id
stringlengths 9
9
| categories
sequence | date
stringlengths 10
10
| title
stringlengths 3
232
| abstract
stringlengths 4
42.4k
| keyword
stringlengths 6
360
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ny0066523 | [
"business",
"international"
] | 2014/06/12 | Leader in Austerity Push Appointed Head of Greek Central Bank | ATHENS — The next governor of Greece’s central bank will be Yannis Stournaras, a Greek economist and former finance minister who led a two-year austerity drive that stabilized the economy but fueled a social crisis. The announcement on Wednesday, by the General Council of the Bank of Greece, followed a sweeping cabinet shuffle on Monday that installed Gikas Hardouvelis, another economist and former government adviser, as Greece’s new finance minister. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras overhauled his government to give it new momentum after a weak showing in European Parliament elections last month. Although Mr. Stournaras, 57, was widely credited with guiding Greece’s return to international bond markets in April and paving the way for crucial debt relief talks in the autumn, he was seen as politically spent after introducing tough measures that have slashed incomes and pushed unemployment to 27 percent. His appointment to the central bank was widely expected to ensure continuity in the government’s reform drive, which international creditors have called for. Image Yannis Stournaras is credited with guiding Greece’s return to international bond markets in April. Credit Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters Mr. Stournaras, a former banker, would take over from the current Bank of Greece governor, George Provopoulos, whose six-year term expires on June 19. Cabinet approval is considered a formality. Mr. Samaras thanked Mr. Provopoulos on Wednesday for his service, saying the outgoing governor “contributed decisively to the stability of the financial system and the recapitalization of Greek banks in the most difficult postwar period our country has experienced.” Despite the efforts by Mr. Provopoulos, Greece’s banking sector is still struggling with the repercussions of the country’s debt crisis, with nonperforming loans amounting to 40 percent of the total held by Greek lenders. In a report on Greece’s reform progress published on Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund warned that Greek banks “face a mountain of bad loans that will require adequate capital and oversight to clean up.” The I.M.F., the European Commission and the European Central Bank have extended Greece two bailouts worth 240 billion euros, or roughly $325 billion, since May 2010 in return for putting into effect a raft of painful austerity measures including cuts to salaries and pensions, as well as tax increases. In his new role, which also puts him on the Governing Council of the European Central Bank, Mr. Stournaras will seek to improve the fortunes of the Greek banks that will undergo E.C.B. stress tests this fall to determine their additional capital needs. The appointment of Mr. Stournaras to the Bank of Greece received a terse response from the leftist Syriza party, which won last month’s European Parliament elections on a fiercely anti-austerity platform. “Mr. Stournaras will continue to defend bailout policies from his new post,” Panos Skourletis, party spokesman, said. | Euro Crisis;Greece;Bank of Greece;Yannis Stournaras;Appointments and Executive Changes;Antonis Samaras |
ny0221102 | [
"science",
"space"
] | 2010/02/07 | Geoffrey Burbidge, Who Traced Life to Stardust, Is Dead at 84 | Geoffrey Burbidge, an English physicist who became a towering figure in astronomy by helping to explain how people and everything else are made of stardust, died on Jan. 26 in San Diego. He was 84. His death, at Scripps Memorial Hospital, came after a long illness, said the University of California, San Diego . Dr. Burbidge was a physics professor there for more than four decades and lived in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego. A large man with an even larger voice, Dr. Burbidge was one of the last surviving giants of the postwar era of astronomy, when big telescopes were sprouting on mountain peaks in the Southwest and peeling back the sky, revealing a universe more diverse and violent than anybody had dreamed: radio galaxies and quasars erupting with gargantuan amounts of energy, pulsars and black holes pinpricking the cosmos, and lacy chains of galaxies rushing endlessly away into eternity. As the director of Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, Dr. Burbidge pushed to open big telescopes to a larger community of astronomers. As a senior astronomer at the university in San Diego, he was, to the consternation of most of his colleagues, a witty and acerbic critic of the Big Bang theory. In 1957, in a long, groundbreaking paper in The Reviews of Modern Physics, Dr. Burbidge; his wife, E. Margaret Burbidge; William Fowler of the California Institute of Technology; and Fred Hoyle of Cambridge University — a collaboration noted by their initials B2FH — laid out the way that thermonuclear reactions in stars could slowly seed a universe that was originally pure hydrogen, helium and lithium, the simplest elements in the periodic table, with heavier elements like oxygen, iron, carbon and others from which life is derived. Stars like the Sun burn hydrogen into helium to generate heat and light for most of their lives, until they run out of fuel and fizzle, or so the story goes. But more massive stars can go on to ignite helium to produce carbon and oxygen and so forth. Eventually the star explodes, tossing the newly minted atoms into space, where they mix with gas and dust and are incorporated into future stars. Successive generations of stars that coalesce from cosmic dust, burn and then explode would thus make the universe ever richer in heavy elements. Allan Sandage of Carnegie Observatories, an old friend of Dr. Burbidge’s, once explained it this way: “Every one of our chemical elements was once inside a star. The same star. You and I are brothers. We came from the same supernova.” Or as the singer Joni Mitchell put it, “We are stardust.” In a recent interview, Dr. Sandage described the B2FH collaboration’s work as “one of the major papers of the century.” “It changed the whole landscape of the chemical evolution of the universe,” he said. Geoffrey Ronald Burbidge was born in 1925 in Chipping Norton in England, in the Cotswolds hills halfway between Oxford and Stratford-on-Avon. His father, Leslie, was a builder. His mother, Evelyn, was a milliner. He was an only child and the first of his family to progress beyond grammar school. He attended the University of Bristol intending to study history, but on discovering he could stay in college longer if he enrolled in physics, he did, and found he liked it. He furthered his studies at University College, London, from which he received a Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1951. Another turning point for him came when he befriended a recent Ph.D., Margaret Peachey, in a lecture course in London. An assistant director of the university’s observatory at the time, she would become a prominent astronomer in her own right. They married in 1948. She survives him, along with a daughter, Sarah Burbidge of San Francisco, and a grandson. It was under his wife’s influence that Dr. Burbidge became interested in the physics of stars, tagging along on observing trips as her assistant. He always joked that he had become an astronomer by marrying one. On occasion the roles switched. Margaret’s application to observe on Mount Wilson, the mountain overlooking Pasadena, Calif., where modern cosmology began, was turned down on the grounds that there was no separate women’s bathroom. Dr. Burbidge booked the telescope time himself and his wife posed as his assistant, but they had to stay in an unheated cabin on the mountain, away from a dormitory housing other astronomers. After stops by the Burbidges at Harvard, the University of Chicago and Cambridge University, Dr. Fowler arranged for them and Dr. Hoyle to go to Pasadena to complete the stellar nucleosynthesis work, for which Dr. Fowler was later awarded a Nobel Prize . Margaret Burbidge obtained a post at the California Institute of Technology, while Geoffrey Burbidge got a job at the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories. The Burbidges landed at the University of California, San Diego, in 1962. By then astronomers had been riveted by the discovery of quasars: bright pointlike objects that were pouring out radio waves and whose visible light was severely shifted toward longer, redder wavelengths, like the sound of a siren going away, indicating that they were moving away at high velocity. According to the standard interpretation of life in an expanding universe, these redshifts, as they are called, meant that quasars were at great distance. As a trained physicist, Dr. Burbidge was one of the first astronomers to investigate what could possibly be supplying the energy of such objects. At a meeting in Paris in 1958, he pointed out that the energy requirements for radio galaxies were already bumping up against the limits of known astrophysics. “That was a very important development,” Dr. Sandage said. In time, that line of thinking would lead to the idea that quasars and radio galaxies were powered by the gravity of supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies, a widely held notion today. Dr. Burbidge, however, soon parted ways with his colleagues on quasars and indeed on the Big Bang itself. The great energies required to produce them and their smallness led him to question whether quasars really were at cosmological distances. His doubts were buttressed by observations by Halton C. Arp, now of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Munich, suggesting that quasars were concentrated around nearby active galaxies and might have been shot out of them. A debate ensued, and almost all astronomers agree that it was one that Dr. Burbidge and his friends finally lost. The overwhelming consensus among astronomers is that the redshifts are what they appear to be, said Peter Strittmatter, director of the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona. Dr. Burbidge’s skepticism extended to cosmology. In 1990, he and four other astronomers, including Drs. Arp and Hoyle, published a broadside in the journal Nature listing arguments against the Big Bang. Dr. Burbidge preferred instead a version of Dr. Hoyle’s Steady State theory of an eternal universe. In the new version, small, local big bangs originating in the nuclei of galaxies every 20 billion years or so kept the universe boiling. To his annoyance, most other astronomers ignored this view. In a memoir in 2007, Dr. Burbidge wrote that this quasi-steady state theory was probably closer to the truth than the Big Bang. But he added that “there is such a heavy bias against any minority point of view in cosmology that it may take a very long time for this to occur.” Despite his contrarian ways, Dr. Burbidge maintained his credibility in the astronomical establishment, serving as director of Kitt Peak from 1978 to 1984 and editing the prestigious Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics for more than 30 years. He was “a very clear-thinking heretic,” Dr. Strittmatter said. Dr. Strittmatter recalled that as a young astronomer he was terrified of Dr. Burbidge. “Then I learned that what he liked was a good argument,” he said. The Kitt Peak observatory had been built with support from the National Science Foundation as a sort of counterweight to the famous observatories in California like Mount Wilson and Palomar, whose giant telescopes were privately owned and available to only a few. Dr. Burbidge believed that Kitt Peak should act more as a service facility for all astronomers. “His idea was to open up astronomy to all qualified astronomers,” Dr. Sandage said. Dr. Burbidge never lost what Dr. Strittmatter called a “rebel’s instinct.” Dr. Sandage said Dr. Burbidge had called him up three times a week for 40 years to argue about the Big Bang. “He delighted in bringing up all the details that didn’t quite fit,” Dr. Sandage said. In recent years, he added, as the evidence for the Big Bang mounted, Dr. Burbidge held his ground. “I just didn’t understand that,” Dr. Sandage said. “I often wondered if he was just arguing with me to keep on the phone.” | Astronomy and Astrophysics;Stars and Galaxies;Deaths (Obituaries);Space;University of California San Diego |
ny0052806 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2014/07/05 | Merkel Heads to China to Keep Alive ‘Golden Decade’ of Deals | BERLIN — With some experts warning that the “golden decade” of rapid growth in German-Chinese trade and dealings may be ending, Chancellor Angela Merkel embarks this weekend on her seventh visit to China, accompanied by top people from German business who, surveys indicate, are still markedly more optimistic about China than are their European counterparts. Like many people raised in Communist East Germany, where travel abroad was tightly restricted, Ms. Merkel is an avid traveler. As a trained scientist, she is also keenly interested in innovation, and in China she always travels to Beijing and at least one other province for a firsthand look at joint ventures and new Chinese research and enterprises. This trip takes her first to Chengdu, capital of western Sichuan Province, which, government officials noted, has a population almost as big as Germany’s 82 million. In Chengdu, she will meet the province’s leadership and visit a joint venture operated by the German automaker Volkswagen and a social center designed to help the children of migrant workers. From there, Ms. Merkel flies to Beijing, where she will be received with military honors by Prime Minister Li Keqiang and attend a dinner hosted by President Xi Jinping, but also meet film directors and address students at Tsinghua University. Both government officials and experts who discussed the trip said that human rights matters, such as any eventual request from Ms. Merkel for China to permit the artist Ai Weiwei to attend his current big show in Berlin, would be dealt with quietly, if raised at all. Ms. Merkel has been in power since 2005, making her one of the longer-serving heads of government in Europe. She and the German business community have forged strong business and political ties with China — this year alone, President Xi was in Germany in March; Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier visited China in mid-April and Sigmar Gabriel, the vice chancellor and economics minister, in late April. While in China on Sunday through Tuesday, Ms. Merkel will oversee the creation of a new economic committee to prepare the ground for high-level talks in Berlin in October designed to map cooperation for the next several years. Just before Ms. Merkel arrives in Chengdu, senior German and Chinese business people, academics and politicians are meeting on education and innovation. Among the Chinese attendees are Jack Ma, executive chairman of Alibaba Group; Ge Honglin, the mayor of Chengdu; and several academics. The German team is headed by Martin Brudermüller, a member of the board of BASF. German officials and experts discussing the trip with reporters said recent years have shown that an agenda of social reform can be pursued most effectively in such meetings, enabling China’s leaders to keep matters they deem sensitive behind closed doors. Image A Volkswagen plant in Foshan, China. German businesses have forged strong ties in the country. Credit Chinafotopress/Getty Images Business has boomed in recent years. In 2000, government figures show, China accounted for 1.6 percent of all German exports. Last year, that had risen to 6.1 percent of all exports. Government officials, insisting they not be identified, said China is now Germany’s No. 3 market, after France and the Netherlands. German businessmen are also more confident than their European counterparts that investment in China is worthwhile. Surveys from the European Chamber and in Germany suggest that many Europeans are seeking alternative markets, due to increased costs in China, competition from Chinese companies and problems with market access. The share of European businesses that wants to expand in China dropped to 57 percent this year from 86 percent a year earlier, according to the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin. German businessmen “are significantly more optimistic,” the institute said this week, citing a 2014 business confidence survey by the foreign trade chamber. “We have had a golden decade in bilateral relations,” said Sebastian Heilmann, director of the Mercator Institute. He noted, however, that “more troubled waters” might lie ahead. German experts said the current anticorruption campaign in China has cut significantly into sales there of French luxury goods such as fine liquors and perfume — favorite gifts for the Chinese elite, who are now worried about the crackdown. For German businesses, experts who insisted on anonymity said that there was danger in the tightening credit in the Chinese banking system. Delays of six months in getting payment are harmful for the many medium-sized or small German enterprises, often family-run, that are the backbone of Germany’s export economy and have done booming trade with China in the past 10 years. Experts also noted that Chinese companies are developing rapidly and becoming ever more competitive with German business. The government did not release a list of the business people accompanying Ms. Merkel, but her delegation traditionally includes a mix from Germany’s leading Dax 30 companies and smaller companies. Among the foreign policy issues likely to be raised in Beijing is Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces continue to fight. Ms. Merkel has been most active in trying to end the bloodshed, warning of further European sanctions if it does not stop. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was in China in May and reached what was billed as a landmark deal to sell Russian gas to the Chinese. The price has not been disclosed. German officials noted, however, that it will be at least a decade before deliveries reach capacity. | China;Germany;Angela Merkel;Xi Jinping;International relations;Li Keqiang;Chengdu |
ny0121529 | [
"sports",
"football"
] | 2012/09/03 | N.F.L. and Officials Still at Odds on Retirement Benefits | The N.F.L. sent a memo to its teams Sunday indicating that it thought Friday that it was close to a deal to end the lockout of officials but that negotiations broke off the next day after a brief meeting in which officials made clear that retirement benefits remained the key sticking point. Now, people on both sides say it is doubtful a deal can be completed in time to use regular officials for Week 1, which starts Wednesday when the Giants host the Cowboys. “Not sure how long this will drag on at this point,” one person briefed on the negotiations said Sunday. The lead negotiator for the officials, Michael Arnold, said the N.F.L.’s memo provided “false and misleading information.” “It continues to mystify any objective observer of the situation why the N.F.L. would jeopardize the safety of its players, the integrity of the game and the quality of its product in order to continue its attack on its professional referees,” Arnold said in a statement. According to the memo, Commissioner Roger Goodell, in a conversation with the referee Jeff Triplette, a member of the officials’ union negotiating committee, was told last week that the financial gap between the league’s offer and the officials’ demands was $4 million a year. The memo said the league told Triplette that it would increase its offer by $1 million a year above the $1.5 million that had already been proposed, to be used either to increase compensation or as part of the league’s proposal to convert the officials’ retirement plan to a 401(k) from the more traditional pension they have now. That was a shift for the league, which had taken a hard line with officials since their last negotiation in July. In the meantime, replacement officials were used during the preseason with uneven, sometimes embarrassing, results. Goodell made it clear, the memo said, that the increase was offered with the intent of closing a deal over the weekend, in time for the officials to work the first week of games, and that the officials should not schedule a meeting if that was not their intent. The memo said that in a conversation Friday, Triplette confirmed to Goodell that union representatives were coming to New York to conclude negotiations within the new parameters. In his statement, Arnold said that any claim that numbers were agreed to before Saturday was “absolutely false.” When the sides met Saturday morning, the memo said, the officials said they would not settle based on those parameters. Scott Green, the president of the officials’ union, told league negotiators that Triplette had “no authority to make that deal” and that the increase of $1 million a year was nowhere near enough to complete a deal. The memo said the officials reverted to their position from before the lockout began in June, which the league said meant there was an economic gap of $70 million over the life of the deal. The union wants all current officials to remain part of the current pension plan, with a 20 percent increase in the pension benefit. New officials would have a 401(k). | Football;Lockouts;National Football League;Officiating (Sports);Organized Labor |
ny0089671 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2015/09/26 | Obama and Xi Jinping of China Agree to Steps on Cybertheft | WASHINGTON — President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China took their first concrete steps on Friday toward reining in the rising threat of cyberattacks between the world’s two largest economies, pledging that their governments would refrain from computer-enabled theft of intellectual property for commercial gain even as Mr. Obama suggested that he might still impose sanctions if rampant Chinese hacking persisted. With Mr. Xi standing beside him at a Rose Garden news conference, Mr. Obama said the two had reached a “common understanding” that neither the United States nor China should engage in state-sponsored cyberintrusions to poach intellectual property, and that they would together seek “international rules of the road for appropriate conduct in cyberspace.” But Mr. Obama said that he had told the Chinese president during two hours of meetings at the White House that the escalating cycle of cyberattacks against American targets “has to stop,” warning Mr. Xi that the United States would go after and punish perpetrators of those offenses through traditional law enforcement tools and, potentially, with sanctions. “The question now is, ‘Are words followed by actions?’ ”Mr. Obama said of China’s commitments on cyberthreats. “And we will be watching carefully to make an assessment as to whether progress has been made in this area.” It was the third set of meetings between Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi in the last three years, and it came at a potential pivot point in United States-China relations, with the Obama administration determined to find areas where it can cooperate with Beijing but increasingly wary of its behavior. Besides their meeting at the White House, the two presidents spent more than two and a half hours together Thursday night at a private dinner at Blair House, across from the White House. At their news conference, both Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi made an effort to demonstrate that they had made progress on curbing cyberattacks, even as they skirted direct references to some of the most contentious issues, including the United States’ claim that China was behind the theft of security dossiers on roughly 22 million Americans from the Office of Personnel Management. “Confrontation and friction are not the right choice,” Mr. Xi said. “Confrontation will lead to losses on both sides.” The pledge on cybersecurity — a hard-fought and not entirely expected bit of progress that was still under negotiation until the final hours before the two presidents met — came as Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi sought to spotlight their cooperation on the world stage. They hailed progress on climate change , with Mr. Xi announcing a new commitment to start a national cap-and-trade system in 2017 to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and both countries outlining ambitious goals for reaching a global climate pact at a December summit meeting in Paris, including winning commitments from every country to reduce emissions. They also celebrated their cooperation on the nuclear accord with Iran and said they were both committed to pressing ahead against the North Korean nuclear problem, which has defied solution for more than 20 years. But there was ample evidence, even as Mr. Obama welcomed Mr. Xi with a 21-gun salute and a state dinner on Friday night, that the two nations remain deeply at odds on key issues. Speaking in the Rose Garden, they clashed over China’s reclamation of islands in the South China Sea, which Mr. Xi defiantly defended, suggesting that China’s buildup on artificial islands in the strategic waterway would move ahead and flatly denying that it was militarizing any territory. Mr. Obama said he told Mr. Xi that he had “significant concerns” over the activities, “which makes it harder for countries in the region to resolve disagreements peacefully.” While the United States has no territorial claim in the waters, he added, “we just want to make sure that the rules of the road are upheld.” The Chinese president stuck to his guns, bluntly asserting, “We have the right to uphold our own territorial sovereignty and lawful and legitimate maritime rights and interests.” Mr. Xi said China’s construction activities “do not target or impact any country, and China does not intend to pursue militarization.” The exchange underscored the degree to which Mr. Xi has in many ways confounded Mr. Obama’s hopes and expectations. “As the most powerful leader in China in decades, Mr. Xi presented an opportunity for greater collaboration,” said Bonnie S. Glaser, senior adviser on Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Instead, he “turned out to be an ultranationalist, bent on achieving the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation even if it meant damaging ties with the U.S. as well as China’s neighbors.” In another point of friction, Mr. Obama said he had deep concerns over human rights in China, describing what sounded like a lecture he had given to Mr. Xi about the issue. “I expressed in candid terms our strong views that preventing journalists, lawyers, NGOs and civil society groups from operating freely, or closing churches or denying ethnic minorities equal treatment, are all problematic in our view, and actually prevent China and its people from realizing its full potential,” Mr. Obama said, using an acronym for nongovernmental organizations, which face strict restrictions under proposed legislation in China. The stern message elicited only a generic response from Mr. Xi, who said democracy and human rights were “the common procedure of mankind,” but then added, “We must recognize that countries have different historical processes and realities, that we need to respect people of all countries in the right to choose their own development independently.” Even the agreement on cybersecurity left room for differences. The United States and China said they would cooperate with requests to investigate cybercrimes and, according to a White House fact sheet, “mitigate malicious cyberactivity emanating from their territory.” But while Mr. Obama said they had agreed on “the principle that governments don’t engage in cyberespionage for commercial gain against companies,” Mr. Xi said nothing of computer-enabled spying, speaking only of “cybercrime,” a narrower formulation. The two countries also embraced a United Nations accord, adopted in July, that commits the signatories not to target one another’s critical infrastructure — such as power plants, cellphone networks and financial transactions — in peacetime. But that leaves open many questions, since there are many definitions of what constitutes critical infrastructure. The morning began with an elaborate White House welcome, complete with cannons reverberating across the South Lawn as a military band played “March of Volunteers,” the anthem of the People’s Republic of China since the 1949 revolution, and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The two leaders strolled across the grass reviewing neat rows of troops, then stopped to shake hands with crowds of children waving American and Chinese flags, including some who attend Washington Yu Ying Academy, a Chinese immersion school. Later, they announced a “One Million Strong” initiative that aims to have a million American students learning Mandarin by 2020. Both pro- and anti-China protesters were kept a block from the White House throughout the meeting, and the day’s events went off without an incident like the heckling that so angered the Chinese when President George W. Bush hosted Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, in 2006 . | China;Xi Jinping;Barack Obama;Cyberwarfare;Corporate espionage;Intellectual property;Climate Change;Global Warming;US Foreign Policy |
ny0249627 | [
"us"
] | 2011/02/04 | In the ‘Glee’ Era, Youth Choruses Pop Up All Over | Running a youth chorus is a daunting task. The repertory has to suit young singers, and the experience has to keep tweeting, texting children entertained. Then there’s the tricky issue regarding boys: what to do when their voices break. Despite these challenges, young people’s choirs are flourishing in the Bay Area. Thanks to the commitment of talented choral directors — and the popularity of TV shows like “Glee” — youth choirs in the region are in a golden era. There are about 40 independent children’s vocal ensembles in the region, and many are earning wide recognition for the complexity and variety of their output and the creativity of their collaborations. “I’m struck by the quantity and quality of children’s choruses in the Bay Area,” said Ann Meier Baker, the president and C.E.O. of Chorus America, a service organization for choirs in the United States. “These ensembles are world class.” Last week the San Francisco Girls Chorus (which, alongside the San Francisco Boys Chorus , performed at President Obama’s inauguration in 2009) became the first American vocal ensemble to win a place in the finals of “Let the Peoples Sing,” a prestigious international choral competition organized by the European Broadcasting Union. One of only three youth choirs from around the globe to make the cut, the San Francisco Girls Chorus plans to travel to Manchester, England, in October to compete against groups from Estonia and Sweden. “We were so excited to learn we were submitted to the competition,” said Teresa Dayrit, a 13-year-old member of the San Francisco Girls Chorus. “When we learned that just two other youth choruses besides us would be in the finals we felt super proud.” In “Fable and Faith,” a multimedia performance featuring the San Francisco Boys Chorus and the Robert Moses’ Kin dance company at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (Feb. 18-20), the choristers will sing seven numbers including music from the movie “Under the Tuscan Sun” and the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem. The boys may also get to kick soccer balls and ride skateboards onstage. The Ragazzi Boys Chorus , which is planning to tour Cuba this summer, is working on a piece for its March 26 concert that incorporates animal sounds and complex chord clusters. And the Pacific Boychoir Academy , one of the few “choir schools” in the country offering choral training alongside an academic day-school program, regularly takes on tough repertory, like Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Vespers, that is beyond the reach of most youth choirs. The Grammy Award -winning chorus is releasing a new CD of spirituals this spring. The success of the Bay Area’s top youth choirs, which generally meet one to three times a week after school and maintain a rigorous performance, touring and workshop schedule, owes much to the vision and dedication of their leaders. Karl Chang founded the Crystal Children’s Choir , a highly regarded children’s chorus based in the South Bay, in 1994 to meet educational needs. “When I arrived here as an immigrant from Taiwan, many public schools didn’t have a music program,” Mr. Chang said. “So some friends and I decided to form a children’s choir to teach music.” Today the Crystal Children’s Choir has 1,000 members and locations in the Bay Area, Taiwan and China. Other Bay Area choruses have also grown substantially. In January, 60 children auditioned for a place in the Ragazzi Boys Chorus — double the number that auditioned five years ago. In the mid-1990s, the San Francisco Boys Chorus had 60 singers. Today there are around 260. “I love being in the San Francisco Boys Chorus because I enjoy making music in a professional atmosphere,” said one San Francisco Boys Chorus member, Elio Bucky, 13. The reasons for the growth can be explained in part by the decline of music education in public schools. Plus there’s the “Glee” factor. According to a recent poll by the National Association for Music Education, nearly half of the music teachers surveyed reported that “Glee” had increased interest in their offerings. The most acclaimed Bay Area youth choruses, whose after-school programs range from around $600 to $1,850 a year in student fees depending on the organization (scholarships are available), are striving to mitigate the budget cuts in music education and serve the surge in interest in singing prompted by pop culture. They offer music history and theory classes and training in vocal technique and repertory for children as young as 5 and as old as 18. A special understanding of young voices helps distinguish the top-tier youth choruses from the rest. Youth choral directors in the region, like Kevin Fox of the Pacific Boychoir Academy and Susan McMane of the San Francisco Girls Chorus, possess a deep knowledge of children’s vocal apparatus and repertory. “Collectively, the choir sounds quite mature because we work on things like intonation and vowel matching,” Ms. McMane said. The goal is not “to push the singers to sound old,” she added. “We want there to be a youthful vibrancy to the voices.” | Music;Children and Youth;Education (K-12);Glee (TV Program);Television;San Francisco Bay Area (Calif) |
ny0095552 | [
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] | 2015/01/09 | Streak Ends for Notre Dame Women | Adrienne Motley scored a career-high 31 points, and Miami ended No. 4 Notre Dame’s record-tying 30-game road winning streak, beating the Fighting Irish, 78-63. Notre Dame’s last road loss was March 6, 2012, at Connecticut. Thursday’s loss also was Notre Dame’s first in 22 regular-season and tournament games in the A.C.C. ■ Brianna Kiesel had 22 points, 9 rebounds and 5 assists to lead host Pittsburgh past No. 8 North Carolina, 84-59. Pitt beat a ranked opponent for the first time in nearly four years. ■ Isabelle Harrison scored 21 points and Cierra Burdick had a double-double as No. 7 Tennessee trounced No. 9 Texas A&M, 81-58, in Knoxville. ■ Alaina Coates scored 20 points and No. 1 South Carolina had six players in double figures in a 102-59 win over host Alabama. ■ A woman who said she was sexually assaulted by three University of Oregon basketball players sued the university and its head basketball coach, Dana Altman. The suit alleging negligence and civil rights violations was filed in federal court in Eugene. According to the suit, Altman knew when he recruited Brandon Austin that the player had been suspended from Providence College because of allegations of sexual misconduct. A lawyer who has represented Austin could not immediately be reached for comment. | College basketball;University of Notre Dame;University of Miami |
ny0127682 | [
"sports",
"basketball"
] | 2012/01/15 | Offense and Defense Fail Knicks Against Thunder | OKLAHOMA CITY —As many as 31 points separated the Oklahoma City Thunder from the Knicks on Saturday night, but the gap between them could be measured in so many vivid ways: in talent, depth, athleticism, chemistry or cohesion. The Thunder simply had more of everything, and it showed in a 104-92 victory that was so much more lopsided than the scoreboard could indicate. Kevin Durant dominated, Russell Westbrook preened and James Harden drilled shot after shot, putting the game away by the middle of the third quarter, while James L. Dolan — the Madison Square Garden chairman — watched grumpily from a baseline seat. Carmelo Anthony , the Knicks’ most dynamic player, watched from the bench, resting a sprained right ankle. But even at full strength, the Knicks might have been no match for the Thunder’s spry, young lineup, which may be the best in the Western Conference. The Thunder’s core players are in their third season together and fit together seamlessly. The Knicks’ roster was slapped together over the past 12 months and is still full of holes, despite the star power of Anthony, Amar’e Stoudemire and Tyson Chandler. “It’s a new team for us, and those guys have been together for a while,” Stoudemire said. “And their chemistry and their camaraderie goes a long way. We got to definitely gain some experience.” In the meantime, there will be humiliating nights like this. Durant scored 28 points in three quarters, hardly breaking a sweat as he converted 10 of 13 shots and all seven of his free throws. Harden had 24 points, going 8 for 12. Westbrook (21 points) also put on a show, blowing on his fingers as if they were smoking guns, then “holstering” them at his sides. If the Knicks were offended, they did not show it, or do anything to make Westbrook reconsider. “You can do what you want when you’re winning,” said Bill Walker, who started in Anthony’s place. “It was up to us to stop him, and we didn’t. That’s what happens when you don’t.” So the Knicks (6-6) dropped back to .500 and lost for the fourth straight time here. They have not won a road game against the Thunder since the franchise relocated from Seattle in 2008. The Thunder (11-2) showed why they are widely favored to win the Western Conference, dominating from start to finish. They led by 23 points at halftime, and by 31 midway through the third quarter, allowing the starting lineup to take the fourth quarter off. With Anthony out, the Knicks’ scoring burden fell primarily to Stoudemire, but he mustered only 14 points, missed 12 of 19 shots and committed 5 turnovers, continuing his perplexing early-season struggles. Chandler and Toney Douglas added 14 points each. “It’s a little bit tough when teams are just loading up on you,” Stoudemire said of opposing defenses. “They’re playing you to drive and guys are already sagging in, and they know you’re going to shoot the shots, so they’re contested shots. It’s not easy right now.” Before tipoff, Anthony sat at his locker, gold-colored headphones over his ears, his eyes closed and his arms crossed — a picture of private contemplation or quiet frustration. He said his ankle was still tender and made no predictions about playing Monday against the Orlando Magic. He has yet to try running or cutting. “It’s frustrating,” he said, adding with a wry smile, “I mean, you see me over there sitting in the corner. I’m hibernating over here.” Dolan — who pushed through the trade for Anthony last February — stopped here on the way back from a business trip, only to see his prized small forward take the night off. Things could become worse in the week ahead, with a tough four-game homestand that concludes with a visit by the Denver Nuggets, Anthony’s former team. The Nuggets (8-4) have fared far better since the trade last February than the Knicks, who are still shuffling players and adjusting to an overhauled roster. Mike Bibby drew his first start at point guard Saturday, in place of the struggling Iman Shumpert. Coach Mike D’Antoni said it was probably temporary, and a product of matchups, but he also did not guarantee that Shumpert would return to point guard. With Bibby, the Knicks had their fourth starting lineup, and their third starter at point guard, a position that will remain unstable until Baron Davis gets healthy. The offense still sputtered, with the Knicks shooting 41 percent from the field and Shumpert going 3 for 10, for 6 points. Bibby finished with 6 points and 3 assists. Jared Jeffries also returned after a 10-game absence and missed all four of his field-goal attempts. “It’s just going to take a while,” D’Antoni said, sounding uncomfortable repeating the theme. “Almost always, we got at least one or two rookies on the floor and without a training camp — it’s just excuse, excuse. I don’t want to do that. Were just struggling right now a little bit.” He added: “Melo will be back pretty soon, and hopefully Baron’s around the corner. And then we’ll see what we got.” | New York Knicks;Oklahoma City Thunder;Anthony Carmelo;Durant Kevin;Basketball |
ny0111812 | [
"sports",
"cycling"
] | 2012/02/10 | Cyclist Jan Ullrich Penalized for Blood Doping | After a prolonged delay, Jan Ullrich , the German who won the 1997 Tour de France , was suspended by a sports appeal body for two years Thursday for blood doping. Because Ullrich retired from racing five years ago, the penalty imposed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport is largely symbolic. It was the latest in a series of doping-related developments involving top cyclists over the past week. On Monday, the court sanctioned Alberto Contador, a three-time Tour winner, for using a banned drug . It also suspended him for two years. On Wednesday, French authorities searched the home of the four-time Olympic medalist Jeannie Longo and detained her husband on allegations that he illegally imported doping materials, presumably on her behalf. Last Friday, American prosecutors dropped a criminal investigation of Lance Armstrong , who holds the record of seven Tour wins, without charges, but an investigation by the United States Anti-Doping Agency continues. Ullrich was Armstrong’s closest rival at the Tour de France. But police raids on two apartments in Madrid belonging to a doctor in 2006 disrupted his career and ultimately led to Thursday’s decision. Many athletes, mainly cyclists, became the subject of investigations and the target of suspicions through Operación Puerto, the Spanish police action against Eufemiano Fuentes, who was once a doctor for two Spanish cycling teams. In a laboratory owned by Fuentes, the police found a large quantity of stored blood that appeared to belong to the teams. To avoid increasingly sophisticated drug tests in the 2000s, riders intent on cheating turned toward freezing their blood in the off-season, then putting it back into their bodies before or during races to increase their oxygen-carrying red blood cell count, a costly and complex process. Records at the laboratory identified one of the riders as “hijo Rudicio,” or Rudy’s son. Throughout his cycling career, Ullrich maintained a close professional relationship with Rudy Pevenage, his team director. The three-member Court of Arbitration for Sport tribunal found that there was substantial evidence that Ullrich used blood doping, including DNA evidence that linked his blood to samples found frozen in Feuntes’s lab. | Doping (Sports);Ullrich Jan;Bicycles and Bicycling;Tour de France (Bicycle Race);Court of Arbitration for Sport;International Cycling Union |
ny0209869 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2009/12/08 | Debate Over Gay Marriage Shifts to New Jersey | TRENTON — The battle over same-sex marriage in New Jersey headed toward a legislative showdown Monday night, when a bill that would allow such unions narrowly cleared a key legislative committee and was set for a vote by the full State Senate. The 7-to-6 vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee — which came after years of efforts by gay rights advocates and a day of emotionally charged testimony by dozens of supporters and opponents of the bill — was the first time any legislative body in the state had ever approved a gay marriage bill. The approval brought cheers from hundreds of supporters who crammed the State House committee room. But the measure faces an uphill fight when it is put up for a vote on Thursday before the full Senate, where even supporters concede that they do not yet have the 21 votes needed to pass it. If it does pass, it will go to the Assembly, where passage is considered more likely. Speaking to jubilant supporters after the vote, Steven Goldstein, executive director of Garden State Equality, said that gay rights advocates had a lot of work to do in the next 72 hours, but said that momentum and history were on their side. “The marriage-equality movement in America starts again right here,” Mr. Goldstein said, as the crowd erupted with, “Right here.” But opponents of the bill said they had expected the committee to approve it and were confident that it would be defeated when it reached the Senate floor. “We’ve got a long way to go,” said Seriah Rein of the Council on the American Family . “And the will of the people, who do not support this, will be heard in the end.” After the New York State Senate rejected a gay marriage bill last week, the front line in the national battle over same-sex marriage shifted to New Jersey. And the uncertain fate of the bill there, in one of the most liberal states, has cheered many conservatives. Passage of the bill, considered a fait accompli by many legislators as recently as October, has been in jeopardy since Gov. Jon S. Corzine, a Democrat who supports gay marriage, was defeated in the election last month. That loss rattled some Democratic legislators who began to worry about riling religious and social conservatives by supporting a controversial social measure at a time of economic distress. Mr. Corzine, who pledged to sign a same-sex marriage bill, will be succeeded by Christopher J. Christie, an opponent. So advocates have been pushing furiously to win approval of the bill before the transfer of power on Jan. 19, and some lawmakers said the size and exuberance of the crowd of spectators at the State House was unlike anything they had seen since a fight over banning assault weapons in the early 1990s. More than 1,000 supporters and opponents converged on the Capitol on Monday, besieging lawmakers with raucous lobbying and solemn appeals to history and Scripture. The bill’s sponsor, Senator Loretta Weinberg, introduced the measure by tearfully invoking her 40-year marriage to her late husband, Irwin. Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, cast the issue as the next front in the battle for racial equality and women’s rights. “Gay rights are civil rights,” Mr. Bond said, invoking during his testimony the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the women’s suffrage movement and the abolition of slavery. But opponents of the bill said same-sex marriage was an affront to religious tradition and natural law. Patrick Branigan, executive director of the New Jersey Catholic Conference , said that although Catholic teaching opposes discrimination based on sexual orientation, church leaders believe that New Jersey’s current civil union law adequately protects the rights of gay people without endangering an institution that many religions hold sacred. “Marriage is a unique natural institution, and it is always between one man and one woman,” he said. New Jersey law currently permits civil unions, but many gay rights advocates say it is a failure because it does not provide the same protections as a civil marriage, like the right to visit a partner in the hospital or to have coverage on a family insurance policy. Marsha Shapiro and Louise Walpin, a gay couple who have been together for 20 years, said that despite their civil union, they have faced job discrimination and been repeatedly denied insurance benefits. “The State of New Jersey has promised us the right to equal legal protection,” said Ms. Walpin, 58. “Our family has suffered enough. Please support us and give us the legal protection that we need.” Opponents of the measure argued that the issue was so personal that it should be put before voters in a referendum. John Tomicki, a leader of the Coalition to Preserve and Protect Marriage, said hundreds of volunteers were in Trenton to lobby against the bill and had gathered more than 300,000 signatures on petitions urging the Legislature to reject it. Six Democrats voted for the bill, along with one Republican, William Baroni of Mercer. The chairman of the committee, Paul Sarlo of Bergen, a Democrat, voted against the measure. Mr. Sarlo said he was satisfied that the committee had come to a bipartisan decision. He said that the bill still faced resistance in the Senate. “This bill still has a long, long way to go,” he said. | Same-Sex Marriage Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships;New Jersey;Law and Legislation;Homosexuality;Garden State Equality |
ny0158868 | [
"us"
] | 2008/12/09 | 5 Charged in 9/11 Attacks Seek to Plead Guilty | GUANTÁNAMO BAY , Cuba — The five Guantánamo detainees charged with coordinating the Sept. 11 attacks told a military judge on Monday that they wanted to confess in full, a move that seemed to challenge the government to put them to death. The request, which was the result of hours of private meetings among the detainees, appeared intended to undercut the government’s plan for a high-profile trial while drawing international attention to what some of the five men have said was a desire for martyrdom. But the military judge, Col. Stephen R. Henley of the Army, said a number of legal questions about how the commissions are to deal with capital cases had to be resolved before guilty pleas could be accepted. The case is likely to remain in limbo for weeks or months, presenting the Obama administration with a new issue involving detainees at the naval base at Guantánamo Bay to resolve when it takes office next month. At the start of what had been listed as routine proceedings Monday, Judge Henley said he had received a written statement from the five men dated Nov. 4 saying they planned to stop filing legal motions and “to announce our confessions to plea in full.” Speaking in what has become a familiar high-pitched tone in the cavernous courtroom here, the most prominent of the five, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed , said, “we don’t want to waste our time with motions.” “All of you are paid by the U.S. government,” continued Mr. Mohammed, who has described himself as the mastermind of the 2001 attacks. “I’m not trusting any American.” Mr. Mohammed and the others presented their decision almost as a dare to the American government. When Judge Henley raised questions about the procedure for imposing the death penalty after a guilty plea, some of the detainees immediately suggested they might change their minds if they could not be assured they would be executed. The announcement Monday sent shockwaves through the biggest case in the war crimes system here — the case for which some government officials say the system was expressly devised. With the case suddenly at a critical juncture, President-elect Barack Obama may find it more complicated to carry out his pledge to close the detention camp here. Brooke Anderson, a spokeswoman for the presidential transition office, declined to comment. Military prosecutors have sought the death penalty against all five men since filing charges last February in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which killed nearly 3,000 people. Mr. Mohammed has emerged as the outspoken leader of the detainees in the courtroom and, presumably, behind closed doors. In September, Mr. Mohammed requested permission for the men — three of whom are defending themselves — to meet without lawyers to plan their defense. A military judge granted the request with the approval of the prosecution, and the men met several times for a total of 27 hours and prepared a written statement. On Monday, Judge Henley methodically questioned each man to determine if he agreed with the joint statement. One of the five detainees, Ramzi bin al-Shibh , told the judge, “We the brothers, all of us, would like to submit our confession.” Mr. bin al-Shibh is charged with being the primary contact between the operation’s organizers and the Sept. 11 hijackers. National security specialists said the strategy appeared orchestrated by Mr. Mohammed, who has repeatedly tried to turn to the legal process into an international platform. “These guys are smart enough to know that they’re not ever going to see the light of day again,” said Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal terrorism prosecutor who is chairman of the Center for Law and Counterterrorism in Washington . “I think they’re trying to make as big a publicity splash as they can.” For the first time, the Pentagon arranged for relatives of 9/11 victims to travel to Guantánamo to attend the session. A group of them, who spoke to reporters afterward, said they were struck by the extensive rights accorded the accused men. One of the relatives, Hamilton Peterson, said he was offended by the detainees, who he said were sneering and laughing in the courtroom. “They seemed to view these proceedings as a joke,” Mr. Peterson said. In an outburst, Mr. bin al-Shibh said he wanted to congratulate Osama bin Laden , adding, “We ask him to attack the American enemy with all his power.” Some lawyers who have been following the prosecutions said the timing of the effort to plead guilty was significant, coming in what may have been the last major hearing here in the Bush administration. Mr. Obama has suggested that he might end the military commissions and charge the detainees in existing American courts. Vijay Padmanabhan, an assistant professor at Cardozo Law School who was until July a State Department lawyer with responsibility for detainee issues, said the five detainees had worked to use criticism of the military tribunals to their advantage. “They are trying to ensure their martyrdom in a manner that continues to attack the credibility of the legal system challenging them,” Mr. Padmanabhan said. In Monday’s session, which was covered by an international press corps from the Arab world, Spain , Brazil , Japan and elsewhere, Judge Henley directed prosecutors to submit full legal arguments by Jan. 4 on the procedures in capital cases outlined by the Military Commissions Act, which governs proceedings here. Among other fundamental issues, Judge Henley asked for analysis of whether the men could be sentenced to death if they pleaded guilty instead of being found guilty by a panel of military officers. Because this week’s proceedings were to consider legal motions to be decided by the judge, no panel was present. Another potential hurdle to guilty pleas was a claim by lawyers for two of the detainees that they may not be mentally competent to represent themselves. The judge ruled that those two detainees could not make decisions about their cases on Monday. The two are Mr. bin al-Shibh and Mustafa al-Hawsawi , charged as a Qaeda financial operative. In addition to Mr. Mohammed, the other detainees are Walid bin Attash , who is accused of selecting many of the hijackers, and Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew of Mr. Mohammed who is said to have been one of his key deputies in the Sept. 11 plot. The judge said the competency issues might not be resolved for a substantial period. The three detainees who are representing themselves said they would wait to enter a plea, as Mr. Mohammed put it, “until a decision is made about our brothers.” The judge ruled that he would permit the three men who represent themselves to withdraw motions filed on their behalf, which would set the stage for a guilty plea. Human rights groups monitoring the proceedings said the judge’s uncertainty about the procedures for accepting guilty pleas in a death-penalty case here illustrated the difficulties of using a new legal system to prosecute terrorism suspects. “It is indicative about the last four years of a failed commission process,” said Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union . But a Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon, said, “These are extraordinarily complex issues, and we have worked hard to ensure that those accused of war crimes get full and fair trials.” Alice Hoagland, the mother of Mark Bingham, who was killed on Sept. 11, said she was pleased that the military judge had not rushed to allow guilty pleas. The detainees “do not deserve to be dealt with as martyrs,” Ms. Hoagland said. “They do not deserve the glory of execution.” | Khalid Shaikh Mohammed;Guantanamo Bay;9/11,Sept 11;Detainees;Ramzi bin al-Shibh;Mustafa Ahmed al- Hawsawi;Walid Muhammad Salih bin Attash;Ali Abdul Aziz Ali |
ny0091385 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2015/08/05 | Rise of SoundExchange Shows the Growth of Digital Radio Royalties | For a sense of how quickly digital radio outlets like Pandora and SiriusXM have become a major source of revenue for the music industry, look no further than their royalty payments. SoundExchange, the nonprofit group that processes the royalties those companies and others pay to performers and record companies, took nearly a decade to pay out its first $1 billion , in 2012. The second billion came almost two years later, in early 2014. On Wednesday the organization will announce that it has crossed $3 billion in payments. “When we first started, we were a rounding error on most people’s income statements,” Michael Huppe, SoundExchange’s president, said in an interview. “Now we’re one of the top accounts at most recorded music companies.” SoundExchange, which was founded in 2000, collects money for performers and record labels whenever songs are played on digital radio. These payments — which are separate from songwriting royalties — have grown along with the popularity of online radio, and now make up a substantial part of the music industry’s revenue. The $773 million that SoundExchange paid last year is equivalent to about 16 percent of the American recording industry’s whole income of $4.9 billion, as reported by the Recording Industry Association of America. SoundExchange, which was founded as part of the recording industry association, has been independent since 2003. The bulk of the organization’s revenue comes from just two sources: Pandora and SiriusXM. But the organization collects royalties from thousands of digital radio outlets. After deducting its operating expenses, SoundExchange pays half its royalty income to the owners of recordings — typically record companies — as well as 45 percent to featured performers and 5 percent to a fund for backup singers and session musicians. According to SoundExchange, its administrative costs are equivalent to 4.6 percent of its revenues. SoundExchange is in the midst of a contentious procedure for setting Internet radio royalties that is currently before the Copyright Royalty Board, a panel of federal judges in Washington who oversee the fees it collects. SoundExchange, which represents the music industry in the proceedings, wants to raise the rate that web companies pay while Pandora, iHeartMedia and others want it reduced. According to Mr. Huppe, the difference between their proposals could amount to $4 billion to $5 billion over the five-year term being considered by the judges, which begins next year and continues through 2020. A decision by the Copyright Royalty Board is expected by December. | Pandora Media;Sirius XM Radio;Audio Recordings; Downloads and Streaming;Royalties;SoundExchange;Music;Radio |
ny0191452 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2009/02/02 | She’s Become an Expert at Accentuating the Positive | Shirley Fenelon doesn’t seem like someone about to move for the third time in three years, who does not know who will care for her baby, due this month, when she goes back to work. She doesn’t sound like a woman who endured the murder of her partner, leaving her with an infant daughter, and then a separation, several years later, from the father of her younger daughter. She doesn’t appear concerned over coordinating her daughters’ school and after-school schedules with her own hectic work and school schedules, a daily crunch that often leaves all three exhausted. It is not denial that keeps her upbeat, or indifference, but a fiercely optimistic outlook on life. “I have to be positive,” she cheerfully said one afternoon in the living room of her bright two-bedroom apartment in Flatbush, Brooklyn. “Something will work out.” Ms. Fenelon, 33, and her daughters, Vieysha, 14, and Infinity, 9, have been packing for their next move, in March. Their possessions are in half-empty boxes throughout the apartment. A plastic bin sits in a corner, filled with bibs, pacifiers and tiny socks. The family must move because their Section 8-subsidized apartment failed inspection — it was the exposed electrical sockets, loose window guards and poor bathroom ventilation — so her $724 monthly rent subsidy from the city was halted. Her share of the $1,275 monthly rent amounts to 30 percent of her income, or $551. Even though the city stopped the subsidy, “I always pay my portion of the rent,” Ms. Fenelon said. “I don’t care what Section 8 does.” If she did not pay, she said, “I’d have to explain to my daughters why we are on the street.” In September, the last time she moved (for the same reason as this time), Ms. Fenelon sought help from every source she could find, eventually turning to the Fifth Avenue Committee , an affordable-housing group in Brooklyn. There, her caseworker referred her to the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies , one of the seven beneficiary agencies of The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund , which provided Ms. Fenelon with $1,238 for a security deposit. She hopes this coming move will be her last for a long while. She has been approved for a two-bedroom apartment in a city housing project in Canarsie, close to the Rockaways. “We’ll be next to the Canarsie pier,” Vieysha said excitedly. The journey to Canarsie began in Haiti, where Ms. Fenelon lived until she was 3, when her mother sent her to stay with an aunt in East Flatbush. Ms. Fenelon’s mother joined them five years later and the clan shared a large house on Linden Boulevard with aunts, cousins and a grandmother. A few years after Ms. Fenelon had started a family of her own, Vieysha’s father was murdered. “It was hard,” she said. “It kind of messes you up for a while. I only just accepted it; it took a long time.” Vieysha is still in contact with her paternal grandmother, and Infinity’s father is involved in her life. But the core of the family — mother, daughters, and in one month, a newborn — fends for itself. While the previous move was financed by a Neediest Cases grant, money for the current one remains elusive. But Ms. Fenelon’s attitude is upbeat, even though she does not know how she will pay for the broadcasting classes she was taking at Kingsborough Community College, or when she will be able to return to her $1,600-a-month job as a paraprofessional for the Board of Education. At Junior High School 234 in Gravesend, Ms. Fenelon focuses on students with special needs, tutoring them on everything from reading to proper manners. “I see the students really trying,” she said, “so I just give them an extra push.” Ms. Fenelon wanted to continue working until her ninth month of pregnancy, but low blood pressure and fainting spells related to it obliged her to take a health leave in November. She has applied the city for short-term disability, which would give her $250 per week. The leave ends in March, one month after she is due to give birth. Who will baby-sit once she goes back to work and school? Where will she get the money for the coming move? Ms. Fenelon is not really sure. “I don’t know how that’s going to turn out,” she said. Her eyes brightened and she smiled. “You think positive, and positive things happen. You think negative, and negative things happen.” She laughed. “You don’t lose anything by thinking positive.” How to Help Checks payable to The NewYork Times Neediest CasesFund may be sent to: 4 ChaseMetrotech Center, 7th FloorEast, Lockbox 5193, Brooklyn,N.Y. 11245. All gifts are acknowledged;special lettersare not possible. Checks intendedfor a particular Neediestagency should be writtento and mailed to the agency,noting that it is a Neediest gift. BROOKLYN BUREAU OF COMMUNITY SERVICE 285 Schermerhorn Street Brooklyn, NY 11217 (718) 310-5600 THE CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW YORK 1011 First Avenue New York, NY 10022 (212) 371-1000 CATHOLIC CHARITIES, DIOCESE OF BROOKLYN AND QUEENS 191 Joralemon Street Brooklyn, NY 11201 (718) 722-6000 THE CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY 105 East 22d Street New York, NY 10010 (212) 949-4800 THE COMMUNITY SERVICE SOCIETY OF NEW YORK 105 East 22d Street New York, NY 10010 (212) 254-8900 THE FEDERATION OF PROTESTANT WELFARE AGENCIES, INC 281 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10010 (212) 777-4800 UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK Church Street Station P.O. Box 4100 New York, NY 10261-4100 (212) 980-1000 For instructions on how to donatestock to the fund, call(212) 556-1137 or fax (212) 730-0927. No agents or solicitors are authorizedto seek contributionsfor The New York Times NeediestCases Fund. The Times pays the fund'sexpenses, so all contributions godirectly to the charities, whichuse them to provide services andcash assistance to the poor. Contributions aredeductible from federal, state andcity income taxes to the extentpermitted by law. To delay may mean to forget. | New York Times Neediest Cases Fund;Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies;Families and Family Life;Section 8 (Housing) |
ny0213573 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2010/03/29 | Sarkozy, and France, Look to U.S. Visit | WASHINGTON — President Nicolas Sarkozy of France travels to the United States on Monday for a two-day trip designed to underscore his close cooperation with President Barack Obama on Afghanistan, Iran and other issues, and apparently to make a statement about their personal relationship. The trip, culminating in a news conference Tuesday and then a private dinner at the White House, comes at a crucial time for both. Mr. Obama has just scored two major victories — the passage of historic health-care legislation and agreement with Russia on a new strategic arms control treaty — and is heading into a period of heavy international engagement. Mr. Sarkozy, for his part, has seen his popularity fade and his party suffer stinging defeats in regional elections. At the same time he is preparing for a crucial stint on the world stage as France takes leadership of both the Group of Eight and the Group of Twenty. As the newspaper Le Parisien put it, “This meeting could not come at a better time” for Mr. Sarkozy. The closeness of the Sarkozy-Obama relationship — and for that matter, of Mr. Obama with other European leaders — has been questioned, based on issues like Mr. Obama’s decision in February to skip an annual U.S.-European summit meeting. But in an interview here last week with the International Herald Tribune and three French correspondents, the national security adviser, James L. Jones Jr., repeatedly rejected the notion of any strains. He called Mr. Sarkozy a “very helpful and steadfast ally” on Iran and “a strong adviser and supporter on the Middle East.” If Mr. Sarkozy sometimes urges the American president to push harder in both areas, said the general, Mr. Obama appreciated the “honest exchange of views.” General Jones, a former supreme allied commander in Europe, said that Mr. Obama had particularly appreciated Mr. Sarkozy’s decision to bring France back into NATO’s military wing and Paris’s “strong support” on Afghanistan. The United States has been pressing its NATO allies to provide more military trainers for Afghanistan. French officials have been quoted as saying they will send no more, but General Jones appeared to leave open the possibility that Mr. Sarkozy would make such a gesture during the visit. While the general acknowledged that as NATO commander he had known frustration over allied contributions in Afghanistan, he said that he had never seen better cooperation within NATO. “We’ve achieved a major breakthrough in how we think of Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he said, “and there is a new sense of energy that we can be successful.” He played down two areas of friction. The announcement that France had agreed to sell four Mistral-class warships to Russia might once have raised American hackles. But General Jones seemed unperturbed. “It was not the subject of any serious bone of contention,” he said, adding that the United States, too, wanted better relations with Moscow. Europeans were deeply unhappy when the Pentagon, while taking bids for a huge contract to supply aerial refueling tankers, changed the plane’s specifications in a way they interpreted as giving an advantage to the chief American bidder, Boeing, to the detriment of the European aerospace group EADS. General Jones asserted that as a former director of Boeing he could not comment. But he said that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates had “assured the president that the Department of Defense wants the competition to be fair and equal for all parties.” The presidents also are expected to discuss some differences: France wants the United States to institute tougher financial regulations and to undertake more resolute action on climate change. Mr. Sarkozy is to open his trip with a speech Monday at Columbia University in New York. He then is to meet with the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. In Washington on Tuesday, he plans to meet with several senators before the presidents hold a late-afternoon news conference. They are then to adjourn, with Michelle Obama and Carla Sarkozy, for a private dinner that French officials are calling “testimony to a particularly close friendship.” | Sarkozy Nicolas;Obama Barack;Jones James L;North Atlantic Treaty Organization;France;United States International Relations |
ny0118997 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2012/07/05 | Germany: Man Facing Eviction Kills 4 People and Himself | Five people died in a hostage-taking drama on Wednesday in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe, the police said. The hostage taker, a 53-year-old man, was facing eviction from the apartment he shared with his 55-year-old girlfriend after she lost it in a foreclosure auction in April, the police said. The man took his own life after killing his girlfriend, a bailiff, a locksmith and the new owner of the apartment, said the police, who did not identify any of the victims in accordance with German privacy laws. The police said the gunman, who was unemployed, had planned a “downright execution.” | Germany;Murders and Attempted Murders;Hostages;Suicides and Suicide Attempts;Evictions;Police |
ny0007067 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2013/05/17 | Peacekeepers in Golan Abducted but Released | UNITED NATIONS — Armed men broke into a United Nations outpost in a buffer zone separating Israel and Syria in the disputed Golan Heights region and abducted three military observers, the peacekeeping chief said on Thursday. Hervé Ladsous, the head of United Nations peacekeeping operations, told reporters that Syrian men held the unarmed observers for about five hours and released them unharmed Wednesday morning. It was the third abduction of peacekeepers in the tense region since March and underlined their vulnerability in the spillover of the conflict in Syria, which is now in its third year. Mr. Ladsous called the latest abduction “a very serious incident ... that illustrates the very difficult conditions that now prevail” in and around the area separating Syrian and Israeli forces, which is supposed to be free of armed groups. The Security Council strongly condemned the abduction by “a group of antigovernment armed elements,” who also looted the observation post. In a statement Thursday evening, the Council called on all Syrian parties to cooperate with peacekeepers, to ensure their security and to enable them to operate freely. The buffer zone had been largely quiet for four decades, but tensions have increased as the conflict in Syria has escalated. One result is that several countries that contribute troops to the observer force have pulled out their soldiers. | Golan Heights;Syria;Israel;Kidnapping;Military;UN;UN Security Council;Arab Spring |
ny0258754 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2011/01/08 | Park Lovers Fight N.Y.U.-Greenwich Village Journal | All together, the seven strips of greenery hardly seem substantial enough to amount to a park. Someone unfamiliar with Greenwich Village might pass them by as ornamental to their adjoining buildings, like extra-wide hedges. But to many residents in and around the two sprawling apartment complexes owned by New York University , these oblong borders of grass, trees and paved playground are precious parkland, spots to sit under an oak’s shade, savor bird song, teach a child to skate, or cultivate roses. “They have been part of our backyard and our front yard,” said Dr. Allan Horland, an internist who has lived in one complex, Washington Square Village, for 40 years. The strips, which add up to 2 ½ acres, are owned by the city but have become the latest battleground in the long-running dispute between residents who want to maintain their offbeat neighborhood’s character and a university that says it needs to grow if it is to attract top students and faculty members. In three decades, N.Y.U. has transformed itself from a commuter school to a national institution with an undergraduate and graduate enrollment of 42,000. Over the next two decades, N.Y.U. wants to build six million square feet of dormitories and classrooms in Manhattan, Downtown Brooklyn and Governors Island, with half — approximately the floor space of the Empire Square Building — in its Greenwich Village core. Four new buildings would be put within the two housing complexes, and to acquire enough space to realize that plan, N.Y.U. wants to buy from the city’s Department of Transportation four of the seven strips edging the complexes. N.Y.U. promises to make good for any parkland it levels by opening an equivalent amount of publicly accessible parklike grounds inside the complexes. But neighbors are skeptical and would like all seven strips turned over to the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation to become parkland. A rally Dec. 5 to make that point drew 125 people, and opponents of N.Y.U.’s plan have received the support of the local community board. “Two and half acres is a lot for a park-starved community,” said Terri Cude, a co-chairwoman of the preservationist Community Action Alliance on N.Y.U. The two modernistic complexes, built in the 1950s and 1960s, are outliers in the Village landscape of brownstones and loft buildings. They rise imposingly on two so-called superblocks north of Houston Street and include three honeycombed towers designed by the I. M. Pei firm, two of which are a landmark known as Silver Towers, and the four buildings of Washington Square Village. The two complexes, home to 1,700 families, are built around landscaped courtyards, with Silver Towers graced by a 36-foot sculpture that was designed in partnership with Picasso. Champions of preserving all seven strips argue that any compensatory green space that N.Y.U. would create would be used mostly by residents of the housing complexes, since the two complexes can appear like gated communities to outsiders. N.Y.U. officials respond that one benefit of rethinking the complexes’ open space is to make the courtyards more inviting. “Right now if you’re Joe Q. Public, you feel like you can’t walk through the block,” acknowledged Alicia D. Hurley, vice president for government and community affairs. For years now, New York University has sometimes been seen as the neighborhood’s bully, gobbling up lot after lot and spoiling the Village’s quaint, low-rise bohemian character. N.Y.U. contends that its campus is far more squeezed for space than other universities. It says it has just 160 academic square feet per student compared with 326 at Columbia University and 673 at Harvard. (Columbia is undertaking a controversial 17-building expansion in West Harlem.) John Beckman, a spokesman for the university, said the Village offers little room to grow beyond the open spaces inside the two superblocks. In November, N.Y.U. scrapped plans to add a 38-story tower to the Silver Towers complex after I. M. Pei himself made his opposition known. In its place, the university wants to erect a 17-story building nearby on the site of the Morton Williams supermarket on La Guardia Place, a site the university owns outright. The new building would not require the taking of a La Guardia Place green strip. But some residents are objecting that it would ruin the strip’s best feature by casting a deep shadow on a community garden, one where 50 local gardeners grow apples, roses and lavender. Plans for three other buildings — a dormitory for 1,400 students atop what now houses the Jerome S. Coles Sports Center and two boomerang-shaped academic buildings that would flank the courtyard of Washington Square Village — would swallow up three additional strips. Jo Hamilton, chairwoman of Community Board Two in Manhattan, said that losing the strips would especially hurt because her district’s neighborhoods have just 0.4 acres of parkland for every thousand residents compared with a citywide average 2.5 acres. Each of the seven strips bordering the complexes “has a different personality,” said Ms. Cude as she gave a reporter a tour. Along La Guardia Place, part of the strip is known as Time Landscape for relatively old red cedars, beech and slippery elm. A strip farther north on La Guardia Place has a statue of the mayor for whom the street was named and will soon get a toddlers’ playground. A strip along Bleecker Street is graced by seven cherry trees. A strip along Mercer Street has a heavily used dog run. N.Y.U. plans to move the dog run inside the Silver Towers complex and create new interior playgrounds to replace any it bulldozes. Still, the existing exterior strips have their ardent devotees. Dr. Horland recalled how he taught his son Jeremy, now 40, to ride a bike in a Mercer Street playground and noted how he now took Jeremy’s son, Elijah, 5, there. Dr. Hurley says she thinks that once tempers subside, the university and its neighbors will have to come together to figure out how any new public spaces “can work for everybody.” “We have a lot of work to convince people of that,” she said. | Parks and Other Recreation Areas;New York University;Greenwich Village (NYC) |
ny0180459 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2007/08/24 | Now a Lobbyist, an Ex-Senator Uses Campaign Money | When he was last running for the United States Senate from New Jersey in 2002, Robert G. Torricelli collected donations from thousands of people who apparently wanted to see him re-elected. They might be surprised to see how he spent a portion of their money. Mr. Torricelli, a Democrat who was one of the Senate’s most flamboyant personalities and prodigious fund-raisers, abruptly quit the 2002 race amid allegations of ethical misconduct and became a lobbyist. Since then, he has given $4,000 from his campaign fund to Puerto Rico’s nonvoting member of Congress, $10,000 to Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois and more than $40,000 to Nevada Democratic Party organizations and candidates linked to the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid. All of those politicians had one thing in common: influence over Mr. Torricelli’s, or his clients’, business interests. In early 2006, for instance, Mr. Torricelli contributed $10,000 from his Senate account to the mayor of Trenton and his slate of City Council candidates, just as city agencies were reviewing an ultimately successful proposal by the former senator to develop retail and office space in the city. There is no evidence that Mr. Torricelli, who declined to be interviewed for this article, violated federal rules, which allow retired officials to give leftover campaign funds to charities, candidates and political parties. Sean Jackson, Mr. Torricelli’s campaign treasurer and a partner in his lobbying firm, said in an interview that any suggestion that the contributions were tied to his business interests was “ridiculous.” He said that Mr. Torricelli contributed to people he knew or with whom he shared policy goals. “Bob has supported people who he believes in, and he doesn’t regret doing it,” Mr. Jackson said. Mr. Torricelli had more campaign money, $2.9 million, than any other senator who has retired in the last 20 years, except John Edwards, who is running for president, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign finance watchdog group. In all, he has spent almost $900,000 from his account since leaving Congress, much of it on gifts to charities and nonprofit organizations like hospitals as well as political campaigns and parties. At least $65,000 went to politicians, or organizations linked to them, that had influence over business interests of Mr. Torricelli or his clients. Campaign finance watchdogs say Mr. Torricelli’s spending raises questions about federal regulations dictating how former politicians can spend unused campaign contributions. The rules prohibit former officials from using their leftover campaign money for personal expenses. And although Mr. Torricelli has not done that, campaign finance watchdogs say he seems to have found a legal wrinkle to spend those funds in ways that could buttress his private business. His case, they say, underscores the need to tighten the rules. Massie Ritsch of the Center for Responsive Politics, said Mr. Torricelli could have considered giving the money back to donors or to charity. “Contributors should reasonably expect that their money will go for campaigning and not that it will sit in an account for years and be doled out to build someone’s personal business,” he said. A day after being asked about Mr. Torricelli’s spending from his Senate account, Mr. Jackson called The New York Times to say that the bulk of the remaining money would go to a foundation that Mr. Torricelli had established earlier this year to help causes like breast cancer awareness and open space preservation. Mr. Torricelli quit the 2002 race in October of that year, several weeks after the Senate Ethics Committee issued a letter “severely admonishing” him for accepting three gifts from a contributor, David Chang. Two months after leaving the race, Mr. Torricelli founded a lobbying practice, Rosemont Associates, which now has clients including the government of Taiwan and the owner of Cablevision. The business has taken him far beyond New Jersey. In February 2005, Aveta Holdings L.L.C., of Hackensack, which provides managed care to Medicare recipients in Puerto Rico and other places, hired his firm for $10,000 a month as it was moving to acquire a managed care company that served Medicare recipients on the island, according to a copy of his contract. He was to build support for the company and meet with political leaders on its behalf. In May 2006, Mr. Torricelli made two contributions totaling $4,000 from his Senate campaign account to Luis G. Fortuno, Puerto Rico’s nonvoting member of Congress. Three weeks later, executives with Aveta Holdings and their relatives made donations of $12,000 to Mr. Fortuno’s campaign committee. Mr. Fortuno’s office said that he advocated an approach that would foster competition in the Medicare program by allowing more companies to participate. Federal regulators eventually adopted such an approach, the office said. Mr. Torricelli, in turn, dropped in on Mr. Fortuno this year to thank him for his efforts, according to a person familiar with the meeting who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter. Mr. Jackson said that Mr. Torricelli’s donations to Mr. Fortuno had nothing to do with Aveta, and were made because he, like Mr. Fortuno, has long supported Puerto Rican statehood. Contributors to Mr. Fortuno connected to Aveta did not return phone calls to their offices and homes. Aveta’s chairman, Daniel E. Straus, also declined to comment. Mr. Torricelli has also tapped his campaign account to make sizable donations to Nevada politicians, including several Democrats close to Senator Reid. In 2003, $25,000 from the Torricelli for U.S. Senate account was given to Silver State Victory 2004, the committee coordinating the Democratic effort in Nevada that year. Then in October 2004, he gave $10,000 to the Nevada State Democratic Party, of which Mr. Reid is the titular head. The same month Mr. Torricelli also gave $250 to Josh Reid, the senator’s son, who ran unsuccessfully for a City Council seat in Cottonwood Heights, Utah. Shortly afterward, Mr. Torricelli began reaching out to Mr. Reid on behalf of a client that retained him for $15,000 a month: the government of Taiwan. On Feb. 2, 2005, before contacting any other senator, Mr. Torricelli called Mr. Reid to set up a meeting with Taiwan’s representative in the United States, according to federal lobbying records, to discuss Taiwan’s opposition to a new Chinese law that authorized the use of force if Taiwan declared independence. By February 2007, Mr. Torricelli had contacted Mr. Reid or his staff some two dozen times about Taiwan’s interests, going beyond what he did with other Democratic Senators, the records show. A spokesman for Mr. Reid said that it was unfair to single out the donations that Mr. Torricelli made in Nevada, given that the state was drawing significant attention from Democrats around the country who viewed its role as crucially important in the presidential election. Mr. Jackson said Mr. Torricelli’s donations to Mr. Reid stemmed from their long relationship, not his lobbying on Taiwan. “It would be surprising — it would be amazing — if he didn’t support Harry Reid,” Mr. Jackson said. Money has gone elsewhere. On Oct. 29, 2003, Governor Blagojevich of Illinois made a fund-raising trip to New York and had a private meeting with Mr. Torricelli and Leonard Barrack, whose law firm, Barrack, Rodos & Bacine, had hired the former senator as a consultant, according to an article in the Chicago Sun-Times. Five days after the meeting, Mr. Torricelli and the firm itself each gave $10,000 to Mr. Blagojevich’s reelection campaign account, according to campaign disclosure reports. (Mr. Torricelli drew on his Senate campaign account for his donation.) On Feb. 20, 2004, the law firm was placed on the Illinois State Teachers Retirement System’s list of preferred outside attorneys, according to a spokeswoman for the state fund. The retirement system’s board of trustees decides who is placed on that list, not the governor. But the governor appoints 4 of the 11 members of the board. A spokeswoman for Mr. Blagojevich said that the governor’s office was unable to comment on the meeting because she did not have access to the governor’s campaign schedule and it appeared to be part of a campaign-related trip. Mr. Jackson said that Mr. Torricelli does not recall meeting Mr. Blagojevich. As a lobbyist in Trenton, Mr. Torricelli counted his biggest client in 2006 as CSC Holdings, the operator of Cablevision, which paid him $162,000 that year. In early 2006, Mr. Torricelli’s firm was lobbying state regulators to seek changes in a bill sponsored by State Senator Joseph V. Doria Jr., a Democrat, that would have allowed telephone companies like Verizon, a chief rival of Cablevision’s, to provide pay television service. In May, Mr. Torricelli contributed $5,000 from his Senate campaign account to a slate of municipal candidates headed by Mr. Doria, who is also the mayor of Bayonne. Eventually, the bill passed, but Cablevision succeeded in weakening some provisions, according to lobbyists in Trenton. Mr. Doria did not return a call last week seeking more information about the law. Mr. Jackson said that Mr. Torricelli has supported Mr. Doria for years. Mr. Torricelli has also given contributions from his campaign account as he has pursued real estate deals in his home state. In September 2005, Mr. Torricelli purchased the Golden Swan, a boarded-up historic building situated a couple of blocks from the State House in Trenton, for $1 from the City of Trenton, according to real estate records. Mr. Torricelli and Trenton’s mayor, Douglas H. Palmer, were signatories. Mr. Torricelli then began investing at least $3 million in restoring the building. But he needed city approvals. In the spring of 2006, Mr. Torricelli contributed $10,000 from his Senate campaign account to Mr. Palmer, and his slate of City Council candidates for the June municipal election. Those donations came as city agencies, including the Council, were reviewing Mr. Torricelli’s proposal for the Golden Swan, which called for the creation of retail and office space in the building. That fall, the Council, including Mr. Palmer’s slate, gave Mr. Torricelli an $89,000 grant to install an elevator in another building he was developing in Trenton’s downtown. This March, the Council also approved a state loan application for the Golden Swan. “It’s not like if you give me money, you’re going to get stuff — it doesn’t work like that,” Mr. Palmer said. Mr. Jackson said: “If anything, Torricelli did something to help people and the city.” | Torricelli Robert G;Lobbying and Lobbyists;Finances;Ethics;Politics and Government;United States Politics and Government;Law and Legislation;New Jersey |
ny0284499 | [
"business",
"international"
] | 2016/09/05 | Raghuram Rajan, India’s Departing Central Banker, Has a New Warning | MUMBAI, India — Three years before the 2008 global financial crisis, an Indian economist named Raghuram G. Rajan presciently warned a skeptical audience of top economic thinkers that excessive risk threatened the entire global financial system. As Mr. Rajan stepped down on Sunday as India’s top central banker, following intense criticism at home, he offered a new warning: Low interest rates globally could distort markets and would be difficult to abandon. Countries around the world, including the United States and Europe, have kept interest rates low as a way to encourage growth. But countries could become “trapped” by fear that when they eventually raised rates, they “would see growth slow down,” he said. Low interest rates should not be a substitute for “other instruments of policy” and “various kinds of reforms” that are needed to encourage growth, Mr. Rajan said in a recent interview with The New York Times. “Often when monetary policy is really easy, it becomes the residual policy of choice,” he said, when deeper reforms are needed. His warning comes at a time when the world’s central banks appear to be at a loss about how to get global growth moving again. A growing number of voices say that low rates are not doing the job and that governments must take other, more politically difficult steps to reinvigorate growth. The warning by Mr. Rajan, now 53, came as he stepped down from a position that had helped make him something of a rock star — albeit a controversial one — in India. He disputed the view that his tight monetary policies had cost him the support of the government, and he said that his departure was based on his inability to reach an agreement with the government on serving longer but not serving another full three-year term. Mr. Rajan is a celebrity in a country where taxi drivers and vegetable sellers are as likely as business owners and bankers to be immersed in debate on the local economy. A blunt speaker who has laid out the case for tighter monetary policies in more than 30 public speeches over the last three years, he was called “the Ranbir Kapoor of banking,” a reference to a Bollywood superstar, by one of the country’s longest-running columnists. Mr. Rajan, whose term expired on Sunday, is credited with helping stabilize the Indian economy. It was fighting double-digit inflation, a weakening of its currency and a plunging stock market when he took the job in 2013. But he also leaves bruised after a barrage of public attacks from the political base of conservatives and small-business interests of India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party. They complained that he choked business by keeping interest rates high and requiring banks to clean up bad debts, which made credit expensive and hard to come by. The attacks turned vicious and personal in the weeks before Mr. Rajan announced in June that he would not continue for a second term, with a B.J.P. lawmaker declaring that Mr. Rajan was “mentally not fully Indian,” in part because he holds a United States green card, allowing him to work and live there. Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, later denounced the attacks, but only after Mr. Rajan said he was leaving the job. With Mr. Modi preparing for contentious local elections, some observers have said the government did not want Mr. Rajan to stay because it needed a looser monetary policy to bolster growth. India has the fastest-growing large economy in the world, at an annual rate of 7.1 percent for the most recent quarter, but that is still far slower than the rate of a decade ago and not fast enough to create jobs for the more than one million people who enter the work force each month. Mr. Modi won election in 2014 promising economic growth and jobs. Mr. Rajan, leaning back in his chair and laughing at times during the interview, disputed that claim. “I don’t think it’s fair to say that it’s because of tight policy that the government wanted to move on,” he said. He cited the government’s move after he announced his departure to set a low inflation target of 4 percent for the next five years. He said his successor, Urjit Patel, a central bank deputy governor who takes over this week, played an important role in setting the country’s tough inflation targets. Mr. Modi has said little in public about Mr. Rajan’s departure except to defend him as “someone who loves his country” and “will continue to serve it.” Mr. Modi’s spokesman declined in a telephone interview on Sunday to explain why Mr. Rajan was leaving, other than to say: “There is a tenure and the tenure has ended. Why should the prime minister of India even be brought into this discussion?” Mr. Rajan said his tight monetary policy had helped bring India’s rate of inflation — currently about 6 percent — down to the upper end of the government’s target range. “I think we’ve done exactly what was needed,” he said. Mr. Rajan said the central bank should continue to prioritize low inflation. He said he hoped the country would finish “the process of bank cleanup which is underway.” Under Mr. Rajan, India’s banks, after decades of loose lending to corporations , had to own up to bad debts. The restriction was intended to shore up the long-term stability of banks, but in the short term it has reduced the pace of lending to businesses. In discussing the Indian economy in the interview, Mr. Rajan offered a less-than-ringing endorsement of the government’s emphasis on manufacturing in India — what the prime minister has called his Make in India campaign. Mr. Rajan said he did not support the view of critics that it was too late in world economic history for India to become a manufacturing hub. But he also said that he would not focus exclusively on manufacturing as the solution to joblessness. If India improves infrastructure and reduces government regulations, manufacturing might take off in a big way, but it “could also be services. It could be value-added agriculture also.” Although China’s economy has overshadowed India’s in recent decades, Mr. Rajan said he was still a believer in democracy as the better system to create long-term growth. “India’s strengths to some extent comes also from its democracy,” he said. “Things can get bad in India, but not beyond a certain point, because the democratic process asserts itself. And we have a change in government.” Mr. Rajan, who served as chief economist of the International Monetary Fund from 2003 to 2006, will return to his longtime job as a professor at the University of Chicago’s business school. He grew momentarily wistful when comparing the job of central bank governor with his past positions, which were more advisory. “So better to be a doer than an adviser. Of course being an adviser sometimes has effects, important effects, but you don’t see it as much immediately. Here you can see what you’re doing and in the years to come.” | Raghuram Rajan;Reserve Bank of India;Economy;Europe;Banking and Finance;Narendra Modi;Interest rate;India |
ny0155423 | [
"sports",
"othersports"
] | 2008/01/25 | At X Games, One-Upmanship Is a Trend in High Places | ASPEN, Colo. — Four years ago, the snowboarder Travis Rice was riding in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains when he accidentally invented the double cork, one of the more progressive and talked-about tricks in snowboarding recently. Rice was attempting a frontside 900 — two and a half rotations — and became too corked, or off-axis, while soaring 90 feet through the air at a place called the Pyramid Gap. Rice landed an “extremely sketchy version of the double cork,” he said. As it happened, Rice had furthered the progression of snowboarding tricks by chance. But most often tricks evolve out of necessity, as riders are constantly trying to outdo one another in what amounts to the sport’s equivalent of a cold war arms race. “It’s a game of one-upmanship,” said Mike Jankowski, freestyle coach for the United States snowboard team. “It’s been this way for years and years in snowboarding.” The same is true in freeskiing, in which skiers pull tricks on some of the same terrain as snowboarders. Often next-generation tricks are pioneered on large, straight jumps that launch riders dozens of feet through the air. At the Winter X Games this year, which take place this week at Buttermilk Mountain in Aspen, there will be a massive jump for a new event in skiing and snowboarding called big air. Skiers, who compete Friday, and snowboarders, who compete Saturday, will face off in a head-to-head format with their best moves while soaring from a 65-foot jump. Winners will be determined by voting from a combination of judges and fans. The better moves could eventually make their way into a halfpipe routine and, in the case of snowboarding, be part of a winning run at the Olympics in 2010. “Tricks are definitely being progressed almost on a daily basis,” said Steve Fisher, who won gold in halfpipe at the X Games in 2007. “There’s always a drive to do the next 180 or a double cork, or something like that. And the double cork is really big off the straight jumps right now.” Although no one has performed the double cork, an off-axis spin, in a halfpipe, “that is probably going to be the next step,” Fisher said. Kevin Pearce, who will compete in big air and halfpipe at the X Games, said, “For me it’s hard to learn new tricks in the half, especially now that the level is so high for the tricks that you have to be learning.” Pearce added: “I think it’s a lot easier on the jumps because if you fall, it’s not as big of a consequence. I’ve definitely learned a lot of tricks on jumps and been like, ‘Oh, I could try that in the halfpipe.’ ” For snowboard big air, Pearce has been working on a cab 1260, in which he takes off backward, or switch-stance, and spins three and a half rotations before landing. But days before the X Games, he had not yet learned the double cork. Two years after Rice first landed the move, he unveiled the double cork in competition, winning two events. For a time it was the most extreme trick in snowboarding. Although there are still many riders who cannot land one, by 2007 the double cork had been surpassed. In the best trick event — a precursor to big air — at the X Games last year, Rice settled for silver when Andreas Wiig landed a frontside 1080-degree spin (three rotations) to win gold. But in the meantime, Rice has raised the stakes. At the Icer Air event in San Francisco in November, he landed the winning run with a double backside rodeo 1080-spin, spinning while inverted. “It’s a heavy trick,” Rice said. In skiing, tricks often progress according to the same principles as snowboarding. “Somebody will get the guts to try a new trick and other people will see that it’s possible,” the freeskier Peter Olenick said. “Then they’ll try it and figure out how they can do it or they can do it better.” Two years ago, Jon Olsson pioneered double flips — off-axis double back flips — on large jumps. Last year, Olenick transferred double flips to halfpipe, calling his version the whiskey flip, which helped him win bronze in the event at the X Games. “I’m sure this year there’s going to be a bunch of people doing the one I did last year or trying new ones,” Olenick said. “We all just kind of feed off each other.” For Olsson, a progressive freeskier who has won eight X Games medals and will compete in big air, the challenge is to remain ahead of the pack. “I spend half a year on a new trick, while someone watches a video and sees, ‘Oh that’s possible; I’ll go out and learn it,’ ” he said. “They’ll learn it in a week.” Olsson has learned new variations of double flips for big air this year, but, he said, “people are catching up fast.” Some skiers have landed 1660-degree spins (four and a half rotations), although without the necessary stylish grab to win a competition. But Olsson believes that the day is not far off when the trick will be performed with flair. “Two years ago I would have said a double flip with a cool grab would be impossible,” Olsson said. “But things progress so fast. One year you think something is impossible and the next year everyone is doing it.” | X Games;Snowboarding;Skiing;Aspen (Colo) |
ny0031610 | [
"sports"
] | 2013/06/15 | A Precarious Olympic Bid for Istanbul | ISTANBUL — There were hundreds of pairs of swim goggles for sale in the heart of Istanbul this past week, but while the goggles gave the bustling streets a certain sporty air, this was not good news at last for the city’s Olympic bid. The goggles were being snapped up for protection against the possibility of more tear gas in Taksim Square and the adjoining Gezi Park as the standoff between protesters and the Turkish police continued. Other gear for sale in the zone included plastic construction helmets, gas masks, surgical masks and all manner of souvenirs, like figurines of Turkey’s founder, Kemal Ataturk, and Che Guevara and Occupy Taksim T-shirts. The mood was unexpectedly upbeat on Thursday. There was an ad hoc evening piano concert in the square, and the only serious smoke was from roasting chestnuts and kebabs. But the timing of all this has hardly been a Turkish delight for those who hope Istanbul’s fifth bid for the Olympic Games will finally be the winning bid. Tokyo and Madrid are the other candidates. “It is potentially a pity, since my impression, from what I hear, is that the 2020 race may be Istanbul’s to lose,” said Dick Pound, the longtime International Olympic Committee member from Canada, in an e-mail message. Istanbul, if stable, is indeed potential catnip to the I.O.C. It is new and symbolic Olympic territory, a historic and contemporary bridge between Asia and Europe with a largely Muslim nation and a moderately Islamist government, challenging Turkey’s secular traditions. Pound is not yet picking his favorite publicly, but the I.O.C. will do just that on Sept. 7 when it selects the 2020 host city by secret ballot in Buenos Aires. The vote is still nearly three months away, which means there is still time for Istanbul to put some meaningful space between the past week’s violent clashes in Taksim Square and the decision. As Pound rightly points out, “We might have the same concerns in any country that hosts the G-8 or G-20 conferences, and the seemingly mandatory riots.” But as Pound also points out, “the Western phobia about Islamic countries and ‘stability’ — however defined — makes it much worse.” But damage has clearly been done already. “I believe in the young people of Turkey; I believe so much,” Hasan Arat, the chairman of Istanbul’s bidding committee, said in a telephone interview from Lausanne, Switzerland. “We will be stronger than before after these things finish with the peaceful solution.” That naturally remains debatable. But the situation does indeed need to be resolved — presumably peacefully — if the I.O.C. is not to lose much more faith in the judgment of Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the country’s political leadership. “It’s going to be quite a roller-coaster ride for everybody involved in the bid up until September,” said Michael Payne, the former I.O.C. marketing director who is now a consultant and, on occasion, an informal bid adviser. Pound said, “I agree that September is some time in the future, but there will have to be some acceptable resolution of the situation that involves engaging with those who are not simply visiting anarchists.” A visit to Gezi Park and its hundreds of tents made the breadth of the movement clear. There was everything from tap-dancing to card-playing under the trees on Thursday; even people browsing through a uniquely independent bookstore that had been set up under a canopy with cinder blocks and planks providing the bookshelves. There was a range of ages and socioeconomic classes in evidence. Some of the park’s occupants on Thursday looked like they might actually spend their lives in tents; others looked like they might be more at home in the tented camps of southern Africa, sundowners and dinner jackets de rigueur. Image On Monday, protesters were gathered at Gezi Park. Credit Thanassis Stavrakis/Associated Press But what was clear, in conversations behind the smoldering truck tires and the barricades of overturned cars, is that this will now be a very tricky situation to defuse and forget. The Olympics are hardly at the forefront of the debate, with the focus, above all, on preserving the park, a rare stretch of green in central Istanbul, from redevelopment. “We don’t care about Olympics too much; we just want our freedom,” said one 21-year-old university student who declined to give his name for fear of reprisal from the government. “We want to save the environment; we want to save the green,” he continued. “They are destroying everything around the city, not only here in this park in Istanbul. All Turkey.” Asked if he was aware these protests could negatively affect the city’s Olympic bid, the student nodded. “Of course we are concerned about that, but we don’t harm anybody,” he said, gesturing to his friend. “We don’t even harm the police. We just sit here and hope this place is going to be saved for two years, three years maybe. This is our Central Park. “If they give the Olympics to Istanbul, it’s good of course for us, but I don’t think they will give it to Istanbul. Because there is really heavy traffic in Istanbul, and we can’t even handle that. How can we do it in Olympics?” The traffic is indeed brutal in this city by the Bosporus. The combined budget of $19 billion for Olympic costs and the city’s own infrastructure projects looks a bit daunting, too. But logistical challenges at this stage must be starting to look like child’s play to the bid leadership compared with the sociopolitical challenges that the Taksim Square demonstrations have laid bare. Arat, the bid leader, a former professional basketball player turned businessman, said that he was concerned by the situation but that there was a positive side to the protests. He plans to explain that when he and the rest of the Istanbul bid team (politicians not present) make their presentation along with the Tokyo and Madrid groups to more than 200 national Olympic committees on Saturday in Lausanne. “Yes, I’m worried,” Arat said of the protest’s repercussions. “But if we explain well how this thing starts and for what reason it starts, then people can appreciate that as well. It’s very good that your country’s young people are caring about their country and environmental issues, and I’m proud of them, very proud of them, honestly speaking, because when they care about their country, they care about their future.” Arat said he was not referring to those violent protesters he believed had corrupted the spirit of the movement. “Not the other people who are trying to hijack these fantastic feelings,” he said. Lower-key until now, this 2020 vote has become suddenly much more intriguing. If Turkey remains in an unsettled state, the I.O.C. will once again have to decide between a riskier choice that could generate societal change and safer options in Madrid and, above all, Tokyo that would reward stability. That may be a shade too simplistic. Madrid, as Spain’s capital, represents a nation that is struggling economically. It also has a reputation — deserved or undeserved — as a paradise for sports doping. Spain could use a little societal change about now, too, and its government made a concerted attempt to address potential I.O.C. concerns by passing a new anti-doping law this past week. As for Tokyo, it represents the latest Japanese renaissance, this one after the huge earthquake and tsunami that devastated parts of the country’s east coast in March 2011. The Tokyo bid has not played that card. Nor does it plan to do so, but there clearly would be a greater mission to bringing the Games back to Tokyo, too. They were staged there in 1964 and were staged in Spain in Barcelona, home city of the former I.O.C. president Juan Antonio Samaranch, in 1992. Therein lies one of Istanbul’s big advantages. Turkey has never staged the Olympics, and Istanbul, with nearly 14 million inhabitants, is the largest city in Europe (or at least partly in Europe). Unlike Madrid and Tokyo, it has a fast-growing economy. The Games also have not been staged in a country with a Muslim majority. But all that catnip may not be sufficient if Erdogan remains tone deaf and something very nasty happens in Gezi Park. It was brimming with youthful enthusiasm on Thursday, which also made it feel like the sort of place that could break your heart. “Be careful, get a helmet,” the 21-year-old student suggested as we parted ways near a pile of rubble. “Maybe the police come tonight.” | 2020 Summer Olympics;Istanbul;Taksim Square Istanbul Turkey;Madrid;Tokyo;Turkey;International Olympic Committee |
ny0256100 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2011/08/18 | Diamondbacks Have Used New Attitude and New Bullpen to Lead N.L. West | PHILADELPHIA — With two out in the ninth inning Tuesday night, Gerardo Parra broke for second on a stolen-base attempt for the Arizona Diamondbacks . From his seat in the third-base dugout, Ian Kennedy distinctly heard Ryan Howard, the Philadelphia Phillies’ first baseman, shout, “Runner!” to alert the other fielders. Kennedy was startled. Just moments before, more than 45,000 people at Citizens Bank Park had been standing and stomping as Roy Halladay, the best pitcher in the league, tried to finish his latest masterpiece. But the Diamondbacks had wrested the lead, silencing the caldron in South Philly. It was eerie, Kennedy said, to see such a lively atmosphere turn so suddenly, emphatically, dead. “We’re not scared of anybody,” said Justin Upton, the Diamondbacks’ right fielder, who started the rally and leads the National League in total bases entering Wednesday. “I don’t think we’ve backed down from one team this year. The last few years, we haven’t won a big game. We always lost the close games. We just didn’t have any fight, it didn’t seem. But this is a different team, different character to it.” In his first full season managing the Diamondbacks, Kirk Gibson has imparted a grinder’s mentality to a team that shuffled to 97 losses last season. The Diamondbacks have a two-and-a-half-game edge over the San Francisco Giants in the National League West , and their 35 comeback victories led the majors. It is a swift turnaround for a team that made a miserable first impression last season on its new general manager, Kevin Towers. The Diamondbacks he inherited, Towers said this spring, carried themselves like losers. Gibson vowed change, and when he recruited the free-agent closer J. J. Putz, he promised to improve the culture and win. “We play the game the way they used to play the game,” said Putz, who grew up in Michigan watching Gibson play for the Detroit Tigers. “We’re really starting to take the mold of our coaching staff.” By the end of spring training, Upton said, players were smashing bats on the dugout rack and flinging helmets after bad at-bats. Kennedy said he did not know if the team would be better, but he knew things would be different. Part of it was the fire of Gibson and his coaches, who challenge each other in the weight room. Their competitiveness, Kennedy said, was bound to trickle down. But there is a more tangible reason the team is so much better. “We don’t have the same team as we did last year,” Kennedy said. “The major difference is having J. J. and David Hernandez at the end of our bullpen.” Towers tackled two problems at once last winter by trading third baseman Mark Reynolds to Baltimore in a deal for Hernandez. The Diamondbacks set a major league record for strikeouts last season, with Reynolds leading the majors for the third season in a row. The Diamondbacks have not missed Reynolds’s power — they lead the league in extra-base hits — and Hernandez has been dominant. Hernandez has held opponents to a .169 average and earned seven saves while Putz was on the disabled list in July. Putz has 30 saves, regaining the form that once made him so enticing to the Mets. The Diamondbacks’ bullpen has a 3.77 earned run average , nearly two runs better than last season’s 5.74. Kennedy has been among its biggest beneficiaries. He is 15-3, winning his last seven starts despite only once working more than seven innings. He struggled to explain his improvement, mainly because he has not been much better than last season, when he was 9-10 but very unlucky. Kennedy actually had a better E.R.A. in his no-decisions than he did in his victories last season, meaning erratic run support and woeful relief cost him dearly. “If you look at this year and last year, I really can’t tell you there’s much different,” said Kennedy, a former Yankee who was dealt in the Curtis Granderson trade. “I know the wins come from our bullpen, really. I feel very comfortable handing the ball over, if I go seven, to David and J. J. Just like back in New York, with Mariano, if you have just one setup guy, it makes the game so much shorter.” Daniel Hudson, Joe Saunders and Josh Collmenter have been solid behind Kennedy, and while the hitters still strike out a lot, they no longer lead the league in whiffs. There is power all through the lineup — the rookie Paul Goldschmidt ripped a two-run homer off Cliff Lee in a 9-2 loss on Wednesday — and the well-rounded Upton could be a contender for the N.L. Most Valuable Player award. Upton, who turns 24 next week , was part of the 2007 Diamondbacks team that reached the N.L. Championship Series despite being outscored that season. He said the 2007 success led to a “false arrogance” that has been eliminated under Gibson, who credited Upton with maturing. In a game against Houston last week, Upton jawed with the plate umpire, C. B. Bucknor, after his at-bat in the third inning. Soon Arizona was trailing, 7-1, and Gibson gave Upton permission to unload on Bucknor. It was a test. “I told him, ‘If you want to blow it out, go ahead,’ ” Gibson said. “We were getting our butt kicked. I said: ‘Go out there, just make sure you don’t get any more than today; don’t get an extra game. Or, you can stick around, maybe you’ll win the game for us.’ And he did.” Upton directed his anger at the Astros, not Bucknor, doubling in two runs, bashing a two-run home run and lifting the Diamondbacks to an 11-9 victory . The team rose to first place the next day, and has been there ever since. “That wasn’t my choice — that was his choice,” Gibson said. “He’s coming along.” So are the Diamondbacks, who could meet the Phillies again in October. | Baseball;Arizona Diamondbacks;National League;Gibson Kirk;Upton Justin (1987- ) |
ny0249756 | [
"sports",
"football"
] | 2011/02/05 | Super Bowl — Goodell’s Address Dominated by Labor Issue | DALLAS — The N.F.L. and the players union will hold three negotiating sessions in the next week starting Saturday with one month to go before their collective bargaining agreement expires. During his annual state of the league address Friday, Commissioner Roger Goodell reiterated the familiar talking points from the last 18 months, defending management’s push for an 18-game regular season and saying the revenue split with players had swung too far in the union’s favor. The deal expires on March 3. Goodell would not say definitively that owners would lock players out if that date passed without an agreement. But Jeff Pash, the lead negotiator for the owners, said the sides would have to make significant progress by then before they could extend the deadline. Goodell reiterated that he believed it would be more difficult to complete a new deal if the deadline passed, because the N.F.L. anticipates losing revenue from sponsors and season ticket holders. The Pittsburgh Steelers chairman emeritus Dan Rooney said he thought that the $9 billion the N.F.L. generates annually was enough to satisfy everyone. The New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft said Friday he believed a new deal could be reached in a week, and called it “criminal” if one was not completed. Pash said: “It’s time to stop the public events. It’s time to stop the pep rallies. It’s time to stop the Congressional visits. It’s time to stop the litigation. Tell the litigators to stay home. Tell the lobbyists to stay home. Tell the public relations spin doctors to stay home. Let’s get into negotiations and let’s spend as much time negotiating as we’ve spent litigating.” Questions about labor dominated the 45-minute news conference that served as a precursor to the first full negotiating session since Thanksgiving. Goodell and the union chief, DeMaurice Smith, have spoken regularly and smaller groups of officials have met, but the sides agreed to increase the frequency of meetings in coming weeks. Owners and union leaders are expected to meet for at least two hours Saturday at a Dallas hotel, amid an NFL Network report that union officials have discussed with player agents the possibility of having their clients boycott the scouting combine later this month or draft activities in April. The combine is a showcase for college players hoping to improve their draft stock by working out for — and more important, submitting to interviews by — coaches and general managers. The draft will be held as scheduled in April, even if there is no new labor deal by then. Goodell took issue with a contention made by Smith that the share of revenue going to players has gone down since the 2006 deal was struck. Players receive nearly 60 percent of revenue after owners receive a $1 billion cost credit for operating expenses, which is deducted from the revenue pool. “If you want to deal with facts, the president of the union, just in the last week, said that the players got a great deal in 2006,” Goodell said, referring to a statement by Kevin Mawae. “And that clearly is indicating that the pendulum has shifted too far in one direction. You want to make sure that it’s fair to the clubs. You want to make sure it’s fair to the players, but allow our great game to grow. Since 2006, we have not built a new stadium, and that is an issue for us. “This agreement needs to be addressed so we can make the kinds of investments that grow this game and make it great for our fans.” | Goodell Roger;Speeches and Statements;National Football League;Football |
ny0289492 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2016/01/20 | Yemen: Africans Cross Into Chaos | More than 92,000 people made the perilous sea crossing from the Horn of Africa to Yemen last year, one of the highest annual totals of the past decade, the United Nations refugee agency said Tuesday. The agency said two-thirds of the people arrived after March, when the conflict in Yemen began. Most were from Ethiopia or Somalia. A spokesman for the agency, Adrian Edwards said that “many new arrivals are misinformed about the severity of the conflict,” even though the agency has warned of the dangers in Yemen. Mr. Edwards said that 95 people died during the crossings last year and that 36 people had drowned already this year. Along with 2.5 million Yemenis displaced by the conflict, Yemen hosts 266,000 refugees. | Refugees,Internally Displaced People;Middle East and Africa Migrant Crisis,European Migrant Crisis;UN;Yemen;Africa;Ethiopia;Somalia |
ny0217604 | [
"sports",
"golf"
] | 2010/05/03 | Miyazato Wins and Salutes Ochoa in Her Final L.P.G.A. Event | Ai Miyazato was composed after winning her third L.P.G.A. Tour title of the season. She did not start to tear up until she began talking about Lorena Ochoa. Miyazato shot a six-under 67 on Sunday to win the Tres Marias Championship in Morelia, Mexico, but she was overshadowed by Ochoa, the tournament’s host, who played her last competitive round before retiring. “I want to say thanks to Lorena,” Miyazato said during the trophy ceremony. “I really appreciate what she did for the L.P.G.A. and what she did for her country here in Mexico.” “She is one of my best friends,” Miyazato said, beginning to cry. “I’m going to miss her.” Miyazato, a 24-year-old Japanese star who swept the season-opening events in Thailand and Singapore, finished at 19-under 273. Stacy Lewis (66) was a stroke back, and Michelle Wie (68) was third at 17 under. Ochoa, the tournament winner three of the past four years, finished sixth. Ochoa has held the No. 1 ranking since April 2007 but she will lose it when the rankings come out Monday, with Jiyai Shin taking over. She spent her last round saying goodbye. Walking down the first fairway, she stopped to kiss two young boys who were carrying the scoreboard. Approaching the second green, she was embraced by her fellow player Christina Kim, who ran from the eighth green to hug her. As Ochoa walked up the 18th fairway, thousands began waving white handkerchiefs — as they do at a bullfight to salute the bullfighter — and shouted “Lo-re-na! EGER WINS CHAMPIONS EVENT David Eger shot a three-under 69 to win his first Champions Tour event since 2005, at the Mississippi Gulf Resort Classic in Saucier, Miss. | Ochoa Lorena;Golf;Ladies Professional Golf Assn;Mexico;Miyazato Ai |
ny0218759 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2010/05/07 | Benefits and Risks of a Suspect Who Likes to Talk | Days after his arrest, the Times Square bombing suspect has not been seen in court, though American law provides a right to be charged promptly before a magistrate, usually within 48 hours. But like a lot of legal rights, that one can be waived. Lawyers and former prosecutors said it could be some time — anywhere from a little while to a long while — before the suspect, Faisal Shahzad , who has been talking with prosecutors and investigators, stands in some baggy jail outfit before a judge. “It’s not the normal course of things, but it’s not unprecedented,” said Daniel C. Richman, a Columbia law professor who is a former federal prosecutor. He said there was no clear outer limit to how much time might pass before a court appearance, as long as Mr. Shahzad properly waived his legal rights. It may suit both sides to keep their momentum going, whether it is full cooperation, boasting or something in between. For prosecutors and investigative agents, the interrogation of a helpful defendant can be a kind of alchemy that works best roped off from the world. A court appearance can break the spell, said Anthony S. Barkow, a former federal terrorism prosecutor in Manhattan who is executive director of a criminal law center at New York University. “All kinds of wheels get set in motion that sometimes makes it difficult to continue the discussion” after an arraignment, Mr. Barkow said. Having a defense lawyer, for example, can be a major impediment. Federal prosecutors declined to comment Thursday on whether Mr. Shahzad has yet consulted a lawyer. He could waive that right as well. Accused people sometimes insist on going it alone for a variety of reasons, including vanity and hubris. Some Islamic prisoners who view themselves as political captives have spurned American lawyers. From the prosecution’s vantage point, a defense lawyer can be a double-edged sword. The presence of a lawyer can limit later claims that a defendant was duped by interrogators, mentally unstable or coerced into saying something false. But on the other hand, a defense lawyer can get in the way. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, one of the staple arguments in the debate about what legal system to use for terrorism prosecutions has been whether the right to counsel may be a luxury the country cannot afford during investigations like the one now under way. The questioning of Mr. Shahzad certainly has both law enforcement and national security aspects. Investigators want to know not only who else might be prosecuted for a role in the failed attack, but also how to try to stop the next one, and where military or intelligence operations might be most useful. “For the government to be able to get at the person directly, without counsel interposed, is something they want,” said Ramzi Kassem, a lawyer for terrorism suspects who is a professor at the City University of New York School of Law in Queens. There are some legal risks in a delay in getting the case into court. Mr. Barkow, the former terrorism prosecutor, said investigators would be careful to document that Mr. Shahzad was acting voluntarily in all his dealings with them, perhaps by signing statements or taping his interviews. “If he waived his rights and that can be demonstrated,” Mr. Barkow said, “there’s really not much of a legal risk” in delaying a court appearance. But other lawyers said that could be a big if. Over time, defendants have a way of changing their minds when confronted with the reality of long prison terms and former allies turned enemies. If Mr. Shahzad’s case travels that route, this period of isolation could become a point of contention, said Professor Richman of Columbia. Should Mr. Shahzad later decide to disavow what he is saying now, he could claim he was mistreated or manipulated while out of reach of the courts. The rule requiring prompt arraignments is rooted in part on an American aversion to people vanishing into secret interrogations. “The longer the period of time is,” Mr. Richman said, “the more plausible will be a claim down the road that any waiver of his rights was not fully voluntary.” James A. Cohen, a criminal law professor at Fordham Law School, said that in the usual case a defendant generally makes it to court quickly. The Times Square case is not the usual case. The exceptions can be for any number of reasons. Informers sometimes stay out of court to keep their legal troubles from new targets of their testimony. Mobsters who switch sides sometimes see secrecy as a way to stay alive. Professor Cohen said Mr. Shahzad’s government handlers are probably focused right now on keeping him talking. “It could be weeks,” he said. “It depends upon the quality of the information he is supplying and how easy or hard it is to confirm.” | Shahzad Faisal;Terrorism;Times Square and 42nd Street (NYC);Bombs and Explosives |
ny0045986 | [
"us"
] | 2014/02/15 | Guantánamo Bay Prosecutors Accuse Detainee of Conspiracy | WASHINGTON — Prosecutors for the military commission trials at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, disclosed in a document posted Friday that they had added a charge of conspiracy against an Iraqi detainee, potentially setting up a test of whether Congress has the power to make conspiracy a prosecutable offense in a war-crimes tribunal despite its not being recognized as an international war crime. The detainee, Abd al Hadi al Iraqi, had already been facing a series of terrorism-related charges. But the addition of the conspiracy offense gives his case a larger significance, because the legitimacy of using the tribunals to bring that charge has been the subject of heated debate. Establishing such legitimacy could help make the commissions more useful in future terrorism cases. Last year, a panel on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out the conviction of a detainee for conspiracy on the grounds that the charge was not recognized under the international laws of war. The Obama administration has appealed , but if the ruling stands, it sharply undermines the utility of tribunals — as opposed to civilian courts — to sentence people to prison who participated in terrorist groups but are not personally linked to any specific attack. But the case that is before the appeals court concerned conduct before 2006, when Congress enacted the first version of the Military Commissions Act. Both that law and a 2009 revision say that commissions have jurisdiction to prosecute conspiracy, raising the question of whether conduct after 2006 may legitimately lead to conspiracy charges before a tribunal. After his capture in late 2006 or early 2007, Mr. Al Iraqi was held by the Central Intelligence Agency before his transfer to military custody in April 2007 , making him among the last detainees to arrive at Guantánamo. He is accused of being a high-level emissary from Al Qaeda to terrorists in Iraq . | Detainees;Terrorism;War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity;Guantanamo Bay;Barack Obama;CIA;Abdul Hadi al- Iraqi |
ny0284683 | [
"science"
] | 2016/09/20 | Human Remains Found at Ancient Roman-Era Shipwreck | Underwater archaeologists have found a 2,000-year-old skeleton belonging to a victim of the famed Antikythera shipwreck from ancient Roman times. The bones are the latest prize from a treasure trove that has yielded bronze statues, marble sculptures and, most famously, the Antikythera mechanism , a clocklike device thought to be the world’s oldest analog computer. Since its discovery in 1900 by sponge divers, the Antikythera shipwreck has provided archaeologists with a window into the trading practices and culture of the ancient Mediterranean by the recovery of jewelry and trinkets. Now, if the researchers can collect genetic information from the human remains, they will gain their best insight yet into the lives of the people who perished on the vessel in 65 B.C. “We knew this was the find of the decade in terms of underwater archaeology,” said Brendan Foley , a research specialist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute who helped uncover the bones . “We’re hoping that by the end of this year we’ll have the first DNA results from an ancient shipwreck victim.” Image Skeletal remains from the Antikythera Shipwreck buried in the sand. Credit Brett Seymour/EUA-WHOI, via Argo Dr. Foley and his colleagues discovered the remains while excavating the site off the coast of the Greek island Antikythera in late August. One of his fellow divers had alerted him to some long bones he had found some 160 feet below. When Dr. Foley swam over and looked, he thought: “Wow! Oh my god, there’s a whole skeleton here.” The long bones turned out to be the ulna and radius of a forearm. Buried in the sand were also a skull, an upper jaw with some teeth, some ribs and two femurs. They called in Hannes Schroeder , an ancient DNA researcher from the Natural History Museum of Denmark, to help determine whether they could extract genetic information from the bones. Microbes, oxygen and salt water at the bottom of the sea can be detrimental to the survival of ancient DNA, he said. But he is optimistic that they can retrieve some genetic material because the team recovered something called the petrous portion of the temporal bone, which is the hard part behind the ear. Ancient DNA recovered from this part of the skull tends to be better preserved than samples from any other body part, including the teeth. It’s not the first time that researchers have uncovered human remains from the site. In 1976 Jacques Cousteau had found a few bones as well, but he did not have the technology needed to genetically test them. Dr. Schroeder said the reason the team had not done genetic testing on the bones found by Mr. Cousteau is because they could not find the specimens. But he added that even if they had known where the remnants were, testing probably would not have been useful because they most likely would have been contaminated by now. “If we analyze those remains we are more likely to pick up DNA from the curators or archaeologists rather than the remains of the ancient individual,” he said. The most recently found bones are much better preserved, he said, and they could provide information about where the individual came from as well as insight into facial features and diet. The plans are to begin genetic tests as soon as the team receives permission from Greek authorities. “We can’t really get closer to the story of these people than by looking at their actual remains,” he said. “It helps us reconstruct his or her identity and gives us insight into what kind of people undertook this voyage 2,000 years ago.” | Skeleton;Genetics and Heredity;Shipwrecks;Archaeology,Anthropology;DNA;Bone |
ny0109529 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2012/05/09 | Gay on TV: It’s All in the Family | On “Glee” this spring, a transgender character named Unique is competing in a sing-off. On “Grey’s Anatomy,” Arizona and Callie are adjusting to married life, having been pronounced “wife and wife” last year. On “Modern Family,” the nation’s most popular television show , Cameron and his partner Mitchell are trying to adopt a second child. What’s missing? The outrage. The cultural battlefield of television has changed markedly since the 1990s, when conservative groups and religious figures objected to Ellen DeGeneres coming out and “Will & Grace” coming on. Today, it’s rare to hear a complaint about shows like “Modern Family” or the drama “Smash,” which has five openly gay characters, or the sitcom “Happy Endings,” which, against stereotype, has a husky and lazy gay male character . To the contrary. Mitt Romney is known to be a fan of “Modern Family,” and a Catholic group gave it a media award this month . Next week in New York the major networks will announce a slate of new shows, including a sitcom on NBC that features a gay couple and their surrogate. The title: “The New Normal.” At a time when gay rights are re-emerging as an election year issue — in part because of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. ’s stated support for gay marriage on Sunday — activists and academics say that depictions of gay characters on television play a big role in making viewers more comfortable with their gay, lesbian and transgender neighbors. “TV and movie representation matters,” said Edward Schiappa, a professor of communication studies at the University of Minnesota . In five separate studies, Mr. Schiappa and his colleagues have found that the presence of gay characters on television programs decreases prejudices among viewers of the programs. “These attitude changes are not huge — they don’t change bigots into saints. But they can snowball,” Mr. Schiappa said. Mr. Biden apparently agrees. He said on Sunday that “Will & Grace,” which ran from 1998 to 2006, “probably did more to educate the American public than almost anything anybody’s ever done so far.” When that sitcom began on NBC, it was seen as controversial. Several conservative groups claimed that it and shows like it would make homosexuality seem desirable. Some groups said the same about “Ellen,” the ABC sitcom starring Ellen DeGeneres, who came out as a lesbian on the show and in real life in 1997. Ms. DeGeneres threatened to quit a year later when ABC preceded an “Ellen” episode that showed her jokingly kissing a friend with a message that warned, “Due to adult content, parental discretion is advised.” That warning would not appear today, as complaints about gay characters on shows like “Modern Family” and “Glee” barely ever bubble to the surface. When a group called One Million Moms tried to have Ms. DeGeneres fired this year by J.C. Penney , which had hired her to star in TV commercials, the company’s chief executive defended her and the group gave up. When the Fox News host Bill O’Reilly briefly made a fuss about the Unique character on “Glee” last month, criticizing the show for “shock value,” his comments gained little notice. (“Glee” is broadcast on Fox , whose parent company, News Corporation , also owns Fox News). Still, when one of Mr. O’Reilly’s guests complained last fall when Chaz Bono became the first openly transgender contestant on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars,” Mr. O’Reilly supported Mr. Bono, who lasted six weeks on the show. Upon being voted off, he said he had participated in part because if there had been “somebody like me on TV when I was growing up, my whole life would have been different.” Perhaps wary of being perceived as moralizing, producers and writers in Hollywood — a predominately liberal town — say that the viewer support of gay, lesbian and transgender characters is just a happy byproduct of their storytelling. “I think I would be lying if I said that I didn’t expect, at some point, for some narrow-minded group of people to try to create some publicity” around “Glee” or “Modern Family,” said Dana Walden, the chairwoman of 20th Century Fox Television, which produces both shows. “The bottom line is that people embrace these characters completely.” Steven Levitan, a co-creator of “Modern Family,” said he thought that when the show started, the inclusion of Cameron and Mitchell would “limit our success a bit, because it will perhaps alienate a certain segment of the population.” “In fact,” he said, “it’s turned out to be quite the opposite,” a point he reiterated last fall when the series won its second Emmy Award for best comedy. Media watchdogs like the Parents Television Council , one of the most active conservative media groups, do occasionally speak out against TV programming; but a spokeswoman for the council said it did not distinguish between gay and straight content. Of the shows with gay plot lines, “Glee” has been the most scrutinized: Dan Gainor, a representative of another prominent group, the Media Research Center , said it “merely pretends to be a show for young people” while actually serving as an “assault on traditional values and morality.” His group, though, focuses more on purported liberal bias in the news media than on prime-time programming. While campaigns against shows with gay characters are now rare, the pressure on networks to include them has grown. There was a fan outcry , for example, when the gay couple on “Modern Family” did not kiss in the sitcom’s first season. The producers insisted that the wait was intentional, and the second season included a story line about Mitchell’s disdain for public displays of affection, as well as many kisses between the characters. In an interview Mr. Levitan, who used to be an anchorman in Madison , Wis., cited a newsroom saying: “Don’t tell me how this law is affecting two million people, show me one family that it’s affecting and it’ll be more powerful.” “I have to think that it’s the same case here,” he said. Some producers say they have marveled at how fast the opinions of television viewers have changed, even as gay rights activists have marveled at how voters across the country have shifted on gay marriage. “What this is about, really, is how far America has come, not how far television has come,” said Christopher Lloyd, a co-creator of “Modern Family.” Shonda Rhimes , the “Grey’s Anatomy” producer, recalled having to “go to the mattresses with broadcast standards and practices” at ABC in 2006 to insist on preserving a steamy shower sequence with three female doctors. That sequence was just a fantasy in the mind of one of the male characters — but now six years later, in the show’s version of reality, two female doctors are married. “Nobody even blinked” at the relationship, Ms. Rhimes said. The only outcry she recalled came when one of the doctors, Arizona, flirted with a man. “It was from lesbians who said, ‘How dare she sleep with a man!’ ” | Homosexuality;TV;Same-Sex Marriage,Gay Marriage;Family;Twentieth Century Fox;2012 Presidential Election |
ny0227334 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2010/10/14 | Iran: Five to Be Tried for Spying | Iranian prosecutors said Wednesday that they would put five people on trial for espionage, accusing them of passing secrets about the country’s space program, economy and defense systems to unspecified enemies of the nation. “The cases of these five spies will be referred to the judiciary soon,” the prosecutor general, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, said in remarks reported by the semiofficial Fars news agency. Although he did not identify the enemies to whom the defendants are accused of passing information, Iran often uses the word to refer to the United States and Israel. Iran said last week that several people had been arrested on suspicion of spying on its nuclear program, but it was not clear whether the five defendants who were cited on Wednesday were the same suspects. Espionage can be punishable by execution in Iran. | Iran;Espionage |
ny0276558 | [
"technology"
] | 2016/02/13 | Start-Up Delivery Services Run Into Reality | Sometimes reality is a cruel thing. The Mets will always break your heart. It is always cold in New England in February. And you will always discover your dog has had an accident overnight on the morning you are late for work. A class of tech start-ups that specialize in food delivery is also being reminded of one of life’s hard truths: Trying to duplicate what local pizza shops have been doing for decades — usually for free — is not necessarily innovative. Investors put more than $730 million on companies like DoorDash, Instacart and Postmates from early 2014 through the first half of 2015, according to data from CB Insights, a venture capital analytics firm. The hope was that once these companies became big enough, they’d be very profitable. But as delivery start-ups like Kozmo.com and Webvan discovered in the dot-com boom, getting to that point is not easy. For starters, you have to pay for drivers. Then you have to cut deals with restaurants and manage orders from customers. And you have to find lots of people willing to pay a premium for that food delivery. Will this new generation be a cautionary tale for the next generation of food delivery start-ups? Perhaps not. But turning this tricky business into a profitable enterprise is proving, yet again, to be elusive. | Startup;Delivery Services;DoorDash;Instacart;Postmates |
ny0147323 | [
"us"
] | 2008/07/01 | In Turnaround, Louisiana Governor Vetoes Bill Doubling Lawmakers’ Pay | BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Gov. Bobby Jindal vetoed a bill on Monday that would have doubled legislators’ salaries, reversing his position and breaking a promise to lawmakers that he would stay out of the matter. The raise had infuriated voters, leading some to file recall petitions against Mr. Jindal and two of his top allies in the Legislature. Mr. Jindal, a Republican, said he should not have promised not to intervene. “Today I am correcting my mistake,” he said. The announcement came two weeks after the Legislature approved the raise. Mr. Jindal said at the time that he disapproved of the raise but that he would allow it to become law. Mr. Jindal became a target for stinging attacks, with some critics pointing out that he had promised in his campaign last year to prohibit lawmakers from approving such a raise for themselves. On Monday, Mr. Jindal said he hoped that lawmakers would continue to support his proposals and work with him. “They’ve got a right to be angry with me,” he said. “I made a mistake in telling them I’d stay out of it.” Mr. Jindal made the surprise announcement at a news conference that had been scheduled to discuss state budget matters. The House speaker, Jim Tucker, Republican of Terrytown, later released a brief statement that said, “I respect Governor Jindal’s veto of Senate Bill 672.” Mr. Tucker defended the raise as an effort to help lower-income people serve in the House or Senate. The move on Monday led organizers of the recall drive to drop their efforts against Mr. Jindal, Mr. Tucker and Representative Hunter V. Greene, Republican of Baton Rouge. The bill would have raised lawmakers’ annual base pay to $37,500 from $16,800. It would have made Louisiana legislators the highest paid in the South and the 14th-highest paid in the country, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. | Jindal Bobby;Wages and Salaries;Louisiana |
ny0089643 | [
"business"
] | 2015/09/26 | E.P.A. to Bolster Testing Because of Volkswagen Scandal | Government regulators said Friday that they planned to step up the testing requirements of cars in the wake of the Volkswagen scandal. The Environmental Protection Agency, which disclosed last week that it had learned that Volkswagen diesel cars had equipment to evade smog-testing standards, said it had sent a letter to manufacturers of gasoline and diesel cars saying that regulators would be looking for so-called defeat devices in all vehicles. The agency said Volkswagen had used a device programmed to fool emissions testers into thinking that the car was emitting much less pollution than it was during regular driving. “Manufacturers should expect that this additional testing may add time to the confirmatory test process,” the E.P.A. wrote in its brief letter . The agency said that the new procedures would start immediately and that the California Air Resources Board and Canada’s environmental regulators were involved with the more stringent requirements. E.P.A. officials said they would not outline specifics of what the new tests will entail. “We are not going to tell them what these tests are, and they don’t need to know,” Chris Grundler, director of the agency’s office of transportation and air quality, said during a conference call with reporters. On Tuesday, Volkswagen said that 11 million of its diesel cars worldwide contained the software. The E.P.A. said that the deception allowed Volkswagen vehicles to spew as much as 40 times the pollution allowed under the Clean Air Act . The company has not yet issued a formal recall for the vehicles that were affected, and the E.P.A. said such notice would come from the manufacturer and not the E.P.A. itself. The agency said it was continuing its investigation. | Volkswagen;Cars;Vehicle Emissions;Fraud;EPA;Air pollution;Regulation and Deregulation |
ny0287124 | [
"business"
] | 2016/08/20 | Hampton Creek, Maker of Just Mayo, Is Said to Be Under Inquiry | Hampton Creek, a prominent start-up that is trying to bring tech industry panache to the world of mayonnaise, ranch dressing and other food products, has come under scrutiny by regulators for its business practices. The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened a preliminary inquiry into Hampton Creek, according to a person briefed on the situation who asked not to be named because it had not been announced publicly. The S.E.C. inquiry is a response to a recent report from Bloomberg News that described an organized effort by Hampton Creek to buy large quantities of its Just Mayo product — a mayonnaise that uses a plant-based ingredient instead of eggs — by sending undercover contractors into stores. Kevin J. Callahan, a spokesman for the S.E.C., declined to comment. Bloomberg earlier reported the S.E.C. inquiry. Hampton Creek’s chief executive, Joshua Tetrick, said he had heard from the S.E.C. about the informal inquiry but declined to give further details. Bloomberg’s report said the product buyback effort, which took place in 2014, made Just Mayo seem more popular than it was, not long before Hampton Creek raised $90 million from venture capitalists and other private investors. The basic details of the program were confirmed by a former Hampton Creek employee, who asked for anonymity because of confidentiality restrictions with his onetime employer. After the report, Mr. Tetrick wrote in a blog post that the mayonnaise shopping spree was part of a quality control program that had minimal impact on overall sales. The inquiry puts a cloud over Hampton Creek, which has described itself as the fastest-growing food company in the world. It has promised to tackle the food industry with the gusto of a technology start-up, using some of the same big data tools to do so. One of its goals is to identify healthy, plant-based ingredients that can substitute for common foods like eggs, with less of a negative impact on the environment. Hampton Creek, based in San Francisco, has been praised by the likes of Bill Gates ; received financial backing from prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors like Marc Benioff and Vinod Khosla; and succeeded in getting its products widely distributed at Walmart, Costco, Whole Foods and other retailers. The inquiry may be only the start of tougher questions facing Hampton Creek. The company is believed to be losing significant amounts of money. It is raising up to $220 million from investors, according to a Delaware filing provided by Equidate, which tracks private company shares. It’s not uncommon, of course, for start-ups to bleed red ink in their early days. But Hampton Creek, founded in 2011, faces some basic challenges with the manufacturing costs for its products. According to one former employee, in 2014 the company had negative gross margins of about 20 percent on Just Mayo, meaning that the raw cost to the company for every $1 it got in sales was about $1.20. Image Just Mayo products use a plant-based ingredient instead of eggs. Joshua Tetrick, the company’s chief executive, said Just Mayo planned to break even by the end of next year. The issue arises from Hampton Creek’s use of premium ingredients in its products without charging shoppers the often eye-popping prices attached to such food products. The vegetable oil used in Just Mayo, for example, does not come from genetically modified organism sources, which adds significant cost, according to the former employee. But on Walmart.com on Friday, a 30-ounce jar of Just Mayo was selling for $3.66 — 32 cents less than a jar of Hellmann’s mayonnaise of the same size. In an interview on Friday, Mr. Tetrick said the company planned to break even by the end of next year. “We are fortunate to be well capitalized,” he said, declining to disclose how much the company had in the bank. He added that some of Hampton Creek’s dressings, mayonnaise and food service cookie products were gross-margin-positive, meaning they generated more revenue than they cost to make. “We’re not trying to optimize at every turn, thinking, ‘What’s the margin?’” he said. “It’s about solving the bigger food problem. You know what we do about it? We attack it.” The company’s program to buy its own mayonnaise has raised eyebrows among retail analysts. Food makers typically do quality checks through every step of production until the product lands on grocery shelves. Kurt Jetta, chief executive of TABS Analytics, a research firm, said that while he had heard of companies buying their own products off retail shelves, in most of those cases, “it’s to jack up the sales numbers, not for quality assurance.” He also said paying retail prices to buy products for quality assurance made “zero financial sense.” When food companies want to move a product off a grocery shelf to replace it with a reformulated or newly packaged version or because it has passed its expiration date, they issue a credit to the store manager — and then only to cover the price the retailer paid, not the consumer price. Some food industry consultants, though, said it was not unheard-of for companies to buy their food products off shelves. Stericycle is a company that helps manufacturers with “audits” of their products for quality assurance purposes. “Manufacturers and retailers may need help with on-site resolution, including handling consumer complaints, product quality evaluation and much more, but they may not have the internal staff to handle those things quickly and efficiently,” said Kevin Pollack, vice president and general manager at Stericycle. Word of the program was mentioned briefly in a lawsuit against Hampton Creek filed this year on behalf of two former contractors for the company who were seeking unpaid wages. The contractors worked in stores in 2014 and 2015, representing Hampton Creek and handing out samples of Just Mayo to spread word of the product. But according to the lawsuit, Hampton Creek required the contractors to also “buy out shelves of Defendant’s products.” | Hampton Creek Foods;SEC;Mayonnaise |
ny0107150 | [
"sports",
"golf"
] | 2012/04/01 | On Eve of Masters, Woods Is Changed but Familiar | A book arrived in the mail for Tiger Woods , one promising insight into his upended life. Not “The Big Miss,” the work of pulp friction by his former swing coach Hank Haney, but “The Noticer,” a thin novel heavy on perspective. Jerry West, the Hall of Fame basketball player, sent the book after Woods’s serial adultery became headline fodder in late 2009. In an interview this year, West said he had included a note in which he expressed his concern for Woods’s well-being and his hope and belief that Woods would emerge from his personal crisis wiser and no less motivated to become the greatest golfer ever. After three years of standing in place in his pursuit of Jack Nicklaus’s record 18 major victories, Woods suddenly has a strong wind at his back. He comes into this week’s Masters, the first men’s major of 2012, fresh off his first official PGA Tour victory in two and a half years, at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Woods, a four-time Masters champion, has straightened out his driving and found his putting stroke. He is clearly a better golfer in 2012 than he was in 2010. But is he a different person? Two years ago, Woods arrived at the Masters after a four-month exile during which he dealt with the personal issues, and he was publicly chastised by the Augusta National Golf Club chairman, Billy Payne. In his opening address, Payne said, “I hope he now realizes that every kid he passes on the course wants his swing but would settle for his smile.” Payne added, “But certainly his future will never again be measured only by his performance against par, but measured by the sincerity of his efforts to change.” The thousand-yard stare is still there. Woods’s game face can still practically melt the iron in a competitor’s hands. The weekend of the Honda Classic, where Woods tied for second, his gallery included Lexi Thompson, 17, who last year became the youngest winner of an L.P.G.A. event. Asked what she had learned from watching Woods, Thompson said: “Just how focused he is. He didn’t let anything get to him. There were people screaming at him the whole time and it was like he didn’t even notice.” Woods’s poker-faced mask slipped when he was walking off a green and saw Thompson waving a Tiger towel that another fan had given her. “He did a double take,” she said. “He gave me this look like, ‘What are you doing here and why do you have that in your hands?’ It was pretty funny.” The Woods of old was a magician. Through sheer concentration, he could make the largest galleries in golf disappear. The new Woods is less aloof, more apt to try to make a connection. In the first round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational, he was grouped with Hunter Mahan and Ernie Els. The group’s standard-bearer that day was Jeff Danjou, who said he had been volunteering at the tournament for several years. “Tiger stopped to talk to me and the scorer, asked how we were doing,” Danjou said, adding, “He threw a couple of golf balls out to kids and acknowledged the crowd more than I had seen before.” On the eve of the World Golf Championship match-play event outside Tucson, Woods declined an invitation to the interview room but stood outside the clubhouse, just off the parking lot, and answered reporters’ questions for 10 minutes before his practice session. The last question came from a young woman who identified herself as a participant in the local First Tee program. “When I play a round and I have a bad shot, I tend to get frustrated,” she said. “So I was wondering, how do you get back into balance after a bad hole?” In his most expansive answer of the day, Woods said: “I think that’s a good thing you get frustrated. Because obviously you have expectations of what you can do, what you can accomplish. And I think that’s good. I would challenge you to try and channel that type of energy and that frustration into focus for the next one. There are times when, yeah, I get angry, and I get angry on purpose, to get my energy up, so that I will be focused for the next one more so than I was at a previous one.” The young woman hung on Woods’s every word. As he left the microphone stand, she held out a pin flag for him to sign. He walked right past her. At the Presidents Cup last year, Woods stopped to chat with his teammates when he ran into them at the hotel. That made an impression on Fred Couples, the United States captain, who had made Woods one of his discretionary picks. The Woods of old, he said, never left his zone, even after he left the course. “Tiger, to me, he’s a totally different person,” Couples said. “He’s got to be.” In “The Noticer,” the author, Andy Andrews, writes of being down and out and living under a pier when he is visited by a sage who helps him to see that a life characterized by happiness and abundance begins with his owning up to bad choices and decisions and adopting a grateful perspective. West said he wrote in his note to Woods, “Sometimes you have to fall, and fall hard, in order to gain the personal wisdom that Andy Andrews’s book speaks about.” Reached by telephone, Andrews expressed appreciation that West had passed his book on to Woods. “I think Jerry West had exactly the right idea,” he said. “He read the situation accurately. Tiger would have his defenses up in such a huge way. A lot of times, people have to come to these conclusions on their own. Jerry West knew he could not give Tiger a book with the title ‘How to Get Your Life in Order After a Disaster,’ but he could say, ‘Here’s a cool book I read that you might like.’ ” Andrews, who does not know Woods, said he had heard a radio interview in which Woods talked about mistakes he had made. The sage in “The Noticer,” Andrews said, would tell Woods he had made choices, not mistakes. “There’s a big difference,” Andrews said, adding: “It’s about living in the truth. Only then can there be a reset.” At his low point, when he was living under the pier, Andrews’s level of distrust was greater than the water level at high tide. When he met the man who transformed his life, Andrews said his first question was, “Are you going to rob me?” Woods’s brusque responses to questions about “The Big Miss” suggest he feels as if his inner circle had been robbed and his confidences snatched when Haney chose to write about their six-year partnership. “The Noticer” is another story. West says he has no idea how Woods felt about it. “I don’t know if Tiger received the book,” he said. “But if he did, I hope he read it.” | Golf;Woods Tiger;Masters Golf Tournament;West Jerry |
ny0222719 | [
"sports",
"ncaafootball"
] | 2010/11/11 | Cheating Charges Embroil Auburn and Newton - Leading Off | If we didn’t know any better, we might suspect the Southeastern Conference was getting jealous. It was falling behind in scandal and mayhem news. For a while there, Southern California was stealing all its thunder. While everyone fixated on the Reggie Bush fiasco, the SEC was left waving in the background, “Hey, the N.C.A.A. is looking into the recruiting hostesses at Tennessee!” Well, now it’s got something to really crow about: the prohibitive favorite for the Heisman Trophy is drawing allegations the way Lindsay Lohan draws paparazzi. Yes, that’s Auburn quarterback Cam Newton, accused of academic malfeasance before he transferred from Florida, and now ESPN.com’s Joe Schad reports others are claiming Newton was shopping himself around for a price when he chose Auburn. All kidding aside, it’s a mess . Auburn officials lashed out amid the storm on Tuesday, although as Kevin Scarbinsky writes in The Birmingham News , the college is going to have to look a lot harder to decide whether the allegations have merit. The SEC is taking its share of heat , too, considering two of its colleges are playing a starring role here. The next drama may move right to the Heisman voting, writes Andy Staples on SI.com . With Bush having been relieved of his, will people be eager to hand out another that might get returned? Should they give them out with postage-paid return boxes now? Michael Rosenberg of SI.com suggests an ankle tether. If you need a college football story with some redemptive qualities after reading all that, check out this article on the Oklahoma State recruit Hershel Sims , whose road to success passed through a horrific childhood of abuse. On a much lighter note, feel free to join in the widespread cackling over Derek Jeter’s winning a Gold Glove award at shortstop, which is slightly less egregious than Johnny Knoxville winning an Oscar for “Jackass 3D.” It highlights a ridiculous voting system, writes John Harper in The New York Daily News , that would be helped if the Gold Glove wasn’t treated like some lifetime achievement award, writes Matthew Leach on MLB.com . The Gold Gloves were, however, but a momentary diversion in the off-season obsession with free agents, which, as Tom Verducci writes on SI.com , should come with warning labels. The N.F.L. is considering affixing warning labels to offensive players, or maybe we just read that between the lines of the new memo the N.F.L. put out on brain-scrambling hits. The issue continues to draw some less-than-intelligent responses from players, including the Steelers’ Troy Polamalu’s idea to have players vote on discipline. Perhaps lost in the reverberations of those hits, the playoff races are starting to look like a Nascar pileup, writes Don Banks on SI.com , and Oakland’s stunning return to relevance, writes Clark Judge on CBSSports.com , has actually given the league a lift. While you’re still scratching your head over that, consider Jason Cole of Yahoo.com’s contention that the Cowboys’ collapse this season could affect the possibility of a lockout. Bizarre news stretches all the way down to high school football, where a Connecticut coach was suspended for using an opponent’s play sheet, and even middle school, where this video of an outrageous trick play has become a YouTube hit . Crazy stuff stretched into the N.B.A. and the N.H.L. on Tuesday night, with the Rangers’ Derek Boogaard breaking a 234-game goal-less drought with a stunningly pretty slap shot and the Indiana Pacers scoring 54 points in a quarter. And just in case your holiday shopping plans included sending everyone you know Cam Newton jerseys, we have a solution: the hideous Novak Djokovic T-shirt worn by his father at the United States Open is now available online . Happy shopping, for T-shirts or quarterbacks. Follow Leading Off on Twitter: twitter.com/zinsernyt | Football;College Athletics;Cheating;Auburn University;Southeastern Conference;Newton Cameron J;Jeter Derek |
ny0192336 | [
"sports",
"skiing"
] | 2009/02/21 | U.S. Ski Jumper Lindsey Van Wins First Women’s World Title | For 13 years, Lindsey Van has battled knee injuries and toiled in anonymity, struggling to help push her sport into the mainstream. So on Friday, when she was faced with shifting winds for her final jump at the first world championships for women’s ski jumping, she tried to take it all in stride. Van soared 97.5 meters (319.9 feet) on her second of two jumps to win the gold medal at the Nordic World Ski Championships in Liberec, Czech Republic. She was joined in unexpected triumph by Todd Lodwick, who won the Nordic combined event. At a competition normally dominated by Scandinavians, the national anthem for the United States was played twice in one day. “It feels totally amazing,” Van said during a conference call. “It’s hard to even think about what really happened.” Van, a 24-year-old from Park City, Utah, hoped her victory would help bring attention to women’s ski jumping’s effort to join the Olympic program. In 2006, the International Olympic Committee turned down the sport’s application for the 2010 Vancouver Games, saying that the sport had not developed enough. But Van and nine other athletes from around the world have filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of British Columbia to force the Vancouver Organizing Committee to include the sport. A hearing is scheduled for April 20. Ski jumping is the only winter Olympic sport that does not include both men and women. “I’m frustrated every day in this sport, with all the problems we’ve had,” Van said. “I’m trying to be optimistic about it, but it’s hard.” Van, who started jumping at age 7, has won 13 national jumping championships, but this was the first opportunity for women at the world championships. A total of 36 jumpers from 13 countries competed; countries were limited to four jumpers. Van earned a total of 243 points for her two jumps. Ulrike Graessler of Germany finished second, with 239, and Anette Sagen of Norway was third with 238.5. The other members of the United States team — Jessica Jerome, Alissa Johnson and Sarah Hendrickson — finished 6th, 20th and 29th. Van was fourth after her first jump. Snow and shifting winds made the conditions difficult; Van said she could not see much past the tips of her skis. When she landed, though, she got the adrenaline rush that has kept her in the sport. “You can make 100 bad jumps and one good one and you’re addicted,” she said. Van sustained a major knee injury last February, and it required five months of rehabilitation. She said she still felt the effects. Van said the sport was ready and that the field at the world championships would have been even stronger if countries had not been limited to four jumpers. “I think the sport is quite developed,” she said. “It is a young sport, so we have young jumpers. But it’s definitely ready.” | Ski Jumping;Skiing;Van Lindsey;International Olympic Committee;Olympic Games |
ny0108825 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2012/05/16 | Egypt: Deaths in Uprising Listed | A rights group on Tuesday released the most comprehensive list to date of the more than 800 civilians killed by security forces in the 18-day uprising that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak last year, saying that 30 were still unidentifiable. The report by the Arab Network for Human Rights Information said that most of the 841 killed in the protests were between 20 and 30 years old, and included 15 women. The list does not include 26 members of the security forces who were killed, according to official figures. A government fact-finding mission last year put the total at 846 but did not provide details. | Egypt;Civilian Casualties;Arab Network for Human Rights Information;Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- );Demonstrations Protests and Riots;Mubarak Hosni |
ny0096973 | [
"sports",
"soccer"
] | 2015/06/03 | Where FIFA Stands After Blatter’s Resignation | Questions and answers about the resignation of FIFA president Sepp Blatter , and the indictments of 14 soccer officials and marketing executives on corruption charges. What’s the Latest? ■ Jack Warner, the former FIFA vice president who was indicted last week, said he knew why the organization’s president, Sepp Blatter, announced plans to step down. “Blatter knows why he fell. And if anyone else knows, I do,” Mr. Warner said in his home country of Trinidad and Tobago on Wednesday. During a rambling and sometimes incoherent seven-minute television address , called “The Gloves Are Off,” Mr. Warner invoked Gandhi and sought to cast himself as a victim. He said he had reams of documents, including copies of checks, linking Mr. Blatter and other senior FIFA officials to an effort to manipulate a 2010 election in Trinidad and Tobago. ■ Russia, which will host the World Cup in 2018, and Qatar, the site of the 2022 event, made clear that they would fiercely object to any effort to strip them of the tournament. Alexander Yakovenko, Russia’s ambassador to Britain, said on Twitter that claims that Russia could lose its right to host the games were “preposterous.” “We have support of FIFA, despite outside pressure,” he wrote. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa bin Ahmed al-Thani, president of the Qatar Football Association, said that the country had been cleared of any wrongdoing, and welcomed an investigation by the Swiss authorities into the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. ■ Mr. Blatter returned to work on Wednesday and got a standing ovation from FIFA staff members after an emotional 10-minute address, The Associated Press reported. ■ Sepp Blatter said Tuesday that he would resign from the presidency of FIFA in the wake of a corruption inquiry, an extraordinary turn just four days after he was re-elected and defiantly insisted that he was blameless and committed to cleaning up the organization. Mr. Blatter, who was re-elected as FIFA’s president on Friday, said he would ask FIFA to schedule a new election for his replacement as soon as possible. Video In the wake of a corruption inquiry at FIFA, Mr. Blatter first said, “I would like to stay with you,” while promising to reform the organization. But on Tuesday he said he would step down. Credit Credit Sebastien Bozon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images ■ The federal authorities believe that Blatter’s top lieutenant at FIFA, Jérôme Valcke, made $10 million in bank transactions that are central elements of the bribery scandal engulfing international soccer, United States officials and others briefed on the case said Monday. The revelation puts the money trail closer to Mr. Blatter , FIFA’s president, than had been previously known. The money was paid by FIFA to a development fund for Caribbean soccer administered by Jack Warner, a former FIFA vice president who was indicted last week in a broad corruption inquiry. FIFA released a statement confirming the payment but denying any impropriety by its officials, but Britain’s Press Association reported that it had obtained a letter addressed to Mr. Valcke that requested the $10 million transfer. ■ FIFA’s medical chief, Michel D’Hooghe, the longest-serving member on the executive committee, on Monday threatened to leave international soccer’s governing body unless it made rapid reforms. “I cannot reconcile myself with an institution where I work, where I have carried the medical responsibility for 27 years and about which I now learn that there is a lot of corruption,” Mr. D’Hooghe told the VRT television network in Belgium. “My conclusion is very clear: I will no longer continue to participate under such conditions. So, it is high time for change to come and we will see over the coming days what may happen. Let’s be clear, if this atmosphere prevails at FIFA, I have no place there.” ■ FIFA’s ethics committee provisionally barred the former Concacaf general secretary Enrique Sanz from all soccer-related activity. Mr. Sanz was not among the soccer officials named in a Justice Department indictment last Wednesday but was barred by FIFA, it said, “on the basis of investigations carried out by the investigatory chamber of the ethics committee.” A former executive with the sports media company Traffic Sports, which also was caught up in the indictments, Mr. Sanz was placed on a leave of absence by Concacaf on Thursday. What’s Next? Mr. Blatter’s resignation is not immediate. A special meeting of FIFA’s member nations will be called to elect a new president. According to FIFA’s rules, there must be at least four months’ notice given to members for such a meeting, so the likely window for a new election is from December 2015 to March 2016. Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan, who last week lost a close election to unseat Mr. Blatter as FIFA president, hinted that he would be open to making a new run at the job now that Mr. Blatter has announced he will leave the post. Prince Ali told CNN that he would be “at the disposal” of anyone who wanted change at FIFA, including those who may have been “afraid to do so” before Blatter’s resignation on Tuesday. “At the end of the day we have to salvage FIFA,” he said. Who Was Charged? Here Are the FIFA Officials Indicted on Corruption Charges A look at the 14 people, including FIFA officials, who face racketeering, conspiracy and corruption charges in the United States. In Custody in Switzerland Jeffrey Webb: President of Concacaf, one of the six regional confederations that compose FIFA, and a vice president of FIFA; Eugenio Figueredo: Former president of Conmebol, the South American soccer federation; Eduardo Li: President of the Costa Rican soccer federation, who was to join the FIFA executive committee last week; Julio Rocha: President of the Nicaraguan soccer federation; Costas Takkas: Former president of the Cayman Islands soccer federation; Rafael Esquivel: President of the Venezuelan soccer federation; José Maria Marin: Former president of Brazil’s soccer federation. These seven men were arrested by the Swiss authorities — at the request of United States law enforcement — last Wednesday in a dawn police operation at their luxury hotel in Zurich, where they had gathered for FIFA’s annual congress. They remain in custody in Zurich, reportedly confined to their cells for as much as 23 hours a day. Six of the seven have contested their extradition to the United States, Switzerland’s Federal Office of Justice said, meaning American officials will have 40 days to file formal requests. One of the men — it is unclear which — has agreed to expedited extradition. All seven have been provisionally banned from all soccer-related activities by FIFA’s ethics committee. Released on Bail Jack Warner: Former president of Concacaf and former vice president of FIFA Warner, who resigned from FIFA in 2011 amid an earlier ethics scandal, turned himself in to the police in his native Trinidad last week. A judge read out the 12 charges against him and released him on bail of about $400,000. He must report in to the authorities regularly as a condition of his release. His next court hearing is July 12, according to The Associated Press, but Warner, 72, may eventually end up in an American courtroom since the United States and Trinidad have a bilateral extradition agreement. He has repeatedly, defiantly and, at times, comically professed his innocence. Under House Arrest Nicolás Leoz: A former president of Conmebol and former member of FIFA executive committee. A judge in Paraguay on Monday ordered the detention of Leoz, 86, who had been receiving medical treatment for high blood pressure. “He is under house arrest,” said a district police commissioner Clemente Espinola. “There’s a patrol car outside his house.” He, too, has been provisionally banned from soccer by FIFA. Arraigned in New York Aaron Davidson: President of Traffic Sports USA, a promoter of soccer events, and chairman of the board of the North American Soccer League. Davidson, 44, pleaded not guilty in Brooklyn federal court on Friday and was released on a $5 million bond secured by several real estate properties. He cannot leave his New York apartment without permission. Davidson has been provisionally banned from soccer by FIFA and suspended from any role in the N.A.S.L. , though the team owned by his company, the Carolina Railhawks, will continue to operate and play league matches. Arrest Warrants Issued Alejandro Burzaco: President of the sports media company Torneos; Hugo Jinkis and Mariano Jinkis: Father and son — and president and vice president — who run the sports media company Full Play International. An Argentine judge issued arrested warrants last Thursday for Burzaco and Hugo and Mariano Jinkis, and that country’s tax authorities said they had opened an investigation into tax evasion. Interpol raided the offices of the two companies on Friday, and it has issued red alerts for the men’s arrest. Burzaco , 50, and both Hugo , 70, and Mariano Jinkis , 40, are listed as “wanted” on Interpol’s website. José Margulies: Sports media executive. Charged as an intermediary who facilitated illegal payments, reportedly in exchange for an annual commission. Margulies, 75, is listed as “ wanted ” by Interpol. Various news reports list him as a Brazilian and as an Argentine. Like several of the others named in the indictments, he is charged with racketeering, money laundering and wire fraud. The Rise and Fall of Sepp Blatter Scandal and accusations have dotted the FIFA reign of Sepp Blatter. Will Sepp Blatter Face Charges? Mr. Blatter has not been charged, although the soccer officials who were indicted might present prosecutors with information damaging to him. Law enforcement officials in the United States, speaking on the condition of anonymity , said Mr. Blatter was the focus of a federal corruption investigation. | Soccer;FIFA;Sepp Blatter |
ny0273435 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2016/05/23 | Arriving in Vietnam, Obama Aims to Lure It Away From China | HANOI, Vietnam — President Obama arrived in the steamy capital of Vietnam ahead of schedule on Sunday night to begin three days of meetings in hopes of luring yet another Southeast Asian country away from China’s tight embrace. He was greeted on the tarmac by a young woman in a long yellow dress who handed him a bouquet of flowers. Several second-tier Vietnamese officials shook the president’s hand before he climbed into his limousine for a quick trip to his hotel after nearly 24 hours of travel. Quiet clusters of people on the dark streets watched his motorcade pass. Except for the small groups, the streets seemed to have been completely cleared. Since Air Force One had been scheduled to land after midnight, or about three hours later, the official arrival ceremony with high officials in attendance was postponed until Monday morning. Maybe then Mr. Obama will see the kind of emotional outpouring that greeted President Bill Clinton in 2000, when he became the first United States president to visit the country since the Vietnam War. But it is possible that relations between the two countries have reached a stage that the arrival of an American head of state no longer seems so unusual. Mr. Obama will meet with the country’s newly installed prime minister and president on Monday, then get together with the country’s real power — Nguyen Phu Trong, the general secretary of the Communist Party. Mr. Obama’s visit is an important step in a complex dance that Vietnam has carried on with China for centuries. Most of Vietnam’s illustrious historical figures made their reputations by battling Chinese invaders. The population here is deeply nationalistic and anti-Chinese sentiment is visceral. The American War, as it is known here, is mostly forgotten, particularly since half of the population is under 30. Vietnam relies on China for trade, investment and even the water that feeds the vast Mekong Delta, so the leadership knows it can poke the dragon only so much. Indeed, Vietnam had mostly sought to appease China since a brief and bloody war between the countries in 1979, and had shrugged off a series of provocations as China sought in recent years to assert its dominance over the South China Sea, which extends the length of Vietnam’s 2,000-mile coast. But in 2014, China placed a giant deep-sea drilling rig to explore for oil and gas right off the Vietnamese coast, and Mr. Trong could not even get his telephone calls to Beijing returned. The confrontation touched off angry protests in Vietnam that led to the deaths of two Chinese and the destruction of Taiwanese and South Korean factories. Since then, Vietnam has stepped up its contacts with the United States. Neither the United States nor Vietnam is ready for a formal alliance, but Vietnam may grant American warships access to its ports, and Washington seems certain at least to widen exceptions to its longtime arms embargo and may end it altogether. Human rights remain a barrier to closer ties. Government-backed thugs routinely attack dissidents, and recent protests over a toxic spill that killed vast numbers of fish led to beatings and arrests by the police. While the country does have elections — polling places were packed Sunday for a parliamentary election — candidates must be approved by the Communist Party. Mr. Obama plans to meet with some dissidents and civil society leaders on Tuesday before making a speech. Brad Adams, the Asia director at Human Rights Watch, suggested that the president “should start by calling for the right of all people to stand for election, voice critical views of government, associate with others and freely choose candidates.” American help in reforming Vietnam’s economy is also high on the agenda for leaders of both countries. While Vietnam has grown robustly — the transformation of this city’s airport and skyline over the past two decades is astonishing — the country remains saddled with a bloated state sector that dominates telecommunications and other crucial parts of the economy, and reliance on low-wage manufacturing that will be increasingly difficult to sustain as the country prospers. Widespread corruption undermines economic growth; government officials with modest salaries can be seen touring the countryside in expensive European automobiles. There are keen hopes here that the Trans-Pacific Partnership , a trade agreement with the United States and 10 other countries, will provide a huge boost. The World Bank estimated that Vietnam would gain the most from the agreement , adding 10 percent to its economic growth by 2030 through increased sales from its textiles and apparel industries. Vietnam is the only developing country in the Trans-Pacific pact, and it had to make major concessions on issues like allowing independent labor unions and ensuring environmental compliance. “Vietnam has agreed to allow independent unions that can control their own finances, elect their own leaders, conduct strikes, affiliate as they wish, get assistance from outside labor organizations,” the United States trade representative, Michael Froman, said in a briefing. There is some debate about whether the promised changes are transformational or just cosmetic, but the government took a risk in promising to make them and is now dismayed to see that the pact has little chance of passing Congress anytime soon. Still, innovation incubators, technology start-ups and a focus on small and medium-size companies are now all the rage among development agencies and government officials. Mr. Obama intends to address attendees at an entrepreneurship event on Tuesday afternoon in Ho Chi Minh City. | Vietnam;Barack Obama;China;Human Rights;US Foreign Policy;Nguyen Phu Trong;International relations |
ny0240625 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2010/12/23 | Police Tactics in New York City Housing Are Criticized | A Manhattan judge criticized the policing tactics in New York City Housing Authority developments, ruling on Tuesday that officers appeared to be routinely flouting the law by questioning people without legal justification. The decision by acting Supreme Court Justice Analisa J. Torres barred the admission of 29 plastic bags of cocaine that the police seized last February from Jose Ventura in the lobby of the Baruch Houses on the Lower East Side. More broadly, the court action renewed a debate about the policing tactics in public housing, including the use of “stop, question and frisk” and vertical patrols. Officers use violations of Housing Authority rules — which forbid people from being in city housing projects unless they live there or are visiting someone — to justify the stops. In her ruling, Justice Torres cited the testimony by Police Officer Jason Del Toro, who said the police could simply question anyone they encountered inside a public housing building. The judge wrote that officers had to have a legally meaningful reason for the stop, such as the site being drug- prone. “To the extent that Del Toro’s description of vertical patrols is accurate, that in public housing the police routinely engage in random, unjustified questioning — and there is evidence that they do — the practice would amount to a systematic violation” of the court decision that spells out the legal basis for stops and questioning, Justice Torres wrote. Officer Del Toro approached Mr. Ventura during a vertical patrol simply after spotting him and without establishing a legal reason to question him, the judge wrote. In testimony at a suppression hearing, the officer never mentioned “whether the building or the area is drug-prone,” the judge wrote. After Mr. Ventura was arrested for trespassing, a second officer discovered the cocaine. But in her ruling, Justice Torres wrote: “No matter the location, luxurious or modest, the police must have ‘some objective credible reason,’ to request information about a person’s residency. Officers conducting vertical patrols are not permitted to select individuals for questioning based on presence alone.” A large volume of all the street stops police officers make in New York are for trespassing, according to an analysis of police data by The New York Times. Officers cited a suspicion of trespassing 369,000 times from 2003 through March 2010, or 12 percent of all stops. But in precincts with large clusters of public housing, up to 30 percent of stops were conducted on suspicion of trespassing. Critics say the trespassing stops are largely unwarranted. Indeed, the analysis by The Times showed that trespassing stops were far more likely than most stops to result in nothing more than an inconvenient delay. Few moved beyond the questioning stage. Two percent of stops where trespassing was suspected — about 7,000 — yielded drugs or other contraband. A total of 81 trespassing stops yielded a gun. Fundamentally, when officers stop people to question them, they are supposed to record both a reason for the stop — like the person’s having a weaponlike bulge in his pocket — and the crime that the person is suspected of having committed. But among all trespassing stops from 2003 through March 2010, two-thirds — more than 257,000 — listed only the vague category of “other” or “furtive movements” as the reason for the stop. In a majority of those cases, the officers indicated that the stop took place in a high-crime area, which would satisfy what Justice Torres said the police needed as a minimum threshold to make a trespassing stop. Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said the judge’s decision was “not a setback” because it was consistent with new housing vertical patrol, procedures and training curriculum put in place this year. Before making a trespass arrest, Mr. Browne said, officers are trained to ask a person: Do you live in the building? Are you visiting someone? Do you have business there? Based on the answers, and on follow-up questions, an officer might establish probable cause for an arrest, or might tell the person to leave or become satisfied that he or she can stay. “Housing officers are trained that they must establish a reason to approach someone before questioning individuals in a housing development — for example, violations of Housing Authority rules and regulations,” Mr. Browne said. “Furthermore, the judge said the officer in the Ventura case did not adequately establish reasonable suspicion or properly articulate probable cause for a trespassing arrest.” Mr. Browne said the department’s new guidelines and training grew out of meetings with tenants’ organizations and the city Housing Authority, and did not suggest that officers’ behavior in patrolling public housing prior to the new rules was faulty. A spokeswoman for Bridget G. Brennan, the special narcotics prosecutor, said the judge’s decision was narrow and “we’re not concerned that it has any precedential value.” But Steven Banks, attorney-in-chief at the Legal Aid Society, said that what Officer Del Toro “candidly admitted” in his testimony is a “serious daily occurrence.” He said it encapsulated what had led his agency, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund Inc., and a private law firm to file a federal lawsuit against the city. | Decisions and Verdicts;Search and Seizure;Housing Authority (NYC);Police;Del Toro Jason;Ventura Jose;Torres Analisa J;Public and Subsidized Housing;New York City;New York Times |
ny0122816 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2012/09/26 | Braves Clinch Wild-Card Spot in N.L. | As the baseball season moves into its final stretch, the story lines are becoming clearer. Three National League teams — San Francisco, Cincinnati and Washington — have clinched spots in the postseason, and Atlanta joined them as a wild-card team with a win Tuesday. That left St. Louis fighting off Milwaukee and the Dodgers for the second wild-card slot. The American League is more complicated. No team has clinched a postseason spot, although TEXAS started the day with a five-game lead in the West. The Yankees and Baltimore continued to cling to each other in the East, and Detroit beat Kansas City to pull even with the White Sox, who lost to Cleveland, in the Central. (NYT) BRAVES 4, MARLINS 3 Freddie Freeman hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth to put host Atlanta back in the playoffs. Freeman’s dramatic drive off Mike Dunn clinched at least a wild-card berth for the Braves, who squandered a big lead in the wild-card race with a huge collapse last September. Chipper Jones, who plans to retire at the end of the season, led off the ninth with a double. He moved to third on a wild pitch by Dunn (0-3) and scored on Freeman’s 22nd home run. “Last year was somewhat of a fluke,” Jones said. (AP) REDS 4, BREWERS 2 Johnny Cueto pitched seven solid innings and host Cincinnati stayed in the chase for the N.L.’s top record after learning it will be without its manager for the rest of the week. Manager Dusty Baker met his players before the game and revealed he sustained a ministroke in addition to being treated for an irregular heartbeat at a Chicago hospital last week. The bench coach Chris Speier will manage the Reds until Baker returns for the playoffs. (AP) CARDINALS 4, ASTROS 0 Jaime Garcia pitched seven sharp innings at Houston to help St. Louis improve its playoff chances. The Cardinals won their fourth straight and moved four and a half games ahead of Milwaukee in the race for the second N.L. wild card. The Dodgers, who played later, dropped four games behind the Cardinals. (AP) PHILLIES 6, NATIONALS 3 Darin Ruf homered for his first major league hit, Carlos Ruiz and Domonic Brown also went deep and host Philadelphia beat playoff-bound Washington. Philadelphia remained five and a half games behind St. Louis for the N.L.’s second wild card. (AP) INDIANS 4, WHITE SOX 3 Chicago gave Detroit an opening to tie for the A.L. Central lead when Gordon Beckham hit into a game-ending forceout with the tying run on second against last-place Cleveland. The White Sox have lost six of seven and have had trouble scoring without homers lately. Three solo home runs were all the offense Chicago mustered. Behind by 4-0, the White Sox rallied when A. J. Pierzynski and Dayan Viciedo hit consecutive fifth-inning home runs off Corey Kluber (2-4). They pulled to a run behind when Paul Konerko homered off Chris Perez leading off the ninth. Perez then walked two batters with two outs, and Beckham grounded to shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera, who threw to second baseman Jason Kipnis for a force. “It’s just going to take some hits together that don’t go over the fence,” Beckham said. Chicago had held sole possession of the division lead since Sept. 3, but Detroit pulled even when it beat Kansas City. (AP) TIGERS 2, ROYALS 0 Anibal Sanchez threw his first shutout in more than a year for host Detroit. Sanchez (4-6) retired the first 11 hitters and allowed only three hits. He struck out 10 and walked 1, throwing 105 pitches. (AP) ATHLETICS 3, RANGERS 2 George Kottaras hit a leadoff homer in the 10th inning and visiting Oakland cut Texas’s A.L. West lead to four games. The A’s began the day two games ahead of the Angels for the second A.L. wild-card spot. The Angels played later against Seattle. (AP) RAYS 5, RED SOX 2 David Price struck out a season-high 13 as Tampa Bay beat Boston. (AP) NO PLAYOFFS FOR CABRERA The San Francisco Giants said they had no plans to bring back the suspended outfielder Melky Cabrera during the postseason if the club is still playing when he is eligible to return. (AP) | Baseball;Playoff Games;Atlanta Braves;Miami Marlins |
ny0009743 | [
"business"
] | 2013/02/11 | Economic Reports for the Week of Feb. 11 | ECONOMIC REPORTS Data to be released this week include retail sales for January, import prices for January and business inventories for December (Wednesday); weekly jobless claims (Thursday); and industrial production for January and the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index for February (Friday). CORPORATE EARNINGS Companies scheduled to report results this week include Coca-Cola, Goodyear Tire and Rubber and McGraw Hill (Tuesday); Comcast, Deere & Company, Cisco Systems and MetLife (Wednesday); CBS, DirecTV, General Motors, Molson Coors, Nestlé and PepsiCo (Thursday); and Kraft Foods (Friday). IN THE UNITED STATES On Tuesday, Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, will testify about its outlook before the Senate Budget Committee. He will similarly testify before the House Budget Committee on Wednesday. On Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee will conduct a hearing on the Federal Housing Administration’s report to Congress. On Thursday, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee will conduct a hearing about a Medicare physician payment system, and the Senate Banking Committee will conduct a hearing about reform on Wall Street and oversight of financial stability and consumer and investor protections. Also on Thursday, Transocean, the owner of the rig involved in the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, plans to plead guilty in New Orleans as part of a $1.4 billion settlement with the United States. OVERSEAS On Monday, euro zone finance ministers will meet in Brussels, and leaders from the Group of 30 will release a report in London on global finance. On Thursday, the Bank of Japan will issue a statement on monetary policy, and Japan will report fourth-quarter gross domestic product. Also on Thursday, the euro zone statistics agency will report fourth-quarter gross domestic product, and the European Commission will introduce its proposal for a financial-transaction tax in 11 euro-area countries. On Friday and Saturday, finance ministers from the Group of 20 nations will meet in Moscow to discuss currencies and the European debt crisis. | US Economy;Earnings Reports;Economy |
ny0130092 | [
"us"
] | 2012/06/15 | Arizona: Republican Drops Out of Rematch | Jesse Kelly, the Tea Party Republican who sought former Representative Gabrielle Giffords ’s seat in Congress, has dropped out of the fall race, two days after losing a special election to serve out her term. Mr. Kelly said Thursday that he made the decision after “looking at the results from Tuesday.” He lost to the Democrat, Ron Barber , by six percentage points. Mr. Barber was a Giffords aide when he was wounded in the mass shooting that badly wounded her. He will have to win again in the November general election to keep the seat. | Giffords Gabrielle;Arizona;Kelly Jesse;Barber Ron;United States Politics and Government |
ny0213732 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2010/03/28 | South Korea Searches for Survivors of Sunken Navy Ship | The South Korean Navy continued its search for survivors of a sunken patrol ship in waters near the disputed western maritime border with North Korea on Sunday. Hopes were dimming for 46 missing sailors, and the mystery of what caused their ship to break in half in a blast and sink Friday evening remained unresolved. South Korea ’s president, Lee Myung-bak, called emergency security meetings and ordered an investigation into the sinking. Fierce waves hampered efforts to examine the 1,200-ton corvette Cheonan underwater or find more survivors until weather improved on Sunday. No new survivors, nor any bodies, have been found since 58 of the ship’s 104 sailors were plucked alive on Friday evening. Relatives of the missing sailed overnight aboard a military ship, arriving at the scene of the sinking on Sunday. “I heard a terrible explosion and the ship keeled suddenly to the right. We lost power and telecommunications,” Choi Won-il, captain of the Cheonan, told the relatives. “I was trapped in the cabin for five minutes before my colleagues broke the window in and let me out. When I got out, the stern had already broken away and disappeared underwater.” Most of those missing were believed to have been trapped inside their rapidly sinking ship as waters gushed into their dark under deck, officials said. “Many sailors were hanging onto the bow of the sinking ship,” Kim Jin-ho, a crewman on a civilian ferry to Baengnyeong, a South Korean border island, told YTN television, describing the rescue scene on Friday night. “They were shouting for help. They were falling into water.” The sinking of the ship near the disputed sea border, where the navies of the two Koreas have fought bloody skirmishes, raised the possibility of a North Korean torpedo attack or sabotage. The South Korean defense minister, Kim Tae-young, told Parliament that the authorities would investigate such a possibility but emphasized that it was too early to connect the sinking to North Korea. The corvette was on a routine patrol mission in the Yellow Sea when it sunk near Baengnyeong, 10 miles from the North Korean coast and 120 miles from the South Korean mainland. The sinking is one of South Korea’s worst peacetime naval disasters. In 1974, a navy landing ship capsized off the south coast in stormy weather, killing 159 sailors and coast guard personnel. In 1967, 39 sailors were killed when North Korean shore guns pounded a South Korean Navy ship off the east coast. Military accidents receive special scrutiny here. North and South Korea are still in an official state of war. All eligible South Korean men must serve in the military. The waters in the disputed western sea near the two Koreas make up the most volatile section of the border. North Korea rejects a maritime demarcation line drawn by the United Nations at the end of the war. The two sides engaged in naval clashes in 1999 and 2002. In November, naval patrol boats from the North and South exchanged fire after a North Korean boat crossed the disputed sea border. | South Korea;Ships and Shipping;Defense and Military Forces |
ny0123508 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2012/09/06 | Angels Continue Turnaround With Sweep of the Athletics | OAKLAND, Calif. Torii Hunter played cards on Wednesday morning, and then studied video in the Los Angeles Angels ’ clubhouse at the Coliseum. When it was time for indoor batting practice, Hunter was all business. Normally chatty, he had little interest in analyzing his team’s well-timed hot streak. “The past don’t even matter,” Hunter said. “We won those games already. It’s all about today, that’s it. We’re fine, man, we’re playing well. Stick with it. One last push.” Two hours later, in the top of the third inning of a scoreless game, Hunter came to bat against the Oakland Athletics with two out and a runner on third. He fell behind in the count but lashed a single to right to give the Angels their first lead. They never looked back in a 7-1 victory , completing a sweep of an Oakland team that had won nine games in a row. “We needed it bad,” said starter Dan Haren, who worked six strong innings. “We knew we had to get all three. Our will to win these last three games has been just different than it’s been the rest of the year. We were loud on our bench. The offense did the job, and the starting pitching has been better this whole time.” The rotation was supposed to be a pillar for the Angels, especially after they traded for Zack Greinke in late July. Instead, the starters sagged for weeks, dragging the team below the Texas Rangers and the A’s in the American League West standings. On Aug. 21, though, the Angels met their match in misery. As badly as they had underachieved — with a 62-60 record — the Boston Red Sox were much worse. The Angels swept their three games at Fenway Park and are 12-3 since the start of that series. In that stretch, their starters are 10-2 with a 3.18 earned run average. “If we were going to continue to struggle and not control the game on the mound the way we can, we had no chance,” Manager Mike Scioscia said after Greinke stifled the A’s here on Tuesday. “So the fact that some guys turned it around, the fact that Zack came in and is pitching to his capabilities, gives us reason to be optimistic that we’re going play at a high level and hopefully play well enough to get into the playoffs.” The Angels (74-63) are two and a half games behind Oakland for one of the two A.L. wild card spots, and they may have to get by for a bit without their ace, Jered Weaver, who took a liner off his shoulder Sunday and has not thrown since. Weaver left the team on Wednesday to have the shoulder examined. A team that spent lavishly last winter to sign first baseman Albert Pujols and starter C. J. Wilson — and that has had extraordinary performance from the rookie center fielder Mike Trout — has no time to waste. “When you start getting into the twenties of games left, there’s just a limited amount of games you can lose,” Haren said. “There’s a different sense of urgency when the games start dwindling and we have ground to gain.” The teams and the crowd put that aside for a few tense minutes in the fourth inning on Wednesday, when Erick Aybar smashed a line drive off the side of Oakland starter Brandon McCarthy’s head. McCarthy fell, the back of his head slamming the ground, and then he sat dazed by the edge of the mound. He left the game — walking off the mound on his own — and was taken to a hospital. The A’s said he did not lose consciousness. “You never want to see anything like that happen, no matter when it is,” Haren said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the last game of the year and we’re tied.” McCarthy was the opening day starter for Oakland, a role Haren once held. He pitched three seasons for the Athletics and started their last playoff game, in 2006. He had a bobblehead of a former teammate, Scott Hatteberg, in his locker Wednesday, and his former manager with the St. Louis Cardinals, Tony La Russa, was a guest in the Angels’ clubhouse after the game. La Russa, who is retired and lives nearby, elbowed his way into Scioscia’s postgame session with reporters. “I was second-guessing you left and right,” he told Scioscia, and he might not have been joking. With one out, two on and a 3-1 lead in the seventh inning, Scioscia summoned Nick Maronde from the bullpen. Maronde had faced just one batter above Class AA, recording a strikeout in Seattle on Sunday, but he fanned Coco Crisp and Seth Smith to survive the jam. Josh Reddick also struck out to start the next inning, and Maronde left the game, preserving his perfect major league line: four batters faced, four strikeouts. Maronde turned 23 on Wednesday and said the whole experience had been surreal. He guessed that this was the first time he had ever pitched on his birthday. “That’s kind of the icing on the cake,” he said. Hunter, who drove in two more runs with a single in the ninth, said he did not know it was Maronde’s birthday and would get him something on the flight home. It figured to be a relaxing flight, a break in a desperate pennant drive. “We know we have a pretty good ball club — a really good ball club — and we want to show it,” Hunter said. “We’re doing it right now.” | Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim;Oakland Athletics;Baseball |
ny0135348 | [
"us",
"nationalspecial2"
] | 2008/04/21 | After Ground Zero Prayer, Pope Ministers to 60,000 in Stadium | Before a crowd of nearly 60,000 people at Yankee Stadium, Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday ended his first visit to the United States as leader of the Roman Catholic Church with a reminder to the faithful that “obedience” to the authority of the church, even in a country that prizes individual freedom, is the foundation of their religious faith. During a six-day visit to Washington and New York, the pope addressed world issues, visited a synagogue and voiced deep shame over the child sexual abuse scandal that has damaged the church’s standing in many American dioceses. At a morning ceremony at ground zero, the pope blessed the World Trade Center site, where more than 2,700 people were killed in the terrorist attack, and prayed for peace. But at Yankee Stadium on a cool, brilliant Sunday afternoon, with an adoring audience of people waving yellow cloths, one of the colors of the Vatican, Benedict acted chiefly as pastor to America’s 65 million Catholics, laying out in simple terms their obligations to a church that represents what he has called the “one church” established on earth by God. “Authority. Obedience. To be frank, these are not easy words to speak nowadays,” the pope said in his homily during the Mass, held on an acre-size platform built over the Yankees infield, “especially in a society which rightly places a high value on personal freedom.” Three years after the death of Pope John Paul II, his popular and charismatic predecessor, the reserved and theologically erudite Pope Benedict XVI gently but unequivocally delineated the source of authority that has since devolved to him, and that he said was integral to the church itself. Referring to himself, he said, “The presence around this altar of the successor of Peter, his brother bishops and priests, and deacons, men and women religious, and lay faithful from throughout the 50 states of the union, eloquently manifests our communion in the Catholic faith, which comes to us from the apostles.” In the Gospels, the Apostle Peter was chosen by Jesus to lead the church, and each pope is said to be the successor of Peter. In a glancing reference to the sexual abuse of children by priests, he said that praying for the kingdom of God “means not losing heart in the face of adversity, resistance and scandal. It means overcoming every separation between faith and life, and countering false gospels of freedom and happiness.” In his writings before and since becoming pope, Benedict has stressed the importance of a strict adherence to orthodoxy, and opposition to a wide array of modern cultural trends, including feminism, gay rights, and demands — especially among American Catholics — for greater democracy and administrative transparency within the church. The Mass at Yankee Stadium was the largest public event of the pope’s tour, and it was held on the same day as the most intimate meeting of his visit. In his stop at ground zero on Sunday morning, the pope spoke briefly with a small group of survivors and families of the victims of the Sept. 11 attack. Cardinal Edward M. Egan of New York stood beside him and read each one’s name and gave the pope a brief description of the family member lost by the person. Some took the pope’s hand, and many knelt and kissed his ring, the traditional protocol for Roman Catholics. For those not invited to meet personally with Benedict or able to get one of the scarce event tickets, there were the untold number of TVs tuned in to the various events of the week. There were six wide screens at Billy’s Sports Bar on River Avenue in the Bronx, where Mike Gonzale, 29, of Woodside, Queens, sat watching as the pope said Mass on Sunday at the stadium across the street. “You feel an energy; you feel a peace,” Mr. Gonzale said, speaking softly, like a golf commentator, as he watched the television. “I think most people feel a calm relief from the complicated world we’re living in.” Inside the packed stadium, the energy was palpable, the stands a solid wall of blurring yellow cloths and cheering. After the Mass, waves of excitement followed the path of the pope as he first walked, and then rode in his Popemobile, around the outside track of the field. Surrounded by black-suited Secret Service men as he walked, the 81-year-old pontiff moved somewhat haltingly, the papal scepter in his left hand. He waved gingerly with his right hand. The crowd roared with all the sustained excitement of spectators at a pennant-clinching game. The next and final stop for the pope was Kennedy Airport, where Vice President Dick Cheney led a ceremony before the pontiff’s return trip to Rome. Many of the people interviewed after Sunday’s Mass said they were deeply moved to be in the presence of Christ’s vicar on earth, as the pope is known to believers. His role as a spiritual father figure can seem to be almost personal for some Catholics. “The most amazing part was when he came in the Popemobile,” said Sylvia Rios, 45, who attended the Mass with her former husband, Jesus Matthews, 46. “I know he wasn’t waving at me, but we had good seats, and when I looked at him, he looked like he was waving specifically at me.” But more, people at the Mass said it was thrilling to be in a state of religious communion with so many others — and while in the presence of the pope, who represents the founding of the church 2,000 years ago. Christa Rivers-Caceres, 37, who drove from Bushkill, Pa., with her husband, Enrique, 32, said being at Yankee Stadium made her feel like part of the family of Catholics, who number more than one billion worldwide. “You were proud to be Catholic,” she said. “It helped reaffirm our faith.” Efrem Menghs, a phone company salesman from Columbus, Ohio, said the experience had made him a better person. “I will look back and say I’m glad I came to this event,” he said. “I did something for God.” | Benedict XVI;Roman Catholic Church;Yankee Stadium (NYC);Stadiums and Arenas;Popes |
ny0269440 | [
"business",
"international"
] | 2016/04/10 | Olympus Investigation Shows Ethical Lapses and a Caterer With Clout | TOKYO — Managers at an Olympus factory in southern China struggled for years to resolve a thorny dispute with local customs authorities. The problem risked incurring millions of dollars in fines and harming a crucial manufacturing hub that churned out 50 million camera lenses a year. Then Olympus found an unlikely helper: an obscure Chinese company that ran the factory’s cafeteria. The caterer had connections. In 2013, Olympus hired the company, Anyuan, to be a fixer, acting as a go-between with government officials in the customs case, according to an internal investigation into the matter. Soon after, the eight-year-old case was inexplicably dropped, and with it demands that Olympus pay at least $9 million in penalties and uncollected import duties. The activities in China, laid bare in a confidential 57-page report on the investigation, as well as internal memos and emails that were reviewed by The New York Times, exposed a series of ethical lapses and a corporate culture undermined by weak oversight. The documents said there was a nearly $700 million bookkeeping discrepancy, dubious real estate deals, “top secret” emails and a hidden “slush fund.” While Olympus found no legal violations in its investigation, the previously unreported documents detailed “sloppy due diligence,” “major problems” with corporate controls and instances where Olympus managers “concealed” payments to Anyuan. Olympus’s dealings with a shadowy middleman took place just two years after it faced a major ethical crisis, admitting in 2011 to a $1.7 billion accounting fraud . Those failings stretched to the top, and senior executives eventually pleaded guilty to hiding huge investment losses for decades. Afterward, the company overhauled the senior management team , vowing to change its ways. That pledge makes the company’s activities in China all the more glaring, since they did not involve the old guard. They were approved by its new leadership, including the president and the chairman. Senior executives signed off on millions of dollars in payments to the Chinese company, according to the internal investigation. And they did so despite the knowledge that Anyuan’s chairman was linked to prominent bribery cases that were reported by China’s state-run media. Some Olympus executives, the report said, understood that Chinese fixers “could commit bribery.” The situation in China has drawn attention from the authorities in the United States. Olympus briefed the Justice Department on the results of its internal inquiry. The Justice Department’s foreign corporate bribery unit is monitoring developments, though it has not opened a formal investigation, according to an American official with knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it. Olympus is on the department’s radar for the 2011 accounting fraud, which involved financial transactions in the United States, as well as a separate investigation into accusations that Olympus paid kickbacks to doctors in order to sell medical equipment. Olympus paid $623 million to settle the medical equipment case and admitted wrongdoing in the matter. Olympus acknowledged an investigation into its Chinese operations, which was conducted by three board members and a law professor, with assistance from outside law firms. But the company declined to elaborate, saying that the inquiry had found no evidence of legal violations. A spokesman for the company, Osamu Kobayashi, said of details described in internal documents: “We don’t deny them, and we don’t confirm them.” Image The Olympus campus in Shenzhen, China, which can produce millions of camera lenses a year. Credit Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times The company, which presented the findings of the China investigation to the board late last year, has taken some action. In February, Olympus quietly disciplined five managers who were directly involved in dealings with Anyuan. Two were demoted, one received a two-day suspension and two others received written reprimands. Olympus announced the actions on an internal notice board accessible by employees, without giving reasons. The inquiry’s report recommended that the same managers be punished for violating company policies, although it said their actions fell short of legal wrongdoing. Mr. Kobayashi, the spokesman, called the actions an internal human resources matter and declined to comment further. Anyuan declined to comment. The company operates out of a building with a polished stone lobby in Shenzhen, an industrial city on the Chinese mainland a few miles from Hong Kong, where Olympus has its camera factory. In response to a visit by a reporter, a receptionist said the chairman, Chen Zuyuan was away. The company did not respond to multiple requests for interviews with Mr. Chen or other representatives. Anyuan did not cooperate with the Olympus inquiry, the investigators said in their report, beyond giving a short statement claiming it had “used only legal means” to aid Olympus with the customs issue. Fixing More Than Lunch Olympus built its first plant in Shenzhen in the early 1990s, at a time when global companies were piling into China’s rapidly developing coastal cities, looking to take advantage of the cheap labor force. It expanded a decade later, after the Chinese government set up a duty-free zone for overseas manufacturers in the city. Soon, Shenzhen became the source of most lenses that Olympus uses in its cameras. The plant, which employed several thousand workers, could produce more than 50 million lenses a year, as well as other camera components. The expansion in Shenzhen was not trouble-free. In 2011, fire inspectors found safety violations at the factory, including faults with “emergency passages, smoke ventilation, doors and windows,” two managers later wrote in a memo. Image The Olympus factory in Shenzhen, an industrial city on the Chinese mainland a few miles from Hong Kong. Credit Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times It was then that Chinese public security officials introduced Olympus to Anyuan, according to one of the memos reviewed by The Times. The officials said that Anyuan could facilitate “a smooth resolution” to the fire-safety problem, the managers wrote. In China, such middlemen have played an invaluable, if sometimes dubious, role for overseas companies. Government officials hold significant sway over the Chinese economy, requiring companies to navigate a labyrinth of bureaucratic approvals and regulations to secure access, orders and licenses, or negotiate taxes and fees. Often operating out of view, the middlemen, who have connections to government and Communist Party officials, can help lubricate the process. Managers at Olympus described Anyuan in the internal memos as an influential fixer, with vaguely defined interests in a variety of industries like construction, mining and pharmaceuticals. Most important, they said, the company could be counted on to solve problems with Chinese officials, by using what they called “strong connections with the central government, the city and the security services.” The managers agreed to let Anyuan deal with the fire inspectors on Olympus’s behalf, multiple Olympus documents show. They later reported that, as a result of Anyuan’s intervention, the factory was certified as safe “without any fines or line stoppages whatsoever.” Olympus declined to comment on the matter. Olympus turned to Anyuan for help, despite hints of impropriety. In 2007, state-controlled media reported that Anyuan’s chairman, Mr. Chen, paid a senior transportation official in Yunnan Province 32 million renminbi, or $4.9 million, to obtain roadway-related contracts — an amount one news report described as the largest bribe ever paid to a Chinese public official. The official, Hu Xing, was arrested in Singapore and extradited to China, where he was sentenced to life in prison for taking bribes. Mr. Chen has also been connected to a more recent corruption case involving Wan Qingliang, the former Communist Party chief of Guangzhou, one of China’s wealthiest and most populous cities and a close neighbor to Shenzhen. The official, who was arrested in 2014, faces charges that he took 111 million renminbi, or $17.2 million, in bribes from Mr. Chen and other businessmen, the official Xinhua news agency reported in December. (It was unclear whether Mr. Chen of Anyuan has been charged with wrongdoing in either bribery case.) For its help with the fire-safety problem, Anyuan requested an unusual form of payment. In October 2011, Olympus hired an Anyuan-affiliated company as a contractor at the factory, according to multiple Olympus documents. The affiliate’s official job was to to provide catering, cleaning and security services to the employee cafeteria. But the affiliate, called An Ping Tai, was established just three days before it took on the contract, and it listed a nonexistent office as its address, the internal inquiry found. The affiliate appeared to exist only on paper. “An Ping Tai seems to be a shell company without substantial operations,” lawyers at a Western law firm said in a confidential report prepared for Olympus in 2014, before the company decided to open a formal inquiry. According to the internal investigation, Olympus paid the affiliate at least 1.2 million renminbi, or about $180,000, in several upfront payments, followed by unspecified monthly service fees and other compensation. Some of the money was drawn from what the inquiry called a “slush fund” that was hidden from Olympus’s official accounts. Image Workers at the Olympus factory in Shenzhen, China. Credit Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times Olympus made other off-the-books payments to Anyuan, the internal inquiry found. In 2014, managers in Shenzhen diverted to An Ping Tai rent money that Olympus had collected from employees who lived in company dormitories. The managers then “covered up” the payments by describing them in financial reports as maintenance fees, the inquiry found. The $694 Million Discrepancy The customs dispute at Olympus stretched back to 2006, when inspectors in Shenzhen found discrepancies with the factory’s inventory records, according to the internal inquiry and managers’ memos reviewed by The Times. Foreign companies in the city’s special manufacturing zone are allowed to import duty-free raw materials on the condition that the products they assemble there are exported to other countries. They must not be sold in China, where they would compete unfairly with local goods. The customs inspectors discovered that the volume of materials that Olympus was importing into the zone did not match the finished components that it was shipping out. Such discrepancies can indicate that a company is violating the no-selling-in-China rule. The value of the discrepancy, $694 million, was so large that Olympus said it could only be explained by data-entry error. By way of comparison, Olympus sold only about $600 million worth of digital cameras worldwide last year. The internal inquiry blamed the problem on “simple operational mistakes” by workers logging inventory in record-keeping software. The customs authorities were unpersuaded. After years of back-and-forth with Olympus, officials threatened to levy at least 60 million renminbi, or $9.2 million, in fines and unpaid import tariffs, according the Olympus documents. In one memo, managers in Shenzhen said the fine could end up being 40 times as large, though the Western law firm’s report questioned the legal basis for that estimate in its 2014 report. Customs authorities in Shenzhen declined to comment. The General Administration of Customs in Beijing, which oversees customs affairs nationally, said it did not comment on investigations. Managers also suggested in the memo that Olympus could lose its duty-free trading privileges in Shenzhen, a blow that would add costs to the already unprofitable camera business. Global digital camera sales have plunged by half in the last decade, hurt by the spread of camera-equipped smartphones. Olympus employees had previously tried to curry favor with Chinese officials, the inquiry’s report suggested. Investigators found a proposal by a Chinese employee at the plant dated August 2011 to offer cash and cameras worth 20,000 renminbi, or about $3,000, to the head of the customs office’s antismuggling department. The report does not make clear if the plan was approved or carried out. Image The Olympus president Shuichi Takayama, left, and Nobuyuki Onishi, an accounting executive, briefed reporters on a scandal in 2011. Credit Franck Robichon/European Pressphoto Agency Anyuan proposed a more decisive intervention. The company told Olympus that it could resolve the problem quickly and relatively cheaply, the Shenzhen managers reported in mid-2013. Anyuan, they said, estimated it would cost Olympus half the amount that the customs authorities were threatening to impose in penalties. It was still a significant payment — equivalent to several million dollars. One manager in Shenzhen, the head of the accounting department at the factory, told the company inquiry that he suspected Anyuan would use part of the money to bribe Chinese officials. Discussions with Anyuan were handled by a Chinese Olympus employee, according to the inquiry. “My interpretation at the time, and still a possible interpretation now,” the accounting manager is quoted in the inquiry’s report as saying, was that the Chinese employee “was negotiating to deliver 100 million to 140 million renminbi in bribes to the government through Anyuan.” The confidential inquiry said there was no documentary evidence to prove the manager’s claim. Other managers told investigators they had no reason to think Anyuan was bribing Chinese officials. Once again, the plan involved an unorthodox form of payment. Olympus, the documents show, proposed a real estate transaction. Olympus would sell two dormitory buildings in Shenzhen to the Anyuan affiliate. The sale price would be set well below the buildings’ market value, according to the confidential report from the Western law firm. The deal would reward Anyuan, but more discreetly than a cash payment. Senior Olympus executives would have to sign off, and they were nervous. The reports and memos showed a debate ensued between Tokyo executives and the Asia-Pacific office, based in Hong Kong, over who would bear responsibility for the decision. Executives knew about the bribery accusations against Mr. Chen and were concerned about legal risks, according to the documents. At one point, the Olympus president, Hiroyuki Sasa; chairman, Yasuyuki Kimoto, who retired last year; and two other board members in Tokyo told subordinates in Hong Kong and Shenzhen to move forward with the real estate deal, according to the report by the Western law firm. Managers in Shenzhen were instructed “not to leave any written evidence of the purpose behind the transaction,” the law firm found. Email memos on the matter were labeled “top secret.” There are conflicting accounts of what happened next. According to the inquiry, Olympus balked at the dormitory sale at the last minute, judging it too risky. But managers in Shenzhen had already signed a deal, which Anyuan claimed contained clauses promising the sale. In the end, Olympus paid Anyuan 24 million renminbi, or $3.7 million, in cash, through its affiliate An Ping Tai, according the inquiry. Olympus declined to comment on details of its arrangement with Anyuan, beyond saying it was “one of many contractual relationships” it maintained in the normal course of its business. In August 2014, eight months after its managers signed the deal with Anyuan, Olympus was informed that it would not be fined or otherwise punished for the inventory-recording discrepancy, according to the inquiry. “In the end, a fine that had been estimated at least 60 million renminbi was not levied at all,” the inquiry found. | Olympus;Bribery and Kickbacks;Shenzhen;China;Tokyo;Fraud;International trade;Manufacturing;Camera;Fines |
ny0149587 | [
"technology",
"companies"
] | 2008/09/30 | Circuit City Revises Outlook and Posts Loss | RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Circuit City Stores posted a wider quarterly loss and withdrew its fiscal 2009 outlook Monday amid sluggish sales, poor traffic and heightened competition. Circuit City, which ranks behind Best Buy among the nation’s consumer electronics retailers, said it lost $239.2 million, or $1.45 a share, compared with a loss of $62.8 million, or 38 cents a share, a year earlier. Sales in the period, which ended Aug. 31 and was the second quarter if Circuit City’s fiscal year, declined 10 percent, to $2.39 billion, from $2.64 billion. Sales at stores open at least a year fell 13.3 percent. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected a loss of $1.04 a share and $2.53 billion in sales. Circuit City’s stock fell 29 cents, or 21 percent, to $1.08 a share. “We realize the performance of this company is unacceptable to all of our stakeholders and that it is imperative that we take the right steps to accelerate our turnaround,” James A. Marcum, the acting chief executive, said in a conference call with investors. Mr. Marcum was named vice chairman and acting president and chief executive last week after the resignation of Philip J. Schoonover, who had been under fire for the last year as financial results weakened. “We must get back to the basics and, make no mistake, this is all about our customers,” Mr. Marcum said. The company also said it was “prudent” to withdraw its previous outlook for fiscal 2009 and suspended store openings beginning with fiscal 2010. In the second quarter, Circuit City’s video sales fell by nearly 10 percent as flat-panel televisions rose slightly, but not enough to offset a sharper decline in tube and projection televisions. Sales of camcorders and DVD hardware fell by more than 10 percent. | Circuit City Stores Inc;Company Reports;Electronics;Retail Stores and Trade |
ny0180502 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2007/08/24 | More Iraqis Said to Flee Since Troop Increase | BAGHDAD, Aug. 23 — The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has soared since the American troop increase began in February, according to data from two humanitarian groups, accelerating the partition of the country into sectarian enclaves. Despite some evidence that the troop buildup has improved security in certain areas, sectarian violence continues and American-led operations have brought new fighting, driving fearful Iraqis from their homes at much higher rates than before the tens of thousands of additional troops arrived, the studies show. The data track what are known as internally displaced Iraqis: those who have been driven from their neighborhoods and seek refuge elsewhere in the country rather than fleeing across the border. The effect of this vast migration is to drain religiously mixed areas in the center of Iraq , sending Shiite refugees toward the overwhelmingly Shiite areas to the south and Sunnis toward majority Sunni regions to the west and north. Though most displaced Iraqis say they would like to return, there is little prospect of their doing so. One Sunni Arab who had been driven out of the Baghdad neighborhood of southern Dora by Shiite snipers said she doubted that her family would ever return, buildup or no buildup. “There is no way we would go back,” said the woman, 26, who gave her name only as Aswaidi. “It is a city of ghosts. The only people left there are terrorists.” Statistics collected by one of the two humanitarian groups, the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization, indicate that the total number of internally displaced Iraqis has more than doubled, to 1.1 million from 499,000, since the buildup started in February. Those figures are broadly consistent with data compiled by an independent agency that specializes in tracking wide-scale dislocations. That agency, the International Organization for Migration, found that in recent months the rate of displacement in Baghdad, where the buildup is focused, had increased by as much as a factor of 20, although part of that rise could have stemmed from improved monitoring of displaced Iraqis by the government in Baghdad, the capital. The new findings suggest that while sectarian attacks have declined in some neighborhoods, the influx of troops and the intense fighting they have brought are at least partly responsible for what a report by the United Nations migration office calls the worst human displacement in Iraq’s modern history. The findings also indicate that the sectarian tension the troops were meant to defuse is still intense in many places in Iraq. Sixty-three percent of the Iraqis surveyed by the United Nations said they had fled their neighborhoods because of direct threats to their lives, and more than 25 percent because they had been forcibly removed from their homes. The demographic shifts could favor those who would like to see Iraq partitioned into three semi-autonomous regions: a Shiite south and a Kurdish north sandwiching a Sunni territory. Over all, the scale of this migration has put so much strain on Iraqi governmental and relief offices that some provinces have refused to register any more displaced people, or will accept only those whose families are originally from the area. But Rafiq Tschannen, chief of the Iraq mission for the migration office, said that in many cases, the ability of extended families to absorb displaced relatives was also stretched to the breaking point. “It’s a bleak picture,” Mr. Tschannen said. “It is just steadily continuing in a bad direction, from bad to worse.” He also cautioned that reports of people going back to their homes were overstated. As the buildup began, the Iraqi government said that it would take measures to evict squatters from houses that were not theirs and make special efforts to bring the rightful owners back. “They were reporting that people went back, but they didn’t report that people left again,” Mr. Tschannen said. He added that Iraqis “hear things are better, go back to collect remuneration and pick up an additional suitcase and leave again. It is not a permanent return in most cases.” American officials in Baghdad did not respond to a request for comment, but the national intelligence estimate released Thursday confirmed that Iraq continues to become more segregated through internal migration. “Population displacement resulting from sectarian violence continues,” it found, “imposing burdens on provincial governments and some neighboring states.” Dr. Said Hakki, director of the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization, said that he had been surprised when his figures revealed that roughly 100,000 people a month were fleeing their homes during the buildup. Dr. Hakki said that he did not know why the rates were so high but added that some factors were obvious. “It’s fear,” he said. “Lack of services. You see, if you have a security problem, you don’t need a lot to frighten people.” It is clear that military operations, both by American troops and the Iraqi forces working with them as part of the buildup, have something to do with the rise in displacement, said Dana Graber Ladek, Iraq displacement specialist for the migration organization’s Iraq office. “If a surge means that soldiers are on the streets patrolling to make sure there is no violence, that is one thing,” Ms. Ladek said. “If a surge means military operations where there are attacks and bombings, then obviously that is going to create displacement.” But Ms. Ladek added that, in contrast to the first years of the conflict, when major American offensives were a main cause of displacement, the primary driving force had changed. “Sectarian violence is the biggest driving factor — militias coming into a neighborhood and kicking all the Sunnis out, or insurgents driving all the Shias away,” Ms. Ladek said. Her conclusions mirrored the experiences of Iraqis who had fled their homes. Aswaidi and her family were driven out of the Dora section of Baghdad five months ago when Shiite snipers opened fire on their Sunni neighborhood from nearby tower blocks, shooting through their windows “at all hours of day and night.” Returning covertly to check on the property in mid-August, she found Sunni insurgents occupying the building and neighboring homes, walking unchallenged through the deserted streets. Nearby, she claims, the same insurgents captured one of the Shiite snipers who drove the residents away, and claimed that he was a 16-year-old Iranian. She now fears that her entire neighborhood will be taken over by Shiite militias like the Mahdi Army, which is loyal to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. “I don’t want them to take my town, but I think they will,” Aswaidi said. “It will change from Sunni to Shia. The Americans can’t stop it.” Shiites face similarly overwhelming odds. In Shualah, on the northern outskirts of Baghdad, 400 Shiite families now live in a makeshift refugee camp on wasteland commandeered by Mr. Sadr’s followers. In a sprawl of cinder block hovels and tin and bamboo-roofed shacks, families have stories of being expelled from their homes by Sunni insurgents. Ali Edan fled Yusifiya, a Sunni insurgent haven south of Baghdad, when his uncle was killed. He has no intention of returning, even though American commanders claim Sunni sheiks there have begun cooperating with them. “It is still an unsafe area,” said Mr. Edan. Both humanitarian groups based their conclusions on information collected from the displaced Iraqis inside the country. The Red Crescent counted only displaced Iraqis who receive relief supplies, and the United Nations relied on data from an Iraqi ministry that closely tracks Iraqis who leave their homes and register for government services elsewhere. Before the troop buildup, by far the most significant event causing the displacement of Iraqis was the bombing of a revered Shiite mosque in Samarra in February 2006. The bombing set off a spasm of sectarian killing, but the rate at which Iraqis left their homes leveled off toward the end of that year before accelerating again as the buildup began, the Red Crescent figures show. The United Nations figures also include a little over a million people it says were displaced in the decades before the Samarra bombing, including the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The Red Crescent data does not include them. In Baghdad, the latest migration involves an enormously complex landscape in which some people flee one district even as others return to it. In Ghazaliya, a mixed but Sunni-majority district of north Baghdad, one 30-year-old Shiite said his family was driven out by Sunni insurgents a year ago with just two hours notice to leave their home. Five months ago, the troop buildup brought American soldiers and the Shiite-dominated Iraqi Army onto his street and his family returned. But even as it did, Sunni neighbors fled, knowing that the army had been infiltrated by Shiite militias. “They are afraid, because the army has good relations with the Mahdi Army,” said the 30-year-old man, who said he was too afraid to give his name. “My area used to have a lot of Sunni. Now most are Shia, because Shias expelled from other places have moved into the empty Sunni homes.” | Iraq;United States Armament and Defense;Immigration and Refugees;International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies;Sunni Muslims;Shiite Muslims |
ny0220471 | [
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] | 2010/02/27 | Butler Beats Valparaiso and Goes Undefeated in Horizon League | Willie Veasley scored 20 points and Matt Howard had 17 to lead No. 15 Butler to a 74-69 victory over host Valparaiso on Friday night, stretching its nation-leading winning streak to 18 games. The Bulldogs (26-4, 18-0 Horizon) prevailed without their top scorer, Gordon Hayward, who sat out with a back injury. Howard played with a stomach ailment. The Bulldogs pulled away with a 19-3 run that started midway through the second half, when Valparaiso (15-16, 10-8) was leading, 49-46. Butler became the third Horizon League team to go unbeaten in conference play, after Wisconsin-Green Bay (16-0) in 1995-96 and Xavier (14-0) in 1994-95. CORNELL 50, PRINCETON 47 Jeff Foote scored 19 points for host Cornell (24-4, 10-1 Ivy League), which has the most wins by a team other than Princeton or Penn since the Ivy League formed in 1955-56. Ryan Wittman hit two free throws with two seconds left to clinch the victory after the Tigers pulled to 48-47 on a Dan Mavraides layup with four seconds to go. Mavraides scored 13 points to lead Princeton (16-8, 7-3), which lost a second straight game for the first time since Dec. 3. HARVARD 91, BROWN 71 Brandyn Curry scored 21 points as host Harvard (19-6, 8-3 Ivy League) tied its 64-year-old record for victories in a season. Women DUKE 83, VIRGINIA 65 Jasmine Thomas scored 21 points for No. 6 Duke, which clinched the Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season title at home against No. 21 Virginia. Allison Vernerey added 17 points and Joy Cheek 13 for the Blue Devils (24-4, 12-1), winners of six straight since their only conference loss. Monica Wright scored 15 of her 27 in the first half for Virginia (20-8, 8-5). GA. TECH 64, NO. CAROLINA 57 Alex Montgomery had 20 points and 15 rebounds, and Brigitte Ardossi added 18 points as No. 22 Georgia Tech (22-7, 8-5 A.C.C.) improved its home record to 12-2. Cetera DeGraffenreid scored 25 for North Carolina (17-10, 5-8). | Basketball;College Athletics |
ny0142047 | [
"us"
] | 2008/11/19 | AARP Orders Investigation Concerning Its Marketing | WASHINGTON — After a Senate inquiry found evidence of deceptive marketing, AARP , the lobby for older Americans, has hired an outside investigator to look into sales of some of its popular health insurance products. AARP and UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation’s largest insurers, have voluntarily suspended sales of the policies, which pay fixed cash benefits — often much less than consumers had expected — for selected services. The investigation will be conducted by Elizabeth Rowe Costle, who was the insurance commissioner of Vermont from 1992 to 2003, when Howard Dean was governor. At issue are insurance plans that were sold by UnitedHealth and carry the AARP brand. More than a million people have bought the policies, which have names like AARP Medical Advantage, Essential Plus and Hospital Indemnity Plan. The senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, said marketing of the products was often misleading because it suggested that they offered comprehensive coverage. “In fact,” Mr. Grassley said, “there’s no basic protection against high medical costs. The products may leave consumers seriously in debt if they need intensive medical care.” The criticism is potentially embarrassing to AARP because the organization has long taken pride in its role as a champion of its members and consumers in general. It has criticized “hard-sell tactics” of private insurers and has accused the Bush administration of overstating the value of private health plans offered to Medicare beneficiaries. William D. Novelli, the chief executive of AARP, said he was eager to address Senator Grassley’s concerns. “Ensuring the protection and keeping the trust of our members drives all that we do at AARP,” Mr. Novelli said. Bonnie Burns, an insurance counselor at California Health Advocates, an education and advocacy group, said: “These limited-benefit policies have been a problem for many years. Uninsured people buy them thinking they are equivalent to major medical coverage, but they are not.” For example, one of AARP’s Medical Advantage plans pays a maximum of $5,000 for surgical procedures that may cost two or three times that amount. The marketing materials highlight coverage for relatively low-cost procedures. A consumer guide to AARP’s Medical Advantage plans says they “can be a real lifesaver for early retirees, part-time workers or people who just need to supplement their current health insurance.” Though known in Washington as a potent lobby, AARP is also a huge business that offers travel services, life and homeowner’s insurance, mutual funds and credit cards. Its operating revenue last year was $1.2 billion, more than 40 percent of which came from royalties, according to its 2007 financial statement. Senator Grassley said he wanted AARP to disclose the profits it had made from sales of its limited-benefit insurance products, which are managed by a taxable subsidiary of AARP Inc., the parent organization. At a hearing in June, a Texas woman, Lisa Kelly, told the Senate Finance Committee that she discovered the limits of her AARP policy when she went to the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston for treatment of leukemia. The hospital demanded a check for $45,000 up front, Ms. Kelly testified. Martha Jones, a spokeswoman for UnitedHealth, said the company was cooperating with the investigation being performed for AARP. The investigation does not concern the marketing of prescription drug plans or Medicare Advantage plans offered by UnitedHealth and endorsed by AARP. | AARP;Health Insurance and Managed Care;Advertising and Marketing;Medicine and Health;UnitedHealth Group |
ny0235711 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2010/01/24 | Cornel West, Touching Minds on the Lecture Circuit | Cornel West , 56, has many roles: Princeton professor, philosopher, fiery orator, civil rights activist, classical violinist and actor (in two “Matrix” movies). On weekends, Dr. West travels the country delivering lectures, being, in his own words, “a bluesman in the life of the mind, a jazzman in the world of ideas, forever on the move.” HEEDING THE CALL I’ve never spent a weekend in Princeton. I would like to be at home, but my calling beckons me. I’ve got places to go, from schools to community centers to prisons to churches to mosques to universities to trade unions. There’s academic lectures, political lectures, religious lectures. It’s just my regular weekly travel. The aim is to touch minds and settle souls; so you instruct as well as delight. EARLY RISER I usually get up in a different part of the country every Sunday, usually very early, about 6:30 a.m. It’s just the habit, you know. I’m traveling, so I’ve got to get moving. I usually hit four cities in a weekend. THE PLACES HE GOES All over. This past weekend, I was in Seattle, Oakland, Sacramento and Chicago. Next weekend, I’m going to Dallas, Houston and back to Chicago. I stay in hotels. They provide for me. None of this is out of my pocket; I’m as broke as I can be. FAITH-BASED Am I religious? Am I a black man born to my parents, Irene and Clifton West? I am, indeed, indeed. I am a profoundly Jesus-loving free black man who bears witness to truth and justice until the day I die. WHICH CHURCHES? Christian and Baptist. Funky Baptist, which means you focus on the blood at the cross where you find the love and freedom to bear witness to truth and justice. And funky as in George Clinton-and-James Brown funky, as opposed to deodorized. FAVORITE HOUSES OF WORSHIP If I can, if possible, I usually go to a black Baptist church. Concord Baptist in Brooklyn. Enon Tabernacle Baptist in Philadelphia. Abyssinian in Harlem, with my dear brother Calvin Butts. I’ve spoken at his church three times. And Mother Zion Church on West 137th Street. I just spoke there. I’m not an ordained or licensed preacher, but they ask me to preach anyway. NO BREAKFAST I haven’t had breakfast on a Sunday since 1984. WHAT HAPPENED IN 1984? We won’t go into that. It was a special Sunday. But I always have water. It’s decaf coffee from Monday to Thursday. HITTING THE BOOKS Downtime is reading; I’m always reading on the plane, whatever the reading is for course work the next week. I’m also always rereading the classics, Plato, St. Augustine. EVER READ FLUFF? I might pick up Time or Newsweek and take a peek. PREPPING FOR CLASS I try to shoot to be home by 8 or 9 at night. I like to get home and wash my clothes. I have to read all night; I have to be real fresh for class. I like to read two or three hours every night. Right now I’m reading Robert Brandom , one of the great pragmatic American philosophers. I read until 2, 2:30 a.m. I don’t really need that much sleep. IN THE COMPANY OF GREATS I’ve been married three times. I’m married to my calling, but I’m not married to a particular woman. I have no pets. My apartment is full of books and records, the light of Toni Morrison and John Coltrane . And Chekhov, everywhere. | West Cornel;Religion and Belief;Civil Rights and Liberties;Princeton (NJ) |
ny0064087 | [
"business"
] | 2014/06/04 | United Auto Workers Vote to Raise Dues 25 Percent | Delegates at a United Auto Workers convention have voted to raise dues by 25 percent to shore up the union’s finances. Representatives voted by a show of hands to approve the increase from two hours of pay per month to two and a half hours. It will cost the average longtime autoworker who makes around $28 per hour about $14 more per month. The increase will raise $15 million per year for the union. The raise is the first in 47 years for the U.A.W., which has been selling assets and raiding its strike fund to pay operating expenses. Dues revenue has dropped nearly 40 percent since 2006 to $115 million as membership has fallen to about 391,000 today from a peak of 1.5 million in 1979. | Labor Unions;UAW |
ny0195405 | [
"business"
] | 2009/11/25 | The Swaps Market Is Too Big to Ban | Is the market for credit-default swaps in for a renaissance? George Soros, for one, reckons credit derivatives should be banned. But trading in swaps has so far survived the crisis and market reforms are on the way. Barring unexpectedly draconian regulatory changes, a comeback looks likely. In a credit-default swap, the buyer pays the seller a fee to protect against default on a notional amount of a borrower’s debt, typically in increments of $10 million. If the borrower defaults, the seller pays up. Losses on an oversize book of particularly wacky versions of these derivatives forced the American International Group to take a gigantic government bailout. Cheery forecasts for growth in swaps trading from Icap, a British broker, and the Intercontinental Exchange, the clearinghouse, are therefore a bit surprising. After all, the notional volume of outstanding contracts declined by 14 percent, to $36 trillion, in the first half of 2009, according to the Bank for International Settlements. In part, the decline reflects the efforts of dealers to cancel out offsetting contracts. But trading activity has also fallen. There’s still uncertainty over reforms being mulled by lawmakers and regulators in the United States and Europe. Sensibly, they mostly want swaps contracts to be traded through central clearinghouses rather than bilaterally, the traditional way of doing business. Done right, that ought to reduce the systemic risk of an individual market participant going bust. It should also mean collateral requirements are standardized and more uniformly enforced. Both reforms would have eased A.I.G.’s troubles. Central clearing of swaps, and maybe exchange trading of the most popular instruments, would accelerate an existing trend toward electronic trading, especially in the United States, which has lagged in that regard. Standardization could also bring in a wider range of users. Admittedly, some policy makers want to squash the swaps market much more forcefully, and the instruments do have structural imperfections that still need work. But it looks likely that reforms to improve the market’s workings will trump the idea of shutting it down. With that in mind, forecasting a return to robust market growth makes sense. Central clearinghouses and electronic trading led the energy derivatives market to bloom in recent years. The return of credit risk-taking wouldn’t please everyone, but the credit-default swaps market could emerge bigger and stronger, too. The India Option Let’s hope everyone enjoyed President Obama’s first state dinner on Tuesday night in honor of Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister. China, America’s second-largest trade partner after Canada, usually gets the bigger reception. But United States trade with India, the world’s most populous democracy, is more balanced. The United States-China trading relationship is enormous, but one-sided. Imports are 4.5 times exports to China. That is fueled by the undervalued Chinese currency, but it also to some extent reflects Chinese protectionism that hampers American exports. Trade with India is much smaller, but growing rapidly. It is also closer to equilibrium. Indian exports to the United States are only 25 percent larger than American exports to India, less broken than American trade as a whole. Moreover, India is more open than it used to be to foreign direct investment, typically an American strength. India’s foreign direct investment was nearly a third of what China’s was in 2008, but up from less than 10 percent in 2000-2. Along with the huge and one-sided trade position, China’s holdings of $800 billion in United States Treasuries make America’s economic relationship with the country too unbalanced to be comfortable. With its huge population, nearly as large as China’s, and robust economic growth rate, India offers the United States a healthy alternative partner. India’s finances are not as solid as China’s. Moody’s warned on Tuesday, for example, that Indian banks had an excessively high level of nonperforming loans. The Indian budget deficit is also large. That, however, is a problem shared with the United States. Mr. Singh, a Social Democrat, should also be broadly in tune politically with Mr. Obama. The Obama administration can’t afford to distance itself from China. But economically and politically, India is a more congenial partner. Mr. Obama could avoid developing too much of an overriding bilateral relationship with China by dining more with Mr. Singh. NICHOLAS PAISNER and MARTIN HUTCHINSON | Derivatives (Financial Transactions);Regulation and Deregulation of Industry;International Trade and World Market;India |
ny0098749 | [
"business"
] | 2015/06/30 | Celgene to Pay $1 Billion for Biotech Collaboration With Juno | Celgene , a leading biotech company, said on Monday that it would pay about $1 billion to start a collaboration with Juno Therapeutics , a leader in the hot new area of cancer drugs that harness patients’ immune systems to attack tumors. Most of the $1 billion Celgene will pay will go toward acquiring about 9.1 million shares of Juno at $93 a share. That is about double the price at which Juno closed on Monday, before rising about 40 percent after hours. Juno, which is based in Seattle, went public in December in one of the largest initial offerings ever in the biotechnology industry. That reflected the excitement around its technology, which involves genetically engineering patients’ immune system cells so they can recognize and attack tumors. A deal with Celgene, which is one of the largest biotechnology companies, could help Juno better compete with Novartis , the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, which is developing similar treatments, which are called chimeric antigen receptor T cells, or CAR-T. Many other companies are also in the race. No such drug is approved for sale yet, but in small clinical trials, the approach has led to some substantial remissions among patients with various blood cancers. “Celgene is the ideal partner for Juno to help us realize the full potential of our science and clinical research while maintaining the independence we, our employees, partners and investors believe is so critical for true innovation,” Hans Bishop, the chief executive of Juno, said in a statement. Celgene is a leader in drugs to treat the cancer multiple myeloma , based mainly on its blockbuster Revlimid. It is also known for entering into what some analysts see as generous deals with smaller companies for new drugs and technology, giving it access to a wide variety of potential approaches to treating cancer. But some analysts said that Celgene overpaid. CAR-T and related approaches are not yet totally validated, nor is it clear so far how applicable the techniques will be in treating so-called solid tumors like breast, lung and prostate cancers, which represent a far larger potential market than the blood cancers. “Celgene’s management are to be congratulated on the audacity of their deal-making, but we expect investors to bridle at the company’s increasingly aggressive front-end loading of their transactions,” Geoffrey Porges, a biotechnology analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, said in a note on Monday. “This transaction amounts to prepaying much of the cost of a distance asset well in advance of the delivery of the asset,” a risky move given the frequent failures in drug development, he said. Celgene executives said the collaboration would help change the face of cancer care. “We consider the combined efforts will far exceed the sum of the parts,” said Dr. Thomas O. Daniel, who leads research and early development for the company. Celgene shares fell about 2 percent in after-hours trading. Celgene will pay $150 million to Juno, and also purchase 9,137,672 newly issued shares at $93 each, giving it about a 10 percent stake in Juno. By the end of the 10-year collaboration, Celgene will be able to increase its stake to as much as 30 percent under certain conditions. It will get one seat on Juno’s board. Under the terms of the agreement, Celgene has the option to be the commercialization partner for Juno’s cancer drugs and also any cell therapies it develops for autoimmune diseases. That includes the cancer drugs Juno now has in clinical trials. Juno will remain responsible for research, development and commercialization in North America. Celgene will be responsible for development and commercialization in the rest of the world and will pay Juno a royalty on sales. The companies may also collaborate globally on certain experimental Juno programs, not including its most advanced ones. And Juno has the option to codevelop and help commercialize certain Celgene drug candidates that are aimed at T cells. Some analysts have said that investors have become overly enthusiastic about engineered T cells, given that the therapies can have severe side effects. Juno has technology from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, the Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and they could be in for a windfall if the company succeeds. | Celgene;Novartis;Biotech,Bioengineering;Cancer;Tumor;Pharmaceuticals |
ny0165812 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2006/09/06 | This Web TV Is for You, Especially if You’re a Male Aged 21 to 34 | IF Anheuser-Busch has its way, it may not be long before consumers start insisting “I want my BTV.” That’s “BTV” as in Bud TV, an online entertainment network that Anheuser-Busch, the nation’s biggest brewer, is preparing to introduce the day after Super Bowl XLI is played in early February. The network, which will be on a Web site that will have the bud.tv address, accelerates a push by Anheuser-Busch into the business of providing program content. Advertisers becoming content providers, a practice known as branded entertainment, is helping reshape how Madison Avenue peddles wares. It reflects an effort by marketers to regain some of the power they wielded from the 1930’s through the 1950’s, when they owned the radio and television shows they sponsored. Anheuser-Busch is joining a lengthy list of marketers turning to branded entertainment. Others include American Honda Motor, Best Buy, Cadbury Schweppes, General Motors, Krups, Nestlé, Pepsi-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Stolichnaya and Washington Mutual. Critics complain that branded entertainment is hastening the commercialization of American popular culture. “It’s the advertisers swallowing the programming,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director at Commercial Alert in Portland, Ore., a nonprofit organization that fights what it considers to be creeping commercialism. “We live in a time of great overreaching by the advertising and marketing industry,” Mr. Ruskin said. “This is one further step toward advertiser control of media.” Marketers are embracing branded entertainment because it can serve as a counterweight to the growing ability of TV viewers to use devices like digital video recorders and remote controls to skip, flip past and otherwise avoid conventional interruptive 30-second commercials. “We still have plenty of strong, traditional national TV venues for our messages such as live sports,” said Anthony T. Ponturo, vice president for global media and sports marketing at Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis, part of the Anheuser-Busch Companies. Going forward, “the Internet will be equal to or better than television,” Mr. Ponturo said, particularly in reaching the company’s target audience for beers like Budweiser and Bud Light, which is men ages 21 to 34. “We’re trying to get out in front of consumers who are spending six hours a week online,” he added. “Marketers had better understand how to effectively reach them.” Mr. Ponturo and James M. Schumacker, the new leader of the Anheuser-Busch digital marketing team, discussed the company’s plans yesterday with reporters. Anheuser-Busch is scheduled to announce today the intended start of Bud TV on Feb. 5. Although it is too soon to discuss the specifics of spending on Bud TV and its complementary program offerings on cellphones, Mr. Ponturo said, Anheuser-Busch is expected to double the share of its marketing budget devoted to online advertising, to 10 percent. That would include spending on Web sites that the company already operates, he added, like budweiser.com and budlight.com , as well as spending for ads on more than 40 third-party Web sites like espn.com and yahoo.com . According to TNS Media Intelligence, Anheuser-Busch spent $919.4 million last year to advertise in all major media, ranking the company 40th among the largest American advertisers. The plans call for Bud TV to offer computer users six channels of comedy, reality, sports and talk programming created for and by Anheuser-Busch. The tentative names for the channels include Comedy, Happy Hour and Reality. Sources for the programs will include agencies that create advertising for Anheuser-Busch like @radical.media and DDB Worldwide, part of the Omnicom Group; companies owned by Hollywood stars like LivePlanet (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon), TriggerStreet.com (Kevin Spacey), and Wild West Picture Show Productions (Vince Vaughn); and production companies like Omelet and Seed. Anheuser-Busch is in discussions with Joe Buck, the sportscaster, to develop a talk show, Mr. Schumacker said, and “we may add a fashion channel” at some point. A seventh channel on Bud TV, tentatively named Bud Tube, will be styled after the popular Web site YouTube ( youtube.com ), Mr. Schumacker said, giving consumers a chance to “generate their own Anheuser-Busch ads, comedic in nature,” which can be shared with other computer users. The idea for Bud Tube, Mr. Schumacker said, came from another agency that works for Anheuser-Busch, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, also part of Omnicom. The first assignment consumers can tackle, he added, is to make their own versions of a series of Bud Light commercials featuring a character called Ted Ferguson, billed as the “Bud Light daredevil.” Anheuser-Busch will borrow another page from the YouTube playbook, Mr. Ponturo said, by setting up the programming on Bud TV so that computer users can repurpose it on other Web sites like YouTube and MySpace ( myspace.com ). “We see this as a marketing tool to talk to consumers,” Mr. Ponturo said, “rather than as a production company or a network whose goal is to make money on programming.” His reference was to efforts by some networks and producers to have content they created removed from sharing sites like MySpace and YouTube. There has been speculation that Anheuser-Busch wanted to expand its presence in the content arena beyond a unit, Bud Productions, that creates sports programs. That speculation reached a fever pitch before the Super Bowl in February, when trade publications reported that the company would offer computer users a desktop application so they could take another look at the Budweiser and Bud Light commercials that ran during the game. Instead, Anheuser-Busch chose to offer downloads of the commercials on budweiser.com and budlight.com. After 700,000 downloads, Mr. Ponturo said, “we learned a little bit” about the preferences of computer users, adding that the commercials were watched by an additional 22 million visitors to other Web sites like video.google.com and video.yahoo.com . The trade publication Advertising Age reported in its Aug. 21 issue that Anheuser-Busch would make entertainment programs available online. Mr. Schumacker said that Bud TV would also offer a desktop application that can be downloaded to deliver a program from the Happy Hour channel each day at 4:55 p.m.. Anheuser-Busch intends to monitor the use of Bud TV so that it is not watched by minors under 21, Mr. Schumacker and Mr. Ponturo said, adding that when computer users sign up and create profiles, they will be asked to provide identifying information beyond age and birth date. To critics like Mr. Ruskin of Commercial Alert, there is one small silver lining in something like Bud TV. “As advertising becomes more and more aggressive and intrusive, people will dislike it more than they do,” Mr. Ruskin said, “and we’ll do better at efforts to keep advertising in its proper place.” | Advertising and Marketing;Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc;YouTube.com;Computers and the Internet;Beer |
ny0114679 | [
"world",
"africa"
] | 2012/11/09 | Sudan: Rebels Claim They Shot Down Military Plane | Sudanese rebels said Thursday that they had ambushed a military patrol, killing 10 soldiers, and shot down a government warplane after its bombs killed two civilians in a southern region. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North said in a statement that the plane was downed Wednesday by rebels in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan State. The rebels also claimed in a separate statement that they had ambushed a military patrol on Wednesday in South Kordofan, killing 10 soldiers. The claims could not be independently verified. The rebel group has been battling the Sudanese government in South Kordofan, on the border with newly independent South Sudan , since June of last year. The fighting in the region has forced tens of thousands of people to flee to a refugee camp in South Sudan. | Sudan;South Sudan;Sudan People's Liberation Army;Nuba Mountains (Sudan) |
ny0190701 | [
"sports",
"hockey"
] | 2009/05/24 | Hockey’s Islanders Feeling Cast Away | Uniondale, N.Y. In the first warm weather of spring, it’s time to think about heading toward Jones Beach . But first, like a regular Indiana Jones, I make a detour past the empty tomb of the ancient empire — Raiders of the Lost Cup. Flashback: Arriving for a Stanley Cup finals game with the May sun in my eyes, circa 1980-84. Mike Bossy stealing a pass from Harold Snepsts and killing the Canucks in overtime. Anders Kallur, wearing only an athletic supporter, displaying the Cup to his relatives from Sweden . Laughter and pride and success. No doubt, fans in other places have their memories. Chicago fans remember Jordan and Pippen. San Francisco fans remember Montana and Rice. Pittsburgh fans remember that slim young Bonds chap. On Long Island, we remember Butch Goring’s funky old helmet . It is hard to watch the late stages of the N.H.L. playoffs these May nights because the Red Wings are the Islanders of this generation, and the Penguins remind me of the young Islanders of the late ’70s, with their best years ahead of them, maybe. It is hard to drive past the mundane Nassau Coliseum , plopped down in a parking lot, sensing that it really may be time for the Islanders to vanish. “Wherever the people are as green as the money, friend,” Professor Harold Hill in “The Music Man” said when asked where he was heading. It is never a good sign when the owner of a sports franchise expresses buyer’s remorse, but that is what Charles Wang is doing these days. “ If I had the chance, I wouldn’t do it again ,” Wang recently said on WFAN about his ownership of the Islanders — claiming a $300 million loss, and counting. The franchise of Smitty and Nystrom is in grave jeopardy because of the world economy, of course, but the Islanders seem to be an especially risky business. Wang, one of the founders of Computer Associates , now a developer, has painted the Islanders into a corner. The team stinks — worst record in the league this season — and the Coliseum is a dump. Any self-respecting member of the Sports Franchise Owners Union knows enough to hustle the locals for a snazzy new palace, or at least some sweet little extras. The Yankees got Mayor Bloomberg to plow down children’s parkland . The Mets got some “infrastructure” out of the Big Apple for their new playpen in Queens. But Wang has a better idea. He does not merely want a new arena on Nassau County land. He has blatantly tied any new arena into an agreement for him to build something called the Lighthouse — theoretically, $3.7 billion worth of housing and stores and hotels, in a county that historically does not do planning. This unlikely Shangri-La is caught up in the normal double-dip politics of Nassau County. The Republican supervisor of the town of Hempstead, Kate Murray, did not show up for a planned meeting with Wang and Democratic county leaders recently, but she had time to hire her 83-year-old father for a $40-an-hour part-time job in the town attorney’s office. With priorities like that, it is hard to imagine keeping the Islanders. Wang sounds beaten down — or devious — about the yawning lack of corporate support for a hockey team on Long Island. Fact is, the Islanders have never been a cushy operation. They won four Stanley Cups in a row because brilliant hockey minds scouted players from Sweden to Alberta, and Al Arbour goaded them to their potential. For the Stanley Cup finals, management disinfected unused party rooms at the Coliseum and hung out tattered bunting. And it was glorious, because of the product on the ice. Talk about flashbacks. The Islanders have scheduled an exhibition in Kansas City, Mo., on Sept. 22. That rings my bell with memories of the Brooklyn Dodgers playing seven regular-season games in Jersey City in 1956 and 1957 . Walter O’Malley was warning us he was moving west — and he did. The Islanders have a lease in Nassau through 2015, but you never know. The N.H.L. is having other major tremors in its tectonic plates. The Sun Belt strategy did not really work for American television networks. The Phoenix franchise is bankrupt, and a man wants to move it to Hamilton, Ontario, halfway between Toronto and Buffalo — hockey country. My belief is that the N.H.L. needs Canadian enthusiasm and expertise more than it has acknowledged. It needs franchises where kids skate on ponds, where fans gossip about junior hockey, where people can take mass transit to urban arenas to watch a beloved sport: Hamilton. Quebec City. Winnipeg. Saskatoon. The true north strong and free. It just may be that hockey has come and gone on Long Island. The Devils have inspired leadership and play in downtown Newark — an easy train ride from most of Long Island. The Rangers, despite being run by the Dolans , are a money machine in the center of the universe. The Islanders? Well, we have our memories. Bob Bourne’s 1983 hipper-dipper move right through the Ranger defense . It is late spring again on Long Island. Time to think about the beach. | Hockey Ice;New York Islanders |
ny0146055 | [
"business",
"worldbusiness"
] | 2008/07/05 | Consortium Rescues Bell Canada Takeover | OTTAWA — A private equity and pension fund consortium said it salvaged a record $52 billion deal for Bell Canada on Friday by postponing its closing date until mid-December and renegotiating some terms of the transaction — including canceling dividend payments on the telecommunication giant’s common stock. A group of four banks, including Citigroup and Deutsche Bank, which originally agreed to provide about $34 billion in financing for the blockbuster purchase when it was first announced last year, had been demanding changes in the original terms because of the many challenges brought on by the continuing credit squeeze. The deal, the largest leveraged buyout to date, was originally scheduled to close on Monday but had gotten mired in response to bankers’ concerns and legal issues. The new closing date is Dec. 11. Because the deal is structured under a unique Canadian court procedure, repricing it to address the lenders’ concerns would have been difficult and time-consuming. But the new agreement gets around that problem — and effectively reduces the purchase price by about $1.5 billion, just under $2 a share — by postponing the closing date and halting the dividend payments. Shareholders, however, will still receive the original price of 42.75 Canadian dollars ($41.96) — for their shares, an amount that is high by current market standards. The bank group, which is lending about 85 percent of the purchase price, also extracted slightly higher interest rates from the purchasers and some changes to the lending agreements, said a person with direct knowledge of the negotiations who declined to be named because he was not an official spokesman for the group. A Bell spokesman, William J. Fox, declined to estimate how much extra cash would flow into the company’s coffers from the canceled dividend payments and general revenue. On Monday, Bell, which is based in Montreal and is Canada’s largest telecommunications company, announced that it was deferring its second-quarter common share dividend payments and estimated doing so would save it about 294 million Canadian dollars ($288 million). Although the credit crisis has not abated and banks have come under greater financial pressures as the American economy sags, participants in the Bell transaction said they were optimistic that there would be no further delays and that the deal would close in December. Another roadblock had been a legal challenge from bondholders who argued that the deal unfairly depressed the value of the company’s current debt. While a Quebec appeals court upheld that complaint and effectively struck down the deal, its ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada last month. “The signing of the financing and credit agreements and the resolution of issues involved in funding this transaction are the essential milestones to closing with both the purchaser and the lenders,” said Michael J. Sabia, the chief executive of Bell, in a statement. Deborah Allan, a spokeswoman for the lead purchaser, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, said that “everyone will see this as being positive.” The other main buyers include Providence Equity Partners, Madison Dearborn Partners and Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity. Mr. Sabia, who was scheduled to leave the company when the transaction closed, will now step down on July 11. He will be replaced by George Cope, who heads the Bell telephone operations in Ontario and Quebec. Under terms announced Monday, the buyers agreed to increase the fee they would pay if the takeover was not completed to 1.2 billion Canadian dollars ($1.18 billion), from 1 billion Canadian dollars. “It speaks to the commitment of the purchase group,” Mr. Fox said. | BCE Inc;Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures;Canada;Telephones and Telecommunications |
ny0150484 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2008/09/25 | Howard Carries the Phillies on His Broad Shoulders | PHILADELPHIA — Each time up, Ryan Howard scratches the chalk line at the rear of the batter’s box, bends low, taps the plate twice and holds his bat in one hand as if it were a torch to be set aflame. What happens next is not so easily or consistently replicated. When Howard rushes, his weight begins to drift forward too quickly, his right shoulder leaning the way one nudges a friend who has told a ribald joke. The shoulder swings wide and Howard tends to hook the ball toward the right side. He hit .206 through May for the Phillies , trying in frustration to muscle the ball with his hands and arms, attempting to smash what Manager Charlie Manuel calls the 11-run homer. When Howard remains patient, waiting, waiting, until that moment when the ball comes so close that it seems to leave him defensive and flat-footed, a subtle but profound shift occurs. The hips pivot, the hands snap forward in a blur ahead of his shoulder, and a great kinetic unleashing comes from his rear leg. He does not stride so much as he swings the way a boxer throws a punch, feet set, his power deriving not simply from muscle but from balance, timing and rhythm. At these moments, when he sees the ball clearly, meaning when he picks up the spin and location, Howard can wait a little late and still drive the ball over the fence to the opposite field. In recounting these at-bats, Manuel marvels at the strength in Howard’s 6-foot-4, 250-pound frame, holding his hands apart to approximate Howard’s biceps, holding them so wide that he appears to be gripping an imaginary pumpkin. As the Phillies chase a second consecutive title in the National League East, Howard, 28, has become a contender to win his second Most Valuable Player award in three seasons. After Wednesday’s 10-4 loss to Atlanta, he leads the majors with 47 home runs and 142 runs batted in. Twenty-two of his home runs have gone to the opposite, or left, field — the most in the majors. Thirty-four of his R.B.I. have put the Phillies ahead in a game, tops in the league. “You couple a guy who can go the other way with a guy who’s now patient, and that’s a dangerous combination,” Will Ohman, the Atlanta left-hander, said of Howard. “He gets his front foot down early in order to read the ball, so he can see spin and location. That puts him at a great advantage. It puts the pitcher at a disadvantage, because you lose deception. No matter what I throw him, it ends up 340 feet to the opposite field.” As his hitting has heated up, though, Howard’s willingness to discuss his stroke has grown cold. Speaking of the successes of September means recalling the failures of April and May. Howard is not willing to go there. Politely but firmly. Perhaps he is afraid of jinxing himself with paralysis by analysis. “I just don’t feel like talking about it,” Howard said. “It’s not really all that big a deal.” If Howard does win a second M.V.P. award, the thinking among voters will go something like this: Albert Pujols had a great season in St. Louis, but the Cardinals faded. No one has been more valuable to a team than Manny Ramírez has been to the Dodgers, but he has been in Los Angeles only a third of a season after being traded from Boston. Carlos Delgado has had a great second half for the Mets, but Howard would trump him with a division title. “I like Delgado,” Manuel said. “He’s had a big second half. Howard got off slow. He’s gotten better and better as the season has gone on. If you want to go look and see what his batting average is from the seventh inning on, or go look and see how many big runs he knocks in and how many game-winning hits he’s got for us and how many big home runs he’s hit from the seventh inning on, he’s ahead of those guys in terms of production. “What’s the game all about? It’s about production.” Of course, there are valid reasons to vote for someone other than Howard. Pujols, for instance, is hitting more than 100 points higher than Howard’s average of .248, and he has struck out nearly 150 fewer times than Howard’s total of 195. In the modern era, no M.V.P. winner in the National League has hit lower than the .267 that Marty Marion batted for St. Louis in 1944. Some believe that Howard is not even the most valuable Phillie, with closer Brad Lidge having saved 40 games in his first 40 opportunities. “If you ask people in this town, most will tell you Lidge has been the most valuable player on this team,” said Glen Macnow, a talk-show radio host on WIP-AM. “But as they vote for M.V.P. in the league, Howard’s the stronger candidate. But you can look it up. If you stopped games after seven innings, the Mets would be something like 10 ½ games ahead of the Phillies right now. That’s about two things — the Mets’ terrible bullpen and the Phillies’ entire bullpen, especially Lidge.” Howard’s numbers seem to tumble out with the randomness of a lottery drawing. With no one on base, he is hitting .195. With runners in scoring position, it is .312. The first month of the season, he hit .172. In September, he is hitting .342. Why the traditional slow start? The theories are as voluminous as they are unproven: not enough plate appearances at spring training; too much cold weather at the start of the season; early frustration at trying to hit through the infield shift that opposing teams regularly apply, placing the shortstop behind second base and the second baseman in short right field. “He’s still trying to find out exactly where he’s at,” Manuel said. “Is he a .280 hitter, or is he a .300 hitter? Or is he a .240 hitter or a .220 hitter? I think he’s somewhere in between .280 and .300. When he does that, his strikeouts should be lower and his production will be higher.” Manuel added: “If I could tell you one thing about his swing, it’s patience. You know what Ted Williams said, ‘Get a good ball to hit.’ Ryan doesn’t get a good ball to hit at times.” That patience was evident Tuesday night in a 3-2 defeat to Atlanta. Howard punched a single to center field, tripled to the right-field corner, walked twice and scored both of Philadelphia’s runs. Late in games with men on base, late in the season, Howard seems more focused and resolute, Manuel said. “He’s so strong and quick; when he’s able to trust that — trust his eyes, his hands, trust that he is quick enough and doesn’t have to be any quicker to the ball, that’s when the real Ryan comes out,” said his teammate Greg Dobbs, who leads the majors with 22 pinch-hits. “Now, he’s trusting himself.” Lidge said he had never seen another hitter with such voluminous production in September. “In April, I remember listening to him, and he said he wasn’t seeing the ball,” Lidge said. “As he started seeing it, there’s really not a lot of pitches that can be thrown that he can’t drive out of the park. It doesn’t matter who’s throwing them, either. The tear he’s been on, basically you can’t throw him a fastball over the plate or it’s gone.” | Philadelphia Phillies;Howard Ryan;Baseball;National League |
ny0195681 | [
"business",
"global"
] | 2009/10/02 | BAE Systems Faces Corruption Charges in Britain | LONDON — Britain ’s Serious Fraud Office said Thursday that it would file charges against BAE Systems, one of the world’s largest weapons makers, after failing to reach a settlement over bribery accusations in relation to arms deals in Africa and Eastern Europe. In a sudden turn of events in an investigation that has stretched over more than five years and tarnished the reputations of both BAE Systems and the fraud office, prosecutors said they would prepare documents to ask the attorney general for permission to take BAE Systems to court. BAE Systems has denied any involvement in bribery and said Thursday that it “acted responsibly in its dealings with the Serious Fraud Office” and was ready to face prosecutors in court if necessary. The charges relate to arms deals in South Africa, the Czech Republic, Romania and Tanzania, most of them in the 1990s. BAE Systems came under pressure to settle the case, but some investors said Thursday that without any certainty that it would face court proceedings, there was little upside for the company to agree to a settlement. A settlement and any admission of guilt could also jeopardize the ability of BAE Systems to win contracts in the future. BAE’s shares dropped 4.2 percent Thursday in London amid concern that a settlement in the case could cost the company more than the $1.6 billion that the German engineering giant Siemens agreed to pay last year to settle bribery charges. The fraud office decided to seek charges because “the investigation that commenced in July 2004 now reached a stage where it has to be taken further,” said David Jones, a spokesman for the fraud office. He did not give details on when prosecutors planned to ask for court proceedings. Christopher Grierson, a partner in the bribery and corruption task force at Lovells, a London law firm, said it could be weeks or months before the attorney general reaches a decision. | BAE Systems PLC;Bribery;Suits and Litigation;Great Britain |
ny0138340 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2008/05/15 | Chinese Soldiers Rush to Bolster Weakened Dams | CHENGDU, China — China mobilized 30,000 additional soldiers to the earthquake -shattered expanses of the nation’s southwestern regions on Wednesday — not just to help victims, but also to shore up weakened dams and other elements of the infrastructure whose failure could compound the disaster. Experts said that these dams were built around the well-recognized Longmen Shan fault. They warned that such dams might have sustained damage that could cause them to fail even weeks later. Much depends on efforts to reduce the menacing pressure of water behind the dam walls. Two thousand soldiers were sent to a dam just three miles upriver from the devastated town of Dujiangyan, northwest of the provincial capital of Chengdu, to inspect a structure that has shown some cracks and is “in great danger,” according to state-controlled China National Radio. Dams and their electric generators are only the most visible aspects of the infrastructure battered by the earthquake: The region also is the site of the cities of Guangyuan and Mianyang, which are home to plants that build Chinese nuclear arms and process plutonium for the weapons. It is not clear whether the plants suffered damage. On Wednesday afternoon Chinese officials raised their estimate of the number of people killed to nearly 15,000. The latest figures put the number of people still buried at 26,000 and the missing at 14,000. The deployment of a total of 100,000 members of security forces across the disaster zone, most from the People’s Liberation Army, is one of the largest peacetime mobilizations by any country in recent memory. The soldiers marched through mud and debris to reach mountain towns at the epicenter on Wednesday while army helicopters began dropping food and medicine. On Thursday morning, high up in Beichuan, where the county seat had been flattened, workers brought rescue dogs to the ruins of a school where 1,000 children were believed buried. Bodies lay strewn throughout the town. Hundreds of thousands of people remain homeless everywhere, and all across the region people are seeking shelter wherever they can find it, sleeping beneath plastic tarps, living in stadiums and lying on sidewalks. The damage to dams and reservoirs is extensive. The People’s Daily, a state-run newspaper, reported that 51 reservoirs were “in danger” around the municipality of Chongqing, 170 miles east of Chengdu and closer to the gargantuan Three Gorges Dam. Hundreds of irrigation and water supply systems around Chongqing were damaged, amounting to an economic loss of $72 million. There have been warnings that a serious breach of the Zipingpu Reservoir, which the soldiers were to inspect, could flood Dujiangyan, where hundreds of schoolchildren have been buried in rubble and where blocks of buildings have crashed to the ground. The irrigation system there dates to the third century B.C., and Dujiangyan is close to the epicenter of the 7.9-magnitude quake that struck on Monday. According to the official Xinhua News Agency, the earthquake “caused cracks on the surface of the dam of the Zipingpu Hydropower Station. Some walls of the plant and other buildings have collapsed, and some are partly sunk.” Experts from China’s earthquake bureau raised concerns about the station’s location near a fault zone before it was built in 2000, according to Aviva Imhof, the China program director for the International Rivers Network, a group that opposed construction of the dam. She cited leaked transcripts of a September 2000 meeting about the issue. The National Development and Reform Commission released a report on Wednesday saying that 391 reservoirs in five provinces had been damaged. The nature of the damage is unclear, and so is the effect it might have on the lives of people in this mostly rural, mostly poor swath of China. Two reservoirs in the report are considered large, and 28 are midsize. On Monday, Xinhua cited an executive with the China Three Gorges Project Corporation saying that the Three Gorges Dam, 350 miles east of the quake’s epicenter, had no damage. J. David Rogers, a professor in the department of geological engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, said the Zipingpu station was a concrete-faced rockfill dam 512 feet high. That means it is not made fully of concrete. Rather, it has a surface of concrete that covers an interior structure of rock and earth. Such a structure could be expected to have a “very noticeable” amount of settlement and cracking in a quake like this one, Dr. Rogers said. No matter what the damage is, he said, the first thing to do is to lower the level of water behind the wall, reducing the overall pressure that can cause further damage. A dam can fail in slow motion, he said. “If they do have a leak, this thing could fail two weeks from now.” One state news media report said late Wednesday that inspectors had declared the Zipingpu dam safe, while China National Radio said that soldiers would, in fact, release some water. A reporter for Caijing, a respected Chinese news magazine, wrote online Wednesday that he had seen cracks on the dam 10 centimeters wide and that workers had already drained the water to such a degree that parts of the reservoir bottom were visible. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was shown on state television Wednesday telling survivors that 100,000 soldiers, paramilitary troops and police officers would be involved in relief efforts. For comparison, in 2005 the American federal and state governments dispatched about 50,000 members of the National Guard in eight days to areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina . The soldiers arriving at Wenchuan County, at the quake’s epicenter, began ferrying survivors across rivers on plastic skiffs. But in Yingxiu, the first township that the soldiers reached, only 2,300 of 10,000 residents could be confirmed alive, according to Xinhua. A poor farming region that is home to a famous panda reserve, Wenchuan is one of the worst-hit areas. “There is an urgent need for medical staff, medicine, food and drinking water,” He Biao, the deputy secretary general of the prefectural government that includes Wenchuan, told Xinhua. The fact that aid was able to reach Wenchuan was a minor triumph in the aftermath of the worst natural disaster to hit China in more than 30 years. Until Wednesday, Wenchuan had been completely cut off. Half of the survivors had severe injuries, Chinese officials said. The threat of earthquakes and aftershocks remained high across the region. Tremors could be felt in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, on Wednesday and Thursday mornings. The rains that had hampered aid efforts for two days let up on Wednesday, allowing easier travel and granting reprieve to cold survivors. The weather had forced the military to cancel rescue plans that included parachuting soldiers into Wenchuan and other hard-hit areas. “Sichuan is so tremendously mountainous, it’s difficult to reach some of these areas even without an earthquake,” said Kate Janis, a program director at Mercy Corps, an aid organization that is preparing to send food, medicine and other supplies. More than 800 police officers arrived in Yingxiu soon after 200 soldiers got through. Photos taken from a helicopter flying over a town in Wenchuan County showed empty avenues and rows of deserted buildings, and what appeared to be a cluster of makeshift tents on a soccer field. Rocks and mudslides have cut off roads to the county, only a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Chengdu, and phone service has been wholly disrupted. At 4 p.m. Wednesday, in nearby Hanwang Township, some 200 young soldiers marched toward a mountain range on the eastern flank of Wenchuan. As they reached the end of an undamaged road, they descended in two rows to a riverbed, then forded the muddy river. Their destination was Qingping, a village of 5,000 deep in the mountains. It was still a 10-hour walk away. Li Zhengxin, 17, a boy whose nearby hometown had been destroyed, watched the soldiers disappear around a bend in the deep ravine. “They are like our bodhisattvas,” he said, using the word for an enlightened Buddhist who helps others attain nirvana. “Now that they are here, our hearts feel more at ease.” A photographer in Hanwang estimated that 70 to 80 percent of the structures had suffered damage, and about a tenth had been flattened. In the evening, cooking fires cast an eerie glow up and down the sidewalks. In Mianyang, where nearly 19,000 people are missing, there were reports of people waiting in line for three hours for a bowl of rice porridge. The number of confirmed dead — 14,866 on Wednesday — is expected to increase by thousands or even tens of thousands as rescue workers reach more remote areas, but some rare moments of good news emerged on Wednesday. A woman who was eight months pregnant and trapped in rubble for 50 hours was pulled to safety in Dujiangyan, The Associated Press reported. Safety officials were able to speak to the pregnant woman, Zhang Xiaoyan, while she was trapped, but rescue workers proceeded slowly for fear that the rubble above her would collapse. “It is very moving,” said Sun Guoli, the fire chief of Chengdu. “It’s a miracle brought about by us all working together.” | China;Earthquakes;Disasters;Dams and Dikes |
ny0104526 | [
"business",
"global"
] | 2012/03/30 | France Suggests Deal Is Near on Tapping Oil Reserve | PARIS — François Fillon , the French prime minister, suggested Thursday that a deal was near among developed countries, including the United States, to tap strategic petroleum reserves to reduce gasoline prices. There are “good prospects” for a deal, Mr. Fillon told France Inter radio, adding his voice to those of other French officials who have said in recent days that the idea, which they attributed to the Obama administration, was under discussion among countries including the United States, Britain and Japan. “If we reach an accord with the other developed countries, we’ll draw on our stocks, push down the price for a limited time,” Mr. Fillon said. “It’s a way to face a crisis that is largely due to the situation today in Iran. But we shouldn’t expect any miracles. It could allow us to stabilize the price, reorient it a little lower.” The price of U.S. crude oil futures for May delivery fell nearly 2 percent Thursday. Domestic political concerns on both sides of the Atlantic may be a factor in the current discussions. President Barack Obama faces a re-election in November, with gasoline prices at $4 a gallon or more in some states. His French counterpart, President Nicolas Sarkozy , may be feeling even greater pressure to act, with gasoline prices in the Paris area at more than €2 a liter, or $10 a gallon, and a first-round election test less than one month away. Nations build oil stockpiles, like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the United States , to insure against major shocks to supply, like those caused by wars or natural disasters. Last June, the United States and its allies agreed to release 60 million barrels of emergency oil reserves to replace lost Libyan production, helping to soften a spike in prices. Oil prices have risen for a number of reasons, including sanctions against Iran in the standoff over its nuclear ambitions, reduced exports from Syria, Yemen and South Sudan, and demand from India and China. Central banks’ quantitative easing policies, which leave more dollars, yen and euros chasing a finite quantity of the commodity, may also be contributing to the rise in prices. Ali al-Naimi, the oil minister of Saudi Arabia, the largest oil producer in the world, said Wednesday in an opinion piece in The Financial Times that the kingdom would also do its utmost to hold prices down so as not to derail the global economic recovery. “The use of strategic stocks is supposed to be the last bullet,” Olivier Jakob, an oil analyst at Petromatrix in Zug, Switzerland, wrote in a report Thursday. “If Western powers are seriously envisaging this, then it only shows the lack of commitment they have received from Saudi Arabia to replace the Iranian oil that is falling under the embargo.” “Looking at the way Europe has managed the Greek crisis,” he added, “we should now expect a sound bite about stock releases every day.” Mr. Fillon’s remarks followed similar comments from other French officials. Valérie Pécresse, the budget minister, sought Wednesday to temper expectations of immediate action, saying the government was waiting to see fresh data on the oil market from the International Energy Agency, the Paris-based body that analyzes oil market conditions. The I.E.A.’s executive director, Maria van der Hoeven, said last week that any move to tap reserves — something normally coordinated by the I.E.A. — would be up the countries involved. But in an apparent softening of the I.E.A.’s position, she said in a statement Thursday that the agency was concerned by the impact of high oil prices while the global economic recovery remained fragile. “The I.E.A. is closely monitoring market developments and will remain in close contact with member countries to exchange views about the oil market situation,” she said. “As we have mentioned many times, the I.E.A. was created to respond to serious physical supply disruptions, and we remain ready to act if market conditions so warrant.” An Obama administration official said Wednesday that no decision had been made about how to proceed. “While this is an option that remains on the table, no decisions have been made and no specific actions have been proposed,” Josh Earnest, the deputy White House press secretary, said at a briefing in Washington, Bloomberg News reported. | Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline;Strategic Petroleum Reserve (US);Fillon Francois;France;Sarkozy Nicolas;Obama Barack;Prices (Fares Fees and Rates) |
ny0081843 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2015/10/03 | Turkey: Suspected Kurdish Militants Are Killed | Turkish security forces killed more than 10 suspected Kurdish militants on Friday amid intensifying clashes in the country’s southeast, local news outlets reported. In addition, 44 people were arrested in Istanbul on suspicion of links with the Kurdish rebels. The fighting took place in the town of Silvan, in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir, where all of those killed were members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, according to a security official. A cease-fire that lasted for two and a half years was broken in July, when the Turkish government began a crackdown on the party, known as the P.K.K. Since then, more than 120 security personnel and hundreds of militants have been killed. | Kurdistan Workers' Party,PKK;Turkey |
ny0281700 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2016/07/03 | Hillary Clinton’s Ambitious Climate Change Plan Avoids Carbon Tax | WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton, courting young voters and the broader Democratic base, has promised to one-up President Obama on climate change, vowing to produce a third of the nation’s electricity from renewable sources by 2027, three years faster than Mr. Obama, while spending billions of dollars to transform the energy economy. A half-billion solar panels will be installed by 2020, she has promised, seven times the number today, and $60 billion will go to states and cities to develop more climate-friendly infrastructure, such as public transportation and energy-efficient buildings. She would put the United States on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent from 2005 levels by 2050. And, she says, she could achieve all that without new legislation from Congress. But Mrs. Clinton has avoided mention of the one policy that economists widely see as the most effective way to tackle climate change — and one that would need Congress’s assent: putting a price or tax on carbon dioxide emissions. “It’s possible, theoretically, to do all this without a price on carbon,” said David Victor, the director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation at the University of California, San Diego. But, he added, “it’s hard to see how.” “The problem is,” he said, “she knows the politics of this are toxic.” John Podesta, a former senior counselor to Mr. Obama who is now the chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, is an architect of both the Obama and Clinton climate change plans. In crafting them, Mr. Podesta, an ardent environmentalist and a seasoned political operative, sought to take substantive action to reduce emissions without turning to Congress, where climate legislation would most likely again be doomed. “Secretary Clinton believes that meeting the climate challenge is too important to wait for climate deniers in Congress to pass comprehensive climate legislation,” Mr. Podesta wrote in an emailed statement. While Mr. Podesta’s climate plan for Mr. Obama centered on using the Clean Air Act to write new regulations to limit emissions from vehicles and power plants, a Clinton administration could return to the same law to issue rules on emissions from other slices of the economy, including the airline industry, oil refineries, gas production wells and cement manufacturers. Image In the short run, a carbon price could drive up the cost of filling gas tanks and lighting homes. Credit Andrea Morales for The New York Times In that way, Mrs. Clinton could walk a difficult line. Her ambitious climate change goals should appeal to young and progressive voters, particularly supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, who has called for a carbon tax. But by avoiding mention of such a tax, she hopes to avoid Republican attacks on a proposal that would raise gasoline and electricity bills. “In an ideal world, the negative externalities would have a price on them,” said Scott Hennessey, the vice president of policy at the solar power company SolarCity, using an economics term for pollution. “But we know it’s not politically realistic. And we need to be realistic about what we can get.” Economists have noted that by driving up the cost of fossil fuels, a carbon price is intended to push the market toward cleaner sources of energy, such as wind and solar. In the long run, that could make those energy sources cheap and widespread. But in the short run, it could drive up the cost of filling tanks with gasoline and electricity generated by coal and gas — a nonstarter for many voters. Veterans of the Obama administration are still smarting from the president’s failed first-term effort to cap carbon emissions and to force carbon-emitting companies to purchase or trade for permits for every ton of carbon dioxide released. That “cap-and-trade” plan died in Congress in 2010, and contributed to Democrats’ loss of the House majority that year. “A lot of the people who cast those votes in the House ended up paying a big price in the 2010 election,” said David Axelrod, the former senior political adviser on Mr. Obama’s campaigns and in the White House. “If I’m in her campaign, I don’t want to hand a cudgel to the other side.” Conservative campaign operatives agree that they would immediately pounce on any mention by Mrs. Clinton of a carbon price. “Hillary Clinton surely knows the political peril of directly telling American families that she wants to tax their gasoline,” said Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, the conservative group backed by the billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch. Since the political fallout from 2010, Mr. Obama has sought to circumvent Congress on climate change. He used his executive authority to release Clean Air Act regulations on vehicles and power plants, the nation’s two largest sources of carbon pollution. Under the Paris Agreement, an accord committing nearly 200 countries to lowering carbon emissions, Mr. Obama pledged to reduce the United States’ emissions 25 percent to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025, and 80 percent by 2050. Image A Wyoming coal mine. Mrs. Clinton would spend $30 billion to help redevelop coal mining communities that are suffering economically in the wake of climate change policies. Credit Kristina Barker for The New York Times Experts say that under a combination of Mr. Obama’s policies and a handful of new policies that would not require Congressional action, it would be possible to reach the 2025 Paris target, but not the 2050 target. Mrs. Clinton has pledged that her policies would put the nation on a path to meeting that 2050 target. “The overwhelming view of the people who have looked at this is that there’s no way to get to the 2050 goal, and probably the near-term goal, without a carbon price,” said Jessica Tuchman Mathews, a former president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “At the very least, it would be like attempting to climb a very steep mountain with one leg tied behind your back.” Absent a carbon price, Mrs. Clinton plans to use a mix of new regulations, grant programs and spending on new infrastructure to achieve her targets. She would also spend $30 billion on a plan to help redevelop coal mining communities that are suffering economically in the wake of climate change policies. But experts say that such a piecemeal approach, while it would feasibly reduce emissions, would probably be less efficient and more expensive than the imposition of a single carbon price. It would also probably reach a point of diminishing returns because the Obama regulations have already affected the two most polluting industries. “She can continue to put out more rules,” Mr. Victor said. “But the Obama administration showed us the high-water mark for what is possible on climate change with executive authority.” And Mrs. Clinton would need at least some action by Congress to meet her goals — legislators would need to appropriate the $60 billion she intends to spend on clean infrastructure grants to states, and the $30 billion to help coal communities. Mrs. Clinton’s advisers say she is confident that Congress would appropriate the money because it would be funneled directly to states. Experts are skeptical. “It’s hard to see how she gets this kind of money from a public budget,” Mr. Victor said. Among environmental groups and the renewable energy industry, however, there is support for Mrs. Clinton’s proposals, however difficult they might be, compared with those of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, who denies the established science of human-caused climate change. Even economists are sounding like realists. “The clearest and most obvious way to reach the climate targets is with a nationwide carbon pricing method, whether a carbon tax or a cap and trade,” said Robert Stavins, the head of the environmental economics program at Harvard University. “But it’s not surprising, given the politics, that Secretary Clinton would not want to explicitly talk about carbon pricing.” | Greenhouse gas;Hillary Clinton;2016 Presidential Election;Renewable energy;Climate Change;Global Warming;US Politics |
ny0286227 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2016/09/23 | Obama Puts Syria at Arm’s Length as Carnage Drags On | WASHINGTON — When Secretary of State John Kerry took the floor at the United Nations on Wednesday to deliver a searing denunciation of the airstrike on an aid convoy headed for the Syrian city of Aleppo President Obama was crosstown, at his Manhattan hotel, preparing for a day of diplomacy that included Africa, Israel and Colombia — but, conspicuously, not Syria. It was typical of the arm’s-length approach the president has taken toward the Syria conflict on the world stage in recent weeks. At a summit meeting in China this month, he studiously avoided negotiating a cease-fire with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, leaving the diplomacy to Mr. Kerry and his Russian counterpart. At the United Nations, he scarcely mentioned Syria in a wide-ranging farewell address to the General Assembly. Mr. Obama’s public distancing, White House officials insist, does not reflect a lack of concern. On the contrary, they say the president is desperate for Mr. Kerry to negotiate a viable agreement with Russia that would halt the relentless bombing of civilians in Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria — if only because he does not see a viable Plan B to stop the carnage. But as Mr. Obama’s presidency enters its final months, the negotiations with Russia have become a threadbare exercise, leaving a president who has long avoided military entanglement with Syria backing a policy that he himself believes is destined to fail. This week, his frustration boiled over publicly. The situation in Syria “haunts me constantly,” the president said in an interview with the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin , published Thursday in Vanity Fair. In a mix of candor and defensiveness, Mr. Obama said he had second-guessed himself more on Syria than any other issue during his presidency. He repeated his rejection of critics who said he should have armed the moderate rebels much earlier in the conflict or carried through on his threat to take military action against the government of President Bashar al-Assad after he fired poison gas at civilians in 2013. But he conceded that there might have been a failure of imagination in his response to the conflict. “I do ask myself, ‘Was there something that we hadn’t thought of?’” the president told Ms. Goodwin. “‘Was there some move that is beyond what was being presented to me that maybe a Churchill could have seen, or an Eisenhower might have figured out?’” While Mr. Obama has supported Mr. Kerry’s diplomacy — even over the objections of the Pentagon — he does not want to be drawn into it. When Mr. Kerry met with Russia’s foreign minister , Sergey V. Lavrov, at a Group of 20 meeting in Hangzhou, China, on Sept. 4, the two fell just short of a cease-fire agreement over what officials said were minor details. American officials suspected the Russians were stalling so the deal could be sealed in a meeting the following day between Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin. After 90 minutes, a stone-faced Mr. Obama emerged to say , “Given the gaps of trust that exist, that’s a tough negotiation, and we haven’t yet closed the gaps in a way where we think it would actually work.” He instructed Mr. Kerry to keep talking to Mr. Lavrov, and the two came to terms five days later in Geneva. Mr. Obama, his aides said, was determined not to give Mr. Putin a platform to declare Russia was working hand in hand with the United States in Syria, particularly since he did not believe the Russians would abide by the terms of the agreement. “The president wasn’t prepared to offer the Russians what they wanted most — a symbolic show of U.S. cooperation — until the Russians delivered on their end of the bargain,” said the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest. “That’s why the bargain is structured the way it is. And it’s rooted in our skepticism that they would deliver.” “The president doesn’t want U.S. credibility to be sullied by Russia’s dishonesty and willingness to sacrifice principle in the name of convenience,” Mr. Earnest added. Mr. Obama’s skepticism appeared warranted when the aid convoy was hit by a warplane that American officials believe was Russian. White House officials reacted harshly. Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, said, “The question is whether or not we just walk away from the table completely at this point, or whether or not we do some more diplomacy and consultation to determine whether or not there is some path forward.” Again, though, Mr. Obama left it to Mr. Kerry to reproach Mr. Lavrov at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council. To the extent he mentioned Syria during the General Assembly, it was in broad-brush humanitarian terms. At a meeting with other world leaders on the refugee crisis, Mr. Obama read a letter by a 6-year-old boy from Scarsdale, N.Y., who wrote to him to offer a home to Omran Daqneesh, the 5-year-old Syrian boy from Aleppo who was photographed, dazed and bloodied, after being rescued from an airstrike. The White House recorded the boy reading the letter aloud, and the video went viral on social media. Mr. Obama’s struggles with Syria are most palpable when he tries to sum up his foreign-policy legacy. In his speech to the General Assembly, for example, the president cited his diplomatic overtures to Cuba and Myanmar, as well as the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord, which he said exemplified the power of global collaboration. But when he referred to Syria, Mr. Obama spoke of constraints rather than possibilities. “If we are honest, we understand that no external power is going to be able to force different religious communities or ethnic communities to coexist for long,” he said, referring to Syria’s sectarian rifts. “I do believe we have to be honest about the nature of these conflicts.” Mr. Obama made no direct reference to the negotiations with the Russians, saying only, “In a place like Syria, where there’s no ultimate military victory to be won, we’re going to have to pursue the hard work of diplomacy that aims to stop the violence, and deliver aid to those in need.” Several former administration officials said they understood why Mr. Obama was keeping his distance from the issue. “Frankly, I doubt Obama engaging on the diplomatic side would help much,” said Robert S. Ford, a former American ambassador to Damascus who is now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “Like Kerry, Obama wouldn’t have much leverage with the tough-nosed Putin unless Obama was also putting into play in the Syria war new elements of material — not verbal — pressure against the Assad-Russia-Iran alliance.” Dennis B. Ross, a former coordinator of Middle East policy at the National Security Council, said Mr. Obama’s dilemma went back to the earliest days of his response to the Syria conflict, when he viewed it as a sectarian quagmire similar to that in neighboring Iraq. As the war ground on and the opposition became more Islamist, Mr. Obama’s options narrowed. Now, Mr. Ross said, the president has little incentive to say anything. “He knows that anything he says either requires him to do something if it is tough — and he won’t — or makes him look weak and ineffective on an issue that will plague his legacy,” he said. | Syria;Barack Obama;US Foreign Policy;Russia;Military;John Kerry;Vladimir Putin;UN General Assembly;UN |
ny0073604 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2015/04/18 | Turkish Premier Says European Stance on Armenian Genocide Reflects Racism | ISTANBUL — Turkey ’s prime minister on Friday accused Europe of showing signs of racism after the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on his government to recognize the mass killings of Armenians in the collapsing Ottoman Empire as genocide. Although Turkey vowed to disregard the resolution, government officials have lashed out at the European Parliament, the legislature of the European Union , accusing it of contriving obstacles to relations with Turkey. But the remarks by the prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, went further. “The European Parliament should not take decisions that would result in hatred toward a certain religion or ethnic group if it wants to contribute to peace,” Mr. Davutoglu told reporters in Ankara. “This issue is now beyond the Turkish-Armenian issue. It’s a new reflection of the racism in Europe.” The tensions came a week before Armenians across the world plan to commemorate the 100th anniversary of what historians recognize as the first genocide of the 20th century. Armenians say that as many as 1.5 million Armenian Christians were systematically killed from 1915 to 1923 through mass slaughter, starvation and deportation into the Syrian desert. While Turkey acknowledges that atrocities took place, it refuses to take responsibility for the deaths, claiming that a large number of people — many of them Turks — were also killed as a result of civil war and famine. Over the past century, all Turkish governments have vehemently rejected the term genocide. The debate over the characterization of the 1915 events gained momentum after Pope Francis described them as genocide on Sunday in a Mass to commemorate the killings. The statement caused a diplomatic uproar from Turkey, which recalled its ambassador to the Vatican. The European Parliament’s resolution on Wednesday calling on Turkey to normalize relations with Armenia and recognize the genocide further enraged the Turkish government. In a call with Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, Mr. Davutoglu urged Europe to look in its own backyard by opening up its archives on events affecting native tribes. “If we open the books on European history, there will be questions about what was done in Asia and Africa,” Mr. Davutoglu said. “What happened to the original tribes there? Where are the Aborigines? Where are the Native Americans?” He continued: “We never had ghettos. Ghettos are a European product. First there is ethnic discrimination, then there is genocide.” After the European Parliament’s vote, Mr. Davutoglu’s chief adviser, Etyen Mahcupyan, an ethnic Armenian, caused a bit of an uproar by appearing to break with the government’s opposition to use of the word genocide. “If you accept the events in Bosnia and Africa as genocide, it is impossible to call what happened to the Armenians in 1915 something else,” he said. A day after his statement, the prime minister’s office announced that Mr. Mahcupyan would be stepping down because he had reached retirement age. | Turkey;War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity;Armenians;European Parliament;Armenia;Pope Francis;EU |
ny0046926 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2014/11/20 | A Second Frenchman Is Identified as Appearing in ISIS Beheading Video | PARIS — Both were “boys next door” who recently converted to Islam and came under the spell of Islamic jihadists through the Internet. Both were apparently self-radicalized and traveled to Syria on their own. Both turned to the web to promote the Islamic State, with one posting images of a female Kurdish soldier’s severed head on his Twitter profile. “You Kurds, tell your wives to go back home, to play dolls, otherwise they will end up like this woman,” the post reads. Now both men, Michaël Dos Santos and Maxime Hauchard, have been identified by the authorities as French recruits who appeared, unmasked, in the prologue of a gruesome Islamic State video leading to the beheading of an American aid worker, Peter Kassig. The group has often guarded its members’ identities, so the two Frenchmen’s prominent place in the video served both as a reminder of the Islamic State’s success in recruiting disenchanted young Europeans, and as an advertisement seeking even more recruits. France was consumed by soul-searching Wednesday after French authorities confirmed that Mr. Dos Santos, 22, the Roman Catholic son of Portuguese immigrants from a working-class suburb east of Paris, had been paraded in front of the world as an Islamic State foot soldier. News media reports buzzed with disturbing entries from his Twitter accounts showing Mr. Dos Santos, a onetime avid soccer fan and dance enthusiast, dressed in combat gear. One of his Twitter posts showed an excerpt from the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, describing it as a “call for jihad.” Only days earlier, Mr. Hauchard, a middle-class 22-year-old from a village in Normandy in northern France who converted to Islam at 17, was identified as being among a group of executioners, wielding a knife near the neck of one of 18 Syrian prisoners killed in the video. To some observers here, that both men were recent converts who found meaning in turning their backs on France underscored the country’s failure to offer its young people a sense of hope for the future. Romain Caillet, an expert on radical Islamist groups, said that the images of the two young converts, with shaggy beards and violent ideology, had brought home to France how everyday citizens with nothing to lose were ripe for radicalism. The Fates of 23 ISIS Hostages in Syria Kayla Mueller was one of at least 23 foreign hostages from 12 countries who were kidnapped by Syrian insurgents, sold or handed over to the Islamic State, and held underground in a prison near the Syrian city of Raqqa. He said a growing and vocal minority of recruits to the Islamic State from France were converts to Islam, including from Catholic, atheist or nonreligious families. “Those who leave are often the most determined ones, or those who have nothing to lose,” Mr. Caillet said. “Many are single, unemployed and have broken ties with their families.” He added: “The big fishes are often Muslims of North-African descent. But converts play an important role.” Not least, such converts show that the grievances that have animated radical movements like the Islamic State may be more widely shared and could be used to recruit a broader pool of the discontented. Experts said the background of Mr. Dos Santos and Mr. Hauchard appeared to fit an alarming pattern in France and across Europe of young people from non-Muslim or nonreligious backgrounds being drawn into the lethal web of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS , through a mix of powerful jihadist propaganda videos and adolescent angst. France is struggling to deal with more than 1,000 citizens who have left or plan to travel to join the ranks of jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq. The government is so concerned about the consequences of young people becoming radicalized by the Islamic State and returning to France that it approved legislation this month to prevent suspected jihadists from leaving the country. Authorities say the extent to which the law has prevented any would-be jihadists from departing France was unclear. France has joined the United States-led airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and is also waging a propaganda offensive against the group, which claims to represent a caliphate — a state governed by strict Islamic principles. Mr. Dos Santos, who also went by the name Abu Othman, is believed to have left for Syria in 2013, around the same time as Mr. Hauchard. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Wednesday that Mr. Dos Santos was “known for being involved in terrorism in Syria” and for his “violent behavior on social networks.” France 3, the television broadcaster, said Mr. Dos Santos, who was being tracked by French intelligence services, had five Twitter accounts. Mr. Caillet, the Islamic studies expert, follows Mr. Dos Santos on Twitter and said that he had posted photographs of himself dressed as a soldier. A remaining account was working Wednesday morning but appeared to have been suspended later. It did not contain any personal details, but it did include posts with verses of the Quran and photos of bombings and dead bodies, including the head of the female Kurdish soldier. Dominique Adenot, the mayor of Champigny-sur-Marne, where Mr. Dos Santos was born and had lived in recent years, said Mr. Dos Santos was the son of Portuguese parents, who were separated. The newspaper Le Monde reported that his mother and grandmother were cleaners. Iraqi Army Retakes Government Complex in Central Ramadi Efforts to stem the rise of the Islamic State. “He was so kind, so kind — they must have given him drugs,” his grandmother, Maria Dos Santos, told the newspaper, referring to the Islamic State. She said he had become radicalized through a Muslim friend and had begun to grow a beard. Mr. Adenot told reporters Wednesday that Mr. Dos Santos had become a French citizen in 2009, and had lived with his mother and his younger brother in a ramshackle four-story building. He said there was no radical mosques in Champigny. But Mr. Caillet, the Islamic expert, said the area where Mr. Dos Santos had lived in Champigny was a “ghetto,” where radical Islamist groups had spread in recent years, ensnaring lost and disenfranchised youths. News reports said that Mr. Dos Santos had been spotted by French intelligence in 2013 after a police crackdown on Islamic militants. Mr. Dos Santos appeared to have had links with some of the French jihadists arrested in the crackdown, authorities said. Mr. Hauchard appears to have followed a similar path as Mr. Dos Santos. Born in 1992, Mr. Hauchard lived in Bosc-Roger-en-Roumois, in Normandy, a quiet and middle-class town. He converted to Islam and went to Mauritania twice to study Islam. This year, Mr. Hauchard described in a Skype interview with BFM television how he had traveled freely to Syria and joined the Islamic State, which “established the laws of Allah on earth.” “It’s funny because in general people think that we have a sort of guru behind us that fills your head with stuff,” Mr. Hauchard said in the interview from Raqqa, the first Syrian city that fell entirely under rebel control. “But in fact I didn’t meet anyone. I would have loved to meet a brother.” In the video, Mr. Hauchard spoke from a barracks where he was living with about 40 people, “mostly Arabs,” he said, adding that he was being trained before “leaving for an operation.” “The personal objective of everybody here is the Shahid,” he said, using the Arabic word for martyr. “It’s the biggest reward.” On Monday, news reports quoted friends describing Mr. Hauchard as gentle, joyful and a regular mosquegoer. “He was never rebellious,” Philippe Vanheule, the mayor of Bosc-Roger-en-Roumois, told Le Monde. Mr. Vanheule denied that his town was fertile ground for would-be jihadists. “We have basketball, karaoke, judo, dance,” Mr. Vanheule said. “I don’t think that we have a lost youth here.” | France;ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State;Peter Kassig,Abdul-Rahman Kassig;Michaël Dos Santos;Maxime Hauchard;Video Recordings; Downloads and Streaming;Syria |
ny0259426 | [
"sports",
"football"
] | 2011/01/13 | Bears’ Forte Sees a Balanced Approach Against the Seahawks | The last time the Chicago Bears played Seattle, they treated their running game as an afterthought and ended up with one of their worst losses of the season. Matt Forte does not see that happening again. The Bears will meet Seattle in a divisional playoff at Soldier Field on Sunday after orchestrating a turnaround that led to the N.F.C. North championship and a first-round bye. Forte was a big part of that. He ran for 717 yards over the final nine games — averaging 4.9 yards per carry, eighth in the league in that span — and if the Bears are going to beat the Seahawks , Forte said they would need to go with the same approach that led to their first playoff appearance in four years. That means more balance. “I don’t think we have a choice,” Forte said. “We can’t go out and do what we did last time and throw the ball 40 or 50 times and run the ball 10 times. We have to have a balanced offense.” It was hard to envision any of this after the first meeting between these teams in October. The Seahawks won, 23-20, at Soldier Field, sending Chicago to its second loss in a 1-3 stretch that nearly ruined its season. Forte was fifth in the N.F.L. at 5.8 yards per carry over the final six games, and his career-high 4.5 average for the season was the best by a Bears running back with 200 attempts since Neal Anderson in 1989 (4.7). The late surge gave Forte 1,069 yards rushing to go with 547 receiving, putting him alongside Walter Payton as the only Chicago players with at least 1,000 and 500 in the same season. “In the last five games, I don’t know if there’s a back playing better,” the offensive coordinator Mike Martz said. “He has always been really good, been very impressive, but about five weeks ago something happened.” HASSELBECK RETURNING? Seattle Coach Pete Carroll said the Seahawks would like to bring quarterback Matt Hasselbeck back for the 2011 season. Asked directly about Hasselbeck’s future with the franchise during his weekly news conference, Carroll said the team would like to do “everything we can” to have Hasselbeck return for an 11th season with the franchise. “We don’t know the timelines or how that’s going to work out, and all that kind of stuff, but that’s a big issue for us that we’re looking forward to,” Carroll said. “He’s had a terrific run for us, and we want to see what we can do to keep that going.” PACKERS PENALTIES Green Bay Packers Coach Mike McCarthy would emphasize penalties in practice and talk about discipline, only to watch the yellow flags fly again the next Sunday. More than three years’ worth of Packers penalty problems hit an all-time low in Week 3 this season, a miserable 18-penalty performance in a loss at Chicago. Since then, one of the league’s most penalty-prone teams suddenly became one of its most disciplined. Green Bay ended the regular season with 78 accepted penalties, tying for third-best in the N.F.L. “We’ve taken a different path this year,” McCarthy said. “They’ve had a lot of adversity, and they’ve done really a great job of buckling down on the discipline penalties.” Now the bad news for the Packers: The team they are playing Saturday night has even better discipline. The Atlanta Falcons committed only 58 penalties this season — tops in the N.F.L. by a significant margin; second-best Miami had 72. FOX MEETS WITH ELWAY John Fox finally arrived in Denver to meet with the Broncos about their head coaching vacancy after his flight out of North Carolina was delayed three times this week by winter weather. Fox met with John Elway , who is leading the team’s second head coaching search in two seasons. Fox’s contract was not renewed by the Panthers after a 2-14 season. FAVRE’S SISTER ARRESTED The police say the 34-year-old sister of Vikings quarterback Brett Favre faces drug charges after she was arrested in a raid on a Mississippi condo where people were making crystal methamphetamine. Maj. Matt Karl of the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday that Brandi Favre was among five people arrested in Diamondhead. | Chicago Bears;Seattle Seahawks;Football;National Football League;Hasselbeck Matt;Green Bay Packers;Elway John;Denver Broncos |
ny0179915 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2007/08/07 | Health Administrators to Reimburse State $7 Million in Duplicate Billing | Two companies that administered health care for New York State Medicaid recipients have agreed to return $7 million that they received through duplicate billings, the state attorney general’s office said yesterday. The recovery stems from an audit of the state Medicaid program by the state comptroller in 2004, the attorney general’s office said. That audit found that in many cases Medicaid recipients had mistakenly been assigned more than one identification number from the program administrators. A later investigation by the attorney general and the state Medicaid inspector general found that once multiple identification numbers had been entered into computer systems, more than one bill was often paid for a single patient. In a statement, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo said the problem had been “costing New York State taxpayers millions of dollars.” Claudia Hutton, a spokeswoman for the State Health Department, said the companies did not do anything improper. “They worked off information they got from the government,” she said. Officials in Mr. Cuomo’s office said that the settlement was the first of a series expected in the coming months and estimated that the total amount returned to the programs could be more than $30 million. The programs affected are Medicaid, which provides health care for the poor, and Family Health Plus, a state health insurance program for people with limited income who might not qualify for Medicaid. Mr. Cuomo said his office and the inspector general were working with local social service agencies, which frequently assign the identification numbers, and the State Health Department to correct the problems that have led to multiple billings. He also said the health care companies that bill Medicaid — known as managed care organizations — have an obligation to monitor whether they charge more than once for each patient. Medicaid payments made to the managed care organizations have increased to more than $7 billion last year from $1 billion in 1996, the attorney general’s office said. As part of the settlement announced yesterday, one company, Healthfirst PHSP, has reimbursed the state about $6 million for duplicate payments received between July 2000 and November 2006, the attorney general’s office said. The payments were for nearly 6,000 individuals who had been assigned more than one identification number. A spokesman for Healthfirst, which is owned by 39 hospitals in New York City and Long Island, said the company had been working with state officials to correct the problem. “This is something that costs us money because we have to pay providers based on the number of people that are enrolled,” said the spokesman, Thomas W. Bergdall. “We are eager for the state to correct the problem.” The attorney general said the second company, St. Barnabas Community Health Plan, which was also known as Partners in Health, agreed to reimburse the state for $902,000 in duplicate billings since 2000. The company stopped operations last year. Ms. Hutton, the Health Department spokeswoman, said that the department was trying to change its computer programs to find the duplicate identification numbers and resolve the issue, but that there was no simple solution. “This is a problem that we have been aware of and we are working on it,” she said. | Medicaid;New York State;Health Insurance and Managed Care;Attorneys General |
ny0028552 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2013/01/23 | Norway: Cheese Fire Shuts Tunnel | A truckload of burning cheese has closed a road tunnel in Arctic Norway for the last six days. Some 27 tons of flaming brown cheese, or brunost, a Norwegian delicacy, blocked a 1.9-mile tunnel near the northern town of Narvik when it caught fire last Thursday. The fire was finally put out on Monday. Brunost is made from whey and contains up to 30 percent fat. “This high concentration of fat and sugar is almost like petrol if it gets hot enough,” said Viggo Berg, a policeman. Kjell Bjoern Vinje at the Norwegian Public Roads Administration said this was the first time that cheese had caught fire on Norwegian roads since he joined the administration 15 years ago. The tunnel will be closed for repairs for at least a week. | Cheese;Norway;Bridges,Tunnels;Fires;Car Crash |
ny0207502 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2009/06/26 | Trade for Shaq Looks Like a Blockbuster, But It Could Be a Bust | On the eve of the N.B.A. draft , the Phoenix Suns sent Shaquille O’Neal to the Cleveland Cavaliers . Along with the stunning news of Michael Jackson’s death, O’Neal’s trade became the talk of the day. The Diesel and King James. A 15-time All-Star center teaming with LeBron James , the league’s most valuable player. Five years ago this would have qualified as a blockbuster, oh-my-god trade. Most of us would have said, “Engrave the championship trophy and give it to the Cavs.” In 2009, this trade has all the makings of a colossal bust. Mark Jackson , the former star of St. John’s and the Knicks and now an N.B.A. analyst, shrugged. “They’ve got to do something else,” Jackson said of Cleveland. “It’s not enough by itself. “It sounds good. But I thought Ali was going to beat Holmes.” Shaq hasn’t slipped as badly as the Muhammad Ali who fought Larry Holmes , but he may be headed in that direction. And the Shaq experiment could be the final act that prompts James to flee to New York. This is great for the N.B.A., of course. Shaq-LeBron is guaranteed to be the talk of the league from now until training camps open in the fall. For the last 10 years I’ve had running dialogue with Big Mike, the superintendent at the Prince Hall Apartments at 155th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem, U.S.A., about the sports news of the day. We usually see eye to eye. Not on this one. Mike is a LeBron fan and was ecstatic about the trade. “How’s Cleveland look right now?” he said. He pointed out that the Cavaliers didn’t give up much to get Shaq — Ben Wallace, Sasha Pavlovic, $500,000 and a second-round pick. Questioned about Shaq’s conditioning, he said, “If you get an in-shape Shaq, it’s a title.” But when was the last time he’s been in shape? “Wasn’t he in shape with Miami?” Mike said. “He’s got another swingman with him now, LeBron. So he’s got a reason to be in shape and stay in shape, too. If he comes in shape, nobody in the East can deal with him.” But even Big Mike conceded that Shaq’s work ethic has changed — dramatically. That’s what Kobe Bryant questioned near the end of their marriage in Los Angeles. I’ve changed my views of Shaq since he left the Lakers . The tension was thick between Shaq and Bryant. Bryant was cast as the villain, Shaq the victim. Shaq remains one of my favorite personalities, although the more I’ve seen Bryant, the clearer it has become that he wasn’t totally the bad guy. Those championship Lakers — 2000, 2001, 2002 — were impressive, largely because of how difficult it is for two young superstars to stick it out, and build and sustain a dynasty, in an era of free agency and obscene amounts of money. Shaq had us all charmed, while Bryant never will be mistaken for a charmer. At the end of their run, Bryant was criticizing Shaq’s work ethic and openly talking about his need for Shaq to be in better shape. Shaq went off to Miami and won a fourth championship in 2006. He was traded in 2008 to Phoenix, where, at times, he began to look like the Ali who fought Holmes . Who will Shaq be in Cleveland? He fancies himself as the wise big brother. He said problems with Bryant began when Kobe stopped listening. Miami succeeded because a young Dwyane Wade listened. In Phoenix, the veteran Suns didn’t need a big brother; they needed Shaq to play the pick and roll. In Cleveland, the Cavaliers will need Shaq to be in shape, be committed and driven. Big Mike was not moved. “I just see Shaq coming in, demanding the double team,” he said earnestly. “Even a not-in-shape Shaq demands a double team. You can’t focus on LeBron anymore.” And that, ultimately, may be the rub: How will LeBron deal with sharing the limelight he has commanded for five seasons? He is known as the consummate teammate, one of the most selfless superstars ever. But Shaq is a media magnet who commands attention. By next June, James’s selflessness will have been sorely tested — especially if there’s no championship. This could indeed be that match made in heaven. There’s an enormous LeBron James billboard across from Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. His eyes are closed, his arms outstretched and his head raised toward the heavens almost as if in prayer. James might have been praying for a legitimate big man. Now he has Shaq. All I’ll say to King James is this: Be careful what you pray for. | Basketball;Trades (Sports);Cleveland Cavaliers;O'Neal Shaquille;James LeBron;Jackson Mark;Bryant Kobe;Phoenix Suns;Los Angeles Lakers |
ny0276787 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2016/02/25 | New York City Can Require Sodium Warnings, Judge Rules | Saying “information is power,” a judge on Wednesday upheld a measure in New York City requiring some restaurants to warn consumers about high levels of sodium in foods. The measure, which the Board of Health unanimously passed in September, applies only to restaurants with 15 or more locations nationwide. The restaurants were required to have the warnings up by Dec. 1, and fines were to go into effect on March 1. It required restaurants to place small images of saltshakers next to menu items high in salt. To earn the image, an item has to contain at least 2,300 milligrams of sodium — an amount many nutritionists say is the daily limit. Some chains in the city, like Subway, T.G.I. Friday’s, Applebee’s and the Regal Entertainment Group, have already begun abiding by the sodium-warning rule, which is the first of its kind in the country. The National Restaurant Association had sought a preliminary injunction to halt the measure. It said the board’s decision, which the association’s lawyer, S. Preston Ricardo, referred to as “the sodium mandate,” lacked legislative guidance or comment from affected businesses. Image The measure will require an icon of a salt shaker next to menu items that contain at least 2,300 milligrams of sodium, the amount that experts say should be a person’s total daily intake. Credit New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Arguing before Justice Eileen Rakower of State Supreme Court on Wednesday, Mr. Ricardo said that the targets of the sodium rule were arbitrary and capricious. “It doesn’t apply in a way that is logical or rational,” he said. Furthermore, he said, the measure would cause “irreparable harm” to chain restaurants by singling out their businesses — which he said might steer consumers to other places — rather than including all restaurants in the city. Thomas Merrill, the general counsel at the city’s health department, sought to contrast the requirement with the sugary drink ban — the highly contested measure proposed by former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in 2012 that would have halted the sale of soft drinks larger than 16 ounces. That measure was ultimately rejected in court. “Warnings can be followed,” Mr. Merrill argued, “or they cannot be followed.” The sodium measure did not regulate, or ban, the sale of products with sodium in chain restaurants, he said; thus, it did not harm the “personal autonomy” of consumers’ choices. It also did not require a significant investment by chain restaurants, he said. High levels of sodium, he added, were linked to hypertension and heart disease, and, as a result, the board had the authority to warn consumers of its consumption. After Justice Rakower’s ruling, a spokeswoman for the restaurant association said it would be exploring all of its legal options, including an appeal. | Salt;NYC;Restaurant;Nutrition;National Restaurant Assn;Board of Health NYC |
ny0152914 | [
"science"
] | 2008/08/22 | Fish Tale Has DNA Hook: Students Find Bad Labels | Many New York sushi restaurants and seafood markets are playing a game of bait and switch, say two high school students turned high-tech sleuths. In a tale of teenagers, sushi and science, Kate Stoeckle and Louisa Strauss, who graduated this year from the Trinity School in Manhattan , took on a freelance science project in which they checked 60 samples of seafood using a simplified genetic fingerprinting technique to see whether the fish New Yorkers buy is what they think they are getting. They found that one-fourth of the fish samples with identifiable DNA were mislabeled. A piece of sushi sold as the luxury treat white tuna turned out to be Mozambique tilapia, a much cheaper fish that is often raised by farming. Roe supposedly from flying fish was actually from smelt. Seven of nine samples that were called red snapper were mislabeled, and they turned out to be anything from Atlantic cod to Acadian redfish, an endangered species. What may be most impressive about the experiment is the ease with which the students accomplished it. Although the testing technique is at the forefront of research, the fact that anyone can take advantage of it by sending samples off to a laboratory meant the kind of investigative tools once restricted to Ph.D.’s and crime labs can move into the hands of curious diners and amateur scientists everywhere. The project began, appropriately, over dinner about a year ago. Ms. Stoeckle’s father, Mark, is a scientist and early proponent of the use of DNA bar coding, a technique that greatly simplifies the process of identifying species. Instead of sequencing the entire genome, bar coders — who have been developing their field only since 2003 — examine a single gene. Dr. Stoeckle’s specialty is birds , and he admits that he tends to talk shop at the dinner table. One evening at a sushi restaurant, Ms. Stoeckle recalled asking her father, “Could you bar code sushi?” Dr. Stoeckle replied, “Yeah, I think you could — and if you did that, I think you’d be the first ones.” Ms. Stoeckle, who is now 19, was intrigued. She enlisted Ms. Strauss, who is now 18. Their field technique was simple, Ms. Stoeckle said. “We ate a lot of sushi.” Or, as Dr. Stoeckle put it, “It involved shopping and eating, in which they were already fluent.” They hit 4 restaurants and 10 grocery stores in Manhattan. Once the samples were home, whether in doggie bags or shopping bags, they cut away a small piece and preserved it in alcohol. They sent those off to the University of Guelph in Ontario , where the Barcode of Life Database project began. A graduate student there, Eugene Wong, works on the Fish Barcode of Life (dubbed, inevitably, Fish-BOL) and agreed to do the genetic analysis. He compared the teenagers’ samples with the global library of 30,562 bar codes representing nearly 5,500 fish species. (Commercial labs will also perform the analysis for a fee.) Three hundred dollars’ worth of meals later, the young researchers had their data back from Guelph: 2 of the 4 restaurants and 6 of the 10 grocery stores had sold mislabeled fish. Dr. Stoeckle said he was excited to see a technology used in a new way. “The smaller and cheaper you make something,” he said, “the more uses it has.” He compared bar coding to another high-tech wonder turned everyday gadget, GPS. Eventually, he predicted, the process will become more automatic, cheaper and smaller so that a handheld device could perform a quick analysis and connect to the database remotely. What his daughter did, he said, is like dropping film off at the supermarket for developing. The next generation could be more like a digital camera that displays the results on the spot. The results of Ms. Strauss and Ms. Stoeckle’s research are being published in Pacific Fishing magazine, a publication for commercial fishermen. The sample size is too small to serve as an indictment of all New York fishmongers and restaurateurs, but the results are unlikely to be a mere statistical fluke. The experiment does serve as a general caveat emptor for fish lovers, particularly because the students, their parents and their academic mentor all declined to give the names of the vendors, citing fear of lawsuits. Besides, they noted, mislabeling could occur at any stage of the process. Dr. Stoeckle was willing to divulge the name of one fish market whose products were accurately labeled in the test: Leonards’ Seafood and Prime Meats on Third Avenue. John Leonard, the owner, said he was not surprised to find that his products passed the bar code test. “We go down and pick the fish out ourselves,” he said. “We know what we’re doing.” As for the technology, Mr. Leonard said, “it’s good for the public,” since “it would probably keep restaurateurs and owners of markets more on their toes.” Ms. Stoeckle said the underlying message of the research was simple: “If you’re paying for white tuna and you’re eating tilapia, I think you’d want to know that.” Although the students did not present the project for a grade at school, they made sure to mention it on their college applications. Both will enroll at Johns Hopkins University this fall. Neither, however, expects to major in the sciences. “I’ve always been into art history,” Ms. Strauss said, “which is really different from this.” Ms. Stoeckle, who is the granddaughter of the entertainer and arts patron Kitty Carlisle Hart , is thinking about studying writing or psychology . But that, they said, is the point. “If we found it interesting — which we did — I think lots of people like us can do it, too,” Ms. Stoeckle said. Peter B. Marko, a professor at Clemson University who used a more detailed genetic technique in a 2004 paper to show that red snapper was commonly mislabeled, called their project “quite remarkable,” though he added that genetic analysis had been simplified to the point that high school students could now perform the task without sending samples off. Mr. Marko prefers to work with whole genomes — “more information is better,” he explained — which can be sequenced now with lightning speed. He plans to perform a broad genetic comparison of fishes that were separated millions of years ago by the rise of the Isthmus of Panama. “The technology is allowing us to ask questions that really would not have been possible in the past.” The students worked under the tutelage of Jesse H. Ausubel of Rockefeller University , a champion of the DNA bar coding technique. As for Ms. Strauss and Ms. Stoeckle, Dr. Ausubel said they “have contributed to global science” by adding to the database, built on a model similar to that of Wikipedia , in which people around the world can contribute. In a way, Dr. Ausubel said, their experiment is a return to an earlier era of scientific inquiry. “Three hundred years ago, science was less professionalized,” he said, and contributions were made by interested amateurs. “Perhaps the wheel is turning again where more people can participate.” | Seafood;DNA;Sushi;Fish;Manhattan |
ny0060684 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2014/08/15 | At Least 10 Injured After Police Fire on Tibetan Protesters | BEIJING — Chinese police officers opened fire on Tibetan protesters this week in a Tibetan area of southwest China, injuring at least 10 people, according to reports late Wednesday by the International Campaign for Tibet, an advocacy group, and Radio Free Asia, which is financed by the United States government. The shootings took place on Tuesday after Tibetans had gathered to protest the detention the previous day of a respected village leader, known as Wangdak, who had insisted to local officials that Tibetans be allowed to hold a traditional prayer ceremony before a horse festival. The reports, citing Tibetans in exile, said the police fired tear gas and live ammunition. Wangdak’s son and brother were among those injured, Radio Free Asia reported. The violence took place in Ganzi Prefecture in Sichuan Province, known to Tibetans as Kardze. The prefecture has been the site of previous violent clashes, including one during a Tibetan uprising in 2008 in which police officers fired on hundreds of protesters. A person answering the telephone at one police station in the prefecture declined to comment. | China;Tibet;Civil Unrest;Wangdak |
ny0273883 | [
"us"
] | 2016/05/25 | Ohio’s Limits on Early Voting Are Discriminatory, Judge Says | An Ohio law that curtails early voting and prevents people from registering to vote and casting ballots on the same day illegally discriminates against black voters, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday, ordering a crucial swing state to change its rules before the fall elections. Democrats had challenged the law, describing it as one in a long series that Republicans in several states had enacted to suppress voting by blacks and Hispanics, who are more likely than others to vote early and to vote Democratic. Republicans denied that charge, saying the law combated voter fraud. Judge Michael H. Watson, of Federal District Court in Cincinnati, wrote in his findings that voter fraud was very rare and that the law did nothing to prevent it. It is unclear what effect the ruling will have on turnout. Republicans would not say immediately whether they would appeal, but they noted that even with the provision the judge struck down, Ohio had one of the longest early voting periods in the United States, starting four weeks before an election. Early voting in Ohio grew out of the 2004 election, when people stood in line for hours to cast ballots, particularly in heavily minority and Democratic urban areas. Thousands went home without voting. George W. Bush carried the state by 2.1 percentage points. If he had lost it, John Kerry would have become president. State law was then changed to allow any voter to get an absentee ballot without offering a reason, and to open early voting — by mail or by dropping off a ballot in person — 35 days before an election. Ohio requires voters to register at least 30 days before an election, so the change created a window, known as Golden Week, when registration and voting were underway. With a single visit to a county elections office, a person could register, get an absentee ballot, fill it out and cast it. In 2014, the Republican-controlled General Assembly and Gov. John Kasich, also a Republican, enacted a law eliminating Golden Week; early voting would start after registration had closed. Judge Watson cited an expert witness called by Democrats who testified that black voters were far more likely than others to vote early and in person, and that voting during Golden Week in presidential elections was more than five times as prevalent in overwhelmingly black census blocks as in overwhelmingly white ones. Curtailing early voting and eliminating Golden Week “will disproportionately burden African-Americans,” in violation of the Voting Rights Act, wrote Judge Watson, who was appointed by Mr. Bush and served in the 1990s as counsel to a Republican governor, George Voinovich. Another federal judge made a similar ruling in 2014, but the Supreme Court blocked it , and the case was later settled. “The racial impact just sticks out like such a sore thumb,” said David A. Pepper, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, which had challenged the law. “I certainly don’t think that’s an accident.” The judge upheld other restrictions imposed by the state that Democrats had also challenged, like limiting early voting to one location per county and reducing the number of voting machines counties are required to have. Mr. Kasich’s office referred questions to Secretary of State Jon Husted, the elected official who oversees elections. Mr. Husted, a Republican, said he would consult with legislative leaders about how to proceed. Noting that “for nearly 200 years, Ohioans voted for only one day,” Mr. Husted said, “If it was constitutional for lawmakers to expand the voting period to 35 days, it must also be constitutional for the same legislative body to amend the time frame to 28 days.” In the 2012 presidential election, state officials said, about 80,000 people voted in person during Golden Week, or 1.4 percent of the total, and 14,000 of those ballots were cast by people who registered the same day. No one could say how many of them would have voted if the week were eliminated. | Voter registration;Black People,African-Americans;Discrimination;Ohio;Absentee ballot;Michael H. Watson |
ny0146288 | [
"business",
"worldbusiness"
] | 2008/07/18 | New Offshore Bank Limits for U.S. Clients, UBS Says | WASHINGTON — Faced with a federal investigation into its private banking practices, the Swiss banking giant UBS said on Thursday that it would stop offering offshore banking services to clients in the United States. Mark Branson, chief financial officer of the UBS global wealth management group, told a Senate subcommittee that the company would provide banking or securities services to United States residents only through companies licensed in this country and that it would help the federal government identify American citizens engaging in tax fraud. On Wednesday, a Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations released a report saying that UBS’s offshore practices helped American citizens hide an estimated $18 billion in 19,000 accounts from the Internal Revenue Service . In his testimony, Mr. Branson apologized for any compliance failures that might have happened and said the decision to close its Switzerland-based cross-border business was intended to ensure that such failures did not happen again. Clients in the United States will still be able to access UBS’s services through wealth management units that are regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. But advisers based in Switzerland will not be allowed to come to the United States to meet with American clients. UBS’s decision came as a surprise even to Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, the subcommittee chairman, who said in his opening statement that UBS operated “behind a wall of secrecy” that needed to be torn down. “I thought we were ready for any possibility,” Mr. Levin said after the hearing. “It turns out we weren’t.” The committee also heard taped testimony from Heinrich Kieber, a former employee of LGT, a bank owned by the royal family of Liechtenstein. Mr. Kieber supplied details about LGT account holders to the I.R.S. and other countries. The subcommittee’s report said that both LGT and UBS helped Americans avoid taxes by setting up convoluted foreign-owned offshore accounts whose assets did not have to be reported to the I.R.S. That practice by LGT, UBS and other offshore companies costs the Treasury Department $100 billion annually in lost taxes, Mr. Levin said. Both LGT and UBS have what are known as qualified intermediary agreements with the I.R.S., which were established in 2001 to allow the revenue service to collect taxes with the help of foreign banks. But those agreements do not mandate the reporting of accounts held by non-American citizens or companies, a loophole that Senator Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota and the ranking subcommittee member, said that LGT and UBS had exploited. Douglas H. Shulman, the I.R.S. commissioner, testified that his agency was strengthening the qualified intermediary program. He asked Congress for more time to audit offshore accounts that might have been used for tax evasion. But Mr. Levin and Mr. Coleman indicated that they would most likely seek legislative solutions. The federal tax investigation initially focused on Bradley C. Birkenfeld, an American and a former top UBS executive, who pleaded guilty in June to a single fraud charge of helping an American citizen conceal $200 million in assets from the I.R.S. In May, federal authorities detained Martin Liechti, a Swiss citizen and senior UBS official, in Miami in connection with the investigation. Mr. Liechti appeared before the subcommittee Thursday, but declined to testify, citing his Fifth Amendment rights. Mr. Levin commended UBS for changing its business practices. “We can’t reach all the banks,” he said. “We have reached yours. That represents progress.” LGT declined a request to testify before the subcommittee, though a senior official from the company did meet with subcommittee staff members last Friday. This week, the company sent a letter to the subcommittee refusing to testify, saying it had complied with its qualified intermediary agreement. The letter also said that company representatives would be severely limited in what they could say because of the principality’s strict disclosure laws. Mr. Kieber, who is in a witness protection program, is accused of breaking those laws. With his face disguised on the videotape, Mr. Kieber told the subcommittee that LGT had used sophisticated methods to avoid detection by American tax authorities. LGT customers were advised to use only public phones to contact the bank, and the company mailed correspondence from nearby Austria or Switzerland, he said. Michael Robinson, a spokesman for LGT, said in an e-mail statement to a reporter that the documents Mr. Kieber supplied dated “back to a time when the regulatory environment was completely different.” Shannon Marsh of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and William Wu of Forest Hills in Queens, whose LGT accounts were examined in the subcommittee report, declined to answer the subcommittee’s questions, invoking their Fifth Amendment rights. According to the subcommittee report, Mr. Marsh hid millions of dollars in four foundations in Liechtenstein, while LGT helped Mr. Wu orchestrate a fake sale of his house to his own offshore company. Steven Greenfield of New York refused to appear after being subpoenaed. Peter S. Lowy of Beverly Hills, Calif., will testify before the committee next Friday. | UBS AG;Tax Evasion;Internal Revenue Service |
ny0149810 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2008/09/06 | Alaska Lawmakers to Seek Subpoenas in Palin Inquiry | ANCHORAGE — Senior lawmakers in the Alaska State Legislature said Friday that they would seek subpoenas to compel seven witnesses to answer questions in an ethics inquiry into whether Gov. Sarah Palin , the Republican nominee for vice president, improperly put pressure on state officials to dismiss her former brother-in-law, a state trooper. The lawmakers overseeing the inquiry said the investigator would deliver a final report by Oct. 10 to allow both sides ample time to respond before the presidential election. Ms. Palin, after pledging for weeks that she would cooperate with the investigation, has in recent days begun to challenge the Legislature’s jurisdiction in the inquiry. The list of people the investigator is seeking to question — including a top Palin aide, the state personnel director and the cabinet-level commissioner of administration — indicates that the inquiry is focusing on accusations that the governor’s office unlawfully breached the personnel file of the trooper, Mike Wooten. He has had a particularly contentious divorce and custody battle with Ms. Palin’s sister. Separately, the state troopers’ union lodged an ethics complaint this week against Ms. Palin and members of her administration, alleging that they had unlawfully gained access to Mr. Wooten’s personnel file. The pursuit of the subpoenas, which are scheduled for a vote before a joint hearing of the Alaska House and Senate Judiciary Committees next Friday, increased tensions in the ethics controversy embroiling Ms. Palin as she seeks to become vice president. The case seems certain to play out under the glare of the presidential campaign and amid considerable rancor between the governor’s office and the Legislature. Lawmakers said they were forced to seek subpoenas after the seven witnesses abruptly canceled appointments this week to be deposed by the Legislature’s investigator, Stephen Branchflower, a longtime Anchorage prosecutor. The lawmakers asserted that Ms. Palin’s lawyer, Thomas V. Van Flein, had forbidden members of her administration to have any contact with the investigator. “That is a misrepresentation of what is going on,” Mr. Van Flein said. “There are several witnesses who have their own lawyers, and they took their own positions.” He added, “My client is just waiting to tell her side of the story, but we’re not going to do it secretly, in a closed room.” The ethics controversy stems from Ms. Palin’s dismissal in July of Walt Monegan, the public safety commissioner, in what he has said was retaliation for his refusal to dismiss Mr. Wooten. Ms. Palin has accused Mr. Wooten of threatening her family and drinking while driving his patrol car. The governor denies that Mr. Monegan’s dismissal was related to Mr. Wooten’s case. The increasingly adversarial relationship between the lawmakers supervising the inquiry and Ms. Palin’s office stands in sharp contrast with the spirit of cooperation she had promised to bring to the inquiry, even as she questioned the need for an outside investigator. “I’m happy to comply, to cooperate,” Ms. Palin told the Anchorage television station KTUU in late July. “I have absolutely nothing to hide, no problem with an independent investigation.” In early August she said, “We are very, very open to answering any questions anybody has of me or my administrators.” But on Aug. 29, the day that Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, named Ms. Palin to his ticket, her lawyer, Mr. Van Flein, sent a letter to the state-appointed investigator asserting that, though he would cooperate with the Legislature’s inquiry, the accusations should be investigated by the state personnel board. According to the letter, obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Van Flein argued that state law made the personnel board “properly vested with primary jurisdiction.” Ms. Palin took the extraordinary step Tuesday of filing an ethics complaint against herself, making the matter fall within the bailiwick of the personnel board. Mr. Van Flein then asked the Legislature to drop its inquiry. The three members of the personnel board are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Legislature. The proceedings of the board are conducted in secret, in contrast with the public deliberations of the Legislature. “It seems obvious that the governor’s approach to the legislative investigation changed radically after she was chosen to be the Republicans’ vice-presidential nominee,” said Mike Doogan, a Democratic state lawmaker from Anchorage. Taylor Griffin, a spokesman for the McCain-Palin campaign, said the governor had been cooperative and criticized the tenor of the investigation. “What was intended as a nonpartisan review has become a political circus,” Mr. Griffin said. On Friday, a Republican in the Legislature, John Coghill of North Pole, demanded that the Democrat overseeing the investigation, Senator Hollis French of Anchorage, give up his role, accusing him of bias. In a letter to the chairman of the legislative panel that authorized the investigation, Mr. Coghill focused on comments Mr. French had made in the press suggesting that the inquiry was “likely to be damaging to the administration” and suggesting that it could lead to impeachment. “These statements cause me to think that the report is already written even though the investigation is only just begun and the most important witnesses have not even been interviewed,” the letter says. “The investigation appears to be lacking in fairness, neutrality and due process.” In an interview in his Anchorage office on Friday, Mr. French acknowledged that he had improperly speculated about possible outcomes of the case and expressed regret. He maintained that the investigation had been insulated from political pressure, and he emphasized that he was not conducting the investigation but rather was acting as the Legislature’s liaison to Mr. Branchflower. Mr. French dismissed suggestions that partisanship and the injection of the presidential race were coloring the investigation. He noted that 8 of the 12 members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees who were to vote on the subpoenas next week were Republicans. The seven witnesses who would be subpoenaed include some of Ms. Palin’s primary aides. At the top of the list is Frank Bailey, who in February was recorded while telephoning a trooper commander to relay that the governor and her husband, Todd Palin, were unhappy that Mr. Wooten was still on the force. Ms. Palin subsequently said Mr. Bailey had acted improperly, and she placed him on unpaid leave. In an interview Friday, Jay Ramras, a Republican who is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in Alaska, said Mr. Bailey was being placed on leave to free him to cooperate with the investigation. Mr. Bailey’s decision to cancel his deposition helped prompt the pursuit of the subpoenas, Mr. Ramras said. “We took great offense that Frank Bailey bailed out of the interview at the moment he was scheduled,” Mr. Ramras said. “In elementary school terms, we feel like he started it.” The others on the list to receive subpoenas, Mr. French said, are Dianne Kiesel, the former director of the Division of Personnel and Labor Relations; Nicki Neal, the current director of the division, which oversees the personnel board; Brad Thompson, director of risk management; Annette Kreitzer, the commissioner of the Department of Administration, a cabinet position; Karen Rehfeld, the state budget chief; and Kris Perry, director of Ms. Palin’s Anchorage office. The lawmakers said they would not send the governor a subpoena, owing to her public pledge to cooperate and to her busy schedule. | Palin Sarah;Ethics;Wooten Mike;Presidential Election of 2008;Alaska |
ny0111488 | [
"sports",
"soccer"
] | 2012/02/29 | In International Soccer, Just One Wish: Stay Healthy | LONDON — A wise old soccer trainer, Liverpool’s Bob Paisley, once said that long-haul flights were like putting kerosene in a player’s gasoline tank. Paisley is gone now, and flying is a very different experience than it was 30 years ago. But some 1,100 players have just been transported around the globe to represent their countries for matches in the middle of this week. Once those games end, they will be flown straight back for their club games this weekend. Shinji Kagawa comes to mind as an especially coveted, yet vulnerable, individual. He came back, quite remarkably, from a torn ankle ligament to play 87 minutes for Borussia Dortmund against Hanover last Sunday. He then boarded a plane, together with other Japanese players based in Germany, for the 14-hour journey to Tokyo. If all goes as planned, Kagawa will represent his country for a home match Wednesday against Uzbekistan, in the Japanese city of Toyota. Then he will gather his travel bag and make the return flight, hoping to play his part for Dortmund, the German league leader, in its game against Mainz on Saturday. “I am on my way to the airport now,” Kagawa wrote on his personal Web site after the Bundesliga game. “As far as the injury goes, pain and swelling are no longer the issue. Though the time is limited, I’ll prepare to be the best of who I am, and get on to the game.” Playing a game the day after arriving, Kagawa told Nikkan Sports, is a bit worrying. But he said he would give everything he could. A matter of hours before the game Sunday, neither Kagawa nor anyone else knew if his ankle would withstand one game in a week, never mind three games separated by travel to the other side of the world and back. The tear in Kagawa’s ligament was, apparently, only partial. He was up and running, though unable to kick a ball or risk a challenge five days before the Hanover match. When Kagawa is ready, he is a sure starter for Dortmund, the most consistently creative player on the team, some say. His game, bursting forward from midfield to score or set up goals, demands energy. Fans come from Japan just to see him in the flesh, and with a smile on his face, he responds to them on and off the field. At 22, Kagawa has ambitions to go right to the very top. Why not? Manchester United was known to follow his progress until a previous injury — a broken metatarsal while representing Japan at the 2011 Asian Cup — knocked him out of the second half of the Bundesliga season last year. United likes players from Asia, and just a week ago it rewarded Park Ji-sung, its South Korean midfielder, with the captain’s armband for a Europa League match. Park, crucially, reached 100 caps for his country and then opted to retire from the national team. He figured he had done his bit living the two-way split between club and country. The rending of flesh, the breaking of bone, the sheer fatigue of up to 60 games a calendar year for club, and a dozen or more for country, can only take so much. UEFA is signing off on an agreement with Europe’s top clubs to cancel the August national team games that interrupt the vital preseason club preparations. The issue, however, will not go away. Look how many star players have been withdrawn, with one medical complaint or another, from the 10 World Cup qualifying games being played in Asia and Australasia this week for the 2014 tournament. And look at the scores of withdrawals from the dozens of money-raising friendly internationals that are scattered across all continents. National teams, of course, must have some preparatory dates, but FIFA and UEFA have pushed the demands for their ever-expanding tournaments to the breaking point. Everyone — the clubs, the nations, the sponsors — want more and more from the ever-shorter time available in a player’s career. I return to Kagawa simply because he is such a talented and willing young man, with the world at his feet, provided he can stay fit and enthusiastic. He apparently dreamed of this from the age of 5, when sports clubs around Kobe, Japan, noticed his dynamic ability. He rose ahead of his age group until a former German professional player became his agent and arranged his move in 2010 from Cerezo Osaka to Dortmund for a predetermined, cut-rate price of €350,000, or $470,000. He would be worth, conservatively, 20 times that amount on the global market today. His immediate future is in the hands of two coaches, neither of whom would knowingly be reckless with his injuries. Jürgen Klopp, his coach at Dortmund, had a full, if relatively modest playing career before taking Borussia to the very top of the Bundesliga last year. Japan’s coach, Alberto Zaccheroni, lost his playing career to injury, but that only increased his desire to coach top players. Zaccheroni has been taking care of players since 1983, and he was the Japan team coach when Kagawa was injured during the Asian Cup semifinal in Qatar in January 2011. The medical team will examine the player when he arrives in Toyota. Air travel has substantially improved, especially in the premium seats at the front of the plane, since Paisley’s time. Even so, a joint can swell and stiffen during a long-haul flight. And before Zaccheroni picks his team, he will want to consider the health of every player and the fact that the match Wednesday against Uzbekistan is hardly a make-or-break game for anyone. Both sides have already qualified for the next stage of the Asian qualifying process. Uzbekistan is traveling without half of its best players because of suspensions and injuries, and because the contest in Toyota is of relatively little consequence to it. Japan will doubtless put pride on home soil somewhat higher. But Dortmund’s message to Kagawa will be: Safe journey, and come back whole. | Japan;World Cup 2014 (Soccer) |
ny0124739 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2012/08/18 | Ahmadinejad of Iran Calls Israel ‘an Insult to Humankind’ | Iran ’s president fanned the flames of confrontation with Israel on Friday, calling the Israeli government “an insult to humankind” in a speech on the annual Iranian holiday that calls for the Palestinian reclamation of Jerusalem from Israel’s control. The speech by the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , who has become known for his baldly anti-Israel and anti-Semitic remarks, came as tensions had been intensifying with Israel, which regards Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat. Speculation has raged in the Israeli press about whether the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to order a military strike on uranium enrichment sites in Iran that Israel suspects are part of a clandestine effort to build nuclear weapons . Iran contends that its uranium enrichment is peaceful. Mr. Ahmadinejad’s speech, as reported by the official Islamic Republic News Agency, added some new and incendiary flourishes to a theme he had pushed for his entire presidency. “The very existence of the Zionist regime is an insult to humankind and an affront to all world nations,” the news agency’s English-language report on the speech quoted him as saying. “Confronting Zionists will also pave the way for saving the whole humankind from exploitation, depravity and misery.” In another passage, Mr. Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying that Jerusalem Day, which the Iranians call Quds Day after the city’s Arabic name, was “an occasion for all human communities to wipe out this scarlet letter, meaning the Zionist regime, from the forehead of humanity.” A violently anti-Israel message was also the theme of Jerusalem Day commemorations in Beirut, Lebanon, the home base of Hezbollah, the militant political organization that fought a war with Israel in 2006 and is aligned with the governments of Iran and Syria in what they call the axis of resistance. Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah secretary general, said in a televised speech that its arsenal of missiles trained on Israel included precision-guided rockets that could transform “the lives of hundreds of thousands of Zionists into hell.” Israel considers Iran its most dangerous adversary because of Iran’s suspect nuclear program, missiles capable of hitting Israeli targets, and support for militant Palestinian groups on Israel’s borders. Conversely, Iran’s clerical rulers have considered Israel one of the world’s most arrogant and dangerous powers since they came to power in the Islamic revolution of 1979. Iranian officials constantly point out that even though they repudiate nuclear weapons, Israel has an arsenal of them. Both Mr. Ahmadinejad and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have regularly excoriated Israel’s existence, but Israel harbors particular antipathy toward Mr. Ahmadinejad, who has denied the Holocaust and predicted in a speech early in his tenure that Israel would one day be “wiped off the map.” | Ahmadinejad Mahmoud;Iran;Israel;Anti-Semitism |
ny0189636 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2009/05/28 | Yonkers Police Officer Acquitted in Body-Slamming Case | WHITE PLAINS (AP) — A Yonkers police officer who was caught on video apparently body-slamming a woman to a restaurant’s tile floor was acquitted on Wednesday of violating her civil rights. Jurors in federal court in White Plains found the officer, Wayne Simoes, 39, not guilty after a five-day trial and five hours of deliberation. Several times during the trial, jurors were shown a recording from a restaurant surveillance camera that seemed to show the officer lifting the woman, Irma Marquez, 44, by her waist and throwing her face-first to the floor. The takedown knocked her unconscious and broke her jaw. Officer Simoes seemed stunned when the verdict was read. He expelled his breath loudly several times, then wiped his eyes with a tissue and hugged his lawyers and his wife. Several of the two dozen off-duty Yonkers police officers in the gallery clapped each other on their backs. The officers then assembled outside the courtroom and applauded Officer Simoes, the jurors and the defense lawyer, Andrew Quinn, as they walked out. Mr. Quinn said that by showing the jurors stills from the video of the night in question — March 3, 2007 — he was able to prove that the takedown of Ms. Marquez was an accident and that Officer Simoes had “no intent or desire to hurt Ms. Marquez or violate her civil rights.” Officer Simoes said that he felt bad for Ms. Marquez. He thanked his lawyers, his wife, his colleagues and everyone who “saw through all the garbage.” Mr. Quinn had claimed during the trial that the soundless, dimly lighted video was misleading because it caught only 15 frames per second. He said Officer Simoes was simply trying to keep Ms. Marquez from interfering with medical technicians who were treating her niece after a bar fight. He said Ms. Marquez was “stumbling drunk.” Ms. Marquez, of Yonkers, was arrested at the scene but acquitted of obstruction charges. She is suing the city’s Police Department for $11 million. The police captain at the scene, Edward Geiss, testified that at the time, he thought Officer Simoes’s action “probably involved excessive force.” On the other hand, he said, he did not think the officer intended to hurt Ms. Marquez “the way he did.” Officer Simoes was acquitted of violating Ms. Marquez’s constitutional protection from excessive police force. Had he been convicted, he could have faced up to 10 years in prison. The Justice Department has been investigating charges of brutality against the Yonkers force since long before the body-slam incident. | Yonkers (NY);Police Brutality and Misconduct;Suits and Litigation;Quinn Andrew;Police Department (NYC);Civil Rights and Liberties |
ny0238064 | [
"us"
] | 2010/06/23 | Day 63: The Latest on the Oil Spill | Judge Blocks Drilling Moratorium Citing economic harm to businesses and workers, Judge Martin L. C. Feldman of Federal District Court in New Orleans blocked a six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling projects that the Obama administration had imposed in response to the vast oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. “The blanket moratorium, with no parameters, seems to assume that because one rig failed and although no one yet fully knows why, all companies and rigs drilling new wells over 500 feet also universally present an imminent danger,” the judge wrote. Several companies supplying offshore drilling rigs had sued to have the ban lifted. The White House said the administration would appeal the decision. Looking for New Ways to Capture Oil Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, the federal spill response commander, said Tuesday that the federal government and BP were looking into whether pipelines could be extended from the leaking well to several production platforms elsewhere in the gulf where the oil could be captured or sent to a different reservoir. An interactive map tracking the spill and where it has made landfall, live video of the leak, a guide to online resources related to the spill and additional updates: nytimes.com/national . | Offshore Drilling and Exploration;Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline;Gulf of Mexico;BP Plc;Accidents and Safety |
ny0047587 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2014/11/17 | Favorite Concedes Presidency in Romania | BUCHAREST, Romania — In a surprising turnaround, Prime Minister Victor Ponta conceded Romania’s presidential runoff election late Sunday night to the center-right candidate, Klaus Iohannis, the mayor of the Transylvanian city of Sibiu. When the last votes were cast at 9 p.m., exit polls had the election too close to call, but soon after 11, Mr. Ponta told reporters, “I called Klaus Iohannis to congratulate him for his victory.” He added, “The people are always right.” Official results were not expected before Monday morning. Mr. Ponta, 42, had long been the favorite. He led Mr. Iohannis, 40 percent to 30 percent, in the first round, but with no one winning a majority in a field of 14 candidates the race went into a runoff. The outcome of the runoff seems to have hinged on the large Romanian diaspora, estimated to number four million. In the first round of the election, which took place on Nov. 2, a large number of Romanians living abroad were unable to vote despite waiting in line for hours. Protests followed, and last Monday the foreign minister, Titus Corlatean, was forced to resign. Yet starting early Sunday morning, long lines formed outside embassies and consulates across Europe. The number of people voting abroad doubled between the two rounds, and some were left waiting for hours and were still unable to vote. “After nine hours and 10 minutes of waiting I gave up,” Ancuta Iordachescu, a photographer who tried to vote at the embassy in Paris, wrote in an email. In reaction, thousands of Romanians took to the streets of Bucharest and other cities in protest, blaming Mr. Ponta for the delays and waving banners that read “Let them vote” and shouting “Ponta resign!” “Ponta is breaking the rules — Romanians outside the country must be allowed to vote,” said Andrea Beltic, who stood outside the main government building. Mr. Iohannis, 55, an ethnic German, ran what many considered a lackluster campaign. Yet voters seem to have decided that he was the better option. “Ponta tried to present himself as a progressive leader, but he failed to convince people,” said Cristian Ghinea, director of the Romanian Center for European Policies, a research group. Mr. Ponta tried to make an issue of his opponent’s religion — Mr. Iohannis is an Evangelical Lutheran in a country that is largely Orthodox — and that he and his wife had decided not to have children. “Iohannis did a poor job in the two debates, but Ponta mobilized the people against himself,” Mr. Ghinea said. “He ran a dirty campaign which blew up in his face.” In the first round, 52 percent of the 18 million eligible voters voted. It was estimated that around 62 percent voted this time, which according to Mr. Ghinea was the highest turnout in the last three presidential elections. Romania’s president is responsible for foreign policy, defense and the naming of key prosecutors. Mr. Iohannis has vowed to make corruption a priority. The current president, Traian Basescu, appointed Laura Codruta Kovesi to lead Romania’s National Anticorruption Directorate, and her office has successfully prosecuted many luminaries of Romania’s political class, including a former prime minister who had been considered Mr. Ponta’s mentor. Some had feared those efforts would be hindered if Mr. Ponta won. Mr. Ponta’s party, the Social Democrats, has a working majority in Parliament, and he remains prime minister, so he and Mr. Iohannis will have to try to find a way to work together, probably until the next parliamentary elections in 2016. “I see a difficult cohabitation between Ponta and Iohannis going forward,” Mr. Ghinea said. | Romania;Victor Ponta;Klaus Iohannis;Election |
ny0129718 | [
"us"
] | 2012/06/01 | Texas Trial Lawyers’ Support of Republicans Yields Mixed Results | Trial-lawyer-backed is a label ready-made for Republicans’ attack ads in tort-reform-happy Texas. But if the 2012 primaries are any guide, the plaintiffs’ bar is becoming less shy about investing in the Republican side of the ballot — and Republican candidates are not being bashful about accepting the money. The jury is still out on whether the stigma about trial lawyers is fading for Republican voters. Steve Mostyn, the immediate past president of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, who has contributed millions to largely Democratic causes, gave hundreds of thousands to three Republican State Senate contests this election cycle. Texans for Insurance Reform — a political action committee to which Mr. Mostyn, a Houston personal injury lawyer, is the largest donor — followed suit. (Mr. Mostyn and his wife, Amber, are donors to The Texas Tribune. The Texas Trial Lawyers Association is a corporate sponsor of The Tribune.) The effort is trial lawyers’ largest foray into Republican primary races in the past decade, and results have been mixed. Two of the State Senate candidates whom Mr. Mostyn and T.I.R. backed heavily, Representative Todd Smith of Euless and Dave Norman of Seabrook, lost handily to opponents who had received money from Texans for Lawsuit Reform, the state’s largest and richest tort-reform group. “For every vote you might get by spending the money, you lose one as well,” because of its source, said Representative Kelly Hancock of North Richland Hills, who defeated Mr. Smith by 30 percentage points. Mr. Smith, a Fort Worth personal injury lawyer, had received nearly $450,000 from T.I.R. by May 20. Mr. Hancock had taken in a similar amount from tort reform advocates. In Mr. Norman’s matchup against Representative Larry Taylor of Friendswood, Mr. Mostyn spent $275,000 of his own money on behalf of Mr. Norman, an insurance agent; T.I.R. gave $368,000. A third group backed by trial lawyers, the Conservative Voters of Texas, run by Mark McCaig, a former State Republican Executive Committee member and an associate in Mr. Mostyn’s law firm, invested another $228,000. T.L.R. and two supporters, Bob and Doylene Perry, gave more than $900,000 to Mr. Taylor’s campaign. (Bob Perry is a donor to The Tribune). Mr. McCaig — who is also behind Texans for Individual Rights — said that to begin with, both of those races were “uphill battles.” Much of the trial lawyers’ investment, he said, came as an attempt to give the candidates “a fighting chance.” “Being able to decrease the influence of a powerful group like T.L.R. is not going to happen overnight,” he said. Sherry Sylvester, a T.L.R. spokeswoman, said that Mr. McCaig’s group was deceptive and that the losses by candidates backed by trial lawyers sent a clear signal. “A message that’s paid for by trial lawyers, no matter how much money is behind it, is not going to persuade conservative Republican voters,” Ms. Sylvester said. But trial lawyers did have one bright spot on Tuesday. That came in a third senate race, with the dispatch of the former Railroad Commissioner Elizabeth Ames Jones, who as of April 30 had received more than $700,000 from T.L.R. since December, plus an additional $100,000 from Bob and Doylene Perry. Ms. Jones’s opponent, Senator Jeff Wentworth of San Antonio got more than $640,000 from the T.I.R. PAC and will face a runoff with Donna Campbell, once considered the long-shot candidate, in July. Mr. Wentworth shrugged off the notion that trial lawyer money might be a liability in a Republican primary, saying the outcome of his race “speaks for itself.” He said he supported lawsuit reform but that he had opposed the tort-reform group when he thought it had behaved dishonestly in negotiations. “That kind of independence really aggravates them,” he said. “When they say jump, they want me and every other member of the Legislature to say how high.” | Texas;Texas Trial Lawyers Assn;Elections;Lobbying and Lobbyists;Legal Profession;Republican Party |
ny0054555 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2014/07/06 | Soup Burg Closes on Upper East Side | Halfway around the world, my 6-year-old son could feel the pull of the Soup Burg’s eggs and sausage, the meal he would have ordered every time, in every restaurant, if he could. So when we arrived home after more than a year away, we headed straight to East 77th Street and Lexington Avenue, where we were confronted with terrible news: The Soup Burg was closing down. Behind the counter last Sunday night, the restaurant’s last, Jimmy Gouvakis’s face drooped, like the ends of his mustache, beneath his faded Soup Burg ball cap. The landlord had not even named a price, he said: “It was just, ‘Get out.’ He’s putting in a TD Bank.” Epicures may have shuddered last month when soaring commercial real estate prices cost the celebrity restaurateur Danny Meyer the lease on his famed Union Square Cafe, but Soup Burg is a workingman’s version, and Mr. Gouvakis, 54, doesn’t have Mr. Meyer’s Shake Shack empire to fall back on. His predicament represents a broader challenge to the fabric of New York: the loss of affordable mom-and-pop shops in Manhattan neighborhoods that once, not so long ago, were not solely for the extraordinarily wealthy. On the Upper East Side, it is hard to say who is disappearing faster, rent-stabilized tenants (like me and my parents before me) or the small-business owners who long catered to them. “It’s going from a family neighborhood to a corporate neighborhood,” Mr. Gouvakis said, though most would probably say it has already gone. The Soup Burg is — was — the archetype of what in today’s homogenized, all-American city is usually called a diner. Premillennial, pre-Starbucks New Yorkers would call it a coffee shop. Not the kind where you get a latte, though that item was grudgingly added to the menu. The kind where you get a burger bigger than its bun, or home fries with sweet peppers and onions, or a chicken orzo soup with saltines. Where you can sit down and eat for $10, with a bottomless, not distractingly good $1.50 coffee, and where they know your face, your order and sometimes even your name. On that final Sunday, nothing looked different. The pink faces of halved grapefruits stared from a glass case. The stainless-steel counters gleamed. The grill cooks flattened sandwiches with a device that resembled an 18th-century iron. The phone rang, with orders for banana pancakes. A stack of menus listed coffee-shop standbys, including “Diet Delights”: a breadless burger with cottage cheese, or tuna over lettuce (Individual Can). The owners, Mr. Gouvakis, his brother, John, and their brother-in-law Timmy Vlachos, did not observe any special ritual. But their regulars had other ideas. They came to pay homage. Image Mr. Gouvakis on closing night on Lexington Avenue. Credit Brian Harkin for The New York Times Mr. Gouvakis was struggling to think of an old-school coffee shop still clinging to Lexington Avenue between 72nd and 96th Streets when a gangly teenager bellied up to the register. “Hi, Shorty,” Mr. Gouvakis said. “Shorty? I’m taller than you,” said the customer, Mark Hollman, 15. He added simply, “I heard.” His sister Lauren, 17, had found out that morning, when she stopped by to offer condolences to the grill cooks, who are Mexican, at their World Cup loss. A bit later, the siblings’ parents, Stella and Juan, walked in for a last round of their usuals: a cheeseburger deluxe (his) and a gyro (hers). The Hollmans live on East 73rd and Madison, above an Italian cashmere boutique that was the original Soup Burg until 2006, when the rent increased to $65,000 from $21,000 a month. Mr. Gouvakis lived in the building for years, to the chagrin of his father, who complained that he was arriving to work later than when he lived at home in Jackson Heights, Queens. At any rate, when the Hollmans pulled up in a taxi with their newborns, fresh from the hospital, Mr. Gouvakis was standing there. He had even helped carry the infant Mark upstairs. “They’re his babies,” Mrs. Hollman said. The elegiac visits continued. Mr. Gouvakis stuffed business cards and phone numbers into a blue “We Are Happy to Serve You” coffee cup, promising to alert patrons when, or if, he finds a new location. Walking up First Avenue from East 50th Street — forget Second — he had found 12 empty storefronts, but no landlords who wanted a coffee shop for a tenant. When he saw Nikki Henkin outside, he excused himself. It was time to bring her dog, Tigger, his daily snack. “Tigger doesn’t know it’s the last time,” said Ms. Henkin, who lives upstairs. Tigger, 13, gazed worshipfully up at Mr. Gouvakis, who dangled a slice of ham. “It used to be bacon, but then the vet put him on a diet,” Ms. Henkin explained. She mentioned that her hairdresser on the next block had been priced out, too. “Gus?” Mr. Gouvakis said. “He’s gone?” “Went somewhere on Second Avenue,” Ms. Henkin said vaguely, waving a hand eastward. “I really need a haircut.” Image Mr. Gouvakis at the cash register. Credit Brian Harkin for The New York Times It is fair to ask if changing gustatory tastes played a role. New Yorkers will not always claim their local coffee shop’s food is great, but the Soup Burg stood out in at least one respect. In 2004, Time Out New York rated its burger third citywide, behind that of the famed Donovan’s Pub and P. J. Clarke’s but ahead of the serious contenders J. G. Melon and Pastis. If Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” patrons ate burgers, the magazine said, the burgers would “probably taste like this.” “There’s no secret,” Mr. Gouvakis said. “I use my father’s ratio, 75 percent meat, 25 percent fat.” No pre-made patties, he added, “and the grill has to be hot.” The original Soup Burg, which opened in 1948, was a dark hole-in-the-wall thick with burger smoke. Sometime in the 1970s, I sat on a stool at its L-shape counter, feeling very grown up, on one of my first lunch dates alone with my mother. Not much later, Mr. Gouvakis quit school and came to work for his father, Peter, an immigrant from Chios, Greece, who had taken a job there in 1958 and bought Soup Burg in 1964. At the peak of the empire, in 2005, the neighborhood had three. In my childhood of plentiful coffee shops, the Soup Burg, three blocks away, was a bit far. For family breakfasts, we walked the block to the Skyline, where an elderly neighbor could often be found eating a grape jelly omelet. Cabdrivers idled outside for the 24-hour service; later, in our 20s, my friends and I nursed hangovers there. The Skyline closed a decade ago, replaced by a succession of forgettable yuppie eateries. Longer gone are Bonté Patisserie, where Madame Bonté slipped extra cookies to small customers; most of the Czech, Hungarian and German restaurants of old Yorkville; pretty much any hardware shop west of First; and Henry Hudela’s clock repair. Whenever my mother pushed her temperamental mantel clock to his shop in a baby carriage, Mr. Hudela, if begged, would set off all his cuckoos at once. However, if you are looking for a Duane Reade, a bank or a $400 cocktail dress, you are in luck. And my children? I guess they have Shake Shack. As for Mr. Gouvakis, he tries not to take it personally. It is not his father’s era, when landlords negotiated $500 rent hikes over burgers. Single and healthy, he considers himself a rich man, worried only about his partners’ three children. But he admitted on that final Sunday that one thing made him anxious. “Tomorrow when I wake up,” he said, “it’ll be the first day in my life that I don’t have a job.” | Commercial Real Estate;Soup Burg;Rent;Upper East Side Manhattan;Jimmy Gouvakis;Restaurant;NYC |
ny0159130 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2008/12/08 | ‘Meet the Press’ Changes, and Hopes Its Rank Won’t | NBC News used the occasion of an appearance by President-elect Barack Obama on “Meet the Press” on Sunday to make official its appointment of David Gregory as the next permanent moderator of that venerable political discussion program. The news of Mr. Gregory’s selection had leaked out in reports last week. On Sunday, Tom Brokaw, who became interim host in June after the sudden death of Tim Russert, said that he would step down. Mr. Gregory’s first program will be next week. Mr. Russert had lifted “Meet the Press” to a long period of dominance among the Sunday morning shows, establishing himself in the process as perhaps the most formidable interviewer on television. In a telephone interview, Mr. Gregory, who is 38, acknowledged that the task before him was challenging. “I’m honored,” he said. “I feel humbled and very excited. I’m not nervous or apprehensive about it, but it is daunting.” The change comes as the Washington power-broker lineup is about to be recast with the arrival of the Obama administration. Calling this “a critically important time for the country,” Mr. Brokaw said on Sunday’s program that “more people are paying attention” to the weekly network Sunday programs than at any time since 1968. That combination of factors has NBC’s competitors anticipating an opportunity to alter the dynamics of Sunday morning talk. George Stephanopoulos, the face of ABC’s program “This Week,” said he saw genuine opportunity in the changeover, though he said, “There’s no question that ‘Meet the Press’ is a powerful brand.” It is the oldest program on television, and like other programs started by NBC in the medium’s early days — “Today” and “The Tonight Show” — “Meet the Press” is a television institution. Still, it is hardly invulnerable. In the 1980s, ABC’s “This Week” dominated for a decade. Mr. Russert reversed that, first by persuading NBC to expand “Meet the Press” to an hour to match “This Week,” then by ratcheting up the intensity of the interviews. But now NBC’s competitors see an opening. “I think the post-Russert era begins now,” said Chris Wallace, the host of “Fox News Sunday.” This year, NBC has averaged about 4.5 million viewers on its Sunday morning show, “This Week” about 3.4 million, and CBS’s “Face the Nation,” hosted by Bob Schieffer, about 3.1 million. “Fox News Sunday” on the Fox network has about 1.6 million viewers, but that number jumps to about 3 million when the program is repeated in the evening on the Fox News Channel. The other cable entrant in the competition, CNN, is also about to make a change, with John King set to take over its “Late Edition” Sunday morning program soon from its host, Wolf Blitzer. Maintaining the dominant position Mr. Russert established is clearly an important consideration. Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, said that he was most interested in the program sustaining a reputation for “tough but fair” interviews. Mr. Gregory said that he felt “the great sense of purpose in the program.” Under his new contract, he will continue to have a presence on “Today,” serving as the regular substitute host for Matt Lauer. But he will give up his interview program on NBC’s all-news cable channel, MSNBC. NBC also extended the contract of Betsy Fischer, the executive producer of “Meet the Press,” who attended American University in Washington at the same time as Mr. Gregory. None of the programs have ambitious plans to shake up the format. Ms. Fischer said any changes under Mr. Gregory would be “gradual and seamless.” There isn’t much you can do differently with a program based on a face-to-face interview. The competition is generally not over how the programs are put together but who the guests are. Some competitors suggest that Mr. Stephanopoulos may have an advantage because he worked in a Democratic administration populated by many names that are making a comeback. “George obviously does have close relationships with people from the Clinton White House,” Mr. Wallace said. Mr. Stephanopoulos said, “I’m going to draw on every relationship I have.” Mr. Schieffer, host of “Face the Nation,” recalled that Mr. Russert considered himself “the curator of a national treasure” and added that he had always been impressed with Mr. Gregory’s talents. “Tim is irreplaceable,” Mr. Schieffer said, “but somebody has to do it.” Mr. Gregory, the new curator, will be under considerable pressure — and scrutiny. Mr. Stephanopoulos pointed out that “Brokaw is handing David about a one-million-viewer lead.” Mr. Schieffer said, “It’s going to be tough competition. I wish David the best — and I’m going to try to beat his brains out.” | NBC News;Meet the Press (TV Program);News and News Media;Gregory David |
ny0133188 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2012/12/22 | Kremlin Statements Move Farther Away From Assad | MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin said Friday that Russia ’s main goal in the Syrian conflict was to avoid chaos, the latest in a series of remarks that have served to distance Moscow from the government of President Bashar al-Assad and shift the focus to a controlled political transition. “We will do what we can so that there will be order in Syria , so that it will be a democratic regime based on the will of the Syrian people,” he said at a news conference after the European Union-Russia summit meeting in Brussels. “Whatever changes are occurring in Syria, we would not like to see the same chaos there which we are seeing in other countries in the region.” His comments expanded on those he made on Thursday, at a televised year-end news conference in Moscow. Speaking in response to a question about Russia’s position toward Syria, Mr. Putin said Russian leaders “are not preoccupied by the fate of Assad’s regime.” “We understand what is going on there and that the family has held power for 40 years,” he said. “Undoubtedly, there is a call for change.” Russia has been the most important foreign supporter of Mr. Assad’s government in the conflict, which began as an uprising against him nearly two years ago and grew into an armed rebellion that has left the Syrian leader’s grip on power increasingly in doubt. While Russian leaders have acknowledged rebel gains in Syria, they still adamantly resist taking part in any international effort aimed at pressuring Mr. Assad to resign. Russia’s foreign minister said in an interview with Russia Today, a government news organization, that Moscow was still rejecting appeals from other countries to help persuade the Syrian leader to flee. “We are not in the business of regime change,” Mr. Lavrov told Russia Today in the interview, which was broadcast on Friday. “Some of the regional players were suggesting, ‘Why don’t you tell President Assad to leave — we will arrange some safe haven for him.’ My answer is very simple. If indeed those people have this in mind, why not bring it to President Assad? Why use us as a postman? If President Assad is interested, this must be discussed directly with him.” | Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- );Putin Vladimir V;Assad Bashar al-;International Relations;Russia;Syria |
ny0042364 | [
"business",
"economy"
] | 2014/05/17 | Consumer Debt Suggests Growing Confidence | CONSUMERS appear to be growing more confident and are less likely to be behind on their bills, according to figures released this week by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Using figures from Equifax, one of the major credit reporting companies, the New York Fed estimated that consumers owed $8.69 trillion in mortgage debt at the end of the first quarter, 2 percent more than they owed a year earlier. That figure includes both first mortgages and home equity loans. It was the first year-over-year increase since 2008. That amount remains 13 percent below the $9.99 trillion peak that Equifax estimated consumers owed at the end of the third quarter of 2008. As many Americans defaulted on mortgages and lost their homes during the financial crisis, the amount of outstanding mortgage debt declined. There was also a sharp decline in new mortgages as fewer homes were sold. The New York Fed report also indicated that the proportion of all four major categories of consumer debt that was seriously delinquent — behind by at least 90 days in payment — declined during the quarter. Only 8.5 percent of credit card loans were in that category at the end of the first quarter, a figure that was lower than at any point previously recorded in the data, which goes back to 2003. The serious delinquency rate on student loans fell to 11 percent from 11.5 percent, but remained higher than the rate for any other category. Despite the small increase in overall mortgages outstanding, the New York Fed reported that young adults “continued to retreat from the housing market,” as three Fed researchers, Meta Brown, Sydnee Caldwell and Sarah Sutherland, put it in a blog post as the report was released. The data indicated that in 2013, the proportion of adults age 27 to 30 with home mortgage debt continued to decline, falling to 21.6 percent among those with student loans outstanding, and 22.3 percent of those with no such loans. Before 2012, young adults with student loans were more likely to have purchased homes than were those without such debt. That was taken as an indication that such people were more likely to be college graduates, with better-paying jobs. The change, the Fed researchers said, may reflect that people with student loans are now more burdened by them. And, they added, it may reflect that 30-year-olds with student loans on average have lower credit scores than those without such loans, and thus have a harder time getting mortgages to buy homes. Another indication of improving confidence is that younger people now seem more willing to take on debt to buy cars. As can be seen in the accompanying charts, the proportion of people 22 to 25 years of age with auto loans rose in 2013 for the first time since the recession began. That was true for both those with student loans and those without. As can be seen from the charts, the recession caused substantial declines in the amount outstanding of three of the four major categories of consumer debt — mortgages, credit cards and auto loans. Auto loan volume was the first to begin growing again. Credit card debts outstanding appear to have leveled out but have yet to rise significantly. By contrast, the amount of student loans outstanding never fell during the recession, although the rate of growth did slow in 2011 and 2012 before accelerating in 2013. In 2012, student loans replaced credit card debt as the category with the highest proportion of delinquent accounts. | Federal Reserve Bank of New York;Student loan;Mortgage loan;Debt;Equifax;Credit score |
ny0201245 | [
"sports",
"tennis"
] | 2009/09/09 | Oudin a Fan Favorite in Native Georgia, Before Winning Hearts at Open | NORCROSS, Ga. — On sun-soaked tennis courts Tuesday afternoon, tweens and young teens thwacked balls as their coaches sporadically name-dropped to emphasize an instructional point. Melanie, they would say, as in Oudin — no surname necessary. Melanie Oudin, the 17-year-old who has taken United States Open hearts hostage, is one of them, a student of her coach Brian de Villiers’s tennis institute at the Racquet Club of the South, and any lesson that references her is most likely absorbed. Even after her first big brush with fame, advancing to the fourth round at Wimbledon this summer, Oudin eagerly stood before them to demonstrate a technique for de Villiers. The audience, some of them restless, became laser-focused, observers say. When a water leak flooded the courts, Oudin fetched a squeegee and mopped up alongside the rank and file. She is known to pick up litter on the grounds. “She’s a prodigy, but not a prima donna,” said John Hoback, a middle-age club member whom she addresses as Mr. Hoback. Though Oudin made her career choice at age 9, she has maintained some normalcy in a profession that can oppress players with a sense of entitlement. Eschewing the live-in tennis academies that draw racket-wielding whiz kids, she stayed at home in Marietta. She would occasionally defer practice, with de Villiers’s consent, to shop or watch movies with friends. Oudin did opt for home-schooling — her idea, not her parents’ — but that has become the norm for top-shelf Generation Z players who require four hours minimum of training daily and crisscross the nation to tournaments. One of Oudin’s weapons is an even-keeled nature that has impressed coaches for years. “If she’d miss a shot, she’d move on,” said Richard Ashby, a national coach with the United States Tennis Association, who has watched her for four years. “If you hadn’t seen the shot, you’d look at her and wouldn’t know she’s made a mistake.” The trait has served Oudin well at the Open, where she tends to spot her foe a set before fighting back. “I don’t teach her competitiveness,” de Villiers said. “That’s what comes from within her, and that’s what’s pulling her through.” Yet, he does not coddle her. They may delay practice until evening, but it is not cut short or ever made easy. “I think when you go through the pain barrier a couple times in training, and you feel like you’ve earned something, then you’re less likely to want to throw it away,” de Villiers said. De Villiers credits her parents, Leslie and John, with a hands-off approach, allowing him to call the shots, in more ways than one. “I think that’s why it’s worked,” he said. “The parents have been great in that they’ve given her the opportunity to pursue it and have supported her, and they haven’t fussed with me.” Oudin’s family tree is flecked with tennis. Frank Willett, a great uncle known as Buckshot, was a national boys indoor champion in the 1930s and a ’61 inductee to the Athletics Hall of Fame at Georgia Tech, his alma mater. “He was good at every phase of the game,” Dan Magill, a retired coach and Georgia tennis historian, said of Willett. “Very talented.” Joan Robertson of Marietta, Melanie’s grandmother, is a lifelong player who still rallies at age 77. It was Robertson who introduced Oudin, then 9, to de Villiers, who promptly became her tennis mentor. One feature her ancestors could not pass down was height. Oudin is 5 feet 6 inches, a munchkin among the sport’s towering figures. “I’m praying for another inch,” de Villiers said, “but I don’t think I’m going to get it.” To her fellow club members, young and old, many of whom who will gather again Wednesday night in the club restaurant to cheer long distance when she plays Caroline Wozniacki in the quarterfinals, Oudin stands tall. Even when she is bent over a squeegee or a piece of trash. | Tennis;Oudin Melanie;United States Open (Tennis) |
ny0237856 | [
"world",
"africa"
] | 2010/06/08 | Zuma Has Yet to Fulfill Promises to South Africans | SIYATHEMBA, South Africa — President Jacob Zuma , the son of a widowed maid, tried to reason with the rowdy crowd in this restive township. He had come to fix their broken public services, he assured them, but their angry heckling kept drowning him out. Finally, like a glowering patriarch, he lectured and scolded them, threatening to leave. “This means you will live forever in poverty!” he exclaimed. “If we do not listen to each other, how can we fix anything?” Suddenly, the rage of the throng dissipated. There was a chorus of apologies. A voice shouted, “Sorry, Baba!” Then a cry arose for the president to sing his trademark song from the anti-apartheid struggle, “Bring Me My Machine Gun.” “You want it?” he asked. “Yes!” they shouted. And like an aging entertainer obliging with a golden oldie, Mr. Zuma, 68, crooned and boogied onstage. It was a moment that encapsulated both the promise and the unfulfilled potential of Mr. Zuma, who has raised the hopes of the dispossessed but not yet delivered the better life they are demanding. Despite persistent corruption charges and the taint of extramarital affairs, he is a political survivor who has risen to lead the continent’s powerhouse nation and will soon step onto the international stage as South Africa holds Africa’s first World Cup. With his rumbling laugh and habit of dancing onstage , Mr. Zuma has a gift for connecting with the country’s impoverished black majority, who are impatient for the better life promised by the dawning of democratic rule 16 years ago. “I’ve never seen a president in Africa in direct dialogue with his citizens like Jacob Zuma,” said Zakhele Maya, 26, an activist in Siyathemba who, like most in the township, is jobless. But that connection has not quelled the discontent. After an earlier visit, last year , Mr. Zuma ordered the government to improve the township’s health and housing services, yet frustrations continued to rise. In February, residents burned down the library. The books are now charred scraps, the library a pile of blackened rubble. A year into his five-year term, Mr. Zuma recently signed performance contracts with his ministers, setting out specific results for them to achieve. But analysts are urging action, not aspirations, on South Africa’s core challenges: a failing education system , staggering levels of joblessness and the widening chasm between rich and poor. There is already open speculation about whether his party, the African National Congress, in power since the end of apartheid, will pick him for a second term. “By 2013, the questions arise: Who will govern beyond 2014?” asked Trevor Manuel, who heads the National Planning Commission in Mr. Zuma’s office and was finance minister for the previous 13 years. “And the intense period has to be 2011, 2012, into 2013. Those are the middle years of the term of government, and I think the foundation is now well laid. Now you’ve got to drive the change.” Mr. Zuma’s highly personal, consensus-building style has helped him lead a sweeping new attack on AIDS after almost a decade of failed leadership under his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki. But even some in his party say that tackling the nation’s deep economic problems will probably require angering allies who put him in office, especially Cosatu — the powerful trade union federation that is part of the governing alliance — and the A.N.C.’s youth wing. It is led by the incendiary Julius Malema , 29, regarded by many here as a demagogue who plays on racial antagonisms and who was recently sent to anger management classes by the party. The dry kindling of resentment is here to be ignited. The ranks of the jobless have grown by more than a million in the past year and a half, and South Africa, population 49 million, already had among the highest rates of chronic unemployment in the world. More than a third of the work force, including those too discouraged to seek work, is jobless. Studies have found that most of the unemployed have never held a job. Mr. Zuma announced in February that proposals would be put forward to subsidize the wages of inexperienced workers, to help them get a foot in the door. But Cosatu, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, which represents those who already have jobs, opposes the idea — and debate within the government continues. Another point of tension is education. Last year, Mr. Zuma said teachers and principals — whose union is also part of Cosatu — must be held accountable for whether they show up and do their jobs. In an interview, Mr. Zuma reiterated the need for such a step and said it would be taken by the end of his second year in office. “There’s no teacher who’s going to hide behind the school,” he said. But critics question whether Mr. Zuma has the support to follow through on these difficult decisions, the vision to address the country’s daunting challenges or the standing to root out corruption. Worries deepened when it surfaced that Mr. Zuma, who already had three wives and a fiancée, had fathered a child, his 20th, out of wedlock with the daughter of a family friend. “The biggest danger we face as a country is the use of office for personal gain, and it is becoming so, so normal, and nobody’s arresting that,” said Mondli Makhanya, a newspaper editor whose reporter broke the story about Mr. Zuma’s child in The Sunday Times. “He lacks the leadership strength at this point to turn against people who supported him, and he lacks the moral authority to say, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ ” More fundamentally, making choices that would divide the governing alliance goes against Mr. Zuma’s instincts as an African traditionalist who seeks to settle conflicts by gathering his coalition under a metaphoric marula tree to talk for days or weeks until they reach a consensus, said Allister Sparks, a veteran commentator here. “Action dies in the process of eternal, everlasting debate,” Mr. Sparks said. Mr. Manuel, the former finance minister, says the president’s style is to keep everyone in the tent, recalling Mr. Zuma’s efforts to mediate Burundi’s complex civil war. “He’d sit in Dar es Salaam for tens of days, and he has the most remarkable patience to do that kind of thing,” Mr. Manuel said. “So perhaps he needs the support of ministers who are going to push and shove and try to get things done.” On issues including teacher accountability, Mr. Manuel said, “Instinctively, I would take a much harder line on some of these things.” Mr. Zuma’s political resilience should not be underestimated. After a decade as a political prisoner, he rose to lead the A.N.C.’s underground intelligence operation during the anti-apartheid struggle. As president, he has filled important police and prosecutorial posts with loyalists, making it unlikely he will face further corruption charges. In an interview, he told a story that suggested the roots of the cool calculation beneath his warm, amiable style. “If you are angry, you can’t think properly, and the other boys will really beat you up,” he said of his days learning stick fighting with other Zulu boys. “You’ve got to be sober so that you can be able to defend yourself and also hit the other boy.” As the debate over Mr. Zuma swirls, the man himself has fun on the hustings. He recently basked in the adulation of a vast crowd at a township stadium in the Free State for a World Cup prayer service sponsored by the A.N.C. The event was an ecstatic, incantatory fusion of sports, religion and politics that would not have seemed out of place in Texas. Thousands of churchwomen ululated for him and the South African soccer team, Bafana Bafana. “Long live Jacob Zuma!” one cried. “Long live!” the crowd responded. A small smile flickered across Mr. Zuma’s face as the premier of the Free State said: “We are not talking succession. We are just saying the president should be president again and again and again!” White dignitaries mounted the stage. A blanket imprinted with the South African flag was laid on the floor; Mr. Zuma knelt on it as preachers placed their hands on his head. People gathered around and raised their hands to God, a tableau of racial harmony. “Let us receive our visitors warmly with love,” Mr. Zuma said of the coming games. “Let us embrace them.” And with a mischievous glint, he added, “Those who at times are not good, let them for just four weeks be good.” | Zuma Jacob G;South Africa;Politics and Government |
ny0254388 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2011/07/21 | Mets Closer on Sale Talks With Einhorn, Also May Be Speaking With Others | Even amid assertions that negotiations with David Einhorn were moving toward a positive conclusion next month, the Mets reopened discussions recently with at least one other serious bidder for a minority share of the team, according to two people with knowledge of the talks. The Mets have reached out to Ray Bartoszek, the billionaire former oil trader for Glencore International, and asked him to re-enter the bidding, the two people said. Fred Wilpon , the Mets’ principal owner, met with Bartoszek on Wednesday at Wilpon’s Long Island estate, and the sides had been expected to continue negotiations over the next few days. But later in the day Wilpon and his son Jeff, the chief operating officer of the team, met with Einhorn, said another person with knowledge of those talks, and apparently concluded a new exclusive negotiating agreement with him that is expected to lead to a final deal next month, on better terms for the Mets. Just hours after meeting with Bartoszek, the Mets released a statement at 7:05 p.m. that said they were negotiating only with Einhorn, raising questions about the purpose of the meeting with Bartoszek. “We are in exclusive negotiations with David Einhorn and continue to have positive and productive discussions regarding David’s ongoing interest in an investment in the Mets,” the statement said. Other parties who were involved in the original bidding were also contacted and invited to renew their efforts after the Mets and Einhorn failed to reach a final agreement within the initial exclusivity period that ended last month. Based on the sequence of events, it is not inconceivable that the Mets could have used the negotiations with Bartoszek, and others, to compel more favorable terms from Einhorn. That certainly appears to be reflected in an agreement on a new period of exclusivity. Bartoszek, a former college infielder who grew up a devout Mets fan, was involved in the original bidding process and was said to have come in second to Einhorn. The Mets chose Einhorn in an unusual deal that would provide them with much-needed capital — $200 million — at a time when they were facing severe financial distress. That included the specter of a billion-dollar lawsuit filed by Irving H. Picard, the trustee for the victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme . Since then, the Mets’ owners, who were heavy investors with Madoff, won a favorable ruling that shifted the case out of bankruptcy court. That may have emboldened them to seek a deal better than the one initially reached with Einhorn in May. Although the framework of the original deal has not been made public, most agree that it provided Einhorn with a clear path to majority ownership if the Mets could not repay him the $200 million within a time frame said to be between three and five years. The number of years depends on the outcome of the Madoff litigation and would be negotiated once the result of the lawsuit is determined. Commissioner Bud Selig has spoken favorably about Einhorn, whom he has known since Einhorn was a child in Milwaukee and played baseball on the lawn of one of Selig’s neighbors. Selig is thought to favor Einhorn’s candidacy, especially because he could end up controlling the Mets within a few years. But at a recent news media conference at Sun Valley, Idaho, Wilpon told people that he was not happy with the deal he cut with Einhorn and was willing to accept new bids. Regardless of the Madoff lawsuit, the Mets still need an infusion of cash to pay off their loans and meet payroll demands. | New York Mets;Wilpon Fred;Einhorn David;Bankruptcies;Baseball;Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures |
ny0144094 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2008/10/16 | Protest Over Schools’ Military Recruiting Policy | A new Department of Education policy that gives military recruiters centralized access to high school student data is drawing fire from the New York Civil Liberties Union , as well as some parents and students. In the past, military recruiters were required to go from school to school to obtain student names, addresses and telephone numbers, sometimes encountering resistance from school employees and students. Now, under an order signed last month by Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, recruiters can access data from each high school simply by going to the Department of Education’s headquarters. At a news conference on Wednesday afternoon, the civil liberties group criticized the change in policy, saying it opened the door to aggressive concentration on certain students. “The D.O.E. is giving military recruiters a direct line to New York City’s children,” said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the civil liberties group. In a letter to Ms. Lieberman on Wednesday, the Department of Education said it had revised the recruiting procedures to add another layer of oversight. Under the new system, the letter said, department officials can scrutinize the number of students choosing to opt out and check to make sure no school has failed to distribute opt-out forms. Centralizing the data also prevents military recruiters from holding impromptu recruitment sessions while on campuses to get student data, the letter said, and it reduces the flow of communication between military branches and schools that “often proved disruptive.” Ms. Lieberman called on the city to delay implementing the new policy. She said the Department of Education had shown a “startling disregard for open government” by not asking for public input on the new measure, and she suggested that it solicit feedback for 30 days. Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, schools are required to provide military recruiters the same access to students granted to colleges and prospective employers. Parents are allowed to block access to a child’s data by signing a form. But Ms. Lieberman said the city had not made an adequate effort to inform parents of that choice, even though the Department of Education has been telling principals to send letters to parents and students about the opt-out option. The department’s Web site also includes the form, in eight languages. | Draft and Recruitment (Military);Education and Schools;Education Department (NYC);New York Civil Liberties Union |
ny0161554 | [
"business",
"yourmoney"
] | 2006/04/23 | Trained in Manhattan, Graduating to the World | TO swim to the top ranks of commercial real estate brokers in New York City, Barry M. Gosin perfected an elegant crawl. But now, as the chief executive of Newmark Knight Frank, he has to maneuver the waters of a much larger pond. Mr. Gosin's company -- formerly known as Newmark & Company, which expanded nationally only about five years ago -- sealed a partnership in January with Knight Frank of London, one of the world's largest privately owned property consulting firms. Last year, the firms handled transactions that, combined, were valued at more than $41 billion, with annual revenue of more than $545 million. Mr. Gosin will oversee the operations in North and South America, while Knight Frank's chairman and senior partner, Nick Thomlinson, will oversee the rest of the offices throughout the world. Besides supervising Newmark's 26 offices in the United States, Mr. Gosin will have under his auspices five existing Knight Frank offices in Brazil and three that will open later this year in Lima, Peru; Santiago, Chile; and Buenos Aires. Mr. Gosin, 55, who grew up in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, seems eager to take on the global arena. "Someone told me a long time ago, if you don't grow, you die," he said. "Every business has to be dynamic." Mr. Gosin and a business partner, Jeffrey Gural, bought Newmark in 1978 from Mr. Gural's father, Aaron Gural, who had taken over the company from Dave Newmark, its founder. At the time, Mr. Gosin was a fledgling real estate entrepreneur who had joined the firm to learn how to buy real estate. And that he did. Mr. Gosin and several Newmark principals have an eight-million-square-foot commercial real estate portfolio that includes the landmark Flatiron Building in Manhattan. "Aaron Gural came out of the Helmsley-Spear school of real estate," Mr. Gosin said, referring to the real estate company. "He taught us how to buy property, and it was a great platform for us." Newmark also expanded into development, forming a construction division several years ago that specialized in converting office buildings into apartments. Until recently, Mr. Gosin and his partners, along with the developer David Walentas, owned about 10 buildings in the Dumbo area of Brooklyn, and worked to transform Dumbo from an obscure industrial area into a trendy residential neighborhood. Mr. Gosin, a history buff, is enthusiastic about a purchase in 2004: for about $4 million his company acquired the former headquarters of Bethlehem Steel in Bethlehem, Pa., and the surrounding 125 acres. The deal includes the headquarters building, designed by Sanford White, and three million square feet of structures. Mr. Gosin and his partners envision a development worth more than $400 million that is to include a casino with 5,000 slot machines -- state license permitting -- a hotel, theater, retail stores, residential buildings and a museum commemorating the country's industrial history. "The steel for most of the large buildings in New York City was forged here," he said. "This is where the 20th century was built." But the allure of ownership aside, Mr. Gosin's first love is brokering deals. As he points out, Harry Helmsley, the legendary New York City real estate magnate, also worked as a broker until the day he died in 1997. "It's an exciting business, and a great way of being a part of what happens in the city," said Mr. Gosin, who began cultivating Newmark's brokerage and advisory division when he sensed a lull in the city's real estate market in the late 80's. "I saw a disconnect between the fundamentals and the values, so the underlying demand was not there," Mr. Gosin said. "The prices were continuing to go up in the late 80's. Rents didn't go up. It just didn't appear to be right, so we needed to find an alternative to keep us busy." During Mr. Gosin's tenure, Newmark's brokerage business has flourished. "We have a unique perspective on the advisory business in that we're one of the few brokerage firms that has a significant investment portfolio," Mr. Gosin said. "And we think that the fact that we own property and the fact that we run property gives us a unique vantage point from which to represent companies who rent space and properties." Mr. Gosin represents mostly big tenants and has handled some of New York City's largest and most intricate leasing deals, including the consolidation of the new Manhattan headquarters of Bloomberg L.P. at 731 Lexington Avenue, between 58th and 59th Streets, in the One Beacon Court building. (Construction on the Bloomberg Tower was completed last year.) Mr. Gosin said his team first had to sell the move to Michael R. Bloomberg, the company founder, who was not yet mayor of New York. "My first conversation with Mike went like, 'You're on so many floors, you're in so many buildings, it would be a good opportunity for you when your lease expires to consolidate,' " Mr. Gosin said. "And Mike is fairly glib. He said, 'If you can prove that it makes economic sense, go talk to my head of real estate, and we'll do it.' " "The exchange probably lasted 15 minutes, because that's about as long as, I guess, Mike would give somebody for the first time," he said. Mr. Gosin said Newmark then had to persuade the principals at Vornado Realty Trust, the developer, to let Bloomberg lease a portion of One Beacon Court tower, which had not yet been built. It had been largely slated for residential use. "We went to Steve Roth and suggested that we be the anchor tenant in the base of the building," Mr. Gosin said, referring to the chief executive of Vornado. "At the time, they had a preference for more residential, and had they known the market would have shot up the way it did, they probably would have done even more residential." Still, the Newmark team pulled off the deal, leasing 700,000 square feet in a building that didn't yet exist, and ensuring that its client, as an anchor tenant, would be able to design the building according to its needs. "We spent 18 months torturously negotiating a lease for Bloomberg so they'd build a new building" for the company, Mr. Gosin said. "The building, which is beautiful, is designed with Bloomberg specs." Mr. Gosin said jokingly that he should have been paid by the hour on that transaction. But Jeffrey Gural, the chairman of Newmark Knight Frank, said, "As a broker, Barry's real strength is he really and truly tries to do a good job for his client -- even if it means not making a commission." Mark Weiss, an executive vice president at Newmark who joined from a competing brokerage firm, Studley, almost four years ago, described Mr. Gosin as a caring boss. Shortly after arriving at Newmark, Mr. Weiss said, he discovered that his wife had breast cancer. Mr. Gosin "walked into my office, put his arm around me -- and I didn't really know this guy, it was a new relationship -- said, 'Anything you need, we're here for you,' " Mr. Weiss said. "He had promised a pretty big bill of goods, and he has delivered on all fronts." BUT does Mr. Gosin also have that toughness to lead a company on a large and impersonal global front, against giant competitors like CB Richard Ellis, Cushman & Wakefield and Jones Lang LaSalle? Perhaps a clue lies in his tennis game. When osteoarthritis was diagnosed in his left shoulder several years ago, Mr. Gosin, a southpaw, learned to serve "righty" and continued todominate his competitors. Mr. Gosin will need to be just as adaptable to succeed in the global commercial real estate market. "Barry's as good as they come," said Robert J. Alexander, chairman of the New York regional practice at CB Richard Ellis. "But I think his company's got a lot of challenges ahead, and the results will speak for themselves over the next few years. Clearly, this is no slam-dunk." | NEWMARK KNIGHT FRANK;GOSIN BARRY M;BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION;OFFICE BUILDINGS AND COMMERCIAL PROPERTIES;REAL ESTATE;BROKERS AND BROKERAGE FIRMS |
ny0045366 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2014/02/26 | Darvish to Start Rangers’ Opener | Texas Rangers Manager Ron Washington told Yu Darvish that he would be the opening day starter on March 31 at home against the Philadelphia Phillies. Darvish is going into his third major league season since leaving Japan for the major leagues. He started the second game last season, when he came within one out of a perfect game against Houston. He went on to lead the majors with 277 strikeouts and finished second in the American League Cy Young Award voting. | Baseball;Texas Rangers;Ron Washington;Yu Darvish |
ny0059218 | [
"us"
] | 2014/08/28 | Unflattering Portrait of Virginia’s Former First Lady Is Offered by Her Lawyers | RICHMOND, Va. — Lawyers defending Maureen McDonnell at her and her husband’s corruption trial presented a portrait of the former first lady of Virginia that was embarrassing and at times even humiliating. Ms. McDonnell, whose defense began and rested on Wednesday, was described as hiding purchases from her husband, former Gov. Bob McDonnell, when the family was financially stressed early in his career; exploding in anger at her husband while he sought in vain to mollify her; and, ultimately, turning to a wealthy nutritional supplement executive to fill an emotional void in her life. The oldest of the McDonnells’ five children, Jeanine McDonnell Zubowsky, testified that her father once confided about his troubled marriage: “I don’t know what to do anymore. I can’t make her happy. She’s always angry.” The unusual defense presented by Mr. McDonnell’s lawyers from opening arguments has been criticized by some observers as callous. But, legal experts say, it is more likely a tactic that both defense teams have agreed on to rebut the government’s case. As presented throughout the trial, exposing Ms. McDonnell’s weaknesses seemed intended to win sympathy for her with the jury. Equally, it bolsters defense lawyers’ claims that the couple were so estranged they could not have worked together to trade the governor’s office for $177,000 in loans and luxury gifts from the business executive, Jonnie R. Williams Sr. Showing Ms. McDonnell to be infatuated with Mr. Williams also helps the defense counter the government’s case of a strict business deal between Mr. Williams and the McDonnells. “I think she had a mild obsession with Jonnie,” Ms. Zubowsky testified. “I’ve never heard her talk about anyone in this manner.” Mr. Williams has testified that he wanted the governor’s office to promote a nutritional supplement that he believed to be a kind of miracle cure, and that his relationship with the McDonnells was all business, not a friendship. Ms. Zubowsky, who last year married a former aide to her father, described following his footsteps to Notre Dame and into the Army out of admiration for him. She deployed to Iraq as a signal officer. She recalled growing up in Virginia Beach with her mother working as a waitress to support the family while her father attended law school, and then the financial stresses as he began a career as a prosecutor and member of the state’s House of Delegates. “My mom would go shopping while my dad was working,” Ms. Zubowsky said. “There would be arguments later that so much money was spent.” While her mother frequently raised her voice, she said, her father never did. “He was trying to not have it escalate,” she said. “He was trying to end the conversation as quickly as possible.” Even back then, she recalled, her parents seemed to communicate little. “It was never more than just the logistics about children,” she said. Once her father became governor in 2010, her parents projected intimacy in public, but it was a sham, their daughter testified. “It was like a switch, they could turn it on,” she said of public hand-holding. Another defense witness, April Niamtu, a friend of the former first lady, described Ms. McDonnell as frequently out of her depth in her role. Ms. Niamtu helped Ms. McDonnell put together her wardrobe for the inauguration ceremonies. “She was so nervous she wasn’t going to look the part,” Ms. Niamtu testified. When Mr. Williams offered to fly Ms. McDonnell on his jet to a convention in Utah for NuSkin, a nutritional supplement that Ms. McDonnell had long sold, the first lady asked Ms. Niamtu to go along. “She was exhausted,” Ms. Niamtu recalled. “She said: ‘I just need my girlfriend time. Will you please go with me?’ ” Ms. Niamtu, who called Ms. McDonnell “very gullible,” said she had formed an impression of Mr. Williams on the flight as a slick salesman. “He pulled out his little Tic Tac bottle and started passing it around,” she said of his eagerness to share his supplement pills, known as Anatabloc. Mr. Williams, she said, told how the product, an anti-inflammatory derived from tobacco, saved his wife from thyroid surgery, and he said that a cream he had made from the active ingredient reduced a swelling on his head in minutes. The defense also called an investigator working for Mr. McDonnell’s lawyers, a former F.B.I. agent, to testify about the details of a flood of phone and text messages between Ms. McDonnell and Mr. Williams. The investigator, Robert Ross, exposed a possible contradiction in Mr. Williams’s earlier testimony, when he said he had called Ms. McDonnell from a jewelry store in California to ask her what she wanted engraved on a Rolex she had asked him to buy for her husband. There was apparently no record of a call between the two on the date, Aug. 14, 2011. With Ms. McDonnell’s defense resting, Judge James R. Spencer told the jury that closing arguments were likely to begin Friday. With the jury out of the room, the judge asked Ms. McDonnell to rise. He asked her whether she had been informed that she had a right to testify, and he sought assurance that she voluntarily waived that right. “Yes, your honor,” Ms. McDonnell replied softly, the only time her voice has been heard at trial. | Maureen Patricia Gardner McDonnell;Robert F McDonnell;Bribery and Kickbacks;Virginia;Jonnie R Williams Sr;Ethics Misconduct Malfeasance;Gifts to Public Officials |
ny0254977 | [
"sports",
"tennis"
] | 2011/09/05 | U.S. Open: Roddick Happily Accepts a Home-Court Edge | Late in the match, Andy Roddick heard a team-sport cheer, the kind the Yankees hear from their Bleacher Creatures, the kind the Rangers hear from the upper rows of the Garden. “An-dy Rod-dick!” followed by a staccato clap-clap-clap. As soon as he had disposed of Julien Benneteau in straight sets, Roddick acknowledged the support in his on-court interview. “Man, I had a blast, I really did,” he told the crowd. “You come out here and hear people cheering for you. Thank you. You made it fun for me.” Roddick was not showboating, not playing to the public. The crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium sensed that Roddick was raising his game, in his third match of the United States Open , so the crowd raised its game, too. If this is a home-court advantage, if this is why CBS and the Open officials make sure Roddick plays in tennis prime time on the major court of the American championship, so be it. Whether or not there is much of a home-court advantage, the United States has four male players through to the Round of 16 for the first time since, get this, 2003. For much of that time, as Andre Agassi wore down and nobody quite replaced him, Roddick has had to apologize for his one Open championship in 2003, when he was 21 , and it was a very good year. It was such a good year for American tennis that Agassi, Taylor Dent and Todd Martin reached the Round of 16 in 2003, along with Roddick, who won it all. Since then, the United States has produced two, three, two, two, three, one and two players in the Round of 16. Once again, there are four: Roddick, Donald Young, Mardy Fish and John Isner. Been down so long, four seems like up to the United States Tennis Association. “It’s a great thing to see,” Roddick said in his postmatch news conference. “You just feel there’s a little bit of momentum. There is a bit of a snowball effect at times if it goes the right way. Seems like there’s some of that right now.” Roddick said he detected “a healthy jealousy going on right now,” in which Young might notice Ryan Harrison having a good summer and step up his own game. And there was Roddick, blasting serves and even moving friskily around the court in his 6-1, 6-4, 7-6 (5) victory over Benneteau, of France. Roddick’s next opponent, David Ferrer of Spain, beat him in a Davis Cup match in July in Austin, Tex., Roddick’s home turf. The other day, Roddick noted that every match of his since 2002 has been played in Ashe Stadium. The U.S.T.A verified that his Ashe streak began with the quarterfinals of the 2002 Open and included 37 straight matches as of Sunday. His overall record at Ashe is 35-9 after Sunday’s victory. (The U.S.T.A. gave him an extra victory in its Open media guide but discovered it had counted one midnight match twice.) Roddick has played the third-most matches there, 44, of any male player, behind Roger Federer, the leader in victories (47) and matches (51). Agassi, now retired, is second among the men with 49 matches and 41 victories. The reason all three have played so much in the main stadium is that they are great players, and extremely popular. Which makes sense. Roddick works hard at maintaining a grumpy facade, but he would not hold back his delight with the crowd Sunday. “I think this year, more than any, I’ve looked around a couple times in the stadium and just realized how cool it really is, how special it is,” he said. “Yeah, afterwards, I was happy. I mean, I went from four weeks ago I wasn’t even playing tennis to now I’m in the second week of a major again. So it turns quickly sometimes. I was humbled at the end. I was happy. I was happy.” Seeded 21st in this tournament, Roddick was given star billing by the network and the Open, as opposed to the defending champion, Rafael Nadal, who is seeded second and was told to play at 11 a.m. Sunday. Asked in the prematch courtside interview how he felt as the opening act, Nadal characteristically said a player had to do what he had to do, or words to that effect. Besides, what was he going to do, stage a protest? There was one protest, back in 1987, when rain loomed for the long tripleheader of the second Saturday, and the Open officials moved up the start of the first men’s semifinal to 10 a.m. from 11 a.m. This rankled the two players, Stefan Edberg and Mats Wilander, so much that they staged a protest, Swedish-style, and did not take the court until the strident hour of 10:15 a.m. (For the record, Wilander won that match and Ivan Lendl beat him on Sunday.) One could only imagine what Jimbo and Junior would have done if their match had been moved up to 10 a.m. The point, though, was that their match would not have been stuck at 10 a.m. Everybody knows the pecking order. But the main thing is to advance at the Open. This time, Roddick has plenty of company. | Tennis;United States Open (Tennis);Ashe Arthur Stadium;Roddick Andy |
ny0097039 | [
"business",
"dealbook"
] | 2015/06/04 | Brazilian Companies Are Finding Willing Investors Again | SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Six months ago, stocks and bonds in Brazilian companies were practically left for dead. Brazil was sinking deeper into a recession. Its currency, the real, was reeling. And the country’s largest company, the government-controlled energy giant Petrobras , was embroiled in a corruption scandal that drew in politicians and weakened the government of President Dilma Rousseff . Things have changed in six months. Although Brazil is still recovering from its economic malaise, the nation’s major companies are attracting investors again. In recent months, President Rousseff has taken steps to cut the budget deficit. And in an unlikely twist, Petrobras itself is emblematic of the turnaround after it sold $2.5 billion in bonds with a 100-year maturity. Brazil, the world’s seventh-largest economy, still faces hurdles. Investors have lost billions in Brazilian companies that are under investigation in possible securities law violations. The real has dropped nearly 40 percent against the dollar in the last year, adding to losses for foreign investors. Inflation is still more than 8 percent. And should the government’s current progress in stabilizing the national debt falter, fears of a ratings downgrade could again send the currency plunging. But, cautiously, some companies are tapping the public markets. Once new management took over in February, Petrobras — the world’s most indebted energy company, with about $130 billion in debt — moved quickly to build cash reserves. In the last two months, it raised more than $11 billion from the China Development Bank, the Standard Chartered Bank and three Brazilian banks. Petrobras also finally restated its third- and fourth-quarter balance sheets. Those updated books allowed the company to again tap the global bond markets, which it did with the offering Monday. In a reflection of its weakened financial position, Petrobras paid a high price: a yield of 8.45 percent. But the offering was successful, even though analysts had modest expectations. The strong demand for Petrobras’s so-called century bond may confirm that investors are willing to lend to and invest in Brazilian companies. In early May, the Brazilian subsidiary of the Spanish telecom giant Telefónica issued new shares and raised $1.4 billion to help finance its acquisition of Vivendi’s Brazilian telecom unit . In other signs of a turnaround, a local insurance brokerage firm, Par Corretora, held an initial public offering on Tuesday, the first Brazilian company to do so in almost eight months. It raised a modest $190 million, but that exceeded the high end of its target range, as a surge in demand led it to raise its share price. “The success of recent offerings shows that there is a demand for quality names,” said Jean-Marc Etlin, chief executive of the Brazilian investment bank Itaú BBA. More transactions are considered likely soon. The reinsurance company IRB-Brasil is expected to file for an initial public offering, seeking to raise $1.3 billion. Another large bank, Caixa Econômica Federal, said in April that it was looking to hire investment banks to spin off its insurance division this year in an I.P.O. that could raise $3 billion. The government of Brazil has an interest in helping to elevate the capital markets. IRB and Caixa Econômica Federal’s insurance division are partly owned by the government, which is eager to raise new money to close a gaping budget deficit. Brazil’s deficit is 7.5 percent of its gross domestic product. The deficit of crisis-ridden Greece was 3.5 percent of G.D.P. last year. “The government, given its need for money, will probably be aggressive about opening capital in the companies it owns,” said Eliana Chimenti, senior partner for capital markets at the São Paulo law firm Machado Meyer. Stock offerings by privately run companies will probably still take time, because most are waiting to see more improvements in the economy and stock prices. Murilo Ferreira, chief executive of the mining company Vale, said in April that the firm was “working to have everything ready” to sell a stake in its $30 billion base metals division through a listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange. But, he said, a decision had not yet been made. But local bankers still say several deals that were filed, then pulled, might return. For instance, Azul Brazilian Airlines, controlled by the JetBlue founder David Neeleman, is expected to again file for an I.P.O., after it withdrew such plans three times. Petrobras, too, is not done fund-raising. It announced in March that it intended to raise $13.7 billion through asset sales. Some $4 billion is expected to come from selling offshore petroleum reserves. Petrobras’s chief financial officer suggested in April that it might spin off its fuel distribution subsidiary, BR Petrobras Distribuidora. “Uncertainties have lifted enough that investors can see opportunities,” said Renato Ejnisman, head of Banco Bradesco BBI. “There are good names available at good prices.” | Brazil;Petrobras;Telefonica;Economy;Stocks,Bonds;IPO;David G Neeleman;Dilma Rousseff;Sao Paulo Brazil |
ny0162625 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2006/02/11 | A Man Fired for Playing With Kings and Queens Has a Name Fit for Royalty | In the beginning there was Édouard-Etienne de Nevers, sieur de Brantigny, later known as Édouard Boisvert. He immigrated to Quebec from France and in 1654 settled along the St. Lawrence on a prime plot he bought for a cow and two barrels of pickled eel. In the middle was Édouard Antoine Boisvert V, who moved down to Massachusetts and Anglicized the family name to Greenwood. Today, history lives on near Albany, N.Y., where Edward Anthony Greenwood IX, late of the New York City Office of State Legislative Affairs, became nationally famous two days ago as the man who was fired after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg spotted a game of solitaire on his computer screen. To some, Mr. Greenwood has become a symbol of arbitrary injustice, dismissed for doing what millions do every day. Others who are less charitable have called him the living embodiment of the public employee work ethic. But enough about the solitaire incident. What's with that IX? What man who does not rule a large country has a number like that after his name? The executive director of the National Genealogical Society, Diane O'Connor, said she had never run across anyone higher than a V. "Off the top of my head," she said, "I would say that it is unusual." She did not, however, rule it out, and researchers at the University of Montreal said that many French Canadians can trace their roots back a dozen generations, thanks to excellent record-keeping by the early settlers. Edward IX said he had never doubted his bloodline. His half sister, Denise Reneau, who researched the family's history, said she was sure the numerical claim is legitimate. Their father, Edward VIII, said carrying on the family name had been a passion of Edward VII, an uncle who had no children of his own. So assuming that the Edward Greenwood/Boisverts are indeed that rare family that has kept a name alive for centuries, and across an ocean, what have they been up to all these years? And what is it like being a IX? Edward IX said that for most of his life, it has not been a big deal. "A lot of times people see IX and just put IV because they think it's a V, not an X, or that I wrote it wrong," he said. As for the family history, the Greenwood/Boisverts turn out to be your average American family. In 1888, Ms. Reneau said, Edward V's estranged wife had him over for tea and forgot to rinse out the lye she had used to clean the kettle. "Supposedly she killed him," she said. A relative, Chester Greenwood of Maine, invented earmuffs. Edward VI had nine children. Edward VII was a chief petty officer in World War II who, Ms. Reneau said, survived the sinking of an aircraft carrier thanks in part to the fishing skills he inherited from his great-great-great-great grandfather the eeler. Edward VII's brother Arthur was the first chiropractor in Pittsfield, Mass., to have an X-ray machine. "He loved to stand in front of it to show his patients how you could see your ribs and all that," Edward VIII said. "Needless to say he died from overexposure." Edward VIII, 66, himself was a railroad conductor for 30 years and an accomplished bluegrass musician. Which brings us to Edward IX, 39, of Ravena, N.Y., who is also a gifted bluegrass guitarist and singer, but that's not all. He is a trained operating-room technician, a certified airplane mechanic and a former Greyhound bus driver. He is a member of a single-malt Scotch society. He knows quite a bit about cheese. "I've been referred to as a renaissance man," he said. As of yesterday, though, he was the former sole breadwinner for a family of three, freshly unemployed and uninsured. His son, Edward X, age 3 1/2, sat in the next room, watching an old Superman episode on TV. Edward IX said he hoped that out of all this publicity he might get a job. He was asked if the illustrious numeral might help his résumé. "Maybe that'll be a bolster to my cachet," he said. | NEW YORK CITY;GREENWOOD EDWARD ANTHONY IX;BLOOMBERG MICHAEL R;SUSPENSIONS DISMISSALS AND RESIGNATIONS;NAMES PERSONAL;COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET;GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES |
ny0230326 | [
"us"
] | 2010/09/28 | California: Record Heat Surges | A blistering fall heat wave sent temperatures to a record 113 degrees in downtown Los Angeles on Monday. The city opened cooling centers for residents while firefighters were on alert for wildfires, but there was little wind amid the onslaught of dry heat. Downtown hit 113 degrees for a few minutes about 12:15 p.m., breaking the former record of 112 set on June 26, 1990, said Stuart Seto of the National Weather Service office in Oxnard. Temperature records for downtown date to 1877. It was not clear whether 113 would remain the day’s high. The previous record high for a Sept. 27 was 106. | Weather;Oxnard (Calif) |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.