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ny0179753 | [
"us"
] | 2007/08/26 | Court Won’t Hear Battle Over Embryos | AUSTIN, Tex., Aug. 25 (AP) — The Texas Supreme Court has refused to consider the case of a woman who wanted custody of three frozen embryos after her divorce. A Houston trial court had ordered the embryos turned over to the woman, Augusta Roman, but her former husband, Randy Roman, appealed that ruling and won. The case then went to the Texas Supreme Court. The court did not issue an opinion with Friday’s ruling on Roman v. Roman. After the Romans married, she miscarried. When she could not conceive again, the couple sought help at a fertility clinic. On April 19, 2002, the night before the eggs were to be implanted, Mr. Roman told her he could not go through with it, giving her a list of complaints about their marriage, Ms. Roman has said. With their marriage dissolving, they decided to freeze the embryos while trying to sort things out. But it was not long before the divorce and court battle ensued. A major piece of evidence was a consent form both signed on March 27, 2002, that said the embryos would be discarded in the case of divorce. | Reproduction (Biological);Courts;Divorce Separations and Annulments;Texas |
ny0063287 | [
"us"
] | 2014/01/23 | Nuclear Corps, Sidelined in Terror Fight, Produces a Culture of Cheating | WASHINGTON — Top military officials were quick to voice outrage over revelations last week that 34 officers responsible for launching the nation’s nuclear missiles cheated on monthly proficiency tests, but few expressed surprise. Cheating has been a fact of life among America’s nuclear launch officers for decades, crew members and instructors said. “When I saw that they got something wrong, I would say, ‘Go back and look at No. 5 again,’ ” said Brian Weeden, a former launch officer at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana who said that he routinely asked new crew members to show him their test answers before they turned them in. The same help, he said, was offered to him by his instructors when he first began a tour of duty in which officers are expected to score 100 percent on the monthly written tests, and anything below 90 percent is a failing grade. Air Force officials insist that regardless of the cheating, there is no potential for a nuclear mistake because several backup procedures are in place. For their part, missile launch crew members say they do know the test material — which includes how to handle nuclear launch codes — but argue that the grading standards are unreasonably high. Whoever is right, the cheating scandal comes as the nation’s missile launch officers, known as missileers, are caught in a vicious cycle. They work with the lethal jewels of the nation’s arsenal, for which errors can be catastrophic, but they find themselves forgotten on the sidelines, overshadowed by combat and Special Operations forces central to the marquee mission of fighting terrorism. No one wants a nuclear conflict, but many launch officers see their lot as spending a lifetime waiting for a war that will never come. “The nuclear deterrent mission has lost much of its status in the Air Force as the Cold War ended, and many of the personnel on the mission are demoralized,” said Loren B. Thompson, the head of the Lexington Institute, a research organization. Former missileers say the cheating is also driven by what they say are onerous consequences for failing the tests, including additional time on “alert” in the isolated, cramped underground capsules from which the missiles are launched. In the language of diplomacy, they say there are few carrots for rewards and far more sticks for retribution. “The sticks are so severe, the punishment for imperfection so great, that it encourages crew members to work together to ensure no one fails,” said Bruce Blair, a former missile launch officer and a co-founder of Global Zero, which advocates the elimination of nuclear weapons. Mr. Blair said he cheated on his proficiency tests, as did his fellow crew members. Missile launch officers must also pass practical tests that include simulations of attacks on specific cities, and that are widely believed to be impervious to cheating. One former missileer who left Malmstrom in 2010 said he believed that every officer there knew about the cheating and that 85 percent to 90 percent of them — himself included — cheated on the tests. “The penalty is so severe that everyone is freaked out,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid repercussions. “It makes your life so much worse when you miss a question, and there are no real consequences to not knowing the answers, so people help each other out.” Current and former missileers described a surreal circular dance in which crew members routinely cheated on the tests, got promoted to higher rank and then officially announced their zero tolerance of cheating, all while looking the other way. “The colonels, they all did the exact same thing we did,” said one captain, who left Malmstrom in 2011 after four years there, and who said he routinely cheated. He also asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisal from the Air Force. “Then they put on a facade that they had to do the right thing now. But everyone knew.” Last week, the Air Force said that the 34 suspended launch officers, all at Malmstrom, either knew about or took part in the texting of answers to the tests. Air Force officials ordered all missile launch officers to retake the test, and said that by Friday nearly 500 had done so, with an overall pass rate of 95.6 percent. Maj. Gen. Jack Weinstein, commander of the Twentieth Air Force, Air Force Global Strike Command, said the breadth of the cheating at Malmstrom — the 34 officers represent 17 percent of the Malmstrom launch crew — “shocked” him. A former missileer himself, he said he had never cheated or witnessed cheating. “I’m not saying that people did not complete a test and then tell others, be careful of this question or that question,” General Weinstein said. “But to the extent of full answer sheets being passed around, I’ve never seen that before.” Many military officials believe that demoralization may have led to a spate of recent mishaps among Air Force nuclear missile officers. In the past year, a general who oversaw nuclear weapons was dismissed for drunken antics during an official trip to Moscow, 17 officers assigned to stand watch over nuclear-tipped Minuteman missiles were removed for violating safety codes and having bad attitudes, and missileers with nuclear launch authority were caught napping with the blast door open — a violation of security regulations meant to prevent terrorists or other intruders from entering the underground command post and compromising secret launch codes. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel flew to Wyoming and Nebraska on Jan. 9 to reassure disheartened missileers that what he called their lonely work was still valued. It was the first visit to missile crew members by a Pentagon chief since 1982. “They are stuck out in the areas where not a lot of attention is paid, and I know they wonder more than occasionally if anyone is paying attention,” Mr. Hagel told reporters. But on the day of his trip, another scandal erupted as investigators reported that several missile launch officers had been implicated in an investigation into illegal drugs. That inquiry eventually widened to include the cheating scandal at Malmstrom. Mr. Weeden, the former launch officer at Malmstrom, who is no longer in the Air Force, summed up the view of many missileers as he recalled the events of Sept. 11, 2001. For four days, he stayed in the underground capsule, watching the images on television and reeling from the attacks. It changed the way he thought about his job, he said, by driving home the fact that nuclear weapons are no longer the centerpiece of national security. “We couldn’t do anything,” Mr. Weeden said. “The mantra had always been that the nuclear deterrent would keep America safe. But it didn’t. So I felt, not only did we fail to deter those attacks, but we couldn’t do anything about it after.” | Nuclear weapon;Cheating;US Military |
ny0277435 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2016/11/11 | Cuomo Strikes Deal to Revive Affordable Housing Program | For the second time in three months, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has forged a deal with developers and union construction officials to revive a program designed to create apartments for poor and working-class New Yorkers. But will it get done? The program, known as 421-a, expired in January. It grants cuts in property taxes to developers who set aside subsidized apartments for low-, moderate- and middle-income families or individuals in their otherwise luxury projects. It is a city program governed by state legislation. As the number of homeless people in city shelters has climbed above 60,000, the creation of additional affordable housing has become a key goal for Mr. Cuomo and his political rival Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, although they have not often agreed on how to achieve it. The Cuomo administration has hoped that by reviving the 421-a program it would unlock $2 billion for the governor’s own housing program, which has been stalled for months without approval by leaders of the State Legislature. Under the new deal, builders would get the special tax benefits for a longer period — a 100 percent tax abatement for 35 years. A plan embraced by the mayor had called for a 25-year abatement followed by a phased-in return to full taxes over an additional 10 years. Details of the new deal were hashed out by state officials; members of the Real Estate Board of New York , the industry’s powerful lobbying arm; and union officials. They were announced on Thursday by the board, known as Rebny, and the governor. In the proposed version of the program, subsidized apartments would have to remain affordable for 40 years. The deal sets a pay schedule for developers who get the tax breaks in prime areas. In Manhattan below 96th Street, they would have to pay an average $60 an hour in wages and benefits for workers on buildings of 300 or more units. On the fast-growing waterfront in Brooklyn and Queens, the average would have to be $45 an hour on buildings of 300 or more units. The Brooklyn and Queens projects would have to be within a mile of the East River waterfront. The program would not require the use of union contractors, but at those wage levels the construction unions could compete for the work. “We are pleased to have reached an agreement that will permit production of new rental housing in New York City,” said Rob Speyer, a developer and chairman of Rebny. “We would like to thank Governor Cuomo for his leadership on this critical issue.” Gary LaBarbera, the president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York , a union umbrella organization, issued a statement saying he “applauded” the governor for bringing the parties together “on an important public policy.” Because developers would get a 100 percent tax abatement for a longer period, a benefit worth tens of millions of dollars per building, the new proposal would make 421-a, which currently grants more than $1 billion a year in tax abatements, more expensive. The framework could still fall apart, as did a deal worked out by the Cuomo administration in August , because it requires legislative approval. Adding to the uncertainty, some of the city’s more prominent developers have not embraced the deal. “This agreement is news to me,” said Douglas Durst, the head of the Durst Organization, “and I’m on the executive board of Rebny. I’ve still got a lot of questions.” Some housing activists, in discussing the proposed deal, used the word “unconscionable,” because the plan could lower the city’s annual tax revenues by as much as $1 billion more than the prior proposal. “It’s historically unprecedented and unjustifiable on any fiscal or economic grounds,” said Benjamin Dolchin, executive director of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development , a nonprofit. “Albany wants to pay Rebny to make a deal with the unions.” The 421-a program was designed to encourage developers to build rental housing, as well as subsidized units, in a city where the costs of land, construction and materials are high. Before it expired, developers received a 20-year tax abatement for setting aside 20 percent of the apartments in a project for poor and moderate-income families. In 2014, about 150,000 apartments qualified for 421-a benefits, resulting in $1.06 billion in forgiven taxes. Even before he took office, Mr. de Blasio vowed to build or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing over 10 years. He said he wanted to get a better deal for taxpayers by obtaining more subsidized apartments in return for the property tax breaks and reducing the subsidy per unit. The de Blasio administration spent nearly a year negotiating with Rebny on a reform plan for 421-a. Their proposal required developers to subsidize 25 or 30 percent of the units in a new rental building and eliminated the benefit for condominiums. But in spring 2015, Mr. Cuomo stunned Rebny and the mayor when he upended the proposal, insisting that he would not renew the 421-a program unless it required developers to pay union-level wages in order to qualify for the tax benefits. The construction unions, a key ally of the governor, argued that any projects getting taxpayer benefits should pay adequate wages. Developers countered that union-level wages would reduce the number of subsidized units, require greater subsidies or even stop construction altogether. The governor left it up to the developers and the unions to come to terms on wages, but no compromise materialized, and the program expired. The Cuomo administration then became increasingly intent on reaching a deal. Bill Mulrow, the governor’s secretary, met secretly with a very small group of union officials and, in turn, with members of the real estate board, according to several Rebny and union members who had been briefed on the talks and would speak only anonymously, so as not to jeopardize the deal. In response to criticism that the 421-a proposals did not focus enough on the poor people who need housing the most, state officials made another adjustment. The maximum income level for the portion of affordable units earmarked for middle-income families would be reduced to $104,000 a year, from $112,000. | Real Estate; Housing;Affordable housing;Tax Credits Tax Deductions Tax Exemptions;Property tax;Real Estate Board of New York;Andrew Cuomo;NYC |
ny0196546 | [
"business",
"energy-environment"
] | 2009/10/21 | Electric Car Plant May Open in Syracuse | New York State appears to be close to securing one of the nation’s first assembly plants for electric cars . Reva, an electric car company based in Bangalore, India, plans to work with Bannon Automotive, a new electric car company in Freeport, N.Y., to assemble a three-door plug-in hatchback, the NXR, at a still-to-be-determined site near Syracuse. The plans were first reported by The Post-Standard, a Syracuse newspaper. Many details remained unclear on Tuesday; an official announcement is expected late in the week. The NXR was introduced at the Frankfurt auto show in September, one of a new class of small electric cars from scrappy Indian and Chinese companies hoping to beat the big car companies to market. Other Reva electric models are already on sale in Europe and Asia. Jeffrey Leonard, a board member of Reva, said that from the beginning the board had understood that “if you’re going to really sell and distribute this car in a big way in the U.S., you should have a production facility here,” for reasons both logistical and political. Speaking on condition of anonymity, officials involved in the discussions said the plant would receive $11.6 million in funding and incentives from New York State, with the companies putting in $26.5 million. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said the project’s backers were also seeking $52 million in loans and loan guarantees from the federal government. He acknowledged that he had been involved in discussions about the plant for several months. Some of the parts needed for the cars could be made by contract manufacturers, Mr. Leonard said, though he stressed that he was not familiar with the particulars of the New York deal. Final assembly would be carried out by as many as 250 workers in the Syracuse-area factory under a recently negotiated agreement between Bannon and Reva, officials said. “We have a very good labor force,” Mr. Schumer said. “It’s experienced in manufacturing.” Efforts to contact Bannon Automotive were unsuccessful. The Metropolitan Development Association of Syracuse and Central New York declined to comment. Morgan Hook, a spokesman for Gov. David Paterson, said that the deal was “one in a long line of major announcements that the governor has helped make a reality in New York, in driving New York toward a clean energy economy.” Discussions with Reva and Bannon Automotive began nearly a year ago, according to David Valesky, a state senator from the Syracuse area. “This is a major victory for upstate New York and for our efforts to grow and attract the green jobs of the new economy,” Mr. Valesky said in an e-mailed statement. Only a couple of electric car plants exist in the United States, but many are on the drawing board as companies bet that some drivers are ready to make the switch. Fisker Automotive, an American electric car start-up that is making cars in Finland, plans to build its next-generation model in the United States, but it has not said where. A company called Tesla also expects to announce a site for an assembly plant in Southern California for its forthcoming Model S. It also plans a powertrain plant in Palo Alto, Calif. Tesla already does final assembly for its Roadster at a plant in Menlo Park, Calif. | Electric Vehicles;Factories and Manufacturing;Automobiles;New York State |
ny0229799 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2010/09/02 | Palestinians Hunt the Killers of 4 Israelis | JERUSALEM — Israeli soldiers carried out house-to-house searches in villages near the West Bank city of Hebron on Wednesday, and Palestinian troops rounded up dozens of men suspected of ties to Hamas as Israeli settlers held a mass funeral for two women and two men killed in a car Tuesday night by Hamas gunmen. The four dead — a couple in their 40s who leave behind six children, a married man in his 20s and a married mother of one in her 30s — were residents of Beit Hagai, a settlement in the south Hebron hills. Their bodies were laid out, covered in prayer shawls, at the settlement’s synagogue as eulogies were recited by family members. Rabbi Dov Lior of the neighboring settlement of Kiryat Arba also spoke, crying to the heavens, “God, avenge the spilled blood of your servants.” Thousands attended the funeral and procession along the main West Bank road. The mother of six who was killed, Tali Ames, 45, had been pregnant and was also a grandmother. Her 9-year-old daughter, Hodaya, wept next to the draped body. Palestinians in the nearby village of Banei Naim were confined to their houses by the Israeli Army while searches were conducted in an effort to find the killers. Palestinian Authority troops detained and questioned dozens of men, drawing the condemnation of Hamas in Gaza. Late Wednesday night there was another shooting at an Israeli car in the West Bank. Two Israelis were wounded, one seriously, when shots were fired at their car near the city of Ramallah, the army reported. Hamas officials claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s shooting, saying it was proof that the Palestinian Authority did not rule in the area and that Hamas had free reign. Hamas vowed to carry out more killings as the Palestinian Authority was scheduled to start peace talks with Israel in Washington. The police said the four Israelis were shot as they drove by and then were removed from their car and repeatedly shot again to make sure they were dead. Settlement leaders, meanwhile, declared that the only response to the event, the worst such anti-Israel violence in more than two years, was to build more housing. They said that the government-imposed construction moratorium in effect for another month was no longer valid and that building would start immediately. Leaders of the Palestinian Authority angrily condemned the killings, as did world leaders engaged in starting the talks. | West Bank;Palestinians;Murders and Attempted Murders;Israeli Settlements;Israel;Hamas;Funerals |
ny0106575 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2012/04/19 | Obama and Romney Face Hurdles in Ohio Among White Working-Class Voters | ELYRIA, Ohio — The battle for Ohio is on, but for many voters here choosing between President Obama and Mitt Romney is like trying to decide between liver and brussels sprouts — a selection they would rather not have to make. As it does every four years, Ohio is again unfolding as a crucial battleground in the presidential election, its 18 electoral votes critical to the equations of both candidates. On Wednesday, Mr. Obama made his fourth trip to the state since January; Mr. Romney is expected to arrive on Thursday, his first trip here since becoming the presumptive Republican nominee. But putting together a winning strategy in Ohio will be a mighty challenge for both men, given that more than half of the state’s electorate — about 54 percent, according to the Brookings Institution — is white and working class, a group that both Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney have had a particularly hard time connecting with. “Ohio is really ground zero for the white working-class voting bloc,” said William H. Frey, the senior demographer at Brookings. “That’s the key in Ohio.” The sentiments of this group, loosely defined as whites without a four-year college degree in the middle and lower parts of the country’s earnings bracket, reflect feelings of economic uneasiness nationwide even as the overall economic picture in the country brightens. Many have not felt the effects of the modest recovery that has lifted the economy here in recent months, leaving them unenthusiastic about the president. At the same time, Mr. Romney is seen as awkward, unsympathetic and distant, a fundamentally uninspiring alternative. Speaking of Mr. Obama, Patrick Cain, an employee of a utility company from the nearby town of Brecksville, said: “There’s just no way I can vote for him. He talked about change, but has it been for the better? No.” Yet Mr. Romney “comes from money and corporate America, a typical Republican,” said Mr. Cain, an independent. “I’m not going to say I like him.” Elyria, a gritty city about 40 miles west of Cleveland where Mr. Obama spoke at a community college on Wednesday afternoon, is dotted with scenes of industrial decline. Lorain County, which includes Elyria, has lost more than 11,000 jobs over the past decade, most in manufacturing. “It’s hard being out of work, especially when you’re midcareer when you have to change jobs,” Mr. Obama told an audience of students from Lorain County Community College, some of them dislocated workers. “In this country, prosperity does not trickle down. It grows from the bottom up. It grows from a strong middle class out.” Still, fresh signs of life in the automobile industry, along with new jobs in the energy sector, have lifted Ohio’s economy recently and pushed the unemployment rate down to 7.6 percent, lower than the national average. A Ford factory in the county has plans to produce a new line of trucks, and a steel plant, which was nearly dead, is now planning new production, with a boost from fresh purchases from the natural gas industry. Indeed, Ohio gained more jobs than any other state in February, said a spokesman for Gov. John Kasich, a Republican. Economic improvement will be critical to Mr. Obama’s argument that he deserves re-election. But the economy is still considerably weaker than several years ago, many people are still unemployed, and Mr. Romney is likely to try to make those truths a central issue of the campaign. “People don’t feel it,” said Senator Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican who has been talked about as a potential vice-presidential candidate for Mr. Romney. “There is still a lot of concern. Even folks who have jobs are nervous. People are not satisfied with the status quo.” Mr. Obama carried Ohio by four percentage points four years ago, but his advisers concede that the state will most likely be even more competitive this time. For the past year, his campaign has been working to rebuild its statewide organization; it opened its 17th office this week. Mr. Obama’s struggles in Ohio have led his advisers to plot ways for him to win without it, like winning Florida or some combination of Virginia, North Carolina and Western states. For Mr. Romney, winning without Ohio would be even harder, given that no Republican has ever taken the White House without it, and his campaign acknowledges that it is starting from behind organizationally. His narrow defeat of Rick Santorum in the primary was a sign that he has work to do shoring up evangelical as well as working-class voters, though his supporters argue that his strength in the suburbs gives him a head start among swing voters like Mr. Cain who will decide the election. “If this is a choice between Mr. Romney and the president, the president wins,” insisted former Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat who is national co-chairman of the Obama campaign and said he would travel across the state with a succinct message: “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.” But he conceded: “If the Romney folks are successful in diverting attention away from his positions and if the economy were to turn south, that would be an incredible challenge for the president.” The issue of race still lurks. In two dozen interviews in Lorain County, four working-class people cited the fact that Mr. Obama is black as a reason they did not like him. Mr. Obama is trying to broaden his appeal by pressing an argument of economic fairness and questioning whether a rich candidate like Mr. Romney can understand people’s challenges. “I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth,” Mr. Obama said in his speech at the community college. “Michelle wasn’t. But somebody gave us a chance.” For some working-class voters, the case against Mr. Romney seemed to be working. “He has a foreign bank account,” said Carol McMahon, a hotel receptionist and an independent voter, who said she would vote for Mr. Obama. “That can’t be a good thing.” But other voters were repelled by the president. Kevin Gillespie, a medical equipment salesman who is a Democrat, said he believed Mr. Obama had presided over a drastic expansion of government, giving entitlements to the poor and forcing through a health care law that Mr. Gillespie did not like. His business has been booming since Mr. Obama was elected — he just bought a new Ford S.U.V. — but he said that was not a reason to vote for the president. “People say, ‘It’s going so well, what’s your beef?’ ” Mr. Gillespie said. As for Mr. Romney, he said: “Do I want to vote for him? No.” Still, he said gloomily that Mr. Romney was “a consolation prize.” | Presidential Election of 2012;Ohio;Romney Mitt;Obama Barack;Voting and Voters |
ny0184216 | [
"business",
"worldbusiness"
] | 2007/12/25 | Canada: Airline Added to Inquiry | Air Canada said it had been included in the European Commission ’s investigation into price fixing on freight services. The airline added that it might suffer a liability as a result. Air Canada, Canada’s biggest airline, said it was cooperating with investigators. It said it had received an official charge sheet, which sets out the commission’s preliminary assessment in its investigation into suspected anticompetitive cargo pricing activities. The activities include the levying of certain fuel surcharges by a number of airlines and cargo operators in breach of antitrust laws. The European Commission last week charged several airlines, including British Airways , Lufthansa and SAS, with fixing freight service prices. Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines said they too had received a notice from the commission. | Air Canada;European Commission;Airlines and Airplanes;Antitrust Actions and Laws;Canada |
ny0078779 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2015/02/05 | Brian Williams Admits He Wasn’t on Copter Shot Down in Iraq | The NBC News anchor Brian Williams apologized Wednesday for mistakenly claiming he had been on a helicopter that was shot down by ground fire in Iraq in 2003. Last week, NBC Nightly News filmed Mr. Williams taking a soldier to a New York Rangers game. The public address announcer at the game explained to the crowd that “U.S. Army Command Sergeant Major Tim Terpak was responsible for the safety of Brian Williams and his NBC News team after their Chinook helicopter was hit and crippled by enemy fire” during the invasion of Iraq. Mr. Terpak received a standing ovation, and, on Facebook, where NBC posted a video of the story, Mr. Williams was also praised. But one commenter cast doubt on the story, which Mr. Williams also told in vivid and specific detail to David Letterman in 2013. Image “You are absolutely right and I was wrong,” wrote Brian Williams, the NBC news anchor. Credit Monica Schipper/Getty Images for New York Comedy Festival “Sorry dude, I don’t remember you being on my aircraft,” wrote Lance Reynolds on Facebook. “I do remember you walking up about an hour after we had landed to ask me what had happened.” The military newspaper Stars and Stripes, which first reported on the Facebook comment , identified Mr. Reynolds as the flight engineer on the helicopter. He and other crew members told Stars and Stripes that Mr. Williams was not in their helicopter that had been shot down, but in one that arrived an hour later. On Wednesday, Mr. Williams, the news anchor, replied on Facebook and admitted that he had made a mistake, acknowledging that he was not in an aircraft hit by ground fire, but instead was in a following aircraft. “You are absolutely right and I was wrong,” he wrote, adding that he had in fact been on the helicopter behind the one that had been hit. Constant viewing of the video showing him inspecting the impact area, he said, “and the fog of memory over 12 years — made me conflate the two, and I apologize.” On Wednesday’s night’s Nightly News broadcast, Mr. Williams reiterated his apology. “This was a bungled attempt by me to thank one special veteran and by extension our brave military men and women veterans everywhere, those who have served while I did not,” Mr. Williams said. “I hope they know they have my greatest respect and also now my apology.” | Brian Williams;Iraq War;NBC News;News media,journalism;Ethics Misconduct Malfeasance;Apologies |
ny0076419 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2015/05/28 | Axact Chief Executive Arrested in Pakistan Over Fake Diplomas Scandal | KARACHI, Pakistan — Pakistani investigators arrested the chief executive of Axact, a software company accused of running a global diploma mill, early Wednesday after discovering a storage room filled with blank fake degrees. The chief executive, Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh, and four other Axact executives were initially charged with fraud, forgery and illegal electronic money transfers, law enforcement officials said. The charges were later expanded to include money laundering and violating Pakistan’s electronic crimes act. The arrests were a sharp blow to a company that claimed to be Pakistan’s biggest software exporter and that was on the cusp of starting a major television network. Axact has been under investigation since May 19, after an article in The New York Times described how the company had made millions of dollars by running hundreds of fake online education websites. Since then, federal investigators have sealed Axact offices in Karachi and Islamabad and requested help from Interpol and the F.B.I. Mr. Shaikh sought to defend himself in a series of television interviews and video appeals, and he asked the courts to halt the investigation. But his legal move proved unsuccessful, and late Tuesday, after hours of questioning, he led investigators to a building next to the Axact headquarters in the upscale Karachi neighborhood of Defence. Inside, they found a room filled with blank certificates bearing the letterheads of dozens of fake universities and high schools operated by Axact under names like Bay View, Cambell State, Oxdell and Nixon. “There were hundreds of thousands of documents there,” said Shahid Hayat, head of the local office of the Federal Investigation Agency, which is leading the inquiry. Pakistani television networks broadcast images of the room, and of Mr. Shaikh, wearing a black polo shirt with the Axact logo, being led to a car waiting outside the office. As he got into the car, he could be heard telling officials of the investigation agency that he would “see to every one of them.” Mr. Hayat, the investigator, expressed surprise at the remark. “I don’t think he can threaten us,” he said. Mr. Shaikh appeared in court later on Wednesday. A judge granted the Federal Investigation Agency custody of Mr. Shaikh and the four other executives until June 4. Investigators had said earlier that they would seek to extend his detention by 14 days while they examined the Axact network, which spans a number of countries and includes several offshore companies. Axact’s online activities appear to have effectively shut down. Attempts by a reporter to contact sales agents at 221 of the company’s websites in recent days produced no response. Several of the fake accreditation bodies set up by the company, in a bid to bestow legitimacy on the universities, have gone offline. Pakistan has requested F.B.I. assistance because many of the universities run by Axact purported to be based in the United States, operated bank accounts and mailboxes there and sold fake degrees to Americans. Axact sales agents also sold State Department authentication certificates bearing Secretary of State John Kerry ’s signature. Experts say that fake degrees can pose dangers to public safety and national security in many parts of the world and can enable immigration fraud. They can also have serious consequences for customers who are caught using them. Two former Axact officials, speaking separately, said that in 2009, an American married couple, both members of the United States military serving in Iraq , emailed Axact to say that they faced courts-martial for having presented academic credentials bought from a university run by Axact. The couple requested an accreditation certificate from the university to help defend themselves, said Ahmed, a former sales agent who asked that his last name not be used. An Axact manager instructed subordinates to block the couple’s calls, he said. Mr. Shaikh has vehemently denied any wrongdoing but admitted some involvement in the online degree business. In his last video message before his arrest, he said Axact provided telephone support and what he termed “document management services” for other companies. He did not identify those companies. The scandal has cast a cloud over Bol, the Axact television and newspaper group that had planned to begin broadcasting in June. On Saturday, the network’s editor in chief and several leading journalists resigned, after Pakistan’s interior minister spoke of “substantive” evidence against Axact. | Pakistan;Axact;E-learning;Fraud;Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh;FBI;Interpol |
ny0183488 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2007/12/01 | A Fuller Picture: U.S. Looks to Iraqi Data | BAGHDAD, Nov. 30 — As the United States military begins to remove troops from Iraq , it plans to draw increasingly on Iraqi government data to gauge the level of violence and ultimately the effectiveness of the American strategy to stabilize the country. The Iraqi data is far from perfect. But the American commanders will need to depend on it more as force levels drop over the next year. They also hope it will allow them to discern events that are often beyond the reach of American forces, like civilian killings. At the recommendation of the American commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the Pentagon is expected for the first time to include the Iraqi government data on civilian deaths in its December report on security trends in Iraq. For years, the American command has collated an array of data on roadside bombs, suicide attacks, small-arms fire and other violence directed against American forces, Iraqi units and the nation’s beleaguered civilians. The information has been incorporated into computer databases and presented to commanders as a measure of the myriad threats encountered by American troops. Under General Petraeus’s predecessor, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Americans’ primary mission was to gradually transfer responsibility to Iraq’s security forces. That goal was reflected in the military’s statistical efforts, which did not measure sectarian violence until January 2006, officials said. But with the change of mission introduced with President Bush’s troop reinforcement plan, a main goal of General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy is to protect the Iraqi people, and thus turn them against the insurgents. That has put a premium on developing a more comprehensive understanding of the violence directed against Iraqi civilians, including the increased use of Iraqi statistics. The Iraqi data is not always complete. During late October there was a 50 percent decrease in field reports to Iraq’s national command center, after the Iraqi government failed to pay a contractor responsible for satellite transmission of the data. Still, given the gaps in the United States’ own reporting on civilian casualties, the Iraqis’ statistics can help the Americans round out their understanding of sectarian tensions in Iraq. The Iraqi figures on civilian deaths have for a long time run higher than the figures the American military has reported. American officials say the truth probably lies somewhere between the Iraqi and American estimates, which, they say, shows the value of considering Iraqi reports even if they are not entirely reliable. “We want to avoid the perception that if the coalition forces did not see it, it did not happen,” said Lt. Col. Todd Gesling, an Army officer who works with the American military’s databases. Yet another reason American officials see a need for Iraqi reports is the projected reduction of American troop levels. A quarter of the American combat brigades in Iraq are scheduled to leave by mid-July, while additional cuts are expected by the end of next year. As American forces withdraw, the United States will have fewer troops to monitor developments inside the country. But if there is a sharp increase in violence it will be important for American commanders, as well as Iraqi authorities, to quickly learn about it so they can act before the trouble spreads. Making effective use of such data will require the Americans to help the Iraqis address some considerable limitations. The Iraqi security forces generally report about a third as often as their American counterparts; they issue about 70 reports of incidents a day, compared with about 200 for the Americans. Iraqi accounts from the field also do not generally include the precise geographic coordinates that American military reports feature. The lack of precision often makes it hard to weed out redundant reports. Follow-up reports are rarely filed. Sectarian biases have sometimes been a problem. When violence soared last year, Iraqi reports were sometimes tainted by sectarian concerns. The Health Ministry, which was controlled by officials loyal to the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, inflated death counts to undermine the credibility of the Iraqi government, according to Col. William Rapp, a senior aide to General Petraeus. Those officials have since been detained or dismissed, and Health Ministry reports have improved, American officials said. In an effort to improve the quality of the Iraqi data, American officials are trying to help the Iraqis ferret out duplicate reports and develop an automated database of their own, no small challenges as the Iraqis have long depended more on paper records than computers. For the United States military, assessing trends is often a matter of comparing trends identified by different databases and statistical methodologies. Each week, American military officials prepare a survey of attacks and other key events, a database known as Sigacts III. Only American and other multinational force data is used to compute numbers of civilian deaths and other attacks. A separate database that focuses on sectarian violence draws on American reports as well as Iraqi data that is deemed to be generally reliable. Both counts, however, show the same general trend. The Sigacts database indicates that civilian deaths in Iraq dropped to less than 500 in October from more than 1,000 in May. The database that uses Iraqi and American data shows a decline to less than 1,000 deaths in October from more than 2,000 in May. American military officials here asserted that civilian deaths were a better measure to use than casualties, which include the wounded as well as the dead. The number of wounded, they say, is harder to determine with precision and can be influenced by the use of tactics, like chlorine bomb attacks, in which larger numbers of civilians are temporarily incapacitated but are not permanently harmed. Either way, American officers foresee a growing reliance on the Iraqis’ input, making efforts to improve their reporting systems all the more important. “We are going to increasingly rely on host nation reports,” said Col. David Larivee of the Air Force, the chief of assessments at General Petraeus’s command. | Iraq;United States Armament and Defense;United States Army |
ny0252606 | [
"sports",
"football"
] | 2011/11/24 | Suh Pushes the Line and Anchors the Lions | ALLEN PARK, Mich. — The text messages from his mother arrive on the morning of each game. “Keep your hands to yourself,” Bernadette Suh reminds her son. Ndamukong Suh (pronounced en-DOM-ih-kin soo), the Detroit Lions ’ mammoth defensive tackle, says he knows just what his mother, a first-grade teacher in Oregon, means by that admonition. She wants him to play hard and fast, to protect himself and be safe. The rest of the N.F.L. might wish Bernadette intended a different warning. In his second season, Suh is already one of the N.F.L.’s best defensive tackles, a rare melding of strength and speed who has collapsed offensive lines and elevated a franchise that, just three years removed from the worst season in league history, is in the race for the playoffs. But this season, Suh has become something else, too: an unintended lightning rod, a helmet-ripping, personal-foul-accumulating referendum on what constitutes dirty play in a game that venerates raw brutality. “It’s how Tom Brady is the pretty boy of the league,” Suh said in after a recent practice. “I’m maybe the villain of the league. It used to boggle my mind: How do you get this reputation? I look at James Harrison’s situation last year. I’m him this year.” Perhaps. But Harrison, a Steelers linebacker, never sat on a bench away from the crowd at a predraft event quietly talking about the importance of being a role model, as Suh did last year, a day before he became the second overall selection. Just a few feet away, Commissioner Roger Goodell was being asked about the imminent suspension of Ben Roethlisberger. Suh is soft-spoken and thoughtful, and as reporters leaned in to hear him, he said there was a simple rule: “Know right from wrong.” Just a few months later, in a preseason game against the Cleveland Browns, Suh grabbed quarterback Jake Delhomme’s face mask, began to twist it, then clutched Delhomme around the neck, hurling him to the ground as if they were in a wrestling ring. Suh is 6 feet 4 inches and 307 pounds, with the nimble feet of the soccer player he was until he turned to football as a high school sophomore, and even a gentle shove sends people 100 pounds lighter flying off their feet. His demolition of Delhomme was the N.F.L.’s first indication of Suh’s staggering strength, but also the first glimpse of how his ferocious play could overshadow a public personality so polished to a corporate sheen that one Detroit observer calls him “Suh Incorporated.” “When he did that to Delhomme, my mouth hit the floor,” said Warren Sapp, the former defensive tackle and NFL Network analyst to whom Suh is often compared as an interior pass rusher. “But you have to have a screw loose to play this position.” This, then, is the paradox of Suh’s career. Before he was even drafted, he had pledged $2.6 million to the University of Nebraska, from which he graduated with a degree in construction management. But since then Suh has been flagged for hitting Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler with a forearm to the back, fined this preseason for body-slamming Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton and, just a few weeks ago, accused by Falcons players of taunting Atlanta quarterback Matt Ryan while he writhed in pain from what appeared to be a serious leg injury. In a Sporting News poll of 111 players, Suh was voted the dirtiest player in the league. He outdistanced Harrison, who became the face of the N.F.L.’s crackdown on hits to the head last season, by a vote of 36-9. Last month, the league’s Web site, NFL.com , labeled a game between Tim Tebow’s Denver Broncos and Suh’s Lions as “good versus evil.” “When my parents, close friends, family, teammates tell me I’m crossing the line, then will I care about it,” Suh said. Still, Suh’s response to his escalating profile and declining reputation has been unusual. He asked for a meeting with Goodell and other top N.F.L. officials, hoping they could clarify what he was doing wrong. The league office praised Suh for his initiative and showed him video of his hits, telling Suh that he was moving in the right direction, that his play was more within the rules than it had been. But with the Lions entering the critical weeks of the season, Thursday’s game against the unbeaten Green Bay Packers is followed by one against the N.F.C. South-leading New Orleans Saints, Suh seems conflicted. He wanted to meet with Goodell so he would not repeat mistakes and draw flags that hurt his team, he said. He knows that quarterbacks receive special protections and that player safety is important. While sitting on a training table in the Lions’ field house after practice, Suh wondered if his hits looked worse because of how big he is and how quickly he moves. He acknowledged that his persona as a slightly reckless player pays dividends, too, erasing years of jokes about the Lions as laughingstocks. “I was always a physical player,” Suh said. “I think it’s good in the aspect that people understand we’re not going to lay down. It used to be the baby cat in Detroit, those baby lions. Now it’s big ferocious Lions you can’t mess with.” In football, of course, calling a player dirty is not necessarily an insult. His teammates shrug when asked about Suh’s play, and the longtime Detroit center Dominic Raiola pointed out a rarely spoken truth: Suh’s reputation seeps into opponents’ heads. “It has to be,” Raiola said. “As much as you don’t want to admit it — ‘What if I get hit like that?’ — they’re thinking.” Matt Williamson, a former N.F.L. scout who works for ESPN.com , compared Suh to the Pittsburgh defensive tackle whose fearsome play helped establish the reputation of the Steelers’ defense and earned him the nickname Mean Joe Greene. “Yeah, he takes some liberties with forearms to the head and going in high,” Williamson said of Suh. “He plays extremely aggressive and he wants to set the tone. Is he dirty? Yeah, a little. But he’s a force up there.” Off the field, Suh spends his down time during the season at home, where he lives with his sister Ngum. He works on his computer and goes to bed around 9 p.m., his sister says. After one recent practice, he sat next to his teammate Kyle Vanden Bosch, hunched over a table as they silently signed autographs on dozens of placards handed to them by Ngum. His sister attended college on a soccer scholarship but moved to Detroit at her brother’s request to help manage his business and personal affairs after he was drafted. In exchange, he is paying for her to go to graduate school. He speaks at high schools about financial literacy. Recently, he received an invitation to a child’s birthday party and, because he could not attend, he called the child instead. He is goofy and boring, Ngum said. Suh’s father, Michael, is troubled by how his son is perceived. Ngum said he read about Suh’s reputation on the Internet and said, “I don’t want people thinking my son is this.” But Ngum said she was not entirely surprised after years of watching her brother in school. Even when he was a child, Suh was so much bigger than others his age that Bernadette would often be asked at soccer games to produce his birth certificate, to prove he was 9, not 14. “He could breathe on someone and knock them over,” Ngum said. Last year, when Suh was first fined, Ngum took offense when she read stories that described him as playing with “nastiness,” only later realizing that in football circles that was high praise. But she began wondering where it was headed, if Suh’s style would be accepted or condemned. By this season, she knew the answer. “I want to say I hope it bothers him a little bit,” Ngum said. “But if he did consider it, then you’re going to hear that he pulled out of a tackle. So I hope that it doesn’t bother him.” Sapp said he thought Suh was playing with some hesitancy this season, not because he is worried about his reputation but because he is looking for certain blocks that have left him vulnerable against the run. Although Suh’s sack numbers are down — he has 3, compared with 11 last season, which was unusually high for an interior lineman — he is getting more pressure in less playing time. According to figures compiled by ProFootballFocus.com , Suh has played 78.1 percent of all defensive snaps this season, compared with 90.4 percent last season. Last year, he had 11 sacks, 6 quarterback hits and 24 pressures in 581 pass rushes, an average of 1 pressure for every 14.2 rushes. This year, with 3 sacks, 4 hits and 23 pressures in 330 pass rushes, he is averaging 1 pressure for every 11 pass rushes. Suh hears about his reduced production from his mother. She did not want him to play football when he was young, but has embraced it to the point that she tells her son, “Why didn’t you make this play?” That, though, may be the most innocuous question Suh faces from now on. Reputations are hard to shake, and Suh, it turns out, has been contending with his long before he started wearing the N.F.L.’s black hat. When Suh was a junior at Nebraska, he drew a flag during a game against Baylor after he threw the quarterback to the ground. “He picked the guy up and slammed him to the ground so hard, it looked like something he shouldn’t be able to do,” said John Papuchis, Nebraska’s defensive line coach. Papuchis said that Nebraska’s coach, Bo Pelini, “ran over and asked, ‘What is the penalty?’ And the referee said: ‘I don’t know. But it looked like a penalty.’ ” | Football;Detroit Lions;Suh Ndamukong;Delhomme Jake |
ny0049100 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2014/11/13 | Fears Rise as Russian Military Units Pour Into Ukraine | KIEV, Ukraine — Tanks and other military vehicles pouring over the border from Russia into eastern Ukraine . Nightly artillery battles in the region’s biggest city, Donetsk, and reports of fighting around another regional capital. And now, sightings of the “green men,” professional soldiers in green uniforms without insignia, the same type of forces that carried out the invasion of Crimea last spring. A senior NATO official confirmed on Wednesday what Ukrainian military officials and monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have been saying for days now: Russian troops and military equipment are crossing the border into Ukraine, seemingly preparing for renewed military action, though what exactly remains unclear. The statement drew stern and dismissive denials from Moscow, which for months has denied any military intervention in eastern Ukraine, though it has acknowledged publicly that Russian “volunteers” have crossed into Ukraine to support the pro-Russia separatists. In light of the military buildup, Western officials finally seemed ready to acknowledge that a cease-fire agreement signed in September had fallen apart, and that the threat to peace in Europe posed by the Ukraine crisis had returned in a possibly more virulent form. At the United Nations headquarters in New York, the Security Council held an emergency meeting on Ukraine — its 26th — where a top official, Assistant Secretary-General Jens Anders Toyberg-Frandzen, told diplomats he was “deeply concerned by the possibility of a return to full-scale fighting.” The official also expressed fear of what he called a “frozen and protracted conflict that would entrench the status quo in southeastern Ukraine for years or several decades to come.” The NATO official, Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, the group’s top military commander, said he was “concerned about convoys of trucks taking artillery and supplies into east Ukraine from Russia.” He said there were increased numbers of Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, training militants including in the use of sophisticated weaponry. “Across the last two days we have seen the same thing that O.S.C.E. is reporting,” General Breedlove said at a news conference in Sofia, Bulgaria. “We have seen columns of Russian equipment, primarily Russian tanks, Russian artillery, Russian air defense systems and Russian combat troops entering into Ukraine.” The full scope of the Russian incursion is not clear, General Breedlove said. The convoys seemed to be heading east toward Donetsk, a spokesman for the security organization, Michael Bociurkiw, said Wednesday. “We have reported since Saturday are three separate sightings of large military convoys — 126 vehicles in total — in areas controlled by armed rebel groups in Donetsk,” he added. General Breedlove said NATO was unsure about their intent. “It is our first guess that these forces will go in to make this a more contiguous, more whole and capable pocket of land in order to then hold onto it long term,” he said. The self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic claims all territory of the Donetsk region of Ukraine, but occupies only about half of it now. Rebel field commanders have spoken openly of a planned offensive for weeks. Video The Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO, Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, confirmed that Russian troops were moving into eastern Ukraine, but that NATO was unsure of their numbers or intentions. Credit Credit Reuters Russia forcefully denied that any of its troops or equipment had crossed into eastern Ukraine, and a government spokesman dismissed General Breedlove as unreliable and “alarmist.” “We have stressed repeatedly that there have never been and there are no facts behind the regular blasts of hot air from Brussels regarding the supposed presence of Russian armed forces in Ukraine,” the spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, told Russian news agencies on Wednesday. “We have stopped paying attention to NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Philip Breedlove’s unfounded statements alleging that he observed Russian military convoys invading Ukraine.” Despite that denial, Col. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s military, said at a news conference in Kiev on Wednesday that there was grim evidence of Russia’s involvement moving in the opposite direction: five truckloads of bodies of dead Russian fighters, driven back to Russia on Tuesday night. Sporadic fighting has continued from virtually the moment the truce agreement was signed on Sept. 5 in Minsk, Belarus. Ukrainian officials have complained ever since that Russia was taking advantage of the cease-fire to reinforce the rebels in eastern Ukraine with more fighters and equipment. Skirmishes have broken out daily along sections of the front line: at the Donetsk Airport; a highway hub at the town of Debaltseve; at an electrical plant north of Luhansk; and on a road leading from the Russian border to the Azov Sea port of Mariupol. Artillery barrages hit in and near Donetsk multiple times a day owing to the fighting over the airport, now nothing more than an obliterated hulk of scorched steel. For weeks, however, officials on all sides had insisted that the cease-fire was holding, a state of denial that underscored the intractability of the conflict. For President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine, acknowledging the failure of the cease-fire would have meant conceding his inability to exert control in the war zone. For Russia, it would have meant inviting new economic sanctions by Europe and the United States. And for Western officials it would have meant pressure to impose more sanctions, which are unpopular among business interests in their own countries. | Ukraine;Russia;NATO;Vladimir Putin |
ny0257979 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2011/01/17 | Arrest Made in Lakewood, N.J., Police Officer Shooting | CAMDEN, N.J. — The police raided an apartment early Sunday morning and arrested a 19-year-old man accused of murdering a police officer in Lakewood on Friday, ending an exhaustive manhunt, officials said. Multiple tips led officers to arrest Jahmell W. Crockam in the Crestbury Apartments, a development of shabby, two-story brick homes 60 miles from Lakewood, the township where Officer Christopher Matlosz was killed by three point-blank shots to the head. “This is not a time of celebration, but it is of some small solace to his family and his brother officers to have this person in custody,” Lakewood Police Chief Robert Lawson said. His bail was set at $5 million cash bond. He is scheduled to appear in Ocean County Superior Court on Tuesday. A 15-member task force made up of the State Police and United States marshals burst into the apartment at 6:30 a.m. and took Mr. Crockam into custody in a second-floor bedroom, officials said. Mr. Crockam was awake, they said, and did not put up a fight. He was unarmed, said Capt. Thomas Hayes, commander of the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office major crimes unit. Investigators are still trying to learn how Mr. Crockam traveled to Camden, evading more than 100 police officers who scoured Lakewood, Captain Hayes said. “We’re trying to establish a timeline of what he did and where he went after the murder,” he said. About 4 p.m. on Friday, Officer Matlosz, 27, pulled his police car alongside Mr. Crockam to talk to him on a pleasant, snowy street in Lakewood, officials said. Mr. Crockam stepped back, drew a handgun and shot Officer Matlosz once in the head before stepping forward to shoot two more times, the Ocean County prosecutor, Marlene Lynch Ford, said. Officer Matlosz did not have time to draw his weapon or get out of his car, she said. He was pronounced dead at Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune less than an hour later. His fiancée was by his side. “It was a senseless killing,” Ms. Ford said, adding that investigators were trying to determine if Mr. Crockam was a member of a gang. On Sunday at the site of the shooting on August Drive, mourners laid bouquets of flowers and candles in a snowbank along with a sign on which Officer Matlosz’s friends wrote, “R.I.P. #317,” “Chris, the station won’t be the same without your smile,” and “Thanks for protecting our community.” The state Policemen’s Benevolent Association offered around $150,000 in cash for information leading to the suspect’s arrest. Ms. Ford said there would be claims made for that money, and she praised those who had contacted law enforcement. “The real heroes are the citizens who stepped forward, who gave us information that we could use,” she said. The police had been hunting for Mr. Crockam since Dec. 29, when the Ocean County prosecutor’s office issued a warrant for his arrest after an illegal rifle and hollow-point bullets turned up in a search of a private residence were linked to him, Ms. Ford said. She said she did not know if Mr. Crockam knew about the warrant or if, in the moments before the shooting, Officer Matlosz learned about it also. Residents in a troubled town-house development just two blocks from the shooting, which SWAT teams swept through on Friday evening, said they had, at different times, seen both men. Emilio Cuccio, 59, a machinist, said that in the past few years Officer Matlosz went to the development several times on his overnight shift to quell disturbances. “He was a gentleman,” Mr. Cuccio said. “He was a very nice guy.” A 41-year-old resident said he saw Mr. Crockam hanging around the town houses a few times a week, even though he did not live there. The man said Mr. Crockam attended Lakewood High School and would often hang around outside with a group of friends. Neighbors in the Crestbury Apartments in Camden said the apartment where Mr. Crockam was arrested had been occupied for about the past month by two young women. At a late-morning news conference, Mayor Menashe P. Miller of Lakewood called Mr. Crockam’s arrest “bittersweet.” “We are thrilled to have removed this cold-blooded murderer off the street,” he said. “But at the same time, there’s a grieving fiancée and a mother has to bury her son.” | Murders and Attempted Murders;Police;New Jersey;Crockam Jahmell W.;Matlosz Christopher |
ny0227833 | [
"science"
] | 2010/07/20 | Fossil Primate Skull Could Help Date When Monkeys and Apes Split | There are a few important differences between Old World monkeys and apes. Old World monkeys, like baboons and macaques, have tails and a great deal of agility, enabling them to jump and swing from tree branches. Apes, which include gorillas and chimpanzees, are tail-less and tend to have a more upright posture. Scientists agree that Old World monkeys and apes share a common ancestry, but at some point two lineages diverged, one giving rise to the Old World monkeys and another to both apes and humans. Eactly when the split happened is a matter of debate. A primate skull unearthed outside of Mecca in Saudi Arabia is the closest common ancestor to apes and Old World monkeys, researchers say, and helps date the split. Sediment records indicate that the fossil is 25 million to 29 million years old, making 24 million to 29 million years ago the window in which the monkey-ape split may have occurred. The ape and human lineages split later. The research appears in the journal Nature. “It is neither a monkey, nor an ape,” said Iyad Zalmout a paleontologist at the University of Michigan and the study’s lead author. “You have an intermediate primate that tells you a story about Old World monkeys and apes.” Based on the skull, the primate was medium-sized and weighed about 30 pounds to 40 pounds. It had broad upper molars and a long, baboonlike snout. A previous estimate, made with DNA samples of living primates found that the split occurred earlier, 34.5 million to 29.2 million years ago. There is however, no fossil evidence to support this. | Monkeys and Apes;Fossils;Evolution |
ny0091157 | [
"sports",
"hockey"
] | 2015/09/25 | Rangers Lose to Bruins in Exhibition Play | Brad Marchand scored in the sixth round of a shootout to give the Boston Bruins a 4-3 home victory over the Rangers in exhibition play. Ryan Spooner and Frank Vatrano also had shootout goals. Spooner and Brandon Carlo scored in the third period to help Boston overcome a 3-1 deficit. Tyler Randell also scored for Boston, which lost defenseman Zdeno Chara to an upper-body injury in the first period. Jeremy Smith made 22 saves for the Bruins. Brady Skjei, Mats Zuccarello and Kevin Hayes scored for the Rangers, and Zuccarello and Dan Boyle scored in the shootout. Henrik Lundqvist made 21 saves in two periods, and Jeff Malcolm stopped 15 shots in the third period and overtime. ■ The lawyer for a woman accusing the Chicago Blackhawks star Patrick Kane of sexual assault abruptly quit the case, saying he was no longer comfortable representing the woman because of how her mother had reported finding an evidence bag they believed once held the woman’s rape kit. The lawyer, Thomas Eoannou, said he did not believe the story he was told about how the bag was found. But he said he was still confident in the woman’s allegations against Kane. District Attorney Frank Sedita of Erie County planned a news conference Friday to talk about the case. | Ice hockey;Brad Marchand;Bruins;Rangers |
ny0246085 | [
"business"
] | 2011/04/24 | Web Instructions Open the Do-It Yourself World to Everyone | HANDS-ON kits offer great ways to learn about science and engineering. But the joys of making a small robot or a crystal radio set have long eluded those who can’t get past Step 2 in the instruction manual. But now, even those without a wisp of natural geek in them may have a chance at success. That’s because Web-based instructions — often designed by hobbyists for other hobbyists — are now supplementing the often-confounding printed directions that come with such kits. Bloggers who tinker are creating interactive tutorials, descriptive videos and step-by-step series of photographs that make it easier for nontechies to go forward confidently. Dozens of do-it-yourself Web sites, like Evil Mad Scientist , AdaFruit and iFixIt , also offer tools, components and kits of their own, many aimed at beginners. Dale Dougherty, editor and publisher of Make magazine , which sells kits as well as related books and tools at the Maker Shed store on its Web site, says a new era is opening for people who want to create things. “There have always been tinkerers,” he said. “But today it’s a lot easier for others to join in. We’ve moved from the lonely tinkerer to the social tinkerer who can share ideas.” Those tinkerers might once have worked alone in their garages, Mr. Dougherty said, but now many offer blogs about their projects, documenting them and opening up the details to their readers. Online communities have sprung up in which people help one another, adapting and explaining the instructions so they are clear even to novices. Some people also try to commercialize their gadgets and inventions, he said, “but many, even most, are happy validating their ideas through the community.” Scott Heimendinger, who blogs about food at seattlefoodgeek.com , created a popular set of online instructions after he made a sous vide immersion cooker for $75 by using off-the-shelf components, rather than buying one for $1,200, the going price two years ago for the model he wanted. The appliance is used to slowly cook food sealed in plastic and immersed in water at precisely controlled temperatures. To illustrate the steps in building the cooker, he took photographs with his digital camera, with the help of a tripod. He used his right hand to illustrate a step, while hitting the shutter release on the camera with the left. He could then use as many shots as he needed without worrying about printing costs. “With every photo, you add information,” he said. “And people following the instructions can be confident they are building in the right way. This takes away a lot of the ambiguity.” To test his instructions, he put them on the Web, refining them in 15 versions with the help of reader feedback. “In the past, I would have no idea how well the instructions work,” he said. “Now, with the Web component, I have a dialogue.” The instructions have developed a life of their own on the Internet, prompting related projects. Some readers have adapted his design to control deep fryers, slow cookers and smokers. He refined the instructions yet again when they caught the attention of Make, which published them in a recent issue. Margaret Honey, president and chief executive of the New York Hall of Science in Queens, which has many programs and events for children, has noticed the broadening choices of kits and projects for adults on the Internet. She says she hopes the trend can also encompass children, to encourage interest in science and engineering. One example of the type of innovation that could do this, she said, is BigShot, a kit and a companion Web site that teach young people how to build a digital camera. The camera captures three types of images: regular, panoramic and stereoscopic three-dimensional. “BigShot is novel and important,” Dr. Honey said. “You are building a complex tool, but you are also learning the science, through the thoughtful way the components in the kit are designed and backed up by Internet resources.” And, afterward, the young builders can share their photographs with others on the BigShot Web site . BigShot was created by Shree K. Nayar, a professor of computer science who directs the Computer Vision Laboratory at Columbia University. The kit, now in prototype and not yet manufactured for sale, divides the building blocks of the camera into fewer than 20 components, including a gearbox, dynamo, flash, electronics and lenses, Dr. Nayar said. The work was aided in part by an $80,000 educational grant from Google. The camera has many unusual features, he said, including a crank that students can turn to generate electricity for each picture. In assembling the camera, users are guided by instructions on the Web site that break the steps into a detailed series of photographs and text. A separate Learn section, with interactive graphics, explains underlying principles of mechanics, electromagnetism, power generation, imaging sensing, image processing and optics. The next step will be manufacturing the camera components and bringing the project to market, Dr. Nayar said. “But not as a toy,” he said. “It’s an educational kit for learning.” | Computers and the Internet;Cameras;Hobbies;Do It Yourself |
ny0173659 | [
"science"
] | 2007/10/02 | In a Primitive Tool, Evidence of Trading in the Pacific | East Polynesia, those remote eastern Pacific islands like Tahiti, the Marquesas and the Tuamotus, was the last part of the planet to be settled, reached by peoples from the western Pacific who voyaged over broad stretches of ocean in canoes, starting about 4,000 years ago. There has always been a question of how expert these ocean travelers were — whether the voyages were lucky accidents or purposeful expeditions. Most anthropologists think these voyagers knew what they were doing, but no one knows for certain, nor whether there was extensive cross-ocean trading among the islands once they were settled. But Kenneth D. Collerson and Marshall I. Weisler of the University of Queensland in Australia provide some clues, through a study of old stone adzes found on the Tuamotus. The adzes have basalt blades. Since they were found on coral atolls, the basalt had to come from volcanic islands elsewhere. By determining concentrations of trace elements and certain isotopes in each blade, the researchers were able to determine where they came from. The study was published in Science. Most of the blades were found to have come from four island groups, suggesting there was extensive trading across more than 1,000 miles of ocean. And one of the blades was from much farther away — Hawaii, 2,400 miles to the northwest. Hawaiian oral histories include mentions of long voyages to Tahiti by way of the Tuamotus, so this finding supports those histories — and the idea that the early Polynesian settlers were skillful navigators as well. | Oceans;Exploration and Explorers;French Polynesia (France) |
ny0252053 | [
"sports",
"football"
] | 2011/11/02 | With Harbaugh in His Corner, Alex Smith Emerges as 49ers’ Leader | SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Some players make their team during minicamp. In June, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Alex Smith used minicamp to make his team his. In lieu of official team activities during the lockout, Smith organized practice sessions. He reserved a field at San Jose State, gathered teammates from around the country, structured workouts, even quizzed his teammates to see how well they were absorbing the playbook — which he had learned during an intense day of meetings at the team’s training center when the lockout was briefly lifted in April. He was, simultaneously, the coach, quarterback and traveling secretary. “It had to be me,” he said, as the only guy on the team at that point with any understanding of the system the 49ers’ first-year coach, Jim Harbaugh, planned to run. “So I did it.” It was a level of leadership Smith had not before shown, and he did it all as a free agent, without being under contract. It has been that kind of year for Smith. After six mostly disappointing seasons after being selected No. 1 over all in the 2005 draft, Smith has helped San Francisco to a 6-1 start , including victories over Philadelphia and Detroit, heading into Sunday’s game at Washington . He has found a comrade in arms in Harbaugh, whose own resilience over a 14-year career as an N.F.L. quarterback was sufficient to earn him the nickname Captain Comeback. “He knows what it’s like to be back there when the bodies are flying, and he demands a lot of us because of that,” Smith said. “He’s on us as quarterbacks, grinding us. He coaches us hard.” It is a decided change from Smith’s first six years, in which he played for two defensive-minded head coaches, Mike Nolan and Mike Singletary, and a different offensive coordinator each season. Nolan once accused Smith of being soft, though the shoulder injury questioned by the coach later required surgical repair, costing Smith most of 2007 and, after complications, all of 2008. Smith feuded openly with the caustic Singletary. He was benched for the likes of J. T. O’Sullivan, Troy Smith and Shaun Hill. During most of that time, of course, the 49ers were awful. So, for that matter, was Smith. What changed? Smith said that he is the same player in terms of approach and preparation. But there are differences, much of them starting with Harbaugh. It began with the trust he placed in Smith during the one-day lockout freeze, talking him through the basics of the playbook even though Smith was still free to sign with another team. With that gesture, Harbaugh anointed the quarterback a team leader, the man who had the task of taking the message to the masses. “It’s no secret, I have a lot of respect for Alex’s play, really like being around him,” Harbaugh told reporters recently. “I think he’s a very good, smart football player that is young and getting better. It’s pretty well documented. Alex is our guy and he’s rising to the occasion.” Quality leadership, forced or otherwise, cannot help but foster confidence, and although those around Smith say that his self-assurance has been consistent through the years, it is difficult to miss its manifestation this season. “Just look at Detroit,” said wide receiver Ted Ginn Jr., referring to the game in which Smith threw a fourth-and-goal touchdown pass to tight end Delanie Walker with under two minutes remaining for a 25-19 road victory . “He stepped up to the plate, fighting over that crowd, keeping everybody in there and spitting out the plays so that everybody could hear him. He was really the top-notch player we need him to be in those types of situations.” Part of it comes from coaching. Asked about the ways Harbaugh has helped him from a technical standpoint, Smith’s description does not even reach the point where he releases the football. “From your stance under center, to your mechanics under center, to your mechanics of taking a snap, to your mechanics of getting away from the center — nothing is off limits,” he said. In giving Smith the technique to succeed, Harbaugh has also managed to slow down the game for him to the point that Smith’s decision making — highly questionable at times throughout his career — has been mostly on point this season. Through seven games, Smith’s passer rating of 95.7 is a career high, and he has completed 63.2 percent of his passes (both numbers are tied for eighth in the league). He has nine touchdown passes against only two interceptions — no full-time starter has thrown fewer. His statistics do not put him on the level of Aaron Rodgers or Drew Brees, but the improvement over seasons past is apparent. Harbaugh’s West Coast system, with its reliance on high-percentage short passes, plays a part, of course. Despite Smith having only three completions of more than 40 yards this season — two coming in a 20-10 win over Cleveland last Sunday — he has never looked more like the franchise quarterback he was once thought to be. “I’m just out there playing football,” he said. “All I want is to reach my potential.” For the first time in his career, he might be in a position to do that. | Football;San Francisco 49ers;Smith Alex;Harbaugh Jim |
ny0267811 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2016/03/12 | A Reluctant Barkeep, Mourned on the Brooklyn Streets That Called Him Home | The thing about Sunny Balzano was you couldn’t stop him from talking, but you didn’t ever want to. He just had stories to tell and stories to tell and stories to tell. And you listened, mesmerized, chuckling along while quaffing your second or third or 13th drink in his bar, Sunny’s Bar, wedged in at the foot of the harbor in Red Hook, Brooklyn. It was a motley joint, decorated with just about everything, but so what, you felt good there. And maybe you weren’t feeling all that great about yourself, torn up by life’s obstinate miseries, but by the time you had paid the tab and were ready to get back at it, you sure did feel wonderful. You had seen Sunny. He had performed his magic. So, deep sadness engulfed Red Hook on Friday as the word got out and was reluctantly accepted: An epochal event had happened. Near midnight on Thursday, at the age of 81, the beloved Sunny Balzano died, after having a cerebral hemorrhage the day before. For those who knew him, a singular man was gone who could not be replaced. “There will never be anyone else like Sunny and there never was anyone else like him before he came into being,” said Tim Sultan, a longtime friend who used to work part time behind the bar and recently published a memoir, “Sunny’s Nights: Lost and Found at a Bar on the Edge of the World.” “Sunny was a very Shakespearean figure without intending to be,” Mr. Sultan said. “It was very hard to say Sunny was a painter or Sunny was a bar owner. Or he was this or that. He was many things. Most of all, he was a terribly kind man. You could walk into Sunny’s feeling like a very unremarkable person and walk out feeling like a luminary. I wrote in the book that he had a thousand ways to make people feel like a million bucks.” Image Sunny Balzano, photographed in 2013. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times The neighborhood wept. On a chalkboard outside the Dry Dock Wine & Spirits store, a simple expression caught the mood: “Rest in Peace Sunny Balzano.” As the sun set, Isaura Horenstein, a bartender at Sunny’s for 16 years, emerged from the bar to stuff a bouquet of flowers in the door handle of an old rusty green car that sits parked outside the bar. Earlier in the day, along Van Brunt Street, the area’s main artery, people were caught up in conversation about the one thing that mattered right then. Risha Gorig, 35, an artist, and Rachel Schulder, 54, an art teacher, stood on a corner, processing their memories. Ms. Schulder said she remembered coming to Red Hook in her 20s as a “wild child” and Sunny becoming an uncle figure. She would even sleep through a night at the bar after a too-long evening. “His death is sad because it’s the loss of someone who truly brought out the good in everyone he met,” she said. Image Mr. Balzano was recalled fondly by residents and local business owners after he died on Thursday night. Credit Bryan Thomas for The New York Times “He was Red Hook,” Ms. Gorig said. “Sunny was a destination.” Bene Coopersmith, 33, who runs the Record Shop on Van Brunt, played versions of the song “Sunny” by Bobby Hebb throughout the day as homage to the man. “His departure is not a departure,” he said. “He is engraved in the neighborhood.” Sitting outside the record shop, Scott Pfaffman, 61, a local artist, said, “Lots of people were close to Sunny. He was like the love doctor.” Antonio was his actual given name, but everyone called him Sunny. He grew up in Red Hook. He wanted out of the neighborhood, joined the Air Force, spent time in California, a decade in India, before returning to Red Hook around 1980, after his father got cancer. He found himself drawn into the family bar business, which went back to 1890. Seeing himself as an actor and painter, Sunny was not always all that smitten with running a bar. For a period of years once he was in charge, he would open up the bar when he got around to it. He figured one night a week was about right. The way it turned out, the stingy hours made it a draw for the neighborhood drinkers . The hardly open bar on Conover Street became something special. It was a beaten-down and hard-boiled area then, not the now-refashioned Red Hook. And did it have its characters: Insectavora, the bug eater from Coney Island. The cross-dresser on the tricycle. The Mercury Men, who painted themselves metallic silver and posed as robots. Everyone was welcome, Sunny made sure of that. As Mr. Sultan quoted him as saying when someone would discuss his bar: “My bar? This isn’t my bar any more than it’s anyone else’s bar. It belongs to each of you who have come here and have served to make it what it is that it is. It’s our bar, aye?” Image Scott Murchison playing the accordion at Sunny’s Bar on Friday. Mr. Murchison was encouraged to learn the accordion by the owner of Sunny’s, Sunny Balzano. Credit Bryan Thomas for The New York Times Nowadays the bar is open six days a week. In recent times, Sunny wasn’t around all that much, uninvolved in everyday operations. He was frail. His wife, Tone Johansen, ran it. For the most part, Sunny stayed in his apartment above the bar. He toiled at his art, though he never felt he had finished a painting and wouldn’t sell them. Some of them hang throughout the bar, and even to those, he might add new touches when he passed them. He did abstract work and liked to turn one thing into something else. He would cut a label off an oatmeal container and paste it to a notebook page, then paint over it. Then attach his doctor’s prescription over that. And so on. He was also recently rehearsing a scene from “King Lear.” The end came suddenly. His wife said: “All I could think about was when he was a kid, he used to go to the local movie house and watch cowboy movies and he and his friends would take their toy pistols and shoot them up. He died that way. He didn’t suffer. He died in action. It was a good way to go.” He never regained consciousness after the hemorrhage. As he lay in the hospital in his final hours, his wife and friends sang to him the Frank Sinatra songs he liked and the novelty songs he enjoyed, like “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts,” and they sang his mother’s favorite song, “A Little on the Lonely Side.” And then his wife and the parade of female friends who came to pay their respects, they all made sure they kissed him. He died with lipstick kisses all over his face. | Antonio Balzano;Red Hook Brooklyn;Sunny's Bar Brooklyn NY;bars,nightclubs |
ny0138821 | [
"sports",
"football"
] | 2008/02/03 | 1972 Dolphins: Undefeated on Field, Undeterred Off It | MIAMI — Dick Anderson made $38,000 as a Pro Bowl strong safety for the Dolphins in 1972, but that was only part of his income. He started an insurance agency five years earlier and would sometimes return calls to clients before or after practices. “Shula was always telling me to get off the phone,” Anderson said of Coach Don Shula . “In those days, you had to have another job if you wanted to get ahead.” Anderson had a car phone, rare in those days, and recalled a young player doing a double take after seeing him in his car, with his uniform on, talking on the telephone. It was a dual life that he considered necessary. As the Dolphins were on their way to a 17-0 season, other players proved adept at mixing football and business pursuits. Nick Buoniconti, who was licensed to practice law in Massachusetts , studied to pass the Florida bar. His fellow linebacker Doug Swift attended the University of Miami and eventually earned a medical degree and became an anesthesiologist in Philadelphia . Almost everybody had an off-season job back then, Shula recalled. He earned only $75,000, according to an internal list of the Miami coaches’ salaries at the time. In addition, Shula had a 10 percent ownership stake in the club, which he received when he left Baltimore for Miami. According to interviews and an internal memorandum sent by Joe Robbie, then the owner, to Pat Peppler, his director of scouting, the standout middle three in the Dolphins’ offensive line earned less than Anderson. Larry Little made $30,000, and Jim Langer $22,000, including a $1,000 bonus. Bob Kuechenberg’s salary was $21,000. The Patriots , who are seeking to match the Dolphins with an unbeaten season, have 23 players earning at least $1 million — including some who were injured or released. Despite the Dolphins’ relatively humble salaries — offensive tackle Wayne Moore played for $18,000 and defensive end Vern Den Herder for $19,000, including a $2,000 bonus — a number of players from the 1972 team found success in business. They are perhaps topped by Buoniconti, who rose to be president of United States Tobacco, has served on the board of several corporations and has helped the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis raise more than $100 million. Buoniconti began fund-raising after his son Marc was paralyzed in a football accident. Quarterback Bob Griese, a longtime college football television analyst, first struck it rich in real estate in Indiana . Linebacker Mike Kolen and Kuechenberg have also excelled in real estate. Wide receiver Howard Twilley, now retired, started a chain of shoe and women’s clothing stores in Oklahoma . Den Herder has specialized in farming in Iowa . Swift works on one of the country’s top heart-surgery teams, at Pennsylvania Hospital. In addition to his insurance agency, Anderson, a former Florida state senator, bought and sold several businesses. Cornerback Tim Foley decided, at the suggestion of Kuechenberg, to become a representative for Amway, which largely sold household cleaning products. At the time, Kuechenberg was renovating a 23,000-square-foot home on exclusive Star Island, near Miami Beach. Kuechenberg recalled that he and Foley had parties at the mansion where they would persuade people to sign up as Amway representatives or buy its products. In the Amway system, Kuechenberg benefited from sales Foley made, and they each benefited from the sales of the people they signed up. Kuechenberg did not like the business and left before Amway reached its sales zenith. But Foley stayed to reap the biggest rewards. “It’s the best gift I’ve ever given anyone,” Kuechenberg said of introducing Foley to Amway. Foley once said he could never live outside Florida because the cold weather would inflame his football-induced arthritis . Now he does not have to. He owns an airplane and runs a management company named after him in central Florida. Shula suspected he had a special group of players after a players strike in 1970. The Dolphins started training camp late, and Shula decided to conduct four-a-day practices. He said the players grumbled at the time. But after they made the playoffs, he said, they credited the extra work for their striking improvement. “The thing I have always said when I talk about that football team is the thing that set them apart was their intelligence and their competitiveness,” Shula said. “They wanted to win and they were very smart. We were the least-penalized team in the league. We never beat ourselves.” A number of players, including Little and running back Mercury Morris, cited Shula’s influence as a philosophical foundation for later success. Fullback Larry Csonka did, too, but in a different way. He spends much of his time these days doing hunting and fishing shows for ESPN. “Getting away from Shula provided me with a great motivation to go all the way to Alaska in a cool stream in July instead of doing grass drills and having Shula stepping over my stomach saying, ‘You don’t like me,’ ” said Csonka, known for his playful sarcasm. “He had no idea how much I didn’t like him. Every July, I think about the fact that I’m not in Miami. I don’t have grass and sweat running down my neck and him standing on my stomach.” Five years ago, Anderson started a memorabilia company for the 1972 team. He acts as the treasurer and usually sends a check twice a year to each player. The payments are tiered so that the Hall of Famers and the starters get more than the nonstarters. But even the team’s lesser lights reap a monetary reward. “It’s a way to keep in touch,” Anderson said. “We had something special, and we still do.” | Miami Dolphins;Football;Don Shula;Bob Griese |
ny0040207 | [
"business"
] | 2014/04/01 | Justices Seem Wary of Software Patent Case | WASHINGTON — In a case with the potential to reshape the software industry, the Supreme Court on Monday seemed poised to issue fresh limits on patents for computer-based business methods. Though the case originated far from Silicon Valley, it has been closely watched as an indicator of how specific or abstract technical ideas can be to become eligible for patent protection. Patent claims over the way such ideas are incorporated into computers, cellphones and other devices have become a challenge for many high-tech companies. Those companies often have interests that tug in opposite directions. They tend to hold large portfolios of valuable patents and want to protect them. But they must also contend with “patent trolls,” companies that have obtained patents on sometimes vague concepts and which are more active in the courthouse than on the production line. Most of the justices seemed skeptical about extending patent protection to the claimed invention at issue, a sort of computerized escrow mechanism that helps ensure that both sides in a transaction do what they have promised to do. But given the importance of the software industry in the information economy, the court also appeared wary of a misstep in announcing a general legal principle. The court’s task, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said, was “to go between Scylla and Charybdis.” On the one hand, Justice Breyer said, the court should not allow the patent system to stifle innovation. “There is a risk,” he said, that “instead of having competition on price, service and better production methods, we’ll have competition on who has the best patent lawyer. “And if you go the other way and say never” allow software patents, he went on, “then what you do is you rule out real inventions with computers.” The patents in question, owned by the Alice Corporation, outlined steps for mitigating settlement risks among multiple parties. The company’s lawyer, Carter G. Phillips, pointed the justices to a flow chart in one of the briefs to explain how the method worked. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. inspected it. “Just looking at it,” he said, “it looks pretty complicated. There are a lot of arrows.” But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy asked whether “a second-year college class in engineering” or “any computer group of people sitting around a coffee shop in Silicon Valley” could convert the idea into computer code “over a weekend.” Mr. Phillips said yes, adding “that’s true of almost any software.” The patents were challenged by CLS Bank International, which says it clears $5 trillion in foreign exchange transactions a day using methods to ensure that both sides performed. The Alice Corporation’s patents, the bank said, merely recited “the fundamental economic concept of intermediated settlement of escrow.” Several justices appeared to agree. Justice Breyer said the method had been around since the abacus and was used by his mother to keep him from overdrawing his checking account.“There is an abstract idea here,” he said. “It’s called solvency.” The justices considered only the threshold question of whether the Alice Corporation’s ideas were eligible to be patented. The court has said that laws of nature, natural phenomena and abstract ideas do not qualify. Were Alice’s ideas to make it over that hurdle, they would still be subject to challenges for obviousness, lack of novelty or indefiniteness. The initial step of patent eligibility, Mr. Phillips said, should be “a very coarse filter.” In recent decisions, the court has been skeptical of protecting discoveries and ideas even at that threshold stage if doing so would hamper innovation. In 2010, the court ruled that a method of hedging risk was not eligible to be patented. In 2012, it said the same thing about correlations between drug dosages and treatment. Mark A. Perry, a lawyer for the bank, said Monday’s case, the Alice Corporation v. CLS Bank International, No. 13-298, was similar to the 2010 case, Bilski v. Kappos. “It is hedging against credit default rather than price fluctuation, but it is simply hedging,” he said. A trial court invalidated the Alice Corporation’s patents , saying they recited only abstract concepts. That decision was effectively affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a specialized court in Washington that hears patent disputes. But the decision was badly fractured, with seven opinions, none of which commanded a majority. The Supreme Court also seemed likely to rule for the bank, though it was not clear how broadly. The justices did not seem inclined to adopt the aggressive approach urged by Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., who argued in support of the bank and said that only a limited number of software patents should be recognized. Mr. Phillips said the government’s approach would declare “in one fell swoop hundreds of thousands of patents invalid.” Mr. Perry said the court needed only to apply its earlier decisions to find in his client’s favor. “This is not the death of software patents,” he said, citing supportive briefs filed in the case from prominent companies. “The software industry is all before this court saying, ‘This is fine with us.’ Every company in the United States practically, except for IBM, is saying go ahead. This will not affect software patents.” Justice Kennedy asked Mr. Perry what sorts of business processes would remain eligible for patents under his theory. He rattled off a few: data compression, streaming video, encryption. Mr. Verrilli had a harder time providing an example, though he said “a process for additional security point-of-sale credit card transactions using particular encryption technology — that might well be patent-eligible.” | Inventions and Patents;Computers and the Internet;Tech Industry;Supreme Court,SCOTUS;Alice Corp;CLS Group;Software |
ny0214221 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2010/03/07 | U.S. Enriches Companies Defying Its Policy on Iran | The federal government has awarded more than $107 billion in contract payments, grants and other benefits over the past decade to foreign and multinational American companies while they were doing business in Iran , despite Washington’s efforts to discourage investment there, records show . That includes nearly $15 billion paid to companies that defied American sanctions law by making large investments that helped Iran develop its vast oil and gas reserves. For years, the United States has been pressing other nations to join its efforts to squeeze the Iranian economy, in hopes of reining in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Now, with the nuclear standoff hardening and Iran rebuffing American diplomatic outreach, the Obama administration is trying to win a tough new round of United Nations sanctions. But a New York Times analysis of federal records, company reports and other documents shows that both the Obama and Bush administrations have sent mixed messages to the corporate world when it comes to doing business in Iran, rewarding companies whose commercial interests conflict with American security goals. Many of those companies are enmeshed in the most vital elements of Iran’s economy. More than two-thirds of the government money went to companies doing business in Iran’s energy industry — a huge source of revenue for the Iranian government and a stronghold of the increasingly powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a primary focus of the Obama administration’s proposed sanctions because it oversees Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. Other companies are involved in auto manufacturing and distribution, another important sector of the Iranian economy with links to the Revolutionary Guards. One supplied container ship motors to IRISL , a government-owned shipping line that was subsequently blacklisted by the United States for concealing military cargo. Beyond $102 billion in United States government contract payments since 2000 — to do everything from building military housing to providing platinum to the United States Mint — the companies and their subsidiaries have reaped a variety of benefits. They include nearly $4.5 billion in loans and loan guarantees from the Export-Import Bank , a federal agency that underwrites the export of American goods and services, and more than $500 million in grants for work that includes cancer research and the turning of agricultural byproducts into fuel. In addition, oil and gas companies that have done business in Iran have over the years won lucrative drilling leases for close to 14 million acres of offshore and onshore federal land. In recent months, a number of companies have decided to pull out of Iran, because of a combination of pressure by the United States and other Western governments, “terrorism free” divestment campaigns by shareholders and the difficulty of doing business with Iran’s government. And several oil and gas companies are holding off on new investment, waiting to see what shape new sanctions may assume. The Obama administration points to that record, saying that it has successfully pressed allied governments and even reached out directly to corporate officials to dissuade investment in Iran, particularly in the energy industry. In addition, an American effort over many years to persuade banks to leave the country has isolated Iran from much of the international financial system, making it more difficult to do deals there. “We are very aggressive, using a range of tools,” said Denis McDonough , chief of staff to the National Security Council . The government can, and does, bar American companies from most types of trade with Iran, under a broad embargo that has been in place since the 1990s. But as The Times’s analysis illustrates, multiple administrations have struggled diplomatically, politically and practically to exert American authority over companies outside the embargo’s reach — foreign companies and the foreign subsidiaries of American ones. Indeed, of the 74 companies The Times identified as doing business with both the United States government and Iran, 49 continue to do business there with no announced plans to leave. One of the government’s most powerful tools, at least on paper, to influence the behavior of companies beyond the jurisdiction of the embargo is the Iran Sanctions Act, devised to punish foreign companies that invest more than $20 million in a given year to develop Iran’s oil and gas fields. But in the 14 years since the law was passed, the government has never enforced it, in part for fear of angering America’s allies. That has given rise to situations like the one involving the South Korean engineering giant Daelim Industrial , which in 2007 won a $700 million contract to upgrade an Iranian oil refinery. According to the Congressional Research Service, the deal appeared to violate the Iran Sanctions Act, meaning Daelim could have faced a range of punishments, including denial of federal contracts. That is because the law covers not only direct investments, such as the purchase of shares and deals that yield royalties, but also contracts similar to Daelim’s to manage oil and gas development projects. But in 2009 the United States Army awarded the company a $111 million contract to build housing in a military base in South Korea . Just months later, Daelim, which disputes that its contracts violated the letter of the law, announced a new $600 million deal to help develop the South Pars gas field in Iran. Now, though, frustration over Iran’s intransigence has spawned a growing, if still piecemeal, movement to more effectively use the power of the government purse to turn companies away from investing there. Nineteen states — including New York, California and Florida — have rules that bar or discourage their pension funds from investing in companies that do certain types of business in Iran. Congress is considering legislation that would have the federal government follow suit, by mandating that companies that invest in Iran’s energy industry be denied federal contracts. The provision is modeled on an existing law dealing with war-torn Sudan . Obama administration officials, while indicating that they were open to the idea, called it only one variable in a complex equation. Right now, the president’s priority is on breaking down Chinese resistance to the new United Nations sanctions, which apply across borders and are aimed squarely at entities that support Iran’s nuclear program . But Representative Ron Klein, a Florida Democrat who wrote the contracting provision moving through Congress with the help of a lobbying group called United Against Nuclear Iran, said it offered a way forward with or without international agreement. “We need to send a strong message to corporations that we’re not going to continue to allow them to economically enable the Iranian government to continue to do what they have been doing,” Mr. Klein said. An Unused Tool Sending a strong message was Congress’s intention when it passed the Iran Sanctions Act in 1996. The law gives the president a menu of possible punishments he can choose to levy against offending companies. Not only do they risk losing federal contracts, but they can also be prevented from receiving Export-Import Bank loans, obtaining American bank loans over $10 million in a given year, exporting their goods to the United States, purchasing licensed American military technology and, in the case of financial firms, serving as a primary dealer in United States government bonds or as a repository for government funds. Congress is now considering expanding its purview to a broader array of energy-related activities, including selling gasoline to Iran, which despite its vast oil and gas reserves has antiquated refineries that leave it heavily dependent on imports. From the beginning, though, the law proved difficult to enforce. European allies howled that it constituted an improper attempt to apply American law in other countries. Exercising an option to waive the law in the name of national security, the Clinton administration in 1998 declined to penalize the first violator — a consortium led by the French oil company TotalFina, now known as Total . The administration also indicated that it would waive future penalties against European companies, winning in return tougher European export controls on technology that Iran could convert to military use. Stuart E. Eizenstat , who as the deputy Treasury secretary handled those negotiations, said the law let Iran “exploit divisions between the U.S. and our European allies.” Waiving it, though, was followed by additional investments in Iran — and more government largesse for the companies making them. In 1999, for instance, Royal Dutch Shell signed an $800 million deal to develop two Iranian oil fields. Since then, Shell has won federal contract payments and grants totaling more than $11 billion, mostly for providing fuel to the American military, as well as $200 million in Export-Import loan guarantee and drilling rights to federal lands, records show. Shell has a second Iranian development deal pending, but officials say they are awaiting the results of a feasibility study. In the meantime, the company continues to receive payments from Iran for its 1999 investment and sells gasoline and lubricants there. Records show Shell is one of seven companies that challenged the Iran Sanctions Act and received federal benefits. John R. Bolton , who dealt with Iran as an under secretary of state and United Nations ambassador in the Bush administration, said failing to enforce the law by punishing such companies both sent “a signal to the Iranians that we’re not serious” and undercut Washington’s credibility when it did threaten action. Mr. Bolton recalled what happened in 2004 when he suggested to the Japanese ambassador that Japan ’s state-controlled oil exploration company, Inpex, might be penalized for a $2 billion investment in the Azadegan field in Iran. “The Japanese ambassador said, ‘Well, that’s interesting. How come you’ve never sanctioned a European Union company?’ ” Mr. Bolton recounted. Inpex was never penalized, though several years later it decided to reduce its stake in the Iranian project. And to Mr. Bolton’s chagrin, the Bush administration did not act on reports about other such investments, neither waiving the law nor penalizing violators. Recently, after 50 lawmakers from both parties complained to President Obama about the lack of enforcement and sent him a list of companies that apparently violated the law , the State Department announced a preliminary investigation. Officials said that they were looking at 27 deals, and that while some appeared to have been “carefully constructed” to get around the letter of the law, they had identified a number of problematic cases and were focusing on companies still active in Iran. Competing Interests Among the companies on the list Congress sent to the State Department is the Brazilian state-controlled energy conglomerate Petrobras, which last year received a $2 billion Export-Import Bank loan to develop an oil reserve off the coast of Rio de Janeiro . The loan offers a case study in the competing interests officials must confront when it comes to the Iran Sanctions Act. Despite repeated American entreaties, Petrobras had previously invested $100 million to explore Iran’s offshore oil prospects in the Persian Gulf. But the Export-Import Bank loan could help create American jobs, since Petrobras would use the money to buy goods and services from American companies. Perhaps more important, it could help develop a source of oil outside the Middle East . After The Times inquired about the loan, bank officials said that they asked for and received a letter of assurance from Petrobras that it had finished its work in Iran. A senior White House official, in a Nov. 13 e-mail message, said that while it was the administration’s policy to warn companies against such investments, “ Brazil is an important U.S. trading partner and our discussions with them are ongoing.” But if the administration hoped that the loan would bring Brazil in line with its objectives in Iran, it would soon prove mistaken. On Nov. 23, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , visited Brazil , and the two countries agreed to share technical expertise on energy projects. Iranian officials said they might offer Petrobras additional incentives for further investment. The visit infuriated American officials, who felt it undercut efforts to press Iran on its nuclear program while lending international legitimacy to the Iranian president. Brazil’s relationship with Iran has also complicated American maneuvering at the United Nations, where Brazil holds a rotating seat on the Security Council. Just last week, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva , restated his opposition to the administration’s sanctions proposal, warning, “It is not prudent to push Iran against a wall.” Carter Lawson, the Export-Import Bank’s deputy general counsel, acknowledged that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s visit was “problematic for us, and it raised our antenna.” He said that since December the bank had been operating under a new budget rule requiring borrowers to certify that they had no continuing operations in Iran’s energy industry, and was carefully monitoring Petrobras’s activities. In the meantime, Petrobras’s Tehran office remains open. And Diogo Almeida, the acting economic attaché at the Brazilian Embassy in Iran, said that while Petrobras was currently assessing how much it could invest in Iran, given the huge discovery off Rio de Janeiro, company officials were in active discussions with the Iranian government and were interested in pursuing new business. Opportunities for Profit For all the American rules and focus, there is still plenty of room for companies to profit in crucial areas of Iran’s economy without fear of reprisal or loss of United States government business. Auto companies doing business in Iran, for instance, received $7.3 billion in federal contracts over the past 10 years. Among them was Mazda , whose cars in Iran are assembled by a company called the Bahman Group. A 45 percent share in Bahman is held by the Sepah Cooperative Foundation, a large investment fund linked to the Revolutionary Guards, according to Iranian news accounts and a 2009 RAND Corporation report prepared for the Defense Department. A Mazda spokesman declined to comment, saying the company was unaware of the links. Even companies based in the United States, including some of the biggest federal contractors, can invest in Iran through foreign subsidiaries run independently by non-Americans. Honeywell , the aviation and aerospace company, has received nearly $13 billion in federal contracts since 2005. That year it acquired Universal Oil Products, whose British subsidiary is working on a project to expand gasoline production at the Arak refinery in Iran. Universal recently received a $25 million federal grant for a clean-energy project in Hawaii . In a statement, Honeywell said it had told the State Department in January of 2009 that while it was fulfilling its Arak contract, it would not undertake new projects in Iran. Ingersoll Rand , another American company with foreign subsidiaries, says it is evaluating its “minor” business in Iran in light of the political climate. But for now, according to a spokesman, Paul Dickard, it continues to sell air-compression systems with a “wide variety of applications,” including in the oil and gas industries and in nuclear power plants. Senator Byron L. Dorgan , a North Dakota Democrat, tried to close the foreign subsidiary loophole after a furor erupted in 2004 over Halliburton , former Vice President Dick Cheney ’s old company, which had used a Cayman Islands subsidiary to sell oil-field services to Iran. But he said he was unable to overcome business opposition. William A. Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, lobbied against Mr. Dorgan’s bill and has opposed other unilateral sanctions. He argues that their futility can be seen in the intransigence of the Iranian government and the way American oil companies have simply been replaced by foreign competitors. Moreover, many foreign companies with business interests in Iran are also large American employers; deny them federal contracts and other benefits, Mr. Reinsch said, “and it’s those workers who will pay the price.” But Hans Sandberg, senior vice president of Atlas Copco, which is based in Sweden , offered a different perspective. Atlas Copco ’s sales of mining and construction equipment to Iran are dwarfed by its American business, including military contracts. If forced to choose, he said: “It would be no problem. We wouldn’t trade with Iran.” | Iran;Sanctions;US Foreign Policy;US Politics;Royal Dutch Shell;Mazda Motor;Honeywell;Ingersoll-Rand;Petrobras;Halliburton |
ny0129325 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2012/06/07 | Independents Falter in California Primary | LOS ANGELES — For those who hoped that an open, nonpartisan primary in California would bring in a new wave of independent candidates and voters, Tuesday’s primary might have felt like a splash of cold water. Turnout remained stubbornly low, and the vast majority of candidates who advanced to the fall election were registered Republicans and Democrats. But the election did provide a few surprises that would not have been possible with a traditional primary. For one thing, there could be as many as eight Congressional races in which two candidates from the same party run against each other in November’s general election. In 2010, voters approved plans to create an open primary, in which voters choose candidates regardless of their political affiliation and the top two vote getters move to the general election. For those who pushed for the change, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, then the governor, the changes were meant to break partisan gridlock and encourage candidates to cater to the middle. There was certainly no revolution this year. Still, there are some signs that the changes will affect the way Congressional and legislative races are run this year. The real impact of the top-two primary system will be more acutely felt in the fall, as members of the same political party battle in the general election, said Dan Schnur, the director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California . Tuesday’s results mean that roughly one of every five seats in the state’s Congressional delegation will be contested by candidates with the same party affiliation. A race that pits two candidates from the same party against each other, Mr. Schnur said, will be “maddening for parties but a huge opportunity for voters” because politicians who win will be more likely to compromise. “These people have been winning election for years by campaigning only to party loyalists, and from now on that is a sure recipe for defeat,” Mr. Schnur said. “There’s no indication that an open primary will lead to more moderate members, but it will lead to more responsive members because they will have to talk to people who they don’t always agree with. It allows them to negotiate in a way that someone who is really beholden to the party really can’t.” No other intraparty race will be as closely watched as the battle between Representatives Howard L. Berman and Brad Sherman, a pair of powerful Democrats who are battling for one seat in the San Fernando Valley thanks to redistricting. The pair spent more than $5 million on the primary race, in which they finished first and second in a field of eight, and many expect that amount could double by the fall. “If they were there with safe races and raising money for targeted seats, they could really be assets,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political strategist in Sacramento. “Instead they have to be really focused on fighting between the two of them, and that’s a net negative — there’s really no other way for them to spin it.” Democrats also suffered a stinging defeat in San Bernardino, east of Los Angeles. In a district that they saw as a place to pick up a seat, two Republicans appeared to win spots on the ballot, shutting out Pete Aguilar, the mayor of Redlands, who had been the Democratic favorite. David Wasserman, who analyzes House races for The Cook Political Report, called the outcome in San Bernardino a “freak political accident,” particularly because President Obama is likely to win the area by as much as a double-digit margin. “In order for this to happen you need both Republican candidates getting similar levels of support and the Democrats splitting the vote — all conditions that were there this time,” Mr. Wasserman said. Perhaps some of the most significant losers on Tuesday were the candidates who ran as independents. In Ventura County, Linda Parks, a county supervisor who was popular in the district, garnered less than 19 percent of the vote, losing second place to a Democratic assemblywoman, Julia Brownley. The House Majority political action committee spent more than $700,000 supporting Ms. Brownley, who also benefited from spending from other outside groups. “The June primaries are still going to be, for the near future, very low turnout with very partisan voters,” Mr. Stutzman said. “The independents really didn’t have a turnout or voters to talk to. It’s possible that could change, but it’s going to take a while.” Nathan Fletcher, the independent candidate for mayor of San Diego, attracted national attention when he left the Republican Party in March. He raised more than $1.3 million for the race, but trailed both the Republican and Democratic candidates, who will face off again in the fall. | Primaries and Caucuses;Democratic Party;Republican Party;California |
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