Ryan, whose coaching uniform consists of gray dress slacks, highly polished black dress shoes and a Salvation Army sweatshirt with his name in red script on the chest, “but we’ve been blessed to be affiliated with some other success stories. Ken Chenault was a heck of a ballplayer” before his success in the business world. Mr. Ryan has been devoted to all of his teams (his goal is to funnel them toward college, not the National Basketball Association), but his personal all-time dream team, the one that broke urban-suburban playground precedent — that urban, as in New York City, always trounces suburban, as in Long Island — was assembled in 1964. “People always said Long Island couldn’t match up to the city players; well, we did,” he said. Mr. Ryan, who said he “came close a couple of times” but never married, recites the names from that team with paternal pride: Julius Erving, Al Williams, Tommy Brethel, Dave and Terry Conroy. The champions of the Summer Playground Championships in the Bronx. Winners in life: four of the players are in their colleges’ halls of fame and the fifth, Dave Conroy, served as a much-decorated medic during the Vietnam War. The tallest kid, the top rebounder and the Most Valuable Player on the 1964 team was, of course, Mr. Erving. According to Mr. Ryan, he was about 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighed 115 pounds in his pre-pre-Dr. J prime. “Very coachable,” said Mr. Ryan, who recalls Mr. Erving’s earliest nicknames — the Claw, the Medicine Man — but finds an abundance of logic, not hubris, in the moniker the player himself favored, the one that stuck. “Because he is a student of whatever he does.” And Mr. Ryan, in turn, is an inspiration to whomever he coaches. “Being around a person like Don was a life-changing experience for me,” Mr. Erving summed up. “I did move on, but I didn’t burn the bridge back to home. The highest recognition of my life was being inducted into the Hall of Fame, and when it was time for the ceremony, I told them I wanted to see a Salvation Army flag flying right behind my head.” His wish was granted.
|
Basketball;Erving Julius;Ryan Don;Long Island (NY)
|
ny0130611
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2012/06/25
|
Vatican Hires Fox News Correspondent as Media Adviser
|
ROME — In an effort to shore up its communications strategy amid a widening leaks scandal in a troubled papacy, the Vatican has hired the Fox News correspondent in Rome as a senior communications adviser. The correspondent, Greg Burke, 52, who has covered the Vatican for Fox since 2001, will leave the network to help improve and coordinate the Vatican’s various communications operations, Mr. Burke and the Vatican spokesman said. Some Vatican watchers called the move a power play by media-savvy Americans — including Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York and the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops — inside a Vatican hierarchy run by Italians whose most frequent communications strategy is to accuse their critics of defamation. Mr. Burke is a member of the conservative Opus Dei movement, and his hiring underscores the group’s role in the Vatican. In a telephone interview on Sunday, Mr. Burke, the Vatican’s first communications expert hired from outside the insular world of the Roman Catholic news media, said that he would not replace the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, but would advise officials on how to shape their message. He said he had turned down the Vatican twice in the past month before accepting the paid position. He will answer directly to officials in the Secretariat of State, the Vatican’s executive branch. “If you look at what the White House has, everyone knows who the spokesman is, no one knows who the secretary of communications is,” Mr. Burke said. “It’s a very similar job. It’s a strategy job. It’s very simple to explain, not so easy to execute: to formulate the message and try to make sure everyone remains on message.” That is a tall order. Vatican experts say that the institution is suffering from a deep crisis of leadership more than of communications. Pope Benedict XVI is seen as an intellectual with little interest or skill in governing, and his deputies have been mired in infighting. The Vatican must deal with a growing investigation that has led to the arrest of the pope’s butler in connection with the leaking of private documents, a case that could reach into higher levels of the hierarchy. On Saturday, Pope Benedict called a meeting of the high-ranking cardinals who are investigating the case. At the same time, the Vatican’s secretive bank remains embroiled in controversy over whether it can meet international transparency standards. And on Friday in Philadelphia, a former aide to a cardinal became the first senior official of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States to be convicted of covering up sexual abuse by priests under his supervision in a vast scandal that has cost the church untold credibility and more than $1 billion in legal settlements. Since his papacy began in 2005, Benedict has also tangled with Muslims and drawn criticism for revoking the excommunication of four schismatic bishops, one of whom had denied the scope of the Holocaust in an interview broadcast worldwide before the pope’s announcement. Asked how he would handle a case in which the message was as much an issue as the medium, Mr. Burke said, “I think at that point you say, ‘We have a train wreck coming here.’ ” He added, “I don’t have an answer for you on how I’d stop the train, but I’d try.” Mr. Burke will have to contend with members of an Italian Vatican hierarchy whose most common defense strategy is blaming the media. In an interview last week with Famiglia Cristiana, an Italian Catholic weekly, the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, accused the press of “imitating Dan Brown,” the author of “The Da Vinci Code” and other best sellers, in its coverage of the “Vatileaks” scandal. A graduate of Columbia University and Columbia Journalism School, Mr. Burke worked for a decade as Time magazine’s correspondent in Rome before moving to Fox News in 2001, where he covered the death of Pope John Paul II and the election of Benedict, and also traveled around Europe and the Middle East for the network. Like Cardinal Dolan, Mr. Burke is a native of St. Louis. He said that he had met with Cardinal Dolan in New York in late May, and he did not rule out that being known by the cardinal might have helped him get hired. Affable and easygoing, with an all-American air in a baroque culture, Mr. Burke is a numerary in Opus Dei, which means, he said, that he is celibate and gives most of his income to the movement. He is the second Opus Dei member to take on a crucial role dealing with Vatican communications. The first was Joaquín Navarro-Valls, a psychologist and journalist who, as the Vatican spokesman under John Paul, was known for his skillful efforts to shape John Paul’s image in the media and the world. Vatican experts said that Mr. Burke’s hiring could be seen as an implicit rebuke to the Vatican spokesman, Father Lombardi, a Jesuit priest who is also the director of Vatican Radio and has struggled to contend with the multiple scandals on Pope Benedict’s watch. Mr. Burke will answer directly to the Vatican’s third-ranking official, Archbishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu, the deputy to Cardinal Bertone. He will also work closely with Msgr. Peter Wells, an Oklahoman who as Archbishop Becciu’s deputy has taken an active role in improving the Vatican’s communications in the face of recent scandals. “For a global institution with a billion followers worldwide, let’s just say the press operation is locally understaffed,” he said. For his part, Father Lombardi said he welcomed Mr. Burke’s arrival, which he said was aimed at “integrating” communications between the Secretariat of State and other Vatican communications organs, including Vatican Radio and the newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. “I am not going to be a power guy,” Mr. Burke said. “I’m not going to be making the decisions. But I certainly hope to be sitting at the table when those decisions are made. I have the sense that this is not going to be easy. This is tough stuff.”
|
Roman Catholic Church;Greg Burke;Benedict XVI;News and News Media;Priests;Vatican City;Opus Dei;Burke Greg
|
ny0269320
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2016/04/17
|
Where the Abused, and Their Pets, Can Be Safe
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Ms. H decided she had to move out of her mother’s apartment last spring after her drug-addicted sister held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her. She packed up her stuff and her 6-year-old son and called a domestic violence hotline. When the hotline worker asked if she had a safe place to leave her cat, Ms. H froze. “My mother is telling me, ‘If you say you have to bring the cat with you, they’re going to say no,’” Ms. H said. Until very recently, pet owners who were abused invariably had to choose between staying with their abusers or leaving without their pets, because virtually no domestic violence shelters allowed pets. This bind can prove disastrous: Abusers use pets to control their victims. In 2014, a woman in Queens was choked and stomped to death by her boyfriend after she went home to protect her dog. In January, a man in Queens was charged with killing his girlfriend’s dog after she said she was leaving. More than two-thirds of battered women in one survey said their abusers had harmed or threatened their pets. But there is a growing understanding of how pets become pawns in the cycle of domestic violence. There are now about two dozen shelters nationwide that let pets live with residents, advocates say, and about 100 more that provide on-site kennels — still just a fraction of the total. In 2013, a nonprofit called the Urban Resource Institute opened the first shelter in New York City that lets domestic violence victims live with their pets. “Pets are members of the family, and no one, especially victims of domestic violence, should have to make the impossible decision to leave their pets behind during times of crisis,” said Nathaniel Fields, the organization’s president. But the institute has only 27 apartments in its program, called UriPals (for People and Animals Living Safely). The units are the only animal-friendly housing in a citywide domestic violence shelter system that serves about 9,000 people a year. And when Ms. H (the name she and the shelter officials requested be used to protect her anonymity because she is a victim of domestic violence) and her son moved into the U.R.I. shelter in Brooklyn last May, there were no vacancies for pets. So the cat stayed behind at the apartment of Ms. H’s mother in Manhattan, where Ms. H had sought refuge from an abusive boyfriend. Image An Urban Resource Institute shelter in Brooklyn has a backyard dog run where residents’ pets can play. Credit Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times It was a bad situation. Ms. H’s sister, the cat’s original owner, had long since stopped taking care of her. The cat herself had gone from sweet pet to nasty recluse, hiding most of the time and lashing out with her claws when approached. After Ms. H left, things got worse. Her sister pulled a knife on her mother and was briefly jailed. Her mother fled to the Dominican Republic. Another sister came by once a day to feed the cat. Then Ms. H got a phone call from a man to whom her sister apparently owed money. “He said, ‘We don’t see you here, but we know how to hurt you, and if you don’t let her come back to us you’re going to pay for it,’” she said. “I thought ‘Oh, my God, they’re going to go into the apartment, they’re going to kill my cat.’” A couple of days later, Ms. H, an effusive woman in her 30s who worked as a coordinator for a health-benefits company, went to check on the cat (whom she referred to as Midnight in an interview for this article). The apartment was padlocked. She got the police to let her in. The place had been trashed. Furniture was overturned. Doors were broken down. “I call her — ‘Midnight! Midnight!’ Nothing,” she said. Ms. H was devastated. But three days later, she found her cat at the city animal shelter in East Harlem. “As I’m turning around, all I hear is ‘Meow, meow, meow.’ She hears me!” After boarding with the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals , the cat was finally able to join Ms. H and her son in July in a spacious, sunny suite in the same institute shelter behind a door that says “Pet Friendly Apartment.” In a safe, stable environment, it is not just Ms. H who has found a new life. The cat has, too. Last summer, Ms. H’s father died, and she was surprised to find the slinky black cat who had kept her distance coming out to comfort her. “When I rested on the couch, she came and put her head on my thigh,” Ms. H said. “She looked up at me, like she was saying, ‘It’s O.K.’ This cat was taking care of me.” One afternoon last month, Ms. H led a visitor into her apartment. “Ooh, baby, Mommy’s here!” she called. The cat was curled up on the bed. Ms. H scooped her up. “She’s so sweet.” The cat ate a few treats from her hand. Since UriPals started, it has housed more than 40 families and over 60 pets, mostly cats and dogs but also turtles. There is a dog run in the back, built with a grant from Purina. “When you’re living in a domestic violence shelter it can be complicated when you walk your dog,” said Abby Tuller, senior director of domestic violence programs for the institute. “You meet other people with dogs on the street and they say, ‘Oh, you’re new to the community, when did you move here, where do you live?’ We wanted to give people a place where they could be outside with their dog but within our security.” Jasmin Rivera, a former college history instructor, spent nearly two years at the Brooklyn shelter after fleeing a partner who broke her ankle in the course of a two-hour assault witnessed by her two terrified Shih Tzus. “I needed a place where I could heal and the dogs could heal,” said Ms. Rivera, 41. “They showed me the dog park and all the help they give you, and I said, ‘Oh, my God, this is everything I need.’ Because it’s not just me that went though it. My dogs went through it, too.”
|
Urban Resource Institute;Animal Abuse;Pet;Domestic violence;NYC;Dog
|
ny0274341
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2016/02/02
|
Brooklyn Suicide Is Third Hanging in City Holding Cells Since May
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The death of a man in a Brooklyn police station house on Sunday was the third time since May that someone had hanged himself in a New York Police Department holding cell, the authorities said. They identified the man as Serge Duthely, 28. An autopsy on Monday verified that the cause of Mr. Duthely’s death was hanging, said Julie Bolcer, a spokeswoman for the city’s medical examiner’s office. Ms. Bolcer said the office had ruled his death a suicide. On May 27, a 53-year-old robbery suspect hanged himself with a shirt in a holding cell at the 121st Precinct station house on Staten Island, the police said. Then, on Nov. 11, the police said a 49-year-old robbery suspect hanged himself in a holding cell at the 49th Precinct station house in the Bronx, in a case that led to a sergeant’s being placed on modified assignment. No police officers or supervisors had been disciplined in the latest episode as of Monday afternoon, the police said. The police said Mr. Duthely was arrested on Sunday on a drunken-driving charge after they got a 911 call about a car accident in front of 9011 Avenue J, in the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn. Officers who arrived, shortly before 1 p.m., encountered Mr. Duthely, who the police said had been involved in a crash with another driver. They determined he was drunk and arrested him. Mr. Duthely was taken first to the department’s Intoxicated Driver Testing Unit, at the 78th Precinct station house, in Park Slope, the police said. Then he was taken to the 69th Precinct station house, they said. Once there he was placed inside a holding cell. Officers later discovered he had hanged himself using his T-shirt, the police said. He was found “unconscious and unresponsive inside the cell area” at 5:30 p.m., the police said. According to the Fire Department, a 911 call was received about Mr. Duthely nine minutes after the police reported finding him. The authorities said he was taken to Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center in cardiac arrest, where he died. Those who knew Mr. Duthely, who lived on a working-class block in Canarsie, said it was difficult to reconcile reports about his suicide with the man they knew. “He was a regular, cool person,” said a mechanic at a small auto shop where Mr. Duthely took his Nissan sedan for service. “I don’t see why he would kill himself.” A clerk at a nearby deli broke into tears when asked about Mr. Duthely, a regular customer. “He was a real nice person,” said the clerk, who declined to provide her name or say anything more, saying that she felt it was improper to do so without the permission of Mr. Duthely’s family. Wayne Chang, 26, said he was a friend of the clerk’s. He said her cousin was engaged to marry Mr. Duthely. “I find it quite strange,” Mr. Chang said of the episode. “People out here aren’t suicidal. I’d be furious to find out it’s not true. We’re going to do an investigation.” Residents who were approached on the block where Mr. Duthely lived would not comment. “Give us privacy! We need privacy!” a woman yelled out on Monday while walking toward Mr. Duthely’s home. A woman and a man who answered the door declined to speak, except to say that Mr. Duthely had relatives in Florida.
|
Suicide;Serge Duthely;NYPD;Driving Under the Influence DUI;Police;Brooklyn
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ny0033997
|
[
"sports",
"basketball"
] |
2013/12/30
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Thunder Win 2nd Straight Without Westbrook, Drubbing Rockets
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Kevin Durant had 33 points, 13 rebounds and 5 assists as the Oklahoma City Thunder won their second straight game without Russell Westbrook, 117-86 over the visiting Houston Rockets on Sunday night. Jeremy Lamb added a career-high 22 points and 5 assists for Oklahoma City, which at 25-5 has the league’s best record. The Thunder have won 12 of their last 13 games and 20 of their last 22. Reggie Jackson had 16 points and 8 assists starting in place of the All-Star point guard Westbrook, who had arthroscopic knee surgery on Friday. “It’s still tough not having him here, but we know what we have to do now,” Durant said. “We learned from our mistakes last time. Hopefully, we just keep getting better, and when he comes back, it’s kind of a seamless transition for us.” Aaron Brooks had 17 points for Houston. MAGIC 109, HAWKS 102 Arron Afflalo scored 21 points as Orlando beat Atlanta at home to achieve back-to-back victories for just the third time this season. Jeff Teague scored 22 points for the Hawks in their second game without the two-time All-Star Al Horford, who is out indefinitely with a torn right pectoral muscle. The Hawks were also coming off three grinding overtime games in a row, the latest of which was Saturday night at home against Charlotte. The Hawks made the game’s first basket, a 3-pointer, but then trailed until a spurt in the fourth quarter gave them a 3-point lead. But a 9-0 run midway through the final quarter put Orlando in control for good. SPURS 112, KINGS 104 Manu Ginobili scored 28 points, Tony Parker added 22, and Tim Duncan had 17 points and 13 rebounds to lead host San Antonio over Sacramento. Boris Diaw had 14 points and Tiago Splitter added 11 for San Antonio (24-7). DeMarcus Cousins had 29 points and 14 rebounds, Isaiah Thomas added 27 points, and Rudy Gay had 24 for Sacramento (9-20). Ginobili, Duncan and Parker scored San Antonio’s final 21 points in a 23-8 run to close the game. WARRIORS 108, CAVALIERS 104 Stephen Curry scored 29 points and made a clutch jumper with 13.5 seconds left as Golden State opened a long trip with its fifth straight victory, in overtime at Cleveland. Curry overcame a poor shooting performance after halftime and nearly recorded a triple-double, adding 11 assists and 9 rebounds. Curry was just 2 of 12 from the floor in the second half and in overtime. Kyrie Irving scored 27 for Cleveland, which dropped its fifth straight and lost its third tight game in a row. The Cavaliers lost by 3 in Boston on Saturday and by 2 in double overtime against Atlanta on Thursday. 76ERS 111, LAKERS 104 Thaddeus Young scored 7 of his 25 points in the fourth quarter, Evan Turner added 22 points, and visiting Philadelphia snapped its 13-game road losing streak. Spencer Hawes had 19 points and 8 rebounds for the Sixers, who hadn’t won away from Philadelphia since their road opener on Nov. 1.
|
Basketball;Orlando Magic;Atlanta Hawks;Arron Afflalo
|
ny0235120
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2010/01/21
|
G.O.P. Senate Victory Stuns Democrats
|
BOSTON — Scott Brown , a little-known Republican state senator, rode an old pickup truck and a growing sense of unease among independent voters to an extraordinary upset Tuesday night when he was elected to fill the Senate seat that was long held by Edward M. Kennedy in the overwhelmingly Democratic state of Massachusetts. By a decisive margin, Mr. Brown defeated Martha Coakley, the state’s attorney general, who had been considered a prohibitive favorite to win just over a month ago after she easily won the Democratic primary. With all precincts counted, Mr. Brown had 52 percent of the vote to Ms. Coakley’s 47 percent. “Tonight the independent voice of Massachusetts has spoken,” Mr. Brown told his cheering supporters in a victory speech, standing in front of a backdrop that said “The People’s Seat.” The election left Democrats in Congress scrambling to salvage a bill overhauling the nation’s health care system, which the late Mr. Kennedy had called “the cause of my life.” Mr. Brown has vowed to oppose the bill, and once he takes office the Democrats will no longer control the 60 votes in the Senate needed to overcome filibusters . There were immediate signs that the bill had become imperiled. House members indicated they would not quickly pass the bill the Senate approved last month. And after the results were announced, one centrist Democratic senator, Jim Webb of Virginia, called on Senate leaders to suspend any votes on the Democrats’ health care legislation until Mr. Brown is sworn into office. The election, he said, was a referendum on both health care and the integrity of the government process. Beyond the bill, the election of a man supported by the Tea Party movement also represented an unexpected reproach by many voters to President Obama after his first year in office, and struck fear into the hearts of Democratic lawmakers, who are already worried about their prospects in the midterm elections later this year. Mr. Brown was able to appeal to independents who were anxious about the economy and concerned about the direction taken by Democrats, now that they control both Beacon Hill and Washington. He rallied his supporters when he said, at the last debate, that he was not running for Mr. Kennedy’s seat but for “the people’s seat.” On Wednesday morning, he described himself as “someone who’s always been accountable and attentive and an independent thinker and voter, and looking at every single issue on its merits, whether it’s a good Democrat idea or a good Republican idea.” In an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show he cited taxation, government spending and terrorism along with health care as his priorities. “People are angry,” he said. “They’re tired of the backroom deals. They want transparency. They want good government. They want fairness. And they want people to start working and solving their problems.” Even so, his election was a sharp swing of the pendulum. The Senate seat held for nearly half a century by Mr. Kennedy, the liberal lion of the Senate, will now be held for the next two years by a Republican who has said he supports waterboarding as an interrogation technique for terrorism suspects, opposes a federal cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions and opposes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants unless they leave the country. In interviews on election day, even Democratic voters said they wanted the Obama administration to change direction. “I’m hoping that it gives a message to the country,” said Marlene Connolly, 73, of North Andover, a lifelong Democrat who said she cast her first vote for a Republican on Tuesday. “I think if Massachusetts puts Brown in, it’s a message of ‘that’s enough.’ Let’s stop the giveaways and let’s get jobs going.” Mr. Brown ran strongest in the suburbs of Boston, where the independent voters who make up a majority in Massachusetts turned out in large numbers. Ms. Coakley did best in urban areas, winning overwhelmingly in Boston and running ahead in Springfield, Worcester, Fall River and New Bedford, but her margins were not large enough to carry her to victory. In a concession speech before cheering supporters, Ms. Coakley acknowledged that voters were angry and said she had hoped to deal with the concerns. “Our mission continues, and our work goes on,” she said, echoing well-known remarks by Mr. Kennedy. “I am heartbroken at the result, as I know you are, and I know we will get up together tomorrow and continue this fight, even with this result tonight.” The crowd at Mr. Brown’s victory rally, upset by reports that Democrats might try to vote on the health care bill before he takes office, chanted, “Seat him now!” Mr. Brown, for his part, noted that the interim senator holding the seat had finished his work, and that he was ready to go to Washington “without delay.” And he effusively praised Mr. Kennedy as a big-hearted, tireless worker, and said that he hoped to prove a worthy successor to him. Ms. Coakley’s defeat, in a state that Mr. Obama won in 2008 with 62 percent of the vote, led to a round of finger-pointing among Democrats. Some criticized her tendency for gaffes — in a radio interview she offended Red Sox fans when she incorrectly suggested that Curt Schilling, a beloved former Red Sox pitcher, was a Yankee fan — while others criticized a lackluster, low-key campaign. Mr. Brown presented himself as a Massachusetts Everyman, featuring the pickup truck he drives around the state in his speeches and one of his television commercials, calling in to talk radio shows and campaigning with popular local sports figures. The implications of the election drew nationwide attention, and millions of dollars of outside spending, to the race. It transformed what many had expected to be a sleepy, low-turnout special election on a snowy day in January into a high-profile contest that appeared to draw more voters than expected to the polls. There were reports of traffic jams outside suburban polling stations, while other polling stations had to call for extra ballots. The late surge by Mr. Brown appeared to catch Democrats by surprise, causing them to scramble in the last week and a half of the campaign and hastily schedule an appearance by Mr. Obama with Ms. Coakley on Sunday afternoon. “Understand what’s at stake here, Massachusetts,” Mr. Obama said in his speech that day, repeatedly invoking Mr. Kennedy’s legacy. “It’s whether we’re going forwards or backwards.” He all but pleaded with voters to support Ms. Coakley, to preserve his agenda. As voters went to the polls, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, made it clear that the president was “not pleased” with the situation Ms. Coakley found herself in. “He was both surprised and frustrated,” Mr. Gibbs said. Although the race has riveted the nation largely because it was seen as contributing to the success or defeat of the health care bill, the potency of the issue for voters here was difficult to gauge. That is because Massachusetts already has near-universal health coverage, thanks to a law passed when Mitt Romney, a Republican, was governor. Thus Massachusetts is one of the few states where the benefits promised by the national bill were expected to have little effect on how many of its residents got coverage, making it an unlikely place for a referendum on the health care bill. On Capitol Hill, the fate of the health care legislation was highly uncertain as Democratic leaders quickly gathered to plot strategy in the wake of the Republican victory. Sentiment about how to proceed was mixed, with several lawmakers saying the House would not accept the Senate-passed plan. Top officials had said that approach was the party’s best alternative, and many members said they still believed it was crucial that Democrats pass a plan. “It is important for us to pass legislation,” said Representative Baron P. Hill, a conservative Democrat from Indiana.
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Brown Scott P;Senate;Cooper Michael;Elections;Politics and Government
|
ny0115215
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2012/11/23
|
Counts Confirm Results of Arizona Congressional Races
|
PHOENIX — It took until 15 days after the election, but all valid votes in Arizona have now been counted, including a record number of provisional ballots that fueled suspicions of voter suppression among Latino voters and raised questions about the integrity of the electoral process in the state. The tallies ended on Wednesday after officials gave the state’s most populous counties — Maricopa, which encompasses Phoenix, and Pima, which includes Tucson — permission to extend their counts past last Friday’s deadline so that they could get through the tens of thousands of provisional ballots cast in both places. Results announced on or just after election night remained unchanged, though it took days for three Congressional races to be decided. All of them were won by Democrats, who will replace Republicans as a majority in the state’s Congressional delegation come January. It was only on Wednesday afternoon that one of the winners, Kyrsten Sinema, was able to find out the number of votes that put her ahead of her opponent, Vernon Parker, a Republican, in the race for Arizona’s Ninth Congressional District — “10,251,” she announced on Twitter. “Thank you.” In an interview, the secretary of state, Ken Bennett, insisted “the system is not broken,” saying it took just as many days to count the votes four years ago as it did this time. Still, he acknowledged that the state could do better, joining a growing chorus of elected officials, civil rights advocates and community organizers calling for a faster way to tally the ballots. “Speed is not our No. 1 goal. Accuracy is our No. 1 goal. But that doesn’t mean we can’t think of a way to speed up the process,” Mr. Bennett said. Ideas and plenty of criticism have been floating around in meetings, e-mail and letters since the exact number of ballots left to be counted after the polls closed — 631,274 — came to be known. This week, Democrats called for a bipartisan investigation to scrutinize some of the issues raised by voters and campaigns, like the fragmentation of the election process — run independently by each of the state’s 15 counties — and the difficulties some voters who signed up to vote by mail seemed to have had in differentiating sample ballots from real ones. “We need the process to be better explained to voters, especially because we had so many new voters registered ahead of the election,” said Luis Heredia, the executive director of the state’s Democratic Party . In Maricopa County, which has roughly 60 percent of all registered voters in the state, 115,000 votes were cast through provisional ballots, a 15 percent increase from 2008, based on state records. Some 59,000 people who requested early ballots also went to the polls on Nov. 6, accounting for almost half of all provisional ballots cast. According to complaints logged by grass-roots groups working to mobilize Latino voters, many were first-time voters who signed up to get their ballots by mail and claimed not to have received them. The county’s recorder, Helen Purcell , said it was possible that some voters tossed their ballots, not knowing what they were. Advocates countered that the state should have run a more comprehensive voter-education campaign. Instead, there was confusion, they said, particularly with outreach to Spanish-speaking voters in Maricopa County, where leaflets listed the wrong date for the election. Petra Falcón, executive director of Promise Arizona , part of a coalition that says it has registered almost 35,000 voters this year, said that based on the complaints, language barriers also kept many Spanish-speaking voters in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods from understanding poll workers. “We need certain skill sets to address the changing electorate, and one of them is language,” Ms. Falcón said. She and her counterparts are nonetheless celebrating small victories. They supported Paul Penzone , a Democrat, who came closer than anyone to defeating Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a Republican elected to a sixth term. (Mr. Arpaio won by 80,639 votes.) Also, in a state where registered Republicans hold a plurality, Latino voters helped Richard H. Carmona , a Latino and a Democrat, stay competitive against his Republican opponent, Jeff Flake, in the race for the Senate seat held by Jon Kyl, a Republican who is retiring. (Mr. Carmona lost by fewer than 68,000 votes.) One of the questions that remains is whether provisional ballots were cast disproportionately by Latino and black voters. Though an analysis of where the provisional ballots came from could take some time, Ms. Falcón said, “Behind every provisional ballot was a determined voter who knew their vote needed to count that day.”
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Arizona;Maricopa County (Ariz);Voting and Voters;Elections House of Representatives;Hispanic-Americans
|
ny0179088
|
[
"business"
] |
2007/08/11
|
Judge Sides With Broadcom in Qualcomm Patent Fight
|
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 10 (Bloomberg News) — The Broadcom Corporation was tentatively awarded $39.3 million in damages and legal fees on Friday in a patent dispute with a rival chip maker, Qualcomm , after a federal judge upheld a jury verdict that Qualcomm had infringed three patents. The judge, James V. Selna of Federal District Court in Santa Ana, Calif., doubled the $19.64 million jury award because the infringement was intentional, he said in a tentative ruling posted Friday on the court’s Web site. “There is a spectrum of improper conduct for determining the amount to award,” the judge said in the ruling. “That Qualcomm’s conduct was not at the most egregious end of the spectrum does not mean that no enhanced damages were due.” Broadcom, best known as a maker of chips for television-set-top boxes, has been battling Qualcomm in federal and state court as well as before the United States International Trade Commission as it seeks to grab a bigger share of the market for chips used in “third generation” mobile phones, which offer fast Internet and multimedia features. Qualcomm is the second-largest maker of mobile phone chips, after Texas Instruments. A Broadcom spokesman, Bill Blanning, and a Qualcomm spokeswoman, Emily Gin Kilpatrick, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The ruling means that Broadcom, which is based in Irvine, Calif., has won three legal victories this week against Qualcomm, which is based in San Diego. On Tuesday, a federal judge in San Diego ordered Qualcomm to pay Broadcom’s legal costs in a patent case that Qualcomm lost in January. The judge found Qualcomm had concealed thousands of documents relevant to the case. On Monday, the Bush administration upheld a ban by the United States International Trade Commission on the importation of mobile phones containing the newest Qualcomm chips because they were found to infringe a Broadcom patent on a battery-saving feature.
|
Broadcom Corporation;Qualcomm Inc;Decisions and Verdicts;Inventions and Patents;Computer Chips;Cellular Telephones
|
ny0123393
|
[
"world",
"americas"
] |
2012/09/01
|
Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Election Challenge Is Rejected
|
MEXICO CITY — Mexico ’s highest election court voted Thursday night to dismiss legal challenges from the second-place leftist candidate seeking to overturn the results of the presidential election. All seven justices on the Federal Electoral Tribunal voted to dismiss accusations by Andrés Manuel López Obrador that the campaign of the winner, Enrique Peña Nieto , engaged in widespread vote-buying and campaign overspending for the election, which took place July 1. The court ruled Thursday night that Mr. López Obrador’s team had not submitted convincing proof of the accusations. Mr. Peña Nieto won 38 percent of the vote, followed by Mr. López Obrador, the candidate of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, at about 31 percent. Mr. Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party has denied wrongdoing.
|
Elections;Mexico;Pena Nieto Enrique;Lopez Obrador Andres Manuel;Institutional Revolutionary Party (Mexico)
|
ny0081983
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2015/10/04
|
Itching to Clinch an Advantage, the Yankees Falter Twice in a Day
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BALTIMORE — After a lackluster loss in the opener of a doubleheader, when the Yankees’ play matched the cold, dreary conditions, Alex Rodriguez channeled his inner Yogi Berra when asked about the mounting pressure to win home-field advantage for Tuesday’s wild-card playoff game. “Pressure’s running out,” Rodriguez said with a laugh. “There’s only two games left. It can’t mount anymore.” If pressure is running out, panic is steadily filling the room. The Yankees lost both games of a doubleheader to the Baltimore Orioles on Saturday, 9-2 and 4-3 , giving them five losses in six games and reducing the opportunities they have to ensure that they do not have to travel to Texas — to face either the Rangers or the Houston Astros — for the one-game playoff. For the game to be played in the Bronx, the Yankees must win Sunday, or the Astros must lose to the Arizona Diamondbacks, whom the Astros defeated, 6-2, on Saturday. “I think you’d have to have your head in the sand to not know what we need to do,” Manager Joe Girardi said. “We need to win.” After being routed in the first game, the Yankees put forth a more engaged effort in the second, but they were undone by the wildness of Dellin Betances, whose second wild pitch of the eighth inning brought home Paul Janish with the deciding run. The Yankees had a chance in the ninth when Rodriguez singled with one out, but pinch-runner Rico Noel — running on the first move of the left-hander Zach Britton — was picked off and thrown out at second. Britton then retired Chase Headley to end a taut game. The Yankees may have shrugged after losing the opener, but the atmosphere in the clubhouse was much tenser by the end of the night, after the team had gone a combined 3 for 19 with runners in scoring position in the two games. Image The Orioles’ Manny Machado tagged out the Yankees’ Brendan Ryan at third base when he attempted to advance on a single by Brett Gardner in the third inning. Credit Gail Burton/Associated Press “We’re not hitting with runners on base; we’re not pitching great,” Headley said. He added: “We’ve got to find a way to play better and not worry about what everybody else is doing. We’re frustrated because we’re not playing the way we want to.” If the Yankees have to travel to Houston, it would considerably raise the degree of difficulty of advancing. Not only has the Astros’ ace, Dallas Keuchel, thrown 16 shutout innings against the Yankees this season, he is 15-0 at home with a 1.46 E.R.A. Such concerns did not occupy the Yankees earlier. Perhaps it was the 53-degree weather or lingering effects of the celebration after Thursday’s playoff-clinching win or thoughts about Tuesday’s wild-card playoff. Whatever it was, the Yankees gave little indication during the matinee that they were interested in playing October baseball that had no grave consequences. It began with the lineup that Girardi sent out: Jose Pirela in right field, Austin Romine at first base and Chris Young batting cleanup. It continued with mental mistakes: Brendan Ryan was easily thrown out trying to race from first to third on a Brett Gardner single to left-center in the third inning, and the Orioles’ Gerardo Parra, who had four hits and three R.B.I., got such a jump in the bottom of the third that he stole third base without a throw. Then there were matters of execution. With the Orioles leading, 1-0, Young tripled to lead off the second, and the Yankees were in good position to draw even. But with the infield in, Headley popped out, John Ryan Murphy struck out, and Pirela popped out. There was more bad baseball — but it came after the game’s outcome was no longer in doubt, although Girardi was contesting it. He challenged a call that Chris Davis had been hit by a pitch in the seventh inning; the call was overturned, sending a runner back to third and depriving the Orioles of a 10th run. Girardi said before the game that he was interested in making certain that the wild-card playoff would be in the Bronx, but there were other interests, too. Catcher Brian McCann, right fielder Carlos Beltran, center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury, shortstop Didi Gregorius and first baseman Greg Bird — all left-handers except for the switch-hitting Beltran — were on the bench against the left-hander Wei-Yin Chen. In declaring that no regulars who started the first game, including Rodriguez, the designated hitter, would start the second game, Girardi said, “The one thing that’s probably more important than home-field advantage is probably the health of our players, and I’m not going to risk that.” Another calculation was to start Ivan Nova in the opener and hold Luis Severino for the second game. Girardi hoped that if the Yankees had won the first game, they could preserve Severino in case the wild-card game went into extra innings. But that plan quickly unraveled. Nova gave up eight hits and five runs and walked three in five and two-thirds innings, and it might have been far worse had a frigid day not turned two deep drives by Steve Pearce into warning-track outs rather than three-run homers. It was an unsatisfying finish to Nova’s uneven season. He returned from Tommy John surgery on June 24 with a flourish, holding Philadelphia to three hits in six and two-thirds scoreless innings, but he was dropped from the rotation in early September after being pounded by Toronto. When Nathan Eovaldi was hurt, he regained his spot but not any semblance of consistency. Asked to assess his season, Nova said, “Bad.” He added: “I lost 11 games. I didn’t pitch the way I would like to pitch.” His health, he said, was the only positive thing. He is 6-11 with an E.R.A. of 5.07. Severino also endured a rare rocky start. Nolan Reimold belted Severino’s second pitch for a home run to left field, and Pearce doubled in Davis, who had been hit by a pitch. But Severino settled in after that, allowing five hits in seven innings, although one was a solo shot by Manny Machado in the third, his 35th home run of the season. Both of the home runs Severino allowed were on fastballs. The Yankees climbed back from a 3-1 deficit in the fifth on a run-scoring double by Slade Heathcott and a bases-loaded walk by Beltran, but the Yankees could not deliver a pivotal blow. McCann, once ahead by 3-0 in the count, hit a fly ball to center. The missed opportunity proved costly when Janish led off the eighth with a bloop single to right, just out of the reach of the diving second baseman Rob Refsnyder. Janish advanced to second on a wild pitch, and after Betances struck out Reimold, Parra dropped a bunt down the third-base line against a shift, which let Janish advance to third. When Betances uncorked a fastball that went to the backstop, Janish scored. It was the first run Betances had given up against the Orioles since Aug. 13, 2014, a span of 13⅔ innings. As the clubhouse emptied, the coaches watched the final innings of the Astros’ game at Arizona. “You know, it’s kind of been like that all year,” Girardi said. “We’ve been up and down. We’ve always seemed to have bounced back when we need to bounce back. So we’ve got to do it tomorrow.”
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Baseball;Orioles;Yankees
|
ny0072280
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2015/03/01
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Colors of Mets Blend to Make Glove of Gold
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PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Several characteristics distinguished Juan Lagares’s outfield glove last season. It was orange with blue trim — Mets colors — along with a patch of black on the back. His son’s name, “J Lagares Jr.,” was stitched into the side. And inside the pocket, on the palm, the leather was worn and scuffed as if permanently bruised. This was Lagares’s tool of trade, the one he used to catch baseballs better than almost anyone else in the major leagues. For him, his glove was what a paintbrush is to a renowned artist, what a pair of Nikes were to Michael Jordan. Lagares used his glove to win two prestigious awards — a Gold Glove and a Fielding Bible. He used his glove to establish himself as perhaps the best defensive center fielder in baseball. Once a year, around this time, Lagares starts over with two new gloves supplied by Wilson. One glove will primarily be used during games, the other for practice. On Friday, two Wilson representatives arrived at Mets camp with the new pair. Lagares has worn Wilson leather for as long as he can remember, and about a dozen of Lagares’s teammates on the Mets’ 40-man roster are Wilson loyalists, too. One is David Wright, a two-time Gold Glove winner at third base. Wright, an established star and the team’s captain, has gotten to the point where Wilson allows him to design his own glove, the DW5. Image One of the gloves for Juan Lagares. Credit Ryan Stone for The New York Times Lagares, 25, is still building his reputation. The Mets signed him as a teenager out of the Dominican Republic. He is entering his third season with the team as a cornerstone, a young player whom they can build around. He is not designing his own glove, at least not yet. The glove he wore last year was the Wilson A2000 1799 SS. A version of it was first designed in the 1990s for Ryan Klesko, a major league outfielder who played for 16 years but did not win a Gold Glove . “It’s easy to break in,” Lagares said of the glove. “I feel comfortable with it.” Klesko’s legacy is that glove. It has become one of Wilson’s most popular models. No matter the glove, though, no matter the design or its weight, or color, it is what Lagares does with it that has propelled him to new heights in the game. Consider some metrics. Baseball Info Solutions , one of the sport’s most respected analytics outfits, evaluates outfielders on the number of plays they make in three areas — shallow, medium and deep. The company found that Lagares ranked among the top center fielders in all three categories. Perhaps more impressive, the company concluded that Lagares also saved 52 runs over the last two years, best among center fielders. As a rule of thumb, said John Dewan, the founder of Baseball Info, about 10 runs saved equal about one victory. Lagares’s defense alone, then, could be credited for about five Mets wins over the last two years, and he played center field for only about 68 percent of the Mets’ games in that period. Dewan said Lagares’s impact was comparable to 40 home runs in half a season. “He could go out there with no glove and still be pretty good,” Wright said. “You can’t teach the athleticism, the jumps and the reads that he gets. There’s not a glove out there that’s going to help him with that.” Image The Mets’ Juan Lagares, making a catch in April, saved 52 runs over the last two years, the best among center fielders, according to Baseball Info Solutions. Credit Mike Zarrilli/Getty Images Lagares’s glove represents him well, though. The bright colors match his startling plays. His teammates say he is fearless, that he will go after any ball. So he often enough ends up on televised highlights, making a diving catch or turning a home run into an out — and doing it all with that orange glove. Lagares selected the glove’s colors himself. One of his closest friends on the team, Wilmer Flores, said that’s his style. Lagares, he said, usually dresses well and looks cool, and his glove is no exception. “He has this quiet confidence,” said Ronny Reyes, the Mets’ coordinator of international operations. “He knows what he can do on the field. It’ll show, but not too often. He has that colored glove to be a little showy, but not too much.” On Friday, when Lagares picked up his two new gloves, a few teammates gathered around to admire them. The new gloves were a similar model to last year’s. Lagares chose a different version of the glove — a heavier, all-leather model — so he could get the color schemes just right. One is gunmetal gray and orange, and the other, the one is he will very likely use during games, is orange and blue on the pocket. Lagares, it should be noted, can do more than field. He hit .281 last season, 39 points higher than his rookie year, and started showing promise as a base stealer. As a defender, though, he is probably at the height of his powers right now. Because outfielders rely so much on speed, they tend to decline defensively as they age. A player’s speed generally peaks around age 23 or 24, Dewan said. Lagares turns 26 this month. But it should be a while before he slows down, and until then, who knows how many more Gold Gloves he might win? “Let’s see,” Lagares said the other day, smiling. “Maybe I’ll win another one. Or a couple more.” With a glove that is hard to miss: orange and blue, and gold.
|
Baseball;Juan Lagares;Wilson Sporting Goods;Mets
|
ny0098428
|
[
"sports",
"cycling"
] |
2015/06/26
|
U.S. Cyclists Fight to Spread Their Message: We’re Clean
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Geneva, Switzerland — In the wake of the Lance Armstrong doping scandal, a new generation of American cyclists led by Andrew Talansky and Tejay van Garderen, two of the United States’s top riders in the Tour de France, has made riding clean a rallying cry. In doing so, they hope to usher in a new era of American cycling and restore the public’s faith in their sport. “This current generation of American cyclists, we feel a responsibility to one another to do our jobs clean, to race clean, to be outspoken proponents of anti-doping, and to achieve the best results we can and then use that as a platform to show how far the movement for clean cycling has come,” says Talansky, 26, who finished 10th in the 2013 Tour de France but was forced to pull out of last year’s race due to injuries sustained in crashes during the opening week. In the post-Armstrong age, winning back the public’s faith is a tall order. After years of vehemently claiming to ride clean, in October 2012 Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life from Olympic sports for systematic doping. Some are trying, though, to change cycling’s image. Talansky, who began riding professionally in 2008, rides for Cannondale-Garmin, a team outspoken about its anti-doping stance. Founded by Jonathan Vaughters, a retired professional cyclist, Tour de France veteran and former teammate of Armstrong, the team was born of Vaughter’s own experience — and frustration — with doping, which he said was “100 percent prevalent” at the top level of the sport when he starting racing two decades ago and was necessary to keep his job as a professional cyclist. The decision to dope never sat well with Vaughters, who quit racing in 2003. “I retired at 29, at the peak of my career, because I was so exhausted by having to justify that decision in my head,” he says. Shortly after retiring, Vaughters launched a developmental cycling squad dedicated to ethical competition. That team has since evolved into Cannondale-Garmin. Early on, the team implemented a stringent doping policy that remains today. If a rider is caught doping, the whole team will be fired. In 2007, his team voluntarily adopted the biological passport, an advanced blood-screening program, which the Union Cycliste Internationale, or U.C.I., cycling’s governing body, implemented the following year. Today, Cannondale-Garmin performs additional screening for performance-enhancing drugs, beyond what is required. In an effort to be transparent, Cannondale-Garmin has published the blood reports of its riders who have won races, including those of Ryder Hesjedal, who won the 2012 Giro d’Italia, one of cycling’s most prestigious races. In its 12-year history, Cannondale-Garmin has never had anyone test positive for doping while on the team and has managed to place six riders in the top ten of the Tour de France. “Yes, you can be competitive now, without doping. That’s 180 degrees different than when I was racing,” said Vaughters. That is not to say that the team has escaped any doping controversy. After being outed in 2013 for using performance-enhancing drugs by the former cyclist Michael Rasmussen, Hesjedal admitted to using erythropoietin, or EPO, as a professional mountain biker in 2003 and 2004, about a year before he switched to road cycling. In 2011, Vaughters fired the team director Matt White after it was revealed that White had referred one of the team’s riders to Luis Garcia del Moral, a Spanish doctor implicated in the Armstrong doping case . Cannondale-Garmin is not the first team to try to win the public’s confidence with transparency. Armstrong made public his 2009 Tour de France blood results, which were later found to show signs of blood doping. After years of broken promises and doping scandals throughout the sport, Talansky and van Garderen, 26, know that winning back the public’s trust will be tough. Van Garderen, who rides for BMC Racing, points to advances in testing, which have made it harder for cheats to avoid detection. Today, cyclists are screened by the U.C.I. for 247 substances, 82 more than in Armstrong’s heyday, through nine different methods of analysis, three more than in 2005, when Armstrong last won the Tour de France. “Nowadays, the testing has gotten so much better and so stringent that it’s physically impossible to get away with anything, which is excellent,” says van Garderen, who finished second in this year’s Critérium Dauphiné, an important tuneup for the Tour de France, which kicks off on July 4. However, the Cycling Independent Reform Commission findings published in March are less optimistic and more ambiguous, reporting that 20 to 90 percent of the professional peloton is still doping and implying that the cheaters may still be one step ahead of the UCI. But Talansky and van Garderen believe that they are racing against a clean peloton and suggest that the proof lies in the results. “Just look at the speeds of the climbs we’re doing now compared to ten years ago,” says van Garderen. “The whole peloton has slowed down and we have better bikes, better equipment, lighter you-name-it and we can’t go anywhere near the times these guys did in the past.” However, van Garderen would like to see stricter rules around therapeutic use exemptions, or T.U.E., a special permission issued to athletes that allows them to use a banned substance, like corticosteroids, for medical reasons. “People kind of abuse this T.U.E. process,” he says. Another performance-boosting tactic that the report noted is micro-dosing, a practice in which riders use small levels of banned substances that aren’t detectable by the biologic passport screening. Though it is impossible to know exactly what the current state of doping in cycling is, many experts and athletes believe the tide has started to turn. “Where we are today is a million miles away from where we were in the late nineties and early to mid 2000s,” says Jaimie Fuller, a sports ethics campaigner and the chairmen of Skins, a sportswear manufacturer. “I’m confident in saying is that there are no longer any teamwide or conspiracy-type doping programs, but that’s not to say that individuals aren’t doing whatever they can to try to get a little bit of a performance boost.” Instead of being angry with Armstrong for damaging their sport, van Garderen and Talansky see opportunity in Armstrong’s legacy. Van Garderen trained briefly with the disgraced cyclist last fall and sees no conflict of interest in doing so. “I’m very thankful I get to race now, that I came into the sport when I did, onto the team that I did, and that moving forward, I’ll never have to face those choices that a previous generation of American cyclists did,” says Talansky. “Their choices kind of paved the way for me to be able to race in this clean era of cycling.”
|
Road Cycling;International Cycling Union;Tour de France;Lance Armstrong;Doping
|
ny0027707
|
[
"business",
"media"
] |
2013/01/21
|
From Amsterdam, a Lodging Web Site Invades the U.S. - Advertising
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CAMPAIGNS for Web sites that offer lodging reservations usually feature colorful characters, perhaps to counter the prosaic, transactional nature of e-commerce. Among them are the Roaming Gnome, for Travelocity ; the Negotiator, played by William Shatner , for Priceline; hordes of animated travelers , for Hotels.com; and a man in a crash helmet delivering Price Assurance checks , for Orbitz. A competitive Web site is taking a decidedly different tack as it begins its first image campaign, as part of efforts to raise its brand’s profile among American travelers. The campaign, which is to start on Tuesday, promotes Booking.com, a unit of the Priceline Group that operates separately from Priceline. The Booking.com campaign, with an initial budget estimated at more than $35 million, will include commercials on television and in movie theaters as well as ads online. The campaign is being created by the Amsterdam office of Wieden & Kennedy, which was chosen after an unpublicized review that also included agencies based in cities like New York and San Francisco. The Priceline Group classifies Booking.com, founded in 1996, as one of its international brands, along with Agoda.com and Rentalcars.com. Booking.com, based in Amsterdam, has been offering accommodations at American hotels, motels and resorts for the last six years, said Paul J. Hennessy, chief marketing officer at Booking.com. “It’s time for our coming-out party,” Mr. Hennessy said in an interview on Friday in Midtown Manhattan as he offered a preview of the campaign. “The U.S. is one of the largest travel markets in the world and we see great potential there.” It is also one of the most competitive travel markets, Mr. Hennessy acknowledged. But, he said, he believes there is an opening for Booking.com because the lodging Web sites that are familiar to Americans have “commoditized the market” by “all pounding the same message of low-price guarantees and best prices.” “American customers are ready for a new hero, if you will,” Mr. Hennessy said, “and Booking.com could be that hero.” To underline that, the campaign will celebrate what Mark Bernath, the executive creative director at Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam who joined Mr. Hennessy for the interview, called “the delight of right” — that is, the potential moment of truth when a traveler who booked a room online “opens the door and has a first look” and is pleased or relieved, rather than dismayed or disgusted, by what he or she finds inside. “The pressure on the booker can be quite intense,” Mr. Bernath said, “so anyone who puts the best tools into your hands” to produce a positive outcome will be perceived “as a good partner to have.” That is perhaps more relevant in the United States than in Europe, said Mr. Bernath, an American who has worked at Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam since 2007. “The plight of the American traveler,” Mr. Bernath said, is that the number of days of vacation “is less than in Europe.” Image The campaign also introduces the catch phrase “Booking dot yeah.” As a result, “it’s more crucial, if you have two weeks instead of four or five, to nail it,” he added, when booking accommodations. That is brought to life in the 60-second commercial that will serve to introduce the campaign. The spot takes a tongue-in-cheek approach, presenting a family of five on vacation in the dramatic way that NFL Films covers a Super Bowl. “This vacation has been a year in the planning,” a stentorian narrator says as the family walks, in slow motion, down a hotel hallway, and “hinges on” the reaction to the room. “The door opens,” the narrator says. “You hold your breath. And then you realize, you got it right. You got it Booking right.” The narrator encourages travelers to “bask in the Booking glory” and concludes: “Booking.com. Booking.yeah”; he pronounces the latter “Booking-dot-yeah.” The phrase “Booking.yeah” appears on screen along with the theme of the campaign, “Planet earth’s No. 1 accommodation site.” Using the brand name as an adjective and rendering it as “Booking.yeah” is an example of a marketing tactic known as nameonics, which ties a brand name to a product quality or benefit. Other examples include “Zestfully clean,” for Zest soap; “Krogering,” for the Kroger supermarket chain; and, in a campaign created last summer by Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam, “Power through,” for Powerade sports beverages . “In a lot of advertising in the category, there are beautiful places, beautiful people,” Mr. Hennessy said, “or just giving you a number,” referring to the price of the room being booked, “but no connection to the brand.” By contrast, the brand is an intrinsic part of the Booking.com campaign, he added. Other, shorter commercials will make similar points. One spot, which shows two gleeful women bumping chests, declares, “Behold the power of a well-booked accommodation.” In another spot, which asserts that “when you get it right,” “you’ll never want to leave,” a man is depicted having to drag a woman from their room to get her to check out. And a spot about using Booking.com on mobile devices promises that the Web site means “the odds are in your favor,” in a moment that seems to mash up “The Hunger Games” and “National Lampoon’s Vacation.” The media buying for the campaign is being handled by the New York office of Wieden & Kennedy. As the campaign runs in the United States, Mr. Hennessy said, executives at Booking.com will “see how it resonates and see how customers react to it.” Based on that reaction, the ads could be expanded into markets like Europe, he added, where Booking.com is far better known.
|
Online advertising;Travel,Tourism;Computers and the Internet;Tech Industry;advertising,marketing;Priceline;Booking.com
|
ny0137851
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2008/05/31
|
Columbia Takes Early Lead, but Loses N.C.A.A. Opener
|
CONWAY, S.C. — Mike Malfettone hit his first home run of the season Friday in the third inning of a scoreless game in N.C.A.A. Division I regional play here. Columbia, which had not played in the tournament since 1976, was leading Coastal Carolina, the top seed in this double-elimination regional. “That was an unreal experience,” Malfettone, a senior outfielder, said. “I felt like I was flying around the bases.” Then came reality. Coastal Carolina tied the score in the third inning, scored three runs in the fifth and added six more in the eighth to win, 10-2, at Charles Watson Stadium. Columbia (22-29) fell into the losers’ bracket and will face East Carolina, a 16-3 loser to Alabama, at 1 p.m. Saturday. Columbia starter Bill Purdy (4-5) gave up four earned runs and eight hits in four and two-thirds innings. For Coastal Carolina (48-12), the right-hander Nick McCully (10-2) allowed two hits in eight innings and retired the final 17 batters he faced. “I’m just glad it’s over,” Coastal Carolina Coach Gary Gilmore said. “I’ve been asked 5,000 times, Are we overlooking Columbia? But the hardest thing to do is realize you have to make it happen.” The Lions arrived at this regional after their best season in years, a huge step in the rebuilding project led by their third-year coach, Brett Boretti. “I just know they are a smart school, that’s about it,” Joey Haug, a Coastal Carolina reliever, said with a laugh. “Smarter than our school.” Columbia was 5-15 in the Ivy League the season before Boretti arrived after five seasons at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania. This season, the Lions won their first Ivy title since 1977 with a program-record 15 conference wins. Boretti said he thought his players handled themselves well in the unfamiliar setting of the N.C.A.A. tournament, managing their emotions and focusing on the game. “It wasn’t like, Hey, we have a chance to win,” he said. “We showed up thinking we have a chance to win.” It appeared that way for four innings. Purdy threw his fastball for strikes, mixed in a slider and held Coastal Carolina, the Big South Conference’s most potent offense, to one run. “He carved us up,” Gilmore said. But Coastal Carolina went ahead in the bottom of the fifth. Dock Doyle’s run-scoring single broke a 1-1 tie. Another run scored on a wild pitch, and David Anderson homered for a 4-1 lead. McCully never allowed the Lions a chance to come back. “He was throwing harder than we were used to,” said Malfettone, whose home run was only the second of his career. “We hit a lot of hard balls at guys, but you can’t help that.” Columbia managed only five hits, and with the lack of offense, Coastal Carolina was too much. “They forced us to have to play near-perfect baseball to get a win,” Boretti said, “and it’s tough to do that against a team like Coastal.”
|
Columbia University;Baseball;Coastal Carolina;College Athletics
|
ny0136112
|
[
"sports",
"basketball"
] |
2008/04/15
|
Fans Eat Free and Chew Out Thomas
|
The Knicks thanked their fans — their irrationally loyal, perpetually tormented fans — with free hot dogs, popcorn, pizza and pretzels Monday at Madison Square Garden. They called it fan appreciation night, although the fans surely would have traded the food for a higher-ticket item, namely the termination of Isiah Thomas . That moment is probably not far off. But for one more night, Thomas roamed the Garden hallways, made optimistic speeches and watched his team try to regain some self-respect against the Boston Celtics . Boos greeted Thomas before tipoff, and they probably would have been louder if everyone’s mouths were not stuffed with free eats. Yet there was no escaping the reality of the evening, the Knicks’ last home game of the season. The season ends Wednesday at Indiana, and Thomas’s Knicks reign will almost certainly end with it. Donnie Walsh , who recently replaced Thomas as team president, is expected to decide Thomas’s fate as coach soon. Thomas betrayed no particular sentiments about his presumed last home game, saying, “I haven’t really let my mind go to that place.” He was still smiling broadly and speaking hopefully of the Knicks’ future, even if it probably will not include him on the bench. But he acknowledged for the first time — without specifically saying so — that his job was on the line. “In sports, we’re conditioned to live in a place of uncertainty sometimes,” he said. “When you’re in that place of uncertainty, you learn to set with it and rest with it until certainty happens. I’m O.K. with where we are.” Walsh has given no hints about his decision on Thomas, other than to say there is a decision to make. The unsolicited advice came throughout the evening, as “Fire Isiah” chants burst from various sections of the arena. The Celtics’ presence was appropriate. It was their record-setting 104-59 rout of the Knicks on Nov. 29 that signaled just how disastrous the season would become. The Knicks had seven losing streaks of at least five games, including two seven-game skids and two eight-game skids. Along the way, Thomas feuded with Stephon Marbury and lost the faith of most of the locker room. Zach Randolph, Thomas’s prized off-season acquisition, clashed badly with the rest of the lineup. Eddy Curry, Thomas’s prized acquisition from 2005, regressed badly alongside Randolph. David Lee, the most popular Knick and a rare bright spot this season, was, not coincidentally, chosen to address the crowd before the game. Lee took the microphone, thanked the fans for their support and said, apologetically, “I know it hasn’t gone the way any of us has wanted it to.” Lee promised that the Knicks would “continue to work hard” in the future. People applauded politely, if not exuberantly, then went back to their pizza. In the relative safety of the Garden multipurpose room, Thomas also thanked the fans in his pregame meeting with reporters. Indeed, Thomas thanked them profusely — in contrast to the many times he has chastised fans for their hostility — but then, as is his habit, Thomas strayed into hyperbole. “When I first got here, people didn’t come to the games,” said Thomas, who took over as president in December 2003. Although Thomas inherited an aging and irrelevant team, the Knicks were still a strong draw before he arrived. They averaged 19,012 fans a game — 96.2 percent of capacity — in 2002-3. Under Thomas, attendance inched upward, to 19,516 in 2004-5. But it dipped to 18,931 in 2005-6, the lowest mark in 14 years. Somehow, the building filled up again this season. The Knicks sold out 21 of 41 games, including 8 of their last 10. They averaged 19,116 for the season, ninth best in the league. So the Knicks were a league leader in at least one category — tickets sold per victory. The Knicks (23-58) have the fifth worst record in the N.B.A. Boston occupied a similarly hopeless place at this point last year. But the Celtics traded a combination of lottery picks and prospects to acquire Ray Allen from Seattle and Kevin Garnett from Minnesota. Now the Celtics (65-16) are finishing off the greatest single-season turnaround in league history and are a favorite to win the championship. While Allen, Garnett and Paul Pierce rested Monday, the Knicks struggled against their backups in a 99-93 loss. Walsh built many great teams during his two decades in Indiana, but the Knicks do not have the assets to duplicate the Celtics’ incredible feat. “Mr. Walsh has a tough job, to come in and try to turn this thing around, and try to do right by the fans and do what’s best for the organization,” Curry said. “I wouldn’t want to be in that situation.” Some players will surely be gone by fall. Some notable fans have already left. Over the weekend, Tom Brokaw, the former NBC News anchor, said he had canceled his season tickets. “I was in the front row for a while and then three rows back, but not next year,” Brokaw told Jim Gray on an XM Radio broadcast. “I just think that they have failed their obligation to the city.” So now it is up to Walsh and a bunch of Ping-Pong balls. Commissioner David Stern seemed to have the Knicks in mind when he spoke earlier in the day about the resurgence of two other marquee franchises, the Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers. “Continued good management can turn around the fortunes of franchises relatively fast,” Stern said, “faster than we think.” The final minute of the game sounded like so many others, with “Fire Isiah” chants and boos. REBOUNDS Wilson Chandler had to be helped off the court after injuring his left knee in the third quarter. The team called it a sprain and said X-rays were negative. Chandler left on crutches and is expected to have a magnetic resonance imaging exam Tuesday.
|
New York Knicks;Basketball;Thomas Isiah;Boston Celtics;Walsh Donnie
|
ny0213153
|
[
"business"
] |
2010/03/02
|
Nasdaq and S.&P. Turn Positive for the Year
|
Wall Street reached a milestone on Monday that had eluded it for some time: two major stock indexes crossed into positive territory for the year. After spending weeks in a seesaw pattern, the Nasdaq composite index and Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index ended the day slightly above their Dec. 31 levels. That gave hope to investors seeking to re-establish an upward momentum for the markets. The indexes had spent much of 2010 searching for direction. At the start of the new year, the energy of last year’s rally seemed poised to endure. Then came a debt crisis in Greece, resurrecting concerns about the global recovery. Soon, the market was rubbing against its lowest levels in months. On Monday, hints that France and Germany would play a central role in a bailout for Greece helped push the two indexes over the flat line for the year, as investors became more confident that a crisis would be averted. The S.& P. 500 climbed 11.22 points, or 1.02 percent, to 1,115.71 — 0.05 percent higher for the year. The Nasdaq surged 35.31 points, or 1.58 percent, to 2,273.57 — 0.19 percent higher for 2010. The burst of enthusiasm was not enough, however, to lead the Dow Jones industrial average above its Dec. 31 close. Though it rose 78.53 points, or 0.76 percent, it ended at 10,403.79 — about 25 points shy of the break-even threshold for the year. Investors seemed reassured by reports that the more affluent members of the European Union would offer loan guarantees on Greek debt as the country prepared for a bond sale to finance its ballooning debt. Adding to the optimism, a report showed that Americans opened their pocketbooks a little wider in January. The dollar rose, closing at $1.3574 to the euro , breaking its pattern of weakening in the face of a growing appetite for risk. Brewing debt woes abroad helped bolster the dollar ’s appeal. Investors worry that looming elections in several countries, including Japan and Britain, could derail efforts to trim deficits. The British pound touched its lowest level since May on Monday after a poll showed no party was on track to gain a majority of seats in Parliament, stoking fears of inaction. “If these countries don’t get their fiscal houses in order soon, investors will continue to be nervous,” said Rebecca Patterson, who specializes in foreign exchange markets for JPMorgan Private Bank. On Wall Street, reassurances of a rescue plan helped quell fears that a debt crisis across Europe would slow a global recovery. David A. Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist for Gluskin Sheff & Associates, said investors were momentarily encouraged by a sense that European governments would not be allowed to default. But he said the underlying concerns about swelling deficits remained. “This a reminder that all these debt concerns left over from the bubble have not been fully resolved. There will be other flare-ups, ” Mr. Rosenberg said. Signs that Americans were spending again helped draw some attention away from debt worries. Consumer spending rose 0.5 percent in January, more than analysts had forecast, though incomes rose just 0.1 percent. There were hopes that the private sector would benefit from merger deals. Prudential of Britain said Monday that it had agreed to buy American International Group’s life insurance business in Asia for $35.5 billion. Shares of A.I.G. rose 4 percent.
|
United States Economy;Stocks and Bonds
|
ny0121511
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2012/09/03
|
Despite Eviction, Settlers of West Bank Outpost Hold Fast to Mission
|
MIGRON, West Bank — The police officers went door to door on Sunday morning in this hilltop settlement outpost east of the West Bank city of Ramallah, handing out final eviction notices and waiting patiently for residents to come out. One young couple, the Altheims, left quietly, walking down the short path from their mobile home to their car, with a tattered Israeli flag flying from the front window, and then drove off. The police said they could hear a television on in the neighboring trailer, but when the officers knocked, nobody answered. By early afternoon, however, all 47 of the outpost’s families had gone, the police said, well ahead of Tuesday’s court-ordered deadline. The evacuation of this outpost, one of the largest and most established of the wildcat Jewish settlements set up in the West Bank without Israeli government permits over the past 15 years, but often with government infrastructure aid, sent a mixed message about the future of settlements. The evacuation was ordered by Israel ’s Supreme Court because the outpost had been built on privately owned Palestinian land. Coming years after the Israeli military issued demolition orders against all the structures, it was seen by many as a modest victory for the rule of law. Peace Now, the antisettlement advocacy group that petitioned the court together with several of the Palestinian landowners, said it viewed the final ruling as “a significant achievement for all those who believe in the two-state solution and in democracy.” But Migron is also a story of the settlers’ persistence and ultimate staying power. Although Migron’s residents may have lost after six years of legal proceedings, state procrastination and efforts by supporters to purchase the land retroactively, the 47 families will be moving only a short distance down the hill. There, the state has built a temporary site of small, prefabricated houses in neat rows, at a cost of millions of dollars, to accommodate the families, at least until a permanent neighborhood of hundreds of new homes is completed in the nearby, state-sanctioned settlement of Adam. “The personal pain is terrible,” said Pinchas Wallerstein, a settler leader, as he watched the evacuation. “But history showed that the evacuation of Sebastia led to the establishment of Elon Moreh,” a reference to the roots of the early spurt of the settler movement in the 1970s. “In the end,” he added, “many Migrons will arise.” Most of the world views all Israeli settlements in the West Bank as being in violation of international law, built on land that the Palestinians envisage as part of a future state alongside Israel. But Israel makes a distinction between the 120 or so formal settlements built with official approval and the 100 or so unauthorized outposts in the West Bank, territory it captured from Jordan in the 1967 war. Israel has pledged in the past, under American pressure, to remove many of the outposts, but until Migron it had mainly dismantled mere dots of settlement consisting of shacks inhabited by teenagers. In June, 30 families were peacefully evacuated from five buildings in a disputed neighborhood of the Beit El settlement, just north of Ramallah, after Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that they, too, were built on private Palestinian land. The evacuation was smoothed by government promises to build hundreds of new settler homes. A few outposts have been retroactively authorized . The Migron case has divided settlers over how far to defy the authorities, or whether to cooperate with them and try to co-opt them. Posters on the roadside depicting the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, pronounced, “Bibi is weak and not trustworthy; a right-wing leader needed urgently.” Up until Sunday morning even the settlers of Migron had reached no consensus on how to act, and most of them remained tight-lipped, refusing to speak to reporters about their impending move. The residents view settling Migron as part of a mission ordained by the Bible. A sign at the gate proclaims that the foundations of Migron were put down in 1999 out of a “right and duty to be part of a historic-divine process of returning to Zion, on the way up to Jerusalem.” Elisheva Razvag, 27, a dance teacher and the mother of two, moved here with her family from Jerusalem three years ago. “It’s a great community,” she said a few days ago, as toddlers played in the outposts’ kindergartens and the residents tried to convey a sense of business as usual. “It seemed like a good place to raise children.” Once the evacuation had been ordered, she said, her purpose for staying went beyond the personal. “This place is important for the whole country, for security,” she said, noting that it commanded a main West Bank artery. “Today,” she added, “it is a battle for justice.” Migron’s case has been in court since 2006. The government at the time pledged to evacuate the outpost “within months.” After years of delays and deals that fell through, the court rejected last-minute appeals by 30 of the families who argued last week that the new temporary site was not ready, and by the other 17 families, who said that the land on which their trailers stood had recently been purchased by Jews. The authenticity of the purchase is being checked by the authorities, but the court ruled that in any case, the buildings had been erected without any planning permits and were scheduled for demolition. On Sunday in Migron, the only disturbances were by right-wing activists who were not residents. They tried to barricade themselves in a couple of buildings until they were hauled out by the police. Dudu Asraf, a police spokesman at the scene, said that the important thing was “to let the families leave with dignity and at their own pace.” One woman carried a backpack to her car with essentials like a packet of diapers, leaving the contents of her house more or less intact, down to the box of cornflakes on top of the refrigerator. Most here refused to deal with the practicalities of moving to dispel any notion that they were leaving willingly. Washing hung outside one of the trailers, another token of peaceful protest and defiance, and children’s bicycles and toys lay scattered on the small lawns and paths. Ms. Razvag said she was home with her family when the police arrived at 8 a.m. “We got up and left,” she said, speaking by phone from a college in Ofra, another settlement, the first stop for many of the evacuees. Later, removal trucks and teams from the Defense Ministry would come to help pack the belongings that the families had left behind.
|
Palestinians;Israeli Settlements;West Bank;Peace Now;Israel
|
ny0178838
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2007/08/20
|
A Firehouse’s Grim Roster Adds Two Names From Blaze
|
The black and purple bunting rose again on the brick firehouse yesterday like a bruise. Again, there were pictures, the only faces at the firehouse that are ever smiling on days like this. Their fellow firefighters spoke in familiar phrases, as if from a script that they had down cold. For reasons unknown, the death of a firefighter has become a familiar event at the firehouse at Avenue of the Americas and West Houston Street in SoHo, the home to Engine 24 and Ladder 5 of Battalion 2. On Saturday afternoon, in a fire in the Deutsche Bank tower at ground zero, two men with more than 30 years’ experience between them became the 15th and 16th from the firehouse to die in the line of duty since 1994. The fire spread out of control as hundreds of firefighters tried and failed to pump water up a malfunctioning standpipe, instead flooding the basement, the Fire Department said. As smoke floated again over Lower Manhattan, firefighters were left to haul hoses up the sides of the ghostly black building, which was damaged on Sept. 11, 2001, and was finally being demolished. The SoHo firehouse lost 11 men on Sept. 11, ranging in age from 28 to 57, a heavy toll on a day of tolls. Seven years earlier, on March 28, 1994, members of the firehouse became trapped in an empty, burning apartment at 62 Watts Street, believing that people were inside. One firefighter died instantly, and a second died the next day. A third, Capt. John J. Drennan, lingered for 40 days in a hospital burn unit before he died. Firefighter Robert Beddia, 53, with more than 20 years at the firehouse, saw it all. He had mixed emotions that surfaced with every new plaque and memorial. “He said, ‘It’s really hard here,’ ” said a friend, Lisa Giunta, 51, the owner of Arturo’s, a neighborhood restaurant. “ ‘They don’t want you to forget, and yet, how could you forget?’ ” Now his will be one of the names on the wall. Firefighter Beddia, 53, of Staten Island, and Firefighter Joseph Graffagnino, 33, of Brooklyn, will be forever linked in their deaths, like some duo that planned it that way, the veteran and the eager kid, the chauffeur and the nozzle man, the guy with the sports car and the guy with the weight bench. But in fact they were friends, and stories from their lives raised quick little grins in the retelling. Firefighter Beddia was there longer than most, 23 years, making him the senior firefighter at his last fire. In pictures, it looks as if a person could strike a match off the stubble on his square jaw. “He was well loved and known as the one who probationary officers were sent to, to learn,” said his sister Barbara Crocco, 49. “He was also known as the one who would go where others wouldn’t on the job. Yet, he never considered himself special or a hero. “I still have girlfriends from childhood who’ve had crushes on him for years,” she said. “And he loved that, he loved people.” He often drove the fire truck for Engine 24, a post referred to as the chauffeur, but when he was not behind the wheel, he was working with the younger men, firefighters said. “He trained or broke in almost everybody at this firehouse,” Capt. Patrick McNally said. Outside the firehouse, he was a bartender at Chumley’s, the former West Village speakeasy that has long been the favorite stop for the firefighters of Engine 24 and Ladder 5, and the faces of the fallen hang from its walls. After Sept. 11, he organized a project to present plaques to several of the businesses in the neighborhood to show thanks for the generous contributions of food, drinks and compassion to the firehouse. Ms. Giunta, 51, the pizzeria owner, said she was pleased when Firefighter Beddia brought dates to Arturo’s, and made sure he had a good seat near the musicians playing jazz in the bar. “We usually put him in the front room,” she said. “That’s where the action is.” Firefighter Beddia grew up in West Brighton on Staten Island, the middle of five siblings. He was divorced and had no children. At home on Staten Island, in a one-story brick house on Andrews Street in Grasmere, he worked at his garden and doted on his black Alfa Romeo. “That was his pride and joy,” said Noreen Foley, 63. “He worked on the car. In the nice weather you’d see him out there.” Michael Mehr, 39, was Firefighter Beddia’s brother-in-law before Mr. Mehr’s divorce a decade ago. He said he had always looked up to the firefighter. “He just exuded cool,” he said by telephone from Henderson, Nev. He remembers the first time he visited the Engine 24 firehouse, in 1994 after the Watts Street blaze. “They were watching one of the news shows about some of the firemen in their unit that had been killed recently,” he said. “To think now that his fellow firemen are going to be watching the same thing about him is very upsetting to me.” His youngest sister, Susan Beddia Olson, 40, thought of his final moments. “I’m taking comfort in that we were told he lost oxygen and passed out,” she said by telephone from Cancún, Mexico, where she was awaiting a flight home yesterday. “He went into cardiac arrest and he died outside the building. I’m just trying to hold on to that.” His older brother, Ed Beddia, said Firefighter Beddia worked the nozzle on Saturday. “In this case, though they usually put younger men on the front of the hose, he was working the nozzle,” Mr. Beddia said. Of the fallen firefighter’s age, Captain McNally said: “He still loved his job. You wouldn’t know his age if you met him. He was in real good shape. He wasn’t a normal 53-year-old man.” Firefighter Graffagnino, of Ladder Company 5, was 20 years younger, a boy of 10 when his colleague joined the department. He would have turned 34 today. He grew up in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, in a house right behind the local firehouse, and he was raised in both places. “The old timers used to say that Joey would come around and jump on the rigs,” said Michael DePaola, 46, a firefighter at the 79th Street firehouse of Ladder 149 and Engine 284. “They’d let him run around and get in the truck.” In high school and college, he worked after school at the B & A Pork Store. “He was one of my boys,” said the owner, Robert Brannigan. “No one had a bad word to say about him.” It was at this time that the young man began hitting the weights, adding some 80 pounds of bulk before Mr. Brannigan’s eyes, he said. “He came in at 110 and he left at 190,” he said. “I tease him that I built his muscles. He ate like a horse.” He joined the Fire Department in May 1999 and was posted at the Brooklyn firehouse behind his childhood home. When they ran out of eggs in the firehouse, he would jump the back fence to fetch some from his mother. “He has the handsomest smile,” said Joanne DeVito, a neighbor. “You know how some people, when they smile, they glow? He glowed.” He fell naturally into the position of nozzle man. “Probably his strength was his strength,” said Firefighter DePaola. “The guy was an ox. He was short but stocky. As a nozzle man, he probably could put out the whole building if there was a fire. He was that strong. He would never give it up.” He and his wife, Linda, had two children. Now, when he visited the pork store, he brought his daughter, Mia, age 4. “He would always get a little rice ball for her,” Mr. Brannigan said. “That’s what she’d come in for. She was very attached to her dad.” His son, Joseph, is not yet a year old. Firefighter Graffagnino, too, tended bar on the side, also at a tavern popular with firefighters, the Salty Dog in Bay Ridge. Mike Schiazza, 40, was one of several people to come to the bar to toast their friend yesterday. “If I had a sister,” he said, “I’d want Joe to date her.” He transferred to SoHo after Sept. 11, stepping into the place of one of the 11 firefighters who died that day. “They were always friendly, always had a big smile,” Capt. Richard Weldon, a 28-year veteran, said of the two firefighters. “When people come to work in your firehouse, you try to make them feel part of the place. They were like that.”
|
Fires and Firefighters;SoHo (NYC);World Trade Center (NYC)
|
ny0290484
|
[
"business"
] |
2016/01/26
|
Sprint Lays Off More Workers
|
Sprint is eliminating more jobs as it seeks to cut costs and turn around its business. A company spokesman, Dave Tovar, says Sprint, the country’s No. 4 wireless service provider, has cut about 2,500 jobs since last fall, or about 8 percent of its work force. Last week, it notified employees at six customer service centers around the country that it would be closing those locations or reducing the staff there. Sprint cut 2,000 jobs in 2014.
|
Layoffs;Sprint Nextel
|
ny0119943
|
[
"science",
"earth"
] |
2012/07/19
|
British Close Case on Climate E-mails, With No Suspects
|
A British police unit on Wednesday formally closed its criminal investigation into the unauthorized publication of thousands of sensitive scientific e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s climate change research institute, saying that it could not identify the hacker. The investigation by the unit, the Norfolk Constabulary, into the data leak concluded that the hacking was a “sophisticated and carefully orchestrated attack” on the university’s digital data files by an unknown outsider operating remotely online. The police put to rest speculation that the release was the work of a mischievous or disgruntled insider at the university’s Climatic Research Unit. The leak in November 2009 set off a battle over the integrity of some of the world’s leading climate scientists and their research. Some of the e-mails contained provocative language about those who question the prevailing scientific view that the global climate is heating up because of the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities. Climate change doubters called the release Climategate and demanded an investigation into the academic honesty of the e-mails’ authors and their research. A half-dozen such inquiries, in Britain and the United States, largely cleared the scientists of wrongdoing, but in some cases chided the authors for an intemperate tone. The senior police investigator, Detective Chief Superintendent Julian Gregory, said that despite an exhaustive two-and-a-half-year inquiry, the police did not have a realistic prospect of finding the offender or offenders. “The international dimension of investigating the World Wide Web especially has proved extremely challenging,” Chief Gregory said. “The offenders used methods common in unlawful Internet activity to obstruct inquiries.” Edward Acton, the vice chancellor of the university, said he was disappointed that no one had been brought to justice for the hacking, which he said “did real harm to public perceptions about the dangers of climate change.”
|
Global Warming;Computers and the Internet;University of East Anglia;Great Britain;E-Mail;Colleges and Universities;Research;Cyberattacks and Hackers
|
ny0113400
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2012/11/20
|
SUNY Buffalo Will End Controversial Fracking Study
|
The State University of New York at Buffalo announced Monday that it was closing down its newly formed Shale Resources and Society Institute, which was devoted to the study of hydraulic fracturing, citing “a cloud of uncertainty over its work.” The institute’s first study, released in May, drew sharp criticism for being biased in favor of the oil and gas industry. In a letter addressed to the “university community,” President Satish K. Tripathi said he was closing the institute after an internal assessment that determined that it lacked “sufficient” faculty presence, that it was not consistent enough in disclosing its financial interests and that the credibility of its research was compromised because of questions over its financing. “It is imperative that our faculty members adhere to rigorous standards of academic integrity, intellectual honesty, transparency and the highest ethical conduct in their work,” Mr. Tripathi wrote. Buffalo’s decision is the most extreme response to date over criticism of academic bias in research related to the controversial natural gas drilling process commonly known as hydrofracking, or fracking. The University of Texas at Austin is conducting a similar review of a university fracking study released earlier this year. One of the professors who fostered the study did not disclose that he was on the board of a gasoline company. The controversies over fracking research tap into concerns in academia about the growing influence of corporate money in research especially at a time when government grants are declining. The University at Buffalo, a major research center with the most students in the State University of New York system, came under pressure from professors, students and some SUNY trustees to close its shale institute, with a petition with more than 10,500 signatures. “The people who signed the petition feel that their public university needs to remain a public university and not a mouthpiece for corporations,” said Jim Holstun, an English professor at the university who, early on, questioned the institute’s practices. The Buffalo study, issued on May 15, said that state regulation in Pennsylvania had made drilling there far safer and that New York’s pending rules were even more likely to ensure safety if drilling began in the state. But a local government watchdog group, the Public Accountability Initiative, raised questions about the study’s data and conclusions as well as the lack of full disclosure about its lead authors, who have also conducted other research directly for the industry. The third author, the shale institute’s co-director, John P. Martin, did planning and public relations work for the industry through JPMartin Energy Strategy in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Dr. Tripathi said that as a result of the transparency issues raised by the now-defunct shale institute, a committee that includes the faculty senate would meet to recommend how to strengthen policies for disclosing financial interests and sources of support in research going forward. He said the university would continue to pursue studies on energy and the environment.
|
Hydraulic Fracturing;State University of New York at Buffalo;Colleges and Universities;Research;Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline;Natural Gas
|
ny0242244
|
[
"us"
] |
2011/03/28
|
Supreme Court Gets Sociology Issue in Wal-Mart Discrimination Case
|
WASHINGTON — When the Supreme Court considers on Tuesday whether hundreds of thousands of women can band together in an employment discrimination suit against Wal-Mart , the argument may hinge on the validity of the hotly disputed conclusions of a Chicago sociologist. Plaintiffs in the class-action suit, who claim that Wal-Mart owes billions of dollars to as many as 1.5 million women who they say were unfairly treated on pay and promotions, enlisted the support of William T. Bielby, an academic specializing in “social framework analysis.” A central question in the case is whether he should have been allowed, in preliminary proceedings, to go beyond describing general research about gender stereotypes in the workplace to draw specific conclusions about what he called flaws in Wal-Mart’s personnel policies. “Bielby made a conclusion that he had no basis to make,” said Laurens Walker, one of two University of Virginia professors who coined the term for the analysis almost 25 years ago. “He hasn’t done the research.” But a brief supporting the plaintiffs from the American Sociological Association said that Professor Bielby’s work explaining how Wal-Mart’s policies may have led to discrimination “is well within our discipline’s accepted methods.” The sharp arguments are a testament to the central role that social framework analysis has come to play in scores of major employment discrimination cases. Describing what was at stake in such cases, a 2009 article in The Fordham Law Review defending Professor Bielby said the debate was “about the existence of unconscious or implicit bias, the continued seriousness of discrimination as a force in the modern workplace and the appropriate reach of legal remedies to challenge discrimination.” The Supreme Court is not considering whether Wal-Mart, the country’s largest retailer and biggest private employer, in fact discriminated against women who worked there. For now, the question before the justices in the case, Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes, No. 10-277, is only whether hundreds of thousands of female workers have enough in common to join together in a single suit. To make that case, the plaintiffs submitted 120 sworn statements describing what they said was anecdotal evidence of discrimination. They also offered statistics showing what they said were suspicious gaps in pay and promotion between men and women. Wal-Mart disputes the plaintiffs’ evidence as unrepresentative and unreliable. But even if all of it were established fact, anecdotes and statistics would not be enough. Supreme Court precedent also requires lawyers pursuing a class action to identify the common policy that they say led to unlawful discrimination. For that, the lawyers for the plaintiffs in the Wal-Mart case turned to Professor Bielby, who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago and has testified in scores of similar cases. Social framework analysis gives courts general information — a framework — drawn from social science. Testimony about the reliability of eyewitness identification can, for instance, serve a valuable role in cases in which prosecutors seek to rely on such evidence. Professor Bielby, who declined a request for an interview, told the trial court that he had collected general “scientific evidence about gender bias, stereotypes and the structure and dynamics of gender inequality in organizations.” He said he also reviewed extensive litigation materials gathered by the lawyers in the case. He concluded that two aspects of Wal-Mart’s corporate culture might be to blame for pay and other disparities. One was a centralized personnel policy. The other was allowing subjective decisions by managers in the field. Together, he said, those factors allowed stereotypes to infect personnel choices, making “decisions about compensation and promotion vulnerable to gender bias.” The methodology he used, Professor Bielby explained, was social framework analysis. He cited the seminal work of the two law professors at the University of Virginia, Professors Walker and John Monahan, in the first of 123 footnotes in his 41-page sworn declaration in the case. But Professors Walker and Monahan contend in their academic writing that Professor Bielby has misused social framework analysis. It is fine, they say, to give courts general information about social science research. But it is improper, they continue, to draw conclusions about the matter in dispute without conducting first-hand research. “This is a case about a missing link,” Professor Walker said of the Wal-Mart litigation. “You can make the link, if you do the research. But what’s holding this class together is — nothing.” That position, also set out in a 2008 article in The Virginia Law Review by Professors Walker, Monahan and Gregory Mitchell, has prompted sharp responses. The Fordham article, by Professors Melissa Hart and Paul M. Secunda, said that Professors Walker and Monahan “seem to suggest that their coining of this phrase gives them a unique right to define the terms and content of expert testimony offered in employment discrimination cases.” Professors Hart and Secunda added that the third author of the Virginia article, Professor Mitchell, is affiliated with a firm that has provided expert witness services to defendants in employment discrimination suits. Professor Mitchell said in an e-mail that he was “against bad science whether offered by plaintiffs or defendants” and that his firm’s work “has been for defendants in employment cases because ‘social framework analysis’ has become so popular among the experts used by plaintiffs.” He added that if his academic critique of social framework analysis was accepted by the Supreme Court, “then the likelihood of me being asked to testify against bad social science experts will go down.” “And I would welcome that development,” he said. For their parts, Professor Walker said that he and Professor Monahan “don’t have a dog in this hunt,” adding that “we’re working purely on keeping the methodology proper.” Laura Beth Nielsen, a sociologist and lawyer who worked on the American Sociological Association’s brief defending Professor Bielby, said “it is tremendously important that jurors and judges understand what we know about the world.” But, she added, “you have to be cautious.” In the Virginia Law Review article, Professor Walker and his colleagues said Professor Bielby had been far from cautious. In particular, they said, “Dr. Bielby’s report provides no verifiable method for measuring or testing any of the variables that were crucial to his conclusions.” At his deposition in 2003, Professor Bielby was asked “how regularly stereotypes play a meaningful role in employment decisions at Wal-Mart.” “I can’t put a number on it,” he replied. Asked whether he could give any guidance in “a range between, you know, .5 percent of the employment decisions and 99.5 percent,” he said no. Should the Supreme Court allow social framework evidence like that presented by Professor Bielby, many large employers could be vulnerable to class-action claims, Professor Walker said. “If this is enough,” Professor Walker said of Professor Bielby’s declaration, “this opinion is perfectly transportable.” In a brief supporting Wal-Mart, lawyers for Costco agreed. Certifying a class in the Wal-Mart case, they said, would mean that “employers with decentralized business models will have few avenues available to escape a Bielby-enabled certification order, other than resorting to surreptitious quotas.”
|
Supreme Court;Discrimination;Women and Girls;Wal-Mart Stores Inc;Sociology;Suits and Litigation
|
ny0083896
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2015/10/30
|
Rare Storms and Floods Bring Iraq to a Standstill
|
BAGHDAD — After a night of intense rainstorms in Iraq, millions of Baghdad residents awoke to knee-deep floodwaters that seeped into homes and paralyzed parts of the city. Blocks of ice, typically for sale, floated down the streets of the Sadr City neighborhood as residents trudged through the muddy water to assess the damage. The rare rainstorms began late Wednesday and continued into Thursday, dumping heavy rain on the Iraqi capital and across the country. The Iraqi government declared a holiday Thursday to ease the burden on people who might otherwise struggle to get to work or school. Police officers and security forces, already stretched thin across the country as they battle Islamic State militants, were deployed in Baghdad to help citizens navigate the floodwaters. “We are your brothers, and we are here to serve the citizens of Iraq,” one police officer in central Baghdad said on the state-run Iraqiya television network. Image Crossing a street Thursday in Baghdad. Torrential rainstorms caused knee-deep flooding, paralyzing parts of the city. Credit Ahmad Al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Old and inadequate drainage systems have long been an issue in Iraq and among the complaints of citizens who have been protesting for better basic services and an end to corruption. Calls for change have intensified since the summer, when scorching temperatures led to chronic power cuts. Iraq’s power, communications, water, sewage treatment and health facilities were severely battered during the 1991 United States-led Persian Gulf war, and then again in the 2003 invasion. In between, stringent United Nations sanctions severely limited the country’s ability to rebuild. Despite some investments to rebuild infrastructure, many Iraqis blame the lack of progress on corruption at home. “There is neither infrastructure nor reforms,” said Muyad Ali, a Sadr City resident whose home was severely flooded when he woke up Thursday. “They promise to do something and then do nothing. Families are fleeing from their homes because they are flooded.” Still, the burden is always hardest on those who are already struggling. At a camp for displaced people in the town of Yusufiyah , south of Baghdad, the water was knee-high and pouring into tents, soaking mattresses and other belongings. Iraq has more than three million displaced Iraqis and Syrian refugees, many of whom are barely able to get by. “Our furniture is soaked,” said Malak Saad, a 10-year-old who lives in the camp. “We want to go home. I want to go to my school. I can’t stand living here in a tent. I want to go home and play with my friends.”
|
Flood;Baghdad;Infrastructure,public works;Weather;Iraq;Rain
|
ny0234838
|
[
"world",
"americas"
] |
2010/01/17
|
Bush, Clinton and Obama Unite to Raise Money for Haiti
|
WASHINGTON — Former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton began a new venture on Saturday to raise money for the Haitian relief effort from corporations, foundations and ordinary Americans, as President Obama pledged to ramp up the American response to the devastating earthquake . The three men, who have collectively occupied the White House for the past 17 years, stood side by side in the Rose Garden to announce the effort. “We just met in the Oval Office — an office they both know well,” Mr. Obama said. Describing the phone calls he made to the two men in the aftermath of the earthquake, he said: “They each asked the same simple question: ‘How can I help?’ ” As the death toll in Haiti grows, Mr. Obama said, the American response, both private and public, must grow with it. “At this moment, we’re moving forward with one of the largest relief efforts in our history — to save lives and to deliver relief that averts an even larger catastrophe,” Mr. Obama said. He said that Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton “will ensure that this is matched by a historic effort that extends beyond our government, because America has no greater resource than the strength and the compassion of the American people.” The White House hopes that Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton can use their stature and their contacts within the corporate and philanthropic worlds to raise the millions in cash that relief experts say the devastated Caribbean island will need to recover. The news conference marked Mr. Bush’s first visit back to the White House since he left office. He stood next to Mr. Obama, the man who during the presidential campaign had criticized Mr. Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina . And, standing on the other side of Mr. Obama was Mr. Clinton, whose relationship with the president remains complicated after the bruising Democratic primary campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton, now secretary of state. But the crisis in Haiti apparently gave the three a rallying point to express their deeply shared concern and a belief in the American spirit of giving. “I know a lot of people want to send blankets or water,” Mr. Bush said. But he reiterated what the relief organizations have been saying for days. “Just send your cash.” He promised that he and Mr. Clinton would “make sure your money is spent wisely.” Mr. Clinton, stepping to the lectern after Mr. Bush spoke, glanced at his fellow former president and said with a smile, “I’ve already figured out how I’m going to get him to do some things he hasn’t signed on for.” All three men acknowledged the mammoth scope of the recovery effort in the weeks ahead as the full extent of Haiti’s difficulties becomes clearer. They repeated the address of the Web site that the public can visit to find out how to help: ClintonBushHaitiFund.org . During a conference call on Saturday, White House officials acknowledged that so far, American search teams have been able to rescue only 15 survivors in Haiti — about half of them American and half of them Haitian. Mrs. Clinton flew to Haiti Saturday carrying relief supplies, and the Haitian government turned control of the main airport over to the United States. White House officials said there were 26 international search and rescue teams in Haiti on Saturday, including teams from Fairfax County, Va., and Los Angeles. “Urban search and rescue will continue,” said Denis R. McDonough, the National Security Council chief of staff, who was on the ground in Haiti. “There is still a window, three and half days into the event. Thursday we saw a variety of people rescued; we saw people rescued yesterday.” The joint venture of Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush is like one that Mr. Clinton shared with the first President Bush, to help victims of the 2004 Asian tsunami, which killed 226,000 people. A letter on the new Web site, which went up on Saturday, asks for donations and promises to “channel the collective good will around the globe to help the people of Haiti rebuild their cities, their neighborhoods, and their families.”
|
Haiti;Earthquakes;Humanitarian Aid;Clinton Bill;Bush George W
|
ny0025260
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2013/08/08
|
City Agrees to Expunge Names Collected in Stop-and-Frisk Program
|
The Bloomberg administration has been unmoved by criticism of the stop-and-frisk program, steadfastly declaring that the tactic is necessary to keep crime down. But in court papers made public on Wednesday, the city voluntarily scaled back on one aspect of stop-and-frisk practices: it agreed to remove hundreds of thousands of names from a database of information about New Yorkers collected during police stops. The New York Police Department began building the database in 1999 to compile and review the information learned during stop-and-frisk encounters; the police said the database allowed investigators to quickly sift through information from millions of police stops for clues in their search for suspects or witnesses to a crime. As the debate grew over the Police Department’s expanding use of the stop-and-frisk tactic, a 2010 state law forced the department to expunge from the database the names and addresses of people who were stopped but not subsequently charged with any crime or issued a summons. But the law left intact information about a vast number of stops — about 565,000 since 2004 — that resulted in an arrest or summons. Those remaining names and addresses are now being expunged as a result of a settlement to a lawsuit brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union. Christopher T. Dunn, the associate legal director of the civil liberties group, said the settlement was notable not only for what it accomplished but also because it was unusual for the city to retreat on any measure of the stop-and-frisk program. “It starkly signals the city’s recognition that a key part of the stop-and-frisk program went too far,” he said. The settlement mandates that within 90 days, the city must delete “any remaining information that establishes the personal identity of an individual who has been stopped, questioned and/or frisked, including the name and address.” The city can still maintain other information regarding the circumstances of the stops. A senior lawyer for the city, Celeste Koeleveld, who is supervising the city’s defense in the broader litigation of the tactic, said the settlement in the database case was “a natural outgrowth” of the 2010 law. Some of the information, she said, was already accessible to police officers through other databases. “At the end of the day, it just didn’t make sense to continue this particular litigation,” she said. Elsewhere, city lawyers are aggressively defending the police department’s stop-and-frisk practices. In three large-scale federal lawsuits challenging the program’s constitutionality, the city’s strategy has been to defend its position at trial. In one case, a federal court has already ruled that the police were stopping innocent people outside their homes in the Bronx. The city is awaiting a verdict in the second case, which deals with stops citywide. The third case, which has not yet gone to trial, deals with stops in public housing developments. The lawsuit concerning the database focused on the fact that many of the cases resulting from street stops were sealed when charges were dismissed or resulted in conviction for a noncriminal violation.
|
NYPD;Mike Bloomberg;NYC;Search and seizure
|
ny0151279
|
[
"technology",
"personaltech"
] |
2008/08/28
|
For the Advanced in Age, Easy-to-Use Technology
|
IN the 1960s, baby boomers, like most young people, could not wait to leave home. Today, those boomers are trying to figure out how to stay at home, even if they are past the age when their parents made the passage to senior living. Companies that have long profited from the transformation of the counterculture into the over-the-counter culture are creating products that they hope will help them do that. Here is what you have to look forward to as you enter your 60s and 70s: deciphering conversations at cocktail parties becomes difficult; you cannot remember where you put your keys; and your grandchildren think you are a computer klutz. Fortunately, technologies are appearing that can remedy some of these shortcomings, helping those in their 60s maintain their youthful self-images. “The new market is old age,” said Joseph F. Coughlin, director of the AgeLab at M.I.T. “Baby boomers provide a perpetually youthful market.” They are, says Mr. Coughlin, himself a spry 47, “looking for technology to stay independent, engaged, well and vital.” As most of them have finished rearing their children and paying for their education, they also have a lot of money, said Mr. Coughlin, and they are looking to spend it on technology. The companies that are successfully marketing new technologies to older people are not those that have created high-tech ways for seniors to open jars. Rather, they are the ones that have learned to create products that span generations, providing style and utility to a range of age groups. An obvious success story is Apple; its iPod line is easy to use and stylish, and its appeal crosses generations. Apple retail stores are clean, sleek and inviting. Older people enjoy entering them because “the Apple stores make you feel smart,” Mr. Coughlin said. Similar trends are happening in the auto industry. In the 1990s, the inside joke at Ford was that the Lincoln Town Car appealed to people whose next car would be a hearse. But those entering their golden years today are not looking for psychedelic-decorated walkers or plush mini-limos. Automobile manufacturers have moved from creating cars for older people to creating cars that can cross generations. Consumers with less-nimble fingers find the large knobs in Honda ’s boxy Element easy to manipulate. But Honda did not design them for the arthritis stricken, but for young people who drive while wearing ski gloves, said a Honda spokesman, Chris Martin. The Element’s design, aimed at younger people, inadvertently attracted consumers across age groups. An important future trend, said Eero Laansoo, a human factors engineer for Ford, will be the personalized car, which gives drivers the ability to change instrument fonts and colors to make gauges and dials easier to read. The rash of accident avoidance technologies — like blind spot detection, lane departure warning and adaptive cruise control (which slows your vehicle down if you get too close to another car) — cross age boundaries in their appeal. Teenage drivers can use them, and they can also give confidence to aging drivers with declining motor skills. Here are some current technology products created for aging consumers: CELLPHONES As growth in the mobile phone market slows because most people have bought one, carriers are looking to expand it by focusing on the specific needs of older consumers. The Jitterbug clamshell phone ( www.jitterbug.com ), made by Samsung ($147, not including a service plan), does not reveal itself as a phone for older people until it is opened, displaying oversize buttons and large type on the screen. One-touch buttons enable easy dialing of 911 and other emergency numbers. The carrier markets the phone to the elderly with ads that explain that consumers can either dial numbers or ask a Jitterbug operator to do it for them. The company says 30 percent chose an operator’s help. Phone numbers can be manually entered into the Jitterbug or the company can do it for consumers. Full text-messaging will be available next year. Because the Jitterbug is sold as a phone for senior citizens, people who refuse to think of themselves as such may hesitate to use it, no matter how easy it is. The Pantech Breeze ($50 with contract), by AT&T, and the Coupe ($30 with contract), by Verizon, are a bit more subtle in that they look more like standard cellphones. They are simplified flip phones with somewhat large buttons, oversize type and three one-touch buttons for emergencies. The Breeze includes Bluetooth capability and a pedometer. In October, Clarity ( www.clarityproducts.com ) will sell ClarityLife C900, which can amplify voices by 20 decibels. A hearing aid can also be plugged into the phone. A single red button can be pushed to call or text up to five numbers of one’s choosing. The $270 cellphone can be used on the AT&T or T-Mobile networks. AT HOME IRobot ( www.irobot.com ), the company that made a name for itself with its Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, has created the Looj, a robotic gutter cleaner. The device, which sells for $100 to $170 depending on features, saves a person the trouble of climbing a ladder repeatedly. Later this year, iRobot will market the ConnectR, its “virtual visiting robot,” which will allow people to remotely view and speak to others. With its activities managed from a Web site at a remote location, the robot can be told to travel around a house to make sure that its occupants are safe, to read a story to a child or to make sure the Roomba is busy cleaning floors. The remote control can also be expanded to do some household tasks. Universal TV remotes from Logitech, Philips and Sony can also control room lighting and draw automated shades. Reach, from Break Boundaries ( www.breakboundaries.com ), is an L.C.D. touch screen that not only controls electronic components, but also allows users to operate a phone, raise a hospital bed, open and close doors and blinds, and call a nurse. TAKE YOUR MEDICINE Another problem of aging is forgetfulness. A number of automated pill dispensers that verbally alert users when to take their medication are available. From Timex, the Daily Medication Manager ( www.timexhealthcare.com ) holds medication and can alert a user to take dosages up to four times a day. Med-Time, from the American Medical Alert Corporation ( www.age-in-place.com ), can be programmed to dispense as many as 15 pills, each up to 28 dosages a day. When the unit beeps, the user turns the device over to release the pills. The simple moments of forgetfulness may not be able to be eliminated, but their effects can be mitigated. For those who misplace items, the Loc8tor ( www.loc8tor.com ), starting at about $100, can find up to seven items. A small tag is attached to an object, which is then registered on the Loc8tor’s main unit using radio frequency. When an item is misplaced up to 600 feet away, the user chooses the item from the list and a series of tones points the user in the correct direction. Of course, if the main unit is lost, you may never find your keys. In which case, several lock manufacturers offer keyless home entry locks that use fingerprint recognition technology to open a door. Available from such companies as Kwikset and 1Touch, the units, which start at around $200, can authorize 50 or more users depending on the model. If you can remember all 50 users, this may be one product you do not need yet.
|
Cellular Telephones;Aged;Wireless Communications;Robots;Computers and the Internet;Honda Motor Co Ltd;Samsung Group;iRobot Corporation;Timex
|
ny0149512
|
[
"business"
] |
2008/09/09
|
Antitrust Document Exposes Rift
|
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department laid out a broad policy on antitrust enforcement on Monday that drew an unusually sharp rebuke from three federal trade commissioners, who said it would protect monopolies from prosecution. A 215-page report from the Justice Department, coming after nearly a year of public hearings, was originally meant to lay out a governmentwide approach to combating anticompetitive business practices. Instead, it exposed a rift between the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission over whether the government was protecting consumers or big businesses. In a quick response to the Justice Department report, three of the four commissioners on the F.T.C. issued a statement saying that the policy was “a blueprint for radically weakened enforcement” against anticompetitive practices. They said the Justice Department guidelines allowed monopolies to act “with impunity” and “would make it nearly impossible to prosecute a case.” In nearly eight years under the Bush administration, the Justice Department has brought one case against a business on anticompetitive grounds, seeking to block the purchase of a West Virginia newspaper by a competitor. Critics considered the new report an attempt, in the last months of the Bush administration, to make formal a pro-business approach to antitrust issues. The policy guidance is not binding on the next administration. Thomas Barnett, the head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said in an interview that the latest report provided “clear standards” for determining whether certain types of conduct by big companies violated the Sherman Act and would harm competition. Mr. Barnett would not comment directly on the critical comments of the three F.T.C. commissioners — Pamela J. Harbour, an independent; Jon Leibowitz, a Democrat; and J. Thomas Rosch, a Republican. But he said the Justice Department’s report reflected a “shared view” of antitrust enforcement among academics, economists and others, and he rejected the idea from the F.T.C. commissioners that its approach favored big business. “We’re comfortable that this is pro-consumer,” Mr. Barnett said. A fourth member of the F.T.C., William E. Kovacic, who was appointed chairman by President Bush in May, put out a statement that neither endorsed nor opposed the Justice Department’s guidelines. He said the Justice Department’s conclusions “absorbed” some of the F.T.C.’s work but added that he found it lacking in historical context and other areas. The campaign of Senator Barack Obama , the Democratic nominee for president, said the Justice Department’s position reflected the need for a more aggressive approach to antitrust enforcement in the next administration. “Four more years of the Bush-McCain approach to antitrust will only lead to higher prices for American consumers and a less competitive environment for smaller businesses to thrive,” said Jason Furman, economic policy director for the campaign. The campaign of Senator John McCain had no immediate comment on the report. The Justice Department concluded that several business practices that some consumer groups consider anticompetitive actually help competition. “Overly broad prohibitions” on anticompetitive practices could harm consumers by undermining economic growth, the report said. It concluded, for instance, that so-called exclusive-dealing practices — allowing big companies to do business solely with particular suppliers or retailers — “should not be illegal” if fewer than 30 percent of existing customers were affected by the arrangement. And it says that the practice of “tying” — selling a product only on the condition that the buyer purchase another product as well — can often promote efficiency. “Consequently,” the report said, “the department believes that the historical hostility of the law to tying is unjustified.” The Justice Department and the F.T.C. held joint hearings from June 2006 through May 2007 in an effort to develop an antitrust model on monopoly practices. In recent months, the two groups traded draft reports on the issue, according to one official involved in the process who spoke on condition of anonymity, but it soon became clear that differing philosophies would prevent the release of a joint statement. The Justice Department and the F.T.C. have clashed in recent months over issues involving, among other industries, high-speed Internet providers and drug makers, but rarely with the intensity seen after Monday’s report. In their statement, the three F.T.C. commissioners said the Justice Department had set up a “protective screen” for companies with monopoly power. Senator Herb Kohl, the Wisconsin Democrat who leads the antitrust subcommittee, called the report “yet another example of this Justice Department’s unfortunate record of failing to vigorously enforce antitrust law.” No matter which side is right in the dispute, “this is part of a growing rift between the F.T.C. and the Justice Department,” said Herb Hovenkamp, an antitrust professor at the University of Iowa who testified as part of the hearings. “It’s warfare, and the level of rhetoric is pretty high.”
|
Antitrust Actions and Laws;Justice Department;Federal Trade Commission;United States Economy;United States Politics and Government;Presidential Election of 2008;Obama Barack;McCain John
|
ny0032121
|
[
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] |
2013/06/25
|
N.C.A.A. Expands Use of Replay Review in College Basketball
|
The N.C.A.A.’s panel on rules oversight voted to expand the use of replay review in college basketball. Under the replay change, officials can use video review to confirm a shot-clock violation or determine who caused the ball to go out of bounds on a deflection involving two or more players in the final two minutes of regulation or overtime. Officials can also use the monitor to determine which player committed a foul. Previously, they were allowed only to use the monitor to determine the free-throw shooter.
|
College basketball;NCAA
|
ny0242334
|
[
"business",
"economy"
] |
2011/03/17
|
Producer Prices Rise in February Points to Higher Inflation
|
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Producer prices surged in February at their fastest pace in about 18 months, lifted by high food and energy prices, according to a government report on Wednesday that pointed to a buildup in inflation pressures. In a second report, the government said housing starts declined the most in 27 years in February while building permits dropped to their lowest level on record, a sign that the beleaguered real estate sector has yet to rebound from its deep slump. The Labor Department said on Tuesday that its seasonally adjusted index for prices paid at the farm and factory gate jumped 1.6 percent, the largest increase since June 2009, after rising 0.8 percent in January. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a 0.7 percent increase in producer prices last month. In the 12 months to February, producer prices increased 5.6 percent. The report came a day after the Federal Reserve said it expected the upward inflation pressure from energy and other commodities to prove transitory but that it would keep a close eye on inflation and inflation expectations. The increase in wholesale prices last month was broad-based, with energy prices surging 3.3 percent — the biggest increase since January 2010, after 1.8 percent the previous month. Gasoline prices, which rose 3.7 percent, accounted for over 40 percent of the increase in the energy index. Food prices jumped 3.9 percent, the biggest increase since 1974. Stripping out volatile food and energy costs, core producer prices rose 0.2 percent last month, matching expectations, and retreating from a 0.5 percent rise in January. Last month, the core index was lifted by 1.0 percent increase in apparel, which was the biggest rise since 1990, while passenger cars rose 0.6 percent, the Labor Department said. In the 12 months to February, the core Producer Price Index rose 1.8 percent, in line with expectations. It was the largest increase since August 2009 and followed a 1.6 percent increase in January. In the housing report , the Commerce Department said that groundbreaking on new construction dropped 22.5 percent in February to an annual rate of 479,000 units. This was just above a record low set in April 2009 and way below the estimates of economists, who had been looking for a smaller drop to 570,000. January’s figure was revised up to 618,000 units from 596,000. But that did not change the tenor of the report, which confirmed that the sector was failing to recover despite interest rates near record lows. Building permits, a hint of future construction demand, fell to a record low of 517,000 units from a revised 563,000, and were down by about 20 percent from levels seen in February 2010. One impediment to the sector’s recovery is a vast backlog of unsold inventory, while a shaky job market has also made consumers reluctant to embark on any major new financial commitments. A glut of foreclosures, stalled in recent months by revelations of improper loan documentation, is further depressing the market. The Commerce Department also reported that the country’s current-account deficit narrowed in the fourth quarter, snapping five quarters of gains as export growth outweighed increases in imported goods. The deficit, which measures the flow of goods, services and investments in and out of the United States, shrank to $113.3 billion — or 3.1 percent of gross domestic product — in the last quarter of 2010. That was down from a revised third-quarter deficit of $125.5 billion, and the lowest since the first quarter of 2010.
|
Producer Price Index;Housing Starts;United States Economy
|
ny0017775
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2013/07/03
|
Bush a Fond Presence in Africa for Work During and Since His Presidency
|
On a humid morning in Tanzania on Tuesday, two American presidents stood side by side in a ceremony where neither spoke. One was the son of a Kenyan whose election broke barriers for African-Americans. But it was the other one who might command as much, if not more, respect among many Africans today. While George W. Bush is remembered at home for war, terrorism and national security, in Africa he is seen as a lifesaver who as president helped arrest a deadly epidemic and promoted development of impoverished lands. Now out of office, he has devoted his post-presidency in part to continuing to aid the world’s poorest continent. The coincidence of Mr. Bush’s trip to Africa overlapping with President Obama’s own journey this week threw a rare public spotlight on the mission the 43rd president has chosen for himself since leaving office more than four years ago. Building on the health care programs of his presidency, he has quietly returned to Africa three times, renovating health clinics and expanding screening and treatment programs to fight cervical cancer. For a leader whose administration was consumed by conflict and death, Mr. Bush’s former advisers say the Africa ventures offer a way to focus on life. As his travels center on lifting up the destitute, they evoke the presidency that might have been had there been no Sept. 11 attacks and no war in Iraq, a presidency that might have been free to focus more on the “compassionate conservative” agenda he embraced on his way to the White House. Mr. Bush does not entertain what-ifs, but casts his enduring interest in Africa as an extension of public service. “I’m here to serve and I believe strongly that with power and wealth comes a duty to serve the least,” he told CNN during a stop in Zambia before overlapping with Mr. Obama in Tanzania. While in office, Mr. Bush started the Millennium Challenge Corporation to direct aid to African states that tried to reform corrupt and undemocratic governments. He also initiated the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief , or Pepfar, which invested tens of billions of dollars to fighting H.I.V., and later tackled malaria and tuberculosis. By the time he left office, millions were receiving retroviral drugs keeping them alive, and polls showed approval of the United States at 65 percent in Tanzania, and in the 70s and 80s in other African countries. During a final trip as president in early 2008, Mr. Bush was warmly greeted by huge crowds of the sort he never saw at home anymore. The AIDS program has become a central part of Mr. Bush’s own effort to shape his legacy. The presidential library he dedicated in April devoted a considerable part of its exhibits to Pepfar, while other more controversial decisions of his tenure like his counterterrorism policies on interrogation, detention and surveillance received less attention. Image Former President George W. Bush and President Obama on Tuesday in Tanzania honored those killed in a 1998 bombing. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times Andrew S. Natsios, who ran the Agency for International Development under Mr. Bush, said the former president increased development aid to Africa several times over as well as expanding trade and stepping in to help settle civil wars. “George W. Bush is a devout Christian and I know this is not fashionable to talk about, but it’s true,” Mr. Natsios said. “I think his faith told him there was a lot of suffering. Africa was falling behind and it was not acceptable.” Mr. Bush wanted to keep it going after leaving office, following in the footsteps of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, who also have spent much of their time since office on programs helping Africa. Teaming up with the United Nations, Pepfar, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation and various pharmaceutical companies, he helped form the Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon program to focus on fighting cervical cancer in Zambia in 2011. The program expanded to Botswana in 2012 and this week to Tanzania. In a paint-splattered shirt, he helped finish the renovation of a clinic in Livingstone, Zambia. “A big part of President Bush’s life — before, during and now after the White House — has been helping to heal sick people in poor countries,” said James K. Glassman, the founding executive director of the George W. Bush Institute. “He just loves this work and he is reluctant to let us tell the world he’s doing it.” The overlap with Mr. Obama, though, generated bipartisan praise for Mr. Bush. “I think this is one of his crowning achievements,” Mr. Obama said on Tuesday. “Because of the commitment of the Bush administration and the American people, millions of people’s lives have been saved.” For Mr. Obama, the presence of his predecessor added to pressure from activists who complain he has not done enough to build on those efforts. At a time of grinding spending constraints, Mr. Obama’s latest budget proposal calls for $4 billion for Pepfar for the next fiscal year, down from $4.24 billion two years earlier. Mr. Obama defended himself on Tuesday by noting that Pepfar is able to serve four times as many people as when it began in part because of increased efficiencies. He has also sought to demonstrate his own commitment to improving the lives of Africans, announcing plans to bolster trade and investment, improve the delivery of electricity and expand Pepfar to combat other diseases. The two presidents got together in Dar es Salaam under a tree canopy at the American Embassy, where they both attended a short wreath-laying ceremony to remember those killed in an Al Qaeda bombing in 1998. Neither spoke during the event, but they talked with each other as they waited for it to begin and greeted family members afterward. Africa and global health have become a Bush family affair. Laura Bush held a summit meeting for first ladies on Tuesday that also drew Michelle Obama. Jenna Bush Hager, their daughter, was an intern for Unicef and wrote a book on a teenage single mother living with H.I.V. She and her sister, Barbara, are founders of the Global Health Corps , and Barbara is its chief executive. It tries to improve access to health care in places like Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia. “It became apparent to me that this was a deeply personal connection that he had to the continent,” said J. Stephen Morrison, a former Clinton administration official and now a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “All of these things bring him back and reconnect him.”
|
George W Bush;Africa;Barack Obama;AIDS,HIV;President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief
|
ny0040518
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2014/04/23
|
Atlantic Yards Sits in 3 Districts, and Each Wants a Voice
|
If a building complex straddles the intersection of three community districts in New York, which community board should claim jurisdiction over the buildings’ garbage collection, sidewalk modifications and other assorted concerns? When the development is the 22-acre magnet for controversy known as Atlantic Yards, the complex that includes the Barclays Center, what might otherwise be an arcane administrative riddle shape-shifts into an impassioned argument that touches on the delicate questions of neighborhood identity and the future of a fast-growing part of Brooklyn. As a local watchdog journalist, Norman Oder, wrote on his blog, Atlantic Yards Report: “Is Atlantic Yards more like (and part of) Downtown Brooklyn, or is it, in part or in whole, a piece of Prospect Heights? Or even, in part, an appendage of Park Slope?” Or as Frank Gehry, the architect originally commissioned to design the complex, once said, is Atlantic Yards essentially a new neighborhood, built “practically from scratch”? For the members of these community boards, the issue has a personal resonance. Though many of them spent nearly a decade battling to keep Atlantic Yards from rising in the first place, they have come to feel possessive about it. If they must live with it, they argue, they should have some say over its impact. “It’s important for the Atlantic Yards to stay within Community Board 8’s jurisdiction after all we’ve been through,” the board’s chairwoman, Nizjoni Granville, told the website DNAinfo . “It’s an emotional issue for me.” Geographically, the project appears to sit in Prospect Heights, most of which falls under Community Board 8. The top half of Atlantic Yards belongs to Community Board 2, which also covers Fort Greene to the north and Downtown Brooklyn to the northwest, among other neighborhoods. Community Board 6, which covers Park Slope, has a triangle of land that bites off part of the bottom half of the arena. This Frankensteinian patchwork, the precise reasons for which have been lost to history, did not matter much when the area was just a railyard and its environs. Now, with a sports arena and hundreds of thousands of square feet in offices, shops and apartments at stake, the situation seems untenable. The jurisdiction question has been simmering since last year, when the community boards discussed taking advantage of a City Charter provision that allows community districts to be redrawn every 10 years if City Hall initiates the process. A decade ago, when plans for Atlantic Yards had just been announced, redrawing the boundaries seemed premature to community board members. Since then, neither the Bloomberg nor the de Blasio administration has weighed in, leaving the question unsettled. Forest City Ratner, the project’s developer, has remained neutral. Ashley Cotton, a spokeswoman for the developer, said all the districts would share local hiring and affordable housing opportunities regardless of what happens. Yet Community Board 2 members cited those benefits when it voted on April 9 to corral the rest of Atlantic Yards without consulting the other two boards — “sort of kicking Community Boards 6 and 8 in the shins,” said Rob Perris, the district manager of Community Board 2. In short, “we’re waiting for Solomon to appear,” said Craig Hammerman, the district manager of Community Board 6. In this case, however, all parties agree that the baby must not be split. Over the past decade, the community boards have had to weigh in on nearly every question related to Atlantic Yards’ impact, including traffic enforcement and liquor licensing for the Barclays Center, meaning extra meetings, extra phone calls and extra room for friction. Some residents say that the split between the three districts made it difficult to unify the opposition to the project in the first place. Sitting atop three districts also means the project receives most of its city services from three different directions, an arrangement that will only grow more complex when people begin moving into the 6,430 apartments slated for construction. Currently, a Sanitation Department team from one district cleans before Barclays Center shows and another cleans after; the streets are divided about equally between three teams. The development is not trisected in its policing: The boundaries of the 78th Police Precinct were redrawn two years ago to encompass all of Atlantic Yards. The rest of the precinct overlaps with Community Board 6, which has suggested that it could redraw its boundaries to match the precinct’s in the interest of coordinating municipal services for the area more efficiently. Community Board 8 has let it be known that since, geographically speaking, Atlantic Yards lies in Prospect Heights — and may be just the first of many high-rise developments marching into the rapidly gentrifying area — it would like to take responsibility. Yet some in Community Board 2 have argued that the high-rises of the project are more in character with the towers that already dot its Downtown Brooklyn territory. At a recent meeting, the second vice chairman of Community Board 8 compared, in a semi-humorous spirit, Community Board 2’s redistricting to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The board wrote in a frosty letter to elected officials, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, that it “rejects” Community Board 2’s move, as well as any realignment of the boundaries that would “decimate” Prospect Heights by splitting it down Vanderbilt Avenue, which could happen if the borders are redrawn to match the 78th Precinct’s. Community Board 6 has refrained from combative remarks, and Mr. Hammerman said it would take no official position before consulting the mayor’s office and the other boards. Then there are the less tangible considerations. The behemoth development could be considered its own neighborhood, attracting thousands of residents, workers and visitors and spawning its own mini-economy. But Gib Veconi, an advocate for Prospect Heights who waged a bitter campaign against Atlantic Yards, believes residents in his neighborhood will bear the brunt of the project’s ill effects. Keeping the project under a single board would focus community participation — and, if need be, opposition — as Atlantic Yards and its successors are built, he said. “This project is going to evolve and all sorts of things are going to happen that nobody’s even thought of yet,” he said. “Beyond that — my God, look at the pace of development in Brooklyn. How long does anybody expect things to stay the way they are?”
|
Atlantic Yards;Brooklyn;Mixed-use development;Forest City Ratner Companies;Barclays Center Brooklyn NY;Urban Planning
|
ny0261359
|
[
"business"
] |
2011/06/09
|
Exxon Predicts Big Yields from Oil and Gas Finds in Gulf
|
Exxon Mobil has made two big new oil discoveries and a natural gas find in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, news that underscores the importance of the basin to American crude output. Oil and gas exploration in the gulf was halted by the United States government last year after the blowout at BP’s Macondo well, and activity in the gulf remains at levels far below those seen before the oil spill . Exxon estimated the new wells could produce about 700 million barrels of oil equivalent. “Seven hundred million barrels doesn’t happen very often,” said John White, an analyst at Triple Double Advisors in Houston. “That’s a lot of oil.” This portion of the deepwater gulf is thought to hold as much as 15 billion barrels of oil. Recent large discoveries there include BP’s Kaskida field, estimated to hold three billion barrels of oil. Exxon had reserves of 24.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent at the end of last year. The discoveries are the company’s first in the gulf since the government moratorium was lifted. The find “speaks to the fact there are resources in the gulf and if we have a tax and regulatory environment that will encourage us to find and produce our own domestic oil, the industry will respond,” said Mark Routt, an energy industry consultant with KBC Advanced Technologies. Exxon has not finished its development plan yet, and more drilling will be needed to further appraise how much oil is in the reservoir. Production could be years away. The wells are located in the Keathley Canyon at a water depth of about 7,000 feet, 250 miles southwest of New Orleans. Exxon owns a 50 percent interest in the three new wells, which are part-owned by Eni Petroleum U.S., part of Eni of Italy, and Petrobras of Brazil. Last month, Noble Energy said it made an oil discovery at its Santiago prospect in the deepwater gulf. Noble was the first company to receive a drilling permit from regulators after the drilling halt.
|
Offshore Drilling and Exploration;Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline;Exxon Mobil Corporation
|
ny0158226
|
[
"sports",
"football"
] |
2008/12/29
|
Jets Reject Pennington Is One Headed To the Playoffs
|
East Rutherford, N.J. Brett Favre walked solemnly through the tunnel, paused to give Ricky Williams a congratulatory pat on the shoulder pad and continued on toward what would now appear to be an overdue retirement. Chad Pennington jogged off the field followed by a horde of cameras, to a chant of “M.V.P., M.V.P.,” and then at the locker-room entrance fell into the embrace of a Dolphins teammate, cornerback Jason Allen. “Go get your hat, boy,” Allen said. “Go get your hat!” He meant the gray division championship cap that Pennington would wear above his combed blond hair to his postgame news conference, where he smiled for America and said, “It’s always a sweet feeling to be a champion — that’s what we are.” He didn’t have to remind anyone that it was at the expense of the Jets , the luckless franchise that sent him away less than five months ago and lived to regret it. “It’s not a revenge factor — it’s really not,” Pennington said after throwing two touchdown passes in a 24-17 Dolphins victory. But how could it not be? When it was fully apparent that the Ravens had a chokehold on their own playoff berth against the Jaguars, what was left for the Jets but to push through the despair in a game of pretend? Play for pride. Play for Bill Belichick’s Patriots, a revolting development for Jets Coach Eric Mangini. Fate could not have meted out crueler punishment than the perfect storm of Sunday’s circumstances, but as it turned out, losing to Miami in addition to playoff elimination brought the consolation of keeping the 11-victory and deserving Patriots out, too. Even with the New England and the Baltimore scores hidden from fans, everyone knew by the start of the third quarter that this was the end to a season that a month ago seemed to be on the express track through December. The grand Favre experiment was officially a fiasco, unless gauged strictly as a business arrangement, a desperate means of making the Jets — 4-12 last season, irrelevant in their own market — a topic of continued conversation. Even as Favre spun right, threw a short pass into the arms of Dolphins defensive end Phillip Merling and dived futilely to keep the rambling Merling out of the end zone minutes before halftime, it was impossible to dispute that Favre and the Jets had been a season-long spectacle. And what a coincidence that their marriage of convenience was refereed just as Jets ticket holders were about to be presented the privilege of buying a personal-seat license for the football palace under construction next door. Who believes that the decision to go geriatric with Favre, now 39, was not made at least partly for the sake of salesmanship? Before he determines the fate of Mangini or General Manager Mike Tannenbaum, the Jets’ owner, Woody Johnson, should take a long look in the mirror and ask himself: Did I want Favre as much or more than they did? Did I tempt fate by letting Pennington slip into the clutches of Bill Parcells? We were reminded at times Sunday of Pennington’s inability to throw deep, to stretch a defense. But he did escape what looked to be a certain sack to keep alive a drive that ended with a 28-yard touchdown pass to Ted Ginn Jr. He did throw a gorgeous third-quarter 20-yarder to tight end Anthony Fasano for the winning score. Pennington did engineer the unlikeliest of playoff runs, taking a Dolphins team that was 1-15 last season to a division title. He did make the playoffs for the fourth time in his career — four of six seasons in which he has played in at least nine games. And Favre? His third interception Sunday killed off the Jets’ last legitimate chance. His last five games will be among the more forgettable of his Hall of Fame career — which he said will most certainly end if he needs surgery on the throwing shoulder he finally acknowledged was sore. “I’m glad I made the decision to come here and play,” he said. “I wish I could have held up my end of the bargain.” In other words, thank you for the opportunity, and goodbye. Where do the Jets go from here? There are reports that Tom Brady may not be ready for next season in New England, and that would no doubt take his replacement, Matt Cassel, off the free-agent market. Maybe what they need even more than another quarterback or coach is a new football man atop the organization. Could it be the consummate Jersey guy and former Jets savior? Wayne Huizenga, the Dolphins’ owner, said after the game that Parcells would have the option to void his contract, with full pay, when Stephen Ross, a New York developer, becomes the controlling owner of the team next year. “I told him, ‘You ought to stick around,’ ” Huizenga said. “He just has to decide what to do.” What Parcells has already done is front a made-for-TV turnaround, beginning with his handpicked coach, the dramatically named Tony Sparano, as his field boss, and Pennington, the Jets reject. “The only way fate would have it,” Pennington said, and that said it all.
|
New York Jets;Miami Dolphins;Playoff Games;Football;Pennington Chad;Favre Brett
|
ny0271954
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2016/05/11
|
As War Strangles Yemen, Many Fear the Grip Will Never Break
|
TAIZ, Yemen — The familiar thud of shelling echoed off the mountains that cradle this besieged and ravaged city. For a few terrifying minutes, a warplane circled over neighborhoods and humming afternoon markets before dropping a bomb that momentarily silenced the guns. But the fighting never stops for long in Taiz, or across Yemen for that matter, a country that has endured 14 months of shattering civil war. Yemen’s government and its main opponents, the Houthi rebels, have been negotiating for weeks to end the conflict, under intense pressure from the United States and from other Western nations alarmed that Al Qaeda’s local affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is gaining recruits, weapons and money in the midst of the country’s collapse. A frenzied escalation of violence over the last few days is threatening a nationwide cease-fire that was supposed to build confidence for the talks. The bloodshed has laid bare the furious rivalries — between aging warlords, tribes, Islamist groups and regional powers — that are making Yemen’s hostilities almost impossible to stop. Even if the negotiations somehow succeed, Yemenis scarred by the vicious fighting, past broken promises and deepening divisions say they fear that any truce would just be a prelude to an even uglier war, fought between regions, religious sects — even neighbors. “People have feelings of revenge,” said Mohamed Nagy, whose house is on a hill less than a mile from one of the front lines in Taiz, a city that residents boasted was a beacon of culture and intellectual life in Yemen before it was transformed into one of the country’s deadliest battlefields. “The reconstruction of souls, by both sides, will take a long time,” Mr. Nagy said. The disagreements extend to who started the conflict. Fighting began in early 2015, when the Houthis drove Yemen’s government, led by President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, from Sana, the capital. The crisis quickly escalated into a multisided war. A Saudi-led military coalition is bombing the Houthis, a Shiite-led movement that the Saudis claim is in league with Iran. Military units loyal to Yemen’s deposed autocratic leader, Ali Abdullah Saleh, Mr. Hadi’s predecessor, are fighting alongside the Houthis. Other factions in the country, including southern separatists, powerful tribes and Islamist groups, have also taken sides. The United States is becoming more deeply involved in the fighting . The Obama administration has provided military support and intelligence to the Saudi-led coalition, and in the past few weeks, it has sent a dozen or so Special Operations force members to Yemen to help fight Al Qaeda. Image Smoke rising from Qahira Castle, an ancient fortress taken over by Shiite rebels, as another building in the background exploded in May 2015 after Saudi-led airstrikes in Taiz. Credit Abdulnasser Alseddik/Associated Press Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula faced little resistance from the Saudi-led coalition for most of the war. The militants held territory across southern Yemen until the United Arab Emirates recently launched an offensive to dislodge them. Negotiations to end the conflict in Yemen started only after tens of thousands of people had been killed or injured and millions displaced from their homes. The front lines have also hardened, sketching violent new borders on Yemen’s map. The most vexing and polarizing battle has been for Taiz, one of the country’s largest cities and a strategic gateway between northern and southern Yemen. The Houthis and their pro-Saleh allies have encircled the city for a year, fighting a coalition of mostly local groups, including ultraconservative Sunni groups and Al Qaeda fighters, known collectively as the resistance. Various cease-fire initiatives have repeatedly failed to separate the warring parties. The nature of the confrontation — with both sides accused of carrying out atrocities against civilians — has served as a dire warning about the perils facing Yemen as the war drags on. The Houthis and pro-Saleh forces have shelled neighborhoods from their positions in the hills and on the city’s outskirts, while severely limiting the flow of essential goods, including medicines, to the city. Resistance snipers have shot civilians in Houthi-controlled areas and carried out summary killings and kidnappings, according to human rights workers in Taiz. Houthi officials recently allowed reporters a rare visit to Taiz, but only to a section that they controlled, called Houban. The visible damage there, mostly from airstrikes, is spare, compared with the city center. But the trauma — among the people who fled the shelling to find shelter in the yards of benevolent landlords, or the medical workers tending to the conflict’s victims while still haunted by the destruction of their own homes — was unmistakable. Hisham Maged, a nurse working in a hospital in Houban operated by Doctors Without Borders, said most of his friends had fled the city or been killed. “Some died in their homes,” he said, “Some in the street.” As he tallied the destruction to Taiz, an ancient city vanishing under artillery shelling and airstrikes, he singled out the damage to a library, a particularly senseless target of the war. “It is so strange, so dangerous,” he said. Many said it would take international peacekeepers to separate the combatants. Politics was hampering any solution, as well as the proliferation of armed groups, said Bashir Fadel, a driver with Doctors Without Borders. “To go back to normal will take a long time,” he said. “There are weapons everywhere — guns, with young and old.” Yemen’s violence stretches from the southern port city of Aden, where shadowy militant groups have carried out assassinations and bombings, to Yemen’s northern border with Saudi Arabia, the site of repeated clashes between the Houthis and Saudi troops. Image Supporters of the former president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, in March. Military units loyal to him are fighting alongside the Houthis. Credit Hani Mohammed/Associated Press Sana, controlled by the Houthis, endured months of airstrikes that have subsided for now. But the planes from the Saudi-led coalition still hover, testing the nerves of residents and sending them scurrying around the city tending to life’s necessities, before the bombing starts again. The residents of Sana do not lack for reminders of the raids. Caved-in buildings, like the home of the judge who was killed in an airstrike along with at least six members of his family, are preserved like shrines, with armed guards standing outside ready to narrate the tragic tales. Lampposts are decorated with posters in shades of green, depicting the conflict’s martyrs, some children , some soldiers, the names too numerous to count. Displaced people clog Sana’s traffic intersections, jostling with vendors of window wipers or sesame cakes and asking passing drivers, and sometimes even one another, to spare some change. Everyone is bruised by the war. Abdelsalam Ali, a student at Sana University, said fighting had destroyed his house in Taiz several months ago. A sister was injured and is still hospitalized, he said. His father had a heart attack when the house was hit. “It took him 40 years to build,” Mr. Ali said. “We have to cling to a little bit of hope,” he said of the possibility of a peace deal. But his friend, Maknoun Ali, disagreed: “The Yemeni elites are taking charge. It will be the same conflict. They are fighting for their own interests, and not for the nation.” The Houthis’ days as rulers of Sana may be numbered if negotiations to form an interim government succeed. But like Sana’s residents, the rebels are moving frantically, to ensure their legacy and their continued survival. To rally their followers, they have blanketed Sana with portraits of the group’s founder, Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, with a zeal that has brought derision even from members. Houthi leaders extol their — arguably Pyrrhic — victory: the survival of the movement after a withering bombing campaign by the Saudi-led coalition that was among the deadliest and most indiscriminate in the region’s recent history, causing a majority of the more than 6,000 civilian deaths during the war. As the rebels send text messages to the public appealing for money, the young men they mobilized for the war dismiss talk of peace deals. Mohamed Khalid al-Sokkari, 19, said he had recently returned from fighting against the Yemeni government and its allies in Marib Province, east of the capital, branding his opponents as “Al Qaeda, mercenaries and other traitors of the nation.” The other side was responsible for breaches of the cease-fire, he said, adding, “We won’t reach a deal with them.” The war, he said, “has yet to start.”
|
Yemen;Houthis;Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula;Taiz Yemen;Saudi Arabia
|
ny0063981
|
[
"business"
] |
2014/06/03
|
Quality Egg to Pay Fine for Selling Tainted Eggs
|
Quality Egg, once one of the nation’s largest egg producers, has agreed to pay $6.8 million in fines for selling old eggs with false labels and the tainted products that caused a nationwide salmonella outbreak in 2010, according to a plea agreement released Monday. The company is expected to plead guilty Tuesday to charges of bribing an Agriculture Department inspector to approve sales of poor quality eggs, selling misbranded eggs and introducing adulterated food into interstate commerce. The company’s owner, Jack DeCoster, 79, and his son and the company’s chief operating officer, Peter DeCoster, are expected to plead guilty to introducing adulterated food into interstate commerce, a misdemeanor. They face sentences ranging from probation to one year in jail, according to the plea agreements, and each agreed to $100,000 in fines. Bill Marler, a lawyer who represents dozens of the salmonella victims, said the $6.8 million fine was the largest he had heard of in 20 years of practicing food safety law.
|
Food Safety;Fines;Salmonella;Quality Egg;Eggs
|
ny0157836
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2008/12/02
|
Pardon Is Back in Focus for the Justice Nominee
|
WASHINGTON — In the much praised career of Eric H. Holder Jr. , President-elect Barack Obama ’s choice to be attorney general, there is one notable blemish: Mr. Holder’s complicated role in the 2001 pardon of Marc Rich , a billionaire financier who had fled the country rather than face federal tax evasion charges. Mr. Holder’s supporters portray him as having been a relatively uninvolved bystander caught in a Clinton-era controversy, the remarkable granting of a last-minute pardon by President Bill Clinton to a fugitive from justice. But interviews and an examination of Congressional records show that Mr. Holder, who at the time of the pardon was the deputy attorney general, was more deeply involved in the Rich pardon than his supporters acknowledge. Mr. Holder had more than a half-dozen contacts with Mr. Rich’s lawyers over 15 months, including phone calls, e-mail and memorandums that helped keep alive Mr. Rich’s prospects for a legal resolution to his case. And Mr. Holder’s final opinion on the matter — a recommendation to the White House on the eve of the pardon that he was “neutral, leaning toward” favorable — helped ensure that Mr. Clinton signed the pardon despite objections from other senior staff members, participants said. At the same time, Mr. Holder was not the sinister deal maker that his critics made him out to be. He let himself be drawn into the case by politically influential advocates, the review of the case shows, bypassing the usual Justice Department channels for reviewing pardon applications and infuriating prosecutors in New York who had brought the initial charges against Mr. Rich and his business partner. Most perplexing to Justice Department allies was that Mr. Holder, by his own admission, involved himself in the discussions without a full briefing from his own prosecutors about the facts of the case, according to an associate of Mr. Holder who spoke on condition of anonymity. Reid Weingarten, a lawyer for Mr. Holder, said that Mr. Holder had done nothing improper in his handling of the Rich matter and that conversations about it were routine and largely insignificant, in part because he assumed that Mr. Rich’s lawyer, Jack Quinn, was going through normal pardon channels. “Mr. Holder assumed that this was all being handled in the normal course,” Mr. Weingarten said, adding, “There’s no question that Quinn played him and it was astute by Quinn because he did catch Eric unawares.” By all accounts, Mr. Holder’s role in the affair represents the biggest misstep of his career, and Mr. Obama’s aides focused on the issue before Mr. Holder was selected. Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were consulted to gauge whether the pardon would prove an insurmountable hurdle. Some Republicans in Congress are eager to revisit the Rich pardon, which was investigated at length in 2001 both by Congress and by a grand jury amid a public clamor that was fueled by hefty donations that Mr. Rich’s former wife had made to Mr. Clinton’s presidential library and to Democratic causes. Critics of the pardon also seized on reports from American intelligence officials that Mr. Rich’s oil-and-commodities company had done business with Iran, Iraq and other so-called rogue states. “Marc Rich was a fugitive for nearly two decades, wanted by the federal government for fraud and tax evasion,” Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said Monday after the nomination was announced. Referring to Mr. Holder’s actions, Mr. Smith added, “If a Republican official had engaged in this kind of activity, he would never receive Senate confirmation.” Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview on Monday that Mr. Holder’s role in the Rich pardon would be “a big question” at his Senate confirmation hearing. A longtime prosecutor and a former judge, Mr. Holder remains a popular figure at the Justice Department eight years after he left, and his supporters insist he was made the “fall guy” for a controversy mainly of Mr. Clinton’s making. Both Republican and Democratic admirers say Mr. Holder’s handling of the Rich affair, which he has acknowledged was flawed, should be balanced against the bulk of his law enforcement career. “There’s no way you can have a high-profile job in Washington like the deputy attorney general without attracting some kind of controversy,” Larry Thompson, who succeeded Mr. Holder in that post in the Bush administration, said before Monday’s announcement. “That matter has been fully investigated, and it should be put behind him.” Janet Reno, the former attorney general who was Mr. Holder’s boss, attributes the episode in part to the fast pace of pardon requests at the end of the Clinton administration. “There wasn’t much time to vet anybody,” Ms. Reno said in an interview. But for Mr. Holder, his role in the Rich issue actually began more than two years before the end of the Clinton administration, almost by happenstance. At a corporate dinner in November 1998, Mr. Holder was seated at a table with a public-relations executive named Gershon Kekst, who had been trying to help Mr. Rich resolve his legal troubles. When Mr. Kekst learned that his dinner companion was the deputy attorney general, he proceeded to bring up the case of an unnamed acquaintance who had been “improperly indicted by an overzealous prosecutor,” according to the Congressional inquiry. A person in that situation, Mr. Holder advised, should “hire a lawyer who knows the process, he comes to me, we work it out.” Mr. Kekst wanted to know if Mr. Holder could suggest a lawyer. Mr. Holder pointed to a former White House counsel sitting nearby. “There’s Jack Quinn,” he said. “He’s a perfect example.” Months later, Mr. Rich’s advisers settled on Mr. Quinn to lead the legal efforts, which stemmed from Mr. Rich’s indictment in 1983 on charges that he evaded taxes on tens of millions of dollars in revenue. At the time, it was the biggest tax fraud case in American history. He fled to Switzerland while the investigation against him was pending. Mr. Quinn and his legal team sought to make the case that Mr. Rich and his partner, Pincus Green, had been wrongly prosecuted by the office of Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was the United States attorney in Manhattan at the time of the indictment, and that the charges against them should best have been treated as a civil matter, not a criminal one. One of the first people Mr. Quinn contacted was Mr. Holder, his former colleague. Mr. Quinn wanted his help in interceding with prosecutors in Manhattan, and the two men had several conversations about the topic beginning in October 1999. Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York were unwilling to negotiate with Mr. Rich’s lawyers while he remained a fugitive. Mr. Holder told Mr. Quinn in one phone call in November 1999 that he believed the prosecutors’ refusal to meet with the Rich lawyer was “ridiculous,” according to notes by Mr. Quinn obtained by House government reform committee investigators as part of a three-volume report on Mr. Clinton’s pardons. In February 2000, Mr. Quinn sent Mr. Holder a memorandum entitled “Why D.O.J. Should Review the Marc Rich Indictment.” About a month later, Mr. Holder spoke with Mr. Quinn again and told him that “we’re all sympathetic” and that the legal “equities” in the issue were “on your side.” Pressed to explain the remark when he appeared before Congress a year later, Mr. Holder said that he meant only that he thought it was “unreasonable” for prosecutors in Manhattan not to meet with Mr. Rich’s lawyers and that he was not intending to assess the merits of the case. By the fall of 2000, efforts to re-open the criminal case were dead, and Mr. Rich’s lawyers had moved on to the idea of a pardon. Again, Mr. Quinn turned to Mr. Holder. On Nov. 21, 2000, at the close of a meeting on a separate topic, Mr. Quinn took Mr. Holder aside, told him he was planning on filing a lengthy pardon petition with the White House and asked whether the White House should contact Mr. Holder for his opinion, according to Mr. Quinn’s account. (Mr. Holder said he did not remember the conversation but did not dispute the account.) In a separate e-mail message that Mr. Quinn sent three days before that to other members of the Rich team, under the topic “Eric,” he wrote: “Spoke to him last evening. Says to go straight to W.H. Also says timing is good.” For the next months, Mr. Rich’s team pressed ahead with the pardon, soliciting foreign leaders from Spain, Israel and elsewhere to speak to the White House about Mr. Rich’s philanthropic work. Still, many White House officials remained opposed to the idea because of the precedent it would set to pardon a fugitive. Prosecutors in New York would “howl,” Mr. Holder told Mr. Quinn. On Jan. 19, 2001, Mr. Quinn called Mr. Holder and let him know that the White House would be contacting him for his recommendation on the pardon, which he said was receiving “serious consideration.” Mr. Holder told him that he did not have a personal problem with the pardon, and Mr. Quinn quickly passed on the gist of the conversation to the White House. Minutes later, Mr. Holder received a call from Beth Nolan, the White House counsel, who had opposed the pardon idea and was surprised to hear that Mr. Holder apparently felt differently. Mr. Holder, according to Ms. Nolan’s testimony, told her that if the Israelis were in fact pushing for the pardon, he would find that “persuasive” and would be “neutral leaning toward” favorable. Mr. Holder told Congressional investigators that he assumed the pardon was going to be rejected and that his comments were not intended to push it through. “I was ‘neutral’ because I didn’t have a basis to make a determination,” he testified. But investigators for the House government reform committee, in a final report in 2002, concluded that Mr. Holder’s input on Jan. 19, 2001, had a “significant impact” in giving the Justice Department’s imprimatur, even though no formal review was conducted by the department’s pardon office. The next day, Mr. Clinton signed the pardon, setting off the final controversy of his terms. The office normally reviews all clemency applications. After Mr. Clinton left office, a federal grand jury investigation was eventually closed with a finding that no criminal wrongdoing had occurred.
|
Holder Eric H Jr;Rich Marc;Amnesties Commutations and Pardons;Justice Department;Presidential Election of 2008;Obama Barack;Clinton Bill
|
ny0150356
|
[
"sports",
"playmagazine"
] |
2008/09/14
|
Daddy Knows Least
|
One day you have a child who loves kicking a ball and grows his hair ridiculously long so he can look like a South American soccer star. You coach his teams, watch his tricks and even travel to the World Cup in 2006, where your favorite image is of him standing at a urinal in Frankfurt with his pet ball sitting obediently at his side. The game is a sweet thing, his devotion to it sweeter. But then, by some freak of nature, your child is shown to have actual talent, lots of it, and you end up where I did last year: at a Massachusetts soccer complex of endless fields with coaches with foreign accents and the state’s best 12-year-olds, in red-and-white training jerseys, each stamped with an identifying tryout number. Your son is somewhere in the middle of it all. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” my wife asked me after Henry was selected out of hundreds of players to join the Olympic Development Program, which grooms 12- to 18-year-olds for the national team. The yearlong process begins with tryouts and then semimonthly indoor winter training sessions, building to weekly practices, minicamps and tournaments in spring and summer. I said I was ready, thinking she meant the driving chores that accompany faraway practices and competitions. What she meant — having, unlike me, listened to the boundary-setting “What Is O.D.P.?” parent chat — was that the cord was about to be cut. Henry was a kid athlete in a national system. It wasn’t an industrial system like, say, China’s, but it was a system just the same, with khakis worn on travel days and dietary guidelines calling for lean meats and whole grains. So much for snack baggies of Cap’n Crunch. “Have you talked with him today?” became the grieving parental refrain in parking lots and hotel lobbies from Anadia, Portugal, where the Massachusetts kids toured during February, to Bordentown, N.J., the site of a regional tournament. In those places we saw our sons fleetingly, as they bunked and spent free time, as per O.D.P. philosophy, with teammates and coaches. We were suddenly superfluous, part of a charmed journey but with nothing to do. In Portugal, Henry paraded onto soccer pitches and met high-ranking government officials. I spent time on the phone with my wife, telling her I wasn’t cut out to be an Olympic Development Parent. The kids seemed to handle the new commitment without a hitch. Even Henry, who might be the most empathetic middle-schooler on the face of the earth, developed a “see-ya-bye” attitude that occasionally left me alone by the car, making huggy arms at the air where my child had just been. In the spring the competitive vise tightened as more roster trims — euphemistically called “releases” — spurred the kids to play even harder. It was all too grown-up for me. I wanted to run away, or at least stop the dreams that jolted me awake, pleading, “Get it off your foot, get it off your foot now.” My wife suggested long walks on the beach to relieve my stress. I stared at the waves and prayed for Henry to hurry up and hit puberty so he might benefit from a testosterone-fueled urge to run over his blond rival for the starting midfield position. Finally it was July, time for the showdown event at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. Kids from 13 states converged to win a place on one of the country’s four regional teams. With a truly exceptional display, a child might even skip ahead and get an immediate invite to his age group’s national training camp. In a letter to the players, the Massachusetts team manager had warned about the wrenching “final selection” posting, reminding the boys that most of them would not be moving to the next level. When she wrote that the Kutztown experience shouldn’t be used “to validate yourself as a soccer player,” she had us parents firmly in mind, not the kids. By the end of the four days, our sons looked like old men, limp-legged, hunched over, pounded by heat and three-games-a-day exhaustion. Still, they possessed something I hadn’t noticed before: not exactly a swagger, but a kind of quiet solidarity. When the posting went up at midday on a cafeteria wall, the kids gathered around, then calmly wandered away. Those who were “released” seemed to already have made their minds up about the results and accepted them. Their parents, however, stood thunderstruck, futilely waiting for a name to materialize on the paper. Henry was one of the lucky ones. He made it to the regional callbacks, but that was it: he wasn’t selected to go to the national level. I learned the news ahead of time from one of his coaches and wrote Henry a three-page letter to soften the blow. I reminded him of all the things he had accomplished, that he could try again next year at the under-14 level. He read the letter straight through, then curled into my lap and cried, saying he thought he had done well. It occurred to me, after the most disorienting year of my parental sporting life, that something short-lived but momentous was happening. I had my 12-year-old back.
|
Soccer;Families and Family Life;Olympic Games
|
ny0240998
|
[
"science"
] |
2010/12/14
|
Fruit Flies May Help Solve Mysteries of Human Brains
|
Taiwanese researchers have managed to bar code some 16,000 of the 100,000 neurons in a fruit fly’s brain and to reconstruct the brain’s wiring map. In terms similar to those that define computers, the team describes the general architecture of the fly’s brain as composed of 41 local processing units, 58 tracts that link the units to other parts of the brain, and six hubs. Biologists see this atlas of the fly brain as a first step toward understanding the human brain. Six of the chemicals that transmit messages between neurons are the same in both species. And the general structure — two hemispheres with copious cross-links — is also similar. “I think this is the beginning of a new world,” said Ralph Greenspan, a neurobiologist at the University of California, San Diego. Biologists should now be able to match the fruit fly’s well-studied behaviors to the brain circuits established by the new atlas, he said. The atlas is maintained on a supercomputer in Taiwan which fly biologists around the world can query. They can also add to the atlas by uploading their own images of fruit fly neurons. “So I think this will really accelerate progress,” said Josh Dubnau , a neurobiologist at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island. The Taiwan team is led by Ann-Shyn Chiang , who has been working on the project for the last decade. He has assembled a group of 40 people, who include computer programmers and engineers, working on a budget of about $1 million a year. The basis of the atlas is a technique for visualizing the three-dimensional structure of individual neurons, including the cell’s nucleus, its long axon, and the little branches, or dendrites, with which it makes contact with other neurons. The complex structure of a neuron can be made apparent with a green fluorescent protein modeled on one used by jellyfish . The gene for the protein is inserted into the fruit fly’s genome, along with another gene that represses it. Dr. Chiang developed a technique for lifting the repression on the gene in just one neuron at a time. When the gene is expressed, the green fluorescent protein reaches every part of the neuron, defining its structure in exquisite detail. He also invented a remarkable solvent for making the Drosophila brain transparent. This is essential if the glowing green neuron is to be imaged precisely. The solvent is so effective that if a researcher fails to keep an eye on the dissected brain as it lies on a microscope slide, the brain will simply disappear when the solvent is added, Dr. Dubnau said. Each fly’s brain is a different size and shape, so Dr. Chiang’s team had to define average dimensions for the female and the male brain, creating a virtual brain with standard dimensions. They then developed algorithms for recasting the 3D image of each neuron so as to bring it into register with the standard brain. This means that the 16,000 neuron images, each taken from a different fly, can all be compared. Each neuron is then given a bar code with the coordinates of where its cell nucleus lies within the standard Drosophila brain, as well as information about which other parts of the brain the neuron connects to, and which kind of chemical transmitter it uses. A major setback occurred partway through the project when Dr. Chiang found he could gather data five times as fast if he recorded the neuron images in a different way. “Painfully,” he said in an e-mail, “we had to throw all the old data away,” even though 3,000 neurons had already been imaged. The neuron bar codes are numerical data that can be manipulated by computer. With 16,000 images in hand, Dr. Chiang’s team was able to analyze the general architecture of the female fruit fly’s brain. The basic element, which they call a local processing unit, is a group of neurons with connecting interneurons that do not extend beyond the group. Tracts of longer-range neurons connect the local processing units with one another. The local processing units correspond with the known anatomical regions of the fly brain. They are the same in all flies, and handle specific tasks like taste or movement. The fly brain turns out to be “a hybrid system of grid computing and a supercomputer,” Dr. Chiang said. “It tells us how a complex brain is put together and operates. Given the growing evidence for conservation in genetic programs underlying brain development and function, the human brain is likely to consist of similar basic operation units.” The only nervous system so far explored in greater detail is that of the C. elegans roundworm, another laboratory organism. But the little worm’s system has only 302 neurons and perhaps does not fully deserve to be called a brain. The fly brain, with its 100,000 neurons, may prove a better starting point for understanding the human brain, which has an estimated 100 billion neurons, each with about 1,000 synapses. “The beauty of this paper is in the completeness of what he did; it’s in the foresight it took to develop over a decade or more a whole suite of new methods to tackle a problem they saw as fundamental, ” Dr. Dubnau said, referring to the Chiang team’s work. Dr. Chiang’s report is published in the latest issue of Current Biology. “Yesterday I almost fell out of my chair,” said Olaf Sporns , who designs computer models of neural circuits at Indiana University. The matrix showing the interconnectivity of the fly brain in Dr. Chiang’s article struck Dr. Sporns as amazingly similar to the matrix he had constructed recently for the human cortex. The construction of the fly and mammalian brains seems to follow the same “small world” principle, that of high local clustering of neurons, together with long-range connections. “So there’s a commonality here, and I think that has to do with the fact that these systems have to accomplish similar goals,” Dr. Sporns said. “Researchers may now be able to pinpoint how information flows through the fly brain network to accomplish certain outcomes,” he said. Dr. Chiang said he will continue to build his atlas until all 100,000 fly brain neurons have been imaged. He said he does not at present plan to map the synapses, the precise connections that one neuron makes with others. Dr. Greenspan, however, said it should be possible in principle to map synapses by splitting in two the gene for the green fluorescent protein used to delineate the neurons. The neurons could be made to export the half-proteins to their synapses, and when the two halves fused, they would glow green and let the synapse be scanned and mapped. With a full wiring diagram of the fly brain’s neurons and all their synaptic connections, researchers could test their ideas about how information flowed in the brain, and even compute the output that should follow a given input. “It’s not out of the question that if we had a complete cellular map and a good database, that we could create virtual organisms,” Dr. Sporns said.
|
Brain;Genetics and Heredity;Fruit Flies;Science and Technology;Taiwan
|
ny0002509
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2013/03/12
|
Plan to Lease Open Land at Housing Projects Stirs Concern
|
When Hassan Adam was growing up in public housing on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, his playground was a nearby recreational yard in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, where residents have long played basketball and neighbors hold an annual “family day.” Mr. Adam still lives in the project, and he taught his daughter to ride a bike in the play area. But soon, that patch of asphalt at the Alfred E. Smith Houses could be replaced by market-rate apartment buildings. And tenants like Mr. Adam, 37, said they feared what could come next. “They’ll make our buildings condos,” he said. “They’re trying to move us.” The New York City Housing Authority , facing one of the most serious financial shortfalls in its history, is for the first time making a major push to lease open land on the grounds of its housing projects to developers to generate revenue. The authority wants to raise more than $50 million a year on long-term leases for parks, courtyards, parking lots, playgrounds and other property, seeking to address a $6 billion backlog of repairs. But the plan has stirred deep concern, if not paranoia, among tenants who have been warily eying gentrification in one of the nation’s most expensive housing markets. The proposal is initially directed at eight housing projects in Manhattan near the waterfront and other prime areas where real estate values have jumped. The authority has repeatedly told tenants that it has no plans to sell buildings themselves, and that no public housing tenant will be displaced by the new policy. Still, in a city that teems with real estate anxieties, the tenants harbor their own. “There’s always an ongoing rumor that Trump is going to buy the buildings,” said Damaris Reyes, 41, a community organizer on the Lower East Side who lives in the Baruch Houses . “If a white man in a suit that no one has seen before walks through the development, the next thing we hear is, ‘They’re looking at the buildings to buy them.’ ” Image Margarita Lopez, a New York City Housing Authority board member, speaks at a local meeting about the plan. Credit Marcus Yam for The New York Times Tenants also said they were alarmed about the potential loss of open space, especially for children and the elderly. The plan has not yet been formally adopted by the authority’s board, and approval by the federal government is also required. Furthermore, it is not clear whether developers will flock to lease land for market-rate buildings so close to public housing. Authority officials have held meetings in recent weeks with tenants and members of the City Council to try to calm them about the plan’s impact. In his State of the City address last month, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that the alternative would be to allow public housing buildings “to crumble” or to “knock them down.” The plan is part of a broader effort to close the authority’s budget gaps that includes raising rents for some tenants and leasing retail space on the ground floor of some buildings. The authority, landlord to more than 400,000 residents, has a backlog of about 350,000 repair orders. It also has a waiting list of 160,000 families. The authority’s chairman, John B. Rhea, whom Mr. Bloomberg appointed, said his agency needed to pursue innovative strategies to address both an operating deficit of $60 million in its current budget and $6 billion in capital needs. “This is the single largest opportunity to preserve public housing units and our buildings,” Mr. Rhea said, referring to the proposal to lease the land. Image Jessica Thomas, tenant association president at Fiorello LaGuardia Houses, opposed installing bike racks at her project for fear of offering a opening for private builders. Credit Marcus Yam for The New York Times Asked about the fears of tenants, he emphasized that “the plan is not a plan to privatize public housing.” The authority is proposing 4,000 to 5,000 private apartments on 13 parcels of land at eight projects — about three million square feet in all. Of those apartments, 20 percent or up to 1,000, would be designated as affordable. The eight projects, with a combined population of more than 25,000 people, are Alfred E. Smith, Baruch, Campos Plaza, Fiorello LaGuardia and Meltzer in Lower Manhattan; Carver and Washington on the Upper East Side; and Douglass on the Upper West Side. Fred Harris, the housing authority’s executive vice president for real estate and development, said officials were looking at projects in other boroughs for similar development sites. Some public housing advocates acknowledged that the city had few options as it confronts a sharp drop in federal aid — a total of more than $1.5 billion since 2001. “It’s a tough choice because the money would support the rest of the system,” said Edward Josephson, director of litigation with Legal Services NYC. “If you keep the parking lot and the rest of the project falls into pieces, that’s worse.” New York has done more than most localities to preserve its public housing. In other cities, high-rise buildings, let alone parking lots, have been sold off or demolished. Still, the prospect of high-income neighbors at their doorsteps has moved some tenant associations in New York City to hire lawyers and appeal to elected officials to intercede. Image Local residents voiced their concerns at a meeting in February discussing the N.Y.C.H.A.'s plans for private development inside public housing projects. Credit Marcus Yam for The New York Times A group headed by Representative Carolyn B. Maloney of Manhattan and Representative Nydia M. Velázquez of Brooklyn, both Democrats, asked the Bloomberg administration to postpone a request for proposals from developers scheduled to go out by April to allow for more consultation with tenants. At a raucous tenants’ meeting last month attended by more than 300 people, tenant leaders said they were worried about higher retail prices as stores cater to high-earning newcomers. They said their communities could lose city services for the poor and political clout as ZIP codes become more affluent. “We’re going to be foreigners in our own homes,” said Aixa O. Torres, the tenants’ president at the Alfred E. Smith Houses, with 12 buildings and nearly 2,000 apartments. Despite the authority’s assurances, some tenants said they were convinced that the plan was the first step in a process that would lead to their eviction. “You’re not going to have people who are paying market rent to want to live in the same place as low-income people,” said Thelma R. Yearwood, the residents’ president at Meltzer Tower , a building for elderly people on the Lower East Side that is to lose its only park under the plan. “They’ll find a way to transfer people out of here.” Dereese Huff, president of the tenant association at Campos Plaza 1 , said she favored the plan “if it’s going to help me get windows in my development.” Jessica Thomas, tenant association president at Fiorello LaGuardia Houses on the Lower East Side near Chinatown, said that her project needed new entrance doors, but that she would oppose the trade-off. Ms. Thomas, 62, said she had opposed installing racks at LaGuardia for the city’s bike-sharing program because they would be “just a toe in the door” for wealthier newcomers drawn by the growing list of attractions along the nearby East River. “There’s South Street Seaport,” she said. “They’re building on the waterfront on the F.D.R. Drive. Gorgeous. Now we have Basketball City across the street. They’re connecting to Pier 42. Who wouldn’t want to live here?”
|
Housing Authority NYC;Real Estate; Housing;Public Housing;Manhattan;Land use;NYC
|
ny0188495
|
[
"us"
] |
2009/04/15
|
Judith Krug, Librarian Who Fought Book Ban, Dies at 69
|
Judith F. Krug, who led the campaign by libraries against efforts to ban books, including helping found Banned Books Week, then fought laws and regulations to limit children’s access to the Internet, died Saturday in Evanston, Ill. She was 69. The cause was stomach cancer, her son, Steven, said. As the American Library Association’s official proponent of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech since the 1960s, Ms. Krug (pronounced kroog) fought the banning of books, including “Huckleberry Finn,” “Mein Kampf,” “Little Black Sambo,” “Catcher in the Rye” and sex manuals. In 1982, she helped found Banned Books Week, an annual event that includes authors reading from prohibited books. She also fought for the inclusion of literature on library shelves that she herself found offensive, like “The Blue Book” of the ultraconservative John Birch Society. The book is a transcript of a two-day monologue by Robert Welch at the founding meeting of the society in 1958. “My personal proclivities have nothing to do with how I react as a librarian,” Ms. Krug said in an interview with The New York Times in 1972. “Library service in this country should be based on the concept of intellectual freedom, of providing all pertinent information so a reader can make decisions for himself.” In 1967, Ms. Krug became director of the library association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, which promotes intellectual freedom in libraries. In 1969, she was appointed executive director of its Freedom to Read Foundation, which raises money to further First Amendment issues in court cases. The issues have changed over time. In December 1980, Ms. Krug’s observation that complaints about the content of books in public libraries had increased fivefold in the month since Ronald Reagan was elected president was widely reported. In an interview with The Times, she said that many of the complainants identified themselves as members of Moral Majority, a strongly conservative group, but the Rev. George A. Zarris, chairman of Moral Majority in Illinois, denied there was any organized effort. But the situation illustrated a frequent conflict in issues over library censorship. Ms. Krug pushed what she often described as a pure view of the First Amendment against what her opponents often said was the democratic will. “What the library associations are trying to do is make the voice of the people null and void,” said Nancy Czerwiec, a former primary school teacher who led the fight to ban a sex education book from the Oak Lawn Library in Illinois. That controversy was settled when the library agreed to lend the book only to adults. Ms. Krug later became a leader in fighting censorship on the Internet, an issue taken up by libraries because many people with no computers at home use library computers. The question involved not just a limited number of books for a particular library’s shelves, but efforts to keep theoretically unlimited amounts of indecent material from children by means of technological filters. In 1997, an alliance of civil liberties groups, with Ms. Krug a principal organizer, persuaded the Supreme Court to strike down the indecency provisions of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. Jerry Berman, founder and chairman of the Center for Democracy & Technology, which promotes free speech on the Internet, said in a statement, “Her legacy rests in the constitutional challenge that secured the free speech rights for the Internet that we exercise today.” More recently, Ms. Krug fiercely fought a provision in the USA Patriot Act that allows federal investigators to peruse library records of who has read what. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft dismissed protests about the law as “baseless hysteria.” Judith Rose Fingeret was born in Pittsburgh on March 15, 1940, graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and earned a master’s degree in library science from the University of Chicago. She worked as a librarian at the University of Chicago and elsewhere before joining the library association as a research analyst. In addition to her son, Ms. Krug is survived by her husband, Herbert; her daughter, Michelle Litchman; five grandchildren; her two brothers; and her sister. Ms. Krug credited her parents as inspiring her passion for free expression. In 2002, she told The Chicago Tribune about reading a sex-education book under the covers with a flashlight when she was 12. “It was a hot book; I was just panting,” she said, when her mother suddenly threw back the bed covers and asked what she was doing. Judith timidly held up the book. “She said, ‘For God’s sake, turn on your bedroom light so you don’t hurt your eyes.’ And that was that,” Ms. Krug said.
|
Krug Judith;Libraries and Librarians;Deaths (Obituaries);Freedom of Speech and Expression
|
ny0226046
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2010/10/26
|
Mets’ Search for General Manager Could End This Week
|
The Mets ’ top three owners met with Josh Byrnes, a candidate for their general manager’s job, on Monday and planned to meet with Sandy Alderson on Tuesday. There were indications the team was prepared to hire one of them as its new G.M. this week, and possibly announce the move on Friday. Major League Baseball prohibits teams from making major announcements during the World Series, but Friday is a scheduled day off between Games 2 and 3 and the league would probably allow the Mets to introduce the new G.M. then. Byrnes, the former Diamondbacks general manager, met during the day with the principal owner Fred Wilpon ; his son Jeff, the chief operating officer; and Saul Katz, the team president as well as the senior Wilpon’s brother-in-law. The interview was the second for Byrnes. “As scheduled, Fred, Saul and I met with Josh Byrnes today,” Jeff Wilpon said in a brief statement. “Out of respect for the candidates and the ongoing process, we will have no further comment on the meeting.” Alderson and Byrnes were the only candidates invited to meet with the top owners after preliminary interviews. Many executives around baseball expect Alderson, the former general manager and president of the Oakland Athletics and the San Diego Padres, to ultimately be offered the job. But Byrnes has impressed the Mets with his intelligence and his innovative ideas to fix the team. BLUE JAYS HIRE MANAGER The Toronto Blue Jays hired the former Boston Red Sox pitching coach John Farrell as their manager. Farrell, 48, has never managed. He succeeds Cito Gaston, who retired after the season. “Going through this interview process, it became very clear the direction that this organization is heading, the resources that are available to support a club that is going to compete and compare with New York and Boston in time,” Farrell said. Farrell was Cleveland’s player development director for five years and Boston’s pitching coach the past four seasons. “John’s the type who strikes me, getting to know him more and more, he’s not going to rest, he’s never going to be satisfied,” Toronto General Manager Alex Anthopoulos said. Farrell spent eight seasons pitching in the majors, winning a career-high 14 games for the Indians in 1988, before retiring after the 1996 season. He spent five years as assistant coach/pitching and recruiting coordinator at his alma mater, Oklahoma State, then returned to the Indians in 2001. He moved to the Red Sox in 2007, working with the young starters Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester. That background made him an attractive candidate for the Blue Jays, whose young rotation includes the promising left-handers Brett Cecil and Ricky Romero as well as the right-handers Shaun Marcum and Brandon Morrow. All four won at least 10 games last season. (AP) JURY IN LEYRITZ TRIAL Jury selection has begun in the trial of the former Yankee Jim Leyritz, who is accused of manslaughter while driving under the influence in South Florida. A six-person jury will be chosen from a pool of 75 people. Jury selection is expected to take several days and the trial three to four weeks. Leyritz is accused of driving drunk in December 2007, running a red light and crashing into a vehicle driven by the 30-year-old Fredia Ann Veitch. If convicted, Leyritz faces a maximum of 15 years in prison. Leyritz settled a wrongful-death lawsuit with Veitch’s family in May. (AP) MCGWIRE TO RETURN AS COACH Mark McGwire agreed to a one-year deal to remain the hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals. McGwire made his coaching debut with the team this season. The Cardinals also said the pitching coach Dave Duncan had agreed to a two-year deal, with a mutual option for 2013. Duncan, 65, has been with the Cardinals and Manager Tony La Russa for the past 15 seasons. La Russa reached a one-year deal with the team last week. (AP)
|
Baseball;New York Mets;Major League Baseball;Alderson Sandy;Byrnes Josh;Wilpon Fred;Wilpon Jeff
|
ny0212720
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2017/01/22
|
A Club Where Lions Dance and Traditions Take Root
|
The first thing you notice in the stairwell to the fourth-floor studio on Canal Street in Manhattan is the measured thumping coming from behind a metal door. Just beyond the entrance, large papier-mâché lion masks were twisting and turning to the drumbeat. On a recent Friday evening, the teenagers made their way across the studio floor — sagging from decades of jumps and lunges — as they practiced Chinese lion dancing. “You want to play in a circle,” Victor Fong, 24, told his students at the New York Chinese Freemasons Athletic Club. “Take it slow and do it again.” The dance troupe, made up of 60 members, performs throughout the year but was now preparing for its biggest events, Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations , which will begin on Saturday and conclude on Feb. 15. Teenagers comprise about half of the group, many of whom began lion dancing at 14. About 100 current and past members of the troupe — which has been performing since 1956 — will be among the 220 groups marching through Chinatown in Manhattan for the 18th Lunar New Year Parade on Feb. 5. Mr. Fong has been involved in the organization since he was 15 and began teaching lion dancing three years ago. But the club also acts as a recreation center and safe haven for teenagers, with video games readily available. As many as 20 students show up after school. “The basic requirement for hanging out here is you have to learn how to lion dance,” Mr. Fong said. While that is not a formal requirement for being a member, everyone finds a way to participate in the Lunar New Year Parade, whether it’s by dancing, carrying a flag or beating a drum. Alvin Chau, 26, is an environmental consultant by day and a lion dancer on weekends. He has been a club member for 10 years and joined because of an interest in lion dance. Image Kelly Wong painted a lion head for the club’s dance troupe. A head typically weighs less than 10 pounds and has strings inside that control the eyes, ears and mouth. Credit An Rong Xu for The New York Times “Everyone is a big family,” he said, shaking hands with other members as they walked through the door. “You know everyone.” It is believed that the lion dance began in the third century. Stories vary about how lion dancing came to be, but most of them include a monster named Nian who would terrorize a village. The villagers finally banded together and scared the beast away with firecrackers and drums. While lions are not native to China, some versions of the story include the villagers creating a monster of their own in the shape of a lion to fight off the beast. Today, the dancers travel across Chinatown going from business to business to bring good luck for the coming year. The new year — 4714 according to the Chinese lunar calendar — will begin on Saturday and marks the Year of the Rooster, which is thought to be a symbol of positivity. “It’s almost like the dark night is ending and the sun is coming up,” said Ya Yung Teng, the digital collections coordinator for the Museum of Chinese in America . “It’s hopeful that we’re going to have a new day.” Roosters and chickens are not particularly strong creatures, Ms. Teng said, but they are numerous. “In a way,” she said, the rooster “stands for ‘We the People.’” The lion head and adjoining tail are operated by two people, and their dance is weighted heavily in martial arts. As one person masters the head, a second follows under a train of fabric representing the body. The dancers move in unison as they mimic the animal’s approach to a carcass, the slyness of the walk and the aggressiveness of an attack. A lion head figure weighs under 10 pounds and sits squarely on the dancer’s shoulders. Inside, the dancer manipulates strings that wink the head’s eyelids, shake its ears and open its mouth to reveal a fire-orange tongue. “A good lion dancer will simulate a living creature,” said Karlin Chan, 59, who heads the athletic club’s community outreach. Image Members of the club’s dance troupe during a recent rehearsal at a studio on Canal Street in Manhattan. The troupe performs year around, but the coming Lunar New Year Parade is its biggest event. Credit An Rong Xu for The New York Times “I started lion dancing when I was a kid,” he said. “Chinatown was much smaller then and it was a celebration with fireworks and firecrackers, which added a lot of flavor and meaning to it.” The dance itself has also evolved. “In the old days it was a way to show your martial-arts school’s proficiency and how good you were,” Mr. Chan said. “Now it’s evolved into more of a dance.” Mr. Chan buys a new lion head each year when he travels to China. A head costs about $1,500. “If you want the good stuff, the quality, you have to see it for yourself,” Mr. Chan said. “I’ll inspect the product before we put it in the crate and send it over.” Mr. Chan, who has been involved with the club for nearly 50 years, said that passing the dance from one generation to the next was vital. “You need to pass on the traditions and the culture, and this is a part of our culture,” he said. “It’s a great way to promote cultural understanding and cultural exchange; we welcome that.” For Sara Pore, 17, another club member, lion dance is more than just tradition; it provides a creative outlet. “Lion dancing started 2,000 years ago — that’s incredible,” she said. “But what makes you a competent lion dancer is that there is a sense of imagination involved. Lion dancing teaches competence in leadership because of this. You’re constantly forced to push yourself past your limit.” Back at rehearsal, Justin Le, 18, tied a red sash around his waist to practice jumping. The dancers use the sashes to pull themselves up over their partners’ heads. The room’s ceilings are too low to wear the lion heads for jumping practice, so once up on his partner’s head, Mr. Le held out his arms as if in offering. Mr. Le comes by the dance as a legacy. “I was born into it,” Mr. Le said, noting that his uncle and father were club members. “Growing up, I would always watch my family and see the lion dance, and I slowly grew interested in it.” By 14, he was fully enrolled in the athletic club’s lion dance troupe. “I value my culture and tradition, being Chinese or Asian-American. I have a lot of pride in that,” he said. “I want to contribute and give back to the community.”
|
Chinese American;Lunar New Year;New York Chinese Freemasons Athletic Club;Clubs;Dance;Chinatown Manhattan;China
|
ny0034631
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2013/12/12
|
Italy: Leader Wins Confidence Vote
|
Prime Minister Enrico Letta of Italy won a confidence vote in the Senate on Wednesday, confirming his government’s majority after promising sweeping overhauls and urging lawmakers to back him or risk chaos. Mr. Letta told Parliament that Italy had avoided overhauls for 20 years and could no longer afford to delay, with protests across the country this week underlining the bitter public mood after years of painful attempts to squeeze costs. Mr. Letta, backed by the center-left Democratic Party and smaller centrist and center-right groups, won the vote 173 to 127 following an even more comfortable victory in the Chamber of Deputies earlier on Wednesday. The confidence votes were called to confirm his majority after former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi pulled his Forza Italia party out of the governing coalition last month.
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Enrico Letta;Italy;Democratic Party Italy;Silvio Berlusconi
|
ny0258524
|
[
"us"
] |
2011/01/09
|
Military Will Do Self-Review, Adm. Mike Mullen Says
|
WASHINGTON — Adm. Mike Mullen , who will almost certainly be the final chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to have served in the Vietnam War, still carries the scars of how that polarizing era damaged the military and its relationship with the American people. As he enters his last year as the nation’s top-ranking officer and as the military enters its 10th year of war since the Sept. 11 attacks, Admiral Mullen is openly voicing concerns that professionalism and ethical standards across the armed forces are being severely challenged by the longest period of sustained combat in the nation’s history. He is responsible for convening a National Defense University conference here on Monday that will open an intensive assessment by the military of its professional behavior. “We’ve learned a lot about ourselves in the last decade; some of it’s been pretty unpleasant stuff,” Admiral Mullen said in an interview. “I want us to understand what we’ve seen, to a depth that we can ensure that our moral compass stays true, our ethical compass stays true.” The conference is the first such introspective session into “military ethos” organized specifically at the request of a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It will examine a subtle set of political and social challenges to military integrity, like a potential slide toward partisanship among the officer corps, especially retired generals and admirals acting as television commentators, and whether the behavior of up-and-coming leaders fits with the image the military as an institution wants to exhibit to the nation. A particularly relevant topic on the agenda is how the next generation’s generals and admirals should express their best, unvarnished military advice to the nation’s civilian leadership, and what to do when they disagree with the eventual policy. Admiral Mullen has said there are just two choices: an officer obeys the policy and follows it with enthusiasm or resigns. Hovering over that discussion will be memories of the bruising, closed-door debate about shaping a strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan that many at the Pentagon and the White House said soured civilian-military relations. But other issues are expected to include an assessment of the retired generals who openly called for Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, to resign, as well as of retired admirals and generals who endorse political candidates or appear at party conventions. The discussion is also expected to touch on whether service members have the right to a different persona online, like on Facebook or in a blog, than they do in uniform. Admiral Mullen, who is scheduled to retire on Oct. 1, acknowledged that his motivations for the conference dated to his service in a war that ended more than three decades ago. “These are Vietnam scars for me,” he said. And just as the Vietnam War shaped his professional outlook, Admiral Mullen said, the intense combat experiences during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will shape the military for decades to come. “How they lead, how they retain, how they recruit, what they talk about — I want to examine as much of that as we can, in stride, to prepare for the future,” he said. A conscious decision was made not to focus at this session on the most egregious acts of military misconduct that seized global attention and prompted worldwide outrage, like detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, because such actions are clearly prohibited by long-standing laws of armed conflict and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Admiral Mullen noted that the Army, in particular, was moving ahead with its own effort to evaluate military professionalism, and he cited the work done by Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, who leads the Army Training and Doctrine Command. General Dempsey said his efforts had been inspired by two trends since the Sept. 11 attacks: how counterinsurgency warfare and efforts to create more deployable brigade combat teams had placed increasing responsibilities in the hands of junior leaders, and how the Army’s system for generating forces created a deliberate cycle in which combat units were built, trained, deployed — and then brought home to be rebuilt with fresh troops. “This is very different from an Army that had been relatively stable, relatively hierarchical, relatively centralized,” General Dempsey said in a telephone interview. General Dempsey, who is Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates’s candidate to be the next Army chief of staff, said the Army had not paused for an institutional, top-to-bottom review of its professional conduct in two decades. “This is another one of those times in our history when we want to encourage ourselves to look at ourselves as professionals and ask whether we are living up to our standards — and where our policies for training, education and promotion enhance these standards or rub against them,” General Dempsey said. To manage the conference, National Defense University turned to Albert C. Pierce, director of the Institute for National Security Ethics and Leadership , which examines and teaches professional behavior in the national security arena. “Our distinctive concept of operations,” Mr. Pierce said, “comes from the chairman, introspection and reflection by the members of the profession on what its basic principles and touchstones are, and how to apply them to specific issues such as providing professional military advice and handling disagreements over policy.” He added, “More broadly, we hope our deliberations that day will help define or describe where and how to draw the lines between appropriate and inappropriate behavior by military professionals, active-duty and retired.” Admiral Mullen will give the keynote address, and all of the panelists are active-duty or retired military personnel, with one exception; John J. Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary who is president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan policy institute here, will offer perspectives on how senior civilian policy makers view the behavior of military professionals.
|
United States Defense and Military Forces;Mullen Michael G;Joint Chiefs of Staff
|
ny0188176
|
[
"sports",
"hockey"
] |
2009/04/08
|
Panthers Lose Ground in Playoff Race After 2-1 Loss
|
PHILADELPHIA — Florida goaltender Tomas Vokoun watched Philadelphia center Jeff Carter shoot the puck, and he thrust his right leg against the goalpost as quickly as he could. But Carter scores a lot of goals because he can detect slivers of space. Vokoun gave him just one. Carter’s shot bounced off Vokoun’s leg, near his knee, and it trickled into the goal early in the third period to lift the Flyers to a critical 2-1 victory Tuesday over the Panthers , who are still hoping to make the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 2000 but now need help. “Every game is important, and we still have a chance, but we have to win our last two games,” Vokoun said in the middle of a dressing room that had emptied quickly. “It’s a tough one to lose.” After an unexpected recent push, Florida (39-30-11) entered Tuesday with a chance to pull ahead of the Rangers for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. But the Rangers beat the Montreal Canadiens, and the Panthers stumbled once too often Tuesday. “We played well, and everybody wants to get to that playoff spot, so it takes on more frustration,” Florida defenseman Jay Bowmeester said. Now the Rangers (41-30-9) are 2 points ahead of the Panthers, with each scheduled to play two more games. The bad news for the Rangers is that they will have to play both games against the Flyers (43-25-11), who resourcefully rallied from a second-period deficit Tuesday. Goaltender Martin Biron stopped 29 of 30 shots for the Flyers, who clinched a playoff berth with the victory. The Panthers must beat Atlanta on Thursday and Washington in their season finale Saturday and get help from tho teams that play the Rangers and the Canadiens. “It’s bad, but we have two games, and they have two games, too,” said the Florida left wing Rostislav Olesz. “It’s hockey. It’s sports, and there are bounces. There’s still a chance there. We didn’t give up.” The Flyers, too, had something to play for. Philadelphia needed one point to clinch a playoff berth and is jostling with the Carolina Hurricanes for fourth place and home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs. “That’s a good team, and they’ve got something to play for, and I think it showed in how well we played,” said Peter DeBoer, the Panthers’ first-year coach. “We played a hell of a hockey game, so it’s tough to walk out of here without anything to show for it.” The Panthers, who had won four of their previous five games, scored at 4 minutes 30 seconds of the second period. A loose puck bounced past Flyers defenseman Randy Jones, and Panthers forward Michael Frolik tracked it down deep in the Flyers’ zone. Frolik cruised toward the goal, then whipped a pass to Brett McLean, who charged into the slot. McLean knocked in his seventh goal of the season on the Panthers’ 16th shot of the game. As the Panthers celebrated the goal, the crowd booed the Flyers’ listlessness. “We’ve got to find a way to score more than one goal,” Florida forward Stephen Weiss said. “It doesn’t matter how well you play if you don’t score. It’s tough to win in this league, but we’ll regroup.” Flyers center Daniel Brière was dragged down by Florida’s Radek Dvorak, and even though Philadelphia did not score on the power play, the Flyers played with much more emotion after the penalty. At 15:45, they tied the score with a hard-earned goal. Philadelphia defenseman Matthew Carle carried the puck on his backhand around Florida defenseman Nick Boynton, then shoveled it toward Vokoun. The puck kicked off the left skate of Philadelphia forward Joffrey Lupul in front of the goal and trickled past Vokoun. The goal was reviewed because Lupul, who was tied up by Panthers defenseman Karlis Skrastins, was off-balance and appeared at first to kick the puck in. But the goal stood, and the foghorn that punctuates each Flyers’ goal here sounded again, as it had after the puck went in. Later, Carter found a way to score again, and Florida left wing David Booth said: “It’s just one bounce that doesn’t go your way. You know what? We’ve got to win our last two, and that’s the only thing we can focus on now.”
|
Hockey Ice;Philadelphia Flyers;Florida Panthers
|
ny0205552
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2009/01/30
|
Six-Month Term for Manager of Escort Ring Tied to Spitzer
|
A college student who managed the prostitution ring that led to the downfall of former Gov. Eliot Spitzer was sentenced to six months in prison on Thursday by a judge who praised her for trying to put her life back on track. Cecil Suwal, 24, of the Bronx, cried as she apologized and asked for mercy from the judge, Barbara S. Jones of Federal District Court in Manhattan. The federal probation department had recommended no prison time; prosecutors had sought roughly two years. Ms. Suwal was 18 when she got involved with Mark Brener, 63, becoming “his paramour, his companion and ultimately his assistant” at the Emperor’s Club V.I.P. , a high-priced escort service, said Alberto A. Ebanks, a defense lawyer. His psychological domination left her incapable of making independent decisions, Mr. Ebanks said. A tattoo on her body, reading “property of Mark Brener,” left no doubt he controlled her, Mr. Ebanks said. “It is my aim to prevent others, especially young girls, from making the kind of mistakes that I have made,” Ms. Suwal said. Mr. Brener, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit a prostitution offense and conspiracy to commit money laundering, faces 2 to 2 ½ years in prison. Nearly a million dollars in cash was found by investigators in the Cliffside Park, N.J., apartment of Mr. Brener and Ms. Suwal. The judge said Ms. Suwal opened bank accounts for shell businesses created to hide the true nature of the operation, paid prostitutes and arranged meetings with clients. It was one such meeting in a Washington hotel last February that snared Mr. Spitzer and led to his resignation as governor in March. Prosecutors have said they will not charge Mr. Spitzer, after investigators found no evidence that he had misused public or campaign funds for prostitution. Ms. Suwal pleaded guilty last year to money laundering, conspiracy and conspiring to promote prostitution. Mr. Ebanks said she had nearly a 4.0 average in college last semester. She has “permanently severed the umbilical cord from Brener,” Mr. Ebanks said. Judge Jones credited Ms. Suwal for going to “extraordinary lengths to put her life back on track” but said it could not erase the central role she had played in the escort service.
|
Suwal Cecil;Emperor's Club VIP;Decisions and Verdicts;Crime and Criminals;Sentences (Criminal);Prostitution;Spitzer Eliot L;Brener Mark;Jones Barbara S;New York City
|
ny0229538
|
[
"us"
] |
2010/07/25
|
Drivers on Prescription Drugs Are Hard to Convict
|
The accident that killed Kathryn Underdown had all the markings of a drunken-driving case. The car that hit her as she rode her bicycle one May evening in Miller Place, N.Y., did not stop, the police said, until it crashed into another vehicle farther down the road. The driver could not keep her eyes open during an interview with investigators, according to the complaint against her, and her speech was slow and slurred. But the driver told the police that she had not been drinking; instead, the complaint said, she had taken several prescription medications, including a sedative and a muscle relaxant. She was charged with vehicular manslaughter and driving under the influence of drugs — an increasingly common offense, law enforcement officials say, at a time when drunken-driving deaths are dropping and when prescriptions for narcotic painkillers, anti-anxiety medications, sleep aids and other powerful drugs are rampant. The issue is vexing police officials because, unlike with alcohol, there is no agreement on what level of drugs in the blood impairs driving. The behavioral effects of prescription medication vary widely, depending not just on the drug but on the person taking it. Some, like anti-anxiety drugs, can dull alertness and slow reaction time; others, like stimulants, can encourage risk-taking and hurt the ability to judge distances. Mixing prescriptions, or taking them with alcohol or illicit drugs, can exacerbate impairment and sharply increase the risk of crashing, researchers say. “In the past it was cocaine, it was PCP, it was marijuana ,” said Chuck Hayes of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. “Now we’re into this prescription drug era that is giving us a whole new challenge.” The police also struggle with the challenge of prosecuting someone who was taking valid prescriptions. “How do we balance between people who legitimately need their prescriptions and protecting the public?” said Mark Neil, senior lawyer at the National Traffic Law Center, which works with prosecutors. “It becomes a very delicate balance.” Some states have made it illegal to drive with any detectable level of prohibited drugs in the blood. But setting any kind of limit for prescription medications is far more complicated, partly because the complex chemistry of drugs makes their effects more difficult to predict than alcohol’s. And determining whether a driver took drugs soon before getting on the road can be tricky, since some linger in the body for days or weeks. Many states are confronting the problem as part of a broader effort to keep so-called drugged drivers, including those under the influence of marijuana and other illegal drugs, off the road. “We have a pretty clear message in this country that you don’t drink and drive,” said R. Gil Kerlikowske, President Obama’s top drug policy adviser, who wants to reduce drugged-driving accidents by 10 percent over the next five years. “We need very much to have a similar message when it comes to drugs.” There is no reliable data on how many drivers are impaired by prescription drugs, but law enforcement officials say the problem is growing so quickly that states are putting hundreds of police officers through special training to spot signs of drug impairment and clamoring for better technology to detect it. Even the prevalence of drug-impaired driving is unknown, since many states combine the arrest data with that for drunken driving. Mr. Kerlikowske points to a 2007 survey by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which screened 5,900 nighttime drivers around the country and found that 16.3 percent tested positive for legal or illegal drugs. The tests could not determine which drivers were impaired by drugs, but Mr. Kerlikowske said the results suggested a problem that had “flown below the radar” for too long. “You don’t want to scare people,” he said, “but you certainly want to make them aware of the dangerousness. You can be as deadly behind the wheel with prescription drugs as you can with over-the-limit alcohol, and you are responsible for your own actions.” In interviews, law enforcement officials around the country said anyone who drives while taking prescription drugs is at risk of arrest, not only those who drive recklessly. In one recent case near Bangor, Me., a pickup truck on a rural road was not swerving, speeding or otherwise hinting that its driver was impaired. A police officer stopped the truck because of its noisy muffler, then saw that the driver’s eyes were bloodshot and his speech slurred. A Breathalyzer test found that the driver, Chester Annance, had not been drinking. Yet he was arrested based on the officer’s suspicion that he was on drugs, and a blood test later found opiate painkillers in his system. Mr. Annance was convicted this month of driving under the influence of drugs. He received seven days in jail, a three-year license suspension and a fine. He is appealing the conviction. “You don’t need to wait for a crash to happen before you charge someone,” said R. Christopher Almy, the district attorney in Bangor. Defense lawyers say that in their zeal to make a statement about drug-impaired driving, the police are casting too wide a net and unfairly punishing people who are taking prescriptions as directed. Tara Jenswold-Schipper, an assistant attorney general in Wisconsin, said she usually stuck to cases where drivers had mixed drugs, exceeded the proper dose or taken controlled medications without a prescription. In one such case in that state, a former physician slammed his S.U.V. into a Honda Accord in April 2008, killing the pregnant driver and her 10-year-old daughter. Prosecutors said the physician, Mark Benson, had high levels of the sleep aid Ambien in his system, as well as Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug, and oxycodone, an opiate painkiller. Mr. Benson was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Defendants can try to prove that they did not realize their medication would affect their driving, prosecutors said, but that argument may not hold up if the bottle had a warning label. “Would you go home and start a chain saw and cut down a tree?” said Lt. Col. Thomas C. Hejl, the assistant sheriff in Calvert County, Md. “Why should you get behind the wheel of a vehicle when the same medication has the same side effects?” Unable to prove impairment with blood tests, prosecutors in drugged-driving cases rely heavily on the testimony of “drug recognition experts,” law enforcement officers trained to spot signs of impairment in drivers. But there are only about 7,000 such officers nationwide, Mr. Hayes said, not nearly enough to respond to every traffic stop that may involve drugs. “When they are involved,” he said of the experts, “our chances of convicting people are much higher.” But persuading a jury to convict someone of impaired driving due to prescription drugs remains difficult except for the most egregious cases, said Douglas F. Gansler, the attorney general in Maryland. “Because most people on the jury will also likely be taking prescription drugs for some ailment,” Mr. Gansler said, “whether it’s Lipitor or allergy pills or whatever it might be, they might think, ‘I don’t want that to become criminal.’ ”
|
Drunken and Reckless Driving;Drugs (Pharmaceuticals);Accidents and Safety;Roads and Traffic
|
ny0249464
|
[
"business"
] |
2011/05/25
|
Chrysler Pays Back Loans From the U.S. and Canada
|
DETROIT — Chrysler paid back on Tuesday $7.6 billion in loans from the American and Canadian governments, paving the way for its Italian partner, Fiat, to increase its control over the Detroit carmaker. The repayment of loans and interest owed to the United States Treasury and Export Development Canada is a significant milestone in Chrysler’s methodical comeback from bankruptcy in 2009. Now the company’s revival will enter a new phase that depends heavily on its alliance with Fiat, which on Tuesday increased its stake in Chrysler to 46 percent, from 30 percent. Fiat will most likely increase its ownership to 51 percent by the end of the year. Terms of Chrysler’s federal bailout allow the Italian company to gain an additional 5 percent interest when a prototype of a new fuel-efficient compact car is ready for production in the United States. Sergio Marchionne, who is chief executive of both auto companies, said the new car should be completed by December and would be produced beginning next year at a Chrysler plant in Illinois. “It’s my intention for us to have the car ready by the fourth quarter,” Mr. Marchionne said at a ceremony marking the loan repayments. Mr. Marchionne was joined at the event by Ron A. Bloom and Brian Deese, two members of the auto task force that was assembled by President Obama to shepherd Chrysler and General Motors through bankruptcy reorganization with taxpayer aid. Many people in the auto industry were skeptical that Chrysler could survive even after its financial bailout. But at the ceremony held at a Chrysler plant outside Detroit, Mr. Marchionne said the company had defied the odds by turning out new, improved products that are being sold at a profit. “We have collectively found the strength to fight against this death sentence placed on our company from the very beginning,” Mr. Marchionne said to the cheers of hundreds of workers at the plant in Sterling Heights, Mich. Mr. Marchionne made his remarks in front of a red, white and blue sign that said “PAID” in huge letters. Retiring its government loans will not only save Chrysler an estimated $350 million a year in interest payments, but it should also bolster its image in the eyes of American consumers. “The loans are no longer a negative in the marketplace,” said Rebecca Lindland, an analyst with the research firm IHS Automotive. “It also frees up more cash for them to build a better product.” Chrysler was able to repay the loans because it had negotiated new financing with a consortium of investment banks that includes a term loan of $3 billion, debt securities totaling $3.2 billion and a revolving credit facility of $1.3 billion. The loan repayment was also helped by funds from Fiat, which paid Chrysler $1.3 billion to increase its stake to 46 percent. Chrysler was not obligated to pay back its United States loans until 2017. In a statement, President Obama said that the early repayment was further proof that government intervention in Detroit’s troubles was a prudent decision. “While there is more work to be done, we are starting to see stronger sales, additional shifts at plants and signs of strength in the auto industry and our economy,” the president said. Mr. Bloom, who is now the president’s special assistant on manufacturing policy, said Chrysler’s comeback had happened “more quickly than we had hoped.” The Treasury Department still holds a 6.6 percent stake in Chrysler, which it could begin selling when Chrysler holds a public stock offering. Mr. Marchionne said he was committed to the stock offering, but had not yet set a timetable. Mr. Bloom said the government would be “opportunistic” in divesting itself of its shares but declined to predict a time frame. With the loan repayments behind it, Chrysler can now concentrate on maintaining its slow but steady resurgence in the marketplace. Sales at Chrysler rose 22.5 percent through the first four months of this year, compared with a 19.6 percent increase for the overall American market. Much of the gains have resulted from new models like revamped versions of the Jeep Grand Cherokee sport utility vehicle and Chrysler 300 sedan. But for the longer term, Chrysler needs more competitive small and midsize cars based on Fiat technology to broaden its product mix. “Chrysler’s alliance with Fiat is crucial to its survival,” said Bruce Clark, a senior vice president at Moody’s Investors Service. “The union is vital to rebuilding Chrysler’s product portfolio and sustaining its business model.” One worker at Tuesday’s ceremony said Chrysler’s Italian partner was so far doing a much better job integrating with the company than one of its previous owners, the German carmaker Daimler. “There’s just a whole different feeling to it,” said Russell Bell, an electrician who has worked for Chrysler since 1973. “Fiat coming in was probably the lifeline that we needed.”
|
Chrysler LLC;Credit and Debt;Automobiles
|
ny0193506
|
[
"business",
"media"
] |
2009/11/04
|
A Rugged Messenger for a Men’s Body Lotion
|
IN a new television spot for Vaseline Men body and face lotion, Michael Strahan , the former New York Giants defensive end who stars on the Fox series “Brothers,” demonstrates a 15-minute workout in a hotel room, including push-ups and lateral jumps over rolled-up towels. Afterward, Mr. Strahan rubs lotion on his Popeye forearm. “Skin’s another part of my body I keep strong with Vaseline Men fast-absorbing lotion,” he says. Finally, a voiceover suggests that the lotion, like the workout, is expeditious: “It takes just 15 seconds for stronger, more resilient skin.” In the new campaign — a collaboration between ESPN and the New York office of Bartle Bogle Hagarty — and a new Web site, StrongerSkin.com , Vaseline, a Unilever brand, explores new territory for men’s grooming. While new categories like men’s body spray, shower gel and facial scrubs have surged in the last decade, major brands like Axe, Old Spice and Gillette have not introduced below-the-neck moisturizers. Some upscale brands, like Clinique and Jack Black, make men’s lotions, but they are sold mostly at specialty stores like Sephora. Before introducing Vaseline Men in 2008, the brand, whose research indicated that only 17 percent of men used body lotion at least once a week (in contrast to 44 percent of women), assessed why men abstain. One barrier is that lotion has what’s known in toiletry marketing parlance as “poor sensories” for men. “The major reason men don’t use lotion is they think lotions feel sticky or tacky, and that they take a long time to put on and don’t absorb quickly,” said Srini Sripada, marketing director for skin products at Unilever. To those accustomed to richer lotions, Vaseline Men, which is formulated to absorb quickly, may feel as if it is lacking moisturizers, although that may appeal to lotion newbies. But the bigger barrier to using body lotion for men may be less tactile than psychological. “Using too many products makes you a girl,” begins a feature about facial moisturizers in the November issue of Maxim, which advocates their use but cautions against toiletry overload, telling readers that if their medicine cabinet holds more beauty products than their girlfriends’ “(and/or you have a Sephora charge card), it’s time to pull back a bit, Betty.” According to a recent report by Packaged Facts, a market research company, the United States men’s grooming market — including the largest segment, shaving products — rose from $3.8 billion in 2004 to a projected $5.6 billion in 2009, an increase of 46 percent. It projects growth of another 56 percent, to $8.7 billion, by 2014. “Shaving is the gateway” for men concerning toiletries, but the “use of a body lotion probably is at the far end of the spectrum from the traditional manly activity of shaving,” said Timothy Dowd, a senior analyst at Packaged Facts. “I think the stereotype is that, for a man, putting lotion all over his body is a more effeminate activity than putting lotion on his face,” Mr. Dowd said. “That’s not a real fancy interpretation — it’s just an empirical observation.” But, Mr. Dowd added, “even though men are resistant to some products like body lotion, they’re less resistant than they were 10 years ago.” One way Madison Avenue telegraphs machismo is by hiring athletes as spokesmen — as Arthur Murray Dance Studio and the weight-loss company Nutrisystem did with the retired N.F.L. stars Emmitt Smith and Dan Marino, respectively. Mr. Sripada, of Unilever, says that while sports figures like Mr. Strahan help remove barriers for the masculinity conscious, equally important is the “sports analogy” of equating a 15-minute workout for strengthening physique with a 15-second application of lotion for strengthening skin. While most lotions are marketed as one or the other, Vaseline Men — deeming itself for “body and face” — mirrors other so-called multifunctionals in men’s care, like shower gels made by Old Spice and Axe that double as shampoos. As men get more accustomed to certain products, the functions become more pinpointed, but with lotion, men are “in the early stages of conversion,” Mr. Sripada said. In the 52 weeks that ended Oct. 4, Vaseline Men generated revenue of $11.3 million, a 1.2 percent share of the overall $970 million body lotion category, according to Information Resources, a market research firm whose data does not include information on Wal-Mart. Nivea for Men, a brand that makes a range of shaving and other products, also introduced a body lotion in 2008. Unlike Vaseline Men, which tends to be stocked with unisex lotions, Nivea for Men was stocked in the men’s aisle, according to Nicolas Maurer, vice president of marketing for Beiersdorf North America, a unit of the German company Beiersdorf. It was an experiment that did not go particularly well, Mr. Maurer acknowledged in an interview. Sales in the last 52 weeks totaled only $210,000, less than 2 percent of sales of Vaseline Men, according to Information Resources. Now the company is considering how to restage the offering, which it introduced quietly without advertising, by shifting it to the lotion aisle, he said. Like Vaseline Men, the Nivea product aims to have a more masculine scent and to absorb quickly. “For women, to have a certain feeling of silkiness on their skin is appealing, but for guys what’s important is that the product has a masculine dimension, which in this case means it absorbs quickly and has the right fragrance,” Mr. Maurer said. “Men want a product that delivers against the uncomfortable feeling of dry skin without adding to the sense that they’re applying a beauty product.”
|
Advertising and Marketing;Cosmetics and Toiletries;Strahan Michael;Unilever N.V;ESPN
|
ny0219768
|
[
"sports",
"olympics"
] |
2010/05/14
|
Charlie Francis, Canadian Track Coach Tied to Steroids, Dies at 61
|
Charlie Francis, the Canadian coach whose star sprinter, Ben Johnson, was the first Olympic champion to be stripped of a gold medal after testing positive for anabolic steroids, and whose unapologetic admission that his athletes used performance-enhancing drugs forced Olympic officials to confront a widespread problem, died on Wednesday in Toronto. He was 61. Molly Killingbeck, a coach and former quarter-miler who had run for him, confirmed his death, saying he had had lymphoma for five years. In 1989, Francis was barred for life from coaching in Canada when he told an inquiry that Johnson and 10 other athletes had used performance-enhancing drugs as part of training programs he designed. Francis continued to advise runners from around the world, in books, on the Internet and in person. For a time in 2003, the American sprinters Marion Jones and her companion, Tim Montgomery, worked with him in Toronto. Responding to pressure from sponsors and track officials, Jones and Montgomery left Francis. Both later admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs. “Charlie’s legacy is multi-layered,” said Dr. Steven Ungerleider, a psychologist and author of “Faust’s Gold: Inside the East German Doping Machine. ” “He wasn’t just an isolated coach, with an isolated athlete; he left this legacy that contaminated some of the greatest track stars of the world.” Johnson’s record-shattering performance in the 100 meters at the Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea, in 1988, and his stunning fall was a watershed for the International Olympic Committee . Three days after he posted a time of 9.79 — Carl Lewis of the United States finished second in 9.92 — Johnson tested positive for a banned steroid, stanozolol. Since then, the I.O.C. has increasingly tried to crack down on drug cheaters. “When you look back at the history of everything in the doping world, 1988 was a pivotal moment,” Ungerleider said. “That’s when the I.O.C. said, ‘Enough is enough.’ ” Francis was born Oct. 13, 1948, in Toronto and attended Stanford University on a track scholarship. He became a Canadian national champion in the 100 and 200 meters in 1971. Francis made it to the quarterfinals of the 100 meters for Canada at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. When a back injury forced him to retire, he turned to selling insurance in Toronto while volunteering as a track coach. He coached Johnson for 12 years, beginning at the Scarborough Optimist Track Club outside Toronto, where Johnson t came to him as a skinny 15-year-old. In 1981, Francis was officially hired to work with Canada’s top track athletes. “He was very interested in the mechanical model, how people ran, the physiology behind it, and he was one of the most attentive and intense coaches I’ve seen,” Alex Gardiner, 60, coach of Athletics Canada, the country’s track federation, said in an interview. Richard Pound, a former vice president of the I.O.C., said Francis became increasingly frustrated in the late 1970s and ’80s with what he felt was a lack of response from international track officials — then known as the International Amateur Athletic Federation — in punishing athletes who used performance-enhancing drugs. “He and a number of the Canadian folks tried to talk the I.A.A.F. into life bans, and the I.A.A.F. refused to budge,” Pound said. “So he went over to the dark side. He said, ‘I’m not going to have my runners start a meter behind.’ ” In Seoul, Francis at first denied that Johnson had used steroids. But months later, in the Canadian inquiry, Francis said he had designed a training program for Johnson incorporating steroids as early as 1981 and had even injected him in 1986. Johnson won two medals at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. Killingbeck, who also coaches for Athletics Canada, said she preferred to remember Francis as a generous, brilliant coach who once counted the change in his pocket to buy her a sweatshirt when the weather suddenly turned. She said that her own steroid use — part of her recovery from injury — was “something that happened a long time ago.” She said that Francis was survived by his wife, Angela Coon, a hurdler he once coached; their 11-year-old son, James; and a brother, Barry. He lived in Toronto. Several newspapers reported that Johnson visited Francis in the hospital the day before he died. Gardiner called Francis’ legacy complicated. “In time, he became more remorseful,” he said. “But Charlie always believed that the rules of the game weren’t always the rules that everybody played by.”
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Francis Charlie;Steroids;Olympic Games;Deaths (Obituaries);Doping (Sports);International Olympic Committee;International Assn of Athletics Federations;Johnson Ben (1961- );Track and Field
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ny0156351
|
[
"us"
] |
2008/06/19
|
Tons of PCBs May Come Calling at a Down-at-the-Heels Texas City
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PORT ARTHUR, Tex. — This downtrodden chemical town on the Gulf of Mexico has no shortage of nicknames: Cancer Alley, the Armpit of Texas , Ring of Fire. Built on a gush of oil wealth, Port Arthur eventually wooed chemical and waste plants as well. But since the 1970s, this city, which is majority African-American, has complained that it has become a dumping ground for the nation’s toxic waste. Now, if a French-owned waste management company has its way, the Port Arthur area will be the final destination for 40 million pounds of toxins from Mexico . “Bring it all to southeast Texas,” Hilton Kelley, a community activist, said wryly. “Who’s next? Germany? Finland? England? Aren’t our oil refineries and chemical plants enough? We have a right to a clean environment, and the nation sees us as expendable in the name of big business.” Despite a federal ban on importing PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, the company, Veolia Environmental Services, has asked the Environmental Protection Agency for an exemption to move the chemicals by truck from Mexico and to burn them at its incinerator just outside Port Arthur. The incinerator has been disposing of the United States’ PCB waste since 1992. In March, the E.P.A. gave tentative approval to the proposal. A final decision is expected after August. On Thursday, the agency will conduct a public hearing featuring all of the players, from incinerator lobbyists to local leaders, who have pledged to sue if the exemption is granted. The mayor of Port Arthur, Delores Prince, has not taken a position on the proposal, saying that the incinerator is outside the city limits and that the exemption is a federal matter. Dr. Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, and an expert on waste incineration who is not involved in the case, called the situation in Mexico an “immediate environmental risk.” Dr. Hershkowitz defended the concept of accepting PCBs from Mexico, saying that proper incineration would be better than leaving the toxins where they were, in temporary facilities. “This is not about Americans versus Mexicans,” he said, “but about protecting what’s most at risk for Homo sapiens and eco-regions.” Still, Dr. Hershkowitz and other environmental experts said Port Arthur, with a population of about 58,000 people, faced a legitimate risk of exposure to PCBs, which have been linked to cancer, brain and liver damage, skin rashes and harmful effects to the reproductive system. And he questioned whether the incinerator, given its record, could do the job safely. PCBs are used as a coolant in electric generators, although they were banned from manufacturing in 1979. No private companies have applied to import them into the United States since 1996. Officials at Veolia said their incinerator had a 99.99999 percent efficiency rating, reflecting the percentage of PCBs that the process destroys. Veolia employees receive annual blood tests for PCBs, and the company said no problems had been found. “We’re in the business of destroying waste,” said Daniel Duncan, the plant’s environmental, health and safety manager. “It’s better to destroy these here than let them go unaddressed down in Mexico.” PCBs from Mexico are now exported to Europe at three times the cost, Mr. Duncan said. He declined to estimate the value of a contract to dispose of the PCBs. Environmental groups cite dozens of reported problems with Veolia’s incinerator and insist that incineration in general, the oldest and most widely accepted means of disposal, is imperfect. Dr. Neil Carman, director of the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra Club, who is leading the fight against Veolia, said PCBs were so dangerous that even small doses of the 40 million pounds that the company wanted to transport here would significantly add to the health problems in Port Arthur. Jefferson County, where Port Arthur is located, has a cancer rate about 20 percent higher than the state average. No one disputes that PCBs are dangerous. In 1981, an electrical fire spread PCBs throughout a state building in Binghamton, N.Y., resulting in a 13-year, $53 million cleanup. And since 2002, General Electric has been under a federal order to clean approximately 40 miles of the Hudson River where its factories discharged PCBs. By 2025, all electric transformers with PCBs must be out of service in the United States, a regulation that is likely to keep the Veolia incinerator busy. PCB disposal is a divisive issue, partly because there are no continuous monitoring devices in the United States for PCBs, an odorless and colorless compound. Veolia’s efficiency claims are based on test burns, which are conducted every five years. Dr. Carman, who conducted emissions tests for the state for 12 years, said the tests were “a crude measure under ideal conditions.” Ideal or not, the Veolia incinerator has an “average” compliance history, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The company, which has spent $22 million since 2002 upgrading its incinerator to comply with tougher standards of the Clean Air Act, reported 70 deviations, or faulty occurrences, from 2006 to 2008. That included 30 reports of carbon monoxide emissions, a standard indicator of poor combustion, in six months in 2006. That same year, according to the federal Toxics Release Inventory, an E.P.A. database, the company emitted the most toxins in the United States. But Mr. Duncan attributed that finding to a bookkeeping error, and the company has submitted an amended report. Dr. Hershkowitz, who reviewed Veolia’s violations, called the incinerator “routinely and disturbingly substandard.” Opponents said they were baffled as to why the Mexican companies responsible for the PCBs, mainly the utility company CFE, had not pursued more eco-friendly disposal alternatives, like portable incinerators, which they say are cheaper and have been used in Canada and may soon be used in Vietnam to destroy toxins from the defoliant Agent Orange. The E.P.A., however, said portable incineration could not handle the PCBs from Mexico. Although the most common wind currents blow emissions from the incinerator away from Port Arthur, Mr. Kelley said that was little comfort. “We don’t want to set a precedent in this community, where we are set up and prepared to take toxic waste from the world,” he said. “It’s not fair to children, or to me.”
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PCB (Polychlorinated Biphenyls);Waste Materials and Disposal;Texas;Environmental Protection Agency;Environment;Hazardous and Toxic Substances;Factories and Industrial Plants;Mexico
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ny0198026
|
[
"sports",
"golf"
] |
2009/07/20
|
Cink Rewrites a Storybook Ending
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TURNBERRY, Scotland — Not the onrush of history, not the seeming preordination of the champion, not the brutal crosswind off the firth or crowds of thousands of Scots who roared almost exclusively for his astounding 59-year-old opponent could stop Stewart Cink from winning the 138th British Open on Sunday. On the Ailsa course at Turnberry, where Tom Watson defeated Jack Nicklaus 32 years ago in the most memorable of his five Open victories, Cink did what was required to send Watson to his most memorable defeat, with an assist from Watson himself. Cink made a tough 15-footer for birdie at the 72nd hole for a 69 and a score of two-under-par 278. Watson bogeyed the 72nd hole for a 72, forcing a playoff. After four days of entrancing golf , during which Watson’s chances to win a record-tying sixth Open went from improbable to possible to playoff, Cink crushed Watson in the four-hole playoff, beating him by six strokes (two under versus four over) for his first major championship. Watson, keenly disappointed by the outcome, did not try to hide the pain. His shoulders sagged and his grin had turned to a look of resignation. “It would have been a hell of a story, wouldn’t it?” he said, and repeated, “It would have been a hell of a story. It wasn’t to be. And yes, it’s a great disappointment. It tears at your gut, as it always has torn at my gut. It’s not easy to take. I put myself in position to win, didn’t do it in the last hole.” He tried to lighten the heavy pall that hung over his news conference. Looking from one row of glum faces to another, he said, “This ain’t a funeral, you know.” Later, when asked what he thought a good headline would be for the story, he thought for a moment. “The old fogy almost did it,” he said with a rueful smile. So much for romance, mystical endings and tales of age before youth in the lengthening shadows and dying light. Watson, the legend who would have been the oldest major champion by 11 years, was taken out by the last younger man standing and the victor offered no apologies, the vanquished no excuses. “I don’t feel ashamed,” Cink said. “I don’t feel disappointed. I’m pleased as punch that I’ve won this tournament, and also proud of the way Tom Watson played because he showed, not only did he show how great a golfer he is, but he showed what a great game we all play, the longevity that can exist for a guy to come out and compete.” All Watson had to do to claim the claret jug was make an 8-footer for par at 18. But he made a bad putt, pushing the ball right of the hole. Every challenger except Cink and the Englishman Lee Westwood had dissolved into the chilly mists on the rocks below by the time Watson arrived at the final hole with a one-stroke lead. Westwood, on the green in 2 with a 60-footer, was about to join them. Already gone were Ross Fisher, another of England ’s hopefuls, who birdied the first two holes to take a two-stroke lead over Watson only to free fall at the fourth and fifth by going bogey, quadruple-bogey on his way to a 75. Mathew Goggin of Australia moved into a tie for the lead with a birdie at No. 10 before bogeying Nos. 14-16 to finish at 73 and tied for fifth. The 21-year-old Englishman Chris Wood, who birdied No. 17 to reach two under, bogeyed No. 18. He missed the playoff by a shot. There stood Westwood at two under and on the green with a 20-footer while Watson, at three under after a birdie at 17, waited in the fairway. “Before I’d hit my putt, I figured he had hit the middle of the fairway, so I thought he was going to make four from there,” Westwood said. “I shouldn’t have got ahead of myself really. I just thought I needed to hole it.” Westwood three-putted instead, sending his shot past the hole and taking himself out of the playoff. Watson hit an 8-iron through the green into the collar and put himself in the playoff. Cink took command of the playoff from the start. The last good shot Watson hit was his first drive at No. 5, a sweet draw that he held against crosswind right into the middle of the fairway. He made bogey from there when his approach shot dove into the left greenside bunker and he could not get up and down. He double-bogeyed the third playoff hole, No. 17, after hooking his drive into the left weeds and lined his tee shot at 18 into the grandstand to the right. As Watson walked up the 18th, a beaten man, the crowd rose as one to cheer him. It is something he said he would choose to remember most about the four days. “Those memories are hard to forget,” he said. “Coming up in the amphitheater of the crowd and having the crowd cheering you on like they do here for me. As I said, the feeling is mutual. And that warmth makes you feel human. It makes you feel so good.” On the green, Cink was also clapping for Watson, a gesture that was heartfelt. As much as he wanted to beat Watson when the playoff began, he had respect for what he had witnessed throughout the week. “When the outcome of the playoff wasn’t really in question anymore,” Cink said, “then I was able to sit back and not only enjoy myself walking up to the green, but also reflect a little bit about what Tom Watson just did in front of all of us. “The same Tom Watson that won this tournament in, what was it, ’77, the same guy showed up here this week. And he just about did it. He beat everybody but one guy. And it was really special.”
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British Open;Tom Watson;Golf
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ny0166957
|
[
"business"
] |
2006/01/27
|
Two Drug Makers Post Gains for Quarter
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Eli Lilly & Company said yesterday that it posted a fourth-quarter profit on higher sales of its 16-month-old antidepressant Cymbalta. Also yesterday Amgen, the world's largest biotechnology company by sales, said that its fourth-quarter earnings rose 20 percent, driven by sales of rheumatoid arthritis and anemia drugs. Lilly, which is based in Indianapolis, said its net income for the fourth quarter was $700.6 million, or 64 cents a share, in contrast to a loss of $2.4 million, or less than a cent, a year earlier, when the company incurred tax expenses from repatriated overseas earnings. Sales of Cymbalta more than tripled. Newer products accounted for 20 percent of total sales in the quarter and will increase to 24 percent in 2006 from 18 percent last year, Lilly said. Excluding restructuring costs, Lilly said fourth-quarter profit was 80 cents a share. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial had expected 78 cents, based on the average of 24 estimates. Shares of Lilly, the seventh-biggest United States drug maker, rose 24 cents, to $56.93 yesterday. Amgen, which is based in Thousand Oaks, Calif., reported a fourth-quarter profit of $824 million, or 66 cents a share, compared with $689 million, or 53 cents a share, for the period a year ago. Excluding one-time expenses and other special charges, Amgen's earnings would have been $928 million, or 75 cents a share, a 24 percent increase over the fourth quarter last year. On that basis, the earnings missed Wall Street analysts' expectations by a penny, according to Thomson Financial. Shares of Amgen fell $3.57, to $71.90.
|
ELI LILLY AND CO;AMGEN INC;COMPANY REPORTS
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ny0238148
|
[
"technology"
] |
2010/06/15
|
Cloud Computing a Threat, and Opportunity, for Taiwan’s PC Makers
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TAIPEI — When Richard Lee, an electronics magnate, peers into the murky future of cloud computing, he sees both opportunity and challenge. The company he heads, Inventec, makes laptops, servers and other electronic hardware for Western brands like Hewlett-Packard, using the renowned low-cost Taiwanese manufacturing model. But if all the hype around cloud computing becomes reality, that business model may have to change. “It might impact our legacy business,” Mr. Lee said in an interview. “But the good news is that it could also push us into new cloud computing opportunities.” While the term is tossed around in reference to a variety of technologies, in essence cloud computing refers to delivering software, storage and other services via the Web from vast data centers. That is a shift away from the PC-based computing model, in which software is stored on individual machines. If the supporters of cloud computing are right, the laptops that Inventec makes will become less important, as computing power migrates to server farms and as simpler, cheaper mobile devices like the Apple iPad proliferate. But the servers that Inventec makes could gain a more significant role if they are adapted to the needs of the data centers powering the cloud. Inventec is just one of Taiwan’s world-beating technology companies that is bracing itself for this paradigm shift. Like other governments in the region, including that of South Korea, it has announced a plan to help its technology companies compete in a new cloud computing age. And a consortium formed in April is bringing Taiwanese telecommunications, manufacturing, Web security and other software companies together to figure out how to meet the government’s ambitious goals. Cloud computing could offer one way for Taiwan to move beyond the business of contract manufacturing, with its low profit margins, and into more lucrative areas — provided that Taiwanese companies are able to shed mind-sets of the past and address their current weaknesses. “We’re searching for a new model,” said C.Y. Ling, director general of the Department of Investment Services in Taiwan. The cloud computing services market in Taiwan was forecast to hit 6.2 billion Taiwan dollars, or $192 million, this year, up from 3.7 billion dollars in 2006, with most of the business in storage and remote security, according to a report from the Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute in Taiwan. At a recent forum on cloud computing in Taipei, Taiwanese participants gave somewhat angst-ridden views on the shortcomings of the island’s companies, while Western participants were conspicuously more upbeat. That may have something to do with the fact that Taiwan contract makers’ profit margins are a thin 3 percent to 5 percent, according to analysts’ estimates, while Western brands’ much higher margins give them more breathing room for risky innovations. Mr. Lee of Inventec said that Taiwan companies needed to focus more on software. Combining the gadget-making that Taiwan is already strong in with software services will be the key to thriving in the age of cloud computing, he said. “We’re our own worst enemy — there has been too much emphasis on hardware.” Unlike the United States, where the government largely leaves innovation to the free market, Taiwan has traditionally seen government-led campaigns to develop important technologies — semiconductors, PCs, then flat-screen video displays — and to help Taiwan companies figure out how to mass-produce and commercialize them. So it is with cloud computing. In late April, Taiwan’s cabinet announced a 24 billion-dollar cloud computing plan. The plan includes investments in research centers and the establishment of a cloud computing industry alliance. The cabinet hopes that within five years cloud computing will be a $30 billion industry in Taiwan, creating 50,000 new jobs and luring investment. The plan followed the South Korean government’s announcement last December that it would pump 610 billion won, or $487 million, into cloud computing. Mr. Ling of the Department of Investment Services said his department planned a road show to Silicon Valley and Boston this year, in part to drum up cloud computing investment for Taiwan. Microsoft has already taken the plunge, having recently opened a cloud computing center that is a joint effort with the Economics Ministry and two main private-sector partners — the Taiwan manufacturing giants Quanta Computer and Compal Electronics. A government-funded technology incubator, the Industrial Technology Research Institute, is also playing a major role in the government’s cloud computing plans. Led by Chiueh Tzi-cker, it is focusing on developing by the end of this year a prototype for a cloud computing data center “total solution” combining hardware and operating systems that could be adapted and commercialized by Taiwan firms. Data centers will be the beating hearts of the “cloud computing” age, and the research institute hopes Taiwan companies can sell such centers ready-made and at one-third to one-half the cost of U.S. and Japanese competitors. “In the past, we built PCs for the world,” said Mr. Chiueh, during the cloud computing forum. “Now we want to build data centers for the world.” Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan’s largest telecommunications operator, is one of the main players in the new cloud computing consortium. Its motivation is to “leverage our competitiveness to capture this paradigm shift in computing and services,” said its chief executive, Lu Shyue-chin. Chunghwa already has about 30 cloud computing customers, according to Mr. Lu, and is building a new data center outside Taipei. Both the Taiwan government and software makers see Web-based government services as one of the bright spots in cloud computing. For example, Taiwan wants to sell its health care technology expertise to other countries, especially China. Not everyone is as enthusiastic about potential business applications of cloud computing. Skeptics in Taiwan argue that many businesses will never trust a remote data center with storing and delivering important data. But Charles Huang, an analyst at Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute in Taipei, says cloud computing holds the most promise for the consumer market, with a multiplying number of mobile devices — including iPads and other tablet devices, smartphones and e-books — that can gain access to the Web anytime, anywhere.
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Computers and the Internet;Laptop Computers;Cloud Computing;Taiwan
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ny0210412
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2009/12/13
|
A Morning Scherzo, Slowing to Adagio
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Francisco J. Núñez, 44, is the founder and artistic director of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City , a youth choir as diverse as the city it calls home. This is a busy time of year for members of the group: On Thursday they sing in the St. Patrick’s Cathedral Christmas Concert and on Friday and Saturday, they perform at Carnegie Hall with the New York Pops. Mr. Núñez, a native New Yorker, lives on the Upper West Side with his wife, Elizabeth, their 22-month-old son, Sebastián, and two Italian greyhounds, Coda and Dixie. UP WITH THE SON No matter what time I go to sleep, at 6:30 the alarm goes off. “Dada! Dada?” It’s my baby crying, he’s like an alarm clock. So I give him his morning milk and we hang out in his room and play. Then his mom wakes up and we play music. He likes to dance, and he likes salsa, merengue. All Latino. He likes music with a beat. WRITING, COMPOSING Breakfast happens and I try to get some work done. I do most of my work in the mornings. I’ll lock myself up. I’m writing this book on children’s choirs. Also I’ll be composing and arranging. I have commissions. We’re doing a concert at the Japanese chamber of commerce and I’m writing a song that we can sing in Japanese and English. It’s a combination of traditional Japanese music, American pop and gospel. CHURCH, BRUNCH, PARK We try to go to church every Sunday, to the Manhattan Church of Christ at 80th and Madison. I’m Catholic but I go there anyway. My wife is Pentecostal. We happen to like that church. It’s multicultural, there’s young people, we happen to like the reverend there. We don’t dress up but we dress my son up. He’s cute! After church we go to brunch in some diner. Then we get the dogs and go back to the park. SLOW FOOD We always talk early on about what we’re going to have for dinner. Other times, we’re always cooking real quick. Sunday can be the day to really focus. We gravitate to more of a meal, like to sit down and eat as a family. My wife really goes all out. On Sunday, food is quality time. The brunch is important. The dinner is important. It’s a conscious decision about food. And in New York City, food is usually unconscious. You just eat. It’s something you do while doing something more important. ZONED Then we’ll just plop in front of the TV during my son’s nap. We will do nothing. I love watching the news, I go between MSNBC and Fox, which I think is hilarious. My wife likes HGTV. So it’s between the three channels, and she doesn’t understand why I’m watching the same news over and over. Sometimes we get stuck on the Weather Channel. I never know why. It seems to be the compromise. WINDING UP Dinner happens, the baby wakes up, we’re playing with the baby. We constantly clean the house. I walk the dogs. We listen to country and a lot of Latino music. My wife’s from the South, she likes bluegrass. A lot of telephone calls also happen on a Sunday. My son is running all over the place, screaming, playing. So it’s very relaxing. EARLY TO BED I go to bed between 9 and 11. Sometimes I’m so exhausted. When you’re always working, you don’t realize how tired you are. My wife always stays up later, until midnight or one. I don’t know how she does it. I’m on my fourth dream by the time she falls asleep.
|
Young People's Chorus of New York City;Music;Núñez Francisco J.;New York City
|
ny0102265
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2015/12/23
|
New York Officer Is Charged in Arrest of Man Who Tried to Film Him
|
A New York City police officer who arrested a man as he tried to film him and other officers with a cellphone camera was charged on Tuesday with official misconduct and lying on a criminal complaint. The charges brought against the officer, Jonathan Munoz, highlight a trend. Conflicts between citizens and the police have become common in recent years, sometimes ending in arrests for disorderly conduct, as cameras have proliferated and passers-by have begun to videotape the police at work. Officer Munoz, 32, of Suffern, N.Y., pleaded not guilty as he was formally charged before Justice Marcy L. Kahn in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. His lawyer, Stephen C. Worth, said the officer was justified in making the arrest and should never have been indicted. “We look forward to his exoneration,” he said. The charges stem from an encounter on March 12 outside La Casa Del Mofongo, a nightspot in Washington Heights, where Officer Munoz arrested Jason Disisto, 21, on charges of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and interfering with a police investigation. The officer later said that Mr. Disisto had crouched in a fighting stance, lunged at him and swung a fist before he was arrested. But that story was not borne out by surveillance videos from the restaurant and bar, near 183rd Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, a prosecutor, Julio Cuevas Jr., said in court on Tuesday. Those videos — reported by WNBC News — show Officer Munoz approach a 20-year-old female friend of Mr. Disisto and illegally search her pockets, Mr. Cuevas said. Another video shows Mr. Disisto then borrow a phone from another friend and raise it to film the police. Officer Munoz grabs his arms and, with the help of two other officers, takes him into custody, the video shows. Later the phone is thrown from a police car. Mr. Cuevas told Justice Kahn the videos revealed that “not only had the man not engaged in the actions attributed to him by Munoz, but that Munoz had unlawfully searched the woman as she stood on the sidewalk.” Mr. Worth, the defense lawyer, said there was no audio on the videos, giving a misleading impression about what happened. Mr. Disisto has sued the Police Department and the city in federal court in Manhattan, charging he was the victim of a false arrest and malicious prosecution. “The officers attacked him and this is borne out entirely by the video evidence from the bar,” said David B. Rankin, a lawyer representing Mr. Disisto. “But for this video, Mr. Disisto likely would have been prosecuted.” The lawsuit also accuses the Police Department of having a “custom and practice” of making retaliatory arrests against people who photograph or videotape police activity. In legal papers, the city has denied that the Police Department has a policy or practice of retaliation for videotaping, said Nick Paolucci, a spokesman for the city’s Law Department.
|
Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings;Video Recordings; Downloads and Streaming;Jonathan Munoz;Washington Heights Manhattan;NYPD
|
ny0094306
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2015/01/20
|
Max Scherzer Set to Give Nationals an Overpowering Rotation
|
A franchise can come a long way in a decade. Ten years ago, there had not been an official major league game played in Washington since 1971. Now, the team that plays there, the Nationals, has such high expectations that the regular season is only a prelude. The Nationals moved from Montreal in 2005, opened a new ballpark in 2008 and led their league in wins in 2012 and 2014. Yet for all that growth, the franchise still has not won a playoff series since Steve Rogers pitched the Expos to a division series victory in 1981. There is no certain formula for October success, but the Nationals are betting on starting pitching as the critical factor. Their new contract agreement with Max Scherzer, which establishes a record for a right-handed pitcher, gives them an overpowering rotation. Scherzer and the Nationals agreed on a seven-year deal that will pay him $210 million, although that includes significant deferrals. The deal was confirmed by a person with knowledge of the talks who requested anonymity because the contract has not been announced and is pending a physical. The website for CBS Sports first reported Sunday that the sides had reached a seven-year agreement. Fox Sports reported Monday that while Scherzer is signed for seven years, the payouts will last for 14 years, at $15 million per year, for the $210 million total. The left-hander Clayton Kershaw, a three-time Cy Young Award winner for the Los Angeles Dodgers, has the record contract for a pitcher at seven years and $215 million. But Scherzer’s deal eclipses Justin Verlander’s mark for a right-hander, which had been seven years and $180 million. Verlander’s performance has declined since he signed that deal before the 2013 season, when he was 30. Scherzer is also 30 but has thrown 3141/3 fewer innings than Verlander had at the same age. His lighter workload had been a public selling point for Scherzer’s agent, Scott Boras, who advised Scherzer to reject the Tigers’ six-year, $144 million contract offer last spring. It was a risk, but Scherzer made it a winning gamble by going 18-5 with a 3.15 earned run average and improving his appeal on the open market. He excelled in Detroit, winning the American League Cy Young Award in 2013 and compiling a 70-24 record the last four seasons despite just one career complete game. Before the Tigers, Scherzer played for the Arizona Diamondbacks, who drafted him in the first round in 2006. Their scouting director then was Mike Rizzo, the current Nationals general manager, who has stocked his team with Boras clients, including Jayson Werth, Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper. Image Scherzer pitching against the Orioles in an A.L. division series last October. Scherzer, 30, is 70-24 over the last four seasons. Credit Patrick Semansky/Associated Press Boras typically negotiates high-level deals directly with ownership, and the Nationals’ owner, Ted Lerner, is 89 years old. The Tigers’ owner, Mike Ilitch, 85, has signed several Boras clients who have helped his team reach two of the last nine World Series. The Texas Rangers also have several Boras clients on lucrative contracts, including Adrian Beltre, Prince Fielder, Shin-Soo Choo and Elvis Andrus, but they finished in last place amid a barrage of injuries last season. With good health, Washington seems well positioned to repeat as the National League East champion. That might have been the case even without Scherzer, but his signing provides a long-term anchor for a rotation that could soon be in flux. Jordan Zimmermann and Doug Fister can be free agents after this season. For now, though, the Nationals have no plans to trade a starter, which gives them a rotation of Scherzer, Strasburg, Zimmermann, Fister and Gio Gonzalez. Another solid starter, Tanner Roark, could slide to the bullpen for a year to replace Tyler Clippard, a top setup man traded to Oakland last week for infielder Yunel Escobar. That deal reflected what had been frugal maneuvering by the Nationals, who had tried and failed to sign Zimmermann and shortstop Ian Desmond to long-term extensions. The team had signed no free agents and took on little salary at the trading deadline last year, acquiring reliever Matt Thornton from the Yankees and infielder Asdrubal Cabrera from the Cleveland Indians, who paid his salary. The team has since allowed Cabrera to sign with Tampa Bay as a free agent. In adding Scherzer, the Nationals are doubling down on their established strength: a rotation whose 3.04 E.R.A. led the majors last season. The Philadelphia Phillies employed the same strategy for the 2011 season, signing Cliff Lee to form a super-rotation with Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels and Roy Oswalt. That group led the Phillies to a club-record 102 victories in the regular season but was knocked out by St. Louis in the first round of the playoffs. Last year’s Detroit team offers a similarly sobering parallel. The Tigers traded for David Price and lined up Scherzer, Verlander and Price for the playoffs, only to be swept in the first round by Baltimore. Gathering aces helps, of course, but, just like nine-figure contracts in general, all it does is improve a team’s chances in theory. Few nine-figure free-agent pitching contracts have worked out; the best is probably the Yankees’ original deal with C. C. Sabathia, who led the team to a title in 2009 and remained an elite starter for three more seasons. Sabathia is coming off serious knee surgery now and is most likely bound to the Yankees through 2017 because of an extension he signed in October 2011. The Yankees could have used Scherzer but stayed out of the negotiations, believing that with Sabathia and Masahiro Tanaka, two nine-figure starting pitchers were enough. The Nationals will be paying Scherzer through 2028. But if they are wearing championship rings while signing his checks, the payments will be much easier to make.
|
Baseball;Max Scherzer;Washington Nationals
|
ny0132400
|
[
"sports",
"soccer"
] |
2012/12/08
|
Eyes of the Soccer World Turn to Manchester
|
With just one swish of his right foot, Sergio Aguero changed the landscape of English soccer forever. His stoppage-time goal against Queens Park Rangers on the final day of the Premier League season in May clinched Manchester City’s first league title in 44 years and confirmed Manchester United was no longer the only soccer superpower in the northwest of England. United’s players and manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, thought they had done enough to avoid such a fate. After they won their game at Sunderland, news filtered through that City was losing, 2-1, with just minutes to play, enough to give United the championship. Its fans were celebrating a record 20th title. Then Edin Dzeko scored the equalizer, and Aguero provided the defining moment. City finished on top of the table on goal difference. United and City will face off again Sunday, this time on the same field. And once again, they hold the top two spots in the league, with United 3 points ahead of City 15 games into the 38-game season. Historically, the rivalry between City and United has been similar to that of the Mets and the Yankees. While one team strutted like rock stars, the other could only watch with envy. Those days are gone. The Abu Dhabi United Group has pumped around $900 million into Manchester City since taking over in 2008. Many say City’s Premier League title has a price tag hung on it, but supporters say the money spent is irrelevant. A banner was once displayed on the Stretford End at Old Trafford (where United’s most fervent supporters sit) showing the years since City’s last trophy. When City lifted the F.A. Cup last year, the ticker stopped at 35 years. The City players even paraded a banner of their own on the Wembley turf — it read 00 years. The rivalry had been reset. Not long after that, City inflicted the worst defeat on United in Ferguson’s 25-year reign. Its 6-1 win at Old Trafford retains shock value even now. Yet it was the team’s dramatic snatching of the league crown from its rival in May that was the most powerful statement. One place City cannot yet claim to compete with United is the Champions League, where it was eliminated at the group stage for the second successive year. In fact, City’s display this season was the worst ever recorded by an English team in the competition. Ryan Giggs insisted this week that United’s biggest rivalry remains with Liverpool — the club it toppled as England’s most successful last year — but given the current shape of the Premier League, it is hard to believe him. With Chelsea in transition — some might say disarray — Arsenal struggling with a transfer policy that almost habitually lets its best players leave every summer, and Liverpool embarking on reconstruction, the arrival of a compelling narrative in Manchester has been a welcome one. Manchester is undoubtedly England’s soccer capital, maybe the world’s. United has fallen behind in 16 of its 24 games this season, with Ferguson comparing his team’s defending to a children’s television show in his native Scotland: “I can’t remember us losing so many goals before Christmas. It’s like ‘Cartoon Cavalcade.’ ” Such fragility could be attributed to the absence of the club captain, Nemanja Vidic, who has been sidelined by a knee injury since September. For City, it appears that the star midfielder David Silva will be available after a recovery from a hamstring injury. With Manager Roberto Mancini so far unable to rediscover the attacking spark that took City to the title last season, many believe Silva’s participation might be enough to swing the derby toward his team. Ferguson has fended off challenges to his supremacy before, most notably from Jose Mourinho at Chelsea and Arsene Wenger’s famous Invincibles team at Arsenal. He says a win at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday would be “one of our best results ever.” Avenging last season’s pain might be his most satisfying victory yet.
|
Soccer;English Premier League;Manchester United (Soccer Team);Manchester City (Soccer Team)
|
ny0273827
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2016/05/22
|
Key G.O.P. Donors Still Deeply Resist Donald Trump’s Candidacy
|
A powerful array of the Republican Party’s largest financial backers remains deeply resistant to Donald J. Trump’s presidential candidacy, forming a wall of opposition that could make it exceedingly difficult for him to meet his goal of raising $1 billion before the November election. Interviews and emails with more than 50 of the Republican Party’s largest donors, or their representatives, revealed a measure of contempt and distrust toward their own party’s nominee that is unheard of in modern presidential politics. More than a dozen of the party’s most reliable individual contributors and wealthy families indicated that they would not give to or raise money for Mr. Trump. This group has contributed a combined $90 million to conservative candidates and causes in the last three federal elections, mainly to “super PACs” dedicated to electing Republican candidates. Up to this point, Mr. Trump has embraced the hostility of the Republican establishment, goading the party’s angry base with diatribes against wealthy donors who he claimed controlled politicians. And he has succeeded while defying conventions of presidential campaigning, relying on media attention and large rallies to fire up supporters, and funding his operation with a mix of his own money and small-dollar contributions. But that formula will be tested as he presents himself to a far larger audience of voters. Mr. Trump has turned to the task of winning over elites he once attacked, with some initial success. And he has said he hopes to raise $1 billion, an enormous task given that he named a finance chairman and started scheduling fund-raisers only this month. Among the party’s biggest financiers disavowing Mr. Trump are Paul E. Singer, a New York investor who has spent at least $28 million for national Republicans since the 2012 election, and Joe Ricketts, the TD Ameritrade founder who with his wife Marlene has spent nearly $30 million over the same period of time, as well as the hedge fund managers William Oberndorf and Seth Klarman, and the Florida hospital executive Mike Fernandez. “If it is Trump vs. Clinton,” Mr. Oberndorf said, “I will be voting for Hillary.” The rejection of Mr. Trump among some of the party’s biggest donors and fund-raisers reflects several strains of hostility to his campaign. Donors cited his fickleness on matters of policy and what they saw as an ad hoc populist platform focused on trade protectionism and immigration. Several mentioned Mr. Trump’s own fortune, suggesting that if he was as wealthy as he claimed, then he should not need their assistance. Among the more than 50 donors contacted, only nine have said unambiguously that they will contribute to Mr. Trump. They include Sheldon G. Adelson, the casino billionaire; the energy executive T. Boone Pickens; Foster Friess, a wealthy mutual fund investor; and Richard H. Roberts, a pharmaceutical executive. Mr. Friess wrote in an email that Mr. Trump deserved credit for inspiring “truckers, farmers, welders, hospitality workers — the people who really make our country function.” Many more donors declined to reveal their intentions or did not respond to requests for comment, a remarkable silence about the de facto nominee of their party. Asked how Mr. Trump intended to win over major donors, Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, responded in one sentence. “There is tremendous support for Mr. Trump,” she said. Mr. Trump has declared that he expects the Republican Party to unite around him, and in recent weeks has made inroads among party leaders who once vowed to oppose him. Are You Concerned About the Republican Party’s Future? There is deep concern among Republicans about political divisions and the future of the party, a new Times/CBS News poll shows. We want to hear from the party’s longtime members or those who have just registered as Republicans. He delivered a winning performance before lawmakers on Capitol Hill in a whirlwind visit to Washington this month. And polls show the party’s rank and file are beginning to coalesce behind Mr. Trump, and that they want party leaders to do the same . Some major donors have not explicitly closed the door on helping Mr. Trump, but have set a high bar for him to earn their support, demanding an almost complete makeover of his candidacy and a repudiation of his own inflammatory statements. “Until we have a better reason to embrace and support the top of the ticket, and see an agenda that is truly an opportunity agenda, then we have lots of other options in which to invest and spend our time helping,” said Betsy DeVos, a Michigan Republican whose family has given nearly $9.5 million over the last three elections to party causes and candidates. But others simply believe Mr. Trump is unfit to serve in the Oval Office. Michael K. Vlock, a Connecticut investor who has given nearly $5 million to Republicans at the federal level since 2014, said he considered Mr. Trump a dangerous person. “He’s an ignorant, amoral, dishonest and manipulative, misogynistic, philandering, hyper-litigious, isolationist, protectionist blowhard,” Mr. Vlock said. Mr. Vlock said he might give to Hillary Clinton instead, describing her as “the devil we know.” “I really believe our republic will survive Hillary,” he said. Image Michael K. Vlock, a Connecticut investor who has given nearly $5 million to Republicans at the federal level since 2014, said he considered Mr. Trump a dangerous person. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times At a dinner of the Manhattan Institute in New York earlier this month, Bruce Kovner, a New York-based investor who has given $3.1 million to national Republicans in recent years, argued to a collection of influential conservatives that Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton were both unacceptable choices. “When I talk to my colleagues and friends in similar positions, they have the same degree of discomfort,” Mr. Kovner said in an interview. Unless Mr. Trump can win over more benefactors, he is likely to become the first Republican presidential nominee in decades to be heavily outspent by his Democratic opponent, and may find it difficult to pay for both the voter-turnout operations and the paid advertising campaigns that are typically required in a general election. Both President Obama and Mitt Romney raised over $1 billion in 2012, and Mrs. Clinton is expected to exceed that figure easily. Charles G. and David H. Koch, the country’s two most prolific conservative donors, are not expected to back Mr. Trump, and their advisers have been scathing in private assessments of Mr. Trump’s candidacy and his policy agenda. The Kochs, who command a vast network of conservative donors, have scheduled a conference of their allies in Colorado in late July, where much of their 2016 spending may be determined. Where Trump Breaks With the Republican Party Donald J. Trump is set to be the Republican standard-bearer, but when it comes to some of his policies, he is out of sync with many Republican leaders in Congress. A spokesman for the Kochs, James Davis, said they were chiefly focused on helping Republicans retain control of Congress , and many of their allies, along with other Republican givers, indicated in interviews that they were focused exclusively on the same goal. Even among the handful of big donors Mr. Trump has won over, doubts persist about both his abilities as a candidate and the political apparatus supporting him. Mr. Adelson, the most important donor who has endorsed Mr. Trump , has indicated that he will cut big checks to aid his campaign only if there is a credible advocacy group set up for that purpose. But Mr. Trump still has no sanctioned “super PAC” able to raise unlimited sums to support his campaign. A gathering next month at Mr. Pickens’s Texas ranch that was to be sponsored by one of the pro-Trump groups, Great America PAC, has been called off because Mr. Pickens was not sure he was hosting Mr. Trump’s preferred super PAC. At a Republican Governors Association donor retreat last week in New Mexico, there was a debate on the sidelines about whether to support Mr. Trump. Mr. Friess argued that the Supreme Court vacancy made it imperative to rally around Mr. Trump. But Mr. Friess acknowledged in an email that enthusiasm for Mr. Trump was limited among his fellow major donors. If some agreed there was “no sensible choice other than to rally around Trump,” Mr. Friess said, many contributors viewed that prospect with “the same enthusiasm as a root canal.” Walter Buckley, the founder of a Pennsylvania financial management company, said he decided to support Mr. Trump after Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey endorsed him. Predicting that Mr. Trump would shake up Washington, Mr. Buckley, said, “This political system needs a shaking like it’s probably not had in 100 years.” But Mr. Buckley, who said he would be willing to contribute to the Trump campaign or to a super PAC supporting him, said he remained upset about Mr. Trump’s mockery of Senator John McCain , Republican of Arizona, for having been captured in Vietnam. “I don’t think anything that anybody’s ever said on the political front has bothered me more than that,” Mr. Buckley said.
|
Donald Trump;Campaign finance;2016 Presidential Election;Republicans
|
ny0274650
|
[
"sports",
"basketball"
] |
2016/02/18
|
Knicks Shrug Off Losses and Trade Rumors as They Try to Refocus
|
GREENBURGH, N.Y. — Eight days removed from their most recent game and winless in February, the Knicks reconvened for practice Wednesday afternoon after an extended All-Star break. All the team’s familiar faces were present. Jose Calderon, consistent grist for the trade-rumor mill, shot free throws. Carmelo Anthony, fresh off an All-Star Game appearance in Toronto and a subsequent trip to Puerto Rico to check on his new soccer team, ran a few full-court sprints at the conclusion of practice. And Kurt Rambis, newly appointed as the team’s interim coach after Derek Fisher’s firing , reiterated his top priority with 27 games remaining. “We have no other goal than making the playoffs,” Rambis said, “and it’s going to take a lot of effort on everybody’s behalf, a lot of focus and a lot of determination.” He added: “We’ve got to improve. Our offense has taken a step back, our defense has taken a step back, and that has to be corrected.” In other words, the Knicks (23-32), without any alterations to their roster, and perhaps none forthcoming, went about their work ahead of Thursday’s 3 p.m. trade deadline. The Knicks have lost 10 of their last 11 games. They could use some help, particularly in the backcourt. But Rambis said that he was leaving personnel discussions to the team’s front office and that all appeared to be quiet. “There hasn’t been a lot of activity from our end that I’m aware of,” Rambis said. “If anything comes up, I’m sure they’ll address it with me.” Phil Jackson, the team president, said this month that the Knicks hoped to be active at the deadline. But at the same time, he sounded realistic about unearthing potential partners. “Like any team that’s looking to improve themselves, we’re open to discussion, and we have to be,” Jackson said at the time. “That’s just the nature of the game. Do we sit in a really favorable spot? Probably not. There aren’t a tremendous amount of favorable trade items that are on our roster.” One interpretation: Not too many teams seem interested in pursuing a deal that includes the likes of Calderon, who at 34 has struggled to defend younger, quicker guards and whose contract runs through next season. Anthony, who has a no-trade clause in his contract and has again pledged his commitment to the organization, said he was focused on preparing for Friday’s game in Brooklyn against the Nets. “The only thing I’m worried about is us at this moment,” Anthony said, “and what we do from here on out.” Like Rambis, Anthony said he was unaware of any pending moves by the team. “If you didn’t hear anything as of now, I doubt if we’re probably even doing something,” he said. “But you never know. This game over the years has done some weird things. We’ve still got to 3 p.m. tomorrow to try to figure something out. I haven’t been hearing anything.” Kristaps Porzingis, one of the team’s untouchables, said he had semi-enjoyed a brief vacation with his family in the Caribbean. He said he had been mobbed by fans. “There were a lot of people from New York,” he said, adding, “Obviously, I appreciate all the love and everything, but it was just hard to just relax.” Porzingis said the experience had revealed to him just how much his life had changed in recent months. “This showed me that I’m not a normal person anymore,” he said. “There are a lot of people that recognize me, but there are also a lot of people that just want to take pictures of me because I’m tall — seriously. I can’t hide, so that’s the problem.” Not long after he returned to New York on Tuesday, Porzingis made his way to the team’s training complex here. He enjoyed the solitude, he said. “I needed to go to my church,” he said. “This is my church. I got some shots up and moved around a little by myself. No noise. No nothing.”
|
Basketball;Sports Trades;Coaches;Knicks;Kurt Rambis
|
ny0293021
|
[
"business",
"international"
] |
2016/06/16
|
‘Brexit’ Plan for the Financial World? Cross Your Fingers
|
Among those who manage gobs of money, the possibility that Britain might actually disavow the European Union seemed until recently like a remote and even outlandish possibility. But about a week before voters go to the polls to determine their future, masters of finance are suddenly absorbing the prospect that Britain might really walk, unleashing anxiety and uncertainty throughout the global economy. Like local responders readying sandbags as a hurricane menaces their shores, financial industry overseers have been quietly drawing up contingency plans while surveying the expensive havoc a so-called Brexit is already wreaking . Central bankers from London to Washington have been monitoring the tempest while making preparations to unleash credit should markets seize with fear. Angst has seeped into the calculations. As investors digest the possibility that the largest marketplace on earth may be days away from a messy alteration, they have been yanking money out of riskier storehouses like stocks and putting it into safer instruments like bonds. The British pound and London stocks have been falling in frenzied trading. The conversation is now focused on managing the risks of Brexit. The trouble is that the worries are so diffuse and rife with unknowns that any attack plan amounts to an exercise in guesswork and hope. Executives, bankers and bureaucrats are grappling with something that could be minor or momentous and has never happened before. Maybe the Brexit — for British exit — would merely lop value from the pound before traders turned their attention to a more consequential plot twist elsewhere. Perhaps it would inspire separatist movements from Scotland to Spain, embolden anti-trade populists across the Continent and reinvigorate existential questions gnawing at the common euro currency. That could sow fear across world markets. A Brexit might spook investors into entrusting their money only to the safest repositories like American Treasuries. That could strengthen the American dollar and weaken American exports, while starving riskier emerging markets of investment. Whatever stories policy makers and businesspeople tell themselves, the only certainty is a surplus of uncertainty. Whatever provisional plans they sketch, they will find themselves mostly just wishing that nothing terrible happens. “On the financial markets, there is nothing they can do; it will just hit them,” said Adam S. Posen, a former member of the rate-setting committee at the Bank of England and now president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “If my house is going to catch on fire, I can plan to have some water on hand, but there’s only so much you can do.” If you run a central bank, water comes in the form of liquidity. Most experts assume the Bank of England and its counterparts have readied plans to lend to financial institutions that could face cash shortages. In recent days, European Central Bank officials have signaled readiness to inject money into the financial sphere. In a speech last week, the Federal Reserve chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen, warned that a Brexit could have “significant economic repercussions.” Much of the business world once shrugged off the Brexit vote as noisy political theater that would eventually be muted by economic common sense. But recent polls have showed the “leave” camp slightly ahead . “That kind of threw the cat among the pigeons and panicked everyone,” said Jeremy Cook, chief economist at World First, a London company that manages foreign exchange for multinationals. “We’ve seen a pickup in client hedging.” A company that, say, imports goods from China to sell in Britain fears that the pound is about to drop, making those Chinese goods more expensive. So it buys contracts that essentially lock in today’s exchange rate for the future. According to Laurence Wormald, head of research at FIS, which provides technology and market intelligence to financial services companies, British stocks would most likely fall 15 percent after a Brexit, with the pound dropping by a similar proportion. If a Brexit vote hurts the British economy, the central bank might feel compelled to lower rates to motivate businesses and households to borrow and spend. But the bank might well do the opposite, raising rates to stop a currency slide. The most nettlesome variable may be trade. Britain sells nearly half its exports within the European Union. Multinational corporations have set up headquarters in Britain, using those bases to serve customers across the Continent. Those campaigning for a Brexit assure that a vote to leave would change nothing right away. Britain would remain a fully fledged member of Europe’s marketplace for two years as it negotiated a new arrangement with the 27 remaining members of the union. ‘Brexit’: Explaining Britain’s Vote on European Union Membership Britain will hold a referendum on Thursday on whether to leave the European Union, a decision nicknamed “Brexit.” But if Britain failed to secure a deal, commerce with Europe could be governed by the terms of the World Trade Organization, which gives member nations the authority to impose potentially steep tariffs on imports. The debate over the Brexit is full of references to sundry alternative models. Norway enjoys access to the European market although it remains outside the union. Switzerland has achieved similar status through a thicket of treaties. But in both cases, they must accept something supporters of Brexit want to eliminate — European rules that allow people to move liberally from country to country. Those urging a Brexit insist Britain can negotiate a tailor-made deal. Many economists describe that notion as somewhere between fanciful and delusional. Eager to discourage other members from considering an exit, Europe would seek to ensure that Britain paid a price. If Britain dumps Europe, “they are not going to say, ‘Well, O.K., here’s a good deal,’” said Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, an independent research institution in London. Nowhere are preparations more intense than in finance. London has parlayed expertise in banking and inclusion in Europe to secure dominance over large areas of trading. As the referendum approaches, financiers are now consumed by a jigsaw puzzle of diabolical complexity: They are mapping out what assets they hold and where, seeking to anticipate what jurisdictions and rules might apply post-Brexit. “Investment banks and asset managers are pre-booking law firms, consulting firms and accounting firms for July,” said William Wright, managing director of New Financial, a research institution in London. “If we do vote to leave on June 23, no one is going to have the faintest idea what impact it will have.” Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, recently visited Britain with a pointed warning. “If the U.K. leaves the E.U., we may have no choice but to reorganize our business model here,” he said . “Brexit could mean fewer JPMorgan jobs in the U.K. and more jobs in Europe.” Citigroup offered a similar caution. If the sun rises on June 24 with Britain on its way out, such a shift could happen sooner rather than later. At a time of crippling uncertainty, banks would feel a compulsion to at least eliminate variables by quickly announcing their plans, moving people within the European Union — to Amsterdam, Dublin, Frankfurt and Paris. In the end, contingency plans may be devised more as salves for frayed nerves than bona fide operational blueprints. Britain may be on the verge of refashioning the world map. If that happens, the vote will set off proceedings so complex that the only guaranteed winners are the lawyers. All plans will be subject to change.
|
Great Britain;EU;Banking and Finance;Referendum;Europe;International trade;Brexit
|
ny0242974
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2011/03/31
|
Rutt’s Hut, Hot Dog Mecca, Sues Mutt’s Hut
|
CLIFTON, N.J. Given trends in local weather (It could snow Friday? Really?) and global everything (wars, earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear disaster), it’s hard to figure out which will end first — this winter or the world. So in the scheme of importance from 100 to 0, we’ll put New Jersey’s hot dog war between the world-famous hot dog mecca Rutt’s Hut and the upstart Mutt’s Hut at a 0.5 at best. Still, if a hot dog joint speaks to elusive warm-weather pleasures, and a legal battle over dopey names is easier on the brain than a nuclear meltdown, a few words on trademark law, deep-fried hot dogs and the Clifton Hot Dog War of 2011. Rutt’s Hut, as most New Jersey gourmands know, is on the long shortlist of the state’s esteemed hot dog palaces. It dates from 1928. Most people eat standing up at plain white linoleum counters in a squat, industrial-style brick building. The menu includes chili and fried calamari, but the main draw is the Ripper, a deep-fried hot dog cooked until the skin rips open. At its best, it seems vaguely radioactive — but in a good way. It is best eaten with an equally celebrated sweet relish made with cabbage, onions and carrots. Many New Jersey dog aficionados have other favorites: Charlie’s Famous in Kenilworth, Dickie Dee’s in Newark, Libby’s Lunch in Paterson, Galloping Hill Inn in Union, Jimmy Buff’s in West Orange, Hiram’s in Fort Lee, Johnny and Hanges in Fair Lawn among them. Still, the 2009 road food compendium, “500 Things to Eat Before It’s Too Late,” by Jane and Michael Stern, opined: “No hot dog lover can say his life is complete until he has dined at Rutt’s.” Mutt’s Hut, about five miles away and offering deli fare and grilled or boiled Sabrett hot dogs, is a good deal less celebrated. At the beginning of January, it was Adam’s Bagel and Deli, a name it still shares with Mutt’s Hutt, or Mutt’s Hut International, as the takeout menu grandly proclaims. A few days after the new Mutt’s Hut sign went up in January, Mutt’s received a letter from lawyers for Rutt’s Hut saying that the name Rutt’s Hut had a federal trademark and that the use of the name Mutt’s Hut “constitutes a willful, obvious and inexcusable infringement of our client’s intellectual property rights.” A second letter followed on Feb. 15, then a federal lawsuit on March 9 seeking damages and the removal of the name. Gregg A. Paradise, a lawyer for Rutt’s, said that Mutt’s was an obvious attempt to piggyback, as it were, on Rutt’s success and name, with potential to siphon off confused customers, particularly nonlocals, seeking the real thing. If trademarks are not strictly protected, he added, they can be diluted and lose their legal force. Ahmed Mohamed, whose father, Magdi Mohamed, owns Mutt’s with his partner, Ed Madsen, said that the restaurants had completely different looks and menus and that the new name was meant as a clever variation on the hot dog theme, not a riff on Rutt’s. “You went to school, right?” he said. “You know how to read. There’s a difference between a Mutt and a Rutt. Rutt is a person. Mutt is a dog. It’s treating customers like idiots to think they can’t tell the difference.” RICHARD LEHV, a lawyer who teaches trademark and copyright law at Columbia University Law School, said the dispute had similarities to other local culinary trademark issues, like those surrounding pizza places named Ray’s and pasta sauces named Patsy’s. He said a court will judge numerous issues: logos, menus, clientele, whether there is evidence of customers being confused, the origin of the name Mutt’s Hut, the strength of the Rutt’s Hut trademark among them. “Likelihood of confusion, as you can guess, isn’t a bright-line standard,” or clear-cut division, he said. Customers seem split, with an unscientific survey of comments perhaps indicating a modest pro-Mutt’s bias. At Rutt’s, Drew Romanello, an electrician from Brielle, supported the suit. “They had to do it,” he said. “Everything counts in this market.” At Mutt’s, Rich Monzo, a former pizzeria owner, said the suit was ridiculous and showed an insecurity on the part of Rutt’s. “One has an ‘R.’ One has an ‘M.’ End of story,” he said. He said he had never heard of Mutt’s but after hearing about the dispute thought, “I’ve got to go there,” a reminder that, absent catastrophe, the adage that any publicity is better than no publicity still holds (for both sides). “To be honest, we didn’t get any more business when we changed the name until all this got into the news,” Ahmed Mohamed said during a busy lunchtime rush. “Then the business went up. The whole thing is childish, but they’re giving us more business by getting it into the media.”
|
Trademarks and Trade Names;Hot Dogs;Restaurants;Suits and Litigation;Clifton (NJ)
|
ny0158038
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2008/12/18
|
Sabathia Could Offer Yankees What Money Can’t Buy
|
In a bizarre spectacle of arrogance and denial, the Mets and the Yankees are hosting back-to-back introductions for their multimillion-dollar pitchers this week. Even as the nation continues to reel from the effect of economic body blows, the Yankees and the Mets lavish money on free-agent pitchers. On Wednesday, the Mets introduced Francisco Rodríguez, the redoubtable closer whom they signed to a three-year, $37 million contract last week. On Thursday, the Yankees will introduce starter C. C. Sabathia , this winter’s free-agent gem. The Yankees signed Sabathia to one of the richest contracts in baseball history: seven years, $161 million. New York’s two major league baseball teams continue to slug it out — money be damned — over everything from signage to signings. This week, General Motors announced that it would not be the automotive sponsor for the Yankees when the new stadium opens next year. Almost simultaneously, G.M. announced that it would seek to renegotiate its sponsorship deal with the Mets. Which team made the best deal for itself on the pitching front? My vote goes to the Yankees. While the Mets plugged an embarrassing hole in their bullpen, the Yankees plugged an even larger hole — a hole in their soul. Sabathia represents a potential breath of fresh air in a stale, cliché-ridden Yankees clubhouse, one with little personality and even less passion, and no recent championships to compensate for those deficiencies. Sabathia is a good-natured star who has strong feelings about issues and isn’t afraid to share them. This is an anomaly in a clubhouse famous for antiseptic professionalism. In 2007, for example, Sabathia complained about the lack of African-American players in the majors. He even pointed a finger at Major League Baseball for not doing all that it could to increase the numbers. Sabathia, who was traded from Cleveland to Milwaukee last season, bemoaned the lack of black Americans in baseball. “There aren’t very many African-American players, and it’s not just in here, it’s everywhere,” he told The Associated Press. “It’s not just a problem — it’s a crisis.” He said later: “I think Major League Baseball should do something about it. I don’t know exactly what they could be doing, but I know it’s not enough.” Sabathia sponsors the North Vallejo Little League in Northern California, which among other things provides equipment for 175 young people from his hometown. Abe Hobbs, Sabathia’s coach at Vallejo High, said Sabathia would be “a great addition, not just to the team, but in the community.” Finally a Yankee with an opinion. “He’s not the kind of person who will talk outside the clubhouse, but if something is troubling his heart, he’ll say something,” Hobbs said Wednesday in a telephone interview. “In the clubhouse he’ll let his voice be heard. He’s very respectful, and he’s a fierce, fierce competitor.” Gary Sheffield was the last great truth teller in the Yankees’ clubhouse. Before that, the passion was generated by the Paul O’Neill Yankees, who played with a verve that has been missing. It’s no coincidence that the championships have been missing as well. You can sign a mountain of A-Rods for a mountain of dollars and get a mountain of great-looking stats and have a molehill of titles to show for it. During a radio interview Wednesday morning, Kevin Millar made a number of candid insights about baseball in general and the Yankees in particular. Millar spent three seasons with the Red Sox, and has a pretty thorough understanding of the Yankees. Millar played for Baltimore last season. “That team can play, but something’s missing,” he said. “When you play against them and you look over there — other than they didn’t pitch very well — something was missing.” The something was chemistry. The Yankees need more than a transfusion of talent — they get one of those every season. Sabathia’s greatest contribution to the Yankees may well be supplying that hard-to-define missing “something.” He has been a hit with teammates everywhere he has gone, in Cleveland for seven-plus seasons and with Milwaukee for three months when he picked up the Brewers and carried them into the postseason. If his tenures in Cleveland and Milwaukee are any indication, Sabathia could help decorporatize the Yankees’ clubhouse. He does things like calling up teammates on the road to go to lunch, inviting teammates out for dinner after a game. This is as critical as taking the ball every fifth day and delivering a knockout blow. “Those things matter when you have men on first and third in the eighth inning, and you have teammates pulling for each other,” Millar said, “and not hoping that a teammate makes an out so you can play.” The common wisdom is that a team can buy Gold Gloves, big bats and strong arms, but it can’t buy chemistry. The Yankees may have finally figured out how to buy that, too.
|
Sabathia C C;New York Yankees;Baseball
|
ny0061987
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2014/01/16
|
French Leader’s Policy Proposals Seek Centrist Path
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PARIS — President François Hollande startled the usually staid world of European economic policy with proposals to take France in a centrist direction with tax cuts for companies, reductions in public spending and a business-friendly tone. Mr. Hollande detailed his economic plans at a news conference on Tuesday attended by hundreds of journalists, many of them more interested in his answers to questions about his affair with an actress than his economic policies. He described his new approach as a “responsibility pact” between the French government and business. On Wednesday, the proposals drew accolades and encouragement from European Union leaders and German officials, who have long pushed for France to make structural changes in its economy. Mr. Hollande drew cautious support from French business leaders. But France’s far-left and far-right parties expressed dismay, saying that the nation needed a generous government safety net. For those on the left, who have pushed to have generous social programs funded by hefty taxes, Mr. Hollande appeared to be relinquishing his position as Europe’s Socialist standard-bearer and strongest opponent of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, whose philosophy of austerity has perhaps strengthened Germany but has yet to bring financial stability to poorer euro zone countries like Greece. Mr. Hollande, who as a candidate took a stand against European austerity policies and as president has resisted calls for deep public spending cuts, strongly rejected the accusation that he had become a free marketer, saying that he “had not been won over by liberalism,” a reference to economic liberalism, which in France means a market approach. “I am a social democrat,” he declared. And his proposals, Mr. Hollande said, “are not a shift” in views, but “an acceleration on the same path.” Germany’s foreign minister, its president and the European Union, all praised Mr. Hollande’s proposals, cautioning, however, that they could be hard to deliver on for political reasons. “What the French president presented yesterday is, firstly, courageous,” said Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the foreign minister of Germany. “That seems to me to be the right way, not only for France, but it can also be a contribution that brings Europe as a whole” into a stronger position as it strives to emerge from an economic crisis, Mr. Steinmeier said. But he cautioned that similar changes had taken a long time to come to fruition in Germany because of political obstacles. Mr. Hollande’s proposals include a cut in payroll taxes that he said would reduce the costs of business and independent workers by 30 billion euros ($41 billion) by eliminating the amount paid by companies and independent workers for the family allocation, a tax that finances an allowance for each child after the first as well as an array of other family benefits. The family allocation and other benefits are core elements of France’s social programs and have been credited with contributing to it having one of the highest birthrates in Europe. The allowance is income blind, going to all French families. Mr. Hollande also said he would cut spending by €50 billion but did not specify where. Economic experts, while gratified that Mr. Hollande finally seemed willing to wrestle with France’s intractable unemployment, which has hovered between about 10 and 11 percent for close to three years, and an economy that is barely growing, remained skeptical that he would be able to persuade his party to support the changes. The experts also said that while it is easy to talk about cutting tax revenues, the president has yet to explain what programs or benefits he would reduce or eliminate to pay for the cuts — not to mention how difficult it would be to win political support for such cuts. “Better late than never,” said Daniel Gros, director of the Center for European Policy Studies , an independent organization in Brussels. “But I must say its implementation is the difficult part,” Mr. Gros said, adding that even with the proposed cuts, government spending in France would remain at over 50 percent — it is now at 57 percent — of GDP, making it the second highest in Europe. That is still “more than the economy can bear if it wants to remain competitive,” he said. He questioned whether Mr. Hollande’s Socialist Party would go along with the changes, but reflected that he might be more able to reduce social spending than a conservative leader. “Sometimes, as in Germany, the left can better do these social policy reforms than right,” Mr. Gros said. It was Ms. Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, who set the course for reducing government spending and strengthening the government’s relationship with business. Although the international media from Tuesday’s news conference dealt with Mr. Hollande’s affair with an actress and the hospitalization of his companion, Valérie Trierweiler, who has been serving as the first lady, those in the French news media on Wednesday were focused on his economic plans, generally supportive, tempered with concern about what they would mean for France’s social safety net. “He is shaking up the Socialist Party,” said Pierre-Alain Furbury, a journalist who covers economic issues for Les Echos, a business newspaper. Reiterating that Mr. Hollande’s plans were a real departure from his policies and his tone during the presidential campaign, when he embraced a 75 percent tax on the rich and criticized big business, Mr. Furbury said that this could be “the most important speech in his five years as president,” and even change the positions embraced by his party.
|
Francois Hollande;EU;Economy;Corporate tax;France;Germany
|
ny0032680
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2013/12/18
|
Budget Deal Offers a Reprieve From Washington Paralysis
|
WASHINGTON — Something odd happened here on Tuesday. The Senate advanced a two-year bipartisan budget deal that will now surely be sent to the president for his signature later this week without waiting for a cliff, a chasm, a deadline or a shutdown to force its hand. Just like that, declarations sounded in Washington that the city almost seemed to be working again. The assertions may be little solace to competing ends of the ideological spectrum that saw the budget deal as a craven capitulation to the spenders or the cutters, depending on which end was looking at it. But flawed as critics complained it was, the deal represented a break in the paralysis that has gripped the capital for years. The question is whether it will be a turning point that will clear the way for agreements on long-stalled issues like Medicare, the tax code and immigration or simply be an asterisk in the history books. To President Obama and his strategists, the cross-aisle accord offers what one called “green shoots of hope” that next year may turn out better than this year. Along with the change in filibuster rules making it easier to confirm nominees, the White House sees prospects for progress, even if limited. “The year is ending with some real positive signs,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the president’s senior adviser. While he cautioned against expecting “a new era of compromise,” he said that without the perennial budget battles, there might be more opportunities to address other priorities. And without filibusters, he said, more Obama appointees will be in place to carry out the president’s agenda. The pending passage of the budget deal freed the House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, to confront conservative activist groups that had been promoting conflict and to empower lawmakers more interested in governance than ideological brinkmanship. Previously he had been more sympathetic to the Tea Party position and had sought to avoid rankling the far right. But others scoffed at the newfound optimism, arguing that in its zeal to show that Republicans and Democrats could finally work together, Congress had substituted good will for good policy. “We’re in a big hurry to show how functional we are,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “Even when we’re functional, we’re dysfunctional.” Skeptics forecast only a temporary lull, a calculated cease-fire in the partisan wars motivated in part by the desire of Republicans to avoid the political damage of the recent government shutdown and to not distract from the mangled kickoff of Mr. Obama’s health care exchanges. Another deadline on raising the debt ceiling by next spring could reignite the trench warfare. After all, many of the structural impediments to compromise remain, and philosophical divisions have hardly disappeared. Jared Bernstein, a former Obama White House economist, compared the budget deal to the Christmas truce during World War I, when troops held fire until after the holiday. The deal represents common ground between the leadership of the two parties, but it “turns out to be a tiny patch of earth,” Mr. Bernstein said. “So I’m not seeing a ton of ‘Kumbaya’ coming, though I hope I’m wrong.” Former Representative Mickey Edwards, an Oklahoma Republican, said party leaders concluded that the government shutdown was too damaging to repeat but that many lawmakers will still be wary of compromise for fear of primary challenges from conservatives next year. Image Mitch McConnell, center, the minority leader, voted against the budget. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times “I think there’s going to be a lot of the same kind of unwillingness, because people are unwilling to throw away their careers,” said Mr. Edwards, author of “The Parties Versus the People,” a book on Washington dysfunction. “Rush Limbaugh can turn out more primary voters than the Chamber of Commerce can.” Still, the spirit in Washington is notably different from this point in recent years, when the two parties were often locked in end-of-the-year battles over the size of government. The Senate on Tuesday formally ended debate on the spending plan by a vote of 67 to 33, easily surpassing the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster and attracting a dozen Republicans, more than expected. Having already cleared the House, the budget is poised for final passage in the Senate as early as Wednesday. The plan would restore $63 billion to military and domestic programs over two years compared with spending caps set to resume in January. Over 10 years, it would reduce deficits slightly by trimming military and federal-worker pensions, extending a 2 percent cut to Medicare providers and making other changes. Even its authors called it a modest step toward addressing the deficit in a more rational way. But those who voted to break the filibuster included Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of the Republican leadership; Senator Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican and Tea Party favorite; and Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a Republican who is facing a challenge from the right next year. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, called it a “vote against extremism.” White House officials were careful not to suggest that the partisan “fever” had broken in Washington, as Mr. Obama once predicted it would. But without having to fight an overall spending battle for two years, they said they might have more running room to push for initiatives like construction of roads and bridges. Mr. Obama’s advisers were also encouraged by the elimination of filibusters for nominations. Aides said, for example, that Republicans have held up major elements of the president’s housing agenda by denying him his choice to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency. “Being able to get our people through,” Mr. Pfeiffer said, “means that we have more tools in our executive-action tool kit.” Lawmakers saw possibilities for movement as well on issues like curbing National Security Agency surveillance. Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, said the difference now is the comity between the Senate and House. While bipartisan thaws in the Senate have produced agreements on immigration, farm and infrastructure legislation, in the past they hit roadblocks in the House. Democrats would like to use the moment to advance farm legislation and extend unemployment benefits. An immigration overhaul “would be the jewel,” Ms. Klobuchar said, but skeptically. Representative Harold Rogers, Republican of Kentucky and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, has already begun work with his counterpart, Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, on the first comprehensive spending bill in years. Such optimism is tempered by the next approaching deadline. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has said Congress will have to again raise the debt ceiling in March. That could renew the wars or, possibly, prove a useful deadline to produce the next bipartisan agreement, a more sweeping deal on tax and entitlement program changes. “I doubt if the House, or for that matter the Senate, is willing to give the president a clean debt-ceiling increase,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. “Debt-ceiling legislation is a time that brings us all together and gets the president’s attention.”
|
Federal Budget;US Politics;Senate;Congress;Barack Obama
|
ny0018575
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2013/07/16
|
Petraeus’s Pay for Part-Time CUNY Job, Criticized at $200,000, Drops to $1
|
It was supposed to be a feather in the cap for the City University of New York’s ambitious honors college. Or perhaps a careful first step back into public life for a leader sidelined by scandal. One way or another, the news that David H. Petraeus, the former C.I.A. director and commander of the allied forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, would be a visiting professor at the Macaulay Honors College at CUNY this coming academic year was supposed to be great publicity all around. Instead it turned into a minor scandal all its own, as some professors and politicians expressed outrage over his six-figure salary, and others accused the university’s administration of lying about just what the salary was. On Monday, it was announced that Mr. Petraeus would, on second thought, teach for just $1. “The general never was taking on this teaching assignment for the money,” said Robert Barnett, his lawyer, who, along with CUNY, confirmed the salary change. “Once controversy arose about the amount he was being paid, he decided it was much more important to keep the focus on the students, on the school and on the teaching, and not have it be about the money.” So Mr. Petraeus proposed waiving his salary “to remove money as a point of controversy,” Mr. Barnett said. Mr. Petraeus declined to comment. When CUNY appointed him in April to teach a seminar now called “Are We on the Threshold of the North American Decade” each semester and deliver two public lectures, his salary was said to still be under discussion. But according to documents obtained by Gawker through a Freedom of Information Law request and later reviewed by The New York Times, he and the CUNY chancellor at the time, Matthew Goldstein, had agreed two months earlier on “$200,000 per annum, supplemented by funds from a private gift.” Mr. Petraeus, who earned a doctorate from Princeton University, later wrote Ann Kirschner, the dean of Macaulay, to thank her for her interest and to confirm his own, noting, “The truth is that I could have had gotten more money or more prestigious places.” Image David H. Petraeus, the former C.I.A. director and commander of the allied forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, will teach for just $1. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times Those documents and others provided by CUNY reveal an extensive and friendly e-mail correspondence between Mr. Petraeus and Dr. Kirschner. The two went back and forth about the seminar, an op-ed article they contemplated writing together, and even their day. They do not appear to have exchanged e-mail about reducing his salary until word of his compensation — far more than most CUNY professors receive, for far less work — began making headlines. CUNY officials insisted that those headlines were wrong, that despite the offer of at least $200,000, Mr. Petraeus had agreed to a smaller sum, all from private funds. To back up that point, Dr. Kirschner then wrote him a letter “memorializing our discussions over the past few months regarding your appointment as Visiting Professor at Macaulay Honors College at $150,000.” That “memorializing” letter failed to convince critics. So a while later she released a document that was described as an early draft of the agreement. But that draft had never been sent, making its relevance unclear, and it was not included with the original cache of documents that had been released. A chorus of observers accused CUNY of a cover-up. State Assemblyman Kieran Michael Lalor wrote a letter of protest. City Councilman Brad Lander started a petition . Bill de Blasio, the public advocate and a candidate for mayor, urged CUNY’s interim chancellor to renegotiate the salary. Salon.com declared the matter “a veritable second Petraeusgate.” The skepticism in part reflects the disparity between what CUNY offered Mr. Petraeus and what it pays other professors. The average salary for full-time faculty members is $89,768. Adjunct professors, who currently teach more than half of CUNY’s courses, get just a few thousand dollars per course. Most professors teach multiple courses each semester and do all of their own grading. Mr. Petraeus will teach one seminar with 16 students, and CUNY has arranged for two graduate students to assist him, in addition to the three Harvard graduate students who helped him assemble the syllabus. In his downtime from CUNY, Mr. Petraeus — whom Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company has hired to be chairman of its new KKR Global Institute — will be on the lecture circuit and teach at the University of Southern California, a job that he said paid extremely well. Dr. Kirschner said, “We felt that we had the opportunity to bring somebody of extreme stature to be with our students and that whether the salary was $200,000 or $150,000 he was absolutely worth it.” The dean also said, “I sympathize with the concerns about salary, but I also believe he is an extremely valuable teacher for our students.” As for the controversy, she dismissed it as “unfortunate.”
|
David H Petraeus;CUNY;Wages and salaries;Ann Kirschner;College
|
ny0067644
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2014/12/18
|
Russian Sailors Finish Training at French Port, but Will Leave Without Warship
|
PARIS — Over 400 Russian sailors will soon leave the French port city where they received training on one of two warships that France agreed to sell to Russia, a deal that was delayed when relations between Russia and the West soured over the situation in Ukraine, the contractor building the ships said Wednesday. Emmanuel Gaudez, a spokesman for the contractor, DCNS, said the sailors had completed their training in Saint-Nazaire on the first ship, the Vladivostok. “They are going to head back to Russia, but not once and for all,” Mr. Gaudez said, adding that the sailors would come back to take command of the ship if the French government decided to deliver it. France signed a deal worth 1.2 billion euros, or about $1.5 billion, in 2011 to build and sell two Mistral-class warships to Russia and to train Russian sailors to operate them. The sailors arrived in Saint-Nazaire , on the Atlantic coast, in June for a four-month training program. The Vladivostok was scheduled to be handed over to Russia in October, while the second ship, the Sevastopol, was due for delivery next year. The Mistral-class ships are designed to each carry up to 30 helicopters, 60 armored vehicles, 13 tanks and 700 soldiers. But the deal grew increasingly controversial , especially in Germany and the United States, as relations with Russia deteriorated following its annexation of the Crimean peninsula and Moscow’s support for a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine. In September, President François Hollande of France said that conditions for delivery of the ships had not been met , despite talks toward a cease-fire in Ukraine. This month, the French defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, suggested in a television interview that the two warships might never be delivered. “The Russians must realize this situation,” he said. Mr. Gaudez, the spokesman for the contractor, said the training of Russian soldiers concluded last month. “They stayed a bit longer because they were hoping that the ship would be delivered after their training, as was initially planned,” he said. “If the decision is made — it wouldn’t be made by us — to deliver, Russian sailors would come back to take delivery of the ships,” Mr. Gaudez said, adding that construction on the second ship would continue. Ouest-France, a regional newspaper, reported that the sailors might leave as soon as Thursday. The sailors had become the focus of much attention in Saint-Nazaire, a shipbuilding city that had welcomed the deal as a respite from hard economic times. “We can’t have 400 soldiers going round and round in circles in a foreign port for weeks” said Christophe Morel, a union delegate at the STX France shipyard that is building the warships. “We hope that the diplomatic situation will allow the delivery of the ship.”
|
Russia;Ships and Shipping;Saint-Nazaire;Ukraine;Francois Hollande
|
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