id
stringlengths 9
9
| categories
sequence | date
stringlengths 10
10
| title
stringlengths 3
232
| abstract
stringlengths 4
42.4k
| keyword
stringlengths 6
360
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ny0209687 | [
"business",
"global"
] | 2009/12/09 | Credit Agencies Downgrade Debt Linked to Greece and Dubai | PARIS — Fresh downgrades by credit rating agencies of Greek government debt and Dubai state-linked companies served as a reminder Tuesday that the effects of the credit crisis were far from over. Stock markets fell sharply across Europe and were in decline in afternoon trading in the United States as investors sought shelter in trusted assets, pushing up the price of German government bonds. “Markets are clearly jittery in light of what’s happening in Dubai and Greece, but it’s not evidence of systemic problems,” said Nick Stamenkovic, a fixed-income strategist in Edinburgh at RIA Capital Markets. “A year ago we were looking at severe financial distress. There are still problems, but they are more isolated and idiosyncratic.” In London, the FTSE 100 closed down 1.6 percent, after paring steeper losses. The DAX ended off 1.7 percent in Frankfurt. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index both were about 0.9 percent lower in afternoon trading Tuesday. The troubles facing Greece also weighed on the euro, which declined to $1.4712 in afternoon trading in America after crossing over the $1.51 mark in late November. Fitch Ratings cut Greece’s debt rating to BBB+ from A-. It was still an investment grade, but with a negative outlook, meaning a further downgrade was possible. The move was the latest blow to the troubled Socialist government, which is struggling to cap a ballooning deficit. A day earlier, another agency, S.&P., had warned about a downgrade of Greece. “Volatility is likely to continue for some time,” analysts at Barclays Capital said of Greece in a research note. They noted that Moody’s Investors Service might yet downgrade Athens and the country has a large backlog of bonds to sell in the new year. Separately, Moody’s further cut its ratings on six Dubai state-linked companies, saying it could not assume that the government would stand behind their debts. Until recently lenders had assumed that state-linked companies, which had invested in grand projects going into the crisis, had implicit government backing. Dubai officials have since made clear no such promise exists and have started complex restructuring negotiations between Dubai World and its creditor banks, primarily from Europe. Mr. Stamenkovic, the RIA strategist, said the financial authorities globally were looking to remove the safety nets that they created during the financial crisis, to emphasize that certain investments would not automatically be bailed out. But they are moving cautiously, to avoid panic. Greek stocks and government bonds tumbled on mounting concern that the country, one of 16 that have adopted the euro, might struggle to meet its debt commitments as its public finances deteriorated. The Athens Stock Exchange general index dropped 6 percent Tuesday. The threat of more downgrades has encouraged speculation that Greek government bonds might soon no longer qualify as collateral for lending operations from the European Central Bank. Analysts said this prospect was unlikely, but they added that Greek banks had become overreliant on those funds in recent months. In Athens, shares of National Bank of Greece sank €2.01, or 10 percent, to close at €18.20. Hellenic Postbank tumbled 39 cents, or 8.6 percent, to €4.12. The price of the 10-year Greek government bond fell as the yield surged and its spread, or difference, over its German equivalent widened to 2.16 percentage points. The spread had been as wide as three percentage points in March, during the height of the financial crisis, before narrowing to as little as 1.08 percentage points in August. Back in February, as bond markets were punishing Ireland, another euro-area country with budget problems, Berlin signaled that euro members close to default would be bailed out. This time, the German government and central bank have remained silent. The Dubai financial market general index closed down 6.1 percent Tuesday, with losses led by banks. In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 stock average fell 0.3 percent and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong slid 1.2 percent. Elsewhere, data showed that industrial production in Germany dropped by 1.8 percent in October from a month earlier. Stefan de Schutter, an asset manager at Alpha Trading in Frankfurt, emphasized that investors were reacting to day-to-day developments and that light trading conditions were exacerbating moves. In London, Royal Bank of Scotland shares fell 7.7 percent on worries that its board might resign over a bonus dispute with the government and amid fears over losses linked to Dubai. HSBC Holdings shed 2.5 percent. | Stocks and Bonds;Credit;Greece;Dubai (United Arab Emirates);Fitch Ratings;Standard & Poor''s Corp;Moody''s Investors Service Inc |
ny0069127 | [
"sports",
"football"
] | 2014/12/01 | As the Jets Stagger On, John Idzik’s Missteps Become Clearer | The day he introduced John Idzik as general manager, the Jets’ owner, Woody Johnson, said it became apparent during the search process that Idzik was “head and shoulders the best fit” for the job. Four weeks from Monday, the day after the Jets’ season ends without a playoff for the fourth straight year, Johnson is likely to announce whether he believes Idzik remains that best fit. This will be a critical off-season for the Jets. Aside from possibly hiring a new coach, they figure to pick high in the draft; they could have more than $30 million in salary-cap space entering free agency; and they must resolve that franchise staple, a flawed quarterback situation. Johnson must weigh his frustration against his confidence in the long-term plan Idzik has charted. He must determine whether Idzik has executed that plan to his satisfaction — and if not, whether Johnson trusts him to continue carrying it out. He must decide whether 23 months is enough time to evaluate a general manager. There have been no indications that Idzik could be fired, or that Johnson is contemplating a change, but everyone has a threshold for suffering and embarrassment. It is possible that Johnson reached his last Monday night, when the team assembled by Idzik, and coached by Rex Ryan, blundered to a 35-point loss to Buffalo, falling to 2-9 this season and 10-17 in Idzik’s tenure. “There’s a lot of things that you can sit back and, in hindsight, say, Why didn’t you do this or why didn’t you do that?” Louis Riddick, the former director of pro personnel for the Philadelphia Eagles and now an analyst for ESPN, said in a telephone interview. “But is it really hindsight?” The answer is complicated, but Riddick’s point is valid. Since replacing Mike Tannenbaum in January 2013, Idzik has jettisoned 34 of the 53 players he inherited. He has purged onerous contracts, restored financial flexibility and acquired assets like Eric Decker, Chris Ivory and Sheldon Richardson. He has also perpetuated the Jets’ quarterback instability and failed to upgrade at essential positions. The roster may not be worse than when he took over, but it is not better. In almost every instance, the Jets’ deficiencies are no less obvious now than they were in July or March. One exception, oddly enough, is at quarterback. Even if it is evident now that Geno Smith has regressed and that the Jets erred in making him the starter without allowing a legitimate competition for the role (forget that charade with Michael Vick), there were few clues during his encouraging off-season that heralded his downfall. Where Idzik miscalculated most is at cornerback, the other position where teams lose games the fastest. Because of injuries and underperformance, the Jets have started six tandems in 11 games, including different ones in the last four. They tried, and failed, to improve through free agency before professing confidence in Dee Milliner, coming off a tumultuous rookie season, and an injury-prone veteran, Dimitri Patterson. That plan imploded during training camp when Patterson was released after leaving the team without notice, Milliner sustained the first of two serious knee injuries and the rookie Dexter McDougle tore a knee ligament. Teams cannot predict injuries, but they can prepare better for them. Without reliable cornerback play, the Jets have allowed 27 touchdown passes, tied for most in the N.F.L. entering Sunday, and their decision to convert Antonio Allen stunted his development at safety. Image The Jets’ general manager, John Idzik, has jettisoned 34 of the 53 players he inherited in 2013. Credit Bill Kostroun/Associated Press The Jets did have other options. Among the best 11 cornerbacks, as rated by the analytical website Pro Football Focus, five — Darrelle Revis, Vontae Davis, Brandon Flowers, Alterraun Verner and Antonio Cromartie, who signed with Arizona after the Jets released him — were available through free agency. A sixth, Jason Verrett, was drafted in the first round, seven spots after the Jets took safety Calvin Pryor, whose strengths have been marginalized by the team’s inadequacies at cornerback. Another solid player, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, chose to sign with the Giants after visiting the Jets. That Johnson would be wary of reuniting with Revis, who dragged them through two contentious contract holdouts, is understandable. But two years removed from reconstructive knee surgery, and a little more than 19 months after the Jets traded him to Tampa Bay for a first-round pick and what turned out to be a fourth-rounder, Revis is thriving with New England. “If John would have signed Darrelle, it would have gone down as one of the best trades in N.F.L. history,” said the former Buccaneers general manager Mark Dominik, who worked with Idzik in Tampa Bay almost two decades ago. Despite entering the season with more than $20 million in salary-cap space — a reserve that could help them re-sign linebacker David Harris and the star defensive lineman Muhammad Wilkerson — the Jets neglected to adequately address a position so vital to Ryan’s defensive scheme: Strong man-to-man coverage on the outside allows him to generate pressure with creative blitzes. Fairly or not, this has invited the perception of a disconnect between Ryan and Idzik, whose long-term interests run counter to the urgent needs of the coach he was required to retain. “If John really knows how Rex likes to run his defense and they’ve talked about it,” Riddick said, “why wouldn’t that get done?” Idzik is not scheduled to be available to the news media until after the season. In Seattle, Idzik helped to execute a strategy espoused by his boss there, John Schneider, an apprentice in Green Bay under Ted Thompson, who prefers building through the draft (then locking up the best players) and short-term free-agent deals. Idzik set out to adopt that approach to player procurement and development with the Jets. He hoarded draft choices and dispensed modest contracts to aging players like Vick and Chris Johnson, while bestowing lucrative multiyear pacts to players at premium positions, like Decker and right tackle Breno Giacomini. Hunting for bargains, he also added players with questionable character, and two of them — Patterson and Mike Goodson, who was arrested last year on drug and weapons charges and in June missed mandatory minicamp — are no longer with the team. Neither are five of the 19 players Idzik selected in his two drafts. Since players progress at different rates, it is accepted that it takes three years to evaluate a draft class. Although the Jets are bullish on Richardson, Pryor and tight end Jace Amaro, Milliner cannot stay healthy, Smith has been benched and early returns suggest that Idzik failed to identify receiving help from what could be the deepest rookie class since Terrell Owens, Marvin Harrison and Keyshawn Johnson headlined the 1996 group. Of the first 22 receivers selected in May, a collection including such midround gems as Jarvis Landry (Dolphins), John Brown (Cardinals) and Martavis Bryant (Steelers), only two have not caught a pass this season. Both were drafted by the Jets in the fourth round: Jalen Saunders, who was cut in September, and Shaq Evans, who muddled through a drop-filled camp before sustaining a season-ending shoulder injury. That unproductive draft class motivated the Jets, in part, to trade for Percy Harvin, who is being paid $6.47 million for a nine-game audition. They acquired him when they were 1-6, and they are 1-3 with him, heading into Monday night’s game against Miami. At Idzik’s introductory news conference, Johnson expressed confidence that Idzik had requisite personnel experience and that he was not just an expert in contracts and salary-cap management. It has been difficult for him to quash that perception, but there is one proven way Idzik can do so, if he continues to get the chance. “If your drafts are good and your player acquisitions are good,” said Charley Casserly, an NFL Network analyst and former personnel executive for the Houston Texans and Washington Redskins, “nobody’s going to remember where you came from.” | Football;John Idzik;Coaches;Woody Johnson;NFL; Super Bowl; Super Bowl 2015;Jets;Rex Ryan |
ny0102955 | [
"sports"
] | 2015/12/25 | Champion Fails Doping Test | The world champion Aleksei Lovchev of Russia was suspended for failing a doping test, the International Weightlifting Federation said . | Doping;Weightlifting |
ny0291365 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2016/01/06 | European Court Orders Russia to Pay Damages to Protester | MOSCOW — The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday in favor of a Russian man who was detained during a political rally in Moscow in 2012 and later sentenced to two weeks in jail for jaywalking. The ruling was a rebuff to the Russian practice of cracking down on political rallies with harsh fines and jail time. It undermined a central element of Moscow’s narrative of the clashes — that unruly protesters had set off the violence, thus justifying new laws cracking down on public assembly. The police arrested about 400 people, including the plaintiff in the case, Yevgeniy Frumkin, after scuffles broke out at the rally , on May 6, 2012, in Bolotnaya Square. The demonstration followed a series of large, peaceful protests by people who opposed the election in March 2012 of Vladimir V. Putin to a third term as president, and who suspected fraud during voting. The rally was permitted to take place. But police officers herded tens of thousands of people from a large avenue into a tightly confined zone in a park, creating a bottleneck, and scuffles with the police ensued. The violence, political analysts say, became politically advantageous for Mr. Putin, who defended the subsequent arrests and prosecutions of protesters on various charges. It also precipitated a series of laws that constricted the right to assemble, part of a general tightening of political screws in Russia since Mr. Putin’s return to the presidency. Rights groups have called the measures a throwback to Soviet-era authoritarianism, and they said the police intentionally created the bottleneck in the parade route to cause a dangerous and unruly scene. The Russian government, in contrast, has pointed to the violent street protests in Ukraine in 2014 , and to the toppling of the government there as well as continued civil strife, as justification for having tight controls on public protests. Prosecutors continue to press charges against protesters unfortunate enough to have been squeezed into the confined area during the 2012 rally. In the latest case, on Dec. 22, a court sentenced a man to two and a half years in prison for striking a police officer with an umbrella during the protest. The police detained Mr. Frumkin for standing in the street after an order had been given to disperse. The European court said, however, that Mr. Frumkin — and thousands of others — could hardly comply while trapped in the tightly packed crowd. The police, the court said in a statement, failed “to ensure the peaceful conduct of the assembly, to prevent disorder and to secure the safety of all citizens involved.” The two-week jail sentence for jaywalking, the statement said, “must have had the effect of discouraging him and others from participating in protest rallies or more generally from engaging actively in opposition politics.” The European Court of Human Rights ordered the Russian government to pay Mr. Frumkin 25,000 euros, or about $27,000, in damages and about $6,400 in expenses. Russia is a party to the treaty that established the court in the 1950s, and it has usually paid fines the court imposes, even in cases where officials said the decisions were biased. A law passed late last year would allow the Constitutional Court of Russia to overrule decisions by the European Court of Human Rights. | Russia;Civil Unrest;Yevgeniy Frumkin;European Court of Human Rights;Human Rights;Vladimir Putin;Moscow |
ny0071166 | [
"us"
] | 2015/03/17 | West Virginia: 2 Plead Guilty in River Pollution | Two former owners of Freedom Industries pleaded guilty on Monday to environmental violations stemming from last year’s Charleston chemical spill, which prompted a temporary tap water ban for 300,000 residents. At separate hearings, William Tis, 60, and Charles Herzing, 64, entered the pleas to causing an unlawful discharge of a coal-cleaning agent into the Elk River. Each faces up to a year in prison. They also face fines of $25,000 per day per violation or $100,000, whichever is greater. But after entering his plea, Mr. Tis expressed doubt when Judge Thomas Johnston of Federal District Court asked him whether he had committed the crime. “I have signed my name to these documents,” Mr. Tis said. “No, I don’t believe I have committed a crime, but I am pleading guilty.” Pressed by the judge to explain, he said: “I do believe I am guilty of this offense. There are people we had hired,” and “their failure results in my failure.” Plea hearings are scheduled Wednesday for a consultant and the tank farm plant manager, and next Monday for the company itself. The former owner, Dennis Farrell, and former president, Gary Southern, face trial this year on charges related to the spill. Freedom filed for bankruptcy protection eight days after the Jan. 9, 2014, leak. | Water pollution;Charleston SC;William Tis;Charles Herzing;West Virginia |
ny0039278 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2014/04/28 | Putin Rival Takes Message to East Ukraine | DONETSK, Ukraine — Not for the first time in his life, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the Russian former tycoon suddenly freed from jail in December by President Vladimir V. Putin, was on a somewhat quixotic mission. Mr. Khodorkovsky, accompanied by a handful of leading Russian commentators, flew on Sunday to this tough mining city in eastern Ukraine to see whether the standoffs were as hard and dangerous as they seem from a distance, leaving the world and everyone here fearing a serious war. “Donetsk,” he concluded, “is far from being as pro-Russian as it could be.” In the same vein, he said after hosting a two-day meeting of Russian and Ukrainian intellectuals before traveling to Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and now here, Russians must reject Mr. Putin’s propaganda that “fascists” have taken power in Ukraine, while Ukrainians must concede the blunders that fed that myth. For Mr. Khodorkovsky, even the separatists who declared the Donetsk People’s Republic from the 11th floor of the regional administrative building they occupied this month, proved at least capable of dialogue. Their limited room for maneuver or discussion, he said, “bore the stamp of Mr. Putin’s bureaucracy.” Things did not start out promisingly, though, as the separatists initially, and aggressively, turned Mr. Khodorkovsky away from their barricaded building: “We are against you,” one man said bluntly. Eventually, the separatist leaders went to a luxury hotel in town for a 30-minute discussion that revealed the depths of emotion fueling the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. “We are not professional revolutionaries,” said Denis Pushilin, the self-proclaimed leader of the People’s Republic. “We want to live better” than in the past 20-plus years, he said, when corruption racked this region. He said ethnic Russians wanted to know that they could speak Russian and watch Russian television, while preserving their view of history as centered on the Soviet triumph over Nazis in World War II. Corruption, chaos and the loss of the certainty seemingly lent by the Soviet system, which in essence took responsibility for the lives of citizens in exchange for their unquestioning loyalty to Communist rule, are central to the dispute in Ukraine. At a meeting with civic society groups in a former factory converted into an arts center, Mr. Khodorkovsky noted that breaking with the kind of dependency nurtured by the Soviet authorities was a critical step in achieving the freedom and prosperity that both sides say they seek. Mr. Khodorkovsky, who was jailed on trumped up charges after he began to challenge Mr. Putin politically, emphasized the importance of standing up for one’s beliefs. In an earlier visit to Kiev, and again these past days, he said he detected even in beleaguered Ukraine a freedom that was missing in an increasingly authoritarian, “even totalitarian,” Russia. “The readiness to take responsibility for one’s fate” is vital, he told the civic society groups on Sunday. “Ukrainian society is ready to do that. But Russians say they want to delegate it Mr. Putin, or another leader.” The factory hall grew deeply quiet as Mr. Khodorkovsky continued, “I won’t teach this wonderful intellectual audience” how to live. But, he added, “after taking a decision, you have to defend it with blood — God willing, not in the literal but the indirect sense.” As he spoke, word reached the gathering that separatists had taken control of a regional state television channel with the demand that it broadcast 24-hour Russian language news. It was a sign, if one was needed, that his quiet plea for dialogue had a long way to go to win over the militants. Mr. Khodorkovsky, who once cut a brash figure as the richest man in Russia, now lives in Switzerland, not daring to return to Russia, where he still faces the danger of fines in the hundreds of millions of dollars and even further court action. When he was released from jail, it was effectively on the promise of staying out of politics. While the Ukraine crisis was then unforeseen, even a modest effort like this one might seem like an unforgivable foray into the political theater to Mr. Putin. Mr. Khodorkovsky chided Ukrainian leaders for initially stripping the Russian language of its official status. The mistake was quickly corrected, he allowed, but it had still helped Mr. Putin construct a legend that Ukrainians had turned on Russia and were now ruled by fascists and latter-day supporters of Ukrainian nationalists who had collaborated with the Nazis in World War II. Even old friends of his in Russia had swallowed this Russian propaganda, Mr. Khodorkovsky said. After this visit, he said, one of the most important tasks of all Russians who participated is to say firmly, “There are no fascists.” “These are the same Ukrainians we knew for decades, we lived in the same state, and then in separate states, but we met,” he added. “There is no change,” and everyone should work against Mr. Putin’s effort to make the split appear irredeemable, he said. Asked about Western sanctions against Russia, which will probably be toughened on Monday, Mr. Khodorkovsky counseled against seeing any immediate effect. “No sanctions will work instantly on Russia,” he said. For the next three to five years, he estimated, the troubled Russian economy would “get worse, but not critical.” | Mikhail B Khodorkovsky;Vladimir Putin;Donetsk Ukraine;Ukraine;Russia |
ny0086135 | [
"world",
"africa"
] | 2015/07/28 | Obama Gathers Leaders in Effort to End South Sudan War | ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — For President Obama , the birth of South Sudan four years ago was the capstone of his Africa policy. He sent his United Nations ambassador, Susan E. Rice, for the independence celebration, and she took her 13-year-old son to stand in the joyous crowds of the new capital, Juba. Four years later , that triumph has degenerated into tragedy. The country is racked by a brutal civil war that has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced more than two million others and dashed Mr. Obama’s hopes of forging a brighter future for that corner of Africa. Now he is trying to pick up the pieces. Mr. Obama convened a meeting of the region’s leaders here on Monday to try to halt the conflict in South Sudan , in his most direct personal intervention since the violence broke out more than 18 months ago. He and the other leaders agreed to press the combatants to agree to a peace agreement by Aug. 17, and threatened both sides with sanctions or other measures if they do not comply. In a discussion of what to do if the rival forces fail to agree, one of the African leaders in the meeting even suggested regional military intervention to stop the fighting, according to American officials. Mr. Obama, though, was more focused on returning to the United Nations Security Council to secure international sanctions against individuals or organizations involved. Mr. Obama used the nearly two-hour meeting to press two countries — Uganda, which has openly supported the government in South Sudan, and Sudan, which has tacitly backed the rebels — to force their allies to stand down. “The statements we heard, particularly from the Sudanese, were constructive,” said one of the American officials, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the closed session. Another official said there was a “resounding and collective loss of patience” with the warring parties, who were not represented at the table. The situation in South Sudan has grown so grim that White House officials hold out little hope of success. Presidents rarely get involved in a diplomatic meeting unless an outcome is reasonably certain, and Mr. Obama’s aides do not usually talk about Plan B before Plan A has failed. But Mr. Obama’s advisers said he had little alternative but to give the regional meeting a try. He was coming to the region anyway to visit Kenya, his late father’s home country, and Ethiopia , where the executive branch of the African Union has its headquarters. Image President Obama in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Monday, where he will convene a meeting to try to forge a peace in South Sudan. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times “As a consequence of this discussion, our hope is that we can actually bring about the kind of peace that the people of South Sudan so desperately need,” Mr. Obama said as he opened the meeting. The frustration of Mr. Obama’s staff members, who invested so much in the creation of South Sudan, has been palpable in recent weeks. “It breaks my heart to see what South Sudan has become today,” Ms. Rice, now Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, said in a video message to the South Sudanese people earlier this month. On Air Force One heading here, a senior administration official briefing reporters under ground rules requiring anonymity expressed exasperation with both sides. “This is a classic case of venal leaders squandering a huge opportunity that they themselves earned, that we all in the international community supported them to obtain,” the official said. “So we can’t undo this for them. They’ve got to fix this.” The meeting on South Sudan included Mr. Obama and Hailemariam Desalegn of Ethiopia, as well as President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour of Sudan and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, chairwoman of the African Union. The challenge was to get regional players that are supporting different sides in the conflict to agree on a unified approach. The conflict in South Sudan, which has become a deadly confrontation between the nation’s largest ethnic groups, began in a power struggle between two men with a bitter rivalry who had come together to forge a new nation. One of them, Salva Kiir, became president of the fledgling country, and the other, Riek Machar, was named vice president. The two come from South Sudan’s main ethnic groups, the Dinka and Nuer, which have fought over land and resources for years. The fragile détente unraveled in December 2013 when Mr. Kiir, a Dinka, accused Mr. Machar, a Nuer, of planning a coup . Their security details engaged in a gun battle and within days the nation was consumed by war. In May 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to the region to broker a peace deal, but the cease-fire he negotiated lasted just days. More than half a dozen other peace plans have fallen apart since then. Mr. Obama’s special envoy, Donald E. Booth, and Ms. Rice have also been involved in trying to broker a resolution. Image The United Nations established a compound for refugees on the outskirts of Malakal, where services are severely strained. Credit Tyler Hicks/The New York Times Fighting has been fiercest in the Upper Nile and Unity States, where the nation’s two major oil fields are found. With the onset of the rainy season, an already dire situation has grown worse. “Tens of thousands of people are cut off from aid and medical care as fighting intensifies in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State,” Doctors Without Borders , the international humanitarian organization, said in a statement last week. In Unity State, the devastation resulting from a recent government offensive into the town of Leer, Mr. Machar’s hometown, is just starting to come into focus. Human Rights Watch released a report last week detailing war crimes in chilling detail. A woman from Koch County described how her two daughters had been raped and then one was tortured. “One man put a gun to the back of my head and said, ‘Watch how we will rape your daughter,’ ” the woman told the Human Rights Watch researcher. She said they had beaten her with a stick, and, after the rapes, had held her older daughter in flames until she caught fire. “She was too injured from her burns, so we had to leave her in the bush when we fled,” the woman said, according to the rights group. The fighting does not appear to be coming to a halt with the rainy season, as it has in the past. On a recent trip to South Sudan, a reporter from The New York Times saw what looked like amphibious assault vehicles being moved out of Juba on trailers. Since then, there have been reports of government forces using tanklike vehicles to hunt down and kill rebels and civilians as they have fled into the swamps. The humanitarian disaster has only worsened. “I am deeply shocked by what I have seen,” Stephen O’Brien, the United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said as he concluded a four-day visit recently. The fighting has made South Sudan one of the deadliest conflicts in the world for aid workers, 27 of whom have been killed since the start of the war. The United Nations’ head of peacekeeping, Hervé Ladsous, urged the Security Council this month to impose an arms embargo “because it is really completely questionable that the very meager resources that the country has go into buying more weapons.” American officials said they had supported the threat of an arms embargo and might embrace such a measure if the current peace plan was not accepted. “But the thing is we have to find tools that affect the two parties equally,” the senior administration official said, “and the arms embargo is more one-sided than two-sided.” | South Sudan;Barack Obama;Africa;African Union;Ethiopia;US Foreign Policy;Hailemariam Desalegn;Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma;Salva Kiir Mayardit;Riek Machar |
ny0148901 | [
"nyregion",
"thecity"
] | 2008/09/28 | In the Bronx, an Awning Starts a War | THE hostilities began when Kennedy Fried Chicken and Biscuit opened in July on Bedford Park Boulevard, near Decatur Avenue, in the northwest Bronx. A long, A-frame-shaped awning was installed over the entrance, and lest a passer-by think the establishment is merely a chicken place, it also advertises burgers, salads and gyros. But Kennedy’s bright red awning reaches nearly the width of the sidewalk, and the proprietors of Bedford Park Gourmet Deli and the Rose Flower Chinese restaurant say it blocked the view of their signs. The deli owners asked Meer Ahmed, a part-owner of the Kennedy restaurant, to remove his sign. Mr. Ahmed refused. After all, he pointed out, the sign cost about $5,000. “We spoke to him nicely because he is a neighbor,” Mustafa Alborati, a deli employee, said the other day as he prepared a pastrami on a roll with American cheese for a customer. “But he didn’t listen.” So began the long-simmering dispute, details of which were reported in The Norwood News, a local paper. Aziz Tareb, a part owner of the deli, offered to buy a big new awning, but not for his own store, which already has what he considers a beautiful sign — a nearly $10,000 investment with curvy red letters that glows at night. Rather, Mr. Tareb offered to buy the sign for the Rose Flower. David Chen, the Rose Flower’s owner, was delighted by the prospect of being able to replace his fading, two-dimensional sign. Mr. Tareb, one could argue, was not acting solely out of kindness. The Rose Flower’s new forest green awning, which went up last month, has the same dimensions as Kennedy’s. The Rose Flower’s awning now blocks Kennedy’s bright red sign on one side. And though the Rose Flower’s new sign is decorated with a soothing image of a rose, peace seems fleeting. “He started a war,” Mr. Chen said of Kennedy’s owner. Mr. Ahmed of Kennedy Fried Chicken is standing firm. “They can put signs everywhere,” Mr. Ahmed said. “I don’t care. If someone wants chicken, they’re still going to come.” | Bronx (NYC);Restaurants;Advertising and Marketing;Retail Stores and Trade |
ny0287946 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2016/08/21 | Queen Anne’s Lace: New York’s Midsummer Snowflakes | In the intense heat of midsummer, abandoned fields and untrimmed roadsides sometimes quite unexpectedly burst into flower. Perhaps it is August’s furious thundershowers that provide the environmental cue, but many plants put on their best show when it is 90 degrees and muggy. Even heat-stressed New Yorkers stop to stare at these free pop-up shows. And from their expressions, it is quite likely the first time they have noticed a particular forsaken lot in its profuse bloom. Though there are notable exceptions, these urban openings are generally composed of tough plants, both native and not, that thrive in poor, dry soils. Queen Anne’s lace , also known as wild carrot, prefers conditions like these, in bright full sun. Daucus carota describes both the familiar orange cultivated carrot and its unkempt feral twin. Though the point of transition from wild plant to garden variety has been lost to history, the close kinship between the two can be detected by the aroma. Simply pull one up and smell it. Eating a wild urban carrot should be done carefully, always considering where it was harvested, but simply scratching the root with your fingernail is enough to make your mouth water. In fact, even the leaves and stems of the plant smell like carrots. Carrot flowers are easy to identify. They are exceptionally showy and delicate, conveying the same sturdy innocence as a daisy. Yet each flower head is actually composed of many tiny flowers displayed in a flat-topped umbel (an inflorescence in which each flower stalk emanates from a single point). To me, their symmetry makes them look like enormous snowflakes, windblown at the least likely time of the year. Obviously, to others they give the impression of fine lace. Actually, the name Queen Anne’s lace is a North American invention. It might refer to Britain’s Queen Anne , whose bloody mis-stitch supposedly ruined a perfectly good lace-making effort (and whose royal blood is now memorialized in the tiny purple dot near the center of a wild carrot’s flower). Or it might refer to St. Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary , who is coincidentally the patron saint of lace makers. Interestingly, not every flower of the Queen Anne’s lace bears the single darkly colored floret. Scientifically speaking, the reason for this dark spot is still not completely understood. It may serve to lure insects who suspect that the dark spot is a neighbor collecting something worth harvesting. A darker theory suggests that predatory wasps are attracted to the fake insect and swoop in for the kill. I have seen my share of wasps on these broad, supportive flowers. Whatever the origins of the wild carrot’s name and pollination strategies, there is little damage done by collecting a few leaves, flowers or roots; the plants are both abundant and nonnative. And recipes abound, ranging from fried flower heads to Queen Anne’s lace jelly — traditionally dyed bright pink. Wash it all down with a Queen Anne’s lace cognac cocktail and you too may begin to appreciate the beauty in Queen Anne’s spattered handiwork. | Flowers and Plants;Gardens and Gardening;NYC |
ny0213223 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2010/03/20 | At Stuyvesant, Parent-Teacher-Interpreter Night | They were too old to be high school students, but not old enough to be the parents. They were lingering near Room 236 at Stuyvesant High School , a group of 20 young people, all of them Asian, standing awkwardly together, waiting for the moment when their peripheral but crucial role would become clear to the main characters at the event, the vaunted parent-teacher night. Two big signs at the school entrance, one written in Chinese, explained their mission: Parents in need of interpreters could find them by Room 236. (Teachers supervised the writing of the signs, noted Harvey Blumm, who coordinated the event, “so we’d know they didn’t say, ‘Go find a bathroom and stick your head in it.’ ”) Sally Liu, 26, a university graduate student in film, came because she knew what it was like to be lost in a sea of English. Lin Lin Cheng, who is 18 and studying paleontology, had some extra time during her spring break. And Ying Lin, 19, an undergraduate interested in business, had always wanted to see the inside of Stuyvesant. At every school, the parent-teacher conference has an “Alice in Wonderland”feeling — men and women contorting their bodies to fit undersize desks, transported back to a time when they cowered before the judgment of teachers. But the Stuyvesant event is a confusing adrenaline sport on top of that, a mad rush in which strivers race to sign up for meetings with in-demand teachers who will tell them everything they need to know about their children’s academic careers, provided it can be done within the three-minute limit. For parents who do not speak English — at Stuyvesant, perhaps 5 percent to 10 percent — the process is all the more discomfiting. Stuyvesant, a school of 3,200 students, has seen its Asian population soar to 70 percent, which inspired Mr. Blumm to start asking for volunteer interpreters. Students interpreting for their own parents could be less-than-reliable sources. “You have to watch the parents’ facial expressions pretty closely,” said Gary Rubinstein, a math teacher at the school. He Qiu Hua, a mother of two who moved to New York in 1992, walked quickly from floor to floor the other night, clutching a sheet of paper with room numbers on it and sticking closely to Ms. Cheng, who came to New York last year from Wuhan, China. Once inside a math classroom, Ms. Hua stared intently at Ms. Cheng as she interpreted the teacher’s words: The second quiz was not as strong as he might have liked; her daughter was very quiet; he would like to hear more from her in class. The concern on the younger woman’s face was evident as she interpreted, her head nearly touching Ms. Hua’s. They looked like longtime collaborators, not women from provinces 1,000 miles apart who had met a few hours earlier. Ms. Cheng admitted later that she could not help but try to protect her new friend from some of what she was hearing. There is a Chinese word for quiet that has especially positive connotations for girls, she said — its meaning is closer to ladylike — and that was the one she chose. In a meeting with a science teacher, Ms. Cheng’s face subtly lighted up as she told Ms. Hua that her daughter’s lab work was strong. Ms. Hua and her husband, both from Fuzhou, had worked hard to open a Chinese restaurant on Avenue M in Brooklyn — so hard that she had no time to study English. When each of her two children started third grade, she took them every Saturday to classes in Chinatown, where they studied — and did homework for — coursework a year ahead of their public school grade’s. (Those trying to solve the frustrating shortage of black and Hispanic students who score high enough on Stuyvesant’s entrance exam might start by taking a look at whatever magic happens in those Chinatown Saturday schools.) Ms. Hua was proud when each of her children got into Stuyvesant, but still expected the best of them, and worried she was not getting it. “Are they on Facebook or doing their homework on the computer? My English isn’t good enough for me to know,” she said to her daughter’s biology teacher, who could only nod sympathetically. When the two women parted ways, Ms. Hua had a lot on her mind, and Ms. Cheng felt a little homesick. “She reminded me of my own mother,” Ms. Cheng said. “Like all mothers, she worries.” Ms. Hua, who had not managed to talk to every teacher she wanted to, intended to return on Friday to finish up. Ms. Cheng, a dutiful daughter to someone else’s mother, assured her she would be there to help. | Stuyvesant High School;Education and Schools;Translation |
ny0226767 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2010/10/06 | Iran: Spying Charges Dropped Against British Embassy Worker | An appeals court dropped spying charges against Hossein Rassam, an Iranian employee of the British Embassy in Tehran who had been sentenced last year to four years in prison after protests broke out over the country’s disputed elections, the man’s lawyer told Agence-France Presse on Monday. The lawyer said that because Mr. Rassam “had no previous record and held no managerial posts,” his sentence was suspended on the condition that he not work for foreign embassies or have ties to political groups for five years. The embassy had called the sentence “an attack against the entire diplomatic community in Iran.” | Diplomatic Service Embassies and Consulates;Rassam Hossein |
ny0133885 | [
"business"
] | 2008/03/08 | Hefty Raises at Goldman Sachs | Goldman Sachs , the investment bank, awarded $67.5 million each to its co-presidents, Gary D. Cohn and Jon Winkelried, increasing their pay 27 percent as the company evaded the mortgage losses spreading through the economy. Mr. Cohn, 47, and Mr. Winkelried, 48, received 40 percent of their compensation in cash and 60 percent in restricted stock and options, Goldman said Friday in a proxy filing The awards “are not doing anything to take the focus off executive compensation,” said Laura G. Thatcher, head of the executive pay practice at the Alston & Bird law firm in Atlanta. “Those numbers innately are high.” Goldman set a record for Wall Street executive pay in December when it granted its chairman and chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, $68.5 million in salary and bonuses for 2007, topping the previous year’s $54 million award. Goldman’s profit increase of 22 percent and share-price gain of 7.9 percent last year outpaced Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, which ousted their chief executives after posting losses from the collapse of the subprime mortgage market. Goldman, in its filing on Friday, said the awards were based on the company’s record earnings. The firm’s proxy also showed that the chief financial officer, David A. Viniar, received $57.5 million and that Edward C. Forst, who oversees investment management, received $44 million. | Goldman Sachs Group Incorporated;Wages and Salaries;Banks and Banking;Bonuses;Executives and Management;Cohn Gary D.;Winkelried Jon |
ny0102501 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2015/12/12 | Special Education Provider in Brooklyn Improperly Billed State $2.6 Million, Audit Finds | A Brooklyn preschool special education provider, Starting Point Services for Children, improperly billed New York State for $2.6 million in expenses during recent fiscal years, according to an audit that the state comptroller released on Friday. Preschool programs for disabled children cost the state and local districts $1.4 billion annually. There are roughly 320 approved private preschool special education providers. In 2012, a series of audits by the office of the comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli , uncovered inappropriate expenses, waste and fraud in these programs. In 2013, the Legislature passed a law requiring the comptroller to audit all of the programs by March 31, 2018. The comptroller is beginning with those programs deemed at highest risk for mismanagement or fraud, because of past complaints or the amount of money involved. In the case of Starting Point, a nonprofit provider, Mr. DiNapoli’s office looked at a program in which teachers go to students’ homes or to classrooms to provide services. Providers submit reports to the state, and the state determines the rate at which they will be paid. (The state picks up roughly 60 percent of the cost, and the local district the rest.) Starting Point charged the state for the salaries and benefits of employees who were, in fact, spending part of their time working for another of the provider’s programs, the audit found. In total, Starting Point improperly charged for $1,981,802 in salaries and fringe benefits over the 2011-13 fiscal years. The audit did not find evidence of fraud. Efforts to reach Starting Point for comment by phone and email on Friday evening were not successful. Starting Point also charged $173,539 for staff bonuses that were not allowed because they were not based on performance evaluations, the audit found. The auditors also determined that Starting Point improperly charged the state for $310,136 paid to a consultant acting as a chief financial officer in the 2011-13 fiscal years. Mr. DiNapoli’s office said the consultant’s services were inadequately documented and not eligible for reimbursement, because a staff controller — who was paid $586,310 over that same period — should have been able to manage the organization’s finances. “Unfortunately, once again we’ve found another school that failed to spend the money properly and shortchanged special needs children,” Mr. DiNapoli, a Democrat, said in a statement. “We’ve shared our findings with the State Education Department, so that they can recover the misspent funds.” | Preschool;Special education;Starting Point Services for Children;Thomas P DiNapoli;Brooklyn |
ny0205301 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2009/01/21 | Obama Embarks on His Honeymoon. The Question: How Long Will It Last? | WASHINGTON — Given the excitement in Washington this week, one might think that with the inauguration of Barack Obama and the departure of George W. Bush, the economy was about to spring back to life, the troops were on their way home from Iraq, there would soon be health care coverage for all, and, to quote a certain Obama foe turned Obama secretary of state-designate, “celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect.” But as Mr. Obama moves into the White House, there is evidence that, enthusiastic though the public is about the change in power, there are no expectations of quick fixes. The cascade of grim economic news, combined with the calculatedly sober tone Mr. Obama has adopted, has provided him something of a cushion. “People are going to give Obama more time than they would any other new president, because they know he is dealing with unprecedented challenges,” said Mark McKinnon, a Republican media consultant who worked for Mr. Bush and, for a time, Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s opponent in the election just past. Still, just how much patience does the country have for turning the ship of state around, no matter how much it likes its new president? Mr. Obama’s advisers, who have been nothing if not diligent about pushing the idea that change will not come quickly, tend to avoid being nailed down to any timetable. “I just don’t know,” David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, said in an interview. “I think that’s hard to judge. I think right now people are inclined to give us some time. By ‘time,’ I mean more than months. People understand that it’s going to take years.” Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s chief of staff, responded with a terse e-mail message when asked how long he thought Mr. Obama had. “Will not put time on it,” Mr. Emanuel wrote. “I think based on what I see,” he wrote, “they know these are big problems and cannot be turned around quickly. Public quite pragmatic.” A Times/CBS News poll conducted last week offered at least some guidance for the Obama Expectations Clock. Most respondents said they thought it would take Mr. Obama two years or more to deliver on campaign promises to improve the economy, expand health care coverage and end the war in Iraq. But an intriguing question is when, if ever, does Mr. Bush lose ownership of this recession and it becomes an Obama recession? In a poll question dealing solely with the recession, most respondents thought it would last two years or longer. David Plouffe, who was the Obama campaign manager, argued that Mr. Obama could earn patience from the American public in part with his tone. “People expect a change in priorities,” Mr. Plouffe said. “People expect a change in intensity. But they know it’s going to take a long while for things to stabilize and turn around.” In all likelihood, the length of time the president has to deal with problems and deliver on promises will vary with the problem and the promise. He probably has a good deal of breathing room not only on the economy but also on health care, given the long and tortured history of efforts to change the system. But after the crispness and certitude of his campaign promise to bring all combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months of his taking office, it seems fair to say that the public at large, and his Democratic base in particular, will not be quite so tolerant of delays on that front. Mr. Obama may also find it difficult to delay very long in closing the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. He has walked a careful line on this issue since the election, making clear that he will eventually close the camp but noting all the complications in doing so. His ability to slow-walk some campaign promises will also be affected by how well he maintains his standing with the American public and continues to project a commanding air. With a series of missteps upon assuming the presidency in 1993, Bill Clinton was quick to squander what political capital he had. So far, Mr. Obama has remained unscathed by any missteps he has made, but his ability to ask for the American public’s patience depends in no small part on confidence in his competence and motives. Mr. Axelrod said he thought Mr. Obama and the country were in tune with each other. “What’s remarkable about the polls is that people are at once optimistic and realistic,” he said. “They have high hopes for his presidency, and that he can help lead us out of the morass we are in — and they understand how deep the morass is. And that’s a good position to be in.” Still, if these past few years have demonstrated anything, it is that things move much more quickly in politics than they ever have before; events change, perceptions change, public opinion shifts. Even as Mr. McKinnon argued that Mr. Obama would enjoy a lot more running room than other presidents, his estimate of when the bill might come due was probably one that Mr. Axelrod would not like to hear. “I think Obama can count on a very long honeymoon,” Mr. McKinnon said. “I think he’s got about six months, which is about five and a half months longer than usual.” | Obama Barack;Public Opinion |
ny0226467 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2010/10/30 | In Senate Races, New Republican Blood Is Mostly Old | WASHINGTON — Christine O’Donnell, the Tea Party favorite and Republican Senate nominee from Delaware, is trailing badly in the polls, but her every utterance seems to win national attention. Meanwhile, John Hoeven, the three-term governor of North Dakota, remains largely unknown even though he is virtually certain to win a Senate seat next week — not to mention that he was recently named a finalist for the American Mustache Institute ’s Mustached American of the Year award. Insurgent challengers may be grabbing all the headlines in midterm elections this year, but most of the Republicans who are best positioned to snap up Senate seats currently held by Democrats are veteran politicians — and most of them have already served in Congress. Based on their experience, the 2010 class of Senate Republican freshman could well prove to be relatively pragmatic and wise to the ways of legislative dealmaking — almost certainly more so than the Tea Party-backed firebrands like Sharron Angle in Nevada and Rand Paul in Kentucky, who have built their campaigns around ideological demands and an end to business as usual. Among them, Rob Portman, who spent 12 years in the House before serving in the Bush administration and now seems likely to win an open Senate seat from Ohio, has a well-established reputation for working across the aisle. Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the former party whip now completing his seventh term, has been ahead in polling in his race for the Senate. He is close friends with the Democratic majority leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, having worked with him on issues including the 2008 financial system bailout and national security. In Arkansas, Representative John Boozman, a five-term Republican, has a huge lead in the polls over the Democratic incumbent, Blanche Lincoln. In Indiana, former Senator Dan Coats is enjoying a large advantage over the Democrat, Representative Brad Ellsworth. Mr. Coats served in the House for eight years, from 1981 to 1989, and in the Senate for a decade, from 1989 to 1999. In Kansas, Representative Jerry Moran, now finishing his seventh term, is way ahead of the Democratic candidate, Lisa Johnston, an assistant dean at Baker University. Other Republicans with a good chance of winning Senate seats include Representative Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois, now finishing his fifth term, and former Representative Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who served from 1999 to 2005. “Not the least remarkable thing about this election is the appearance of honorary virgins,” said Ross K. Baker , a professor of political science at Rutgers University. “The fact that they are not incumbents is kind of a technicality. These are people with long experience.” Mr. Baker, a Senate expert, added, “The number of veteran senators certainly will outweigh by a considerable margin the number of people with no legislative experience whatsoever.” The clear, if little noted, wealth of prior political experience among so many of the likely Republican victors in Senate races this year also highlights why voters often end up disappointed when they head to the polls eager for change in Washington. The overwhelming majority of winners on Tuesday in both the House and Senate races will be sitting incumbents, while relatively few will be neophytes with no background in politics. The Senate may well have a handful of new Tea Party-backed members in January, making up a small but potentially influential caucus that could exert rightward pressure on the Republican leadership. But even if the more ideological candidates, like Mr. Paul, Ms. Angle, Ken Buck in Colorado and Linda McMahon in Connecticut, ended up winning, they would be a minority among the newest Republican senators. And that stands to make life easier for party leaders even as they have been besieged by questions about how internal politics may change as a result of high-profile newcomers. So, while many commentators are musing about how political newcomers will change the face of Congress, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, is ready to roll out the welcome mat for a highly experienced freshmen class. Or as Mr. McConnell’s spokesman, Don Stewart, put it: “The ink-to-likely-electability ratio in this race is way off.” For Republican strategists, the media’s fascination with unconventional candidates — and the efforts by Democrats to keep the focus on them — has made it difficult to win attention for the Republicans on the ballot with long résumés. “Despite the best efforts by the Democrats to brand the incoming class of Republicans as on the fringe, the reality is that we are looking at a diverse and experienced group of men and women,” said Brian Walsh, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Janine A. Parry , a political science professor at the University of Arkansas, said Republicans in her state expressed a clear preference for the experienced Mr. Boozman when they chose him in an eight-way primary to challenge Senator Lincoln. “He almost has as much experience in D.C. as she does,” Dr. Parry said. “They nominated the establishment candidate.” If history is any guide, the spotlight of the campaign trail will give way to relative anonymity that comes with being near the bottom of the seniority list. For instance, Senator Scott P. Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, arrived this year at the Capitol amid much fanfare after winning the seat long held by Edward M. Kennedy. But since then, he has mostly faded into the background, neither seeking nor gaining undue influence. In some cases, those who would be new to Washington, like Governor Hoeven, have substantial experience at the state or local level and were courted heavily by party leaders. Mr. McConnell, for instance, has already promised Mr. Hoeven a seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee, which oversees government spending. In Florida, Marco Rubio, the Republican Senate nominee, was a member of the State House of Representatives for nine years and its speaker from 2007 to 2009. In New Hampshire, Kelly Ayotte, the Republican Senate nominee, is the former state attorney general. Both Mr. Rubio and Ms. Ayotte have been leading in polls. The candidates’ previous experience has not been overlooked by their competitors, however, and in many cases they are using it for the same type of anti-incumbent attack advertisements that Republican challengers are using in far more races against incumbent Democrats. “Roy Blunt’s been gone some time now, probably doesn’t know how tough folks here in Missouri have it,” an elderly woman says in a television commercial paid for by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Then a young woman, apparently a Washington socialite draped in pearls, says, “Roy is the life of the party in D.C. His wife? Great! A powerful tobacco lobbyist.” After the older woman says her nephew lost his home in Missouri, the younger woman says, “Roy is building a new million-dollar home in D.C.’s best neighborhood.” She adds, “That’s how we know he’s made it here.” (The Blunt campaign said he was building no such home.) | Elections;Tea Party Movement;Republican Party;United States Politics and Government |
ny0125211 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2012/08/28 | Teixeira’s Calf Injury Is Focus in Yankees’ Loss | Mark Teixeira ’s swing looked innocuous enough — a trickled foul ball on a 1-0 changeup — but the reverberations might echo at a bad time for the Yankees . Running out of the batter’s box, Teixeira injured his left calf. This was in the fourth inning, more than three hours before the Toronto Blue Jays took a ninth-inning lead, gave it back, then retook it in the 11th, this time holding on for an 8-7 win to take the opener in a key homestand for the Yankees as they look ahead to the season’s final month. The Yankees’ position atop the American League East, tenuous as it is, could become even deeper in doubt without Teixeira, their leading run-producer. Monday’s loss stung, particularly the blown 6-4 lead in the ninth by closer Rafael Soriano. But the postgame topic quickly swung to Teixeira’s health. “I don’t see him playing in this series,” Manager Joe Girardi said. “I don’t. I don’t even know if see him playing in the next series.” Girardi added: “Calves can be really tricky. I’m concerned.” Teixeira, who had missed three games already this month with left wrist inflammation, said he felt the calf muscle grab when he ran out of the box on the foul ball off Toronto starter Henderson Alvarez. “I knew something wasn’t right,” Teixeira said. Girardi and the trainer Steve Donohue came out to examine Teixeira after the foul ball. He stayed in the game and drew a walk, but hobbled around the bases while scoring on a single by Russell Martin. “I thought I could kind of run through it,” Teixeira said. “But instead of loosening up as I was running it kind of tightened up on me.” Teixeira did not come out to the field the next inning, and a magnetic resonance imaging exam showed a Grade 1 strain, the same type of finicky injury that put shortstop Derek Jeter on the disabled list for a prolonged period last season. A healthy Jeter was the momentary star in the ninth inning Monday, when his homer to right field off Casey Janssen tied the score, 7-7. Jeter had 3,261 hits coming into the ninth, but none against Janssen, a member of an increasingly rare fraternity of pitchers who could say he had Jeter’s number. On Monday, in their 14th career meeting, Jeter took Janssen’s 89-mile-per-hour fastball and pushed it out to right field, just deep and high enough to clear the wall and tie the score. “I don’t really pay attention to what I’ve done in the past off someone,” Jeter said. “But I’m pretty sure it was a mistake on his part.” That homer relieved the Yankees’ normally dependable closer Soriano, who squandered a two-run lead in the top half of the inning by surrendering a three-run homer to Colby Rasmus. Soriano, known for swiftly untucking his jersey after saves, stayed dressed and looked aghast as Rasmus’s home run fluttered into the second deck to put the Blue Jays ahead. “We’ve seen him close so many games for us, and he has done a great job,” Girardi said. “Just tonight wasn’t the night.” Soriano was hit in the hand by a line drive Sunday but stayed in the game and told Girardi he was all right to go Monday. But his third blown save of the season erased a quality start by the rookie David Phelps, who allowed four runs in six and one-third innings. “It’s tough,” Phelps said. “The bullpen has done such a good job all year long, you expect them to get the job done. Obviously it’s a shock.” In the 11th, the Blue Jays took a lead thanks to the craftiness of pinch-runner Mike McCoy, who scored from third on an infield grounder to third baseman Jayson Nix. Jeter said Nix made the right play on the ball. “He initially went back to third and then changed his mind and scored,” Jeter said of McCoy. “That’s pretty difficult to do.” With that, Toronto regained a lead they would not give back to the Yankees, who begin a stretch of 22 consecutive games against opponents from the American League East — the type of toilsome loop that can be especially fatiguing on the mind, as every game against a similar opponent looks and feels like the last. Weren’t the Orioles just in town? Was that last week or last night? Ten of those games are against the last-place Blue Jays, which would seem comforting for the Yankees, who have already begun looking over their shoulder as the Baltimore Orioles and Tampa Bay Rays have gained on them. And with a main slugger like Teixeira now added to a long list of injuries, once-solid ground now looks even shakier. “For a guy like that to be out of our lineup, that’s a big deal,” outfielder Nick Swisher said. “We’ve got to step it up.” INSIDE PITCH Robinson Cano hit two solo home runs, the ninth multihomer game of his career. ... Alex Rodriguez (broken left hand) and Andy Pettitte (broken left ankle) had X-rays before Monday’s game, and Joe Girardi said they were both progressing. Rodriguez will be able to begin taking batting practice while Pettitte will continue throwing on flat ground. | Baseball;New York Yankees;Teixeira Mark;Jeter Derek;Toronto Blue Jays |
ny0252119 | [
"sports",
"ncaafootball"
] | 2011/11/18 | Yale Looking Into Coach Tom Williams’s Rhodes Claims | NEW HAVEN — Yale University began an internal review Thursday to determine if its football coach, Tom Williams, was being truthful when he listed himself as a Rhodes scholarship candidate on his résumé. The move came after The New York Times reported Wednesday that officials of the Rhodes Trust, which finances the scholarships, said they could find no evidence that Williams had applied for the academic fellowship in 1992, when he graduated from Stanford. In addition to describing himself as a former Rhodes candidate on his résumé, Williams, who became the Yale coach in 2009, has also been referred to as a former Rhodes finalist in numerous news stories over the past two weeks. Those stories were prompted by Yale quarterback Patrick Witt’s being a finalist for the scholarship this year. Yale’s president, Richard C. Levin , said in a statement that he had instructed the university’s general counsel “to commence immediately a review of the facts surrounding Tom Williams’s assertions about being a candidate for a Rhodes scholarship.” The university said it would have no further comment until after the review. Witt had been wrestling with whether to play in Saturday’s season finale against Harvard, a team he has never beaten, or participate in an interview in Atlanta that would help determine if he would get the scholarship. Witt said he relied on Williams for advice in the decision-making process, in part because Williams had said he faced a similar situation when he was at Stanford. Williams had said that he chose to attend an N.F.L. tryout instead. Witt eventually chose to play in the game. After being asked by The Times this week to check on Williams’s assertion that he had been a candidate, the Rhodes Trust said it could find no evidence that he had ever applied. The trust keeps a database of all who applied, even those who withdraw their applications. Elliot Gerson, the American secretary of the trust, said that it “was conceivable though frankly highly unlikely” that Williams withdrew his application so quickly that it did not appear in the database. On Wednesday night, Williams said that Stanford did endorse him as a Rhodes candidate but that he did not advance as far as Witt had. “I was in the preliminary stages at Stanford and I had to decide,” he said. “But the interview wasn’t official.” Asked if Stanford had endorsed Williams for a Rhodes scholarship, John Pearson, the director of the university’s Bechtel International Center , which advises the Rhodes applicants there, said in an e-mail, “We feel that we cannot provide information that pertains to the record of someone who was a Stanford student unless we received permission from that student.” On Thursday, before Yale announced its review, Williams told reporters after practice that he had been endorsed by a faculty adviser at Stanford to apply for the scholarship, but ended up not doing so. He said that in talking about Witt’s situation, he had merely been trying to make a comparison between football and academic choices. “There is no intention to deceive,” Williams said. “I never said I was a finalist for the Rhodes candidacy. The Rhodes shouldn’t have any record of me, because I didn’t do it. I didn’t go through the process. I pulled out long before it got to that point.” Nonetheless, the perception that he was talking about his own Rhodes scholarship experience was never corrected, and it was reported in several outlets, including Yale’s alumni magazine in 2009, that he had been a finalist. He players did not seem troubled by the situation. “I didn’t see anything where he was telling people personally that he was a finalist,” said Wes Moyer, a linebacker. “But I really don’t think that Coach Williams would say he was a finalist if he wasn’t. I don’t think he would lie about this type of stuff.” | Williams Tom;Yale University;Rhodes Scholarship;Coaches and Managers;Scholarships and Fellowships;Football;Colleges and Universities;Football (College) |
ny0159187 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2008/12/01 | CNN Pitches a Cheaper Wire Service to Newspapers | CNN, in the afterglow of an election season of record ratings for cable news, is elbowing in on a new line of business: catering to financially strained newspapers looking for an alternative to The Associated Press. For nearly a month, a trial version of CNN’s wire service has been on display in some newspapers. But this week editors from about 30 papers will visit Atlanta to hear CNN’s plans to broaden a service to provide coverage of big national and international events — and maybe local ones — on a smaller scale and at a lower cost than The A.P. “The reality is we don’t have a lot of relationships with newspapers,” said Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide. “We have relationships with TV stations around the world.” Mr. Walton said the meeting this week, which CNN has billed the “CNN Newspaper Summit,” is “kind of a get-to-know-you.” With its CNN Wire, the company is going up against the largest news-gathering operation in the world in The A.P., and it must convince editors that it can offer something that is well outside its broadcast expertise — which may not be a tough task given the dire circumstances newspapers face. In addition, a number of newspapers are unhappy with the cost of The A.P., a nonprofit corporation that is owned by the 1,400 papers that are its members. Some newspapers have even given notice that they intend to leave The A.P. “I’m very interested in hearing what they have to present,” said Benjamin J. Marrison, the editor of The Columbus Dispatch in Ohio, which is among the papers that have said they will drop The A.P. because of its cost. “It has a lot of potential. We just need to understand it better.” “Mainly, we’re going to listen to what it is they have to offer, and what their plans are for expanding their news-gathering operation,” Mr. Marrison added. “They say they have more than 3,000 journalists worldwide, and that’s a formidable group, and we want to see how they intend to deploy those resources, how in tune they are with the needs of newspapers and their Web sites, and what kind of cooperative they intend to build.” The project has several implications for the news business. For CNN it amounts to another expansion of its operations at a time of severe cutbacks across the media industry, especially at newspapers, which are facing the wrenching circumstances of both a faltering economy and the continuing flight of advertising dollars out of print and onto the Internet. And for The Associated Press, it represents a competitive threat, while some client newspapers already are leaving the service because of financial pressure. (CNN Wire would also compete with other services, like Bloomberg News and Thomson Reuters.) On Nov. 20, Tom Curley, the president and chief executive of The A.P., spoke to employees in New York City and by Webcast to groups around the world — a recording of which was heard by The New York Times — about the state of its business. He outlined three main challenges: the economic downturn, the financial problems of newspapers, and what he described as customers becoming competitors, specifically CNN. Of those three challenges, he said he was most worried about the last one. “On the competitive side, CNN volunteered to be the first, but any number of people could have pulled the trigger,” Mr. Curley told employees. “They’re coming off a very strong election cycle, they have extra money and they’re going to do it because they can.” Mr. Walton, of CNN, says that the network already runs an internal wire service for its bureaus and CNN.com , and that taking it outside is a logical step. The breadth of the service that CNN will ultimately offer is unclear, and partly depends on the demands of newspapers. CNN Wire could offer columns written by some of its high-profile personalities, like Anderson Cooper. It also plans to offer text versions of its major investigative pieces for television. “The CNN system is set up so we use content across all our networks and platforms,” Mr. Walton said. “It’s not unusual for Anderson Cooper to appear online or on CNN International.” And local coverage could be in the offing. In August, CNN said it was dispatching journalists to 10 cities in the United States, but in a bare-bones fashion: the correspondents will be laptop- and camera-toting one-person bands, rather than workers in expensive bureaus. “This is obviously a national wire service,” said Susan Goldberg, the editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, which has already published some stories from CNN’s wire service. “They’re not opening up shop here in Ohio necessarily. We would like to see them put out accurate, informative, entertaining news and information. We would also love to see them produce content that works really well on the Web. Shorter stories, because all of us are dealing with shrinking space in our print edition.” (An editor from The Plain Dealer will attend the CNN meetings.) A number of newspaper editors say the component of A.P. service that would be hardest to replace is still photography. CNN said it did not plan to offer photography but would offer streaming Web video for newspapers’ sites. Mr. Walton declined to say how many journalists CNN was looking to hire, but job ads have been appearing online. One recent posting sought journalists to staff bureaus in Atlanta, Washington and Los Angeles. The help-wanted ad described the service like this: “The CNN Wire is on CNN’s editorial front line, editing and vetting the work of correspondents and producers worldwide and doing original reporting for use across CNN’s networks and Web pages.” In an interview, Mr. Curley of The A.P. said that given the state of the news industry, “we should rejoice that someone has millions of dollars to spend on breaking news.” “Breaking news is very, very expensive and if they have the resources to spend on it, we welcome them to the game,” he added. But in his conference with employees, Mr. Curley suggested that the CNN wire service needed major improvement before it could play at The A.P.’s level. “You really don’t want to put quotes up there that could end up on locker room walls,” Mr. Curley said, before doing just that. “The current CNN wire, if you look at it truly is still, and remarkably, abysmally written,” he said. “However, they’re interviewing A.P. people, we know, and that can be transformed. And if you have enough money and you have enough ego and enough desire, you can fix that in a hurry.” Last year CNN said it was dropping Reuters’ wire service. The move saved the network more than $3 million annually, but it was not a cost-cutting decision, executives said. Instead, it was part of CNN’s strategy of relying less on outside media outlets for news coverage. In that vein, CNN plans to drop The A.P. for CNN.com in January. (CNN the television network will continue to use The A.P.) “Look at the history of CNN,” Mr. Walton said. “We launched as one network in 1980. Today CNN is more than just one network. We have a huge radio business. A huge online business. We’re about content.” “We want to own more of our own content and reporting. We felt we had to look at our business as more than television,” he added. The Associated Press is more than 150 years old and is the world’s largest news-gathering operation, with more than 3,000 journalists in over 100 countries. “I think the crucial question is whether CNN is going to try to really go head-to-head with The A.P., or offer something that’s a lot more selective,” said Jack Driscoll, the former editor of The Boston Globe and editor in residence at the M.I.T. Media Laboratory. “Newspapers are hurting so much that they could be willing to get less for less.” In that case, Mr. Driscoll said, there is probably room for a new competitor. “But if CNN is going to try to do something close to the range and quality of The Associated Press, that’s awfully hard to do, and it’s a huge financial undertaking.” Some newspapers that have long relied on The A.P. have said they would drop the service because of its cost, which varies — The Columbus Dispatch, for example, paid more than $800,000 a year. Others, including The Star Tribune of Minneapolis and the Tribune Company, one of the largest newspaper chains, have also given notice that they plan to drop out of the service. The A.P., in response, announced in October that it would reduce prices, which will result in a cumulative savings of $30 million annually for its member newspapers. This stands in contrast to the current financial fortunes of CNN. In October, CNN said it was hiring nearly 30 people to staff a news hub in Abu Dhabi, and has made other international expansion moves. And Mr. Walton said the network was on track for its fifth consecutive year of double-digit profit growth, a first for CNN. “One of the good things is that when you are profitable, you can reinvest,” Mr. Walton said. | Cable News Network;Associated Press;News and News Media;Newspapers;Recession and Depression;Curley Tom;Walton Jim |
ny0061149 | [
"sports",
"tennis"
] | 2014/08/25 | Players to Watch at the U.S. Open | Caroline Wozniacki The resurgent Wozniacki, a former No. 1 player, has had a stellar summer, winning in Istanbul and reaching the quarterfinals in Montreal and the semifinals in Cincinnati. She lost to Serena Williams in three sets at both events, but her commitment to playing a more aggressive, up-tempo style has made her the most improved player on the women’s tour since Wimbledon. Her serve is now a consistent force, well placed and heavy, and it allows Wozniacki, left, to stay on the offensive on the first ball. In 2009, when she reached the United States Open final, Wozniacki was a superb mover and counterpuncher. After a long period of succumbing to more powerful ball-strikers, Wozniacki, the No. 10 seed, has learned how to play closer to the baseline and dictate play. Lucie Safarova A 5-foot-9 left-hander from the Czech Republic, Safarova made a run to the Wimbledon semifinals this year, her first breakthrough in a Grand Slam. At this year’s Australian Open, Safarova, 27, had a match point against the eventual champion, Li Na, and unloaded on a backhand that landed about an inch past the baseline. The decision to play aggressively showed her ambition and her belief that she could beat anyone. Known for her penchant for working hard on the practice court, Safarova, seeded 14th, is poised to break into the top 10. With her powerful first-strike capability, especially on her forehand, Safarova has a game tailor-made for the quick hardcourts at Flushing Meadows. Video All eyes will be on Serena Williams and Roger Federer at this year’s United States Open. Credit Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times Madison Keys Keys, 19, has steadily climbed the rankings, and she is a seeded player, No. 27, at the Open for the first time in her young career. With a thunderous serve and bone-crushing ground game, Keys has the weapons to go toe to toe with anyone. Her agility and court coverage have improved, and her ability to keep her poise under pressure has vaulted her into the top 30. Although she lost a tight three-setter to Maria Sharapova in Cincinnati this month, Keys appears to be learning with every match, absorbing the difficult lessons of life on the tour and getting better in a patient, incremental way. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga Tsonga’s astonishing level of play in winning the Rogers Cup in Toronto this month by defeating Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, Grigor Dimitrov and Roger Federer in successive days signaled a stunning return to form. After playing listlessly in Grand Slams this year, Tsonga, 29, used phenomenal serving and a dominant forehand to overpower the game’s best players. He is now a threat to win the Open, where he is seeded ninth. Against Federer in the final, Tsonga, right, never faced a break point, despite getting only 50 percent of his first serves in. His second serve was remarkably effective as he varied pace, spin and placement to befuddle Federer. Tsonga plays with relentless aggression, pouncing on every short ball as he attacks his opponent. Vasek Pospisil Pospisil, a 24-year-old Canadian, arrives in New York brimming with confidence. At Wimbledon, Pospisil and the American Jack Sock stunned the Bryan brothers, Bob and Mike, to win the doubles title. Pospisil advanced to the final at the Citi Open in Washington last month, losing to his countryman Milos Raonic in straight sets. He extended Federer to three sets at the Cincinnati tournament a few weeks later. Pospisil, ranked 46th, is capable of pulling off a big upset in the early rounds. Image The resilient Steve Johnson rose into the top 50 with a superb hardcourt season. Credit Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images Steve Johnson Johnson, a two-time N.C.A.A. singles champion at Southern California, cracked the top 50 for the first time after reaching the third round in Cincinnati. He has had a superb hardcourt season, defeating the top-15 players John Isner and Ernests Gulbis. Johnson’s greatest strength is his mental game. He is a resilient, emotionally steady competitor who always gives himself the best chance to win. Although not seeded, Johnson, now ranked 51st, is playing at a high enough level to score an upset or two and make it into the second week. | Tennis;Caroline Wozniacki;Lucie Safarova;Jo-Wilfried Tsonga;Madison Keys;Vasek Pospisil;Steve Johnson;US Open Tennis |
ny0080267 | [
"sports",
"basketball"
] | 2015/02/01 | N.B.A. Great Aids Campaign | The Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson is among the investors in a group that wants to legalize marijuana use in Ohio, the organizers of the campaign announced. Robertson said in a statement released by the group, ResponsibleOhio, that he was taking part because of the benefits of medical marijuana. “It’s a terrible feeling when you can’t help someone suffering from cancer or another debilitating medical condition — I know from personal experience,” said the statement from Robertson, who had surgery a few years ago after he was found to have prostate cancer. Arizona Cardinals defensive end Frostee Rucker is another backer, the group said. | Ohio;Marijuana,Pot,Weed;Oscar Robertson;Legislation;Basketball |
ny0068038 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2014/12/28 | Events in New Jersey for Dec. 28, 2014 - Jan. 3, 2015 | A guide to cultural and recreational events in New Jersey. Items for the calendar should be sent at least three weeks in advance to [email protected]. Comedy NEWARK Prudential Hall, New Jersey Performing Arts Center Jim Gaffigan: The White Bread Tour. Jan. 10 at 6 and 8:30 p.m. Prudential Hall, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, 1 Center Street. 888-466-5722; njpac.org. Film RED BANK Count Basie Theater “Keep on Keepin’ On,” 2014 documentary directed by Alan Hicks. Jan. 6 at 7 p.m. $5. Count Basie Theater, 99 Monmouth Street. 732-842-9000; countbasietheatre.org. For Children CAMDEN Adventure Aquarium “Hippo Haven.” Continuing. $18.95 and $25.95; children under 2, free. Adventure Aquarium, 1 Riverside Drive. adventureaquarium.com; 856-365-3300. EAST RUTHERFORD Izod Center Disney on Ice presents “Princesses and Heroes.” Jan. 1 through 4. Tickets: $15 and up. Izod Center, 50 Route 120. 201-935-3900; izodcenter.com. Music and Dance CAPE MAY Cape May Stage, the Robert Shackleton Playhouse “Merry Melodies: A Holiday Celebration,” musical revue. Through Dec. 31. $15 to $35. Cape May Stage, the Robert Shackleton Playhouse, 405 Lafayette Street. 609-770-8311; capemaystage.com. HIGHLAND PARK Highland Park Public Library Spook Handy Folk Concert. Dec. 30 at 2 p.m. Free. Highland Park Public Library, 31 North 5th Avenue. 732-572-2750; hpplnj.org. JERSEY CITY Zeppelin Hall Zeppelin Hall New Year’s Eve, live D.J., dancing, hats and noisemakers. Dec. 31, 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. Free. Zeppelin Hall, 88 Liberty View Drive. zeppelinhall.com; 201-721-8888. MANASQUAN Algonquin Arts Center New Year’s Eve, The McCartney Years: A Paul McCartney Concert Experience. Dec. 31 at 6 and 9 p.m. $45 to $63. “Father Alphonse’s New Year,” Orchestra of St. Peter by the Sea, conducted by Father Alphonse Stephenson. Jan. 4 at 3 p.m. $25 to $51. Algonquin Arts Center, 173 Main Street. algonquinarts.com; 732-528-9211. MONTCLAIR Outpost in the Burbs Light of Day Winterfest to combat Parkinson’s disease, with Garland Jeffreys, James Maddock, Steve Conte and Joe D’Urso. Jan. 10 at 8 p.m. $35 to $75. Outpost in the Burbs, 67 Church Street. 973-744-6560; outpostintheburbs.org. MONTCLAIR Trumpets Jazz Club Second annual Mike Kaplan Nonet Salute to Cedar Walton, with Vinnie Cutro, trumpet. Dec. 28, 3 to 6 p.m. $10. Trumpets Jazz Club, 6 Depot Square. 973-744-2600; trumpetsjazz.com/main.html. MORRISTOWN Mayo Performing Arts Center “First Night Morris 2015,” over 300 artists and 80 performances in 24 venues, all within walking distance of the Morristown Green. Dec. 31 at 4:45 p.m. $20. “Sing-A-Long Sound of Music.” Jan. 4 at 3 p.m. $15 and $20. “Shatner’s World: We Just Live in It,” one-man show, with music and storytelling. Jan. 9 at 8 p.m. $59 to $150. Mayo Performing Arts Center, 100 South Street. mayoarts.org; 973-539-8008. MORRISTOWN The Minstrel, Morristown Unitarian Fellowship Open stage. Jan. 2, 8 to 11 p.m. $9; 12 and under free. The Minstrel, Morristown Unitarian Fellowship, 21 Normandy Heights Road. 973-335-9489; folkproject.org. NEW BRUNSWICK State Theater Blues Traveler, rock. Dec. 29 at 8 p.m. $35 to $50. “Salute to Vienna,” the Strauss Symphony of America. Dec. 31 at 6 p.m. $47 to $107. Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes, blues and rock. Dec. 31 at 10 p.m. $40 to $90. Warner Bros. presents “Bugs Bunny at the Symphony II,” with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Jan. 4 at 3 p.m. $20 to $88. Tickets: 973-624-3713; njsymphony.org. The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra presents “Romeo and Juliet,” led by Jacques Lacombe. Jan. 10 at 8 p.m. Tickets: 973-624-3713; njsymphony.org. $20 to $87. State Theater, 15 Livingston Avenue. 732-246-7469; statetheatrenj.org. NEWARK Prudential Hall, New Jersey Performing Arts Center Warner Bros. presents “Bugs Bunny at the Symphony II,” with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Jan. 3 at 3 p.m. $10 to $88. The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra presents “Romeo and Juliet,” led by Jacques Lacombe. Jan. 9 and 11. $20 to $87. Tickets: 973-624-3713; njsymphony.org. Prudential Hall, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, 1 Center Street. njpac.org; 888-466-5722. PRINCETON McCarter Theater Center Joint recital with Gidon Kremer, violinist and Daniil Trifonov, pianist. Jan. 5 at 7:30 p.m. $42 to $58. McCarter Theater Center, 91 University Place. mccarter.org; 609-258-2787. RAHWAY Hamilton Stage Lisa Bouchelle, rock. Dec. 31 at 8:30 p.m. $25. “El Sueño: The Dream.” A Three Kings Day show by Alborada Spanish Dance Theater. Jan. 4 at 3 p.m. $14 and $20. Susan Werner, singer-songwriter. Jan. 9 at 8 p.m. $25. Hamilton Stage, 360 Hamilton Street. 732-499-8226; ucpac.org. RED BANK Count Basie Theater “Sing-Along: Wizard of Oz,” sing along to the classic 1939 film. Jan. 3 at 2 p.m. $15. Count Basie Theater, 99 Monmouth Street. 732-842-9000; countbasietheatre.org. Image RED BANK Justin Kauflin, left, and Clark Terry are in “Keep On Keepin’ On,” a documentary directed by Alan Hicks, which will be shown at the Count Basie Theater, 99 Monmouth Street, on Jan. 6 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $5. For further information: 732-842-9000; countbasietheatre.org . Credit RADiUS-TWC SOUTH ORANGE South Orange Performing Arts Center “Celebrate New Year’s Eve,” with Average White Band, blues, soul and funk. Dec. 31 at 9 p.m. $58 to $78. Blues in the Loft: Tomás Doncker Band. Jan. 4 at 7 p.m. $15. The Madeleine Peyroux Trio, jazz. Jan. 8 at 7:30 p.m. $50 to $75. Dave Mason’s Traffic Jam, classic rock. Jan. 11 at 7:30 p.m. $55 to $75. South Orange Performing Arts Center, 1 Sopac Way. sopacnow.org; 973-313-2787. WESTFIELD Presbyterian Church New Jersey Festival Orchestra, led by David Wroe, presents “The Guys and Dolls of Broadway,” a cabaret-style celebration of American musical theater favorites for the whole family, with the guest vocalists Analisa Leaming, Beth Kirkpatrick, Jason Forbach and Greggory Brandt. Dec. 31 at 7 p.m. $40 and $70. Presbyterian Church, 140 Mountain Avenue. 908-232-9400; njfestivalorchestra.org. Spoken Word RED BANK Two River Theater LoserSlam poetry and open mike night. Jan. 5 at 7 p.m. Free. Two River Theater, 21 Bridge Avenue. 732-345-1400; trtc.org. Theater CAMDEN South Camden Theater Company, Waterfront South Theater “Agnes of God,” drama by John Pielmeier. Jan. 9 through 25. $20. South Camden Theater Company, Waterfront South Theater, 400 Jasper Street. 866-811-4111; southcamdentheatre.org. CAPE MAY Congress Hall “The Santaland Diaries,” comedy by David Sedaris. Through Dec. 30. $25 to $59. Congress Hall, 200 Congress Place. capemaystage.org; 609-770-8311. LONG BRANCH New Jersey Repertory Company, Lumia Theater “Swimming at the Ritz,” drama by Charles Leipart. Jan. 8 through Feb. 1. $40 to $60. New Jersey Repertory Company, Lumia Theater, 179 Broadway. 732-229-3166; njrep.org. MADISON F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theater, Drew University “Much Ado About Nothing,” by William Shakespeare. Through Dec. 28. $62. F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theater, Drew University, 36 Madison Avenue. 973-408-5600; shakespearenj.org. MILLBURN Paper Mill Playhouse “Elf: The Musical.” Through Jan. 4. $36 to $121. Paper Mill Playhouse, 22 Brookside Drive. 973-376-4343; papermill.org. NEW BRUNSWICK State Theater “Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” presented by Middlesex County Department of Parks and Recreation. Through Dec. 28. $7. State Theater, 15 Livingston Avenue. 732-246-7469; statetheatrenj.org. PRINCETON McCarter Theater Center “A Christmas Carol,” by Charles Dickens. Through Dec. 28. Tickets start at $25. McCarter Theater Center, 91 University Place. 609-258-2787; mccarter.org. RAHWAY Union County Performing Arts Center “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” musical comedy with book and lyrics by Joe DiPietro and music by Jimmy Roberts. Jan. 2 through 11. $25. Union County Performing Arts Center, 1601 Irving Street. 732-499-8226; ucpac.org. RED BANK Two River Theater “Absurd Person Singular,” comedy by Alan Ayckbourn. Jan. 10 through Feb. 1. $20 to $50. Two River Theater, 21 Bridge Avenue. 732-345-1400; trtc.org. Museums and Galleries ASBURY PARK Where Music Lives “The Big Man’s West Exhibit,” photographs by Bob Wilkinson. Through Jan. 4. Where Music Lives, 708 Cookman Avenue. 732-775-8900; asburyparkmusiclives.org. BEDMINSTER Connoisseur Gallery “Holiday Small Works Exhibit.” Through Jan. 3. Connoisseur Gallery, 2493 Lamington Road. 908-766-1139; cfineart.com. BEDMINSTER The Center for Contemporary Art “Line, Color and Surface,” works by Harry Naar, Sue Ferguson Gussow, Geoffrey Dorfman and Tracey Jones, curated by Mel Leipzig. Jan. 9 through Feb. 21. Mondays through Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Center for Contemporary Art, 2020 Burnt Mills Road. ccabedminster.org; 908-234-2345. CLINTON Hunterdon Art Museum “A Clay Bestiary,” animal ceramics; “Giovanna Cecchetti: The Consciousness of Infinite Goodness,” paintings and works on paper; and the 2014 members exhibition. Through Jan. 4. “Contemporary International Tapestry,” works of three generations of artists from nine countries. Jan. 11 through May. 10. Donation: $5. Tuesdays through Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Hunterdon Art Museum, 7 Lower Center Street. 908-735-8415; hunterdonartmuseum.org. FREEHOLD Monmouth County Historical Association Museum and Library “Farm: Agriculture in Monmouth County, 1600-2013.” Through Feb. 28 . Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monmouth County Historical Association Museum and Library, 70 Court Street. monmouthhistory.org; 732-462-1466. HALEDON American Labor Museum/Botto House National Landmark “Border Angels,” photographs by Pamela Calore and Sara Gurling. Through Dec. 31. “New Haven’s Garment Workers: An Elm City Story,” exhibit by Joan Cavanaugh and the New Haven Labor History Association. Jan. 10 through April 17. Suggested donation, $5. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 1 to 4 p.m., or by appointment. American Labor Museum/Botto House National Landmark, 83 Norwood Street. 973-595-7953; labormuseum.net. HAMILTON Grounds for Sculpture “Seward Johnson: The Retrospective,” 150 works by the sculptor at the 42-acre park that he founded. Through July 1. “Michael Graves: Past as Prologue,” seminal architecture and product design projects, and original artworks, including sculpture and paintings. Through April 5. $10 to $15; members and children under 5, free. Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Grounds for Sculpture, 18 Fairgrounds Road. 609-586-0616; groundsforsculpture.org. Image RAHWAY The singer-songwriter Lisa Bouchelle will perform at Hamilton Stage, 360 Hamilton Street, on Dec. 31 at 8:30 p.m. Tickets: $25 and $27. Information: 732-499-8226; ucpac.org . Credit A. M. Saddler JERSEY CITY Victory Hall Drawing Rooms “The Big Small Show Fundraiser,” Small works by almost 100 painters, collage artists, printmakers and sculptors. Through Jan. 25. Victory Hall Drawing Rooms, 180 Grand Street. 201-208-8032; drawingrooms.org/events.html. LAMBERTVILLE The Artists’ Gallery “19th Annual Holiday Exhibition,” works selected by the artists. Through Feb. 1. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Artists’ Gallery, 18 Bridge Street. lambertvillearts.com; 609-397-4588. MADISON Drew University “Coming Home,” installation by Valerie Hegarty. Jan. 8 through 30. Tuesdays through Fridays, 12:30 to 4 p.m., selected weekends and by appointment. Drew University, 36 Madison Avenue. 973- 408-3758; drew.edu/korngallery. MONTCLAIR Montclair Art Museum “From Heart to Hand: African-American Quilts From the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts.” Through Jan. 4. “Sanford Biggers: Danpatsu,” video on outdoor monitors examining cultural difference and identity. Through Jan. 4. “Robert Barry: Diptych, Window-Wallpiece for the Montclair Art Museum,” site-specific installation. Through Jan. 4. $10 and $12; members and children under 12, free. Wednesdays through Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Montclair Art Museum, 3 South Mountain Avenue. montclairartmuseum.org; 973-746-5555. MORRISTOWN Atrium Gallery Fall/Winter Exhibit, group show. Through Jan. 7. Mondays through Fridays, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Atrium Gallery, 10 Court Street. 973-540-0615; artintheatrium.org. MORRISTOWN Morris Museum “The Dog Show: The Art of Our Canine Companions,” works of art in which dogs take center stage. Through Dec. 14. $7 to $10. “Brick by Brick” features innovative works created by artists, architects and engineers using Lego pieces. Through March 15. $7 to $10. “Chairs of Inclusion,” 10 life-size chairs by professional artists, in honor of the 10th anniversary of the Jewish Service for the Developmentally Disabled’s Wae Center. Through Feb. 1. $7 to $10. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; second and third Thursdays of each month, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Morris Museum, 6 Normandy Heights Road. 973-971-3700; morrismuseum.org. NEW BRUNSWICK Museum of American Hungarian Foundation “40th Anniversary of Rubik’s Cube,” from the collection of Andre Farkas. Through Jan. 31. $5. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 4 p.m. Museum of the American Hungarian Foundation, 300 Somerset Street. ahfoundation.org; 732-846-5777. NEW BRUNSWICK Zimmerli Art Museum “Sports and Recreation in France, 1840-1900,” works on paper. Through Jan. 11. “Bugs and Frogs and Toads! Oh My!,” children’s book illustrations by Nancy Winslow Parker. Through June. “A Place in America: Celebrating the Legacy of Ralph and Barbara Voorhees,” prints and drawings. Through Feb. 8. “Oleg Vassiliev: Space and Light,” paintings and works on paper. Through Dec. 31. “Jesse Krimes: Apokaluptein: 16389067,” works created by Mr. Krimes while he was incarcerated. Through Dec. 14. Free to $6. Tuesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Zimmerli Art Museum, 71 Hamilton Street. 848-932-7237; zimmerlimuseum.rutgers.edu. NEWARK The Newark Museum “City of Silver and Gold From Tiffany to Cartier.” Through 2015. “Great Balls of Fire! Comets, Asteroids, Meteors,” an interactive exhibit. Through Jan. 4. “Korea, Land of the Diamond Mountains,” decorative arts, clothing and works on paper. Through Jan. 25. “Gone Fishin’: Aquatic Imagery in Asian Art,” folding screens, hanging scrolls, ceramics and sculpture. Through March 1. Free with museum admission, $7 and $12; children under 2 and members, free. Wednesdays through Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. The Newark Museum, 49 Washington Street. 973-596-6650; newarkmuseum.org. PATERSON Lambert Castle “A Closer Look at our Community: The Fine Art of Mark Oberndorf,” local sights, as shown in the paintings of a Bergen County resident and artist. Through March 29. Wednesdays through Sundays 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. $3 to $5; members free. Lambert Castle, 3 Valley Road. 973-247-0085, ext. 201; lambertcastle.org. PRINCETON Bernstein Gallery “Call and Response,” digital collages by Andrew Ellis Johnson. Through Jan. 29. Mondays through Fridays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Bernstein Gallery, Robertson Hall. 609-497-2441; wws.princeton.edu/about-wws/bernstein-gallery. PRINCETON Morven Museum and Garden “Hail Specimen of Female Art! New Jersey Schoolgirl Needlework, 1726-1860.” Through March 29. $5 and $6. Wednesdays through Fridays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 4 p.m. Morven Museum and Garden, 55 Stockton Street. morven.org; 609-924-8144. PRINCETON Princeton University Art Museum “Chigusa and the Art of Tea in Japan.” Through Feb. 1. “Kongo Across the Waters,” examining 500 years of cultural exchange among Congo, Europe and the United States. Through Jan. 25. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 5 p.m. Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton University Campus. 609-258-3788; artmuseum.princeton.edu. PRINCETON Princeton University Library “Nova Caesarea: A Cartographic Record of the Garden State, 1666-1888,” maps and atlases of New Jersey counties. Through Jan. 25. Mondays through Fridays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Firestone Library and Museum, Princeton University, 1 Washington Road. 609-258-1470; library.princeton.edu. SOUTH ORANGE South Orange Performing Arts Center “Precious Memories,” photography, collage and constructs by Mansa K. Mussa. Through Feb. 15. South Orange Performing Arts Center, 1 Sopac Way. 973-313-2787; sopacnow.org. SUMMIT Visual Arts Center of New Jersey “Doppler Shift,” international group show. Through Jan. 18. Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, 68 Elm Street. artcenternj.org; 908-273-9121. TRENTON New Jersey State Museum “Drawn to Dinosaurs: Hadrosaurus Foulkii,” 25-foot cast and life-size illustration of a dinosaur. Through Dec. 31. “New Jersey on Display: World’s Fairs and the Garden State,” stories of pioneering entrepreneurs like Thomas Edison. Through Jan. 4. “America, Through Artists’ Eyes,” works by contemporary New Jersey artists. Through April 5. “A Shadow Over the Earth: The Life and Death of the Passenger Pigeon,” through June 2015. Suggested donation, $5. Tuesdays through Sundays, 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. New Jersey State Museum, 205 West State Street. statemuseum.nj.gov; 609-292-6464. UNION TOWNSHIP The Karl and Helen Burger Gallery at Kean University “The Mill Street Salon: Beyond the Image,” works by New Jersey photographers. Through Feb. 13. Mondays through Thursdays, 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Fridays, 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Karl and Helen Burger Gallery at Kean University, 1000 Morris Avenue. 908-737-0392; kean.edu/~gallery/. WESTFIELD Gallery U “Primar(il) y Red”: Artwork celebrating the color. Through Jan. 5. Gallery U, 439 South Avenue West. gallery-u.blogspot.com; 908-232-1895. | Art;The arts;New Jersey |
ny0130223 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2012/06/12 | NATO Chief Sees Parallels Between Syria and Balkans | BRUSSELS — The secretary general of the NATO alliance, Anders Fogh Rasmussen , said on Monday that the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s illustrated what might befall Syria unless Russia and the West agreed on a “unified, clear message” to the Syrian government to stop the violence. In an interview, Mr. Rasmussen said that alliance members were disappointed by the failure of President Bashar al-Assad ’s government to comply with the peace plan promoted by Kofi Annan, the special envoy for the United Nations and the Arab League. Mr. Rasmussen said he agreed with the British foreign secretary, William Hague, who told Sky News over the weekend that the crisis in Syria was starting to resemble the sectarian warfare in Bosnia two decades ago, another time when Russia and the West were at odds over how to stop the violence. “I think one part of the lessons learned from the events in the Balkans is the serious consequences it may have if the international community can’t speak with one voice, and can’t reach an agreement on how to address the security challenges,” Mr. Rasmussen said. “That’s exactly what we’re witnessing in Syria.” He repeatedly emphasized in the interview that NATO had no plan or intention to intervene militarily in Syria, as the alliance eventually did in Bosnia and in Kosovo, and more recently in Libya. A United Nations Security Council resolution would be needed to authorize any NATO military action of that kind, he indicated. “If we are to facilitate a peaceful solution in Syria,” Mr. Rasmussen said, “I think it’s of utmost importance that the international community stands united and sends a unified, clear message to the Assad regime that it must live up to its international obligations and stop the crackdowns on the civilian population, and accommodate the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people.” Mr. Rasmussen expressed concern about recent developments in the Balkans, where NATO is still stationing more than 5,000 troops. Adm. James G. Stavridis, the supreme commander of the alliance’s forces in Europe, wrote in a blog post last week that NATO would maintain that troop level “for the foreseeable future” because “tension continues to be high” in the Balkans, particularly between ethnic Serb and ethnic Albanian communities in northern Kosovo. Mr. Rasmussen said the alliance postponed plans to reduce the NATO troop presence gradually in the Balkans in part because the European Union’s mission in Kosovo — made up mostly of police and judiciary officials — is being cut by one-quarter this month. Serbia on Monday inaugurated a new president, Tomislav Nikolic, whose nationalistic statements have raised concerns that he might undo the region’s efforts toward reconciliation. Mr. Nikolic is scheduled to visit Brussels this week to meet with European Union officials, but no stop at the NATO headquarters here is planned. Serbia officially became a candidate to join the European Union in March. Mr. Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister, said he trusted that Mr. Nikolic would “stick to that European commitment.” He urged the Serbian government and the ethnic Albanian leadership in Kosovo, a former province of Serbia, to refrain from “unilateral steps that can fuel violence and instability.” Mr. Rasmussen said he was sure that Greece would remain a strong and “highly valued ally” within NATO even if it dropped out of the euro zone or even the European Union. Still, he said, “from an overall Euro-Atlantic perspective,” it would be best if Greece stayed in the euro zone and the union. | Syria;North Atlantic Treaty Organization;Rasmussen Anders Fogh;Assad Bashar al-;Bosnia and Herzegovina |
ny0040959 | [
"sports",
"autoracing"
] | 2014/04/14 | A Surprise in Long Beach | Mike Conway was the surprise winner of the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach in California, grabbing the lead when Scott Dixon was forced to stop for fuel two laps from the finish. | Car Racing;Mike Conway;Scott Dixon;Indy Racing League,IndyCar |
ny0035054 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2014/03/03 | Giving Early Taste of G.O.P. Tactics, Texans Make a Stand Against Obama | WASHINGTON — Todd Staples has some fighting words for President Obama in an ad he has run more than 50 times on his quest to win Tuesday’s Republican primary for lieutenant governor of Texas. “You’re not a king, and Texans bow to no one,” Mr. Staples says, looking directly into the camera and addressing the president, before he is shown picking up a gun at a store, aiming it over a counter and vowing to “fight Obama’s liberal agenda.” After running through a list of his conservative credentials, Mr. Staples, the Texas agriculture commissioner, ends on an equally aggressive note: “So, Mr. President, if you still want to mess with Texas, we’ve got a saying for you: Come and take it.” In Texas, tough talk in political advertising is as ubiquitous as the two-step, but especially when it comes to this election cycle’s Republican primaries. In commercial after commercial, Republicans up and down the ballot are rallying around common villains — Mr. Obama and the federal government — and promising to “fight” and “stand up to” the president and his policies. “The heaviest concentration of anti-Obama messaging anywhere in the country right now is in Texas,” said Elizabeth Wilner, a senior vice president at Kantar Media/CMAG, a company that monitors political advertising. “After Election Day, we will look back on the year and still see Texas as a standout in terms of anti-Obama messaging.” The tone of many of the Republican primary ads in Texas, she added, “is quite vitriolic.” With an early primary and more contested statewide races on the Republican side than in recent election cycles, Texas has in many ways become ground zero for sharply worded attacks against the president. “In Texas today, it’s impossible to strip off too much bark if you’re a Republican talking about President Obama,” said Mark McKinnon, a veteran Republican strategist and ad maker based in Austin. “In a Republican primary, most candidates are trying to convince voters they are the most conservative. And the easiest way to do that is to broadcast that you hate Obama more than anyone else.” In one ad, State Senator Dan Patrick, who is also running for lieutenant governor, says, “I’ll never stop fighting Obama’s attacks on Texas,” and in another, he challenges the president more directly, promising to “be a bold, no-nonsense, conservative leader” and “fight Obama.” John Ratcliffe, a former United States attorney who is hoping to unseat Representative Ralph M. Hall, at 90 the oldest member ever to serve in the House, in a Republican primary, produced a 30-second spot arguing that he has “the energy, the passion, the fight to stand up to Obama’s liberal agenda every day.” And an ad for Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, titled “The Truth” accuses Mr. Obama of obfuscating on a variety of issues, including the attack on the United States Mission in Benghazi and the president’s signature health care law. A quote from Mr. Cornyn, arguing that the administration “has taken lying to a new level,” flashes on the screen as the senator says, “That’s why I fight for the truth.” Video In a campaign ad, a candidate for lieutenant governor in Texas vows to “fight Obama’s liberal agenda.” “Senator John Cornyn stands up to President Obama every day, pushes back,” concludes a narrator. “John Cornyn’s for us, for Texas.” Accusing the president of lying in an ad, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on political discourse, is “a very strong attack.” “To make the charge that someone is lying, you have to know that they knew that what they were saying was false,” she said. “If it’s a ‘new level,’ that would mean higher than Watergate, higher than the deceptions of Vietnam, higher than the deceptions of Iran-contra.” In many ways, strongly worded messages against a sitting president have always been a surefire tactic used by both parties to turn out their bases in primary elections. But an “anti-government-intrusion theme,” said Ms. Wilner, is particularly effective in Republican primaries. “Whether it’s the health care law, guns, et cetera,” she said, “it’s all the same theme of we don’t want this particular administration, especially, intruding in our private lives.” Though several of the Texas ads feature candidates with guns, Mr. Staples’s is perhaps the most striking, showing him taking a gun off a rack and aiming it as he vows to “fight Obama’s liberal agenda.” “The question is: Why would need a gun to fight an agenda? You don’t shoot a policy or shoot an agenda — you fight an agenda with words,” Ms. Jamieson said. “It’s either a gratuitous visual, or trying to suggest that he takes this very seriously, and centering a gun is a metaphor.” Mr. Staples said his 30-second spot was simply intended to underscore his willingness to fight for states’ rights and stand up to government overreach. “What was so inflammatory was his proclamation during the State of the Union that he will run around Congress issuing executive fiat,” Mr. Staples said, referring to Mr. Obama’s promise to use executive actions to circumvent Congress when possible. “These are fighting words to Texans.” The footage of him with the gun, he added, was simply an allusion to his promise to defend the Second Amendment rights of Texans. “We want to remind those in Washington that the best 911 is a .223,” he said, referring to a .223-caliber rifle. But don’t expect to see the tone of Texas ads thaw anytime soon. Running in a Republican primary in Texas, said Will Feltus, senior vice president for research and planning at National Media Inc., a Republican media-buying company, “is just as extreme as running in a Democratic primary in San Francisco.” | Campaign advertising;Republicans;Texas;Election;Barack Obama |
ny0216454 | [
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] | 2010/04/07 | Moore Leads Connecticut Past Stanford for Women’s Title | SAN ANTONIO — Sometimes, the best coaching tactic is a desperate plea to a team’s best player. Stand up. Do something. Show us the way. After a half of basketball to disremember in the N.C.A.A. women’s final, Connecticut Coach Geno Auriemma sounded the alarm to Maya Moore and the rest of his unbeaten Huskies on Tuesday night after a first-half snooze on the national championship stage. Moore rose first, to the moment of need and then to the level of her reputation as the best player in the women’s college game. With Vice President Joseph R. Biden watching at the Alamodome, Moore assumed the role of commander-in-chief. Moore, a 6-foot forward, scored 18 of her 23 points in the second half, as Connecticut (39-0) rallied from an eight-point halftime deficit to defeat Stanford, 53-47, for its 78th straight victory and its second straight unbeaten season. After the game, Auriemma climbed the stage in the center of the court for the trophy presentation and went straight to Moore, hugging and thanking her for delivering his seventh national title. “Maya is obviously the best player that you can think of when you need points, so when she’s making shots, the team feels like, ‘Wow, we can accomplish anything,’ ” he said. The first half might have set the women’s game back a couple of decades, with both teams shooting at a staggeringly inept pace. Connecticut’s salvation and second-half hope was that while its first-half percentage — 17 percent, or 5 for 29 — was laughable, Stanford’s, at 8 for 31, was abysmal. Still, Auriemma watched his team go 10 minutes 37 seconds without a point, finishing on the short end of a 20-12 halftime score. “To be honest with you, and you know me, it was one of the few times I was speechless,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life and all my years at Connecticut. We were just so out of it and we just talked about slowing everything down, getting a little better movement, get some better screening, being a little more patient. And then Maya just made some huge shots.” Defended by Stanford’s rising sophomore, Nnemkadi Ogwumike, Moore credited the Cardinal for “getting us out of our rhythm.” Auriemma’s astonishment aside, Moore said it was too early to worry, much less to panic. When Stanford took a 2-point lead over Connecticut in a regular-season game in December, the answer was a 30-6 Huskies spurt. “We knew a run was coming,” Moore said. It began with her grabbing a long rebound in the lane, squaring up from 15 feet and burying a jumper. On the Huskies’ next possession, she ball-faked Ogwumike, stepped inside and banked home a jumper from the right wing. A 3-pointer by Moore gave UConn its first lead, 23-22, since the 13:32 mark in the first half. Then she leaked out after Tina Charles as Charles blocked Ogwumike under the rim and then dropped in a fast-break layup for a 27-22 lead. While Moore was high-stepping her way forward, Jayne Appel, the Cardinal’s 6-4 center, was limping through an 0-for-12 shooting nightmare on a bum right ankle that felt worse after she went down in a heap under the Stanford basket early in the second half. Appel took a painkilling injection and returned a few minutes later, but her night did not improve. “You could correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve never seen her go 0-fer,” Stanford Coach Tara VanDerveer said. “She was in a lot of pain. And she just kept going at it. But the ball was not dropping for her.” Appel, a shadow of the all-American who scored 46 points in a tournament game last season and had battled Charles across the years in national competitions since they were 11, was unable to elevate and got her shot blocked several times by Charles, who had six in the game. With Appel laboring, Connecticut’s man-to-man defense sagged into more of a zone when the ball went below the free-throw line. Ogwumike paid the steepest price. “I mean, yeah, they were sagging,” she said. “And it was as if every time I went into the block and tried to make a move, there was always someone there waiting for me. They were sagging off our other posts and there was a lot of help-side.” In plain English, that translated to 11 points for Ogwumike after her 38-point effort in a semifinal victory against Oklahoma. The Cardinal needed more. While Connecticut improved its second half shooting to 48.3 percent, Stanford continued firing away like cross-eyed gunslingers, finishing at 26.5 percent for the night. On defense, Ogwumike had the chore of dealing with Moore, no enviable task once the momentum had turned. “They were screening each other more, so it caused a lot of franticness because we were switching,” Ogwumike said. “So I think that’s how she kind of got off.” Aroused by Moore, Charles began playing tenaciously inside and the sophomore guard Caroline Doty scored all 8 of her points. But when all was said and done, Moore was the story, the best player making chicken salad out of the first-half slop. “She’s the best player in the game right now and she’s better than a lot of professionals, too,” VanDerveer said. The bad news for Stanford and everyone else is that Moore, a junior, is not going anywhere. However much Auriemma doesn’t want to hear it, the focus will be on whether Connecticut can break the 88-game winning streak set by U.C.L.A.’s men’s team from 1971 to 1974. “Please, let us enjoy this one,” Auriemma said after his raising his record in national title games to 7-0, even as perfection never looked so imperfect. | NCAA Basketball Tournament (Women);Basketball;College Athletics;Moore Maya;Auriemma Geno;University of Connecticut;Stanford University |
ny0085322 | [
"sports",
"golf"
] | 2015/07/04 | Tie Atop Greenbrier Leaderboard | Jhonattan Vegas shot a five-under-par 65 to tie Scott Langley for the lead after the second round of the Greenbrier Classic. They were at nine-under 131 on the Old White T.P.C. course in West Virginia. Twenty-three golfers were within three shots of the lead, including seven at eight under. Tiger Woods avoided missing consecutive cuts for the first time in his career. He shot a 69 and was at five under. | Golf;Scott Langley;Jhonattan Vegas;Tiger Woods;Greenbrier Classic |
ny0082188 | [
"sports",
"football"
] | 2015/10/02 | Jets Head to London With a Detailed Game Plan, and That’s Just for Their Laundry | FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — After landing at Heathrow Airport early Friday morning, the New York Jets will disembark and make a left toward customs, where six lines will be devoted to their delegation of 220 people. To safeguard against any mishaps later, passports will be collected after everyone clears, and then a brigade of Virgin Atlantic representatives will escort the Jets to seven buses waiting outside. This will be the procedure because Aaron Degerness, the Jets’ senior manager of team operations, walked this route in June, when he made his second scouting trip to London in advance of their game Sunday against the Miami Dolphins at Wembley Stadium. Degerness learned which gate the plane would pull into, which door the team would exit and where the jet bridge would deposit the group. He also learned that when the Jets flew home, their walkway would meander past duty-free shops, and that worries him, if only a little. “It’s hard to tell the guys: ‘Don’t stop. Just keep walking,’ ” Degerness said. “Those are the things that keep us up at night — that we get through security, someone stops at duty free, and we leave Ryan Fitzpatrick because we didn’t know he wasn’t there.” In that unlikely event, the Jets have a solution: As each player boards the plane, a team official will cross off the player’s name with a highlighter. The Jets learned last November that they would be playing in London, and they have spent the past 11 months planning for about 65 hours overseas, an undertaking that Degerness said involved about 10 times the work that preparing to play at Miami would have required. If the Jets were playing in South Florida, for instance, they would not have needed to pack more than 5,000 items — ranging from cereal and extension cords to gauze pads and wrist bands — onto a ship containing supplies for all six N.F.L. teams playing in London this season. They would not have needed to list the value and country of origin for the contents in every trunk or bag. Or find an industrial launderer to pick up soiled practice clothing at one location and deliver it clean to another. Or fly in the chef at their London hotel to observe how food is cooked and served at team headquarters. Or order 350 rolls of toilet paper to replace the thinner version used in England. “Some may say that’s a little over the top or whatnot, but it didn’t really cost that much, so why not?” Degerness said. “We’re basically trying to replicate everything that we’re doing here over there.” Image Bags were ready to be loaded onto a truck at the Jets' training facility in Florham Park, N.J. Credit Alex Goodlett for The New York Times That planning began soon after the game was announced. The process included photographing Wembley Stadium and calling on a sleep specialist who advised players how to minimize jet lag. From the outset, Clay Hampton, the senior director of team operations, started soliciting advice from counterparts with teams that had played in London. A valuable resource was Hamzah Ahmad of the Jacksonville Jaguars, who on Oct. 25 will play at Wembley for a third consecutive season. In a telephone interview, Ahmad, the Jaguars’ director of football logistics and facilities, said that in their initial conversations, Hampton had asked him to consider: “What are the basic things that we don’t think about on a day-to-day basis? That’s what you plan for.” That meant reminding players to call their cellphone providers and credit card companies before taking off and to plug in electrical adapters, lest the higher voltage fry their Xboxes or favorite hair clippers. It meant shipping over condiment staples that could be difficult to procure, like hot sauce and barbecue sauce. It also meant considering whether to distribute the per diem in pounds or dollars (the Jets stuck with dollars). “It’s one of those things you have to go through,” Hampton said. “Until you go through it yourself, you’re never going to know.” Jets officials made two reconnaissance trips to London. On the first visit, at the end of February, Degerness and Hampton scouted potential practice sites and about six hotels recommended by the league. At the time, they did not know whether Coach Todd Bowles would prefer a long trip or a short one, so they evaluated each option. Bowles ultimately favored a brief stay so he could hold the week’s most critical workouts, on Wednesday and Thursday, at the Jets’ practice center here. Had Bowles wanted to spend a week overseas, as some teams do, the Jets would have picked a hotel that had practice facilities — including a locker room, a weight room and lots of space for meetings — on the property. Degerness analyzed how teams that had traveled to England had fared based on the length of their trip and which lodging they chose and reported his findings to Bowles, who opted to set precedents. The Jets will be the first N.F.L. team to stay at their hotel and are the first N.F.L. team to practice at the London Irish rugby club. For those practices, the N.F.L. helps provide field equipment, like game clocks, pop-up dummies and lifts that elevate video cameras, and it also supplies projectors and copy machines for meeting rooms. But teams develop packing lists on their own. Hampton and Degerness collaborated with the equipment manager Gus Granneman, who met with his staff before training camp to determine how much apparel — and what kind — to take. Extra T-shirts and shorts, sizes large through XXXXL, were necessities, they concluded, as was assembling a third full set of gear for a walk-through Saturday at Wembley. Image Gus Granneman, the Jets' equipment director, kept track of what had been loaded up for the team's game in London. Credit Alex Goodlett for The New York Times Any supplies that contain alcohol or are considered combustible (like batteries) are not permitted to be stowed as plane cargo. They were sent on the ocean freighter, which left the New York area in August. Accounting for cooler weather, Granneman packed sideline coats and hand warmers — things he said he had never considered, and never would again, for a road game against Miami. “It’s almost like a winter game,” Granneman said. “It’s like going to Buffalo this time of year. You probably take the same stuff.” All that stuff, though, cannot be cleaned the same way. At the equipment managers’ meetings in March, Granneman spoke with colleagues from the Dolphins and the Atlanta Falcons, both of whom played in London last year, and asked for their advice. Laundry was, and remains, his primary concern. The Jets are accustomed to their tailor in Rutherford, N.J., and Granneman, who worked in N.F.L. Europe for three years as the equipment manager for the Barcelona Dragons, knows he must give detailed instructions. “You’re always scared about going to another country and your laundry comes back in a ball or something like that,” he said. Granneman said that something as simple as temperature instructions must be explained to the laundry operator in specific degrees. He added: “You don’t even tell him low heat. You say, ‘I want this at 100 degrees Fahrenheit, whatever it is Celsius,’ because ‘low heat’ might be something entirely different to him.” Granneman and his staff planned to stay late Wednesday arranging trunks that they would start loading onto a truck at 8 a.m. Thursday, and they expected to work at a frenetic pace all the way through Sunday night, when the Jets return to Heathrow for their flight home. They know where their buses will drop them off, which escalators to ascend and where to pass through security — almost as if they have done it before. | Football;Gus Granneman;London;Miami Dolphins;Jets |
ny0175330 | [
"us"
] | 2007/10/06 | Medical Plane Crashes | ALAMOSA, Colo., Oct. 5 (AP) — A medical plane slammed into a mountain, leaving three people presumed dead Friday in the wreckage, the authorities said. The body of one crew member was recovered, and the authorities concluded no one else could have survived the impact. The twin-engine plane disappeared on a flight from Chinle, Ariz., to Alamosa, where it was to have picked up a passenger to take to Colorado Springs. A pilot, a flight nurse and a paramedic were on the Beech King Air C-90A, said Mike Fergus, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman. The wreckage was found Friday near Charleys Peak. | Accidents and Safety;Colorado;Airlines and Airplanes |
ny0042727 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2014/05/21 | More Than Just a Booming Voice, Mr. Moviefone Is Now on Video | LOS ANGELES — Helloooo, and welcome to Mr. Moviefone’s new gig. Russ Leatherman, who co-founded the Moviefone listing service 25 years ago and served until recently as its vociferous mascot, has teamed with HitFix.com , a fast-growing entertainment news site, to bring his Six-Second Review franchise to video. “Short, snackable, shareable — that’s what video needs to be, especially on mobile devices and social networks,” said Jennifer Sargent, HitFix’s chief executive. HitFix on Tuesday will start distributing the offshoot videos, which last 15 seconds if you include the introduction and an ad. Mr. Leatherman has provided bite-size movie and DVD reviews under the Six Second brand to radio stations since 2010, but the video component is new, as is advertiser sponsorship. “If you can build abs in six seconds, you can review a film in six seconds,” said Mr. Leatherman, who said goodbye last fall to Moviefone, which is now conducting a national contest to find a new corporate pitch-person . HitFix delivers about 90 million monthly video streams. The HitFix network includes screens in airports and retail outlets. | advertising,marketing;moviefone;Russ Leatherman;Movies;HitFix |
ny0130357 | [
"sports",
"soccer"
] | 2012/06/13 | A Draw, but France Shows a New Spirit | The English and the French have been battling for centuries, first on the field of battle and lately on the soccer field, but their 1-1 draw at the European Championship took them somewhere new: to the sapping Ukraine heat of Donetsk. England tried something different Monday night, an almost Italian-style, entrenched 10-man defense to go with one attacker. France tried everything in its armory to break the English resistance and atone for its shameful performance at the World Cup two summers ago. That it all resulted in a stalemate was fortunate for England, and a shame for France. The latter’s greater skills, and its constant attacks, foundered on a veritable rock of English stubbornness. Laurent Blanc, the man who took up the coaching of Les Bleus after the squad virtually mutinied against the previous coach, Raymond Domenech, at the World Cup in 2010, had identified what the team was lacking when he unveiled the French lineup a week ago. He said in France that he wished he had a “brain” in midfield like Xavi Hernández or Xabi Alonso. “I need,” he said then, “someone like them — a guy who analyzes the play with a quarter turn, a guy who decides we do this or we do that.” The two Spaniards are, of course, visionaries in the modern game. They are exceptional, though Italy found someone who could play with them — Andrea Pirlo — when the teams tied, 1-1, in Gdansk, Poland, on Sunday in their first game of the tournament. Without a playmaker like Xavi or Xabi, France toiled against an English team whose greatest virtues were discipline, organization and an ability to embrace luck with a muscled amount of endeavor. England carried survival to an art form. So might a tie seem a fair result? Only if you are English. This is no reflection on the coach, Roy Hodgson. He took over a depleted squad just six weeks ago. Hodgson built the team as he invariably does wherever he coaches in Europe, with thoroughness and a sensibleness. He instructs his team to play within its limits — which in England’s case is quite limited without Wayne Rooney, who is banned for the first two games of Euro 2012 for kicking an opponent during the qualifying rounds. That kind of irresponsibility is not Hodgson’s cup of tea. He prefers warriors like Steven Gerrard, his captain, and Scott Parker. The pair seldom set foot Monday over the halfway line, and they spent their evening attempting to dampen down the French firepower before it could threaten the solid back line. France tried — how Karim Benzema and Franck Ribéry and Samir Nasri tried — to break down those forces. Approaching the half hour, England took the lead in the only way that seemed likely to trouble Hugo Lloris, the French goalie. A free kick from the right side of the penalty box by Gerrard was allowed to pass over the static French defensive wall, and when Alou Diarra failed to reach the ball and failed to tightly cover Joleon Lescott, the big English defender scored. England could protect that lead for no more than 10 minutes. Joe Hart was by far the busier of the two goalkeepers, and had repelled several shots with smart reactions and quick reflexes. Hart, however, was in part culpable for the equalizer. It came from a quick collection of passes by the French out on the left before Nasri popped up just outside the penalty area. Parker and Gerrard rushed toward him, but as they did, Gerrard did what no defender should do. He charged toward the striker, turned his back, and at least partially obscured the view of his keeper. Hart saw the shot, skimming low toward his right-hand post, too late. The equalizer was no more than France deserved. Gone is the sullen, squabbling air of disinterest that Les Bleus had displayed under Domenech. Here was the spirit of the French, personified in the tireless and gifted Benzema. And for most of the second half, England was a team on its back foot. After the match, Hodgson spoke at length about how satisfied he was with how England diligently followed his plan. Blanc had another view. “If we were to play the English way,” he said, “it would be 0-0 and we might get a goal from a set piece. No, we’ll play our game, but I hope that the team that plays the most football wins.” Blanc admitted that he has been in his job for two years, while Hodgson has barely had time to work on a more coherent attacking game with his team. Blanc also said that he knew what to expect in terms of commitment and resoluteness from the English because of the two years he spent as a defender with Manchester United. Michael Ballack, the former German team captain, offered his own opinion to ESPN in the United States: “Parking three buses in front of the goal, this is not football.” He was exaggerating a reference made by the Real Madrid coach José Mourinho, who called mass defending like the English employed “parking the bus.” England is what it is: a collection of honest journeymen, reliable on graft more than craft, doing the best it can in a tournament that, for once, not even England expects to win. But as a player-turned-commentator, Ballack had the last words. “People have a right to expect more than that,’ he concluded, “This is after all a European championship.” Joy in Ukraine Car horns blared in Ukraine’s capital, fans chanted in the streets and newspapers glorified Andriy Shevchenko after a comeback 2-1 victory against Sweden in the European Championship, The Associated Press reported from Kiev. The 35-year-old Shevchenko scored both goals Monday after his team was down 1-0 to give the co-host a perfect start to the tournament. The performance, reminiscent of his glory days, increased his status as a national icon. The newspaper Segodnya screamed “SHEVAAAAA! UKRAINAAA!” on its front page Tuesday, showing a photograph of Shevchenko cheering and clenching his fists. The newspaper wrote that “what seemed like a dream became reality” as the underdog Ukrainian team already managed to surpass expectations. | Soccer;France;England |
ny0246599 | [
"us"
] | 2011/04/22 | Community Agriculture Goes Global With Coffee | Rather than buy produce at a store, members of community-supported agriculture programs, known as C.S.A.’s, pick up their vegetables in a neighbor’s garage, right where a local farmer leaves them. This direct grower-to-consumer relationship has become so popular that it has inspired meat and egg C.S.A.’s among Northern California ranchers and farmers, as well as grain C.S.A.’s and even C.S.F.’s — community- supported fisheries — elsewhere. Last week, the movement made a shift from the locavore to the global with CoffeeCSA.org — the first large-scale coffee C.S.A. The farmer-owned C.S.A., created by the Pachamama Coffee Cooperative , has begun delivering coffee from its members in Mexico, Peru, Ethiopia, Guatemala and Nicaragua to the cups of consumers in this country. To join the group, which is based in Davis with a roasting plant in San Francisco, a customer can choose between monthly or annual memberships with a specific farm or a farmer-of-the-month subscription. The coffee costs roughly $10 a pound, plus $9.99 in shipping per delivery. Conventionally, coffee farmers sell their green coffee beans to a broker. From there, the beans go through several hands before they reach retail shelves. In recent years, a small number of roasters in the United States — like Four Barrel in San Francisco — have begun buying their green coffee directly from farms. But with its online C.S.A. model, farmers in CoffeeCSA.org receive 100 percent of the profits. “The Internet is a unique opportunity to level the playing field,” said Thaleon Tremain, chief executive of Pachamama and CoffeeCSA.org. “The economic impact is significant.” Pachamama represents 140,000 farmers and has an elected board. Its products are also available at Rainbow Grocery and other outlets in the Bay Area. Though prices have shot up since last year, coffee on the conventional market averaged $1.64 a pound in 2010, according to the IntercontinentalExchange. Coffee farmers selling fair-trade-certified beans earned an average of $2.18 a pound, according to Fair Trade USA, based in Oakland, and coffee bought directly by specialty coffee companies often goes for more. Mr. Tremain said a farmer in his organization could receive $4.60 a pound, plus another $3.60 that goes back to the collective. Northern California farmers who run produce or meat C.S.A.’s say that beyond the income itself, the biggest benefit of a C.S.A. is stability. “We know that no matter what, 52 weeks a year we’re going to be packing these boxes,” said Tim Mueller of Riverdog Farm in Guinda, whose C.S.A. helps support 45 farm workers through the winter. A recent spate of erratic weather patterns has hurt coffee production, setting off the record-high prices now seen on the global market. But customers who sign up for a long-term C.S.A. help farmers survive such changes in the market and also help pay for the next year’s crop. Since CoffeeCSA.org made its debut last week, membership is now just 15. But Erin Barnett, director of LocalHarvest.org , a nonprofit, sees a lot of potential. “People are addicted to coffee,” Ms. Barnett said. “The likelihood that they’re going to have loyal support is high.” | Farmers;Agriculture;Coffee;Latin America;Bay Citizen The |
ny0014591 | [
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] | 2013/11/22 | UConn Edges B.C. at the Garden | Ryan Boatwright made two free throws with 7.9 seconds to play and blocked a 3-point attempt at the buzzer as No. 18 Connecticut beat Boston College, 72-70, in the semifinals of a tournament at Madison Square Garden. ■ Ian Miller scored 22 points and Devon Bookert added 18 to help Florida State cruise past No. 10 Virginia Commonwealth, 85-67, at the Puerto Rico Tip-Off. The Seminoles (4-0) have scored at least 80 points in each of their games. ■ Cleveland Thomas hit a 3-pointer with 39.5 seconds left in the second overtime to give No. 19 New Mexico the lead for good in a wild 97-94 victory over Alabama-Birmingham at the Charleston Classic in South Carolina. | College basketball;Boston College;University of Connecticut |
ny0154239 | [
"sports",
"football"
] | 2008/01/21 | Keeping His Mouth Shut, Rivers Lets His Play Do All of the Talking | FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Sometimes, Philip Rivers’s passion looks misplaced, as it did last week when he exchanged barbs with Indianapolis Colts fans on his way to the locker room to have a brace put on his sprained right knee. On Sunday, the New England Patriots and a national television audience saw Rivers’s passion in all its radiance. Playing in the American Football Conference title game on a knee that will probably need surgery, Rivers nearly pulled off a monumental upset of the undefeated Patriots. The San Diego Chargers fell short, 21-12, but Rivers’s play went a long way toward reshaping his public image. He went from punk to plucky in 60 hard-fought minutes. “I can’t say enough about Philip Rivers and what he did,” Chargers Coach Norv Turner said. “He gave us a chance to win.” Four times, Rivers drove his offense inside the Patriots’ 25-yard line. Three times the Chargers were within 10 yards of the end zone. But they never got closer to the goal line than the 5. They settled for four field goals by Nate Kaeding, their offense sputtering largely because their usual catalysts — running back LaDainian Tomlinson and tight end Antonio Gates — were not their usual high-octane selves. Tomlinson, who was nursing a left knee injury, was reinjured on his first carry, a 3-yard run up the middle on the opening play from scrimmage. He absorbed a hit on his knee, ran the ball for 2 yards on the next play and did not take another handoff. The former Charger Junior Seau, who turned 39 on Saturday, made the first tackle on Tomlinson. “As unfair as it may sound, when you see a guy banged up, you’ve got to go out there and hit him,” said Patriots safety Rodney Harrison, another former Charger. “It’s part of the gig.” Gates played his second consecutive game with a dislocated toe and mustered two catches, but he was not the same player who caught 75 passes, 9 for touchdowns, during the regular season. It pained Tomlinson to watch from the sidelines as one promising drive after another stalled. “You just feel helpless because you can’t do anything about it,” he said. But it gave him some comfort to watch Rivers battle the way he did. Rivers completed 13 of 23 passes in the first half and finished 19 of 37 with 2 interceptions, one of which led to a Patriots touchdown. Chris Chambers was Rivers’s favorite receiver, with seven catches, one more than Vincent Jackson. “That’s the gutsiest performance I’ve ever seen,” Tomlinson said. “Being injured like that, not too many guys would have been able to do what he did.” With less than 20 seconds left in the first half, Rivers threw incomplete to Jackson on a third-and-1 at the Patriots’ 22. After Kaeding made the 40-yard field goal to bring the Chargers to 14-9, Rivers walked gingerly toward the locker room. He did not stop to exchange any words with the Patriots fans trying to engage him, a sure sign that he was really hurting. Billy Volek, the Chargers’ backup quarterback, had practiced all week as if he were going to start, but Turner said he never considered replacing Rivers with Volek for the second half. “I couldn’t get him off the field if I tried,” Turner said. The defense was stout, picking off Tom Brady, who threw only eight interceptions during the regular season, three times. The offense also played well, but it came up short in the clutch. The Chargers were 3 for 12 on third downs. One failed conversion that will dog them well into the off-season occurred during their first possession of the third quarter. On a third-and-1 at the Patriots’ 4, Rivers handed off to Michael Turner, who plays behind Tomlinson, and he was stuffed by Seau for a 2-yard loss. In the Chargers’ locker room afterward, many players pointed to that play as the one on which the game turned. “That is probably as upset as I was the whole game,” Rivers said. “It’s unfortunate we couldn’t score in the red zone where we’re usually so good.” Kaeding, who missed a potential game-tying field goal with three seconds left in a playoff game against the Patriots last year, was perfect Sunday. “I told Nate he was great, but I wish he could have kicked a couple fewer field goals,” Rivers said. As disappointed as the Chargers were, this loss did not leave the same bitter taste that last January’s 24-21 defeat to the Patriots did. They looked at the experience as a building block instead of a brick wall. The outcome was not to his liking, but Rivers was clearly glad he gave himself the opportunity to play Sunday. “It was all it was cracked up to be,” he said. “I certainly enjoyed it.” | Rivers Philip;Football;San Diego Chargers;New England Patriots |
ny0185433 | [
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] | 2009/03/21 | Sun Devils’ Harden Makes His Only Field Goal Count | MIAMI, Fla. — Arizona State guard James Harden was bruised and battered. Temple’s rugged man-to-man defense had flustered him for nearly 36 minutes. Harden, the Pacific-10 player of the year, did not have a field goal and looked frustrated and winded. But with Arizona State clinging to a 4-point lead, Harden’s only field goal of the game in No. 6 Arizona State’s 66-57 victory against No. 11 Temple proved to be the biggest. He swished a 3-pointer from the top of the key, the last field goal Arizona State scored, boosting the Sun Devils’ lead to 56-49 with 4 minutes 4 seconds remaining. From there, he and his former high school teammate Derek Glasser combined to score 12 of the game’s final 14 points. Arizona State will play No. 3 Syracuse on Sunday. Harden finished 1 of 8 from the field, but his lone shining moment on offense turned the game. “You’re a basketball player; you live for those moments,” he said. And while Harden carried the Sun Devils in the final minutes, Glasser’s four first-half 3-pointers helped them build a 13-point lead. Glasser finished with 22 points, tying for the team high with Jeff Pendergraph. “These last couple days he’s stepped up and made big shots,” Harden said of Glasser. “It’s a credit to him, he’s playing well and the entire team is playing well.” | Arizona State University;Temple University;NCAA Basketball Tournament (Men);Basketball;College Athletics |
ny0121792 | [
"sports"
] | 2012/09/02 | In-Box — Andy Roddick Is ‘a Champion in Our Hearts’ | To the Sports Editor: Re “The Gift of Roddick,” Aug. 27: This was a great reminder about Andy Roddick and his gift to our family. In 2002, he reached out to our son, an aspiring tennis star and fan, who had leukemia. At a time when we had nothing to smile about, Roddick made us smile. He called and e-mailed regularly — talking about tennis and keeping us positive and upbeat. He was 19 at the time. Through his wonderful family, we met Roddick on several occasions, including one awesome moment for a United States Tennis Association promotional event at Rockefeller Center, where he hit a few tennis balls with our son and escorted him to meet with tennis celebrities. Ten years later, our son is a leukemia survivor and Roddick remains a champion in our hearts. Andrea H. Ciminello Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Rainy Days at the Open To the Sports Editor: Re “The Sky’s the Limit,” Aug. 27: As we have yet another rain-interrupted United States Open , it is clear that the U.S.T.A. must seriously consider changes to the present setup. Either the current stadium should be renovated to withstand the vagaries of the East Coast hurricane season, or the date, the site or both should be moved. Until that is done, tennis fans will be subjected to viewing impaired performances from the players because of delays, a compressed tournament schedule and unsafe footing on the courts. The stature of the tournament will continue to decline until it is regarded as less of a Grand Slam tournament and more of a regional tournament. K. R. Kummerer Saratoga, Calif. To the Sports Editor: I realize what I’m suggesting is anathema to New Yorkers, but just outside Seattle, we have no rain or hurricanes in late August and early September. The weather is about as close to ideal as any tennis player could want: 65 degrees, give or take 10. Move the United States Open to the Pacific Northwest, and just say no to hot, sticky or rain-soaked national tournament tennis. Roger Lauen Bainbridge Island, Wash. Salary Is Not ‘Modest’ To the Sports Editor: Re “For Perkins, a Modest Addition to a Full Coaching Résumé,” Aug. 29: Ray Perkins, a former N.F.L. coach, was hired to coach a junior-college football team in Mississippi for $100,000 a year. I wonder how many of the faculty members there make $100,000 a year. Elliot Lang New York Passion and Priorities To the Sports Editor: Re “Passion Plays,” Aug. 26: I attended neither Alabama nor Louisiana State but reached a different conclusion than that of Brett Michael Dykes. Rather than loving their team less, perhaps L.S.U. fans and the citizens of Baton Rouge have a better sense of priorities. I remain haunted by the incident after the Bowl Championship Series title game in which an Alabama fan sexually assaulted an inebriated L.S.U. fan, cheered on by fellow celebrators. Nancy Silverblatt Dallas | United States Open (Tennis);Football (College) |
ny0273269 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2016/05/06 | Q. and A.: Arthur R. Kroeber on ‘China’s Economy’ | Arthur R. Kroeber is managing director of Gavekal Dragonomics , a research firm that he helped found in Beijing in 2002, and editor of China Economic Quarterly . Formerly a financial journalist based in Asia, he is a nonresident fellow of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy and an adjunct professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. His new book, “ China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know ,” was published in April by Oxford University Press. Q. An ability to innovate is often portrayed as necessary for China to take the next step to becoming a world-class economy. Is it really so important? A. You can get a lot of economic growth without being at the technological cutting edge and, in fact, this is what most countries do. China can still grow quite fast simply through technological catch-up. Moreover, Chinese private companies are already very proficient at what you could call “adaptive innovation,” where they’re not inventing new things, but are making things work better in the Chinese context. Image Arthur R. Kroeber Credit Lucy Kynge On the negative side, what you don’t see in China so far is much exportable or globally significant innovation. You don’t see people coming to China and saying, “Oh isn’t that neat — let’s bring that back to the U.S., or Japan, or wherever.” Q. But should China be at that level? It still has a per capital G.D.P. about one-fourth of the U.S. level. A. True, but it’s interesting that China looks quite different from where Japan was in the early 1970s, when it had about the same per capita income. At that point Japan was already becoming famous for manufacturing processes that were leading-edge, and Japanese companies were getting toward leading-edge in their products. You don’t really see that in China. For the most part, you don’t see Chinese firms operating outside the walled garden of China. Q. It has some companies that are highly touted. A. You could say that Alibaba is potentially China’s equivalent to what Sony was for Japan in the 1970s and 1980s. It is an interesting company that has really pioneered e-commerce and online payments in China. And it recently bought a controlling stake in a Filipino e-commerce company, Lazada , so they’re beginning to move out internationally. This will be a good test of whether Chinese companies can turn their success in their home market into an international presence. Image The productivity of state-owned companies in China has stagnated, widening the gap with private firms. This chart, provided by Mr. Kroeber, tracks the return on assets of Chinese industrial enterprises. Credit CEIC, Gavekal Data/Macrobond The key thing for China now is for the government to relax and let these kinds of companies spread their wings, both at home and abroad. If these kinds of dynamic private companies get space, then China can enjoy a phase of strong growth coming both from catch-up and from innovation. The problem is we seem to be moving in the other direction, and not only because of government censorship or controls on higher education. The government is also proposing that Internet companies like Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu sell a 1 percent golden share to the government , apparently with the idea that these companies will be better — or at least more politically controllable — if they have government involvement. Unfortunately, all the evidence is that these companies are successful because they are not government controlled. In the long run, this obsession with government control is a big problem for innovation. Q. Financial reform has been a key battleground under President Xi Jinping. Why is that? A. Financial sector reform was looking promising but has fallen into disarray. The problem crystallized last year. Reformers wanted a more flexible exchange rate and a more vigorous stock market. But you had others who viewed the stock market simply as an index of economic performance and the exchange rate as an anchor of stability. When the stock market crashed, rather than allowing a bust — which you should, if you really want more market forces — the government opted to intervene, ordering state firms to buy shares to keep prices artificially high. Now it’s trapped, because the state firms that bought these shares can’t sell them without triggering a panic sell-off. As for the exchange rate, the central bank wants a flexible rate that will help it set monetary policy in a more normal way, but the political leaders don’t want the volatility that comes with that. You’ve had a direct collision between the technocrats who honestly were trying to get a more market-oriented mechanism and those saying the key is for the exchange rate to be stable, because if it’s not stable, then people will think that China isn’t stable and that will be bad. Image Q. That sounds like the hallmark of Xi’s government style. A. Xi belongs to the group of stability-oriented people. In many other areas as well, the desire to control things has won out over the desire to reform and liberalize. Q. Maybe from a broader perspective this could be seen as normal. When countries undertake major changes, they need breaks for people to catch up. A. Economists who call for reforms often ignore the social and political costs of these reforms. So, yes, it may be reasonable for the government to take reforms slowly, so that society has a chance to adjust. Another way to look at it is that after three decades of economic growth that was mainly about building stuff — infrastructure, housing, heavy industry — China is now entering the phase where economic growth has to come mainly from squeezing efficiency out of the assets you’ve already installed. That is always a tough transition and we should expect it to be rocky. Why China Rattles the World China’s economy is faltering, prompting concerns that are now shaking global stock markets. The key thing is that all of economic history tells us that while state firms can be good at building stuff, when it comes to squeezing out efficiencies you need private companies. In China today, private industrial companies have a return on assets of 9 percent, compared to just 3 percent for state companies. Plus, state companies take on twice as much debt as private companies. So they are twice as indebted, but have a third of the performance. That’s a huge gap, but the government keeps channeling too much money to this inefficient part of the economy. Q. Is there a more optimistic viewpoint that holds that they’re going through a difficult transition, but that even without big policy changes, the state sector will shrink organically — much as Barry Naughton described the first 15 years of economic reforms in “ Growing Out of the Plan ”? A. That’s possible. But the difference is that in the 1990s and early 2000s, government policies were on average enabling to the private sector, even if it was two steps forward and one step back. Today, it seems pretty clear that the direction is toward more government control and less space for the private sector. If that direction becomes entrenched, then China’s economy will face a lot of difficulties down the road. Q. When will we know for sure? A. The next party congress [in 2017] will be the revelatory moment. You could argue that Xi isn’t a dummy. He understands that the party’s ability to stay in power in the long run depends on getting the economy right. He realizes the need for significant changes to the economic structure, but faces so much entrenched resistance that he had to spend several years in a cleanup campaign to move aside people who might oppose economic reforms. Once he has consolidated political power and cleaned up the system, he can move from the political-discipline task to the economic let’s-get-the-system-running-better task. I’m not sure I’ll put my chips on that, but the next party congress is when we’ll know for sure whether Xi is a committed economic reformer, or someone who’s mainly just interested in political control. | Arthur R Kroeber;China;Economy;Xi Jinping |
ny0098565 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2015/06/07 | Putin Urges Western Pressure on Ukraine in Peace Effort | MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called on the United States and Europe on Saturday to pressure the Ukrainian government to comply with a cease-fire accord, saying that Russia would do what it could to influence separatists in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk but held no sway in Kiev, the capital. In an interview with Corriere della Sera , an Italian newspaper, before a scheduled visit to Italy, Mr. Putin blamed the failure to carry out the political components of the peace agreement on the government of President Petro O. Poroshenko. The accord was reached in February in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. Mr. Putin’s suggestion that Russia does not control the authorities of the self-declared separatist republics in Donetsk and Luhansk contradicts Mr. Poroshenko and his Western allies, including the United States, Germany and France, who insist that the separatists are financed and directed by Russia. Fighting flared last week in eastern Ukraine as frustration continued to build on all sides over the failure to secure a longer-term peace settlement. In the newspaper interview, Mr. Putin said he remained committed to the peace accord. “The document we agreed upon in Minsk, called Minsk II, is the best agreement and perhaps the only unequivocal solution to this problem,” Mr. Putin said. “We would never have agreed upon it if we had not considered it to be right, just and feasible.” Russia’s Endgame in Ukraine How Russia aims to achieve its goal of keeping Ukraine isolated from the West. He added: “On our part, we take every effort, and will continue to do so, in order to influence the authorities of the unrecognized, self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics. But not everything depends on us. Our European and U.S. partners should exert influence on the current Kiev administration. We do not have the power, as Europe and the United States do, to convince Kiev to carry out everything that was agreed on in Minsk.” Mr. Poroshenko said Friday that Ukraine could not move forward with local elections and other political changes in the east until pro-Russian fighters and their weapons were withdrawn, and control of the border with Russia was restored to Ukraine. “It is impossible to provide the election when the bandits and terrorists with guns are on the street,” he said. “This is not free and not fair,” he added, using the terminology favored by international election monitors to describe ideal balloting conditions. In another setback for the Ukrainian peace process, Heidi Tagliavini , a Swiss diplomat who had been the lead mediator on behalf of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, announced on Saturday that she was stepping down. No immediate reason was given for her departure, and it was unclear who would replace her. Ms. Tagliavini had won praise on all sides for her persistence in trying to shepherd the talks to a positive conclusion, although her efforts had been largely unsuccessful. In the newspaper interview, a transcript of which was published on the Kremlin website on Saturday, Mr. Putin made some of his most expansive statements in recent weeks on the situation in eastern Ukraine, and he reiterated his longstanding view that the embattled regions should be granted substantial political autonomy. “Specifically, there needs to be a constitutional reform to ensure the autonomous rights of the unrecognized republics,” Mr. Putin said. “The Kiev authorities do not want to call it autonomy — they prefer different terms, such as decentralization. “Our European partners,” he continued, “those very partners who wrote the corresponding clause in the Minsk agreements, explained what should be understood as decentralization. It gives them the right to speak their language, to have their own cultural identity and engage in cross-border trade — nothing special, nothing beyond the civilized understanding of ethnic minorities’ rights in any European country.” Although Mr. Putin spoke of the situation in eastern Ukraine as if the rights of Russian-speaking citizens had been under threat, there has been little evidence of such discrimination. Russian is still widely spoken in Ukraine, including in Kiev. Still, Mr. Putin laid blame for the failure of the peace process on Mr. Poroshenko. Russia regularly refers to the Ukrainian government as having come to power in a coup, because of the ouster last year of Viktor F. Yanukovych , the pro-Russian president, after months of prolonged street protests. Demonstrators had expressed their anger over Mr. Yanukovych’s broken promise to sign sweeping political and economic agreements with the European Union, and over years of entrenched corruption. Mr. Putin complained that Mr. Poroshenko would not negotiate directly with the separatist leadership in the east. “The problem is that the current Kiev authorities don’t even want to sit down to talks with them,” Mr. Putin said. “And there is nothing we can do about it. Only our European and American partners can influence this situation. There is no need to threaten us with sanctions.”The European Union is considering whether to extend sanctions against Russia, which will expire at the end of July. | Russia;Ukraine;Vladimir Putin;Petro Poroshenko;US Foreign Policy;EU |
ny0086155 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2015/07/17 | City Comptroller’s Office Dispenses Few Answers but Writes Real Checks | A few days ago, a New York City official named Scott M. Stringer announced that he had agreed to pay the estate of Eric Garner $5.9 million for violations of his civil rights during an arrest one year ago on Staten Island. Justice, you see. Or maybe you don’t. Mr. Stringer is the city comptroller, not a judge, and he is in the check-writing business, not the justice-dispensing service. The comptroller has the legal power to pay claims against the city even before lawsuits are filed, and so becomes an extrajudicial cash machine. In the past 15 months, Mr. Stringer has approved payments of $37.8 million in seven high-profile cases that involved claims of grave abuses of power, including the death of Mr. Garner and the wrongful imprisonment of others. Yet for all the money Mr. Stringer has spent, not a single piece of information has emerged to explain precisely how and why things went wrong. This week, I tried to find out how Mr. Stringer decided that $5.9 million was the amount that the city should pay to the Garner estate. You could read the news release issued at the time of the settlement, or listen to an interview he gave on radio, but that would not help find answers. When Mr. Stringer says in his own release , “While we cannot discuss the details of this settlement” — well, let’s stop right here. Why have a news release about a settlement if you can’t discuss the details of that settlement? A grand jury on Staten Island decided that the police officers involved in the arrest of Mr. Garner, who was put in a chokehold, should not be indicted. How did the grand jury reach that decision? Its proceedings are secret, and, so far, efforts to pry them open have been unavailing. Similarly, in concluding, without explanation, that the Garner estate should be paid, Mr. Stringer has extended the silence in a new direction. Image Scott Stringer Credit Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times For instance, how did he come to the figure of $5.9 million? Instead of, say, $3.9 million or $9.9 million or $17 million? He’s not saying. Did he speak with the police officers involved? Did they have any explanation for their actions, or did the officers believe the use of force was reasonable? And what training in less-risky approaches did they have? No answer. What evidence did he consider? Not talking about it. How about consulting an actuary or economist to determine Mr. Garner’s likely earnings had he lived? Can’t say. Won’t say. When I asked why these details could not be disclosed, the city comptroller’s office put four people on the phone. One of them vaguely cited confidentiality requirements in legal negotiations; another person provided a section of the City Charter that, to my eyes, says nothing that would stop the comptroller from describing what he learned about the death of a citizen, or how he decided to pay that person’s estate $5.9 million. Things go wrong in the world; the process of figuring out how that happens ought to be a main event in government, especially for the comptroller, who has the responsibility of auditing city agencies to make sure they carry out their duties. If we don’t have a decent way of understanding how an innocent person ended up in prison, or why Mr. Garner ended up dead, or why tree limbs rot unnoticed and then kill or maim people walking in parks, then all we are left with is our fallibility. Hospitals and airlines try to use accidents to improve safety by studying how systems failed. Lawsuits — the customary way that these matters are resolved in New York — routinely ignore the root causes of problems. Last year, the city paid five men $41 million for being wrongly convicted of attacking a jogger in Central Park. The vast documentary record of the case, assembled during a decade of pretrial litigation, has still not been made public, although it may be, eventually, because lawyers for The New York Times went to court and the city agreed to release it. To Mr. Stringer’s credit — and unrelated to the settlement of the Garner claim — his office has created a public database called ClaimStat that shows what kinds of problems the city gets sued for. By mapping mistakes, it points the way to making things better. In quickly settling the civil rights claims, Mr. Stringer bypassed years of litigation, presumably saving on legal fees and general wear and tear on the spirit. Was this justice? Maybe. What he has done, without question, is make a $37.8 million contribution to the cause of public ignorance. It is already heavily funded. | Scott M Stringer;Eric Garner;NYC;Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings |
ny0278438 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2016/11/08 | Woman Thrown in Front of Train at Times Square Subway Station Is Killed | A 49-year-old Queens woman was killed after being pushed in front of a subway train in Times Square on Monday, the New York Police Department said. The attack disrupted traffic at one of the city’s busiest transit hubs as trains were diverted and emergency workers converged on the scene. Assistant Chief William Aubry, the commander of Manhattan detectives, said witnesses on both the subway platform and the train itself flagged down police officers and pointed out a suspect. Melanie Liverpool-Turner, a 30-year-old Queens woman, was taken into custody almost immediately and later charged with second-degree murder. The police described her as emotionally disturbed and said that she had made up a story last month about pushing a woman onto the tracks. The victim’s name was not immediately released. The police were combing through video from the platform and the area to better understand what happened, but the preliminary investigation suggested that the attack was unprovoked. The attack occurred at 1:20 p.m., when a woman was pushed in front of a No. 1 train. Swarms of police officers and emergency workers converged on the station, and subway traffic was rerouted as emergency crews worked to remove the body, which was pinned under the third car of the train. The Times Square-42nd Street station is the busiest on the subway system, with 66 million annual riders. It serves 10 subway lines and the shuttle to Grand Central Station. More than 200,000 people navigate the tunnels there every day. Cases involving people being pushed in front of subway trains are exceedingly rare, but when they occur, they strike at some of the deepest fears held by city dwellers. In 2012, when Ki-Suck Han of Queens was struck and killed by a train in Manhattan, The New York Post published a front-page photograph of him on the tracks moments before his death. Less than a month later, when another person was pushed in front of a train in an unprovoked attack, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg sought to reassure jittery riders. “You can say it’s only two out of the three or four million people who ride the subway every day, but two is two too many,” Mr. Bloomberg said then. “I don’t know that there is a way to prevent things. There is always going to be somebody, a deranged person.” In 1999, two attacks involving mentally ill people pushing unsuspecting victims into the path of trains, one fatally, led to legislation giving families the right to demand court-ordered outpatient psychiatric treatment for their ill relatives. Known as Kendra’s Law , it permits state judges to order closely monitored outpatient treatment for people with serious mental illnesses who have records of failing to take medication, and who have frequently been hospitalized or jailed or have exhibited violent behavior. The law was named for Kendra Webdale , who was pushed to her death by Andrew Goldstein. He had stopped taking the medication he had been prescribed for schizophrenia. | Subway;Times Square and 42nd Street Manhattan;Train wreck;Murders and Homicides;Connie Watton;Melanie Liverpool-Turner |
ny0113861 | [
"sports",
"football"
] | 2012/11/29 | A Little Knowledge About Griffin May Be Dangerous | The Giants say they will have a better understanding of what to expect from Robert Griffin III, the Washington Redskins ’ dynamic rookie quarterback, when they face him for a second time, on Monday night at FedEx Field. But that knowledge is not comforting. “He’s got a different skill set than most guys,” linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka said Wednesday during a conference call. “Some guys are either fast and not necessarily a good pocket passer, or they’re a pocket passer and they’re not as quick. But I think he has talent on a lot of levels.” Griffin’s blend of abilities makes it difficult to label him. He ranks second on the Redskins in rushing with 642 yards (on 99 attempts) and needs only 65 more to break the mark for rushing yards by a rookie quarterback, set last season by the Carolina Panthers’ Cam Newton, but Griffin is hardly a runner in the guise of a passer. His 104.6 passer rating, which ranks second in the N.F.C., illustrates his willingness to settle in the pocket, work through his reads and find an open receiver. Griffin has completed 206 of 305 throws (67.5 percent) for 2,504 yards with 16 touchdowns and 4 interceptions. He has already established team single-season rookie records for passing yards, breaking Norm Snead’s mark of 2,337, set in 1961, and for passing touchdowns. Eddie LeBaron’s 14 scores had stood since 1952. “He’s not a guy that looks to run first,” Washington Coach Mike Shanahan said. “He’s going to read defenses. He’s going to go through his progressions and get you in the right play, right checkoff, right formation and do the things that you feel like it takes to win.” The Giants know firsthand about Griffin’s ability to buy time when the pocket breaks down. On fourth-and-10 at his 23 on Oct. 21, with the Redskins trailing, 20-16, he rolled left and scrambled for what Giants Coach Tom Coughlin said “seemed like forever” before rifling a 19-yard completion to spark a drive that produced a go-ahead touchdown. The Giants needed Eli Manning’s 77-yard bomb to Victor Cruz with 1 minute 13 seconds left to escape with a 27-23 win. Giants defensive end Justin Tuck is not optimistic his team can alter its approach to confuse or shake Griffin. “I haven’t seen him kind of flustered or anything like that,” Tuck said. “You always see him kind of poised and ready for the moment. And that says a lot about his maturity, to be thrust upon this league and have all the weight of a franchise on you. It shows a lot about how mature he is.” Instead of hitting the proverbial rookie wall, Griffin has taken his game to new heights in leading the Redskins to consecutive division victories over Philadelphia (31-6) and Dallas (38-31) to keep Washington’s slim playoff hopes alive with a 5-6 record. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Griffin’s combined 146.1 rating the last two games is the best in N.F.L. history among rookie passers with at least 40 attempts. He threw for four touchdowns in each game. Shanahan said there was an element of doubt when Washington traded up to second over all to draft Griffin, a Heisman Trophy winner at Baylor. “People can see his ability, but until you’re around somebody, you don’t really know what his work ethic is going to be,” Shanahan said. “You see that on a consistent basis. How he prepares, comes to work, how he handles himself after victory and how he handles himself after defeat. He’s got the mind-set of the guy that has all the things you’re looking for, all of the intangibles to be your quarterback for years to come.” While the Giants have won 10 of the last 13 meetings, Tuck, in his eighth season, knows the rivalry took a daunting turn as soon as Griffin donned burgundy and gold. “Until I exit stage right,” Tuck said, “he’s going to be a fixture in my dreams and nightmares.” | Griffin Robert III;Washington Redskins;New York Giants;Tuck Justin;Coughlin Tom;Football |
ny0054793 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2014/07/23 | They Did This? In Rebel Country, Disbelief | SNIZHNE, Ukraine — It was photographed rolling past the Pitstop Market gas station in Torez. It was seen near the city sauna here, and was caught on video creeping up Gagarin Street, past an auto parts store and the Ivushka food mart in the direction of the Russian border. An SA-11 missile system, or Buk, may be what Western intelligence officials believe shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Yet for most people in eastern Ukraine, even those who live in places where the infamous Buk system was believed to have lumbered past, the idea that pro-Russian rebels used it to bring down Flight 17, bound from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, draws only scorn. “They just aren’t capable,” said Sergei Melnik, 41, a coal miner, who was sitting in a shady courtyard here a few yards from where the Buk was spotted on Gagarin Street last Thursday. “I don’t believe it.” Wreckage Offers Clues on Why Flight 17 Went Down Photographs of a piece of wreckage from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 offer evidence about what could have caused it to crash. Photographs and videos posted on social media sites of what Ukrainian intelligence officials have said was likely the Buk system are unconfirmed and far from conclusive. But they offer a muddy picture of what might have been the weapon’s bumpy journey through eastern Ukraine to a location near this sleepy mining town where American intelligence officials believe it blew the passenger jet out of the sky that day. Many people interviewed in the days since the downing of the plane agreed that what happened was a tragedy. Villagers who live nearby brought flowers, stuffed animals and candles to the site, and many volunteered in a largely inept recovery effort that seemed to have ground to a halt on Tuesday. Yet opinions soon diverged. Most said they had never heard or seen the weapon. Many questioned its existence. A number of people asserted that it had been invented by Ukraine’s central government as a diversionary tactic in its war against pro-Russian rebels. “Poroshenko said he was going to bring us a surprise,” said a thin man with gray hair and angry eyes, referring to a remark by Ukraine’s president, Petro O. Poroshenko, who was speaking about his government’s military operation against the rebels. “There’s your surprise.” Video Some background on the Buk SA-11, the weapon that was most likely used to shoot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, and who might be able to operate it. The alternate reality that has formed in eastern Ukraine means that the destruction of the plane and the aftermath have not done much to change the dynamic of the conflict here. Most residents continue to trust the rebels, even though much of the world sees them as outlaws responsible for the deaths of the 298 passengers and crew aboard the airliner. The reasons for distrusting the American conclusion come from deep within society. The government in Kiev is prosecuting a war here, and civilians are suffering as a result, their minds hardening. (Last week, at least 11 people were killed in a bombing here that fell short of a rebel base.) The rebels are largely impoverished local people, and many here simply do not believe they could operate a sophisticated piece of military machinery. The conflict has thrust so deeply into peoples’ lives that their attention, and patience, for the sorrow of others extends only so far. Standing outside the rubble of his apartment building at 14 Lenin Street, Victor Dmitrovich, an elderly man with a bandaged head whose wife died in the bombing, voiced a common sentiment: “Why should we talk about the Boeing?” he said. “We have our own sadness.” People here are also heavily influenced by Russian television, which has been beamed into most every house in rebel-controlled territory after separatists took over the television towers in these areas earlier this year. Maps of the Crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 A Malaysia Airlines flight with nearly 300 people aboard crashed in eastern Ukraine near the Russian border on July 17. Even on the day after the crash, the conclusions drawn by people in the village of Grabovo, which was nearly crushed as the plane fell, were beginning to settle into a pattern consistent with the narrative on Russian television — that a Ukrainian plane shot down the airliner. One woman, who had pulled up to a friend’s house in a small Lada car, was recounting through tears how she had seen the jet crash just yards from her home, when her husband interjected: “The rocket came from over there.” She swung around and said: “There was no rocket. It was a fighter jet. One hundred percent.” Some theories were particularly strange. A woman in central Snizhne said there was something suspicious about the flight because all the passports were new and been collected in one place, and because most of the bodies were without clothing. “Were they all having sex before the plane came down?” said the woman, who identified herself only as Tatyana out of concern for her safety. What Happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 An updated summary of what is known and not known about the crash. The Ivushka market is on the road where Ukrainian intelligence officials say the Buk moved. Lyubov Sherbakova, a clerk there, said she saw so much rebel hardware that even if she had seen a Buk, she would not have been able to distinguish it. “We wave at them all day,” she said, referring to rebels’ heavy machinery. The fog of war is thickening. Russian military officials said that a billboard in the foreground of one of the Ukrainian intelligence videos makes it clear that the piece of hardware they said was a Buk crossing into Russia was actually in the city of Krasnoarmeysk, much further west and under Ukrainian control. What people see often corresponds with their political bent. At the Pitstop Market in the town of Torez, where a large piece of machinery that Ukrainians say was the Buk was photographed, Yevgeny, a clerk and a self-described Ukrainian patriot, said the weapon had been seen by his colleagues who were on duty that day. “Of course it came by,” he said. “I have no doubt.” One rebel named Andrei, who was guarding the rebel base at Saur Mogila, a Soviet war monument near here that rebels and Ukrainians have been fighting over for weeks, seemed almost to confirm that, though he would not say what he was referring to. “We had something,” he said, smiling and standing tall on the road sprayed with dirt from a Ukrainian airstrike Saturday morning. “But it left.” | Ukraine;Malaysia Airlines 17;Plane Crashes and Missing Planes;Kiev;Russia;Malaysia Airlines;Petro Poroshenko;Airlines,airplanes |
ny0098528 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2015/06/07 | Daryl Hall Renovates Venue, for Music, Food and TV | In the 1970s and ’80s, Daryl Hall and his musical partner, John Oates, built a catalog of recordings that included six No. 1 hits, among them “ Rich Girl ,” “Private Eyes” and “Out of Touch.” The duo, who still attract sellout crowds on tour, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year. But Mr. Hall builds more than songbooks. He has developed a sideline in construction, renovating old houses and remodeling the space once inhabited by the Towne Crier Café , a haven for singer-songwriters in Pawling, whose closing in June 2013 after 25 years left a hole in the Hudson Valley music scene. While the Towne Crier has relocated to Beacon, Mr. Hall has transformed its old space from a 19th-century Southwestern-style outpost to an 18th-century Colonial clubhouse. Last Halloween, with the paint barely dry, the space, renamed Daryl’s House Restaurant and Live Music Club , opened to a standing-room-only, live-streamed performance by Hall and Oates. It has been going strong ever since. Relaxing in the club on a recent weekday, Mr. Hall, who at 68 still sports the long blond hair and black leather jacket of a young rock star, said that in addition to bringing music back to a venerable Dutchess County stage, the renovation provided a new home for his cable television show “ Live From Daryl’s House .” It was, in fact, the television show that first drove his interest in the Towne Crier space. The show, which began in 2007 as an Internet endeavor, offers viewers a look at “what it’s like when musicians get together outside of a performance situation,” Mr. Hall said, “but yet they’re still performing.” Each episode features an invited guest, who eats, drinks, swaps stories and plays music with Mr. Hall. Image Mr. Hall said he wanted a design that would age well and provide an open space to play music. Credit Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times Until the show moved to the Pawling space, for a season shown last year on Palladia, a Viacom music video channel , “Live From Daryl’s House” was produced in what was then Mr. Hall’s home, a large Colonial-era structure in Amenia that he had renovated in spectacular fashion, bringing together two houses. Mr. Hall lives in another Colonial-era home, in Sherman, Conn., that he is renovating for “ Daryl’s Restoration Over-Hall ,” a show on the DIY Network. “Live From Daryl’s House” has never had a live audience. But as it became more popular, more viewers asked how they could share the experience. “So I started thinking about creating an environment where people can basically do what we do at the house with the television show but in a public place,” he said. “I hang out in here, have bands that have been on the show playing here, sort of create that clubhouse environment.” The renovation, based largely on drawings by Mr. Hall, attempted, within limits, to emulate the Amenia home, said Joe Interlande, a guitar technician who helps with Mr. Hall’s renovation projects. “We tried to mimic it as much as we could,” he said, “but also make it a functioning club-restaurant.” The renovation involved some compromises, like the use of a composite material for the posts and beams, a prominent feature of the rustic design, because the existing structure could not bear the weight of wood. But the makeover had its benefits, including the incorporation of acoustically treated material, giving the club an advantage over the Amenia house as a music venue. “To get in there and play with a lot of live instruments was somewhat problematic,” Shane Theriot , a guitarist and the musical director for “Live at Daryl’s House,” said of the home. “Sonically, the club is exponentially better.” At the club’s live performances, the renovation has aided communication between the musicians and audiences, particularly from the bar area, where sight lines to the stage have been opened up. The whole point, Mr. Hall said, is to break down walls and match the sensibility of 21st-century music consumers. “Trying to get on the radio, having hit records, it’s not really where the action is these days,” he said. “It’s all about being tribal, having your following.” Image Credit Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times At first, he said, he was surprised at the direct way artists at the club often engage audience members, who can number 350 when the tables are removed. But Mr. Hall, who retains the lean look and lithe movements of his early days, has gotten into the spirit. “I do jump on stage,” he said. “I’ve tended bar.” Mr. Hall said he was more likely to show up when members of his working band bring their own groups. Klyde Jones , the bassist, and Porter Carroll, the drummer, have done so, and Mr. Theriot, a session musician from New Orleans, said he was contemplating a guitar night that could include his jazzman neighbor in Katonah, John Scofield . The club has become something of a beacon for guitarists generally. In the next week alone, Selwyn Birchwood , a rising blues guitarist from Florida, is scheduled for June 12, and Jon Herington , the longtime guitarist with Steely Dan, for June 13. Mr. Hall is looking to expand the “Daryl’s House” franchise, both in Pawling, where he is building a patio for possible concerts behind the club, and to Charleston, S.C., where he has a home. Palladia has ordered a third, expanded season of eight episodes for the show; the second season — which included Aaron Neville of the Neville Brothers and Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top among the guests — ended on Thursday. Clearly, Mr. Hall is not resting on his laurels. Near the club’s bar hang photos of soul-music luminaries with whom he worked in his heyday, including Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross. But he said his new ventures constituted more than a gratifying second act. “Times have changed,” Mr. Hall said, “and I feel more fulfilled, like everything’s happened to me more in the past eight or nine years than at any time.” | Music;Pawling Rhode Island;Restaurant;John Oates;Rock and Roll Hall of Fame;Daryl Hall |
ny0036300 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2014/03/10 | ‘No Guarantee’ of Final Nuclear Deal With Iran, E.U. Official Says | TEHRAN — The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, said Sunday that there was “no guarantee” that Iran and world powers would be able to reach a final, comprehensive agreement over Iran’s nuclear program. Ms. Ashton, who talked with Iranian leaders in Tehran, represents the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States), plus Germany, known as the P5-plus-1 group, which reached an interim agreement with Iran in November to limit its nuclear program. It was a breakthrough after more than a decade of talks. The six-month, renewable agreement obliged Iran to stop enriching uranium to high levels and to reduce its stockpile of near-weapons-grade uranium. In return, some economic sanctions were lifted, including access to $4.2 billion in Iranian cash frozen in foreign banks. But on Sunday, Ms. Ashton tried to temper optimism about a final deal. “This interim agreement is really important, but not as important as a comprehensive agreement,” Ms. Ashton said at a joint news conference with Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. Because of the “difficult” and “challenging” nature of the process, however, “there is no guarantee that we will succeed,” she added. Mr. Zarif, who has faced pressure from Iranian hard-liners who accuse him of selling out the country’s nuclear program, emphasized that his negotiators would agree only to a deal that respected Iran’s “rights,” a reference to the nation’s ability to enrich uranium independently on its own soil. In Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said Sunday at the start of a cabinet meeting that Ms. Ashton should ask the Iranians about a merchant ship Israel seized in the Red Sea last week, carrying what Israel described as an Iranian shipment of weapons intended for Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. Iran has rejected Israel’s allegations. “Nobody has the right to ignore the true and murderous actions of the regime in Tehran,” Mr. Netanyahu said, according to a statement from his press office. “I think that it would be proper for the international community to give its opinion regarding Iran’s true policy, not its propaganda.” | Iran;Nuclear weapon;Catherine Ashton;EU;Sanctions;International relations;Mohammad Javad Zarif;UN Security Council |
ny0260354 | [
"sports",
"autoracing"
] | 2011/06/27 | Maneuvering to Control Future of Formula One | The fortunes of a Formula One race can change in a split second. When Sebastian Vettel, the 23-year-old star of the Red Bull Racing team, slipped up on the last lap of the Canadian Grand Prix this month, he allowed Jenson Button of McLaren to snatch away the victor’s Jeroboam of Champagne. The business of Formula One could be set for a similarly drastic swing. Much more than a trophy and a big check is at stake: the future ownership of the world’s most widely followed auto racing series — and, perhaps, the way in which hundreds of millions of fans watch it on television — is ultimately up for grabs. The starting gun in this contest was fired this spring when News Corporation , controlled by Rupert Murdoch, and an investment company owned by the Agnelli family of Italy, overlords of the storied Ferrari racing team, expressed interest in taking over Formula One Management, which organizes the races. Since then, in trackside chats and informal conversations, officials of the two companies have been trying to convince skeptical team owners and other interested parties that they are the best future stewards of Formula One. People with knowledge of the talks say the pitch goes something like this: News Corporation could do for Formula One what it did for English soccer, which was transformed by an infusion of billions of pounds of television rights fees from a News Corporation pay-television affiliate in Britain. News Corporation’s global reach and considerable financial resources could generate interest in markets where Formula One has lagged, particularly the United States. Meanwhile, by aligning themselves with the Agnelli company called Exor and Ferrari, the team owners might be able to extract a larger portion of the commercial proceeds of the races, rather than handing over half to the central organization, as they do now. Still, questions abound. Would team owners agree to part ownership by another team? Would regulators allow Formula One to move from free television, as stipulated in its current operating agreement, to pay-television outlets in Europe and Asia owned by News Corporation? If so, would fans and sponsors stick with the sport? And perhaps most important, would this marriage of a media company and a sports organization work better than other recent examples, most of which have broken down after failing to deliver the expected benefits? “I can’t see how a media group could take over without changing fundamentally how the sport is run,” said Nigel Currie, the director of BrandRapport, a sponsorship agency. “Media companies are now one spoke in the wheel of Formula One, but in this case, a media company would become the hub.” Precedents for media companies owning sports franchises or organizations are not especially encouraging. News Corporation bought the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1998, hoping to generate viewership for its Fox TV network. It sold the team six years later when the hoped-for synergies failed to emerge. American media companies, like Tribune Company and Disney, have also been bailing out of team ownership. The New York Times Company is trying to sell its stake in the Boston Red Sox. The hurdles are so high that some analysts say they think News Corporation and Exor do not intend to make an actual bid for Formula One, which is majority-owned by CVC Capital Partners, a private equity firm. Instead, they may be trying to persuade key teams to peel away and create a new race series — a threat that has been dangled several times in the past. Bernie Ecclestone, the 80-year-old impresario who has been the driving force behind the race series for four decades, said that officials of News Corporation and Exor had not made any formal presentations to CVC or to him. “It’s a pity they don’t come along and sit down with the people that own the shares,” Ecclestone said. “That conversation hasn’t ever taken place.” By keeping everyone guessing about their intentions, News Corporation and Exor figure they cannot lose, insiders say. An agreement between the teams and Formula One Management expires next year. If the teams were to break away and set up a new series, the value of CVC’s investment in Formula One, which it bought for about $2.6 billion, would plunge. CVC does not want to sell, Ecclestone said. “Having said that, the type of company they are — a private equity firm — if the price was right, they would sell,” he said. John Elkann, the 35-year-old chief executive of Exor and scion of the Agnelli family, and James Murdoch, 38, who runs News Corporation’s European and Asian operations, are said to have discussed a move on Formula One for several years. This spring, with more than the usual amount of political and financial turbulence swirling around the organization, they saw their opportunity. Political unrest in the Gulf state of Bahrain disrupted plans for a race that had been set to take place there in March. The race was rescheduled for the fall, but team directors protested, fearing that they would be seen as endorsing a crackdown on dissidents. Finally, race organizers in Bahrain canceled the event. Meanwhile, Ecclestone is embroiled in a German investigation of bribery accusations related to the sale of Formula One to CVC in 2006. Ecclestone, the chief executive of Formula One Management, said he was said he was cooperating with the investigators and has vehemently denied any wrongdoing. The investigation stems from a change of ownership that followed the bankruptcy of the Kirch Group of Germany, a media company that briefly held a controlling stake in Formula One before it collapsed under the weight of its debts in 2001. Turmoil is nothing new to Formula One, which seems to careen from one tabloid scandal to the next, only to emerge stronger. Television viewership has bounced back after a dip a few seasons ago. Formula One Management says 527 million people watched at least part of a race on television or in person last year, up from 520 million in 2009. Sponsorship is expected to bring in a total of $4.4 billion this year for the teams and the central organization, according to Formula Money, a research report on the finances of Formula One. In Vettel, Button and Lewis Hamilton, Formula One has bankable young stars. This season has produced exciting races. There is even a comeback story: Michael Schumacher, the seven-time world champion who retired in 2006, returned last year. Still, there are questions about the future. Formula One, whose most famous race twists and turns through the streets of Monaco, has struggled to expand its appeal beyond white European men, an audience that is aging. Sponsorship of the race teams has recovered slowly after a steep drop during the global financial crisis. And there are no obvious candidates in Ecclestone’s family or in the Formula One organization to succeed him as chief deal maker. “There’s no line of succession, no one waiting to take over, so what you’re left with is a vacuum,” said Simon Chadwick, a professor of sport business strategy and marketing at Coventry University in Britain. Against this backdrop, officials of four of the most powerful teams in Formula One — Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes — gathered in mid-May in Stuttgart, Germany, at the headquarters of Daimler, which controls the Mercedes team, to discuss the approach from Exor and News Corporation, as well as the negotiations on a renewal of their deal with Formula One Management, called the Concorde Agreement. Those four teams then called a separate, secret meeting to consider the Exor and News Corporation situation in more detail. This gathering took place at the end of May in Rome, according to a person who was briefed on the discussions. Any takeover involving News Corporation could require a rethinking of the Formula One business model. The Concorde Agreement stipulates that races should be shown on free television whenever possible, so as to maximize audiences, which typically reach 50 million to 60 million, more than most any sporting event other than the World Cup final and the Super Bowl . “If it were to become a pay-TV product rather than a predominantly free one now, it would be one of the most seismic changes in the history of the sport,” said Kevin Alavy, who analyzes television audiences at Initiative, a media buying agency, in London. Sponsors, the biggest source of revenue for the individual racing teams, could demand compensation for lost television exposure. On the other hand, revenue from television rights would probably rise, because pay-TV companies typically have deeper pockets than free broadcasters like the BBC, which now owns the rights in Britain. A newspaper owned by News Corporation, The Sunday Times of London, appeared to jump the gun on such a change, reporting on a recent weekend, “BBC axes F1.” The story cited unidentified sources as saying the BBC, a frequent subject of criticism from Murdoch and his father, Rupert, was considering dropping Formula One to save money. The BBC responded that this was speculation. Tony Fernandes, a Malaysian entrepreneur who owns Team Lotus, said Formula One officials and team owners ought to keep open minds about pay television. “I don’t know if it is right or wrong, but I think it would be foolish to say it’s a bad thing,” he said in an interview at the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal. “Pay TV has worked. It has worked in America; it has worked in Europe.” Neither News Corporation nor Exor has commented publicly since issuing a brief statement in May, in which they said they were “in the early stages of exploring the possibility of creating a consortium with a view to formulating a long-term plan for the development of Formula One in the interests of the participants and the fans.” Other parties are said to be potentially interested in Formula One, too, either with a group led by News Corporation and Exor or alone. These include Carlos Slim Helú, a Mexican billionaire; Mubadala, an Abu Dhabi investment company; and Raine Group, a New York investment firm. Spokesmen for Mubadala and Raine declined to comment. A spokesman for Slim, a major shareholder and creditor of The New York Times Company, did not respond to an e-mail requesting comment. CVC declined to comment beyond a statement issued in May, when it said Formula One was “not currently for sale.” Rather than shutting the door, however, the firm added: “CVC recognizes the quality of Exor and News Corp. as potential investors, but any investment in Formula One will require CVC’s agreement and will need to demonstrate that it is in the interest of the sport and its stakeholders.” At the center of all this strategizing is Ecclestone, who owns a minority stake in Formula One Management but who knows how all the parts are bolted together. Ecclestone can claim credit for guiding Formula One through several major challenges in recent years, including the loss of sponsorship money from tobacco companies and the departure of racing teams owned by BMW, Honda and Toyota. Ecclestone also held Formula One together in 2009 when team owners revolted against the International Automobile Federation, which sets Formula One rules, over proposed changes championed by Max Mosley, then the president of the federation. The team owners won that battle, and also ousted Mosley, the subject of an embarrassing tabloid exposé — by a News Corporation publication, The News of the World — of a sadomasochistic romp with prostitutes. Mosley sued the paper for invasion of privacy and won. Ecclestone said he planned to “carry on doing what I want to do until people don’t want me doing it.” He added: “People say to me, ‘What do you do?’ I say, ‘I’m a firefighter.’ And generally the answer comes back, if there are no fires, you light them.” | Automobile Racing;Formula One;News Corp;Ferrari SpA |
ny0051038 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2014/10/07 | 35 New York City Parks to Get Makeovers | At Bowne Playground in Queens, Mayor Bill de Blasio is expected to announce on Tuesday an ambitious initiative that would channel some $130 million into tattered parks and playgrounds in low-income neighborhoods across New York City, according to several people briefed on the plan. Many people could not find them on a map: Ranaqua Park in Mott Haven in the Bronx. Saratoga Ballfields in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Luther Gulick Park on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. They are the hardscrabble neighborhood parks that, advocates say, were overlooked during the Bloomberg administration, even as billions of dollars flowed to big-ticket legacy projects in wealthier parts of the city. The parks equity plan comes after months of wrangling over how to finance the initiative. During his campaign, Mr. de Blasio endorsed a plan to force the private groups that raise money for the city’s richest parks to hand over as much as a fifth of their budgets to needier parks. But as with the living wage law signed last week, and his push for universal prekindergarten classes, Mr. de Blasio chose to compromise on the methodology in order to achieve the core of his goals. The park plan relies on public funding, not private dollars, in its quest to address the disparities in the city’s vast park system. Image Ranaqua Park in the South Bronx has a tiny patch of grass, a playground and basketball court. Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the city committed $6 billion to capital projects in the parks, but they tended to be highly visible projects like the High Line in Chelsea; Brooklyn Bridge Park, along the East River waterfront; or Governors Island. He also poured hundreds of millions of dollars into several park projects in more modest communities, including the revival of the long-shuttered McCarren Pool on the Greenpoint-Williamsburg border in Brooklyn. Often left behind, however, were the half-acre parks and playgrounds sandwiched between tenements. Under Mr. de Blasio’s plan, 35 of those parks will share the $130 million infusion, plus additional money for maintenance. The parks are all heavily used open spaces in poor neighborhoods that struggle with high obesity and asthma rates. The parks on the list have had little to no investment in recent years. Mark D. Levine, a city councilman from Upper Manhattan who is chairman of the parks committee, praised the plan, particularly its use of public funds. Requiring the largest conservancies to give a portion of their budgets to neighborhood parks, he said, would have yielded $15 million at most. Conservancy leaders had said that it could scare off donors and force staff layoffs. The money, Mr. Levine acknowledged, “is not enough to touch every park in the system, but it will have a transformative impact on these parks.” Mr. Levine added, “It largely answers the question of whether we’ll solve the equity problem through public investment or taking money from the conservancies.” But to put the figures in perspective, the Central Park Conservancy, the nonprofit group that runs the city’s flagship park, received a single $100 million gift in October 2012 from the hedge fund manager John A. Paulson; it spends $44 million annually to help operate the park. At the same time, the percentage of the city’s budget going to parks has dropped, according to Mr. Levine. Parks spending made up 0.52 percent of city spending in 2000, down from 0.86 percent in the 1980s and 1.5 percent in the 1960s. Image The park stands to reap more than $3 million. Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Parks spending for the current fiscal year was budgeted at about $950 million. But the parks department does not control how all of that money is spent. Instead, the choice of what capital projects to fund often is made by City Council members and borough presidents. If the local City Council members put their discretionary money elsewhere, parks in their districts are left to deteriorate. Of the $130 million, $80 million represents an increase to the parks capital budget. It was proposed by Mr. Bloomberg in his final budget plan. Mr. de Blasio added $50 million. State Senator Daniel L. Squadron has been a proponent of having conservancies share their wealth. He sponsored a bill requiring conservancies with operating budgets of $5 million or more to dedicate 20 percent to neighborhood parks. Only a handful of conservancies are that well-endowed. While Mr. de Blasio had embraced Mr. Squadron’s proposal during the campaign, he seemed to back off when he announced his new parks commissioner, Mitchell J. Silver, last spring. At a news conference, Mr. de Blasio called the Albany bill “creative” and “productive,” but stopped short of endorsing it. Still, on Monday, conservancies and representatives from City Hall were continuing to discuss their role, which could include fund-raising on behalf of struggling parks or helping with maintenance. Mr. Squadron said that he was not disappointed by the lack of a financial commitment from the conservancies. His legislation, he said, helped start a conversation about park equity. “A year and a half ago, folks were not talking about parks equity and now the mayor is addressing the biggest inequities in the system,” Mr. Squadron said. “Having the conservancies at the table beyond this step is a critical piece of the long-term picture.” Ranaqua Park, a tiny patch of grass with a playground and basketball court in the South Bronx, made the cut for the park-equity plan and stands to reap more than $3 million in capital money. On a recent weekday, residents said that money could correct the uneven surfacing on the playground and smooth out the court. It might also pay for landscaping for the patchy lawn. The idea got Benjamin Rosa, 15, who lives a block from the park, dreaming: “We could have new sprinklers, and maybe two basketball courts instead of one,” he said. | Parks;Playground;NYC;Bill de Blasio;Brooklyn;Brownsville Brooklyn;Bronx;Lower East Side Manhattan;Urban Planning |
ny0152052 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2008/08/30 | In the Life of a New York Mayor, a Second Act Is Hard to Follow | Long before Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg began flirting with the possibility of extending term limits so he could seek a third term next year, there were third acts in the lives of New York mayors. But they typically played out to poor reviews. And encores were never requested. Only three mayors — Fiorello H. La Guardia , Robert F. Wagner and Edward I. Koch — were re-elected twice. And though all three could point to accomplishments in their third terms, they left office after 12 years drained, diminished and disdained. The personal strengths that had seemed so appealing were diminished by the increasing challenges confronting the city. “La Guardia Term 1 was a dynamic reformer,” said Chris McNickle, the author of “To Be Mayor of New York.” “By the end of Term 2 there was more tendency to describe him as a bully. Wagner Term 1 was a consensus builder. By the end of Term 2 he was indecisive and weak. Koch Term 1 was refreshingly candid. By the end of Term 2 he was increasingly described as divisive.” Mayors La Guardia and Wagner considered a fourth term (Mr. Wagner followed his father’s advice: “When in doubt, don’t.”) But only Mr. Koch audaciously sought one. He was defeated, after third-term business-as-usual complacency contributed to scandals, and David N. Dinkins presented himself as a salve to racial polarization. “I lost,” Mr. Koch said after his defeat in 1989, “because people got tired of me.” Mr. Koch favors extending the limit from two terms to three, both as a matter of principle and because he supports Mr. Bloomberg. The chief principle at stake in the revived debate over term limits is whether rules imposed by the voters in a referendum should be overturned by the City Council. But the debate isn’t really about principle. It’s all about Mr. Bloomberg, and whether New Yorkers are willing to take a chance on his potential successors. “When you have a mayor like Mike Bloomberg, who everybody believes would be re-elected in a landslide, denied the opportunity to run, we all suffer,” Mr. Koch said. Fairly or not, Mr. Koch’s own third term is remembered largely for conflict-of-interest investigations, mostly involving people outside his administration. The scandals thrust him into a period of clinical depression so serious that he ordered the police to remove a gun that had been secreted in a Gracie Mansion “panic room.” The more enduring legacy of Mr. Koch’s third term, though, was that he began an unprecedented $5 billion investment in moderately priced housing. Mr. Wagner won election to a third term in 1961 by re-inventing himself and running against the political bosses who had supported him earlier. His third term was defined by advances in housing, urban renewal, zoning, fluoridation of the water supply and consolidation of the municipal hospitals, but it also depleted his political capital and left him weary, particularly after the death of his wife. “Much of the pleasure and satisfaction I have always derived from even the day-to-day work schedule had been drained from me,” he recalled. Still, recalled Judah Gribetz, a commissioner in the Wagner administration and later a deputy mayor and counsel to the governor, the decision not to seek a fourth term “wasn’t because he didn’t have a good third.” Mr. La Guardia, bitter over being denied a generalship in World War II (he had already been fitted for a uniform), distracted by a federal civil defense job and hobbled by shriveled resources, turned vituperative. “His third term was weakened by the fact that he accepted it as a fallback,” said Thomas Kessner, a City University professor and La Guardia biographer. Mr. Bloomberg might have to grapple with that perception, too. He may want to complete his unfulfilled legacy, but after flirting with a presidential campaign, he might also be accused of waffling on term limits or settling for four more years as mayor just because public office is more challenging and energizing than making more money or giving it away. “In Bloomberg’s case, the question is what is his motivation for a third term?” said Stan Altman, a professor of public policy at Baruch College. “He knew when elected that it was a two-term mayoralty.” If Mr. Bloomberg allows the Council to extend term limits on its own, Professor Altman added, then “I think he is beginning to exhibit the early signs of the ‘third-term syndrome.’ ” Those symptoms for public officials, he said, are “the false conclusion that they are invincible and can do whatever they want and are accountable to no one.” Regardless of whether Mr. Bloomberg really wants to run for mayor again, the mere possibility that he might seek a third term next year could enhance the legacy of his second. The more he flirts with a candidacy, the less likely he is to be dismissed as a lame duck, political strategists and officials say. “The longer Bloomberg plays Hamlet,” said Nelson Warfield, spokesman for Ronald S. Lauder, the unreconstructed father of term limits in New York, “the more strength he has in dealing with the City Council.” | Term Limits (Political Office);Bloomberg Michael R;Mayors;New York City;la Guardia Fiorello H;Wagner Robert F;Koch Edward I |
ny0230501 | [
"sports"
] | 2010/09/17 | A Limousine for Dropouts | The Columbus marathon in Ohio said that runners who have to drop out deserve more than a bus ride to the finish line. Organizers of the annual 26-mile race said they would offer a lift in a stretch limousine to anyone who has to stop. Darris Blackford, the race director, said he wanted something better to boost runners’ spirits than the school bus he once had to ride. About 5,000 people were expected to run in the Oct. 17 race. Organizers said it was impossible to predict how many might use the 12-seat limousine. | Running;Columbus (Ohio) |
ny0159770 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2008/12/22 | The Montel Williams Infomercial | Although Montel Williams’s talk show was canceled this year, it seemed to have been reincarnated last week at a studio in Fairfield, N.J. Mr. Williams had gathered a live audience, self-help experts and people who had dealt with problems like the death of a daughter, and he stood before them, gesticulating, tearing up and nodding thoughtfully. After almost an hour of discussing the problem of depression, Mr. Williams presented the guests with the answer to their problems: a set of books he had written. In other episodes, he suggested solving various issues by buying a debt-relief kit, a rotisserie grill or a blender. For this was not a television show. It was an infomercial, “Living Well With Montel,” and Mr. Williams is being paid depending on how well the products sell. Mr. Williams has put his “Living Well” brand on several new products, and he will soon promote other brands, too, like books from Men’s Health magazine. He is paid no salary, only a share of profits that depends on how much he sells. (For now, the products are available only through a toll-free number and a Web site.) Starting last weekend, Tristar Products, which owns the production and the merchandise, began showing the hourlong infomercial on national cable channels and broadcast networks, in the late-night and early morning hours when infomercials reign. Keith Mirchandani, the chief executive of Tristar, said he would spend about $2.5 million a week buying advertising time for the infomercial, and expected to sell about $5 million worth a week of the merchandise Mr. Williams promotes in the production. In an interview, Mr. Williams said combining a talk-show format with sales was a logical extension of product placement, in which advertisers pay producers or networks to feature their merchandise, like a Coca-Cola cup seen on Fox’s “ American Idol .” It is meant to advertise products subtly, even if viewers skip traditional commercials. “Every single television program is trying to figure out a way to do integrated advertising,” Mr. Williams, 52, said. “There may be those that throw stones, but then I say, ‘Hold up a mirror.’ ” He added that “even the soap operas have integrated cans, keys, cars.” Mr. Williams is receiving a percentage of all the product sales. Tristar, an infomercial marketer based in Fairfield, Conn., that sells the Ab Roller and the Jack LaLanne juicer, owns the show and the products sold on it. (For existing products, Tristar creates special versions, like a two-pack of Mr. Williams’s books, that are available only through the show.) Mr. Mirchandani said Tristar had a straightforward approach to the products it would sell. “It’s vanity,” Mr. Mirchandani said. “If you can make someone’s life easier or faster, and give them instant results, that’s what they want.” The company’s formula is to introduce a problem and then offer a solution, Mr. Mirchandani said. For example, in one episode, Mr. Williams identifies childhood obesity as a problem, then offers his solution: a $199 blender that can make healthy soups and smoothies. While talk-show hosts have long plugged their books or their guests’ books, Mr. Williams’s promotions are a departure, with plugs for items like a fleece blanket with arms called the Toasty Wrap. “Are they a leap?” Mr. Williams said. “Let’s take a look at it. I watched ‘The View’ the other day, and they’re passing out iPods.” “I don’t think it’s a leap at all, because he’s identifying problems the American public are having,” Mr. Mirchandani said. The problem the Toasty Wrap solved, he said, was one of high heating bills. Mr. Williams said he was careful about choosing which products to endorse. “These are products that can make peoples’ lives either easier or help them live well,” he said. “People right now are figuring out how to make ends meet,” he said, adding that he tried to price his products reasonably. They range from $19.95 to $199. He took exception to a suggestion that a $199 blender was not a necessity in a tough economy. “If you change your diet and eat more vegetables and fruits, you can change your health,” he said. “The truth is, when you say you don’t need something like a juicer, a juicer is what’s kept me alive.” Though this would seem a difficult time to sell products, infomercial companies tend to do well during recessions, said A. J. Khubani, the chief executive of a rival infomercial production firm, Telebrands. His company has set sales records in the last three months, he said. Mr. Khubani said he thought it was because advertising time had become inexpensive, which means he can run ads more frequently. And when unemployment is high, he said, people have more time to watch television. The infomercial that was taped last week was intended to sell two of Mr. Williams’s books about depression. Producers had filled the audience with beauticians from Staten Island, sales representatives from Mary Kay, and with men and women who had responded to ticket offers on Essence.com , a site devoted to black women, among other places. The offer did not state the tickets were for an infomercial; instead, it described a “limited TV engagement” for Mr. Williams that would “focus on issues concerning men, women and families.” Mr. Williams is using many of the same tactics that he did on “The Montel Williams Show,” which ran for 17 years, produced and syndicated by CBS. During that time, he was criticized for exploiting guests. On many days, he revealed the results of paternity tests on the air. In one episode, the show featured a woman telling her sister that she had been sleeping with the sister’s boyfriend of 14 years. “There’s not one of them I’m not proud of,” he said. “I don’t know about putting people in vulnerable positions on national television. I never paid a guest.” (His show did pay the betrayed sister a settlement after she sued for $10 million.) Last week, the audience seemed excited to be in Mr. Williams’s presence. Men and women were nodding, rocking and murmuring as he exhorted them to think positively. His voice rising, he told the audience members to close their eyes and talk to themselves, aloud, about a special moment in their lives. Almost everyone complied. “Appreciate who the heck you are!” Mr. Williams shouted, to applause. “Thank God he gave you a chance to wake up!” A moment later, he mentioned he would be selling his two books for the price of one on that day’s episode. Charlie James III, of Tacoma, Wash., was in the audience because his son’s mother was waiting backstage to talk to Mr. Williams about her depression, he said. He had wanted to appear on the infomercial, too, “to help people with the same problem,” he said. The fact that the production was selling products did not bother him, he said. “Everyone’s got to make money somehow,” Mr. James said. “It’s better to make it trying to help people than not so.” Product placement has its share of critics, who worry that advertising has too much influence on the content of television programming. Now that Mr. Williams is promoting products not just for ratings but for profits — and using real people with real problems to help sell those products — critics have raised questions about disclosure and ethics. The blurring of lines between television advertising and television entertainment has concerned advocates like Robert Weissman, the managing director of Commercial Alert, a Washington group that has lobbied for stricter regulation of product placement. “One issue is the deception issue, and whether viewers sufficiently understand that they’re watching an advertisement, even if it’s an entertaining advertisement,” Mr. Weissman said. He said he was also troubled by people discussing their problems on this kind of program. “These people, it sounds like, are being exploited,” he said. Carol Bernstein, the vice president of the American Psychiatric Association and an associate professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine, said that issue was also of concern to her. It might “devalue patients who have these illnesses and make it seem like it’s just part of a commodity,” she said. “That’s really a social and societal question. Personally, I would find that offensive. I don’t think this is something that is really appropriate for marketing.” Mr. Mirchandani said he hoped that by spring, stores like Costco and Wal-Mart would be selling the Living Well branded products, though he had not yet approached those retailers. Mr. Williams said he could envision a Living Well network, or Living Well aisles in stores. He objected to the notion that his latest venture was solely commercial. “I’m dedicated to helping people,” he said. “Too often we do things because our motivation is in the wrong direction.” While the infomercial is not a charity effort, he said, “neither was ‘The Montel Williams Show.’ Believe me, CBS made an inordinate amount of money,” he said. “I’ve promoted product from here to eternity for CBS and I didn’t share in the profits,” he said. “The entire move of the media has been to push people in this direction.” | Williams Montel;Television;Product Placement;Advertising and Marketing |
ny0203312 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2009/08/09 | New Jersey: Trying to Put Safety First | New Jersey schools provided daily transportation to 831,062 students — or nearly 60 percent of the school-age population — last year, up 7.5 percent from 2000, according to state education statistics. Under state law, New Jersey’s 603 districts are required to bus elementary and middle school students who live more than two miles from school, and high school students who live more than 2.5 miles away. But many districts go beyond those minimum requirements, particularly in rural areas or suburbs with busy roads. Last year, courtesy busing, as service provided beyond the required minimums is known, accounted for nearly one in three passengers. Districts received $293.9 million in state aid last year to pay for required busing (courtesy busing is not covered), and will receive $352 million this year because of a more generous school funding formula. Frank Belluscio, a spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association, said that every year at least some school districts revisit the issue of courtesy busing during budget negotiations, and may place it on the ballot for a vote. In recent years, voters in some districts have chosen to maintain the supplemental bus services, while others have reduced it. “It stirs up strong sentiments, and it’s always controversial because when it comes to student safety, parents and boards of education want to err on the side of safety,” Mr. Belluscio said. “But there are also financial realities that have to be considered.” WINNIE HU | Education and Schools;New Jersey;Buses |
ny0032713 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2013/12/18 | British Panel Narrows Options for Expanding Airport Capacity | LONDON — A government-appointed panel kicked the can down the road on Tuesday, declining to eliminate competing choices over how to create new runway capacity for southeastern England. The coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron, a Conservative, and the Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, has made it clear that it would not make a choice on the contentious issue until after the next general election in spring 2015. They do not want to face the voters’ unhappiness if they choose to expand Heathrow Airport, with only two runways and running at 98 percent capacity, with a third runway, so are leaving the real choice to the next government. The Airports Commission’s preliminary report ruled out only the least likely options, which would be to expand Stansted, Luton or Birmingham airports. It said that Britain would need one new runway in the southeast by 2030 to keep up with aviation capacity demands, with a second likely to be needed by 2050. The most viable options, the panel said, include a new runway at Heathrow, the extension of an existing runway at Heathrow to allow takeoffs and landings, and a new runway at Gatwick. But the panel did not exclude the most ambitious and expensive idea, promoted by the London mayor, Boris Johnson, Mr. Cameron’s rival, to build an entirely new airport east of London in the estuary of the River Thames, and transform Heathrow into new housing for a crowded London. The commission will study that option in the first half of 2014, the report said, and “will reach a view later next year on whether that option offers a credible proposal for consideration alongside the other shortlisted options.” The discussion has provoked conflicting concerns about the environment, noise and competitiveness in an era when other European centers like Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam have increased their number of runways in the contest to provide hub services. Those living near Heathrow oppose a new runway and also oppose shutting down the airport where many of them work. The ideas for Heathrow would involve either building a 3,800-yard runway to the northwest of the airport or extending an existing runway to 6,500 yards, enabling it to function as two runways. Speaking on the BBC on Tuesday, Mr. Johnson said that rival proposals for a third runway at Heathrow would “entrench a huge planning error,” adding, “We’re not dead yet.” Apart from Heathrow and Gatwick, London is served by Stansted, Luton and City airports. Sir Howard Davies, the head of the commission, said in his report that the British capital currently enjoyed “excellent connectivity.” Capacity “is not yet critical but it will become so if no action is taken soon, and our analysis clearly supports the provision of one net additional runway by 2030,” the report said, while urging more “efficiency” in current airport use. The current government abandoned the 2010 plans of the previous Labour government for a third runway at Heathrow, while the current Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband, who had opposed a third Heathrow runway, now has said he recognizes the need for more capacity but is neutral for now about where. Heathrow this year will handle about 71.6 million passengers, 31.8 percent of the passengers at all British airports. But any delay because of weather or accident creates enormous backlogs. Gatwick is about half as busy. The latest proposal for an estuary airport foresees six runways to be built in seven years, able to handle 172 million passengers annually. Colin Matthews, the chief executive of Heathrow, said, “It’s good news for the U.K. economy that the commission is recognizing the need for connections.” But John Stewart, chairman of the Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise , which opposes expansion at the airport, said the proposals would act as “the trigger to 18 months of intense campaigning against Heathrow expansion.” Mr. Johnson said a second runway at Gatwick would be the “least injurious” in terms of environmental damage but would not make “a bean of difference” to the capital’s fortunes. Gatwick has said it would not be able to expand if Heathrow got another runway, however. In a reflection of the longstanding fight over runways, Georgia Wrighton of the Campaign to Protect Rural England said, “A second runway at Gatwick, together with sprawling development and urbanization anticipated on a massive scale, would concrete over cherished open countryside.” | Airport;Conservative Party;Howard Davies;Boris Johnson;London;Great Britain;River Thames England |
ny0010645 | [
"sports"
] | 2013/02/09 | Natalie Geisenberger of Germany Seals Luge World Cup Title | Natalie Geisenberger of Germany clinched the overall luge World Cup title by beating the American Julia Clukey by 0.295 of a second at Mount Van Hoevenberg in Lake Placid, N.Y. The world champions Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt of Germany won the doubles title. | World Cup Skiing;Luge;Natalie Geisenberger;Julia Clukey |
ny0163822 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2006/02/14 | Fire Kills Man, 71, a Popular Bronx Presence | With his broad mustache and big grin, John Pye was a familiar presence in the Tremont section of the Bronx, where he lived all his life. He ran the hardware store, made a daily appearance at the Cross Town Diner and was active in the Sons of Italy. "He was the mayor of Tremont," said Alfonso Cruz, 43, his next-door neighbor. "He knew everyone." Early yesterday, a fire tore through Mr. Pye's vinyl-sided house, at 1065 Revere Avenue, rousing his family members from sleep and forcing them into the street. Mr. Pye, 71, an Army veteran who walked with a cane, never made it out. Investigators have yet to determine the cause of the blaze, although they said that the fire was not considered suspicious. The fire was reported at 5:19 a.m. and under control less than two hours later. Eight firefighters were taken to Jacobi Medical Center with minor injuries. Mr. Pye, fire officials and family members say, died trying to extinguish the flames that were consuming the three-story home. His wife, Suzanne, said she woke up to the smell of smoke and was greeted by a wall of fire when she opened her bedroom door. After waking her son, John, and her brother, Vincent Mileto, Ms. Pye and her son made their way out of the burning house. The two older men briefly tried to fight the blaze before the flames became too intense. Liane Pye-Legath, 34, said her father was an avid joke teller whose gait had been made wobbly by a knee injury. Mr. Pye's second home was P & P Building Supply, a Bronx hardware store started by his mother that closed a few years ago. "He really took care of us all," said Ms. Pye-Legath, who stood yesterday in front of the 93-year-old house where she grew up, now a charred ruin. "He loved to talk to people." | NEW YORK CITY;BRONX (NYC);PYE JOHN;FIRES AND FIREFIGHTERS |
ny0229998 | [
"us"
] | 2010/09/27 | An Arizona Act of Kindness, Leaving Water for Immigrants, or an Offense? | BUENOS AIRES NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Ariz. — In this remote, semidesert landscape along the United States-Mexico border, water is a precious commodity — and a contentious one, too. Two years ago, Daniel J. Millis was ticketed for littering after he was caught by a federal Fish and Wildlife officer placing gallon jugs of water for passing immigrants in the brush of this 118,000-acre preserve. “I do extreme sports, and I know I couldn’t walk as far as they do,” said Mr. Millis, driving through the refuge recently. “It’s no surprise people are dying.” Mr. Millis, 31, was not the only one to get a ticket. Fourteen other volunteers for Tucson-based organizations that provide aid to immigrants crossing from Mexico to the United States were similarly cited. Most of the cases were later dropped, but Mr. Millis and another volunteer for a religious group called No More Deaths were convicted of defacing the refuge with their water jug drops. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit weighed in on Mr. Millis’s appeal this month, ruling that it was “ambiguous as to whether purified water in a sealed bottle intended for human consumption meets the definition of ‘garbage.’ ” Voting 2-to-1, a three-judge panel overturned Mr. Millis’s conviction. The issue remains far from settled, though. The court ruled that Mr. Millis probably could have been charged under a different statute, something other than littering. And the Fish and Wildlife Service continues to forbid anyone to leave gallon jugs of water in the refuge — a policy backed by this state’s immigration hardliners, who say comforting immigrants will only encourage them to cross. From 2002 to 2009, 25 illegal immigrants died while passing through the refuge’s rolling hills, which are flanked by mountains and are home to pronghorns, coyotes, rattlesnakes and four different kinds of skunks. Throughout southern Arizona, the death toll totaled 1,715 from 2002 to 2009, with this year’s hot temperatures putting deaths at a record-breaking pace. The Border Patrol has installed rescue beacons in remote areas along the border, including several in the Buenos Aires refuge, to allow immigrants in distress to call for help. Those who are injured and have been left behind by their guides are often so desperate they no longer fear deportation. Still, the federal government has acknowledged that additional steps are needed to keep deaths down on its land. In 2001, it gave another aid group, Humane Borders , a permit to keep several large water drums on the refuge, each of them marked by a blue flag and featuring a spigot to allow immigrants to fill their water bottles for the long trek north. Last year, the government considered but ultimately decided against allowing No More Deaths to tether gallon jugs to trees to allow immigrants in more remote areas to drink without taking the jugs on their way. Right now, even after the court decision, there is what amounts to a standoff. This month, the federal government said it was willing to allow more 55-gallon drums on main pathways in the refuge. It said it would not permit any gallon jugs. But the water jugs continue to appear. Last week, Gene Lefebvre, a retired minister who co-founded No More Deaths, hiked along a path popular among immigrants until he reached a clearing where volunteers for his organization had recently left some jugs. Each bottle had markings on it noting the date it was left and the exact location on the group’s GPS mapping software. There were also signs of encouragement for the immigrants: a heart and a cross on one bottle and the words, “Good luck, friends,” on another. “We’d give water to anyone we found in the desert, even the Border Patrol,” Mr. Lefebvre said. But opponents say the water drops are encouraging immigrants to continue to come across the border illegally. The critics say there ought to be Border Patrol agents stationed near the water stations to arrest those who are crossing illegally as soon as they finish drinking. So furious are some at the practice of aiding immigrants that they have slashed open the water jugs, crushed them with their vehicles or simply poured the water into the desert. The Buenos Aires refuge is among the most troubled of the 551 refuge areas across the country, the federal government says. The reason is its location, adjacent to the border. “Since its establishment in 1985, refuge staff have worked diligently to protect species such as the endangered masked bobwhite quail and pronghorn, as well as offer meaningful visitor recreational opportunities,” a recently released government report on the water controversy said. “However, over the past decade an increasing amount of refuge time and energy has been required to address the growing issue of illegal traffic entering the U.S. across refuge lands.” In 2006 and 2007, an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 illegal immigrants crossed the refuge annually, along with Border Patrol agents pursing them, federal officials say. “As a result, refuge lands have been marred by illegal trails and roads, litter and degraded habitat,” said a government report on the problem. The numbers have dropped in recent years, to 31,500 in 2008 and about 20,000 in 2009. “This still averages approximately 50 to 60 illegal immigrants traveling through the refuge daily,” the government report said. Mr. Millis, a former high school Spanish teacher who now works for the Sierra Club, disputes the notion that leaving out water jugs is luring more immigrants. He said it was border enforcement efforts that had pushed those seeking to cross into dangerous desert areas. As for spoiling the environment, he said he collected as many jugs as he left behind. He also recounts how he found the dead body of a 14-year-old Salvadoran girl near the refuge days before he was ticketed. “People are part of the environment,” he said. | Water;Illegal Immigrants;Arizona;Mexico;No More Deaths |
ny0011640 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2013/02/22 | Hyderabad, India, Hit by Deadly Bombings | NEW DELHI — Two bombs on Thursday killed at least 13 people and wounded about 70 in a busy shopping district in the southern city of Hyderabad at the height of the evening rush hour, the largest terrorist bombing in India since September 2011. Sushil Kumar Shinde, India’s home affairs minister, said the central government had warned state governments that such an attack was planned. “We have had some information for the last two days of such an incident,” he said. Hyderabad, one of India’s largest cities and a leading center of the country’s growing pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, has faced other such attacks in recent years, usually linked to sectarian friction. The sites of the blasts — in the Dilsukhnagar neighborhood, packed with shops, restaurants, theaters and a huge produce market — were quickly mobbed by protesters, reporters, curious onlookers, and politicians and their entourages. Video on television news in the hours after the bombings showed chaotic scenes, with some investigators trying to find the remains of the explosive devices, which were planted on bicycles, while huge numbers of people jostled for space around them. Mr. Shinde, speaking to journalists in New Delhi, said that the bicycles were almost 500 feet away from each other and that the bombs detonated about 10 minutes apart, killing eight at one site and three at the other. But he forewarned that the toll could rise, and it did so, with 13 reported dead by midnight. In a Twitter message , Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, “This is a dastardly attack, the guilty will not go unpunished.” They and other officials sought to diminish the chances of the kind of sectarian rioting that has long plagued the country. Image Asked in a news conference if he believed that Muslim extremists were to blame for Thursday’s blasts, Mr. Shinde said, “We have to investigate. We should not come to conclusion immediately.” In another Twitter message , Mr. Singh said: “I appeal to the public to remain calm and maintain peace.” Asaduddin Owaisi, a Muslim member of Parliament from Hyderabad, called the blasts “cowardly.” “I feel that the priority is to maintain peace,” he said. “Let us not fall prey to rumors.” The crush of government officials where the blasts took place, along with their large entourages and their own police squads, was portrayed by the news channel NDTV as particularly unhelpful. The money and resources spent on protecting government officials and politicians has become a source of increasing controversy in India, especially when security for ordinary people is lacking, as was underscored recently by a highly publicized gang rape case in December in New Delhi. Indian politicians, like those elsewhere, often compete with one another to show who is tougher on acts of terrorism and other crimes. “We’ve seen political leaders come into the area and hold press conferences,” an NDTV anchor said. “That’s the last thing they should be doing.” Nallari Kiran Kumar Reddy, the chief minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh, where Hyderabad is, held a news conference away from the scene late Thursday night and asked people to stay away from the blast areas. Renuka Chowdhury, a leader of the Indian National Congress Party, pleaded with other politicians to stay away as well. “I really wish politicians would recognize this,” Ms. Chowdhury said. The bombings in recent years in Hyderabad have often used homemade explosives. In May 2007, 13 people died after a bomb went off at the Mecca Masjid, a mosque there, including some who were killed in clashes between the police and Muslim protesters afterward. In August 2007, a pair of synchronized explosions tore through two popular gathering spots in Hyderabad, killing at least 42 people and wounding dozens. In the hours after the blast, police found and defused 19 more bombs, left at bus stops, theaters, pedestrian bridges and intersections. In New Delhi in September 2011, a briefcase exploded near the high court, killing at least 12 people and injuring scores. | Bombs;India;Hyderabad India |
ny0227647 | [
"technology"
] | 2010/07/04 | Services Monitor Children’s Activities Online | FEAR can be good for business. Just ask the multibillion-dollar insurance industry, for example. Or companies like LifeLock and TrustedID, which monitor people’s credit reports for fraudulent transactions to protect against identity theft . So it comes as no surprise that, after years of headlines and horror stories about predators, cyberbullies and other dangers to children online, a crop of subscription services has emerged to help parents monitor their child’s activities on social networks. These start-ups aim to distinguish themselves from the older category of software products like NetNanny. Such products sit on a user’s hard drive, primarily to block various Web sites. The new companies include SafetyWeb , based in Denver; SocialShield , of San Mateo, Calif.; and MyChild , a service of ReputationDefender, in Redwood City, Calif. These services scour the Web to create easily digestible reports for parents of everything a child is doing online. The companies charge for subscriptions; the lowest costs $10 a month or $100 a year. For harried parents, the question is: Are they worth it? Certainly not for people who are Web-savvy. The services gather data that can be freely collected with a bit of ardent Web searching. But many parents are overworked and generally overwhelmed by the rapid pace of technological change and the continuing introduction of social Web sites. For these people, a simple Internet cheat sheet on their child — even at $100 a year — could be a useful tool. I tested two of the monitoring services, SafetyWeb and SocialShield, on myself, various family members and a baby sitter and found the reports to be a bit unpolished. Both start by asking for a few pieces of information about a child, including his or her e-mail address and the family’s physical address. Then they look through various social networks, checking to see where the child has accounts and, where possible, monitoring what the child writes and what others write about the child. Long lists of a child’s online activities emerge, some marked as safe, some as potentially dangerous. Other items are explicitly red-flagged, like a Facebook friend who is considerably older, or a posting with a keyword like “kill” or “suicide.” As you can imagine, there are plenty of reports about innocuous accounts on sites like Amazon and false alarms (“the band killed last night”), for which the companies do not apologize. “If it’s good, we’ll tell you about it and if it’s something to be concerned about, we will tell you as well,” said Geoffrey Arone, chief of SafetyWeb. It may seem that there is something of a creepy, cyberstalking element to all of this. But the services look only for material that is publicly available, which is part of their value: many kids, especially teenagers, need constant reminding that what they post online may be viewed not only by their parents but later by colleges and employers. When it comes to Facebook, often the center of children’s online lives, SafetyWeb takes a more discreet and privacy-respecting approach. It asks parents to link their Facebook account to the service, assuming that they are friends with the child on the site. If a parent is not a Facebook friend of the child, SafetyWeb can do little more than record the existence of the child’s account. By contrast, SocialShield asks the child, not the parent, to link his or her Facebook account to the monitoring service. That gives SocialShield constant access to a child’s Facebook account, even if the child and parent are not friends. That ends up being a more thorough approach, but it may also be more intrusive. The service collects more information, but the child typically knows about the monitoring. Because SocialShield is in the business of finding red flags, it is worth noting that the firm has something of a red flag itself. The company said that one of its consultants is Robert Maynard Jr., a co-founder of LifeLock. Mr. Maynard resigned from LifeLock in 2007, after it became known that he had previously agreed to be banned for life from the credit repair industry amid Federal Trade Commission allegations of deceptive practices at one of his past companies. Arad Rostampour, a co-founder of SocialShield, said that Mr. Maynard was not an investor or a board member but had helped the company to market the service over radio and television. Neither service can offer truly comprehensive protection from threats like cyberbullying. They miss private e-mail exchanges between children, as well as anything that happens over a cellphone. The companies say they are working on mobile components, although for technological and legal reasons, they cannot peek into text messages , a major channel of communication among teenagers. PARRY AFTAB, executive director of WiredSafety , a group that educates about online safety, says the services are no substitute for good parenting techniques, like frequent conversations about Internet activities. “I don’t think they work terribly well, and I think they are far too expensive for what they do,” she said. She also worries that these new companies may have a commercial interest in stoking exaggerated fear about child safety, in an effort to sell more subscriptions. The companies vow to avoid that. “We are not trying to do any fear-mongering,” said Roger Lee, a partner at Battery Ventures , which recently invested in SafetyWeb. “Parents don’t need SafetyWeb and anyone else to scare them. They hear about these heartbreaking situations already. We are just trying to give them a product to help solve the problem.” | Computers and the Internet;Parenting;Social Networking (Internet);Children and Youth |
ny0203987 | [
"sports",
"cricket"
] | 2009/08/12 | Pakistan Tries Its Luck With an Unlikely Captain | Sports may specialize in tales of the improbable, but there are still some things you just don’t expect to see happen. On Wednesday, Shahid Afridi will captain Pakistan’s cricketers in a Twenty20 international against Sri Lanka in Colombo. Think Michael Vick becoming president of the Humane Society of the United States, or Manchester United’s manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, being awarded the Freedom of Liverpool. Of course not all national cricket captains are straight arrows like England’s Andrew Strauss. Should Afridi last very long in his new role, there is a good chance he will find himself tossing for innings with Ricky Ponting of Australia, whose issues with alcohol and betting once threatened to capsize his career. Afridi, 29, has had a career whose colorfulness is eclipsed among current players only by his turbulent erstwhile Pakistan teammate Shoaib Akhtar. Afridi’s extensive rap sheet includes a four-match ban for insulting opponents and a match umpire; a dressing room dispute with his captain and vice captain over his place in Pakistan’s batting order; sanctions after a girl was found in his room — his explanation that she was seeking his autograph was not accepted — and being fingered as the provocateur two years ago when Akhtar finally lost it and struck a teammate with a bat. There was a brief, mysterious and never fully explained retirement from test cricket three years ago, and as recently as last year the Indian star Vangipurappu Laxman, his captain in the first Indian Premier League tournament, complained that “Afridi has no team ethics.” That he has survived at all is because of his exceptional talent. A dull or mediocre player — admittedly not a type often seen in Pakistan teams — would have been discarded long ago. That Afridi is anything but dull or mediocre was made abundantly clear in his first international innings as a 16-year-old. Not for him the diffident, deferential entrance. Playing against Sri Lanka in Nairobi he struck bowlers who included the world-class Muttiah Muralitharan and Chaminda Vaas for 100 runs from only 37 deliveries, still the fastest century ever struck in a one-day international. He is also fourth on the list, with a violent 45-ball assault on India in 2005. He has continued his career in that vein as the most destructive batsman around. He averages 111 runs per 100 balls, easily the fastest among those who have scored more than 1,000 runs, in one-day internationals. He also bowls fast, attacking wrist spin and is a fine fielder in a team often lacking in this respect. The problem has been lack of consistency and judgment, overconfidently audacious stroke play that often costs his wicket when restraint would have produced better results. That he has played only 26 five-day tests in 11 years since his debut, and none in the last three, reflects the exasperation he has induced in captains and selectors. His attributes might, though, have been designed with the Twenty20 format in mind. He bestrode this year’s World T20 tournament in England with both bat and ball, his innings in the semifinal and final taking Pakistan to its victory. Along with his brilliance, there was a fresh sense of him as a team man. When the 17-year-old paceman Mohammad Aamer beat the dangerous South African batsman Jacques Kallis in the semifinal, only to see the ball fly off the edge of the bat for four runs, it was Afridi who ran 20 meters to put an arm around his team-mate and encourage more of the same. Much of the credit was due to Pakistan’s captain, Younis Khan, who reminded Afridi of his importance to the team but also counseled patience in his batting, pointing out that he did not need to strike every single ball for four or six. Khan’s retirement from T20 created the opening for Afridi to step up. He has some experience of leadership in domestic cricket, and there may be a hint of his likely style in his criticisms of Shoaib Malik, Pakistan’s captain before Khan, for not being tough enough with his players. It might be a short-lived experiment or could be the prelude to his stepping onto the big stage at some point should Khan, still one-day and test captain, lose form or fall victim to Pakistan’s ever-Byzantine cricket politics. But whether it lasts a day or a decade, Afridi’s tenure as Pakistan captain is unlikely to be dull. After all, nothing else in his career has been. | Cricket;Pakistan;Sri Lanka |
ny0223195 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2010/11/19 | N.Y.U. Scraps Plan for Tower in Greenwich Village | New York University abandoned plans to build the tallest tower in Greenwich Village on Thursday after the influential architect I. M. Pei made his opposition known, and is now proposing to build a shorter but bulkier building on a different site. N.Y.U. had sought approval from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to add a 38-story tower to the three-building Silver Towers complex that Mr. Pei designed 46 years ago. The new building, which was to feature a 240-room hotel on the first 15 floors, was part of the university’s ambitious plan to add six million square feet of classrooms, dormitories and offices over the next two decades to its Greenwich Village campus and on Governors Island, Downtown Brooklyn and the East Side of Manhattan. But local residents and preservationists vehemently opposed adding a fourth tower to the original three-tower modernist design, and Mr. Pei’s approval was seen as important in winning the landmark commission’s ratification. N.Y.U. said the architect, who is 93, originally had no qualms about the plan, but now had second thoughts. Instead, the university will file plans with the city to erect a 17-story building on the site of the Morton Williams supermarket, property N.Y.U. already owns at LaGuardia Place and Bleecker Street. The structure would include a hotel and faculty housing, and although shorter, it will be about as large as the scuttled building at 225,000 square feet. “Mr. Pei has now had a change of heart,” said Lynne Brown, N.Y.U.’s senior vice president. “The clarity Mr. Pei has now provided — that the Morton Williams site is ‘preferable’ — is helpful to us in understanding how to proceed.” But Mr. Pei’s longtime colleague, Henry N. Cobb, disputed N.Y.U.’s account of Mr. Pei’s flip-flop. Mr. Pei, who has been retired for 20 years, did meet with N.Y.U. officials in 2008, Mr. Cobb said, but “he didn’t make any comment on the substance of the proposal.” Since that meeting, the Silver Towers complex was certified as a New York City landmark. “I wasn’t present,” said Mr. Cobb, adding that Mr. Pei had asked him to speak on his behalf. “I think everybody’s in agreement that I. M. Pei did not comment on the proposal at that time. The interpretation of his silence is what’s at issue.” N.Y.U. stood by its account. “If opposition had been expressed at that meeting, we would not have brought the proposal forward,” said John Beckman, a spokesman for the university. “The change of heart came as a surprise.” In any event, writing on behalf of Mr. Pei and himself, Mr. Cobb sent letters on Nov. 10 to both N.Y.U. and the landmarks commission expressing opposition to the tower. And the two architects were not that thrilled with the university’s alternative 17-story building either. They described it as “unattractive,” but “nonetheless preferable” to the 38-story tower. The university plans to seek certain zoning changes through the city’s land use review process in order to build on the supermarket site, where there are currently height restrictions and prohibitions on new construction, possibly until 2021. N.Y.U. would have had to go through the same process to build the taller tower. Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, said Thursday that he was “deeply gratified that in the face of overwhelming opposition, including from architect I. M. Pei, N.Y.U. has chosen to withdraw its plans for landmarks approval for a 400-foot-tall tower in the Silver Towers complex.” “However,” he added, “N.Y.U.’s insistence on moving ahead with seeking public approvals for its alternative plans for a development on the adjacent nonlandmarked supermarket site, as well as the remainder of its massive N.Y.U. 2031 expansion plan to add two million square feet of space around Washington Square Park, shows that the university still does not get it.” | New York University;Architecture;Landmarks Preservation Commission;Greenwich Village (NYC);Pei I M |
ny0143715 | [
"sports",
"basketball"
] | 2008/10/02 | Detroit Shock Triumphs in W.N.B.A. Finals Opener | SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Katie Smith and Taj McWilliams-Franklin helped Detroit take a first step toward reclaiming the W.N.B.A. title by leading the Shock to a 77-69 victory over the San Antonio Silver Stars on Wednesday night in Game 1 of the finals. Smith scored 25 points and McWilliams-Franklin had 24. Game 2 of the best-of-five series is Friday in San Antonio. The Silver Stars, who lost to an Eastern Conference team for the first time this season after 14 wins, were led by Sophia Young’s 21 points and 16 from Ann Wauters. San Antonio’s Becky Hammon, who scored 35 points in the decisive Game 3 of the Western Conference finals on Sunday, scored 13 points on 4-of-10 shooting Wednesday. Smith’s jumper from 19 feet with 8 minutes 19 seconds to play gave Detroit a 14-point lead. But the Silver Stars outscored the Shock by 20-6 in the next six minutes. But Kara Braxton scored inside and was fouled. She missed the free throw, but Detroit rebounded and Smith sank a jumper to make it 73-69 with 1:44 left. The Shock hit four free throws to close out the game. | Women's National Basketball Assn;Basketball;San Antonio Silver Stars;Detroit Shock;Smith Katie (1974- ) |
ny0186193 | [
"nyregion",
"thecity"
] | 2009/03/15 | School of Visual Arts Offers Dorm, Maybe Homework, for Some | TWO weeks ago, a curious short-term listing appeared on the Web site of Citi Habitats, a real estate company. The rooms advertised were on the Lower East Side, started at $1,600 a month, and were available through July 29. Selling points include all utilities, Internet service, 24-hour security, bathrooms shared by two suites and a large communal kitchen and laundry. But these were not the standout features. The rooms were in a new residence hall of the School of Visual Arts, and halfway down the ad was this unusual perk: “You will also be enrolled in a Continuing Ed class as part of the deal!” Since the 20-story residence hall, at Ludlow and Delancey Streets, was not completed in time for the spring semester, the school decided to rent out its 306 rooms to the public throughout the spring and summer, until the degree students arrived in the fall. “It’s a nice place for a short-term stay,” said Michael Grant, the school’s director of communications. “Completely brand-new. It offers a lot for someone who’s not in a position to have an apartment. In business-speak, it’s added value to have this course as part of your lease.” The course offered will be Background Essentials for Film History, to be taught by Gene Stavis, a film teacher at the school for 30 years. Rooms come in singles, doubles and triples, with floors of shining gray linoleum. The spaces are sunny, furnished with brown, institutional-style desks and chairs, along with a microwave and a minifridge. Some have bunk beds, and each has a bathroom shared with its neighbor. The listing caught the attention of the real estate blog Curbed. “New LES Dorm FOR RENT, Education at No Additional Charge!” wrote Joey Arak, the site’s senior editor. But in Mr. Arak’s opinion, the high-rise overwhelms the neighborhood, and he questioned the value of the deal. “With the trends right now in the rental market,” he said, “you can do a lot better than paying $1,600 for a room with hundreds of people crammed into a grim-looking building. And it’s not like you actually have to go to the class. You’re just enrolled in it.” Nonetheless, the School of Visual Arts hopes not only to rent the rooms, but perhaps to hook potential new students who might not otherwise have considered S.V.A. As of Wednesday, no rooms had been rented, but James Pirot, the school’s executive director of facilities, said he had received some inquiries. “It’s a brand-new building,” Mr. Pirot said. “Come on. Who wants to be No. 1?” | School of Visual Arts;Education and Schools;Renting and Leasing;Housing and Real Estate |
ny0295509 | [
"sports",
"cricket"
] | 2016/12/16 | Women’s Cricket Gains in Numbers and Visibility, but Gender Gaps Remain | As in most sports, women’s cricket has long been overshadowed by the men’s game, but there are signs that that is changing. In a window into the growing popularity and self-confidence of women’s cricket, Cricket Australia cleared the men’s schedule last weekend for the beginning of the second season of the Women’s Big Bash League, a Twenty20 cricket tournament. The strategy worked. A match between the Sydney Thunder and the Melbourne Stars was shown on prime-time television Saturday night and peaked at 637,000 viewers , surpassing the previous season’s highest figure. Average viewing figures for matches on the opening weekend were almost half as high as for the recent Australia-New Zealand men’s one-day international series. This year, all 47 Women’s Big Bash League matches are being streamed online, with 12 matches being broadcast on Australian TV. Australia has long established itself as the world leader in women’s cricket, on the field and off. Since 2009, Australia has won four out of five International Cricket Council global events. There has been a 266 percent rise in maximum cricket earnings for women since 2011-12, and the top Australian players are now paid more than $100,000 a year. The soaring popularity of the Big Bash League also reflects broader advances in the women’s game. In March, India hosted the men’s and women’s world championships in Twenty20 cricket, simultaneously. The International Cricket Council paid for all men’s teams to fly business class, but women had to fly economy class. But next summer, when England hosts the Women’s World Cup, the I.C.C. will pay for all teams to travel business class. In another landmark decision, women will be entitled to the same daily expenses as men, which “demonstrates how seriously the women’s game is treated now,” said Heather Knight, the England captain. There have been other significant developments in women’s cricket in recent months. The West Indies became the first team from outside Australia, England or New Zealand to win the Twenty20 world championship. Ticket sales for the 2017 Women’s World Cup in England, which begins on June 26, are far higher than for previous tournaments there. Last month, Cricket New Zealand chose a female president, the first time that a test nation had elected a woman to the role. In September, Catherine Dalton, an Irish cricketer, became the first woman recruited to coach a professional men’s team. Perhaps most significant, Australia, which has been awarded the men’s and women’s Twenty20 world championships in 2020, has decided to decouple the two events, an indication that Cricket Australia believes that the women’s tournament can thrive on its own. The division “allows the women’s game to stand alone and not be overshadowed by their counterparts,” said James Sutherland, the chief executive of Cricket Australia. While women’s cricket, including the Big Bash League, remains subsidized by the men’s game, it has been helped by a history of innovation. The first World Cup and the first Twenty20 international series happened in the women’s game before the men’s, reflecting how the women’s game has often had more dynamic administration and been less encumbered by tradition. In 2014, women’s cricket introduced a league system for one-day international cricket, which the I.C.C. hopes to replicate in the men’s game . Men’s cricket is still attempting to balance the sport’s three formats — Twenty20 matches, which last three hours and are the most popular; one-day internationals, which last eight hours; and Test matches, which last five days — but “member countries of the I.C.C. have agreed that the primary format for the women’s game should be T20,” Sutherland said. The emphasis on Twenty20 cricket, combined with the more merit-based and less hierarchical structure of the women’s game, offers hope that women’s cricket will gain in popularity beyond the sport’s traditional strongholds. The men’s game has historically been divided between the 10 so-called full member nations and 95 other countries, which are associate or affiliate members. But the I.C.C. believes that the women’s game has the best chance of having a successful team emerging from two markets cricket has long dreamed of tapping into: China and the United States. Based on its performances in the qualifiers for the 2016 World Twenty20, China already ranks 14th in the world. Obstacles remain. The rate of progress in the women’s game has been uneven throughout the world. There remains no women’s version of the Indian Premier League, the lucrative Twenty20 league that began in 2008. Bangladesh and Pakistan, two cricket-mad nations, have been much slower to embrace the women’s game. In Sri Lanka, an internal inquiry last year found two officials guilty of sexual harassment, and a third of improper conduct, after players on the women’s national team were asked for sexual favors in exchange for keeping their places. The amounts players are paid also vary widely. Only in Australia and England are salaries high enough for players not to have second jobs along with their cricket careers. Even in Australia, women can sign only one-year national contracts, while men have the security of multiyear deals. This week, it emerged that contracts for the women’s team mandate that signers acknowledge that, to the best of their knowledge, they are not pregnant. The pay gap remains huge between the men’s and women’s game. This year, the West Indies men and women won their world Twenty20 competitions on the same day. The men shared $1.1 million in prize money, but the women received only $70,000. “The game is developing at such a pace that one day this might not even be a question,” Knight said of the gender pay gap. “I don’t think you can put a limit on how big women’s cricket can become.” | Cricket;International Cricket Council;Australia;Women and Girls |
ny0249163 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2011/05/13 | Man Exonerated in Rape Case Has $18.5 Verdict Overturned | A federal judge in Manhattan on Thursday set aside an $18.5 million jury verdict against New York City in a lawsuit filed by a man who spent 22 years in prison for a rape he did not commit. The judge, Shira A. Scheindlin , said that the man, Alan Newton, had not proved that any city employees “withheld evidence in deliberate contravention or disregard of his right to due process.” Mr. Newton, who was found guilty on rape, robbery and assault charges in 1985, spent years pressing the city to find the rape kit and test it. The police finally found it in a warehouse in 2005, and he was freed in 2006 after tests showed that his DNA did not match genetic material taken from the victim after the assault. Judge Scheindlin said that in a lawsuit like Mr. Newton’s, a showing of negligence was not enough. “Notwithstanding grave deficiencies in the city’s evidence management system,” she wrote, “Newton’s due process claim cannot be sustained absent proof that a city official acted with the requisite constitutional culpability in withholding evidence.” City officials said they were pleased. “Although this case involved difficult circumstances,” said Arthur Larkin, the lead city lawyer on the case, “we believe the court ruled correctly on the law in finding that the city did not violate Mr. Newton’s due process rights.” John F. Schutty III, the lawyer who represented Mr. Newton at his trial last year, did not return a call for comment. Judge Scheindlin’s ruling came six months after a federal jury concluded that the city had violated Mr. Newton’s constitutional rights. His lawyers argued that the city had shown a reckless disregard for Mr. Newton’s rights because the system for storing DNA evidence was slipshod. In several passages in her opinion, Judge Scheindlin made clear she was interpreting the case in light of an appeals court ruling issued a month after the trial in Mr. Newton’s lawsuit against the city concluded. Mr. Newton, the judge said, had argued at trial that the city had violated his right to due process because it did not have procedures to safeguard DNA evidence and a defendant’s access to it. She said that in the case decided by the appeals court, state courts had denied the defendant his right to gain access to DNA evidence. In Mr. Newton’s case, she said, the courts “repeatedly granted Newton the right to test the DNA evidence,” but it took years for the police to find the rape kit. | Decisions and Verdicts;Newton Alan;Scheindlin Shira A;Sex Crimes;New York City |
ny0203598 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2009/08/01 | Obama’s Pledge to Tax Only the Rich Can’t Pay for Everything, Analysts Say | WASHINGTON — Behind Democrats’ struggle to pay the $1 trillion 10-year cost of President Obama ’s promise to overhaul the health care system is their collision with another of his well-known pledges: that 95 percent of Americans “will not see their taxes increase by a single dime” during his term. This will not be the last time that the president runs into a conflict between his audacious agenda and his pay-as-you-go guarantee, when only 5 percent of taxpayers are being asked to chip in. Critics from conservative to liberal warn that Mr. Obama has tied his and Congress’s hands on a range of issues, including tax reform and the need to reduce deficits topping $1 trillion a year. “You can only go to the same well so many times,” said Bruce Bartlett, a Treasury official in the Reagan administration. In the budget, Mr. Obama and Congress have already agreed to let the Bush tax cuts for the most affluent expire after 2010, as scheduled, but to extend them for everyone else. The top rates, now 33 percent and 35 percent, will revert to Clinton-era levels of 36 percent and 39.6 percent. The critics do not have a beef with the government’s taking more from the wealthiest Americans, especially given the growing income gap between the rich and everyone else. They object to doing so for health care over other pressing needs. “I want to tax the rich to reduce the deficit,” said Robert D. Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office who heads the Urban Institute, a center-left research group. Similarly, Mr. Bartlett, a conservative analyst who often chastises Republicans for their antitax absolutism, supports overhauling the tax code to raise revenues. As these analysts recognize, taxing the rich has its limits both economically and politically, such that members of Congress are not likely to tap that well again and again. Polls show strong majorities supporting higher taxes on those earning more than $250,000 a year, Mr. Obama’s target group. Yet some Congressional Democrats are fearful of Republicans’ attacks that “soak the rich” tax increases will douse small-business owners, too, even if the number of those affected is far less than Republicans suggest. Also, higher rates like those in the House health care legislation could lead to tax avoidance schemes, reducing the government’s collections and warping business decisions, analysts say. The House measure calls for surtaxes ranging from 1 percent on annual income of $280,000 to 5.4 percent on income of $1 million and more. The millionaires’ surtax would push the top tax rate to 45 percent, the highest since the 1986 tax code overhaul lowered all rates in return for jettisoning a raft of tax breaks for businesses and individuals. But the effective top rate would be higher still, counting the 2.9 percent Medicare payroll tax and state and local income taxes. In the highest-tax states of Oregon, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York and California, it would be 57 percent, according to the conservative Heritage Foundation. In the health debate, Democrats emphasize that they are not just raising taxes on the rich, but cutting spending, too, mostly for Medicare payments to doctors, hospitals and insurance companies. Also, the Democrats say, at least they are trying to pay for the health care initiative, rather than letting the deficit balloon as the Republicans, along with President George W. Bush, did when they created the Medicare prescription drug benefit in 2003. That program will add a projected $803 billion to the national debt in the decade through 2019, according to the White House budget office. “They charged theirs on the government’s credit card,” Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said of the Republicans. Even so, Mr. Obama’s vow to tax only the rich is a variation “of Bush’s policy that nobody has to pay for anything,” said Leonard Burman, a veteran of the Clinton administration Treasury and director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. “Democrats are more worried about the deficits,” Mr. Burman added, but “they put the burden on a tiny fraction of the population that they figure doesn’t vote for them anyway.” Mr. Burman and others recall that in the creation of Social Security and Medicare, Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson insisted that beneficiaries contribute through payroll taxes, both to finance the programs and to give all Americans a vested interest. The same philosophy should apply to seeking universal health coverage, they say. “This idea that everything new that government provides ought to be paid for by the top 5 percent, that’s a basically unstable way of governing,” Mr. Burman said. Mr. Obama recently dismissed concerns that taxing the rich to pay for health care would foreclose that option when he and Congress turn to deficit reduction. “ Health care reform is fiscal reform,” he said. “If we don’t do anything on health care inflation, then we might as well close up shop when it comes to dealing with our long-term debt and deficit problems, because that’s the driver of it — Medicare and Medicaid ,” Mr. Obama said. But his no-new-tax admonition for most Americans even now complicates the behind-the-scenes work of the panel he established to recommend ways to simplify the tax code and raise more revenue. The panel, which is led by Paul A. Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, is to report by Dec. 4. Overhauling the code, as in 1986, generally creates winners and losers across the board; leaving 95 percent of taxpayers unscathed will not be easy. That has already proved true in the health care deliberations. Proposals to raise about $50 billion over 10 years by taxing sugared drinks foundered partly because the levy would hit nearly everyone. And when Congressional leaders opposed Mr. Obama’s chief idea for raising revenues — limiting affluent taxpayers’ deductions — his campaign vow against taxing the middle class made finding an acceptable alternative difficult. While the president endorsed House Democrats’ surtax idea, saying it “meets my principle that it’s not being shouldered by families who are already having a tough time,” he could not embrace a bipartisan Senate proposal to tax employer-provided health benefits above a certain amount. He had criticized a similar idea as a middle-class tax during his presidential campaign. Yet taxing at least the most generous employer-provided plans above a threshold amount would meet two elusive goals for Mr. Obama: It would raise a lot of money and, economists say, cut overall health spending by making consumers more cost-conscious. Administration officials recently began promoting a fallback. Rather than tax individuals, it would single out insurance companies that sell “Cadillac” plans. David Axelrod, a White House strategist, has described the proposal in populist terms, saying it would hit “the $40,000 policies that the head of Goldman Sachs has” and “not impact on the middle class.” That position, analysts predict, cannot hold over time. “There is no way we can pay for health care and the rest of the Obama agenda, plus get our long-term deficits under control, simply by raising taxes on the wealthy,” said Isabel V. Sawhill, a former Clinton administration budget official. “The middle class is going to have to contribute as well.” | Obama Barack;Taxation;Health Insurance and Managed Care;Reform and Reorganization;High Net Worth Individuals |
ny0047299 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2014/11/29 | A Jordanian Spins Comic Book Tales to Counter Terrorist Ideologies | OSLO — SULEIMAN BAKHIT has made a career of studying heroes. Mr. Bakhit, 36, is a Jordanian comic book author and entrepreneur who creates Middle Eastern stories that are an alternative to terrorist ideologies. His field research has included surveys of children in poor neighborhoods in and around the Jordanian capital of Amman and in Syrian refugee camps. All this, he says, has given him an insight into what fuels terrorism, and a specialist’s appreciation for the propaganda strategies of the Islamic State, and how they have improved upon those pioneered by Al Qaeda. Where Osama bin Laden once lectured in didactic videos, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has young jihadists speaking to potential recruits in their native tongues, whether English, French or Arabic, and connecting on an emotional level. They “preach terrorism as a heroic journey,” Mr. Bakhit said in an interview. “The biggest threat in the Middle East is terrorism disguised as heroism.” He says he believes that the terrorist narrative is essentially “copying Joseph Campbell’s work,” referring to the American mythologist. In Mr. Campbell’s view, a heroic journey is central to mythmaking. A hero has to be called to action, perhaps hesitate, then leave home and be tested. Among other things, Mr. Campbell’s work inspired the filmmaker George Lucas to create “Star Wars.” Mr. Bakhit has studied Mr. Campbell as part of his fellowship at TED, a nonprofit organization known for sponsoring conferences on ideas. He expanded on this idea, and his story, during a recent speech at the Oslo Freedom Forum , a gathering of dissidents and activists, and in a series of interviews. “The greatest heroic journey in our culture is the journey of the Prophet Muhammad, who left his village to go meditate in a cave in the middle of the desert,” he said. “He was meditating, and there the archangel came down and gave him the message of Islam. He came out of that cave transformed with a new vision of Islam and united all Arabs around that vision.” “What’s interesting is that Bin Laden emulated that journey to the letter,” he continued. “Bin Laden left his life of wealth and aristocracy in Saudi Arabia, went to the caves in Afghanistan and emerged from these caves a new leader, with a new vision to cleanse the shame of the Muslim nation through violence. Similarly, this is the same message, the heroic message, that they push to all the terrorists in Western Europe who go join ISIS. And this has such a huge appeal for a lot of these youth, unfortunately.” In the Islamic State vision, you win whether you live or die. “You get killed, you’re reunited with the prophet and Allah,” Mr. Bakhit said. “If you don’t, you’re still on your journey.” Mr. Bakhit says he believes that comic books and video games can provide an antidote, coupled with the right storytelling, and he started a company in 2006 called Aranim Media Factory — Aranim being a fusion of the words “Arab” and “anime” — to produce them. But his path has not been easy. IN many ways, Mr. Bakhit is playing out his own Campbellesque journey. Barrel-chested, with a cleanshaven head and a goatee, he certainly looks the part of an action hero. Like many people, he saw his life change on Sept. 11, when he was studying at the University of Minnesota. On the day of the attacks, before he even knew about them, he received a call from his father, Marouf al-Bakhit, a Jordanian politician who went on to serve two times as prime minister. “He says, ‘Suleiman, if anybody asks you your name, tell them you’re José and you’re from Mexico,’ ” he said. “I should have listened to him. Sometime afterwards, I got attacked by a group of men for no other reason than being an Arab.” Image Some of the art by Mr. Bakhit, who taught himself to draw as he prepared to make comic books with Middle Eastern stories. Credit Warrick Page for The New York Times He decided to visit schools in the area to build community relations and explain to American children that most Muslims are not terrorists. When he was asked by a young boy if the Arab world had its own Superman and Batman, he realized the answer was no. He describes the moment as an epiphany. He taught himself how to draw and began creating stories and characters. Eventually, he moved back to Jordan and started his company. Early on, he conducted focus groups with Jordanian children from different economic classes. “I went there and asked the kids, ‘Who are your heroes?’ ” he said. “ ‘We don’t have any heroes, but we hear a lot about Bin Laden, about Zarqawi,’ ” he said they told him, referring to the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who led the group that evolved into the Islamic State. “I’m like, ‘What do you hear about them?’ The children replied, ‘That they defend us against the West because the West is out there to kill us.’ And this is the terrorist narrative and Propaganda 101.” At first, the Jordanian government embraced his company, even though he says his father was less than enthusiastic. “He was initially disappointed, and wanted me to become an engineer,” he said. “Later on, he started to change his mind and see the value in it.” MORE than a million copies of his comic books were distributed in schools in Jordan, he said, and his company received a grant from the King Abdullah II Fund for Development. His early comics were about Jordanian war heroes. Then he began to expand his company’s range, creating stories like the one about an all-women military unit, and he hired web developers to create games for Facebook. One of his most popular characters, Element Zero, was a kind of Arab version of Jack Bauer, the fictional counterterrorism agent in the television series “24.” He says he has not been offered American government support and would not take it. “If I get any funding from the U.S., it’s going to be perceived as propaganda, C.I.A., and doomed to failure,” Mr. Bakhit said. “We as the Arab world, we need to take responsibility for this problem. We have to develop the solutions from the ground up.” Problems developed along the way. An assault by extremists has left a long scar above and below his left eye. And his relationship with the government became strained. After he developed a post-apocalyptic “Mad Max”-style comic called “Saladin 2100,” set almost a century in the future, the government was concerned that it did not show the ruling Hashemite dynasty was still in power. The comic was a collaboration with Tony Lee , the prolific British comic book author. “It was deemed ‘too dangerous’ because I did not answer the question who is going to be the leader 100 years from now,” Mr. Bakhit said. “Now you know why I don’t have any hair.” Eventually, he shut his company as the government’s pressure increased. Many of his comics, including one about a world ruled by teenagers after adults disappear, were left unpublished. Mr. Bakhit weathers his struggles with good humor. Expanding on his baldness, he said, “I have a lot of hair, just really bad distribution.” Of the attack that left him with a scar: “My dating life improved exponentially.” He says the government is softening its stance, and he is in the process of restarting his business with a new name, Hero Factor . But he says he is considering domiciling it in the British Virgin Islands. A spokesman for the Jordanian government did not respond to requests for comment. “For every terrorist we kill, there’s a hundred more being born,” Mr. Bakhit said. The narratives pushed by the likes of the Islamic State are “light years ahead of what we have, and no one is fighting it at that level.” “It is at its core a war of mythologies,” he added, one that can be fought “for a fraction of the cost of a drone strike.” | Suleiman Bakhit;Comic strip;Middle East;Terrorism;Jordan;ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State;Islam;Propaganda |
ny0133789 | [
"business"
] | 2008/03/09 | Coming Soon: Nothing Between You and Your Machine | Menlo Park, Calif. IT has been more than two decades since Scotty tried to use a computer mouse as a microphone to control a Macintosh in “Star Trek IV.” Since then, personal computer users have continued to live under the tyranny of the mice, windows, icons and pull-down menus originally invented at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s and popularized by Apple and Microsoft in the next decade. Last year, however, the arrival of the Nintendo Wii and the Apple iPhone began to break down the logjam in technological innovation for the way humans interact with computers. Both devices extend the idea of directly controlling objects on the screen and blending that ability with visually compelling physics software that brings computer screens to life in new, immersive ways. With a Wii, a wave of the hand can slam a tennis ball in cyberspace; with the iPhone, a flick of a finger can slide a photograph across the screen like paper on a table. The idea of directly manipulating information on a computer screen is almost as old computer graphics terminals, going back at least to 1963, to Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad drawing system he created at M.I.T. for his Ph.D. thesis. Since then, a thriving scientific and engineering discipline has sprung up around systems that bridge what was originally called the man-machine interface. There has been a broad exploration of pointing devices, alternatives to keyboards for entering information, voice-recognition technologies, and even sensors that capture and interact with human brain waves. What is new is a convergence of more powerful and less expensive computer hardware and an inspired set of mostly younger software designers who came of age well past the advent of the original graphical user interface paradigm of the 1970s and ’80s. This new generation is “mostly under 25,” said Joy Mountford, who until last month was vice president for design innovation at an advanced development group at Yahoo. “They come from a world of fluid media, and they multitask at an extraordinary level.” One intriguing example of this new immersive approach to Web navigation is the PicLens software from Cooliris, a 10-person start-up based here. This software plug-in for Web browsers tries to make it possible to navigate, find and share information by directly browsing the images, video and other digital media that are increasingly common on the Web. PicLens currently offers a small icon cue inset in each Web photo that lets users know they are at a site like Facebook, Google or Flickr that can be browsed with the software. Clicking on the icon transports the user away from the conventional page-oriented Web into an immersive browsing environment. The software does away with the browser frame and gives the user the effect of flying through a three-dimensional space that feels like an unending hallway of images. In the future, the Cooliris designers plan to make it possible to browse text and video as well. “I’ve wondered for a long time why the computer interface hasn’t changed from 20 years ago,” said Austin Shoemaker, a former Apple Computer software engineer and now chief technology officer of Cooliris. “People should think of a computer interface less as a tool and more as a extension of themselves or as extension of their mind.” Some of these ideas can be traced back to the 1990s, to work done at the M.I.T. Media Lab. In 2002, a former student there, John Underkoffler, brought the idea of direct manipulation to life in “Minority Report,” the science-fiction movie. (In the movie, Tom Cruise interacts with a wall-size transparent computer display directly with his hands.) More recently, the idea of a multitouch display, where images could be moved or scaled by direct touch, was brought to life both by Jeff Han, a computer science researcher at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University and by W. Daniel Hillis and Bran Ferren, researchers at the consulting firm Applied Minds, who developed a “touch table” world map. The transition to more immersive displays is happening in part because of more powerful computer hardware, but also because of an explosion of more powerful programming tools. These tools offer visual effects that were once within the grasp of only the most skillful programmers to a wide audience with only basic skills. “The old paradigm is breaking down,” said Paul Mercer, senior director of software at Palm Inc. “It used to be that you needed to be a visionary and technologist like Michelangelo, but we’re turning that corner.” INDEED, the more powerful graphics-oriented software has spilled over into the creation of palettes for a new generation of software-oriented artists. One new programming language, Processing, is an extension of Sun’s Java designed specifically for students, artists, designers, researchers and hobbyists who are interested in programming images, animations and interactions. It has been used extensively at “Design and the Elastic Mind,” a digital art exhibition now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Voice, too, is finally beginning to play a significant role as an interface tool in a new generation of consumer-oriented wireless handsets. Many technologists now believe that hunting and pecking on the tiny keyboards of cellphones and P.D.A.’s will quickly give way to voice commands that will return map, text and other data displayed visually on small screens. “We’re on the verge of creating something as compelling as touch, except with voice,” said Mike McCue, general manager of the Tellme subsidiary of Microsoft. The common theme of all of the technologies will be a new kind of immersive experience. “If you’re looking for what’s next after the Web browser, this is it,” said Bill Joy, a partner at the Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, the venture firm that is funding Cooliris. | Apple Inc;Nintendo Company Limited;iPhone;Science and Technology;Computers and the Internet;Design |
ny0222998 | [
"us"
] | 2010/11/17 | Hawaii: Protection Sought for Group of Dolphins | The National Marine Fisheries Service recommended on Tuesday that a small population of dolphins living near Hawaii be placed on the endangered species list. The agency is scheduled to post its recommendation in the Federal Register on Wednesday. The species is called the false killer whale even though it is a dolphin and does not look like a killer whale. An agency study published in August says the group, numbering 150 to 170, is in danger of inbreeding and of being caught on fishing lines. | Endangered and Extinct Species;Hawaii;National Marine Fisheries Service |
ny0223604 | [
"science"
] | 2010/11/09 | Research, as a Business, Is Risky - Science in 2011 | Research, in any field of science, is not the risk-free business that might easily be supposed from the confident promises of scientific spokesmen or the daily reports of new advances. Nature yields her secrets with the greatest unwillingness, and in basic research most experiments contribute little to further progress, as judged by the rarity with which most scientific reports are cited by others. Basic research, the attempt to understand the fundamental principles of science, is so risky, in fact, that only the federal government is willing to keep pouring money into it. It is a venture that produces far fewer hits than misses. Even the pharmaceutical industry, a major beneficiary of biomedical research, does not like to invest too heavily in basic science. Rather, it lets private venture capital support the small biotechnology companies that first try to bring new findings to market, and then buys up the few winners of this harsh winnowing process. If basic research is fraught with such a high failure rate, why then does it yield such rich economic returns? The answer is that such government financing agencies as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation are like the managers of a stock index fund: they buy everything in the market, and the few spectacular winners make up for all the disasters. But just as index fund managers often go astray when they try to improve on the index’s performance by overweighting the stocks they favor, the government can go wrong when it tries to pick winners. This is why it was such a risk for California to earmark $3 billion specifically for stem cell research over the next 10 years. Stem cells are just one of many promising fields of biomedical research. They could yield great advances, or become an exercise in sustained failure, as gene therapy has so far been. By allocating so much money to a single field, California is placing an enormous bet on a single horse, and the chances are substantial that its taxpayers will lose their collective shirt. Stem cell researchers have created an illusion of progress by claiming regular advances in the 12 years since human embryonic stem cells were first developed. But a notable fraction of these claims have turned out to be wrong or fraudulent, and many others have amounted to yet another new way of getting to square one by finding better methods of deriving human embryonic stem cells. The major advances in stem cell biology have come from molecular biologists who study transcription factors, the master control switches that govern the cell’s operations. The Japanese biologist Shinya Yamanaka showed that with a mere four of these factors, which he cleverly guessed, he could force an ordinary cell to walk back to embryonic state. But the finding illustrates what stem cell research is really about. It’s not about therapies and quick cures, it’s about understanding the basic nature of human cells and what makes one type different from another even though all have the identical genome. In other words, it’s a basic research program with little likelihood of producing therapeutic gains in the near future. Stem cell scientists, while generally avoiding rash promises themselves, have allowed politicians to portray stem cells as a likely cure for all the major diseases. Strangely, for a project that is aimed at regenerative medicine, the arbiters of stem cell research have largely neglected the free lesson that nature is offering as to how regenerative medicine could actually work. Many little animals, like newts and zebra fish, do regenerate parts of their bodies. But their recipe is the reverse of that presented by the advocates of stem cell therapy. Instead of taking a stem cell and trying to convert it into a well-behaved adult tissue, animals like the zebra fish start with the adult cell at the wound site, and walk it backward into a stemlike state from which a new limb grows. For the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to invest its $3 billion in studying newts, rather than building new science buildings on every state campus, might seem the best way of understanding regeneration, but that would be hard to explain to California’s voters, who have been assured stem cell cures are just around the corner. Even if governments do better to avoid picking winners among basic research fields, they can play a necessary role in supporting specific scientific infrastructure that lies beyond the means of individual researchers or universities, like atom-smashers or the human genome project. But even these projects are not guaranteed success. More powerful atom-smashers let physicists explore new ranges of energy, but the expected new atomic particles are not always found there. The HapMap, a catalog of human genetic variation that grew out of the human genome project, was designed to uncover the genetic roots of common diseases and help develop new treatments. The project was well conceived and executed, but nature declined to provide many very useful answers. Still, there is nothing wrong with the National Institutes of Health having tried the experiment. The only shame would be in not having tried. The same goes for the HapMap’s successor, the 1000 Genomes Project, which is an attempt to construct an even larger genetic catalog. It’s well worth trying, but success cannot be assumed — and should be the more applauded if attained. To take scientific progress for granted is to underestimate the difficulties, professional and otherwise, that scientists must overcome. A researcher spends years in apprenticeship, mastering difficult techniques with a short useful life. He or she then has a few years to strike it lucky and become a lab chief, much of whose time is spent applying for grants and administering the work of the next generation of apprentice scientists. It’s amazing that the system works as well as it does. But its successes are hard won, not the inevitable victories that scientific spokesmen sometimes suggest when on the fund-raising trail. | Research;Science and Technology;National Institutes of Health;National Science Foundation;Science Watch List;Stem Cells;Genetics and Heredity |
ny0183686 | [
"nyregion",
"nyregionspecial2"
] | 2007/12/23 | A Much-Loved Home for the Blind Is Leaving Yonkers | YONKERS DIANE SKALICKY has only one problem with the Guild Home for Aged Blind. It’s closing. “The guild was the epitome of what a facility should be,” said Ms. Skalicky, whose 87-year-old father has been at the home three years. “I walk in there and it’s a kiss and a hug with the aides. They have become part of my family. “I go there now and we sit and cry,” she said. Bruce A. Mastalinski, vice president of the home, said the facility was being downsized and would reopen early next year in the Bronx as the Guild Institute for Vision and Aging. It will be operated in collaboration with the Jewish Home & Hospital Lifecare System. The move is all part of a bigger picture in the growing trend to keep people in their homes as they age. “Our mission has changed,” Mr. Mastalinski said. The closing of the home will enable the guild to do two things: give more attention to its Guild Net program, which serves almost 7,000 people in their homes although they qualify for nursing home care; and create the new institute in the Bronx. Through the institute, it hopes to create a model to better serve those with vision problems. It will have three 38-bed units that will be opened in phases, Mr. Mastalinski said. The steps are being taken in part because of the high cost of operating a nursing home, he said, noting that a majority of residents in such homes are on Medicaid , which typically falls $20 to $25 short in covering daily costs. “Nursing facilities have become much different,” Mr. Mastalinski said. “They’re much more about short-term rehabilitation.” The new home will also have features better suited to those with vision impairments. Rooms and hallways will have indirect lighting to prevent glare, for example, and contrasting paints will be used to help delineate features like door frames. “I think we know there hasn’t been a lot of emphasis on vision in long-term care, assisted living and even hospitals,” he said. “We’re trying to bring an overall awareness to the issue.” It is not known how many of the 200 residents at the facility will transfer to the Bronx, but most of them will have to relocate elsewhere. The facility will remain open until everyone has found a new place, Mr. Mastalinski said, and employees who need to find jobs are receiving assistance. “We’ll be in Yonkers as long as we have to be to help people make that transition,” he said. Some residents have already begun moving, and for the staff — some of whom have worked there for two and three decades — the closing has been devastating. “This has been a wonderful place to work,” said Neslin Edwards, a nurse who has worked at the home for 21 years. “It’s clean. The staff is friendly. It’s like home.” Stories of that sense of family abound. It’s fair to say that Dee Dee and Tom McKinnon probably would not be married today if it were not for the home. The two met while working there, and residents worked behind the scene to bring them together. “He told residents he liked me before he told me,” said Mrs. McKinnon, a receptionist, who has worked there 22 years. Mr. McKinnon, a therapist, has been there only seven years, but the closing means a very different life because they’ll no longer be coming and going to work together. But more than that, she said, there is a sense of loss. “It’s killing him,” she said. “This has become our family.” Ms. Skalicky is dean of students at Sacred Heart High School in Yonkers, and Mr. McKinnon is a former student of hers. The two have reunited since her father, who has dementia, moved to the home. “He’s my father’s recreational therapist,” Ms. Skalicky said. “They have a bond. It’s just amazing.” She has found another home for her father in Yonkers, and she understands the issues confronting the home, but she remains troubled by one issue. “We had nothing to say. No recourse,” she said. “This wasn’t just a piece of real estate. This was my father’s home. We didn’t have a chance to say we’ll pay the extra $20 a day to keep it open. “I would have paid every penny out of my life savings.” | Blindness;Housing |
ny0013618 | [
"sports"
] | 2013/11/08 | The Addictive Allure of the Steelhead’s Tug | PORTLAND, Ore. — Come September, many of this city’s fly-fishing enthusiasts head about 100 miles east on Interstate 84 to the Deschutes River. They pass mammoth Bonneville Dam, the wind-sport mecca of Hood River, and leave the highway at the town of The Dalles, where a large railroad-tie treating facility abuts the highway. The pungent smell of creosote soon mixes with the sage of the high desert, and their anticipation heightens as they near the river. The summer steelhead run reaches its apex at that time, and few fish evoke such passion among devotees. Few are more devoted than Dave Moskowitz. Moskowitz, an environmental lawyer, first fished for steelhead — an oceangoing form of rainbow trout — on the Deschutes in 1987. “I was invited by some of my housemates to accompany them on their annual Deschutes fishing trip,” he recalled. “Most fished for trout, but one guy convinced me to go for steelhead. He said to cast across the current and let the fly swing to shore, then take two steps and do it again. He fished below me and I tried to mimic his technique. There was a cry and I looked up to see his rod above his head, and a huge bright silver fish cartwheeling downstream. He and the fish soon parted ways. I looked at the water around me and took several steps back — fearful of fish that large swimming around my legs.” Moskowitz was intrigued, but it would be five more years of intermittent angling before he brought his first steelhead to hand. Image Dave Moskowitz, who has been angling for steelhead for 26 years, often makes his own flies, Credit Leah Nash for The New York Times There is a saying among steelhead aficionados that goes “the tug is the drug;” that is, the excitement of the steelhead’s take keeps anglers coming back. There is a visceral thrill when a fish grabs the fly — the reel screams as line spins off, and the fish leaps madly, leaving the angler holding on for dear life and praying that all the knots will hold. But perhaps more addictive than the take is the hope that the fish will grab the fly — or that the fish are even present. Steelhead spend their early years in the river, then migrate to the sea. After a year or more of intensive feeding, they return to their natal river to spawn, weighing from 5 to 20 pounds — and on some rivers, more. Steelhead begin showing up in the Deschutes in late June, with new fish entering the river through October. Unlike trout that feed on dry flies or rolling tarpon, steelhead seldom show themselves. You enter a run or pool hoping some fish might be holding there. To make matters even more interesting, steelhead seldom eat once they are in the river; they seem to take a fly as an act of aggression. Even if they are present where you are fishing, they have to be in the mood (presumably, a bad mood) to bite. For all these reasons, fishing for steelhead is one of angling’s great acts of faith. Steelheaders may log long days of fishing in the cold and the rain — and thousands of casts — with nary a bite. But something goads them on. In the 26 years since his first encounter, Moskowitz has learned a good deal about how to catch Deschutes steelhead. He spends 40 to 50 days on the river each season and knows all the famous runs intimately — Lockit, Hot Rocks, Magic, Greenlight, Wagonblast — as well as countless little spots that most overlook. He is a competent fly tier, favoring dry flies like the Strungout Skater; and while not the river’s longest caster, he throws a spey rod well enough to cover the water. Professional guides and river regulars know him as someone ever willing to share a run, an effective fly or a cold beer. Moskowitz has two children and a well-rounded life. But he is the first to admit that come late June, he is “the most evasive, noncommittal guy around.” “Steelheading has definitely led me to give up on some relationships with women,” he said. “I know myself well, and I’m up front with people about what I like to do.” Image Dave Moskowitz, right, and Chris Santella, the writer, devoted a day in September to a summer steelhead run. Credit Leah Nash for The New York Times Moskowitz has also been a champion of the river and its fish, working for a variety of conservation organizations over the years. “Dave has passion for fishing and for the fish, and recognizes the two passions are inseparable,” said Bill Bakke, science and conservation director for the Native Fish Society, which advocates for the recovery and preservation of native fish species. “His enthusiasm for the Deschutes is infectious, and he’s brought many people into the conservation community,” Bakke said. “The Pacific Northwest is better for his efforts, though many anglers may not know it.” Moskowitz’s most recent endeavor is the Deschutes River Alliance, a nonprofit organization that aims to protect the water quality and fish habitat. On a Friday afternoon in late September, I accompanied Moskowitz to a section of the Deschutes called Kloan, seven miles from the river’s confluence with the Columbia. A dirt road leads to a small parking area. Weathered remnants of a handmade sign hang by the path leading to the river. It used to read “Life Starts Here.” Fall rains had arrived early, cloaking the canyon in shades of gray. Moskowitz led me from run to run, suggesting where the fish were most likely to be resting — and always letting me cast over the most promising water. At a spot called Signal Light, I watched my line swing across the water as the gray began to give way to black. Near the end of the swing, there was a sharp tug on my line. Instinctively, I lifted the rod — exactly the wrong thing to do. The fish was gone, and that was the only tug of the outing. Heading back to Portland, we stopped in Hood River for an India pale ale at Double Mountain Brewery, a favorite post-fishing watering hole. I began to bewail my lost opportunity, but Moskowitz offered solace: “A few years back, I lost 18 fish in a row. Another year, 13. It happens.” I knew I would be returning soon. | Recreational fishing;Oregon;Dave Moskowitz |
ny0058062 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2014/09/13 | Orioles Lose Chris Davis to Drug Suspension Before Edging Yankees | BALTIMORE — The Baltimore Orioles played their first game Friday without Chris Davis, the slugging corner infielder who was suspended earlier in the day for amphetamine use. It was devastating news because the 25-game suspension extends well into the postseason, where the Orioles seem destined to play. Still, just a few hours later, the Orioles were jumping and dancing on the infield grass at Camden Yards. As it turned out, Friday’s events were even more devastating for the Yankees, who lost in crushing fashion and certainly do not appear headed to the playoffs. The Orioles, despite the loss of one of their most dangerous hitters, were celebrating because they had come from behind to beat the Yankees, 2-1, in 11 innings when pinch-hitter Jimmy Paredes lined a two-out, two-run double off Adam Warren, leaving the Yankees looking stunned and helpless as they walked off the field. But that was only the beginning. In the second game, the Orioles won, 5-0, to record their first doubleheader sweep of the Yankees since 1984. In 20 innings over roughly nine hours, the Yankees struck out 25 times and scored only once, as their already-slim playoff hopes dissipated even further. If there was any ambiguity left regarding the Yankees’ chances of making the postseason, Friday at least provided some clarity. “It’s extremely frustrating,” Manager Joe Girardi said after the first loss, “especially when you’ve got some momentum after the way you’ve won the last two games. But we weren’t able to hold on to it.” The Yankees were hoping — perhaps even expecting — to carry the momentum of Thursday’s victory into Friday’s doubleheader. They even had the benefit of a crucial 11th-inning home run from Chris Young, the charmed outfielder whose three-run blast the night before had secured arguably the Yankees’ most thrilling win of the season. But they could not capitalize on the momentum and now can only envy the Orioles’ October prospects, even given Davis’s suspension. Davis, 28, tested positive for the stimulant Adderall. He previously held a therapeutic use exemption, but it ran out and he did not have clearance at the time of testing. He is not appealing the suspension. “I apologize to my teammates, coaches, the Orioles organization and especially the fans,” he said in a statement. “I made a mistake by taking Adderall. I had permission to use it in the past, but do not have a therapeutic use exemption this year. I accept my punishment and will begin serving my suspension immediately.” Image The Orioles’ Chris Davis in 2013, when he led the majors in home runs and runs batted in. He was given a 25-game ban. Credit Elaine Thompson/Associated Press Assuming the Orioles make the playoffs — they led the Toronto Blue Jays by 11 ½ games after Friday — Davis will miss eight playoff games, if the Orioles advance that far. Division series are best of five; the American League Championship Series is best of seven. If the Orioles swept their first two series, Davis would still have to sit out Game 1 of the World Series. “I think it’s disappointing,” Orioles Manager Buck Showalter said before Friday’s first game. “I’m disappointed. I know Chris is too. It is what it is. So we’re going to try to deal with it and move on. The timing is never good, but it’s one of those challenges. That’s why we have this in place, and we’re fully supportive of it. These are the things everybody knew about beforehand, and it’s another way we want the fans to be able to trust a lot of things.” Showalter said Davis had telephoned him about 8 p.m. Thursday to notify him of the suspension. He was not at Camden Yards to address the situation Friday morning. “In my situation, you got to learn to deal with the problems and challenges along the way,” Showalter said. “If they’re self-inflicted, there’s no ‘Woe is me.’ And this is self-inflicted. But Chris, like he does a lot of things, you’re going to see in the next day or so, attack it head on. I’m sure he’ll address it. I know he called some of the players last night.” Davis is normally the Orioles’ first baseman, but he recently moved to third base after Manny Machado sustained a season-ending knee injury. A year ago, Davis hit 53 home runs, knocked in 138 runs and had 370 total bases, all major league highs. He batted .286 that year with a 1.004 on-base plus slugging percentage. This year his numbers have declined. He has 26 home runs and 182 total bases and has struck out 173 times, the most in baseball. His O.P.S., so impressive last season, fell to .704 this year. But the Orioles did just fine in their first game without him, even though they did not score until after Young’s home run, his third in three games. On Thursday, the Yankees were trailing the Tampa Bay Rays by two runs in the bottom of the ninth when Young hit his three-run homer, and it appeared that his bases-empty shot would be enough on Friday, too. But the Orioles, held scoreless by a combination of Brandon McCarthy, Dellin Betances and David Robertson, did their damage against Warren. Girardi elected to use his best relief pitchers, Betances and Robertson, to get out of jams in the eighth and ninth, with the hope that Warren could close the game. But he walked the leadoff batter, Nelson Cruz, and it would cost him the game. Cruz was replaced by pinch-runner David Lough, who was sacrificed to second. Warren then hit J. J. Hardy with a pitch and struck out Kelly Johnson for the second out. But he walked Steve Clevenger to load the bases. Then on the first pitch, Paredes lined a ball into right field, scoring Lough and Hardy to complete the comeback and start the celebration with most of the Orioles players, except for Davis. The Orioles lost a crucial member of their team Friday morning, but they were the ones smiling Friday afternoon. “It’s pretty quiet, as you would expect,” Young said of the Yankees’ clubhouse between games. “We’ve got to pick ourselves up.” | Chris Davis;Baseball;Doping;Amphetamine;Orioles;Yankees;MLB |
ny0203858 | [
"sports",
"soccer"
] | 2009/08/23 | Sky Blue F.C. Beats Los Angeles to Win W.P.S. Title | CARSON, Calif. — Gathering atop a platform at midfield, the Sky Blue F.C. players wrapped their arms around one another and wore the same smiles they had worn all season whenever something — or was it everything — had gone wrong. They spent the first half of the inaugural season of Women’s Professional Soccer in last place, went through three head coaches and played three games in three time zones in the last eight days. But the smiles they wore Saturday were not of incredulity, they were of champions. With a 1-0 victory over the Los Angeles Sol, delivered by an early goal by Heather O’Reilly, a back line led by the defender-coach Christie Rampone and a red card to Sol defender Allison Falk, Sky Blue turned its ridiculous season sublime. “It’s very surreal,” O’Reilly said. After New Jersey-based Sky Blue’s previous two playoff wins, in Washington and in St. Louis, she said, “we were almost laughing — the irony of the entire story was just incredible. It has not sunk in yet, that’s for sure.” The W.P.S. could use a compelling story line as it struggles to establish a foothold during a deep recession with a sport that has been unable to build on the success of the Women’s World Cup held in the United States a decade ago. An announced crowd of 7,218 watched the game at the Home Depot Center, half of which was closed off. The crowd was less than half as large as the one the Sol, which features the Brazilian star Marta, drew for its season-opening match, and it often saved its biggest cheers for the T-shirts that were tossed into the crowd. Commissioner Tonya Antonucci preferred to focus on the field rather than the stands. Though every club lost money in the league’s first season, she said the W.P.S. was able to introduce itself as a league that showcased many of the world’s best players. “From a business standpoint, we can say we’re real, we’re here,” Antonucci said. “It’s a tangible product now.” The product itself was intriguing. The Sol, with Marta and the United States national team midfielder Shannon Boxx, was a heavy favorite. It was rested and had gone 2-0-1 in three regular-season games against Sky Blue. But for most of a sunny, humid afternoon, it was Sky Blue, supposedly on fumes, that looked fresh. It maintained possession, which served several purposes: keeping the ball away from Marta, conserving energy and creating scoring chances. Sky Blue converted one in the 16th minute, when Keely Dowling’s cross after a throw-in reached Natasha Kai near the penalty spot. She was able to flick the ball to the far post for O’Reilly, whose shot beat goalkeeper Karina LeBlanc. Eleven minutes later, the task of rallying became more difficult for the Sol. Kai received a pass on the left side in her own half, spun past Falk and took off on a 60-yard run. Falk knocked her down from behind at the edge of the Sol’s penalty area, and the referee Kari Seitz, contending that Falk was the last defender, showed her a red card. That left the Sol to play the final 63 minutes with 10 players. “The Sol is a great team, but I think the intangibles really showed,” O’Reilly said. Nowhere were they more present than in Sky Blue’s back line, which was anchored by Rampone and included the outside backs Dowling and Megan Schnur and center back Jen Buczkowski — a converted midfielder who replaced Anita Asante when she left at the start of the playoffs to play for England in the European Championships. The four defenders communicated flawlessly, which might be expected when you have a coach on the field. They handed Marta off to one another as she roamed the field, limiting her opportunities to turn and run at them. Schnur, Buczkowski and Rampone each tackled the ball away from Marta in the penalty area. “I can dictate what’s going on on the field,” Rampone said. Though she is 4-1 since replacing Kelly Lindsey, who resigned with two games left in the regular season, and Ian Sawyers, who was fired earlier in the season, Rampone said she would put her coaching career on hold. “I’m retiring as coach for now until I’m done playing,” Rampone said. The Sol was revitalized in the second half. Though it missed the play-making midfielder Camile Abily, who is playing for France at the European Championships, it had chances. Marta and Boxx, who moved from her central spot to the right flank, created them. At one point, Boxx, sprinting in and lunging at a cross, ended up in the back of the net but the ball did not. It was gloved by goalkeeper Jenni Branam, who also clutched a late volley by Boxx. Marta sent a free kick from 28 yards sailing over the crossbar in stoppage time. When the final whistle blew, the Sky Blue players summoned one final sprint to midfield. As they bounced up and down on the podium, the boards beneath their feet began to waver — a metaphor, perhaps, for the league. Though the shaking caused the players to stop their dance, it did not wipe the smiles from their faces. | Soccer;Women's Professional Soccer;O'Reilly Heather;Los Angeles Sol;Sky Blue FC;California |
ny0073914 | [
"sports",
"hockey"
] | 2015/04/16 | Young Forwards Lead Islanders Past Capitals | The young forwards Brock Nelson, Josh Bailey, Ryan Strome and the Islanders showed that experience is not required for playoff success. Each of the three scored in the postseason for the first time, with Nelson recording two goals, and goalie Jaroslav Halak got plenty of help in keeping Alex Ovechkin off the scoring sheet as the visiting Islanders beat the Washington Capitals, 4-1, in Game 1 of their Eastern Conference first-round playoff series Wednesday. Bailey (2008), Nelson (2010) and Strome (2011) were all first-round draft picks by the Islanders, and Bailey, the oldest, is only 25. The three entered Wednesday with these combined playoff numbers: seven games, zero goals, three assists. “I liked their composure, the way they held their emotions in check, and they came up big for us tonight,” Islanders Coach Jack Capuano said. “They skated. And, you know, they played with confidence and poise. And they’ve done that all year.” Bailey, who added an assist, said that his team’s success could be attributed to their confidence. “I think us guys in here believe in one another, believe in what we have, and I think that tonight was an example of that.” Halak, who stymied Ovechkin and the Capitals while playing for eighth-seeded Montreal in a 2010 first-round upset, made 24 saves, allowing only a Marcus Johansson goal in the final minute of the first period. Game 2 in the best-of-seven series is set to be played Friday at Washington. The Capitals will need to figure out a way to slow down the Islanders’ offense, avoid lengthy lulls and get more from Ovechkin. Ovechkin, named the league’s most valuable player three times, scored 53 goals this season to lead the N.H.L. for the third year in a row and for the fifth time over all. But all eight of his shots on Wednesday were turned aside. “We’re going to have to be a lot sharper,” Capitals Coach Barry Trotz said. “That goes right through the whole lineup. I thought from our top guys to our role players, there wasn’t too many sharp guys.” About six minutes into the game, Nelson took a pass from Bailey, moved in unimpeded and completed a shot just as he reached the right circle. Even though there was no traffic in front and no apparent deflection, the puck slid past Braden Holtby’s glove and inside the right post. Washington forward Brooks Laich tied the score at 1-1 with 56.3 seconds left in the first period. Halak went after a dump-in along the boards behind the Islanders’ net, and Laich challenged him to get the puck free, keeping it away from Nick Leddy and John Tavares, and then fed Johansson for a shot from the right circle. A pivotal sequence came early in the second period, when play was delayed for about five minutes while a broken glass panel behind Holtby’s net was replaced. Less than 30 seconds after action resumed, Tavares, second in the league in points this season, beat Michael Latta on a face-off. The puck went to Strome, whose shot from the left circle flew over Holtby’s right shoulder to make it 2-1. Midway through the period, Bailey got to a bouncing puck off a cross by Kyle Okposo, yet another first-round pick. A sprawling Holtby blocked the initial shot, but Bailey’s second stab sent the puck in off the post and Holtby’s left shoulder. Nelson added an empty-netter with 79 seconds left. CANADIENS 4, SENATORS 3 Brian Flynn scored a tiebreaking goal late in the second period, and host Montreal held on to defeat Ottawa in a wild opening game of their first-round series. Flynn also had two assists for the first three-point game of his career. Tomas Plekanec and Torrey Mitchell scored 15 seconds apart in a frenetic second period that saw five players get goals in less than five minutes. Lars Eller also scored. Mika Zibanejad and Kyle Turris scored power-play goals in the middle period for the Senators. Milan Michalek was credited with the game’s first goal, which Montreal’s Andre Markov tipped into his own net at 12 minutes in. The game broke open when the Canadiens scored twice in a 15-second span of the second period, the fastest two playoff goals by Montreal since 1998, with Mitchell and Plekanec scoring. But six seconds later, Eller went off for slashing. Seven seconds after that, P. K. Subban took a chop at Mark Stone’s hands and Stone, the Senators’ scoring leader, left the ice to be treated. Subban was given a five-minute major and a game misconduct. With the puck near Carey Price’s net, Subban lifted his stick in the air and chopped hard, bringing it down on Stone’s right wrist. Stone fell to the ice, then skated to the dressing room. The Senators scored twice and gave up a short-handed goal on the ensuing power play. Stone, who went into the playoffs on a nine-game points streak, returned to play, left again late in the second period, then returned midway through the third frame. It was a shaky game for Ottawa goalie Andrew Hammond, who got his team into the playoffs by going 20-1-2 down the stretch. The shots were 39-33 in Montreal’s favor. BLACKHAWKS 4, PREDATORS 3 Duncan Keith scored at 7:49 of double overtime, and the Blackhawks rallied from a three-goal deficit after the first period in Nashville. The Blackhawks finished only two points back of Nashville in the Central Division, and they grabbed home-ice advantage back despite benching goalie Corey Crawford after the first period. Scott Darling stopped every subsequent shot, making 42 saves in his postseason debut as Nashville took a franchise-record 54 shots. Jonathan Toews had a goal and an assist, and Niklas Hjalmarsson, Patrick Sharp and Jonathan Toews each scored for Chicago. Patrick Kane also had two assists in his return after missing 21 games with a broken collarbone. Colin Wilson scored twice and Viktor Stalberg had a goal, all in the first period for the Predators. Game 2 is Friday night in Nashville. FLAMES 2, CANUCKS 1 Defenseman Kris Russell scored with just under 30 seconds remaining in the third period in Vancouver. David Jones also scored for the Flames, who were down 1-0 entering the third period. Jonas Hiller stopped 29 shots in the Flames’ first playoff game since 2009. Bo Horvat opening the scoring for Vancouver midway in the second period. Jannik Hansen and Alexander Edler assisted on the play. Vancouver hosts Game 2 on Friday night. Russell’s shot from the point found its way through traffic after a dominant shift by the Flames that had the Canucks hemmed in deep. Eddie Lack made 28 saves for Vancouver, which is back in the postseason after missing out last spring for the first time in six years. | Ice hockey;Playoffs;Islanders;Washington Capitals |
ny0094634 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2015/01/29 | 6 Days That Felled Sheldon Silver, the Speaker Who Ruled Albany for Decades | ALBANY — After 21 years dominating Albany through his stoicism and unyielding will, Sheldon Silver met his downfall, appropriately enough, after an uncomfortable silence. Late on Monday afternoon, Mr. Silver, the longtime speaker of the New York Assembly, addressed scores of his Democratic colleagues who had grimly gathered in a corner conference room in the State Capitol. The mood was as serious as the charges he faces: that he exploited his office to obtain millions of dollars in payoffs. Mr. Silver spoke for less than 10 minutes before offering to leave the room, to help facilitate a freer discussion. No one asked him to stay. So it was that Mr. Silver, one of the most powerful men in New York, and suddenly the face of Albany’s continuing corruption crisis, shuffled out. That exit foreshadowed his fall from grace — a six-day, slow-motion toppling that began with his arrest on Jan. 22 and culminated on Tuesday evening, when Democrats said Mr. Silver would be replaced for the betterment of a chamber repeatedly buffeted by prosecutions, convictions and sexual harassment scandals. Mr. Silver’s arrest has shocked New York State politics, upending a time-tested and oft-criticized political arrangement in which the governor, the Senate majority leader and Mr. Silver would decide the state’s finances, important policies and major projects and plans. Mr. Silver’s prosecutor, Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, has castigated Albany’s “three men in a room” system, under which Mr. Silver thrived, as a disgrace to democracy. Interviews with more than a dozen legislators indicate that it was a similarly idealistic new wave of Assembly members who helped galvanize opposition to Mr. Silver, prodded a loyal old guard and cleared the way for an election of a new speaker and, they hoped, a new start. “It’s a transformational moment,” said Assemblyman Michael Blake, a Bronx Democrat who was newly elected in November. “Once in a political lifetime, once in a generation, you have an opportunity to set a new direction.” Such sentiments, of course, do little to explain the somewhat tortured week of machinations and deliberations that led to Mr. Silver’s finally accepting his rank-and-file’s decision, a process punctuated by fast-shifting alliances and fast-disintegrating declarations of support; an ill-fated gambit to hang onto power; long hours of group discussion and cubed cheese; and an inglorious climax in which Mr. Silver, Learlike, walked into an elevator and out into the frigid night. Lawmakers Awakened Just after midnight on Jan. 22, The New York Times published an article online reporting Mr. Silver’s impending arrest, sending text messages flying through Albany and rousing lawmakers from their beds. “I was dead sleeping,” said Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright, a longtime Democratic lawmaker from Harlem, who rooms with Assemblyman Jeffrion L. Aubry of Queens when they are in the capital. “We started talking about it at 3 in the morning. We got absolutely no sleep.” Image Sheldon Silver Credit Seth Wenig/Associated Press Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, a Democrat from Westchester County, had her cellphone turned off. When she learned about the arrest in the morning, she rushed over to the Capitol. Shortly afterward, she attended a long-scheduled meeting of Democratic assemblywomen that the speaker had been expected to address. Some there were already invoking divine intervention: Assemblywoman Carmen E. Arroyo of the Bronx asked for a moment of prayer on Mr. Silver’s behalf. Judy Rapfogel, his longtime chief of staff, fought back emotion. Her face ashen, speaking through tears, people in the room recalled, Ms. Rapfogel alluded to how her own husband — William E. Rapfogel, a longtime associate of Mr. Silver who pleaded guilty last year to stealing more than $1 million from the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty — was in prison. And now this. “It has been a horrible year for me,” she said. Later that Thursday, stunned Assembly Democrats caucused, a regular gathering that Mr. Silver normally led. “Innocent till proven guilty” was the mantra. But as details about the federal complaint against Mr. Silver trickled out, lawmakers began to contemplate a previously unheard-of concept: an Assembly without Mr. Silver in charge. “I’ve been here 12 years,” said Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell, who represents the Upper West Side of Manhattan. “He’s the only speaker that I’ve known.” At another point on Jan. 22, a smaller group of lawmakers discussed the criminal complaint in the Legislative Office Building across the street from the Capitol. One of them was Assemblyman Todd Kaminsky, a freshman Democrat from Long Island. His previous job was as a public-corruption prosecutor for the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn, where his targets included former Representative Michael G. Grimm, a Republican. Mr. Kaminsky, according to several people in the room, was asked his expert assessment. “How bad is it?” one lawmaker asked. “It’s really, really bad,” Mr. Kaminsky replied. One of the people in the room recalled: “It was like a bomb hit the place.” That same day, a crowd of Democrats, including many of the longest-serving members, gathered to proclaim that they remained united behind Mr. Silver. “We have every confidence that the speaker is going to continue to fill his role with distinction,” said Assemblyman Joseph D. Morelle of the Rochester area, the majority leader. It would be the last such display — and a high-water mark in Mr. Silver’s effort to hold his post. No Special Prayer On Friday, lawmakers were back in their districts, and local newspapers across the state ran editorials demanding the speaker’s resignation. On the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Mr. Silver went about his day. That afternoon, he had a haircut; the next morning, attending Sabbath services at his synagogue, he declined offers to have a special prayer said on his behalf, according to The New York Post . “No need,” the paper quoted him as saying. “Not now.” Lawmakers were due back in Albany on Monday. Late Sunday night, news surfaced about how Mr. Silver planned to hang on to their support: He and a group of senior lawmakers had hammered out a plan under which five allies of Mr. Silver would handle his duties, but he would keep his title. The “Gang of Five” plan landed like a bag of anvils. As lawmakers returned to the Capitol on Monday, members were denouncing the arrangement. Some saw it as a way for Mr. Silver to continue to pull the strings while merely appearing to cede control. Others fumed that they had learned of it first from news reports. Ms. Paulin, of Westchester, met with more than a dozen other lawmakers from the suburbs — typically a less-powerful group in a body dominated by New York City Democrats. That group, instantly nicknamed the Suburban Caucus, called for Mr. Silver’s ouster. Others lawmakers came to the same conclusion: Just before noon on Monday, Mr. Wright, of Harlem — an influential figure whose demeanor mixes humor and gravitas — issued a statement calling for Mr. Silver to resign: “Without a complete separation of Sheldon Silver from the speakership and its powers, and a real reform of our conference,” he wrote, “we will as a body remain mired in the swamp of dysfunction and chaos.” Secluded in his legislative office, Mr. Silver and several allies discussed resistance to the Gang of Five plan, and delayed a planned meeting of the full Democratic conference. Walking slowly to the Capitol, Mr. Silver entered the large corner conference room reserved for Assembly Democrats, who hold a huge numeric advantage over Republicans. No aides were admitted. Some lawmakers hugged Mr. Silver as he entered; others shook his hand. He tried to insert routine into a meeting that was anything but: At Monday conference meetings, Mr. Silver typically announces which lawmakers are celebrating a birthday in the coming week. And so it was that on Monday, with his fate hanging in the balance, he wished a happy birthday to any member celebrating one. Then he turned to the case against him. “I’m going to beat this,” he said, according to lawmakers in the room. He offered to let his colleagues debate his future without him. There was a silence, and Mr. Silver headed for the door. The Case Against Sheldon Silver Sheldon Silver, the former powerful speaker of the New York State Assembly, was found guilty on all counts in his corruption trial. The government said he used “the power and influence of his official position to obtain for himself millions of dollars of bribes and kickbacks.” As he walked out, some legislators applauded. But Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol, a Brooklyn Democrat, said he felt Mr. Silver’s resignation was a foregone conclusion the moment he left the room. “If I was in a similar predicament, and I never hope to be, I want all the members to look me in the eye and tell me to go,” Mr. Lentol said. “He really left his fate to the members.” Lost Confidence Not long after Mr. Silver left the conference room on Monday, the Assembly’s longest-serving member, Richard N. Gottfried of Manhattan, told his colleagues that the current situation was untenable, and that Mr. Silver needed to step down. “It was heartbreaking to say that about someone who has been an extraordinary friend and ally, and a force for almost everything I care about in public policy,” Mr. Gottfried recalled on Wednesday. Newer members were even more insistent. “The core question was what is best for the institution and best for the people,” Mr. Blake, the freshman from the Bronx, said. “And whether you had been there one, 10, 20 years, the collective understanding of what was best was to move forward.” Five hours later, the lawmakers emerged. Mr. Morelle went to Mr. Silver’s office to inform him that he had lost the confidence of his fellow Democrats. After another day’s discussion about more practical concerns, the final plan was announced Tuesday night: Mr. Silver would be replaced next week; a new speaker would be elected on Feb. 10. In a sign of the influence of the conference’s younger members, several of those vying to succeed Mr. Silver signaled on Wednesday that they would heed those newer lawmakers’ concerns. Mr. Lentol promised to “liberalize the operations” of the Assembly and allow junior members “to fully participate” in the legislative process. Assemblyman Carl E. Heastie, a leading contender from the Bronx, vowed to “increase accountability and transparency.” Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, of Queens, promised an “appreciation for suggestions and reforms.” But for many, the first reform had already come. Just before entering the Capitol elevator on his way out on Tuesday night, Mr. Silver, the master of the sotto-voce negotiation, suddenly raised his voice after repeated questions from reporters about his future and his looming departure from the speaker’s office. “I will not hinder the process,” Mr. Silver, 70, barked, louder than reporters could recall him ever speaking. And with that, he stepped into the elevator and the door closed. | Sheldon Silver;New York;Democrats;State legislature;Corruption;Bribery and Kickbacks;Politics |
ny0025008 | [
"business",
"economy"
] | 2013/08/09 | New Claims by Jobless Are Lowest Since 2007 | WASHINGTON — A measure of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits over the last month has fallen to its lowest level in almost six years, signaling fewer layoffs. The Labor Department said on Thursday that the average number of people who applied for benefits over the last four weeks dropped by 6,250, to 335,500. That is the lowest level since November 2007, the month before the Great Recession began. The four-week average smooths week-to-week fluctuations. Weekly applications for unemployment aid increased by 5,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 333,000. But that is up only slightly from the previous week’s five-and-a-half-year low. Image Credit The New York Times The decrease in the four-week average points to a positive trend in recent months. Applications, which are a proxy for layoffs, have fallen more than 10 percent since the start of the year. That has helped drive net job gains this year, which are the number of people hired minus the number who lose or quit their jobs. Employers added 162,000 jobs last month, the smallest monthly gain since March. And most of the job growth came in lower-paying industries or part-time work. Since January, the economy has added an average of 192,000 jobs a month. But the pace has slowed to 175,000 in the last three months. When employers are cutting few workers, as they are now, it does not take many hires to create a high net gain. The job market is improving, largely because layoffs have fallen to pre-recession levels. But while employers are no longer cutting jobs, many remain reluctant to hire in the face of tax increases, federal spending cuts and slower global growth. | US Economy;Jobs;Unemployment;Labor Department;Unemployment benefits |
ny0262643 | [
"business"
] | 2011/12/04 | Lie-Detection Software Is a Research Quest | SHE looks as innocuous as Miss Marple, Agatha Christie’s famous detective. But also like Miss Marple, Julia Hirschberg, a professor of computer science at Columbia University, may spell trouble for a lot of liars. That’s because Dr. Hirschberg is teaching computers how to spot deception — programming them to parse people’s speech for patterns that gauge whether they are being honest. For this sort of lie detection, there’s no need to strap anyone into a machine. The person’s speech provides all the cues — loudness, changes in pitch, pauses between words, ums and ahs, nervous laughs and dozens of other tiny signs that can suggest a lie. Dr. Hirschberg is not the only researcher using algorithms to trawl our utterances for evidence of our inner lives. A small band of linguists, engineers and computer scientists, among others, are busy training computers to recognize hallmarks of what they call emotional speech — talk that reflects deception, anger, friendliness and even flirtation. Programs that succeed at spotting these submerged emotions may someday have many practical uses: software that suggests when chief executives at public conferences may be straying from the truth; programs at call centers that alert operators to irate customers on the line; or software at computerized matchmaking services that adds descriptives like “friendly” to usual ones like “single” and “female.” The technology is becoming more accurate as labs share new building blocks, said Dan Jurafsky , a professor at Stanford whose research focuses on the understanding of language by both machines and humans. Recently, Dr. Jurafsky has been studying the language that people use in four-minute speed-dating sessions, analyzing it for qualities like friendliness and flirtatiousness. He is a winner of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship commonly called a “genius” award, and a co-author of the textbook “Speech and Language Processing.” “The scientific goal is to understand how our emotions are reflected in our speech,” Dr. Jurafsky said. “The engineering goal is to build better systems that understand these emotions.” The programs that these researchers are developing aren’t likely to be used as evidence in a court of law. After all, even the use of polygraphs is highly contentious. But the new programs are already doing better than people at some kinds of mind-reading. Algorithms developed by Dr. Hirschberg and colleagues have been able to spot a liar 70 percent of the time in test situations, while people confronted with the same evidence had only 57 percent accuracy, Dr. Hirschberg said. The algorithms are based on an analysis of the ways people spoke in a research project when they lied or told the truth. In interviews, for example, the participants were asked to press one pedal when they were lying about an activity, and another pedal when telling the truth. Afterward, the recordings were analyzed for vocal features that might spell the deception. For her continuing research, Dr. Hirschberg and two colleagues recently received a grant from the Air Force for nearly $1.5 million to develop algorithms to analyze English speakers and those who speak Arabic and Mandarin Chinese. Shrikanth Narayanan , an engineering professor at the University of Southern California who also uses computer methods to analyze emotional speech, notes that some aspects of irate language are easy to spot. In marital counseling arguments, for instance, the word “you” is a lot more common than “I” when spouses blame each other for problems. But homing in on the finer signs of emotions is tougher. “We are constantly trying to calculate pitch very accurately” to capture minute variations, he said. His mathematical techniques use hundreds of cues from pitch, timing and intensity to distinguish between patterns of angry and non-angry speech. His lab has also found ways to use vocal cues to spot inebriation, though it hasn’t yet had luck in making its computers detect humor — a hard task for the machines, he said. Elsewhere, Eileen Fitzpatrick, a professor of linguistics at Montclair State University in New Jersey, and her colleague Joan Bachenko are using computers to automatically spot clusters of words and phrases that may signal deception. In their research, they have been drawing on statements in court cases that were later shown to be lies. David F. Larcker , an accounting professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, audited a course in computer linguistics taught by Dr. Jurafsky and then applied its methods to analyze the words of financial executives who made statements that were later disproved. These executives were, it turned out, big users of “clearly,” “very clearly” and other terms that Joseph Williams, the late University of Chicago professor who wrote the textbook “Style,” branded as “trust me, stupid” words. PROFESSOR LARCKER says he thinks computer linguistics may also be useful for shareholders and analysts, helping them mitigate risk by analyzing executives’ words. “From a portfolio manager’s perspective looking at 60 to 80 stocks, maybe such software could lead to some smart pruning,” he said. “It’s a practical thing. In this environment, with people a bit queasy about investments, it could be a valuable tool.” | Computers and the Internet;Research;Emotions;Software;Voice and Speech;Language and Languages;Voice Recognition Systems;Lying |
ny0173289 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2007/11/25 | Ally of Bush Is Defeated in Australia | SYDNEY, Australia , Nov. 24 — Australia’s prime minister, John Howard, one of President Bush’s staunchest allies in Asia, suffered a comprehensive defeat at the hands of the electorate on Saturday, as his Liberal Party-led coalition lost its majority in Parliament. He will be replaced by Kevin Rudd, the Labor Party leader and a former diplomat. “Today Australia looks to the future,” Mr. Rudd told a cheering crowd in his home state, Queensland. “Today the Australian people have decided that we as a nation will move forward.” Mr. Howard’s defeat, after 11 years in power, follows that of José María Aznar of Spain, who also backed the United States-led invasion of Iraq, and political setbacks for Tony Blair, who stepped down as Britain’s prime minister in June. Mr. Howard conceded nearly two hours after the last polling booths closed in the west of the country. “A few moments ago I telephoned Mr. Kevin Rudd and I congratulated him and the Australian Labor Party on a very emphatic victory,” Mr. Howard told a room of emotional supporters. “I leave the office of prime minister with our country prouder, stronger and more prosperous than ever,” he said. Returns for a small number of seats are yet to be compiled, but analysts estimate that over all the Labor Party gained 28 seats to win a comfortable 22-seat majority in the 150-seat lower house of Parliament, where governments are formed. Official results are expected within the next day or two. Mr. Howard may suffer the indignity of losing his own seat, representing a district on Sydney’s north shore, which he has held for 33 years, to a former television anchor and rookie politician. He would be the first sitting prime minister to lose his seat since 1929. It was a bruising campaign, and the Liberal Party has said it will challenge some results on the grounds that the Labor candidates had broken electoral law by failing to resign from government jobs before running for office. The Labor Party said it had broken no laws. Mr. Rudd, 50, campaigned on a platform of new leadership to address broad concerns about the environment, health and education. He has said his first acts as prime minister would include pushing for the ratification of the Kyoto agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and negotiating the withdrawal of Australia’s 500 troops from Iraq. Analysts said the leadership change was unlikely to bring a radically new foreign policy, although they expected a shift in emphasis in the relationship with the United States, Australia’s closest ally. “Australia will remain a close ally of the United States, and Rudd remains committed to the alliance,” said Michael Fullilove, of the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney. But he noted that “if there is a Democratic administration elected next year, to some extent they would become closer.” Mr. Howard has a strong personal relationship with Mr. Bush that is based on a similar socially conservative philosophy and a shared outlook on terrorism. Australian opinion polls have shown that although Australians remain strong supporters of the so-called Anzus alliance — the security pact among Australia, New Zealand and the United States — they do not approve of Mr. Bush or the Iraq war. The attempts by Mr. Howard’s coalition to stress its economic record apparently failed to impress voters. The Australian economy has had 17 years of continuous growth, lately driven by Chinese demand for Australian iron ore and coal. Mr. Howard had warned voters that a Labor victory would endanger the country’s prosperity. Despite the coalition campaign, there was little distance between the parties on economic policy, and the defining characteristics came down to the personalities of the leaders. Mr. Howard was running for a fifth term, and many voters said they were ready for a change. “Howard is out of touch,” said George Varvaressos, 52, who voted in eastern Sydney on Saturday morning. “It’s the arrogance of being in power for too long — he hasn’t been listening.” If Australia’s strongest military and political alliance is with Washington, the fuel for its economy is coming from China. Mr. Fullilove says Mr. Rudd’s ability to manage the relationship among Canberra, Washington and Beijing will be crucial. Mr. Rudd, 18 years younger than Mr. Howard, has a reputation as a cerebral student of policy, as opposed to the Liberal leader’s image of a hardened and aggressive political animal. “He seems more personable, approachable. He doesn’t seem arrogant — yet — and I have respect for him,” said Marcelle Freiman, who voted for Mr. Rudd in eastern Sydney on Saturday. Mr. Rudd’s dry image was altered by the news that he had visited a strip club during a trip to New York in 2003. He was a diplomat in Beijing and speaks Mandarin. He impressed many with a fluent address to President Hu Jintao of China when Mr. Hu visited Australia in September. Mr. Fullilove said Mr. Rudd’s experience regarding China was unlikely to make a significant difference to Australia’s relationship with the United States. “I would counsel against people assuming that because Kevin Rudd speaks Mandarin there would be a big rebalancing of the relationship in favor of Beijing,” he said. | Australia;Elections;Howard John;Politics and Government |
ny0139471 | [
"business"
] | 2008/02/16 | F.D.A. Seeks to Broaden Range of Use for Drugs | WASHINGTON — When federal drug regulators approve a medicine for sale, they limit how drug makers sell it. A drug approved to treat only breast cancer cannot be marketed for lung cancer even if some studies suggest that the medicine may save lung patients. But the Food and Drug Administration proposed guidelines Friday that would change this, and advocates on both sides of the issue say that lives are at stake. The rules would allow drug and device makers to provide doctors with copies of medical journal articles that discuss product uses that have not been vetted or approved by the F.D.A. The rules also say that drug companies do not have to promise to adequately test the unapproved use discussed in the article. Advocates of the rule say the F.D.A. is so slow in assessing drug and device benefits that companies need to be able to hand out medical journal articles so that doctors can learn immediately about life-saving uses. “The consequence of rapid disclosure of these benefits could be measured in lives,” said Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former F.D.A. deputy commissioner. Ken Johnson, senior vice president for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said that “journal articles can offer physicians valuable insight that helps them make informed decisions regarding appropriate medical treatments for their patients.” But critics of the proposal say that drug and device companies have a long history of promoting unapproved drug and device uses that later proved dangerous and that allowing companies to talk about such unapproved uses removes incentives for companies to research adequately whether the new use is actually beneficial. “People will die if they are getting drugs that don’t have clear evidence that the benefits outweigh the risks,” said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen’s health research group. Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, said the proposed rule “caters to the industry’s desire to market their products without adequate testing or review.” The F.D.A. will accept comments from the public on the proposal and take it up for final consideration in 60 days. The reason for this debate is that doctors are not overseen by the F.D.A. Medicine is regulated by state medical boards, which generally let doctors prescribe drugs and devices as they see fit regardless of F.D.A. judgments. In some cases, this is beneficial. Pediatricians for years had very few drugs approved for their use because drug makers often failed to test new medicines in children. So they prescribed drugs for children anyway, and, sometimes, saved lives. A 2006 study estimated that more than 20 percent of all prescriptions written by doctors were for unapproved uses. But drug makers have in the past abused doctors’ discretion by telling them that some medicines were appropriate for patients in whom the drugs may have caused more harm than good. In 2004, Pfizer paid a $430 million fine to resolve criminal and civil charges that it marketed its epilepsy drug Neurontin for conditions in which the company’s own studies suggested that the drug was ineffective. The F.D.A. has for years struggled to find the appropriate balance between the need to inform doctors of experimental but hopeful drug and device uses and the need to guard against hucksters promoting dangerous products as cure-alls. To complicate the issue, the drug agency’s power to prevent companies from providing truthful, albeit uncertain, information to doctors has been questioned by federal courts as a possible infringement of commercial free-speech rights. Congress stepped in to resolve the issue in 1997, passing a law that let drug makers hand out studies from medical journals as long as reprints were given to the F.D.A. beforehand and they promised to seek approval from the agency of the use discussed. That law lapsed in 2006 and “questions have been raised since then about what our policy is,” said Rita Chappelle, an F.D.A. spokeswoman. Under the proposed rule, the agency would let drug and device companies pass out articles to doctors if the articles were peer-reviewed and came from a journal with an expert editorial board. The article must be accompanied by a prominent warning that the use described is not approved or cleared by the F.D.A. The agency abandoned the requirement that drug and device makers must provide the studies to the F.D.A. beforehand or promise to seek approval of the discussed use. An F.D.A. official said the agency did not really enforce those requirements anyway. Diane Edquist Dorman, vice president of the National Organization for Rare Disorders, said she supported the F.D.A. position because patients with rare diseases are generally treated with unapproved drug uses about which doctors must be informed. “And these companies are just never going to do the confirmatory trials when only a couple of hundred people have the disease,” she said. But Dr. Steven Nissen, chairman of the department of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, said the rule would stop companies from underwriting expensive trials to confirm new drug uses. “Companies could openly promote products for unapproved indications without testing these drugs,” he said. “I’m astonished that this rule would even be considered.” | Food and Drug Administration;Drugs (Pharmaceuticals);Law and Legislation;Medicine and Health |
ny0162316 | [
"nyregion",
"nyregionspecial2"
] | 2006/02/05 | State Checking Dozens of Sites for Hidden Contaminants | WITH satellite photographs all over the Internet, images of Long Island as seen from above are only a few mouse clicks away. Views beneath the Island's surface and a clear picture of what may be seeping up and down are not so easy to come by. The need for a better view of what is going on below ground has assumed new urgency in New York as environmental officials move to evaluate the threat of volatile chemical vapors rising into homes and businesses from contaminated soil and water -- some at sites the state said had already been cleaned up. The potential for contamination is far worse than state environmental officials previously believed, and homes could be at risk from vapors that can migrate from industrial and commercial sites where contaminants were dumped or spilled years or even decades ago. The chemicals most commonly found in the volatile vapors have been linked to health problems that include cancer, organ damage and birth defects, a state assemblyman's report says. In an effort that has received little attention on Long Island, the State Department of Environmental Conservation is making plans and setting priorities for investigating 400 hazardous waste sites, including more than 80 on Long Island. The department wants to determine whether vapors are moving -- a process called vapor intrusion -- and tainting indoor air in buildings on or near the sites. Authorities had deemed many of the sites sufficiently cleaned up but will now take a second look. The sites are scattered across the Island but are predominantly in Nassau County and western Suffolk. There are no estimates for the cost of their cleanup. "Historically, we thought that vapor intrusion was only an issue where the source of contaminants was very shallow and the magnitude of contamination was very great," Carl Johnson, the conservation department's deputy commissioner for air and waste management, said in testimony at a State Assembly hearing last April. "We now know that our previous assumptions about the mechanisms that could lead to exposure to vapor intrusion were not complete." The environmental conservation department and the State Health Department have devised a strategy to look at the sites for what are called vapor intrusion pathways -- essentially, the paths that the vapors from chemical contaminants like industrial solvents can follow from the soil and groundwater to the surface and, in the worst cases, into buildings. Sites ranked most likely to have problems will be dealt with first. The rankings are due by December. Cleanup costs would be borne by business owners and past owners identified as responsible for contaminants; they would be assumed by the state as a last resort. Additional cleanup efforts could include the excavation of contaminated soil and groundwater treatments generally referred to as air stripping, in which volatile organic compounds in groundwater are exposed to the air and evaporate. At sites where problems are suspected or found, soil and basements, crawl spaces and lower-level living areas in commercial buildings and nearby homes could be tested. Indoor air samples are usually collected during the heating season. Steps to evaluate the risks of vapor intrusion are part of current cleanups, including brownfield sites, the former commercial or industrial sites that have been cleaned up for reuse. In some cases, demolition and excavation can provide paths for vapors. The state environmental conservation and health departments said their comprehensive approach would make New York a national leader in addressing vapor intrusion. But critics said the problem only underscored how much contamination was allowed to remain even after state-approved cleanups. Walter Hang, the president of Toxics Targeting in Ithaca, N.Y., a company that compiles government information on 500,000 toxic sites in New York for clients ranging from water districts to home buyers, said the state was reaping the results of inadequate cleanup of contaminated sites. "The state should have cleaned up these sites decades ago, given that everyone knew the sole source of Long Island drinking water had to be protected," Mr. Hang said. Now, he said, the vapor problem was compounding the risks residents already faced from contaminants that are seeping farther down toward public water supplies. "The question is, are these solvents penetrating into nearby homes and buildings as a soil gas vapor?" Mr. Hang said. He said Long Island's sandy and highly permeable soils were "an ideal environment for allowing contaminated water and soil vapor to spread to the maximum degree." "These chemicals are very persistent, particularly when they are underground and there is no breakdown of the compounds," he said. "They can migrate slowly but surely through the groundwater and cause continuing contamination hazards." The new view of soil vapor intrusion began emerging in the late 1990's when the federal Environmental Protection Agency found a far wider problem at a Colorado cleanup site than agency officials had anticipated or computer models had predicted. The findings set off alarms among environmental agencies across the country, but nowhere more than in New York, where solvent dumping associated with heavy industry and manufacturing is well documented. In 2001, the State Department of Environmental Conservation investigated soil vapor at an industrial plant in Endicott where I.B.M., the former owner, had reported a 4,100-gallon solvent spill in 1979. By the summer of 2004, I.B.M. had discovered measurable levels of vapors in 470 homes and buildings in the vicinity of the plant in the Village of Endicott and the Town of Union. It has spent about $40 million so far to clean up the site. Among Long Island sites where vapors have become an issue is a large industrial park in Plainview near residential areas south of the Long Island Expressway. An engineering consultant hired by the environmental conservation department, O'Brien & Gere of Syracuse, asked property owners in December for access to test groundwater and poke underground with heated probes that draw out vapors. The industrial park, like many of the other Long Island sites on the state list for evaluation, has a long history of contamination. Reports supplied by Toxics Targeting, compiled from Department of Environmental Conservation records, show that one tenant in the Plainview industrial park, a lithography company, disposed of unknown quantities of contaminants in four leaching pools for about 25 years, ending in 1990. Some contaminated soil was removed and some groundwater monitoring was performed under the direction of the Nassau County Health Department, the reports said. The contaminant that worries state officials most is trichloroethylene, which is also known as trichloroethene or TCE. It is found in solvents used to clean machine parts, strip paint, make adhesives and mix in paints and varnishes, among other applications. The state health department says long-term exposure to high levels of TCE in the air can cause nausea, headaches, dizziness, reduced coordination and in some studies, increased risks for certain cancers. Other contaminants, which like TCE are also volatile organic compounds, include xylene, toluene, tetrachlorethylene (a common dry-cleaning solvent, also known as perchloroethylene, PCE or perc), and trichloroethane (TCA). Another manufacturer at the industrial park dumped unknown quantities of perc and TCA into a leaching pool over an unknown length of time, contaminating soil and groundwater, the reports said. The documents say that a voluntary cleanup of soil and groundwater at the site met objectives, but that contaminated soil was left in place, because it was "primarily subsurface" and "direct exposures are not likely to occur." The records show that employees of a manufacturer of paint and industrial coatings dumped solvents on the ground and into storm drains, a situation that came to light in the late 1980's. In 1993, a cleanup ordered by the Department of Environmental Conservation removed contaminated soil as well as hazardous wastes from leaking underground tanks. The site is within 500 yards of a public well. In all cases, the conservation department eventually "delisted" the sites, meaning they were deemed sufficiently cleaned up. Carol Meschkow, the president of the Concerned Citizens of the Plainview-Old Bethpage Community, said she was unaware of state-ordered testing for vapor intrusion at the industrial park and did not know of the state's concern about vapors. She added that she had never heard a complaint from any area resident about confirmed or suspected vapors in a home. Paul Granger, the superintendent of the Plainview Water District, also had not heard of the testing. "I am surprised I am not hearing more about this, and I'm surprised there is not more information for the public," he said. Mr. Granger, a former chairman of the Long Island Water Conference, an association of water companies, has tried for years to compel the conservation department to do more to clean up the industrial park. "We are very concerned with that facility," he said. "But these spills are decades-old, and it appears the horse is out of the barn. Here we are in 2006, and it seems like things are only getting worse." He said that a water district pumping station drawing water at a depth of 700 feet about a half mile northeast of the industrial park began picking up traces of TCE in 2001. He said the amount had steadily increased since then, requiring the district to spend $1 million to build a stripping tower to remove the contaminant. Mr. Hang of Toxics Targeting said that the Plainview park was not unique. "It is one of dozens of sites that will require further investigation and probably further cleanup," he said. "Long Island had so many companies that used these solvents." Assemblyman Thomas P. DiNapoli, a Democrat from Great Neck and the chairman of the Assembly's Committee on Environmental Conservation, called on the State Health Department on Tuesday to enact stricter standards for exposure to TCE in indoor air. Mr. DiNapoli said the recommendation came out of hearings the committee held in Endicott in November 2004, in Ithaca last April and in Hopewell Junction last May. All three communities have had major problems with vapor intrusion from contaminated industrial sites. He urged the environmental conservation and health departments to "adopt the strictest guidelines that are out there" and to agree to any requests for tests of indoor air by any resident living near a contaminated site with possible vapor intrusion. A report Mr. DiNapoli scheduled for release on Thursday also said that once vapors had been blocked or diverted from homes, an aggressive cleanup of soil and groundwater contamination should begin as soon as possible. The report noted that the current State Health Department air guidelines for TCE were half as stringent as those in California, Colorado and New Jersey. The report said the stricter standards in those states were warranted in New York because of uncertainties about the toxicity of TCE. Mr. DiNapoli said that the contamination of indoor air by volatile chemicals like TCE was "the most significant public health threat from contaminated Superfund and brownfield sites." His report said that TCE, PCE and TCA, chemicals commonly found in vapors, were linked to the serious health effects including cancer, organ damage and birth defects. At the federal level, the Environmental Protection Agency's regional office for New York and New Jersey is appraising vapor intrusion at Superfund sites in both states. "Even on sites we have completed active remediation of, we feel there is a need to go back and look," said Michael Sivak, a risk assessment specialist for the agency. There are 15 Superfund sites in Nassau County and 11 in Suffolk. Mr. Sivak said that the risks from vapor intrusion varied from site to site depending on local geology and other factors the agency is still learning about. He said the agency had done recent testing for indoor vapors at a groundwater contamination site in Smithtown but found little or no sign of problems inside homes there. In 1998, the agency found PCE in water from private wells in contaminated areas in Nissequogue, Head of the Harbor and St. James. The agency plans more indoor air sampling near Lawrence Aviation Industries in Port Jefferson Station, a former titanium plant that is on the federal Superfund list. The testing is proposed for about 25 homes and Earl L. Vandermeulen High School in Port Jefferson. | LONG ISLAND (NY);ENVIRONMENT;CHEMICALS |
ny0044171 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2014/05/22 | 1-Year-Old Boy Falls to Death From Sixth-Floor Window in Brooklyn | A 1-year-old boy fell to his death from a sixth-floor window late Wednesday morning in Brooklyn. The baby, whom the police identified as Theodore Nemon, landed on a third-floor balcony at 580 Crown Street in the Crown Heights neighborhood. Police officers found him there sometime after 11:30 a.m., and an ambulance took him to Kings County Hospital Center, where he was pronounced dead. Police officials said they were still investigating and did not provide any other details. The boy’s parents could not be reached on Wednesday because a phone number for the family could not be found. | Falling;Crown Heights Brooklyn;Babies;Fatalities,casualties;Theodore Nemon |
ny0016333 | [
"business",
"energy-environment"
] | 2013/10/09 | Report Says a Shortage of Nuclear Ingredient Looms | WASHINGTON — Most nuclear reactors in the United States rely on a type of lithium that is produced only by China and Russia, and the supply may be drying up, according to a study to be released on Wednesday. The Government Accountability Office said the looming shortage of a material critical to the operation of 65 out of 100 American nuclear reactors “places their ability to continue to provide electricity at some risk,” a conclusion echoed by outside experts. The problem reflects the withering away of the American industrial infrastructure of all things nuclear, and the nation’s dependence on distant places for “energy-critical materials,” including “rare earth” materials used in high-efficiency motors, and other materials used in solar cells. Producing these generally involves environmentally damaging processes, one reason that production has moved abroad. The material in potentially short supply is specifically lithium-7, which is what is left over when it is separated from another form, lithium-6, which can be used to make tritium, the hydrogen in the hydrogen bomb. The two forms, called isotopes, are chemically identical, although lithium-7 has one additional neutron. The equipment needed to separate lithium-6 from lithium-7 is mostly a cold war leftover. The United States shut down almost all of its machinery in 1963, when it had a huge surplus, now mostly consumed. It has not had to make much tritium in the last few years because its nuclear weapons inventory is shrinking. China and Russia apparently still have their equipment in place, but because it is related to their weapons program, outsiders do not know how much capacity they might have. At the same time, Chinese domestic demand for lithium-7 is likely to increase soon because they are working on a new type of nuclear reactor that uses vastly larger quantities of the material, according to independent experts. Per Peterson, the chairman of the nuclear engineering department at the University of California, Berkeley, said it would be “pragmatic” for the United States to re-establish the ability to separate lithium-6 from lithium-7 — although the G.A.O. report said it would take five years and $10 million to $12 million. Dr. Peterson said the American utilities could protect themselves by soliciting bids from companies that could do the work in this country, and signing purchase agreements. So far, though, according to the G.A.O., no government entity has taken the lead to assure a supply, and the utilities, having seen no problem so far, do not appear concerned. The reactor industry could also find a substitute material, although Keith P. Fruzzetti, a reactor chemistry expert at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit utility consortium, said that a change like that “typically takes many years to accomplish.” The type of nuclear reactor that uses lithium-7 heats water under high pressure to keep it from boiling and then transfers the heat through heat exchangers that are prone to corrosion. The reactors use lithium to counteract another chemical they add to the water that makes it corrosive, boric acid. The boric acid is needed to sop up excess neutrons, the subatomic particles that are released when uranium is split, and which sustain the chain reaction. The report also cited the recent failure of the federal government to foresee the shortage of another isotope, a type of helium that the Department of Homeland Security wanted to use in detectors looking for smuggled bomb materials. The G.A.O. report was requested by Representative Dan Maffei of New York, who is the ranking Democratic member of the House Science Committee’s subcommittee on oversight. A staff member said that because of the government shutdown, Mr. Maffei’s office would have no comment. The G.A.O., which produced the report before the shutdown began, is also mostly closed. | Nuclear energy;Electric power;GAO;US;Lithium Mental |
ny0123028 | [
"sports",
"tennis"
] | 2012/09/07 | For Federer at U.S. Open, Flicker or Flame Out? | Once the happiest of hunting grounds for Roger Federer , the United States Open has turned into a booby trap. Wednesday’s surprising — if far from shocking — late-night defeat to Tomas Berdych was only the latest example. Though Federer is back atop the rankings at age 31, his timeline at Flushing Meadows reads like a tale of gradual decline: five straight singles titles through 2008, finalist in 2009, semifinalist in 2010 and 2011 and now quarterfinalist in 2012. His recent defeats share a common thread: blown leads and missed opportunities. In 2009, he lost a one-set advantage against Juan Martín del Potro to lose in five sets. In both 2010 and 2011, he failed to convert on two match points and ended up losing to Novak Djokovic. Against Berdych, Federer never built a commanding lead but he was up a break of serve in the opening set with a chance to go up a second break before losing the set in a tiebreaker and ultimately the match, 7-6 (1), 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 . “I really expected myself to play better tonight,” Federer said. “Especially at night, I have had such a great record. I don’t know. I felt good, you know. Such an amazing summer I had. I really thought I was going to come out and play a solid match. I didn’t do that tonight. Obviously there is a bit of a letdown now.” Deep concern seems out of the question. Federer won Wimbledon this year in grand style and reached the Olympic gold medal match at the same location last month with a gutsy victory over del Potro before losing to Andy Murray. He then beat Djokovic to win his only United States Open warm-up event: the Masters 1000 tournament near Cincinnati. That was Federer’s sixth title of the year, which only makes his failure to challenge for this title more deflating. Though Federer has little left to prove at this stage of his career, he looked deeply affected in the aftermath Wednesday night, cracking a thin smile as he answered questions in Swiss-German but remaining resolutely downbeat otherwise. He has lost matches to Berdych before on fast courts: at the Olympics on a hardcourt in 2004 and in the quarterfinal of Wimbledon in 2010. He came close to losing to him on a fast blue clay court in Madrid this year. But Federer did not expect to lose this time in his current state of grace, and the defeat could well compromise his chances of finishing the season at No. 1, particularly if Djokovic, the reigning Open champion, reaches the final or retains his title. Djokovic has precious few tour points to defend the rest of the season while Federer will have to defend a bundle after winning his final three tournaments of 2011. “I’ve got to go back to the drawing board from here and see what’s really the priority, if that’s a priority for the end of the year,” Federer said of the No. 1 ranking. “So I don’t know right now. I mean the goal has been achieved, but this is disappointing for me. We’ll see where I go from now.” The first decision is whether he plays Davis Cup for Switzerland next week in its World Group qualifying match on clay against the Netherlands in Amsterdam. Winning the Davis Cup remains one of Federer’s few unrealized tennis dreams, and if the Swiss lose next week, they will be relegated and have no chance of competing for the trophy next year. Many in the players lounge maintained that Federer’s letdown against Berdych was a result of the walkover he received in the previous round because of Mardy Fish’s withdrawal. “It’s very difficult when you have four or five days off in a row in the middle of a Slam,” said Greg Rusedski, the former United States Open finalist, who is doing commentary for British television. “You have to come out and you have to stimulate the body to do two and a half hours of training and maintain the concentration, and he lost his flow. He wasn’t as sharp. He was playing brilliantly all summer. He played great at Wimbledon, and I think that default really threw him off with the combination of Berdych playing well.” It is an attractive theory, but this was the fourth time Federer received a walkover during a Grand Slam event. On two previous occasions, the United States Open in 2004 and Wimbledon in 2007, he went on to win the title. But the title will go elsewhere this time, and this is now the first Grand Slam tournament since the 2004 French Open in which neither Federer nor Rafael Nadal will be playing in the semifinals. Their duopoly was broken up — presumably for good — by Djokovic last year, but this is still a signpost. And Britons like Rusedski are taking it as a sign that Murray, fresh off his Olympic gold medal, is finally ready to win his first Grand Slam title, although their confidence should have been rattled by Djokovic’s suffocating, 2011-worthy performance in the quarterfinals against del Potro on Thursday night. “He’s attacking the second serve better; he’s being more aggressive,” Rusedski said of Murray. “He’s hitting his forehand better, taking it early rather than letting the ball drop, and if you’re going to win one of these things you cannot counterattack your way to success at the majors.” Like his poker-faced coach Ivan Lendl, Murray has lost his first four major finals. Lendl solved the riddle after that, finishing with eight Grand Slam titles. For Murray to keep the symmetry alive, he will need to absorb plenty more pace and beat Berdych, who holds a 4-2 edge over Murray. As for Federer, he will have to keep waiting for his sixth United States Open title and, if he really intends to keep playing until 2016, to watch out for booby traps. “I think Berdych played very well and was very offensive, and Roger fought hard but it was one of those times where it didn’t all click,” Federer’s co-coach Paul Annacone said. “Sometimes we forget that it actually does happen to the great ones.” | Federer Roger;United States Open (Tennis);Tennis |
ny0092040 | [
"business",
"international"
] | 2015/08/16 | The Greek Debt Deal’s Missing Piece | At long last, European creditor nations and Greece have reached an agreement on a third bailout in five years. The bailout, which was approved by Greece’s Parliament on Friday, included familiar details: In return for an infusion of 86 billion euros, or $95 billion, Greece has promised to increase taxes, cut spending and enact measures to make its economy function more efficiently. But there was one glaring omission. As it stands, none of that new money flowing into Greece will come from the agency that has, until now, played a crucial role in virtually every bailout, in Greece and elsewhere around the world: the International Monetary Fund. That is because the I.M.F. says that Greece was simply incapable of repaying its staggering debt. Yet the accord reached last week makes no effort to reduce that burden. If you agree with the I.M.F.’s reasoning, you might have to conclude that despite all of the seemingly ironclad provisions of the agreement imposed by eurozone creditors, Greece will be no more able to honor the deal or to repay its new loans than it has been in other bailouts. “I remain firmly of the view that Greece’s debt has become unsustainable and that Greece cannot restore debt sustainability solely through actions on its own,” the I.M.F.’s chief, Christine Lagarde, said on Friday, following the accord’s approval this week. The Greek debt drama has had its share of twists and turns. Alliances have shifted, rivalries have deepened, and the back-room maneuverings have been appropriately Byzantine. But the I.M.F. shift from being Greece’s most persistent scold to its main advocate for a break on its debt has been among the most intriguing developments so far. Clashing Assessments In late June, representatives of European countries and the I.M.F. gathered at a private meeting at the European Union’s headquarters in Brussels. The officials were racing against time to devise a plan to keep the country in the eurozone. But the dispute between Greece’s two largest lenders was about to boil over. Poul M. Thomsen, the Danish fund official who served as the I.M.F. point person in the Greek talks, had been negotiating around the clock, and his voice was hoarse. Since early in the spring, he had been arguing that while Greece needed to follow through on tough economic measures, its debt was out of control. Europe, however, insisted that the Greek government had only to enact tough austerity measures to set itself on a prudent financial path. Explaining Greece’s Debt Crisis European authorities have agreed to disburse $8.4 billion in fresh funds to Greece, allowing the country to keep paying its bills in the coming months. Now the Europeans wanted to highlight their own, more sanguine view of Greece’s debt prospects at a crucial meeting of the creditor countries’ finance ministers the next day. And in doing so they took the I.M.F.’s conclusion — that Greece could no longer repay its debt and that Europe might have to face losses on its exposure there — and presented it, in one throwaway sentence, as a long-shot scenario. For the I.M.F. it was a breaking point. Not only were officials frustrated that Europe was not accurately reflecting their view, but they also wanted to make sure that their non-European shareholders, many of whom had become very critical of the fund’s aggressive lending in Greece, got the full picture of how their analysis had changed. So, in a highly unorthodox move, they decided to make their disagreement public. They released their full analysis — a 23-page document — a week later. Since then the fund has been adamant: Europe must provide significant debt relief in order for the I.M.F. to provide cash toward the next Greek bailout. A growing number of economists agree that Greece needs more than another dose of austerity policies to recover. But they are also asking why it took so long for the fund to reach that conclusion. “I applaud the fund for releasing the report, but at the same time it was too late,” said Gabriel Sterne, an economist at Oxford Economics in London who has closely studied the I.M.F.’s role in Greece. “For right or for wrong, they are the only honest broker here so they really should have gotten this out sooner.” No More Argentinas Founded in 1944 as part of a broad mandate to ensure global financial stability after the end of World War II, the I.M.F. for many years primarily lent money to developing economies — largely in Latin America and Asia — that experienced a financial crisis. But after the 2008 financial crisis, the I.M.F. turned its attention to Europe. An astonishing 61 percent of the I.M.F.’s loan book is now tied up in Ireland, Portugal and, of course, Greece. The standard prescription in a crisis is a dollop of loans in return for belt-tightening measures. When this analysis is done correctly, the endings tend to be happy. The economy recovers, and the country goes back to the usual method of meeting its financing needs by borrowing on global bond markets, as has happened with Ireland and Portugal. When the analysis is not done correctly, the results can be disastrous. The country goes bust. The I.M.F. is not paid back. And most acutely, citizens end up suffering from the failed policies. Arguably, then, the I.M.F.’s most critical task is figuring out whether or not a country can pay back its loans. That calculation will determine how much the fund pushes pure austerity policies or whether it will also impose losses on lenders to return the economy to health. Image Credit Paulo D. Campos As an emergency creditor — the world’s subprime lender, if you will — the I.M.F. has some failures. Before Greece, the fund’s biggest debacle had been Argentina. The fund lent billions of dollars to the country just before it defaulted in 2001, leading to an economic tailspin. It took years for Argentina to come out of it. To guard against falling into a similar money pit, the fund put in place a “no more Argentinas” rule, according to the author Paul Blustein in his definitive paper on the I.M.F.’s Greek drama. The rule decreed that the fund would hand out money only if there was a “high probability” that the applicant could make good on the loan. In May 2010, Greece would be the first test of this new rule. From the outset, most of the fund’s senior staff concluded it was highly unlikely that Greece could pay the money back, given its voluminous debts and dysfunctional economy. Several top officials went so far as to push for an immediate debt “haircut” — a permanent loss to the lenders — in secret meetings with their European counterparts, according to Mr. Blustein’s recounting of those events. But the fund, then under the leadership of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, wanted to get back into the bailout game. Having hit a low of $9 billion in 2007, I.M.F. lending had been slowly ticking up through 2010. Mr. Strauss-Kahn, who was known to have his eye on the French presidency, was not going to miss an opportunity to play a central role in resolving the European debt crisis. So the I.M.F. made a last-minute adjustment to its “no more Argentinas” decree. It would approve the loan request under a new “systemic exemption.” That is, the fund could justify the loan if it would prevent a broad financial panic. Greece seemed to fit that exemption. The bailout request came less than two years after Lehman Brothers had failed. The global economy was still in a precarious state, and European debt markets had been rattled by Greece’s troubles. With the European Central Bank not yet ready to use its ability to print money to intervene, the fund decided to back Greece in spite of its disastrous finances. It was a controversial decision. The bailout was a salvation for bond investors, namely large European banks, which owned the majority of Greek debt. But the Greek people would have to pay, as the country was required to institute severe budget cuts and tax increases to make the debt numbers add up. The immediate halt in government spending had a devastating effect in an economy dependent on state largess. Unemployment soared, suicide rates jumped, and pensioners took to begging on the streets. The fund, nonetheless, produced optimistic reports about the outlook for Greece. (Since 2010, the fund’s growth estimates missed the mark by a cumulative 25 percent, a forecasting error of such a magnitude that the fund’s chief economist was forced to acknowledge in 2013 that the I.M.F. had underestimated the extent to which austerity policies could sink an economy.) Image Dominique Strauss-Kahn agreed to a Greek bailout in 2010 without requiring lenders to take losses. Credit Tobias Schwarz/Reuters By 2012, Greece would need a second bailout, and this time fund officials were able to convince their European partners that bond investors must contribute to the rescue by accepting steep losses on their investments. In addition, they extracted a commitment from Europe that it would take steps to reduce Greece’s debt in the coming years. With all the hoopla of the second bailout, this clause drew little notice, but for the I.M.F. it was a victory of sorts, as it gave voice to what officials had been saying internally: The time would come when Europe would have to take a hit on its Greek loans. The Pressure Mounts By mid-2014, Greece had made some progress. Excluding interest paid on its debt, its budget had reversed from a 10 percent deficit to a slight surplus. The government was again able to tap global markets for cash, and Greek banks raised billions of dollars in New York and London. That July, Rishi Goyal, a senior member of the I.M.F.’s Greek team based in Washington, hailed the achievement in a speech in Athens. Privately, however, fund officials were voicing doubts to their European partners over whether Greek politicians, notorious for their free-spending ways, could maintain fiscal discipline. Mr. Thomsen, the head of the I.M.F.’s European department, was among the most skeptical. A career technocrat from Denmark with a blunt manner, he had put together the original Greek program in 2010 and had become frustrated with Greece’s reluctance to follow through with reforms. In particular, Mr. Thomsen was infuriated when the Greek prime minister at the time, Antonis Samaras, fired Harry Theoharis, a crusading young reformer in the Greek finance ministry. Mr. Theoharis had the enthusiastic support of the I.M.F. to retool the country’s deplorable tax system. With the government backtracking on reforms, the country’s small surplus disappeared. In January of this year, the anti-austerity party of Alexis Tsipras came to power. By April, negotiations over debt repayment had stalled, the government was hemorrhaging cash, and the economy was at a standstill. Image Poul Thomsen, the Danish fund official who served as the I.M.F. point person in the Greek talks. Credit Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images On Easter Sunday, Yanis Varoufakis, who had become Greece’s finance minister, flew to Washington to meet with Mr. Thomsen and Christine Lagarde, who became the I.M.F.’s chief in 2011, and threatened to stop payment on more than a billion dollars in loans that were soon coming due. Relations between fund officials and the Greeks had reached their nadir. Mr. Tsipras said that the fund had “criminal responsibility” for the crisis, and Mr. Varoufakis was telling people that Mr. Thomsen’s work in Greece would go down in history as the I.M.F.’s greatest failure. Yet having run the numbers, the fund now accepted the central argument being made by Mr. Varoufakis: Greece was bankrupt and needed debt relief from Europe to survive. The fund was also feeling the pressure from the non-European members of its board who questioned the huge commitment to Greece (currently about $15 billion) relative to the small size of its economy. Ms. Lagarde and David Lipton, her top deputy, became more insistent, pressing European nations that economic reforms alone were not enough and that a debt restructuring would be needed as well. In late April, Mr. Thomsen took up the issue once more at a critical meeting of European finance ministers in Riga, Latvia. Two months later, Ms. Lagarde found herself at the Brussels meeting of European finance ministers, with the country’s future in the eurozone hanging in the balance. The Europeans were pressuring Mr. Varoufakis to agree to an austerity-loaded debt deal that he was resisting. I have a question for Christine, he said. Can the I.M.F. formally state in this meeting that this proposal we are being asked to sign will make the Greek debt sustainable? She could not. And when Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister and lead negotiator for Europe, cut off all discussion of debt relief, the die was cast. Image Christine Lagarde, the new head of the I.M.F., has argued that without relief, Greece’s debt is unsustainable. Credit Thierry Charlier/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Back at I.M.F. headquarters in Washington, the decision was unanimous: It would go public with its assessment that Greece’s debt situation was hopeless. ‘Old Wine in a New Bottle’ The 19 countries of the euro area make up the I.M.F.’s largest shareholder base, but as the world’s financial watchdog, the fund also represents 169 other nations. If the I.M.F. wants to be seen as an international, as opposed to a European, monetary fund, it must prove that it can speak with an independent voice. And if that means arguing that Europe, its senior partner in these talks, needs to take a loss on its loans — well, so be it. Many have commended the fund for going public with its views. But the release of its debt reports has not yet had any practical effect. The latest bailout is heavy on austerity measures like privatization of power companies and seaports, reduced pensions and tax increases in shipping and tourism, and says nothing about debt relief. “This is old wine in a new bottle,” said Megan E. Greene, chief economist at Manulife in Boston. “I see very little chance that the bailout will succeed — it’s too much like the other ones.” Would it have made a difference if the fund had officially broken with Europe in the spring, when it began to conclude that the Greek debt had become unmanageable? Probably not, says Susan Schadler, a former I.M.F. economist and author of a widely read paper on the fund’s Greece saga. But she argues that by not forcing creditors to take a loss back in 2010, the pain has been borne almost exclusively by the Greeks themselves, and not by bond investors. “The fund should have pushed for a restructuring then,” she said. “That, after all, is its job — to assess the risks and say whether or not the debt is sustainable.” | Greece;IMF;EU;International trade;Euro Crisis |
ny0178351 | [
"business",
"smallbusiness"
] | 2007/09/13 | Out of Adversity, an Opportunity | As his mother tells it, Cade Larson was a lively 15-month-old who loved playing peekaboo and chase with other children and was quickly adding to his vocabulary of more than 50 words, including “fish,” “bowl” and “shoe.” But then, said his mother, Jennifer VanDerHorst-Larson, Cade got vaccinations for measles , mumps and rubella , influenza and chicken pox on Oct. 15, 2001. He wailed for a few moments, then slumped into a deep sleep that lasted 14 hours. When he woke up, she said, he was a different child. “He stopped looking at me,” Ms. VanDerHorst-Larson said. “He had lost his speech.” She believes he had a huge seizure that resulted in brain damage. In a heartbeat, her mission became healing her son. In that, she failed. On Valentine’s Day 2002, her school district told her that Cade had the severest case of autism it had ever seen. “This is my only child,” she said. “I can’t describe the pain.” The idea that vaccines cause autism has been widely rejected by mainstream scientists, though some doctors are investigating it and many parents of autistic children remain convinced there is a link. But Ms. VanDerHorst-Larson, 35, had a resource for fighting back that many parents do not: She was an entrepreneur. In 1996, she had opened a Pilates studio in Minneapolis. In 1998, she had started Vibrant Technologies , a buyer and seller of information technology hardware that now has 40 employees and expects revenue this year of $45 million, up from $37 million last year. In the five and a half years since Cade’s condition was diagnosed, Ms. VanDerHorst-Larson has thrown herself into the challenge of giving meaning to his life with all of the classic weapons of the entrepreneurial personality: superhuman energy, bottomless self-confidence, bulldog tenacity, a compulsion to be in control and a knack for spotting opportunities in even the most disheartening reversals of fortune. In effect, she has made caring for her son and for others like him her third business. She shut her first one, the Pilates venture, to free up time. For two years, she traveled the country, attending seminars and taking Cade to neurologists, immunologists and other specialists, until, she said, she realized she would never find the cure she was seeking. “By then, I was running a home program for him, nine people in all: a behavioral analyst, a speech therapist, an occupational therapist, a psychologist, a social worker, a special education teacher and three behavioral therapists,” Ms. VanDerHorst-Larson said. She was also running Vibrant. She said she was getting just two hours of sleep a night. “It was not normal,” she said. “It was inhuman.” “It was the same drive you have when you start a company,” she said. “My son was my investment. I was the manager.” Ms. VanDerHorst-Larson said that her husband, David Larson, a co-owner of Vibrant, was very supportive, but “this was who I am, not who he was.” In April 2003, she started the nonprofit Holland Center in Excelsior, Minn., for children ages 2 to 8 who have autism, including Cade, whose face is on the Web site’s home page. The staff consists of a behavioral analyst, an occupational therapist, a speech therapist, a special education teacher, a music teacher, two psychologists , 15 behavioral therapists and Ms. VanDerHorst-Larson as the business manager. That comes to 23 people working with 17 children. Six months after the Holland Center was created, she was back to more traditional entrepreneurship, starting St. Croix Solutions, a technology consulting firm and provider of computer hardware. She said that she wanted her son to sprout his wings and that she realized he could not do that if she was at the center all the time. But it was more than that. “It’s in my nature,” she said. “I saw an opportunity. My husband says, ‘Don’t start anything else.’ But it’s like a drug.” Ms. VanDerHorst-Larson estimates that St. Croix’s revenue this year will be $26 million, up from $18 million last year. Dr. Kerry J. Sulkowicz, an M.D. who founded the Boswell Group, a New York consulting firm that specializes in business culture issues, says Ms. VanDerHorst-Larson’s approach to her son’s disability is a case study in “the uncanny ability of entrepreneurs to see obstacles as challenges and to jump over them instead of being stopped by them.” “Many mothers might react to the discovery that their child has autism with depression ,” Dr. Sulkowicz said. “Jennifer didn’t because she had pre-existing resources that she could call upon to seek a solution to the problem.” Asked how he interpreted her statement that her son became her investment and she the manager, Dr. Sulkowicz said it was “ a depersonalization of something that is extremely personal.” He continued: “It’s kind of like saying, ‘On one level, I’m not going to think in terms of mother and son, I’m going to take a half step back and approach and deal with that as a business problem. Because that way, I will be more likely to find a solution.’ That approach, in turn, has probably made her a sturdier and more satisfied mother.” Ms. VanDerHorst-Larson said she had not decided yet what to do next. She said she might create a chain of autism centers or a foundation to help children with autism. Or both. Her ordeal, she agreed, had made her a better entrepreneur. “It changed my perspective on everything,” she said. “It gave me more drive in looking for opportunities and challenging myself more. It has led me to think harder, make smarter decisions.” Successful entrepreneurs do not agonize over problems. They jump in and solve them, often in ways they could never have foreseen. Ms. VanDerHorst-Larson was unable to find a quick fix to Cade’s autism. But she found a remedy. “Today, he does speak,” she said. “He says, ‘Sit, mommy,’ and ‘Blue crayon,’ and ‘Red shirt.’ He’s not in pain anymore. He’s a social person. He makes eye contact. He’s happy.” • Next week at www.nytimes.com/smallbusiness , an In the Hunt column online: How an entrepreneur overcame depression so debilitating it had forced her to close her business. | Autism;Children and Youth;Entrepreneurship;Small Business |
ny0095975 | [
"us"
] | 2015/01/06 | North Dakota: Train-School Bus Crash Kills 2 | Two people were killed and at least 11 were injured Monday afternoon in a collision between a Larimore School District bus and a train on a gravel road about five miles east of Larimore in the northeastern part of the state, the authorities said. The bus was heading north on a county road when it was struck by a westbound freight train, Lt. Troy Hischer of the Highway Patrol said. He said the weather had been clear. | Car Crash;Train wreck;Bus;North Dakota |
ny0094732 | [
"sports",
"tennis"
] | 2015/01/29 | Facing a Top Server, Novak Djokovic Does Him One Better | MELBOURNE, Australia — Against one of the best servers in the game, top-seeded Novak Djokovic turned in an untouchable performance. Djokovic beat eighth-seeded Milos Raonic, 7-6 (5), 6-4, 6-2, on Wednesday night in the Australian Open quarterfinals, and he did not face a single break point on his serve in the match. In his semifinal, set for Friday night, Djokovic will face fourth-seeded Stan Wawrinka, who beat Kei Nishikori, 6-3, 6-4, 7-6 (6), on Wednesday afternoon. Sixth-seeded Andy Murray and seventh-seeded Tomas Berdych were to meet in the other semifinal Thursday night. Djokovic has served dominantly throughout his first five matches in Melbourne, and he has been broken only once in 73 service games (on a double fault in his second-round rout of Andrey Kuznetsov). More known for his returning and rallying skills than for his serving prowess, Djokovic said his coach, Boris Becker, could be credited with some of the improvement on that shot, which was Becker’s forte. “Serve was one of the tasks, one of the things that we wanted to improve,” Djokovic said of his work with Becker. “I know I can’t serve as fast as Milos, but I’m trying to use the angles, the accuracy, align myself to have some free points with that serve. That’s what I used well during this 10 days now so far.” Wawrinka also consistently overpowered Nishikori with his serve, winning 86 percent of points on his first serve and striking 20 aces. Fans from Nishikori’s native Japan, many in face paint and kimonos, flocked to Rod Laver Arena to watch him at a tournament that has called itself the Grand Slam of Asia-Pacific. But it was Wawrinka who looked at home from the start, taking early break leads in the second and third sets. Over all, he hit twice as many winners as the fifth-seeded Nishikori, 46 to 23. Nishikori trailed by 6-1 in the third-set tiebreaker before he saved five consecutive match points to level the score at 6-6, sending the resigned crowd into unlikely excitement. But with Wawrinka pinned behind the baseline on the next point, an attempted drop shot by Nishikori hit the bottom of the net tape and slid down onto his side of the court, sending his coach, Michael Chang, similarly slumping into his seat. The error gave Wawrinka a sixth match point, which he converted with an ace for a spot in the semifinals. “I’m still nervous,” Wawrinka, the defending champion in Melbourne , said in his on-court interview after his narrow escape against Nishikori, the first man from Asia to break into the top five of the ATP rankings in singles. Wawrinka said of the failed drop shot in his news conference, “I was really happy because I was not going to get to that ball.” He added: “I had the wind with me, so it was not easy to make a drop shot, especially at that moment. No, it was a crazy tiebreak, but good tiebreak. Good to finish in three sets.” After his run to the final of the United States Open last year, which included a five-set win over Wawrinka in the quarterfinals, Nishikori was expected by many to move one step further at this tournament. Still, he said, reaching the last eight of this tournament was a strong result. “It’s not easy,” he said of making a Grand Slam quarterfinal, adding: “I have to keep doing this. I mean, I could be better. But you know, I think I need, kind of, this experience, playing tough all the time, playing a lot of matches.” Wawrinka said he believed his play was even better than it was here last year, when he beat Djokovic and Rafael Nadal en route to his first major title. Image Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland had 20 aces to Kei Nishikori’s six in their match. Credit Bernat Armangue/Associated Press “But I think we all improve every year,” Wawrinka said. “I’m more aggressive. I’m more confident with my game when I come to the net. “Again, it’s a Grand Slam. You play every two days. Today was a great level, was a great match. Now I’m going to enjoy a little bit, watch who’s going to win tonight and get ready for the semifinal.” Wawrinka and Djokovic played grueling five-setters in each of the previous two years in Melbourne, with Djokovic prevailing, 12-10, in the fifth set in the fourth round in 2013 and Wawrinka avenging that loss in the quarterfinals last year. “You know when you play Novak, especially in a semifinal in a Grand Slam, you have to play your best game,” Wawrinka said. “You have to play your best tennis if you want to push him. So far, I’m playing great. I’m confident with my game. I’m happy I won in three sets today. Let’s see.” Djokovic, who beat Wawrinka in five sets in the semifinals of the 2013 United States Open, said he was prepared for another hard-fought match. “I’m ready for the battle,” he said, adding that their last three Grand Slam matches “were the finals stages of a Grand Slam, semifinals, quarterfinals.” “Grand Slams are the tournaments where you want to perform your best,” Djokovic continued. “I’m sure we both are very much aware of that fact, and it’s why we get to play on a high level against each other and we push each other to the limit, in a way.” Djokovic said he would watch footage of his loss to Wawrinka here last year, which he had not yet brought himself to revisit. “Probably now is the time,” he said playfully. “I will not watch the last point of that match. Everything else is fine.” | Australian Open;Tennis;Kei Nishikori;Stan Wawrinka |
ny0077557 | [
"sports"
] | 2015/05/01 | Verne Gagne, Wrestler Who Grappled Through Two Eras, Dies at 89 | Eighth Avenue traffic was disorganized, pedestrian traffic was jammed for blocks north and south, side doors at Madison Square Garden were torn from their hinges as the crowd stormed the entrances. It was the largest crowd at the Garden in 25 years — larger than for championship fights, rodeos, tennis matches or the circus. — New York Journal-American, 1957 They had come to see Verne Gagne. Gagne, who died last Monday at 89, was one of the most celebrated pro wrestlers of his time, known for his quickness and finesse in the ring. “A matador,” the newspapers called him; a “matinee wrestling idol,” “the millionaire wrestler.” His effect on New York City that day was nothing out of the ordinary. Handsome, college educated and a former United States Marine, Gagne (pronounced GAHN-yeh) was among the first wrestlers of the postwar era to become major national celebrities. He wrestled professionally from the late 1940s until the 1980s, when he was well into his 50s, drawing vast crowds around the country and appearing frequently on television. His opponents — men with names like Dick the Bruiser , Killer Kowalski and Hard Boiled Haggerty — often left the ring in defeat. Sometimes they left on stretchers. A native of Minnesota, a state perhaps second only to Iowa in its ardor for wrestling, Verne Gagne had been determined to be a wrestler from the time he was a boy. He left home at 14 to pursue the sport, defying his father and turning down a career in pro football for life in the ring. In 2002, Wrestling Digest ranked him No. 5 on its list of the 50 greatest wrestlers of the previous half-century, ahead of titans like Andre the Giant , Gorgeous George and Stone Cold Steve Austin . But the sport that gave Gagne wealth and renown also exacted a great price. Besides the toll on his body — concussions, broken bones, cauliflower ears, hearing loss and a surgically fused ankle — there was, quite possibly, a toll on his mind: Six years ago, in the grip of the Alzheimer’s disease with which he lived for the last dozen years of his life, Gagne was involved in an altercation that resulted in a man’s death. Even at midcentury, Gagne was small for a heavyweight: about 6 feet and 225 pounds in his prime. He held 10 world professional titles, was a much-decorated college champion and served as an alternate on the 1948 United States Olympic team. As a pro, he was earning $100,000 a year by 1960, equivalent to almost $800,000 today. “In Minnesota especially, he was one of the most recognizable and charismatic heroes that people had back in the ’50s and ’60s and into the ’70s,” George Schire, the author of the 2010 book “Minnesota’s Golden Age of Wrestling: From Verne Gagne to the Road Warriors,” said by telephone on Wednesday. “He rivaled people like Harmon Killebrew and Fran Tarkenton . When Hubert Humphrey was the vice president, there were several times when Verne and Humphrey would appear at the same function and they’d be in the news at the same time.” Gagne was a transitional figure in pro wrestling history, a bridge between the early-20th-century barnstormers who grappled in the dirt at carnivals and the steroidal sideshows of today. A pure technician, he relied on speed, skill and strategy rather than brutal bulk. He wore no costume but shoes, socks and shorts; his theatrics were minimal. “Verne’s character was that he was the real deal,” Schire said. “In wrestling, it was always a soap opera. You had to have a good guy, you had to have a bad guy; that’s what draws the crowd. So Verne was always in the ring with the bad guy. Those guys would be cheating — eye gouges, doing stuff behind the referee’s back, hitting someone with something — all to further the story line for the crowds. Verne never did.” In later years Gagne was a wrestling trainer and a promoter whose clients included Hulk Hogan and Jesse Ventura, the future governor of Minnesota. He produced wrestling shows for television and was the executive producer and a star of a 1974 feature film, “ The Wrestler ,” which also starred Edward Asner and a spate of fellow wrestlers. (To persuade any remaining cynics that he was no actor in the ring, Gagne cheerfully commended to them his performance in the movie.) But after he left wrestling in the 1990s, Gagne all but disowned the sport. From the manner in which his promoting career had run its course — and as he himself made plain in interviews — wrestling, in its late-20th-century histrionic incarnation, appeared to have passed him by. Image Verne Gagne, left, with Ken Patera, a wrestler, in 1972. Credit Powell Kruege/Star Tribune, via Associated Press A saloonkeeper’s son, LaVerne Clarence Gagne was born on Feb. 26, 1926, in Corcoran, Minn., near Minneapolis, and reared on a farm there. His mother died when he was 11; three years later, determined to wrestle despite his father’s insistence that he work in the saloon instead, he left home. Verne finished high school, where he wrestled and played football and baseball while living with an aunt and uncle. At the University of Minnesota, he became a four-time heavyweight champion of the Big Nine, as the Big Ten Conference was then known, and an N.C.A.A. national champion. He also played football. Near the end of World War II he served stateside with the Marines, tapped by virtue of his wrestling skills to teach the men hand-to-hand combat. In 1947 Gagne was a 16th-round draft pick by the Chicago Bears; he was later courted by the Green Bay Packers and the San Francisco 49ers. But there was little money in pro football then, and he chose to earn his keep on the canvas. In his first professional match, in 1949 in Minneapolis, Gagne defeated Abe Kashey , known as King Kong, and in the decades that followed Gagne traversed the country. Crowds waited eagerly for him to dispatch his foes with his trademark sleeper hold, which entailed grabbing an opponent’s head and pressing on his carotid artery so that he passed out — or at least gave a convincing impression of passing out. In 1960, Gagne helped found the American Wrestling Association. Based in Minneapolis, the association promoted matches throughout the Midwest, the Far West and Canada. Gagne, who later became the association’s sole owner, held the A.W.A. championship belt 10 times. But in the 1980s, with the ascent of cable TV and its lucre, many of the nation’s star wrestlers, including Hogan and Ventura, were lured from their regional stables to the World Wrestling Federation, now a national behemoth known as World Wrestling Entertainment. The A.W.A. ceased operations in 1991; Gagne filed for personal bankruptcy in 1993. A dozen years ago, after Gagne had trouble finding his way to his son’s home, a 10-minute drive from his own, doctors at the Mayo Clinic diagnosed Alzheimer’s disease. Speaking by telephone on Tuesday, the son, Greg Gagne, also a former professional wrestler, said that while the exact cause of his father’s dementia could not be determined, it was more than possible that the many blows to the head he sustained during his career were a contributing factor. He ticked off a list of pro wrestlers, contemporaries of his father, who had also developed dementia. In 2009, in an altercation of uncertain origin, Gagne, then 82, pushed Helmut Gutmann, a 97-year-old fellow resident in the memory-loss unit of a Bloomington, Minn., retirement home. Gutmann fell to the floor, breaking a hip. Neither man could recall the episode afterward. Gutmann had surgery but died from complications less than three weeks later. Although the Hennepin County medical examiner’s office ruled the death a homicide, the county attorney did not file charges, citing Gagne’s impaired mental capacity. Gagne lived afterward in Chanhassen, Minn., at the home of one of his daughters; his death there, from complications of Alzheimer’s, was confirmed by his son. Gagne’s wife, the former Mary Marxen, whom he married in 1949, died in 2002. Besides his son, his survivors include three daughters, Elizabeth Ahern, Kathleen Whistler and Donna Gagne; a brother, Jerry; nearly half a dozen younger half-siblings; and six grandchildren. In an irony that was not entirely lost on him, Gagne was inducted into the W.W.E. Hall of Fame in 2006. Though he made a few jovial remarks at the induction ceremony, he had made his real views on the organization and its stars clear long before. “They’ve got a cartoon going there,” Gagne said in The New York Times in 1989. “I never heard of needing a dog bone or a safety pin through your cheek to wrestle.” He added: “A lot of ’em don’t even know how to wrestle. Some are just body builders, and some puffed themselves up with steroids. Sure, there was entertainment when we wrestled, but most of us were real wrestlers.” | Obituary;Wrestling;Verne Gagne |
ny0244254 | [
"us"
] | 2011/04/03 | Certainties of 1970s Energy Crisis Have Fallen Away | Unrest in the Middle East, rising oil prices and frustration with federal energy policy — for Texans of a certain age, today’s headlines must seem like déjà vu. The current situation is far less severe than the aftermath of the 1973 Arab oil embargo. But the parallels are unmistakable. Back then, state officials strongly criticized federal price controls for natural gas because they reduced the incentive to hunt for new supplies. Today, Texas policy makers rage at Washington for moving too slowly to approve leases for deepwater offshore drilling , and for imposing tight environmental controls that could hinder power plants and refineries. Still, one lesson Texas could take from the 1970s is that what seems clever today may not remain so tomorrow. A classic example involves the trade-offs between coal and natural gas power. In the mid ’70s, convinced that gas supplies were running out, state regulators ordered electric utilities to reduce their use of the fuel. So they started burning coal instead. Today, some state officials are urging the opposite. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has voiced support for phasing out the oldest coal plants and increasing natural gas power in their place. Far from running out, Texas’ gas supplies have expanded rapidly in recent years with better technology and the discovery of new shale formations. Coal is now vilified — outside Texas, at least — as contributing to climate change and emitting pollutants, and environmentalists are eager to shut down ’70s-era coal plants. “We are a fickle people,” said Michael Webber, the associate director of the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Texas . Nationally, Mr. Webber said, a 1978 law barred utilities from building new gas power plants. The policy effectively aided coal but was rescinded in 1987. The ’70s were also when Texas began building nuclear power plants, which went forward despite concerns about ballooning costs and waste storage. Those issues have added resonance today, with potential expansions at Texas’ two nuclear plants almost certainly delayed in the wake of the crisis in Japan. Advocates of renewable energy also see the ’70s as a missed opportunity. Gov. Dolph Briscoe Jr., a Democrat, called for a federal Manhattan Project to find an environmentally friendly and secure mix of fuel sources, which would include solar, geothermal and nuclear fusion. Months before the 1973 embargo, Mr. Briscoe formed an energy advisory council headed by his lieutenant governor, Bill Hobby, and the group ordered studies on a variety of fuels — including one on wind power in 1974 and another, in 1977, on a portfolio of options including solar, wind, biomass and even exotics like algae. Policy makers were aware that oil and gas production in Texas had peaked in 1972, according to the author of the 1977 report, Robert J. King, who still heads a clean-energy consulting firm in Austin. The only alternative to succeed on a large scale, however, has been wind power, and most of that growth did not occur until the past decade. Energy conservation, a fact of life during the ’70s, has also largely been abandoned — although Texas today uses energy more efficiently than it did decades ago, meaning that the state’s economic output per unit of energy is far greater. In November 1973, just a month after the embargo began, Mr. Briscoe decried the “ wasteful use of energy in every segment of our society. ” He asked state agencies to use less fuel, buy small cars and set thermostats to 65 degrees in the winter. He had put a brigadier general, James M. Rose, in charge of the Energy Conservation Task Force, and Mr. Rose delivered regular updates on the falling use of electricity and natural gas at the Capitol, even seeking to adjust the schedules of the building’s janitors so they would not waste light at night. In today’s environment, where eight-hour rolling blackouts in February prompted outrage, such pronouncements by a Texas politician would be politically unthinkable. | Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline;Energy Efficiency;Natural Gas;Texas;Energy and Power |
ny0213934 | [
"us"
] | 2010/03/19 | Woman Known as JihadJane Pleads Not Guilty | The Pennsylvania woman accused of recruiting men on the Internet to wage jihad in southern Asia and Europe pleaded not guilty Thursday to all counts in federal court in Philadelphia. The authorities say the woman, Colleen R. LaRose , is a terrorist sympathizer known by her Internet name, “JihadJane,” and had expressed a desire to become a martyr for an Islamist cause. According to a federal indictment unsealed this month, Ms. LaRose, 46, was intent on killing a Swedish artist who depicted the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog. Wearing a green jumpsuit and her hair in cornrows, Ms. LaRose, of Pennsburg, Pa., appeared in court to face a four-count indictment, including charges of conspiring with jihadist fighters and pledging to commit murder in the name of a Muslim holy war. If convicted, she would face a possible life sentence in prison and a $1 million fine. Federal officials said Ms. LaRose, who is white and has blond hair and green eyes, boasted to other jihadists that she could go anywhere undetected. In August, she traveled to Sweden carrying the American passport of her companion, Kurt Gorman, which the authorities say she stole and planned to give to one of her co-conspirators in a plot to kill the artist, Lars Vilks . Prosecutors say that she grew acquainted online with violent co-conspirators from several other countries and that in a 2008 YouTube video she said she was “desperate to do something” to ease the suffering of Muslims. Ms. LaRose was arrested in October in Philadelphia upon returning to the United States from Europe. Last week, the investigation of the plot against Mr. Vilks spread to Ireland with the arrests in the southern city of Waterford of seven Muslims, five of whom were subsequently released. Two others, Ali Charaf Damache, from Algeria, and Abdul Salam al-Jahani, from Libya, were charged on Monday with relatively minor offenses. The authorities said Mr. Damache made a menacing telephone call, while Mr. Jahani was charged with an immigration offense. Both men were scheduled to appear in the Waterford court again on Friday, and lawyers connected with the case say they may face further charges, including conspiracy to murder. One of those released in Ireland was an American woman, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31, from Leadville, Colo. A Muslim convert like Ms. LaRose, Ms. Paulin-Ramirez had been living in Waterford with Mr. Damache since last fall, according to lawyers in Waterford, and is several months pregnant. The lawyers said she left Waterford this week and moved into a Dublin hotel with her 6-year-old son from a previous marriage. Ms. Paulin-Ramirez has been meeting in Dublin with F.B.I. agents, who have urged her to return to the United States for questioning on her connections with Ms. LaRose, Mr. Damache and others in the investigation. | LaRose Colleen R;Terrorism;Vilks Lars |
ny0181858 | [
"technology",
"techspecial2"
] | 2007/12/05 | Never Mind the Wasteland. We’re Just Talking Vast. | AT 50, can you be thinner, sharper and more popular than you were at 40? When talking about the size of television sets, electronics manufacturers say the answer is yes. This shopping season, the makers of plasma and liquid crystal display flat-screen televisions are pushing new models with screens that measure 50 inches or more, have higher resolution and perhaps most important, come with ever lower prices. “Definitely, 50- or 46-inch screens are the new 40,” said Ross Young, president of DisplaySearch, a television research firm. While TVs in the 30- and 40-inch range remain the dominant sellers, bigger L.C.D. and plasma screens, the kind once seen only in bulky projection TVs installed in the finished basements of suburban homes, are becoming part of the mainstream urban landscape. “We are selling as many 50-inch plasma TVs as 42-inch models,” said Jeff Cove, Panasonic’s vice president for technology and alliances. “Two years ago, 25 percent of our TVs were 50-inch models. We don’t know how big this phenomenon will get.” And as screens become bigger, they are also becoming sharper. Increasingly, pricier HDTVs offer 1080p resolution, creating the sharpest possible images when paired with accessories like high-definition DVD players. (Broadcast and cable channels do not transmit in 1080p, so their images are “upconverted” when shown on these sets.) Whether consumers know what 1080p is or not, they know they want it. “Last quarter, 1080p sets outpaced everything else in L.C.D. sales,” said Tamaryn Pratt, principal of Quixel Research, which analyzes the industry. Randy Waynick, a senior vice president for marketing at Sony Electronics, says the strategy is to go bigger. “Over the past four or five weeks, our 52-inch L.C.D. has been driving performance for us,” he said. “As soon as you get a bigger set, you get used to the size.” Sony has increased the number of 40-inch and larger models that it sells to 17 in 2007 from 11 last year. It is those larger sets that allow 1080p technology to shine, but manufacturers offer 1080p in smaller models, too, as a way to raise prices and profits. Sharp, for instance, sells 32-inch sets with 1080p resolution; in 2008, Toshiba will do the same with its 32- and 37-inch models, even though, according to Paul Reynolds, electronics editor for Consumer Reports, “sets 50 inches and up are when you will see a potential picture difference with 1080p.” “This is to TVs what megapixels are to digital cameras,” he added. “You should not rule out a set that uses 720p but gets everything right.” According to Mr. Young of DisplaySearch, 42-inch TVs using 720p L.C.D. technology can now be found for $1,000, down from $1,300 last year. Plasma models are even cheaper, with typical 42-inch models under $1,000, a drop of $500 from last Christmas. As sets get bigger, they bump up against a limiting factor: available space. Consumers may lack wall space or may be using an armoire meant for a traditional squarish picture-tube TV. To help squeeze more pixels into fewer inches, many manufacturers are creating thinner-framed models. Mitsubishi has cut the frame width of all its L.C.D. models in half, compared with last year. The company’s current models use a one-inch bezel, so that its 46-inch model can fit in the space for a standard-size 40-inch set, said Frank DeMartin, a marketing vice president at Mitsubishi. Similarly, Sharp’s 42-inch thin model takes up the space of a standard 40-inch set. The company contends that the D64 series, its least expensive 1080p sets, are also the industry’s thinnest; depth is decreased by 25 percent compared with its other models. The svelte sets are easier to hang on the wall, said Bob Scaglione, Sharp’s vice president for marketing. But they may cost more. Toshiba’s 46-inch 1080p thin-bezel model, for example, is $200 more than its standard-width sibling. At the other extreme, Sharp’s smallest Aquos-brand L.C.D. TV, a 19-inch model, is designed for the kitchen, with a cooking timer and a magnetic remote control to stick on the fridge door. As L.C.D. screens get larger, manufacturers are addressing one of their major shortfalls: the inability to display motion as smoothly as plasma sets do. To close the plasma gap, L.C.D. makers are adopting 120-hertz technology, a technique that doubles the number of frames displayed per second; the more frames, the smoother the motion. Sony says it takes the technique one step further with its Motionflow 120-hertz system. Not only are the frames doubled, but the technology also tries to determine where an object in motion will be moving and then place it in that direction in the added frame. Other features that are new this season are an increased number of HDMI inputs to handle add-on devices like video game machines and DVD players, and more inputs on the front of the set for easy connection to video cameras. But one of the biggest changes on the landscape is one you will not see: the end of picture-tube TVs. Sharp and Toshiba stopped selling standard tube sets in the United States last month, joining Panasonic, which left the tube business in 2005, and Sony, which did the same in June. In terms of TV sets, America is slimming down. | Television Sets;Retail Stores and Trade;Electronics;Panasonic Co;Sony Electronics;Sharp Corp;Toshiba Corporation |
ny0193083 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2009/02/13 | Seattle Police Chief May Be Next Drug Czar | WASHINGTON — President Obama has chosen R. Gil Kerlikowske, the chief of police in Seattle, as his drug czar, an administration official said Thursday. If confirmed by the Senate, Chief Kerlikowske, 59, would come to the Office of National Drug Control Policy after more than eight years as the chief law enforcement official in a city known for its progressive drug laws. The appointment was first reported Tuesday on the Web sites of Seattle newspapers. The nomination of Chief Kerlikowske, coupled with early policy pronouncements by Mr. Obama, has left those who want to change drug policy cautiously optimistic. The White House, for example, supports removing a ban on federal money for needle exchanges. Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which wants drug laws eased, said Mr. Kerlikowske did not voice support for Seattle’s needle exchange or medical use of marijuana policies, but did not actively oppose them, either. “We’d have preferred more of a public health type,” Mr. Nadelmann said. “But he’s likely to be the best drug czar we’ve seen. Not that that’s saying much.” | Office of National Drug Control Policy;Drug Abuse and Traffic;Kerlikowske R Gil;Appointments and Executive Changes;Obama Barack |
ny0146955 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2008/07/21 | Anglican Bishops Meet in Canterbury | CANTERBURY, England — As he passed through the heavy wooden doors of this city’s ancient cathedral behind a procession of 650 other Anglican bishops and archbishops on Sunday, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, appeared taut and ill at ease. It was as if keeping a church with an estimated 80 million followers around the world from breaking apart over the issue of gay priests and bishops was proving almost too heavy a burden. In a whipping wind that caught the tail of his golden-threaded miter, Archbishop Williams, as he entered the cathedral, was crossing a threshold in Anglican history. From a stone seat close by the spot where a 12th-century archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas à Becket, was murdered by Norman knights seeking to end the archbishop’s defiance of King Henry II, Archbishop Williams led a Eucharist marking the formal opening of a gathering that many in the church have described as a make-or-break moment. The gathering, the Lambeth Conference, takes place once every 10 years. This year’s meeting, centered on two weeks of debate that begin Monday, is taking place only a few weeks after a group of bishops from the church’s traditionalist and evangelical wings, meeting in Jerusalem, founded a new group, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, that many in the church regard as posing the gravest threat of a schism in the worldwide Anglican Communion since Anglicanism was born in King Henry VIII’s 16th-century break with Rome. The group in Jerusalem claimed to have the allegiance of 300 Anglican bishops and archbishops, many from Africa, and vowed to step up its battle with church liberals, especially in the United States, over the issue of gay priests that has nearly paralyzed the Communion in recent years. Equally threatening to the continued existence of a unified Communion, the new group challenged the authority of the archbishop of Canterbury to speak for Anglicans worldwide, and followed up the Jerusalem gathering by effectively boycotting the Lambeth meeting. At the procession on Sunday, the extent of the boycott was clear, with at least 220 absentees among the 880 bishops and archbishops invited. Equally stark was the absence of the bishop who more than any other has come to embody all that traditionalists and evangelicals abhor in the church’s liberal wing: Gene Robinson, the Episcopalian bishop of New Hampshire. In 2003, he became the first openly declared gay priest to become an Anglican bishop, touching off the bitter dispute that culminated in the meeting in Jerusalem in June. Archbishop Williams, seeking to avoid open confrontation between liberals and traditionalists at Lambeth, withheld an invitation from Bishop Robinson. That put the American in a small group of Anglican bishops denied a place at the Canterbury meeting and, incongruously, on a list of unwanted people that includes a Nolbert Kunonga, a disgraced prelate who was ousted last year from his position as bishop of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, because of his unwavering support for President Robert Mugabe during the country’s slide into chronic poverty and violence. Despite the snub to Bishop Robinson, a large group of American bishops, including Katharine Jefferts Schori, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, are attending. So, too, in his way, is Bishop Robinson, who has attracted widespread attention in the news media here since arriving in Britain 10 days ago. On Sunday, he attended an “alternative” open-air Eucharist that gay and lesbian groups held in St. Stephen’s Park, in a leafy residential area of Canterbury with a view across the city to the cathedral spires. About 200 worshipers, including many of the American bishops who attended the earlier Eucharist at the cathedral, held a service before a roughly carpentered wooden cross, then lingered over a picnic. Bishop Robinson, surrounded by well-wishers, declined to give interviews, apparently keen to let only his presence speak. In a radio interview with the BBC last week, he said he had not come to England to disrupt the Lambeth Conference but rather to make the case for gay men and lesbians in the clergy in as civil a manner as possible. “Let’s be clear,” he said. “I am not planning to storm into the pulpit to take the microphone away from the archbishop. I’m not trying to attend meetings to which I am not invited.” The Rev. Susan Russell, an Episcopalian minister from Pasadena, Calif., who is president of Integrity USA, a gay and lesbian group that was an organizer of the park gathering, said Archbishop Williams’s decision to exclude Bishop Robinson “grieves the heart of God.” If Archbishop Williams’s reasoning was that allowing him to attend would have led to a boycott by Anglican traditionalists and evangelicals, she said, that too was a misjudgment, as hard-liners opposed to ordaining gay clerics had stayed away anyway. “That sort of demonstrates that there is a fringe of determined conservatives for whom no compromise is sufficient,” she said. Traditionalists have also objected to the ordination of women as priests and bishops, and on this, too, the American lead has been showcased at the conference. In the Sunday morning procession, fewer than 20 of the 650 bishops were women, and more than half of those were Americans, including Bishop Jefferts Schori, who was born in Florida, grew up in the Seattle area and had been the bishop of the Diocese of Nevada before being elected to her current position in 2006. She entered the cathedral in the procession’s final group, which included Archbishop Williams. Female bishops from Australia, Argentina, Canada and Cuba also joined the procession. While American liberals and African conservatives have been at the heart of the contest over gay and women in the clergy, conference officials noted the presence of many African bishops, one of the largest groups in Sunday’s procession. In Africa, they said, only The Church of the Province of Uganda had imposed a blanket boycott on bishops attending the conference, and other bishops from countries where traditionalists hold sway had braved their superiors’ disapproval to attend. One African delegate, Bishop Thomas Dibo from Cameroon, implied he was not with the conservatives. “It’s God’s communion, and we’re all children from the same womb,” he said. At the last Lambeth Conference, in 1998, the first steps toward the current bitterness were taken when delegates passed resolutions condemning homosexuality and forbidding the ordination of homosexuals. That set the stage for battle, especially when Bishop Robinson, with an acknowledged male partner, was consecrated by the American church in 2003. This year’s conference will hold no formal plenary debates, and will vote on no resolutions. Working with a “design team” that included at least one representative from the American church, the Rev. Ian T. Douglas from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., Archbishop Williams devised a format that allotted three days, beginning last week, for the bishops to go into retreat at the cathedral, meeting in small groups to discuss, pray and listen to five sermons by Archbishop Williams. To limit the risks of discord, conference organizers say they have asked the bishops to take “appropriate care” in anything they say to reporters. In the second week, the bishops move into larger sessions to deal directly with the issue of gay and female clerics, in a session titled “Human Sexuality and the Witness of Scripture.” The arrangements have led to criticism of Archbishop Williams from liberals and conservatives, who say his “stealth” approach to the most sensitive issues will do nothing to resolve them. The criticism has built on a frequent critique of the straggly-bearded Archbishop Williams, 58, as an other-worldly, Oxford-educated theologian who lacks the political skills, and perhaps the power of personality, to force compromise. His supporters say the divide is so wide that he has little choice but to play for time, and hope that Christian values of tolerance and understanding will foster a spirit of compromise. Dr. Phillip Aspinall, the Anglican primate of Australia, acting as chief spokesman for the conference, offered a weary prognosis after Sunday’s Eucharist of what the talking might achieve. “The last Lambeth Conference didn’t resolve our differences, the one before that didn’t resolve them, and this one won’t, either,” he said. “That’s the journey of life, until the Lord returns, I’m afraid.” | Anglican Churches;Religion and Churches;Homosexuality;Priests;Christians and Christianity;England |
ny0059549 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2014/08/19 | Indonesia: Fishermen Save 13 From Tourist Boat That Sank | Rescuers on Monday safely recovered 13 more people from a tourist boat that sank after hitting a reef in central Indonesia but were searching for a Dutch man and an Italian woman who were still missing, officials said. The boat sank Saturday evening on its way from Lombok Island to Komodo Island carrying 20 foreign tourists, four Indonesian crewmen and an Indonesian guide. Ten people — all foreigners — were rescued Sunday. Eight more foreign tourists and all five Indonesians were found Monday, said Lalu Wahyu Efendi, operational chief for the search and rescue agency in Mataram, the provincial capital of West Nusa Tenggara. He said the 13 were rescued by fishermen about 27 miles east of where their boat sank off the eastern coast of Sumbawa Island. | Indonesia;Boat Accidents;Rescue;Boats;Missing person |
ny0247571 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2011/05/29 | Seattle Solves Rivera and Yankees in 12th | SEATTLE — If there is one guideline in baseball that managers follow almost uniformly, it is this: on the road, their closer pitches only with a lead. Manager Joe Girardi strayed from that line of thinking Saturday night because he was left with little other choice. Mariano Rivera entered with the score tied in the 12th inning, and he surprisingly emerged as the weak link in the Yankees ’ bullpen chain. Rivera gave up the winning run in the Mariners’ 5-4 victory on a bases-loaded blooper to Adam Kennedy, who ignited their go-ahead rally on Friday. Having already used five of his seven relievers, Girardi summoned Rivera because he did not want to burn his long man, Lance Pendleton, in case the game went on for a while. “If you go to Lance and you take the lead and they tie it up, I’ve got nobody else,” Girardi said. “So you’ve got to have somebody to back up Mo. You just can’t leave Mo being the last pitcher out there.” It was a bizarre night at Safeco Field, and not just because four fans — including a naked man — ran onto the field. The Yankees scored four runs against Felix Hernandez and lost. Rivera could not do what Hector Noesi and Dave Robertson, Joba Chamberlain and Boone Logan and Luis Ayala could over seven and one-third innings — that is, hold Seattle scoreless. Of the three hits Rivera allowed, only one — a one-out double to left by Jack Cust that put runners on second and third — was struck hard. “I made good pitches,” Rivera said. “The balls found places.” It was a deflating end to a game that did not end until 2:28 a.m. in New York, the Yankees unable to solve the Mariners’ bullpen for a second consecutive night. After tying the score in the seventh off Hernandez, they hardly threatened over the ensuing five innings, reaching base three times. And now the Mariners are one victory from a three-game sweep, their first over the Yankees since 2002. “It’s frustrating,” Girardi said. “We had leads in both of the games and that’s the frustrating part.” Nova lasted three and two-thirds innings, buckling under the pressure, be it real or perceived, of opposing Hernandez. No one had baffled the Yankees quite like Hernandez, who had won his previous four starts against them, going 4-0 with a 0.51 earned run average in 35 innings. He allowed homers to Robinson Cano and Mark Teixeira and twice in the seventh was one strike away from escaping with a lead. The first time, he walked Derek Jeter. The second, Curtis Granderson clubbed a triple off the fence in right-center, scoring Jeter with the tying run. On his 128th pitch, Hernandez snuffed a first-and-third rally by striking out Alex Rodriguez, who left five runners on base. Rodriguez made his impact on defense, with a potentially game-saving play in the bottom of the eighth. With two runners on, Brendan Ryan ripped a sharp one-hopper that was headed for the left-field corner before Rodriguez dived to his right and backhanded it, popping up to throw out Ryan at first. A thesaurus would have been useful as the Yankees searched for adjectives to praise Hernandez. Comparisons were made to another overpowering right-hander, Pedro Martinez. “I don’t know if we got a run off him last year,” Girardi said of Hernandez. “Maybe one.” One but only one — in 25 innings. “To me, he’s the perfect pitcher,” Teixeira said Friday. “You have a guy that throws hard, the ball moves, can hit the corners with three different pitches. And his breaking stuff is so good that, you know, you just hope he makes a mistake.” And still, despite their deference — and Hernandez’s dominance — some Yankees have hit him well. One of them is Teixeira, who attributed his success — .298 in 47 at-bats — to “luck, honestly.” Perhaps. Surely some skill is involved, as demonstrated by the way Teixeira slugged a 95-mile-per-hour fastball into the seats in right field for a two-run blast, his sixth homer in nine games, that put the Yankees ahead, 3-1. In fewer than three innings, they had already scored more runs off Hernandez than they had in their previous 35. Right then, two questions emerged: Could they continue battering him? And could Nova preserve the lead? The answers took shape at different rates, and for a while neither worked in the Yankees’ favor. As Hernandez fell into a rhythm, retiring six in a row after Teixeira’s homer and 10 of his next 13, Nova fell apart. A subtle sign of trouble materialized soon after an errant curveball hit Ryan to lead off the third, when a 1-0 curve to Ichiro Suzuki hardly broke, coming in high and about a foot outside. Out for a mound conference came Girardi, who has said that he uses Nova’s curveball as a barometer. If it is flat and ineffective, then opposing hitters will lay off. Without that pitch in his arsenal, Nova relied on his fastball, and his command was not precise enough Saturday to skate by. “I’ve got to find another way to stay in the game,” Nova said. Leading off the fourth, Franklin Gutierrez reached on an infield single that deflected off the heel of Jeter’s glove. Kennedy followed by rifling a double inside the first-base line, and both runners came in when Miguel Olivo bashed a ground-rule double to right-center, evening the score at 3-3 — but only temporarily. After Carlos Peguero struck out, Ryan ripped a single up the middle to drive in Olivo with the go-ahead run. When with two outs, Nova walked Chone Figgins, who began Saturday tied for the lowest on-base percentage (.242) in the majors, Girardi decided he had more faith in Noesi, who ended the rally by retiring Justin Smoak. “I feel bad about that,” Nova said. “I got the lead twice in the game and I couldn’t hold on.” INSIDE PITCH With his third-inning steal of second base, Derek Jeter surpassed Rickey Henderson to become the Yankees’ franchise leader with 327... Phil Hughes (right shoulder inflammation) threw 20 fastballs in a bullpen session Friday, his first time on a mound since April 25, and reported no discomfort or pain. He said he was unsure about his next step, but added that he was encouraged with his progress... The Yankees’ game April 6 against Minnesota, which was postponed, will be played at 1:05 p.m. on Sept. 19 at Yankee Stadium. | Baseball;New York Yankees;Rivera Mariano |
ny0289050 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2016/08/25 | Syria Used Chlorine in Bombs Against Civilians, Report Says | Syrian military helicopters dropped bombs containing chlorine on civilians in at least two attacks over the past two years, a special joint investigation of the United Nations and an international chemical weapons monitor said on Wednesday in a confidential report. The report also found that militants of the Islamic State in Syria had been responsible for an attack last year using poisonous sulfur mustard, which, like chlorine, is banned as a weapon under an international treaty. The 95-page report, based on a yearlong investigation, represents the first time the United Nations has blamed specific antagonists in the Syrian conflict for the use of chemical weapons, which is a war crime. Previous inquiries have determined that chemical weapons were used, but did not specify by whom. A panel of investigators from the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons submitted the report on Wednesday to members of the United Nations Security Council. It was not made public, but a copy was viewed by The New York Times. The panel’s findings further damaged the credibility of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who, under international pressure, signed a treaty banning chemical weapons nearly three years ago after a horrific attack in which the nerve agent sarin killed hundreds in a Damascus suburb. The United States has accused Mr. Assad’s forces of responsibility for that attack. Mr. Assad and his subordinates have consistently denied government forces have used chemical weapons in the conflict. Mr. Assad’s compliance with commitments made by signing the chemical weapons treaty have long been suspect. Although all of Syria’s declared stockpile of dangerous ingredients to make chemical weapons was exported and destroyed, that operation took far longer than expected and raised questions about whether all had been accounted for. The director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has complained in an internal report about misleading statements from Syria and potentially undeclared “chemical-weapons-related activities” there, Foreign Policy magazine reported on Tuesday, citing what it described as a confidential two-page summary of the report. The organization’s public affairs office declined to comment. There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government on the findings in the report submitted to the Security Council on Wednesday. But they could set up a new confrontation at the Security Council between Russia and the United States over whether to impose new penalties on Syria. Image A civilian breathes through an oxygen mask after a hospital and a civil defense group said a gas, which they believed to have been chlorine, was dropped alongside barrel bombs on a neighborhood in Aleppo, Syria, on Aug. 11. Credit Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters The Russians, Mr. Assad’s most important ally, have blocked previous moves by the Security Council to penalize Mr. Assad for brutalities committed since the conflict in Syria began more than five years ago. Yet under a Security Council resolution passed when Syria signed the treaty banning chemical weapons in 2013, the council vowed to impose punishments in the event of noncompliance, “including unauthorized transfer of chemical weapons, or any use of chemical weapons by anyone.” The investigators looked at nine attacks over the past few years and were able to determine who was responsible in three of them. The findings, gathered in four visits to Syria, were based on information that included 8,500 pages of documents, 950 photos and 450 videos. There was sufficient information, the report said, to conclude that the Syrian Air Force had used “makeshift weapons deployed from helicopters” that contained chlorine on the town of Talmenes in April 2014 and the town of Sarmin in March 2015. Both are in the northern province of Idlib. The report also concluded that the Islamic State was the only entity that could have carried out an attack using sulfur mustard on the town of Marea, north of the city of Aleppo, in August of last year. The United States and other Western powers, which have long pressed for accountability over the use of chemical weapons in Syria, welcomed the panel’s findings on the three attacks and said they expected the panel to continue work on determining who committed the others. Samantha Power, the United States’s ambassador to the United Nations, said in a statement that “it is essential that members of the Security Council come together to ensure consequences for those who have used chemical weapons in Syria.” She called the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons, as described in the report, “the greatest challenge to the legitimacy” of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which more than 190 nations have signed. “When anyone — from any government or from any terrorist group — so flagrantly violates the global ban on chemical weapons use without consequences, it sends the signal that impunity reigns,” Ms. Power said. | Biological and Chemical Warfare;Syria;War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity;Civilian casualties;UN;UN Security Council;ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State;Bashar al-Assad;Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons |
ny0039800 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2014/04/07 | Toledo Blade Sues Over Detention of Journalists at Tank Plant | The Toledo Blade newspaper has filed a lawsuit against six government officials, including Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, claiming that two of its journalists were detained unlawfully while taking pictures outside a tank plant in Lima, Ohio. The lawsuit, filed in United States District Court in Ohio last Friday, said that Tyrel Linkhorn, a reporter, and Jetta Fraser, a photographer, were detained on March 28 outside a General Dynamics tank plant after taking photographs of it. The two were held by military police officers, the suit said, and Ms. Fraser was restrained and threatened. The police officers confiscated cameras, the suit says, and deleted pictures before returning the equipment. Mr. Linkhorn and Ms. Fraser drove onto the public part of the entry road of the plant where there was no restrictive access, and did not pass a guard hut, which is about 30 feet from the road, the complaint said. Ms. Fraser was handcuffed and referred to “in terms denoting the masculine gender,” the lawsuit said. When she objected, the lawsuit said, she was told, “You say you are a female, I’m going to go under your bra.” The journalists were released after about 90 minutes, without being charged, but their camera equipment was only returned to them hours later after the intervention of Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, The Blade reported. Messages left Sunday for the commanding officers at the plant were not answered immediately. Fritz Byers, a lawyer for The Blade, said the paper decided to file the lawsuit to protect its interests and those of other publications. “It is hard for me to believe that anyone in a public position is not aware that the Constitution admits anyone, including the media, to take photographs of buildings, scenes or situations that are readily observable from public spots,” Mr. Byers said in a telephone interview on Sunday. | Toledo Blade;Freedom of the press;US Military;Lawsuits;News media,journalism;Chuck Hagel;Photography;Ohio |
ny0132638 | [
"science",
"earth"
] | 2012/12/24 | West Antarctic Warming Faster Than Thought, Study Finds | West Antarctica has warmed much more than scientists had thought over the last half century, new research suggests, an ominous finding given that the huge ice sheet there may be vulnerable to long-term collapse, with potentially drastic effects on sea levels. A paper released Sunday by the journal Nature Geoscience reports that the temperature at a research station in the middle of West Antarctica has warmed by 4.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1958. That is roughly twice as much as scientists previously thought and three times the overall rate of global warming , making central West Antarctica one of the fastest-warming regions on earth. “The surprises keep coming,” said Andrew J. Monaghan, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., who took part in the study. “When you see this type of warming, I think it’s alarming.” Of course, warming in Antarctica is a relative concept. West Antarctica remains an exceedingly cold place, with average annual temperatures in the center of the ice sheet that are nearly 50 degrees Fahrenheit below freezing. But the temperature there does sometimes rise above freezing in the summer, and the new research raises the possibility that it might begin to happen more often, potentially weakening the ice sheet through surface melting. The ice sheet is already under attack at the edges by warmer ocean water, and scientists are on alert for any new threat. A potential collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is one of the long-term hazards that have led experts to worry about global warming. The base of the ice sheet sits below sea level, in a configuration that makes it especially vulnerable . Scientists say a breakup of the ice sheet, over a period that would presumably last at least several hundred years, could raise global sea levels by 10 feet, possibly more. The new research is an attempt to resolve a scientific controversy that erupted several years ago about exactly how fast West Antarctica is warming. With few automated weather stations and even fewer human observers in the region, scientists have had to use statistical techniques to infer long-term climate trends from sparse data. A nearby area called the Antarctic Peninsula, which juts north from West Antarctica and for which fairly good records are available, was already known to be warming rapidly. A 2009 paper found extensive warming in the main part of West Antarctica, but those results were challenged by a group that included climate change contrarians. To try to get to the bottom of the question, David H. Bromwich of Ohio State University pulled together a team that focused on a single temperature record. At a lonely outpost called Byrd Station , in central West Antarctica, people and automated equipment have been keeping track of temperature and other weather variables since the late 1950s. It is by far the longest weather record in that region, but it had intermittent gaps and other problems that had made many researchers wary of it. The Bromwich group decided to try to salvage the Byrd record. They retrieved one of the sensors and recalibrated it at the University of Wisconsin. They discovered a software error that had introduced mistakes into the record and then used computerized analyses of the atmosphere to fill the gaps. The reconstruction will most likely undergo intensive scientific scrutiny, which Dr. Bromwich said he would welcome. “We’ve tested everything we could think of,” he said. Assuming the research holds up, it suggests that the 2009 paper, far from overestimating warming in West Antarctica, had probably underestimated it, especially in summer. Eric J. Steig , a University of Washington researcher who led the 2009 work, said in an interview that he considered his paper to have been supplanted by the new research. “I think their results are better than ours, and should be adopted as the best estimate,” he said. He noted that the new Byrd record matches a recent temperature reconstruction from a nearby borehole in the ice sheet, adding confidence in the findings. Much of the warming discovered in the new paper happened in the 1980s, around the same time the planet was beginning to warm briskly. More recently, Dr. Bromwich said, the weather in West Antarctica seems to have become somewhat erratic. In the summer of 2005, the interior of West Antarctica warmed enough for the ice to undergo several days of surface melting. Dr. Bromwich is worried that this could eventually become routine, perhaps accelerating the decay of the West Antarctic ice sheet, but the warming is not fast enough for that to happen right away. “We’re talking decades into the future, I think,” Dr. Bromwich said. | Antarctic Regions;Global Warming;Ice;National Center for Atmospheric Research;Research;Temperature;Weather;Nature Geoscience (Journal) |
ny0210859 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2017/01/05 | China Rates the Best Toilets for Tourists (and Tells the Laggards to Clean Up) | HONG KONG — Smog and corruption are among the problems that the Chinese government has vowed to combat. Now another problem, which lies right under many tourists’ noses, is in the authorities’ cross hairs: unsightly toilets. The China National Tourism Administration , a government agency, announced a five-year plan in December to enhance the country’s tourism industry, including a project to build, expand and renovate 100,000 toilets in scenic areas and along tourist routes. The plan complements a campaign to add 57,000 modern public toilets nationwide by late 2017. The agency’s chairman, Li Jinzao , has said that a failure to upgrade toilets could damage the reputation of China’s tourism industry, which the United Nations said earned $114 billion from international visitors in 2015, second only to the United States. China should “advance the toilet revolution with the help of science and technology,” Mr. Li said in November at a conference in Beijing. To help the revolution, the agency published a list of 10 scenic sites with exemplary toilets. The winner was Gubei Water Town , a resort complex of gray brick buildings with tiled roofs at the foot of the Great Wall on the outskirts of Beijing. On a recent afternoon at Gubei Water Town, a visitor saw restrooms with sofas, potted plants and watercolor paintings. The urinals were exceptionally clean, and the stalls were stocked with what is often a rare commodity in China’s public facilities: toilet paper. “One small step forward, one giant leap for civility,” a placard above each urinal said. But the government is taking a hard line against stragglers. The tourism agency said in December that after recent inspections, it had delisted, downgraded or warned 367 A-rated scenic sites for a range of violations, including outdated or unsanitary restrooms. One place that the government penalized last year was the Shenlong Gorge , a scenic area in the southwestern municipality of Chongqing known for its white-water rafting. Shenlong, which had been classified as 5A, the highest level in the five-tier ratings, was delisted last summer after inspectors conducted two undercover visits. The National Tourism Administration said in a news release at the time that the Shenlong Gorge was a “prominent laggard of the toilet revolution, with messy toilet sanitation, filthy conditions, seriously bad odors and dirty toilet appliances.” In response, the site closed for five days in August, partly to renovate its 12 restrooms and add soap and toilet paper dispensers. But as of this week, it was still unaccredited. The number of visitors to Shenlong Gorge has slumped, and the management recently dropped the entrance fee to 80 renminbi, about $12, from 100 renminbi, said Liao Jiangwei, Shenlong’s general manager. He said that he was working to improve the site’s restrooms but that some of the government’s standards appeared to be subjective. “It is hard for us to judge if our own toilets are smelly or dirty,” Mr. Liao said. | Bathrooms;China;Travel,Tourism;China National Tourism Administration |
ny0267903 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2016/03/13 | Things to Do in the Hudson Valley, March 12 Through 27 | A guide to cultural and recreational events in the Hudson Valley. Items for the calendar should be sent at least three weeks in advance to [email protected]. Comedy KENT LAKES Lo Hud Comedy with Charles McBee, Joanne Filan and Adam Oliensis. March 19 at 8 p.m. $20; members, $15. Arts on the Lake, 640 Route 52. artsonthelake.org; 845-228-2685. PELHAM Joseph Anthony, Tommy Gooch and more. March 19 at 9 p.m. Chris Monty and Jim Gallagher. March 26 at 9 p.m. Rockwells, 105 Wolfs Lane. 914-738-5881; rockwellsusa.net. ROSENDALE Dan DiMarino, Jen Saracino, Keith Black, Ross Scanio and Jeff Sklar. March 25 at 9:30 p.m. $10. Rosendale Theater, 408 Main Street. 845-658-8989; rosendaletheatre.org. WEST NYACK Jeff Dye. March 12 and 13. $17 to $20. Orlando Baxter. March 17 at 7:30 p.m. $15. Craig Robinson. March 18, 19 and 20. $32. Kyle Grooms. March 23 at 7:30 p.m. $15. Levity Live, 4210 Palisades Center Drive. 845-353-5400; levitylive.com. WHITE PLAINS Robert Klein. March 12 at 8 p.m. $45. White Plains Performing Arts Center, 11 City Place. 914-328-1600; wppac.com. Film HUDSON “Requiem for the American Dream” (2015), directed by Peter D. Hutchison, Kelly Nyks and Jared P. Scott. Through March 13. $6 and $8. Time & Space Limited, 434 Columbia Street. timeandspace.org; 518-822-8448. PLEASANTVILLE “3:10 to Yuma” (2007), directed by James Mangold. March 12 at noon. $7.50 to $13. “Until the End of the World: Director’s Cut” (1991), directed by Wim Wenders. March 13 at 2:30 p.m. $8 and $13. “Paris, Texas” (1984), directed by Wim Wenders. March 12, 13 and 14. $8 to $13. “Dear President Obama, the Clean Energy Revolution Is Now” (2016), directed by Jon Bowermaster. March 16 at 7 p.m. $10 and $15. Jacob Burns Film Center, 364 Manville Road. 914-747-5555; burnsfilmcenter.org. ROSENDALE “The Lady in the Van” (2015), directed by Nicholas Hytner. March 12 through 17. $5 and $7. Rosendale Theater, 408 Main Street. 845-658-8989; rosendaletheatre.org. For Children BRONX Family Art Project: A Living Wall With Green Golly, classical music, comedy and storytheater in the Sarah and Geoffery Gund Theater, led by guest storytelling musicians of the Green Golly Project; make green collages. March 12, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Free. Wave Hill, 675 West 252nd Street. 718-549-3200; wavehill.org. BRONXVILLE “The Monster of Guitaristan” by Rami Vamos, musical performance. March 12 at 11 a.m. $7.50 and $15. Schoenfeld Campus Center, Concordia College, 171 White Plains Road. concordia-ny.edu; 914-395-4507. KATONAH School’s Out/Arts In, unique projects for children up to age 12, like nest-weaving or birdhouse building. March 22 through 25. $5 and $8. Katonah Museum of Art, 134 Jay Street. 914-232-9555; katonahmuseum.org. MAMARONECK “Room on the Broom,” musical adapted from the book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. March 12 at 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. $15. Emelin Theater, 153 Library Lane. 914-698-0098; emelin.org. PEEKSKILL Piff the Magic Dragon, magic show. March 20 at 7 p.m. $30. Paramount Hudson Valley, 1008 Brown Street. 914-739-0039; paramounthudsonvalley.com. RYE Tales for Tots. March 17 at 10 a.m. Rye Free Reading Room, 1061 Boston Post Road. 914-967-0480; ryelibrary.org. TANNERSVILLE Hunter-Tannersville Theater’s “The Little Mermaid, Jr.,” directed by Shannon Hoyt. March 18, 19 and 20. $6 and $10. Orpheum Performing Arts Center, 6050 Main Street. 518-263-2063; fotorpheum.org. TARRYTOWN “Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy,” musical. March 12 at 2 p.m. $25 and $35. Tarrytown Music Hall, 13 Main Street. 877-840-0457; tarrytownmusichall.org. WOODSTOCK “Alice in Wonderland,” adapted by R. Conti from the book by Lewis Carroll. March 12 and 13. $10 and $12. Woodstock Playhouse, Routes 212 and 375. 845-679-6900; woodstockplayhouse.org. YONKERS Planetarium Show, “Tycho to the Moon.” Learn about night and day, space travel, phases of the moon and features of the lunar surface. Ages 5 and up. Through March 27. Lego building workshops. March 13, 20 and 27. 1 to 4 p.m. Free with museum admission, $3 to $6. Hudson River Museum, 511 Warburton Avenue. 914-963-4550; hrm.org. YONKERS Music and Merriment, interactive stories and songs for children ages 1½ to 4 years. No registration required. March 16, 9:30 to 10 a.m. Yonkers Public Library, 1 Larkin Center. 914-337-1500; ypl.org. Music and Dance ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON March Dance Concert, choreographed and performed by Bard students. March 12 and 13. Free. The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, at Bard College, 845-758-7900; fishercenter.bard.edu. BEACON John Mayall, blues. March 17 at 7:30 p.m. $60 and $65. The Rhythm Future Quartet, jazz. March 18 at 8:30 p.m. $17.50 to $22.50. Towne Crier Cafe, 379 Main Street. 845-855-1300; townecrier.com. BRONX Carlos Cuevas, jazz. March 20 at 3 p.m. Free. Pregones Theater, 571-575 Walton Avenue. 718-585-1202; pregones.org. BRONX Daria Rabotkina, piano. March 20 at 2 p.m. $12 to $28. Wave Hill, 675 West 252nd Street. 718-549-3200; wavehill.org. CROTON-ON-HUDSON Woodwind Quintet, Vent Nouveau Ensemble, classical. March 13 at 2 p.m. Croton Free Library, 171 Cleveland Drive. 914-271-6612; crotonfreelibrary.org. HASTINGS-ON-HUDSON The Open Music Ensemble, improvised acoustic. March 12 at 8 p.m. Free. Upstream Gallery, 8 Main Street. 914-674-8548; upstreamgallery.com. HUDSON The Tarbox Ramblers. March 12 at 9 p.m. $15. Aaron Neville, R&B. March 17 at 8 p.m. $65 and $95. Lady Moon and the Eclipse, R&B. March 18 at 9 p.m. $10. Bindlestiff Family Cirkus: Cabin Fever Cabaret. March 19 at 9 p.m. $20 to $30. Club Helsinki Hudson, 405 Columbia Street. helsinkihudson.com; 518-828-4800. KATONAH “Vocal Rising Stars,” five emerging artists perform mini song cycles, with music by Saint-Saëns, Bernstein, Poulenc, Balfe, Montsalvatge, Bucchino and more. March 13 at 4 p.m. $15 to $35. Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, 149 Girdle Ridge Road. caramoor.org; 914-232-1252. MARLBORO Chris Vitarello, Willa McCarthy, Mike Bram and Jeremy Baum, R&B and soul. March 17 at 7 p.m. The Falcon, 1348 Route 9W. 845-236-7970; liveatthefalcon.com. MOHEGAN LAKE Human Wheels, John Mellencamp tribute band. March 16 at 8 p.m. The Winery at St. George, 1715 East Main Street. 914-455-4272; thewineryatstgeorge.com. PAWLING Myles Mancuso, blues. March 12 at 8 p.m. $15 and $20. Bluegrass Brunch, featuring Too Blue. March 13 at noon. No cover. Coco Montoya, rock and blues. March 13 at 7 p.m. $15 and $25. The Lonely Heartstring Band and the Wool Hats String Band, bluegrass. March 16 at 7 p.m. No cover. Desert Highway, Eagles tribute band. March 18 at 8 p.m. $20 and $30. Ed Kowalczyk, rock. March 19 at 8 p.m. $35 and $50. Bluegrass Brunch, featuring Cold Chocolate. March 20 at noon. No cover. Matt O’Ree Band, with David Bryan of Bon Jovi. March 23 at 7 p.m. $15 and $20. Daryl’s House, 130 Route 22. darylshouseclub.com; 845-289-0185. PEEKSKILL Harmony Road, blues and pop. March 12 at 9:30 p.m. Greg Westhoff’s Westchester Swing Band. March 13 at 5:30 p.m. The Norris Brothers Band, performing music by Steely Dan and others. March 18 at 9:30 p.m. $5. 12 Grapes Music and Wine Bar, 12 North Division Street. 914-737-6624; 12grapes.com. PEEKSKILL Miki Hayama Trio, jazz. March 12 at 8 p.m. $10. Bean Runner Cafe, 201 South Division Street. 914-737-1701; beanrunnercafe.com. PEEKSKILL Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, swing. March 13 at 7 p.m. $35 and $45. Celtic Crossings, songs of Phil Coulter, sung by Andy Cooney, Geraldine Branagan and the Irish Pops Ensemble. March 16 at 7 p.m. $30 to $55. Atlanta Rhythm Section and the Georgia Satellites, rock. March 19 at 8 p.m. $29 to $49. Paramount Hudson Valley, 1008 Brown Street. 914-739-0039; paramounthudsonvalley.com. POUGHKEEPSIE Hindenberg, Led Zeppelin tribute band; Trifecta; Family Friendly Criminals; and Willis Avenue, rock. March 18 at 7:30 p.m. $15. The Chance Theater, 6 Crannell Street. 845-471-1966; thechancetheater.com. PURCHASE Apollo’s Fire, performing Bach’s “St. John Passion.” March 13 at 3 p.m. $18.75 to $67.50. The Performing Arts Center, Purchase College, 735 Anderson Hill Road. 914-251-6200; artscenter.org. TARRYTOWN Patty Griffin, Sara Watkins and Anaïs Mitchell, folk. March 12 at 8 p.m. $38 to $78. Tarrytown Music Hall, 13 Main Street. tarrytownmusichall.org; 877-840-0457. WILLIMANTIC J. J. Grey & Mofro, with North Mississippi Allstars, rock. March 19 at 7 p.m. $27.50 to $45. The Disco Biscuits, electronic and rock. March 25 at 8 p.m. $45 to $72.50. Capitol Theater, 896 Main Street. 860-465-5636. WOODSTOCK Nth Power and Jennifer Hartwick, funk and jazz. March 19 at 8 p.m. $15 and $20. The New Riders of the Purple Sage, rock and country. March 26 at 8 p.m. $25 and $30. Bearsville Theater, 291 Tinker Street. 845-679-4406; bearsvilletheater.com. Outdoors KATONAH American Woodcock Walk, led by Saw Mill River Audubon. Limited space; preregistration required. March 12 at 6:30 p.m. $5. Muscoot Farm, 51 Route 100. 914-864-7282; muscootfarm.org. OLIVEBRIDGE Ashokan Maple Fest, all-day pancake breakfast with Ashokan maple syrup. Tree tapping, syrup making, blacksmithing, live music, hiking. March 12. $5; children under 5, free. Ashokan Center, 477 Beaverkill Road. 845-657-8333. SCARSDALE Maple Sugaring at Home. Learn how to make maple syrup and about its multiple uses. Dress for outdoors. March 13 at 2 p.m. $8; members, free. The Great Green Egg-travaganza, springtime egg-themed activities, including an egg hunt, crafts, refreshments and games. March 20, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. $5 to $15. Teaching Trails: Weekend Walks for All Ages, introduction to the center’s trail system. Weekends at 11:30 a.m. through March 26. Free. Greenburgh Nature Center, 99 Dromore Road. 914-723-3470; greenburghnaturecenter.org. Spoken Word BRONX Jorge Viera discusses his new book, “De Todo Menos Perfecto.” March 12 at 5 p.m. Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1040 Grand Concourse. 718-681-6000; bronxmuseum.org. BRONX “The Art of Making Gardens,” talk by Luciano Giubbilei as part of “Chelsea Gold,” 16th annual winter lecture series. March 24, 10 to 11:30 a.m. The New York Botanical Garden, Southern Boulevard. 718-817-8700; nybg.org. HASTINGS-ON-HUDSON Meredith Lue, former studio manager for the photographer Mary Ellen Mark, who died in 2015, will reminisce about the artist and show images of her work. March 25 at noon. Upstream Gallery, 8 Main Street. 914-674-8548; upstreamgallery.com. KATONAH Gallery talk with the artist James Prosek, whose large-scale installation “Tree of Life” is on view in the Atrium and Bietzel Gallery as part of “The Nest,” an exhibition of art and nature. March 13 at 3:30 p.m. Free. Katonah Museum of Art, 134 Jay Street. 914-232-9555; katonahmuseum.org. LARCHMONT In celebration of Women’s History Month, five Mamaroneck Artists Guild members will present a short talk about a female artist they admire and how they have been influenced by her. March 23 at 2 p.m. Mamaroneck Artists Guild, 126 Larchmont Avenue. 914-834-1117; mamaroneckartistsguild.org. PEEKSKILL Ted Kelsey reads from his book “Shasha and Wally Watson vs. The Faker.” March 22 at 3 p.m. Free. Field Library, 4 Nelson Avenue. 914-737-1212; peekskill.org. RYE Discussion with Dr. Mark Schenker on Shakespeare’s “Henry IV.” March 13 at 4:15 p.m. Rye Free Reading Room, 1061 Boston Post Road. 914-967-0480; ryelibrary.org. Image KINGSTON “Field Work” (2016), oil on linen, is on view in Nancy Campbell’s solo show “Paintings of Italy: Discoveries and Connections” through March 26 at the Arts Society of Kingston, 97 Broadway. For further information: askforarts.org ; 845-338-0333. Credit Nancy Campbell SLEEPY HOLLOW Po’Jazz, international poets and musicians. Golda Solomon, Cheryl Boyce Taylor and E. J. Antonio read their poetry with Kelvyn Bell on guitar and J. D. Parran on multireeds. March 20 at 4:30 p.m. $11. Hudson Valley Writers’ Center, 300 Riverside Drive. 914-332-5953; writerscenter.org. TANNERSVILLE “The History of Improvisation,” lecture. March 18. Free. Orpheum Performing Arts Center, 6050 Main Street. 518-263-2063; fotorpheum.org. Theater ARMONK “The Other Side of Now,” series of six short comedies. March 12 at 8 p.m. $20. The Small Town Theater, The Hergenhan Center, 40 Maple Avenue. 914-273-0300; smalltowntheatre.com. ELMSFORD “Man of La Mancha,” musical by Dale Wasserman, Joe Darion and Mitch Leigh. Through May 1. $50 to $84. Westchester Broadway Theater, 1 Broadway Plaza. 914-592-2222; broadwaytheatre.com. GARRISON “The Glorious Death of Comrade ‘What’s-His-Name,'” black comedy by playwright David Bridel. March 25 at 8 p.m. $15.00 to $20.00. The Philipstown Depot Theater, 10 Garrison Landing. 845-424-3900; philipstowndepottheatre.org. IRVINGTON “American Idiot,” Clocktower Players Adult Troupe. Through March 13. $20 and $30. “Urinetown,” musical, by Mark Hollmann. March 18 through 20. $15 and $20. Irvington Town Hall Theater, 85 Main Street. 914-591-6602; irvingtontheater.com. MAMARONECK The Improvised Shakespeare Company will create a fully improvised performance. March 12 at 8 p.m. $42. Emelin Theater, 153 Library Lane. 914-698-0098; emelin.org. OSSINING “The 2016 Living Art Event.” Docent-led tours through a gallery of artwork created by members of the Ossining Arts Council. When the tour reaches an artwork that inspired a playwright, a short play based on that piece will be performed. Through March 26. $20 and $35. Steamer Co. Firehouse Theater, 117 Main Street. PEEKSKILL “The Canada Lee Project,” stage reading of the life of Canada Lee, a civil rights activist, performed by actors from the Esperance Theater Company. March 12 at 7:30 p.m. $16; students and seniors, $10. Paramount Hudson Valley, 1008 Brown Street. 914-739-0039; paramounthudsonvalley.com. PURCHASE “The Caucasian Chalk Circle,” drama by Bertolt Brecht. March 12. $12.50 and $17.50. “The Crucible,” opera by Robert Ward, based on the play by Arthur Miller. March 13 at 1 p.m. $12.50 to $17.50. The Performing Arts Center, Purchase College, 735 Anderson Hill Road. 914-251-6200; artscenter.org. Museums and Galleries BEACON “Tapioca Bride” by Catherine Latson, and “Marbleous” a collaborative interactive marble installation by the bau Gallery artists. March 12 through April 3. Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 6 p.m.; and by appointment. Beacon Artists Union, 506 Main Street. 845-440-7584; baugallery.com. BRONX “Jill Baroff: In a Grove.” Through May 8. “Michelle Stuart, Theater of Memory: Photographic Works.” Through June 26. Wednesdays through Sundays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Fridays, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1040 Grand Concourse. 718-681-6000; bronxmuseum.org. BRONX “Bronx: Africa,” group show. Through May 4. Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, noon to 5 p.m. Longwood Art Gallery @ Hostos, 450 Grand Concourse. 718-518-6728; bronxarts.org. BRONX “The Orchid Show: Orchidelirium.” Through April 17. $8 to $25; children under 2, free. Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The New York Botanical Garden, Southern Boulevard. 718-817-8700; nybg.org. COLD SPRING “Plastic Harvest,” sculptures from discarded plastic. Through March 27. Free. Fridays through Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Gallery 66NY, 66 Main Street. 845-809-5838; gallery66ny.com. CROTON FALLS “Come to My Party,” exhibition of painting and drawings created by individuals with disabilities. Through March 31. Schoolhouse Theater, 3 Owens Road. 914-277-8477; schoolhousetheater.org. GARRISON “I Would Wear That,” study in nonfunctional weaving by Juliet Martin, and “FLOW,” Hudson River installation by Charles Luce. March 19 through April 17. Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Garrison Art Center, 23 Garrison’s Landing. 845-424-3960; garrisonartcenter.org. HARRISON Youth Art Month, student group show. Through March 31. Free. Mondays and Wednesdays, 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 5 p.m. Harrison Public Library, 2 Bruce Avenue. harrisonpl.org; 914-835-0324. HASTINGS-ON-HUDSON A variety of work by Upstream Gallery Members, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography and more. Through March 27. Thursdays through Sundays, 12:30 to 5:30 p.m.; and by appointment. Upstream Gallery, 8 Main Street. 914-674-8548; upstreamgallery.com. HUDSON “Robert Forte: Iconic Imagery,” paintings. Through March 27. Fridays and Saturdays, noon to 6 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. 510 Warren Street Gallery, 510 Warren Street. 518-822-0510; 510warrenstreetgallery.com. HUDSON “Winter Exhibit,” group show. Through April 3. Mondays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Carrie Haddad Gallery, 622 Warren Street. carriehaddadgallery.com; 518-828-1915. KATONAH “Aaron Curry: Ugly Mess.” Through June 19. $5 and $10; members and children under 12, free. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Katonah Museum of Art, 134 Jay Street. katonahmuseum.org; 914-232-9555. KINGSTON “Paintings of Italy: Discoveries and Connections,” by Nancy Campbell. Through March 26. Free. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 1 to 6 p.m.; and by appointment. Arts Society of Kingston Arts Center, 97 Broadway. askforarts.org; 845-338-0333. LARCHMONT “Photo ’16,” group show. Through April 2. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; and by appointment. Kenise Barnes Fine Art, 1947 Palmer Avenue. 914-834-8077; kbfa.com. LARCHMONT “Shouts and Whispers,” works by Larry Gordon Colorful and H. David Stein. Through March 26. Tuesdays through Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m.; and by appointment. Mamaroneck Artists Guild, 126 Larchmont Avenue. 914-834-1117; mamaroneckartistsguild.org. LIVINGSTON MANOR “Intricate Realities,” artwork by Hannah Raine Brenner-Leonard, Patrick Duffy and Jayoung Yoon. March 19 through April 17. Mondays and Thursdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sundays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Catskill Art Society, 48 Main Street. 845-436-4227; catskillartsociety.org. MONTROSE “Under Tuscan Influence,” paintings by Maria Pia Marrella. Through March 31. Free. Mondays through Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Fridays, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 5 p.m. Hendrick Hudson Free Library, 185 Kings Ferry Road. 914-739-5654; henhudfreelibrary.org. NEW PALTZ “Andrew Lyght: Full Circle.” Through April 10. “Made for You: New Directions in Contemporary Design.” “On the Street and in the Studio: Photographs Donated by Howard Greenberg.” “The Floating World: Holograms by Rudie Berkhout.” Through July 10. Suggested donation, $5. Wednesdays through Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, at the State University of New York at New Paltz, 1 Hawk Drive. 845-257-3844; newpaltz.edu/museum. NEW ROCHELLE Iona College Art Faculty Exhibition. Through March 31. Mondays through Wednesdays, noon to 5 p.m.; Thursdays, noon to 5 p.m. and 6:30 to 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 to 5 p.m. Brother Kenneth Chapman Gallery, Iona College Council on the Arts, 715 North Avenue. 914-637-7796; iona.edu/artscouncil. NEW ROCHELLE “Collective Conscience: Love, Respect and Truth,” works in a variety of mediums by 17 artists, in honor of Black History Month, Women’s History Month and Valentine’s Day. Through March 31. Weekdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. New Rochelle City Hall, 515 North Avenue. 914-235-9027; newrochellearts.org. NEW ROCHELLE A retrospective of the New Rochelle Council on the Arts and a multimedia exhibit of inspired works by members. March 6 through 31. Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Wednesdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 5 p.m. New Rochelle Public Library, 1 Library Plaza. 914-632-7878; nrpl.org. NEW ROCHELLE “Larger Than Life,” paintings by S. J. Riley, Sonne Hernandez and Michael Thornton-Smith. Through June 5. Mondays through Fridays, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. transFORM Gallery, 20 Jones Street. 800-450-1455; transformgallery.com. NYACK “Where We Are Standing: Contemporary Women Artists From Iran.” Through April 24. $2 to $7; members and children 16 and under, free. Wednesdays through Sundays, noon to 5 p.m.; and by appointment. Edward Hopper House Art Center, 82 North Broadway. 845-358-0774; edwardhopperhouse.org. OSSINING “Her Nature,” group show. Through March 30. Mondays and Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Tuesdays and Fridays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Wednesdays, 1 to 9 p.m.; Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Ossining Public Library, 53 Croton Avenue. 914-941-2416; ossininglibrary.org. OSSINING “Rebuilding Nepal,” images before and after the earthquake in April 2015. Through June 1. Daily, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Maryknoll Museum of Living Mission, 55 Ryder Road. 914-941-7590; maryknollsociety.org. PEEKSKILL “Often Software,” exhibition of recent artworks by Paul Theriault, including work that is both digitally constructed and displayed on laptops, desktop computers and video monitors. Through April 9. Mondays through Fridays, 8:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Center for the Digital Arts, 27 North Division Street. 914-606-7304; sunywcc.edu/peekskill. PEEKSKILL “Promise of Spring,” watercolor paintings by Maureen Winzig. Through March 27. Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Wednesdays, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Fridays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 4 p.m. Field Library, 4 Nelson Avenue. 914-737-1212; peekskill.org. PEEKSKILL “Word,” group show. Through July 31. $2 to $5; members and children under 8, free. Fridays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Weekends, noon to 6 p.m.; and by appointment. Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, 1701 Main Street. hvcca.org; 914-788-0100. PELHAM “Insomnia,” group show. Through March 26. “Legacy,” sculptures by Ivan Biro and Derek Uhlman. Through March 30. Tuesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Pelham Art Center, 155 Fifth Avenue. 914-738-2525; pelhamartcenter.org. PIERMONT Group exhibition of paintings, photographs and sculpture. Through March 27. Thursdays and Sundays, 1 to 6 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 1 to 9 p.m.; and by appointment. Piermont Flywheel Gallery, 223 Ash Street. piermontflywheel.com; 845-365-6411. PORT CHESTER “Tristate of Mind,” group show. Through March 19. Weekdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; and by appointment. Clay Art Center, 40 Beech Street. clayartcenter.org; 914-937-2047. POUGHKEEPSIE “American Stories 1800–1950,” group show. Through April 17. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 5 p.m. Vassar College, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, 124 Raymond Avenue. 845-437-5632; fllac.vassar.edu. PURCHASE “After 1965,” group show. Through March 13. “Pursuit of Clarity: Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke, Edward Weston and the Straight Photography Movement.” Through June 5. “The Instant as Image,” group show. Through June 5. $3 and $5; members and children 12 and under, free. Tuesdays through Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Neuberger Museum of Art of Purchase College, 735 Anderson Hill Road. 914-251-6100; www.neuberger.org. RHINEBECK “When Paintings Collide,” Bruce Murphy. “Shades of Light,” Cross River Artists. Through March 31. Thursdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; and by appointment. Betsy Jacaruso Studio and Gallery, 43 East Market Street. 845-516-4435; betsyjacarusoartist.com. WEST NYACK “Kevin Paulsen: Winter Theorems.” Through April 3. “Beautiful Nonsense,” group show with works by Karlos Carcamo, Keetra Dean Dixon, Jared Handelsman, Lynn Itzkowitz and more. Through April 30. Weekdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; weekends, 1 to 4 p.m. Rockland Center for the Arts, 27 South Greenbush Road. 845-358-0877; rocklandartcenter.org. WHITE PLAINS “The Quietest Place on Earth,” photographs by Nicole Tschampel, Wesley Bernard, Sean Hemmerle, Sasha Bezzubov and Susi Dugaw. Through March 31. Mondays through Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.; Fridays, 9 a.m. to noon. Westchester Community College Center for the Arts, 196 Central Avenue. 914-606-7500; sunywcc.edu/arts. WOODSTOCK “Shimmering Substance: Selections From Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grantees of the Hudson Valley,” group show. March 12 through May 1. Fridays through Sundays, noon to 6 p.m.; and by appointment. Byrdcliffe Guild, 34 Tinker Street. byrdcliffe.org; 845-679-2079. WOODSTOCK “Directors Choice: The Responsive Eye,” group show. Through March 27. Sundays, Mondays and Thursdays, noon to 5 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, noon to 6 p.m. Woodstock Artists Association and Museum, 28 Tinker Street. 845-679-2940; woodstockart.org. YONKERS Big Ideas in Small Packages. March 12 through April 12. Thursdays and Fridays, 4 to 9 p.m.; Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m. Blue Door Gallery, 13 Riverdale Avenue. 914-375-5100; bluedoorartcenter.org. YONKERS “Thomas Doyle: If the Creek Don’t Rise,” small-scale sculpture. “Oh Panama! Jonas Lie Paints the Panama Canal.” Through May 8. $3 to $6; members, free. Wednesdays through Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Hudson River Museum, 511 Warburton Avenue. 914-963-4550; hrm.org. | The arts;Art;Music;Westchester |
ny0172058 | [
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] | 2007/11/26 | Rutgers Gets Physical to Win a Rematch | PISCATAWAY, N.J., Nov. 25 — About seven months after Rutgers steamrolled Louisiana State to reach the national championship game, the rematch was immensely more difficult. It was 40 minutes of bump-and-grind basketball and the outcome was not decided until the Lady Tigers missed a last-second shot. But No. 7 Rutgers can still lay claim to being the better team after squeaking past No. 6 L.S.U., 45-43, Sunday. The game, which featured the same starting lineups as last season’s Final Four meeting, was a physical defensive battle in which neither team seemed to be able to get into an offensive flow. In victory, Rutgers committed 20 turnovers and had only one player (Kia Vaughn) score in double figures. But the Scarlet Knights made up for their offensive struggles with their play on the defensive end, bottling up L.S.U.’s all-American center, Sylvia Fowles, for much of the game and making stops at crucial times. “They improved a lot and we improved,” the Rutgers senior Essence Carson said when asked to compare Sunday’s game to Rutgers’s 59-35 Final Four victory. “At the end of the day it was two great defensive teams going against each other. It was exactly what everyone predicted the last time we played them. I thought this game lived up to the hype.” The key play came in the final 20 seconds, with Rutgers leading by a point. Fowles had the ball down low for L.S.U., only to be stripped by Matee Ajavon. “I didn’t see her coming down when I put the ball on the floor,” Fowles said. “That’s something I need to pay attention to. She got her hands on it.” After Epiphanny Prince made one of two free throws with 9.3 seconds left, L.S.U. still had a chance to at least tie the score. But Quianna Chaney’s hurried 3-point attempt at the buzzer was off the mark. Often, the key to defeating L.S.U. is in containing Fowles, a 6-foot-6 center who is averaging 18.2 points a game. Fowles, who was held to 5 points in the Final Four loss to Rutgers, managed 13 points and 12 rebounds Sunday, but nothing seemed to come easy for her. Harassed by Vaughn or the backup center Rashidat Junaid every time she got the ball, Fowles went 5 for 16 from the floor and had six turnovers. L.S.U. Coach Van Chancellor said he thought the Fowles-Vaughn matchup “was really physical.” “I coached in the W.N.B.A. the last 10 years and I thought this was the most physical matchup I’ve seen in the post in the last 11 years,” said Chancellor, who is in his first season at L.S.U. after coaching the W.N.B.A.’s Houston Comets. Vaughn was also the primary offensive threat for Rutgers, scoring 13 points. Prince and Ajavon each had 8. “Kia has now demonstrated she can hurt you a number of ways, facing the basket or in the post position,” Rutgers Coach C. Vivian Stringer said. Fowles’s problems Sunday included a missed dunk. She became the sixth player in women’s college basketball history to dunk in a game when she did so against Louisiana-Lafayette on Nov. 21. Her repeat attempt hit the back rim late in the first half, which ended with Rutgers leading by 26-24. The Scarlet Knights extended their lead to 38-30 on a jumper by Junaid with 12 minutes 25 seconds to go in the game. L.S.U. responded with an 8-0 run to tie the score with 7:38 left. From that point, L.S.U. was 1 for 6 from the field as both teams struggled to find their shooting touch in the final minutes. Rutgers improved to 3-1 and now has beaten L.S.U. three times in a row. Chaney led L.S.U. (4-2) with 16 points. L.S.U. was the third top-15 team the Scarlet Knights have played this season. After meeting unranked St. Joseph’s on Wednesday, Rutgers will return home to play No. 3 Maryland on Dec. 3 in the Jimmy V Classic. Maryland defeated L.S.U., 75-62, Nov. 18. | Basketball;Rutgers The State University of New Jersey;Louisiana State University;Vaughn Kia |
ny0060620 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2014/08/15 | An Open Letter to the Port Authority About That Traffic Jam and Other Stalling | Mr. Daniel D. Duffy Freedom of Information Administrator Port Authority of New York and New Jersey 225 Park Avenue South New York, N.Y. 10003 Dear Dan: My apologies for not responding to your last six (6!) letters. Perhaps there were more; I’ve only held onto the ones you’ve sent since April. You have been more than diligent, and it’s past time that I did my part. Was I asking too much in requesting things like the calendars and phone logs of David Samson, former chairman of the Port Authority and a New Jersey political potentate who, until the unfortunate matter of the intentional traffic jams in Fort Lee and subsequent cover-up, was poised to chaperone Gov. Chris Christie at Republican presidential cotillions? They are, as you know, records of the public actions of a powerful public official. So far, ex-Chairman Samson has yet to answer any questions in public about his own actions. A few email scraps have emerged to show that he was furious at the Port Authority’s executive director, who, in the naïve belief that the intentional traffic jams were a menace to public safety, not to mention an insane outrage, ordered an end to them. So who was Mr. Samson talking to in those days? I requested the records back in January. Let’s face it: No one would have to search through file cabinets for typed originals of his schedules or phone logs. We’re talking about documents that a computer could spit out quickly. Yet every month, you write, “We continue to process your requests for records,” and promise that you’ll be done making up your mind in a few more weeks. Your April 8 letter said that day would come “on or about the week of April 28th.” On May 2, you wrote to say that it would take until May 19. Then it was June 9 and July 28. Now it’s Sept. 1. As a man who has had his own problems with deadline abuse (my unwritten memoir is tentatively titled “Be There in a Minute, and Other Fibs”), I was, of course, sympathetic to your totally blowing the schedule the first three or four times. But I must tell you from direct experience that by the fifth broken promise — even ones made in earnest, as I am sure all yours were — credibility begins to fray. Instead of writing another one of these — you will pardon the expression — phony baloney letters about “processing” my request, suppose you just hit Control F and get the records. We are coming up to the first anniversary of the traffic jams in Fort Lee, at the start of the school year. What better way to mark the occasion than airing out the truth? Yours, Jim PS: Believe it or not, there soon could be a law that says you have to do this. Normally, because the Port Authority was created by two states, it supposedly does not have to abide by the laws of either one. Certainly, it is far more obedient to the whims of governors than any discernible process. When it comes to records, the Port Authority even has something it calls a “ Freedom of Information Code ,” words that pretend to be law but really aren’t. “Although the budget of the Port Authority is larger than that of many nations, it falls through the cracks concerning its obligation to disclose records regarding its expenditures and myriad functions,” said Robert J. Freeman, the executive director of New York State’s Committee on Open Government. Now a bill giving the public the right to the authority’s records has passed both the State Senate and the Assembly in New York, and the State Senate in New Jersey. Unanimously, by the way. Right now that law is bottled up by one person: John S. Wisniewski, a Democratic Assembly member in New Jersey. Passing a public records law without larger cultural changes at the Port Authority was “a fool’s errand,” he said. “There has to be a complete package of reforms or it won’t make a difference,” Mr. Wisniewski said. He had been studying the agency’s complex dysfunctions long before the Fort Lee scandal. “But most people found it rather boring and uninteresting” until the traffic jams, he said, sounding a bit peeved. All valid concerns, said Amy Paulin, a Democratic Assembly member from Westchester County who sponsored the authority’s public records bill in New York. “We should reform everything,” Ms. Paulin said, but any law required both legislative chambers in the two states, plus both governors. “We have six partners. This one is a no-brainer.” So Dan, I thought you’d like a heads-up. There’s a no-brainer heading your way. | Port Authority;David Samson;Chris Christie;Daniel D Duffy;Archive;GW Bridge;Roads and Traffic;New Jersey |
ny0037508 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2014/03/23 | Jet’s Disappearance Puzzles a World Under Constant Electronic Watch | SEPANG, Malaysia — A satellite image of an indistinct, pale object floating in the ocean far off the west coast of Australia, published on Saturday by the Chinese authorities, is the latest of a succession of elusive clues in what has already become one of aviation’s greatest mysteries. In an era when satellites, cellphones and radar would seem to be everywhere, a 328-ton jetliner nearly 200 feet from wingtip to wingtip has completely vanished, and for nearly two weeks searchers have not found a single material indication of its fate. Vague shapes photographed by satellites above the southern Indian Ocean appear to be the likeliest lead so far, but they, too, may turn out to be mirages, like a succession of previous false sightings of the plane, a Boeing 777-200, and rumors about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared about 40 minutes after takeoff on March 8. On Saturday, the Chinese government said one of its satellites had spotted an “unusual object” on Tuesday in an area where Australia had already organized a search. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Chinese planes and ships would try to reach the area and look for the whitish object, about 74 feet by 43 feet. It was spotted about 65 nautical miles southwest of the spot where, two days earlier, another satellite captured similar images of floating objects, which the Australian government said might be wreckage from the jet. Image The object spotted in the Indian Ocean on Saturday is said to be about 74 feet long and 43 feet wide. Credit China's State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry, via Associated Press “It looks consistent with what the Australian picture shows,” said Sean O’Connor, a former United States Air Force intelligence officer who is a consultant to IHS Jane’s for imagery analysis, after comparing the pictures released by both governments. Currents may have pushed the object to a new location during that time, he said. The coordinates provided with the Chinese satellite images are highly consistent with the location of the last recorded “ping” that Inmarsat, a satellite communications company, detected from the missing plane, according to one person familiar with the coordinates that Inmarsat submitted to Malaysian investigators. Inmarsat declined to comment. But debris in the ocean can sink or simply elude searchers, especially in vast and often rough waters. Late on Saturday, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which has coordinated the hunt in the southern Indian Ocean, said the location reported by the Chinese government fell within a search zone that ships and planes had already patrolled that day. “The object was not sighted on Saturday,” the authority said in an email. The continuing uncertainty, with no conclusive evidence of what happened to the plane and the people on it, has tormented relatives of those on board and flummoxed aviation experts, security policy makers and travelers. More than two dozen countries are on the hunt from land, air, space and sea for any visible scrap of wing, tail or engine. Investigators from law enforcement and aviation safety agencies from across the world have combed through the backgrounds of all the passengers, and so far have revealed no potential suspects. The search is of such complexity and reach that most countries would struggle to manage it. Many aviation safety experts and some government officials have said the Malaysian government’s sometimes maladroit handling of the crisis, including miscommunication between its military and its civilian government and the seemingly poor grasp of detail, have magnified uncertainty and confusion about the plane’s fate. The search has demanded cooperation from governments crisscrossed by mutual distrust and, in some cases, outright enmity. Malaysia has urged them to focus on finding the plane, but officials of some other governments have privately accused Malaysia of hesitancy in putting that ahead of worries about security and plain pride. French officials said on March 9 that they had offered their help. But no response was received from the Malaysians for the better part of a week, and it was not until last Sunday that France announced that a team of three investigators from its Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses had departed for Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, to share expertise gleaned from the two-year search for an Air France jet that disappeared off the coast of Brazil in 2009. The Malaysians have kept American investigators at a distance since the plane vanished on March 8, angering some lawmakers in Washington who believe that the F.B.I. should have been playing a larger role from the beginning. A small team of F.B.I. agents in Malaysia has received briefings on the investigation, but it has not been asked to help. As recently as last weekend, American aviation investigators in Malaysia told the government there that it was searching for the plane in the wrong areas, and that it needed to redirect its search to the Indian Ocean, according to a person briefed on the inquiry. The American investigators were also concerned that the Malaysian officials were not sharing all the information they had from their radar systems, the person said. The American investigators believe that the Malaysian government was reluctant to share information with them because they fear exposing their weak radar and satellite systems. It took the Malaysians several days to share data from the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, which collected information from the plane that was relayed to the ground before it vanished from civilian radar, the person said. Typically, that information is shared with investigators and other countries in the day or so after a plane has crashed or disappeared. The data collected by the Acars system showed that the first turn to the west that diverted the plane from its planned path was carried out through a computer system that was most likely programmed by someone in the cockpit. Flight 370 was about 40 minutes into a six-hour red-eye trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it stopped communicating with air traffic controllers and turned far off course, cutting back across peninsular Malaysia toward the Indian Ocean. With few leads to go on, countries cooperating in the search have sometimes sniped at one another. Even Chinese officials, usually reluctant to upbraid friendly Southeast Asian countries publicly, have criticized the Malaysians’ handling of the inquiry. | Malaysia Airlines Flight 370;Plane Crashes and Missing Planes;Australia;Satellite;Indian Ocean;Malaysia Airlines |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.