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ny0210006 | [
"science"
] | 2009/12/01 | Darpa Puts On Contest to Find 10 Red Balloons Across U.S. | The prize is $40,000, and it goes to the first person or group to determine the locations of 10 red balloons that can be anywhere in the continental United States. The apparent frivolity of the challenge is only on the surface. This is not a game invented by some eccentric Web Midas. The contest , which takes place on Dec. 5, is being sponsored by Darpa, the Pentagon’s research agency. The goal is to learn more about social behavior in computer networks and how large computer-connected teams use their resources and connections to compete. There is also an invention being celebrated. Peter Lee, a computer scientist and one of the Darpa directors organizing the contest, said Dec. 5 would be the 40th anniversary of the day when the first four nodes of the Arpanet — the experimental military-sponsored computer network that was the forerunner of today’s Internet — were connected. Darpa has previously sponsored three “grand challenges” in an effort to advance the technology for autonomous vehicles. In the second one, in 2005, a Stanford University team won $2 million when its roboticized Volkswagen Touareg was the quickest to navigate a 131-mile course through California desert. The mission of the agency, created in 1958 after the Sputnik satellite’s launching, is to guard the country against technological surprise. But Darpa prompted concerns about privacy after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when it created a program to use data-mining technologies to identify potential terrorists. Dr. Lee said he was not certain what to expect in the tactics that teams might use to track down the balloons, which will be visible from public roadways for a single day. Some groups are developing software applications. Dr. Lee said he also expected large teams of spotters and even the possibility that some groups might use subterfuge like disseminating false information. Other groups may try to pay for information, he said, noting that even during a brief experiment the agency ran with a balloon near its headquarters, information on the location was offered for sale on Craigslist. Dr. Lee said the agency would continue to pursue a number of large and small challenge-style contests to foster what he described as new ways to tap into pools of talented individuals and creative groups. Contestants from anywhere in the world may participate in this contest, he said, and registration will stay open until the contest begins. | Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency;Contests and Prizes;Defense Department;Computers and the Internet;Science and Technology |
ny0190871 | [
"us"
] | 2009/05/12 | As Boom Town Busts, a Brief Political Movement Fades Away | DONNELLY, Idaho — When they built the grand resort and the outsiders arrived with their snow skis and sand wedges, there was tension in this town of 138. Another stunning mountain outpost in the West was going the way stunning mountain outposts in the West always seemed to go: upscale and out of reach. By late 2007, newcomers had even taken control of City Hall. Yet it was not the second-home set at the new Tamarack Resort who rose to political power. It was the young workers who had moved to town to serve them: the guy who drove the airport shuttle, the cook at the lodge, the backcountry ski guide. Now the city’s political leadership is a question mark. When financial troubles forced the resort to shut down in March, three of the top five elected officials, including the mayor, were laid off from their jobs at Tamarack; a fourth, a member of the Town Council who builds high-end houses, is all but out of work. Even as they hope Tamarack will reopen one day, some of the elected officials have been forced to look for jobs in other cities and states, potentially ending their ability to hold office. “We want to stick around, obviously, but family comes first,” said the mayor, Brad Backus, 33, a former ski instructor who said he was considering a move to Washington to work for the summer. “If it means we can’t provide for our family by staying in the valley, we’re going to have to make some tough decisions.” The newcomers’ ascent to power had had the feel of a movement, although a really small one. Mr. Backus and a handful of friends and co-workers at Tamarack scraped together enough to buy modest houses on Donnelly’s tiny grid of gravel roads not long after Tamarack first opened for business, in the boom times of 2004, as a year-round golfing, skiing lakefront resort on private and state land in the Payette River Mountains. By late 2007, they were running the city, promising a more creative, responsive and environment-friendly government. “We wanted to take Donnelly back to its core community values,” Mr. Backus said. It was right about then that Tamarack went into receivership after defaulting on a $250 million loan. Fifteen months later, even as many homeowners and guests used the resort, it ceased operations. One of its developers, Jean-Pierre Boespflug, is on record as saying he hopes to reopen the resort in some fashion later this year. For some longtime residents, the upheaval has administered a measure of poetic justice. The closing of Tamarack proved that the shiny new future the outsiders promised was not such a cinch, and showed that maybe Donnelly was not so bad the way it had been before. “It’s kind of fun to watch them go,” said Jesse Withers, 68, a logging truck driver. Yet by and large, the closing of Tamarack and its impact on city leadership has meant pain. Aside from the economic fallout, the uncertainty in the town’s government comes as important business is at hand, including trying to find financing for a new municipal well and drafting an annexation plan that, if the housing market ever turns upward again, could expand the town’s tiny tax base. Even former mayors and Council members say the newcomers have been doing smart work and that a remote town still recovering from declines in logging has benefited from a dose of new energy and ideas. They praise the new people for learning how to write successful grant requests, for pushing through a bed tax (the town’s new hotel has now closed, however) and for working with the state to begin adding curbs, sidewalks and streetlights to a block of Main Street. They also say the new people listen better. “They think differently, and I think they’re better politicians than we were,” said Susan Dorris, a former Council member whose husband, George, is a former mayor. “They didn’t have any of the old political baggage.” Even some officials who did not work for Tamarack are uncertain of their future. Steve Hart, a high-end home builder who was appointed to fill a vacancy on the Council in early 2008, said he was considering renting out his house here and moving to Boise. If he does, he may not meet the residency requirement to serve. At 63, Mr. Hart is not of the same generation as the mayor and others on the Council, but he said he was impressed by their passion and competence. Noting that Donnelly sits between Tamarack and the tourist destination of McCall, about 15 miles north, Mr. Hart said the goal of the Council had been to make Donnelly a place “where the working person could live economically.” Jay Mentzer, 30, the president of the Town Council and the former head of transportation and parking for Tamarack, said he had written a paper while in college in Colorado “about the theft of culture in mountain towns.” He said he had no intention of making Donnelly another victim of the New West. Mr. Mentzer has managed to find a new job, essentially an extension of his old one, running a shuttle bus that delivers children to school and workers to their jobs. He has a mortgage on a house he says he could not sell if he wanted to — and this in a town where just a couple of years ago speculators offered to cut checks on the spot for rambling ranchers with rusty cars in the yard. “We’re still moving forward,” Mr. Mentzer said, noting the street improvements on Main Street, which will begin this summer, and the effort to build the new well. “I’ll be here. I’m stuck. I’m in.” | Donnelly (Idaho);Idaho;Local Government;Economic Conditions and Trends;Layoffs and Job Reductions |
ny0047933 | [
"us"
] | 2014/11/21 | Texas Drilling Brings Health Complaints, but Little Enforcement | AUSTIN, Tex. — Bradford Gilde, a Houston lawyer, stumbled across some unexpected evidence as he was preparing to sue Aruba Petroleum on behalf of a North Texas couple who believed fumes from the company’s natural gas wells were making them sick. His clients, Bob and Lisa Parr, complained of chronic dizziness and eye and throat irritation. A Texas environmental inspector reported experiencing the same symptoms in 2010 after visiting Aruba’s wells in Wise County, Mr. Gilde learned. Responding to complaints from residents, and its own inspector’s dizzying experience, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality later fined Aruba $49,000 in 2012. Mr. Gilde ultimately won a $3 million judgment for his clients, and the company is appealing. At trial, however, he was not allowed to use evidence reflecting the state’s findings and sanctions against Aruba because, as part of its agreement to pay the fine, the company formally denied any wrongdoing. To Mr. Gilde, the experience underscored the lack of clout the state’s environmental regulations — and the agency charged with enforcing them — have in Texas’ rapidly growing oil and gas fields. “They’re overworked; they’re woefully understaffed; they don’t have the financial resources,” Mr. Gilde said. While drilling surges in South Texas’ oil-rich Eagle Ford Shale and North Texas’ gas-rich Barnett Shale , fines or citations for violating environmental laws are few, data shows. The commission said it was stepping up enforcement in both shale regions. Although its inspectors have been sickened at least twice, it does not believe airborne emissions from oil and gas drilling pose a threat to human health. “The typical issues are mechanical or operational errors, and they’ve been quickly remedied for the most part in working with the industry,” said Susan Jablonski, a field director in the agency’s office of compliance and enforcement. The Barnett Shale Energy Education Council , a nonprofit set up by a coalition of drilling companies in the Barnett, said there was no evidence that drilling was harmful. Ed Ireland, the council’s executive director, said last summer that improvements in drilling efficiency were also lowering emissions. But advocates and residents living near oil and gas wells believe otherwise. In the last two years, the Texas commission has received more than 400 complaints related to air quality that residents believed resulted from drilling in the Barnett and Eagle Ford shales. Many describe headaches, dizziness, itchy eyes and nosebleeds; others claim more serious effects, like lung disease. The symptoms are consistent with Environmental Protection Agency descriptions of possible exposure to emissions from oil and gas drilling. But despite all those complaints, and thousands of oil and gas leases in the shale regions, the state commission has levied 35 fines in last two fiscal years. The commission made documentation available for only two of the fines. In 2013, the drilling company Wiley Lease was ordered to pay $6,250 for releasing air contaminants, without the proper permit, from a wastewater disposal site in South Texas’ Atascosa County. The company was told to get the permit retroactively, after which the same emissions would be allowed. And last summer, Swift Energy Operating was fined $14,280 for odors around a drilling site that, according to agency investigators, “may be injurious to or adversely affect human health or welfare.” In documents, the agency said its staff “experienced irritation of the eyes and a burning sensation in the throat” during each of four visits to Swift’s La Salle County operations in South Texas in 2013. Swift Energy paid $11,400 of the fine, the agency said, “upon timely and satisfactory compliance,” which involved mostly repairing equipment leaks. Such low fines do not carry enough weight to compel companies to regularly follow the rules, said Hugh Fitzsimons, a rancher near the Mexican border who has seen an explosion of drilling activity on his 11,000-acre property. (Mr. Fitzsimons is a major donor to The Texas Tribune.) And his foreman, Freddy Longoria, who lives on the ranch full time, often experiences health effects he believes are related to oil and gas drilling. “We’ve noticed that our boys started getting headaches,” said Mr. Longoria, who has three children and has worked on the ranch for 15 years. “They didn’t have them in school. But they would have them when they got here.” Soon after the oil boom began, he said, family members began feeling allergy symptoms and experiencing nosebleeds while on the ranch. But every time Mr. Fitzsimons has complained to state regulators about the symptoms, the problem “mysteriously disappears” before state investigators arrive, he said. Mr. Gilde said his clients had similar experiences with problems going away by the time regulators arrived. For his clients, he said, that meant “not only did they have the experience of bad air, but they’re also perceived as a liar.” Ms. Jablonski said the Texas commission tried to respond to complaints quickly, especially health-related ones. But it takes an average of 11 days to respond to complaints in the Eagle Ford Shale, the agency says. Much of the region is rural, and drilling often occurs in remote areas. And response times are longer in Eagle Ford because “staff must often contact a responsible party to gain access to remote locations that may not be continuously manned,” said Terry Clawson, an agency spokesman. The advance notice gives companies an opportunity to make temporary fixes before investigators found violations, Mr. Gilde said. While state investigators did not experience symptoms when visiting Mr. Fitzsimons’s ranch, they did issue some notices of violation for lack of permits and other small problems a year ago. But as the problems continued, Mr. Fitzsimons decided to do something himself, sending Mr. Longoria to a class in Dallas where he learned how to use an infrared camera, which can show dangerous emissions invisible to the naked eye. The class cost $3,000, and renting the camera for a week was $4,000. In September, Mr. Longoria spent his week watching white, previously unseen plumes of smoke billow out of compressor stations, tank batteries and drilling sites across the ranch — some at the same places where the Texas commission had issued notices of violation a year ago. The agency has received the videos and said it was reviewing them. “It’s kind of exciting because you look at something that you’ve been looking at for so many years, and you smelled that smell for so many years, and now it’s here,” Mr. Longoria said. “You can see the vapors. You can see the gas.” | Oil and Gasoline;Drilling;Shale;Fines;Texas;Texas Commission on Environmental Quality |
ny0150055 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2008/09/15 | Medical Technician Is Stabbed to Death | An off-duty emergency medical technician was stabbed to death at his companion’s apartment in Brooklyn early Sunday, the police said. The victim, Jason Ruiz, 30, was a popular member of the close-knit fraternity of emergency medical technicians who work for the Fire Department. On July 15, he helped rescue a woman who had suffered a seizure and fallen onto the subway tracks in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, the Fire Department said. “He loved his job,” said one of his colleagues, Josmiry Rodriguez, 23. “He always came in with a smiling face.” Mr. Ruiz was at his companion’s apartment at 5914 Fifth Avenue in Sunset Park when he answered a knock at her door shortly after 1:30 a.m., according to the police. A man stabbed him twice in the torso and fled, the police said. Mr. Ruiz was taken to Lutheran Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead shortly after 2 a.m., the police said. On Monday morning, detectives arrested Enrique Pizarro, 25, a former boyfriend of Mr. Ruiz’s girlfriend, the police said. He was charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon. Mr. Ruiz and his partner, Juan Rios, were recognized by the Fire Department after the July 15 rescue of a 31-year-old woman, who suffered a seizure in a Brooklyn subway station and fell to the tracks. When they arrived, they found that an off-duty firefighter had jumped down to the tracks to help the woman. Mr. Ruiz and Mr. Rios also descended to the tracks and began treating the woman, without knowing whether electricity to the third rail had been shut off. They placed her on a board and lifted her to the platform. “We just tried to stay away from the third rail,” Mr. Ruiz later said. “You don’t think about the risks until afterwards,” Mr. Ruiz later said. | Murders and Attempted Murders;Brooklyn (NYC);Emergency Medical Treatment |
ny0230444 | [
"us"
] | 2010/09/17 | 30 Years Later, Freedom in a Case With Tragedy for All Involved | HATTIESBURG, Miss. — A little after 10 o’clock on Thursday morning, it was all up to Phillip Bivens. Just like that. The judge adjourned the hearing and Mr. Bivens, standing in a red jumpsuit in the corner of the courtroom, could all of a sudden do anything he wanted. After 30 years in prison, he was not sure what that was. “Take it easy, I guess,” he said. “Try to ease my mind.” Mr. Bivens, 59, and Bobby Ray Dixon, 53, two men who were serving life sentences, were exonerated by a judge on Thursday morning, their guilty pleas to the charge of murder erased. The judge said it was likely that another man, Larry Ruffin, would soon be cleared for the same murder. There was no special hurry in his case. Mr. Ruffin died in prison eight years ago. The expected ruling would be one of only a handful of posthumous exonerations nationwide, and taken with Thursday’s events, a rare triple exoneration. Nonetheless, said Emily Maw, the director of the Innocence Project of New Orleans , the law center that pressed for the men’s release, the case has been nothing but a series of tragedies. On a warm night in early May 1979, a man broke into the home of Eva Gail Patterson, raped her and cut her throat in front of her 4-year-old son. Ms. Patterson, whose 2-year-old was sleeping in the next room and whose husband was working offshore on an oil platform, stumbled to her neighbor’s carport, where she collapsed and died. The 4-year-old, Luke, told the police that a single man, “a bad boy,” had killed his mother. Larry Ruffin, 19 at the time, was picked up a few days later. The night of the murder he had been on leave from a halfway house, where he was sent after stealing some beer from a store. Over the next few weeks, he gave several statements, contradictory on many points but all conforming to the same basic storyline: He had raped and killed Ms. Patterson, and he had acted alone. Mr. Ruffin soon recanted, however, saying that he had been physically coerced by law enforcement officials into confessing, and maintained his innocence. Over a year later, just before Mr. Ruffin’s trial was set to begin, the police interviewed Mr. Dixon, who had been with Mr. Ruffin at the halfway house at the same time. Mr. Dixon told them that Mr. Ruffin had killed Ms. Patterson, but said that he had been with him that night. Mr. Dixon, who pleaded guilty to murder, apparently said Mr. Bivens was with them as well, though no records exist of that first interview. Mr. Bivens, who had returned to his home in California several months earlier, was arrested by police officers who showed up at his door one night. “I’d never been on a airplane before,” he said on a car ride out of Mississippi after the hearing. “I thought they were going to kill me. I thought they were going to get me up there and push me out.” Back in Hattiesburg, he was told he could be facing the death penalty unless he pleaded guilty. Law enforcement officials showed him pictures of the crime scene and asked what he remembered, he said. He had never met Mr. Dixon before, he said, but, fearing for his life, he backed up Mr. Dixon’s account. “All of these things, it’s hard to push them out of my mind,” he said on the car ride, staring out the window. “I don’t like to think about it. I feel like I should have been stronger than that.” The trial, in the winter of 1980, was based almost exclusively on the three statements. On the stand, Mr. Dixon, who described himself as a “hard learner” who could barely read, began to contradict his own testimony. Finally, he said that he had not been with the other two that night and that he did not even know what Ms. Patterson looked like. He said that he had been kicked in the head by a horse as a child and ever since had suffered seizures. “I don’t have the right mind,” he said on the witness stand. “My mind comes and goes, and I don’t like to see nobody took away for nothing they ain’t done.” Mr. Ruffin was convicted, though a hung jury prevented a death sentence. He was sentenced to life in prison and died of a heart attack in 2002. Mr. Dixon, whose seizures were so frequent in prison that guards gave him a baseball batting helmet, developed lung cancer last year, which has since spread to his brain. A couple of years earlier, lawyers for the Innocence Project had received an application for help from Mr. Dixon through a corrections officer. The lawyers, pointing to studies that show the frequency of false confessions, requested a DNA test of the evidence from the rape kit. In July, the results came back. They implicated a man named Andrew Harris, who had lived just up the road from Ms. Patterson. In 1982, he was convicted of a rape outside Hattiesburg and is now serving a life sentence. Law enforcement officials are now investigating his connection to the Patterson case. Mr. Dixon was granted medical parole after the test results came in and has been out of prison since. Only Mr. Bivens remained. The courtroom on Thursday was full of people who last came together 30 years ago. Mr. Ruffin’s family members wore “Free at Last” T-shirts, maintaining that freedom is a state that can be still achieved by the dead. Mr. Dixon was there, smiling and leaning on a cane carved by his brother. The Patterson family, including Luke, now in his 30s, was sitting the front row. The district attorney, the same man who had been in the post in 1979, represented the state. After the hearing, Mr. Dixon was taken by his brother a few dozen miles out of town to a sun-dappled clearing among pine trees, the site of Mr. Ruffin’s grave. The Ruffin family prayed, sang hymns and released balloons, and Mr. Dixon broke into sobs. Earlier, Mr. Bivens stood across the street from the courthouse, in brand-new clothes still bearing the creases of the display shelf. He carried his belongings in a pillowcase: two Bibles, a pair of flip-flops, some shampoo, some socks. The lawyers took him to lunch and then drove him to New Orleans. He was planning to stay in housing there that was set up especially for exonerated prisoners. Maybe, he said, he could find a job gardening. And he was thinking about looking up his old girlfriend, the one he was about to marry before the police arrived at his door that night. It is important to have people around you, he said. They keep you from thinking about things too much. And they serve as an alibi, just in case. | False Arrests Convictions and Imprisonments;Forensic Science;Decisions and Verdicts;Sentences (Criminal);Prisons and Prisoners;Mississippi |
ny0033162 | [
"sports",
"basketball"
] | 2013/12/28 | Reassured or Not, Knicks Still Look Overburdened | A day after James L. Dolan’s impromptu meeting with his embattled team, not much changed for the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. Carmelo Anthony, Raymond Felton and Pablo Prigioni remained injured, relegated to watching from the bench as the Knicks fell to the Toronto Raptors, 95-83, on Friday. The fans still booed. The offense still sputtered. The fourth quarter still belonged to the opponent, this time to the tune of a 29-12 dismantling by the fresh-legged Raptors. In brief summation, Coach Mike Woodson may have awaked Friday comforted by a smidgen of security, but the problems that plagued the Knicks (9-20) through the first 28 games remained just as darkly stained on their performance in No. 29. Dolan’s meeting with the team, first reported by ESPN and confirmed by a person in the N.B.A. with knowledge of the situation, occurred at some point before practice or during practice Thursday, an effort to calm the disquiet around the franchise. Dolan told the players to rest assured there would be no imminent deals and that they should play hard, according to the person, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the meeting. Image J.R. Smith, driving in the second half, scored 17 points over all but missed five of seven shots in the fourth quarter. Credit Richard Perry/The New York Times With trade rumors, J. R. Smith’s antics, a time-management fiasco against Washington and swelling criticism of Woodson’s handling of the team, few days have passed quietly in the Knicks universe. The team has lost 7 of its last 11 games. And Saturday’s rematch with the Raptors looks equally bleak. Woodson said Anthony (sprained ankle) would not travel to Toronto and thus would miss his third consecutive game. So the vote of confidence was curious timing again by Dolan, who shared his feelings with the team after a 29-point trouncing by Oklahoma City on Christmas Day. On Nov. 19, during his first interview with a news organization about the Knicks in seven years, Dolan told The New York Post: “I have a lot of confidence in Woodson.” The Knicks proceeded to lose seven consecutive games. Woodson seemed slightly uncomfortable on the matter before the game, too, cutting off a reporter before he could even fully form a question beyond, “There have been some reports ——” “I’m not commenting on that,” Woodson said. He declined to comment when a second question was raised about the meeting as well. Woodson’s sensitivity was not out of the ordinary — he has regularly avoided in-house topics this season — but he has had to answer a lot about his job lately. Indirectly, his answers typically wind back to his desire to coach with a full and healthy roster at his disposal, a desire that has come close to being fulfilled just once this season: on Monday in Orlando, for one half before Anthony and Felton were hurt. With a complete team, Woodson said he believes it can still win the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference, which the Raptors lead at 12-15. Image The Knicks' Andrea Bargnani attempted a shot over Toronto's Patrick Patterson. Credit Richard Perry/The New York Times “We have not had a full deck,” Woodson said before the game. “I’m talking about key guys that have been out. I’m just anxious to see where we are. Because I know if we’ve got a full deck, we’ve got a chance to win basketball games. I truly believe that.” Will a “full deck” be on the Knicks’ horizon before Dolan decides to make a coaching change? That remains to be seen. Iman Shumpert, with a left thigh contusion, nearly became the latest to join the team’s injury list, but he suited up to play. As did Metta World Peace, who had missed the previous three games with knee soreness, saying before the game, in all apparent seriousness: “Aliens only want to win championships. That’s it. Injuries is not a focus.” But neither Shumpert nor World Peace provided much beyond serviceable bodies in uniform on Friday. The Knicks led by as much as 12 in the third, but the Raptors charged back with ease in the fourth. Without Anthony to go to down the stretch, the offense stalled. A 3-pointer by John Salmons with eight minutes remaining gave Toronto its first lead, 74-73, since the second quarter. “I felt like we had the game in control,” center Tyson Chandler said. “We let it dwindle away in the fourth quarter. It’s pretty disheartening.” Toronto kept up its attack as the Knicks slogged up and down the court in a daze. Woodson said the team’s short-handed lineup was a factor. The offense shot just 5 of 19 in the fourth. “I played guys in long stretches based on the fact that we were short-handed,” he said. “I rode the guys that got us the lead. I’m not using excuses, I thought maybe the legs kind of set in at the end and shots just weren’t falling.” REBOUNDS Coach Mike Woodson said guards Pablo Prigioni (broken toe) and Raymond Felton (groin) remained out indefinitely. Woodson had no timetable for Felton’s return after he sustained his injury on Monday. “Right now he’s just going through day-to-day treatment,” Woodson said. “When he’s ready, they’ll let me know.” Prigioni will most likely need another week or two, Woodson added. | Basketball;Knicks;Raptors;Mike Woodson;James L Dolan |
ny0040832 | [
"us"
] | 2014/04/13 | Rivka Haut, Dies at 71; Championed Rights of Orthodox Jewish Women | Rivka Haut, a prominent champion of Orthodox Jewish women fighting for divorce in rabbinical courts and seeking to pray together as a group, died on March 30 in the Bronx. She was 71. The cause was cancer, her daughter Sheryl Haut said. In 1980, when she was living in Brooklyn, Ms. Haut organized one of the first public protests in the United States concerning Orthodox divorce, outside a building owned by a man who had refused to give his wife a document known as a get, which is needed for traditional Jewish divorces. Under Orthodox law, only the husband has the power to grant a divorce. Though Ms. Haut, a teacher and author on Jewish topics, did not question that tradition, she fought to make it easier for Orthodox women to obtain a get through rabbinical courts, where they are known as agunot (pronounced aw-goo-NOTE), Hebrew for “chained women.” “She took a personal interest in these women and she never even considered turning anybody away,” said Blu Greenberg, the founder of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance. Ms. Haut would take calls day and night for decades, helping hundreds of women navigate the often dizzying religious procedures to receive a divorce. “In many ways she was my conscience and in many ways the conscience of the community,” said Rabbi Dov Linzer, the dean of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, who leads a daily Talmud study group in which Ms. Haut participated for several years. “She would say to rabbis all over, ‘You’re not doing enough to help these women, and you could be doing more.’ ” Her aim, he said, was to help women “who were suffering.” It was not, however, to challenge Orthodox Judaism as a political activist, her daughter said. “Eventually people started to call her a feminist, but she had a pretty traditional role at home,” Sheryl Haut said. “For her it wasn’t about equality between men and women, but about women’s dignity and voice.” In the late 1970s, Ms. Haut also helped organize, in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, one of the first Orthodox women’s prayer groups, with women reading from the Torah scrolls, an activity long reserved for men. In 1988, while on a flight to Jerusalem for a women’s conference with the American Jewish Congress, she decided to convene the first all-female prayer service with a Torah scroll at the Western Wall, considered one of Judaism’s holiest sites. There, women in the group, wearing prayer shawls, publicly led prayers and read from the Torah. Their actions drew immediate protests from ultra-Orthodox religious leaders. The demonstration, however, caught the attention of Orthodox women worldwide, and a movement grew under the name Women of the Wall. A group has continued to meet at the site monthly despite continued cries of protest in Israel. Last May, thousands of Orthodox Jews, including women and girls, tried to block members of the group from praying at the wall. “We did not know — how could we? — that we were beginning a new chapter in the history of Jewish women and prayer, yet we felt the momentous nature of our act,” Ms. Haut wrote in “Women of the Wall: Claiming Sacred Ground at Judaism’s Holy Site” (2002), an anthology of essays she edited with Phyllis Chesler . “It was an extraordinary experience for me, combining both public and private prayer at that sacred site.” Ms. Haut was born Renee Rivka Makowsky in Brooklyn on May 13, 1942, the eldest daughter of Teddy and Esta Makowsky. She attended high school at the Yeshiva of Flatbush. After graduating from Brooklyn College with a degree in English, Ms. Haut received a master’s in Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, a Conservative Jewish institution, in part because no Orthodox seminaries offered advanced study programs for women, said Tamara Weissman, Ms. Haut’s younger daughter. She later taught courses at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and the Academy for Jewish Religion. She dropped her given English name when she became more involved in advocating on behalf of agunot in the early 1980s. Besides her daughters, Ms. Haut is survived by a sister, Arlene Talerman, and six grandchildren. Ms. Haut moved to the Riverdale section of the Bronx after the death in 2001 of her husband, Rabbi Irwin Haut, who was also a lawyer and the author of a book about the agunot. She was a co-author of several books on Jewish topics. In one, a prayer book titled “Shaarei Simcha: Gates of Joy,” she and Adena Berkowitz included traditional Jewish blessings but also liturgy written by them — the first by Orthodox women to be published in modern times. “To be involved with writing prayers and creating rituals gave her joy,” Ms. Weissman said. | Rivka Haut;Judaism;Divorce;Obituary;Women's rights,Feminism;Rabbi;NYC |
ny0266709 | [
"world",
"americas"
] | 2016/03/21 | As Obama Arrives, Cuba Tightens Grip on Dissent | HAVANA — President Obama touched down in Cuba on Sunday, pledging to interact directly with the Cuban people and accelerate engagement between the United States and Cuba after more than a half-century of hostility. He is the first sitting American president to visit in nearly nine decades, and Cubans of all political persuasions had eagerly awaited his arrival. But hours before Air Force One landed at José Martí International Airport, the challenges inherent in normalizing relations with a Communist police state were laid bare, as dozens of arrests were made at the weekly march of Ladies in White, a prominent dissident group. The protest, which takes place most Sundays outside a suburban church here, was widely seen as a test of Cuba’s tolerance for dissent during the presidential trip, and the arrests confirmed that Cuba was maintaining its long history of repressive tactics, if not intensifying their reach. For Mr. Obama — who is scheduled to meet Tuesday with dissidents including the leader of Ladies in White, Berta Soler — the detentions threw a spotlight on the core challenge of the visit: how to work with the Castro government while expressing concern for its handling of human rights and free expression. “We thought there would be a truce, but it wasn’t to be,” said Elizardo Sánchez, who runs the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation. He noted that the arrests had taken place “in the moment that Obama was flying in the air to Cuba.” Cuba on the Edge of Change Photographs from a land of endless waiting and palpable erosion — but also, an uncanny openness among everyday people. Security and control are mainstays of any country preparing to host the president. But Cuba, a nation still working out just how much to open up to the world — and to its own people — after decades of isolation, has gone above and beyond to prevent embarrassing surprises. The baseball game where Mr. Obama will watch Cuba’s national team play the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday is an invitation-only event, with most seats going to government loyalists. Some of the Old Havana shops near where Mr. Obama strolled on Sunday evening had been ordered to stay closed. The police have been sweeping up prostitutes from nightclubs and beggars from the streets. Mr. Sánchez, who is among the dissidents expected to meet with the president on Tuesday, said that in the first two weeks of March, 526 critics of the government had been detained. While dissidents are often held for a few hours for printing fliers, staging street protests or just planning them, he and others said Mr. Obama’s visit had set in motion a broader campaign. On Saturday, Mr. Sánchez himself was held for three and a half hours at the Havana airport. He said he had been separated from his wife; sent to a cold, windowless room; and told that he was not being “detained” but rather “retained.” “Can I make a phone call?” he said he had asked, as officials made copies of every document in his bag. “No,” came the reply. “It’s the climate of intimidation the government is creating for Obama’s visit,” said Mr. Sanchez, a graying, steady critic of President Raúl Castro ’s government. “Right now what you see is preventive repression, so it does not occur to anyone to say anything to Obama while he is here.” For decades, Cuban officials have treated every interaction with the United States as a test of sovereignty, and their approach to Mr. Obama’s visit is partly an effort to project competence, confidence and a new commitment to a calibrated friendship. No matter what Mr. Obama says about freedom during his three-day stay, the Cuban government has made it clear that Cubans of all ideologies will be expected to behave. “The government of Cuba is like a father,” said Carlos Alzugaray Treto, a former Cuban diplomat who writes about the country’s political dynamics. “Strong, but worried about the family.” For the United States, there are more visible signs of change. Billboards lashing imperialism a few months ago now denounce violence against women, or laziness. And beautification is suddenly competing with decay. Fresh blue paint graces the baseball stadium ahead of Tuesday’s game. With a rush of repaving, much of Mr. Obama’s route through the city could be mapped out by the scent of fresh tar. But the Cubans’ response to all this improvement is not simply appreciation: After decades of you’ll-get-what-we-give-you government, their version of thank you is often salted with sarcasm. “Everyone wants to know how we Cubans feel about Obama coming,” said Yamile Suárez, 36, shrugging near a freshly repaved road in central Havana. “I’m frankly just happy that giant pothole finally got filled in, so if I have him to thank for it, thanks, Obama!” Control is the subtext. Some Cubans describe the government’s efforts as the directing of an elaborate, predictable performance. “The government manipulates everything,” Mr. Sanchez said. Image A member of the Ladies in White dissident group being carried by officers after the police broke up a demonstration by the group. Credit Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters Other countries certainly engage in similar acts of stage management and repression — China, for example. And José Daniel Ferrer, an opposition activist in Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second-largest city, said that while pressure from the government had increased in recent months, it was largely in response to growing activism. “It’s the third law of Newton: The greater the actions for democracy, the greater the repressive reaction by the regime,” he said. Several of his organization’s members had been arrested and released in the past week, Mr. Ferrer said. He added that the authorities were watching his house full time, making him wonder what will happen when he leaves it to attend the gathering of about a dozen dissidents with Mr. Obama at the United States Embassy on Tuesday. How the Cuban government and local journalists respond to that and other elements of the visit will be closely watched. Beyond Mr. Obama’s speech to the Cuban people on Tuesday, which will be broadcast on national television, it is not clear how much Cubans will get to see or hear of him. One young reporter who works for a major government news outlet said he and his colleagues had been brought into a room two weeks ago and reminded that anything posted to social media regarding Mr. Obama’s visit would result in more than just a slap on the wrist. No photographs, no commentary, no interviews with foreign reporters — not even private discussions with friends. Some independent journalists and scholars maintain that the government has loosened the reins since Dec. 17, 2014, when Mr. Obama and Mr. Castro announced the restoration of relations . Image President Obama and his family arriving at Havana’s international airport. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times It is clear that the flow of information in Havana is increasing. Wi-Fi hot spots can be easily found, just by looking for crowds of young Cubans gathered in clusters. Elaine Díaz, an independent journalist in Havana and a former Nieman fellow at Harvard, said her reporting and that of her colleagues who cover contentious issues, like housing, were being passed around with increasing frequency, by email, zip drive and private networks. “We’re focusing on the problems in Cuba that are separate from the United States,” she said. “We’re focused on what’s happening here.” Whether that or something else leads to broader civic and economic change, and when, is the question that all Cubans seem to want answered. Mr. Sánchez — who spent the weekend discussing his detention with foreign reporters, who could visit, and members of the alternative Cuban news media, who called in — said change would depend not on Mr. Obama, but rather on Fidel Castro, the architect of the 1959 revolution; President Castro, his brother; and their families. “What the government gives, it can take away in a second,” he said, silencing a cellphone in his pocket. “What we need is reform. What we need are laws. That’s what will create real change.” | Cuba;Barack Obama;Human Rights;Civil Unrest;Ladies in White;Raul Castro;Freedom of the press;US Foreign Policy |
ny0102102 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2015/12/06 | A Chinese Folk Artist’s Descendants Are Split by the Government’s Use of Their Family Legacy | TIANJIN, China — For nearly three years, a propaganda campaign closely associated with President Xi Jinping has blanketed roadways, construction sites, bus stops and rail stations across the country. Its most popular image is of a clay figurine of a chubby peasant girl in a red smock, her chin resting on her folded hands, her eyes cast upward. “My Dream,” says the text on the posters and billboards. “The China Dream.” The campaign is part of a broad effort to imbue Mr. Xi’s signature slogan — a call for national rejuvenation led by the Communist Party — with traditional Chinese values such as family and social harmony. The figurine is crucial to the strategy; it is sculpted and painted in a style recognized across China as traditional folk art and it is the product of a renowned family studio. But behind this slick campaign is one family’s tale of persecution, division and conflicting views on government control of art. The story offers a darker counterpoint to the party’s upbeat message, underscoring longstanding efforts to control art and bend it to political aims. Image A display case at the government-run studio in Tianjin with original “China Dream” figurines. Credit Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times “Our family wants to have nothing to do with politics,” said Zhang Yu, 37, a sculptor and a member of the sixth generation of the figurines’ creators, who objects to his family name being associated with the campaign. “We don’t do those sorts of things.” The peasant girl and other statuettes used in the government campaign are products of a studio founded nearly 200 years ago by a craftsman named Zhang Mingshan. Working with the thick yellow clay found in the wetlands that surround this port city east of Beijing, he fashioned figurines of local notables, lovable street vendors and opera characters, as well as historical figures and philosophers. Mr. Zhang soon became a national celebrity, earning the nickname Clay Man Zhang. His descendants carried on the work, building one of the most well-known folk art traditions in China. Their miniature sculptures resemble the porcelain Hummel figurines collected in the West, and for many Chinese, they evoke a sentimental vision of their country in much the way of Norman Rockwell’s depictions of America. The dowager empress Cixi received Clay Man Zhang statues on her 60th and 70th birthdays, in 1895 and 1905. The Nationalist Party leader Chiang Kai-shek owned pieces. Mao Zedong kept one modeled on a famous literary beauty in his study. Image A figurine made in Tianjin. Credit Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times The Communists early on saw the potential of folk art as a tool of propaganda. After taking power in 1949, they set up state-run collectives, schools and studios to control woodblock printers, calligraphy brush makers and other traditional artists and artisans, interrupting the passing of skills from father to eldest son that had stretched back centuries. Because of their fame, the Clay Man Zhang figurines came in for special attention from the Communists. Premier Zhou Enlai asked the Zhang family to send one son to Beijing to teach its craft to art students. The family complied, and he was showered with titles and granted an audience with Mao. In Tianjin, the government opened a workshop and set up classes taught by the head of the family, Zhang Ming, a great-grandson of Clay Man Zhang. With the onset of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, though, Mao sought to destroy traditional practices, including folk art, as obstacles to socialist progress. Zhang Ming’s descendants say he was beaten by his students, forced to drink buckets of soy sauce and vinegar, and subjected to mock trials for carrying on the family tradition. Other family members were attacked as well, the descendants say, and one committed suicide by throwing himself into a river. Near the end of the Cultural Revolution, the government reopened the sculpting studio but stripped it of the Zhang name. Zhang Ming was given an honorary title, but he was physically broken and housebound, barely able to climb the stairs without help, relatives said. After China embraced capitalist-style reforms in the 1980s, the government studio began selling the figurines to the public — and modified its name again, restoring the “Clay Man Zhang” moniker. The government studio also secured the trademark to sell under that name. But the Zhang family was largely left out. Some family members tried to carry on the tradition and sell their own figurines, but the police stopped them and said only the government studio could use the name “Clay Man Zhang.” “First they beat us, then they stole our name,” said Zhang Yu, 37, Zhang Ming’s grandson, who continues to make the figurines. “How do you think we felt?” Zhang Ming’s descendants sued the government studio in 1994 and won back the right to use the Clay Man Zhang brand. The court also prohibited the government studio from engaging in commercial activities, but that order was never enforced — not an uncommon outcome in China when state interests clash with the law. Image The statuettes used in the government campaign are products of a studio founded nearly two centuries ago. Credit Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times The government studio still has stores throughout Tianjin selling Clay Man Zhang figurines, and claims to be as much an heir to the tradition as the branch of the family that sued it. The studio management says one of Clay Man Zhang’s grandsons worked there in the 1950s. His granddaughter then worked in the studio as a sculptor in the 1970s and ’80s. Her daughter, a member of the sixth generation, still works as a sculptor in the studio. She changed her family name from Fan, which she inherited from her father, to Zhang to emphasize the tie to her famous ancestor, and she is now known as Zhang Fanyun. “What’s the difference between being surnamed Fan or Zhang?” Ms. Zhang, 48, said. “My mother was the fifth generation. I’m her daughter.” The studio’s figurines are mostly mass produced outside Tianjin and sold to tourists under the Clay Man Zhang label for the equivalent of about $15 each. Many are simple statuettes of children and animals, though some are of a higher quality and sell for up to $500. The branch of the family that sued the studio works differently. Its figurines are handmade in Tianjin by Zhang Yu. They are more intricate, and they sell for about $8,000 a piece in the family’s lone shop. Some portray historical figures, while others are allegorical depictions of loneliness or alienation. Still angry about the government’s use of the family name, Mr. Zhang pays for a billboard outside the government’s studio that proclaims his branch of the family to be Clay Man Zhang’s true heirs. He takes a dim view of his distant cousin who works at the studio. “People like her are more and more common,” he said. “She is a model of someone who can’t do anything, but because she has the name, she makes money.” Ms. Zhang declined to comment on the feud. The figurines became part of the China Dream campaign three years ago, after Mr. Xi made it the main theme of his administration. According to a 2013 television broadcast celebrating the campaign, the party set out to find images to support their effort. An official with the Propaganda Department visited the government studio in Tianjin and noticed the figurine of the little girl in a display cabinet. Image Zhang Yu, a descendant of the sculptor known as Clay Man Zhang, has his own smaller studio where he handcrafts figurines. Credit Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times “I felt it represented longing and hope,” Lin Gang, its creator, said. Experts said the campaign was one of the party’s more effective propaganda efforts. “When you see this little girl on the poster, for most people, it is hard to see the political language and propaganda in it,” said Zhan Jiang, a professor of media studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University. “It feels more like a campaign on morality and social conscience, which is easier for ordinary people to accept.” Party authorities asked the government studio to deliver a batch of 169 figurines for the campaign, including of army soldiers rescuing people from an earthquake, children playing chess, and Communist officials standing resolutely upright. Ms. Zhang said the entire studio was mobilized to meet the request. “It was our task,” she said. “We work for the government.” But Zhang Yu said the propaganda campaign hurt his business. “People sometimes call up and say, ‘Hey, were you involved in that?’ ” he said. “This is not beneficial for us.” He says he objects to state management of traditional culture. “Tradition is something you have to live,” he said. “It’s not something that you learn at the university or that a government can create.” | China;Art;Communist Party of China;Sculpture;Xi Jinping;Cultural Revolution |
ny0200260 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2009/09/02 | North Korea Reopens Border to Some Traffic | SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea restored regular border crossings for traffic going to South Korean factories in the North on Tuesday, while its leader, Kim Jong-il, reiterated his government’s call for a peace treaty with the United States. North Korea had previously called for talks with Washington to replace the truce — which fell short of a formal treaty — that ended the Korean War in 1953. “We can ease tensions and remove the danger of war on the peninsula when the United States abandons its hostile policy and signs a peace treaty with us,” Mr. Kim said in a commentary carried on Pyongyang Radio, which broadcasts North Korean government statements abroad. The dispatch, which was released late Monday, did not say when Mr. Kim made the statement. But the remark was the latest in a number of recent conciliatory overtures from the North. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, North Korea restored regular traffic for South Korean companies that have operations in a joint industrial park in the North Korean border city of Kaesong. The North had sharply curtailed such traffic in December. The border will now open 23 times a day to traffic to and from Kaesong, up from 6 times, said Lee Jong-joo, a spokeswoman with the Unification Ministry in Seoul. About 110 South Korean factories employ 40,000 North Korean workers at Kaesong. Ian Kelly, a State Department spokesman, said Monday that Washington was “encouraged” by the North’s recent gestures toward the South, but he said he had no comment on the North’s call for a peace treaty. Mr. Kelly urged North Korea to return to six-nation talks with regional powers about the dismantling of its nuclear weapons programs. The North, which prefers a bilateral dialogue with the United States, has said the six-nation framework is dead. Also on Tuesday, a diplomatic delegation left Pyongyang, the North’s capital, for a visit to Beijing, according to KCNA, the official North Korean news agency. China is North Korea’s principal trading partner and its biggest supplier of aid. Washington has said that negotiating a peace treaty with the North is possible only as part of a broader process that addresses the North’s nuclear disarmament. North Korea conducted its second nuclear test in May , and there is a growing suspicion among analysts in Seoul that the North is trying to win diplomatic recognition from Washington while also being accepted as a nuclear power. The United States led the United Nations forces that fought on South Korea’s behalf during the Korean War and then signed the truce. North Korea has tried for years to bring American administrations into peace talks while arguing that it was building nuclear weapons because of Washington’s “hostile policies.” | North Korea;South Korea;International Relations;United States International Relations |
ny0156444 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2008/06/26 | NBC Settles With Family That Blamed a TV Investigation for a Man’s Suicide | NBC has settled a lawsuit filed by the family of a man who killed himself when confronted with cameras for the documentary series “To Catch a Predator.” The family of Louis W. Conradt Jr. filed a $105 million lawsuit last year against NBC, which ran the “Predator” episode as part of its “Dateline NBC” newsmagazine series. The network refused to disclose the amount it paid to the family. “The matter has been amicably resolved to the satisfaction of both parties,” an NBC spokeswoman, Jenny Tartikoff, said in a statement. The lawsuit spotlighted the techniques used by the hidden-camera program to attract men online by having someone pose as an under-age girl in a chat room, then luring them to a house where they were confronted by a camera crew and host. While “To Catch a Predator” drew high ratings for NBC, ethical questions were raised over the program’s all-access arrangements with the local police and an online watchdog group. Mr. Conradt, an assistant district attorney in Rockwall County, Tex., had reportedly sent sexually explicit messages to a person he believed was under-age. It turned out that the person was a volunteer for Perverted Justice, an activist group that helps set up stings to catch child sexual predators. The group was a paid consultant for NBC in the “Predator” series. The volunteer posing as a child arranged to meet with Mr. Conradt in November 2006, as part of a four-day sting in Texas facilitated by a local police department. The sting led to 25 arrests, but Mr. Conradt did not show up at the bait house, so the local police, encouraged by NBC (according to the lawsuit), decided to arrest him at his home. As the police and camera crews entered the home, Mr. Conradt shot himself in the head. Last winter, when the ABC newsmagazine “20/20” investigated the “Predator” sting, Walter Weiss, a former detective with the police department that had worked with “Dateline,” said: “I understand he took his own life, but I have a feeling that he took his own life when he looked out the door and saw there was a bunch of television cameras outside.” Mr. Conradt’s family agreed and filed a lawsuit. NBC maintained that the suit had no merit. In February a judge dismissed some of the lawsuit’s claims, but declared that a jury “could find that NBC crossed the line from responsible journalism to irresponsible and reckless intrusion into law enforcement.” The two parties reached a settlement before a trial could begin. NBC would not comment on the details of the settlement, and would not say whether an apology to Mr. Conradt’s family would be issued. The Los Angeles Times, which first reported the resolution on Tuesday, said that the “Dateline” Web site had removed references to the Texas sting. The network would not comment on whether it had been removed as part of the settlement. NBC has broadcast only two new “Predator” investigations in the last 12 months, and it appears the televised sex predator stings will not be repeated anytime soon. “Right now we are working on other investigative stories,” Ms. Tartikoff said in an e-mail message. | National Broadcasting Co;Suicides and Suicide Attempts;Suits and Litigation;Television |
ny0133726 | [
"business"
] | 2008/03/21 | Credit Suisse Predicts First Loss Since 2003 | Credit Suisse said on Thursday that it was likely to post its first quarterly loss since 2003 because of large write-downs and “intentional misconduct” at its trading desk. The giant Swiss bank revealed in February that certain asset-backed securities had been priced incorrectly, but it was unclear whether it had been done intentionally. On Thursday, the bank said its internal review had found that a handful of traders acted deliberately, and suggested personal gain as their motive. The employees were fired or “are in the process of being fired,” Brady W. Dougan, the chief executive, said in a conference call. He described the misconduct as a “disappointing situation and one that we cannot and will not tolerate.” The trading irregularities at Credit Suisse, on the heels of the trading case at Société Générale in France, added to questions about how banks worldwide were managing risk during the expanding credit crisis that stemmed from failing mortgages in the United States. “The Credit Suisse situation reflects a lack of a proper accounting system and a lack of control of the accounting system,” said Jean Dermine, a professor of banking finance at Insead, the international business school in Fontainebleau, near Paris. “It is clear that this is not unique to Credit Suisse when you see how much time it took for Citibank and Bear Stearns to really announce the magnitude of their losses, reflecting in all the cases a lack of a proper accounting systems.” After the announcement, Credit Suisse shares tumbled more than 10 percent in Zurich. In New York trading, shares fell 37 cents, or 7 percent, to $49.48. Credit Suisse said on Thursday that it had taken steps to prevent and detect misconduct, including reassigning responsibilities and improving controls. The bank said it would write off $2.65 billion for the fourth quarter of 2007 and the first three months of 2008. Credit Suisse also reduced its stated fourth-quarter net income to 540 million Swiss francs ($541 million), from the original estimate of 789 million francs ($791 million). Profit for 2007 declined to 7.76 billion francs ($7.8 billion). Mr. Dougan, the chief executive, said on Thursday that the review had found that the misconduct was limited to “a handful of traders” in the collateralized debt obligations trading department and had not spread to management levels or product control. The review also determined that the bank’s own security controls “were not effective in this case,” he added. Mr. Dougan said the bank’s loss was only partly explained by the misconduct, however, and that market conditions also contributed. Like many other investment banks, Credit Suisse requires its traders to value their trades properly on a daily basis, and those calculations are supervised by their managers. These valuations are then crosschecked on a weekly, monthly or ad-hoc basis by independent controllers, who verify the valuations. The mistakes were detected during such a crosscheck, bank officials said last month. | Credit Suisse Group;Company Reports;Executives and Management |
ny0177109 | [
"business"
] | 2007/09/11 | Consumer Credit Slowed in July | ASHINGTON, Sept. 10 (Bloomberg News) — Consumers borrowed less in July than in June, the Federal Reserve reported on Monday. Consumer credit increased $7.5 billion in July, to $2.46 trillion. In June, credit rose $11.9 billion, less than previously reported. The figures do not include mortgage debt. Auto sales slumped to a two-year low in July, capping the weakest quarter of consumer spending since the last three months of 2005. Slumping home values and stricter lending standards have made it harder for Americans to borrow against their homes for extra cash, suggesting that more and more will turn to credit cards to finance spending. “Consumers have been increasing their use of consumer credit as mortgage-equity withdrawals have shrunk,” said Steven Wood, president of Insight Economics in Danville, Calif. Economists forecast that consumer credit would rise by $8 billion after an originally reported $13.2 billion increase in June, according to the median of 33 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. In Monday’s report, the Fed also reported that consumer credit increased at a 3.7 percent annual rate in July after rising at a 5.9 percent pace during June. Revolving debt, like credit card balances, rose $5 billion in July and nonrevolving debt, including auto loans, rose $2.5 billion, the smallest increase since October. | Credit;Sales;Federal Reserve System |
ny0093222 | [
"sports",
"tennis"
] | 2015/08/06 | Andy Murray Loses at Citi Open | Andy Murray’s first appearance at the Citi Open in Washington in nearly a decade ended quickly, with a 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 (4) loss to 53rd-ranked Teymuraz Gabashvili in his opening match, in the second round. Feliciano Lopez ended Lleyton Hewitt’s last appearance in the Citi Open in Washington with a 4-6, 7-5, 6-3 second-round win. Hewitt, a former No. 1, has said he will retire after January’s Australian Open. John Isner hit 17 aces to move into the third round by beating Victor Estrella Burgos, 6-3, 7-6 (5). In women’s action, second-seeded Samantha Stosur defeated Irina Falconi, 6-1, 7-5, and the defending champion, Svetlana Kuznetsova, pulled out, citing an injury to her lower left leg. ■ Alison Riske beat third-seeded Carla Suárez Navarro, 6-4, 6-4, to reach the quarterfinals of the Bank of the West Classic in Stanford, Calif. (AP) ■ Top-seeded Dominic Thiem extended his winning streak to nine matches by defeating his fellow Austrian Andreas Haider-Maurer, 1-6, 7-6 (6), 6-4, in the second round of the Generali Open in Kitzbühel, Austria. ■ The United States Tennis Association will name the United States Open’s press room the Bud Collins U.S. Open Media Center to honor Collins, a journalist and a historian of the sport. A plaque will be unveiled during the event, which begins Aug. 31. | Tennis;Teymuraz Gabashvili;Andy Murray;John Isner;Samantha Stosur;Svetlana Kuznetsova;Dominic Thiem;Lleyton Hewitt;Alison Riske |
ny0248538 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2011/05/08 | Julião Sarmento Show at the Parrish - Review | Art and literature used to be linked more closely than they are today. Poets and novelists wrote art criticism; artists painted, sculptured and photographed writers. Now, artists are more likely to depict media celebrities, and younger critics are often the product of art history departments. So it’s as if one steps back in time when visiting “Julião Sarmento: Artists and Writers/House and Home,” a cross-media show at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton. But only a little bit back in time. Mr. Sarmento, a Portuguese artist, devours the work of contemporary authors, and their books and words are featured prominently in his work. The current show also makes a point of connecting him to one of his favorite American authors, James Salter, who lives nearby in Bridgehampton. Mr. Salter even contributed a short story to the exhibition catalog, a tale about a man and a woman having an affair in Paris, although “she was meant to be in Basel at the Art Fair” — words you see frequently in art contexts, but not so often in contemporary fiction. Mr. Sarmento was quoting Mr. Salter in his paintings even before the two were introduced by the exhibition’s curator, Terrie Sultan, who is also the director of the Parrish. “Heavy Load,” from 2009, takes the cover of Mr. Salter’s best-known novel, “A Sport and a Pastime,” from 1967, reproducing it three times, underneath a simple outline drawing of a woman, shown below the neck and with her arms crossed. Other paintings find Mr. Sarmento reproducing book covers by American authors like Paul Auster, Richard Ford and Don DeLillo. “Ford,” from 2008, is a canvas with markings, like a dirty stucco wall, and a snippet of text silkscreened on the upper right-hand corner that reads: “He wasn’t a fool. He wasn’t stupid enough to lose his sense of proportion. He was a survivor, he thought, and survivors always knew which direction the ground was.” The painting includes just the right amount of text to be forceful and evocative. (How much viewers will actually read while standing in a gallery is a perennial question of debate.) Moreover, the words “proportion” and “ground” are like painting puns, highlighting the concerns of the artist as he locates markings and text in the “ground” of the canvas and tries to find the right “sense of proportion.” And, of course, both artists and writers are survivors, riding the inevitable tides of rejection and success. In addition to being an artist, Mr. Sarmento also trained as an architect, and several paintings show his sensitivity to the built environment, with photographs of unnamed modern buildings, or outlines of floor plans, silkscreened or collaged on their surfaces. “Seven Houses & Six Flats,” from 2006, is a series of 13 photographs that documents the facade of every building in which Mr. Sarmento has lived during his lifetime — for the most part in Lisbon, or the nearby town of Estoril. The series of photographs, like Mr. Sarmento’s paintings, is very much in the tradition of Conceptual and post-Conceptual art. The photographs recall projects like Ed Ruscha’s “Every Building on the Sunset Strip” in Los Angeles, from 1966; Sophie Calle ’s photographs of buildings and interiors; and the works of Germans like Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke . Mr. Sarmento’s paintings are also very much in keeping with those of American painters like David Salle and Eric Fischl , who came to prominence in the 1980s, and whose work relies on the photographic image. (Mr. Fischl and Mr. Sarmento were born the same year, 1948.) If there is a quibble with Mr. Sarmento’s oeuvre, it’s his masculinist version of postmodernism. The authors he cites are virtually always men, and women in his paintings usually appear headless, or as body parts. A couple of canvases feature disembodied breasts poking out of a rudely snipped garment. Mr. Fischl and especially Mr. Salle, who has utilized images taken from pornography, have often been accused of the same thing. It’s a question that resonates with this critic, trained in an art history partially informed by 1970s feminist film theory, which asserted that pictures in the Western canon were orchestrated to afford maximum viewing pleasure for men, with women arranged, as one famous essay by the British feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey described it, for their “to-be-looked-at-ness.” It’s never fun to wield the political-correctness whip — particularly toward an artist like Mr. Sarmento, whose work is suffused, for the most part, with a poetic gentleness. And yet, his paintings, photographs and video rely very much on the strategies of what has come to be called “critical” postmodernism: the appropriation and mixing of text and images that alert us to how we view bodies and the world. The authors Mr. Sarmento cites also grapple with many of the same issues, of how to be a man — and an artist — in a world that has changed dramatically in recent decades, with women and formerly disenfranchised people claiming new roles and powers. (The J. M. Coetzee novel “Disgrace,” whose cover is reproduced in one of Mr. Sarmento’s paintings and which won the Booker Prize in 1999, deals with these exact subjects in post-apartheid South Africa.) That virtually all of the authors mentioned here are English-speakers is another issue — one that reveals how, to succeed in today’s art world, one must address an Anglophone public. And so, while Mr. Sarmento’s show seems at first like a sleepy European version of postmodern pastiche, it contains the seeds of many recent debates. It reaches back to older models in which literature and art were more closely aligned and painting ruled the art world. But it also pushes a number of buttons, which means that, by contemporary standards, it must be succeeding on some terms. | Art;Sarmento Juliao;Long Island (NY);Parrish Art Museum |
ny0044158 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2014/05/22 | Vigilance Urged for N.Y.U. After Abuses in Abu Dhabi | Following a report this week about mistreatment of workers who built New York University’s new Abu Dhabi campus, N.Y.U. apologized and said it would work with its partner to investigate. The next day, the partner, the Abu Dhabi government, confirmed it would participate . N.Y.U. has declined to specify how such an investigation might proceed, or what remedies it might pursue. But experts on labor conditions in the region warn that while looking into past abuses is an important first step, preventing further abuses on the campus — which former President Bill Clinton is set to inaugurate on Sunday — will be no small matter, given the laws currently in place. The New York Times reported that immigrant workers who built the campus said they were charged a year’s wages to land the job; paid less or later than they were promised; denied access to their travel documents; and arrested, beaten and deported for going on strike — all seeming violations of the “ statement of labor values ” that N.Y.U. published in 2009. About 6,000 workers were hired by local contractors under the system known as kafala, by which laborers are beholden to their employers for visas, and may not return to their home countries or even change jobs without permission. The university has said it had no direct oversight of the workers’ conditions, and was reliant on contractors and subcontractors, as well as an outside monitor, to see that the labor values were being upheld. Those contractors ultimately report to the government of Abu Dhabi, whose royal family paid for the entire campus and contributed at least $50 million to the university. “Whatever happens, I think N.Y.U. has to accept that statements of assurance from their Emirati partners, as they call them, cannot be necessarily taken at face value,” said Nicholas McGeehan , a researcher for Human Rights Watch, the international watchdog organization. “I think there’s been a degree of credulity in the approach of some of the Western institutions who have gotten in bed with governments who have a proven track record of not upholding workers’ rights and not necessarily acting in good faith when they assure people about reforms.” He said that for its code of conduct to succeed, N.Y.U. would have to use its influence to bring about changes to the kafala system. “But to do that they have to run the risk of upsetting their host,” Mr. McGeehan said. Criticizing government policies is a particularly delicate matter in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, where political dissent is punished harshly. The edition of the International New York Times that contained the article about abuses on the N.Y.U. campus did not appear in the United Arab Emirates because the local printer, Khaleej Times, said the material was “too sensitive.” In its statement saying it would investigate, Tamkeen, the government agency that has been N.Y.U.’s local partner, also defended its previous oversight, saying that the “groundbreaking labor standards” that the university established for the campus were “vigorously applied.” The Clinton Foundation , in a statement, said that it was “disturbed” by the reports of labor conditions, but that Mr. Clinton would keep his engagement. The Guggenheim Museum, whose plans for its own branch in Abu Dhabi have drawn protests from labor activists, declined requests for comment. Qatar, a neighbor of the U.A.E., recently proposed changes to the kafala system, in response to questions about how it intended to build for the 2022 World Cup. Amnesty International dismissed those changes as inconsequential, and called the effort “a missed opportunity.” Now that construction has ended on N.Y.U.’s Abu Dhabi campus, John Beckman, the university’s chief spokesman, said most of the workers will be “on contracts that N.Y.U. directly oversees.” But James Lynch, an Amnesty International researcher, said abuses could still occur. He recommended that N.Y.U. arrange compensation for mistreated workers, determine why the monitoring system did not detect abuses and establish a hotline where workers can report violations directly to the university. “Having the standards is one thing, but what you see a lot in the Gulf are bits of paper with values and standards,” Mr. Lynch said. “It comes down to results.” | Foreign Workers;NYU;Abu Dhabi;Study Abroad and International Study;Jobs;Human Rights;College;Apologies;Construction |
ny0105912 | [
"world",
"americas"
] | 2012/04/20 | In Mexico, a Volcano Rumbles, but Few Flinch | SANTIAGO XALITZINTLA, Mexico — The night sky sparked bright; dust fell on the villagers. Popocatépetl, the monstrous volcano shadowing this tiny town, rumbled once again this week, spewing forth a cloud of ash and scaring Mexican authorities, who raised threat levels and dispatched civil protection services. But as has been the case for years, the people here at the volcano’s base — in ancient farm towns with their own ways and legends — hardly flinched. For lifelong residents like Carmela Silvestre, 78, the volcano they call Popo simply stirred. As a friend and protector, she says, he has no interest in hurting his neighbors. “He’s just breathing up there, that’s all,” she said, walking toward the central plaza here on Wednesday night, pulling a shawl over her shoulders. “We’re used to it.” Most of Mexico seems to feel the same way. The 17,945-foot peak also known as Don Gregorio or Don Goyo is often described as the world’s most dangerous volcano because it sits within 40 miles of the capital, Mexico City, and its 20 million people. But all over the country, Popo jokes have been running far ahead of evacuation plans. Twitter has been abuzz with humorous descriptions of what Popo might really be up to. Some said he was coughing and sneezing. Others said he must be angry and perhaps demanding a gift, prompting one Mexican journalist to post on Twitter: “If Don Goyo needs a sacrifice, I suggest the political class.” Here in Santiago Xalitzintla and in other towns with a clear view of Popocatépetl’s snow-capped peak and plume of smoke, the mood seems to run from calm to comical to mildly concerned. Rosario Jesús, 55, during a stop for tortillas in San Cayetano, was one of many who joked that Don Goyo “is a friend when he’s quiet, but not much of a friend when he’s mad.” Like many others around here, she noted that 2012 has been a particularly bad year in the marriage of nature and humankind. “We started with earthquakes,” she said, “and now there’s the volcano.” She looked down, smiling, but her eyes suggested a pinch of actual worry, perhaps for good reason. Mexico has endured quite a few rattles this year: a 7.4 earthquake in Oaxaca on March 20 was followed by a 6.4 in Michoacán on April 11 — and preceded by a handful of other quakes at a magnitude of 5 or above. With many of these shocks, and aftershocks, swaying buildings in the capital, many Mexicans have begun to ask what is going on. Seismologists have generally suggested it is simply a healthy release of underground tension, perhaps preventing either a large volcanic eruption or a cataclysmic earthquake later on. But there is also the Mayan question. Long ago, the Mayan calendar put 2012 as the end of the world, at least according to some believers. And though references to the apocalypse usually come with a smirk — like a lime with tequila — there are plenty of Mexicans noting the year’s extraordinary natural activity. Residents of Xalitzintla are no exception. “It’s not just here in Mexico,” said Liliana Ochoa, 20, leaning on the stand where she sells roasted chicken here. “There are strange things happening all over the world.” She is right, of course. The year started with record heat waves in Australia and “Snowmageddon” in Europe and the Pacific Northwest . Maybe, Ms. Ochoa said, “it’s a year of real change.” Xalitzintla nonetheless seems to be much the same as always. The village of around 2,000 people was settled centuries ago, and today local farmers mainly produce fruit — apples, pears, peaches — from the rich soil that is the product of volcanic activity spanning thousands of years. Popocatépetl (pronounced poh-poh-kah-TEH-peh-til), sometimes described as a god of rain or the community’s heartbeat, has stayed quiet for most of its life. It became active (after a lengthy rest) in 1994, and it last erupted with significant force in 2000, prompting the evacuation of 50,000 people from this village and others nearby. Many people here, however, mainly recall those who did not flee. Thousands refused to go. Indeed, residents here said that since the days of the Mexican Revolution, many of their neighbors were less afraid of the volcano than of the soldiers and police officers who come to town when Popo decides to say hello. On Wednesday night, several of those officers sat under a breezeway and traded off-color jokes with young children wearing surgical masks around their necks. Across the street, television journalists took turns reporting in the blaze of bright lights beside a mobile antenna that poked its silver nose skyward to test the air. So far, there is no major danger and no need for evacuation, officials have concluded, though a walk through town did reveal a scent resembling a sauna in a lush green forest. Was it pleasant or a sign of danger? “He’s calm now,” Ms. Silvestre said. The last serious eruption — spitting rocks skyward — had occurred about 14 hours earlier. Inside a church across the plaza, a dozen people said the rosary in unison. Women sat on the right, men on the left inside a sanctuary still filled with Easter flowers and lighted with chandeliers and green, red and white neon lights behind and beside the altar. A statue of St. Michael the Archangel, sitting on a white house with two swords waved high, stared out over the crowd. Residents said this was what usually passed for local action on a weeknight. Now, however, there was more activity both above and on the ground, perhaps for the best. Maybe it was Popo who had sent a health trailer (officially sent by the state of Puebla) that included a doctor who, with nothing else to do, offered free checkups. There was even a dentist and a yellow leather dentist’s chair inside the trailer. A young boy inside with his mouth wide open looked a bit uncertain about whether this was a positive development, but his father seemed pleased. So did Ms. Silvestre, who had wandered around the plaza to check on the activity. “This is our town,” she said. “This is our story.” | Volcanoes;Evacuations and Evacuees;Mexico City (Mexico);Mexico;Santiago Xalitzintla (Mexico);Popocatepetl Volcano (Mex) |
ny0112263 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2012/02/08 | Russia Plans to Retry Dead Lawyer Sergei L. Magnitsky in Tax Case | MOSCOW — The police in Russia plan to resubmit for trial a tax evasion case in which the primary defendant died in detention more than two years ago, his former employer said Tuesday. The trial of the defendant, Sergei L. Magnitsky, would be the first posthumous prosecution in Russian legal history, according to a statement by the former employer, Hermitage Capital. The death of Mr. Magnitsky, a lawyer, in November 2009 drew international criticism over Russia’s human rights record, especially after accusations arose that he had been denied proper medical care. The State Department has barred officials linked to Mr. Magnitsky’s prosecutions from entering the United States. Parliaments in nine European countries are considering similar bans. Police officials reopened the case against Mr. Magnitsky last summer, saying it would provide a chance for relatives and supporters to clear his name. Relatives, though, said they had not asked for that, and executives at Hermitage said the motive was something else entirely: to vindicate the officials Mr. Magnitsky had accused of corruption. Hermitage Capital’s executive director, William F. Browder, who lives in London, will be a co-defendant in the case; he will be tried in absentia, a procedure used only intermittently in the post-Soviet period but restored under a Russian law that took effect in 2006. The statement from Hermitage said that even in the Soviet period, no defendant had been tried after death. But a Russian Supreme Court ruling last summer allowed the police to conduct posthumous investigations. Calls to the press service of the Investigative Committee of the Interior Ministry, which is handling the case, were not answered on Tuesday. Mr. Browder maintains that the posthumous case against Mr. Magnitsky, who died in pretrial detention when he was 37, is intended to intimidate his family and discourage them from pressing for the prosecution of the police and tax officials who they say orchestrated his imprisonment. A conviction of Mr. Magnitsky might also appear to vindicate the officials he had accused of wrongdoing. The Hermitage statement said a police investigator had offered to drop the case in a letter to Mr. Magnitsky’s mother last week, but only if relatives stated that they had no “desire to protect the honor and dignity of the deceased.” Mr. Browder said in the statement, “If the Russian Interior Ministry thinks that running a show trial against me and Sergei will stop our campaign for justice, they are dead wrong.” Mr. Magnitsky was detained in 2008 on suspicion of helping Hermitage Capital evade $17.4 million in taxes. That accusation came after Mr. Magnitsky testified against Interior Ministry officials, saying they had used Hermitage companies to embezzle $230 million from the Russian Treasury by filing false corporate tax returns. Mr. Magnitsky’s supporters say they believe that the prosecution was retaliatory, and that investigators assigned to his case, including individuals he had accused, denied him medical care before his death. | Magnitsky Sergei L;Russia;Human Rights and Human Rights Violations;Hermitage Capital;Police;Tax Evasion |
ny0195155 | [
"world",
"africa"
] | 2009/11/12 | Somali Money From Abroad Is a Lifeline at Home | PARIS — As Somalis struggle to survive the chaos that has overtaken their country, a network of companies that distribute money from the nation’s large diaspora has quietly expanded, providing a crucial safety net. As in other poor countries, the main purpose of these companies is to ensure that money from those working abroad reaches family members left behind. But in war-torn Somalia , where the government has little control of the country and is itself struggling to survive, the companies are now also helping international organizations shift money into and within Somalia, according to the World Bank, academics and aid workers. And in Somaliland, a breakaway region where the government is more stable than in other parts of the country, the Somali diaspora has contributed money for education, health and other social programs. “The remittance system has become the lifeline for the Somali people and the lifeblood of the economy during the last two decades of civil strife,” said Samuel Munzele Maimbo , a World Bank specialist based in Mozambique, who added that many Somalis survived only because of the money from abroad. For others, the money has been crucial to establishing or propping up businesses. A study sponsored by the British Department for International Development from May 2008 found that 80 percent of the start-up capital for small and medium-size enterprises in Somalia benefit from money sent by the diaspora. Dilip Ratha, a World Bank economist, said that Somalia, like Haiti, was among the countries that are the most dependent on money from abroad. The remittance system — and its importance in Somalia — has grown as decades of political upheaval have driven many Somalis abroad and, in recent years, as Islamists have wrested control over much of the country from a weak transitional government. The government, which has international support, is trapped in a small section of the capital under the protection of African Union peacekeepers . A recent study by the United Nations Development Program estimated the size of the Somali diaspora at more than one million and the amount of annual remittances to Somalia at up to $1 billion, equivalent to about 18 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. The system began to take off during the dictatorial rule of President Mohammed Siad Barre, who ran the country from 1969 to 1991. As the banking system weakened, according to Mohamed Waldo, a consultant who has worked with Somali remittance companies, traders stepped in with a solution: act as middlemen in the resale of consumer goods shipped home by the increasing number of Somalis working abroad, especially in the Persian Gulf region. The traders kept a small cut of the proceeds and turned the rest over to the laborers’ relatives in Somalia. The shipments got around currency restrictions. Eventually, when the government collapsed, Somali workers abroad began to send money instead. Mr. Waldo said that these days, there were more than 20 active Somali remittance companies, five of them large. One of the leading companies is Dahabshiil , founded in the early 1970s by Mohamed Said Duale from his general store in Burao in northwest Somalia. In 1988, fighting between government forces and rebels with the Somali National Movement swept Burao. Mr. Duale subsequently left the country and continued his work from abroad. In 1991, when the Barre government was overthrown, Mr. Duale returned to Somalia. He opened offices in major towns and later in remote villages that the Western money-transfer giants would struggle to serve. “Through word of mouth we built this business,” said his son, Abdirashid Duale, now chief executive of the company. Today, Dahabshiil says it has more than 1,000 branches and agents in 40 countries. The United Nations Development Program uses Dahabshiil to transfer money for local programs, said Álvaro Rodríguez, the agency’s director for Somalia. Such companies provide “the only safe and efficient option to transfer funds to projects benefiting the most vulnerable people of Somalia,” he said. “Their service is fast and efficient.” Abdirashid Duale, who gives his age as “35, but with 25 years of experience,” declined to provide profit or revenue figures, saying that would only help his competitors. The company charges commissions that vary from 1 percent to 5 percent depending on the size of the transaction; he said most Somalis he worked with abroad sent home $200 to $300 a month. Nikos Passas, a professor at Northeastern University in Boston who researches terrorism and white-collar crime, said Dahabshiil was helped by the closing of a larger rival, Al Barakaat, at the behest of the United States authorities in the wake of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. In the end, F.B.I. agents found no evidence linking Al Barakaat to terrorist financing. But for Dahabshiil, gaining market share from Al Barakaat was “like shooting fish in a barrel,” Professor Passas said. Dahabshiil’s image has been helped by its charitable works. It says it invests 5 percent of annual profit in such ventures; Abdirashid Duale said this represented around $1 million a year. In Mogadishu — a city of pockmarked Italian architecture and rubble — Dahabshiil operates from Bakara Market, despite continued clashes in the area between the weak government and Islamist insurgents. Its office, in an unassuming two-story building, is protected by security guards. Looking ahead, Abdirashid Duale plans more expansion. “One day the fighting will stop,” he said, “and we will still be here.” | Somalia;Remittance;Third World and Developing Countries |
ny0231757 | [
"business"
] | 2010/09/22 | Stores Scramble to Accommodate Budget-Conscious Shoppers | The country’s continued economic doldrums have stores scrambling for the once-ignored low-end customer, as people make fewer costly shopping trips to stock their pantries, and increasingly, can only afford inexpensive items in small quantities like those sold at dollar stores. Dollar stores have shown the biggest gain in shopper visits over the last year out of all the retailers that sell basic consumer goods, according to market research data. Manufacturers are racing to package more affordable versions of products common at those stores, and other budget retailers, feeling the loss of customers, are trying to duplicate their success. Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, is adding thousands of items to its shelves, including inexpensive ones, and is asking dollar-store suppliers to create small, under-a-dollar packages for its stores, too. In areas with high unemployment, Wal-Mart is grouping together its less than $1 items in a clear challenge to the dollar stores. The impetus for the downmarket trend is the continued tightening of household budgets, retailers and analysts said. Some customers at Wal-Mart and the major dollar chains — Dollar General, Family Dollar and Dollar Tree — have such modest budgets that the retailers report upticks in spending at the beginning of the month, when government benefit checks and many paychecks come through. Late in the month, sales drop as even multiroll packs of paper towels are ditched for a single roll. “People are literally running out of cash on hand as the month goes on and they’re looking for smaller package sizes,” said Craig Johnson, president of the retail consulting and research firm Customer Growth Partners. “They may have $10, $20, $30 to spend getting toward the end of the month, and they have to be able to still feed the family and get diapers and so forth.” At about a quarter of Wal-Mart’s stores, the company is beginning to offer items for under $1, like a four-pack of toilet paper, boxes containing just a few garbage bags and single rolls of paper towels. But the dollar stores have best been able to capitalize on the downmarket trend because of strategies they embraced during the recession, when the stores kept things cheap and expanded their merchandise, analysts said. Realizing that their shoppers often could not afford regular-size detergent, for example, the stores worked with manufacturers to create smaller packages that cost less. “Just because of their cash flow, they’re buying the smaller packs,” said Sam Paul, chief executive of Nextep, which makes trash bags. To keep up with the demand for smaller quantities Wal-Mart began stocking the company’s five-pack of outdoor garbage bags a couple of months ago and Nextep recently opened a factory that specializes in small packaging. In the last year, dollar stores “have not only shown growth among their heaviest shoppers, but also that they are stealing heavy shoppers” from stores like Wal-Mart, said Susan Viamari, editor of Times and Trends, a publication from the market research and consulting firm SymphonyIRI Group, in an e-mail. SymphonyIRI tracks what consumers are buying. According to the company, the number of visits to dollar stores increased 2.6 percent from June 2009 to June 2010 compared with the same period a year earlier, the most recent figures available. Over the same period, visits to large stores like Wal-Mart declined 7 percent. The dollar stores are pulling in shoppers like Mellissa Hayden. A pizza deliverer, she is the kind of price-sensitive shopper who knows that a bottle of ibuprofen from the Dollar General near her home in Rockford, Tenn., costs just $2.50 and has 100 pills, but at Wal-Mart, she will get fewer pills for about $5. So lately, she has been heading to dollar stores instead of Wal-Mart. “You don’t have the big crowds and it’s cheaper,” she said. Same-store sales, which measure revenue at stores open at least a year, at the three major dollar chains have increased for at least 10 consecutive quarters. At Wal-Mart, same-store sales in the United States have declined for the last five quarters. During the recession, Wal-Mart pulled back on very inexpensive products, suppliers said, to make the stores look less cluttered and to appeal to shoppers who might be testing out that retailer instead of, say, Target. That decision has it now playing catch-up. “They just abandoned that lowest price point,” said Mr. Paul of Nextep. In the last couple of quarters, Wal-Mart tried aggressive discounts on items like milk, but the price cuts did not attract huge traffic, said Thomas M. Schoewe, Wal-Mart’s chief financial officer, in a conference call with reporters last month. He said that dollar stores were part of the challenge. “Many times it is convenient to walk into a dollar store and even though the price per unit, if you will, may be a little bit higher at the dollar store, if they can find that product and still live from paycheck to paycheck, that’s how they’re solving that problem,” Mr. Schoewe said. The dollar stores have found creative ways to keep their prices low. When commodity costs rose for suppliers, for example, the dollar stores asked them to decrease the number of sandwich bags in a box or pushed them to come up with a cheaper version of the products. To increase their attractiveness to the low-income customer, the dollar stores have also switched out merchandise like trinkets for necessities like food and detergent. At Family Dollar, most customers have incomes under $40,000 and have “really curtailed discretionary spending out of necessity,” said Kiley Rawlins, a spokeswoman. But customers are shopping more frequently, she said, and buying a greater variety of items, a reflection of the items like cleaning products that the store now carries. Some of the stores have even managed to reach some middle-income shoppers, by increasing products from well-known brands like Hanes, Quaker Oats and Nabisco. “This is a break from historical trends, where dollar stores really catered almost entirely to lower income shoppers,” Ms. Viamari of SymphonyIRI said. Many manufacturers have been hurrying to get dollar shoppers’ attention. Tracy VanBibber, senior vice president for sales at the Dial Corporation, a division of Henkel that makes products like Dial soap and Soft Scrub, said there were now enough low-end customers — known in the industry as value shoppers — to justify the investment . “We’re really trying to get better at thinking of the value shopper earlier in our innovation pipeline,” Ms. VanBibber said. “The retailers that service value shoppers have enough scale that manufacturers can customize and it pays off now.” | Shopping and Retail;Consumer Behavior;Budgets and Budgeting;Recession and Depression;United States Economy |
ny0030096 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2013/06/16 | For New York City Buskers, an East End Platform | When “East End or Busk,” a new musical series at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, begins its summerlong run on June 22, five acts that visitors may, or may not, recognize from New York City’s subways will descend on the premises. “I’m hoping people who know them from the city will enjoy seeing them in a different setting. And that people who don’t live in the city will have the opportunity to come and get to know them. Because they all do proper club gigs, and are pretty established,” said Amy Kirwin, associate development officer for museum events and visitor services at the museum. The idea to bring buskers to the museum’s sprawling lawn was partly inspired by the design of the 14-acre property; the Parrish moved there in November from its former home in Southampton, said Ms. Kirwin, 40. “The perimeter of the museum has this very long and elevated walkway, and it sort of looks like a subway platform,” she said. Image Members of the Xylopholks, a group that performs novelty ragtime music while dressed in animal costumes. Credit Chris Zedano The series opens with a Saturday afternoon event, but subsequently musicians will appear on the first Friday night of each month. Eight busking acts, all New York City-based and all participants in Music Under New York , a program run by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority , will play. Even though the acts travel the same underground circuit, Ms. Kirwin made musical diversity a priority when selecting them. “You’ll get a sense of that on the first day,” she said, when Natalia Paruz , known as the Saw Lady because she plays classical music on a carpenter’s saw, performs on the same bill as Vongku Pak and the Vongku Pak Drum Troupe , a Korean percussion outfit. Also playing on opening day will be the Xylopholks , a group that performs novelty ragtime music from the 1920s while dressed in animal costumes. The outfits “take away certain inhibitions when we’re playing,” said Jonathan Singer, the xylophone player in the skunk suit. “They also draw people in who might not otherwise listen to the music.” At the museum, he hopes to draw people in for more than a single song. Or at least for longer than it takes to squeeze into a subway car. “‘East End or Busk’ is kind of a gift,” Mr. Singer, 30, of Brooklyn, said. “People are coming to really listen, which we love. It can be a drag to only capture someone for 20 seconds before their train comes.” | Music;Water Mill NY;Parrish Art Museum;Subway |
ny0224409 | [
"world",
"americas"
] | 2010/11/13 | Defying Trend, Canada Lures More Migrants | WINNIPEG, Manitoba — As waves of immigrants from the developing world remade Canada a decade ago, the famously friendly people of Manitoba could not contain their pique. What irked them was not the Babel of tongues, the billions spent on health care and social services, or the explosion of ethnic identities. The rub was the newcomers’ preference for “M.T.V.” — Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver — over the humble prairie province north of North Dakota, which coveted workers and population growth. Demanding “our fair share,” Manitobans did something hard to imagine in American politics, where concern over illegal immigrants dominates public debate and states seek more power to keep them out. In Canada, which has little illegal immigration , Manitoba won new power to bring foreigners in, handpicking ethnic and occupational groups judged most likely to stay. This experiment in designer immigration has made Winnipeg a hub of parka-clad diversity — a blue-collar town that gripes about the cold in Punjabi and Tagalog — and has defied the anti-immigrant backlash seen in much of the world. Rancorous debates over immigration have erupted from Australia to Sweden, but there is no such thing in Canada as an anti-immigrant politician. Few nations take more immigrants per capita, and perhaps none with less fuss. Is it the selectivity Canada shows? The services it provides? Even the Mad Cowz, a violent youth gang of African refugees, did nothing to curb local appetites for foreign workers. “When I took this portfolio, I expected some of the backlash that’s occurred in other parts of the world,” said Jennifer Howard, Manitoba’s minister of immigration. “But I have yet to have people come up to me and say, ‘I want fewer immigrants.’ I hear, ‘How can we bring in more?’ ” This steak-and-potatoes town now offers stocks of palm oil and pounded yams, four Filipino newspapers, a large Hindu Diwali festival, and a mandatory course on Canadian life from the grand to the granular. About 600 newcomers a month learn that the Canadian charter ensures “the right to life, liberty and security” and that employers like cover letters in Times New Roman font. (A gentle note to Filipinos: résumés with photographs, popular in Manila, are frowned on in Manitoba.) “From the moment we touched down at the airport, it was love all the way,” said Olusegun Daodu, 34, a procurement professional who recently arrived from Nigeria to join relatives and marveled at the medical card that offers free care. “If we have any reason to go to the hospital now, we just walk in.” “The license plates say ‘Friendly Manitoba,’ ” said his wife, Hannah. “It’s true — really, really true,” Mr. Daodu said. “I had to ask my aunt, ‘Do they ever get angry here?’ ” Canada has long sought immigrants to populate the world’s second largest land mass, but two developments in the 1960s shaped the modern age. One created a point system that favors the highly skilled. The other abolished provisions that screened out nonwhites. Millions of minorities followed, with Chinese, Indians and Filipinos in the lead. Relative to its population, Canada takes more than twice as many legal immigrants as the United States. Why no hullabaloo? With one-ninth of the United States’ population, Canada is keener for growth, and the point system helps persuade the public it is getting the newcomers it needs. The children of immigrants typically do well. The economic downturn has been mild. Plus the absence of large-scale illegal immigration removes a dominant source of the conflict in the United States. “The big difference between Canada and the U.S is that we don’t border Mexico,” said Naomi Alboim, a former immigration official who teaches at Queens University in Ontario. French and English from the start, Canada also has a more accommodating political culture — one that accepts more pluribus and demands less unum. That American complaint — “Why do I have to press 1 for English?” — baffles a country with a minister of multiculturalism. Another force is in play: immigrant voting strength. About 20 percent of Canadians are foreign born (compared with 12.5 percent in the United States), and they are quicker to acquire citizenship and voting rights. “It’s political suicide to be against immigration,” said Leslie Seidle of the Institute for Research on Public Policy, a Montreal group. Some stirrings of discontent can be found. The rapid growth of the “M.T.V.” cities has fueled complaints about congestion and housing costs. A foiled 2006 terrorist plot brought modest concern about radical Islam. And critics of the refugee system say it rewards false claims of persecution, leaving the country with an unlocked back door. “There’s considerably more concern among our people than is reflected in our policies,” said Martin Collacott, who helped create the Center for Immigration Policy Reform, a new group that advocates less immigration. Mr. Collacott argues high levels of immigration have run up the cost of the safety net, slowed economic growth and strained civic cohesion, but he agrees the issue has little force in politics. “There’s literally no one in Parliament willing to take up the cudgel,” he said. The Manitoba program, started in 1998 at employers’ behest, has grown rapidly under both liberal and conservative governments. While the federal system favors those with college degrees, Manitoba takes the semi-skilled, like truck drivers, and focuses on people with local relatives in the hopes that they will stay. The newcomers can bring spouses and children and get a path to citizenship. Most are required to bring savings, typically about $10,000, to finance the transition without government aid. While the province nominates people, the federal government does background checks and has the final say. Unlike many migrant streams, the new Manitobans have backgrounds that are strikingly middle class. “Back home was good — not bad,” said Nishkam Virdi, 32, who makes $17 an hour at the Palliser furniture plant after moving from India, where his family owned a machine shop. He said he was drawn less by wages than by the lure of health care and solid utilities. “The living standard is higher — the lighting, the water, the energy,” he said. The program has attracted about 50,000 people over the last decade, and surveys show a majority stayed. Ms. Howard, the immigration minister, credits job placement and language programs, but many migrants cite the informal welcomes. “Because we are from the third world, I thought they might think they are superior,” said Anne Simpao, a Filipino nurse in tiny St. Claude, who was approached by a stranger and offered dishes and a television set. “They call it friendly Manitoba, and it’s really true.” One complaint throughout Canada is the difficulty many immigrants have in transferring professional credentials. Heredina Maranan, 45, a certified public accountant in Manila, has been stuck in a Manitoba factory job for a decade. She did not disguise her disappointment when relatives sought to follow her. “I did not encourage them,” she said. “I think I deserved better.” They came anyway — two families totaling 14 people, drawn not just by jobs but the promise of good schools. “Of course I wanted to come here,” said her nephew, Lordie Osena. “In the Philippines there are 60 children in one room.” Every province except Quebec now runs a provincial program, each with different criteria, diluting the force of the federal point system. The Manitoba program has grown so rapidly, federal officials have imposed a numerical cap. Arthur Mauro, a Winnipeg business leader, hails the Manitoba program but sees limited lessons for a country as demographically different as the United States. “There are very few states in the U.S. that say, ‘We need people,’ ” he said. But Arthur DeFehr, chief executive officer of Palliser furniture, does see a lesson: choose migrants who fill local needs and give them a legal path. With 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States, he sees another opportunity for Manitoba. “I’m sure many of those people would make perfectly wonderful citizens of Canada,” he said. “I think we should go and get them.” | Immigration and Emigration;Labor and Jobs;Migrant and Foreign Workers;Citizenship and Naturalization;Manitoba (Canada) |
ny0269957 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2016/04/09 | Donald Trump Finds Support in Reddit’s Unruly Corners | “We’re at war,” the video began. “No one wants to admit it, but humanity is under attack.” The narration continued, delivered over swelling music and video of protests and gunfire: “One very specific man might be all that stands between humanity and the greatest threat of our brief existence.” The man being offered as the savior of a doomed world is Donald J. Trump. And last week, Mr. Trump shared the video with the millions of people who follow him on Twitter and Facebook as he tries to secure the Republican nomination for president. But the original version of the video, titled “Trump Effect,” appeared nine days earlier on Reddit, the popular online message board, posted by its anonymous creator. Given Reddit’s reputation as an unruly and sometimes extreme corner of the Internet, it is perhaps not surprising that the video pushed the boundaries of campaign promotion: By turns grave and winking, it borrowed an apocalyptic narration by the actor Martin Sheen from a 2010 trailer for the video game Mass Effect 2. At the end, a clip showing Hillary Clinton making barking sounds was followed by the words “BEWARE OF DOG.” The video linked on Twitter was taken down within hours for copyright reasons, and other copies subsequently vanished from the Internet. But that the video migrated from Reddit to Mr. Trump’s official accounts shows not only the candidate’s unfiltered promotional strategy, but also the disparate ways in which his many supporters take up his cause online — and the ease with which Mr. Trump incorporates their narratives into his own. In the absence of a large, organized online operation, the Trump campaign has leaned on its candidate’s huge following on social media, where supporters share links and photos, argue on his behalf and spread his views to friends and family. But if major social media platforms are where Mr. Trump amplifies his pronouncements, sites like Reddit and 4chan have become a sort of proving ground, where an extreme, Internet-amped version of Mr. Trump’s message is shared and refined. At least 90,000 people on Reddit have subscribed to a community called “ The Donald ,” in a group known as a subreddit. Its members post material full of slang, insults and inside jokes. Users refer to each other as “centipedes” — a reference to a series of popular videos in which Mr. Trump is compared to the creature , which is a “nimble navigator” just like the candidate himself. (Mr. Trump has shared these videos as well.) Many usernames include the letters MAGA — for Make America Great Again. Political campaigns have become increasingly aware of Reddit, where young users rallied around Barack Obama in 2012 , and, to a lesser extent, Ron Paul in 2008 . “The Bernie Sanders Reddit is very much working in concert with the Sanders campaign organization,” said Micah L. Sifry, a co-founder of Personal Democracy Media, which examines the intersection of politics and technology. “The Sanders people have strategically realized this is an asset.” “In Trump’s case, none of that support is being developed,” Mr. Sifry said. If anything, he said, “the Internet maybe shows the latent capacity of Trump supporters. They’re there, and they might be excited to be given something to do.” Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, wrote in an email, “We are not involved with Reddit.” The “Trump Effect” video, she said, “got to us via Twitter.” The subreddit is intentionally insular, but widely read, ranking among the most active on the site . According to Reddit’s own measurements, it produced nearly 52 million page views in March. In the same month, the largest subreddit supporting Mr. Sanders, who has visited the site to answer questions, and whose campaign maintains an active presence there, drew almost 36 million, despite having more subscribers. In subreddits supporting other candidates, users promote favorable stories, feud with foes and rally support through phone-banking or “Facebanking” — campaigning to Facebook friends. On The Donald, the message is relentless — as are the insults. Opponents are referred to as “cucks,” which is short for “cuckservative,” as in “cuckold” — now used as a derisive term for liberals and moderate Republicans recently popularized by far-right online commentators and white nationalists, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center . The group shares content and tone with parts of 4chan, the infamous and anonymous message board that traffics in shock, and where Mr. Trump — who regularly scorns “political correctness” — has found substantial, if oblique, support. Visitors to the group will find a cascade of offensive postings. Some members share open antipathy toward Muslims, sling insults with relish and mock anyone who takes umbrage. “We have a relationship with 4chan,” said one Reddit moderator, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified out of fear, he said, of harassment. “It’s a little bit scary to some people, the way they talk.” (Moderators, like all Reddit users, are listed only by self-selected handles). To charges of racism, the moderator, who said he was a 32-year-old technology worker, said that “white nationalists” had been banned from the group. “We kicked them out before it became an issue for Trump,” he said in a phone interview. Members respond to accusations of bigotry with defiant claims of persecution at the hands of critics. It is an article of faith among posters that anti-racists are the real bigots, feminists are the actual sexists, and progressive politics are, in effect , regressive. Support for Mr. Trump on 4chan and similar sites started off as a manic elation and disbelief at the spectacle of it all — he’s behaving like us! On Reddit at least, that elation has turned into real support. In between meme photos and lengthy threads of mockery, users also post calls to action that offer tangible benefits to Mr. Trump. They remind one another of voter registration deadlines and share rhetorical strategies for dealing with opponents. The group maintains a delegate counter, links to pro-Trump videos and articles, and provides materials instructing new visitors on how to help with the campaign. Recently, the group has focused on holding question-and-answer sessions — known on Reddit as AMAs, for Ask Me Anything — with figures including the conservative commentator Ann Coulter, the immigration activist Roy Beck and Helmut Norpoth, a political-science professor at Stony Brook University whose election model is favorable to Mr. Trump. (Mr. Norpoth, who did not express support for any candidate, said in an interview that he had been invited to participate by a student, but was unaware that he was speaking to a Donald Trump group. “It took me a little bit to find my bearings,” he said.) A session with the creator of the cartoon Dilbert, Scott Adams, who has predicted victory for Mr. Trump, is on the schedule. The group is governed by anonymous volunteer moderators, who impose rules that include “Don’t post people planning to assassinate Trump” and “New Centipedes must assimilate.” Enforcement is harsh, said another moderator, who identified himself as a 23-year-old law student and who posted under the name “ciswhitemaelstrom.” “What I’m interested in is letting Donald Trump supporters speak among themselves,” he said in a phone interview, speaking on the condition that he not be named because of the potential for retribution. “That will help them consolidate a stronger position.” Their messages do rise, perhaps surprisingly, up the chain into the mainstream. When the “Trump Effect” video was posted to Mr. Trump’s Twitter account, the subreddit exploded with activity, as it does any time it believes that the campaign has acknowledged it — something its organizers claim happens often. A link to Mr. Trump’s video tweet Monday was pinned to the top of The Donald’s main page. “He actually did it!” one member wrote. “How does it feel to influence an election, Centipedes?!?!” | Reddit;2016 Presidential Election;Donald Trump;Social Media |
ny0120046 | [
"business",
"smallbusiness"
] | 2012/07/26 | Small Businesses Open Storefronts on Facebook | When Mandie Miller left her job as an on-air traffic reporter in Charlotte, N.C., to have her first child, she started baking cakes for friends, just for fun. The response was so positive that in April 2009 she started a business, Got What It Cakes. Ms. Miller put up a Web site, but about five months later her sister created a Got What It Cakes Facebook page . That’s when the business started to grow. Cake orders went from two or three a weekend to six to 10; now Ms. Miller is turning away another 10 each weekend. Annual revenue at the end of her second year in business was a little more than $40,000. Got What It Cakes is part of a new wave of online commerce: F-commerce. Social media specialists say the term was coined in 2009 to describe the growing number of businesses that sell through a Facebook page. Payvment , a start-up that provides support for Facebook shopping transactions, says it has 170,000 clients and is signing on about 1,500 stores a week, most with fewer than five employees. The rise of F-commerce has been largely haphazard, something Facebook did not instigate or promote. A spokesman declined to discuss the phenomenon, except to acknowledge, “Retailers are experimenting in a number of ways.” Small businesses seem to be having more success on Facebook than large companies, said Sucharita Mulpuru , a retail analyst at Forrester. Those doing well, she said, generally have less than $100,000 in revenue and fewer than 10 employees. Gap, Nordstrom, J. C. Penney and GameStop, on the other hand, have all shut down Facebook stores in the last 12 months, mostly, Ms. Mulpuru said, because consumers are accustomed to the richer experience on retailing Web sites. But Facebook can present challenges to businesses of all sizes. Some consumers do not feel safe buying directly from a Facebook storefront, said Krista Garcia, a social commerce analyst with a market research firm, eMarketer . And business owners should be aware that they do not own their Facebook pages — Facebook does, and it can change the appearance and rules whenever it wants. GETTING STARTED It’s easy for a small business to open a Facebook storefront by creating a page in the business’s name, loading photos of the product and adding shopping functions. Because Facebook storefronts can look generic, small businesses have to find ways to differentiate themselves, said Jay Bean, chief executive of an online marketing firm, OrangeSoda . Customizing a page is done by installing applications that enable customers to do things like shop, enter contests or see a menu. Apps are available from Facebook and outside vendors, or they can be custom-developed. Payvment’s tools let businesses create a storefront with a shopping cart and promotions like discounts and coupons. USE YOUR PERSONALITY Unlike larger businesses, small businesses can build on their personal relationships to end users, said Wendy Tan-White, chief executive of Moonfruit , which builds and supports e-commerce Web sites. She advises using a cover image for a business’s page that relates not only to the product or service but to customers, too. On the Got What It Cakes storefront, for example, the cover photo shows the owner, Ms. Miller, in her home, with baby photos on the wall behind her and several cakes scattered about the sitting room; the smaller-profile photo is the company logo. Many of Ms. Miller’s customers are busy mothers like her, and she communicates frequently with them on Facebook. “I am a local, one-person business but I have 5,000 fans,” she said. Ms. Miller gives the kinds of tips her customers might get from a friend, like what to do with leftover chocolate cake batter: “Put some butter on your griddle and make pancakes with it.” POST, PIN AND TAG To attract fans and friends, a storefront needs to be dynamic, with frequent posts — status updates and photos. Tagging people in a photo may cause the photo to show up on the tagged person’s page, where friends (and often friends’ friends) can see it. Deann Kump, founder of TuTu Cute , which sells hair accessories and clothing for mothers, babies and toddlers, hosts a monthly photo contest on her page. “If someone posts a photo of their daughter wearing one of my products and tags it, their friends will wonder, ‘What is TuTu Cute?’ and go to my page,” she said. Mrs. Kump opened on Facebook last December and about half of her sales occur on the site. Ms. Tan-White of Moonfruit suggested that a business give customers incentives to spread the word, offering a discount if they tag its product in a photo. Facebook’s “pin” feature allows users to pin a post, which might be a product of the week or a special discount and pushes the post to the top of a business’s page. FOCUS ON COMMUNITY Magical Moments Modeling made TuTu Cute a “boutique of the month” on its Facebook page in April so friends of both pages could see it. And Mrs. Kump often promotes the work of children’s photographers she likes; they in turn promote her accessories. Patrick Skoff , a painter who sells 90 percent of his paintings on Facebook, said some visitors to his page might have been hesitant about buying until they saw the comments and “likes” on new and sold paintings. “They see all the likes and think, ‘Oh, I better buy that before someone else does,’ ” Mr. Skoff said. In July he painted 10 paintings a day for 10 days and sold all of them through Facebook. Darren Gann, co-owner of the Baby Grocery Store , started his Facebook storefront in February (he also has a kiosk in SouthPark Mall in Charlotte). Thirty-five percent of his sales come through Facebook, and Mr. Gann gives lots of help and advice to his customers. “They communicate with us there about everything, from asking about a shipment to what do we recommend for a gluten-free 9-month-old." Heather Logrippo opened a Facebook storefront in 2009 for We’ve Labels , which sells clothing labels. She routinely goes to the Facebook pages where her customers spend time, like those for quilters or knitters. “I log on as We’ve Labels and start interacting with people, writing things like: ‘That’s a beautiful scarf you’ve knitted,’ ” she said. Those knitters and quilters will often click on the We’ve Labels page out of curiosity. OFFER OPTIONS While some small businesses sell only through Facebook, others maintain separate Web sites or have bricks-and-mortar outlets, because not all consumers feel comfortable using their credit card information on the site. Ashley Gall, owner of Méli Jewelry , which sells jewelry she designs and makes, said buying on Facebook was still too new for many of her customers — 15 percent of her sales happen there — so she also sells on Etsy , Indie Fashion Marketplace and her own Web site . Most of Mandie Miller’s customers order on Facebook and pay when she delivers the cake or when they pick it up. Yet she still maintains a Web site of her own. “I do a lot of wedding cakes, and it’s the moms and dads of brides usually paying and they often want to go to a regular business Web site. I also have grandmothers in their 80s and 90s that come to my cake tastings,” she said. “They aren’t on Facebook.” | Facebook Inc;Social Networking (Internet);Small Business;Entrepreneurship;E-Commerce;Customer Relations |
ny0215203 | [
"us"
] | 2010/04/04 | Harriet Shetler, Ally of Mentally Ill, Dies at 92 | Harriet Shetler, whose experience as the mother of a son with schizophrenia led her to help start a national organization to address mental health needs, died Tuesday in Madison, Wis. She was 92. Her death was confirmed by her daughter, Jane S. Ross. Today the organization Mrs. Shetler helped start, the National Alliance on Mental Illness , has affiliates in every state and more than 1,100 communities. It offers support to the mentally ill and people living with them; promotes research and education on mental illness; and lobbies governments on mental health concerns. Its beginnings go back to the anxiety Mrs. Shetler felt after her son, Charles, was identified as schizophrenic. A friend at the Congregational church she attended put her in touch with another church member, Beverly Young, who faced similar challenges with her own schizophrenic son. The two women met for lunch in 1977 and had instant rapport, Mrs. Young said Thursday in an interview. At a second lunch, the women, both active in civic and charitable activities, decided to assemble people with similar concerns. In April 1977, about 13 people met at a nightclub in Madison. Mrs. Shetler suggested a name, Alliance for the Mentally Ill, partly because its acronym meant “friend” in French. (The name was later changed slightly to broaden its scope.) Within six months, 75 people had joined. When members came across a newsletter from a similar organization in California, they were thrilled to find they were not alone, Mrs. Young said. She said Mrs. Shetler hit upon the bold idea of holding a national conference. Mrs. Young said that they expected perhaps 35 people to come, but that more than 250 showed up. Among them were mental health professionals, including Dr. Herbert Pardes , then director of the National Institute of Mental Health and now president and chief executive of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. By the end of the conference, a national group had been formed, named and financed. In 1999, in an interview with The Los Angeles Times, Dr. Steven Hyman , then director of the National Institute of Mental Health, called the alliance “the greatest single advocacy force in mental health.” Last year, this advocacy came into question. Congressional investigators found that from 2006 to 2008 drug makers had contributed nearly $23 million to the alliance , about three-quarters of its donations, according to The New York Times. The disclosure followed criticism of the group for tailoring its legislative agenda to help the pharmaceutical industry, The Times reported. In a letter to The Times last October, Michael J. Fitzpatrick, the alliance’s executive director, said the group strictly prohibited endorsement or promotion of any specific medication, treatment, service or product. Harriet Jane McCown was born on Aug. 1, 1917, in Leechburg, Pa., and graduated from Monmouth College in 1938. She worked for many years as a reporter and editor for newspapers, scientific and industrial magazines and the University of Wisconsin’s extension service. Mrs. Shetler’s husband of 67 years, Charles W. Shetler, died on March 21. In addition to her daughter and son, she is survived by two grandsons. | National Alliance on Mental Illness;Mental Health and Disorders;Schizophrenia;Deaths (Obituaries);National Institute of Mental Health |
ny0031268 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2013/06/06 | Rent Board Trims Roster of Hearings on Increases | Even as many New Yorkers face substantial rent increases, they will have one less chance to complain about it. Citing poor attendance in the last few years, the Rent Guidelines Board, a nine-member board appointed by the mayor, has eliminated a public hearing this month that has traditionally been held in the Bronx, Brooklyn, or Queens since 2005. The remaining public hearing will be held in Lower Manhattan on June 13 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. The rent board is proposing to allow rent increases for tenants living in about one million rent-stabilized apartments in New York City. For a one-year lease, the proposal would allow an increase of from 3.25 percent to 6.25 percent; it would be from 5 percent to 9.5 percent for a two-year lease. Last year, it approved rent increases of 2 percent and 4 percent, respectively, after a dip in landlords’ operating costs. The board will make a final decision on June 20. Renters outside Manhattan, and their advocates, say that many people want to testify this year because of the large increases that are being proposed, but will not be able to get to the Manhattan hearing because they cannot afford to take time off from work, or would find it difficult to travel there. “This arrangement all but assures the working people most affected by the board’s decision will be unable to participate, and their voices will have no bearing on the final rent increase decision,” Bill de Blasio, the public advocate, said in a letter to the board. “This is not a mere inconvenience — it is a downright failure of the democratic process.” In protest, tenant groups organized a hearing of their own on Wednesday evening in the Bronx that drew more than 180 people. Susanna Blankley, director of housing organizing for Community Action for Safe Apartments , a project of New Settlement Apartments, said they had invited the rent board to attend, but the majority did not respond. The proposed rent increases are higher this year to help cover the increases in operating costs for rent-stabilized buildings, including the cost of real estate taxes, utilities, labor and insurance, said Jack Freund, executive vice president of the Rent Stabilization Association , which represents about 25,000 building owners and managers. He noted that the price index of operating costs for rent stabilized buildings rose by 5.9 percent this year, compared with 2.8 percent last year. “It’s a necessary increase,” Mr. Freund said. “If you want to maintain that work force housing, you have to pass along the cost increases.” Andrew McLaughlin, executive director of the Rent Guidelines Board, said the board had seen declining attendance at public hearings since the 1990s, when a few hundred people would rise to speak, and the board members would stay as late as midnight. He said that so few people attended the Queens meeting in 2010 that board members sat for an hour with no one to listen to. Last year’s meeting in the Bronx drew 21 speakers (of which 12 were tenants) compared with 55 in Manhattan, he said. Tenant advocates say that many people do not know about the hearings because they are not well publicized, and the information is provided only in English. Mr. McLaughlin said that notices were sent out to major media outlets, community boards, council members and others, and that translations into Spanish and other languages are available through a function on its Web site. Mr. McLaughlin added that the board, which had to cut its budget 20 percent last year, to about $450,000, saved between $4,000 and $5,000 by not renting space for the second meeting. He said that the Manhattan meeting was extended by an hour this year, to 7 p.m., and that the board would stay to listen to anyone who had registered by that time. But renters like Alfreda Lee said it would be difficult, if not impossible, to get there in time. Ms. Lee, 59, said she answers phone calls on a domestic violence hot line in Brooklyn until 6 p.m. or later on weeknights. “We have to work full-time jobs to pay rent,” she said. “If you really wanted to hear from people, you would make it fair.” | Rent Control;NYC;Andrew McLaughlin;Real Estate; Housing;Rent |
ny0191777 | [
"business",
"economy"
] | 2009/02/11 | Wholesale Inventories Drop the Most on Record | WASHINGTON (AP) — Wholesalers cut back on their inventories in December by the largest amount in nearly 17 years, and economists say more reductions are likely as the recession deepens. The continuing inventory reductions mean wholesalers will probably order fewer new goods, leading to reduced production and potentially more job layoffs. The Commerce Department said Tuesday that wholesale inventories plunged by 1.4 percent, nearly double analysts’ expectations of 0.8 percent and the steepest since records began in January 1992. It also was the fourth consecutive monthly decline. Sales at the wholesale level dropped 3.6 percent, slightly steeper than analysts’ expectations, but less than November’s record 7.3 percent drop. Wholesale inventories are goods held by distributors who generally buy from manufacturers and sell to retailers. They make up about 25 percent of all business stockpiles. Factories hold another third of inventories and the rest is held by retailers. Despite the sharp cut in inventories, sales are falling even faster, which means it is taking longer for distributors to clear out excess stockpiles. The inventories-to-sales ratio rose to 1.27 in December, up from a slightly revised total of 1.24 the previous month. The ratio measures how many months it would take to clear inventories at the current sales pace. The ratio is at its highest level since March 2002. Wholesalers are likely to reduce orders from manufacturers even further to bring down that ratio, Tim Quinlan, an economic analyst at Wachovia, wrote in a research note. | United States Economy;Sales;Layoffs and Job Reductions;Recession and Depression |
ny0046270 | [
"business",
"international"
] | 2014/02/22 | In Sake, Japan Sees a Potential Stimulus | NIHONMATSU, Japan — As Japan confronts troubling economic data and memories of its stagnant “lost generation,” the country’s government is offering a little something to take the edge off: a bottle or two of sake. Around the country at international airports, the government is helping to fund tasting booths where travelers can sample sake, an alcoholic brew made from fermented rice. On a recent morning, an attendant at a booth at Narita Airport near Tokyo explained that most high-quality sake is intended to be drunk slightly chilled — not heated, as lower-grade sake is sometimes offered at restaurants outside Japan. The program, set to run at least until March, is part of a broader push by the government to bring the country’s cultural products to the world — and in doing so, hopefully, give a little lift to Japan’s export economy. A government-financed program called Cool Japan looks to champion the country’s softer goods, like anime, music, fashion, food and drink. In December, Japan secured “intangible cultural heritage” status for its traditional cuisine, known as “washoku,” from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Japan has been taking a broad approach to reviving its moribund economy. In the face of persistent deflation, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has introduced his “three arrows”: fiscal stimulus, monetary easing and structural reform. Sake and other softer goods are hardly going to fill the gap left by an erosion in core industries like electronics. But the government appears to be working on the assumption that every bit counts. In the case of sake and other rice-based products, the government hopes to increase exports fivefold by 2020, to a value of 60 billion yen, or $590 million. “Until the current government, hardly anything was done to promote sake,” said Hideharu Ohta, chief executive of Daishichi Sake Brewery in Nihonmatsu, a small town in Fukushima Prefecture. “The government concentrated on electronics and cars, and lowering tariffs for those things.” Sake plays an important role in the culinary traditions of Japan, where it takes center stage in holiday toasts and is consumed by enthusiasts at izakayas, which are hole-in-the-wall bars. Yet consumption has fallen sharply over the last few decades, as many drinkers have switched to wine, much of it imported, or other domestic drinks like beer, whiskey or shochu. Two decades of deflation and an aging population have caused a major problem for the domestic market. As a result, makers of alcoholic drinks have joined a rush of Japanese companies looking to do more business abroad. Suntory, the Japanese beer brewer and whiskey distiller, recently agreed to buy Beam Inc. , the American maker of Jim Beam bourbon and other spirits, for $13.6 billion. But sake producers lack the deep pockets of corporate giants like Suntory. The industry is highly fragmented, with hundreds of small, mostly family-owned producers dotting the countryside, from the island of Hokkaido in the north to Kyushu in the south. Daishichi is one of a handful of sake producers that still uses a time-consuming, laborious, traditional method called kimoto. With its artisan appeal, the company has managed to break into upmarket food shops like Le Bon Marché in Paris. Even so, Daishichi exports only about 3 percent of its production, about 50 percent above than the national average. Image Consumption of the rice alcohol has fallen in Japan, so producers are looking abroad. Credit Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images In 2012, overall exports of Japanese sake totaled ¥8.9 billion, or about $87 million at current exchange rates, according to the National Tax Agency. While that was up from ¥7.5 billion a decade earlier, it is a tiny fraction of the 5.6 billion euros, or $7.7 billion, worth of wine that France exported in 2012. Sake producers in Fukushima are suffering even more than their peers elsewhere in Japan, rocked not just by the downturn in domestic consumption but also by fears over safety, after the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March 2011. Some Japanese retailers have taken Fukushima sake off their shelves to avoid alarming their customers. China and South Korea do not allow imports of sake and other agricultural produce from the prefecture, citing health concerns. The government faces a battle as it tries to appeal to palates outside Japan. The United States accounted for more than one-third of Japanese sake exports in 2012. But it has not caught on in a big way anywhere else. One reason is price. With transport costs and import duties, sake can cost two to three times more as much overseas. Japanese negotiators have reportedly pushed sake into talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed trade agreement that would cut tariffs on a variety of goods. Another problem is confusion. Many sake labels are indecipherable to non-Japanese speakers. And much of the “sake” served in Japanese restaurants abroad is little more than cheap distilled alcohol, not the real thing. Once Westerners have been burned by this firewater, it can be difficult to convince them of the charms of real sake. “I spend more time telling people what sake isn’t than telling them what sake is,” said Sylvain Huët, a French blogger and sommelier who holds the title of sake samurai, awarded by the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association. The Japan External Trade Organization, which promotes exports, says it has educational efforts coming via conferences and other marketing. The brewers’ association has named, for the first time, a Miss Sake, who will travel to events like a Joy of Sake festival in Hawaii this summer. Mr. Abe is doing his part, giving bottles of sake to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for his 61st birthday last year, and to President François Hollande of France during a recent visit to Tokyo. The sake that Mr. Abe chose, from a brewery called Asahi Shuzo, is made in his home prefecture, Yamaguchi. Sold under the brand name Dassai, it is also from one of the few producers that has managed to buck the downturn in sales at home and to break into export markets. Asahi Shuzo exports about $3 million worth of sake yearly, or 8 percent of its production, to about 20 countries, according to Kazuhiro Sakurai, a vice president at the brewer. The company wants to raise that to 50 percent over the next 10 years, he said. To support the export push, the brewery plans to open a shop this summer in Paris. Mr. Ohta of Daishichi, whose company has been making sake for nearly three centuries and exporting it for three decades, knows selling abroad is not easy. He says producers should take a long-term view, like the French wine chateaus that have found export success by playing up their history and ties to the land. “We don’t want to make concessions or to make a sake that would be easier for people abroad to drink,” he said. “We want to make the products we are proud of in Japan.” | Sake;Japan;International trade;Economy |
ny0224534 | [
"technology"
] | 2010/11/22 | Prisa Looks for Return to Financial Health | MADRID — Struggling under €4.8 billion in debt, Prisa, the largest media company in Spain, is hoping shareholders will support a plan to return it to financial health this week by approving a shift from family ownership to control by a group of financiers, hedge funds and investment banks. Liberty Acquisition Holdings, an investment company based in New York that is led by the financiers Martin E. Franklin and Nicolas Berggruen, is set to inject €900 million, or $1.2 billion, into Prisa in return for majority control, under the terms of a deal reached last March and renegotiated after Prisa’s market value dropped. Under the agreement, family members related to the company’s founder, Jesús de Polanco, who had controlled Prisa, will see their holdings fall to about 30 percent from 70 percent. Liberty shareholders are expected to approve the deal Wednesday, followed three days later by those of Prisa, according to executives at both companies. Despite its debt problems, Prisa remains the dominant media company in Spain, spearheaded by the newspaper El País. It has also expanded in Latin America, where it gets about a fifth of its $3 billion in annual revenue and has a strong presence in publishing and radio. But a series of mistimed and expensive deals, particularly in the Spanish television market, made Prisa open its doors to outside investors to meet the refinancing demands of an army of creditors, led by Santander and HSBC. Mr. Berggruen, a German-American entrepreneur who had sold a Portuguese business to Prisa in 2007, was quick to respond to the distress signal. “I’ve known Prisa and their advisers for years, so I just picked up the phone when it became clear that Liberty’s capital could really help Prisa,” he said. Liberty’s main investors believe their timing, unlike those of Prisa at the peak of the television market, is just right. “Concerns about Spain have calmed down and people see this as an opportunity to come in at the bottom of the cycle,” Mr. Franklin said. In the media sector, “the multiples of entry are much more reasonable than they were 10 years ago,” he added. “For us, were the price not right, we would not be doing it.” The key to Liberty’s arrival, however, was to persuade the heirs of Mr. de Polanco to cede control. Mr. de Polanco and Juan Luis Cebrián started Prisa after the death of the military dictator Francisco Franco in 1975 and rapidly established their media company as a left-leaning symbol of Spain’s return to democracy. While Mr. Polanco ran the business, Mr. Cebrián founded and edited El País for more than a decade before becoming Prisa’s chief executive. Mr. de Polanco’s death in 2007 effectively left Mr. Cebrián alone at the helm just as the world debt crisis started to unfold — thereby also raising the company’s refinancing hurdles. “Prisa could have alleviated this terrible debt pressure much earlier by accepting last year what was a good offer for an asset like Santillana,” its publishing business, according to a person familiar with the company who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak on the subject. In a separate interview, Mr. Cebrián said that Prisa had turned down as much as €1.5 billion offered by Pearson, the British media group, for Santillana. Instead, Prisa completed the sale this year of a 25 percent stake in Santillana to a private equity firm, DLJ South American Partners, for €278.7 million. “We’ve preferred to sell minority stakes, which is always harder,” Mr Cebrián said. “We’ve opted for a different path, perhaps harder and longer to reach but a lot better for the company.” Selling profitable businesses like Santillana, he said, would have been the equivalent of dismantling Prisa, destroying its potential as a multimedia and increasingly digital platform. In any case, he said, it would have been tantamount to the gradual dissipation of a family fortune, “just as when you start by selling the house furniture, then the Picasso painting and then the Miró,” he said. While some of Prisa’s banks may have pushed for the sale of Santillana, rejecting Pearson’s offer had the full support of Prisa’s family shareholders, Mr. Cebrián said. “On top of being a company, this is also an institution — and the family have opted to maintain the institution,” he said. In response to an interview request, a Prisa representative said that Polanco family members preferred to let Mr. Cebrián discuss Prisa’s plans. Still, the deal with Liberty does not guarantee that Prisa will maintain its diversified portfolio, even if the incoming investors want to avoid a fire sale. In addition to El País and Santillana, Prisa controls Digital+, the leading provider of pay-television services in Spain, as well as Cadena Ser, the country’s top radio station. While the company is focused on the Spanish-speaking market, Portugal and Brazil are among the 22 countries where it has a presence. “Any sale that is done now is done under duress, which doesn’t maximize value,” Mr. Franklin said. “If in a year’s time there is a very compelling reason to sell an asset, that’s a decision that we will make, but it will be a board decision.” That revamped 15-member board will contain seven new directors. But Mr. Franklin adamantly maintained that Liberty would not extend its influence to sensitive areas like the editorial direction of El País, which has partnership agreements with the International Herald Tribune and the IHT’s parent company, The New York Times. The deal with Liberty will also give Prisa a New York stock exchange listing, through American depositary receipts, on top of its existing one on the Spanish stock exchange in Madrid. Mr. Cebrián, meanwhile, is to remain in charge for another three years. “Our interest is in the governance of the company and that’s all we care about it,” Mr. Franklin said. Mr. Franklin and Mr. Berggruen set up Liberty in 2007 as a U.S.-listed special purpose acquisition company — an arrangement similar to one used for other transactions, including the purchase of Pearl Group. Mr. Franklin also runs Jarden, owner of the K2 sports brand, while this year Mr. Berggruen acquired Karstadt, the German retailer. Liberty’s cash injection, together with the expected proceeds from a linked issuance of warrants and some recent television-asset divestments, will allow Prisa to cut net debt to €2.16 billion from €4.75 billion, or about 3.5 times its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — almost in line with a 3.1 average in the publishing sector, according to a presentation made by Liberty to investors in September. Regaining financial clout rapidly is also important because “now is the sweet moment to invest more in Latin America,” said Julian Villanueva, marketing professor at the IESE Business School lin Madrid and Barcelona. Mr. Franklin, meanwhile, said that “there are a number of small opportunities and investments that the company would like to make that it has not had the time and ability to do.” In fact, ideological rather than financial reasons may have driven some past investments, notably Prisa’s purchase in 2005 of a 15 percent stake in the French newspaper Le Monde, whose losses recently resulted in its takeover by a group of French businessmen. With its new investors, Prisa will change from “an ideological company to one more focused on profits than influence,” said Juan Pablo Artero, communications professor at the University of Navarra. | Grupo Prisa;Spain;News and News Media;Liberty Acquisition Holdings Corporation;Credit and Debt |
ny0000010 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2013/03/03 | ‘Terra Incognita,’ on Exhibition at the College of New Rochelle | Despite the name, “Terra Incognita,” a new exhibition at Castle Gallery at the College of New Rochelle , is not a show that limits itself to depicting unknown lands. Take the paintings of Gwen Hardie , one of nine artists with works on display. In a sense, her work is intensely familiar. The three round oil paintings — part of a larger series, called “Boundaries,” that the Manhattan artist has been working on since 2008 — portray human skin, in hues of terra cotta, rose, brown and turquoise. And while magnification has the effect of obscuring the subject so it is no longer recognizable, what the paintings ultimately reveal is something known intimately to everyone. What connects all the works in “Terra Incognita,” which include sculpture, drawings, paintings and a mixed-media piece by the artist Seth Fairweather , of Coral Gables, Fla., is that “what you’re seeing are these strange places that have familiar elements,” said Katrina Rhein, the gallery director and organizer of the show. “The familiar is either so closely cropped or presented in such a unique way that it becomes unfamiliar,” Ms. Rhein said. Image “Subduction into Trench,” a geology-inspired encaustic by Laura Moriarty. Credit Courtesy of Laura Moriarty For Ms. Hardie, whose studio is in Brooklyn, the theme fit, and she felt particular kinship with the sculptures of Laura Moriarty , an artist in Rosendale, N.Y., whose colorful encaustics — sculptures made of pigmented beeswax — have a geological feel. In Ms. Hardie’s work, skin is the vehicle for a study of surfaces. Ms. Moriarty “also seems to be exploring surfaces, but what she’s looking at is the earth’s surface,” said Ms. Hardie, 50. Two of Ms. Moriarty’s encaustics are on display near a pair of pen-and-ink drawings of mysterious vistas by the artist Benedict Oddi , from Cookville, Tenn.; two of four wall-mounted vignette boxes housing a wreckage of buckling tiles by Will Corwin of Manhattan also are nearby. The encaustics date from 2009 and are titled “The Expansive Force of Water Freezing in Cracks” and “Subduction Into a Trench.” Scientific-sounding names aside, they are less didactic than curiously pretty: pools of swirling, bleeding color are stacked to form what looks like a 3-D version of the earth’s strata in a textbook diagram crossed with a crumbling or otherwise askew pastry shop confection. A small room within Castle Gallery called the “feature gallery” is dedicated exclusively to Ms. Moriarty and “Still Time,” an installation she created last year that gathers 50 similar encaustics of various sizes, as well as six paper sculptures hanging from the walls surrounding them. Image Will Corwin’s “Mirhab,” vignette box with buckling tiles. Credit Courtesy of Will Corwin All of the encaustics represent layer upon layer of a shifting foundation meant to resemble the earth and its precarious movements beneath us. “I’ve always known ‘terra incognita’ to be about landscape, geology, the environment,” Ms. Moriarty, 52, said in a phone interview. “That seems general, but it’s also a very specific way of approaching artwork.” Ms. Moriarty said her process involved studying cross sections, often of plate tectonics, in geology books. “Other artists do sketches; I do research,” she said. Ms. Moriarty builds the sculptures “as a way to get people to think about what’s going on in the earth we’re standing on.” “I think human beings have this way of thinking about nature and science as something that’s out there happening separate from us,” she said. “And I think that it’s starting to resonate in a more direct way with just regular people — they’re starting to realize that the actions we take have an effect on these processes, the processes of the earth, that are really big and really hard to harness.” The art “becomes a metaphor for being alive, for being vital,” she said. Image Gwen Hardie’s “Body 05.01.08,” oil on tondo depicting magnified human skin. Credit Courtesy of Gwen Hardie The might of the environment also informs the work of Gina Occhiogrosso , who traveled from her home in Troy, N.Y., to attend the opening reception in New Rochelle. Her piece “Slump,” a series of 24 gouache-on-paper panels, takes weather-ravaged billboards as its subject. A few years ago, her work focused on what she called her “broken, disrupted” home. That work indirectly inspired “Slump,” which she made in 2011. “I thought, ‘How can I do some visual representation of the unraveling of the environment, which is similarly unsettled?’ ” said Ms. Occhiogrosso, 47. She began looking at online images of Federal Emergency Management Agency projects, “and I kept coming across billboards. As I pulled up landscapes, I isolated them,” she said. They are represented in their twisted, dilapidated and broken forms against stark white backgrounds on each panel. For Ms. Occhiogrosso, the works in the exhibition seemed more about “transcending landscapes” than encountering unknown ones, she said. Regardless of the breadth of “Terra Incognita,” she was glad her work fit in. So was Ms. Moriarty. “My work is so weird,” she said. “When you say you make sculptural paintings, who knows what to picture? For commercial galleries it’s a hard sell. So when someone offers me a show like this, it’s an opportunity to do something really ambitious.” | Art;New Rochelle NY;College of New Rochelle;College |
ny0191710 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2009/02/27 | U.S. Helps Palestinians Build Force for Security | JERICHO, West Bank — They rappel down a 65-foot tower, navigate obstacle courses, shoot in the firing range and sleep in pristine barracks. They eat in an air-conditioned mess where brushed aluminum glints from every kitchen surface. Rows of Land Rovers stand by. The entrance reads “The Presidential Guard, Always in Front: Strength, Sacrifice, Redemption.” One year ago, this 18-acre campus built with $10 million of American taxpayer money was another piece of Jordan Valley desert, and Palestinian guardsmen slept on flea-bitten mattresses and took meals on their laps. Along with a 35-acre, $11 million operations camp a few miles away, also American-financed, it is a real step forward in an otherwise moribund process of Palestinian state-building. “These guys now feel like they’re on a winning team, that they are building a Palestinian state,” said Lt. Gen. Keith W. Dayton, the American who has been overseeing the training of Palestinian forces, as he watched exercises on Thursday. “And I wouldn’t stay if I didn’t think they were going to do it. I have complete confidence in the Palestinian leadership, and I’m convinced the new administration is serious about this.” The Obama administration’s envoy to the Middle East, George J. Mitchell , arrived in the region for his second time in a month on Thursday. The secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton , will be here next week. Despite General Dayton’s optimism, no one doubts that they have their work cut out for them. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians are deeply divided, violence and settlement-building continue, and faith in the two-state solution is waning. But for much of the past year, the Palestinian security forces have trained and increased their role as if all remained on track. Some 1,600 have been through American-financed courses in Jordan. In coordination with Israeli defense officials, Palestinian troops and police officers have taken over much of the patrolling in the West Bank cities of Jenin, Nablus, Bethlehem and parts of Hebron. Last month, as Israel carried out a war in Hamas -ruled Gaza, some in the Muslim world called on the West Bank to stage a violent uprising in protest. But while there were demonstrations, no such uprising occurred, partly because the Palestinian Authority troops maintained tight order. All the while, these state-of-the-art facilities were being built, employing hundreds of Palestinian workers. The Presidential Guard College here has been functioning for several weeks, while the National Security Force Operations Camp elsewhere in Jericho will open at the end of next month. Along with police training facilities here supported by the European Union, they represent a new phase in the security plan: sophisticated training under Palestinian command has begun in Palestinian territory. General Dayton was due to end his three-year assignment, but Mr. Mitchell asked him to stay on for two more years and he has agreed. His decision has been greeted with something approaching jubilation in these camps, where the commanders have come to trust him and to view Washington, through him, as a true ally. “We have been trained with American money and by General Dayton, and that means a lot to us,” said Brig. Gen. Munir al-Zoubi, commander of the 1,800-man Presidential Guard, the elite force that protects top officials and guests. “We are here to enforce law and order and to use all means to fight terrorism.” He was asked whether the word “terrorism” was a delicate one. “Two years ago, we couldn’t talk about or use the term ‘terrorism,’ ” he said. “Any Palestinian who used the term was called a collaborator. But that is no longer true. We have discovered that many people commit terrorist acts under the cover of resistance to occupation. And we are fighting that.” The big change in those two years has been the Hamas takeover of Gaza and the Palestinian Authority’s hope to turn the West Bank into a model that will reduce the appeal of Hamas. General Zoubi added that his forces had been trained in human rights, at their request, and in how to shoot without killing when capturing an armed suspect. There are five classrooms for 50 students each on the campus. On Thursday, one of them had a first-aid class going on. Israeli defense officials say that the development of the Palestinian security forces is a real step forward and that the more the Palestinians do in the West Bank, the less Israel will do. But the Israelis also said that if they did not carry out their night raids on Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists in the West Bank, the area would be a lot less stable. So there is cooperation. An Israeli officer inaugurated the firing range here, shooting a Palestinian weapon to test it and give his seal of approval. But tensions remain. General Zoubi said new uniforms and protective vests for his men were still waiting at a port in Israel because the Israelis had not released them. And the need for consultation with the Israelis to move his men around frustrates him. General Dayton is one of the few military men who ply a path between the Palestinian and Israeli officers on a daily basis. He is diplomatic when asked about the tensions. But his commitment to helping the Palestinians build a responsible and serious security force is enormous. He hopes to have a well-trained battalion based in each of eight West Bank cities when he is through. He said he first became aware of the importance of this conflict beyond its borders when he was leading weapons searches in Iraq in 2003. As he and his men entered barracks of the Iraqi Republican Guards, he kept seeing drawings on the walls showing Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock, a sacred Muslim shrine, being strangled by a cobra symbolizing Israel. At the National Security Forces Operations Camp, still under construction, he met on Thursday with Maj. Gen. Shawki al-Safadi, who has spent his entire adult life wearing the uniform of a Palestinian soldier, starting in 1968 in Jordan, when he was part of the armed wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization . General Safadi was asked why he turned from an approach of combat to one of coexistence with Israel. “Anyone can call for peace,” General Safadi responded. “But like General Dayton, I have had a lot of experience. My generation understands the need for peace because we lived under conflict. We were willing to live together in one country. But the Jews want their own homeland. We have come to accept that. And we Palestinians need peace more than any people in the whole world.” | West Bank;Palestinians;Armament Defense and Military Forces;Hamas;Palestinian Authority;Palestine Liberation Organization;Mitchell George J;Clinton Hillary Rodham |
ny0077646 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2015/05/06 | Saudi Arabia: Yemeni Rebels Attack | Rebels in Yemen struck a border town in Saudi Arabia with mortar and rocket fire on Tuesday, damaging buildings and leading the national airline to cancel flights to the area. The attack on the town of Najran near the Saudi southern border was the first direct assault on an inhabited area in the kingdom since Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies began bombing the rebels, known as Houthis, in Yemen in March. | Yemen;Houthis;Saudi Arabia;Najran Saudi Arabia;International relations |
ny0116786 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2012/10/28 | Jazz Celebration in Cape May Will Have New Orleans Flavor | MICHAEL KLINE, organizer of next month’s inaugural Exit 0 International Jazz Festival in Cape May, said he had “great respect” for the local group that put on the semiannual Cape May Jazz Festival, which ended a 17-year run in 2011. The old festival, according to Carol K. Stone, 83, its co-founder, suffered from “serious debt, and things got very unpleasant” between the board and the founders. Ms. Stone and Woody Woodland, the other co-founder, who live in Cape May, went on to produce the first Philly Jazz Fest, in Philadelphia, in September. The new Cape May event, to be held Nov. 9 to 11, is likely to have a different flavor under Mr. Kline, whose company Spy Boy Productions is promoting it. That flavor might be slightly redolent of étouffée. “As long as I’m involved, it’s always going to have a New Orleans vibe, because nobody knows how to have fun like people in New Orleans,” said Mr. Kline, 52, who lived there for more than a decade before moving to West Cape May after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005; he had spent summers in Cape May as a child. Mr. Kline is also a senior partner at Michael Kline Artists, a management and booking agency for jazz artists, and several from the company’s roster will be performing at the festival. Main-stage shows will take place at the Convention Hall, which will be reconfigured as a 550-seat bistro; the headliners are the pianist/composer Ramsey Lewis , a three-time Grammy winner from Chicago who will perform with his Electric Band; the Grammy-winning bassist Christian McBride , of Montclair, with his quintet Inside Straight; and the 17-member Captain Black Big Band, based in Philadelphia and led by the pianist Orrin Evans . New Orleans will be well represented by acts taking the stage elsewhere around town. The trumpeter Nicholas Payton is from the city, Mr. Kline said, and he will perform two sets Nov. 9 at SeaSalt Restaurant in the Ocean Club Hotel . Other acts will include DJ Soul Sister , a WWOZ-New Orleans radio personality who “has the greatest soul, R&B and funk record collection I’ve ever seen,” said Mr. Kline, who added, “She’ll be spinning both nights of the festival.” In all, more than 20 bands and artists will perform at eight locations. Mr. Kline plans to continue the jazz tradition in Cape May throughout the year, by presenting another Exit 0 festival in June, when “we can really show off Cape May as a shore town,” he said. For Mr. Lewis, accepting the invitation to headline had less to do with the appeal of the shore than with his memories of Cape May’s fondness for jazz. He played in Cape May several years ago, “and what I remember is the love affair between the artists and the audience,” said Mr. Lewis, 77. “I remember the warmth of the people there, their love of the music,” he said. “All I needed was the invitation.” | Jazz;Cape May (NJ);Exit 0 International Jazz Festival;Music |
ny0232613 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2010/08/28 | Paul Singer’s Largess Reflects G.O.P.’s Wall St. Support | At a black-tie dinner in April, a politically influential hedge fund manager named Paul Singer offered a blistering critique of the “terrible path” he said Washington politicians were charting on economic issues. Mr. Singer, professorial and soft-spoken, used a gathering of business and government leaders at the conservative Manhattan Institute to lash out at “indiscriminate attacks by political leaders against anything that moves in the world of finance.” Government efforts to “take over and run” the economy through more regulations, he warned, threatened to ruin the United States’ standing as the world leader in finance. As the head of a $17 billion hedge fund, Mr. Singer, a self-described Barry Goldwater conservative who is 66, is using his financial might to try to change those policies. He has become one of the biggest bankrollers of Republican causes, giving more than $4 million of his money and raising millions more through fund-raisers he hosts for like-minded candidates who often share his distaste for what they view as governmental over-meddling in the financial industry. The same day in June that the House gave final approval to the sweeping overhaul of financial regulations , Mr. Singer had a fund-raiser at his Central Park West apartment, netting more than $1 million for seven Republican Senate candidates who had opposed the bill. Mr. Singer and others affiliated with his firm, Elliott Management, are collectively the top source of contributions to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which collates campaign finance data. With economic problems weighing heavily as the November elections approach, the divide between Republicans and Democrats in their attitudes toward Wall Street and the economy promises to be a recurring point of attack for both parties, and Mr. Singer is using his money to push conservative causes. He is not new to fund-raising — he raised money for George W. Bush, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and, surprisingly, gay rights initiatives — but his prominence has risen lately with his donations as he and other conservatives tap into a rising tide of anger on Wall Street toward Washington. His largess reflects a recent surge in Wall Street money to Republicans. Generally Democrats have been favored by Wall Street, getting 70 percent of donations from the securities and investment sector just 18 months ago. But by the time Congress took up the financial regulations legislation this June, Republicans were getting 68 percent of the donations, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group. In the 2010 election cycle, financial industry donors, from brokers to real estate interests, have contributed $180 million to both Republican and Democratic Congressional candidates, the analysis showed. Dave Levinthal, a spokesman for the center, said: “What this says is that Wall Street is awfully angry with Democrats and sees Republicans as a better bet. They’re making an investment in the prospect of a Republican-controlled Congress that they perceive to be more favorable toward their bottom line.” For Democrats, the November elections will test their ability to focus public attention away from the country’s poor economy and toward the eye-popping sums that Wall Street is raising for Republicans. Already, Democrats are using the issue in a handful of hotly contested races because they believe many voters are even angrier with Wall Street than they are with Washington. In Washington State, for instance, a spot broadcast this month by Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat seeking re-election, attacks her Republican opponent, Dino Rossi, as “the best friend Wall Street and big banks can buy.” Ms. Murray — who has taken significant sums from the financial sector herself — is seeking to tie her opponent’s Wall Street contributions to his call for repealing the toughened financial regulations. Her commercial cites two fund-raisers in particular, including a June 30 event hosted by Mr. Singer that earned the Rossi campaign nearly $135,000, with many executives at his Elliott Management fund contributing personal checks. Republicans maintain that the strategy has fallen flat. “The Democrats have tried to make this anti-business rhetoric an attack point, but I haven’t seen any evidence that it’s resonated at all,” said Brian Walsh, communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. In the meantime, Mr. Singer has continued writing checks. In April, he gave $500,000 to the Republican Governors Association, along with smaller donations this election cycle to more than two dozen other conservative campaigns. At his June fund-raiser, Mr. Singer voiced frustration not only over financial policies in Washington, but also on national security and foreign policy, particularly what he saw as the Obama administration’s inadequate support for Israel, according to a friend at the fund-raiser who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not comfortable speaking publicly about his guarded associate. But very quietly, Mr. Singer has also given significant sums to personal causes that run counter to the agenda of many conservatives. With no public disclosure, Mr. Singer has given more than $4.2 million to groups supporting gay rights and same-sex marriage , like the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund, associates said. “Several of Paul’s family and friends are gay activists, and he has learned a lot from their work over the years,” said Myron Kaplan, a longtime friend and lawyer for Mr. Singer. “He supports the work of these groups. He also believes the Republican Party is a big tent, and he respects the different perspectives within the party on this issue.” Mr. Singer plans to hold a fund-raiser next month at his Manhattan apartment in support of the California lawsuit opposing Proposition 8 , which banned gay marriage. Ken Mehlman, a former top Republican official who said this week that he was gay, will be one of the co-hosts. Mr. Singer is guarded about his political and business dealings. He declined requests for an interview for this article, as he rarely gives interviews, and he has turned down several invitations to be honored for his philanthropy. He made news this week for trying to keep secret the internal positions of his hedge fund, going to court to try to identify the source of a leak of the firm’s investment newsletter. Still, his visibility has grown, beginning in 2007 as a fund-raiser for Mr. Giuliani’s presidential campaign. Mr. Singer, who lent the former New York City mayor his jet for the campaign, was drawn into controversy when he was identified as the donor who indirectly contributed $175,000 to a California ballot initiative that Democrats saw as a way of tilting the state’s electoral votes toward Republicans in 2008. His role at the Manhattan Institute — he became its chairman in 2008 — has also given him more visibility. The April black-tie event that Mr. Singer hosted netted a record $1.4 million for the institute. But Mr. Singer, ever the fund-raiser, could not resist another pitch for more money even as dinner was about to be served. “Have no fear,” he told his guests. “We will accept checks or credit cards at the door, jewelry, brightly colored bits of glass.” | Singer Paul;Hedge Funds;Campaign Finance;Republican Party;United States Politics and Government;Manhattan Institute;Banks and Banking |
ny0149953 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2008/09/23 | M.T.A. Seeks Contingency Plan to Cut Service if Economy Worsens | The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has begun exploring possible cuts in subway, bus and commuter rail service to shore up its budget in the face of a projected deficit next year of nearly $900 million, officials said on Monday. The cuts could be necessary if the authority does not receive enough additional money from the state and city or if the economic crisis deepens significantly, the officials said. They cautioned, however, that any service cuts were purely theoretical at this point. The authority has already proposed fare and toll increases that would go into effect next July, although it has not said how big those increases might be. Gary J. Dellaverson, the authority’s chief financial officer, said that he had directed the heads of the agencies that make up the authority — including New York City Transit , which runs the subway and buses, Metro-North Railroad and the Long Island Rail Road — to come up with alternative budgets “in the event either the economy is worse than predicted, which is possible, or assistance from government partners in its entirety is not forthcoming.” Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman for the authority, said that the agencies were told to explain how they would make cuts of 4.5 percent or so in their expenses. He declined to say how much that would amount to, but a 4.5 percent reduction of the total authority-wide budget projected to be $9.7 billion next year would equal $437 million. “This is an exercise in case of a hypothetical situation,” Mr. Soffin said. “It’s very preliminary.” The cuts are supposed to target management-level expenses first and then expenses that directly affect operations. That could include cuts to train and bus service, Mr. Dellaverson said. “I think it’s fair to say that it will be difficult for agencies to find that much savings without affecting the service package,” he said. Doreen M. Frasca, a member of the authority’s board, said after a meeting of the board’s finance committee on Monday, “Obviously, we’ve got a big deficit, and if our funding partners don’t come through for us, everything’s going to be on the table. But service cuts will be the last thing on the table.” The authority announced in July that it was facing a deficit next year of nearly $900 million, caused partly by a substantial fall-off in revenues from taxes on real estate transactions. It said at the time that it would ask the state and city to contribute an additional $300 million to the authority’s budget. That brought a rebuke from City Hall, where officials said that the city was facing a budget crisis of its own and could not give the authority more money. Gov. David A. Paterson has appointed a commission headed by Richard Ravitch , a former chairman of the transportation authority, to recommend long-term solutions for the authority’s financial problems. Those recommendations are expected to be ready in December, shortly before the deadline for the authority’s board to approve a budget for next year. Some of those budget tensions were apparent on Monday at the finance committee meeting, when Mr. Dellaverson traded barbs with a board member, Jeffrey A. Kay, who is the director of the mayor’s office of operations. The two argued over an authority proposal to end free E-ZPass use by official city vehicles, including those of the Police and Fire Departments. The change, which would also affect vehicles owned by some state agencies and other public entities, would provide an estimated $10 million annually to the authority. “I feel like this is a way to sort of nickel-and-dime to try to get money to make up for a hole that we have,” Mr. Kay said. Mr. Dellaverson responded, “There is no statutory provision that says fire trucks don’t pay tolls, just like there’s no statutory provision that fire trucks don’t pay for gas or paint.” The issue is to be taken up by the full authority board at a meeting on Wednesday. | Metropolitan Transportation Authority;Budgets and Budgeting;Economic Conditions and Trends;Finances;Metro-North Commuter Railroad;Long Island Rail Road Co;New York City Transit;Dellaverson Gary J;Ravitch Richard;Paterson David A |
ny0267836 | [
"technology"
] | 2016/03/12 | The Government Answers Apple in the iPhone Case | The fight between Apple and the United States government over breaking into an iPhone reached a new level of argumentativeness on Thursday. That was when the Justice Department submitted a new court filing in a case over whether Apple should weaken its mobile security to help authorities extract information from an iPhone used by one of the assailants in last year’s San Bernardino, Calif., shooting. In the filing, the Justice Department rebutted Apple’s motion to throw out the case, saying “no single corporation” should be allowed to flout the rule of law, writes Eric Lichtblau and Katie Benner. It’s the latest volley in the high-stakes case, which has set off debate over privacy and security. The back-and-forth is set to continue, at least until a March 22 hearing when the California federal magistrate judge in the case, Sheri Pym, hears arguments in court. Which means there is plenty more fodder to come for water cooler talk about this case. Speaking of water cooler talk, have any readers noticed how Times reporters are getting increasingly chatty, especially with one another? Farhad Manjoo and Mike Isaac make it a point to converse about tech (and take digs at one another) every Saturday. Mr. Manjoo also likes to chitchat with other Times columnists . Now Alexandra Alter, who covers publishing, and Nick Wingfield, who covers Amazon, are at it too, in an illuminating discussion about Amazon’s physical bookstores . Check it out. | Apple;Justice Department;iPhone;Privacy |
ny0103754 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2012/03/16 | Britain: 2 Sentenced for a Robbery Videotaped During the Riots Last Year | The videotaped robbery of a Malaysian student during last summer’s rioting, which drew nearly six million hits on YouTube and a personal condemnation by Prime Minister David Cameron, resulted in prison terms for the two muggers on Thursday. The video, filmed by a passerby, showed the two men pretending to help the student, Ashraf Rossli, after another youth in a London neighborhood had robbed him of his bicycle and broken his jaw. After helping Mr. Rossli to his feet, the two men stole his cellphone and other items from his backpack. The bicycle thief, sentenced separately, received a seven-year prison term. One of the men who looted the victim’s backpack, Reece Donovan, 24, was sentenced to five years in prison, and the other, John Kafunda, 22, received a term of four years and three months. Of the 3,000 people arrested for robbery, violence and property destruction during the riots, nearly 1,000 have been jailed, with average sentences of 14 months. | London (England);Robberies and Thefts;Sentences (Criminal);Muggings;Great Britain |
ny0151557 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2008/08/19 | Old Sewer Mapping System Undergoes a Welcome Update | In the chaos of Sept. 11, 2001, rescue workers in Lower Manhattan frantically tried to shut off damaged water mains. Just to locate the valves, they had to call the city’s Department of Environmental Protection’s offices in Rego Park, Queens, where James Roberts spent hours directing the workers by scouring dozens of maps of the city’s water grid. “I remember sitting here at 2 a.m. on Sept. 12,” said Mr. Roberts, now the deputy commissioner of the department’s Bureau of Water and Sewer Operations, pointing to a seat in a conference room on the third floor of the department’s headquarters. “I was sitting here with the maps and radios telling people, ‘It’s 27 feet from there.’ ” For decades, city workers and contractors who want to make any change to New York’s vast water and sewer networks have had to retrieve browning maps, drawn by draftsmen and stored away in each borough hall and the department offices in Queens. To help them find the sewer and water main maps — some dating back to the Civil War — city clerks have had to consult indexes, created by each borough before the city was unified in 1898. The maps were cataloged on 3-by-5-inch cards. In the coming months, though, visiting the department or borough halls to get maps, or calling to get the information on them, will become unnecessary. For nearly a decade, the department has been scanning, reformatting and piecing together the tens of thousands of linen, Mylar and vellum maps of the city’s water mains and sewers. More than just digital replicas, these maps are linked to millions of bits of information, or attributes — the size of the pipes, the dates they were built and repaired, what they were made of — that can be called up and sorted with the click of a mouse. The maps can be updated instantly when water mains and sewers are installed, removed or repaired. “This is a real live snapshot of what we have in the ground,” Mr. Roberts said. “These maps can now see in one spot what was on five or six drawings before.” Thanks to global satellite positioning technology, the maps are accurate to within 18 inches. And because they are on a central database, a growing number of department workers will have access to them not just on office computers, but outdoors on laptops using the city’s new wireless data network, NYCWiN. Given the chronic shortage of money to maintain and expand infrastructure, city officials expect the maps to make department workers more efficient by cutting down the time spent retrieving them. By feeding customer complaints, repair records and other information into the map database, the city hopes that planners and engineers can spot trends and anticipate problems. “They are going to make people a lot more productive because they are not going to have to climb down in the sewer and not have to drive back to the office,” said Emily Lloyd, the commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection. “Having to move people around to collect information is very time-consuming.” A consolidated database may also break down walls between city agencies by making it easier for, say, the Department of Transportation engineers to figure out where sewer mains are before they start building roads. “Cities have been organized by departments, historically, and they managed records in their own ways,” said John Wilson, a professor of geography and civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California. With municipal interactive maps, “you have one big database, and people can pick what’s important to them,” he said. “This is a whole different way of thinking about your assets.” The foundation for the online water and sewer maps was laid in the 1990s. Planners recognized that they needed a map of the city above ground that could serve as a precise geographic anchor for the underground maps. So the D.E.P. helped create NYCityMap, an interactive database linked to a quilt of aerial photographs of the entire city. The map, which was made available to the public in 2001, divides the city into 1,873 2,500-square-foot “tiles.” It includes the exact locations of every manhole cover, sewer and fire hydrant the department maintains. Those points of reference became the framework for the water and sewer maps. The maps of the city’s water mains had been scanned in the 1990s, but only in the last few years have they been reformatted and linked to a database of attributes. In 2002, Baker Engineering NY won a $10.4 million contract to scan all the sewer maps, which took nearly a year, and to digitally stitch them together so the more than 6,000 miles of sewers would form a seamless map. Fusing the maps was challenging because each borough uses its own measurement systems. The boroughs, for instance, have different starting elevations that engineers have to account for when building, for example, between Brooklyn and Queens. “The complexity of this boggles the mind,” said Sean C. Ahearn, at the Center for the Analysis and Research of Spatial Information at Hunter College, which the department hired for an additional $5 million to double-check the maps for accuracy. “You’re talking about over 10 million attributable values, from the pipe size to the materials. You think of sewer mains as simple pipes, but it’s very complex.” Unlike NYCityMap, which New Yorkers can use at gis.nyc.gov/doitt/cm/CityMap.htm , some of the information on the sewer and water maps will be kept from the public because of security concerns. For the time being, contractors and developers will continue to rely on copies of the old maps kept at the department offices when making repairs and additions to the water and sewer maps. But over time, the old maps, with all their charming quirks, will fade into obsolescence. The 24-by-30-inch maps of the networks in Queens are rolled over skinny wooden rods. At the end of each of rod is a set of numbers linked to the map’s location. Mr. Roberts showed one that read 77-2, for the second ward in the 77th district. In the top left corner of another map were notations in dark blue ink showing when a portion of the grid in Washington Heights was updated, starting in 1964. There were notations for hydrants and lines representing water mains of varying diameter, from 6 inches to 84 inches. Huge file cabinets on the 12th floor of the department’s headquarters include thousands of index cards, each numbered to designate its location. Field card number 44409, for instance, included information about water mains on part of Grand Avenue in Queens. “Forget sorting the data,” Mr. Roberts said. “Just keeping track of it was a challenge.” In the years to come, as more and more people have access to the digitized maps, the hassles of maintaining the old versions — not unlike library card catalogs — will become a quaint memory. “Our long-term goal is, the more we can get them off of paper and allow them to use them on the computer, the better it is for all of us,” Ms. Lloyd said. | Maps;Water;Department of Environmental Protection;Manhattan (NYC) |
ny0010306 | [
"business"
] | 2013/02/26 | Even a Rock Star Has to Be Careful - Frequent Flier | I HAVE flown so much that most of my trips are routine. I’m either off to a concert or coming back from one. I’m actually very Zen-like when I fly. I just accept the delays since there’s nothing I can do about it. But all the travel is great because I love seeing new places and meeting new people. Or, sometimes, seeing people I’ve known for a long time. I was going from Minneapolis back to Los Angeles and I was standing at the gate checking e-mails when someone walked up to me and grabbed my arm. It was my girlfriend from when I was 17 years old, who happens to be a flight attendant. That was a mind blower. Sometimes people recognize me. But what generally happens is if we’re traveling in a group, passengers might start to talk among themselves, wondering who we are. That’s kind of fun because usually they know all of our songs. If I’m traveling alone, I don’t mind talking to seatmates, but I’d sooner just enjoy the flight. If someone asks me what I do, I generally reply, “I’m in music.” But if they ask what band, I say Foreigner. Either people break into a smile, or they say, “You mean, Foreigner, Foreigner?” I always want to say, “No, the other Foreigner.” But I don’t. Image Kelly Hansen, lead singer of Foreigner, on vacation in Yelapa, Mexico. A lot of times the crew knows who we are, and word spreads that way. There was one flight where the attendants must have told the pilots. A little while into the flight, the pilots came over the P.A. system, and they just started singing a medley of Foreigner songs, including “Feels Like The First Time” and “Hot Blooded.” Everyone got a good laugh. I wasn’t worried about my day job. I thought as singers they made great pilots. I have a lot of respect for the job they do. I had a flight coming into Los Angeles and the pilot came on and said that because of a questionable oil-pressure reading, he was going to “have to shut down the left engine — scratch that, right engine.” Even though I’m not a nervous flier, I was in disbelief. And then I thought about it for a minute, and realized this guy was so into the zone of dealing with a problem, that he just misspoke. We landed without incident, and that’s when you’re really grateful for a good pilot. As a vocalist I’ve resigned myself to the fact that my throat has its own set of demands. My throat is a diva. My No. 1 tip for travel is a scarf. Everyone who has traveled with me knows that I call my scarf “the Great Equalizer” because it levels the temperature when you go from air conditioning to a hot Jetway, both of which can affect my voice. My current favorite is a lightweight black scarf that works particularly well for warm-weather travel. I never thought I’d have a summer scarf, but I do. When I get on the plane and it’s scorching hot, I unwrap it. But when that big tin can hits 35,000 feet, it usually gets cold, so I wrap it around my neck. But there are other benefits which are equally, if not more, valuable. There are many times that I might sleep on a plane, either on purpose or by accident. Now remember, I’m a lead singer, and I’m a little vain and self-conscious. I don’t want to fall asleep and have my mouth hanging open for people to count my fillings. So with this summer scarf, I can pull one thin layer up over my nose and go to sleep knowing I’m safe from most embarrassment, including YouTube. | Business travel;Airlines,airplanes;Music;Kelly Hansen |
ny0100453 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2015/12/27 | The Subway Garnet | The American Museum of Natural History is a lot of things to a lot of people. To the wealthy philanthropist, it’s a venue for black-tie galas in the shadow of a 94-foot blue whale. To the young, it’s the setting for a movie franchise starring Ben Stiller that single-handedly made the educational diorama relevant again. And then there are the scientists who avail themselves of the 33 million artifacts and specimens on exhibition and in storage at the museum, like a mastodon jaw. Image The jaw of a mastodon, also part of the museum’s collection but not on display to the public. Credit Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times Only 2 percent of the collection is on view, so any visiting geologist who wants to see what may be the museum’s most magnificent mineral must make an appointment with the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences . That is the current repository of the once famed, now forgotten “ Subway Garnet ” — although that name is only half correct. The almandine garnet is as rare as it is large. A nine-pound bundle of iron and aluminum nearly six inches in diameter, the gem resembles nothing so much as Fred Flintstone’s bowling ball. It was discovered on 35th Street, between Seventh Avenue and Broadway — or rather eight feet under the street, during a sewer excavation in August 1885. It is estimated to be 430 million years old, and its nickname was bestowed by journalists who no doubt thought a subway dig would be a more genteel provenance than a sewer trench. (The garnet was unearthed years before Manhattan’s underground train tunnels would be dug.) “It’s rare in the sense of the size and perfection of it,” said George Harlow, the curator for the earth sciences department at the museum. “They’re usually all broken up at that size.” Indeed, Columbia University is in possession of a once enormous almandine garnet that was discovered in the Adirondacks, near Gore Mountain. But the easily breakable block has since greatly diminished, thanks to decades of psychology students who broke off keepsake pieces when they defended their theses. When the Subway Garnet was discovered, it became the darling of contemporary scientific journals, but its origin story seems more suited to the gossip columns of the day. William Niven, the owner of a business that sold gemstones and minerals, claimed he picked up the garnet as he was passing by the site, just after an unnamed laborer dumped it on the street during the excavation. Dr. Niven then promptly sold it to one George F. Kunz (whom Professor Harlow describes as “the P.T. Barnum of mineralogists”) for $100. But as early as 1908, there are accounts of Kunz stating that he himself had found the garnet. From there the gem made its way to the New York Mineralogical Club and then, in 1968, to the American Museum of Natural History, where it was proudly displayed in a case at the entrance to Mineral Hall until its relegation to a drawer on the fourth floor. As for whether this remarkable link to our Paleozoic past might be excavated from storage, there is hope. “Nothing’s been finalized, but I believe plans are afoot,” said Professor Harlow, who has worked at the museum for 40 years. “I’d certainly like to see it available to the public before I retire.” | Geology;Rocks;American Museum of Natural History;Museum;Paleontology;Manhattan |
ny0006602 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2013/05/27 | Sabathia Has Identified the Problem and It’s Him | ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — About 15 minutes after C. C. Sabathia and the Yankees were pounded by the Tampa Bay Rays, the pitching coach Larry Rothschild sat next to Sabathia in front of his locker, and they had a brief conversation in hushed tones. After Rothschild left to allow Sabathia to speak with reporters, Sabathia was asked about the conversation. He said it was private, but then he immediately communicated a larger point. “I’m hurting the team,” he said. “I’m not helping the team out. I just need to get better.” In a season in which expectations have been turned upside down by events on the field, perhaps it is only fitting that Sabathia, once considered among the Yankees’ greatest assets, has turned into one of their biggest liabilities. Sabathia had another curious performance Sunday, allowing seven runs, including a pair of two-run homers, in seven innings. The Yankees, not surprisingly, lost the game, 8-3, at Tropicana Field and fell back into a virtual tie with the Boston Red Sox for first place in the American League East. In his last five starts, Sabathia is 0-2. He has not won since April 27. The seven runs he gave up were the most since he gave up seven to the Red Sox at Fenway Park on Aug. 6, 2011. He is 4-4 over all, and his earned run average rose to 3.96. The last time his record was .500 or lower this late in the season was in 2008. Left fielder Sean Rodriguez hit a two-run homer in the Rays’ three-run third inning, and first baseman James Loney connected on a two-run shot in the three-run sixth. The Yankees scored three times in the ninth as Brett Gardner homered against starter Alex Cobb, who was otherwise dominant in his eight and one-third innings. After he left, the Yankees rallied, as third baseman David Adams hit a two-run double. But Joel Peralta struck out Ichiro Suzuki and then Jayson Nix to end the game. Sabathia’s record against the Rays sunk even lower: he is 3-10 with a 4.08 E.R.A. in 20 starts against the Rays since joining the Yankees in 2009. Once again, the velocity on his fastball was clocked mostly at 90 to 91 miles per hour, a few miles an hour lower than what it had been for most of his career, until last year. Sabathia endured some elbow problems then, and after the season, he had surgery to remove bone chips from his left elbow. But he said that was no longer an issue. “It feels great,” he said. “I have no complaints. I’ve just got to be better.” Sabathia insisted that he was not trying to pitch around his decreased velocity, and that he has not changed his approach. He has not been as aggressive pitching inside, but he said that had nothing to do with his power. For Rothschild and Sabathia, the issue is not the speed of his pitches, but the location. Rothschild said Sabathia was pitching with the same reduced velocity earlier in the season, when he looked as good as he ever did. “There’s some inconsistencies,” he said. “He’s missing some spots at times, and he’s not getting away with any pitches. I think you’ll see that all modify itself and take care of itself. Every bad pitch he made got hit.” Rothschild noted that some of Sabathia’s fastballs are cutting over the plate. The pitch that Loney hit out stayed up and over the plate, and the pitch to Rodriguez cut right into his swing zone, Rothschild said. It was only the second home run Rodriguez had hit this season. The other came against Andy Pettitte. Rothschild would not reveal the content of his postgame discussion with Sabathia, saying only that small modifications to Sabathia’s mechanics were necessary. He indicated that all Sabathia needed was a reminder of his past successes. “Look at what you’ve done and what you are, and when you take the mound, that’s what you have to know,” Rothschild said he would tell Sabathia. “And not only does he know it, but everybody he faces knows it. That’s all part of the game. The track record is there, and not just because of the stuff he’s had. It’s because of the way he competes. There’s a lot of guys with great stuff who haven’t won the games that he’s won. So, I think you’ll see him get back to it.” INSIDE PITCH The left-handed reliever David Huff made his Yankees debut and allowed one run. The Yankees designated Ben Francisco for assignment to make room on the roster for Huff. ... The Yankees won two of three games in the series but have not swept a series of at least three games at Tropicana Field since 2005. ... Kevin Youkilis was at Sunday’s game and said that his back was feeling better and that he was ready to begin playing in minor league rehabilitation games. | C C Sabathia;Yankees;Tampa Bay Rays;Baseball;Mets |
ny0163958 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2006/02/25 | Queens Co-op Has It All: Golf, Shops and a Resident Gadfly | North Shore Towers, an upscale co-op complex in eastern Queens, consists of three hulking 33-story buildings along the Grand Central Parkway near the Nassau County border. The complex has a private 18-hole golf course and an indoor shopping concourse. It has 3,500 residents, many of whom are well-to-do, a $35 million annual budget, underground parking for about 2,800 cars, and its own 500-seat movie theater, ZIP code and power plant. The complex also has Fred Hadley, a self-described aging leftist who spent his youth crusading against the Vietnam War, and who is considered by the co-op's management as a major thorn in the side. Mr. Hadley, who lives in one of the few remaining rent-stabilized apartments in the complex, is still fighting. Only now, his adversaries are the management and co-op board of North Shore Towers, which Mr. Hadley accuses of "ongoing suppression of free speech" by censoring dissent in its public meetings and limiting the distribution of fliers and publications in the buildings. He is waging his public war in hopes of proving that the powers that be at North Shore Towers are bent on squelching opposing views. As the host of a local cable show in Queens and the author of a weekly newsletter, Mr. Hadley criticizes co-op employees and board members. The co-op's management has responded to Mr. Hadley by suing him for slander and libel and threatening him with eviction. "I'm an old lefty, and I'm not going to have my freedom of speech squelched," he said. "I've always been an activist and a gadfly. They just don't want their dirty laundry aired in the complex." The lawsuit against Mr. Hadley, which was filed in State Supreme Court in Queens, claims that he has slandered, libeled and defamed Glen Kotowski, the co-op's general manager. Samuel B. Freed, a Queens lawyer for Three Towers Associates, which owns the rental units in the complex, recently sent Mr. Hadley a letter warning that if he continued "causing unnecessary panic in the community" he could face eviction. The "panic" mentioned in the letter referred to Mr. Hadley's newsletter that he sends as an e-mail message to hundreds of residents. The newsletter often contains articles accusing officials of mismanaging the complex. Neither Mr. Freed nor Errol Brett, a lawyer representing Mr. Kotowski in the lawsuit, offered much detail about the dispute involving Mr. Hadley. Mr. Freed called Mr. Hadley "a unique character." "He has freedom of speech, but can you yell 'fire' in a crowded theater?" he said, adding, "I don't know if it's risen to that level." Mr. Brett said, "Fred means well, but he goes too far sometimes." Mr. Kotowski and Ira Rubin, co-op board president, did not respond to telephone messages seeking comment. To help his cause, Mr. Hadley enlisted the New York Civil Liberties Union, which wrote a letter to co-op board officials advising them that it is illegal to interfere with "the communicative privileges of tenancy." He said the co-op board banned him from board meetings and refused to broadcast meetings of a dissenting residents' group, the Shareholders Association, on the in-house television channel. Mr. Hadley used to videotape board meetings and functions for the complex's television channel, but, in 2004, he said, Mr. Kotowski began instructing him to exclude the comments of some dissenting residents at the meetings. Mr. Hadley protested and soon thereafter, he said, his contract as videographer was terminated. Now Mr. Kotowski and other management officials are regular targets in his newsletter, whose motto is "The True Independent Electronic-Journal of North Shore Towers." In the lawsuit, Mr. Kotowski cited an issue of the newsletter sent out after a fire at the complex in 2004. It included a wanted poster with Mr. Kotowski's image and blamed him for leaving open some fire doors after the fire, which Mr. Hadley considered a security violation. The newsletter also included photographs of what Mr. Hadley believed to be fire code violations. The newsletter also included criticism of a $2 million lobby renovation and accusations that the co-op board runs fraudulent elections. Mr. Hadley also demanded to know if rooftop antenna signals, asbestos and toxins in the golf course's irrigation system have caused a high rate of lung cancer among residents. He quoted a former employee who claimed that security guards were trying to find out how to tap residents' phones. Mr. Hadley, a film projectionist at a movie theater in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, moved into the complex in 1977. All but 150 units, one of which is his apartment, were converted into the co-op in 1987. Mr. Hadley was raised in public housing in Woodside, Queens, and studied film at New York University. He pays $1,400 a month for his spacious one-bedroom apartment on the 25th floor with a view of Manhattan's skyline to the west. It is a tangle of video equipment, conspiracy theory books, and rock records from the 60's and 70's, as well as files obtained through freedom-of-information requests. He walks around the complex lugging thick folders of news clippings and legal documents. He chats with supporters and detractors. He says he has spent $50,000 in legal fees in his dispute with the co-op's management. And he says his recent trip to China, which included a visit to Tiananmen Square and Mao Tse-tung's tomb, only strengthened his resolve. "Part of me enjoys it," he said. "But if they're going to attack the First Amendment, it's my job to protect it." | QUEENS (NYC);NEW YORK CITY;HADLEY FRED;KOTOWSKI GLEN;CENSORSHIP;HOUSING;COOPERATIVES;FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND EXPRESSION;SUITS AND LITIGATION;LIBEL AND SLANDER |
ny0227878 | [
"us"
] | 2010/07/18 | The Pulse: Judge Contributed to Candidate’s Campaign | Scott Lee Cohen, the affluent Chicago pawnbroker who is running for governor as an independent, might seem an unlikely candidate to receive financial backing from a Cook County judge. In February, Mr. Cohen relinquished the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor — he had spent nearly $2 million of his own money to win the race — after it was revealed that his former live-in girlfriend accused him of holding a knife to her throat during a dispute. Mr. Cohen subsequently acknowledged meeting her at a suburban spa where she had been charged with prostitution (Mr. Cohen insisted he received only a “straight massage”). But before these revelations surfaced, Mr. Cohen apparently impressed Anthony Lynn Burrell, a Cook County judge who made three contributions totaling $650 to Mr. Cohen’s campaign committee, Citizens for Scott Lee Cohen. Mr. Burrell’s donations, on Aug. 12 and Aug. 14, 2009, were made public in an amendment to a 2009 campaign finance report filed Monday. Mr. Burrell declined to comment. Illinois judges are required by the state’s judicial code of conduct to “refrain from inappropriate political activity” but are not prohibited from making political contributions. The American Bar Association’s model code of conduct bars judges from contributing to political candidates unless they are currently candidates themselves. Mr. Burrell lost a primary election for a state appellate court vacancy in February. “It’s very unfortunate that we have a system like that here in Illinois,” said Jeffrey M. Shaman, the Vincent de Paul professor of law at DePaul University College of Law and a former senior fellow at the American Judicature Society. Judges’ making campaign donations, Mr. Shaman said, “entraps them in this political system and politicizes the selection of judges.” Mr. Burrell has not contributed to Mr. Cohen again, according to a Cohen campaign spokeswoman. | Chicago (Ill);Campaign Finance |
ny0212693 | [
"business"
] | 2017/01/14 | China Orders Registration of App Stores | HONG KONG — In the clearest sign yet that China’s government has begun a new push to solidify control over mobile apps, a regulator has ordered the registration of app stores across the country. In a notice published on its website, the Cyberspace Administration of China said late Friday that its offices across China should ensure that records are kept on the country’s many app stores, starting Monday. “Many apps have been found to spread illegal information, violate user rights or contain security risks,” the post read. It said the purpose of the registration was to ensure that it is clear who takes responsibility if apps, or app stores, are found to engage in illegal practices. Beijing has begun pushing harder to enforce a law passed last year that barred apps from engaging in activities deemed to endanger national security or disrupt social order, terms that are often broadly applied to discussion of politically sensitive topics. Just three weeks ago, Apple removed the English and Chinese-language news apps of The New York Times from its China app store. Apple said the government had told it that the apps violated local regulations, but the company declined to specify which regulations. While the Chinese authorities have long maintained tight controls over the internet, smartphone apps have presented new challenges. Because Google’s store for apps using its Android operating system is blocked in China, a large number of third-party stores have arisen to take its place. Most of China’s biggest app stores are controlled by its largest internet and smartphone companies, including Tencent, Baidu, Qihoo 360, Xiaomi and Alibaba. The profusion of third-party stores has led to multiple versions of apps and low security standards on the sites where they are commonly downloaded, according to analysts. Government monitoring of content and discussions can also be more difficult on mobile apps than on websites. Content that would be strictly blocked on the internet can often be found on Chinese apps, though the authorities have occasionally banned apps that hosted such content. As with many Chinese laws and government orders, the notice posted Friday is vague, but it does appear to place some responsibility for policing apps’ activity on the app stores themselves. It is also significant because it indicates that the regulator is taking concrete steps to follow up on the law passed last summer . Chinese laws are often intentionally broad and open-ended to allow regulators discretion in enforcing them. For that reason, concrete steps like the registrations ordered Friday can provide the first indication of how laws will be carried out in practice. While the impact the order will have on China’s mobile internet is not clear, it could ultimately lead to a culling of apps that store owners are uncomfortable with, including ones from foreign companies, which could be more difficult to identify or rein in. Still, it may take years for the government to exert control over all the app stores in the country. Carrying out such edicts is often a slow process; for example, efforts to ensure that online profiles are linked to the user’s real name have been continuing for more than a decade. | Mobile Apps;China;Politics;Regulation and Deregulation;Cyberspace Administration of China |
ny0050897 | [
"sports",
"golf"
] | 2014/10/26 | Will MacKenzie Gets Hole in One and Shares Lead | Will MacKenzie made a hole in one and finished with a five-under-par 65 and a share of the lead with Andrew Svoboda in the McGladrey Classic in St. Simons Island, Ga. | Golf;Will MacKenzie;Andrew Svoboda |
ny0199353 | [
"business"
] | 2009/07/06 | Volatile Swings in Oil Prices Hobble Industry | The extreme volatility that has gripped oil markets for the last 18 months has shown no signs of slowing down, with oil prices more than doubling since the beginning of the year despite an exceptionally weak economy. The instability of oil and gas prices is puzzling government officials and policy analysts, who fear it could jeopardize a global recovery. It is also hobbling businesses and consumers, who are already facing the effects of a stinging recession, as they try in vain to guess where prices will be a year from now — or even next month. A wild run on the oil markets has occurred in the last 12 months. Last summer, prices surged to a record high above $145 a barrel, driving up gasoline prices to well over $4 a gallon. As the global economy faltered, oil tumbled to $33 a barrel in December. But oil has risen 55 percent since the beginning of the year, to $70 a barrel, pushing gas prices up again to $2.60 a gallon, according to AAA, the automobile club. “To call this extreme volatility might be an understatement,” said Laura Wright, the chief financial officer at Southwest Airlines , a company that has sought to insure itself against volatile prices by buying long-term oil contracts. “Over the past 15 to 18 months, this has been unprecedented. I don’t think it can be easily rationalized.” Volatility in the oil markets in the last year has reached levels not recorded since the energy shocks of the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to Costanza Jacazio, an energy analyst at Barclays Capital in New York. At the close of last week’s trading, oil futures fell $2.58, to $66.73 a barrel, after rising above $72 a barrel last month. These gyrations have rippled across the economy. The automakers General Motors and Chrysler have been forced into bankruptcy as customers shun their gas guzzlers. Airlines are on pace for another year of deep losses because of rising jet fuel costs. And households, already crimped by falling home prices, mounting job losses and credit pressures, are once more forced to monitor their discretionary spending as energy prices rise. While the movements in the oil markets have been similar to swings in most asset classes, including stocks and other commodities, the recent rise in oil prices is reprising the debate from last year over the role of investors — or speculators — in the commodity markets. Government officials around the world have become concerned about a possible replay of last year’s surge. Energy officials from the European Union and OPEC , meeting in Vienna last month, said that “the speculation issue had not been resolved yet and that the 2008 bubble could be repeated” without more oversight. Many factors that pushed oil prices up last year have returned. Supply fears are creeping back into the market, with a new round of violence in Nigeria ’s oil-rich Niger Delta crimping production. And there are increasing fears that the political instability in Iran could spill over onto the oil market, potentially hampering the country’s exports. The OPEC cartel has also been remarkably successful in reining in production in recent months to keep prices from falling. Even as prices recovered, members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries have been unwilling to open their taps. Top officials said that OPEC’s goal was to achieve $75 a barrel oil by the end of the year, a target that has been endorsed by Saudi Arabia , the group’s kingpin. “Neither the organization, nor its key members, has any real interest in halting the rise in oil prices,” said a report by the Center for Global Energy Studies, a consulting group in London founded by Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, a former Saudi oil minister. But unlike most of 2007, when the economy was still not in recession and demand for commodities was strong, the world today is mired in its worst slump in over half a century. The World Bank warned the recession would be deeper than previously thought and said any recovery next year would be subdued. The International Energy Agency held out the prospect that energy demand was unlikely to recover before 2014. Yet the indicators that would traditionally signal lower prices — like high oil inventories or OPEC’s large spare production capacity — do not seem to hold much weight today, analysts said. “Crude oil prices appear to have been divorced from the underlying fundamentals of weak demand, ample supply and high inventories,” Deutsche Bank analysts said in a recent report. Investors are betting that the worst of the economic slump may be coming to an end, and are bidding up what they perceive will become scare resources once demand kicks back again, analysts said. This uncertainty is making it difficult for companies to plan ahead, they said. “People do not like that kind of volatility, they want to know what their costs are going to be,” said Bernard Baumohl, the chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group. For the global airline industry, the latest price surge is certain to translate into more losses this year, according to the industry’s trade group, I.A.T.A. Airlines are expected to post losses of $9 billion this year, following last year’s losses of $10.4 billion. “Airlines have not yet felt the full impact of this oil price rise,” according to I.A.T.A.’s latest report. At Southwest Airlines, for example, fuel accounts for about a third of the company’s costs, according to Ms. Wright, the chief financial officer. The experience of the past year, she said, “has convinced us we cannot afford to not be hedged.” The company has currently hedged part of its fuel use for the second half of the year at $71 a barrel, and for 2010 at $77 a barrel. Hedging acts as an insurance policy if prices rise above these levels. But last year, Southwest reported two consecutive quarters of losses, as prices spiked and collapsed — all within a few months. “Prices were falling faster than we could de-hedge,” Ms. Wright said. To survive the slump, many airlines have cut routes and raised both fares and fees, like charging for luggage, while some of the industry’s top players have merged. For example, Delta Air Lines bought Northwest Airlines last year, and in Europe , Lufthansa of Germany bought Austrian Airlines and Air France-KLM acquired Alitalia of Italy . Likewise, automobile showrooms emptied out as gasoline prices rose, forcing General Motors and Chrysler to cut production sharply as they wade through bankruptcy. Meanwhile, they are under pressure from Washington to improve their fuel ratings. “Do not believe for an instant that sport utilities are making a comeback,” George Pipas, Ford ’s chief sales analyst, told reporters last week. But to Jeroen van der Veer, who retired as chief executive officer of Royal Dutch Shell last week, prices are increasingly dictated by long-term assessments of supply and demand, rather than current market fundamentals. He advised taking a long-term view of the market. “Oil has never been very stable,” Mr. van der Veer said. “If you look at history, you have to expect more volatility.” | Oil and Gasoline;Price;Subprime Mortgage Crisis,2008 Financial Crisis;Recession and Depression;International trade;Economy;OPEC;International Energy Agency |
ny0067068 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2014/12/03 | Symbolic Vote in France Backs Palestinian State | PARIS — First it was the British and the Irish. Then the Swedes and the Spanish. And on Tuesday, the French, too, added their weight to the push for recognition of a Palestinian state. The vote in the French lower house of Parliament favoring such a step was a largely symbolic move. But it was the fifth such gesture in two months, and arguably the most important, in what has amounted to a cascade of support for the Palestinian cause and a widening torrent of criticism of Israeli policy across Europe. Though the vote is unlikely to affect France’s foreign policy, it nevertheless carries particular resonance coming from a country with the largest Muslim and Jewish populations in Europe. As such, France itself has become something of a proxy playing field for the Arab-Israeli conflict, which this summer spilled over into the streets of cities around the country with sometimes violent protests during Israel ’s military campaign against Hamas. Similarly, the French vote, and the other moves, accompany a worrying rise in anti-Semitism in Europe that some have linked to intensifying antipathy toward Israel, as well as growing radicalism among young European Muslims who have been lured to jihad in Syria. Serge Cwajgenbaum, the secretary general of the European Jewish Congress, an organization in Brussels representing European Jews, played down the political consequences of the vote, calling it toothless. But he said it reflected a worrying attitude in some quarters of Europe that threatened to further undermine the faltering Middle East peace process. Mr. Cwajgenbaum said he feared the vote was an effort by some on the French left to curry favor with Muslim voters. “Such votes can have negative consequences for the Middle East peace process because it can radicalize people, while pushing Palestinians to abandon the negotiating table in favor of seeking recognitions,” Mr. Cwajgenbaum said. “I can’t exclude the possibility that there can be repercussions of the vote on the Jewish community,” he added, “as criticism of Israel can be construed by some extremists as an excuse for incitement against Jews.” The Israeli Embassy in Paris condemned the vote. It said Israel considered it “an error that sent the wrong message to leaders and people in the region.” It noted that French policy remained unchanged, namely, that only a negotiated solution would bring an end to the conflict. Other European nations like Sweden, Britain, Ireland and Spain have taken steps in support of a Palestinian state as attitudes toward Israel harden. The European Parliament said in a statement last month that it would debate and vote on a resolution on the recognition of Palestinian statehood during its plenary session on Dec. 15 in Strasbourg, France. Israel has sought to play down the importance of the recent steps in Europe recognizing a Palestinian state, saying that only a negotiated settlement can achieve a solution to the conflict and warning against unilateral action by third parties. Nevertheless, the strength of the vote in France, one of the most influential countries in the European Union, is harder to ignore. The lower house of Parliament voted 339 to 151 in favor of the nonbinding motion to recognize a Palestinian state, which was initiated by the governing Socialist Party. It is expected to pass the Senate later this month. The vote urged the government to “recognize the state of Palestine” in order to “reinforce our country’s diplomatic action, prevail over hate speech everywhere and contribute to the establishment of peace in the Middle East.” The vote is unlikely to result in a change of the French government’s diplomatic support for Israel. President François Hollande, who supports Israel, has distanced himself from the vote. After the conflict in Gaza this summer, Mr. Hollande drew criticism from commentators of different political stripes for expressing solidarity with Israel, underlining the fragile balance he has sought to maintain between retaining Israel as a close ally, not alienating Muslim voters, and seeking to buttress the Middle East peace process. Nevertheless, the strident tone of parts of the parliamentary motion and the wide margin of passage reflect Europe’s growing impatience with the breakdown of negotiations over a two-state solution, the conflict in Gaza and additional Israeli settlements despite international criticism, even from close allies like France. While few across the French political spectrum oppose the recognition of a Palestinian state, some leading voices of the opposition criticized the timing of the vote and said they would not support it. Others refused to back it, saying it would amount to supporting the militant Palestinian movement Hamas. Speaking before the vote, the former president, Nicolas Sarkozy, said he supported a Palestinian state. But he also voiced unwavering support for Israel. “I will not accept that the security of Israel be questioned,” Mr. Sarkozy said. “It is the battle of my life.” Mr. Sarkozy was elected the leader of his center-right Union for a Popular Movement on Saturday and is expected to run in the 2017 presidential election. Leaders in France’s Jewish community also criticized the vote. In recent months, as violence flared during the Gaza war, they warned that criticism of Israeli policy was being seized by some to promote anti-Semitism. They urged the media to avoid equating the Jewish community with Israeli policies and warned against importing the Arab-Israeli conflict into France. Thousands of Jews have left France in recent years , with Israel a favored destination. In November, European foreign ministers denounced the “unbearable situation” in Gaza. They also cited Israel’s expropriation of land near Bethlehem, in the West Bank, and its plans to build new settlements, particularly in Givat Hamatos, a neighborhood on the southern flank of East Jerusalem. France has long backed a two-state solution, especially under former President François Mitterrand, “who understood since 1982 that we needed two states,” said Jean-Paul Chagnollaud, who heads the Institute of Mediterranean and Middle East Research and Studies, based in Paris. In 1988, Mr. Mitterrand’s decision to welcome Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, drew criticism from many Socialist lawmakers and local Jewish figures. Mr. Arafat died in a Paris hospital in 2004 at the age of 75. But, Mr. Chagnollaud said, a vote recognizing the Palestinian state would also clarify years of “sometimes unbalanced” foreign policy in the region. As French lawmakers debated the vote on Friday, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told them that France was spearheading an effort at the United Nations to pass a Security Council resolution to restart and conclude peace talks. Palestine was upgraded to a nonmember observer state at the United Nations in 2012. More than 130 countries have recognized Palestinian statehood. “And if this final effort to reach a negotiated solution fails?” Mr. Fabius asked Parliament rhetorically. “If this last attempt to find a negotiated solution doesn’t succeed, then France will have to do what it takes by recognizing without delay the Palestinian state. We are ready for it.” | Israel;France;Palestinians;Socialist Party |
ny0229570 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2010/07/25 | 2 Americans Are Captured Near Kabul | KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban militants captured two American service members who were driving a civilian vehicle in a particularly dangerous region of Logar Province south of Kabul on Friday, according to officials and local residents. The capture prompted a wide manhunt by the American military, including searches by military helicopters and radio broadcasts of a $20,000 reward for information leading to the Americans’ return. Local officials in Logar began receiving unconfirmed reports late Saturday afternoon that one of the two Americans may have been killed, and that the other one was still alive, said Din Mohammed Darwish, the spokesman for the Logar provincial governor. A NATO official said he did not know whether that was true. The Taliban have reportedly claimed responsibility for seizing the two Americans, but Mr. Darwish said local officials knew little more. “We don’t know what their demands are,” he said. News of the capture came on the same day that five other American service members were killed in southern Afghanistan in two separate bomb attacks. A NATO statement said that four of them died in a one bombing, and one died in another blast. Fifty-six American troops have died in Afghanistan so far this month, according to icasualties.org , which tracks military fatalities. The toll for July is now close to last month’s total of 60 United States troops, the largest number of American deaths in the nearly nine-year war. In a terse statement, the American-led NATO military command said Saturday evening that the two missing Americans had left a compound in Kabul on Friday afternoon, but the statement did not address why they had traveled to Logar. The two service members “departed their compound in Kabul City in a vehicle on Friday afternoon and did not return,” the statement said, adding that troops in military vehicles and helicopters were now searching for them. Mr. Darwish, the governor’s spokesman, said the two Americans were dressed in civilian clothes, and were seized while they were driving in an armored sport utility vehicle early Friday evening in the Charkh District of southern Logar Province, a Taliban hotbed . “The area is very bad in terms of security,” he said. He said they were seized in an area locally known as Matani, inside Charkh, about 10 miles south of the provincial capital, Pul-i-Alam. The area is about 60 miles south of Kabul. A NATO official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, would not say whether the service members’ trip was sanctioned by the military. The official did confirm that the two were American military service members, not civilians, nor members of a State Department provincial reconstruction team. But he said he did not know whether they were wearing military uniforms or civilian clothes. Local residents said the Americans had been taken while they were driving in an armored S.U.V. They said a local radio station broadcast that NATO forces were offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to their safe return. The only American service member known to be in Taliban captivity is Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl of Idaho, who was captured in June 2009, in Paktika Province. Military officials had initially reported that he had walked off his post in eastern Afghanistan. But in a video sent out by the Taliban, Private Bergdahl said he had been captured after he lagged behind during a patrol. | North Atlantic Treaty Organization;Afghanistan War (2001- );Afghanistan |
ny0287264 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2016/08/27 | Amtrak’s Answer for Aging Acela Fleet: 160 M.P.H. Trains | WASHINGTON — A new era of high-speed train travel is coming to the nation’s busiest rail corridor. Federal officials on Friday announced a $2.45 billion loan to Amtrak for the purchase of state-of-the-art trains to replace the aging Acela trains that use the Northeast Corridor from Washington to Boston. Amtrak plans to put the first of 28 new trains into service in about five years. Once they are fully deployed, officials expect the Acela to depart every half-hour between Washington and New York and every hour between New York and Boston. That should increase passenger capacity by about 40 percent, they said. While the new trains will not approach the speeds of some Asian and European trains, officials said they hoped that the new Acela would travel at 160 miles per hour in some places, up from 135 m.p.h. now. The trains will theoretically be able to go faster than 160 m.p.h., though that would require a huge upgrade of the track system. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a longtime Amtrak supporter who frequently travels by train between Washington and his home in Delaware, announced the loan at the station in Wilmington that is named in his honor. “We need these kinds of investments to keep this region — and our whole country — moving, and to create new jobs,” Mr. Biden said. Anthony R. Coscia, Amtrak’s chairman, said the railroad service was “responding to a change in the United States of people moving into the cities, of people looking for city-to-city connections.” The Acela trains have become one of the most successful parts of the Amtrak system. Over the last decade, they have helped train service displace airplanes as the most popular mode of travel in the Northeast Corridor. Acela trains carry about 3.4 million passengers a year between the three major cities. But nearly 15 years after America’s first high-speed trains began coursing between Washington and Boston, the 20 current Acela trains are nearing the end of their usable lives. Transportation officials said Amtrak first considered overhauling the existing Acela trains, 17 of which are operating at any given time. But that would have been disruptive and costly, the officials said. The new trains will be manufactured in New York State by Alstom, a French company that builds high-speed trains around the globe. For Amtrak, Alstom will build a version of the Avelia Liberty , which the company’s website describes as having “an innovative compact power car and nine passenger cars, with the possibility of three more being added if demand grows.” The company says the train is capable of traveling at 186 m.p.h. Like the existing Acela trains, the new ones will have business-class cars, a cafe car, a first-class car and a quiet car, where the use of cellphones is discouraged. The new trains will also offer better accessibility for people with disabilities. Officials said about $2 billion would be spent on the new trains. The rest of the loan will be used to upgrade several stations, including those in New York and Washington, and to improve track reliability and safety. Amtrak expects increased revenue from the more frequent Acela service to help it pay back the loan, the biggest in the history of the Department of Transportation , officials said. The existing Acela trains will be completely phased out by the end of 2022, they said. “This is a serious, serious upgrade,” Mr. Biden said. “You would need seven more lanes on I-95 to accommodate the traffic if Amtrak shut down.” | Railroads;High Speed Rail;Amtrak;Transportation Department;Joe Biden;Anthony R Coscia;I95;NYC;Washington DC;Northeastern States |
ny0200695 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2009/09/16 | Iran Arrests Children of Dissident Clerics | TORONTO — Authorities in Iran have arrested at least seven children and grandchildren of senior clerics in the religious city of Qum and threatened to arrest the son of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani , the powerful cleric and a former president, in what appeared to be fresh pressure on religious leaders who sympathize with the opposition. The arrests, reported by several opposition Web sites on Tuesday but apparently carried out on Monday, coincided with a harsh rebuke of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei , from a senior cleric who is an outspoken dissident, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri , who urged colleagues to support the opposition movement. Ayatollah Khamenei has the final say on state matters and has issued fierce warnings against Iranians who have challenged the June 12 election, which the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , officially won by a landslide. The opposition, which includes Mr. Ahmadinejad’s two main challengers in the election, Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hussein Moussavi , has called the election a fraud and has sharply criticized the government’s violent suppression of postelection protests. The latest arrests appeared to be part of efforts to intimidate senior clerics and silence the younger generation in Qum who have been instrumental in reporting the use of violence in the capital, Tehran, and other large cities to traditional clerics. Such clerics ordinarily pay little attention to the news and some were unaware of the events. Mr. Karroubi and Mr. Moussavi have called on their supporters to attend the annual pro- Palestinian rally on Friday, known as Quds Day, to stage protests against the government. Mr. Moussavi announced Tuesday that he would participate. Ayatollah Montazeri’s three grandchildren, 18 to 22 years old, were arrested Monday evening in Qum, at the home of his son and their father, Ahmad Montazeri, who runs the ayatollah’s office, the opposition Web site mowjcamp.com reported. The Web site also reported that Mehdi Moussavi Tabrizi, the son of Hussein Moussavi Tabrizi, who heads the Association of Teachers and Researchers of Qum and has issued statements supporting the opposition, was arrested, as were the son of Ayatollah Asghar Nazemzadeh and two sons of another member of the association. In another development, Hamid Rassai, a conservative member of Parliament, called Monday before his fellow legislators for the arrest of Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani, the son of Mr. Rafsanjani, the Fars news agency reported. Many senior officials have accused the son of orchestrating the antigovernment unrest. The senior Mr. Rafsanjani leads the influential Council of Experts, which has the power to dismiss Ayatollah Khamenei. Mr. Rafsanjani sided with the opposition last month, but has behaved cautiously. He enjoys support among traditional clerics who have not sided with the opposition leaders. However, there are no indications that the Council of Experts would challenge Ayatollah Khamenei. Mohsen Kadivar, a senior cleric and visiting professor at Duke University, said it was unlikely that the Council of Experts would try to dismiss the ayatollah. He said that members “would not stand against Mr. Khamenei and easily give in to pressure.” In what appeared to be another sign that loyal conservatives are upset, a conservative filmmaker and activist wrote an unusual letter to Ayatollah Khamenei on Monday blaming him for the postelection violence. “As a commander in chief of the armed forces, you did not treat people well after the election,” wrote the filmmaker, Mohammad Nourizad, in the letter posted on several Web sites including his blog . “Your agents opened fire, killed the people, beat them and destroyed and burnt their property. Your role in this cannot be ignored.” | Iran;Political Prisoners;Politics and Government;Khamenei Ali;Ahmadinejad Mahmoud;Karroubi Mehdi;Moussavi Mir Hussein;Kadivar Mohsen |
ny0241652 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2011/03/20 | Hamas Bombards Southern Israel, Escalating Tensions | JERUSALEM — Hamas militants fired dozens of mortar shells from Gaza into southern Israel during a 15-minute period on Saturday morning, slightly injuring two Israeli civilians and sharply escalating tensions along the Israel-Gaza border. The Israeli military responded to the unusually intense barrage with tank and helicopter fire. Gaza officials reported that five Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire directed at a Hamas security facility east of Gaza City, including three security officers and two civilians, one of them a child. In an uncommon step, the military wing of Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza, took responsibility for the mortar fire. Although it has allowed smaller groups to carry out sporadic attacks against Israel, Hamas has largely maintained a cease-fire since Israel’s devastating three-week military offensive in Gaza that ended in January 2009 and that came after years of persistent rocket and mortar fire against southern Israel. The Hamas military wing said in a statement that it had fired 33 mortar shells, though the Israeli police put the number at closer to 50. And while Hamas said that it was firing at Israeli military bases along the border, mortar fire is notoriously inaccurate, and the Israeli side of the border is dotted with villages and communal farms. An Israeli military spokeswoman, speaking on condition of anonymity under army rules, said the mortar shells fell all along the border, but could not specify where for security reasons. The Israeli news Web site Ynet showed pictures of a damaged house in one of the communities and of another mortar shell that fell near a playground. Hamas said that it was retaliating for Israeli attacks on Gaza. On Thursday, two Hamas militants were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a training camp. The Israeli military said the strike was in response to the firing of a military-use projectile from Gaza into southern Israel earlier that morning. The show of force by Hamas militants came amid talk by the rival Palestinian leaderships of the West Bank and Gaza about reviving efforts toward internal unity . There has been increasing public pressure to end the political division between Hamas-run Gaza and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006 and then, after a period of factional fighting, routed Fatah forces in Gaza and took full control in June 2007. Saturday’s escalation raised the possibility that the Hamas military wing opposes the tentative moves toward unity that were welcomed by the local political leadership in Gaza. It also came against the background of Israel’s capture on Tuesday of a shipment of weapons that Israel says were bound for Gaza. Israel found the weapons on board a merchant ship intercepted by its naval forces en route from Turkey to Egypt. The weapons included more than 2,000 mortar shells and six advanced anti-ship missiles. Also Saturday, a group of about 10 men suspected of being Hamas security officers broke into several media offices in Gaza City, chasing down journalists who had filmed Hamas police officers forcefully dispersing a peaceful demonstration for Palestinian unity. The intruders, armed with handguns and batons, ransacked the Reuters bureau, smashing a television and camera tripods. They struck one Palestinian Reuters journalist on the arm with a metal bar and threatened to throw another out of the window of the high-rise building, Reuters reported. They also broke into the offices of CNN, Japan’s NHK station and Mayadeen Media Group, a local production company, where they beat a cameraman with a club on his head. They confiscated videotapes and cameras from some of the media companies. The offices that were broken into overlook the Square of the Unknown Soldier, where the demonstration took place. The men told Reuters journalists that they were from the internal security services of Hamas, but they showed no documents, Reuters reported. Fathi Hammad, Hamas’s interior minister, met a delegation of journalists and promised to investigate the attacks. He denied that the assailants were from Hamas. | Israel;Hamas;Politics and Government;Defense and Military Forces |
ny0234186 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2010/01/02 | With New Year’s Eve Send-Off, Tavern on the Green Closes | It ended as it all began, in a rush of light. But even the brilliance of its mirrored corridors, twinkling trees and shimmering heirloom chandeliers could not avert the bankruptcy blackout of Tavern on the Green . And so there was a last waltz. With formidable revelry and not a few tears, some 1,700 New Year’s Eve celebrators paid $125 to $500 a person for the privilege of welcoming 2010 with a last, vast, rollicking hurrah for the landmark restaurant in Central Park . It shuttered after 4 a.m. Friday for at least six weeks before facing an uncertain future: a new operator, a new décor and possibly even a new name. “Obviously there is sadness here, but I think Warner would be very happy about how we finished this,” said Michael Desiderio, Tavern’s chief operating officer, referring to Warner LeRoy, the legendary restaurateur who reinvented it in 1976. “He gave a wonderful gift to New York, so in a way, this is a celebration.” Shelley Clark, a spokeswoman, said that Jennifer Oz LeRoy, the 30-year-old chief executive of Tavern, was too distraught to attend, explaining that it would have been unseemly “for her to be celebrating when so many people would be out of work.” Ms. LeRoy presided over the end of her family’s long reign after her father, Mr. LeRoy, died in 2001 at the age of 65. Some 20 million patrons have visited since 1976. Given the historic import and sheer scope, it was the night’s most prominent celebration, said Andrew Fox, who heads Newyears.com , which hosted more than 40 New York parties on Thursday night. There were 300 seated partygoers in the restaurant’s Park and Chestnut Rooms, and the remainder of the guests roved among the buffet tables, open bars, disc jockeys, jazz ensembles and strolling guitarists in the Crystal, Rafters and Terrace Rooms. By 10 p.m. every nook, cranny and crevice of Tavern was jammed. Outside, in the run-up to midnight, an unending sleet-pelted line of limos at Warner LeRoy Place — the official name of the 67th Street extension to Tavern’s front door — delivered guests who queued in a slushy shuffle until they could enter the winter palace. Inside, wreaths ringed the stained-glass windows. Lasers played on the Waterford chandeliers. Santa stockings dangled from the rafters. And holiday swags swathed the mirrored walls. The party was a destination for some visitors at the sold-out event. “This is the last night to be part of the history,” said Judy Tucker, who traveled from Houston with her husband, Larry, just for the party because “it was the place to come to.” Reminiscences were rampant. Anthony J. Micari, 68, and his 66-year-old wife, Maria, recalled their wedding — and reception for 130 — at Tavern on June 4, 1972. “We think it’s the most beautiful place in the world,” he said. They were happily tucking into their menu of Hudson Valley foie gras, tataki bluefin tuna salad and rack of Colorado lamb. “This really was the place to celebrate,” said Tony Musich, a retired telecommunications manager whose wife, Mary Ann, was a Tavern regular. Even Mr. Desiderio shared his Tavern memories: He met his wife, Karen, in the restaurant 13 years ago, and “I grew up here,” he said. There were, however, first-timers in the crowd. “I can’t believe it’s so big,” said Stephanie Stuart, navigating the corridors with Bob Stoddard, who had asked her out on what she said was “a great New Year’s date.” She had a sense that history was being made, “and in the future,” she said, “I think it will mean something to us that we were here.” But if Tavern’s flameout was Champagne-rich, the restaurant’s outlook was grim. In August the city awarded a 20-year license starting in 2010 to a new Tavern operator, Dean J. Poll, who runs the Boathouse restaurant in Central Park. Mr. Poll has yet to sign a contract with Tavern’s landlord, the Department of Parks and Recreation. His lawyer, Barry B. LePatner, said before New Year’s that “we expect to finalize an agreement with the city shortly,” but a key to that accord is a settlement with the powerful Hotel Trades Council, the union that represents some 400 Tavern employees. Negotiations are stalled. And the restaurant’s vast assemblage of candelabras, samovars, weather vanes, sculptures, murals, prints, lighting fixtures, topiaries and other eccentric assets is to go on the auction block in a three-day sale at the restaurant by Guernsey’s auction house, scheduled to begin Jan. 13. The assets of Tavern are being aggressively contested in two federal courts as hundreds of butchers, bakers, balloon artists and other purveyors try to keep alive their hopes for repayment. In dispute is even the ownership of its name. Some Tavern staffers professed optimism despite the tear in the eye. “I fully believe this staff will return,” said Wendy Baranello, a 57-year-old server who has worked the tables at Tavern for 32 years. “We’ve had a good long run, and I think Mr. Poll will make it even longer.” To another server, Jesus Montesano, the staff of Tavern “is a family,” he said, “and we hope we can keep our family together.” The name-ownership issue has been a flash point in Tavern’s bankruptcy case because the name — which has been appraised at $19 million — is potentially the restaurant’s most valuable asset. But early Friday morning, the restaurant still called Tavern on the Green was aglow in its swan song. And as the party-hardy partied on, Tavern on the Green did not go gentle into that good night. “It was about getting this night right,” said Mr. Desiderio, perhaps speaking for all of those who would rage, rage, against the dying of the light. | Tavern on the Green;New Year |
ny0030519 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2013/06/19 | Muslim Woman Suffers Miscarriage After Attack in France | PARIS — A pregnant Muslim woman who was attacked for wearing a facial veil on Thursday in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil suffered a miscarriage and lost her baby, her lawyer said on Tuesday. Two men attacked the 21-year-old woman, trying to remove her head scarf and later cutting off her hair, and reportedly shouted anti-Islamic taunts at her. The woman, four months pregnant, had been kicked in the stomach, her lawyer, Hosni Maati, told Agence France-Presse. On Saturday in Bordeaux, six Chinese students were attacked by three French youths, ages 19 and 20, shouting racial insults. The youths were arrested and the attack brought a protest from Beijing. | France;Muslim Veiling;Women and Girls;Miscarriage |
ny0186794 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2009/04/04 | Police Continue Questioning of Israeli Foreign Minister | JERUSALEM — Avigdor Lieberman , the new foreign minister of Israel , was questioned by the national fraud squad for hours on Thursday and again on Friday, according to a police spokesman, as part of a longstanding investigation into suspicions of bribery, money laundering and breach of trust. Also Thursday, a Palestinian wielding a pickax killed an Israeli boy, 13, and wounded another, 7, in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank before fleeing, witnesses and the Israeli authorities said. Israeli officials said that the father of the wounded 7-year-old, Ofer Gamliel, is serving a 15-year prison term for planting a bomb outside a Palestinian girls’ school in Jerusalem in 2002. But there was no evidence that the attack on the boy was retaliatory. Mr. Lieberman caused an uproar on Wednesday, his first day as foreign minister, declaring in a blunt speech that Israel was not obligated to continue an American-backed peace effort with the Palestinians, started at a conference in Annapolis, Md., in late 2007. The police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said the interrogation did not come as a surprise but was coordinated with Mr. Lieberman several days in advance. Mr. Lieberman was questioned for seven hours on Thursday, and an additional five hours on Friday, and “will be questioned again in the future,” Mr. Rosenfeld said. Mr. Lieberman is part of the new government led by Benjamin Netanyahu and his conservative Likud Party, which was sworn in late Tuesday. Mr. Lieberman leads the hawkish party, Yisrael Beiteinu, an important partner in the governing coalition and the third largest party in Parliament. Critics of Mr. Lieberman were outraged at the outcome of the recent coalition negotiations, which put Yisrael Beiteinu in charge of the Ministry of Public Security, which is responsible for the police. The new public security minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, is highly regarded as a former deputy commissioner of the national police. Nevertheless, police officials expressed surprise when Mr. Lieberman, the party chief, took the unusual step of turning up at Mr. Aharonovitch’s inauguration ceremony on Wednesday. The police have been investigating Mr. Lieberman’s business dealings for 13 years, but he has never been charged. He has frequently railed against the police, accusing them of persecution. Mr. Aharonovitch said Thursday that he had no intention of intervening in the investigations of public figures, and Mr. Lieberman’s office said that he had fully cooperated with the police investigators. The police spokesman said that the investigation was continuing and that Mr. Lieberman would be questioned again. The teenager killed in Bat Ayin, a settlement south of Jerusalem, Shlomo Nativ, was attacked around midday outside a youth club about 50 yards from his home. Witnesses said he managed to reach the house, where he collapsed and died. Several Palestinian groups claimed responsibility for the attack — among them Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group linked to the Fatah movement of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas — but the authorities did not rule out the possibility that the assailant was acting alone. “The new Israeli government will have a zero-tolerance policy toward these sorts of terrorist attacks and refuses to accept them as routine,” said Mark Regev, a government spokesman. “The Palestinian government must both in word and in deed also have a zero-tolerance policy to demonstrate its commitment to peace and reconciliation.” Officials in the new government, which is dominated by right-wing and religious parties, have signaled a new approach toward the Palestinians, involving fewer Israeli concessions and more proof from the Palestinian side that it wants peace. An official in the prime minister’s office, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, noted that Mr. Abbas, the Palestinian president, had used “strong language” to attack Mr. Netanyahu on Wednesday, calling him a man who “does not believe in peace.” Instead of giving “fiery speeches,” the Israeli official suggested, “perhaps Mr. Abbas and his people could do more to fight terrorism. There is clearly much to be done.” Bat Ayin, home to about a thousand Israelis, is in the Etzion settlement bloc. Israel intends to keep the area under any future peace accord with the Palestinians, who demand the whole of the West Bank as part of an independent Palestinian state. Shocked residents of Bat Ayin wept and embraced one another in the aftermath of the attack. Daniel Kohn, the New York-born rabbi of the community, said by telephone that there was “on the one hand a great desire here for conciliation and peace in this land.” But, he added, any peace would have to be based on “a very firm conviction of our place here.” Rabbi Kohn described the boy killed in the attack, whom he said he had known well, as “sweet and pure, very devoted spiritually, and involved in giving in private and modest ways.” Avinoam Maimon, 45, a resident of Bat Ayin, described how he struggled with the assailant and managed to disarm him before he escaped. Shaul Goldstein, the leader of the regional Etzion council, said he hoped that the new government would reinstate money cut from the budget to help the army protect the residents of “Judea and Samaria,” using the biblical name for the West Bank. | Lieberman Avigdor;Frauds and Swindling;Israel |
ny0112153 | [
"technology",
"personaltech"
] | 2012/02/09 | Apps to Help Singles Flirt Their Way to Romance | Some people are born flirts. For everyone else, a pocket-size Cyrano de Bergerac awaits. With Valentine’s Day approaching, more apps to help singles flirt their way to romantic attachment are popping up on mobile devices. The Web abounds with matchmaking sites like Match.com, eHarmony, Jazzed and Grindr, and all those services have apps for people who want to arrange dates remotely. But flirting apps are different. Some are meant to solve the so-called last yard problem, in which a prospective flirter might lose the nerve to say hello, while other apps help people engage more with people they’ve already met. IFlirt4U ($1 on Apple) is for the first-time encounter. It’s for across-the-room flirtations, presumably in dark and loud nightclubs. The app displays short, flirty phrases on the screen, one word at a time, in extra-large white type against a black background. Just point the phone at your crush and let it do the work. It has seven phrases to choose from, including the traditional lines like “you are cute,” “you are hot” and “can I buy you a drink?” (Given the huge value of many free apps, it’s a little disconcerting to see only seven phrases in this app for $1. But if it manages to help someone secure a date, it’s arguably worth the buck.) The phrases appear slowly on the screen, and in a typeface big enough that recipients could understand them from 10 yards away — plus or minus a couple of yards, depending on the recipient’s blood alcohol content and visual acuity. Sometimes there is a second helpful step. The “Can I get your number?” screen includes small yes and no buttons. The no button yields a “too bad!” message, but the yes button opens the phone’s contact list to a new page. If you don’t want your phone to do more than provide specific lines, you can turn to apps meant to help with flirting strategies. Of the ones I tested, How to Flirt - wikiHow (free on Apple) was the most useful. The content is divided into three main categories — steps, tips and warnings — with concise and generally useful tips on how to start and sustain a conversation with a stranger. In the “steps” section, for instance, users are walked through its nine phases of a successful flirtation, from the initial approach to asking for a person’s phone number. (Step 5, on initiating a conversation: “What you say isn’t important. You are simply inviting the person to talk with you.”) The app includes a two-minute video, as well, with more specific advice. It features a more professional design than many others in this genre, but the layout is marred by ads, and the advice is occasionally strange. “If the person seems unresponsive, there’s the possibility that they are on the autism spectrum,” it suggests at one point. At another, it characterizes funerals as “generally not good places to flirt.” Both the iTunes App Store and the Android Market feature multiple apps that carry the flirting banner, but the apps mostly perform like dating services. FlirtMaps, Flirtomatic and Speed Flirt, for instance, allow you to post profiles and photos quickly and scroll through those posted by others. You can send “winks” or invite strangers to chat. This is also the approach of better-known apps and online services like Skout, Flurv and Grindr. These are not the user-friendliest pieces of technology, though. Many don’t let you sort people according to geographic distance, for instance, so it’s easy to waste time flipping through poor matches. FlirtMaps (free on Apple and Android ) shows the actual neighborhood of the people profiled. Indeed, in an unsettling bit of disclosure, the app’s mapping feature appears to show each person’s precise location. (The company says the locations shown are just an approximation.) Some people have little trouble connecting with strangers, face to face or otherwise. For them, the bigger problem is simply managing all their romantic ambitions. Axe Auto Romeo (free on Apple and Android ) is aimed at this population — specifically, men who want to maximize their flirting efficiency. The app’s core feature is a database of cheeky texts. Auto Romeo prompts you to make a “flirt list” by choosing names from the phone’s contact list, and then asks for the contact’s first name, hair and eye color, best feature, the place and date you met, and birthday. (It sends a reminder for birthdays.) After selecting someone from your flirt list, you then choose whether your communications should be “warm,” “hot” or “steamy,” and select a one-liner to send. The app then opens a chat window with the flirty text ready and waiting to send. Among the “warm” texts are lines like these: “I could lose myself in your sparkling green eyes” and “Is it hot today or is it you?” The “hot” selections include: “I spend hours daydreaming about your dimples” and “Your green eyes seem to hypnotize!” The “steamy” texts include a few extremely off-color ones, and tamer fare like these:: “When I look into your blue eyes, I see a better place I want to be a part of” and “I think I could fall madly in bed with you.” It’s an uneven mix, clearly. Given that most of these messages are gender-neutral and devoid of specifically heterosexual references, the app’s branding unnecessarily confines it to men who flirt with women. But others may also wish to download the app, if only for sniffing out the flirts on their list who use it. Quick Calls Emusic, a new (and free) music app for iPad , is a great way to discover new music and learn about various genres. ... Ultimate Guitar Tabs ($3 on Android and Apple ) recently introduced a new version with improved tablature tools. ... In the Kitchen ($2 on Android and Apple ), from the Food Network, has been redesigned for the iPad, with ratings and reviews and improved search. | Mobile Applications;Single Persons;Dating and Courtship;Online Dating;Shyness |
ny0265948 | [
"sports",
"tennis"
] | 2016/03/11 | Sharapova Is Not the Only Player Paying Little Attention to Antidoping Emails | INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — Explaining on Monday how she tested positive for the recently banned substance meldonium, Maria Sharapova admitted that she received an email from the World Anti-Doping Agency in December that contained changes in its prohibited list. The list included meldonium. “I did not look at that list,” said Sharapova, who has been taking the substance since 2006. The former WADA president Richard W. Pound called out her “willful negligence,” saying to BBC Sport that she was “reckless beyond description” for failing to heed the prohibition. But Sharapova is not the only player paying little mind to messages from the antidoping agency. Many players and coaches at the BNP Paribas Open here this week conceded that they, too, do not thoroughly read emails from WADA. “No one clicks that link,” said Jiri Fencl, a Czech coach. Some dismissed the messages as irrelevant to their own regimens or too complicated to be useful; others said that they trusted someone in their inner circle would be keeping tabs on their behalf. “I just have my vitamins, so I don’t really have to check it,” ninth-ranked Petra Kvitova said. “So I’m not really reading that.” Third-ranked Agnieszka Radwanska also said she did not personally read the emails she receives from WADA. “To be honest, I’m also not really checking those emails,” she said. “That’s what my doctor is doing, and my agent.” Richard Gasquet had his own experience with a drug violation when he tested positive for cocaine in 2009, but was able to reduce his suspension to two and a half months by successfully arguing that he might have picked up the substance from a kiss. “You can imagine, after my story, I’m very, very careful,” he said. “I have my doctor, everything. Every time when I take an aspirin or something, I call him, I show him the pictures of the aspirin, everything.” But even Gasquet, who called the year of his positive test the toughest of his life, said he did not read the emails he receives from WADA. “I don’t read so much, because the only thing I take is sometimes some aspirin,” he said. “I don’t take vitamins. I take anti-inflammatories. So it’s O.K. But when I have something to do, of course I call the doctor. I know there is a list, every year you need to read it, but I don’t read so much.” Many players said they researched products they were considering taking for the first time. Eighth-ranked Belinda Bencic, 18, professed paying steadfast attention to all related emails she receives and any labels she encounters. “If I go to a normal pharmacy or doctor, I always watch what’s in there,” she said. “My mom, especially, is always like, ‘Check it, check it!’ ” Fourth-ranked Stan Wawrinka said: “I don’t read what they change on the list, because I don’t take anything. But if I have to take a medicine, I will check if it’s on the list or not, and then I will ask my doctor if it’s on the list or not. ” Rafael Nadal, a 14-time Grand Slam champion, puts his full trust in a doctor when it comes to WADA’s prohibited list. “To be honest, I never read it,” Nadal said of the emails. “I have my doctor that I have confidence in. My doctor is the doctor of the Spanish tennis federation, with a lot of years as a doctor for all the Spanish tennis players, so for sure I have full confidence in him, and I never take nothing that he doesn’t know.” Nadal said he understood how Sharapova could have been let down by a support staff that failed to notice the change in rules. “If you believe in your team, and the team is not enough professional, that can happen,” he said. Still, Nadal said Sharapova’s case would not cause him to take a more vigilant role in such matters for himself. “You cannot live thinking about all the negative things that can happen,” he said. “I am 100 percent confident with my team. At the same time, I know all the things that I am taking.” He added: “I want to believe that it’s a mistake for Maria, she didn’t want to do it. But it’s obvious that it’s a negligence. The rules are like this, and it’s fair. ” Serena Williams said she read the emails herself, while also knowing that others on her support staff would be reading them as well. “I have people on my team that look at it; I also look at it,” Williams said. “In case I miss something, I think it’s important to have a good team around you. But I think it’s important, also, to read through it.” Andy Murray said he checks with a doctor at the Lawn Tennis Association, the sport’s governing body in Britain, if he has specific questions for his doctor. “I get him to check first,” said Murray. “He’s obviously more knowledgeable than me about that stuff, but it’s quite easy to check yourself.” Fourth-ranked Garbiñe Muguruza said she had trouble understanding the medical jargon used in WADA documents, so she relied on those around her. “It’s not easy for us to understand all those weird names,” Muguruza said. “So, yeah, my team checks it every time I need to take something, or every time they update it, but if I check it, I will not understand most of the things.” No one interviewed could recall an experience comparable to Sharapova’s, in which a longtime legal medication they took was banned. Scott Clark, a Chicago-based doctor who works with four American players on the ATP Tour, said he “wouldn’t typically” check continually on a substance that a player had already been taking for a while. “The list we get is difficult to read and comprehend, even as a doctor,” Clark said. “And they, WADA, seem to always leave a way out. If these guys are interested in a supplement, I send it in through the channels to get it approved. But always at the end, there’s a WADA disclaimer: Take it at your own risk.” | Tennis;Doping;Maria Sharapova;World Anti-Doping Agency;Drug test;Rafael Nadal;Petra Kvitova;Stan Wawrinka;Agnieszka Radwanska |
ny0071653 | [
"us"
] | 2015/03/21 | Florida Justices Reject 70-Year Sentence for Juvenile, Likening It to Life Term | The Florida Supreme Court has ordered a new sentencing hearing for a man who received 70 years in prison without parole for an attempted murder at the age of 14. The court agreed with lawyers for the defendant, Shimeek D. Gridine, that his sentence violated the limits on juvenile penalties set by the United States Supreme Court. In a 2010 decision , the federal court, citing evidence that children do not have fully developed brains, barred sentences of life without parole for juveniles who are convicted of non-homicide crimes. State prosecutors in the case of Mr. Gridine , who wounded a man with a shotgun during an attempted robbery in 2009, argued that a 70-year sentence was not the same as a life sentence. But his lawyers said it amounted to one in practice, referring to actuarial tables for black males and the likelihood that Mr. Gridine, who is black, would die in prison. The Florida court ruled on Thursday that Mr. Gridine’s 70-year sentence “is unconstitutional because it fails to provide him with a meaningful opportunity for early release based upon a demonstration of his maturity and rehabilitation.” The ruling was one of four related decisions on juvenile sentencing issued Thursday by Florida’s top court. They will lead to new sentencing hearings, and a chance for reduced terms, for scores of inmates serving life sentences for murders committed while juveniles. The United States Supreme Court, in another step offering protections for juveniles, ruled in 2012 that juveniles who commit murder cannot automatically be sentenced to life without parole. Such sentences might sometimes be constitutional, the court said, but only after consideration of the offenders’ personal histories and other mitigating factors. The ruling left unclear whether the decision should affect cases from previous years, and officials in Florida and several other states had argued that it did not apply to offenders who were sentenced before the 2012 decision. But the Florida Supreme Court said Thursday that the new standard for penalizing juvenile murderers did apply retroactively and that defendants could apply for reconsideration based on new guidelines adopted by the state in 2014. In a new hearing expected in coming months, Mr. Gridine, too, will be subject to the 2014 revisions, which means that he will still face a minimum of 25 years, said Gail Anderson, a public defender who argued his sentencing appeal. Under the new guidelines for serious juvenile offenders, Mr. Gridine, after 25 years in prison, could ask for judicial review of his behavior and readiness to return to society. Ms. Anderson said she spoke with Mr. Gridine on Friday morning. He understands that he will spend at least 25 years in prison in any case, she said, but offered, “It’s better than what I have now.” | Murders and Homicides;Shimeek D. Gridine;Criminal Sentence;Florida;Juvenile delinquency;Teens |
ny0104767 | [
"us"
] | 2012/03/06 | Las Vegas Gun Range Offers New Way to Let Loose | LAS VEGAS — For Vegas die-hards bored with the $750 tasting menu at Guy Savoy, the $250 Elton John tickets at Caesars or the $200,000 baccarat bet at the Bellagio, this city is serving up a new way to find high-priced thrills. Machine Guns Vegas — an upscale indoor shooting range complete with skimpily dressed gun-toting hostesses — opened last week a half-mile from the Strip with an armory of weapons and a promise to fulfill the desires of anyone wanting to fire off an Uzi or a vintage Thompson submachine gun. With its provocative mix of violent fantasy (think blowing holes through an Osama bin Laden target with an AK-47) and sexual allure, it is the latest example of how the extravagances and excesses that have defined Las Vegas are moving beyond the gambling table. “O.K., the Uzi is down right now — sorry!” Melissa Krause, a hostess dressed in a skin-tight black outfit and black boots, with a fake pistol attached to her hip, told a father and son who had driven three hours from Victorville, Calif. “Is there something else you wanted to choose?” No matter. Before long, the son, Chris Neveu, 20, was standing between two range masters, a man and a woman, feet planted to the ground, eyes protected by goggles and ears by headphones. Hot shells clattered around his feet as his father, Paul, took pictures. “They have a lot of weapons you wouldn’t be able to find back where I’m from,” Chris said as he repaired to the V.I.P. lounge, where the walls are adorned with machine guns. “Such as the — well, you can see them all around the room: the M-4, the M-16, the M-249 — a lot of exotic weapons.” In the main lounge, Barry Burmaster, 54, of Williamsburg, Md., was giddy after he and three friends, in town for a convention, compared a stack of bullet-riddled targets. “Twenty years ago, I’d spend $400 at the strip clubs,” he said. “Now, I just come here to shoot.” This latest addition to Las Vegas entertainment is in a low-slung building, set among dusty fields and next to an Adult Superstore . Marked off by a few small signs, and with the main entrance at back, it recalls an after-hours club in Lower Manhattan. It has views of two towering buildings whose outsize names — Wynn and Trump — suggest a Las Vegas extravagance that by comparison seems almost quaintly outdated. Las Vegas in general, and the Strip in particular, is no stranger to violence: Last year, there was a series of stabbings on the street, most of them involving people moving from casino to casino. But the owners of Machine Guns Vegas said that they would carefully screen customers and that their clientele would be made up of people who enjoy the sport of shooting. This is certainly not the first shooting range here. Interest in guns is high in Nevada, particularly among tourists from countries that ban weapons. “From England, from Japan,” said Jasmine King, a former go-go dancer who now works as a hostess at Machine Guns Vegas. The Gun Store, another local destination for weapons enthusiasts, was teeming with customers the other day. But unlike Machine Guns Vegas, the Gun Store is as much about selling guns and weapons paraphernalia as it is a shooting range. It is out of the way, more than three miles from the Strip, past the city’s airport, with a check-in counter more reminiscent of the rental concession at a roller-skating rink than a swank nightclub. There are no hostesses in black. The aspirations of Machine Guns Vegas are, well, different. “We want it to have a Melrose boutique feel to it,” said Genghis Cohen, referring to the upscale stretch of quirky shops along Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. Mr. Cohen, a nightclub impresario, is a managing partner of Machine Guns Vegas. “It would be like a boutique style of guns,” he said as he led a tour of his latest venture. “We will have artwork on the walls.” “This is our V.I.P. area,” he said. “Look — a cappuccino machine, nice big leather couches. Let’s say you’re the vice president of the Palazzo or the Wynn,” he continued, referring to two of the city’s fanciest resorts. “You’re like, ‘Oh, it’s lunch break. I’m going to grab a sandwich and go shoot my gun for half an hour.’ ” There is not much to eat, though the club plans to sell prepackaged food eventually. But one can spend a lot of money here at a club that — and thank goodness for this — does not serve alcohol. (Not that you need to be Lewis and Clark, exactly, to find yourself a drink in Las Vegas.) For $699, the top-of-the-line package, a client gets an array of 16 firearms, 1,550 rounds of ammunition and a pass to the V.I.P. lounge. Mr. Burmaster’s group opted for a slightly less costly Full Auto package: $399 for 10 machine guns. “We went macho,” said Wilbur Willis, 61, a printer from Chattanooga, Tenn. “We did the fully automatic. It was awesome: some older guns, some newer guns.” Machine Guns Vegas seems so far to be drawing equal numbers of tourists and locals, some of them curiosity-seekers who saw its advertisements on the sides of buses or on its provocative come-hither Web site. Behind two closed doors, Gricelda Fernandez, 22, who lives in Las Vegas, fired off a semiautomatic pistol under the watchful eye of a ranger. “I’ve never done this before,” said Ms. Fernandez, who works as a go-go dancer. “It’s really exciting — it’s really easy.” Charles McElhinney, a construction supervisor from Texas, brought his son, Brian, to the range for his 29th birthday. “I shoot a lot at home,” he said. “But this is something I’ll never get a chance to do anywhere else: full auto.” “Yeah,” said Brian, a limousine driver in Las Vegas. “That is pretty great — full auto.” Mr. Cohen, the managing partner, emphasized that all the range masters were military veterans with experience in weapons. “We have girls who work for us who are veterans, and have very successful modeling careers,” he said. “But they are also ex-veterans. “The reason we did that is we didn’t want someone to say, ‘Ah, you just went to a strip club and got a bunch of strippers and gave them guns,’ ” he said. “That’s not what we did. We have veterans that are officially trained in the military in the use of firearms.” Still, a big part of the club’s cachet are the hostesses. There are no military requirements for the women who greet customers at the door, holding iPads and wearing identical black outfits. “It’s called liquid leggings,” said Ms. Krause. “It’s supposed to look like leather. It’s very light and stretchy.” Thad Beavers, 33, a designer from Charlotte, N.C., eyed the hostesses as he prepared to head back to his convention. “I definitely like the business plan,” he said. “It combines everything; it is one of those things I wish I had thought of.” | Shooting (Sport);Las Vegas (Nev);Firearms;Casinos;Machine Guns Vegas |
ny0052911 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2014/07/02 | In Britain-China Summit, a New Paradigm of Power | LONDON — Before the Chinese prime minister came to Britain to sign billions of pounds’ worth of business contracts last month, a brief diplomatic spat erupted. The planned length of the red carpet rolled out for Li Keqiang at Heathrow Airport fell short of the plane by about 10 feet, his aides complained. Could this be fixed? Prime Minister David Cameron’s office responded that it had more important things to worry about, according to several accounts in the press. But Mr. Cameron did give in to another Chinese demand: Mr. Li, who had reportedly threatened to cancel his trip if he did not get an audience with Queen Elizabeth II, was received for a hastily arranged cup of tea at Windsor Castle, an honor typically reserved for heads of state. It was a meeting of an emerging great power with a former great power. But it was also a meeting of great insecurities. China, which by some estimates will become the No. 1 economy in the world this year, still seeks validation in protocol, in this case from the onetime colonial power that humiliated it with opium wars and gunboat diplomacy. Britain, with an indebted state and an economy that has still not fully recovered, needs the investment. “Welcome to the new world order,” John Crace concluded in The Guardian. Incensed at the leaks about China’s requests in the British press (“China sees Red,” was The Daily Mail’s triple pun), a newspaper controlled by China’s Communist Party, Global Times, swiftly hit back, calling Britain an “old, declining empire” that engaged in “eccentric acts” to hide its fading importance. Image Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain followed Li Keqiang, the Chinese prime minister, as they visited the treasury building in London last month. Credit Neil Hall/Reuters To be sure, Britain is in a bit of a funk. Its main parties are still reeling from their defeat by the anti-immigration U.K. Independence Party in the recent European elections. A referendum on Scottish independence in September could start a process that eventually reduces Great Britain to Little England. And another possible referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union in 2017 — promised by Mr. Cameron if he wins re-election next year — could all but wipe out the country’s already limited clout on the Continent. Even Britain’s military, traditionally celebrated as one of the more serious defense structures on this side of the Atlantic, is getting a hard time, and not just because of the still-raging controversy over the decision to stand by the United States in invading Iraq in 2003. “British troops too fat to fight,” The Times of London claimed on a recent front page. To make matters worse, the English soccer team was effectively eliminated from the World Cup after a mere two games. (What is the difference between England and a tea bag? asks a joke that has taken on new life here. Answer: The tea bag stays in the cup for longer.) The only hope for bolstering the national mood this summer is Andy Murray, Britain’s highest-seeded tennis player, who is currently battling it out at Wimbledon. Mr. Murray is from Scotland, of course, and might not be British for that much longer. The idea of Scotland’s departure came up on the sidelines of the China-Britain summit meeting last month, as a member of the Chinese delegation tried to get his head around the Scottish referendum. With Taiwan or perhaps Tibet on his mind, he asked what Westminster would “do” if the Scots actually voted to secede. “We would let them secede,” came the British answer. For all the soul-searching about the state of affairs in Britain, it is an answer that everyone here takes for granted and is rooted in a commitment to freedom, human rights and self-determination that remains largely alien to China. Mr. Cameron irked Chinese officials in 2012 by meeting the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader. Still, at a joint news conference with Mr. Li, Mr. Cameron chose not to bring up the thorny issue of human rights in China. Instead, it appeared to be Britain’s turn to seek validation. Which country mattered the most to China, a British reporter asked — Britain, France or Germany? There followed a long, noncommittal response from Mr. Li and eventually a cryptic conclusion: “When you’re in a local place,” he said, “you sing local songs.” | Great Britain;China;Li Keqiang;David Cameron |
ny0013055 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2013/11/26 | Report Retraces Six Minutes of Horror, and Every Step a Gunman Took | At 9:30 a.m. on Dec. 14, in Room 9 of Sandy Hook Elementary School, the principal, psychologist, and other staff members had gathered for a meeting about student placement. Sixteen first graders were assembled in Classroom 8, overseen by a substitute teacher. Sixteen more were next door, in Classroom 10, where their instructor had been known to spend evenings designing poster boards for the children. Eighty-two staff members had reported to work; nine were absent. Student attendance had not yet been recorded. Outside, a Honda Civic had pulled up beside a “No Parking” zone. Around 9:34, a cascade of shattering glass could be heard near the front lobby doors. A man in a hat and sunglasses, holding what appeared to be a rifle, walked in. He said nothing. “Stay put!” shouted the principal, Dawn Hochsprung, emerging from Room 9 with the school psychologist, Mary Sherlach. Moments later, a staff member followed, heard gunshots and saw the two women fall. With the release of a report on the mass school shooting in Newtown, Conn., the state’s attorney for Danbury on Monday provided a meticulous account of that morning, sketching the parallel chaos of school personnel trying desperately to protect students and the authorities scrambling to assess an unthinkable emergency. The report did not name the children who died, and it did not include graphic descriptions of the crime scene, but the sequence of events was recreated in minute detail. Another shot struck the staff member, who sprawled across the hallway, crawled back into Room 9 and held the door shut. A call was placed to 911, and, perhaps accidentally, the dialing activated the schoolwide intercom system. “This appears to have been done inadvertently,” the report said, “but provided notice to other portions of the building.” After killing Ms. Hochsprung, 47, and Ms. Sherlach, 56, and wounding two others in the hallway, the gunman, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, entered the main office, where some staff members had taken shelter. They heard the office door opening. There were sounds of footsteps, moving closer, then receding. By 9:36, according to a timeline of 911 calls and radio transmissions, the Newtown police had been notified of a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. Six seconds after 9:36, a dispatcher delivered the message to officers: “Sandy Hook School caller is indicating she thinks there is someone shooting in the building.” Forty-two seconds later, the dispatcher, Bob Nute, reported that the school’s front glass had been broken. Thirty-nine seconds after that, Mr. Nute delivered a disquieting update. “All units,” he said, “the individual that I have on the phone is continuing to hear what he believes to be gunfire.” After leaving the main office, it is unclear whether Mr. Lanza entered Classroom 8 or 10 first. The police would later find 15 children in Classroom 8, 14 who were dead and one who would be pronounced dead after being taken to Danbury Hospital. One child survived, exiting after the officers arrived. Two other adults — the substitute teacher, Lauren Rousseau, 30, and a behavioral therapist, Rachel D’Avino, 29 — were also killed. In Classroom 10, five children were found, with a behavioral therapist, Anne Marie Murphy, 52, partially covering one of them. Four of the children were dead and the fifth was pronounced dead after being taken to the hospital. Ms. Murphy and the teacher, Victoria Soto, 27, were killed. Ms. Soto was found near the room’s north wall, near a set of keys. Nine children had run from the room and survived; two were found uninjured. At 9:40 a.m., the police said, Mr. Lanza shot himself in Classroom 10. In the minutes that followed, officers feared that another gunman may have been at large. Some people were “treated initially as suspects and handled accordingly, including being handcuffed,” the report said. These included a parent holding a cellphone and two reporters in the woods outside the school, who were held at gunpoint by officers until their identities could be verified. Investigators determined that Mr. Lanza had acted alone. They are still unsure why. “There is no clear indication why Sandy Hook Elementary School was selected,” Stephen J. Sedensky III, the state’s attorney in Danbury, wrote in the report’s conclusion, “other than perhaps its close proximity to the shooter’s home.” | Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting;Adam Lanza;Sandy Hook Elementary School Newtown Conn;Newtown CT |
ny0164601 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2006/10/20 | Seeking Quality, German Universities Scrap Equality | KARLSRUHE, Germany , Oct. 18 — At the university in this humdrum German town, there are no decorous strands of ivy on the 1960’s buildings, nor is there the kind of scholarly patina that blankets Heidelberg, the older, more celebrated university just up the road. Yet last week, when a German government committee anointed three institutions as elite universities — a sort of Teutonic Ivy League — Karlsruhe made the cut while Heidelberg did not. The other winners were the University of Munich and the Technical University, also in Munich. The much anticipated decision, which entitles the schools to more than $100 million each over the next five years, sent spirits soaring at Karlsruhe and swooning at Heidelberg. It also set off a national discussion about the nature of excellence, the necessity of focusing on science and technology and the wisdom of culling the great from the merely good. “People used to say elite was a dirty word,” said Peter Hommelhoff, the rector of the University of Heidelberg, nursing his disappointment at being passed over. But he said: “I haven’t seen much negative reaction to the announcement. The idea of elites is no longer a problem in Germany.” With German universities — once the envy of the academic world — in decline for decades, Mr. Hommelhoff said most Germans accepted that radical measures were needed to propel them back into competition with their rivals in Britain, Switzerland and especially the United States. To start with, Germans are abandoning a notion that all universities are basically equal — an ideal that dates from the 1970’s when university admissions were opened up and that has served to mask vast disparities in quality among the country’s 102 universities. “Germany was never a flat landscape,” said Wolfgang Ketterle, a Nobel Prize -winning physicist who was a member of the selection committee. “There were always hills and valleys. Our hope is that some of these hills will now grow into well-defined mountains.” Designating elite universities reveals some awkward truths about German higher education that were known but rarely acknowledged. One is that northern Germany lags far behind the south in the quality of its institutions. Another is that the most hallowed names in German academia — Humboldt, Tübingen and the like — are not actually the best schools. “I was very disappointed, of course, but it would be the wrong reaction to become depressed,” said Mr. Hommelhoff, in his elegant office with a view of a cobblestone square and a 13th-century castle on a bluff overlooking town. “We need to make sure we are successful in the next round.” Germany plans to select another handful of elite universities next October, and Heidelberg remains in contention. The committee also selected 18 promising graduate programs and 17 research clusters, which would each get several million dollars a year from 2007 to 2011. At Karlsruhe, the extra money will help finance the university’s highly regarded research in nanotechnology, the field of manipulating matter in dimensions as small as atoms or single molecules. But the school, which was founded in 1825, making it the country’s oldest technical university, has loftier ambitions. It wants to merge with the nearby Karlsruhe Research Center, a 50-year-old institution that specializes in particle physics and nuclear fusion, to create a university under a new name, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. “We chose the name on purpose because K is not far from M in the alphabet,” said Horst Hippler, a professor of physical chemistry and the rector of the university, who wears a lapel pin with the letters K.I.T. Turning Karlsruhe into a German Massachusetts Institute of Technology will take decades, given the vastly higher levels of private and public research financing M.I.T. receives. The money flowing to Karlsruhe is “peanuts compared to Harvard, Stanford or Berkeley,” Mr. Hippler said. Still, he added, every bit helps. And more important than the money is the status, which he said would help Karlsruhe attract better students, better professors and financing from other sources. “Branding is very important,” said Mr. Hippler, whose entrepreneurial style is a sharp contrast to that of the courtly Mr. Hommelhoff. “In five years, German university brands will be recognized around the world.” At the moment, they languish far down the academic league tables. In rankings of the world’s leading universities, no German institution appears in the top 50. American universities dominate the top spots, with a few scattered British notables like Cambridge and Oxford. Some of the weaknesses of German universities defy easy solutions. Germans spend only 1.1 percent of their gross domestic product on higher education, compared with 2.6 percent in the United States. Classrooms have been overcrowded — and standards have slipped — since the 1970’s, when Germany began guaranteeing that any graduate of a gymnasium, the more academically rigorous part of the high school system, was entitled to a place in a university, paid for entirely by the state. At Heidelberg the other day, students filed out of a lecture hall so packed that 30 of them had had to sit on the floor. “The organization for first-year students is a bit chaotic,” said Ricarda Wagner, 19, who studies English and French. “The university doesn’t seem to care about us much as people.” Ms. Wagner said she was proud of Heidelberg, which is 620 years old and has produced eight Nobel Prize winners. If her family had the money, however, she said, she would have chosen the University of London. At Karlsruhe, students were delighted that their school was not slighted. “I thought politics would play a larger role in the process,” said Martin Hermatschweiler, 28, a doctoral candidate in physics. Yet even here, there are criticisms. “In some cases, I have not been satisfied with the quality of teaching,” he said. “You rush from experiment to experiment without much thought or organization.” Universities hope to address these shortcomings by becoming more like their elite American counterparts. Starting next year, they will be allowed to charge tuition of 500 euros, or $630, per semester. Karlsruhe has begun to practice selective admissions for its smaller humanities programs. Germany, like other European countries, is adopting separate bachelor’s and master’s degrees. It is also shifting authority away from powerful faculty senates to university presidents and their boards. “We’re moving from a republic of professors to an entrepreneurial university,” said Peter Frankenberg, the minister who oversees universities in Baden-Württemberg, home of Heidelberg and Karlsruhe. Josef Joffe, a German journalist teaching at Stanford University this semester, said this trans-Atlantic influence was a “closing of the circle,” recalling that “in the late 19th century, the German model of the university inspired Harvard, Berkeley, Chicago and Johns Hopkins.” Germans may have shed their resistance to elite schools, but some commentators criticized the heavy emphasis on science and technology in the so-called excellence initiative. Humanities programs were largely overlooked, suggesting that Germany wants engineers more than poets. While Germany would benefit from having an M.I.T., some experts warned against mimicking the United States. Professor Ketterle, who was born in Heidelberg and studied there, said: “Germany has great strengths and a great tradition. To abolish this, and to copy from abroad, would just leave you with a bad copy.” He was speaking by telephone from M.I.T., where he has been a researcher since 1990 and won his Nobel Prize in 2001. | Germany;Colleges and Universities;Science and Technology;Education and Schools;Finances;Nanotechnology;Physics |
ny0058611 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2014/08/05 | Pablo Sandoval’s Ground-Rule Double Helps Giants Defeat Mets | Jenrry Mejia held his palms to the sky and then put his hands on his hips as the gravity of the moment sank in. The first two outs of the ninth had come so easily, and now slowly, methodically, the San Francisco Giants had ground their way back. Gregor Blanco poked a single up the middle. Buster Posey drew a walk. Then came Pablo Sandoval, with the go-ahead run on second. Mejia, undeterred by the situation, composed himself and fired two sliders for strikes. He threw another, and Sandoval fouled it off, so Mejia kicked his leg and unleashed a backdoor curveball. As the ball looped toward the plate, Sandoval stuck out his bat and sliced it down the third-base line. Curving, it bounced fair and then hopped into the stands as if to toy with the Mets in a game of keep-away. The Mets eventually lost, 4-3, and this was what separated the two teams: a matter of inches down the line. The Mets shrugged it off, though. They said their young relievers, Mejia and Jeurys Familia, were bound to have an off day. Combined, they allowed two runs. “He got it,” Mejia said of that curveball to Sandoval. “I don’t know how he got it.” If Sandoval had not, then perhaps several other Mets would have been lauded as heroes. Daniel Murphy played a part in all three Mets runs. He launched a two-run homer in the first and scored in the fifth. For that run, he singled, stole second base, advanced to third on a throwing error and scored as David Wright legged out an infield single. Then there was Juan Lagares, who gunned out a runner at the plate. Vic Black and Josh Edgin each escaped jams. And Dillon Gee, the starter, pitched admirably. Gee’s day was particularly encouraging for the Mets given how he had struggled recently. After missing about two months with a strained muscle, he had seemed off, allowing 15 runs in three starts since the All-Star break. Mets Manager Terry Collins had noticed progress, though, and appeared unconcerned. He noted that when Gee was at his best, he commanded and used all his pitches. That required a certain rhythm and feel that Gee had been deprived of, though. Collins said, “I think the more he’s out there, the more innings he accumulates right now, we’re going to see the Dillon Gee we know he can be.” Gee held the Giants to two runs in five and two-thirds innings. His only blemish came in the third, when Hunter Pence doubled, Posey drew a walk (he finished with four) and Sandoval doubled to the right-field gap to score them. As Pence started the rally, two fans on the Shea Bridge beyond center field groaned loudly. They were Rory Buchanan and Erik Falcone, two college students who had made it their mission to needle Pence by holding fluorescent-colored signs with messages degrading his character. During Friday and Sunday’s games, they were seen attacking his taste in movies (“Hunter Pence likes The Godfather 3”), his dinner etiquette (“Hunter Pence eats pizza with a fork”) and his driving skills (“Hunter Pence can’t parallel park”). On Monday, one of their signs read, “Hunter Pence brings 13 items to the express lane.” Pence, though, did not seem affected. Over the four-game series, he drove in seven runs, the most any Giant had produced in a series all season. In the seventh, against Familia, he tripled to left field, causing Chris Young and Lagares to come close to colliding. Two batters later, Pence scored on a wild pitch from Familia to tie the score at 3-3. Familia was clearly not at his best. After Pence, he walked Blanco and Posey and allowed a single to Sandoval. Blanco would have scored, but in one smooth motion, Lagares charged, fielded the ground ball and threw out Blanco at home. Josh Edgin relieved Familia and, on his first pitch, induced a double play. “I think I have my stuff,” Familia said. “I just had one of those bad days everybody can have, you know?” Entering Monday, Familia had allowed one earned run over his previous 221/3 innings, and Mejia had allowed one earned run over his previous 16 innings. They had come to form a nasty one-two punch that Collins could lean on in any situation. “Today was a hiccup,” Collins said. Still, the Mets had their chances to counter. They stranded eight base runners and managed just one runner over the final three innings. In the seventh, after Lucas Duda struck out looking at a low fastball, their frustration boiled over. Duda turned to discuss the call with the home-plate umpire, Ben May. Collins started jawing at him from the dugout and was soon ejected. | Baseball;Mets;San Francisco Giants;Jeurys Familia;Dillon Gee;Pablo Sandoval;Jenrry Mejia |
ny0091340 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2015/08/05 | Pregnant Woman and 4 Others Injured in Brooklyn Shooting | A spate of shootings over the weekend spilled into Monday, the police said, when two men opened fire on a crowd in Brooklyn and wounded five people, including a pregnant woman whose fetus later died. The violence erupted shortly before 11 p.m., as the two armed men emerged from an older model sport-utility vehicle and fired a volley of bullets in front of a residence on Dwight Street in Red Hook, police officials said. Two men and three women — including the pregnant woman, identified by relatives as Special Houston, 19 — fell wounded as the gunmen climbed back into their vehicle, with another person at the wheel, and sped off, police officials said, leaving the street littered with .40-caliber shell casings. Detectives said they believed the attack, like another shooting at a party in the East New York neighborhood a day earlier, was fueled by gang violence. “This is an ongoing dispute that started several months ago,” Robert K. Boyce, the chief of detectives, said at a news conference on Tuesday at Police Headquarters. Image Special Houston Around 3 a.m. Sunday, a member of a crew from the Gowanus Houses was shot at Bond and Warren Streets, Mr. Boyce said. A day later, members of the crew from the Gowanus Houses retaliated, targeting a rival in a crew from the Red Hook Houses, he said. Mr. Boyce said detectives had identified one of the gunmen, Frederick Marquise, 19, who was still being sought. Detectives believe they know the identity of the other person involved, Mr. Boyce said, but do not yet have probable cause to make an arrest. Residents of the block, where neighbors spend time together in the small fenced-in yards along the street, said the shootings came as a painful reminder of the violence that still plagues their neighborhood. The gunfire on Monday threatened, if not obliterated, a sense of security they had about the block. “It’s hard, it’s bad, it’s wrong,” Viva Smith, the mother of Ms. Houston’s boyfriend, said. “We’re glad she’s still here, that our kids are still here” she said of Ms. Houston and the other victims. “But something has to be done.” Ms. Houston, who was four months pregnant and was shot multiple times in the torso, was in critical condition on Tuesday, as was another 19-year-old woman who was hit in the neck, legs and midsection, the police and relatives said. A 20-year-old man who was shot in the torso and legs and another 20-year-old man who was shot multiple times in the leg were listed in stable condition, the police said. A 22-year-old woman was also shot once in the leg, the police said. Despite the violence, the number of shootings in New York City is at about the same level as this time last year, according to Police Department statistics. Through Sunday, there had been 669 shootings in 2015, versus 674 at this time last year. Image Police officers at Dwight and Delavan Streets in Red Hook on Tuesday, a day after two men fired at a group of people there. Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times A surge in shootings in May prompted concern among police officials, who accelerated an annual anti-violence initiative that included putting more officers on weekend patrols in crime-plagued neighborhoods. They are also focusing intently on people and groups known to drive the violence. Police Commissioner William J. Bratton said on Tuesday that as the nation moved to reform the criminal justice system, righting wrongs from the past, prison still remained a prime option for those who took part in extreme violence. “We probably did over-incarcerate too many people,” Mr. Bratton said. But those committed to “a life of violence” should not be diverted into treatment programs or have their records sealed, he said. “There’s certain people, unfortunately, in our society, that we need to put in jail,” he added. “That’s where they belong, that’s where they need to be, to keep the rest of us safe from them.” Detectives investigating the motive behind the East New York shooting on Sunday, in which nine people were injured, believe it began as a retaliatory act, the police said. There, two men opened fire on a crowd outside a house party, the police said, targeting two rivals. “Obviously, this is a coordinated shooting,” Mr. Boyce said. “We know who those intended targets are, and we are speaking to them now. They are still in the hospital.” | Murders and Homicides;Gang;Red Hook Brooklyn;NYC |
ny0066445 | [
"sports",
"worldcup"
] | 2014/06/15 | World Cup 2014: Costa Rica Rallies to Stun Uruguay | FORTALEZA, Brazil — Costa Rica came from behind to stun Uruguay, 3-1, on Saturday, opening play in the World Cup’s tough Group D with a major upset. Placed in a group that also includes Italy and England, Costa Rica entered the tournament as one of the biggest underdogs to advance to the knockout stage but showed no signs of feeling overwhelmed, scoring three goals in the second half. Image Óscar Duarte dived past the outstretched foot of Uruguay’s Christian Stuani to head in the winning goal for Costa Rica. Credit Christophe Simon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Uruguay had to leave the star striker Luis Suárez (knee) on the bench for the game but took the lead when Edinson Cavani scored on a penalty kick in the 24th minute. Costa Rica fought back after the break, with striker Joel Campbell driving in a ball headed down by Celso Borges in the 54th minute. Óscar Duarte dived past the outstretched foot of Uruguay’s Christian Stuani to head in the go-ahead goal in the 57th minute, and the substitute Marco Ureña added another goal in the 84th, slotting in the ball from a tight angle. The victory was Costa Rica’s first at a World Cup since it beat China in the group stage in 2002. “What counted is that we stayed calm and kept creating opportunities against a very tough team,” Costa Rica Coach Jorge Luis Pinto said. “We have great respect for Uruguay, but we weren’t that impressed tonight.” Uruguay, the highest-ranked team in the group, ended its disastrous night with 10 men, with Maxi Pereira sent off for a clumsy injury-time foul on Campbell. Pereira will have to miss Uruguay’s next game, against England. “In the second half they just took over — and they took the tactical advantage,” Uruguay Coach Óscar Tabárez said. “Football means that sometimes you have to lose. You can’t lose heart; you just have to improve.” He added, “We made mistakes today that we haven’t made for a long time.” | 2014 World Cup;Soccer;Costa Rica;Uruguay;Fortaleza |
ny0184688 | [
"business"
] | 2009/03/27 | An Overseer of Medical Trials Comes Under Fire | A Colorado company that drug and medical device makers pay to oversee patient safety during clinical trials drew scorn Thursday at a Congressional hearing on whether such companies adequately supervise medical trials. The company, Coast Independent Review Board, of Colorado Springs, was recently snared when undercover federal investigators created a sham medical study to see how closely companies like Coast evaluate the studies they are paid to review. Two of Coast’s competitors refused to approve the study’s design. But Coast approved a trial, involving a make-believe surgical product called Adhesiabloc and researchers who did not exist. “Where was the due diligence of your company?” demanded Representative Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the panel, the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s oversight and investigations subcommittee. Coast’s chief executive, Daniel Dueber, who had issued press releases before the hearing that accused government officials of carrying out an “extensive fraud” against his company, maintained a combative attitude at the hearing. He said he could not imagine why anyone would design a fake trial. “I cannot believe that my government did this to me and my company,” Mr. Dueber said. “It is unconscionable.” The hearing follows incidents in recent years in which patients have died during clinical trials or companies have submitted fraudulent data to the Food and Drug Administration to get new medical products approved. During this period, the oversight of clinical trial safety has shifted from academic medical institutions to commercial firms like Coast. There is growing concern that commercial review boards may too easily accommodate drug and device companies that pay for their services. Some critics also say that companies will shop for an accommodating oversight board after their research plans are rejected by more stringent reviewers. Over a five-year period, Coast reviewed 356 study proposals and rejected only one, according to data presented at the hearing. Meanwhile, since 2004 the company’s revenue has more than doubled, to $9.3 million in 2008. In a report presented at Thursday’s hearing, officials of the Government Accountability Office, a research arm of Congress, said they had found that the commercial review system was vulnerable to manipulation. It was G.A.O. investigators who set up the Adhesiabloc sting. In responding to undercover solicitations from G.A.O. investigators, two other companies — Argus Independent Review Board, of Tucson, and Fox Commercial Institutional Review Board, of Springfield, Ill. — refused to approve the Adhesiabloc plan. In their responses, they called the trial design “awful,” and “a piece of junk,” according to the G.A.O. After a separate F.D.A. inspection last year, Coast received an agency warning letter after officials discovered it had used an unqualified person to approve an advertisement to recruit trial subjects for a different, real study. That approval had come, the F.D.A. letter said, after qualified reviewers working for Coast had found the advertisement unacceptable. An F.D.A. official said at Thursday’s hearing that Coast had subsequently submitted a plan to improve its procedures. Mr. Dueber said Thursday that Coast also revised its procedures in response to the G.A.O. investigation. Another focus of Thursday’s hearing was whether the F.D.A. and the Department of Health and Human Services, which also has a role in overseeing clinical trials, have been doing their jobs to protect patients. In another part of the G.A.O. operation discussed at the hearing, investigators last year created a fictitious clinical trial oversight company and registered it with the department. Representative Joe L. Barton, Republican of Texas, asked at the hearing why federal regulators had not yet put companies like Coast out of business, saying the company ought to be “kicked out of the door.” | Coast Independent Review Board;Tests and Testing;Food and Drug Administration;Medical Devices |
ny0278219 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2016/11/07 | Protesters in Hong Kong Clash With Police Over Lawmakers’ Fate | HONG KONG — Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday, clashing with the police in a protest against an impending decision by China’s Parliament aimed at eradicating a nascent independence movement in the territory. In a scene that resembled the enormous pro-democracy demonstrations of 2014, the police used pepper spray to push back hundreds of protesters gathering after nightfall around the Chinese government’s liaison office in the city. Protesters defended themselves with umbrellas, many of them yellow — the symbol of the 2014 Umbrella Movement — and set up barricades across a major street. Sunday’s march occurred before a decision expected on Monday by the National People’s Congress in China that is intended to ensure that two young people elected in September to Hong Kong’s 70-seat legislature never formally take office. The two, Yau Wai-ching , 25, and Sixtus Leung, 30, support independence for Hong Kong. Both inserted what many consider to be a derogatory term for China into their oaths of office last month, and both were told that they must retake their oaths. Their words incited fury in Beijing, which has used its large internal police force to stamp out separatist movements in places like Tibet and Xinjiang. A commentator in the Communist Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper called Ms. Yau’s and Mr. Leung’s actions a “festering pustule” on Wednesday. On Saturday, the standing committee of the National People’s Congress declared the two a threat to national security . But in Hong Kong, unlike in Tibet and Xinjiang, the power of China’s authoritarian government is constrained. Here, civil liberties are guaranteed by the city’s mini-constitution, known as the Basic Law, and an international treaty that paved the way for Britain to hand over sovereignty of the territory, a former colony, to China in 1997. In a sign of how seriously it views the situation with the lawmakers, China is taking the extraordinary step of interpreting a clause in the Basic Law in such a way that is expected to make it impossible for Ms. Yau and Mr. Leung to retake their oaths and formally assume office. A decision may come on Monday. It would be only the second time since 1997 that the National People’s Congress had intervened in Hong Kong without being asked by the territory’s government or its highest court. Such an intervention into a sophisticated legal system inherited from the British and based on hundred of years of legal precedents has alarmed many people in Hong Kong. China has the right to issue interpretations of the Basic Law, but the Hong Kong Bar Association said on Wednesday that a decision by Beijing would “ deal a severe blow ” to the judicial independence of Hong Kong’s courts, which are adjudicating Ms. Yau and Mr. Leung’s case. Many fear that the move will further undermine the principle of “one country, two systems,” which has given the city considerable autonomy. Beijing’s impending move has galvanized the large coalition of protesters who captured the world’s attention during their 79-day occupation of major thoroughfares in Hong Kong in late 2014. They fear that the Communist Party will not only invalidate the elections of Ms. Yau and Mr. Leung, but also move against other major figures of the protests who were voted into office in September. “When Hong Kong’s Basic Law can be changed at the Communist Party’s will, what does that say about Hong Kong’s future?” said Joshua Wong, 20, the most prominent leader of the 2014 protests. “Today, it could disqualify the pro-independence legislators,” he said, wearing a surgical mask and plastic goggles as he stood in the middle of the demonstration. “Who would be next?” As midnight approached in Hong Kong, hundreds of protesters remained in a tense standoff with the police near China’s liaison office. Officers stood in a row, armed with truncheons and shields. Some had gas masks, raising concerns that tear gas could be used. It was the use of tear gas against the unarmed protesters in 2014 that helped set off that year’s widespread protest movement. After midnight, officers in riot gear began clearing the area of protesters, some of whom were shouting, “Hong Kong independence.” The 2014 protests followed a decision by the National People’s Congress that also generated outrage in Hong Kong. That year, the Communist Party-controlled body set strict rules on planned elections for Hong Kong’s top leader that effectively gave Beijing control over who could be nominated for the office. | Hong Kong;Civil Unrest;Legislature;National People's Congress China;Joshua Wong;Sixtus Leung;Yau Wai-ching |
ny0286116 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2016/09/24 | Debate Prep? Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Differ on That, Too | Hillary Clinton is determined to get under Donald J. Trump’s skin at Monday’s debate , and is testing attack lines to try to rattle him. Mr. Trump is largely shunning traditional debate preparations, but has been watching video of Mrs. Clinton’s best and worst debate moments, looking for her vulnerabilities. The two candidates are taking vastly different approaches to what is expected to be one of the most widely watched presidential debates since Carter vs. Reagan in 1980. And their divergent strategies reveal how the candidates and their campaigns see the race, their strengths and their opponents’ weaknesses. Mrs. Clinton has a thick dossier on Mr. Trump after months of research and meetings with her debate team, including analysis and assumptions about his psychological makeup that Clinton advisers described as critical to understanding how to knock Mr. Trump off balance. Mrs. Clinton has concluded that catching Mr. Trump in a lie during the debate is not enough to beat him: She needs the huge television audience to see him as temperamentally unfit for the presidency, and that she has the power to unhinge him. Mr. Trump, in turn, is approaching the debate like a Big Man on Campus who thinks his last-minute term paper will be dazzling simply because he wrote it. He has paid only cursory attention to briefing materials. He has refused to use lecterns in mock debate sessions despite the urging of his advisers. He prefers spitballing ideas with his team rather than honing them into crisp, two-minute answers. With Mrs. Clinton largely devoting the next four days to mock debate sessions and drills in New York, and Mr. Trump hunkering down only on Sunday, here is a scouting report on the two prospects and their training regimens for Monday’s face-off, according to advisers, allies and friends of both candidates. Preparations CLINTON She is mentally readying herself for multiple Trumps: the disciplined opponent who sticks to big themes, the no-holds-barred adversary who goes on the offensive, and the snide antagonist who calls her a “loser” to her face. Her advisers are hurling a host of Trumpian assaults and counterattacks at her to test her responses and adjust them as needed. Mrs. Clinton is eager to play offense and try to get under his skin, by doing things like calling him “Donald” and questioning his net worth. Yet she is also testing out whether and how to interrupt Mr. Trump, as she does not want to be seen as pushy and play into gender stereotypes. In practice sessions, she has come across best when she waits to pounce confidently on Mr. Trump for lying or misstating facts, rather than trying to talk over him. TRUMP He does not like practicing an answer over and over until it is letter-perfect and appropriately brief. But this weekend’s work will be geared to running through questions while Mr. Trump is on his feet and aware of a countdown timer when he is speaking. His advisers will try to throw him off balance, and measure his response to possible Clinton jabs like “You’re lying, Donald.” He believes debates are not won or lost on policy minutiae since most viewers will not remember them in an hour. His advisers see it as a waste of time to try to fill his head with facts and figures. Instead, they want him to practice staying focused on big-picture themes (jobs, terrorism, protecting the homeland and closing borders, “Make America Great Again”) rather than picking fights on side issues or taking the bait from Mrs. Clinton. Image Mrs. Clinton during a Democratic primary debate at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, N.H., in February. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times Strategy CLINTON She has been steady and poised in debate preparations and knows it is critical that she appear cool and collected on stage with Mr. Trump — from the moment they first shake hands to the moment they say good night. Mrs. Clinton and her advisers have written out dozens of answers, and she has tested some attack lines on the campaign trail to see what might work in the debate. If Mr. Trump expresses admiration for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, she is prepared to evoke the hero of the Republican Party: “What would Ronald Reagan say about a Republican nominee who attacks American generals and heaps praise on Russia’s president?” as she recently said. Advisers want to work on helping Mrs. Clinton get into a groove on stage as quickly as possible. Should Mr. Trump confront her on the private email server she used at the State Department, she should aggressively respond by pointing to his not disclosing his tax returns. TRUMP His instinct in debates is often to attack and insult opponents, which had an upside during the circuslike primary debates but could be grating during a 90-minute one-on-one debate. Mr. Trump has a tendency to belittle Mrs. Clinton to the point of rudeness when he is speaking off the cuff, such as by making fun of her for recuperating from her recent pneumonia. His advisers want him to project optimism about America and his policies while also showing some heat and energy in the right moments to challenge Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Trump can get bored with both debate preparations and debates themselves. His advisers have been reinforcing the importance of listening and focusing on every word Mrs. Clinton says and looking for ways to counterattack. He may not like debate preparations, but he is very competitive and wants to vanquish Mrs. Clinton on Monday night. His team has been emphasizing the best ways to win: Do not pick stupid fights with her or with the moderator; explain yourself rather than get defensive; and deliver the answers you want rather than worrying about directly answering the question. Mock Debates CLINTON is expected to do at least one timed mock debate this weekend. Philippe Reines, a longtime aide to Mrs. Clinton and a close observer of her personal and political vulnerabilities, is playing Mr. Trump in her mock debate sessions. Mrs. Clinton is mindful of the importance of “podium behavior,” as debate coaches call it. She sometimes takes notes while an opponent is speaking; she also looks directly at her opponent at times, which projects confidence. Her aim is to look steady and attentive when Mr. Trump is speaking, and to avoid visibly or audibly reacting to him too much. TRUMP He prefers not to do a full-length mock debate, and has no set person playing Mrs. Clinton. He is not using a lectern for mock debate drills, despite suggestions from some on his coaching team that simulating a one-on-one debate is good practice after the primary debates that featured several rivals. Some Trump advisers are concerned that he underestimates the difficulty of standing still, talking pointedly and listening sharply for 90 minutes. In the primary debates he often receded into the background, and only jumped into the debate forcefully when he was attacked. Some advisers worry that if Mrs. Clinton surprises him, he will be caught flat-footed. Image Mr. Trump at a Republican primary debate at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla., in March. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times Strengths CLINTON Dutiful student, quick to absorb information. She limited her campaign schedule after Labor Day to pore over briefing books. Up to speed on all her briefing materials. Good self-editing skills. Mrs. Clinton grasps that answers need to be trimmed down to two minutes (and rebuttals should be even tighter) and will keep working to tighten her answers in coming days. Responds well to timers and stopwatches but also has an instinctual sense of time running out. Aware that preparations are a relief valve. She vents frustrations during preparation sessions, joking and being sarcastic in ways she never would before a national audience. TRUMP Unpredictable. Whether in politics or business, he takes pride in sizing up opponents based on their language, posture, eye contact, and particularly the needs and goals that his adversaries have at that moment. He will hold back, lunge forward, or stay cagey at varying points in hopes of knocking his opponent off balance. Studying her strengths and his faults. Mr. Trump has reviewed tapes of Mrs. Clinton’s old debates as well as compilations of his own worst moments during the primary face-offs. Self-confident. He has said repeatedly that he can handle Mrs. Clinton on stage. Vulnerabilities CLINTON Can appear stiff and irritable under pressure. Sometimes packs too many facts into answers. Tendency to get defensive about questions involving her honesty and trustworthiness. She has delivered multiple answers explaining her use of a private email server as secretary of state; she is practicing one clear, crisp answer for the debate. Hard to predict how she will respond if relentlessly attacked on character issues like her ethics, honesty, and relationships with wealthy donors, or on her husband’s character (such as his past infidelities). TRUMP Can be insulting and demeaning to his opponent, the debate moderator, and voters at large, which can be off-putting. Tendency to lie on some issues (like his challenge to President Obama’s citizenship) or use incorrect information or advance conspiracy theories — all of which opens him to counterattack from Mrs. Clinton or rebukes from the moderator. Advisers are urging him to focus on big-picture themes rather than risk mangling facts. If Mrs. Clinton says he is lying, his advisers want him to focus on her trustworthiness and issues like her State Department email and accusations of favors for donors. Lacks a range of perspectives from women as he prepares to face the first-ever female general election candidate. The only woman consistently in Trump debate preps is Kellyanne Conway, his campaign manager. While she is a savvy and strategic debate coach, Mr. Trump may be underestimating the task of taking on a woman on a big stage. Debate Team CLINTON Former President Bill Clinton has been attending more preparation sessions lately. Other regulars include Ron Klain, a veteran presidential debate coach; Karen Dunn, a Washington lawyer; Joel Benenson, the campaign’s senior strategist; Mandy Grunwald and Jim Margolis, campaign media advisers; Robert Barnett, a lawyer and friend; John D. Podesta, the campaign’s chairman; and Jennifer Palmieri, the campaign’s communications director. Image John D. Podesta, chairman of the Clinton campaign, at a White House event in 2014. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times TRUMP Stephen K. Bannon, the campaign’s chief executive; Ms. Conway; former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York; Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey; Stephen Miller, a policy adviser; Jason Miller, a communications adviser; Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, a retired Army officer; and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law. The former Fox News executive Roger Ailes has not been at the last two debate sessions, but he sends memos and speaks to Mr. Trump. Image Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, speaking with reporters in New York this summer. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times Practice Setting CLINTON Mostly in New York. TRUMP Initially at his weekend home in Bedminster, N.J., but moved to Trump Tower in Manhattan after distractions kept popping up in Bedminster. | 2016 Presidential Election;Political Debates;Hillary Clinton;Donald Trump |
ny0205551 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2009/01/30 | 15 Years for Killing Son | A New York City woman who took her 2-week-old son from a hospital and suffocated him was sentenced on Thursday to 15 years in prison. The woman, Lucila Rojas, 27, pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter last month, said Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney. Prosecutors said she suffocated her son Anthony Rojas in December 2006, after picking him up from a Bronx hospital, where he had spent two weeks after being born prematurely. They said she dumped his body in Queens. Despite an intensive search, the boy’s body was never found. | Murders and Attempted Murders;Queens (NYC);Sentences (Criminal);New York City |
ny0280566 | [
"science"
] | 2016/10/07 | Over 190 Countries Adopt Plan to Offset Air Travel Emissions | Governments from more than 190 countries on Thursday adopted a measure that for the first time will reduce the climate impact of international jet travel. The accord adds an exclamation point to a week in which enough countries signed onto the broader Paris climate deal to ensure that it will enter into force later this year. The aviation plan, the product of years of negotiations, was approved by acclamation at a meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization, or I.C.A.O., in Montreal. The measure could force air carriers to take major steps to improve fuel economy in their routes and fleets, very likely accelerating the purchase of newer, more efficient planes. Carriers may pass the cost of the program on to consumers in higher airfares, though most experts think any increases would be relatively small. Leaders hailed the accord, which will take effect in 2021, as a major step in reducing the environmental impact of international aviation, which is currently responsible for about 2 percent of worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases. Secretary of State John Kerry called the measure “unprecedented” and said it built on the Paris agreement and other international efforts to reduce emissions. “This measure addresses a growing source of global emissions, demonstrates the international community’s strong and growing support for climate action in all areas and helps avoid a patchwork of potentially costly and overlapping regional and national measures,” Mr. Kerry said in a statement. Along with international shipping, international aviation was not covered by the Paris accord reached in December . On Tuesday, with the ratification of that pact by the European Union, it reached a threshold — acceptance by countries responsible for more than 55 percent of the world’s emissions — that causes it to go into effect. It is expected to enter into force before the next large United Nations climate meeting, in Morocco early next month. The aviation measure will be voluntary for the first six years, and even countries that commit to it voluntarily will be allowed to opt out on relatively short notice. Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change The issue can be overwhelming. The science is complicated. We get it. This is your cheat sheet. Under the program, airlines will buy credits to offset emissions from individual flights. The credits will come from alternative energy installations, forest conservation programs and other projects that prevent some amount of greenhouse gas emissions. But critics point to several possible problems. Some environmental groups said the plan did not go far enough, forecasting that it would fall short of the goal originally set by the aviation organization to offset all of the growth in emissions from air travel after 2020. At least 65 nations, including the United States, China and the European Union countries, have signaled that they will participate during the voluntary phase of the measure. The measure exempts many smaller countries that do not have large international air carriers, and because of rules on competition, that could mean that some popular routes from participating countries could be exempt as well. Several countries that are significant sources of international air travel, including Russia and India, on Thursday expressed formal reservations about the agreement, indicating they would not participate, at least for now. Critics and supporters of the measure alike noted that much work remains to be done before the agreement is put into effect. Mechanisms must be developed to monitor and report current emissions, and criteria established to select conservation programs and other projects that will count toward offset credits. The aviation industry has supported the idea of mitigating the climate impact of its jet engines. Manufacturers have taken steps to improve the efficiency of current engines, and some carriers have begun replacing some of their conventional jet fuel with cleaner-burning biofuels. Some airlines have also encouraged environmentally conscious passengers to buy offsets voluntarily for their flights. Under the new measure, the airlines would buy the offsets, and they could pass the cost on to all passengers. But one estimate by the aviation organization forecasts that by 2025 the annual cost to airlines would be less than 1 percent of revenue. On Thursday, industry representatives welcomed adoption of the measure. Michael Gill, executive director of the Air Transport Action Group, a coalition of manufacturers, carriers and other companies, said he was heartened by how many countries, including small developing countries with a lot at stake as climate change takes hold, had agreed to participate voluntarily. “Despite some reservations over the scheme being voluntary in its initial years, the support of all these states — large, small, developed and developing — shows the commitment of the international community, working through I.C.A.O., to deliver a robust measure,” Mr. Gill said in a statement. But an analysis by the International Council on Clean Transportation, a research group, shows that the agreement as approved will offset only about three-quarters of the growth in emissions from international aviation above 2020 levels. That means the proposal falls short of the goal originally set by the International Civil Aviation Organization of “carbon-neutral” growth after 2020. | International Civil Aviation Organization;Airlines,airplanes;Vehicle Emissions;Fuel efficiency;Greenhouse gas;Climate Change;Global Warming |
ny0283204 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2016/07/09 | Bartolo Colon Heads to Fourth All-Star Game as Madison Bumgarner’s Replacement | Bartolo Colon was selected by Terry Collins, the National League’s manager in Tuesday’s All-Star Game, to replace Madison Bumgarner on the roster. Bumgarner was to pitch for the San Francisco Giants on Sunday. “It means a lot, even at my age, when I didn’t expect this,” Colon said Friday. This will be Colon’s fourth All-Star Game (1998, 2005, 2013 and 2016). Colon, a fan favorite and the elder statesman of the Mets’ rotation, becomes the eighth player 43 or older to be named to the All-Star Game. “When I asked him, ‘You want to go to the All-Star Game?’ he said, ‘Yes,’” Collins said. “He didn’t say, ‘Hey, I need to rest, I’m 43 years old.’ He said, ‘Thank you, I’d like to go.’” Colon, in his 19th major league season, is 7-4 with a 3.28 E.R.A. in 18 games. He said he wants to pitch one more season beyond this year if he is healthy. Colon will join teammates Yoenis Cespedes, Jeurys Familia and Noah Syndergaard in San Diego next week. “I was surprised a little bit,” Colon said. “There are a lot of better players ahead of me. But I thank God I was chosen.” JAMES WAGNER | Baseball;All-star game;Bartolo Colon;Mets;Madison Bumgarner;Terry L Collins |
ny0184569 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2009/03/20 | Ads for Tampax Erase a Layer of Euphemisms | ADVERTISING spots for tampon brands historically have been among the most euphemistic on television, featuring women riding horses along the beach or twirling in fields of flowers, while voice-overs assure that the products will instill “confidence” and “freshness.” But the ads have grown less oblique in recent years, and a new campaign for Tampax uses elements that were once unheard-of in ads for tampons and sanitary napkins: candor and even humor. In a series of television spots by Leo Burnett Worldwide for Tampax Pearl, a Procter & Gamble brand, an actress depicting Mother Nature approaches women and gives them a present wrapped in red, representing the onset of their menstrual cycle. In one ad, she presents the red box to a woman sunning on a beach in a white bikini. “Mother Nature here, bringing Kate her monthly gift: Her period,” says the actress, who is in her 40s and is smartly dressed in a Jacqueline Onassis-style green suit, her pinched smile suggesting a sinister edge. Looking at the skimpy bikini, she says, “Good luck wearing that with backup,” an expression for using a sanitary napkin as reinforcement for a tampon. But Kate reaches into her beach bag, pulls out a box of Tampax Pearl tampons, and winks triumphantly at the camera. The voice-over tag line: “Outsmart Mother Nature — with Tampax.” Tampax has been running several ads in the campaign since July, and this month it will introduce another, in which Mother Nature interrupts a woman’s steamy dream with the red gift, as well as an online-only video where the actress thrusts the package at unsuspecting women on the street, an unscripted video using nonactors who subsequently signed releases. Becky Swanson, a creative director from the Chicago-based Leo Burnett USA on the Tampax account, said that the campaign was intent on avoiding oft-parodied clichés. “There are no walks on the beach, no riding a white horse or sitting on a white couch, and no conversations between a mother and a daughter about ‘that not-so-clean feeling,’ ” Ms. Swanson said. The Mother Nature character was developed to be a “worthy opponent who is all-powerful and very much in control, more of a mother-in-law figure,” Ms. Swanson said. While the target audience is vast, she said, “the idea of having this worthy opponent really resonates with younger girls, because when someone tries to tell them how to lead their life or what they can or cannot do, they want to outsmart that person.” Using the word “period” in commercials is something Tampax has been doing only in recent years, but Ms. Swanson says that newer spots drop the word as women become more familiar with the campaign, making it unnecessary to spell out what the red gift represents. Procter & Gamble’s most prominent use was in the “Have a happy period” campaign for the company’s Always sanitary napkins, ads that began in 2005 and continue today. Patricia Perez-Ayala, vice president of Procter & Gamble’s feminine care division, says that while most women alternate between tampons and sanitary napkins depending on the stage of their menstrual cycles, the company’s research indicates that they generally have a preference, or “mind-set.” “A pad mind-set is much more embracing the period and is much more accepting because it’s part of being a woman,” Ms. Perez-Ayala said. Women who have favored tampons have a different attitude. “A tampon mind-set is like, ‘Period — what period? I don’t even want to talk about it,’ ” Ms. Perez-Ayala said. The Always and Tampax campaigns speak to those contrasting views — the idea of Mother Nature’s being an opponent would most likely be anathema to a devoted pad user, as would the notion of a “happy period” for those who favor tampons. According to a report from Mintel, a market research firm, the United States tampon market was worth $610 million in 2008, a drop of nearly 1 percent from the previous year. The report also said growth in the market had been sluggish since 2005 because baby boomers were reaching menopause and were no longer using menstrual and birth control products. Tampax brands lead the tampon category, with 49 percent of the market, followed by Playtex brands (25 percent), Kotex (10 percent) and O.B. (6 percent), according to Mintel. Kotex, made by Kimberly-Clark, declined a request for an interview about its marketing efforts, as did representatives from O.B. (made by Johnson & Johnson) and Playtex (a division of Energizer Holdings Inc.). While tampons have been advertised in print since Tampax first sold them commercially in the 1930s, they were not advertised on television until 1977, and ads skirted the word “period” until 2000, when Kotex unveiled a campaign with the theme “Kotex fits. Period.” Kotex caused a stir in Australia last year when it ran a series of humorous ads for its Kotex U brand that struck some as being in bad taste, and others as hilarious. The ads, by the Sydney agency Brandshop, feature a woman and a joking reference to slang for female genitalia, and ended with the tag line, “You’ve only got one. So for the ultimate care down there, make it U.” The ads, which attracted about 300,000 views on YouTube, also drew more than 185 complaints to Australia’s Advertising Standards Bureau. While the feminine care industry prides itself on empowering women and giving them confidence, critics fault it for doing just the opposite. Elizabeth Arveda Kissling, author of the book “Capitalizing on the Curse: The Business of Menstruation” and a professor of media studies and women’s studies at Eastern Washington University, echoes other scholars who find fault with the term “feminine hygiene,” a term popular with industry watchers and on signs in drugstore aisles. “It suggests that femaleness itself is a little dirty and you have to clean it up, and it goes back to ancient taboos about menstruation being a pollution,” Ms. Kissling said by telephone. As for advertisements getting more candid, Ms. Kissling wrote in her book, which predates Tampax’s Mother Nature campaign, that while “often they give the appearance of breaking menstrual taboos by speaking openly about the management of menstruation,” commercials still were highly euphemistic, never even showing the products in bathrooms, where “they are usually kept and used.” Still, Ms. Kissling recently screened some ads for the new Tampax campaign for her women’s studies class, and she said her students had been impressed. “My students thought the ads were hilarious,” she said. “There’s still a powerful taboo about talking about menstruation, and being able to laugh about it is a big change.” | Advertising and Marketing;Menstruation;Women;Procter & Gamble Co |
ny0234221 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2010/01/02 | In Russia, a New Year and a New Price for Vodka | MOSCOW — Russia ’s cheapest thrill disappeared at dawn on Friday, when the minimum price for a half-liter of vodka rose to 89 rubles, or around $3, from an earlier price of $1.69. The change is part of an anti-alcoholism campaign by President Dmitri A. Medvedev, who had said he was shaken by recent data showing that Russians consume 4.75 gallons of pure alcohol per capita every year, more than double the level that the World Health Organization considers a health threat. (The average American, by comparison, consumes 2.3 gallons of pure alcohol per year.) A study published in The Lancet, a British medical journal, found that more than half the deaths of Russians between the ages of 15 and 54 were caused by drinking. A raft of new measures will be imposed on July 1, including a crackdown on the production of illegal vodka, known as samogon. Mr. Medvedev has proposed banning sales of beer from sidewalk kiosks and prohibiting the large, cheap containers of beer preferred by young Russians. But the increase in vodka prices — especially at the outset of a 12-day winter holiday — drives straight at one of Russia’s fundamental appetites. Viktor Zubkov, Russia’s first vice prime minister, told the RIA-Novosti news service that regulators would begin spot checks of wholesalers to make sure they were complying with the new norms. Already, 50 licenses for vodka producers have been suspended and 10 have been revoked, he said. In 1985, Mikhail S. Gorbachev began a widespread anti-alcohol campaign , ordering distilleries, breweries and vineyards razed. The measures at first seemed effective but gave way to a public backlash that irretrievably damaged Mr. Gorbachev’s popularity. It also bolstered production of samogon, distilled from fermented sugar, yeast and water, and proved a serious blow to state revenues. The campaign was abandoned in 1987. | Russia;Vodka;Prices (Fares Fees and Rates);Alcoholic Beverages |
ny0075379 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2015/04/25 | Intense Lobbying Failed to Assure Comcast’s Deal | WASHINGTON — David L. Cohen, the master salesman who runs the Comcast Corporation’s lobbying efforts, stood before a room full of Latino House lawmakers one morning in early December trying to convince them that they should embrace his $45 billion deal to acquire Time Warner Cable. But as Mr. Cohen continued to talk — taking up much of the time set aside for the closed-door session — at least some of the assembled lawmakers began to wonder if his highly polished pitch was falling short. “He was smothering us with attention but he was not answering our questions,” said Representative Tony Cárdenas, Democrat of California, who said that in the early stages of the deal he was open to supporting it if his questions were addressed satisfactorily. “And I could not help but think that this is a $140 billion company with 130 lobbyists — and they are using all of that to the best of their ability to get us to go along.” The announcement Friday morning that Comcast was terminating its effort to take over Time Warner Cable, a plan that would have united the nation’s top two cable operators, ultimately collapsed because of clear signals that federal regulators were preparing to block it. But the warning signs were already present from the muted reception it had received on Capitol Hill. Despite the distribution of $5.9 million in campaign contributions by the two companies during the 2014 election cycle, and the expenditure of an extraordinary $25 million on lobbying last year, no more than a handful of lawmakers signed letters endorsing the deal. By contrast, more than 100 signed letters of support in 2010 when Comcast was pushing its merger with NBCUniversal. Congress has no direct power to approve or disapprove any merger, but endorsements, particularly if they come from black and Hispanic leaders, can send a subtle but important message to regulators that the deal is in the public interest and should be cleared. It was not that many lawmakers spoke out against the Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal — it was just that many of them remained silent. Lawmakers cited a variety of reasons as to why Comcast’s elaborate pitch failed to gain traction this time: The miserable customer service ratings the company earns, for instance, made politicians leery of helping it out. In addition, there were much more substantial antitrust concerns associated with this deal, and some members of Congress said they thought Comcast had failed to live up to its promises in the NBCUniversal deal, and so could not be trusted this time. Other lawmakers and staff members on Capitol Hill, in interviews Friday, cited Comcast’s swagger in trying to promote this deal. They said they felt that Comcast was so convinced in the early stages that the deal would be approved that it was dismissing concerns about the transaction, or simply taking the conversation in a different direction when asked about them. “There are limits as to how effective even the best advocate can be with a losing case,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, who was critical of the deal from the start, “as this merger would have further enhanced this company’s incentive, its means and its history of abuse of market power.” Comcast did not offer on Friday its own post-mortem on the deal’s collapse. “Today, we move on,” the Comcast chairman and chief executive Brian L. Roberts said in his short statement. A Comcast spokeswoman declined to comment further. Comcast, at least until this deal, had a near-legendary reputation in Washington for leveraging its connections. In 2013, President Obama stopped by Mr. Cohen’s Philadelphia home for a fund-raiser, and Mr. Roberts was envied for having played golf with President Obama that same year in Martha’s Vineyard. The company carefully assigned members of its sprawling lobbying team to different lawmakers at both the federal and state levels, based often on their ethnicity or past relationships, company officials acknowledged in an interview shortly after the Time Warner Cable transaction was proposed in February 2014. Comcast, for example, assigned Juan Otero , a former Department of Homeland Security official who serves on the board of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute and now works as a Comcast lobbyist, to be the point person to work with Mr. Cárdenas. Meanwhile, Jennifer Stewart , an African-American lobbyist on the Congressional Black Caucus Institute board, was assigned to work with Marc Veasey, Democrat of Texas, who is also black. She personally appealed to Mr. Veasey’s staff, urging that he not sign a letter last August questioning the deal, according to an email obtained by The New York Times, citing the company’s work on behalf of the minority community. (Mr. Veasey still signed a related letter .) Comcast also asked Jordan Goldstein , a former official at the Federal Communications Commission who is now a Comcast regulatory affairs executive, to work with Mr. Blumenthal’s office. Mr. Goldstein had previously developed a working relationship with Joel Kelsey, a legislative assistant in charge of reviewing the matter for the senator, who is a member of the Senate Commerce Committee. At the state level, it also hired at least two former state attorneys general — Patrick C. Lynch of Rhode Island and Walter W. Cohen of Pennsylvania — to reach out to state officials, who in many cases have their own antitrust powers, to try to remove impediments to the deal’s approval. But the effort, despite the heavy spending, which included an Internet and newspaper advertising campaign, never seemed to gain traction. In some cases, lawmakers like Mr. Cárdenas and Mr. Blumenthal had private conversations with Thomas Wheeler, the chairman of the F.C.C., to express their reservations. Mr. Blumenthal also spoke directly with Mr. Cohen, who visited the senator’s office for a chat. But the senator said he came away from the meeting unconvinced, as did others on Capitol Hill who had similar conversations. “They talked a lot about the benefits, and how much they were going to invest in Time Warner Cable and improve the service it provided,” said one senior Senate staff aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “But every time you talked about industry consolidation and the incentive they would have to leverage their market power to hurt competition, they gave us unsatisfactory answers.” Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, ultimately offered reserved support for the NBCUniversal deal after playing a leading role in pushing for concessions by Comcast to promote diversity in its programming. But she said her concerns with this transaction were just too big to overcome. “No amount of public-interest commitments to diversity would remedy the consumer harm a merged Comcast-Time Warner would have caused to millions of Americans across the country,” Ms. Waters said. | Comcast;Time Warner Cable;Competition law;Mergers and Acquisitions;US Politics;Lobbying;David L Cohen;Brian L Roberts |
ny0107689 | [
"business",
"global"
] | 2012/04/14 | Poland Trying to Build Banks' Defenses | The Polish authorities say they are open to an inflow of Russian capital, even if they are doing what they can to bolster Polish banks against Russian takeovers. In a move aimed at strengthening the domestic banking sector, Bank Zachodni WBK announced in February that it would merge with the much smaller Kredyt Bank, a subsidiary of KBC Group of Belgium, to create one of the largest banks in Poland. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will support the deal by purchasing a stake in the new entity for 332 million zlotys, or $104 million. Bank Zachodni is almost wholly owned by Banco Santander, the Spanish banking giant, but its shares are traded on the Warsaw Stock Exchange and it is considered a standalone business. “We are very supportive of local markets,” said Lucyna Stanczak, director of Poland for the European reconstruction bank. The merger needs the approval of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority. The Polish authorities are also exploring ways to tap capital from sources like government pension funds to capitalize domestic banks. West European banks have been attracted by the strength of the Polish economy. While many other European Union economies are teetering in or near recession, the Polish economy is expected to grow 3 percent this year, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Gunter Deuber, an economist at Raiffeisen Research in Vienna, said the Poles could try to throw up regulatory barriers against Russian banks trying to enter the market. No matter how useful direct foreign investment might be to the Polish economy, from whatever source, many Poles still harbor deep resentment toward Russia from the Soviet era, he said. Poland depends heavily on Russian natural gas and crude oil . Nevertheless, since joining the European Union, Poland has directly challenged Russian interests in former Soviet states, including the Baltic countries, Belarus and Ukraine, by supporting pro-Western positions in those countries. Ties between Warsaw and Moscow were further strained in 2010 when a plane crashed en route to Russia, killing President Lech Kaczynski and the nearly 100 other members of Poland’s political, military and religious elite on board. “I would assume that the Polish regulator will be looking at them, or should be looking at them, as any other foreign investor entering the Polish market,” Ms. Stanczak said of Russian bankers. The Russians, she said, will undoubtedly face “some political debate or discussion.” | Poland;Banking and Financial Institutions;Russia;Bank Zachodni;Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures |
ny0089579 | [
"sports",
"autoracing"
] | 2015/09/19 | What a Difference a Year Made | How many Formula One races prove to be more interesting a year after they have happened? One of those races was the inaugural Singapore Grand Prix in 2008, which had already been exciting but a year later ended up being seen as a much different, crazier race. When it became the first night race in the series, Singapore fulfilled its promise: The cars looked great under the floodlights, the city street circuit was dynamic, and its backdrop, a mixture of modern and colonial architecture, was a stunning visual success on television. On the track, there was an array of unusual incidents, with unpredictable results and even a tinge of suspicion that the victory had been so unlikely that it might have been somehow staged. Fernando Alonso had started in his Renault in 15th position. But he went on to victory on a track where overtaking was extremely difficult if not impossible. But he won thanks to his own teammate having crashed out at a moment that was beneficial to Alonso. That teammate, Nelson Piquet Jr., crashed after 13 laps. The accident drew a safety car onto the track to suspend the action, so most of the other cars seized the opportunity to make a pit stop. Alonso, however, had made his pit stop on Lap 12, so he was bumped up the pack as the other drivers — including the race leader, Felipe Massa in a Ferrari — made their stops. Massa’s stop was a mess. His car was released before the refueling hose was removed, so he dragged the hose down the pitlane. He was then penalized for driving in front of another car in the pitlane, rather than giving way. He finished out of the points in 13th place, in a race that he probably should have won easily. What was not realized until a year later that something behind the scenes had been at work to produce the race result. That fact came to light when Piquet was fired by the Renault team in July 2009. Bitter about being dropped, he revealed that his crash in Singapore the year before had been intentional, staged to help Alonso win the race. In 2008, some observers had suspected as much, but the notion was so extraordinary — that a team or driver would stoop to such a tactic or take such a big risk — that no one could believe it. It was difficult to believe even when Piquet admitted it. But in two detailed statements to the International Automobile Federation, or F.I.A., the sport’s governing body, one in late July 2009 and the other in September, he explained in detail how his team director, Flavio Briatore, and another top director, Pat Symonds, had before the race proposed that he crash in order to help Alonso. Renault had been having a poor season. The team was desperate to give good news to the owners, the Renault car company, which was trying to decide whether to stay in Formula One. Because Piquet wanted to re-sign with the team for the next season, he accepted. After his confession, the F.I.A. held a hearing in Paris. The body banned Briatore from Formula One for the rest of his life and banned Symonds for five years. The Renault team was eliminated from the championship, but the ban was suspended for two years, so the team continued to race. It was the first time in the series’s history that a team was known to have asked one of its drivers to crash on purpose. The incident cast a pall over Formula One as the public wondered if this was common practice. The incident came amid several other scandals. The year before, there had been the so-called “ Spygate ” affair involving the McLaren and Ferrari teams, in which McLaren was fined $100 million for illegally obtaining the technical information of the Ferrari car design. And earlier in 2008, at the Malaysian Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton , the reigning world champion at McLaren, had admitted to lying to the race stewards in the season-opening race in Australia. “There is something fundamentally rotten and wrong at the heart of Formula One,” Jackie Stewart, a three-time world champion driver, said at the time. “Never in my experience has Formula One been in such a mood of self-destruction. Millions of fans are amazed, if not disgusted, at a sport which now goes from crisis to crisis with everyone blaming everyone else.” When Piquet’s revelation came, the 2008 season was long over, and the champion was Hamilton. He had finished third in Singapore and secured the driver’s title in the final race of the season, in Brazil, finishing fifth in a race won by Massa, who missed winning the world title by a single point. Massa had scored the pole position in Singapore and had led the race easily until the crash. Had he gone on to win or at least score a few points, he, not Hamilton, would have won the title. But it would have been difficult to hand Massa the title a year later. Piquet never returned to Formula One. He is racing in the Formula E series, where he has won two races, and has raced in various Nascar levels. Although Briatore rarely visits the Formula One paddock, he continued to do his other Formula One-related work in driver management after he took the F.I.A. to court in France and had the ban overturned. Symonds is a director of the Williams team — where Massa now races. | Formula One;Singapore;Fernando Alonso;Car Racing |
ny0283630 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2016/07/06 | After Attacks on Muslims, Many Ask: Where Is the Outpouring? | PARIS — In recent days, jihadists killed 41 people at Istanbul’s bustling, shiny airport ; 22 at a cafe in Bangladesh ; and at least 250 celebrating the final days of Ramadan in Baghdad . Then the Islamic State attacked, again, with bombings in three cities in Saudi Arabia . By Tuesday, Michel Kilo, a Syrian dissident, was leaning wearily over his coffee at a Left Bank cafe, wondering: Where was the global outrage? Where was the outpouring that came after the same terrorist groups unleashed horror in Brussels and here in Paris ? In a supposedly globalized world, do nonwhites, non-Christians and non-Westerners count as fully human? “All this crazy violence has a goal,” Mr. Kilo, who is Christian, said: to create a backlash against Muslims, divide societies and “make Sunnis feel that no matter what happens, they don’t have any other option.” This is not the first time that the West seems to have shrugged off massacres in predominantly Muslim countries. But the relative indifference after so many deaths caused by the very groups that have plagued the West is more than a matter of hurt feelings. One of the primary goals of the Islamic State and other radical Islamist groups is to drive a wedge between Sunni Muslims and the wider world, to fuel alienation as a recruiting tool. And when that world appears to show less empathy for the victims of attacks in Muslim nations, who have borne the brunt of the Islamic State’s massacres and predatory rule, it seems to prove their point. “Why isn’t #PrayForIraq trending?” Razan Hasan of Baghdad posted on Twitter . “Oh yeah no one cares about us.” Hira Saeed of Ottawa asked on Twitter why Facebook had not activated its Safety Check feature after recent attacks as it did for Brussels, Paris and Orlando, Fla. , and why social media had not been similarly filled with the flags of Turkey, Bangladesh and Iraq. “The hypocrisy is the western world is strong,” she wrote . The global mood increasingly feels like one of atavism, of retreat into narrower identities of nation, politics or sect, with Britain voting to leave the European Union and many Americans supporting the nativist presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump. The violence feeds a growing impulse among many in the West to fear Muslims and Arabs, which has already prompted a political crisis over immigration that, in turn, has buttressed extremists’ goals. Europe is convulsing over a movement to reject refugees from Syria and Iraq, who are themselves fleeing violence by jihadists and their own governments. It is in Syria and Iraq that the Islamic State has established its so-called caliphate, ruling overwhelmingly Muslim populations with the threat of gruesome violence. The group has killed Muslims in those countries by the thousands, by far the largest share of its victims. When Islamic State militants mowed down cafegoers in Paris in November, people across the world adorned public landmarks and their private Facebook pages with the French flag — not just in Europe and the United States, but also, with an empathy born of experience, in Syria and Iraq. But over the past week, Facebook activated its Safety Check feature, which allows people in the vicinity of a disaster to mark themselves safe, only after the attack on the Istanbul airport. The flags of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Bangladesh have not been widely projected on landmarks or adopted as profile pictures. (Photographs on social media showed that in Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of Europe’s two majority-Muslim countries, the Turkish flag was beamed onto a bridge in Mostar, the scene of sectarian killings in the 1990s.) Some wonder if part of the reason is that three of those flags bear Islamic symbols or slogans. “More deaths in Iraq in the last week than Paris and Orlando combined but nobody is changing their profile pics, building colours, etc.,” Kareem Rahaman wrote on Twitter . Image Relatives on Monday mourned a victim killed in the attack at the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka. Credit Adnan Abidi/Reuters There are some understandable reasons for the differing reactions. People typically identify more closely with places and cultures that are familiar to them. With Iraq, there is also a degree of fatigue, and a feeling that a bombing there is less surprising than one in Europe. Deadly attacks have been a constant in Iraq after years of American occupation, followed by a sectarian war in which Sunni and Shiite militias slaughtered civilians of the opposite sect. Still, while terrorist attacks in Europe may feel more surprising to the West — though they have become all too common there, too — that does not explain the relative indifference to attacks in Istanbul, Saudi Arabia or Bangladesh. “That’s what happens in Iraq,” Sajad Jiyad, a researcher in Iraq who rushed to the scene of the Baghdad bombing and found that one of his friends had died there, wrote on his own blog . “Deaths become just statistics, and the frequency of attacks means the shock doesn’t register as it would elsewhere, or that you have enough time to feel sad or grieve.” In the Muslim world, the partly sectarian nature of some conflicts shades people’s reactions, producing a kind of internal sympathy gap. People from one sect or political group often discount or excuse casualties from another. In Iraq, the Islamic State took root within an insurgency against the country’s Shiite-led government, and Shiite militias fighting it have been accused of brutality as well. In Syria, it is just one menace; many more Syrians have been killed by the government’s attacks on areas held by Sunni insurgents, including rebel groups opposed to the Islamic State. Mr. Jiyad added that the Islamic State was “hoping to incite a reaction and a spiral into endless violence,” and that Iraqis played into that when they mourned more for their own sect than for others. In the West, though, there is a tendency in certain quarters, legitimized by some politicians, to conflate extremist Islamist militants with the Muslim societies that are often their primary victims, or to dismiss Muslim countries as inherently violent. “Either Iraqi blood is too cheap or murder is normalized,” Sayed Saleh Qazwini, an Islamic educator in Michigan, wrote on Twitter . In Paris, a rainbow flag hangs on the Hotel de Ville, memorializing the 49 people gunned down at a gay nightclub in Orlando last month. But in a corner shop on Monday, the woman who served me had no such sympathy for the Middle East. When she asked where I lived, and I told her Beirut, Lebanon, she exclaimed about the violence in the region. Struggling to explain that there is a lot more than just violence happening there, I said: “Yes, there are a lot of problems. What can one do?” “Exterminer les islamistes,” she said grimly. Exterminate: a strong word. Islamists: a broad category of people. Mr. Kilo, who spent years in the prisons of the Syrian government and opposes both it and the Islamic State, said his life in Paris had changed since November. Speaking Arabic is now suspect. He sees fear in French people’s eyes when they see Syrians. “I’m afraid, too,” he said. “Someone could blow himself up anytime.” He has written an article that will be published in the newspaper Al Araby Al Jadeed, titled “The Curse of Syria.” The failure of empathy is broader than the Islamic State, he said; it extends to the international community’s unwillingness or inability to stop the slaughter of the Syrian civil war, which began with protests for political change. “If we lose all humanity,” Mr. Kilo said, “if you allow the slaughter of a nation for five and a half years, after all the leaders of the international community declared the right of these people to revolt against their government, then expect Islamic State — and many other Islamic States in other forms and shapes.” | Terrorism;Islam;Baghdad;Dhaka;Istanbul Airport Attack;ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State |
ny0177858 | [
"us"
] | 2007/09/30 | Duke’s President Apologizes Over Lacrosse Case | DURHAM, N.C., Sept. 29 (AP) — Richard H. Brodhead, president of Duke University , apologized Saturday for not having better supported the men’s lacrosse players falsely accused last year of sexual assault. Mr. Brodhead, speaking at the university’s law school, said he regretted Duke’s “failure to reach out” in a “time of extraordinary peril” after a woman accused three players of assaulting her at a team party in March 2006. “Given the complexities of this case, getting the communication right would never have been easy,” Mr. Brodhead said. “But the fact is that we did not get it right, causing the families to feel abandoned when they were most in need of support. This was a mistake. I take responsibility for it, and I apologize for it.” As the authorities began to investigate the woman’s allegations, the university initially suspended the highly ranked team from play. Mr. Brodhead later canceled the remainder of its season and ousted Mike Pressler, the team’s longtime coach. Michael B. Nifong , the Durham County prosecutor, labeled the team “hooligans” as he investigated the case. But even as Mr. Nifong won indictments against the players, Reade W. Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David F. Evans, there was growing skepticism over the charges. State prosecutors determined in February that the accuser’s story was not true, and Roy A. Cooper, the North Carolina attorney general, called the three players innocent victims of Nifong’s “tragic rush to accuse.” Mr. Nifong was disbarred in June for more than two dozen violations of the state bar’s rules of professional conduct, including withholding results of important DNA tests, and resigned from office. | Duke University;Brodhead Richard H;Lacrosse;Assaults;Nifong Michael B |
ny0133106 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2012/12/14 | Evidence of Russian State Role in Death of Poisoned Spy Is Cited | LONDON — New testimony that emerged Thursday deepened the intrigue surrounding the death of the former K.G.B. officer Alexander V. Litvinenko , offering “prima facie” evidence of Russian state involvement and indicating that he had been a paid agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, lawyers at a preliminary inquest hearing said. The accusations evoked the murky world of rumor, claim and counterclaim in which Mr. Litvinenko appeared to operate before his death in November 2006 and raised questions about his role in the twilight arena of competing intelligence services. Mr. Litvinenko died after ingesting a rare and highly toxic radioactive isotope, polonium 210, which British investigators later traced to a pot of tea served to him at an upscale hotel in Grosvenor Square, opposite the American Embassy in central London. British prosecutors have charged another former K.G.B. operative, Andrei K. Lugovoi, with the killing. Mr. Lugovoi has denied the charge. The potentially explosive assertions were made at a procedural hearing before a full inquest, set for May 2013, into Mr. Litvinenko’s death. In a statement composed on his deathbed, Mr. Litvinenko accused the Russian leader Vladimir V. Putin of responsibility for his death. Hugh Davies, a lawyer acting for the inquest, said evidence provided by the British government had established a “prima facie case as to the culpability of the Russian state in the death of Alexander Litvinenko.” The charge is certain to infuriate the Kremlin, which has denied involvement but sheltered Mr. Lugovoi from a British demand for his extradition. Neither the Russian authorities nor Mr. Lugovoi offered any immediate response to the accusation on Thursday. Mr. Litvinenko’s adversaries had long depicted him as an agent of British intelligence, accusing him of trying to recruit Mr. Lugovoi. But the details of his role had not been enumerated publicly until the hearing on Thursday. Ben Emmerson, a lawyer representing Mr. Litvinenko’s widow, Marina Litvinenko, said that Mr. Litvinenko, who fled to Britain in 2000 and became a British citizen weeks before his death, had for some years been a “registered and paid agent and employee of MI6, with a dedicated handler whose pseudonym was Martin.” He would meet his handler in central London, Mr. Emmerson said, and discuss the encounters with his wife. Mr. Litvinenko also worked for the Spanish intelligence service, Mr. Emmerson said, and both the British and Spanish spy agencies made payments into a joint account with his wife. He added that the inquest next year should consider whether MI6 failed in its duty to protect him against a “real and immediate risk to life.” Mr. Litvinenko’s contacts and meetings with Mr. Lugovoi have been documented in the past, but there seemed to be a further twist to their relationship, according to Mr. Emmerson, who said the two former K.G.B. officers had been scheduled to travel together to Spain to give evidence to the Spanish security services about possible links between Russian organized crime and the Kremlin. A lawyer for the British authorities, Neil Garnham, said he could neither confirm nor deny whether Mr. Litvinenko had been a British agent. Mr. Litvinenko was also a close associate of the self-exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, another of Mr. Putin’s adversaries. Hugo Keith, a lawyer acting for Mr. Berezovsky, denied any involvement by his client. “It’s not open to an individual to get polonium 210,” he said. “The suggestion that Mr. Berezovsky is responsible is implausible.” The death of Mr. Litvinenko deeply strained the relationship between Russia and Britain, and the new testimony set the stage for highly contentious hearings in May, at which both governments may be forced to deal with unwelcome questions about what their security services knew about events leading to the killing. | Russia;Litvinenko Alexander V;British Secret Intelligence Service;Poisoning and Poisons;Espionage and Intelligence Services;Great Britain |
ny0064394 | [
"technology",
"personaltech"
] | 2014/06/20 | Using Microsoft OneDrive for Photo Backup | Q. The Microsoft OneDrive app on my Android phone once asked if I wanted to back up my photos automatically and I said no, but now I’ve reconsidered. How can I get back to that screen again? A. The mobile app for Microsoft OneDrive , the cloud-storage service formerly known as SkyDrive, offers to automatically back up all the pictures you take with the phone’s camera (just as the Google+ Auto Backup can do) when you first sign in. If you declined the offer to enable the photo backup then, you can turn it on in the app’s settings. Open the OneDrive app and tap the Settings icon. In the Options area, tap the On button next to Camera Backup. By default, the OneDrive app will upload pictures only when you are on a Wi-Fi network to avoid eating up your phone’s monthly data allowance from your cellular provider. If you have an expansive data plan and want to upload photos anyway, tap Camera Backup on the OneDrive Settings screen and turn on “Use Mobile Network” in the Options area. The app normally backs up the photos at their full resolution when you are connected to a Wi-Fi network, but you can choose to shrink the images a bit for quicker and smaller uploads by turning on the “Resize Photos” setting. Sharing Another Computer’s Disc Drive Q. What is this thing called “Remote Disc” in my Mac OS X sidebar? A. Apple now makes several MacBook laptops and desktop iMacs that no longer include a built-in DVD/CD drive. The Remote Disc tool that appears in the sidebar panel of OS X Finder windows allows these machines to “share” the disc drive of another computer on your local network. In addition to the network connection, the computers doing the sharing need to be running at least Mac OS X 10.4.11 with the DVD or CD Sharing Setup Update for Mac v1.0 installed. The Mac without the disc drive can also borrow the disc drive of a PC on the network, as long as the PC is running Windows XP Service Pack 2 or later and has the DVD or CD Sharing Update 1.0 for Windows software installed. One you have the software installed, you need to enable the DVD or CD Sharing feature in the Mac’s System Preferences or the Windows Control Panel. Apple has illustrated instructions for both systems on its site, as well as a set of troubleshooting steps and firewall settings you may need to adjust to get the two computers communicating properly. Borrowing another computer’s optical drive with the Remote Disc tool can be helpful for copying over files stored on a CD or DVD, but Apple lists a number of activities that are not supported with the sharing feature. These include playing audio CDs or watching DVD movies, playing video games or other content on copy-protected discs and using system installation discs for Windows or Mac OS X. You cannot burn CDs or DVDs remotely either. If you need to do any of these forbidden things with a disc, you may want to invest in an external USB disc drive for your Mac. Not every external drive out there will play nice with Apple’s hardware, but the company makes its own $79 USB SuperDrive that works with its computers if you do not feel like checking compatibility specifications on models from other manufacturers. | Wireless;Smartphone;Photography;DVD |
ny0230857 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2010/09/07 | New Yorkers Strongly Back Shorter Term Limits | Two years after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg extended the limit on New York City’s elected officials from two terms to three, paving the way for his re-election, nearly three-fourths of city voters favor reversing his move, according to a New York Times poll. The remarkably unified public support is a rebuke for Mr. Bloomberg, who overturned the results of two voter referendums when he asked the City Council to rewrite the term limits law in 2008 . Now voters appear poised to undo Mr. Bloomberg’s actions at the ballot box this November, when they will be asked to select limits of two or three terms. If anything, the battle over Mr. Bloomberg’s decision to revise the rule has intensified public support for the original measure, which restricted most officials to eight consecutive years in office: in 1993, it was adopted with 59 percent of the vote. Today, 73 percent want it restored, the survey found. Interviews with respondents to the poll show that frustration with the mayor’s aggressive tactics two years ago has influenced their views on the issue. “When the term limits were enacted, I thought it was a bad idea, but what was worse was the way Bloomberg went about overturning that law,” said Alan Brodherson, 46, a lawyer who lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. “The way he handled it was not right.” Now, Mr. Brodherson said, he was considering voting for the two-term limit to avoid rewarding Mr. Bloomberg for what he saw as a self-serving maneuver. In a city where consensus on anything can be elusive, the poll revealed broad, bipartisan support for returning to the two-term cap: 74 percent of Democrats, 73 percent of Republicans and 72 percent of independents back it. The poll was conducted Aug. 27 to 31 with 892 adults, 754 of them registered voters. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus four percentage points. In follow-up interviews, respondents who endorsed two terms argued that it would force entrenched politicians from office and encourage new people, untainted by money and power, to enter public life. “The longer most politicians are in office, the more corrupt they get,” said Ronald Rosen, 69, a retired post office worker in Queens. “I don’t think being a Council member or mayor should be a career job. They’re supposed to be people who want to serve the public for about two terms and that’s it, you get a new face.” But several also pointed to their anger with Mr. Bloomberg, who before changing the law had said he would not seek a third term and had called those who previously sought to change the term limits “disgraceful.” And the poll suggested that in some ways, it is personal: voters who disapprove of the mayor’s handling of city government were more likely to back a limit of two terms over three. Peter Marsala, 63, who favors a two-term limit, said he had lost faith in Mr. Bloomberg because of the city’s high unemployment rate and the mayor’s support for a planned Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan. “When he first came into office, I thought it was a breath of fresh air, but it turns out he is an elitist,” Mr. Marsala said. “You can ride the subway all you want, but it does not make you the common man.” Mr. Marsala, a financial planner who lives in Queens, recalled Mr. Bloomberg’s effort to extend term limits with disgust. “He strong-armed it through,” he said. “I didn’t appreciate the way he did it.” Eighty-six percent of those who disapprove of Mr. Bloomberg back a return to two terms, compared with 68 percent of those who approve of him. Even though emotions still run high over term limits, Mr. Bloomberg remains popular for an incumbent, especially given the harsh political climate: 59 percent of city residents approve of how he is running the city, while 29 percent disapprove. When he announced his intention to seek a third term in the midst of the financial crisis, the mayor argued that New York City needed his financial expertise, and he explained that his seemingly ironclad support for a two-term limit had evolved. “You can make that case for two terms or three terms,” he said at the time. “In this case after listening to everybody I’ve been convinced that three terms is right.” To quell public anger over his decision to change the law through legislation in the City Council, rather than a new public referendum, as many demanded, Mr. Bloomberg pledged to put the issue before voters eventually. Two weeks ago, a commission whose members were appointed by the mayor voted to place the question about term limits on the Nov. 2 ballot. The commission, however, decided to shield sitting city officials from any change. Under the proposal on the ballot, those already in office would be given a chance to serve three terms even if voters approved a two-term limit. The Times poll shows that voters overwhelmingly oppose that exemption. Sixty-one percent said that whatever they adopt in November should apply to incumbents, not just newly elected officials; 29 percent think current officeholders should be excluded. In a follow-up interview, Gayle Borden, 63, a paralegal in Queens, said that if New Yorkers backed a limit of two terms, nobody in elected office should be allowed to exceed it. Such limits, she said, “give voters a chance to find out if somebody else can do a better job or add something to the job that’s already done.” For the same reason, she added, “I think term limits should apply to people already in office.” | Term Limits (Political Office);Elections;Bloomberg Michael R;Polls and Public Opinion;Referendums;New York City |
ny0195401 | [
"technology",
"internet"
] | 2009/11/25 | Facebook Sets Up Dual-Class Stock Structure | SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook is taking a rudimentary step down the path to becoming a public company. The company said on Tuesday that it was creating a dual-class stock structure for itself, and converting all of its current shares into so-called Class B shares, which will have 10 votes each on matters of corporate governance. Class A shares, which would be sold in an initial public offering, would carry one vote. Facebook said it had “no plans to go public at this time.” In the event Facebook does sell shares, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, would firmly retain control over the company and its board of directors. “We did introduce a dual-class stock structure because existing shareholders wanted to maintain control over voting on certain issues to help ensure the company can continue to focus on the long term to build a great business,” a Facebook spokesman, Larry Yu, said in an e-mailed statement. “This revision to the stock structure should not be construed as a signal the company is planning to go public.” The news of Facebook’s new stock structure was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Such dual-class stock structures — and the controversy they typically generate — are nothing new in the corporate world. Many families and individuals who start companies grant themselves these special voting shares as a way to preserve control of the company while selling shares to the public. The structure is used at The New York Times Company, Ford, Warren E. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, Visa and EchoStar Communications, among others. Google also employed a dual-class structure when it went public in 2004. Several investors criticized the arrangement, saying that it disenfranchised outside shareholders. Earlier this month, Hyatt Hotels, which is based in Chicago, drew similar fire from analysts and unions when it went public, selling only A shares. The Pritzker family, which runs the hotelier, kept B shares and a strong majority of the voting power. A dual class structure “is another mechanism to exert complete control and it’s tantamount to almost like a preferred security,” said Scott Sweet, senior managing partner at IPO Boutique, an advisory firm. Facebook has recently shown more of an interest in delaying a public offering than in rushing one. Earlier this year, the company allowed its employees to sell a portion of their stock to Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian venture capital firm, which added $100 million in shares to its previous $200 million ownership stake. Employees have also been able to sell their shares on so-called secondary exchanges, like SecondMarket, based in New York, and SharesPost, based in Santa Monica, Calif. Facebook’s see-sawing valuation was last set at $6.5 billion when Digital Sky Technologies bought shares from employees. On secondary exchanges, where the supply of shares is limited, the valuation has risen to $9.5 billion. The social network said earlier this fall that it had surpassed 300 million members. | Facebook.com;Stocks and Bonds;Initial Public Offerings |
ny0071072 | [
"business"
] | 2015/03/28 | Fuel Costs Help Cruise Company Profit Top Forecast | Carnival, the world’s largest cruise operator by revenue, reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit, helped by higher onboard spending and lower fuel prices. It said bookings for Caribbean cruises, its biggest business, were strong for the rest of the year. Shares of Carnival rose 6 percent to close at $47.12. The company, which runs the Carnival, Holland America and Costa cruise lines, faced intense competition as rivals like MSC Cruises of Europe cut prices. The company’s operating costs declined 7 percent. Excluding one-time items, Carnival earned 20 cents a share. Revenue declined 1.7 percent to $3.53 billion. Analysts on average estimated a profit of 9 cents a share and revenue of $3.57 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. | Carnival Cruise Lines;Earnings Reports |
ny0044498 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2014/02/02 | Political Candidate’s Aides Die in Afghanistan Attack | KABUL, Afghanistan — Two aides to an Afghan presidential candidate were fatally shot in the relatively secure city of Herat in western Afghanistan on Saturday, officials said, raising questions about the prospects of a peaceful election one day before the official start of the campaign. The attack occurred around 6:30 p.m. when gunmen fired on a vehicle outside the campaign office in Herat, according to police officials and a spokesman for the candidate. The assault killed Faiz Zada Hamdard, a campaign manager for the candidate, Abdullah Abdullah, and the driver of the vehicle, Shujauddin, 19, the nephew of a well-known jihadi commander who goes by a single name like many Afghans. By late Saturday, the police had detained several suspects, officials said. A spokesman for Mr. Abdullah, an ophthalmologist who first ran for president in 2009, said Mr. Hamdard had been threatened by phone and in person for his work on the campaign, and questioned the ability of Afghan security forces to protect candidates and their aides. “This was a saddening news, which deeply hurt us all,” said Sayed Fazel Sancharaki, the spokesman. “We see it as a great loss, and Mr. Abdullah Abdullah requests that the security organizations seriously investigate this incident.” Image Two employees of Abdullah Abdullah, a presidential candidate, were killed Saturday. Credit Massoud Hossaini/Associated Press The attack comes at a difficult time for Afghanistan, as it prepares for its first democratic transfer of power. The election, set for April 5, is to determine the successor to President Hamid Karzai, who is scheduled to step down after serving two terms. The election is viewed as a crucial milestone for the nation, which must confront fears about security and fraud as well as the withdrawal of most, if not all, Western forces. Mr. Abdullah is one of 11 candidates vying to succeed Mr. Karzai. The death of Mr. Hamdard is a blow to Mr. Abdullah’s campaign. He was a longtime staff member of Mr. Abdullah’s political organization, the National Coalition of Afghanistan, and served the candidate during his previous bid for the presidency. In his latest role, he was the head of one of Mr. Abdullah’s 12 campaign offices in Herat Province. Mr. Abdullah, partial to turtleneck sweaters and tailored jackets, is a well-known figure in Afghan politics, having come in behind Mr. Karzai in the 2009 elections, which were widely considered fraudulent. He is seen this time around as one of the favorites. Early polling has suggested that he could very well garner the most votes in a first round, though probably not enough to avoid a runoff. Born of a Pashtun father and Tajik mother, Mr. Abdullah was part of the resistance to both Soviet and Taliban rule and was an early member of the government formed after the American intervention. He was Mr. Karzai’s foreign minister for five years before becoming one of the Karzai government’s fiercest critics. | Abdullah Abdullah;Assassination;Herat Afghanistan;Election;Afghanistan;Murders |
ny0159283 | [
"sports",
"othersports"
] | 2008/12/06 | Road Runners to Limit Participants in Most Central Park Races | Despite increasing demand, road races in Central Park are going to be smaller next year. The New York Road Runners, the group that organizes most road races in the park, said Friday that it would cap most of its fields at 5,000 runners. This year, 10 of 27 Road Runners events had fields of more than 5,000. The group said it would also impose limits on its two biggest events, the New York City Marathon and the NYC Half-Marathon; those fields will be far bigger than 5,000, although the caps have not been determined. The marathon had more than 38,000 finishers this year. Mary Wittenberg, president of the Road Runners and director of the marathon, said the restrictions were not prompted by any particular safety concern and had been considered for several years, as participation grew by about 10 percent every 12 months. “The idea is to create a better experience for the runners and to better share the park,” Wittenberg said. Approximately 6,500 runners will be able to register for each race, on a first-come-first-served basis. A percentage of runners who register for a race do not make it to the start line, for a variety of reasons, a factor considered in the cap number. Eventually, Wittenberg said, the Road Runners will consider guaranteed entry for certain runners, perhaps based on official times or other factors. “The biggest change is that it will force runners to decide early what races they want to run in,” she said. “Up until now, they had the luxury of waiting basically until race day. I think what will happen is that we’ll end up providing some structure to the way people run.” Besides the marathon and half-marathon, the biggest races this year were the 10-kilometer Scotland Run at the end of March, which drew 6,977 runners, and the 5-mile Poland Springs Marathon Kickoff at the end of October, which drew 6,477 runners. | Running;New York Road Runners Club;Central Park (NYC);New York City Marathon |
ny0239620 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2010/12/19 | SoulCycle Workouts Gain a Devout Following | SEEN from the street, the cycling studio at SoulCycle , at Third Avenue and 83rd Street, is a gleaming white glass box — said to be inspired by London’s White Cube gallery. “The corner buzzes for us,” said Julie Rice, an owner. The energy inside is palpable: sweaty and competitive. There is no talking. No cellphones. It’s about the music, the spinning flywheels and the discipline. The race begins each Monday at noon, when online reservations open for the coming week’s quad-burning workouts. The bikes in the most dynamic instructors’ classes are often all booked within an hour. “It is impossible to get into some of the hot classes taught by the best teachers,” said Richard Wagman, a real estate developer in his 40s who joked that his strategy “involves three super computers registering at noon on Mondays.” Others pay a premium to get ahead of the masses. The price of each session normally is $32. It drops a little when 10, 20 or 30 sessions are bought at once. But a 50-class series does not come with a discount. In fact, the cost, $3,000, works out to $60 a class. The package comes with the privilege to sign up weeks early for spots and even to request a bike in the front row — a chance to lead the pack of racers. A hard-core group of regulars fill many of the slots, and beginners are welcome, though it can be difficult to keep up. The sessions mix serious pedaling with an upper-body workout for a maximum calorie burn; the workout is beloved for being efficient and fun. The studio offers 7 to 10 classes a day, seven days a week, and about 2,000 people spin through each week, Ms. Rice said. SoulCycle has three branches in Manhattan and one each in Scarsdale and Bridgehampton, N.Y. (A branch in Miami Beach is to open this month, and two more locations in Manhattan are to open early next year.) Before entering the steaming, windowless studio at the Upper East Side branch, students stuff gear into small lockers and try to sidestep the sweaty cyclists leaving the previous session. Those finished with their workouts often grab their sweatshirts, jackets and shoes and change outside on Third Avenue. In the studio, the bikes are crammed so tightly that riders in racing position can practically lick the Lululemon logo on the seat of the pants of the person directly in front of them. “We ride close together so we can feel and feed on each other’s energy,” the SoulCycle Web site says. “That being said, your neighbor does not want to feed off your odor.” One Sunday night, 48 riders packed into Daniel Wiener’s class, which had a fun old-school mix of Journey, Bonnie Tyler, Run-D.M.C. and Salt-n-Pepa playing. Middle schoolers perched on bikes next to their parents. Teenagers twisted their long hair into top knots, adorned with SoulCycle bandanas. Middle-aged women strapped on heart monitors and peeled off shirts to reveal skimpy sports bras and SoulCycle-cut abs. The lights were dimmed, and Don Henley boomed: Nobody on the road, Nobody on the beach, I feel it in the air, The summer’s out of reach. The workout was brutal: double-time and relentless. Perfectly suited to its neighborhood. | Bicycles and Bicycling;Health Clubs;Upper East Side (NYC) |
ny0287435 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2016/08/29 | Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan’s Longtime Ruler, Is Hospitalized | MOSCOW — The Uzbekistan government issued an unusual statement on Sunday announcing the hospitalization of President Islam Karimov, who has ruled the former Soviet republic for more than a quarter-century. The statement gave no details about the nature of the illness suffered by the 78-year-old president or his condition. It said only that “in the opinion of the specialists, a full medical examination and subsequent treatment will require a certain amount of time.” The Regnum news agency reported from Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, that the police and security forces had formed a cordon around the government hospital where Mr. Karimov was being treated, in an apparent indication of the unease caused by his hospitalization. Mr. Karimov, who tolerates no dissent, has ruled Uzbekistan since the Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev made him the republic’s Communist Party chief in 1989. In December 1991, just days after the Soviet Union ceased to exist, Mr. Karimov was elected president of the newly independent nation. As he has aged, questions have arisen about both a successor and the long-term stability of Uzbekistan, a strategically placed Central Asian country. During the war in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan served as an important supply route for United States and NATO troops. When the war began in 2001, Mr. Karimov allowed United States forces to use a major air base. He then evicted them in anger over American criticism of a violent crackdown on a 2005 uprising in Andijan, where Uzbek troops fired on demonstrators, killing several hundred people, according to witnesses and human rights groups. Mr. Karimov then softened his position, allowing Uzbekistan to be part of the Northern Distribution Network, a vital supply route for Afghanistan later in the war. | Islam Karimov;Uzbekistan;Central Asia;Afghanistan War;Soviet Union |
ny0050596 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2014/10/17 | Europe Evaluates Ebola Measures as Possibility of New Cases Arises in France and Spain | PARIS — Several new suspected cases of Ebola were reported in Europe on Thursday, amid heightened fears that measures to prevent the virus from spreading here are insufficient and that more people, especially health personnel attending to Ebola patients, are at risk of contamination. The French and Spanish authorities would not confirm that any of the four people have tested positive for Ebola. But in each of the cases — one in France, three in Spain — a link to possible sources of contamination has been established. All three of the Spanish patients were taken to the Carlos III hospital in Madrid, which has been serving as an Ebola treatment center since August , when a priest was transported there from West Africa for treatment of the virus. That priest died, as did another one who had also worked in West Africa and was airlifted to Spain in late September. On Thursday, the Spanish health minister, Ana Mato, confirmed that medical personnel were treating a Nigerian passenger with signs of fever who had landed at Barajas airport in Madrid on an Air France flight from Paris. The other passengers were evacuated, and the Nigerian was transferred to Carlos III hospital, which said early Friday the illness was, in fact, malaria. Also on Thursday, a nurse considered at risk for Ebola was admitted to Carlos III, hospital officials said. The nurse had ridden in an ambulance after it had been used to transport María Teresa Romero Ramos to the hospital this month, they said. Ms. Romero, an auxiliary nurse, was the first person to test positive for Ebola in Europe, leading to a health emergency, as well as scrutiny of Spain’s handling of the treatment of Ebola patients. Ms. Romero had tended the second priest who had been flown back from West Africa for treatment. She remains in serious condition in the Carlos III hospital, although her health has shown some signs of improvement, according to hospital officials. She is now one of 15 people quarantined in the hospital. Fernando Simón, director of the Ebola crisis unit set up by the authorities, said that the nurse admitted on Thursday was “a low-risk” case, and that test results were expected soon. A third new case involves a priest who was part of the same religious order as the two others who died of Ebola in the Madrid hospital, according to hospital officials. He had returned to Spain from Liberia on Saturday, according to a government statement. In France, officials would not provide any information about a possible case involving another nurse. If confirmed, it would be the first instance of Ebola infecting someone through transmission in France. According to French news media reports, the nurse had an intense fever and was transported to a military hospital near Paris on Thursday. The hospital is one of 12 in France where the authorities have set up special units to treat Ebola cases and where a French volunteer for Doctors Without Borders , which has been providing front-line medical assistance in West Africa, was taken last month after being infected by the virus in Liberia. The volunteer recovered after treatment and left the hospital on Oct. 4. It was unclear if the nurse in the latest case had worked at the Bégin military hospital and, if so, whether she was involved in treating the Doctors Without Borders volunteer. Health Minister Marisol Touraine told the French radio station RTL on Thursday evening that she would not comment on the suspected case and that she did not want to feed anxiety. Later on Thursday, quoting anonymous sources, the French station BFM TV reported that a first series of tests had found the nurse to be negative for Ebola, but that more testing was necessary. The Health Ministry would not comment on that report. The latest episodes renewed concerns that Ebola cases may increase in Europe. European health officials meeting in Brussels on Thursday called for increased screening for people leaving West Africa but made no concrete decisions to address the health crisis beyond scheduling an Ebola workshop next month. Tonio Borg, the European Union ’s health commissioner, said after the meeting that countries had all agreed on the need to improve checks at African airports, but not on whether to impose similar screening on arrivals at Europe’s own airports and ports. That, he said, would be left up to individual countries to decide. Mr. Borg also said the European Commission, the bloc’s administrative arm, would sign an agreement with the State Department that would allow infected European doctors and nurses in Africa to make use of American evacuation planes, which are operated by a private company in Georgia called Phoenix Air . At the United Nations, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday that the new trust fund for Ebola had received only a fraction of the pledges of money it needed to tackle the outbreak. | Ebola;Europe;France;Spain;Doctors Without Borders;EU |
ny0281021 | [
"business",
"dealbook"
] | 2016/10/06 | Sompo of Japan Buying Endurance, a Specialty Insurer | TOKYO — Another Japanese insurer has made a multibillion-dollar overseas deal to protect itself from the financial pitfalls of an aging domestic population. Sompo Holdings said on Wednesday that it was buying Endurance Specialty Holdings, which is based in Bermuda but focuses on the United States market, for 639.4 billion yen, or about $6.3 billion. Sompo will pay $93 per share, a 40 percent premium to the average share price for the three months ending Monday, the companies said at a news conference in Tokyo. The deal comes as the company bets on nursing and other health care services in Japan as Sompo’s home market grows older. The Bank of Japan’s embrace of negative interest rates has also made overseas investments more attractive, and a relatively strong yen made the purchase easier. “With Endurance, we would like to establish a truly integrated global insurance platform,” Kengo Sakurada, the president and chief executive of Sompo, said at the news conference. He emphasized the importance of potential growth in Endurance’s specialty products. Endurance provides property and casualty insurance in the United States, as well as reinsurance and specialized coverage in areas like agriculture. John Charman, the chief executive of Endurance, said his company had done business with Sompo for years before the deal. “We highly respect Sompo’s disciplined risk-management system and underwriting culture,” Mr. Charman said. “Endurance’s clients will benefit from our increased scale, better financial strength rating and a larger balance sheet.” The size of the United States insurance market makes it an ideal target in Sompo’s overseas expansion, but the deal is still risky because of the type of insurance Endurance deals with, said Nobuyasu Uemura, a consultant at Capitas Consulting. “The corporate business is not easy, and Japanese companies don’t have much experience in specialty insurance,” Mr. Uemura said. “Underwriting corporate insurance is very technical and complicated. If it’s not well written, they could end up paying unexpected amounts of money to clients.” The agreement follows a string of deals involving Japanese insurers’ looking for overseas growth as their home market shrinks. Japanese acquisitions of overseas insurance companies surged in 2015, reaching $24.3 billion — the highest level in at least a decade, according to data from Dealogic. In the scramble to diversify, Tokio Marine agreed to buy HCC Insurance for $7.5 billion after a series of acquisitions in the United States. Sompo’s deal for Endurance is the largest outbound deal by a Japanese insurance since then. The Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Company bought the StanCorp Financial Group for $5 billion, and Sumitomo Life struck a $3.8 billion deal to buy the Symetra Financial Group, another American insurance company. Mitsui Sumitomo also bought the British insurer Amlin for $5.3 billion, while the Nippon Life Insurance Company spent $1.7 billion on 80 percent of National Australia Bank’s life insurance business. These mergers also come amid broader consolidation of the global insurance sector. The value of deals worldwide rose to $123.5 billion in 2015, from $69 billion the year before. Last year, Ace agreed to buy Chubb for $28.3 billion as low interest rates made it difficult for insurers to get good returns on capital, while Exor battled for months with Axis Capital Holdings to buy PartnerRe , a Bermuda insurer. Sompo shares closed up 2.73 percent on Wednesday. Endurance stock had already jumped about 35 percent in New York after reports of the deal were initially published. | Mergers and Acquisitions;Life insurance;Japan;US |
ny0103865 | [
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] | 2012/03/28 | At Wagner, Bashir Mason’s Rapid Rise | Bashir Mason’s first call after he was hired as the Wagner’s men’s basketball coach Sunday night was to his mother, Kathy, in Jersey City. He could barely contain his excitement. “Her response was, ‘O.K.,’ ” Mason said with a laugh. “That was it. Then she started talking about something else.” His mother’s nonchalance did not seem to surprise him — Kathy Mason, while always supportive of her only son, was also the calming influence who kept life’s developments in perspective. As a single mother, she worked three jobs to support her three children, and basketball was rarely her focus. For Bashir Mason, basketball has rapidly evolved from an activity to a pursuit to a career. On Tuesday, he was officially promoted to replace Dan Hurley at Wagner. Hurley left to become the coach at Rhode Island on March 20. At 28, Mason becomes the youngest N.C.A.A. Division I basketball coach in the country — North Carolina-Greensboro’s Wes Miller, 29, is next. Mason is five years removed from his senior season as Drexel’s point guard and has had only one year of head-coaching experience — leading the 2007-8 boys’ postgraduate team at St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark. His swift promotion is an eyebrow-raising development considering how Hurley’s success raised the visibility of Wagner’s program nationally and the stakes of the university making a sound hire. After a program-best 25-win season before losing to Robert Morris in the semifinals of the Northeast Conference tournament, the Seahawks have built momentum and now Mason — who was not Hurley’s top assistant — has to sustain it. “My goal in my life was to be a Division I head coach,” Mason said. “Did I ever see it happening this quickly? Never. Not even in my dreams.” He added: “They took a huge chance on me. I want to make them look good because of it.” The name Bashir is Arabic for “one who leads,” and some in Mason’s extended family are Muslim, though he was raised Baptist in a three-bedroom house in the Greenville section of Jersey City. His father has been absent, Mason said, and Kathy Mason took care of him, his two sisters and their elderly aunt, Edna, who lived in the basement. Kathy Mason worked full time as a home health aide, part time at the post office and on weekends at St. Mary’s elementary school, earning enough to send Mason to the private Marist High School in Bayonne, N.J., and then St. Benedict’s, where he met and played under Hurley. As a 6-foot, 180-pound point guard, Mason was a defensive standout good enough to earn a scholarship to Drexel. Coach Bruiser Flint called Mason, a four-year starter, one of the most mature players he had ever coached. Mason earned a momentary glimpse of national fame by banking in a one-handed, half-court shot at the buzzer to defeat Virginia Commonwealth as a sophomore in 2005, hopping onto the scorers’ table in jubilation. Few who saw the highlight knew that it was Mason’s first play-calling experience: he told the inbounder, Danny Hinds, to change the play and pass to him instead of the team’s leading scorer, Phil Goss. “It was designed for me to, like, set a screen,” Mason said. “But I called my own number.” After graduating from Drexel, Mason had offers to play for teams in Portugal, Mexico and the Czech Republic. But he held off, and discussed his future with Hurley, then at St. Benedict’s. Sensing Mason’s hesitation about playing overseas, Hurley told him he had a spot as the coach of the St. Benedict’s postgraduate team. “I said, ‘O.K., I’ll be the assistant coach for that,’ ” Mason said. “He said, ‘No, you’re the head coach.’ I was like, ‘But I’ve never coached a game.’ ” That team went on to win the state title. Hurley hired Mason as his assistant at Wagner in 2010. His promotion marks the second consecutive time that Wagner’s athletic director, Walt Hameline, has hired someone with no Division I coaching experience. This is also a team with four starters returning; a top prospect — the Michigan State transfer Dwaun Anderson — set to join; and a newfound buzz in the campus’s 2,100-seat Spiro Center, all of which Mason is expected to maintain. “There’s more to it than just coaching a team,” said Dereck Whittenburg, who coached Wagner to its only N.C.A.A. tournament appearance, in 2003. “It’s a position of leadership. For a young man like him, he’s just going to have to continue to learn those traits as he goes along. And at the same time, he has to win.” Hameline said he fielded “hundreds” of inquiries about the opening and said interest was higher than ever. But Mason, that mild-mannered young man from New Jersey who looks spry enough to still be banking in buzzer-beaters, seemed a risk worth taking. “He’s young,” Hameline said. “He’s enthusiastic. He cares. And he’s going to be real good.” | Mason Bashir;Wagner College;Coaches and Managers;Basketball;National Collegiate Athletic Assn;College Athletics |
ny0256521 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2011/08/31 | Federal Austerity Changes Disaster Relief | WASHINGTON — As Senator Bernard Sanders toured Vermont by helicopter on Tuesday to assess the damage from what he said could be his state’s worst-ever natural disaster, the idea of cutting other federal programs to aid towns pummeled by Hurricane Irene was stoking his outrage. “To say that the only way you can come up with funding to rebuild devastated communities is to cut back on other desperately needed programs is totally absurd,” said Mr. Sanders, an independent, responding to a call by leading Republicans to balance any financial relief with spending reductions elsewhere. “Historically in this country we have understood that when communities and states experience disasters, we as a nation come together to address those. “That is what being a nation is about,” he said in an interview. The new push for federal austerity is threatening to change the traditional dynamic when it comes to government relief in the aftermath of a storm, an earthquake or other calamity. It has touched off an intensifying debate over whether the government should just tack needed money onto the deficit or try to find a way to adjust the budget to cover the costs. Holding fast to their push for lower federal spending, top Congressional Republicans have argued that any federal aid in the aftermath of the double whammy of an earthquake followed by a hurricane should be offset, if possible, by spending less on other programs. “Clearly when disasters and emergencies happen, people expect their government to treat them as national priorities and respond properly,” said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for Representative Eric Cantor, the Virginia Republican and majority leader who has advocated offsetting emergency aid. “People also expect their government to spend their dollars wisely, and to make efforts to prioritize and save when possible.” Representative Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who is seeking his party’s presidential nomination, has gone beyond that view to argue that the federal government’s role in disaster preparation and relief should be cut substantially. Mr. Paul said he saw little value in the Federal Emergency Management Agency , saying the federal approach has given birth to an intrusive bureaucracy and supplants what should be an area for private insurance. “The bleeding heart will say, well, we have to take care of them,” Mr. Paul said on “Fox News Sunday,” calling FEMA “a gross distortion of insurance” and saying that workers for the agency “hinder the local people, and they hinder volunteers from going in.” “So there’s no magic about FEMA,” he concluded. That view and the idea of offsetting the cost of relief is unsettling to those of both parties who see disaster aid as a chief responsibility of the federal government. They note that past efforts were financed through deficit spending by both parties — a fact pointedly made on Tuesday by the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, when he was asked about paying for relief efforts with corresponding cuts. “I guess I can’t help but say that I wish that commitment to looking for offsets had been held by the House majority leader and others, say, during the previous administration when they ran up unprecedented bills and never paid for them," Mr. Carney said. As FEMA struggles with its own significant shortfall in financing, officials at the agency emphasized this week that immediate relief efforts were not being shortchanged even as the agency had been forced to shift money to cover its costs. “Our immediate focus is continuing doing everything we can to support our state and local partners as they respond to Irene and meet the immediate needs of disaster survivors, and we have the resources needed to do this,” an agency spokeswoman, Rachel Racusen, said. Conservative Republicans have pushed in the past to pay for disaster relief through budget cuts elsewhere, most notably in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But party leaders ultimately relented under political and public pressure, and much of the aid was delivered through deficit spending. Research by Senate Democrats showed that since 1989, Congress has approved 33 emergency appropriations for disaster relief without offsetting that money with cuts in other departments or agencies. But with the federal debt now more than $14 trillion, the dialogue has shifted on Capitol Hill, and Republicans are under pressure to hold firm on spending. The hard-fought debt limit deal struck this month would cut spending for federal agencies by $7 billion in 2012, and much of that savings could be quickly consumed by emergency relief. Congress will return next week to begin confronting the issue, both in setting a budget for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes disaster relief money, and a stopgap measure most likely to be needed as the end of the fiscal year, which is Sept. 30 approaches. It promises to be a politically charged fight. In an appearance on Fox News this week, Mr. Cantor promised to find the money for the storm aid. “But those monies are not unlimited,” said Mr. Cantor, who called for offsets and faulted the Senate for not moving ahead with a bill passed by the House to bolster FEMA’s accounts. In response, top Democrats warned that the emergency relief should not get tied up in the running budget dispute. “While getting our fiscal house in order needs to remain a top priority,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the Democrat whip, “this is clearly an emergency situation, and we need to take action as quickly as possible to help those in need.” | Federal Aid (US);Federal Emergency Management Agency;Disasters and Emergencies;Federal Budget (US);Hurricane Irene (2011);House of Representatives;Senate |
ny0183654 | [
"sports",
"football"
] | 2007/12/24 | Browns Lose, Then the Titans Rub It In | CINCINNATI — Because Cleveland bungled both early and late and lost, 19-14, to the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday in the cold and wind of Paul Brown Stadium, the Browns needed help to clinch a playoff berth for the first time since the 2002 season. And they did not get it. The Tennessee Titans defeated the Jets , 10-6, later Sunday to put Tennessee and Cleveland in a tie for the final wild-card berth in the American Football Conference with 9-6 records. The Titans play at Indianapolis next week while the Browns play host to San Francisco. Should both Tennessee and Cleveland win, the Titans would get the last A.F.C. berth because they would have a better record against common opponents. If both teams lose, Cleveland will get the playoff spot because it will have a better conference record. “We had a chance to go home and enjoy Christmas and everything is lovey-dovey,” said receiver Braylon Edwards, who caught two touchdown passes for the Browns. “Now, we have to watch scenarios and that’s not how you want to be.” When someone asked if the Browns were hurt by pressure, Edwards said: “No. We just didn’t play well. There’s no such thing as pressure.” Browns quarterback Derek Anderson threw four interceptions along with the two touchdown passes to Edwards, which spurred a second-half comeback. But the rally ended with an incomplete pass in the Bengals’ end zone as time ran out, with five players converging on a jump ball near the goal posts. “I’m not going to blame everything on the wind,” Anderson said of the interceptions. “A couple were bad decisions.” The early disarray of the Browns was evident in the second quarter when Anderson collided with running back Jamal Lewis on a handoff. The play lost 2 yards. “A bad exchange,” Lewis said. “A new play we put in.” Speaking more generally of the team, Lewis added, “We have to grow up and take on the task at hand and play like a playoff team.” The defeat not only prevented the Browns from claiming a playoff berth, but it also eliminated them from contention for the championship of the A.F.C. North. The first-place Pittsburgh Steelers (10-5) have clinched that division because they defeated Cleveland in both meetings this season. Because Jacksonville defeated Oakland on Sunday, the Jaguars (11-4) clinched one of two wild-card playoff berths in the A.F.C. Anderson completed 29 of 48 for 251 yards, but was not pleased with his performance. “It’s a tough battle to fight when you throw four picks,” he said. The two most devastating came near the end of the first half, when Chinedum Ndukwe intercepted a pass and carried it 44 yards to the Cleveland 5-yard line, setting up a touchdown on a pass from Carson Palmer to T. J. Houshmandzadeh on the next play. On the first play of Cleveland’s next possession, in the final minute of the half, Anderson was intercepted by Leon Hall, who carried the ball to the Cleveland 20 and set up a 1-yard touchdown run by Watson to make the score 19-0. “Right there, that won the game,” Anderson said. A reporter asked Coach Romeo Crennel whether it might have been wiser for the Browns, starting at their 20, to run the ball and use up the clock, then start fresh when they took the opening kickoff of the second half. “No,” he said. “We’ve been a pretty good two-minute team.” The Browns cut the lead to 19-7 with 40 seconds left in the third quarter on a 2-yard touchdown pass from Anderson to Edwards, who got open near the back of the end zone. The Browns had won four of their previous five games and seven of their previous nine, including an 8-0 victory against Buffalo in Cleveland last Sunday amid blowing snow. The Browns squandered two scoring opportunities on their first two possessions Sunday, botching a field-goal snap with the ball at the Bengals’ 22 and failing to convert on fourth-and-1 at the Bengals’ 19. Shayne Graham kicked field goals of 29 and 38 yards in the second quarter for Cincinnati. Kenny Watson carried 30 times for 130 yards and a touchdown. | Football;Cleveland Browns;Tennessee Titans;Cincinnati Bengals;New York Jets |
ny0238617 | [
"sports",
"basketball"
] | 2010/06/25 | A Diagnosis, as LeBron Fever Sweeps the City | The real LeBron Watch doesn’t officially begin until July 1, but as a staple of ESPN programming and a source of mind-blowing tedium, it has surpassed the endless will-he-or-won’t-he speculation over Brett Favre. LeBron James is a basketball player, a freakishly talented one, no doubt. And a decent guy, at least according to “Shooting Stars,” Buzz Bissinger’s book about the hardscrabble formative years of James’s life. He is responsible enough that he won’t provoke the dreaded 4 a.m. phone call from the police, and he’s too sensible to divvy up his fortune among various gambling joints, which seems to be an occupational hazard in today’s N.B.A. Now if championship rings matter, a skeptic might question the fuss over a player who doesn’t own one, but that wouldn’t be James’s fault. Both his coach and his general manager have been let go in recent weeks, presumably over their failure to surround him with enough complementary talent to win. What’s a superstar to do? Michael Jordan, remember, didn’t win his first ring until he was 28 and in his seventh N.B.A. season, but he stuck it out in Chicago and made it happen. James, 25, is keeping his intentions to himself, holding title-starved Cleveland hostage while his Hamlet-like ruminating determines which team in which city offers the best opportunity to bring forth his inner champion. A story the other day identified access to the emerging gym-shoe market in China as James’s primary consideration, and somewhere there’s a correlation between sneakers and titles. And it makes sense: William Wesley, the James adviser known as Worldwide Wes who runs sports these days, is a former shoe salesman. The Bulls , with salary-cap money to burn, are a committed player in the LeBron lottery. They introduced their new coach, Tom Thibodeau, on Wednesday, and while N.B.A. tampering rules prevented Thibodeau from discussing James, the prospect of landing the star hovered over the proceedings like the ghost of Rusty LaRue — a stronger presence than the team’s plans for the college draft or the style of play Thibodeau is likely to employ. Several weeks ago, an ESPN talking head said, don’t rule out Chicago as a potential James destination. Fired-up members of the local news media accepted the observation as gospel — it was ESPN, after all — and have been pushing the story ever since. It could happen. If James is committed to winning, the Bulls have some intriguing pieces in place, most notably the young point guard Derrick Rose. If it’s a business decision, Chicago certainly offered an adequate base for Michael Jordan’s marketing empire. The Bulls, meanwhile, are looking for a boost: They find themselves in the back seat behind the Blackhawks as a winter attraction for the first time since the Jordan era. Signing James might offset some of the Stanley Cup buzz that has taken over the city and shows no sign of abating — the Hawks’ 2010-11 schedule was Monday’s big sports story. Thankfully, there has been no talk of putting the band back together and sending Jerry Krause, Benny the Bull and the Luvabulls cheerleaders on a recruiting trip to land James. The last such mission targeted Tracy McGrady and delivered Ron Mercer. It was an unseemly gesture by a proud organization that once dominated basketball, but it symbolized the depths to which the Bulls sank after their dynasty disintegrated. As general manager, Krause was quite good at identifying and assembling talent, but he didn’t recognize the N.B.A.’s new world order, in which signing other teams’ players is the key to roster building, and in which shopping trumps scouting. Participants in this season’s flurry of deadline deals were judged on how much salary-cap space they had created, not on whether they had strengthened their roster or enhanced their playoff chances. The figure atop the executive of the year trophy should be holding a calculator. It’s a sign of the times as basketball continues to devolve into an individual sport, like golf or tennis, and superstar players like James become bigger than their team. You come off sounding like an out-of-it old fogey if you lament the passing of the team concept, but it’s happening. Think about it: Amateur Athletic Union programs sweep up the most promising players just as they are getting started and have them playing 80 games a summer when they should be developing their skills. By high school, they are serving two masters: their school team and their club team. Different coaches, different teammates. Where does their loyalty lie? When it’s all about getting to “the next level,” what do teammates matter? College is a one-and-done experience, or two years at most, for pretty much any player with realistic N.B.A. aspirations. If a player sticks around any longer, he starts hearing talk that there must be something wrong with him. John Calipari doesn’t mind if he loses his whole Kentucky team after a year; he’ll start over with a new group of, um, student-athletes. But Butler, the little team that could from this season’s N.C.A.A. tournament, also lost its best player to the pros, Gordon Hayward, a sophomore. Butler. LeBron James didn’t create this system; he’s merely a product of it — blessed with the talent, character and maturity to thrive in it. Others haven’t been as fortunate, and the game has suffered. Stay put, LeBron — Cleveland needs you. But, please, get on with it. | James LeBron;Draft and Recruitment (Sports);Basketball;Athletics and Sports;ESPN;National Basketball Assn;Chicago Bulls;Chicago (Ill) |
ny0133652 | [
"business"
] | 2008/03/17 | Treasury Auctions Set for This Week | The Treasury’s schedule of financing this week included today’s regular weekly auction of new three- and six-month bills and an auction of four-week bills Tuesday. According to traders, at the close of the New York cash market on Friday, the rate on the outstanding three-month bill was 1.16 percent. The rate on the six-month issue at 1.31 percent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 1.17 percent. The following tax-exempt fixed-income issues are scheduled for pricing this week: TUESDAY Alaska Municipal Bond Bank. $62 million of revenue bonds. Competitive. ONE DAY DURING THE WEEK Albuquerque Bernalillo County, Joint Water and Sewer System, $55.5 million of improvement revenue bonds, series 2008A. RBC Capital Markets. City and County of San Francisco, Airport Commission, $573.4 million of debt securities. Citigroup Global Markets. District of Columbia Hospital, Children’s Hospital Obstetrics Group, $245 million of revenue bonds. UBS Securities. Friendswood ISD, Texas, $99.4 million of general obligation bonds. RBC Capital Markets. Harris County, Tex., Health Facilities Development Corporation, $230.1 million of thermal utility revenue bonds. RBC Capital Markets. Indiana Finance Authority, $200 million of debt securities. Morgan Stanley. Jacksonville Health Florida, Baptist Medical Center, $125 million of debt securities. Banc of America Securities. Minooka School District No. 201, Ill., $56 million of general obligation bonds. Raymond James. Rancho, Calif., Water District Financing Authority, $165 million of refunding revenue bonds. UBS Securities. State of Wisconsin, General Fund, $366.4 million of taxable debt securities. Citigroup Global Markets. State of New York, Tobacco Settlement Financing Corporation, $441.1 million of debt securities. Citigroup Global Markets. Trustees of the California State University, $408 million of systemwide revenue bonds. Lehman Brothers. Virginia, Capital Region Airport Commission, $50.6 million of airport revenue bonds. Morgan Keegan. | Government Bonds;Stocks and Bonds;Auctions |
ny0239639 | [
"us"
] | 2010/12/19 | Astronomer Sues University of Kentucky, Claiming Faith Cost Him a Job | In 2007, C. Martin Gaskell, an astronomer at the University of Nebraska, was a leading candidate for a job running an observatory at the University of Kentucky . But then somebody did what one does nowadays: an Internet search. That search turned up evidence of Dr. Gaskell’s evangelical Christian faith. The University of Kentucky hired someone else. And Dr. Gaskell sued the institution. Whether his faith cost him the job and whether certain religious beliefs may legally render people unfit for certain jobs are among the questions raised by the case, Gaskell v. University of Kentucky . In late November, a federal judge in Kentucky ruled that the case could go forward, and a trial is scheduled for February. The case represents a rare example, experts say, of a lawsuit by a scientist who alleges academic persecution for his religious faith. Both sides agree that Dr. Gaskell, 57, was invited to the university, in Lexington, for a job interview. In his lawsuit, he says that at the end of the interview, Michael Cavagnero, the chairman of the physics and astronomy department, asked about his religious beliefs. “Cavagnero stated that he had personally researched Gaskell’s religious beliefs,” the lawsuit says. According to Dr. Gaskell, the chairman said Dr. Gaskell’s religious beliefs and his “expression of them would be a matter of concern” to the dean. Federal law prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion, so interviewers typically do not ask about an applicant’s faith. Depositions and e-mails submitted as evidence suggest why Dr. Cavagnero may have raised the issue with Dr. Gaskell. For the plaintiff, the smoking gun is an e-mail dated Sept. 21, 2007, from a department staff member, Sally A. Shafer, to Dr. Cavagnero and another colleague. Ms. Shafer wrote that she did an Internet search on Dr. Gaskell and found links to his notes for a lecture that explores, among other topics, how the Bible could relate to contemporary astronomy. “Clearly this man is complex and likely fascinating to talk with,” Ms. Shafer wrote, “but potentially evangelical. If we hire him, we should expect similar content to be posted on or directly linked from the department Web site.” In his deposition , Dr. Cavagnero recalled reading Ms. Shafer’s e-mail and said he discussed Dr. Gaskell’s faith with the department chairman at the University of Nebraska, where Dr. Gaskell worked at the time. Dr. Cavagnero also said a colleague, Moshe Elitzur, worried that Dr. Gaskell “had outspoken public views about creationism and evolution.” Dr. Elitzur, in his deposition , said he feared that bad publicity could arise from bringing Dr. Gaskell to the university, which is less than 100 miles from the Creation Museum , in Petersburg, Ky. “There’s no way you can avoid the headline in The Herald-Leader saying ‘U.K. hires a creationist for public outreach,’ ” Dr. Elitzur remembered saying. Referring to Ms. Shafer’s concern that Dr. Gaskell was “potentially evangelical,” Francis J. Manion, Dr. Gaskell’s lawyer, said: “I couldn’t have made up a better quote. ‘We like this guy, but he is potentially Jewish’? ‘Potentially Muslim’?” Dr. Elitzur and Dr. Cavagnero did not return phone calls for comment. Reached by phone, Ms. Shafer said that “it would not be a good idea” for her to answer questions. Jay Blanton, a university spokesman, said the hiring committee “had a responsibility to discuss his comments on evolution and science in general. Part of the job is lecturing publicly on science.” Dr. Gaskell has written that “there are significant scientific problems in evolutionary theory (a good thing or else many biologists and geologists would be out of a job.)” And in the lecture notes Ms. Shafer found online, Dr. Gaskell tried to reconcile the creation account in Genesis with recent astronomical findings. Dr. Gaskell, however, said he accepted standard evolutionary science. In e-mail responses to questions, he said he was not a creationist and did not deny the theory of evolution. The University of Kentucky says it chose another candidate for the job based on “bona fide occupational qualifications.” With his faith, Dr. Gaskell, who now works at the University of Texas but has accepted a job in Chile, does embrace views that most of his peers find indefensible. In a 1998 survey, 7.5 percent of physicists and astronomers in the National Academy of Sciences said they believed in God — and many of the believers would still concede that science explains the universe better than a reading of Genesis. Daniel Mach, who works on religious freedom issues for the American Civil Liberties Union, said he knew of no cases similar to the one filed by Mr. Gaskell. At least two scientists have made accusations of similar discrimination, but neither sued. Richard Sternberg, a biologist, said he was harassed after a journal he edited published a paper, in 2004, supporting the “intelligent design” theory of the universe, which scientists generally say owes more to religion than to science. And an astrophysicist, Guillermo Gonzalez, said he was denied tenure by Iowa State University in 2007 because of his advocacy of intelligent design. | Hiring and Promotion;Religion and Belief;Colleges and Universities;Astronomy and Astrophysics;University of Kentucky |
ny0249058 | [
"sports",
"hockey"
] | 2011/05/15 | NHL Playoffs: Flurry Gives Lightning the Cushion It Needs | BOSTON (AP) — Sean Bergenheim began a stretch of three Tampa Bay goals in 1 minute 25 seconds in the first period and the Lightning beat the Boston Bruins , 5-2, in the opener of the Eastern Conference finals Saturday night. Bergenheim, who scored 14 goals in the regular season, got his N.H.L.-high eighth of the playoffs at 11:15. Brett Clark connected at 11:34 and Teddy Purcell wrapped up the outburst, both with unassisted goals. The two goals in 19 seconds and three in 1:25 are club records. Tyler Seguin, the No. 2 overall draft pick last year, scored for Boston with 4:01 left in the first period in his playoff debut. Tampa Bay scored twice in the last seven minutes — Marc-Andre Bergeron on a power play and Simon Gagne into an empty net — before Johnny Boychuk made it 5-2. Game 2 of the best-of-seven series is Tuesday night in Boston. The teams were coming off long layoffs after sweeping earlier series. It was the first game in 10 days for the Lightning and the first in eight for the Bruins. But the speedy Lightning showed little rust in an arena where they were only 4-25-6 before beginning their first playoff series ever against the Bruins. Tampa Bay, the 2004 Stanley Cup champion, won its eighth straight game. The Bruins, in the conference finals for the first time since 1992, lost for only the second time in 10 games. Tampa Bay capitalized on Boston mistakes to take a commanding lead. Bergenheim scored after Tim Thomas made a save and Dennis Seidenberg tried to clear the rebound with his right skate after losing his stick. But the puck went right to Bergenheim in front of the crease. It quickly became 2-0 when Clark skated up the right side, passing at least two Bruins who let him go by, and scored his first playoff goal when he shoveled a backhander from the right side off Thomas’ right arm. The third goal resulted from a giveaway by Bruins defenseman Tomas Kaberle. He had the puck behind his net but skated to the left and lost control. An aggressive Purcell was there to take it away. | Hockey Ice;Playoff Games;Tampa Bay Lightning;Boston Bruins |
ny0253930 | [
"sports",
"tennis"
] | 2011/07/05 | Wimbledon 2011: Djokovic Leads Pack After Years of Chasing | WIMBLEDON, England — Novak Djokovic has been the hunter for years now, trying to chase down Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal . But he is No. 1 at last, and when he returned to Wimbledon as the new champion on Monday for his morning-after obligations with the news media, he was asked how it felt to be the rabbit, the one everyone else is chasing. “I’m a rabbit?” he said, his eyes full of mirth. “O.K., O.K., well I guess I have to keep on running.” That sounds like a fine plan in this hypercompetitive age in men’s tennis: keep running, keep pushing, keep searching for that small improvement that can help you maintain or acquire an edge. “The better you get, the more you have to go into details, into small things, to optimize every little angle of the game,” Djokovic’s trainer, Gebhard Phil-Gritsch, said Monday. “In this stage, if we can get 1 percent better, he might make a big jump. These guys are so good. We are already talking about the optimum. It’s just a little bit here and a little bit there.” It took Djokovic years to find the right formula to crack the top of the men’s game and give his small, onetime pariah of a nation its latest tennis highlight (Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic, also Serbs, have already spent time at the top of the women’s rankings). Djokovic, who grew up in Belgrade and the mountain resort of Kopaonik, turned professional in 2003, played his first Grand Slam tournament in 2005, reached his first Grand Slam final at the United States Open in 2007 and won his first Grand Slam title a few months later at the 2008 Australian Open. But it required three and a half more years of striving and searching for Djokovic, 24, to fine-tune his fitness, consistency and confidence and break Federer’s and Nadal’s alternating grip on the No. 1 ranking. The last time neither Federer nor Nadal ruled — at least mathematically — was Sunday, Feb. 1, 2004, when Andy Roddick of the United States was finishing up his 13-week run at No. 1. Since then, Federer has accumulated 285 weeks at the top and Nadal 103, but this is now Week 1 of Djokovic’s reign, and — paradoxical though it might seem — he made it clear Monday that he could not have made it there without them. “It’s true, there has been some change in my head,” he said. “But look, I have been working on that for a while, already trying to figure out the way to win majors and to win against those two guys. We all know how good they are, how they always raise their level of performance in the big occasions, and they are always performing their best tennis in the last four of a Grand Slam. “Everybody knows that, in the last five or six years, this is the case. So I knew that if I want to win against them, at the semifinals and finals of a Grand Slam, I have to raise my game. I have to play on top of my game. I have to improve, and they made me improve. They made me a better player, and right now, there’s that mental switch that I have. I believe in the court much more than I did before.” And right now, belief in tennis looks rather like a zero-sum game. How else to explain Nadal’s uncharacteristic lack of assurance at the critical phases of Sunday’s final? He had already lost to Djokovic four straight times this year in tournament finals. “Sure that has an effect,” said Nadal, who explained without being asked directly that he felt mentally weaker in this Wimbledon final than at other moments in his career. Though there have been reports in the British news media that Nadal has a stress fracture in his left foot, the same foot that required painkilling injections after an injury in the quarterfinals, Toni Nadal, his coach and uncle, and Benito Pérez Barbadillo, his publicist, denied there was a fracture. For now, Nadal, ranked No. 2, will skip this week’s Davis Cup quarterfinal between Spain and the United States in Austin, Tex. He plans to return to the circuit in five weeks for the Masters 1000 event in Montreal. Djokovic, however, has not withdrawn from Serbia’s Davis Cup quarterfinal in Sweden on Friday, where he is supposed to rejoin the team that won the Davis Cup for the first time in December and helped set Djokovic’s magnificent 2011 season in motion. When the Serbs won the Cup, they were feted in central Belgrade, and that was where Djokovic was headed Monday night. It was a counterpoint moment on the same day that Ratko Mladic, the former military leader of the Bosnian Serbs and accused war criminal, made his first substantial appearance at The Hague tribunal. But then Djokovic, even while living in Monaco and surrounding himself with a cosmopolitan support team, remains well aware of his symbolic role in a Serbian society searching for an improved international identity. The Serbian president, Boris Tadic, who was in the Royal Box for Sunday’s final at Wimbledon, joked with reporters afterward that he was ready to relinquish his post to Djokovic. “For our country in these tough times, these recent 20 or 30 years, I think that athletes have been the biggest ambassadors,” Djokovic said recently. “With your success and with your behavior and with your interviews and conversations and gestures, people kind of analyze your country through you, right?” Though there is a nationalistic aspect to Djokovic’s rise, it is above all the story of one determined family making big sacrifices and taking significant financial risks to back the nascent career of a youngster in a sport that no one else in the family played at a high level. It was a huge gamble, one that is paying off now on multiple levels with Djokovic’s father, Srdjan, and his uncle Goran expanding the family’s business interests at home in Serbia and abroad. Both were at Wimbledon on Sunday, and when Djokovic won, their celebrations were exuberant, and Srdjan Djokovic was soon being tossed into the air by a group of supporters outside Centre Court, thought not everyone at Centre Court appreciated the jubilation. “I don’t want to get involved in others’ celebrations because it would be ugly of me,” Toni Nadal said in comments reported by the Spanish newspaper Marca. “But in life, you have to conduct yourself with a certain humility.” There is no quibbling with the rankings, however. Djokovic is 48-1 in 2011 and has won eight tournaments, including the Australian Open and Wimbledon. He — not Nadal and not Federer — is deservedly the rabbit now. | Tennis;Wimbledon Tennis Tournament;Djokovic Novak;Nadal Rafael;Federer Roger |
ny0011130 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2013/02/23 | BBC Portrayed as Top-Heavy, Bickering and Dysfunctional | LONDON — A senior press officer for the British Broadcasting Corporation darkly volunteers to “drip poison” to discredit a BBC reporter he suspects of having leaked embarrassing information. The woman in charge of the corporation’s news divisions accuses Newsnight, a public-affairs program she oversees, of being out of touch and “sneery” toward rival BBC shows. And, as investigators seek to uncover why the corporation canceled a Newsnight broadcast alleging that a once-beloved BBC personality who had recently died had in fact been a serial pedophile who preyed on vulnerable girls, everyone involved is scrambling to deflect blame onto someone else. These and other unflattering details about the inner workings of Britain’s public broadcaster emerged Friday when the BBC released some 3,000 pages of internal documents — e-mails, memos and transcripts of interviews — from an external investigation into why the program, about the BBC presenter Jimmy Savile, had been canceled. In all, the documents painted a picture of a highly dysfunctional, top-heavy organization divided into discrete, rival factions, and weighed down by mistrust, poor communication, buck-passing and internecine squabbling. There were no startling revelations; all those came out in the so-called Pollard report into the Savile affair, which was published in December and which concluded that there were deep structural problems in the BBC. But the supporting documents released Friday shed light on just what Nick Pollard, who prepared the report, meant by his scathing critique, said John Whittingdale, chairman of the House of Commons culture and media committee. “It demonstrates the extent of unhappiness within the BBC structure, the frustration at the bureaucratic nature of the management, and the generally poor state of morale,” Mr. Whittingdale said in a television interview. Referring to the fact that material in some of the newly released documents was blacked out, apparently because of concerns that it might give rise to lawsuits, Mr. Whittingdale added: “The fact that so much of the evidence can’t be published, because we are told the lawyers have advised it could be defamatory, in a sense tells its own story.” Large portions of the testimony of Jeremy Paxman, a blunt-talking Newsnight host who is known for his testy and combative interview style, for instance, are blacked out in places where it appears he is about to make personal remarks about other people. And in an annoyingly tantalizing instance, Peter Horrocks, director of global news, declares: “It is no secret that ...” What follows has been redacted, however, so that it is in fact a secret. Lord McAlpine, a former Tory cabinet minister who, in another debacle at Newsnight, was unjustly accused of being a pedophile in a report that was broadcast, said that the BBC should not have left out any material. “The BBC is not the Secret Service, for Christ’s sake,” he told The Daily Telegraph. But the BBC defended the redactions. Tim Davie, the acting director general, said that “97 percent plus of all the thousands of pages are out there.” In an interview with an off-camera interlocutor that was broadcast on the BBC Web site, Mr. Davie continued: “We are not redacting or taking out material that is embarrassing or uncomfortable to the BBC. We have simply taken out stuff that external lawyers saw as a clear risk.” He did not make himself available for interviews with other news organizations on Friday — indeed, no one from the BBC did. That strategy was roundly ridiculed by the broadcaster’s rivals. On Twitter, Ben de Pear, editor of Channel 4 News, said that over his career he had successfully coaxed interviews out of Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. “We are still trying for Tim Davie,” he said. Much of the material focused on who said what to whom, and when, during Newsnight’s investigations into the allegations against Mr. Savile — and during the subsequent decision to cancel the broadcast. But there were also general interviews with many key figures in the corporation about what was wrong and how to fix it. The testimony of Lord Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, was particularly sharp, as he described the chaotic flow of information, the preponderance of high-ranking officials (the BBC had “more senior leaders than China,” he said) and the general mistrust within the corporation. “Is a lesson I should take from this that I can’t believe it when I’m told things by the next director general, that I have to query everything he says or the director of news says to me or whatever?” he asked rhetorically. No, he said in response. “With the next director general I won’t — or his senior colleagues — I won’t begin every conversation on the assumption that he or she or they may not be telling me the whole truth,” he said. “I will want to be more convinced that there is a structure in place which ensures that the truth is being told.” | BBC;Great Britain;Jeremy Paxman;News media,journalism;Jimmy Savile;Rape;Child Abuse |
ny0071873 | [
"business"
] | 2015/03/09 | Treasury Auctions Set for the Week of March 9 | The Treasury’s schedule of financing this week includes Monday’s regular weekly auction of new three- and six-month bills and an auction of four-week bills on Tuesday. At the close of the New York cash market on Friday, the rate on the outstanding three-month bill was 0.01 percent. The rate on the six-month issue was 0.10 percent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.01 percent. The following tax-exempt fixed-income issues are scheduled for pricing this week: TUESDAY Boston, $270 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive. Clark County, Nev., $181.4 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive. Hartford, Conn., $72 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive. New York, $319.8 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive. WEDNESDAY Florida Board of Education, $250 million of debt securities. Competitive. Florida Department of Transportation, $300 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive. Parkway, Mo., School District, $50 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive. THURSDAY New York City, $203.2 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive. ONE DAY DURING THE WEEK California Municipal Finance Authority, $67 million of refunding revenue bonds. Wells Fargo Securities. University of California, $2.8 billion of revenue bonds. Barclays Capital. Citrus Community College District, Calif., $60 million of general obligation refinancing bonds. Piper Jaffray. Clear Creek, Tex., Independent School District, $181.5 million of unlimited tax school building refinancing bonds. Wells Fargo Securities. Colorado Health Facilities Authority, $111.6 million of revenue refinancing bonds. Ziegler. Commerce City, Colo., $51.5 million of sales tax revenue refinancing bonds. Stifel Nicolaus. Connecticut, $500 million of general obligation bonds. Citigroup Global Markets. Dallas, $578.6 million of waterworks and sewer system revenue refinancing bonds. Cabrera Capital Markets. Hamilton, Ohio, City School District, $72.8 million of various purpose general obligation bonds. RBC Capital Markets. Hays County, Tex., $60.8 million of limited tax refinancing bonds. Raymond James. Houston, $223 million of airport system special facilities revenue bonds. Citigroup Global Markets. Houston, $65 million of airport system special facilities revenue bonds. Citigroup Global Markets. Illinois Educational Facilities Authority, $72.3 million of University of Chicago adjustable rate revenue bonds. Wells Fargo Securities. Lincoln, Neb., $161.3 million of electric system debt securities. J. P. Morgan Securities. Louisiana Public Facilities Authority, $181.2 million of hospital revenue refinancing bonds. Morgan Stanley. Macomb County, Mich., $263.8 million of taxable debt securities. J. P. Morgan Securities. Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency, $89.9 million of single-family housing revenue bonds. RBC Capital Markets. Miami-Dade County, Fla., $56.5 million of industrial development revenue bonds. Raymond James. Michigan Finance Authority, $312 million of student loan asset-backed notes. Bank of America. Froedtert Health Inc., Wis., $100 million of taxable revenue bonds. Morgan Stanley. Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, $50.1 million of homeownership finance bonds. RBC Capital Markets. Missouri Joint Municipal Electric Utility Commission, $193.9 million of debt securities. J. P. Morgan Securities. Monroe County, N.Y., $60 million of refinancing bonds. J. P. Morgan Securities. Montour, Pa., School District, $97 million of general obligation bonds. Boenning & Scattergood. New Jersey Economic Development Authority, $50.8 million of revenue bonds. RBC Capital Markets. New York City, $800 million of general obligation bonds. RBC Capital Markets. New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, $300 million of revenue bonds. Bank of America. University of North Carolina at Charlotte, $110 million of revenue bonds. Bank of America. Southeastern Ohio Port Authority, $60 million of hospital facilities debt securities. Bank of America. North Olmsted, Ohio, City School District, $80.6 million of school improvement bonds. Stifel Nicolaus. Philadelphia School District, $150 million of general obligation refinancing bonds. Bank of America. Raleigh, N.C., $91.9 million of debt securities. J. P. Morgan Securities. Rhode Island Tobacco Settlement Finance Corporation, $600 million of tobacco settlement asset-backed bonds. Citigroup Global Markets. Rockwall, Tex., Independent School District, $89.5 million of unlimited tax refinancing bonds. Raymond James. San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, $450 million of water system bonds. J. P. Morgan Securities. American University, Washington, D.C., $125 million of debt securities. J. P. Morgan Securities. Henrico County, Va., $60.2 million of general obligation public improvement refinancing bonds. Wells Fargo Securities. Issaquah, Wash., School District, $150 million of unlimited tax general obligation bonds. Piper Jaffray. | Stocks,Bonds;Debt;Tax Credits Tax Deductions Tax Exemptions;Treasury Department |
ny0093953 | [
"us"
] | 2015/01/03 | Dozens of Vehicles Crash in Two Pileups on New Hampshire Highway | ASHLAND, N.H. — A spokesman for the New Hampshire State Police said on Friday that at least 35 vehicles were involved in two separate pileups on Interstate 93 after some fast-moving snow squalls. The spokesman, Lt. Jerry Maslan, said there had been some injuries, but they were not considered to be life-threatening. Calls about the accidents started coming in at 9:45 a.m. Friday. The fire chief for the Manchester District, Al Poulin, who drove through the heavy snowfall, told a local television station that many vehicles on the highway had been driving in excess of the speed limit of 75 miles an hour. Image A frame grab from aerial video provided by WCVB-TV as emergency personnel worked on Interstate Route 93 near Ashland, N.H. Credit WCVB-TV, via Associated Press Conditions were clear and then suddenly, “we slowed right down to nothing,” he said. “We couldn’t even see where we were going, that’s how much of a whiteout condition existed at the time.” Lieutenant Maslan said one crash involved a tractor-trailer that caught fire after a vehicle went underneath it. It was not known what the trailer was carrying, but boxes could be seen strewn about. The accidents happened in the northbound lanes in and near Ashland, about 30 miles north of Concord. Snow has been falling on and off in the state and parts of the highway are covered in snow. Lieutenant Maslan said earlier Friday on Interstate 89 in Grantham, multiple cars went off the road or were involved in fender benders. He said no injuries were reported in those crashes. | Car Crash;Snow Snowstorms;New Hampshire |
ny0117956 | [
"business"
] | 2012/10/06 | Avon Chairwoman to Step Down | Andrea Jung , who resigned as chief executive of Avon Products late last year, announced on Friday that she would step down as executive chairwoman at the end of the year, further cutting her ties with a beauty products company for which she long served as its glamorous public face. Ms. Jung’s announcement was somewhat of a surprise because she was working under a two-year contract. She will become a senior adviser after she steps down. The news pleased several analysts who said Ms. Jung’s diminished role should make it easier for her successor as chief executive, Sherilyn S. McCoy, to execute a much-needed turnaround strategy. “It’s just one more way that the new management group is trying to close the book on the most recent troubled chapter the company has been living through in the last couple of years,” said Erin Lash, an analyst at Morningstar. Investors were buoyed by the announcement, too. Shares of Avon climbed 7.21 percent on Friday, closing at $17.39. In a statement, Ms. Jung, who is 54, said her decision to step down “reflects the successful transition to new leadership.” “It has been a great privilege to serve the company over the past two decades, most notably the millions of Avon representatives and thousands of associates around the world,” she said. The new chairman will be Fred Hassan, who is an independent director. Mr. Hassan is a managing director and partner at Warburg Pincus, the private-equity firm. Ms. Jung’s announcement comes after years of turmoil at the company, which is known for its door-to-door sales force, once known as “Avon ladies.” Ms. Jung, who was named chief executive in 1999, was credited with injecting energy into a tired brand and pushing Avon into new and potentially lucrative markets overseas, including China and Russia. But sales slowed in 2005, and several turnaround efforts by Ms. Jung failed to take hold. In addition, Avon became the subject of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into potential bribery of foreign officials, which is continuing. As of the last fiscal year, Avon’s profits had declined every year since 2008. But Ms. Jung remained popular with the sales force, and her continuing role with the company was in part to ensure its continued loyalty, analysts said. Ms. McCoy was hired after a long stint at Johnson & Johnson, where she oversaw an overhaul of its pharmaceutical division. Her task at Avon, whose products include Anew cosmetics and Skin So Soft lotion, may be even more challenging. So far, analysts credit Ms. McCoy for being blunt about the extent of Avon’s problems, for focusing on accountability and for taking her time in devising a strategy for going forward. “I’ve been encouraged by the tone they have been taking,” said Ms. Lash, of Morningstar, referring to Ms. McCoy and her chief financial officer, Kimberly A. Ross. “They definitely got the point across that they were unhappy with the firm’s results.” Connie Maneaty, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said she was impressed by some of the changes that had already happened at Avon. For instance, she said the company had hired a general counsel, Jeff Benjamin, with 40 years of experience, and a new head of human resources, Scott Crum, to streamline the company’s myriad compensation plans. “When you have too many plans, the organization isn’t working toward a common goal,” she said. Avon is trying to settle the bribery case, which Ms. Maneaty said was a positive step forward. “I like the quality of what I see happening,” Ms. Maneaty said. As for Ms. McCoy’s turnaround strategy, Ms. Maneaty said, “I think it’s really smart of her to not come out with her plan until she knows the depth of her problems and how to fix them.” “As much as the street wants instantaneous analysis, these things take time,” she said. Through a spokeswoman, Ms. McCoy declined to comment. In Avon’s most recent quarterly earnings call in August, however, she was blunt in assessing the challenges ahead of her but suggested that the answer could be fairly basic. Avon’s products and pricing were “off target.” Technology and service “did not keep pace.” Senior managers were moved so often they couldn’t gain traction. “Avon doesn’t need yet another new strategy,” she said. “We need to focus on the core of Avon’s business: representatives, consumers and our people.” “The challenge we’re facing didn’t materialize overnight,” Ms. McCoy concluded. “They developed over years, and our solutions will take time as well.” | Avon Products Inc;Jung Andrea;Appointments and Executive Changes;Suspensions Dismissals and Resignations |
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