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ny0204389
|
[
"sports",
"football"
] |
2009/01/05
|
Cardinals’ James Resembles Old Self After a Trying Season
|
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Given the declarations coming from the Cardinals’ locker room about proving naysayers wrong, it was curious that as Edgerrin James pulled on a sweatshirt Saturday after Arizona’s 30-24 win over Atlanta, there did not appear to be a discernable chip on either of his shoulders. If there was anyone among the Cardinals who could talk about being disrespected or written off, it was James. Earlier this season, he lost his starting job to the rookie Tim Hightower. His request to be released was rebuffed, and he said last week that he did not plan on being back with the Cardinals next year. He said his idea of playing running back was not to block in pass protection 50 times a game. So, did James view his performance Saturday — when he rushed for 73 yards on 16 carries and gave the Cardinals a semblance of balance that they lacked almost all season — as redemption? “It’s playoff football, man,” said James, who brushed off several versions of the question. This might have been the most disappointing and least productive season of his career, but there is no bitterness in James. “It really has nothing to do with proving something to somebody,” James, 30, said. “Once I feel like I can’t play, I won’t go play the game. I’m not in a situation where I have to play. If I couldn’t play at a high level, I would hang it up.” When James left the Indianapolis Colts and signed a four-year, $30 million contract with Arizona as a free agent in 2006, it seemed a good fit. The Cardinals had not had a 1,000-yard rusher since 1998. James was expected to be the complement to a passing game that would be developed around quarterback Matt Leinart, their first-round draft pick; and two of the N.F.L.’s best young receivers: Anquan Boldin and Larry Fitzgerald. But James struggled behind a woeful offensive line, the Cardinals got off to a 1-8 start, and Coach Dennis Green was fired at the end of the season. The Cardinals hired Ken Whisenhunt as the coach, and when Leinart was injured early in the 2007 season, they turned to Kurt Warner, who began to resemble the quarterback who had won two Most Valuable Player awards. James entered the season with questions about how much he had left, given that he began 2008 with 366 more career carries than any other back in the league. He rushed for 100 yards on 26 carries in a season-opening victory over San Francisco, but he was rarely productive after that. After he was benched in Week 9, James carried 11 times over the next eight games. “Obviously, things didn’t go the way he envisioned them, or the way I’m sure a lot of us envisioned our offense going,” guard Reggie Wells said. “But he persevered and showed up every day to do his job.” Not that this should have been a surprise. Peyton Manning once called James the best teammate he had ever had, and the Colts’ owner, Jim Irsay, gave James a Super Bowl ring even though he left the team a season before they won the title. “It’s just part of the business,” James said. “I’m not going to embarrass my family. I’m not going to embarrass my momma because I wasn’t raised to act crazy and go off. I said, You know what? This is what I signed up for. You’ve got to take the good with the bad. You’ve got to stand on the sidelines and do what you’re supposed to do. If I didn’t want to do it, all I had to do was not play. Just say, O.K., I’m going home. But I want to play.” James got his chance in an otherwise meaningless season finale, rushing for 100 yards on 14 carries against Seattle. With Hightower struggling for an offense whose 3.3 yards a carry was the lowest average in the N.F.L., Whisenhunt turned to James against Atlanta on Saturday. He carried the ball on three consecutive plays, for 6, 9 and 6 yards, to begin the Cardinals’ second series. He was given the ball on the next play, but flipped it back to Warner, who threw a 42-yard touchdown pass to Larry Fitzgerald. “Edge, from Day 1 of his career, has been known as a guy who doesn’t go backward, who doesn’t take negative runs,” Wells said. “He takes what he can get.” Late in the third quarter, James took a handoff, juked defensive end Chauncey Davis at the line of scrimmage, ran through the arm tackle of linebacker Keith Brooking, and was brought down by three Falcons after a 10-yard gain. It was part of a drive in which he carried four times for 19 yards and caught a 9-yard pass to convert a third down. The drive ended with Hightower’s touchdown run that put Arizona ahead, 30-17. “That’s his game,” said Falcons tight end Marcus Pollard, who played six seasons with James in Indianapolis. “He’s strong enough to run over people and quick enough to run around them and make people miss. He looked like Edgerrin James to me in every way.” When James was asked if he might reconsider leaving the Cardinals, it was the one time he did not take the ball and run with it. “I don’t want to bring a dark cloud over what is going on right now,” he said. “Everybody knows I can run. It’s just a matter of the situation. Situations dictate a lot in this business. As far as next year, I’m just going to enjoy this and ride it out.”
|
James Edgerrin;Arizona Cardinals;Atlanta Falcons;Football
|
ny0050137
|
[
"business"
] |
2014/10/11
|
Australia Group Calls for Talks on China Coal Tariffs
|
MELBOURNE, Australia — Australia must hold urgent talks with China to exempt coal producers from new tariffs in a free-trade agreement expected to be completed this year, an Australian industry body said Friday after a move by Beijing to reintroduce coal tariffs after nearly a decade. China, the world’s top coal importer, said on Thursday that it would impose import tariffs, in its latest effort to prop up ailing domestic mining companies, which have been hit by rising costs and plunging prices. The industry group, the Minerals Council of Australia, said the move to reinstate the tariffs raised the stakes in free-trade talks with China and pressed the Australian government to ask Beijing to reverse the decision. “This is the kind of hiccup in our biggest and most important trading relationship that we just don’t want or need,” Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia said at a news conference. “We’ll work with the Chinese to get to the bottom of what seems to have happened overnight.” The tariffs would hit Australian producers hardest because Australia’s main coal export rival, Indonesia, would be exempt from the tariffs through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ free-trade agreement with China. Coal is Australia’s second-largest export, after iron ore. Shares in Whitehaven Coal slipped 8.8 percent on Friday in trading in Australia, where the big, diversified mining companies BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto both fell more than 2 percent. The mining and trading company Glencore fell 5 percent in Hong Kong trading. In the year ended in June, China took nearly a quarter of Australia’s exports of metallurgical coal, used to make steel, buying $4.8 billion worth. It also took about a fifth of Australia’s exports of thermal coal, used to fuel power plants, buying $3 billion worth. The Chinese Ministry of Finance said on Thursday that import tariffs for metallurgical coal would be reinstated at 3 percent, with a 6 percent tariff on thermal coal. Trade Minister Andrew Robb played down the impact on mining companies, saying that China was likely to consume an additional one billion tons of coal over the next five years and that Australia would be a competitive source to fill that demand given the high quality of its coal. Traders said that the sudden announcement may prompt Chinese buyers to delay or renegotiate pricing for fourth-quarter shipments, and that the buyers may even purposely default on near-term shipments. BHP, Glencore and Rio Tinto had no immediate comment on the Chinese tariffs. Another mining company, Anglo American, declined to comment. “The full impact of this on Australia will also depend on whether exporters can switch to other markets such as Korea, Japan and India,” said Rohan Kendall, an analyst in Beijing for the consulting firm Wood Mackenzie. “So this is likely going to be a modest impact on Australia and not a huge one on miners.” The extent of the impact will also depend on Chinese coal prices and whether top domestic mining companies like the Shenhua Group take the opportunity to raise prices during the winter restocking period, traders and analysts said. The tariffs come on top of measures that China announced in September to curb pollution, banning coal with high ash and sulfur content for some users starting next year.
|
Coal;Australia;China;Tariff;Tony Abbott;Whitehaven Coal;Rio Tinto;BHP Billiton
|
ny0220349
|
[
"technology"
] |
2010/02/18
|
Apple’s Prices for E-Books May Be Lower Than Expected
|
Maybe e-book prices won’t be rising so much after all. Since Apple announced plans to sell digital books on its forthcoming iPad , it has been cast as something of a savior of the publishing industry for allowing e-book prices to go above the $9.99 that Amazon charges for e-books on its Kindle device, a price that publishers say is too low to sustain their business. But as more details come to light of the actual negotiations between Apple and publishers, it appears that Apple left room to sell some of the most popular books at a discount. When Steven P. Jobs showed off the iPad last month, he announced agreements with five of the six largest publishers to offer their content through a new iBooks application. Those publishers — the Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan, the Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster — agreed to terms under which they would set e-book prices and Apple would serve as an agent to sell the books to consumers. Apple would take 30 percent of each sale, leaving 70 percent for publishers to split with authors. Publishers indicated that e-book editions of most newly released adult general fiction and nonfiction would sell in a range from $12.99 to $14.99, under a complicated formula that pegs e-book prices to the list prices of comparable print editions. Publishers liked Apple’s deal because it resulted in a marked increase above Amazon’s $9.99 price for most new releases. But according to at least three people with knowledge of the discussions, who spoke anonymously because of the confidentiality of the talks, Apple inserted provisions requiring publishers to discount e-book prices on best sellers — so that $12.99-to-$14.99 range was merely a ceiling; prices for some titles could be lower, even as low as Amazon’s $9.99. Essentially, Apple wants the flexibility to offer lower prices for the hottest books, those on one of the New York Times best-seller lists, which are heavily discounted in bookstores and on rival retail sites. So, for example, a book that started at $14.99 would drop to $12.99 or less once it hit the best-seller lists. Moreover, for books where publishers offer comparable hardcover editions at a price below the typical $26, Apple wanted e-book prices to reflect the cheaper hardcover prices. These books might be priced much lower than $12.99, even if they did not hit the best-seller list. Tom Neumayr, an Apple spokesman, declined comment. While e-books still represent a relatively small proportion of total book sales, they are the fastest-growing part of the industry. How they are sold and priced has become a matter of fierce debate within the publishing industry. For Amazon, the $9.99 price on new and best-selling e-books helped it market the Kindle device — which now sells for $259 — and build market share quickly. But Amazon has effectively lost money on each sale at that price because it buys and resells e-books as it purchases printed books, by paying publishers a wholesale price generally equivalent to half the list price of a print edition. That means that on a $26 hardcover book, Amazon would typically pay the publisher $13, losing just over $3 on a digital edition it sells for $9.99. Under the agreements with Apple, both the publishers and Apple should make money on each book sale.
|
Book Trade;Electronic Books and Readers;iPad;Apple Inc
|
ny0049568
|
[
"us"
] |
2014/10/04
|
After Uproar, School Board in Colorado Scraps Anti-Protest Curriculum
|
GOLDEN, Colo. — Will history be rewritten by the winners? That was the question parents and students were asking in school hallways, in online PTA forums and on boulevards up and down this suburban Colorado school district on Friday, a day after the school board’s conservative majority voted to change how the district reviews parts of its curriculum. It was the climax of an impassioned debate over censorship, academic freedom and what to teach students about American history. After two weeks of student protests and a fierce backlash across Colorado and beyond, the Jefferson County School Board backed away from a proposal to teach students the “benefits of the free enterprise system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights,” while avoiding lessons that condoned “civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.” But the board did vote 3-to-2 to reorganize its curriculum-review committee to include students, teachers and board-appointed community members. The Jefferson County schools superintendent, Dan McMinimee, who suggested the compromise, said it represented the “middle ground” in a fevered debate that pitted the board’s three conservative members against students, parents, the teachers’ union and other critics who opposed the effort to steer lessons toward the “positive aspects of the United States and its heritage.” The board members who supported the proposal said they did not want to censor or distort history. But the compromise allayed few critics. On Friday afternoon, hundreds of parents and students lined the streets in the Jefferson County School District — Colorado’s second-largest — to criticize the board’s actions as the latest in a series of divisive moves. Parents and students have said that the board ignored dissenting voices and that the majority voted in haste, overruling the other two members when they said they needed more time to review the proposal. Parents said they were concerned that the curriculum-review committee’s members would be appointed by, and answerable to, the board. “That still opens the door for the board to mess with curriculum,” said Jonna Levine, a parent and co-founder of the group Support JeffCo Kids. “It starts with A.P. history. What comes next? Stop and think about the books in A.P. lit they could monkey around with.” Some called for the board’s three conservative members, who were elected last November over a slate of three union-backed candidates, to resign. Others proposed recalling them. “They have lost my trust,” Amanda Stevens, whose children are in elementary school in the district, said in an email. “I have not seen actions that reassure me they will govern with students’ learning as their top and singular focus.” Image The board voted to accept a compromise. Credit Matthew Staver for The New York Times For two hours on Thursday night, dozens of parents, students and community members spoke about how the schools lay at the heart of this quilt of suburban towns west of Denver. Families whose children graduated years ago still show up at Friday night football games. Parents live-stream school board meetings at home. Graduates move back to raise their children here. As board members looked on, students and parents stood up to deride the idea of sanitizing history or tilting curriculum to suit a particular political view. They also criticized board members for suggesting that the teachers’ union and other critics had been using the students as pawns. “We know what we stand for and what we want,” Ashlyn Maher, a senior, told the board. “It is our education that is at stake.” “What’s next?” asked Jackson Curtiss, another student. “Are you going to choose science? Are you going to take down English?” The original proposal — to create a panel to examine what students were learning in Advanced Placement United States History and elementary-school health classes — crystallized months of tension. Since the November election, the board and its critics have clashed over teacher pay and charter schools, the expansion of full-day kindergarten and the resignation of a long-serving superintendent. After Julie Williams, one of the three conservative members, proposed the curriculum-review committee last month, hundreds of high school students staged walkouts, and teachers shut down schools by calling out sick. Civil liberties groups and several prominent Democrats in Colorado cheered the students on. Senator Mark Udall and Representative Ed Perlmutter issued supportive statements and urged the board to hear out the students. Representative Jared Polis, a Democrat from Boulder, sent Twitter messages under the hashtag #JeffCoSchoolBoardHistory, which offered up humorously whitewashed versions of American history. The College Board, which administers Advanced Placement programs and exams, warned Jefferson County that a course could not carry an “A.P.” designation “if a school or district censors essential concepts.” At the meeting Thursday, Ms. Williams said she had never wanted to censor history classes, but simply to evaluate recent changes to the A.P. United States History course that have drawn criticism from the Republican National Committee and some conservative educators. “My proposal was aimed to increase community engagement and transparency, so people do know what is being taught to their children,” she said. “We want increased transparency, increased accountability and increased community engagement.” Even the board’s critics — as they looked at the signs, homemade T-shirts and hundreds of people inside and outside the district offices on Thursday — said they agreed that the community was now undoubtedly engaged.
|
K-12 Education;Civil Unrest;Colorado;US Politics;History;Censorship;Ed Perlmutter;Mark Udall
|
ny0209835
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2009/12/30
|
Audit Found $35 Billion in Fraud Among Chinese Officials
|
SHANGHAI — Chinese officials misused or embezzled about $35 billion in government money in the first 11 months of the year, according to a national audit released this week. The announcement is the latest indication of how widespread corruption has become among government agencies and how difficult it will be for Beijing to root it out. The National Audit Office , which carried out the examination, did not disclose the size of the budgets reviewed this year. But the agency, which is based in Beijing, said that it surveyed nearly 100,000 government departments and state-owned companies, and that more than 1,000 officials were facing prosecution or disciplinary action because of the audits. Auditors said government officials engaged in everything from money laundering and issuing fraudulent loans to cheating the government through the sale or purchase of state land or mining rights. “Criminals are now more intelligent, and covert,” Liu Jiayi, the director of the National Audit Office, was quoted as saying in the state-run news media. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao hailed the work of the auditors on Tuesday and called on them to monitor government projects and prevent waste. But analysts say the Communist Party faces significant hurdles in trying to curtail corruption. Every year Beijing announces new anticorruption drives, new laws and new policies aimed at dealing with the problem. But every year the scale of fraud seems enormous, particularly in a country where the average person earns less than $50 a week. In 2005, for instance, the National Audit Office reported finding about $35 billion worth of government funds misused or embezzled. That was the last year the office gave a national figure covering its audits, according to its Web site. Experts say the audits revealed one thing: many in government are finding ways to steal public money. “The huge crackdown reflects the seriousness of corruption in China ’s government,” said Zhu Lijia, a professor of public policy at the Chinese Academy of Governance in Beijing. “Even the National Audit Office should be supervised. In the past few years it was the N.A.O. that decided whether to publish or hide some statistics.”
|
China;Frauds and Swindling;Embezzlement
|
ny0028632
|
[
"business",
"media"
] |
2013/01/15
|
In Hollywood Movies for China, Bureaucrats Want a Say
|
LOS ANGELES — When “Kung Fu Panda 3” kicks its way into China’s theaters in 2016, the country’s vigilant film censors will find no nasty surprises. After all, they have already dropped in to monitor the movie at the DreamWorks Animation campus here. And the story line, production art and other creative elements have met their approval. The lure of access to China’s fast-growing film market — now the world’s second largest, behind that of the United States — is entangling studios and moviemakers with the state censors of a country in which American notions of free expression simply do not apply. Whether studios are seeking to distribute a completed film in China or join with a Chinese company for a co-production shot partly in that country, they have discovered that navigating the murky, often shifting terrain of censorship is part of the process. Billions of dollars ride on whether they get it right. International box-office revenue is the driving force behind many of Hollywood’s biggest films, and often plays a deciding role in whether a movie is made. Studios rely on consultants and past experience — and increasingly on informal advance nods from foreign officials — to help gauge whether a film will pass censorship; if there are problems they can sometimes be addressed through appeal and subsequent negotiations. But Paramount Pictures just learned the hard way that some things won’t pass muster — like American fighter pilots in dogfights with MIGs. The studio months ago submitted a new 3-D version of “Top Gun” to Chinese censors. The ensuing silence was finally recognized as rejection. Problems more often affect films that touch the Chinese directly. “Any movie about China made by outsiders is going to be very sensitive,” said Rob Cohen, who directed “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” among the first in a wave of co-productions between American studios — in this case, Universal Pictures — and Chinese companies. One production currently facing scrutiny is Disney and Marvel’s “Iron Man 3,” parts of which were filmed in Beijing in the last month. It proceeded under the watchful eye of Chinese bureaucrats, who were invited to the set and asked to advise on creative decisions, according to people briefed on the production who asked for anonymity to avoid conflict with government or company officials. Marvel and Disney had no comment. Another prominent film, Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi,” which was nominated last week for 11 Academy Awards, made it through the process mostly unscathed, but got some pushback over a line in which a character declared that “religion is darkness.” “They modified the translation a little, for fear of provoking religious people,” Mr. Lee said. Hollywood as a whole is shifting toward China-friendly fantasies that will fit comfortably within a revised quota system, which allows more international films to be distributed in China, where 3-D and large-format Imax pictures are particularly favored. At the same time, it is avoiding subject matter and situations that are likely to cause conflict with the roughly three dozen members of a censorship board run by China’s powerful State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, or S.A.R.F.T. In addition, some studios are quietly asking Chinese officials for assurance that planned films, even when they do not have a Chinese theme, will have no major censorship problems. Image The makers of “Iron Man 3” arranged for bureaucrats to meet its star, Robert Downey Jr. Credit Zade Rosenthal/Walt Disney Pictures The censorship bureau did not respond to a list of questions submitted by The New York Times seeking information about its process and guidelines. Studios are quickly discovering that a key to access in China is the inclusion of Chinese actors, story lines and locations. But the more closely a film examines China, the more likely it is to collide with shifting standards, unwritten rules and unfamiliar political powers who hold sway over what can be seen on the country’s roughly 12,000 movie screens. Mr. Cohen’s “Mummy” film, which was shot throughout China in 2007, was a historical fantasy about an evil emperor who is magically resurrected by foreign adventurers in 1946. The script was preapproved by China’s censorship board with only token changes — the emperor’s name had to be fictionalized, for instance. The censors also cautioned that the ancient ruler should not resemble Mao Zedong. On reviewing the finished film, however, they found a deeper problem that “we didn’t have any way of seeing, or any way of fixing,” Mr. Cohen said: “White Westerners were saving China.” The picture was approved, he said, but its release was delayed until it had played elsewhere in the world, and pirated versions took a bite out of the Chinese box-office receipts. For Americans, dealings with the Chinese censors are mostly a distant and secondhand business. Films are normally submitted by their Chinese partners, while various consultants in China handle the bureaucratic communications that lead to approval or rejection. But those who shoot in China often assume that censorship officials have eyes and ears on the set. “There were points where we were shooting with a crew of 500 people,” said Mr. Cohen of his movie. “I’m not sure who was who or what, but knowing the way the system works, it’s completely clear that had we deviated from the script, it would not have gone unnoticed.” In a 2011 Web post , Robert Cain, a producer and consultant who guides filmmakers through China’s system, described having worked in Shanghai on a romantic comedy that went off script; the director included a take in which an extra, holding a camcorder, pretended to be a theater patron taping a movie on a screen. The next day, Mr. Cain and others involved with the film were summoned to the office of a Communist Party member who told them the film was being shut down for its “naïve” and “untruthful” portrayal of film piracy. Assuming they had been reported by a spy on their crew, the producers apologized and managed to keep the film on track. Studios are seeking out official co-productions, in which a Chinese company works with an American studio in financing and creating a film, because they can bypass the Chinese quota system and bring their distributors a 43 percent share of ticket sales, rather than the 25 percent allotted to foreign-made films. Co-productions like “Kung Fu Panda 3” draw close monitoring by the censors at every step. Scripts are submitted in advance. Representatives of S.A.R.F.T., according to Mr. Cohen and others, may be present on the set to guard against any deviation. And there is an unofficial expectation that the government’s approved version of the film will be seen both in China and elsewhere, though in practice it is not unusual for co-productions to slip through the system with differing versions, one for China, one for elsewhere in the world. Questions about how Chinese forces are shaping American movies are now playing out in the making of “Iron Man 3,” which is set for release on May 3. Disney and its Marvel unit want “Iron Man 3” to gain co-production status, partly because the previous two “Iron Man” movies performed well in China. To work toward that distinction, Disney and Marvel made a deal last year for Beijing-based DMG Entertainment to join in producing and financing the film. But they have taken a middle-of-the-road approach that appears intended to limit Chinese meddling in the creative process. A finished script was not submitted for approval and the companies have not yet made an application for official designation as a co-production. Rather, they are trying to show a heightened sense of cooperation in hopes the government will approve the status once that application is formally made in the spring. Image Censors’ objections delayed release of “The Karate Kid.” Credit Jasin Boland/Columbia Pictures The producers made a presentation to censors early in the process, describing broad strokes of the story, the history of other Marvel and Disney movies, and plans to integrate Chinese characters into the movie. That won a conceptual sign-off for the film, which is being directed by Shane Black. Next, bureaucrats were invited to the set and were able to meet the star, Robert Downey Jr. Hollywood executives are only now becoming familiar with the censorship board and its workings. A recent count by one of their advisers found that the board has 37 members, including representatives from government agencies and interest groups, like the Communist Youth League and the Women’s Federation, along with filmmakers, academics and professional bureaucrats. At the top of S.A.R.F.T. is Cai Fuchao , a recent member of the Communist Party Central Committee. In a previous municipal post in Beijing, he was widely reported to have policed Web sites for banned material with the help of 10,000 volunteers, and to have joined in a roundup of a million illegally published books in 2004. In 2008, after an uproar over the release of Ang Lee’s “Lust, Caution,” whose story of wartime love and collaboration caused unease even after sex scenes were deleted, written censorship guidelines were circulated in China, in what filmmakers there took to be a crackdown. Some of the prohibitions were broad, barring violations of the fundamental principles of the Constitution and the harming of social morality. Others were more pointed. Disparagement of the People’s Liberation Army and the police were banned, as were “murder, violence, horrors, ghosts, demons and supernaturalism.” In all, the standards would appear to clash with almost any American film, other than, perhaps, the PG-rated animated fare of a DreamWorks Animation. (Even “Kung Fu Panda” provoked objections by some Chinese, who saw the lead character as profaning a nationally revered animal.) But some who have dealt with S.A.R.F.T. say the censors are often pragmatic, and appear to walk a line between the demands of viewers, who want more global fare, and those of politicians, who are out to protect the status quo. For example, 20th Century Fox managed to get “Life of Pi” through with only the modification of the “religion is darkness” line, despite the movie’s spiritual themes — which tread close to a prohibition against the preaching of cult beliefs and superstitions — and the earlier trouble over “Lust, Caution.” For Americans, the hard part is knowing what might suddenly cause trouble — initial approvals notwithstanding. In 2009, Sony Pictures and its partner, the China Film Group, submitted their script for “The Karate Kid” to China’s censors, and dutifully changed parts of the story to suit them. But the finished film was rejected, according to people who were briefed on the process, essentially because film bureaucrats were unhappy that its villain was Chinese. After negotiation, 12 minutes of the film were cut, and it was released in China, though later than intended. Some filmmakers here suggest that impositions by the China censors are similar to the restrictions imposed by a ratings system administered by the Motion Picture Association of America. But Joan Graves, the chairwoman of Hollywood’s ratings board , insists otherwise. “We’re the only major country with a ratings system that does it on a voluntary basis,” she said. Steven Soderbergh, whose film “Contagion” was shot partly in Hong Kong, said the participation of China’s censors simply added to the chorus of input that surrounds every big-budget filmmaker. “I’m not morally offended or outraged,” Mr. Soderbergh said. “It’s fascinating to listen to people’s interpretations of your story.”
|
China;Movies;Censorship
|
ny0247529
|
[
"us"
] |
2011/05/29
|
Criminals in Police Clothing
|
MIAMI — A black BMW flashing red and blue lights suddenly filled Alexandria Armeley’s rearview mirror one evening last month. At a stoplight, the BMW’s driver pulled up next to her, waved a gold badge and told her “I’m a cop.” But Ms. Armeley was suspicious. Before she pulled over, she called her stepfather, Alex Hernandez, a police detective in Biscayne Park, Fla., who warned her that the man was probably not a police officer. Speed away, he told her. A terrified Ms. Armeley took off and was chased by the BMW for several miles through southern Miami-Dade County. Detective Hernandez had jumped in his car to help and eventually caught up to them. So the real officer arrested the fake officer, whose name is Daniel A. Barros. Asked why he had tried to pull over Ms. Armeley, a 23-year-old college student, Mr. Barros, 22, told officers, “She was speeding.” The BMW 7 Series car, outfitted with police lights and a siren, was “lit up like a Christmas tree,” Detective Hernandez recalled about the midnight encounter. “There are a lot of guys walking around with phony badges, but this guy had the whole works. Who knows what he would have done if he had gotten my stepdaughter to stop?” Mr. Barros is facing several charges in the case, including impersonating an officer. As long as police officers have worn uniforms and carried badges, criminals have dressed like them to try to win the trust of potential victims. Now the impersonators are far more sophisticated, according to nearly a dozen city police chiefs and detectives across the country. In South Florida, seemingly an incubator of law-breaking innovation, police impersonators have become better organized and, most troubling to law enforcement officials, more violent. The practice is so common that the Miami-Dade Police Department has a Police Impersonator Unit. Since the unit was established in 2007, it has arrested or had encounters with more than 80 phony officers in Miami-Dade County, and the frequency has increased in recent months, said Lt. Daniel Villanueva, who heads the unit. “It’s definitely a trend,” Lieutenant Villanueva said. “They use the guise of being a police officer to knock on a door, and the victim lowers their guard for just a second. At that point, it’s too late.” He added that part of the problem was that it was easy for civilians to buy “police products,” like fake badges, handcuffs and uniforms. “The states need to lock this down and make impersonating a police officer a more serious crime because we’re seeing more people using these types of these things to commit more serious crimes,” he said. Detective Javier J. Baez of the Miami-Dade Police Department said, “These types of crimes here in Miami typically have a nexus to drugs.” Increasingly, fake police officers are pulling off crimes together, the authorities say. One evening three weeks ago, three men in police uniforms knocked on the door of a home in southwest Miami-Dade County. When the home’s owner, Jose Montoya, opened the door, the men barged in and yelled, “Police, police! Get down, get down!” The men tied up Mr. Montoya, his wife and their toddler and then spent hours ransacking the house, the authorities said. They beat up Mr. Montoya, who was treated at a nearby hospital, and stole cash, jewelry and several weapons, the police said. Before leaving, the robbers warned Mr. Montoya and his family not to call the police, the authorities said, or they would return and kill them. Some police impersonators commit violent crimes like home invasions, car-jackings, rapes and, rarely, murders. Last summer, a Tampa man impersonating an undercover officer used a badge and a siren to pull over a 28-year-old woman and rape her. In January, the man, Luis Harris, 31, was convicted of sexual battery, grand theft, kidnapping and impersonating a police officer, among other charges. A judge sentenced Mr. Harris to life in prison. Other police impersonators, police chiefs and detectives say, masquerade as officers for more benign reasons, like trying to scare or impress someone. “Usually,” Detective Baez said, “the wannabe cop outfits their vehicles with police lights and fake insignias to fulfill some psychological need.” This happened in Chicago when a 14-year-old boy named Vincent Richardson donned police garb and walked into the Third District precinct during morning roll call in January 2009. Officers handed him a radio and told him to ride along with a female officer. The teenager even helped make an arrest. “After four or five hours, she asks, ‘Who is this guy?’ ” recalled Jody P. Weis, who was the Chicago police superintendent at the time. “He’s in a uniform, he has a goofy badge, he doesn’t have a weapon and he’s a high school kid. It was so embarrassing.” (The embarrassment did not end there for Mr. Weis, who said he had recommended against punishing the teenager in juvenile court because no harm had been done. Three months later, the boy was arrested and charged with stealing a car. Last week, he was arrested on several weapons charges.) Impersonating an officer is a misdemeanor in some states, though it is a felony in Florida. The charge’s severity, and punishment, increases if a criminal charged with posing as a police officer commits a felony. Several chiefs and detectives say the crime is not taken seriously enough by the justice system and the public. Often, the crime goes unreported, the police say. “Unfortunately, there is not a lot of downside for a criminal to impersonate a police officer,” said Commissioner Edward Davis of the Boston Police Department. “You can charge them with impersonating a police officer, but that’s not a very serious crime. The way the law views this crime, it’s as an innocent or silly prank. But it has become a much more serious crime than it is perceived by the public.” Detective Hernandez, of Biscayne Park, Fla., said: “People minimize it. They just let it go. They won’t think about how dangerous this potentially can be. They just don’t see it.” Some law enforcement officials said the public did not take these types of episodes seriously because of the types of cases often highlighted by the news media. People charged with impersonating police officers are often portrayed as befuddled, hapless and harmless. In March, a motocross champion was arrested in Orlando, Fla., and charged with impersonating a police officer. The man, James Stewart Jr., 25, tried to stop another car using red and blue lights, the Florida Highway Patrol said. The car that he tried to stop contained two off-duty troopers. Last October in Boca Raton, Fla., Andrew Novotak, in his white Crown Victoria with flashing green lights, pulled over motorists and quizzed them about whether they had been drinking alcohol, the police said. When the police questioned him, Mr. Novotak was wearing a police badge and carrying a loaded gun. He also had a German shepherd in his back seat, which he insisted was a police-trained dog. After arresting him, officers said they smelled alcohol on his breath. He was charged with impersonating an officer and driving under the influence.
|
Police;Impersonations;Crime and Criminals;Miami (Fla);Florida
|
ny0230476
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2010/09/17
|
A System Afraid of Its Own History
|
BEIJING — Fan Meizhong remembers exactly what inspired him to become a teacher after graduating from Peking University’s history department in 1997. “My own history classes at school were so oppressive,” he said. “It wasn’t about pursuing the truth, but about controlling our minds. I felt my education was a waste, and it made me really mad.” So Mr. Fan, now 38, decided to tackle the problem head on — by becoming a teacher who would tell children the truth about their country. Even as China ’s economy and society become increasingly diverse and sophisticated, its relationship to its own history remains stubbornly mired in cover-ups and silences. A look at how high school textbooks present the six decades since the establishment of the People’s Republic reveals the problem. Glaring omissions include mass famine, violent political campaigns, deadly labor camps and the suppression of a democracy movement that was televised live around the world. Taken together, these events killed dozens of millions of Chinese. The reason is simple, say critics. The political party that caused the tragedies is still in power, and it fears challenges to its authority. “They didn’t begin telling the truth in the Soviet Union until after it collapsed, did they?” said Yuan Tengfei, a teacher in Beijing. A result is that high school graduates, many headed for university and top jobs in China and, increasingly, abroad, leave school in a miasma of ignorance about their country, Mr. Fan said. He lists the history hot spots: “The 1957 Anti-Rightist Campaign, the 1958-61 Great Leap Forward famine, the Cultural Revolution, June 4th” — the army’s crushing of democracy protests near Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. “All these things have happened in our history, and we need to talk about them,” he said. “What kind of country are we that our history is so tragic?” His course is a risky one. In 2000, he left his first teaching job, at a state high school in his home province of Sichuan, under duress. He was then fired from two private schools after just a few weeks’ teaching. “The accusation is always that I’m ‘reactionary,”’ he said. Today he teaches at the private Guangya School in Chengdu, where most of the students, the offspring of China’s new rich, are headed to universities overseas, often in the United States. The school tolerates him, Mr. Fan said, because its principal is a free thinker — and has the political connections to protect his establishment. The malaise does not only affect history, said Liang Weixing, who teaches literature at a state high school in Hubei Province. He says the education system is conservative, and bogged down with ideology. “The actual content of the books we must teach is enough to drive you mad,” he said, singling out the paucity of post-1949 literature, from either China or overseas. Instead, “more than 70 percent” consists of ancient texts, which students must memorize to pass. “Judging by the course work, it appears that we are still living under the imperial system,” said Mr. Liang. What is offered as contemporary literature, like “Goodbye, Britannia,” a news-style account of Hong Kong’s 1997 return to China, or “Journey into Space,” about China’s astronauts, does not redress the imbalance, he says. “They lack linguistic and literary merit, and are stale,” he said. Perhaps the most famous maverick teacher in China these days is Mr. Yuan, videos of whose history courses at the private Jinghua School in Beijing, where he teaches part time, were posted on the Internet by the school. The school’s curriculum director, Liu Juan, said they had drawn nearly 40 million hits. In class, Mr. Yuan questions with humor official accounts of events like the Great Leap Forward famine, described in texts merely as a time of “severe economic hardship.” While estimates of the death toll from the forced collectivization policies vary, Mr. Yuan has taught that 20 million died, a figure he says the government does not dispute. The journalist Yang Jisheng put the number at 36 million in his 2008 book “Tombstone.” Frank Dikötter cites 45 million in his recent work “Mao’s Great Famine.” In May, the principal and Communist Party secretary of Haidian Teachers Training College, Mr. Yuan’s primary workplace, called him into his office for a “chat.” In June they ordered him to reapply for permission to teach at the college. Effectively, he was suspended. He has not yet heard if his application will be approved. Meanwhile, he continues to teach at Jinghua, once a week. His wife, afraid he will be arrested, accompanies him when he goes out. “It’s a tragedy for China that I say one or two true things and get so much attention,” said Mr. Yuan. Mr. Fan believes the omissions in textbooks are actually multiplying. He cites the 1989 democracy protests. “The textbooks used to mention June 4,” he said. “But these days it’s completely gone. They’re afraid if they mention it, students will know something happened and be curious, and look it up on the Internet. So they think it’s better to pretend it never happened.” Indeed, the protests are missing from the Major Events Chronology in the latest edition of Beijing’s high school history books, published by the People’s Education Press in 2007. In the volume devoted to world political developments, just one Chinese event is mentioned for the 1980s: a 1984 law on ethnic minorities. The next date for China is 1990, for an item on relations with Taiwan. There is mention of 1989 as a year of “drastic change” — in Poland. Mr. Yuan thinks silence is preferable to outright lies. And textbooks are getting better in some aspects, he says. “I think it’s really good that today they do talk about the Enlightenment, or the American political system,” he said. For now, the voices of independently minded teachers remain few. “You can’t expect everyone to be brave,” said Mr. Fan. “Most people want security, so they teach what they’re told.”
|
China;History;Education
|
ny0250226
|
[
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] |
2011/02/11
|
St. John’s Continues Garden Roll With Upset of UConn
|
From its rafter-rattling victory over Georgetown earlier this season to its upset of Duke the last time it played at Madison Square Garden, St. John’s has brought the kind of vitality to the arena that was missing for nearly a decade when the Red Storm took the court. Welcome to Lavinwood. In Steve Lavin’s first season as coach, St. John’s has undergone an extreme makeover as March approaches. The latest test of the Red Storm’s progress, an 89-72 victory over No. 10 Connecticut on Thursday, added another bullet point to its growing portfolio, one that it hopes will be good enough for its first N.C.A.A. tournament appearance since 2002. “It felt good to get another big one for the résumé,” guard D. J. Kennedy said. “There’s something about the Garden this year. When we play in front of the fans, it’s just a show.” It was the latest strong performance for St. John’s at the Garden, the site of some of the team’s biggest victories this season. The Red Storm beat Georgetown, then ranked 13th, Jan. 3; Notre Dame, ranked ninth, on Jan. 16; and Duke, ranked third, on Jan. 30. In fact, the Garden, the self-proclaimed World’s Most Famous Arena, has been so welcoming to the Red Storm (14-9, 6-5 Big East) that it has earned a new name, and perhaps a new tradition. Fans in the St. John’s student section held up oversize letters to spell out “Lavinwood,” a nod to Lavin’s previous coaching job at U.C.L.A., located in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Westwood. Led by guard Dwight Hardy — who scored 21 of his 33 points after halftime — St. John’s was ahead by as many as 25 points in the second half with a blitzing style that was up-tempo on offense and trapping, pressing and confusing on defense. St. John’s scored 27 points on fast breaks and outrebounded the typically strong Huskies by 10. “We just played very poorly, and they in turn played very well and took us out of the game,” UConn Coach Jim Calhoun said. “Congratulations to them. They completely outplayed us.” St. John’s took a 35-31 lead at halftime on a 37-foot heave by the plucky guard Malik Boothe as time expired. Calhoun was assessed a technical foul for arguing that Boothe had traveled on the play. That gave the Red Storm a pair of free throws — which Hardy made — and the possession arrow in its favor to start the second half. St. John’s opened with an 8-0 run to help swing the momentum, although Calhoun disputed that notion afterward. “Then we should’ve lost by 50,” Calhoun said, adding that he was still not pleased about the noncall. “I do think four steps is too much. I’ll take three. But four got me.” Although the Huskies (18-5, 6-5) brought a strong contingent from Storrs, Conn., the fans witnessed UConn’s third loss in its last four games and a pedestrian 15-point performance from Kemba Walker. Indeed, the night belonged to the St. John’s fans, who taunted the visitors with chants of “Over-rated!” “It was a great feeling,” Hardy said. “We worked hard the last couple of days in practice. The feeling was remarkable.” Lavin noted the importance of the victory for St. John’s after its loss at U.C.L.A. on Saturday. He said he also pointed out the stakes to his players: the need to win in the Garden, the need to continue to climb the Big East standings, the need to bolster their tournament credentials. “From the very first time we met as a team, our goal was to make the N.C.A.A. tournament,” Lavin said. “I think you need a dream, something you aspire to, a goal. Then you start putting the hammer to the rock and putting in the work of getting there.” St. John’s might be closer to that goal than it has been in quite some time. With roughly 90 seconds to play, and a St. John’s win inevitable, the public-address announcer requested that the fans stay off the court, which is always a good sign in college basketball. The crowd rose to its feet and cheered for the rest of the game. It was just another memorable night in Lavinwood.
|
St John's University;University of Connecticut;Basketball;Madison Square Garden
|
ny0123452
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2012/09/06
|
Obama, Seeking Re-Election, Asks for Patience
|
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — He warned them in 2008, and when he formally opened his re-election campaign in May, he put it in his speech again. He will “never be a perfect president,” he said, a line he now repeats at stop after stop. The unspoken subtext: It’s not my fault if you didn’t listen or expected too much. If rapturous supporters in Denver four years ago were not paying attention, those expected here on Thursday night surely know better. This is not a perfect president; this is a proud yet humbled president, a confident yet scarred president, a dreamer mugged by reality, a pragmatist confounded by ideology, a radical to some, a sellout to others. This is a president who has yet to realize the lofty expectations that propelled him from obscurity to the Oval Office, whose idealism or naïveté or hubris has been tempered by four years in the fires. Long after the messiah jokes vanished, the oh-so-mortal Barack Hussein Obama is left to make the case that while progress is slow, he is taking America to a better place — and that he will be a better president over the next four years. If Denver was all about promise, Charlotte is all about patience. Whether Americans grant the 44th president a four-year extension will depend in part on his ability to reconcile the heady aspirations of 2008 with the messy results of the four years that followed. Remade by his time in office, the candidate of change will now argue for staying the course. Although “he certainly seems more grizzled or hardened,” as his former economics adviser Austan Goolsbee observed, Mr. Obama expresses confidence that he has figured out how to wield power in an age of political polarization and economic stagnation. Now on his third chief of staff, he describes his change in management in sports terms, no longer picking the best overall athlete but whoever best fits the particular job. Burned by failed Roosevelt Room summits with Republican leaders and faced with implacable resistance, he has abandoned the inside game to barnstorm the country pressuring lawmakers. Once a virtual prime minister tethered to Congress, he now advances immigration , environmental and education initiatives through executive authority. In the privacy of the West Wing, of course, there are moments when he feels discouraged by what he has not accomplished or unappreciated for what he has. “That’s been our sweet spot — finding policies that don’t make anybody happy, that make both sides angry,” he has joked, Mr. Goolsbee said. “And the experts then say, well, they didn’t do enough anyway.” But those close to him say he takes the long view, understands things will not change as quickly as he likes, and retains his famed never-too-high, never-too-low reserve. During the dark days of summer 2011 when a grand bargain with Republicans on spending slipped away , he took a walk with David Axelrod , his strategist, to the White House basketball court and shot hoops. “Do you ever rethink this, about whether it was worth doing?” Mr. Axelrod remembered asking. Mr. Obama looked at him incredulously. “Of course not,” he said. “If you’re in public life, where else would you rather be?” The Limits of Rationality A few months ago, Mr. Obama read “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” by Daniel Kahneman, about how people make decisions — quick, instinctive thinking versus slower, contemplative deliberation. For Mr. Obama, a deliberator in an instinctive business, this may be as instructive as any political science text. Mr. Obama, the 51-year-old Harvard law graduate, sees himself as a rational thinker and came to office with what might be called the Reasonable Person Theory of Government. If he could simply sit down and talk with other political actors, whether they be Republicans from the House or mullahs from Tehran, he seemed certain he could work something out. His faith in his own powers of persuasion was deep. But politics is often not rational, at least not as Mr. Obama defined it. The Iranians have proved immune to Mr. Obama’s charm, as have the North Koreans, the Taliban and Vladimir V. Putin . So have the Republicans and, for that matter, even some Democrats. After a year of failed Middle East peacemaking, he conceded being too confident that he could cajole Israelis and Palestinians into resolving age-old disputes. “We overestimated our ability to persuade them to do so when their politics ran contrary to that,” he concluded at the time. So, too, has his reliance on oratory diminished. At first, there was no problem, it seemed, that could not be solved by a presidential address. “Race problem? Speech,” one former aide recalled. “ Afghanistan ? Speech.” But speeches by themselves rarely generated the action he sought. Indeed, Mr. Obama in private sometimes expresses surprise at the constraints of the office. Lulled by his success in passing an $800 billion stimulus package 24 days after his inauguration , and perhaps not fully cognizant of the tone set by doing so almost exclusively with Democratic votes, he found that everything else came harder, like his health care program, or not at all, like climate and immigration legislation. He keeps a list and argues that he has fulfilled most of his core promises. He pulled the country back from the economic abyss, rescued the auto industry, killed the world’s top terrorist, withdrew troops from Iraq , imposed regulations on Wall Street, put two liberal justices on the Supreme Court, signed a nuclear treaty with Russia and cut taxes for the middle class. Yet looking back, he realizes that some of his “heal the planet” ambitions that would prove fodder for mockery by Mitt Romney , his Republican rival, were unrealistic, at least in four years. During the 2008 campaign, he said he would talk with rogue leaders from countries including Iran and Cuba , make peace between Pakistan and India so Pakistan could shift forces to the Afghan border, close the prison at Guantánamo Bay , win Senate approval of a never-ratified test ban treaty, negotiate legislation live on C-Span and usher in a new era of bipartisanship. His contemplative decision-making can be isolating. He does not readily let others in. “It’s hard to gain the president’s confidence — not trust, but confidence in your judgment,” Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. observed in an interview this summer. “It doesn’t come easily to this president.” As a result, he said, Mr. Obama demands a rigorous process. When someone proposes something, the president’s reaction is, “Get me a paper on that.” When he receives it, Mr. Biden said, “he devours it. He masters it.” His deliberation proved refreshing to those weary of President George W. Bush ’s swagger. “I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak,” Mr. Obama once said when asked why it took him days to respond to a controversy. But when he waited to speak out about the would-be underwear bomber at Christmas 2009 or the BP oil spill in 2010, he paid a political price. He learned the public wants to see its president during crises. So when a gunman shot up a movie theater in Colorado this summer, Mr. Obama appeared before cameras within hours. As Mr. Kahneman said in an interview, “Being a slow thinker for a leader is not necessarily an advantage because the public likes a leader to think quickly and react instinctively.” Hardball Time How has Mr. Obama applied the lessons he learned? One day last spring, aides told him interest rates on federal student loans would double on July 1 unless Congress acted. Early on in his presidency, Mr. Obama might have invited lawmakers to the White House. Instead, he headed to Air Force One and flew to college campuses in North Carolina and Colorado to castigate Congress for not heading off the rate hike . There was never any debate about the strategy; no one, even Mr. Obama, thought about talking with Republicans. “Our view on student loans was they wouldn’t do it without really putting their backs against the wall,” said David Plouffe , the president’s senior adviser. “He realized this was a simple thing, it was clear, it was something we could motivate people on.” Republicans angrily accused the president of bad faith. “He was making a political argument,” said Representative John Kline of Minnesota , chairman of the education committee. “I never saw any engagement from the White House about what really to do about it.” Maybe so, but Obama aides crowed that it worked because Republicans instantly came out against the rate increase, too. Republicans said they saw it the other way, arguing that they defused the Obama attack by reacting quickly. Either way, it was a sign of how much the president had changed. No longer would he give Republicans the benefit of the doubt. Having been surprised by the unbreakable solidarity against his initiatives, Mr. Obama came to privately use the phrase “not on the level,” meaning Republicans were not playing straight. “They came in like they were the East German judge at the Olympics,” said Mr. Goolsbee. “He could hit the triple flip and they would give him a 2. That was a pretty grim lesson that he had to learn.” In Mr. Obama’s mind, it is a one-way street, and he takes no responsibility for the divisions, dismissing Republicans who consider him highhanded. “Elections have consequences,” he told Representative Eric Cantor , the Republican whip at the time, during an early meeting, “and Eric, I won.” The breakdown of last year’s grand bargain talks proved a turning point. “That was a searing experience,” Mr. Plouffe recalled. The lesson: Forget negotiations and use the bully pulpit. Policy is not about applying reason; it’s about applying power. “You’re never going to convince them by sitting around the table and talk about what’s good for the country,” said John D. Podesta , who ran Mr. Obama’s transition and still advises him occasionally. “You had to demonstrate that there’s political pain if you don’t produce an acceptable outcome.” Bold and Cautious If Mr. Obama has changed over his presidency, in part it suggests Americans never really knew him to begin with. Where conservatives see an unremitting liberal, supporters on the left wish he were. To mystified admirers, it is unrequited love. When they read in David Maraniss’s biography of how a girlfriend told him, “I love you,” only to have him reply, “Thank you,” some joked they knew how she felt. On the hustings, Mr. Obama is more careful to reply in kind. When someone shouts out, “We love you,” he calls out, “I love you back.” But sometimes it does not feel that way. His has become a bloodless presidency, built on cold calculations, not quixotic crusades. His argument now boils down to asking voters to stick with him because the other side will revive failed policies that would enrich the wealthy, shred safety-net programs and undermine the economy. With unemployment stuck above 8 percent and his approval ratings stuck below 50 percent, Mr. Obama has turned to the sort of campaigning he once disdained. The man who bristled when critics claimed without evidence that he was born in Kenya or was a Muslim now does not object as advisers and allies make unsubstantiated assertions about Mr. Romney’s taxes and business record. Asked about such incidents, he says the behavior of the Republicans is worse. He does not talk about changing Washington rules; he is playing by the rules as he found them. He is sensitive to the costs he has imposed on his own party. After the Supreme Court upheld his health care program, he reached out to three House Democrats who lost in 2010 after supporting the legislation, including Tom Perriello of Virginia , who said liberals have come around. “To the extent there was a passion for Obama in 2008, that’s matured into a comfort and a trust by 2012,” he said. Mr. Obama is a curious mixture of bold and cautious. He spent months in what amounted to a grueling graduate seminar on Afghanistan and then disregarded his vice president and top advisers to order 30,000 more troops to the war zone. Even the action considered his most decisive, ordering the raid that killed Osama bin Laden , took place only after months of secretly monitoring intelligence and considering options. He defied advisers by pressing for his expansive health care program rather than settling for a “skinny” alternative. Yet he stays doggedly away from hot-button issues like gun control and race, took two years to lift the ban on gays and lesbians in the military, and took even longer to endorse same-sex marriage . He appointed a bipartisan commission to fix the nation’s finances, then shelved its plan. On foreign policy as well, he has his priorities, and those that do not fit are put to the side. Since pulling American forces out of Iraq, for example, he has seemed removed from its fate. Adm. Dennis C. Blair , Mr. Obama’s director of national intelligence until he was pushed out over policy and personality differences, said the president took a checklist approach to foreign policy overly influenced by domestic politics. “There quickly developed what I thought of as the top-10 list of individual issues that needed to be worked — Iran, a treaty with Russia, the South China Sea, the Middle East peace process,” he said. “Never did there seem to be an idea of a strategy — where do we want to be, what’s important, and how do we get there?” Moreover, he said, decisions on foreign policy were shadowed by concern for how they would play with the American public. “Domestic political considerations were ground in very early, very early,” he said. A Second Term The isolation can be palpable. Riding in his motorcade after an event, Mr. Obama sometimes stares out the windows at the world he cannot really touch. When he arrives at a hotel at the end of a campaign day, he confers with aides in his suite, then sometimes asks what they plan to do the rest of the evening. When they mention going to the hotel bar to unwind, he notes he is not free to follow, essentially confined in his suite until morning. “He was a little wistful when I was with him about his new public life, his presidential life, and its cost in terms of isolation from ordinary life experiences,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin , his former Illinois colleague. Mr. Obama enjoys watching “Homeland” and “Boardwalk Empire,” and recently took in the Will Ferrell movie “The Campaign” (not great, in his review, but some funny scenes). His fixation with ESPN remains unabated, and, like others in Washington, he ruminates on the wisdom of the Nationals’ sitting down their star pitcher, Stephen Strasburg, before the playoffs. But his inner circle is the same tight group it was before. It is probably fair to say he has made no new friends since moving to Washington. “The times he wants downtime or personal time, he seems to naturally gravitate to the people he’s known for a very long time,” said John W. Rogers Jr., an old friend. In private, he speaks of his challenger with disdain. While intellectually understanding the odds, aides say, the president finds it hard to conceive of losing to Mr. Romney, a rival he does not consider a serious thinker who knows what he wants to do with the country. The president has told people he is determined to win because he believes the economy will bounce back and does not want Mr. Romney getting credit . Mr. Obama has convinced himself, or so he says, that things will be different next time around. Should he win, maybe Republicans will finally cooperate. “I believe that if we’re successful in this election — when we’re successful in this election — that the fever may break,” he said last spring. “My expectation is that after the election, now that it turns out the goal of beating Obama doesn’t make much sense because I’m not running again, that we can start getting some cooperation again.” If that sounds like optimism overcoming experience, Mr. Obama promises to be on guard. “I’m not going to just play it safe,” he tells aides. But he intends to play by the lessons he has learned.
|
Barack Obama;2012 Presidential Election;US Economy;2008 Presidential Election
|
ny0246291
|
[
"sports"
] |
2011/04/15
|
Kentucky Allows Horses Entered by Dutrow to Race
|
The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission allowed owners for two horses trained by Rick Dutrow Jr. to switch trainers, shortly after a judge granted the owners a temporary injunction. One of the horses, Amen Hallelujah, finished second in the $300,000 Vinery Madison at Keeneland after the trainer Justin Sallusto was granted a license. He also will be the trainer of record for another Dutrow horse, Court Vision, who is entered in the Maker’s Mark Mile on Friday. Kentucky officials denied Dutrow a racing license on Wednesday for “consistent disregard for the rules of racing.” He won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness in 2008 with Big Brown but has a history of rules violations in several states.
|
Horse Racing;Kentucky Horse Racing Commission;Dutrow Richard E Jr;Kentucky;Doping (Sports);Kentucky Derby
|
ny0145862
|
[
"business",
"yourmoney"
] |
2008/10/25
|
Weighing an Investment That Promises No Risk
|
One of the hardest parts about working in (or writing about) the personal finance industry these days is that there are no consoling words to offer up to people in their 60s and older who had a lot of money in stocks. Work longer? Not attractive. Go back to work? Ditto, or not physically possible. Spend less? No fun. Stay the course in stocks? No guarantee that they’ll come back in time to finance the retirement their owners had been looking forward to for decades. No, what many of these people want to hear about now is a financial product that promises no more losses but offers the possibility to share in the gains if and when the stock market comes back. So it should not come as a big surprise that the financial services industry, at least, is ready and waiting to push just the thing to soothe them. It’s called an equity index annuity, or index annuity for short. And if your response to the word “annuity” is to move your eyeballs elsewhere on the page, please at least give me a shot at explaining why this is important. Yes, annuities are often complicated and laden with fees. The salespeople don’t always have your best interests at heart. And this particular type of annuity has been the subject of lots of regulatory scrutiny and the target of numerous lawsuits. But given the attractiveness of the no-risk-with-growth pitch at the moment, you’ll probably be hearing a lot about them in the coming months. That makes this an especially good time to review how an index annuity works, what its drawbacks are and whether there are simpler alternatives that can provide better results. First of all, you don’t need to know much about annuities in general to understand the basic premise of an index annuity. You hand over some money for a particular term, say 10 years, and you earn a guaranteed minimum of 1 or 2 percent a year over that period. Then, if there’s a jump in the stock market, as represented by an index like the Standard & Poor’s 500, you’ll also get a chunk of that gain, though generally not all of it. Sounds good so far, right? The first big complication comes from how the annuity providers calculate your return on the index and credit it to your account. There are at least a dozen ways this can happen, according to Sheryl J. Moore, president and chief executive of the market research firm AnnuitySpecs.com , though consumers generally select among just three or four of the industry’s most popular options. The other problem here is that the insurance companies that sell index annuities need to add all sorts of rules and restrictions so they can pay commissions averaging 7 percent to sales representatives, earn a profit and still offer that guaranteed minimum plus upside. First of all, you may need to keep most of your money locked up in the annuity for several years. If not, you could pay penalties, generally known as surrender charges, and possibly lose interest earned, though there may be exceptions for things like severe illness or job loss. Then, there are the three main levers that put a lid on what you can earn in an index annuity. There might be an annual cap that keeps you from getting credit for more than, say, an 8 percent rise in the S.& P. 500, even if the index earns 15 percent in a given year. Or instead of a cap, you simply won’t be allowed to collect more than half or two-thirds of whatever the index earns, even during a raging bull market. This is known as the participation rate. Finally, there may be a fee of 6 percentage points (or lower or higher), known as the margin or spread. It is subtracted from the index’s return before any other restrictions come into play. An index annuity will generally have one of these restrictions or fees, though it could have more. The list of things to keep in mind continues, practically ad nauseam. The restrictions, like the cap, may change during the time you have your annuity, which creates uncertainty. Unlike a mutual fund that tracks the S.& P. 500 and collects the dividends that are paid out, your annuity doesn’t earn such dividends and thus can’t hand them off to you. And while earnings inside an annuity are tax-deferred, you pay ordinary income taxes on that money once you take it out, not the lower capital gains rate. Despite a significant amount of shorthand on my part here, this is still an awful lot to take in. Especially if you’re 65, scared and not financially savvy. Or even if you actually deal with money for a living. “I have never seen an equity-indexed annuity that I understood, and I have never met anyone else who has,” Jay Hutchins, a certified financial planner with Comprehensive Planning Associates in Lebanon, N.H., wrote in an e-mail message. “Trying to figure out how they calculate your return is like unraveling a tangled ball of yarn.” So why even bother? Because if you look back at the last 10 years with the help of professional yarn untanglers, the performance of many, perhaps most, index annuities would have trounced an investment of the same size in an S.& P. 500 index mutual fund. I asked GoFigureNow, an actuarial and educational service that helps sales representatives calculate historical returns on index annuities, to calculate the return on an index annuity with an 8 percent cap, a participation rate of 100 percent and no spread. This sample product also would have paid a 5 percent bonus to the holder of the annuity upfront (a common sales tactic) and used something called an annual point-to-point crediting method for adding gains on the index to the account. The result? The index annuity, which started with $100,000 in October 1998, would have had an account value of $176,478 as of Friday’s market close. The S.& P. 500 index fund, which also started with $100,000, would have actually lost money over 10 years, ending with a balance of $81,890. Those kinds of numbers make an index annuity tempting. But again, remember why we’re here. If you’ve read this far, it’s because you’ve had enough of the drama, you want no downside risk and you’re seeking safety. So throwing all your money in the S.& P. 500 isn’t a real choice for you. So consider this alternative, which many financial planners suggest in various forms: Let’s say you have $10,000, and you don’t want to lose a cent of it. You could take just enough of that money and buy zero-coupon Treasury bonds that will be worth $10,000 in 10 years, thus guaranteeing you’ll get your principal back. Then, you could plop the rest in an S.& P. 500 index fund (to get some of that same upside that the index annuity promises). How might that work out for you 10 years from now? In a simulation examining 50,000 different outcomes using the same sample annuity I described above in the backward-looking comparison, and assuming an annualized S.& P. 500 return of 10 percent (7 percentage points from capital gains and 3 percentage points from dividends), the bonds-plus-index-fund strategy beats the index annuity 81 percent of the time. Take that presumed return up to 13 percent, and the index annuity loses 92 percent of the time. Craig J. McCann, a former Securities and Exchange Commission economist whose firm performed the simulation for me, says he believes that standard annuity terms are even less favorable than the ones I asked him to use. His firm, Securities Litigation & Consulting Group, does work for lawyers suing annuity providers (and for government agencies as well), and the index annuities he has studied have underperformed more than 99 percent of the time. The terms I asked him to use, however, come from Ms. Moore at AnnuitySpecs, who makes a living keeping an eye on the products offered by annuity providers. “I have seen every single index annuity in the past decade,” she said. Ms. Moore has served as an expert witness for annuity providers in cases where Mr. McCann has helped the other side. I’m in no position to referee here about what sort of index annuity is typical. Neither are you. And I haven’t even mentioned other factors here, like the viability of the company offering the policy, the volatility in current index annuity pricing and the insurance features of these annuities that their issuers promote. My point in all this is simply to note that index annuities can be complex, and there are high-performing alternatives that aren’t. Given the stakes now that your portfolio is down double digits, please don’t buy any financial product, index annuity or otherwise, without getting a second (or third) opinion from someone who has no stake in whether you close the deal.
|
Personal Finances;Annuities
|
ny0034428
|
[
"business",
"media"
] |
2013/12/23
|
When ‘60 Minutes’ Checks Its Journalistic Skepticism at the Door
|
Last week, a study commissioned by the president concluded that the National Security Agency had reached too far into the private lives of Americans. The study, which came after a series of journalistic revelations exposing the agency’s surveillance practices, recommended numerous reforms that would curb the N.S.A.’s prerogatives. President Obama said he was “open to many” of the suggestions. It was exactly the kind of news-making moment that “60 Minutes” — America’s leading purveyor of serious television news — has often been responsible for creating. For more than four decades, the program has exposed C.I.A. abuses, rogue military contractors and hundreds of corporate villains. But where was “60 Minutes” on the N.S.A. story? The Sunday before the damning study, the program produced a segment that scanned as a friendly infomercial for the agency. Reported by John Miller, a CBS News reporter, the piece included extensive interviews with Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the N.S.A. In a scene that served as something of a metaphor for the whole segment, the producers negotiated access to the Black Chamber, a supersecret area where the nation’s top code breakers work. The door is briefly opened, we see a deserted office hall that looks like any other and then the door is closed. We get a look in, but we learn nothing. Coming as it does on the heels of the now-discredited Benghazi report — in which “60 Minutes” said it was fooled by an eyewitness who was apparently nothing of the kind — the N.S.A. segment raises the question of whether the program has not just temporarily lost its mojo, but its skepticism as well. It didn’t help that the day after the piece aired, a federal judge ruled that the agency’s program of collecting phone records was most likely unconstitutional . In between its coverage of Benghazi and the N.S.A., “60 Minutes” drew criticism for letting Amazon promote a drone delivery program that is years from actually happening, if it happens at all. It was a fanciful look at the commercial future, though Charlie Rose, the reporter, also asked Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, some tough questions: whether providing cloud services to the C.I.A. was a conflict, and whether its “ruthless” pursuit of market share was fair. Image A “60 Minutes” segment about the N.S.A., reported by John Miller, pictured, included extensive interviews with Gen. Keith Alexander, the agency’s director. Credit CBS Let’s stipulate that “60 Minutes” has been and continues to be a journalistic treasure, which just this year has done hard-hitting pieces on the damaging practices of credit report agencies , the high rate of suicide among returning veterans, and how tainted pain medication that caused fungal meningitis killed dozens and sickened hundreds . Mr. Rose also landed an interview with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, about chemical weapons. At a time when both the definition and execution of news has dimmed, “60 Minutes” stands out. Historically, the news that “60 Minutes” was in the lobby or on the phone has struck fear in the hearts of both the stalwart and the venal. The show made its targets quake and audiences thrill as it did the hard, often amazing work of creating consequence and accountability. But in the last few months, there have been significant lapses into credulousness, when reporters have been more “gee whiz” than “what gives?” The news that “60 Minutes” is calling could be viewed as less ominous and more of an opportunity. More than once this year, the show has traded skepticism for access. When it comes to the access game, everyone, even “60 Minutes,” plays ball on occasion. When it seeks to lighten things up, as it did with Taylor Swift, or Maggie Smith of “Downton Abbey,” no one expects hidden cameras or brutal interrogations. Everyone, including the audience, knows the score. But viewers expect the show to bring its A game, and deserve it, when it takes on a huge issue like the N.S.A., to serve as a stand-in for the American people and ask the uncomfortable questions. Mr. Miller is a former high-ranking official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and a former spokesman of the F.B.I. whose worldview is built on going after bad guys and keeping the rest of us safe. In his report, Mr. Alexander was allowed to parse his responses, suggesting that the collection and retention of telephone metadata from Americans is not a big deal — it is — and that the agency is “not collecting everybody’s email, we’re not collecting everybody’s phone things.” The report delivered to the president last week said that the agency was doing a great deal of both and that it should stop. After taking over “60 Minutes” from Don Hewitt less than 10 years ago, Jeffrey Fager has managed to maintain the journalistic momentum of the news division’s crown jewel. In 2011, he was named chairman of CBS News, and since then has earned high marks for helping restore hard news at the evening news program and developing a distinct identity for “CBS This Morning” by emphasizing topical coverage. But people inside and outside the news division have questioned whether those dual roles are stretching him too thin. An internal CBS investigation into the Benghazi fiasco cited fundamental lapses in execution, including missed opportunities to check the story of Dylan Davies, a contractor who had told conflicting accounts about his whereabouts on the night of the attacks on the American diplomatic mission. Image Jeffrey Fager, executive producer of “60 Minutes” and chairman of CBS News. Credit Bret Hartman/Reuters Of course, any news organization can be fooled — The New York Times famously fell short with its reports of supposed weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Iraq war — but it was hard to watch the N.S.A. segment and not wonder who was minding the store. On what planet is it fine for someone like Mr. Miller, a former federal law enforcement official, to be the one to do a big segment on a major government security agency? Mr. Miller got the story because the N.S.A. said yes to his pitch — why would it not? — but other journalists at “60 Minutes” without his potential conflicts were interested as well. No matter how the deal was brokered, the optics were terrible and the N.S.A. got its hands on a megaphone with nary a critic in sight. Mr. Fager would not speak on the record, perhaps in part because he was pummeled after initially defending the Benghazi broadcast; when it fell apart, he was forced to put Lara Logan, the reporter, and the producer on leave. But while declining to comment, he made it clear that he very much had his eye on the ball at “60 Minutes” and pushed back against any notion of institutional malaise. Mr. Miller was more than happy to explain his N.S.A. segment, which he said he would not change if he had the chance. As a reporter, he has a blend of insider knowledge and careful inquiry that has been lauded by many, including me , especially during the school shootings in Newtown, Conn. He is nothing if not confident, dismissing his critics as ankle-biting, agenda-ridden bloggers who could not be compelled to get out of their pajamas and do actual reporting. “I fully reject the criticism from you and others,” he told me. “The N.S.A. story has been a fairly one-way dialogue. There has been no conversation and when you do hear from the N.S.A., it is in a terse, highly vetted statement.” “We went there, we asked every question we wanted to, listened to the answers, followed up as we wished, and our audience can decide what and who they believe. As we constructed it, the N.S.A. was a story about a debate, not a villain, and we added to that debate with important information. I fail to understand how a shrill argument for the sake of creating televised drama would have accomplished anything.” Mr. Miller is a highly respected reporter, and stand-up enough to come on the phone and defend his work. (He is reportedly heading back into government to work for his former boss, William Bratton, in the New York City Police Department.) But I’m pretty sure that the credentials that make him valuable on a mass shooting are the same ones that create a conflict on the N.S.A. segment. And Ms. Logan, who raced past conflicting information to a predetermined conclusion and pulled the program into a ditch in the process, should get more than Christmas off for her lapses. The DNA of “60 Minutes” is adversarial, investigative and most of all accurate. It would be a cheap and easy trick to roll Mike Wallace back from the grave for the sake of contrast, but of course the N.S.A. would not have let him near the place. Maybe that is the point. “60 Minutes” is a calling, not an assignment, and the program should not be the kind of outfit that leaves its skepticism at the door to get inside.
|
60 Minutes;CBS News;News media,journalism;NSA;Jeffrey Fager;Charlie Rose;Lara Logan;Benghazi;TV;Benghazi Attack 2012
|
ny0295294
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2016/12/27
|
Shinzo Abe at Pearl Harbor: ‘Rest in Peace, Precious Souls of the Fallen’
|
The following is a transcript of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s remarks on Tuesday at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, based on an advance text of his speech. President Obama, Commander Harris, ladies and gentlemen, and all American citizens: I stand here at Pearl Harbor as the prime minister of Japan. If we listen closely we can make out the sound of restless waves, breaking and then retreating again. The calm inlet of brilliant blue is radiant with the gentle sparkle of the warm sun. Behind me, a striking white form atop the azure, is the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial. Together with President Obama, I paid a visit to that memorial, the resting place for many souls. It was a place which brought utter silence to me. Inscribed there are the names of the servicemen who lost their lives. Sailors and marines hailing from California and New York, Michigan and Texas, and various other places, serving to uphold their noble duty of protecting the homeland they loved, lost their lives amidst searing flames that day, when aerial bombing tore the U.S.S. Arizona in two. Even 75 years later, the U.S.S. Arizona, now at rest atop the seabed, is the final resting place for a tremendous number of sailors and marines. Listening again as I focus my senses, alongside the song of the breeze and the rumble of the rolling waves, I can almost discern the voices of those crewmen. Voices of lively conversations, upbeat and at ease, on that day, on a Sunday morning. Voices of young servicemen talking to each other about their futures and dreams. Voices calling out the names of loved ones in their very final moments. Voices praying for the happiness of children still unborn. Each and every one of those servicemen had a mother and a father anxious about his safety. Many had wives and girlfriends they loved. And many must have had children they would have loved to watch grow up. All of that was brought to an end. When I contemplate that solemn reality, I am rendered entirely speechless. “Rest in peace, precious souls of the fallen.” With that sentiment, I cast flowers on behalf of Japanese people, upon the waters where those sailors and marines sleep. President Obama, the people of the United States of America, and the people around the world, As the prime minister of Japan, I offer my sincere and everlasting condolences to the souls of those who lost their lives here, as well as to the spirits of all the brave men and women whose lives were taken by a war that commenced in this very place, and also to the souls of the countless innocent people who became victims of the war. We must never repeat the horrors of war again. This is the solemn vow we, the people of Japan, have taken. And since the war, we have created a free and democratic country that values the rule of law and has resolutely upheld our vow never again to wage war. We, the people of Japan, will continue to uphold this unwavering principle, while harboring quiet pride in the path we have walked as a peace-loving nation over these 70 years since the war ended. To the souls of the servicemen who lie in eternal rest aboard the U.S.S. Arizona, to the American people, and to all peoples around the world, I pledge that unwavering vow here as the prime minister of Japan. Yesterday, at the Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe Bay, I visited the memorial marker for an Imperial Japanese Navy officer. He was a fighter pilot by the name of Commander Fusata Iida who was hit during the attack on Pearl Harbor and gave up on returning to his aircraft carrier. He went back instead and died. It was not Japanese who erected a marker at the site that Iida’s fighter plane crashed. It was U.S. servicemen who had been on the receiving end of his attack. Applauding the bravery of the dead pilot, they erected this stone marker. On the marker, his rank at that time is inscribed, “Lieutenant, Imperial Japanese Navy, ”showing their respect toward a serviceman who gave his life for his country. Video Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan stood next to President Obama and offered repentance for the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Credit Credit Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press “The brave respect the brave.” So wrote Ambrose Bierce in a famous poem. Showing respect even to an enemy they fought against; trying to understand even an enemy that they hated — therein lies the spirit of tolerance embraced by the American people. When the war ended and Japan was a nation in burnt-out ruins as far as the eye could see, suffering under abject poverty, it was the United States, and its good people, that unstintingly sent us food to eat and clothes to wear. The Japanese people managed to survive and make their way toward the future thanks to the sweaters and milk sent by the American people. And it was the United States that opened up the path for Japan to return to the international community once more after the war. Under the leadership of the United States, we, as a member of the free world, were able to enjoy peace and prosperity. The good will and assistance you extended to us Japanese, the enemy you had fought so fiercely, together with the tremendous spirit of tolerance were etched deeply into the hearts and minds of our grandfathers and mothers. We also remember them. Our children and grandchildren will also continue to pass these memories down and never forget what you did for us. The words pass through my mind; those words inscribed on the wall at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., where I visited with President Obama. “With malice toward none, with charity for all… let us strive on… to do all which may achieve and cherish a… lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” These are the words of President Abraham Lincoln. On behalf of the Japanese people, I hereby wish to express once again my heartfelt gratitude to the United States and to the world for the tolerance extended to Japan. It has now been 75 years since that “Pearl Harbor.” Japan and the United States, which fought a fierce war that will go down in the annals of human history, have become allies with deep and strong ties rarely found anywhere in history. We are allies that will tackle together, to an even greater degree than ever before, the many challenges covering the globe. Ours is an “alliance of hope” that will lead us to the future. What has bonded us together is the power of reconciliation, made possible through the spirit of tolerance. What I want to appeal to the people of the world, here at Pearl Harbor, together with President Obama, is this power of reconciliation. Even today, the horrors of war have not been eradicated from the surface of the world.There is no end to the spiral where hatred creates hatred. The world needs the spirit of tolerance and the power of reconciliation now — and especially now. Japan and the United States, which have eradicated hatred and cultivated friendship and trust on the basis of common values, are now, and especially now, taking responsibility for appealing to the world about the importance of tolerance and the power of reconciliation. That is precisely why the Japan-U.S. alliance is “an alliance of hope.” The inlet gazing at us is tranquil as far as the eye can see. Pearl Harbor. It is precisely this beautiful inlet, shimmering like pearls, that is a symbol of tolerance and reconciliation. It is my wish that our Japanese children, and President Obama, your American children, and indeed their children and grandchildren, and people all around the world, will continue to remember Pearl Harbor as the symbol of reconciliation. We will spare no efforts to continue our endeavors to make that wish a reality.Together with President Obama, I hereby make my steadfast pledge. Thank you very much.
|
Shinzo Abe;US Military;World War II;Pearl Harbor;Japan
|
ny0271147
|
[
"sports",
"basketball"
] |
2016/04/22
|
At Last, Jeremy Lin Settles Into Identity of His Own Making
|
MIAMI — Over the past five years, Jeremy Lin has felt multiple disparate identities foisted upon him: undrafted underdog, franchise savior, overpaid mercenary. None quite fit. But over these past six months, a fresh calibration seems to have occurred. A half-step away from the spotlight, Lin has nurtured an existence that now comfortably rests somewhere between the short-burst ecstasy of his time with the Knicks and the protracted bewilderment of his stints with the Houston Rockets and the Los Angeles Lakers. Meet Jeremy Lin, solid basketball player. As a reserve this season for the Charlotte Hornets, Lin contributed steadily to a group that enjoyed an exciting run to the playoffs. He reasserted himself as a deft scorer, capable of catching fire in the right conditions. After finishing seventh in the N.B.A.’s sixth man of the year voting , he reset his value as an attractive target for teams this summer, should he, as expected, decide to become a free agent. In an interview this week, Lin said that he felt liberated by a firmer sense of who he is. “I think I’m just in a different place, mentally, spiritually, where I’m able to enjoy this job more and more,” Lin said. “The lows don’t affect me the way they used to anymore.” At the risk of speaking too soon, it seems as though Lin has broken out of the grating cycle of hype and backlash that shadowed him after a sudden emergence with the Knicks in 2011-12 catapulted him to the national stage. The most provocative thing about Lin this season might have been his changing hairstyles. Lin has been trying to grow his hair out to some unspecified length, and the process led him to improvise various coiffures: Mohawks, side parts, ponytails. He laughed this week about the way fans on social media and interviewers had tried to use his hair as a window to his inner life, to find some symbolism in the hairdos, to attach some special meaning to styling gel. Image Lin, pictured in December, laughed this week about the way fans on social media have tried to find some symbolism in his different hairstyles this season. Credit Scott Halleran/Getty Images “It’s taken on a life of its own, which I never expected,” Lin said. “I’m just trying to have fun with it.” Fun was missing at times over the last few years. He languished on the Rockets from 2012 to 2014, often watching from the corner as James Harden handled the team’s creative responsibilities. With the Lakers last season, he seemed miscast in the team’s ponderous offensive system. Lin was a free agent after the Lakers’ 21-win season, and suitors were not quite knocking down his door. But the Hornets envisioned a role for him, and Coach Steve Clifford pitched him a system that would emphasize fast play and pick-and-rolls — the lively conditions in which Lin thrives. The Hornets, who had missed the playoffs in 2015, had ambitions to re-establish themselves as postseason contenders. It was an intriguing opportunity. “Going through what he went through last year, and then coming here and having a chance to do something special, he was down for it,” Charlotte center Al Jefferson said. “In this league, you want a winning situation, and normally everything else will take care of itself.” Lin signed a modest contract: two years for $4.37 million, with a player option on the second year. It has been a mutually beneficial agreement. At Jefferson’s request, Lin helped to revive and organize the Hornets’ road trip Bible study group, which had gone dormant last season. Jefferson said the entire team had attended the final session of the regular season. On the court, Lin averaged 16.1 points per 36 minutes during the regular season, his highest single-season average since his days in New York. In five games, he notched 25 points or more, including a 35-point performance against the Toronto Raptors in January and a 29-point game in a surprise win over the San Antonio Spurs in March. Image Lin passed to his Hornets teammate Cody Zeller in a game in Milwaukee in March. Credit Morry Gash/Associated Press As the season wound down, Clifford praised Lin for a “terrific year.” He said there were facets of his game that seemed to have gone underappreciated. “He’s a much, much better defender than people realize,” Clifford said. “He competes hard every night, and he’s a very serious player.” Lin kept a low profile all season. His name re-entered the national conversation this month, however, when a fan named Hsiu-Chen Kuei from San Jose, Calif., uploaded a homemade video to YouTube that showed multiple instances in which Lin had drawn hard contact from opponents. Kuei questioned why flagrant fouls had not been called. The video was widely viewed. An article in The New York Times about Kuei and the video prompted the N.B.A. to issue a statement saying essentially that Lin’s common and flagrant foul numbers were in line with league norms. Lin shrugged this week when asked what he thought about the N.B.A.’s response. He seemed to find it a bit perplexing. “That doesn’t address the issue,” Lin said. “To me, not everybody drives the same way, not everybody goes to the basket the same way, not everybody takes contact the same way. I mean, it is what it is. They made their statement. All I know is, you’ve just got to watch the film.” But Lin did not want to criticize the officiating. He said that it was out of his control and that he had other matters to worry about. The Hornets fell behind in their series against the Miami Heat, two games to none, with a loss on Wednesday night. He scored 9 points in Game 1 and 11 points in Game 2 and is among the many Hornets players who will need to improve in Game 3 on Saturday to make the series competitive. Lin demurred, too, when asked whether he might opt out of his contract this summer and what he might seek. He said that it would be disrespectful to the Hornets organization and to his teammates to discuss personal business during this postseason run. Several teams could use his services. The Nets’ hiring of Kenny Atkinson, an Atlanta Hawks assistant who had been an assistant with the Knicks during the Linsanity days, to lead their team next season prompted some media outlets to speculate whether Brooklyn would be an attractive destination for Lin. Lin did not entertain any notion that there was significance to the connection. But he was more than happy to heap praise on his former coach. “I’ve kind of been saying it was just a matter of time for him because I know how good he is, I know how much he was there for me in New York,” Lin said. “When you’re around him, you kind of understand there’s something different about him: his energy, his passion, the juice he approaches his work with.” Lin added: “He doesn’t leave any stone unturned. He’s always the first one in, and I’m saying first one in by, like, hours.” Clifford offered similar praise for Lin’s work ethic. He called him a serious player who puts in extra work every day. Since last summer, Lin’s focus has been on altering his jump shot — still a weak point in his game — with help from a shooting coach. Clifford predicted Lin’s 3-point-shooting percentage would rise starting next season. “I think he’s got another big jump in his game,” Clifford said. And then, maybe, another label in a short career full of them.
|
Basketball;Jeremy Lin;Charlotte Hornets
|
ny0167732
|
[
"business",
"mutfund"
] |
2006/01/08
|
Digging for Gold? A Little Bit Can Go a Long Way
|
GOLD makes a few people rich and a lot of people giddy. King Tutankhamen went to his grave with a trove of it. Francisco Pizarro, the explorer, pillaged for it. John Maynard Keynes, the economist, railed against it. Neil Young wrote songs about it. Nobody, besides butchers, rhapsodizes about pork bellies. And with the price of bullion rising -- in December, it topped $500 an ounce for the first time in nearly 25 years -- mutual fund investors have been bitten by the gold bug, too. In the first 10 months of 2005, a net $2.3 billion flowed into precious-metals funds, which tend to be dominated by gold miners' stocks. That inflow was up 50 percent over the full-year figure for 2004. Just a few years ago, some investors were fleeing these funds; they had net outflows in 2000 and 2001. The recent popularity of precious-metals funds has some analysts wondering whether investors are striving to diversify their portfolios or just flirting with a fad. "A lot of investors overdo it trying to get rich with gold," said Karen A. Wallace, who tracks precious-metals funds for Morningstar in Chicago. "Just a little bit of allocation to the sector goes a long way." One of these funds may have a place in your portfolio, but only after you've found the right mix of stocks, bonds, cash and maybe real estate, said Joseph P. Brennan, who leads the portfolio-review department at the Vanguard Group in Malvern, Pa. "It's for diversifying around the edges, and most people struggle to just get a well-balanced portfolio," he said. Even metals-fund managers, who point out that gold's price tends to move independently of stocks and bonds, urge caution. They typically recommend an allocation of no more than 5 percent. "Remember, it's a small sector, so you don't want to get too excited," said Bill H. Martin, manager of the American Century Global Gold fund. And a few experts see any investment in precious metals as the province of speculators. "There are so many better places for your money," said Jeremy J. Siegel, a finance professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. "In the long run, stocks or bonds have thrashed gold as holdings." According to Professor Siegel's calculations, a dollar invested in gold bullion in 1802 would now be worth $1.60, after inflation. In contrast, a dollar invested in stocks would have returned $630,000, after inflation, over the same period, and one in government bonds, $1,100. For investors seeking an inflation hedge, Professor Siegel suggests Treasury inflation-protected securities instead. But someone must see value in glitter and gilt. Otherwise, gold's price wouldn't have nearly doubled since 2001. Other precious metals have also soared in value. Platinum recently reached a 25-year high, and silver and palladium prices have climbed lately, too. Some analysts credit the booming economies of China and India. Newly affluent people there have fewer investment options than Westerners and thus have turned to gold and other precious metals, said Parvathy Krishnan, a Morningstar stock analyst. Others, like Kathleen M. Camilli, an economics consultant in New York, point to the recent rise in oil prices. "We've seen tremendous wealth creation there, and some of that is going back into gold," she said. Still other analysts say a widespread rally in commodities prices has also propelled metals. Whatever the reasons, a rush of sorts has ensued. If mutual fund investors are bent on participating, they have several options. They can, of course, skip funds entirely and buy a bar of bullion or a fistful of coins. But then they would have to store and insure their treasure, which entails costs that would erode their return. And "unlike collectibles like antiques or art, most people can't get a lot of enjoyment out of displaying bullion or gold bars around the house," said Wayne R. Guay, an accounting professor at the Wharton School. Alternatively, investors can take the conventional path and buy shares in a fund such as American Century Global Gold, Vanguard Precious Metals and Mining or Franklin Gold and Precious Metals. Precious-metals funds may sound exotic -- as if they're giving shareholders a stake in a subterranean vault full of platinum, silver and gold. In fact, they are like other stock mutual funds in that they typically invest in companies. And these companies' business is dirty, difficult and, when metals prices are low, not very profitable, said Stephen M. Land, vice president and manager of the Franklin fund. In Nevada, for example, gold mining involves huge open pits, 400-ton trucks and "shovels big enough that you can stand in them," he said. In South Africa, it requires deep shafts bored thousands of feet into bedrock. "You're dealing with 10,000 people in a hole in the earth," he added. With the gold price at $250 an ounce, these costly operations barely break even, if they even do. But at $500, they can earn a healthy return. If the recent numbers seem enticing, investors should understand that, as a rule, returns for precious-metal funds zigzag about twice as much as those for the average large-capitalization stock fund, said Andrew Clark, a senior research analyst at Lipper. "This isn't a 401(k) investment," he warned. "It's speculative, and you may have made nothing at the end of the year." And unlike the large-cap stock category, the sector doesn't easily lend itself to indexing, which many experts consider the most efficient means of running a fund. There just aren't enough publicly traded mining companies to create a well-diversified index, said Mr. Martin of American Century. His fund began as an indexer but evolved because he and his co-managers found the strategy unworkable in such a small sector. "It's not an index fund anymore, but it's as close as we can come," he said. Because these money managers have a relatively small community of companies from which to choose, their funds tend to hold fewer stocks than the average stock fund, said Ms. Wallace of Morningstar. (They typically hold large gold producers like AngloGold Ashanti, Barrick Gold, Newmont Mining and Placer Dome; in December, Barrick Gold agreed to acquire Placer Dome for $10.4 billion, creating the world's largest gold miner.) In such funds, the ups and downs of a single company can do much to bolster -- or sap -- returns. That contributes to the funds' volatility, as does their focus on one industrial sector. Sector funds tend to have high expense ratios. "Some of them are priced at what the market will bear," rather than at the cost of running the fund, she said. Vanguard's offering carried an expense ratio of 0.48, according to its most recent annual report, the lowest among precious-metals stock funds tracked by Morningstar. By comparison, the average expense ratio for all precious-metals funds was 1.68 percent. Returns for precious-metals funds often jump and dive even more than gold prices, which are plenty volatile on their own. "The shares tend to accentuate anything that's going on with the gold price because you've got operational leverage and technological advances working in your favor," Mr. Martin explained. Of course, leverage can work both ways, exaggerating slides as well as upswings. Investors have another option: exchange-traded funds that invest in gold bullion. One is StreetTracks Gold Trust, which was organized by the World Gold Council, a marketing group for miners, and opened in 2004. Another is iShares Comex Gold Trust, organized by Barclays Global Investors; that fund began in early 2005. With the E.T.F.'s, you really do get a stake in gold in a vault. The custodian for StreetTracks, for example, holds 239 tons of bullion in London. The fund's Web site, www.streettracksgoldshares.com, includes pictures of pallets of gleaming bars. Both funds carry an expense ratio of 0.40. With E.T.F.'s, investors must also pay brokerage fees to buy or sell their shares. Be aware, too, that the I.R.S. treats gold as a collectible, so shareholders in the E.T.F.'s will typically see their gains taxed at the 28 percent rate as opposed to the 15 percent rate that applies to many other investments. As gold prices have risen over the last five years, investors may have forgotten that they can fall far and fast, too. "From the 1981 peak, the price of bullion fell about $300 in the next 12 months," said Mr. Clark of Lipper. And when they do, he added, they tend to drag down precious-metals funds with them.
|
MINES AND MINING;METALS AND MINERALS;GOLD;PRICES (FARES FEES AND RATES);MUTUAL FUNDS;STOCKS AND BONDS
|
ny0280584
|
[
"world",
"canada"
] |
2016/10/07
|
Women in Royal Canadian Mounted Police Get an Apology for Years of Harassment
|
OTTAWA — The head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police struggled to keep his composure as he publicly apologized Thursday to hundreds of women who were bullied, sexually harassed or discriminated against as officers or employees of the force. Commissioner Bob Paulson’s remarks were part of a settlement of two class-action lawsuits that will also include more than 100 million Canadian dollars in compensation to the women. “You came to the R.C.M.P. wanting to personally contribute to your community, and we failed you. We hurt you,” Commissioner Paulson said at a news conference, pausing as he appeared to be on the verge of tears. “For that, I am truly sorry. You can now take some comfort in knowing that you have made a difference. Because of you, your courage and your refusal to be silenced, the R.C.M.P. will never be the same.” He also extended his apology to all Canadians, saying, “I know how disappointed you’ve been with the force.” The settlement, which is subject to court approval, covers claims going back to 1974, when women were first allowed to become officers in the national police force. Commissioner Paulson’s tenure has been clouded as a growing number of women have described mistreatment. Some said male officers had not responded to their calls for backup. Several said they had received suggestive communications or found sex toys on their desks. At least one senior officer was accused of exposing himself to a female colleague when they were traveling in a police cruiser. Many of the women abandoned their police careers. Several of those who remained said they had been harmed psychologically. Linda Gillis Davidson, one of the lead plaintiffs, once worked in the group that protects the prime minister. She said she had repeatedly received unwanted sexual advances and been harassed during her 27 years on duty. “I love my flag, I love my country and I loved my job — I left way too early,” Ms. Davidson said on Thursday before thanking Commissioner Paulson. “It takes a great person to acknowledge something wrong,” she told him. Some of the allegations are relatively recent, leaving open the question of how Commissioner Paulson will prevent future misconduct. Last year, legislation gave him additional powers to fire officers involved in sexual misconduct, and a new process for harassment complaints was introduced. But the number of complaints suggests that the force, which is still run somewhat on paramilitary lines, must resolve pervasive problems in its internal culture. “Harassment, and the lack of effective systems and processes to have prevented it and eliminated it from our workplace, is absolutely at odds with what the R.C.M.P. is supposed to be,” Commissioner Paulson said. He added, “The announcement that brings us all here today is another huge step in the ongoing work which is the cultural transformation of the R.C.M.P.” Michel Bastarache, a retired Supreme Court of Canada justice, will oversee an independent process to settle the claims.
|
Royal Canadian Mounted Police;Bob Paulson;Sexual harassment;Women and Girls;Canada;Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings;Lawsuits;Apologies
|
ny0079414
|
[
"science"
] |
2015/02/28
|
On Nantucket, Surf’s Up, if You’re Part Penguin
|
How cold has it been on Nantucket? Chilly enough to freeze waves. Last Friday, Jonathan Nimerfroh, a photographer, arrived on the beach and saw an unusual sight: slow-moving waves of slush. “I just noticed a really bizarre horizon,” said Mr. Nimerfroh, who is also a surfer. “The snow was up to my knees, getting to the water. I saw these crazy half-frozen waves. Usually on a summer day you can hear the waves crashing, but it was absolutely silent. It was like I had earplugs in my ears.” It is not uncommon for the harbor to freeze, but even a fisherman he spoke with later said he had never seen anything quite like it. Normally, water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. But salt in the ocean lowers the freezing temperature — basically by getting in the way of the water molecules — to about 28.4 degrees. The movement of the waves seems to have broken up ice crystals before they could grow into a sheet covering that shallow stretch of the Atlantic Ocean. The result was an ocean with the consistency of a 7-Eleven Slurpee. Helen Fricker, a glaciologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., who studies the dynamics of ice flows in Antarctica, said the images were beautiful, but a full scientific explanation was outside her expertise. “Basically, it’s very cold,” she said. “You’ve got waves. I imagine this does happen all around the edges of the Arctic Ocean. I can’t really say more than that. It’s the ocean freezing.” That Friday was an uncommonly cold day on Nantucket, in Massachusetts, with a low of 10 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. If temperature were the only factor, frozen waves might be more common. “I have never seen frozen waves like this,” said Erin Pettit, a glaciologist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, adding that waves in Alaska tend to break up sea ice. “Cold, but calm water is what normally freezes easiest.” On the website Reddit, people wondered if it might be possible to surf the waves , which Mr. Nimerfroh estimated to be about two to three feet tall. (Possibly not, because ice is less dense than water and a surfer might just sink.) The waves might hurt more too, just as an ice ball hits with more force than a water balloon. Mr. Nimerfroh returned to the beach on Saturday, which was even colder by a few degrees. But by then, the water had frozen into an ice sheet. “Nothing was moving,” he said. “There were no waves anymore.”
|
Nantucket;Oceans and Seas;Photography;Water;Ice
|
ny0272868
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2016/05/09
|
Australian Leader Calls for National Elections in July
|
SYDNEY, Australia — Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the leader of the conservative Liberal coalition government, said on Sunday that Australia would hold national elections on July 2, in a contest that is likely to be close. The election will be the first time Mr. Turnbull and his opponent, Bill Shorten, the leader of the main opposition Labor Party, have faced each other on a ballot. Mr. Shorten was appointed Labor leader after his party lost control of the government in 2013. Mr. Turnbull took over as prime minister in September after deposing his deeply unpopular, gaffe-prone predecessor, Tony Abbott, who was in his first term as prime minister. The announcement on Sunday was no surprise . The federal budget, which is the government’s annual blueprint for managing the economy, was delivered a week early. And Mr. Turnbull had warned lawmakers that he would call a so-called double dissolution election, in which all Senate seats are thrown open for a vote, if the rambunctious upper house continued to block government legislation. A change in Senate rules, passed in March, means some dissenting senators from minor parties may find it hard to win re-election on July 2. “At this election, Australians will have a very clear choice: to keep the course, maintain the commitment to our national economic plan for growth and jobs, or go back to Labor with its higher-taxing, higher-spending, debt-and-deficit agenda, which will stop our nation’s transition to the new economy dead in its tracks,” Mr. Turnbull said at a news conference on Sunday in Canberra, the capital. He promised a steady hand in managing Australia’s economy, lower company taxes and increased job growth. Mr. Shorten, at a news conference on Sunday in Tasmania, Australia’s southernmost state, said Labor represented a “fairer Australia.” He is likely to use the campaign to highlight the contrast between his own past as a union organizer and Mr. Turnbull’s as an investment banker and highly paid lawyer. The Labor Party has promised tax overhauls that would most likely affect affluent property investors by curtailing tax breaks on some investments. It has also committed to legalizing same-sex marriage within 100 days of entering office, and enacting policies to help fight climate change. If the Liberal coalition returns to power, Mr. Shorten said, Australians will see another “three years of dysfunction, of dithering and disappointment.” The campaign will be a long one by the standards of Australia, where a typical election campaign runs four to five weeks, and voters are already weary. Mr. Turnbull has squandered an early lead his party held in polls after unseating the staunchly conservative Mr. Abbott. Voters had expected Mr. Turnbull to be bolder and more progressive. But the government’s flat-footed approach to issues like tax overhauls and education funding, and Mr. Turnbull’s decision to stick with a conservative party line on same-sex marriage and climate change, have damaged his party’s standing. The Liberal coalition and Labor were tied in a Fairfax Ipsos poll taken from April 14 to 16, with each garnering support from 50 percent of the 1,402 respondents. The poll has a margin of error of 2.6 percentage points. “He has squandered his party’s lead,” said Jessica Elgood, a director of Ipsos. Geoffrey Robinson, a lecturer on politics at Deakin University in Geelong, Victoria State, said, “People expected something new from the government when Mr. Turnbull took over, and he has not delivered.” Both leaders have said they would maintain Australia’s strict policies against asylum seekers who arrive by boat. Asylum seekers are assessed at offshore camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, and are not allowed to settle in Australia regardless of whether they are refugees.
|
Australia;Malcolm Turnbull;Bill Shorten;Election;Labor Party Australia;Liberal Party Australia
|
ny0262494
|
[
"sports",
"autoracing"
] |
2011/06/25
|
Team Lotus Hoping to Be More Than a Famous Name
|
The role of the underdog is in many ways a strange one for Team Lotus. The pedigree of this newly revived team is that of the fourth-most successful team in Formula One history, one that raced in the series from 1958 to 1994 and won seven constructors’ titles. But an underdog is precisely what the best of last year’s three new teams has come to be. Revived last year by a Malaysian consortium led by Tony Fernandes, a Malaysian entrepreneur who owns AirAsia, and with the blessing of the son of the owner of the original Team Lotus and the support of the Malaysian-owned Lotus Cars, the team’s off-track fortunes quickly proved to be even more challenging than racing in its first year. It began to take on a much stronger role as an underdog when over the winter Lotus Cars pulled out of the project and decided to buy shares and sponsorship with the Renault team, renamed Lotus Renault GP. The ensuing court cases have left both teams to continue using the Lotus name and colors — Team Lotus uses the racing green of the 1960s, Lotus Renault uses the black and gold of the team’s iconic 1970s period — and perhaps the results on track will be the final decider as to which team lives up to the Lotus legend. “It has been a baptism of fire,” Fernandes said. “But from strife comes inner strength and belief. And in some ways that has galvanized us and made us more determined. “If Colin Chapman is watching from above, I think he would be proud of what we have achieved,” Fernandes added, referring to the founder of the original team, who died in 1982. “I think from that aspect we have done it correctly and well and the dream still lingers on. But it wasn’t us, we just brought the name back, we got the heritage back. But we’ve got to create our own destiny and prove ourselves.” In fact, if Team Lotus was doing as well on the track as it has done in the courts in its battle to keep the team name, then it would now be up at the top of the grid rather than still moving around at the back. But on track, the team has consistently achieved its goals under the directorship of Mike Gascoyne. It now appears to no longer be the strange hybrid that it was only a year ago, when it had difficulty convincing people that it could really do justice to the Lotus name. “The first year was always about getting on the grid in a short space of time and trying to be the best of the new teams,” said Gascoyne, the chief technical officer. “For us it was about securing 10th place and being on the grid in time for the first race. And we managed to achieve both of those aims.” Last week, the team announced a new major sponsorship deal with General Electric, and Fernandes said there are more sponsorship deals to come. In April, in order to further stamp its car-manufacturer status on its image, the team bought out Caterham Cars, the company that makes a kit car based on the Lotus 7 that Chapman created and sold starting in 1957. “I think you are missing out the biggest opportunity if you don’t have a car with you,” Fernandes said. “And I think being a car manufacturer is critical to maximize Formula One, especially a sports-car manufacturer.” Gascoyne, for his part, has made a career specializing in bringing up teams from the back of the grid to the front. He did it with the Jordan team, which rose in the 1990s to finish as high as third in the championship in 1999 — the first time one of the top four team names had changed in two decades — and he did it again with the Renault team, building up the staff and structure that would eventually win the Formula One titles in 2005 and 2006. Lotus has two experienced drivers in Heikki Kovalainen and Jarno Trulli, and they are both enthusiastic about building the team, despite the drawbacks of small size and budget. “The strength is that the team has grown up a lot and is now operating very well, professionally,” Trulli said. “The weakness is that we are still a young, small team. So obviously there is a long way to go before we can really establish ourselves within the established teams. But we are very close and getting there.” He pointed out that with the same budget, a more established team would go further than a new team, because the new team must continue to invest in factory materials, building staff and other foundations of a new company, while the established team would already have those things and could therefore concentrate its resources on car development. Based in England, not far from the original Team Lotus factory, the team is an international mix of Malaysians, Britons, and many other nationalities. “We have our factory, we have 250 people, we are an established team now,” Gascoyne said. “I think if you look at Virgin and HRT, they still don't have proper bases, they don’t have everyone together, they don’t have proper design teams, they are subcontracted, and we have made that step. And I think that is the key thing for Team Lotus this year.” Kovalainen agreed. “For me, things have progressed better than I was expecting,” the Finnish driver said. “Especially over the winter I think the team has grown to another level. We needed to take another step. But I think we have taken a very good step. We are much stronger as a team, the car is quicker, which is exactly what the team was setting as a target. “I think we can do better, but for the time I think it is very good,” he added. “And overall we have taken a place in the paddock, we are not a new team anymore, we are a pro outfit. So for me overall the situation with the team is very positive.”
|
Formula One;Automobiles;Automobile Racing
|
ny0198748
|
[
"sports"
] |
2009/07/26
|
Phelps Eager for His Next Big Challenge
|
The French freestyle sprinters will try to exact revenge on Michael Phelps and his United States teammates Sunday in the men’s 4x100 freestyle relay at the world championships in Rome, and later in the week Milorad Cavic, who lost to Phelps by the whites of his fingernails in the 100 butterfly last summer in Beijing, will have his turn. Those promise to be among the most riveting races of the world championships, but for pure entertainment value Phelps figures nothing can top his impending duel in the pool against Shaquille O’Neal . Phelps, a 14-time Olympic gold medalist, will race O’Neal, a 15-time N.B.A. All-Star, for an episode of O’Neal’s reality show, “Shaq Vs.” , which debuts on ABC on Aug. 18. “We haven’t decided on how far, how long the distance is, how big a head start I’m going to give him,” Phelps said Friday, adding, “Being able to swim a 7-foot, 300-pound man is going to be absolutely awesome. That’s something, when I had the opportunity, when I was asked to do it, I quickly said yes.” When asked about the race against O’Neal, Phelps broke into an ear-to-ear grin and described the opportunity as “kinda cool.” The question, which he fielded during an otherwise stultifying news conference, confused the non-American news media members, one of whom was heard asking another, “Who is this Shaq?” Bob Bowman, who coaches Phelps at North Baltimore Aquatic Club, said: “I’m going to be coaching Shaq. Right now we’re sewing together three body suits.” KAREN CROUSE
|
Phelps Michael;O'Neal Shaquille;Television;Reality Television
|
ny0045498
|
[
"business"
] |
2014/02/07
|
Christy Wyatt of Good Technology, on Minding the Details
|
This interview with Christy Wyatt , chief executive of Good Technology, a provider of mobile security solutions, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant . Q. When you were a child, were you in leadership roles? A. The first leadership role I can remember was in elementary school. They had a choir, but when I got to third grade, they didn’t have a teacher for the choir anymore. So I became the instructor after convincing the music department to let me and a friend who played the piano do it. So we told the first- and second-graders that we’d create a choir. It seemed wrong that there wasn’t going to be a choir, because I had had one when I was in the first and second grade. Q. Tell me about your parents. A. My mom did mostly office work, and my father had a variety of different jobs. We were not an affluent family by any stretch of the imagination. So my mother would often say, “If you want something, you’re going to have to figure out how to go get it, because nobody’s going to bring it to you.” My grandfather was also a big influence. He moved his whole family from Holland to Canada after World War II, and came in as an orchard worker in British Columbia. He lived in a little shack in an orchard, and worked for one of the local families. Then he built a bigger house for him and his family, and then he built somebody else a house, and he eventually started his own construction company. So I spent weekends in his workshop. If I wanted something, he would show me how to build it — he wouldn’t build it for me. “Anything you want, you just need to make it,” he would say. Q. Tell me about your college years. A. I went to the College of Geographic Sciences in Nova Scotia. It was very small and it was very intense — a really brutal course. On the first day, they said: “Look around you. Fifty percent of you will be gone by Christmas.” I remember feeling that everyone was looking at me, because I was only one of three women in the room. They were thinking, “That’s the first one who’s going.” I was very intimidated at first, because I had no technical background. I had barely touched a computer. Even though everybody assumed I would be the first to go, I made sure I was the last to go. By Christmas, I was actually head of the class. Q. Any challenges when you first started managing people? A. There’s the work side versus the personal side of managing a team. I’m very driven, and I’m very focused on what we need to get done. So early on, I had to kind of remind myself to hit the pause button, check in with folks, and make sure they’re with you as you’re going forward. Q. You worked at many tech companies, including Sun, Palm, Apple and Motorola. Lessons from those experiences? A. One lesson from both Apple and Motorola was the importance of getting into the details — just the attention to every pixel, every detail, every word. When Sanjay Jha came in to rebuild Motorola, he really brought us back to grinding through every detail. How are we designing products? How are we looking at the market? How are we talking to customers? So it was a 20,000-foot view, but he could also take it down to a centimeter-off-the-ground view, and in a way that didn’t slow us down. Because that’s the big risk — if you try to get into that much detail, how do you not slow your organization down? The point is that it’s not about micromanaging; it’s about asking the right questions. Q. This is your first C.E.O. role. Has anything about the role surprised you? A. From a day-to-day perspective, it’s not all that different from when I was a general manager running a big P.&L. But I have noticed that people read a lot more meaning into things that you didn’t necessarily intend to have meaning. People will make up stories in the white space. We had one recent example. We’re a Silicon Valley company, so we have a very full kitchen. I hired a new head of business operations, and she decided we were going to switch out the vendors. There was a week when the supply went very low because the next vendor was coming in a couple of weeks later to kind of set up. Because we hadn’t said anything about it, and the food was starting to run low, people started saying, “There’s layoffs coming; bad things are going to happen.” I actually had to say in an all-hands meeting, “Guys, it’s just the nuts in the kitchen. That’s it.” But people look for symbols, and they look for meaning where maybe there isn’t any. So now we’re overcommunicating. You have to talk about the little stuff as well as the big stuff, just to make sure folks aren’t running away with ideas. Q. How do you hire? A. I go on two things. One is intuition. I’m relatively good at reading people, reading their authenticity and whether what they’re saying is connected to underlying facts. That shows up early in the conversation. Are they looking you in the eye? Are they comfortable with themselves? Then I want very specifically to know what they’ve done. If they say, “We did this amazing thing as a team,” my next questions are usually going to be: “So, what part of that did you do? How did you approach that? How did you know that was the right answer?” I also try to understand whether people will lean into tough problems or lean away from them. Q. Can you elaborate? A. I’ll say, “Give me an example of a time you were responsible for something, and it wasn’t working. What did you do?” I want people who are going to lean in and take ownership. You want people with the right level of inspiration and passion and commitment. You want people who take ownership of the outcome. They’re going to get it done.
|
Good Technology;Management;Christy Wyatt
|
ny0208587
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2009/12/04
|
House Votes to Extend Tax on Estates of the Wealthy
|
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House voted Thursday to expand indefinitely a 45 percent inheritance tax on estates larger than $3.5 million, canceling a one-year repeal of the tax that is set to begin next month. A similar effort is under way in the Senate, but the health debate could preclude action on the estate tax before Congress breaks for holidays. There are also disagreements among senators over the tax rate and the size of estates that should be exempt, further clouding the bill’s prospects. But lawmakers do not want to delay action until next year because they are wary of enacting retroactive tax changes. Under the House bill, estates smaller than $3.5 million would continue to be exempt from the tax. Married couples, with a little estate planning, could exempt a total of $7 million. That leaves less than 1 percent of all estates subject to the tax. The bill passed by a 225-to-200 vote, with all Republicans opposed. Democrats who voted for the bill argued that a permanent tax rate made it easier for families and small-business owners to do estate planning. “In America, it’s not a sin to be rich nor is it a crime to die rich,” said Representative Jared Polis, Democrat of Colorado. “This bill gives our nation’s wealthiest families the ability to know exactly what their obligation to the nation that fostered their wealth will be, and it is fair and it is just.” The bill follows the federal budget proposed by President Obama. But many Republicans called for a permanent repeal of the estate tax, which some call a “death tax,” arguing that it hurts families that pass down farms and small businesses to their children. “The majority claims to be offering certainty to taxpayers, and I suppose in a way they are — they are certainly repealing the hope of ever eliminating the death tax,” said Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, the top Republican on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. Under current law, the federal estate tax is scheduled to disappear temporarily next year before returning in 2011 at a higher rate, 55 percent. During the year without an estate tax, all estates would be subject to a 15 percent capital gains tax that they now avoid. “If Congress does not act on this issue this month, you would have a wildly fluctuating scenario of different estate tax levels, making it impossible for families to plan,” said Representative Earl Pomeroy, Democrat of North Dakota and the chief sponsor of the House bill. Some liberals have complained that the bill is a giveaway to the rich because it would result in lower rates in future years than what current law provides. Conservatives argue for a permanent repeal. “We’re trying to forge a compromise that resolves this issue once and for all,” Mr. Pomeroy said. Under current law, the estate tax would return in 2011 with a $1 million exemption and a top rate of 55 percent, unless Congress acts. Permanently extending the tax with a top rate of 45 percent on estates larger than $3.5 million would raise about $14 billion a year. But it would raise less tax revenue than current law over the next 10 years — an estimated $234 billion less — because the tax rate would be lower in future years.
|
Inheritance and Estate Taxes;Law and Legislation;Taxation;Wills and Estates;High Net Worth Individuals;House of Representatives
|
ny0278463
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2016/11/08
|
‘Fired Up’ Obama Makes Final Push for Clinton, and His Legacy
|
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — President Obama was feeling a little sentimental. His shirt sleeves rolled up, his vowels slipping off the ends of his words, his last day on the campaign trail finally here, Mr. Obama soaked up an unseasonably warm autumn sun on a baseball field at the University of Michigan on Monday, and drank in the energy of his political finale. “We’ve got one more day, Michigan — one more day,” he said, gazing out over a crowd of more than 9,000 at midday. But Mr. Obama was not quite ready for it to be over. “This is gonna be my last” — he caught himself — “probably my last day of campaigning for a while.” For Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton, Monday’s cross-country travels were all about tomorrow. For Mr. Obama, his travels here to Michigan, and then to New Hampshire and Philadelphia, were part victory lap and part nostalgia tour, as he was accompanied on Air Force One by some of his longest-serving aides, and was ushered in and out of rallies by the same U2 and Bruce Springsteen anthems that were the soundtracks of his campaigns. But his core mission was to implore voters across the country to rally behind Mrs. Clinton on Tuesday, or see the values and ideals that fueled his rise and powered his agenda defeated. So Mr. Obama stumped on Monday with the fervor of a man battling to preserve his legacy and with the joy of one who has watched his approval ratings tick higher as the presidential race’s tenor has sunk ever lower, savoring the almost palpable sense at Mrs. Clinton’s rallies that Americans will miss him when he is gone. “Whatever credibility I’ve earned after eight years as president,” Mr. Obama said, “I am asking you to trust me on this one.” “I already voted,” he added. “I voted for Hillary Clinton, because I am absolutely confident that when she is president, this country will be in good hands — and I’m asking you to do the same.” “I love you!” supporters kept shouting at the president as he turned serious to lay out the stakes of an extraordinary race. “I love you back — I do,” Mr. Obama said in Michigan. “But tomorrow, you will choose whether we continue this journey of progress, or whether it all goes out the window.” Nostalgia aside, there was no mistaking the seriousness of his message. Mr. Trump could never be trusted with control over the nation’s nuclear arsenal, the president said, if his own staff regarded him as too temperamental to use restraint on social media. “Over the weekend, his campaign took away his Twitter account,” Mr. Obama said, referring to a report in The New York Times about the closing days of Mr. Trump’s campaign. “Now, if your closest advisers don’t trust you to tweet, then how can we trust him with the nuclear codes?” “Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit to be commander in chief,” Mr. Obama said. “He’s unqualified to be America’s chief executive.” Mr. Obama began his day at the White House, striding out of the residence to board Marine One just after 9:30 a.m. to begin his final campaign sprint. He rarely paused in the hours that followed, jetting from state to state on Air Force One, speeding from airport to rally site and back again in his armored limousine, racing against the clock on a historic presidential contest and his own campaign denouement. In New Hampshire, his motorcade rushed at sunset down roads flanked by flaming-red and burnt-orange foliage to deliver him to a rally that drew more than 7,600. At the airport in Portsmouth, he confessed to a young boy who asked about the presidential jumbo jet that he was reluctant to relinquish Air Force One. “I am going to miss this plane,” he told the boy with a smile. “I only have it for a few more months.” His itinerary on Monday took the president to three states that he won in 2008 and 2012, and that are now crucial bulwarks for Mrs. Clinton. All three are also places where it is more difficult for Democrats to turn out their core supporters because they do not offer early voting. “It’s not that often you get the chance to move history in a better direction,” Mr. Obama said. “This is one of those moments. Don’t let it slip away.” In Michigan, he allowed himself a few moments to gloat, reminding voters of all that his administration had done to pull American automobile makers from the brink of bankruptcy. “I think I’ve earned some credibility here,” Mr. Obama said tartly, repeating the phrase three times as he checked off the metrics of a resurgent automobile industry and recovering manufacturing sector. He returned to his trademark campaign-trail catchphrases. As he elicited jeers by reciting a litany of criticisms of Mr. Trump — his not paying taxes, his comments about immigrants, women and Muslims — Mr. Obama barked, “Don’t boo. Vote!” He sparked chants of “Yes we can!” and “O-BAM-A.” In Durham, N.H., he returned to the now-familiar story about how his 2008 campaign found its signature “Fired up! Ready to go!” theme, borrowed from a woman in a small town in South Carolina, whom he met after getting soaked in a driving rain to attend a gathering of only about 20 people. “Every meeting she goes to, she does this thing” of chanting the refrain, Mr. Obama said. “Which is kind of strange. But the thing is that after a while, I get kind of fired up,” Mr. Obama said. “I’m starting to feel like I’m ready to go.” When he retired to his cabin on Air Force One, Mr. Obama sat with senior adviser Valerie B. Jarrett, a confidante whose friendship with Mr. Obama dates to his Chicago days, and Susan E. Rice, his national security adviser. Brian Deese, his senior adviser for climate change, came too, along with Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary who has been with him throughout his presidency, and David Simas, his political director. But it was in the thronging crowd that Mr. Obama seemed to relive his campaign experience most poignantly. In Ann Arbor, he lingered for several minutes after he finished speaking, clasping hands with supporters and grinning at them broadly, as the strains of Mr. Springsteen’s “Land of Hope and Dreams” pulsed the stadium, a throwback to four years ago. Then he turned on his heel to go, and a sudden cheer went up as people throughout the emptying stadium raised their arms and gave the president one final wave goodbye.
|
2016 Presidential Election;Barack Obama;Hillary Clinton;Donald Trump
|
ny0161657
|
[
"business",
"media"
] |
2006/04/14
|
F.B.I. Links Big Film Names to a Detective
|
LOS ANGELES, April 13 - The chairman of Paramount Pictures and a onetime Hollywood superagent had far more direct dealings than they have acknowledged publicly with the celebrity detective at the center of a rapidly expanding wiretapping scandal, according to government evidence. Brad Grey, Paramount's chairman, told the F.B.I. that he spoke with Anthony Pellicano about two lawsuits in which Mr. Pellicano, a private detective, was working on Mr. Grey's behalf, and that he learned information about his legal opponents directly from Mr. Pellicano. A former employee of Mr. Pellicano, who was charged in February with wiretapping and conspiracy, separately told the F.B.I. that Mr. Grey had met with the detective at least five times. Publicly, Mr. Grey has said that he was only "casually acquainted" with Mr. Pellicano, and that his lawyers were responsible for hiring and overseeing the detective. Michael S. Ovitz, a former talent agent and Hollywood powerhouse who served as the head of the Creative Artists Agency and was once president of the Walt Disney Company, acknowledged to the F.B.I. that he paid Mr. Pellicano in April or May of 2002 to obtain information on 15 to 20 people who were saying negative things about him. They included former business associates and Bernard Weinraub, then a reporter for The New York Times who was reporting on the demise of a company Mr. Ovitz started after he left Disney, and Anita Busch, a freelance reporter who wrote with Mr. Weinraub. A lawyer for Mr. Ovitz, Bart H. Williams, denied that Mr. Ovitz had given Mr. Pellicano a list of anyone to investigate except the people who were suing him. If Mr. Pellicano "went out and used illegal means to get information that he thought would impress Mr. Ovitz, that was not done with Mr. Ovitz's knowledge and consent," he said. The federal investigation, set off by a threat against Ms. Busch in June 2002, has since sent shock waves through entertainment and legal circles here. Who, exactly, initiated the threat has not been established. But the government's questioning of the two Hollywood executives -- who maintain they are witnesses in the case, not targets -- shows authorities circling the heavyweight entertainment lawyer Bert Fields, who worked for both. Mr. Ovitz has not publicly acknowledged directing Mr. Pellicano to investigate Mr. Weinraub or Ms. Busch. In February, Mr. Ovitz's lawyer, James Ellis, said that Mr. Pellicano's use of law enforcement databases for checks on the two reporters, which prosecutors say was illegal, "wasn't done at our direction." Mr. Fields, the entertainment lawyer, has acknowledged being a subject of the investigation, but, like Mr. Grey and Mr. Ovitz, has said he had no knowledge of illegal activity. Summaries of F.B.I. interviews seen by The New York Times -- documents that are routinely compiled as the raw material of investigations -- give no indication that Mr. Grey or Mr. Ovitz knew Mr. Pellicano had used illegal means. But they paint a picture of their hands-on dealings with the disgraced detective. Thus far, 14 people have been charged in the case, including the entertainment lawyer Terry N. Christensen, who has pleaded not guilty, and John McTiernan, a film director who has not yet entered a plea to a charge that he lied to the F. B. I. Mr. Grey, who headed the entertainment company Brillstein-Grey until being named chairman of Paramount in January 2005, described his interaction with Mr. Pellicano in two interviews, the second of which, on Jan. 14, 2004, told a story fuller and somewhat different from the first, which occurred on July 17, 2003. Carl H. Moor, a lawyer for Mr. Grey, said Mr. Grey had been able to say more in the second interview because at that point his "lawyers allowed him, at the request of the government, to talk about privileged communications, therefore he was at liberty to provide a more fulsome description of these matters." Mr. Grey was questioned by the authorities about two lawsuits in which Mr. Pellicano was hired: one by his former client Garry Shandling, the comedian, who accused Mr. Grey of enriching himself at Mr. Shandling's expense, and another by a writer, Bo Zenga, who said Mr. Grey cut him out of the profits from "Scary Movie." In his first interview, Mr. Grey told F.B.I. agents and prosecutors that he met Mr. Pellicano around 1996 in the Sunset Boulevard office building where Mr. Pellicano's detective agency and Brillstein-Grey then were neighboring tenants. Mr. Grey said he knew Mr. Pellicano enough to say hello in the hallway. Mr. Grey said he could not recall if he knew of Mr. Pellicano's association with Mr. Fields before the Shandling lawsuit, which was filed in 1998. But Mr. Shandling, in his own F.B.I. interview, said Mr. Grey had urged him to hire Mr. Fields "and a private investigator who worked with Fields by the name of Anthony Pellicano" in 1996, when Mr. Shandling was sued by a former girlfriend and employee, Linda Doucett. Mr. Grey proposed that "Fields and Pellicano would '[dig] up dirt' " on Ms. Doucett, Mr. Shandling told agents. In his first interview, Mr. Grey, who told investigators he was unaware of Mr. Pellicano's use of any intimidation tactics, repeatedly called Mr. Pellicano a "colorful character," and once called him "warm." Regarding the Shandling lawsuit, which was filed in 1998 and settled in 1999, Mr. Grey said he could not remember why Mr. Pellicano had been hired or any specific instructions Mr. Fields had given him. But in the second F.B.I. interview, six months later, Mr. Grey said Mr. Fields had hired Mr. Pellicano to investigate an allegation that Mr. Shandling had a drug dependency, and to determine how a draft of a libel lawsuit against Mr. Shandling had been leaked to a magazine. In November 2003, between Mr. Grey's two interviews, Mr. Fields publicly disclosed that he was a subject of the federal investigation of Mr. Pellicano. In Mr. Grey's subsequent F.B.I. session, he expounded upon Mr. Fields's ties to Mr. Pellicano, saying "Fields and Pellicano shared a 'key relationship,' that Pellicano was frequently used by Mr. Fields, and that Mr. Pellicano was 'part of Fields's team.' " Mr. Grey told the F.B.I. in July 2003 that he could not recall ever speaking by phone with Mr. Pellicano during the Shandling dispute. But in January 2004, Mr. Grey said Mr. Pellicano called him "from time to time to talk about the case and the Hollywood scene." Mr. Grey said Mr. Pellicano mainly told him to "stay strong and not settle" with Mr. Shandling, and that Mr. Grey conveyed Mr. Pellicano's advice to Mr. Fields, his lawyer, who told him to ignore it. Mr. Grey -- who told agents he had worked with Mr. Pellicano on a proposal for a television series about a private detective -- said in the July 2003 interview that he did not recall any face-to-face meetings with Mr. Pellicano about the Shandling case. The F.B.I. summaries do not contain any mention by Mr. Grey of any substantive meetings with Mr. Pellicano over the years. But a month after the July 2003 interview, when a former employee of Mr. Pellicano, Lilly LeMasters, who said she worked for him from 1996 until April 2001, was asked by the F.B.I. if she recognized Mr. Grey's name, she remembered him as a Pellicano client who was "very arrogant." Ms. LeMasters said she did not know the details of the case but had seen Mr. Grey in Mr. Pellicano's office twice; she also said Mr. Pellicano visited Mr. Grey's office three or four times. Mr. Moor, the lawyer for Mr. Grey, said: "As Mr. Grey told the government, a prominent agent and director worked with Anthony Pellicano to pitch a television program to Brillstein-Grey, and it was only in connection with that effort that Mr. Pellicano and others on that project met at the offices of Brillstein-Grey. Mr. Grey has never been to Mr. Pellicano's office." In the January 2004 interview, Mr. Grey also told the authorities he did not recall Mr. Pellicano's ever saying anything indicating that he had inside knowledge from the Shandling camp. But Mr. Grey said he did once hear Mr. Pellicano say Mr. Shandling was driving his lawyers crazy. He said one did not have to be particularly close to Mr. Shandling "and his people to make that observation." While Mr. Grey minimized his interactions with Mr. Pellicano, Mr. Ovitz told the F.B.I. that "he had expected to be contacted given his prior relationship with Pellicano," the interviewing agents wrote. Mr. Ovitz said he had heard of Mr. Pellicano for years "around the campus," as he called Hollywood, and that some of his clients had used the detective. Mr. Ovitz said Mr. Pellicano called him a few times a week, presumably to drum up business, but that he did not return the calls. Mr. Ovitz said he first met Mr. Pellicano in 2001, when Artists Management Group -- the vehicle Mr. Ovitz had used to attempt a comeback as a talent manager -- was disintegrating. He said he hired Mr. Pellicano to help with lawsuits by a former employee and by a sports agent demanding a commission, and paid Mr. Pellicano $25,000 for each case through the firm handling the lawsuits, Gorry Meyer & Rudd. Mr. Ovitz said that at Mr. Pellicano's direction, Mr. Ovitz used the code name Gaspar when calling Mr. Pellicano's office. Mr. Ovitz told the F.B.I. he was ignorant of Mr. Pellicano's methods and unaware of any wiretapping, but he said he was impressed by Mr. Pellicano's "initiative and resourcefulness." Mr. Ovitz said he believed that Mr. Pellicano was also investigating him, to drum up business; he complained of telephone problems and provided the F.B.I. agents his phone numbers. In April or May 2002, as he was negotiating and completing the sale of Artists Management, Mr. Ovitz learned that a "group of people" were "coming after" him to attack his reputation, he told the F.B.I., and he hired Mr. Pellicano to investigate. He said he asked Mr. Pellicano for embarrassing information about 15 to 20 people who were affecting his plans to sell the business, including Ron Meyer, his former partner at C.A.A. and the current head of Universal Studios; Mr. Weinraub; and the entertainment titan David Geffen, a partner in DreamWorks. Asked if Ms. Busch was on the list, Mr. Ovitz said she was. In May 2002, Mr. Ovitz said, Mr. Pellicano obtained for him an unedited, advance copy of a Vanity Fair article to be published that August in which Mr. Ovitz attributed his problems to a "gay mafia" in Hollywood. The agents noted that Mr. Ovitz "claimed to have never read" the article. Mr. Ovitz told the F.B.I. that he met three or four times with Mr. Pellicano and spoke "multiple" times with him in June and July of 2002. Mr. Ovitz said he received an oral report about Mr. Weinraub, Ms. Busch and Mr. Geffen, but all Mr. Ovitz said about the report was that Mr. Pellicano called Ms. Busch "boring and not worth [Ovitz's] time." When Mr. Pellicano claimed he had worked for Mr. Geffen in the past, doing "damage control" relating to "Geffen's gay lifestyle," Mr. Ovitz told the F.B.I., he wondered what Mr. Pellicano might say about him. Mr. Ovitz said he paid Mr. Pellicano $75,000 in cash, the last payment in late June or early July 2002.
|
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION;PARAMOUNT PICTURES;PELLICANO ANTHONY;GREY BRAD;OVITZ MICHAEL;DETECTIVES (PRIVATE);WIRETAPPING AND OTHER EAVESDROPPING DEVICES AND METHODS
|
ny0105286
|
[
"business"
] |
2012/03/14
|
Obama Takes Up Trade Case Against China
|
WASHINGTON — If there was ever any doubt about the political salience of China in an election year, it was erased Tuesday, when President Obama stepped before cameras in the White House Rose Garden to announce a procedural move in a long-running trade dispute with China over rare earth metals. Mr. Obama said that the United States was lodging a formal “request for consultations” with China at the World Trade Organization , the first step toward filing a legal case against the Chinese government over its ostensible hoarding of metals that are used to manufacture a range of sophisticated technology products. The United States is being joined in its request by the European Union and Japan. But the timing of the announcement about an incremental development —when prices of rare earth metals have declined and on the day of Republican primaries in Mississippi and Alabama — raised questions about the White House’s political calculations. Given China’s robust defense of its trade policies and the several years that any legal challenge would drag on, trade analysts and industry experts said the filing might be too late to make much of difference. “It’s probably more political at this stage of the game,” said Karl A. Gschneider Jr., a professor and expert in rare earth metals at Iowa State University. “But it’s still important that we do it.” Mr. Obama put the rare earth dispute in the context of his drive to restore American manufacturing, create more middle-class jobs and improve the nation’s competitiveness in industries like advanced batteries and hybrid vehicles. By hindering the shipment of metals used in these industries, he said, China was jeopardizing the ability of the United States to compete in the global economy. “We want our companies building those products right here in America,” Mr. Obama said. “But to do that, American manufacturers need to have access to rare earth materials, which China supplies.” “If China would simply let the market work on its own, we’d have no objections,” he added. “But their policies currently are preventing that from happening, and they go against the very rules that China agreed to follow.” For Mr. Obama, turning a spotlight on China in an election year carries risks and rewards. While it will help him with labor unions and in battleground states like Michigan and Ohio, analysts said, it could also sow future conflicts with Beijing, if the trade frictions spill into other parts of the relationship. Administration officials said Mr. Obama would strike a balance. He welcomed China’s vice president and likely future leader, Xi Jinping, to Washington last month, they noted. And they said he would seek a constructive relationship with China, even as he prodded it to abide by international trade standards. China has become a popular bogeyman on the campaign trail, with Republican candidates like Mitt Romney accusing Mr. Obama of not doing enough to protect American workers. Mr. Romney said China was guilty of stealing American technology and hacking into its computers, and he has pledged to declare Beijing a currency manipulator on his first day in the Oval Office. Mr. Obama defended his record against China, noting that his administration had brought trade cases against Beijing at twice the rate of the Bush administration. He cited a case against China’s shipment of tires, which he claimed had resulted in the restoration of more than a thousand American jobs. Rare earth metals are used to make products ranging from advanced batteries and wind turbines to smart bombs. China, which has a near-monopoly on these materials, has used export taxes and other quotas to slow shipments of them to Japan and the West, forcing some foreign companies to relocate factories to China. China’s actions had caused prices for these metals to skyrocket, Professor Gschneider said, and though prices have declined about 30 percent from their peak levels, they are still inflated. Prices, he added, were only part of the problem; China is simply holding back some of the metals. The administration was applauded by Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, who has called for tougher action against China on trade as well as its currency. “Rare earth hoarding is one of the many illegal trade practices that China employs to tilt the playing field in its own favor,” he said. “Enough is enough.” But some Democrats said the White House needed to do more. Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, another Democratic critic of China, said the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, should urge the World Bank to block financing of Chinese mining projects, and the Interior Department to block such projects in the United States. “There are faster ways to assert leverage on China than relying on the W.T.O., which could take years to resolve the case,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement.
|
International Trade and World Market;Rare Earths;China;European Union;World Trade Organization
|
ny0020961
|
[
"sports",
"ncaafootball"
] |
2013/09/02
|
Bridgewater Leads Louisville Rout of Ohio
|
Teddy Bridgewater threw five touchdown passes, and the former Auburn star Michael Dyer had a 46-yard touchdown run as No. 9 Louisville defeated visiting Ohio, 49-7. Coming off an 11-2 finish and a Sugar Bowl upset of Florida, Bridgewater and the Cardinals (1-0) dominated. Bridgewater kicked off his Heisman Trophy campaign by going 23 of 28 for 355 yards. Damian Copeland and Kai De La Cruz each caught two touchdowns, and DeVante Parker and Robert Clark each had one.
|
College football;University of Louisville;Ohio University;Teddy Bridgewater
|
ny0167703
|
[
"nyregion",
"thecity"
] |
2006/01/08
|
Dear Mayor Mike
|
SHORTLY after Mayor Bloomberg's re-election in November, The New York Times asked New Yorkers to give him some advice -- specifically, practical ways to improve the city at a modest cost but with a citywide impact. The Times then asked city and other officials to assess the ideas as bright, light or something in between. The ideas focused on screeching subways, big box stores, double-parking, wire trash cans, windmills and more. Some proposals were health-conscious (a tax on candy and cookies). Others were revenue-minded (advertising on MetroCards). Some were prompted by gratitude (a ticker-tape parade for nonprofit groups), and some sounded a little like bids for revenge (taxi horns as loud inside the cab as outside). Officials responded to the proposals, a selection of which are presented below, in various ways. Some cannot be adopted, for legal or technical reasons, they said. Other ideas have already been put into place. And in a few cases, they said, the resident's idea is being explored and may someday be put into effect. Car Talk Suggestion: Counters should be installed in taxicab horns. Each month, cabdrivers would pay for the number of times they honked (they might be given a generous allowance of free honks for safety). The cost per honk could be relatively low, maybe 50 cents. The knowledge that disturbing the peace isn't entirely free might quiet the pointless use of car horns, or at least raise some revenue. If the plan is a success, it might be expanded to other vehicles in the city. -- Thomas Talbot, Upper West Side Matthew W. Daus, chairman of the Taxi and Limousine Commission, responded: "Hornhonking for any reason other than to warn of danger is simply unacceptable, which is why it is singled out for mention in the 'Passenger Bill of Rights.' We definitely appreciate the highly creative approaches to this issue, but continue to believe that the best way to hold drivers appropriately accountable is to report incidents by calling 311." I suggest reserved residential parking in neighborhoods, on the side streets. The residents would be given permits for a modest price, say $200 or more a year. Everyone else would be allowed to park only on avenues with parking meters. One would hope the meters would be upgraded using credit cards for all-day parking; I also believe this would be another income stream for city coffers. -- Dennis Dalrymple, Upper West Side "We have given this a lot of thought," said Iris Weinshall, the city transportation commissioner. "Our research shows that car ownership per household in New York is relatively low. All the research shows that residential parking programs work best in lowerdensity, single-family neighborhoods. Having said that, we're currently looking into doing a residential parking permit program in Brooklyn Heights, Boerum Hill and Fort Greene. We've collected all the data and we hope to have results in 2006." How about alternate-side-of-the street rules for double-parking, at least for deliveries on avenues in Manhattan? All of Manhattan should have a law that on Monday and Wednesday, doubleparking and deliveries are allowed only on one side of every avenue, and on Tuesday and Thursday, on the other side of every avenue. On Fridays, either side would be permissible, since Friday traffic into and in the city is usually lighter. (Ever ride down Lexington Avenue or Madison Avenue and have only one lane to travel in?) -- Jean Lindenbaum, Upper East Side "The problem with what the reader said is that businesses are open on both sides of the street," Ms. Weinshall said. "If you're asking truck drivers to transport their goods across intersections, it's going to delay the amount of time the trucks will be doubleparked." Noting that the city wanted to minimize double-parking as much as possible given its limited space, she added: "We have all these competing needs. We've created a system in the city where trucks making deliveries can double-park on a short-term basis. In the most congested part of the city, which is Manhattan from 14th Street to 60th Street, from First Avenue to Eighth Avenue, trucks can't double-park between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. That's why you see truck loading and unloading zones during that period of time. Any other time, trucks can double-park." Litter and Snow Sanitation should have signs on garbage cans telling people to dispose of remaining beverages in the gutter before throwing the containers out. It would make the cans lighter, stop beverages from leaking onto sidewalks and possibly save money by not having garbage trucks haul the liquids. -- Susan Gottridge, Upper East Side "From a practical point of view, whatever you pour into the street, for the most part, winds up going into the harbor," said Ian Michaels, spokesman for the city's Department of Environmental Protection. "Ninety percent of the floatable trash in New York Harbor starts out as street litter. If you pour your coffee into the street at Broadway and 96th, it's going to go out into the Hudson River. It's not an ecologically desirable thing to do." Replace wire trash receptacles with fully sealed ones. We have a wire receptacle on the street and it is the biggest cause of litter. Trash pours out of the top and from the holes in the can. -- Beth Segal, Park Slope, Brooklyn "New York City has 25,000 wiremesh litter baskets," responded John J. Doherty, sanitation commissioner. "These baskets generally cost $100 each and are easy to service. "In recent years, merchants have 'adopted' baskets and place heavy-duty plastic bags inside of them to collect the litter. When the baskets are filled, their employees take the plastic bag out of the basket, tightly close the bag and place a new empty bag inside of the basket. The full bag is left next to the basket for sanitation collection. The program has worked very well. "We also have had business improvement districts purchase high-end litter baskets that are enclosed and have only a small opening on the top that prevents misuse. These baskets, costing anywhere from $400 to $700, are maintained by the B.I.D. but are serviced by Sanitation." When it snows, the streets are plowed and most sidewalks are shoveled, but many crosswalks are almost impassable. Corner property owners should be required to keep crosswalks clear for at least the width of a double stroller and fined if they don't -- just as they are now if they don't shovel their sidewalks. -- Ginny Donnelly, West Village "When we have a big snow, we hire laborers who do crosswalks" as well as bus shelters and fire hydrants, said Kathy Dawkins, a Department of Sanitation spokeswoman. "We call them for eight inches or more. We do a press release and it's all over the papers, radio and television when we ask for snow laborers. And we have some snow laborers preregistered so we can just call them out. We try to get to all the crosswalks." The city has an alternate-side parking calendar online, and also subway and bus maps. It would be great if it could also post online a map of alternateside parking rules by neighborhood. Alternatively, a listing by neighborhood and streets might work. Everyone knows the rules in their own neighborhood, but there's no way to know the rules at your destination. It would help drivers pick the best day and time for scheduling doctor appointments, package pickups and so on. -- Stephanie Kolber, Park Slope "It would take hours and hours of manpower" to make such a map, Ms. Dawkins responded. "Alternate-side street parking rules change from block to block, street to street, neighborhood to neighborhood and borough to borough." The "Squat and Slide": When a dog squats to do his or her thing, you have approximately 1.5 seconds to slide a newspaper or magazine between his or her rear legs. After the dog does its business directly onto the paper, you simply roll it up into a cone, fold the top corner down, and then deposit it into the nearest trash receptacle. No muss, no fuss -- no cost! And best of all, no mess ever hits the pavement. -- Todd Cherches, Upper West Side "What we are concerned about is that people pick up after their dogs," Ms. Dawkins said. "The method that they use is totally dependent on how they feel about it." Require that all garbage be put in tin cans. Chicago had a terrible rat problem and passed a can law. Overnight, they resolved their rat problem. -- Beth Segal, Park Slope Mr. Doherty responded: "The Department of Sanitation requires all homeowners and building owners to place refuse and recyclables out for curbside collection in suitable containers with tightly fitting lids or in heavy-duty plastic bags. Our enforcement division makes regular passes through many neighborhoods to ensure that there is no loose refuse left out for collection. "In city-run buildings where rodents have been reported, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene -- as part of the mayor's Rodent Control Task Force -- has provided, free of charge, rodentresistant trash receptacles that are made of thick, tough plastic." Windows and Windmills Inlay a compass in the sidewalk at the top of every subway stair in Manhattan. This will direct the disoriented to walk in the right direction. I have lived here 71 years and I am still one of the disoriented. Since Manhattan is essentially laid out on the compass points, this would work. -- Alfred Mayor, Upper East Side "I think it's a great idea," said Ms. Weinshall, the city transportation commissioner. "As a matter of fact, when my 16-year-old daughter gets out of the subway, she sometimes doesn't know how to go east or west -- she told me she looks at the sun." Ms. Weinshall added that she would like to discuss with the city's Department of Small Business Services a way to "maybe try a pilot in some of the more congested parts of the city." Have signs saying something like "Only in New York" that can go in the windows of our independent stores (and perhaps restaurants). This logo will remind consumers to support these businesses instead of chains and big box stores. -- Karen Wunsch, Upper West Side "I think the boosterism is nice, but I think it comes up short," said Robert W. Walsh, commissioner of the Department of Small Business Services. "It's sort of like singing to the choir. "But here's an idea that we've been kicking around: Bedford Avenue, Smith Street, Dumbo -- people still don't fully understand and appreciate the synergy that is taking place in a lot of these areas. Our agency and the city, quite frankly, owe it to some of these areas to be even a greater voice than just putting a sticker in a window. "Let's use the F train as an example. You look up, and instead of seeing an ad for a foot doctor, you see that on Smith Street in Brooklyn, there are 50 shops and restaurants and bookstores. That's where I would like to go -- to brand, to market." Require every building to show its address clearly, and enforce the rule by fines. For New Yorkers and visitors alike, this measure would save hours and hours for deliveries and address-finding. -- Nina Planck, Stuyvesant Town Ilyse Fink, a spokeswoman for the Department of Buildings, said the city already required building addresses to be "plainly legible from the sidewalk," in the words of the administrative code. "The individual borough presidents are responsible for enforcing the display" of addresses, she said, adding that the Department of Housing Preservation and Development could also enforce this rule. Install windmills on the eastern shore of the Hudson River to capture the prevailing westerly winds. The city can sell the electricity to Consolidated Edison, make a profit and finance needed city services. -- Jill Hausman, Upper West Side "Wind energy has proven itself throughout New York State already to be a viable option, in a variety of applications on land and hopefully offshore," said Phil Doherty, coordinator of the Wind Powering America initiative at the federal Department of Energy. "But it really depends on resources, available financing, community acceptance of the project and being able to sell the electricity at a reasonable rate." Hey, Hey, M.T.A. If passengers could prepay for a bus while waiting at the bus stop rather than at the fare box, buses could load up much more quickly. I envision a turnstile with a weather-protected queue. --Michael Mederrick, Upper East Side Deirdre Parker, a spokeswoman for New York City Transit, responded: "As part of our Bus Rapid Transit study, we are evaluating several techniques to speed dwell time, including off-board fare collection and the use of smart cards." It's very silly not to be able to buy a MetroCard aboveground when you use it aboveground -- on buses. To offer this option will also eliminate the inconvenience of paying for the bus with quarters. --Nava Ney, East Harlem To install MetroCard machines on buses is "not feasible," Ms. Parker said. "However," she added, "customers can buy cards aboveground. We have 3,500 outside vendors where MetroCards may be purchased; 3,000 are within the five boroughs. There are also one bus and two vans visiting strategic locations throughout the city once a month where MetroCards may be purchased." Make exiting through the rear door mandatory on limited-stop buses, which have the potential to move quickly. One reason people don't want to exit from the rear is that they don't understand how to open the doors. Honest. I watch people push the doors open instead of touching the yellow strip, and it's difficult to open the doors that way. Educate people to use the yellow strips. -- Sharon Bermon, Roosevelt Island "We agree that customers should make every effort to exit the rear door in order to save time," Ms. Parker said. "From time to time we make it part of our courtesy campaign with BusTalk car cards. Our latest, for example, read: 'If you move to the rear of the bus and exit out the back door, we can get everyone to where they're going faster.' " In London, simple electronic signs at each tube station and recently at each bus stop continuously inform passengers of when the next train or bus will arrive. No more leaning over a platform to see an approaching train, and no more trying to decide if it is worth leaving the bus or train stop to try to catch the train or bus. -- Barbara Robey, Morningside Heights "M.T.A. New York City Transit is currently engaged in a program that will provide a modern public address system with customer information screens," Ms. Parker said. Under the system, which will initially be installed in 157 stations on the numbered lines, subway workers "will be able to provide subway customers with service status and other information either as audio only, visual only, or as synchronized audio and visual information." Why can't the M.T.A. fix the horrible screeching noise that so many of their trains (especially the E train) make when arriving at a station? Why is the noise allowed to happen at all? If a private vehicle were to make an equivalent noise, I am sure it would be ticketed for some kind of violation. -- Jason Phillips, Greenpoint, Brooklyn "Noise abatement initiatives started in the mid-1970's," Ms. Parker responded. "On the track, we have installed continuous welded rail and resilient rail fasteners and applied rail lubrication (grease and, where applicable, water spray). On subway cars we have installed quieter traction motors and ring-damped wheels, overhauled air-conditioning units and installed composite brake shoes (to reduce brake screech). Old cast-iron brake shoes have been eliminated. "Transit continues to explore new track and car equipment initiatives to reduce noise levels." In 2003, a Paris railway station tested a high-speed moving sidewalk, the trottoir roulant rapide. Six hundred feet long and capable of seven miles an hour, it could carry 110,000 passengers a day. If a safer version is developed, possibly using turnstiles, such walkways could work underground in place of the proposed Second Avenue subway. Combined with the T.R.R., commuters could walk 7 to 11 miles an hour. A single half-mile-long walkway could whisk commuters between 2 of 16 stations in three to four minutes, where commuters would walk across a platform and onto another walkway to continue to the next station. -- David Allison, Murray Hill "We appreciate the idea, but we don't believe it's feasible in New York City's Second Avenue corridor," said Mercedes Padilla, a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. "We are transporting riders in far greater numbers and at significantly higher speeds."
|
NEW YORK CITY;BLOOMBERG MICHAEL R
|
ny0096773
|
[
"sports",
"tennis"
] |
2015/01/22
|
Serena and Venus Williams Advance in Straight Sets, With a Bit of Levity
|
MELBOURNE, Australia — Venus and Serena Williams made their first long journey to the Australian Open in 1998 and played each other in the second round, with Venus, the big sister, coming out on top. Against the odds and the expectations, they are both here 17 years later, and on Thursday, a typically steamy day in Melbourne, they took turns winning their second-round matches in straight sets. Venus Williams, seeded 18th, played first, beating a fellow American, Lauren Davis, 6-2, 6-3, at Margaret Court Arena. Serena Williams, the top seed, went next, beating Vera Zvonareva of Russia, 7-5, 6-0, at Rod Laver Arena. “I’m just doing the best I can; I always was, even when it wasn’t what I wanted,” said Venus, who is in the midst of an upswing at 34. “I think as long as I’m doing my best, something good will come out of it. There is a scripture that says, ‘Faith without works is dead.’ So you have to have faith, but you have to work, too. So I’m doing both.” Serena had to work harder, or at least under more pressure. Zvonareva might be ranked 203rd this week, but before a shoulder injury and other ailments knocked her back, she was once No. 2. That was in 2010, the year she reached the finals at Wimbledon and the United States Open. She has beaten Serena twice, and it looked as if she might threaten her again when she twice broke her serve in the opening set. Serena, 33, was alternating spectacular winners and tight-armed errors and struggling to win points on her second serve and to deal with Zvonareva’s clever tactical shifts, including serving and volleying. But after Serena saved three set points on her own serve at 3-5, she did what she has done so often in her career: shift into a higher, smoother gear. Looking flushed, Zvonareva served for the set and was broken. Serena went on to win a total of 10 games in a row. “She started out really well; she was really aggressive, and I was a little too passive,” Serena said. “Once I got down, I thought: ‘Serena, you have done so well here. You have nothing to lose. Just have fun and enjoy yourself.’ And I started playing a lot better.” Novak Djokovic, the No. 1 men’s seed, played well from the start against Andrey Kuznetsov, rolling to a 6-0, 6-1, 6-4 win in the match that followed on Laver Arena. He was then asked about his rival Rafael Nadal, who had fought through dehydration, cramps and a tough opponent the previous night before defeating Tim Smyczek of the United States in five sets. Like Nadal, he said he was deeply impressed by Smyczek giving his opponent another chance to hit a first serve after a fan distracted him on his initial attempt. “I think that’s something that people should talk about,” Djokovic said. “This is something that is not very common in the sport today, you know, where media and people generally emphasize on the rivalries — feisty, aggressive kind of approach to matches. It’s nice to have something that is greater than sport itself: the sportsmanship and fair play.” The Williams sisters played well in general, but they will not play doubles together, having withdrawn Wednesday for reasons that remained unclear. “According to the rules, you don’t have to give a reason,” Venus said. “I think we’ll stick with that.” Was it perhaps because of the heat that was correctly forecast for Thursday, heat that could have created more problems than usual for Venus, who has Sjogren’s syndrome? “It was warm,” she said. “I don’t think it was as warm as it could have been. But no, that wasn’t it.” Were doctors consulted? “No further questions on that; I object,” Venus said, grinning and raising an arm in the air. “Sustained,” she continued. “Thank you.” This was lighthearted to a degree but also one more reminder of the difficulty long inherent in reading the Williams tea leaves. Still, what is clear is that while other members of their generation have exited the Grand Slam scene, the sisters are here after all these years. “She came in as a new face, a black woman that was shaking up the world,” Serena said of her older sister, who reached No. 1 first. “She had all the pressure on her shoulders. I kind of came in behind her, you know, just snuck in there. There was no pressure on me at all. She dealt with it so amazing. She had a lot of confidence, and she had so much class and still does throughout everything. You can see that her personality is pretty much the same. She’s definitely grown, but she’s always been very mature and very regal.” Next up for Venus is Camila Giorgi of Italy. Next up for Serena is Elina Svitolina of Ukraine.
|
Tennis;Serena Williams;Venus Williams;Vera Zvonareva;Australian Open;Lauren Davis
|
ny0162082
|
[
"world",
"americas"
] |
2006/05/15
|
Canada Miner Raises Bid
|
OTTAWA, May 14 — Inco, the Canadian nickel miner, increased its friendly offer for Falconbridge, a Toronto-based competitor, to 19.6 billion Canadian dollars ($17.7 billion) on Sunday evening. Inco's bid for Falconbridge, proposed just over seven months ago, was originally valued at about 12 billion Canadian dollars ($10.8 billion). Inco's move appeared to be an effort to derail a hostile bid for Inco initiated last week by Teck Cominco, based in Vancouver, and a potential bid for Falconbridge from Xstrata, a Swiss diversified miner. Falconbridge's board endorsed Inco's revised offer of 51.17 Canadian dollars for each Falconbridge share, significantly below Friday's closing price of 53.38 Canadian dollars.
|
Canada;Inco Limited;Falconbridge Limited;Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures;Teck Cominco Limited;Mines and Mining;Metals and Minerals
|
ny0192123
|
[
"technology",
"companies"
] |
2009/02/19
|
Yahoo Shows Search Ads With Images and Video
|
Yahoo is introducing a new type of search advertising that integrates images and video in paid listings, the company plans to announce Thursday. Search advertising typically shows only text advertisements and links. Marketers usually devote part of their online budget to search — which shows text-only advertisements and links — and part to display, the banner and box advertisements that show images or video. By introducing video and images, the new offering from Yahoo, called Rich Ads in Search, gives search some of the advantages of banner advertisements. “It moves the advertising experience from just the blue links, to a more engaging experience for advertisers,” said Tim Mayer, the vice president for search monetization and distribution at Yahoo. Yahoo has been trying to win back paid search advertising from the market leader, Google. Yahoo’s market share in paid search has fallen from 13.8 percent in 2004, to 10.5 percent this year, according to the research firm eMarketer. In the same time period, Google’s market share has more than doubled, from 32.8 percent in 2004, to 67.7 percent this year. Yahoo’s strength has been its display advertising, where it sells boxes and banners on its highly trafficked pages. However, as the recession has deepened, many advertisers have shifted money to search, which gives them direct, measurable results. Yahoo’s fourth-quarter results, reported in January, reflected that change. Search revenue was up 11 percent, and display revenue was down 2 percent. Yahoo has been testing its offering with advertisers like the dog-food company Pedigree. A search for “Pedigree” on Yahoo turns up a light-blue box at the top of the search-results page holding an image from a Pedigree commercial, which plays when clicked. “Video is always more powerful than just words on the page,” said John Anton, the marketing director at Pedigree. “It’s definitely compelling to us to have options like this, where, when you type in ‘Pedigree,’ you get more than just the words, you get the video itself.” Yahoo can also include images — a search for Staples results in a similar light-blue box with the company’s logo on the side. Or, it can include a search box within the light-blue space, asking the visitor to enter his ZIP code, then taking him to the section of the advertiser’s Web site that lists bank branches or car dealerships near him, for example. “What the search results look like is a very different experience with rich ads in search versus the text link,” said Joanne Bradford, Yahoo’s senior vice president for revenue and market development in the United States. “There is consistency to the experience, which all advertisers want, and were unable to get until this point.” Yahoo is charging a monthly fee for the service, versus the auction-based pricing of search advertising, which Mr. Mayer said Yahoo might use in the future. For now, it is allowing only certain large, brand-focused advertisers — which have existing commercials or logos — to participate in the program. SoBe, Pepsi and Home Depot were all part of the pilot program. According to Yahoo, some advertisers in the pilot program saw an improvement by as much as 25 percent in click-through rates. Karin Blake, the senior search manager at the ad agency Razorfish, who tested the offering for some of her clients, saw slightly less significant results: she said her clients had a 5 to 10 percent increase in click-through rates compared with a regular text ad. Still, the new type of search will probably be attractive to advertisers, who pay high prices to develop their commercials and logos, and want to be able to show those wherever they can. “In a typical search landscape, you can’t utilize things like video and images, just because the nature of search listings is really text,” Ms. Blake said. “It does allow Yahoo to sort of put together a more robust offering.” Ms. Blake said that “right now, there isn’t anything in the paid search landscape that either Google or Microsoft is offering” along these lines. Even as Yahoo updates its search capabilities, it has been under pressure from Wall Street analysts to consider selling its search business to Microsoft. Recently, Microsoft’s chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer, has repeatedly expressed interest in such a deal. Carol A. Bartz, the new chief executive of Yahoo, has not specified her plans for Yahoo’s search business. “Maybe we should divest of some things, maybe we ought to focus a little more on the company,” she said in a conference call last month with investors. “So, yes, everything’s on the table,” But, she added, “this is not a company that needs to be pulled apart and left for the chickens.”
|
Yahoo Inc;Advertising and Marketing;Search Engines;Computers and the Internet;Online Advertising
|
ny0126492
|
[
"sports",
"tennis"
] |
2012/08/23
|
Andy Roddick Makes Early Exit
|
Andy Roddick was eliminated from the Winston-Salem Open, losing a third-round match to Belgium’s Steve Darcis. The fifth-seeded Roddick fell to the 81st-ranked Darcis, 7-6 (8), 7-6 (7), in the final hardcourt tournament before next week’s United States Open. Roddick had 13 aces but struggled to find consistency with his ground strokes. The defending champion, John Isner, slowed by two rain delays, beat 13th-seeded Jürgen Melzer, 6-4, 6-3. ¶ The four-time defending champion Caroline Wozniacki remains undefeated in New Haven after beating Sofia Arvidsson, 7-6 (4), 6-2, in the second round of the New Haven Open. She will play Dominika Cibulkova in the quarterfinals. Petra Kvitova advanced with a 6-2, 6-4 victory over the N.C.A.A. champion Nicole Gibbs.
|
Tennis;Roddick Andy;Wozniacki Caroline
|
ny0225060
|
[
"business"
] |
2010/10/20
|
Bank of New York Mellon Returns to Profitability
|
Bank of New York Mellon reported Tuesday that it returned to profitability in the third quarter, which it attributed to acquisitions and an improvement in its investments. The bank said it had net income of $622 million, or 51 cents a share, in the three months ended Sept. 30. That contrasts with a net loss of $2.44 billion, or $2.05 a share, a year earlier, which was related to a charge for restructuring the company’s investment securities portfolio. Thomson Reuters analysts, who usually do not consider one-time items in their estimates, had predicted earnings of 54 cents a share. The bank’s revenue rose 3 percent, to $3.43 billion, from $3.33 billion, which beat Wall Street’s $3.39 billion forecast. Total adjusted fee revenue rose to $2.71 billion, from $2.61 billion last year. Net interest revenue, or earnings from deposits and loans, rose to $718 million, from $716 million. The bank has recently been on a buying spree, purchasing BHF Asset Servicing in a $343 million European deal. It also completed its $2.31 billion acquisition of PNC’s Global Investment Servicing in July. Assets under management rose 18 percent, to $1.14 trillion, mostly from the takeover of Insight Investment Management. Assets under custody and administration climbed 10 percent, to $24.4 trillion, reflecting higher market values and new business. The bank’s provision for credit losses was a credit of $22 million compared with a charge of $147 million in the 2009 quarter, because of the current quarter’s 26 percent decline in criticized assets, which are loans that are classified just above nonperforming loans. The unrealized gain on the investment securities portfolio was $319 million, up sharply from $114 million in the second quarter on declining interest rates and the tightening of credit spreads. In midday trading Tuesday, Bank of New York Mellon shares were down 8 cents, to $26.54.
|
Company Reports;Bank of New York Mellon Corp
|
ny0124917
|
[
"world",
"americas"
] |
2012/08/11
|
Venezuela: American Citizen Detained, Chávez Says
|
President Hugo Chávez said Venezuelan authorities had detained an American citizen and were interrogating him, and Mr. Chávez voiced his suspicions that the man could be a “mercenary” plotting to destabilize the country. Mr. Chávez did not identify the man or detail the accusations against him. He said that the American was detained last Saturday while crossing into Venezuela from Colombia and that he was carrying a United States passport with entrance and exit stamps from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. A State Department official said Friday that the United States government had not been notified of the arrest by the Venezuelan government.
|
Chavez Hugo;Venezuela;Detainees
|
ny0203514
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2009/08/08
|
Brancusi’s ‘Mademoiselle Pogany’ Sculpture Mired in Custody Fight
|
Nothing says simplicity like the sculpture of Constantin Brancusi , the Romanian-born early modernist known for paring subjects down to their barest essentials. But now a 1913 version of one of his most celebrated works, “Mademoiselle Pogany,” a bronze bust of a young woman spare and streamlined as an egg, has ignited a baroque custody battle being waged in courtrooms in Manhattan, Oslo and Paris. With two high-profile collectors committing millions to a bitter struggle over the prize, the legal dispute has widened a rift between elderly brothers whose family owned the statue for nearly a century, and recently led to the disappearance of the masterpiece itself. “This is going to take a long time,” said Christen Sveaas, a Norwegian art collector, who is suing to enforce a 2007 contract that he believes makes him the owner of the piece. At issue is an 18-inch bust that depicts a blank-eyed woman with slender hands cushioning her face in delicate repose. It is one of several versions Brancusi made in marble or bronze, all modeled on Margit Pogany, a Hungarian artist who posed for him in Paris. (Another is at the Museum of Modern Art.) Claimed by Romania as a national treasure worth as much as $100 million, the statue is believed to be in storage, placed there by the other of its disputed owners, a holding corporation tied to David Martinez, a New York financier and art collector. Mr. Sveaas and the corporation each maintain that the statue was sold to them in 2007 by the brothers Alexandru and Alvaro Botez, who are originally from Romania. The brothers say the bronze came into their family in 1914, when Brancusi gave it to their maternal grandparents, Romanian artists who were friends of his. In 1976, the family lent the piece to the National Museum of Art of Romania for a two-month exhibition. But the government refused to return it, claiming it as cultural patrimony. It took more than two decades, a lawsuit and an order from Romania’s highest court for the family to secure its return in 2000. In the interim, the Botez brothers bought the bronze from their uncle in 1992. By this time, the brothers had emigrated from Romania — Alexandru to Oslo, where he worked as an architect, and Alvaro to Paris, where he struggled as an artist. They then offered the bronze for auction at Christie’s in New York, but it was withdrawn after objections by the Romanian government. In 2005, the brothers tried again, negotiating to sell the piece to Mr. Sveaas, 53, owner of a Norwegian investment company with vast holdings in shipping and real estate. He already owned a Brancusi, “Prometheus.” When a sale appeared imminent in 2007, the Botezes deposited the bronze in a Paris bank vault for safekeeping. But differences over the sale aggravated longstanding tensions between the brothers, according to a ruling by a judge, Yngvild Thue, in Norway, where Mr. Sveaas later filed suit. Alvaro, now 65, needed money and favored a quick sale, Judge Thue found. Alexandru, now 72, favored waiting, so that time might erase Romanian claims to the statue and make it more valuable. But he agreed to go along, according to the court papers. In July 2007, Mr. Sveaas signed separate contracts to buy the statue from the brothers. In one, with Alexandru and his two children, he agreed to pay $7 million for one half of “Mademoiselle Pogany,” with additional money to be paid if all Romanian claims were finally dismissed. Under a separate agreement signed by Alexandru’s daughter, Mr. Sveaas agreed to pay Alvaro $5.6 million for his half of the bronze. Alvaro, though, became miffed at his smaller share, according to Judge Thue, and within days had repudiated the contract, saying he had been misled about the negotiations and had not given his niece the power to sign for him. Given the problems with the Sveaas deal, the brothers renewed negotiations with another buyer that had expressed interest in the piece, Studio Capital, a Belize-based corporation identified in court papers as a “shell company and alter ego” for Mr. Martinez, 52, a Mexican-born debt trader. He is reported to have paid a record price for a contemporary painting — $140 million for a Jackson Pollock in 2006 — and spent nearly $55 million in 2004 and 2005 for penthouse apartment space in the Time Warner Center . In August 2007, to help close the deal with Studio Capital, Alvaro Botez and the statue traveled to Switzerland, where a New York art dealer who represented Mr. Martinez, Dominique Lévy of L&M Arts, inspected it. A week later, without telling Mr. Sveaas, the Botezes sold the statue to the corporation, which paid the brothers roughly $7 million each. In addition, if Romanian claims are cleared within six years, Alexandru would be paid half the market price of the statue, less the $7 million he already received. Court papers say Ms. Lévy estimated the sculpture’s value at $38 million. Studio Capital also agreed to reimburse the Botezes up to $420,000 against any claims by Mr. Sveaas. For facilitating the sale, Ms. Lévy was paid a commission of $980,000 through what Mr. Sveaas’s court papers called “an offshore account” in Belize. She did not return calls for comment, but said in court papers that there was nothing inappropriate about her role in the transaction. Since the Botezes turned over the statue, it has not been seen. Mr. Martinez and Studio Capital have declined to comment on the bronze or its whereabouts. When he learned of the sale, Mr. Sveaas responded by suing the brothers in Norway and Mr. Martinez and associates in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. He also obtained a court order in Paris in 2007 requiring the Botezes to produce the sculpture and redeposit it for safekeeping. When they did not, they were fined up to $11,000 a day by the court, but the penalty has been stayed pending appeal. Last month, the judge in Oslo issued a 47-page ruling that said Mr. Sveaas had a right to half ownership based on the contract he signed in 2007. (Mr. Sveaas said he planned to appeal to win the right to the entire piece.) The judge also awarded him $1.5 million in damages for bad-faith negotiating by the Alexandru Botez side, asserting that had they not concealed Alvaro Botez’s repudiation of the first contract, Mr. Sveaas might have salvaged the deal. Asked for comment, Timon Botez, responding for his father, Alexandru, called the judge’s ruling “a difficult read” and said, “We are naturally very disappointed.” He said Mr. Sveaas did not get all he had sought, and added: “We have spent over 30 years defending our rights to this statue, a fight that is not over yet.” Alvaro Botez declined to comment, as did Mr. Martinez and Ms. Lévy. In the ruling, Alvaro was absolved of wrongdoing. “The judge did decide Sveaas had a contract with Alexandru,” said Donald J. Kennedy of Carter, Ledyard & Milburn , which represents Mr. Sveaas. Now, Mr. Sveaas is pushing forward with his case in Manhattan, where he has accused Mr. Martinez and Studio Capital of “tortious interference” in his contract to buy the statue. He is seeking $40 million in actual damages — his valuation of “Mademoiselle Pogany” — plus $40 million in punitive damages. Mr. Martinez’ lawyer in London, Jonathan I. Blackman of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton , denied that Mr. Martinez himself owns the statue. But the Oslo judge found that Mr. Martinez was closely involved in the sale to Studio Capital. In court papers, Studio Capital said that Mr. Sveaas never had a binding contract with both Botez brothers, so there was nothing to sabotage, and that winning the statue amounted to “the definition of economic competition.” These days, Mr. Sveaas tries to be content with visits to the “Mademoiselle Pogany” he can see — at MOMA. “I do it every time I’m in New York,” he said.
|
Suits and Litigation;Art;Brancusi Constantin;Romania;Botez Alexandru;Botez Alvaro
|
ny0233527
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2010/08/23
|
Proposed Muslim Center Draws Opposing Protests
|
Around noon on Sunday, Michael Rose, a medical student from Brooklyn, approached some of the hundreds of protesters who had gathered near ground zero to rally against a mosque and Islamic center planned for the neighborhood. Mr. Rose, 27, carried a handwritten sign in favor of the mosque — “Religious tolerance is what makes America great,” it read — and his presence caused a stir. An argument broke out, punctuated by angry fingers pointed in the student’s face. One man, his cheeks red, leaned in and hissed that if the police were not present, Mr. Rose would be in danger. Before any threats could be carried out, the police intervened, dragged Mr. Rose away from the crowd and insisted that he return to the separate area, one block away, where supporters of the project had been asked to stand. Minutes later, as Mr. Rose was still shaking off the encounter, he turned to find the red-cheeked man back at his side. The man had followed the student up the street, and the two now stared at each other for a tense moment. Then the man stuck out a hand and, in a terse voice, said, “I’m sorry.” “You have a right,” he told Mr. Rose. (He would not give his name.) “I am sorry for what I said to you. I disagree with you completely, but you have a right.” The dual protests on Sunday, against and for the Islamic center, part of a complex on Park Place called Park51 , had taunts, tensions and the occasional minor scuffle. Around 500 opponents of the mosque stood in a cordoned-off area, singing patriotic songs and speaking of a hijacked Constitution, while about 200 supporters held a counterprotest nearby. As the rallies went on in Lower Manhattan, one of the main organizers of the Islamic center, Daisy Khan, said in a televised interview that the opposition to the plan was akin to discrimination against Jews. “This is like a metastasized anti-Semitism,” Ms. Khan said on the ABC morning program “ This Week .” “That’s what we feel right now. It’s not even Islamophobia; it’s beyond Islamophobia. It’s hate of Muslims, and we are deeply concerned,” she said. But Sunday’s exchange of words, although harsh at times, never led to blows or other violence. No arrests or injuries were reported by the authorities. “The rain was the biggest problem,” a spokesman for the police said. That calm prevailed, in a charged atmosphere two blocks north of ground zero, was due in large part to a sizable and wary police deployment. Dozens of officers kept watch and aggressively stopped members of either side from approaching the other. Those efforts did not keep activists like Mr. Rose from trying. He said he had waded into the opposing crowd “to get a better sense of what the protesters were saying or thinking.” Was he surprised by their message? Mr. Rose shook his head. “There was nothing that Newt Gingrich isn’t saying,” he said. But in interviews, some protesters said they had arrived not to advance a political agenda, but to express their belief that the center’s organizers had ignored the interests of the public. “I’m upset at how this whole thing was handled,” said Dominick DeRubbio, 25, nephew of David P. DeRubbio , a firefighter who died in the World Trade Center. “The level of defiance is running high. They’re saying, ‘We’re doing this whether you like it or not.’ ” Other protesters insisted that while they supported religious freedoms, the location of the planned Islamic center was an incursion on the rights of those who deemed ground zero a hallowed space. “It’s a disgrace to have a mosque at this sacred site,” said Kali Costas, who said she was a member of the Tea Party.
|
Park51;Mosques;Demonstrations Protests and Riots;World Trade Center (NYC);Manhattan (NYC)
|
ny0159509
|
[
"business"
] |
2008/12/12
|
‘Car Czar’ a Fuzzy Description for a Big Job
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WASHINGTON — Over the last three decades the American automotive industry has turned to many would-be saviors: bold chief executives, quality-control gurus, advocates of just-in-time manufacturing techniques from Japan, proponents of new factories where union leaders and corporate managers would operate arm in arm. Some of their approaches worked for a while, some never took off. But over the last two days, in a frenzy of bill-writing and arm-twisting with $14 billion of taxpayer money at stake, a crucial issue facing Congress was whether a car czar with uncertain authority will be able to accomplish in a little over three months what no one has accomplished in a little over three decades. Whether that strategy had a chance depended partly on the powers that this as-yet-unnamed person could wield to force the kinds of changes that Detroit, its unions, its suppliers and its creditors have resisted since the Chevrolet Caprice convertible rolled onto car lots in the mid-1970s. Negotiations over the rescue appeared to have collapsed late Thursday, but if the proposal were to resurface, it would not be the first revival of a presumably dead issue in Washington. A car czar might also be possible next month when Barack Obama is sworn in. Officially, no one is using the shopworn word “czar.” In the words of the legislation, the autocrat of the assembly line is formally termed the “president’s designee,” a phrase that skips over the fact that in this delicate dance, there are two presidents involved, one with 39 days of authority remaining and little influence, and one with lots of influence and no legal authority. “Whoever gets this job isn’t going to have the luxury of time to reinvent the car industry,” Laura D’Andrea Tyson, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California and the former head of the national economic council under President Clinton. “He or she is going to have to take a number of approaches to this problem that are already known, that have been discussed endlessly, and force it through. It’s going to take someone with huge stature.” It is also going to take someone with imagination. The bill passed by the House late Wednesday is so vague that it is not clear whether he or she is supposed to be an accountant, a convener of meetings in hotels around Detroit or Washington, or someone with Henry Ford’s ability to reinvent the concept of car manufacturing. It sets out a host of goals — “a viable and competitive domestic auto industry that minimizes adverse effects on the environment,” the development of new, energy-efficient “advanced technology vehicles,” preserving health plans and pensions and jobs — but it does not say how those are supposed to figure in a restructuring of the industry that must be under way by March 31. But it may depend even more on the personality and the political skills of the person appointed to the job. The name of the former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker has been bandied about by all sides. But there is no indication that Mr. Volcker, already heading Mr. Obama’s economic advisory team, is interested in pursuing what some consider a kamikaze mission. Republicans in the Senate, in rebellion over the bill, are trying something vastly more specific: they would force General Motors and Chrysler (Ford has opted out of federal assistance for now) to lower their debt by two-thirds over the next few months, lower worker compensation to the levels earned by workers in Japanese factories in the United States and force creditors to accept repayment at 30 cents on the dollar. But even that is something of a short-term solution: it addresses the immediate crisis but not the long-term one. The main problem, almost everyone agrees, is that Detroit is building the wrong kinds of cars, and doing so inefficiently. There are not many other bottom-line explanations for why G.M.’s market share in the United States has fallen from to around 20 percent today from more than 50 percent four decades ago. “The problem here is that the politicians want to talk about short-term fixes, but those fixes just prolong the inevitable,” said Bill George, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School and former chairman of Medtronic. “If G.M. was a normal corporation, they would hire someone to sell off the unhealthy parts of the company, and just keep the rest. Because the bottom line here is that G.M. needs new technology and it needs to get out of Detroit,” where the immense costs of its contractual obligations to workers and retirees haunt it. Mr. George has proposed cutting G.M. into two firms — one made of Cadillac, Buick and Chevrolet, and the other holding all the remaining brands, all the less profitable factories and dealers. They would be liquidated under his plan, much the way a bankruptcy court might liquidate an unprofitable enterprise. The first firm would be committed to average fuel efficiency of 40 miles per gallon by 2015 and 50 miles per gallon by 2020, and would retain only the most profitable factories — many abroad. But in the waning days of his tenure, President Bush does not want to be anywhere near that specific; his legacy is complicated enough, his aides say, without going down in history as the man who dismantled the American car industry in the last month of his presidency.
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Automobiles;Subprime Mortgage Crisis;Law and Legislation;Volcker Paul A
|
ny0254564
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2011/07/08
|
With Reyes on D.L., Mets Fall to Dodgers
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LOS ANGELES — The Mets had been in a state of denial for four games after the loss of Jose Reyes . Their shortstop and best player had gone down with a strained hamstring, but for four games and four victories they played as if the loss of one of baseball’s most dynamic forces was but a mere hiccup. But on Thursday it finally sunk in for the Mets, or at least they played that way. A few hours after Reyes was officially placed on the 15-day disabled list, the Mets looked like a very short-handed team in need of a spark. Starting pitcher Dillon Gee had perhaps his worst outing of the year, the Mets fielders made three errors, and the hitters looked helpless against the Dodgers ’ Clayton Kershaw. “We didn’t help Dillon, either,” Manager Terry Collins said after the game, addressing the Mets’ sloppy play. “That’s not characteristic of the way we’ve been playing.” They were held to just six hits as the Los Angeles Dodgers won, 6-0, in front of an announced crowd of 56,000 fans on a giveaway night at Dodger Stadium. Kershaw pitched eight scoreless innings and allowed only five hits and two walks while striking out nine. He had a terrific fastball that the Mets’ hitters never figured out. “Jason Bay said it was like hitting a stinking shot-put, it’s so heavy,” Collins said. The Mets loaded the bases in the eighth inning off Kershaw and in the ninth inning against reliever Kenley Jansen, but failed to score both times. Hong-Chih Kuo got the final two outs to preserve the shutout. Angel Pagan led off the game with a single to left field against the left-handed Kershaw, an All-Star, before stealing second base. But he was stranded there, no Mets runner reached second again until the eighth. By then, the Dodgers already led by six runs. Kershaw’s performance underscored Collins’s concerns about the stout pitching the Mets would be facing over a seven-game span that began Thursday night. Collins pointed out on Wednesday that after Kershaw, the Mets would go on to face Ryan Vogelsong, Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain of the San Francisco Giants, perhaps followed by Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels of the Phillies right after the All-Star break. With that string of top-flight pitchers on the agenda, Collins was hoping to have Reyes back from his hamstring injury. But on Thursday the Mets were forced to place him on the disabled list because he was making slow progress in his recovery. Perhaps the reality that Reyes would not be with them for at least two more weeks had a demoralizing effect on the Mets. After several weeks of terrific baseball, they looked lifeless and sloppy against the Dodgers. Gee allowed six runs, five of them earned, in five and two-thirds innings, and has now allowed 16 earned runs in his last four starts. His record fell to 8-3. He threw 86 pitches, 30 of them in the sixth inning as the Dodgers scored five times to blow the game open. The Dodgers’ first run of the game came on what appeared to Umpire Greg Gibson’s second blown call in two nights, both of which went against the Mets. On Wednesday he called Matt Kemp safe at first base when he appeared to be out, and during an on-field argument he admitted to Collins that he made a mistake. In the second inning on Thursday, Gibson called Juan Uribe safe at home on a sacrifice fly when it appeared that he, too, was out. Uribe was on third when Aaron Miles hit a fly ball to left field. Jason Bay made a sensational throw to catcher Ronny Paulino, who seemed to apply the tag to Uribe’s leg before his front foot crossed the plate. Paulino couldn’t believe the call, and for the second straight night Collins came out to argue. They didn’t get the call, but in the ninth Gibson called enough balls for the Mets to load the bases on a single and two walks against Jansen. But Kuo struck out Lucas Duda and got Pagan to ground out to end the game. So the Mets fell to 4-1 since Reyes was hurt, but are 0-1 since he was put on the disabled list.
|
Reyes Jose;New York Mets;Los Angeles Dodgers;Kershaw Clayton;Baseball
|
ny0210297
|
[
"science",
"earth"
] |
2009/12/15
|
Australia’s Rudd Looks for Success in Copenhagen
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SYDNEY — Fresh from failing — twice — to pass his widely contested plan to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd headed to Copenhagen on Monday hoping to succeed internationally where his domestic agenda has thus far fallen short. Mr. Rudd is expected to play a key, behind-the-scenes role in the negotiations. He accepted an invitation from Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen of Denmark to join the U.N. secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, and President Felipe Calderón of Mexico as “friends of the chair” to help press other leaders to commit to action. In the two years since Mr. Rudd received a standing ovation from delegates at a U.N. conference for reversing Australia’s longstanding refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol — his first official act as prime minister — he and his ministers have been fighting an increasingly fractious battle over the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at home. Earlier this month, the Australian Senate rejected, for the second time this year, the government’s plan to implement a carbon pollution reduction system. The agreement would have placed Australia in the company of the European Union and other countries that already have, or are now debating, a “cap-and-trade” style approach to cutting greenhouse gases. The Senate, where the balance of power is controlled by pro-business conservatives and a vocal minority of climate change skeptics, voted, 41-33, on Dec. 2 to reject the government’s plan to set a nationwide cap on greenhouse gas emissions and issue pollution permits to be bought and sold on a newly created carbon market. Australia’s constitution allows the prime minister to call a general election when a bill that has been passed in the lower house of Parliament fails to pass through the upper house after two attempts, signaling an intractable deadlock. Mr. Rudd has said that he does not want to call an early election, and opinion polls suggest that he faces little threat from his conservative opponents regardless of whether elections are held early in the year or in November, as expected. The Senate’s rejection was a blow to Mr. Rudd’s global ambitions. Many political observers said that Mr. Rudd and his 100-member-plus delegation to Copenhagen had hoped to present Australia’s emissions trading system as an example of the developed world’s willingness to commit to binding targets. Australia’s overall share of greenhouse gases is small relative to the rest of the world, but its heavy reliance on coal-fired electricity makes it one of the world’s largest polluters per capita. “Australia is really trying to bridge the gap between some of the developing and developed countries,” said Frank Jotzo, the deputy director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University. “There is a huge credibility gap in terms of what the rich countries have been doing in their domestic policies. If Rudd had gone with his carbon pollution reduction scheme in place, then that would have been a huge boost to Australia’s credibility in those negotiations.” Mr. Rudd’s domestic woes have not gone unnoticed. The minister for climate change, Penny Wong, said in Copenhagen on Monday that she had fielded multiple questions from colleagues about whether the government’s recent setbacks would affect Australia’s negotiating position. And Sarah Palin, the former vice-presidential candidate in the United States, pointed to the Australian Senate’s rejection of the cap-and-trade bill as evidence of growing public unease over climate change legislation. “I think it would have added extra momentum had Rudd gone to Copenhagen with an emissions trading scheme in his back pocket,” said Michael Fullilove, the director of the global issues program at the Lowy Institute for International Policy and a Brookings Institution fellow. “But having said that, I think the battle is still in front of him, and it’s all to do with how much ingenuity he can bring to the debate.” The prime minister, who served years in Australia’s diplomatic corps before turning to politics, has been accused by his critics — including the media mogul Rupert Murdoch — of spending too much time trying to burnish Australia’s image on the global stage, rather than focusing on issues at home. Mr. Rudd has also been pushing for a nonpermanent seat for Australia on the U.N. Security Council and for expanded cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region. “I have a simple view that we’re here to make a difference. And for Australia to make a difference in the world, you’ve got to be active in the world stage,” Mr. Rudd told CNN this month, shortly after co-hosting a round-table discussion on climate change in Singapore that was attended by President Barack Obama and President Hu Jintao of China. “What I sensed was a strong resolve to land that sort of agreement at Copenhagen,” he said. “It’s still going to be tough. But we’re still in the business of making a difference, and that’s what I’m doing most nights of the week.”
|
Rudd Kevin;Greenhouse Gas Emissions;Australia;United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change;Copenhagen (Denmark);Global Warming
|
ny0096730
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2015/01/22
|
At Risk of Fragmenting, Yemen Poses Dangers to U.S.
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WASHINGTON — Only months ago, American officials were still referring to Yemen ’s negotiated transition from autocracy to an elected president as a model for post-revolutionary Arab states. Now, days of factional gun battles in the Yemeni capital have left the president a puppet figure confined to his residence. The country appears to be at risk of fragmenting in ways that could provide greater opportunities both for Iran and for Al Qaeda, whose Yemeni branch claimed responsibility for the first Paris terrorist attack this month. The latest Yemeni crisis raises the prospect of yet another Arab country where the United States faces rising dangers but has no strong partners amid a landscape of sectarian violence. Although the Houthi rebels who now effectively control the state are at war with Al Qaeda, they are also allied with Iran and with Yemen’s meddlesome former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh . The Houthis’ rise to a dominant position may set off local conflicts in ways that would give more breathing room to Al Qaeda’s local branch, which has repeatedly struck at the United States. Yemen’s elected president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, is a stalwart American ally but has almost no domestic support. Image A Houthi fighter in Sana on Wednesday manned a machine gun atop a military vehicle seized from presidential guards. Credit Khaled Abdullah/Reuters “The Yemeni state has always been weak, but now there’s a real danger of economic meltdown, and of the kind of fragmentation that could ultimately make Yemen almost ungovernable,” said April Alley, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization that works to resolve conflicts. The Houthi takeover — which began in September and was reinforced in recent days — has deepened sectarian and regional divisions in a desperately poor country that has long been a sanctuary for jihadists. And though the latest round of fighting appeared to end Wednesday when Mr. Hadi conceded to the Houthis’ political demands, the underlying crisis will continue to fester, analysts say. The deal announced Wednesday addressed a number of the Houthis’ grievances, including a lack of representation in government bodies and complaints about provisions in a draft constitution. In return, the Houthis agreed to withdraw fighters from the presidential palace and other parts of Sana and to release an aide to Mr. Hadi who was kidnapped by Houthi gunmen on Saturday. But there was little doubt that the Houthis, who have repeatedly threatened in recent months to use force to win political concessions, remain in control. The Houthis’ public humiliation of Mr. Hadi — a southerner — prompted southern rebels to close the country’s chief port in Aden and shut the border between the north and south earlier this week, raising the specter of actual secession. Armed tribesmen have cut off oil exports in three southern provinces. And Saudi Arabia, which sees the Houthis as a proxy of its regional rival, Iran, has shut off almost all aid to the Yemeni government, leaving it virtually penniless and unable to pay salaries. The Saudis, who have long been Yemen’s economic lifeline, pumping in more than $4 billion since 2012, say they would rather allow the Houthis to take the blame for the approaching economic collapse than provide aid to an Iranian client, according to a Yemeni official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing diplomatic protocol. Other Persian Gulf countries are likely to follow the Saudi lead. Image Yemen’s elected president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, is a stalwart American ally but has almost no domestic support. Credit Natalia Kolesnikova/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images In another ominous sign, the Houthis appear to be gearing up for a major battle with their Sunni Islamist rivals in Marib Province, to the east of the capital, where much of Yemen’s oil infrastructure is. That could prove devastating to Yemen’s government and economy, which is deeply dependent on oil. It could also exacerbate sectarian tensions in a country that was almost entirely free of them until recently. The Houthis belong to the Zaydi branch of Shiite Islam, and Saudi Arabia — whose leaders see all Shiites as heretics — has been providing aid to Sunni tribes in Marib, diplomats say, fueling another proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Some of the tribes refer to the Houthis as an occupying force, undermining their claim to represent a broad-based national movement. In Washington, military and intelligence officials expressed grave concerns on Wednesday about the violence in Sana and the impact any further deterioration could have on one of the Obama administration’s staunchest counterterrorism partners. Michael G. Vickers, the Pentagon’s top intelligence policy official, said analysts were still trying to determine the Houthis’ ultimate goal. The meteoric rise of the Houthis has drawn global attention to an insurgent group that was almost unknown outside Yemen a decade ago, and whose agenda is still opaque to many people both inside and outside the country. Their leader, a charismatic guerrilla fighter in his early 30s named Abdel Malik al-Houthi, inherited his mantle from his father and his older brother Hussein, who founded the movement in the 1990s and was killed in the first of a series of wars against the Yemeni state that ended in 2010. Mr. Houthi’s speeches focus on fighting corruption and fulfilling the agreements reached in a series of “national dialogue” sessions that ended last year. Those demands have helped bolster public support for the Houthis — which remains strong — in a country where corruption has gutted the state and appears to have worsened since Mr. Hadi became president after the uprising of 2011. But the Houthis are often seen through the lens of their identity as revivalist Zaydis, a group that was dominant in Yemen’s government for centuries and was then marginalized in recent decades. They modeled themselves in important ways on Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, and though their ideology and leadership are distinct and unmistakably Yemeni, they are allied with Iran, which has provided them with weapons, training, and money, especially since 2011. Image Houthi militiamen on a road outside the presidential palace in Sana on Wednesday. Credit Khaled Abdullah/Reuters The Houthis’ continuing and bloody battle with Al Qaeda has led some in the West to see them as potential partners, despite the trademark Houthi slogan, “God is great; death to America; death to Israel.” Under Yemen’s former president, Mr. Saleh, “the formula was to milk the U.S.A. for support in the fight against Al Qaeda, which was a recipe for more drones and more radicalization,” said Bernard Haykel, a professor at Princeton who has written extensively on Yemen. “The Houthis actually want to fight Al Qaeda, which could be more effective.” But the Houthis are also allied with Mr. Saleh, who remains a powerful figure in Yemen and is bent on revenge on those who engineered his ouster during the turmoil of 2011. If the Houthis succeed in consolidating power, many in Yemen expect a bloody power struggle between them and Mr. Saleh’s loyalists in the military and the tribes. The Houthis long benefited from a reputation for honesty and discipline, much like their mentor group, Hezbollah. But the arrogant behavior of the Houthi gunmen who descended on Sana in September, bullying government ministers and their ideological opponents, has spent some of that good will. The conflict between the Houthis and their mostly Sunni rivals has led some Yemenis to give up on the state. In Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest city, the local governor has taken over the military and intelligence quarters and is effectively governing a city-state. In southern Yemen, which was a separate country from 1970 until 1990 and fought a brief civil war against the north in 1994, many have similarly seized on the Houthi ascendancy as an opportunity to break away. Those aspirations have fueled fears of a wider breakdown that could benefit Al Qaeda, which ejected government officials across a wide stretch of the south in mid-2011 and declared an Islamic emirate that lasted about a year.
|
Yemen;Houthis;Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula;Saudi Arabia;Iran;Al Qaeda;Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi;Ali Abdullah Saleh;Coups D'Etat
|
ny0085650
|
[
"science",
"space"
] |
2015/07/18
|
Pluto Terrain Yields Big Surprises in New Horizons Images
|
In addition to soaring ice mountains, Pluto ’s mixed bag of terrains includes smooth plains that are crisscrossed by enigmatic troughs, photographs from NASA ’s New Horizons mission show. “When I saw this image for the first time, I decided I was going to call it not-easy-to-explain terrain,” said Jeffrey Moore, the leader of the geology, geophysics and imaging team for New Horizons, which visited Pluto this week . “You can clearly see that we’ve discovered a vast craterless plain that has some strange story to tell.” During a news conference on Friday, Dr. Moore and other mission scientists described some additional data that the spacecraft has sent back. It has been an ecstatic few days for the scientists, who are puzzling over features they never expected. Video S. Alan Stern, the principal investigator for NASA’s New Horizons mission, said on Friday that the second close-up views of Pluto show mountains made of ice and a crater-free surface. Credit Credit NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI, via Associated Press “I’m a little biased, but I think the solar system saved the best for last,” said S. Alan Stern, the principal investigator for New Horizons. After a journey of nine and a half years and three billion miles, New Horizons passed within 7,800 miles of Pluto’s surface on Tuesday. It was traveling much too fast to enter orbit and instead zipped past. Pluto is already more than two million miles in its rearview mirror. By the time the spacecraft finishes its observations at the end of the month, its onboard memory will be filled with 50 billion bits of data. Communications are slow over the interplanetary expanse, and only about 2 percent of the data has been sent back to Earth . The first up-close snapshot released on Wednesday showed mountains as tall as 11,000 feet, made of water ice, not rock. One surprise was that there were no craters on this patch of Pluto, about 150 miles by 150 miles. Image Measurements of New Horizons' "Ralph" tool found carbon monoxide ice, represented by the green graphic, on the western end of Pluto's heart-shaped region. Credit NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI The new snapshot described by Dr. Moore on Friday was near the mountains and likewise devoid of craters, but it was almost flat. The lack of craters indicates that the surface was erased by erosion or tectonic activity in the recent geological past — within the past 100 million years. “This could be only a week old, for all we know,” Dr. Moore said. (Craters have been spotted in the global view of Pluto, and other regions could be geologically much older.) Dr. Moore speculated that the troughs, breaking the plains into irregular shapes 12 to 20 miles across, could be caused by convection of carbon monoxide, methane and nitrogen ices below the surface, “creating the same sort of patterns that you see when you look at the surface of a boiling pot of oatmeal, or like the blobs in a lava lamp.” Another possibility is that they could be similar to mud cracks on Earth, caused as the soil dries and contracts, Dr. Moore said. The shapes are reminiscent of those seen near the north pole on Mars, but it was too early to tell if similar geological processes had shaped them. Some of the plains appeared pitted, as if suffering skin disease. Dr. Moore said it was not clear whether the pits actually exist or are just illusions inserted when the images were compressed. Clearer images without compression will be sent later. If the pits are real, they may have been caused by erosion when ice turns to vapor. In addition, some of the troughs were partly filled with dark material, and others contained clusters of dark hills. The hills could be material that oozed out from below the surface, Dr. Moore said, or they could be knobs of more resilient material that persisted as the surrounding icescape eroded. The scientists have informally named the plains Sputnik Planum, in honor of the first space satellite, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. Both the mountains and the plains are part of a large, bright heart-shaped feature on Pluto that the scientists are calling Tombaugh Regio, after Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930. An instrument that can identify certain molecules has found a concentration of frozen carbon monoxide in the western half of the heart, but not the eastern part or anywhere else on this side of Pluto. “It’s a very special place on the planet,” Dr. Stern said. The scientists also reported that New Horizons detected charged nitrogen atoms that had once been part of Pluto’s atmosphere tens of thousands of miles away, carried away by the solar wind. With the weak gravity, computer models suggest that Pluto is losing 500 tons of its atmosphere every hour, far more than the one ton an hour that Mars loses. That raises the question of how Pluto still has an atmosphere at all.
|
Pluto;Space;NASA;New Horizons
|
ny0248272
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2011/05/07
|
Drone Strike Said to Kill At Least 8 In Pakistan
|
Missiles believed to have been fired by an American drone killed at least eight suspected militants and wounded four in Pakistan ’s tribal regions on Friday, according to a Pakistani security official and a resident in the area of the strike. Later, seven more bodies were recovered, bringing the death toll to 15, the resident said. The attack was the first by a drone since the killing of Osama bin Laden , the leader of Al Qaeda , in an American helicopter-borne raid early Monday in Abbottabad, a small garrison city about a two-hour drive from the capital, Islamabad. The drone campaign, which is run by the C.I.A. , has long been a sore point with the Pakistani public for what is widely considered its violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. The government has publicly condemned the strikes, while privately tolerating them in an arrangement with the United States, which flies drones from a base inside Pakistan. The Bin Laden raid has put new pressure on that alliance, however, coming after the killing of two Pakistanis by a C.I.A. contractor in January, and has inflamed the sovereignty issue still further. On Thursday, the head of Pakistan’s army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, said another raid like the one that killed Bin Laden would not be tolerated, and he repeated a demand that the number of American troops in Pakistan be reduced “to the minimum essential.” The attack on Friday showed, however, what the Americans have insisted, that they will continue the drone campaign, which has proved to be an effective way of reaching Qaeda militants in Pakistani’s tribal region on the Afghan border. The latest attack took place at noon on Friday in Dua Toi, a village in North Waziristan, which borders Afghanistan. The village is in the Datta Khel area, about 30 miles west of Miram Shah, the regional capital. The official said four of the dead were foreign fighters, but their nationalities were not known yet. The missiles hit a car near a roadside restaurant and a compound where the militants had been invited for lunch by commanders affiliated with Hafiz Gul Bahadar, the top commander in North Waziristan. He is a close ally of the Haqqani network and Al Qaeda, and has reached a truce with the Pakistani military, though he is involved in fighting against the NATO forces in Afghanistan. The missiles killed five of the militants in the car. In the compound, three were killed and four were wounded. Datta Khel is the stronghold of Mr. Bahadar, and many of the drone strikes have taken place in that area because of its high concentration of local and foreign fighters, who are involved in cross-border attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan.
|
Drones (Pilotless Planes);bin Laden Osama;Pakistan;Defense and Military Forces;Central Intelligence Agency;Strikes;Al Qaeda
|
ny0289470
|
[
"business",
"dealbook"
] |
2016/01/20
|
Lazard Hires Managing Director to Bolster Restructuring Business
|
As energy companies continue to struggle with the sharp drop in oil prices, Lazard is beefing up its restructuring business by hiring a new managing director: Ken Ziman of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. But Lazard’s head of global restructuring, David Kurtz, said he would have tapped Mr. Ziman in any market. “Ken is and was a superb lawyer, but he was a lawyer that was always very sensitive to the business dynamics,” Mr. Kurtz, who is also Lazard’s vice chairman of United States investment banking, said in a phone interview. “He was very good with numbers, very practical, very deal-oriented. In addition to being excellent at hard-core lawyering skills, Ken presented a package of skills that allowed him to fit in well here.” The opportunity to recruit Mr. Ziman to Lazard presented itself late last year while the two worked closely on the bankruptcy of Millennium Health, a drug-testing company. Mr. Ziman was the deputy practice leader of corporate restructuring at Skadden, which was providing legal advice to Millennium Health on the bankruptcy, along with Mr. Kurtz, whose firm was the financial adviser. After working well together on the deal, the two started discussing whether it would make sense for Mr. Ziman to move over to the investment banking side. Ultimately they agreed it did, and announced the hire on Tuesday in a statement. Mr. Ziman will be based in New York and start at the firm on March 1. At Skadden, Mr. Ziman had been a partner since 2010. Previously, he had worked as a partner at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, according to the statement. He received his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and his undergraduate degree at Colgate University. Lazard is known for its restructuring practice, having advised on more than 500 such deals worldwide over the last decade.
|
Lazard;Appointments and Executive Changes;Ken Ziman;Banking and Finance;Oil and Gasoline;Bankruptcy
|
ny0039128
|
[
"sports",
"soccer"
] |
2014/04/29
|
Countdown to 2014 World Cup in Brazil: Day 45
|
It’s all about timing for Luiz Felipe Scolari, the coach of Brazil’s national soccer team, as the days tick off the calendar toward the start of the World Cup. Scolari, who last week attended a conference about soccer and psychology in São Paulo, told Brazilian television Sunday that protests calling for social change and criticism of the amount of money spent on the tournament “could big-time” be a negative influence on his team. “I think the protests can happen,” Scolari told Globo TV Sunday. “If they are peaceful, then that’s democracy. Everyone has the right to protest. But I don’t know if it’s the right time.” Last year Brazil experienced a surge in violent street protests as a segment of the population marched to demand more and better public services while at the same time calling attention to the billions of public dollars being expended on the World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The protests gave the country a black eye, which only seemed to fester as the completion of stadiums and other infrastructure lagged. Then the deaths of several construction workers at stadiums under construction called more attention to what seemed like a World Cup about to go wrong. Scolari, who also said he has settled on 21 of the players on his 23-man roster for the tournament (naming nine of the 21: David Luiz, Oscar, Ramires, Willian, Paulinho, Júlio César, Thiago Silva, Fred and Neymar), mentioned that his players have discussed the protests, both last year and more recently, and that he would not dissuade them from speaking their minds during the World Cup, should they be asked. “They are national team players and they are on a mission,” he said. “They can express themselves and say, ‘Look, I also want a better Brazil,’ but I don’t want it to be something that causes problems to our environment.” He was also critical of the pace of organization and construction. “We could have done a better job to take advantage of these seven years that we had to prepare everything that was going to be needed, from airports to roads to education,” he said. “But we lost time and now we are out of time.” Scolari said he would name his roster on May 7 ahead of warm-up games against Panama and Serbia.
|
2014 World Cup;Luiz Felipe Scolari;Brazil
|
ny0099556
|
[
"sports",
"soccer"
] |
2015/06/13
|
At Women’s World Cup, Seeing Signs of Lionel Messi, Not Mia Hamm
|
Megan Rapinoe controlled the ball at the halfway line at the Women’s World Cup and sped forward. When she finally encountered a defender, she effortlessly jinked past her and shot the ball into the net to seal a victory for the United States over Australia on Monday. What is the right way to describe such a feat? “I was doing my best Messi impression,” Rapinoe said Monday, referring to the Argentine star Lionel Messi. As the World Cup in Canada gives women’s soccer its time in the spotlight, fans, coaches, the news media and the players themselves are closely watching the stars of the women’s game — and then likening them to men. So anyone watching the matches is likely to hear France’s best player referred to as the female Zinedine Zidane, or Sweden’s as the female Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Marta, the Brazilian star and a five-time world player of the year, was once described as “ Pelé in a skirt ” by Pelé himself. Image Louisa Necib has been called the female Zinedine Zidane. Credit Elsa/Getty Images; Shaun Botterill/Getty Images Some players do not especially welcome the comparisons. Vivianne Miedema, the 18-year-old Dutch star, is often called the female Arjen Robben, after the wing who led the Netherlands to the men’s World Cup semifinals last summer. “Yeah, I get that a lot,” Miedema told FIFA.com . “But Arjen plays very differently to me. It’s really cool to be compared to him, but, as a woman, it’s a bit strange to always be compared to a man. I’m Vivianne Miedema, and I don’t play like men do.” Lotta Schelin, Sweden’s star forward, is often compared to Ibrahimovic, the dominant player on her country’s men’s team. “The comparisons are nice in a way,” Schelin said last year . “But although he inspires me, and I love watching him play, there are big differences between us, too. And I like that young girls look up to me as Lotta Schelin, not as the female Zlatan.” Julie Foudy was a star on the 1999 World Cup team that put women’s soccer on the radar in the United States and is now an analyst and commentator for ESPN. She said she wished players in the Cup were more often compared to female stars of the past, like Mia Hamm. But she knows that, because of the ubiquity of men’s soccer, comparisons to men are inevitable. Women’s World Cup: Players to Follow Once you get past the faces on magazine covers and the world players of the year, there are plenty of other stars who could be game changers at the World Cup. “I get it, because that’s what people see on television,” Foudy said. “There’s no opportunity to follow the women’s game. It’s really hard to find it.” Many female players are avid followers of the men’s game, Foudy said, and the players themselves are often the sources of the comparisons to men. “Messi’s my role model,” Ramona Bachmann of Switzerland told FIFA.com . “He’s so exceptional, it’s like he’s from another planet.” Gaëlle Enganamouit, who scored a surprise hat trick in Cameroon’s opener, even compared herself to her country’s most famous men’s player. “In my view, Samuel Eto’o is the greatest forward in the world,” she said. “I’ve always said that one day I will be the Samuel Eto’o of women’s football.” Enganamouit’s team is making its Women’s World Cup debut. “They are the first generation,” Foudy said. “There is no Michelle Akers or Mia Hamm for them. You hope the next wave behind them will have them as role models.” Image Marta has been called the female Ronaldinho. Credit Nicholas Kamm/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; Shaun Botterill/Getty Images There is nothing new about comparisons like this. In Brazil, where interest in women’s soccer lags far behind that for the men’s game, Marta has long been compared not only to Pelé but to other famous male players; another of her nicknames is the female Ronaldinho. Louisa Necib of France is the female Zinedine Zidane, also a French player of Algerian ancestry. Zidane led France’s men to the World Cup title in 1998. And the phenomenon is not unique to women’s soccer. Sheryl Swoopes, the three-time W.N.B.A. most valuable player, has often been called the female Michael Jordan. But the male-female comparisons do not seem to be so common in individual sports; Serena Williams, Lindsey Vonn and the mixed martial arts champion Ronda Rousey are mostly recognized for their own achievements, rather than as female versions of Roger Federer, Bode Miller or Brock Lesnar. But because many people follow women’s soccer only once every four years, they find the easiest analogies in comparisons to the men’s game. Foudy said she “would not necessarily go to a male player” when making a comparison on the air. On ESPN the other day, she compared the current South Korean player Ji So-yun to the former Chinese women’s star Sun Wen. But Foudy is in the minority. Ji’s nickname is Ji Messi.
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Soccer;FIFA Women's World Cup;Megan Rapinoe;Women and Girls
|
ny0195047
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2009/11/15
|
Portuguese, Filipino, Jamaican: Grilled Taste Takes Many Forms
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WHEN Carlos Teixeira bought Burnet BBQ in Union about 15 years ago, most of the customers for his heaping platters of flame-grilled chicken and ribs were Portuguese. That’s not true anymore, Mr. Teixeira said. Portuguese barbecue, or churrasco, has become so popular that he now operates three additional restaurants: a second in Union, one in Newark and one in Clark. Portuguese churrasco is just one of the many variations on the barbecue theme that can be found in New Jersey restaurants. Jamaican, Filipino and Korean are a few of the cuisines where the grill plays a part; each has its own marinades, seasonings and sauces. These spots are typically casual and do a good bit of takeout business. None of those listed here serve liquor. At Burnet BBQ, you place your order at an open counter and a waitress brings your food. There’s seating for 15, at a handful of tables. Mr. Teixeira, 40, said he learned how to make what he calls his “Old World” barbecue from his mother, Maria, who ran a barbecue restaurant in Portugal. He moved to New Jersey with his family when he was 4 years old. Portuguese barbecue is straightforward, he said. “We take the meat, dip it in the sauce and then put it on the grill,” said Mr. Teixeira, who lives in Union. The key is good meat, he added, and saucing the meat while it cooks. Grilling over charcoal is also important. At some of his restaurants he makes a white wine-based sauce from scratch; at the original Burnet BBQ he uses Trappey’s Red Devil Cayenne Pepper Sauce , a commercial condiment. At the New Barbecue Pit in Bergenfield, Louie Cancio uses two kinds of sauces to prepare his Filipino-style barbecue chicken and spare ribs on the gas grill. One has an Asian influence, he said, and is primarily soy sauce and sugar. The other is tangy, a classic American tomato and vinegar-based sauce, to which he adds Jufran Banana Sauce , a Filipino ketchup. “We let the sauce caramelize on the meats while they grill,” said Mr. Cancio, 34, who was born in the Philippines and came to the United States at age 11. For the past five years he has operated the restaurant with his father and mother; all of them live upstairs. Mr. Cancio brushes the meats with both sauces while they sizzle on the grill and adds more just before serving. For another Filipino dish, pork on a stick, he lets the pork marinate in lots of garlic, Thai chili peppers, white wine, pineapple and Worcestershire sauce before grilling. The sign outside might lead you to believe that the meat for another specialty here, the pulled pork sandwich, is cooked over an open fire. It’s not; for safety reasons, Mr. Cancio’s father, Carlos, roasts the 40-pound pigs in the oven. At Real Jamaican Jerk an’ Ting in Somerset , the owner, Iva Thompson, 37, who grew up in St. Catherine, Jamaica, remembers roadside jerk stands there where the meat was slow-cooked over pimento wood in a pit dug in the ground. Ms. Thompson now lives in New Brunswick and grills her jerk chicken, pork, shrimp and fish over charcoal briquettes in the kitchen at her yellow and green storefront restaurant, which opened in 2005 and seats 16 people. Sides include rice and beans, and festival, a type of Jamaican fried dumpling. The jerk here owes much of its flavor to Ms. Thompson’s dry rub, which includes peppers, thyme, scallions, onions and garlic. She likes to marinate the meat for several days. But perhaps most critical is the sauce, which can be served on top of the jerk or on the side. Ms. Thompson is mum on the specifics. “There is a secret to making the sauce, which I really do not disclose,” she said. One of the more interesting takes on barbecue is at the Krave, a food truck in Jersey City , which opened in August and has a following on Twitter. Here the galbi (Korean-style short ribs), spicy pork and sesame chicken are served in tacos ($2.50) or on a platter with rice and kimchi ($6). “The fusion aspect is definitely unique,” said Nhon Ma, 27, one of the owners, who lives in Jersey City, where the truck operates, normally in front of the Grove Street PATH station. “I grew up in L.A., where there are a lot of taco trucks and also good Korean food. That mix of cooking Mexican and Korean together was the next step,” said Mr. Ma, the son of Chinese refugees from Vietnam who moved to the United States before he was born. For authentic Korean barbecue, Mr. Nhon relies on the family recipes of his two partners, Taejin In and Charles Heo, both 24. The barbecue marinade includes a mix of soy sauce, garlic, fruit and spices. “But Korean barbecue is all about the grilling,” Mr. In said. At the Krave, the marinated meat is cooked on a propane grill in the truck’s tiny kitchen; some prep work is done off-site. Customers say they can smell the barbecue aroma as soon as they walk up the stairs of the PATH station. A sampling of different approaches to barbecue from around the state: BERGENFIELD New Barbecue Pit, 100 North Washington Avenue; (201) 439-0522. Open Monday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Barbecue chicken, $9.25 whole, $5.50 half; spare ribs, $10.55 for six. JERSEY CITY The Krave. Check the Web site, kravetruck.com , for the location, but normally at Marin Boulevard and Columbus Drive in front of the Grove Street PATH station. Open Monday to Friday, normally from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Lunch, 11:30 to 2:30, usually in front of the Exchange Place PATH station. Tacos with galbi (short ribs), spicy pork or sesame chicken, $2.50 each; platters, $6. SOMERSET Real Jamaican Jerk an’ Ting, 500 Hamilton Street; (732) 745-7300. realjamaicanjerk.com . Open Monday to Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Saturday, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Jerk chicken entree, $8.50 with rice and vegetable. UNION Burnet BBQ, 1363 Burnet Avenue; (908) 687-0313. Open Sunday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Monday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Tuesday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Barbecue chicken, $13 whole, $7.50 half; ribs, $13 whole, $7.50 half. Includes two side dishes.
|
Grilling (Cooking);Barbecue;Restaurants;Cooking and Cookbooks;Jersey City (NJ)
|
ny0273291
|
[
"sports",
"soccer"
] |
2016/05/06
|
Liverpool to Face Sevilla
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Liverpool stands in the way of a third straight Europa League title for Sevilla after the clubs, which both have rich pasts in Europe’s second-tier competition, reached the final. Sevilla beat Shakhtar Donetsk, 3-1, at home to advance, 5-3, on aggregate. Sevilla is trying to win the UEFA Cup/Europa League for a record-extending fifth time in the past 11 years. Liverpool, a three-time winner, overcame a first-leg deficit against Villarreal by winning, 3-0, at Anfield to go through, 3-1, on aggregate. The final is in Basel, Switzerland, on May 18. The winner will qualify for the Champions League.
|
Soccer;Playoffs;Liverpool Soccer Team;Sevilla Soccer Team;Shakhtar Donetsk Soccer Team
|
ny0138310
|
[
"technology"
] |
2008/05/15
|
Icahn Is Said to Plan a Proxy Battle at Yahoo
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Carl C. Icahn , the billionaire investor and activist shareholder, has decided to move ahead with plans for a proxy fight at Yahoo and will propose a dissident slate of directors, people with knowledge of the plans said Wednesday. Mr. Icahn, who has told associates that he has bought as many as 50 million shares of Yahoo, is leaning toward trying to oust the entire board by proposing a slate of 10 candidates, these people said. The deadline for nominating a dissident slate is Thursday. He is moving ahead with the proxy fight in hopes of pushing Yahoo to restart talks to sell itself to Microsoft. Yet Microsoft has given no indication that it would be willing to restart talks. Mr. Icahn’s decision to try to oust the entire board — as opposed to proposing only a couple of candidates — is considered a high-risk maneuver, analysts said. He might have a better chance of winning a campaign by proposing a smaller slate, several analysts added. Under the proxy rules, Mr. Icahn can reduce his slate later, but had he nominated a smaller number of candidates he would not be allowed to increase it. As part of his proxy contest, Mr. Icahn is taking direct aim at Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s chief executive and co-founder, who is revered inside the company and has the support of many of its employees. Some analysts question whether ousting Mr. Yang would destabilize Yahoo if were not sold and had to remain independent. People included in Mr. Icahn’s proxy effort say he wants to propose a full slate so that he will have enough leverage to push the company into the arms of Microsoft. Getting Microsoft, or any other suitor, to make a bid for Yahoo would raise the share price and yield a profit for Mr. Icahn. Still, Microsoft has given Mr. Icahn no assurance it will re-enter talks, these people said. Mr. Icahn has tried to approach Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, and his advisers through various channels. Mr. Icahn’s interest comes less than two weeks after Microsoft withdrew a $47.5 billion offer for Yahoo. Since then, many large Yahoo shareholders have accused the board of pushing Microsoft away. In recent days, Yahoo’s directors have received a deluge of letters criticizing the company’s tactics during the negotiations. Microsoft balked after Mr. Yang said Yahoo needed a bid of at least $37 a share. Microsoft, which originally bid $31 a share in cash and stock and raised its offer to $33 a share, refused to raise it further and ended the discussions. Shares of Yahoo rose 58 cents, to $27.14, on Wednesday. Mr. Icahn has a made a career of agitating for change at some of the nation’s biggest companies. In the last three decades, he set his sights on companies as varied as T.W.A. and Time Warner. While Mr. Icahn is often successful — he orchestrated a deal between Oracle and BEA Systems last year — he has also come up short. He was forced to abandon a proxy contest at Time Warner, and though he won seats on the board of Blockbuster, the company’s value has fallen sharply since he joined it.
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Icahn Carl C;Yahoo Inc;Stocks and Bonds;Computers and the Internet
|
ny0089677
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2015/09/26
|
Ukraine to Ban Flights by Major Russian Airlines
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Ukraine will ban major Russian airlines including Aeroflot, the Russian national airline, from flying to its airports starting next month as part of a broad set of trade sanctions imposed on Russia for supporting a separatist revolt in Ukraine . The ban, which will take effect on Oct. 25, was authorized in sweeping legislation passed this month that lists 90 Russian companies and about 900 individuals as targets for sanctions. It is the latest step in a wide-ranging trade war that has raged along the sidelines of the armed conflict, which has been in abeyance lately even as the political atmosphere has deteriorated. Speaking to the Ukrainian cabinet on Friday, Prime Minister Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk said that Russian airlines, “primarily Aeroflot and Transaero,” another large carrier that is in the process of merging with Aeroflot, will be banned from Ukrainian airports under the sanctions measure. It was not clear what other Russian airlines might fall under the ban. “Airlines with the Russian tricolor have no reason to be in Ukrainian airports,” a Ukrainian government website quoted Mr. Yatsenyuk as saying. The ban also prohibits Russian cargo airlines from flying over Ukrainian territory while carrying military hardware or troops, a provision further limiting Russia ’s options for projecting power toward the Mediterranean or the Middle East, after Bulgaria and other countries prohibited such flights this summer. Ukraine and Western governments accuse Russia of sending weapons and soldiers into eastern Ukraine to help separatists fight a conflict that has killed nearly 8,000 people since it began in April 2014. Russia denies any involvement. The announcement of the airline ban was a bold economic jab at Russia from Ukraine, a country usually on the receiving end of such maneuvers. Russia has repeatedly raised the price of natural gas it charges Ukraine, twice shutting off fuel for the country in the dead of winter, and has banned imports from Ukraine, including chocolate and cheese. Russia’s transport minister, Maksim Sokolov, immediately threatened to retaliate by banning flights by Ukrainian airlines into Russia. “We understand that this in fact will lead to a complete halt in air traffic between our countries,” he said. Once Russia receives confirmation of the flight ban, he said, Russian air traffic controllers will apply a “mirror” measure against Ukrainian airlines. Aeroflot now flies to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, and Odessa, a port city on the Black Sea. Other Russian airlines fly dozens of routes daily to cities throughout Ukraine.
|
Airlines,airplanes;Aeroflot Russian Airlines;Russia;Ukraine;Embargoes Sanctions
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ny0168603
|
[
"world",
"americas"
] |
2006/06/26
|
11 Killed in South Mexico
|
MEXICO CITY, June 25 (Reuters) — Eleven people, including four police officers, were murdered over the weekend in southern Mexico , officials said Sunday. Drug and gang-related violence have been rising in advance of Mexico's presidential election July 2. Kidnappers killed four policemen in Guerrero State, gagging and shooting three and beheading another, the police said. The resort of Acapulco, Guerrero, is an important front in a battle between drug traffickers and the police. The police reported another seven murders in Guerrero, including a businessman and a former police officer found shot dead in Acapulco, four bodies left in plastic bags in a nearby town, and a shooting victim discovered in another nearby town.
|
Mexico;Murders and Attempted Murders;Police;Politics and Government;Terrorism;Crime and Criminals
|
ny0190750
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2009/05/23
|
10 Held in China for Mistreating Factory Workers
|
BEIJING — A factory boss and nine foremen have been arrested in eastern China after the police raided a brick kiln late last month and found 32 mentally disabled people working in what were described as slavelike conditions, according to the state-run news media. The police said Friday that 80 officers carried out the raid last month and rescued the workers, some of whom had been beaten. The workers were all between the ages of 25 and 45. The brick kiln was operating in Jieshou, a city in Anhui Province, one of China’s poorest regions. Similar raids were carried out in 2007, leading to shocking images when police investigators rescued more than 1,300 people — about 350 of them mentally retarded — from working as modern-day slaves in brick kilns in the northern province of Shanxi . The 2007 case led to dozens of arrests and exposed a trafficking ring that fed poor, ignorant laborers to some of the most difficult jobs. One man involved in the case was sentenced to death. The police in Anhui Province said they were continuing to investigate the most recent case to determine whether the workers were part of a trafficking ring. “All of them are mentally handicapped people,” Gao Jie, director of the Jieshou City Public Security Bureau, was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency. “Few of them can tell where they came from.” The police say the factory boss said he had bought the workers from a taxi driver in Shandong Province, according to Xinhua. Some of the workers have been returned to their homes, and others are being cared for in shelters, the police said.
|
China;Factories and Manufacturing;Handicapped;Freedom and Human Rights
|
ny0287360
|
[
"science"
] |
2016/08/11
|
Get Ready for the Perseids Meteor Shower: ‘It Will Rival the Stars in the Sky.’
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Prepare for the Perseids. This week, the annual meteor shower will illuminate the night sky with cosmic fireworks, creating a particularly dazzling display for skygazers across the Northern Hemisphere. NASA estimates that between 160 and 200 meteors will ignite in Earth’s atmosphere every hour during the display’s peak on Thursday night and Friday morning. Normally the shower has between 80 and 100 space specks. You can thank Jupiter and its intense gravity for turning this year’s meteor shower into a meteor hurricane. Image The Perseids as seen in southern Germany in 2015. This year, the shower will peak on Thursday night and Friday morning, when as many as 200 meteors per hour will fill the night sky. Credit Daniel Karmann/DPA, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The Perseids occur when Earth runs into pieces of debris floating in the solar system that were left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle. The 17-mile-wide dirty snowball orbits the sun about once every 133 years. It made its last close pass by the sun in 1992. But you won’t be seeing the leftovers of that event. A general rule of thumb with meteor showers is that you are never watching remnants from a comet’s most recent orbit. Instead, the burning bits come from the previous pass. In this case, the debris were ejected when Comet Swift-Tuttle visited in 1862 or earlier. For this week’s shower, Jupiter’s gravity has tugged together at least three meteor streams left by the comet into Earth’s path. Our planet will run into a cluster of leftovers from Comet Swift-Tuttle’s rendezvous in 1862, 1479 and 1079. Image The Perseids in 2015, seen from Switzerland. They zoom through the atmosphere at around 133,000 miles per hour and burst about 60 miles overhead. Credit Alexandra Wey/European Pressphoto Agency “You’re seeing pieces of ice that have been orbiting for that long kamikaze-ing themselves into the Earth’s atmosphere,” said Bill Cooke , an astronomer with NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. Jupiter’s large gravitational pull is constantly influencing the meteor streams, according to Dr. Cooke. Sometimes it tugs them toward Earth, and sometimes it pushes them farther away. The last time a special Perseids shower like this one occurred was in 2009. The Perseids zoom through the atmosphere at around 133,000 miles per hour and burst about 60 miles overhead, according to Dr. Cooke. Most of the meteors are about the size of a grain of sand, but some can be as large as a silver dollar. You should be able to see many of the small bursts, but it’s the handful of large ones that create jaw-dropping fireballs when set ablaze. “It scares you to the bone when you see it coming across,” said Jackie Faherty , an astronomer from the American Museum of Natural History. “If you get just one, it will be embedded in your vision for all time. I don’t think you forget things like this.” The best way to see the Perseids meteor shower, according to Dr. Faherty, is to go to a location with a clear view of the entire night sky. Ideally you would go somewhere with dark skies, but she said the main thing to look for is a spot that offers a wide, unobstructed view. She said that even in a crowded city like New York you could still spot some of the flashes by going to a rooftop. The best time to watch is before dawn on Friday. Before getting their hopes up, stargazers should be warned that the weather and moonlight can obscure the show. If that happens, there are several livestreams of the event to watch, like one hosted by NASA and one hosted by Slooh , a global system of cameras and telescopes pointed at the sky. Still, Dr. Faherty suggests people get outside and try to see it for themselves. “It is worth waiting out there for an hour, two hours, three hours, four hours even to catch a glimpse of something like this,” she said. “When you get a good one, it will rival the stars in the sky.”
|
Meteors and Meteorites;Space;Comet
|
ny0221526
|
[
"business",
"global"
] |
2010/02/15
|
Battle Over Tax Data Heats Up Between Switzerland and Germany
|
BERLIN — If the German government wants to buy account data stolen from Swiss banks, then the Swiss accounts of German officials and other public figures should also be exposed, according to the head of an influential lobby that represents the interests of Swiss taxpayers. “If Germany buys stolen bank data, we will work for a change in the law so that the complete Swiss accounts of German people holding public office have to be disclosed,” Alfred Heer, the president of the Swiss Taxpayers Association, said over the weekend. Mr. Heer, a legislator and member of the rightist Swiss People’s Party, told the German newspaper Bild am Samstag that he and his party would seek to have the law changed so that such banking information could be published. Swiss legislators would be extremely reluctant to amend a law that protects account holders. But Mr. Heer’s threats show the degree to which relations between Switzerland and Germany have deteriorated since a bank employee sold private account data to the German government earlier this month. The computer disc contained the names of 1,500 Germans with Swiss accounts who may have evaded taxation in their home country. Relations between the countries began to fray in 2008, when another bank employee sold account information to the German government. “Here we have a new form of bank robbery,” Pirmin Bischof, a Swiss lawmaker, told the German radio station Deutschlandfunk earlier this month. “Before, you had to go to the bank and get hold of the money with a weapon. Today you can do it electronically by stealing data.” Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, said his government paid €2.5 million, or $3.5 million, for the disc this month. Since then, the state of Baden-Württemberg has been offered another disc containing 2,000 names. According to the daily newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau, the disc contains information from UBS and Credit Suisse. The state of Bavaria is considering buying yet another collection of data that could lead to supposed tax cheats. The issue has strained relations so much between Germany and Switzerland — and has encouraged other countries to support Germany — that finance ministers from Germany, Liechtenstein, Austria, Luxembourg and Switzerland met Sunday evening in Luxembourg in an attempt to find some compromise on the issue before it escalates. “It is an informal dinner to discuss the Swiss issue and other topics. Mr. Schäuble will be attending,” a German Finance Ministry official said Sunday. “I do not expect any concrete results.” At issue is how to deal with rogue employees who are prepared to offer account information on any number of people who hold accounts in Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, countries that defend bank secrecy. Governments across Europe face the difficult choice of buying the stolen information — which could be illegal and also expose the states to lawsuits from the account holders — or refusing to deal with such information at all. A German real estate broker was awarded €7.5 million in damages by a Liechtenstein court last month. The broker, Elmar Bernhard Schulte, had been named on a disc of stolen account data that an employee of a bank in Liechtenstein had sold to the German Finance Ministry in 2008. The Luxembourg court said the bank should have warned Mr. Schulte so he could have come forward to settle with German authorities. “I can only advise anyone who thinks he may have evaded taxes in the past to use the provisions in our tax code to declare it voluntarily,” Mr. Schäuble said recently. The issue has deeply divided Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right coalition government. Mrs. Merkel supports plans to buy bank account data even if it is stolen, a popular stance in Germany. According to officials of her party, the Christian Democratic Union, she does not want the party to be identified as one that supports rich crooks. But her coalition partners, the Free Democrats, say that by buying stolen data, the government would benefit from a crime and might encourage more people to try to obtain account data illegally. “This is about the rule of law,” said the party’s leader, Guido Westerwelle, who is also the vice chancellor and foreign minister. On Sunday he offered to mediate between the German and Swiss governments. Even inside her own party, Mrs. Merkel has faced criticism. “The state should use all legal means to arrest the man who has stolen the data,” said Kurt Lauk, chairman of the Christian Democratic Union’s economics council. Günter Krings, the deputy leader of the party’s parliamentary faction, warned about taking illegal action by buying stolen information. He said in a newspaper interview, because the price of the data would go up once the German government had established a market for it. Siegfried Kauder, chairman of the Parliament’s judiciary committee and also a member of the Christian Democrats, advised against a deal. “We’re sending data thieves a message: if you steal, we’ll buy it off you,” he said.
|
Switzerland;Germany;Taxation;Tax Evasion;Merkel Angela
|
ny0147293
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2008/07/08
|
Britain: Accord in Missing Girl Case
|
A British police department reached an agreement with the parents of Madeleine McCann to provide them with 80 pieces of information from its investigation into her disappearance from a resort town in Portugal last year. In return for the Leicestershire police force’s agreeing to release the information, Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, agreed to abandon a lawsuit seeking release of all information held by the department. Madeleine vanished from the family’s apartment in Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007, shortly before her fourth birthday.
|
Great Britain;McCann Madeleine;Police
|
ny0235803
|
[
"business"
] |
2010/01/23
|
Supplier Accused of Bribes for U.N. Contracts
|
Last year, according to people briefed on the case, a Florida businessman went undercover to play the part of a corrupt sales executive in a foreign bribery sting that led to nearly two dozen arrests and 16 indictments announced earlier this week. On Friday, the executive was accused by prosecutors of playing the same role in real life — paying bribes from 2001 to 2006 to get contracts to supply helmets, armored vests, pepper spray and other protective gear to United Nations peacekeeping forces and a Dutch law enforcement agency. The accusations in the new case were made in documents filed by the Justice Department in Federal District Court in Washington. The defendant is Richard T. Bistrong, identified in the court record as a former vice president for international sales at a military and law enforcement equipment manufacturer in Jacksonville, Fla. His employer was named in the document only as “Company A.” But during the years covered by the allegations against Mr. Bistrong, public records show that he worked at Armor Holdings, a manufacturer in Jacksonville that is now a subsidiary of BAE Systems of Britain. John Suttle, senior vice president for corporate communications at the American unit of BAE, confirmed that Mr. Bistrong had been employed at Armor and said he was fired before BAE acquired the company in 2007. Armor had “disclosed this to the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission,” he said, adding, “They did the right thing.” He emphasized that all of these events occurred before BAE bought the company. People briefed on the wide-ranging investigation confirmed that Mr. Bistrong was also the key intermediary identified as “Individual 1” in the 16 indictments released by Justice Department on Tuesday. Those indictments, built around an F.B.I. sting, accused nearly two dozen executives in the small arms and military equipment industry of paying bribes to undercover agents posing as representatives of an African nation. “Individual 1” handled the introductions and posed as the broker for the deals. That case was the first undercover sting aimed at violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a law that bars the payment of bribes to win foreign business. With 22 defendants, it was also the biggest individual foreign bribery prosecution by the Justice Department — and the new charges against Mr. Bistrong, identified as a main figure in the F.B.I. sting, reveal that a much larger investigation is under way than was previously disclosed. The latest court filing, called a criminal information, accuses Mr. Bistrong of conspiring with four other unidentified people in a scheme that began in June 2001. They were identified only as a “U.N. Agent,” a consultant for Company A, and two other Company A employees. A criminal information is typically filed when the defendant has waived indictment and is negotiating a plea agreement. Brady Toensing, a lawyer who represents Mr. Bistrong, joined government lawyers in a federal courtroom in Washington on Friday for what was expected to be a public hearing. Sitting with Mr. Toensing at the defense table was a tall, slender man in a dark suit. When Mr. Toensing and the government lawyers were called from the courtroom, that gentleman remained. Shortly thereafter, the hearing was canceled. A Justice Department spokeswoman said she could not comment on the purpose of the hearing or why it was canceled. “But the criminal information remains in the public record,” she said. According to that document, the object of this latest foreign bribery conspiracy was for Mr. Bistrong and “his co-conspirators” to increase the company’s revenue and enrich themselves by paying bribes to get and keep foreign business, concealing those bribes in the company’s books and avoiding the payment of necessary export licenses. As part of the conspiracy, the government asserts, Mr. Bistrong’s company agreed to pay the United Nations agent “a success fee” — a percentage of the value of any contract that the intermediary helped the company obtain. In exchange, the government claims, the United Nations agent rigged the bidding process to ensure that Mr. Bistrong’s company would win the 2001 and 2003 contracts to supply the United Nations with body armor. The total value of these contracts was approximately $6 million, according to the court documents. A similar arrangement was set up in June 2001 with a Rotterdam police procurement officer, according to the criminal information. In that case, the unidentified Dutch official provided Mr. Bistrong’s company with confidential information that enabled it to win a $2.4 million contract for pepper spray. The case against Mr. Bistrong adds a dash of politics to what was already a cinema-ready investigation. From 2004 to 2008, Mr. Bistrong was married to Ambassador Nancy Soderberg, a prominent foreign-policy specialist in the Clinton administration who served as a senior representative to the United States mission to the United Nations from 1997 until January 2001 — before any of the events cited in the criminal documents filed against her ex-husband. Ms. Soderberg declined to comment.
|
Bribery;Justice Department;Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (1977);BAE Systems PLC;United Nations;Federal Bureau of Investigation;Bistrong Richard T.;Armor Holdings
|
ny0277357
|
[
"science"
] |
2016/11/18
|
Drilling Into the Chicxulub Crater, Ground Zero of the Dinosaur Extinction
|
Some 66 million years ago an asteroid crashed into the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, triggering the extinction event that obliterated the dinosaurs and nearly extinguished all life on Earth. It struck with the same energy as 100 million atomic bombs, and left behind a 100-mile-wide scar known today as the Chicxulub crater. Now, a team of geophysicists has drilled into the gigantic cavity under the Gulf of Mexico, targeting a circular series of hills called a peak ring located at its center. What they discovered illustrates that powerful impacts can catapult materials buried deep in a planet’s crust much closer to its surface. “Chicxulub is the only crater on Earth with an intact peak ring that we can go sample, the next intact peak ring would be on the moon,” said Sean P. S. Gulick , a marine geophysicist from the University of Texas at Austin. “It’s ground zero of the Cretaceous extinction event.” Image After collecting core samples filled with limestone and remnants of broken and melted rock, the team suddenly retrieved cores with pink granite. Credit D. Smith/European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling Dr. Gulick and his colleague Joanna Morgan , a geophysicist from Imperial College London, led a team of more than 30 researchers representing 12 countries to drill into the Chicxulub crater. By drilling into stone beneath the ocean’s surface, they discovered that the peak rings were made of granite, which is usually found much deeper in Earth’s crust. They concluded that the asteroid impact was so strong it lifted sediment from the basement of Earth’s crust several miles up to its surface. “These rocks behaved like a fluid for a short period of time, and rocks don’t tend to do that,” said Dr. Morgan. “It’s a very dramatic process when you form a large crater.” The team’s results, which were published Thursday in the journal Science , may help end a debate over how the Chicxulub crater formed in the minutes following the colossal collision. Their research could lend support to the dynamic collapse model theory, which suggests that the asteroid impact was so powerful it shocked the rocks deep in Earth’s crust and caused them to shoot up before collapsing down to the surface to produce peak rings. Their findings pose a challenge for another model that suggests that the peak rings were formed from the melting of the upper parts of the crust. Image Core samples recovered from the Chicxulub crater showing that its peak rings were made of granite that most likely originated deep in the Earth’s crust. Credit D. Smith/European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling “The other model can’t be correct given what we’ve found,” said Dr. Gulick. He said the theory may also explain how large craters found on the moon, Mercury and Venus formed. The Chicxulub crater is buried beneath 66 million years of sediments, and if you were to look at it today you would see that half of it is underwater and the other half is covered by rain forest. The team conducted their work aboard a boat that was converted into a drilling station that was about 40 feet above the Gulf of Mexico, standing on three pillarlike legs. In order to get to the peak ring, the team needed to drill through about 60 feet of water and then through about 2,000 feet of limestone and other sediment that had accumulated since the impact. As they dug into the crust they collected drill cores, which were 10-feet-long cylindrical samples of rock pulled up by the drill. For a while, the team kept pulling up drill cores filled with limestone and remnants of broken and melted rocks called breccia. “It was limestone, limestone, limestone, breccia. And then suddenly pink granite!” said Dr. Gulick. “It was exhilarating, it looks like your classic pink granite countertop.” They reached the peak ring’s granite around 2,500 feet below sea level, but they think it may have originated from crust that may have been more than 25,000 feet deep before the impact. “That was the big find because that says that this peak ring didn’t come from something shallow at all,” said Dr. Gulick. “It had to come from deep because it’s made of deeply buried crustal rocks now at the surface.” The team made another find during their dig. They noticed that the granite samples they recovered were weaker and lighter than normal granite; some even crumbled in their hands. One of the team’s next steps is to figure out how exactly the rocks got to the point where they were so weak they could behave like a fluid.
|
Yucatan Peninsula;Asteroid;Earth;Geology;Science Advances;Sean P. S. Gulick;Joanna Morgan
|
ny0085143
|
[
"sports",
"ncaafootball"
] |
2015/10/25
|
Tie Score. F.S.U. Kicks. Georgia Tech Wins.
|
Lance Austin returned a blocked field-goal attempt 78 yards for a touchdown on the final play of the game, giving host Georgia Tech a stunning 22-16 upset of No. 9 Florida State on Saturday night. Roberto Aguayo, one of the most accurate kickers in college football, tried a 56-yard field goal to win the game for the Seminoles (6-1, 4-1 Atlantic Coast Conference) with six seconds remaining. But the kick was low, and Patrick Gamble got a hand on it. While most of the Yellow Jackets celebrated, Austin went back to retrieve the ball, which was rolling inside Georgia Tech’s 25-yard line. Yellow Jackets Coach Paul Johnson was yelling to his players that no one should touch it; he was content to go to overtime with the score tied at 16-16. At first, Austin seemed hesitant to pick it up. But he did, taking off the other way in front of the Georgia Tech bench. He avoided Aguayo’s diving tackle and then cut back on the final Florida State player with a chance to stop him to win the game for the Yellow Jackets (3-5, 1-4). Georgia Tech kicker Harrison Butker tied the score, 16-16, with his third field goal of the game, a 35-yarder, with 54 seconds left. U.S.C. 42, UTAH 24 Cameron Smith returned the second of his three interceptions 54 yards for a touchdown, and host Southern California handed No. 3 Utah its first loss. Ronald Jones II, Justin Davis and fullback Soma Vainuku rushed for scores to help the Trojans (4-3, 2-2 Pacific-12) halt a two-game skid and earn a victory for the interim coach Clay Helton in his debut at the Coliseum. Cody Kessler passed for 264 yards and a touchdown and rushed for another score, while JuJu Smith-Schuster had eight catches for 143 yards and a fourth-quarter touchdown that wrapped up the win. Britain Covey caught two touchdown passes for the Utes (6-1, 3-1), whose eight-game winning streak ended. OHIO STATE 49, RUTGERS 7 J. T. Barrett threw three touchdown passes and ran for two scores in his first start of the season, leading No. 1 Ohio State (8-0, 4-0 Big Ten) past Rutgers (3-4, 1-3) and ensuring at least two weeks of quarterback stability for the Buckeyes. Ohio State, which extended its winning streak to 21 games, heads into its off week with little doubt who the starting quarterback will be when Minnesota visits Columbus on Nov. 7. Cardale Jones had started the first seven games of the season at quarterback for the Buckeyes. BAYLOR 45, IOWA STATE 27 Shock Linwood ran for 171 yards and a touchdown and caught a pass for another score, helping No. 2 Baylor (7-0, 4-0 Big 12) beat Iowa State (2-5, 1-3) for its 20th consecutive home win, the longest such streak in the Football Bowl Subdivision. Corey Coleman had two touchdown catches — it was his sixth game with multiple scores — and pushed his total to 18, which leads the F.B.S. Image Pittsburgh’s Qadree Ollison, center, ran for 98 yards in a 23-20 victory over Syracuse. Credit Brett Carlsen/Getty Images CLEMSON 58, MIAMI 0 No. 6 Clemson (7-0, 4-0 A.C.C.) handed host Miami (4-3, 1-2) its worst defeat in the program’s 90-year history. Deshaun Watson threw for a touchdown and ran for another, while Wayne Gallman rushed for 118 yards and a touchdown for the Tigers. Stacy Coley had eight catches for 54 yards for the Hurricanes. There was booing and a “Fire Golden” chant aimed at Coach Al Golden from the sparse crowd even before the first quarter ended, and the stands were largely empty midway through the third quarter. MICHIGAN STATE 52, INDIANA 26 Connor Cook threw for 398 yards and four touchdowns, and No. 7 Michigan State (8-0, 4-0 Big Ten) pulled away from visiting Indiana (4-4, 0-4). Cook fell just short of the team record of 400 yards passing, set by Bill Burke in 1999 against Michigan. The Spartans never trailed in the second half, but it was close until Cook found R. J. Shelton for a 10-yard touchdown pass with 4 minutes 57 seconds remaining to give Michigan State a 12-point lead. The Spartans then tacked on two more touchdowns to avoid an upset. ALABAMA 19, TENNESSEE 14 Derrick Henry’s 14-yard touchdown run with 2:24 left vaulted No. 8 Alabama (7-1, 4-1 Southeastern Conference) over visiting Tennessee (3-4, 1-3). Alabama’s aggressive defense recorded two straight sacks, and Ryan Anderson knocked the ball loose from Volunteers quarterback Joshua Dobbs to preserve the win and the Crimson Tide’s national title hopes. Alabama got plenty of help, with Tennessee missing three long field-goal attempts. OKLAHOMA STATE 58, KANSAS 10 The backup quarterback J. W. Walsh ran for three touchdowns and passed for two more to help No. 14 Oklahoma State (7-0, 4-0 Big 12) rout visiting Kansas (0-7, 0-4). Mason Rudolph completed 20 of 26 passes for 305 yards and had a touchdown for the Cowboys. MISSISSIPPI 23, TEXAS A&M 3 Chad Kelly threw for 241 yards and two touchdowns, and No. 24 Mississippi (6-2, 3-1 SEC) used a dominant defense to beat No. 15 Texas A&M (5-2, 2-2). Laquon Treadwell caught five passes for 102 yards and a touchdown for the Rebels, and Jaylen Walton finished with 97 yards rushing. OKLAHOMA 63, TEXAS TECH 27 Samaje Perine ran for 201 yards and four touchdowns, helping Sooners quarterback Baker Mayfield top his old team, as No. 17 Oklahoma (6-1, 3-1 Big 12) pounded visiting Texas Tech (5-3, 2-3). Mayfield transferred from Texas Tech after his freshman season in 2013 and had to sit out last year because the university blocked his ability to play right away. TOLEDO 51, MASSACHUSETTS 35 Phillip Ely recovered from a poor start and threw four of his five touchdown passes in the second half as No. 19 Toledo (7-0, 4-0 Mid-American Conference) stormed back from an 18-point deficit to top Massachusetts (1-6, 0-3) in Foxborough. HOUSTON 59, CENTRAL FLORIDA 10 Kenneth Farrow ran for 167 yards and three touchdowns, and No. 21 Houston (7-0, 4-0 American Athletic Conference) crushed host Central Florida (0-8, 0-4). DUKE 45, VIRGINIA TECH 43 Thomas Sirk threw four touchdown passes and ran for a 2-point conversion in the fourth overtime to propel No. 23 Duke (6-1, 3-0 A.C.C.) past host Virginia Tech (3-5, 1-3). PITTSBURGH 23, SYRACUSE 20 Chris Blewitt kicked a 25-yard field goal as time expired to lift No. 25 Pittsburgh (6-1, 4-0 A.C.C.) at Syracuse (3-4, 1-2).
|
College football;Baylor University;Clemson;University of Miami;Iowa State
|
ny0241079
|
[
"business"
] |
2010/12/22
|
Watching the Costs in a Buyout Revival
|
The buyout industry should slowly emerge from its fund-raising drought in 2011. Investors will be more inclined to put money into private equity after having more capital returned to them in 2010. But it is still a buyer’s market, and the time is ripe for investors to push hard to overhaul the fees they pay. It took the last seven quarters to match the $365 billion the global private equity industry raised from investors in the first six months of 2008, according to the research firm Preqin. There could be fresh momentum after an uptick in successful sales of investments in 2010 and with big initial public offerings of HCA, Nielsen and Toys “R” Us among those teed up. But it still won’t be easy for buyout firms to raise new capital. The Blackstone Group provides a cautionary tale. That blue-chip buyout shop expects to close its sixth fund after raising nearly $15 billion. It’s an impressive sum, but only about two-thirds of its last effort. Meanwhile after a good year, BC Partners, the European firm, is ambitiously gunning to raise 6 billion euros, only a little more than the fund it closed in 2005. Rivals that lack the profile and investment record of such industry giants will struggle to get anywhere near what they have raised before. Even the best of breed, however, could find themselves over a barrel if investors choose to use their negotiating leverage. Again, Blackstone provides some insight, at least on a small scale. The firm agreed to share 65 percent of any deal-related fees with its limited partners, up from 50 percent. That’s nice, but there’s more chiseling to be done. First, investors should pound away at management fees. Most firms take out 1.5 percent, even on funds that aren’t yet invested — and that has always seemed steep. Second, the distribution of so-called carried interest should be revisited. As it stands, buyout bosses immediately start receiving their 20 percent cut of increased valuations. Consider a $1 billion fund with 10 investments of $100 million. If the first portfolio company is sold for $200 million, $180 million is returned to investors. But the firm’s managers also extract $20 million — even though investors have yet to be made whole on their full commitments. With many buyout firms fighting for survival and others hard-up for fresh funds, investors have an opportunity to reform the private equity model in their favor. Soft on Portugal Sometimes ratings agencies don’t see trouble coming at all. More often they spot risks but are reluctant to draw ugly conclusions. Just consider Moody’s comments as it put Portugal on negative watch on Tuesday. The agency noted concerns about Portugal’s “long-term economic vitality.” Yet it also said the European nation’s solvency was “not in question.” Moody’s pointed out that the bond market had remained open to the country, while recognizing that its cost of debt was “elevated.” Far more elevated, it might have said, than six months or a year ago. That gradual increase in financing costs is what tends to happen as a country heads toward crisis. Portugal’s big macroeconomic problem is indeed a lack of vitality. The economy struggled to grow even in the first seven happy years of the euro when the government ran a cheaply financed deficit and the banks were able to tap euro zone capital markets at extraordinarily low interest rates. The task now is to generate the revenue needed to service all that accumulated debt even as the government imposes austerity measures. The challenge is all the greater because the debt burden is so large. The government has made little progress in improving its fiscal position. Debt is estimated to exceed 80 percent of gross domestic product. Keeping within a still large fiscal deficit of 7.3 percent of G.D.P., as a goal for this year, looks like a struggle. That deficit will add to the country’s debt. In 2011 recession is likely, and growth prospects after that look poor. Portugal lacks a strong industrial base and does not look competitive. Even with the country in recession the trade deficit is big, which implies a need for external funding. Portugal’s lenders are, as Moody’s says, reliant on the European Central Bank. Portugal seems almost certain to require a bailout, and that would provide short-term relief. But without some fresh catalyst, the long-term vitality problem that Moody’s identifies will remain unsolved. JEFFREY GOLDFARB and IAN CAMPBELL
|
Private Equity;Economic Conditions and Trends;Blackstone Group The;Portugal
|
ny0256234
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2011/08/16
|
Yankees’ Burnett Ends August Skid
|
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In a major league career that began in 1999, A. J. Burnett had won 23 games in August before Monday, more than in any other month except July, in which he also has 23 victories. But since joining the Yankees for their championship season of 2009, Burnett had never managed to win in August. In 13 starts as a Yankee in those overheated days, Burnett had gone 0-8 with a 7.18 earned run average, and this year he could not win in July either. But on an unusually cool evening in which the game-time temperature was a very un-August-like 74 degrees, Burnett pitched as if it were April, the month in which he has a career-low 3.84 earned run average and the highest winning percentage (.667). Perhaps it has just been the weather. Burnett did not make it out of the sixth inning Monday, but with the Yankees’ offense producing, he pitched well enough to win. Derek Jeter knocked in three runs and collected three hits, including a two-run triple in the sixth inning, as the Yankees beat the Royals, 7-4, in front of 24,879 at Kauffman Stadium for Burnett’s first win since June 29. “It feels good,” Burnett said. “It makes you feel like you’re a part of it.” Burnett was removed from the game with two outs in the sixth, even though he had thrown only 88 pitches. But Manager Joe Girardi wanted the left-hander Boone Logan to face the left-handed-hitting Mike Moustakas. Burnett would have preferred to remain in the game, but he could not argue with the ultimate outcome. “You can’t fight city hall,” he said. “Skip’s got a reason for everything.” The skipper, Girardi, did have a good reason. Moustakas came into the game batting .080 against lefties, and Girardi also wanted to make sure Burnett left the game on a positive note. As he walked off the mound, Burnett was called back by Jeter, who whispered something in the pitcher’s ear. After watching videotape of a previous start, Burnett was concerned that he might have been exposing his grip on certain pitches to runners on second base. So he made a slight adjustment and asked Jeter to check whether he could see anything, and Jeter could not. Burnett also acknowledged that he might not have won the game had it not been for the seven runs produced by the Yankees, including Jeter, who hit his third triple of the year. Since returning from the disabled list July 4, he is batting .326 (45 for 138). The game also featured the return of Mariano Rivera, who pitched his first scoreless inning after three dubious outings to settle any nerves about his ability. Rivera, of course, was not worried at all. “Nah,” he said with a smile after earning his 31st save. “Believe me.” Burnett lasted five and two-thirds innings and surrendered 10 hits and 3 runs. He also issued one critical walk in the fifth inning, when all the runs were charged to him. The fifth was the kind of inning that has been so maddening for Burnett, although it did not end up costing him the victory. After getting the first out, he allowed the next five Royals to reach base as three runs scored and Kansas City took a 3-2 lead. Moustakas, Alcides Escobar and Alex Gordon all singled to right field to load the bases. That was followed by perhaps the most annoying sequence for Burnett. Burnett went ahead of Melky Cabrera, 0-2, then proceeded to walk him on a 3-2 curveball to force in the Royals’ first run. Then designated hitter Billy Butler rocked a single to right field, scoring two more runs. Burnett was saved from more damage, though, when Robinson Cano, Jeter and Mark Teixeira combined on a well-executed double play. Burnett pumped his fist at the play’s completion, then watched from the dugout as his teammates got it all back for him in the top of the sixth. Jorge Posada, coming off his grand slam and six-R.B.I. game on Saturday, singled down the left-field line and went to third on Russell Martin’s single to right. Brett Gardner followed with another single to right that scored Posada and evened the game, 3-3, bringing Jeter to the plate. By then Royals starter Felipe Paulino had thrown 104 pitches and was showing signs of caving in. Jeter ripped a 1-1 pitch deep into the gap in right-center for a triple, scoring Martin and Gardner to give the Yankees a 5-3 lead. Jeter would help add to that lead in the eighth. After the Royals scored on Cabrera’s double to make it 6-4 in the bottom of the seventh, Jeter singled in the eighth, stole second and scored on Teixeira’s single to center. By then Burnett could just about count on his first victory in six weeks, and first in August since joining the Yankees. As he said, it felt good, but not good enough for a victory pie in the face. “No way,” he said. “Maybe a cupcake. You’ve got to do better than three runs in five and two-thirds for a pie.” INSIDE PITCH Freddy Garcia’s cut right index finger is improving, he said, and he hopes to throw a bullpen session Tuesday or Wednesday to test it out. Garcia, who had been scheduled to start Sunday, said he cut the finger “cutting stuff around the house” last week, but was vague about the specifics. “He said he did it in the kitchen, with a knife,” Joe Girardi said. “The bottom line is, how he did it exactly, if he was cutting a pear, a piece of celery or whatever it was, a steak; it doesn’t really matter. The bottom line is his finger is cut and he can’t throw his split and we have to wait for it to heal.” ... Playing in his second consecutive game, Jorge Posada was 1 for 2 with a walk and scored two runs as the designated hitter.
|
Baseball;New York Yankees;Kansas City Royals;Burnett A J;Jeter Derek
|
ny0285700
|
[
"business",
"dealbook"
] |
2016/09/09
|
Regulators Seek Tighter Curbs on Investments by Big Banks
|
Regulators are seeking to impose further restrictions on the ability of Wall Street banks to make risky investments with their own money. If the new rules proceed, banks will be prohibited from buying and selling commodities, like copper, and would have to shut down what remains of their in-house private equity operations. The biggest banks have already been scaling back these businesses, but Goldman Sachs continues to have significant operations in these areas. Most of the recommendations are unlikely to take effect soon because they would need to be passed by Congress. But the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is moving to immediately prohibit banks from buying and selling copper. The proposed rules were in a long-awaited report released Thursday from the three largest banking regulatory agencies: the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The agencies were required to issue the report by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial overhaul . The report was supposed to be completed years ago. The most significant new rules were proposed by the Federal Reserve, which oversees all of the nation’s largest banks. Image A report by the regulatory agencies focused on the role that banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley play in the physical commodities market, owning oil tankers and coal mines. Credit Richard Drew/Associated Press The Fed suggested that Congress bar banks from getting involved in the physical commodities markets, which a 1999 law allowed Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to do. The Fed also said that Congress should prohibit banks from so-called merchant banking, which generally involves owning large, private equity-like stakes in outside companies. These sorts of activities have already been restricted by the so-called Volcker Rule in Dodd-Frank, which prohibits banks from making many types of speculative bets with their own money. These investments have been further restricted by the annual regulatory stress tests, which essentially penalize banks for owning illiquid assets. But the banks’ continuing role in these markets was put under the spotlight by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 2014 . A report from the committee focused , in particular, on the role that banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley play in the physical commodities market, owning oil tankers and coal mines. Morgan Stanley said at the time that it was selling these businesses, but Goldman Sachs stated its intention to continue with its operations. Spokesmen for each bank declined to comment on the new report. The most consequential recommendation from the report, if Congress moved ahead on it, is the proposed ban on merchant banking activity. This would probably make it all but impossible for the banks to run their in-house private equity funds, in which they generally have ownership stakes. The Fed said in the new report that the merchant banking operations pose risks to the “safety and soundness” of the banking system.
|
Dodd Frank;Goldman Sachs Group;Morgan Stanley;Commodity;Private equity;Banking and Finance;FDIC;Office of the Comptroller of the Currency;Federal Reserve
|
ny0247375
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2011/05/27
|
Belarus: Ex-Presidential Candidates Are Sentenced
|
Belarus sentenced two former presidential candidates to lengthy prison terms on Thursday for organizing a large protest against elections held in December that independent observers said were tainted by widespread fraud. The former Soviet republic’s authoritarian president won the election. The two former candidates, Nikolai Statkevich and Dmitri Uss, received six and five-and-a-half year sentences, respectively. The convictions came a day after President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko suggested that he might free his political opponents, remarks broadly interpreted as a signal to the West that he might be willing to negotiate to secure a badly needed loan. But the convictions seemed to indicate the president’s hard line would not soon soften.
|
Belarus;Lukashenko Aleksandr G;Sentences (Criminal);Politics and Government
|
ny0134941
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2008/04/16
|
All Rise! A Centenarian Will Analyze the Supreme Court
|
Ruth Proskauer Smith has a crosstown bus to catch, on the corner of 72nd Street and Central Park West. She is 100 years old, she got her first lesson in public speaking from Gov. Alfred E. Smith in 1928, and she now teaches a class on Tuesdays about the United States Supreme Court. Come along, but don’t be late. “The schedule says 9:20,” she warns. “If you’re not there when the bus comes, I’m getting on it anyway.” Tuesday morning, she stood outside the Dakota, her home since 1962. About 90 years ago, as a girl growing up a few blocks away, she regularly came eye-to-eye with the fierce, wrought-iron creatures — it is hard to say if they are serpents or sea horses — entwined along the building’s fence. “I used to roller skate up here from 69th Street,” Mrs. Smith said. “All the gargoyles on the outside fences terrified us.” She cannot name a fear now. Four mornings a week, Mrs. Smith catches the bus to the No. 1 train, then rides to Rector Street, to a downtown branch of City College that houses Quest ( www.questonline.org ), a group of retired men and women who teach themselves. On days that she is not giving her Supreme Court class, she might be taking a course on the plays of Edward Albee, or international affairs, or ethics and morality. There are no tests, no homework, no attendance requirements, yet the seats in 30 different classes are filled by people who want to stay mentally nimble. That still leaves the matter of getting downtown. “My children are furious because I take the subway and won’t take taxis,” she said. And why won’t she? “I just get so mad when I’m stuck in traffic and the meter keeps ticking up,” Mrs. Smith said. Among her fellow students and teachers, Mrs. Smith is the eldest. She is as clear-eyed about the Supreme Court’s 2008 docket as she is about New York in the early days of the 20th century. The family home on 69th Street was heated with coal that sluiced into the house on a chute; she rode the Ninth Avenue El before it was torn down and the upper reaches of the street were renamed Columbus Avenue; in her girlhood, the horse-drawn traffic was so heavy that her mother counseled her on what to do if a horse bolted and ran her way. (“Go into the nearest doorway,” Mrs. Smith said). Her father, Joseph M. Proskauer, was close to Governor Smith, who led investigations of workplace horrors like the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, supported immigrants and created an activist government that Franklin D. Roosevelt said was the model for the New Deal. With Mr. Proskauer, a lawyer, at his side, Governor Smith ran for president in 1928. One night, they went to Boston. Ruth Proskauer, then a Radcliffe student, had been asked to make a speech on Governor Smith’s behalf at a rally. She confessed at dinner that she was in over her head. The governor offered a simple trick. “He said, ‘I’ll tell you what to do,’ ” Mrs. Smith said. “ ‘You just make this gesture’ — and that was a big swing of the right hand and raising your fist up in the air — ‘and that will be all you have to do.’ ” She married after college and divorced after World War II. Living in Massachusetts, she campaigned against the state’s prohibition on birth control. Later, in New York, she helped form a group that advocated abortion rights. Now, she backs right-to-die legislation, a cause her mother, Alice Naumburg Proskauer, took up in the 1930s. Mrs. Smith, who has two children, six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, lives alone. She will be 101 in August. “I eat what I want to,” she said. “I used to take my drinks, my evening drinks, with Walter Cronkite. Two or three martinis then. I can’t do that anymore.” On the No. 1 train, she threaded through the crowd and immediately sat down. A year ago, concerned about her balance, she started using a cane on the street. “I will say that now that I use the cane, I get a seat almost immediately,” she said. As the classroom filled for the Supreme Court session, she met with Martin Halpern, a retired tax lawyer who was making a presentation on the current members of the court. A bit nervously, Mr. Halpern remarked that he had almost never gone inside any courtroom — much less the Supreme Court — during his career. It was too late. Besides, he had read two books to prepare and attended a talk last week by Sandra Day O’Connor, retired from the court, and Justice Stephen Breyer. At the stroke of 10:30, Mrs. Smith stood. “The court is now in session,” she announced. She had no need of a gavel or even Al Smith’s big right uppercut: The room came to immediate order.
|
Aged;Adult Education;Smith Ruth Proskauer
|
ny0023925
|
[
"sports",
"football"
] |
2013/08/20
|
Baas Is in Doubt for Giants’ Opener
|
A knee injury to the Giants’ starting center, David Baas, will jeopardize his chances of being available for the team’s season-opening game Sept. 8, Giants Coach Tom Coughlin said Monday. “It’s a weekly thing,” Coughlin said of Baas, who injured his medial collateral ligament early in the Giants’ 20-12 preseason loss to the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday. “It depends how fast that whole injury and rehab goes.” Wide receiver Victor Cruz, who also left Sunday’s game early, has what appears to be a less serious injury, which the Giants called a heel contusion. Still, Cruz probably will not practice when the team resumes its training camp sessions Tuesday. Defensive end Justin Tuck, who batted down a pass in the Colts game and displayed some explosive moves pressuring the quarterback, has a slight hamstring strain. In some positive news for the team, Coughlin said that safety Antrel Rolle, who sprained his ankle in practice last week, was expected to return to practice this week. The Giants play the Jets on Saturday at MetLife Stadium. The injury to Baas could cause the Giants to shake up the offensive line. The left guard, Kevin Boothe, has played center. If Boothe is moved there, the Giants could shift right tackle David Diehl, who struggled in pass protection against the Colts, to guard. But that might mean that the untested rookie Justin Pugh would have to take over the right tackle spot. That is less likely, given Pugh’s inexperience. Sunday was his N.F.L. debut. There are other options, but the most simple solution would be allowing the backup Jim Cordle to take over for Baas, as he did for most of the game Sunday. Cordle has been a reserve for the Giants the last two seasons, playing in 25 games, mostly on special teams. Coughlin was noncommittal about plans for replacing Baas, who had a series of injuries last season but started every game. Image Victor Cruz has a heel contusion, the Giants said, and will probably miss practice time. Credit Bill Kostroun/Associated Press “I can’t give you any thoughts on that just yet,” he said. Besides the injuries, Coughlin said, he was most disappointed by the offense, which has been ineffective near the goal line and in third-down situations. “We haven’t scored any points; we haven’t scored any touchdowns,” he said. The Giants’ points Sunday came on four field goals. REDSKINS TOP STEELERS Rex Grossman completed 10 of 16 passes for 133 yards with a touchdown and an interception in Washington’s 24-13 preseason win over visiting Pittsburgh. Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins, the backup to Robert Griffin III, who is recovering from knee surgery, left after spraining his right foot. (AP) REVIS TAKES STEP FORWARD Buccaneers cornerback Darrelle Revis, acquired from the Jets and coming off knee surgery, began practicing with the first defensive unit. Revis said he expected to be ready for Tampa Bay’s season opener against the Jets. (AP) BILLS RELEASE KICKER Rian Lindell, the most accurate kicker in franchise history, was released after 10 years with Buffalo. Coach Doug Marrone said the rookie Dustin Hopkins, 22, a sixth-round pick, had won the team’s kicking competition. (AP) JAGUARS NAME QUARTERBACK Jacksonville Coach Gus Bradley named Blaine Gabbert as his starting quarterback. Gabbert, a former Missouri standout, will miss the rest of the preseason, however, because of a broken thumb sustained in Saturday’s 37-13 loss to the Jets. (AP) CHIEFS AND 49ERS DEAL AGAIN Kansas City sent wide receiver Jon Baldwin, the 26th overall choice in 2011, to San Francisco for wideout A. J. Jenkins, the 30th overall pick last year. It’s the second big trade between the teams this year. Earlier, the Chiefs sent two draft picks to San Francisco to acquire quarterback Alex Smith. (AP) TE’O SHEDS WALKING BOOT The rookie linebacker Manti Te’o, who sprained his right foot in the San Diego Chargers’ preseason opener, took a step forward in his recovery when he did side work with the team trainer without the cumbersome walking boot he had been wearing. Te’o, a second-round pick, has yet to return to practice. (AP)
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Football;Giants;David Baas;Victor Cruz
|
ny0112744
|
[
"sports",
"hockey"
] |
2012/02/12
|
Rangers Find Power Play and Handle the Flyers Again
|
PHILADELPHIA — Ryan Callahan rapped in a crisp pass from defenseman Michael Del Zotto for yet another Rangers power-play goal Saturday, and he and Del Zotto flashed bright smiles as they gathered to celebrate in front of Flyers goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky. Callahan later became the first Rangers player to score three goals in a game this year, punctuating a 5-2 victory over Philadelphia. But he was much more jubilant after his second goal, because he and Del Zotto had been working on such a play all season, without much success. “It was just nice to be able to connect on it,” Del Zotto said. The Rangers did a lot of connecting en route to their fifth victory in five games over the Flyers this season. The Rangers (35-13-5) found a new way to foil Philadelphia, pounding in a season-high three power-play goals: two by Callahan, the other by Marian Gaborik. So much has gone right for the Rangers this season, but they have stumbled on the power play. The last time they scored more than one power-play goal was on Dec. 11 against Florida, and they were 5 of 68 in the 25 games since, tumbling to 27th in the league in the category. Asked after the game about the sudden power-play display, Rangers Coach John Tortorella said he had no good explanation, finally saying, “Some pucks went in that might not have gone in a couple of weeks ago for some of the guys.” With the Philadelphia tough guy Tom Sestito serving a double minor for roughing, Callahan scored the Rangers’ first goal at 8 minutes 25 seconds of the first period by taking a pass from Gaborik and knocking in a shot from a sharp angle over Bobrovsky’s right pad. Wayne Simmonds tied the score for the Flyers (31-17-7) less than five minutes later, but Gaborik tipped in a shot from the point by Brad Richards with Philadelphia’s Andrej Meszaros in the penalty box for hooking. “Today, it seemed like we moved the puck and kind of found that open guy,” said Gaborik, who also had three assists. Flyers forward Claude Giroux tied it at 6:36 of the second period by scoring on a breakaway, shoving the left arm of Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist with his stick while pushing in the puck for his 22nd goal. Less than two minutes later, however, Philadelphia’s Scott Hartnell knocked over Lundqvist while tracking down a rebound and received a borderline goaltender-interference penalty. Sixty-one seconds later, Callahan took a pass from Del Zotto and scored. “We felt it was coming,” Callahan said of the team’s success on the power play Saturday. “We knew we had guys who could execute. It was a matter of getting some bounces.” Fittingly, Callahan wore the increasingly less debonair Broadway Hat after his first hat trick since he scored four goals against the Flyers in a 7-0 victory March 6. But he said he had a lot of help. Richards had three assists, two on power-play goals. The Rangers did not score on three power plays in a 1-0 loss to the Devils on Tuesday at Madison Square Garden, but they felt much better about the chances they were getting. They were 1 for 3 with a man advantage Thursday in a 4-3 overtime victory against Tampa Bay. “We’ve been trying to focus on our own issues on the power play,” Richards said, before adding, “The last week or so, we’ve been worrying about ourselves.” Artem Anisimov and Callahan scored even-strength goals to fatten the Rangers’ lead on the scoreboard and in the standings. The Rangers lead the Atlantic Division by 6 points over the Flyers, whom the Rangers will play once more in the regular season. Philadelphia Coach Peter Laviolette seemed to be most bothered by Anisimov’s goal, which he said deflated his team for the rest of the game, although Simmonds and Zac Rinaldo got into third-period fights with Brian Boyle and Brandon Dubinsky, respectively. In response to a question about the Flyers’ not being able to match up with the Rangers, Laviolette unconvincingly replied: “Do I feel like we have enough talent? Yeah, I do.” But the Flyers lost again, and now the Rangers have jump-started what probably had been the least impressive part of their game. Lundqvist stopped 31 of 33 shots, but, for a change, the Rangers beat the Flyers at the other end, especially with a Flyer in the penalty box. “The biggest thing, I think, is confidence,” Lundqvist said of the team’s power play.
|
Hockey Ice;New York Rangers;Philadelphia Flyers;Callahan Ryan;Del Zotto Michael
|
ny0026643
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2013/01/20
|
Egyptian Court Drops Charges Against 379 in Street Protests
|
CAIRO (AP) — An Egyptian criminal court has invoked a presidential amnesty and dismissed charges against 379 people accused of taking part in deadly clashes with the police, a judge said Saturday. The charges stem from nearly two weeks of street fighting in downtown Cairo in November 2011 that left 42 people dead. Young protesters, mostly die-hard soccer fans known as Ultras, led demonstrations against the police near the Interior Ministry and Tahrir Square. They were demanding a timetable for the military officers who were then ruling the country to hand over power and hold presidential elections, and denouncing security crackdowns on sit-ins. The judge, Gamal Eddin Rushdi, said that his decision was based on the pardon issued late last year by President Mohamed Morsi. In Alexandria on Saturday, the police fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators throwing stones outside a courthouse where the city’s former security director and five police officers are on trial in connection with the killing of protesters during the 2011 uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak. Mohammad Ibrahim, the former security director, and the five officers are accused of using excessive violence against the protesters. Dozens of protesters gathered outside the courthouse on Saturday to denounce what they saw as a lack of accountability for the killing of protesters. Those who took part in the uprising say that Egypt’s legacy of police impunity and the use of brute force by security agencies cannot be ended without genuine political change. Nearly 100 police officers have been brought to trial in a string of cases since Mr. Mubarak was deposed on Feb. 11, 2011. All were acquitted or received suspended sentences on charges of killing and wounding protesters. Of more than 900 people killed nationwide in the anti-Mubarak protests, about 300 were reported to have died in Alexandria. Mr. Mubarak and his former interior minister were sentenced to life in prison for failing to stop the killings, but were granted a retrial this month.
|
Egypt;Decisions and Verdicts;Judiciary;Amnesties Commutations and Pardons
|
ny0134436
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2008/04/02
|
David Todd, Architect and Official, Dies at 93
|
David F. M. Todd, an architect of the towering Manhattan Plaza complex who later brought an imperturbable style to the chairmanship of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 93 and lived in a town house on the Upper East Side that has a garden of his own design. His death was announced by his son, Gregory. In effect, Mr. Todd had two careers: the first as an architect in private practice and the second, beginning at the age of 69, as a public official. He joined the landmarks commission in 1984 and was elevated to chairman in January 1989 by Mayor Edward I. Koch. Mr. Todd served in that post for the last year of the Koch administration. As controversies — and any number of large egos — swirled around him, Mr. Todd maintained a reserved, flinty, no-nonsense demeanor. His gravelly voice seemed ideally suited for his plain speaking. “He is an experienced architect who combines sense with sensibility,” said a New York Times editorial welcoming Mr. Todd’s appointment in 1989. “Further, he has the ability to distinguish landmarks from dross without abusing the city’s architectural heritage or giving in to obstructionism.” Mr. Todd assumed the post toward the end of a building boom, when the real estate industry was chafing and complaining steadily about landmarks designations and regulations. By his own account, he did not fit the mold of the ardent preservationist. “I am more tighter reined on the designation side,” he said in a 1989 interview. “I am more inclined toward architectural quality level as a decisive criterion. The historical or cultural sides can be stretched, strained and rationalized. To my mind, too many things can fit under those headings. “On the regulatory side, I’m looser reined,” Mr. Todd continued. “We sometimes have a tendency to view every landmark as an equally sacred object.” David Fenton Michie Todd was born on Feb. 22, 1915, in Middletown, Ohio. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1937 and received a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Michigan in 1940. Two years later, he married Suzanne Williams, who survives him. After Army service in the Pacific in World War II, Mr. Todd joined the architectural firm of Harrison, Ballard & Allen in 1946. In 1957 he became a partner in the renamed firm, Ballard, Todd & Snibbe, which after 1967 was known simply as David Todd & Associates. Its best-known project, completed in 1977, was Manhattan Plaza, which fills a square block bounded by 42nd and 43rd Streets and Ninth and 10th Avenues. The design, by Mr. Todd and Robert Cabrera, called for 45-story, red-brick apartment buildings on each end of the long block, with a low-rise structure between them. Even though the towers would dwarf the surrounding tenements, Mr. Todd said the plan actually deferred to the neighborhood to the north. “Larger structures in midblock would have cut the sunlight,” he said in 1974, “and would have destroyed the small scale of the midblock areas as well.” Among Mr. Todd’s other clients were Lehman College in the Bronx, the Collegiate School on the Upper West Side, the State University of New York, Princeton University and resorts in Puerto Rico and St. Martin. Public housing and the theater were his foremost interests as an architect. In 1965, Mr. Todd urged that money be spent for a higher quality of subsidized housing, indirectly criticizing officials who “trembled at the sight of stimulating and interesting designs on the ground that they ‘looked too expensive.’ ” Until Mr. Todd was 90, he and his wife spent almost half of each year in the village of Venasque in southern France. But he could also be found in his garden in the East 90s. “I’m really a housebody,” he said when he was named landmarks chairman. “I love tinkering. I love puttering. One thing that concerns me now is, who is going to keep up the house?”
|
Todd David;Architecture;Historic Buildings and Sites;Deaths (Obituaries);Landmarks Preservation Commission
|
ny0252106
|
[
"business",
"global"
] |
2011/11/18
|
Hip Cities That Think About How They Work
|
The story of young people, full of ambition, energy, skill and talent, moving to enticing cities that call to them like a siren’s song is as old as modern civilization. And in a world where national borders are easier to traverse, where more countries are joining the prosperous global middle class and where the cost of a one-way plane ticket is more affordable, young professionals probably have more cities to choose from than ever before. This survey is not based solely on quality of life, number of trees or the cost of a month’s rent. Instead, we examine some cities that aim to be both smart and well managed, yet have an undeniably hip vibe. Our pick of cities that are, in a phrase, both great and good: Auckland With its beaches, inlets and lush coastal climate, the Kiwi metropolis has always had great natural beauty going for it (and, now, for the first time in 24 years, it is the home to the World Cup Rugby Champions). But we digress. Currently counting 1.5 million residents , the government is projecting the city to hit the two million-mark in just 30 years. The city has recently voted to create a new central core that mixes sustainable housing and mixed-use development. The public transportation system, which includes subways, trams, busses and ferries, is constantly being expanded. Measures to increase the density of the urban landscape, meant to ultimately prevent encroachment on surrounding lands, as well as planting “green carpets” along urban roads demonstrate a keen eye toward creating a greener future. Plus, the city is expanding its free Wi-Fi coverage, according to a city official. Auckland is doing its best to “up their game with urban design,” said Angela Jones, a spokesperson for the city, turning a beautiful but provincial capital into a smart city. Berlin This culture capital combines low rents, a white-hot arts scene, good public transportation and myriad creative types — from media to design to technology — from all over the world. Known as Europe’s largest construction zone for at least 10 of the past 20 years, 4.4-million-strong Berlin has probably changed more in that time than any other large European city. And while the restaurants have become more expensive, the clothes are now more stylish and the D.J.’s have added more attitude, there is still plenty of real city left to be discovered by the thousands of artists and young professionals who move here every year to make this the pulsing center of Germany, the powerhouse of Europe. Besides radical renovations to the government center, main train station and the old Potsdamer Platz, the city recently turned a historic airport in its heart into a vast urban park. A short-term bike-rental system is in place and the old subway system, reunited after the fall of the wall, like the city itself, is as efficient as ever. Besides artists and bohemians looking for the vibe, the city — home to several prestigious universities, research institutes and many a company headquarter — is brimming with smart scientists and savvy businessmen. Barcelona Anyone who has walked down Las Ramblas on a summer evening or has stared at the Sagrada Familia for long enough understands why this city attracts planeloads of tourists. Music, good food, great weather and strong technology and service sectors compete to make this city of 1.6 million a home for all those who want to stay beyond summer break. If all the traditional charms of Barcelona were not enough, an active city government is trying to keep this city smart, too. Under its auspices, photovoltaic solar cells have been installed on many public and private rooftops. Charging stations for electrical cars and scooters have recently been set up around the city, in preparation for the day when residents will be tooling around in their electric vehicles . A biomass processing plant is being built that will use the detritus from city parks to generate heat and electricity, and free Wi-Fi is available at hotspots around the city. Cape Town Wedged between sea and mountain, Cape Town’s natural setting is stunning. Nor does the city — with its colorful neighborhoods, historic sites, and easy charm — disappoint. And while its one of Africa’s top tourist destinations, it also attracts many new residents from around the globe. The local government is trying to lead the growing city of 3.5 million with a more inclusive government and development structure, to overcome the gross inequities of South Africa’s past. Four major universities and many research institutes make Cape Town one of the continent’s bustling research centers. Named the 2014 World Design Capital last month, the city government is encouraging a cluster of design and creative firms in a neighborhood called the Fringe. The 2010 World Cup of soccer was a boon for infrastructure, especially public transportation. A new bus system, with dedicated lanes, has been rolled out in recent years to keep the many suburbs connected and alleviate crushing traffic. Under a program called Smart Cape, libraries and civic centers have computer terminals with free Internet access. Poverty and crime are still issues in Cape Town, but overall quality of life indicators rank the city as one of the best in Africa. Copenhagen Progressive, cozy and very beautiful, the young and the elegant flock to this northern light. Rents might not be as low as in other hip cities, but the social infrastructure in this metropolitan area of 1.9 million cannot be beat. Offering a prosperous blend of art, culture and scene, this highly tolerant city is attracting young professionals lucky enough to work in the center of Danish industry and commerce. A mix of stately old European buildings and modern, green-oriented architecture speaks of a city that treasures the old but loves experimenting with the new. Despite its cool Scandinavian climate, the Danish capital might just be the most bicycle-friendly city in the world. Bike superhighways crisscross the city, and statistics show that more than a third of the city’s inhabitants commute to work or school on their trusty two-wheelers. A metro system was inaugurated in the last decade for those who choose to go without. With sunlight-flooded underground stations and clean, driverless subway cars, the system looks more like a people-mover at an international airport than an urban transport system. Having committed itself to reducing carbon levels by 20 percent before 2015, some of the city’s power is generated by wind. The city has been so successful in cleaning up its once-industrial harbor that it has been able to open three public baths in a harbor waterway. Curitiba, Brazil One of the smartest cities in Latin America, Brazil’s wealthy regional capital attracts many new inhabitants with jobs in service and production sectors, and with the promise a functioning city. The 1.7 million residents have access to a bus-based rapid transport system so good that more than 700,000 commuters use it daily. Buses run on designated lanes that, because of a unique and modern urban design, have right-of-way and preferred access to the city center. A beautiful botanical garden and other city parks, along with other strong environmental measures, keep the air largely clear of pollution, despite Curitiba’s land-locked location. The city strives to be sustainable in other ways, too. According to reports, it recently invested $106 million, or 5 percent, of its budget into its department of environment. The city government makes itself integral in the lives of Curitibans, not just seeking comment and feedback on policies, but also organizing a host of events. “Bike Night” is the latest craze in the active city. Each Tuesday, residents take to their bikes and peddle through the night, accompanied by municipal staff members. Montreal With its hearty French and North American mix, this city of 3.6 million has a real soul thanks to low living costs and long winter evenings. And it is no slouch when it comes to good food, hip culture, well-appointed museums and efficient transportation. With four major universities and plenty of bars, the nightlife in this bilingual city has a well-deserved reputation. Because the winters tend to be long and cold, the city possesses an extensive underground network connecting several downtown malls and a subterranean arts quarter. When spring finally does arrive, and snow is cleared from the many bike paths, the city puts out its 3,000 short-term-rental bicycles, known as Bixi. City-sponsored community gardens are sprouting around town, giving urbanites a chance to flex their green thumb. Montreal is an incredibly active town where festivals celebrating everything from jazz to Formula One dominate the city’s calendar during the summer. Thanks to Mount Royal, a large central park and cemetery that serves as cross-country, snowshoe and ice-skating terrain in the winter and becomes a verdant picnic ground and gathering spot in the summer, Montrealers never have to leave city limits. Santiago A vibrant mix of Latin American culture and European sensibility, this Chilean city is modern, safe and smart. The rapidly growing city of 6.7 million — , which, perhaps surprisingly, was first subject to urban planning mandates in the mid-20th century — is still ahead of others in South America when it comes to urban governance. A law curtailing urban sprawl and protecting the few natural spaces close to the city is exemplary. Beautiful old cultural jewels like the library and fine art museum are dwarfed by serious commercial skyscrapers. The smell of local food , good and inexpensive, brings life even to the streets of its financial district. One of the most extensive public transport systems on the continent whisks more than 2.3 million commuters to and from work or school every day. Because of its high altitude, pollution is a problem — one that the national government is trying to curb with various green initiatives. Short-term bike rentals exist in one of the more active parts of town, and significant city funds have been used to construct bicycle lanes. For a city this modern, however, Santiago has few parks. But the ocean is just a short drive to west and the mountains to the east. Shanghai China’s commercial heart has grown tremendously in the past couple of decades. Attracting young professionals with its jobs and opportunities rather than with museums and hip nightlife, this megacity of 23 million is surprisingly smart. Its top-down urban planning approach is efficient in a city made up of separate 16 districts and one county. City coffers are put to use building enormously ambitious infrastructure, like a deepwater port, tunnels, bridges and roadways. A good indicator for the rapid and deliberate growth of the city is the metro system. First opened in 1995, it is now the world’s longest subway network, according to city officials. Adding a futuristic aspect to the utilitarian system is a Maglev (magnetic levitation) line that connects the airport to the city, and on which the train travels at speeds of up to 431 kilometers, or 268 miles, per hour. But Shanghai’s urban development is also green. The city claims that it put the equivalent of $8 billion into environmental improvement and cleanup, which include sewage treatment systems but also an impressive number of city parks. In addition, Shanghai has made its city government more accessible by running a Web site were residents can find municipal information, and read a blog entitled “mayor’s window.” Vilnius, Lithuania One of the greenest of the former Eastern bloc capitals, Vilnius has a forward-thinking city government. In a recent Internet video that spread virally, the mayor, Arturas Zuokas, is seen crushing a Mercedes parked on a bike path with a tank . Beyond the obvious political theater of the stunt, the city, whose metropolitan area population is 850,000 takes providing good public transportation seriously. A recent study suggested that some 70 percent of the capital’s citizens either walk, bike or take the bus. Vilnius, a verdant city that despite some communist architectural clunkers is charmingly medieval and surprisingly well maintained, boasts an old town that is a Unesco world heritage site. After the fall of the old regime, the city took great pains to retool its waste disposal systems, building a modern landfill in 2005. The capital attracts young professionals, and not just from Eastern Europe, who see in Vilnius a rising star in business and appreciate all that the extensive cultural scene in the little capital has to offer.
|
Urban Areas;Infrastructure (Public Works);Ecology and Environment Inc;Politics and Government;Local Government;Sustainable Living
|
ny0190546
|
[
"business"
] |
2009/05/01
|
Even Now, Berkshire Is a Brand Name
|
Berkshire Hathaway shareholders are on their way to Woodstock. Or rather, they are heading for Omaha and the company’s annual gathering, known as Woodstock for capitalists. Warren Buffett , the Berkshire boss who holds deceptively folksy court at these occasions, has changed the format to encourage more questions about the company’s business. Investors should take him up on that and listen. Through Mr. Buffett’s choices and market forces, Berkshire is changing. Shareholders don’t yet know the result of one of Mr. Buffett’s most important decisions: his successors. The influential investor is 78, and his longtime business partner, Charlie Munger, is 85. With his track record and public profile, Mr. Buffett is the epitome of the corporate “key man,” as Fitch Ratings pointed out in knocking Berkshire’s triple-A rating down a notch in March. Although Mr. Buffett’s chosen successors’ identities remain undisclosed, it’s a safe bet they know what they are doing. But they aren’t Mr. Buffett. Moreover, the leadership of Berkshire and the management of its investments will be separated, requiring some adaptation. The culture that brings 30,000-odd shareholders to Omaha every year will unavoidably change, too. Another important Buffett decision of late has been to expose Berkshire to big derivatives bets — $67 billion worth in terms of the worst-case exposure at the end of 2008. Despite having once called such instruments “financial weapons of mass destruction,” he appears to think they are safe enough in his hands. He recognizes the apparent double standard and brings to derivatives much of the common sense he applies to other investments. The types of contracts he has written — long-dated stock-index put options and credit-default swaps — are relatively straightforward, and he collects premiums up front to avoid the danger of trading partners running short of cash. So far, he has also limited expected losses, a fraction of the worst-case figure, to an amount Berkshire could easily handle. Even so, Berkshire’s recent performance will take some explaining. In recent years, the company has released quarterly earnings on the eve of the annual shareholder meeting. That would be this Friday, but the report is instead expected in a week. That’s the company’s prerogative and doesn’t necessarily signal any trouble. But with further losses anticipated, Mr. Buffett might be glad for the chance to explain his derivatives holdings to shareholders at Saturday’s meeting before the bald numbers are published. Another change is Berkshire’s growing vulnerability. The company looked good in the wake of the dot-com bust because Mr. Buffett avoided technology investments. But in the wake of global market turmoil centered on financial businesses, Berkshire’s shares have lost a third of their value in the past year, and its vaunted triple-A rating is gone. Berkshire suddenly looks like what it is: a largely unhedged equity investment vehicle with a focus on the financial sector. Its giant insurance businesses, which generate gobs of free investing capital in good times, don’t look so special at the moment, and its large stakes in American Express, Wells Fargo and the ratings agency Moody’s underline the finance focus. Then there are those out-of-the-money derivatives trades that, in hindsight, seem to have been badly timed. Along with the succession question, that may all help explain why Berkshire’s shares appear to be trading at a discount to the market value of the company’s holdings, even after allowing for stock market declines during the first quarter. That stocks have turned upward recently is one positive thought for those traveling to Omaha this weekend. But another development should also generate optimism among the Berkshire faithful: opportunities to invest on the cheap ought to be plentiful now. In his annual letter to shareholders, which showed 2008 to be his worst investing year on record, Mr. Buffett gleefully noted the disappearance of debt-financed private equity firms after the credit crisis (“they’re keeping their remaining funds very private,” he observed). Far less money is sloshing around markets. Partly as a result, Mr. Buffett picked up some good deals last year, including what now looks like a bargain $5 billion stake in Goldman Sachs. Berkshire still has strong credit and plenty of cash. And the sage is still around. After years in which few bargains were available and Berkshire’s size made meaningful deals hard to come by, Mr. Buffett has the chance to redeem himself. RICHARD BEALES
|
Buffett Warren E;Berkshire Hathaway Inc
|
ny0013892
|
[
"business"
] |
2013/11/24
|
Lynn Good of Duke Energy, on Effective Leaders
|
This interview with Lynn J. Good , chief executive of Duke Energy, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant . Q. Were you in leadership roles early on? A. No, I had a childhood that would be called ordinary. But my parents taught us about responsibility and instilled incredible confidence in us. My father was a World War II Marine who became a high school principal. He always had a heart for students who maybe were underprivileged or had difficulty of some sort. My mother was also a teacher; both had an incredible work ethic. They also told me that I didn’t need to pursue traditional roles. Other lessons from them? They demonstrated accountability to me through actions. When I was growing up, we had a widow living next door to us. So the habit was that if we went to the grocery store, we called her first. If we cut our yard, we cut her yard, no questions asked. When you graduated from college, did you have a clear idea of what you wanted to do? I went to work in accounting, at Arthur Andersen. At one point it was the crème de la crème. I wanted to work there because it looked like the hardest thing I could find, and I loved being on a steep learning curve. I progressed quickly, and two years out of college I was managing a small team of people. What did you learn from that experience? The beauty of it was that we worked together around a table. I could see when someone was frustrated or had a difficult meeting, so I could keep in touch with what was going on. I would typically stay after they left so I could get a gauge of the work they produced, so I had real-time feedback about whether an assignment was working, and I could adjust. The feedback loop was almost immediate, so I had a chance to practice. Have you heard feedback over the years about your leadership style that caused you to make some adjustments? I can be incredibly focused, and I can appear impatient. So I’ve learned to slow down, get to know people and provide more context. There’s nothing wrong with getting to the point pretty quickly, but it’s also helpful to give people an opportunity to talk about their work. Image Lynn Good, chief executive of Duke Energy, says effectiveness "comes from those qualitative things that give you the ability to network, communicate and lead people toward an outcome they can't see." Credit Earl Wilson/The New York Times You faced a pretty tough task as a new C.E.O. — merging the staffs of Progress Energy and Duke Energy. How did you decide who was going to be on your leadership team, particularly since there were people you already knew from Duke? There is a comfort level with people you’ve known for a long time — you’ve been in the foxhole with them. But when you bring an organization together, you need to be agnostic about background, and to interview on capabilities and track record. So we went through interviewing processes to pick the best person for each role. So what questions did you ask? Let’s say you’re interviewing me. What have been some of your specific responsibilities? What successes have you had? How do you think? I’m looking for creativity. I’m looking for an ability to lead. I’ll ask about failures. What have been some things that have changed you and developed you over time? What are your best interview questions? Why do you come to work in the morning? What makes you passionate about what you do? Why did you choose the career that you did? How do you want it to develop over the next five years? What makes you uniquely qualified for this role? I try to engage people around what makes them passionate about what they do, because people who love what they do get after it every day. Other things? With people at this level of their career, it’s no longer about whether you are the smartest subject-matter expert in the room. It’s whether you can be effective in leading a diverse team. Can you adapt? As you think about developing people through their careers, you’re looking for that transition from being the smartest person in the room — and caring so much about that — to being the most effective. It’s about how to develop a team. It’s about how to solve something where the solution isn’t obvious. Effectiveness comes from those qualitative things that give you the ability to network, communicate and lead people toward an outcome they can’t see. What advice would you give to graduating college students? I’ve had an interesting career in that I was with Andersen when it went out of business. So in my 40s, everything I’d worked for disappeared. That changes you. It causes you to refocus on what’s important. So I’d say: “Be passionate about what you do, but also be passionate about your relationships and family and other things in life. That’s where happiness is. It’s not all about career.” Did the experience of seeing Arthur Andersen go out of business make you more risk-averse or more tolerant of risk? Between March 2002 and May 2002, the firm disappeared. It was a crazy time, because I really didn’t have time to think about a career move. I was focused on getting clients and people from Point A to Point B in a way that preserved as many jobs as possible. Later, I had a chance to re-evaluate what I wanted to do. Risk is an interesting way to think about it, but I would say it refocused me on the importance of family and where happiness comes from. The lesson was that I’m not defined by my career, so I need to be prepared at any time to go or to change careers. There’s a freedom with that. It’s not that you’re disloyal or don’t like what you do or aren’t passionate about what you do, but your asset is you. It’s not who you work for. So is that risk-taking, or just recognizing that a career changes over time and you have to be ready at any point?
|
Lynn J Good;Duke Energy;Careers and Professions;Management;Job Recruiting and Hiring
|
ny0267767
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2016/03/15
|
Putin Orders Start of Syria Withdrawal, Saying Goals Are Achieved
|
MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Monday ordered the withdrawal of the “main part” of Russian forces in Syria , a surprise move that reflected what he called the Kremlin’s achievement of nearly all its objectives in the war-torn country. The news upended expectations in Western capitals and among ordinary Syrians, setting off fevered speculation about Russia’s intentions, much as Mr. Putin’s unexpected military plunge into the Syrian battlefield five months ago changed the course of the war. Perhaps the most urgent questions were how the move would affect the war’s outcome and what it meant for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whose rule had been increasingly threatened by a string of military losses before Russian forces backed him up. The Russian decision could signal a new confidence in Mr. Assad’s stability or an effort to pressure him to negotiate with his political adversaries — or both. Mr. Putin has made his move at a particularly critical moment, as the upheaval in Syria enters its sixth year and a United Nations mediator in Geneva tries to revive peace talks to stop the war, which has displaced millions and created a humanitarian catastrophe. A Russian military pullback will not leave Mr. Assad’s forces completely alone, because he also has support from Iran and from Hezbollah in Lebanon. And the Kremlin made clear it was keeping its new air base in the coastal Mediterranean province of Latakia, in addition to the naval refueling station it has kept nearby in Tartus since Soviet times. Mr. Putin has a history of unpredictability and is known for public statements that do not always align with Russia’s actions. In eastern Ukraine, for example, fighting by Moscow-backed rebels has continued even though Mr. Putin has pledged to honor a peace treaty. But Russia is also facing deepening economic problems caused by the collapse in global oil prices, and the announcement may reflect Mr. Putin’s desire to declare victory and extricate his country from a costly military venture. The Kremlin declared its plans hours after the United Nations mediator, Staffan de Mistura, met with the Syrian government delegation in Geneva. There have been growing signs of differences between Russia and the Syrian government over the Geneva talks, which Moscow has pressed hard for, along with Washington. And for Mr. Assad, the prospect of Russia’s leaving him to fend for himself is sure to focus his mind on following its lead — advice that Russian officials have publicly offered him in recent days. “I seriously doubt Moscow is breaking with Assad,” said Andrew J. Tabler, a scholar on Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Rather, he said, the Russian announcement appeared to be “putting the military burden back on Assad so as to soften up his negotiating position.” Moscow has recently evinced a measure of frustration. Three times in the past two weeks, Mr. Assad and his advisers have made public statements noticeably out of sync with Russia’s declared goal of substantive talks — most recently on Saturday, when Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem of Syria declared that Mr. Assad’s rule was a “red line” and that there would be no discussion of presidential elections. Image President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Credit Michael Klimentyev/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Speculation about Russia’s announcement grew so intense, including among Syrian government loyalists on social media, that by Monday night, Mr. Assad’s office issued a statement to dispel rumors that the president had been caught flat-footed. It blamed “partners in Syrian bloodshed” for the conjecture and said that the announcement had been made “with full coordination” after “extensive study” of recent military successes and that “Syria and Russia are, as always, together fighting terrorism.” The Russian move may also be a reflection that Mr. Putin is now supremely confident in Mr. Assad’s renewed stability and can afford to step back a bit and play statesman. Mr. Putin has achieved many of his main goals : bringing Russia back to center stage as a global power; preventing, on principle, regime change by outside powers, particularly Western ones; gaining a stronger foothold in Syria; picking off Russian jihadists on the Syrian battlefield; and strengthening Mr. Assad. The Syrian leader appeared more threatened last summer than he had been in years, as American-backed and Islamist insurgents coordinated more effectively and began to threaten his coastal strongholds. But the Russian intervention turned the tables. Now, many of those insurgent gains have been reversed, and Russian air power helped cut off critical opposition supply lines into Turkey, isolating the rebel-held portion of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. That does not put Mr. Assad in a position to retake the entire country, but it does, at least, restore the deadlock that he had maintained through 2014. And it can be argued that Mr. Putin has little to lose: Russia can easily resume strikes from its base at will, and it can keep supporting the Syrian military and Mr. Assad’s other allies on the ground — Iranian-backed militias from Hezbollah, Iraq and elsewhere — with Russian weapons while floating cash to the Syrian government. “The goal was to preserve the regime in some form and guarantee that Russia will keep its presence in the region, in terms of a naval facility and now also with an air base,” said Aleksei Makarkin, the deputy head of the Center for Political Technologies in Moscow. But Russia remains mindful of its history of getting bogged down in a long war in Afghanistan in the 1980s — and of the $3 million daily cost of its involvement in Syria while collapsing oil prices and economic sanctions are harming Russia’s financial health. Initially, Russia said it was intervening in Syria to take the fight to the Islamic State militant group. But it soon came under criticism for concentrating on other insurgents — groups fighting Mr. Assad that do not belong to the Islamic State and sometimes clash with it, including some that were supported by the West. Russian officials said any groups coordinating with the Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, as many of those groups have done, were fair game. By declaring, in effect, mission accomplished, Russia is in a way acknowledging that destroying the Islamic State was never the primary goal; the group is still deeply entrenched in much of northern and eastern Syria. Yet Russian airstrikes are pummeling Palmyra, a historic city held by the Islamic State. If government troops manage to retake it, Mr. Putin could claim to have saved an archaeological treasure by preventing the extremist group from further destroying some of the world’s most significant ancient ruins. (Some antigovernment activists there say, however, that the airstrikes are endangering the ruins, as well as civilians.) Russia has been accused of targeting noncombatants and civilian infrastructure, like hospitals, which it has denied; opposition groups said Russian airstrikes had accounted for over half of civilian casualties since September. Signs of Hope Five Years After Start of Syria’s War The partial cease-fire in Syria, which began Feb. 27, has proved more effective and durable than expected, significantly reducing the level of violence. But under a partial truce — flawed and wobbly, but holding for the past few weeks — the rate of airstrikes has plunged, though opposition groups still accuse Russia of violations. The announcement on Monday surprised people on all sides of the conflict. State Department officials, Syrian antigovernment activists, Mr. Assad’s supporters and Syrian opposition negotiators all reacted with disbelief, not sure whether to lament, celebrate or laugh. In Idlib Province, held by a combination of insurgents that range from the Nusra Front to American-backed rebels, people fired guns in the air. “People are distributing sweets and calling ‘God is great’ from the mosques,” said a fighter who gave his name as Ahmed. “There’s optimism, but we don’t know what’s hidden.” Farther south, in Homs, an antigovernment activist, Firas — who, like Ahmed, asked that only his first name be used for safety reasons — was worried. “The Russians were sponsoring the cease-fire,” he said. “Now the regime will bomb again and the Russians will leave us for the Iranians, a disaster.” Even in Geneva, the opposition spokesman, Salem al-Muslet, reflected that ambivalence, resenting Russia’s support for Mr. Assad but seeing Mr. Putin as the only figure who could force Mr. Assad to negotiate in earnest. “Nobody knows what is in Putin’s mind, but the point is, he has no right to be in our country in the first place,” he said at first. “Just go.” Later, he added, “If it’s true, this is a good sign and a good start to a political solution.” President Obama spoke by telephone with Mr. Putin, a White House statement said. Mr. Obama welcomed the reduction in violence in Syria since the cease-fire began last month, but he emphasized “that continuing offensive actions by Syrian regime forces risk undermining” both the cessation of hostilities and a political resolution led by the United Nations. “The president underscored that a political transition is required to end the violence in Syria,” the statement said.
|
Vladimir Putin;Syria;Russia;Military;UN
|
ny0162593
|
[
"business",
"media"
] |
2006/02/27
|
The Big Man Still Reigns in Hollywood
|
NEXT Sunday at the Oscars, directors, actors and producers from a handful of small films will pick up the majority of the big awards. The winners will talk about courage, about independence, about the women and men who were willing to step forward and triumph over the big Hollywood machine. So they will be sticking it to the man. Except, of course, they are the man. If you drill down into this year's best picture nominees, you will find that they are guerrilla insurgencies backed by superpowers. "Brokeback Mountain" is from Focus Features, a specialty arm of NBC Universal, the studio that also produced "Munich." "Good Night, and Good Luck," is from Warner Independent Pictures, a unit of Time Warner, and "Capote" belongs to Sony Pictures Classics, owned by Sony. Only the aptly named "Crash," produced by Lion's Gate Entertainment, has truly independent DNA. And before anyone decides that small is the next big thing for the studios, a moment's pause. Remember that for every demure belle of this year's ball there are dozens of films that started small and stayed that way. And even if all the breakthrough little movies of the past few years were stacked on top of each other, they would not match one huge global movie like Pixar's "Cars," which could make as much as a billion dollars if all goes as planned when it is released in June. People in Hollywood love to talk about making serious movies for discerning audiences and then set about swanning their way through Oscar weekend, but that is not the business they are in. "I am happy that the business includes movies like these," said Sean Daniel, a longtime producer and former manager of production at Universal Pictures, referring to this year's list of best picture nominees. "But the business is bigger than this, and it has to be." The real significance of this year's nominees is that Hollywood is placing bets all over the table to stay in business. At a time when everything is up for grabs -- distribution, technology, platform -- studios are morphing and eliding as fast as they can to hang onto their big, fat corner of the entertainment dollar, even if that means playing small. IT just so happened that, in 2005, small worked. If the Academy was tough on Hollywood-as-usual, audiences were brutal, snubbing Oscar-ready studio films -- like "The New World," "Cinderella Man," and "Memoirs of a Geisha" -- that turned out to be gorgeous, empty vessels in favor of movies that attack serious issues with grit and idiosyncrasy. (In that sense, Jon Stewart seems to be a pitch-perfect choice as host of this year's affair.) "This year, the industry did not manage to make a lot of big, expensive movies that the Academy liked," said Tom Pollack, a veteran producer at the Montecito Picture Company. "That may not be true next year." The success of this year's group of serious films made for adults means that directors and producers who want to make something besides a sequel about a comic book character will have an easier time getting a meeting and even financing. But for all the self-congratulation on the podium next week, this year's class of earnest films have limited value in the global marketplace. All that gravitas will not have much value in a world where the attention span of a 15-year-old on an opening weekend still rules. Niche films are grand but studios still need the next "Lord of the Batman Chronicles" to feed the beast, because studios find more than half their revenue outside the domestic market. Even this year's Oscar telecast will be challenged in the ratings, not simply because it will be preoccupied by movies with low attendance figures, but because in a culture in which taste is now networked, where everyone from Netflix to your digital friend on MySpace can tell you what you like, the approbation of elites is far less important than it used to be. The ratings for this year's Grammy Awards show dropped 10 percent from last year, getting walloped by "American Idol," a show in which the audience, and not some industry executive, gets to decide on the winner. "The Internet has created a universe of niches, and I think that audiences are clearly saying that they don't like being treated as all part of the same group," said Peter Dekom, a lawyer and co-author with Peter Sealey of "Not on My Watch: Hollywood vs. the Future." "Niche films are defining the industry, and I love it." Yes, if "Brokeback Mountain" wins the Oscar for best picture, it will be profitable for years to come, just not as profitable as a three-picture tent pole franchise. So what is the economic model going forward? Will studios go global with a huge expensive concept or make story-driven movies that don't cost a lot? Probably some measure of both, but you can only hedge so much. Harvey Weinstein may not be a huge presence at the Oscars this year, but the industry is currently traveling a track laid down when he and his brother Bob first built Miramax: smart movies, cunning marketing and a willingness to take on some artistic as well as financial risk. He said that there was no magic, big or small, that would lead to steady success. "The only formula I have ever come across is to make good movies every time out, and that is the hardest thing to do," he said. For the moment, the Academy has spoken: why not try better movies?
|
MOTION PICTURES;ACADEMY AWARDS (OSCARS)
|
ny0061014
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2014/08/22
|
Perry Says Terrorists Could Be Entering the U.S. From Mexico
|
WASHINGTON — Gov. Rick Perry of Texas warned Thursday that militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and other terrorist groups may have already slipped across the Mexican border. Mr. Perry said there is “no clear evidence” that terrorists have entered the United States illegally across the southern border. But he argued that illegal immigration should be considered a national security issue as well as a social and economic problem, and as evidence he cited the increase in violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants. “I think there is the obvious, great concern that — because of the condition of the border from the standpoint of it not being secure and us not knowing who is penetrating across — that individuals from ISIS or other terrorist states could be,” he said during a conference on border security and immigration at the Heritage Foundation. His speech came after Mr. Perry pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of abusing his power on Tuesday after being indicted by a grand jury last Friday , making him the first Texas governor to face criminal charges in nearly a century. Mr. Perry has called the charges a “farce,” and he is contemplating a second run for the Republican presidential nomination. He is scheduled to appear in New Hampshire this weekend. To bolster security, the United States should add more law enforcement personnel at the border and use drones to monitor the situation, Mr. Perry said. But he also said the nation should step up its military involvement in Iraq to eliminate the threat from ISIS with more airstrikes before they can launch an attack on American soil. “Air power is a major part of it, but it’s also going to take more special operations, intelligence and advisory support than we’ve offered so far,” he said. Mr. Perry aimed much of his criticism at President Obama, for everything from abuse of his executive authority to failing to better aid Syrian rebels. “When laws are treated this way, what usually follows are chaos and grief, and that’s exactly what we’ve got right now,” he said. Mr. Perry opened his remarks by addressing the indictment, saying he was “very confident” and dismissing the charges for what he called “an exercise of my constitutional veto authority.” The charges stem from the governor’s attempts to force out Rosemary Lehmberg, a district attorney, after she was arrested on a drunken-driving charge. Mr. Perry threatened to cut off the funding for her office unless she resigned, and when she refused, he vetoed $7.5 million designated for the Public Integrity Unit, an organization tasked with fighting corruption, which she led. Critics allege Mr. Perry abused his power by pressuring Ms. Lehmberg while the unit was investigating the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, one of the governor’s signature initiatives. Mr. Perry’s supporters accuse Democrats of criminalizing politics. Mr. Perry’s defense lawyers on Thursday released an affidavit from a former county investigator, who said the unit did not target or find evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the governor or anyone in his office as part of its investigation of the scandal-ridden cancer center. The statement was designed to discredit Democrats’ story line that the real reason Mr. Perry wanted to veto funding for the anticorruption unit was to avoid being implicated, pushing back against what the defense called an “outrageous,” weak case against the governor. The governor’s office also announced Thursday that the rest of Mr. Perry’s legal bills would be paid using funds from his campaign account, not with taxpayer money, as had previously been the case. “Further legal bills will be paid for with campaign funds,” said Lucy Nashed, Mr. Perry’s spokeswoman. She said Mr. Perry had more than $4 million in his campaign account at the end of June, and has spent about $80,000 in taxpayer funds so far on legal fees. Mr. Perry’s high-profile legal team is led by Tony Buzbee, who was once described by The New York Times Magazine as one of the most successful trial lawyers in the country. It also includes Ben Ginsberg, a well-known Washington lawyer who served as counsel to the campaign of George W. Bush, whom he represented during the 2000 presidential election recount.
|
Rick Perry;Texas;Mexico;Customs and Border Protection US;ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State;Terrorism;Illegal Immigration;Heritage Foundation;Ethics Misconduct Malfeasance
|
ny0014580
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2013/11/22
|
Rescued London Women Say They Were Held 30 Years
|
LONDON — The London police announced Thursday that three women had been rescued from a city home where they claim to have been held against their will for about 30 years, and that a married couple who lived there had been arrested. A Malaysian woman, 69; an Irishwoman, 57; and a British woman, 30, were freed from the house in the Lambeth district in South London in October after one of the women contacted a charity that helps victims of forced marriage, the police said at a news conference. They said the youngest woman had apparently been held captive her entire life. The two suspects, an unidentified man and a woman, both 67, were arrested Thursday morning and were being held in a South London police station pending charges. The British police generally do not identify suspects until they have been charged. The police would not say whether the couple owned the home, and they declined to elaborate on other details of the women’s ordeal or the arrests. Although the captive women had enjoyed some “controlled freedom,” the police said, they had been forced to perform domestic tasks. Kevin Hyland, a detective inspector in the Metropolitan Police’s Human Trafficking Unit, said most of their days were probably spent indoors, though it remained unclear under what conditions and whether they had been held in more than one house. They did not appear to be related, the police said. “We have had some other cases we have dealt with previously where we know that people have been held for periods of up to 10 years, but never anything on this scale before,” Detective Hyland said. At least one of the women may have been forcibly married to the man in the house, according to an official close to the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. Although Detective Hyland said that there was no evidence that the women had suffered sexual abuse, this official said the police suspected otherwise. “The woman appears to have been through some kind of religious marriage ceremony with the male member of the couple that kept them,” he said. All three appeared to have been used as unpaid domestic helpers, but “manipulated” into believing that staying was in their best interest, he said. The oldest one, the Malaysian, had been with the couple the longest, 30 years, he said. Image Kevin Hyland, a detective inspector, discussed the rescued women in London on Thursday. Credit Ben Stansall/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The story dominated the evening news on the main broadcasters and led the home pages of all major newspapers as Britons tried to grasp the idea that three adult women might have been kept as domestic slaves in their capital. A statement from the Home Office emphasized that the police still needed to get to the bottom of the matter, but also expressed “determination to tackle the scourge of modern slavery.” After a television documentary on forced marriages was broadcast in October, the Irish woman contacted Freedom Charity , which specializes in helping victims of such marriages and whose work was featured in the program, according to the charity’s founder, Aneeta Prem. “I can’t go into too many details, but they managed to get to a phone and make a call to us,” she told Sky News . “We started to talk to them in depth when we could. It had to be prearranged when they were able to make calls to us and it had to be done very secretly because they felt they were in massive danger.” Working with Freedom Charity, police officers managed to track down the home where the women were living. They moved swiftly to free them, but then spent several weeks assembling evidence before making the arrests on Thursday. Ms. Prem said she was still investigating how the women could have remained hidden from view for so long. “In a very busy capital city we often don’t know our neighbors,” she told the BBC . “We’re looking at people who were kept against their will in an ordinary residential street in central London.” The women are at a secret location and are being questioned by interrogators who specialize in dealing with trauma victims, the police said. “All three women were deeply affected by this activity and traumatized,” Detective Hyland said. “It was essential that we took things slowly in order to establish the facts of the period in what was alleged to be servitude or domestic labor.” He added that because interrogators were treading carefully, many of the details of the women’s ordeal remained unknown or were emerging only slowly. Detective Hyland said it was “fair to suggest that the 30-year-old had no contact with the outside world that we would see as normal.” He added that he could not say whether she was the daughter of the arrested man. “We don’t know whether the 30-year-old was born in the house, but the 30-year-old has spent her whole life we believe in servitude or forced labor,” Detective Hyland said.
|
London;Great Britain;Women and Girls;Human trafficking;Kidnapping
|
ny0001392
|
[
"science",
"space"
] |
2013/03/26
|
Do Spacecraft Carry IDs of Their Earthly Origins?
|
Q. Do the spacecraft we have sent to investigate the universe carry any identification of their human and earthly origin? A. In 1972 and 1973, the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft were launched on long-distance space journeys with plaques intended to show where they came from and who made them, in case they encountered any intelligent life. Image Credit Victoria Roberts The plaques include drawings of nude male and female figures; a simple map of the solar system; and a diagram showing its location in relation to 14 quasars, or very bright objects in deep space. The transition between two states of the hydrogen atom is also shown schematically. The two Voyager spacecraft, both launched in 1977, carry more elaborate messages — the so-called Golden Record , etched on gold-plated copper disks that offer recordings of diverse earthly sounds and 115 analog images. Needles and playing instructions are included. Voyager 1 , launched by NASA and managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is now humankind’s most distant object , about 11.5 billion miles away from the Sun. Many other spacecraft carry depictions of American flags, and some have microchips etched with the names and signatures of members of the public. Whether any would be understood remains to be seen.
|
Outer space;NASA;Solar System;ID
|
ny0257032
|
[
"sports",
"soccer"
] |
2011/01/03
|
Friedel and Aston Villa Earn Tie at Chelsea
|
The American goalkeeper Brad Friedel made outstanding saves Sunday to help Aston Villa to a 3-3 draw at Chelsea , the defending English Premier League champion. Chelsea, the league leader the first three months of the season, is in fifth place. ¶Ronaldinho is in Brazil to negotiate a transfer after being allowed to leave A.C. Milan’s training camp in the United Arab Emirates, Coach Massimiliano Allegri said. The Brazilian clubs Gremio, Flamengo and Palmeiras have expressed interest. ronaldinho
|
Chelsea Football Club;Aston Villa;Soccer
|
ny0039218
|
[
"sports",
"ncaafootball"
] |
2014/04/16
|
A Top Player Accused, and a Flawed Rape Inquiry
|
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Early on the morning of Dec. 7, 2012, a freshman at Florida State University reported that she had been raped by a stranger somewhere off campus after a night of drinking at a popular Tallahassee bar called Potbelly’s. As she gave her account to the police, several bruises began to appear, indicating recent trauma. Tests would later find semen on her underwear. For nearly a year, the events of that evening remained a well-kept secret until the woman’s allegations burst into the open, roiling the university and threatening a prized asset: Jameis Winston, one of the marquee names of college football. Three weeks after Mr. Winston was publicly identified as the suspect, the storm had passed. The local prosecutor announced that he lacked the evidence to charge Mr. Winston with rape. The quarterback would go on to win the Heisman Trophy and lead Florida State to the national championship. In his announcement, the prosecutor, William N. Meggs, acknowledged a number of shortcomings in the police investigation. In fact, an examination by The New York Times has found that there was virtually no investigation at all, either by the police or the university. The police did not follow the obvious leads that would have quickly identified the suspect as well as witnesses, one of whom videotaped part of the sexual encounter. After the accuser identified Mr. Winston as her assailant, the police did not even attempt to interview him for nearly two weeks and never obtained his DNA. The detective handling the case waited two months to write his first report and then prematurely suspended his inquiry without informing the accuser. By the time the prosecutor got the case, important evidence had disappeared, including the video of the sexual act. “They just missed all the basic fundamental stuff that you are supposed to do,” Mr. Meggs said in a recent interview. Even so, he cautioned, a better investigation might have yielded the same result. The case has unfolded as colleges and universities across the country are facing rising criticism over how they deal with sexual assault, as well as questions about whether athletes sometimes receive preferential treatment. The Times’s examination — based on police and university records, as well as interviews with people close to the case, including lawyers and sexual assault experts — found that, in the Winston case, Florida State did little to determine what had happened. University administrators, in apparent violation of federal law, did not promptly investigate either the rape accusation or the witness’s admission that he had videotaped part of the encounter. Records show that Florida State’s athletic department knew about the rape accusation early on, in January 2013, when the assistant athletic director called the police to inquire about the case. Even so, the university did nothing about it, allowing Mr. Winston to play the full season without having to answer any questions. After the championship game, in January 2014, university officials asked Mr. Winston to discuss the case, but he declined on advice of his lawyer. Image Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston was with Chris Casher, right, on the night Mr. Winston was accused of rape. Credit Phil Sears/Associated Pres When The Times asked Mr. Winston for an interview, an Atlanta lawyer advising his family, David Cornwell, responded, “We don’t need an investigation, thorough or otherwise, to know that Jameis did not sexually assault this young lady.” Mr. Cornwell, who has represented major sports figures and the N.F.L., added, “Jameis has never sexually assaulted anybody.” Mr. Winston has previously acknowledged having sex with his accuser but said it was consensual. His account has been supported by two friends from the football team who were with him that night, Chris Casher, who took the video, and Ronald Darby. A month before the rape accusation became public, the university’s victim advocate learned that a second woman had sought counseling after a sexual encounter with Mr. Winston, according to the prosecutor’s office. The woman did not call it rape — she did not say “no.” But the encounter, not previously reported, “was of such a nature that she felt violated or felt that she needed to seek some type of counseling for her emotions about the experience,” according to Georgia Cappleman, the chief assistant state attorney, who said she had spoken with the advocate but not with the woman. The victim advocate was concerned enough about the episode to have alerted Mr. Winston’s first accuser. Ms. Cappleman said that based on what she was told, a crime had not been committed. Nonetheless, Ms. Cappleman said she found the encounter troubling, because it “sheds some light on the way Mr. Winston operates” and on what may be “a recurring problem rather than some type of misunderstanding that occurred in an isolated situation.” Mr. Cornwell called her comments “out of bounds,” adding, “I’m not interested in a prosecutor expressing an opinion based on a personal moral compass.” The university, after initially speaking with The Times, recently stopped doing so. A university spokeswoman, Browning Brooks, said she could not discuss specific cases because of privacy laws but issued a statement, saying that the university’s “code of conduct process has worked well for the vast majority of sexual assault cases” and has “provided victims with the emotional and procedural help they need.” On Feb. 13, before the university stopped granting interviews, Rachel Bukanc, an assistant dean who oversees student conduct issues, said she knew of no student who had secretly videotaped sex. After The Times questioned that response, the university began an inquiry and recently charged Mr. Casher with a student-code violation for taking the video. Mr. Darby has also been cited in connection with the episode. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of football to Florida State and its hometown. In Tallahassee, rooting for the Seminoles is a matter of identity and economy. The 2013 championship season generated millions of dollars for the athletic department and city businesses, and favorable publicity beyond measure. Patricia A. Carroll, a lawyer for Mr. Winston’s accuser, said the police investigator who handled the case, Scott Angulo, told her that because Tallahassee was a big football town, her client would be “raked over the coals” if she pursued the case. Officer Angulo has done private security work for the Seminole Boosters, a nonprofit organization, with nearly $150 million in assets, that is the primary financier of Florida State athletics, according to records and a lawyer for the boosters. It also paid roughly a quarter of the $602,000 salary of the university president, Eric Barron, who was recently named president of Penn State. Image Jameis Winston won the Heisman a month after being publicly identified as a suspect in a rape case. Credit Kelly Kline/Getty Images, for the Heisman Trust The Tallahassee police declined to make Officer Angulo available for an interview, but his report states that he suspended the investigation because the accuser was uncooperative, which she denies. The department issued a statement, saying that police reports in the Winston case “document that our department took the case seriously, processed evidence and conducted a thorough investigation based on information available when the case was reported.” The case came at a time of turmoil for the Tallahassee police. In March 2013, a grand jury investigating police misconduct in an unrelated matter called police supervision “careless, uncaring, cavalier and incompetent.” The grand jury said supervisory deficiencies were so deeply ingrained that the city police, which has more than 350 sworn officers, should merge with the sheriff’s department, with the sheriff assuming overall control. Late last year, Mr. Winston’s accuser and another Florida State student filed internal-affairs complaints, charging that Tallahassee police officers had investigated them, rather than the accused, and then prematurely dropped their cases. “My attorney’s repeated calls to Tallahassee Police Department prove that I had not dropped the case,” Mr. Winston’s accuser wrote in her Dec. 19 complaint. Two days earlier, the other student had written, “Why did the detective insist my case was closed and refused to answer calls and emails?” She added, “I am SO ANGRY!” Both complaints were quickly dismissed. Purgatory at Potbelly’s Potbelly’s is a classic campus bar: big and boisterous, a place to drink, dance and mingle inside or at a tiki bar outside. A Thursday tradition, Purgatory at Potbelly’s, allows students to drink all the alcohol they want for $10 from 9 p.m. to midnight. On Purgatory Thursday, Dec. 6, 2012, Mr. Winston’s accuser, who at 19 could not legally buy alcohol, shared at least five mixed drinks with friends, according to police records. At one point, a man she did not know grabbed her arm, pulled her close and introduced himself as Chris, a football player. He said he was looking for his roommate, and when he requested her phone number, she gave it to him. She did not recall seeing him again that night. The woman did not appear drunk, her friends said. But after a stranger gave her a drink, she recounted, her memory became hazy and fragmented. Soon, she found herself in a taxi with three unfamiliar men, all of whom turned out to be Florida State football players. Jameis Winston was one of them. A redshirt freshman quarterback, 6 feet 4 inches and 235 pounds, Mr. Winston had been a prize recruit, well-known in football circles but not yet a widely recognizable name. Because of the young, combustible clientele, Potbelly’s protects itself by operating more than 30 security cameras. If something untoward happens, the cameras are there to record it. They were in position to fill in the blanks from that evening, recording how the woman came to leave without her friends, her general behavior and the face of the man who gave her the final drink. Image Mr. Winston’s DNA was not obtained until the prosecutor, William N. Meggs, got the case nearly a year later. Credit Leslye Davis/The New York Times Taxi records also contained a footprint for investigators to follow: The woman recalled that someone in the car swiped a Florida State student identification card to get a discounted fare. After partially blacking out, the woman said, she found herself in an apartment with a man on top of her, sexually assaulting her. She said she tried unsuccessfully to push him away, but he pinned down her arms. Meanwhile, according to her account, another man walked in and told her assailant to stop. He did not. Instead, she said, he carried her into the bathroom, locked the door and continued his assault. Afterward, the woman told investigators, the man put her on a bed, dressed her and drove her on a scooter to an intersection near her dormitory and dropped her off. Upon returning to her room, she posted a plea online for someone to call her. Two friends did. One was Jenna Weisberg, another Florida State student. “I was awake and I called her and she was hysterically crying,” Ms. Weisberg said. “ ‘I think I just got raped,’ ” she recalled her saying. Ms. Weisberg drove immediately to the friend’s dorm. Ms. Weisberg said her friend was reluctant to call the police because she did not “want anybody to be mad at her.” Eventually she relented, and at 3:22 a.m., Ms. Weisberg called 911. A campus police officer responded, listened to the accuser’s account and then drove her to the hospital for a sexual assault examination. Because the woman believed the encounter occurred off campus, a city police officer, Clayton Fallis, interviewed her next. Soon, Officer Angulo, an investigator with the special victims unit who joined the force in 2002, arrived at the hospital and took over the case. Again the woman began to recount what had happened, until the investigator, seeing she was tired, told her to go home and come to Police Headquarters later in the day. She returned, accompanied by a friend, Monique Kessler, who was with her at Potbelly’s, and they recounted what they had seen and heard, including the encounter with Chris, the football player. Officer Angulo had three solid leads to identify the suspect: the name Chris, the bar’s security cameras and the cab where a student identification card had been used. What the investigator did next — or did not do — would later confound prosecutors and muddied the outcome of the case. Image The lead investigator, Scott Angulo, never interviewed Mr. Winston. An Inquiry Begins, and Ends Officer Angulo’s investigation was halting at best. His first report, filed more than two months after the encounter, includes no mention of trying to find Chris or looking at Potbelly’s videotapes. Not only would Chris have been easy to find, but the police already had an investigative file that identified Chris Casher as Mr. Winston’s roommate. A little more than a week before the sexual encounter, the Tallahassee police had interviewed both men in connection with 13 damaged windows at their off-campus apartment complex, all caused by football players engaging in a long-running BB gun battle. The Florida State athletic department promised that the $4,000 in damages would be paid, and no charges were filed. Officer Angulo did contact the cab company, without success. “The GPS units on the vehicles are not precise enough to eliminate enough cabs to focus the search,” he wrote. He then asked the cab company to email all drivers who had worked that night, with “the demographics of the passengers and the pickup location.” No one responded, and there is no indication that he attempted to interview drivers. Officer Angulo, who had told his superiors that he “had no real leads,” suddenly got a big one on Jan. 10, a little more than a month after the encounter. As a new semester was beginning, the accuser called to say she had identified the suspect — Jameis Winston — after seeing him in class and hearing his name called out. Again, Officer Angulo hesitated. Nearly two weeks passed before his backup investigator contacted Mr. Winston — by telephone, records show. “Winston stated he had baseball practice but would call back later to set a time,” Officer Angulo wrote. The police did get a response — from Mr. Winston’s lawyer, Timothy Jansen, who said his client would not be speaking to anyone. With Mr. Winston identified, the next logical step would have been to quickly obtain his DNA. Officer Angulo decided against it. Ms. Carroll, the accuser’s lawyer, said the officer told her that testing Mr. Winston’s DNA might generate publicity. “I specifically asked and he refused,” Ms. Carroll said. Officer Angulo concluded his six-page report by saying: “This case is being suspended at this time due to a lack of cooperation from the victim. If the victim decides to press charges, the case will be pursued.” Two parts of that statement struck Ms. Carroll as strange. The officer, she said, never informed her client that he had suspended his investigation, and her client never said she would not cooperate. She said that while her client was indeed concerned about the prospect of pressing her case against a star-in-waiting, “at no time did we call him and tell him we don’t want you to do an investigation.” Her client, she added, simply wanted more information before deciding what to do. Such reluctance should not keep the police from investigating, according to Ms. Cappleman of the prosecutor’s office. Image Ronald Darby and Mr. Casher were with Mr. Winston the night of the encounter and supported his account of consensual sex. Credit Joe Robbins/Getty Images “It makes the most sense to me, if somebody comes in to report a violent crime, investigate it, and we’ll talk about what to do with it after we’ve collected the evidence and have the most thorough picture,” she said. If an accuser later decides she does not want a trial, Ms. Cappleman added, her office might offer a suspect a better plea deal. Officer Angulo’s investigation apparently stirred no concern within his department. His superior officer signed off on his work, records show. In the weeks that followed, not knowing the investigation had been suspended, Ms. Carroll called the police periodically to see if lab tests had come back. Sometimes, her calls were returned, she said, but not always. A Deputy’s Daughter Early last October, a 19-year-old Florida State student was studying on a Saturday night while her roommates went drinking. She said they returned drunk, and a roommate’s former boyfriend, also a student, raped her in her room. The student reported the encounter to the Tallahassee police. The episode had nothing to do with Mr. Winston, but it, too, raised questions about how the city police deal with rape accusations. The police response was so inappropriate, according to the father, that later on, in a complaint filed with the police, he compared it to the Winston inquiry, which had recently drawn criticism in the news media. The father, a part-time deputy sheriff in another county, said he was away on business when he called his daughter and found her crying and confused. With prodding, she disclosed that she had just spoken to the police about “a situation,” but would say no more. An officer had told her that “it might be better not to inform me,” her father said. Alarmed, he asked his wife to call. She did, and their daughter said she had been raped. The mother and a family friend, also a law enforcement officer, immediately drove more than two hours to Tallahassee. They found the daughter with what appeared to be choke marks on her neck. According to the father, a Tallahassee police officer named Christopher Pate characterized the young woman as confused and having had a hard time communicating. “Why was I not given an advocate to speak with?” his daughter said in a complaint she filed later with the police. “I was raped and was stressed and scared.” In a report, Officer Pate said he had offered the woman “many different avenues of help (victim advocate, female officer etc.). She refused them all.” Rape crisis counselors, while not speaking specifically about this case, say traumatized victims often experience memory problems. “Victims themselves feel like they are losing their minds when they can’t remember, when they remember fragments that don’t seem to connect up,” said Meg Baldwin, executive director of the Tallahassee-based Refuge House, a haven for victims of domestic violence and rape. “The interpretation so often is, well, she’s lying, she’s in any event an unreliable witness who won’t be believed.” Officer Pate’s blunt interviewing style did not help, the student said. “The first thing he asked me,” she recounted, “was if I was sure this was rape or if I just didn’t want a baby or wanted the morning after pill.” He also made comments, she said, “like, ‘Are you sure you want to file a report? It will be very awkward, especially for a female.’ ” Image Chris Casher. Credit Joe Robbins/Getty Images In his complaint to the police, the father wrote that Officer Pate had suggested that an investigation “would be futile, as ‘this kind of stuff happens all the time here.’ ” The family also said the police had focused more on the accuser than on the accused. “From my perspective, T.P.D. demonstrated a poor initial response, poor investigative techniques and perhaps most importantly failed to support the victim of a violent crime,” the father said. Unlike in the Winston case, the police did ask prosecutors to review the evidence, but they declined to bring charges because statements from the roommates conflicted with the accuser’s account. After receiving the family’s request for an internal affairs investigation, the police found no basis for punishment. “While no policy violation was identified, Officer Pate was counseled on the public perception of officer actions and speech during investigations,” according to police documents. The department declined to make the officer available for an interview. The woman, an A student, dropped out of school, left the city and underwent therapy for extreme depression, according to the family. “Going to F.S.U. had been a longtime dream for her,” her mother said. The News Breaks It was Wednesday of homecoming week last year and Florida State, ranked No. 2 in the nation with a 9-0 record, was preparing to play Syracuse. Mr. Winston, described by teammates as both playful and intense, had already thrown 26 touchdown passes, amassing 2,661 passing yards with a completion percentage just south of 70 percent. After his first game, an ESPN draft expert had identified him as a legitimate No. 1 choice in the 2015 N.F.L. draft. If Florida State was going to ascend to the national championship game on Jan. 6, it would do so on the arm and poise of Jameis Winston. The Heisman voting was but a month away, and his crowning as America’s best college football player appeared all but certain. Then, suddenly, that glorious vision began to go out of focus. On Nov. 13, the Tallahassee police, responding to a public-records request from The Tampa Bay Times, released documents on the sexual assault case, setting off a frenzied scramble in the news media and prosecutor’s office to learn what had happened. As the news broke, and before investigators could talk to them, Mr. Winston’s lawyer had the two witnesses, Mr. Casher and Mr. Darby, submit affidavits attesting to their recollection of that now-distant night. They gave similar accounts: A blond woman who was not intoxicated willingly left the bar with the three football players, they said, and joined Mr. Winston in his room. Because the door was broken and would not close, they looked in and saw the woman giving the quarterback oral sex. At one point, Mr. Casher said, he entered the room, but the woman told him to leave, got up to turn off the light and then tried to close the door. At no time, both men said, did she appear to be an unwilling participant. (The men did not respond to phone messages, conveyed through university officials, seeking comment.) Mr. Meggs immediately directed his staff to reinvestigate the case. In the recent interview, Mr. Meggs said he was surprised that the police had not quickly found Mr. Casher. “How long does it take to identify a freshman football player — about 10, 15, 16 seconds?” he asked, adding, “Anybody that looked at this case would say you get a report at 2 in the morning, by noon you could have had the defendant identified and talked to.” Image Purgatory at Potbelly’s, a popular local bar, is a Thursday tradition where for $10 patrons receive unlimited drinks from 9 p.m. to midnight. To protect itself the bar has more than 30 security cameras. Credit Leslye Davis/The New York Times Why Officer Angulo had not asked to see the Potbelly’s security video is unknown. A Times review of sexual assault complaints handled by the campus police last year found that in one case, officers asked for the Potbelly’s video when they were trying to identify a suspected assailant who had been seen at the bar. As for not finding the taxi driver, “I am convinced that we would have identified the cabdriver that night and had an interview with him,” Mr. Meggs said. “Don’t know what we would have learned, but we would have learned the truth. I am also convinced that had it been done properly, we would have had the video from Potbelly’s.” By the time the prosecutor asked for that video, the tape had long since been recycled. Unlike the police, prosecutors said they interviewed every cabdriver they could find who had worked that night, but they turned up no new information. Mr. Meggs said that while his investigators probably spoke to the driver they were seeking, “at 11 months later, maybe he didn’t remember, maybe he didn’t want to remember.” Mr. Meggs said he was shocked that the police investigator’s first attempt to contact Mr. Winston was by telephone. “He says, ‘I have baseball practice, I’ll get with you later,’ ” Mr. Meggs said. That call allowed Mr. Winston to hire a lawyer who told him not to talk. “It’s insane to call a suspect on the phone,” Mr. Meggs said. “First off, you don’t know who you are talking to.” He said he would have gone straight to the baseball field. “If you walked up to Jameis Winston in the middle of baseball practice and said, ‘Come here, son, I need to talk to you,’ he would have said, ‘Yes, sir.’ ” Mr. Meggs added: “He’s not in custody, you don’t have to read him his rights. He might have said, ‘I didn’t have sex that night.’ ” Only after the prosecutor took over the case did the authorities obtain Mr. Winston’s DNA. It was a match to DNA found on the accuser’s clothing. Belatedly, Officer Angulo and his backup were asked to conduct a crucial interview — to question Mr. Casher about the events of Dec. 7, 2012. Mr. Casher made a startling admission: he had secretly videotaped part of the sexual encounter through the partly opened bedroom door, and deleted the video from his phone a couple of days later. Had the police found him quickly, they might have obtained that video. Mr. Casher had never mentioned the video in the affidavit he submitted with the help of Mr. Winston’s lawyer. Even so, officers did not ask why he had omitted that important fact, why he had deleted the video or whether he had shared it with anyone. And though Mr. Casher said he had a new phone, the officers did not ask what he did with the old one. Neither the police nor the prosecutor’s office subpoenaed the phone records of Mr. Casher, Mr. Darby or Mr. Winston — even though they investigated all electronic communications to and from the accuser around the time of the sexual encounter. Image Local cabs discount fares for users who swipe a Florida State ID card. Mr. Winston’s accuser recalled someone in the cab with her swiping such a card. Credit Leslye Davis/The New York Times The failure to seek similar electronic communications from the three football players surprised one former assistant state attorney, who prosecuted a Florida State football player on a rape charge a decade ago. “Why that was done, I don’t really know the answer to that,” said the former prosecutor, Adam Ruiz. “To me, that’s a no-brainer.” Mr. Ruiz said his children, aged 7 to 21, all had iPhones, and even for something as mundane as rain: “You’re texting 30 people about it. I can’t imagine there would not have been something coming off that cellphone after the incident.” Three weeks after it began, with evidence lost and memories faded, the state attorney’s investigation was over. “I have personal concerns about what happened in that room that night,” Ms. Cappleman said, “but that’s completely separate from whether I’m able to prove a crime occurred.” The University’s Role The news that Mr. Winston had been accused of rape moved through campus like an electric charge. On social media, the discussion quickly lost any semblance of civility, prompting one female student to send an email expressing her anger to Mary Coburn, vice president for student affairs. “All day every day I am bombarded with messages of hatred for the alleged victim,” the woman wrote. “I am sad and ashamed to be part of a student body that is quick to support a man who is accused of sexual assault, simply because he is a good football player, and even quicker to condemn the alleged victim of the crime as a liar.” Ms. Coburn replied: “I agree with you and have been thinking about how we address the ugliness that has been circulating.” She promised to gather a group of students in January to discuss the problem. The athletic department had known early on that Mr. Winston had been accused of a serious crime. According to an internal Tallahassee police email on Jan. 23, 2013, one officer wrote that Officer Angulo’s backup on the case “received a call from the Athletic Directors Assistant inquiring about the case.” This knowledge should have set off an inquiry by the university. According to federal rules, any athletic department official who learns of possible sexual misconduct is required to pass it on to school administrators. Florida State declined to respond when asked if top officials, including the university president, had been informed of the encounter. “Why did the school not even attempt to investigate the matter until after the football season?” said John Clune, another lawyer for the accuser. His client filed a complaint with the civil rights office of the federal Department of Education, and the agency recently agreed to examine whether Florida State properly responds to sexual violence complaints. The inquiry was first reported by USA Today. Image Patricia A. Carroll, a lawyer for the accuser, said neither she nor her client asked the Tallahassee police to stop investigating the case. Credit Steve Nesius/Reuters It was not just the Winston case that was causing concern on campus. In January, the mother of a student who said she had been sexually battered at a fraternity the previous April contacted the campus police asking why the university “doesn’t do more to protect women from rape,” records show. The police response was to inform the mother of a self-defense class for students. That did not satisfy the mother, who told an officer, “The university should take a harder stand on the men who are identified as having committed rapes.” According to the campus police, the student had said she did not want officers to investigate the case. Determining the extent of the problem is difficult, because so many students are reluctant to report sexual assaults. President Obama, in announcing the creation of a task force earlier this year to protect students from sexual assault, cited surveys showing that one in five women is a victim of “attempted or completed sexual violence” while in college. Last year, 28 Florida State students received forensic exams after suspected sexual assaults, according to Refuge House, which is not affiliated with the university. Seven occurred on campus and 17 off campus; in four cases the location was not clear. “I’d like to see a higher reporting rate so that we can address the problem,” said Ms. Cappleman of the state attorney’s office. “A lot of these cases go unreported, so having a higher reporting rate will lead to a higher success rate of prosecution and hopefully a deterring effect.” If cases are reported, the university is obligated to investigate, regardless of what the police do. According to the federal Education Department’s civil rights office, “a school that knows, or reasonably should know” about sexual harassment, including rape, “must promptly investigate to determine what occurred and then take appropriate steps to resolve the situation.” Universities must also inform the federal government of reported sexual assaults on their property or in the immediate vicinity. Florida State has not yet reported its 2013 sexual assault numbers, but in the three previous years it reported four, five and five. Those numbers place Florida State in the lower half nationwide of similar-size public universities, according to federal data analyzed by The Times. The number of reported rapes can be affected by the percentage of students who live off campus. Ms. Baldwin, the Refuge House director, said accusers report that the university’s internal complaint system tends to bury their experience rather than address it responsibly. “When I compare F.S.U. with other universities within the last five years that have done a great deal to address this issue, I’m not seeing that level of energy here,” said Ms. Baldwin, a former Florida State law professor. In its statement, the university said that, in complying with federal rules, “The need to investigate possible harassment must be balanced against the rights of and consent from the complainant.” A decade before the Winston case, the inspector general found that Florida State had violated its policy when the athletic department failed to inform the campus police of a rape accusation against one of its standout football players. Mr. Ruiz, the former prosecutor who handled the case for the state attorney’s office, recalled that the coach at the time, the revered Bobby Bowden, attempted to convince him that a crime had not occurred. A jury eventually acquitted the player. “I learned quickly what football meant in the South,” said Mr. Ruiz, who grew up in New York State. “Clearly, it meant a lot. And with respect to this case I learned that keeping players on the field was a priority.”
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Rape;College;College football;Jameis Winston
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ny0007021
|
[
"us"
] |
2013/05/17
|
Louisiana: 2 Arrested in Shootings at New Orleans Parade
|
The police in New Orleans arrested two brothers and charged them both with 20 counts of attempted murder in connection with a shooting spree at a parade on Sunday that left 20 people wounded, 3 of them in critical condition. Akein Scott, 19, was arrested late Wednesday night and Shawn Scott, 24, was arrested on Thursday morning. The police also arrested and charged four others, ages 19 to 32, for providing “comfort and aid” to Akein Scott after investigators identified him as the likely gunman. The police said that the younger brother was a member of a gang, and several news outlets reported that he had been targeting a rival gang member from another neighborhood, who is recovering from bullet wounds. Akein Scott was already out on bail for gun and drug possession charges. His bail on the attempted murder charges was set at $10 million.
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New Orleans;Parade;Murders;Akein Scott;Shawn Scott
|
ny0064993
|
[
"business",
"media"
] |
2014/06/28
|
Sherri Shepherd and Jenny McCarthy to End Roles on Talk Show
|
The latest cast changes at ABC’s daily talk show “The View” may signal a more sweeping transition, as two hosts will depart by the end of the summer, and the new participants may include the show’s first permanent male host. Executives familiar with the changes said on Friday that the departures of Sherri Shepherd and Jenny McCarthy are part of a creative makeover planned in the wake of the retirement of the show’s creator and original star, Barbara Walters. The news of their exits broke on Thursday night in the form of posts on Twitter by Ms. Shepherd and Ms. McCarthy. ABC confirmed it in an official statement saying, “ ‘The View’ will be moving in an exciting new direction next season, and ABC has made decisions to evolve the show creatively.” Executives informed of the network’s strategy, who asked not to be identified because the plans are still unsettled, said that the motivations for the two departures differed. Ms. Shepherd, who has been on the show for seven years, was in the middle of negotiations to continue, but no deal could be worked out, the executives said. Ms. McCarthy was not being asked to return because the show wanted to make “creative changes.” Ms. McCarthy’s participation had been an issue since the start of her tenure last September, mainly because of strong backlash against statements she had made before joining the show in which she linked autism in children to vaccines. The departure of the two hosts prompted immediate speculation that more changes would follow, including that Bill Geddie, the show’s longtime executive producer — and its show runner — might also be leaving. On Friday, however, one executive briefed on the moves said, “There is no reason to believe Bill will not be back.” “The View” remains a hit for ABC, though the show is averaging 3.12 million viewers this season, down 1 percent from last. Advertising spending on the show was $118 million in 2013, down only slightly from $122.8 million the year before, according to Kantar Media, which tracks ad revenue. The departure of the two hosts means that only Whoopi Goldberg will be a holdover when the show starts its new season in mid-September. (Ms. Shepherd and Ms. McCarthy are expected to work on the show until it takes its annual hiatus in mid-August.) ABC executives declined to comment on potential replacements as hosts. The most prominent person mentioned has been Rosie O’Donnell, who helped lift the show to ratings heights during her sometimes contentious year as host, which started in 2006. But more intriguing is the possibility that the show will add a regular male co-host for the first time next season. That move is “under consideration,” one executive familiar with the show’s planning said. In recent months, a number of men have appeared on “The View,” in what looked like tryouts. Among them were the former “Tonight” show correspondent Ross Matthews, the conservative commentator Will Cain and the former Giants backup quarterback Jesse Palmer.
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The View;Jenny McCarthy;Jesse Palmer;TV;ABC;Sherri Shepherd
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ny0190215
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2009/05/07
|
New Basque President Vows to Fight ETA
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MADRID — The political mood in the Basque country seemed set to shift on Wednesday after a Socialist politician became president on Tuesday, ending three decades of nationalist government in the prosperous and turbulent region of northern Spain marked often by separatist violence claimed by the militant group ETA . Patxi López, 49, won 35 of a possible 75 votes cast by Basque lawmakers, vowing to confront ETA head-on and calling for unity between Basque secessionists and those who favor remaining part of Spain. In a speech ahead of the vote to the Basque parliament in Vitoria, the regional capital, Mr. López said he would fight ETA “day in and day out.” “ETA has one destiny: the definitive and unconditional end of its criminal barbarism,” he said. Basque politics have been dominated for years by questions of Basque identity and greater autonomy. Juan José Ibarretxe, the current Basque president, has promoted holding a referendum among Basques on whether they wish to remain Spanish or become a “free associated state” within Spain. Mr. Ibarretxe is due to step down Thursday. However, views are mixed as to what a Socialist regional government would mean for the fight against ETA, which is considered a terrorist organization by the State Department and has killed more than 825 people in its violent campaign for an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwest France. Some argued that a departure from nationalist politics would help erode ETA’s political base. “The new government will de-legitimize the discourse of violence that exists in this region. It will marginalize ETA’s supporters,” said Edurne Uriarte, a political scientist at the King Juan Carlos University in Madrid. Ms. Uriarte predicted that the Socialists would push the Basque police to act more strongly against ETA. However, Jonan Fernandez, director of Baketik, a Basque organization that promotes dialogue to resolve conflicts, rejected the argument that a non-nationalist government would weaken ETA. “It is not a question of one government or another,” he said in a telephone interview. “How quickly we do away with ETA hinges more on whether all the political and social forces in the Basque Country pull together.” Referring to ETA’s likely reaction to the region’s first Socialist government, he said, “This is a completely new situation and we really don’t know where it will lead us. You can’t apply simple logic to the Basque conflict.” The governing Basque nationalists won more votes than any other party in regional elections on March 1 but could not muster the majority needed to form a government. The Socialists, who won 25 seats in the Parliament, struck a deal with the conservative Popular Party and received a single vote from the independent party Union, Progress and Democracy. Nationalists have decried the alliance between the Socialists and the Popular Party, which are bitter rivals on the national political stage, calling it a cynical act of expediency that would create an illegitimate government. However, Mr. López promised Tuesday to unite Basque society and called on the region’s people to “leave behind the times of division and confrontation.”
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Basques;Politics and Government;Basque Region (Spain);ETA
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ny0247941
|
[
"sports",
"hockey"
] |
2011/05/10
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Switzerland Defeats United States at Worlds
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Kevin Lotscher scored two goals to lead Switzerland to a surprising 5-3 victory over the United States in their final group match at the ice hockey world championship in Kosice, Slovakia. The Americans had already qualified for the playoff round, but the loss means they will now face the defending champion Czech Republic in the quarterfinals after finishing fourth in Group F. Switzerland had already been eliminated.
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Hockey Ice;Switzerland
|
ny0093613
|
[
"business",
"smallbusiness"
] |
2015/08/13
|
Want to Shop for a Surprise? Try a Subscription Box
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Need a monthly delivery of doomsday prepping supplies ? How about treats for your pet rabbit , or only-available-in-Japan snacks like Umashi Oasi Cheetos? Then you might be a candidate for the latest consumer craze: the subscription box. A growing community of eager shoppers seeking both the convenience and surprise that every regular delivery brings are flocking to the concept, paving the way for ever-more-eclectic and specialized offerings. Generally priced at $10 to $30 a shipment, the boxes are stuffed with goodies built around a theme, but usually filled with a surprise mix of products picked out by a curator. “I get close to 100 boxes a month, and I still get excited when I see them at the front door,” said Liz Cadman, the founder of the My Subscription Addiction , a website of reviews. Investors are making big bets on subscription box start-ups like Blue Apron , which mails its subscribers weekly deliveries of recipes and the ingredients to make them. The three-year-old company, based in New York, recently raised $135 million in a deal that values it at $2 billion. Blue Apron says it is delivering more than three million meals a month, three times the number it shipped nine months ago. Companies like NatureBox (snacks), Club W (wine), Citrus Lane (children’s products), BarkBox (treats for dogs), Faithbox (socially responsible goods) and Birchbox, the beauty products retailer widely credited with accelerating the subscription craze, have also taken in money from venture capitalists. Image A Barkbox with Chicken Jerky, a Pineapple toy and Twizzies all-natural chew. Trailing those well-funded ventures are a growing number of mom-and-pop operators. Korrina Ede, 26, and Robert Madden, 32, had long fantasized about leaving their retail jobs and starting their own business. In November, they took a week off to brainstorm and sketch out ideas. From that emerged OwlCrate , a monthly subscription box for young-adult books. Each shipment includes a recently released novel and an assortment of themed literary knickknacks like jewelry, bookmarks, stickers and art. Trying to guess how many customers they might attract, the couple prepared 150 boxes for their first shipment in March, featuring V. E. Schwab’s fantasy novel “A Darker Shade of Magic.” It sold out almost instantly. They scrambled to assemble supplies for an additional 100 boxes, priced at $30 plus shipping — and quickly blew through those. A waiting list formed. Ms. Ede and Mr. Madden won’t disclose exactly how many subscribers OwlCrate now has, but they say it’s in the thousands. The business they started in their apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia, is already overflowing the storage locker they rented for their swelling inventory. “The main limitation on our growth is that we can only put together so many boxes ourselves,” Mr. Madden said. “We’re still sort of in a state of shock about how this took off.” OwlCrate’s success was fueled by a community of bloggers and subscription fans eager to promote their latest finds. My Subscription Addiction has 1,200 companies listed in its subscription directory, up from around 800 a year ago. “We found that the typical person who creates an account on our site subscribes to seven boxes and has 12 more on her wish list,” Ms. Cadman said. Image September&aposs offering from Birchbox Man, the monthly service from Birchbox for men&aposs grooming items. New service providers are making it easier for those with ideas to get started. Ms. Cadman and others say that one catalyst for the market’s recent growth is Cratejoy , a company in Austin, Tex., that sells turnkey software — website templates, customer account management and billing tools — for running a subscription business. Cratejoy’s services cost $39 a month, plus 1.25 percent of each client’s subscription revenue and 10 cents for each billing transaction. After beta testing with a limited pool of customers, it opened to the public in October. Within a month, it had 100 paying merchants. It now has 8,000. Around half of those vendors are first-time business owners, according to Amir Elaguizy, Cratejoy’s co-founder and chief executive. How many will stick with it is an open question. Starting a subscription business can be inexpensive — OwlCrate’s founders say they spent just a few thousand dollars on their initial supplies and inventory — but maintaining one is a punishing logistical grind. Sourcing suppliers, fielding customer questions and complaints, marketing, managing inventory, packing boxes and transporting shipments can be a heavy workload for what is typically a low-margin operation. Ms. Cadman says that 13 percent of the merchants My Subscription Addiction tracks have disappeared. Market research on the industry is scarce, but anecdotal evidence suggests that many subscription businesses have trouble sustaining the elements — like heavy product discounting and the novelty of discovery — that draw customers to them. Paige Hendrix Buckner and her business partner had several hundred subscribers to Tique Box, a $25 monthly shipment of artisanal goods from Portland, Ore., but chose to shut down the business in March after two years of operations. Video A look at the subscription box industry and its outlook, with Katia Beauchamp of Birchbox and Matt Meeker of BarkBox, on CNBC. Balancing the boxes’ price against the cost of supplies was a challenge, Ms. Buckner said. In the beginning, Tique Box sought free samples from merchants looking for exposure to new customers, but that became harder as Tique Box’s customer base grew. Paying for products left thin profits. The business could cover its costs, but it was hard to envision it growing big enough to support salaries for its owners. Ms. Buckner used what she learned from Tique Box to form a new company that she thinks has broader potential: ClientJoy , which creates custom gift packages for corporate clients — a market Tique Box unexpectedly uncovered when local businesses started stocking up on its boxes. “One of the biggest lessons we learned from Tique Box was to decide, ‘Is this a small business, or do you want to scale this into a faster-growing start-up?’” she said. Some ventures that successfully scaled have complex business strategies underpinning a model that looks deceptively simple. Birchbox , created in 2010 by two Harvard Business School students, proved — against all conventional wisdom — that customers would pay $10 a month for a box of cosmetics samples obtained by Birchbox free from manufacturers. Dozens of competitors immediately copied the approach. But Birchbox believed from the start that its subscription model would work only as the first step on a much longer path of introducing customers to new brands and turning them into repeat buyers, says Katia Beauchamp, a company co-founder. Each box is individually customized and comes with educational content on how to use the products. Birchbox places volume orders for everything it samples and sells full-size versions on its website; a generous loyalty program encourages customers to buy directly instead of migrating to other online or offline retailers. More than half of Birchbox’s one million subscribers have shopped on its website, and the company now draws 35 percent of its revenue from nonsubscription sales. Image Faithbox&aposs Welcome Kit for new subscribers is a mix of customers&apos favorite items and a monthly devotional notebook. Credit Patricia Wall/The New York Times “The unit economics are so sexy — you’re selling people things that you got for free — that people fixated on it, but our approach was really complicated,” Ms. Beauchamp said. “If you’re not creating value for the consumer and the brand, it’s a short life cycle.” The subscription boom may turn out to be more of a bubble than a lasting market — plenty of early entrants have already faded away — but it’s alluring enough that new players keep charging in. Hot niches quickly become glutted, almost comically so. Blue Apron’s long list of rivals in the dinner kit market include Plated , Hello Fresh , Din , Marley Spoon , PeachDish , Gobble , Home Chef and at least a dozen others. “Two years ago, there was this trend of ‘time of the month’ boxes ,” Ms. Cadman said. “They didn’t exist, and then suddenly there were 20 of them.” She sees three especially hot areas right now. Boxes filled with comics and toys are taking off, as are home décor subscription boxes. The third category Mr. Cadman named is book boxes. OwlCrate opened at exactly the right moment to capitalize on a surge of interest in young-adult literature, and it has drawn praise for its thoughtful selections, its clever packaging and the custom items it hires Etsy artists to create. Now the challenge Ms. Ede and Mr. Madden face is to keep their thousands of newfound customers feeling as if they’re getting $30 worth of value — about twice what the featured books alone would cost — from OwlCrate’s packages, month after month after month.
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E Commerce;Entrepreneurship;Blue Apron;Small business;Retail;Startup
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ny0274374
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2016/02/02
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Iowa Caucuses: What to Know
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Join us for live coverage of the Iowa caucuses . The Iowa caucuses signal the official start to the 2016 presidential nominating process, and an end to months of candidates’ courtship of voters in the state. While a victory in Iowa does not always lead to a candidate capturing the nomination, it often provides a significant boost to the top finishers and has the potential to reorder dynamics of the race. Here’s some background and a look ahead: Why Iowa? The caucuses have been taking place in Iowa for decades, but in 1972 they became the first contest in the nominating process. The Democratic Party made rule changes that required the state to move its caucuses earlier after problems at the 1968 Democratic National Convention led to a desire for more transparency in the delegate allocation process. Jimmy Carter’s strong showing in 1976 was credited with catapulting him into the presidency and with giving Iowans their special influence. What is at stake? Besides momentum, there are some delegates to be won. Democrats allocate 44 delegates — though none of them will be bound to any candidate as a result — and there are 30 at stake for Republicans. They are awarded proportionally based on the outcome of the caucuses and Democratic candidates need to win at least 15 percent of the votes statewide to be eligible to secure any of the delegates. How prescient are Iowans? The Republican winner has not gone on to win the nomination since George W. Bush in 2000. Iowans kicked off Senator Barack Obama’s upstart presidential bid with a win in 2008. When do the caucuses start? The caucuses begin 8 p.m. Eastern time in 1,681 precincts across the state. When do they end? In some cases the process could take as little as 45 minutes and results will trickle out through the night. The prospect of a big snowstorm hitting the state could encourage Iowans to finish up faster. Where does the race stand? Iowans like to defy expectations and decisions about candidates are often made at caucus time. As voters head to their precincts, the latest Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll has Donald J. Trump leading Senator Ted Cruz by a slim margin on the Republican side, with Senator Marco Rubio in third place. For the Democrats, Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders are deadlocked for the lead, with Martin O’Malley a distant third.
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2016 Presidential Election;Primaries;US Politics;Iowa
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ny0030530
|
[
"world",
"africa"
] |
2013/06/19
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Rebels in North Mali Sign Peace Deal Allowing In Government Troops
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DAKAR, Senegal — Nomadic rebels whose revolt in northern Mali last year split the West African nation signed a peace deal Tuesday with the government, resolving a stumbling block to the country’s reconstruction. The rebels of the Tuareg ethnic group had been clinging to swaths of Mali’s desert north, refusing to disarm or allow the country’s army to enter Kidal, a dusty Sahara outpost near the Algerian border. The peace accord, which calls for the deployment of the Malian Army there, followed a French military intervention at the beginning of the year that itself went some way to putting the fractured country back together. That intervention did not go all the way, however, and the accord signed Tuesday in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, now appears to resolve the last major sticking point. The agreement also helps clear the way for elections in late July. International donors, whose billions of dollars in promised aid is vital to Mali’s reconstruction, have been calling for elections. Before a recent series of military confrontations, Mali had been one of West Africa’s most stable nations. In January and February, the French chased out Al Qaeda-allied Islamists, who took over Mali’s north last year. But they did not dislodge the Tuaregs, rankling the government and population in Bamako, the capital. It was the Tuareg uprising in January 2012 — the latest in a long series of revolts by the Tuaregs dating to the 1960s — and the subsequent rout of the Malian Army that paved the way for the Islamist takeover. For weeks after the French effectively chased the Islamists out of Mali, the Tuaregs hung on in Kidal, proclaiming their sovereignty. The government announced its intention to retake Kidal by force, if necessary. The agreement Tuesday halts that military campaign. A draft circulated last week called for the “progressive deployment of the Malian Army in Kidal.” The Malian government’s chief negotiator, Tiébilé Dramé, said Tuesday night that “the agreement re-establishes the international consensus that Malian territory is indivisible and that the state is secular.” “Even the former separatists have recognized that the national territory can’t be divided,” he said from Ouagadougou. Mr. Dramé said no concessions on the issue of sovereignty had been made to the rebels. “I think they saw that things were not going in their favor,” he said.
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Military;Al Qaeda;Mali
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ny0208158
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2009/06/15
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New York City Proposes Pedicab Regulation
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The city will move forward with its long-stalled regulation of pedicabs, officials said on Sunday, four days after an accident in Brooklyn seriously injured a driver and focused attention on the lack of oversight of the tourist-friendly tricycles. Owners of the pedal-powered cabs would have a 60-day window to register with the city, under a proposal announced by the mayor and the City Council speaker. Those who provide proof of ownership and insurance would receive a license, providing that their vehicles pass a safety examination. The proposed rules are a shift from the city’s first attempt at regulating the industry in 2007, when the city insisted on a limit to the number of licenses it would issue. Pedicab owners sued, arguing the cap would hurt established businesses, and regulation was held up for two years. The lawsuit was resolved in April, and the licensing cap was thrown out. In the meantime, safety laws enacted in 2007 — including the requirement of seat belts, turn signals and emergency brakes — have not been enforced. Last week, a pedicab collided with a taxi at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge, injuring the pedicab driver and two passengers. Advocates for regulation said the city should have enforced rules that made it illegal for pedicabs to travel on bridges, but the city said it was powerless until a licensing procedure could be established. Sunday’s proposal was an attempt to end that impasse, but enforcement may still be a few weeks or months away. The proposal must wind its way through the legislative review process, and city officials have said their hands are tied on regulation until the new procedure becomes law. (The first public hearing for the bill is set for the end of month.) But one potential hurdle may have been cleared: Pedicab owners who sued over the original licensing plan said they had no qualms with the new proposal. “This is really what we had been hoping for from the beginning,” said Chad Marlow, a lawyer for the New York City Pedicab Owners Association . “We think we’ll be the most vigilant supporters of the bill out there.” City officials said the plan had been in the works since April, when the lawsuit was resolved. “To say the mayor and the speaker saw this accident and they’re jumping into action because of that, that would take credit away from them,” Mr. Marlow said. The bill would require pedicabs to display a fare card, owner information and contacts so passengers can file complaints. The city would revisit licensing rules after 18 months. The original rules limited licenses to 325; owners estimated that there were about 1,000 pedicabs in the city. One pedicab operator said Sunday that the new rules could still put established companies at a disadvantage. “It leaves the window wide open for anyone who is going to speculate on this and say, ‘If I’m going to jump in the pedicab business, now’s my time,’ ” said Robert Tipton, owner of Mr. Rickshaw. “An accident is always an unfortunate thing to have happen,” he said. “But if there is any good that’s coming out of it, pedicabs in New York City should be safer after this.”
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New York City;Pedicabs (Bicycle Taxis);Accidents and Safety;Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
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ny0258988
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2011/01/06
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Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven Elected to Hall of Fame
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Roberto Alomar was 9 years old in 1977 when his father, Sandy, was traded from the Yankees to the Texas Rangers. Alomar and his brother tagged along to games at old Arlington Stadium, playing ball in the parking lot with the other players’ sons, including 4-year-old Todd Blyleven. Late in the next decade, Alomar embarked on a career as one of the most dynamic all-around players in baseball history. Todd’s father, Bert, was still pitching then, quietly compiling impressive statistics that have, at last, become impossible to ignore. Alomar and Blyleven were elected to the Hall of Fame on Wednesday, Alomar in his second year on the ballot, Blyleven in his 14th. Alomar received 523 of 581 votes, for 90 percent , while Blyleven finished with 463, for 79.7 percent. Candidates needed 436 votes, or 75 percent, to be enshrined. “What an amazing thing,” Alomar said on a conference call from Toronto. “I got to hit against him, saw him when I was young and now I’m getting the chance to go in the Hall of Fame with him.” Barry Larkin was third in the voting, at 62.1 percent, followed by Jack Morris (53.5 percent), Lee Smith (45.3 percent) and Jeff Bagwell (41.7 percent). In his first election after admitting steroid use, the former slugger Mark McGwire dropped to 19.8 percent, his lowest share in five appearances on the ballot. Rafael Palmeiro, who hit 569 homers but failed a drug test in 2005, received only 11 percent. Alomar and Blyleven narrowly missed induction last year , Alomar by eight votes and Blyleven by five. Most players who come that close are elected the next year, and Alomar, a 10-time Gold Glove second baseman, said he expected to make it. Blyleven, who played for the Minnesota Twins in half of his 22 seasons, took nothing for granted. “It’s been 14 years of praying and waiting,” he said on a conference call from Fort Myers, Fla. “I thank the baseball writers of America for, I’m going to say, finally getting it right.” When he first appeared on the ballot in 1998, Blyleven collected only 17.5 percent of the vote. The next year, that figure dropped to 14.1 percent; a candidate must have at least 5 percent to remain under consideration, with a maximum of 15 years on the ballot. Blyleven did not receive even half the votes until 2006, his ninth year of eligibility. But many bloggers mounted a convincing campaign on his behalf, stressing Blyleven’s value beyond his mediocre .534 winning percentage . Blyleven cited Rich Lederer of BaseballAnalysts.com . “He’s one guy that’s really brought out so many different stats than just wins and losses,” said Blyleven, who was 287-250. “As a pitcher, sometimes you can’t control wins. You can’t control losses. But what you can control is innings you pitch, if you keep your club in the game, all those things, and I think they’re brought out a lot more today than they were even 10 years ago.” Blyleven ranks high in two categories that show a pitcher’s dominance: strikeouts (fifth, with 3,701) and shutouts (ninth, with 60). Every other pitcher in the top 20 in shutouts was in the Hall of Fame, as was every other eligible pitcher in the top 17 in strikeouts . He also ranks highly in a much newer metric, Wins Above Replacement for pitchers , which tries to show how many victories a player produces compared with a replacement who might be called up from the minors. According to Baseball-Reference.com , Blyleven ranks 13th among pitchers on that list, and was the only eligible pitcher in the top 27 who was not already in Cooperstown. Blyleven, who said he consults Baseball-Reference.com as a broadcaster for the Twins, has long been fascinated by statistics. “I’m kind of a baseball geek as far as numbers,” he said. “I always looked at numbers, even as a young kid coming up. I admired Walter Johnson and Cy Young. How could one guy pitch over 7,000 innings, like Cy Young? I wanted to be like him.” Alomar’s case was more obvious. He made 12 All-Star teams in a row, from 1990 through 2001. He is the only Gold Glove winner in baseball history to finish his career with a .300 average and at least 2,700 hits, 200 home runs and 450 stolen bases . Like Blyleven, he played for two World Series winners and generally excelled in October. Signed by the San Diego Padres out of Puerto Rico in 1985, Alomar spent his prime years with the Toronto Blue Jays, the Baltimore Orioles and the Cleveland Indians, reaching the playoffs with all of them. His productivity came to an abrupt halt with the Mets in 2002, and he retired in spring training 2005. Some voters may have penalized Alomar last year for spitting in the face of the umpire John Hirschbeck during an argument in 1996. But Hirschbeck forgave Alomar years ago, and Alomar has donated money to fight the brain disease that has afflicted Hirschbeck’s children. “I feel good that I have a good relationship with John,” Alomar said. “He forgives me, his family forgives me, and we both move on.” Alomar was born to a baseball family; his father’s career spanned 15 seasons, and his brother, Sandy Jr., was a six-time All-Star catcher. Blyleven is one of only nine major leaguers born in the Netherlands, and the only one to play more than four seasons. His father moved the family to Canada before Blyleven was 2, and they moved again, to Southern California, when Blyleven was 5. He grew up listening to the Dodgers’ radio broadcasters, Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett, and their vivid descriptions of Sandy Koufax’s curveball. Blyleven would make it his signature pitch. “I threw it and threw it and threw it against a block wall until I could get it over for strikes,” Blyleven said. “My dad built me a mound in the backyard with a canvas backdrop over our horseshoe pits, and I would go back there and just throw and throw and throw until I developed it, and it became my curveball. And I could throw it over at any time, any count.” Alas, he did not have many chances to throw it to Alomar. They met just once , in Blyleven’s final major league season, 1992. Alomar had a flyout, a triple and a walk, and Blyleven allowed six runs. “I’m glad I got the chance to face him when he wasn’t as good as before,” Alomar said, laughing. “But he was a tough, tough pitcher.”
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Baseball;Baseball Hall of Fame;Alomar Roberto;McGwire Mark
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ny0088317
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2015/09/04
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Numbering of Migrants by Czechs Brings Outcry
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LONDON — Human rights advocates and Jewish groups expressed outrage on Thursday after the authorities in the Czech Republic wrote numbers on the skin of migrants who were pulled off trains this week, a move they said summoned memories of the Nazi era. The Czech officers used felt-tip pens to write the numbers on the hands of some of the more than 200 mostly Syrian migrants at Breclav railway station on Tuesday. The officers were apparently unaware of the historical resonance with World War II , when the Nazis tattooed numbers on the arms of Jews at concentration camps. The Czech government said Thursday it had abandoned the practice, but the dehumanizing treatment of migrants has come under criticism by human rights groups at a time when countries across Europe have grappled with how to respond to the migration crisis in the face of the rise of far-right anti-immigrant parties that have demonized migrants. Language used to describe migrants has come under criticism, including in Britain, for example, where Prime Minister David Cameron in July referred to them as “ a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean .” This week, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland was criticized for installing sprinkler showers at its entrance to combat heat, a move that a visitor complained evoked the painful history of the concentration camp. The episodes in the Czech Republic and at the museum in Poland, said Tomas Kraus, the executive director of the Federation of the Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic, showed a lack of sensitivity and historical awareness. “It is 70 years after the war, and it is a new generation, and they have no clue about history,” he said by telephone. “It is a lack of education, a lack of empathy. If they understood the history, the images from the history, they would not do it.” Jan Brulc, a spokesman at Migrants’ Rights Network, an advocacy group based in London, said the Czech episode reflected the extent to which many European Union countries are ill equipped to deal with the large influx of migrants. “This incident shows how certain countries in Europe have been hit completely off guard,” he said. “The image of labeling refugees brings historical images of the Second World War to mind, and the police and border guards should understand the requirement under international conventions to treat migrants with the dignity they deserve. Countries can’t punish people for being migrants.” The Czech Interior Ministry said that the inscriptions, which were written after the migrants were taken off a train traveling from Hungary to Germany, were not standard practice. The ministry said that the priority of the police had been to ensure that families were not separated, and a spokeswoman noted in an emailed statement that the authorities were under pressure to move quickly. The spokeswoman, Lucie Novakova, added that new rules would be initiated “in order to prevent such a situation in the future.” The Czech Republic has so far received 884 asylum requests this year, compared with 800,000 that Germany is expected to get this year, yet the country has experienced a simmering anti-immigrant backlash. During 40 years of Communism in Eastern and Central Europe, immigration was relatively small, and countries are still trying to come to terms with the challenges of immigration and integration. There are fewer than 20,000 Muslims in the Czech Republic, and anti-immigration groups have exploited the relative lack of familiarity with Islam to suggest that migrants, many of whom are fleeing Syria, pose a terrorist threat. The human cost of the migration crisis was called into sharp relief this week after at least 12 migrants fleeing the war in Syria, including two boys, drowned on Wednesday while trying to reach the Greek island of Kos . The image of one of the boys, whose body was found face down in the sand, spread across the Internet, and some human rights officials hope the response will compel European leaders to act.
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Czech Republic;Holocaust and Nazis;Middle East and Africa Migrant Crisis,European Migrant Crisis;Immigration;Refugees,Internally Displaced People;Discrimination;EU
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ny0204214
|
[
"us"
] |
2009/01/03
|
John Travolta’s Teenage Son Dies
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NASSAU, Bahamas (AP) — The actor John Travolta ’s teenage son, Jett, died on Friday in the Bahamas after apparently suffering a seizure at his family’s vacation home, the authorities said. A house caretaker found Jett, 16, unconscious in a bathroom late Friday morning. He was taken by ambulance to a Freeport hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Superintendent Basil Rahming of the Freeport police said in a statement. The teenager had a history of seizures, according to the statement. An autopsy is planned. Jett was the oldest child of Mr. Travolta and his wife, the actress Kelly Preston. They also have an 8-year-old daughter, Ella Bleu. Ms. Preston and Mr. Travolta have said that Jett became very sick and almost died when he was 2. He was later determined to have Kawasaki disease, an illness that leads to inflammation of the blood vessels in young children. It is unclear whether the teenager was taking any medications for his seizures. The family had arrived in the Bahamas on a private plane Tuesday and was vacationing at their home in the Old Bahama Bay resort community.
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Travolta John;Seizures (Medical)
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ny0269701
|
[
"us"
] |
2016/04/21
|
Flint Water Crisis Yields First Criminal Charges
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FLINT, Mich. — Three government workers were charged with crimes on Wednesday for their roles in this city’s water crisis, accused in part of covering up evidence of lead contamination. The workers — an employee of Flint and two state workers assigned to monitor water quality in cities — are the first to face criminal charges in connection with the failures that left residents of this city drinking foul and unsafe water for many months. In announcing the charges, some of which are felonies carrying penalties of as much as five years in prison, Bill Schuette, the Michigan attorney general, answered skeptics in Flint and elsewhere who had openly doubted that anyone would ever be held accountable for the health crisis here. Emails and other documents have shown a cascading series of failures at every level of government — local, state and federal — and Mr. Schuette, a Republican who is widely seen as a possible candidate for governor in 2018, emphasized that his investigation, begun in January, was far from over. “These charges are only the beginning,” Mr. Schuette said. “There will be more to come — that I can guarantee you.” The charges against the three defendants — Michael Prysby, a district engineer with the State Department of Environmental Quality; Stephen Busch, a district supervisor in the same department; and Michael Glasgow, the city’s utilities manager — included tampering with evidence contained in reports on lead levels in city water, and the two state officials were also charged with conspiracy to tamper with evidence. Mr. Prysby and Mr. Busch were arraigned later on Wednesday, court records show. Lawyers for the three men could not be reached for comment. Among other things, the workers were accused of distorting the results by directing residents to run their water before it was tested and failing to collect samples from some houses they were required to test. That had the effect of making the levels of lead in the water supply appear far less dangerous than they were, and falsely reassured officials who could have intervened months earlier, as well as residents, that the water was safe. The disaster has left Flint residents fearful about the lasting effects of lead on the city’s youngest children, distrustful of the promises of the authorities and reliant on filters and bottled water. Some have questioned whether this economically distressed, majority black city of fewer than 100,000 residents will ever get justice. The charges against relatively low-level officials were being viewed as a promising initial step, but by no means a final answer. “We want the complete story,” Karen Weaver, the recently elected mayor of Flint, said after listening to details of the charges from the front row of a news conference with prosecutors and investigators here. “This is the start to that.” Some residents pointedly alluded to Gov. Rick Snyder. Asked whether Mr. Snyder would face charges, Mr. Schuette said, “There’s no target, and no one’s off the table.” Ellis Stafford, a Flint native and an investigator on the team Mr. Schuette assigned to investigate what happened in Flint, choked up as he addressed the failed water system — and the broken trust in government that has come from it. “It really hurts,” he said. “I have friends, personal close friends. They live here. They look at me and they wonder if there’s any truth to this investigation. I hope I gave them some.” He went on to say, “I told one of my friends, ‘You might not believe in government or the state, but believe in me.’” The three men face a total of 13 charges, a mix of felonies and misdemeanors. The state workers have been suspended without pay, Mr. Snyder said late Wednesday. Mr. Glasgow has been placed on administrative leave, Ms. Weaver said. The charges are linked to the handling of a change in the city’s water supply two years ago and to the aftermath of that change, including a failure to add chemicals that reduce corrosion inside pipes. The resulting problems led to Flint residents’ exposure to water contaminated with lead and possibly linked to a deadly outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease. David M. Uhlmann, who was chief of the environmental crimes section at the Justice Department from 2000 to 2007, and who is a law professor at the University of Michigan, said such charges were rare. ”It’s extremely unusual and maybe unprecedented for state and local officials to be charged with criminal drinking water violations,” he said. Mr. Busch and Mr. Prysby, the state officials, were charged with misconduct in office, a felony, for “willfully and knowingly misleading” the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Genesee County Health Department about dangers posed by the water. Mr. Prysby was also charged with misconduct in office for authorizing use of the Flint plant, “knowing that the Flint water treatment plant was deficient in its ability to provide clean and safe drinking water.” Each of those charges carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Each of the tampering charges is a felony punishable by up to four years and $10,000. Mr. Prysby and Mr. Busch each face two misdemeanor charges of violating the state’s Safe Drinking Water Act by failing to order anticorrosion treatment of the water, and for telling residents to run, or “preflush,” their taps before samples were taken for lead testing, creating misleadingly low readings. Each count carries a penalty of up to a year in prison, and a fine of up to $5,000 for each day of violation. Events That Led to Flint’s Water Crisis Timeline of the critical moments leading to the public health emergency. Mr. Glasgow also faces a misdemeanor charge of willful neglect of duty, with a maximum sentence of a year and a $1,000 fine. At times, Mr. Glasgow has been seen as someone who tried to warn officials about his concerns over the water. Not long before Flint switched to a new water supply in 2014, Mr. Glasgow warned state officials that he believed the city was not fully ready to make the change and suggested, in an email released as part of thousands of emails made public since the crisis began, that “people above” him were pushing to move too quickly. Mr. Snyder, a Republican who has apologized repeatedly for what happened in Flint but has also indicated that staff members failed for months to tell him about the gravity and dangers of the mounting situation, has faced the most intense criticism of his two terms over the issue, as well as calls for his resignation or recall. The city had switched to the troubled water system while under the control of an emergency financial manager, appointed by the governor to sort out Flint’s fiscal troubles. Last month, a panel appointed by the governor assigned most of the blame to state officials, citing “government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction and environmental injustice.” Mr. Snyder, who announced this week that he would drink Flint water for a month, said at a news conference on Wednesday that the charges were “deeply troubling and extremely serious.” He said he had not yet been interviewed by the attorney general’s team, but that his office was cooperating with the investigation. Asked whether he believed he had committed a crime, Mr. Snyder said, “I don’t believe so.” Along the streets here on Wednesday, some people questioned why Mr. Snyder was not being held to answer for the state’s failings. “Somebody knew about this at the top,” William McCraw, 64, said as he waited at a bus station in Flint. “They need to round them all up, everyone who knew.” They also wondered aloud how criminal charges could now solve their continuing water and health problems. Researchers from Virginia Tech said recently that while Flint’s system was “on the path to recovery,” it remained a “high-risk zone for lead in water.” Nicole Woycik, a mother who worries about her 6-year-old son’s behavioral changes and wonders about long-term effects the water may have on him, described the criminal charges as “a start.” But, she added, “The charges will not bring a lot of closure, because we’re affected either way.” Asked whether Flint was now beginning to heal, Ms. Weaver, the mayor, said the criminal charges were “part of getting it healed.” The other part, she said, would be securing all of the money Flint needs to replace its aged water system.
|
Flint Michigan;Lead;Water;Michael Prysby;Stephen Busch;Michael Glasgow;Michigan;Bill Schuette;Water pollution
|
ny0012937
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2013/11/19
|
Former Marcos Aide Is Convicted in Attempted Sale of Missing Paintings
|
Vilma Bautista was patient. She waited more than a quarter of a century before discreetly trying to sell the paintings she had in her New York apartment: Impressionist masterpieces that had once hung on the walls of a townhouse used by Imelda Marcos. How those paintings came into the possession of Ms. Bautista, who was Ms. Marcos’s longtime confidante and personal secretary, and whether she had a right to sell them, were open questions — ones that a jury in Manhattan did not take long to answer. It took jurors only three hours on Monday morning to convict Ms. Bautista on conspiracy and tax fraud charges stemming from the sale or attempted sale of the paintings, which disappeared in the 1980s, when Ferdinand Marcos was ousted as president of the Philippines. When the jury forewoman read the verdict, Ms. Bautista, who is 75 and has a heart ailment, was not even in court. Her lawyers said she was still resting at home after being taken to a hospital on Friday with chest pains and nausea. The reappearance of the four masterpieces — two by Monet, including one from his famous water lily series — was another recent example of dubious dealings in the art world. This month , the existence of the biggest trove of missing 20th-century European art discovered since the end of World War II emerged in Germany. Though Ms. Bautista was the one facing charges, the monthlong trial focused attention on the struggle of Philippine authorities to track down and recover millions of dollars’ worth of missing artwork that was purchased with public money during the Marcos era. The trial also shed light on a complex $43 million transaction in September 2010 that transferred one of the Monets — the majestic “Le Bassin aux Nymphéas” — from Ms. Bautista to a Panamanian company, then to a London gallery and finally to Alan Howard, a hedge fund manager in Switzerland. That deal had gone forward even though the only evidence Ms. Bautista possessed that she was authorized to sell the painting was a single-page document from 1991, purportedly signed by Mrs. Marcos. “Everyone held their noses and closed their eyes because it was in their shared financial interest to do so,” one of the prosecutors, Ted Starishevsky, said during summations on Friday. The jury found Ms. Bautista guilty of conspiracy for having plotted with her two nephews, Chaiyot Jansen Navalaksana and Pongsak Navalaksana, to sell four paintings on the Asian black market. Image Vilma Bautista Credit Eric Thayer/Reuters All the works had been taken in late 1995 from the walls of an Upper East Side townhouse, owned by the Philippine government, where Mrs. Marcos stayed and threw lavish parties when in New York. Mrs. Bautista was also convicted of criminal tax fraud for failing to report to state and city tax officials on the $28 million she received from the sale of the painting. She faces up 25 years in prison on the top charge. “We all agreed the evidence was damning,” one juror, who asked that her name not be used, said as the jury left the courtroom. “It was just good evidence.” Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, likened the conviction to a “white-collar cold case” that came to light only because prosecutors had analyzed Ms. Bautista’s finances and tax returns. He said the case also highlighted the darker side of the art market. “We have solved the mystery of a painting that has been missing for decades,” he said. Ms. Bautista’s lawyers, Susan and Fran Hoffinger, had argued to the jury that their client was authorized to act as Mrs. Marcos’s agent and had intended to send some of the proceeds to her, but could not because the district attorney’s office had seized the money. Prosecutors never accused Ms. Bautista of stealing, but they presented evidence that she had hidden the paintings at her apartment on East 64th Street. Beginning in July 2009, as she was running short of money, she enlisted her nephews to find a private collector willing to buy the work. The jury was shown more than a dozen emails sent between Ms. Bautista’s nephews outlining their plans to sell the paintings on her behalf. The two men expressed worries about being caught and going to jail. Prosecutors presented evidence raising questions about the document authorizing Ms. Bautista to sell the painting. The notary who signed it admitted under oath that Mrs. Marcos was not present when he notarized it, and that he had done it as a favor to one of Ms. Bautista’s sisters. Still, in the summer of 2010, a London Gallery — Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox — agreed to buy the painting and then resell it to Mr. Howard. The gallery deposited $28 million into Ms. Bautista’s bank account. In April 2011, she failed to report the $28 million windfall on her state tax return and paid about $80 in taxes. “This transaction was never intended to see the light of day,” Mr. Starishevsky said.
|
Vilma Bautista;Imelda R Marcos;Art;Philippines;Arts and Antiquities Looting;Fraud
|
ny0001620
|
[
"sports",
"cricket"
] |
2013/03/07
|
Angelo Mathews to Captain Sri Lanka Cricket Team
|
The Sri Lankan cricket captaincy will go through a change in generations this week, but not before a reminder of why earlier captains regarded the job as a penance as much as an honor. Angelo Mathews, 25, will lead Sri Lanka in a five-day test match for the first time Friday when it plays Bangladesh at Galle in the first of a series of two matches. He succeeds Mahela Jayawardene, 35, who stepped down after a second stint as captain. Until earlier this week, it was unclear whether Mathews would play in the match, much less lead the team. He and Sri Lanka’s 23 leading players were feuding with the Sri Lanka Cricket Board over pay, but they reached a settlement Monday. Before that, the board was preparing to field a team of replacement players against Bangladesh. Disputes over pay and late payments and complaints of political interference have dogged Sri Lankan cricket for years. It is telling that while Jayawardene, Kumar Sangakkara and Tillakaratne Dilshan, the three players who have led Sri Lanka since 2005, all remain members of the national test squad, none wants to lead the team. Jayawardene will miss the Bangladesh series after surgery on an injured finger, while Sangakkara’s participation is in doubt because of a fractured finger. Mathews has been eyed as a potential captain for some time. He was seriously considered for the captaincy in 2011, but the selectors decided it was too early and opted for Dilshan. His appointment to lead Sri Lanka in Twenty20 cricket last year showed that he remained the heir apparent. His elevation to lead the test and one-day international team means that the Twenty20 leadership passes to Dinesh Chandimal, 23, now also the vice captain in the longer forms. Mathews, who leaves Sri Lanka atop the world rankings in Twenty20, has made climbing up in the other rankings, both in tests and one-day internationals, a priority. “My main ambition now is to see the Sri Lankan cricket team in the top three in the next few years,” he said when appointed last month. “We’ve dropped down to sixth place in tests and fifth in O.D.I.’s.” Mathews brings a range of skills as a player. He is a highly competent middle-order batsman who averages close to 40 runs per dismissal in tests, although injuries have limited both the extent and effectiveness of his fast-medium bowling. Certainly he will want to improve a current test average of more than 70 runs per wicket. But he has attracted most attention as a brilliantly athletic fielder, earning himself a heap of highlight reel appearances, with plays such as an extraordinary stop during the Twenty20 World Cup in 2009, when he leaped over the boundary rope to parry back into play a shot that looked certain to go for six. And while Sri Lanka has struggled to bowl other teams out since the retirement in 2010 of Muttiah Muralitharan, the all-time record wicket-taker in test cricket, the veteran left-arm spinner Rangana Herath is beginning to look like a match-winner. He took 60 test wickets in 2012, more than any other bowler in the world, including 28 in Sri Lanka’s three matches at Galle. The Bangladeshi captain, Mushfiqur Rahim, has described the series as his country’s best-ever opportunity to do well in Sri Lanka. “The tour is a big opportunity if we can play to our potential,” Rahim said. It would be hard for Bangladesh to do worse than on its previous visits to Sri Lanka, where it has been beaten heavily in all eight test matches it has played. It will, though, be seriously handicapped by the absence of its best player, Shakib al-Hasan. The 25-year-old, out with a shin injury, is Bangladesh’s leading player in both the batting and bowling rankings and is rated the world’s No. 1 all-rounder, ahead of Jacques Kallis of South Africa. Bangladesh hopes that part of the slack will be taken up by its prodigal talent, Mohammad Ashraful. A decade ago, at age 17, he became the youngest ever to hit a century in test cricket, against Sri Lanka in Colombo. But since then, he has mixed occasional moments of brilliance with long spells of low scoring. His recall for the Sri Lanka tour after more than a year out of the team came only because Shahriar Nafees was ruled out with a hand injury. “I think I am at an age when I want to have a second coming, and from the top order, I think I can target that,” Ashraful, now 28, said after scoring 102 in Bangladesh’s warm-up match against Sri Lanka’s development team.
|
Cricket;Sri Lanka
|
ny0270550
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2016/04/23
|
Donald Trump’s More Accepting Views on Gay Issues Set Him Apart in G.O.P.
|
Elton John and his longtime boyfriend, David Furnish, entered a civil partnership on Dec. 21, 2005, in England under a law the country had just enacted granting recognition to same-sex couples. The congratulations poured in as the two men appeared at a joyous ceremony at Windsor Guildhall, amid a crush of paparazzi. Donald J. Trump, who had known the couple for years, took to his blog to express his excitement. “I know both of them, and they get along wonderfully. It’s a marriage that’s going to work,” Mr. Trump wrote , adding: “I’m very happy for them. If two people dig each other, they dig each other.” Mr. Trump is now the leading candidate for president in the Republican primary, which has traditionally been dominated by hopefuls eager to show how deeply conservative they are on social issues like gay rights and marriage. But Mr. Trump is far more accepting of sexual minorities than his party’s leaders have been. On Thursday , he startled some Republicans by saying on NBC’s “Today” show that he opposed a recently passed North Carolina law that prohibits people from using public bathrooms that do not correspond to the gender they were born with, striking down a Charlotte ordinance. Transgender people should “use the bathroom they feel is appropriate,” Mr. Trump said, putting him at odds with a majority of Republicans in North Carolina . How the Rest of the Delegate Race Could Unfold An interactive delegate calculator that lets you simulate how the 2016 Republican nomination process could unfold. But it is his views on gay rights and gay people that most distinguish Mr. Trump from previous Republican standard-bearers. He has nurtured long friendships with gay people, employed gay workers in prominent positions, and moved with ease in industries where gays have long exerted influence, like entertainment. “He will be the most gay-friendly Republican nominee for president ever,” said Gregory T. Angelo, the president of the Log Cabin Republicans, a group that supports gay rights. Of course, Mr. Trump is not as embracing of gay rights as the Democratic candidates are; he said during this campaign that he believes that marriage is between a man and a woman, a position he has held since at least 2000, when he briefly flirted with a bid for the presidency . But he does not emphasize marriage as an issue, and he makes no mention of it, for example, on his campaign website, which focuses on issues like immigration and trade. And Mr. Trump, who has inflamed tensions with almost every group, from Hispanics to women to African-Americans, has avoided attacking or offending gay men and lesbians during the campaign. His history with the gay community is a long one. He donated to charities focused on the AIDS crisis in the late 1980s and early ’90s. In 2000, when he briefly considered running for president, he gave an interview to The Advocate , a gay magazine, in which he supported amending the 1964 Civil Rights Act to “include a ban of discrimination based on sexual orientation.” “It would be simple. It would be straightforward,” Mr. Trump said in the interview, adding, “It’s only fair.” Sixteen years later, gay rights advocates are still trying to persuade Congress to pass a similar measure, but they have struggled to win support, especially from Republicans. The last Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, opposed similar legislation in 2012. Mr. Trump declined to be interviewed for this article. His ease with gay people does not seem to be the result of deep soul searching, but, rather, the product of the Manhattan social and political world he has inhabited the past five decades. “I live in New York. I know many, many gay people. Tremendous people,” Mr. Trump said in an interview in 2011 . He has been playful at times, such as in 2000, when he and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani appeared in a skit for a political roast , during which Mr. Trump nuzzled and caressed the mayor, who was dressed in drag. Friends say he also views gay rights through the lens of a bottom line-minded businessman. “His key concern is, Are you capable and able to do the job I hired you for? And if you are, very little else matters,” said Abe Wallach, an openly gay executive at the Trump Organization in the 1990s. “Very little on a social level will make Donald excited — if it was money or something else, he might get excited.” Mr. Trump was believed to be the first private club owner in Palm Beach, Fla., to admit an openly gay couple, according to Laurence Leamer, the author of “Madness Under the Royal Palms,” a book about Palm Beach society. Mr. Trump made his club, Mar-a-Lago , more open partly out of disdain for the restrictions that barred Jews and African-Americans from joining exclusive clubs in Palm Beach. “It’s one of the best things he’s done in my view in his life,” Mr. Leamer said. “He really changed the nature of Palm Beach.” Rand Hoch, a gay activist who founded the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council in 1988, recalled bringing dates to Mar-a-Lago on two occasions. Both times, he said, Mr. Trump, who loves to play the role of greeter as guests arrive at his club, was pleasant and approached the two for chitchat. “He treated us no differently than everyone else who was going through that door,” Mr. Hoch said, adding that it was not possible that Mr. Trump was unaware they were gay. “He’s perceptive, so I’m pretty sure he didn’t think we were brothers.” Image Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Fla. Mr. Trump was believed to be the first private club owner there to admit an openly gay couple. Credit Eric Thayer for The New York Times Mr. Wallach said that he and his husband would fly on Mr. Trump’s jet to Florida or Atlantic City on weekends. “I found him to be very friendly to my spouse,” he said. “He would often ask about my spouse, how his dental practice was doing.” Mr. Trump’s foundation has given over the years to groups like the AIDS Service Center and the Elton John AIDS Foundation. Some of those donations came more recently in connection with his reality television show “The Celebrity Apprentice,” whose winners got to select the recipient charities. But as early as 1987, Mr. Trump made a $25,000 contribution to the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, from profits generated by his company’s operation of the Wollman Memorial Rink in Central Park. And in 1992, the Trump Taj Mahal held an event that raised $60,000 for AIDS research. Mr. Trump’s recent alliances with social conservatives such as Jerry Falwell Jr. and Pat Robertson have alarmed people like Mr. Angelo, whose group, the Log Cabin Republicans, is eager to meet with the real estate mogul to discuss his positions in detail. And some gay acquaintances of Mr. Trump find it puzzling that he cannot support same-sex marriage, given his comfort with gay relationships. In 2012, Mr. Trump attended the wedding of Jordan Roth, a Broadway producer, and Richie Jackson , in a ceremony at the Al Hirschfeld Theater. Months later, Mr. Trump went to lunch with the actor George Takei, who is openly gay and was fired by Mr. Trump from “The Celebrity Apprentice.” Mr. Takei approached Mr. Trump at a news conference for the show, saying he would like to try to change his views on letting gay people marry. “He said, ‘George, maybe I could learn something from you,’ ” Mr. Takei said in a telephone interview this week from his home in California. The lunch, at Trump Tower, opened with Mr. Trump mentioning the wedding he had attended, which Mr. Takei later learned was that of Mr. Roth and Mr. Jackson. Mr. Takei walked Mr. Trump through the benefits of supporting same-sex marriage, particularly for a business owner. Gay couples would celebrate in his hotels, and their guests would dine in his restaurants, Mr. Takei said. Mr. Trump agreed with that view, Mr. Takei said, but he would not budge, saying he supported “traditional marriage.” “I was tempted to say, marrying multiple times is not traditional marriage,” Mr. Takei said of Mr. Trump, who has been married three times.
|
2016 Presidential Election;Donald Trump;Same-Sex Marriage,Gay Marriage;Gay and Lesbian LGBT;Republicans
|
ny0052596
|
[
"us"
] |
2014/07/03
|
James Metts Is Accused of Accepting Bribes
|
LEXINGTON, S.C. — The weekday lunch rush arrives as a small ritual of suburban pleasure at the San Jose Mexican Restaurant, just across from the tanning salon and the strip-mall multiplex. A mostly white clientele pulls into a parking lot, past a sign with a cartoon peasant tugging on an obstinate donkey. Inside, a mostly Latino work force serves Americanized versions of Mexican classics as a sound system plays syrupy Spanish ballads. The restaurant chain — local, family-owned and, with more than a dozen locations, as abundant here as any national brand — has been around central South Carolina since the days when Tex-Mex was considered exotic. Today, it is at the center of an illegal immigration and bribery scandal that has resulted in the indictment of the state’s longest-serving sheriff, who has showcased the deportations of hundreds of people not authorized to be in the country. A June 17 grand jury indictment accuses Sheriff James R. Metts, Lexington County’s top law enforcement official since 1972, of accepting cash bribes from Gregorio M. Leon, a 47-year-old restaurant mogul whose family founded the first San Jose restaurant in the state in the late 1980s. In exchange for the cash, Sheriff Metts, who pleaded not guilty this week, is alleged to have freed restaurant workers arrested in an initiative against illegal immigration and sent to the county jail he controlled. Both men are well-known figures here: Sheriff Metts, 68, was once sympathetically portrayed by the actor William Devane in a made-for-TV movie based on a notorious local murder case. Mr. Leon hosts a large tailgate barbecue at the University of South Carolina’s home football games in nearby Columbia, the state capital. Federal authorities have indicated that the investigation is continuing. The shock has reverberated among the leadership of this conservative, populous and politically powerful county. A different kind of shock echoes in the scruffy mobile-home parks where many of the county’s unauthorized immigrants reside, hiding in plain sight. “Corruption — just like in Mexico,” said Alexei Martinez, 37, an out-of-work welder who is not authorized to be in the country, as he stood outside of the Lexington Village trailer park last week. “Usually, you can’t just bribe a police officer in this country.” Image Sheriff James R. Metts, left center, outside the federal court in Columbia, S.C., after pleading not guilty to charges that he accepted bribes to release workers for the San Jose Mexican Restaurant chain. Credit Tim Dominick/The State, via Associated Press During more than four decades in office, Sheriff Metts earned a reputation as an innovator, starting the state’s first dedicated anti-drunken driving details, creating a special domestic violence court, and hiring the state’s first sworn female law enforcement officers. The county law enforcement complex, which includes the jail and sheriff’s department, is named in his honor, as is a boat landing on the nearby Lower Saluda River. For a number of years, South Carolina has had one of the fastest-growing Latino populations in the nation, and along with it, a growing concern, especially among conservatives, about the presence of people here illegally. In 2010, Sheriff Metts, a Republican, told USA Today that he was concerned about “several murders, gang activity, drug activity, coming in with the Hispanic population” in his county. “We’re not trying to profile any particular area, race or whatever,” Sheriff Metts said. “We’re just trying to keep the quality of life in our community.” That same year, Sheriff Metts entered into an agreement with federal officials that allowed some of his deputies to enforce federal immigration laws under the supervision of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. This program, known as 287(g) for the section of the federal law that created it, gave specially trained deputies at the Lexington County jail the ability to interview detainees whom they suspected to be here illegally, and begin removal proceedings if warranted. The program is offered to local law enforcement agencies, but it has come in for criticism from many activists and some police chiefs, who argue, among other things, that witnesses who are not in the country legally might be reluctant to report crimes to officers for fear of being deported. Local pro-immigrant activists who met with Sheriff Metts at the time said he was unwavering in his decision to enact the program. But they also said that he seemed receptive to their concerns. Sheriff Metts invited Myriam E. Torres, the director of a Latino studies program at the University of South Carolina, to lead cultural sensitivity classes for his deputies. In the ensuing months, the sheriff’s office claimed that the program had resulted in the deportation of hundreds of people who were here without authorization. But the indictment alleges that Sheriff Metts made special exceptions for Mr. Leon, the restaurateur. The document describes episodes in late 2011 in which Sheriff Metts allegedly took unspecified cash payments for freeing, or trying to free, four of Mr. Leon’s workers who were in the country illegally. In one instance, he is alleged to have received an envelope full of cash during a meeting with Mr. Leon in the sheriff’s office. A former member of the Lexington town council, Danny Frazier, is accused of helping to coordinate the deals. Federal immigration officials suspended the local 287(g) program three days after Sheriff Metts was charged. Federal authorities had previously terminated such agreements in Alamance County, N.C., and in Maricopa County, Ariz., after officers were believed to have violated the constitutional rights of Latinos. Programs continue in 36 jurisdictions in 18 states. Image The chain’s founder, Gregorio M. Leon, also faces charges. Credit Megan Gielow for The New York Times Sheriff Metts has been suspended by Gov. Nikki R. Haley. Scott Schools, his lawyer, said Sheriff Metts denied the allegations. Mr. Frazier and Mr. Leon have been indicted on bribery charges by a state grand jury. A lawyer for Mr. Frazier could not be reached, but Eric Bland, a lawyer for Mr. Leon, said his client “looks forward to going through the judicial process and getting his reputation restored.” Mr. Bland described the Leon family as an American success story. Mr. Leon’s father arrived in the United States from a rural Mexican town in the late 1970s, and taught the hospitality business to his 10 children and a number of other relatives, many of whom are now owners of individual restaurants in the chain. Mr. Bland would not discuss whether Mr. Leon or his family members had hired unauthorized workers, but he said that Mr. Leon regularly threw holiday parties for his employees, and helped pay the medical bills for an employee who had brain cancer. After a federal Department of Labor investigation at one of his restaurants in 2012, Mr. Leon was forced to pay 11 employees $170,000; investigators determined that he had failed to meet minimum wage requirements and to pay them overtime. Later that year, federal labor officials announced that three of his relatives were ordered to pay $390,000 in back wages to workers at three other San Jose restaurants after a similar investigation. Immigrant advocates like Greg Torrales, president of the South Carolina Hispanic Leadership Council , said Congress’s failure to overhaul immigration laws enables the kind of back-room deals that are alleged in the indictments. At a San Jose restaurant in the city of West Columbia, Dennis Smith, 59, emerged from lunch last week with a doggie bag. Mr. Smith, who supports changes in immigration laws, said he had no moral qualms about visiting the restaurant. He favors letting the workers out of jail, he said, but not if it takes bribes to do so. Donnie Byrd, a 53-year-old from Lexington County who opposes an immigration overhaul, said the case here showed why such changes might never pass. Too many powerful people, he said, benefit from the status quo. “I think the good ol’ boys club are not going to allow it,” said Mr. Byrd, who installs air-conditioning systems. “Because there’s money to be made.”
|
South Carolina;Bribery and Kickbacks;Illegal Immigration;Restaurant;Immigration detention;Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings;James Metts;Gregorio M. Leon;Danny Frazier
|
ny0277137
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2016/11/05
|
Protest at Athens Mosque Site Ends With 15 Arrests
|
ATHENS — The Greek police raided a site near downtown Athens on Friday that would be the capital’s first state-sponsored mosque, arresting 15 members of nationalist groups that had been occupying the premises in protest. Athens is the only European Union capital without an official place of worship for Muslims, and although plans for the mosque predate the arrival of a huge of influx of migrants, many of whom are from Syria and Iraq, its construction has been caught up in the polarizing debate over how to handle the recent arrivals . Nationalist groups have complained that the increase in Muslims threatens traditional Greek values, while the leftist-led government and Mayor Giorgos Kaminis, of Athens, have insisted that the creation of the mosque is an obligation for Greece as a European Union member state. The protesters, who will face charges of disturbing the peace and have described themselves as patriots, moved to the plot of land in July to oppose the plans to construct the mosque, which was formally approved by Parliament in the summer after years of delays caused by protests and legal appeals. The project, budgeted at 887 million euros, or about $985 million, will be paid for by the Greek state. Though relatively small in size, the protest was a source of concern because it had picked up the support of far-right groups including the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn , Greece’s third-largest party. According to the occupants, the site accommodated 20 homeless Greeks ages 17 to 74, and 45 “guards,” chiefly Greek Army reservists with right-wing views. They subsequently named their initiative the “homeless hostel,” saying they were providing food and shelter for destitute Greeks who have been neglected by the state at the expense of migrants who have been cared for at centers across the country. The protesters, many of whom wore their army uniforms on the site, a former navy facility, also set up a makeshift Greek Orthodox Church on the premises. Speaking by telephone before the raid, Christos Athanassiou of the Association of Reservist Infantrymen, one of the groups occupying the site, said the initiative was intended to help people who have been struggling because of Greece’s long-running economic problems . “We are not racists, we are patriots,” he said. “Our Greece is at risk.” Mr. Athanassiou said protesters were occupying the site legally, claiming they had gained approval from Greece’s human rights commission. A spokeswoman for the commission denied that assertion, saying that it did not have the authority to give such approval and, in any case, that it was not approached. The rhetoric used by the protesters is similar to that employed by Golden Dawn , whose leadership is on trial for charges that include racist attacks against immigrants. The protesters have denied any connection to Golden Dawn, but the mosque protest recently received a public embrace by the party. Its leader, Nikos Michaloliakos, led a protest rally outside the plot on Sunday, and its spokesman, Ilias Kasidiaris, visited the site on Friday after the police raid, which was carried out peacefully. Mr. Kasidiaris condemned the police for dismantling the makeshift church on the site, while leaving hundreds of unofficial Muslim prayer sites in buildings across Athens untouched. The leftist-led coalition aims to Islamicize Greece, Mr. Kasidiaris said. “This will not pass,” he said. “Golden Dawn will make sure of it.” In a statement earlier this week, the general secretary of Greece’s Justice Ministry, Kostis Papaioannou, said the actions of the protesters were “reminiscent of past manifestations of hate which pose a threat to law, order and security.” Golden Dawn had distributed food in central Athens squares at the peak of the Greek crisis, but the handouts were restricted to Greek citizens, and they have since been banned. Greek society has been accepting of the migrants who continue to arrive in the country, and protests have been confined to areas close to overcrowded reception facilities , particularly on the islands in the Aegean Sea where migrants have been landing. The mosque project has not been opposed by the general public, with objections expressed chiefly by right-wing groups and Greek Orthodox clerics. The country’s influential Archbishop Ieronymos said this week that although he was initially supportive of an Athens mosque, he now believed that the project should be postponed until it was clear how many Muslim migrants would remain in the capital. He also expressed concern about “anti-Greekness and dechristianization.”
|
Mosque;Middle East and Africa Migrant Crisis,European Migrant Crisis;Athens;Golden Dawn Greece;EU;Immigration;Civil Unrest
|
ny0110535
|
[
"sports"
] |
2012/05/13
|
N.C.A.A. Lacrosse - Gary Gait Coaches Syracuse Women to 4th Seed
|
SYRACUSE — Gary Gait , who helped Syracuse win three consecutive N.C.A.A. lacrosse championships from 1988 to 1990, was recently watching another generation of players practicing the sport and preparing to pursue their own bit of history. Wearing a Syracuse warm-up jacket and sipping coffee, Gait stood on the large orange S painted at midfield inside the Carrier Dome . In the background, a giant banner hung from the rafters, celebrating the storied tradition of the university’s men’s lacrosse team. An image of Gait, his hands raised in triumph, is at the center, below the words “All-Time Greatest Program.” “I love playing in the Dome,” Gait said last week. “It was so good to me as a player. It brings back great memories. Now it’s about creating new memories, building something special and trying to bring women’s lacrosse to a new level.” Syracuse (16-3) enters the N.C.A.A. tournament seeded fourth and will face Dartmouth on Sunday. Florida, Northwestern and Maryland are the top three seeds. The Syracuse women’s team started play in 1998 and reached the national semifinals in 2008 and 2010. This year, after an overtime loss to Northwestern, Syracuse won a team-record 15 games in a row — including a victory at Florida and a win at Maryland that stopped the Terrapins’ 36-game home winning streak. The Syracuse men have won 11 N.C.A.A. titles , a Division I record (although the team’s 1990 championship was vacated). Gait, along with his twin, Paul, transcended the game, drawing the kind of crowds to the Carrier Dome usually seen only for football and men’s basketball games. In 2007, Gait returned to the campus with a new challenge: to turn the women’s lacrosse program into a national champion. “To be honest, I didn’t ever think I would be back here,” said Gait, who coached the Colorado Mammoth of the National Lacrosse League in 2006 and 2007. “When I left, I swore that I would never again experience those Syracuse winters.” Just as snow regularly accumulates during lacrosse season in Central New York, so did Gait’s accomplishments as a player at Syracuse: a four-time all-American, two national Player of the Year awards, and the program record for goals in a season (70) and a career (192). Gait’s old games are still broadcast on local television. The most replayed highlight is from May 28, 1988, when Syracuse hosted the University of Pennsylvania in an N.C.A.A. semifinal. During one sequence, Gait leapt from outside the crease behind Penn’s goal and slammed the ball into the upper left corner of the net. The play, as iconic in lacrosse as Michael Jordan’s switching-hands-while-in-midair layup during the 1991 N.B.A. finals, became known as Air Gait. The maneuver, considered unstoppable at the time, is now illegal in N.C.A.A. competition. “He still loves to show his moves,” the sophomore midfielder Katie Webster said. “No more Air Gait though.” During his Hall of Fame career — in which he set numerous scoring records and was a six-time N.L.L. most valuable player — Gait also worked as an assistant for Maryland’s women’s team. With Gait on the staff of Coach Cindy Timchal, the Terrapins won seven consecutive N.C.A.A. titles beginning in 1995. Gait retired from professional lacrosse last year, at age 43. Though he may no longer be able to pull off his patented move, he said the motivation behind Air Gait, to accomplish something that had never been done before, embodied his mission as a coach. “Their style of play is up-tempo, similar to when Gary played at Syracuse,” said Timchal, now the coach at Navy. “They’re really looking to push the ball in transition, looking for unsettled situations. They take risks, but play good, solid defense.” Last week, Gait was named the Big East coach of the year . As his trophy collection continues to expand, so does his appeal to other programs. In 2010, he was a candidate to become the coach of the Maryland men’s team. “I absolutely considered it,” Gait said. “That was a job I was vying for back when I was an assistant at Maryland. Many of the alums said: ‘We made a mistake the first time. We want to make sure we get you here.’ That was a huge compliment, but unfortunately it wasn’t the time or the place.” Daryl Gross, Syracuse’s athletic director, who hired Gait and called him the “Babe Ruth of lacrosse,” said, “I think he’s content doing something really special on the women’s side, to really recreate what women’s lacrosse is in this country.” Katie Rowan, a three-time all-American for Syracuse who played two seasons under Gait, said she did not think he would leave anytime soon. “His passion for Syracuse lacrosse is too great,” she said. Every day Gait sees reminders of that history; outside his office in Manley Field House, the halls are decorated with men’s lacrosse trophies dating to 1920, as well as lists of his personal achievements. “The men’s team has a great legacy, and our coach was involved in that,” said Alyssa Murray, a sophomore attacker. “It’s time for us to do something new for our school and our program. “He doesn’t force us to be like him. He doesn’t say: ‘I did this. You have to accomplish this, too.’ He just wants us to do our best. In due time, maybe we’ll get our own hallway, too.” Gait said his presence alone displayed his confidence that the women’s team can forge its own legacy. “Anyone who takes over a program, hopefully you believe you can build a championship-caliber team,” he said. “Your players are only going to believe it if you do. “They know I made a commitment here.” That commitment includes coaching his daughter, Taylor, who will be a freshman at Syracuse in the fall. “I haven’t finished what I started, and I promised my daughter I’d be here to coach her,” Gait said. “We have work yet to do. “A lot of people don’t remember that I’m from western Canada. But Syracuse certainly feels more like home now.”
|
NCAA Lacrosse Championships;Gait Gary;Syracuse University;Lacrosse;College Athletics
|
ny0015188
|
[
"us"
] |
2013/10/18
|
Court Rules on ‘Stand Your Ground’ Costs
|
SEATTLE — A state appeals court here in Washington, in a major ruling on the “stand your ground” debate over personal safety, said Thursday that a defendant who successfully uses a self-defense claim is entitled to reimbursement for lost wages and other costs, as well as legal fees. “The cost of a criminal defense often starts at arrest,” the court wrote in its decision, affirming a lower court’s award of nearly $49,000, including $10,000 in lost wages, to Tommy J. Villanueva. Mr. Villanueva, 53, was fired from his job as an assembler in a manufacturing plant in Spokane after being arrested in 2010 and charged with assault, accused of stabbing two people in the neck at a party. He was acquitted in 2012 by a jury that agreed with his claim that he had acted in self-defense. In a separate decision, the jury also agreed that under the law, Mr. Villanueva was entitled to reimbursement for the cost of bringing that defense. Prosecutors asserted that the law allowed reimbursement only for legal expenses. Mr. Villanueva’s lawyer, however, argued that his client would not have lost his job but for an arrest that kept him from going to work. Many states in the last decade have adopted so-called Stand Your Ground laws, which codified the right of a person to use deadly force in self-defense even outside their homes. Washington’s self-defense law is much older, and has been interpreted by the courts — in cases dating back at least to the 1930s — as saying that a person has no obligation to retreat if he or she reasonably perceives a dire threat. The three-judge Court of Appeals panel said that state law, in promising reimbursement for “all reasonable costs,” in a successful self-defense claim, was vaguely worded. “There’s not a lot of case law on this issue,” said Mr. Villanueva’s lawyer, Timothy S. Note. In its ruling, the appeals court leaned on an earlier Washington State Supreme Court case that said the reimbursement law was broadly meant to ensure that no “costs of defense” are borne by a person acting legally to protect his or her life. Thus, in Mr. Villanueva’s case, the Court of Appeals said, the lost wages “constituted lawful earnings he would have received but for being prosecuted.” The court went on to rule that because Mr. Villanueva was also defending himself legally after the trial, through the appeals process on the monetary reimbursement question, he had piled up additional reimbursable defense costs since the verdict, the judges said. “Therefore, we award him reasonable appellate costs,” the order said, in sending the case back to the trial court to determine what a reasonable added amount should be.
|
Self-defense;Wages and salaries;Legislation;Washington;Decisions and Verdicts
|
ny0173026
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2007/11/13
|
Korean Officials Accused in Widening Bribery Scandal
|
SEOUL, South Korea , Nov. 12 — A widening corruption scandal at the Korean electronics giant Samsung engulfed the government of South Korea on Monday when President Roh Moo-hyun’s next chief prosecutor and his top anticorruption agent faced accusations of accepting bribes from the conglomerate. The accusations by Samsung’s former chief lawyer, Kim Yong-chul, are a further blow to Mr. Roh, who in his final months in office has faced a raft of bribery scandals, some involving his top aides. The departing president had proudly proclaimed a less corrupt government as one of his major achievements. Mr. Kim, who worked as Samsung’s chief in-house lawyer for seven years until 2004, has said in the past two weeks that Samsung runs a vast bribery network that encompasses the government, the judiciary and the news media, and that he even bribed prosecutors on behalf of Samsung and its chairman, Lee Kun-hee. Until now Mr. Kim had not disclosed any of the recipients of the bribes, but at a news conference on Monday several Catholic priests who have been serving as spokesmen for Mr. Kim accused three individuals with oversight of corruption cases of accepting bribes: Lim Chae-jin, who was appointed prosecutor general last month by Mr. Roh; Lee Jong-baek, a former prosecutor whom Mr. Roh appointed in August to head the Korea Independent Commission Against Corruption; and Lee Gui-nam, director of the Central Investigation Bureau, which investigates corruption charges against politicians and big businesses. “They should be taken as a symbol of a government agency tainted by bribery,” said the Catholic Priests’ Association for Justice, an influential religious group. The priests said the three senior prosecutors received bribes regularly from Samsung. On Monday, all three denied accepting bribes. “I have never received any cash gifts or requests for favor from Samsung,” Mr. Lim said, according to his spokesman, who added that Lee Gui-nam also denied taking bribes. In a statement, Lee Jong-baek demanded that the priests and Mr. Kim unveil any evidence against him, and he threatened to sue them. Samsung issued a statement calling the accusations “malicious and unfounded.” Cheon Ho-seon, President Roh’s spokesman, said his office could not immediately investigate the accusations, made a day before prosecutors vowed to investigate thoroughly. But the priests accused prosecutors of dragging their feet, afraid to disclose “their deep-rooted collusive links” with big businesses. On Monday, some of the candidates for the Dec. 19 presidential election called on Parliament to appoint an independent counsel to investigate the scandal. Mr. Roh, who leaves office in February, has been widely credited with fighting corrupt ties between businessmen and public servants, and he has been struggling to bolster his legacy by reaching out to North Korea. He held the peninsula’s second inter-Korean summit meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, in early October, and the prime ministers of the two Koreas are to meet in Seoul on Wednesday. But his efforts have been sidetracked by a spate of corruption scandals. Jeon Goon-pyo, head of the National Tax Service, was arrested last week on charges of taking $66,000 in bribes from one of his deputies, who was seeking a promotion. Mr. Jeon denied any wrongdoing but resigned. Also last week, prosecutors indicted Jung Yun-jae, one of Mr. Roh’s closest confidants, who served as his protocol secretary, on charges of receiving bribes from a building contractor in return for helping him evade a tax investigation. A provincial tax official was arrested on charges of receiving kickbacks from the builder. Last Tuesday, a court in Seoul opened the trial of Byeon Yang-kyoon, Mr. Roh’s top policy adviser, who was arrested last month on charges of using his influence to win favors for a woman said to be his girlfriend. The woman, Shin Jeong-ah, was also under arrest on charges of using a fake Yale University diploma to get jobs as a college professor and museum curator in Seoul. That scandal prompted a nationwide investigation into counterfeit academic credentials, which were found to be widespread. Social critics have said that a culture of corruption is so deeply embedded in South Korea that many here have come to consider small cash gifts, usually contained in white envelopes, as an essential tool for success. The most infamous among those gifts are “rice cake expenses,” cash envelopes that businesses are accused of doling out to government officials or politicians on major holidays. The term made headlines again in recent weeks as Mr. Kim, the former Samsung lawyer, claimed that he had doled out cash envelopes to scores of senior prosecutors, giving each the equivalent of $5,500 to $22,000, three times a year. On Monday, Mr. Kim said through the priests that Samsung had a secret vault in its headquarters in downtown Seoul where a bribery list was kept and that Samsung executives were assigned to bribe prosecutors with whom they had school or hometown connections. Samsung called the claim “absurd.” Kim Sang-jo, a university professor who leads Solidarity for Economic Reform, a civic group, said the Samsung scandal was a typical case of a big South Korean conglomerate raising slush funds to help the son of its chairman take over management control and then bribe law enforcement agencies in case the irregularities were investigated. Major corruption scandals tend to erupt during election years. A former business partner of the leading presidential contender, Lee Myung-bak, of the conservative opposition Grand National Party, is being extradited from the United States to face charges of embezzlement and money laundering. Mr. Lee has denied involvement. But the possibility of a damaged conservative front-runner prompted Lee Hoi-chang, who lost to Mr. Roh in 2002, to declare his candidacy last week. He has since surged to the No. 2 slot in polls, splitting conservative support with Mr. Lee.
|
South Korea;Bribery;Politics and Government;Frauds and Swindling
|
ny0147162
|
[
"us"
] |
2008/07/30
|
Iowans Washed Out of Homes Find Their Future Hard to Grasp
|
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Seven weeks after this river town went under water in the biggest flood ever recorded here, city officials on Tuesday provided a first glimpse of their redevelopment plan to increasingly restless and frustrated residents, many thousands of whom remain displaced from the wreckage of their homes. In three information sessions, city officials and their consultants showed residents a framework for rebuilding that begins with public comment and culminates in a report to the state by the end of the year. So far, specifics are few. City leaders called for “sustainable” neighborhoods, better transportation and reinvestment in downtown, but emphasized that they were still in the information-gathering stage of the plan, which will be shaped by how much federal money is available for long-term recovery. The sessions did little to assuage the concerns of flood victims who say they do not know where — or if — they should rebuild. “What I wanted to know is, what do I do with my house?” said Jan Chapman, a flooded resident. “And I’m leaving without knowing what to do with my house. They are looking for our ideas about how to rebuild the city. I’d rather get out, frankly.” Many residents are hoping to relocate with the help of government grants for buyouts, similar to the federal program for New Orleans. The City Council says it will not be able to address that idea for at least a year because of the multiple levels of government and complexities involved. For now, city leaders are telling residents not to assume that they will receive permanent relocation assistance. “We can’t guarantee any buyouts or areas that would qualify for green space,” said Councilman Chuck Wieneke. “To come up with a plan, we’ve got to study a lot of things.” By the time the state presents the plan to the federal government and money is distributed, Mr. Wieneke said, “it’s a year and a half to two years down the road, which leaves many people I represent in what I can honestly call dire straits.” Cedar Rapids suffered more than $1 billion in damage from the flood, which soaked about 5,400 homes over nine square miles. Some homeowners are bristling at the notion that they might rebuild, only to have their homes demolished by a redevelopment plan or flooded again. Many would prefer to move to higher ground now. The city’s flooded population is scattered around hotel rooms, temporary apartments and mobile homes, financed by temporary housing assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. (FEMA is not using the small travel trailers that caused health issues and other problems along the Gulf Coast.) Inside mobile home No. 31 at a trailer park in northeast Cedar Rapids, Kenneth Benning, 82, said: “I am so disgusted I don’t know where to begin. We’re not getting direction. I know it’s a heck of a job for the city, but you can’t sit there and wait. We’ve got winter coming, and we don’t even know if these trailers can withstand our kind of winter. The walls are pretty thin.” SanDee Skelton, a dance instructor who said she had never expected the water to reach her house, which was destroyed, described herself and those like her as being “on hold.” “Nobody quite knows what to do,” Ms. Skelton said. “I’m frustrated. I’d like to be somewhere I could unpack my bags.” Mr. Benning’s house, built in 1910, is now just a shell on a cracked foundation in an old neighborhood near the Cedar River. The river crested at more than 31 feet in the second week of June after an unusually wet winter and cold early spring. “We don’t want to be forced to go back there,” said Mr. Benning, a World War II veteran. “The home cannot be put back together. The house was under water for 12 days, and now they want us to rebuild it? I say, forget it.” For now, the city guidelines recommend rebuilding for houses that can be saved for less than 50 percent of their pre-flood value. Mr. Benning’s house was inspected and found to be at about a 49 percent loss. But three other estimates varied widely, with one calculated at much more than the house’s value before the flood. City officials said the timetable they were working with was appropriate, given the scope of the disaster. “The public participation process is a key element, a tried and tested approach,” said James Prosser, the city manager. “This is about a very high level of transparency.” Mr. Prosser added that more specific information would be ready to present to the public by early September. To date, said a FEMA spokeswoman, Alexandra Kirin, $97.5 million has been approved for housing assistance in Iowa, and $11.4 million has been approved in assistance for other immediate needs. But Gov. Chet Culver, who convened a 15-member Rebuild Iowa Commission last month, said the state had sustained damage estimated at $10 billion, with some towns, like Palo and Parkersburg, seriously damaged or destroyed in the spring tornadoes and floods. “We’re trying to make the case that this emergency is so serious that we’re going to need swift Congressional action for the people of the Midwest,” Mr. Culver said. “We just can’t wait.”
|
Floods;Cedar Rapids (Iowa);Iowa;Federal Aid (US)
|
ny0216991
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2010/04/23
|
Trailblazer Reacts to Proposed Street Vendor Limits
|
The sign, with the little racks he designed to hold what he used to sell, sat in the foyer in his fourth floor walk-up. David Ferguson strapped it on for the first time in a long time. “I would walk around like some guy wearing a sign saying, ‘The end of the world is coming,’ ” he said. But in the 1970s and ’80s, when he trudged along the streets of Greenwich Village and the avenues of Midtown Manhattan, he was not prophesying doom; he was selling something. Poems. Yes, poems, and also a literary magazine that he, his wife and about 15 friends edited and published. He was also getting picked up by the police, which is how he came to be a footnote in municipal history. Mr. Ferguson, now 76, was the catalyst behind a change in the way the city regulated street vendors in 1982. Now the Bloomberg administration is proposing another change. On Friday, the parks department is scheduled to hold a public hearing on its plan for a sharp reduction in the number of street vendors in some Manhattan parks. Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner, said the vendors treated parks as “year-round flea markets” that clog park walkways. Parks officials say the proposed changes are not about the content of the vendors’ wares, which is protected by the First Amendment, but about the uses of the parks. Mr. Ferguson said Thursday that he agreed with Mr. Benepe’s “general outlook” but called the commissioner’s proposal “a bit bureaucratic, if thoughtful.” He said he was concerned that street vending had become too commercial. “I don’t see any poets out there,” he said. “I don’t see anybody hawking small magazines, homegrown things. “There ought to be a way to translate that distinction. If you’re selling something that’s sold in a bookstore, a trade book, that’s a product. How do you draw the line? That’s the problem.” Still, Mr. Ferguson said, if vendors are destroying a park, “you’ve got to cut that back; parks are special.” He said his own street-vending days ended about the time the 1982 change took effect. His wife, Mary — “the soul of the magazine” they published, he said — died at the beginning of that year. He finished his fight over the right to sell in the street, a fight that ended with the 1982 change, “but couldn’t pursue the magazine.” “That’s what happened to that,” he continued. The 1982 change came about when Arthur Eisenberg, a lawyer for the New York Civil Liberties Union who had represented him in the 1982 fight to get the law amended, turned to Edward C. Wallace, then a city councilman at large from Manhattan. Mr. Wallace introduced an amendment exempting “vendors of written material” from the city law on licensing people who sell things on the streets. One night at a New York Philharmonic concert in Central Park, he made $40 from his poetry. At five cents apiece, that is 800 poems, but he said he did not actually sell that many. “I got tips,” he said. He also got attention — feature articles in newspapers, a segment on the “CBS Evening News.” But some was attention of the unwelcome kind. Police officers would pick him up. Once, he said, two officers stopped him on Fifth Avenue and took him to a station house. On the way, he said, the officers’ radios crackled. “I heard on the walkie-talkie there’s a perp around the corner with a gun and a knife,” he said. “And they’re after me?” At the station house, a captain leafed through the magazine, called Box 749, Mr. Ferguson recalled, and “he said, ‘There are no cartoons against Nixon in here, therefore it’s not political, therefore it’s merchandise, therefore you can’t sell it.’ ” Mr. Ferguson told the captain to check with the Police Department’s lawyers. While the captain went to call headquarters, an officer came over and said he wrote poetry too. “He said he’d had poems in Playboy and The New York Times,” Mr. Ferguson recalled. “I showed him one of mine. He said, ‘Nice alliteration.’ Then the captain comes back and says, ‘You’re right.’ ” Mr. Ferguson was free to go.
|
Vendors Street;Parks and Other Recreation Areas;Manhattan (NYC);New York Civil Liberties Union;Ferguson David
|
ny0188173
|
[
"sports",
"basketball"
] |
2009/04/08
|
Derrick Rose, in Rookie Season, Leads Bulls’ Resurgence
|
CHICAGO — To promote Derrick Rose for rookie of the year, the Chicago Bulls produced a glossy 12-page pamphlet packed with statistical achievements. But the key numbers are visible only with the aid of red-tinged 3-D glasses. Put on the glasses and one can see the Bulls’ spike in points per game (plus 4.7 through Monday) and field-goal percentage (.456, up from .435) since Rose’s arrival, along with a handy chart comparing his season with the rookie campaigns of Jason Kidd, Chris Paul and Deron Williams. Needless to say, Rose compares favorably, with or without the help of the rose-colored glasses. “It’s great,” an appreciative Rose said of the kitschy marketing effort, “but I want to get it from how I’m playing.” Despite heavy accolades, Rose is humble to a fault — he gave himself a B-minus in a recent Chicago Tribune interview — but he seems to realize that he is his own best advocate. His nightly performances, and the Bulls’ resurgence in the Eastern Conference, are sufficient evidence to justify his rookie of the year candidacy. The Bulls missed the postseason last year but are closing in on a playoff berth with a week to play. Chicago (38-40) is in seventh place, a half game ahead of Detroit after Tuesday’s 110-103 victory over the Knicks . If the Bulls make it, Rose would become only the seventh No. 1 draft pick since 1981 to make the playoffs as a rookie. He would be the only one to do so as a point guard, which is easily the most challenging position on the court. Rose, who had 18 points and 6 assists, is on pace to become the eighth rookie in N.B.A. history to average at least 16 points, 6 assists and 3.5 rebounds. That group includes Oscar Robertson, Magic Johnson and Penny Hardaway. Its most recent member was Paul, who achieved the feat in 2005-6. Yet such historical markers seem to be lost on the 20-year-old Rose, who is clearly too fixated on the present to consider the past. A proud Chicago native, he has the city’s skyline tattooed on his left forearm, and its hopes resting on his shoulders. “My biggest goal was just coming in and just making the playoffs,” Rose said. “I did want to play good. But I didn’t really care how my stats were. I just wanted to make the playoffs.” The Bulls have been a franchise without a face, or much playoff success, since Michael Jordan’s retirement 11 years ago. When Jordan was announced on Monday as a 2009 Hall of Fame inductee, it reminded the city just how long it has been since the Bulls commanded respect. Two years ago, the Bulls appeared to be on the verge of something when they won 49 games under Coach Scott Skiles and staged a remarkable first-round upset of the defending champion Miami Heat. But Skiles was fired when the Bulls stumbled last season, and only four players remain from the 2006-7 roster. The team has been revived through some good fortune and some savvy trades, including a deal to acquire Brad Miller and John Salmons from Sacramento in February. The Bulls have remained competitive despite playing the last five weeks without Luol Deng, who has a stress fracture in his right leg. Much of the credit goes to Rose. “He’s a lot better than I thought he was,” said point guard Lindsey Hunter, a 15-year veteran. “He can score a lot better. I really thought he was going to have to work a lot on his scoring.” With a rare combination of speed and strength, Rose is dangerous on the drive and routinely breaks down defenses. He is shooting 47 percent from the field and has scored in double figures in all but 10 games. He has 29 games with at least 20 points. Most impressive to Hunter, however, is Rose’s resiliency. Hunter said he kept waiting for Rose to hit the rookie wall, mentally or physically, but it never happened. “Because every night, if he struggled, the next night he’d come back really strong; that’s unique,” Hunter said. Rose is a bit of a perfectionist and an extremely harsh self-critic. He occasionally reviews a bad performance on film, but Rose says he does not need the DVD. “I know the plays in my head that I did wrong,” Rose said. “Every daydream or when I’m by myself, or a commercial comes on TV, it’s going on in my head, every play.” Rose discusses these matters in a serious monotone, his expression fixed. But his face and voice brighten as he considers his future, and his potential role in bringing the Bulls back to prominence. He does not seem to shy away from the becoming the franchise’s first certifiable star since Jordan. “I know the history of the Bulls, I know how the city feels when they were winning championships,” he said. “It was just a happy feeling, just a positive feeling throughout the whole Chicago area. So for me to do that, it’d be great. But it’s going to take time, and it’s going to take some growth. And I hope they can be patient with me.”
|
Basketball;Chicago Bulls;New York Knicks
|
ny0212860
|
[
"sports",
"basketball"
] |
2017/01/25
|
Knicks Sink Further Into Dysfunction With Loss to Mavericks
|
DALLAS — Carmelo Anthony started his day in the familiar position of discussing his future with the Knicks. The latest round of questions from reporters centered on comments by the Cleveland Cavaliers’ LeBron James — specifically his frustration with his own team’s roster and his desire to add another “playmaker” as the Cavaliers seek to defend their N.B.A. championship. James and Anthony are close friends. “Do I think he would want me to play with him?” Anthony said Wednesday morning. “Yes, I do think he would want me to play with him. But I don’t know if that comment is about me. I don’t think I’m the only playmaker in the N.B.A.” A trade with the Cavaliers would be nearly impossible for any number of reasons, starting with the no-trade clause in Anthony’s contract. He has expressed a desire to remain with the Knicks — for now, anyway. Anthony finished his day by trying to deliver a win for the foundering Knicks. Instead, the Dallas Mavericks dealt them a 103-95 loss at American Airlines Center, their 14th defeat in their last 18 games. The Knicks committed eight of their 18 turnovers in the fourth quarter. “That’s the game right there,” Anthony said. “We’ve got to do a better job of taking care of the ball.” The Knicks (20-27) have issues. Anthony, who will most likely be the subject of trade speculation for weeks, is barely speaking with team management. And they are hemorrhaging losses; their playoff hopes have already dimmed considerably before the All-Star break. “I think we’re playing all right,” Coach Jeff Hornacek said. “We’re just not making enough plays, especially late to win a lot of these games. We need contributions from everybody.” Anthony finished with a game-high 30 points, shooting 13 of 24 from the field — although he was scoreless in the fourth quarter — and Courtney Lee added 23 points. But it was not enough against the Mavericks (16-29), a middling team that appears bound for the draft lottery. And Wednesday’s game was another rough outing for Kristaps Porzingis, who has been hampered by a sore Achilles’ tendon in recent weeks. He finished with 13 points and shot 4 of 11 from the floor. Early in the first quarter, the Mavericks’ Dirk Nowitzki fooled Porzingis with a pump fake, forcing him into his second foul, which prompted him to unsuccessfully petition Hornacek to keep him on the floor. It was that kind of night for Porzingis, and not unlike many of his recent ones. In his last six games, he is shooting 37.7 percent from the field while averaging 11 points, well below his season averages. “Nobody’s happy to lose a game like this,” Porzingis said. Afterward, Anthony was asked about an ESPN report that cited unidentified people claiming that the Knicks had approached the Cavaliers about a trade involving him. “I really don’t have a reaction to that,” said Anthony, who did acknowledge that he was open to waiving his no-trade clause. “If they want to go in a different direction, that’s something I have to consider.” He added: “All the talk that’s going on right now, that’s out of my control. Nobody called me and nobody got in contact with my representation or anything like that. So it’s something I don’t worry about.” Before the game, Anthony said he had not spoken with Phil Jackson, the team president, since last week, when they had what Anthony described as a brief meeting. “That’s all I can say,” Anthony said.
|
Basketball;Knicks;Carmelo Anthony;Kristaps Porzingis;Mavericks
|
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