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ny0197995 | [
"us"
] | 2009/07/20 | Train Operator Under Scrutiny After Crash in San Francisco | SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The operator of a light-rail train that crashed here, injuring dozens of passengers as well as the operator, came under scrutiny on Sunday as federal investigators tried to figure out why he turned off the automatic controls moments before the accident. Ted Turpin, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, said that the operator switched the controls from automatic to manual in a tunnel near the West Portal Station and that he never engaged the emergency brake. Had the operator kept the autopilot on, Mr. Turpin said, the train would have slowed down before arriving at the station and most likely not have careened into a parked train while going 23 miles per hour. He said the operator never engaged the emergency brake. The crash injured 48 people, 4 seriously, but none of the injuries were life-threatening, officials said. Two safety board investigators based in Los Angeles were working with transit officials to interview passengers and witnesses, and assessing the condition of the train tracks and signal systems and the structural integrity of the train cars involved. Investigators were also still checking whether the signaling system played a role. In addition, investigators will be looking at whether cellphone use was a factor in the crash, as is standard in all train accident inquiries, Mr. Turpin said. Neither Mr. Turpin nor local transit officials would identify the operator, who was hospitalized after the crash and who was administered a drug test, which is standard procedure for crashes. The crash is the fourth major subway or commuter rail accident in the United States in the past 10 months. In September, a commuter rail train crashed with a freight rail in Los Angeles, killing 25 people. The crash was attributed to a commuter rail engineer’s sending text messages on a cellphone. About 50 people were injured in Boston in May when a trolley rear-ended another trolley. The conductor admitted to texting when the crash took place. And last month, a subway train rear-ended another in Washington, killing nine. | Railroads;Accidents and Safety;San Francisco (Calif);Transit Systems |
ny0222138 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2010/11/05 | Airport Delays in N.Y.C. Aren’t Improving, U.S. Officials Say | Flights through New York’s three major airports are delayed or canceled more often than anywhere else in the nation, and the government’s efforts to correct the problem have so far come up short, the federal Transportation Department said Thursday. Told to uncover the cause of the delays, the office of the department’s inspector general discovered what generations of air passengers already knew: New York’s skies are not so friendly. A relatively dense airspace means problems at one airport can cause trouble at others in the region, the report said, and the limited runway capacity cannot keep up with overwhelming passenger demand. To cope, the Federal Aviation Administration has limited the number of flights per hour that can take off or land at Kennedy International, La Guardia and Newark Liberty International Airports, an effort to avoid traffic jams on the taxiway. Officials said fewer scheduled flights would mean fewer chances for a bottleneck. But the inspector general’s office said those limits had not been effective. Regulators based the caps on overly optimistic numbers that reflected how many flights each airport could handle under ideal conditions, the report said, despite the fact that about half of delayed flights resulted from poor weather. The report said that the true capacity of the airports was far lower than the caps might suggest — resulting in a glut of scheduled flights and, inevitably, delays — and that a decision to allow airlines to exceed the limits under certain conditions “exacerbated the delay situation in New York.” “To prevent delay rates from again rising to record levels,” the report said, “F.A.A. will need to re-examine its flight caps, basing them on realistic airport operating conditions.” Airlines, wary of losing business, typically resist limits on how many flights they can schedule. And a no-cap policy can result in cheaper tickets and additional service. But demand at the New York airports has ballooned in recent years, with the recent creation of new hubs for Delta and JetBlue at Kennedy. While delays have fallen in the past two years, officials attribute this drop to the sagging economy and expect that problems will soon start to creep up again. The last new runway at the three airports was built in the early 1970s, at Newark, although officials at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the region’s three major airports, noted that they had renovated runways and installed additional taxiway routes that can help alleviate congestion. Still, the Port Authority and the F.A.A. both said significant improvements would be possible only with federal investment in GPS plane-tracking technology, a satellite-based system that allows for more accurate coordination of flights. The inspector general’s office also tried to determine the ripple effects of New York delays on airports across the country, but officials could not so do. “No one fully understands the impact of New York flight delays nationwide,” the report said. More than 1,400 planes fly through the three airports on a typical summer day, and one-third of those planes fly through multiple times, the report said. | Airlines and Airplanes;Airports;Delays (Transportation);Inspectors General;Transportation Department (US);New York City;Newark (NJ) |
ny0266727 | [
"sports",
"autoracing"
] | 2016/03/21 | At Australian Grand Prix, Mercedes Picks Up Where It Left Off | MELBOURNE, Australia — Formula One demonstrated once again Sunday that it might not know how to design racing rules that guarantee a great show, but it does know how to write regulations to build racing cars to save drivers’ lives in case of an accident. On Lap 17 of the season-opening Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, after a high-speed accident from which no driver would have survived 25 years ago, Fernando Alonso, the two-time world champion driver for the McLaren Honda team, climbed out of the wreck uninjured, in one of the most horrific crashes the series has witnessed in years. But Sunday’s event also showed that whatever the criticisms of the series may be, races under the current rules can still be as action-packed and unpredictable as anyone would want. But manipulating the format to produce excitement can backfire, after a change to the qualifying format on Saturday proved a complete failure. Still, the result of the first of 21 races this year again came to a 1-2 finish by the dominant Mercedes team, whose driver, Nico Rosberg, won the race, his fourth in a row after winning the last three races last season. His teammate, Lewis Hamilton, finished in second place, after dropping as low as seventh after a poor start on pole position. Sebastian Vettel of the Ferrari team, who led for much of the race after charging into the lead at the start, finished third after his team made an error in tire strategy, while his teammate, Kimi Raikkonen, retired nearly halfway through the race after his engine caught fire while he was in third place. “The strategy was crucial today, so I am really thankful,” Rosberg said. “It’s early days, but a perfect start. We have to keep an eye on the red guys,” he added, referring to the Ferrari cars’ color. It was the 15th victory of Rosberg’s career, and his second in Australia, where he also won in 2014. But it was Alonso’s horrific crash for which the race will be remembered. With roughly a quarter of the 57-lap race run, the Spaniard was trying to pass the car of Esteban Gutiérrez, a Mexican driving for the new United States-based Haas team. As Alonso moved to the left to pass, Gutiérrez drifted over to the left as well to enter the corner. Alonso’s front right wheel ran into one of the wheels of Gutiérrez’s car. The McLaren flew off the side of the track into a wall and then rolled through the gravel and came to rest at the retaining wall. Very little of the car remained intact aside from the so-called survival cell surrounding the driver, proving that the cars are constructed to withstand the worst beating. “I feel good,” Alonso said. “Obviously I’m trying to put everything in place again in my body. It was a big, big crash.” He added, “I’m thankful for the safety of those cars and that I’m alive talking to you.” It was testament to the stringent safety regulations and accident research that the series has undertaken since the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger during a race in Italy in 1994. The series went another 21 years without a fatality until Jules Bianchi died last year from injuries in an accident at the Japanese Grand Prix of October 2014. The spectacle of Sunday’s race was a huge contrast to Saturday’s qualifying session, for which the series had made its biggest change in the racing rules in years. In an effort to counter the predictability of the Mercedes team’s domination and spice up the weekend’s show at the race, Formula One changed the format of the best parts of the weekend’s action at the track. Again the Formula One organizers were criticized over the winter, for while the Mercedes team had won all but six of the 38 races over the last two seasons, the qualifying sessions had been a highlight of weekend’s track action. The qualifying sessions last one hour in three separate heats during which the cars try to set the fastest lap time and establish the final grid formation for the race the following day. Under the new rules, cars were progressively eliminated in a complicated system that was both difficult to understand and that left the track empty of cars for long periods of time. Moreover, it favored the stronger teams, punished the weaker ones, and the pole position was decided five minutes before the end of the final session, leaving the track empty for the last three minutes of the session. The teams had a quick meeting and decided to scrap the new system for the next race, in Bahrain in two weeks. “For me, this new qualifying system did not work, and really we should apologize to the fans,” said Christian Horner, the director of the Red Bull team, which had dominated the series for the four years prior to the Mercedes reign of the past two seasons. “We have not put on a show for them at all today, which is a shame, especially for the first race of the season,” he added on Saturday. “It’s not good for qualifying to be done with five minutes to go; drivers and cars need to be out on track fighting for pole up until the last second.” | Car Racing;Formula One;Mercedes GP Petronas Formula One Team;Nico Rosberg;Lewis Hamilton;Fernando Alonso;Melbourne |
ny0085939 | [
"sports",
"soccer"
] | 2015/07/29 | Mexico Dismisses Its National Soccer Team’s Coach | Miguel Herrera, the Mexican national team’s coach, was fired Tuesday after a television reporter said that Herrera had punched him at the Philadelphia airport. The ouster came two days after Herrera led Mexico to victory over Jamaica in the Concacaf Gold Cup. But Decio de María, who is set to become president of the Mexican Soccer Federation on Saturday, said the episode with the journalist was not in keeping with “the spirit of fair and respectful competition” that the organization espouses. De María did not announce a replacement for Herrera. | Soccer;Miguel Herrera;Mexico;Assault |
ny0110772 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2012/05/25 | Obama Leaps Into Direct Attacks | DES MOINES — With the general election campaign now under way, one thing has become clear: There will be no Rose Garden strategy for President Obama . If past incumbents have been reluctant to directly engage opponents this early in an election year for fear of looking like a candidate rather than a president, Mr. Obama has tossed aside convention. No simply leaving it to the vice president or the campaign staff, no waiting until summer, no dancing around with oblique phrases like “my opponent.” Instead, with Mitt Romney now the nominal Republican nominee, Mr. Obama has shown a willingness to confront him aggressively by name more than five months before the election. In a succession of speeches on the road over the last two days, the president attacked Mr. Romney as an out-of-touch plutocrat whose prescriptions for the economy would reverse the fragile gains of the last couple of years. “There may be value in that kind of experience, but it’s not in the White House,” Mr. Obama told supporters at the Iowa State Fairgrounds on Thursday night. He used the setting to needle Mr. Romney about a controversial comment he made here during the primaries. “The world view that Governor Romney gained” in private finance, he said, “explains why the last time he visited these very same fairgrounds he famously declared that corporations are people.” Encouraged by the partisan audience, Mr. Obama then mimicked Mr. Romney. “ ‘Human beings, my friend’ — that’s what he called them.” Then, he called Mr. Romney’s speech here last week warning of a “prairie fire of debt” more like “a cow pie of distortion.” He added, “I don’t know whose record he twisted the most, mine or his.” Mr. Romney’s camp said the attacks signal desperation. “All he has to offer now are tired political attacks,” said Amanda Henneberg, a spokeswoman. “With no record to run on, no new ideas and flailing attacks like these, it’s no surprise the Obama campaign has had such a tough week.” The early engagement reflects the acceleration of politics in the age of Twitter, when every attack must be countered in real time. Obama strategists calculate that if previous presidents could afford to be more genteel until later in the year and leave the back-and-forth to surrogates until then, such an approach is no longer realistic. After all, no challenger waits to attack the president by name. “There’s no point in being coy,” said David Axelrod, the president’s adviser. “Governor Romney is the nominee. He’s been directing his comments to, and about, the president for a year. The debate has been joined.” But some veterans of past campaigns, particularly Republicans, questioned whether it would take some of the sheen off Mr. Obama’s stature as president. Rather than appearing above the fray, Mr. Obama may look like just another officeseeker. Sara Fagen, an adviser to President George W. Bush during his 2004 campaign against Senator John Kerry , and later the White House political director, said the campaign was conscious to avoid that. “He almost never mentioned him and certainly not this early,” she said. “President Bush understood it diminished the office by going after his opponent directly.” That does not mean Mr. Bush’s campaign went soft on Mr. Kerry. But the president largely left it to others to be so direct until summer. Vice President Dick Cheney opened the debate with a sharp speech criticizing Mr. Kerry in March 2004 at the same time the campaign began airing its first negative advertisements. When Mr. Bush criticized Mr. Kerry, he generally used phrases like “my opponent.” Only in July did he start naming him regularly. That was the case for previous presidents like Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Bill Clinton in 1996. Of course, Mr. Clinton was in far better shape at this point than Mr. Obama is; he led by 15 percentage points in a Gallup survey in May and could afford to dismiss Senator Bob Dole. Mr. Reagan was ahead by just 4 points at this stage. Mr. Obama is essentially tied with Mr. Romney, according to a succession of polls. Mr. Romney sought on Thursday to change the subject from his time at Bain Capital , traveling to a mostly black elementary school in West Philadelphia to promote his plan for reducing the role of the federal government in education. “Our failure to provide kids with the skills they need for the jobs of today and tomorrow is a crisis,” Mr. Romney said. “We have an education, an American education crisis, and we keep talking through the same things expecting somehow things to get better. It’s like, you guys we’ve got to try some new things, we’ve got to be bold.” But during a panel discussion in the school’s library, he faced skepticism from faculty members and local education leaders, who challenged his argument that small class sizes play little role in improving performance. And outside were reminders of Mr. Romney’s time in private equity. Protesters held up signs declaring, “We are the 99 percent.” Mr. Romney arrived at his campaign headquarters in Boston shortly after lunchtime to meet with advisers. Before taking a brief reprieve from campaigning over the holiday weekend, he is wrapping up an extensive week of fund-raising at an evening event in Chestnut Hill, Mass., which donors said is expected to raise more than $6 million for his campaign and the Republican National Committee. Then he and the president will renew a political battle that increasingly sounds more like Labor Day than Memorial Day. | Presidential Election of 2012;Obama Barack;Romney Mitt;Political Advertising;Bain Capital;Bush George W;Kerry John |
ny0132115 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2012/12/09 | Charlie Crist, Former Florida Governor, Joins Democratic Party | TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Charlie Crist , who was elected as the governor of Florida as a Republican and then ran unsuccessfully for the Senate as an independent, has announced that he is switching to the Democratic Party . The announcement, made Friday night via Twitter, prompted speculation that Mr. Crist would seek to regain his old job in 2014 from Florida’s current governor, Rick Scott, a Republican. Mr. Crist sent out a message that said , “Proud and honored to join the Democratic Party in the home of President @BarackObama!” The post included a photo of a smiling Mr. Crist with his wife, Carole, as he held up a Florida voter registration application. The Tampa Bay Times reported that Mr. Crist signed the papers changing his party affiliation during a Christmas reception at the White House. President Obama greeted the news with a fist bump. Mr. Crist said his reasons for switching parties included the Republican Party ’s shift to the right on a range of issues. Mr. Crist, 56, was elected to the governor’s post in 2006. As he moved to run for the Senate in 2010, he faced a tough primary challenge from the right, and he left the Republican Party to run as an independent. He lost a three-way Senate contest in 2010 to Marco Rubio, a Republican. Mr. Crist spoke at this year’s Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., and campaigned for Mr. Obama’s re-election. He may now decide to challenge Mr. Scott, who has struggled with low favorability ratings since taking office. But it is unlikely that Mr. Crist would get a clear path to the Democratic nomination. Nan Rich, a former state senator, has already jumped into the Democratic race, and Alex Sink, the state’s former chief financial officer, could run as well. Ms. Sink barely lost the 2010 governor’s race to Mr. Scott. Some Democrats are wary of Mr. Crist. The Florida Democratic Party chairman, Rod Smith, has joked that just because someone joins the congregation, “you don’t make them the preacher.” Steve Schale, a Democratic political consultant who worked on Mr. Obama’s Florida campaign, called Mr. Crist a “viable Democrat.” “He earned his stripes when he supported the president,” Mr. Schale said. In recent weeks, Republicans have increased their criticism of Mr. Crist and have pointed out that he had been critical of Mr. Obama and once described himself as a Republican in the mold of former President Ronald Reagan and Mr. Crist’s predecessor as governor, Jeb Bush. | Crist Charlie;Democratic Party;Republican Party;Appointments and Executive Changes;Governors (US);Florida;Twitter |
ny0193097 | [
"business",
"economy"
] | 2009/02/13 | Ailing Banks May Require More Aid to Keep Solvent | Some of the nation’s large banks , according to economists and other finance experts, are like dead men walking. A sober assessment of the growing mountain of losses from bad bets, measured in today’s marketplace, would overwhelm the value of the banks’ assets, they say. The banks, in their view, are insolvent. None of the experts’ research focuses on individual banks, and there are certainly exceptions among the 50 largest banks in the country. Nor do consumers and businesses need to fret about their deposits, which are federally insured. And even banks that might technically be insolvent can continue operating for a long time, and could recover their financial health when the economy improves. But without a cure for the problem of bad assets, the credit crisis that is dragging down the economy will linger, as banks cannot resume the ample lending needed to restart the wheels of commerce. The answer, say the economists and experts, is a larger, more direct government role than in the Treasury Department’s plan outlined this week. The Treasury program leans heavily on a sketchy public-private investment fund to buy up the troubled mortgage -backed securities held by the banks. Instead, the experts say, the government needs to plunge in, weed out the weakest banks, pour capital into the surviving banks and sell off the bad assets. It is the basic blueprint that has proved successful, they say, in resolving major financial crises in recent years. Japan endured a lost decade of economic stagnation in the 1990s before it adopted such measures from 2001 to 2003. The Swedish government took tough steps in 1992 and Washington did so in 1987 to 1989 to overcome the savings and loan crisis. “The historical record shows that you have to do it eventually,” said Adam S. Posen, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “Putting it off only brings more troubles and higher costs in the long run.” Of course, the Obama administration’s stimulus plan could help to spur economic recovery in a timely manner and the value of the banks’ assets could begin to rise. Absent that, the prescription would not be easy or cheap. Estimates of the capital injection needed in the United States range to $1 trillion and beyond. By contrast, the commitment of taxpayer money is the $350 billion remaining in the financial bailout approved by Congress last fall. Meanwhile, the loss estimates keep mounting. Nouriel Roubini, a professor of economics at the Stern School of Business at New York University , has been both pessimistic and prescient about the gathering credit problems. In a new report, Mr. Roubini estimates that total losses on loans by American financial firms and the fall in the market value of the assets they hold will reach $3.6 trillion, up from his previous estimate of $2 trillion. Of the total, he calculates that American banks face half that risk, or $1.8 trillion, with the rest borne by other financial institutions in the United States and abroad. “The United States banking system is effectively insolvent,” Mr. Roubini said. For its part, the banking industry bridles at such broad-brush analysis. The industry defines solvency bank by bank, and uses the value of a bank’s assets as they are carried on its books rather than the market prices calculated by economists. “Our analysis shows that the banks have varying degrees of solvency and does not reveal that any institution is insolvent,” said Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs at the Financial Services Roundtable, a trade group whose members include the largest banks. Edward L. Yingling, president of the American Bankers Association, called claims of technical insolvency “speculation by people who have no specific knowledge of bank assets.” Mr. Roubini’s numbers may be the highest, but many others share his rising sense of alarm. Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund , estimates that the United States banks have a capital shortage of $500 billion. “In a more severe recession, it will take $1 trillion or so to properly capitalize the banks,” said Mr. Johnson, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . At the end of January, the I.M.F. raised its estimate of the potential losses from loans and other credit securities originated in the United States to $2.2 trillion, up from $1.4 trillion last October. Over the next two years, the I.M.F. estimated, United States and European banks would need at least $500 billion in new capital, a figure more conservative than those of many economists. Still, these numbers are all based on estimates of the value of complex mortgage-backed securities in a very uncertain economy. “At this moment, the liabilities they have far exceed their assets,” said Mr. Posen of the Peterson institute. “They are insolvent.” Yet, as Mr. Posen and other economists note, there are crucial issues of timing and market psychology that surround the discussion of bank solvency. If one assumes that current conditions reflect a temporary panic, then the value of the banks’ distressed assets could well recover over time. If not, many banks may be permanently impaired. “We won’t know what the losses are on these mortgage-backed securities, and we won’t until the housing market stabilizes,” said Richard Portes, an economist at the London Business School. Raghuram G. Rajan, a professor of finance and an economist at the University of Chicago graduate business school, draws the distinction between “liquidation values” and those of calmer times, or “going concern values.” In a troubled time for banks, Mr. Rajan said, analysts are constantly scrutinizing current and potential losses at the banks, but that is not the norm. “If they had to sell these securities today, the losses would be far beyond their capital at this point,” he said. “But if the prices of these assets will recover over the next year or so, if they don’t have to sell at distress prices, the banks could have a new lease on life by giving them some time.” That sort of breathing room is known as regulatory forbearance, essentially a bet by regulators that time will help heal banking troubles. It has worked before. In the 1980s, during the height of the Latin American debt crisis, the total risk to the nine money-center banks in New York was estimated at more than three times the capital of those banks. The regulators, analysts say, did not force the banks to value those loans at the fire-sale prices of the moment, helping to avert a disaster in the banking system. In the current crisis, experts warn, banks need to get rid of bad assets quickly. The Treasury’s public-private investment fund is an effort to do that. But many economists and other finance experts say that the government may soon have to take on troubled assets itself to resolve the credit crisis. Then, they say, the government could wait for the economy to improve. Initially, that would put more taxpayer money on the line, but in the end it might reduce overall losses. That is what happened during the savings and loan crisis, when the troubled assets, mostly real estate, were seized by the Resolution Trust Corporation , a government-owned asset management company, and sold over a few years. The eventual losses, an estimated $130 billion, were far less than if the assets had been sold immediately. “The taxpayer money would be used to acquire assets, and behind most of those securities are mortgages, houses, and we know they are not worthless,” Mr. Portes said. | Bank;Subprime Mortgage Crisis,2008 Financial Crisis |
ny0065047 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2014/06/17 | Teenagers Arrested After Videotaped Attacks | HUDSON FALLS, N.Y. — They were beatings meted out with seemingly no motive other than capturing a moment of small-town adolescent fame. And, in a bizarre way, they succeeded. Depicting an unhappy mix of technology, teenage ennui and casual violence, police in this small village in northern New York said on Monday that they had arrested seven local teenagers who had participated in a series of attacks on other minors in the last two months. In each case, the alleged perpetrators and witnesses documented the beatings on cellphones and showed the recordings to friends. The attacks, which the police here said were unrelated to each other, did not result in any serious injuries, but left authorities puzzled as to the underlying cause. “We don’t see a motive other than the perceived interest in fight videos,” said Sgt. John Kibling, a Hudson Falls officer. “And wanting to be the first to show it.” The attacks began on May 1, when a 15-year-old boy was lured to a local home by an older teenage girl who had suggested a romantic rendezvous. After the boy arrived, however, he was accosted by an older boy who beat him on the head and body, all while being filmed. Then the attackers decided to do a second take. “They said, ‘You better get ready; it’s coming again,’ ” Sergeant Kibling said. The boy, who was not identified, was shaken and frightened enough to bring a knife to his school in Hudson Falls the following day, a decision that caused school officials to alert police. On May 17, police arrested several teenagers, including the 17-year-old girl, who was allegedly captured on camera saying “No cops” to the young victim. On May 23, another beating, of a 13-year-old girl, occurred at a local convenience store, where a group of teenagers used cellphones to record the attack, even as the girl attempted to escape. “She was doing what most parents teach a child, which is to avoid confrontation,” said Sergeant Kibling. A final, and more serious, attack happened on May 29 at the local high school, when an 18-year-old female was attacked at her locker, and suffered a concussion. Again, the beating was filmed by others. “They ignored a victim’s cry for help,” the sergeant said. “There’s a moral issue there.” The seven alleged attackers, four teenage girls and three boys, were not identified, but were charged with conspiracy. Several were also charged with assault. Most will be tried as juveniles, though two 17-year-olds will face charges as adults, said Sergeant Kibling. A village of some 7,300 about 50 miles north of Albany, Hudson Falls has a well-worn Main Street with many features common to Small Town, U.S.A.: red brick buildings arranged around a village green, folksy hometown pharmacies and the “For Rent” signs that so many upstate communities are now accustomed to. On Monday, residents here said they were aware of the attacks, though not totally shocked. “I heard they set them up to jump them,” said Shane Cook, 15. “Our teachers told us about it.” Indeed, in the end, the teenage assailants have become famous, albeit by acts that many find repugnant. “It’s disturbing, but life has changed everywhere, and we deal with some things in small towns that 40 years ago when I was a kid, you wouldn’t believe they would happen,” said Thomas Van Aernem, 64, a village trustee who owns a real estate brokerage in Hudson Falls. “It’s still a wonderful community to live in. But any time you hear of something like that, if you take it at face value, it’s very upsetting.” | Teens;Video Recordings; Downloads and Streaming;Assault;K-12 Education;New York;Hudson Falls |
ny0019822 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2013/07/06 | The Empire State Building, Now in 16 Million Colors | The Empire State Building threw itself a bit of a dance party on Thursday night. As fireworks exploded in a spectrum of colors over the Hudson River for the 37th Annual Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular, it was a new light show atop the world-famous building that caught many people’s attention. Whether it was grand or garish is a matter of opinion, but it was certainly different. When a new LED lighting system was installed on the building in 2012, it promised the opportunity to light up the skyline with 16 million colors. There have been several light shows since then that showed what the system could do. But on the Fourth, when all eyes were turned skyward, it seemed that every one of those colors illuminated the building at some point. “I know the Macy’s fireworks are amazing but the Empire State Building lights are stealing the show!!” Damien Basile posted on Twitter. The music for the program, called “It Begins With a Spark,” was chosen by the singer Usher, and the light show was created by the lighting design artist Marc Brickman to mirror the fireworks. When the new lighting system, from Philips Color Kinetics, was installed, it replaced an older system that required colored gels to be placed on top of static lamps to light up the building. Now, the colors can be programmed remotely to change at the stroke of a key. They also glow up to eight times brighter than the old lights. The building’s owners have promised to maintain strict standards on how the new lights will be used. For instance, no advertising is allowed. However, the Fourth of July offered an opportunity to show off a bit. “Partnering the world’s most famous building with the world’s most famous fireworks spectacular can only happen in New York City,” said Anthony E. Malkin , whose family controls the building, in a statement. “As the iconic feature of the New York City skyline, we are honored to have this opportunity to add our unmatchable LED lights to the celebration.” For those who prefer a more subdued palette, the schedule for lighting on the building calls for white/white/white until the end of the month. | Empire State Building;July 4th;Lighting;NYC;LED |
ny0062277 | [
"us"
] | 2014/01/10 | Obama Seeks Balance in Plan for Spy Programs | WASHINGTON — As he assembles a plan to overhaul the nation’s surveillance programs, President Obama is trying to navigate what advisers call a middle course that will satisfy protesting national security agencies while tamping down criticism by civil liberties advocates. Mr. Obama has not tipped his hand much during the meetings he has held with intelligence officials and lawmakers before he unveils his plan as early as next Friday. But some of the proposals under consideration are forcing him to decide just how much he is willing to curtail government spying in the interest of reassuring a wary public. The challenge was brought into stark relief on Thursday when James B. Comey, who is the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was recently appointed by Mr. Obama, went public with his objections to a recommendation of a presidential review group. The panel suggested requiring court review of so-called national security letters compelling businesses, under a gag order, to turn over records about customer communications and financial transactions. “What worries me about their suggestion that we impose a judicial procedure on N.S.L.’s is that it would actually make it harder for us to do national security investigations than bank fraud investigations,” Mr. Comey said. He added, “I just don’t know why you would make it harder to get an N.S.L. than a grand jury subpoena,” calling the letters “a very important tool that is essential to the work we do.” Such letters have long been used in bank fraud and other cases, but their use exploded over the past decade as they were expanded to terrorism investigations, with the agency now issuing tens of thousands a year since Congress lowered the legal standard. The review panel urged Mr. Obama to require a judge to find “reasonable grounds” that the information sought “is relevant” to terrorism activities. Mr. Obama has run into resistance from national security officials to other proposals. They oppose checks on government subversion of commercial encryption software, and they argue that further limits on another program intercepting communications would create legal, political and bureaucratic uncertainties. But Mr. Obama has met more acquiescence on two proposals he seems likely to adopt. One would have telecommunications firms or a private consortium, rather than the government, store vast troves of telephone metadata. Another would establish a public advocate to argue against the government before a secret intelligence court that oversees surveillance. A departing N.S.A. official said in an interview to be aired on NPR on Friday that the agency would accept a public advocate. “I would welcome that advocacy in the room,” said John Inglis, who is retiring as deputy N.S.A. director on Friday. “The question is how operationally efficient can you make it.” Yet such moves may not satisfy vocal critics of the N.S.A. after revelations by its onetime contractor Edward J. Snowden. A committee of former N.S.A. officials released 21 recommendations on Thursday that go much further, like outlawing national security letters and revoking 2008 legislation authorizing expansive surveillance. The debate came as lawmakers digested a report by the Defense Intelligence Agency concluding that Mr. Snowden’s revelations probably made American forces overseas more vulnerable. “Snowden’s actions are likely to have lethal consequences for our troops in the field,” said Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Documents leaked by Mr. Snowden revealed military techniques to secure, and interfere with, telephone and computer network communications. But the D.I.A. report remained classified and it was difficult, officials acknowledged, to quantify any damage. Ben Wizner, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who advises Mr. Snowden, criticized the lawmakers’ description of the account as “exaggerated national security claims.” Mr. Obama spent 90 minutes on Thursday talking with lawmakers from both parties about the proposed policy changes, a day after meeting with Mr. Comey and other national security officials, and separately, a privacy advisory board. White House officials will also meet on Friday with technology company executives. One adviser, who spoke about the president’s deliberations on condition of anonymity, said Mr. Obama was seeking a middle ground that probably would draw complaints from both security and privacy advocates. “Whatever he does next week will be an attempt to reach that balance, and on both sides there will be some element of dissatisfaction,” the adviser said. Some of the 16 lawmakers who attended the meeting in the Roosevelt Room said Mr. Obama was still sorting through the complex issues. “The president is thinking through this in a very correct way, and I think he’s asking the right questions and still making up his mind,” said Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee. Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said Mr. Obama seemed likely to support a public advocate as well as a change in the method of appointing members of the secret intelligence court. “He’s clearly given it a lot of thought — very penetrating and searching thought,” Mr. Blumenthal said. Much of the discussion centered on the metadata program. “The critical question at the end of the day is if the program has some value, how is that weighed against the cost of collecting millions and millions of domestic call records of the American people?” asked Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California and a member of the Intelligence Committee. Even if Mr. Obama shifts storage of such data, officials have debated whether each telecommunications company should keep its own or a single consortium should be created to house all of it. Some officials complained it would be inefficient if the N.S.A. had to go to individual companies each time it wanted to search for a number, while critics like Mr. Schiff said creating a consortium would be pointless because it would be seen as a de facto arm of the N.S.A. Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and a critic of the surveillance programs, said he objected during the meeting to the assertion that the bulk records program thwarted attacks. He said he read aloud a sentence from Mr. Obama’s review group report declaring that information gleaned by the program “was not essential to preventing attacks and could readily have been obtained in a timely manner” using conventional means. | Government Surveillance;US Military;Barack Obama;NSA;FBI;Spying and Intelligence Agencies |
ny0090305 | [
"us"
] | 2015/09/06 | T. Eugene Thompson Dies at 88; Crime Stunned St. Paul | T. Eugene Thompson’s paid obituary on Tuesday nebulously described him as “a multifaceted person” and concluded with a quotation from Oscar Wilde: “Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” The death notice, placed by Mr. Thompson’s family in the Minneapolis and St. Paul newspapers, ended with one word, “Amen.” What the notice failed to mention was the facet of Mr. Thompson’s story that seized the nation’s attention and induced his Minnesota neighbors to deadbolt their doors and demand the restoration of the state’s death penalty for the first time since 1911. On Dec. 6, 1963, after deliberating for 12 hours, a jury of six men and six women convicted Mr. Thompson, a leading local criminal defense lawyer, of first-degree murder after a bungling hit man killed his wife, Carol, in their St. Paul home. At the trial, the prosecution convinced the jury that Mr. Thompson, then 36, had arranged what turned out to be a gruesome contract killing so that he could collect nearly $1.1 million in life insurance benefits. The prosecution, quoting him, said he had promised his 27-year-old former secretary, Jackie Olesen, that the proceeds would provide “enough money for us to live on.” Many Minnesotans came to believe that the case had been an inspiration for the 1996 movie “Fargo.” After serving 19 years of a life term, Mr. Thompson was paroled in 1983. He died on his 88th birthday, Aug. 7, at his home in Roseville, a Twin Cities suburb. His son, Jeffrey, a former defense lawyer and prosecutor who was 13 at the time of the murder and is now chief judge for the southeastern district of Minnesota, confirmed the death. Mr. Thompson had remarried (his second wife died of natural causes), sold real estate and re-established equivocal relationships with his son; three daughters, Patricia, Margaret and Amy; two sisters; six grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren, all of whom survive him. “He always insisted he was innocent,” said William Swanson, who wrote a book about the case, “Dial M: The Murder of Carol Thompson,” published in 2006. Tilmer Eugene Thompson, nicknamed “Cotton” for his white-blond hair, was born in 1927 in Blue Earth, Minn., about 120 miles southwest of Minneapolis. He was the son of a chicken farmer, also named Tilmer. Image Carol Thompson was insured for over $1 million. Credit United Press International He dropped out of high school in Elmore (where he played football with Walter F. Mondale, who would become a United States senator and vice president), also in Minnesota, to enlist in the Navy. He served on a minesweeper in the Pacific during World War II. Mr. Thompson and the former Carol Swoboda were classmates at Macalester College in St. Paul. After graduation, Mr. Thompson enrolled in St. Paul College of Law (now William Mitchell College of Law). The Thompsons became pillars of the community, regular Sunday churchgoers for Presbyterian services. On March 6, 1963, Ms. Thompson, 34, made bacon and eggs for breakfast for her husband and four children, ages 6 to 13, in their comfortable brick home in St. Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood, and then went back to bed. According to prosecutors, Mr. Thompson had hired Norman J. Mastrian, a college friend and former boxer, for $3,000 to bludgeon his wife with a rubber hose, place her naked in the bathtub and make the death look like an accidental drowning. Mr. Mastrian subcontracted the killing to Dick W. C. Anderson, a roofing salesman and Marine veteran. Mr. Anderson hid in the basement and then attacked Ms. Thompson, leaving her for dead. He was tidying up when she regained consciousness. “She managed to get out of the tub,” he testified, “so I knew I had trouble.” Mr. Anderson tried to shoot Ms. Thompson, but the pistol, a stolen Luger, was loaded with the wrong ammunition and misfired, so he smashed the butt into her head. To be doubly sure, he grabbed a paring knife from the kitchen and plunged it into her neck, breaking the handle. Ms. Thompson nevertheless managed to stumble out of the house, bloody and begging for help. Mr. Anderson fled. Ms. Thompson died hours later at a hospital. The police initially suspected that an intruder, a homicidal maniac, had killed her. But they became suspicious when they learned that Mr. Thompson had recently given away the family’s dachshund and that, after arriving at his office unusually early that morning, he had instructed his secretary to call his wife at home on a pretext. She answered the phone. Prosecutors said he had staged the call so that he could say she was still alive when he left for work. “The trouble was that he had thought of everything,” Joe Healy, an insurance investigator, told The New York Times in 1972, “and everything he thought of made him that much more suspect.” Image Mr. Thompson told Jackie Olesen they would live on the money. Credit Gerald Brimacombe/Minneapolis Star-Tribune Mr. Thompson, who was then the chairman of the criminal law committee of the Minnesota State Bar Association, was arrested on June 21 at his summer home in Forest Lake, Minn. Bail was set at $100,000, the highest in state history at the time. Mr. Anderson, a petty thief, confessed that he had carried out the crime for $2,300, suggesting that Mr. Mastrian had intended to pocket the other $700. Mr. Anderson and Mr. Mastrian were also given life terms, and they, too, were later paroled. The case attracted national attention, and Minnesotans suspect that it left an impression on the filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, who were growing up in a nearby suburb at the time of the murder and trial. Their film “Fargo” was about a car dealer who hires a couple of inept criminals to kidnap his wife for ransom. The opening credits say that the film is “a true story” and that the events “took place in Minnesota in 1987.” “This, however, is not the case,” Joel Coen said in an interview on Friday. “It’s completely made up. Or, as we like to say, the only thing true about it is that it’s a story.” As for Mr. Thompson, Mr. Coen insisted, “Never heard of him.” Like many of Mr. Thompson’s colleagues and neighbors, his son, Jeffrey, originally believed that someone else was to blame for his mother’s murder. He visited his father at the Minnesota Correctional Facility at Stillwater and pleaded for his early parole. “It’s very hard for a child to have a parent in prison, but once he got out, we never had much of a relationship,” Jeffrey Thompson said in an interview. But Mr. Swanson, the author, said, “As Jeffrey matured and eventually studied law and reviewed the voluminous files, he came to the conclusion that his dad had been lying.” Jeffrey said, “He never admitted doing it.” In 1986, Mr. Swanson said, Jeffrey Thompson “convened a family court, and they brought Eugene in and said: ‘We are going to presume you’re guilty. You convince us otherwise.’ He failed to do that.” Still, Mr. Thompson attended his son’s swearing-in as a judge, and Jeffrey sent him birthday cards. Mr. Swanson asked Jeffrey once to explain his ambivalence. “He teared up and said, ‘He’s my dad,’ ” Mr. Swanson said. Wilde’s redemptive quotation, the one in Mr. Thompson’s paid obituary, is also posted in Judge Jeffrey Thompson’s courtroom in Winona. He declined to classify his father as a saint or a sinner, but said, “I think, based on my experience with Minnesota’s criminal justice system, that the jury did the right thing.” | Obituary;Minnesota;Murders and Homicides;St Paul MN;Fargo;T. Eugene Thompson |
ny0187529 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2009/04/10 | With More Rooms Open, Hotels in New York Want to Pay Workers Less | With the city’s hotels in the midst of a sudden slowdown in business, operators are seeking wage cuts and other concessions from the unions representing 27,500 bellhops, housekeepers and waiters. But the unions are drawing a line across hotel lobbies, from the high-end Carlyle to the more budget-minded Ramada Inn, saying they see no need to bend now that operators are cutting rates in an effort to fill vacant rooms with tourists, executives and other travelers. It is far too soon to judge the financial health of the industry, said Peter Ward, president of the New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council , an alliance of hotel unions. “They had 10 years of magnificent, never-ending upside: record profits and record occupancy,” Mr. Ward said Thursday. “Now, they’ve had just 100 bad days, and a bunch of these big tough capitalists are crying for relief. They want to take it out on dishwashers and room attendants.” Housekeepers at unionized hotels make $803.93 a week and are due for a 3.5 percent wage increase in July, which would bring their pay to $832.07, union officials said. Dishwashers make $781.42 a week, which is to increase to $808.77 on July 1. Bellhops make comparable wages; waiters’ wages vary depending on tips. The Carlyle is among 20 hotels in the city that asked an arbitrator for help in reopening union contracts over the last week, although they have yet to make specific demands. Others include the Courtyard Times Square South, the Paramount Hotel, the Jolly Hotel Madison Towers, the Holiday Inn SoHo and the Radisson Lexington. No one believes that the city’s hotel industry is immune to the recession. There are fewer foreign travelers in the city, and corporations are slashing travel budgets and demanding bigger discounts. So hotel operators, like construction companies, newspapers and City Hall, want their union employees to accept wage and benefit cuts and more flexible work rules. “There certainly needs to be some concessions,” said James McBride, managing director of the Carlyle, where the average room rate is still more than $600 a night. Mr. McBride said that business for the first two months of the year was off by 18 percent at the Carlyle over the same period last year. Occupancy at another luxury hotel, the Four Seasons, dipped below 50 percent in the first two months of the year, from 67 percent a year ago, according to hotel analysts. “We’re looking at everything,” said John Fitzpatrick, chief executive of the Fitzpatrick Hotel Group and chairman of the Hotel Association of New York City . “We have to try and save costs everywhere. But he said it was “a little premature” to discuss specific concessions hotel owners have in mind. The average occupancy rate at New York City hotels in the first two months of this year was 61.8 percent, down from 73.5 during the same period last year, according to Smith Travel Research, a national hotel research firm. At the same time, the average daily room rate dropped to $196.30, from $232.25. “It’s not a pretty picture,” said Joseph Spinnato, president of the Hotel Association. The industry’s problems are compounded by the prospect of 10,000 new hotel rooms in 2009 and 2010. “We’re in this classic economic model where we’ve got declining demand because of the economy and added supply,” said John Fox, a hotel consultant with PKF Consulting. Mr. Ward said nearly 4,000 hotel workers have been laid off since the beginning of the year. He is not eager to make concessions and be hit with additional layoffs in the future. Under collective bargaining agreements, owners can, under certain conditions, ask to reopen a contract. Mr. Ward, in turn, can ask to look at their books. This all comes as a bit of a shock for an industry that has enjoyed a record-breaking number of years in which hotels were essentially full for more than 250 days a year. The occupancy rate dropped below 80 percent in only 3 of the last 12 years, making New York hotels the envy of the national industry. That allowed hotel operators to raise their average room rates by 63.9 percent, to $276.18, from 2003 to 2009. Even today, New York hotels are among the best performing in the 25 largest markets in the country. But during the real estate boom, some hoteliers expanded or refinanced, thereby increasing the debt on their properties, which is now causing them problems. Hotel owners, said Mr. Ward, have embraced a business model predicated on “unsustainable room rates and occupancies.” “This is a cyclical industry, and they’re not prepared for the bumps in the road,” Mr. Ward said. Hotel operators are working with the city on a new marketing plan that could include a nine-city tour of European capitals by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to drum up interest in New York. Airlines, which had refused to offer discount packages in the past, are now willing to do so, Mr. Fitzpatrick said. Mr. Spinnato said he remained optimistic about the future in the face of consumer reluctance to spend money on travel. “We need to turn that around,” he said. At the same time, he acknowledged that if wages were cut for hotel workers and other Americans, they would “spend less money.” But, he added, “I think it’s premature to get into those issues at this time.” | Hotels and Motels;Organized Labor;New York City |
ny0185696 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2009/03/30 | Ain’t Nothing Like the Real (Estate) Thing | If there were some kind of contest for unbridled optimism, it would be hard to decide whether people who work in advertising or people who work in real estate would win. So a campaign for a real estate broker, you might think, would be imbued with enough optimism to make Pollyanna seem like Gloomy Gus. That is why a campaign for the Corcoran Group, now getting under way, is somewhat surprising. To be sure, the campaign -- in print, online and in e-mail messages -- takes an upbeat, positive approach toward the idea of buying real estate during this parlous period. For instance, one ad asserts, “There’s never been a better time to find an incredible place at an incredible price.” What about, oh, say, 1933? The late 1970s? The early 1990s? Still, in a departure for the category, the campaign is on the whole more grounded than ethereal. For instance, there are frequent acknowledgments of market conditions. “In this economy, people are spending more time at home,” one ad says. “Truthfully, is there any place you’d rather be?” Another ad declares: “In these times, it’s economically incorrect to be ostentatious, improvident and excessive. Nobody said anything about comfortable.” There is also a focus on the inherent value of homes and apartments rather than glitz or glamour. “Value sweet value,” proclaims the headline of one ad. Another ad asks, “How do you define value in a new home?” and answers thusly: “Let’s begin with the definition of ‘Oh, wow, I love it.’ ” There is also a section of the Corcoran Web site devoted to value-priced listings ( corcoran.com/bigvalues ), arranged in sections from under $500,000 to more than $3 million. (When is a home priced at more than $3 million a value? Maybe if the seller bought it for more than $6 million.) The campaign, created internally and by a team of free-lancers, also has a budget that is more down to earth. The most recent Corcoran campaigns had annual budgets estimated at several million dollars each; for this one, the company is spending about $275,000. This campaign, like those from 2006, 2007 and 2008, carries the theme “Live who you are.” But the look has been altered, to be pared down and plainer. The ads from the last three years featured attractive photographs, shot by Tina Barney, of real estate shoppers who were defined by terms found in real-estate ads. (They can be seen at a microsite, or special Web site, livewhoyouare.com For example, an ad of a couple lounging in a posh apartment, perhaps just engaged, carried the headline “In contract.” An ad of a young woman dressed to ride a horse, standing near a lush home, carried the headline “Groomed to perfection.” An ad of a shirtless hunk in a sleek apartment carried the headline, “Triple mint, new to the market.” And an ad of a well-dressed couple, posed in front of a Palm Beach mansion, carried the headline “Meticulously maintained.” By contrast, the new ads are text only, white letters against black backgrounds. The only color comes from the Corcoran logo at the bottom of each ad. “The sentiment of ‘Live who you are’ is still the same,” says Christina Lowris, executive vice president for advertising and marketing at Corcoran in New York. “This is a different way of expressing it, given the state of the industry.” “Nothing says more about who you are than where you live,” she adds, but that needed to be expressed differently after “we found ourselves in a new time.” Despite the severity of the downturn in the real estate market, “we didn’t want to become one of those companies that goes silent during a recession,” Ms. Lowris says. “We’ve certainly made cuts, but we’ve found a way to do a campaign with the resources we have,” she adds. For instance, there are fewer print ads and more online ads, Ms. Lowris says, and the ads will be displayed on the corcoran.com Web site as well. In another cost-saving move, the print ads, which had previously been full pages, are now fractional, she adds, in sizes ranging from a quarter page to three-fifths of a page. One print ad, with the longest text, serves as sort of an anthem for the campaign. “At Corcoran, we know that nothing is more important than value right now,” the text begins. “But we also know that while a ‘real estate value’ has to have a great price, it also has to find an emotional connection to you.” “With that in mind, we make every effort to understand your aspirations, your personality and where you are in life right now,” the ad continues. “Value can have 700 square feet or 30,000 square feet, if it fits who you are.” The ad then lists several criteria for suitability, which include an affordable price and “a place that makes you feel good about yourself every time you walk in the door,” then concludes, “At Corcoran, that’s how we define value.” In producing a continuing campaign, “the challenge is always to think about what’s going to happen next,” says Kristina Backlund, a creative director and art director who worked on the ads on a free-lance basis. “We didn’t foresee a big recession,” she adds, “but it came, and we decided to adjust.” No longer showing people in the ads “is a reflection of the tough times,” Ms. Backlund says, as is reducing the budget, in that it would be wrong to “go and spend a lot of money on a flashy campaign.” The campaign is focused on the current mood of those considering buying real estate, she adds, “and understanding where they say they are.” The ads are being timed to appear at the start of spring, which is traditionally a strong season for buying homes and apartments. Whether that will be the case this time around is Topic A among brokers. “Prices have come down, and there are a lot of values out there,” Ms. Lowris says, but “there is a lot of fear out there” as well. And “people are still having problems getting mortgages,” she adds, which is “a big roadblock for us.” But there have been some encouraging statistics emerging lately. Last week, the Commerce Department reported that sales of new homes rose in February for the first time in seven months. And sales of existing homes also rose in February, reversing a decline in January. But prices of both types of homes fell. For new homes, that was because distressed properties accounted for 45 percent of sales. For existing homes, that was because of the huge glut of houses still unsold. Another positive sign, Ms. Lowris says, is an increase in traffic on the corcoran.com Web site along with “more traffic, too, at open houses.” She attributes that to what she calls “recreational interest in real estate, not necessarily a serious buyer or seller, but someone interested in what’s going on and wants to see where prices are.” The print ads are appearing in “a shortened list” of publications compared with the previous campaigns, Ms. Lowris says, “concentrated right now in the New York area.” Among them are New York magazine, The New York Post, The New York Times Magazine and The Wall Street Journal. In addition to the Corcoran Web site, the online ads are running on the Web sites of the publications carrying the print ads. And Corcoran brokers are sending e-mail messages to clients and prospects that echo the points the ads are making, describing how each agent defines “great value.” “When looking at real estate, it has to rise above your expectations,” one such e-mail message sent last week says. “You will know you’ve made the right decision to buy because of the strong connection felt as you walked through the doors of your potential home.” If you like In Advertising, be sure to read the Advertising column that runs Monday through Friday in the Business Day section of The New York Times print edition and on nytimes.com . | Advertising and Marketing;Housing and Real Estate;Prices (Fares Fees and Rates);Recession and Depression;Corcoran Group |
ny0292480 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2016/06/02 | Success Academy Network Cancels Pre-K Program Amid Contract Dispute | The Success Academy charter school network is canceling its prekindergarten program for next year as it continues to battle with New York City over a contract, the network announced on Wednesday. When it started the universal prekindergarten program, the city required all providers to sign a contract, saying it was necessary to ensure a consistent level of quality. But the Success network, whose chief executive is Eva S. Moskowitz , has refused to sign , arguing that the city does not have the authority to regulate programs at charter schools. The 13 other charter school organizations that offer prekindergarten classes have signed the contract. Success had asked the State Education Department to intervene in the dispute, and in February, the education commissioner ruled in the city’s favor , saying it could indeed require charter schools to sign the contract in order to receive public financing for their programs. Success is challenging the decision in a lawsuit in State Supreme Court. But on Wednesday, in a strongly worded statement, Success said that the court’s decision would not come in time to allow it to prepare for the next school year and blamed Mayor Bill de Blasio for “forcing” the network to cancel its program. Image Eva S. Moskowitz, the founder of the Success Academy charter network. Credit Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times Success currently has 72 students in prekindergarten at three schools and was planning to expand the program to two other schools next year. The dispute over prekindergarten is the latest skirmish in a continuing feud between Ms. Moskowitz and the mayor. Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, is a critic of charter schools who pledged during his campaign to end the practice of giving such schools space in public school buildings. After taking office, he sought to block three Success schools from getting space, but backed down after the network’s supporters unleashed $5 million worth of television advertisements attacking him. In a letter sent on Tuesday to parents of students accepted into prekindergarten classes at Success school for next year, the network blamed Mr. de Blasio for the decision to cancel the program and urged parents to sign an open letter to the mayor accusing him of hypocrisy and of putting politics above children’s education. The letter, which the network released publicly on Wednesday, states in part: “You say you care about all kids but then discriminate against public charter kids and families. You say you care about inequality, and yet you keep working-class families who cannot afford private school or to move out of the city from getting access to world-class education, our ticket to equity.” The city’s Education Department said it would help the students who were accepted into prekindergarten classes at Success find placement in other programs. Devora Kaye, a spokeswoman for the department, said of Success’s decision, “The state upheld our important standards to ensure all programs are high quality, and we look forward to welcoming more charter schools and organizations” to the prekindergarten program. | Preschool;Charter school;Success Academy Charter Schools;Eva S Moskowitz;Bill de Blasio;NYC |
ny0204397 | [
"sports",
"othersports"
] | 2009/01/05 | For Bull Riders, It’s a Long Day of Waiting and a Few Seconds of Fury | BALTIMORE — A bull named Hammered had just ejected a professional rider named Luke Snyder, who landed boots-over-buckle on his head and moseyed dizzily to the locker room. “I took a big old swan dive right over his left horn,” Snyder explained after he plopped down and asked no one in particular for some aspirin. He lasted about four seconds atop Hammered on Friday night during the Professional Bull Riders tour stop at the downtown 1st Mariner Arena. To earn points at all — and, thus, any money — a rider needs to hold on for eight seconds. But there would be another show Saturday night. No sport packs as much into eight seconds as bull riding. In Baltimore, the winner, Kasey Hayes, rode for 24 seconds and earned $28,370. That is a pay rate of more than $4.25 million an hour — as if anyone could ride the 1,500-pound likes of Chief of Staff, Walk the Line or El Presidente for an hour, or would want to. Snyder rode a total of 11.3 seconds, earned nothing, and was left to hope — and wait — for better results at Madison Square Garden this weekend. But waiting is what bull riders do most. After his first ride in Baltimore, Snyder had almost exactly 24 hours to think about his second one. First, he had to get rid of the headache. Snyder is a 26-year-old from Raymore, Mo., with a black hat, a dignified air and a nose reconstructed a few years ago by a surgeon who used Snyder’s driver’s license as a guide. That procedure followed a head-to-head run-in with a bull — a brutally common collision known among riders as being jerked down or, more graphically, dashboarded. He was the tour’s 2001 rookie of the year, earning $348,560.54 the season he turned 19. He is now known in bull-riding circles for an ironman streak of 236 consecutive P.B.R. events. Part of each event is killing time between rounds. After shaking his headache and changing into dirt-free Wranglers on Friday night, Snyder joined the 44 other P.B.R. tour members in signing autographs. Minutes later, Snyder was in a taxi, headed to the tour’s official after-party at Mex, a nightclub where female bartenders occasionally dance atop the bar. Snyder, the first with a cowboy hat to arrive, bought a Bud Light. He earned $117,846.70 last year and ranked 23rd in the points standings. The tour pays for expenses like flights and hotels. Other riders arrived, mostly oblivious to the halo of interest they received, particularly from women. Rodeo groupies are called buckle bunnies for the saucer-size silver buckles that cowboys earn for winning rodeo events. Snyder wore a buckle from last year’s victory in Nampa, Idaho. A flirty woman in a straw hat slid through the crowd straight to Snyder. He stands out, even among cowboys. Everything about him seems extra starched, from the creased jeans to the crisp long-sleeve shirt to the brown-and-yellow turkey feather adorning his hat. He is dark and handsome and not so rugged, save for the scars on his chin. He looks approachable. “Are you a rider?” she asked him. “That guy is,” Snyder said, pointing across to a friend. She spun and redirected her pursuit. Snyder laughed behind her. He has had a girlfriend, Jayme, for about five years. The drink of choice among other riders is a Jägerbomb, a mix of Jägermeister and Red Bull. Platters of the drinks were purchased as Bud Lights and Jack Daniel’s-and-Cokes, provided free, sat idle. Snyder found a spot against a back wall where he could watch and comment on the unfolding debauchery. Within an hour, several riders were paired with 20-something women they just met. One rider was on an ottoman, pushed onto his back by a comely blonde. She rode like a bull rider and lifted her shirt, eliminating the need for an imagination. A friend pulled her away. “What are you doing?” she shouted at her. Snyder shook his head. “I’ve never seen stuff like this, I swear to you,” he said. About 1:30 a.m., Snyder ignored a loose plan to reconvene at the hotel. He fell asleep in his room watching “Righteous Kill,” with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. He was back on the arena floor at 8 a.m. to shoot a promotional video for Ford, the tour’s primary sponsor, with his fellow rider Matt Bohon. A 2009 pickup was parked on the dirt. For two hours, Snyder and Mohan read scripts from a teleprompter and were filmed receiving a tour of the truck’s features. Snyder moved straight into a shoot for the “Rachael Ray” show, to be broadcast this week, for which Snyder mostly discussed laundry — stains and wrinkles, two banes of a proper cowboy’s starchiness. The shoot delayed the start of a church service in the arena, then was moved across the street to the hotel. Snyder, toting his suitcase, gamely re-enacted his check-in from the day before. The producer wanted him to carry his chaps and vest, too. Snyder went back to the arena to get them. “You don’t check in holding your chaps and your vest,” Snyder said with a shrug when he returned. The three-person crew spent an hour in his hotel room. Snyder emerged after 1 p.m. with a growling stomach. Faidley’s at Lexington Market is well known for its crab cakes. On the walk there, Snyder came across five other riders. They stuck out because they were white and wore cowboy hats. “You don’t want to go that way,” one said. “It’s scary.” Snyder kept going, and the others turned and followed. People along the sidewalk stopped them, shook their hands and told them how crazy they must be to ride bulls. Over crab cakes, another rider asked which bull Snyder had drawn for Saturday’s show. Road Daddy, Snyder said. Tour statistics said that the bull had been ridden 3 times in 11 tries the last two years. The average ride lasted 5.13 seconds. “He’s real notorious for dropping a guy in the well,” Snyder said, meaning that the bull often sent riders to the inside of his rightward spin. “I’ve got a good bull, if I can stay on him.” Snyder took an afternoon nap. He ordered a chicken sandwich from room service at about 5, then walked to the arena about 6:30, wearing crisp jeans and alligator-skin boots and carrying his chaps and vest. The show started at 8. The floors of the two large changing rooms at 1st Mariner Arena were covered in dust thick enough to scrawl a name. A section of metal fence stood in the middle. Gear hung on the fencing. Riders sat on folding chairs. The mood was light, the banter typical — about bulls and women, the night before and the coming schedule. One rider dazzled the others with a card trick. Snyder cleaned the dirt from his bull rope with the wire brush. He grabbed a rocklike chunk from a bucket supplied by another rider, Brendon Clark. It was a mix including Neutrogena soap, rosin and glycerin, melted together and cooled. Rubbed on the rope repeatedly with a leather glove, it heated up and made the rope tacky. That is where riders hold on. About 7:45, as the arena’s seats filled, Snyder donned his chaps and vest. “When you make a great ride in front of a big crowd, and you jump off and they are going nuts, there is nothing you can replace that with,” Snyder said. The riders were paraded in front of the fans for introductions, all pyrotechnics and bombast. Snyder watched the action from behind the chutes. Dozens of bulls milled behind him, out of sight of the audience. They sometimes clanged against the fences. As his turn approached, Snyder grew quiet and looked for Road Daddy. He fiddled with his hat. He jumped up and down and twisted his hips. Once the bull had been placed in line in a stall, Snyder climbed on the fence and straddled the beast, tying his rope around the broad midsection. When it was time to ride, Snyder climbed aboard. He wrapped the sticky part of his rope around his right hand. Over the pounding music, the announcer said something about Snyder’s ironman streak, and the gate popped open. Road Daddy spun, stopped, spun and stopped, something the riders call shifting gears. Snyder hung tight, but a subtle move threw him. He hit the dirt at 7.3 seconds. Snyder gathered his rope and walked silently down the corridor toward the changing room. Behind him, the music blared again, and the crowd cheered someone else. | Bull Riding;Rodeos;Professional Bull Riders;Snyder Luke |
ny0042032 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2014/05/29 | Obama Warns U.S. Faces Diffuse Terrorism Threats | WEST POINT, N.Y. — President Obama tried once more to articulate his vision of the American role in the world on Wednesday, telling graduating cadets here that the nation they were being called to serve would seek to avoid military misadventures abroad, even as it confronts a new set of terrorist threats from the Middle East to Africa. Speaking at the commencement of the United States Military Academy, Mr. Obama disputed critics who say his cautious response to crises like Syria’s civil war and Russian aggression toward Ukraine had eroded America’s leadership in the world. Those critics, he said , were “either misreading history or engaged in partisan politics.” But for a president who has promised to take the United States off a permanent war footing, Mr. Obama painted an unsettling portrait of the world, 13 years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The nation, he said, had, in effect, traded Al Qaeda in Afghanistan for a more diffuse threat from extremists in Syria, Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Mali and other countries. A day after announcing that the last American soldier would leave Afghanistan at the end of 2016 , Mr. Obama told a new class of Army officers that some of them would be sent on murkier missions, helping endangered nations deal with their own terrorist groups. In the only new policy announcement of the speech, he called on Congress to finance what he called a Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund, with up to $5 billion to provide training in these operations to vulnerable countries like Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey, all neighbors of Syria. Video President Obama gave a commencement speech at West Point on Wednesday, describing his foreign policy vision as one in which “American isolationism is not an option.” Credit Credit Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times “We have to develop a strategy that matches this diffuse threat; one that expands our reach without sending forces that stretch our military too thin, or stirs up local resentments,” Mr. Obama declared. “We need partners to fight terrorists alongside us.” The president has spoken before about the threat from terrorism, most notably in a speech last May at the National Defense University . But on those occasions he had taken pains to note that the threat was on a lesser scale than the Sept. 11 attacks and could be dealt with “smartly and proportionately.” On Wednesday, his language was more ominous: “For the foreseeable future,” he said, “the most direct threat to America at home and abroad remains terrorism.” Mr. Obama singled out Syria, which he said was becoming a haven for extremists, a situation that his critics have attributed in part to his own unwillingness to take more aggressive action. While pledging to strengthen American support for the opposition — something he has done several times before — the president did not discuss expanding the C.I.A.’s covert training program for Syrian rebels in Jordan, perhaps bringing in the military, an option that is being discussed inside the administration. A senior administration official said after the speech that the White House was consulting with Congress about ways to expand the military’s role in counterterrorism operations. But he declined to say whether the administration had decided on a bigger Pentagon role in Syria and noted there were other ways to help the opposition. Video President Obama discussed climate change in his speech at West Point, saying he intends “to make sure America is out front in putting together a global framework to preserve our planet.” Credit Credit Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Little in Mr. Obama’s tone suggested he had dropped his reluctance to get involved militarily in Syria, a position that has not changed despite three years of war and a death toll above 160,000. “I made a decision that we should not put American troops into the middle of this increasingly sectarian war, and I believe that is the right decision,” Mr. Obama said. “But that does not mean we shouldn’t help the Syrian people stand up against a dictator who bombs and starves his own people.” Weeks in the drafting, the president’s speech was meant to be a wide-ranging rebuttal to critics who say he should have done more to curb the bloodshed in Syria or stop Russia’s takeover of Crimea. But it also rejected arguments that the United States should retreat from its post-World War II centrality in global affairs. Mr. Obama instead called for a middle course between isolationism and overreach, citing the international coalition the United States had mobilized to counter Russia’s aggression in Ukraine as an example of how to use American muscle “without firing a shot.” “America must always lead on the world stage,” the president said. “But U.S. military action cannot be the only — or even primary — component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.” West Point , with its 1,064 graduating cadets in full dress uniform, offered a grand backdrop for Mr. Obama’s foreign policy blueprint. But he got a subdued reception under leaden skies and chilly wind, which left family members of the cadets, many in shirt sleeves and sundresses, shivering in the stands of the football stadium. One line that did bring a burst of applause, mainly from parents, came when Mr. Obama told the graduates they might be the first class since 2001 not sent to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan. It was a very different theme than in 2009, when he came here to announce the United States would send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. Mr. Obama presented Afghanistan as a mission all but fulfilled and described a world of threats that require a more targeted and varied American response. He also repeated a call for the United States to be more transparent about its counterterrorism operations — something on which it has made scant progress since last year. “When we cannot explain our efforts clearly and publicly, we face terrorist propaganda and international suspicion,” Mr. Obama said. “We erode legitimacy with our partners and our people; and we reduce accountability in our own government.” The president once again pledged to be more open about America’s secret wars, saying that drone strikes “like those we’ve carried out in Yemen and Somalia” need to be explained publicly to counter militant propaganda. He did not mention Pakistan, which for a decade has been the epicenter of America’s drone wars, but where the United States government still considers the strikes, carried out by the C.I.A., a covert action. But he reiterated a vow to transfer the drone strikes and other counterterrorism operations from the C.I.A. to the Pentagon, a pledge he made a year ago, but which has been unfulfilled because of turf fights and congressional resistance. Image A nearly deserted base in Iraq in December 2011. President Obama said troops will be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2016. Credit Pool photo by Mario Tama Mr. Obama has been deeply frustrated by the criticism of his foreign policy, which during his first term was generally perceived as his strong suit. He has lashed out at critics, whom he accuses of reflexively calling for military action as the remedy for every crisis. On a trip to Asia last month, Mr. Obama described his foreign policy credo with a baseball analogy: “You hit singles, you hit doubles; every once in a while we may be able to hit a home run.” But, he added, the overriding objective is to avoid an error on the scale of the Iraq war. In private conversations, the president has used a saltier variation of the phrase, “don’t do stupid stuff” — brushing aside as reckless those who say the United States should consider enforcing a no-fly zone in Syria or supplying arms to Ukrainian troops. At West Point, a 212-year-old institution on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River, Mr. Obama struck a loftier tone, quoting Dwight D. Eisenhower on the folly of war and John F. Kennedy on the need for peace based on “a gradual evolution in human institutions.” Mr. Obama said the Iran nuclear negotiations and a new climate-change accord would be among his top foreign policy priorities for his final two and a half years in office, noting tartly that a deal on climate change would be a stretch “if a whole lot of our political leaders deny that it is taking place.” To make his case for the United States as the ultimate guarantor of an international order, the president drew on the example of Russia and Ukraine. Far from conceding the episode was a setback, he said American leadership in putting together an international coalition and imposing sanctions had thrown President Vladimir V. Putin on the defensive. “This mobilization of world opinion and institutions served as a counterweight to Russian propaganda, Russian troops on the border and armed militias in ski masks,” Mr. Obama said. | Afghanistan War;Barack Obama;US Military;Terrorism;US Politics;US Foreign Policy;Commencement speech;College;West Point |
ny0203567 | [
"sports"
] | 2009/08/08 | Teaching Full-Time Job for Hambletonian Favorite’s Trainer | ALLENTOWN, N.J. — Greg Peck always thought he would do something special someday in harness racing, but he might have been the only one. Peck was stuck in the sport’s lowest leagues, training and driving at Tartan Downs in his native Nova Scotia, where purses rarely topped $2,000 a race. But Peck has traits that have served him well on and off the track, and have taken him a long way. Ambitious and tireless, he now trains the sport’s biggest star and also finds the time to run a company that trains corporate executives to deal with the news media. “Somehow, he juggles everything and he does it well,” said Bob Marks , one of the sport’s top breeders and a longtime acquaintance of Peck’s. “I’m not sure how he does it. He just does.” Peck, 45, has built a 20-horse stable that is based here at White Birch Farm. He has won a number of big races, but the Hambletonian at the Meadowlands on Saturday could be his crowning achievement. Peck is the trainer of Muscle Hill, the 3-5 morning-line favorite in the $1.5 million trotting classic, which may be the most coveted prize in the sport. Peck picked out Muscle Hill at the yearling sales, where he sold for $55,000, and has guided him through a stellar career. The champion 2-year-old trotting colt of 2008, Muscle Hill has lost just once in 13 career starts. “I knew from Day 1 that this horse was gifted,” Peck said. “It all goes back to the dream angle. I could only dream that I’d have a horse this good. I guess dreams do come true sometimes.” Harness racing is deeply imbedded in the culture of the Canadian Maritime provinces, but the racetracks there have minuscule purses. For that reason, most trainers and drivers at the Nova Scotia tracks have other jobs. Peck’s father and grandfather trained horses but also sold groceries on the side. It was not uncommon for them to deliver groceries in the winter in sleds pulled by a family-owned standardbred. “To do more than one thing with my life came naturally to me,” Peck said. “Everyone where I grew up loves horses, but they can’t rely on them to make a living. That’s why everyone did something else.” Had it not been for his brother-in-law, Barry McLoughlin, Peck might still be in Nova Scotia dealing with $1,500 claiming horses. McLoughlin owned a media-training firm and decided to take a chance on Peck, figuring someone like his brother-in-law, who was well-spoken and confident, could learn a new business quickly. McLoughlin guessed correctly. Peck took to his new enterprise and eventually formed his own firm. His client list has been an impressive one that includes the Republican National Committee, Pfizer, Exxon Mobil, Merck and DuPont. It may seem that training race horses and coaching corporate executives might require vastly different skills, but Peck said that was not the case. “It’s about reading body language,” he said. “Horses can’t talk to you, so you have to understand their body language. That’s the only way to make them better. It’s really not that different with an executive. I watch them and see what makes them nervous and uncomfortable and why they might have trouble getting their message across. I look at that and then my job is to figure out how I can make this person comfortable to do a media interview.” With his media-training company doing well, Peck relocated to Pennsylvania and focused primarily on his nonracing activities. But he never lost his passion for harness racing and always had at least a handful of horses to train. He also had made enough money to invest in horses far better than those he trained in Nova Scotia. Marks said some owners might not have taken Peck seriously as a trainer because he spent much of his time rubbing elbows with corporate executives. “I’m sure that didn’t help him,” Marks said. “Like with anything, there’s a certain amount of back-biting in harness racing, and Greg had to deal with people resenting his success in the media business.” But Peck eventually won people over, and more owners were willing to give him a chance. He turned Palone Ranger into a stakes winner who has topped the $1 million mark in earnings and has impressed owners with his careful and calculating handling of Muscle Hill. The colt has followed a set, light schedule from the beginning of his career, all geared toward getting him to win the Hambletonian. “I’ve had some of the top trotting guys tell me that this is the best trotter they have ever seen, bar none,” Peck said. Still, Muscle Hill must win the Hambletonian to be favorably compared to the greatest trotters. The race is that important and prestigious. That makes Peck nervous, but he has no reason not to be confident. The horse is clearly the fastest, most talented colt in the field of 10. “Do I have to pinch myself? Sometimes,” he said. “I could always see myself being in the Hambletonian, but never with a horse like this. It’s not lost on me. I am enjoying every moment.” | Horse Racing;Horses;Hambletonian (Harness Race);Peck Greg;Muscle Hill (Race Horse) |
ny0092612 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2015/08/07 | New York Times Co. Reports $16 Million Profit | The New York Times Company reported net income of more than $16 million for the second quarter on slightly lower revenue, as digital growth and cost declines offset a continued drop in print advertising across the industry. The company said on Thursday that it had added 33,000 net digital subscribers in the quarter, higher than in the same quarter in the previous two years. It also disclosed that last week, for the first time, it passed the one million mark for digital subscribers. That, combined with an increase in home delivery prices in January, more than offset a decline in print copies sold. Total circulation revenue increased about 1 percent to almost $212 million. The company reported adjusted earnings of 13 cents a share, surpassing analyst expectations of 11 cents. In a week when media companies were shaken by volatility in the industry, The Times’s results seemed to reflect a new reality for many publishers — that of seeking smaller victories and aiming to adapt nimbly to a shifting landscape. Shares in the company closed down by nearly 3 percent on Thursday. Digital advertising, a bright spot for the company the last several quarters, was up 14 percent, and accounted for about $48 million of revenue, or about a third of total advertising revenue. Mark Thompson, the company’s chief executive, said the growth was driven by mobile and video advertising, as well as native advertising, which the company calls paid posts. Print advertising revenue, the bedrock of most print publications until a precipitous decline in recent years, dropped nearly 13 percent, contributing to a drop of nearly 6 percent in overall advertising revenue. The falloff in print advertising, Mr. Thompson said, was primarily responsible for a decrease of 1.5 percent in revenue, to about $383 million, from about $389 million in the same quarter a year ago. A 5 percent reduction in operating costs outpaced that drop, and Mr. Thompson said managing expenses would “remain a top priority as we head into the second half of 2015, although our emphasis on digital investment and execution is also more intense than ever.” Other revenue, including that from the company’s crossword product and rental income, was up 4.5 percent. The company also highlighted new relationships with companies like Facebook, Apple and Starbucks, which Mr. Thompson said could “enable us to reach new audiences for our journalism, as well as provide incremental revenue.” In a call with investors on Thursday, the company’s executives outlined a series of strategies. International readers make up 13 percent of the digital subscriber total, Mr. Thompson said, a figure that has room to grow. New endeavors, such as the relationship with Facebook, fed into a broader initiative to increase The Times’s audience, and thus its advertising revenue and potential subscribers. New digital advertising strategies could be shaped by shifts in the industry at large, the executives said, and could even mean that the Times Company might compete with cable networks and others that have traditionally been a separate market for advertisers. | New York Times;Earnings Reports |
ny0023836 | [
"world",
"americas"
] | 2013/08/02 | A Culture Clings to Its Reflection in a Cleaned-Up Soap Opera | TIHOSUCO, Mexico — It might be the cleanest Mexican soap opera around. The passionate love scenes that are a staple of the genre were reduced, bowing to conservative local sensibilities, to a few pecks on the cheek and hand-holding as innocent as junior high schoolers on a first date. It was not the only accommodation made by producers of what is considered the first “telenovela,” as soap operas are known here, entirely in an indigenous language, Maya, and with a story line rooted in the community. For starters, María, the love interest, cannot bring herself to say “I am falling in love with you” when her beau-to-be, Jacinto, finally gets his act together. Because while phrases of desire like “I love you” are roughly translatable into Maya, it is trickier to express being “in love” in the language. “It’s more like ‘the heart of my heart is happy,’ ” said Hilario Chi Canul, a professor of Mayan language and culture. He also helped write the script and also plays the leading man in the telenovela, called “Baktun,” which makes its debut this month on Quintana Roo State public television. It has standard ingredients of the form: greed, betrayal, family squabbles, unrequited love and acting that would probably not get the attention of the Emmy academy. But “Baktun” is as much a cultural journey as one of the heart, using a contemporary story line that blends Mayan ceremonies and beliefs with the tale of a young man who emigrates to New York City to work, distances himself from family and community — even becoming rusty in his language — and eventually returns and learns the value of preserving the community and not forgetting his roots. Or his childhood sweetheart, who has taken an interest in his brother. Baktun (pronounced bak-TOON) refers to a megacycle of the Mayan Long Count calendar and was deliberately chosen as the title in light of the attention it received last December , when widespread misinterpretations fanned on the Internet led people to claim that the end of the world was nigh. In reality, one cycle ended and another began. In the telenovela’s case, the cycle is a metaphor for life’s ever-changing chapters. “We wanted to show you could still be proudly Mayan even in this modern world with mass media and digital communication,” said Bruno Cárcamo, the veteran film and television producer who made the show and previously oversaw a documentary on fading indigenous languages in Mexico. “Telenovelas are popular in the Mayan communities, too, but they are not presented in their language or their reality.” The series, in 21 episodes and also packaged as a movie that will be shown at film festivals, was shot in this remote, historic village in Quintana Roo State, 140 miles southwest of Cancún and famed for a church left damaged from a 19th-century Mayan uprising. Most members of the cast are residents of the town with little or no acting experience, smitten a bit with the star turn. On a recent evening, Mr. Cárcamo showed some episodes of the drama as well as the full movie in an open-air meeting hall before rapt audience members who stayed glued to their seats even when technical problems interrupted the showing. Image The screening was held near a Catholic church in Tihosuco that was damaged in a 19th-century Mayan uprising. Credit Ginnette Riquelme for The New York Times “We should never forget our origins,” said María Elena Tuz Kuvil, 40, who sat leaning forward for nearly the entire screening. “I could not believe it was in our language. I watch a lot of telenovelas, but none like this.” Many people said the cycle of loss and gain resonated with them, as dozens of young people have left to work in nearby beach resort hotels or in the United States. Fewer parents seem to be teaching their children Maya, though Mr. Cárcamo estimated that 80 percent of the village speaks it as a first language. During the filming, in fact, he often needed an interpreter to get his point across. “Parents often say, ‘Learn Maya for what? It’s better to speak English,’ ” said José Manuel Poot Cahun, 26, who plays the role of the scheming brother and grew up speaking both Maya and Spanish. “But many of my friends are wondering why they didn’t learn Maya as children.” Entertainment offerings in Maya are sparse. There are occasional documentaries and Hollywood movies dubbed in Maya. The 2006 Mel Gibson movie “Apocalypto,” set during the decline of the Mayan empire, was almost entirely in Maya, with Mr. Chi Canul serving as a linguist on the production. It was criticized for focusing on the civilization’s violent practices, and Mr. Chi Canul today calls it “exaggerated, not history but Hollywood.” A full-length telenovela, or any television drama for that matter, set in the Mayan world in Maya is unique, experts on Mexican soap operas said. “It’s very important that indigenous people are able to tell stories of their reality, not only in documentaries but in fictional formats,” said Adrien J. Charlois, a communications professor at the University of Guadalajara, who studies telenovela history. “This allows them to see themselves as habitants of the full media panorama, while making it possible to generate new ways of defining themselves.” Still, Mr. Cárcamo and Mr. Chi Canul had to win the support of community elders, who were skeptical of outsiders but eventually were convinced by the idea of a Mayan story told by Mayans. With Quintana Roo State television financing 60 percent of the $250,000 budget (Mr. Cárcamo put up the rest), the screenwriters carefully chose their principal villain, steering clear of making any connection to the booming tourist development that has troubled some communities and instead settling on a vague multinational industrialist bent on exploiting their land. But working in Maya and in a community where public displays of affection are frowned on presented stiff challenges as well; many staples taken for granted in telenovelas, like passionate love scenes, would offend the community. “We took all the kissing out,” said Mr. Cárcamo, who with a partner wrote the script in Spanish and then adapted it with Mr. Chi Canul into Maya. One translation stumped them, so they simply avoided it. “New York” is referred to as “the far, faraway town.” “What,” Mr. Chi Canul asked, explaining the difficulty, “is a York?” | Mexico;Soap opera;TV;Indigenous peoples;Language;Mayans |
ny0072291 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2015/03/06 | Prosecutor Denies Creating a ‘Media Firestorm’ Over Sheldon Silver’s Arrest | The office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, asked a federal judge on Thursday to deny a motion by Assemblyman Sheldon Silver to dismiss his indictment on grounds that Mr. Bharara orchestrated a “media firestorm” around the arrest of Mr. Silver. Lawyers for Mr. Silver, who faces a trial in Manhattan on charges of mail and wire fraud and extortion under the color of official right, had accused Mr. Bharara of making “improper extrajudicial comments” at a Jan. 22 news conference announcing the charges, in a speech the next day at New York Law School and in a later interview with MSNBC. They said the effect of Mr. Bharara’s actions had been “to convict in the media before even calling his first witness.” But in its court filing, the prosecutor’s office said that Mr. Bharara emphasized repeatedly that the charges were only allegations and “explicitly stated that the defendant was presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.” During the course of the news conference, which lasted about 36 minutes, the government wrote, Mr. Bharara used words like alleged and allegations “no fewer than 25 times.” Mr. Silver, a Democrat from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, is accused of abusing his office to obtain nearly $4 million in illicit payments through two law firms, while saying publicly that the income he earned came from bona fide legal work. Prosecutors say that Mr. Silver provided state grants to a doctor who directed lucrative asbestos cases to a personal injury law firm, Weitz & Luxenberg, where Mr. Silver worked. Mr. Silver is also accused of steering real estate developers to another law firm, Goldberg & Iryami, which is said to have paid him kickbacks. Mr. Silver, 71, who has pleaded not guilty, was forced to step down as the Assembly speaker after his arrest, though he continues to serve as a member. One of his lawyers, Joel Cohen, said on Thursday that “the defense will be replying firmly in its own brief.” In its filing, Mr. Bharara’s office asked the judge, Valerie E. Caproni of Federal District Court, to deny the defense request for dismissal of the charges or at least to poll the grand jurors who indicted Mr. Silver and to order disclosure of the normally secret grand jury minutes, to determine whether the jurors had been influenced by the news coverage. The prosecutor’s office noted that at least 18 current or former New York State legislators had been convicted of serious crimes by federal, state and local prosecutors since 2007, and that it was “squarely within the role and duty of the U.S. attorney, as the chief federal law enforcement officer in this district, to speak out about the causes of public corruption and potential means of combating it.” “The U.S. attorney’s statements violated no ethical rule, did not unfairly prejudice the defendant, and were consistent with the stated mission” of the Justice Department, the prosecutors wrote. | Sheldon Silver;Preet Bharara;Bribery and Kickbacks;New York |
ny0167217 | [
"sports",
"sportsspecial1"
] | 2006/01/28 | Italian Authorities Outline Security Measures Planned for Turin Games | ROME, Jan. 27 - Italian law enforcement officials said Friday that they would pay special attention to protecting American and Israeli athletes at the Winter Olympics in Turin. They also said they had not excluded the possibility of reintroducing border controls with neighboring countries before the Games begin in two weeks. Italian authorities presented their security plan, which will rely on 9,200 officers from the various law enforcement agencies in Italy. Law enforcement authorities and officials within Italy's Interior Ministry estimated that the cost for security would exceed $110 million and stressed the need to coordinate with other countries. In addition to a no-fly zone over the entire Olympic area, which NATO planes will patrol, sharpshooters will oversee the Olympic Village, which houses the athletes, and 300 members of the police will patrol the slopes around the mountain venues on skis and snowmobiles. Italian authorities did not rule out a potential suspension of the Schengen Agreement, which allows citizens of European Union countries to cross the borders of member states without showing a passport unless they are boarding an aircraft. Security agents chaperoning teams will not be allowed to carry their own weapons, law enforcement officials said. However, security agents protecting visiting dignitaries will be allowed to carry arms, the officials said. Roberto Masucci, a spokesman for the National Information Center on the Olympic Games, said that no specific threat against the Olympics had been received. But he said the Olympics, which precede Italy's national elections by two months, presented a potentially tempting moment for an attack. Campaigns for the April elections are scheduled to begin in February. REINSTATEMENT BID -- Tim Nardiello, the former skeleton coach, asked the United States Olympic Committee on Friday to reconsider its decision to deny him a credential for next month's Turin Games, saying his team wants him to keep fighting. In a letter sent by fax to the committee, Nardiello asked to see all documents related to its four-week investigation into his conduct. Earlier this week, Nardiello indicated that he was not planning to appeal the ruling that barred him from coaching the team in Turin. The U.S.O.C., which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, is not allowing Nardiello to coach the Olympic skeleton team, citing ethical violations and other issues. The United States Bobsled and Skeleton Federation had reinstated Nardiello after an arbitrator decided no credible evidence existed to support sexual harassment claims filed against him. (AP) SNOWBOARD CHALLENGE DENIED -- After a daylong hearing on Thursday, arbitrators in Denver denied a challenge by snowboarder Chris Klug over selection criteria for the United States Olympic team. Klug, who won an Olympic bronze medal in 2002 after having a liver transplant 19 months earlier, challenged the United States Ski and Snowboard Association's decision to bypass him for Tyler Jewell as the lone male parallel giant slalom racer on the team. The association selection criteria call for each racer's top two finishes in the current World Cup season to be averaged, with the spot going to the person having the best average. Klug, 33, had a higher average finish than Jewell, but World Cup events have a weighted points system and Klug averaged fewer points than Jewell in his two best races. (AP) MILLER GOES ON OFFENSIVE -- The skier Bode Miller, in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, suggested that Barry Bonds and Lance Armstrong took performance-enhancing drugs. "Right now, if you want to cheat, you can: Barry Bonds and those guys are just knowingly cheating, but there's all sorts of loopholes," Miller said in the interview, which is in the current issue of the magazine. "If you say it has to be 'knowingly,' you do what Lance and all those guys do, where every morning their doctor gives them a box of pills and they don't ask anything, they just take the pills." Bonds's agent, Jeff Borris, declined to respond to Miller's comments. Telephone and e-mail messages left with Armstrong representatives were not immediately returned on Thursday. A spokesman for the United States Ski and Snowboard Association said that the organization had no response. Bonds reportedly told a federal grand jury in 2003 that he used substances given to him by a trainer who was later indicted in a steroid-distribution ring, but that he did not know they were steroids. Armstrong has never tested positive. (AP) | ITALY;NARDIELLO TIM;MILLER BODE;OLYMPIC GAMES (2006);WINTER GAMES (OLYMPICS);OLYMPIC GAMES;SECURITY AND WARNING SYSTEMS |
ny0175985 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2007/07/02 | Obama Campaign Raises $32.5 Million | WASHINGTON, July 1 — Senator Barack Obama raised at least $32.5 million from April through June, he announced Sunday on his campaign Web site, attracting more than 258,000 contributors since entering the Democratic presidential race nearly six months ago. As candidates tabulated how much money they raised in the year’s second quarter, Mr. Obama, of Illinois, appeared to be leading contenders from either party, raising at least $31 million for the primary campaign alone. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, raised about $21 million for the primary, a spokesman confirmed Sunday, and about $27 million over all. “Together, we have built the largest grass-roots campaign in history for this stage of a presidential race,” Mr. Obama said, adding that 154,000 new donors had signed on in the last three months. “That’s the kind of movement that can change the special-interest-driven politics in Washington and transform our country. And it’s just the beginning.” Mr. Obama waited barely 12 hours after the fund-raising period closed to trumpet his success, a quarterly record for a Democratic candidate, hoping to depict widespread support for his campaign and to rebut suggestions that his candidacy is falling behind Mrs. Clinton’s. If her estimate last week that she had raised “in the range of $27 million” proves true, Mr. Obama will have outpaced Mrs. Clinton for a second consecutive quarter in money that can be spent in primaries. John Edwards’s campaign said Sunday that it had raised more than $9 million, while Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico reported raising $7 million and Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut reported raising $3.25 million. Republican candidates did not provide fund-raising figures on Sunday, but are expected to do so well in advance of the July 15 deadline for filing reports with the Federal Election Commission. While candidates are allowed to simultaneously raise money for the primary and the general election, Mr. Obama has focused almost exclusively on primary money. The Clinton campaign has solicited both, and a spokesman, Phil Singer, estimated Sunday evening that about $6 million of its second-quarter money was intended for the general election, meaning it could be spent only if Mrs. Clinton wins the nomination. So far this year, the Obama campaign has raised $55.7 million to be spent on winning the party’s nominating fight. In the last three months, an average of 1,500 donors a day contributed to the Obama campaign, many through the Web site or in response to more unusual appeals, including a contest to have dinner with the candidate. David Plouffe, the Obama campaign manager, said in an interview Sunday that more than 90 percent of the contributors to Mr. Obama could contribute again. In addition to courting major Democratic donors, the campaign has had fund-raisers across the country for donors making small contributions, focusing particularly on early voting states, and has built a database of supporters and volunteers from events that cost as little as $5 per person. “This gives us a deep financial base that will continue to allow us to perform strongly throughout the course of the campaign,” Mr. Plouffe said. “It also gives us a huge foundation of volunteers and organizational support.” After spending significant money on the opening contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, the campaign will rely on a grass-roots operation in the states where primaries or caucuses are scheduled Feb. 5, Mr. Plouffe said. While the campaign focused intently on raising money in those states, he said, almost no effort was directed toward raising money beyond the primary campaign. “The general election money,” Mr. Plouffe said, “is funny money.” For weeks, the Clinton campaign had been seeking to lower expectations for the second fund-raising period. A memorandum sent last week by Howard Wolfson, a top strategist for the senator, estimated that she would raise “in the range of $27 million.” The campaign on Sunday had no comment on Mr. Obama’s fund-raising numbers. While a spokesman for the Clinton campaign said a more precise figure was not available yet on Sunday, advisers to Mr. Edwards held a conference call to discuss their second-quarter contributions of $9 million. After raising $14 million in the first quarter, campaign officials said they were on track to reach their goal of $40 million this year and said they were not troubled by falling behind two leading rivals. Jonathan Prince, deputy manager of the Edwards campaign, said that slightly more than half of the $9 million — $4.7 million — came from small donations. In the first quarter, more than 80 percent of donations to the Edwards campaign were $100 and under; this quarter, more than 80 percent were $50 and under. This reflects the campaign’s effort to expand its grass-roots base and to rely more heavily on Internet donations. Mr. Prince said the number of contributors had increased by 70,000 in this quarter to reach a total of 100,000 donors. | Presidential Election of 2008;Obama Barack;Elections;Finances;United States Politics and Government;Presidents and Presidency (US);Primaries;Presidential Elections (US);Democratic Party |
ny0187082 | [
"us"
] | 2009/04/18 | Oklahoma Couple Finds Answers in a Book | CLINTON, Okla. On so many Sundays since they married two years ago, the second time around for each, George and Darla Barton went to church the same way. They carried their Bibles and their burdens, and their testimonies never left their throats. Mrs. Barton had lived all her 42 years here, a crossroads of 8,800 people, and belonged to First Christian Church from the cradle. She knew that in Clinton, a girl grew up and got married and had children. After more than a decade in her first marriage, she knew all too well she had none. Customers at the bank where she worked would ask, “How many kids you have?” When she answered, “I haven’t been blessed that way,” they would change the subject. A boy in the Sunday-school class she taught, whose parents were divorcing, once blurted to her, “God doesn’t answer prayers.” She reflexively replied, “He didn’t answer mine.” Mr. Barton, 51, had found his way to her and Clinton by way of the online matchmaker eHarmony.com . He was a city guy who had lived in St. Louis and Tulsa, gone to a conservatory for alto saxophone and never stopped second-guessing himself for having dropped out. Instead of playing Paul Creston concertos as a profession, he was a hospital maintenance worker. What Mr. Barton regretted most was the way he had neglected his ties to his three grown children in Tulsa. Since remarrying and moving to Clinton, he had occasionally called them, left messages and, when they were not answered, stopped trying. As the winter of 2009 wore on, he had not seen the children since Christmas 2007. Then, six weeks ago, the pastor at First Christian Church, Doyle Kinney, gave out copies of a book called “ One Month To Live ” (WaterBrook Press, 2008) and solicited volunteers from the congregation to spend an hour every Wednesday night discussing it. George and Darla Barton signed up and started to read. A dozen pages in, Mr. Barton came to a section about the “Someday syndrome,” the way people put off the really important things. “This is your life, right here, right now,” went one passage. “Wherever you’re reading this page, feeling what you’re feeling, facing what you’re experiencing, Someday is right now. ” Mr. Barton waited a week, feeling all unsettled, fearing rejection, and then he called the older of his two daughters. Of that call, more can be said later. At this point, it is worth knowing the chain of events that brought the Bartons to this particular moment. It began in the autumn of 2007 in an evangelical megachurch near Houston, the Fellowship of the Woodlands . The senior pastor there, Kerry Shook , ran into a friend and longtime congregant, Jimmy Dowden. Mr. Dowden said that his prostate cancer had spread and that doctors had given him about six months to live. “We’ll pray for you,” Mr. Shook recently recalled having told Mr. Dowden. “You don’t need to pray for me,” Mr. Dowden replied. “I need to pray for you and the congregation. I’m not distracted by life anymore. I know exactly what I need to do.” That exchange inspired Mr. Shook and his wife and colleague, Chris Shook, to write their book, “One Month To Live,” by early 2008. It combined life lessons, practical advice, gentle theology, quotes from Mother Teresa, Helen Keller and a panoply of religious leaders — and an audacious, even morbid confrontation with mortality. The Shooks expected it to be useful mostly for the fellowship’s 16,000 members. “This is all about living,” Mr. Shook, 46, said in a telephone interview. “In 20 years of ministry, Chris and I have walked many people through the last months of their lives, and we’ve never had anyone say, ‘If only I’d had more possessions, if only I’d gone sky diving.’ It always comes down to relationships. That’s the priority all the time.” By the middle of 2008, the book had been picked up by two of the most important evangelical churches in the country, the Rev. Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Southern California and the Rev. Bill Hybels’s Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago. From those hubs, word spread to scores of other congregations, and Mr. and Mrs. Shook developed printed and Web-based materials , including items as diverse as discussion-group worksheets and advice on a healthy diet. By now, 1,800 churches in 48 states have done or have firmly planned workshops and worship services oriented around the “One Month To Live” challenge — a genuine grass-roots phenomenon, not a marketing coup. One of the ministers who picked up “One Month To Live” was Doyle Kinney. It happened to be the book he was reading on the day in May 2008 when he learned he had prostate cancer, and the day soon afterward when one of his daughters discovered she had breast cancer. “I’ve always been naturally a religious person,” Mr. Kinney, 62, said in an interview, “but this book really got me when it talked about having a no-regrets life. We all have a wish basket — someday I’ll do this, someday I’ll go there — but now you begin to say you can’t wait for those things.” Which brings us back to George Barton and that phone call to his older daughter. She called back, and three weeks ago, he and Darla spent a day with her family in Tulsa, ordering in pizza, playing in the yard with two young grandchildren. The next day, the Bartons visited George’s son, and they talked for three hours in a restaurant and another hour in the parking lot. “So when are y’all coming back?” the son asked as they finally parted. A few days later, the daughter’s husband called Darla to say he wanted to add her name to an online family tree. “Something shifted,” Mrs. Barton said the other day, thinking back. “I have my kids now. These are my husband’s kids, my husband’s grandkids. I truly feel like I have a family. And if the book did that ...” She caught herself. “I mean, God did that.” | Christians and Christianity;Religion and Belief;Death and Dying |
ny0214254 | [
"sports",
"hockey"
] | 2010/03/07 | N.H.L. Players May Defect to Russia for 2014 Games | Enjoy hockey’s Olympic moment while it’s still aglow because its luster is beginning to fade. Instead of looking forward to the splendor of the world’s best players again representing their nations in 2014 in Sochi, Russia, the N.H.L. is leaning toward secession from the Winter Games. Sochi is too far away for its fans to care, the N.H.L. argues. With an eight-hour time difference between Sochi and the Eastern time zone, some games there would be played when most American viewers are working or asleep. Television money is involved. When the rights to the Sochi Olympics and the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro are up for bid late this year, the two expected bidders, NBC and ESPN, will need to know whether the N.H.L., which supplied 140 players for the Vancouver Games, will play again. If not, the bids will probably be lower. • Another factor for NBC is that its N.H.L. contract for Sunday afternoon and postseason games ends after the 2011 playoffs. If N.H.L. players are not promised for Sochi, a new NBC deal could be jeopardized. If the N.H.L. does not pause its season for the Olympics, another complication is that many of its European players may insist on joining their national teams anyway. Especially the Russians, who were co-favorites with Canada but failed miserably in Vancouver. Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, the former Russian president who successfully campaigned for Sochi before the International Olympic Committee, asked last week for what he described as “serious critical analysis” of Russia’s weak performance in earning only three gold medals in Vancouver. Its acclaimed hockey team didn’t even qualify for the semifinals. Putin demanded the creation of “the necessary conditions for the preparations and successful performance of our team” in Sochi. And who’s to say that Putin, knowing what Canada’s hockey gold medal in Vancouver meant to that nation, would not demand that his country’s best players, like Alex Ovechkin and Ilya Kovalchuk, interrupt their obligations to the N.H.L. to compete for Mother Russia in Sochi. Would those Russian players defy Putin’s orders? If they did depart, how would the N.H.L. respond? If they didn’t, how would Putin respond? If the Russians jumped their N.H.L. contracts for two weeks to join their national team in Sochi, why wouldn’t at least some N.H.L. players from Canada (hoping to defend their gold medal), the United States, and especially other European nations — Sweden, the Czech Republic, Finland and Slovakia — want to go to Sochi, too? If that happened, N.H.L. teams would need to fill out their rosters with several minor leaguers until the Olympic rebels returned. N.H.L. players stocked the Canadian and United States teams in Vancouver. But if those teams were to send only college or amateur players to Sochi, the Russians would surely accuse them of conceding the Olympic tournament. The N.H.L. teams could fine players who leave for more than two weeks to play in Sochi, perhaps suspend them. But that would be like cutting off their hockey sticks to spite their hockey gloves. Questions about the Sochi site add to the situation. The Winter Games there would be an “economic and ecological catastrophe,” Boris Y. Nemtsov, a former Russian deputy prime minister, told Foreign Policy magazine last week. “He,” Nemtsov said, referring to Putin, “has found one of the only places in Russia where there is no snow in the winter. He has decided to build these ice rinks in the warmest part of the warmest region. Sochi is subtropical. There is no tradition of snow or hockey there. In Sochi, we prefer football, volleyball and swimming. Other parts of Russia need ice palaces. We don’t. Sometimes, it seems like God doesn’t even want the Olympics in Sochi.” Nemtsov said the “bigger concerns are organized crime, which is very active there, and government corruption.” He added that “roughly 5,000 people were forced out” of their homes to create room for Olympic facilities but that “thanks to the corruption and incompetence of authorities,” those people have not been “adequately compensated for their property or been given equivalent housing elsewhere, as they were promised.” • So instead of basking in the Olympic glow created by virtual competitive purity — no fights, no enforcers, no timeouts for commercials, few penalties — the future of hockey at its best is now at the mercy of the N.H.L.’s concern about a Russian time zone during an interruption to its season, the price of television rights to both the Olympics and the N.H.L., and the possibility of European players, notably Russians, defecting for two weeks. Just when the N.H.L. struck gold and silver, it seems to prefer ice. Thin ice. | Olympic Games (2014);National Hockey League;Sochi (Russia);Olympic Games (2010) |
ny0037636 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2014/03/15 | Official Targets ‘Russophobia’ | MOSCOW — With the Russian authorities on edge amid fears of conflict in Ukraine, a member of Parliament on Friday submitted a draft bill that would penalize the spreading of “Russophobic propaganda” in Russia, imposing maximum penalties of 15 days in prison or a fine of 50,000 rubles, or about $1,370. An opposition lawmaker, Ilya Ponomaryov, submitted the bill after a week of increasing pressure on Internet publications, including a staff reshuffle at a respected independent news site and a government order to block three websites and a blog that serve as platforms for prominent opposition activists. Mr. Ponomaryov, who was a leader of antigovernment protests in 2011 and 2012, did not respond to calls for comment. According to text available on the website of the Duma , the lower house of Parliament, the bill defines Russophobic propaganda as “inaccurate negative information, intended for the formation of negative attitudes toward Russia and Russians, and also the Russian language, culture, and statehood.” It said the ban would not apply to “scientific, literary, artistic or any other creative work, if it is not intended to disseminate Russophobia, but to study and objectively examine it.” | Legislature;Legislation;Russia;Ukraine;Fines |
ny0045796 | [
"business"
] | 2014/02/24 | Tech Industry to Gather; Commerce Dept. to Release New Estimate | TECH INDUSTRY WILL GATHER AT MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS The mobile industry has become one of the most lucrative and competitive markets in the world. Not only are there companies that make cellphones; there are also phone carriers, network equipment makers, chip makers, software developers and Internet services. Crucial players from many corners of the industry, including Samsung Electronics, Lenovo, Facebook and Ericsson, will be in Barcelona this week for the Mobile World Congress, an annual trade show. BRIAN X. CHEN NEW OFFICIAL ESTIMATE FOR 4TH-QUARTER GROWTH On Friday, the Commerce Department will provide its second estimate of economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2013. The initial figure of 3.2 percent released on Jan. 30 is likely to be revised downward in light of new data showing a more mixed holiday shopping season than first thought and smaller gains from trade and inventory adjustments. Morgan Stanley, for example, expects the estimate for growth in October, November and December to be lowered to 2.5 percent, while Barclays expects it to be 2.3 percent. The outlook has been increasingly gloomy in recent weeks, and a more substantial downward adjustment would only add to that economic pessimism. The government’s third and final estimate of growth in the fourth quarter will be released March 27. NELSON D. SCHWARTZ DATA COULD PROVIDE CLUES OF FUTURE EURO POLICY The European labor market and price pressures in the euro zone are in the spotlight this week, with Eurostat announcing the January unemployment report and February inflation data on Friday. While economists say the European economy is in a gradual recovery, unemployment has been stuck for months around 12 percent, and the euro zone is flirting with deflation. With the European Central Bank’s main interest-rate target already close to zero, the data will be scrutinized for clues about the central bank’s monetary-policy decision at its next meeting March 6. DAVID JOLLY | Mobile World Congress;Commerce Department;Economy;Eurostat;Europe |
ny0264881 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2011/12/14 | Iran Rejects U.S. Request for Return of Drone | Iran has rejected a request by President Obama to return an American surveillance drone that the Iranians say they captured on Dec. 4., state media in Tehran reported Tuesday. “We have asked for it back — we’ll see how the Iranians respond,” Mr. Obama said of the drone on Monday in a short session with reporters at the White House. Mr. Obama appeared with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq , with whom he discussed issues including American concerns about Iran’s influence in the region. The semi-official Fars News Agency quoted Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi as telling reporters on Tuesday that the drone “will remain in the country’s possession as part of its assets.” “The U.S. spy drone is among the assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” General Vahidi was quoted as saying. “Our country will decide what to do about it.” Press TV, a state-financed Iranian satellite broadcaster, said the drone was “brought down with minimal damage by the Iranian Army’s electronic warfare unit on December 4 when flying over the northeastern Iran city of Kashmar,” which it said lies about 140 miles from the border with Afghanistan. The president’s request was his first public comment about the drone, a remote-controlled spying aircraft, in a case that has raised American tensions with Iran. Mr. Obama was answering this question: “And speaking of Iran, are you concerned that it will be able to weaken America’s national security by discovering intelligence from the fallen drone that it captured?” Mr. Obama did not elaborate on the episode or on Iranian assertions that its forces had captured the drone through a digital attack on the aircraft’s avionics, which they say caused it to land safely inside northern Iran. American officials have attributed the loss of the drone to a technical malfunction. Just how the drone, which was managed by C.I.A. controllers in neighboring Afghanistan , ended up on the ground in Iran, apparently nearly intact, remains unclear. Last Thursday, the Iranian authorities staged an elaborate televised video presentation of what they said was the captured drone, an RQ-170 Sentinel. The RQ-170, a batwing aircraft with radar-evading technology, is capable of lingering for hours at 50,000 feet and monitoring developments on the ground. American officials have said the aircraft was part of an intensified effort to monitor suspect nuclear sites in Iran. On Monday, Iranian military officials were quoted in the state-run press saying they were extracting intelligence data from the drone and would reverse-engineer it to learn how it works. The semiofficial Fars News Agency said Iran’s armed forces had captured a prize that “can blunt the U.S. technological edge over its adversaries.” Iran lodged formal complaints last week about what they called the drone incursion, protesting to both the United Nations Security Council and Switzerland’s ambassador to Tehran, who is responsible for American interests in Iran. Iran also complained to Afghanistan for allowing the Americans to use it as a surveillance base, the Afghanistan Foreign Ministry said Sunday. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta described efforts to seek the return of the drone from Iran as “an appropriate request.” But he cast doubt on chances that Iran would agree. | Iran;United States Defense and Military Forces |
ny0241471 | [
"science"
] | 2011/03/05 | Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software | When five television studios became entangled in a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit against CBS , the cost was immense. As part of the obscure task of “discovery” — providing documents relevant to a lawsuit — the studios examined six million documents at a cost of more than $2.2 million, much of it to pay for a platoon of lawyers and paralegals who worked for months at high hourly rates. But that was in 1978. Now, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, “e-discovery” software can analyze documents in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost. In January, for example, Blackstone Discovery of Palo Alto, Calif., helped analyze 1.5 million documents for less than $100,000. Some programs go beyond just finding documents with relevant terms at computer speeds. They can extract relevant concepts — like documents relevant to social protest in the Middle East — even in the absence of specific terms, and deduce patterns of behavior that would have eluded lawyers examining millions of documents. “From a legal staffing viewpoint, it means that a lot of people who used to be allocated to conduct document review are no longer able to be billed out,” said Bill Herr, who as a lawyer at a major chemical company used to muster auditoriums of lawyers to read documents for weeks on end. “People get bored, people get headaches. Computers don’t.” Computers are getting better at mimicking human reasoning — as viewers of “Jeopardy!” found out when they saw Watson beat its human opponents — and they are claiming work once done by people in high-paying professions. The number of computer chip designers, for example, has largely stagnated because powerful software programs replace the work once done by legions of logic designers and draftsmen. Software is also making its way into tasks that were the exclusive province of human decision makers, like loan and mortgage officers and tax accountants. These new forms of automation have renewed the debate over the economic consequences of technological progress. David H. Autor, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , says the United States economy is being “hollowed out.” New jobs, he says, are coming at the bottom of the economic pyramid, jobs in the middle are being lost to automation and outsourcing, and now job growth at the top is slowing because of automation. “There is no reason to think that technology creates unemployment,” Professor Autor said. “Over the long run we find things for people to do. The harder question is, does changing technology always lead to better jobs? The answer is no.” Automation of higher-level jobs is accelerating because of progress in computer science and linguistics. Only recently have researchers been able to test and refine algorithms on vast data samples, including a huge trove of e-mail from the Enron Corporation . “The economic impact will be huge,” said Tom Mitchell, chairman of the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh . “We’re at the beginning of a 10-year period where we’re going to transition from computers that can’t understand language to a point where computers can understand quite a bit about language.” Nowhere are these advances clearer than in the legal world. E-discovery technologies generally fall into two broad categories that can be described as “linguistic” and “sociological.” The most basic linguistic approach uses specific search words to find and sort relevant documents. More advanced programs filter documents through a large web of word and phrase definitions. A user who types “dog” will also find documents that mention “man’s best friend” and even the notion of a “walk.” The sociological approach adds an inferential layer of analysis, mimicking the deductive powers of a human Sherlock Holmes. Engineers and linguists at Cataphora , an information-sifting company based in Silicon Valley, have their software mine documents for the activities and interactions of people — who did what when, and who talks to whom. The software seeks to visualize chains of events. It identifies discussions that might have taken place across e-mail, instant messages and telephone calls. Then the computer pounces, so to speak, capturing “digital anomalies” that white-collar criminals often create in trying to hide their activities. For example, it finds “call me” moments — those incidents when an employee decides to hide a particular action by having a private conversation. This usually involves switching media, perhaps from an e-mail conversation to instant messaging, telephone or even a face-to-face encounter. “It doesn’t use keywords at all,” said Elizabeth Charnock, Cataphora’s founder. “But it’s a means of showing who leaked information, who’s influential in the organization or when a sensitive document like an S.E.C. filing is being edited an unusual number of times, or an unusual number of ways, by an unusual type or number of people.” The Cataphora software can also recognize the sentiment in an e-mail message — whether a person is positive or negative, or what the company calls “loud talking” — unusual emphasis that might give hints that a document is about a stressful situation. The software can also detect subtle changes in the style of an e-mail communication. A shift in an author’s e-mail style, from breezy to unusually formal, can raise a red flag about illegal activity. “You tend to split a lot fewer infinitives when you think the F.B.I. might be reading your mail,” said Steve Roberts, Cataphora’s chief technology officer. Another e-discovery company in Silicon Valley, Clearwell, has developed software that analyzes documents to find concepts rather than specific keywords, shortening the time required to locate relevant material in litigation. Last year, Clearwell software was used by the law firm DLA Piper to search through a half-million documents under a court-imposed deadline of one week. Clearwell’s software analyzed and sorted 570,000 documents (each document can be many pages) in two days. The law firm used just one more day to identify 3,070 documents that were relevant to the court-ordered discovery motion. Clearwell’s software uses language analysis and a visual way of representing general concepts found in documents to make it possible for a single lawyer to do work that might have once required hundreds. “The catch here is information overload,” said Aaref A. Hilaly, Clearwell’s chief executive. “How do you zoom in to just the specific set of documents or facts that are relevant to the specific question? It’s not about search; it’s about sifting, and that’s what e-discovery software enables.” For Neil Fraser, a lawyer at Milberg, a law firm based in New York, the Cataphora software provides a way to better understand the internal workings of corporations he sues, particularly when the real decision makers may be hidden from view. He says the software allows him to find the ex-Pfc. Wintergreens in an organization — a reference to a lowly character in the novel “ Catch-22 ” who wielded great power because he distributed mail to generals and was able to withhold it or dispatch it as he saw fit. Such tools owe a debt to an unlikely, though appropriate, source: the electronic mail database known as the Enron Corpus . In October 2003, Andrew McCallum, a computer scientist at the University of Massachusetts , Amherst , read that the federal government had a collection of more than five million messages from the prosecution of Enron. He bought a copy of the database for $10,000 and made it freely available to academic and corporate researchers. Since then, it has become the foundation of a wealth of new science — and its value has endured, since privacy constraints usually keep large collections of e-mail out of reach. “It’s made a massive difference in the research community,” Dr. McCallum said. The Enron Corpus has led to a better understanding of how language is used and how social networks function, and it has improved efforts to uncover social groups based on e-mail communication. Now artificial intelligence software has taken a seat at the negotiating table. Two months ago, Autonomy , an e-discovery company based in Britain , worked with defense lawyers in a lawsuit brought against a large oil and gas company. The plaintiffs showed up during a pretrial negotiation with a list of words intended to be used to help select documents for use in the lawsuit. “The plaintiffs asked for 500 keywords to search on,” said Mike Sullivan, chief executive of Autonomy Protect, the company’s e-discovery division. In response, he said, the defense lawyers used those words to analyze their own documents during the negotiations, and those results helped them bargain more effectively, Mr. Sullivan said. Some specialists acknowledge that the technology has limits. “The documents that the process kicks out still have to be read by someone,” said Herbert L. Roitblat of OrcaTec, a consulting firm in Altanta. Quantifying the employment impact of these new technologies is difficult. Mike Lynch, the founder of Autonomy, is convinced that “legal is a sector that will likely employ fewer, not more, people in the U.S. in the future.” He estimated that the shift from manual document discovery to e-discovery would lead to a manpower reduction in which one lawyer would suffice for work that once required 500 and that the newest generation of software, which can detect duplicates and find clusters of important documents on a particular topic, could cut the head count by another 50 percent. The computers seem to be good at their new jobs. Mr. Herr, the former chemical company lawyer, used e-discovery software to reanalyze work his company’s lawyers did in the 1980s and ’90s. His human colleagues had been only 60 percent accurate, he found. “Think about how much money had been spent to be slightly better than a coin toss,” he said. | Lawyers;Computers and the Internet;Artificial intelligence;Autonomy |
ny0036636 | [
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] | 2014/03/21 | Only Seeding Reminds Virginia of Sampson Days | GREENSBORO, N.C. — If Ralph Sampson raised Virginia’s national profile and gave the men’s basketball program its identity in the 1980s, he remains the towering measure of every team that has come through Charlottesville since. Yet in all the years after the Sampson era, which ended in 1983, few Virginia teams have come close to matching that success. Until now. The Cavaliers, coming off their first Atlantic Coast Conference tournament title since 1976, enter the N.C.A.A. tournament as the No. 1 seed in the East Region. Virginia will face No. 16 Coastal Carolina on Friday in Raleigh, N.C. The last time Virginia was a No. 1 seed? It was 1983, when Sampson was a senior and the Cavaliers were among a handful of elite teams in the country. Of course, Tony Bennett knew all about Sampson’s legacy when he took over the Virginia basketball program in 2009. Here is what he did not know: The Cavaliers had little history worth noting beyond those four years. In a recent interview, Bennett said he was surprised by the program’s number of A.C.C. finishes above .500, conference championships and even N.C.A.A. appearances, expecting them to be higher. “You saw there were good stretches,” he said, “but there wasn’t that much consistency, and that was kind of a motivation or the challenge that was in front of me.” How to get there? The Bennett way. And that is where any comparison to the Sampson era ends. These Cavaliers do not have a 7-foot-4 pillar in the middle. They do not have a national player of the year candidate. They did not have a single player on the news media’s A.C.C. all-conference first team, although guard Malcolm Brogdon was on the coaches’ first team. They are not a team of stars. Instead, Virginia has won primarily by playing an excruciatingly deliberate, grinding style that has made the Cavaliers the No. 1 scoring defense in the country this season; they hold opponents to 55.3 points a game Just ask Duke. “I think they’re a really good defensive team,” Duke’s Rodney Hood said after shooting 4 of 12 here Sunday in the A.C.C. tournament championship game, which Virginia won, 72-63 . “But at the same time, I think we got a lot of looks,” adding that some were “going to haunt me tonight.” Virginia haunts a lot of players with a style that is not always pretty to behold. But Bennett, the son of Dick Bennett, who succeeded as a coach at every level in Wisconsin, has sold that defensive mentality to his players and rebuilt a program that entered this season having lost 18 of its last 22 A.C.C. tournament games. Until last week, the Cavaliers had not even made it to the semifinals since 1995. “What he’s done is, he’s built a program,” Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski said of Bennett. “It’s not just a Virginia team. It’s a Virginia program.” It has been a slow, steady progression since Bennett arrived. His 2009-10 team was 15-16. The Cavaliers improved to 16-15 the next year, then were 22-10 with an N.C.A.A. tournament bid in 2012 and 23-12 in 2012-13. They are 28-6 so far this season. If Virginia advances to the Round of 16, it will record the second 30-win season in team history. The first was in 1981-82, Sampson’s junior year, when Virginia was 30-4. Looking back, no one predicted this year’s Cavaliers would rank among the country’s best. They were picked to finish a respectable fourth in the A.C.C. and were unranked for much of the season. Then came a disastrous game at Tennessee on Dec. 30, an 87-52 loss. “It was huge,” Brogdon said of the loss, which dropped Virginia to 10-4. “It was a wake-up call for us. It showed us that we had to play together if we’re going to move forward and have success this season. It showed us we all have to play our roles and buy into the program. So that’s what we did from that point forward.” That program included a new role for Joe Harris, the closest Virginia had to a star player last season. Harris averaged a team-best 16.3 points in 2012-13 as an all-A.C.C. first-team selection by coaches and the news media. He is averaging 11.7 points this season and was a second-team choice among coaches, third among the news media. “I wasn’t asked necessarily to do anything differently,” Harris said, “but I knew that if we were going to have a much more balanced scoring attack this season, we needed somebody to take over more of a leadership role, more of a glue-guy type of role, and I had no problem doing that, and it has been beneficial to all of our success this season. I don’t think we’d have the same success if I was taking the same amount of shots and trying to get the points that I might have gotten last year.” After the Tennessee loss, Virginia went 16-2 in the A.C.C., including 13 wins in a row. The streak was capped with a 75-56 victory over Syracuse on March 1, which clinched Virginia’s first A.C.C. regular-season title since 1981, Sampson’s sophomore year. If there was any doubt about Virginia’s mettle, that was settled in the A.C.C. tournament. Victories against Florida State and Pittsburgh set up a final against Duke, the only team Virginia had not defeated this season. How fitting. After all, you cannot become a blue blood in the A.C.C. unless you beat one. Not that Virginia is in that category quite yet. “U.N.C. and Duke are the two blue bloods in the conference,” Brogdon said. “We should be one, but we’re not. We’re not looked as one right now. But we’re getting there.” And for now, that is enough for longtime fans who have waited decades to see Virginia become a factor in the A.C.C. and the N.C.A.A. tournament again. “Ralph was fun because he was a star, he got all the publicity and you knew a big play could happen at any time — a big dunk, a big block and all that,” said Greg Wells, 59, of Charlottesville, who attended the A.C.C. tournament. “But this team is fun to watch. “I don’t know if it’s where it was in ’81 because it was probably the most dominant program for two years in college basketball. But I think we’re at the point now where we can compete with anybody, which is so nice.” Wells is not the only fan who has waited a long time to see the Cavaliers rise again. “Oh, I don’t know what the measure is,” Sampson, who lives in Phoenix, said in a telephone interview Monday. “I was there many, many years ago, 30 years ago, and we took it to the highest level that we could take it and got there. Hopefully, that’s some of the measuring stick. “But I really don’t worry about the measuring stick; I just want Virginia to be consistently good every year, not be up and down and wait this long to be successful.” | NCAA Men's Basketball,March Madness;University of Virginia;Ralph Sampson;Tony Bennett;College basketball |
ny0097665 | [
"business"
] | 2015/06/11 | Gemvara, an Online Jeweler, Branches Into Resetting | When their first daughter was born in 2006, Jay Dorio gave his wife, Erika, a ring with an oval aquamarine to celebrate the occasion. Ms. Dorio was touched by the gift, but over the years, the ring got little wear. “I loved the stone, but the setting was a little too modern,” said Ms. Dorio, who lives in Southbury, Conn. This year, Ms. Dorio sent her ring to the online custom jewelry company Gemvara for a makeover. She shipped it to the company via insured mail, exchanged ideas with a Gemvara designer, and a few weeks later received her aquamarine in a classic setting surrounded by tiny diamonds. “I’ve been wearing it several times a week,” said Ms. Dorio, who paid about $630 for the new setting. The mantra of reduce, reuse, recycle seems to be finding its way into the jewelry box. When Gemvara, which was founded in 2010, began offering stone resetting in January, demand for the service was overwhelming. Within weeks, the company had a backlog of more than 200 orders. To accommodate demand, it added employees and fine-tuned the experience. Now, stone resetting accounts for 20 percent of the site’s traffic, and the company expects that share to continue growing. “The American fine jewelry market is more than $60 billion a year, and it has to go somewhere,” said Matt Nichols, Gemvara’s chief executive. By his estimate, Americans have billions of dollars in baubles that they rarely wear. Decades after the De Beers Group, the world’s largest diamond company, started its “A Diamond Is Forever” campaign, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of that slogan’s era are hoping to use those stones for their own engagements. And women in their 40s, 50s and 60s are looking for convenient and affordable ways to update their jewelry, or consolidate several stones into one piece. Although resetting is a new undertaking for Gemvara, Mr. Nichols said it was a relatively easy transition for the company, which lets customers design jewelry using hundreds of combinations of stones and settings. “Since the beginning, customers asked about using their own stone or just buying a setting,” Mr. Nichols said. “In about half of the business meetings I had, people would bring up a ring from an aunt or other relative that they wanted to reset.” Despite the interest, Gemvara chose to focus on the core custom design business before it branched into resetting. “We wanted to build some trust before we started asking people to send us their heirlooms,” said Mr. Nichols, a former member of Google’s corporate development team and a former principal at Highland Capital Partners, who joined Gemvara full time in 2011. The original idea for Gemvara came from a Babson College student, Matt Lauzon, who pitched it during an internship at Highland Capital, a venture capital firm in Boston. Though his business plan called for putting kiosks in jewelry stores, the idea quickly evolved into an online retailer. The company, which is based in Boston but houses its jewelry operations in New York’s Diamond District, now has 60 employees and is projecting $20 million in sales this year. “It was an idea to change the way a traditional age-old industry was run,” said Bob Davis, a general partner at Highland Capital, which initially backed the idea; all told, Gemvara has raised $51 million in venture capital. Unlike traditional jewelers, the company carries no inventory; everything is made to order. Image A ring sent to Gemvara for resetting. The company began offering the service in January. Credit Mark Kauzlarich/The New York Times While the industry is ripe for a makeover, consumers have yet to embrace the idea of buying jewelry online, said Edahn Golan, a diamond industry analyst in Tel Aviv. “For most people there is a need to see the bling,” he added. United States sales for fine jewelry in 2014 were $68.8 billion, according to Mr. Golan, with the biggest slices going to specialty jewelry retailers — most of whom run single stores — and multiproduct retailers. “Walmart, at one point, was the largest seller of diamonds in the United States,” he said. Online jewelry sales are still a sliver of the market, he said. The largest online seller, Blue Nile, accounted for less than 1 percent of total fine jewelry sales last year, Mr. Golan said. That is not to say that there is not opportunity, he said, particularly when it comes to younger buyers, who are comfortable shopping online and want a more customized experience. “With something as permanent and personally meaningful as an engagement ring, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to pick from a limited catalog,” said Max England, 30. He used Gemvara to design an engagement ring featuring a moissanite stone, which is a diamond alternative, that he bought from another company. While other sites had some element of customization, he found the options too limited. As for a traditional jewelry store, “I didn’t want to deal with high-pressure sales tactics,” said Mr. England, who lives in the San Diego area. Two weeks before Mr. England planned to propose, the ring arrived in the mail, tucked in a black box lined with velvet. It was a hit with Chelsea Fontana, who is now Mr. England’s fiancée. When Gemvara was ready to offer stone resetting, Mr. Nichols volunteered to be the first customer. “I proposed to my wife 13 years ago with a traditional round-cut diamond in a basic setting,” he said. “She loved it, but I always had in my mind that I would get her another design.” In December 2014, he gave the program a test drive and presented his wife a new ring for Christmas. The company is now sending out an average of 50 insured shipping kits a day; customers use these to mail their jewelry or stones for resetting. Gemvara conducts a full appraisal and assigns an internal designer to look at the piece and suggest settings. From there, the customer can customize with different metals and additional stones and preview the creation online. Gemvara charges only for the cost of the new setting, which can range from less than $100 to several thousand dollars. The typical turnaround time is a few weeks. Some customers are, understandably, reluctant to put grandmother’s ring in the mail, even with insurance. Gemvara has gone to great lengths to show that shopping online can be less risky than the old-fashioned route. For one thing, the company offers a 101-day return policy — even for its reset stones. While technology is at the heart of the business, Gemvara personalizes the experience with its team of designers. “We wanted to let people self-serve, but we want to be as hands-on as people need,” Mr. Nichols said. That was relief for Christina Cain when she sent her grandmother’s circa-1920 engagement ring to Gemvara in April. “I was so nervous, but they were very reassuring at every stage,” said Ms. Cain, who lives in Pittsburgh and paid $320 to reset the diamond. “It’s a dainty little ring with a tiny gold band and bezel setting with two leaves,” she said of the redesigned version. “It still has meaning to me, but it’s more my style, and it doesn’t look like an engagement ring.” | Jewelry;E Commerce;Gemvara |
ny0000720 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2013/03/11 | Mets Demote Top Pitching Prospect Zack Wheeler | PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — On Sunday, for perhaps the last time before what is expected to be a promising major league career, Zack Wheeler was cut from a baseball team. Wheeler, 22, one of the game’s top pitching prospects, was one of the 10 players who had their gear shuttled Sunday morning from the Mets’ major league camp to the team’s minor league one. The demotion of Wheeler, an electrifying right-handed starter, had long been planned, but that did not dull its sting as he stood before an empty locker. “I mean, I’m not happy,” said Wheeler, who was limited to one start because of an oblique injury during batting practice a week and a half ago. “I wanted to sort of get out there and prove myself. Hopefully, I’ll be up there soon.” Almost certainly he will. The Mets are expected to promote him to the majors sometime this summer, a debut that will surely be anticipated by an antsy fan base. Once he arrives, he could headline the club’s rotation for years. On Sunday morning, though, the Mets went on preparing without him. Some players ate a quick breakfast before a 40-minute bus ride to play the St. Louis Cardinals. The rest of the group changed for an early morning workout. Wheeler lingered among them, exchanging lighthearted goodbyes and ducking into the kitchen to give his regards to the dining staff. After speaking with reporters, Wheeler received a firm pat on the back from Matt Harvey, whose name was invoked during Wheeler’s meeting Sunday with Manager Terry Collins, General Manager Sandy Alderson and the pitching coach Dan Warthen. “I said, ‘You know, you’re sitting in the same seat Matt Harvey did last year,’ ” Collins said, adding that he told Wheeler, “If you force us to call you, we’ll be calling you.” The path of Harvey, 23, who was cut by the Mets around this time last year before making a successful midsummer debut, provides a framework for Wheeler’s ascent. Harvey’s presence last year at the big-league camp generated a swell of hype. His spring training performances were closely watched and widely praised. Then, as planned, he was sent back to minor league camp. “You use it as fuel to get back,” said Harvey, who struck out 11 batters during his Mets debut July 26. “That’s really what I did. I was sad to leave all the guys, the clubhouse atmosphere, all of this. Your main goal has to switch from making the team to getting back.” To that end, hours after rejoining the minor league camp, Wheeler threw a live batting practice session that acted as another test for his oblique muscle. He showed he could still draw a crowd. His 30-pitch session was observed by several minor league coaches and front office staff members, as well as by Jeff Wilpon, the Mets’ chief operating officer. Other players, like outfielder Brandon Nimmo, the team’s top draft pick in 2011, wandered over to watch, too. “He’s dirty, man,” Nimmo said afterward, noting the explosiveness of Wheeler’s fastball, as well as the quick snap of his curveball. “That hammer is sharp.” The rave reviews were nothing new. Though Wheeler rued the fact that he did not have more chances to perform in front of the big-league coaches, he did make a considerable impression, through his play and his demeanor. “We know he’s got the great arm,” Collins said. “And I thought he handled the situation in the clubhouse, you guys” — he nodded at the reporters — “for his first camp, I thought he did a very, very good job of that.” Wheeler said he hoped his brief stay would make his eventual transition to the highest level easier. For now, the start of the Class AAA season awaits. After his workout, Wheeler said the muscle strain was behind him, though he thought his timing seemed off. “I’m not pitching real crisp,” he said. “But other than that, everything else felt good.” His demotion Sunday was a matter of timing, too. The Mets could use him now, but by having him start the season at Class AAA, they can delay his eventual free agency by a year. And more than likely, he will never again go through the sort of day he did Sunday. “When he gets here,” Collins said, “he’ll never look back.” INSIDE PITCH The Mets have 45 players left in their big-league camp. Besides Zack Wheeler, nine players were demoted Sunday morning: the right-handers Gonzalez Germen, Collin McHugh, Elvin Ramirez and Hansel Robles; the left-hander Darin Gorski; outfielders Cesar Puello and Juan Lagares; and infielders Reese Havens and Wilfredo Tovar. | Zack Wheeler;Mets;Matt Harvey;Baseball |
ny0154305 | [
"sports",
"football"
] | 2008/01/07 | Secondary Answers All the Questions | TAMPA, Fla. — Corey Webster was surrounded by reporters. During a three-year career in which his role with the Giants has expanded and shrunk again and again, a crowd at his locker has not always been a positive thing. But the questions were easy and Webster was smiling, talking about his second-half fumble recovery and his interception that helped the Giants to a 24-14 playoff victory over the Buccaneers on Sunday. Webster started the game at cornerback only because Sam Madison could not play because of an abdominal strain. “It was one of the best games, if not my best game,” Webster said. The Buccaneers saw the Giants’ secondary as a weak spot in the defense, and that feeling only grew with the insertion of Webster, who had not started since the third game of the season. But the Giants countered counterintuitively, having Webster defend the speedy receiver Joey Galloway throughout the game. “My plan was not to let Joey Galloway catch the ball,” Webster said. It was a gutsy move, since one deep touchdown pass could have been the difference in what both teams expected to be a low-scoring game. Galloway had 57 receptions for 1,014 yards and 6 touchdowns during the regular season. On Sunday, Webster held Galloway, playing with a sore shoulder, to one catch for 9 yards. “I think they played better as a defensive secondary than maybe we gave them credit for,” Tampa Bay quarterback Jeff Garcia said. The surprisingly strong play of the pass defense should make for interesting fodder this week as the Giants prepare to face the Cowboys in next Sunday’s divisional playoff game at Texas Stadium. Dallas quarterback Tony Romo threw for 592 yards and 8 touchdowns in two victories over the Giants this season. But Garcia, chased by a pass rush and often hit as he threw the ball, found no gaping holes. Tampa Bay likes to throw short, quick passes, but the Giants routinely bumped receivers off their routes near the line of scrimmage, disrupting the timing. Garcia complimented the Giants’ cornerbacks for their physical play, and Webster in particular. Webster made two game-altering plays in near succession. He scooped up a fumble on the opening kickoff of the second half, leading to a Giants field goal that pushed their lead to 17-7. Garcia drove the Buccaneers to the Giants’ 27-yard line on the next possession. He lobbed a ball for Galloway into the end zone. Webster, positioned perfectly, intercepted for a touchback. The Buccaneers did not get within 10 points again. “Corey was outstanding,” Giants Coach Tom Coughlin said. “I felt that he would play well coming into this game. He practiced well. He’s a guy who has exceptional hands and was in very good position in coverage.” Garcia, who threw four interceptions during the regular season, was intercepted again on the first play after the two-minute warning with the Giants holding a 10-point lead. R. W. McQuarters leapt to catch the ball near the sideline. Like a ballet dancer, with the rest of his body falling out of bounds, he somehow reached back and planted his toes on the green turf. McQuarters was initially ruled out of bounds, but a replay review gave the ball to the Giants. The play ended any lingering suspense — or just moved it forward a week, to the game against the Cowboys. | Football;New York Giants;Webster Corey;Coughlin Tom |
ny0223437 | [
"sports",
"football"
] | 2010/11/21 | In N.F.L., Coming to Expect More Surprise Onside Kicks | New Orleans Saints Coach Sean Payton called for an onside kick to open the second half of the Super Bowl in February. It caught the Indianapolis Colts off guard, changed the momentum of the game and stunned the football world. Except for Kansas City Coach Todd Haley. As the halftime show ended, he turned to his wife to say what perhaps only one other person in the N.F.L. was thinking. Haley predicted the onside kick. “Sean and I spent a lot of time together in Dallas,” Haley said. “We have a lot of similar personality traits.” So maybe nobody should have been surprised when Haley opened the Chiefs’ game against the Colts in October with an onside kick. But at almost the same moment, St. Louis opened its game in Detroit with an onside kick. What in the name of the Saints’ Thomas Morstead was going on? Perhaps emboldened by New Orleans’s success — or maybe recognizing the need to unearth any edge when no team is dominant — N.F.L. coaches have delved deep into their playbooks this season to breathe life into a rare play, the surprise onside kick. From 2000 to 2009, teams tried the play 101 times in the first three quarters of games (not counting the last five seconds of the first half, when an onside kick is used to run off the remaining time), an average of 10.1 surprise onside kicks per regular season, according to Football Outsiders, which tracks every play of every game to analyze trends. But Cleveland’s surprise onside kick attempt against the Jets last Sunday was the eighth in the league this season. N.F.L. teams are on a pace for 14.2 surprise onside kicks this season, an increase of 40 percent from the average over the last decade. Yet only two of the eight, 25 percent, have been recovered by the kicking team; historically, the recovery rate is about 60 percent. The kick is unusual for a number of reasons, perhaps the most significant of which is its ripeness for second-guessing. Job security in the N.F.L. is tenuous at best, and coaches and players alike still marvel at Payton’s audacity in the most important game of his career. And they make an indisputable point: if the Colts had recovered the onside kick and traversed a short field to score, Payton would have been excoriated for making one of the worst calls ever. Haley, who describes his coaching philosophy as “trying to think outside the box without being crazy,” has a reputation as something of a riverboat gambler, in part because he routinely avoids punts to try to convert on fourth down, too. But he undertook a series of considerations before trying the onside kick, reflecting the risk of the play even as it is having its star turn on game film. Haley’s research showed that the Colts were especially proficient at scoring points on their first drives, and that they score around 28 points a game. The beauty of the onside kick, Haley determined, was that if the Chiefs recovered the ball (they did not), they would have stolen a possession from the Colts. If the Colts recovered, they would have a shorter distance to score — and scoring was almost a given, Haley figured, if Peyton Manning had the ball. “They’re not going to be able to use nearly as much time to score, so in a sense, that’s a positive,” Haley said. “All we’re trying to do is get an extra possession or cut their time of possession.” In the complex calculus of coaching, that was a no-lose situation. Even better: Haley’s research indicated that since 2000, 11 teams had opened a game with an onside kick, and 6 of those teams won the game. Yet there was no correlation between recovering the kick and winning. Not every kicker can disguise a kick well enough to catch the opponent unaware. Among the onside kicking styles are the squibber along the ground that takes funny bounces and the liner off the ground. But the most popular style for the surprise kick is the high hopper, in which the kicker drives the ball into the ground and it bounces high into the air. San Francisco’s Joe Nedney could be the best kicker at masking his intentions, but he did not master the skill until his sixth N.F.L. season. Nedney developed his sleight of foot through hours of repetition by himself, he said, after he saw Miami’s Olindo Mare successfully execute two successive surprise onside kicks. Nedney said that Mare’s approach to the ball was identical to the one he took if he was going to kick away, so he tried to emulate him. The result: Nedney does not slow down on his approach, but he aligns his plant foot and his body slightly past the football on the kickoff. He takes the full pendulum-like swing at the ball — critical for selling the kick to the receiving team — but reduces the force about 20 percent. His foot touches the ball on the downswing, hitting the tip, which forces it into the ground. He does not follow through as he would on a normal kick, but by then, it does not matter. The ball bounces high and, he hopes, travels exactly 11 yards and descends outside the numbers. Nedney said he could consistently place the ball within a 2-yard “doughnut” of his target. “It’s a constant lobbying effort on my part to get them to call it,” Nedney said. “The kick itself is easy to execute. The biggest challenge is you have to make sure it’s being done at a time of the game when it’s least expected. There used to be times when you wouldn’t expect something like that to happen.” Those moments have dwindled as surprise onside kicks proliferate, certainly since Payton made the play a highlight-film favorite. Mike Westhoff, the Jets’ special-teams coach, said he looked for opponents whose front-line return team might turn around a few seconds early to chase the kickoff, watching especially carefully if those players partly turn their backs and their legs to run downfield. Those players cannot reverse their stride in time to recover an onside kick. That is not what the Colts did in the Super Bowl, though, Westhoff said. The Saints got lucky that the ball bounced off the Colts’ Hank Baskett, but he had been in position to catch it. Before the season, Westhoff said that his kickoff team was more likely to head downfield early than the Colts’ because the Colts play so conservatively. But Westhoff said he told his front-line return-team players to shuffle back two steps or so, never to turn and start running before the ball is kicked. Perhaps that is what Denver Coach Josh McDaniels meant when he said the Broncos tried the surprise onside kick against the Jets because they were vulnerable to it. (The Broncos recovered the kick.) That inspired an irritated Westhoff, who coached Mare in Miami, to proclaim that he had invented the kick. Perhaps he did. But Payton’s swashbuckling persona is now inextricably linked to the onside kick. With each high-bouncing kick this season, coaches hope to steal a possession — and a little bit of Payton’s magic. “The Saints were very lucky to get it,” Westhoff said. “It wasn’t like the Colts were out to lunch. But they had the aggressiveness and the guts to do it. A lot of times, that is all you need.” | New Orleans Saints;Onside Kick;Football;Super Bowl;National Football League;Coaches and Managers |
ny0191459 | [
"us"
] | 2009/02/02 | A State With a Wish List for Stimulus Spending | SAN FRANCISCO — In charge of 1,200 miles of weather-beaten roads in rural California , Pat Minturn knows exactly where he would spend the $4 million his office hopes to receive from the federal stimulus package . “Oasis Road, Happy Valley Road, Cassel Road,” said Mr. Minturn, the public works director in Shasta County, about 200 miles north of here, ticking off a list of neglected mountainous byways. “We can put that money on the road by this summer. And by the fall it will be gone.” Even as lawmakers in Washington debate the final form of the $819 billion stimulus package, state and local officials of both parties across the country are gearing up to spend the money. More than two-thirds of the states are facing budget shortfalls this year and next — including yawning gaps in Arizona, Nevada and New York — and could use the money to help balance budgets, blunt potential cuts in education and shrink Medicaid obligations. Some big, battered states — led by Michigan, which has the highest unemployment rate in the nation — could use the plan to mend a frayed social services net straining under bad conditions, with new federal money expected for food stamps and unemployment benefits. But in California, which has a projected budget deficit — $42 billion — that is larger than the total expenditures last year in each of 39 states, the federal stimulus will be put to its sternest test. The infrastructure and energy projects, high-tech job creation, rural outreach and low-income benefits included in the proposal make the state a proving ground where nearly all the plan’s potential benefits, and pitfalls, converge. All told, Congressional estimates show that California’s two-year take from the House version of the bill, which was approved on Wednesday, could top $32 billion, or nearly $1,000 a resident. The State Finance Department puts the number even higher, at $37 billion. With nearly twice as many motor vehicles as any other state, California would receive at least $4 billion under the House plan for highway, rail and transit projects. Counties have already submitted possible uses, a list that could include $120,000 to improve a road in the small town of Niland and $9.3 million to close gaps in a bike path in Marin County, just north of San Francisco. In suburban Contra Costa County, east of San Francisco, meanwhile, stimulus money would start crews moving on a $2.5 million project to resurface a stretch of Vasco Road, a popular and treacherous commuter cut-through that has been the scene of deadly accidents, including a 2006 wreck that killed four construction workers. Such projects are ideal for the short deadlines required by many of the grants and loans contained in the stimulus package, said Allan Krauter, the legislative analyst for Kern County, a mostly agricultural county north of Los Angeles. “It doesn’t take a lot of design to repave a road,” said Mr. Krauter, who estimated his county had some $125 million in “shovel-ready” highway plans. “It’s ready to go.” But potential infrastructure winners are not just asphalt. The California State Association of Counties estimates that its members have more than $12 billion worth of projects — including transportation, county and public health facilities, green energy, court buildings and flood control — ready to contract out within six to nine months. They range from high-tech to low, including a $7 million plan to improve broadband Internet access in Del Norte County, where redwoods almost outnumber people, and a $50,000 project to put barbecue pits in a park in agricultural San Benito County. More urban areas have also made pitches. San Diego County, for example, submitted more than $500 million worth of potential projects to the association, a wish list including new gutters, ball fields, landfills, library expansions, government buildings, solar-energy systems and, in one case, security fencing at a Marine air base. Not all, or even many, of these projects will be able to break ground using stimulus money. But with the state halting more than 5,000 infrastructure projects in December because of financial problems, the very idea that some new money might flow into cash-starved counties and localities has led to a touch of giddiness in some quarters. “We rushed right down to Floyd’s Emporium for shovels,” Mr. Krauter of Kern County wrote in an e-mail message. “But the City of Bakersfield got there ahead of us and cleaned them out.” For all the anticipation of stepped-up spending, there is also awareness of the potential pitfalls. Many environmentalists are not thrilled with an emphasis on road-building, though they acknowledge that repairing existing roads is a plus because smooth rides make cars more fuel efficient. Critics of the plan, moreover, argue that building roads and infrastructure is not enough to bring California, or the nation, out of a recession and suggest that the entire stimulus package may not be big enough to make much of a dent. And while the House plan includes federal tax cuts, tax increases are on the table in some states, including California. There are political hazards, too. Not only is California needy, with high unemployment, the most foreclosures in the country and tax revenues so depressed that it will begin furloughing state workers, it is also politically unruly. The deeply partisan culture in the capital, Sacramento, has resulted in near political paralysis in recent years; the negotiations over closing the budget gap this year were still continuing on Sunday, even as the state comptroller prepared to start issuing i.o.u.’s to vendors. And such problems raise inevitable doubts about how state leaders — including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, and Democratic majorities in both houses — will reach consensus on spending the billions of dollars marked by Congress as discretionary. “It’s a lot of money, quickly,” said Scott D. Pattison, the executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. “So again the key word is management.” H. D. Palmer, a spokesman for the California Department of Finance, said his office had seen credit markets tighten as the state’s economic malaise deepened. Mr. Palmer said the department would advise the state to pay off debt with “fungible” money in the so-called state fiscal stabilization fund, which could amount to $3 billion in California. But he acknowledged that there might be a fight. “There will be any number of ideas on how to spend that money,” Mr. Palmer said. Some fiscal analysts also expressed concern that the influx of federal money might create costly expectations for some programs, like special education, which would then need to find future sources for operating money. “We want to make sure that doesn’t add to future commitments,” said Mac Taylor, with the state’s legislative analyst’s office. And while Mr. Taylor said that the stimulus would be “a big help in the near-term,” he echoed the sentiment, voiced by politicians on both sides of the aisle, that Congress could not solve the state’s long-term problems, like declining tax revenue, and a difficult legislative standard — a two-thirds majority — for raising taxes or passing budgets. “I think it would be very foolish to think that we could sit back and wait” for federal help, said Karen Bass, a Los Angeles Democrat who serves as the speaker of the California Assembly, adding, “That would be a gamble we cannot afford to take.” That said, state and federal officials say an infusion of money from Washington could take a large bite out of the state’s budget deficit. Estimates vary, but California’s nearly empty coffers could receive as much as $11 billion in additional Medicaid money over two years. The stimulus would also give a lift to Silicon Valley, where even once-invulnerable companies like Yahoo have recently had layoffs, and to the growing clean-tech sector, which could see a windfall in new financing for projects like solar equipment, energy-efficient cars and smart energy grids. Supporters of the stimulus package say places like the rural, agricultural counties of Central California, where double-digit unemployment is increasingly common, could see a sudden boom in “green-collar” workers with the plan’s mandates to equip remote counties for broadband Internet access. “It’s good for high-tech, low-tech and no-tech,” said Carl Guardino, president and chief executive of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. But even in California, which prides itself on being forward-thinking, some local officials in lightly populated regions, are skeptical that the stimulus will be anything more than a token gesture. Lynn M. Flanigan, a senior engineer with the public works department in rural Inyo County, said she expected only a few hundred thousand dollars in federal transit money. “I can improve less than one mile of two-lane rural road with that,” Ms. Flanigan said in an e-mail message. “It’s a joke.” But Mr. Minturn, the public works director in Shasta County, said he believed his hoped-for $4 million could create as many as 100 jobs up and down the construction chain, including road crews, truck drivers and workers retrieving the raw materials to make roads. “Someone has to go out and dig up those rocks,” he said. The Senate plan is likely to differ from the House version. But no matter the package’s final form, experts say that California will most likely be a reliable indicator of the plan’s success or failure. “If it has a positive impact in California,” said Mr. Pattison, of the budget officers association, “it’s going to be great everywhere else.” | Obama Stimulus Plan;Infrastructure (Public Works);United States Economy;California |
ny0035352 | [
"us"
] | 2014/03/02 | An Eye on Runoffs, Candidates Mind Tactics in Primaries | In the highest-profile races of Tuesday’s primaries, a large number of candidates will be happy to come in second. Several statewide contests are expected to end in runoffs, drawing out the races for an additional 12 weeks. Some candidates have adopted a more nuanced strategy to contend with the possibility of a runoff, particularly in the four-way Republican primary for lieutenant governor, where opponents have acknowledged that the incumbent, David Dewhurst, is likely to draw the most votes. “With your help, we can keep Dewhurst under 50 percent and get closer to putting an authentic conservative in the lieutenant governor’s chair,” one candidate, State Senator Dan Patrick, Republican of Houston, wrote early this year on his campaign website. Texas election law requires a runoff if no candidate receives a majority of the votes. While runoffs are frequent, the high number of statewide races this year drawing multiple candidates is expected to lead to an unusually large second round after Tuesday. On the Republican side, voters will probably be asked to return on May 27 to pick between the last two candidates standing for lieutenant governor, attorney general, agriculture commissioner, comptroller and railroad commissioner, and several local races. On the Democratic side, runoffs are probable in the races for agriculture commissioner and United States Senate. Craig Murphy, a Republican consultant who has worked on Attorney General Greg Abbott’s campaign for governor, said that finding a winning strategy for a race that was expected to go to a runoff can be trickier than finding one for a contest that ends after one round. “A race with two candidates is checkers,” Mr. Murphy said. “A race with multiple candidates is chess.” One potential pitfall is attacking an opponent who is leading in the primary, only to see that strategy backfire in the runoff, said Philip Paolino, associate professor of political science at the University of North Texas. “The danger is, if you’re too vicious in your attack, will you turn off some of the other candidates’ supporters?” Mr. Paolino said. Two of the most expensive primary statewide races this year — the Republican contests for lieutenant governor and attorney general — offer a lesson in contrasts on runoff strategy. Mr. Dewhurst is vying for re-election against three challengers: Mr. Patrick, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples. A poll of likely Republican voters conducted last month by the University of Texas at Austin and The Texas Tribune found Mr. Dewhurst leading his competitors with 37 percent, followed by Mr. Patrick with 31 percent. Mr. Staples and Mr. Patterson each drew less than 20 percent. (The University of Texas at Austin is a corporate sponsor of The Tribune.) Throughout the race, the challengers have attacked Mr. Dewhurst as an ineffective leader of the Texas Senate. Mr. Patrick has also drawn extensive criticism from his three opponents. Mr. Patterson went so far as to hire a private investigator, whose subsequent inquiry uncovered former employees who said that Mr. Patrick had knowingly hired them while they were in the United States illegally in the 1980s. Mr. Patrick has denied the claims. It is a different story in the Republican primary for attorney general, where there is no incumbent. Though the candidates — State Representative Dan Branch of Dallas, State Senator Ken Paxton of McKinney and Barry Smitherman, the chairman of the Railroad Commission — began attacking one another more forcefully last week, they have focused most of their efforts on raising their own profiles. Mr. Murphy said the attorney general candidates were being cautious because it was hard to predict how an attack would play out in such a wide-open contest. “In a multicandidate race, it’s not a clean deal to simply attack another candidate because the votes may not go to you,” he said. Along with worrying about hurting a candidate’s chances in a subsequent runoff, campaigns in multicandidate races are also preoccupied with conveying to supporters and donors that their candidate is well positioned to make the second round. Laurent Bouton, an assistant professor for economics at Georgetown University, who has studied voter behavior, said research suggested that as many as half of voters would consider changing their vote if they thought their candidate was unlikely to make it into a runoff. “When candidates are not viable, when they don’t even have a chance to make it to the second round, we’ve found some voters will go to their second-most preferred candidate,” Mr. Bouton said, citing preliminary results from his research. In the primary races for United States Senate, John Cornyn, the Republican incumbent, and David Alameel, a Democrat, are vastly outspending their competitors. Yet the sheer number of candidates in each race — eight Republicans and five Democrats — could prevent any candidate from winning a majority. Last month’s U.T./Tribune poll found Mr. Cornyn leading his primary challengers with 62 percent. The poll predicted a runoff in the Democratic race between Mr. Alameel and Kesha Rogers, who is best-known for calling for President Obama’s impeachment for his “advancing the post-9/11 banker’s dictatorship initiated by his predecessor.” The Texas Democratic Party has argued that Ms. Rogers’ views do not reflect the party’s values and has taken the unusual step of opposing her candidacy. Harold Cook, a Democratic consultant in Austin, said the Democratic candidates have struggled to differentiate themselves in a crowded field, which is why Ms. Rogers may do well despite her controversial views. She has raised just $26,000. Mr. Cornyn’s primary challengers are still hoping to force a runoff, with some candidates encouraging voters to support “anyone but Cornyn.” United States Representative Steve Stockman, Republican of Friendswood, has drawn considerable attention largely for an unorthodox campaign strategy that has included declining most media requests and attending few public events. While speaking last month to Michael Berry, a Houston-based conservative radio host, Mr. Stockman said his main goal was to see Mr. Cornyn unseated. “I would think the first 100 people in the phone book would be better than what we currently have,” Mr. Stockman said. “And if I do not prevail and someone else does prevail in the runoff, Michael, you have my word, I will work just as hard for that person than anybody else.” In the same interview, Mr. Stockman acknowledged that Mr. Cornyn may avoid a runoff and blamed that possible outcome on the challenge of fighting for voters’ attention against another crowded race on the ballot. “By and large, there are more folks focusing on the lieutenant governor race, to be frank,” Mr. Stockman said. “It’s because you have four high-profile people spending millions of dollars versus one guy that’s entrenched and spending millions on his own.” | Texas;David Dewhurst;Greg Abbott;Gubernatorial races;State Legislature elections;Attorney General Elections |
ny0192496 | [
"nyregion",
"long-island"
] | 2009/02/08 | Patchogue Healing With Latino Stories and Drama | PATCHOGUE MARITZA TACURI moved to the United States 13 years ago from her native Ecuador with a terrible sadness over the son she left behind and a sense that the residents of her new homeland “were not like us.” “I left my son in his country when he was 4,” Ms. Tacuri told an audience gathered at the Congregational Church of Patchogue on Jan. 31 for an improvisational event called “Patchogue Stories.” As Ms. Tacuri spoke in Spanish, with a translator, a theater troupe acted out her words on the spot, as it did those of several other participants. Leaving her son, Ms. Tacuri told the crowd, “broke my heart, but I had to do it — I came to this country for better opportunities.” (Her son was eventually able to move to the United States as well, she said later.) Though the people she encountered here initially seemed distant and bored compared with her fellow Ecuadoreans, the Patchogue resident said, she soon learned that they can also be “happy and cheerful” — so much so that “I sometimes think, boy, they might be Latin!” The anecdote and its improvised dramatization by members of Playback Theater (NYC) — who portrayed everyone from the uptight Americans of Ms. Tacuri’s fears to the more welcoming sort she said she encountered — drew laughter from the audience, despite the somber background of the evening event. Subtitled “After Grief and Anger — Healing and Change,” the performance was an effort to promote better understanding between Latinos and non-Latinos in the area following the killing last November in Patchogue of Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorean immigrant. Seven teenagers have been charged in the fatal attack, and investigations are under way into other reported bias attacks on Latinos in Suffolk County. Such legal proceedings “are pretty intimidating for the community,” Paul McIsaac, the director of Playback (NYC), said a few days before the church performance. “Patchogue Stories,” he said, would be a way for people “to begin to talk to one another.” Part of an international improvisational theater movement, Playback (NYC) invites audience members to tell stories from their lives, which are enacted using a mix of spontaneous dialogue, mime and music. To the Rev. Dwight Lee Wolter, the pastor of the Congregational Church, a historic building on Patchogue’s Main Street, telling stories in church seemed especially apt. “What did Jesus do? He told stories,” Mr. Wolter said in an interview. “Almost everything he did was telling a parable or telling a story.” More than 100 people filled the church reception room for “Patchogue Stories,” including a film crew and police and county government representatives. An art exhibition in the room featured the work of Ecuadorean immigrant painters. (“I work in a factory, but I’m also an artist,” Julio Guncay, who had two landscapes on view, said in Spanish to a reporter. “There are many sides” to the immigrant experience, he said, “that sometimes people don’t know.”) Some who attended might have expected stories to bear directly on the events that have roiled Patchogue. While there were some references to anti-Latino sentiment, including an account by Mel Guadalupe, the Suffolk County director of minority affairs, about coming to grips with his Puerto Rican heritage, the stories generally struck an optimistic note. The Playback troupe will perform another improvised theater event on March 6 for students at Patchogue-Medford High School, as part of the school’s annual Cultural Awareness Day. For this evening at the church, Mr. McIsaac (who had begun the evening by urging the audience not to share stories “that might cause you any kind of legal problem”) declared himself satisfied. “They didn’t have to tell stories about being beaten up,” he told the film crew after the performance. “They told stories of being human beings.” | Hispanic-Americans;Hate Crimes;Patchogue (NY);Theater |
ny0173183 | [
"science"
] | 2007/11/22 | Man Who Helped Start Stem Cell War May End It | If the stem cell wars are indeed nearly over, no one will savor the peace more than James A. Thomson. Dr. Thomson’s laboratory at the University of Wisconsin was one of two that in 1998 plucked stem cells from human embryos for the first time, destroying the embryos in the process and touching off a divisive national debate. And on Tuesday, his laboratory was one of two that reported a new way to turn ordinary human skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells without ever using a human embryo. The fact is, Dr. Thomson said in an interview, he had ethical concerns about embryonic research from the outset, even though he knew that such research offered insights into human development and the potential for powerful new treatments for disease. “If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough,” he said. “I thought long and hard about whether I would do it.” He decided in the end to go ahead, reasoning that the work was important and that he was using embryos from fertility clinics that would have been destroyed otherwise. The couples whose sperm and eggs were used to create the embryos had said they no longer wanted them. Nonetheless, Dr. Thomson said, announcing that he had obtained human embryonic stem cells was “scary,” adding, “It was not known how it would be received.” But he never anticipated the extent and rancor of the stem cell debate. For nearly a decade now, the issue has bitterly divided patients and politicians, religious groups and researchers. Now with the new technique, which involves adding just four genes to ordinary adult skin cells, it will not be long, he says, before the stem cell wars are a distant memory . “A decade from now, this will be just a funny historical footnote,” Dr. Thomson said in the interview. As for the science behind it, the thrill of discovery, he said, “Surprisingly, there is no ‘Wow’ moment,” either from 1998 or now. Both times, the discovery came after he had spent months rigorously testing the cells to be sure they really were stem cells, worrying all the while that they could die or be lost to contamination. When he knew he had succeeded, the suspense was gone. “Imagine holding your breath for a few months,” Dr. Thomson said. When he was done, he said, “I felt mostly a sense of relief.” But he knows what he wrought. Stem cells, universal cells that can turn into any of the body’s 220 cell types, normally emerge only fleetingly after a few days of embryo development. Scientists want to use them to study complex human diseases like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s in a petri dish, finding causes and treatments. And, they say, it may be possible to use the cells to grow replacement tissues for patients. The problem until now had been the source of the cells — human embryos. The topic, says R. Alta Charo, a University of Wisconsin ethicist, “took on an almost iconic quality the same way Roe v. Wade has.” In the meantime, many leading scientists decided not to get into the stem cell field. There was a stigma attached, Dr. Thomson says. And, he adds, “Most scientists don’t like controversial things.” A native of Oak Park, Ill., James Alexander Thomson, 48, did not set out to throw bioethical bombs. All he wanted, he said, was to answer the most basic scientific questions about cellular development. First there was a degree in biophysics from the University of Illinois. As a graduate student, Dr. Thomson began working with mouse embryonic stem cells and then, with federal support, he extracted stem cells from monkey embryos. After earning two doctorates from the University of Pennsylvania, one in veterinary medicine and one in molecular biology, he continued research at his own laboratory at the University of Wisconsin. Eventually he realized, though, that studying mice and monkeys could take him only so far. If he wanted to understand how human embryos develop and why their development sometimes goes awry, he needed human stem cells. But, he says, he hesitated. In 1995, he began consulting with two ethicists at his university, Dr. Norman Fost, a physician, and Ms. Charo, a law professor. He wanted to anticipate what the ethical problems might be and what the criticisms might be. Dr. Fost was impressed. “It is unusual in the history of science for a scientist to really want to think carefully about the ethical implications of his work before he sets out to do it,” Dr. Fost said. “The biggest problem in ethics is not anticipating problems.” But Dr. Fost and Dr. Thomson guessed wrong about what would bother people most. They thought it would be what Dr. Fost termed “the technological power” of stem cells. What if someone put human stem cells into the brain of a rat, for example? “I thought at the time that this was possibly the biggest issue,” Dr. Fost said. “It was unprecedented in the history of biology. It’s the ‘Help, get me out of here’ scenario. Let’s say the rat brain turns out to be entirely human cells. What’s going on in there? Is it a human brain? And how would you study it — you can’t ask the rat.” Meanwhile, as Dr. Thomson was planning his effort to obtain human embryonic stem cells, another discovery changed his entire view of development. In 1997, Ian Wilmut, a scientist in Scotland, announced the creation of the first cloned mammal, Dolly, cloned from frozen udder cells from a long-dead sheep. Dr. Wilmut had slipped an udder cell — a cell that normally would never be anything but an udder cell — into an egg whose genetic material had been removed. The egg somehow brought the udder cell’s chromosomes back to the state they had been in when embryo development first began. “Dolly changed the way I thought about developmental biology,” Dr. Thomson says. “Development was reversible.” Four years ago he and, independently, Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University set out to figure out a way to mimic what an egg can do. Both succeeded and both discovered that all they had to do was add four genes to the cells and the cells would turn into what look, so far, just like stem cells. “It is actually fairly straightforward to repeat what we have done,” Dr. Thomson said. More work remains, but he is confident that the path ahead is clear. “Isn’t it great to start a field and then to end it,” he said. | Thomson James A;Stem Cells;Science and Technology;Medicine and Health;Biology and Biochemistry;Ethics;Cloning |
ny0143884 | [
"business",
"worldbusiness"
] | 2008/10/27 | Hard Times Jolt Hot Economies, Even Poland’s | WARSAW — Poles were jolted last week by the sudden discovery that they were not immune to the financial crisis contagion rippling across the globe. The plunging stock market here and the drastic weakening of the Polish currency proved, as in so many corners of the fast-growing developing world, how wrong they were. The go-go atmosphere in Poland has abruptly stilled to a cautious wait-and-see. Developers across the country have halted building projects for thousands of apartments as banks have grown stingy with lending. The boomtown energy here has been replaced by nervous eyeing of the once powerful zloty, as it retreats in value against the dollar and the euro. The daily newspaper Dziennik summed up the mood on Friday with a front-page headline, “Welcome to the Tough Times.” In a country that seemed to be on the fast track to full membership in the Western club, the question on everyone’s lips is, “Why us?” Emerging markets that seemed healthy, even thriving, barely a month ago are beginning to find themselves caught in the worldwide panic. This sharp turn has caught even the local financial guardians and experts by surprise, as they have clung to their indicators of fundamental economic soundness while forgetting that capital stampedes rarely tarry for fine distinctions. From Europe’s former Communist bloc to South America, fear and disbelief mingled with frustration that a breakdown in the United States mortgage market — one that most investors and institutions in emerging markets had avoided — was beginning to lead once again to their punishment at the indiscriminate hands of the capital markets. “Everything is going down,” said Lukasz Tync, 28, an information technology consultant in Warsaw, who said he owned shares in 10 companies and several mutual funds and had been hit hard by five consecutive days of falling stocks at the Warsaw Stock Exchange. The country’s leading index was down 12.6 percent for the week and more than 50 percent for the year. “The thing is that there is no fundamental basis for such moves,” Mr. Tync said. “It’s just panic.” Adding to the pain, the zloty has fallen around 17 percent against the dollar over the past week, and more than 10 percent against the euro. The currency has fallen roughly 30 percent against the dollar in October. Economic experts are cutting growth forecasts. Poland is still considered relatively healthy compared with Hungary and Ukraine, which have been among the hardest hit. On Sunday, the two reached tentative agreements with the International Monetary Fund for loans and other assistance aimed at preventing their financial systems from collapsing. Ukraine will get a loan of at least $16.5 billion. The value of Hungary’s rescue package has not been specified. Still, alarm about Hungary and Ukraine has infected Poland. “A week ago, people would have told you that this is an oasis of calm and stability,” said Marek Matraszek, founding partner and managing director at CEC Government Relations in Warsaw, a political consulting firm for foreign investors. “They didn’t expect that the lack of confidence in Central Europe would bleed over from Hungary and Ukraine.” The bleeding has extended much farther. In South Africa , the price of platinum, a major earner of foreign exchange, has cratered, from more than $2,000 an ounce in June to less than $800 now, contributing to a sharp depreciation in that country’s currency. Brazil ’s currency has fallen by more than 40 percent against the dollar since August. The Turkish lira has fallen by more than 30 percent against the dollar in recent weeks and almost 20 percent against the euro. Fuat Karatas, 41, a dental technician in Istanbul, buys some imported materials priced in euros but cannot pass on the rising price to customers, who pay in lira, he said. “Now with the euro going crazy, I have no idea how things are going to work out for me,” he said. “I just want to be able to keep my lab open, nothing more.” During more prosperous times the risks in emerging market countries were strongly underestimated, said Marek Dabrowski, president of the Center for Social and Economic Research in Warsaw. “Naturally, the global credit crunch and economic slowdown caused overshooting in the opposite direction,” he said. Emerging-market countries are hardly a homogenous group, but they face similar challenges. The outflows of investor capital driving down their stock markets and pressuring their currencies have occurred just as the demand abroad for their products, whether commodities like oil or manufactured goods like automobiles, has begun to weaken. But the crisis has not hit the streets right away, buttressing the confidence of many in affected countries that the problems are temporary and can be weathered. Some argue that the declining value of local currencies is even a plus, because it will help these countries sell more goods abroad by making them more affordable. “When the zloty was so strong, my import was profitable. Just now, I hope my exports will be improving,” said Krzysztof Izydorczyk, 52, owner of Comexpol, an importer and exporter of stainless steel products based in Katowice. In South Africa, Finance Minister Trevor A. Manuel gave a budget speech to Parliament last week, saying he had seen the warning signs of trouble and had taken appropriate action. But South Africa is not just facing unpredictable economic pressures. It is also at a perilous political moment, with a likely split in the governing African National Congress and a strong possibility that the unemployment rate will worsen. The economy had been weakening before the global crisis, according to Pieter Laubscher, chief economist at the Bureau for Economic Research at South Africa’s Stellenbosch University. The commodities boom had drawn investment into the country and had helped drive economic growth, Mr. Laubscher said, but that boom has now fallen victim to the worldwide slowdown. In Brazil, leaders took pains to save wisely during the commodity boom, reform the country’s banking sector after a financial crisis in the late 1990s and diversify its trade partners. “This country has never been so prepared to face up to adversity as it is now, economically, politically and, I’d say, ideologically,” President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said early last week. But on Wednesday the government empowered state-controlled banks to buy stakes in private financial institutions. Although officials denied any private banks were in danger, the announcement fueled jitters that some could fail, helping send Brazil’s stock market down more than 10 percent that day. Poles had good reason to believe that they had avoided the stigma that causes investors in emerging markets to flee at the first hint of financial panic. Poland had joined the European Union and NATO, it was a close ally of the United States, it was growing robustly and enjoying swiftly rising living standards unimaginable under Communism. Experts say there was a consensus locally that Poland would not be affected by the crisis, and that membership in the European Union would buffer it from the worst of the shocks. That consensus has begun to break down. When the Central Bank of Hungary surprised markets last week by raising interest rates three percentage points to defend its currency, the vulnerability of Central and Eastern Europe received harsher scrutiny. Poland illustrates the illogic but also the relentless pressure this crisis has exerted, because in many ways it was in good shape. Compared with Hungary, Poland has higher growth, lower inflation, lower interest rates, less public debt relative to the size of its economy and a smaller share of foreign loans. Poland has stronger domestic demand than Hungary to prop up the economy as consumers among its Western trading partners cut spending. But Poland has not adopted the euro, which might have helped insulate it somewhat. Now the prime minister, Donald Tusk, says Poland hopes to by 2012. Government officials in Warsaw, including the prime minister, the central banker and the finance minister, have been saying that the Polish economy remains strong and that they expect markets to stabilize. Indeed, the latest economic news out of Poland has been largely positive. Retail sales rose 11.6 percent in September, compared with the previous year, and the unemployment rate, which exceeded 20 percent just five years ago, fell 0.2 percentage points last month, to 8.9 percent. At Miedzy Nami, a restaurant in downtown Warsaw, the owner, Ewa Moisan, said she had not seen a slowdown. Yet some customers said they were beginning to feel the pinch. The monthly payment for the apartment mortgage of one customer, Jarek Wiewiorski, has gone up by a fifth, to 1,800 zloty, about $600. “It’s not catastrophic, but it’s painful,” Mr. Wiewiorski, 40, said. “One minute it’s America, the next it’s Hungary, and then suddenly, it’s here.” | Poland;Economic Conditions and Trends;International Trade and World Market;Certificates of Deposit;Subprime Mortgage Crisis;South Africa;Brazil |
ny0160696 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2006/03/12 | With Adam Dunn | At 26, Adam Dunn of the Reds has established himself as one of the most feared left-handed power hitters. With 40 homers last year, the 6-foot-6 Dunn became only the third Reds player to post back-to-back 40-homer seasons, joining George Foster and Ted Kluszewski. Dunn and the Hall of Famer Joe Morgan are the only Reds to amass 100 runs batted in, 100 runs and 100 walks in a season. Dunn has done it twice. He is also the classic feast-or-famine hitter; his 195 strikeouts in 2004 broke the major league record. PAT BORZI LAST SONG DOWNLOADED -- I'm going to say "Redneck Yacht Club" by Craig Morgan. It's a country song. BEST POSTGAME SPREAD ON THE ROAD -- Houston, because it's in my house. I live there, so I get to make whatever I want. I can cook. I'm a big pasta guy. MEAL TO IMPRESS -- I'd probably cook a steak. FIRST CAR -- A Dodge Ram, a big one, white. It was new. My parents got it for me when I turned 16. WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT KEN GRIFFEY JR. THAT NOBODY ELSE DOES -- How much he cares about everything. I don't think people really realize how much he cares about baseball, how much he cares about a lot of things. He really cares what people think. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's bad. PLANS TO READ "GAME OF SHADOWS" -- I'll probably wait until it comes out on DVD or something. I DON'T GO ANYWHERE WITHOUT -- My video games. They go everywhere with me. 30 Seconds | CINCINNATI REDS;DUNN ADAM;BASEBALL |
ny0258138 | [
"us"
] | 2011/01/19 | Idaho: Giant Trucks Win Permit | Brian Ness, the state transportation director, has agreed to issue permits that would allow ConocoPhillips to begin hauling as early as next week large oil refinery machinery along a winding, scenic stretch of U.S. 12. Mr. Ness said he was convinced that ConocoPhillips and its shipper could safely haul the four loads from the port in Lewiston along a 172-mile stretch in north-central Idaho en route to the company’s refinery in Billings, Mont. His decision follows months of legal challenges over the agency’s initial decision to permit the oversize loads. Opponents say the giant trucks moving along the mountainous, two-lane road pose a threat to public safety and a risk to the environment. | Idaho;Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline;ConocoPhillips;Environment |
ny0013760 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2013/11/06 | Expert Hands Are Ready to Help Inexperienced de Blasio | One predecessor walked into City Hall as a crime buster with the scalps of crooked politicians and gilded financiers dangling from his belt. The next arrived as a self-made billionaire who didn’t need the mayor’s mansion to sleep in; he already had several of his own. For the moment, at least, Bill de Blasio is known to New Yorkers more for his charming children and a glib campaign slogan borrowed from Dickens than he is for a résumé of eye-catching accomplishment. New York pivoted toward the guy in the rowhouse next door: a politician smart enough to be standing in the right place when luck broke his way during the Democratic primary, and shrewd enough not to be seen measuring the curtains a moment too soon. If Mr. de Blasio is not especially well known, he has turned for advice and support to people who — like himself — have been deeply embedded in city government and politics, some for more than 40 years. Among them are Harold Ickes, a veteran mechanic and engineer of Democratic Party politics both nationally and in New York; John H. Banks, an executive with Consolidated Edison who held various positions at the City Council, including chief of staff, from 1990 to 2002; and Peter J. Madonia, who was a top aide in the mayoral administrations of Michael R. Bloomberg and Edward I. Koch. “Because of his liberal credentials, Bill de Blasio will have access to a pool of very talented people who will be interested in helping him implement the day-to-day basics,” Mr. Ickes said. “I’ve forwarded names to him. Other people have forwarded names to him. “Democrats, Martians, Republicans, it matters little, as long as they are good managers and understand Bill’s vision,” Mr. Ickes said. Image Two advisers: Peter J. Madonia, left, and Harold Ickes. Credit Left, Rob Schoenbaum; right, Alex Wong/Getty Images In June, a birthday party for Mr. de Blasio — well, really, a campaign fund-raiser — was hosted by, among others, Sid Davidoff, whose face would be embroidered on the permanent government’s flag, if it had one. Mr. Davidoff was for seven years a personal aide to Mayor John V. Lindsay from the late 1960s into the early 1970s. Later, he was the tennis partner of Mayor David N. Dinkins, and ran the city’s leading lobbying firm at the time. Having seen the miseries endured by various mayoral administrations because of unseemly familiarities with lobbyists, Mr. de Blasio no doubt will be cautious. Moreover, he is already well schooled in the lessons regarded by Mr. Banks and Mr. Madonia as fundamental to understanding New York’s government: The city’s roughly $70 billion budget is a beast that slouches along, mostly blithe to the commands of mayors and legislators. About 75 percent is mandated or required by contract — things like social services, pension and fringe benefits, debt service, and much of what is spent on education. An additional 15 percent is essentially untouchable: the services of the Police, Fire and Sanitation Departments. Ultimately, the mayor and the Council have real power over about 10 percent of what the city spends, or seven billion dollars. Youth services or programs for the aging? Open the libraries seven days a week? Close firehouses, shrink police classes? During the campaign, Mr. de Blasio wore holes through an already well-worn Dickens title, invoking “A Tale of Two Cities” as the core of his critique of the Bloomberg administration and, by proxy, Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker, for most of Mr. Bloomberg’s years in office. With his large margin of victory, Mr. de Blasio is very likely to have a voice on Ms. Quinn’s successor, and no doubt will come to appreciate the quality of accommodation in which he had found so much fault. As for the two cities? “The mayor can only do so much on big macroeconomic things,” Mr. Ickes said. “Growing inequality — there’s not necessarily a lot that a mayor can do. Rhetorically, he can do a lot. There’s going to be a different tone and emphasis, although you can only go so far on tone, on constituencies that he thinks merited more attention than they got during the Bloomberg years.” Another lesson Mr. de Blasio has absorbed, his friends say, is the loss of Mark Green in 2001 to Mr. Bloomberg. After winning a runoff in the Democratic primary, Mr. Green set up a transition committee to prepare for the administration that he was certain to be running. It was all done very publicly. So was the thrashing Mr. Bloomberg administered to him in the general election, mooting Mr. Green’s plans. For his part, Mr. de Blasio’s staff has insisted that there has been no transition process, no getting ready for assuming an office that he had not yet won. There was, however, wink-wink, a place where insiders knew to send résumés: to Dominick Williams, the chief of staff for Mr. de Blasio, who, for the moment, is the public advocate. | Mayoral races;Bill de Blasio;Democrats;Harold M Ickes;NYC;John H Banks;Peter J Madonia;Sid Davidoff |
ny0136946 | [
"business"
] | 2008/05/18 | Yes, It’s a Cooperative. But for Whom? | THE traditional idea of agricultural cooperatives is that farmers have more muscle to negotiate prices when they band together. At the nation’s largest dairy cooperative, the Dairy Farmers of America, it hasn’t always worked that way. The group’s executives have often seemed more concerned about pleasing dairy executives than their members, this during a time of brutal consolidation in the industry. The cooperative, created in 1998 from the merger of four others, generates $11 billion in sales. Because it is so big, some dairy farmers have felt compelled to join, only to find that they were paid less than before for their raw milk. D.F.A. executives didn’t suffer such hardships, traveling the country in a corporate jet and making deals that appeared to benefit a few in the industry; some members complained that they were largely left in the dark about how the money from the deals was spent. Wait, aren’t the farmers supposed to own the cooperative? Now, we come to hear that the Dairy Farmers’ former chief executive, a larger-than-life figure named Gary E. Hanman, transferred $1 million in 2001 to the board chairman at the time, Herman Brubaker, for reasons that remain a mystery. The payment was disclosed by the current president and chief executive, Richard P. Smith, during a recent press conference with dairy trade publications. Mr. Smith described the payment as “an improper transaction” that had been concealed. The cooperative has since recovered the money with interest, said Mr. Smith, who in 2006 replaced Mr. Hanman, who retired. Mr. Smith said he believed that both Mr. Brubaker and Mr. Hanman had chipped in to cover the payment. “It was a breach of trust,” Mr. Smith said in an interview. “I do believe it was an aberration.” Asked what the payment was for, Mr. Smith said: “We don’t know. I’d rather not speculate. Certainly there is no valid reason.” Neither Mr. Hanman nor Mr. Brubaker, who retired in 2003, were available for comment. This might seem like a dispute that would be confined to states like California and Wisconsin, where there are plenty of dairy farms. But it has implications well beyond dairy states. Mr. Hanman was among the most powerful people in the dairy industry at a time of monumental change. In the last decade, the number of dairy farmers has declined sharply — from about 99,000 in 1997 to about 59,000 last year, according to the Agriculture Department. At the same time, there has been a major shift in where milk is produced. Small dairy farmers east of the Mississippi River and in the Upper Midwest are increasingly being replaced by huge dairy farms in the West, in places like New Mexico and western Texas. Few dairy farms are even left in the Southeast. These days, more milk is trucked halfway across the country because the local dairy farmer and milk bottler are out of business. All of this change was done in the name of efficiency — and may have made sense when gasoline was $2.50 a gallon. But if you have bought milk any time in the last year, you know that consumers aren’t benefiting from the new dairy landscape. Mr. Hanman was in an ideal position to help dairy farmers deal with the shifting winds. But if anything, he seemed to have made the situation worse. A large man with thinning red hair who favored bright red suspenders, Mr. Hanman aggressively expanded his cooperative and his influence by outmaneuvering competitors, rewarding his allies and giving campaign contributions to politicians who were in a position to help him. To expand the cooperative, Mr. Hanman used a strategy that gave dairy farmers little choice but to join and, in the process, helped push competing cooperatives out of business. (In some instances, they merged with the Dairy Farmers of America.) The D.F.A. would sign exclusive supply agreements with milk bottlers or buy the bottling plants outright, often in areas where it had few if any members. The dairy farmers who supplied the plant could then either join the cooperative or find somewhere else to sell milk. In a time of rapid consolidation, there often weren’t any other plants within a reasonable distance. In some parts of the country, including the Northeast and areas of the South, three out of four dairy farmers now sell their milk through the Dairy Farmers of America or one of its affiliates. Some farmers have complained that the money they were paid for their milk declined when they started selling it through the D.F.A. or its subsidiaries. Questions about where farmers’ money was going intensified when court documents filed by the Justice Department a few years ago revealed that some of the Dairy Farmers’ business partners were making extraordinary profits. For instance, Robert Allen, a dairy executive, participated in a joint venture in the Northeast and made $21.7 million profit on a $1 million investment. Another dairy executive, Allen Meyer, had a joint venture with the D.F.A. in Kentucky and Tennessee: he turned an investment of several hundred thousand dollars into a gain of $70 million. Neither Mr. Allen nor Mr. Meyer could be located for comment. D.F.A. officials say the cooperative made the same return on those investments as Mr. Allen and Mr. Meyer. But Peter Hardin, editor and publisher of The Milkweed, a newsletter that has long been critical of Mr. Hanman, remains skeptical. “Outside business partners seemed to walk away with sweet deals, and the farmers were left with the crumbs,” he said. “The money went anywhere but to the farmer.” MR. SMITH said that “some combination of lack of transparency and arrogance” existed in the old days at the D.F.A., and he has vowed to change the culture. For one thing, he got rid of the corporate jet. He has also promised a thorough and transparent investigation of the cooperative’s finances to ensure that there weren’t any other unexplained payments. The farmers who lost their dairies during the last decade deserve at least that much. Better yet, perhaps the Justice Department, which began an investigation of the Dairy Farmers of America about four years ago, will finally let them know if it found anything more than an aberration. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. | Dairy Farmers of America;Frauds and Swindling;Milk;Farmers;Executives and Management;Agriculture Department;Justice Department;Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures |
ny0209679 | [
"business"
] | 2009/12/09 | Weakness of Recovery Unsettles Wall Street | Investors from Asia to Europe to Wall Street sent shares lower on Tuesday, distressed by signs of weakness in the global recovery amid talk of credit worries in Dubai and Greece. As stocks fell, traders turned to the dollar for safety, helping it gain strength against other currencies. That sent the price of commodities like gold and oil down. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 104.14 points, or 1 percent, to 10,285.97, while the broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index dropped 11.31 points, or 1 percent, to 1,091.94. The Nasdaq fell 16.62 points, to 2,172.99. With little on the economic calendar and the end of the year in sight, shareholders tried to gauge the health of the underlying economy and adjust their portfolios. They were taken by surprise, however, when the credit ratings of six Dubai companies were downgraded on Tuesday and concerns emerged about Greece’s ability to pay off its debt. Investors worry that problems in those countries could spread and curb the growth of emerging markets worldwide. Thomas J. Lee, chief United States equity strategist for J.P. Morgan Securities, called the concerns a “short-term disruption” and said they were confined to those countries. “The markets should be rattled. If they didn’t react, then you would realize we’re not in a rational world,” Mr. Lee said. “But this isn’t going to derail the global recovery.” He said stocks still had the potential for strong growth in December, but he added that some investors “want to hibernate” and have begun to remove risky assets from their portfolios. In London, the FTSE 100 shed 1.65 percent, and in Frankfurt, the DAX was off 1.66 percent. In Asia, the Nikkei 225 in Japan closed down 0.3 percent and the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong lost 1.2 percent. The declines in United States stocks came after disappointing financial reports from large companies. On Tuesday, 3M, the diversified manufacturer, offered a disappointing forecast of its earnings, and the McDonald’s Corporation, the fast-food restaurant chain, reported that sales at restaurants in the United States fell in November for a second month. On Friday, the government will provide another snapshot of holiday sales when it releases its November retail sales report. The dollar strengthened to $1.47 against the euro . Rebecca Patterson, global head of foreign exchange and commodities at J.P. Morgan Private Bank, said she expected the dollar to remain weak in 2010 as the Federal Reserve maintained its near-zero interest rates, even as it strengthens during times of uncertainty. “The situation in Greece reminds us there are still risks out there,” Ms. Patterson said. “When in doubt, investors want to own something liquid and something perceived to be safe.” Fitch Ratings on Tuesday lowered the debt rating in Greece, the latest blow to the troubled euro-zone country, driving bond prices and banking shares lower as investors fretted about the possibility of a default. Moody’s, another credit rating firm, further cut its ratings on six Dubai state-linked companies because it said it cannot assume the government will stand behind their debts. The downgrades came as Dubai seeks to distance itself from at least $80 billion of debt racked up by companies it created to expand the emirate’s global clout. Until recently, lenders had assumed Dubai’s many state-linked companies had implicit government backing. Dubai officials have since made clear no such promise exists. “It’s a macro story that’s making investors cautious,” said Stefan de Schutter, asset manager at Alpha Trading in Frankfurt. “They are worried that banks that hold debt from Dubai or Greece will be hit hard.” European investors were also distraught over data showing industrial production in Germany dropped 1.8 percent in October from a month earlier. In Britain, the giant retailer Tesco retreated 2.7 percent. It said third-quarter sales at stores open at least a year in Britain gained 2.8 percent, excluding fuel and value-added tax. That compared with the advance of 3.1 percent in the second quarter. Interest rates in the United States were lower. The Treasury’s benchmark 10-year note was up 13/32, to 99 30/32. The yield was 3.38 percent, down from 3.43 percent late Monday. Following are the results of Tuesday’s Treasury auction of four-day cash management bills, four-week bills and three-year notes: | Stocks and Bonds;Economic Conditions and Trends |
ny0272446 | [
"us"
] | 2016/05/19 | National Briefing | SOUTH Mississippi: A Reversal On Transgender Access Under fire from the governor and many Republican legislators, the state Department of Education now says it will not follow new federal guidance on use of bathrooms and locker rooms by transgender students. State Superintendent Carey Wright announced Wednesday that the department would “follow the lead of state leadership” and take no action until the state Board of Education could discuss the situation. The move comes as Republicans in a number of other states have opposed the guidance, with some seeking to join legal challenges. Mississippi education officials had said Friday they would follow the guidance by federal authorities calling for transgender students to be treated consistently with their gender identity. They cited a need for a “safe and caring school environment.” The State Board of Education chairman, John Kelly of Gulfport, said that board would have a special meeting within the next two weeks to discuss the issue. The move came as opposition to Ms. Wright’s earlier announcement that she would comply turned into a landslide. Wednesday, 27 Republican state senators among the 32-member Republican supermajority sent a letter to her and the Board of Education calling for “swift and decisive action on this urgent matter.” (AP) SOUTHWEST Arizona: Governor Rescinds Abortion Laws Gov. Doug Ducey has signed legislation repealing a pair of laws targeting abortion because they appeared to be indefensible in court. The Republican governor also signed another bill that opponents say is designed to make it easier to cut off abortion providers from Medicaid funding. Tuesday’s action repeals a law he signed in March that locked in outdated federal guidelines covering the most commonly used abortion drug. It also repealed a 2015 law he approved requiring providers to tell patients the effects of an abortion drug are reversible. That law had been on hold pending a court challenge. The Medicaid payment law Mr. Ducey signed allows the state to cut off funding to providers that fail to segregate taxpayer money from funds used to provide abortions. (AP) ROCKIES Colorado: At $1.3 Million, An Affordable Home The four homes planned for an Aspen affordable housing complex will cost upward of $1.3 million each. The City Council decided Tuesday against subsidizing the homes as the city has done with other affordable housing. Councilman Adam Frisch said selling the homes at cost is still less than the $2 million price they would carry on the market. The Land Title Guarantee Company says the average single-family home price in Aspen was almost $5.9 million last year. Housing lottery eligibility will extend to applicants who do not meet requirements for subsidized housing but earn too little to purchase on the open market, among other criteria. (AP) | Mississippi;Transgender,Gender Dysphoria;Bathrooms;K-12 Education;Arizona;Abortion;Doug Ducey;Aspen;Affordable housing |
ny0158185 | [
"us"
] | 2008/12/29 | Lessons for Other Smokers in Obama’s Efforts to Quit | Will one of President-elect Barack Obama ’s New Year’s resolutions be to quit smoking once and for all? His good-humored waffling in various interviews about smoking made it plain that Mr. Obama, like many who have vowed to quit at this time of year, had not truly done so. He told Tom Brokaw of NBC several weeks ago, for example, that he “had stopped” but that “there are times where I’ve fallen off the wagon.” He promised to obey the no-smoking rules in the White House, but whether that meant he would be ducking out the back door for a smoke is not known. His transition team declined to answer any questions about his smoking, past or present, or his efforts to quit. Antismoking activists would love to see him use his bully pulpit to inspire others to join him in trying to kick the habit, but he has not yet taken up their cause. The last president to smoke more than occasionally was Gerald R. Ford, who was quite fond of his pipes. Jimmy Carter and both Presidents George Bush were reportedly abstainers, but Bill Clinton liked cigars from time to time, though he may have chewed more than he smoked. Mr. Obama’s heaviest smoking was seven or eight cigarettes a day, but three was more typical, according to an interview published in the November issue of Men’s Health magazine. In a letter given to reporters before the election, Mr. Obama’s doctor described his smoking history as “intermittent,” and said he had quit several times and was using Nicorette gum, a form of nicotine replacement, “with success.” Mr. Obama was often seen chewing gum during the campaign. His pattern matches that of millions of other people who have resolved but stumbled in their efforts to give up cigarettes. Today, 21 percent of Americans smoke, down from 28 percent in 1988. Off-again-on-again smoking and serial quitting are common, as is the long-term use of nicotine gum and patches. “It takes the average smoker 8 to 10 times before he is able to quit successfully,” said Dr. Steven A. Schroeder, director of the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Schroeder said that counseling was helpful, and that if Mr. Obama were his patient, he would urge him to try it, even if only by telephone, toll free at 1-800-QUITNOW (1-800-784-8669). With nicotine replacements and counseling, quit rates at one year are 15 percent to 30 percent, Dr. Schroeder said, about twice that of those who try without help. But Mr. Obama has apparently been chewing nicotine gum for quite a while. Is it safe? Dr. Neal L. Benowitz, another expert on nicotine addiction from the University of California, San Francisco, said that long-term use of the gum or patches, “if it keeps you off cigarettes, is O.K.” He said people had the best chances of quitting if they used more than one type of nicotine replacement at the same time — like wearing a patch every day, but also using the gum when cravings took hold. Studies have found that 5 percent to 10 percent of people who try nicotine replacements were still using them a year later, and nicotine itself appears not to be harmful, except possibly during pregnancy and for people at risk for diabetes, Dr. Benowitz said. The risks of cancer, other lung disease and heart problems come from other chemicals in tobacco smoke. “If nicotine is harmful, it is a minuscule risk compared to cigarette smoking,” he said. “If people want to continue using gum or patches, and not cigarettes, their health will be enhanced.” Nicotine can speed up the heart rate somewhat, he said, and it may raise blood pressure slightly. More important, it can reduce the body’s sensitivity to insulin and may aggravate diabetes or prediabetic conditions. It also constricts blood vessels in the skin and may interfere with wound healing. But still, Dr. Benowitz emphasized, “if the choice is between taking nicotine or smoking, nicotine is far, far better.” Falling off the wagon is typical. Three months, six months and a year are major milestones, and most people who can quit for a year will be able to stay off cigarettes for good, Dr. Benowitz said. But about 10 percent relapse even after a year or more. “It’s generally prompted by a stressful situation, when they’re fatigued and they need to concentrate and focus,” Dr. Benowitz said. “Obama talked about that. People are used to having a cigarette in that situation.” Nicotine is strongly addictive for many people, and withdrawal can leave them irritable, restless, sleepless, depressed and struggling to concentrate. Some experts say it is harder to give up than cocaine or heroin. “Then there is something called hedonic dysregulation,” Dr. Benowitz said. “It involves pleasure. Nicotine involves dopamine release, which is key in signaling pleasure. When people quit smoking, they don’t experience things they used to like as pleasure. Things are not as much fun as they used to be. It’s something you get over in time.” People become hooked on nicotine in part because, like alcohol and other addicting drugs, it alters the brain. Some of the changes are long-lasting, and the younger people are when they take up smoking, the stronger their addiction. “There is increasing evidence that you lay down new neural circuits related to smoking, sort of memory tracks,” Dr. Benowitz said. “Nicotine does it, and other aspects of smoke do, too. Your brain is forever changed.” Those memory tracks could be hindering Mr. Obama’s efforts to quit. Dr. Schroeder also noted that for someone who smoked fewer than 10 cigarettes a day, as Mr. Obama reportedly did, nicotine replacements may be less helpful because the addiction may be more to the habit than to nicotine. One of the best things that President-elect Obama has going for him is that he is a jogger. “There is increasing evidence that if you can exercise, it’s often helpful” in quitting, Dr. Benowitz said. “I hope Obama can still find time to play basketball on a regular basis.” | Obama Barack;Smoking and Tobacco;Nicotine;Medicine and Health |
ny0167841 | [
"business"
] | 2006/01/06 | Ford's Debt Is Lowered Two More Steps | DEARBORN, Mich., Jan. 5 - Even before Ford Motor introduces the turnaround plan it is calling The Way Forward, Standard & Poor's clearly thinks that it may not be. S.& P. put Ford's debt rating two notches further into junk on Thursday, less than a month after a similar move at General Motors. It warned that problems at G.M., which S.& P. said might be forced to seek bankruptcy protection, could make a Ford comeback more difficult. The agency reduced its rating on Ford and its Ford Credit financing arm to BB- from BB+. It said the outlook for both was negative, meaning the ratings could be cut again if the company's prospects did not improve. Ford has $141.7 billion in outstanding debt. Late last year, S.& P. cautioned Ford that it could reduce its rating by more than one notch, so the move was not a surprise. But it was a historic blow to Ford, which boasted investment-grade ratings from May 1984 until October 2001. It used that sterling credential, which meant it paid lower borrowing costs, as a competitive tool, only to see its rating cut when its sales and profits fell earlier this decade. On Jan. 23, Ford is set to unveil its second turnaround effort in four years. The plan is expected to include plant closings, the elimination of thousands of hourly jobs and several automobile models, and a renewed emphasis on cost-cutting. A Ford spokeswoman, Becky Sanch, said, "We remain committed to accelerating our business plan." She declined to comment further. In its report Thursday, S.& P. said the lower rating "reflects our increased skepticism about Ford's ability to turn around its North American operations," a process S.& P. said could take several years at best. Ford executives met with S.& P. analysts late last month to outline the plan and explain how it would improve the automaker's performance. Ford's 2002 turnaround effort, which it called its revitalization plan, helped reduce costs and led to corporate profitability, but it did not reverse a slide in Ford's market share. Ford, which held about a quarter of American automobile sales at the start of the decade, ended 2005 with 17.4 percent, a level it was last at in the early 1980's. The popularity of its big sport utility vehicles, which fueled its earlier market share, has faded, and while Ford has won good reviews for new cars like the Fusion, a midsize sedan, it does not earn as much on cars as it has on sport utilities. It also faces strong competition from several rivals, from Chrysler to Hyundai and Toyota, all with new car models. On Thursday, an S.& P. analyst, Scott Sprinzen, said Ford was in danger of being hurt by the financial problems at G.M., which also plans to close plants, cut jobs and reduce spending under a restructuring plan. Last month, Mr. Sprinzen startled the industry when he said G.M. could be forced to seek bankruptcy protection to reduce its labor, pension and other costs. A G.M. bankruptcy "could be a huge problem for Ford," Mr. Sprinzen said, enabling the company to win lower rates from the United Automobile Workers union than Ford could persuade the union to grant outside bankruptcy. Mr. Sprinzen said a weakened G.M. might try to take buyers away from Ford with another program like the employee discount plan it offered customers last summer. While the deals led to record industry sales, buyers quickly disappeared once the offers were gone. "G.M. is one factor in the marketplace that Ford has to consider in setting its own restructuring plan," Mr. Sprinzen said. S.& P. executives said they were encouraged by a recent plan approved by union members that was aimed at reducing Ford's annual health care costs. But on Thursday, three U.A.W. members said they planned to ask the union to review the procedures used during balloting on the plan, which passed by only 51 percent of those voting. Workers at big Ford factories in Kansas City, Mo., and St. Paul rejected the cuts. The effort by the workers -- two from Michigan and the other a retired union member from Ohio -- could lead to a new vote on the plan. U.A.W. officials have said the vote was conducted fairly, although most ballots that are approved pass by a far wider margin. In October, G.M. workers voted 61 percent in favor of similar cuts. Chrysler and VW in Deal DETROIT, Jan. 5 (AP) -- Volkswagen said Thursday that it would collaborate with the Chrysler Group of DaimlerChrysler on a VW minivan for the North American market that will start production in 2008. The chairman of VW, Wolfgang Bernhard, told reporters at the Los Angeles Auto Show that Chrysler would build the minivans at a plant in Windsor, Ontario, or a plant near St. Louis. The minivan will be based on the next-generation Dodge and Chrysler minivan platform, but VW will design the interior and exterior. Mr. Bernhard predicted sales of around 10,000 minivans a year once the vehicle hits the market, a fairly conservative estimate. The deal allows VW to save production costs on a vehicle for which North American dealers have been clamoring. | FORD MOTOR CO;FINANCES |
ny0157804 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2008/12/05 | European Court Rules Against Britain’s Policy of Keeping DNA Database of Suspects | LONDON — The European Court of Human Rights ruled unanimously on Thursday that Britain’s policy of gathering and storing the fingerprints and DNA of all criminal suspects — even those who turn out to be innocent — was a violation of the human right to privacy. The ruling, handed down in Strasbourg, France, is a severe blow to the law-enforcement policies of the Labor government, which has led Europe in aggressively collecting and retaining personal information on its citizens. Using unusually strong language, the court declared itself “struck by the blanket and indiscriminate nature” of the police’s policy of holding DNA material indefinitely in its database. Britain has several months to decide how to respond to the ruling, but the current law will have to be amended. In a statement, the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, said she was “disappointed” by the court’s decision. “I strongly believe DNA and fingerprints play an invaluable role in fighting crime and bringing people to justice,” she said. Britain’s DNA Database contains the profiles of more than 4.6 million people, some 860,000 of whom do not have criminal records. Privacy experts say that this represents a higher proportion of Britain’s population than do similar databases in other countries. “They’re in the vanguard of doing this, is the polite way of saying it,” said Daniel P. Cooper, a partner at Covington & Burling, a corporate and business law firm that filed an amicus brief in the case on behalf of Privacy International, an advocacy group. “They have the biggest database in Europe, and possibly globally, for law enforcement purposes.” Human rights groups applauded the court’s decision as a welcome check on the powers of the state. “Forty percent of Britain’s criminals are not on this database, but hundreds of thousands of innocent people are,” said Anna Fairclough, the legal officer of Liberty, a British group that advocates for human rights. The court, she said, “has protected the privacy of British people so poorly let down by our own government.” The government argues that information on the database collected from suspects in past crimes has helped investigators solve thousands of fresh cases in the past eight years, including at least 53 murders and 94 rapes. Britain has a reputation for intruding in an increasingly heavy-handed way in its citizens’ private lives. It is said to have the most CCTV cameras per capita in the world. A government plan to issue mandatory ID cards encoded with personal information has stirred fierce opposition in a country that has long celebrated individual liberty. “There have been a number of recent government initiatives which have been very worrying to privacy advocates,” Mr. Cooper said. “And there have been so many massive data breaches and leaks of information that anytime the government proposes something that would require collecting more data, people get very concerned.” The DNA case was brought by two Sheffield men who were arrested in separate cases in 2001, but were both ultimately cleared of committing crimes. One, identified as Mr. S., 19, was charged with armed robbery; he was later acquitted. The other, Michael Marper, now 45, was arrested and charged with harassment in 2001; the charges were eventually dropped. In both cases, the suspects’ fingerprints and DNA samples were taken by the police. Both men asked later that the samples be destroyed, but the police refused. While most European countries allow the police to take fingerprints and DNA samples in some criminal cases, England and Wales are alone in Europe in allowing the samples to be taken as a matter of course, and in keeping them indefinitely, experts say. Scotland has separate, less stringent, rules. The two men took their case to the European court after losing a series of battles in British courts, arguing that the police’s decision to keep the samples violated their right to privacy as set out in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Having information on the DNA data base was humiliating and stigmatizing, they said. The court agreed, saying that Britain had “overstepped any acceptable margin of appreciation” in striking a balance between individual rights and public interests. The current law, it said in stinging language, “constitutes a disproportionate interference in the applicants’ right for respect to private life and cannot be regarded as necessary in a democratic society.” | Europe;European Court of Human Rights;Decisions and Verdicts;DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid);Identification Devices;Freedom and Human Rights |
ny0121190 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2012/07/13 | Silvio Berlusconi Said to Be Plotting a Political Comeback | ROME — The last time Silvio Berlusconi grabbed so much media attention, it was because he had resigned as prime minister. Not eight months later, the front pages of Italian newspapers are emblazoned with headlines that say that Mr. Berlusconi is back and ready to take another stab at Italy ’s top elected position. By popular demand, no less. According to news reports on Thursday, Mr. Berlusconi, 75, said that he had been persuaded to jump back into the political fray at the urging of Italy’s business and entrepreneurial community. “Many people ask President Berlusconi to run for election. I am among them,” Angelino Alfano wrote Wednesday on Twitter, referring to Mr. Berlusconi as head of the Peoples of Liberty party. Though Mr. Alfano, 41, is Mr. Berlusconi’s designated heir, he seemed unruffled to have been unceremoniously shoved aside by his mentor. “If he decides to do so, we will all be by his side.” A member of Mr. Berlusconi’s staff, who was not authorized to speak publicly for attribution, played down the speculation, but did not dismiss it. “Right now, there’s no election, no campaign to run in, but what’s true is that he’s not retired, he’s still in politics, he hasn’t given up,” the staff member said. “It’s impossible to say what he’s running for, because that will depend on the political situation and the various alliances that might be formed; it’s not the time to give details.” “But he thinks it is necessary to change and reform the institutional architecture of Italy, to allow the next government to do its job,” he said. When Mr. Berlusconi resigned on Nov. 12, a victim of Italy’s political and economic instability and of personal weaknesses that tainted his premiership with scandal, the popular backlash was such that a political recovery seemed wishful, at best. But the three-time prime minister and billionaire media tycoon has dodged dozens of court cases on a host of criminal charges and mastered more than one comeback. And he is closely attuned to the changing popular mood here, which has decidedly soured after eight months of a government of technocrats led by Prime Minister Mario Monti that has left Italians feeling impoverished without any gains in their sense of security about the country’s economic future. This month, borrowing costs on Italian bonds have almost returned to the unsustainable levels they were at when Mr. Berlusconi resigned. Recent polls, which have punished Italian political parties in general, suggest that with Mr. Alfano at the helm, and Mr. Berlusconi out of the picture, the Peoples of Liberty party barely garners 10 percent of the vote. But a Berlusconi-Alfano ticket leading a renewed — and younger — party leadership with a distinctive message could attract about 28 percent of the voters, according to Euromedia Research, which has been monitoring voting preferences since February. Mr. Monti, who has grudging bipartisan support, is expected to remain in power until elections next spring. On Tuesday, he ruled out staying in the government after the 2013 elections. But he is a senator for life, and he noted that he would continue to have a role in Parliament. Any future political developments will involve an unknown variable: a new electoral law. Under the current system, party leaders pick members of Parliament to fill the seats apportioned to the parties by a general vote. Parliament is discussing drafting a new one to allow voters to directly choose candidates, making politicians more accountable to their constituents. The new law is also expected to avert having different majorities in the two houses of Parliament, a situation that can arise now because of the way seats are allocated. Since leaving the prime minister’s office last year, Mr. Berlusconi never entirely left the political stage, weighing in periodically with suggestions that Italy — or Germany — leave the euro zone, or start printing its own money, ideas that he later admitted were said in jest. Some commentators noted that Italy had to move forward, and not back to a past that began 18 years ago, when Mr. Berlusconi first ran for office, and won. “The ideas of Berlusconi are the same as 20 years ago, including battling communists, now impossible to find, and passing the legendary liberal reforms,” the columnist Curzio Maltese wrote in the Rome daily La Repubblica. “They’re still waiting to be passed after the longest and most stable period of government of Republican history.” Others were more humdrum. The real surprise “was that there was surprise about the news that he would run again,” wrote Michele Brambilla, in a front-page editorial in the Turin daily La Stampa. That a man like Mr. Berlusconi “could be content to be the wise old man of the party and accept the idea that someone could do better than him, was just not credible.” | Berlusconi Silvio;Italy;Politics and Government |
ny0108865 | [
"sports",
"basketball"
] | 2012/05/16 | Indiana Pacers Defeat Miami Heat | This does not sound like a winning formula. Miss 24 of 29 shots in one stretch, on the road. Watch an 11-point second-half lead turn into a deficit. Have your entire team get outscored by two players in the fourth quarter. Somehow, it worked for the Indiana Pacers . David West scored 16 points and grabbed 10 rebounds and the Pacers took home-court advantage away from Miami by beating the Heat , 78-75, in Game 2 of the teams’ Eastern Conference semifinal series Tuesday night — after LeBron James and Dwyane Wade each came up short on key opportunities in the final minute. “Defense and rebounding,” Indiana Coach Frank Vogel said. “We built this team, we started talking about smash-mouth basketball about winning the war in the trenches, and that’s with defense and rebounding.” The series is tied at 1-1, with Game 3 in Indianapolis on Thursday night. James scored 28 points for Miami and Wade finished with 24, though they each failed to convert big chances late. James missed two free throws with 54.3 seconds left and Miami down 1, and Wade was short on a layup that would have tied the game with 16 seconds remaining. “The game is not lost or won with two free throws,” James said. “But I definitely want to come through for my teammates. So I’ll get an opportunity again. I know I’ll be at the line again in that situation. Just go up and make ’em.” Miami was without Chris Bosh, who is sidelined indefinitely after he strained a lower abdominal muscle in Game 1. Bosh’s absence was noted in many ways. Miami shot 35 percent, got outrebounded, 50-40, and besides James and Wade, no other Heat player scored more than 5 points. Spurs 108, Clippers 92 Tim Duncan had 26 points and 10 rebounds and host San Antonio, recharged after a weeklong layoff, wore down Los Angeles to win Game 1 of their Western Conference semifinals series. Playing for the sixth time in 11 days, the Clippers gave San Antonio its toughest first half of the playoffs before fading fast. Unlike their stunning Game 1 comeback at Memphis in the first round, they did not have a second wind this time. Manu Ginobili added 22 points for the Spurs, who have won 15 in a row. It is the longest winning streak in the N.B.A. playoffs since the 2004 Spurs won 17 straight. Eric Bledsoe led the Clippers with 23 points. ROSE’S RECOVERY The doctor who operated on Derrick Rose’s knee insists the Chicago Bulls star can dominate again. It will take time, though. Rose faces a recovery of eight months to a year. The assessment by the team physician Dr. Brian Cole means the point guard could return around mid-January to early February, or miss next season. The doctor added there was a chance Rose could be back sooner, but “we’re not going to rush it.” The Bulls had already said Rose had a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. Cole said there were also two tears in his meniscus cartilage. He said Rose is “doing great,” that the operation went “extremely well” and that he can still be an explosive player. IRVING IS TOP ROOKIE Cleveland Cavaliers guard Kyrie Irving is the N.B.A.’s rookie of the year, winning the award with the same ease as he dribbled past defenders this season. Irving received 117 of 120 possible first-place votes from a nationwide news media panel. Irving finished with 592 points, way ahead of Minnesota’s Ricky Rubio (170) and Denver’s Kenneth Faried (129). CARLISLE STAYING Rick Carlisle has agreed to a new contract with the Dallas Mavericks, a year after winning the N.B.A. championship. Carlisle has a 198-114 regular-season record in Dallas. | Miami Heat;Indiana Pacers;Rose Derrick;Basketball;Playoff Games |
ny0121060 | [
"us"
] | 2012/07/12 | Florida A&M President Resigns | MIAMI — The president of Florida A&M University, James H. Ammons, resigned on Wednesday, eight months after a member of the university’s celebrated marching band collapsed and died after a hazing ritual. Dr. Ammons, who served five years as president, resigned on the same day that the parents of Robert Champion, the drum major who died Nov. 19 after being beaten, filed a lawsuit in Orlando. The lawsuit asserts that university administrators failed to do enough to end student hazing, a longstanding ritual among university band members that involved beatings and verbal abuse. Offering an example of what it called university wrongdoing, the lawsuit states that university leaders, including the band director, failed to take action after the dean of students recommended a long-term suspension of the band three days before Mr. Champion died. The recommendation was made after a string of hazing-related episodes surfaced before the Florida Classic football game in Orlando, a showcase for the Marching 100, as the band is called. The university is best known for its innovative band, which numbers 375 and serves as a centerpiece for fund-raising and recruiting. Administrators were not willing to suspend the band for fear it would hurt the university’s budget, the lawsuit asserts. The university’s board of trustees, the company that owns the bus on which the hazing took place and the bus driver are named in the lawsuit. “FAMU refused to suspend the FAMU band prior to the Florida Classic, as suggested by Dean Kirby, due to the public notoriety and financial gain of participating in events during the three-day Florida Classic Weekend,” the lawsuit said. After Mr. Champion’s death, the band was suspended indefinitely . Dr. Ammons had been under considerable pressure for months to step down. On June 7, the university’s board of trustees handed him a no-confidence vote. In December, a month after Mr. Champion’s death, Gov. Rick Scott asked the board to suspend Dr. Ammons, a request that was rebuffed. In his resignation letter to Solomon Badger, the chairman of the board, Dr. Ammons said that he had accomplished what the board asked of him recently: He moved quickly to put together a “competent team of key administrators” to deal with the challenges the university faces in the wake of the scandal. “When the next president experiences her or his transition in, she or he will very likely find additional challenges, albeit not nearly to the extent of which I faced at the outset, or those I am facing now,” Dr. Ammons wrote. Since Mr. Champion’s death, Florida A&M, the state’s only historically black public university, has faced considerable criticism. A number of serious hazings have come to light. The university’s band finances are being investigated for irregularities by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. And investigators found that some band members were not university students. But it was Mr. Champion’s death that upended the university, an institution known for having graduated the state’s top black professionals and politicians. After months of investigation, 11 band members, including three fellow drum majors, were charged in May with felony hazing; two others face misdemeanor charges. Mr. Champion died after being beaten and kicked as he made his way to the back of a chartered bus in Orlando in a ritual called “Crossing Bus C,” the lawsuit states. He also sat in the so-called hot seat at the back of the bus, where he was struck and deprived of oxygen for brief moments, the lawsuit said. Orange County investigators say that Mr. Champion volunteered for the ritual — as do many members — believing he needed to earn respect. His parents have said they do not believe their son would have agreed to the ritual. | Florida A&M University;Hazing;Deaths (Fatalities);Suspensions Dismissals and Resignations;Suits and Litigation;Ammons James H;Champion Robert;Colleges and Universities;Florida |
ny0289705 | [
"sports"
] | 2016/01/27 | With Punch, Blake Griffin Breaks Hand and Will Miss Time | Blake Griffin of the Los Angeles Clippers was involved in a physical altercation Saturday in Toronto that left him with a broken right hand, which could keep him out of action for a month or more. In a statement released Tuesday, the team said that Griffin, 26, sustained the fracture “throwing a punch,” but provided no other details as to what occurred. But according to multiple reports, Griffin, a five-time All-Star, got into an argument with Matias Testi, the team’s assistant equipment manager, at a restaurant during a team trip, and struck him, causing the injury to his hand. Both men were sent back to Los Angeles after the altercation, according to the reports, and it was there that Griffin underwent surgery to repair a spiral fracture in the fourth metacarpal. The Clippers and the N.B.A. were still investigating the episode on Tuesday, and the Clippers noted that further disciplinary actions could be forthcoming. “This conduct has no place in our organization and this incident does not represent who we are as a team,” the Clippers said in the statement. “We are conducting a full investigation with assistance from the N.B.A. At the conclusion of the investigation, appropriate action will be taken.” Such action, presumably, could include a suspension of Griffin. Griffin had already been sidelined since Dec. 26 with a partly torn tendon in his left quadriceps muscle, but he was thought to be nearing a return in the coming days. The Clippers are 29-16, the fourth-best mark in the Western Conference, and in Griffin’s absence, they had gone 12-3. But in a conference in which the Clippers are trying to contend with two dominant teams — the 41-4 Golden State Warriors and the 38-7 San Antonio Spurs — the continued absence of Griffin is a significant setback. That sentiment came across clearly in Clippers Coach Doc Rivers’s remarks to reporters before his team beat the Pacers, 91-89, on Tuesday night. “I’m not satisfied,” Rivers said in reference to the episode concerning Griffin. “I’m not satisfied with anything. I’m talking about a non-basketball issue right now, so I’m not satisfied with anything.” Rivers added: “It happened, but it shouldn’t happen. It’s frustrating. You don’t want it to happen to anyone. You don’t want it to happen during the season. You don’t want it to happen after the season.” Rivers also said he was skeptical that Griffin would be back within four to six weeks, which was the timetable the Clippers cited in their statement. “I always say four to six weeks with a broken hand is unrealistic,” he said. When not hurt, Griffin has been having a strong season on the court, averaging 23.2 points, 8.7 rebounds and 5.0 assists a game. A former N.B.A. rookie of the year and slam-dunk contest winner, he has been one of the league’s most popular and marketable players in recent years, appearing in countless N.B.A. promotions and lighthearted commercials for a bevy of sponsors. This was apparently not his first altercation away from the court. In November 2014, Griffin was accused of slapping a man and grabbing his phone at a Las Vegas Club. Griffin was charged with misdemeanor battery, but the case was later dropped. In Tuesday’s victory, Chris Paul scored 26 points and J. J. Redick added 19 to help thwart host Indiana’s late comeback. HEAT 102, NETS 98 Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh each scored 27 points, leading visiting Miami to a win over the Nets. Wade also had eight assists and four rebounds. Justise Winslow added 13 points and 7 rebounds for the Heat. Andrea Bargnani had 20 points and Joe Johnson 15 for the Nets. The Heat led, 99-96, when Wayne Ellington missed a 3-point shot that would have tied it. Bosh then hit one of two free throws, and the Heat held on. (AP) 76ERS 113, SUNS 103 Ish Smith had 20 points and 9 assists and Robert Covington scored 19 points to lead host Philadelphia to a win. The Sixers led almost the entire game against the slumping Suns and built a 19-point advantage. Nik Stauskas scored 15 points and Nerlens Noel 14 for the Sixers. (AP) RAPTORS 106, WIZARDS 89 The All-Star starter Kyle Lowry scored 29 points before leaving with an injury in the final minutes, and Toronto beat visiting Washington for the Raptors’ ninth straight win, matching a franchise-best mark. Lowry left and went up the tunnel toward the Raptors’ locker room with what appeared to be an injured hand with just under four minutes to go in the fourth quarter. He briefly returned before trainers escorted him back under the stands. John Wall led the way for the Wizards with 18 points and 14 assists. (AP) BUCKS 107, MAGIC 100 Giannis Antetokounmpo dunked eight times and scored 25 points as host Milwaukee, with Coach Jason Kidd back on the bench, sent Orlando to its seventh straight loss. Kidd missed 17 games after having surgery on his right hip Dec. 21. (AP) | Basketball;Blake Griffin;Clippers |
ny0225185 | [
"sports",
"golf"
] | 2010/10/18 | Mediate Earns 6th Title With One-Stroke Victory | Rocco Mediate holed out for eagle for the fourth straight day, hitting a pitching wedge approach from 116 yards into the cup on the par-4 17th hole en route to a one-stroke victory in the Frys.com Open in San Martin, Calif. Mediate won his sixth PGA Tour title and first since 2002, finishing with a two-over-par 73. ¶Beatriz Recari overcame a bogey at No. 17 to earn her first L.P.G.A. Tour title, beating Gwladys Nocera by a stroke at the CVS Pharmacy Challenge in Danville, Calif. Recari, a tour rookie, parred the final hole for a two-under-par 70 and a 14-under 274 total. lpga (AP) ¶Richard Green started the day seven shots behind the leader but shot a seven-under-par 65 to win the Portugal Masters in Vilamoura, beating four players by two strokes. green | Golf;PGA Tour Inc;Mediate Rocco |
ny0194157 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2009/11/17 | Grand Central’s Water Fountains: Free, Pure and Overlooked | I might not have appreciated the marvel of the Grand Central Terminal water fountain if it hadn’t been for the notebook. I had run into Posman Books after getting off my train and finding myself without a notebook, and grabbed what Moleskine , the high-end paper packager, calls a reporter’s notebook. I’m a reporter; it spoke to me. Until I got to the counter and learned it cost a cool $17.95 plus tax, a sum no reporter I know would shell out for a notebook, even if it came with the story already written in perfect Pulitzer-worthy prose. I put the notebook back, and felt a flash of frustration. Now I needed a notebook and a drink of water. For most of my adult life, I’ve either commuted through Grand Central or lived within five blocks of it, but I didn’t know of a water fountain in the place. I was on the brink of buying a bottle of water along with my not-quite-as-overpriced notebook at Rite-Aid, but balked. It’s not just that bottled water is a waste of money and plastic; I also never need as much as a bottle carries, so it would either go to waste or I’d lug it around all day, with a lot of overpriced liquid weighing down my bag. Maybe the saleswoman knew where a water fountain might be. She didn’t, but asked someone. There was one right by the Chase A.T.M.’s. There, just a 30-second walk from the saleswoman, who surely must occasionally feel thirst, was the perfect water fountain. The spout juts out from the cool, beige Botticino marble wall of Grand Central, a handsome basin below it, a marble relief of some natural harvest above. Water was arcing above the spout, so high that I felt reassured no thirsty germy toddler had mouthed the metal at the base. A fluid piece of accessible history, that fountain, I later learned, has conveniently been spouting water almost continually since the terminal opened in 1913. I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed this small wonder. Just across the way from a store where someone was charging $20 for a few hundred sheets of paper, the water fountain was proffering its goods free. Here it was, the ideal nourishment — nonfat, ice-cold, high-fructose-corn-syrup-free. If it’s good and it’s free in New York, you usually have to get there pretty early to get it. But at Grand Central Terminal, which 700,000 people hustle through every single day, there was not even so much as a line for the water. I took a drink, stood back, admired the carvings of oak leaves and acorns — a Vanderbilt family symbol — and drank some more. Then I looked up. A police officer was looking at me as if I’d just lapped up some water on one of the tracks. So it’s free, it’s cold, it’s pretty, it’s a Proustian trip back to splashy childhood satiations — is it safe? A phone call to Metro-North revealed that the terminal’s two water fountains are cleaned daily between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m., and that a test last year confirmed the water was at least lead-free. A quick Google search of the medical literature on water fountains suggested that the real risk of germ contamination lies in the fountain handle. Given how few people use that water fountain — seven in the course of an hour I spent watching it during the Monday morning rush — chances are it’s a lot safer than the average subway pole. Of the seven people who used the fountain, only one was a woman. Maybe it’s the lipstick, or that women are more conscientious about hygiene, or think there’s something decidedly unchic about drinking from a public fountain. I like to think that just as the humble canvas tote has been transformed into a fashion and political statement — “I’m hip, therefore I recycle” — one day there will be a certain cachet in stopping to join a line in front of a public water fountain. Standing in such a line will signify: I eschew the landfill’s friend, the plastic water bottle. I resist the mass marketing of sugary coffees and teas and juices. At a minimum, it will signify what I wanted to say to the cop who was looking at me as if I’d just done something indecent in public: So sue me, I’m thirsty. Next time you pass through Grand Central, feast your eyes and drink freely of what’s free. And if you’ve got some hand sanitizer with you, that probably wouldn’t hurt. | Grand Central Terminal (NYC);New York City;Water |
ny0131873 | [
"sports",
"basketball"
] | 2012/12/26 | Heat Beat Thunder in Finals Reunion | MIAMI — A decade and a half has passed since the N.B.A. finals have featured the same matchup for two straight years. What seemed to happen frequently in the 1980s and the halcyon days of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird has not taken place since the Chicago Bulls vanquished the Utah Jazz in consecutive championship series in 1997 and 1998. Judging from the Miami Heat ’s 103-97 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder on Tuesday, that rematch drought in the finals has an excellent chance of ending. In a regular-season shootout that pulsated with playoff intensity, right down to the five technical fouls, Kevin Durant’s 33 points were not quite enough to stop his good friend LeBron James (29 points) and the Heat. Durant and Russell Westbrook each missed 3-point attempts that could have tied the score in the final 10 seconds as the Heat held on before an American Airlines Arena record crowd of 20,300. “It was on line,” Durant said of his shot from the left wing. “Whoever was guarding me put a hand up, and I could barely see the rim. I practice off-balance shots all the time, especially from deep. It looked good.” Kendrick Perkins tapped the rebound to Westbrook, who missed as Dwyane Wade pressured him. Westbrook, who thought he was fouled, slammed his fist onto the scorer’s table and picked up the final technical foul. Tuesday’s loss was just the second for the Thunder in the past month, the other coming last week at Minnesota to end a 12-game winning streak. The Heat won for the seventh time in eight games since a second 20-point loss to the Knicks on Dec. 6. No team has scored more than 97 points against the Heat during that run, an upturn that has coincided with increased playing time for the rugged defenders Udonis Haslem and Joel Anthony. The last time these teams met, the Heat put the finishing touches on a five-game triumph in the finals. That was a little more than six months ago, on a steamy June night that offered the memorable image of James bouncing ecstatically in place on the Heat sideline, embracing his teammates and coaches as the series’s final seconds ran out and his long-awaited championship was secured. Tuesday’s reunion pitted the two teams with the top winning percentage in each conference. A finals rematch is well within reason, although the Thunder would seem to face more potential hurdles in getting out of the Western Conference than the Heat might encounter in the East. “They are absolutely relentless,” Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra said. “You cannot relax for a single possession against them.” The Thunder attempted 38 free throws to the Heat’s 19. Oklahoma City also won the rebounding battle (39-34) but never led by more than 4 points after digging an early 12-point hole. Durant had just 8 points while battling foul trouble in the first half but heated up down the stretch. He smiled when asked about a possible finals rematch. “Of course you would love to see this matchup again,” he said. “I would love to see it, but you never know. We can’t think too far down the line. We can’t get ahead of ourselves. That’s one thing I’m preaching to the guys.” Four of the N.B.A.’s top 11 scorers entering Tuesday were on the court, including three of the top six, with the off-season workout tandem of Durant (third at 27.9 points a game) and James (fifth at 25.4) leading the way. James turned and barked into Durant’s face a couple of times during the emotional showdown, but afterward, Durant smiled and said he was not listening. “Both teams have multiple once-in-a-generational players,” Spoelstra said. “You don’t see that too often.” The concentration of scoring talent could have been even more impressive if not for the off-season trade that sent James Harden, who was fourth in the league at 25.6 points a game, to Houston from the Thunder. Wade added 21 points and Mario Chalmers 20 for the Heat. Westbrook scored 21 for Oklahoma City. James has scored 20 or more points in the Heat’s first 25 games, a career best. Since the N.B.A.’s merger with the American Basketball Association in the mid-1970s, the only players to open seasons with longer streaks of 20-plus points were Kevin McHale (28 games) in 1986-87 and George Gervin (45 games) in 1981-82. James’s streak of foul-free basketball, dating to Dec. 8, ended at 254-plus minutes early in Tuesday’s game after he bumped Thunder center Serge Ibaka on a baseline drive. James also picked up a rare technical foul late in the first quarter. The Heat and the Thunder will play once more in the regular season, on Feb. 14 in Oklahoma City. After that, few would be surprised to see them meet again in June. | Basketball;Oklahoma City Thunder;Miami Heat;Wade Dwyane;James LeBron |
ny0033400 | [
"us"
] | 2013/12/19 | Growth in U.S. Health Care Spending Slows | It is a sweeping trend that should mean bigger paychecks for middle-class households and hundreds of billions of dollars in savings for the government. Yet only one in 20 Americans is aware of it. Nationally, spending on health care is growing at the slowest pace ever recorded. Annual spending on health care often grew more than 10 percent a year during the 1970s and ’80s. Growth dipped in the 1990s, only to rise again, but starting in the early 2000s, the rate began falling. It is now just about 4 percent a year. Yet in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, just 5 percent of all Americans — and 3 percent of uninsured respondents — said that health care spending has moderated. Half of respondents said that costs have been going up at a faster rate lately. That might be in part because Americans are paying more out of pocket for their health care. For instance, deductibles — the amount a covered individual has to pay for health care before the plan kicks in to cover the remaining costs — have become more common and more expensive. The percentage of Americans enrolled in a health plan with a deductible of at least $1,000 has climbed to 38 percent in 2013 from 18 percent in 2008, according to a recent survey by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. And over the same period, the average deductible has increased to $1,097 from $735. Normally, that moderation in health spending would mean households would receive higher wages: Businesses spending less on health premiums would spend more on salaries and bonuses, as happened in the 1990s, economists said. But because of the weak economy and high rates of unemployment, employers have not felt pressured to increase wages, leaving households struggling with stagnant earnings and bigger out-of-pocket health costs — which explains why the national spending slowdown remains invisible to them. | Health Insurance;Polls;US Economy |
ny0118163 | [
"science"
] | 2012/10/23 | Isolated Male Orangutans Travel Far to Mate | There are only about 6,600 orangutans left in Sumatra. Once found throughout the Indonesian island, the orangutans now live in just a few forest patches on the northern tip of the island. Now a genetics study reveals that the population patches are not as isolated as they seem, and that interbreeding occurs across rivers and mountainous areas. Protecting the existing corridors among these small populations is important to ensure that the species survives, said Alexander Nater , an evolutionary biologist at the University of Zurich and the study’s lead author. “It is important that all Sumatran orangutans act like a large population for future survival,” he said. The research , reported in The Journal of Heredity, was part of Dr. Nater’s doctoral work at the University of Zurich Anthropological Institute and Museum. Sumatran orangutans build new nests each night to sleep in, and the researchers climbed trees to get hair samples from abandoned nests. They used the hair, along with blood and fecal samples, to look at the apes’ genealogy. By looking at mitochondrial DNA, they were able to study the orangutans’ maternal lineage and found that females always settle close to their mothers. Autosomal microsatellites (highly repetitive stretches of DNA inherited from both parents) revealed more about the paternal lineage. It is the males who navigate rivers and mountains and mate with females outside their local populations, the researchers found. While it is a healthy sign that males cross boundaries and improve genetic diversity, deforestation is still a threat to the species. The region is well suited for palm oil plantations, and companies are eager to make use of the fertile, forested land the orangutans rely on, Dr. Nater said. | Monkeys and Apes;Research;Genetics and Heredity;DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid);Endangered and Extinct Species;Sumatra (Indonesia);Heredity (Journal);Journal of Heredity |
ny0216767 | [
"business"
] | 2010/04/01 | Failed Banks Keep F.D.I.C’s Top Deal-Makers Busy | WASHINGTON JOE JIAMPIETRO and Jim Wigand are two of the busiest deal-makers around, calling on financial titans like Wilbur Ross and John Paulson, and orchestrating some of the biggest and most complex transactions in banking. Their pay? Each earned less than $260,000 last year. Their employer? The United States government. From their perch at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation , the two senior officials are responsible for sorting through the carnage of the financial crisis and finding buyers for the deposits, branches and loans of more than 200 failed banks. Between them, Mr. Wigand and Mr. Jiampietro have sold more than $508 billion in assets over the last two years, from financial giants like Washington Mutual and Corus Bankshares to little-noticed community lenders. They have reeled in new investors with innovative transactions. One October night, they announced they had found a buyer for nine failed banks. “Just take a look at the deal tables,” Mr. Jiampietro boasted, half-jokingly. “We would have 100 percent market share.” By several measures, Mr. Jiampietro and Mr. Wigand seem to have performed well for the government — although it could take years to see how their transactions work out. They have done this by acting like bankers, not bureaucrats, in negotiating deals meant to protect the savings of depositors and get the financial system back on its feet. “You don’t want inexperienced rookies in there up against the professionals on the other side,” said one senior federal official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because he regularly interacts with banks. Wall Street does not mistake them for amateurs, either, although some of their deals have caused investors to grumble. Bond investors have lashed out at the structure of the Washington Mutual deal, which penalized them but protected the F.D.I.C.’s insurance fund from a potentially devastating loss. Some federal watchdogs say the government has offered too many sweetheart terms to potential buyers. And some private equity firms complained that the agency’s rules limited their ability to compete in auctions with traditional bank bidders. One thing is not in doubt: Mr. Wigand and Mr. Jiampietro are likely to stay busy for some time. Hundreds of small and midsize banks are expected to collapse in the coming years, putting enormous pressure on the F.D.I.C. deal team to find buyers or investors. Most people do not think of marathon deal-making as typical government work. But Mr. Wigand, 53, and Mr. Jiampietro, 44, aren’t your typical government employees. Mr. Wigand, a career civil servant with a technocratic bent befitting the son of a NASA engineer, has worked on failed bank transactions for more than two decades. He helped write the F.D.I.C. field manual on such deals, based on his experience selling assets during the savings and loan crisis. Now, as the agency’s deputy director for bank resolutions, Mr. Wigand is applying those lessons to today’s environment. Mr. Jiampietro, an investment banker and a lawyer, has drawn on previous experience in Washington and on Wall Street in his role as a top adviser to the F.D.I.C. chairwoman, Sheila C. Bair. A former aide to the Senate Banking Committee, Mr. Jiampietro spent more than a decade advising financial firms on mergers and other complex transactions. (He has also kept a toe in politics, donating money to the Obama campaign and to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, a childhood friend.) To join the F.D.I.C., in March 2009, he took himself out of consideration for a senior Treasury Department post. Together, from a government building just blocks from the White House, Mr. Wigand and Mr. Jiampietro work with a core group of a dozen senior managers and sometimes as many as 200 federal employees, whom they are quick to credit for any success. They also rely on a coterie of outside firms, including Perella Weinberg Partners and others, that help them value and manage the assets of failed banks. But they approach the job as if they were co-heads of the government’s own financial institutions group. They eschew Washington’s alphabet-soup acronyms in favor of jargon like “doughnut structures,” “true-ups” and “equity kickers.” And like their Wall Street colleagues, they shroud their deal-making plans under the cover of code names. (The sale of Washington Mutual was known as Project Orca, while the one for BankUnited of Florida was called Project Beach.) Mr. Wigand specializes in structuring transactions and overseeing the deal team’s daily operations. Mr. Jiampietro serves as the F.D.I.C.’s eyes and ears in the markets, and advises on the biggest and most complex deals. He regularly meets with bank executives, hedge fund managers and other big investors to get their feedback on deal terms and other agency policies. Advisers who sit on the other side of the negotiating table say the two are open-minded, pragmatic and tough. “They listen; they probe,” said H. Rodgin Cohen, a top bank lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell. “They will try to spend the time to think through ideas that you have.” Of course, there are differences between deal-making in the private and public sectors. Most investment bankers spend years courting clients to win advisory work. F.D.I.C. officials do not have to solicit new business: their assignments arise as regulators prepare a takeover of a troubled bank. They are only sellers — with a mandate to minimize losses. (“The business comes to us,” Mr. Wigand noted.) And even though Mr. Wigand and Mr. Jiampietro are among the country’s highest-paid government officials, they each earn less annually than Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, makes in a week. The government deal-makers also play by stricter rules. For example, they must offer the same terms to all prospective bidders, while their colleagues in the private sector can fine-tune a deal to satisfy a specific buyer. By law, they must choose the offer that is “least costly” to the F.D.I.C. fund. And forget about private jets, commemorative deal toys or lavish closing dinners. “Wall Street is all about the money,” said John Douglas, a bank specialist at the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell and a former F.D.I.C. legal chief. “In Washington, you also have to worry about Congressional reaction, public reaction, what it looks like on the front page or when the inspector general comes in.” Over the last two years, the two men have come under ever-rising pressure. Middle-of-the-night board meetings grew so frequent that Mr. Wigand said he had lost track of how many he had participated in. Last summer proved so frantic, Mr. Jiampietro said, that he and Mr. Wigand resorted to holding a planning session on the Amtrak Acela train en route to New York. Sitting at a fold-out table with two deputies, they worked out the complex deal for Corus, a deeply troubled construction lender, that they referred to only as Project Cork. “When we got to Penn Station, all the fundamentals were established,” Mr. Wigand recalled. As fears of bank runs mounted, deal talks that once took months to negotiate were compressed into days. In the case of Colonial Bank, a $25 billion Southeastern regional lender that failed in August, the F.D.I.C. staged an auction just over a week after the disclosure of fraud involving its biggest borrower. Stunned by the news on a Wednesday, Mr. Wigand and Mr. Jiampietro immediately began putting out feelers to several banks that had previously expressed an interest in Colonial. Over the weekend, staff members in Washington and Dallas pulled together a term sheet and other documents for prospective buyers to review. By Monday, the group headed to New York to make a face-to-face pitch to several prospective buyers. Working long hours, they ultimately settled on a bid from the BB&T Corporation of North Carolina that would cost the insurance fund about $2.8 billion. BB&T’s takeover of Colonial was a signature deal for the F.D.I.C. It is among the 124 deals so far that involved a loss-sharing arrangement, a tool Mr. Wigand dusted off from the savings and loan crisis, in which the government agreed to take some of the pain if a buyer incurred losses from a target’s loans. Mr. Wigand and Mr. Jiampietro contend that the arrangement helps raise prices and eases the burden of managing billions of dollars of troubled assets, ultimately saving the insurance fund money. Critics say the terms are too generous to buyers, because the government is responsible for the bulk of the losses. Recently, as bidding has picked up, the agency has scaled back its most buyer-friendly arrangements. “One of the lessons of the last crisis is that you have to adapt to the market and be nimble,” Mr. Wigand said. “It’s not one size fits all.” Their team has adjusted in other ways, as well. After East West Bancorp of California participated in an F.D.I.C.-assisted deal last fall, several top officials noticed that its stock price soared. “A lot of that value creation is coming from us,” Mr. Jiampietro recalled the officials saying. “Shouldn’t the F.D.I.C. get a part of it?” Now, in five recent deals, the agency has been able to get a piece of the upside by obtaining short-term securities like warrants issued by the acquirer. Mr. Wigand and Mr. Jiampietro are introducing other changes, too. They began offering government-guaranteed financing to entice private investors to take some of the most troubled loans from failed banks off the agency’s hands. And as early as this summer, they may start packaging loans from multiple failed banks to create complex mortgage bonds — using the same type of financial alchemy that contributed to the financial crisis to clean up the mess. “You always hear that people in the government don’t work very hard,” Daryl Bible, BB&T’s chief financial officer, said. “That’s not these guys.” | Federal Deposit Insurance Corp;Subprime Mortgage Crisis;Wall Street (NYC) |
ny0027124 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2013/01/16 | Man Killed in Fall Between Subway Cars | After initial reports that a man had been struck and killed by a train after a confrontation on a platform at East 125th Street in Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon, the police said that in fact the man had been killed and another was injured in separate episodes near the station. The man who was killed had been on a train, defecating between two cars, when he fell on the tracks and was struck by the train, said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman. In an unrelated episode, Mr. Browne said, a bloodied man with a broken pelvis emerged from the tracks at the 125th Street station just before the fatal accident. Mr. Browne said the man told investigators that he did not know what had happened to him. The Fire Department said the man was in serious but stable condition at Harlem Hospital Center. The names of those involved were not immediately released. Earlier on Tuesday, the police had said that two men had been involved in a fight on the platform that resulted in both tumbling to the tracks. Mr. Browne said Tuesday evening that the initial information provided by the Police Department had been wrong. | Subway;Manhattan;Fatalities,casualties |
ny0028534 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2013/01/23 | Egypt: Rights Group Accuses Police of Using Torture and Violence | An Egyptian rights group on Tuesday accused the country’s police of “acting like a gang,” torturing detainees and using violence to impose control. The report by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights documented 16 cases of police violence in which 11 people were killed and 10 were tortured inside police stations. Three died under torture during the first four months after President Mohammed Morsi took office on June 30, it said. The police were among the most hated state institutions under Hosni Mubarak, who was deposed in a popular revolt in 2011. “Police still use excessive force, and torture is still systematic just as it was under the Mubarak regime,” the report said. It also accused the police of carrying out random shootings and collective punishment. There was no immediate comment from the government. | Police;Torture;Egypt;Human Rights |
ny0105868 | [
"us"
] | 2012/04/20 | Streetopia Project Imagines a Perfect San Francisco | The last time Erick Lyle was part of a huge undertaking on Market Street, he ended up handcuffed in his underwear. Mr. Lyle, a writer and activist, first arrived in San Francisco in 1993, where he joined a vibrant underground publishing culture and began putting out his own zines. He left briefly and returned in 1997, to the dot-com boom. In 2001, after the bubble had burst, Mr. Lyle and a group of collaborators commandeered an empty building at 949 Market Street. They made art, cooked free food for whoever wanted to eat it and were eventually ejected by the police. Mr. Lyle’s latest project, Streetopia, is a legal and more ambitious version of the 949 Market Street takeover. Streetopia began as an art show to complement a book Mr. Lyle was working on about sidewalk etchings in San Francisco, the unauthorized drawings and words carved in wet cement. The book was put on hold after Mr. Lyle’s computer was stolen, but the modest show has ballooned into a free multisite event featuring more than 80 artists, lectures, film screenings and workshops. The show, which is running in and around downtown from May 18 through June 23, asks participants to imagine a utopian city. “The reason I got so ambitious was because I’d never done anything like this before,” Mr. Lyle said. “I didn’t know how much work it was going to be.” Streetopia arrives at a time when there is a lot of chatter about the quality of the Central Market neighborhood, a crime-plagued area where vacancy rates are higher than in surrounding neighborhoods. The city has long been promising a Mid-Market revamp, hoping to lure arts organizations to the neighborhood and offering Twitter a tax break to relocate its offices to the area. Grey Area Foundation for the Arts, the Black Rock Arts Foundation and S.F. Camerawork are the most recent additions to the neighborhood. “What we’re talking about with this show is art that will improve the neighborhood instead of creating art for a future imagined neighborhood,” Mr. Lyle said. “I think the conversation has to be about what are we doing for the people that are already here.” Mr. Lyle began organizing the show in earnest about a year and a half ago with Chris Johanson and Kal Spelletich, both artists. The three have been friends for nearly 20 years. “I suppose we had similar politics and lifestyle. People find each other in that town,” said Mr. Johanson, who was a high-profile member of San Francisco’s Mission School art movement in the 1990s and showed his work at the Whitney Biennial in 2002. Streetopia’s home base is the Luggage Store Gallery, a nonprofit organization that has had a storefront on Market Street since 1991, as well as an annex in the nearby Tenderloin neighborhood. The gallery provides the surrounding community with everything from a restful garden to free clothing repair. Darryl Smith, co-founder of the gallery, said that at one point he had encouraged Streetopia organizers to look elsewhere. As part of the project, Mr. Lyle and his collaborators plan to build a mini-city within the gallery and a free cafe in the Tenderloin annex, and Mr. Smith wondered if they would have enough space. Mr. Lyle insisted he wanted to work with the gallery, whose history with the neighborhood spanned decades, and Mr. Smith eventually agreed. “Not to use an overly used term, but the show took on a viral nature,” Mr. Smith said, “Someone told another person, and someone told another person.” The show is partially financed through grants obtained by the gallery but is largely a volunteer effort. Free labor will build the miniature city, local building owners are lending the use of their empty storefronts, and grocers are being called on to donate food to the free (volunteer-staffed) kitchen. Ivy Jeanne McClelland, a crisis mental health counselor and artist, will be leading free workshops on herbal medicine making as part of Streetopia. She, too, was part of the 949 Market Street squat. Ms. McClelland said she planned to reach out to downtown residents and tailor her classes to suit their needs. “I get to see up close just how little to no access to comprehensive health care and preventative medical care affects communities,” she said. “What would it look like if we could take health and well-being into our own hands?” Organizers hope that initiatives like Ms. McClelland’s will last beyond the art show. There will be a bread-making workshop, and even a workshop in which participants will be given redwood tree seeds and planting instructions. “Theoretically,” Mr. Lyle said, “there could be a skyline of trees years from now.” As for what a utopian San Francisco would look like, Mr. Lyle said he did not have the answers. “This show is not a sci-fi vision where if we build a certain kind of building and have jet packs, everything will be better,” he said. “Market Street is a crucible for the vast disparities of wealth being played out in our society right now.” | Lyle Erick;Streetopia;Art;San Francisco (Calif) |
ny0197472 | [
"sports",
"football"
] | 2009/10/13 | Sharpton Urges N.F.L. to Oppose Limbaugh Bid for Rams | Al Sharpton urged the N.F.L. in a letter released Monday to reject the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh ’s potential bid to buy the St. Louis Rams . He also asked for a meeting with N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell . It was the latest indication of the controversy Limbaugh’s involvement in the bid has caused, months before N.F.L. owners are expected to consider a new ownership group for the Rams. In his letter , Sharpton, the president of the National Action Network , a civil rights organization, said that the N.F.L. should reject the bid by Limbaugh because he would be bad for the league. Goodell is in Boston, attending owners meetings through Wednesday, and will respond to the letter when he returns, the league spokesman Greg Aiello said. Limbaugh taped an interview for the “Today” show, to be broadcast Tuesday and Wednesday, in which he said the attention generated by his attempt to buy the Rams showed that his detractors wanted to pigeonhole him. “They’re just gonna go nuts,” Limbaugh was quoted saying of his detractors in an account of the interview on MSNBC.com . “This is the kind of stuff they’ve been trying to make sure doesn’t happen with me. All this stuff is the mainstreaming of Rush Limbaugh from off this far-right fringe they’ve tried to put me. I just keep tiptoeing into the mainstream. And it just irritates them.” Limbaugh, a Missouri native who lives in Palm Beach, Fla., is an avid sports fan. He has teamed with Dave Checketts , the principal owner of the St. Louis Blues hockey team and a former Madison Square Garden executive, in making the bid for the Rams. There is no guarantee that their bid would prevail for the 60 percent of the team that is for sale by the family of the former longtime owner Georgia Frontiere , who died in January 2008. Checketts , in a telephone interview, said: “I have a confidentiality agreement with Goldman Sachs as part of the bid process. I absolutely cannot say anything about any of it.” Three to six groups are reported to be interested in bidding for the team, which Forbes magazine valued last month at $913 million. Stan Kroenke , who owns the other 40 percent of the team, has the right to match any offer. The N.F.L. is working with Frontiere’s family, but would not discuss the potential ownership groups or their bids. The sale also raises the question of whether new owners would move the team from St. Louis. Frontiere’s family has said little. In a statement last week, Chip Rosenbloom, the owner, said: “Our strategic review of our ownership of the Rams continues. We will make an announcement upon the completion of the process.” The winning bidder would have to be approved by a three-fourths majority of the league’s other 31 owners. The perception is that owners will accept whoever has the deepest pockets, but they may be reluctant to invite a regular source of controversy into their midst. Last year, when Stanley Druckenmiller , the president of a hedge fund company, tried to buy a controlling interest in the Pittsburgh Steelers by buying up the shares owned by the younger brothers of the team’s chairman, Dan Rooney, Goodell said that the N.F.L. would do everything it could to help Rooney retain control of the team. Druckenmiller withdrew his offer . Goodell has said nothing about Limbaugh’s bid, although an outcry has built since Limbaugh went public last week with his involvement. Retired and current N.F.L. players, who rarely take an interest in ownership transactions, have said that they would not be interested in playing for a Limbaugh-owned team and that the Rams would have trouble attracting free agents. Roman Oben , a former player who is now the chairman of a town Democratic Party in New Jersey, has been particularly vocal. “The biggest fear that I share, and a lot of people share with me, is that you just don’t want a guy with these extreme views, who has made a living off those views, getting in the ear of upper management and ownership to create some of these policies,” Oben said in a telephone interview. “If you start letting a guy like Rush Limbaugh in, he would assert himself into one of these committees and he will start to talk about policy. That will affect all N.F.L. players. It’s not a black-and-white thing.” The players’ opposition to Limbaugh is rooted largely in his comments about race. The most famous of those came when he spoke about Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb in 2003, while Limbaugh worked for ESPN. “The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well,” Limbaugh said during a broadcast then. “There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn’t deserve.” Not surprisingly, McNabb said last week that he would not play for the Rams if Limbaugh were the owner. And over the weekend, the executive director of the players union, DeMaurice Smith , sent an e-mail message to the union’s executive committee in which he expressed his concern about Limbaugh and encouraged players to speak their minds. The union spokesman George Atallah said Monday that Smith’s message should not be construed as union opposition to Limbaugh, because it has no role in the ownership process. “I think it’s safe to characterize it that he realizes he’s a polarizing figure and it would be better if he weren’t part of that group,” Atallah said. | Football;St Louis Rams;National Football League;National Action Network;Sharpton Al;Limbaugh Rush;Goodell Roger;Checketts Dave;St Louis (Mo) |
ny0050844 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2014/10/26 | Matty Talty, a Musical Concierge From County Clare | The old man with the cap sidled up to a stranger’s table and placed a small instrument case down. “I’m Matty Talty of County Clare, and I’m 91 years of age,” he said, offering a firm handshake. “I worked in construction — that’s why I have this grip.” You have come to the regular Monday night session at the Landmark Tavern in Hell’s Kitchen, where musicians gather in one corner to play traditional Irish music. And now here is Mr. Talty hooking his cane on your table and asking you where in Ireland you — or your parents or, perhaps, grandparents — are from. He pulls out his business card, which describes him as “The old man with the cap,” the cap being made of patchwork wool, with a pendant of St. Patrick at its peak. Suddenly, you feel as if you are in some cozy snug in the Irish countryside. Mr. Talty moves on to other strangers’ tables, for surely they must have some Irish relatives as well. In this way, Mr. Talty has made himself the greeter for the session, a concierge of sorts, who lends a taste of the old country to the proceedings, said the musicians’ leader, Don Meade. Video Matthew Talty, 91, first learned to play the concertina by ear as a child, growing up in a farmhouse in County Clare, Ireland. After 60 years of not playing he resumed in his mid-80s. Credit Credit Julie Glassberg for The New York Times When the time is right, Mr. Talty pulls his concertina, a small, accordionlike instrument, out of its case and joins the group. On Monday night, as he began to play the ballad “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” and then “The Jolly Tinker,” those rough construction worker’s hands danced nimbly over the buttons of the instrument. Mr. Talty played the concertina in his youth, growing up in a farmhouse in County Clare. But he left it and music-making behind when he departed Ireland as a young man. It was not until his mid-80s that he picked up the instrument again, he said, but the old songs flowed back like the River Shannon. At the Landmark, Mr. Talty sits out the more intricate lines played by the expert musicians, but his ballads and jigs and reels evoke a soulful connection to what Yeats called “the deep heart’s core” of rural Ireland. “People just get drawn to him,” said Mr. Talty’s daughter Fidelma Dolan. “And it’s great for him — it helps keep him going.” Mr. Talty lives alone in a house he built in the Country Club section of the Bronx. Until recently, he would drive himself to the Landmark sessions, and others in Manhattan and Yonkers, and order a pint of Guinness. Now, relatives take turns driving him. Mr. Talty said he grew up the 14th of 16 children, in a thatch-roofed farmhouse with no electricity or plumbing, in the town of Ennis. “At that time there was a concertina in every house in Clare,” he said. Young Matty taught himself to play his father’s instrument by listening to local masters such as Chris Droney , Gerard Commane and Pakie Russell , who would visit the house in the evenings. “I had the music in my ears since I was a baby,” Mr. Talty said. “I was like a bird — I could pick up any tune in a few minutes.” By third grade or so, he had quit school to work the farm. At age 24, he left for England, and left his concertina behind in Ireland, he said, “because I had to go into the world and make a living.” In the mid-1950s, Mr. Talty moved to New York and settled with his wife, Molly, and their three children in the Bronx. After a few years working as a laborer and a building superintendent, he began building houses and bars. He would go on to own and operate six bars himself, mostly in the Bronx. “I’ve built more bars than anybody,” he said. “A fellow once asked me if I had enough experience building bars to build him one. I said, ‘If you come and have one drink in every bar I’ve built, and you’re still standing, I’ll build you a bar for free.' ” When Mr. Talty retired, his son, Matthew, bought him a concertina. When Molly died several years ago, he played the instrument at her grave site. Then the last of his 15 siblings died, and Matthew died of cancer in March. Mr. Talty was devastated, which has made the socializing at the music sessions that much more comforting, he said. “If I gave up playing that concertina, I’d start going downhill very rapidly,” Mr. Talty said. He sat tapping his cane on the floor in time to the music and said, “I’m just happy at my age to be able to play with these young guys.” | Matty Talty;Restaurant;Music;Irish American;bars,nightclubs;Hell's Kitchen Manhattan;Landmark Tavern |
ny0121486 | [
"us"
] | 2012/09/03 | A Free Online University Tests the Waters | After a lifetime in business and academia, Shai Reshef finally found something he could not do: retire. So in 2009, Mr. Reshef, an Israeli-born entrepreneur, founded University of the People, an online school offering a four-year U.S.-style undergraduate education for free. The institution, based in Pasadena, California, has admitted 1,500 students from 132 countries. While most of its initial financing came from Mr. Reshef, it has since drawn the support of organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and corporations like Hewlett Packard. The teachers, many from top universities, are all volunteers. The provost, David Harris Cohen, was vice president of Columbia University. Last year, New York University agreed that students who successfully finished their first year at University of the People would be eligible to apply to N.Y.U. Abu Dhabi, where they would complete their education free if accepted. Mr. Reshef described his campaign to “open the gates of higher education to those who cannot afford it.” Q. How did you get started? A. I looked around and saw that everything that was needed was already available for free. All I had to do was bring it together. I mean open source technology, available for anyone to use for free; open educational resources; content that people produce and put on the Internet for everyone to use. And the new Internet culture of social networking, where people share, teach and learn from each other for free. Q. Can students study any subject? A. No. We offer only business administration and computer science degrees. These are the two programs that are most likely to help people find a better job, and that’s what our students want. They want a better chance for the future. But also, which is just as important for us, these two programs are global. Our program is 40 courses long. And every time a student takes a class they are put together with 25 students from 25 countries. Imagine what happens when students from India and Pakistan study together. They learn to know each other, to respect each other. Instead of being enemies outside of the class, they become friends. We believe that by doing so we make peace a bit closer. Q. What about the instructors? A. For our 1,500 students we have 2,900 volunteer professors who jumped on board to help our students — a ratio of about two professors for every student. I don’t think there are many universities with this ratio. Q. What do students pay? A. When they apply, students have to pay an application fee, which ranges from $10 to $50 depending on the gross domestic product of their country of residence. For example, the United States would be $50. So would the United Kingdom and Japan. Q. What are some $10 countries? A. South Sudan, Ethiopia, Nepal. If they don’t have it, we waive it. But starting in September we are also asking our students to pay for exams. While we waive 95 percent of the cost of higher education, we want the program to become financially sustainable. An exam costs us $100 to administer and grade. But if a student can’t afford that, he or she can go to our micro-scholarship portal. Q. Explain the micro-scholarship portal. A. We are the second largest university on Facebook after Harvard, which obviously means we should try harder, right? What we are trying to do there is to tell them, “Please help our students, some of them can’t even afford the $100 for an exam.” Let’s say a student needs $500. This will come from small amounts of $5 or $10 rather than a single donation. Also there will be a direct connection between the students and the donors. Q. How does the teaching work? A. When students sign up for a class they are put together with students from 20 or more different countries. They study together for 10 weeks. When they go into the “classroom,” the first thing that they see is the profile of their fellow students, which is very similar to a Facebook profile. Then they find the lecture notes for the week, the reading assignment for the week and the homework assignment. They also find the discussion question of the week. The discussion question is the core of our studies. Let’s say the first student is Chinese. Just because the morning starts earlier in China, so he will go into the classroom, read the material, see the discussion question and post his own original contribution to the discussion. Let’s say that the second student is Indonesian and she does the same thing. But she decides to comment on what the Chinese student said. Every week each student is expected to make one original contribution. The instructor reads everything going on in the classroom, but gets involved only if the peer-to-peer learning doesn’t work as well as it should. For example, if a student asks a question and none of their fellow students was able to answer it. Or a student says something wrong and nobody corrected him or her. At the end of the week the students take a quiz to see if they have mastered the material. They hand in their homework, which is assigned randomly to peers and graded by them, under the supervision of an instructor. They get a grade, start a new topic next week. At the end of 10 weeks they take a final exam and go on to the next course Currently, you are in the process of applying for accreditation from an agency recognized by the U.S. government. What difference will being accredited make? A. We are talking about students from the entire world. Having said that, most of our students, be they American or from developing countries, appreciate the American higher education system. They want to study in an American university. And our students want us to be accredited. Accreditation means, for a student, both that it’s a legitimate institution and that they will find a job. All over the world people are worried about this phenomenon of diploma mills. And people are afraid of institutions which are not legitimate. And I think that they are right. Because accreditation is a stamp of quality. Q. What distinguishes University of the People from other online universities like P2P University ? A. That’s a good question, but I would even broaden it to include the new phenomenon where Harvard and M.I.T. give away their courses for free online to hundreds of thousands of people. We are not doing this just for the sake of the knowledge. We are offering a degree program. P2P is a great thing for people who are seeking knowledge. People can study any subject they want. But that is not a diploma. The same goes for Harvard and Stanford putting their courses online. These are courses that hundreds of thousands of people take, and great professors teach them. But people do not get credit for them. Q. What are some of the factors behind limiting the number of students? A. It’s less than three years since we started teaching our first students. So while we are done developing all the courses, we’re still working on strengthening our academic quality. We want to make sure that the quality is there. And that whatever is needed to give good service to our students is also there before we start to grow faster. Every 10 weeks we accept another 100 students. We’ll do that for the next few terms, until we feel completely confident about our academic base, and about our ability to grow, and at that point we’ll start to grow much faster. | Education;Colleges and Universities;Computers and the Internet;Pasadena (Calif);United States |
ny0156237 | [
"science"
] | 2008/06/17 | Tiny, Clingy and Destructive, Mussel Makes Its Way West | LAKE MEAD, Nev. — Kneeling at the edge of the dock, Wen Baldwin began hauling on a length of nylon rope that disappeared into the depths of Lake Mead. One after another, an odd assemblage of objects — a water bottle, a chunk of concrete, a pair of flip-flops, a steel anchor — emerged from the emerald-green waters. A living blanket of tiny, striped mussels covered each one. “The conditions here are ideal for these things, absolutely ideal,” said Mr. Baldwin, 70, a retired design engineer and a National Park Service volunteer. The mussel-coated debris is unmistakable evidence of an event occurring silently and largely out of sight — the colonization of the Colorado River by the quagga mussel, a fingernail-size Eurasian bivalve with an astonishing sex drive and a nasty reputation for causing economic and ecological havoc. Like the closely related zebra mussel, the quagga can cling tenaciously to hard surfaces, like the equipment of the many hydroelectric and water-supply plants along the lower Colorado. “They’re going to be all over the pipes, all over the intakes,” said Gary L. Fahnenstiel, senior ecologist with the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “It’s going to be devastating.” Dr. Fahnenstiel ought to know. The quagga has carpeted much of the Great Lakes, largely displacing the better-known zebra. Its invasion of the Colorado, presumably after crossing the Rockies on recreational boats hitched to trailers, foretells major disruptions not just for utilities, but also for the entire ecology of the lower river. By stripping nutrients and microorganisms from the water, the mussel could do grave damage to a wide variety of species, including small invertebrates, fish and birds. “This is one bad hombre,” Dr. Fahnenstiel said. “It’s almost your worst-case scenario for affecting the entire food chain.” The quagga’s introduction in the Colorado can hardly be a surprise. For almost 10 years, a small chorus has warned of ruinous consequences if the mussels crossed into the West. In 1998, a group called the 100th Meridian Initiative brought together biologists, wildlife officials, water managers, environmentalists and others with the goal of preventing invasive species from crossing the 100th meridian, a historical boundary separating East and West. For seven years, Mr. Baldwin has been the group’s sentinel at Lake Mead. In 2001, Mr. Baldwin, then president of the Lake Mead Boat Owners Association, heard a presentation by a biologist from the initiative on the zebra mussel. The zebra invaded the Great Lakes from Ukraine in the 1980s and spread to major rivers and more than 800 lakes. Mr. Baldwin lobbied officials at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area for more inspections of recreational boats, which carry mussels in bilge pumps and live bait wells. He distributed brochures and spoke widely on the threat. “I started researching it and put on some programs, trying to get people to pay attention. Some did. Most didn’t.” He even built monitoring stations on docks around the lake, but found nothing. In January 2007, however, Mr. Baldwin received a call from a maintenance worker who had spotted a suspicious-looking mussel clinging to a steel cable below a Lake Mead dock. It was a quagga. Investigation quickly found colonies throughout the lake, at depths much greater than usual for zebras. “We were monitoring for zebras, and the quaggas snuck right in beneath us,” he said. At Lake Mead, a deep, narrow reservoir hundreds of miles long created by the Hoover Dam, quaggas appear well on the way to taking over. “Within a year of discovery, it was apparent that they were lakewide, and in areas they were really numerous,” said Kent Turner, chief of resource management for the park service at the recreation area. Sampling the lake bottom has found mussel concentrations in the thousands per square meter, he said. Like the zebra, the quagga breeds externally, forming clouds of veligers, microscopic, free-swimming larvae that can float up to five weeks before settling on any surface that strikes their fancy. By riding the current, quagga veligers have floated hundreds of miles downstream. Adult mussels have been found as far south as the Imperial Dam, near the Mexican border. They have not stopped there. At the Lake Havasu reservoir, on the California-Arizona border, giant pumping stations pull millions of gallons of water a day for cities and farms. Drawn into the Colorado River Aqueduct and the Central Arizona Project canal, veligers have journeyed as far east as Phoenix and Tucson and as far west as San Diego. “Wherever the river takes them, they have gone,” said Alexia Retallack, a spokeswoman for the California Fish and Game Department. The infiltration of the Colorado poses a major challenge for a water system already strained by record drought. Las Vegas is particularly reliant on the river, drawing 90 percent of its drinking water from Lake Mead. The Metropolitan Water District, which provides water to 26 cities in Southern California, regularly deploys scuba divers to clear mussels from its intake pumps on Lake Havasu. To kill the mussel larvae, 9,000 gallons of chlorine, equal to two trailer tanks, are added to the Colorado River Aqueduct daily. “What we want to do is contain them,” said Ric de Leon, a microbiologist who directs quagga control for the district. “So far, we’re doing fairly well.” California officials have begun aggressive boat inspections, even enlisting canine units trained to find mussels. “We have the first quagga-sniffing dogs on the planet,” Ms. Retallack said. Lined with dams, reservoirs, canals and pipelines, the Colorado more closely resembles a giant plumbing project than a wild river, giving the mussels ample opportunity for mayhem. David Pimentel, a professor of ecology at Cornell and an expert on the economic effects of invasive species, said the maintenance and control costs might run “into the billions, as it has been in the East.” More alarming to some experts are the potential ecological effects. Dr. Fahnenstiel called the mussels’ explosive growth the most significant ecological disruption in modern Great Lakes history. “It’s a huge perturbation,” he said. “I don’t think that can be understated.” In Lake Michigan, fish populations have plummeted as quaggas strip the water of nutrients. “The fish are taking a hit because there’s no food for them,” said Tom Nalepa, a research biologist with the Great Lakes laboratory. “All the food is being sucked out by the mussels. What we’re seeing is the replacement of the fish by the mussels.” By filtering the water, quaggas can increase clarity, letting in sunlight that leads to algae blooms and explosive weed growth. That can, in turn, result in oxygen-starved “dead zones,” observed recently in Lake Erie. By accumulating toxins filtered from the water, the mussels have also contributed to botulism . “In the Great Lakes, we’ve seen avian botulism go through the roof,” Dr. Fahnenstiel said. “We’ve had huge die-offs of loons, which are one of the most beloved species here.” In the Colorado River, two native fish species, the bonytail chub and razorback sucker, are considered particularly vulnerable to mussel competition, and avian botulism may threaten bald eagles around Lake Mead. Biologists also warn that the vector behind the quaggas’ spread, to the Great Lakes by oceanic freighter and to the West on recreational boats, remains open to exploitation by other potentially destructive species. An estimated 180 alien species have reproducing populations in the Great Lakes Basin, with new ones added almost yearly. Most recently, viral hemorrhagic septicemia , a European virus that can cause large fish kills, has spread to three Great Lakes: Huron, Michigan and Ontario. “Everybody in North America needs to be concerned about what species come into the Great Lakes,” Dr. Fahnenstiel said. “There’s no system that’s geographically isolated anymore. We’re all linked.” | Lakes;Mussels;Fish and Other Marine Life;Colorado River;Quagga Mussels;Invasive Species |
ny0015869 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2013/10/10 | Tracing the Calendar Down to the Last Cent | WASHINGTON — Oct. 17 is the day the Treasury Department expects to exhaust its so-called extraordinary measures to keep paying the country’s bills, putting it on the precipice of default. But officials in Washington and traders on Wall Street have a second, yet more dire deadline in mind: Nov. 1. That is when more than $55 billion in federal payments come due, almost certainly more than enough to use up whatever cash the Treasury might still have on hand. The three weeks between now and then — should Congress fail to raise the debt ceiling — would most likely be ones of market turbulence, plummeting confidence and a slowing economy. The Treasury Department has remained tight-lipped about any contingency plans it might have for when it runs out of cash, saying only that the administration would not have the legal right to ignore or otherwise maneuver around the debt ceiling. A Treasury official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew intended to reconfirm that analysis in Congressional testimony on Thursday: that the Obama administration believes there is no way to work around the debt ceiling, and that the country would simply not have enough money to pay its bills. For that reason, Mr. Lew is expected to again implore Congress to raise the ceiling. “If you start having a situation in which there’s legal controversy about the U.S. Treasury’s authority to issue debt, the damage will have been done,” President Obama said at a news conference on Tuesday. “What people ignore is that ultimately what matters is, what do the people who are buying Treasury bills think?” The message is that when the cash runs out, the cash runs out. That has left investors and politicians trying to determine what might happen to the economy, the markets and the government if the Treasury is forced to spend only as much as it takes in. The country hit its statutory borrowing limit last spring, and since then the Treasury has been using a series of “extraordinary measures” to free up hundreds of billions in cash and continue paying the country’s bills on time. On Oct. 17, the Treasury expects to exhaust those measures, leaving it with about $30 billion in cash on hand. On any given day at that point, outgoing payments might overwhelm the cash reserve, as well as receipts from tax payments or other sources. Analysts have pored over the government’s calendar for scheduled payments and have looked carefully at anticipated receipts, to try to determine when the Treasury would run out of money, with estimates generally ranging from Oct. 22 to Nov. 1. The Treasury official stressed that tax payments can be volatile, and that on any day after Oct. 17 it might end up short-handed. The official said that the government shutdown had compounded the Treasury’s cash management problems, both by creating additional uncertainty about money coming in and money going out and by leaving the department — including its Office of Fiscal Projections — short-staffed because of furloughs. Major debt rollovers are scheduled for Oct. 17 and Oct. 24, when the Treasury would effectively refinance tens of billions of dollars of loans from investors. A number of large payouts — to Social Security recipients, Medicare providers and the military, among others — will hit on the first of the month. Image Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew has said that the Obama administration has no way to work around the debt ceiling. Credit Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images “It appears very unlikely the Treasury would be able to make all the payments scheduled for that day absent an increase in the debt ceiling,” the Goldman Sachs economists Alec Phillips and Kris Dawsey wrote in a note to clients. The Obama administration is loath to describe what it would do if the country got close to breaching the debt limit. It has said that all federal payments, like those for retirees and for bondholders, would be put in extraordinary jeopardy after Oct. 17. A report by the Treasury inspector general, though, has shed some light on the planning, indicating that the government believes the best option would be to delay payments, rather than cutting them across the board, for instance. The report did not indicate which payments the Treasury might delay. The House has passed a bill ordering the Treasury to “prioritize” payments by putting bondholders first. But the administration has argued that doing so would be technically difficult and would fail to blunt the market reaction to a breach of the ceiling. “You’ve actually had the House leadership pass proposals to implement how you would do prioritization, as if that would be an acceptable solution,” Gene B. Sperling, the director of the National Economic Council, said at a breakfast meeting in Washington. “It is not acceptable. Prioritization is default by another name.” Pulling the plug on one or more of the Treasury’s automated payment systems might be one way to reduce spending, analysts have said. “The way that they are set up, they can either be set to ‘on’ or ‘off,’ ” Credit Suisse analysts said in a note to clients. “A system either makes all of its payments, or it doesn’t make any at all.” Breaching the debt ceiling would mean that the Treasury would be forced, in effect, to balance the government’s budget. It would need to refrain from sending out about 30 percent of the government’s payments until Congress raised the ceiling again — enough to tip the economy into a recession in a matter of days or weeks, many economists say. The financial market implications of a breach would compound the direct economic blow of missed payments. Analysts generally believe that the Obama administration would ensure that bondholders were repaid, to blunt the market effects and protect the full faith and credit of the government. Some Republicans have used that assumption to argue that the country would not truly default, and that the market reaction might be quieter than anticipated. “I would dispel the rumor that is going around that you hear on every newscast, that if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, we will default on our debt,” Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, said on CBS. “We won’t. We’ll continue to pay our interest.” But in 2011, the near breach of the debt ceiling raised the government’s borrowing costs by billions of dollars. Investment banks, financial advisers and others have warned that even if the country remained current on its sovereign debt payments, the market reaction could be severe. Already, fear has shot through the markets, with concerns about the debt ceiling and the government shutdown spurring the sharpest drop in consumer confidence since Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008. The Dow Jones industrial average and other stock indexes have been on a slow and steady decline since mid-September. Market participants, including Fidelity, the mutual fund group, have been fleeing short-term sovereign debt for longer-term sovereign debt. On Tuesday, Treasury bills maturing in one month sold with an interest rate of 0.355 percent, triple the rate charged just a week earlier. Many investors remain confident that a debt ceiling crisis will not occur, particularly given that Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio has told some House Republicans that he might allow a vote on a bill raising the debt ceiling that would pass with Democratic votes. Moreover, Washington’s flirtations with budgetary or financial catastrophe have inured some market participants to the possibility of a breach in the ceiling. “Despite all this posturing, we remain confident that neither the president nor the speaker wants a default on their watch,” said Steven Ricchiuto, the chief economist at Mizuho Securities U.S.A. “We continue to expect that there will be a temporary debt limit extension at the 11th hour if all else fails.” | US National Debt;US Economy;Treasury Department;Jacob J Lew;Closings;Federal Budget;Stocks,Bonds |
ny0052591 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2014/07/03 | Outside Legal Work Proves Fruitful for New York’s Top Legislators | The three lawmakers who lead the New York State Legislature earned as much as $1.1 million combined practicing law in their spare time last year, according to disclosure statements released on Wednesday. The most prolific of the three was Sheldon Silver, the speaker of the State Assembly, who works for the personal injury firm Weitz & Luxenberg and got at least a $200,000 raise: He reported earning $650,000 to $750,000 from his legal work, a sharp increase from the year before , when he earned $350,000 to $450,000. State legislators are allowed to hold other jobs outside their legislative duties, which carry a base salary of $79,500. This outside employment was a top area of interest for an anticorruption panel, known as the Moreland Commission, that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo appointed last summer, which argued that the part-time jobs presented the “risk of criminal behavior.” As part of its investigation, the commission issued subpoenas to a number of law firms that employ legislators, provoking a showdown that ended only after Mr. Cuomo abruptly shut down the Moreland Commission in late March. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, disbanded the panel as part of a deal with lawmakers to pass stronger bribery and corruption laws. The governor had proposed additional measures to expand what lawmakers must disclose about their employment and their firms’ clients, but much of what he had sought did not make it into the final deal. The outside jobs have drawn scrutiny because it is often unclear what, exactly, the legislators do to earn paychecks that can be quite lucrative. Mr. Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, holds the title of “of counsel” for Weitz & Luxenberg. On Wednesday, a spokesman for Mr. Silver declined to provide details about his specific duties, but said Mr. Silver did not represent any clients that had business before the state. As for Mr. Silver’s higher earnings, the spokesman, Michael Whyland, said, “The speaker’s salary fluctuates year to year depending on the disposition of his cases.” The Senate Republican leader, Dean G. Skelos of Long Island, works for the law firm Ruskin Moscou Faltischek . He reported earning $150,000 to $250,000 practicing law last year. Mr. Skelos shares leadership of the Senate with Jeffrey D. Klein of the Bronx, who leads a faction of independent Democrats. Mr. Klein is a partner at Klein Calderoni & Santucci , from which he earned $75,000 to $101,000 last year. He also earned a total of $10,000 to $40,000 providing legal services to a pair of caterers in the Bronx. More than a dozen members of the State Senate, which has 63 seats, reported earning income from practicing law in 2013, according to the annual disclosure statements, which require lawmakers to divulge their earnings within specified income brackets. The statements were released by the state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics. Even a legislator with legal problems profited from legal work. Senator John L. Sampson, a Brooklyn Democrat who was indicted last year on embezzlement and other charges, reported earning $120,000 to $200,000 working as a lawyer, with a portion of that money coming from his work for the law firm Belluck & Fox . Not all lawmakers who work outside Albany have jobs that would seem to raise questions about possible conflicts. For example, when she is not in the capital, Senator Cecilia Tkaczyk raises sheep on her family’s farm in Duanesburg, in Schenectady County . Ms. Tkaczyk, a Democrat, reported earning up to $5,000 last year from producing wool and yarn. | State legislature;Conflict of interest;New York;Sheldon Silver;Jeffrey D Klein;Dean G Skelos;Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption NYS;Joint Commission on Public Ethics NYS;Wages and salaries |
ny0227628 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2010/07/04 | Zephs’ Sour Cherry Pie Gains Popularity | At Zephs’ , a peach of a restaurant in Peekskill that takes big inspiration from seasonal produce, the phone started ringing in early May with calls from customers clamoring for sour cherry pie . That local cherries would not be ripe for another month or two — typically in late June — attests to the popularity of Vicky Zeph’s latticed handiwork. “It kind of got out of hand,” Ms. Zeph said on a recent afternoon while making one of her picture-book pies. “They’re always checking: ‘Is it time yet? Is it time yet?’ I think we’d be in a lot of trouble if we didn’t make pies.” She is quick to credit the recipe — for “once-a-year sour cherry pie” — to Nick Malgieri, a friend who is an accomplished baker and well-known cookbook author. Ms. Zeph, who will be celebrating the restaurant’s 20th anniversary this year, regularly scouts tag sales for vintage Pyrex pie plates. (“You can pick them up for 50 cents, and the pastry browns better in glass than in tins,” she said.) Her pastry is wonderfully short — the crust tastes and acts like a tender butter cookie. She rolls out the dough to a sturdy thickness before cutting it with a pastry crimper, which results in sawtooth edges on top. Pitted cherries and their juices, sweetened with sugar and thickened with cornstarch, bubbled on the stove; Ms. Zeph added crumbled almond paste and a knot of butter and poured the filling into a pastry-lined plate. After crisscrossing strips of dough in a basket-weave pattern, she brushed the whole with egg white and sprinkled the top with crystallized sugar. Pulled from the oven 45 minutes later, the pie glittered like a geode. Ms. Zeph, who is nursing a three-foot-high sour-cherry sapling at home, picks cherries for her pies at local farms with her brother and business partner, Michael. Last year, they picked 100 pounds at Fishkill Farms . “We’re really fast,” she said. “The orchard has both sour and sweet, side by side. Everyone crowds around the sweet cherries, so we have the sour ones all to ourselves.” ALICE GABRIEL Z ephs’, 638 Central Ave., Peekskill, (914) 736-2159; zephsrestaurant.com . Open for dinner only, with seatings Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.; and Friday and Saturday, 5:30 to 9 p.m. Reservations highly recommended. | Restaurants;Peekskill (NY);Cherries |
ny0224268 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2010/11/12 | In Mount Morris, N.Y., Builder Inspires Rejuvenation | MOUNT MORRIS, N.Y. — For several years, Greg O’Connell moved stealthily, buying building after building along a run-down stretch of Main Street here. It was a puzzling property grab in this rural village, 25 miles south of Rochester, whose commercial district was little more than shabby, vacant storefronts. Few people knew Mr. O’Connell’s name, but the “faceless New York developer,” as one businessman put it, was a persistent topic of speculation. What did he want with one- and two-story buildings sagging from decades of neglect, competition with big-box stores like Wal-Mart and the loss of manufacturing jobs in the Finger Lakes? Was he a slumlord? His intentions became clear in the last year as he took control of more than a third of downtown and began chipping away at the building facades, renovating apartments and signing up tenants. Mr. O’Connell, 68, a big, shambling retired New York City detective, wants nothing less than to bring Mount Morris back from the dead and make it a western New York version of Red Hook, Brooklyn, where he made his name and millions. He has snatched up 19 buildings, some at tax lien sales for $2,000, and has restored the historic look of a half-dozen storefronts, dusting off the tin ceilings and renovating the apartments on the second floor, where he has installed new bathrooms and oak floors. New businesses — an Italian restaurant, a barber shop, an antiques store and a gourmet food shop — are opening in long-vacant spaces, with leases from Mr. O’Connell that require the businesses to leave their lights on at night, stay open at least one evening a week and change their window displays at least four times a year. There are plans for a gallery where local artists and artisans can display their work and get help with the business of selling the items. “I feel like I’m 21 again, starting all over,” Mr. O’Connell said in an interview. “We’ve gotten some things up and running. We’re now trying to figure out how to make it sustainable.” Like some kind of whirlwind, he has swept up nearly everyone in his quest. He enlisted high school students to build and place flower boxes along Main Street and students from nearby SUNY Geneseo to design public-relations and marketing strategies for downtown businesses. In April, Geneseo students startled passers-by when they performed “Waiting for Godot” in one of his empty storefronts. “Greg coming in started the ball rolling,” said Harold F. Long, the tanned, white-haired mayor. “Other businesses followed suit. And not only other businesses got involved; people in the village started to spruce up their homes.” It is anyone’s guess whether any of Mr. O’Connell’s tenants, most of them first-time business owners, can survive the rough economy or the notoriously short life expectancy of a small business, not to mention the region’s significant challenges. Mount Morris sits in Livingston County at the edge of an attraction unself-consciously called the Grand Canyon of the East, a gorge with three waterfalls in Letchworth State Park. The village was still a thriving hub when Mr. O’Connell graduated from the State University of New York at Geneseo in 1964. There were lots of farms and small factories making everything from bottles to brooms. “You could buy anything from a deck of cards to a car,” Mr. Long recalled. But Mount Morris began a long decline with the loss of manufacturing jobs, the construction of an expressway that bypassed the village and competition from Wal-Mart. The downtown buildings fell into disrepair, and the businesses expired. “There wasn’t anything to attract anyone to Mount Morris,” Mr. Long said. Mr. O’Connell, who reckons he has spent $1 million on the 19 properties and plans to spend another $1 million on renovations, says he has had a soft spot for the area ever since he attended SUNY Geneseo. He moved to New York City after graduation to join the Police Department, and did not turn his attention to Red Hook until long after he retired, in 1981. He bought waterfront land cheaply from the city and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and set about renovating dormant Civil War-era stone warehouses on the piers, where wild dogs and drug dealers roamed. Today, his buildings house more than 150 small businesses and Fairway, the high-end grocery that has attracted patrons from all over Brooklyn. Critics like John McGettrick, co-chairman of the Red Hook Civic Association , say that Mr. O’Connell has been more adept at acquiring cheap land from the government than in making good on his promises, citing a half-mile esplanade and a park that he has yet to deliver. But Michelle de la Uz, executive director of the nonprofit Fifth Avenue Committee , said Mr. O’Connell had been a “catalyst” for a resurgent Red Hook. “He was one of the early people willing to put his money where his mouth was to help realize a vision, and he included the community in the process,” said Ms. de la Uz, whose organization recently developed 60 subsidized apartments on land bought from Mr. O’Connell. Over the years, Mr. O’Connell, who often dresses in overalls and refers to his paper-strewn pickup as his office, bought a house on 57 acres in Geneseo and five farms in the area, and now spends most of his time there, leaving his two sons to run his holdings in Red Hook. No doubt, Mr. O’Connell is a big shot in Mount Morris, a village of 3,500. He is a major investor in the local Bank of Castile , a corn syrup factory and the county’s largest private employer, American Rock Salt, the largest operating salt mine in the United States. He has had to adjust to local customs; his workers tend to disappear during hunting and maple syrup seasons. “Before Greg came, we couldn’t wait to get out of Mount Morris,” said Teresa Brado, who now plans to open the Rainy Day Café in a recently gutted brick building owned by Mr. O’Connell. “I never realized how much a difference it makes to leave the lights on at night. And the new businesses are working together. I’m buying my lamps at the antique shops.” Rents for Mr. O’Connell’s stores run about $5 a square foot, a paltry sum by New York City standards. Carol Huffman, who rents a store for her antiques and used-furniture business, Treasure Island, said she was also paying $300 a month for the cozy, exposed-brick apartment she rented upstairs from her store. “I’m more interested in making it active down here,” Mr. O’Connell said. “It’s not about the bottom line, although at the end of the day when I look at acquisition and renovation costs, there’s still a profit to be made on something like this.” | Area Planning and Renewal;Housing and Real Estate;Mount Morris (NY) |
ny0051329 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2014/10/31 | American Drone Strike Kills 6 in Pakistani Tribal Areas | PESHAWAR, Pakistan — An American drone strike killed at least six militants early Thursday in the South Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan, a senior Pakistani security official said. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said that four of the dead were foreign militants, two from Saudi Arabia, one from Yemen and one from Sudan. The drone’s missiles struck a private residence near a school in the village of Nargasi, the official said. Pakistan’s Hot Spots at a Glance Main theaters of conflict in northwestern Pakistan. The drone program is operated by the C.I.A., and the strike, which is reported to be the 16th such attack on Pakistani soil this year, brought fresh protests from the Pakistani government as being a violation of its sovereignty. “The government of Pakistan is itself taking decisive action against terrorist elements and therefore believes that such strikes are unnecessary and need to be stopped,” said Tasnim Aslam, the spokeswoman for the Pakistani Foreign Ministry. Ms. Aslam was referring to the ongoing military offensive against militants in the North Waziristan tribal region, near where the drone strike hit on Thursday. Of the reported drone strikes this year, two have been in South Waziristan, and the remaining 14 have been in North Waziristan. | Pakistan;Drones;CIA;Waziristan;Federally Administered Tribal Areas |
ny0259383 | [
"business"
] | 2011/01/13 | Shares Higher After Portugal’s Bond Auction | Shares on Wall Street finished solidly higher on Wednesday after European debt fears eased. The broad advance was led by banks and commodity-related shares. Investors expect further flows into equities on speculation the economy will strengthen. Banks were led by JPMorgan Chase, which rose 2.5 percent to $44.71 after its chief executive said the bank could increase its dividend once the Federal Reserve gave its approval. JPMorgan is expected to report its quarterly results on Friday. The Dow Jones industrial average was up 83.56 points, or 0.72 percent, at 11,755.44. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was up 11.48 points, or 0.90 percent, at 1,285.96. The Nasdaq was up 20.50 points, or 0.75 percent, at 2,737.33. The S.& P. is almost 9 percent higher since the start of December, in part on bets that earnings would be strong. While early results have suggested that optimism was justified, some analysts say it may be hard for equities to rise much further given recent gains. Eric Marshall, director of research at Hodges Capital Management in Dallas said that money leaving the bond market was “slowly coming back into equities. This is really about the first time in three years we’ve seen outflows out of bond funds.” A healthy bond auction in Portugal drove investors into riskier assets. Portugal sold bonds valued at 1.25 billion euros ($1.62 billion) to strong demand. Lisbon’s borrowing costs fell on the 10-year issue, but rose in the five-year. Investors were hopeful euro zone finance ministers would beef up the European Union’s rescue fund. “Europe has kept people from becoming more bullish than they would be otherwise, and the demand in the auction sets a positive tone going forward,” said E. William Stone, chief investment strategist at PNC Wealth Management in Philadelphia. Jason Pride, director of investment strategy at Glenmede Investment and Wealth Management in Philadelphia, said the auction showed stability in Europe. “There have been fears of contagion that could ripple into equity markets” he said. Also lifting banks on Wednesday were positive comments from Wells Fargo, which raised the bank sector to an overweight rating, citing a decline in credit costs and positive loan growth. Agricultural stocks rallied after a government report said American stockpiles of corn and soybeans would be drawn down to surprisingly low levels, lifting food prices and agricultural shares. The seed company Monsanto rose 3.3 percent while Corn Products International was up 2.1 percent. The farm equipment company Deere & Company rose 2 percent. Shares of ITT Corporation, the diversified manufacturer, surged 16.5 percent, to $61.50, after the company said it would separate its businesses into three publicly traded companies, and shareholders would own shares in all the three corporations. Investors focused early on Lisbon’s bond auction. Traders were keen to see if debt-laden countries could finance themselves at a sustainable cost or be forced to turn to the European Union and International Monetary Fund for financial aid in the same way that Ireland and Greece did last year. The FTSE 100 in London rose 36.69 points, or 0.61 percent, while the DAX in Frankfurt added 127.21 points, or 1.8 percent. The CAC 40 in Paris gained 83.15 points, or 2.15 percent. The Treasury’s 10-year note fell 6/32, to 93 27/32. The yield rose to 3.37 percent, from 3.34 percent late Tuesday. In Japan, the Nikkei gained on Wednesday, hitting an eight-month high at one point, as some upbeat earnings reports and a weaker yen provided momentum for foreign investors to pile into financial and property shares. In the end, however, the Nikkei closed 2.12 points higher, at 10,512.80. | Stocks and Bonds;Credit and Debt;Portugal |
ny0247659 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2011/05/28 | Criticism for CityTime Project Grows as a Manager Is Arrested | As federal investigators arrested another central figure in their widening inquiry into the city’s troubled automated payroll project, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Friday leveled his harshest criticism yet against the project’s main contractor, suggesting there was “widespread fraud and gross negligence” in the company. The scandal involving the payroll project, CityTime , has become an albatross for Mr. Bloomberg in his third term, with prosecutors accusing several employees of CityTime subcontractors of defrauding the city in an $80 million scheme that began in 2005. The city official who was the project’s point person, Joel Bondy, resigned in December and had close ties to the suspected mastermind of the scheme. And, even before the accusations, the project was dogged by criticism over its ballooning costs, which have climbed to about $700 million after an initial estimate of $63 million. Mr. Bloomberg has long defended the project’s goal of modernizing an antiquated and largely paper-based system. Indeed, on Friday, Mr. Bloomberg, speaking on his weekly radio show, said that “we actually did a pretty good job here, in retrospect.” But hours later, Gerard Denault, a former executive with Science Applications International Corporation, the company overseeing CityTime, was charged with receiving over $5 million in kickbacks for his work as the project’s senior manager. Mr. Denault was also charged with wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering in a federal complaint, as part of a continuing inquiry by the city’s Department of Investigation and the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan. After Mr. Denault’s arrest, Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement that “the fraud perpetrated against the city is despicable.” He also suggested the city would pursue avenues to recoup its money. “It appears there may well have been widespread fraud and gross negligence within S.A.I.C., which confirms the need to continue our detailed examination of every dollar spent on the project,” he said. “We are aggressively exploring all options for how we can recover any costs the city was improperly charged.” Melissa L. Koskovich, a spokeswoman for the company, based in McLean, Va., declined to address the mayor’s comments directly. Instead, she said in a statement that the company was “aware that our former employee, Mr. Denault, has been charged with conspiring to defraud the city and S.A.I.C. in order to receive illegal kickbacks from the CityTime project for his own personal gain.” “We are reviewing the complaint against Mr. Denault in its entirety,” she continued, “and are not in a position to comment further at this time.” According to the complaint, Mr. Denault had worked as CityTime’s program manager since 2003 and had perpetrated a kickback scheme for much of his involvement. He urged his employer to hire a New Jersey company, TechnoDyne, L.L.C., as the project’s main information technology subcontractor. TechnoDyne received some $450 million out of $600 million that was paid to Science Applications International and funneled $5.6 million to a sham consulting company, said to have been based in India, that Mr. Denault actually owned. Indeed, the complaint notes, Mr. Denault “has no known ties to India, and, according to a law enforcement records database, has never traveled to India.” The owners of TechnoDyne, Reddy and Padma Allen, who have longstanding ties to their native India, did not respond to messages on Friday. A hint of Mr. Denault’s troubles materialized on Wednesday, when John C. Liu, the city comptroller, released a letter from Science Applications International stating that Mr. Denault had been fired for misrepresenting the number of hours he had worked. The company also said it would return $2.4 million to the city, the amount the company had billed for Mr. Denault. Mr. Liu’s news conference caught investigators by surprise, people familiar with the case said, and accelerated the timetable for Mr. Denault’s arrest. In an unusually blunt statement, Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, suggested more arrests were imminent. “The CityTime investigation remains very much ongoing, and there are more individuals yet to be held accountable,” he said. To date, eight people have been charged in the investigation. One of those charged pleaded guilty in February, and is cooperating with investigators, while another died in January. Mr. Denault, 49, was arrested in Danbury, Conn., on Thursday, and appeared in federal court in Manhattan on Friday. After a hearing, Mr. Denault’s lawyer, Barry A. Bohrer, told reporters that his client expected that a jury would find him not guilty. “He will be devoting his attention to fighting these charges,” Mr. Bohrer said. “He does feel that the product of his work — the CityTime payment system — is a quality state-of-the-art product of which he’s proud.” | CityTime;Denault Gerard;Saic Inc;Frauds and Swindling;New York City |
ny0133603 | [
"technology"
] | 2008/03/16 | ‘The Amazing Race,’ as Played in the Lab | WHAT do reality TV shows like “Survivor” and “America’s Next Top Model” have in common with an insurgent method of stimulating useful innovations around the world? It may be hard to believe that watching Tyra Banks drive aspiring models to the breaking point can provide insight into how to accelerate technological change. Well, pinch yourself. Popular reality shows indeed provide a way to understand the logic behind a new wave of contests in technological innovation. Both types are driven by head-to-head competition among unknowns. And the winner takes all — and is celebrated in the process. A research agency for the government is using the model to spawn a new generation of driverless cars. Google is sponsoring a $20-million-grand-prize race to the moon and back for commercially feasible spacecraft. And this week, the newest contest — for a drivable, affordable car that gets 100 miles a gallon — will be formally started at the New York International Auto Show. Sponsored by the X Prize Foundation , which is also running the lunar contest, the car contest is really two in one. In 2010, there will be a winner in the “city” category, which permits three-wheelers, and another in a category for four-wheel, four-seat cars. “Human beings do some of our best work under the pressure of competition,” says Peter H. Diamandis, chairman of the X Prize Foundation, based in Santa Monica, Calif. “Cooperation is wonderful, but it doesn’t lend to breakthroughs or true innovations.” The usual way that companies — and sometimes even government agencies — spawn advances is to employ staff members or contractors to create them. The market then rewards the winning products. The problem, however, is that the market sometimes delivers just incremental improvements, especially in areas of energy, transportation and health. Breakthroughs are imagined, but not mass-produced. Contests, which come with a deadline, aim to create a sense of urgency, conjuring up a “race” mind-set that harks back to the cold war. After World War II, competition between the United States and the Soviet Union fostered races in space and weapons, for instance. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh made aviation history winning a $25,000 prize for being the first pilot to fly nonstop between New York and Paris. Why have contests proliferated in recent years? “Tycoons have come into it,” says Stewart Brand, president of the Long Now Foundation, which aims to raise awareness on solving long-term technological problems. The X-Prizes, for instance, are funded by such wealthy people as Elon Musk, a co-founder of PayPal, and Stewart Blusson, who made a fortune in diamonds. The sponsor rewards only the winner. The contestants invest their own money, thus expanding the pool of capital devoted to the field. Taking a page from the playbook of professional sports, contestants can often attract sponsorships from those who want to benefit from publicity generated by the competition — publicity that flows even to the losing contestants. “The recognition given a prize is significant,” not merely vanity, “because it can set fire to people’s imaginations,” says Tapio Alvesalo, secretary general of the Millennium Technology Prize Foundation in Finland; that prize was first awarded in 2004. (The prize, which goes to a creator of a breakthrough innovation, pays about $1.5 million. In 2006, Shuji Nakamura won for inventing blue, green and white light-emitting diodes; finalists for the next award will be announced in April.) Because publicity attracts more contestants, hyping prizes seems inevitable. On its Web site, the X Prize Foundation declares that it supports “the most radical approach to innovation yet.” Skeptics say that prizes often merely confirm what has already been done in the lab — and that too often they shower attention on the contest’s founders. Look at all the free advertising Google receives for its role in the moon-travel prize, for instance. “Creating useful innovations ought to be self-rewarding,” says Robert Friedel, a historian of technology at the University of Maryland. “If you need a prize, then maybe it’s not an invention worth pursuing.” Although the contests have flaws, they bring innovators into the open. That can inspire young inventors — and tip off venture capitalists to the next big thing. Indeed, V.C.’s watch these contests to get leads on whom to fund. “These contests and prizes become a quality-control mechanism,” says Yogen Dalal, a managing director of the Mayfield Fund, a venture capital firm in Menlo Park, Calif. “Often the winners — and losers — don’t have a fundable plan, but they’ve done enough to entice a V.C. to help them.” To be sure, the devil is in the details. The creation of a great contest echoes the lesson of the Goldilocks story: make the goal not too difficult, but not too easy, either. “We have to find the intersection of audacity and achievability,” Mr. Diamandis says. In the case of the car competition, contestants must enter vehicles that are safe to drive and affordable to build, through means defined by a dense set of rules. The guidelines run 37 pages. As more innovation contests are introduced, the more obvious goals may already be met. For instance, there is an all-electric car made by Tesla Motors of San Carlos, Calif. — going into production Monday — that promises to achieve more than 100 miles to the gallon. But the Tesla car is only a two-seater. The complexities of creating the auto prize illustrate a wider problem of how to come up with ever more novel tests of human ingenuity over time. Mr. Brand of the Long Now Foundation predicts that contests will soon pursue “things we truly think of as impossible.” Mr. Brand’s wish list includes machines that defy gravity or that allow us to read the minds of other people. Hey, Tyra Banks, are you available for an afternoon of Vulcan mind- meld? | Contests and Prizes;X Prize Foundation;Automobiles;New York International Auto Show;Venture Capital;Inventions and Patents;New Models Design and Products |
ny0094908 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2015/01/28 | Ukraine: E.U. Sends Aid to East | The European Union delivered three planeloads of aid to eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, including blankets, tents, heaters and warm clothing, as part of a stepped-up effort to help the nearly one million people who have fled their homes in the war-torn region. The planes landed in Dnipropetrovsk, outside the area where pro-Russian separatists are battling the Ukrainian military. The assistance is being delivered by a coalition including Unicef, Save the Children, the World Food Program and People in Need, and is part of more than $53 million in aid pledged by European Union countries. The effort contrasted sharply with Russia’s unilateral dispatch of convoys to eastern Ukraine in recent months, which drew criticism from the Ukrainian government and the Red Cross over a lack of inspections and participation of international groups. “We have not forgotten the population of Ukraine,” said Christos Stylianides, the European commissioner for humanitarian assistance, who oversaw the planes’ arrival. “We’re in there big time,” he added. “It is our job to minimize the pain.” | Ukraine;EU;Humanitarian aid;Russia |
ny0061666 | [
"sports",
"basketball"
] | 2014/01/18 | Knicks’ Dream of Home Streak Runs Into Ugly Truth | It was the start of a rare opportunity for the Knicks. Their game Friday night against the Los Angeles Clippers launched an eight-game homestand, their longest such stretch at Madison Square Garden since 1986. About two hours before tipoff, Coach Mike Woodson felt bold enough to float the unthinkable. “If we can win all eight,” he said, “it would be fantastic.” No one doubted his sincerity. But given that the Knicks were less than 24 hours removed from a 28-point loss to the Indiana Pacers, perhaps he was merely allowing himself to dream. Then reality set in, and the Clippers dealt the Knicks a 109-95 loss. The fans showed more restraint than usual by waiting until 10 minutes remained before they began to boo. The Knicks (15-25), so clumsy at home this season, were well on their way to their third straight loss. They could not shoot (34.9 percent from the field). They could not dribble (20 turnovers). And they could not defend when it mattered. “Either I got to change the lineup, or we have to get our starting five clicking,” Woodson said. After winning six of seven games to start the month, the Knicks are once again searching. It all felt vaguely familiar. In the locker room, there was talk of fixing problems. What those problems were, exactly, was more difficult to say. Tyson Chandler, for example, cited offense and defense. “I think we have to clean some things up on both ends of the floor,” he said. “There’s not going to be a pity party.” The game featured an unconventional effort from Carmelo Anthony, who went 4 of 23 from the field against a swarm of defenders but still manufactured 26 points by making all 16 of his free throws. Anthony also grabbed 20 rebounds and supplied 40 minutes as the team played its fourth game in five days. “We could never turn the corner all night,” he said. The Knicks were short-handed. Before the game, the team announced that Amar’e Stoudemire and Kenyon Martin were expected to miss the next two weeks after spraining their left ankles against Indiana, and Pablo Prigioni (toe) and Metta World Peace (knee) did not dress. Then again, the Clippers (28-13) were undermanned, too. It was their sixth game without point guard Chris Paul, who separated his shoulder Jan. 3. In his absence, Darren Collison has assumed a starting role and played well. Against the Knicks, he finished with 12 points and 7 assists. Collison also helped lead the Clippers during an important stretch of the third quarter. The Knicks were coming unglued well before Collison forced Toure’ Murry into throwing a pass that sailed over Anthony’s head and into an expensive row of seats. But the Clippers made sure to take advantage, closing the quarter with a 14-2 run to build a 9-point lead. “We were dragging,” Woodson said. It was too much for the Knicks. The Clippers were not in any danger of setting records for offensive efficiency — they shot 26.7 percent from 3-point range — but they slowly pulled away in the fourth. The Knicks helped them by fumbling the ball as if it were coated with cooking oil. The Knicks had hoped to force Blake Griffin into taking outside jumpers, and he obliged by scoring 32 points. Jamal Crawford added 29. Most distressing for Woodson was the play of his starting backcourt. Iman Shumpert and Raymond Felton combined for seven turnovers and shot 2 of 12 from the field. Shumpert, after a recent stretch of strong games, went scoreless in 25 minutes. Woodson said he planned to talk with Shumpert over the weekend to see if his confidence was lacking, and that felt familiar, too. “I didn’t lose any confidence,” Shumpert said. “Same shots are coming. Just got to knock them down.” The Knicks were not in the best frame of mind going into the game. Anthony, in particular, had sounded glum after Thursday’s loss to the Pacers. Not angry. Not upset. Just disappointed. He capped that game by describing the team’s effort as “embarrassing” for at least the third time this season, but he delivered it almost as a whisper. The Knicks had little time to deconstruct game film and hunt for solutions. It could have taken days. Instead, they flew home and took the court against the Clippers hoping to salvage a few crumbs of confidence. Much as they did against the Pacers (before everything went sour), the Knicks actually got off to a nice start, leading by 27-23 at the end of the first quarter. The question, as it often is with the Knicks, was whether they could sustain their effort. The answer was an emphatic no. The usual lapses began to hurt them. DeAndre Jordan slipped behind the Knicks’ backline defenders for a dunk. Griffin charged past Andrea Bargnani as if he were a piece of Saran wrap. Chandler threw an outlet pass that the Clippers deflected and turned into a layup. Over the course of a tortured first half, the Knicks committed 13 turnovers. The Clippers shot 32.6 percent. Neither team deserved the lead, and sure enough, the score was 50-50 at halftime. The Knicks had nothing left in the second half, and the Clippers had no trouble managing whatever was thrown their way, errant passes and all. “They ran away with it,” Chandler said. | Basketball;Clippers;Knicks;Carmelo Anthony;Mike Woodson |
ny0172830 | [
"technology",
"personaltech"
] | 2007/11/15 | Kidizoom Camera From VTech | Made for the youngest of shutterbugs, the Kidizoom Camera from VTech has a real viewing screen and binocular-vision viewfinders, much like last year’s Fisher-Price Kid-Tough camera. But the Kidizoom does more than take pictures. It can capture videos and has an on-screen editor so a child can quickly add a pair of devil horns to a photo of her big sister and display the results on either a TV or a computer screen using the included cables. A joystick can be used to play tic-tac-toe, a Concentration-type memory game or a sliding square puzzle using photos stored in the camera’s memory. A slot for an SD card lets you expand the memory beyond the included 16 megabytes. It also provides a way to back up photos, which are erased from the internal memory if the four AA batteries need to be changed. Information about this peanut-butter-proof camera can be found at vtechkids.com . For $60, it could be worth the price if only to lure a curious preschooler away from your Nikon. WARREN BUCKLEITNER | Cameras;Vtech;Computers and the Internet |
ny0227321 | [
"business",
"economy"
] | 2010/10/14 | Import Prices Slip as Lower Petroleum Costs Offset Gains in Food | WASHINGTON (Reuters) — United States import prices fell 0.3 percent in September, as a drop in petroleum prices offset gains in food and other nonfuel goods, a Labor Department report showed Wednesday. Excluding petroleum, prices rose 0.3 percent after increasing 0.2 percent in August. The September decline in overall import prices followed a 0.6 percent rise in August. Analysts surveyed before the report had expected import prices to fall 0.2 percent in September. Petroleum and fuel import prices both fell 3.1 percent in September in their first month-to-month declines since June. In the 12 months through September, overall import prices rose 3.5 percent. That year-to-year rise has fallen from a high of 11.4 percent in January. In recent months, the year-on-year rise in nonpetroleum import prices also has slowed. In the 12 months through September, they were up 2.9 percent. However, a weakening dollar on expectations the Federal Reserve will ease monetary policy further could push the price of many imported goods higher in coming months. Export prices rose 0.6 percent in September, much more than a consensus forecast for a 0.2 percent increase before the report. It was the second consecutive monthly increase. Agricultural export prices led the way, rising 2.4 percent, while food, feed and beverage prices were up 2.2 percent. Compared with September last year, export prices were up 5.0 percent. | International Trade and World Market;Prices (Fares Fees and Rates) |
ny0008523 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2013/05/15 | South Korea Proposes Border Meeting With North | SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea proposed on Tuesday to hold a border meeting with North Korea to discuss bringing finished goods and raw materials from an industrial park that the two countries jointly operated until last month. The Kaesong Industrial Complex has been idle since North Korea withdrew all its 53,000 workers , accusing the United States and South Korea of plotting to invade the North. South Korea pulled out the last of its citizens from Kaesong on May 3, severing the last economic ties between the Koreas. Neither the North nor the South has officially closed the eight-year-old complex, the best-known symbol of inter-Korean cooperation. But its fate has become a test for inter-Korean relations. President Park Geun-hye insisted that South Korea would not reward the North’s bad behavior over Kaesong with compromises. But she said she was open to dialogue with North Korea to “build trust.” As a token of good faith, she said North Korea should allow South Korean factory owners to return to Kaesong in order to ship out millions of dollars’ worth of finished goods stranded there. “We call for a positive response from the North,” Kim Hyung-suk, a spokesman for the South’s Unification Ministry, said in a statement. There was no immediate reaction from the North. It has rejected the South’s two previous offers of dialogue over the fate of the Kaesong complex. It has indicated that it is willing to sacrifice the complex, and $90 million in badly needed hard currency that its workers earn annually, to show its anger at South Korea’s policy toward the North. The industrial park, where 123 South Korean factories had hired low-cost North Korean labor, was originally conceived as an experiment that its supporters hoped would help advance the economic integration — and eventual reunification — of the two Koreas. Ms. Park said on Tuesday that South Korea wanted to reopen Kaesong. But she said North Korea must first promise broad changes in the complex to make it globally competitive and must guarantee that it would not use the economic project as a political bargaining chip again. Meanwhile, Glyn T. Davies, the top American envoy on North Korea, met with South Korean officials in Seoul. He said the United States and its allies wanted the North to get “back on the path of denuclearization by taking concrete steps to demonstrate that they have obligations.” The United Nations Security Council has tightened sanctions on North Korea for its rocket and nuclear tests. The North said it was abandoning its commitments to denuclearization. | North Korea;South Korea;Kaesong;Manufacturing;Park Geun-hye;International relations |
ny0097837 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2015/06/16 | Sidney Blumenthal, Hillary Clinton’s Confidant, Turns Over Memos on Libya | WASHINGTON — Emails that a longtime confidant to Hillary Rodham Clinton recently handed over to the House committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, raise new questions about whether the State Department and Mrs. Clinton have complied with a series of requests from the panel. The emails, provided by Sidney Blumenthal, a close adviser to Mrs. Clinton, include information about weapons that were circulating in Libya and about the security situation in Benghazi in the year and a half before the attacks. The committee has asked the State Department and Mrs. Clinton several times in the past year for emails from her and other department officials about “weapons located or found in” Libya and about the decision to open and maintain a diplomatic mission in Benghazi. The emails from Mr. Blumenthal have widened a rift between the State Department and the committee. State Department officials said that they had complied only with requests and subpoenas related directly to the attacks because the committee’s demands were too broad. The department has “provided the committee with a subset of documents that matched its request and will continue to work with them going forward,” said a spokesman, Alec Gerlach. But the panel has called that an excuse to protect Mrs. Clinton and to slow the investigation of the attacks, which occurred on Sept. 11, 2012, and resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. It is not clear whether the State Department possesses the emails between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Blumenthal and did not hand them over. It is also possible that Mrs. Clinton never provided them to the department and deleted them off the server that housed the personal account she used exclusively when she was secretary of state. Mr. Gerlach said that the committee had not told the department which emails Mr. Blumenthal handed over and that it would take some time for officials to determine whether the department had the emails. In response to a subpoena from the committee, Mr. Blumenthal on Friday handed over dozens of pages of emails between him and Mrs. Clinton. The emails are similar to others between Mr. Blumenthal and Mrs. Clinton that were provided to the committee by the State Department in February. Those included dozens of memos about Libya that Mr. Blumenthal sent to Mrs. Clinton. She forwarded many of them to her deputies to seek feedback. The deputies often said that Mr. Blumenthal’s information was false or misleading. Mr. Blumenthal, a former aide to President Bill Clinton, is scheduled to be deposed by the committee on Tuesday. Its chairman, Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, wants to question him about where he was getting his information and why he was writing intelligence memos for Mrs. Clinton. At the time, Mr. Blumenthal was being paid by the Clinton Foundation. In the emails he gave to the committee, there are several references to weapons in Libya. One describes how a Libyan opposition leader feared that the United States did not want to provide weapons to opposition groups because the arms could fall into the hands of Al Qaeda or other radical Islamist groups. Another email included a list of weapons said to be possessed by the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Last year, the State Department asked Mrs. Clinton for any documents she had that may be government records. In response, she gave the department about 30,000 emails that she said related to her work. The State Department in February provided the committee with about 900 pages of Mrs. Clinton’s emails that the department said were handed over in response to the panel’s requests, which included a subpoena that the committee had sent to Mrs. Clinton. Mrs. Clinton has said that she deleted about 30,000 other emails from the account that were personal. Republicans have contended that this gave Mrs. Clinton an opportunity to cherry-pick the documents that would be considered government records. After The New York Times first reported in March that she had exclusively used the personal email account, she said that she had asked the State Department to make her emails public. That process is likely to take months, if not years. “The department is working diligently to publish to its public website all of the emails received from former Secretary Clinton through the FOIA process,” Mr. Gerlach said, referring to the Freedom of Information Act. | Sidney Blumenthal;Hillary Clinton;Diplomats Embassies and Consulates;Libya;Email;State Department;Benghazi Attack 2012;US Politics;US |
ny0263078 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2011/12/27 | France: Florence Hartmann Will Not Face Charges in Tribunal Case | The French government said it would not arrest the former spokeswoman for the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, convicted for revealing confidential decisions during the trial of Slobodan Milosevic . The woman, Florence Hartmann, a French national, was convicted of contempt of court in July and fined $10,000 in the case, which involved disclosures she made in her 2007 book “Peace and Punishment.” The appeals panel of the United Nations court last month converted the fine into a seven-day prison term and asked French authorities to find and arrest Ms. Hartmann. Bernard Valero, the spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Paris, said Monday that it would be impossible to fulfill the request. He said judicial agreements between France and the court do not apply to such offenses as contempt of court. | Hartmann Florence;War Crimes Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity;Milosevic Slobodan;France;Decisions and Verdicts;United Nations;Serbia |
ny0066674 | [
"sports"
] | 2014/06/13 | Video: The Snowboarder Jeremy Jones Prepares for Peak in Nepal | “Higher Unplugged” looks at the making of the film “Higher,” which follows the snowboarder Jeremy Jones and the TGR crew as they ascend and ride peaks in Alaska, Wyoming, California and Nepal. Jones is a professional snowboarder who has been named big mountain rider of the year 10 times by Snowboarder magazine. For the largest descent of his life, Jones abandoned the iconic in search of the obscure. Rather than making a descent of Mt. Everest, he selected a nearby peak in Nepal, which he dubbed the Shangri-La Spine Wall. With a summit that towered 21,400 feet above sea level, the only certainty the mountain offered was the challenge of scaling it. In addition to its high elevation, the Shangri-La Spine Wall features weather that changes rapidly and there is a dearth of information about its snowpack. To train for his mission to Nepal, Jones teamed with Conrad Anker, a climber and mountaineer who built his reputation around ascents in the Himalayas. Last June, Jones and Anker traveled to Alaska to summit Denali, the highest peak in North America. As Jones explains, “I went to see how I would handle the high elevation.” With a summit elevation of 20,322 feet, Denali provided Jones with a glimpse of what awaited him in Nepal. And just as he anticipated, the trip revealed that climbing — let alone snowboarding — the Shangri-La Spine Wall would be no easy task. | Snowboarding;Mountaineering;Jeremy Jones;Conrad Anker |
ny0171151 | [
"us"
] | 2007/11/20 | Audit Finds Misuse of $34 Million Student Loan Subsidy | The student loan corporation in Pennsylvania improperly exploited a subsidy program to collect $34 million from the government, said a report released yesterday by the inspector general of the federal Education Department. The audit called on the department to recover the payments to the corporation, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, a state-owned company that makes and guarantees student loans. The chief executive of the agency, James Preston, defended its conduct. In a statement, Mr. Preston said the agency had complied with department regulations and received the payments with the approval of the department. The report, he added, is based on “present-day interpretation of past department regulations,” “and ignores 10 years of our compliance with regulations.” A spokeswoman for the department, Samara Yudof, said the report was under review. The subsidy program was enacted in the 1980s, when interest rates were high, as an incentive to continue making the loans. It guaranteed lenders a 9.5 percent rate of return. Congress tried to rein in the program in 1993 as interest rates fell, but the loans ballooned as lenders exploited a loophole to keep receiving the subsidy. The failure to crack down on the program has simmered in Congress. A former official in the department testified that he had urged the Bush administration to stop the subsidy. The inspector general called on the department in January to recover $278 million in subsidies to Nelnet, a lender in Lincoln, Neb. The department suspended more than $800 million in future payments to Nelnet until an independent audit confirmed it was eligible and moved to curtail payments to all lenders except those proving eligibility with audits. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings told Congress that she settled with Nelnet because she thought that her department’s subsidy history could put it in legal jeopardy if Nelnet sued. The new findings prompted criticism by Democrats in Congress. Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and chairman the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said, “The Bush administration’s reckless refusal to conduct proper oversight allowed a lender to egregiously misuse tens of millions of taxpayer dollars that were intended to help students and families pay for college.” | Frauds and Swindling;Student Loans;Pennsylvania;Education Department |
ny0063003 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2014/01/01 | 2 Slashed at Port Authority Bus Terminal | Two men were injured in slashings at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York on Tuesday night, sending frightened people running from the station, just a block from the New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square, officials said. The attacks took place around 8:50 p.m. in an area near the ticketing counter in the main concourse of the station, officials said. Two men, ages 47 and 61, were being treated at Roosevelt Hospital with wounds that did not appear to be life-threatening. The police were searching for a male suspect who fled the station, but no arrest had been made by about 11 p.m., said Joseph Pentangelo, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He said the weapon had not been recovered, but described the injuries as “lacerations rather than stabs.” Image A person with a bandaged head was wheeled to an ambulance outside the Port Authority on Tuesday night. Credit Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York Times The suspect and the two victims appeared to know one another, Mr. Pentangelo said, and had an argument that led to a physical confrontation. Some service was disrupted, but was restored around 10:30 p.m., Mr. Pentangelo said. Mamdouh Dawood was working at the Deli Plus store at the terminal when he saw people running from the main concourse. Nearly 100 people poured into his store to take cover, with many hiding behind the counter. “Everyone came into the store and came behind the counter and said, ‘Get down! Get down!’ ” he said. Mr. Dawood, 50, a shift manager at the store who is from Egypt, said he was not too alarmed. “I’m from the Middle East, so I’m used to this thing,” he said. Police at the Port Authority blocked off the area while cleaning crews mopped the floors around 10:30 p.m. Blood remained on the floor near an escalator. | New Year;Port Authority Bus Terminal;Assault |
ny0053454 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2014/07/16 | Reading India’s Language of Public Protest | NEW DELHI — During my first months in India, I was constantly mistaking one thing for something else. The natural world baffled me. I would occasionally look up at the tree growing in my neighbor’s front yard and notice that leaves had appeared or vanished, and I had no idea whether this meant it was spring or fall. I didn’t know what kind of tree it was, any more than I knew the names of the birds that warbled weirdly in its branches. People were equally unreadable. The cluster of men that gathered around our car after a fender bender — were they reaching consensus on a fair penalty, or bullying our driver, or enjoying a half-hour of free entertainment? The transgender beggars vamping outside our car window, were they sweet or menacing? I had no idea. One day, something happened that helped me understand at least a little. We were returning to Delhi after a day of sightseeing in Agra with three small girls buckled into the back seat. We left the city in half-light, past ruminant humpbacked cattle and fruit sellers with careful pyramids of mangoes, past women crouched over hearths and onto the six lanes of the Yamuna Expressway. I was beginning to doze off when I saw that something was wrong. As we approached a tollbooth, the cars ahead of us were making U-turns and racing the wrong way down the highway. Our driver pulled onto the shoulder, but it was too late: A crowd of men was running toward us, waving sticks and hurling stones at vehicles they could overtake. It was hard to see their faces, but their undershirts stood out white in the darkness and I could see that many of them were wearing flip-flops. Something hit our car with a crack. I felt a kind of sick fear, and our driver sped forward. But as we drove, I realized that men with sticks were running alongside us on the highway, and that ahead, all six lanes were blocked. “Who are those guys?” my 6-year-old asked, and I didn’t answer. I had read a great deal about mob violence, neighbors turning on each other with scythes and rods, and I ran through the possibilities in my mind. As we sat there, waiting to see what sort of crowd this was, I made a call to a colleague — if this was about to turn dangerous, someone should know where we were — and in a minute or two he called back with a story he had heard from his brother, a police officer who was posted nearby. And it was the most pitiable, miserable little story you can imagine. There was construction going on at the edge of the highway, and workers had gone home leaving electrical wiring exposed. A boy had stepped on it and been electrocuted. According to the police officer, the villagers wanted an inquiry into the boy’s death. Just that — an inquiry. Nothing special. But there was no answer from the state. The villagers were powerless. And so they used the tools available to the weak. We were incidental to the scene. It was a kind of conversation between citizens and a state government that, even after years of 9 percent growth, was unable to guarantee public safety. By the time I heard this account, police cars had arrived, and the villagers had agreed to clear off the highway. I don’t know if the boy’s death was investigated. More likely someone slipped his father a couple of thousand rupees and declared the matter settled. But now I see the pattern repeating itself constantly. Gandhi, the father of modern India, never had much interest in petitioning the state over misrule, viewing it as “boring, or playing by the rules of the game,” the political scientist Ashutosh Varshney noted when I told him this story. Instead, he guided his followers to civil disobedience. Power outages, rapes or murders, road accidents, derailments, tiger maulings — every day, in one place or another, people pour out their anger in small public protests, because that is the only way they know to get something out of the government. The authorities largely tolerate it and refrain from retaliating unless they are under attack. Who knows, maybe they agree that they are to blame. Most of the time the storm passes, as it did that night on the highway from Agra, and everyone goes back to what they were doing before. | India;Civil Unrest;Politics |
ny0217110 | [
"business"
] | 2010/04/15 | Defaults Rise in Federal Loan Modification Program | The number of homeowners who defaulted on their mortgages even after securing cheaper terms through the government’s modification program nearly doubled in March, continuing a trend that could undermine the entire program. Data released Wednesday by the Treasury Department and the Housing and Urban Development Department showed that 2,879 modified loans had been ended since the program’s inception in the fall, up from 1,499 in February and 1,005 in January. The Treasury Department said it could not explain the growing number of what it called cancellations, almost all of which were apparently prompted by the borrower’s being unable to make the new payment. A scant number — 37 — were because the loan had been paid off, presumably because the borrower sold the house. About seven million households are behind on their mortgage payments. The Obama administration’s modification program has been widely criticized for doing little to help them. The program received another bad review on Wednesday with the release of a report from the Congressional Oversight Panel. The Treasury’s stated goal is for the modification program to help as many as four million households, the oversight report said, “but only some of these offers will result in temporary modifications, and only some of those modifications will convert to final, five-year status.” The report continued: “Even among borrowers who receive five-year modifications, some will eventually fall behind on their payments and once again face foreclosure. In the final reckoning, the goal itself seems small in comparison to the magnitude of the problem.” The Treasury took issue with the report and said the pace of modifications was picking up. The number of active permanent modifications in March was 227,922, an increase of 35 percent from those in February. An additional 108,212 permanent modifications are awaiting borrower approval. Shaun Donovan, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, said in an interview that those were the important numbers to focus on. “One percent of these loans defaulting is a tiny fraction,” Mr. Donovan said. “Given how stressed these borrowers are, even in the best situation, there will be redefaults. But I don’t think there is any evidence that would cause us to worry at this point.” Julia R. Gordon, senior policy counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending in Washington, said she expected the number of post-modification defaults to continue to rise. “It’s definitely alarming to look at those statistics,” she said. “The current model for modifications doesn’t necessarily produce sustainable results.” While the program is too new to predict its long-term success, the data on previous modification efforts is not encouraging. Sixty percent of modifications undertaken by banks in late 2008 were in default a year later, according to the latest Mortgage Metrics Report compiled by the Office of Thrift Supervision and the comptroller of the currency. Many of these private plans either kept the payments the same or increased them. Inevitably, those mortgages suffered the highest failure rate: about two-thirds of the borrowers defaulted again. Loans for which the payments were decreased by at least 20 percent failed at a slower but still significant rate of about 40 percent. The government program takes a more aggressive approach, lowering the interest rates for all loans. On many loans, terms are also extended or principal payments put off for years. Treasury data shows that the median savings for borrowers receiving permanent modifications is $512 a month. Many borrowers remain deeply indebted, however. They owe not only on the house, but on homeowner association fees, home equity loans , car loans, alimony and credit card interest. Even after modification, $61 out of every $100 earned by the borrower goes to servicing debt, government figures show. For increasing numbers of modification recipients, mortgage relief is apparently not enough to stave off financial collapse. “If you can help 60 percent, and 40 percent have to fall back, is that worthwhile?” asked John Courson, president of the Mortgage Bankers Association. “Clearly for the 60 percent it was, and the 40 percent weren’t going to make it anyway.” The Treasury said on Wednesday that it had always anticipated that some homeowners would not sustain a modification, which was one reason the program had been greatly expanded. New elements focus on allowing distressed homeowners to sell their properties for less than they owe and on shaving the principal owed by borrowers. The notion of cutting principal, however, has already run into some resistance from the big banks, which do not want borrowers to get the idea that their mortgage can be chopped on a whim. | Mortgages;loan modification;Housing and Real Estate;Foreclosures;Treasury Department;Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan |
ny0214935 | [
"business"
] | 2010/03/14 | Shopping the Mortgage Rate Before the Home Price | “IT’S a great time to buy a home.” Real estate agents were saying that in 2001, as home prices were rising. They also said it when home prices peaked in 2005 — in fact, David Lereah, former chief economist of the National Association of Realtors , published a book that year titled “Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom?” And many real estate agents said it was time to buy as prices began to drop — and continued to say it over the past several years as prices fell by an average of 33 percent in America’s 20 largest cities. Mr. Lereah would acknowledge that he had gotten it wrong. But from the perspective of many real estate agents, it is always a good time to buy. “What they are really saying is that it is a good time to be involved in a transaction that generates a commission,” says Barry Ritholtz, C.E.O. and director of equity research at FusionIQ, a quantitative research firm. He’s also author of “The Big Picture,” an irreverent blog on markets. If agents are always motivated to make a deal, buyers are often asking an impossible question: “Will the price of this house go up?” Although the National Association of Realtors said for many years that home prices historically don’t fall, actually they do, and sometimes quite sharply. The housing market is complicated, and the future unknowable. Still, for clues to the overall direction of prices, Mr. Ritholtz advises buyers to look at three metrics: the ratio of median income to median home prices, which suggests whether people can afford a house; the cost of ownership versus renting; and the value of the national housing stock as a percentage of gross domestic product. All those measures were aberrationally inflated during the housing bubble. And they still aren’t back to historical norms. We can get back to the norm in either of two ways, Mr. Ritholtz says: home prices can either drop an additional 15 percent or go sideways for seven years or so, while G.D.P. and income presumably grow. To complicate matters, even if home prices rise or fall nationally, they may not follow that pattern in Las Vegas or South Florida or Maine, to say nothing of the neighborhood where you want to buy. There may be a better way, however, for potential buyers to approach the problem. “Predicting interest rates is a whole lot easier than predicting home prices,” says Glenn Kelman, chief executive of Redfin, a multistate discount online real estate brokerage company based in Seattle. “Before you buy the house, you buy the money,” he says. It’s a little like walking into a dealership to buy a car, and finding the saleswoman immediately jotting down what your monthly payments will be and starting the negotiations there. That’s absolutely the wrong way to buy a car. But for a prospective homeowner, it’s a good place to start the analysis to determine how much house you can buy. Instead of betting on home prices, you make a bet on whether money will become cheaper or more expensive, allowing you to buy more or less house. That’s where the regular Joe has a pretty good shot of being right. You won’t know day to day, or week to week, what’s happening to rates, and a jolt like a default in Greece or a change in Chinese monetary policy can throw everything off. But, generally, the Federal Reserve is telegraphing where things are headed over the next six months. “I can’t prove to you that housing prices have definitely bottomed out,” Mr. Kelman says. “I can say with a fair degree of certainty that the cost of money will go higher.” OF course, if rates go up, home prices tend to dampen. Borrowing $300,000 at 5 percent costs you $1,610 a month. If rates rise to 6 percent, that’s $188 a month more, or $67,680 over 30 years. Would the price of a $375,000 house fall because of a half-point rate hike? Now you are back to guessing about home prices. Don’t go there. Maintain your focus. “People are frequently buying for the wrong reasons,” says Frank LLosa, a real estate agent working in northern Virginia. In most cases, he says, they think that they are getting an income tax break or that their home is an investment . He points out that a buyer of a $300,000 home would have to see the house appreciate $18,000 just to cover the commission and closing costs. Then figure in the predictable costs of maintenance, the opportunity costs of the mortgage down payment and the amount one could have saved by renting a similar place more cheaply. Then there are property taxes. In California, taxes alone can be $5,000 a year on that $300,000 house. In New Jersey, where property taxes are the highest in the nation, the extra cost can be even more. (The Star-Ledger of Newark calculated that, on average, residents in the town of Lodi pay 10 percent of their income in property taxes.) But who would have guessed that property taxes in that state would keep climbing, doubling over the course of seven years in some cases, even as home values stopped appreciating? Mr. LLosa thinks that many people — including him — would be better off renting. People ought to buy a house for what he calls “warm and fuzzy feelings,” but they shouldn’t try to predict home prices. Nor should real estate agents, who aren’t much wiser. “I don’t think real estate professionals should be in the business of telling people when it is a great time to buy,” he said. | Housing and Real Estate;Prices (Fares Fees and Rates);National Assn of Realtors;Mortgages;Interest Rates;Property Taxes |
ny0143317 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2008/11/25 | Bronx Market Gets Early Start to Busy Thanksgiving Week | The cold concrete platforms were like little expressways for whirring electric jacks and beeping Hi-Lo forklifts, their frenetic maneuvers punctuated with cries of “Back it up! Back it up!” and “Turn around! Turn around!” All Sunday night and into the early morning on Monday, hundreds of giant tractor-trailers and smaller trucks jockeyed for precious parking space between the massive loading platforms at the Hunts Point produce market in the South Bronx. With Thanksgiving only days away, the produce market began its busiest time of the year, based on a food-centered holiday that crams five days of business into three. “Customers will come back several days before Thanksgiving,” said Matthew D’Arrigo, a co-president of the Hunts Point Terminal Produce Cooperative Association who also runs D’Arrigo Brothers Company, a produce-distribution business started by his grandfather. “It really stresses the system, having a three-day week,” he said. “Produce takes up a lot of space. It’s bulky, and it needs to be kept cold. There’s very little of that infrastructure in the customer base within the city.” In preparation for Monday morning’s sales, trains started bringing in produce on Saturday, and tractors hauling 53-foot trailers brought in loads from all over the country on Sunday. The market, which usually opens on Sunday at 10 p.m., let in customers at 6 p.m. to accommodate the shorter week. Throughout the night, the platforms, each measuring a third of a mile long, glowed with bright overhead lights, the fruits and vegetables shining on inclined steel-framed stands. “We like to think that we’re lit brighter than Yankee Stadium,” said Myra Gordon, the association’s executive administrative director. The early start was a small blessing for Bulent Unal, the owner of a 10-foot-long produce stand at 43rd Street and Ninth Avenue in Manhattan. Mr. Unal does not usually finish his purchases at the Hunts Point market until 4:30 a.m. On Sunday, however, he was done by about midnight. Mr. Unal said that when he started selling produce in 1990, he had a full head of hair that he kept in a ponytail. His balding head is a testament to the hard work involved in providing New Yorkers with fresh produce, he said. He runs his stand from 7:15 a.m. to 7 p.m. and usually gets no more than three hours’ sleep before heading back to Hunts Point. “To be honest, you can sleep 10 hours, but you lose money,” he said. Like other buyers, Mr. Unal did a fair amount of sampling in the refrigerated warehouses. He squeezed, tasted and smelled, much like a shopper in a supermarket aisle. Before he left, he had spent $660 on pomegranates, $840 on Fuyu persimmons, $700 on navel oranges and $560 on crimson grapes. The 50 or so companies at the Hunts Point market make sales of more than $2 billion annually, more than any other produce terminal market in the world, according to the cooperative association. The customers include about 2,500 green grocers and 1,000 upscale green grocers (which sell specialty items), bodegas and small chain supermarkets, Mr. D’Arrigo said. The market also has about 500 registered buyers who buy for multiple stores. Market officials say their association has outgrown the aging building and is in desperate need of an expansion. They have requested that the city, which owns the property, help pay for the expansion, which would cost more than $450 million. Around midnight on Sunday, Leon Shapiro, a grocer from Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, waited on one of the platforms, near his packed, 40-foot tractor-trailer with his son and his store manager, sipping coffee and smiling. As they waited for a last shipment of carrots, they reveled in the knowledge that they would be leaving soon, rather than at 4 a.m. Mr. Shapiro, 50, opened his Brighton Beach store, M.N.L. Development, almost three years ago and serves mostly Russian immigrants who “know their stuff and demand quality,” he said. “In this business, you got to be here; you got to see the stuff,” Mr. Shapiro said. “A box of cereal is a predictable thing. A box of romaine lettuce? Never. You got to see it.” | Hunts Point produce market;Food;Hunts Point (NYC);Retail Stores and Trade;Thanksgiving Day;Bronx (NYC) |
ny0180343 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2007/08/01 | In Murdoch’s Past, Clues to The Journal’s Future | So now what? Since the News Corporation’s offer for Dow Jones & Company was made public three months ago, Rupert Murdoch ’s business career, character and motives have been dissected in an effort to predict what he might do as the owner of The Wall Street Journal. Despite how long Mr. Murdoch has wanted The Journal, he may not have a set playbook, according to interviews and more recent conversations with several people in Mr. Murdoch’s camp, who spoke on the condition they not be identified. “There’s a very low probability that there’s a grand plan,” said one person close to Mr. Murdoch. But based on his history, there is little doubt that Mr. Murdoch will directly aim at luring both readers and advertising away from The New York Times and The Financial Times, The Journal’s closest rivals. His strategy will probably include aggressively undercutting advertising and investing heavily in editorial content — particularly in Washington and international news — absorbing losses at first to win the longer-term war. At its most ambitious, Mr. Murdoch’s vision for Dow Jones would establish The Journal as the rival to The Times in setting the daily news agenda of the country. The vision has a business corollary: by broadening The Journal’s influence beyond pure business readers, Mr. Murdoch wants to reposition it as not just the world’s leading financial newspaper, but the world’s leading business journalism source for consumers. The paper has already tried this with softer service features and its Saturday edition. Reorienting the newspaper further for consumers would fit with two other aspirations Mr. Murdoch has. One is to build his nascent Fox Business Network, which begins in 30 million United States homes this October, into a viable contender with Bloomberg Television and CNBC, which have much larger subscriber bases both at home and abroad. The Journal already has a deal to provide news content exclusively to CNBC, an agreement that the News Corporation discovered is ironclad until 2012. Any move to tie The Journal to the new Fox business channel will require disentanglement. In the meantime, the business channel, which is scheduled to begin operation on Oct. 15 under the direction of the Fox News chief executive and chairman, Roger Ailes, is being readied on the presumption that it is a stand-alone business. Mr. Murdoch’s second and overarching vision is to resurrect the newspaper industry by integrating print and video online and building brands around the world. Part of that involves tapping into Dow Jones’s Web properties — it owns not just The Journal but also the investing weekly Barron’s, Dow Jones Newswires and the consumer-focused Web service MarketWatch.com — to create an online platform for all of the company’s newsgathering operations around the world. Another part would be using the company’s Fox and Sky News video outlets as sources of video content on the new sites. Mr. Murdoch has shown in the past that he is willing to experiment, even knock over some sacred cows. In an interview with The Times earlier this year, Mr. Murdoch mused aloud about The Journal, saying, for instance, that he did not have time to read longer articles during the week and might like to swap out the paper’s Pursuits section on Saturdays with a glossy magazine. More recently, he told Time magazine that he was not sure about the offbeat front-page stories known internally as “A-Heds” that are a plum for reporters to write. A more immediate change might be felt on the Web side, where The Journal has stood out among newspapers by commanding more than 900,000 paid subscribers. Executives at the News Corporation are keen to explore whether more of that content ought to be offered free online to increase the audience and attract advertising, while keeping subscribers by offering more premium services. A more open WSJ.com would be able to attract more advertising, but also potentially distribute that advertising across the News Corporation’s online footprint. Mr. Murdoch’s purchase could mean more immediate changes on the business side of Dow Jones. When he repurchased The New York Post in 1993, he focused on raising the paper’s circulation by cutting the cover price of the paper several times and handing out copies free. “If he hadn’t come in, there wouldn’t have been a New York Post,” said Jerry Fragetti, senior vice president for media and operations at Newspaper National Network, who worked as chief financial officer of The Post in the 1980s and as an executive for the News Corporation in the early 1990s. Mr. Murdoch believed that expanding the readership would allow him to take away advertisers from The New York Times and The Daily News. (He fought hard for readers on the news side, as well, turning the paper into a gossipy must-read for people on Wall Street, in fashion and in the media business.) And as The Post grew in circulation, Mr. Murdoch did not always increase the price of ads in the paper, say advertising executives who bought newspaper ads in the 1990s. Advertising executives say The Post pursues ad sales as aggressively as Mr. Murdoch has pursued a purchase of Dow Jones. The Post’s advertising department started offering more creative packaging of ads, like opportunities for advertisers in the paper to also be involved in events and promotions, and featured in fliers in the paper, said Peter Gardiner, chief media officer at Deutsch, an advertising agency that is part of the Interpublic Group of Companies. The paper’s advertising team is still known to be one of the more persistent in the newspaper business. “The DNA of the people they hire tends to be a little higher octane in terms of aggressiveness and energy,” said Jason E. Klein, president and chief executive of Newspaper National Network, which sells ads on behalf of a variety of newspapers across the country. “They’re kind of standouts in terms of how hungry they are, which I think for some people is actually quite refreshing,” Mr. Klein said. Several ad executives said it might be appealing to have a one-stop place to buy ads in The Wall Street Journal, its Web site and the News Corporation’s television network about business. “I want to go nuts on that channel,” Mr. Gardiner of Deutsch said. Mr. Murdoch absorbed heavy start-up costs when he introduced the Fox News Channel in 1996, entering a market where critics said there was no room for a new entrant. While his rivals complain that Mr. Murdoch has succeeded through flash, tone and slant, today the network is profitable and has overtaken CNN in the ratings. When it comes to his newspapers, he can be especially deep-pocketed and patient, running up considerable losses for years so long as other branches of his media empire are churning out enough profits. The Australian, a national newspaper that Mr. Murdoch founded in 1964, took more than two decades to record its first profit. The Times of London is expected by News Corporation executives to make a profit next year, its first since it was acquired in 1982. The New York Post has also lost money since the company acquired it for the second time in 1993. Over all, despite the losses at these high-profile titles, the company’s 110 newspapers, anchored by Mr. Murdoch’s money-spinning tabloids in Britain and Australia, produced solid profit margins of nearly 14 percent in the nine months that ended March 31, far higher than The Journal’s margins in the low single digits. With both The Times of London and The Post, Mr. Murdoch engaged in long cover price wars with their chief competitors, The Daily Telegraph in London and The Daily News in New York, which helped increase the sales of both Murdoch titles markedly. Mr. Murdoch has not said whether he would try to change the price of The Journal, which recently increased its newsstand price, as did The New York Times and The Financial Times. And while changes atop Dow Jones may not be imminent, they would not be surprising. People close to Mr. Murdoch have speculated that he will find a senior role at Dow Jones for Robert Thomson, the current editor of The Times of London. Mr. Thomson has been an adviser in the pursuit of The Journal. Also, it has been bruited by some within the News Corporation that buying Dow Jones could set the stage for the eventual move of Mr. Murdoch’s son James to the United States to oversee the company’s print, television and online network businesses, with Mr. Ailes playing a senior role. Both Mr. Thomson and James Murdoch, who is the chief executive of BSkyB in London, have said they had no immediate plans to leave their current posts. At The Journal, Mr. Murdoch has agreed to a series of measures intended to protect the paper’s editorial independence from corporate interference, something the media billionaire has been known to engage in over the years at other newspapers he owns. Top editorial executives cannot be removed or added without the approval of a new oversight board, but Mr. Murdoch can make changes on the business side. For now, he has voiced his support for the new managing editor, Marcus W. Brauchli, and said he does not plan to replace the chief executive, Richard F. Zannino, or the publisher, L. Gordon Crovitz. One person close to Mr. Murdoch said it was his style to see how things worked out before making any judgments. One major marker is going to be how Mr. Zannino approaches The Journal brand internationally. The company has scaled back its European and Asian editions in recent years and they did not figure prominently in the growth plan Mr. Zannino put in place when he became chief executive last year. Mr. Murdoch, however, is keen to turn up the heat on The Financial Times. “He will give the management there the confidence to put up some of the plans they had in the past and didn’t have resources for and see how they run,” the person close to Mr. Murdoch said. | Murdoch Rupert;Newspapers;Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures;Wall Street Journal;News Corporation Limited;Dow Jones & Co |
ny0209352 | [
"business"
] | 2009/12/10 | S.E.C. Proposal Aimed at Early Madoff Investors | Adding a new wrinkle to an already rumpled issue, the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed at a Congressional hearing on Wednesday that the cash claims of the earliest investors in Bernard L. Madoff ’s Ponzi scheme be adjusted for inflation. Michael A. Conley, the deputy solicitor for the commission, disclosed the proposal during testimony before a House Financial Services subcommittee hearing examining how the claims of Mr. Madoff’s victims were being handled. The claims process is being overseen by the Securities Investors Protection Corporation, an industry-financed fund that provides some limited reimbursement to the customers of failed brokerage firms. Citing a long history of court cases involving Ponzi schemes, SIPC has been calculating victim loss by subtracting withdrawals from the amounts initially invested — the so-called cash in, cash out method. Under that approach, someone who invested $100,000 but withdrew the same amount over time would not be eligible for SIPC compensation. The approach benefits investors who came late to the scheme or never withdrew funds over the years. But it means that claims filed by thousands of Mr. Madoff’s early investors — many face serious financial hardship as a result of the fraud — are being denied. The S.E.C.’s proposal, if accepted by the courts or imposed by Congress, would help some early investors by increasing the cash-in side of their equation, which might result in them having a net cash loss that would qualify as a valid claim. Mr. Conley testified at the hearing by the House subcommittee, whose chairman is Representative Paul E. Kanjorski, Democrat of Pennsylvania. “Assume that one claimant invested $100 in the Madoff firm in 1987, a second claimant invested $100 in 2007, and neither withdrew any funds from their accounts,” Mr. Conley said in his testimony. A strict net cash calculation would treat both amounts the same although the more recent contribution is worth about $83 less than the investment made more than 20 years ago, he said. “So the claimant who invested $100 in Madoff’s firm 21 years before the firm collapsed has suffered a much more substantial real-world loss than a claimant who invested $100 only one year before the collapse,” Mr. Conley said. The S.E.C.’s approach is an attempt to adjust for that reality, he said, although his prepared testimony did not report how many ineligible claims would become eligible if early cash contributions were adjusted for inflation. The proposal may not win over many of the victims whose claims have been ruled ineligible because they were “net cash” winners over time. Representatives of those investors were among the other witnesses at Wednesday’s hearing. They argued that the only proper way to calculate their losses is to rely on the amounts shown on the final account statements they received before the fraud collapsed. And Mr. Conley’s testimony made it clear that the S.E.C. does not support that “final statement” approach. While he conceded that the Madoff case “does not fall neatly” into the patterns established by prior court decisions, he said that did not justify relying on the final account statements to establish losses in a Ponzi scheme. “Although this approach would allow most Madoff account holders to receive payments on their claims, those payments would be based on account balances reflecting amounts that Madoff himself concocted that bear no relation to reality,” he said. The hearing also included testimony from Stephen P. Harbeck , the president of the Securities Investors Protection Corporation, who also endorsed the cash-in, cash-out method, but stopped short of supporting Mr. Conley’s proposal for calculating claims in constant dollars. Mr. Harbeck also argued strongly against any legislative steps that would prohibit the Madoff trustee from filing lawsuits against people who took out substantially more than they invested in the scheme — money, he noted, that Mr. Madoff had stolen from other investors. Helen Davis Chaitman, a Madoff victim and a lawyer who represents many other victims, told the panel that these so-called clawback lawsuits victimized innocent investors and should be barred. | Madoff Bernard L;Ponzi Schemes;Frauds and Swindling;Securities and Exchange Commission |
ny0281204 | [
"business"
] | 2016/10/15 | With Sprint, Former Verizon Actor Says, You Can Hear Him Just Fine | ONCE, he was widely known as the Verizon guy, or the “Can you hear me now?” guy. Now, he’s just Paul. This summer, Paul Marcarelli, an actor whose private life was largely a mystery during the decade or so in which he starred in Verizon commercials, made a big announcement . He had switched to Sprint, his former employer’s competitor for wireless service. “Hey, I’m Paul. And I used to ask if you could hear me now, with Verizon,” he said in a commercial. “Not anymore. I’m with Sprint now.” The ad set off a flood of interest. David Tovar, a spokesman at Sprint, said most new commercials get between 30,000 and 40,000 views on YouTube. Sprint’s first commercial featuring Mr. Marcarelli has been viewed over 14 million times. More than 970 articles were written about Mr. Marcarelli’s switch, the company said, and the ad created over three billion impressions. Mr. Marcarelli, 46, spoke to The New York Times about his experience working for the two companies. He said a major difference was that, with Verizon, he had been playing a character who represented an employee. “Now I’m speaking from personal experience as a legitimate Sprint customer,” he said. Mr. Marcarelli’s transformation from actor to advocate speaks to a traditional marketing culture that is starting to loosen up in some corners as it faces threats from new forms of advertising , as well as digital tools like ad blockers . Sprint has opted for transparency in its marketing and communications efforts, an unusual approach in a telecommunications industry dominated by giants like Verizon and AT&T. Mr. Tovar said Sprint had to do things differently from other companies “because of where we are in the market right now.” “We’re the No. 4 carrier; we feel like we have to be bold,” he said. “Otherwise we’re not going to be able to compete with our competition. They have more money, they have more resources and they have more brand equity.” Verizon declined to comment for this article. Part of Sprint’s strategy is letting Mr. Marcarelli off the leash. The actor was unaccompanied during our phone interview. (Public relations staff members often insist on monitoring interviews.) “I don’t represent them,” he said. “I am one of their customers. They wouldn’t presume to tell me what to say.” Image Paul Marcarelli in a Verizon advertisement. Credit Verizon Wireless Mr. Marcarelli, who grew up in North Haven, Conn., said he moved to New York in 1992 to pursue an acting career. In 1998, he founded a theater company with some friends, helping to bankroll productions with money from his work on commercials. In late 2001, he said, he auditioned for the role of “Test Man” for Verizon. “We never discussed it as a spokesman role,” he said. “I knew that I would be playing a character that in some way embodied the brand identity of the company. But I was never called upon to be a spokesperson per se.” He could not discuss the specifics of his arrangement with Verizon because of contractual obligations, but said it was agreed that he would not promote his character outside of the advertisements. “I had absolutely no public persona outside of that role,” he said. The news media took note of his silence. In 2003, Advertising Age reported that Verizon did not want Mr. Marcarelli speaking to the press. “He is not positioned as an icon,” a Verizon spokeswoman said at the time. “His role is to give visibility to the real people in the company who test the network.” Mr. Marcarelli made dozens of commercials with Verizon. His relationship with the company formally ended in 2012, he said, though in the fall of 2010, he was told that Verizon would be taking a new direction in its advertising. A 2011 profile in The Atlantic made it seem as if he were glad to leave the job behind. But Mr. Marcarelli said that was not the case. “We all set out to build and direct a career for ourselves, and I think the career shapes itself, sometimes in spite of our best efforts,” he said. “We come to acknowledge the gifts inherent in that, as well as the drawbacks.” This spring he was approached by Sprint, which asked if he would like to try its service. It was understood that a role in an ad campaign was in the works. Mr. Marcarelli tried the service and, as he says in the commercial, liked it enough to switch from Verizon (and to receive what is, no doubt, a lucrative contract). He would not discuss financial details but joked, “This is not my volunteer job.” He expressed gratitude that Sprint was letting him play himself, describing a “pretty amazing conversation” that he had with some Sprint employees after having already switched his carrier. “I happened to mention to them that my husband has always been with Sprint,” he said. “And I asked them: ‘Incidentally, do you have any discomfort about the fact that I’m married to a dude? Is that going to be an issue? If it is, that’s kind of a deal-breaker for me.’ “And they were actually surprised that I even asked that. They said, ‘We love everything about you.’ And this was in a business meeting!” “I’ve been speaking as myself with my name,” he added. “And there’s no way that I would take a job if I in any way, shape or form was being asked to tell a half-truth, lie or closet myself.” The Sprint campaign has helped prompt new analyses of its business. In a recent head-to-head comparison between Sprint and Verizon, a headline at the Motley Fool stock advising website asked, “Sprint stole Verizon’s spokesperson. Can it steal its investors?” The article concluded that Verizon remained a better investment option. Mr. Tovar acknowledged, “We have a long way to go in terms of transforming Sprint.” “But we’re a far better company today than we were two years ago across any metric that you can point to,” he said. He sent along some statistics, including the company’s consistent gains in postpaid phone subscribers, and last year’s record decrease in churn, a metric that shows customers departing for other carriers. Mr. Tovar said that while there were some instances in which transparency had backfired for Sprint, he was happy to remain as open as possible. “If everybody just tells their story and tells the truth, well, then you let the chips fall where they may,” he said. “If that’s the case, we feel really good about our company.” | Paul Marcarelli;Wireless;advertising,marketing;Sprint Nextel;Verizon Communications |
ny0049383 | [
"science"
] | 2014/11/25 | After Acid Rain, Lakes Are Turning to ‘Jelly’ | Tiny, jelly-clad crustaceans known as Holopedium are thriving in some Canadian lakes after years of acid rain, threatening the food chain and “jellifying” the waters, say biologists. Unlike other “water fleas,” Holopedium can survive on very little calcium, making them ideally suited to the calcium-depleted waters of lakes exposed to pollution. But their hard, jelly-protected bodies cause problems for others, clogging up filtration systems, removing nutrients from the food chain and washing up in the form of “goo balls.” A study published in The Proceedings of the Royal Society B says the population of Holopedium in Ontario lakes doubled between the 1980s and mid-2000s. | Fish;Water pollution;Canada;Lake;Air pollution;Acid rain;Ontario;Biology and Biochemistry;Jellyfish |
ny0067966 | [
"science"
] | 2014/12/16 | A Horned Reminder of Montana’s Past | Researchers have discovered the oldest known horned dinosaur species from the early Cretaceous in North America. It dates back 113 million to 105 million years ago. The tiny dinosaur, with a skull measuring under four inches in length, was named Aquilops americanus and found in Montana. This is an artist’s reconstruction of Aquilops in its environment in ancient Montana. | Dinosaur;Paleontology;Montana;Archaeology |
ny0033352 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2013/12/10 | Without Notice, Putin Dissolves a News Agency | MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin exerted new control over Russia’s state news media on Monday, dissolving by decree one of Russia’s official news agencies, RIA Novosti, along with its international radio broadcaster as he continues a drive to strengthen the Kremlin’s influence at home and abroad. The decision shutters a decades-old state-run news agency widely viewed as offering professional and semi-independent coverage, while putting a reconstituted news service in the hands of a Kremlin loyalist. Since returning for a third time as president last year, Mr. Putin has taken several steps that critics have denounced as a strangulation of political rights and open debate, concentrating power in an ever tighter circle of allies. The decree comes at a time when Russia has become increasingly assertive on the world stage, most recently in the tug of war with the European Union over political and economic relations with Ukraine, a country with deep historical and cultural links that Mr. Putin and others here believe bind it to Russia, not the West. The Kremlin’s intense lobbying and strong-arming of Ukraine’s embattled president, Viktor F. Yanukovich, have been a principal grievance of the hundreds of thousands who have poured into the streets in the last two weeks. The reorganization of Russia’s state news media occurred only days after a meeting between the two leaders — and unconfirmed rumors that they had reached a secret deal to forge a strategic partnership — served to intensify the protests. Mr. Putin’s presidential chief of staff, Sergei B. Ivanov, said the decision to close the news service was part of an effort to reduce costs and make the state news media more efficient. But RIA Novosti’s report on its own demise said the changes “appear to point toward a tightening of state control in the already heavily regulated media sector.” Its executive editor, Svetlana Mironyuk, the first woman to lead the agency, appeared before her stunned colleagues and apologized for failing to preserve what she called the best news organization ever built by state money, according to a video recording of the meeting. The two agencies will be absorbed into a new state media organization known as Rossiya Sevodnya, or Russia Today. In a separate decree, Mr. Putin appointed Dmitry K. Kiselyov as executive director of the organization. Mr. Kiselyov, a television executive and host, is an avowed pro-Kremlin figure who has provoked controversy with starkly homophobic remarks and virulent commentary suggesting foreign conspiracies are threatening Russia. The decrees caught the agencies’ employees, its executives and even some government officials by surprise. Mr. Putin made the changes without prior notice or public debate, as is often the case here. His decree said that the new agency would focus on providing news about Russia to an international audience; the agency’s directors will be directly appointed by the president’s office. The reasons behind the timing were unclear and, to many, puzzling. RIA Novosti is one of the official sponsors of the Winter Olympics to be held in the Russian resort of Sochi in February, and its employees have been deeply involved in organizing preparations for news coverage there. There have been some calls for boycotting the Games, citing Russian policies, including a new law prohibiting advocacy of nontraditional sexual relationships , that have prompted harsh criticism from rights organizations. “Russia has its own independent politics and strongly defends its national interests,” Mr. Ivanov, a close ally of Mr. Putin’s, said in remarks to reporters, according to RIA Novosti. “It’s difficult to explain this to the world, but we can do this and we must do this.” He suggested that Russia had had some difficulties in successfully explaining its views abroad. “We must tell the truth, make it accessible to the most people possible, and use modern language and the best available technologies in doing so,” he added. RIA Novosti’s roots extend to World War II, when it was founded as the Soviet Information Bureau two days after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. According to the agency, it has correspondents in 45 countries and provides reports in Russian and 13 other languages. Image Dmitry K. Kiselyov, a Kremlin backer, was appointed the head of a new news agency. Credit Pool photo by Mikhail Klimentyev It was renamed after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and while it continued to serve as an official news agency, its reporting earned greater respect for its balance and diversity of viewpoints. That troubled at least some here. Maxim L. Shevchenko, a prominent television personality, called the reorganization “a sensible step” in a post on Twitter. “The nest of anti-Russian media forces has been destroyed,” he wrote. That an official news agency could be considered hostile to its own government reflected some deep divisions within Russia’s political elite. The new agency’s name, Rossiya Sevodnya, is the original name of the Kremlin’s international television network, now re-branded simply as RT and known for its jaundiced view of the United States and other Western countries. The decree, which takes effect immediately, did not link the two organizations. Aleksei A. Navalny, the anticorruption blogger and opposition leader, lamented the demise of a “strong Soviet brand” in his own posting on Twitter and said Russia Today, as a brand, was “something repulsive.” Andrei Miroshnichenko, an independent media critic here, said RIA Novosti and the other state news agency, Itar-Tass, had in effect competed for resources and influence. He said RIA Novosti had become the most respected news agency in the former Soviet Union, one he associated closely with the presidency of Dmitri A. Medvedev, who has served as prime minister since Mr. Putin returned to the presidency last year. In that way, dismantling the news service is another step by Mr. Putin to erase any legacy of Mr. Medvedev’s presidency, and his “modernization initiative.” The new agency, Mr. Miroshnichenko said, would now revert to its mission before the dawn of “the post-Soviet era” as an arm of “foreign propaganda,” while Itar-Tass would focus on domestic news. The most pointed criticism of Mr. Putin’s decrees focused on the choice of Mr. Kiselyov as the new agency’s director. He is known for sharp commentaries in defense of Mr. Putin’s Russia that often reflect his belief that there are foreign conspiracies aimed at weakening the nation. He has described the current protests in Ukraine as a provocation by a coalition of Sweden, Poland and Lithuania like the one that Peter the Great defeated in 1709 in the Battle of Poltava in what is modern Ukraine. “This week the coalition has shown its full strength,” Mr. Kiselyov said on his weekly talk show, “Vesti Nedeli,” or “News of the Week,” on the state television network, Rossiya. “It looked like a thirst for revenge for Poltava.” Remarks he made last year resurfaced during the recent debate over the new prohibitions on “propaganda” of nontraditional sexual relationships. “I think it is too little to fine gays for homosexual propaganda,” he said. “They should be forbidden from donating blood, sperm. And in the case of an automobile accident, their hearts should be buried in the ground or burned.” There were calls for a criminal inquiry for his remarks, but none were undertaken. Mr. Kiselyov denied that he or the remarks he made were homophobic. His views on journalism, he acknowledged in a recent interview with the online news organization Lenta.ru, had evolved significantly, particularly after he worked in Ukraine during the previous political protests there that became known as the Orange Revolution. “I understood that objective journalism, distilled, is absolutely not in demand,” he said in the interview. “The basic difference between post-Soviet and Western journalism is that for us it is necessary to create values and not to renew them, to produce values and not to reproduce them, as is basically done in the West.” | Vladimir Putin;Russia;Russia Today;News media,journalism;Dmitry K Kiselyov;Svetlana Mironyuk |
ny0039444 | [
"business"
] | 2014/04/10 | The Medicare Data’s Pitfalls | The release on Wednesday of Medicare payment data is getting mixed reviews from doctors. Many say they favor sharing information but worry that the data presented by Medicare omits important details and may mislead the public and paint an unfairly negative picture of individual doctors. Dr. Gary Heit, a recently retired neurosurgeon in Redwood City, Calif., said he thought some of the details revealed could be useful to patients who want to make sure that the physicians they choose are experienced — say in carotid-artery surgery, where more operations performed correlate with better patient outcomes. “Being able to track the number of procedures is incredibly valuable,” Dr. Heit said. “I think the ability to see the number of cases a physician does is really important.” However, the data only include treatments given to certain Medicare patients. Many other doctors worried that the data released was incomplete and often misleading. In some cases, enormous payments that seem to be going to one doctor are actually distributed to multiple others. But the data tables do not reveal that the money was shared. For instance, Dr. Jean M. Malouin, a family medicine physician at the University of Michigan Health Systems, shows up as one of the top Medicare billers in the country, collecting payments of $7.58 million in 2012 for more than 207,000 patients. But Dr. Malouin directs a Medicare project that involves 1,600 primary care physicians, who each receive a small payment each month. Those payments are funneled through Dr. Malouin. The doctor’s situation is described in a website that the hospital set up on Wednesday to help explain the data to the public. Dr. David L. Longworth, chairman of the medicine institute at the Cleveland Clinic, said the data could also be misconstrued because it does not explain that some doctors treat unusually ill patients who need a great deal of complex, time-consuming care, for example those with heart failure or advanced cancers. People who focus only on the payments may assume that doctors who receive more money are doing something wrong, he said. He also noted that some doctors who work as salaried employees of group practices like the Cleveland Clinic do not receive the amounts that show up alongside their names in the data tables because the Medicare payments go to their institutions. Aaron K. Albright, director of the Media Relations Group at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the information was not misleading but simply “represents payments made to the providers for the services they provide.” Dr. Ardis Dee Hoven, president of the American Medical Association, said her group was concerned about the data’s accuracy because of what she described as a history of mistakes in Medicare’s database. She also noted the lack of any information about the quality of services. “We were told we would have an opportunity to see this data before it was publicly produced, and we were not,” Dr. Hoven said. Mr. Albright said he did not know of any promise made to the medical association about seeing the data before it went public. How Much Medicare Pays For Your Doctor’s Care Use the form below to find a doctor or other medical professional among the more than 800,000 health care providers that received payments in 2012 from Medicare Part B, which covers doctor visits, tests and other treatments. Payments may also cover overhead, such as staff salaries and drug costs. In some cases, when doctors work as salaried employees of group practices, the payments that show up under their names go to their institutions. Dr. David A. Fleming, president-elect of the American College of Physicians, said his group favored transparency, but added: “One concern is that this is a huge data dump, and a lot of interpretation is occurring without the data actually being analyzed, with exposure of physicians who have been paid huge amounts of money. I understand the implications, but there may be very legitimate reasons as to why.” Oncologists, who receive some of the highest Medicare payments, are among those who feel most unfairly treated by the data because the tables do not make it clear that the payments must also cover their overhead — expensive chemotherapy drugs and the salaries of nurses and other professional staff. Dr. Robin T. Zon, an oncologist in South Bend, Ind., is listed in the Medicare tables as having received more than $1.2 million in 2012, but she said that 90 percent of it went to overhead. Some doctors feel a bit vulnerable and exposed by having details about their income posted on the Internet for the whole world to see. “I have very mixed feelings because I think there’s a lot of stuff about doctors that’s already on public records, and it makes me anxious we’re being examined to that extent,” said Dr. Ulrike D. Sujansky, an internist in San Mateo, Calif. “It’s public record what prescriptions I prescribe. And that information is also sold to the pharmaceutical companies,” Dr. Sujansky added. “Anybody can look up if I have lawsuits. And now they’re going to find out what my billings are. It does feel very invasive and intrusive.” But she also said: “I am pleased that light is being shed on the fact that some physicians clearly do procedures for financial gain and not for the benefit of the patients.” | Health Insurance;Medicare;Doctor |
ny0046190 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2014/02/14 | Putting the Romance in Cold Medicine and Fabric Softener | FLORISTS, chocolatiers, jewelers and greeting card publishers typically promote aggressively for Valentine’s Day, but brands that few would associate with romance also are courting consumers this year. Paper towels, for example, do not figure prominently in love songs, but Viva , the Kimberly-Clark brand, is choosing Valentine’s Day, which falls on Friday, to introduce a campaign that urges consumers to “break up” with their current brand of paper towel. For a new variety of paper towel that stretches like fabric, called Viva Vantage, the brand is introducing commercials in which consumers who have posted glowing Twitter posts about category leader Bounty are paid a surprise visit in their homes by Viva representatives, who persuade them to switch to Viva’s product. In the social network era, in which companies court consumers to “like” them, Darin Berg, the brand director for Viva in North America, said that it was fitting to apply the language of romance to products. “Consumers are liking brands and having conversations with them, so we’re very much looking at it like a relationship,” said Mr. Berg. With Bounty users, he continued, “We’re trying to get them to rethink that relationship by calling attention to the fact that sometimes it’s O.K. to make a fresh start.” Snuggle, the fabric softener, is also embracing the holiday. In Times Square on Friday, the company’s bear mascot will serve as what the brand calls a “ring bear-er” for a couple the brand has selected, Mitch and Pam Mitchell from Andover, N.J., who are renewing their vows on what will be their 21st wedding anniversary. “Snuggle is all about adding that extra touch to your laundry that signifies love,” said Bibie Wu, vice president of marketing for Snuggle, a Sun Products brand. “Valentine’s Day is really a perfect opportunity for the Snuggle brand and Snuggle Bear to increase their relevance.” At the Empire State Building on Friday, another couple will renew their vows and two others will be married in a promotion by ProFlowers and RedEnvelope , the online flower and gift stores, and Empire State Realty Trust, which owns the landmark. Image An ad by Viva urges consumers to break up with their current paper towel brand and switch to Viva. As part of MasterCard’s continuing Priceless Surprises campaign that gives cardholders unexpected gifts, on Friday about 2,000 consumers who use the taxi-hailing app Uber, then pay the fare with MasterCard, will learn later in the day that MasterCard has picked up the tab (up to $20) and credited their accounts. The promotion will run in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco. Also on Valentine’s Day, MasterCard is giving 12 cardholders in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas a free personalized skywriting message to dedicate to a loved one. In another high-elevation promotion, United Airlines asked couples to submit stories about how they met on a United flight or in a United terminal. One couple will win a free pair of business-class tickets to anywhere they choose. Some brands encourage couples to stay in on the holiday, like K-Y, the personal lubricant, which in recent print advertisements promoted special packages of his and her lubricants that also include coupon codes for both ingredients for a home-cooked meal from Plated.com and for a movie to stream from Vudu.com. For its lines of condoms, lubricants and vibrators, Trojan ran an ad in Sunday newspaper circulars with coupons that urged consumers to “make a big deal out of Valentine’s Day,” while a print ad that appeared in magazines showed a container of lubricant on a bed strewn with rose petals, accompanied by the text, “Happy Valentine’s Night.” Affection of a more public sort will be displayed for the fifth year on Friday at Qdoba Mexican Grill, where customers who kiss while ordering an entree will get another for free. “Share a smooch with someone special,” encourages a post about the promotion , Queso for a Kiss, on Facebook, which adds, in case it didn’t seem awkward enough already, “or someone willing.” Dunkin’ Donuts and Krispy Kreme are both observing the holiday with heart-shaped doughnuts, while some of the oldest heart-shaped treats, Necco Sweethearts (formerly Conversation Hearts), which were introduced in 1866, highlighted the candies on Twitter this Valentine’s season with a promotion called Tweethearts . After posting a romantic message to the account @tweethearts, Twitter users received a return message showing the words printed on individual candies, and an option to buy a one-pound bag of Sweethearts with those custom-printed words for $30. An animated rap video by Necco’s agency, Hill Holliday in Boston, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, promotes the effort. The brand was surprised when Mindy Kaling, the comedic actress and writer, ordered a bag and posted a photograph of it on Facebook . Her message quoted from a line in the film “Notting Hill” that Julia Roberts delivered to Hugh Grant: “I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her.” That the holiday falls in the middle of cold season struck Zicam Cold Remedy as an opportunity, so on Friday its 7-foot-tall, runny-nosed brand character, Cold Monster , will appear in Manhattan’s Union Square. While mascots do not generally promote themselves as romantic prospects, the Cold Monster will be handing passers-by Valentine’s cards with text including “Love at first sneeze.” | Valentine's Day;advertising,marketing |
ny0263015 | [
"sports",
"basketball"
] | 2011/12/18 | Celtics’ Jeff Green Out for Season With Aneurysm | Boston Celtics forward Jeff Green will have surgery to repair an aortic aneurysm and will miss the season, the team announced Saturday as it traveled to Toronto for its exhibition opener against the Raptors. Green is scheduled for an operation Monday at the Cleveland Clinic. Doctors have told him the operation “should completely repair Green’s condition and that he can expect to resume his N.B.A. career next season,” the Celtics said in a news release. If so, the timing of his training camp physical — and the end of the N.B.A. lockout — might have saved Green’s life. Green has averaged 13.9 points in his career. TIMBERWOLVES 117, BUCKS 96 Ricky Rubio wowed an eager crowd with some slick passing in his N.B.A. debut and Kevin Love had 21 points and 15 rebounds to lead host Minnesota to a preseason victory over Milwaukee. ROCKETS 101, SPURS 87 Luis Scola scored 20 points and Terrence Williams had 14 as the Rockets beat the short-handed Spurs in Houston. PISTONS RE-SIGN STUCKEY The Detroit Pistons, who recently parted ways with guard Richard Hamilton, re-signed guard Rodney Stuckey, reportedly for $25 million over three years. Stuckey averaged a team-high 15.5 points last season. | Basketball;Aneurysms;Green Jeff;Boston Celtics |
ny0019161 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2013/07/26 | Taken Before Harvey, Pitcher Faces an Uphill Struggle | ROUND ROCK, Tex. — The very moment he was drafted, in 2010, Barret Loux was buried. His team, Texas A&M, was waiting out a rain delay at an N.C.A.A. regional game in Miami, and had gathered in the weight room to watch the draft on TV. Loux, a junior right-hander, was the Aggies’ ace, with an 11-2 record, a 2.60 earned run average and 136 strikeouts, which led the Big 12 Conference. He was projected to be a late first-round choice, and when the Arizona Diamondbacks grabbed him much higher, with the sixth overall pick, Loux’s teammates pounced. “I got tackled,” Loux said, smiling at the memory. Moments later, possibly while Loux was still in that joyous pile on the floor, the Mets prepared to make their selection. Their executives had identified Bryce Harper, Jameson Taillon and Manny Machado as the three best players in the draft, and all were gone — Harper to Washington, Taillon to Pittsburgh and Machado to Baltimore, in that order. The next-best player on the Mets’ list, according to Omar Minaya, their former general manager, was a junior right-hander from the University of North Carolina who watched the draft with friends at the Chapel Hill home of his pitching coach, Scott Forbes. He had not heard much from the Diamondbacks and was not expecting them to draft him. But he had been in contact with the Mets and knew they had scouted him extensively. Kansas City took shortstop Christian Colon with the fourth pick. Cleveland took pitcher Drew Pomeranz fifth, and Arizona took Loux. Then the Mets got their man. “They called my name, and it was a pretty special moment,” he said. “I was kind of in shock, and I couldn’t really move. Everybody else in the room is going crazy. I was so happy, but I just kind of sat there. Everybody came up to me and was hugging me, and I’m still sitting there.” The name of that pitcher, who was so relieved to be drafted where he wanted, was Matt Harvey. The history of the draft is filled with misevaluations. Over time, every team will make them, and every team will benefit from others’ mistakes. In 1966, the Mets used the first overall pick on Steve Chilcott, a high school catcher who never played in the majors. Reggie Jackson went next to the Kansas City A’s. Sixteen years later, the Minnesota Twins used the fourth overall pick on Bryan Oelkers , who never won a game for them. The Mets grabbed Dwight Gooden next. In 2001 — after passing on David Wright with their first choice and taking Aaron Heilman — the Mets got their future captain at No. 38. The pick before, the Oakland Athletics took John Rheinecker , who never pitched for them. The difference in Loux’s tale is that the Diamondbacks rejected him without even trying to sign him. Before the draft, Loux had told them he would sign for $2 million, below the recommended value assigned to that slot. Then, after a physical exam, the team pulled the offer. “They said they had some concerns about the elbow, which I had surgery on after my sophomore year, so it was kind of documented,” said Loux, who now pitches for the Class AAA Iowa Cubs . “And then they said, ‘Your labrum’s torn.’ So that was kind of a shock. I went home, hanging out in College Station, just working out and throwing, and I found out I wasn’t going to get signed. I was waiting in limbo for a while, which was really hard.” Loux said he had shoulder tightness in high school, but overcame it with stretching exercises that improved his flexibility and strength. The problem never resurfaced in college, but the Diamondbacks were so alarmed that they decided they would rather have a compensation pick in the 2011 draft, which would be No. 7, than sign Loux at any price. Loux’s case is similar to the professional introduction of last year’s Mets ace, R. A. Dickey, who failed his physical after the Texas Rangers took him in the first round of the 1996 draft. The Rangers slashed Dickey’s bonus but, with little to lose, still gave him a chance. By 2010, the compensation rules had changed, giving the Diamondbacks an easy escape hatch as long as they left Loux with nothing. The drafting of Loux, and the Diamondbacks’ failure to fully research his medical history in their rush to find a bargain, seems to have been a product of a front office in chaos, without a clear decision-making process. The team was playing terribly, and General Manager Josh Byrnes had a strong feeling he would be fired soon. “It was a weird process,” Byrnes said of that draft, without much elaboration. Byrnes was, indeed, fired within weeks, and now is the general manager of the San Diego Padres. Tom Allison, the scouting director then, declined to discuss Loux. But Baseball America later reported that Allison had wanted Chris Sale , who went 13th to the Chicago White Sox and, like Harvey, worked two shutout innings at the All-Star Game this month. Allison was gone from the organization by October 2010, after Kevin Towers took over as general manager. Jerry Dipoto — Byrnes’ interim replacement, whose power was growing around the time of the draft — left a year later to become the Los Angeles Angels’ general manager. Indirectly, the Diamondbacks could still benefit from their decision to drop Loux. With the compensation pick, they chose Archie Bradley , now widely considered the best pitching prospect in the minors. Bradley signed for $5 million, far more than Loux has earned so far. Image Barret Loux pitching for Texas A&M in 2008. Loux lost much of a seven-figure draft bonus because of an elbow problem. Credit Alonzo Adams/Associated Press “Not only did it cost him, but everybody wants to be drafted by a team that wants him,” said Iowa Cubs pitcher Brooks Raley , who was also Loux’s teammate at Texas A&M. “For him to not have an opportunity to go play for the Diamondbacks, it was tough.” If Loux is haunted by the celebrated pitchers on the fringes of his story, he does not show it. Last Saturday, he folded his 6-foot-5, 230-pound frame into a rocking chair above the left field berm at Dell Diamond before a game against the Round Rock Express. The Cubs are his third organization, and, incredibly, he joined them specifically because he was healthy. “You listen to doctors, like you listen to scouts, but that doesn’t mean what they say is etched in stone,” said Kip Fagg, the scouting director for the Rangers. “Sometimes you can’t always go by medicals.” After the Diamondbacks let him go, Loux was in baseball purgatory. He did not believe he could return to college for his senior year, because he had already retained an agent and negotiated with a major league team. It took a special ruling from the commissioner to make him a free agent. (Because of Loux’s case, a drafted player who fails a physical can now become a free agent automatically if the team does not offer him at least 40 percent of the recommended bonus for his slot.) Loux traveled to Baltimore, Cincinnati, Milwaukee and Minnesota for workouts, but signed with the Rangers, who did not see him pitch. They had scouted Loux in college and believed he had the command, the size and the intelligence to be a reliable fourth-starter type in the majors. “And he really had something to prove,” Fagg said. “That’s what put me over the top. He was not real happy about how the process had played out. To me, it was extra motivation.” Loux signed with the Rangers for $312,000 and reported to instructional camp in Arizona. His roommate there, Mike Olt , said Loux never even mentioned his draft ordeal. He was eager to put it behind him, and over the next two seasons, Loux went 22-6 with a 3.62 E.R.A., earning Pitcher of the Year honors in the Class AA Texas League in 2012. Loux’s fastball sometimes touched 94 miles an hour, Fagg said, but usually it was slower, and he thrived by executing game plans and using a deceptive windup in which he tilted his head toward third base while lifting his left leg. “He doesn’t have the most orthodox delivery,” said Brad Holman, Loux’s Class A pitching coach. “He does have some funk in there, but it’s funk that doesn’t particularly put him in a vulnerable position. It’s funk that makes him good.” The Cubs thought so, too, and they traded for Loux last November, essentially to complete a summer deal that had turned sour. The Cubs had sent catcher Geovany Soto to the Rangers for the minor league pitcher Jake Brigham , who developed elbow problems shortly after the deal. To make things right, the Rangers took back Brigham and sent Loux to the Cubs. “I called him right after it happened, and he answered the phone laughing, like, ‘What is going on right now?’” Brigham said. “It’s funny. I wish him the best. I hope he has a long career and a healthy career.” Loux said he was “pretty proud” to have stayed healthy, but does not think much about his unusual journey. Whatever extra motivation he showed the Rangers has been absorbed by the simple desire to compete. He lost the seven-figure bonus but appreciates what he has. “I was thinking it was the worst thing in the world, and when you think about it, it’s not,” Loux said. “There’s so many more bad, life-altering events that have happened to people than getting to play a game for my career.” On Sunday, Loux took the mound here a few hours after Harvey had fired seven shutout innings for a victory in New York. Loux tossed five shutout innings, but it was a struggle. He walked the eighth and ninth hitters to load the bases in the second inning, surviving the jam with a hard curveball to strike out Leury Garcia after two fouls. In the fourth, again after two walks, Loux flipped a slower curveball for another inning-ending strikeout. His fastball did not exceed 90 m.p.h. all night. But Loux did what he said he did best: he made big pitches in big spots. He said he did more shoulder maintenance between starts than most pitchers, and got the most of what he has. He has a 4-4 record, a 4.19 E.R.A., and more strikeouts than innings pitched. His work has brought him to the verge of the major leagues, where one day Loux might face the player picked just behind him. He has never met Harvey, but knows all about him. “Watching ‘SportsCenter,’ seeing him blow up the radar gun — the success he’s having, it’s pretty awesome for him,” Loux said. “I knew his name from the draft, and you follow guys from your draft class. I don’t know him, but the success he’s having is pretty unbelievable.” In its own way, Loux’s success is just as improbable, a different kind of triumph on a much smaller scale. | Baseball;Chicago Cubs;Diamondbacks |
ny0011957 | [
"us"
] | 2013/11/05 | After Los Angeles Airport Shooting, No Easy Answers on Security Strategies | WASHINGTON — When Stephen L. Holl, the chief of police at the Washington Metropolitan Airports Authority, gathered his staff for the regular morning meeting on Monday, he opened with a sobering assessment. “It wasn’t our turn this time,” said Mr. Holl, who oversees security at Reagan National and Dulles International airports. “Our turn could be next or it could be never.” “We believe this could happen any time,” he later added. The shooting last week at a security checkpoint at Los Angeles International Airport that left one Transportation Security Administration official dead and two others wounded has security experts re-examining strategy for making airports safe, but they say that there are no obvious solutions and that extending any security perimeter raises other problems. “Wherever you establish a security perimeter, by definition, there’s stuff outside it,” said Arnold Barnett, an aviation security expert at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explaining why it was hard to guard the people at the gate. Placing additional police officers outside the security perimeter, like at the ticketing area or at the curb, could simply prompt a gunman to go where the officers are not. In a July 4, 2002, shooting at the Los Angeles airport, a man with a handgun waited until police officers left the area in front of the El Al Airlines ticket counter before he shot and killed two people and wounded several others. An El Al security guard shot and killed the gunman. The chief of the Los Angeles Airport Police Department, Patrick Gannon, has defended his recent decision to reassign armed officers from the security screening area, saying it would allow them to patrol the airport more freely and avoid becoming too predictable. He said the biggest threats to terminals are from the curb areas to where passengers are screened and he wanted more officers available for those areas. “We changed our strategy to a certain degree,” Chief Gannon said. “I can’t run the same thing every day.” He said the redeployment had allowed officers to respond to the shooting within seconds and stop the gunman from harming more people. While interrupting communications among terrorists might provide a way to disrupt their plots, lone gunmen are much tougher to stop, especially if they seem intent on suicide, as many believe was the case with the man suspected in the Los Angeles shooting, Paul Ciancia, who wrote a long note indicating he was targeting T.S.A. officers . Chief Gannon said Monday that Mr. Ciancia had entered wearing regular clothes and would not have raised suspicion from any officer who saw him. As at many airports across the country, Los Angeles airport officials place officers at the curb, primarily to prevent car bombs. Setting up checkpoints at the traffic lanes leading to the airports, done in times of heightened tension, would not have helped in this case, experts say. The police at the T.S.A. checkpoints are there mostly to make sure passengers comply with the screeners and to arrest those found to be carrying guns. Officials for the union that represents some 45,000 T.S.A. agents have renewed their call to give at least some of its members a law enforcement status and allow them to carry guns. Image Officers on Monday at a security checkpoint in the lanes approaching the Los Angeles airport. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times “We’re not talking about arming and deputizing everyone, but we need to have a consistent and effective force to back up our officers,” said David Borer, the general counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees. “Right now it’s left to local law enforcement and it’s a real patchwork. It worked this time, but I am not sure if we would have the same response in another airport.” Some safety specialists have long warned that creating crowds of people at the entrances to the airport gate areas merely moves the area of vulnerability from the planes to a more distant place — arguably safer, because gunfire at a security checkpoint would not make a plane crash. Researchers are trying to create security systems that would avoid crowds at the checkpoints by allowing passengers to stroll through, putting their carry-ons on a fast-moving conveyor belt. “All kinds of things could be happening — sniffing for explosives, X-rays, body scanners, or all of the above,” said Vahid Motevalli , a member of a Transportation Research Board committee called “Checkpoints of the Future.” But that technology is probably quite distant, he said, and if a gunman specifically targeted T.S.A. agents, even that futuristic checkpoint might not help. Marshall McClain, the president of the airport police union, said the number of officers at the airport had been cut for each of the last three years, making it more difficult to patrol the sprawling area. “Part of our job is to be a deterrent and one way you’re a deterrent is by being seen,” Mr. McClain said. “We need to be out there monitoring traffic and have a steady force at all times.” Dr. Motevalli, the associate dean for research and innovation at the Tennessee Tech University College of Engineering, said that the Los Angeles shooting was different from the terrorism that the existing security protocols were established to combat and had more in common with a workplace or school shooting in the way the victims were targeted. Like others, Dr. Motevalli said that such attacks predate the T.S.A. and have continued. “It’s not politically or religiously motivated,” he said. “It seems to be mental illness of some kind.” Some believe a strong police presence outside the airports’ “sterile area” could scare off attackers or at least end an attack more quickly. Paul Hudson, president of the passenger advocacy group FlyersRights.org, said that airport officials should follow the example of Grand Central Terminal in New York City. “They have uniformed agents there with essentially Uzis, standing around,” he said. Mr. Hudson said such a show of force at airports was in place after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but was later withdrawn. An official at another airport, who asked not to be named, described such a show-of-force strategy as “scaring the gunman away so he goes to the mall instead.” Brian Michael Jenkins, a former Green Beret captain and a security expert at the RAND Corporation, argued that increased security for crowded public places might not be worth the expense and challenge. “If your only achievement is you’ve forced your shooter or terrorist bomber to drive three blocks further to another crowded place, that’s not really a net security benefit,” he said. “If a person is denied access to a crowded airport, he can go to a train station, bus depot, a supermarket, or a theater, as we saw in Aurora, Colo., or a shopping mall, as we saw in Nairobi, or Times Square.” | Airport security;Los Angeles International Airport;Paul A Ciancia;TSA;Murders;Police;Los Angeles;Patrick Gannon |
ny0157286 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2008/06/12 | Irish to Vote on Complex European Union Treaty | DUBLIN — The final straw, said Dermot Gilmartin, was seeing an official struggle on television to answer questions about the topic of the hour: the European Union ’s Lisbon Treaty, which is being put to a referendum here on Thursday. Challenged on a technical point, the official sputtered, began frantically rifling through his papers and fell silent. For two and a half minutes. “I was cringing for the guy,” said Mr. Gilmartin, 25, interviewed en route to his local pub the other afternoon. But pity aside, he said, why should he vote for something so abstruse that even someone whose job is to understand it cannot explain away its mysteries? In a nutshell, that is the problem confronting the treaty’s proponents as the Irish head for the polls in a referendum being watched across Europe. At 287 pages of vintage bureaucratese, the Lisbon Treaty, which would among other things give the European Union its first full-time president and create a new and powerful foreign policy chief, is hard to explain. Few voters fully understand it or even want to try. “The problem is that it’s not a very exciting treaty,” said Gail McElroy, a lecturer in political science at Trinity College Dublin. “Institutional efficiency is very hard to get people excited about.” The treaty, which proponents say must be enacted for the union to function more efficiently, has the support of every government in Europe as well as most of the Irish establishment, including the main political parties and unions as well as business groups and farmers’ associations. But an 11th-hour surge of opposition has proved unexpectedly persuasive. The campaign is still too close to call, with roughly equal numbers in the “yes” and the “no” camps. But recent opinion polls suggest that previously undecided voters — possibly a third of the electorate — are leaning against the treaty. “The Irish seem instinctively inclined to listen to dissonant voices, to rebel against their own establishment and to scupper the best-laid plans of the Eurocrats,” Fintan O’Toole, the assistant editor of The Irish Times, wrote in an editorial in The Times of London. To take effect, the treaty must be ratified by all 27 states in the European Union. Twenty-six members are considering it through their legislatures and executives; only Ireland is putting it directly to its citizens in a referendum. That means, in effect, that the future government of nearly 500 million Europeans is in thrall to the vagaries of public opinion in a country with just 4.2 million people, or less than 1 percent of the total population. The prospect of defeat is making supporters of the treaty across Europe anxious, and irritated. If Ireland rejects the treaty, “The first victim would be the Irish,” Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, warned on Monday. “It would be very, very troubling,” he added, “that we would not be able to count on the Irish who counted a lot on Europe’s money.” Ireland is one of Europe’s great success stories. European largess has helped fuel the country’s extraordinarily rapid transformation from a poor, homogeneous, largely agrarian society to a place of flourishing international business. But with the economy foundering, housing prices spiraling downward and a general tendency to mistrust politicians and bureaucracy, many Irish voters interviewed this week seemed both hazy on the details of what Europe does and less than grateful for whatever that is. “They think Europe gave us all this wealth, but it’s all crashed,” said Vicky Cahill, an accountant and reflexologist in her 50s, relaxing on a bench on St. Stephen’s Green in the center of town. She mentioned, in an unhappy manner, former Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, an avid proponent of the treaty and currently the subject of an inquiry into financial irregularities from the 1990s. She also said that despite silken European promises, the roads in Ireland were not as good as they might be. “They’re all crooks,” she said, meaning politicians. Count her as a “no” vote. The capital is awash in contradictory information, strong opinions and posters: “Vote Yes for Jobs, the Economy and Ireland” jostling for space with “Keep Ireland Strong in Europe: Vote No.” Strolling through the park, a 35-year-old violinist named David O’Doherty pronounced himself pro-European and said of Ireland’s financial obligations to the union, “You’ve got to pick up the check at a certain point.” But, he said, he is not registered to vote and in any case is not strictly familiar with all the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty. Europe has a history of rejecting treaties when they are put to popular votes. Ireland voted down an earlier document, the Nice Treaty, in 2001 (it then changed its mind and passed a slightly modified version of it the next year). In 2005, a proposed European constitution — written under the aegis of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former French president — died after it was rejected by voters in France and the Netherlands. If the Irish vote this one down, no one is sure what will happen, although the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, spoke ominously on Tuesday of a “Franco-German” response to a “no” vote. The Lisbon Treaty, in essence a restyled version of the failed constitution, is the result of long negotiations among the factious states of Europe and is meant to address the complexities that have come with expansion. The union has almost doubled in size in the last four years. If enacted, it would reduce the number of people serving in the powerful European Commission, the union’s executive body, and would allocate seats to member states on a rotating basis. That means that instead of having a commissioner all the time, each country would be represented in the commission for 10 out of every 15 years. Irish opponents of the treaty, who include the singer Sinead O’Connor, the left-leaning Sinn Fein political party and a business-based group called Libertas, say that the loss of a commissioner would strip power from Ireland. There are also fears that Ireland’s sovereignty on matters like its strict anti-abortion law, its low corporate tax rate and its neutrality would be in jeopardy. The treaty’s supporters say Ireland will retain the ability to decide for itself on these and other issues. “They are creating confusion,” Brian Cowen, the prime minister, told RTE radio recently. “This is a decent balanced treaty for Ireland. It’s a good deal for Ireland and Europe.” But his message was lost on Brendan Fairbrother, a retired man of 65 with a comfortable spot in the park, a congenital mistrust of government and strong views on the failures of the Irish health care system. “I’m voting ‘no,’ ” he said of the treaty, “though I don’t know an awful lot about it.” | Ireland;European Union;Treaties;Politics and Government;Constitutions;Abortion;International Relations |
ny0152130 | [
"business"
] | 2008/08/08 | 2 Banks Buying Back $17 Billion in Securities | Two major Wall Street firms on Thursday offered to buy back more than $17 billion of troubled auction-rate securities that they had marketed as being as safe and liquid as cash, moving quickly to contain the legal fallout from the credit crisis. Citigroup will buy back $7.3 billion of the securities and pay $100 million in fines as part of a settlement with state and federal regulators announced on Thursday morning. Hours later, Merrill Lynch , without entering into a settlement, offered to buy back $10 billion of similar securities that it had sold to thousands of individuals. Neither firm agreed to reimburse institutional investors. The moves are likely to pave the way for other banks and brokerage firms to take similar actions. The Securities and Exchange Commission is examining about 20 firms over their sales of auction-rate securities, and the New York attorney general’s office and 12 other state regulators are conducting at least a dozen similar investigations, according to people briefed on the situation. Bank of America, the largest retail bank, said Thursday that it had received subpoenas from federal and state regulators related to sales of auction-rate securities, which are preferred shares or debt instruments with rates that reset regularly, usually every week, in auctions overseen by the brokerage firms that originally sold them. UBS is also in talks with regulators about a settlement, according to people briefed on the situation. Firms including Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, UBS and the Wachovia Corporation are also among those under scrutiny by regulators. Representatives for the firms did not return calls late Thursday or declined to comment. Auction-rate securities were invented in the late 1980s and worked fairly well until this year, when the auctions began to fail amid the credit crisis, and investors could no longer sell their securities. Regulators have been examining how brokers sold the notes and whether they fully disclosed the potential risks to buyers. Thursday’s actions by Citigroup and Merrill suggest banks are anxious to put the matter behind them. But with as much as $50 billion or more of the troubled securities in the hands of individual investors, buying back all of the securities would be a big burden for banks, many of which have been weakened by multibillion dollar losses and write-downs stemming from mortgage-linked investments. The New York attorney general’s office and other state regulators said that Citigroup would buy back, in the next three months, auction-rate securities from individual investors, charities and small and midsize businesses. These customers, about 40,000 in total, have been unable to sell their securities since mid-February. Arthur Tildesley, the administrative chief of Citigroup’s global wealth management division, said at a news conference that the settlement reflects a “truly favorable solution for our investors and our clients.” In a similar case in Massachusetts, Morgan Stanley reached an agreement with the attorney general’s office on Thursday to reimburse the cities of New Bedford and Hopkinton $1.5 million for the investments in the securities, Martha Coakley, the attorney general of Massachusetts, said in a statement. “Wall Street has been under siege lately,” said Jill E. Fisch, a law professor at Fordham University. “Nobody wants to be under long-term regulatory scrutiny. You want to get it behind you as best you can.” The agreement with Citigroup, the biggest underwriter of auction-rate notes, is a watershed for Wall Street. If Citigroup buys back all $7.3 billion of the securities, as it has agreed to do, it would represent one of the largest amounts ever recovered by investors from a single company as a result of state and federal regulator action. The figure would eclipse those stemming from settlements reached earlier this decade with Wall Street firms over conflicts with investment research, mutual fund trading, and insurance sales practices. It is also likely to provide a template for other firms to strike similar deals. “We often begin with the largest industry players to make the greatest impact,” Andrew M. Cuomo, the New York State attorney general, said in an interview on Thursday. Other state regulators said the Citigroup settlement would cause other banks and brokerage firms to seek similar agreements. “This will provide a great incentive for the other firms who sold auction rate securities to come to settlement talks,” said Denise Voigt Crawford, the commissioner of the Texas State Securities Board, which led the group of state agencies on the Citigroup case. “Without this, they are at a competitive disadvantage reputationally.” Federal and state regulators say that the amount of securities sold to retail investors and the severity of the conduct will be factored into any settlements. UBS, for example, faces additional allegations that executives sold personal holdings of the securities, even as UBS salespeople claimed the investments were safe. Regulators are also considering the ability of banks to absorb losses that might result from any settlement. That is part of the reason, some analysts said, that some deals may exclude institutional investors who were sold riskier securities, backed by the student loan and mortgage markets. Citigroup’s purchases of the securities will cause the bank to take a pretax charge of about $500 million to reflect the current value of the securities. The settlement leaves open the possibility that Citigroup will buy back an additional $12 billion of securities purchased by institutional investors, but does not require the bank to do so. It also will refund financing fees to several, unspecified municipal governments that issued auction rate securities from August 2007 to earlier this year. Citigroup will also pay a $100 million fine, with half going to the New York State attorney general’s office and half to be divided among the states. The S.E.C. also participated in the settlement talks but elected to defer a penalty, pending Citigroup’s efforts to comply with the settlement. Merrill Lynch has been under investigation by the New York State attorney general’s office and several state agencies. Mr. Cuomo said in a statement late Thursday he was “reviewing their plan to begin returning money to investors.” Unlike Citigroup, Merrill Lynch has no plans to mark down the value of the securities it buys. Mark Herr, a Merrill spokesman, said the company views the securities as high-quality assets whose credit has not been hurt; investors’ inability to sell them is the investments’ only problem. “Our clients have been caught in an unprecedented liquidity crisis,” John A. Thain, Merrill’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. Merrill said its focus on the frozen markets convinced it that it will not need to raise more capital to back up the securities once it purchases them from clients in January. Morgan Stanley offered to buy back securities that the two towns in Massachusetts had purchased in May, said Christine Pollak, a spokeswoman for Morgan Stanley. “We are pleased to settle this matter without penalty,” Ms. Pollack said. She declined to comment on whether Morgan Stanley is working on a broader plan for its clients who own the frozen securities. Countrywide Replies Bank of America, the nation’s largest retail bank, said on Thursday that Countrywide Financial, the mortgage lending giant it bought last month, had responded to subpoenas from the Securities and Exchange Commission and that the unit faced a formal investigation by that agency. Bank of America disclosed the subpoenas in its quarterly report filed with the S.E.C. Countrywide is also under investigation by the F.B.I., authorities have said. The F.B.I. last month said it had 21 corporate targets in its investigation of potential corporate fraud in the mortgage industry. California, Connecticut, Florida and Illinois have sued Countrywide over its lending practices. | Citigroup Incorporated;Merrill Lynch & Co;Suits and Litigation;Banks and Banking |
ny0246293 | [
"sports"
] | 2011/04/15 | In Verdict, Bonds Defense Sees a Reason to Smile | SAN FRANCISCO — The lawyers for Barry Bonds did not consider it a failure that he was convicted Wednesday of obstructing justice for giving evasive answers to a grand jury more than seven years ago. After the verdict was announced in United States District Court, the lawyers even seemed to celebrate the outcome — a conviction on one count and no verdict on the other three. “Go figure,” Allen Ruby, one of Bonds’s lawyers, said with a laugh outside the courthouse to Cris Arguedas, who is also on Bonds’s legal team. “Yep, go figure,” Arguedas answered, as they both grinned. For now, the conviction on an obstruction of justice charge means Bonds faces a maximum 10-year prison sentence, but the defense team predicted that the conviction would not stick. The lawyers said they expected the judge, Susan Illston, to throw out that conviction at a hearing May 20. They said that Bonds needed to be convicted on at least one of the three perjury charges he faced to be guilty of obstructing justice. Instead, Bonds was convicted only of impeding a federal investigation in 2003 when he gave intentionally evasive, false or misleading statements to a grand jury investigating the use of performance-enhancing drugs by elite athletes. “There was no conviction on any allegations that had to do with steroids or human growth hormone or anything that had to do with performance-enhancing drug use,” Arguedas said in a telephone interview after the verdict. “So we will be filing post-trial briefs that will have a great deal of merit.” Legal experts said the case for having Bonds’s conviction thrown out was far from a certainty, but was filled with possibility. Rory Little, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, said the defense had at least two substantial arguments that bolster its case. He said the defense was likely to argue that Bonds could not be convicted of obstruction of justice because he eventually answered the question mentioned in the charge. He was convicted of giving an evasive and misleading answer when asked whether Greg Anderson, his former trainer, had ever injected him. Bonds instead talked about how he was the celebrity child of the former San Francisco Giants star Bobby Bonds. The defense will say that Bonds ultimately answered that question later in his testimony, Little said. (When asked if Anderson ever injected him, Bonds said no. The jury nearly convicted him of perjury for that statement, voting 11 to 1 before it deadlocked.) Little also said the defense might argue that it is not a crime to mislead the grand jury. “That’s a substantial argument, but not necessarily a winner,” Little said. “I wouldn’t say it’s likely to win because it’s never likely after the jury convicts.” Bradley Simon, a former federal prosecutor who specializes in white-collar criminal defense, said the defense might say that Bonds’s evasive statements to the grand jury did not rise to the level of obstruction of justice. He said that it was one of the arguments that make a strong case and that the issue might set off an appeal that would last for years. “I think there’s a reasonable chance the judge will agree with the defense, but even if she doesn’t dismiss it, they have a really good appellate question,” Simon said. “No matter how you look at it, this is a great result for the defense because they have an issue that calls the conviction into question.” The prosecutors are under a time constraint to figure out if they will retry the three counts the jury could not decide on. The jury voted 8 to 4 for Bonds’s acquittal on the charge that he lied when he said he never knowingly used steroids. On the issue of whether he ever knowingly used human growth hormone, it voted to clear him, 9 to 3. But on the count relating to whether Bonds was ever injected by anyone but his doctor, the government came just one juror short of a conviction. The prosecutors — who were forced to try the case without their would-be star witness, Anderson, because he refused to testify and instead went back to prison — have until May 20 to announce whether they intend to try the case again. “I think the prosecutors are relieved to get the one conviction and that it’s highly unlikely they will retry this case unless the judge throws out the obstruction count,” said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who is a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “I think any conviction where the defendant is facing 10 years in prison is considered a victory, no matter how the defense tries to spin it.” Mathew Rosengart, a partner at the Manatt, Phelps & Phillips law firm and a former federal prosecutor, said the government might use the prospect of a retrial to pressure Bonds to take a plea deal. Regarding the defense’s argument that the conviction will be thrown out, he said the defense should not be so confident that an obstruction of justice conviction must accompany a perjury conviction. “Technically, he can be guilty of one and not the other,” Rosengart said. “But it is quite unusual, and the defense will mount a strong argument.” | Bonds Barry;Decisions and Verdicts;Baseball;Steroids;Doping (Sports);Illston Susan;Perjury |
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