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ny0192742
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2009/02/24
|
Three Seats on Council to Be Filled in Elections
|
Special elections will be held on Tuesday in three City Council districts in Queens and on Staten Island to fill three seats vacated by candidates who won other offices in November. Polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Candidates will serve the remainder of the terms through Dec. 31. None of the candidates are running under established party labels, because the City Charter says that in a special election for municipal office, the candidates may not use any of the names of designated parties that have received more than 50,000 votes in gubernatorial elections. The forbidden designations include: Democratic, Republican, Independence, Conservative and Working Families. “So basically what happens in this case is that the candidate makes up a independent body name,” said Matt Graves, an administrative associate with the city’s Board of Elections. The Democrat, Republican and Independence party affiliations listed below are gleaned from prior activities, statements and voter registration records. In the 49th Council District, on Staten Island, candidates are vying to replace Michael E. McMahon, who was elected to the House of Representatives. The candidates are: Kenneth C. Mitchell (Experience Now), Democrat; Tony Baker (Prepared to Lead), Democrat; Donald R. Pagano, Democrat; Deborah L. Rose, Democrat; Paul D. Saryian (Together We Can), Independence; John A. Tabacco (No Tax), Independence. Paper ballots will be used in the vote because a court ruled on Monday that Mr. Tabacco would be included in the election, said Valerie Vazquez-Rivera, a spokeswoman for the Board of Elections. In the 32nd Council District, in Queens, candidates running for a seat vacated by Joseph P. Addabbo Jr.’s election to the State Senate are: Mike Ricatto (Voice of the People), Republican; Eric A. Ulrich (People First), Republican; Geraldine M. Chapey (Community First), Democrat; Lew M. Simon (Good Government), Democrat. In the 21st Council District, in Queens, the candidates are running to replace Hiram Monserrate, who won a State Senate election. The candidates are: Julissa Ferreras (United We Can), Democrat; Francisco P. Moya (Yes We Can), Democrat; Jose Eduardo Giraldo (People For Progress), Democrat; George R. Dixon (United For Change), Democrat.
|
Elections;City Councils;Queens (NYC);Staten Island (NYC)
|
ny0194177
|
[
"business"
] |
2009/11/17
|
Do Stockholders Really Know Best?
|
When news of Kraft ’s hostile bid for Cadbury broke in England a couple of months back, it caused intense debate, including whether an American company should, by all rights, really be the new home of a well-known British brand that dates back to 1824. Felicity Loudon, the granddaughter of the former Cadbury Brothers managing director Egbert Cadbury, was quoted in The Sunday Telegraph saying that she was “particularly saddened by the possibility of one of the last remaining British icons disappearing into an American plastic cheese company.” After giving the back of her hand to Kraft, she made a plea to her fellow countrymen: “I cannot believe that something can’t be done for totally patriotic reasons.” Let’s set aside for a moment the charged rhetoric over the merits of Cheez Whiz versus a Dairy Milk candy bar, and consider this instead as Exhibit A in the argument that maybe, just maybe, the notion of shareholder democracy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. First, some context. Kraft’s $16.7 billion hostile takeover bid for Cadbury, the confectionery company, is one of the largest deals of the year. If the takeover battle were happening in the United States, it would most likely be a fierce fight. And yet when I visited London two weeks ago, there wasn’t much talk of a fight at all. Indeed, most takeover experts I talked to said the deal is a fait accompli — it’s just a matter of time and the price Kraft will end up paying. The reason is that, unlike in the United States, British takeover law essentially handcuffs the board of a target company from doing anything to block a deal. No poison pills. No staggered boards. No changing the shareholder vote date. The potential for a C.E.O. or entrenched board to block a deal — or otherwise act in its own self- interest — is virtually nil. In other words, England is as close as any country gets to a true shareholder democracy. Any bid gets put to a vote, and all the board can do is offer an opinion. To many people, this is how the rest of the world should work. “I’m a majority-rules guy,” said Steven N. Kaplan, a finance professor at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. “The U.K. system is better.” Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management, also said that, in theory, the British system has much to commend it. “Economists will say it is much purer,” he said. “It creates a tremendous fluidity.” So what’s not to like? Professor Sonnenfeld noted an important asterisk — that this push for shareholder democracy may create a perverse incentive system so that short-term shareholders can end up determining the long-term fate of the company. So the balance of interests becomes skewed. “It raises a question about short-termism,” Professor Sonnenfeld said. Indeed, one parlor game in London has been to guess how much of Cadbury’s long-term shareholder base has already sold out to arbitrageurs, whose goal is to see the company sold as quickly as possible and then move on to another deal. (That’s not to say the right strategic decision isn’t for Cadbury to be sold to Kraft, though that’s the position of Cadbury’s board.) People involved in the deal estimate that about a third of the shares have already changed hands, moving from long-term shareholders to hedge funds. Those funds, said Joseph Grundfest, a professor at Stanford Law School, “have a long-term time horizon of about 12 minutes.” If the board lacks power to weigh in on the deal, that also means nobody with any clout is looking out for other stakeholders, like employees. Most mergers never live up to their hype, resulting in lower values and fewer jobs. So the question worth asking is: Shouldn’t someone be looking further into the future? That’s been the argument of people like Martin Lipton, the takeover lawyer who invented the poison pill. He has long argued that shareholders don’t necessarily know what’s good for them, and that companies need someone looking out for their best interests. That best interest may include holding out for a higher offer, or even roping in other bidders. As a result, he has often been branded a friend of entrenched boards. Without the first-line defense of boards, shareholders may simply jump at the first bid. “It gives the company less negotiating leverage,” Professor Sonnenfeld said. That’s certainly the argument that some Cadbury insiders and bankers made to me, saying they feel helpless that their votes count for so little in this case study in shareholder democracy. There is also very little evidence that shareholder democracy works better than directors in deal-making. A number of academic studies suggest it is a wash. There will always be exceptions to every rule. Some boards make bad calls. “Look at the lost opportunity with Yahoo and Microsoft,” said Professor Sonnenfeld about the decision by Yahoo’s board to originally block Microsoft’s offer, a decision that probably lost Yahoo shareholders billions. Professor Kaplan argues that both boards and shareholders will always make mistakes, but that when shareholders are in charge, “Net-net, the shareholder wins.” And he may have a point: While Cadbury’s fate may now be in the hands of fast-money arbitrageurs, “some long-term investor had to make the decision to sell.” And selling is in itself a vote on the long-term future of the company. Democracy is indeed messy.
|
Kraft Foods;Cadbury Plc;Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures;Boards of Directors;Sonnenfeld Jeffrey A;Lipton Martin
|
ny0195432
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2009/11/25
|
A Bed Where Comfort Is Not the Point
|
STOCKHOLM — A Hindu spirit is stalking the streets of Stockholm, armed with this Nordic capital’s latest fad: the nail bed. It is not the wood and iron nail variety used by Hindu fakirs, but instead a modern Swedish variation that usually consists of a light foam rubber pad, covered in cotton sacking and embedded with small, hard plastic disks with sharp little spikes. Modernized or not, it hurts. And the fewer the spikes, the more they hurt. “It’s quite painful initially,” said Catarina Rolfsdotter-Jansson, 46, a yoga instructor and writer who uses her nail bed almost every day. “The trick is, all the adrenaline rushes, after which you relax and feel nice again.” When a person stands up after lying on the mat, she said, “the back looks picked at, as if with a fork.” The fad has caught on so rapidly in the past few years that many Swedes are now devotees. In August, one of the biggest manufacturers of nail mats, Shakti (named for the Hindu fertility goddess), gathered 3,000 people in one of Stockholm’s parks to occupy nail mats placed in the form of the rays of the sun. Most of the group sang mantras while sitting or lying on their mats, thus earning themselves a place in Guinness World Records . But the organizers said that only about 2,500 participants sang, since the remaining 500 fell asleep — a sure sign, they said, of the mats’ relaxing properties. Of course, as with all health fads, the mats’ salutary effects can be exaggerated, with some people promising cures for everything “from schizophrenia to dandruff,” Ms. Rolfsdotter-Jansson said. But many nail mat users claim relief from sleep problems, migraines and even asthma. The mats measure about 16 by 28 inches, though they are sometimes larger; contain 4,000 to 8,000 spikes; and range in price from $50 to $115. The origins of Sweden’s nail mat fad are murky, but what is clear is that it began in the yoga community and later moved into the general population. One of those credited with popularizing the mat is Susanna Lindelöw, 46, who bought a mail order nail mat made in Russia in a desperate attempt to cure severe lower back pain. “I had tried a lot of things: massage, I went to doctors,” Ms. Lindelöw said in a telephone interview. The one she bought, she said, “had small-sized spikes, very many of them.” “I lay on it, but it was too painful, so I tried it with a T-shirt,” she said. Buoyed by the ultimate success of her mat in curing her back problems, Ms. Lindelöw had a demonstration model made in plastic and in late 2005 went into production. She said her company, CuraComp , was manufacturing about 100,000 mats a year, about four-fifths of them for sale in Sweden and the rest for export, including small quantities to the United States. Of course, not everyone here has purchased a nail mat. “I tried it, I liked it, it feels like it’s opening a flow in the body,” said Josefine Vilhelmson, 19, a receptionist in a fitness center along the Drottninggatan shopping street. But did she have one? “No, it’s a bit too expensive,” she said. For others, opposition to the nail mat is more substantive. In a recent commentary, the conservative newspaper Svenska Dagbladet wrote that there was “nothing that even approaches a scientific proof for the effects” of the nail mat. To counter such naysayers, the largest manufacturer of nail mats has organized a medically supervised survey of 30 regular users. “We’re doing a clinical test, to see what happens in the body,” said Max Hoffmann, 45, who left a job at the Swedish home furnishings retailer Ikea a few weeks ago to become director of marketing for Shakti mats. “We’re not looking for what the mat can heal, but what happens to the body — you know, blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature.” So will Ikea be selling them? “Not yet,” said Dan Engman, 51, Shakti’s chief executive. “Their people thought about it.” About a dozen different brands of nail mats are now sold over the Internet and in Stockholm fitness stores. The Christmas season is expected to bring a boom in sales. “Sweden is a small country,” Ms. Lindelöw said. “If someone in Stockholm uses it, then everybody uses it.” Ms. Rolfsdotter-Jansson said the mats provided a fine antidote for the aches and pains of the cybergeneration. “In general, Swedes sit too much in front of the computer, they don’t walk enough, they don’t stretch enough,” she said. “People find this helps.” Emilia Drake agrees. Ms. Drake, 24, who works in an organic bakery in the historic center of Stockholm, said she had used her nail mat almost every evening since purchasing it six months ago. “It was a little bit painful at first, but now I’m used to it,” she said. Friends who use the mats to relieve back pain told her about it, she said. Does it help? “Absolutely,” she said. “I feel very relaxed. I could fall asleep standing.” Mr. Engman, who left a job in banking last June to become chief executive at Shakti, said he saw only one major threat to his business, which imports its mats from India. “Now, lots of people are producing nail mats more cheaply,” he said. “In China.”
|
Stockholm (Sweden);Sweden;Shakti
|
ny0262585
|
[
"sports"
] |
2011/12/03
|
Wayne Hills High School Plays for Title, Minus 9 Players
|
WAYNE, N.J. — When Wayne Hills High School takes on Old Tappan in its state sectional football championship Saturday night at MetLife Stadium, chances are its community at large will not feel satisfied about the outcome of the season, win or lose. After several weeks of controversy in the North Jersey township of about 55,000, Christopher Cerf, the acting commissioner of the state Board of Education, on Friday heeded the recommendation of an administrative law judge and upheld the suspension of nine football players charged with aggravated assault for their roles in an Oct. 29 fight that took place off school grounds. The nine players, all but one of whom are minors, are accused of beating two students from the district’s other high school, Wayne Valley, after an earlier confrontation at a house party. One of the victims was said to have been left unconscious in the street. With the charges by the local police came a series of rulings by Wayne’s interim district superintendent, Michael Roth, and the school board — based on an interpretation of relevant case law, they said — that resulted in the players participating in the first two state playoff games. But the day after Thanksgiving, Roth and the board announced that the players — including Andrew Monaghan, 18, a star receiver and cornerback, and the only player being charged as an adult in the case — would not be allowed to compete against Old Tappan in a rematch of last year’s title game, which was won by Wayne Hills. Darren Del Sardo, a lawyer for one of the minors charged, said he had evidence that his client was not at the scene of the fight and that the suspensions for at least some of the players were a rush to judgment in the wake of the Penn State scandal. “I understand the notion of covering up for athletes, but I think this was the opposite,” he said. “If these were not football players, the school would have not gotten involved.” Once the charges were made public, local message boards reflected the community’s turmoil and fear for its reputation. Many people complained that Coach Chris Olsen had failed to administer discipline and was conflicted in his dual role as the school’s athletic director. In making their decision to hold the nine players out of the championship game, Roth and the school board said they would review their policies “to address the conflict of interest concerns when administrators, and/or supervisor act as a coach or assistant coach.” Stewart Resmer, a 10-year Wayne resident, said, “He has dual roles and that circumvented checks and balances.” Resmer went to a school board meeting that Olsen had his players attend, wearing uniform shirts in a show of unity, which Resmer said came off as defiance. “It made you think, who’s really running the school?” Resmer said. In a shopping center across the street from Wayne Hills High one recent morning, most residents asked about the case declined to give their names, saying that emotions were running too high on both sides. But 18-year-old Michael Driesse, who played for Wayne Hills last season before graduating in June, said it was unfair for the players to miss the championship game without all the facts about the fight being known, although he added that it might have been appropriate for them to sit out the previous two playoff games. He also acknowledged that it was not Olsen’s style to compromise. “His passion for the game is like no other coach,” Driesse said. “He’ll do anything to win.” Olsen has done a lot of winning at Wayne Hills, where he earns $143,000 a year, according to a report in The Record of Hackensack, and has won seven sectional titles since 2002. He came to Wayne Hills in 1987 with a reputation for antagonizing opponents and school superiors with a hard-driving approach. Olsen was fired at Paterson Eastside High in 1986 after playing 39 boys who failed to meet academic eligibility standards and clashing with the principal, Joe Clark, whose authoritarian tenure at the school was the subject of a film, “Lean On Me.” Olsen’s son Greg is a tight end for the Carolina Panthers. His son Kevin is a quarterback on his Wayne Hills squad. Del Sardo, the lawyer, said Olsen’s refusal to suspend the players after the incident was based on Roth’s initial interpretation of how much control a school board legally had in disciplining students for what happened in nonschool activities. Reached by telephone Friday, Roth said he could not comment because of the criminal charges. But on message boards, many Wayne residents were saying that Olsen might have prevented the controversy by benching the players even if he believed he could not suspend them. “But no, the coaches and parents had to get all lathered up,” Resmer said. “It became a polarizing thing and this town has bigger fish to fry, something like 2,400 homes affected by major flooding after Hurricane Irene .” Eventually, district officials reached the understanding that they had the authority to suspend the players if the incident had a negative effect on the schools. At a hearing in Newark on Thursday before the administrative law judge, Ellen S. Bass, Roth cited a “troubling change in the tone” at both high schools, according to their principals, who described tension and fear arising from the incident. According to court records, one of the Wayne Valley victims posted on his Facebook page, “Honestly, I want to kill these kids.” Lawyers for the players have argued that suspending or even benching the players would violate the rights of the minors by revealing their identities. They also contended that missing the championship game could affect their chances for football scholarships. In her two rulings, both upheld by Cerf, Bass agreed with the players’ lawyers but seemed to be saying that some issues were bigger than football and the coach. “This story rises to the question of what the purpose is of high school sports,” said Jim Thompson, the chief executive of the Positive Coaching Alliance, a nonprofit organization that supports character-building sports experiences. “Even without knowing all the facts, how can you not say, on the face of it, something has gone wrong here? The bottom line here is, what kind of people do we want these kids to grow up to be?”
|
Wayne Hills High School;Football;Interscholastic Athletics;Olsen Chris;School Discipline (Students);Assaults;Roth Michael;New Jersey;Wayne (NJ)
|
ny0264344
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2011/12/06
|
Four Killed in Gunplay in Bayonne
|
A toddler and two adults were killed on Monday night by a gunman who then shot himself in a residential neighborhood in Bayonne, N.J., the mayor said. A woman was also shot in the violence, which took place in a single-family home, but survived. “There are multiple fatalities, what looks like homicide-suicide,” said the mayor, Mark Smith. Two other children who were in the home, on Avenue A, were unharmed but “traumatized,” Mayor Smith said. “There are still a bunch of questions,” Mayor Smith said, including the relationships among the people in the house. The police were still piecing together what had happened just before they received a call about shots fired around 7 p.m. Preliminary information suggested the shooter may have been visiting an ex-wife. The injured woman was taken to a local hospital for treatment of injuries that were described as not life-threatening. The names of those involved were not released pending notification of their next of kin.
|
Murders and Attempted Murders;Bayonne (NJ)
|
ny0133722
|
[
"us",
"politics"
] |
2008/03/21
|
Clinton Treats Obama Pastor With Extreme Caution
|
ANDERSON, Ind. — Ever since Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton started running for president, her team has argued that she is more electable than Senator Barack Obama : more experience, as first lady and senator; more spine, after years fighting Republicans; and more popular with key voter blocs, like women, Hispanics and the elderly. Yet this week, Mrs. Clinton’s electability argument has taken on a new dimension that for her and her advisers is both discomfiting and unpredictable, but also potentially helpful. Some Democrats are now looking at the racially incendiary and anti-American remarks of Mr. Obama’s longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. , and wondering if that association could weaken Mr. Obama as a nominee. Clinton advisers have asked their allies not to talk openly about the issue, for fear it could create a voter backlash and alienate black Democrats. They also say Mr. Obama, of Illinois, is in enough trouble over Mr. Wright that they do not need to foment more — and, besides, cable television is keeping the issue alive. On Thursday night, the Obama campaign, to shift the spotlight to the Clintons, provided The New York Times with a picture of Mr. Wright and President Bill Clinton at the White House in 1998 at a breakfast meeting with religious leaders hours before the Starr report on the Monica Lewinsky scandal was made public. The campaign also provided a letter Mr. Clinton sent to Mr. Wright the next month thanking Mr. Wright for a “kind message” and saying he was touched by his prayers. A spokesman for the campaign said it was providing the information to show that Mr. Wright was well respected by many, including Mr. Clinton. A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton said Thursday night that the campaign did not believe the Clintons had met with Mr. Wright before the speech or were aware of any views expressed by him at his church. Phil Singer, a Clinton campaign spokesman, said in an e-mail message, “In the course of his two terms in office, Bill Clinton met with, corresponded with and took pictures with literally tens of thousands of people.” Despite the complications and risks of engaging on the issue, some allies of Mrs. Clinton said they were privately pushing the issue with key party members to lift her candidacy. And at least one prominent surrogate of hers has gone off message: Lanny Davis, a former Clinton White House lawyer, has publicly challenged Mr. Obama to answer questions about his views on racist speech and Mr. Wright. Mrs. Clinton, of New York, sidestepped reporters’ questions on Thursday about Mr. Wright and electability. At one point, she turned from a reporter, pursed her lips and shook her head no. A spokesman said later she was unaware of anyone involved in the campaign pushing the Wright issue with superdelegates. As a matter of strategy, top Clinton allies and advisers said Thursday they were treading carefully when it came to talking about Mr. Wright with superdelegates, the elected officials and party leaders whose votes could determine the Democratic nomination. They said they were aware of the potential repercussions of pressing the issue too directly but were convinced this was going to be a key factor in superdelegates’ making a judgment on Mr. Obama’s electability. The difficulty, Clinton advisers and political analysts said, was that a race-based argument against Mr. Obama’s electability was unappealing and divisive and cut against the image of the Democratic Party and its principles. And the argument could alienate black voters. “It would be very difficult for her or the Clinton campaign publicly to pair electability with Reverend Wright because it’s so inflammatory,” said Ronald W. Walters, a government and politics professor at the University of Maryland. The sensitivities surrounding the Wright-Obama relationship were laid bare on Thursday when a Clinton ally, Geraldine A. Ferraro , decried being lumped in with “this racist bigot,” a reference to Mr. Wright, for her comments that Mr. Obama enjoyed an advantage in the campaign because he was a black man. And the campaign of Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, suspended an aide for circulating a video of Mr. Wright’s comments that portrayed Mr. Obama as unpatriotic. Still, Republican strategists said the episode with Mr. Obama could give Mr. McCain and his supporters a potent line of attack, a way to challenge Mr. Obama’s patriotism by questioning why he did not challenge Mr. Wright when Mr. Wright made statements attacking the nation. Republicans have offered hints of other ways they will try to come after Mr. Obama in this area, pointing to him saying why he had stopped wearing an American flag on his lapel and how his wife, Michelle, had said at a rally for her husband that “for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.” Three Clinton surrogates and donors said Thursday that Mr. Wright had been a natural topic in conversations with superdelegates and donors. They said the possible effects on Mr. Obama’s electability were a legitimate concern for Democrats who want to win in the fall. One of the surrogates echoed a top Clinton ally, Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, who said in February that some white voters in his state would not vote for Mr. Obama because they were not ready to back a black candidate. “The Republicans made John Kerry look like a coward in 2004,” said the surrogate, a close ally of Mrs. Clinton from New York, who has talked to superdelegates about Mr. Wright and who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations. “The Reverend Wright attacks wouldn’t even look like ‘Swift-boating.’ It’s just putting his comments out there.” But some black Democrats said the Clinton camp could face serious consequences if it was seen exploiting the Wright matter, given the unpredictable reactions from black voters in general election battlegrounds like Michigan and Ohio. “I think the Clinton campaign has to show leadership and sensitivity here; this cannot become part of the mix with the drug stuff and the South Carolina stuff,” said Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist, referring to past attacks on Mr. Obama by the Clinton campaign. “I am too close to my friends in the Clinton campaign to accuse any of them, including the senator, of trying to benefit from this,” she said. “But race is obviously in the water right now, and everyone needs to be careful.”
|
Presidential Election of 2008;Wright Jeremiah A Jr;Clinton Hillary Rodham;Obama Barack;Blacks;Democratic Party;Ferraro Geraldine A
|
ny0029382
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2013/06/05
|
James Van de Velde, From Pariah Back to Pillar
|
James R. Van de Velde graduated cum laude from Yale University, won fellowships at Stanford and Harvard, got a Ph.D. from Tufts and returned to Yale as a lecturer. But it was not scholarship that made him a famous name on college campuses in the late 1990s. It was the killing of one of his students , a death in which he alone was named as a suspect. Though he was never charged with a crime, he went, in the words of one local headline, “from pillar to pariah.” Mr. Van de Velde’s long legal battle to clear his name has taken many turns, and now has reached something of a conclusion. On Monday, he, Yale and the City of New Haven said they had reached a settlement over his lawsuit, which claimed that Yale and New Haven wrongly singled him out, and that his reputation and health had been damaged. Yale, which did not disclose the amount of money it agreed to pay, issued a statement denying any wrongdoing. “Continuing the civil litigation for several more years,” it read, “would demand further time, energy and cost with no corresponding benefit. For this reason, Yale has chosen to reach a simple, negotiated settlement to resolve the litigation.” New Haven’s portion of the settlement comes to $200,000, but Robert A. Rhodes, the lawyer who handled the litigation, similarly insisted the settlement was not an admission that “anyone at the City of New Haven believes they acted incorrectly.” To Mr. Van de Velde, however, the settlement is a victory, the last step in his search for public and personal redemption. Against considerable odds he has found a new career — two, really, in government and in private consulting — and started a family. And now, a decade and a half after Yale determined that his notoriety would interfere with his ability to teach, Mr. Van de Velde, 53, is back at the front of a classroom , at Johns Hopkins University, where students give him positive reviews for the graduate course Intelligence and Counter Terrorism. Suzanne Jovin, a political science major in her final year at Yale, was stabbed 17 times in the back and neck, and left on a curb on the night of Dec. 4, 1998. The brutality of her death attracted worldwide attention, much of which focused on Mr. Van de Velde, who advised on the thesis she had just turned in. No evidence was presented tying him to the crime, but reporters rang his doorbell at every hour of the day and people with no connection to the case or the city wrote to say they knew he was guilty. A 1999 article about him in The New York Times Magazine said he had “no job now and few prospects, just a growing pile of rejections. His casual friends and colleagues have dropped away, leaving a small, hard core of loyalists. He cannot, of course, date.” Looking back at those days now, he said, “I felt I was in some ways at the very top of a very successful career and I was dropped through a trap door to the very bottom.” Teaching was not an option, he realized, so he built on his academic expertise in terrorism, his years in the naval intelligence reserves, and a previous job at the State Department to work as a senior intelligence analyst at the Department of Defense. He studied Al Qaeda’s acquisition of weapons of mass destruction and even spent a few months (while employed by the defense contractor Lockheed Martin) at Guantánamo Bay. He took the foreign service exam and in 2004 joined the State Department. From there he went on to the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, where he works as an analyst on intelligence and counterterrorism issues, as well as cyberattacks and weapons of mass destruction. The job offer, he said, was contingent on his passing a Central Intelligence Agency polygraph and securing top secret security clearance. Along the way he met a woman, a friend of a friend, and they started dating. Three years later, they were married. “It hurts my head every time I think about how we met,” he said, “because of course if what happened in Connecticut didn’t happen, I probably never would have met my wife.” They live in a suburb of Washington with their son, 8, and daughter, 3. In an interview on Tuesday, Michael Dearington, the state’s attorney for the New Haven judicial district, spoke for what he said was the first time about Mr. Van de Velde’s status in the investigation, which remains open. “I guess I can say at this point in time he’s not considered a suspect,” he said. Mr. Van de Velde no longer feels as he said he did when he was first named as a suspect, like being blasted by a water cannon. He publishes in scholarly journals and flies around the world to speak at conferences; next week, he will be in Israel talking about jihadist Web sites. “I’d like to think I was able to rebuild my career through perseverance,” he said. But his redemption, he continued, “also suggests I was denied an even better one or at least a different one. I find myself now where I was when I was at 39,” just before his student died. His next goal, he said, is to find a way to serve as a spokesman for the rights of the wrongly accused.
|
James van de Velde;Lawsuits;Yale;New Haven CT;Suzanne Jovin;Murders;College
|
ny0031353
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2013/06/06
|
White Sox Beat Mariners in 16 Innings After a Wild 14th
|
Alejandro De Aza and Alex Rios each had a run-scoring single in the 16th inning, and the Chicago White Sox snapped an eight-game losing streak with a 7-5 victory over the Seattle Mariners on Wednesday. De Aza’s tiebreaking hit came after the teams combined to make baseball history when Chicago scored five times in the top of the 14th, only to have Seattle complete an improbable rally on Kyle Seager’s tying grand slam off Addison Reed (2-0) with two out. “We’re all too exhausted right now to relish it,” Chicago second baseman Gordon Beckham said. “But when you’re down, you’ve got an eight-game losing streak, and you’re battling and what happens in the 14th happened, it’s like, ‘How can it get any worse?’ We battled and hopefully it does enough for us to get going back in the right direction.” According to the Mariners, with information from the Elias Sports Bureau, Seager was the first player to hit a tying grand slam in extra innings, and no team had ever scored five or more runs in the 14th inning or later to tie a game. It also was the first game in major league history when each team scored five or more runs in the game when it was scoreless through the ninth. ROCKIES 12, REDS 4 In Cincinnati, Carlos Gonzalez tied his career high with three of Colorado’s six homers, and Troy Tulowitzki went 5 for 5 with a pair of homers. BRAVES 5, PIRATES 0 Julio Teheran carried a no-hitter into the eighth, helping host Atlanta beat Pittsburgh. Pinch-hitter Brandon Inge singled to left with two outs in the eighth for Pittsburgh’s only hit. PHILLIES 6, MARLINS 1 Cole Hamels had a season-high 11 strikeouts in seven dominant innings, Domonic Brown hit another homer, and Philadelphia completed a three-game series sweep at home. Brown has 10 homers in the last 12 games and leads the National League with 18. ASTROS 11, ORIOLES 7 Houston put on an impressive display of power at home, hitting six home runs to get its seventh win in eight games. RANGERS 3, RED SOX 2 Elvis Andrus hit a tiebreaking, two-run double in the seventh inning after earlier ending a 1-for-18 slump as Texas won in Boston. RAYS 3, TIGERS 0 Matt Joyce hit a sacrifice fly to break a scoreless tie in the ninth to lift Tampa Bay in Detroit. ROYALS 4, TWINS 1 Jeremy Guthrie lasted six shaky innings and the bullpen held off Minnesota, as Kansas City ended a franchise-record 11-game home losing streak. INTERLEAGUE GAMES Bartolo Colon won his fourth straight start and Brandon Moss hit a three-run homer to power the Oakland Athletics to 6-1 victory over the Brewers in Milwaukee. ... R. A. Dickey allowed two hits in eight and a third innings and sparked a four-run fifth with an R.B.I. double, helping the visiting Toronto Blue Jays beat the San Francisco Giants, 4-0. ... Anthony Rizzo hit a three-run double in the 10th inning and the visiting Chicago Cubs overcame a pair of homers by Mark Trumbo to beat the Los Angeles Angels, 8-6. INDIANS’ CLOSER UNDER INVESTIGATION Authorities in suburban Cleveland are investigating a suspected delivery of marijuana to the home of Chris Perez, the Indians’ closer. A statement from the Rocky River Police Department said it was looking into the Tuesday delivery along with the Westshore Enforcement Bureau and the United States Postal Service. Rocky River Police Chief Kelly Stillman said that Perez and his wife were “extremely cooperative” and that “the evidence has been confiscated.” STEVE EDER
|
Baseball;White Sox;Mariners
|
ny0228592
|
[
"business",
"economy"
] |
2010/07/07
|
For a New Generation, an Elusive American Dream
|
GRAFTON, Mass. — After breakfast, his parents left for their jobs, and Scott Nicholson, alone in the house in this comfortable suburb west of Boston , went to his laptop in the living room. He had placed it on a small table that his mother had used for a vase of flowers until her unemployed son found himself reluctantly stuck at home. The daily routine seldom varied. Mr. Nicholson, 24, a graduate of Colgate University , winner of a dean’s award for academic excellence, spent his mornings searching corporate Web sites for suitable job openings. When he found one, he mailed off a résumé and cover letter — four or five a week, week after week. Over the last five months, only one job materialized. After several interviews, the Hanover Insurance Group in nearby Worcester offered to hire him as an associate claims adjuster, at $40,000 a year. But even before the formal offer, Mr. Nicholson had decided not to take the job. Rather than waste early years in dead-end work, he reasoned, he would hold out for a corporate position that would draw on his college training and put him, as he sees it, on the bottom rungs of a career ladder. “The conversation I’m going to have with my parents now that I’ve turned down this job is more of a concern to me than turning down the job,” he said. He was braced for the conversation with his father in particular. While Scott Nicholson viewed the Hanover job as likely to stunt his career, David Nicholson, 57, accustomed to better times and easier mobility, viewed it as an opportunity. Once in the door, the father has insisted to his son, opportunities will present themselves — as they did in the father’s rise over 35 years to general manager of a manufacturing company. “You maneuvered and you did not worry what the maneuvering would lead to,” the father said. “You knew it would lead to something good.” Complicating the generational divide, Scott’s grandfather, William S. Nicholson, a World War II veteran and a retired stock broker, has watched what he described as America ’s once mighty economic engine losing its pre-eminence in a global economy. The grandfather has encouraged his unemployed grandson to go abroad — to “Go West,” so to speak. “I view what is happening to Scott with dismay,” said the grandfather, who has concluded, in part from reading The Economist, that Europe has surpassed America in offering opportunity for an ambitious young man. “We hate to think that Scott will have to leave,” the grandfather said, “but he will.” The grandfather’s injunction startled the grandson. But as the weeks pass, Scott Nicholson, handsome as a Marine officer in a recruiting poster, has gradually realized that his career will not roll out in the Greater Boston area — or anywhere in America — with the easy inevitability that his father and grandfather recall, and that Scott thought would be his lot, too, when he finished college in 2008. “I don’t think I fully understood the severity of the situation I had graduated into,” he said, speaking in effect for an age group — the so-called millennials, 18 to 29 — whose unemployment rate of nearly 14 percent approaches the levels of that group in the Great Depression . And then he veered into the optimism that, polls show, is persistently, perhaps perversely, characteristic of millennials today. “I am absolutely certain that my job hunt will eventually pay off,” he said. For young adults, the prospects in the workplace, even for the college-educated, have rarely been so bleak. Apart from the 14 percent who are unemployed and seeking work, as Scott Nicholson is, 23 percent are not even seeking a job, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics . The total, 37 percent, is the highest in more than three decades and a rate reminiscent of the 1930s. The college-educated among these young adults are better off. But nearly 17 percent are either unemployed or not seeking work, a record level (although some are in graduate school). The unemployment rate for college-educated young adults, 5.5 percent, is nearly double what it was on the eve of the Great Recession, in 2007, and the highest level — by almost two percentage points — since the bureau started to keep records in 1994 for those with at least four years of college. Yet surveys show that the majority of the nation’s millennials remain confident, as Scott Nicholson is, that they will have satisfactory careers. They have a lot going for them. “They are better educated than previous generations and they were raised by baby boomers who lavished a lot of attention on their children,” said Andrew Kohut, the Pew Research Center ’s director. That helps to explain their persistent optimism, even as they struggle to succeed. So far, Scott Nicholson is a stranger to the triumphal stories that his father and grandfather tell of their working lives. They said it was connections more than perseverance that got them started — the father in 1976 when a friend who had just opened a factory hired him, and the grandfather in 1946 through an Army buddy whose father-in-law owned a brokerage firm in nearby Worcester and needed another stock broker. From these accidental starts, careers unfolded and lasted. David Nicholson, now the general manager of a company that makes tools, is still in manufacturing. William Nicholson spent the next 48 years, until his retirement , as a stock broker. “Scott has got to find somebody who knows someone,” the grandfather said, “someone who can get him to the head of the line.” While Scott has tried to make that happen, he has come under pressure from his parents to compromise: to take, if not the Hanover job, then one like it. “I am beginning to realize that refusal is going to have repercussions,” he said. “My parents are subtly pointing out that beyond room and board, they are also paying other expenses for me, like my cellphone charges and the premiums on a life insurance policy.” Scott Nicholson also has connections, of course, but no one in his network of family and friends has been able to steer him into marketing or finance or management training or any career-oriented opening at a big corporation, his goal. The jobs are simply not there. The Millennials’ Inheritance The Great Depression damaged the self-confidence of the young, and that is beginning to happen now, according to pollsters, sociologists and economists. Young men in particular lost a sense of direction, Glen H. Elder Jr., a sociologist at the University of North Carolina , found in his study, “Children of the Great Depression.” In some cases they were forced into work they did not want — the issue for Scott Nicholson. Military service in World War II, along with the G.I. Bill and a booming economy, restored well-being; by the 1970s, when Mr. Elder did his retrospective study, the hardships of the Depression were more a memory than an open sore. “They came out of the war with purpose in their lives, and by age 40 most of them were doing well,” he said, speaking of his study in a recent interview. The outlook this time is not so clear. Starved for jobs at adequate pay, the millennials tend to seek refuge in college and in the military and to put off marriage and child-bearing. Those who are working often stay with the jobs they have rather than jump to better paying but less secure ones, as young people seeking advancement normally do. And they are increasingly willing to forgo raises, or to settle for small ones. “They are definitely more risk-averse,” said Lisa B. Kahn, an economist at the Yale School of Management, “and more likely to fall behind.” In a recent study, she found that those who graduated from college during the severe early ’80s recession earned up to 30 percent less in their first three years than new graduates who landed their first jobs in a strong economy. Even 15 years later, their annual pay was 8 to 10 percent less. Many hard-pressed millennials are falling back on their parents, as Scott Nicholson has. While he has no college debt (his grandparents paid all his tuition and board) many others do, and that helps force them back home. In 2008, the first year of the recession, the percentage of the population living in households in which at least two generations were present rose nearly a percentage point, to 16 percent, according to the Pew Research Center. The high point, 24.7 percent, came in 1940, as the Depression ended, and the low point, 12 percent, in 1980. Striving for Independence “Going it alone,” “earning enough to be self-supporting” — these are awkward concepts for Scott Nicholson and his friends. Of the 20 college classmates with whom he keeps up, 12 are working, but only half are in jobs they “really like.” Three are entering law school this fall after frustrating experiences in the work force, “and five are looking for work just as I am,” he said. Like most of his classmates, Scott tries to get by on a shoestring and manages to earn enough in odd jobs to pay some expenses. The jobs are catch as catch can. He and a friend recently put up a white wooden fence for a neighbor, embedding the posts in cement, a day’s work that brought Scott $125. He mows lawns and gardens for half a dozen clients in Grafton, some of them family friends. And he is an active volunteer firefighter. “As frustrated as I get now, and I never intended to live at home, I’m in a good situation in a lot of ways,” Scott said. “I have very little overhead and no debt, and it is because I have no debt that I have any sort of flexibility to look for work. Otherwise, I would have to have a job, some kind of full-time job.” That millennials as a group are optimistic is partly because many are, as Mr. Kohut put it, the children of doting baby boomers — among them David Nicholson and his wife, Susan, 56, an executive at a company that owns movie theaters. The Nicholsons, whose combined annual income is north of $175,000, have lavished attention on their three sons. Currently that attention is directed mainly at sustaining the self-confidence of their middle son. “No one on either side of the family has ever gone through this,” Mrs. Nicholson said, “and I guess I’m impatient. I know he is educated and has a great work ethic and wants to start contributing, and I don’t know what to do.” Her oldest, David Jr., 26, did land a good job. Graduating from Middlebury College in 2006, he joined a Boston insurance company, specializing in reinsurance, nearly three years ago, before the recession. “I’m fortunate to be at a company where there is some security,” he said, adding that he supports Scott in his determination to hold out for the right job. “Once you start working, you get caught up in the work and you have bills to pay, and you lose sight of what you really want,” the brother said. He is earning $75,000 — a sum beyond Scott’s reach today, but not his expectations. “I worked hard through high school to get myself into the college I did,” Scott said, “and then I worked hard through college to graduate with the grades and degree that I did to position myself for a solid job.” (He majored in political science and minored in history.) It was in pursuit of a solid job that Scott applied to Hanover International’s management training program. Turned down for that, he was called back to interview for the lesser position in the claims department. “I’m sitting with the manager, and he asked me how I had gotten interested in insurance. I mentioned Dave’s job in reinsurance, and the manager’s response was, ‘Oh, that is about 15 steps above the position you are interviewing for,’ ” Scott said, his eyes widening and his voice emotional. Scott acknowledges that he is competitive with his brothers, particularly David, more than they are with him. The youngest, Bradley, 22, has a year to go at the University of Vermont . His parents and grandparents pay his way, just as they did for his brothers in their college years. In the Old Days Going to college wasn’t an issue for grandfather Nicholson, or so he says. With World War II approaching, he entered the Army not long after finishing high school and, in the fighting in Italy , a battlefield commission raised him overnight from enlisted man to first lieutenant. That was “the equivalent of a college education,” as he now puts it, in an age when college on a stockbroker’s résumé “counted for something, but not a lot.” He spent most of his career in a rising market, putting customers into stocks that paid good dividends, and growing wealthy on real estate investments made years ago, when Grafton was still semi-rural. The brokerage firm that employed him changed hands more than once, but he continued to work out of the same office in Worcester. When his son David graduated from Babson College in 1976, manufacturing in America was in an early phase of its long decline, and Worcester was still a center for the production of sandpaper, emery stones and other abrasives. He joined one of those companies — owned by the family of his friend — and he has stayed in manufacturing, particularly at companies that make hand tools. Early on, he and his wife bought the home in which they raised their sons, a white colonial dating from the early 1800s, like many houses on North Street, where the grandparents also live, a few doors away. David Nicholson’s longest stretch was at the Stanley Works , and when he left, seeking promotion, a friend at the Endeavor Tool Company hired him as that company’s general manager, his present job. In better times, Scott’s father might have given his son work at Endeavor, but the father is laying off workers, and a job in manufacturing, in Scott’s eyes, would be a defeat. “If you talk to 20 people,” Scott said, “you’ll find only one in manufacturing and everyone else in finance or something else.” The Plan Scott Nicholson almost sidestepped the recession. His plan was to become a Marine Corps second lieutenant. He had spent the summer after his freshman year in “platoon leader” training. Last fall he passed the physical for officer training, and was told to report on Jan. 16. If all had gone well, he would have emerged in 10 weeks as a second lieutenant, committed to a four-year enlistment. “I could have made a career out of the Marines ,” Scott said, “and if I had come out in four years, I would have been incredibly prepared for the workplace.” It was not to be. In early January, a Marine Corps doctor noticed that he had suffered from childhood asthma . He was washed out. “They finally told me I could reapply if I wanted to,” Scott said. “But the sheen was gone.” So he struggles to get a foothold in the civilian work force. His brother in Boston lost his roommate, and early last month Scott moved into the empty bedroom, with his parents paying Scott’s share of the $2,000-a-month rent until the lease expires on Aug. 31. And if Scott does not have a job by then? “I’ll do something temporary; I won’t go back home,” Scott said. “I’ll be a bartender or get work through a temp agency. I hope I don’t find myself in that position.”
|
US Economy;null;Jobs;Job Recruiting and Hiring;Careers and Professions;Recession and Depression;Economy
|
ny0059839
|
[
"world",
"africa"
] |
2014/08/07
|
Bush Urges Renewed Fight Against Deadly Diseases in Africa
|
WASHINGTON — Former President George W. Bush made a rare return to the nation’s capital on Wednesday to rally world leaders behind a public health campaign to conquer killer diseases in Africa and to forecast what he called “the beginning of the end of AIDS.” Mr. Bush, who has made fighting AIDS in Africa one of his biggest priorities, flew to Washington to participate in a program connected to the Africa summit sponsored by his successor, President Obama. Mr. Bush’s public policy institute teamed up with Michelle Obama and the State Department to host a daylong forum on education and health with the spouses of African leaders. The former president used the occasion to promote a new chapter in the battle with AIDS, saying at this stage the effort can be focused with better data, better treatment options and better prevention approaches to “reach and help the highest-risk regions and groups.” He also urged African leaders to avoid discrimination that makes public health efforts harder, although he did not specifically mention laws like the one overturned by a court in Uganda last week criminalizing homosexuality. Video As the conference gets underway this week in Washington, a look at some of the African heads of state in attendance. Credit Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times “Applied with clear goals and accountability, this saturation approach presents an amazing opportunity – the beginning of the end of AIDS,” Mr. Bush told the gathering, held at the Kennedy Center. “It also requires something from the rest of us. It is impossible to direct help where it is needed most when any group is targeted for legal discrimination and stigma. Compassion and tolerance are important medicines.” Mr. Bush returned to Washington at a time when many issues associated with his time in office are being debated here, including how to combat Islamic insurgents in Iraq, what to do about Russian aggression in Europe and whether to release a Senate report on what Mr. Obama calls the torture of terrorism suspects under the last administration. Mr. Bush has come under renewed criticism for invading Iraq and for authorizing the controversial interrogation techniques, but he offered no comments on any of those issues in his prepared remarks. Instead, as he generally has since leaving office, he stayed out of the current debates. He noted lightly that as a retired president, “I got a little more time on my hands these days – surprising to some, painting.” And he joked about recent trips to Africa when he and his wife, Laura Bush, helped refurbish health clinics in Zambia. “I was in charge of the painting,” he said. “She was in charge of going over the spots I missed. She had a lot of work. But in my defense, I was studying the impressionist movement.” While Mr. Bush’s presidency is remembered mostly for his pursuit of terrorists after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, since leaving office he has spent more time on his public health legacy. U.S.-Africa Summit Reading List <a name="readinglist"></a>As President Obama hosts a gathering of more than 40 African leaders in Washington, explore the forces that are reshaping the African continent. In the White House, Mr. Bush created the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief , or Pepfar, the largest single global response to a disease, which is credited with helping to save millions of lives in Africa. From his current home in Dallas, Mr. Bush has focused on fighting cervical cancer and breast cancer, which together kill more women in Africa than any other disease. The Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon project he founded in partnership with Pepfar, Susan G. Komen and the United Nations AIDS program has screened more than 100,000 women in Zambia, Botswana and Tanzania. Mr. Bush announced that it will now expand to two more countries, Namibia and Ethiopia. Mr. Bush said ignorance, misinformation and stigmatization were obstacles to public health that should be overcome, mentioning specifically what he called “false rumors about the HPV vaccine,” intended to guard against cervical cancer. Some conservatives, like Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, have questioned the vaccine’s safety, but doctors have rejected such claims. Mr. Bush praised Zambia’s first lady for fighting those “rumors,” adding that was “something that needs to be done here in America as well.” “People die from stigma,” he added. “While stigma may seem like a high, unbreachable wall, you’ve got to realize it’s made of glass. It can be broken.”
|
George W Bush;Africa;AIDS,HIV;Medicine and Health;President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief
|
ny0168926
|
[
"nyregion",
"nyregionspecial2"
] |
2006/12/10
|
Plan Would Consolidate Some Hospitals on Island
|
SWEEPING changes may be in store for some Long Island hospitals and nursing homes. A state commission’s report has recommended that four community-based East End hospitals consolidate, restructure their services to avoid duplication and become affiliated with the state-financed Stony Brook University Medical Center. Although no locations were recommended for closing, the report also urges the restructuring of four other hospitals and three nursing homes on the Island. Separately, State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle has introduced a bill calling for the separation of the Stony Brook hospital from the university and the creation of a 15-member board that would shift authority away from the university president. The State Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century, known as the Berger Commission, recommended merging Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport, Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead, Brookhaven Memorial Medical Center in East Patchogue and Southampton Hospital. They would remain acute-care hospitals but develop unique specialties for the East End — one for obstetrics, for example, or physical rehabilitation. The report, released on Nov. 28, recommends that those four hospitals develop an affiliation with Stony Brook University Medical Center. Stony Brook has already struck agreements with the Eastern Long Island and Peconic Bay hospitals. Mr. LaValle, a Republican from Port Jefferson, said the commission’s plan codified the hospitals’ vision of building “a regional approach to health care with Stony Brook at the center of the wheel and the community hospital as the spokes.” Marsha Kenny, a Southampton Hospital spokeswoman, called the report “a positive move” that had been expected and said the elimination of 43 beds, as proposed in the report, would not be a hardship. She said the hospitals on the East End had already been working together “so that we will not be duplicating services.” The Berger Commission was created last year by Gov. George E. Pataki and the Legislature to assess and streamline health care statewide. The other hospitals on its Long Island list for restructuring were the Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow; Mather Memorial Hospital and St. Charles Hospital, both in Port Jefferson; and Long Beach Medical Center. Long Island nursing homes on the list were the A. Holly Patterson Extended Care Facility in Uniondale, the Cold Spring Hills Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation and the Brunswick Hospital Center Skilled Nursing Facility in Amityville. Mr. LaValle said his Nov. 22 proposal to restructure Stony Brook University Medical Center was a result of concerns over its management, which were affirmed by the Berger Commission findings. He insisted that it had nothing to do with the hospital’s recent troubles, which include the deaths of three children and state citations for 36 violations. “In its current structure, Stony Brook is not creating the kind of environment required to build a synergy between the university and community hospitals,” Mr. LaValle said. He said the board he proposed “would oversee quality of patient care, monitoring and reviewing quality assurance systems, credentialing of all medical staff including the removal of professional staff and approval of contracts and affiliations with other hospitals.” The university president, Shirley Strum Kenny, “has done an incredible job,” Mr. LaValle said, but “she was given a structurally deficient situation that we need to repair.” But there are serious concerns within Stony Brook University. “It is vital for the governance of the university and the medical center to remain similar to the structure that exists now,” said Dr. Richard N. Fine, the dean of the medical school at Stony Brook. “The clinical and research enterprises need to proceed in unison, and we must have combined resources — both financial and intellectual.” Dr. Fine said the current setup provided the best way to compete for the financing of research. Mr. LaValle said he expected his bill to meet with opposition. He said he filed the legislation to get the State University of New York chancellor, John R. Ryan, and Dr. Kenny “to look at the recommendations and reach an agreement as to how to make necessary changes.” The Legislature is scheduled to meet for a special session on Wednesday to vote on the Berger report. If it is approved, the health care facilities it cites will have until June 2008 to close or restructure.
|
Shutdowns (Institutional);Hospitals;Long Island (NY)
|
ny0197040
|
[
"sports"
] |
2009/10/01
|
In Copenhagen, Michelle Obama Works on Behalf of Chicago’s Olympic Bid
|
Michelle Obama arrived Wednesday in Copenhagen and got right to work on behalf of Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics. By the afternoon, she was hunkered down in a hotel, meeting with voting members of the International Olympic Committee . The mission — to sway delegates before Friday’s vote — felt oddly familiar. “This is like a campaign, just like Iowa,” Obama said at a welcome dinner for Chicago 2016 supporters, according to a pool report. “The international community may not understand that, but the I.O.C. is like a caucus. Nobody makes the decision until they’re sitting there.” Oprah Winfrey, who is in Copenhagen on behalf of the Chicago bid, called it a “sprint to the finish line,” the pool report said. Sir Craig Reedie, an I.O.C. voting member from Britain, met with Obama and said she was charming but declined to provide details of their conversation. Her time in Copenhagen, Obama said, will be used to “hold some hands, to have some conversations, to share our visions, to make the world understand this is an opportunity for the United States to connect with the world in a really important way at a very critical time.” In a telephone interview from Copenhagen, Reedie said, “People from the bid cities are not beating you on the head when you come out of the lift, but the process is certainly under way.” On Friday, each of the four bid cities will make a final 70-minute presentation to the 106 I.O.C. delegates eligible to vote. They will cast their choice electronically — and secretly. Delegates from countries with a city in the competition may not vote until after that city’s bid is eliminated. If no city receives a majority of the votes in the first round, the city with fewest votes is eliminated. Bid watchers predicted that this vote would require the full three rounds. In the last I.O.C. vote, for the 2012 Games, London beat Paris by a 54-50 margin. In this race, Chicago and Rio de Janeiro are considered the front-runners in the field with Madrid and Tokyo. “You can feel the electricity in the air,” said Patrick G. Ryan, Chicago’s bid leader, according to the pool report. “You can feel the competition in the air.” The bid teams are meeting continually to review their standing among the various I.O.C. delegates who may be undecided — or, in some cases, swayed from their current choice. The highest-profile members of each team — like the heads of state in Copenhagen from all four bids — are assigned to speak with those delegates. Reedie, who helped obtain the 2012 Summer Games for London, knows the process well. He was part of the team lobbying alongside Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose last-minute efforts are thought to have made the difference in the voting. “We decided four years ago that it’s probably not a good idea for heads of state to ask for votes, so I don’t think anyone will be doing that,” Reedie said of the top leaders heading to Denmark, including presidents, a king, a prince and a prime minister. “They just need to be supportive of the candidate city. That’s enough. Everybody understands why Mrs. Obama’s here.” If Reedie does have a favorite this time around, he is not saying. “The favorite is the last person you spoke to,” he said. “They can be that influential.”
|
International Olympic Committee;Olympic Games (2012);Obama Michelle
|
ny0213666
|
[
"sports"
] |
2010/03/16
|
Mackey Nears Fourth Iditarod Win
|
Lance Mackey was poised to win his fourth consecutive Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. He was the first out of the checkpoint at Elim, Alaska, 123 miles from the finish. Hans Gatt left next, more than two and a half hours later.
|
Dog Sledding;Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race (Alaska);Mackey Lance
|
ny0138665
|
[
"nyregion",
"nyregionspecial2"
] |
2008/05/25
|
Roanoke Stands Out
|
“Brooklyn Uncorked,” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, allows the public to compare the styles of Long Island wineries — 30 this year. Sponsors of the tasting, on May 14, included the Long Island Wine Council and Edible East End and Edible Brooklyn, sister publications. Roanoke Vineyards’ wines stood out. Roanoke does not have its own winery; Richard Pisacano, Wölffer Estate’s vineyard manager, provided the grapes, and Roman Roth, Wölffer’s winemaker, did the rest. The lean 2007 chardonnay ($18) was brisk; a pink 2007 named DeRosé ($16) was delicately fruity; the red 2004 Blend One ($30), delectable. Paumanok’s 2007 chenin blanc was awash in tropical-fruit flavors, but overpriced at $28. Palmer’s 2007 refined sauvignon blanc ($16.99) was world-class. Castello di Borghese’s 2007 version ($18) was rich and savory. Christiano Family Vineyards’ ingratiating 2006 chardonnay was redolent of pears and apple pie . It was made at the Premium Wine Group, a for-hire winery in Mattituck, and costs $16.99 at the Tasting Room, in Peconic. Riesling is a specialty of the Peconic Bay Winery. The off-dry 2005 ($18) delivers an agreeable peach-and-apricot flavor. Among the reds, Lieb’s 2003 reserve merlot ($24) was a winner. The fruit is almost exuberant, the smoky bouquet attractive. Scarola Vineyards’s 2004 merlot, named Masseria — in Italian, an ancient farmhouse — showed inviting hints of a prune-and-raisin compote, herbs and tobacco notes; some cabernet franc heightens the blend. Scarola’s dark, gutsy 2005 Masseria merlot was more interesting. Both, made by Mr. Roth at Wölffer, cost $16.95. Nature often foils North Fork pinot noir growers, and when the wine succeeds, they want a reward. Ron Goerler Jr., Jamesport Vineyards’ general manager, called 2005 “a glorious year.” That year’s pinot costs $44.95.
|
Wines;Alcoholic Beverages;Goldberg Howard G
|
ny0013712
|
[
"world",
"africa"
] |
2013/11/01
|
South Sudan: One-Sided Vote in Disputed District
|
Residents of the disputed district of Abyei voted overwhelmingly in favor of joining South Sudan, according to results announced by the referendum’s organizers on Thursday. Zachariah Deng Majok of the Abyei Referendum High Committee said that 99.9 percent of those who had voted wanted to be part of South Sudan. But the nonbinding referendum was not recognized by the governments of Sudan and South Sudan or by the African Union. Both Sudan and South Sudan claim ownership of oil-rich Abyei, and the region is shared uneasily by two ethnic groups: the more-settled Ngok Dinka and the nomadic Misseriya. The Ngok Dinka, allied with South Sudan, took part in the referendum, but the Misseriya, who are close to Sudan’s government, did not. President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan has said he will work with his South Sudanese counterpart, Salva Kiir, to resolve the Abyei dispute.
|
Abyei Sudan;Referendum;Sudan;South Sudan;African Union;Omar Hassan Al- Bashir;Salva Kiir Mayardit
|
ny0058064
|
[
"sports",
"soccer"
] |
2014/09/13
|
Ghana’s Coach Is Out
|
Kwesi Appiah left his position as Ghana’s coach after failing to guide the national team out of the group stage at the World Cup in Brazil. The Ghana Football Association said it “agreed to mutually part ways” with Appiah.
|
Soccer;Coaches;Ghana
|
ny0083556
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2015/10/07
|
Answering an Appeal by Mao Led Tu Youyou, a Chinese Scientist, to a Nobel Prize
|
BEIJING — During the upheaval of China’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, when many of the country’s Western-trained scientists were shunned and persecuted, the government had an urgent scientific problem that needed attention. North Vietnam, an important ally that was in the middle of war with the United States, had asked for a way to reduce the deaths of its soldiers from malaria, which had become resistant to the drug chloroquine. Malaria was also killing large numbers of people in southern China. Mao Zedong set up a secret military project, Project 523 — named after its starting date, May 23, 1967 — to find a solution. But China’s top expert in the field of malaria research, like legions of other Chinese in this time of high political turmoil, had been labeled a “rightist” and shunted aside. After making little headway on the problem, the government turned to the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Beijing, and to a little-known scientist, Tu Youyou, who had studied both Western and Chinese medicine — and who found the solution in traditional Chinese healing. Dr. Tu, 84, on Monday became the first citizen of the People’s Republic of China to win a Nobel Prize in the sciences, for discovering artemisinin, a drug that is now part of standard antimalarial regimens. She shared the Nobel for medicine or physiology with two scientists who also developed antiparasitic drugs. Dr. Tu, through the Institute of Chinese Materia Medica at the Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences where she works, issued a statement about the value of artemisinin and traditional Chinese medicine. “Artemisinin is a gift for the world’s people from traditional Chinese medicine,” the statement said. Four Chinese scientists born in mainland China have been awarded the Nobel in physics, but only after making their careers in the West. The Chinese government has long wanted a Nobel in the sciences for the sake of prestige and as a confirmation of the quality of its education system. The Chinese government and state-run news media celebrated Dr. Tu’s prize as an acknowledgment of the rising strength of Chinese science as well as a vindication of the value of traditional Chinese medicine. But some scientists and commentators also said that until now, China’s scientific establishment had treated Dr. Tu somewhat dismissively. Prime Minister Li Keqiang said that Dr. Tu’s Nobel “was an expression of the prosperity and progress of Chinese science, and of the huge contribution that Chinese traditional medicine and pharmacy has made to the health of humankind.” But Dr. Tu had been denied a place as an academician in China’s highest honorary body for scientists, apparently because of her lack of foreign training and a doctoral degree, other commentators noted. “I think that Tu Youyou’s prize should lead to deeper reflection about China’s scientific efforts,” Wang Yuanfeng, a professor in Beijing said in an online commentary. “There are many problems in the institutions and mechanisms of scientific work in China.” At the start of her research for Project 523, Dr. Tu, then 39, was sent to Hainan Island, in the southernmost region of China, to see how the disease was affecting the population. Her husband had been purged during the Cultural Revolution, and she put her 4-year-old daughter into a nursery. Her visit to Hainan was the start of a decade of work, she told New Scientist in an interview in 2011. Video In an interview with China’s state news media, the Nobel laureate said the award was a recognition of her country and its traditional medicine. Credit Credit China Stringer Network/Reuters She visited traditional medical practitioners across China, and from those conversations, compiled a notebook, “A Collection of Single Practical Prescriptions for Anti-Malaria.” Among 2,000 traditional Chinese recipes, she said, one compound was found to be effective: sweet wormwood, or Artemisia annua, which was used for “intermittent fevers,” a hallmark of malaria. In the interview, Dr. Tu told New Scientist that she reread a particular recipe, written more than 1,600 years ago in a text titled “Emergency Prescriptions Kept Up One’s Sleeve.” The directions were to soak one bunch of wormwood in water and then drink the juice . But Dr. Tu said she realized that her method of preparation — boiling the wormwood — probably damaged the active ingredient. So she made another preparation using an ether-based solvent, which boils at 35 degrees Celsius, or 95 degrees Fahrenheit. When tested on mice and monkeys, she said, it proved 100 percent effective. After the successful animal tests, Dr. Tu volunteered to be the first human subject, along with two colleagues. Satisfied that she had suffered no ill effects, she conducted clinical trials with patients. “We had just cured drug-resistant malaria,” Dr. Tu told New Scientist. “We were very excited.” Ten years after Mao founded Project 523, her work was published, though anonymously. Western aid agencies did not take advantage of artemisinin for decades, even after its effectiveness was established. Older drugs were cheaper, but resistance to them was growing and some experts said the delay endangered lives. The Nobel is not the first recognition for Dr. Tu’s work. In 2011, when she won the $250,000 Lasker Award for clinical medical research, which named her the discoverer of artemisinin, some Chinese and Western malaria experts protested. Image The Nobel is not the first recognition for Dr. Tu’s work. In 2011, when she won the Lasker Award for clinical medical research, which named her the discoverer of artemisinin, some Chinese and Western malaria experts protested. Credit China Network/Reuters Dr. Nicholas J. White, a prominent malaria researcher at Oxford, said that others involved in the research equally deserved the honor. He suggested that the clinical trial leader, Dr. Li Guoqiao, and a chemist, Li Ying, had contributed just as much. A malaria researcher from Hong Kong, Dr. Keith Arnold, agreed. But Dr. Tu said in an interview that she had done the decisive work. As the leader of a small team within the large Project 523, she was the first to isolate the active ingredient, and the one who had thought of using ether to extract it rather than the boiling method, she said. The Lasker citation had noted that the research under Project 523 was collaborative. In 1978, she was singled out to accept an award from the Chinese government to Project 523. By all accounts, Dr. Tu, who was born in Ningbo, a port city in the province of Zhejiang, is modest and shuns the limelight. She was born in 1930, the only daughter among five children, and was admitted to the Beijing Academy of Medical Sciences. She said she was “very lucky” to go to university as a woman, according to a blog post by Songshuhui, a nongovernmental organization focused on writing about science. New Scientist described Dr. Tu as diminutive, with wisps of black curls, and passionate about her work. In 2008, a Phoenix television reporter described meeting her in her office in central Beijing, where there was an old couch and barely any heating. A phone and a refrigerator for storing medicines were the only modern touches, the reporter said. Some analysts have said that Chinese scientists have not had the stability and long-term funding needed to establish a tradition of excellence in research. The lack of a Nobel Prize for science has been particularly galling in recent years, as the government has tried to emphasize that China can be as innovative as the West in the technology and medical sectors. Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese writer, dissident and literary critic, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 , the first Nobel of any kind to be given to a citizen of China. Mr. Liu was serving an 11-year prison sentence for “subversion of state power” at the time of the designation, and he remains in prison. The Chinese novelist Mo Yan won the Nobel for literature in 2012. Despite her age, and some health problems associated with osteoporosis, Dr. Tu has continued to work, said her son-in-law, Lei Mao, who works at a pharmaceutical company in North Carolina. He said Dr. Tu lives quietly in Beijing with her husband, an engineer, and works on scientific projects on a part-time basis.
|
Malaria;Tu Youyou;Nobel Prize;Mao Zedong;Research;Pharmaceuticals;China
|
ny0172869
|
[
"world",
"africa"
] |
2007/11/15
|
Break-In at Nuclear Site Baffles South Africa
|
JOHANNESBURG, Nov. 14 — This much is known: Just after midnight on Nov. 8, Anton Gerber was sitting with his fiancée in the control room of South Africa ’s most secretive nuclear facility, the site at which this nation’s apartheid government conceived and delivered six atomic bombs, when four gunmen burst into the room. Mr. Gerber pushed his fiancée under a desk. The attackers shot him in the chest, grabbed a computer and fled, but abandoned their booty as they came under assault by guards. Now, one week after the assault, the most serious on a nuclear installation in recent memory, the government is largely mum about who was behind it, how they broke in or why. Already, the attack is raising questions among advocates and analysts about the wisdom of plans by South Africa and other African states to embrace nuclear energy as a solution to chronic power shortages and the looming problems of climate change . The assault on the Pelindaba nuclear reactor and research center, one of South Africa’s most zealously guarded properties, is a severe embarrassment to the government. The four gunmen escaped cleanly, neither caught by guards nor identified on surveillance cameras. Mr. Gerber is still recovering. On Tuesday, officials belatedly acknowledged that the Pelindaba reactor had come under attack that same night by a second team of gunmen who were also repelled — and also escaped — after guards sounded an alarm. The Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa, the government-created heir to the apartheid nuclear program, said it suspended six security officials after the assaults and hinted that the break-ins were inside jobs, made possible only by intimate knowledge of the elaborate defenses. But no one has offered a plausible explanation for the assaults. A Pretoria News report, withdrawn under government pressure, suggested a love triangle involving Mr. Gerber and his fiancée, a plant supervisor. Others have raised the specter of terrorism, without evidence. South Africa’s nascent antinuclear movement called the break-ins evidence of the government’s lackadaisical approach to nuclear power. “They’ve failed to control activities there; they’ve failed to protect the people,” said Mashile Phalane of Earthlife Africa, an environmental and social justice advocacy group. Pelindaba is vital to the government’s efforts to build a high-tech infrastructure. It researches advanced scientific issues, and, some experts say, holds bomb-grade enriched uranium. It was at Pelindaba that the apartheid government devised and built as many as seven atomic bombs in the 1970s and 1980s. The government renounced its nuclear bomb program late in the apartheid era, and democratic South Africa has said it has obliterated most of the technology. Critics are skeptical, but it is unclear if bomb-making information would be so casually stored as to be available to burglars.
|
South Africa;Atomic Energy;Assaults
|
ny0000219
|
[
"business"
] |
2013/03/05
|
Justices to Take Up Case on Generic Drug Makers’ Liability
|
The injuries that Karen Bartlett suffered after taking a mild pain pill are enough to make anyone squeamish. Ms. Bartlett, who lives in Plaistow, N.H., developed a rare but severe reaction to the anti-inflammatory drug sulindac after a doctor prescribed it to treat shoulder pain in 2004. Within weeks of taking the drug, her skin began to slough off until nearly two-thirds of it was gone. She spent almost two months in a burn unit, and months more in a medically induced coma. The reaction permanently damaged her lungs and esophagus and rendered her legally blind. Ms. Bartlett sued Mutual Pharmaceutical Company, which made the drug she took, a generic pill, arguing that the drug’s design was dangerous and defective. During her trial in 2010 in Federal District Court in Concord, N.H., her burn surgeon described her experience as “hell on earth,” and a jury awarded her $21 million. An appeals court upheld the verdict. “I wouldn’t want anybody to go through what I went through,” Ms. Bartlett said in a recent interview. “It was horrible. And this medication that I took, sulindac, I don’t think it should be prescribed.” Now, in a case that is being closely watched by pharmaceutical companies, federal regulators and others, the Supreme Court will hear arguments this month on whether Mutual can be held responsible for Ms. Bartlett’s injuries. The outcome is likely to further clarify the legal recourse for patients who take generic drugs, which now account for 80 percent of all prescriptions in the United States. Two years ago, the Supreme Court severely limited the conditions under which consumers of generic drugs could sue the manufacturers, ruling in Pliva v. Mensing that such companies did not have control over what warning labels said and therefore could not be sued for not alerting patients to the risks of taking their drugs. Ms. Bartlett’s case is slightly different because she did not argue that the drug’s warning label was inadequate. She claimed that the drug itself was defective. But Mutual has contended that the rationale is the same since, like the label, it has no control over the drug’s design. Under federal law, generic companies are not allowed to deviate from the brand-name drug they are copying. Sulindac is the scientific name for Clinoril, a drug similar to ibuprofen that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1978 and is sold by Merck. Like ibuprofen, sulindac is in a class of drugs known as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or Nsaids, which are in widespread use. Mutual is appealing a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, that upheld the jury verdict and argued that even if Mutual could not have changed the drug’s design, it had no obligation to continue selling a defective product and could have taken the drug off the market. Mutual is a subsidiary of Sun Pharmaceutical of India. Image Ms. Bartlett contends the maker of the drug she took should be liable for her injuries. The drug maker says it was not responsible for the design of the medication. Credit Cheryl Senter for The New York Times Interest groups on both sides say any decision could have serious consequences. If the court agrees with Mutual and rules that generic companies cannot be sued for defective products, trial lawyers warn that patients will be left with very few options if they are injured by a generic drug. “The question becomes, can you sue a generic manufacturer for anything?” said Bill Curtis, a Dallas lawyer who specializes in pharmaceutical cases. But manufacturers of generic drugs and other business groups have said that if the court sides with Ms. Bartlett, the decisions of individual juries could trump the authority of federal agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and potentially lead drug makers to remove valuable medicines from the market. The federal government has sided with the generic drug makers in this case even though it opposed the industry in the Mensing case. “Tort judgments second-guessing F.D.A.’s expert drug safety determination would undermine the federal regime to the extent that they forbade or significantly restricted the marketing of an F.D.A.-approved drug,” the government wrote in its brief to the court. Keith M. Jensen, Ms. Bartlett’s lawyer, disputed this argument, saying, “that presumes the F.D.A. always has all the information and that drug companies never have incentive to hide it from them.” He said lawsuits like Ms. Bartlett’s could uncover new information about the safety of a drug. In the case of sulindac, he presented evidence at trial that patients taking the drug were more at risk of developing the condition that Ms. Bartlett contracted, known as toxic epidermal necrolysis, a severe form of a related condition called Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, than those taking other, similar pain drugs. The conditions can be set off by a negative reaction to many drugs, but only rarely. It is difficult to estimate how common the reactions are because some contend they are underreported, but one recent review of medical literature found that fewer than a handful of people out of a million users of Nsaids would be affected. Like all Nsaids, sulindac carried a notice on its label that patients could develop Stevens-Johnson Syndrome. But in 2005, after Ms. Bartlett’s reaction, the F.D.A. recommended that all manufacturers of Nsaids strengthen their labels by specifically listing the risk of developing the skin reactions in the “Warnings” section of the label. That same year, Pfizer removed the pain drug Bextra from the market after the F.D.A. warned that patients were at a heightened risk for developing Stevens-Johnson Syndrome and other skin reactions. In its brief, the federal government disputed the conclusion that sulindac was unsafe, saying the F.D.A. had reviewed the drug and determined that it could remain on the market. Ms. Bartlett said that before her injury she was independent, active and loved her job as a secretary at an insurance company. In 2004, she visited her doctor because her shoulder hurt, and he prescribed Clinoril. The pharmacist dispensed a generic version of the drug. Today, Ms. Bartlett is 53 and legally blind despite 13 eye operations. She said she struggled to reach the mailbox each day and could no longer drive or work. Her lungs are severely damaged, and she has trouble eating. To her, it makes no difference who made the drug she took. “I think the generic companies as well as brand-name companies, they should be held accountable for the medicines that they put out there,” she said.
|
Karen L Bartlett;Mutual Pharmaceutical;Pharmaceuticals;Generic brand;Lawsuit;Consumer protection;Supreme Court;Product liability
|
ny0120260
|
[
"sports",
"tennis"
] |
2012/07/07
|
Federer Exorcises Demons and Djokovic, Too
|
WIMBLEDON, England — Perhaps the surface and the setting matter in men’s tennis, after all. Roger Federer had lost six of seven matches to Novak Djokovic, most recently last month in a dispiriting, straight-sets affair in the French Open semifinals. But that was on red clay during a soggy second week in Paris when it was even tougher than usual to breach Djokovic’s formidable defenses. Wimbledon was rainy, too, on Friday. But Centre Court now has a retractable roof, and Federer, with his suspect back and grand plans, was able to stay safe and dry on his favorite court, able to shift the momentum of a great rivalry back his way with a stirring and surprising 6-3, 3-6, 6-4, 6-3 victory in the semifinals. “I’ve played a lot of tennis lately; I’m maybe the guy with most matches played this year,” the third-seeded Federer said. “So it’s not like I’ve been on the sideline. I think that helps building confidence and momentum, really. Obviously you want it to pay off in the big matches against the best of the players.” It was the 27th match between Federer and Djokovic, yet their first on grass, a surface that was once considered the domain of net rushers but has lately become a more neutral playground, best enjoyed from the baseline. “I think the surface obviously does make our match quite different, to be honest,” said Federer, who holds a 15-12 career edge on Djokovic. “We barely had rallies in the first couple of sets, which was quite surprising for me to see, as well. We did a lot of first-strike tennis, a lot of service winners out there. That obviously changes momentum of the match. Doesn’t make it maybe as physical. It’s more explosive.” At 30, the smooth-moving and enduring Swiss champion is one victory away from tying William Renshaw’s and Pete Sampras’s Wimbledon record of seven men’s singles titles. Federer is also just one victory away from reclaiming the No. 1 ranking. To cross those thresholds, he will have to defeat Andy Murray, who beat Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France, 6-3, 6-4, 3-6, 7-5, in the other semifinal. Djokovic, who had already played indoors three times in this tournament, said he did not believe that the closed roof gave either player an advantage. But Federer certainly served effectively with no wind or sun to trouble him, winning 75 percent of his first-serve points and, more surprisingly, 72 percent of his second-serve points. Djokovic, one of the world’s best returners, was able to break him just once — in the second set when Djokovic appeared to have taken control of the match after Federer’s quick start. At that stage, Djokovic was winning a clear majority of the baseline rallies, holding serve effectively and making Federer lunge for volleys when he did manage to get to net. But Federer was able turn the flow of the match in the third set despite missing a big chance on Djokovic’s serve in the sixth game. With Djokovic serving at 4-5, the Serb retreated to hit an overhead and missed it long to give Federer two set points at 15-40. Federer attacked on the second and hit a leaping overhead of his own for a winner to take the set. Sitting in his chair, Djokovic appeared drawn and weary, breathing hard. “Last five or six days I haven’t been feeling that great, but I don’t want to talk about it right now,” Djokovic said. He declined to elaborate, but did seem low on energy, even inspiration, as the match progressed. This potentially classic match lost amplitude down the stretch as Djokovic’s level dropped and Federer jumped to a 3-0 lead in the fourth set. Djokovic stayed in touch by rallying to hold serve in the sixth game from 0-40 down, but he could never get another break point against Federer. At 5-3, serving for the match, Federer suddenly started missing his first serve. He had to rely on his second serve four times in a row to start the game. “I get nervous, too,” Federer said. But his nerves were also linked to painful tennis memories. Djokovic beat Federer in the United States Open semifinals the last two years, saving two match points on both occasions. Last year’s loss stung more as Djokovic produced a high-velocity winner on one match point that ended up shifting the momentum. “It’s clear that you have flashbacks that come to you from that kind of match,” Federer said. But at 30-30 on Friday, Federer said he was determined to see if Djokovic could produce lightning twice in the same Grand Slam round. Federer hit a first serve wide to Djokovic’s forehand that Djokovic knocked long. At match point, Federer hit another first serve to Djokovic’s forehand that Djokovic knocked into the net. “It’s not possible to do the same each time, and I wanted to see nonetheless if he could do it again,” Federer said. “I was really happy he couldn’t.”
|
Wimbledon Tennis Tournament;Tennis;Federer Roger;Djokovic Novak
|
ny0230972
|
[
"business",
"global"
] |
2010/09/09
|
Anglo Irish Bank to Be Split Up in Restructuring Plan
|
The European bank panic that rattled markets around the world last spring may have subsided, but the experience has left investors and analysts jumpy about the prospects of more Greek-style bank bailouts. On Wednesday, the Irish government, bowing to market fears that its escalating banking losses might cause it to seek such a bailout, said it would split the troubled Anglo Irish Bank into two entities, one of which would eventually shut. The move represents a backtracking of sorts for Ireland. The government has said that it would be more expensive to close Anglo Irish, which is weighted with bad loans incurred during Ireland’s debt-fueled real estate boom, than to continue it as a smaller institution. But a recent deposit run and a sharp rise in government bond yields to 6 percent — a level that at least one analyst called “unbearable” — have forced the government to act. Last week, Anglo Irish said that the cost to the government of supporting the bank would be 25 billion euros, or $32 billion. But that figure has been rejected by analysts and the Standard & Poor’s rating agency, which, in a recent report, said that it would cost as much as $45 billion. The increasing uncertainty over Anglo Irish’s losses and the extent to which the deeply indebted Irish government can finance them has rapidly become a concern throughout Europe. Greece’s financing costs are now 11.7 percent, and spreads, or the risk premiums associated with its debt, widened again Wednesday on reports that the country’s largest bank, the National Bank of Greece, would raise $3.6 billion — prompting concerns that the banking sector must raise more capital than originally expected. In Portugal, while the government raised about $1.3 billion at a debt auction Wednesday, it had to offer a yield of 5.9 percent for bonds due in 2021. That was up sharply from 4.1 percent in March. Greece’s disclosure that it would have trouble refinancing its debt set off a crisis in Europe this spring and led to a trillion-dollar rescue package from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. The current bout of nerves has less to do with liquidity — Ireland has enough capital to finance itself through the second quarter of next year — than the willingness and capacity of governments to pay for the sins of bankers. “Governments are on the line globally for their banking systems,” said Aziz Sunderji, a credit strategist at Barclays Capital. “And this is being reflected in the yields. It is not a liquidity issue, it’s a solvency issue.” In an era of global banking excess, Anglo Irish was one of the most reckless lenders, funneling the bulk of its loans into the country’s real estate market. When the market crashed, so did Anglo Irish, prompting a government takeover. Of the $96 billion in loans on Anglo Irish’s books when the government stepped in, only about $15 billion are receiving payments, according to bank management. The government said Wednesday that Anglo Irish would be split into a recovery bank that would be either sold or closed, and a funding bank that would be owned by the government. “Resolution of this, our most distressed institution, is essential to the promotion of confidence and stability in our financial system,” the Irish finance minister, Brian Lenihan, said Wednesday . As many economists in Ireland and elsewhere will say, Ireland is not Greece. It has a cash cushion of close to $50 billion, from reserves and its pension fund. Even though Ireland is paying an interest premium, its financing cost, about 3 percent of gross domestic product, is considered manageable. As the International Monetary Fund made clear in a recent report that questioned the notion that some indebted countries in Europe might be better off defaulting, restructuring Ireland’s debt would do little to close its primary deficit, which excludes interest payments, of about 10 percent of G.D.P. But the increasing burden of Irish banking losses, which some economists say could push Ireland’s debt-to-G.D.P. ratio to 115 percent, has become a millstone for the government, which made guarantees to not only bank depositors but also its bondholders — a move that remains controversial. The renewed nervousness has caught European officials by surprise. Having cobbled together a bailout package for Greece and for a broader rescue fund, they did not expect such levels of fear and uncertainty — especially as European growth has done better than expected on the strength of Germany’s strong performance. “I have to admit this is puzzling to me,” said Paul De Grauwe, an economist in Brussels who advises the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso. “If anything, the fundamentals have improved.” But for many investors, Germany’s robust growth underscored the increasing north-south divergence and the possibility that stagnating economies like those of Portugal and Ireland might not be able to generate enough income to close deficits or that mounting bank debts would become unaffordable. According to widely read research by Barclays Capital, for a country to borrow at a 6 percent rate of interest is “unbearable” and represents a prelude to a bailout or rescue — especially if cheaper borrowing is made available from the rescue fund. In the case of Greece earlier this year, the country quickly began to lose the confidence of the markets once its borrowing costs surpassed 6 percent. “It’s déjà vu all over again — but this is different from Greece,” said Daniel Gros of the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels. If Irish banks “can’t refinance themselves, the numbers get very big very quickly,” he said. Mr. Gros pointed out that loans to depleted Irish banks from the European Central Bank were about 40 percent of the country’s G.D.P., a dynamic that he contended was unsustainable and would ultimately lead to Ireland seeking assistance from Europe and the I.M.F. “I think things are going to get worse,” he continued. “And over time, the E.C.B. will have to refinance a very large part of the Irish banking system.”
|
Ireland;Banks and Banking;Anglo Irish Bank
|
ny0135132
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2008/04/10
|
Legislators Back Spending Rise in State’s Budget
|
ALBANY — The State Legislature approved a $122 billion budget on Wednesday, increasing spending by nearly 5 percent despite warnings that the weakening New York economy will leave the state unable to afford the expansion. The increase comes as other states are planning to cut back spending and trim their payrolls. The New York budget relies on $1.5 billion in new revenue generated by closing tax loopholes and expanding taxes and fees on items including cigarettes, museum souvenirs and manicures. The $1.25 a pack tax increase will make cigarettes in New York City the most expensive in the country, according to antismoking groups. Legislative leaders said the increased spending, which includes more state aid for public schools, was needed to spare essential programs from painful cuts, but many legislators expressed concern that the budget was bloated and predicted that they would have to cut spending later. Although Gov. David A. Paterson has publicly complained for two weeks that the budget was too generous, his role seemed to be minimized as the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, and the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, pushed through hundreds of millions of dollars in spending. Mr. Paterson is expected to sign the budget. Legislators said that it was responsible and that the new taxes and fees would pay for the expanded spending. “I don’t want to be one of the pessimists who says the sky is falling, we’re going over a cliff, it’s doomsday,” Mr. Bruno said Wednesday. “I don’t buy that.” Legislative leaders pointed out that former Gov. Eliot Spitzer had proposed an even bigger budget in January. Mr. Spitzer’s plan was presented before the full emergence of the problems of Wall Street, which is New York’s biggest source of revenue. The budget, for the fiscal year which began April 1, calls for $121.7 billion in spending, including both state and federal dollars. That amounts to about $6,400 for each New Yorker and is 4.9 percent higher than the budget for last fiscal year. The state’s operating budget, which excludes federal funds, will grow 4.5 percent this year to $80.5 billion. “They really didn’t act like they were in belt-tightening mode,” said Elizabeth Lynam, an analyst for the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit group that works for fiscal discipline. “There was quite a bit of larding on.” The budget will increase aid to public schools by $1.75 billion over last year, and more than a third of the new money is to go directly to New York City. There is also $6 billion for capital projects at the State University of New York and the City University of New York. Legislative leaders and Mr. Paterson, who took office only two weeks before the budget deadline, faced a trying set of circumstances as they tried to reach an agreement. In addition to the worsening situation on Wall Street, they were distracted by Mr. Spitzer’s resignation last month and a last-minute push from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Mr. Bruno to approve a divisive traffic-reduction plan for New York City. Still, not even the budget’s biggest champions were calling it austere. Some 2,000 new workers will be added to the state’s work force of 200,000. Each legislative chamber will receive $350 million in funds — derided by critics as pork — to dole out for capital projects across the state. And lawmakers perpetuated their widely criticized practice of handing out state money for various projects in their districts. The Legislature also rejected a plan from Mr. Spitzer that would have closed four prisons upstate that the administration said were not full enough to keep open. The taxes and fees will touch consumers as well as corporations. Raising the tax on a pack of cigarettes to $2.75 from $1.50 will generate $265 million annually, according to government estimates. And $102 million more will come from increasing the income tax cap on financial services companies that have a profitless year; their tax liability goes to $10 million from $1 million. Another $50 million will come from requiring online retailers like Amazon that do not have a physical presence in New York to collect sales taxes on purchases made by New Yorkers and remit them to the state. An array of smaller tax law changes — requiring nonprofit organizations like museums and advocacy groups to collect sales taxes on T-shirts, mugs and other items, for example — will bring in more modest amounts. In New York City, an additional sales tax on health clubs memberships and purchases at beauty salons, massage parlors and weight loss centers, which was set to expire this summer, will instead be extended through December. The city has said the tax generates $1.1 billion a year, but the extension was not popular among beauticians and barbers. Jose Lopez, 29, who owns the Jordan Sport barber shop in the High Bridge section of the Bronx, reacted angrily to the news. “We’re not getting rich cutting hair, it’s a tough business,” he said. “Why are they taxing us? It’s not right.” “I’ve got a family to support, and all these guys need jobs here,” he said, gesturing to a half-dozen barbers in blue shirts cutting hair in the shop, which is named after Michael Jordan and is decorated with dozens of photos of Mr. Lopez cutting the hair of pro baseball players. A plan to raise income taxes on New Yorkers who earn more than $1 million a year, which had been championed by some labor groups, was not included after strong opposition emerged in the Republican-led Senate. Mr. Bruno stressed that the budget would help preserve the quality of life for New Yorkers in difficult financial times. Slashing services, he said, would drive residents away. Still, analysts were left looking for evidence that lawmakers recognized the severity of the financial situation. “They’re doing their pork, and they’re not doing any significant cutbacks,” said E. J. McMahon, director of the Empire Center at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research group. “It’s very, very shortsighted. I get the feeling that legislators are knowingly burning the furniture in advance of an election.” Even on the other side of the political spectrum, experts were questioning the wisdom of not making more cuts now. “They’re not taking the difficult actions now to make the budget balanced over time,” said Frank Mauro, executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, a left-leaning research group.
|
Budgets and Budgeting;New York State;Finances;Legislatures and Parliaments
|
ny0142660
|
[
"business"
] |
2008/11/01
|
Budgets Squeezed, Some Families Bypass Organics
|
Once upon a time, sales of organic and natural products were growing in double digits most years. Enthusiastic grocers and venture capitalists prowled the halls of trade shows looking for the next big thing. Grass-fed beef? Organic baby food? Gluten-free energy bars? But now, shaky consumer spending is dampening the mood. It turns out that when times are tough, consumers may be less interested in what type of feed a cow ate before it got chopped up for dinner, or whether carrots were grown without chemical fertilizers — particularly if those products cost twice as much as the conventional stuff. Whole Foods Market, a showcase for the natural and organic industries, is struggling through the toughest stretch in its history. And the organic industry is starting to show signs that a decade-long sales boom may be coming to an end. The sales volume of organic products, which had been growing at 20 percent a year in recent years, slowed to a much lower growth rate in the last few months, according to the Nielsen Company, a market research firm. For the four-week period that ended Oct. 4, the volume of organic products sold rose just 4 percent compared with the same period a year earlier. “Organics continue to grow and outpace many categories,” the Nielsen Company concluded in an October report. “However, recent weeks are showing slower growths, possibly a start of an organics growth plateau.” If the slowdown continues, it could have broad implications beyond the organic industry, whose success spawned a growing number of products with values-based marketing claims, from fair trade coffee to hormone-free beef to humanely raised chickens. Nearly all of them command a premium price. While a group of core customers considers organic or locally produced products a top priority, the growth of recent years was driven by a far larger group of less committed customers. The weak economy is prompting many of them to choose which marketing claim, if any, is really important to them. Among organic products, those marketed to children will probably continue to thrive because they appeal to parents’ concerns about health, said Laurie Demeritt, the president and chief operating officer of the Hartman Group, a market research firm for the health and wellness industry. But products that do not have as much perceived benefit, like processed foods for adults, may struggle. The economy has “crystallized the tradeoffs that consumers are willing to make,” she said. “Fair trade is nice, but fair trade may fall off the shopping list where organic milk may not.” Thomas J. Blischok, president of consulting and innovation for Information Resources, a market-research firm, said shoppers were not moving entirely away from categories like organic products in the grocery store. But they are becoming more selective, buying four or five products instead of seven or eight, he said. Mr. Blischok conducted a survey of 1,000 consumers in the first half of the year and found that nearly two-thirds said they were cutting back on nonessential groceries and nearly half said they were buying fewer organic products because they were too expensive. Such consumer attitudes have compounded problems for Whole Foods Market, the Austin, Tex., chain that served as a launching pad for many organic and natural brands. The company’s stock has dropped by more than 70 percent since the first of the year, and analysts expect more grim news when fourth-quarter earnings are announced next week. Recently in Boston, on the sprawling convention floor of the Natural Products Expo East, some vendors said they had been hurt by the economic malaise and others said they had not yet felt the impact. Several of them noted that Whole Foods Market faces a broad array of problems, including increased competition from traditional grocers, and should not be viewed as a proxy for the whole industry. But many also worried that if the economy continues to flounder, consumers — particularly those who only occasionally shop for their products — may decide they can no longer afford to let their conscience dictate their shopping list. Theresa Marquez, the chief marketing executive for Organic Valley, which sells primarily dairy products, said she was not worried about core customers because they were so committed to buying organic. “I’m not sure the periphery — those that purchase perhaps only four or so times a month — will break the industry,” she said in an e-mail conversation after the convention. “But I am concerned that those periphery customers are important to the growth of the industry and without them, organic growth is sure to go flat.” Organic Valley’s sales have slowed in the last four months, in part because of price increases, company officials said. Robert Atallah, the owner of Cedarlane Foods, which makes organic and natural frozen meals, said his business had slowed in the last 18 months, a problem he attributed to increased competition and the economy. He said that he believed a newly developed line of products could help sales but cannot convince buyers for grocery chains to commit. “The morale of buyers is so low, they don’t want to buy anything,” he said. “It’s a sick feeling all the way around. People don’t know if their job is going to be there.” But others said they had not yet noticed a slowdown and were optimistic that sales would remain steady — or possibly improve — as consumers ate fewer meals in restaurants and devoted more time to cooking. Some store-brand manufacturers said they were thriving as consumers looked for cheaper alternatives to branded products. “People aren’t going on vacation, they aren’t going to buy a car, so maybe they’ll buy a luxury item that is affordable,” said Dary Goodrich, chocolate products manager for Equal Exchange, a worker-owned fair trade organization offering tea, coffee and chocolate from small-scale farmers. “Right now, we aren’t seeing a slowdown, but it’s a concern.” In interviews with consumers around the country, some said they were spending as much or more at the grocery store, including on organic products, in part because they have curbed restaurant meals. Karen Jenson, 35, said she was buying as much organic food but shopping at four different stores to find deals. “The apples right now are really cheap here because they are in season,” she said, standing outside the Linden Hills Co-op in Minneapolis. But some others said they were cutting back on organic food to save money. Joni Heard, a 29-year-old mother of two who lives in central Florida, said that in the past she would buy organic milk, cheese and produce but had cut back because it was too expensive. “I’m a stay-at-home mom and my husband — you never know if he’s going to be laid off,” she said in an interview, explaining that her husband works in construction. “I can’t justify spending $2 or $3 more for a single item.”
|
Organic Food;Economic Conditions and Trends;Retail Stores and Trade;Sales
|
ny0186596
|
[
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] |
2009/03/22
|
Playing Near Home, 12th-Seeded Gonzaga Upsets Fifth-Seeded Xavier
|
Heather Bowman 23 points Saturday night, and 12th-seeded Gonzaga earned its first N.C.A.A. women’s basketball tournament victory with a 74-59 upset of No. 5 Xavier in Seattle in the first round of the Oklahoma City Region. The Bulldogs (27-6) were playing just 300 miles from their campus in Spokane. Xavier finished the season 25-7. U.N.C. 85, CENTRAL FLORIDA 80 Third-seeded North Carolina (28-6) never led by more than 14 points but held on to beat 14th-seeded Central Florida (17-17) in Chattanooga, Tenn. PURDUE 65, CHARLOTTE 52 Sixth-seeded Purdue (23-10) beat 11th-seeded Charlotte (23-9) in Chattanooga for its 12th straight first-round win. PITTSBURGH 64, MONTANA 35 Fourth-seeded Pittsburgh (24-7) beat 13th-seeded Montana (28-5) in Seattle. Montana had 10 second-half points, tying the tournament record for fewest in a half. Raleigh Region VANDERBILT 73, W. CAROLINA 44 Christina Wirth scored 23 points as fourth-seeded Vanderbilt (25-8) beat 13th-seeded Western Carolina (21-12) in Albuquerque. Trenton Region VIRGINIA 68, MARIST 61 Monica Wright scored all of her 13 points in the second half to push fifth-seeded Virginia (24-9) past No. 12 Marist (29-4) in Los Angeles. CALIFORNIA 70, FRESNO STATE 47 In a game with two players named Ashley Walker, California’s scored 21 points and Fresno State’s was scoreless as the fourth-seeded Bears (26-6) beat the 13th-seeded Bulldogs (24-9) in Los Angeles. ARIZONA STATE 58, GEORGIA 47 Sixth-seeded Arizona State (24-8) held 11th-seeded Georgia (18-14) to 20 first-half points to win in Duluth, Ga. FLA. ST. 83, N. CAROLINA A&T 71 Alysha Harvin scored 18 points, and third-seeded Florida State (26-7) beat 14th-seeded North Carolina A&T (26-7) in Duluth.
|
NCAA Basketball Tournament (Women);University of North Carolina
|
ny0129273
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2012/06/21
|
Tepco, Operator of Fukushima, Exonerates Itself in Report
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TOKYO — The much vilified operator of the tsunami-hit nuclear power plant at Fukushima released a report on Wednesday that said the company never hid information, never underplayed the extent of fuel meltdown and certainly never considered abandoning the ravaged site. It asserts that government interference in the disaster response created confusion and delays. The report, inches thick, was compiled by an in-house executive committee, overseen by a third-party panel of experts and presented to reporters after deep bows by a line of executives. The company stuck to a defense it has offered since the earliest days of the crisis: that no company could have predicted or prepared for last year’s magnitude 9.0 quake and subsequent tsunami. “The tsunami we experienced was just that big,” said the Tepco executive vice president Masao Yamazaki, who led the investigation. “The workers on the ground did their utmost under extreme conditions.” The claims appear to be an effort by the operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, to reclaim some measure of its former standing by distancing itself from the layers of missteps in the nuclear disaster, which left more than 100,000 people displaced and areas uninhabitable possibly for decades. Over the last year, new details of the disaster have emerged that build a picture of an organization that ignored or concealed that its reactors might be vulnerable to quakes and tsunamis, used its close links with regulators and nuclear experts to hijack nuclear policy and — since the accident — has worked vigilantly to shut out close scrutiny of the ravaged plant’s condition. The report comes as the government is pushing to restore public confidence in nuclear energy and restart Japan’s reactor fleet . Critics were skeptical. “The report is too full of excuses,” said Masako Sawai of the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, an anti-nuclear policy group. “If we don’t get to the bottom of this accident, how can we prevent future ones?” she asked. Japan temporarily went nuclear-free in early May, as the last of its 54 reactors shut down for maintenance, and local opposition prevented others from coming back online. Last week, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda gave the go-ahead to restart two reactors in western Japan, a decision that has elicited relief from business leaders worried about a power crunch, but much furor from a still-jittery public. To quell public fears, Japan’s Parliament approved legislation on Wednesday to set up an independent regulator to oversee the nuclear industry. Previously, the industry had been policed by the same body tasked with promoting it. Still, the jitters were reinforced on Wednesday after an alarm went off at one of those two reactors warning of falling water levels in a cooling tank for its power generator. But later checks revealed no leaks and the restart is proceeding as planned, the reactor’s operator said. Tepco itself is pushing to reopen a large nuclear power plant on Japan’s northwestern shore. The company faces billions of dollars in compensation claims, as well as trillions of yen in costs of decommissioning the damaged reactors at Fukushima, a cost that has left its finances in ruins and prompted the government to effectively nationalize it. The report’s most fervent denials concern whether the company asked to abandon the plant at the height of the crisis — a move that experts say could have contaminated a far wider stretch of eastern Japan, possibly even Tokyo. The prime minister at the time of the disaster, Naoto Kan, has suggested in testimony to a public inquiry that he had received such a request from Tepco, a request he overrode. But Tepco claimed that Mr. Kan had misunderstood a request to evacuate just some of the less-essential workers. “It is an undeniable fact that our employees stayed — or even voluntarily returned to the plant — to bring it under control,” the report said. “Multiple reactors were in trouble, all power was lost, there were frequent aftershocks and tsunami warnings. But still, our employees stayed at their posts,” Mr. Yamazaki emphasized. And Tepco struck back at Mr. Kan, saying his meddling interfered in its disaster response. Mr. Kan flew to the plant in a helicopter the morning after the tsunami, and at times stepped in to give orders, causing “unnecessary confusion,” the report said.
|
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (Japan);Japan Earthquake and Tsunami (2011);Japan;Tokyo Electric Power Co;Nuclear Energy;Disasters and Emergencies
|
ny0129292
|
[
"sports",
"soccer"
] |
2012/06/21
|
Taking the Pulse of the European Championship
|
WARSAW — Now is when the rhythm should change, and the true nature of Euro 2012 should evolve. The 16 nations are down to 8. Both hosts, Poland and Ukraine, are out, which brings its own test to their enthusiasm to sustain this marathon tournament. After 24 games in which the purpose was to garner points to stay in the competition, the essence shifts. From here, teams must win, if necessary by the dreaded penalty shootout, or go home. The group phase yielded 2.5 goals per game, and the best of those was scored in Kiev on Tuesday by Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who will play no further part here and is by now headed for a vacation somewhere. He leaves his mark. Sweden’s fans, like the Irish, brought a breath of fresh air to this hot and testy tournament, and the Swedes at least went out with an incredible victory against France. Ibrahimovic, whose parents moved to Sweden from the Balkans, is an enigmatic performer. He is ridiculously gifted and balanced for so tall and languid a man. He often lurks on the edges of games, almost devoid of the competitive elements until, out of nothing, he applies skills in a way that confounds viewers. Ibrahimovic’s parting shot was a goal of great beauty. It was a perfect, airborne volley that broke France’s 23-match unbeaten run. His balance is almost balletic, and the moment the ball came his way in the match, he had a vision of what to do with it. It arrived above knee height to him, from his right. Ibrahimovic had no intention of controlling that ball, or of doing anything ordinary. He launched both feet off the ground, shaped his body almost horizontal to the surface and, with immaculate timing, struck it with his right foot. The shot from 18 yards comprehensively beat Hugo Lloris, one of the world’s finest goalkeepers. The astonishment on the face of Lloris contrasted to an expression almost devoid of surprise from Ibrahimovic. With that shot, and then another Swedish goal, France lost its expected place atop group D. It now faces Spain in the quarterfinals, but before anyone makes assumptions that this is a French squad in transition at the mercy of the reigning champion, it must be observed that, thus far, France has touched greater heights at this tournament than Spain. In part, that is because no one dares play soccer against the Spaniards. All the opponents, including the much-fancied Germans during the 2010 World Cup, play negatively against Spain, not daring to meet talent with talent. It must be so soul-destroying for Xavi and Xabi, for Andrés Iniesta and Fernando Torres, to keep on trying to repeat their victories against opponents who camp in their own half and who simply try to discourage them, physically and mentally, and either get lucky or strike the Spanish when they grow weary. Those tactics are not great to watch, either. But France has the game to beat Spain. In their six competitive meetings in the World Cup and the European Championship, the record is five victories to Les Bleus, one draw, no defeats. And with Franck Ribéry in the teasing, thrilling form he has shown here, this will at least be a true examination of whether Spain has another tournament triumph in it, or whether, strange as it sounds, the team is wearied by winning. That game comes Saturday in Donetsk, the hottest and physically most demanding place in this championship. Before then, we have the intrigue of the Czech Republic against the Cristiano Ronaldo-led Portuguese in Warsaw on Thursday. The Czechs are the last of the former Soviet Bloc nations to remain in this event, which is treading new ground in the east of Europe expressly for the purpose of bringing countries in from the cold of what once was an east-west divide on the Continent. So far, so very good. There have been regrettable incidences of violence between followers of Poland and Russia, and racist issues by Croatian supporters. But by and large, civility is winning. The Poles, whose team exited before that of their Ukrainian neighbors, have very quickly gotten over their loss and shown, wherever one travels here, that they are delighted that their country is being opened up to this event, and that they are both capable organizers and sporting people. “We lost, and we were sad for a night,” said a young female traveler on a train. “But we are happy you are here. We will just pick a team to support, and we will keep on enjoying it until the end. It’s our chance in a lifetime, and we are taking it.” Her choice among the players? Ronaldo, of course, and not because he is handsome, but because his skills can transcend all boundaries of culture or creed. “It’s such a simple game,” my travel companion said, “and if you see skill like that, it doesn’t matter where it comes from.” The lady said she knew little about soccer. I disagree — she clearly appreciates it for what it is. Another player who intrigues the Poles is Lukas Podolski, not least because he is a Pole in a German vest. When Germany meets Greece in Gdansk on Friday, he will be supported like a home-team player, and his country — the only team to have won all three of its opening games — is the clear favorite. But as the Greeks say, few expected them to get this far, and they have nothing to lose. And please, they say, forget the politics about the euro and the drachma and just let them play. The last of the quarterfinals pits two old foes, England and Italy, against each other in Kiev on Sunday. England, for once, arrived less sure of itself as a title contender. But now that Wayne Rooney is back and has poached his first goal in a major tournament since 2004, that expectation rises with the temperature. Italy, however, is a formidable opponent, raising its game when it has to do. Among those who failed is Russia. Its opening 4-1 thrashing of the Czech Republic proved a false dawn. Russia then flopped, leaving in shreds its rhetoric that in this, its 100th year of international competition, it expected to win this east-west competition. Its slogan, “Bring us the victory,” has been put to bed.
|
UEFA European Football Championship;France;Spain;Poland;Ukraine
|
ny0086064
|
[
"us"
] |
2015/07/28
|
Boy Scouts End Ban on Gay Leaders, Over Protests by Mormon Church
|
The Boy Scouts of America on Monday ended its ban on openly gay adult leaders. But the new policy allows church-sponsored units to choose local unit leaders who share their precepts, even if that means restricting such positions to heterosexual men. Despite this compromise, the Mormon Church said it might leave the organization anyway. Its stance surprised many and raised questions about whether other conservative sponsors, including the Roman Catholic Church, might follow suit. “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is deeply troubled by today’s vote,” said a statement issued by the church moments after the Scouts announced the new policy. “When the leadership of the church resumes its regular schedule of meetings in August, the century-long association with scouting will need to be examined.” Only two weeks ago, the Mormon Church hinted that it could remain in the fold so long as its units could pick their own leaders. The top Boy Scouts leaders, including Robert M. Gates, the current president and a former defense secretary who pushed for the new policy, did not immediately respond to the Mormon declaration. In previous statements, Mr. Gates expressed the hope that with the exemption for religious groups, the Boy Scouts might avoid a devastating splintering. Many scouting leaders said they had not expected the Mormon Church’s sharp response and threat to leave. “My assumption was that the concept voted on today had been fully vetted so as to avoid any unnecessary surprises,” said Jay Lenrow, a longtime volunteer scout leader in Baltimore who is on the executive committee of the Scouts’ northeast region and serves on the organization’s national religious relationships committee. “I can only say that I’m hopeful that when the leadership of the L.D.S. Church meets and discusses the issue, that they will find a way to continue to support scouting,” Mr. Lenrow added. Mormons use the Boy Scouts as their main nonreligious activity for boys, and the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts units they sponsor accounted for 17 percent of all youths in scouting in 2013, the last year for which data have been published. Under the policy adopted Monday, discrimination based on sexual orientation will also be barred in all Boy Scouts offices and for all paid jobs — a step that could head off looming lawsuits in New York, Colorado and other states that prohibit such discrimination in employment. One legal threat was immediately averted. In response to the change, the New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, announced on Monday that his office was ending its investigation of the Scouts for violating state anti-discrimination laws. The Boy Scouts’ national executive board, composed of 71 civic, corporate and church leaders, adopted the changes with 79 percent of those who participated in a telephone meeting voting in favor, according to an announcement issued by the Scouts. The announcement did not say how many board members were not present. The policy change, which was expected, was widely seen as a watershed for an institution that has faced growing turmoil over its stance toward gay people, even as it struggles to halt a long-term decline in members. It was praised by gay-rights organizations as a major if incomplete step toward ending discrimination. In 2013, facing growing public and internal pressure, the Scouts decided that openly gay youths could participate, but not adults. That approach satisfied no one, forcing the ejection of gay Eagle Scouts when they turned 18 but still causing some conservatives to quit. Mr. Gates gave an urgent warning in May that because of cascading social and legal changes, the organization had no choice but to end its ban on gay leaders. In a statement on July 13, the Mormon Church seemed to suggest that it could accept the compromise adopted on Monday. The statement said that any new leadership standard must preserve for its churches “the right to select Scout leaders who adhere to moral and religious principles that are consistent with our doctrines and beliefs.” But the tone of Monday’s statement from the Mormons, after the formal announcement of the new Boy Scouts policy, was markedly more negative. “The church has always welcomed all boys to its scouting units regardless of sexual orientation,” the statement by the Mormon Church headquarters said. “However, the admission of openly gay leaders is inconsistent with the doctrines of the church and what have traditionally been the values of the Boy Scouts of America.” The statement also suggested another reason the Mormons are considering withdrawing from the Boy Scouts: the possible creation of its own boys’ organization to serve its worldwide membership. “As a global organization with members in 170 countries, the Church has long been evaluating the limitations that fully one-half of its youth face where Scouting is not available,” the statement said. Some conservative evangelical churches ended ties with the Boy Scouts after the 2013 decision to admit openly gay youths. Total national enrollment of youths, which had declined by a few percentage points in many prior years, fell by 6 percent in 2013 and by 7 percent in 2014, to 2.4 million. More departures by religious conservatives are likely, said Russell D. Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Mr. Moore expressed skepticism about the Scouts’ promise to let church-sponsored units exclude gay leaders on religious grounds. ”After the Scouts’ shift on membership, they told religious groups this wouldn’t affect leadership,” he said. “Now churches are told that these changes will not affect faith-based groups. Churches know that this is the final word only until the next evolution.” But scouting executives hope that with Monday’s change they can renew ties with corporate donors, schools and public agencies and attract parents who had steered their children away from scouting because of the policy. “Moving forward, we will continue to focus on reaching and serving youth, helping them to grow into good, strong citizens,” said the statement Monday from the Boy Scouts. The toughest challenge, Scout leaders say, may be to capture the time and enthusiasm of today’s increasingly urban, diverse and over-scheduled youths. To increase their appeal, the Boy Scouts have built new adventure camps with mountain biking and zip lines, and have created new merit badges in fields like robotics and animation.
|
Boy Scouts;Discrimination;Gay and Lesbian LGBT;Mormons;Lawsuits
|
ny0100479
|
[
"us"
] |
2015/12/27
|
Robert Spitzer, 83, Dies; Psychiatrist Set Rigorous Standards for Diagnosis
|
Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, who gave psychiatry its first set of rigorous standards to describe mental disorders, providing a framework for diagnosis, research and legal judgments — as well as a lingua franca for the endless social debate over where to draw the line between normal and abnormal behavior — died on Friday in Seattle. He was 83. Dr. Spitzer died from complications of heart disease at the assisted living facility where he lived, his wife, Janet Williams, said. The couple had moved to Seattle from Princeton, N.J., this year. Dr. Spitzer’s remaking of psychiatry began with an early interest in one of the least glamorous and, historically, most ignored corners of the field: measurement. In the early 1960s, the field was fighting to sustain its credibility, in large part because diagnoses varied widely from doctor to doctor. For instance, a patient told by one doctor that he was depressed might be called anxious or neurotic by another. The field’s diagnostic manual, at the time a pamphletlike document rooted in Freudian ideas, left wide latitude for the therapist’s judgment. Dr. Spitzer, a rising star at Columbia University, was himself looking for direction, increasingly frustrated with Freudian analysis. A chance meeting with a colleague working on a new edition of the manual — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or the DSM — led to a job taking notes for the committee debating revisions. There he became fascinated with finding reliable means for measuring symptoms and behavior — i.e., assessment. “At the time, there was zero interest in assessment,” said Dr. Michael B. First, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia. “He saw how important it was, and his whole career led to assessment being taken seriously.” One of the first behaviors Dr. Spitzer scrutinized was homosexuality, which at the time was listed in the manual as a mental disorder. Dr. Spitzer, after meeting with gay-rights advocates, began re-examining homosexuality based on whether it caused any measurable distress. The issue was extremely contentious, but in 1973, Dr. Spitzer engineered a deal by which the diagnosis was replaced by “sexual orientation disturbance,” to describe people whose sexual orientation, gay or straight, caused them distress. Gay-rights groups immediately recognized the change as a historic one, and Dr. Spitzer’s skill in orchestrating it helped him take charge of the third update of the manual, known as DSM-3. “The fact that gay marriage is allowed today is in part owed to Bob Spitzer,” said Dr. Jack Drescher, a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York who is gay. To some extent, the central question Dr. Spitzer applied to homosexuality — does it cause distress? — was the same one he used to conduct a broad re-examination of all behaviors listed as disorders. In a series of meetings, many in New York, he convened experts in each diagnostic category and sat in a corner, typing notes as they debated. Working with another researcher, Dr. Williams, who would become his wife, he produced the DSM-3, which sold surprisingly well in 1980 in the United States and abroad. It immediately set the blueprint for future manuals, using rigorously tested checklists to categorize mental problems. It also elevated its principal architect to the top of his field, where he reigned as keeper of the book for more than two decades. Dr. Spitzer wore the position as if he had been born to it, exuberantly courting controversy. He clashed with Freudian analysts, researchers, journalists and, late in his career, gay-rights advocates and psychiatrists, who helped discredit a study he had done purporting to support “reparative” therapy to alter homosexual behavior. Dr. Spitzer publicly apologized for that study in 2012 , calling it the only thing in his career that he regretted. “Bob Spitzer was by far the most influential psychiatrist of his time,” Dr. Allen J. Frances, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at Duke University and editor of a later edition of the manual, said in an email. “He saved the field and its millions of patients from a crisis of credibility, raising its scientific standards and rescuing it from the arbitrariness of warring and unsupported opinions.” Robert Leopold Spitzer was born on May 22, 1932, in White Plains, the youngest of three children of Benjamin and Esther Spitzer. His father was an engineer who invented dental materials, among other things; his mother was an accomplished pianist. The family soon moved to Manhattan, and Dr. Spitzer grew up on the Upper West Side, where he attended the Walden School. He received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Cornell University in 1953 and an M.D. in 1957 from New York University School of Medicine. He completed a psychiatric residence at the New York State Psychiatric Institute in 1961, and in 1966 he graduated from Columbia’s Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. From 1980 to 2001, he won many of the field’s most prestigious awards, including one for patient care and one for teaching. A tall, lean, restless presence, he freely admitted to craving controversy and attention, and to forging relationships through debate and disagreement. “Maybe it was a New York thing, growing up here, I don’t know,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in 2012. “I was just always like that, contrary and confident.” Those qualities, combined with his outsize influence, did not sit well with many colleagues, some of whom said the DSM-3 and its successors delivered standardization at the expense of humane interviewing and intuition. “DSM has had a dehumanizing impact on the practice of psychiatry,” Dr. Nancy Andreasen, a prominent psychiatrist at the University of Iowa, wrote in 2007. “History taking — the central evaluation tool in psychiatry — has frequently been reduced to the use of DSM checklists.” Dr. Spitzer’s first two marriages ended in divorce. In addition to Dr. Williams, he is survived by five children — Laura Spitzer and Daniel Spitzer, by his second marriage, and Noah, Ezra and Gideon Spitzer-Williams, by his third — and four grandchildren. Not long before retiring from Columbia in 2003, Dr. Spitzer developed Parkinson’s disease, which progressively limited his mobility. It had no measurable effect on any other quality. During subsequent major revisions of the psychiatric manual — particularly DSM-5, published in 2013 — he loomed on the sideline like an exacting parent, issuing advice, commentary and punishing critiques. “For DSM-3, he was in every work group. He ran the entire show; he virtually wrote the thing himself” with Dr. Williams, said Dr. First, who edited DSM-4 and consulted on DSM-5. “Since then, the process has become decentralized, and people have come to realize how extremely difficult it is to get experts in this field to agree on anything.”
|
Obituary;Mental Health;Psychiatry;Psychology;Columbia;Robert L Spitzer
|
ny0102313
|
[
"business",
"media"
] |
2015/12/23
|
Disney Eyes Fusion Exit as Venture Struggles
|
The Walt Disney Company is in talks with the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision to sell its stake in Fusion, the joint venture started by the two companies two years ago, a person with knowledge of the discussions said Tuesday. Fusion is an English-language digital news service and cable channel that is aimed at millennial audiences. Its chief executive is Isaac Lee, who also oversees digital and multicultural functions at Univision. Terms of Disney’s exit, including the timing, the price and whether other partners were involved, were not clear. Over the years Fusion has struggled to define its identity and deliver large audiences. The cable channel has faced challenges attracting viewers in an era when TV networks face sharp ratings declines, particularly among younger viewers. The website, which originally was aimed at young Latinos who spoke English but shifted to target young viewers of all ethnicities, has had a hard time standing out against digital media rivals like BuzzFeed and Vice. A spokesman for Disney declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Univision could not be reached for comment. News of the talks was first reported by The Financial Times. During Fusion’s first full year of operations in 2014, the group reported losses of $35 million. The company has 250 to 300 employees and offices in Miami, New York, Washington, D.C., Boulder, Colo., and Oakland, Calif. Fusion has projected that its television network would be profitable in 2016, and that its digital operations would be ahead of business plans. There have been some culture clashes . Disney, for instance, put Fusion on notice that it would not appreciate coverage that might hurt it with consumers after Fusion published several stories based on documents that hackers stole from Sony, according to a news report. Two years after Fusion started its cable network the distribution reached nearly 40 million households, according to a note to staff sent by Mr. Lee in October. "So while we are still building awareness, we are reaching our target audience and growing at a faster pace than many of our competitors," he said." The development comes as Univision’s public offering has been delayed after fears about the future of the television business set off a plunge in the share prices for major media companies. Igniting much of that industrywide concern was Disney, which in August reduced growth expectations for its cable network division, which contributes about half of its annual operating income and is anchored by the cable sports network ESPN. Factors slowing growth at ESPN include subscriber erosion combined with a weak ad market and the inflation of sports rights.
|
Walt Disney;Fusion;Univision;BuzzFeed;Cable television
|
ny0064758
|
[
"world",
"americas"
] |
2014/06/11
|
Chile: Patagonia Dams Rejected
|
A government commission rejected an $8 billion proposal to dam Patagonian rivers to meet growing energy demands, handing a victory to environmentalists who praised the ruling on Tuesday. The commission, including the ministers of agriculture, energy, mining, economy and health, voted unanimously to reject the HidroAysén plan, which would have tamed two of the world’s wildest rivers, the Baker and Pascua, and built more than 1,000 miles of power lines to supply energy to central Chile. Patricio Rodrigo, executive secretary of the Patagonia Defense Council, called the decision “the greatest triumph of the environmental movement in Chile.” Chile is strapped for energy, but most Chileans opposed the plan.
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Levees and Dams;River;Patagonia Chile;Chile;Water;Electric power
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ny0108788
|
[
"us"
] |
2012/05/16
|
Florida Woman Kills 4 Children and Then Herself, Police Say
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A Florida woman killed her four children at the family's home in Port St. John, Fla., on Tuesday before killing herself, the authorities said. Lt. Tod Goodyear, a spokesman for the Brevard County Sheriff's Office, said that at one point during the early morning, three of the woman's children had gone to a neighbor's house to say that their mother had shot them. The authorities identified her as Tonya Thomas. The children were identified as Pebbles Johnson, 17; Jaxs Johnson, 15; Jazlin Johnson, 13; and Joel Johnson, 12. Lieutenant Goodyear said at a news conference that the authorities had received a 911 call from a neighbor of Ms. Thomas at 4:50 a.m. The neighbor reported having heard gun shots from Ms. Thomas's home followed by a knock on her door. The neighbor, whom the authorities have not identified, said that when she opened the door, three of Ms. Thomas' children were on the door step. "They did appear to be shot," Lieutenant Goodyear said. He did not describe the injuries. Moments later, the neighbor said, Ms. Thomas, 33, emerged from her house and called her children to come back home. As the children were walking home, the neighbor called 911. Moments later, the neighbor told the authorities that she heard several more gunshots. Sheriff's deputies, who arrived within four minutes of the call, heard additional gunshots, Lieutenant Goodyear said. A few minutes later, deputies saw someone who may have been armed with a gun open the front door before going back inside. About 30 minutes later, there was a final shot, Lieutenant Goodyear said. Shortly after, a special weapons team entered the house and found three children and Ms. Thomas, who the authorities said had a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The body of a fourth child, who had also been shot, was found in the front yard. Lieutenant Goodyear said there had been other calls to 911 related to incidents at the house, the most recent on Easter. He did not describe the nature of the calls.
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Murders and Attempted Murders;Florida;Port St John (Fla);Suicides and Suicide Attempts
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ny0224573
|
[
"sports",
"golf"
] |
2010/11/22
|
One-Stroke Win at Hong Kong Open
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Ian Poulter held off a spirited challenge from Matteo Manassero to win the Hong Kong Open by one stroke. The 17-year-old Manassero shot an eight-under-par 62 at the Fanling course and finished at 21-under 259, but Poulter’s 67 was enough to secure his 10th win on the European Tour. ¶John Mallinger won the Pebble Beach Invitational in Pebble Beach, Calif., birdieing four of the last six holes for a four-under 68 and a two-stroke victory over Jason Gore. Mallinger made a 25-foot birdie putt on No. 18 to finish at 15-under 273. He won $60,000. Pebble Beach
|
Golf;Poulter Ian;Manassero Matteo;Callaway Golf Company;Hong Kong;Pebble Beach (Calif)
|
ny0099483
|
[
"us"
] |
2015/06/13
|
Ohio: Judge Approves Deal for Monitoring Cleveland Police
|
A federal judge on Friday approved an agreement between Cleveland and the Department of Justice to reform the city’s troubled Police Department. Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. of Federal District Court said that officers and citizens alike should embrace the agreement, reached last month, as a means to keep the city safe. The city and the Justice Department agreed to create the consent decree after the department issued a report in December saying it had found a pattern and practice of Cleveland police officers using excessive force and violating people’s civil rights. Independent monitoring is to measure how elements of the consent decree are implemented. Cleveland will need to show sustained reforms for two years before the judge can release it from the oversight. Judge Oliver seemed especially interested in the section of the agreement that requires officers to receive more training on use of force and bias-free policing. “I certainly hope we can create the good will necessary to make sure this carried out and enforced,” he said. Video Steven Dettelbach, the United States attorney in Northern Ohio, and Vanita Gupta of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced a settlement with Cleveland over the use of police force. Credit Credit Tony Dejak/Associated Press
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Cleveland;Police;Justice Department;Solomon Oliver Jr;Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings
|
ny0061326
|
[
"sports",
"basketball"
] |
2014/01/04
|
Mental Lapse at Finish Wastes 47 Good Minutes From the Knicks
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HOUSTON — The Knicks had done what they could to survive against the Rockets for more than 47 minutes at the Toyota Center on Friday night. They had hustled. They had rebounded. They had defended, at least for stretches. And when Tyson Chandler corralled an offensive rebound with 23.6 seconds remaining in a tie game, the Knicks could have held the ball for the final shot. But this team has had a penchant for mental gaffes, and when the ball found its way to J. R. Smith, he opted against logic and hoisted a hasty 3-pointer that was off the mark. The Rockets’ Aaron Brooks was fouled on the ensuing loose ball, and he sank both free throws as the Rockets dealt the Knicks a 102-100 loss . The Knicks (10-22), who were hoping to keep their momentum going after beating the San Antonio Spurs on Thursday, had one final opportunity, but Beno Udrih could only watch as his attempt at a game-tying runner rimmed out at the buzzer. It was a stupefying decision by Smith, who was 3 of 13 from the field and finished with 9 points. He said he thought the Knicks were trailing by 2 points when he attempted his 3-pointer. He said he could hear Chandler yelling, “No, don’t take the shot!” But Smith had already released the ball with 19.9 seconds left. He shouldered the blame, saying it was “bad basketball I.Q. by me.” Chandler called it a “learning experience.” Coach Mike Woodson was flummoxed. “Yeah, I was surprised,” Woodson said. “Had he made it, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. But I don’t know.” Carmelo Anthony, who was playing on consecutive nights after missing three games with a sprained left ankle, played through obvious discomfort to finish with 25 points and 8 rebounds. Iman Shumpert had another terrific effort, scoring 26 points. “We’re playing a lot better, and that’s promising,” said Woodson, whose team will face the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday. “I like the way we compete. If we stay at this level, we’ll be in a lot of games. We just got to figure out how to win them down the stretch.” The Rockets (22-13) were led by James Harden, who had 37 points and sank all 12 of his free throws. It was a tough matchup for the Knicks, who had given everything they had against the Spurs. In addition, the Rockets’ pick-and-roll offense figured to pose a serious challenge, in large part because the Knicks are poor at defending against pick-and-roll offenses. So the situation was far from ideal. But the Knicks were resilient. When the Rockets went ahead by 5 early in the third quarter, the Knicks responded with an 8-0 run. They built on their lead, an effort sparked by Shumpert and Anthony, who combined for 24 points in the quarter. Shumpert connected on a 3-pointer to extend the Knicks’ advantage to 79-70, and the Rockets appeared to be reeling, but they fought back. Harden scored on back-to-back baskets, including a 3-pointer, as the Rockets took a 100-95 lead late in the fourth quarter. Shumpert responded with a 3-pointer, then forced a jump ball while defending Harden at the other end. On the subsequent possession, Chandler hit two free throws to even the score at 100-100. After an empty possession by the Rockets, Udrih misfired on a 3-pointer, but Chandler grabbed the rebound and kicked the ball to Smith. It was a bad choice. “We were right where we wanted to be,” Chandler said. “But at the end of the game, we had some mental breakdowns.” REBOUNDS Kenyon Martin did not dress because of a sore left ankle.
|
Basketball;Knicks;Houston Rockets;Carmelo Anthony
|
ny0058053
|
[
"sports",
"golf"
] |
2014/09/13
|
At Tour Championship, Chris Kirk Is Tied for Second After Two Rounds
|
ATLANTA — Chris Kirk was celebrating a baseball title with his teammates when he startled his father, who was also his coach, by saying: “Dad, this is the coolest thing ever. It’s a good time to end my baseball career.” Even at age 12, Chris had deduced that pursuing a dream involving a smaller ball would require his undivided attention. “Now I need to focus my energy on golf,” he went on. “So this is it for me.” Like many of his peers, Gary Kirk had envisioned himself as a pro ballplayer. So until Chris replaced a metal bat with a 5-iron for keeps, Gary imagined someday living vicariously through his big-leaguer son. “I was heartbroken,” Gary said Friday in the clubhouse at East Lake Golf Club minutes before Chris continued to validate his newfound place in golf’s major league. With a two-under 68, the younger Kirk hung in contention for the Tour Championship. He sat in second, along with Rory McIlroy and Jason Day, two strokes behind the front-runner, Billy Horschel. Kirk had sensed that until lately, as he strolled down the fairway, spectators were leafing through their programs and wondering, “Who is this guy?” Now he notices that people recognize him by name — never more so than in the Atlanta area, where he has lived for all of his 29 years. “He was a fiery little dude,” said his mother, Kim. Chris’s standard childhood response to a parental command: “Not me.” Before his teenage years, Kirk began channeling his stubbornness into golf. Rarely a day passed without hours spent at the family’s club course a mile from home, even in stormy or frigid weather. “I’ve got to learn how to play in these conditions,” he told them, “if I’m going to be on the PGA Tour.” The Kirks permitted Chris to indulge in his obsession, provided his school report card showed all A’s. He never lost golfing privileges, although Kim remembers him sprinting through homework. They worried about Chris’s one-dimensional existence, but only for a while. “He’s known for a long time what his life’s goal was,” his father said. “He expected to now be at the stage he’s at.” The stage is big this weekend as the season’s most accomplished 29 players aim for a trophy and an eight-figure bonus check. As he had Thursday, Horschel finished No. 18 for a four-under-par 66, flipped his cap backward and turned on his phone to check on news from home. There was none: His wife, Brittany, remained eight-plus months pregnant. “So everything’s good,” he said. “I think our child is staying put for the time being.” Times have been more trying for McIlroy and Day. McIlroy was excoriated on social media for observations Wednesday about Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, conspicuous absentees this week. Commenting on their advanced age, he said both were “getting into sort of the last few holes of their careers.” Though he said he had meant to be complimentary, the remarks were interpreted by some as pouring shovels of dirt on their golfing graves. Then the tennis standout Caroline Wozniacki, McIlroy’s former fiancée, disclosed details on Thursday about their May breakup, saying he had delivered the hurtful news in a phone conversation that she had at first assumed was a joke. The report unleashed more social media umbrage at McIlroy, who had termed their parting amicable. McIlroy found reason to smile at No. 14 on Friday after his drive ricocheted off a tree and into a spectator’s pocket. The fan was not hurt, nor was McIlroy’s scorecard. He parred the hole, then birdied the final two for a 65, the day’s low round. Day has been limited to 15 events, about half of Kirk’s calendar, by injuries (back, thumb) and illness (throat infection). He lasted only one and a half rounds last week at the BMW Championship before his back seized up. “The body has not performed the way it’s supposed to,” he said. “You see guys winning on tour each and every week, and you’re sitting on the couch or going through rehab — it’s frustrating and motivating at the same time.” Day has tight-roped his way through a healthy week so far. His caddie was not so fortunate. Colin Swatton bowed out after eight holes Thursday with a sore back, an ailment that is apparently infectious in the Day camp.
|
Golf;PGA Tour;Billy Horschel
|
ny0168264
|
[
"nyregion",
"thecity"
] |
2006/01/22
|
Jitterbug Days
|
Correction Appended THE first thing you notice about Harlem is how wide the sky is. For a longtime New Yorker, so accustomed to being blinkered by ever more towers, the views along Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevards are almost giddying. To the south, it feels as if you can see the rest of Manhattan below you, or at least down to the skyscrapers of Midtown, set like so many pickets against the horizon. Those structures offer a different tone poem every day, depending on the weather and the time of year; spectacular beneath the gaudy sunset of a summer evening, moody and contemplative on a drizzly winter afternoon. The view is one of the few strands that tie the Harlem of today to what it was 60 years ago, and it is very welcome. When writing about the city as it was, one searches for any visual clue, however fleeting, to what people were seeing, feeling and hearing back then as they went about their daily lives. Such moments are not easily forthcoming. New York is a wastrel with its past, shucking its skin like some giant snake as it slithers relentlessly into the future. Some of this is inevitable, of course, if a city is not to become a mausoleum, and the past is not something to be idealized. And yet it is easy to wish that what existed before had not been eradicated quite so quickly, or so thoroughly. That is certainly the case with the Harlem of the 1940's. This nostalgia is ironic, because Harlem is a fluke. Those grand avenues give away what the neighborhood was intended to be, a hundred years ago: a wealthy, white suburb for the city growing explosively just to the south. But because of a combination of overspeculation, racism and pure chance, Harlem became something very different, the capital of black America, the locus of countless dreams -- and a prison of sorts. The swampy village that was Harlem had been intended as a home for the white elite, who had been retreating up Manhattan before one immigrant wave after another for most of the 19th century. Moving up the island almost simultaneously were New York's African-Americans, living together as a segregated community since the terrible lynchings of the Civil War draft riots. They were pushed on from one neighborhood to the next by assaults from the police, and by the same, white ethnic hordes that so frightened the nobs. Deprived of their anticipated upper class, the landlords of Harlem turned to black tenants, knowing they could be charged double the standard rents for working-class New Yorkers because they had no place else to go. The result was New York's first real ghetto. The word, ghetto, has come to be used almost interchangeably with slum, but it means something else. Where a slum implies simply poverty, a ghetto is a place where everyone, from all walks of life, rich or poor, is relegated by virtue of race or religion. By the 1920's, the convergence of blacks from every walk of life and region had brought about the Harlem Renaissance, the first great concentrated flowering of black culture in America. The Depression was hard on Harlem, and it ended the renaissance. Yet by 1943 Harlem was enjoying an edgy resurgence, infused with the new money generated by the war. THIS was the last moment when Harlem was still a destination, an irresistible attraction for black and white servicemen alike who were on leave. Both the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and Malcolm Little, later Malcolm X, were walking those broad avenues then, and they would scarcely recognize the Harlem of today. Like the rest of Manhattan, it is an almost sedate place now. Much of the exuberant street life is gone, the vendors no longer hawking everything from ice to coal to sweet potatoes, with songs made up and sung to tunes from the hit parade. There are no more numbers runners, catching the nickels that slipped like quicksilver through the fire escape slits above; no more "Thursday girls," who strode out for a night on the town from beauty shops that were filled with smoke from the various, frightening hair-straightening processes of the day. The Harlem of World War II was a vibrant place, a place well-honed by both disappointment and hope, where the music was harder and better than ever, where some of the best musicians who ever were competed against each other in midnight parties to raise rent money for the host. The music was best there, in those overcrowded, ordinary apartments, played by men who would never leave their best stuff in the downtown clubs. Physically, most of Harlem is still built on a very human scale, and still has one of the city's largest collections of brownstones. Some of the old institutions remain from that time as well: the magnificently ponderous Y.M.C.A. on 135th Street, where Malcolm and so many other eager newcomers lived, and the stately Hotel Theresa, where more celebrated visitors stayed, from Joe Louis to Fidel Castro. Yet the Harlem night scene has almost vanished, gone the way of the city's other fantastic entertainment districts, from the Latin Quarter to the old Coney Island to the German beer gardens that once lined the Bowery. The enormous dance halls, where the big bands played and jitterbugging came into its own, are long gone. The Cotton Club moved to Midtown before the 30's were out, and the fabulous Savoy Ballroom -- "the home of happy feet," with its battles of the bands and its 250-foot-long dance floor -- has been replaced by a housing project and a few stores. The only physical remnant of the great halls is the gorgeous ruin of the Renaissance Casino, a hall that was big enough to hold one of New York's first great basketball teams, the New York Rens. It still runs the length of a city block on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and is somehow still majestic despite the layers of grime on its red-brick facade, the trees growing out of its roof, and its rusting marquees, one of them incongruously advertising "Chow Mein." The great clubs are gone, too. Connie's Inn, where Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller played, has been replaced by something that looks like a garage. Small's Paradise, which had the best floor shows and, some say, the only working air-conditioning in Harlem, and where Malcolm met all the hustlers and pimps and burglars he would write about so lovingly in his autobiography, has now been subsumed by a school and an International House of Pancakes. The old live theaters and the great movie palaces, the Lafayette, the Alhambra and the Victoria, have been plowed under as well, or changed beyond recognition. The Regent, considered the first truly "deluxe" movie theater in Manhattan, has long since been converted into a church. Gone, too, are the less respectable establishments. The stretch of 133rd Street between Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevards was then known as Beale Street or Jungle Alley; this block of raucous clubs and after-hours bars was described rather melodramatically at the time as a place where "a knife blade is the quick arbiter of all quarrels, where prostitutes take anything they can get." Now it is a quiet block full of brownstone churches, and workmen rehabilitating brick town houses. West 144th Street, where a teenage Malcolm once worked as a "john-walker," escorting white tricks up to see black prostitutes, seems even more somnolent. About all that remains of Harlem, the entertainment mecca, is the elegant Apollo. One can still stand on 126th Street and study the long, fire escape staircases on its back, wondering which one might have been used as a separate entrance for black patrons, confined to an upper gallery when the building was still the segregated Hurtig & Seamon's theater. To the west of the Apollo stood the old Braddock Hotel, now demolished. For a while, it was the place leading black entertainers would stay, and in the 40's the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and Billie Holiday could still be found in its bar -- close enough so they could step over from the stage door of the Apollo for a quick drink. But by World War II, the hotel itself had become seedy. The race riot of 1943, the worst in Harlem's history, which would leave six people dead and the neighborhood ravaged, would begin there when a black serviceman was shot by a white cop in a fight that started over a complaint about a room. Across 125th Street from the Apollo is the site of other battles. The old Kress's department store, where an earlier, more contained race riot began in 1935 after the false rumor that a shoplifter had been killed by store detectives, has been altered irretrievably. But the facade and name of a defunct department store just down the street, Blumstein's, is still in place. This was among the last great bastions of segregation in Harlem; the store had refused to hire black employees or even to allow black women to try on dresses. It was finally conquered by the "don't shop where you can't work" campaigns of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Those initiatives were a dramatic first step for Mr. Powell, who, while still holding the pulpit he had inherited from his father at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, went on to become the city's first black councilman, then its first black congressman. It was not surprising that the first black man to represent Harlem in Congress was a clergyman; no part of the old Harlem has survived as intact as its many, splendid churches. They stand like fortresses along its streets, as many of them have for the last 80 or even 90 years: the Abyssinian and St. Philip's, Salem Methodist and Mount Olivet, Mount Calvary and St. Mark's, to name only a few. The great churches have never been the be-all and end-all of religion in Harlem; the area has many humble storefront churches, and many cultists and revivalists. But the big churches played a special role. These were the "invisible institution" made manifest -- the term dating to the days of slavery, referring to how black believers had often had to hide their services. Over the decades these entities, some of them dating to Lower Manhattan in the late 1700's, had been painfully brought to life. They had been kept together as their communicants moved up the West Side of Manhattan, transferred to private homes, abandoned buildings, even old stables. Critics argued that these great structures were too heavy a burden on the community, but to finally establish large, impressive churches was to make a statement, to say that Harlem was where they would make a stand. Mr. Powell, a determined democratizer, relentlessly mocked his fellow clerics, accusing them of hypocrisy and "churchianity," and ridiculing all pretensions on the basis of income, or background, or skin tone. His needling fell largely on deaf ears. Distinctions are always made within the ghetto, lighter skin vs. darker skin; old New Yorkers vs. Southern migrants vs. proud immigrants from the British West Indies. And of course, there was money. Wealthy Harlemites gathered together in specific areas -- on Sugar Hill, in the Dunbar Apartments, or on Strivers Row -- as the rich always have. But in the ghetto these enclaves were more heterogeneous and interesting than they were in New York's white neighborhoods. On Strivers Row alone, there lived at various times the composers W. C. Handy and Eubie Blake; Dr. Louis T. Wright, a prominent surgeon; Henry Pace, the founder of Black Swan Records; the fine heavyweight Harry Wills; the comedian Stepin Fetchit -- and Mr. Powell himself. NO neighborhood better exemplifies both the triumph and the frustration of Harlem than Strivers Row, on 138th and 139th Streets between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. On its two blocks, lovely, ethereal yellow- and rust-brick Italianate town houses seem to almost float above the branches of the slender trees along the sidewalk. Originally called the King Model Houses, they were designed by Stanford White and several other leading New York architects of the 1890's. One can still find gates on some of them with the ancient imprecation "Walk Your Horses," directed at the sports who liked to race their horses along the broad avenues. There are even back alleys, providing residents with those luxuries so rare in Manhattan, house decks and garages. Yet Strivers Row was designed for white people. When not enough of them would stay, refusing to live in an increasingly black Harlem, the Equitable Life Insurance Company kept the buildings vacant for a year before finally giving in, and allowing African-Americans to buy them. Even in Harlem, black people had to be insulted before their money was accepted. One other extant building tells the story of the Harlem of the 40's, and what lay in store for it: the vast Art Deco armory on 142nd Street. The armory was built for the 369th Regiment, the "Harlem Hellfighters," after their return from World War I. Forced to fight with French troops, the Hellfighters had distinguished themselves, serving longer in continuous combat than any other American fighting unit, and they had marched back up Fifth Avenue in triumph with their band breaking into "Here Comes My Daddy Now" as they crossed into Harlem. But for World War II, most of the 369th was trained in the Deep South, under white officers, along with tens of thousands of other black soldiers. Throughout the war, the people of Harlem had been receiving letters from their young men telling of how shabbily they were being treated, both by their white commanders and by the sheriffs and the police of Southern towns. The letters, combined with news reports of white police officers and white mobs assaulting and even killing black soldiers and black defense workers around the country, brought people of all classes in Harlem together by the summer of 1943. James Baldwin would remember seeing "the strangest combinations" of people, standing about in tense, silent groups, churchgoers and "the most flagrant disbelievers." "Something heavy in their stance seemed to indicate that they had all, incredibly, seen a common vision," he wrote, "and on each face there seemed to be the same strange, bitter shadow." ALL that summer, the conflagration crept palpably closer, with every precaution taken against it only more enraging than the last. Military authorities had the Savoy closed, ostensibly to preserve the morals of our fighting men but mostly to prevent "racemixing," and motorcycle police patrols roared constantly through the streets, looking out for trouble. When the riot did come, with the shooting at the Braddock Hotel, Harlem would be permanently altered. Ultimately, the fury behind it would leave standing only a few suggestions of what had gone before, peeking out here and there. This largely vanished Harlem may be most readily understood from the inside, looking out at those broad views of the looming city and its sentinel skyscrapers. So accessible and yet so unobtainable, still spurning those it had so arbitrarily driven out. To have looked upon that city every day, to understand the hatred and bigotry it represented even if you had no desire to join with it, must have been all but unbearable. Kevin Baker is the author of the novel "Strivers Row," set in Harlem in the 1940's, to be published next month by HarperCollins. Correction: January 29, 2006, Sunday An article last Sunday about the history of Harlem misstated the name of a company that controlled town houses on 138th and 139th Streets. It was the Equitable Life Assurance Society, not the Equitable Life Insurance Company.
|
HARLEM (NYC);HOLIDAY BILLIE
|
ny0272938
|
[
"science"
] |
2016/05/31
|
How, and Why, to Hunt the Red-Spotted Newt
|
Warren Pond in southern Connecticut, bordered by shady oaks and maples, is a lovely place to fish for bass or sunfish. Or, if the mood strikes you, to hunt the Eastern red-spotted newt. Why one would want to hunt newts is a valid question. But for Evan Grant, who was stalking the banks of Warren Pond this month, scanning the water through polarized sunglasses, the answer is that many species of salamander in the United States, including the newts he was seeking, may be on the brink of a deadly fungal assault, much like one that has devastated some frog and toad populations worldwide. In 2013, scientists discovered that a fungus called Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans, commonly known as Bsal, was attacking salamanders in Europe . Researchers later determined that species in the United States were vulnerable to the infection. And earlier this year, the Fish and Wildlife Service temporarily banned the import of 201 species of salamanders that pose a danger of carrying the fungus into the United States. The wildlife service has proposed a permanent ban, and just finished a public comment period on that proposal. The service will make a final decision in the coming months. Image The red-spotted newt is common throughout the Northeast. Credit Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times In the meantime, the United States Geological Survey is monitoring vulnerable salamander populations to catch any early signs of infection. So far, researchers have not found evidence of Bsal. Dr. Grant, a research wildlife biologist with the agency’s Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative, has been up and down the East Coast catching red-spotted newts, swabbing their skin to check for infections and sending samples to the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis. In mid-May, he put on rubber boots and shouldered a long-handled dip net to explore the pond, in Newtown, Conn., with Adrianne Brand, a wildlife biologist who is also with the initiative. Not that anyone really needs a reason. Newts, and salamanders in general, are just plain cool. They don’t simply grow from egg to adult the way mammals or reptiles do. They have several stages, from egg to larva to adult, and in any given species, they may skip a stage, change whether they live in water or on land, grow lungs or stick with gills. Some absorb oxygen through their skin, and skip both lungs and gills. Newts, in particular, are like ecological utility infielders, switching habitats and physiology depending on what is needed for the game of staying alive. The two researchers found no newts in the pond, so they moved on to a swampy patch in the woods of Paugussett State Forest, down a hillside from a suburban cul-de-sac. The water, about knee high, was dark with detritus, and surrounded by thickets. Image The United States Geological Survey is sampling salamander populations in an effort to detect any appearance of a dangerous fungus. Credit Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times After a few minutes of swishing his net through the water, which ran over the top of his boots, Dr. Grant called out, “Yo! Newt!” The catch was about three inches long, identifiable as a male because of the shape of its tail and rough patches on the inside of its hind legs, with a dark greenish brown color and red spots that warn predators of toxins in the skin. He swabbed the skin and snipped off the ends of the swabs for testing. The United States is considered a global treasure trove of salamander diversity, and the U.S.G.S. study is concentrating on sampling a few areas that have species like the newt, known to be vulnerable to Bsal, and are close to ports where animals in the pet trade are imported, like New York and New Orleans. From 2004 to 2014, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service, about 2.5 million salamanders were imported into the United States for the pet trade, many from Asia, where the fungus seems to have originated. Scientists believe it was the importation of salamanders to Europe that led to the appearance of the fungus in the Netherlands, Belgium and the United Kingdom. Image Dr. Grant holds a red-spotted newt from Beebe Pond in Sunderland, Vt., this month. Credit Jim Cole/Associated Press Salamanders may serve as a kind of early warning system for environmental problems, and they are deeply embedded in forest ecosystems, so their reduction or disappearance could have unpredictable consequences. But scientists have always been fascinated by a kind of flexibility in their life histories that is not seen in most vertebrates. The newt is a prime example. Sean Sterrett, a wildlife ecologist with Penn State and the U.S.G.S, who works with Dr. Grant, said the newt emerges from an egg laid in the water as a tadpole-like larva, metamorphosing into a tiny salamander shape with gills. Then the fun begins. It lives a year or two like that and then develops into a terrestrial form. Unless it doesn’t. Sometimes it goes straight to an adult aquatic form. And though an adult usually has lungs, it may sometimes keep its gills. The juvenile terrestrial form — the red eft — is familiar to anyone who walks in Northeastern woodlands, particularly after rain, when they are most active. Sometimes the efts are more orange than red, but either way, you can’t miss them. Image Evan Grant and Adrianne Brand taking samples in a wetland at Paugussett State Forest in Connecticut. Credit Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times The efts usually spend three to six years on land, eating insects, worms and any living thing that’s small enough. Unless they don’t. They may spend only one year on land. Eventually, the efts return to the water, where they turn dark and greenish with red spots, and breed and live out their lives. Unless they don’t. If the pond dries up or food runs out, or a newt suffers from too many leeches, it can move back to land. And if an adult stays there long enough, its skin changes to rough and dry. It doesn’t need to stick to its decision, though, because it can move back to the water at any time. Wherever they are, salamanders eat whatever they can. Scientists refer to them as “gape-limited predators.” In other words, if it fits in your mouth, that means it’s food. The salamanders seem to have a liberal interpretation of what “fits” means. Dr. Sterrett said, “I’ve found a salamander that consumed an earthworm twice its body size.” Many salamanders have flexible courses of development. Some, like mud puppies, keep their gills and never leave the water. And salamanders have other oddities — some of the giant ones in China can grow to nearly six feet long and smell like stale urine. Others can poke the ends of their ribs out of their skin as a defense. And some engage in a kind of cannibalism that makes the worst playground bully seem like the Dalai Lama. These are the larvae of the tiger salamander. In any given clutch of eggs a few grow particularly big heads. “The big heads are adapted to eating other larvae,” said Dr. Sterrett. The cannibals thrive on the nutritious sibling diet, and don’t look any different as adults. Of course, salamanders themselves suffer predation, even with their toxic skin. “Raccoons skin them,” Dr. Grant said. “You sometimes come to a pond and you find a pile of salamander skins.” But not the heads. The raccoons apparently like the brains. Dr. Grant and Ms. Brand caught only five newts at the suburban slough, so they planned to go back for more sampling. The survey of newt populations is about half-done, Dr. Grant said, and so far no Bsal has been detected. If it does appear, he hopes by then they will know more about which areas have thriving populations and how to protect them.
|
Salamander;Fungus;US Geological Survey;US;Evan Grant
|
ny0012390
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2013/11/27
|
Rodriguez Amends Suit, Adding Claims About Selig
|
Alex Rodriguez’s lawyers updated their lawsuit against Major League Baseball on Tuesday, adding new claims about the conduct of baseball’s commissioner, Bud Selig, in defending his 211-game suspension of Rodriguez, the Yankees’ third baseman. The amended lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Manhattan, came after Rodriguez stormed out of his grievance hearing last Wednesday at M.L.B. headquarters, angry that the arbitrator hearing the appeal of his suspension, in a separate proceeding, would not require Selig to testify. With Rodriguez saying that he is disgusted with the arbitration process, his lawyers are now using the court system to air their concerns with how M.L.B. has handled the case. Much of their anger is focused on Selig, who they say defended the league’s discipline of Rodriguez to reporters during the World Series but declined to be questioned by his lawyers. The amended lawsuit also expands on earlier allegations that baseball investigators acted unethically. “Mr. Selig lacked the courage of his convictions to explain under oath the reasons for the suspension and the conduct of his investigators,” the lawyers wrote. “His silence on these issues speaks volumes and leads to only one logical conclusion — his actions, and those of the M.L.B. personnel he controls, were aimed at destroying the reputation, career and business prospects of Alex Rodriguez.” A spokesman for Major League Baseball declined to comment on the amended complaint because, as of Tuesday morning, baseball officials had not seen the updated lawsuit. M.L.B. has maintained that Selig should not have to testify — that he has not taken the stand in past cases, and that another high-ranking league official was questioned. Baseball has also stood by its investigation, saying it was appropriate while denying Rodriguez’s claims in his original lawsuit. Baseball officials say Rodriguez’s lawyers, through their public statements and the lawsuit, are attempting to distract from what M.L.B. sees as the core issue in the case: Rodriguez’s use of performance-enhancing drugs. Rodriguez is facing allegations from M.L.B. that he used banned substances over a period of years and obstructed the league’s investigation of Biogenesis of America, an anti-aging clinic in South Florida believed to have supplied performance-enhancing drugs to professional baseball players. But Rodriguez and his lawyers believe that Selig has been at the helm of a “witch hunt,” trying to oust the highest-paid player in the league in an effort to redraw his legacy. Selig plans to retire after next season. Included in the lawsuit is a photograph of Selig posing with a young baseball fan wearing a T-shirt that reads, “A-Roid,” a reference to Rodriguez’s used of banned substances. “One cannot imagine the commissioner of any other professional sport — or indeed the C.E.O. of any business — doing something similar with respect to one of his or her players or employees,” the lawyers wrote. In the amended lawsuit, Rodriguez’s lawyers added a new section documenting what they said were “unethical and illegal” practices by M.L.B. investigators. The section adds details to past allegations about an M.L.B. investigator’s becoming intimate with a witness, as well as that investigator’s purchasing potentially stolen documents. The suit also includes a rundown of members of the M.L.B. investigative unit and claims past misconduct, some of which predates their full-time employment with baseball.
|
Baseball;MLB;Alex Rodriguez;Bud Selig;Yankees;Doping
|
ny0124964
|
[
"us"
] |
2012/08/29
|
Judge Awards $21 Million In Somalia Torture Case
|
A federal judge in Alexandria awarded $21 million to seven people who sued a former prime minister of Somalia who is now living in Virginia, claiming he tortured and killed his own people more than two decades ago. Seven Somali natives filed the lawsuit in 2004 against the former prime minister, Mohamed Ali Samantar, 76, of Fairfax, saying he ordered the killings and torture of members of a minority clan. Mr. Samantar denied the accusations and claimed immunity. While he later accepted liability for the killings, he denied any wrongdoing. His lawyer, Joseph Peter Drennan, said he would appeal. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is already considering whether Mr. Samantar was properly denied immunity.
|
Somalia;Samantar Mohamed Ali;Torture;Decisions and Verdicts
|
ny0117503
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2012/10/09
|
Using Grand Buildings to Support Those in Need
|
In a wide-open ballroom in Manhattan last week, a room with gilded columns and dark herringbone floors, men and women in dark suits sat at a reception for a retiring city official, listening to speeches as they munched on tidy portions of chicken and salad greens. They sat in an elegant early-20th-century building near Madison Square Park, where some of New York’s most expensive real estate and finest restaurants can be found. But the residents living above that fine golden ballroom did not shell out a few million dollars for their homes; far from it. The tenants of this building, called the Prince George , include formerly homeless New Yorkers, people with persistent mental illness and the very poor. “ ‘The Real Housewives of New York’ shot here once,” said Brenda E. Rosen, the executive director of Common Ground , which owns the Prince George and rents out the ballroom to help support the organization. “I watched them yell at each other in the ballroom on TV!” About 25 years ago, when many of Manhattan’s grand older buildings were derelict and decrepit, the city started selling abandoned buildings and troubled single-room-occupancy hotels to social service agencies for use as long-term “supportive housing” for chronically homeless New Yorkers. At the time, the buildings were haggard, having surrendered long before to drug dealers and decay, and the neighborhoods where they stood were often sketchy. Today, these facilities are still operating, but they do so in a different universe. The Prince George, among the largest welfare hotels in the city before it was acquired by Common Ground in the mid-1990s and restored, is just a few blocks from one of New York’s best restaurants, Eleven Madison Park; a supportive building on West 24th Street is opposite a Whole Foods store and expensive condominiums; there is even supportive housing on prime West End Avenue, blending in perfectly with its co-op neighbors, right down to its crisp green awning. An untold number of drivers have whizzed past and wondered about a reddish-brick building beside the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, not far from the Williamsburg Bridge, with two rounded wings, capped by curved black balconies, that reach toward the East River. That structure, built as a hospital more than 100 years ago, then gutted and abandoned in the 1980s, has served as supportive housing for nearly 20 years. “I get calls every day from some real estate company, every day,” said Steve Coe, the chief executive of Community Access , which owns the building, the Gouverneur Court . Callers leave numerous messages asking if he would consider selling, he said, but he is not interested in contributing to the city’s supply of fancy condos. “The reason we became property owners is because our folks are not welcome in regular housing,” Mr. Coe said. “So we, by necessity, became real estate developers.” The Gouverneur has 124 studio apartments, occupied by people with mental illnesses or H.I.V./AIDS, and very low incomes. The rents are affordable — no more than one-third of a tenant’s income — and the building, like all supportive housing, comes equipped with services meant to help residents manage their affairs. Staff members help tenants apply for government assistance, remind them to refill their prescriptions and provide 24-hour security to keep an eye on who comes and goes. Tenants have rent-stabilized leases and all the protections that that affords. Even if Mr. Coe decided he wanted to sell the building, his real estate callers would still be disappointed.That is because supportive housing buildings have layers of financing and regulatory agreements requiring that they be used as supportive housing far into the future. Those agreements, advocates say, would be very hard to unwind. “It’s difficult on purpose; you think we were born yesterday?” said Tim O’Hanlon, the city’s assistant commissioner of supportive housing (and the soon-to-be retiree who was feted at the Prince George last week). “Someone might say: ‘Gee, I changed my mind. I don’t want to take care of the homeless and disabled anymore. I want to rent to middle-income, or better.’ ” Brokers and developers might be banging on the doors today, but 25 years ago, Mr. O’Hanlon said, the real estate strategy was all “bottom fishing,” because nobody else was interested in buying those properties. And with a look back, it is not hard to see why. Take Euclid Hall , a lovely grande dame built of pink brick that stretches from 85th to 86th Street on Broadway. In the early 20th century, when it was built, it garnered occasional mention in the society pages of The New York Times. But by the 1980s, “it was a mess,” said Laura Jervis, the executive director of the West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing , which now owns the building. “There was a lot of crime in the building and the owner never went above the first floor,” Ms. Jervis said. “People had to come in with hazmat suits to clean it out.” Over time, however, well-run supportive housing buildings become just another stitch in their neighborhood’s fabric. “I think if you ask the average resident,” City Councilwoman Gale A. Brewer said of Euclid Hall, “they wouldn’t even be aware it is supportive housing.” That is no accident. Housing advocates say that an important part of being successful is creating a place that blends into the neighborhood, in part by making sure the facade is clean, attractive and well kept. Nonetheless, city officials and housing advocates say that initial opposition to new supportive housing can be intense. “When we proposed this, the folks next door in co-ops were convinced it would be a Bellevue-style inpatient hospital, but with people leaping out of the windows,” Mr. Coe said of Gouverneur Court. “Every time we go into another community, we hear the same stuff.” These days, most new supportive projects are in new buildings outside Manhattan, and the populations in them are more varied — including young adults aging out of foster care , and veterans, for example — but the basic model continues. In June, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Mathew M. Wambua, announced a plan to double the production of supportive housing units, and as he spoke, he made it personal. Mr. Wambua spoke of his teenage son, who is autistic and does not speak, and what the future might hold for him. “I make no assumptions about the heights he’s capable of attaining, and he’s proved me, time and again, wrong,” Mr. Wambua said. “But I do know that should he choose to live independently, he will need support. And the same is true of countless New Yorkers.”
|
Real Estate and Housing (Residential);Common Ground;Community Access;Welfare (US);Homeless Persons;New York City
|
ny0083720
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2015/10/31
|
Cuomo Planning Role in National Gun Control Campaign
|
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo intends to take a lead role in a broad campaign pressing for a crackdown on the improper dealing of firearms, swerving into national politics on an issue that has caused him some political heartburn in New York but has become a defining subject of the 2016 presidential campaign. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, has pledged to throw his weight behind the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence , one of the country’s most prominent gun control groups, in an as-yet-unannounced effort demanding that the Justice Department more closely scrutinize so-called bad apple gun merchants, according to people familiar with the campaign. Mr. Cuomo, in an interview about his plans to work with the Brady Campaign, promised that his involvement in national gun politics would continue to deepen. He said he would hit the campaign trail in 2016 to emphasize the issue of gun violence, which he repeatedly called “the big issue” in national politics. “The political climate is right again for action,” said Mr. Cuomo, who has endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton for president. He added, “The appetite is there, I think, in the presidential election, especially in the Democratic primary but also in the general election.” To start, Mr. Cuomo will be among the chief signatories of a letter to Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, to be released as early as next week, urging the Justice Department to punish what the Brady Campaign describes as a small fraction of gun dealers who sell an overwhelming share of weapons used to commit crimes. He has promised to lobby other governors around the country to join in the push. Dan Gross, the president of the Brady Campaign, said Mr. Cuomo, who signed a 2013 law aggressively regulating gun sales in New York, was “a very appropriate national spokesperson to get other governors on board.” “That’s the role he has committed to play,” Mr. Gross said. Mr. Cuomo has typically kept a cautious distance from national politics, rarely leaving New York or diving into the Washington debates of the moment. But his political allies, and other people familiar with the Brady Campaign’s new initiative, said the gun-control issue had taken on new and sharply personal meaning for the governor amid a string of tragedies. He spoke in September at the funeral of an aide, Carey W. Gabay, a 43-year-old lawyer who was struck in the head by a stray bullet in Brooklyn . Since then, Mr. Cuomo has spoken angrily in remarks about gun violence. He openly criticized federal inaction after a massacre on an Oregon college campus this month, one of several recent mass shootings that has returned gun violence to the fore. At one point, Mr. Cuomo suggested that Democrats in Congress should be willing to shut down the government to force action on gun violence. He has repeatedly attacked Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, for his lack of support for gun control in the past. The new collaboration between Mr. Cuomo and the Brady Campaign emerged swiftly after the shooting of Mr. Gabay. Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, a Democrat close to Mr. Cuomo, said the governor told him during a visit to Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, in October that he planned to increase his involvement in gun control advocacy. Mr. Gabay’s death affected the governor on a “personal level,” Mr. Jeffries said, adding, “He did indicate to me that he was going to intensify his efforts.” Even before Mr. Gabay’s funeral, Mr. Cuomo vented frustration at the absence of federal legislation addressing gun killings. He blamed lax gun regulations at the federal level and in other states for creating a “back door” into New York for illegal firearms. Image Confiscated guns on a table during a news conference in October 2012, where New York City officials spoke about major firearms trafficking cases. Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times The governor’s remarks drew attention among national gun control advocates: Mark Kelly, the husband of former Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, spoke with Mr. Cuomo about the need to “address gun trafficking and crack down on the illegal gun trade,” said a spokesman for Americans for Responsible Solutions, a group dedicated to reducing gun violence that Mr. Kelly and Ms. Giffords founded after she was shot in the head in 2011 . Mr. Gross said the Brady Campaign took note of the governor’s public comments and, seeking a renewed pressure campaign directed at Congress, reached out to gauge Mr. Cuomo’s interest in participating. His response, Mr. Gross said, was enthusiastic. In addition to an emerging group of governors lobbying for federal action, the Brady Campaign also intends to enlist prominent mayors and police chiefs in related initiatives. The group has a longstanding relationship with Mr. Cuomo, dating to his service as federal housing secretary in the Clinton administration, when he worked on an initiative pressing gun manufacturers to include stricter safety features. Mr. Cuomo’s sister Maria Cuomo Cole is on the board of the Brady Campaign. It is unclear what Mr. Cuomo’s deeper participation in gun politics, at the national level, might mean in New York, where his stance on gun control has cost him votes. His popularity plunged across rural areas upstate after he signed the Safe Act, the 2013 gun-control law enacted following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. “There’s no doubt it cost me popularity,” Mr. Cuomo said on Thursday, adding that on this particular issue, “the polls don’t matter.” Republican lawmakers, who hold a majority in the State Senate, have campaigned eagerly against the Safe Act, and some rural Democrats may be wary of re-engaging the issue as they seek to take control of the Senate in the elections next year. But if upstate voters recoiled from the Safe Act , the law has played well with New Yorkers in general. A Siena College poll published this week showed the law is more popular than the governor himself: Half of the state’s voters had a favorable view of him in the poll, but about three in five supported the Safe Act. Mr. Cuomo is expected to face pressure next year from quarters of his own party to enact new gun restrictions. Some Democrats criticized him over the summer for the lack of progress in putting a key section of the law — required background checks for people buying ammunition — into effect. An aide to Mr. Cuomo signed a memorandum with Republicans in the Senate this year suspending background checks for ammunition because of the “lack of adequate technology” that would allow such a system to function. Leah Gunn Barrett, executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, said her organization was in “constant contact with the governor’s office about getting the ammunition background check database up and running.” She added that the group was also pushing the state to pass laws creating a registry of lost and stolen weapons and requiring people to lock up their guns when not in use. Eric L. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, said he hoped Mr. Cuomo would zero in on the problem of handgun violence in New York. Mr. Adams, a Democrat, who is headlining a gala dinner for New Yorkers Against Gun Violence next week, said he was concerned that the Safe Act had done more to restrict automatic weapons than to control large-caliber handguns used in urban crimes. Asked if he envisioned additional gun control measures in New York, Mr. Cuomo said federal intervention against states with lax gun laws would be essential for further progress in combating the illegal use of firearms. “I’m urging federal action,” he said, “because it’s the only way you can make a real difference.”
|
Andrew Cuomo;Gun Control;Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence;2016 Presidential Election;Carey Gabay;School Shootings and Attacks;New York
|
ny0049983
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2014/10/18
|
Recriminations Follow Deaths of Hikers in Nepal
|
KATMANDU, Nepal — About a week ago, when Tej Bahadur Gurung, the director of a Himalayan tour company, read reports of a powerful cyclone headed for India, he thought little of it, dismissing it as “just news.” But on Sunday, he said, as unseasonable rains began to lash Katmandu, the Nepalese capital, he began to worry about his colleagues and seven Indian clients trekking the Annapurna Circuit in central Nepal . By that point in their two-week hike, they should have been at Khyang, a village more than 12,000 feet above sea level in the barren ridges of the Himalayas. They were at a point in the trail where their telephones were inoperable, so he called a resident of a village some distance below, and asked him to go up to Khyang by foot, and alert the travelers. He hoped, rather than believed, that this directive would bear fruit. A guide who worked for his company finally managed to call on Wednesday, still stuck in Khyang, where several feet of snow had accumulated since the storm hit on Tuesday. The guide’s message was short: “We lost three clients. Some Canadians died. We need a rescue.” Then the phone cut out. “The reports never said that bad weather was coming to Nepal,” said Mr. Gurung, with evident frustration. “I didn’t connect it — I thought it would be a little rain, some snow, some clouds. We are not weather experts.” As the death toll rose to 31 on Friday after this week’s intense snowstorm and avalanche — an aftereffect of the devastating cyclone — many involved in Nepal’s robust, expedition-centered tourism industry began to question why so many hikers were stranded on mountains in the midst of a weather event that appeared to have been predicted. Some tour operators blamed the government for not warning them; others suggested that the trekkers themselves and the companies that ran the tours were eager, perhaps overly so, to complete the trek. Meteorologists had some indication that the effects of Cyclone Hudhud would be felt in Nepal well before the snowstorm hit. Michael Fagin, lead forecaster at EverestWeather.com , said he warned his clients about the possibility of fallout from the cyclone on Oct. 3. His clients, experienced climbers on Nepal’s higher peaks, are outfitted with satellite phones and state-of-the-art gear. But trekkers tackle relatively easier, lower altitudes and are often less experienced and traveling without sophisticated gear. For guides and trekking companies, many of which lost employees and clients and are now facing the possibility of diminished tourist seasons for years to come, the immediate shock of the disaster gave way to recriminations. “The government should have alerted the trekking operators and the agencies that this might affect us,” said Mr. Gurung, managing director of Nepal Alternative Treks. The Nepal Meteorological Forecasting Division did issue at least one report about the cyclone, on Sunday, but by that time, many of the trekkers on the Annapurna Circuit were well on their way, and unreachable by phone. To address that shortcoming and prevent more catastrophes, the prime minister of Nepal announced on Thursday that the government would put in place an early weather warning system. “I want to assure that the government will make efforts to install early warning centers for weather along the important sectors, mainly in the Himalayas areas and along the rivers,” Prime Minister Sushil Koirala said in a statement. But it was unclear whether warnings would have kept trekkers and their guides off the mountains anyway. Many tour operators and guides said they did not usually look to the government for warnings about weather, and described October as the season’s clearest, most ideal month. Kusang Sherpa, a guide working with a group from Terra Ultima, a Quebec-based tour company, said his brother had called him on Oct. 7 to warn him about rains predicted in the area, but he hesitated, unwilling to call off the trek. “This is something we usually find out ourselves,” he said about adverse weather. When the storm hit on Tuesday, he was walking about 15 minutes ahead with some in the group, and he watched as an avalanche buried a colleague and two clients, all women, on the way to Khyang. Bikram Neupane, rescue coordinator for the Himalayan Rescue Association, said that generally, neither foreign trekkers nor their Nepalese guides check weather forecasts before beginning the journey. “They’re planning these trips for months or years,” he said. “They’re not looking at the weather. They’re not looking at the Internet.” And even if there are signs of bad weather, trekkers tend to push ahead. “Generally, there’s pressure to keep going,” he said. “They don’t want to turn back.” Rescue efforts by private trekking companies, a nonprofit expedition association and the Nepalese Army continued on Friday, as some agencies estimated that 100 people were still missing after Tuesday’s storm. Prakash Adhikari, chief executive of the Himalayan Rescue Association of Nepal, said the death toll could rival or exceed that of the last major trekking disaster, in 1995, when another storm and avalanche killed more than 60 people on the Gokyo Circuit near Mount Everest and required hundreds of trekkers to be evacuated by air. A member of the Trekking Agencies’ Association of Nepal, who had led a daylong expedition on Thursday, said he expected the death toll to rise, though it was difficult to find either victims or survivors. The army told the agency that it had found four more dead trekkers on Friday. On Thursday, Ang Pemba Sherpa, who worked on the rescue expedition, took a helicopter into the villages in one part of the Annapurna Circuit, in the Manang district. Amid the craggy mountain peaks and snow, the only clues to life were a series of thin tracks in snow that reached six and a half feet deep in places. He followed those tracks on foot and in a helicopter, but found only wild deer. One series of footsteps, which he was sure belonged to a human, led to a small cave nestled beside icy Tilicho Lake, at 16,000 feet one of the highest lakes in the world. “I tried to walk, but there was this much fresh snow,” he said, pointing to his chest. His helicopter hovered by the cave, hoping to wake resting travelers, but no one came out. Meanwhile, some tour operators are beginning to worry about the threat to their prime seasons. Mr. Fagin said that in the past 10 years, Nepal has been hit with increasingly worse weather stemming from cyclones in October. One tour operator, Sujoy Das, said he had canceled October treks out of a sense that the weather over the past decade in Nepal was slowly changing for the worse. Mr. Gurung said he was not willing to cancel October treks just yet, but agreed that the weather had declined. “The weather has been changing for the past two or three years,” he said. “There have been rains, clouds, snow — tourists can’t see anything.”
|
Himalayas;Nepal;Avalanche;Hiking;Fatalities,casualties
|
ny0001446
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2013/03/21
|
State and Federal Inquiry Asks Whether Heating Oil Companies Cheated Customers
|
State and federal authorities are investigating whether several New York heating oil businesses cheated tens of thousands of customers for years, selling fuel diluted with recycled or waste oil, according to law enforcement and city officials. In addition, two related civil lawsuits make accusations against two other companies that in recent years have sold tens of millions of gallons of oil to New York City and New York State for schools, housing complexes, universities, hospitals and other buildings. Burning waste oil in furnaces could present a significant environmental hazard, and if the accusations that the companies cut their fuel are correct, it would mean that dangerous amounts of toxic pollutants had been released into the atmosphere, experts said. As part of the criminal investigation, the authorities on March 12 raided at least five heating oil businesses in and around the city, including a delivery company and several businesses that deal in waste oil and some that are licensed to recycle it. Two days later, several commercial and residential building owners filed the two lawsuits, seeking class-action status. One accuses Castle Oil Corporation, which describes itself as the largest independent fuel oil distributor in the metropolitan area, of defrauding customers by mixing its fuel with waste oil. The other accuses Hess Corporation, among the world’s leading energy companies, of delivering fuel oil blended with waste oil to its customers, but one of the lawyers who brought the suit said in court last week that Hess might have been victimized by a trucking company or companies that it hired to deliver oil. Neither Hess nor Castle has come under scrutiny in the criminal inquiry, law enforcement and company officials have said. Both companies have denied any wrongdoing. They have contended that their oil met rigorous legal specifications and have called the lawsuits baseless, saying they would fight them in court. Court papers filed by Castle in the lawsuit say that it has an in-house laboratory that conducts daily testing to ensure its products meet the required standards, and that city inspectors are on site five days a week to test every truck leaving its terminal bound for city agencies. Last year alone, Castle sold more than 20 million gallons of No. 4 and No. 6 fuel oil — the grades burned in older furnaces — to New York City agencies, an official said. The lawsuit claims it was mixed with waste oil, like motor oil that has been used and discarded, sludge residue from commercial boilers and other used oil and lubricants. The lawsuits were filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. The presiding justice, Shirley Werner Kornreich, signed a temporary order last week barring Hess and Castle from providing fuel that contained waste oil or that was not up to legal specifications, saying she had concerns about possible environmental hazards. At a hearing on Wednesday, lawyers for Hess told the judge that they agreed to extending the order for a month while they prepare a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Castle’s lawyers said they were negotiating with the plaintiffs to reach a similar agreement. The businesses that were raided last week as part of the criminal investigation included Statewide Oil and Heating in Brooklyn — a company that is among several that deliver oil for Hess and that until 2011 delivered for Castle — and four interrelated companies that deal in waste oil: County Oil Company and J. B. Waste Oil Company in Astoria, Queens; New York Oil Recovery Corporation in Brooklyn; and Paradise Heating Oil in Ossining, N.Y. During the raids, investigators from several state, city and federal agencies — some wearing bright yellow head-to-toe protective suits — tested oil and seized computers, reams of records and other materials, carting away more than 100 boxes of documents from one company alone, according to officials and people briefed on the matter. They will examine transactions involving hundreds of millions of gallons of oil, some dating as far back as 10 years. The inquiry is in its early stages, one official said. The investigation, which grew out of a 2007 federal case in which two defendants pleaded guilty and cooperated with prosecutors, will examine a number of aspects of the businesses, including how transactions were recorded, how shipments were logged and how oil was tested, one official said. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a senior lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, the president of Waterkeeper Alliance and one of the lawyers who brought the lawsuit against Castle — said the environmental impact of the company’s actions were stark. “Basically, that company has turned every boiler or furnace that it services into a toxic-waste incinerator,” Mr. Kennedy said in an interview. “When you burn waste oil, there is a tremendous amount of not only benzene, toluene and xylene, which are known carcinogens, but in addition, there is an inventory of heavy metals that are extremely toxic, including mercury, lead, arsenic, cadmium, antimony and zinc.” But Castle, in its court papers, argued that the lawsuit’s contention that it mixed its fuel with waste oil was based on a single test of one delivery that it made last year out of 108,000, and that the suit provides no details on who conducted the test or how it was performed. Lawyers for Statewide and for County Oil and its three related companies also denied wrongdoing and said they were cooperating with the inquiry, which is being conducted by the office of the Manhattan district attorney, the Internal Revenue Service, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the city’s Department of Investigation, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and other agencies, officials said. In a statement, Statewide, which delivered oil from County, said that it “has always believed that County’s oil has met” city and state specifications and that it had no knowledge of County’s oil failing to meet specifications during random tests. Scott N. Fein, a lawyer for the four interrelated companies, said, “We are hopeful that a resolution can be achieved reasonably quickly.” Castle, in its court papers, said it blended oil to the city’s specifications for No. 4 and No. 6 fuel oil, which are different from applicable standards in New Jersey and New England; it also said it used some “lawfully processed” recycled oil. It argues that both practices are legal, and Mr. Fein said state and federal regulations allowed the blending of so-called virgin fuel oil with reprocessed or re-refined oil. But the lawsuits contended that city and state contracts barred their vendors from blending. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has been a proponent of helping buildings meet cleaner fuel requirements and instituted the NYC Clean Heat program in 2011, when the city adopted new regulations to phase out the use of Nos. 4 and 6 heating oils, which he has said emit soot, reduce air quality and can contribute to asthma. The city has coordinated with banks and energy companies, including Hess, and environmental groups to establish financing to help building owners pay the cost of conversion to cleaner fuels, like natural gas, ultralow sulfur No. 2 heating oil and biodiesel. The mayor has said the conversions were expected to reduce soot pollution by 50 percent by the end of this year and prevent 300 asthma-related hospital visits.
|
HazMat;Heater;Decisions and Verdicts;Oil and Gasoline;NYC
|
ny0223748
|
[
"us"
] |
2010/11/08
|
Children’s Mental Health Visits Up as Parent Deploys - Study
|
Young children in military families are about 10 percent more likely to see a doctor for a mental difficulty when a parent is deployed than when the parent is home, researchers are reporting Monday in the most comprehensive study to date of such families’ use of health insurance during wartime. Visits for mental health concerns, like anxiety and acting out at school, were the only kind to increase during deployment; complaints for all physical problems declined, the study found. Researchers have long known that deployment puts a strain on families, particularly spouses. Experts said the new study, being published in the journal Pediatrics and including more than half a million children, significantly fills out the picture of the entire family as multiple deployments have become a norm. “This study gives us an excellent beginning to understand what’s happening” in military households, said Benjamin Karney, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s pretty amazing that they were able to look at essentially the entire military population and strongly document something we suspected was happening but didn’t know for sure.” In the study, a research team led by Dr. Gregory H. Gorman of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences analyzed the health records of 642,397 children ages 3 to 8 with parents in the military. It compared the frequency of health visits from 2006 to 2007 when a parent was deployed with those when the parent was home. The researchers found that the children saw a doctor or other health professional about six times a year and about once every two years for a mental health reason. During deployment of a parent, however, the visit rate dropped by about 11 percent for physical problems but rose by 11 percent for psychological complaints. Stress, anxiety and attention-deficit problems were among the more common diagnoses, and mothers were far more likely than fathers to take a child to a doctor. “It’s not clear yet whether kids are in fact suffering more mental problems when a parent is deployed, or that mothers are more attendant to any shift in behavior,” Dr. Karney said. “That’s the next question we have to ask.” The rates were highest for 7- and 8-year-olds in two-parent families. This may be because when single parents deploy, children are left with caregivers who are less sensitive to changes in behavior and therefore less likely to seek treatment, the study’s authors suggested. “These findings are especially important for nonmilitary pediatricians, who provide almost two-thirds of outpatient care for the children of military parents,” they concluded. Despite the strain of duty, military marriages tend to be relatively stable, research suggests. In a recent study, Dr. Karney and John S. Crown of the RAND Corporation found time deployed was associated with a lower risk of divorce for most of the military, at least from 2002 to 2005.
|
Children and Youth;Mental Health and Disorders;Anxiety and Stress;Research;Psychology and Psychologists;Medicine and Health;Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences;United States Defense and Military Forces
|
ny0274651
|
[
"sports",
"basketball"
] |
2016/02/18
|
Heat to Travel Without Chris Bosh
|
MIAMI — The All-Star forward Chris Bosh was not with the Miami Heat for practice on Wednesday, and the team said he would not play in its game Friday at Atlanta. For his part, Bosh offered a cryptic sign of hope, with an audio-only post on Snapchat featuring a Kendrick Lamar lyric, “We gon’ be all right.” The Heat went back to work after the All-Star break, still not commenting about Bosh’s going back on blood thinners to combat a blood clot. Bosh missed the final 30 games of last season with a clot. The Heat planned to leave Thursday for Atlanta, where they will face the Hawks the next night. Bosh will meet with more doctors as he keeps trying to find a way to play again this season. The team said it had no other information to announce. “None of us are doctors,” the All-Star guard Dwyane Wade said. “None of us are in the rooms with whatever’s going on.” Bosh’s former Heat teammate LeBron James, now with the Cleveland Cavaliers, said: “I texted him today and just told him I was sorry. I hate that he has to go through this again.”
|
Basketball;Chris Bosh;Miami Heat
|
ny0193211
|
[
"sports",
"basketball"
] |
2009/02/14
|
Nowhere to Hide for Faltering Suns
|
PHOENIX — The hotel escalator was moving upward, but Amare Stoudemire was unsure of his destination. A news conference for N.B.A. All-Stars was about to begin, somewhere on the third floor. “Where am I going?” he asked someone wearing an All-Star Game credential. “To the Bulls,” said the someone, who happened to be a reporter from Chicago. Stoudemire laughed. His sense of humor is apparently intact, though it is being stretched to the limit. N.B.A. players, coaches, executives and owners are descending on Phoenix this weekend to celebrate the league’s signature exhibition, and possibly to pick over the remains of a once-proud franchise. The Suns , underachieving and in flux, are the uncomfortable hosts for the 2009 All-Star Game. Their record (28-23) is substandard. Their first-year coach (Terry Porter) is rumored to be on the firing line. Their lineup is talent-rich but chemistry-poor. And they are, quite possibly, about to be dismantled — starting with a trade of Stoudemire, the Suns’ erstwhile cornerstone. Stoudemire, their supremely athletic young forward, has been the subject of trade rumors for weeks. Chicago, Cleveland, Portland and Memphis are reportedly in pursuit. (Miami also had interest but instead acquired Jermaine O’Neal on Friday, in a trade for the former Sun Shawn Marion.) There are whispers that Phoenix already has a handshake deal but is waiting until after the All-Star Game to make it official. So as he joined the other All-Stars in a crowded hotel ballroom Friday afternoon, Stoudemire’s expression seemed caught between annoyance and resignation. His table in the ball room was engulfed with reporters, all wondering the same thing that fans here have been wondering. How could the Suns, with Stoudemire, Shaquille O’Neal and Steve Nash, be this mediocre? What happened to the N.B.A.’s most entertaining team? And why would they trade their best young player? “That, I don’t understand,” Stoudemire, 26, said. “I’m lost with that. They say they’re trying to fix the team, but then they’re talking about trading your young All-Star, your future, supposedly. So I’m not sure now whether it’s about building the team or it’s about saving money.” It is, apparently, about both. The Suns have the league’s eighth-highest payroll but are on pace for their worst record in five years. They are ninth in the Western Conference and in danger of missing the playoffs. The national recession may be squeezing the Suns’ ownership more than most. Robert Sarver, the team’s managing general partner, is invested primarily in real estate and banking. Cost-cutting is clearly part of the Suns’ agenda. It is well known in N.B.A. circles that Phoenix is asking for expiring contracts and young (meaning cheap) prospects in exchange for Stoudemire. Names that have been floated include Portland’s LaMarcus Aldridge and Chicago’s Tyrus Thomas. As the All-Star Game approached, team officials tried to calm the waters. “We do not want to make a bad basketball move,” Sarver said Thursday in an interview with radio station KTAR. “There’s no guarantee that Amare Stoudemire is going anywhere.” Steve Kerr, the team president, acknowledged the trade discussions Thursday night on TNT. “I’ve said all week that we are listening to” offers, Kerr said, “because we’re an underachieving team.” On Friday morning, Sarver had to rebut a newspaper report that Porter was about to be fired. The Suns, a high-octane, high-scoring, run-and-gun team under Coach Mike D’Antoni, have struggled to adapt to Porter’s more deliberate style. “I think guys just got to get used to his system,” O’Neal said, although he conceded that should have happened by now. Still, he added, the criticism is “not really fair to Terry.” “Something goes wrong, it’s going to be three guys get that get blame — Steve, myself and Terry,” O’Neal said. “So we just have to figure something out.” The Suns’ trade for O’Neal last February has not worked out as hoped. Although O’Neal has been resurgent this season, his presence has knocked Stoudemire off kilter. Stoudemire’s scoring average (21 points), rebounds (8.1) and field-goal percentage (.530) are down significantly, despite an increase in minutes. Meanwhile, Nash, the Suns’ two-time most valuable player, is sitting at home this weekend, having been left off of the All-Star roster for the first time since 2004. Nash, 35, is said to be the one untouchable player on the roster in trade talks. But some people around the league believe that he could ask for a trade this summer if the Suns plunge into a rebuilding mode. The Suns were Western Conference finalists in 2005 and 2006 under D’Antoni, but they have drafted poorly and have sold off numerous first-round picks under Sarver’s watch. Their identity was compromised last February, when they traded Shawn Marion for O’Neal, and changed irrevocably when the team forced out D’Antoni last spring. The Suns were once criticized as a one-dimensional thrill ride, an offensive machine that provided entertainment but not titles. Now they are neither entertaining nor successful. “Phoenix Suns fans are puling their hair out,” said Dan Bickley, a longtime Arizona Republic columnist who also hosts a radio talk show. “They’re finally starting to realize the magnitude of what has been lost and the magnitude of some of the mistakes that have been made along the way. And they want their window of opportunity back, they want their old coach back, they want their old system back. And it’s not coming back.” When Phoenix was awarded the All-Star Game two years ago, Jerry Colangelo, the former managing general partner, viewed it as a crowning achievement for the franchise and for the city’s downtown, both of which had undergone a renaissance. Colangelo is still a tireless cheerleader for the city, but he seemed saddened by the Suns’ quick decline. “Here’s the franchise that I gave birth to,” Colangelo said. “I gave my blood, sweat and soul to the franchise, and yes, I’m affected by it. Even though I’m not involved today, it’s part of me.” So the N.B.A.’s raucous weekend party is now doubling as a memorial.
|
Phoenix Suns;Trades (Sports);Basketball;All Star Games;Athletics and Sports;National Basketball Assn;Stoudemire Amare
|
ny0055468
|
[
"sports",
"football"
] |
2014/09/03
|
Fantasy Football: Waiver Wire Picks for Week 1
|
While the rest of your league was busy “winning” your draft (and telling you about it), they were also leaving good players on the waiver wire for Week 1, and possibly beyond. Finding those players is easier said than done, but you are not alone. I will help you find the leftovers each Tuesday for the rest of the season, and hopefully you can tell your fellow owners about how you picked up the next Julius Thomas as you hoist your trophy after the season. Here’s a look at two players at each position who are worth considering this week (the first player at each position is more likely to be available in shallower leagues, while the second player may be around in deeper leagues). Quarterback Jake Locker (TEN) — Let’s just pretend for a second that Locker stayed healthy last season. His 2013 pace would have led to a 60 percent completion rate with about 3,500 passing yards, 20 passing touchdowns, 400 rushing yards and 5 rushing touchdowns. He also would have outscored Carson Palmer and Eli Manning on a per game basis. If he can manage to stay on the field, with another year of development from Kendall Wright and Justin Hunter, Locker could very well finish as a top 15 fantasy quarterback. 2014 Fantasy Football Preseason Player Rankings Jason and Justin Sablich provide player rankings for standard and PPR scoring formats. They will be updated throughout the preseason. Geno Smith (NYJ) — Smith will have Michael Vick looking over his shoulder all season, but maybe that’s a good thing. After an up-and-down rookie season (which surprisingly included five weeks of top 5 QB fantasy performances), the Jets helped Smith by adding Eric Decker and drafting him a pass-catching tight end in Jace Amaro. There will still be growing pains, but Smith has top 20 potential at quarterback. Running Back Ahmad Bradshaw (IND) — While he will never be accused of being durable, Bradshaw could end up with 150 to 200 carries this season (and maybe more) if Trent Richardson struggles again. Bradshaw averaged 80 yards and a touchdown in the two games before he was hurt last season, and Richardson went on to average 2.9 yards per carry. Bradshaw will open the season as a backup, but he is worth a flier considering the lack of good running backs available. Dexter McCluster (TEN) — I’ll preface this by saying this recommendation is mostly directed at Points Per Reception leagues, but McCluster will find himself playing the Danny Woodhead role in Ken Whisenhunt’s offense (Woodhead finishing as the 12th best running back in PPR leagues last season). He will not finish as an RB1 as Woodhead did, but McCluster has two straight seasons of 50-plus receptions and a good chance at being a viable weekly flex play for owners in P.P.R. leagues. Wide Receiver Brian Hartline (MIA) — Poor Brian Hartline. All he does is put up two straight seasons of more than 70 receptions and 1,00 yards and he still gets no love. Sure, he is not as exciting as T.Y. Hilton, but he did finish as the 26th best wide receiver in standard leagues last season. He lacks the upside of some other waiver wire receivers, but Hartline is as consistent as they come. Aaron Dobson (NE) — I’m not sure why (I do, it’s the off-season foot surgery), but the Patriots’ best downfield threat since Randy Moss is available in a lot of leagues. While he had his rookie struggles, Dobson showed flashes of putting it together before he was hurt last season and is poised to make the famed second-year receiver jump. Tight End Travis Kelce (KC) — Folks in deeper leagues will be laughing at this suggestion, but Kelce is still available in over 90 percent of most 10-team leagues. The only thing stopping the 6-foot-5 Kelce from being a top 10 fantasy tight end is uncertain playing time. With Dwayne Bowe suspended for a week, there is a good chance that we are talking about Kelce as the top waiver add next week. Image Aaron Dobson is the best deep threat that the Patriots have at wide receiver. Credit John Minchillo/Associated Press Richard Rodgers (GB) — I did a little crowdsourcing for this article and promised to include the best answer, so a big thanks to @AdamGuthridge for this: “Richard Rodgers may well be the Julius Thomas of 2014. Potent offense, sound running game, opportunity.” With Rodgers getting the first chance to step into the Jermichael Finley role, and with Aaron Rodgers as his quarterback, I agree with Adam. Defense Cleveland Browns — The Browns finished as the 13th best fantasy defense last season (I was surprised, too). There are a lot of talented, young players on the Browns defense and they are available in quite a few leagues. It is worth taking a chance on them in case this is the year they put it together. Jets — Need a Week 1 defense to stream? The Oakland Raiders are starting a rookie, and while Derek Carr may very well end up being a good quarterback someday, his first N.F.L. start, on the road, seems like a good target for fantasy purposes. Kicker Matt Bryant (ATL) — Bryant was the third best kicker back in 2012 and was even more accurate in 2013. The only problem was that his attempts dwindled by 29 percent last season because of injuries to Julio Jones and Roddy White. With a healthy offense, Bryant should get plenty of opportunities, and he is available in more than 70 percent of leagues. You will also get eight games of guaranteed good (indoor) weather with Bryant. Whoever New Orleans Signs — At press time, the Saints did not have a kicker on their roster. Unless Drew Brees can moonlight as a kicker, they will sign someone who will step into the enviable fantasy role of kicking in the high-powered Saints offense (and again, in a dome).
|
Football;Fantasy sport;Geno Smith;Jake Locker;Travis Kelce;Richard Rodgers;Ahmad Bradshaw;Dexter McCluster
|
ny0181322
|
[
"business"
] |
2007/06/28
|
Southwest to Slow Growth
|
DALLAS, June 27 (AP) — Southwest Airlines will add fewer planes to its fleet than it had planned and will tweak its flight schedule in several cities as it grapples with a slowing American economy and high fuel costs, the company’s chief executive, Gary C. Kelly, said Wednesday. Instead of adding 34 aircraft by 2008, Southwest will add 19 for a total of 539 by the end of next year, Mr. Kelly said in a meeting with analysts and investors in New York. By early next month, Southwest will eliminate 39 round-trip flights, including its two daily nonstop routes between Philadelphia and Los Angeles, while adding 45 flights between cities including New Orleans and Birmingham, Ala. The changes are intended to restore profit growth, which Mr. Kelly said was expected to slow to 6 percent, down from 8 percent. He maintained a revenue goal of $1 billion by 2010. “In this economic environment, we simply need to take less risk and grow more slowly,” he said.
|
Southwest Airlines;United States Economy;Airlines and Airplanes
|
ny0130524
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2012/06/22
|
Vietnam Law Claims Spratly Islands, Angering China
|
BEIJING — In a show of its resolve in a dispute over the South China Sea, China sharply criticized Vietnam on Thursday for passing a law that claims sovereignty over the Paracel and Spratly Islands, saying they are the “indisputable” territory of China. The Foreign Ministry in Beijing summoned the Vietnamese ambassador, Nguyen Van Tho, to strongly protest the new law, said a spokesman, Hong Lei. “Vietnam’s Maritime Law, declaring sovereignty and jurisdiction over the Paracel and Spratly Islands, is a serious violation of China’s territorial sovereignty,” a ministry statement said. “China expresses its resolute and vehement opposition.” The dispute between China and Vietnam over the law, which had been in the works for years, is the latest example of Beijing’s determination to tell its Asian neighbors that the South China Sea is China’s preserve. The Chinese statement comes two weeks before a meeting of foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which will be attended by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The South China Sea is expected to be high on the agenda. To reinforce its claims, China also announced that it had raised the level of governance on three island groups in the sea: the Spratlys, the Paracels and the Macclesfield Bank, known in Chinese as the Nansha, Xisha and Zhongsha Islands. The Chinese State Council issued a statement placing the three groups of islands and their surrounding waters under the city of Sansha as a prefectural-level administration rather than a lower county-level one. Xinhua, the state-run news agency, quoted a Ministry of Civil Affairs spokesman as saying that the new arrangement would “further strengthen China’s administration and development” of the three island groups. China and South Vietnam fought over the Paracels and the Spratlys in 1974, and a unified Vietnam fought briefly with China in 1988 over the islands. China controls the Paracels and reefs and shoals within the Spratlys, according to the International Crisis Group, a research organization. The Macclesfield Bank comprises a sunken atoll and reefs. In another South China Sea squabble, President Benigno S. Aquino III of the Philippines said Wednesday that he would order Philippine government vessels back to the Scarborough Shoal if China did not remove its ships from the disputed area, as had been promised. A two-month standoff between China and the Philippines at the shoal appeared to have been defused last weekend , when a typhoon forced Philippine fishing boats and a navy vessel to leave. China pledged to remove its vessels, too, the Philippines said at the time. But this week, Philippines officials said half a dozen Chinese government vessels and fishing boats remained at the shoal. The exact position of the Chinese boats — whether they were inside the shoal’s large lagoon, or outside the lagoon in more open waters — was not clear. The Philippine government spokesman, Raul Hernandez, said a verbal agreement between China and the Philippines applied only to the withdrawal of vessels from the sheltered lagoon, where Chinese fishermen were poaching rare corals, fish and sharks. “The two sides are still talking about the vessels outside the lagoon,” he told a Philippine radio station. The Asean ministerial meeting in Phnom Penh will almost certainly come under competing pressures from China and the United States over the tensions in the South China Sea. Last month, at an Asean session in Phnom Penh in preparation for the ministerial meeting, Cambodia, which holds the chairmanship of the regional bloc and is a close ally of China, refused to allow the issuing of a statement on the need for a peaceful resolution of the disputes. The United States is expected to urge the association to strengthen an existing code of conduct on the South China Sea, probably over China’s objections.
|
China;Vietnam;Spratly Islands;South China Sea;International Relations;Asean
|
ny0048692
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2014/11/24
|
Iran Nuclear Negotiators, Facing Key Differences, Weigh Extending Deadline
|
VIENNA — With a deadline for an agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program just a day away, American officials finally acknowledged Sunday that the two sides would not reach a deal by Monday’s deadline but would probably extend the talks a second time to explore a series of possible solutions. It was unclear how long the talks would be prolonged or what additional sanctions relief Iran might receive as negotiators wrestled with differences such as how much nuclear fuel Iran could produce, how long the accord would last and how intrusive inspections would be, among other issues. Secretary of State John Kerry raised the idea of extending the talks in a meeting Sunday night with Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister. It was not clear whether a document detailing new points of convergence would be issued Monday in return for an extension in the talks. “Our focus remains on taking steps forward toward an agreement, but it’s only natural that just over 24 hours from the deadline, we are discussing a range of options,” said a senior State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “An extension is one of those options. It should come as no surprise that we are also engaged in a discussion of the options with the Iranians.” Earlier on Sunday, President Obama said that the gaps in the negotiations were still “significant.” Mr. Obama appeared to rule out giving in to one of Iran’s central demands: that as part of any final deal, the United States and its partners lift, quickly and permanently, all the nuclear-related sanctions against Iran. “I think Iran would love to see the sanctions end immediately, and then to still have some avenues that might not be completely closed, and we can’t do that,” Mr. Obama said, referring to avenues for producing a nuclear weapon. Timeline on Iran’s Nuclear Program Whether Iran is racing toward nuclear weapon capabilities is one of the most contentious foreign-policy issues challenging the West. But he also held out hope that an agreement, if it could be struck, would change the nature of the relationship with Iran for the first time in more than three decades. “What a deal would do,” he said, “is take a big piece of business off the table and perhaps begin a long process in which the relationship not just between Iran and us but the relationship between Iran and the world, and the region, begins to change,” Mr. Obama said Sunday in an interview on ABC. The decision of when and under what conditions to agree to a negotiating extension has been a highly delicate one for the Obama administration. It would like to lock in many areas of agreement that negotiators for the two sides have spent months drafting and which are now waiting for political decisions from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Mr. Obama. But given the failure to close the wide gap that remains, neither leader seems inclined to end the negotiations — or to declare failure. The Iranians have reportedly declined to agree to dismantle a significant number of their centrifuges — the machines that enrich uranium at supersonic speed — just as Mr. Obama has refused to end the sanctions by a specific date, until he can measure Iran’s compliance. And other issues are in dispute. One is how many years an agreement would last before Iran would be free, like any other signer of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to develop as large a civilian nuclear infrastructure as it would like. Another is what kind of freedom inspectors would have to visit any location where they suspect nuclear-related work might be underway. Image Iranian negotiators have expressed concern about President Obama’s ability to deliver an agreement that will survive contact with a skeptical Congress. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times For weeks, the American team has sought to keep the pressure on the Iranians to make hard decisions in the talks by insisting that an extension was not on the table. “We are not talking about an extension,” Mr. Kerry insisted as recently as Thursday. “We are driving towards what we believe is the outline of an agreement that we think we can have.” Republican and even some Democratic lawmakers have warned that they would press for additional sanctions if the American negotiators did not emerge from the latest round of talks with provisions that toughened the temporary agreement. That agreement freezes much of Iran’s nuclear program and is set to expire Monday evening. The Obama administration already agreed to one extension in July, which it justified on the grounds that sufficient progress had been made to warrant continuing the talks until Nov. 24, the anniversary of an agreement for a temporary accord that froze some of Iran’s advances and required Iran to dilute a stockpile of fuel that the West feared could quickly be converted to weapons use. A breakdown in talks, American and Iranian officials seem to agree, is in neither side’s interest. Any extension that might be agreed to would presumably keep in place the freeze on much of Iran’s nuclear program and could be cited by the White House to make the case to Congress against additional sanctions. It would also enable the United States to argue to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel — whom Mr. Kerry called on Saturday — that there is no need for military action because Iran’s nuclear threat is less than it was a year ago. But the temporary accord was never envisioned to be permanent. And in Tehran, where the issue is whether negotiators can win an end to the economic sanctions, an extension would probably not allow Iran to sell more oil on international markets or resume normal banking relationships with the West. Image Secretary of State John Kerry with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif of Iran on Sunday. Credit Pool photo by Ronald Zak The key question is what form an extension might take. With American officials saying that their goal in the talks is to lengthen the “breakout” time Iran would need to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon to at least a year, the best option for American officials would be to conclude a broad understanding on the main elements of a comprehensive accord and to thrash out the details over the next few months. The option that would be the most difficult to sell would be a straight extension without any clear headway on the remaining stumbling blocks. In between are an array of possibilities, which may emerge only as the negotiators continue their work on Monday. Mr. Kerry’s Sunday meeting with Mr. Zarif was the sixth time that he had met with Mr. Zarif alone or with Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s envoy to the talks, since Mr. Kerry arrived here Thursday. Mr. Kerry also rode to the airport here Sunday to talk with Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister. While Saudi Arabia is not involved in the talks, it has long been worried that an agreement might allow Iran to keep more of its nuclear infrastructure than Saudi Arabia is comfortable with. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, also flew here to join the talks. An Iranian negotiator, who was not named, was quoted by an Iranian news agency on Sunday as saying that a detailed and comprehensive agreement was no longer possible by the Monday deadline. The Iranian held out the hope that a general understanding on the main elements of an agreement, such as the number of centrifuges and a plan for ending sanctions, might yet be possible, though there was nothing in his comments to indicate that Tehran was prepared to make the sort of concessions that the United States says are needed.
|
Iran;Nuclear weapon;John Kerry;Barack Obama;US Foreign Policy
|
ny0112403
|
[
"sports",
"golf"
] |
2012/02/06
|
Kyle Stanley Wins Phoenix Open a Week After Losing in a Playoff
|
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Some of the most prolific authors are golfers, who can write a new narrative every week. On Sunday, seven long days after completing a horror story worthy of Stephen King, Kyle Stanley put the finishing flourishes on a redemptive tale. Stanley came from eight strokes back to win the Phoenix Open, a 180-degree plot reversal from the Farmers Insurance Open in San Diego, where he led by five going into the final round only to succumb to Brandt Snedeker in a playoff after making a triple bogey on the final hole of regulation. Stanley’s first PGA Tour victory came at the expense of Spencer Levin, the 54-hole leader, who struggled to a four-over 75 after posting sub-70 scores in the first three rounds. Levin finished third, at 13-under 271, two shots behind Stanley. “I just maybe tried a little too hard,” a dry-eyed Levin said, adding, “Just wanting it a little too much, I think.” As Snedeker did a week earlier, Stanley made his charge from the third-to-last group, carding a bogey-free round of 65. Finishing one stroke behind in second was Ben Crane, who posted a 66 while playing alongside Stanley. “It’s an unbelievable turnaround,” Stanley said, adding: “I’m not sure what I’m thinking right now. You go from a very low point to a high point. I’m not sure I expected to maybe recover this quickly.” Stanley made a terrific recovery shot at the 17th hole after hitting his drive into a cacti patch 50 yards right of the green. He took his pitching wedge out of his bag but was talked into using a more lofted wedge by his caddie, Brett Waldman, who marveled at the shot Stanley produced with a hooded club face. The ball landed 22 feet from the pin, and Stanley two-putted to salvage a par. “I guess you couldn’t ask for a more perfect shot,” Waldman said. Another week, another plot reversal; he and Stanley had rued not using a less-lofted club on what proved to be the most pivotal shot of their final round in San Diego. On his approach shot at No. 18, Stanley used his sand wedge to hit a shot that spun off the green and into the water. Stanley, 24, also escaped with a miraculous par on TPC Scottsdale’ s signature hole, No. 16, a par-3 that appears to be dug out of a mosh pit. He got up and down after hitting his tee shot left of the green. At No. 18, Crane hit his drive, and the next sound the gallery heard was a splash. Crane’s ball did not get wet but a spectator did, covering the width of the water hazard with several flailing freestyle strokes before being apprehended by security officers upon reaching the other side. “I didn’t really expect that,” Stanley said, adding, “It actually probably loosened us up a little bit.” Stanley covered the final nine holes in 33 strokes, eight fewer than he had the previous Sunday. “I think playing from behind was quite a bit easier,” said Stanley, who was in tears after last week’s collapse. “I think when you have a big lead, it’s human nature to want to protect it. I think it’s a little easier kind of being on the chasing side. It certainly was today.” As he walked from the 18th green to the scoring trailer, Stanley was stopped by Aaron Baddeley, who offered his congratulations. “Really impressive round,” Baddeley said afterward. “Sort of the exact opposite of last week.” The word impressive seemed to roll off everybody’s lips when talking about Stanley’s turnaround. “Golf’s a cruel game sometimes,” Waldman said. “He got his revenge today. I can’t say how impressed I am with how he handled everything last week and how he handled himself this week.” For Stanley, the best perk of winning was not securing a Masters berth. It was that he lived down his failure in San Diego. “That’ll be nice,” he said. “I don’t really want to talk about it, anyways.” Now it’s left to Levin to write a new story. “You know, I really feel for him, experiencing that,” Stanley said, adding: “He’s a very good player, way too good of a player to not bounce back or recover. I feel bad for him. I really do.”
|
Spencer Levin;PGA Tour;Golf;Kyle Stanley
|
ny0203709
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2009/08/06
|
Italy Is a ‘Mad House’ for Lottery
|
ROME — Neophytes do it. Financially pinched town councils do it. Even people who usually shun gambling as a cunning ruse for the state to raise taxes do it. With a record €119 million jackpot at stake in Italy’s state lottery, millions have been gripped by lotto fever. “It’s become a bit of a mad house,” said Paolo Valli, owner of the neighborhood Bar del Pino in southern Rome, where the number of wagers has tripled in the past month for the SuperEnalotto, which has not registered a winning six-number combination since January. Although the Italian capital is emptying out, as it does every summer, draw days — Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays — have been attracting small crowds to Mr. Valli’s bar. “People complain that the jackpot is too high, and that people are spending too much, but then they come in and play,” he said with a shrug. The economic crisis and growing unemployment seem only to have fueled dreams of instant wealth. “It’s been shown statistically that numbers of bettors increase in times of economic downturn,” said Silvana Mazzocchi, who has written two books on gambling and its addictions. Last week, the national statistics agency for Italy, Istat, revealed that almost three million Italians — just under five percent of the population — were in absolute poverty in 2008, surviving below acceptable levels. In an unrelated report a few days earlier, the Censis social studies institute estimated that in June, Italians were spending an average of €7.8 million a day on SuperEnalotto tickets. “I’d ban all forms of gambling, it is just another way for the state to levy taxes,” said Lucio Orlanno, an insurer who had just bought several lottery tickets at the Bar del Pino. (He won €14 on Tuesday for guessing three numbers in the lottery and said he was feeling lucky.) “I usually don’t play, only when the prize is so high, that’s when I too get the fever.” The betting boom has raised concerns among psychiatrists and officials of the ever-present Roman Catholic church who warn that the quick-fix hope raised by gambling can lead to long-term woe. Father Alberto D’Urso, founder of the National Anti-Usury Consultative Board, said that gambling was one of the principal motives of debt, which in turn fueled usury. “We can’t ignore the fact that thousands of people find themselves in trouble,” he said. “When gambling becomes pathological it’s not a game anymore.” “Gambling takes advantage of weak people,” added Rolando De Luca, a psychotherapist specialized in gambling addiction. He strongly criticized the state, which gets a percentage of gambling profits, equating state-sponsored gambling games with “cocaine addiction centers run by the Medellín cartel.” Money made from gambling, he added, brought little to the economy. “You aren’t spreading your wealth around or boosting employment if you’re just buying lottery tickets,” he said. According to news reports, some strapped town councils are even looking to Lady Luck. Earlier this week, the small Sicilian town of Ficarra, diverted money from council salaries to bet on numbers associated with the local patron saint, the Virgin of the Assumption, the news agency ANSA reported. In Varallo, a town of 7,500 in Piedmont, the mayor convinced his five-person cabinet to cough up cash and buy a €100 ticket, which allows for several combinations of numbers. “We want to abolish taxes, pay off mortgages and, why not, bring a little happiness,” Gianluca Buonanno, the mayor, said during an interview by telephone. He said they would continue to play until the six-number combination was drawn, hopefully with his winning numbers. “We could buy some top soccer players,” like David Beckham and Alessandro del Piero, he mused. “That would put our town on the map.”
|
Lotteries;Italy
|
ny0002456
|
[
"science",
"earth"
] |
2013/03/15
|
Algae Blooms Threaten Lake Erie
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TOLEDO, Ohio — For those who live and play on the shores of Lake Erie, the spring rains that will begin falling here soon are less a blessing than a portent. They could threaten the very future of the lake itself. Lake Erie is sick. A thick and growing coat of toxic algae appears each summer, so vast that in 2011 it covered a sixth of its waters, contributing to an expanding dead zone on its bottom, reducing fish populations, fouling beaches and crippling a tourism industry that generates more than $10 billion in revenue annually. The spring rains reliably predict how serious the summer algae bloom will be: the more frequent and heavy the downpours, the worse the outbreak. And this year the National Weather Service says there is a higher probability than elsewhere of above-normal spring rains along the lake’s west end, where the algae first appear. The private forecaster Accuweather predicts a wetter than usual March and April throughout the region . It is perhaps the greatest peril the lake has faced since the 1960s, when relentless and unregulated dumping of sewage and industrial pollutants spawned similar algae blooms and earned it the nickname “North America’s Dead Sea.” Erie recovered then, thanks to a multibillion-dollar cleanup by the United States and Canada that became a legendary environmental success story. But while the sewage and pollutants are vastly reduced, the blooms have returned, bigger than ever. Once, fisheries and sports anglers pulled five million walleye from the rejuvenated lake every year. Today the catch is roughly one-fifth that, the Environmental Protection Agency says. Commercial fisheries’ smelt catch is three-fifths of past levels. The number of charter fishing companies has dropped 40 percent. Sport fish like walleye and yellow perch are deserting the lake’s center and moving shoreward in search of oxygen and food. “We’ve seen this lake go from the poster child for pollution problems to the best example in the world of ecosystem recovery. Now it’s headed back again,” said Jeffrey M. Reutter, who directs the Sea Grant College Program at Ohio State University. Image A water snake in Lake Erie. Credit Jeff Reutter The algae problem is hardly isolated. Similar blooms are strangling other lakes in North America and elsewhere, including Lake Winnipeg, one of Canada’s largest, and some bays in Lake Huron. The algae are fed by phosphorus, the same chemical that American and Canadian authorities spent billions to reduce — for good, they believed — in the 1970s and ‘80s. This time, new farming techniques, climate change and even a change in Lake Erie’s ecosystem make phosphorus pollution more intractable. Like plants, algae thrive on a phosphorus diet. Decades ago, some 64 million pounds of phosphorus flowed into Lake Erie each year from industrial and sewer outfalls, leaky septic tanks and runoff from fertilized lawns and farms. The United States and Canadian governments responded by capping household detergent phosphates, reining in factory pollutants and spending $8 billion to upgrade lakeside sewage plants. Phosphorus levels plunged by two thirds, and the algae subsided. But in the mid-1990s, it began creeping back. “2002 was the last year that we didn’t have much of a bloom,” said Thomas Bridgeman, a professor at the Lake Erie Center at the University of Toledo. “2008, ’09 and ’10 were really bad years for algal blooms. “And then we got 2011.” 2011 was the wettest spring on record. That summer’s algae bloom, mostly poisonous blue-green algae called Microcystis, sprawled nearly 120 miles, from Toledo to past Cleveland. It produced lake-water concentrations of microcystin, a liver toxin, that were 1,200 times World Health Organization limits, tainting the drinking water for 2.8 million consumers. Image Tom Bridgeman, a professor at the University of Toledo, stood deep in deposits of algae, whose growth is encouraged by the runoff of agricultural fertilizers. Credit Dr. Tom Bridgeman Dead algae sink to the lake bed, where bacteria that decompose the algae consume most of the oxygen. In central Lake Erie, a dead zone now covers up to a third of the entire lake bottom in bad years. “The fact that it’s bigger and longer in duration is a bad thing,” said Peter Richards, a senior research scientist at the National Center for Water Quality Research at Heidelberg University in Ohio. “Fish that like to live in cold bottom waters have to move up in the thermocline, where it’s too warm for them. They get eaten, and that tends to decrease the growth rates of a lot of the fish.” Last spring, the rains arrived amid a record drought, and the algae retreated to waters near Toledo. “We had two extremes in two years,” Mr. Bridgeman said. “The lake responded exactly the way we thought it would.” But no one hopes for a drought. To cut phosphorus levels this time, scientists say, the habits — and the expensive equipment — of 70,000 farmers along the Erie shore must change. Most of the phosphorus that feeds algae these days comes from farmland. Much of the phosphorus originates near Toledo, where the Maumee River completes a 137-mile journey and empties into the lake’s shallow western basin. The Maumee watershed is Ohio’s breadbasket, two-thirds farmland, mostly corn and soybeans. Farming there is changing radically, said Steve Davis, a watershed specialist with the United States Agriculture Department’s Natural Resource Conservation Service. Image Algae blooms in Lake Erie. Credit Brenda Culler/ODNR Coastal Management Plowing is declining; 55 percent of farmland is planted using anti-erosion methods promoted by the Resource Conservation Service, like no-till farming, in which seeds are inserted into small holes in unplowed ground. Fertilizing is now contracted to companies that cast pellets onto the bare ground from trucks, or to “factory farms” that spray liquefied animal waste on their cropland. Mr. Davis has analyzed his watershed almost to the last cornstalk. Animal waste makes up 14 percent of all fertilizer. The rest is fertilizer pellets, 48 pounds per acre. In past days, most pellets sank into plowed soil and stayed there. Now, rain and snowmelt wash an average 1.1 of those 48 pounds off unplowed soil. Much winds up in the Maumee, then in Lake Erie. The Maumee supplies only about 5 percent of Erie’s water, but half its phosphorus. And while algae struggle to digest ordinary phosphorus — only about 30 percent gets taken up — fertilizer phosphorus is designed for plants to use instantly. Two other recent changes make matters still worse. One is the zebra mussel, a foreign invader that has dominated Erie since its discovery in 1988. Millions of mussels feast on nontoxic green algae, removing competitors to the toxic Microcystis algae and decimating the base of the food chain that supports Erie’s fish. Then in a vicious cycle, mussels excrete the algae’s phosphorus, providing the Microcystis a ready-made meal. The other is climate change. Only heavy rains wash fertilizer off farmland, and since 1940, Mr. Richards said, heavy spring rainstorms have increased by 13 percent. The Maumee’s phosphorus can be limited, Mr. Davis says, but only if farmers change their approach. More soil testing and new G.P.S.-guided machinery can ensure that crops receive the minimum fertilizer they need. Other new equipment can put fertilizer in the ground during planting instead of pellets being broadcast in the winter. Leaving land fallow beside streams reduces runoff. The catch is that fertilizing is already efficient: that wasted 1.1 pounds is but 2 percent of all pellets spread on Maumee-area farms. “When you’re only losing a pound per acre,” Mr. Davis said, “how do you cut it to a half?”
|
Algae;Lake Erie;Water pollution;Invasive species;Agriculture;Fertilizer
|
ny0295195
|
[
"sports",
"football"
] |
2016/12/20
|
Atlanta Falcons Dominate Despite Loss of Star Receiver
|
FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — The Atlanta Falcons can afford to be patient with Julio Jones’s return from a sprained toe. Atlanta has scored more than 40 points in two straight lopsided victories without Jones, their star wide receiver. These are heady times for the Falcons’ offense, which has obliterated the team’s single-season scoring record with two games left in the regular season. The Falcons play at Carolina on Saturday. Atlanta is the N.F.L.’s top-scoring team, and the race is not close. The Falcons (9-5) have 469 points, 63 more than the second-place Saints’ 406. Atlanta’s players are not saying much about the scoring record, instead focusing on the race for the N.F.C. South title. Atlanta is one game ahead of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the division. “If we have to score 3 points or we have to score a lot of points, we just want to do our part in winning,” right guard Chris Chester said Tuesday. Jones watched from the sideline on Sunday as the Falcons beat San Francisco, 41-13, to shatter the team mark of 442 points set by the 1998 squad that made the Super Bowl. Jones also missed the previous week’s 42-14 victory over the Rams. The Falcons’ success has placed quarterback Matt Ryan in the discussion for most valuable player. He has 32 touchdown passes with only seven interceptions. “For me, he’s my M.V.P.,” running back Devonta Freeman said Tuesday. Ryan has consistently distributed his passes to many targets. Depth at receiver kept the offense moving even without Jones. Aldrick Robinson led the team with a personal-best 111 yards receiving on four catches against the 49ers. Taylor Gabriel added three catches for 60 yards, including his team-leading sixth touchdown reception. “It shows the depth that we have by having each other’s back,” receiver Justin Hardy said. “If one guy goes down, another guy steps in and we don’t miss a beat. It says a lot about the team and the character we have.” The Falcons also have depth at running back, with Freeman, who ran for three touchdowns against the 49ers, and Tevin Coleman sharing the carries. “I think definitely this year it has been fun to see so many people step up and make big plays, and that’s been a really exciting part of our offense,” center Alex Mack said. “It’s not just one guy having a great season. It’s a lot of guys doing a lot of good things all over the field a lot of times.”
|
Football;Atlanta Falcons;Julio Jones
|
ny0032753
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2013/12/27
|
New York Soon to Trail Florida in Population
|
ALBANY — New York, whose status as the most populous state has long been ceded, will soon fall behind Florida into fourth place, a long-anticipated drop that is rife with symbolism and that could carry potentially serious economic consequences in coming years. When the Census Bureau releases its latest population estimates on Monday, demographers expect that Florida and New York will be narrowly separated — perhaps by as little as a few thousand people — and that if Florida does not pass New York this time, it almost certainly will do so in 2014. The census figures underscore immigration trends, as foreign-born migrants continue to move to warm-weather states such as California and Texas — No. 1 and 2 — as well as to Florida. The newcomers also include winter-weary New Yorkers who move or retire to Florida at a rate of over 50,000 a year, twice the number of Floridians who head to New York. But the shift also highlights the struggles in upstate New York, which has lost large-scale manufacturing jobs and large chunks of population, offsetting consistent gains in New York City. But the city’s growth has seemingly not been robust enough to stave off hubs in Florida like Jacksonville, Miami-Dade County and Tampa. “It’s going to happen,” said Andrew A. Beveridge, a professor of sociology at Queens College and an expert on the census, on New York’s falling into fourth place. “And if Florida accidentally grew faster and New York slowed down, it could have happened already.” Image Beyond a blow to New Yorkers’ collective ego, the changing population pattern could have many practical and political implications, including diminished congressional delegations, a setback New York already suffered in 2010 — the year of the last decennial census count — when the state lost two districts, while Florida gained two seats. Census data also inform how billions of dollars in federal funding and grants are divvied up among the states, for things like highway planning and construction, public aid for housing and health care and education programs. All of which has Florida feeling good. “Every number we see, if we don’t pass them this year, we’re going to pass them in the next few months,” Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, a Republican, said in an interview last week. “Florida’s on a roll.” A closer look at the numbers shows that New York is not actually losing population. It has been growing at about 1 percent annually of late, but it simply cannot keep up with Florida’s rate of growth, which was about 2.7 percent between April 2010 and mid-2012, according to the Census Bureau. However, New York’s population is declining in upstate cities like Buffalo, which has lost more than 10 percent of its population since 2000, as well as places like Syracuse and Rochester, where population is largely stagnant. Turning around upstate has been a major focus of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, who has tried to revive its fortunes through a variety of economic development programs, including the legalization of more casinos and a program that allows businesses to start or relocate on or near college campuses and pay no state taxes for 10 years. Florida has actually been creeping up on the Empire State for decades. The last census estimate, for July 2012, put the states nearly tied: New York with 19.6 million and Florida with 19.3 million. But that margin was getting narrower by the day, according to Jan K. Vink, a specialist with the Program on Applied Demographics at Cornell University, which both supplies data to the Census Bureau and reviews its estimates. Image A man collecting empty bottles in Syracuse. Credit Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times Scott Cody, a demographer at the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research in Gainesville, which also consults with the bureau, said that trends showed Florida passing New York “in the near future,” barring what he called “the unusual events that can occur: tsunamis, or asteroids, and total economic breakdown.” Florida had such a meltdown — a bursting housing bubble — but is on the rebound and continues to be a magnet for new arrivals. While demographers tend to stay neutral on the issue of population growth, they say that bigger is generally better because it tends to reflect an attractive economic climate. “Once you have a growing economy, you tend to attract a lot of young people,” said Mark Mather, a demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit research group in Washington. And that, in turn, he said, means “a lot of babies.” New York City certainly still attracts young people, Mr. Mather said, “but the city is different from the state.” Image A cigar shop in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood. Florida is on track to become the third most populous state. Credit Angel Valentin for The New York Times However, bigger is not always better. While politicians might welcome the larger tax bases that come with bigger populations, demographers say a need for more services increases. More populous places also have more congestion on highways and more wear-and-tear on public spaces. “Just because one state is passing another, it’s not a good or a bad thing,” Mr. Cody said. “It doesn’t mean one state is better than another.” But Mr. Scott said he believes that a large part of Florida’s appeal has to do with its pro-business, low tax approach. Florida also has no personal income tax. And then there is Florida’s decided climatological edge, which attracts both retirees and those still in the work force, he said. “When I call on companies around the country, I clearly talk to them about what the weather’s like,” Mr. Scott said. “I say, ‘Oh it’s 40-what?,’ and I joke, ‘I’ve got to turn down the air conditioning so you can hear me.’ ” Gov. Cuomo pointed to his tax-free campus plan, known as Start-up NY , as an example of how “it’s less expensive for businesses to locate in New York State.” And as for the weather, Mr. Cuomo said he was happy with New York’s. “Florida and the South have a warmer climate if that’s what you prefer,” he said. “I prefer to have seasons.”
|
Population;Florida;New York;Census;Economy;Immigration;Federal Aid;NYC;Andrew Cuomo;Rick Scott
|
ny0226020
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2010/10/26
|
Pressing China, U.S. Lines Up Allies on Issues Like Currency
|
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, facing a confrontational relationship with China on exchange rates, trade and security issues, is stiffening its approach toward Beijing, seeking allies to confront a newly assertive power that officials now say has little intention of working with the United States. In a shift from its assiduous one-on-one courtship of Beijing, the administration is trying to line up coalitions — among China’s next-door neighbors and far-flung trading partners — to present Chinese leaders with a unified front on thorny issues like the currency and their country’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. The advantages and limitations of this new approach were on display over the weekend at a meeting of the world’s largest economies in South Korea. The United States won support for a concrete pledge to reduce trade imbalances, which will put more pressure on China to allow its currency to rise in value. But Germany, Italy and Russia balked at an American proposal to place numerical limits on these imbalances, a step that would have further isolated Beijing. That left the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, to make an unscheduled stop in China on his way home from South Korea to discuss the deepening tensions over exchange rates with a top Chinese finance official. Administration officials speak of an alarming loss of trust and confidence between China and the United States over the past two years, forcing them to scale back hopes of working with the Chinese on major challenges like climate change , nuclear nonproliferation and a new global economic order. The latest source of tension is over reports that China is withholding shipments of rare-earth minerals , which the United States uses to make advanced equipment like guided missiles. Administration officials, clearly worried, said they did not know whether Beijing’s motivation was strategic or economic. “This administration came in with one dominant idea: make China a global partner in facing global challenges,” said David Shambaugh, director of the China policy program at George Washington University. “China failed to step up and play that role. Now, they realize they’re dealing with an increasingly narrow-minded, self-interested, truculent, hyper-nationalist and powerful country.” To counter what some officials view as a surge of Chinese triumphalism, the United States is reinvigorating cold war alliances with Japan and South Korea, and shoring up its presence elsewhere in Asia. This week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will visit Vietnam for the second time in four months, to attend an East Asian summit meeting likely to be dominated by the China questions. Next month, President Obama plans to tour four major Asian democracies — Japan, Indonesia, India and South Korea — while bypassing China. The itinerary is not meant as a snub: Mr. Obama has already been to Beijing once, and his visit to Indonesia has long been delayed. But the symbolism is not lost on administration officials. Jeffrey A. Bader, a major China policy adviser in the White House, said China’s muscle-flexing became especially noticeable after the 2008 economic crisis, in part because Beijing’s faster rebound led to a “widespread judgment that the U.S. was a declining power and that China was a rising power.” But the administration, he said, is determined “to effectively counteract that impression by renewing American leadership.” Political factors at home have contributed to the administration’s tougher posture. With the economy sputtering and unemployment high, Beijing has become an all-purpose target. In this Congressional election season, candidates in at least 30 races are demonizing China as a threat to American jobs . At a time of partisan paralysis in Congress, anger over China’s currency has been one of the few areas of bipartisan agreement, culminating in the House’s overwhelming vote in September to threaten China with tariffs on its exports if Beijing did not let its currency, the renminbi , appreciate. The trouble is that China’s own domestic forces may cause it to dig in its heels. With the Communist Party embarking on a transfer of leadership from President Hu Jintao to his anointed successor, Xi Jinping, the leadership is wary of changes that could hobble China’s growth. There are also increasingly sharp divisions between China’s civilian leaders and elements of the People’s Liberation Army. Many Chinese military officers are openly hostile toward the United States , convinced that its recent naval exercises in the Yellow Sea amount to a policy of encircling China. Even the administration’s efforts to collaborate with China on climate change and nonproliferation are viewed with suspicion by some in Beijing. Mr. Obama’s aides, many of them veterans of the Clinton years, understand that especially on economic issues, there are elements of brinkmanship in the relationship, which can imply more acrimony than actually exists. But the White House was concerned enough that last month it sent a high-level delegation to Beijing that included Mr. Bader; Lawrence H. Summers, the departing director of the National Economic Council; and Thomas E. Donilon, who has since been named national security adviser. “We were struck by the seriousness with which they shared our commitment to managing differences and recognizing that our two countries were going to have a very large effect on the global economy,” Mr. Summers said. Just before the meeting, China began allowing the renminbi to rise at a somewhat faster rate, though its total appreciation, since Beijing announced in June that it would loosen exchange-rate controls, still amounts to less than 3 percent. Economists estimate that the currency is undervalued by at least 20 percent. Meanwhile, trade tensions between the two sides are flaring anew. The administration recently agreed to investigate charges by the United Steelworkers that China was violating trade laws with its state support of clean-energy technologies . That prompted China’s top energy official, Zhang Guobao, to accuse the administration of trying to win votes — a barb that angered White House officials. Of the halt in shipments of rare-earth minerals, Mr. Summers said, “There are serious questions, both in the economic and in the strategy realm, that are going to require close study within our government.” Beijing had earlier withheld these shipments to Japan, after a spat over a Chinese fishing vessel that collided with Japanese patrol boats near disputed islands. It was one of several recent provocative moves by Beijing toward its neighbors — including one that prompted the administration to enter the fray. In Hanoi in July, Mrs. Clinton said the United States would help facilitate talks between Beijing and its neighbors over disputed islands in the South China Sea. Chinese officials were livid when it became clear that the United States had lined up 12 countries behind the American position. With President Hu set to visit Washington early next year, administration officials said Mrs. Clinton would strike a more harmonious note in Asia this week. For now, they said, the United States feels it has made its point. “The signal to Beijing ought to be clear,” Mr. Shambaugh said. “The U.S. has other closer, deeper friends in the region.”
|
China;United States International Relations;Obama Barack;International Trade and World Market;Yuan (Currency)
|
ny0119235
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2012/07/18
|
West Bank: Israel Authorizes University in Jewish Settlement
|
An Israeli education committee voted Tuesday to grant full university status to an academic center in Ariel, a large Jewish settlement, making it the first Israeli university in the West Bank . Most of the world views the areas that Israel conquered from Jordan in the 1967 war, and where the Palestinians want to establish a future state, as occupied territory, and the Israeli settlements there as a violation of international law. Critics denounced the decision as a political move aimed at bolstering the settlement project. The presidents of Israel’s seven other universities and other state bodies opposed the upgrade, saying that the competition for limited budgets and resources was already severe.
|
Israeli Settlements;Israel;Colleges and Universities;West Bank
|
ny0229363
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2010/07/13
|
Plan for Female Bishops
|
The Church of England’s General Synod ruled on Monday that the church will go ahead with a plan to appoint female bishops by 2014, with only minimal concessions to traditionalists opposing the move. Citing the fact that all of the disciples of Jesus were men as evidence that women bishops would be contrary to biblical beliefs, the traditionalists had pressed for creation of a separate body of “complementary” male bishops with independent authority, established in church law, to minister to traditionalists in dioceses where female bishops are appointed. But at a weekend meeting in the northern city of York, the synod, responding to strong pressures from women’s groups and other reformers, narrowly rejected a formula for accommodating the traditionalists put forward by The Most Rev. Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury. Ignoring predictions of a wave of traditionalist defections to Roman Catholicism, the synod ruled as it closed its three-day meeting that female bishops would have the authority to decide which male bishops could enter dioceses to minister to traditionalists and what functions they could perform.
|
Church of England;Women and Girls
|
ny0057366
|
[
"business"
] |
2014/09/08
|
G.M.’s Board Is Seen as Slow in Reacting to Safety Crisis
|
DETROIT — After General Motors emerged from bankruptcy and a government bailout five years ago, the board of directors of the “new G.M.” was expected to keep a more watchful eye on a company that had gone seriously off track. But on the issue of vehicle safety, the board until recently took a mostly hands-off approach, rarely even discussing the topic beyond periodic reviews of product quality with company executives, according to interviews with current and former board members, as well as G.M. officials with knowledge of the board’s actions. In February, the initial recall of hundreds of thousands of cars with defective ignition switches was treated in such a routine manner at the board’s monthly meeting that the board’s chairman, Theodore M. Solso, said he had only a vague recollection of the details. “I can’t remember the specifics,” Mr. Solso said in an interview. “It was a large recall. There were probably cost estimates.” Since February, G.M. has been rocked by additional recalls totaling nearly 30 million vehicles, as well as by disclosures that some company officials had known about the defective switches for more than a decade. At least 13 deaths have been linked to the defect; the automaker is the subject of multiple investigations and has set aside nearly $4 billion to cover its costs. Although Mr. Solso said the directors were never as passive as others suggest, he acknowledged that since the first recall they have met more frequently and have received regular updates about safety issues. “It was a period of time that we learned how serious the situation was,” he said, adding, “When we had all the facts we did our job.” The events of the last few months have delivered a jolt to a board that has experienced high turnover and the sudden retirement in January of its leader, Daniel F. Akerson, who had held both the chairman and chief executive jobs for four years. The board is now confronting the fact that it was blindsided by years of corporate misconduct that has set off the most serious safety crisis in the company’s history. The directors are coming under harsh criticism. Several lawsuits have been filed by G.M. shareholders against current and former board members for failing to exercise their fiduciary duty to oversee management. In addition, the company faces wide-ranging investigations of its actions by the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and 45 state attorneys general. One shareholder lawsuit, filed on behalf of a St. Louis police pension fund and an individual stockholder, claims board members are “guilty of a sustained and systemic failure” to keep informed of safety and recall issues. “They set up a system that is calculated not to inform them about safety issues,” said David Honigman, a lawyer for plaintiffs in the case. Senator Richard Blumenthal, one of G.M.'s sharpest critics during congressional hearings, said the board had abdicated to G.M. management too much responsibility for resolving the switch crisis. “The board’s silence and apparent absence as a force is really regrettable,” said Mr. Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut. G.M. officials dispute the notion that the board has been absent, noting that it has hired outside lawyers to investigate the company, approved a compensation fund for accident victims and formed a new committee to monitor potential risks within G.M.'s vast engineering and manufacturing operations. “We didn’t understand the enormity of the situation at the beginning, because I don’t think management did,” said Mr. Solso, who became chairman in January after serving on the board since June 2012 and who is the retired head of the Cummins engine company. “It was an evolving problem.” Interviews with current and former executives and directors reveal that the first weeks after the February meeting were tumultuous for the board. One former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the directors became “very nervous” as G.M. followed the initial recall with a flurry of others. Image Theodore M. Solso, G.M.’s chairman, said its board was slow to learn of a safety issue. Credit Lauren Victoria Burke/Associated Press There were also concerns among board members that senior management, primarily Mary T. Barra, the chief executive, and Michael P. Millikin, the company’s general counsel, had been given too much latitude to chart the company’s response to the ignition switch problems, according to one director who was not authorized to speak publicly. Said another G.M. official, also not authorized to speak on the matter: “It was a little bit of Mary and a whole lot of Millikin.” It was Mr. Millikin, the officials said, who pushed for G.M. to retain a former federal prosecutor , Anton R. Valukas, to investigate the long-delayed recall — an inquiry that found no wrongdoing by either Mr. Millikin or Ms. Barra, who is also a board member. And the board relied on Ms. Barra and other executives to select the 15 employees that G.M. dismissed for their involvement in the delay, as well as to initiate major changes in safety and engineering functions. Mr. Solso, who has spoken only rarely in public since February, said during a 40-minute interview by telephone from his home in Indiana that the G.M. board was now “very much involved and engaged.” He was the only board member made available by G.M. to The New York Times. At least one former G.M. director, Cynthia A. Telles, said unidentified company officials had instructed board members to keep quiet about events surrounding the switch crisis. “I really can’t talk because of the issues,” said Ms. Telles, a psychologist who served on the board for four years before stepping down in June. “There are all these shareholder lawsuits.” Mr. Solso was circumspect about the board’s performance before the recall — particularly after Mr. Valukas’s report in June uncovered years of errors, missteps and deception among engineers, lawyers and product specialists charged with finding out why a deadly defect could cut engine power and disable air bags in millions of older-model Chevrolet Cobalts, Saturn Ions and other compact cars. “Yes, we should have known earlier,” Mr. Solso said. “The way I look at it, G.M. has not been well run for a long period of time.” Mr. Solso said he was “shocked” and “stunned” at the findings in the 315-page report by Mr. Valukas, which detailed how dozens of G.M. employees failed repeatedly to repair the switch defect, despite mounting evidence that the problem put drivers and passengers at risk of death and serious injury. But Mr. Solso contended that the board and management were not lax about safety. “The problem with the ignition switch recall is that people did not do their job,” he said. “They didn’t have a sense of urgency, and they didn’t communicate up the ladder.” Documents turned over to federal regulators and Congress show that the board did not devote much time to safety in recent years, with the exception of one meeting in which crash-test issues with the Chevrolet Volt hybrid-electric vehicle were discussed. Safety issues were typically folded into occasional reports from management on product quality. According to the Valukas report, the last time that happened was in October 2013, but the discussion was mostly about how G.M. vehicles fared in consumer polling. Nothing about the switch came before the board until its meeting in February. By then it was a board in transition. Mr. Solso had been a surprise choice to succeed Mr. Akerson as chairman, having beaten out another director, Patricia F. Russo, who was lead outside director during Mr. Akerson’s tenure. Mr. Solso acknowledged that the board, whose members are paid $200,000 annually, had relied heavily for direction on Ms. Barra and Mr. Millikin, as well as Mark Reuss, G.M.'s global product chief. And he conceded that some directors were “frustrated” by the volume of recalls that followed the ignition switch action, and that they questioned whether enough employees were fired after the Valukas report. But he said all major decisions had been reached by consensus between directors and management since that February meeting. Still, the board hired its own law firm, Wachtel Lipton Rosen & Katz, in April to help evaluate management. A senior partner in the firm, Martin Lipton, has attended every board meeting since then. Mr. Solso had particular praise for Mr. Millikin, a veteran G.M. lawyer who was attacked during congressional hearings for his failure to know about switch-related lawsuits against the company. He called Mr. Millikin a “really important person” at G.M. and a valued adviser to both the board and Ms. Barra. “We’re plowing through some new ground,” Mr. Solso said, “and he’s been one of the strongest and most honest voices we have.” The board is also seeking some stability within its own ranks. Besides Mr. Akerson’s retirement, three of its 14 directors left in June. One new director, the union official Joe Ashton, was elected at the company’s annual meeting that same month. Some members are stepping up their involvement by serving on the new risk-management committee, including James J. Mulva, a former head of the oil company ConocoPhillips; Adm. Michael G. Mullen, a retired former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Thomas M. Schoewe, a former chief financial officer at Wal-Mart Stores. “The ignition switch recall basically raised the bar in terms of increased involvement,” Mr. Solso said.
|
GM;Board of directors;Automobile safety;Recalls and Bans;Theodore M Solso;Car Crash;Lawsuits;Fatalities,casualties;Justice Department;SEC
|
ny0241780
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2011/03/18
|
Radiation Spread Seen; Frantic Repairs Go On
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WASHINGTON — The first readings from American data-collection flights over the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northeastern Japan show that the worst contamination has not spread beyond the 19-mile range of highest concern established by Japanese authorities. But another day of frantic efforts to cool nuclear fuel in the troubled reactors and in the plant’s spent-fuel pools resulted in little or no progress, according to United States government officials. Japanese officials said they would continue those efforts, but were also racing to restore electric power to the site to get equipment going again, leaving open the question of why that effort did not begin days ago, at the first signs that the critical backup cooling systems for the reactors had failed. The data was collected by the Aerial Measuring System, among the most sophisticated devices rushed to Japan by the Obama administration in an effort to help contain a nuclear crisis that a top American nuclear official said Thursday could go on for weeks. Strapped onto a plane and a helicopter that the United States flew over the site, with Japanese permission, the equipment took measurements that showed harmful radiation in the immediate vicinity of the plant — a much heavier dose than the trace levels of radioactive particles that make up the atmospheric plume covering a much wider area. While the findings were reassuring in the short term, the United States declined to back away from its warning to Americans there to stay at least 50 miles from the plant, setting up a far larger perimeter than the Japanese government had established. American officials did not release specific radiation readings. American officials said their biggest worry was that a frenetic series of efforts by the Japanese military to get water into four of the plant’s six reactors — including using water cannons and firefighting helicopters that dropped water but appeared to largely miss their targets — showed few signs of working. “This is something that will likely take some time to work through, possibly weeks, as eventually you remove the majority of the heat from the reactors and then the spent fuel pool,” said Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission , briefing reporters at the White House. The effort by the Japanese to hook some electric power back up to the plant did not begin until Thursday and even if they succeed, it is unclear whether the cooling systems, in reactor buildings battered by a tsunami and then torn apart by hydrogen explosions, survived the crisis in good enough shape to be useful. “What you are seeing are desperate efforts — just throwing everything at it in hopes something will work,” said one American official with long nuclear experience who would not speak for attribution. “Right now this is more prayer than plan.” On Thursday, President Obama said that the crisis had convinced him to order the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to do a comprehensive review of the safety of nuclear plants in the United States. After a day in which American and Japanese officials gave radically different assessments of the danger from the nuclear plant, the two governments tried on Thursday to join forces. Experts met in Tokyo to compare notes. The United States, with Japanese permission, began to put the intelligence-collection aircraft over the site, in hopes of gaining a view for Washington as well as its allies in Tokyo that did not rely on the announcements of officials from the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operates Fukushima Daiichi. American officials say they suspect that the company has consistently underestimated the risk and moved too slowly to contain the damage. Aircraft normally used to monitor North Korea’s nuclear weapons activities — a Global Hawk drone and U-2 spy planes — were flying missions over the reactor, trying to help the Japanese government map out its response to last week’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake, the tsunami that followed and now the nuclear disaster. President Obama made an unscheduled stop at the Japanese Embassy to sign a condolence book, writing, “My heart goes out to the people of Japan during this enormous tragedy.” He added, “Because of the strength and wisdom of its people, we know that Japan will recover, and indeed will emerge stronger than ever.” Later, he appeared in the Rose Garden at the White House to offer continued American support for the earthquake and tsunami victims, and technical help at the nuclear site. But before the recovery can begin, the nuclear plant must be brought under control. On Friday, steam that was likely laced with radioactive particles was again rising over the plant, this time billowing from reactor No. 2, which suffered an explosion Tuesday. But Japanese authorities said they did not yet know the cause of the latest release. American officials, meanwhile, remained fixated on the temperature readings inside that reactor and two others that had been operating until the earthquake shut them down, as well as at the plant’s spent fuel pools, looking for any signs that their high levels of heat were going down. If the fuel rods are uncovered and exposed to air, they heat up and can burst into flames, spewing radioactive elements. So far the officials saw no signs of dropping temperatures. And the Web site of the International Atomic Energy Agency , the United Nations nuclear watchdog, made it clear that there were no readings at all from some critical areas. Part of the American effort, by satellites and aircraft, is to identify the hot spots, something the Japanese have not been able to do in some cases. Critical to that effort are the “pods” flown into Japan by the Air Force over the past day. Made for quick assessments of radiation emergencies, the Aerial Measuring System is an instrument system that fits on a helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft to sample air and survey the land below. Daniel B. Poneman, the deputy secretary of energy, said at a White House briefing on Thursday that preliminary results of the initial flights “are consistent with the recommendations that came down from the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” which led to the 50-mile evacuation guideline given to American expatriates. Although the worst contamination is closer to the plant, the recommendation takes into account the possibility of shifting winds or greater emissions. The State Department has also said it would fly out of the country any dependents of American diplomats or military personnel within the region of the plant and as far south as Tokyo. Space will be made for other Americans who cannot get a flight, it said. Getting the Japanese to accept the American detection equipment was a delicate diplomatic maneuver, which some Japanese officials originally resisted. But as it became clear that conditions at the plant were spinning out of control, and with Japanese officials admitting they had little hard evidence about whether there was water in the cooling pools or breaches in the reactor containment structures, they began to accept more help. The sensors on the instrument pod are good at mapping radioactive isotopes, like cesium 137, which has been detected around the nuclear plant and has a half-life of 30 years. In high doses, it can cause acute radiation sickness . Lower doses can alter cellular function, leading to an increased risk of cancer . Cesium 137 can enter the body through many foods, including milk. On Wednesday, when the American Embassy in Tokyo, on advice from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told Americans to evacuate a radius of “approximately 50 miles” around the Fukushima plant, the recommendation was based on a specific calculation of risk of radioactive fallout in the affected area. In a statement, the commission said the advice grew out of its assessment that projected radiation doses within the evacuation zone might exceed one rem to the body or five rems to the thyroid gland. That organ is extremely sensitive to iodine 131 — another of the deadly byproducts of nuclear fuel, this one causing thyroid cancer . The commission says that the average American is exposed to about 0.62 rem of radiation each year from natural and manmade sources. The American-provided instruments in Japan measure real levels of radiation on the ground. In contrast, scientists around the world have also begun to draw up forecasts of how the prevailing winds pick up the Japanese radioactive material and carry it over the Pacific in invisible plumes. Private analysts said the United States was also probably monitoring the reactor crisis with spy satellites that can spot the heat from fires — helping it independently assess the state of the reactor complex from a distance. Jeffrey G. Lewis, an intelligence specialist at the Monterey Institute, a research center, noted that the Japanese assessment of Reactor No. 4 at the Daiichi complex seemed to depend in part on visual surveillance by helicopter pilots. “I’ve got to think that, if we put our best assets into answering that question, we can do better,” he said in an interview. One main concern at No. 4 has been a fire that was burning there earlier in the week; American officials are not convinced that the fire has gone out. American officials have also worried that the spent-fuel pool at that reactor has run dry, exposing the rods. Japanese officials, however, have concentrated much of their recent efforts on Reactor No. 3, which has been intermittently releasing radiation from what the authorities believe may be a ruptured containment vessel around the reactor. Temperatures at that reactor’s spent fuel pool are also high. Perhaps because of the difficulties experienced Thursday trying to accurately drop water from helicopters, the Japanese military announced Friday that it was halting those efforts for at least a day.
|
Japan Earthquake Tsunami;Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster;US Foreign Policy;Radiation;Tokyo Electric Power;Japan
|
ny0229509
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2010/07/22
|
Merkel Looks to Recharge Her Ratings
|
BERLIN — For a head of government barely nine months into a second term, Chancellor Angela Merkel faced an unusual question in her annual summer news conference on Wednesday: how much longer she expected to remain in charge. The grilling Mrs. Merkel took from the news media in the capital was inspired by an opinion survey showing approval ratings for her governing coalition plunging to record lows among German voters after months of infighting and disagreement over unpopular budget cuts, health care changes and broken promises to reduce taxes. “Right now it’s fun for me, and we’ll leave it at that,” Mrs. Merkel said of her job as chancellor, as reporters returned time and again to the government’s recent difficulties. “I decide step by step, and at the moment you can be quite certain that you will see me again after the vacation.” For Mrs. Merkel, the summer vacation could not begin soon enough, but the future of her reign as chancellor could well be decided by how quickly the government can regain its footing when Parliament returns from its recess in September. Mrs. Merkel does not face a party-financing scandal, as does her French counterpart, President Nicolas Sarkozy, dealing with the fallout from claims of envelopes full of money in the so-called Bettencourt affair . And unlike President Obama, she can take heart from the fact that the unemployment rate here has fallen to lower levels than before the economic crisis began. But the rebounding German economy has done little to bolster the fortunes of her struggling government. A poll released Wednesday by Forsa, the independent polling institute, found that the governing parties together mustered just 34 percent support, according to a representative sample of 2,500 Germans, compared with the more than 48 percent of the vote they received in last September’s election. The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. That was the lowest level for the conservative coalition since Forsa began regular surveys for the magazine Stern in 1986. In contrast, two left-wing opposition parties, the Social Democrats and the Greens, had climbed to 47 percent, potentially a large enough share of the vote to win a majority in Parliament if early elections were called. That is something Mrs. Merkel will do everything in her power to prevent. Mrs. Merkel’s party has been plagued recently by a series of high-level departures. The head of the city-state of Hamburg, Ole von Beust, announced Sunday that he would step down, making him the sixth state premier from Mrs. Merkel’s party to resign over the past year. That followed the surprise resignation of President Horst Köhler in May. While some, like his replacement as president, Christian Wulff, moved into new posts, Mr. von Beust joined the powerful state premiers in Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia in announcing his retirement. Last week the left-wing parties there managed to form a tenuous minority government. As a result, Mrs. Merkel’s coalition lost its majority in the upper house of Parliament, which has to sign off on legislation passed by the Bundestag, or lower house, making it that much harder for her to win major legislative victories in the fall. Putting the best face on her situation, Mrs. Merkel said that she was “quite certain” that her government would survive the next three years to see out the end of its term. “I wouldn’t want to bet on that,” said Frank Decker, a professor at the Institute for Political Science and Sociology at the University of Bonn. But Mr. Decker said it was unlikely that Mrs. Merkel would face a serious challenge to her leadership this year, in part because so many of her rivals within the party had been sidelined in the recent string of retirements, resignations and personnel reshufflings. “The impression that the government is completely at odds with itself, that all sides are working for themselves and not working together on common goals of government, is growing stronger in the populace,” Mr. Decker said. Earlier this month the coalition agreed to raise health care premiums to reduce the growing deficit in Germany ’s public health system, a move widely criticized here as little more than a stop-gap measure that would burden taxpayers and companies, rather than the kind of broad overhaul that was necessary for the rapidly aging German population. Mrs. Merkel acknowledged at her news conference that the government had faced several “turbulent” months, including often furious disagreements over how to slice roughly $100 billion from the budget by 2014 as part of an austerity program she championed. “Voters were displeased with the way we had been discussing things inside the coalition,” Mrs. Merkel conceded. “You can disagree on the issues, but the way that we disagreed was unacceptable.” In her comments on Wednesday, Mrs. Merkel defended her government’s handling of the economic crisis, saying that the improvement in employment was viewed internationally as “a small miracle.” According to the polls, voters are not yet feeling reassured. “The uncertainty is still there among the people that the crisis has not yet been overcome,” said Manfred Güllner, director of Forsa. “In such a situation one expects the government not to fight internally. But they’re only fighting.”
|
Merkel Angela;Germany;Politics and Government;von Beust Ole;Wulff Christian
|
ny0019614
|
[
"science"
] |
2013/07/30
|
Hurricane Tips From Cuba
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HAVANA — Old computer processors whirred and paint crumbled from the walls in the National Prognostic Center of Cuba’s Meteorological Institute , set on a rise above Havana’s old city. Half a dozen meteorologists shifted their gaze between satellite images on large video screens and a giant overhead map of the United States. They monitor the region’s weather every day, but their gaze grows especially intense in hurricane season. As the center’s director, José Rubiera, explained, almost every hurricane that strikes the Southern United States passes through Cuba first. “A hurricane that hits Cuba doesn’t ask for a visa before entering the United States,” he said. This shared destiny has led to a rare truce between the two nations, which have had no bilateral relations for more than 50 years. Their meteorological agencies exchange satellite data, jointly analyze radar and collaborate on storm forecasting. When a storm is approaching, “we call the National Prognostic Center or they call us, whoever gets to the phone first,” said Lixion Avila, a senior specialist at the United States government’s National Hurricane Center . Dr. Avila called Cuba one of the United States’ most valuable meteorological partners. “Cuba has a long history of excellent forecasting with a tremendous record of data,” he said. Or as Michael T. Clegg, foreign secretary of the National Academy of Sciences, put it, “It seems that the substantial threat to the human population” posed by storms “is taken seriously enough to make cooperation more desirable.” And some experts on both sides wish that cooperation would extend to the nonmeteorological aspects of storms. The countries’ disaster management agencies have no direct communication. “Cuba manages hurricanes well,” said Russel L. Honoré, the retired lieutenant general who commanded military relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005. He has since become a specialist on disaster preparedness and has traveled to Cuba three times in recent years. “We could be learning from them,” he added. Cuba consistently weathers Category 4 and 5 hurricanes with relatively few casualties. The Center for International Policy , a research and advocacy group based in Washington, says a person is 15 times as likely to be killed by a hurricane in the United States as in Cuba. The island did suffer a body blow last fall from Hurricane Sandy, the second-biggest storm in Cuban history. Before it struck the United States’ Eastern Seaboard, Sandy slammed into Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second-largest city. Eleven people died, and President Raúl Castro said that Santiago looked “like a bombed city.” Half of its buildings were damaged; almost 16,000 in the city and the surrounding province were destroyed. There were small outbreaks of cholera and dengue fever. Some residents interviewed for this article said they went almost a month without electricity. “Cuba has an enormous amount of deteriorated buildings that can’t withstand natural disasters,” said Ricardo Mena, a United Nations official responsible for disaster risk reduction in the Americas. He added that while a hospital, for example, might need rebuilding, “that’s very costly and they don’t have the resources to do it.” Still, he and other analysts emphasized that Cuba would have suffered a great deal more if not for its well-rehearsed storm preparation system. It is a multilevel process that starts with the young. Grade school students practice evacuations; high-school students monitor neighborhoods to identify weak trees and other hazards. Dr. Rubiera is the nation’s sole hurricane forecaster, much praised by Cubans for his calm, authoritative manner. “We trust Rubiera because he knows what he’s talking about,” said Camilo Guara, a Havana resident. In the event of a storm, the head of every institution — schools, hospitals, hotels — is considered a member of the Cuban Civil Defense force, responsible for the well-being of people around them. Tight state control means Cuba can mandate evacuations, mobilize quickly and put Dr. Rubiera’s face on every TV screen. “Cuba is not a model that could be fully replicated anywhere else,” Mr. Mena said. In Pinar del Río, the province most vulnerable, the government deploys large brigades to prepare for disaster. “If you have nowhere to go, then there’s the state shelters with food and water and doctors,” said María Fajardo, a resident. Still, evacuees are more likely to take shelter with family members, friends or strangers, according to the relief organization Oxfam . “We have learned to take care of ourselves and not just rely on the state,” said Yesi Mejía, 43, of Havana. In that way, they are no different from storm survivors in the United States. Barbara Morita, a first responder from California who visited Cuba to learn more about its disaster preparations, said that after Hurricane Katrina, “so many people told me, ‘I wouldn’t be alive if my neighbor hadn’t come over.’ ” And she added, “Maybe more could have been saved if we were better prepared.”
|
Cuba;Hurricane Sandy;Hurricanes;US Foreign Policy;Emergency Response and Preparedness;Weather
|
ny0279274
|
[
"world"
] |
2016/10/03
|
Colombia Peace Deal Is Defeated, Leaving a Nation in Shock
|
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — A Colombian peace deal that the president and the country’s largest rebel group had signed just days before was defeated in a referendum on Sunday, leaving the fate of a 52-year war suddenly uncertain. A narrow margin divided the yes-or-no vote, with 50.2 percent of Colombians rejecting the peace deal and 49.8 percent voting in favor, the government said. The result was a deep embarrassment for President Juan Manuel Santos. Just last week, Mr. Santos had joined arms with leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the FARC, who apologized on national television during a signing ceremony. The surprise surge by the “no” vote — nearly all major polls had indicated resounding approval — left the country in a dazed uncertainty not seen since Britain voted in June to leave the European Union. And it left the future of rebels who had planned to rejoin Colombia as civilians — indeed, the future of the war itself, which both sides had declared over — unknown. Both sides vowed they would not go back to fighting. Mr. Santos, who appeared humbled by the vote on television on Sunday, said the cease-fire that his government had signed with the FARC would remain in effect. He added that he would soon “convene all political groups,” especially those against the deal, “to open spaces for dialogue and determine how we will go ahead.” Why Colombia’s Peace Deal With the FARC Failed Colombians defied opinion polls on Sunday by voting against a peace agreement to end 52 years of war with the country’s largest rebel group, the FARC. Rodrigo Londoño, the FARC leader, who was preparing to return to Colombia after four years of negotiations in Havana, said he, too, was not interested in more war. “The FARC reiterates its disposition to use only words as a weapon to build toward the future,” he said in a statement. “With today’s result, we know that our challenge as a political party is even greater and requires more effort to build a stable and lasting peace.” The question voters were asked was simple: “Do you support the final agreement to end the conflict and construct a stable and enduring peace?” But it was one that had divided this country for generations, as successive governments fought what seemed to be a war without an end and the Marxist FARC rebels dug into the forest for a hopeless insurgency. To many Colombians who had endured years of kidnappings and killings by the rebels, the agreement was too lenient. It would have allowed most rank-and-file fighters to start lives as normal citizens, and rebel leaders to receive reduced sentences for war crimes. “There’s no justice in this accord,” said Roosevelt Pulgarin, 32, a music teacher who cast his ballot against the agreement on a rainy day at an elementary school in Bogotá, the capital. “If ‘no’ wins, we won’t have peace, but at least we won’t give the country away to the guerrillas. We need better negotiations.” Video President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia and Timoleon Jimenez, commander in chief of the FARC, vowed to continue to seek peace after Colombians rejected a peace deal in a referendum. Credit Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images María Fernanda González, 39, an administrator at a telecommunications company who voted against the deal, said she simply did not trust the FARC. “Why didn’t they turn in their arms and tell the world what happened to the people they kidnapped, as a gesture during the talks?” she asked. Her household seemed to reflect the deep divides in Colombia, with her husband, Carlos Gallon, 42, an engineer, voting for the deal. Mr. Gallon said the country had no choice but to stop fighting. But still, he admitted, “I understand why she is voting no.” The referendum result overturned a timetable intended to end the FARC insurgency within months. The rebels had agreed to immediately abandon their battle camps for 28 “concentration zones” throughout the country, where over the next six months they would hand over their weapons to United Nations teams. Under the agreement, rank-and-file fighters were expected to be granted amnesty. Those suspected of being involved in war crimes would be judged in special tribunals with reduced sentences, many of which were expected to involve years of community service work, like removing land mines once planted by the FARC. Colombians Around New York Vote on Peace Accord Colombians in New York and New Jersey were among those who voted Sunday on a peace deal between the Colombian government and the country’s largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, that unexpectedly went down to defeat. On Sunday, the government said it had sent negotiators to Havana to begin discussing the next steps with the rebels. After the president’s statement that he was reaching out to opposition leaders in the Colombian Congress like former President Álvaro Uribe, experts predicted a potentially tortured process in which Mr. Uribe and others would seek harsher punishments for FARC members, especially those who had participated in the drug trade. “Everyone has said, including those who sided ‘no,’ that they could renegotiate the deal, but obviously that would have political challenges,” said César Rodríguez, the director of the Center for Law, Justice and Society, a nongovernmental organization in Colombia focusing on legal issues. “It was a small majority, but a valid majority, and that has consequences.” On Sunday night, politicians who had strongly opposed the deal were already signaling that it was time to negotiate more stringent terms with the rebels. “We want to redo the process,” said Francisco Santos, a vice president under Mr. Uribe, who was against the deal but supports an eventual peace with the FARC. “In democracy, sometimes you win, but sometimes you lose.” The war left brutal scars in Colombia. About 220,000 people were killed in the fighting, and six million were displaced. An untold number of women were raped by fighters, and children were given Kalashnikov rifles and forced into battle. Image Opponents of a peace agreement celebrated its apparent defeat in Bogotá. Many believed it was too lenient on rebels. Credit Ariana Cubillos/Associated Press Unable to put down the insurgency, the government turned in the countryside to paramilitary groups run by men who became regional warlords. The state seemed swept aside in the fighting. In the end, the war lasted so long that it might have been difficult for many Colombians to forgive the FARC. “The adults that were born before the war now number very few,” said Juan Gabriel Vásquez, a novelist who voted for the deal. “As a society, we are a massive case of post-traumatic stress, because we have grown up in the midst of fear, of anxiety, of the noise of war.” Many people lost because of the outcome. Among them was President Santos, who had staked his legacy on the peace deal and had been rumored as a possible contender for the Nobel Peace Prize. FARC members, who had been on the run in the jungle for decades, saw their hopes of rejoining Colombia as political leaders, including 10 seats in Congress, suddenly dashed for the time being. Perhaps the biggest winner on Sunday was Mr. Uribe, the former president, and the Colombian far right, which had vowed to defeat the deal at the ballot box. Mr. Uribe had argued that the agreement was too lenient on the rebels, who he said should be prosecuted as murderers and drug traffickers. “Peace is exciting, the Havana agreement disappointing,” Mr. Uribe wrote on Twitter on Sunday after casting his “no” vote. In the end, a small majority of Colombians agreed with him.
|
Colombia;FARC;Referendum;Juan Manuel Santos;War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity;Rodrigo Londono;Alvaro Uribe
|
ny0026432
|
[
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] |
2013/01/04
|
College Basketball Catches Up to Jerry Tarkanian
|
LAS VEGAS — It is a Monday afternoon, and one of the most controversial figures in college basketball history sits quietly at the end of a rectangular table at Landry’s, a seafood restaurant on West Sahara Avenue that is, both physically and metaphorically, a long, long way from the glitz and glitter of the Strip. The man’s silence is jarring. All around him people are talking about the glory days of Nevada-Las Vegas basketball, but the man, Jerry Tarkanian — the Shark, the coach who won more than 700 games, earned a national championship and went to four Final Fours, all while fighting the N.C.A.A. and chomping wet towels on the sideline — stays mum. When Harvey Hyde, a former U.N.L.V. football coach, recalls how Frank Sinatra tried to help with basketball recruiting a few times, Tarkanian barely raises his head. (Sinatra was not all that successful; one of his targets, a New York prospect named Jim Graziano, went to South Carolina to play for Frank McGuire instead.) When Brad Rothermel, the former athletic director, laughs as he recalls the day Tarkanian heard some assistant coaches talking about how Bo Derek “was a 10” and said, with absolute sincerity, “We need to start recruiting him right away,” Tarkanian does not chortle with the rest. He does not even look up. The stories keep flowing: the time when Tarkanian nearly got the coaching job at Indiana (the Hoosiers ended up hiring a man named Bob Knight); the back story to his nickname (it came from a Los Angeles Times columnist); even the history of Tarkanian’s predilection for sucking on those towels. His son, Danny, explains that Tarkanian began the practice while coaching a high school team that played in a gym so hot it perpetually left Tarkanian with cotton mouth. “He couldn’t very well keep running to the water fountain!” Danny says. The others giggle; Tarkanian barely moves. As glasses clink and the room fills around them, Tarkanian stays hunched over, his fork going up and down slowly, like a rickety elevator. At one point Danny whispers beneath the din, “You O.K., Dad?” and Tarkanian stirs. “I’m ... good,” he croaks, but then he stares, quizzically, as Danny gestures over and over at his own chin. Eventually, Danny sighs; after a quick glance around, he surreptitiously reaches across the table to wipe a speck of salad from his father’s mouth. Image Jerry Tarkanian coaching in the 1990 title game while chewing a towel, one of his habits. Credit Ed Reinke/Associated Press “It is different now,” Danny says softly to the man sitting next to him. “There are different issues.” Jerry Tarkanian is 82. His health, which began deteriorating about four years ago when he fell while walking in San Diego, has declined to the point that basic movements are difficult. When someone comes by for an introduction during the meal at Landry’s, Tarkanian shakes hands with his left hand because his right is anchored to the table, as if to keep him from slumping over. His eyes, which drooped like week-old balloons when he was 40, now seem to hang to his neck. After eating, as Tarkanian makes his way to the parking lot, he hesitates as he steps down from the curb, putting his hand on the shoulder of a visitor and grunting hard as he guides his walker a few inches in front of him. His Division I coaching career, which covered 31 seasons, 3 colleges and countless hearings, depositions and court dates as he fought the governing body of the sport he loves, feels far away. In the car on the way back to the family home, a two-story Spanish-style house that Tarkanian and his wife, Lois, bought in 1973, he is asked about his years of plenty. He nods twice when the championship team of 1990 is mentioned. He shakes his head when asked to remember coaching against John Wooden. “Played him three times,” he says slowly. “Lost all three.” He looks out the window. “Should have won one of them.” As the car pulls into the driveway, past the mailbox with the basketball on it and around the corner from the small backyard court where friends and relatives and college students and celebrities have played casual games, Tarkanian is asked if he still watches basketball. For the first time all day, his face brightens. He smiles. “It’s on all the time,” he says. “We didn’t have so much TV when I was coaching.” And what does he think when he watches these days? Tarkanian turns in his seat and hacks through a laugh. It is almost as if he is trying to chuckle. “I think,” he says as he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, “that it looks familiar.” Ahead of His Time Tarkanian’s impression is not unreasonable. During his time at U.N.L.V., he was considered by many to be an outsider. He was not Wooden, certainly, and his approach to operating his program — from recruiting to his playing style to how he handled the N.C.A.A. — was markedly different from those of contemporaries like Knight and North Carolina’s Dean Smith. Compared with those icons, Tarkanian was a renegade. Image Jerry Tarkanian at the 1991 N.B.A. draft with three former U.N.L.V. players selected in the first round: from left, Stacey Augmon, Greg Anthony and Larry Johnson. Credit Ron Frehm/Associated Press Twenty years later, however, Tarkanian’s methods hardly seem out of place. Here are some of the things Tarkanian did at U.N.L.V. that were, at the time, considered unusual: ¶ He embraced and encouraged the elevation of his players and program to cult status. Tickets to Runnin’ Rebels games were more difficult to come by than those to Wayne Newton’s show. Celebrities clamored to sit on Gucci Row, as the floor seats were called. A laser light show with throbbing music was a part of the pregame introductions. Games were as much productions as athletic competitions. ¶ He changed his philosophy, shifting to an up-tempo, high-intensity strategy that regularly produced triple-digit point totals and — not coincidentally — heightened public interest. In the music video for the rapper Tupac Shakur’s 1991 song “Brenda’s Got a Baby,” Shakur wears U.N.L.V. clothing. Jay Bilas, an ESPN analyst, recalls that when he was growing up in Los Angeles, “the games were on, like, Channel 9, and everyone would watch them on tape delay — they were awesome.” ¶ He gave opportunities to recruits with questionable backgrounds, earning him a reputation as a “second-chance” coach. Some, like Moses Scurry of Brooklyn, succeeded; others, like Lloyd Daniels, were disasters. Dick Vitale, the former college coach who now works as an analyst for ESPN, says he often referred to Tarkanian as the Father Flanagan of coaching. “Got a problem? Call up Jerry,” Vitale says. The obvious comparison to a modern-day coach is Kentucky’s John Calipari — a wildly successful and enigmatic personality with a greater-than-average amount of controversy attached to him — but there are others. For those who appreciate Tarkanian’s legacy beyond his battles with the N.C.A.A., it is hard not to wonder how he would have fit in to the college landscape if he were in his prime now. With recruiting having changed — both in style and in the types of players targeted by major colleges — and the nonstop exposure that did not exist for top programs in Tarkanian’s era, Bilas says: “I think he would have operated very successfully. I think he would have won even more.” Greg Anthony, who played for Tarkanian at U.N.L.V. and is now an analyst for NBA TV, is more succinct. “He was ahead of the times,” Anthony says. “It was wonderful that he coached when he did, but it’s hard not to wonder what might have happened now, too.” Anthony acknowledges, though, what everyone around Tarkanian does: that he will never get a full airing of his accomplishments because of “the photo.” Even Lois shakes her head when she says, “That photo will never go away.” Image Jerry Tarkanian won more than 700 games. Credit Ken Levine/Getty Images In 1991, a picture was published in The Las Vegas Review-Journal that showed several U.N.L.V. players sitting in a hot tub with Richard Perry, a prominent gambler who had twice been convicted on federal charges of sports bribery. The picture surfaced a few months after Tarkanian had said he told his players to stay away from Perry. “The sad part is that the guys didn’t even know who he was,” Anthony says of Perry. “He was using an alias. I had met him. I didn’t know who he was. There were so many people around then. And what does the picture show? That they were doing something wrong? Or that they were around someone who had done things wrong? There’s a difference. But perception becomes reality.” The picture is the most significant part of the stigma that lingers over Tarkanian. At one point while resting in his easy chair at home, Tarkanian grimaces when he considers how many coaches he has stayed in touch with since retiring in 2002, compared with how many talk publicly about his contributions to the game. “I would talk every day to guys, and they would thank me sometimes,” he says. “I fought for things they wanted to fight for. Everyone knows the system is broken. But no one ever says anything about it because they don’t want to be connected to me. They know what people will think.” There is, to be sure, some measure of paranoia from Tarkanian and his family, though Bilas says he believes “there could be some truth” to Tarkanian’s claim. Regardless, no one can deny the depth of Tarkanian’s battle with the N.C.A.A.; the roots go back 40 years to when he wrote guest columns in The Press-Telegram, in Long Beach, Calif., that were critical of the organization. Tarkanian, who began his career coaching high school and junior college ball before taking the Long Beach State job in 1968, was vocal about what he perceived as selective enforcement of the N.C.A.A.’s rules and accused the organization of ignoring issues at big-name universities in favor of targeting smaller institutions. When the N.C.A.A. began investigating Long Beach State in 1973, Tarkanian had already left for U.N.L.V. Predictably, his family says, the investigators followed, beginning a battle that lasted decades and included meetings, affidavits, postseason tournament bans and a memorable visit to the Supreme Court. The court said that the N.C.A.A.’s treatment of Tarkanian was “constitutionally inadequate” but ruled against him because the N.C.A.A. was a private organization. Image A photo of U.N.L.V. players in a hot tub with Richard Perry, second from left, a gambler convicted of sports bribery, was published in The Las Vegas Review-Journal in 1991, tarnishing Jerry Tarkanian’s reputation. The allegations against Tarkanian ranged from the benign (that he gave a player $35 in spending money) to the significant (that he helped arrange for proxies to take tests for players or helped falsify grades). Tarkanian always vigorously defended himself, and Lois says, “it was just an unending amount of emotion.” Ultimately, he takes solace in the fact that his plight played a role in significantly changing the way the N.C.A.A. must handle its investigations. He adds, though, that his biggest regret “is how long we fought.” “I wish it had never happened because of all the pain it caused,” Tarkanian says. On the way to lunch at Landry’s, Tarkanian is asked flatly whether any of the allegations against him were true. “There were some small things, very small things,” he says. “Nothing big and nothing everyone else wasn’t doing.” He does not elaborate. He indicates instead, as he always has, that the N.C.A.A.’s investigations of him were an epic witch hunt. Later, Danny points out that in 1998 the N.C.A.A. paid Tarkanian $2.5 million to settle a suit he had filed against the organization, claiming it harassed him and sought to prevent him from coaching. “I do believe there were violations committed, but obviously there were negative feelings toward him from the office in K.C.,” Bilas says, referring to the N.C.A.A.’s previous main office in Overland Park, Kan. “Should it be that way? No. But I have no doubt it was that way.” Bilas adds: “I don’t think there’s any coach that if you look back over his years, he was squeaky clean. It’s an impossible standard. All you have to do is look at the number of violations that are reported every year.” At this point, that reality means little to Tarkanian. All that remains for him is the legacy of a career that can be framed wildly differently, depending on one’s particular prism. To some, Tarkanian was an innovator, a wizard, a genius. His players graduated at a rate above the U.N.L.V. average. He put numerous black players in his starting lineup at a time when others shunned them. He offered players from difficult backgrounds the opportunity to go to college. To others, Tarkanian was a rogue, a scoundrel, a used-car salesman. To them, he associated with unsavory characters, had no standards and cheated. Image Tarkanian is often compared to John Calipari of Kentucky, a coach known for success and controversy. Credit Ed Reinke/Associated Press Lois says she often used to ask Tarkanian about simply walking away. Whenever she did, though, she recalled the night in 1955 when, as a young couple still getting to know each other, they sat in a car outside Lois’s family farmhouse. They had just seen the movie “The Trouble With Harry,” but Tarkanian was not talking about the film. He just sat sullen. “Do you think I’ll ever be any good at this?” Tarkanian asked Lois suddenly. He was talking about coaching. Lois, who knew little about basketball, had no idea. “Of course!” she replied. She remembers seeing fear and worry and pain on his face. It was the exact moment, she says, that she began to have feelings for him. “I knew then he would never walk away,” Lois says now, her hands wrapped around a mug at the kitchen table. “I just had no idea what we would face and how much it would hurt.” She looks out the window to her husband sitting in the sun. “I don’t think people realize how much it all hurt,” she says. “He says he never cared what people said, but he did. They broke his heart. All of it broke his heart.” Talk of the Hall of Fame Not long ago, Lois reached out to a friend who had a connection to the former N.F.L. quarterback Brett Favre. Lois was hoping to get some memorabilia from Favre to give as a gift to a family member. After a few days, the friend responded that it would be no problem. But there was also a request from Favre. “He wanted to know if we could send along a towel,” Lois says. “Even now, he wanted a towel. People ask all the time. Of course I sent him one.” It has been 10 years since Tarkanian last coached. He has not bitten a towel since then, he says, and his house is not particularly overrun with shark paraphernalia. There are a few trinkets and paintings, but nothing overt. “I wonder what it would have been like if everyone would have called me Jerry,” he says at one point. Image The Hall of Famer Bob Knight has more victories than Tarkanian but a lower winning percentage. Credit Tom Russo/Associated Press Still, Tarkanian’s presence hangs over college basketball’s modern form, even if Tarkanian himself has faded away. “The game has changed in a lot of ways that would fit him very well,” Bilas says. “I don’t think there’s any question that college basketball today in a lot of places looks a lot like what Tark did at Vegas.” For Tarkanian’s family, the primary concern now is his health. There have been hospital stays, a heart attack and a bout with pneumonia. Not long after lunch at Landry’s, Tarkanian settles into a soft chair in front of the television. At the kitchen table, Lois watches him and says softly, “What do you think about the Hall of Fame?” She looks away. “I just really would love for him to get in before ... ” she trails off. “You know.” This has become an important issue for the family. The Basketball Hall of Fame has a murky induction process, with a variety of committees charged with selecting and voting on nominees. Tarkanian, whose career winning percentage of nearly .800 is higher than those of McGuire, Knight, Mike Krzyzewski and Smith, is not in the Hall of Fame. His family is hopeful that might change, but there has been little indication that the committees are interested in looking past Tarkanian’s seemingly indelible tarnish. “There is no doubt that his legacy has been absolutely set aside and is always looked at in terms of N.C.A.A. investigations,” Vitale says. “I think that’s sad in many ways.” Anthony, not surprisingly, strongly believes Tarkanian should be in the Hall of Fame, and Bilas says flatly: “I think it’s a no-brainer that he should be in the Hall of Fame. I don’t claim to understand how everything works, but if you look at who is in the Hall of Fame, he meets and exceeds those standards.” Tarkanian does not seem overly concerned with whether he is enshrined. In the car, he shrugs when the subject is raised, and he gives only a cursory glance when Lois brings it up before turning back to the TV. “I know what people have said and think of him, but he deserves it,” Lois says. “But he deserves it. At this point — right now — it would mean so much. He has done so much and made such a difference and. ...” She looks over and sighs. Tarkanian has sunk into his chair, his head tilted back and his chin jutted out. The room goes quiet. As one of the most controversial figures in college basketball snoozes, the players on the screen run up and down the court in front of him.
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Jerry Tarkanian;University of Nevada; Las Vegas;Coaches;Basketball;College Sports;College basketball
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ny0244102
|
[
"world",
"africa"
] |
2011/03/22
|
Libya Releases 4 New York Times Journalists
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The Libyan government freed four New York Times journalists on Monday, six days after they were captured while covering the conflict between government and rebel forces in the eastern city of Ajdabiya. They were released into the custody of Turkish diplomats and crossed safely into Tunisia in the late afternoon, from where they provided a harrowing account of their captivity. Like many other Western journalists, the four had entered the rebel-controlled eastern region of Libya over the Egyptian border without visas to cover the insurrection against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. They were detained in Ajdabiya by forces loyal to Colonel Qaddafi. The journalists are Anthony Shadid, The Times’s Beirut bureau chief, who has won two Pulitzer Prizes for international reporting ; two photographers, Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario, who have extensive experience in war zones; and a reporter and videographer, Stephen Farrell, who in 2009 was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan and was rescued by British commandos . After The New York Times reported having lost contact with the four last Tuesday, officials with the Qaddafi government pledged that if they had been detained by the government’s military forces, they would be located and released unharmed. Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, wrote in a note to the newsroom that he was “overjoyed” at the news. “Because of the volatile situation in Libya, we’ve kept our enthusiasm and comments in check until they were out of the country, but now feels like a moment for celebration,” he wrote. “We’re particularly indebted to the government of Turkey, which intervened on our behalf to oversee the release of our journalists and bring them to Tunisia,” Mr. Keller added. “We were also assisted throughout the week by diplomats from the United States and United Kingdom.” A clearer account of the four journalists’ capture and detention has come to light now that they have been released. The four had been covering fighting near Ajdabiya last Tuesday when they decided that the battle had grown too dangerous for them to continue safely. Their driver, however, inadvertently drove into a checkpoint manned by forces loyal to Colonel Qaddafi. By the time they knew they were in trouble, it was too late. “I was yelling to the driver, ‘Keep driving! Don’t stop! Don’t stop!’ ” Mr. Hicks recalled in a telephone interview from the hotel where he and the three others were recuperating. “I knew that the consequences of being stopped would be very bad.” The driver, Mohamed Shaglouf, is still missing. If he had tried to drive straight through, Mr. Hicks said, the vehicle certainly would have been fired on. In any event, the soldiers flung the doors to their gold four-door sedan wide open so quickly that they had little chance to get away. As they were being pulled from the car, rebels fired on the checkpoint, sending the four running for their lives. “You could see the bullets hitting the dirt,” Mr. Shadid said. All four made it safely behind a small, one-room building, where they tried to take cover. But the soldiers had other plans. They told all four to empty their pockets and ordered them on the ground. And that is when they thought they were seconds from death. “I heard in Arabic, ‘Shoot them,’ ” Mr. Shadid said. “And we all thought it was over.” Then another soldier spoke up. “One of the others said: ‘No, they’re American. We can’t shoot them,’ ” Mr. Hicks said. The soldiers grabbed whatever they could get their hands on to tie up their prisoners: wire, an electrical cord from a home appliance, a scarf. One removed Ms. Addario’s shoes, pulled out the laces and used them to bind her ankles. Then one punched her in the face and laughed. “Then I started crying,” she recalled. “And he was laughing more.” One man grabbed her breasts, the beginning of a pattern of disturbing behavior she would experience from her captors over the next 48 hours. “There was a lot of groping,” she said. “Every man who came in contact with us basically felt every inch of my body short of what was under my clothes.” Their captors held them in Ajdabiya until the fighting with the rebels died down. Soldiers put the four in a vehicle and drove them out of the city around 2 a.m. One threatened to decapitate Mr. Hicks. Another stroked Ms. Addario’s head and told her repeatedly she was going to die. “He was caressing my head in this sick way, this tender way, saying: ‘You’re going to die tonight. You’re going to die tonight,’ ” she said. Their vehicle stopped repeatedly at checkpoints, each time allowing for a new group of soldiers to land a fresh punch or a rifle butt in their backs. The first night they spent in the back of a vehicle. The second night they spent in a jail cell with dirty mattresses on the ground, a bottle to urinate in and a jug of water to drink. On the third day they were on the move again, this time to an airfield. Mr. Shadid, who speaks Arabic, had overheard one of the soldiers saying something about a plane, and the four assumed they would be flown somewhere. As they were loaded on the plane they were blindfolded and their hands were bound tightly with plastic handcuffs. “I could hear Anthony at this point yelling ‘Help me!’ ” Mr. Hicks said, “which I learned later was because he had no feeling in his hands.” In a rare show of mercy, a soldier loosened the cuffs. They landed on Thursday in Tripoli, where they were handed over to Libyan defense officials. They were transferred to a safe house, where they said they were treated well. They were each allowed a brief phone call. That was the first time since their capture two and a half days earlier that their whereabouts became known to their families and colleagues at The Times. Their disappearance had kicked off an intensive search effort. The Times canvassed hospitals and morgues, beginning a grim process-of-elimination search. The paper also turned to a variety of people on the ground who might have heard or seen something — local residents, security contractors for Western businesses, workers for nongovernmental organizations. It also notified American diplomats. The State Department got word Thursday afternoon that the journalists were safe and unharmed, in a phone call to Jeffrey D. Feltman, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, from an aide to Abdullah al-Senussi, the head of Libyan military intelligence and the brother-in-law of Colonel Qaddafi, Mr. Feltman said. But the arrival of the four journalists in Tripoli was just the beginning of three days of frustrating, increasingly tense negotiations conducted by a State Department consular officer, Yael Lempert. Libyan officials kept changing their demands for the conditions of the journalists’ release, and an allied coalition, including the United States, began bombing Tripoli to enforce a no-fly zone. Several Libyan agencies were involved in the negotiation, which added to the confusion. First the Libyan government demanded that an American diplomat come to Tripoli to take the journalists, State Department officials said. The United States, which closed its embassy in Libya last month, refused. After initially resisting, the Libyans agreed to allow the Turkish Embassy to act as an intermediary. The release was scheduled for Sunday but was delayed until Monday because of the bombing. The four were turned over to Turkish diplomats Monday afternoon, and were driven to the border with Tunisia. While Monday was a day for celebration and relief at The Times, other news organizations covering the conflicts in Libya and elsewhere in the Arab world have not been so lucky. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists , 13 journalists are either missing or in government custody. The missing include four from Al Jazeera, two from Agence France-Presse and one from Getty Images. In addition, six Libyan journalists are unaccounted for, the group said. Others have died. A Libyan broadcaster was killed Saturday while covering a battle near Benghazi. A cameraman for Al Jazeera was killed in the same area on March 12, the first death of a journalist in Libya during the current conflict.
|
Libya;New York Times;Shadid Anthony;Farrell Stephen;Hicks Tyler;Addario Lynsey;Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- );Newspapers
|
ny0223165
|
[
"world",
"africa"
] |
2010/11/10
|
Growing Ransoms Attract Somalis to Piracy
|
NAIROBI, Kenya — The monsoon season has ended. The Indian Ocean is calm again. For Somalia ’s pirates , that means one thing: it is a busy time of year. According to Ecoterra International, an organization with offices in East Africa that keeps track of Somali piracy, pirates are currently holding hostage more than 25 foreign ships and 500 people. Some of the ships have been hijacked hundreds of miles offshore, closer to India than to Africa. The crews are often held at gunpoint for months while ransom negotiations play out. The ransoms are getting bigger, drawing more young men from Somalia’s ruined economy — the country has not had a functioning central government for nearly 20 years — into the piracy business. Last week, a band of pirates received what is widely believed to be a record ransom — around $10 million — for a hijacked South Korean supertanker, the Samho Dream . The ship had been commandeered in April and anchored for months off the city of Hobyo, in central Somalia, in plain sight of the beach. The ransom was promptly divided among dozens of young gunmen, each allotted a $150,000 share. But many of the pirates never saw close to that much money because they had taken advances from their bosses and had to pay back expenses, said a pirate in the Hobyo area. “During the six months the ship was here, they spent a lot on qat,” a local stimulant, “women and drink,” said the pirate, who asked not to be identified. “Many just came home with $20,000.” Some of the bigger pirate bosses in this part of Somalia have been building mini armies from the millions they receive in ransoms, and it is widely believed that much of the money from the Samho Dream will go toward more weapons. At the same time, the Shabab , the powerful Islamist insurgent group that vows to enforce strict Islamic law across Somalia, seems to be getting more deeply involved in piracy. Pirates recently sailed a hijacked yacht with three South Africans on board to Barawa, a coastal town firmly in Shabab hands. The pirates would not be able to set foot in Barawa, let alone hold hostages there, without Shabab cooperation. According to European naval officials, the pirates in the yacht ran aground just off Barawa’s beach on Sunday morning and ordered the hostages to come ashore. The skipper refused and was left behind on the sailboat. He was rescued soon after by a European naval patrol that had been trailing the sailboat. The two other South Africans are now believed to be in Barawa. Somali pirates have said they prefer bigger ships, especially oil tankers, which usually pay the best, though they will opportunistically attack a sailboat that crosses their path. A British couple, Paul and Rachel Chandler, have been held hostage in Somalia since pirates hijacked their yacht in October 2009 near the Seychelles. Even when captured, many pirates have been set free. On Tuesday, a Kenyan court ordered the release of nine piracy suspects, saying the country could not prosecute them for crimes committed outside its territory, Reuters reported. But international warships are plying the seas trying to thwart new attacks, sometimes successfully. Somali pirates opened fire — apparently by mistake — on a Spanish warship in a bungled nighttime attack, maritime officials said Tuesday. According to Lt. Col. Per Klingvall, of the European Union Naval Force patrolling Somalia’s waters, pirates cruising around on a hijacked Japanese cargo ship started shooting at a Spanish frigate over the weekend while it was escorting a supply ship for African Union peacekeepers in Somalia. The warship promptly fired warning shots — it did not want to sink the pirates’ ship because of the possibility that hostages were still on board — and the pirates sailed away, Colonel Klingvall said. “The frigate is relatively small, and the pirates probably thought it was a merchant vessel,” he said.
|
Somalia;Piracy at Sea;Al-Shabab
|
ny0283584
|
[
"us"
] |
2016/07/06
|
What the Email Inquiry Says About Washington and Its Secrets
|
WASHINGTON — When the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, announced the bureau’s findings in its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s personal email server, he revealed something that, while cloaked in opaque technical language, helped to answer a question long at the heart of this controversy: Just how sensitive was the information in those emails? Of the 30,000-plus emails the bureau reviewed, 113 were determined to “contain classified information at the time they were sent or received,” he said. Another 2,000 or so emails were retroactively “up-classified to make them confidential.” Those 113 emails, according to the investigation, contain information that was sensitive enough to be automatically considered classified the moment it was sent. This finding seems to suggest that a small number of Mrs. Clinton’s emails did include government secrets. This helps to explain why Mr. Comey, despite recommending no criminal charges against Mrs. Clinton, rebuked her and her team as “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” At the same time, the far larger share of 2,000 other emails considered “up-classified” do not fall into this category — and speak to long-running criticisms that Washington has a problem with overclassifying banal information. These designations shed light on the nature of the information in Mrs. Clinton’s emails and on the debate around them. ‘Born classified’ There is a reason that Mr. Comey dwelled on the 113 emails (a few of which had included classified markings, he said), detailing their provenance — 110 came from 52 email chains included in the files originally submitted to the F.B.I., three from emails the bureau found by other means — and their classification level. First, it seems to contradict Mrs. Clinton’s statements. “I did not send classified material, and I did not receive any material that was marked or designated classified,” she said in August 2015, though Mr. Comey said Tuesday that a few of the emails did bear such markings. Second, Mr. Comey revealed that the information in those emails was sensitive enough to be what is officially known as “born classified,” a technical but highly meaningful distinction. This doesn’t mean that there was a State Department officer standing over Mrs. Clinton’s shoulder classifying emails as they came in or went out. Rather, it means those emails contained information that was obtained through classified channels or generated in ways that make it automatically classified. For example, if Mrs. Clinton took notes on comments that a foreign ambassador made to her in confidence, then this information would probably be “born classified” because of how it was gathered. This practice dates to a 1946 law called the Atomic Energy Act , which established, among other things, that all information pertaining to the development of nuclear weapons would be automatically considered classified. That designation now extends far beyond nuclear issues, but it is still considered an important metric for information that should be treated with secrecy. Mr. Comey, in detailing the classification levels, seemed to drive this home. What We Know About the Investigation Into Hillary Clinton’s Private Email Server The F.B.I. recently uncovered new emails potentially related to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. Eight of the reviewed email chains contained information deemed “top secret,” the highest level of secrecy, the bureau found. Another 37 contained information that was designated “secret,” and the final 10 were “confidential,” the lowest level. This does not necessarily mean that Mrs. Clinton was copying and pasting information from top-secret C.I.A. reports — the designation can reflect how information was gathered as much as it does its content. Several of Mrs. Clinton’s classified emails were related to the C.I.A.’s covert drone program in Pakistan, which has been widely reported in the news media. But the “born classified” designation is meaningful, indicating that the source of the information is so sensitive that the government assumes significant harm if it emerges. Mr. Comey seemed to suggest that handling such information on a personal email server reflected a significant error of judgment. “Even if information is not marked ‘classified’ in an email, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it,” he said, warning that the State Department was “lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.” ‘Up-classified’ and beyond Then there are the other 2,000-some emails that Mr. Comey described as “up-classified,” which he said meant that “the information in those had not been classified at the time the emails were sent.” This is a much murkier category. While it is difficult to judge these emails without reading them, “up-classification” often has less to do with a document’s contents than it does with Washington’s long-lamented habit of overclassification — a problem distinct from Mrs. Clinton’s email practices. American classification practices, which are not governed by any one set of rules, have been criticized by virtually everyone who has encountered them, including the people tasked with their management. Classification is determined by “a series of bureaucratic fiefdoms” operating under “a hodgepodge of laws, regulations and directives,” J. William Leonard, then the head of the federal office that oversees classification, said in 2003 . The result, critics say, is that government information is routinely classified with little regard for its actual sensitivity. This is driven less by secrecy than by bureaucratic disarray, which is why national security officials have often led efforts at reform. A member of the 9/11 Commission, Richard Ben-Veniste, warned Congress in 2005 that overclassification had to be reduced to prevent another attack. “Information has to flow more freely,” he said. “Much more information needs to be declassified. A great deal of information should never be classified at all.” While subsequent legislation has tried to address this problem, many of the system’s core contradictions remain. That often comes through in the process of “up-classification.” For example, a document might begin as unclassified but later pass through an office that handles state secrets. Or a piece of information that is banal on its own might later be referred to in a classified report, making that piece of information also classified. Or a document might be unclassified according to the rules of the agency that created it, but become classified by another agency that uses it. This is why some Clinton allies have argued that her emails may have been deemed classified not because they contained sensitive information but because they had been swept up in routine Washington overclassification. The fact that so many of the reviewed emails were “up-classified” rather than “born classified” seems to support this argument. Still, those 113 “born classified” emails, even if they are a very small proportion of the total, speak to Mr. Comey’s charge that Mrs. Clinton, in some instances, “should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.”
|
Hillary Clinton;Classified Information;Email;State Department;James B Comey;FBI;US Politics
|
ny0217217
|
[
"sports",
"soccer"
] |
2010/04/12
|
Chelsea Reaches Final as Villa Boss Complains
|
Manchester United suffered a third major blow in eight days on Sunday when a 0-0 draw at Blackburn Rovers damaged their hopes of claiming a fourth consecutive Premier League title. United, who went out of the Champions League on away goals to Bayern Munich on Wednesday, failed to break down a resolute Rovers side, which means they remain stuck behind leaders Chelsea having played a game more. Chelsea have 74 points from 33 games while United, whose 2-1 defeat at home to Chelsea last weekend cost them top spot, have 73 from 34 games. Arsenal are still in the hunt with 71 points from 33 games. Liverpool’s ambitions of Champions League soccer next season look all but over after they drew 0-0 with fellow Europa League semifinalists Fulham at Anfield, while Manchester City beat Birmingham City 5-1 to maintain their bid for fourth place. Roberto Mancini’s City side stay in the fourth and final Champions League spot on 62 points after 33 games, four ahead of Tottenham Hotspur who have played one less. In the day’s third goalless stalemate Wolverhampton Wanderers eked out another point in their bid to retain their top-flight status, drawing at home to Stoke City. The United manager Alex Ferguson made six changes to the side who started the ultimately fruitless 3-2 win at home to Bayern on Wednesday with Dimitar Berbatov and Federico Macheda up front and Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes also included. However, with leading scorer Wayne Rooney missing after re-injuring his ankle on Wednesday, United were toothless as for the seventh time this season they dropped vital league points in the match following a midweek Champions League fixture. Spain Athletic Bilbao pressed their claim for a spot in next season’s Champions League by trouncing Almeria 4-1 to climb to sixth in La Liga on Sunday. Javi Martinez scored either side of halftime, Fernando Llorente also netted and had a penalty saved and Igor Gabilondo was on target before Pablo Piatti grabbed a late consolation goal for visiting Almeria. Sevilla occupy Spain’s fourth Champions League qualification berth after a 2-1 victory at Malaga on Saturday gave them 51 points with seven matches remaining. ITALY Coach Claudio Ranieri struck a prudent tone after AS Roma sent the Giallorosso side of the Italian capital into a frenzy by beating Atalanta 2-1 to overtake Inter Milan at the top of Serie A on Sunday. Roma fans buzzed around the city honking their car and scooter horns after Ranieri’s men moved one point ahead of champions Inter, who were held 2-2 at Fiorentina on Saturday, with five games to go. The leading pair both have difficult games next weekend. On Friday, Inter face a Juventus side striving to climb into the top four to qualify for the Champions League, while Roma meet the city rivals Lazio on Sunday. GERMANY Ruud van Nistelrooy scored a late goal to help Hamburger SV end a four-game winless streak with a 2-1 victory at relegation-threaten Bochum. In the other game Sunday, Edin Dzeko raised his season total to a Bundesliga-high 19 goals by scoring in Wolfsburg’s 2-0 win at Nuremberg, another team struggling against relegation. Van Nistelrooy picked up a pass from Ze Roberto to score the winner from close range in the 88th minute as the team strengthened its hold on sixth place. Hamburg went ahead on Robert Tesche’s header from a corner in the 18th and Zlatko Dedic netted for Bochum in the 32nd. Bochum is winless in six games and one point above the relegation zone.
|
Chelsea Football Club;Munich (Germany);Bordeaux (France);Inter Milan;Soccer
|
ny0150653
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2008/08/05
|
Suit Seeks Police Data on Race of People Shot by City Officers
|
The New York Police Department recently released 11 years of statistics on every bullet fired by its officers, including the reason for each shooting, the number of shots fired and how many bullets hit their target. But the reports stopped mentioning the race of the people shot after 1997 without saying why. Testimony by a former police chief now offers an explanation. The former chief, Louis R. Anemone , said that while the data on people killed by officers were being compiled in 1998, the police commissioner, Howard Safir , ordered the department not to include the race of those killed by officers. The testimony by Mr. Anemone, a former chief of department, did not say why Mr. Safir made his decision, but the shift appeared to have occurred during a public furor over race and the police’s use of deadly force in the shooting of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant, in February 1999. Mr. Diallo was killed in a barrage of 41 police bullets in the Bronx. Mr. Anemone’s statements were submitted with a lawsuit filed on Monday by the New York Civil Liberties Union seeking access to the data on race. The group first sought the data after undercover detectives fired 50 bullets at a car in Queens in November 2006, killing its driver, Sean Bell, and wounding two of his friends. Like Mr. Diallo, Mr. Bell was black. Mr. Safir, who was appointed commissioner in 1996 and resigned in 2000, did not respond to telephone or e-mail messages on Monday. An assistant to Mr. Safir, now the chairman of a security and investigative firm, SafirRosetti, said that he was traveling in Europe and that he had not responded to her message sent to his BlackBerry. Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said in an e-mail message that the “race of suspects shot by the police generally comports with the race of shooting suspects.” When asked why the department continued to omit the data on race from its annual firearms reports, he wrote, “They are internal tactical reports that focus on tactical considerations, such as lighting, weapons, distance between suspect(s) and officer(s), and not race.” After the department denied the civil liberties group’s Freedom of Information Law request, the group sued the department on Monday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. “I don’t think there is any reasonable claim that the race of shooting victims is irrelevant,” said Christopher T. Dunn, the associate legal director of the civil liberties group. “It certainly is not something that the N.Y.P.D. should be hiding from the public, but that is exactly what they are doing. In a city where there have been lots of concerns about blacks being shot, I think this is information that needs to come out.” The Police Department has said that the information on race is embedded in individual police reports on separate shootings that are “exempt from disclosure” because they are preliminary, include witnesses’ statements and are prepared as part of continuing inquiries, among other reasons. As a practical matter, police officials who brief the news media after police shootings routinely disclose the race of those shot. The reports for 1996 and 1997 include the race of both the officer and the person who was shot. Those reports said that, adding up the two years, 89.4 percent of those shot by the police were black or Hispanic. The 1998 report was the first to omit the data on race. Mr. Anemone was the department’s top uniformed officer from January 1995 until his retirement in July 1999. He later became security director of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. After he accused authority officials of impeding a corruption inquiry, the authority’s inspector general accused Mr. Anemone of fabricating a confidential source. Mr. Anemone denied the charge, but was fired. In October 2004, while Mr. Anemone was being deposed for a civil suit in which he was named as a defendant, he testified that he could not provide certain information about the race of suspects killed by the police. He testified that it was because Mr. Safir had asked him to remove it from a copy of the 1998 firearms-discharge report that was specially prepared for the police commissioner. While Mr. Anemone’s testimony referred to the version prepared for the commissioner, the change in policy apparently was also applied to the annual reports the department releases to the public. Mr. Anemone testified that he did not agree with Mr. Safir’s decision to remove the data on race because it was too important, a view he reiterated in an interview on Monday. Although he could not say what motivated Mr. Safir’s decision, he said that work on the 1998 report was completed in the spring of 1999, “subsequent to the Amadou Diallo shooting.”
|
Police;Race;Anemone Louis R;Safir Howard;Suits and Litigation;New York Civil Liberties Union;Statistics
|
ny0202313
|
[
"world",
"asia"
] |
2009/08/05
|
Korean Police Raid Occupied Factory
|
SEOUL, South Korea — Firing water cannons, the police raided Ssangyong Motor Company on Tuesday to reclaim the plant, which had been occupied for more than two months by hundreds of workers resisting layoffs. After a day of battles, with workers firing nuts and bolts with slingshots and police helicopters showering workers from above with tear-gas-laced water, the police gained control of all but one of the factory buildings, where some 500 workers continued to make a last stand. The workers also hurled fire bombs from rooftops. At least 23 police officers were injured, the police said, while the union said “many” workers were inside the factory were also injured. Dark smoke billowed from the factory in Pyeongtaek, 45 miles south of Seoul. Workers burned tires when thousands of riot police officers moved in behind plastic shields. Police helicopters hovered overhead, throwing water laced with tear gas on the workers. After hours of fighting, the police occupied several buildings but retreated from a paint shop, where at least 520 workers made their last stand. The building is stocked with inflammable material. Ssangyong, the country’s fifth-largest carmaker, filed for bankruptcy in January amid falling sales and mounting debts. The company has also had an acrimonious relationship with its Chinese owner, the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, which bought a controlling share of the business in 2004. Shanghai Auto, China’s largest carmaker, was seeking to expand overseas at a time when South Korea was beginning to embrace China as an economic partner. As the company’s fortunes waned, management laid off hundreds of workers in 2006, leading to cross-national recriminations and a strike in which workers took over the plant and locked out management for nearly two months. In December, union members held several Shanghai Auto officials hostage for seven hours, accusing them of absconding with proprietary technology. In April, the company announced plans to shed 36 percent of its workforce. About 900 employees barricaded themselves inside the paint shop and other buildings on May 22. As the police siege on the factory persisted, many workers broke ranks and deserted the factory. But the protesters rejected the management’s latest offer to reduce the number of layoffs. They said in a statement that rather than being divided, they would “die together.” Ssangyong threatened to seek liquidation if the workers prolong the occupation.
|
South Korea;Ssangyong Motor;Labor
|
ny0089718
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2015/09/21
|
Bratton Tries a Community Policing Approach, on the New York Police
|
After years of aggressive, centralized enforcement of its most minor rules, the New York Police Department is changing the way it disciplines its officers. Police Commissioner William J. Bratton is giving his commanders in the field far more authority in deciding how — or whether — to punish minor infractions, like misplacing a memo book or being late for court. Mr. Bratton still comes down hard in politically combustible cases, as he did this month in placing a plainclothes officer on desk duty for mistakenly arresting the retired tennis star James Blake with the kind of aggression that many black New Yorkers, particularly young men, say they endure frequently, and with far less attention. But on day-to-day internal disciplinary issues, Mr. Bratton is seeking to alter departmental culture: He disbanded a so-called tow-away squad that had been giving tickets to and towing department cars on official business but parked improperly. He also ordered the Internal Affairs Bureau to stop sending investigators into Traffic Court waiting to pounce on officers’ errors , an effort that grew out of a ticket-fixing scandal in the Bronx. The changes are evident in the number of vacation days officers have been docked, a common sanction for low-level violations. Officers were docked about 10,000 days last year, down from about 20,000 in each of the previous two years, under Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly , officials said. For Mr. Bratton, who popularized the “broken windows” approach to fighting crime — attacking low-level infractions to prevent serious, violent offenses — the idea of easing up on internal rule-breaking might seem at odds with the policing philosophy that helped burnish his reputation. Yet, his aides argue, the effort mirrors one being deployed on the streets, a departure from some of the blunt tactics of the past that represents a new incarnation of a more neighborhood-oriented style of policing. While arrests, summonses and street stops made by officers had all been declining in recent years, they dropped markedly from 2013, Mr. Kelly’s last year as commissioner, to 2014, when Mr. Bratton took charge. Image William J. Bratton addressed 822 newly minted New York police officers at Madison Square Garden in July. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times According to the Police Department, arrests dropped to 388,368 in 2014 from 394,537 in 2013; summonses fell to 359,202, from 424,850; and street stops plunged to 46,235, from 191,558. Mr. Bratton described the shift in internal discipline as part of a broader push to change police culture. By breaking with his predecessor’s harder line on low-level misbehavior, he said, he hopes to change officers’ attitudes about their jobs and, in the process, their attitudes about the people and neighborhoods they serve. “I’m practicing community policing on the cops,” he said in an interview about his effort to reshape how the department polices itself. For Mr. Bratton, the new approach is a key test of his second stint as New York’s police commissioner, which began in the shadow of the stop-and-frisk practices employed during the Bloomberg administration. It comes at a time when police departments across the country are under pressure to address the anger and frustration that have fueled antipolice protests for over a year, feelings that were stirred again by the arrest of Mr. Blake, who is biracial, by a white plainclothes officer, James Frascatore. But treating officers differently does not guarantee they will treat civilians differently, and shifting to a more discretionary system of discipline presents risks. Many past police corruption scandals grew out of a culture that was more tolerant of officers’ misdeeds, and some students of that history say strict supervision and consistent enforcement are essential to deterring serious graft. “If the rule makes sense, then the rule should be there and be applied to everyone,” said Milton Mollen, a former state appellate judge who led a commission that investigated police corruption in New York in the 1990s. A ‘White Socks’ Problem Like police commissioners before him, Mr. Bratton is facing high-profile, high-stakes disciplinary matters. Before Mr. Blake’s arrest, by an officer with a history of civilian complaints , the commissioner was already weighing the actions of officers and supervisors involved in the fatal encounter with Eric Garner on Staten Island in July 2014. And this summer, 19 officers in the Bronx were accused of downgrading criminal complaints , to make crime levels in their precinct appear lower than they actually were. History has shown Mr. Bratton to be a tough disciplinarian in serious cases. Many officers still recall his retiring of the badge numbers of officers swept up in the “Dirty 30” scandal of the early 1990s. In the more serious cases of misconduct, the Police Department said the number of officers suspended without pay each year hovers around 200. A total of 172 were suspended last year and 117 have been suspended this year, through Friday. Those put on desk duty, or “modified,” reached 134 last year and number 98 this year. Image Mr. Bratton, also shown at a 1994 news conference announcing the arrests of New York officers on corruption charges, is known as a tough disciplinarian in serious cases. Credit Dith Pran/The New York Times Last year, 96 officers were arrested, mirroring an average of about 100 each year, a majority of them on drunken driving and domestic violence charges, the department said. (An arrest automatically leads to a suspension, so all of the arrested officers are among those counted as suspended.) But the re-engineering now underway involves a different class of rule violations, the kind that Roy T. Richter, president of the Captains Endowment Association, referred to as “classic white socks” transgressions — a term from a time when officers were sanctioned for wearing socks that clashed with their dress blues. Mr. Bratton’s effort comes as the Police Department is contending with a degree of official scrutiny rarely seen in its history. As a result of the federal court case on stop-and-frisk tactics, the department is dealing with a newly appointed court monitor, a newly created inspector general’s office and a reinvigorated Civilian Complaint Review Board . Mr. Bratton has worked to forge close ties with those entities in hopes of obtaining the best treatment for officers. As an example, the review board, an independent oversight agency, is disciplining more officers than ever but recommending less severe charges in many cases than in the past and giving the department more opportunity to negotiate punishment. It has also cut to 79 days, from 280, the average time it takes to investigate allegations against officers and issue findings, Richard D. Emery, the board’s chairman, said. One of Mr. Bratton’s goals is to increase the trust in commanders of officers being asked to change the way they do their jobs. Officers in pockets of the city, including Far Rockaway, Queens , are not just answering 911 calls and enforcing the law, but are also expected to connect with members of the public and use the insights they develop to better police the streets. And as Mr. Bratton gives his commanders new powers to deploy personnel and tailor strategies, those commanders are also playing a bigger role in deciding how to handle officers who run afoul of the rules that govern how they dress, when they take meal breaks and where they park their cars. “If you want us to buy into community policing, and you want us to buy into treating each individual on the street as an individual, not the stereotype, then you have to do the same within your own organization,” said Lou Turco, president of the Lieutenants Benevolent Association, who worked as a community-policing officer in the early 1990s during the administration of Mayor David N. Dinkins. “That is what Bratton is trying to do,” Mr. Turco said. Sanctions Hurt Morale When Mr. Bratton began his second tour as commissioner in January 2014, he was succeeding Mr. Kelly, who had held the job for 12 years under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Mr. Bratton surveyed his officers and heard grievances about punishments being too heavy and meted out from a desk in Police Headquarters. Some commanders said the rigid, distant hand of discipline sapped them of authority over their officers. The one-size-fits-all approach often broke the spirit of hardworking officers who erred, one commander who served through the recent years said. Image Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, Mr. Bratton's predecessor as commissioner, took a hard line against officers who committed minor transgressions. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times “You would be told what the penalty was,” said the commander, who, like several officers and supervisors interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to talk to reporters. “You were neutered. Maybe you want to slap him, but now you’ve got to hit him hard.” Low morale led to poor police services, the commander said, describing a common chain of events: “Chief got kicked; chief kicked inspector; inspector kicked captain; captain kicked lieutenant; lieutenant kicked sergeant; sergeant kicked cop; cop kicked civilian. This is what Bratton has to undo.” Joseph J. Reznick , deputy commissioner of internal affairs, “is now running an operation that is focused, primarily, on serious offenses, both in the ability to react to identified trends as well as to proactively do stings,” Mr. Bratton said. “ Internal Affairs had become ‘white socks’ focused; we’ve taken all the ‘white socks’ offenses out of there.” Mr. Bratton said the work with the review board, and a city effort to analyze and fight lawsuits against officers, were part of addressing the dissatisfaction officers had expressed about the disciplinary processes in the department. Still, analysts said there was a balance to be struck between keeping a paramilitary force in line and giving it the freedom to work effectively. Major corruption tends to surface in New York every two decades or so, often as the lessons of past scandals fade and minor wrongdoing begins to turn into serious malfeasance. Memorably, the New York Police Department once made a training film, “The Erosion Factor,” which showed how, for example, condoning officers’ acceptance of free cups of coffee opened gateways to more serious corruption. One supervisor said a zero-tolerance policy was often all that most officers understood. Several years ago, the supervisor said, officers in patrol cars would “cut their seatbelts” or buckle them in behind them, feeling they interfered with bullet-resistant vests and gun belts. It was not until inspection teams confronted officers on the issue and stripped them of vacation days, he said, that officers began buckling up. One detective said a recent disciplinary case against him, for a minor offense, was “too severe,” dragging on for three years and tainting his record. “My move for grade was held up,” the detective said, referring to a potential promotion. “It put a mark on my career.” Image Hundreds of police officers gathered outside the Bronx County Courthouse in 2011 in a show of solidarity with 16 officers accused of fixing tickets. Credit Kirsten Luce for The New York Times Echoing others, the detective said the move to give commanders more discretion was encouraging. The supervisor, however, warned that it also put bosses in a tough spot. “The commander needs to be a nice guy to his cops, because he wants them to work,” the supervisor said. “If you discipline them or write them up, they won’t do anything for you.” A Test of Leadership Mr. Bratton said he was checking commanders’ work and holding them accountable. “I’m decentralizing, but I’m still holding a lot of power in my hands,” he said. “If I find a commander is not behaving appropriately in his disciplinary matters, he’s going to hear from us.” Mr. Bratton is, of course, the commissioner who ushered in CompStat , a computerized method of tracking crime. He said he was now applying the same data-driven approach to identifying troublesome trends in the ranks — and, with “broken windows” in mind, he has no intention of ignoring lesser offenses. “I’m very conscious of corruption and corruption tendencies,” he said. “We’ll watch for that officer that is repeatedly racking up the minor violations to see ‘Is that minor violation growth now leading to more significant problems?’ ” He said history showed that the department could not operate from a sense of fear, creating ways to keep officers out of situations considered possible corruption hazards. After the findings of the Knapp Commission in the 1970s, uniformed officers were prevented from making drug arrests that might tempt them into wrongdoing. “Remember how crazy that was,” Mr. Bratton said. “That was to thwart the potential for corruption. But everybody thought they were corrupt because they weren’t doing anything about the drug deals going on right in front of them.” As officers try to build close ties to residents, merchants and others in neighborhoods, that free cup of coffee — and the risks that it carries — looms. After all, the fear of pervasive graft worked against the immersion of officers in neighborhoods decades ago. Ultimately, Mr. Bratton’s policing strategies must be rooted in trust. It is a “major leadership question,” said Walter Mack, a former federal prosecutor who has worked to root out police corruption. “Cops are smart, they respond to good training, they respond to good leadership,” he said. “Discipline is part of the enforcement mechanism, of seeing that your cops are functioning. You’ve got to make a decision: ‘What is most important?’ And make clear that there are certain things you’re just not going to tolerate.”
|
William J Bratton;NYPD;Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings;NYC
|
ny0069715
|
[
"sports",
"football"
] |
2014/12/13
|
New York Jets at Tennessee Titans Preview
|
Jets (2-11) at Titans (2-11) 4:05 p.m. Sunday, Line: Jets by 3 Percy Harvin is injured, which seems like a cliché at this point, but it is notable because he appears to be the only receiver who can make the Jets’ Geno Smith look like a quarterback. If Harvin is out, the Jets will run more, but some semblance of a passing game is necessary to defeat even lowly Tennessee. Pick : Titans
|
Football;Jets;Titans
|
ny0128563
|
[
"world",
"middleeast"
] |
2012/06/29
|
Bahrain: Human Rights Activist Wounded
|
The police wounded a prominent human rights activist by shooting her in the leg with a tear-gas canister, witnesses said Thursday. The activist, Zainab al-Khawaja, was fired on at close range, said Yousef al-Muhafedha, a member of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. The injury did not appear life-threatening. Ms. Khawaja is the daughter of the jailed activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, whose hunger strike of more than 100 days brought renewed international attention to the protest movement in Bahrain. Bahrain’s majority Shiites, emboldened by Arab Spring protests elsewhere, began an uprising more than 16 months ago seeking to limit the wide-ranging powers of the ruling Sunni dynasty. At least 50 people have been killed in the unrest in Bahrain, which is home to the United States Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Bahrain’s monarchy has made concessions, but not enough to satisfy demands of the protesters.
|
Bahrain;Demonstrations Protests and Riots;Khawaja Abdulhadi al-;Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- );Political Prisoners
|
ny0004721
|
[
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] |
2013/04/07
|
Rutgers Officials Long Knew of Coach Mike Rice’s Abusive Behavior
|
They first saw the video Nov. 26, the Monday after Thanksgiving, inside an office in Piscataway, N.J., but it was hardly the first time that senior Rutgers officials had heard of the troubling behavior of Mike Rice, the men’s basketball coach. There was the upperclassman who earlier in the year had come forward to say that he felt bullied. There was an outburst during a game that led to Mr. Rice’s ejection. And there were the months of allegations from a former assistant, who repeatedly claimed that Mr. Rice was abusive. Tim Pernetti, the athletic director, knew all of that and had repeatedly tried to rein in Mr. Rice, according to a 50-page report that Rutgers commissioned outside lawyers to prepare. He personally reprimanded him, attended Mr. Rice’s practices and even assigned the university’s sports psychologist to work with the team, the report said. But the video was stark, a highlight reel of abuse — the coach kicking his players, hurling basketballs at them and taunting them with homophobic slurs. Those epithets were especially galling at Rutgers, where a gay freshman had killed himself. The video, parts of which were made public last week, was 30 minutes long. It had been professionally edited from a collection of 219 DVDs covering hundreds of hours of practices, material that Rutgers had voluntarily provided to Eric Murdock, the former assistant, after his departure. Mr. Pernetti’s decision not to fire Mr. Rice after seeing the video — despite internal university documents that suggest he legally could have — cost him his job, and has embroiled Rutgers in a deepening scandal during a time of tumultuous change for the university. But Mr. Pernetti is hardly the only person who watched the edited video and still approved of keeping Mr. Rice on staff until last week. The athletic department’s human resources and chief financial officer saw the video, as did the university’s outside legal counsel. At least one member of the board of governors saw it. Robert L. Barchi, the university president, has said he did not see it before last week, although at least one of his senior directors asked him to watch it. Interviews with university officials, former players and members of the board, as well as reviews of internal documents and legal records, show that when the most senior Rutgers officials were confronted with explicit details about Mr. Rice’s behavior toward his players and his staff, they ignored them or issued relatively light penalties. The interviews and documents reveal a culture in which the university was far more concerned with protecting itself from legal action than with protecting its students from an abusive coach. University officials focused on the technical issue of whether Mr. Rice had created a hostile work environment, a potential legal justification for his firing, while paying less attention to the larger question of whether Rutgers should employ an authority figure who hurled slurs at and physically provoked its students. Mr. Murdock first laid out his allegations about Mr. Rice in a letter that his lawyer sent to university officials in July. He said officials repeatedly canceled meetings with him to discuss those claims, until Nov. 26, when he showed them the video. Image Rutgers fired Mike Rice, the men's basketball coach, on Wednesday. The firing came after video surfaced of him throwing basketballs at players and taunting them with vulgar language. Credit Chris Trotman/Getty Images About two weeks later, Rutgers suspended Mr. Rice for three games and fined him $50,000. Mr. Pernetti did not offer much explanation at the time other than to say that the punishment was related to incidents at practice involving players. “We commenced a thorough, lengthy and fair investigation, and this was the result,” he said in December. Meanwhile, the university had hired outside counsel to investigate the men’s basketball program and determine Rutgers’s legal options. Lawyers with the firm Connell Foley of Roseland, N.J., interviewed coaches, players and administrators. They reviewed text messages, secret recordings and dozens of hours of video, noting the vulgar terms Mr. Rice used to address players. But the primary goal of the report, which was completed in January and made public Friday, was not to determine whether Mr. Rice had abused his players, or whether he was a suitable authority figure for a group of young men. Instead, it focused largely on whether Mr. Rice created a hostile work environment, which could have resulted in future lawsuits, and whether Mr. Murdock was wrongfully terminated. Lawyers interviewed assistants, who said the video clips — which represented less than one-half of 1 percent of Mr. Rice’s total practices, the report said — were taken out of context. The lawyers also interviewed players who thought Mr. Rice prepared them well for tough competition. The report notes that under Mr. Rice, the players’ grades rose to a B average. It called Mr. Rice “passionate, energetic and demanding” and said that his intense tactics seemed genuinely aimed at improving his team and “were in no way motivated by animus.” But the report also describes Mr. Rice’s misconduct: broken clipboards, kicks aimed at teenagers, basketballs thrown at his players. Page after page describes the very actions that spurred outrage from higher education leaders across the country last week — including at Rutgers, even though Rutgers officials received the report months ago. “Certain actions of Coach Rice did ‘cross the line,’ ” the report said, and those actions “constituted harassment or intimidation.” “These improper actions,” the report added, “constitute grossly demeaning behavior directed at players, and occasionally at coaches, that do not appear necessary to build a high quality basketball program or to build a winning Division I basketball team.” The report also made clear that Mr. Pernetti, who has said publicly that he initially wanted to fire Mr. Rice, would have been well within his legal rights to do so. “We believe that A.D. Pernetti could reasonably determine that Coach Rice’s actions tended to embarrass and bring shame to Rutgers in violation of Coach Rice’s employment contract,” it said. As to the legal questions that seemed to preoccupy Rutgers officials, the report was clear. “Coach Rice’s conduct does not constitute a hostile work environment,” it said. The lawyers also assured Rutgers officials that Mr. Murdock’s “assertion that he was wrongfully terminated from his position at Rutgers is without merit.” Image Robert L. Barchi, Rutgers’s president, has said that until last week, he had not seen a video of Coach Mike Rice at practice. Credit Nadav Neuhaus for The New York Times On Friday, Dr. Barchi, the university president, said that once he finally saw the videotape this week, “it took me five minutes” to decide to fire Mr. Rice. But the report, which describes much of Mr. Rice’s behavior in detail, apparently warranted no follow-up. The university has not described any additional actions taken against Mr. Rice after receiving the report in January. A spokesman for Rutgers declined to comment for this article. The lawyers’ clear bill of health seemed enough for Rutgers officials to declare the Rice matter closed — until ESPN showed the footage last week. The scandal comes during an extraordinarily sensitive time for the university. Rutgers had been working for years to improve its reputation and financing, in large part by elevating its athletic program. The university had expanded and renovated its football stadium, at a cost of some $100 million, and had been negotiating to join the prestigious Big Ten Conference, a move that would raise its profile and bring in huge revenue from athletics. Dr. Barchi joined Rutgers in September — after serving as the president of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and, previously, the provost of the University of Pennsylvania — with orders to upend the university, merging Rutgers and the state medical schools. Joining the Big Ten was crucial to those broader ambitions, and Dr. Barchi worked closely on that goal with Mr. Pernetti. Mr. Pernetti, who had been hailed as a visionary before last week, received a severance package worth at least $1.25 million when he resigned. Dr. Barchi and other university officials adamantly maintain that the Big Ten negotiations, which proved successful, had nothing to do with how administrators handled Mr. Rice. But it is clear that a scandal during those months could have proved damaging in the university’s bid for membership. Rutgers’s first Big Ten competition is scheduled for next year. Mr. Murdock, a former professional basketball player, has emerged as a complicated figure in the scandal. He maintains that he was a whistle-blower who was horrified at Mr. Rice’s behavior and was unjustly fired for speaking up about it. But the F.B.I. is investigating whether Mr. Murdock attempted to extort the university in the matter, and an agent recently visited Mr. Pernetti’s office, along with other sites on Rutgers’s campus, according to a university official who was not authorized to speak publicly. The F.B.I. investigation is believed to be related to a letter that Mr. Murdock’s lawyer sent to administrators in December demanding $950,000 “to resolve his claims,” according to the official. The F.B.I. declined to comment; a lawyer for Mr. Murdock, Raj Gadhok, dismissed the extortion allegations as “simply false.” Mr. Murdock said that he finally secured a meeting with Rutgers officials, after repeated attempts, on Nov. 20 in a Piscataway office on the Rutgers campus. But once again, Mr. Murdock said, it was canceled. Instead, on that same day, Rutgers officials held a news conference to announce the official invitation to join the Big Ten. “It’s a transformative day for Rutgers University,” Mr. Pernetti said publicly at the time. Six days later, in the same room where Mr. Pernetti spoke that day, Mr. Murdock screened the footage of Mr. Rice.
|
College basketball;Rutgers;Mike Jr Rice;Tim Pernetti;Eric Murdock;Robert L Barchi;College
|
ny0065265
|
[
"sports",
"hockey"
] |
2014/06/10
|
Cup Chase Puts Gaborik Back on the Garden’s Ice
|
Marian Gaborik is a man of few words and many goals. As a Ranger, Gaborik, a high-scoring right wing, excelled and struggled. There were two seasons with 40-plus goals, a 22-goal campaign in which he was hampered by injury, and then a difficult final season under the former coach John Tortorella. With Gaborik, the Rangers’ prize free-agent signing of 2009, exasperated with his coach, and vice versa, the team decided to trade him to Columbus in April 2013 for forwards Derick Brassard and Derek Dorsett and defenseman John Moore. All three played key roles in helping the Rangers reach the Stanley Cup finals this season. Gaborik, who never quite fit with the Blue Jackets, was traded in early March this year to the Los Angeles Kings. All he has done since is flourish in the sunshine of Southern California. Going into Game 3 against the Rangers on Monday, the soft-spoken 32-year-old Gaborik — who has 347 career goals and is playing in his first finals — led all playoff scorers with 13 goals. “I have great memories of my time here,” he said after the Kings’ morning skate at Madison Square Garden, where he was to play for the first time since being traded. “But it’s all about business now. It’s a big game for us and for them.” Gaborik was injured and missed both games when Columbus visited the Rangers this season. He still has many friends on the Rangers’ side of the Garden, which is hosting its first Cup finals since 1994. A native of Trencin, Slovakia, Gaborik was a key piece when the Rangers reached the Eastern Conference finals two years ago, netting 41 goals and five more in the playoffs, including one in triple overtime against Washington. He had 114 goals in his time with the Rangers and became a fan favorite. Gaborik scored the tying goal against Henrik Lundqvist midway through the third period of Game 2 from his usual spot just outside the crease. Gaborik’s linemate, center Dustin Brown, scored in double overtime for the victory. Playing extra sessions does not faze Gaborik or his teammates. Gaborik knotted Game 7 of the Western Conference finals in Chicago in the third period before the Kings won in overtime, ousting the defending champion Blackhawks. It was the third Game 7 victory on the road for the Kings, who, entering Monday, had won their last three games, all in overtime. “I played some overtime, long overtime before,” said Gaborik, the third overall pick in 2000 by the Minnesota Wild. “But obviously three in a row, that’s pretty tough. It’s a lot of hockey. But everyone will find energy, and we’ll be ready to go.” Kings Coach Darryl Sutter, a man of fewer syllables than Gaborik, was asked what flexibility the late-season addition had given his squad, which won the Stanley Cup two years ago for the first time in franchise history. Sutter was more succinct than usual. “Allowed us to move players around a little bit,” he said. “Gaborik can play right wing, left wing.” Gaborik, who was featured two years ago in HBO’s “24/7” purchasing a Christmas tree in Battery Park City before placing it on his shoulder and trudging home, was eager to hit the Garden ice for his first shift. “I was here almost four years, and I definitely enjoyed it,” he said. “But when you hit the ice, when the puck drops, it’s like playing any other team. My first finals has been a long time coming. It makes it more special to play against the Rangers, that’s for sure.”
|
Ice hockey;Marian Gaborik;Sports Trades;Madison Square Garden;Los Angeles Kings;Rangers
|
ny0039298
|
[
"sports",
"basketball"
] |
2014/04/28
|
Raptors’ Kyle Lowry Unfazed by Injury or Height Disadvantage
|
Jonas Valanciunas was standing in the Toronto Raptors’ locker room after Sunday’s game, talking to reporters, when a voice was heard from behind a wall of microphones and cameras. “Shout me out, J. V.,” Kyle Lowry said. “He’s a warrior,” Valanciunas said to the group, recognizing Lowry only by sound until he finally popped into view. Nearly a full foot in height separated the 6-foot-11 Valanciunas from the barely 6-foot Lowry. Up close it appeared an ample breach. It was hard to imagine any shot Lowry could concoct that might sneak beyond a reach as long as Valanciunas’s in practice, never mind in a game, never mind in the N.B.A. playoffs, never mind in the final 73 seconds of Game 4 against the Nets. Yet that was the kind of shot Lowry had somehow managed to pull off when he lifted a right-handed skyhook over the 6-11 Kevin Garnett to give the Raptors their final field goal in an 87-79 win that tied their first-round Eastern Conference series at two games each. The ball went through the net as softly as a petal, and Barclays Center fell quiet. It was wizardry, pulled from practically nowhere, and afterward Lowry said it was the first time this season he had tried such a shot in a game. “It’s something I work on in the summertime,” he said. “It was needed. I felt like that’s a shot I can go to, and I felt like I was going to make. It felt good.” Lowry finished with 22 points, behind only DeMar DeRozan’s 24, despite an injury to his right knee that has left him hobbling since Game 3 on Friday. On several occasions Sunday, he was seen limping up and down the court. The injury was said to be nothing structural and nothing requiring an immediate medical procedure, but Lowry said it was certainly painful. “I’m O.K.,” Lowry said. “It’s something that’s controllable. We can do what we got to do to get through the playoffs.” The pain has not stopped Lowry from continuing to be a floor general with a scorer’s touch. Along with DeRozan, he has bedeviled the Nets with perimeter scoring. Lowry also made one of the Raptors’ decisive plays on the defensive end, swiping the ball from Paul Pierce during a fast-break opportunity with 2 minutes 31 seconds left and the Nets trailing by 4. With five fouls, Lowry gambled, reaching in on the veteran Pierce. But Raptors Coach Dwane Casey was rewarded for having left Lowry in the game: The steal stifled a comeback effort by the Nets, who ended up missing their last six field-goal attempts. “He’s dealing with a lot right now,” Casey said of Lowry. “And he came through with flying colors.” Lowry came out strong in the first quarter, scoring 7 of the Raptors’ first 18 points, but foul trouble forced him to the bench early in the second, and the Nets began to climb back into the game. Lowry did not make another field goal until 2:08 remained in the third quarter. A Lowry 3-pointer with 48.3 seconds left in the third gave the lead back to Toronto. Teammates said Lowry’s presence on the court was enough to lift them. “He just continues to battle and fight through it,” forward Patrick Patterson said. “That’s just more motivation for us to want to do the same.” Valanciunas said, “When we see him diving on the court, we just want to go and do the same thing.” Lowry, 27, had a career year with Toronto during the regular season, averaging 17.9 points and 7.4 assists a game, and the Knicks heavily pursued him in trade negotiations early in the winter. But those talks eventually fell through, and Lowry, who will be a free agent this summer, is helping Toronto keep its season alive against some seemingly tall odds. “We’re just encouraged to go home 2-2,” he said. “Our confidence is high. We thought we were going to win Friday, and we didn’t. We thought we were going to win tonight, and we did.”
|
Basketball;Playoffs;Brooklyn Nets;Raptors;Kevin Garnett;Kyle Lowry;Dwane Casey
|
ny0089242
|
[
"sports",
"football"
] |
2015/09/28
|
Arizona Cardinals Embarrass Colin Kaepernick and the 49ers
|
If there was any doubt that the Arizona Cardinals had passed the San Francisco 49ers for superiority in the N.F.C. West, it was erased when two of Colin Kaepernick’s first four passes were intercepted and returned for touchdowns. Things did not get any better from there as the Cardinals embarrassed the visiting 49ers, 47-7, with Kaepernick’s four interceptions representing a career high and the game marking his career low. The two pick-sixes came in a flurry in the first half, with the Cardinals grabbing a 14-0 lead in the first six minutes. Justin Bethel had the first interception, returning it 21 yards for a touchdown and Tyrann Mathieu, once known as the Honey Badger, took the second one 33 yards for a score. Mathieu had another interception later in the game. After three consecutive playoff appearances from 2011 to 2013 — including a Super Bowl appearance spurred partly by Kaepernick’s breakout sophomore season in 2012 — the 49ers slide back to 8-8 last season. Meanwhile the Cardinals looked like a serious contender last season before Carson Palmer was lost for the year with an injury. Palmer is back, and the Cardinals are off to a 3-0 start — and a two-game division lead — while the 49ers are struggling to find their identity after coach Jim Harbaugh was let go despite the team going 44-19-1 in his four seasons. Kaepernick’s numbers coming into the game were not bad, but Sunday was a total disaster other than a 12-yard touchdown run. Along with the four interceptions, Kaepernick went 9 for 19 for 67 yards ,and San Francisco dropped to 1-2.
|
Football;Arizona Cardinals;49ers;Colin Kaepernick
|
ny0181478
|
[
"us"
] |
2007/06/08
|
Alaska: She’ll Need a Plane With Leg Room
|
The Alaska Zoo board has decided to relocate the state’s only elephant to another state under certain conditions, the board president said Wednesday. Advocates want the elephant, Maggie, moved to a warmer location, preferably to a sanctuary where she can roam with other elephants. The board voted late Tuesday on the relocation, citing various conditions to be met, including enlisting independent veterinarians to ensure that Maggie is healthy enough to move. Possible sites must also be selected by zoo staff members and approved by the board. Air travel is the only form of transportation acceptable to the board for moving Maggie, who was put on a regimen that included having a $100,000 treadmill built.
|
Zoos;Elephants;Alaska
|
ny0254828
|
[
"sports",
"golf"
] |
2011/07/22
|
Many Golfers Contend in Canada
|
Kris Blanks of the United States shot a three-under-par 67 to take a one-stroke lead after the first round of the Canadian Open in Vancouver. Canada’s Matt McQuillan was one of 11 players, including Ernie Els , who shot 68. Rickie Fowler, Anthony Kim and Lucas Glover were among nine players at 69.
|
Golf;Canadian Open (Golf);Blanks Kris;Els Ernie;Vancouver (British Columbia);Glover Lucas;Kim Anthony
|
ny0294169
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2016/06/24
|
Judge Holds Ice Cream Truck Owner in Contempt in Cone War
|
New York City’s game of cones between Mister Softee and New York Ice Cream continued this week, as the battling of the two companies moved from the streets of Midtown to the federal courtroom in Lower Manhattan. While New York Ice Cream drivers have been accused of intimidating their frozen-confection competition with threats and strong-arm tactics, the owner of the company, Dimitrios Tsirkos, owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to Mister Softee for breaching franchise agreements, trademark infringement and other unfair business practices. On Thursday, Judge Laura Taylor Swain held Mr. Tsirkos in contempt of court for failing to begin payments on a $97,000 judgment handed down in 2014. The judge dismissed claims from Mr. Tsirkos’s lawyer that the ice cream operator was an “unsophisticated” businessman who did not realize that he owed the money. “It beggars belief,” she said, that Mr. Tsirkos was ignorant to the charges. Frank A. Reino, a lawyer for Mister Softee, asked the judge to also hold Mr. Tsirkos in contempt of court for the other fines they claim he owes. “He’s buried his head in the sand,” said Mr. Reino. The defendant was absent from court. His lawyer, Peter Moulinos, declined to comment. Mr. Tsirkos had been a franchise owner of Mister Softee trucks for decades. He defected in 2014, when, according to court papers, he stopped paying franchise fees. Then he removed several of his trucks from the depot and altered the trademarked “Cone head” figure, a smiling, tuxedoed wafer cone, to a smiling, tuxedoed waffle cone with sprinkles, under the name Master Softee. (The fleet has since been painted all-white and renamed New York Ice Cream.) Video When it gets hot in New York, ice cream trucks hit the pavement, often competing fiercely for coveted street corners. Follow Ricardo Cruz, one of Mister Softee’s 350 drivers, on a sunny day in the city. Credit Credit Michael Nagle for The New York Times Mister Softee sued. Now, all told, Mr. Tsirkos owes Mister Softee $767,000, almost half of which is for mounting legal fees. So far, Mister Softee’s lawyers said they had been able to seize only $2,426. For years, Mister Softee has been pursuing Mr. Tsirkos, but his legal representation has been in flux. A previous lawyer failed to show up in court, which is why Mr. Tsirkos claims not to have known about the order to begin payments. Multiple letters had been sent to his home and truck depot. His wife testified that she had given the letters to her husband. (She, too, is being sued by Mister Softee, which has accused her of hiding money for her husband. Judge Swain described the tactic of shifting money between accounts as “playing Whac-a-Mole.”) In May, Judge Swain ordered him to start paying $6,000 a month, which he has yet to do. On Thursday, the judge gave him until Monday to pay $12,000 for the delinquent payments. “When I sign an order, it is not a suggestion,” she told the court. If Mr. Tsirkos fails to make good on the judge’s order by Monday, he could face further sanctions from the court, or arrest. Jeffrey Zucker, who has been representing Mister Softee since 1998, said Mr. Tsirkos was running out of places to hide. Bankruptcy is an option, “but he has too many assets,” Mr. Zucker said. According to Mr. Zucker, Mr. Tsirkos also receives income from rental apartments and 30 or so ice cream trucks. “He’s not some little guy that’s scraping by,” said Mr. Zucker. “He lives a nice life.” Mister Softee has no plans to back down. “Like I told his lawyer,” said Mr. Zucker, “We’re not going away.”
|
Food Trucks,Food Vendors;Mister Softee;New York Ice Cream;Midtown Area Manhattan;Lawsuits;NYC
|
ny0103704
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2012/03/16
|
Officer Adrian Schoolcraft, Forcibly Hospitalized, Got No Apology, Just a Bill
|
It was not until 6 in the morning on Nov. 1, 2009, that Officer Adrian Schoolcraft finally had access to a telephone. The night before, he had been brought to the psychiatric emergency room at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center on the orders of his police bosses. Since then, his left hand had been cuffed to a gurney and he had been guarded by officers from the 81st Precinct in Brooklyn, where he worked. He rolled the gurney to the phone and dialed a number, but the call was immediately disconnected by a sergeant, who said, “Hey, I thought perps weren’t allowed to use the phone,” according to a federal lawsuit that Officer Schoolcraft has filed against the city, saying he was punished for whistle-blowing. Then, the suit charges, six officers pushed Officer Schoolcraft back down on the gurney, and a second handcuff was tightened around his left wrist. Officer Schoolcraft was not, however, a perp — as the police call someone charged with a crime. He was a police officer who had accurately reported wrongdoing by his supervisors, and who had left work an hour early the previous day. The very people he implicated — and who knew that he had — decided that his early departure and failure to answer the telephone constituted a psychiatric emergency. Led by a deputy chief and a deputy inspector, officers raided his apartment and brought him in cuffs to the psychiatric emergency room. Throughout the encounter in his home, which was secretly captured on audiotape, Officer Schoolcraft sounds calm, and not like a threat to anyone. His suit claims that the hospitalization, which lasted six days, was meant to shut him up. The second cuff was fastened so tightly that his hand turned blue, the lawsuit says. It brings to mind another hospital patient manacled by the left hand, and the reaction of the mayor and the police commissioner at the time. On a summer night in 1997, Abner Louima, mistakenly identified as a man who had punched an officer, was led into a toilet stall at the 70th Precinct station house and raped with a stick, an assault that nearly killed him. At Coney Island Hospital, Mr. Louima was handcuffed to the rails of his bed until the atrocity was reported by Mike McAlary, a columnist with The Daily News. Within a day, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir swept out senior officers in the precinct, put others on desk duty and stood at the bedside of Mr. Louima. His hand was uncuffed. “The alleged conduct involved is reprehensible, done by anyone, at any time,” Mr. Giuliani said. “Done by police officers, it’s even more reprehensible.” OF course, the story of Mr. Schoolcraft’s confinement — which, seen in its worst light, is in a dimension different from the torture of Mr. Louima — took much longer to unfold, first emerging in The Daily News in February 2010, three months afterward, and then in the May 4, 2010, edition of The Village Voice. The superiors involved in the misreported crimes were eventually transferred by Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly without public explanation, although an internal report affirmed Officer Schoolcraft’s accusations. But on Officer Schoolcraft’s forced hospitalization, neither Mr. Kelly, nor his boss, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg , has had anything substantial to say. The Bloomberg administration continues to refuse to release any internal reports on the matter, saying the records are sealed by court order — although the city’s own lawyers asked for the order. Unlike Mr. Giuliani, who thundered in the Louima case, Mr. Bloomberg seems to be shrugging at what, if true, also amounts to a grotesque abuse. “While the police may bring someone who is potentially at risk to themselves or others to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation, they have no say over who is admitted or for how long,” Frank Barry, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, said this week. “That’s up to the mental health professionals at the hospital.” Rather than absolving the mayor of responsibility, that circumstance amplifies it. Jamaica’s spokesman, who did not return a phone call on Thursday, has said that the doctors relied on the observations of the police officers. A doctor wrote that Officer Schoolcraft’s “insight and judgment” were impaired, but also noted that he was “coherent, relevant with goal-directed speech and good eye contact.” The doctor also wrote: “He is irritable with appropriate affect.” Dressed only in a gown, he spent three days in the psychiatric emergency room, then another three days in a locked ward among seriously disturbed people, with no phone, clock or mirror. After his father tracked him down and brought him home, Jamaica Hospital Medical Center sent Adrian Schoolcraft a bill for $7,185.
|
Schoolcraft Adrian;Whistle-Blowers;New York City;Bloomberg Michael R;Suits and Litigation;Police Department (NYC);Crime Rates
|
ny0133908
|
[
"business"
] |
2008/03/01
|
F.D.A. Approves Wyeth Antidepressant
|
Faced with the looming loss of patent protection for its top-selling drug, the antidepressant Effexor XR, Wyeth received federal approval on Friday for a successor drug, Pristiq, which the company hopes will also become a blockbuster. With the Food and Drug Administration ’s approval of Pristiq, Wyeth said the company planned a big sales effort to introduce the product to psychiatrists and primary care doctors. Wyeth needs a product that will replace some of the revenue expected to be lost to generic competitors of Effexor XR, whose patent protection expires in 2010. Sales of Effexor XR last year were $3.8 billion. Dr. Philip Ninan, a Wyeth vice president for neuroscience, said he thought that Pristiq, which is chemically similar to Effexor, would have similar benefits in treating major depression . But the company said the drug had distinct advantages over its existing product. Among them are that patients can start taking Pristiq at the therapeutic dose of 50 milligrams. Frequently, antidepressants must be started at a low dose, then ramped up to the therapeutic dose, to test whether patients can tolerate the drug and to determine the correct dose for the individual. Another advantage is that Pristiq avoids a major metabolic pathway in the liver, Dr. Ninan said, so it is not likely to interact with other medications metabolized by the liver. “I think what’s important to understand in the depression category is that many patients fail to respond to anything that’s available,” said Geno Germano, Wyeth’s president of pharmaceuticals for the United States. “What’s important is that physicians and patients need multiple options available.” But several analysts are skeptical of Pristiq, saying it has little advantage over other products on the market. And they raised questions about whether insurance companies would cover its cost in light of the availability of other drugs, including a less expensive generic version of Wyeth’s original version of Effexor that is already on the market. Wyeth applied for F.D.A. approval of Pristiq in 2005. But in January 2007, the agency asked for additional information, a process that delayed approval until now. During regular stock market trading on Friday, when most of the market was plunging, Wyeth’s shares were up more than 2.5 percent, closing at $43.62, in apparent anticipation of the F.D.A. approval. Wyeth, based in Madison, N.J., has not yet announced how much Pristiq will cost. Effexor XR sells for about $120 for a 30-day supply, while the generic version of the original Effexor has been priced at less than half that recently on the Web site of one domestic chain pharmacy. Dr. Timothy Anderson, a pharmaceutical analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, said that data Wyeth presented at a recent meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology failed to distinguish Pristiq from other marketed antidepressants. “Payers are not likely to widely cover Pristiq in our view, and we forecast only low levels of sales,” Dr. Anderson wrote in a note to clients. He predicted the drug’s sales at $500 million by 2012, a relatively small figure in the antidepressant category. And Dr. Daniel Carlat, a psychiatrist in Newburyport, Mass., who publishes the Carlat Psychiatry Report, said the release of Pristiq appeared mainly to be an effort by the company to, in effect, extend its patent for Effexor XR. That is because Pristiq is a metabolite of Effexor — meaning it is the chemical compound that results after Effexor is swallowed and processed in the body. “Is there a compelling public health reason for Wyeth to be releasing another antidepressant into the market, with no clear advantages over others?” Dr. Carlat said. “Not that I can see.” Wyeth is also seeking F.D.A. approval for Pristiq as a drug to reduce hot flashes in menopause . The agency has asked for more data for that use.
|
Wyeth;Food and Drug Administration;Antidepressants;Inventions and Patents;Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)
|
ny0143605
|
[
"business"
] |
2008/10/05
|
Can’t Open Your E-Mailbox? Good Luck
|
LOGGING on to Gmail or other e-mail service has become a routine of daily life, completed without a thought. What would you do, however, if you woke up tomorrow, plugged in your user name and password as you always do, but then received an unfamiliar message: “User name and password do not match”? If you’re a Gmail user, what you’ll want to do after a few more unsuccessful, increasingly frantic attempts is to speak with a Google customer support representative, post haste. But that’s not an option. Google doesn’t offer a toll-free number and a live person to resolve the ordinary user’s problems. Discussion forums abound with tales of woe from Gmail customers who have found themselves locked out of their account for days or even weeks. They were innocent victims of security measures, which automatically suspend access if someone tries unsuccessfully to log on repeatedly to an account. The customers express frustration that they can’t speak with anyone at Google after filling out the company’s online forms and waiting in vain for Google to restore access to their accounts. Tom Lynch, a software entrepreneur who lives near Austin, Tex., discovered early last month that he had been locked out of both Gmail accounts he used; he had no idea why. He received boilerplate instructions for recovering his accounts that did not apply to his particular circumstances, which included his failing to maintain a non-Gmail e-mail account as a back-up. He said it took him four weeks, including the use of a business directory and talking with anyone he could find at Google, before he succeeded in having service restored. A Google spokesman placed the blame on Mr. Lynch, saying he did not follow Google’s guidelines. The spokesman characterized Mr. Lynch’s ordeal as a praiseworthy illustration of Google’s tough security: “We have had no cases of falsely recovered accounts.” Google does provide phone support to Gmail customers who subscribe to Google Apps Premier Edition, which costs $50 annually and includes larger storage quotas and other benefits. Customers who use the advertising-supported version of Gmail, however, must rely solely on what Google calls “self-service online support.” Microsoft and Yahoo similarly offer phone support only to their premium e-mail customers. (Yahoo says it offers phone support for its free e-mail service “in some cases,” but it does not publish the phone number; it is revealed to the user in distress only after e-mail communication fails to resolve the problem.) Last month, Google’s official blog dispensed advice for those unfortunate souls who find themselves locked out. The post, “What to do if you can’t access your Webmail,” scolded users about not sharing passwords with anyone, pointed customers to a form to reset the password and, if that doesn’t solve the problem, to another form to start the “account recovery process.” As customers, we bring the same expectations to Google’s personalized information services, like Gmail or Google Docs, its word-processing service, as we do to our bank’s Web site. These are places that hold information very dear to us. My bank recognizes that losing access for days at a time is unacceptable. It provides me with round-the-clock phone support for account problems. So, too, should Google, even if I pay the company not in the form of a monthly account fee, but with my attention, which Google commercializes by selling slices to its advertisers. Last month, with cases like Mr. Lynch’s in mind, I contacted Google to see what the company had to say about my suggestion that it add phone support for its customers with account-related problems. The company returned with a debate team of three to argue the negative position: Matthew Glotzbach, who works with Google’s business customers; Roy Gilbert, who handles consumers; and Greg Badros, who is an engineering director. Mr. Glotzbach began by saying that “one-to-one support isn’t always the best answer” because it would take Google too long to collect lots of data about a problem that is affecting many users simultaneously. For systemic problems, data collection is important. But not for other categories. Account recovery could be slow for a locked-out customer who doesn’t have a backup e-mail account, and who declined to provide a security question and answer because of concerns that someone else could use it to get in (which is what someone did to Gov. Sarah Palin’s Yahoo Mail account). Mr. Badros argued that Google asks so little personal information of a new Gmail customer that it’s hard to determine identity when the genuine user and the impostor both present themselves to claim the account, and neither can produce the verification. He said more information could be asked of users when they sign up, but the inconvenience would dissuade them from trying the service. Mr. Gilbert added that proving identity with only minimal information is a problem, whatever form of communication is used to reach customer support. He said, “Even if they were standing right in front of us, it wouldn’t help.” THIS makes sorting out competing claims seem permanently hopeless, when, of course, this is not the case; it simply means that standard security questions will not suffice. But if Google were to use real people to sort out identity problems over the phone, the only remaining consideration would be the one that Google’s panel of experts didn’t mention in our talk: cost. Google says it has “tens of millions” of Gmail customers. (It declines to be more specific.) If it’s willing to consider phone support for account-access emergencies, it can take heart in the example of Netflix, which last year adopted phone support with enthusiasm, replacing online support completely. For all customers. For all problems. And without resorting to an offshore call center. It turns out that a staff of 375 customer service representatives are enough to handle calls from Netflix’s 8.4 million customers, answering most calls within a minute. Netflix says with justifiable pride that it has received the top ratings in online retail customer satisfaction by both Nielsen Online and ForeSee Results. A Netflix spokesman explained the complete switch to phone support: “Most people don’t need customer service,” he said, “but when they do, they want it now.”
|
Electronic Mail;Computers and the Internet;Customer Relations;Google Inc
|
ny0009251
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2013/02/05
|
Garbage Disposals Are the New Kitchen Amenity
|
The online listing for a condominium in Brooklyn Heights advertises five bedrooms and wide-open views of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline for $4.995 million . A 19th-floor two-bedroom on East 59th Street offers floor-to-ceiling windows, a gas fireplace and two balconies; corporations and pieds-à-terre welcome, $2.495 million. And a penthouse on Greenwich Street offers a 500-square-foot terrace and a pet spa for $6.195 million . In addition to large price tags, these listings have something else in common. They all puff out their chest to announce: This apartment has a garbage disposal. This little appliance of convenience has been widely available in much of the country since the middle of the last century, but residential garbage disposals were, in fact, illegal in New York City until 1997. And although the laws have changed, many apartment buildings, especially older ones, continue to ban them, fearing for the health of aging pipes. They do pop up now and again in apartment listings, especially in newer buildings. On Monday, 83 listings on the StreetEasy Web site considered this modest gadget, which typically costs less than $200, worth a mention, right alongside the gyms and the views, the pet wash rooms and the 24-hour doormen. Nancy Albertson, director of leasing at Glenwood, a company that builds new rental buildings, many of which have included garbage disposals in recent years, said that when many New Yorkers saw them, they had the same reaction: “Isn’t that illegal?” No, just rare. Michael J. Wolfe, president of Midboro Management, which manages mostly prewar co-op and condominium buildings, said that out of 95 buildings, maybe three of his prewar buildings and a few newly constructed projects allowed garbage disposals. Garbage disposals were banned in much of the city in the 1970s over concerns for the aged sewer system. (More creative and gruesome reasons worked their way into city lore. Stuart M. Saft, the chairman of the Council of New York Cooperatives and Condominiums, said he had heard the police feared that the bodies of murder victims might be disposed of down the drain. And in an essay in The New York Review of Books in 1991, Joan Didion wrote that a city employee had expressed concern to her that people might be tempted to “put their babies down them.”) Before lifting the ban, the city distributed more than 200 disposals to New Yorkers free for a 21-month trial run . The sewers survived, so the ban did not. Yet years later, worry remains that the remnants of dinner will become clogged in corroding old pipes, especially in apartment buildings that were not built with in-sink disposals — or washing machines, or dishwashers — in mind. But plumbers, building managers and real estate lawyers said they were hard pressed to think of a single recent horror story of a flood or broken pipe caused by the appliance. “It probably has a lot more to do with fear than fact,” Mr. Wolfe said. “But nobody wants to be the test case.” Image Many apartment buildings, especially older ones, still ban them, fearing for the health of pipes. Credit Yana Paskova for The New York Times Some plumbers do say that putting extra grease down the drain while grinding up leftovers can damage plumbing, and if every apartment in an older building suddenly put in a garbage disposal, that could cause problems over the course of many years. The real threats to pipes, they say, comes from cat litter flushed down the toilet or a child’s toy shoved into a bathtub drain. And the true dangers of garbage disposals — many of which now operate only when there is a cap on to protect wandering fingers — appear to lie elsewhere, as well. “I was operating a garbage disposal once, and a turkey popper flew out and whacked me right in the forehead,” said Steven Sladkus, a real estate lawyer, offering up one example. Shawn Calkins, a manager at Fred Smith Plumbing and Heating Company in Manhattan, provided another. “Anything that can fall down there generally does,” Mr. Calkins said. “Wedding rings tend to be the most common thing down garbage disposals, and toilets and sinks.” Regardless of the reasoning, Mr. Sladkus added, if a building’s board wants to ban disposals, it is perfectly within its rights. This does not mean that everybody listens. “People sneak them in,” Mr. Wolfe said, describing scenes of them being surreptitiously hustled into buildings in shopping bags. When they are discovered, his management company asks that they be removed, but some disposal lovers put up a fight. Occasionally, he said, a lawyer even gets involved. The frequency of these sneaky instances is impossible to gauge, but Mr. Saft has a suspicion. “My guess is everybody who modernizes a kitchen puts in a garbage disposal unit,” he said. “All of a sudden, there’s a plumber and a unit goes in — and gee, I don’t know how that got there!” There are plenty of new buildings, however, that have taken the plunge willingly, eager to provide an extra touch of convenience. The kitchens at Crystal Green, a Glenwood rental building on West 39th Street, include garbage disposals — as they do at the ultraluxury Midtown building One57, where two apartments are under contract for at least $90 million. But old buildings, according to plumbers and real estate professionals, will probably continue to drag their feet. “People are just used to doing what they’ve been doing for decades,” said Philip J. Kraus, owner of Fred Smith Plumbing. And though he believes that disposals are not a problem, he does not have one himself, for another prototypically New York reason: space. “I just don’t happen to have enough room under my kitchen sink,” Mr. Kraus said, “or I’d be happy to have one.” Besides, the garbage can is right over there.
|
Waste management;Real Estate; Housing;Plumbing;NYC;Kitchen
|
ny0184069
|
[
"business",
"worldbusiness"
] |
2007/12/14
|
Confidence Falls Among Japan’s Manufacturers
|
TOKYO (AP) — Confidence in business conditions at major Japanese companies fell from three months ago, a closely watched Bank of Japan survey showed Friday, dampening expectations of an interest rate increase and clouding the outlook for the world’s No. 2 economy. The quarterly tankan survey showed the sentiment index for large manufacturers at 19, down from 23 in the previous survey in September, and below the 21 mark forecast by economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires. A similar index for large nonmanufacturers in the survey, which polls more than 10,000 companies nationwide, also dipped to 16 from 20, below a forecast of 18. The disappointing numbers came amid worries that Japan’s growth might take a hit from a possible slowdown in the United States economy, which continues to wrestle with a credit crisis and higher raw material prices. Last week, the government cited slow corporate capital investment to downgrade growth figures for the July to September quarter. It said the economy grew at an annual pace of just 1.5 percent, worse than a preliminary estimate of 2.6 percent. Along with sluggish data on jobs and consumer prices, the latest tankan reading has cemented expectations that the central bank will hold off from raising a key interest rate at its policy meeting next week. Analysts believe the Bank of Japan, which last raised its benchmark rate to 0.5 percent in February, will sit tight as it gauges the American economy — a crucial export market — and fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis.
|
Japan;Economic Conditions and Trends
|
ny0140056
|
[
"sports",
"baseball"
] |
2008/02/21
|
Facing Questions, Rodriguez Raises More
|
During his first interview with reporters at the Yankees ’ spring training complex on Wednesday, third baseman Alex Rodriguez was peppered with questions about Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and the scrutiny he expects as he pursues baseball’s career home run record. In defending the sport’s drug-testing program, he ended up raising questions about himself. “Last year, I got tested 9 to 10 times,” he said. “We have a very, very strict policy, and I think the game is making tremendous strides.” The number of tests he cited is substantially higher than those mandated by baseball’s collective-bargaining agreement. All players in the major leagues — roughly 1,200 — are subject to at least two drug tests between spring training and the end of the postseason. Another 600 random tests are conducted during the same period, and 60 more random tests are done in the off-season. Under the program, other circumstances call for extra testing. A player who tests positive for steroids is publicly identified, suspended and subjected to additional testing. With the approval of a small committee, baseball can also conduct extra tests of players who are suspected of doping, although it is unclear how often that happens. Players who fail a first test for amphetamines are not publicly identified, but they are subject to six more random tests over the next 12 months. Rodriguez has never been publicly identified for testing positive for a banned substance, and only two players have ever been suspended for amphetamine use since testing for that substance began in 2006. When asked later Wednesday whether he had ever tested positive for amphetamines, Rodriguez said: “That’s not true. It couldn’t be more false — 100 percent false.” He also adjusted the number of tests, saying it had been 7 to 10 instead of 9 to 10. On Wednesday night, Jason Zillo, the Yankees’ media relations director, issued a statement on behalf of Rodriguez to further clarify his original comment. “My quote from earlier today was taken literally,” the statement said. “I was not tested 9 or 10 times last year. I was just using exaggeration to make a point. My intent was simply to shed light on the fact that the current program being implemented is working, and a reason for that is through frequent testing. I apologize for any confusion I may have caused.” How many tests was Rodriguez given? “I have no idea,” Zillo said. Baseball does not discuss the testing of individual players unless they are suspended. In a telephone interview, Richard Levin, a spokesman for Major League Baseball, said “theoretically it is possible” for a player to be tested as many as seven times. “There is no limit on the number of times a player can be tested,” he said. Rodriguez said it was just chance that he had been tested so frequently. “It’s random,” he said. “You could have 20 or 30 or one. But a minimum of one. That’s the way it works.” If Rodriguez had been tested seven times last year, five of them would have been random. A player has a one in 4,200 chance of being selected five times for a random drug test in a given year. Gene Orza, the chief operating officer for the players union, said one random test does not keep a player from being selected again. “Once you are picked to be tested you go back in the hat and can be tested again,” Orza said in a telephone interview. “The inference that a player who is tested a lot must have tested positive for something is wrong. I don’t know what Alex is talking about. I think he meant to say he was tested a lot of times. Lots of players have been tested a lot of times.” Rodriguez, who has 518 home runs and is 17th on the career list, said he expected speculation given the current climate. “Right now, the game is in a very not-trusting situation with our public, with our fans,” he told reporters Wednesday. “Some of the things that I’ve accomplished and potentially some of the things that people think I can accomplish, my name has come up and will probably come up again in the future.”
|
Baseball;Steroids;New York Yankees;Rodriguez Alex
|
ny0025671
|
[
"us"
] |
2013/08/23
|
Young Immigrants Protest Deportations
|
Young immigrants in the country illegally have escalated their protests against deportations this week, creating awkward dilemmas for Obama administration officials who are pressing the House of Representatives to pass broad immigration legislation this fall. With leaders in the House saying they could take up several immigration bills, the administration is walking a fine line. They want to avoid arrests or deportations of advocates that could create a confrontation between the White House and groups mobilizing support for overhaul legislation that Mr. Obama supports. But officials are also trying to persuade skeptical Republicans that the administration is vigorously enforcing immigration law. In Phoenix on Wednesday, dozens of protesters marched around a federal immigration detention center and four of them chained themselves to the fence outside. Several protesters sat down in a roadway to block a bus taking immigrants out of the center, apparently on the way to deportation. Many demonstrators were young people who called themselves Dreamers, immigrants without legal papers who came here as children. Six people were arrested and charged with trespassing, disobeying a federal officer and other misdemeanors, officials said, but all were freed. No immigration proceedings were opened. Organizers said they wanted to highlight continuing deportations under Mr. Obama, even as the president has championed legislation that would provide legal status and eventual citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants. “Our families are tired of being separated, and we want Congress to stop the deportations and give us a path to citizenship,” said Jhannyn Rivera, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Dream Act Coalition , one of the groups that staged the protest. In July, nine young immigrants from Mexico tried to enter the country through a border station in Nogales, Ariz., without legal visas, by presenting claims for political asylum. After they were detained for two weeks, all nine were released and their asylum cases were allowed to go forward in immigration courts. The militant tactics by young immigrants “are not a welcome development for the administration at a time when it is trying to persuade Congress that immigration enforcement is under control,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a policy expert at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. Homeland Security Department officials at first said it would be difficult to allow the nine immigrants, now known as the Dream Nine, to be released from detention. But their protest quickly became national news. After interviewing the immigrants, the authorities decided they had met the first test for asylum, showing they had a “credible fear” that they could face danger or persecution if they returned to Mexico. They were placed in deportation but will remain free while their cases make their way through the immigration courts, said their lawyer, Margo Cowan. In the overburdened courts, asylum decisions often take years. The administration’s action in those cases provoked the ire of House Republicans, drawing attention to a broader policy that has led to large increases in the numbers of migrants gaining entry by requesting asylum at the southwest border. In a letter on Wednesday to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Robert W. Goodlatte of Virginia, cited official figures showing that 23,408 foreigners had come to the southwest border requesting asylum in the past nine months, up from 5,222 in all of 2009. Border authorities allowed 92 percent of those foreigners to remain in the country and pursue their claims. Mr. Goodlatte said it appeared the administration was allowing migrants “to game the system by getting a free pass” into the United States. Homeland Security Department officials said 91 percent of asylum requests by Mexicans were ultimately denied.
|
Immigration;Deportation;Legislation;US Politics
|
ny0191647
|
[
"sports",
"golf"
] |
2009/02/18
|
Young Japanese Player Has Rock-Star Look and Golf-Star Game
|
LOS ANGELES — As if his electric-yellow pants did not do the trick, Ryo Ishikawa smiled, leaned into the microphone and introduced himself to more than the room, which was packed with more paparazzi than golf reporters. “Hello, America,” he said. “I’m Ryo.” After a few sentences in halting English about his first impressions of the Riviera Country Club, he offered a primer on how to pronounce his name. “Yo,” he said. “Repeat after me. ‘Yo. Yo.’ ” And so it was that Ishikawa, a 17-year-old wunderkind, arrived as golf’s latest curiosity. Ishikawa, who two years ago became the youngest player to win a Japanese tour event, signed last month with the marketing giant I.M.G. He has been granted exemptions to three PGA Tour events over the next four months: the Northern Trust Open that begins here Thursday, the Transitions Championship and the Arnold Palmer Invitational. He has also received an invitation to the Masters , where he will be the second-youngest professional to play in the tournament. About 400 media members received credentials at Riviera, nearly double the number for Tiger Woods’s last visit in 2006. Few golfers here seemed to know much about Ishikawa, but they were curious. One who did know him expected him to cope with the attention just fine. “He’s fully equipped,” said Ryuji Imada, who moved to the United States from Japan as a teenager and won more than $3 million on the tour last year. “He’s got the game, he’s got the charisma and he can handle the media attention.” Ishikawa seemed to relish it as he sat for his introductory news conference. With his garish pants and his sunglasses resting atop a mop of black hair, he gave off the air of a rock star. Ishikawa’s English is limited and the translated version of his comments was dry, perhaps leaving some of his charms lost in translation. But Ishikawa said his goal was to eventually win the Masters, that his idol was Woods, and that he did his best to focus on golf, not on all the attention. Not that he minds. “The best thing is I get 20 more bucks in my wallet,” he said of the fruits of celebrity. And his colorful pants are “as important as a golf club.” The most important piece of equipment probably lies between his ears. It is one thing to make shots, but it is another to know how to win. That is the difference between Woods and Ty Tyron, who in 2002 turned pro at age 17, and is now on the minor league Gateway Tour. “I probably wouldn’t know which tee to go off if I was 17 trying to play on the PGA Tour,” said Hunter Mahan, who won the United States Junior Amateur Championship in 1999, when he was 17. “I wouldn’t know what to do,” he added. “I would probably have to call my mom and go: ‘What do I do? I want to eat. What do I do?’ ” Imada said that Ishikawa was not your typical teenage golfer. “He loves the attention,” Imada said. “You don’t see that from a 15-, 16-, 17-year-old. He loves being in the middle of it — the middle of the cameras, the middle of the competition. When I was his age, I was scared to play in front of people.” As marketers, sponsors and equipment manufacturers go about taking measurements for the next superstar in sports, they have not always been prudent investors. Sidney Crosby and LeBron James have worked out nicely. Michelle Wie and Freddy Adu have not. Adu was promoted as the face of Major League Soccer at age 14. He was paid $1 million a year by Nike and starred in a soft-drink commercial with Pelé. Although he may play for the United States at next year’s World Cup at age 22, he is not the next Pelé. Wie, 19, was given sponsors exemptions to men’s tournaments before she even earned her L.P.G.A Tour card. She has yet to win a tournament. Jason Bohn did not come up that way. He made a hole in one worth $1 million while he was at the University of Alabama. To accept it, he turned pro. He was 29 when he earned his way onto the tour. “Do you remember what you were like at that age?” asked Bohn, 35. “You’re completely fearless. The road I took — going through all the minitours, playing all the junk, sleeping in your car — is a little different.” Moments after Bohn spoke from the fringe of the 18th green, Ishikawa rolled up in a golf cart and ambled into the interview area in the media tent. Dozens of members of the news media followed. Perhaps this was what Bohn had in mind when he was talking about relishing life on the tour. “This is Barnum and Bailey,” he said. “It’s the greatest show on earth.”
|
Ishikawa Ryo;Golf
|
ny0054714
|
[
"sports",
"football"
] |
2014/07/24
|
General Manager’s Recipe for Giants: Youth and Speed
|
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — General Manager Jerry Reese said little last year as the Giants decayed. The team was aging and lacked imagination offensively. When the Giants’ record dropped to 0-6, they became the butt of jokes nationwide. Throughout the storm, Reese remained stoic. Then the 2013 season ended, and with Reese at the helm, the team dismissed three coaches and, during one week, signed a new free agent nearly every day. During his annual training camp news conference Wednesday, Reese continued to prove he had been stung and changed by last year’s experience. The Giants’ biggest mistake in 2013 was standing pat as the roster grew old and perhaps soft. Reese is not letting it happen again. “We’re going to have a younger, more physical football team that plays fast,” Reese said. “You always try to watch and be leery about whether your team is getting a little bit too old. Maybe that was part of it. A lot of things went wrong last year.” Two people Reese did not blame: Coach Tom Coughlin and quarterback Eli Manning. “I don’t think coaches get old,” Reese answered when asked if he thought his coaching staff, led by the soon-to-be 68-year-old Coughlin, had aged along with the roster. “Coaches don’t forget how to coach.” Yet the Giants parted ways with Kevin Gilbride, the longtime offensive coordinator, and two other assistant coaches. “We thought it was time to make a change,” Reese said. While Manning may be 33, Reese said he remained confident that his quarterback would rebound from his worst season in a decade. “I expect him to bounce back and be the Pro Bowl-caliber quarterback that we know he can be,” Reese said of Manning. “He’s still a young football player with respect to the quarterback position.” He added: “Quarterback is a little different. It’s not like a running back at that age. Hopefully, Eli won’t take a lot of hits like he did last year. We expect to play better on the offensive line, where we’ve added some youth and depth, and that should help him.” At the same time, Reese said the team was not discussing a contract extension with Manning, although such a move would give the Giants added salary-cap room moving forward. Reese, like many Giants fans, is instead awaiting the remodeled Giants — younger, more aggressive, and with a West Coast-style offense. “I think we’re going to have a really good football team,” Reese said. “We want to start fast so we don’t put ourselves in a hole like we did last year. But we’re thankful for the chance to get that bad taste out of our mouths.” Reese also defended the team’s recent decision to hire the former Giants wide receiver David Tyree as its new director of player development. After he retired from the N.F.L. in 2009, Tyree, a Christian, expressed his opposition to same-sex marriage. Reese indicated that he had known of Tyree’s comments before his hiring. “We do our due diligence on everybody we try to hire,” Reese said. “No. 1, David was qualified, and we think he’s a terrific fit. We’re happy to have David with us. “In this day and age, sometimes you say some things you shouldn’t have said. I’m not here to talk about social issues. I believe that everybody should be treated equally. I believe everyone should be treated fairly. I believe everybody should have an opinion, too. Most of all, I believe I should mind my own business and keep the plank out of my own eye.” Reese declined to address the topic further. DRAFTEE’S INJURY WOES The Giants expected their 2013 first-round draft pick, wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., to contribute immediately and, with the departure of the former No. 1 receiver Hakeem Nicks via free agency, perhaps even to start. But so far, Beckham cannot stay on the field. He strained a hamstring in the spring practices and was sidelined or limited for several workouts. Beckham was expected to be healed by the opening of training camp, but during Tuesday’s first full day of practice, he pulled up on a deep pass route and grasped at his hamstring again. On Wednesday, Beckham did little in practice. Beckham already appears to be irking his head coach at least a little. After Tuesday’s practice, when Tom Coughlin was asked about Beckham, he responded, “He’s got some work to do.” On Wednesday, when Beckham could not practice with the rest of the wide receivers catching passes from Eli Manning, Coughlin shook his head. “It’s a hamstring,” Coughlin said. “Who knows how long?” Also on Wednesday, with temperatures once again in the 90s, Coughlin gave his team a break of about five minutes in the shade midway through practice. Until the players union negotiated a new collective bargaining agreement, a typical break at training camp was lunchtime. “There’s nothing wrong with that,” Coughlin said of the time in the shade. “Breaks have been going on for a thousand years.”
|
Football;Jerry Reese;Eli Manning;Tom Coughlin;Giants
|
ny0105757
|
[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2012/04/05
|
Public Suicide for Greek Man With Fiscal Woe
|
ATHENS — A 77-year-old Greek pensioner distraught over his financial state shot himself in the head in the capital’s busy main square near Parliament on Wednesday morning. “I don’t want to leave debts to my children,” he shouted before pulling the trigger, witnesses said. The location, Syntagma Square, is a focal point for frequent public demonstrations and protests. It was full of commuters using the nearby metro station when the man killed himself, around 9 a.m. Shocked witnesses told state television that the man positioned himself under a tree, cried out and fired. The local news media identified the man as Dimitris Christoulas, a retired pharmacist, and said he left a note saying he could not face the prospect “of scavenging through garbage bins for food and becoming a burden to my child.” The police did not immediately confirm the existence of a note, but identical passages were reproduced in nearly all the Greek news media. Three paragraphs of handwritten red text called on young Greeks to take up arms. “I believe that young people with no future will one day take up arms and hang the traitors of this country at Syntagma square, just like the Italians did to Mussolini in 1945,” said one passage. The suicide prompted an outpouring from politicians. In a statement, Prime Minister Lucas Papademos said, “In these difficult times for our country we must all — the state and its citizens — support those next to us who are in despair.” On Wednesday evening, Greeks held a vigil in Syntagma Square, while many posted notes of condolence and protest on trees. Reports said the note blamed “the occupation government of Tsolakoglou for taking away any chance for my survival.” Georgios Tsolakoglou was a collaborationist prime minister during Germany’s occupation of Greece during World War II . Germany has drawn the ire of many Greeks in the last year, thanks to its role in shaping harsh austerity measures Greece was required to enact in return for billions of euros in loans from foreign creditors to avert sovereign default. The arrangement helps Europe by stabilizing the euro , but at the cost of financial ruin for some individuals and shrinking the country’s social safety net. The number of suicides reported in Greece over the past three years has risen sharply, a trend experts attribute to repercussions of the debt crisis, including rising unemployment, now at 21 percent, and deepening poverty. Before the crisis, Greece had one of the lowest suicide rates in Europe, just over 300 a year. In 2009, the police recorded 507 suicides; in 2010, 622; and last year, 598.
|
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- );Greece;Suicides and Suicide Attempts;Christoulas Dimitris
|
ny0018045
|
[
"business",
"global"
] |
2013/07/02
|
Loan Practices of China’s Banks Raising Concern
|
SHANGHAI — Text message solicitations began arriving on the mobile phones of many of China’s wealthy last month, promising access to lucrative wealth management products with yields far above the government’s benchmark savings rate. One message read: “China Merchants Bank will issue a high interest financing product starting from June 28th to 30th. The product will be 90 days with a 5.5% interest rate. Please call us now.” A day later came another. “Warm reminder: The interest rate of yesterday’s product has been raised to 6%. (Product duration is 90 days). There is limited access to this product. First come first served.” The offers are not coming from fly-by-night operators but some of China’s biggest banks. They are raising huge pools of cash to finance a relatively new and highly profitable sideline business: lending outside the scrutiny of bank regulators. The complex way they go about making off-the-balance-sheet loans is at the heart of China’s $6 trillion shadow banking industry, which the government is now trying to tame. Efforts to rein in the dodgy lending practices rattled stock markets worldwide in late June. China’s regulators — and a fair number of economists, policy makers and investors — worry that legitimate banks are using lightly regulated wealth management products to repackage old loans and prop up risky companies and projects that might not otherwise be able to borrow money. Analysts warn that shadow banking is helping drive the rapid growth of credit in a weakening economy, which could lead to — in the worst situation — a series of bank failures. “This is the biggest uncertainty I’ve seen in my 18 years following the China market,” Dong Tao, an economist at Credit Suisse, said of shadow banking. “You don’t know how banks are deploying capital. And you don’t know the credit risks.” What banks are doing, analysts say, is pressing customers to shift money from the old, regulated part of their operations — savings deposits — into the new, less regulated part consisting of high-yielding wealth management products that can circumvent government interest rate controls and be used to finance high-interest loans to desperate customers. China’s leaders are so worried about credit risk that last month the country’s central bank tightened credit in the interbank market, where banks typically go to borrow money from other banks. The move sent short-term interest rates soaring, and for a day at least, created a debilitating credit squeeze. The stock markets in China calmed down last week. But financial institutions are hinting that cash is still hard to come by. Some banks temporarily suspended lending in order to preserve cash, according to Caixin, the Chinese business magazine. Other banks are raising cash by offering a new slate of wealth management products. Nearly every major Chinese bank sold a short-term wealth management product that had to be completed by the end of June, according to a telephone survey. China Merchants Bank did not respond to requests for an interview. Many of the investments pay 6 percent annual interest, which is far above the highest savings deposit rate set by bank regulators: 3.3 percent. Consumers withdraw money from their regular savings account and put it into a wealth management product that promises a much higher rate. “Usually banks will have higher-yielding products at the end of each quarter,” said Wang Yanan, a 24-year-old accountant who works in Shanghai. “If I happen to have money at those moments, I’ll buy some.” Though the products are popular, their disclosure is often poor. Bank employees insist the principal is guaranteed, but contracts for wealth management products are usually vague, simply noting there could be risk. Most offer little detail about where the money will be invested. Much of the money, analysts say, is lent to property developers and local government financing vehicles, areas that have government officials worried because of an explosion in property development and soaring housing prices. Regulated banks will not make the loans because the borrowers are too risky. So the loans are often made off the balance sheet, and therefore outside the purview of bank regulators, which is why experts call it shadow banking. They are made at higher interest rates, so everyone wins — the borrower, the banks and the investor of the wealth management product — as long as the borrower repays. “The banks now have these dark pools of money,” said Joe Zhang, a former investment banker and the author of “Inside China’s Shadow Banking: The Next Subprime Crisis?” He said, “To finance deals they usually have a trust company stand in the middle and simply put their stamp on it. The trust companies get a fee for that but often they do next to nothing. The bank does all the work.” The explosive growth of wealth management products began about five years ago, enticing Chinese banks, big and small, to engage in shadow banking. By the end of last year, China’s shadow banking activity was valued at $6 trillion, twice the level in 2010, and now equal to 69 percent of China’s gross domestic product, according to a report released in May by JPMorgan Chase. Now, even state-run banks are doing shadow lending, extending financing to companies in high-risk sectors. Who is responsible for the loans is not always clear, and that’s where everyone starts getting nervous. “If a wealth management product defaults, who is on the hook?” asked Michael Pettis, a finance professor at Peking University in Beijing and senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It’s all very murky. In these things, the banks are technically acting as intermediaries.” Financial experts worry about the lack of transparency in the market when China’s economy is weakening. They also fret about whether some borrowers have the cash flow to repay their loans. Fitch Ratings, the credit ratings agency, began warning two years ago that “wealth management activity carries unique liquidity and credit risks.” But the lending continued and increased. In a newspaper opinion piece last year, Xiao Gang, then head of the Bank of China, a leading commercial bank, and now the nation’s top securities regulator, referred to shadow banking as “fundamentally a Ponzi scheme.” The government has so far tolerated shadow banking because getting rid of it is all but impossible, analysts say. Wealthy customers are accustomed to getting better returns, and a large segment of the economy is desperate for capital and cannot easily gain access to regular bank loans, largely because of government restrictions. But they are willing to pay the shadow banks 9, 10, even 15 percent interest. And to make that possible, China’s banks are raising pools of capital and creating increasingly complex financial instruments with outside institutions to make off-the-books loans to those willing to pay a premium. Perhaps the biggest worry, though, is that this booming practice could be undone by a major business failure that forces bank customers to suffer losses. “This is a major problem,” said Ding Shuang, a Citigroup analyst based in Hong Kong. “Many of these are just three months, and they need to be rolled over. So if there’s a default that could change things. This is a problem regulators are very aware of.”
|
Banking and Finance;China;Regulation and Deregulation
|
ny0220416
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2010/02/27
|
Cuomo Cannot Stay Away from Governor’s Race for Much Longer
|
For months, Andrew M. Cuomo has silently inhabited a world of grand assumptions: that he was by far the strongest Democrat to run for governor of New York; that his poll numbers were not merely overwhelming but durable; that his fund-raising prowess would turn his inevitable campaign into a juggernaut. Those assumptions excited a lot of people, if for no other reason than that they made him seem an infinitely more attractive candidate than the man who happened to be occupying the governor’s office. Now that Gov. David A. Paterson has abandoned his campaign, however, all those assumptions about Mr. Cuomo — not to mention his record — will be scrutinized and challenged, if and when he does what everyone expects he will in a matter of weeks: quickly wrap up his investigation of Mr. Paterson and officially enter the race. But Mr. Cuomo, 52, is more than just a poll choice, or the payee on the checks of campaign contributors. In three decades of public life, including two prior statewide races, he has grappled with how to present himself, and how much to change: whether to be more humble, or less contentious; how to calibrate his legendary aggressiveness to suit a shifting political climate; when to leap to the attack and when to lay low. On Friday, as Democrats began falling into line behind him, Mr. Cuomo’s supporters pointed to late March or early April as the likeliest moment for him to declare his candidacy. Mr. Cuomo signaled that he would not be hurried into the fray. “It is in the best interests of all New Yorkers that the state government function through this difficult time and address the pressing budgetary problems we face,” he said in a statement. “This is an election year and I will announce my plans at the appropriate time. In the meantime, I will continue to focus on my job as attorney general and the many important issues we are pursuing.” Until now, the focus on a potential primary with Mr. Paterson has allowed Mr. Cuomo to skirt questions about the race for governor by saying he was focusing on his job. Attorneys general, after all, do not draft budgets or seek givebacks from union leaders. “Could you blame him for being coy, and not being available to the press on every issue, on things that aren’t in the purview of the A.G.?” asked the publicist Ken Sunshine, a close friend and longtime Democratic insider. “Obviously he’ll have to start talking about that, and he will. But he doesn’t need to go to school to learn how.” Mr. Cuomo got his political education managing the campaigns of his father, former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, while still in his 20s — a precocious age at which to earn the nickname “Prince of Darkness.” Later, he built housing for the homeless, then rose to Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton administration, becoming a confidant of Vice President Al Gore’s. After Mr. Gore’s 2000 presidential defeat, Mr. Cuomo returned to New York and mounted an ill-advised gubernatorial primary campaign against the widely favored H. Carl McCall, who would have been New York’s first black chief executive. The Democratic establishment united against Mr. Cuomo and he withdrew to avoid a crushing defeat. Mr. Cuomo also showed a capacity for doing damage to himself, as when he derided Gov. George E. Pataki as having merely held Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s coat after the Sept. 11 attacks. In defeat, and after a messy and embarrassing divorce a year later from Kerry Kennedy, Mr. Cuomo showed a capacity not just for rehabilitation, his admirers say, but for evolution. As a candidate for attorney general in 2006, he seldom took the bait dangled before him by opponents who hoped to trigger an uncalculated Cuomo eruption. Once elected, he reached out to Democrats and to New Yorkers statewide with self-deprecating jokes about his youthful hubris. And as the state’s top law enforcement officer, he managed the feat of grabbing daily headlines without making himself the story. He shunned expansive interviews, though he would speak off the record for hours. NY1 News, the cable-TV channel, taunted him with a “Cuomo clock” showing how long it had been since he appeared on its program “Inside City Hall.” “He’s let his actions talk, and he’s really stayed in the background,” said Doug Muzzio, a professor at Baruch College’s School of Public Affairs. Just how much Mr. Cuomo has matured as a candidate since 2006 remains to be seen, but Mr. Sunshine acknowledged that his war chest and poll numbers, and the degree to which he benefited from comparisons to Governor Paterson, had made for “enormously high expectations.” He added, “It’s a potential danger.” Kenneth Sherrill, a political science professor at Hunter College, put it this way: “I’m not sure that God could live up to people’s expectations today.” Whether he proves a Democratic deus ex machina or not, Mr. Cuomo will be unable to keep quiet for much longer. The presumed Republican nominee for governor, Rick A. Lazio, a former representative, has been trying unsuccessfully to draw him into a debate about issues, demanding to know Mr. Cuomo’s positions on budget deficits, taxes and Medicaid . The prospect of a Democratic primary made Mr. Lazio seem to be getting slightly ahead of himself. But Mr. Paterson’s withdrawal creates a two-man race. “He can ignore me all he wants. He just can’t ignore the people of New York,” Mr. Lazio said in an interview on Friday. “It’s very clever to not show your cards, not take positions on issues so you don’t alienate anybody. But the public is at a point where they want a candidate who will treat them with respect, by explaining where you are on the issues regardless of whether it does some political damage. “Cuomo’s gotten bucketloads of money from some of the most powerful special interests that control Albany,” he said. “How are you going to take them on?” Of course, Mr. Cuomo’s supporters say that even now, keeping his head down remains the most effective rebuttal to such attacks. While Mr. Lazio assails Mr. Cuomo’s tactics, Mr. Cuomo can continue to press his claims against bailed-out bank executives, gouging retailers, polluters and insider traders. Behind the scenes, Mr. Cuomo’s advisers say he is likely to alter his message to donors and Democratic allies, who have grown exceedingly anxious in the wake of Republican gains and Mr. Paterson’s problems. Now, they say, he and his advisers can at least begin assuring jittery Democrats that the day they have been waiting for is nearing. “You sort of see some running room now,” said one adviser, who insisted on anonymity in keeping with Mr. Cuomo’s below-the-radar posture. “There’ll be a not-so-subtle change in the discussion, from this whole ‘Stay cool’ approach to ‘O.K., guys and gals, let’s get ready for a campaign and hopefully we’ll have a candidate in the next month or so.’ ”
|
Cuomo Andrew M;Elections;New York State;Paterson David A;Politics and Government
|
ny0079736
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2015/02/26
|
Reconsidering Notion of Mercy After a Basketball Rout in Brooklyn
|
The odds were long for Brooklyn Collegiate ’s girls varsity basketball team going into the playoff game on Tuesday night. They were 1-14 for the season. Their opponents, Francis Lewis High School , were 13-3 and the defending city champions, and had beaten them earlier in the season by 85 points. As it turned out, even long odds were too optimistic: Brooklyn Collegiate lost 117-8. It was a vivid illustration of how quickly a high school team’s abilities can change — in recent years, Brooklyn Collegiate had excelled in its division — and of the sometimes embarrassing results of a citywide policy stipulating that all teams in the top division qualify for the playoffs, regardless of their performance during the season. So far, no one at either school is complaining about the lopsided result, and neither Francis Lewis nor its coach will be penalized for being too aggressive. But a spokesman for the Education Department, Jason Fink, said that the game’s score did not reflect the type of experience the city tried to foster in the Public Schools Athletic League, and that the department was looking at introducing a mercy rule across all sports. (There are currently mercy rules in baseball and softball.) Despite his team’s having beaten Brooklyn Collegiate overwhelmingly earlier in the season, the Francis Lewis coach, Stephen Tsai, ordered a full-court press, an aggressive tactic of challenging the ballhandler even when they are far from the basket, in the first quarter of the game. In a phone interview on Wednesday, Mr. Tsai said that he always ran a full-court press because his players are shorter than those on many of the teams they played against, and that he did not want to change his routine on Tuesday. “For me as a coach who’s trying to get prepared for the playoffs it’s a tough call,” he said. The game on Tuesday was their first in more than two weeks, he added, “so you want to make it so that all the players get some conditioning in.” Mr. Tsai did try to run time off the clock in the fourth quarter, he said, telling the players to complete several passes before shooting. Image At the playoffs, Brooklyn Collegiate lost to Francis Lewis High School. Credit Nick Forrester/New York Daily News “We had girls that were underneath the basket wide open, and we were telling them not to shoot,” he said. “We’re not trying to embarrass anybody out there,” he added. “At the same time we’re trying to keep the integrity of the game.” The two coaches spoke after the game, and both said there were no hard feelings. “I said I hope it didn’t look like we’re trying to run up the score, and he said no,” Mr. Tsai said. Brooklyn Collegiate’s coach, Rodney Johnson, said in an interview that Mr. Tsai had complimented him on his coaching, even in the face of such a blowout. “He told me, ‘I can tell that you didn’t give up on your kids — you coached them to the end,’ ” Mr. Johnson said. The two schools looked ill matched from the outset. Francis Lewis, after all, has 4,160 students , while Brooklyn Collegiate has 347. But because there are not enough teams in their AA division, all go to the playoffs, and the Education Department said Brooklyn Collegiate qualified for AA based on its previous performance: Last year, it was 8-7, and in 2012-13 it finished 13-2. All of its star players graduated in the last two years, however, and this year the team is mostly composed of freshmen who, Mr. Johnson said, had never watched or played the game before. School systems around the country have sometimes been lacking in girls’ sports participation, and New York City recently resolved a complaint, brought by the National Women’s Law Center, that it did not provide sufficient athletic opportunities for high school girls. The United States Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights concluded that the city was in violation of Title IX, which forbids gender discrimination in federally financed education programs, and the city agreed to take several steps, such as conducting a survey of female eighth graders and high school students to assess any unmet athletic interests and developing a procedure for students, parents and others to request the addition of new sports teams. As for Brooklyn Collegiate, Mr. Johnson said his players’ spirits were not vanquished. They showed up for practice as usual on Wednesday and began preparing for next year.
|
Basketball;K-12 Education;School Sports;Francis Lewis High School;Brooklyn Collegiate;NYC;Brooklyn;Public Schools Athletic League
|
ny0010634
|
[
"world",
"africa"
] |
2013/02/09
|
Senegal: Trial for Chad’s Ex-Ruler
|
A new internationally backed court opened on Friday in Senegal, and its judges will prepare a case against the former ruler of Chad, Hissène Habré, who has been living in exile in Senegal. Three countries have indicted Mr. Habré, 70, for crimes against humanity; Chad sentenced him to death for killings and torture carried out during his rule from 1982 to 1990. Senegal’s president, Macky Sall, agreed to set up the ad hoc court in Dakar, the capital, where Mr. Habré is to be tried by African judges under Senegalese law. European countries are paying two-thirds of the court’s $10 million budget; the African Union has been criticized for paying for only 10 percent of the court’s costs.
|
Hissene Habre;War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity;Chad;Senegal;African Union
|
ny0069970
|
[
"nyregion"
] |
2015/03/03
|
Monroe Freedman, Influential Voice on Legal Ethics, Dies at 86
|
Monroe H. Freedman, a dominant figure in legal ethics whose work helped chart the course of lawyers’ behavior in the late 20th century and beyond, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 86. His granddaughter Rebeca Izquierdo Lodhi confirmed the death. At his death, he was a professor of law at Hofstra University, on Long Island. Professor Freedman’s book “ Understanding Lawyers’ Ethics ,” written with Abbe Smith and currently in its fourth edition, is assigned in law schools throughout the country. “He invented legal ethics as a serious academic subject,” Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard Law School professor, said in a telephone interview on Monday. “Prior to Freedman, legal ethics was usually a lecture given by the dean of the law school, which resembled chapel: ‘Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not be lazy.’ But Monroe brought to the academy the realistic complexity of what lawyers actually face.” For half a century Professor Freedman was, by his own account and that of colleagues, a gleeful jurisprudential provocateur. On one occasion, he waggishly titled a law-review article “ In Praise of Overzealous Representation : Lying to Judges, Deceiving Third Parties and Other Ethical Conduct.” On another, he moved a future chief justice of the United States to call for his disbarment. In his published writings and his many interviews in the news media, Professor Freedman persistently raised questions about lawyers’ professional conduct that entailed deep reflection, impassioned argument and — all too often — discomforting answers. “He was on my speed dial for everything I ever did involving legal ethics,” Professor Dershowitz said. “And I brought him to my classes every single year: A legal education without Monroe Freedman was incomplete.” Drawing on a scholarly background that let him invoke Hebrew Scripture, Christian Gospels, St. Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant in support of his legal arguments, Professor Freedman was concerned in particular with defining the scope of lawyers’ responsibilities toward their clients. Central to his concern was the lawyer-client relationship as it played out in criminal court. “It is 50 years since the case of Gideon v. Wainwright ,” the noted civil-rights lawyer Michael E. Tigar said on Monday, invoking the landmark Supreme Court case of 1963 that established a criminal defendant’s right to an attorney. “The law books are full of cases of what is now called ‘ineffective assistance of counsel.’ Monroe championed a view of the lawyer’s role and responsibilities that makes the promise of Gideon a reality.” Professor Freedman’s views on ethics sprang from his early work as a civil-liberties lawyer, and throughout his career he maintained that the two fields should dovetail seamlessly. “That’s how he saw legal ethics,” his co-author Professor Smith, who teaches at the Georgetown University Law Center, said on Monday. “To him, access to justice was — and is — central.” At midcentury, for instance, Professor Freedman took the American Bar Association to task on civil libertarian grounds for its longstanding ban on professional advertising. For one thing, he argued, the ban violated lawyers’ First Amendment rights. For another, he said, it denied low-income Americans ready access to information about legal services. His work helped pave the way for the lifting of the ban in 1977. Likewise, as Professor Freedman told the CBS News program “60 Minutes” in 1994, “I believe that there is a professional responsibility on the part of lawyers to chase ambulances.” He added: “We are here to help members of the public. And we are not helping members of the public the way we’re supposed to do it if we are not there to tell people who are ignorant of their rights that they’ve got rights.” In 1966, in what was undoubtedly his most controversial public stance, Professor Freedman published an article in The Michigan Law Review titled “ Professional Responsibility of the Criminal Defense Lawyer : The Three Hardest Questions.” In it, he argued that a lawyer’s obligation to represent clients vigorously (and to protect their privacy just as vigorously) should trump all other considerations — including the lawyer’s knowledge that a client plans to lie on the stand. Though lawyers should advise clients not to commit perjury, Professor Freedman wrote, if it became clear that the client was going to anyway — or already had — the lawyer’s overriding obligation was to remain silent. “His argument is still resonating in the halls of every courtroom and every deposition, because perjury is still rampant in our legal system,” Professor Dershowitz said on Monday. “He wrote the article to provoke a discussion.” But what it provoked was a firestorm. Several prominent jurists, including Warren E. Burger , then a federal appellate judge and later the United States chief justice, called, without success, for Professor Freedman’s disbarment. “Monroe’s position was really based upon a view that the lawyer’s primary obligation is the defense of a client who is, after all, facing an adversary with superior resources,” Professor Tigar explained. “And with everything arrayed against the accused, Monroe put this primary value on the advocate’s obligation of undivided loyalty and zeal.” Monroe Henry Freedman was born on April 10, 1928, in Mount Vernon, N.Y.; his parents, Chauncey Freedman and the former Dorothea Kornblum, ran a pharmacy there. The young Mr. Freedman earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard, followed by bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Harvard Law School. Near the start of his career, Professor Freedman served as a volunteer counsel to the Mattachine Society , the early gay-rights group; from 1960 to 1964, he was a consultant to the United States Commission on Civil Rights . In the early 1980s, he was the first executive director of what became the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum . Professor Freedman taught at George Washington University before joining Hofstra in 1973. As the dean of Hofstra’s law school from then until 1977, he was credited with helping to give the school, founded in 1970, a national profile as a teaching and research institution. He was also a visiting professor at Georgetown. Professor Freedman’s wife, the former Audrey Willock, whom he married in 1950, died in 1998. Besides his granddaughter Ms. Izquierdo Lodhi, his survivors include a brother, Eugene; a sister, Penny; a son, Judah; a daughter, Alice; six other grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. A son, Caleb, and a daughter, Sarah Freedman-Izquierdo, died before him. His other books include “Lawyers’ Ethics in an Adversary System” (1975) and “Group Defamation and Freedom of Speech: The Relationship Between Language and Violence” (1995), which he edited with Eric M. Freedman. With Professor Smith, he was the editor of “How Can You Represent Those People?” (2013), a collection of articles about a lawyer’s obligation to take on distasteful clients. As an index of his willingness to puncture all manner of sacred cows, Professor Freedman, in a series of articles in the 1990s, squared off against possibly the most venerated figure in American jurisprudence: Atticus Finch, the hero of Harper Lee’s 1960 novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Among the moral transgressions for which Professor Freedman takes Finch to task is the fact that he defends Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman, not voluntarily but because he was appointed by the court. “Atticus Finch never in his professional life voluntarily takes a pro bono case in an effort to ameliorate the evil — which he himself and others recognize — in the apartheid of Maycomb, Ala.,” Professor Freedman wrote in The Alabama Law Review in 1994. “Throughout his relatively comfortable and pleasant life in Maycomb, Atticus Finch knows about the grinding, ever-present humiliation and degradation of the black people of Maycomb; he tolerates it; and sometimes he even trivializes and condones it.” Professor Freedman added: “For Finch, the civil rights movement of the 1960s is inevitable, but decades too soon.”
|
Obituary;Monroe H Freedman;Lawyers;Long Island;Hofstra
|
ny0201581
|
[
"technology",
"personaltech"
] |
2009/09/24
|
A Wi-Fi Alternative When the Network Gets Clogged
|
Talk about falling short of expectations. In the last year, millions of people have snapped up new smartphones, filled them with apps and promptly found out that they couldn’t actually use them. The problem? Either the much-hyped 3G pipeline was clogged with other users, or the cell connection wasn’t even good enough to ring the 3G bell in the first place. AT&T users have had it the worst, thanks to the network’s iPhone data hogs. Carriers are quickly adding high-speed network capacity, but in the meantime, AT&T and T-Mobile are throwing another lifeline to customers in the form of Wi-Fi. Both are making it easier to connect to wireless hot spots with their phones, in an effort to deliver fast data and clear calls in areas where neither might be possible. In this respect, AT&T has been the most aggressive of any carrier. The company said this month that customers with a Windows Mobile phone could now connect freely at any of the company’s roughly 20,000 hot spots. AT&T claims to sell more Windows Mobile phones than any other carrier, and with the introduction of Windows Mobile version 6.5 next month and new Windows phones like the HTC Touch Pro2, it stands to sell more. Now all Windows Mobile users can duck into a Starbucks, among the many other locations with AT&T Wi-Fi, and the phone will automatically route data and calls over a high-speed Internet connection. Many people with iPhones and AT&T BlackBerrys don’t know it, but this perk has been available to them for months. The difficulty, of course, is finding a free hot spot when you need it. Rather than roaming around and hoping to stumble into a Starbucks or an unlocked Wi-Fi signal, you can download one of the many hot-spot locating apps. I found JiWire’s free Wi-Fi Finder iPhone app particularly useful. The software sniffs out your location and offers a list of nearby hot spots, free and paid. If you’re a customer of one of the big Wi-Fi networks, like iPass, Boingo or AT&T, the app will tell you where to find those. Unfortunately, no comparable app exists for BlackBerrys or Windows Mobile phones. Users of those devices can download apps that help find free hot spots (like Free Wi-Fi Cafe Spots, for $3 on BlackBerry’s App World). Otherwise, you need to get online before leaving home, and make a list of hot spots you can use while on the road. AT&T says its free Wi-Fi initiative isn’t a response to a recent avalanche of complaints from iPhone users that they cannot connect via 3G. Still, Jeff Bradley, the company’s senior vice president of devices, said that if more AT&T users shifted to Wi-Fi, the performance of the 3G network should improve. T-Mobile, too, has put significant emphasis on Wi-Fi, which is good for users, because T-Mobile’s coverage quality trails that of its competitors in most regions. T-Mobile’s HotSpot Network has more than 10,000 locations in the United States, thanks to roaming agreements with Boingo and AT&T, so the network covers Starbucks, many major airports and FedEx Kinko’s stores, among others. As with AT&T, the connection costs are included in a subscriber’s monthly data plan. Some T-Mobile phones, like the MyTouch 3G or the G1, have available applications that will help users find a hot spot. These so-called Google phones, which operate on Google’s Android software platform, are fairly well served, in this respect, with T-Mobile’s HotSpot Locator app (free, in the Android Market). The app garnered some harsh early reviews for frequent crashes, but T-Mobile recently said the problems had been fixed. In recent tests I experienced no problems. Connecting to a hot spot is generally as easy as it is on AT&T. If you have an Android phone, like the MyTouch 3G or the G1, T-Mobile’s affiliated Wi-Fi networks will recognize your phone and automatically log you on. Other smartphones require users to log in with their phone number, at least initially. If you tweak the phone’s settings, it will log in automatically thereafter. For an additional $10 a month, T-Mobile subscribers can make unlimited calls from any hot spot without racking up cellphone charges. On my tests, calls showed good voice quality, with no noticeable difference from the cellular calls on T-Mobile’s network. Just 18 of T-Mobile’s 30 Wi-Fi capable phones can make calls this way, though, and the Android phones are not on that list. So check T-Mobile’s Web site to see if your phone qualifies. Verizon, the nation’s biggest wireless carrier, has no similar Wi-Fi initiative, which is perhaps understandable since it has few Wi-Fi-enabled phones. And Sprint has no nationwide Wi-Fi initiative to speak of, either. Sprint does have a horse in the wireless race, however. The company has invested in Clearwire Communications, a company that is rolling out WiMax, a technology that covers entire cities in a wireless Internet cloud. This year, Clearwire began introducing its WiMax service in Baltimore and Las Vegas, and last month added Boise, Idaho; Bellingham, Wash.; and Portland, Ore., among other cities. By the end of next year, WiMax coverage will be available in New York, San Francisco and most of Texas, among other places. Existing Sprint subscribers receive no discounts when they use the network. You can subscribe to the Mobile broadband service for $60 a month, and connect in any city where Sprint’s WiMax service is available, or users can pay $10 to connect for 24 hours. As an alternative, Sprint and Verizon Wireless also sell Novatel’s MiFi 2200 ($100 with a two-year contract), a pocket-size device that converts a cellular signal into a Wi-Fi signal, which you can share with up to five devices nearby. You need to be in an area with good cellular coverage for it to be of much use, so there’s little logic in owning one just to connect your phone to Wi-Fi. But if your circle of friends includes data-hogging iPhone users who can never seem to get on AT&T’s 3G network, you could probably extort a cup of coffee or two from them in exchange for a Wi-Fi fix. Quick Calls AT&T subscribers with individual Nation plans of at least $60 a month can now connect for unlimited minutes with five domestic phone numbers — landlines and competing wireless carriers included. The company’s A-List with Rollover feature, which is similar to Verizon’s Friends & Family plan and T-Mobile’s MyFaves plan, also applies to subscribers with family plans of at least $90 a month, who can choose 10 numbers. Sprint’s new competing plan, Any Mobile, Anytime excludes landlines. ... Research suggests that cellphone radiation poses no significant health danger, but the United States Food and Drug Administration still suggests hands-free headsets just to be safe. Now, the Environmental Working Group has released a study measuring the radiation levels of 1,200 cellphones. Check yours at ewg.org . ...The Google Voice app, which has been popular among BlackBerry and Android phone users, is now available — sort of — on the Palm’s WebOS, through gDial Pro. (Free, in Palm’s App Catalog.) ...Sprint recently cut the price on the Palm Pre to $150 with a two-year contract.
|
AT&T Corp;Wireless Communications;Smartphones
|
ny0115029
|
[
"us"
] |
2012/11/06
|
Dogs Killed Boy Who Fell Into Pittsburgh Zoo Exhibit
|
A 2-year-old boy who fell into an exhibit of African wild dogs was killed by the animals, not the fall, the president of the Pittsburgh Zoo said Monday. The boy’s mother had picked him up and put him on top of a railing at the edge of a viewing deck late Sunday morning when he lost his balance and fell, said Barbara Baker, C.E.O. and president of the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium. There was a safety net below the railing, but it failed to catch him and the boy dropped more than 10 feet into the enclosure, she said. The animals attacked the child so violently and quickly that by the time a veterinarian and other zoo staff members arrived seconds later, they determined it would have been futile to try rescuing the boy, she said. The medical examiner’s office has not yet publicly confirmed its findings or released the boy’s name.
|
Pittsburgh Zoo;Falls;Deaths (Fatalities);Pittsburgh (Pa);Dogs
|
ny0085625
|
[
"us"
] |
2015/07/18
|
Maine: Ex-Convict Arrested in Rampage That Killed Two
|
A man with a long criminal history shot five people, two fatally, during a nightlong spree before being apprehended on Friday near the Canadian border, the police said. The man, Anthony Lord, 35, faces murder and kidnapping charges. Mr. Lord is also suspected of starting a barn fire, stealing weapons and two vehicles, assaulting one person and leading officers on a chase. The authorities did not have a motive. Mr. Lord is a registered sex offender in Maine. The Bangor Daily News reported that he had been convicted of theft and domestic violence assault, among other charges. Lt. Sean Hashey of the Maine State Police said the sequence began Thursday night with a fire at a barn in Benedicta. Early Friday, a man was beaten in nearby Silver Ridge Township, and his truck and weapons were stolen. Later, Kyle Hewitt, 22, was shot dead and Kim Irish, 55, was wounded at the residence where the barn burned. Mr. Lord, the police said, left the scene with Ms. Irish’s daughter, Brittany Irish, 22. Another man, Carlton Eddy, who drove by the scene, was shot in the shoulder. Police later received a call about a shooting at a woodlot in Lee, about 40 miles south of Benedicta. Kevin Tozier, 58, was killed and Clayton McCarthy, 54, was injured there. A truck was stolen from that scene, and officers searching for it found Mr. Lord and Ms. Irish at his relative’s home in Houlton.
|
Murders and Homicides;Kidnapping and Hostages;Robbery;Assault;Arson;Maine
|
ny0171174
|
[
"business",
"media"
] |
2007/11/20
|
Imitation Hits the Marketing Business. Again.
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THEY say that imitation is the sincerest form of advertising, and once again a skein of look-alike, sound-alike, seem-alike campaigns is raising eyebrows along Madison Avenue. Television commercials for American Honda Motor and Subway restaurants, for instance, both use the theme song from the vintage sitcom “The Odd Couple.” Here are some other examples that have consumers doing double — and in some cases, triple — takes: ¶Campaigns for AT&T and a company called Riverbed Technology are both based on the concept of “mashing up” the names of cities to produce fanciful amalgams like “Japaridelphia” and “New Yorkyo.” ¶A television commercial for Visa, set in a toy store, and a trailer promoting “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium,” a movie about a magical toy store, both feature the same upbeat instrumental tune, “Breakfast Machine,” which was featured in the 1985 film “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.” ¶TV spots for Aflac and Alltel use the venerable special-effects tool known as stop-motion animation to bring to life Santa Claus, among other characters. On the USA cable network on Sunday night, the two spots ran within minutes of each other in a commercial break during an episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” Also, shoppers can see ads from three marketers — Dell, Sears and Wal-Mart — that all promote the idea of making holiday wishes come true. For Dell, the thought is expressed with themes like “Wish for the holidays” and “Wish for anywhere.” For Sears, the themes include “This year, don’t just give a gift, grant a wish” and “Where wishes begin.” For Wal-Mart, there is a single wishful theme, “For every wish.” The issue of what constitutes originality in ads — and what might instead be homage, borrowing, mimicry, copycatting or plagiarism — has been vexing industry professionals for decades. Generally, although an idea cannot be copyrighted, in some instances a specific expression of the idea may be protected. The Internet has made it easier to find and widely publicize perceived similarities in campaigns. Now, even when ads appear thousands of miles apart, comments can be made about their apparent commonalities. For instance, the blog Adfreak ( adweek.blogs.com/adfreak /) noted recently that a billboard for an electric utility in South Africa was reminiscent of a billboard for a water utility in Denver. Each used a small portion of a big billboard for a visual pun: a message promoting conservation. Adfreak, written by editors of the trade publication Adweek, is among scores of blogs devoted to advertising and marketing. Many of their authors devote posts to ads that they believe too closely resemble other ads. As the ranks of the ad detectives grow, the number of incidents may seem to proliferate. A blog called FX Rant ( fxrant.blogspot.com ) even devotes a section, titled “Movie Marketing Is Hard,” to “illustrating the lack of creativity” among campaigns from film studios. The most recent post pointed out similarities between the campaigns for “Beowulf,” which opened on Friday, and the 2006 film “300.” How did the Visa commercial come to use the same song and the same toy-shop setting as the trailer for “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium,” which opened on Friday? Any coincidences between the spot and the movie “are just that, coincidences,” said Jeremy Miller, a spokesman for the Visa agency, TBWA/Chiat/Day, part of the TBWA Worldwide division of the Omnicom Group. “This is not the first time Visa has highlighted a toy store in its advertising,” Mr. Miller said, and depicting a “busy toy store during the holiday period is completely in character for Visa as the fourth quarter is a very busy time with all retailers.” • The idea for the commercial was submitted last February, he added, before the movie trailer began to appear. Speaking of the holiday, what could account for three campaigns all using variations of “wish”?“Wishing is something that’s pretty common at holiday time,” said David Clifton, director for global marketing communications at Dell, and as a result, he added, “I don’t see a problem” with the echo effect. “One thing we looked at was how do we differentiate our campaign,” Mr. Clifton said, “so we added some texture to it” with a theme, “Yours is here,” that is also the address for a special Web site ( yoursishere.com ) featuring celebrities like Burt Reynolds. The campaign is created by the New York office of Mother. At Sears, Roebuck, part of Sears Holdings, Richard Gerstein, chief marketing officer, said: “It would be tough to ‘own’ wishes. Wishes are part of the holiday.” The Sears campaign is created by the Chicago office of Y&R, part of the Young & Rubicam Brands unit of the WPP Group. Still, Sears has ties to wishing that go back further than Dell’s or Wal-Mart’s: The Wish Book was the name for the Sears holiday catalogs published from 1963 to 1993. The onset of the holiday shopping season is also the likely reason for the simultaneous appearances of the stop-action Santas in the Alltel Wireless commercials, from Campbell-Ewald in Warren, Mich., part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, and the Aflac commercial, from the Kaplan Thaler Group in New York, part of the Publicis Groupe. The spots pay affectionate tribute to holiday TV specials from the 1960s, like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Still, some marketers have a less laissez-faire attitude about similarities in campaigns than Mr. Gerstein at Sears and Mr. Clifton at Dell. In September, as executives at RPA, the agency for the American Honda Motor Company, were completing a commercial for the Civic Hybrid using the theme from “The Odd Couple,” they learned that a Subway spot, finishing production at about the same, was using the same music. “There was some concern,” said Britt McColl, a spokeswoman at RPA in Santa Monica, Calif., so “we pushed it a little quicker” and moved up the introductory date for the Civic spot to late September from early October. It beat the Subway commercial onto television by about a week. Although “they’re different messages completely,” Ms. McColl said of the two commercials, “the music makes the spot.” A spokesman for Subway Restaurants, Mack Bridenbaker, said his company noticed the Honda spot’s appearance before his company’s spot, by the MMB agency in Boston, which features the Subway spokesman, Jared Fogle, and the football player Reggie Bush as the odd couple. “We were cool with it,” Mr. Bridenbaker said of the theme’s use in both commercials, “but we’d rather we be the only ones.” That seems to characterize the feelings of the people behind the mash-up campaigns for AT&T and Riverbed Technology. The Riverbed campaign is composed of Web banner ads, which the company and its agency, Godfrey Q & Partners in San Francisco, said began running on April 29. Each Riverbed banner ad mixes the names and landmarks of two cities, producing make-believe places like “San Franciscapore,” with the Golden Gate Bridge set against the Singapore skyline; “New Yorkyo”; and “Mumboston.” The AT&T campaign, by BBDO Worldwide in New York, another Omnicom agency, is more extensive. Along with banner ads there are television commercials and posters; each combines the names and landmarks of two or more cities or states, yielding imaginary places like “Philawarepragucago”; “Japaridelphia”; and “New Sanfrakota.” • There is also a section of the AT&T Web site ( att.com/wheredoyoulive ) where visitors can smush together their own sets of city, state and country names. The idea for the AT&T campaign “was first presented to the client in early April,” a spokesman for BBDO New York, Roy Elvove, wrote in an e-mail message. The first outdoor ads appeared on June 1, he added, which meant production had to begin “well in advance” of that date “and therefore in advance of the April 29 launch date for the Riverbed campaign.” “In addition — and not to be disrespectful — it is highly unlikely that the BBDO creative team was surfing the Web,” Mr. Elvove wrote, to visit sites “where they might have come across the Riverbed banner ads.” Patrick Godfrey, managing partner at Godfrey Q, had a tart response. The Riverbed campaign “continues to perform off the charts in terms of increasing awareness and driving demand for Riverbed’s products,” he wrote in an e-mail message. “So whatever the origin of BBDO’s subsequent campaign,” he added, “we’ve exceeded what we set out to do.”
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Advertising and Marketing;Television;American Honda Motor Co;AT&T Corp
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ny0073007
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[
"world",
"europe"
] |
2015/03/14
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Putin Has Vanished, but Rumors Are Popping Up Everywhere
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MOSCOW — Where’s Putin? The question obsessed Moscow and much of Russia on Friday, as speculation mounted as to why President Vladimir V. Putin had not been seen in public for more than a week. He abruptly canceled a trip to Kazakhstan and postponed a treaty signing with representatives from South Ossetia who were reportedly told not to bother to fly to Moscow. Most unusually, he was absent from an annual meeting of the top officials from the F.S.B., Russia’s domestic intelligence service. The rumor mill went into overdrive, churning out possible explanations from the simple to the salacious to the sinister. He had been stricken by the particularly devastating strain of flu going around Moscow just now. He sneaked off to Switzerland for the birth of his love child. He had a stroke. The victim of a palace coup, he was imprisoned within the Kremlin. He was dead, aged 62. Dmitry S. Peskov, the presidential spokesman, treated all the health questions with a certain wry humor initially, coming up with new and inventive ways to say, “He’s fine.” Yet, the fact that the story proved impossible to quash underscored the uneasy mood gripping the Russian capital for months now, an atmosphere in which speculation about the health of just one man can provoke fears about death and succession. There have been periodic glimpses of the tension behind the high red walls of the Kremlin, infighting over the wisdom of waging war in Ukraine that has only deepened as the value of the ruble crumbled under the combined weight of an oil price collapse and Western economic sanctions over the annexation of Crimea. Those pressures seemed to culminate in the Feb. 27 assassination of Boris Y. Nemtsov, the opposition leader and former deputy prime minister who was gunned down near the Kremlin. Mr. Nemtsov’s supporters blamed the atmosphere of hate that has been brewing in Russia, with the state-controlled news media labeling him a ringleader among the “enemies of the state.” All that seemed to feed some of the darker interpretations of Mr. Putin’s disappearance. Andrei Illarionov, a former presidential adviser, wrote a blog post suggesting that the president had been overthrown by hard-liners in a palace coup endorsed by the Russian Orthodox Church . Russians could anticipate an announcement soon saying that he was taking a well-deserved rest, the post said. Conspiracy theorists bombarded Facebook, Twitter and the rest of social media with similar intrigue. Of course, the “wag-the-dog” grandfather of all the conspiracy theories surfaced as well, that Mr. Putin disappeared on purpose to distract everyone from the problems and economic pressures piling up around them. Given that Russia sometimes seems to be reverting to the dusty playbook of the Soviet Union, some concerns seemed to feed off old habits. In the early 1980s, when three Soviet rulers — Leonid I. Brezhnev, Yuri V. Andropov and Konstantin U. Chernenko — died in quick succession, the public was among the last to be informed. “If an American president dies, not that much changes,” said a reporter who has covered Mr. Putin for years, not wanting to be quoted by name on the subject of the president’s possible demise. “But if a Russian leader dies everything can change — we just don’t know for better or worse, but usually for worse.” The White House declined to say if it had any information about Mr. Putin’s whereabouts or whether President Obama has been briefed. “I have enough trouble keeping track of the whereabouts of one world leader,” said Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman. “I would refer you to the Russians for questions on theirs. I’m sure they’ll be very responsive.” The last confirmed public Putin sighting was at a meeting with Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy on March 5, although the Kremlin would have one think otherwise. That was another aspect of the Soviet past that seemed to actually emerge from the grave: efforts to doctor the president’s timetable to confirm that all was hunky-dory. The daily newspaper RBC reported that a meeting with the governor of the northwestern region of Karelia, pictured on the presidential website as taking place on March 11, actually occurred on March 4, when a local website there wrote about it. A meeting with a group of women shown as March 8 actually happened on March 6, RBC said. On Friday the Kremlin released video and still pictures of Mr. Putin meeting with the president of the Supreme Court to discuss judicial reform. The footage got heavy play on state-run television, but given that it was not live it did little to douse the flaming rumor mill. The simplest explanation appeared to come from an unidentified government source in Kazakhstan, who told Reuters “it looks like he has fallen ill.” Since half of Moscow seemed racked with a flu that knocks people onto their backs for days at a time, that seemed the most likely explanation. (Who knows how many hands he shakes in a day?) But there seemed to be a certain reluctance to admit that Russia’s leader, who cultivates a macho image of ruddy good health, might have been felled like a mere mortal. His spokesman told any media outlet that called (and most did) that his boss was in fine fettle, holding meetings and performing other duties of the office. “No need to worry, everything is all right,” Mr. Peskov said Thursday in an interview with Echo of Moscow radio. “He has working meetings all the time, only not all of these meetings are public.” As new theories emerged practically by the hour, Mr. Peskov denied them all. A Swiss tabloid reported that Mr. Putin had spent the past week accompanying his mistress, the Olympic gymnastics medalist Alina Kabayeva, to give birth in a clinic in Switzerland’s Ticino canton favored by the family of Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister. (It would be the third child, none confirmed.) Mr. Peskov swatted that one down, too. Of course, Mr. Putin’s opponents next door in Ukraine lost no time celebrating the possible news. One set up a clock using a joyous chorus from “Swan Lake” to count off the time since Mr. Putin last appeared alive. One of Mr. Putin’s predecessors, Boris N. Yeltsin , used to disappear frequently as well. But that was due either to drinking bouts or, at least once, an undisclosed heart attack. His spokesman settled on a standard explanation that Mr. Yeltsin still had a firm handshake and was busy working on documents. Mr. Peskov drolly resorted to both explanations, telling Echo of Moscow that Mr. Putin’s handshake could break hands and that he was working “exhaustively” with documents. By Friday, Mr. Peskov’s patience appeared to be wearing thin as he told Reuters: “We’ve already said this a hundred times. This isn’t funny anymore.” But he also mused aloud about finding a wealthy sponsor to underwrite a prize for the funniest hoax invented about Russia’s leader. Early in his presidency, Mr. Putin infamously dropped out of sight when the submarine Kursk sank in 2000 and again two years later when terrorists seized a Moscow theater, trapping hundreds of hostages. But since those two crises, which spawned all manner of questions about his leadership skills, he has been very much a public figure. A key sign that Russians seemed to be taking it in stride, despite the weird and wild tales, was that the value of the ruble barely budged. Farther away, on world markets distant from rumor central, there were gyrations attributed in part to the Putin uncertainty. Now all eyes are on Monday, when the president is scheduled to meet with the president of Kyrgyzstan in St. Petersburg.
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Vladimir Putin;Russia
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