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ny0171003 | [
"business"
] | 2007/11/05 | When Playing With Food Becomes Serious Business | One contestant painstakingly made a model of the Starship Enterprise out of an ear of corn, a stalk of celery, an eggplant, a mushroom and other vegetables. Another turned a half-shelled peapod into the hull of a ship. Several contestants made real potatoes into Mr. Potato Head-type creations. And all of them waited and waited, while Morningstar Farms, a vegetarian food division of the Kellogg Company, blew one deadline after another for announcing a contest winner. Then some of them got angry. Morningstar Farms, which makes meatless versions of burgers and corn dogs and the like, had set a June 27 deadline for submissions to its “Veggie Creations” contest and promised to award prizes of up to $10,600. The contest rules originally said that judging would happen around July 16, and a Web site for the contest ( seeveggiesdifferently.com ) still says that winners will be announced around Aug. 15, which was well over two months ago. “What’s up with the contest? Are they still accepting entries?,” one person wrote on the contest’s MySpace page on Aug. 22. “Either management is hiding something again or the contest has been extended.” “I don’t mind losing, but I do mind a game being played on me,” said Nancy Kevorkian, a contestant who complained in online forums, to the company and even to the Michigan state attorney general. Another contestant, Sandra Pelletier, said in an e-mail message Friday, “I wish now that I never wasted my time at seeveggiesdifferently. This is NOT the way to run a contest that solicits passion and creativity from the entrants.” Such virulent — and public — complaints are an increasingly common pitfall for companies that attempt to solicit promotional content from their customers. In June, Malibu Rum faced accusations of contest-fixing in an online-video contest, while other companies like Heinz have faced more mundane problems like submissions that do not show the product in the best light. With Morningstar Farms, the complaints paid off: the company named the winners last Tuesday. The problem, according to a Morningstar Farms spokeswoman, was in finding winners who would or could accept the prizes. The spokeswoman, Thuy-An Wilkins, said that while Melissa Pantel-Ku was chosen almost immediately as the winner of the photo/video portion of the contest, Karen Gulkin was actually the fourth person chosen as winner of the recipe contest. “The first winner was ineligible because she wasn’t a United States citizen,” and the second and third winners ended up declining the prize because of family scheduling conflicts, Ms. Wilkins said. Each time a new winner was selected, a time-consuming legal verification process had to be completed, which ended up prolonging the announcement until late October. Meanwhile, an internal approval process was still under way, holding up the announcement of the winners’ names on the contest Web site. Despite the problems, Morningstar Farms was pleased with the contest’s outcome, Ms. Wilkins said, though she would not say whether the contest would be repeated. “It didn’t happen in the time frame that we had anticipated, but in the end we feel that this was a successful promotion,” she said. MARIA ASPAN | Kellogg Company;Contests and Prizes;Vegetables |
ny0141209 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2008/11/04 | Nominees Pack in Visits to G.O.P.-Leaning States as Campaign Closes | JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A campaign waged under the specter of war and financial crisis drew to an anxious finish on Monday as Senators Barack Obama and John McCain raced across nine states and asked voters on both sides to discount polls and predictions on the closing day of a two-year pursuit of the presidency. Mr. Obama surrendered the race to the judgment of the American people as he told a booming crowd here, “Now, it’s all about who wants it more, who believes in it more.” Mr. McCain sought to motivate Republicans who worried aloud that it could be a bleak election, declaring, “The Mac is back!” In the final hours of his second bid for the presidency, Mr. McCain dashed through Republican-leaning states from Florida to Indiana and New Mexico to Nevada. He stopped in Tennessee, hoping to reach voters in adjacent North Carolina and Virginia, and he swung by only one normally Democratic state, Pennsylvania. He planned to return home for a rally in Arizona in the small hours of the night. Mr. Obama, confident in his standing on Democratic terrain, devoted his final day of campaigning by trying to push Florida, North Carolina and Virginia into his column. He pressed ahead after he awoke to news that his grandmother, the woman chiefly responsible for his upbringing, had died in Hawaii. The election eve travels of both men, as well as their running mates, offered a viewer’s guide of the states whose outcomes will play a large role in settling who will become the nation’s 44th president. Their last-minute efforts were amplified by their muscular ground organizations and unprecedented advertising barrages in all forms. The Obama campaign tested its text-messaging program to remind voters, particularly young ones, to go to the polls. The McCain campaign activated its automated phone system to check with any voter who had shown an interest in the Republican ticket. In their pitches to voters, each candidate struck an optimistic chord, delivering a few gracious words about his opponent and offering a vow to change Washington. Yet neither refrained from reprising the piercing criticisms that have become the soundtrack for the five-month general election fight. “At the end of this long race, I want to congratulate him on the tough race that he has fought,” Mr. Obama said of Mr. McCain in a morning speech here at Veterans Memorial Auditorium. “He can point to a few items where he has broken with President Bush, but when it comes from the central issue of this election, the plain truth is John McCain has stood with George Bush.” Mr. McCain delivered a truncated version of his stump speech at each stop but grew hoarser as the day progressed. His aides said he appeared to be catching the bad cold that had waylaid many others in the petri dish of his campaign plane. By late afternoon in Indiana, he was sucking on throat lozenges to try to finish the marathon. “My friends, you know that I’ve been fighting for this country since I was 17 years old, and I have the scars to prove it,” he said at a rally in Indianapolis as he battled to prevent Mr. Obama from taking a state that has not backed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964. Four hours later, Mr. McCain dropped out of the sky into the supposed home of space aliens, Roswell, N.M. “I am pleased to announce that I have received the alien endorsement,” he told the crowd, to a roar of laughter. As the contest headed to its finish, an air of normalcy surrounded Mr. Obama. There was no rush of friends or advisers on the plane for the final flights. His demeanor, at least from his public appearances, seemed the same as it has for months. His schedule of rallies was no different than at any point in the general election. Only a few close advisers knew that at 8 a.m. he had received word from his sister that his 86-year-old grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, had died. When he arrived at a rally, he spoke briefly about his grandmother, whom he visited last month in Honolulu. “She has gone home,” Mr. Obama said, his voice tinged with emotion. “She died peacefully in her sleep with my sister at her side, so there’s great joy instead of tears.” Mr. McCain, as he sprinted through seven states, warned voters at every stop of the differences between the outlooks and policies of the two tickets. He did not dally, spending 30 minutes at each stop, with his argument boiled down to fit the frenzied moment. “Senator Obama’s running to punish the successful,” Mr. McCain said at his opening stop in Tampa, Fla. “I’m running to make everyone successful.” The mood on the McCain campaign plane was upbeat and punchy throughout the day as Mr. McCain’s advisers continued to hammer their belief that the polls were tightening and that Mr. McCain’s chances of winning the presidency were difficult but not impossible. “Winning 270 is right in the cards,” Rick Davis, the campaign manager, insisted around midnight Sunday, as Mr. McCain’s plane headed from New Hampshire to Florida. Mr. McCain drew stirring applause from his crowds — as well as jeers directed at the Democratic rival — when he said Mr. Obama wanted to “spread the wealth around,” Adding, “He’s in the far left lane of American politics.” The barnstorming rallies, the dawn-to-dusk television commercials and the armies of volunteers flooding neighborhoods disguised how the United States now elects its president: with millions of ballots already having been cast in early voting. In Ohio, voting lines looped in and out of doors, upstairs and around corners at the registrar’s office in Columbus, with a record number of voters adding their ballots to those that have been collected for nearly a month. Democrats outnumbered Republicans by more than two to one. In Florida, about 37 percent of registered voters have already cast ballots, state officials said, setting the stage for potentially record-breaking turnout. In Virginia, where more restrictions are placed on early voting, the state has processed 465,962 absentee ballots. And more than 300,000 Virginians voted in person by an absentee ballot. In 2004, a total of 222,059 absentee ballots were cast. Worried about the outlook in Virginia, where a Democrat has not won the presidential race in more than four decades, Mr. McCain’s campaign sued the state’s election board on Monday. The campaign asserted that the absentee ballots had not been mailed on time to members of the military serving overseas. Mr. Obama held his final rally in Virginia, a sign Democrats were waging an all-out push for the state, which is seen as a barometer for the fight with Mr. McCain. In Virginia and around the country, both sides are keeping a close eye on the weather . “I think if it rained mud, it won’t make a difference,” said L. Douglas Wilder, the former governor of Virginia, who was the state’s first black chief executive. “They’re coming out. Trust me, they’re coming out.” The First Results Are In DIXVILLE NOTCH, N.H. (AP) — Mr. Obama easily won early Tuesday in Dixville Notch, N.H., where tradition of having the first Election Day ballots tallied lives on. Mr. Obama defeated Mr. McCain 15 to 6. | Presidential Election of 2008;United States Politics and Government;Elections;Obama Barack;McCain John;Republican Party;Democratic Party |
ny0246849 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2011/05/04 | Winner Decreed in Meadowlands Ode Contest | On City Room did we last week A poetry contest declare The charge: to rewrite “Kubla Khan” Much better known as “Xanadu” In light of recent news. About 20 of you regaled us with your re-visionings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s deathless stanzas in response to our call for poems about the plan to revive Xanadu , the reviled, unfinished Meadowlands supermall. We submitted them to our judge, Tina Kelley , a former reporter for The New York Times and award-winning poet . She is currently one of the writers of a book on homeless young people (to be published by Wiley next year), and her second collection of poetry, “Precise,” is being published by Word Press. Ms. Kelley awarded honorable mention to Marc Wallace’s entry , No. 26, which begins: “In Xanadu did corporate con / Leave shabby pleasure-doomed debris.” But the winner was: Steve Schoenwiesner’s entry , No. 6. Ms. Kelley praised Mr. Schoenwiesner, of Montclair, N.J., for “smartly touching on both the tunnel and the wildlife.” Following is his poem: For Xanadu did Christie-Khan A stately subsidy decree. While tracks below a river, planned, Were scuttled, fundless, by this man A blight revives tax-free. So still more miles of open ground Can yield to shoppers’ ka-ching sounds And there where wetlands struggling still, To blossom through decades of recovery; And here where wildlife once did fill, Now sacrificed for profligacy. Lest anyone be tempted to question Ms. Kelley’s judgment, we also note that Mr. Schoenwiesner’s poem was the reader favorite, with nine recommendations. | Poetry and Poets;Contests and Prizes;Shopping Centers and Malls;New Jersey;Meadowlands Xanadu (NJ) |
ny0143307 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2008/11/22 | Bob Jeter, All-Pro for Packers, Is Dead at 71 | MILWAUKEE (AP) — Bob Jeter, a former All-Pro cornerback who played in the first two Super Bowls with the Green Bay Packers , died Thursday at his home in Chicago. He was 71. The apparent cause was cardiac arrest, said his son, Rob Jeter, the men’s basketball coach at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Jeter was an all-Big Ten halfback at Iowa and played on the Green Bay teams that won the N.F.L. championship in 1965 and the first two Super Bowls, defeating Kansas City in 1967 and Oakland in 1968. He played for the Packers from 1963 to 1970, starting five seasons as part of a formidable cornerback combination with Herb Adderley. Jeter earned Pro Bowl berths in 1967, when he had eight interceptions, and in 1969. Jeter also played for the Chicago Bears, from 1971 to 1973. He was inducted into the Packers Hall of Fame in 1985. Besides his son, his survivors include his wife, Gwen, and another son, Carlton. | Football;Green Bay Packers;Jeter Bob;Deaths (Obituaries) |
ny0268575 | [
"us"
] | 2016/04/02 | Tests on Knife Rule Out Link to O.J. Simpson Case, Police Say | A knife reportedly found at a home that once belonged to O. J. Simpson is not connected to the 1994 killings of Mr. Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald L. Goldman, the Los Angeles Police Department said on Friday. Officials said the knife had been tested for DNA, fingerprints and other forensic evidence. But those tests revealed “no nexus” to the infamous double-homicide case, the police said. Ms. Simpson and Mr. Goldman were slashed to death on the evening of June 12, 1994, outside her townhouse in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Mr. Simpson, a former star football player in college and in the National Football League, was arrested and charged with murder. Mr. Simpson was acquitted of the killings in 1995 after one of the most publicized criminal trials the nation has seen. More than two decades later, the case continues to resonate and has been turned into a popular mini-series on the FX cable television channel. The families of Ms. Simpson and Mr. Goldman prevailed in a lawsuit against Mr. Simpson in 1997, when a jury found him responsible for the deaths and awarded the plaintiffs $33.5 million in damages. Mr. Simpson, 68, is currently in a Nevada prison, where he is serving a sentence of nine to 33 years for a 2007 attempted robbery in a Las Vegas hotel room. He was convicted of robbery and kidnapping after he and associates held sports memorabilia dealers at gunpoint to try to retrieve items that Mr. Simpson said had been stolen from him. He is eligible for parole next year. No weapon was ever recovered in the murder case. The single-blade, six-inch knife that underwent the recent testing was found many years ago, possibly during the demolition of Mr. Simpson’s house in 1998. But it was turned over to law enforcement officials only recently, the police said. “We don’t know if it’s a hoax, but there’s no nexus to the murders, based on the testing we’ve done,” Capt. Andrew Neiman of the Los Angeles Police Department said in an interview with Reuters. | Murders and Homicides;O J Simpson;Nicole Brown Simpson;Ronald Lyle Goldman;LAPD;Los Angeles |
ny0155718 | [
"sports",
"othersports"
] | 2008/06/02 | Big Brown’s Challengers Find Hope in Belmont’s Distance | The hoof specialist Ian McKinlay says that Big Brown , the Kentucky Derby and Preakness champ, does not need a patch on the quarter crack on his left front hoof until the morning of the Belmont Stakes . So the trainer Rick Dutrow will give Big Brown his final hard workout Tuesday without it and gallop him into the race confident the tender hoof is healed. McKinlay changed the steel sutures Saturday and originally intended to put an acrylic and fiberglass patch on the three-quarters-inch crack Monday. Instead, he told Dutrow on Sunday that the heel was healing perfectly and “the only thing we can do now is screw it up.” “There isn’t a hint of blood, a hint of heat, a hint of anything,” McKinlay said. “If we covered it up and there was something way down deep and we don’t know it’s there, then it might pop up two days from now. I told Rick to let Big Brown heal on his own.” McKinlay said Big Brown would be fine Tuesday, when he was expected to breeze five furlongs in his first and only workout since winning the Preakness. “It is in absolutely perfect shape,” McKinlay said. “He looks like a million bucks and I can change those sutures every day if we want. If this thing goes wrong, I know I’ll look like the biggest idiot ever. But I know we’re taking the safest route possible.” Michelle Nevin has ridden Big Brown in all but one workout of his racing career. She says he has not only healed, but he is also ready to make history as the 12th Triple Crown winner. “He was very cheeky,” Nevin said of Big Brown’s strong gallop at Belmont Park on Sunday. “He felt good. He knows something is going on because all these people are around him all the time.” Big Brown is indeed drawing a crowd. Even though Dutrow says that if Big Brown gets the lead in the mile-and-a-half Belmont, he will win, that has not scared away other challengers. Ready’s Echo worked five furlongs in 1 minute .91 seconds and is a late addition to a field that may now number as many as 10. The trainer Todd Pletcher has yet to name a rider for Ready’s Echo. The colt has a victory, two seconds and a third in four career starts. Tale of Ekati, the winner of the Grade I Wood Memorial at Aqueduct, turned in his final workout before the Belmont, breezing six furlongs in 1:11.99 for the trainer Barclay Tagg. In 2003, Tagg brought Funny Cide to the Belmont with an opportunity to win the Triple Crown. Funny Cide finished third. Tagg knows better than most how a horse can fall victim to Belmont’s grueling marathon. He says he has a potential spoiler in Tale of Ekati, who has never lost at Belmont. | Belmont Stakes;Big Brown (Race Horse);Triple Crown (Horse Racing);Horse Racing;Preakness Stakes;Horses;Kentucky Derby;Dutrow Rick |
ny0270430 | [
"sports",
"olympics"
] | 2016/04/06 | Rio Police Detect Olympic Ticket Scalping | The Rio de Janeiro police investigator Gilberto Ribeiro said that 10 people had been detected trying to sell 712 ticket vouchers — to be exchanged for tickets for this summer’s Olympics — at up to double their face value. Organizers have sold only half of the 3.5 million Olympic tickets allocated for Brazilians. It is illegal in Brazil to resell tickets above face value. | 2016 Summer Olympics;Ticket Scalping;Rio de Janeiro |
ny0143201 | [
"business"
] | 2008/11/14 | Hedge Fund Managers Ask for a Few New Rules | WASHINGTON — A House of Representatives committee room was transformed into a club for billionaires for a few hours on Thursday, as five of the richest men in the world testified on the role of hedge funds in financial markets. The billionaires were all hedge fund managers themselves, among the most prominent — and successful — in the business. Many of the people crowding the room expected a slugfest, given the growing calls on Capitol Hill for hedge funds, those private investment vehicles, to disclose their investments and business practices. So it came as something of a surprise when the managers agreed, more or less, with the lawmakers. All five managers — Philip A. Falcone, Kenneth C. Griffin, John A. Paulson, James Simons and George Soros — said they would support new rules that would require their industry, controlling nearly $2 trillion, to disclose more of its secrets. The hearing was crammed with some of the same policy makers who have criticized people who presided over the financial boom that has become a painful bust. But aside from some grumblings about how much money hedge fund managers make, the sharpest remarks were directed not at John Paulson and the other hedge fund billionaires, but at Henry M. Paulson Jr., the secretary of the Treasury. “The headline of this hearing is definitely Paulson v. Paulson,” joked Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland. For all the theatrics, a consensus seemed to be emerging. More than a year into the financial crisis , the hedge fund industry’s leaders seem to realize that regulation may be inevitable, that operating under the radar may no longer be possible, and that their riches have torn away their cloak of anonymity. Mr. Griffin, the founder of the Citadel Investment Group, displayed the most resistance to the changing tide, at first saying that greater regulation of the industry was not needed. Then, growing flush, Mr. Griffin, who began trading bonds out of his Harvard dorm room, said he would “not be averse” to greater disclosure, so long as the information was shared only with regulators. Mr. Soros, seated at one end of the panel with his most recent book in front of him, was the strongest advocate of greater disclosure and new rules about margin requirements and leverage, or borrowed money. But while his testimony — and willingness to sign autographs — may have pleased some Democrats, some Republicans took the opportunity to criticize him for his liberal ideas. “Your intervention in the drug area has been appalling,” said Representative Mark E. Souder, Republican of Indiana. Mr. Soros, well-known for his daring bet against the British pound in 1992, is used to testifying before Congress, but some of the other hedge fund titans took the hearing as an opportunity to introduce themselves. “I was born in Chisholm, Minn., population 5,000, on the Iron Range of Northern Minnesota,” said Mr. Falcone, the co-founder of Harbinger Capital Partners. “I was the youngest of nine kids who grew up in a three-bedroom home in a working class neighborhood.” Mr. Falcone, a stock picker, said he favored greater transparency of hedge funds and public companies. He also added, “It’s important for the committee and the public to know that not everyone who runs a hedge fund was born on Fifth Avenue.” Even the smallest of details provided in the hearing had traders around Wall Street glued to a webcast of the hearing. Mr. Paulson, whose fund gained prominence because he correctly bet against the mortgage market, became the topic of widespread emails when he revealed that he now managed $36 billion, employed 70 people, and that 80 percent of his assets come from foreign investors. Like several of the other managers, Mr. Paulson tried to emphasize that he not only does well, he does good. He included a press release about a donation he gave to a nonprofit organization in his written testimony. And he pointed out that he has created jobs. “Over the last five years, our firm has increased our employee count by 10 times, creating numerous high-paying jobs for Americans,” Mr. Paulson said. | Hedge Funds;House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform;Regulation and Deregulation of Industry |
ny0076017 | [
"us"
] | 2015/05/27 | New Mexico: Police Officer Killed During Traffic Stop | A police officer in Rio Rancho, an Albuquerque suburb, was shot and killed during a traffic stop, the first time an officer was fatally shot in the line of duty in the Rio Rancho Police Department’s 34-year history. The officer, Gregg Benner, 49, who had been with the department for four years, tried to pull over a vehicle for a routine stop shortly after 8 p.m. Monday, Chief Michael Geier said at a news conference on Tuesday. After a short chase, the vehicle stopped near a library and post office. As Officer Benner approached, a passenger in the vehicle shot him several times in the torso with a handgun, Chief Geier said. A suspect, Andrew Romero, 28, was taken into custody about 20 miles away early Tuesday after he and a group of men were seen robbing a gas station, the authorities said. The police described Mr. Romero as a known gang member with an extensive criminal record that includes a manslaughter conviction and weapons charges. | Murders and Homicides;Attacks on Police;Gregg Benner;Andrew Romero;Rio Rancho NM |
ny0248358 | [
"world",
"americas"
] | 2011/05/09 | Tens of Thousands of Mexicans March in Protest of Drug Violence | MEXICO CITY — Javier Sicilia, the poet who has become an unlikely hero in a movement calling for an end to Mexico’s drug war , asked for five minutes of silence at the end of a Sunday rally in this city’s giant central plaza. The silence was to honor the dead — more than 35,000 since President Felipe Calderón sent the military to fight drug cartels four and a half years ago. Among the dead is Mr. Sicilia’s son, killed seven weeks ago in the colonial city of Cuernavaca. Since then, Mr. Sicilia’s grief and fury have resonated with many Mexicans who believe they have become the ignored victims in a battle between organized crime on one side and soldiers and the police on the other. At the rally Sunday, Mr. Sicilia called on the government to change its strategy in the war, calling first for the resignation of Genaro García Luna, the director of public security and an architect of Mr. Calderón’s battle against the drug gangs. “We want to hear a message from the president of the republic that with this resignation, yes, he has heard us,” Mr. Sicilia said. The city police estimated that as many as 150,000 people took part in the march, although the number of people who finally gathered in the plaza late Sunday afternoon to hear Mr. Sicilia and other grieving families speak, seemed considerably smaller. Since Mr. Calderón began his crackdown, sending soldiers to patrol large parts of northern and western Mexico, the government has argued that the dead are almost all members of rival gangs killed as drug cartels fight over territory and smuggling routes to the United States. But the violence continues to increase and the toll of innocent victims has mounted as drug gangs have become more ruthless. Authorities have failed to check the killings because of a what even the government admits is a combination of corruption, fear and inefficiency. New horrors have been revealed in the past few weeks. Mr. Sicilia’s son was found dead along with six other people, supposedly killed by a drug cartel. Then, soldiers found mass graves in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas that held 183 bodies, many believed to be people kidnapped from public buses on their way to the border. Meanwhile, the authorities have pulled 168 other bodies from pits in the central state of Durango. The government has remained on the defensive, presenting the choice as one between either backing down and letting organized crime take hold, or continuing the fight along the same lines. On Thursday, as Mr. Sicilia set on his march from his hometown, Cuernavaca, Mr. Calderón insisted that he would not pull the military from the streets, as many Mexicans have asked. “We are right, we have the law and we have the strength, we will win,” he said. | Mexico City (Mexico);Drug Abuse and Traffic;Murders and Attempted Murders;Demonstrations Protests and Riots |
ny0185472 | [
"business"
] | 2009/03/07 | 1,000 Dismissed to Preserve Stanford Financial Assets | HOUSTON — A court-appointed receiver notified 1,000 employees of the Stanford Financial Group on Friday that their jobs were terminated in an effort to preserve the value of whatever resources were left in the company. The company’s assets were frozen last month when the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil fraud complaint against Robert Allen Stanford and two other senior executives. The S.E.C. has accused Mr. Stanford and his chief lieutenant of executing a Ponzi scheme in which more than $1.6 billion in “bogus” loans were made to Mr. Stanford over the last decade. Laura Pendergest-Holt, the chief investment officer for the financial and brokerage firm, was arrested last week on accusations of obstructing the S.E.C.’s inquiry. Neither Mr. Stanford nor James M. Davis, his lieutenant, has been charged with a crime. Salaries and benefits for about 85 percent of Mr. Stanford’s employees in the United States were discontinued immediately, according to a statement from the Stanford Financial Group Receivership, “in the interest of conserving and preserving the value of the estate because there are insufficient resources to continue to compensate all present employees.” Most of Mr. Stanford’s businesses will be closed, and only a small number of employees will continue working to wind down operations and settle accounts, the statement by the receiver, Ralph Janvey, said. The Stanford financial companies had offices around the United States, and in the Caribbean and Latin America. Many of its investors were from countries like Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela. The statement said, “Decisions regarding Stanford’s employees in locations outside the U.S. will be made and announced in the next few weeks.” On Thursday, a federal district judge in Dallas approved a plan to unfreeze the investments of some 12,000 investors whose accounts hold less than $250,000 each. All together, they contain about $500 million of the $6 billion held in more than 30,000 Stanford accounts. | Stanford Financial Group;Ponzi Schemes;Securities and Commodities Violations;Layoffs and Job Reductions |
ny0285044 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2016/09/16 | Donald Trump Vows to Create 25 Million Jobs Over Next Decade | Donald J. Trump unveiled a pledge on Thursday to create 25 million jobs over the next decade, but he offered few details on how he would achieve that ambitious goal as president. In remarks that may stir new consternation abroad, Mr. Trump told the Economic Club of New York that he would pay for his economic agenda in part by requiring allies to shoulder the full cost of American military resources deployed in their defense. Mr. Trump has long criticized the country’s defense arrangements, but on Thursday, he drew an uncommonly straight line between his job-creation promises and the “billions and billions of dollars” currently spent on “defending other people.” He specifically mentioned Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia and South Korea as “economic behemoths” that the United States should not pay to protect. “You could ask yourself, how long would Saudi Arabia even be there if we weren’t defending them?” Mr. Trump said in his speech. “And I think we should defend them, but we have to be compensated properly.” He added, “I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to hear that.” Speaking at the Waldorf Astoria, Mr. Trump largely reiterated a broad economic vision he outlined in Detroit last month, vowing to slash taxes on business and scale back federal regulations, and to redraft or void trade agreements he views as disadvantageous to the United States. But Mr. Trump’s remarks also underscored the opaque and improvisational nature of his policy agenda, which has been defined by a few grand promises but few concrete details. By putting a hard number on his job-creation promises — even if far-fetched — Mr. Trump may be aiming to strengthen a campaign message that has been light on policy outside the issues of immigration and trade. And Mr. Trump has now twice revised his tax proposals during the campaign, first sharply scaling back plans for a $10 trillion tax cut and then, on Thursday, backing away from several ideas that drew criticism and mockery in the past. He partly rolled back his earlier proposals to reduce corporate taxation: Mr. Trump still proposes a 15 percent tax rate on corporate income, but it would no longer apply to business income reported on personal taxes, generally limiting the lower rate to the largest corporations. He also reduced a tax break that generated backlash because it would particularly benefit real estate developers. Image Mr. Trump proposed cutting federal taxes by $4.4 trillion if elected president. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times Mr. Trump also now proposes to cut federal taxes by $4.4 trillion, not $10 trillion; he insists the plan would ultimately cost the government only $2.6 trillion in revenue, with the difference made up in economic growth. Mr. Trump spoke loosely and plainly enjoyed himself, repeatedly teasing the well-tailored crowd about their own wealth and business ventures. He put his audience on notice that he would enlist some of them in government, to help renegotiate deals far larger than any they had dealt with before. “Hate to say it,” Mr. Trump joked, “but your companies are peanuts.” But Mr. Trump also continued to cast himself as a champion of working-class interests, and in his remarks invoked nostalgia for the heyday of the American auto industry, steel manufacturing and coal mining. And Mr. Trump attacked his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, for having described some of his supporters as “deplorables” for holding views she called bigoted. “My economic plan rejects the cynicism that says our labor force will keep declining, that our jobs will keep leaving and that our economy can never grow as it did once before,” Mr. Trump said. “And boy, oh boy, did it used to grow.” Mr. Trump’s description of an economy growing more slowly than it did after World War II until 2000 is accurate. But his promise to return to that postwar growth rate and add 25 million jobs over the next decade would be difficult to attain, given the nation’s shifting demographics. Part of the downshift in the growth rate since 2000 was caused by a working-age population that has grown less rapidly than in earlier eras. And that trend is unlikely to reverse, despite Mr. Trump’s criticism in his speech of “cynicism that our labor force will keep declining.” The Congressional Budget Office projects employment will rise by 7.1 million over current levels by 2026 amid an increase in the labor force of eight million people. In effect, to add 25 million jobs by then, the number of people who seek to work would have to increase more than three times as much as the economists at the budget office think likely. One way would be to encourage more prime-age Americans who neither work nor look for work to do so. This group includes stay-at-home parents and those who see few possibilities in the work force, and their numbers have risen substantially since 2008. But even if the percentage of working 25- to 54-year-olds returned to its peak of the spring of 2000, that would add only about 5.2 million more potential workers compared with current levels. Another way would be to encourage people to retire later, extending the length of their careers. A third option would be to increase immigration levels sharply over the next decade so there are more potential workers born elsewhere. Beyond promising to put many more people to work, Mr. Trump pledged to attain 3.5 percent annual growth in gross domestic product over the next decade — versus the 2 percent that has been routine in recent years and that the Congressional Budget Office projects for the decade ahead; such growth would require a steep increase in businesses’ productivity. While not articulated in these terms, his plan imagines that the much-remarked-upon slump in productivity will reverse itself if Mr. Trump’s agenda of lighter regulation and lower taxes was put into effect. The revised version of Mr. Trump’s tax plan would still substantially reduce federal taxation, replacing seven tax brackets with three and taxing most income at lower rates. Under the plan, a married couple with $50,000 in taxable income would pay 12 percent in taxes, or $6,000, rather than 13 percent, or $6,572, under current law. Families with more income would save more. The top tax rate would drop to 33 percent from 39.6 percent. More Americans would avoid paying taxes entirely, although not as many as under Mr. Trump’s earlier proposal. Mr. Trump said he wanted a $30,000 standard deduction for married couples instead of the $50,000 in his last plan. He also proposed a new limit of $200,000 on deductions by wealthy couples. Mr. Trump’s proposals drew a friendly reception from his audience, particularly for his plan to reduce taxation on businesses. But he also offered reminders of the distance that separates him from many of the financiers and business leaders who typically fund Republican campaigns. He repeatedly attacked foreign trade in harsh language, and for the second time this week questioned the independence and legitimacy of the Federal Reserve. Mr. Trump charged that rather than simply doing what is right for the economy, the Fed made “the political decision every single time.” And there was perhaps a subtler reminder of the divisive nature of Mr. Trump’s campaign: Terry J. Lundgren, the chief executive of Macy’s and the chairman of the Economic Club of New York, did not attend the speech. Under Mr. Lundgren, Macy’s pulled Trump-branded merchandise from its shelves last year, after Mr. Trump — who retaliated by repeatedly taunting Mr. Lundgren from the campaign trail — described undocumented immigrants from Mexico as rapists and drug smugglers. | 2016 Presidential Election;Donald Trump;US Economy;Jobs;Economic Club of New York;Income tax;Corporate tax |
ny0005315 | [
"sports",
"basketball"
] | 2013/04/24 | In Game 2, Boston’s Offense Fades a Quarter Earlier | The Boston Celtics had to listen for three days about how their offense scored only 8 points in the fourth quarter of Game 1. For the first half of Game 2 on Tuesday at Madison Square Garden, they looked as if they had overcome that humiliation. The Celtics shot 56 percent in the first half to take a 48-42 lead into halftime. But for the second game in a row, their offense suddenly vanished, as if it had all been a mirage. This time, the Celtics’ undoing came from a nightmarish third quarter. The Knicks held the Celtics to 11 points and 4-of-18 shooting, flipping a 6-point halftime deficit into a 15-point lead heading into the fourth. “We didn’t come out with the same mentality,” Celtics Coach Doc Rivers said. “I don’t know why and I need to find that out in the next two days.” Image Kenyon Martin left, helped the Knicks limit Paul Pierce and hold the Celtics to 11 points in the third quarter of Game 2. Credit Barton Silverman/The New York Times The Knicks’ J. R. Smith said Coach Mike Woodson’s halftime message was all about defense, telling his team that it was not responding to Boston’s renewed energy. The players took that challenge to heart. They extended on the perimeter and applied full-court pressure. Tyson Chandler emerged as a presence in the middle, sending a message early in the quarter by swatting a layup attempt by Avery Bradley into the first row. His genuflected and screamed — it was the team’s first block of the game — and his teammates reacted: the Knicks wound up holding Boston without a field goal for 5 minutes 23 seconds. “Our pick-and-roll coverages were pretty good, and we finally hit a good offensive spurt in the third quarter,” Woodson said. “That gave us the cushion we needed.” Indeed, the Knicks went on a 24-6 run that put them comfortably ahead going into the fourth quarter. The offense got into its first sustained rhythm, fueled by Carmelo Anthony, who was 5 of 6 from the field and scored 13 points during the run. Game 2: Knicks vs. Celtics 11 Photos View Slide Show › Image Al Bello/Getty Images “We buckled down on the defensive end; that’s what opened the game up for us,” said Anthony, who finished with a game-high 34 points. “For us to find that energy, find that momentum, to make the comeback we made — our defense has been winning us the basketball games.” For the Celtics, the offensive drop-off was eerily reminiscent of their fourth-quarter collapse in Game 1. With point guard Rajon Rondo out for the season with a knee injury and Kevin Garnett in foul trouble, the Celtics were increasingly reliant on Paul Pierce to carry its offense, which he did for the most part in the first half. But, draped by Iman Shumpert and Raymond Felton, Pierce could not easily find openings. “They put the pressure on us defensively, put us on our heels and we didn’t respond,” said Pierce, who shot 8 for 19 and had a team-high 18 points. “We have to do a better job at getting open and getting into our sets.” At one point, the Celtics missed 13 field-goal attempts in a row and were held without a basket for the last 9:15. Their 23 second-half points was the fewest the Knicks have allowed in the postseason. Now the Knicks ride into Boston with a 2-0 lead because of two strong defensive second halves. | Basketball;Celtics;Knicks;Doc Rivers |
ny0089493 | [
"sports",
"tennis"
] | 2015/09/10 | Rain Aids Simona Halep; Flavia Pennetta Wins Under Scorching Sun | The retractable roof on Arthur Ashe Stadium is not finished, despite the new steel structure rising above the court. So the United States Open, for one more year, anyway, is still vulnerable to rain. On Wednesday, the 10th day of the tournament, the rain came, sending Victoria Azarenka and Simona Halep back to the locker room during the third set of their quarterfinal match. About two hours later, after the sun had returned and the match was over, Halep said, “Thanks, God, for raining.” Halep, the No. 2 seed, reached the Open semifinals for the first time, defeating the 20th-seeded Azarenka, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4. She will meet No. 26 Flavia Pennetta, who beat No. 5 Petra Kvitova, 4-6, 6-4, 6-2. Image No. 20 Victoria Azarenka lost to the second-seeded Halep in three sets. Credit Mike Stobe/Getty Images Halep said that in the first set she was playing her best tennis, but in the second, she played further behind the baseline and ceded control of the match to Azarenka. “Everything was negative in my head,” Halep said. “The rain delay was perfect for me. It was unbelievable that I had another chance.” She spoke to her coach, Darren Cahill, and focused on returning to her first-set game plan. When play resumed, with Halep serving at 40-15 and 1-2 of the third set, she hit an ace down the middle. It marked the return of her aggression. She broke Azarenka for the sixth time in the match at 3-3 and held on to win. Halep finished with 40 winners and only 19 unforced errors. Before the rain came, Pennetta and Kvitova were more worried about the sun and the scorching conditions it brought. Kvitova, who was found to have mononucleosis this summer, has been limiting her practice time during the tournament. She has also limited her time in matches by not losing a set. Against Pennetta, she played for nearly an hour longer than in any of her previous matches, and she began to wither. Kvitova had nine double faults, was broken six times and collected 60 unforced errors. But she said her problems began before the match. “I think just from the beginning of the match I didn’t really feel 100 percent ready today,” Kvitova said. It has been a triumphant Open for Italian tennis. Fabio Fognini was victorious in one of the most memorable matches of the tournament, ousting Rafael Nadal after losing the first two sets of a late-night match last week. And now Pennetta and Roberta Vinci, who will play Serena Williams on Thursday night, give Italy two women in the semifinals here for the first time in the Open era. Pennetta, 33, and the unseeded Vinci, 32, are part of a generation of women who have brought attention to Italian tennis in the past decade. In 2009, Pennetta became the first Italian woman to crack the top 10. Francesca Schiavone won the French Open in 2010. Sara Errani was a French Open finalist in 2012. Errani and Vinci won five Grand Slam titles as a doubles team. Image Flavia Pennetta, left, during her three-set quarterfinal victory over fifth-seeded Petra Kvitova on Wednesday. Credit Alex Goodlett/Getty Images “Everyone was pushing the other one,” Pennetta said. “I think it was really important for us to have someone before us just to try to catch it all the time.” Pennetta’s greatest success has come at the Open, having now reached the quarterfinals here in six of her last seven appearances. In 2013, ranked 83rd and coming back from a wrist injury, she made a run to the semifinals, beating Vinci in the quarterfinals to get there. She lost to Azarenka, 6-4, 6-2, and is still searching for her first Grand Slam final. “You just go on court and play,” Pennetta said. “I mean, doesn’t matter if you make final, semifinal, quarterfinal years before. You just try to play the match the best you can, and nothing more.” Last year, Halep was a finalist at the French Open and a semifinalist at Wimbledon, but did not get past the second round at either tournament this summer. She said losing in the first round at Wimbledon was her lowest point. So she went home to Romania and put away her racket for almost four weeks. “I wanted just to forget about tennis, about official matches,” she said. “I just wanted to come back with the pleasure on court and taking just, you know, the fun.” When she returned for the North American hardcourt swing, she reached back-to-back finals at the Toronto and Cincinnati events. “I knew when I started the tournament that I have a good game,” she said. “I feel great and I have good mentality coming in this Grand Slam. I had no expectations, no pressure. So that’s why I’m playing so good.” Halep, 23, is the youngest semifinalist by nine years. Just don’t call the rest of them old. “Old for tennis,” Pennetta clarified. “For the life we are younger.” “We are here,” she added. “We still fight.” | Tennis;Simona Halep;Victoria Azarenka;Flavia Penetta;Petra Kvitova;US Open Tennis |
ny0258614 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2011/01/31 | For Online Shopping, More Transactions but Smaller Orders | During the most recent holiday season, consumers who clicked on search ads, like those accompanying Google results, performed 87 percent more transactions with online retailers than they had a year before. But the average online shopping basket was 10 percent smaller, according to Kenshoo, a maker of search-engine marketing software that analyzed three million transactions with its clients, generally large online retailers. In other words, people are spreading their money thinner online. One reason for this change is that retailers are increasingly offering free shipping, regardless of how little money the customer spends. “In the old days, you wanted to load up with one retailer so you could cross their minimum threshold to get free shipping,” said Aaron Goldman, the chief marketing officer of Kenshoo. “Now that you can get free shipping with a $15 order, there’s less keeping you from placing a small order with one retailer for exactly what you want from them, and then moving to another to buy something from their site.” ALEX MINDLIN | E-Commerce;Consumer Behavior |
ny0081897 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2015/10/04 | Restaurant Review: Eating With the Seasons at 273 Kitchen in Harrison | The look of 273 Kitchen in Harrison is instantly familiar: There are waiters in gingham shirts, silvery planks of repurposed wood, big jars brimming with pickles and popcorn kernels and an open kitchen glinting with stainless steel. The circular logo is by-the-numbers, with the numbers spelled out (“Two-Seventy-Three Kitchen EST 2015”). More eye-catching is a high-backed banquette in a shade of green that could only be called “Shrek.” The cuisine, too, has a certain ring to it: locally sourced, Mediterranean in spirit, super seasonal (the menu changes daily) and “meant to be shared.” It’s all pretty appealing on first blush, but after two visits the consensus among my guests was that while some dishes were sharply focused and engaging, others were muddled and underperforming. Presentation — on various and sundry white ceramic vessels and glass plates — ran the gamut from artful to slapdash. Constantine Kalandranis, who owns 8 North Broadway in Nyack and is poised to open 251 Lex in Mount Kisco, launched 273 Kitchen in April, with Hichem Habbas overseeing the kitchen. (Michael Raneri is a co-owner of 273 Kitchen.) Mr. Kalandranis , it would seem, has a lot on his plate. The main menu is divided into first, second and third courses — all of modest proportion — and an array of vegetable sides. Descriptions are in a sort of knowing shorthand (“grass-fed beef carpaccio/crudité/caper/smoked oil/aged cheese” or “local quail à la plancha/melted cabbage/fairy-tale eggplant”). For $45, you can tailor your own three-course meal, with dessert on the house, which is the way to go. Image Left, the vanilla bean panna cotta, garnished with orange sections, berries and honey. Right, the quail á la plancha with melted cabbage. Credit Andrew Sullivan for The New York Times I would start with poached calamari on a plush cushion of avocado with a trace of turmeric and delicious little fennel taralli; move on to the aforementioned quail, done to a succulent turn; and then fight with my tablemates over the super crispy fritto misto — an addictive jumble of rock shrimp, tiny scallops, calamari and snow-white porgy served with tangy tartar sauce. For dessert, I would order again and again the creamy vanilla bean panna cotta, garnished with glistening orange sections and a swipe of honey. These dishes showed a mastery that made the shortcomings more baffling. Falling shy of potential were an overly fussy lobster crudité dominated by the taste of unpeeled cucumber pedestals; an under-seasoned dollop of duck-liver terrine served with tough, room-temperature toast; crudo of not-quite-fresh-enough Montauk fluke in a puzzling alliance with spiced walnuts, wild blueberries, watermelon and purple basil; a delicate squash blossom suffocated by beer batter; an unorthodox Caesar salad incorporating cucumbers, fennel, radishes, sharp green olives and stale croutons; and salty spaghetti carbonara with an aggressive smokiness (“almost like liquid smoke,” a guest said). There were, to be sure, other good things to eat: tasty tidbits of rock shrimp ceviche; a little lineup of potato-and-feta croquettes with harissa aioli and lime (“I’m in love with this aioli,” said a guest); golden chicken wings with lemon verbena vinaigrette; a straightforward Wagyu burger and excellent frites; two rosy lamb chops alongside a tangle of chard, summer squash and purslane; roasted organic chicken (we liked that we had a choice of dark meat); and a fine example of flourless chocolate cake. Open kitchens can backfire when the ventilation is insufficient. At 273 Kitchen, an acrid haze filled the dining room and the smell of cooking oil clung to our clothes afterward — not the takeaway the restaurant probably had in mind. As we settled the bill one night, the wait staff serenaded a nearby table with what seemed to be a halfhearted rendition of “Happy Birthday,” but the host thanked us for coming in the most genuine way and hoped we would be back. The two different spirits seemed to capture our experience exactly. | Restaurant;Harrison NY;273 Kitchen |
ny0202772 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2009/08/16 | At a Tiny New York Farm, Seeking Freedom From Addiction | GARRISON, N.Y. — It was shortly after 8 a.m. on a sun-drenched July day in this idyllic hamlet 50 miles north of Manhattan, and a hulk of a man named Venice Crafton was lumbering between beds of arugula, leaving outsize footprints in his wake. Mr. Crafton is 6-foot-2 ½ inches, 241 pounds and missing his two front teeth, all of which might have made him seem menacing but for the wide-brimmed, slightly floppy straw hat on his head. “Boy, if they could see me now in Brooklyn, they wouldn’t believe it,” said Mr. Crafton, who was raised in Brownsville. “This goes no further than this farm,” he added to the half-dozen co-workers around him. The men responded with grins and low grunts. They were immersed in their work, tugging heads of lettuce from the soil, culling the leaves and rinsing the produce in a plastic pail filled with water. “I’m not used to doing this stuff,” Mr. Crafton, 48, grumbled. “You can’t tell with that hat,” came someone’s retort. It was all in a day’s work at an unlikely flyspeck of a place: a two-acre organic vegetable farm bordered by a forest and gentle hills, where two dozen men were quietly fighting for their lives. The farm is run by recovering addicts and alcoholics from New York City, men whose various addictions, and repeated relapses, have left them sickened and homeless. Called Renewal Farm, the patch of land boasts neat rows of vegetables and bright flowers, as well as two greenhouses fashioned out of thick sheets of plastic. The men’s days are split into two very different parts. They tend the farm, lacing the air with locker-room banter and gentle ribbing. And then they exorcise their worries and voice their hopes at St. Christopher’s Inn , a hilltop rehabilitation center nearby where they sleep. The men’s lives are shot through with such contrasts. They are urban, transplanted to the country. They have dark pasts, but they spend their days in bucolic surroundings. They come from the gritty streets, but they grow trendy produce, often for rarefied palates. In this patchwork existence, they do have one constant thread: the knowledge that they are teetering on the brink. “It’s a last resort,” said one participant, James Fletcher, who is 58 but looks far older, his cheeks lined and eyes sunken by decades of heroin abuse . The transition to the farm can be unnerving. On that sunlit July morning, a man from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, was leaning over rows of red kale, looking bewildered. He had been, he said, “addicted to everything, a garbage-head.” He was also new to the farm, and did not want to talk much about his past, or reveal his name. Instead, he kept his eyes pinned on another program participant, Bernard Cole, who was cutting off wilting leaves from kale. “Those leaves aren’t good?” the man asked, perplexed. “No,” Mr. Cole replied gently. “But see this one, see how it’s good?” “No, I don’t know nothing,” the man replied dolefully. “I’m a newcomer.” Several feet away, Mr. Crafton was cleaning lettuce, and eyeing it suspiciously. He is not fond of vegetables, and as a rule, he said, doesn’t trust any food that “doesn’t already come in a bag.” “If it ain’t on a McDonald’s menu, I ain’t eating it,” Mr. Crafton declared proudly, peering out from beneath his straw brim, a wet, dripping head of lettuce in his hand. “I always been a picky eater.” Renewal Farm is run by Project Renewal , a Manhattan nonprofit that helps the homeless, the addicted and the mentally ill. The farm is headed by David Harrington, a 61-year-old horticulture expert, and Anthony DeArmas, a 45-year-old former crack addict and alcoholic. About two dozen men participate in the farm program at a time, usually for six to nine months. The farm is financed mostly by public dollars. From its inception in 1996 until 2007, the farm was at Camp La Guardia, a sprawling 1,000-bed shelter in Orange County that housed homeless men from New York City. Camp La Guardia closed in 2007, but Renewal Farm found new living quarters 25 miles away at St. Christopher’s Inn, in Garrison off Route 9. The compound, a Franciscan friary, is also used as a homeless shelter and a rehabilitation center, with 147 beds, a medical clinic and services like acupuncture and counseling. As for the farmland, the nearby Garrison and Highlands country clubs donated the two acres, with the men in the program helping to clear the land, build a deer fence and install a water line linked to a nearby reservoir. Much of the harvest is sold at the farm’s road stand, which opened late last season, while some is served to the residents of St. Christopher’s and some sold in the inn’s thrift shop. About 1,200 pounds of the produce is provided to the two country clubs annually in exchange for the donated land. At the country clubs in particular, the food finds its way to a world far distant from the men’s. The Tavern, the restaurant at the Highlands Country Club, serves the farm’s lettuce in the $9 Cranberries and Blue salad (greens, cranberries and blue cheese made from local sheep’s milk, in a white balsamic vinaigrette) and with the pan-seared diver scallops dinner, which costs $27. The morning that Mr. Crafton was yearning for McDonald’s, he watched as the other men rinsed heads of lettuce, one by one, in a pail of water. Then he intervened, showing off some previously acquired knowledge. He piled a load of lettuce into a plastic basket, and dunked the whole thing in the bucket in one efficient swoop. “Genius, man, genius,” said one of his co-workers, Manfred Long. “That was an old trick I learned back in 2000,” Mr. Crafton said, smiling with satisfaction. Mr. Crafton was enrolled in Project Renewal before, in 2000, and when he left he thought his crack and alcohol problems were licked. But, after some relapses and some good years, he found himself starting his mornings with six-packs of beer. By December of last year, he was back at Renewal Farm. No one knows how many graduates of Renewal Farm have stayed clean. About 450 have cycled through in its 13 years, but their progress has not been tracked, both because it would be expensive and because the men tend to move around a lot. Still, based on anecdotal responses, Mr. Harrington, the program director, guesses that about 65 percent stayed off drugs and alcohol at least a year. The program’s strengths, he believes, are its length and the structure it gives the men’s lives. Dr. David A. Deitch, the chief clinical officer with Phoenix House , said the 65 percent rate is high, relatively speaking; on average, he said, the one-year success rate is closer to one-third. “Regardless of the outcome,” he added, “the idea that they’re doing something, and it’s self-supporting, keeping them clean longer, and being good for the community as a whole, and that they’re earning their keep as opposed to being treated as though they’re horizontal patients somewhere in a hospital. These are very good, exciting features.” The men seem to have an easier time at St. Christopher’s Inn than they did at Camp La Guardia, where there was some drinking and drugs among the 1,000 residents, and where the two dozen Project Renewal participants were among the few in recovery. At St. Christopher’s, all of the shelter’s roughly 150 residents are in recovery. “It was a lot more chaotic,” Mr. DeArmas said of Camp La Guardia. “A lot more temptation there, too.” The program’s success rate seems to bear out this impression. In the year and a half since Renewal Farm opened at Garrison, just 4 percent of the men have tested positive for alcohol and drugs, a result that leads to dismissal. The men are tested randomly, and also whenever they leave St. Christopher’s on unescorted trips. At Camp La Guardia, the number of Renewal men who failed those tests was roughly 20 percent. The Renewal men, and the other men who stay there, call St. Christopher’s “the holy mountain.” Its grounds are thick with crosses, crucifixes and statues of saints. Many of them also want to believe, almost desperately, that miracles happen there. Mr. Long was shaking water off some lettuce, and the droplets were catching the sun and spraying a few men standing nearby. He laid the heads in a box bound for the farm stand. As often happens during the slow hours in the field, the talk drifted back to the men’s former lives. Mr. Crafton was speaking about the old Project Renewal farm truck, which was crushed on Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. DeArmas had driven it to the city that day to deliver produce to a farmers’ market near the World Trade Center, and fled on foot when the first tower fell. “That truck was de- stroyed ,” Mr. Crafton said to the others. The group fell silent for a moment. Then: “I bet the drug dealers were having a field day that day,” Mr. Long said. “No cops,” Mr. Crafton said. Then another man had a thought. “No cellphones,” he said. “Oh yeah,” Mr. Long said. Nine men were sitting in a circle in a room at St. Christopher’s Inn for a therapy session. After a brief meditation, Michael Boccia, the social worker leading the group, began a discussion about old habits, and the men started talking about how they had drowned their anxieties with drinks and drugs. “My worst fear is leaving this mountain the way I came in, doing things in half measures,” said William Chapman, a recovering crack addict from Brooklyn. “I worked too hard to get where I am now.” Like the rest of the men, Mr. Chapman was wearing a photo ID taken the day he entered the program. It showed a terrified man with downcast eyes. Fear and hope are undercurrents at Renewal, even for Mr. Crafton. Despite all his city slicker bravura, he admitted privately that he liked being out of New York and loved the peaceful rhythms of the farm. He has found serenity in Garrison, he said, and now possesses, he believes, the peace of mind he needs to stay sober when he leaves. “I’m too old to be coming in and out of these places,” Mr. Crafton said. “I got insight now into what I need. This is my last time. I know it.” There was a snake on the loose somewhere in the hoop house, the long, low greenhouse made out of arched tubing and plastic sheets. But the men had no time to find it; they had work to do. Mr. Fletcher walked over to the flower beds with Mr. DeArmas, crouched down and began snipping blooms — celosias, nasturtiums, snapdragons — to sell at the farm stand. Another man helped. “Here you go, flower maiden,” he said, handing Mr. Fletcher a bloom. “Thank you,” Mr. Fletcher said, and moved to another plant, accidentally dropping a flower. “Sweetheart, you dropped one,” the man said. Mr. Fletcher shook his head. “Sweetheart,” he muttered. Mr. Crafton began arranging the picked blooms into bouquets. “You usually want a little color,” he explained to Mr. Fletcher. “See? I put that one in the middle. The red one. Then this one. And this pink one. Look! A bouquet.” He held the arrangement at arm’s length, surveyed his work, and nodded. “This one?” Mr. Fletcher asked, offering him a yellow snapdragon. “No,” Mr. Crafton said. “It doesn’t go.” Renewal Farm’s roadside stand sits at the corner of Route 9 and Snake Hill Road, and at midmorning one weekday Mr. DeArmas and a few men unloaded the van, setting out baskets of squash, herbs, lettuce, Swiss chard, tomato plants and Mr. Crafton’s bouquets. Sales at the farm stand have been slow this year, partly because of the near-daily downpours. Mr. Long, who had been helping unpack the produce, waved at a passing car, grinning widely, a gesture that sometimes draws in customers. “I always wave at everybody,” he said. The car slowed but did not stop. Mr. DeArmas left the men to tend their stand and drove back to the farm. It was time for the men there to wrap up their day’s work. As the van arrived at the farm, Mr. Crafton was waiting with news. “I came across the snake!” he cried. “It was a garter snake, but it was big.” “Yeah,” said one of the men. “The snake ran one way; he ran the other way.” Mr. DeArmas guffawed, and then he told the men to hop into the van. It was time to go back to St. Christopher’s, back to the holy mountain. | Drug Abuse and Traffic;Garrison (NY);Project Renewal;Agriculture |
ny0014064 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2013/11/15 | HUD Storm-Protection Competition Will Narrow Ideas Big and Small | One project aims to raise parts of Lower Manhattan, put in a protective barrier that could double as a community center or an art installation, and sink the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive underground and cover it with a lush park. Another would encircle parts of Hoboken, N.J. — vulnerable to flash floods and tidal surges at Weehawken Bay — with greenery by filling in parts of the Hudson River. Yet another would possibly elevate or relocate some of the small businesses along New Jersey’s barrier islands to be better braced against climate change and sea-level rise. These are just a few of the concepts and measures the federal government said it could support, as part of a competition to design ways to protect the New York area from another Hurricane Sandy. The contest, held by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and called “Rebuild by Design,” attracted engineers, architects, designers and others who came up with several dozen proposals to defend the coastline from New Jersey to Connecticut. The department has narrowed them down to 10, which will be announced on Friday. It does not mean that all 10 will be carried out, but they could have an inside track as billions of dollars in Hurricane Sandy relief money are doled out in the coming years. “The big ideas are there,” said Henk Ovink, a senior adviser to the HUD secretary, Shaun Donovan. “The next phase is to get the ideas to concrete solutions. There are a lot of possibilities.” Other projects among the finalists include a tidal park in New Jersey’s Meadowlands; using levees to protect the food supply in Hunts Point, in the Bronx, the distribution point for much of the city’s food supply; working with schools on Staten Island on a new harbor landscape; creating funding opportunities and investment strategies for coastal businesses to redevelop or relocate; and large-scale natural barriers like manufactured islands on the mid-Atlantic coast. While projects like sinking the F.D.R. Drive would require more time and more money, many of the others are short-term, Mr. Ovink said. Image The Manhattan proposal, called “Big U,” could create a barrier system with new buildings, bike paths and parkland. “You could start now where there’s opportunities,” he said. “We call it low-hanging fruit.” In Hoboken, the north and south sides used to be islands, Mr. Ovink said, and were later filled in. On the south side, the proposed project would possibly integrate flood protection barriers like levees into commercial development. The north side would see more greenery. The two areas would then be connected to water containment areas. “They’re not talking about gigantic flood walls or gigantic parks or an unimaginable island,” Mr. Ovink said. “These are normal measures, but as a chain of measures they really make sense for the safety of Hoboken.” The Rockefeller Foundation has donated $3 million for the competition, which is run in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. The Community Foundation of New Jersey and other nonprofit institutions have also provided funding. The teams will spend the next five months working with community leaders and local and state governments to develop their designs. The Manhattan proposal, called “Big U,” which includes the F.D.R. Drive idea, could create a barrier system that would be combined with new buildings, bike paths and parkland that would hold or hold back water, and wrap around Manhattan from West 57th Street down to the Battery, and up to East 42nd Street. “It would look different everywhere along the U,” Mr. Ovink said, and added that each neighborhood would tailor its own set of programs. The city also has its own resiliency ideas and is looking into the construction of a so-called Seaport City, just south of the Brooklyn Bridge in Manhattan, modeled after Battery Park City, to protect Lower Manhattan. “These are concepts that we hope to develop into real projects,” said Daniel A. Zarrilli, the city’s director of resiliency, of the proposals being considered for New York City. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced recently that the state would spend about $13 million on more than 6,000 feet of flood barriers, some of which could be raised or dropped as needed, for the Long Beach industrial district. “These measures are excellent,” Mr. Ovink said. “But at the same time, we can raise the bar for innovation and ambition.” | Urban Planning;Hurricane Sandy;HUD;New Jersey;NYC;Contests and Prizes;New York Metropolitan Area;Hurricanes |
ny0075196 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2015/04/14 | Teenager Whose Stray Bullet Killed Man on Brooklyn Bus Goes on Trial | Sitting at the back of the B15 bus on a Thursday evening in March 2014, Kahton Anderson, then 14, pulled a gun from his backpack, shot once and killed a father of two who was heading home from his job as a fruit vendor. It was an alarming killing , committed by someone who was barely a teenager and ending a 39-year-old immigrant’s life, all on a well-trafficked Brooklyn bus during peak commuting hours. On Monday, Mr. Anderson’s murder trial began in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn. The defense and prosecution agree that Mr. Anderson killed the man, Angel Rojas, and that it was accidental. They agree that rival crews were playing out a turf war on the bus, with Mr. Anderson’s antagonists boarding the bus just before he shot. But they disagree over Mr. Anderson’s state of mind: Did he think he was being attacked by his rivals, as the defense lawyer Frederic Pratt suggested, and shoot the gun in self-defense? Or was he such an aggressive person, one who had bragged about his gun for years, that even when his rivals fled he chased them down Marcus Garvey Boulevard, firing until every bullet was gone from his gun, as the assistant district attorney Nicole Chavis argued? Murder in the second degree, the charge Mr. Anderson faces, requires intent or “a depraved indifference to human life.” He is being tried as an adult. Mr. Pratt described what had happened earlier in the day on March 20, 2014. Mr. Anderson had grown up in Brooklyn, in part in the Sumner Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Some living in Sumner were part of a large and longtime feud between crews from the nearby Marcy and Tompkins housing projects. Sumner allied with Tompkins, and Mr. Anderson and his friends called themselves the Stack Money Goons. Their Marcy adversaries were the Twan Family. “It’s literally been going on for generations,” Mr. Pratt said. “The young men in this trial were born into that situation.” In 2013, Mr. Anderson’s mother had sent him upstate to live with his father, worried about the violence in the neighborhood. He came back in early 2014, after his grandfather died, and begged his mother to let him stay in the city, Mr. Pratt said. A few weeks after he returned from upstate, he went to visit his grandmother at Sumner and, as he left, saw Twan Family members. They shot at him. He ran to a friend’s apartment, calmed down, and the friend asked if he wanted to take a .357 Magnum, which Mr. Anderson had obtained at age 12, and which he and his friends shared, Mr. Pratt said. Mr. Anderson did. Image Maria Lopez testified at State Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Monday. Her husband, Angel Rojas, was fatally shot while riding a bus last year. Credit Brian Harkin for The New York Times He was supposed to head back to his apartment on Gates Avenue for dinner, but the several blocks between were “treacherous territory” that the Twan Family members were patrolling, Mr. Pratt said. So Mr. Anderson did what he often did: He took the B15 bus. At a stop near a laundromat, Twan Family affiliates boarded, including a young man who looked to the back of the bus, grabbed a woman he boarded with and “yanks her off,” Mr. Pratt said, describing surveillance video. The man then beckoned to people at the laundromat to come to the bus while he held the doors open. Three Twan Family members bounded over from the laundromat and boarded, including two of the youths who had earlier shot at Mr. Anderson. One had his hands in his pocket and a “menacing smile.” Another had his hand behind his back with what looked like a “metallic object,” Mr. Pratt said. Trapped, Mr. Anderson pulled out the gun and shot, Mr. Pratt said. The Twan Family members ran off the bus, and Mr. Anderson followed, shooting at the Twan Family members. “He wasn’t smiling,” Mr. Pratt said. “He was running for his life.” According to Ms. Chavis, the prosecutor, once Mr. Anderson pointed the gun at the Twan Family members, they left the bus, but, she added, “that wasn’t enough for the defendant.” He chased them, she said, and “he didn’t stop firing that gun until the bullets were gone.” This was a boy who had bragged about his gun on Facebook, Ms. Chavis said, asking his pals where he could get more bullets. When the police approached Marcus Garvey Boulevard after the episode on the bus, they saw Mr. Anderson running and looking over his shoulder with a “slight smile,” Ms. Chavis said. They threw him down and took his gun, which was still warm. In the patrol car, Ms. Chavis recounted, Mr. Anderson talked to the police, asking: “Who did I hit? Was it an innocent or a rival? Why didn’t I just go home?” He added, “It’s war out there.” Inside the bus it was chaos, with babies crying and people screaming, the bus driver, Jennifer Worthy, said in later testimony. A woman seated behind Mr. Rojas saw a hole in his head, then felt her clothes were warm. She realized it was blood and began to scream, Ms. Chavis said. Mr. Rojas, who had recently moved to New York from the Dominican Republic, had a 12-year-old son and a 8-year-old daughter. His widow, Maria Lopez, cried on the stand when she said she had last seen him the day before the B15 bus trip. | Murders and Homicides;Angel Rojas;Kahton Anderson;Bed-Stuy;NYC |
ny0173721 | [
"business"
] | 2007/10/20 | Markets Slide as Wall Street Sees Signs of Trouble | Call it Gray Friday. Stocks plunged to their lowest level in a month yesterday, with the Dow Jones industrials dropping more than 360 points. The steep drop happened on the 20th anniversary of the one-day plunge that came to be known as Black Monday. And it capped a week in which the market was hit with a battery of poor earnings reports, particularly from large banks. It also served to remind investors of the economy’s broader problems: the housing slowdown and the tight credit markets. Yesterday’s slide began with reports of disappointing performances from Wachovia Bank and Caterpillar, the machinery manufacturer. Wachovia’s report of a 10 percent drop in income and $1.3 billion in losses and write-downs followed similar announcements this week from Citigroup and Bank of America. The Dow, which had its worst week since late July, has fallen more than 4 percent from the record high it set 10 days ago. It closed at 13,522.02, down 366.94 for the day, or 2.6 percent. “We’re like a bunch of adolescents right now,” Jerry Webman, chief economist at Oppenheimer Funds, said of investors. “Last week we got some good news, and we’re happy. Now we’re all sullen and down in the dumps.” It was the worst one-day loss for the Dow since Aug. 9, when it lost 387.18 point, though the average remains up 8.5 percent for the year. The Dow’s decline yesterday was mirrored in the broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and the Nasdaq composite. Crude oil prices also retreated, falling from the record they reached Thursday. Oil closed down 87 cents, at $88.60. And the dollar hit record lows against the euro. David Kelly, an economist at Putnam Investments, the mutual fund company in Boston, warned against seeing the market plunge as a bellwether. “What may seem like tough times on Wall Street isn’t so tough for the economy as a whole,” he said. But a prominent figure in the hedge fund industry, Julian H. Robertson Jr., said yesterday that the economy was heading for a “doozy of a recession.” “I think the credit situation is worse than anybody realizes,” he said on CNBC. “I don’t think any of the normal indicators you would look at in the economy are really very strong. As a matter of fact, they are weak, and not really getting any better.” Yesterday’s steep sell-off was reminiscent of the Oct. 19, 1987, decline, though not nearly as harsh. That day brought the Dow’s worst single-session decline ever, a loss of 508 points, or 22.6 percent. Still, yesterday’s losses were unnerving to investors shaken by a week of write-offs at major banks and the surging price of crude oil. Wachovia’s report came after Bank of America’s announcement on Thursday that its third-quarter earnings plunged 32 percent, in part because of heavy losses in consumer banking. “All these financial companies reporting on their earnings is contributing to the sourness of the mood,” Mr. Kelly said. “It’s putting a big focus on a big problem, and I think that’s scaring people on Wall Street who are close to all of these problems.” Bank of America joined Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase this week in planning an ambitious fund to stave off further problems in the credit markets, though investors seem ambivalent about the safety net. The plan is intended to relieve the pricing pressure on mortgage-backed securities held by institutions and known as structured investment vehicles. Two such entities in Europe —run by Cheyne Capital Management of London and IKB Deutsche Industriebank of Düsseldorf, Germany — defaulted yesterday on more than $7 billion of debt. But in the United States, it was clear that investors’ concerns went beyond the financial sector. Earnings reports from Caterpillar and Honeywell International, both part of the Dow industrials, did not meet expectations, and that was seen as a sign that the credit troubles were clouding the broader economy. Caterpillar posted a 21 percent gain in quarterly profit but fell short of analysts’ estimates. The company cut its full-year profit forecast, sending its stock down 5.3 percent, to $73.57. Net income at Honeywell, the manufacturer based in New Jersey, climbed 14 percent, and the company raised its yearly sales expectations. But the stock still fell nearly 4 percent, to $58.32. Shares of 3M, another Dow component, plunged 8.6 percent, to $86.62, even after the company raised its profit forecast and posted a 7.4 percent increase in third-quarter profit. 3M lowered revenue expectations and said it would be forced to cut prices. The disappointing reports, coupled with a week of mixed economic data, underscore investors’ concerns over the fourth-quarter outlook. The Fed’s beige book, a report based on surveys of business leaders across the country, said companies expected a “modest” and “mixed” economy in coming months, as prices start to rise and the labor sector weakens. Yesterday was the 44th day in 2007 when the market moved more than 1 percent, according to Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at Standard & Poor’s. In 2006, the market had only 29 such days, he said, suggesting increased jitters among investors. “What the market hates more than anything else is uncertainty,” said William Rhodes, chief investment strategist at Rhodes Analytics. Yet Mr. Rhodes himself sounded rather uncertain. “Is this the beginning of a bear market?” he asked. “I have to say right now, I don’t think it is. Ask me in another week, and I might have a different opinion.” | Stocks and Bonds;Economic Conditions and Trends;Dow Jones Stock Average;Nasdaq Composite Index |
ny0249689 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2011/02/04 | In 1996 World Series, Pettitte’s Gem Sparked Yankees | Andy Pettitte was 240-138 in his major league career with 19 postseason victories, but one game still stands out. At age 24 in 1996, in his second season and second World Series game, Pettitte allowed five hits in eight and a third innings in an electrifying 1-0 victory over the Atlanta Braves in Game 5 . The Yankees had lost the first two games at home, 12-1 and 4-0, then won two in Atlanta. Pettitte’s gem put them one victory away from their first World Series title since 1978. The Braves’ John Smoltz, who led the majors with 24 victories in 1996, was no slouch in Game 5. He gave up four hits and struck out 10 in eight innings, and the game’s lone run was unearned. The Yankees scored in the fourth inning when Charlie Hayes, who had reached second base on center fielder Marquis Grissom’s two-base error, scored on a double by Cecil Fielder, who had three of the hits that Smoltz allowed. Throwing sinker after sinker, Pettitte, who was knocked out of Game 1 in the third inning, allowed eight Braves to reach base in the first eight innings, but none reached third. And when Andruw Jones singled for Atlanta’s first hit in the fifth, Pettitte picked him off. Pettitte was not known for his defense, but his fielding in the tense sixth inning preserved the 1-0 lead. Smoltz and Grissom opened the bottom of the inning with singles, and the Braves asked Mark Lemke to sacrifice the runners to second and third. Pettitte barehanded the bunt and fired to third base for a force, a risky play. With runners still at first and second but now with one out, Pettitte threw a fastball to Chipper Jones, who hit it right back to him. Pettitte fired to second, starting a double play. Chipper Jones led off the ninth inning with a double and moved to third on a groundout by Fred McGriff. Manager Joe Torre called in John Wetteland, the Yankees’ closer, to replace Pettitte. With the infield drawn in, Wetteland got Javier Lopez to ground out to third baseman Hayes for the second out. Torre decided to walk pinch-hitter Ryan Klesko, putting the potential winning run on base. But Paul O’Neill made a wondrous running catch of Luis Polonia’s fly ball near the fence in right-center field on a ball that would not stop carrying, saving the victory. Jimmy Key won Game 6, 3-2, and the Yankees were champions for the first time in 18 years. Pettitte went on to win the most games in postseason history, but no victory might have been better than that Game 5. | Pettitte Andy;New York Yankees;Baseball |
ny0181685 | [
"technology"
] | 2007/12/03 | Effort to Combat Internet Piracy Gains Strength in France | LONDON, Dec. 2 — Before the French election last spring, the rock ’n’ roll musician Johnny Hallyday endorsed the man who went on to become president of France , Nicolas Sarkozy . Now Mr. Sarkozy is returning the favor — not directly to Johnny Hallyday, but to a French cultural industry that seems increasingly fearful about its future. Last month Mr. Sarkozy outlined an aggressive proposal to crack down on Internet piracy of music and movies. Under the plan drawn up by a government-commissioned panel, Internet service providers have put aside their objections to cooperating with copyright owners in the fight against illegal file sharing. If legislation to enact the plan is approved, the service providers will work with a new, independent authority to identify pirates and warn them to stop. People who ignore the warnings can face suspension, and eventually termination, of their Internet accounts. “This is really one of the first occasions when service providers have assumed responsibility for the content that goes over their networks,” said Paul Jackson, an analyst at Forrester Research. “Generally, they have maintained that they are just like an online postal service and that file sharing is not their problem.” While the agreement in France is the most striking departure from that way of thinking, analysts say that Internet providers may have to soften their positions elsewhere, too, under pressure from governments or the courts. In Britain and Sweden, for example, government-sponsored reports have urged Internet providers to sit down with media companies and come up with a solution to online piracy. In the United States, one service provider, Comcast, has acknowledged slowing down file-sharing activity on its network, though not blocking it outright. But Comcast has said this was part of a policy of “network management” intended to keep traffic moving, since file sharing takes up significant amounts of bandwidth. In Belgium a court ruled last summer that an Internet service provider, Scarlet, should be required to filter out illegal online exchanges of music via peer-to-peer networks. The court gave Scarlet until the end of this year to install the necessary safeguards; Scarlet has appealed. The French proposal stops short of requiring filtering, which is aimed at halting illegal sharing before it starts, but it calls for experiments with the technology to do so within two years. In return for persuading the service providers to crack down, French media owners agreed to remove some of the digital strings they have typically attached to their works. That could allow service providers to enhance their digital music stores and other online content offerings, generating more revenue from them. Music industry groups agreed to remove so-called digital rights management protection from music recorded by French record labels and sold online, allowing customers to transfer songs to more than one music player — something that some record companies have already been doing. Movie companies agreed to shorten the lag time between the release of French films on DVD and their later appearance on video-on-demand systems. The plan, drawn up under the guidance of Denis Olivennes, chief executive of the electronics, movie and music retailer FNAC, is the latest in a series of French efforts to deal with media piracy. Persistent violators, for instance, already face the threat of fines and up to three years in prison. But only about 50 people have been prosecuted and few convicted under these laws, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a trade group for the record companies. Other initiatives aimed at supporting French cultural industries, including a proposal to create a “global license” that would permit unlimited digital media consumption in return for a monthly fee, have foundered for lack of support. By contrast, the Olivennes plan seems to have broad support, with France Télécom, the movie company Gaumont, copyright protection societies and others endorsing it. | Computers and the Internet;France;Sarkozy Nicolas;Hallyday Johnny;Copyrights;Motion Pictures;Music |
ny0051999 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2014/10/15 | Under Indictment, Grimm Fights to Keep His Congressional Seat | This question Michael G. Grimm liked. Representative Grimm, a two-term Republican known by many for threatening to throw an inquiring NY1 reporter off a Capitol balcony , was asked during a sparsely attended news conference on Staten Island last week whether his challenger’s emphasis on personal issues — like, say, the 20-count federal indictment against Mr. Grimm — was distracting voters from more substantive ones. “National Democrats have spent millions upon millions of dollars to make it about anything but the issues,” Mr. Grimm said as he stood at the St. George ferry terminal, where he received the endorsement of the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association. A former agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he proceeded to accuse his Democratic rival, Domenic M. Recchia Jr., a former New York City councilman from Brooklyn, of “nickel-and-diming” the middle class, of being a member of the “far liberal left” who “represents that de Blasio-Obama mentality” and of being an outsider whose failed job search in Brooklyn led him to Staten Island. “You know, the forgotten borough doesn’t need to be the borough of last resort for Domenic Recchia, and that’s what it is,” Mr. Grimm said. Image Mr. Grimm, a Republican, has been indicted on charges that he hired undocumented workers. Credit Christopher Gregory for The New York Times Issues, maritime and otherwise, have become somewhat beside the point in a nasty, no-holds-barred and now exceedingly close race for Mr. Grimm’s seat in New York’s 11th Congressional District. On Saturday, the Recchia campaign began closing out the contest with “20 Counts for 20 Days” news releases (“Count One: Tax Evasion,” “Count Two: Perjury”), and on Sunday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, at whose chairman Mr. Grimm once flashed a butter knife, released another ad, attacking the Republican over his legal travails. (In April, Mr. Grimm was indicted on federal charges that he hired undocumented immigrants at Healthalicious, the Manhattan health-food restaurant he used to own, and then lied about it to federal investigators. His lawyers have said he is the target of a witch hunt.) Mr. Recchia had drawn about even in the polls with Mr. Grimm, whose base on Staten Island, a Republican redoubt in a liberal city, seems mostly unbothered by his legal problems. But the Democratic campaign committee believes many voters simply do not know about the indictment. To educate them, the committee has spent $1.3 million on cable television ads since Aug. 12, and may spend more, said its chairman, Representative Steve Israel, Democrat of Long Island. In an increasingly bleak climate for Democrats in closely contested races, Mr. Israel sees the race as a “tossup” but also as the best chance in New York for a pickup. “We have an offensive opportunity with Grimm,” he said. Mr. Recchia seems to think his Washington benefactors could spend their money better. “People know,” he said of the indictment. Image Mr. Recchia is a Democrat. Credit Bryan Thomas for The New York Times At least Mr. Recchia has a party apparatus with which to try to coordinate messages. Mr. Grimm has been almost entirely abandoned by Republican campaign committees and fund-raisers. But some outside help, including about $100,000 from Defending Main Street, a Republican “ super PAC ” that aids moderate Republicans in tough races, has helped Mr. Grimm with field operations and allowed him to air commercials calling Mr. Recchia a “puppet” of the Rev. Al Sharpton, and to print fliers showing Mr. Recchia next to a stock-footage image of a man with face paint, a red ball nose and oversized bow tie. “Which one of these clowns raised property taxes 18 percent and voted to hike our tolls $8?” the flier asks. Every element of the race has turned toxic. Mr. Grimm criticized Mr. Recchia’s endorsement by the League of Conservation Voters because the group had advocated to keep Staten Island’s landfills open. Asked about the Humane Society Legislative Fund’s endorsement of Mr. Grimm, who rescued his Yorkshire terrier, Sebastian, from a Missouri puppy mill, Mr. Recchia spoke tenderly about Lexi, his own miniature dachshund. The final lap of the race began during an Oct. 1 debate at the Fort Hamilton Senior Center in Brooklyn, where Mr. Recchia called Mr. Grimm a liar and Mr. Grimm did his best to transform Mr. Recchia into Mr. Sharpton. Reminded about his recent past as a would-be reporter-tosser, Mr. Grimm replied, “As a Staten Islander, sometimes I get my Italian up.” Blunt as Mr. Grimm can be, he does evince far greater fluency than Mr. Recchia when policy enters the picture. Some of Mr. Recchia’s recent discussions of foreign affairs have induced Democratic cringes. At a news conference last month , Mr. Recchia stood next to Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and sought to demonstrate his “great knowledge” of the world by pointing to his trips to Italy, Israel and “many, many countries.” Mr. Recchia had previously demonstrated a knowledge somewhere south of great when he struggled to explain what the letters TPP stood for even as he publicly opposed a proposed TPP trade agreement. (The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a trade agreement being negotiated between the United States, Australia, and Asian and South American countries.) But at the news conference, Mr. Recchia had an ace in the hole. What Mr. Grimm did not know, Mr. Recchia said jovially, was that as a local school board member, “I ran a student exchange program with Japan for the students of his district that he represents.” Mr. Schumer looked as if he needed an Alka-Seltzer. Last week, Mr. Grimm was still savoring that one. “Someone says they are ready and they have a ton of foreign-policy experience,” Mr. Grimm said at the ferry terminal. “And it’s based on running some type of children’s exchange program for Japanese students?” Image Mr. Grimm, standing, and Mr. Recchia during a debate in Brooklyn. Credit Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press Some Democrats have wondered if Mr. Grimm’s aggressive campaign is not more rooted in his desire to stay out of prison than to serve a third term. Mr. Grimm has asked that his trial, set to begin in December, be delayed out of fear that negative ads could taint the jury pool. But re-election could furnish him with the bargaining chip of his own resignation, which other politicians facing federal prosecution have traded for lighter sentences. Mr. Grimm, in an unorthodox sales pitch, says voters should stick by him if only so that they will get a fresh slate of candidates should he have to leave office. “If things don’t go my way, right? And I had to step down in January, then there will be a special election, and at least the people of Staten Island and Brooklyn can then have qualified candidates to choose from,” Mr. Grimm told the radio talk-show host Geraldo Rivera this month. The Staten Island Advance reported last week that Republicans had begun floating the name of the borough’s district attorney, Daniel M. Donovan Jr., as a potential special-election candidate in 2015. But Mr. Recchia, who was forced out of the race for city comptroller last year by the Democratic machine, is focused on November and campaigning as if his career depends on a victory. In the 11th District’s sliver of southern Brooklyn, which amounts to his natural base, he handed out fliers at night between a man selling $2 boxes of “red, very sweet, very sweet” strawberries and the elevated Avenue X station. “We have momentum,” Mr. Recchia said to one woman. “I hope so,” she responded. Momentum is Mr. Recchia’s watchword, and the talking point of his Washington backers. When asked if he was in a dead heat, Mr. Recchia said, “Yeah, dead,” and then stopped himself. “We have momentum.” He attributed Mr. Grimm’s remarks tying him to Mr. Sharpton to “what happens when a campaign is desperate. They know that I am connecting with people. They see that we have momentum.” The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says it has registered more than 6,000 new voters who it believes are likely to vote for Mr. Recchia. He put the number above 7,500, and said voters “want someone who is not going to throw people off a balcony, who is not going to go into a bathroom and have an affair with somebody.” Mr. Grimm, who is unmarried and has denied reports that he had a tryst with a woman in a wine bar bathroom , showed up a little late to the ferry terminal for the marine engineers’ endorsement. Emerging from a Buick Regal, he strode across the terminal, his arms never brushing his torso. He greeted his two endorsers and then contrasted his efforts to keep jobs in the maritime industry (“We started a maritime caucus”) with Mr. Recchia’s “trite phrases” and inexperience. “I know how to work with the federal agencies,” Mr. Grimm said. As he spoke, one of the three reporters present, a colleague of the NY1 correspondent Mr. Grimm had threatened to toss, crept closer. “Just back up a little bit,” he said sternly. “I feel like you’re on top of me.” She did as he asked. | New York;Michael G Grimm;Domenic M Recchia Jr;Campaign advertising;2014 Midterm Elections;House races;Congressional elections |
ny0004995 | [
"science",
"earth"
] | 2013/04/08 | Scientists Question Impact as Vineyards Turn Up in New Places | For more than a decade, wine experts have discussed the impact of climate change on wine grapes, agriculture’s diva, a marquee crop nurtured and pampered around the world. Now scientists are raising a new question: when grapes are transported to new areas, assuming warming weather and flagging rain make current regions unsuited to such harvests, what will the crop’s arrival do to the animals and plants already in residence? Will there be a conflict between prosecco and pandas in China? Will the contentious wolf hunts near Yellowstone National Park be complicated by new vineyards that crowd out everything else — wolves, elk and hunters? “One of the adaptation strategies for grape growers will be to move into areas that have a suitable climate,” said Rebecca Shaw, a scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund and an author of a new paper to be published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “This adaptation has the potential to threaten the survival of wildlife.” Or, in the words of the new study, “Vineyards have long-lasting effects on habitat quality and may significantly impact freshwater resources.” In addition to introducing sterilizing chemicals and fertilizer, which remake the ecosystem, mature vineyards “have low habitat value” for native species “and are visited more often by nonnative species.” Dr. Shaw believes that the movement of agriculture of all types into land that was once cold and inhospitable should be guided to some extent by its impact on existing ecosystems. “The adaptation of farmers who continue to grow crops and displace wildlife is something that needs a lot more attention everywhere,” she said. A year ago, a Stanford climate scientist, Noah Diffenbaugh, did a study predicting that increased heat in the atmosphere would result in higher volatility in corn prices. But the wine industry presents a more refined target for study, given the crop’s sensitivity and the generations of information that have been gathered on how much sunshine, rain and warmth will produce a grape with the ideal balance of sugar and acid. The wine industry has undergone more than 15 years of climate-driven change, marked by newly rich vintages in once-chilly regions and the establishment of new vineyards like Burrowing Owl Estate Winery in British Columbia, in the Canadian west, or Yaxley Estate in Tasmania, the island in southeastern Australia. Image A wine tasting there. The industry has undergone more than 15 years of climate-driven change. Credit Stuart Isett for The New York Times Nonetheless, it remains firmly centered in its traditional heartlands — Burgundy in France, Tuscany in Italy, California in the United States. But these traditional regions — particularly those that seemed to have the perfect blend of soil, sunshine and temperature — are facing an uncertain future. Robert Pincus, a scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, wrote in 2003, “Where the culture of wine production is tightly coupled to the current climate, something will have to give.” In the new paper, the authors use 17 different climate models to anticipate which current wine areas will face increasing heat and loss of rainfall, and which areas will warm up sufficiently to be hospitable to viticulture. They predict that under most climate models, as much as 47 percent of land suitable for wine grapes will be lost in the areas of Chile that have a Mediterranean-like climate. They also indicate that 59 percent of wine country in western North America — mostly in California — will be severely stressed by heat and declining rainfall, and that 74 percent of such land in Australia will no longer be compatible with viticulture. The equivalent figure for Mediterranean areas of Europe is the most striking; 85 percent of currently suitable lands would become unfriendly to vineyards by 2050. But it is the spread of wine country into wilder places that has conservationists most worried, and not just for the large animals that may be displaced, but also for smaller native plants. As the climate changes, said Lee Hannah, the lead author and a scientist at Conservation International, “things with feet and wings are going to move faster, plants are going to move slower. So it is very certain that human agriculture, and in this case wine cultivation, change will move faster than plants will evolve.” His paper predicts that “Western North America has the greatest area of increasing ecological footprint” suitable for wine grapes, especially in the Rocky Mountains near the border between Canada and the United States. Much of that area has been coveted by conservationists who want to create a Yukon-to-Yellowstone corridor for unimpeded migration of various kinds of wildlife, like pronghorn. In an interview, Dr. Pincus noted that the new study relied heavily on a series of models about climate, suitability of climate for wine grapes, and other elements, but said that its conclusions and concern about conflicts between wildlife and agriculture were robust. Dr. Pincus noted that a decade ago, Austrian winemakers were talking about moving their crop to higher altitudes where land had been undisturbed. Dr. Pincus said, “The tension is, do you want your Grüner Veltliner, or do you want some wild lands left in Europe?” He added, “Chile and California are going to have it harder — this is hard to argue with, this is robust.” | Wine;Animals;Agriculture;Climate Change;Global Warming;Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |
ny0259976 | [
"us"
] | 2011/06/05 | In Mountain View, 2 Contrasting Economic Worlds Intersect | At the Google campus on the outskirts of Mountain View, employees sip lattes under brightly colored umbrellas as others pass on company bicycles, laptops secured in the front baskets. This year the company will add substantially to its work force of more than 5,000 in that Silicon Valley city, and it has just leased nine acres to expand its campus. But closer to downtown, Carolina Rivera finds herself in a decidedly less attractive environment — the crowded office of the Community Services Agency, where she is looking for a job. She has three children to support and has not found anything since her hours at an organic-food factory were reduced. Those like Mrs. Rivera find life difficult in Mountain View: the competition for work is fierce, housing is expensive and cuts in government services are pending as the city tries to balance its budget. Mountain View, home to technology kingpins like Google, LinkedIn and Symantec, illustrates the disconnect between the current technology boom and the daily economic realities of many in Silicon Valley. The five biggest tech companies with headquarters in town are valued at more than $200 billion, but Mountain View, with a population of 74,000, faces a $2.6 million budget gap and has an unemployment rate of 7.7 percent. “We really are seeing two very different economies emerging,” said Emmett Carson, chief executive of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation . “We have the Google campus; they’re expanding, they’re adding employees, they’re doing very well financially. But the nonprofit sector and local government have been stretched to the maximum.” Like many other local governments, Mountain View’s has struggled with rising costs for city employee health care and retirement. Tax collections have picked up a bit from the depths of the recession, but because Internet companies generally do not produce products that are subject to local sales taxes, the Web 2.0 boom has not provided a direct financial boost to the city. That is not to say that Mountain View does not benefit from the presence of Google and other big tech companies. Google just signed a 52-year, $30 million lease on nine acres of city property to expand its campus, and agreed to make the payment up front. City officials are leaning toward putting that money into a trust (partly as a reserve in the event that some of it has to be paid back if Google changes its plans) and using only the interest earned — about $1 million in the next fiscal year — to help close the budget gap. Jac Siegel, mayor of Mountain View, said that he meets with Google representatives regularly and that the company recently gave $1 million to the local school district. “That was a nice thing to do,” Mr. Siegel said. Ellis Berns, the city’s economic development manager, said: “We’re proud of the fact that they’re here. I think it adds a certain level of excitement to the community to have dynamic innovative companies.” Dan Hoffman, Google’s director of real estate and workplace services, wrote in an e-mail: “2011 will be our biggest hiring year in company history and we’re excited to continue growing in Mountain View. Over the years, we’ve worked closely with the city and we look forward to continuing this relationship for many years to come.” Still, Mayor Siegel is not ready to declare the Internet giant a model corporate citizen. “I’ve suggested — and I’m not afraid to say this on the record — that their generosity to us is underwhelming in terms of what they do for our city." Part of the problem is that corporate campuses, with their own cafeterias, day care centers and other employee perks, are not always very integrated into the surrounding community. “The industry doesn’t create a lot of demand for services,” said Terry Christensen, a professor at San Jose State University who specializes in Silicon Valley politics. “The Google campus, they pay their taxes, but their workers don’t necessarily use parks, police and other traditional services, so you get a disconnect between the businesses themselves and the people who work in them.” Just as important, many local residents are simply not in the talent pool for high-tech jobs. The people looking for work at the Community Services Agency have skills in other areas, like housecleaning, gardening and washing dishes, and those jobs are scarce. The agency’s executive director, Tom Myers, grew up in Mountain View, across the street from the apricot orchards that used to dominate the area. His agency was set up in 1957 to help poor seasonal farm workers. Mr. Myers saw an increase in need from 2006 to 2010. Though there has been a slight decline this year, the agency still has 180 people taking food from its shelves each day, and has provided homeless services to more than 300 people over the past nine months. “It’s like there’s two different worlds: those able to access employment and benefits of the tech sector, and those doing jobs not connected to it,” Mr. Myers said. The city government and its employees are in some respects caught in the middle. On the one hand, the tech business, which in addition to the Internet giants includes thousands of start-ups and small businesses, has put Mountain View in a better place than most other Bay Area cities. Median household income is almost $87,000, and the NASA Ames Research Center and the Shoreline Amphitheatre add diversity to the city’s economic base. But city workers are still being asked to give back. John Miguel, president of the Mountain View firefighters union, estimates that the concessions his group has agreed to — further sharing of the cost of benefits, leaving three positions unfilled and reducing hours for a fire marshal position — will save the city more than $500,000 in the next fiscal year. “The city has told us things are tight,” Mr. Miguel said. “These are tough times. We’re trying to help out.” All the local unions are in talks with the city to try to save $1 million more. Otherwise, the city may resort to layoffs and elimination of some outreach programs. “It is ironic that the businesses located there are thriving and the city is not,” Professor Christensen said. In downtown Mountain View, which is dominated by restaurants, business seems to be bouncing back, and nobody is begging for money in the streets. But Mr. Myers cited the “invisible poverty” in the city. “You have people living in poverty literally right next door to people making a lot of money,” he said. Dr. Carson of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation added: “Those communities have few places to meet and experience each other. Once you are on one of these campuses, there’s a different world. How do you get them to recognize they are the yin and yang of one community?” Just because homeless people are not visible, doesn’t mean they are not there, he said. “People on the margin are really smart,” Dr. Carson said. “If you become a problem to the vibrant business area, it becomes uncomfortable. They migrate to other places because they’re looking for work.” And it can take a lot of work to live in Mountain View, especially if you must work for the minimum wage. The median single-family home in Mountain View cost about $890,000 as of May. And Mr. Myers said two-bedroom apartments rent for well over $1,500 a month. “You can’t make it on a wait-staff salary,” he said. | Labor and Jobs;Google Inc;Economic Conditions and Trends;Mountain View (Calif) |
ny0223144 | [
"science",
"earth"
] | 2010/11/10 | PG&E Official Suspended in Fight Over ‘Smart Meters’ | SAN FRANCISCO — A Pacific Gas and Electric executive has been suspended with pay for using a fake name to join an online discussion organized by opponents of so-called smart meters, the utility company said on Tuesday. In an e-mail last week, the executive, William Devereaux, wrote that he wanted “to see what I can do to help” opponents of the meters, which send electronic signals about energy consumption from homes to a central monitoring station. Mr. Devereaux is the senior director of PG&E’s SmartMeter Program . Although his message was signed “Ralph,” his e-mail server betrayed him, identifying him by his real name. Sandi Maurer, the moderator of an opposition group, the California EMF Safety Network , immediately wrote back: “Hi, aren’t you the head of the Smart Meter program at PG&E? We’d love your help! Can you help us obtain a Smart Meter moratorium ASAP?” Jeff Smith, a spokesman for the utility company, said Mr. Devereaux had been suspended with pay pending the outcome of an investigation. “We do not at all condone this kind of behavior,” he said. “It is not in keeping with PG&E’s core values of honesty and transparency.” Mr. Smith said Mr. Devereaux would make no comment. But in interviews with The San Francisco Chronicle and The San Jose Mercury News, Mr. Devereaux confirmed that he had sent the e-mail message and said it was a “mistake.” He said he had been monitoring online exchanges among smart-meter opponents for weeks “to better understand their concerns.” It was a public relations setback for PG&E, one of the California utilities that have been installing the digital meters in Northern and Central California. The goal is to create a more flexible electricity grid that can respond to fluctuations in demand across the region and the country. Opponents have argued that the meters inflate electric bills, emit harmful electromagnetic radiation and reflect encroaching Big Brotherism. Mr. Devereaux’s ruse was quickly denounced by groups that oppose smart meters. “This is a devious act for someone trying to undermine legitimate concerns about the health impact of radio frequency exposure,” said Joshua Hart, a leader of the group Stop Smart Meters. Ellen Marks, 58, of Lafayette, Calif., a smart-meter opponent who blames cellphone use for her husband’s brain cancer, said: “It’s absolutely outrageous and despicable. We’ve been honest. We brought all our issues to the table. He didn’t have to do this.” And it apparently was not the first time. On Sept. 18, someone using the same e-mail address submitted a comment to a discussion group called SmartWarriorMarin. It criticized “the hypocrisy of your own arguments as you pick and chose yourself about the science regarding rf, make unsubstantiated claims about smart meter energy use, and make completely irresponsible allegations trying to link smart meters to the tragedy of San Bruno.” (The abbreviation “rf” stands for radio frequency emissions. The San Bruno reference concerned the explosion of a PG&E gas line in San Bruno, Calif., that killed eight people in September and destroyed or damaged more than 50 homes; the blast has not been linked to the use of smart meters.) The argument that radiation from devices like cellphones or smart meters can cause health problems has generally been greeted skeptically in scientific circles. But in the Bay Area those concerns are taken seriously. This summer, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors tentatively approved a measure requiring cellphone makers to tell customers how much radiation their devices emit. Homes in the Bay Area were among the first to get smart meters. The utility has installed 6.5 million of them over the last three years. Early critics argued that the devices were inflating their bills. A contractor’s report that the utility submitted to regulators two months ago concluded that the meters’ readings were accurate. | Suspensions Dismissals and Resignations;Pacific Gas and Electric Co;Devereaux William;Smart Meters;Energy Efficiency |
ny0136451 | [
"business"
] | 2008/04/25 | Whirlpool’s Profit Drops 20% on Declining Sales | ATLANTA (Reuters) — Whirlpool , the appliance maker, posted much lower-than-expected quarterly profit on Thursday as sales declined in the United States and oil and steel costs soared. It also cut its full-year earnings outlook, sending its shares down sharply. Record costs for energy and metals are compounding the woes of appliance makers, which have already been wrestling with weak results in the American market as the housing slump lowers demand and higher food and gasoline prices cause consumers to curb big-ticket purchases. The company, which makes Maytag, KitchenAid and Amana appliances, forecast a steeper drop in industry appliance shipments this year in North America, its biggest market. The company also announced more price increases for this year. Whirlpool’s first-quarter profit fell 20 percent, to $94 million, or $1.22 a share, from $117 million, or $1.46 a share, a year earlier. Analysts had expected $1.57 a share, according to Reuters Estimates. Sales rose 5 percent to $4.6 billion, better than the $4.46 billion analysts expected, as the weak dollar helped bolster international sales. But sales fell 3 percent in North America, and operating profit in the region plunged 73 percent to $44 million, hurt by higher costs for resins and metals like steel and copper. Whirlpool expects industry unit shipments in the United States to fall 5 to 6 percent this year, a steeper drop than its February forecast of a 3 to 5 percent decline. Sales rose 13 percent in Europe, 24 percent in Latin America and 19 percent in Asia. Whirlpool expects industrywide appliance shipments in Europe to fall 2 percent to 3 percent this year; it had previously forecast no change. | Whirlpool Corp;Company Reports;Sales |
ny0148972 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2008/09/17 | Missing Teacher Is Found, Alive, Floating in New York Bay | Almost three weeks after she was reported missing, a young teacher was spotted floating in New York’s Upper Bay on Tuesday and was rescued by deckhands from a Staten Island ferry. The teacher, Hannah Upp, 23, was plucked from the swells, taken ashore and transported to Richmond University Medical Center on Staten Island, where officials said she was in stable condition. The disappearance of Ms. Upp, a New York City teaching fellow set to begin her second year as a Spanish instructor at Thurgood Marshall Middle School in Harlem, baffled her relatives and friends and touched off a citywide search. The teachers’ union offered a $10,000 reward for information. After she vanished — on Aug. 29, just before the start of the school year — investigators found her keys, credit cards, wallet, cellphone and passport among her other belongings in her apartment in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. She is believed to have last withdrawn money from her bank account on Aug. 28. Ms. Upp was seen in early September checking her e-mail in the Apple store at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street in Manhattan, the police said. When a classmate from Pace University approached her, she evaded him and disappeared again, the police said. The police determined that Ms. Upp had been in the store twice within four days, and that she had taken showers at branches of the New York Sports Clubs, of which she was a member, said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman. On Tuesday morning, she was seen at a Dunkin’ Donuts near the ferry terminal on Staten Island. But by the time officers arrived, she had apparently jumped into the water. Shortly before noon, as the ferry John J. Marchi approached the Staten Island terminal, a pilot saw a woman in the water, officials said. The pilot had some deckhands launch a small rescue craft and steer it toward her, said Scott Gastel, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation, which runs the ferry. Michael J. Sabatino, 28, who was operating the rescue boat — a 12-foot skiff with an outboard motor — saw Ms. Upp, slowed the boat and grabbed her by the ankle as his partner took hold of her shoulders and back. “She was floating face down in the water, just like lifeless,” Mr. Sabatino said. “She gasped desperately for air and she laid down and started crying when we got her in the boat.” Ms. Upp was dressed in the same clothes she was said to be wearing when she disappeared: a red tank top and black shorts. Mr. Browne, the police spokesman, said he could not speculate on why Ms. Upp had jumped into the water. She declined to speak to detectives. Hannah Wood, a friend of Ms. Upp’s, said on Tuesday that she believed Ms. Upp’s mother would go to her daughter’s side, but she declined to comment further. | Missing Persons;Upp Hannah |
ny0032948 | [
"us"
] | 2013/12/29 | As the Obamas Celebrate Christmas, Rituals of Faith Become Less Visible | HONOLULU — President Obama celebrated a low-key Christmas in Hawaii this year. He sang carols, opened presents with his family, and visited a nearby military base to wish the troops “Mele Kalikimaka” — the Hawaiian phrase meaning “Merry Christmas.” But the one thing the president and his family did not do — something they have rarely done since he entered the White House — was attend Christmas church services. “He has not gone to church hardly at all, as president,” said Gary Scott Smith, the author of “Faith and the Presidency: From George Washington to George W. Bush,” adding that it is “very unusual for a president not to attend” Christmas services. Historically, watching the nation’s first family head to church dressed in their Sunday best, especially around the holiday season, was something of a ritual. Yet Mr. Obama’s faith is a more complicated, more private, and perhaps — religious and presidential historians say — a more inclusive affair. And his religious habits appear to be in step with a changing America, with fewer people these days reporting that they attend church on Christmas Day or Christmas Eve. According to a Pew Research Center study released this month , 54 percent of adults said they planned to attend Christmas religious services, while 69 percent said they traditionally did so as children. Mr. Obama has gone to church 18 times during his nearly five years in the White House, according to Mark Knoller of CBS News, an unofficial White House historian, while his predecessor, Mr. Bush, attended 120 times during his eight years in office. But those numbers do not reflect the depth of Mr. Obama’s faith, said Joshua DuBois, the former head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. “President Obama is a committed Christian,” said Mr. DuBois, who sends the president a daily devotional by email, and is the author of “The President’s Devotional.” “He has a serious practice of faith even though he doesn’t necessarily wear it on his sleeve,” he said. Mr. Obama’s religion first garnered national headlines during the 2008 campaign; after sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. — Mr. Obama’s spiritual mentor — included inflammatory remarks, Mr. Obama was ultimately forced to renounce the minister and sever ties with the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which he and his family had attended for 20 years. But rumors that he was a “pretend Christian” or a Muslim Manchurian candidate — fueled by his Kenyan background and the boyhood years he spent in Indonesia — dogged him. A 2010 study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that nearly one in five Americans thought the president was a Muslim, and 43 percent did not know what his religion was. “I would argue that Obama’s faith has been one of the most misunderstood of any president out there,” Mr. Smith said. Image President Obama and his family with the Rev. Luis Leon at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington in October. Credit Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press People close to the president say that Mr. Obama’s spiritual beliefs are profoundly held. In addition to the daily devotional he receives — which contains lines of Scripture and quotations from people as wide-ranging as Nina Simone and Johnny Cash — Mr. Obama regularly speaks to spiritual leaders on a variety of topics. Every year on his birthday, Mr. DuBois said, the president convenes a phone call with ministers “to thank God for the year that was and pray for the year ahead.” He has turned to his faith during difficult times, and is comfortable invoking Scripture; his speeches and remarks are peppered with the phrase “I am my brother’s keeper,” echoing the Old Testament phrase. His vision of faith is also an inclusive one, perhaps an outgrowth of his own eclectic upbringing. He spent several childhood years in Indonesia, with its predominantly Muslim population, but attended a private Catholic grade school for much of that time; he later lived in Hawaii, a melting pot of cultures. Mr. Obama set his own inclusive tone early, declaring during his first Inaugural Address, “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers.” He was the first president to hold an Easter prayer breakfast, and he also held the first Passover Seder at the White House, traditions he has repeated. “He’s very conscious of the fact that this is a pluralistic nation,” said Randall Balmer, the chairman of Dartmouth College’s religion department and the author of “God in the White House: A History.” Yet the public rituals of religion have proved tricky for Mr. Obama. When he arrived in Washington after his election in 2008, many of the city’s churches began furiously vying to have him and his family join their congregation. As president, he has attended services at several of the city’s African-American churches, as well as St. John’s Episcopal Church, which is across the street from the White House. But he ultimately opted against choosing a spiritual home in the nation’s capital. “I think part of the reason he’s been wary of affiliating with a church in Washington is that he got so burned by the Jeremiah Wright situation, and he’s kind of backed away from that,” Mr. Balmer said. The public has long cared about the religion of its president. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, for example, was not a regular churchgoer before he entered office. After he was elected, at the urging of the Rev. Billy Graham, he joined the Presbyterian Church, and was baptized, becoming a diligent member of the faith. Part of Mr. Obama’s decision to largely opt out of religious services reflects a desire to avoid disruptions by his Secret Service detail and security requirements, echoing concerns of Ronald Reagan, who presidential historians say rarely went to church. “The important thing to President Obama isn’t where you worship God, but how you serve God by serving other people,” Mr. DuBois said. Mr. Balmer put it more bluntly: “If the calculus is, ‘Do I spend two hours going to church Sunday morning or do I get to watch college basketball Sunday afternoon?’ If he had to choose between the two, and knowing Obama, he’d probably choose college basketball.” He added, with a laugh, “And that’s a calculation many Americans make on a weekly basis.” | Religion and Belief;Barack Obama;White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships;Christmas;President of the United States |
ny0151344 | [
"nyregion",
"nyregionspecial2"
] | 2008/08/17 | Farm Program Aims to Teach Children Healthy Eating | When Susan Gaulden enrolled her 4 ½-year-old son, Chris, in HealthBarn USA, a nutritional program for children and families at Abma’s Farm and Market in Wyckoff, her intention wasn’t to turn a poor eater into a good one. “He was already a healthy eater,” Ms. Gaulden, 40, of Ramsey, said of Chris. But she still has concerns about what he eats. “Most kids think food comes from the food store,” she said when she accompanied her son to a recent “Summer Seedlings” class for 3- to 5-year-olds ($400 for a 10-week summer course of 90-minute classes; there are other year-round classes for children up to age 15 and adults). The children tend their own one-eighth-acre organic garden in the midst of Abma’s 32 acres, which is now overflowing with tomatoes, zucchini and peppers. The farm’s nonorganic market is open year-round to the public. In a classroom in a converted barn on this 75-year-old family farm, they learn how to make natural meals and snacks. Stacey Antine, 40, a registered dietician who opened HealthBarn USA in 2005, seeks to integrate field and kitchen, compiling recipes the children can follow. “It’s great for kids to have a farm experience, but they need to bring it home,” said Ms. Antine, who hopes to franchise HealthBarn USA beyond Abma’s, where she rents space. When the children learned about honey recently, they saw the beehives and helped their teacher make a banana, orange and strawberry smoothie sweetened with honey. Most of the 12 children liked the drink; at least, none said, “yuck,” a word that is not permitted at HealthBarn. Parents and children may want to take that lesson home. HealthBarn USA at Abma’s Farm and Market, 700 Lawlins Road, Wyckoff; (201) 891-2066. www.healthbarnusa.com . KELLY FEENEY | Children and Youth;Organic Food;Food |
ny0116107 | [
"sports",
"soccer"
] | 2012/10/05 | Red Bulls Have 3 of 4 Top-Paid Players in M.L.S. | NEW YORK (AP) — Australian midfielder Tim Cahill has the fourth-highest salary in Major League Soccer, earning $3.6 million from the New York Red Bulls. The MLS Players Union released updated salaries on Thursday, with former Everton midfielder Cahill joining ex-Arsenal striker Thierry Henry ($5.6 million total compensation) and Rafa Marquez ($4.6 million) on the high-spending Red Bulls, who replaced general manager Erik Soler with Jerome de Bontin on Tuesday. The only other players in MLS making seven figures are the Los Angeles Galaxy trio of David Beckham ($4 million), Robbie Keane ($3.4 million) and Landon Donovan ($2.4 million), Montreal forward Marco Di Vaio ($1.9 million), Portland forward Kris Boyd ($1.5 million), Toronto’s Torsten Frings ($2.4 million) and Danny Koevermans ($1.6 million), Dallas midfielder Julian DeGuzman ($1.9 million) and Vancouver’s Kenny Miller ($1.2 million). | New York Red Bulls (Soccer Team);Henry Thierry;Cahill Tim;Marquez Rafa;Soccer |
ny0022136 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2013/09/21 | Pakistan to Free a Taliban Commander | ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Pakistani government said Friday that it would release a senior Taliban commander on Saturday to facilitate peace talks in neighboring Afghanistan. The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, one of the founding members of the Taliban, has been in Pakistani custody since his arrest in a joint Pakistani and American intelligence raid in the port city of Karachi in 2010. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced his impending release in a brief statement on Friday evening. The statement said Mr. Baradar would be set free on Saturday but did not give further details. Pakistani officials previously said Mr. Baradar would not be handed over to the Afghan authorities despite longstanding demands from the Afghan government. President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan raised the issue during a recent visit to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, when he met with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Pakistani officials portrayed the move as a good-will gesture that would help bring the Taliban and Afghanistan to the negotiating table as the United States prepares to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014. “The timing is quite significant,” said Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, chairman of the defense committee in the Pakistani Senate, “as he is an important, credible figure who has the potential to have outreach to the Taliban leaders.” Mr. Sayed, who led a Pakistani delegation this month to Kabul, the Afghan capital, said, “There was a positive response on this from the Kabul regime, which seems to have high hopes and greater confidence in the new Pakistani government’s ability to deliver on Afghan-related issues.” Pakistan has been steadily releasing Taliban prisoners, most recently during the first week of September, when seven were freed. But the release of Mr. Baradar, who is the former top military commander of the Taliban movement, is the most significant, as it is seen as crucial to initiating the peace talks. | Abdul Ghani Baradar;Pakistan;Taliban;Afghanistan War |
ny0081671 | [
"sports"
] | 2015/11/01 | Detroit Lions vs. Kansas City Chiefs Preview | Detroit Lions (1-6) at Kansas City Chiefs (2-5) 9:30 a.m. Line: Chiefs by 4.5 Matthew Stafford has thrown for 661 yards, six touchdowns and just one interception in the two games since he was benched because of his poor performance in a Week 5 loss to Arizona. But last week the team struggled to keep up with Minnesota, so Jim Bob Cooter was promoted to offensive coordinator in place of the fired Joe Lombardi. The first test of Cooter’s offense will come in London against a tough Kansas City defense, but with the Chiefs missing Jamaal Charles and possibly Jeremy Maclin, the Lions could win for the second time in three weeks after opening the season 0-5. PICK: LIONS | Football;Detroit Lions;Kansas City Chiefs |
ny0205426 | [
"us"
] | 2009/01/09 | Rev. R. J. Neuhaus, Political Theologian, Dies at 72 | The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a theologian who transformed himself from a liberal Lutheran leader of the civil rights and antiwar struggles in the 1960s to a Roman Catholic beacon of the neoconservative movement of today, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 72 and lived in Manhattan. He learned that he had cancer in November and recently developed a systemic infection that doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center say led to his death, said Joseph Bottum, editor of First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion, Culture and Public Life . Father Neuhaus founded the journal and served as editor in chief. Father Neuhaus’s best-known book, “The Naked Public Square,” argued that American democracy must not be stripped of religious morality. Published in 1984, it provoked a debate about the role of religion in affairs of state and was embraced by the growing Christian conservative movement. In the last 20 years, Father Neuhaus helped give evangelical Protestants and Catholics a theological framework for joining forces in the nation’s culture wars. With Charles Colson, the former Watergate felon who became a born-again leader of American evangelicals, Father Neuhaus convened a group that in 1994 produced “ Evangelicals and Catholics Together .” It was a widely distributed manifesto that initially came under fire by critics, who accused the two men of diluting theological differences for political expediency. But the document was ultimately credited with helping to cement the alliance, which has reshaped American politics. “Richard’s Protestant background gave him a unique brokerage position,” George Weigel, a Catholic commentator and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, said in an interview on Wednesday. Mr. Weigel likened Father Neuhaus to the Rev. John Courtney Murray, the Jesuit theologian who was often called on to navigate the relationship between religion and American government in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. Mr. Weigel said of Father Neuhaus, “He was a philosopher and theologian of American democracy, and that is the bright line that links all” the stages of his life. Father Neuhaus underwent several conversions in his life. He was born in Pembroke, Ontario, and emigrated to the United States, which he came to love fervently. He was a Lutheran minister, like his father, but at the age of 54 was ordained a Roman Catholic priest. Politically, he evolved from a liberal Democrat and admirer of Senator Eugene J. McCarthy to a conservative and occasional adviser to President Bush. No matter which side he was on, Father Neuhaus was always a leader. The Rev. Max L. Stackhouse, a professor emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary, said he first glimpsed Pastor Neuhaus marching in Selma, Ala., in a row of clergy members flanking the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “He thought that somebody ought to be out front carrying the ball, and he designated himself, and he was pretty good at it,” Dr. Stackhouse said. “He was not poverty-stricken when it came to confidence, and he did a lot of his homework and made judgments and felt very secure in them. He did enjoy controversy.” In the 1960s, he was pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church, a predominantly black and Hispanic Lutheran congregation in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He was arrested at a sit-in at the New York City Board of Education headquarters, demanding integration of the public schools. With the war in Vietnam raging, he and other prominent members of the clergy, like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel , founded Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam , an advocacy group. This contact with Jewish and Catholic leaders seeded his passion for interfaith dialogue. In 1968, Pastor Neuhaus was a delegate for Senator McCarthy to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. When the Chicago police clashed with demonstrators, he was among those arrested and tried for disorderly conduct. Two years later, he made an unsuccessful bid to become the Democratic candidate for the Congressional seat representing the 14th District, in Brooklyn. By the mid-1970s his ideas about the relationship between religion and politics were evolving. He helped write a theological statement criticizing churches for speaking out on secular social issues without sufficient attention to faith and spirituality. He joined conservative clergy members in a campaign against the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches , accusing the organizations of a taking a leftist approach to international affairs and cozying up to Marxist governments. He wrote the founding manifesto for the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a group that challenges mainline Protestant denominations it considers too liberal. In 1990, after years of uneasiness in the Lutheran church, Father Neuhaus was accepted into the Catholic Church by Cardinal John O’Connor of New York in the chapel of the cardinal’s residence on Madison Avenue. A year later the cardinal ordained him a priest. Father Neuhaus insisted that his conversion was not so much political as theological. He said the goal of Martin Luther’s Reformation had always been a united Christian church. “I have long believed that the Roman Catholic Church is the fullest expression of the church of Christ through time,” he said in an interview then. His survivors include his sisters, Mildred Schwich of East Wenatchee, Wash., and Johanna Speckhard of Valparaiso, Ind.; and his brothers, Clemens, of Redlands, Calif.; George, of Seeshaupt, Germany; Joseph, of Stone Mountain, Ga.; and Thomas, of St. Hippolyte, Quebec. Father Neuhaus wrote and edited nearly 30 books, among them “The Catholic Moment: The Paradox of the Church in the Postmodern World,” “Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus From the Cross,” and “As I Lay Dying: Meditations Upon Returning,” about his near-death experience during an early bout with colon cancer. He advised President Bush and the White House on issues like stem cell research and gay marriage. On Thursday, President and Mrs. Bush issued a statement praising “his wise counsel and guidance.” When Time magazine published a list of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America in 2005, Father Neuhaus, despite his Roman Catholic affiliation, was on it. In First Things, the journal he founded, he maintained a column of caustic commentary on political, social and religious developments until he fell ill last year. Father Neuhaus’s last book was “American Babylon,” to be published in March by Basic Books. In it, he depicts America as a nation defined by consumerism and decadence and argues that Christians must learn to live there as if they are in exile from the promised land. | Neuhaus Richard John;Religion and Churches;Priests;Deaths (Obituaries);Christians and Christianity |
ny0097455 | [
"technology",
"personaltech"
] | 2015/06/18 | Podcasting Blossoms, but in Slow Motion | Is podcasting in the middle of a long boom or a short bubble? The future of radio, a medium already being buffeted by streaming music, may be riding on the answer. Podcasting — a terrible tech insider’s name for delivering radiolike shows directly to your phone — has long been prone to cycles of hype and doom. While the medium is more than a decade old, from the moment the very first pods were cast, people have been calling podcasting either the world’s next great media revolution, or another failed byway in digital experimentation. The truth, as ever, is somewhere in the middle. The breakout success last fall of “Serial,” a true-crime investigation spun off by the public radio show “This American Life,” attracted serious mainstream attention to podcasts, and set off another storm of boosterism about their place in the future of media. Now, the hype has cooled, but podcasting is still chugging along. The largest podcasting operations are attracting sizable audiences and advertising revenue. The ads work. Large and small advertisers report a significant upside to the campaigns they run on podcasts, and ad rates on top-tier podcasts approach $100 per thousand listeners, which is many times what it costs advertisers to reach audiences in most other digital formats. Yet the overall audience for podcasts is growing very slowly. In February, Edison Research reported that 17 percent of Americans had listened to one podcast in the previous month. That is up just slightly from Edison’s 2012 survey, when 14 percent of Americans had done so. The business also has some problems, including a labor-intensive ad-buying process, a shortage of audio producers and the inability to accurately measure who is listening. So don’t call podcasting a bubble or a bust. Instead, it is that rarest thing in the technology industry: a slow, steady and unrelentingly persistent digital tortoise that could eventually — but who really knows? — slay the analog behemoths in its path. Image Alex Blumberg, left, and Matthew Lieber, co-founders of Gimlet, on the roof of their office in Brooklyn. Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times One company worth watching is Gimlet Media , a podcasting start-up founded last year by the public radio star Alex Blumberg and his business partner, Matthew Lieber. Gimlet, which raised nearly $1.5 million from investors and employs 18 people, now shows three production-heavy narrative podcasts — programs that, in their sound and journalistic integrity, are analogous to “Serial” and “This American Life.” The company has found a substantial audience. Gimlet’s shows attract four million listeners a month, a number that has doubled since the beginning of the year. (Gimlet counts one download or stream of a show as a single “listen”; as I’ll explain below, this measurement may not necessarily be accurate.) Gimlet is betting that high production values will win the future of podcasting. Gimlet’s shows also suggest that podcasting can foster new kinds of programming that might never have taken off in traditional radio. For instance, the premise of “ Mystery Show ,” Gimlet’s newest production, which began playing last month, sounds a bit like a stunt. On each episode, Starlee Kine, a longtime public radio personality, solves mysteries for people. But Ms. Kine does not investigate the kind of serious mysteries addressed by the producers of “Serial.” Instead her inquiries are the sort of ridiculously fun questions that no journalist would ever get paid to answer. Why, for example, was Britney Spears once seen carrying a book by a writer that no one ever reads ? “Until podcasts blew up, I was about to leave radio — there didn’t seem to be a place for this show,” Ms. Kine told me. Mr. Blumberg said that he couldn’t imagine the show running on traditional radio. “It feels so new,” he said. “It’s sort of like comedy journalism. We follow the rules of journalism, but the purpose is to make you feel something. The purpose is amusement and entertainment.” (Speaking of comedy journalism, I do a weekly tech-commentary podcast with a friend who works at Business Insider.) “Mystery Show” has also proved Gimlet’s thesis that a network of shows can create a self-sustaining audience. With the possible exception of “Serial,” podcasts aren’t really part of the viral web. They don’t get chatted about on Facebook and Twitter, and the sharing and discovery features of many podcasting apps are limited. For the most part, people hear about new podcasts from other podcasts they already listen to. And once people start listening to podcasts, they keep listening to more podcasts. The share of podcasts in Americans’ diet of audio programming grew by 18 percent from 2014 to 2015, according to Edison . People who listen to podcasts daily spend about two hours a day, on average, with podcasts, a larger share than for any other form of audio, Edison reported. For Gimlet, listeners’ willingness to try new podcasts has translated into instant audiences for its newest shows. “Startup,” the company’s first show, took 30 days to reach 100,000 listeners a week. Its weekly audience is now more than 500,000. “Mystery Show” took four days to reach 100,000 listeners, mainly because it was being promoted by Gimlet’s two other shows. By its fourth episode, its audience was about 250,000 weekly listens. Banking on a similar effect, in February, the parent company of the web magazine Slate — which has been producing podcasts for years — created Panoply , a network of shows it produces with media partners, including The New York Times. Matt Turck, the chief revenue officer for Panoply, said the audience for Slate’s own podcasts grew from two million downloads a month to six million downloads a month in 2014. By combining many shows into a single network, Panoply hopes to sell a single large audience to advertisers. Neither Panoply nor Gimlet would discuss revenue or profits in detail, but both said the advertising business was booming. Podcast advertising has been dominated by a regular cast of mainly tech companies looking to attract a relatively wealthy audience with an affinity for technology. Firms like Audible, Stamps.com, MailChimp, Squarespace and several apparel and food companies are regular sponsors. More recently, podcasts have also begun to attract large entertainment marketers — movies and TV shows now advertise on podcasts — and even large national brands like Ford and Acura have sponsored shows. Several advertisers told me that podcast ads had proved to be tremendously effective. They can’t be easily skipped, and because they are often read by hosts, audiences are often convinced of their authenticity. “We feel it creates a deep personal connection to our brand,” said Ryan Stansky, the marketing manager who runs podcast advertising at Squarespace, which currently sponsors hundreds of podcasts. Even though rates are high, selling ads is still a laborious process and top-tier shows limit the number of ads that appear in each show. The more ads that appear, the less each advertiser will pay, a dynamic that may limit the upside of the business. There are also technical problems to be solved. Podcasters can count their downloads, but it’s difficult to tell if downloads translate to listeners, and it’s nearly impossible to tell who is listening, and to figure out what sort of ads listeners may like. There are also few standards in the business, which means podcasters and advertisers are often suspicious of one another’s claims. “I’ve heard directly from sales reps in casual settings that numbers get lied about,” Mr. Stansky said. “I’ve heard that from the other side — sales reps that I’ve worked with saying, ‘Yeah, we lied to you about numbers.’ And to me, that’s the most scary part of it all, that you’re paying for something that you’re not actually getting.” Podcasters concede that dodgy numbers are a problem, but they argue it is one that will be solved as the business matures and technology improves. Several advertisers, including Squarespace, create “offer codes” or specific web links to promote as part of their ads — a way to track how many customers podcasts bring to their sites. Larger advertisers like Ford said their investments in podcast marketing are small, so the numbers aren’t being watched closely. And the Interactive Advertising Bureau, an online ad trade group, is creating standards for podcast audience measurement. In other words, there is a lot about this business that still needs to be worked out. This will most likely happen eventually. Podcasting is destined to be huge, both as a medium and a business. “It’s the future of radio,” Mr. Turck of Panoply said. Just don’t expect that future to come tomorrow. | Podcast;advertising,marketing;Gimlet Media;Online advertising;Startup |
ny0010825 | [
"business"
] | 2013/02/01 | Food Companies Meet to Weigh Federal Label for Gene-Engineered Ingredients | With Washington State on the verge of a ballot initiative that would require labeling of some foods containing genetically engineered ingredients and other states considering similar measures, some of the major food companies and Wal-Mart, the country’s largest grocery store operator, have been discussing lobbying for a national labeling program. Executives from PepsiCo, ConAgra and about 20 other major food companies, as well as Wal-Mart and advocacy groups that favor labeling, attended a meeting in January in Washington convened by the Meridian Institute, which organizes discussions of major issues. The inclusion of Wal-Mart has buoyed hopes among labeling advocates that the big food companies will shift away from tactics like those used to defeat Proposition 37 in California last fall, when corporations spent more than $40 million to oppose the labeling of genetically modified foods. “They spent an awful lot of money in California — talk about a lack of return on investment,” said Gary Hirshberg, co-chairman of the Just Label It campaign, which advocates national labeling, and chairman of Stonyfield, an organic dairy company. Instead of quelling the demand for labeling, the defeat of the California measure has spawned a ballot initiative in Washington State and legislative proposals in Connecticut, Vermont, New Mexico and Missouri, and a swelling consumer boycott of some organic or “natural” brands owned by major food companies. Mr. Hirshberg, who attended the January meeting, said he knew of roughly 20 states considering labeling requirements. “The big food companies found themselves in an uncomfortable position after Prop. 37, and they’re talking among themselves about alternatives to merely replaying that fight over and over again,” said Charles Benbrook, a research professor at Washington State University who attended the meeting. “They spent a lot of money, got a lot of bad press that propelled the issue into the national debate and alienated some of their customer base, as well as raising issues with some trading partners,” said Mr. Benbrook, who does work on sustainable agriculture. For more than a decade, almost all processed foods in the United States — like cereals, snacks and salad dressings — have contained ingredients from plants with DNA that has been manipulated in a laboratory. The Food and Drug Administration, other regulators and many scientists say these foods pose no danger. But as Americans ask more pointed questions about what they are eating, popular suspicions about the health and environmental effects of biotechnology are fueling a movement to require that food from genetically modified crops be labeled, if not eliminated. Impending F.D.A. approval of a genetically modified salmon and the Agriculture Department’s consideration of genetically engineered apples have further intensified the debate. “We’re at a point where, this summer, families could be sitting at their tables and wondering whether the salmon and sweet corn they’re about to eat has been genetically modified,” said Trudy Bialic, director of public affairs at PCC Natural Markets in Seattle. “The fish has really accelerated concerns.” Mr. Hirshberg said some company representatives wanted to find ways to persuade the Food and Drug Administration to proceed with federal labeling. “The F.D.A. is not only employing 20-year-old, and we think obsolete, standards for materiality, but there is a general tendency on the part of the F.D.A. to be resistant to change,” he said. “With an issue as polarized and politicized as this one, it’s going to take a broad-based coalition to crack through that barrier.” Morgan Liscinsky, an F.D.A. spokeswoman, said the agency considered the “totality of all the data and relevant information” when forming policy guidance. “We’ve continued to evaluate data as it has become available over the last 20 years,” she said. Image Chris McManus, with boxes of petitions for his initiative to require the labeling of gene-engineered food sold in Washington State. Credit Rachel La Corte/Associated Press Neither Mr. Hirshberg nor Mr. Benbrook would identify other companies that participated in the talks, but others confirmed some of the companies represented. Caroline Starke, who represents the Meridian Institute, said she could not comment on a specific meeting or participants. Proponents of labeling in Washington State have taken a somewhat different tack from those in California, arguing that the failure to label will hurt the state’s fisheries and apple and wheat farms. “It’s a bigger issue than just the right to know,” Ms. Bialic said. “It reaches deep into our state’s economy because of the impact this is going to have on international trade.” A third of the apples grown in Washington State are exported, many of them to markets for high-value products around the Pacific Rim, where many countries require labeling. Apple, fish and wheat farmers in Washington State worry that those countries and others among the 62 nations that require some labeling of genetically modified foods will be much more wary of whole foods than of processed goods. The Washington measure would not apply to meat or dairy products from animals fed genetically engineered feed, and it sharply limits the ability to collect damages for mislabeling. Mr. Benbrook and consumer advocates say the federal agencies responsible for things like labeling have relied on research financed by companies that make genetically modified seeds. “If there is a documented issue with this overseas, it could have a devastating impact on the U.S. food system and agriculture,” Mr. Benbrook said. “The F.D.A. isn’t going to get very far with international governments by saying Monsanto and Syngenta told us these foods are safe and we believed them.” Advocacy groups also have denounced the appointment of Michael R. Taylor, a former executive at Monsanto, as the F.D.A.’s deputy commissioner for food and veterinary medicine. Ms. Liscinsky of the F.D.A. said Mr. Taylor was recused from issues involving biotechnology. What has excited proponents of labeling most is Wal-Mart’s participation in the meeting. The retailer came under fire from consumer advocates last summer for its decision to sell a variety of genetically engineered sweet corn created by Monsanto. Because Wal-Mart is the largest grocery retailer, a move by the company to require suppliers to label products could be influential in developing a national labeling program. “I can remember when the British retail federation got behind labeling there, that was when things really started to happen there,” said Ronnie Cummins, founder and national director of the Organic Consumers Association. “If Wal-Mart is at the table, that’s a big deal.” Brands like Honest Tea, which is owned by Coca-Cola, have written to the association, which estimates 75 percent of grocery products contain a genetically modified ingredient, to protest its “Traitors Boycott,” which urges consumers not to buy products made by units of companies that fought Proposition 37. Consumers have peppered the companies’ Web sites, Facebook pages and Twitter streams with angry remarks. Ben & Jerry’s, the ice cream company, announced recently that it would remove all genetically modified ingredients from its products by the end of this year. Consumers had expressed outrage over the money its parent, Unilever, contributed to defeat the California measure. The state Legislature in Vermont, where Ben & Jerry’s is based, is considering a law that would require labeling, as is the General Assembly in Connecticut. Legislators in New Mexico have proposed an amendment to the state’s food law that would require companies to label genetically modified products. And this month, a senator in Missouri, home of Monsanto, one of the biggest producers of genetically modified seeds, proposed legislation that would require the labeling of genetically engineered meat and fish. “I don’t want to hinder any producer of genetically modified goods,” the senator, Jamilah Nasheed, who represents St. Louis, said in a news release. “However, I strongly feel that people have the right to know what they are putting into their bodies.” | Walmart;Label;Genetic engineering;State legislature;Food;Retail;Agriculture;Legislation;Lobbying |
ny0284158 | [
"world",
"africa"
] | 2016/07/14 | What Can the United Nations Do When Its Troops Can’t, or Won’t, Protect Civilians? | UNITED NATIONS — The thousands of United Nations peacekeepers trying to stave off disaster in South Sudan already have a tough, clear mandate: to protect civilians by any means necessary. Their track record, however, shows that they have not always been able or willing to do that. When civil war broke out in South Sudan more than two years ago, the United Nations took pains to tell the world that its peacekeepers in the country had opened their compound gates and given refuge to tens of thousands of civilians. Since then, however, the troops have faced blistering criticism for not taking steps in time to head off an ethnic massacre in a camp for displaced people; for being unable to protect women who were raped when they ventured outside camps to gather firewood; and for being confined to their bases as new spasms of violence over the weekend led to the deaths of even more civilians. On Wednesday, as senior United Nations officials warned of the risks of renewed fighting between rival South Sudanese factions after deadly clashes over the weekend, Security Council diplomats met behind closed doors to discuss whether to send more troops or give them new orders. They agreed on little, diplomats said. And so it remained unclear whether the Council would move anytime soon to impose an arms embargo on the warring parties, as the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon has called for, or whether they could agree on a political strategy to make the peacekeepers’ job any easier. The United Nations said that its troops patrolled the streets of Juba, the capital, on Wednesday for the first time in days, only to discover that food stocks had been looted from its warehouses. The United States announced that it would charter two planes to allow its citizens to leave Juba. “Further clashes cannot be ruled out,” said Hervé Ladsous, the United Nations under secretary general for peacekeeping. Over the weekend, United Nations troops were under lockdown in their bases in Juba as government forces put up checkpoints and thousands of civilians poured in. Gunmen fired at civilians trying to enter the United Nations bases, which also came under fire. Two peacekeepers were killed inside a base, along with at least eight civilians. “Something is fundamentally wrong with the mandate of the U.N. mission here,” Zlatko Gegic, the country director for Oxfam, said by Skype from Juba this week. “They were victims themselves, being completely unable to move.” There are 13,000 troops and police officers on the ground now, nearly half of them assigned to protect displaced people sheltering in their bases, known as protection of civilian sites. Some of South Sudan’s neighbors are calling for the mission to be fortified with a special unit that could intervene militarily, as peacekeepers were allowed to do against a militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is a far trickier proposition in South Sudan, however, as an intervention could embroil United Nations troops in an incendiary ethnic conflict. The challenge in South Sudan is part of a broader identity crisis for United Nations peacekeeping. Globally, the program is bigger and more expensive than ever, with the United States picking up more than one-fourth of the $8.3 billion budget. But peacekeeping’s limitations are also on stark display, especially when it comes to the program’s ability to protect civilians. The shadow of United Nations failures in Rwanda in 1994 and in Srebrenica in 1995, during the Bosnian war, still looms large. In South Sudan, the world’s newest country, not only have peacekeepers been unable to ward off what United Nations investigators call crimes against humanity committed chiefly, though not entirely, by government forces, but its own so-called protection-of-civilians sites have not always been reliable sanctuaries. The peacekeeping mission has drawn its harshest criticism over its failure to prevent an ethnic massacre at a camp in the strategic city of Malakal in mid-February. Two investigations for events in Malakal, by panels appointed by the United Nations, suggested that some peacekeepers had retreated from their posts and that others had waited for written instructions from headquarters. Both acts contravened the mandate set by the Security Council: to protect civilians, by deadly force if necessary. While the troops dithered, according to one of the investigations, gunmen threw grenades into the camp, singled out civilians based on their ethnicity, and went on a looting and burning rampage. When peacekeepers finally advanced, 16 hours after the attack began, and fired into the air, the gunmen withdrew. Image A United Nations peacekeeper from Rwanda amid the remnants of a looted and burned clinic at the camp in Malakal, South Sudan, in February. The massacre there emerged as a test of recent United Nations pledges. Credit Albert Gonzalez Farran/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images By then at least 30 people had died, and at least 123 had been wounded. The Malakal massacre has emerged as a test of the United Nations’ recent pledges to ensure that peacekeepers are held accountable when they do not do their jobs. “While some peacekeepers performed bravely, some of those with the responsibility to protect civilians did anything but that,” David Pressman, an American ambassador at the United Nations, said in an email shortly after a closed-door Security Council meeting on what happened in Malakal. “This was a horrific event,” he said. “It merits a serious response and accountability, certainly for the uniformed perpetrators who killed innocents but also for peacekeepers who may have failed to carry out their responsibilities.” Doctors Without Borders, the medical aid group, said in a report of its own that the United Nations had “failed in its duty to safeguard the people at the site and could have averted many fatalities.” South Sudan is a vast, largely roadless country of rivers and swamps — and of deadly ethnic fault lines. A full-scale civil war broke out in December 2013 when soldiers loyal to the president, Salva Kiir, took up arms against followers of the vice president at the time, Riek Machar. Mr. Kiir’s loyalists belong mainly to his Dinka ethnic group, while Mr. Machar is a Nuer. The two men signed a peace accord in August, but it remains, for now, limited to words on a page. Roughly two million people have been forced from their homes, with nearly 200,000 living inside United Nations bases that were never meant to become camps for so many people for so long. One of the camps was in Malakal. According to one of the internal investigations, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, someone cut a hole in the fence that encircled the camp, about 50 feet from a United Nations sentry post staffed by Ethiopian soldiers. Two Dinka men tried to smuggle in two Kalashnikovs through the hole, plus 58 rounds of ammunition. Peacekeepers tried to detain them, but the smugglers escaped. Through that hole in the fence, over the course of the next day, most of the camp’s ethnic Dinka residents left. Uniformed soldiers loyal to Mr. Kiir assembled on the edges of the camp. By late that second day, clashes broke out inside. The peacekeepers deployed one platoon to try to disperse the crowd. The soldiers fired tear gas. It was not enough to deter the troublemakers. A grenade was thrown into an ethnic Shilluk section of the camp. A fire broke out in the Nuer enclave. The Dinka sections were left intact. By morning on the third day, the report said, witnesses saw South Sudanese troops inside the camp, along with armed men in civilian clothes and white scarves masking their faces. The report concluded that the attack “seems to have been well planned and orchestrated by local authorities.” As for the United Nations forces, only at 2:30 p.m. did they respond with force, advancing in four armored personnel carriers and firing into the air. The second internal inquiry recommended “decisive action” against units that were unwilling to use force, including by repatriating entire units or individual commanders. As always, the tricky part for the United Nations is confronting countries that provide armed forces for its missions, especially those that send many troops, without which peacekeeping operations could not exist. Countries that had contingents in Malakal — Ethiopia, India and Rwanda — are among the largest troop contributors. In a measure of the political difficulties, the under secretary general for peacekeeping, Mr. Ladsous, told reporters in mid-June that some of the soldiers would be sent home. He declined to reveal their nationalities. A month later, none of the troops had been repatriated, and given the latest surge of violence, it is unlikely any of them will be anytime soon. Now, as the Security Council tries to strengthen the United Nations mission, the question remains: What can peacekeepers be expected to do in South Sudan? “The argument for keeping the mission in place is that, by guarding civilians at its protection sites, it mitigates the overall violence,” said Richard Gowan, an analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “But a lot of the sites seem to to be insecure, and the risk of a large-scale massacre at a U.N. base is serious.” | South Sudan;Malakal South Sudan;UN;War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity;Riek Machar;Salva Kiir Mayardit |
ny0241027 | [
"sports",
"football"
] | 2010/12/14 | No Favre, but Lots of Fans in Detroit | DETROIT — It was time for strange allegiances and circumstances for Detroit Lions fans on Monday. They gathered at Ford Field to see an N.F.L. game, but it involved the Giants and the Minnesota Vikings . Some came to heckle Vikings quarterback Brett Favre but were denied the chance when he was ruled inactive because of a sprained right shoulder. Favre’s league-record streak of 297 starts came to an end. He has had an assortment of injuries, the latest the shoulder sprain, sustained last week against the Buffalo Bills. The game was relocated to Ford Field because the Metrodome roof collapsed Sunday morning under the weight of 17 inches of snow. Admission was free, prompting fans to line up in the wee hours of Monday to claim their share of the 30,000 tickets at the box office. The lower sections were mostly filled, the upper bowl was about a third full, and the crowd for the Giants’ 21-3 victory was announced at 45,910. (The Lions are averaging crowds of 56,181 a game.) A Detroit resident, Jennifer Thompson, surveyed the field, which had the Vikings logo at midfield, another set of Vikings logos flashing on both large video boards and the end zones emblazoned in purple Vikings lettering. The Vikings and the Lions are longtime division rivals. “I don’t know if I like seeing all this Viking stuff all over the place,” Thompson said. “It seems kind of creepy, since we’re still in Detroit. But I like coming to the game for free.” The Ford Field staff and Lions front office turned the stadium around in 24 hours after the Lions played the Packers here. Concession stands had to be restocked, 30,000 tickets had to be printed, and the entire stadium from bathrooms to concourses had to be cleaned. “The Lions really came to the assistance of the league and the Vikings,” said Frank Supovitz, the N.F.L’s senior vice president for events. “We sent a number of people to Detroit this morning to assist as well, but I have to say that the Lions organization from top to bottom was incredibly engaged, incredibly participatory and incredibly supportive.” Fans who attended the Lions-Packers game could attend the game with their ticket stub to sit in the open areas. The first fans seeking free tickets arrived around 2 a.m., camping outside in 10-degree cold to await the opening of the box office at 9 a.m. The 30,000-seat allotment was snapped up in 90 minutes, with some showing up later on Craigslist and other Web sites for sale. Getting to the game was a challenge. The freeways and streets were in various states of clearing after seven inches of snow, and an icy glaze underneath, from Sunday’s storm. Numerous accidents dotted the roads heading into Ford Field, leaving traffic at a crawl. Fans lined up in the bitter cold for the 5:30 p.m. stadium opening. The doors opened promptly, and fans ran into the warmth and to be the first to get to the first rows of the open seating. Seats on the 50-yard lines were reserved for Giants and Vikings fans with tickets for Sunday’s postponed game. The sections were mostly full by kickoff. Monty and Martin Kowalski, brothers and Lions fans from Warren, Mich., came to the stadium at 7 a.m., waiting in line for free tickets. Neither professed to like the Vikings or the Giants, but wanted to attend the game to heckle Favre. They seemed disappointed to hear Favre would not be playing. “I guess since Favre isn’t playing, we don’t have a real villain anymore,” Monty Kowalski said. “I guess we’ll just sit back and watch some good football hopefully.” The costs of staging the game in Detroit, as well as revenue matters like who will receive the parking and concessions take, will be resolved among the N.F.L., the Lions, the Vikings and the Giants, said Tom Lewand, the Lions’ president. He said some of the costs would be picked up by the Vikings’ insurance, which covers events like interruptions because of stadium issues. “As you can imagine, it’s a pretty complex matter,” Lewand said. “We’ll get it all straightened out. We just want to get through tonight.” | Ford Field (Detroit);New York Giants;Minnesota Vikings;Football;Metrodome;Favre Brett;Detroit (Mich);Stadiums and Arenas;Detroit Lions |
ny0086980 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2015/07/30 | Award in Lead Paint Lawsuit Can’t Be Tied to Ethnicity, Judge Rules | A federal judge in Brooklyn explained in a court memo released on Wednesday why he rejected a landlord’s attempt to use a child’s Hispanic ethnicity to argue for reduced damages in a lead poisoning case. Judge Jack B. Weinstein ruled that the attempt violated federal law governing the use of statistical generalizations based on race or ethnicity, and forbid experts on both sides to discuss them. A lawyer for Mark Kimpson, the landlord, was seeking to reduce the $2 million in damages awarded to the child and his mother after she sued over lead poisoning. A jury awarded the damages on July 10 after finding that the apartment the family rented from Mr. Kimpson contained lead-based paint that had not been properly removed or contained. “Posed is the question,” Judge Weinstein wrote, “can statistics based on the ethnicity (in this case, ‘Hispanic’) of a child be relied upon to find a reduced likelihood of his obtaining higher education, resulting in reduced damages in a tort case? The answer is no.” To contest the damages, Mr. Kimpson’s lawyer, Roger V. Archibold, needed to persuade the court that the boy’s prospects for attending college and earning a degree if he had not had lead poisoning were already low. Mr. Archibold argued that because Hispanics are less likely to attend college, the boy’s chances for doing so were improbable. In a 52-page memo, Judge Weinstein wrote that he rejected the argument based on a case in which the use of race- and ethnicity-based statistics was found to be in violation of the Constitution’s equal protection and due process clauses. The memo on Wednesday does not affect the jury verdict, which Mr. Archibold has appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Mr. Archibold said Judge Weinstein had “mischaracterized” the defense’s argument about the child’s ethnicity. Mr. Archibold said he was confronting an expert hired by the plaintiffs whose statements at the trial did not seem to line up with the study he was citing. “The expert was confronted with the evidence of the study that he quoted,” he said. “He opined that the study gave him these statistics and it did not.” Judge Weinstein added that Mr. Archibold was required to use specific characteristics of the child and his family, rather than the characterization of the child as a member of a particular ethnic group, in projecting damages. The boy’s father has a bachelor’s degree and his mother has a Master of Fine Arts. Both held responsible income-generating jobs, the family was stable, and the parents were caring, Judge Weinstein said. “Based upon his specific family background, had the child not been injured, there was a high probability of superior educational attainment and corresponding high earnings,” Judge Weinstein wrote. “Treated by experts as a ‘Hispanic,’ his potential, based on the education and income of ‘average “Hispanics” in the United States,’ was relatively low.” The boy’s mother, Niki Hernandez-Adams, rented a basement apartment from Mr. Kimpson in an old building at 490 MacDonough Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where she lived while pregnant and after the boy turned 1. During a visit to the pediatrician after his first birthday, the boy was found to have elevated levels of lead in his blood. Ms. Hernandez-Adams claimed in her lawsuit that the lead poisoning had damaged the boy’s central nervous system. Mr. Archibold argued that Mr. Kimpson had sufficiently contained the hazardous lead-based paint in the apartment. Before the family moved in, the landlord had covered the old paint with new paint and drywall, according to the judge’s memo. Mr. Archibold blamed the family’s dog for severely scratching the walls and the moldings in the apartment, releasing lead dust. He also claimed that the infant’s cognitive and behavioral difficulties resulted from other medical conditions of his mother during her pregnancy. | Lead;Hispanic Americans;Discrimination;HazMat;Lawsuits;Bed-Stuy |
ny0101688 | [
"world",
"africa"
] | 2015/12/31 | Central African Republic Elections, Long Delayed, Are Peaceful | BANGUI, Central African Republic — Citizens of the Central African Republic began casting ballots on Wednesday in long-delayed elections that represent the best hope of reuniting the country, one of the world’s poorest, after three years of sectarian violence that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Turnout was heavy among the 1.8 million registered voters, nearly 40 percent of the population. Stores were largely closed so that workers could cast their ballots, a process that took hours. Many lined up outside schools and other polling places well before they opened at 6 a.m., as United Nations peacekeepers from Burundi, Egypt, France, Mauritania, Pakistan and other countries, along with 40 election monitors from the African Union, kept watch. As polls prepared to close at 4 p.m., people were still waiting to vote, including older men with walking sticks and women carrying babies on their backs. Thirty candidates are running for president in the first round of voting, and elections are also being held for Parliament. Because of technical and organizational problems, the vote had been delayed numerous times. In a referendum on Dec. 13 and 14, which had also been delayed, voters overwhelmingly approved a new Constitution, clearing the way for the elections and raising hopes for lasting peace. Last month, Pope Francis visited the capital , Bangui, expressing hope that the elections would “enable the country to embark serenely on a new chapter of its history.” He shocked residents by touring PK5, a volatile, largely Muslim neighborhood that is normally surrounded by armed Christian militias. Image Election workers counted votes after the polls closed for presidential and legislative elections in the Bangui city center. Credit Issouf Sanogo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images In recent days, the archbishop of Bangui, Dieudonné Nzapalainga, and a Muslim leader, Omar Kobine Layama, have also appealed for peaceful elections. The voting on Wednesday seemed largely free of violence, though logistical problems persisted. In the courtyard of a school in PK5, voters shouted angrily because bureaucratic delays had blocked the arrival of some election materials. Illiteracy is rampant in the country, and many of those overseeing the election received only a day or two of training. Voter registration cards were issued by the election authority, but many contained inaccurate information, according to several people. Bintou Abakar, who voted at the school in PK5, said that she, her husband and their three children had moved to the neighborhood after their house burned down two years ago. She said she hoped a new president would “reopen” the neighborhood so that her children could “live in a country where people are free to go wherever they want.” Amadou Warfai, a father of two, had come to the same polling place to vote in the constitutional referendum — only to run for his life when gunfire broke out. He said that he was not deterred from returning to exercise his right to vote, and that he hoped for leaders and institutions that would “put criminals in jail and let good people live freely.” Voters also turned out at a camp in Bangui for internally displaced persons, named after Pope John XXIII. “We are citizens too, and this is proof,” said Martin Bissidi, a young man who took a break from fixing a motorcycle he shares with some friends to proudly show his voter registration card and his ink-stained finger, a sign that he had voted. There were scattered reports of voting irregularities. Marie-Madeleine N’kouet Hoornaert, the president of the National Election Authority, said in a statement on Wednesday that some poll workers were blocking access to election documents and materials in an attempt to disrupt the voting. Image United Nations peacekeepers from Burundi searched voters at the entrance of a polling station in Bangui on Wednesday. Credit Issouf Sanogo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images She called on them to “immediately stop all attempts to undermine the aspirations of almost two million Central Africans who want to express themselves unequivocally and help their country to end its crisis, via the ballot box.” The balloting offers the country a chance for stability after years of turmoil . In December 2012, fighting among Muslim and Christian factions upended the country’s political situation. In March 2013, a mostly Muslim rebel alliance known as the Seleka overthrew President François Bozizé , a Christian, who had himself taken power in a civil war a decade earlier. One of the rebel leaders, Michel Djotodia, became president, the first Muslim to hold the position. But he failed to deliver on his promise of a peaceful transition to a unity government and resigned in January 2014. By then, Christian militias known as the “anti-balaka” had begun a brutal backlash against Muslim civilians. Nearly one million people were displaced , and 2.7 million, nearly half the population, needed humanitarian support, a huge setback for what was already a poor country. More than 400,000 refugees — primarily in neighboring Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Chad — have yet to return. The violence prompted a military intervention by France, which ruled the country until 1960, and has sent troops there several times since. To this day, the country remains divided: Anti-balaka militias hold territories in the west of the country and small pockets in Bangui; the former Seleka rebels control the north and center of the country; and the Lord’s Resistance Army, a brutal rebel movement that also operates in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Uganda, controls parts of the east. Voting was reported to be taking place peacefully in areas such as Bambari, where deadly sectarian violence erupted this summer, and even in parts of the north controlled by Noureddine Adam, a Muslim rebel leader who surprised the country recently by publicly supporting the elections, even though he had called for a breakaway republic in the north. Image Waiting in line to vote Wednesday in the PK5 district of Bangui, the capital. A second round of balloting is scheduled for Jan. 31. Credit Issouf Sanogo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Catherine Samba-Panza has served as interim president since January 2014 but is not a candidate. Three leading candidates — two former prime ministers, Anicet-Georges Dologuélé and Martin Ziguélé, and an independent candidate, Abdou Karim Méckassoua, who lives in PK5 — all cast their votes Wednesday morning. Mr. Dologuélé’s party recently forged an alliance with that of Mr. Bozizé, the former president. He sought to return from exile and take part in the election, but was prohibited from doing so, ostensibly because he had agreed not to run when he stepped down. The United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions last year against Mr. Bozizé and two others for their role in the country’s disorder. “When you see how many people are lining up to vote, it’s evident that Central Africans want to vote,” Mr. Dologuélé said after casting his ballot. “Logistical glitches are normal. They just need to be corrected as we go along.” Mr. Ziguélé was less sanguine: “I have no choice but to be faithful to this electoral process, despite its flaws, despite the risks of fraud.” Officials from the French and United Nations peacekeeping forces said they would ensure that all ballots, even from remote villages, would be sent to Bangui to prevent a repeat of logistical problems that bedeviled the constitutional referendum this month. Election results are not expected until next week, and a second round of balloting is scheduled for Jan. 31. Whether the outcomes are accepted as legitimate will determine the country’s future. “The warlords will have to accept the results of the elections because the elections are democratic,” the country’s interim prime minister, Mahamat Kamoun, said in a recent interview in Paris, where he was attending the United Nations climate change conference . “Elections are one of the solutions to bring people back to peace,” Mr. Kamoun said, “but they can also be a new source of crisis if we do not manage to make them democratic, transparent and credible.” | Central African Republic;Bangui Central African Republic;Seleka;Catherine Samba-Panza;Election;UN;War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity;Anicet-Georges Dologuélé;Abdou Karim Méckassoua;Martin Ziguélé |
ny0222696 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2010/11/11 | Russia: Journalist Is Convicted of Slander | A crusading Russian journalist who was crippled in a brutal beating two years ago was convicted on a criminal slander charge on Wednesday. Despite criticism from rights groups, prosecutors in a Moscow suburb, Khimki, had refused to drop the charge against the journalist, Mikhail Beketov. A judge found him guilty of slandering the Khimki mayor, Vladimir Strelchenko, by accusing him of involvement in blowing up Mr. Beketov’s car. Mr. Beketov was fined a nominal amount, which was then suspended. Mr. Beketov made the comments at issue well before he was beaten. No one has been arrested in that crime. | Beketov Mikhail;Libel and Slander;News and News Media;Strelchenko Vladimir;Europe |
ny0013519 | [
"sports",
"autoracing"
] | 2013/11/30 | What Lies Ahead in a Formula One Season of Change? | As Sebastian Vettel went about winning every race of the second half of the 2013 season, the talk in the Formula One paddock turned increasingly to what might happen next year. It was not the simple question of whether the four-time world champion Vettel and his Red Bull team would dominate for a fifth year in a row. It was centered on the much deeper questions about what amounts to the biggest technological change for decades in the series as it seeks to become more environmentally responsible — to reflect the interests of its engine manufacturers, Ferrari, Mercedes and Renault. The sweeping changes start with new engines and energy-recovery systems that are more than twice as complex and as powerful as those used today. But the changes go well beyond the engine, and the results could affect everything from how a team operates and uses race strategy to what constitutes the best kind of driver and driving style. Among the key changes are: • A limit of 100 kilograms, or 220 pounds, of fuel per car per race, compared to around 150 kilograms used this year. •A limited fuel-to-engine flow rate. • A reduction of engine size from 2.4 liters, or .634 gallons, to 1.6 liters and from eight cylinders to six cylinders. • A reduced engine r.p.m. limit, to 15,000 from 18,000 this year. • A new heat recovery system, in addition to the braking energy recovery system, with power for the kinetic system doubled over the current amount. • Turbo-charged engines for the first time in decades. There will be other areas of change, too, including tires and a reduction in aerodynamic downforce. The four-time world champion Alain Prost, who works for the Renault engine manufacturer, expects that at the start of next season the cars will go 1.5 to 2.0 seconds slower than they did this year. Moreover, Prost, who as a driver was known as The Professor because of his intelligent approach to racing and technical understanding, said that drivers next year will have to work much more closely with engineers in developing the cars and strategy and during the races. The engine itself is the biggest unknown. The three engine manufacturers are each working independently to build the new engine and it remains to be seen which will develop the best one. Renault has produced the dominant engine over the last eight years, powering the Red Bull to its last four titles and before that, in 2006,winning the title with its engine in the Renault chassis. A better engine next year by one of the other two manufacturers could put an end to Vettel’s dominance. The three manufactures expect that their new engines and energy recovery systems are not likely to be as reliable as the current generation of engine. Image A Renault technician working on a new engine. Credit Jean-Michel Le Meur/DPPI for Renault Sport F1 “Yeah, reliability is a tough call,” said Rob White, the director of the Renault engine program. “We have to aim for the same place, which is of course not to break down, not to stop the car. It’s more difficult to achieve because the systems are more complicated, more numerate on the car. It’s more difficult to achieve because the durability requirement is higher.” That could lead to more unpredictable racing, as even the best teams might see more engine blowouts than the series has come to expect. Last weekend at the Brazilian Grand Prix, Ross Brawn, the director of the Mercedes team, suggested that another factor may return to play next year, one that the stable engine regulations had long eradicated. “We are a team similar to Ferrari, where we do an engine and a chassis, and I think that’s a significant benefit for next season,” he said, referring to the fact that only Mercedes and Ferrari make both engine and chassis at their factories, while the other teams all buy engines from a manufacturer. “The engine has been very much designed alongside the chassis to get the best integrated package,” Brawn added. “I think the engine is going to be one of the differentiaters next year. I don’t think it’s going to be the only one, but I think it’s much more significant than the engines have been the last few years.” Another area in which teams cannot yet predict performance is in the choice of driver. The new engine systems will require much more input from the drivers. “I think with the rule change — and it is a huge rule change, on the power-train and aerodynamics — the way you drive the cars is going to be quite different,” said Sam Michael, sporting director of the McLaren team. “We’ve already done quite a lot of work in the simulator on that at this point and, if anything, it probably lends itself some good opportunities for change. “But ultimately,” he added, “it’s four tires on the ground that you drive as quick as you can around a circuit.” Yet Eric Boullier, the director of the Lotus team, said the driver had to be able to work hard on technological development. “You need a driver that all engineers, all the team can rely upon,” he said. “You want to have proper feedback, accurate feedback to be able to improve the car on an event-to-event basis. So that’s what we need. We need a driver who is transparent in the way that he is driving the car and providing feedback to everyone.” Even Adrian Newey, the designer of the dominant Red Bull car of the last four years, said that it was an open game next year and that the reliability of the entire car was also a key to success. “The cars are hugely complex compared to the cars that we’ve been used to,” he said. “The level of reliability that everybody’s achieving now is the result of a lot of evolution on what actually looks a relatively simple product compared to what we’re facing next year. “So I think reliability’s going to be quite an issue for the teams,” Newey added, “could well be a deciding factor in the championship, who knows?” | Formula One;Car Racing;Engine;Renault |
ny0097795 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2015/06/29 | Mets Defeat Reds in Suspended Game, but Take Their Time Doing So | After Carlos Torres was announced as the new pitcher in the second game of the Mets’ weekend series with the Cincinnati Reds, he was able to go home, sleep, play video games, shoot baskets and even study video of the first batter he would face, Ivan De Jesus. Because of the suspension of Saturday’s game, which was tied, 1-1, heading into the seventh inning, Torres had to wait 19 hours 21 minutes to throw his first pitch. Torres’s elongated preparation apparently worked: De Jesus grounded out, and the Mets went on to win, 2-1, in 13 innings on Sunday afternoon. The Mets’ bullpen threw seven scoreless innings, and Bobby Parnell picked up his first victory since June 16, 2013. “We won the game,” Manager Terry Collins said. “That’s the only good thing that happened besides the pitching today.” The teams combined to use 11 pitchers during the final seven innings, and a 12th, the Reds’ Mike Leake, made an appearance as a pinch-hitter. The Mets left runners on base in the eighth through the 12th innings before loading the bases with no outs in the bottom of the 13th. The Reds brought outfielder Skip Schumaker into the infield to try to prevent the winning run, but Lucas Duda hit a high chopper that first baseman Joey Votto failed to field cleanly. Votto’s bobble allowed Dilson Herrera to sprint home from third with the winning run. The play was ruled a fielder’s choice, and the Mets finished 0 for 15 with runners in scoring position. They left 19 runners on base, tying a season high. Image Lucas Duda hitting a high chopper to score Dilson Herrera from third and give the Mets the win in the bottom of the 13th. Credit Seth Wenig/Associated Press Sunday was the fifth time the Mets had played a suspended game, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, and the first time since May 24, 2013, against the Atlanta Braves. The most important suspended game in baseball history happened during the 2008 World Series, when Game 5 stretched over three days because of rain. The Philadelphia Phillies ultimately clinched the title with a 4-3 win over the Tampa Bay Rays. On Saturday, the stakes were lower, but encouraging, for the Mets from a pitching standpoint. Matt Harvey pitched six strong innings, limiting the Reds to one run, but the Mets’ only production came from a Curtis Granderson homer in the third. Moments before Saturday’s game was called, Granderson had a chance to deliver the Mets a win, but he flied out to left with the bases loaded. When the Citi Field gates opened Sunday, the scene on the field had not changed much. Sixty-five minutes before play was to resume, a drizzling rain forced the grounds crew to roll the tarp back onto the field and sent many fans out of their seats and under cover. The rain led to a 21-minute delay from the scheduled start time of 1:10 p.m. Even after the Mets recorded the first three outs of the day, bringing about an early seventh-inning stretch, patrons were still trickling in, a mix of fans taking advantage of the opportunity to watch 11-plus innings of baseball and others anticipating the debut of Steven Matz in the second game. Saturday’s attendees were allowed to exchange their tickets for Sunday but were placed in different locations. The confusion even affected those not at the park: WPIX broadcast the end of Saturday’s game before SNY took over for the second game. Collins said his players’ routines would not change much, but the unorthodox circumstances befuddled him to a degree. He was not certain of the technicalities of the rule, but he said he planned to carry Matz as a 26th player because the team was playing an extra game on Sunday and therefore did not have to make a corresponding move to make room for him. | Baseball;Mets;Reds |
ny0064681 | [
"sports",
"tennis"
] | 2014/06/27 | Wimbledon 2014: Madison Keys Advances to Third Round | WIMBLEDON, England — If adversity is the best education, the 5-foot-10-inch Madison Keys experienced a competitive growth spurt after dropping the second set of her second-round match here Thursday against the physically overmatched but persistent Klara Koukalova of the Czech Republic. As late afternoon gave way to early evening, the skies darkened over Court 12 in the outer reaches of the All England Lawn Tennis Club. What had been pleasant conditions devolved to that time-honored London staple: chilly and drizzly weather. Noise from a nearby show court, where the former Wimbledon champion Lleyton Hewitt had the crowd in his corner against Jerzy Janowicz, threatened to wreak havoc upon a young player’s concentration. Keys, 19, had been one game away from winning the match before dropping a tiebreaker. Now she was facing a new set of distractions along with the 32-year-old Koukalova, who, while giving away a good five inches in height to Keys, had no shortage of cunning or courage in confronting the pace of Keys’s power strokes. Juan Todero, Keys’s United States Tennis Association coach, had good reason to believe that she was ready for this test. “I think she is learning to manage her emotions much better and learning to control the situations much better,” he said after Keys did just that, staying composed, harnessing her power and disposing of Koukalova with a 7-6, 6-7 (3), 6-2 victory that sent her into the third round against Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan. Shvedova, who beat Kaia Kanepi of Estonia, 6-3, 6-7 (4), 6-2, is ranked No. 65, which will make Keys, who is No. 30, a favorite to reach the fourth round of a Grand Slam tournament for the first time. Her ranking has been improving, along with her confidence, since she won the pre-Wimbledon tuneup at Eastbourne for her first tour title. “I feel like a whole person,” she said when asked what winning five matches without dropping a set and defeating the top-10 players Jelena Jankovic and Angelique Kerber had done for her. “I feel confident, you know? I feel like I have that milestone.” One down; who knows how many more to go? “She was steady; she understood what she had to do,” Todero said of the Eastbourne victory. “It was big. She’s building on this, and little by little we’re going to see much more of that.” Such a declaration, practically a promise, was a rare departure from the Keys camp, which has typically preached a more grounded approach, an honoring of the process, since Keys appeared on the women’s tennis radar as a 16-year-old at the United States Open. Her parents, Rick and Christine, who are lawyers, were wary of the hype that was bound to engulf their daughter, given her size and her ability at 16 to rocket serves at 120 miles per hour or more. They especially wanted to defuse the notion of Madison as the next great American, or African-American. Image Klara Koukalova of the Czech Republic was physically overmatched but persistent against Keys. Credit Alastair Grant/Associated Press Even the story of how she was influenced to try tennis after seeing Venus Williams on television in a flashy tennis dress became more about the sartorial than the athletic. “I don’t think at 4 years old I was smart enough to really know how great Venus was and how amazing she is for the game,” said Keys, citing Williams’s virtues while playing down the connection. Asked to define what she meant by amazing, Keys said: “I know she was very influential in helping us get equal prize money. So, yay, Venus.” How much of an earner Keys will ultimately be will depend on her becoming a more complete player and not trying simply to overpower her opponents. “That’s the biggest thing, making her understand how to control the game and not always overhitting,” Todero said. “That’s what she’s been working on, not overhitting and to choose the right shots.” Still, he said that very few players could serve like Keys and that “it’s a big advantage and her biggest weapon by far.” Against Koukalova, Keys cranked it up as high as 123 m.p.h., serving seven aces on a day when 57 percent of her first serves were in and her performance was not much to her liking. Todero agreed, saying she had played considerably better at Eastbourne, where she was consistent and probing. But he liked how she remained unfazed by the lost tiebreaker, the worsening conditions and, most of all, Koukalova’s ability to handle the pace on many of the rallies. Overhitting on too many of Koukalova’s meager second serves in the first two sets, Keys took more measured swings in the third. She broke in the fifth and seventh games without facing a break point on her serve. Todero nodded at the suggestion that Keys had aced the challenge of facing a more seasoned player. He agreed that in one or two more rounds, Keys could be the talk of the women’s tournament. But that will no doubt be the time to talk about the process, the progression. “She’s 19, and many times people have told her she’s going to be this and this, but at this moment she is what she is,” Todero said. | Tennis;Wimbledon Tennis,Wimbledon;Madison Keys;Yaroslava Shvedova;Klara Koukalova |
ny0242756 | [
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] | 2011/03/21 | At End, Arizona Hits Shots That Count to Edge Texas | TULSA, Okla. — Texas was a bust again in the N.C.A.A tournament, an upset victim not just at the hands of the opponents’ star player, but also at the hands of Arizona’s band of outside shooters and perhaps another bewildering game by the officials. The fifth-seeded Wildcats, who had not defeated a top 25 team this season, took down the fourth-seeded Longhorns, 70-69, in a Round of 32 game Sunday with their all-American Derrick Williams being hounded by the length of the Texas defense and having to sit at times because of foul trouble. Williams showed up when it mattered most, though. With Arizona trailing, 69-67, when he drove to the basket with 9.6 seconds left, made the shot and drew a foul from Texas’ Jordan Hamilton. Williams, a 75 percent free-throw shooter, had made only 9 of 15 from the foul line throughout the game. But he sank this one to give the Wildcats a 1-point lead. The Texas guard J’Covan Brown brought the ball slowly down the floor, perhaps taking too much time, before charging down the right side of the lane. Replays showed a defender putting a forearm into Brown’s side and pushing him off the path to the basket. There was no foul call. Brown’s shot scraped the rim. Gary Johnson grabbed the rebound for Texas and his arm was held as he tried to get the ball back up on the rim. The Longhorns begged for a call, but did not get one as Arizona Coach Sean Miller signaled for the referees that they should leave the floor. “It’s hard for the refs to call it with the game on the line,” Brown said. Added the official Richard Cartmell: “We all had a look and didn’t have a foul on the play. And the buzzer clearly went off before there was contact up high.” The Wildcats (29-7) got 16 points from the reserve guard Jordin Mayes, who had been averaging 4.7 points. Arizona made 8 of 14 three-pointers, which helped make up for Williams’s difficult game (4 of 14 from the field). The Texas reserves, outplayed in the first half by the Arizona bench, found a hero in the second with Brown, who scored 21 of his 23 points after halftime. The N.C.A.A. tournament has been a poor reflection on the otherwise solid work of Texas Coach Rick Barnes. His teams have been to the tournament 13 times in the 13 years he has been in Austin, but there may be no other program that is a bigger bust in March. The Longhorns, more often than not, are portrayed as a title contender at the start, but resemble something much less at the end. In those 13 N.C.A.A. tournament appearances, Barnes’s teams have nine losses against teams with lower seeds. The Longhorns, unranked at the start of the season, finished 28-8. Arizona moves on to face No. 1 Duke in the Round of 8 in the West Region on Thursday in Anaheim. There was anticipation of a big-man matchup between the Texas freshman Tristan Thompson and the Arizona sophomore Williams, but early on the Longhorns let the 6-foot-6 forward Gary Johnson handle the clever Williams, who has a variety of moves around the basket. Texas did not want to risk foul trouble by Thompson, who is the Longhorns’ second-leading scorer (13.4 points per game). Williams struggled with the quicker Johnson on him and double-team help from the weakside. He was 0 for 6 from the field in the first half and had to go to the bench with 4 minutes 31 seconds to play in the half after picking up his second foul. It turned out Williams was the least of Texas’ problems. The sophomore forward Solomon Hill, one of three Arizona players who had committed to Southern California before pulling out of those commitments, scored 12 points in the first 20 minutes as Arizona took a 36-25 lead at the half. Besides the post matchup, there was also the matchup of Arizona’s efficient offense (51.6 shooting; 39.6 on 3-pointers) against Texas’ long-armed defense, which held opponents to 42 percent and 28.7 percent, respectively. Arizona clearly had the best of that duel, too. The Wildcats made 6 of 11 from 3-point range in the first half. | NCAA Basketball Tournament (Men);University of Arizona;University of Texas at Austin;Williams Derrick;Basketball |
ny0004924 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2013/04/30 | As Election Nears, Ahmadinejad’s Critics Pile On | TEHRAN — Just six weeks before Iran’s presidential election, politicians and clerics have declared open season on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his government, in one instance calling him a “coward” and likening him to a “drunk driver.” The invective is the latest manifestation of infighting that broke out months ago between Mr. Ahmadinejad and his allies and a loose coalition of clerics and Revolutionary Guards commanders. Night after night during prime-time talk shows on state television — under the firm control of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s opponents — critics tear into what they see as the government’s mismanagement of the economy, blaming the president and not international sanctions for its poor performance. In an interview this month on the country’s most watched station, Channel 3, an economist showed a bar chart intended to illustrate how Mr. Ahmadinejad’s policies had led to massive job losses. “Surprisingly,” the show’s host added, “this happened at a time of record oil revenues for Iran,” even though Iran’s oil revenues have now fallen off because of the sanctions, imposed over Iran’s disputed nuclear program. Newspapers of all political affiliations and the semiofficial news agencies have enthusiastically joined the chorus. On Monday the Shargh newspaper published pictures of poorly attended speeches by Mr. Ahmadinejad, in near-empty stadiums. Last week, the moderate Web site Asr-e Iran published an opinion poll saying that 91.5 percent of Iranians disapproved of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s economic policies. The change in tone signals a hardening among Iran’s top leadership toward Mr. Ahmadinejad, who by law cannot run for another term but who is championing the candidacy of a protégé, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, in the June election. “It seems that there are controlled, plotted attacks against the president and his entourage,” said Saeed Allahbehdasthi, a political analyst. “Anybody can talk against him now.” The criticism stands in sharp contrast to 2009, when the top leadership and the security forces rallied around Mr. Ahmadinejad, whose landslide election victory was challenged as fraudulent by millions of protesters. A well-orchestrated narrative that was spun out through state and semiofficial news media labeled anyone doubting Mr. Ahmadinejad’s victory part of a “sedition” aimed at toppling the Islamic Republic. Eventually, hundreds of prominent journalists, dissidents, activists and ordinary people were arrested, and many of them were tried in televised mass court cases. Image President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cannot run for re-election next month, but his tenure is under fierce attack. Credit Vahid Salemi/Associated Press But a rift opened between the former allies over the president’s support for his aide, Mr. Mashaei. On the campaign trail, Mr. Mashaei has stressed nationalist themes rather than Islamic ones, alarming the traditionalists who oppose any revival of nationalism as a threat to their power base. In appearances around the country, Mr. Ahmadinejad and his allies have been met with protests against Mr. Mashaei by members of paramilitary forces overseen by the Revolutionary Guards. Last week, while visiting western Khuzestan Province, Mr. Ahmadinejad responded to the criticisms by saying that if he revealed too much, others would “give him hell.” He accused “some individuals” of exerting pressures “in order to keep the country, its wealth and people in their hands.” “They want us to forget about the revolution’s goals so that they can make money and become rich,” he said. The remarks drew an angry response from the chief of staff of the armed forces, Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, who said the president was “disturbing the minds of the people.” A state-run newspaper, Kayhan, dared Mr. Ahmadinejad to name those he said were involved in corrupt activities. “The country doesn’t need a cowardly president,” the paper’s influential editor in chief, Hossein Shariatmadari, wrote in an editorial. But many prominent Iranians admit to worrying about the president’s threats to reveal inner-circle secrets. “I do not deny the fact that I really fear Ahmadinejad’s ‘shall I tells’ the way one should fear and flee from a truck driven by a drunk driver,” a presidential candidate, Mohammad Reza Bahonar, said last week. Although Iran’s judiciary has closed over a hundred newspapers and magazines in the last decade, it has remained silent throughout the barrage of criticism of the president. The judiciary is led by Sadegh Larijani, one of five political brothers with whom Mr. Ahmadinejad has a long-running feud. “It seems that security forces and the Intelligence Ministry have given media the go-ahead to damage Mr. Ahmadinejad, as they do not want his representative to enter these elections,” said an analyst who asked to remain anonymous because of the leadership’s sensitivity to criticism. While Mr. Mashaei has not yet officially announced his candidacy, several clerics and former foreign ministers and intelligence officials have entered the race. On Sunday, one former president, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, told a group of visitors that he had not ruled out running. Candidates for the presidency must officially register with the Interior Ministry from May 7 to May 11, and then will be vetted by the Guardian Council. That group, which consists of 12 members appointed by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the head of the judiciary will decide on May 21 who will be allowed to participate. “Anyone who thinks they can run can do so,” Ayatollah Khamenei said in a speech on Saturday. “But they should avoid giving baseless promises or paint a rosy picture of the issues.” | Iran;Election;Mahmoud Ahmadinejad;Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei;Islamic Revolutionary Guards |
ny0245539 | [
"sports",
"ncaabasketball"
] | 2011/04/21 | Three Kentucky Players Declare for N.B.A. Draft | Kentucky, which lost five players, including four freshmen, to the N.B.A. last year, had three more players declare for the draft. The university said the players — the freshmen Terrence Jones and Brandon Knight, and the junior DeAndre Liggins — would not sign with agents, however, allowing them to return to Kentucky next season if they change their minds by May 8. Jones and Knight are considered mid- to high first-round picks. Liggins is a defensive stopper who hopes to play his way into the first round after being evaluated by scouts. | Basketball;Draft and Recruitment (Sports);Jones Terrence;Knight Brandon;University of Kentucky;Basketball (College) |
ny0186579 | [
"business",
"economy"
] | 2009/03/22 | When ‘Deficit’ Isn’t a Dirty Word | ARE you confused about whether large federal budget deficits matter? No wonder, when disagreement about deficits is popping up everywhere. Even among Republicans, there is no unity on this basic issue. Defending his recent proposal to freeze government spending, Representative John A. Boehner, the House minority leader, said, “We simply cannot afford to mortgage our children and grandchildren’s future to pay for this big government spending spree.” But Martin Feldstein, the Harvard economist, disagrees. An adviser to the past three Republican presidents, Professor Feldstein warns that failure to run large deficits would prolong the current economic downturn. Because important policy decisions hinge on whether deficits matter, this is an opportune moment to take stock of what we know. The good news is that there is little disagreement among economists who have studied the issue. The consensus is that short-run deficits help end recessions, and that whether long-run deficits matter depends entirely on how government spends the borrowed money. If failure to borrow meant forgoing productive investments, bigger long-run deficits would actually be better than smaller ones. In 1929, President Herbert Hoover thought that the best response to a collapsing economy was to balance the federal budget. With incomes and tax receipts falling sharply, that meant cutting federal spending. But as almost all economists now recognize, President Hoover was profoundly mistaken. When a downturn throws people out of work, they spend less, causing still others to be thrown out of work, and so on, in a downward spiral. Failure to use short-run deficits to stimulate spending amplifies that spiral, causing further declines in tax receipts and even bigger deficits. That this path makes no sense is a settled issue. But what about long-run deficits? To think more clearly about them, we must recognize that carrying debt is costly. The government can pay just the interest on its debt each year, or it can pay interest plus some additional amount to reduce the principal. The yearly payment is clearly greater in the second case, just as a homeowner’s monthly payment is larger with a 10-year mortgage than with a 30-year one. But the total burden of the various repayment options (in technical terms, their “present value”) is exactly the same. It’s a simple trade-off between intensity of burden and duration of burden. No matter which option we choose, money spent to service debt can’t be spent for other things we value. But that doesn’t mean we should always borrow less. The main issue is what we do with the borrowed money. If we simply use the money to buy bigger houses and cars, deficits make us unambiguously worse off in the long run. That’s why the explosive increase in the national debt during the Bush administration was a grave misstep. Trillions of dollars, many of them borrowed from China, financed tax cuts for the wealthy, who spent much of their added wealth on things like bigger mansions. But beyond a certain point, when everyone builds bigger, the primary effect is merely to raise the bar that defines the size of home that people feel they need. Much of the interest we’ll pay on debt incurred during the Bush years is thus money down the drain. In contrast, borrowing for well-chosen investments doesn’t make us poorer. Road maintenance is a case in point. Failure to repair roads in a timely way could mean eventually spending two to four times as much for the work. Even ignoring the fact that timely repairs would reduce the substantial vehicle damage from potholes, it would be much cheaper to borrow the money and do maintenance on schedule. It’s also useful to put the nation’s debt burden into perspective. Over the last eight years, Bush administration deficits raised the national debt by almost $5 trillion. Given the current crisis, it’s easy to imagine a similar increase during the next four years. At recent interest rates, servicing $10 trillion of extra debt costs about $400 billion annually — a big amount, to be sure, but less than 3 percent of the economy’s full-employment output. We’ll still be the richest country on the planet even after paying all that interest. Once the downturn ends, there should be no need to incur additional debt. Indeed, there are many ways to pay down debt without requiring painful sacrifices. A $2 tax on each gallon of gasoline, for example, would generate more than $100 billion in additional revenue a year. Europeans, who pay more than $2 a gallon in gasoline taxes, have adapted by choosing more efficient cars — and they appear no less satisfied with them. We could also levy a progressive consumption surtax, which would not only generate additional revenue to pay down debt or finance additional public investment, but would also stimulate private savings by diverting money from those over-the-top coming-of-age parties that the wealthy stage for their children. Notwithstanding the neo-Hooverite talk from stimulus-program opponents, the current deficit isn’t too large. If anything, it may need to be even larger to revive the economy. In the long run, new sources of tax revenue could keep deficits from growing and could even pay down existing debt. But if the political system cannot figure out how to pay for productive investments with tax revenue, we’d still end up richer, on balance, by making those investments with borrowed money. | National Debt (US);United States Economy;United States Politics and Government;Economics;Federal Budget (US) |
ny0159453 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2008/12/15 | Pakistan Says Indian Planes Entered Airspace | LAHORE, Pakistan — Indian warplanes crossed into Pakistani airspace on Saturday over two parts of the country where the militant group accused of carrying out the Mumbai terror attacks is active, according to Pakistani officials, who said they scrambled their own air force jets to chase the Indian aircraft back across the border. The incursions would appear to be an aggressive display by India , whose top officials describe neighboring Pakistan as the “epicenter of terrorism” and say Pakistan’s own intelligence service has long aided Lashkar-e-Taiba , the group blamed for the attacks in Mumbai last month, which sharply raised tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals. Pakistani officials trumpeted the airspace breaches in statements to the news media but said there was no cause for “alarm.” They also said they had contacted Indian officials, who confirmed the breaches as accidental. But Indian outlets also reported on Sunday morning that the Indian military had denied any improper flyovers. The Pakistani government sought to play down the airspace violations as “inadvertent,” but it did not elaborate on how two separate breaches so far away could be unintended and coincidental. According to the Pakistani account, one violation occurred over the portion of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir that is controlled by Pakistani forces, while the other happened at least 100 miles south, near Lahore, the capital of Punjab Province and Pakistan’s second-largest city. Both areas are strongholds of Lashkar and Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the charity group shut down last week by the Pakistani government after the United Nations labeled it a front for Lashkar. The attacks in Mumbai, which began the night of Nov. 26 and ended three days later in a battle between gunmen and Indian commandos, left at least 163 people dead along with nine gunmen. | Pakistan;India;Military Aircraft;Terrorism;Lashkar-e-Taiba |
ny0163688 | [
"nyregion",
"nyregionspecial2"
] | 2006/02/12 | The Place We Call Home | Correction Appended IT has been decades since the squeaky-clean optimism of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" defined our image of suburban life -- more than time enough for the sarcastic dysfunction of "Roseanne" and the steamy exploits of "Desperate Housewives" to work their transmogrification. Of course, the truth about suburbia lies somewhere between these extremes -- as an enthralling new countywide celebration of suburban culture seeks to show. Among the offerings are a social history of Westchester, a study of urban sprawl, a take on suburban life by contemporary artists and a suburbia-themed film series. So, what is suburbia? The term remains elusive, despite several bureaucratic measures of definition: size of population, density of living, legal or administrative status, proximity to the city. This uncertainty is part of its charm. More broadly, the word refers to the environs -- the periphery of a city or town, somewhere in-between better-defined places. We define it by what it is not: in short, as being neither urban nor rural. It is an imaginary space onto which we can project our hopes, fears and fantasies. It is also bound up in a wider set of debates on ways of living: the suburbs confront us with questions about community, the nature of family and core social values. More than half of all Americans live in suburbs, according to the 2000 census. It is the crucible of our age. No surprise then that this robust subject continues to attract the interest of artists, filmmakers, television producers and writers. Moreover, it makes perfect sense that Westchester -- the definitive 20th-century American suburb because of the early television writers and other authors who lived here and depicted it -- should play host to an examination of suburban life. Debates on suburbia often center on the issue of representation: who lives here, and what do they stand for? This question motivates "I 3/5sheart 4/5 the Burbs," an in-your-face, brash exhibition of roughly 70 paintings, prints, photographs, sculptures and more at the Katonah Museum of Art. Forty-seven artists are taking part, among them a few Westchester locals: Dan Cohen, Steven Millar and Gail V. Biederman. As expected, many of the displays fixate on the darker side of suburbia, parodying the usual cast of "freaks, fatties and fanatics," to borrow from Garrison Keillor's review of the French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy's new book "American Vertigo," charting Mr. Lévy's travels through our suburbs. The book, like this art, is a catalog of clichés. But there is a grain of truth in all clichés. Lee Stoetzel's photograph of a model home made entirely from McDonald's foodstuff is a strikingly literal embodiment of the idea of a McMansion, for instance. The artwork was inspired by the supersized houses appearing in the artist's once-rural Pennsylvania neighborhood, but it could just as easily have been motivated by urban developments in Purchase, or any other Westchester village. There is also a truth to suburban car culture, the subject of paintings and installations by Amy Chan, Tad Lauritzen Wright, Ms. Biederman, Sven Pahlsson, Jayne Holsinger and Sarah McKenzie. The works point to the "centerlessness of suburbia," the exhibition curator Ellen J. Keiter writes in the catalog. But they also remind you of the countless miles of road needed to connect everything. Ms. Chan's painting "Peaceable Kingdom" (2005) slots American suburban icons (big-box retail, fast-food diners and McMansions) into the vertical space of traditional Chinese landscape painting, with each building set on its own little lawn-green island linked by a network of meandering causeways. I feel carsick just thinking about it. A particular way of life is integral to perceptions of the suburbs. It is also the subject of several artworks, including Diane Arbus's "Family on Their Lawn One Sunday Afternoon in Westchester, N.Y." (1968). The photograph, now a classic, shows a husband and wife lying leisurely on parallel sun chairs, drinking and reading, their child playing happily beyond with toys in a near-limitless backyard. Looking at this image, all kinds of value judgments on suburban life begin to creep into your head. Is this affluent young couple happy, or is the distance between their sun chairs indicative of some kind of emotional rift? Is life out here leisurely, or is it dull, materialistic and empty? It depends on your point of view, or prejudices, but to me it is an image of the suburban ideal: relaxation in a private, tranquil setting. Whereas the Katonah Museum exhibition deals broadly with the theme of suburbia, an exhibition at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers offers a focused social, cultural and historical survey of Westchester County. It is a big show, with more than 300 exhibits spread around the museum. It is also one of the best-researched and the best-looking shows I have ever seen in this space. Frankly, the museum has never looked better. "Westchester: The American Suburb" is the kind of exhibition that you can lose yourself in for hours. In addition to heaps of great archival photographs, there are paintings, memorabilia, old real estate advertisements, portraits of famous residents, a vintage Ford car and three model kitchens complete with retro appliances like a 1950's aqua-green Sunbeam Mixmaster. I remember licking those beaters. There is also a display of early Tupperware -- and, for those who feel especially inspired by the sight, the nearby Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville is featuring the story of the original Tupperware Lady, Brownie Wise, on Monday night. (She devised the idea of sending housewives as salespeople into suburban homes all over America.) The Katonah exhibition begins with a display of television memorabilia (mostly photographic stills) from beloved postwar situation comedies. Series like "I Love Lucy" (during the run of that show, they moved to Connecticut) and "The Dick Van Dyke Show" helped create the popular image of idyllic suburban existence: a sprawling home, a car and a dizzying range of domestic labor-saving devices, not to mention a television set. Following sections break down the elements of suburban life, according to punchy themes like "the domestic ideal," "owning your own home," "consumerism," "the yard" and "commuting." Among the more curious exhibits are several old real estate advertisements for housing in Westchester from the late 19th century to the 1960's. There is even a video segment from an episode of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" in which the Petries buy their New Rochelle home. Of course, commuters had been moving out to Westchester from New York City years before Rob and Laura took the plunge. The first spurt of settlement began in the 1890's after railroad and streetcar track was laid through the region; it spiked again after 1945 as soldiers returned home. It continued right through the 1950's and 1960's, as New York City became less attractive to families. What drew residents to Westchester County, then as now, was largely the promise of a quiet, countrylike ambience -- dispersed homes, lots of natural landscape, and a villagelike atmosphere, all within easy commuting distance of New York. The main change to that ambience, beginning in the 1970's, has been the commercial and apartment-housing development. White Plains, a site of both, is now considered a satellite city. Complementing this exhibition is a new book about the county, "Westchester: The American Suburb." Published by the museum and Fordham University Press, it was edited by Roger Panetta, a history professor at Marymount College who is a curator of the exhibition, along with Bartholomew Bland and Laura Vookles. It is crammed with curious facts, among them a prediction that white people will become a minority of residents in Westchester by 2020. So just how prevalent in America is suburbia? The answer lies within reach in a thoughtful exhibition at the Westchester Arts Council's Arts Exchange by the aerial photographer Jim Wark, with accompanying text by the urban historian Dolores Hayden. The photographs and text, published in a companion book titled "A Field Guide to Sprawl" (W. W. Norton & Company), present a rare moment in which art, urbanism and social consciousness mesh. The photographs detail an abundance of new suburban housing and urban developments, many of them in once-unpopulated and arid desert regions. Between 1990 and 2000, an accompanying wall text tells us, "Las Vegas and its suburbs were the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the nation, with a growth rate of 85.2 percent." It is little wonder the region has problems finding enough water and curbing pollution. What is most interesting about these aerial photographs, as Ms. Hayden also observes in her wall texts and book, is the way in which words like suburb, city and countryside no longer reflect the reality of urban development across America. Most of the images in this show depict a multilayered, interconnected city-suburban environment, or the development of exurbs -- housing enclaves beyond city suburbs. It may just be that the American suburb is already a thing of the past. Admit One to All VISITORS to one of these sites will be offered a pass for admission to the other participating museums, as well as a member discount for the Jacob Burns Film Center. "Celluloid Suburbia," Jacob Burns Film Center, 364 Manville Road, Pleasantville, through Feb. 13. Final film: "Tupperware!" Monday at 7:15. Laurie Kahn-Leavitt, 2004, 63 minutes; not rated. Information: (914) 747-5555 or on the Web at burnsfilmcenter.org "Westchester: The American Suburb," Hudson River Museum, 511 Warburton Avenue, Yonkers, through May 28. Information (914) 963-4550 or hrm.org. "I 3/5sheart 4/5 the Burbs," Katonah Museum of Art, Route 22 at Jay Street, Katonah, through April 9. Information: (914) 232-9555 or katonahmuseum.org. "A Field Guide to Sprawl," Arts Exchange, Westchester Arts Council, 31 Mamaroneck Avenue, White Plains, through April 1. Information: (914) 428-4220 or westarts.com. Westchester Correction: February 26, 2006, Sunday Because of an editing error, an article on Feb. 12 about four exhibitions on suburbia misidentified the show that begins with television memorabilia. It is "Westchester: The American Suburb" at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, not "I 3/5sheart 4/5 the Burbs" at the Katonah Museum of Art. | WESTCHESTER COUNTY (NY);SUBURBS |
ny0276448 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2016/02/12 | Who Won the Debate? Critics Say Hillary Clinton Shone | Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders returned to familiar ground on Thursday night, grappling over Wall Street, health care and the criminal justice system just two days after Mr. Sanders’s commanding victory in the New Hampshire primary. After heated clashes in their most recent meetings, this debate had a more subdued and even scholarly tone, with detailed discussions about Henry Kissinger, Franklin D. Roosevelt and President Obama’s legacy. In the aftermath, many commentators and critics felt that Mr. Sanders held his own on domestic affairs, but that Mrs. Clinton outshined him on foreign policy and scored some points by cornering him as a single-issue candidate. “This is as good as Hillary gets. Calm, in command, not patronizing, armed with facts. Best debate performance yet?” — Doug Heye , former spokesman for Eric Cantor “Only 48 hours after getting demolished in NH, impressive performance for Hillary Clinton. Better tone. Picked her shots.” — David Axelrod , former adviser to President Obama “Hillary won tonight’s debate by closely aligning herself with Obama... But she also may lose the (general) election because of it.” — Frank Luntz , conservative pollster “For a debate that was supposed to set the stage for a fight for voters of color, I feel like very little depth was achieved here on race.” — Joy Reid , author of “Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the Racial Divide” “The Kissinger exchange won’t move votes, but it is precisely the kind of thing that deepens support for Bernie. Clinton demonstrated her mastery of public policy. But also showed degree to which she doesn’t just compromise, she is compromised.” — Jamelle Bouie , chief political correspondent for Slate “If Bernie was directing traffic, there’d be car accidents everywhere. If he was conducting an orchestra, the tempo would be nuts.” — Matt Viser , political reporter for The Boston Globe “I can’t shake the feeling that everything Bernie Sanders knows about foreign policy came from the world politics section of a used bookstore.” — Daniel Drezner , professor of international politics at Tufts University “I think Winston Churchill definitely won tonight’s debate. FDR was strong, too. Tough night for Kissinger but it’s a long primary.” — Josh Lederman , White House reporter for The Associated Press Image Senator Bernie Sanders, in the thick of the Democratic debate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on Thursday. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times | Hillary Clinton;Bernard Sanders,Bernie Sanders;US Politics;2016 Presidential Election;Primaries |
ny0292080 | [
"technology",
"personaltech"
] | 2016/01/22 | Editing a Gmail Inbox Trip Bundle | Q . I generally like the way Gmail Inbox collects all the messages related to travel, and groups them together so I have my flight information, hotel and rental car under one heading on my Android phone. However, I noticed that for a coming trip, the collected information has me listed in the completely wrong hotel. I don’t know how this happened, but can I get rid of the incorrect information in the Trips grouping? A. Google’s Trip Bundles feature , introduced for Inbox last year, scans the contents of your incoming messages for things like flight reservations, hotel confirmations and rental car bookings in the same time period, but it can sometimes grab the wrong information. For example, if you booked your flight online and your email receipt contained advertisements or suggested hotels in your destination location, one of those suggestions may have been folded into the Trip Bundle accidentally. Also, if you book one hotel and then cancel it for another, the Trip Bundle may keep the original reservation. Although Trip Bundles were difficult to edit at first, Google recently added the ability to move selected email messages into an existing trip. To add an open message (like one with the correct hotel reservation) on your phone’s screen to a Trip Bundle, tap the icon depicting three vertical dots in the top-right corner. In the Move To menu, select Trips and on the next screen, choose the appropriate trip. To remove a message from the grouping (but not your Inbox), open the Trip Bundle and in the Related Emails list below the trip information, select the errant message. Tap the Move To icon in the top-right cover and choose “Remove from this trip.” If the wrong hotel still persists in the bundle, you might try removing the related email that mentions the establishment from the bundle first — even if it contains your flight information — put it into a new message and send it to yourself. Inbox should hopefully scan it again and set up the Trip Bundle again, without the erroneous details. | Google;Email;Android;Travel,Tourism |
ny0255044 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2011/09/20 | Rivera Unquestionably Stands Alone at the Top | In the early morning after the Yankees ’ last championship, in 2009, Mariano Rivera sat beaming at a table in a conference room across from the home clubhouse in the Bronx . It was informal, a few writers gathered around, asking if Rivera really meant what he had just said on the field, that he wanted to play five more seasons. Yes, Rivera insisted, he was serious. But in that same room Monday, he was not so sure. This time there were four chairs, one for Rivera and each of his sons. They all wore fresh caps and T-shirts commemorating Rivera’s 602nd save, which set a major league record. The oldest boy, Mariano Jr., is in college. The youngest, Jaziel, is 8, and Rivera nuzzled him, pulling him closer, when asked how much longer he would play. “I tell you one thing: in spring training, this boy here almost didn’t let me go,” Rivera said. “Every year is harder.” Rivera turns 42 in November, and he is signed for one more season. He makes pitching look easy, but really, Rivera said, it is not. He could be the rare athlete who retires at the top of his game, leaving an unbroken trail of excellence. From his first full season as a reliever, in 1996, Rivera has been nothing but elite, year after stupefying year. Joe Girardi , the Yankees’ manager and former catcher, used words like privilege and honor to describe how it feels to work with Rivera. “It’s also very peaceful,” Girardi said, and that was the perfect word. Rivera has played in a stressful era for the Yankees. Every game is dissected as never before, and only a title qualifies as success. Yet with Rivera, there is no panic, no high wire. No pitcher in a century has ever had things so under control. Hitters have had more trouble reaching base against Rivera than they have against any pitcher since Addie Joss. From 1902 through 1910, Joss had a WHIP — walks and hits per inning pitched — of 0.968. Rivera’s is 0.999. Nobody else with 1,000 innings has been as good. The save is such an imperfect metric that fans cheered on Monday when Nick Swisher grounded into a double play to end the eighth inning. If Swisher had homered, the Yankees’ lead would have been too wide for Rivera to qualify for the save. But the save is the obvious defining figure for a closer, and now Rivera stands alone. “This is an important moment,” the longtime catcher Jorge Posada said. “Nobody is ever going to get even close to this. There’s so many intangibles that you have to achieve to get here that it’s amazing that we’re watching it right in front of us. We’re spoiled when he comes into the ballgame because he’s able to do it for so long.” Posada pushed Rivera out to the mound after he dispatched of the Minnesota Twins , 6-4, and finished hugging every teammate. In the late-afternoon shadows, Rivera stood alone, waving his hat to all corners of Yankee Stadium . A stagehand should have brought him flowers. It was awkward, a little, and Rivera gestured twice to Posada, spreading his arms as if to say, “What am I doing out here?” But the mound has been a postgame refuge for Rivera before, the spot he rushed for when the Yankees won the pennant in 2003, the last great moment at the old shrine. As teammates bounced to the plate to greet Aaron Boone , Rivera kissed the dirt on the mound, sobbing for joy — overcome, he would say, by feelings of gratitude. Rivera’s father, Mariano Sr., spoke Monday about how proud he was of his son, who rose from a small village in Panama , where he worked on a fishing boat, to succeed so wildly in New York. But Rivera, who is deeply spiritual, deflected credit and glory. “This is not about me,” he said. “My abilities weren’t enough to be able to accomplish this, if it wasn’t for the mercy of God. That’s the only reason why we’re here, holding this interview.” What’s more, Monday’s celebration recognized only Rivera’s regular-season performance. His postseason dominance truly sets him apart — a 0.71 earned run average across 1392/3 innings. He has not allowed a postseason home run since 2000. Rivera has held hitters to a .176 average, .213 on-base percentage and .276 slugging percentage in the postseason. Jayson Stark of ESPN.com looked for a modern hitter with comparable statistics and found Zach Duke, a pitcher. In other words, when the games matter most, Rivera turns hitters into pitchers. There may never be another October force quite like him, but Rivera was too humble to say it. “Baseball will remain without me, and there will be other good guys pitching there, closing games, and I’ll be watching,” he said. “I enjoy it, but the time will come when I have the time to think about it and appreciate God for everything. Definitely I will do that first, appreciate God for everything he has given me.” Girardi said Rivera’s record would not be broken in our lifetime, and he may be right. Only Trevor Hoffman and Rivera have even 500 saves, and no other active pitcher has 350. The record will be part of Rivera’s legacy for many years, but it will not be his epitaph. “Records are meant to be broken, so I don’t know,” Rivera said. “All I hope is whoever’s going to be there or do that will just respect the game the way I have respected it. That’s all I wish.” | Baseball;Minnesota Twins;Mariano Rivera;Trevor Hoffman |
ny0071929 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2015/03/31 | Cuomo Gets Timely New York Budget but Pays Price | ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo started his second term with a zeal to address broad societal problems like income inequality, faltering public schools and waning trust in the criminal justice system. Taking advantage of the strong budget powers afforded to New York’s chief executive, the governor peppered his budget proposal with policy plans, hoping to gain leverage against reluctant legislators. But as Mr. Cuomo and lawmakers reached a budget agreement on Sunday night, many of his most ambitious goals were nowhere to be found. Instead, the governor stood poised to claim victory for what has become one of his hallmarks: an on-time budget in a state where budgets have chronically been late. For all his aspirations, as the budget deadline neared, the governor blinked. Though he did secure some changes to ethics and education laws, he abandoned a number of proposals, pushing them aside until after the spending plan is passed. As a result, the budget, which still needs the formal approval of lawmakers, would be Mr. Cuomo’s fifth in a row passed by the April 1 deadline, a feat of punctuality that has won a place at the core of his political brand. The budget talks also shed light on the changed atmosphere in Albany: Mr. Cuomo, while still popular with voters, saw his influence diminished since his first term, when he demonstrated a mastery of the machinery of state government and legislators tended to swallow their frustrations, rather than fight back. “As time goes on, the first-term mandate fades, and the legislative leaders on the majority side stand a little stronger with each passing year,” said Senator Michael N. Gianaris, a Queens Democrat, who added this about the final budget: “It’s enough to keep government functioning, but most of the major issues of the day have been peeled off of it.” In his first term, Mr. Cuomo cited his on-time budgets as proof that he had extinguished the unruliness in Albany’s soap opera of a government. He has taken great pride in his achievement: Two years ago, he gave out hockey pucks to celebrate the “hat trick” of three on-time budgets, and last year he produced commemorative baseballs to celebrate his “grand slam” of four on-time budgets. “It certainly reflects a more disciplined budget process by the state,” said Marcia Van Wagner, an analyst at Moody’s Investors Service. Still, she said, the substance of the governor’s budget, such as limiting spending growth, is more important than the date of its approval. This year, Mr. Cuomo was again determined to produce a punctual spending plan — at the expense of its contents, in the view of people who think he folded too quickly. Elizabeth Lynam, vice president and director of state studies for the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan watchdog group, questioned whether too many important issues had been dropped from the budget in the rush to ensure it would be on time. “It should be quality over timeliness,” Ms. Lynam said, “not timeliness as the end all and be all.” To that end, the budget deal struck on Sunday was notable for what it excluded. A number of criminal justice reforms, developed by Mr. Cuomo after unarmed men died at the hands of police officers in Ferguson, Mo., and on Staten Island, were dropped. So were plans to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 18, from 16, and to impose new sexual assault policies at colleges across the state. Even a hallmark of Mr. Cuomo’s tenure as governor, fighting against burdensome property taxes, fizzled this time around: A tax credit he proposed was dumped from the budget, too. Mr. Cuomo faced resistance from both sides of the aisle. The Republican-controlled State Senate doomed his plans to raise the minimum wage and to pass the Dream Act, which would allow tuition aid from the state for undocumented students, while the State Assembly, which Democrats control, blocked a tax credit for certain donations to schools and scholarship funds. Supporters of the abandoned proposals were not pleased that their issues were considered expendable as Mr. Cuomo worked to strike a budget deal. “One thing he has taught us over the years is that he’s a brilliant political strategist, and our hope was that he would use that to make sure that the Dream Act was in the budget, and it’s not,” said Javier H. Valdés, co-executive director of Make the Road New York, an immigrant advocacy group. “And he as the governor needs to take responsibility for that.” Mr. Cuomo devoted much of his attention in the final days of budget negotiations to two thorny issues — ethics measures and education changes. After the arrest in January of Sheldon Silver , who was the Assembly speaker, on corruption charges, the governor said he would make ethics a priority. Most notably, the governor reached agreement with both houses that lawmakers disclose more about the income they earn from other jobs. On education, Mr. Cuomo proposed giving greater weight to state tests in teacher evaluations and making it harder to get tenure, prompting a blistering battle with teachers’ unions. He did not fare well: Polls found that when it came to improving schools, voters sided with the unions over the governor. Mr. Cuomo ultimately reached a compromise on his education plans. Teachers will now need at least four years in the classroom before earning tenure, one more than they do now, and in at least three of those years they must be rated effective or higher on evaluations. The State Education Department will come up with a new evaluation formula. The governor originally offered $1.1 billion in increased education spending if the Assembly and Senate went along with his agenda, prompting complaints that he was holding school money hostage, but he ultimately agreed to the additional dollars, and a few hundred million more, even though lawmakers insisted on changes to his proposals. “He was not willing, and I think very smartly, to make the budget late, even a day or two,” said John McArdle, a former top aide to the Senate Republicans. “At the end of the day, people don’t know what you’re fighting for, what you’re holding out for — they only know the budget is late.” In the final days of budget talks, Mr. Cuomo seemed to go out of his way to lower expectations for what would make it into the completed spending plan, saying many of the issues could be passed later in the legislative session. He described his budget proposal as a “statement of priority” and said he loaded it with so many items only because people had complained when he left their pet proposals out of previous budgets. “I succumbed,” the governor said on Saturday. He added that budget negotiators could only negotiate so much. “There’s a certain amount that the system can handle,” he said, listing several of his proposals. “That’s a lot of work. That’s a lot of discussion, a lot of meetings, a lot of paper going back and forth. At one point you’re just maxing out the limit of the system.” | Andrew Cuomo;New York;Budget;State legislature |
ny0217092 | [
"us"
] | 2010/04/15 | Groups Protest Segregation of Inmates With H.I.V. | In Alabama, prisoners infected with H.I.V. must wear white armbands and live in special units. In South Carolina, infected men have blue dots on their badges and are housed in a maximum-security prison; female prisoners carry the name of the H.I.V./AIDS dorm on their uniforms. The two states are the last to segregate and put blanket restrictions on H.I.V.-positive inmates and on Wednesday, rights groups called for change, saying the policies violate federal and international guidelines. Infected prisoners’ chances of early release and help in re-entering society are harmed as well, according to a report issued by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch. South Carolina bars them from participating in work-release, for example, and Alabama limits such opportunities. Prison officials in the two states say that segregation is necessary to prevent the spread of H.I.V. and provide specialized medical care. | Prisons and Prisoners;Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome;Segregation;Alabama;South Carolina |
ny0094829 | [
"sports",
"football"
] | 2015/01/16 | Steve Spagnuolo to Steer Giants’ Defense Again | Coach Tom Coughlin is both loyal and impatient. Under pressure to turn around the Giants this year after successive losing seasons, Coughlin reached out to a familiar colleague Thursday to help resurrect the dysfunctional defense. Steve Spagnuolo, the defensive mastermind behind the Giants’ stunning upset of the previously unbeaten New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII, was reunited with Coughlin as the new defensive coordinator. Spagnuolo became a rising star in coaching circles after his defense held the high-flying Patriots to 14 points in the Giants’ Super Bowl victory after the 2007 season. In 2009, he left the Giants to become the head coach of the St. Louis Rams. But Spagnuolo remained a popular figure within the Giants organization, and he immediately became the likely replacement last week when Coughlin dismissed Perry Fewell, the defensive coordinator since Spagnuolo’s exit. The Giants defense ranked 29th in the N.F.L. during the 2014 season. “The energy, enthusiasm and strong personality that we saw before in Steve Spagnuolo — all of that was very evident again,” Coughlin said in a statement from the team Thursday. “His desire to be a Giant again was very, very obvious.” Spagnuolo said: “This is both new and familiar at the same time. We’re going to work our butts off, and hopefully we will do great things together.” The Giants also hired Tim Walton as their cornerbacks coach. Walton was the Rams’ defensive coordinator in 2013. Spagnuolo has encountered bumps since leaving the Giants. He had a 10-28 record with the Rams and was fired after the 2011 season. He spent one disappointing year as defensive coordinator of the New Orleans Saints. For the 2014 season, however, he drew praise as the Baltimore Ravens’ cornerbacks coach and assistant head coach. Image Josh McNary was charged with felony counts of rape and criminal confinement in Marion County, Ind. Credit Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, via Associated Press Coughlin said the Giants were not just reaching back in time with the hiring of Spagnuolo. “His defense has changed since he was last here,” Coughlin said. “He worked in Baltimore with John Harbaugh and Dean Pees, and they are outstanding defensive coaches. He has studied defenses. Steve visited colleges and talked to college coaches, including Urban Meyer, to learn how to defend the spread offenses that have become so popular.” JETS ASSISTANT JOINS RYAN Bills Coach Rex Ryan is wasting little time in assembling his new staff, which will include his longtime assistant Dennis Thurman as defensive coordinator. Thurman held the same role under Ryan with the Jets the last two years. The two have worked together since 2002, when they were members of the Ravens’ defensive staff. Ryan was hired on Monday. Thurman replaced Jim Schwartz, whose contract was terminated. Among those also hired by Buffalo on Thursday were Bobby April III, who will coach the linebackers; Karl Dunbar (defensive line); Tim McDonald (defensive backs); and Tony Sparano Jr. (tight ends). (AP) LINEBACKER ON EXEMPT LIST The Indianapolis Colts placed the backup linebacker Josh McNary on the commissioner’s exempt list, a move that came less than 24 hours after prosecutors charged McNary with rape, criminal confinement with bodily injury and battery resulting in bodily injury. (AP) NEW COMBINE FOR VETERANS The N.F.L. is adding a combine for veteran players to go with the huge event it holds for potential draftees. The veterans’ combine is scheduled for March 22 at the Cardinals’ training complex in Phoenix. (AP) COWBOYS RETAIN PLAY-CALLER The Dallas assistant Scott Linehan will add the title of offensive coordinator after one season as the Cowboys’ play-caller. (AP) | Football;Steve Spagnuolo;Colts;Josh McNary;Jets;Dennis Thurman;Scott Linehan;Dallas Cowboys;Giants |
ny0145801 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2008/10/22 | Top Military Officers Talk in U.S.-Russia Conference | HELSINKI, Finland — The United States and Russia sent their top military officers to this neutral capital, with its resonant legacy of cold-war-era talks, for a secretly arranged meeting on Tuesday to try to push their strained relations back on track, American officials said. It was the first time that Adm. Mike Mullen , chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had met his counterpart, Gen. Nikolai Makarov, since the Russian was appointed chief of the General Staff this summer. However, the two had spoken by telephone multiple times during the brief August war between Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia. The conflict — in which much of the West sided with Georgia and its claims to two breakaway enclaves — worsened relations between Moscow and Washington, particularly after the enclaves declared their independence with Russia’s backing. “I think it’s important that we talk when there isn’t a crisis,” Admiral Mullen said after the meeting. American military officers said that the session, held at the Königstedt Manor along the Vantaa River, just outside Helsinki, was organized at the request of the Russians. The admiral said he and General Makarov had discussed American disquiet over the war in Georgia — Russia’s first post-Soviet offensive outside its soil — as well as Russian unhappiness with the arrival of American warships in the Black Sea with humanitarian aid for Georgia. Other topics included NATO’s relations with Russia and how to improve cooperation on countering terrorism, halting the proliferation of unconventional weapons and stemming narcotics trafficking. Admiral Mullen offered no details of those discussions but said that he and his counterpart had pledged to continue talking. “Clearly the relationship has changed because of what happened in Georgia,” Admiral Mullen said. “But by no means should it end. I don’t think it can resume exactly where it was before Georgia, but we also covered areas of mutual concern.” He said that “even in our darkest days of the cold war we were talking to each other — and I think we need to continue.” “I’ll go home encouraged by the opportunities that I had to discuss the issues in a very direct way, face to face, and the commitment that in the future we will stay engaged,” he said. Relations were strained before the Russia-Georgia war. Russia has used its oil and natural gas to fill its coffers and rebuild its military since the disarray of the 1990s, and it has resumed flexing its might with flights by long-range bombers and surveillance planes to test American and NATO airspace. At the same time, Washington’s recent agreements with Poland and the Czech Republic to host American missile-defense sites brought outrage and even threats of military action from the Kremlin. American officials have emphasized that the system — radar equipment and 10 interceptors — is intended to counter a potential Iranian missile attack and poses no threat to the Russian nuclear arsenal. After returning to Moscow, General Makarov told reporters that Russia would “need to take measures in connection with the deployment of missile defense systems in the Czech Republic and Poland.” As tensions have escalated, Admiral Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates have spoken in calm, calibrated terms of the Kremlin’s military decision-making and foreign policy. They have challenged the Kremlin to behave better in global affairs but have noted that Russia’s armed forces do not pose a global risk. General Makarov was elevated to chief of the Russian General Staff this summer after a long career in the ground forces, although his most recent post was as chief of armaments and deputy defense minister for industrial procurement, according to his official biography. Pentagon officials said his appointment appeared to be part of a Kremlin push to modernize Russia’s military and clamp down on corruption and waste in procurement and payrolls. After the Russia-Georgia conflict, some newer NATO members expressed concerns about their own territorial integrity. Among the most concerned were the Baltic states — Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — as well as Poland and the Czech Republic. Admiral Mullen said it was vitally important for all of NATO to reassure members that the alliance’s mutual-security guarantees remained an imperative, and he pointedly visited Riga, the Latvian capital, after the Helsinki meeting. | United States Armament and Defense;Russia;Mullen Michael G;United States International Relations |
ny0221345 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2010/02/06 | New York City Housing Authority Plans to Topple Prospect Plaza | Philadelphia tore down 21. Chicago leveled 79. Baltimore took down 21 as well, and when 6 of them came down in one day in 1995, it threw a parade. Since the 1990s, public housing high-rise buildings have come tumbling down by the dozens across the country as cities replace them with smaller suburban-style homes that do not carry the stigma of looming urban despair and poverty. New York City has long been the great exception, and red-brick towers still dominate the skyline from the Lower East Side to East Harlem, from Mott Haven, in the Bronx, to Bushwick, Brooklyn. But now, for the first time in its 75-year history, the New York City Housing Authority wants to knock down an entire high-rise complex, Prospect Plaza in Brooklyn — a move that has surprised and angered a number of former tenants and advocates for low-income housing. In the past decade, the authority has chosen to renovate rather than tear down its aging housing stock, often at great expense. Its decision to demolish Prospect Plaza was not the result of a sweeping policy shift, but of the failure of a renovation project that became bogged down in years of administrative, financial and legal problems. Prospect Plaza — three 12- to 15-story towers in Brownsville — is plagued by neither despair nor poverty: It has been vacant since 2003, when the last tenants were moved out with the promise they could return to refurbished apartments. One recent evening, the sole occupant of Prospect Plaza — many of the windows on the upper floors have been removed, giving the buildings a hollowed-out look — was a security guard in a ground-floor office. The window frames and doorways on each tower’s bottom three floors were sealed shut with cinderblocks or metal gates. The flagpole was flagless, but an old wooden sign remained: “Welcome to Prospect Plaza.” Agency officials say they want to tear down the 35-year-old buildings and erect new apartments in their place. Officials initially planned to leave the towers standing and reconfigure the apartments, by eliminating some units to create bigger living rooms and bathrooms, but those plans were scrapped by the authority’s new leadership because demolition made better financial sense. Ilene Popkin, the agency’s assistant deputy general manager for development, said it would cost $481,000 to renovate each of the 269 apartments. Demolishing the structures and building 361 new units would cost $381,700 per unit. Ms. Popkin and other officials said the three buildings had deteriorated from vandalism and exposure to the elements, and were out of context with the neighborhood. The new apartments — including public and private housing, not only for the poor but also for low- and moderate-income families — are likely to be built in low-rise buildings. Prospect Plaza originally included four towers housing 1,200 people. One was torn down in 2005; the plan was to use that space for a new community center, shops and additional housing. But today, the building’s old footprint is just a fenced-off lot. That building was the first high-rise the authority demolished. In 2007, the agency also knocked down a number of two-story buildings as part of the redevelopment of the Markham Gardens complex on Staten Island. The authority has completed the first two phases of its Prospect Plaza redevelopment plan, involving not the actual housing project itself but 37 two-family houses and 150 rental units in four-story town-house-style buildings that were constructed on nearby lots formerly owned by the city. Several former residents of Prospect Plaza and groups that represent public housing tenants said they did not support the demolition, in part, because it was unclear to them that the authority intended to replace the old units with the same number of new public housing units. Agency officials have not decided how many of the new apartments will be public housing, but they said that former residents and community leaders would help make that determination. “We are committed to being shoulder to shoulder with you,” the agency’s new general manager, Michael Kelly, told former tenants and others at a community meeting last week a few blocks from the vacant buildings. The cost of demolishing the towers and building the new apartments is estimated at $138 million. Part of the financing will come from a $21.4 million federal grant the authority was awarded in 1999 to revitalize Prospect Plaza, of which about $17 million remains. At the meeting, Mr. Kelly said it was too early to say where the rest of the financing would come from. Agency documents describe the project as “mixed finance,” meaning it will be paid for with public and private dollars, with some of the money coming from the sale of federal low-income housing tax credits. Michaels Development Company , a real estate company based in New Jersey, was hired in 2003 to rehabilitate the three towers, but the agency terminated its agreement with Michaels in 2007. In a letter to Representative Yvette D. Clarke’s office in December, the agency said that Michaels “was unable to develop a financially feasible plan for rehabilitation.” A spokeswoman for Michaels disputed that description. “We had a viable plan to fully finance the deal,” said the spokeswoman, Laura Ochipinti Zaner. Michaels sued the agency in April 2008 for breach of contract, accusing it of mismanaging the project and of failing to compensate the company for $5.6 million in predevelopment and other costs. The project stalled in part because it took the agency three years to finish the development agreement and because of turnover at the authority, according to the lawsuit. In court documents, the agency denied many of the company’s assertions, stating that Michaels breached the agreement by failing to obtain commitments from lenders willing to invest in the project. An agency spokeswoman said Michaels was paid about $4 million from the federal grant for architectural, engineering and environmental review work. Even as the three towers sit vacant on Prospect Place near Saratoga Avenue, they continue to be a costly expense for the cash-strapped authority, which has paid a security firm $25,000 a month since 2005 to keep watch over the buildings. The demolition, which must be approved by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, is planned for this fall, with construction scheduled to start in 2012. Preference for the new public housing units will go to former residents, many of whom were relocated to other public housing in Brooklyn. At the community meeting, Priscilla Davis, 40, a former tenant, said she would not believe anything the authority told her until she was handed the keys to her new apartment. Milton Bolton, 50, a former resident and the president of the still-intact Prospect Plaza Tenants Association, held up a thick draft of a 1998 application for the federal grant and said, “It’s hard to have trust.” More than three dozen tenants have died since 2003. Ms. Popkin and Mr. Kelly acknowledged “bumps along the road” for the project in the past, but they stressed their desire to rebuild the neighborhood. “I understand that folks here are frustrated,” Ms. Popkin said. “There is a new management at Nycha. We have a commitment to these towers. This is a top priority to move forward.” | Demolition;Public Housing;Housing Authority (NYC);Brownsville (NYC) |
ny0165730 | [
"technology"
] | 2006/09/07 | S.E.C. Warns Lucent of a Possible Suit | Lucent Technologies has been notified by the Securities and Exchange Commission that it may be sued over a previously disclosed investigation of its operations in China. Lucent said in April 2004 that an internal audit and outside inquiry had found possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the company said in a regulatory filing yesterday. The S.E.C. told the company that it might receive a Wells notice, which means that the commission’s staff has decided to recommend an enforcement action against it. Lucent, which makes telecommunications equipment, said it was negotiating with the agency to resolve the matter. Lucent, based in Murray Hill, N.J., said in a statement yesterday that while “incidents and internal deficiencies” in China did not have a material impact on its operations, it could not guarantee that the continuing investigation would not affect its operations in China or elsewhere. In trading yesterday, Lucent shares fell 8 cents, to $2.27, down nearly 15 percent this year. | Lucent Technologies Inc;Securities and Commodities Violations;Securities and Exchange Commission;China |
ny0222663 | [
"business",
"global"
] | 2010/11/11 | Countries See Hazards in Free Flow of Capital | LONDON — In China and Taiwan, regulators are imposing fresh restrictions on stock market investments by foreigners. In Brazil, officials have twice raised taxes on foreign investors. Even in South Korea, host to this week’s Group of 20 meeting, pressure is building on the government to take similar steps. As the leaders of the 20 major economic powers gather in Seoul, an increasing number of them have either imposed curbs or are in the process of doing so to slow the torrent of hot money into their markets. Over the years, foreign capital flowing into emerging markets has played a crucial role in helping finance roads in India, factories in China and buyers of luxury cars in Brazil. But as the sums have compounded and led to more market volatility, fast-growing countries have begun to worry that short-term investment will push up the value of their currencies, make their goods less competitive in the global market, and lead to asset bubbles that will be painful to deflate. Once a core policy commandment of the so-called Washington consensus and held dear by the United States Treasury, the International Monetary Fund and global investment banks, the belief that unfettered capital flows are a boon for everyone — including the country on the receiving end — has been dealt a major blow. Short-term investment is now increasingly viewed as something that needs to be controlled. “The world has learned about the perils of free market finance — global financial liberalization just does not work as advertised,” said Dani Rodrik, a political economy professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. “Just as John Maynard Keynes said in 1945 — capital controls are now orthodox.” Still, the risk remains that as capital controls are adopted by more countries, a result will be a series of competitive devaluations, which could drive away overseas investors and lead to a rout of once-buoyant stock markets. Many countries are discussing additional steps because they fear that the Federal Reserve’s latest bid to revive the United States economy by pumping an additional $600 billion into the banking system will further weaken the dollar and send more money into fast-growing markets. The latest restrictions are as various as taxes on bond and equity flows and extended rules on how quickly short-term capital may be repatriated. Emerging markets have been grappling all year with the consequences of a flight of investor capital from rock-bottom interest rates in Western countries in search of higher yields. Short-term capital investment in emerging markets — largely in stock markets, which are at an all-time high — is expected to hit $458 billion this year, the highest figure since 2007 when $784 billion flowed into these markets, according to the Institute of International Finance . Abandoning its earlier stand, the I.M.F. now recognizes capital controls as a viable policy tool. Likewise, the United States has expressed sympathy and support for the actions taken by countries with overvalued currencies, like Brazil. “Capital controls are now part of the emerging-market investor consensus,” said Gary N. Kleiman of Kleiman International, an emerging-markets consulting firm based in Washington. “But if there is ever a correction, you will get a harsher view.” Under what conditions countries should impose controls on investment is a matter of some dispute. The United States, with its big budget deficit, aggressive monetary easing and weakening currency, may struggle to be the arbiter. A new study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics offers a suggestion. It argues that policy makers need to distinguish between types of capital controls. There are the ones deployed by countries like China and a few other Asian export powerhouses intended to keep their currencies artificially low. They contrast with those being applied by Brazil and others that are intended to avoid asset bubbles and prevent their currencies from rising too quickly. China, which the authors estimate encourages its renminbi to remain at least 20 percent undervalued against the dollar, and Singapore, where the undervaluation is even steeper at 33 percent, are “violating their international obligation” to avoid competitive devaluations, the institute concluded . As for fast-growing economies like Brazil and Turkey, where currencies are now overvalued against the dollar by an estimated 9 percent and 16 percent, respectively, the paper concludes that they are justified in raising selective barriers. What gives the study an extra bite is that one of its authors is John Williamson, an international economist who conceived the original notion of the Washington consensus in 1989. Broadly defined, that long-held view was that developing nations must absorb 10 policies, like balancing their budgets, privatizing state-owned enterprises and opening their markets to foreign investors, to achieve lasting economic success. Although there is no mention in the original 10 principles of the importance of the free flow of capital, such a view came to be associated with a promarket stance that such flows, along with fiscal discipline and open markets, were crucial for emerging markets to succeed. “The term took on a life of its own and became associated with free market fundamentalism,” said Mr. Rodrik, who added that an apogee was reached in the mid-1990s when the I.M.F. tried to include the free flow of capital as one of its articles of agreement. After the Asian crisis in 1997 and the Russian market collapse in 1998, the notion that such flows were an unquestioned good began to be challenged. Of course, at the time, many countries were concerned mostly about capital flight and its effect, not inflows. Despite China’s success in maintaining tight control over its currency and the recent actions of Taiwan, Brazil and others, not all emerging markets are erecting barriers. In India, where a record-breaking stock market has lured billions of dollars, officials have said that they do not intend to impose new restrictions. Similarly, policy makers in booming Turkey say they will not impose controls, despite calls for action from some of the country’s exporters. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan even went so far as to say that a strong currency was a source of pride for Turks. “I think there has been a bit of exaggeration in this need for capital controls,” said William R. Cline, the co-author of the Peterson Institute report. Mr. Cline notes that of the countries with trade deficits, only Brazil has set up capital controls, with others preferring to intervene selectively in exchange markets. “This is a rapidly changing situation, and a lot depends on what happens to U.S. interest rates and the stock market.” | Group of Twenty;Currency;Foreign Investments;Brazil;South Korea;International Monetary Fund;China;International Trade and World Market |
ny0230640 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2010/09/19 | Afghan Vote Marked by Light Turnout and Violence | MARJA, Afghanistan — The first voter here was Muhammad Akbar, 22, who dipped his finger in the indelible purple ink, collected his ballot and had just stepped into the cardboard box that served as a voting booth when gunfire broke out. “They’re right on time,” said Lt. Col. Kyle Ellison, commander of the Second Battalion, Sixth Marine Regiment. The Taliban had vowed to disrupt Afghanistan ’s parliamentary election and sought to make good on that promise throughout the country on Saturday. At least 10 people were killed, scores of polling stations were attacked and hundreds of them apparently never opened. Even where there was no shooting, turnout was light. Many polling centers were largely empty for most of the day, in sharp contrast to presidential elections a year ago, when voters waited in long lines. And where there was voting, there were numerous reports of fraud, from vote buying to ballot stuffing. Results of the elections, a crucial measure of the government’s ability to function on its own before American troops begin to withdraw next year, were not expected for several days. But one year after the flawed and still disputed presidential vote, rampant fraud and low turnout could further undermine the government’s legitimacy. Afghan officials insisted that in most places the election went ahead without major incident. “There is no doubt that security is better than last year,” Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said. But the Free and Fair Elections Foundation , the independent Afghan monitoring organization, cited “widespread irregularities.” “Insecurity and violence shaped the voting process in large swaths of the country,” the group said in a statement late Saturday. The full extent of any fraud may not be known for some time, if ever. The election, in which 2,500 candidates ran for 249 seats, was monitored by fewer than half the number of international observers than those who observed in last year’s balloting, and they were confined to provincial capitals because of safety concerns. The election last year was so fraud-ridden that nearly a quarter of the votes were thrown out, the recounting dragged on for months and accusations of electoral malfeasance by President Hamid Karzai’s campaign drove a rift between his government and the United States that has yet to heal. This year, the Taliban are stronger, and their campaign of intimidation and violence appeared to have taken a toll. Some 3.6 million votes were cast, according to a preliminary estimate by the Independent Election Commission , about a million fewer than in 2009, according to United Nations estimates. Marja, which remains one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan seven months after a Marine Corps-led offensive to oust the Taliban from this Helmand Province stronghold, was no exception. “The people were coming here to vote, but the shooting stopped them,” said Abdul Bari, 20, the chief election worker at a polling place in southern Marja, in a small whitewashed building that is the area’s new high school. By 10:30 a.m., as bullets whizzed overhead and grenades exploded nearby, only 27 voters had cast their ballots there. By the end of the day, there were unconfirmed reports that 400 voters had cast ballots in southern Marja’s six polling places, none of which was directly attacked. “A thousand people would have been a win,” said Colonel Ellison, who had walked around the deserted streets trying to encourage the few people he saw to vote. “It’s frustrating to me that people are intimidated by three or four people running around their village.” In Kandahar Province, the other major Taliban redoubt in southern Afghanistan, explosions were heard every half-hour through the morning, and officials said there were 5 rocket attacks and 10 bombs detonated in and around Kandahar city. Governor Tooryalai Wesa was touring polling places to encourage voters to turn out, but his convoy was hit by a roadside bomb, slightly damaging his armored car but hurting no one. Those who did vote in Kandahar were nervous. “I am so scared to come to the polling station,” said Shafiqa, 49. “My family insisted I not come, but I have to because this is my country and I want to use my vote for someone I like.” The Taliban used every conceivable tactic to dissuade people from voting, firing rockets at polling places, kidnapping campaign workers, planting a bomb in the toilet of a mosque that was to be used as a polling place and threatening to amputate not only fingers with voting ink on them, but also the noses and ears of those who dared to vote. Nationwide, the authorities said that 92 percent of 5,816 polling centers had opened as planned, and there was no word from the other 8 percent, raising concerns that security conditions had forced them to close, according to the election commission. An additional 1,000 polling centers had been closed before Election Day because the authorities could not secure them. The polling places that did not report to the commission were scattered across nine provinces, in the northeast, northwest, east and south, Fazal Ahmad Manawi, the commission’s chairman, said at a news conference. He added, however, that every province had at least 50 percent of its polling places open. Violence was also widespread, and not limited to the Taliban’s southern stronghold. In the north, 5 people were killed and 19 were wounded in a variety of attacks in Kunduz Province, according to Afghan government and hospital officials. In Baghlan Province, also in the north, three members of a village self-defense militia were killed, the governor said. In Nangarhar Province, in the east, the bomb hidden in the mosque exploded harmlessly, but in the town of Chapayar, two people were killed by a rocket. A statement on a pro-Taliban Web site claimed that the insurgents had attacked more than 100 polling centers. Fraud vied with security as a major concern. In Helmand Province, an election commission official was arrested with what were said to be 1,500 fake voter registration cards she was suspected of trying to use for her mother, a candidate, and in Paktika Province, a man was arrested with 1,600 fake cards. At a polling center at Ghazi Khan High School in Kunduz, journalists and observers watched as election officials and supporters of some candidates locked the doors for two hours and filled out ballots themselves. The Free and Fair Elections Foundation complained that in nearly 3,000 polling centers — or more than half of the total — its monitors discovered that the ink being used to mark voters’ fingers, and prevent repeated voting, was easily washed off, even though it was supposed to have been indelible. In Helmand, ink was the least of the Marines’ concerns as they returned to Forward Operating Base Marja, where insurgents launched a rocket into the base at noon, destroying the platform of a tent but hurting no one. “It’s not luck, it’s God,” said Cpl. Jason Hamlet, 23, who was standing less than 15 feet from the blast site. The Marines responded with three Hellfire missiles fired at insurgents’ positions from Reaper drones. Later, where one of the missiles had hit, they found a pool of blood, clothing and a stopped wristwatch. For one person, at least, the battle for Afghanistan’s future had ended at 1:42 p.m. | Afghanistan;Elections;Afghanistan War (2001- );Taliban |
ny0110749 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2012/05/25 | West New York, N.J., Mayor Accused of Hacking Opponents’ Web Site | An insurgent political campaign in West New York, N.J., suddenly realized in February that its Web site had been disabled. The campaign was being run by opponents of the mayor, Dr. Felix Roque , and the Web site, recallroque.com, had been intended to rally support to recall him and collect information about what his critics described as his rampant mismanagement. On Thursday, federal prosecutors said they had uncovered the culprit behind the hacking: the mayor himself. Mayor Roque, 55, who was elected last year, and his 22-year-old son, Joseph, were charged with gaining unauthorized access to computers. The criminal complaint against the Roques reads like Watergate scripted for the Internet age and the scrappy politics of Hudson County. It depicts a public official and his son frantically working their BlackBerrys and iPhones, and Facebook and Google, in an effort to silence his opponents. Prosecutors said that in February, Mayor Roque had encouraged his son to take down the Web site, which had been set up anonymously. Joseph Roque then uncovered the identities of the site’s creators, who included several public officials and a local media personality. The mayor, a Democrat who has a close relationship with Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, threatened to use his political connections to punish them. Mayor Roque told one of the site’s creators that “everyone would pay,” and threatened to refer another to the Internal Revenue Service for an audit, according to the criminal complaint. He was powerful enough, he told them, that no one would discover the hacking. “A friend of mine, he works in the — I can’t tell you — three letters: C.I.A.,” he told one, according to a conversation recorded by law enforcement officials. “You know, that’s how I get information. So, what I’m doing is not very kosher.” Father and son appeared, shackled at the hands and feet, in federal court in Newark on Thursday, where a judge told them that they face up to 11 years in prison and $600,000 in fines. They were released on $100,000 bond each, officials said. Mayor Roque did not make a statement in court. His lawyer did not respond to phone messages seeking comment on the charges. Born in Cuba, Mayor Roque immigrated with his parents to West New York, on the Hudson across from Manhattan, when he was 11. He joined the Army, and became a doctor. He became politically active in 2009, declaring that he was angered by seven years of property tax increases and the town’s proposal to lay off dozens of police officers and other municipal employees. He formed an effort to recall the mayor , but could not get it on the ballot after the signatures on the recall petition were challenged. He then ran for a successful campaign for mayor on a promise to cut property taxes and stop corruption and patronage at City Hall. According to the complaint, a government official in Hudson County set up the recall Web site on Feb. 4 and through Facebook encouraged people to send information anonymously about alleged mismanagement in the Roque administration. Two nights later, Joseph Roque e-mailed the creator to say that he had good leads, the complaint charged, and tried to learn the creator’s identity, insisting he had documents to hand over in person. The creator suggested he scan them into a computer and then e-mail them. In between constant phone calls to his father, Joseph Roque figured out how to take control of the creator’s e-mail address and use it to tell the host of the recall Web site, GoDaddy, to shut the site down, according to the complaint. Prosecutors said that at one point Joseph Roque even did Internet searches for “how to hack.” The day that GoDaddy was allegedly instructed to shut the site down, a West New York resident who had contributed information to the recall site found that it did not work. Eleven minutes later, Mayor Roque called the resident and left a threatening message, the complaint said. In a later e-mail, he warned, “Remember that I am in the Army with many friends,” concluding: “Don’t let me down. Your friend, Dr. Roque.” When law-enforcement officials went to Joseph Roque’s home in Long Island in late March to tell him that they were aware of the hacking, he told them that his father knew nothing about it, prosecutors said. When they informed him that they had seized Mayor Roque’s cellphones, his son looked at the ceiling and mouthed a profanity, prosecutors said. The mayor was more cavalier when officials interviewed him the same day. He would be fine if he went to jail, he said, according to the complaint, “because he was set financially and had ‘lived the dream’ and would not have a problem with serving time in jail because he would work out and read while there.” | Cyberattacks and Hackers;West New York (NJ);Roque Felix;Roque Joseph;Elections Mayors |
ny0021465 | [
"sports",
"hockey"
] | 2013/09/29 | The Devils’ Plan of Succession, Carried Out Gradually | NEWARK — The banners hanging from the rafters of Prudential Center tell the story of the Devils’ past two decades. Nine Atlantic Division championships, five Eastern Conference titles and three Stanley Cups to go with three retired numbers — defensemen Scott Stevens, Scott Niedermayer and Ken Daneyko. Martin Brodeur needs not peer too long at them. Brodeur, a 41-year-old goalie, has had a hand in nearly all of the franchise’s glory. On top of backstopping the Devils to those accomplishments, Brodeur has claimed 669 wins — the most in N.H.L. history — and three Vezina Trophies. He will begin his 21st season as a Devil on Thursday in Pittsburgh and is expected to start opening night for the 19th straight season. But Brodeur’s career is clearly running short. He is entering the final year of a two-year deal he signed after the Devils’ most recent run to the Stanley Cup finals. With the Devils not having an obvious heir apparent, General Manager Lou Lamoriello acquired goalie Cory Schneider from the Vancouver Canucks on draft day for the Devils’ first-round pick. Schneider, 27, was in a fierce goaltending competition with Roberto Luongo in Vancouver, one many thought Schneider would win after playing 30 of 48 games last season. Luongo was shopped throughout the past year, but it ultimately was Schneider who was traded June 30. Schneider has shown the Devils the promise he displayed in Vancouver. He spent the preseason playing like the starting goalie, stopping 79 of 80 shots in 200 minutes. In his first preseason start, against the Rangers on Sept. 16, he stopped all 22 shots through two periods, including a remarkable stick save on the star forward Rick Nash. Schneider was the game’s first star and received chants of “Co-ry!” from the Prudential Center crowd. “It was great, I did not expect that at all,” said Schneider, a native of Marblehead, Mass. “The fans were incredible that night. With the Rangers in town, you could tell there was a different atmosphere at the rink, even for a preseason game.” He also was the first star in the Devils’ final exhibition game, stopping nine shots in a 4-1 win over the Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday night. Brodeur surrendered seven goals in six preseason periods, including four in one period in a 5-3 loss to the Islanders. Yet, when asked, Coach Pete DeBoer immediately quells any goalie controversy, reiterating that Brodeur is the Devils’ starter to open the season — assuming he is available after leaving the team Thursday because of the death of his father , Denis. Such a statement could frustrate Schneider, but he seems to understand. “He’s earned that right for what he’s done and who he is,” said Schneider, who grew up idolizing Brodeur. “It’s up to me to compete and battle for any game I can get.” The schedule will offer Schneider chances. The Devils will play 21 games on back-to-back nights, and DeBoer has said that goalies would not play back-to-back games. “I think that’s part of our schedule; we do have a lot of back-to-backs,” Schneider said. “I think he has made it pretty clear that he wants to use both of us in those back-to-backs.” The Devils open the season with four games in six nights, including the back end of back-to-back games at Vancouver. When asked about the prospect of starting against the Canucks mere months after being traded, Schneider played it down. “Maybe it is my turn in Vancouver, maybe it’s not,” he said. “Whoever plays the game, we’ll have a good chance to win, and if it is me, it would be fun to play in front of those fans. But if it’s not, it’s a hockey game, and there’ll be a lot more to come, so it wouldn’t be the end of the world.” Brodeur has recently been susceptible to injuries, having played fewer than 60 games in four of the last five years. Last season, Brodeur pulled himself from a home game against Winnipeg during warm-ups with back stiffness, then missed the next 12 games with a pinched nerve. But Brodeur still seems confident. He also realizes Schneider’s presence can be useful. “He’s going to keep me accountable,” Brodeur said. “I don’t really need it, but it’s there, so I might as well use it.” Brodeur says he does not think he has anything left to prove. “If they don’t know what I can do, they’ll never know,” he said. As Brodeur enters the final year of his contract, he is not quite ready for a Mariano Rivera-esque farewell tour. “I’m just going to play this year,” Brodeur said. “Tell your friends around the league that I’m not going to tell anyone if I’m going to retire until I make a decision.” But even if Brodeur does return next season, and even though Schneider is signed only through 2015, there is no doubt in Brodeur’s mind who will be in goal to help the Devils raise future banners. “He’s definitely the guy who takes what I did for so many years and move with it,” Brodeur said of Schneider. “He’s going to be the top goalie in New Jersey in the next few years, there is no doubt about that.” | Martin Brodeur;Devils;Ice hockey;Cory Schneider |
ny0210807 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2017/01/05 | New York Police Shoot Man Wearing Ballistics Vest | Police officers shot a man three times in the leg as he drew a handgun, while responding to a call about gunfire on Staten Island early Thursday morning, the New York Police Department said. And when the man, Patrick Allen, was taken into custody, the officers discovered that he was wearing a ballistics vest, which had absorbed another bullet. It was the third time in less than 36 hours that police officers had shot someone in the city. The police said the two other men, who were killed in separate shootings in Brooklyn, had also brandished weapons. The first shooting occurred around 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, when officers responded to a call about an emotionally disturbed person in a house in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn. The police said that after a woman let officers into the home, James Owens, 63, advanced toward them with a 13-inch kitchen knife. An officer used his Taser on Mr. Owens, but it had “no effect,” the police said. A second officer then fired at Mr. Owens, who was pronounced dead at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center. About 3:40 a.m. Wednesday, three officers in street clothes were patrolling the border of the Crown Heights and Clinton Hill neighborhoods in Brooklyn, when they heard gunfire and saw a man shooting into a lounge. The police said the man, Joshua Martino, 18, ran from the officers when they got out of their car, before turning to them with the gun, a .38 revolver, in his hand. Two officers fired at Mr. Martino, the police said, striking him in his torso. He was pronounced dead at Brooklyn Hospital Center. Image A ballistics vest worn by a man who was shot by officers in Staten Island on Thursday. The police said the vest, worn by Mr. Allen, absorbed one bullet. He was taken into custody. Credit New York Police Department In 2016, officers in the city shot 32 people, killing nine of them, the police said. That figure was the highest since 2009, when officers also shot 32 people, killing 12. Officers shot 23 people in 2015, killing eight, and 22 in 2014, killing eight. “You look at 2016, there were a number of instances where people fired a pointed weapon at police officers,” James P. O’Neill , the police commissioner, said Thursday at a news conference. “There’s still some very bad people in the world that make very bad decisions.” Asked about the cluster of shootings this week, Mr. O’Neill said: “I’m always concerned. But if you just take a look at what the three shootings were, two of them were a result of 911 calls, and one was 77 Precinct Anti-Crime on patrol, doing what they ask them to do,” he said. “So sometimes it’s going to be a very dangerous job.” Five officers have been fatally shot in the last three years: Sgt. Paul Tuozzolo in the Bronx in 2016; Officers Randolph Holder in Manhattan and Brian Moore in Queens in 2015; and Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos in 2014. The police said they took a second man, Jonathan Derbyshire, 24, into custody Thursday in the shooting on Staten Island, in the Charleston neighborhood. Image Evidence markers littered the site where officers fatally shot a man who they had seen firing a gun into a lounge in Brooklyn. Credit Kevin Hagen for The New York Times Bob Hutson, a dispatcher for a trucking company in New Jersey who lives in the neighborhood, said he heard about five shots around 12:45 a.m. Another five shots were fired about 10 minutes later. “And this time, I hear ‘Shots fired! Shots fired!’” he said. “I look out the window. I see two officers, shooting position, across the street. So I went, got my wife and kids, put them in the back of the house.” Additional police officers arrived as helicopters buzzed overheard. Mr. Hutson said he saw the man who had been shot on the ground, about 100 feet from his door. The police said Mr. Derbyshire had fled into a wooded area, where an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and a large hunting knife were found. The police, who said four guns had been recovered during the investigation, said they believed the two men had headed to the woods to test fire some weapons. Mr. Allen was in custody and was being treated at a hospital. He faced charges of attempted murder and weapons possession, and Mr. Derbyshire faced charges of attempted assault and weapons possession, the police said late Thursday night. The shootings by police officers occurred as city and police officials boasted that crime across the city was at or near record lows . For instance, on Wednesday in a news conference at the Brooklyn Museum, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the police said that in 2016 fewer than 1,000 shootings occurred, for the first time in more than two decades. | Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings;Brooklyn;Canarsie Brooklyn;Clinton Hill Brooklyn;Staten Island;Crown Heights Brooklyn |
ny0290331 | [
"sports",
"ncaafootball"
] | 2016/01/10 | Clash in ’08 Put Clemson and Alabama on Path to Current Title Game | The plan was for a Clemson coming-out party. The Tigers had finished strong in 2007 and entered the 2008 season with a Top 10 ranking. It seemed to be the perfect time for the Tigers to take on a marquee Southeastern Conference opponent at an N.F.L. stadium in a nationally televised game. It turned out that Nick Saban and Alabama made the statement in the Georgia Dome. Coming off a 7-6 season, the Crimson Tide crushed No. 9 Clemson, 34-10, and Saban’s Alabama dynasty was born. “I didn’t expect that type of outcome,” said Greg McElroy, an Alabama quarterback in 2008 who is now an analyst for ESPN and the SEC Network. “Most people didn’t expect that type of outcome. When Coach Saban was able to come to us after the game and say, ‘Look at the hard work you put in and look at the fruits of your labor,’ that allowed us to really have a perspective that we can beat anybody we played if we do what we’re supposed to do in the week leading up.” Alabama went on to play for the SEC championship that season, and the Tide have done nothing but contend for national championships since. The loss led to changes at Clemson that ended up putting the Tigers on the path to playing for a national championship seven years later. Saban and the second-ranked Tide (13-1) will try to make it four titles in nine seasons Monday night in Glendale, Ariz., when they face No. 1 Clemson (14-0) in the College Football Playoff title game. Image Drew Davis (79) after the upset. Credit Dave Martin/Associated Press Saban arrived in Tuscaloosa, Ala., with great fanfare after a short stay with the Miami Dolphins. Alabama had spent years trying to recreate the Bear Bryant era with only scattered success. The 10 years before the hiring of Saban were particularly frustrating. Only twice did Alabama win more than seven games, and four times the Tide finished with a losing record. The Tide went through five head coaches. Saban’s first year was not much to get excited about. In going 7-6, the Tide ended the regular season with a four-game losing streak that included a defeat at home against Louisiana-Monroe. “You really have to establish fundamental sort of intangibles that are going to help you build the kind of character, competitive character in the people that you have in the organization to get them to be all that they can be, and that says a lot about the attitude that the players have, and that’s certainly a challenge,” Saban said. McElroy said some of the upperclassmen in 2007 were not quite ready to do the work the new coach demanded. “The talent, to a certain extent, wasn’t overwhelming, but let’s be honest, Nick Saban is demanding, to the point where it can wear you out from time to time,” McElroy said. “The thing that’s fun, what makes it fun, is you win.” McElroy said the true turning point for the program was Alabama’s 30-27 victory against Colorado in the Independence Bowl to end 2007. “The Colorado game proved that we can come together and we can play for each other,” he said. In the off-season, players like center Antoine Caldwell and safety Rashad Johnson moved into leadership roles. Younger players like linebacker Rolando McClain and defensive back Kareem Jackson developed into impact players, and a star-studded freshman class that included receiver Julio Jones and linebacker Dont’a Hightower came on board. “We realized that we were going to be better,” said McElroy, who backed up John Parker Wilson in 2008 before leading Alabama to a championship the next season. “Things were going to be going better. Maybe we’ll go 9-3.” Then came Clemson and a dominant performance. Alabama outgained the Tigers by more than two to one and did not allow an offensive touchdown. “We’re sitting there thinking to ourselves, if that’s a Top 10 team in the country, well then what are we?” McElroy said. “I think that was a launch-pad moment for us.” While that last meeting between the Tigers and Tide was just the beginning for Alabama, it was the beginning of the end for the Clemson coach at the time, Tommy Bowden. “Disappointment would be the correct word,” said Terry Don Phillips, the Clemson athletic director at the time. “We finished the previous season in strong fashion. Then we had this opportunity to be showcased nationally with Alabama, and Alabama had struggled the previous season, so you go in with a degree of optimism.” By midseason, Bowden was out and the wide receivers coach, Dabo Swinney, was elevated to run the program. In a sense, that game was the start of something big for the Tigers, too. In nine and a half seasons under Bowden, the Tigers had become so synonymous with inconsistency that the term “Clemsoning” was coined to describe a disappointing and unexpected loss. Under the charismatic Swinney, Clemson has won at least 10 games each of the last five seasons. Swinney has improved recruiting, helping lure five-star prospects like quarterback Deshaun Watson and receiver Sammy Watkins away from SEC programs, installed an up-tempo spread offense and taken a top-to-bottom approach similar to Saban’s to building the program. “He’s been able to take a program and build it to a level of consistency where over the last three, four years, every time you walk in that stadium, you feel like you’ve got a fighting chance to win,” Phillips said. “Prior to Dabo, you really didn’t have that same type of feeling.” Seven years since the last Alabama-Clemson game, both programs are as strong as they have ever been. On Monday night at University of Phoenix Stadium, either Alabama will add to its dynasty or Clemson will complete its climb to the top. | College football;Clemson;University of Alabama |
ny0005648 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2013/04/13 | Park Geun-hye, Steely Leader of South Korea, Is Battle-Ready | SEOUL, South Korea — Her mother was shot by an assassin. Her father, a staunchly anti-Communist dictator, was similarly killed. And she survived a vicious razor attack to the face. Nobody doubts the toughness of South Korea’s new president, Park Geun-hye, whose upbringing has made her as steely a leader as they come. Now at the center of an escalating crisis with North Korea, Ms. Park, 61, is her country’s first-ever female leader , a fact that her rivals in the North have raised to taunt her. Stories of her mental toughness are legend — on learning that her father had died, her first concern was whether North Korea was preparing to invade. Her first question after awakening from an operation after the razor attack in 2006, which left a scar across her jaw, was how her party’s campaign was going. Ms. Park is so tough-minded that even in South Korea, still one of Asia’s most patriarchal societies, her gender has mainly been a nonissue after some initial jitters. “In the past, during the election campaigning, there was some doubt on whether a female president would do well at a time of crisis,” said Choi Jin, head of the Institute for Presidential Leadership in Seoul. Image Ms. Park with John Kerry in Seoul on Friday. Credit Pool photo by Kim Jae-Hwan “But through this current standoff with North Korea, she dispelled whatever doubt there had been about a female president by showing that she was a strong-minded leader.” However, now that South Korea’s prized economy appears to be rattled by months of crisis, critics and supporters alike wonder if Ms. Park may have gone too far in presenting herself as an ultratough leader and what some now call the “neuter president.” Just as some critics accused Hillary Rodham Clinton of becoming more hawkish to win over skeptics, Ms. Park took office seemingly ready to do battle. She filled the top security posts in her cabinet and presidential staff with former generals and decided to offer no real concessions until the North backs down, a change from some past administrations. Even officials in the Obama administration, which has also taken a hard line against the North, have privately expressed fears that she might go too far if North Korea made a limited but deadly assault. To try to prevent an overreaction, the administration recently sent two stealth bombers to fly a practice run over South Korea to prove to the country’s leaders that they would not be left to face the North alone. Although Ms. Park does not highlight her history-making role as the South’s first female president, her gender has been raised by leaders in Pyongyang, the North’s capital, where society clings to traditional Confucian notions of women’s roles even as South Korea has begun to shed them. Last month, the North said her “venomous swish of skirt” was to blame for the tensions besetting the peninsula, a reference to an old Korean expression for women who forget their place. Image A flower show Friday in Pyongyang, North Korea. The nation’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has taunted his South Korean counterpart. Credit Alexander F. Yuan/Associated Press The verbal tongue-lashing, which Ms. Park did not respond to directly, led some analysts to speculate that the North may have been underestimating her resolve, or at least testing her. If that was the point, it did not work. Ms. Park and her military have parried the North’s over-the-top threats of nuclear holocaust with vitriol of their own; the military recently threatened to wipe the Communist dynasty “off the face of the earth” if it dared to launch a nuclear attack. And, breaking with the tone of her archconservative predecessor, Ms. Park told her generals that if the North staged even a limited attack, they should strike back “without political consideration” and without waiting for her approval. She has something of a personal stake in taming North Korea. North Korean commandos came within striking distance of her father’s office in 1968 before they were repelled. And the assassin who killed her mother was believed to have been sent by the North to kill her father. (Her father was later killed by his own disgruntled spy chief.) Ms. Park’s ability to set any worries about her gender to rest has everything to do with her personal history. In a country with so few female leaders and a gender income gap that is one of the widest in the developing world, South Koreans explain their relative lack of interest in Ms. Park’s sex by saying they elected her for her political pedigree. Image Ms. Park was cut on the face in an attack in 2006. She has made a vague offer of talks to the North, but not of aid. Credit Lee Kwang-hoon/Newsis, via Associated Press Ms. Park is seen as very much her father’s daughter, practically channeling his resolve against the enemy to the north that drove him to talk openly about “exterminating” Communists. The former dictator, Park Chung-hee, remains the country’s most popular former leader, despite a record of human rights abuses, mainly because of his role in shepherding South Korea’s then-feeble economy and helping build one of the world’s most remarkable economic success stories. During the campaign, many voters — even conservatives wary of female leaders — said they would back Ms. Park, who is not married and has no children, solely because of her father. “She is not a woman,” said Bong Young-shik, a senior research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, reflecting a common view in the country. “She is Park Chung-hee personified in a woman’s body.” As a legislator, Ms. Park was never known for a feminist agenda, and her male rival in the presidential election won the backing of many women’s groups. A South Korean Leader Toughened by Adversity 10 Photos View Slide Show › Image Yonhap, via European Pressphoto Agency Despite her toughness, Ms. Park has also displayed a pragmatic side. In 2002, when her country was warming to the North, she built her political standing by visiting Pyongyang, and the son of the man who may have ordered the assassination attempt that killed her mother. While campaigning, before the current standoff began with the North’s nuclear test, Ms. Park offered a nuanced approach to her country’s enemy. She said she would offer much-needed humanitarian aid, but make no big concessions until the North gave up its nuclear weapons or won the South’s “trust.” That offer faded amid the din of the North’s threats, which have defined her early weeks in office. Ms. Park began to scale back her hard line only this week, and then only after the stock market slumped and a foreign business leader openly questioned whether the South would remain stable enough for investment. With her father’s economic legacy to protect, Ms. Park tried to halt the series of escalating threats and counter-threats by making a vague offer of talks. But she did not revert, as previous administrations have done, to offering much-needed aid to ease tensions. Unless the economy gets much worse, experts expect that Ms. Park will stand her ground, attempting to force the North to take a step back from the brink. In her family, the experts point out, resolve is inherited. Her mother was shot in a theater as Mr. Park was speaking onstage. After she was rushed away, bleeding, Mr. Park turned to his audience and resumed his speech. Days later, the 22-year-old Ms. Park, just back from school in Paris, abandoned her dream of becoming a professor and stepped in as de facto first lady. Nearly 40 years later, she re-entered the presidential Blue House, this time as the leader herself. | Park Geun-hye;South Korea;North Korea;International relations;Nuclear weapon |
ny0238430 | [
"sports",
"basketball"
] | 2010/06/14 | Help for Pierce Finally Comes, and Celtics Take Control | BOSTON — Paul Pierce and Kobe Bryant repeatedly scorched the nets, traded baskets and jostled for postseason supremacy as the N.B.A. finals swayed with each flick of their wrists. As tensions reached a crescendo and emotions flared, solo efforts mostly dissolved. When they did, Pierce had help. Bryant was a capable, but lone, gunslinger. The efforts resulted in resounding “Beat L.A.” chants that ended on a harmonic note at TD Garden. After Boston’s 92-86 victory in Game 5 of the finals on Sunday, the Celtics are one win from lifting an 18th championship banner to their already crowded rafters. Pierce submitted 27 points and moved to within a win of a second championship in three years. His salvation came in the form of Kevin Garnett’s purposeful drives, Rajon Rondo’s skying leap over Bryant to tip in a Pierce miss and Tony Allen’s emphatic block of Pau Gasol's shot. The Celtics took a 3-2 lead in the series, which shifts to Los Angeles for Game 6, and if necessary Game 7. As Boston wrapped up a win in Game 2, cameras caught Pierce vowing that the series would not return to Los Angeles, meaning Boston would win three games here. But the Celtics lost the next game, so happily for Pierce, and in part because of his doing, his prediction proved untrue. “That was a rumor, they said I said that?” Pierce said with a mischievous grin when asked about his prediction after Sunday’s win. “I wasn’t being cocky about it,” he added. “I was being confident in my team.” Instead of the triangle offense, the Lakers showcased Bryant from all angles. Bryant delivered timely retorts to Pierce and registered a game-high 38 points, half of them in a one-man performance in the third quarter. The Lakers never led in the second half, and whether Bryant took too much of the game on his shoulders and too many shots, or if his teammates simply faltered, remained uncertain. “I’ve forgotten about it,” a ho-hum Bryant said, with his face in his palm and his thoughts on Game 6. Garnett’s presence was felt everywhere; he contributed 18 points, 10 rebounds and 5 steals. Rondo totaled 18 points, 8 assists and one technical for pushing Ron Artest after he delivered a hard foul to Garnett. Boston dominated inside and outscored the Lakers, 46-32, in the lane. The Celtics shot 56 percent from the field, and had 21 assists to the Lakers’ 12. “This was huge for us,” Celtics Coach Doc Rivers said. “Let’s be honest. For us, we had to win this game and that’s the way we felt going into it.” Beyond Bryant, the Lakers seemed unnerved, with their lowest point total this postseason. Gasol, Bryant’s usual running mate, tip-toed his way to 12 points on 12 shots. No other Laker scored in double digits. Derek Fisher, who received a technical with Ray Allen in the third quarter, and Artest each shot 2 for 9. Andrew Bynum, who had his troublesome knee drained between games, lasted 32 minutes, but did not score after the first quarter. In between games with a long flight before them, Bryant said he would not offer a pep talk. “What the hell is the big deal?” said Bryant, who made 13 of his 27 shots and four 3-pointers. “I don’t see it as a big deal. If I have to say something to them, then we don’t deserve to be champions.” Pierce made 12 of his 21 shots. He was the boxer who repeatedly used his jab to daze and dazzle. He stepped and faked his way to the rim before pulling up for the jumper. Several times, Pierce sidestepped Artest, a renowned defender, lifting his hand as if to politely say “you first,” before nailing the shot. “He had Ron guessing out there for much of the game,” Lakers Coach Phil Jackson said. Boston led by double digits for much of the second half, although the Celtics were never up by more than 13 points. In the fourth quarter, a layup by Lamar Odom brought Los Angeles to 81-75 before Garnett and Rondo quickly answered with baskets. With 90 seconds remaining, the Lakers pulled to 87-82 when Ray Allen fouled Bryant on a 3-point attempt and Bryant converted the free throws. At the time, Jackson was captured by prying cameras, just as Pierce was. Television cameras caught him attempting to motivate the Lakers by disparaging Boston: “This is a team that knows how to lose games in the fourth quarter.” Allen followed with a missed 3-pointer, continuing his troubles behind the arc after a scintillating Game 2. Boston retained possession on Kendrick Perkins’s offensive rebound and received a new 24-second clock when officials declared the ball had nicked the rim. Fisher stole the ball from Garnett and Artest clanked two free throws. Rondo sealed the victory with a reverse layup that started on Garnett’s frantic inbounds pass to Pierce, who fired the ball to Rondo before falling out of bounds. “I was just showing off my Randy Moss and Tom Brady in one play, that’s all,” Pierce said. Rivers knew that a game like this eventually awaited Boston, one in which Bryant would unleash a barrage of points and the Celtics would be forced to absorb it. “That number, whatever it is, it’s still not the final number,” Rivers said of Bryant’s point total before the game. “Other people still have to score for them.” Like a sage, Rivers proved correct. As Bryant found gaps, the Celtics’ defense tightened around his teammates. At one point, Bryant scored 23 straight points and 19 of his team’s 26 points in the third quarter. “It felt like a lot more,” Rivers said. Rivers doubted his defense, but stayed steady. For half of the quarter, no other Laker attempted a shot. Perhaps sensing the desperation of the moment and the seriousness of a 45-39 halftime deficit, Bryant wasted no time trying to make up for a sluggish first two quarters after having his ankle retaped at halftime. First came two jumpers, followed by matching 3-pointers. On the second, the ball flirted with every part of the rim before finally dropping in. “He’s the kind of guy you ride a hot hand, that’s for sure,” Jackson said. The Lakers did. Bryant dominated the ball, and the Celtics kept scoring and increased their lead to 73-65 at the end of the third quarter. Pierce mostly delivered the blows, scoring 11 of his points in the quarter and leaving a little time to admire Bryant. “It was the toughest shots I had seen somebody hit while I was on the court,” Pierce said. As Boston’s stars performed, it became apparent that Nate Robinson and Glen Davis, who rounded out Boston’s bench of misfits by providing points, energy, drool and quotations in Game 4, would not be needed as much as they were Thursday. They combined for only 4 points. So there were no memorable postgame moments at the podium this time, but the same sense of Boston elation and another step taken toward a championship. “We’ve got to win one game,” Pierce said. “That’s the goal.” | Boston Celtics;Los Angeles Lakers;National Basketball Assn;Basketball;Playoff Games |
ny0265627 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2016/03/18 | Memos Play Central Role in Decision-Making at de Blasio’s City Hall | At City Hall, the buck typically stops with the mayor. But in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, it does so in the form of a multipage, multisignature memorandum, replete with caveats. Mr. de Blasio has relied upon “decision memos” — documents requiring the review and signatures of a dizzying array of top officials — for nearly every city endeavor that is likely to attract attention, and some that are not: a policy change, or an action that could bring about controversy, generate public interest or carry a substantial cost. There have been memos on raising the minimum wage to $15, the distribution of the anti-overdose drug naloxone, a new city-organized retirement savings plan and lead levels in water. Before the memos can land on the mayor’s desk, they require the signatures of at least eight top officials, including the first deputy mayor, Anthony E. Shorris; the Law Department, the mayor’s counsel; the budget director; the press operation; the head of intergovernmental affairs; and any relevant deputy mayor. De Blasio's Decision Memo Multipage documents have become a hallmark of the mayor’s managerial approach. If any of the officials happen to mark up the memos with thoughts and concerns, new versions and new rounds of signatures become necessary. The memos are intended to help the mayor’s office control high-level decision-making across the sprawling apparatus of New York City government. They provide a look at the behind-the-scenes methods by which Mr. de Blasio — a Democrat steeped in Washington politics, but lacking in experience leading a large organization — has coped with the flood of information and demands flowing into his office. The memos, a feature of the White House with roots at least as far back as the Carter administration, are also the most striking managerial innovation brought by Mr. de Blasio, who has faced criticism for the slow pace of his decision-making. Image Joseph J. Lhota called Mr. de Blasio’s memorandum process “way too bureaucratic.” Credit Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times Some of the 86 memos issued since Mr. de Blasio took office in 2014 have taken months to get attention, creating what agency officials have perceived as a bottleneck at City Hall; a few have been lost as they made the rounds, current and former city officials said, and had to be resubmitted. The memos are variously described by current and former administration officials as a necessity for the free flow of information and knowledge, and an impediment to quick action on decisions formerly handled by agencies or deputy mayors. Mr. de Blasio’s chief of staff, Tom Snyder, described the mayor’s approach as “extremely granular, engaged, semi-Socratic.” According to the administration’s template for the memos , the goal is to get input from all parties, including “external stakeholders” and “willing validators and anticipated detractors.” The memos should “present necessary arguments, including the pros and cons” of each approach and “clearly identify the positions of relevant agencies and City Hall policy advisers.” A mayor, who like the head of any large organization faces myriad decisions, can benefit from a formalized process, though none before Mr. de Blasio had employed the memos. “I don’t know that it ever occurred to us to force things into a format,” said Jay L. Kriegel, the chief of staff to Mayor John V. Lindsay, adding, “There’s nothing wrong with it.” Joseph J. Lhota, a Republican who was deputy mayor to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, said that their administration had relied on daily morning meetings to debate policy and reach consensus, rather than on memos. “Everybody has a different approach to management,” said Mr. Lhota, who ran against Mr. de Blasio in 2013. “But this one,” he added, referring to Mr. de Blasio’s method, “is way too bureaucratic.” Mr. Shorris said some government officials familiar with past administrations had objected to the rigid new process, arguing that it delayed action. Those complaints resonated with critics who have faulted Mr. de Blasio for his deliberative style, including when he managed Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Senate in 2000 . Image An excerpt from a template used by the mayor’s staff to write decision memos. But Mr. Shorris said that delaying action to reach better decisions was part of the design of the memo process. “It slows things down,” he said. Elke Weber, the director of the Center for Decision Sciences at Columbia University, said the city’s memos struck her as “a little old-fashioned.” “It seems like from a different era,” she said, “where people thought that decision makers are more rational than they are, or that they should be, and that just by structuring information better, you could arrive at better decisions.” But Jennifer S. Lerner, a professor of decision science with the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, said the most important thing for any leader to have when making a decision was a fair representation of arguments on either side of a given issue. Image Alicia Glen, the deputy mayor leading the proposed Brooklyn-Queens streetcar project. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times “If you have an optimal process, the value of a memo is better than no memo because it forces a discipline, and there is accountability,” Professor Lerner said. Other avenues certainly exist for Mr. de Blasio to take a course of action. For example, the process for creating the mayor’s proposed budget incorporates major and minor questions over spending and programs without the use of decision memos. And on rare occasions, a large-scale project does not go through the decision-memo process, Mr. Snyder said. One example is the proposal for a streetcar line along the Brooklyn-Queens waterfront. “There are lots of things that I talk to him about which are not lending themselves to a decision memo but are directions I need him to understand that we’re going,” said Alicia Glen, the deputy mayor spearheading the project. The memos, she added, “are usually about a specific thing we’re going to implement on a particular time frame” rather than a “big idea.” But the decision memos have, for some current and former city officials, come to define the hands-on leadership of Mr. de Blasio. All but five of the 86 decision memos have been resolved, with the oldest pending decisions dating to December, City Hall officials said. The administration has fine-tuned the practice; in January, the mayor’s office began using an online portal for the memos, ending the cumbersome paper process. And in recent months, as the administration has matured and as more decisions are being made in meetings, fewer memos have been circulated: From a peak of 11 a month last summer, there were just two memos in February. But Mr. Snyder said they remained important. “The mayor, not infrequently, says, ‘I want a decision memo on that,’” he said this month, tapping on a table for emphasis. “Not 10 times a day, but it’s definitely part of the fabric of how we operate here.” | Bill de Blasio;NYC;Mayor;Local government |
ny0225305 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2010/10/11 | Paladino Laces Speech With Antigay Remarks | The Republican candidate for governor, Carl P. Paladino , told a gathering in Williamsburg, Brooklyn , on Sunday that children should not be “brainwashed” into thinking that homosexuality was acceptable, and criticized his opponent, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo , for marching in a gay pride parade earlier this year. Addressing Orthodox Jewish leaders, Mr. Paladino described his opposition to same-sex marriage . “I just think my children and your children would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family, and I don’t want them brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option — it isn’t,” he said, reading from a prepared address, according to a video of the event . And then, to applause at Congregation Shaarei Chaim, he said: “I didn’t march in the gay parade this year — the gay pride parade this year. My opponent did, and that’s not the example we should be showing our children.” Newsday.com reported that Mr. Paladino’s prepared text had included the sentence: “There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual.” But Mr. Paladino omitted the sentence in his speech. About an hour after Mr. Paladino’s remarks, Mr. Cuomo’s campaign released a statement condemning them. “Mr. Paladino’s statement displays a stunning homophobia and a glaring disregard for basic equality,” it said. “These comments along with other views he has espoused make it clear that he is way out of the mainstream and is unfit to represent New York.”Mr. Paladino declined a request to be interviewed after his appearance. His campaign manager, Michael R. Caputo, denied assertions that Mr. Paladino was antigay, and noted that he employed a gay man on his campaign staff. “Carl Paladino is simply expressing the views that he holds in his heart as a Catholic,” Mr. Caputo said in a telephone interview. “Carl Paladino is not homophobic, and neither is the Catholic Church.” “The majority of New Yorkers agree with him,” Mr. Caputo added. He said the campaign had done its own polling. During his appearance at the synagogue, with reporters in attendance, Mr. Paladino said: “Don’t misquote me as wanting to hurt homosexual people in any way. That would be a dastardly lie.” A same-sex marriage bill was defeated last year by New York lawmakers. Mr. Paladino has said that, unlike Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, he would veto such a bill if he were governor. But Mr. Caputo said that if the same measure passed in a statewide referendum, Mr. Paladino would uphold the law. Brian Ellner, head of the marriage initiative for the gay advocacy group Human Rights Campaign , said that the Republican’s remarks were insensitive given a recent swirl of news about suicide in the gay community and antigay violence. The New York City Police Department announced on Friday that nine men in the Bronx had lured three men they believed were gay and then tortured them . Last month, a student at Rutgers University jumped off the George Washington Bridge after two classmates broadcast his sexual encounter with a man over the Internet. Mr. Paladino’s statements in Brooklyn were first broadcast by Azi Paybarah, a reporter for WNYC, and Reid Epstein of Newsday , on Twitter . The back-and-forth between the two campaigns took a strange turn late on Sunday, when Mr. Caputo suggested that, on Aug. 20, a Cuomo staff member had referred to two gay male aides to Mr. Paladino as “girls.” The aides were accompanying a Paladino volunteer dressed in a duck costume, and blowing duck calls, to call attention to what the Paladino campaign said was Mr. Cuomo’s habit of ducking issues. According to Mr. Caputo, the aides were approached by the Cuomo staff member and told: “If you girls don’t get out of here I’m going to shove those duck calls down your throats.” Mr. Caputo said the encounter was “likely a hate crime since the Cuomo staffer clearly referenced their sexuality in his threat.” The Cuomo campaign did not respond late Sunday. | Election;Carl P Paladino;Politics;Homosexuality;New York;Speeches |
ny0024409 | [
"us"
] | 2013/08/28 | Family Sues Miami Beach in Police Taser Death | MIAMI — The family of an 18-year-old street artist who died three weeks ago after being shocked with a Taser by the police filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the City of Miami Beach and its police chief, accusing officers of “unnecessary, excessive and unconstitutional force” in their apprehension of the man, Israel Hernandez-Llach, who had been seen tagging an abandoned building with graffiti. The suit, which seeks unspecified damages, says that police officers “had no reasonable basis to fear for their own safety or the safety of the public,” and no reason to suspect that the young man, who was unarmed and of slight build, was “a danger to them or anyone else.” Miami Beach city and police officials declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing a continuing investigation. The officer who fired the Taser was placed on paid administrative leave. A witness to the pursuit that preceded Mr. Hernandez-Llach’s death in the early hours of Aug. 6 said officers laughed and exchanged high-fives as he lay on the ground, immobilized. “Israel died on that pavement,” Todd R. McPharlin, a lawyer for the family, said at a news conference on Tuesday. He said that the city’s police officers were not sufficiently trained to avoid using excessive force and were unprepared to offer medical attention to someone suffering from the effects of a Taser, which fires an electrical charge designed to render a suspect helpless. Image A vigil on Aug. 10 in Miami Beach for Israel Hernandez-Llach, who died after being shocked with a Taser. Credit Paula Bustamante/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images In a study published last year, Amnesty International said that at least 500 people had died in the United States since 2001 after being shocked by Tasers. The lawsuit said the young man was pursued for an act that amounted to no more than a second-degree misdemeanor. At Tuesday’s news conference, family members included his father, Israel Hernandez-Bandera, a former airline pilot from Colombia; his mother, Jacqueline Llach; and his 21-year-old sister, Offir Hernandez, who spoke for them. “We’re not trying to draw attention to our family,” she said. She and other relatives have called for an outside inquiry. The family’s lawyers asserted Tuesday that the Miami Beach Police Department was incapable of investigating itself. A statement issued on Aug. 12 by the city manager’s office said the death remained under investigation in conjunction with the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is to review the findings of the police inquiry. An autopsy on Mr. Hernandez-Llach, who was also known as Reefa, was inconclusive. | Miami Beach FL;Lawsuits;Stun Guns;Israel Hernandez-Llach;Fatalities,casualties;Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings;Graffiti |
ny0144145 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2008/10/16 | Toxins Found in Russian Rights Lawyer’s Car | MOSCOW — The French police are investigating the discovery of toxic mercury pellets in the car of a human rights lawyer who was taken ill in Strasbourg on Tuesday, a day before pretrial hearings in Moscow into the killing of one of her best-known clients, the journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya . The case recalled events almost two years ago when Alexander Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. officer and a vocal critic of Vladimir V. Putin, died after ingesting a highly radioactive toxin, polonium 210. Scotland Yard said he had been murdered. Ms. Politkovskaya, who had chronicled allegations of abuse in Russia ’s wars in Chechnya, was shot to death in her apartment building in Moscow a few weeks before Mr. Litvinenko was poisoned. Critics of Mr. Putin, then president and now prime minister, said the two killings were part of a pattern of Kremlin-backed actions against its foes. On Wednesday, pretrial hearings into Ms. Politkovskaya’s killing began behind closed doors in a military court in Moscow. But her lawyer, Karinna Moskalenko — a prominent Russian human rights lawyer — was not there. The Strasbourg police said Ms. Moskalenko’s husband, a chemist, had discovered “about 10 little pellets of liquid metal” in the family car on Sunday, on the floor of both the driver and the passenger sides of the vehicle, the newspaper Le Figaro reported, quoting an unidentified person close to the police inquiry. Analysis by toxicologists identified the substance as mercury, which can damage organs and the immune and nervous systems. Ms. Moskalenko complained of headaches and vomiting on Tuesday. Doctors examined her and her family on the same day. “People do not put mercury in your car to improve your health,” Ms. Moskalenko told Ekho Moskvy, a Russian radio station, later on Tuesday. A police officer said the presence of mercury might have been a result of an accident before the Moskalenko family bought the car, used, in August. Anna Stavitskaya, another lawyer representing the Politkovskaya family, said the mercury might have been part of an attempt to intimidate Ms. Moskalenko. In New York, the Committee to Protect Journalists said it was “deeply concerned” about her welfare, citing news reports saying Ms. Moskalenko “was the target of an apparent poisoning in Strasbourg” and “had felt weak for several days.” Ms. Moskalenko spends much of her time in Strasbourg, in eastern France, pursuing cases at the European Court of Human Rights , according to the radio station. Some of her cases have been on behalf of Chechens complaining of human rights abuses. She has represented Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the jailed oil tycoon. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Ms. Moskalenko’s clients included Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion who has become an opposition political leader in Russia, and Mr. Litvinenko, the former K.G.B. officer. At the hearing in Moscow, a judge refused a request by lawyers for Ms. Politkovskaya’s family that the session be delayed because of Ms. Moskalenko’s illness. Two Chechen brothers, Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov, are accused of conducting surveillance of Ms. Politkovskaya. A former police officer, Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, is accused of providing technical help. All three deny the charges. Ms. Politkovskaya’s supporters argue that a third Chechen, suspected of shooting her, is on the run. The court failed to decide whether to allow news media access to cover the trial, which is being held at a military court in Moscow, the authorities say, because of Mr. Khadzhikurbanov’s former ties to law enforcement. Ms. Stavitskaya said that while she would like the trial to be opened to journalists, she did not think the court would allow it. “They have no basis for closing the trial,” she said. “We want this to be accessible to the people, so that they can reach their own conclusions.” The next hearing is set for Nov. 17, with jury selection scheduled for the following day. | Russia;Politkovskaya Anna;Poisoning and Poisons;European Court of Human Rights |
ny0283526 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2016/07/01 | Beijing Rejects South China Sea Case Ahead of July 12 Ruling | BEIJING — The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague said on Wednesday that it would announce its rulings in a contentious case between China and the Philippines over the South China Sea on July 12. The landmark case centers on the Philippine government’s argument that China’s claims over much of the sea, a strategic waterway in the western Pacific, are illegal under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea . The Philippines initiated the case in 2013 after China seized Scarborough Shoal, an atoll that the Philippines administered and that was a favorite fishing ground for Filipino fishermen. A special five-member tribunal established by the court in 2013 will also decide on the size of maritime zones around rocks and reefs in the Spratly archipelago off the Philippine coast. It will also rule on whether China has caused environmental damage in constructing an artificial island at Mischief Reef. China has refused to participate in the proceedings, saying that the tribunal has no jurisdiction, and has insisted that it will ignore its rulings. The tribunal is not considering questions of sovereignty, and which country owns what islands, reefs and atolls in the sea will remain unresolved by the decision. China and nearly half a dozen countries in Southeast Asia have long disputed ownership of various tiny specks in the waterway. What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea China has been feverishly piling sand onto reefs in the South China Sea, creating seven new islets in the region and straining already taut geopolitical tensions. In a statement , China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said late Wednesday that it would reject any decision by the tribunal. “China does not accept any means of third-party dispute settlement or any solution imposed on China,” a ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, said. “The Chinese government will continue to abide by international law and basic norms governing international relations as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, and will continue to work with states directly concerned to resolve the relevant disputes in the South China Sea through negotiation and consultation on the basis of respecting historical facts and in accordance with international law, so as to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea.’’ The case has become a diplomatic tussle between China and the United States, an ally of the Philippines. China has mounted a global effort to round up countries to support its position that the tribunal represents outside interference in a dispute between the Philippines and China. The Obama administration has encouraged China to abide by the tribunal’s ruling and has asked European and Asian countries to speak out in favor of it. The United States has not ratified the Convention on the Law of the Sea. “Consistent with our longstanding policy, we support the peaceful resolution of disputes in the South China Sea, including the use of international legal mechanisms such as arbitration,” the State Department said on Wednesday. The court made its announcement on the eve of the inauguration of the new Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte. His predecessor, Benigno S. Aquino III, took a hard line against China by initiating the arbitration after talks between the two countries failed. Mr. Duterte has adopted a friendlier attitude toward China. | Law of the Sea;Permanent Court of Arbitration;China;Philippines;South China Sea |
ny0097858 | [
"business",
"dealbook"
] | 2015/06/16 | G.E. Said to Struggle to Find Buyers of Australian Units | SYDNEY, Australia — GE Capital, the financial arm of General Electric, is struggling to drum up interest in its Australian commercial lending and leasing businesses, according to people briefed on the matter. Expressions of interest in the five GE Capital businesses — fleet financing, private plane financing, equipment rental, lending for working capital and leveraged loans — were due on Monday. They are valued at $2.9 billion in total. Australia’s biggest investment bank, the Macquarie Group, and the private equity firms Blackstone Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and TPG Capital have contacted Morgan Stanley, which G.E. hired to sell the businesses. But Macquarie and the private equity firms are struggling to find value in a diverse spread of businesses that have neither the scale nor potential margins that would make them eager buyers, said the people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The lukewarm interest in the commercial business contrasts with the fiercely competitive auction for G.E.’s consumer lending business in Australia and New Zealand. Varde Partners, K.K.R. and Deutsche Bank agreed in March to pay $6.3 billion for the business, beating out, among others, TPG, Macquarie and Apollo Global Management. One investment banker who has done a preliminary analysis of GE Capital’s lending and leasing businesses said the private equity firms might find it difficult to put together a funding package to buy such a diverse mix of businesses, some of which are small, have few customers and are managed by just a few people. In an effort to keep the private equity giants interested, Morgan Stanley has not instituted a strict timetable of when preliminary bids must be submitted. GE Capital, Morgan Stanley, Blackstone, K.K.R., TPG and Macquarie either declined to comment or did not return calls seeking comment. | GE Capital;Australia;Mergers and Acquisitions;Macquarie Group;TPG Capital;Kkr &;Blackstone Group |
ny0216885 | [
"world",
"europe"
] | 2010/04/06 | After Attacks in Russia, Fears of Xenophobia | MOSCOW — Lilya Paizulayeva descended into the subway anxiously, trying to keep her distance from the crowds and the newly deployed and heavily armed police officers. She cringed at the train’s loud metallic shriek, pressing herself to the wall. She was not scared of suicide bombers — she feared being taken for one herself. With her jet-black hair and large dark eyes, Ms. Paizulayeva, a 26-year-old native of Chechnya , looks very much the daughter of Russia ’s fiery North Caucasus region, from where, investigators say, two young women traveled to Moscow to blow themselves up last week in the rush-hour throngs, killing at least 40 people. While for many the attacks are an unsettling reminder of the female suicide bombers who have terrorized this city for years, women from the Caucasus, particularly from Chechnya, say they worry about the return of the arbitrary arrests, xenophobic attacks and open hostility that many experienced after similar terrorist attacks in the past. “Psychologically, I feel a kind of alarm inside,” said Ms. Paizulayeva, who was born in Chechnya’s capital, Grozny, and fled to Moscow in 1995 with her family when the war there started. “Though I’m dressed like a local, I think that perhaps someone could attack me in the metro,” she said. “This whole week I have felt like a stranger in this city.” Though Russian citizens, Chechens and others from the North Caucasus are often seen as foreigners in Russia, especially here in the capital, and are frequently associated with immigrants from the countries of Central Asia that were former Soviet republics. More than 1,000 miles from Moscow, Chechnya has its own language, religion and customs, as well as a history of violent separatism that many in the rest of the country find alien in the best of times and threatening in the worst. There have already been several reports of revenge attacks against people from the Caucasus in the wake of the bombings. Last week a brawl broke out on a subway train when a group of passengers insisted on inspecting the bags of several people who appeared to be from the Caucasus, according to the Sova Center, an organization that tracks xenophobic violence. Attacks against people with darker skin and hair typical of those from the Caucasus are not uncommon in Russia. But it is the women, particularly Chechen women, who are frequently associated with suicide attacks. Female suicide bombers, most often from Chechnya, have been responsible for some of the deadliest attacks in Russia in the last decade. These so-called Black Widows have carried out at least 16 bombings, killing hundreds. The police have identified Dzhanet Abdullayeva , a 17-year-old woman from Dagestan, a region bordering Chechnya, as one of the suicide bombers responsible for last week’s attack in Moscow. Investigators suspect that another woman, possibly from Chechnya, was the second bomber. Like these women, Ms. Paizulayeva has experienced the horror and loss of war, but there the similarities end. With her bright-red nail polish, tight jeans and high boots, only her dark hair and eyes distinguish her from the many fair, blue-eyed women rushing through the ornate Revolution Square subway station on a recent day. A journalism student at a prestigious Moscow university, Ms. Paizulayeva said she now considered Moscow to be her hometown. Nevertheless, she said, she notices the nervous stares when she enters a bus or train. A year ago, a man yelled “Chechen!” and grabbed her by the throat as she was walking through the subway. She was able to wrestle free. Even some acquaintances from her university, she said, treat her “with caution.” “When these incidents occur,” she said, “you feel a coldness.” Russia’s leaders appear to be trying to play down the ethnic element of the attacks. Last week, President Dmitri A. Medvedev admonished journalists and officials for referring to people from the Caucasus as if they were foreigners. “This is not a foreign province; this is our country,” Mr. Medvedev said at a meeting in Dagestan . “A huge number of people live here, the majority of which are normal, honest, decent people.” The president’s entreaties, however, have not stopped lower-ranking officials from calling for stricter security measures directly focusing on people from the Caucasus. Since the attacks, there have been renewed calls to carry out a plan proposed by Russia’s top investigator early last month to collect DNA samples and fingerprints from every person from the region. Several people who track xenophobic violence in Russia said the recent bombings had yet to provoke the surge in anti-Chechen sentiment that often accompanied previous attacks, in the years when they occurred more frequently. “This is different now than we have seen,” said Svetlana Gannushkina, the director of Civil Assistance, a national human rights group. “I don’t see people alarmed like they were,” Ms. Gannushkina said, adding, “But we still don’t know what will happen.” Still, even before the recent bombings, Chechens had difficulties escaping the stigma attached to their homeland after so many years of violence and vilification. Even those who do not look particularly Chechen, like Alshna, a 36-year-old Chechen woman who refused to give her last name, said they carried that stigma around with them in their passports, which indicate their place of birth. One look at that passport has been enough to deny housing, employment and medical care, said Alshna, who has lived in Moscow for 15 years. The principal of a local school refused to register Alshna’s daughter, saying she feared that Alshna would “come and blow it up.” “Here, after every other step the police stop you and insult you,” Alshna said. “Even if they are decent people, they are still scared of us.” | Terrorism;Moscow (Russia);Russia;Chechnya (Russia);Caucasus;Xenophobia |
ny0252838 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2011/10/03 | Tigers’ Cabrera Speaks Cordially and Carries a Big Stick | Miguel Cabrera is a gregarious soul who, when he is not smacking hits all over the park, finds time to chat with his colleagues. That was an illustrious group of peers he schmoozed with Sunday in Yankee Stadium — Derek Jeter, Robinson Cano and Curtis Granderson — during the Tigers ’ 5-3 victory, which tied the teams’ division series at one game apiece. Cabrera also found time to slug a two-run homer in the first inning that gave the Tigers a cushion that lasted the rest of the slippery game. He also hit two singles and now, in his 38 career games against the Yankees , including the postseason, has 47 hits in 138 at-bats for a .341 average — well above his nine-year career average of .317 . Some superstars do not perform well in the postseason, but Cabrera seems to be comfortable in his first appearance since he was with Florida in 2003. His big day on Sunday gave his manager, Jim Leyland, a chance to praise him. “Well, I think Robinson Cano is a star, a superstar, and I think Miguel is one, too,” Leyland said afterward. “Since over the last two nights you saw what those guys do. They’re good. In the big stage, and two big-time players two nights in a row came up big.” Cano had hit a grand slam to give the Yankees a big lead on Saturday. On Sunday, Cabrera gave his team a good start. He did it after methodical preparation in the early afternoon sunlight during batting practice, when he seemed to be inspecting the flags that were blowing from right field to left field, while working on hitting the ball to right field. “That’s part of my game,” he said later. “Try to drive the ball to the other way. When they pitch inside, try to use my hands to pull the ball. When you see a pitcher like Freddy, you have to do that. He gets you off balance. So you want your hands to stay inside and try to hit it the other way.” This was exactly where he stroked the ball off Freddy Garcia, his countryman from Venezuela. Cabrera, 28, from Maracay, not far from Caracas, has often played against Garcia, 34, from Caracas . In the first inning, he whacked the ball a few seats inside the right-field foul pole and a few rows deep, the poke of a hitter who knows how to go with the pitch and use the entire ballpark. Cabrera is now 11 for 26 in his career against Garcia, including four home runs. The home run did not affect his fairly placid demeanor. Cabrera was also a visitor to the Yankees’ batting cage during the workout Friday, hugging the Yankees he knew and probably even those he didn’t. This is not so unusual these days as lodge brothers greet one another, but clearly Cabrera has a convivial side to him. After wandering in the outfield and at third base with the Marlins and at designed hitter with the Tigers, Cabrera seems to have adapted to first base because it gives him a chance to chat up his equals. In the first inning, he seemed to commiserate with Derek Jeter after Jeter’s drive was hauled in by Austin Jackson in deep center field for the first Yankees out of the game. Two batters later, Robinson Cano reached first base on a walk and engaged in a long chat with Cabrera, until the Yankees’ first-base coach, Mick Kelleher, sidled over and reminded Cano of the usual precautions of taking a lead. In the eighth inning, Cabrera stole second base, which gave him time to catch up on the day’s doings with Jeter, who had not been amused by a called third strike earlier. “Yes, when you have a chance to chat with great players like that, you have to enjoy,” Cabrera said. “You have to focus on the game, too, but you have to enjoy.” What did he discuss with Jeter? “We were talking about our at-bats,” he said. “Strike zone, where he swing, where he don’t swing. We talked about hitting right there.” And in the goofy ninth, when the Yankees scored twice, Cabrera chatted with Granderson at first base. This sociability does not bother Leyland, who is old school in many ways, but knows his star, too. “He has a lot of energy,” Leyland said. “What comes out of Cabrera, if you watch him, is how much he loves to play the game. He’s like a big kid or a little kid, however you want to look at it. He just loves to play the game. He’s the most instinctive player I have. He’s smart. When I mess up, he knows it. Not all of them do, but he does.” Cabrera has had his problems in recent years, with a couple of public bouts with alcohol that have him under supervision . His demeanor after Sunday’s game was perfect — nice smile, gentle manner, a feel for the game. Of course, hitting the ball exactly the way he had practiced it can do wonders for the mood of a superstar, too. | Baseball;Detroit Tigers;Cabrera Miguel;New York Yankees;Playoff Games |
ny0159966 | [
"sports",
"hockey"
] | 2006/03/02 | Devils End Olympic Sabbatical in Style | EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J., March 1 - The Devils resumed their season Wednesday after an 18-day Olympic break, and the Philadelphia Flyers often got in their way. Many Devils players ended shifts with snow on their pants and snarls on their faces. But the Devils nudged the game into overtime, then to a shootout, where there is a lot of open ice. Viktor Kozlov scored in the shootout for the Devils, and Martin Brodeur smothered three shots by the Flyers, allowing the Devils to escape with a 2-1 victory. With the exception of Brodeur, the Devils (31-22-6) were not expected to excel at shootouts this season, but they have won seven of nine. Kozlov has scored six goals on nine shots in shootouts. "I don't think people thought we were going to be that good," Brodeur said, smiling. Kozlov, who also scored a goal in regulation Wednesday, scored his shootout goal on a move that Coach Lou Lamoriello had seen only in practice. Kozlov pulled the puck on his backhand, then pulled it to his forehand to beat Flyers goalie Robert Esche. Zach Parise missed the Devils' second shot of the shootout, but Brodeur stopped shots by Mike Richards, Petr Nedved and the dangerous Peter Forsberg. "It's like you have more confidence when Marty is in your net," Kozlov said. The Devils are to play the Islanders on Thursday and the Rangers on Saturday at the start of their push to improve their playoff standing. The Devils had three power plays in the first nine minutes of the game, including two two-man advantages, but did not score. They clearly missed left wing Patrik Elias, who bruised his ribs in the Winter Olympics and did not play. "To me the most important thing is that we didn't get frustrated when we didn't score on the power play," Lamoriello said. Later in the period, Esche ventured behind his net to play the puck only to find Devils right wing Brian Gionta blocking the way. Gionta knocked the puck to Kozlov, Elias's replacement on the Devils' top line, and Kozlov scored over a lunging Esche. "What could be better than to play with the best players," Kozlov said of his pairing with Gomez and Gionta. Kozlov's goal at 11 minutes 59 seconds gave the Devils a 1-0 lead. But the Flyers tied the game as the result of some splendid playmaking by Forsberg. Earlier in the second period, Brodeur got lucky early. He stopped a slap shot by Forsberg, then tried to rake in the loose puck with his stick. Forsberg poked the puck loose, then flung a shot that hit both posts before bouncing away. Forsberg flicked a seeing-eye pass from the goal line to Flyers defenseman Mike Rathje, stationed inside the blue line. Brodeur stopped Rathje's strong shot from the point, but Brian Savage swooped in, unchecked by Jay Pandolfo, to knock in the puck. It could have been a tougher test for the Devils. Philadelphia was without left wing Simon Gagne, who has 37 goals this season but also a knee injury, and center Michal Handzus, who has an injured shoulder. But the Devils eventually prevailed. "It starts with Marty," Gomez said. "I don't know if it's mental, but other teams go into the shootouts thinking they've got to beat Marty Brodeur. I think he's got them mentally before they go." | PHILADELPHIA FLYERS;NEW JERSEY DEVILS;BRODEUR MARTIN;HOCKEY ICE |
ny0158853 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2008/12/09 | Crime and Punishment, the Abridged Version for Chuckleheads | Because transcendent dopiness is not a crime, New Yorkers are left to debate the proper punishment for some chuckleheads who have run afoul of the law but have done no cosmic harm. Heading that category for the moment is Plaxico Burress , the Giants wide receiver with a $35 million pair of hands and what seems to be a 5-cent brain. Mr. Burress, as surely everyone in this hemisphere knows by now, was charged with illegal possession of a weapon after he shot himself in the thigh at a Manhattan nightclub. That made him but the latest in a long line of National Football League members accused of serious crimes. We’re at the point where you can’t tell the players without a rap sheet. If the police account is correct, a gun that Mr. Burress had tucked into the waistband of his sweat pants slipped down his leg and went off by accident. There are those who would take him to court simply for wearing sweat pants while out on the town. But for now he is charged only with violating gun laws. Apparently, he had no New York permit for that gun, a Glock semiautomatic pistol. Even though Mr. Burress hurt no one but himself — and maybe his team, which played poorly on Sunday, perhaps distracted by the hubbub over this case — he faces the possibility of three and a half years or more in prison. But how should he be punished? On one hand, he shouldn’t have been carrying an illegal handgun. On the other hand, football players and other famous athletes have become the targets of predators, and feel they must protect themselves. On one hand, many New Yorkers want to make an example of Mr. Burress, tired as they are of watching celebrities flout the law and then get away with a wrist slap, if that. On the other hand (we’re beginning to sound like Tevye the Milkman here), statistics suggest that few gun-law violators get the book thrown at them with full force. The moral ambiguities are embodied in no less than the mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg , who has made an antigun crusade a signature element of his administration. His fervor is understandable and widely applauded. Guns kill, often indiscriminately. Just last week, in Brooklyn, a gun took the life of Mario Smith , 14, who was sitting in the wrong place when some idiot tried to settle an argument with a pistol. But cars kill, too, especially when a drunk is at the wheel. About 13,000 Americans are killed every year by what the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration calls “alcohol-impaired drivers.” One alcohol-impaired driver of note is soon-to-be former Representative Vito J. Fossella , who represents Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn. Vino Fossella, as tabloid headline writers took to calling him, ran a red light in Virginia last spring while driving with a blood-alcohol level that the police put at more than twice the legal limit. Motorists who are that hammered are, by definition, menaces. They are as dangerous as, say, some bubblehead with a Glock in his sweat pants. Drunken drivers kill. It happens every day — many times a day. But where Mr. Burress could get years in prison for his errant ways, Mr. Fossella faced no more than five days in a local lockup. Indeed, that is the sentence he received on Monday. And while Mr. Bloomberg wants the full force of the law applied to the gun-toting Mr. Burress, he is preparing to celebrate the life and times of the drunken-driving Mr. Fossella. On Sunday, a spokesman said, the mayor will attend a farewell party for the congressman. To borrow from the philosopher Sly Stone, different strokes for different folks . Now, what do we do with other law breakers who harmed no one but made major annoyances of themselves? Take Alain Robert , the first of three men who scaled The New York Times Building last summer. Mr. Robert said his sole intent was to call attention to global warming . Right. Until his climb, no one had a clue that global warming was a problem. For tying up Midtown traffic, not to mention platoons of police officers, he got off relatively easy last week, with a $250 fine and a sentence of three days’ community service. Was this justice for being a colossal pest? Then, too, what punishment should befall another nuisance, Jeb Corliss, who was stopped by security guards before he could parachute from the observation deck of the Empire State Building ? He was found guilty last week of reckless endangerment as a misdemeanor. He could get as much as a year behind bars. Perhaps what we need is a measure of judicial creativity. Maybe Mr. Robert could be sentenced to climb the side of Giants Stadium, carrying Mr. Burress with him. Or it could be Mr. Corliss who carries Mr. Burress, while parachuting from a plane to the 50-yard line. In a sense, they all deserve one another. And then maybe they could all go away. | Burress Plaxico;Fossella Vito J Jr;Robert Alain;New York City;Bloomberg Michael R;Corliss Jeb |
ny0088527 | [
"sports",
"football"
] | 2015/09/02 | 2015 Fantasy Football: Tight End Preview and Rankings | Tight end is traditionally the thinnest of the four offensive fantasy football positions, and there seems to be even more uncertainty than usual regarding the position heading into 2015. Of the top 10 tight ends selected in 2014 drafts, only four of them finished the season in the top 10 (compared with six in 2013), and of the four who did, only one, Rob Gronkowski, is expected to average more than 10 standard fantasy points per game in 2015. The other three include Jimmy Graham and Julius Thomas, who are playing in new offenses that are expected to yield fewer fantasy riches, though Graham’s potential in Seattle is much greater than Thomas’s in Jacksonville. We highlight Thomas below as one of the most overvalued tight ends heading into 2015. The fourth player in this group, Greg Olsen, finished fifth among tight ends in 2014 (8.6 F.P.P.G), and we expect another top five finish this year. Additionally, the top three tight ends from last season totaled 483.4 standard fantasy points, 45.9 less than the top three accumulated in 2013. That is significant for a position that just does not produce a lot of fantasy points in general. A bounce back at the top of the tight end field will depend on how Graham fares in the Seahawks’ conservative offense and whether someone like Travis Kelce, one of our favorite tight ends to target in drafts, can make the leap into the top tier. Gronkowski, who was the only tight end to average more than 10 F.P.P.G. last season (12.3), is the clear No. 1 option at the position, and you cannot fault fantasy owners willing to spend their late-first- or early-second-round draft picks on him. But what do you do if you lose out on Gronkowski, do not trust Graham or do not think Olsen or Kelce are worth late-third- or early-fourth-round selections? You can get by with value picks later in the draft, especially in standard scoring leagues, where there was only a 3.5 fantasy points per game difference between the fifth best tight end (Olsen, 8.6 F.P.P.G.) and the 19 th best (Jermaine Gresham, 5.1 F.P.P.G.). Let’s look at this year’s tight end field and try to locate the best and worst values, based on the current consensus Average Draft Position, according to fantasypros.com. Also, if you’re preparing for your fantasy draft and missed our other position primers, see our articles on quarterbacks , running backs and wide receivers. 2015 Fantasy Football Preseason Player Rankings These player rankings are for standard and PPR scoring formats and will be updated throughout the preseason. Overvalued Julius Thomas (JAC) (ADP: 6) — Thomas is no longer a part of the Peyton Manning-led offense that ranked second in total points scored in 2014. He will now catch passes from Blake Bortles, who managed an uninspiring unit that ranked last in total points a year ago. Thomas acquires much of his fantasy value in the red zone, where he hauled in 12 touchdowns with Denver last season. Jacksonville receivers caught 15 touchdowns in 2014, so you will need to assume Bortles is going to take a major step forward this year to draft Thomas as a top six option. If nothing else will lower his ADP, the recent news that he may miss the start of the season with a finger injury might. Zach Ertz (PHI) (ADP: 10) — Chip Kelly’s second season in Philadelphia confirmed that he prefers a run-blocking veteran at tight end. In other words, he does not care about your fantasy team. Brent Celek ( profootballfocus.com’s No. 2 blocking TE in 2014) saw the field 70 percent of the time compared with the flashier Ertz’s 50 percent. This year is shaping up to be no different, as the popular breakout pick has failed to win the starting job over Celek for a second consecutive summer. Ertz is also rehabbing his way back from groin surgery and is questionable for the Eagles’ Week 1 opener against the Falcons. His 5.4 weekly fantasy scoring average ranked 17 th among tight ends last season, and expecting a leap into top 10 tight end territory from a part-time player does not make a lot of sense. Owen Daniels (DEN) (ADP: 11) — Daniels is a fragile, 10-year veteran who is turning 33 in November and has not had a meaningful fantasy season in two years, yet many believe he can return to TE1 form now that he is playing with Peyton Manning. Wear and tear issues aside, Daniels will have to share the field with the fourth-year tight end Virgil Green, which is worse than it seems considering Green is the superior run blocker and the Broncos are expected to emphasize the run this season. Health permitting, Daniels is in for some big games, but counting on reliable weekly production from an aging veteran entrenched in a time share is likely to leave owners frustrated. Image The Titans' Delanie Walker finished 2014 as the eighth best tight end. Credit Weston Kenney/Associated Press Undervalued Delanie Walker (TEN) (ADP: 12) — Fantasy’s eighth best fantasy tight end last season averaged 7.5 standard fantasy points per game while setting career highs in targets (106), receptions (63) and yards (890). That’s not too shabby, considering Tennessee’s stable of lackluster quarterbacks ranked 29 th in total passing yards and offense efficiency, as well as a combined 81 quarterback ranking, which was the seventh lowest in the league. The No. 2 overall pick, Marcus Mariota, is a clear upgrade at the quarterback position, and with Kendall Wright as his only major competition for targets, Walker is a good bet to surpass 2014’s career marks. Tyler Eifert (CIN) (ADP: 17) — The former first-round pick has received glowing camp reviews this summer, with Bengals.com’s Geoff Hobson stating that “nobody has been able to cover” him and that he appears to be morphing into Andy Dalton’s safety valve “whenever he’s in a jam or needs a big play.” Eifert should see plenty of open space with opposing teams focused on stopping A.J. Green, and he could easily end up trailing only him as the team leader in targets. There’s TE1 upside here, similar to what Travis Kelce provided in 2014, lurking in the 10th or 11th round. Larry Donnell (NYG) (ADP: 25) — Giants tight ends, including Kevin Boss and Jake Ballard, have never finished lower than 17 th over all in standard fantasy scoring during Eli Manning’s 10-year career, yet Donnell is being selected as the 25 th tight end option, on average. While his rookie season was an up-and-down affair, he proved he is capable of generating a handful of big games in this offense, and concluded the 2014 season as fantasy’s 11 th best tight end. With Rueben Randle entering his fourth season and still struggling to reach his full potential, and Victor Cruz no lock to return to previous form, there is still room in the offense for Donnell to develop into a more reliable option. Image The Dolphins' Jordan Cameron is expected to play a big role in Miami’s offense, but his price is high in fantasy drafts. Credit Chuck Burton/Associated Press Worth Avoiding Jordan Cameron (MIA) (ADP: 8) — With all of the question marks surrounding the position after the consensus top five picks, Cameron is an attractive pick on paper. After all, he is expected to play a big role in Miami’s offense and is just one year removed from being a top-four fantasy tight end. The problem is his seventh-round price tag, which seems high for an injury-prone player transitioning to a new team. Cameron has yet to play a full 16-game season in his four-year career and has endured three concussions over the last two seasons. There are much safer bets, like Walker and Eifert, going two to three rounds later. Dwayne Allen (IND) (ADP: 9) — Allen is being drafted as a clear-cut TE1 option despite his time share with Coby Fleener and his proneness to injury (14 games played in the last two seasons). While Allen has a knack for scoring touchdowns (nine in his last 13 games), his fantasy usefulness depends on them, as he does not see enough consistent targets to yield reliable TE1 numbers. We would be content with Allen as a solid TE2 selection but will avoid him at this high price. Heath Miller (PIT) (ADP: 18) — Unlike the previous two tight ends mentioned, our beef has nothing to do with the asking price. Miller’s ceiling is simply caving in as he enters his age 33 season. Miller has managed just four touchdowns over the last two seasons, and has reached double-digit fantasy points just twice in standard leagues over that same time. Why settle for nonexistent upside this late in your draft when you can take a chance on a more intriguing option like Charles Clay, Josh Hill or Austin Seferian-Jenkins? | Football;Fantasy sport;Rob Gronkowski;Jimmy Graham |
ny0002422 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2013/03/15 | Pataki Endorses Catsimatidis for Mayor | Two Republican titans of Empire State politics now find themselves on opposite sides in this year’s race for New York City mayor. George E. Pataki, the three-term former Republican governor, said on Thursday that he would back John A. Catsimatidis, the billionaire owner of Gristedes, in his bid for the Republican mayoral nomination. The endorsement will pit Mr. Pataki, by proxy, against former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has thrown his political capital behind the campaign of Joseph J. Lhota, a former deputy mayor in the Giuliani administration and a preferred pick of the city’s conservative business class. “John Catsimatidis isn’t a career politician,” Mr. Pataki wrote in a statement distributed by the Catsimatidis campaign, using a term that the candidate has frequently deployed as a weapon against opponents with more traditional government backgrounds. Mr. Giuliani has actively promoted Mr. Lhota’s campaign, corralling donors and talking up the candidate to influential New Yorkers. Mr. Pataki could wind up playing a quieter role for Mr. Catsimatidis, who does not need to raise money from outside donors. Mr. Catsimatidis, in his first two months as a candidate, spent about $260,000, almost all from his own $3 billion fortune, according to papers filed on Thursday. His campaign poured nearly $100,000 into radio spots aimed at introducing him to voters — “How do you pronounce his name again?” one woman asked in the advertisement — and gave $23,100 to the Queens Republican Party, whose political operation Mr. Catsimatidis has leaned on as he opens his campaign. The best-financed candidate in the Democratic field, Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, spent about $240,000 between Jan. 12 and March 11, her campaign said on Thursday, with the most of her spending going toward consultants’ fees. Ms. Quinn raised slightly more than $500,000 in the fund-raising period that ended this week, bringing her campaign war chest to about $5.5 million. | Political endorsement;Mayoral races;John A Catsimatidis;George E Pataki;Joseph J Lhota;Rudolph W Giuliani;Christine C Quinn;NYC |
ny0018152 | [
"business"
] | 2013/07/20 | Judge Rules Against BP Attempt to Suspend Payments | A federal judge denied an attempt by BP to suspend payments to people and businesses claiming damages related to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill while an investigator looks into possible misconduct in the payout process. The payments are being made under a program set up under a settlement BP signed last year. Judge Carl J. Barbier, who is overseeing the consolidated spill-related civil case against BP and its contractors, ruled on Friday that there was nothing to prove the “mass of claims” was not being properly evaluated. Under its settlement signed last year, BP agreed to a compensation formula and framework covering certain personal and business liabilities. The company insists the formula is being misinterpreted, but Judge Barbier has already ruled against BP, which has appealed. A United States appeals court is considering the case. | Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill;BP;Oil and Gasoline;Offshore drilling;Accidents and Safety |
ny0257784 | [
"sports",
"hockey"
] | 2011/01/29 | All-Stars Choose Teams | Eric Staal chose goalie Cam Ward, his teammate on the Carolina Hurricanes, with the first pick in the inaugural N.H.L. All-Star fantasy draft on Friday. With Sidney Crosby sidelined by a concussion, the favorites for the first pick in the draft for the All-Star Game on Sunday had been the Washington Capitals’ Alex Ovechkin, and the Tampa Bay Lightning’s Steven Stamkos. But Staal grabbed Ward, saying he was “a tremendous goalie, and I won a Stanley Cup with him.” Ward joked, “I was the best player available, I guess.” Nicklas Lidstrom, the other All-Star captain, took Stamkos with the second pick. Ovechkin then went third to Staal’s team. Toronto Maple Leafs right wing Phil Kessel was the final player chosen. He received a car as consolation. | Hockey Ice;All Star Games |
ny0101361 | [
"sports",
"international"
] | 2015/12/26 | Australia’s Greatest Yacht Race Becomes a More Global Affair | Before sailing in Australia’s great race from Sydney to Hobart starting Saturday, the competitors and their yachts first had to get to Sydney. Increasingly, that is quite a journey in itself. The Rolex Sydney Hobart Race, once largely an Australian concern, is becoming more global. Of the 109 entries this year, a record 28 are from outside the country, which is four more than the previous record. “I keep saying to the people around at our club here that we are not just a race between Sydney and Hobart; we are an international event,” said John Cameron, commodore of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, or C.Y.C.A., which organizes the annual race from Sydney Harbor across the Bass Strait to Hobart on the island of Tasmania. “I think we’re seeing a resurgence in yachting and interest in yachting worldwide, and what we’re seeing are people who are prepared to invest a lot of time and effort into getting their boats to come a long way to come out to Australia to be part of our event,” he said. Two of those who came the farthest are also two of the fastest boats in the fleet: Comanche and Rambler 88, which made it to Sydney by container ship from the United States. But two of the international boats that could have the longest impact on the race sailed to Sydney with their own wind power: Ark 323 and Shuguang Haiyang, the first two yachts from mainland China to take part in the race. Major professional sailing events have tried to connect with the Chinese market for the last decade. A team representing China challenged for the 2007 America’s Cup in Valencia, Spain. And boats representing China have taken part in the Volvo Ocean Race, with Dongfeng Racing finishing third in the 2014-15 edition. But those campaigns came after considerable outreach, and while the boats sailed under the Chinese flag, many of the crews were non-Chinese (and often French). What is intriguing about the two entrants for the Sydney-Hobart race is that both boats will compete with all-Chinese crews. There are also four Chinese sailors on the Australian entry China Easyway. “They came out of the blue,” Cameron said of the Chinese teams. “We weren’t aware they were even preparing for it.” At a news conference last week in Sydney, Dong Qing, the skipper of the 42-foot Shuguang Haiyan, which is based in Shenzhen, said that “sailing is becoming more and more popular” in China. Another major Australian sporting event, the Australian Open tennis tournament, has carefully cultivated the Asian and Chinese market. Its efforts got a big boost when Li Na twice reached the Australian Open women’s singles final and won in 2014. But the Sydney-Hobart has attracted the Chinese without much effort, though the C.Y.C.A. has hosted some Chinese delegations exploring the idea. “There are two boats this year, and they’ve got six or seven boats they say they are preparing for future years,” Cameron said. “I hope they do well because that is going to add to the interest.” Twelve British yachts competing in the Clipper Round the World Race will also take part in the Sydney-Hobart this year. Comanche, the 100-foot American super maxi, and Rambler 88 dueled for monohull line honors at the Rolex Fastnet Race in August, with Comanche winning by just four and a half minutes. Comanche, christened late last year, required a major push to get ready for the 2014 Hobart race, where it finished second to Wild Oats XI for line honors. Given the logistics, the original plan was not to return until 2016. But the boat’s owners, Jim and Kristy Clark, changed the plan several months ago. Wild Oats XI’s participation, meanwhile, was never in doubt. The celebrated maxi has taken line honors eight times in the past 10 years. There have been many modifications during that span in a successful attempt to stay competitive, but nothing had been as radical as this year’s surgery to its composite hull. Two meters were cut off the stern to allow for a new, lengthened bow. “It’s been under the knife more times than Liz Taylor,” said Comanche’s skipper, Ken Read. “It’s not an old boat. It’s a brand-new boat in its own right. They’ve done a really nice job over the years keeping up with current times.” | Sailing;Sydney;Hobart;Fastnet Race;Australia;Australian Open;America's Cup;Volvo Ocean Race;China |
ny0159378 | [
"business",
"worldbusiness"
] | 2008/12/23 | Toyota Expects Its First Loss in 70 Years | TOKYO — Toyota Motor , the Japanese auto giant, said Monday that it expected its first operating loss in 70 years, underscoring how the economic crisis was spreading across the global auto industry. On Monday, Toyota said it expected an operating loss in its auto operations of 150 billion yen, or $1.7 billion, for the fiscal year ending March 31. That would be the company’s first annual operating loss since 1938, a year after the company was founded, and a huge reversal from the 2.3 trillion yen, or $28 billion, in operating profit earned last year. Analysts said Toyota’s downward revision, its second in two months, showed that the worst financial crisis since the Depression was threatening not just the Big Three but also even relatively healthy automakers in Japan , South Korea and Europe . Many other companies will also soon be reporting losses. Worse, analysts said that they expected next year to be even more painful, amid forecasts that the global economy would continue to slide until at least the summer. This could cause a significant shakeout, driving smaller and weaker companies into the arms of a smaller number of bigger, richer players. “It is just a matter of time before all major automakers are losing money,” an auto analyst in Tokyo for Credit Suisse Securities, Koji Endo, said. “And things will just get worse next year, when companies start losing money for the second consecutive year.” Toyota, which just a few months ago seemed unstoppable after eight years of record profits, said it suffered from plunging vehicle sales not only in North America but also in once-promising markets like India and China , which many had hoped would prove immune to the United States malaise . Toyota’s group includes the automaker Daihatsu and the truck builder Hino. “The change in the world economy is of a magnitude that comes once every hundred years,” Toyota’s president, Katsuaki Watanabe, told a news conference in Nagoya , Japan, near the company’s Toyota City headquarters. “We are facing an unprecedented emergency.” Mr. Watanabe said the company would respond by suspending investment in new plants, including last week’s announced postponement in the start of a factory in Mississippi , and moving some production lines to single shifts. The company has even unplugged electric hand dryers at some offices in an effort to cut costs. Yet Toyota said it still expected to report a small net profit, helped by interest and dividend income as well as tax-related savings of 50 billion yen, or $560 million. With some $18.5 billion in cash, and relatively little debt, Toyota is still in far better shape to weather the downturn than General Motors and Chrysler , which on Friday received $17.4 billion in emergency loans from Washington . In Japan, the recession could force a realignment of the country’s eight automakers, which are globally competitive but have begun feeling increasing pain from the global downturn. The biggest drops have come in the United States, traditionally the Japanese companies’ most profitable market. After years of increasing market share at Detroit ’s expense, sales at Japanese companies are sharply lower. In November, Toyota’s sales dropped 33.9 percent and Honda Motor ’s 31.6 percent, both faring slightly better than G.M. , which had a 41 percent decline. Sales are also down in their home market of Japan, both because of the financial crisis and because of longer-term demographics in this rapidly aging society. Last week, an industry group announced that new car sales in Japan would drop next year below five million vehicles for the first time in 31 years. Japan’s automakers have responded by slashing production by 2.2 million vehicles in the current fiscal year. They have also cut profit forecasts, laid off nonstaff workers and delayed investment in new factories. Last week, Honda Motor, the nation’s second-largest carmaker, reduced its profit forecast by two-thirds for the current fiscal year. The auto slowdown has helped worsen an increasingly nasty recession in Japan’s export-dependent economy, the world’s largest after the United States. On Monday, Japan finance ministry said exports dropped 26.7 percent in November, the largest drop since statistics started being kept in 1980, to push the nation into a rare trade deficit for the month. The financial turmoil has also hurt carmakers by driving up the value of the Japanese yen, which has risen some 25 percent since summer. A higher yen makes Japanese autos and other products more expensive overseas. On Monday, Toyota cited the currency as one reason for revising its forecast. Analysts say Toyota has been seen as the most vulnerable of Japan’s big automakers because it has been investing heavily in new products, including a full-size pickup truck for the United States market, just as auto sales started to fall. “They’ve caught the same cold that Detroit has caught,” said Christopher J. Richter, senior analyst in Tokyo at Calyon Capital Markets Asia . “Everything is going wrong for Toyota this year.” Toyota also lowered its worldwide vehicle sales forecast for the fiscal year to 7.54 million vehicles, far below the 8.9 million vehicles it sold last year. It said the decline would be particularly large in North America, where it forecast it would sell 2.17 million vehicles this fiscal year, down from 2.96 million last year. | Earnings Reports;Cars;Subprime Mortgage Crisis,2008 Financial Crisis;Economy |
ny0281019 | [
"business",
"dealbook"
] | 2016/10/06 | What Is a ‘Personal Benefit’ From Insider Trading? Justices Hear Arguments | WASHINGTON — Supreme Court justices offered hope to both prosecutors and traders on Wednesday during arguments in the first insider trading case to come before the nation’s high court in two decades. A ruling by the court could clarify one of the most hotly debated issues on Wall Street: what prosecutors must prove to secure insider trading convictions based on confidential tips. In their questioning, the justices grappled with where to draw the line. Even as they appeared sympathetic to the government’s interpretation of the high court’s past insider trading decisions, the justices were wary of radically expanding the government’s power and affording prosecutors too much of a free hand in these cases. The case now before the court, Salman v. United States, No. 15-628, comes from California and centers on the insider trading conviction of Bassam Salman in 2013. According to prosecutors, Mr. Salman placed profitable stock trades based on confidential information leaked by his future brother-in-law, Maher Kara, who had advance knowledge of corporate mergers because of his job in Citigroup’s health care investment banking group. For decades, courts have held that it is not inherently illegal to trade stocks based on material, nonpublic information like a merger or acquisition. For an insider to be guilty of sharing inside information, his leak must breach a duty to keep the information confidential and he must receive a personal benefit in exchange for the leak. By extension, the person who receives the information must generally know of that breach and benefit. The Salman case presents a question that has vexed federal appeals courts and left prosecutors and traders alike seeking clarity: What exactly amounts to a “personal benefit”? Prosecutors hope the court will afford them leeway in defining the benefit, arguing that if an insider provides a gift of information, that should count as a benefit. In the Salman case, Maher Kara did not receive any financial benefit, but arguably leaked the information as a gift. Mr. Salman’s lawyer, Alexandra Shapiro, argued on Wednesday that the benefit must be more “tangible” — like cash or something that eventually can be monetized. Several of the justices, citing one of the court’s seminal insider trading decisions from three decades ago, seemed skeptical of her argument and poised to uphold Mr. Salman’s conviction. After all, as Justice Stephen Breyer noted, “to help a close family member is like helping yourself.” Yet the court, often skeptical of prosecutors in white-collar crime cases, also questioned the government’s lawyer, Michael Dreeben, about where to draw the line. The justices seemed hesitant to afford prosecutors broad authority to apply the so-called gift test to situations in which the insider and recipient are not family or close friends. The issue gained prominence after a 2014 decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan, United States v. Newman, that upended the Justice Department’s sweeping crackdown on insider trading. Mr. Salman’s argument for overturning his conviction hinges on the Newman decision, which tightened the standard for what constitutes a personal benefit by requiring prosecutors to show a tangible benefit rather than mere friendship between the tipper and recipient. The Second Circuit, in that 2014 decision, overturned the insider trading convictions of the hedge fund managers Todd Newman and Anthony Chiasson, who were at the end of a long chain of information being passed along. In the aftermath, federal prosecutors in New York tossed out the convictions of nearly a dozen other traders and industry consultants. Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, whose office secured insider trading convictions against dozens of people in the nearly $3 trillion hedge fund industry, has been an outspoken critic of the Second Circuit ruling. Mr. Bharara, who attended Wednesday’s argument, has argued that the Second Circuit’s decision could create “a potential bonanza for friends and family of rich people with material nonpublic information.” The Supreme Court denied the Justice Department’s request that it review that ruling, though the justices could indirectly rebuke it in deciding Mr. Salman’s case. In Mr. Salman’s case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco took a different approach. The Ninth Circuit upheld Mr. Salman’s conviction and adopted the view that giving inside information to a family member qualified as a benefit, creating what some legal observers saw as a split that only the Supreme Court could reconcile. Both the Newman and Salman appeals court decisions hinged on a 33-year-old Supreme Court case, Dirks v. Securities and Exchange Commission , that has long been the cornerstone of insider trading law. That decision directed courts to focus on “whether the insider receives a direct or indirect personal benefit from the disclosure, such as a pecuniary gain or a reputational benefit that will translate into future earnings.” In overturning Mr. Newman’s conviction, the Second Circuit seized on that financial element. But when the Ninth Circuit upheld Mr. Salman’s conviction, it focused on another passage in the Dirks decision that allowed liability “when an insider makes a gift of confidential information to a trading relative or friend.” That excerpt strikes at the heart of Mr. Salman’s case. Maher Kara passed the inside information, arguably as a gift, to his brother, Michael Kara, who in turn shared it with Mr. Salman. The two families were close; Maher Kara was engaged to Mr. Salman’s sister. (While Maher Kara struck a plea deal and was sentenced to three months of home confinement, Mr. Salman was sentenced to three years in prison.) Some of the justices, appearing skeptical of Mr. Salman’s argument, highlighted the passage within the Dirks ruling that references gifts to family members. “You’re asking us to cut back significantly from something that we said several decades ago,” Justice Elena Kagan told Ms. Shapiro, adding that “the integrity of the markets are a very important thing for this country. And you’re asking us essentially to change the rules in a way that threatens that integrity.” But a decision that just upholds Mr. Salman’s conviction — and reaffirms the Dirks decision with some clarity — would disappoint some prosecutors who argue that the current unsettled nature of the law has had a chilling effect on cases. The Justice Department’s ideal ruling would uphold the conviction of Mr. Salman and then take the Ninth Circuit’s ruling further so that the gift rule would not be limited to just family and close friends. Mr. Dreeben mentioned the case of a barber who could slip through the cracks. He also proposed an even looser standard that would allow charges whenever information is shared for a noncorporate purpose and the insider knows that the recipient will place trades based on the leak. The justices appeared to balk at that extension of prosecutorial power. “It doesn’t seem to me that your argument is much more consistent with Dirks than Ms. Shapiro’s,” Justice Samuel Alito told Mr. Dreeben. Justice Alito then proposed a hypothetical: “Now suppose someone, the insider is walking down the street and sees someone who has a really unhappy look on his face and says, I want to do something to make this person’s day. And so he provides the inside information” and allows the recipient to trade. Mr. Dreeben replied that such a case was indeed a violation. Later in the argument, however, as other justices expressed skepticism about the Justice Department’s position, Mr. Dreeben conceded that “if the court feels more comfortable given the facts of this case of reaffirming Dirks and saying that was the law in 1983, it remains the law today, that is completely fine with the government.” Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor and now a professor at Columbia Law School, predicted that because insider trading law was almost entirely judge-made, rather than set by Congress, the Supreme Court might be reluctant to radically revisit its Dirks ruling from three decades ago. It would be simpler to draw distinctions between cases involving family members and business associates. “If you were going to be a minimalist, this little bit of family relationship could be elaborated on without wholesale redevelopment,” he said. One of the most prominent critics of judges determining what constitutes insider trading was Justice Antonin Scalia, whose death earlier this year created the vacancy on the bench. Justice Scalia argued that only Congress — rather than agencies, prosecutors or judges — may define what conduct amounts to insider trading . Although Ms. Shapiro made a similar argument, the remaining eight justices seemed to be unswayed. They also seemed skeptical of her argument that Maher Kara turned over the information to Michael Kara for “the scant benefit of getting his brother off his back.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for whom Ms. Shapiro was once a law clerk, remarked: “He’s no longer being pestered. Isn’t that a benefit?” | Securities fraud;Insider trading;SEC;Supreme Court,SCOTUS;Bassam Salman;Preet Bharara |
ny0104504 | [
"us"
] | 2012/03/30 | GTT ★ | Our quirky, discerning picks for the most interesting things to do around the state this week. FORT WORTH Entry Point The inspiration for “ Forgotten Gateway ,” an exhibition that focuses on Galveston as a mid-19th-century immigration hub, was a field trip that Suzanne Seriff, the exhibition’s curator, took to New York with a group of 10th graders right after Sept. 11. En route to Ellis Island, they were sidetracked by a memorial service. “It was a symbolic moment,” Ms. Seriff said. “We looked behind us to the glory days of a nation of immigrants. And we looked before us to our fear of the immigrants who are coming into our nation now.” Ms. Seriff has transformed that epiphany into a powerful show — featuring oral histories, slave manifests, Ku Klux Klan paraphernalia promoting nativism and other resonant artifacts — that challenges us to examine the hard truths that lurk within our immigration policies. This is the final weekend to see the traveling exhibition, which opened in Austin in 2009 and made a stop at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum. A panel discussion with Ms. Seriff will gauge the impact the exhibition has had on the national immigration debate. Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, March 30-April 1, various times. fortworthmuseum.org AUSTIN Infinite Analysis Admirers of David Foster Wallace, the cultish writer of “meta” insight, are still mourning his 2008 suicide. Aside from their frustration that there will never be another Wallace novel, there is the concern that we may never know the true meaning of his famously complex tome “Infinite Jest.” A good place to commiserate is at the David Foster Wallace Symposium , featuring some of the people who knew Wallace best: Bonnie Nadell, his agent; Michael Pietsch, his editor; and D. T. Max, the New Yorker writer who is doing his biography. The discussion will be complemented by a display of correspondence, corrected proofs and other papers from the Harry Ransom Center’s archive that will help unlock verse whose footnotes alone can address the meaning of life. “I remember reading Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ in grad school and feeling very alone as I wrestled with the book,” said Amanda Eyre Ward, an Austin novelist participating in the symposium. “Reading D.F.W., you’re never alone with your questions, unless you want to be.” Harry Ransom Center, April 5-6, various times. hrc.utexas.edu DALLAS Shape of Things Trenton Doyle Hancock, the star Houston artist whose fantastical works conjure mythological worlds, has a loose definition of the word “sculpture.” While most people think of it as something akin to a statue, Mr. Hancock considers it anything that makes a work more than two-dimensional, whether that is appliqués on his paintings or the Bjorkian costumes and sets he designed for the 2008 ballet “Cult of Color: Call to Color.” “Sculpture is not confined to an actual tactile output,” said Mr. Hancock, whose works include a mural that hangs in Cowboys Stadium. As part of the 360 speaker series at the Nasher Sculpture Center , Mr. Hancock will use his own works to explore the relationship between art and observer. “I did this project where I created a nine-foot-long arm that hangs off the wall,” he said of a work called “ Vegan Arm.” “I wondered what it was like for people to deal with it head on.” The corollary Mr. Hancock draws between “objecthood” and “art” may even have you considering yourself a sculpture. Nasher Sculpture Center, March 31, 1 p.m. nasher sculpturecenter.org GALVESTON The Ultimate Competitor The Tour de France ’s loss is the gain of the Memorial Hermann Ironman 70.3 Texas triathlon , in which Lance Armstrong will compete this year. From a spot along the route, you can cheer on a tremendous cyclist as he tries to become champion of an arguably more difficult sport. Fighting the doping allegations against him (the case was dropped in February) has apparently made Mr. Armstrong stronger. If he can start out with a quick 1.2-mile swim, look out, because 56 of the remaining 69.1 miles are on bike — and there’s no way the 13.1-mile culminating run will be as tough as the Hill Country terrain where Mr. Armstrong trains. Moody Gardens, April 1, 7 a.m. ironmanlonestar.com EL PASO Flower Power It is respectable to jump in the family roadster to check out the bluebonnets in highway pastures, but wildflower extremists in search of gold may make the pilgrimage to far west Texas to see the Mexican poppies, in their dense, sun orange splendor, shooting out of the Chihuahuan Desert at the Franklin Mountains Poppies Fest . El Paso Museum of Archaeology, March 31, 10 a.m. chihuahuan desert.org HOUSTON Pitted No pool party is complete without guacamole, but instead of recycling the recipe from past summers, learn and sample innovative new ones at the Avocado Takedown , a Bobby Flay-style challenge that will imagine new twists on salsa’s cousin, plus countless other avocado concoctions. Warehouse Live, April 1, 2 p.m. thetakedowns.com | Texas;Museums |
ny0152991 | [
"world",
"americas"
] | 2008/08/25 | Mexico City Struggles With Law on Abortion | MEXICO CITY — When Mexico City’s government made abortion legal last year, it also set out to make it available to any woman who asked for one. That includes the city’s poorest, who for years resorted to illegal clinics and midwives as wealthy women visited private doctors willing to quietly end unwanted pregnancies. But helping poor women gain equal access to the procedure has turned out to be almost as complicated as passing the law, a watershed event in this Catholic country and in a region where almost all countries severely restrict abortions. Since the city’s legislature voted for the law in April 2007, some 85 percent of the gynecologists in the city’s public hospitals have declared themselves conscientious objectors. And women complain that even at those hospitals that perform abortions, staff members are often hostile, demeaning them and throwing up bureaucratic hurdles. “We had to resolve how to offer the service on the fly,” said the city’s health secretary, Dr. Armando Ahued. “We were learning as we went along.” Now, even as the city’s left-wing government revamps its abortion services, the law is coming up against its biggest challenge — in the courts. On Monday, Mexico ’s Supreme Court begins public deliberations on a legal challenge that was filed last year by the conservative federal government and backed by anti-abortion groups. A decision could come as early as this week. In a measure of the passions that the debate has aroused, the Supreme Court heard 40 speakers for and 40 against abortion during six public hearings that began in April. To overturn the city’s law, which allows abortions during the first trimester, 8 of the 11 magistrates must vote against it. The debate is unlikely to end with a court ruling. Anti-abortion groups have already said that they will push for a referendum if the court ruling goes against them, arguing that is a better way to decide such a momentous issue. “It is a debate over absolutes,” said Armando Martínez, president of the College of Catholic Lawyers of Mexico. “It is an issue that is not really subject to debate.” In the rest of Mexico, states allow abortions only under limited circumstances, such as rape and incest, and Human Rights Watch reports that in practice such abortions are almost impossible to obtain. Mexico City has ignored the philosophical battle, pushing ahead with plans that officials say will help them live up to the spirit of the law. “For the people with money, this was not a problem,” said Dr. Ahued, who sees the law as righting a wrong that put many poor women in jeopardy. “But for our people with no resources, what could they do? They went to clandestine clinics.” After so many doctors refused to perform abortions, the city hired four new doctors to help handle the load at the 14 city hospitals where the city initially offered abortions. Now 35 doctors offer the procedure in city medical facilities. Because the city determined its service was not fast enough, it has trained doctors to use abortion pills when possible and perform speedier surgical procedures. It is unclear how many women may have decided not to get abortions at the already overstretched public hospitals because it took too long to get appointments or because they had to wait too long for the required ultrasound . Since unrestricted abortions became legal in April 2007, doctors have performed (or overseen when pills are used) some 12,500 of the procedures at public clinics and hospitals, according to the Health Ministry. But at least some women have tried other methods. Alejandra, 24, who works for the city’s women’s institute, said that when she went to get an abortion last year at a public hospital, a social worker there told her that she would need to pay for her own ultrasound, which is supposed to be free, and that she would need to be accompanied by a family member. Scared off by the description of the risks and the procedure, she fled the hospital. She ended up taking pills to induce an abortion, without seeing a doctor, and developed a serious infection. She asked that only her first name be used because she said she recently received a death threat for speaking at a city event celebrating the new law. Another woman, a 27-year-old high school literature teacher, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said her friends told her that they were treated like prostitutes at public hospitals. She also took abortion pills but said they were ineffective, requiring her to visit a doctor to complete her abortion. To speed up treatment, officials are moving low-risk abortions out of overworked public hospitals into three smaller public clinics, based in part on models in Britain and the United States. The smaller staffs there should be more supportive, they hope. On a recent morning at one of those clinics, called Beatriz Velasco de Alemán, in a working-class neighborhood, women waited with friends, husbands and boyfriends in a small courtyard, chatting, fiddling with their cellphones or staring into space. One 27-year-old married mother of two who had come to the clinic for an abortion saw no contradiction between her religion and abortion. “I’m Catholic but now the law has been passed,” she said as she went inside for her appointment. There is one sign of opposition at the clinic. Brenda Vélez and two assistants from the anti-abortion group Pro Vida arrive every day at 11 a.m. to say the rosary and hand out pamphlets. But unlike the very public battle over abortion in the United States, which is played out on the streets and through the news media, the two sides here have confined much of their argument to the courtroom. Even the powerful Catholic Church, which threatened legislators with excommunication last year if they approved the law, has muted its political rhetoric. (In the end, the church did not kick any lawmakers out because of their votes.) There have been a few public protests as the Supreme Court’s decision approaches, but neither side has mobilized massive forces. It is the doctors themselves who are on the front lines when it comes to choosing sides. One gynecologist working at a public hospital, herself a new mother, said she was an objector because she was uncomfortable with interrupting life. Some women, she said, “are irresponsible because there are contraceptives.” She asked not to be identified. Those who have chosen to perform abortions say it has not been easy. Dr. Laura García was the only one of 13 gynecologists at her hospital who agreed to offer abortions last year. Some days, she says, she performs as many as seven or eight surgical abortions. “I became a warrior there defending my convictions,” said Dr. García, who moved to a new hospital in May where the city plans to have abortions performed for minors. She said she had been insulted by colleagues and chased down the street by abortion opponents. But she said that having witnessed what happened to women before abortion became legal — she saw cases of septic shock and uncontrolled bleeding from botched abortions — helped her continue her work. “I am contributing to rescuing women’s rights,” Dr. García said. “In Mexico, women have always been marginalized.” She added: “I am a Catholic, but I have convictions. I don’t think I’m going to hell. If I go, it will be for something else.” | Abortion;Mexico;Birth Control and Family Planning;Medicine and Health;Women;Roman Catholic Church;Human Rights Watch |
ny0119942 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2012/07/19 | AARP Campaign Tries to Persuade Advertisers | YOUTH, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, is wasted on the young. Now AARP says that advertising budgets are, too. A new campaign aimed at advertisers themselves features people in their 50s and early 60s, and argues that brands should be focusing on them, not people ages 18 to 34, commonly referred to by the marketers who covet them as millennials. “I may be creased, but my money is crisp,” says the headline in one ad. “I may be gray, but my money is as green as it gets,” says another, which continues, “Why is it all about 18-34, when they barely have a dime of their own? The story is simple, AARP Media reaches the best boomers, and 68 percent of those over 50 give money to their adult kids.” The campaign, by Catch New York, will be introduced Monday in Adweek and will appear on Web sites including LinkedIn, Mediabistro and Business Insider. Along with advertisers, ads are aimed at chief executives, marketers and media planners. Patricia Lippe Davis, the vice president for marketing at AARP media sales, said that while a trade campaign last year reminded marketers that consumers over 50 are physically active and avid shoppers, this is more pointed. “Here we’re ramping it up and being in your face,” said Ms. Davis. “What we’re trying to say to marketers is put your money where the money is, and to break the old paradigm of targeting youth.” The organization’s print and online outlets include AARP The Magazine, AARP Bulletin and AARP.org . Joseph Perello, a managing partner at Catch New York, said that when advertisers courted consumers in their 20s and 30s two or three decades ago, it made more sense. “The advertising industry in general puts an overemphasis on youth, and when boomers were young that was a very good advertising strategy, because when boomers were 35 in ’75 or ’85, there were 70 million of them,” Mr. Perello said. “But that needs to change because this demographic is changing the way our country is and the way our country behaves.” If there is a tendency to pitch to younger consumers, one reason might be the blush of youth among those creating the ads. Employees from 20 to 34 years old represent 40.3 percent of the advertising field, while that age group represents 31.1 percent of the American work force over all, according to 2011 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics . Those 55 and over represent 20.6 percent of the general work force, but 15.8 percent of the advertising industry. With AARP membership beginning at age 50, and baby boomers defined as those born from 1946 to 1964, in two years the entire generation will fall within AARP eligibility. Today, 33 percent of the group’s 37 million members are ages 50 to 59, 46 percent are 60 to 74 and 21 percent are 75 and older. Founded in 1958 as the American Association of Retired Persons, the organization started going solely by its acronym more than a decade ago; today only 47 percent of its members are retired. The bimonthly AARP The Magazine, mailed free to households with AARP members, has the largest circulation of any magazine, distributing 22.4 million an issue. Advertising revenue for the magazine totaled $163.3 million in 2011, up from $131.2 million in 2010, an increase of 24.5 percent, according to the Association of Magazine Media. Much of the advertising in the June/July issue of the magazine is what might be expected, prescription and over-the-counter drugs, a blood sugar monitoring device, and amplifying earphones for television viewers with hearing loss. But there also are a few ads from brands that have nothing to do with infirmities, the type with which AARP hopes to gain more traction, like Stouffer’s Farmers’ Harvest meals and the Bose Wave music system. While people 50 and older purchase 62 percent of new cars, according to Ms. Davis of AARP, there are no car companies advertising in the magazine, although both Toyota and Jeep have in recent years. There are also no alcohol brands on board, although Michelob Ultra has advertised in the past. “I think we are underserved — pun intended,” Ms. Davis said. “We are buying booze.” Marketers are well aware that older consumers are purchasing their brands and may assume they are reaching them by advertising on television, but Ms. Davis refers to that as just “spill,” shorthand for spillover. “They are reaching our market to some degree with spill, but I’m a firm believer as a marketer that content has a profound impact on messaging,” Ms. Davis said, referring to media content. Denny’s, the restaurant chain, has been a regular advertiser with AARP since 2010 and highlights in its ads that AARP members get a 20 percent discount from 4 to 10 p.m. Frances Allen, chief marketing officer for Denny’s, said that diners over 50 account for more than 45 percent of the restaurant chain’s guests. “It’s a very fit, active and relatively financially secure market with time on their hands, and we’ve got to make sure we meet their needs in all sorts of ways,” Ms. Allen said. Along with broad-reaching television campaigns, Denny’s also focuses on specific demographic groups, such as people 18 to 25, the intended audience of a humorous and provocative Web series, “Always Open,” which it releases on CollegeHumor.com and on Denny’s Facebook page. “You have to talk to everyone in a way that’s targeted and relevant to them, and to do so in media that’s targeted and relevant to them,” Ms. Allen said. | Advertising and Marketing;AARP;Baby Boomers |
ny0243038 | [
"world",
"asia"
] | 2011/03/31 | Crackdown in China Continues With New Arrest | BEIJING — A human rights advocate in Sichuan has been formally arrested and charged with inciting subversion against the state, according to a statement on Wednesday by China Human Rights Defenders, an advocacy group that tracks violations by the Chinese government. The advocate, Chen Wei, was charged on Monday, and his family was notified on Tuesday. Mr. Chen is the third person in recent days to be charged with inciting subversion in an extraordinarily harsh crackdown on progressives in China that has been unfolding since late February. The other two, Ran Yunfei and Ding Mao, are also from Sichuan and are known, like Mr. Chen, to be promoters of the rule of law and democracy-oriented reforms. Parts of Sichuan Province, a rugged, populous area in western China, are known to be havens for liberal thinkers, and the region has a long literary and philosophical tradition. The authorities there are now at the forefront of pressing charges against people advocating political reform. On Friday, a court in Sichuan sentenced Liu Xianbin , a veteran democracy activist, to 10 years in prison for slandering the Communist Party in his writings; Mr. Liu was detained in June, before the current clampdown. The recent wave of disappearances and detentions began when a Chinese-language Web site hosted in the United States posted a call in late February for frustrated Chinese to take to the streets in a so-called Jasmine Revolution to protest corruption and unjust rule. The Chinese government, fearing the kinds of protests that have swept through the Arab world, has apparently ordered that any signs of dissent be nipped in the bud. China Human Rights Defenders estimates that at least 23 people have been detained for criminal investigation. ChinaGeeks.org , an English-language Web site based in Beijing, compiled a list this week of about 50 Chinese who have been recently detained, arrested or made to disappear; the list is based on various reports and is incomplete. One person on the list is Yang Hengjun , an Australian spy novelist and pro-democracy blogger who vanished on Sunday after reportedly making a call from the airport in the southern city of Guangzhou. Mr. Yang had said three men were following him. The Australian government said Tuesday that it was concerned about Mr. Yang’s whereabouts, and one friend in Australia said Mr. Yang, a former employee of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, had indicated over the phone to his sister that he had been taken away by security officers. On Wednesday, the mystery over Mr. Yang deepened when at least three friends of his said on their microblogs that he had called them that morning to say he was in a hospital. One friend, Li Huizhi, wrote that Mr. Yang had said everything was a “misunderstanding.” Another friend, Wu Jiaxiang, told Reuters that Mr. Yang coughed a few times. “It’s impossible for me to say whether Yang was really in the hospital,” he said. The cryptic calls have fueled theories among many of Mr. Yang’s supporters that he was being held by the state at a secret site. | Human Rights and Human Rights Violations;China |
ny0081156 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2015/11/03 | Under Pressure to Stand Out, Jeb Bush Tries for Reset | TAMPA, Fla. — Jeb Bush has played the wide-eyed optimist, anointing himself the “joyful tortoise” in a campaign season low on joy and reptiles. He has been the slinger of arrows, responding in kind to the broadsides of Donald J. Trump — or at least trying to — and assailing Marco Rubio’s Senate attendance record during last week’s debate . But on Monday, facing pressure to prove that his presidential campaign is not doomed, Mr. Bush introduced a new feature in a languishing campaign: the kitchen sink. Straining to rescue a run afflicted by anemic polling, lackluster debates, donor unrest and the persistent “low-energy” taunts of Mr. Trump, Mr. Bush left few tactics untested here as he set off on a campaign reset — or perhaps a re-reset — after recent staff shake-ups and strategy shifts. What was left was something of a messaging potpourri. There were at turns cheery recollections of his days as Florida governor, with a plug for a new e-book on his prolific email habits while in office, and laments over a campaign trail “littered with candidates disguised as television critics.” Image Supporters of Jeb Bush listened on Monday in Tampa, Fla., as he tried to show doubters within the Republican Party that his campaign was alive and well. Credit Brian Blanco/Getty Images He vacillated between barbed critiques of the Democrats’ talk on matters of national security, calling it “delusional,” and flights of despair over the doomsday tenor of the Republican Party , particularly on immigration. “I truly fear the president has already succeeded in setting the trap for our party, bringing a new pessimism on the right,” he said, pledging to “reject this kind of thinking.” He alluded to Mr. Rubio (“the solution won’t be found in someone who has never demonstrated the capacity to implement conservative ideas”) and Mr. Trump (“you can’t just tell Congress, ‘You’re fired,’ and go to commercial break”) without mentioning either’s name. Mr. Bush’s speech began a critical week for a campaign that has stumbled at virtually every turn, requiring several on-the-fly adjustments. Once seen as a fund-raising juggernaut capable of clearing the field, Mr. Bush has cut salaries, shifted staff out of his Miami headquarters and prompted donor unrest after a deluge of troubling polls and poor debate showings that have raised questions about the viability of his candidacy. The candidate who last week described his inability to “fake anger” as a chief weakness spoke on Monday in defense of a focus on policy and in disappointment over the campaign’s ceaseless punditry before letting fly a brazen prediction of his own. “Let me tell you something,” he said, as exclamation-pointed signs were waved. “When the dust clears, and the delegates are counted, we’re going to win this damn thing.” (His prepared remarks had called for the meeker, “We will win this campaign.”) Who’s Winning the Presidential Campaign? History suggests that each party’s eventual nominee will emerge from 2015 in one of the top two or three positions, as measured by endorsements, fund-raising and polling. In recent weeks, he has appeared increasingly exasperated on the campaign trail, at one point observing that there were “really cool things I could do other than sit around, being miserable, listening to people demonize me and me feeling compelled to demonize them.” After the address on Monday, Mr. Bush traveled to Orlando and Jacksonville, before a planned swing through South Carolina on Tuesday and a three-day bus tour in New Hampshire, the state with the first primary, and one increasingly crucial to his fortunes. Mr. Bush will promote the e-book, “Reply All,” during the stops. On Monday, taking the stage to “Takin’ Care of Business,” he recalled choice anecdotes from his email archives, highlighting his education policies (“we listened and changed the law so Kirsty could get her high school diploma and go on to graduate from college”) and his gift for constituent services (“by noon, that raccoon was out” of the attic of a concerned elderly woman in South Florida). Mr. Bush’s remarks, among his most forceful, earned a warm reception in a room stocked with allies, staff members and residents who recalled his years as governor fondly. He spoke in front of “Jeb Can Fix It” signs — an intended reference to the nation’s intractable problems, it seems, and not the campaign’s. (The mantra quickly became fodder for social media mockery anyway.) At times, it felt as if Mr. Trump’s insults hung over the room, contributing to fits of overcompensation. Chants of “We want Jeb” preceded his arrival. Someone kept blowing a whistle in revelry. A dearth of chairs preserved a standing-room-only feel, though several older people jockeyed for the available leg relief in the back. One speaker introducing Mr. Bush, Richard Corcoran, a former top aide to Mr. Rubio, likened the former governor to Winston Churchill, Steve Jobs, Abraham Lincoln and Captain America. He appraised Mr. Bush as “a leader who, when he sees that grenade, he will jump on it every time to make America great again” — a possibly inadvertent echo of Mr. Trump’s campaign slogan. Mr. Bush said he was “not sure” about the Captain America comparison, but he did not entirely resist the Lincoln allusion. He began by noting how many people had been eager to offer him advice recently: “Take off the suit coat. Ditch the glasses. Get rid of the purple striped tie.” Or “nail that zinger. Be angrier. Hide your inner wonk.” He then imagined what Lincoln might face if he ran today: “Advisers telling him to shave his beard. Cable pundits telling him to lose the top hat. Opposition researchers calling him a five-time loser before the age of 50.” Yet Mr. Bush’s critique of the modern political system veered well beyond cosmetics. In a rebuke of the party’s direction on immigration — an area where Mr. Bush’s more inclusive tone has distinguished him from some in the field — he said Democrats had “written a script for Republicans, filled with grievance and resentment.” He twice said he refused to play the part of “angry agitator,” describing the approach as inconsistent with the conservative cause. “That’s their plan,” he said of his liberal foes, “and I’m not going to go along with it.” | Jeb Bush;2016 Presidential Election;Republicans |
ny0225163 | [
"business",
"media"
] | 2010/10/18 | Fox News Insinuations Just Make Prince Shrug | Some critics of the proposed Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan, including commentators on Fox News, have linked the project to terrorism by seizing on a Saudi prince’s past financial backing of the imam at the center of the controversy. Prince Walid bin Talal of Saudi Arabia is also the second-largest shareholder of Fox News’s parent, the News Corporation , with a stake worth more than $2 billion, which was not always disclosed on Fox News. In fact, Prince Walid, in his first public comments about the matter, says he is actually opposed to the Islamic center’s being built in downtown Manhattan. “I have been associated with this mosque in New York, but frankly speaking, I have nothing to do with it,” he said in an interview. “I’m not for putting that mosque there.” Prince Walid offered a two-pronged explanation for why he was opposed to the project: he said out of respect for Islam, it does not belong at the proposed location because of its proximity to a strip club; and out of deference to the families of 9/11 victims who might feel antagonized, the Islamic center should not be near ground zero. “I respect all religions,” he said. The prince’s charity, the Kingdom Foundation, has supported causes linked to the imam behind the project, Feisal Abdul Rauf, as another News Corporation outlet, The New York Post, has reported. But, he says, it does not support the Islamic center project near ground zero. On the subject of relations between Islam and the West, Prince Walid has been a controversial figure, both here and in the Middle East. In the United States, he is often depicted as a backer of radical Islam, for giving to organizations like the Islamic Development Bank, and for supporting the construction of madrassas, a name for Islamic schools that in some corridors has become a broad-brush phrase for incubators of Islamic terrorism. But he has also given $20 million to Harvard to finance an Islamic studies center. So the controversy simmers on the other side as well. “I sometimes get penalized in the Arab world for being pro-American,” he said. In 2001, he sought to donate $10 million to the victims of 9/11, but the money was refused by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani because the prince had made critical comments about United States foreign policy. In his statement at the time, he said the United States “should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause.” Prince Walid became a figure in the cable news controversy over the Islamic center, which reached its zenith in late August. Dan Senor, a Fox News commentator and former adviser to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer when he was viceroy in Iraq after the American invasion, referred to Prince Walid as someone who “funds radical madrassas all over the world.” In one presentation this summer, Glenn Beck, the Fox News host, seemed to directly tie Prince Walid to 9/11. And then Jon Stewart, host of “The Daily Show,” weighed in with a comedic game of connect the dots, noting what Fox News had not disclosed: “The guy they are painting as a sinister money force owns part of Fox News.” The prince said: “It’s funny, it’s like a joke. I take these things very lightly.” He has long been an investor in the News Corporation and a supporter of its leader, Rupert Murdoch . Several years ago, he increased his voting stake in the company in a show of support for Mr. Murdoch, who holds the largest stake but was at the time facing a challenge from John C. Malone, another media mogul. This year, the relationship was cemented in a new way: Mr. Murdoch invested about $70 million in Prince Walid’s media company, Rotana. “My relationship with Rupert goes back 20 years,” Prince Walid said. | Park51;News Corporation;Walid Bin Talal;News and News Media;Fox News Channel;Murdoch Rupert;Mosques;World Trade Center (NYC) |
ny0018394 | [
"nyregion"
] | 2013/07/11 | At Sentencing, Victim Describes Rape and Its Aftermath | As the hulking stranger held her down by the throat and sexually assaulted her, the young woman stopped thinking about being rescued, about breaking free, or even about surviving. “All I heard in my head, like a broken record, was how are they going to tell my family?” she said in State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Wednesday. “How are they going to tell my daddy that I was found raped and murdered in my own bed?” She spoke at the formal sentencing of the man who pleaded guilty last month to predatory sexual assault in the attack . The man, Lawrence Elliot, 50, accepted a sentence of 13 years to life, which will begin at the conclusion of a 15-year sentence he is now serving for selling drugs. The petite woman, now 24, began shaking as Mr. Elliot, who is 6-foot-1 and 260 pounds, was led into the courtroom. She stepped to a microphone, said hello to the judge and began to weep. “Two years and eight months ago,” she began, “I spent my last hours as the person I used to be.” She described how on Nov. 11, 2010, she left the City College campus, where she was a senior, and walked to her nearby apartment. In the stairwell, Mr. Elliot came upon her, said he had a gun and would shoot her if she screamed or put up a fight, and followed her to her apartment. Before that day, she saw herself as a perfect student, with a perfect boyfriend and amazing friends. Afterward, she could not concentrate or sleep. She took a semester off, and lost some of those friends, and the boyfriend. She has since felt isolated and lonely, unable to tell new acquaintances what she endured. “I become untouchable, an object of pity and disgust, a mess that no one wants to clean up, or something fragile that no one wants to hold for fear of breaking it,” she said. Several people told her she had no business living in “that neighborhood” — Hamilton Heights — which seemed to her as if they were blaming her for the rape. She said no revenge would give her satisfaction, but she felt gratified that the Manhattan district attorney’s office believes Mr. Elliot will spend the rest of his life in prison, an outcome that makes her feel as if she has done something to protect other women. “I want to be, and I will be, your last victim,” she said. Mr. Elliot, who had also been convicted of rape in the early 1990s, said nothing to the victim. He spoke at length about how he had been coerced into pleading guilty, taking particular offense that the judge had refused to dismiss one particular juror. “This juror is eight months pregnant, and she’s standing there looking at me like she’s going to kill me, because she’s emotional,” he shouted. Justice Melissa C. Jackson quickly rejected his complaints and said she would abide by the promised sentence. The judge’s expression remained stony until the door to the holding cells closed behind Mr. Elliot. The judge then turned her eyes to the victim, smiled broadly and raised a hand with an exuberant thumbs-up. The victim smiled and returned the gesture. | Rape;Hamilton Heights Manhattan;Criminal Sentence;Lawrence Elliot;Melissa C Jackson |
ny0155985 | [
"sports",
"baseball"
] | 2008/06/11 | Eliot Asinof, ‘Eight Men Out’ Author, Is Dead at 88 | Eliot Asinof, whose journalistic re-creation of the 1919 Black Sox scandal, “Eight Men Out,” became a classic of both baseball literature and narrative nonfiction, died Tuesday in Hudson, N.Y. He was 88 and lived in Ancramdale, N.Y. The cause was complications of pneumonia, his son, Martin, said. A writer whose shrewdness and insight trumped his style, which was plainspoken and realistic, Mr. Asinof was productive and versatile. He wrote more than a dozen books, including a novel, “Final Judgment,” that is set on a college campus and concerns a protest to keep President Bush from delivering a commencement address, and is to be published in September by Bunim & Bannigan. Weeks before his death, his son said, Mr. Asinof completed a memoir of his World War II service in the Army Corps on Adak Island in the Aleutians. “Seven Days to Sunday,” his 1968 account of a week in the life of the New York Giants football team as it prepared for a game, was an early if not groundbreaking enterprise of journalistic embedding in the world of sports. His first novel, “Man on Spikes,” published in 1955 and based on a longtime friend who spent years in the minor leagues, was a prescient condemnation of baseball’s feudal control over the players. That system was not dissolved until 1975 with the abolition of the so-called reserve clause in standard contracts, which allowed teams to retain in virtual perpetuity the services of players in their employ. Mr. Asinof also wrote for television and the movies, although his published credits were limited, probably because he was among the many writers who were blacklisted in the 1950s. In his case, he once wrote after he got hold of his F.B.I. file, the blacklisting came about because “I had at one time signed a petition outside of Yankee Stadium to encourage the New York Yankees to hire black ballplayers.” But he is best known for “Eight Men Out,” published in 1963, and for the 1988 movie of the same title. The book is an exhaustively reported and slightly fictionalized account of how eight members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox allowed their anger at the parsimonious team owner, Charles Comiskey, to corrupt their integrity, leading them to welcome the overtures of gamblers, who persuaded them to throw the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. A seminal event in the history of the game, it led to the appointment of the first baseball commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Mr. Asinof spent nearly three years researching the book, including interviewing Happy Felsch, one of several members of the team who were still alive. In the end, “Eight Men Out” was a book that made plain the connection between sport and money and between sport and the underworld. “Here is the underbelly of baseball vividly dissected,” said Fay Vincent, the former baseball commissioner. In the Camelot of the Kennedy 1960s, the book also made plain, if only by inference, the unsavory potential in American culture, a theme that ran throughout Mr. Asinof’s work. Twenty-five years later, “Eight Men Out” was made into a popular film directed by John Sayles, with a script by Mr. Sayles and Mr. Asinof. Eliot Tager Asinof was born in Manhattan on July 13, 1919, and he grew up in Manhattan and Cedarhurst, N.Y. His grandfather Morris, a Russian immigrant, was a tailor who eventually opened a men’s store in Manhattan. Eliot’s father, Max, worked there, and when young Eliot went to work there as well, it was a tenet that he had to sew a suit before he would be allowed to sell one. The dexterity he developed served him well. Mr. Asinof was an accomplished amateur pianist and sculptor. He was also a carpenter who in 1985, with his son, built the Ancramdale house he lived in for the rest of his life. He shot his age on a golf course for the first time at 79. “He was really proud of that suit,” said his son, who lives in Tillamook, Ore. Mr. Asinof is also survived by a sister, Betty, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. After graduating from Swarthmore, Mr. Asinof played baseball briefly in the minor leagues — he was a first baseman in the Philadelphia Phillies’ organization — before he joined the Army. When he returned, his son said, the Phillies invited him to return, but he pulled a muscle during his first practice, and that was it for his sports career. He turned to writing. He also had a gift for finding the company of other gifted people. A compact man with a gravelly voice and a New York accent, he was gregarious and shrewdly charming. A friend, at various times in his life, of the violinist Yehudi Menuhin and Joe DiMaggio, Mr. Asinof was married once, to Jocelyn Brando, Marlon’s sister. Their marriage lasted five years, ending in divorce in 1955. They met, his son said, in 1949, while Marlon Brando was starring on Broadway in “A Streetcar Named Desire” and Jocelyn was starring in “Mister Roberts.” “As I always heard the story,” Martin Asinof said, “my father was on a date with Rita Moreno, and the four of them met for dinner. And Brando took a shine to Rita Moreno, and they left together. And my father was there with my mother.” | Books and Literature;Baseball;Writing and Writers;Deaths (Obituaries);Asinof Eliot |
ny0017051 | [
"us"
] | 2013/10/23 | Nevada: Boy Who Killed Teacher Got Weapon at Home, Police Say | The 12-year-old seventh grader who opened fire at a middle school, wounding two classmates and killing a teacher before killing himself, got the gun from his home, the authorities said Tuesday. The Washoe County School District police said they were still working to determine exactly how the boy obtained the 9 millimeter semiautomatic Ruger handgun used Monday morning at Sparks Middle School. The boy’s parents are cooperating with the authorities and could face charges, the police said. The authorities say they are withholding the student’s name out of respect for his family. At a news briefing Tuesday, officials again lauded the actions of the teacher, Michael Landsberry, 45. The boy opened fire outside a school building, hitting a 12-year-old student in the shoulder. He then headed toward a basketball court, where he encountered Mr. Landsberry, who tried to stop him. After killing the teacher, the boy fired at a second student, hitting him in the abdomen. He then shot himself in the head. | Sparks Middle School Sparks Nev;Murders;K-12 Education;Michael Landsberry;Nevada;School shooting;Sparks NV |
ny0194413 | [
"business",
"global"
] | 2009/11/26 | G.M. Says It Won’t Close Opel Plants in Germany | General Motors said on Wednesday that it would not close any of its four Opel plants in Germany, a decision that appeared to be intended to earn favor with the officials in Berlin who control billions of euros in aid for the unit’s reorganization. G.M. agreed in May to sell a majority stake in Opel to Magna International, a Canadian-Austrian auto parts company, and Sberbank, its Russian partner. To the dismay of workers and the government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, G.M. threw out that agreement earlier this month and said that it would restructure Opel, which plays a central role in its development of smaller cars. About 9,000 jobs will be eliminated in Europe, with 50 to 60 percent in Germany, Nick Reilly, the head of G.M.’s international operations, said in Rüsselsheim, Germany, after meetings with government officials and workers’ representatives. Mr. Reilly said the unit’s four German plants would remain in operation, but added that the reorganization plan was not final. He said the fate of the Opel plant in Antwerp, Belgium, long seen as vulnerable, was “uncertain.” Mr. Reilly also said that the company would cut a layer of Opel management and move its European headquarters to Rüsselsheim from Zurich. The company’s need for government financial aid — it is seeking about 3.3 billion euros ($5 billion) — has led to fears that it will close plants and concentrate layoffs at plants in Spain, Britain, Poland and Belgium to keep the German government on board. About 25,000 of Opel’s 50,000 European employees are in Germany. German officials in Berlin said they were surprised that G.M. still had not presented a strategy to restore Opel to health. Analysts said that it appeared G.M. was following the reorganization plan worked out with Magna. Other governments agreed Monday not to negotiate with the company before Dec. 4. G.M. said Wednesday that it hoped to announce a restructuring plan in a few weeks. G.M., which itself emerged from bankruptcy in September after an overhaul and $60 billion in taxpayer assistance, has said it wants to cut capacity by 20 percent at Opel, which makes the Opel and Vauxhall brands. Even with cuts, analysts are skeptical the automaker can make money in a market where capacity vastly outstrips demand. “This is what we’ve seen throughout this crisis, political involvement and bargaining and so on and no factories are closed,” said Michael Tyndall, an auto specialist at Nomura International in London. “I don’t think it’s good for the sector in the long term, and it’s one of the reasons investors avoid autos. But it’s a politically sensitive and highly visible industry, and I think politicians feel exposed when it comes to autos,” Mr. Tyndall said. He questioned whether a 20 percent capacity reduction would be enough to restore profitability at Opel, though he noted that it was “quite an aggressive target, considering what we’re seeing from its peers in Europe.” Most European automakers, except Volkswagen, are struggling. Klaus Franz, leader of the works council for Opel, said at a separate Rüsselsheim news conference that the company was planning to cut 8,684 jobs in Europe, of which 7,230 would be in Germany and Belgium. Mr. Franz said that closing the Antwerp plant would eliminate more than 2,300 jobs. He said G.M. was also planning to cut 354 jobs in Luton, England, and 900 in Saragossa, Spain. G.M.’s announcement about Opel came less than 24 hours after the American automaker said that plans to sell its Saab Automobile unit to the sports car maker Koenigsegg Automotive had collapsed. Any state aid for Opel would have to receive the approval of the European competition authorities in Brussels. In addition, Mrs. Merkel’s government is seeking to please a conservative constituency that is alarmed about interference in the market, while also trying to safeguard jobs and votes in regions where Opel plants are located. Important regional elections are scheduled for May in North-Rhine Westphalia, the most populous of the 16 German states, where Jürgen Rüttgers, a leader of Mrs. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, is fighting to remain in power for a second term. He has lobbied G.M. to retain as many jobs as possible in the Bochum plant, which employs more than 5,000 people. After talks with Mr. Reilly, Mr. Rüttgers told the German public television channel ARD that Bochum was “an important location for the future.” Analysts expect the German government to reach a new deal with G.M. Regional leaders and trade unions said Wednesday that state aid should not be dismissed. Spain and Britain have already promised state aid to guarantee jobs. | Opel Adam AG;General Motors;Automobiles |
ny0033993 | [
"sports",
"soccer"
] | 2013/12/30 | German Juggernaut, Led by Spaniard | The best in German engineering (in terms of soccer) had a trophy in its hands and a new Spanish driver. What could Bayern Munich and Coach Pep Guardiola possibly do for an encore? Guardiola, one of the men who took Barcelona to the top in recent years, replaced Jupp Heynckes at Bayern Munich for the 2013-14 Bundesliga season. Guardiola has kept the team at the top of the standings — it is undefeated so far this season — and by winning the Club World Cup in December in Morocco, he added another piece of silverware to Bayern’s bulging trophy case. In 2013 alone, the club won the Bundesliga title, the UEFA Champions League, the German Cup and the UEFA Super Cup (while losing its only final to rival Borussia Dortmund in the preseason German Super Cup). The numbers were quite staggering: Munich won all 17 of its home Bundesliga games, equaling the record of the 1972 and 2005 teams, and became the only team in the league’s 51-year history not to lose a Bundesliga game in a calendar year, going unbeaten in 41 matches. The highlight among many came on a balmy May night at Wembley Stadium in London, where Bayern Munich erased the disappointment of a year earlier — when it lost the Champions League title to Chelsea on penalty kicks in its home stadium — by beating Dortmund on Arjen Robben’s late goal. “For me, it was the perfect night,” Robben said, adding: “It was like a fairy tale: winning at Wembley and scoring in the last minute. It can’t get any better.” But can it? Bayern Munich is now trying to extend its brand outside Germany. It recently opened an office in New York, and after next year’s World Cup, it will travel to Portland, Ore., to face a team of All-Stars from Major League Soccer. “We’ve worked very hard, indeed, for many years,” the Bayern captain Philipp Lahm said on the club’s website. “We’ve earned the reward in 2013.” | Soccer;Bayern Munich Soccer Team;Josep Guardiola |
ny0141141 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2008/11/03 | What Happens to Public Financing, When Obama Thrived Without It? | As Senator Barack Obama spends the last of hundreds of millions of dollars donated to his presidential campaign, the debate over how future campaigns will be financed is set to begin in earnest. The outcome promises to have a profound impact on future presidential runs, either upping the fund-raising ante irrevocably or forcing sweeping changes to prevent such large amounts of cash from coursing through campaigns again. But just as it has in this election cycle, it is quite likely that politics, as much as principle, will shape the jockeying. Democrats, in particular, who have traditionally supported limits on campaign spending, are grappling with whether they can embrace Mr. Obama’s example without being seen as hypocritical. They are keenly aware that they have developed through the Internet a commanding fund-raising advantage over Republicans, much like the direct mail money machine that conservatives used to lord over them. “I think there is going to be tremendous reluctance on our side to yield any of that advantage,” said Tad Devine, a senior strategist for Senator John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004. Bob Kerrey, a Democratic former senator from Nebraska who serves as an honorary chairman of a group that fights for public financing of federal races, wrote an opinion article in The New York Post last week in which he confessed to newfound ambivalence on the issue in light of Mr. Obama’s success among small donors and the energy he had seen in the election this year. Mr. Kerrey said in an interview that part of his change of heart might indeed be because the existing system was benefiting Democrats, and he said he believed that many others in his party were wrestling with the issue anew because of the changed calculus. But he added that Mr. Obama’s army of small donors had altered the terms of the debate, causing him to believe that he had been wrong about the need for such limitations. “I think the reformers’ arguments have been substantially undercut by the facts on the ground,” Mr. Kerrey said. Both candidates have campaigned as reformers and declared that repairing the public financing system for presidential campaigns would be a priority in their administration. But Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee for president, apparently did not absorb much by way of political cost when he broke a pledge to accept public financing if his opponent did as well. Mr. Obama built a huge financial advantage over the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, which may have written the epitaph for the current system. A recent USA Today-Gallup poll found most Americans did not even know who was taking public financing and who was not; only Mr. McCain opted for the $84 million in public financing. But the survey also found most of those polled supported limits on campaign spending. House and Senate leadership aides said it was highly unlikely that the issue would earn much attention next year, given other priorities like the economy and the war in Iraq. There is also the matter of the brewing debate among Democrats, who will probably control Congress, over whether such limits are even warranted. “Democrats may decide this is working pretty well,” said Representative David E. Price, Democrat of North Carolina, who last year was the lead sponsor of a measure in the House to update the presidential public financing system. “I don’t really know what might materialize in the way of views on our side.” Campaign finance reform has been a signature cause for Mr. McCain, though he declined in recent years to sponsor bills updating the presidential public financing system. Yet if Mr. McCain were to win on Tuesday, the resistance in Democratic circles to new financing rules would presumably only grow as they plot another assault on the Republicans’ White House grip in 2012. The existing presidential public financing system began in the 1970s after the Watergate scandal to limit the influence of money in politics, but it has not kept pace with the escalating spending. The 2004 race marked the first time both major nominees, Mr. Kerry and President Bush, decided to bypass the federal matching funds for the primary. Mr. Obama became the first major party candidate to opt out of the system for the general election. The move allowed him to continue raising private donations while Mr. McCain could not. But advocates for tighter restrictions on campaign finance said they were alarmed by the more than $1.5 billion that had been raised by the presidential candidates in the primary and general elections this year — the first time presidential aspirants have topped $1 billion. (The Obama campaign alone has raised more than $600 million.) The advocates said that they were poised to begin aggressively lobbying for changes to the public financing system and that they hoped the issue would be taken up quickly by the new president and Congress. The bill they are promoting seeks to offer new incentives to participate in the public finance system by substantially increasing the amount of public money available to candidates. Its provisions include increasing the ratio of public matching funds available in the primary, eliminating state-by-state primary spending limits and increasing the size of the grant for the general election. Advocates for the bill said they were not convinced of Mr. Obama’s argument, now being embraced by many fellow Democrats, that by raising unprecedented sums from small donors he had addressed the problem of big-money influence in politics. Skeptics note that Mr. Obama raised record amounts from large donors as well. In addition, they said, the presidential campaign this year highlighted new issues, like megadonors to joint fund-raising committees that benefit the candidate and the party. There are also questions about whether Internet donations are being vetted adequately, which has drawn increased scrutiny in recent weeks with regard to contributions to the Obama campaign. “Whether we get to move this meaningful campaign reform forward is going to depend largely on the leadership of either Obama or McCain,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for Public Citizen, a watchdog group. “If either one of them decides they don’t care, we’re going to have a hard time convincing Congress to take up the issue.” | Presidential Election of 2008;Campaign Finance;Democratic Party;Obama Barack;Presidential Elections (US);Elections;United States Politics and Government |
ny0243767 | [
"us"
] | 2011/03/12 | Partisans Adopt Deceit as a Tactic for Reports | The reporter in disguise has largely faded from mainstream American journalism. But the tactic is alive and well in the hands of passionate partisans. As their pursuit of the “gotcha” moment has become part of the cost of life in the public eye, one question is how willing politicians will be to advance their agendas on the backs of these muckrakers 2.0. In just the last month, surreptitiously recorded conversations have embarrassed NPR and Planned Parenthood , organizations long under assault from conservatives, as well as Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican and target of the political left for his anti-union stance. The latest episode came this week, when the conservative provocateur James O’Keefe released a video that included an NPR fund-raiser who makes disparaging remarks about the Tea Party . This led to the resignation of the radio network’s chief executive, Vivian Schiller. So far, politicians have been quick to celebrate the ends even as they tiptoe around the question of whether the means are appropriate. Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, has limited his comments to calling for an end to federal financing for NPR. Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republican majority leader, issued a statement saying, “This video clearly highlights the fact that public broadcasting doesn’t need taxpayer funding to thrive.” Representative Doug Lamborn, Republican of Colorado, also cited the O’Keefe video specifically in talking to The Daily Caller about cutting funding for public broadcasting. “Their arrogance and condescension,” he said, is “just amazing.” None of the three mentioned Mr. O’Keefe by name. When asked about Mr. O’Keefe’s tactics, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cantor was circumspect: “Congressman Cantor has been working to find ways to cut spending so that people can go back to work.” Political strategists express worry that this sort activity has been creeping into campaigns for some time now. But the fact that they can so often have a political benefit leaves many torn. “I find the whole thing bordering on unsavory on both sides,” said Ari Fleischer, a White House press secretary under President George W. Bush. “As much as I love it when liberal hypocrisy is exposed,” he added, “do we really want to get to the point where it becomes standard fare — especially in political campaigns — for opponents to engage in sting operations?” Defensible or not, use of the tactics seems to be growing. In the recent Planned Parenthood incident, the organization fired a clinic manager after an anti-abortion group secretly videotaped her giving advice on how to get medical care for under-age prostitutes, prompting renewed cries from social conservatives to eliminate the organization’s federal funding. In Wisconsin, a liberal blogger prank-called the governor posing as David Koch, the conservative donor and philanthropist. The governor compared his efforts to weaken the collective bargaining rights of public workers to President Ronald Reagan’s firing of air traffic controllers in 1981, a move seen by many as a watershed moment in the weakening of organized labor. Democrats pounced, seeing an opportunity to draw focus to what they said were the governor’s intentions all along: to break public employee unions. And those were just in the last month. Mr. O’Keefe, who first gained notice for secretly videotaping his exchanges with workers for the community organizing group Acorn who appeared to advise him how to avoid prosecution for a variety of unsavory activities like child prostitution, pleaded guilty last year in connection with entering the New Orleans office of Senator Mary Landrieu under false pretenses. Mr. O’Keefe claimed Ms. Landrieu had been ignoring constituents’ phone calls during the health care debate. Conservative politicians pointedly distanced themselves from Mr. O’Keefe after that incident, with some saying that a line had been crossed. Despite their misleading methods, such pranks do not seem to taint the politicians who benefit from them. “I do find it a little difficult to draw a link because it’s so hard to hold one person accountable for behavior with which they had no relationship at all except that they kind of agree,” said Christopher C. Hull, who teaches politics at Georgetown University. By and large, American news organizations are wary of the toll stunts like Mr. O’Keefe’s can take on their credibility. Some attempts by mainstream media outlets to mask their reporters’ identities, in fact, have caused a backlash. One of the most significant examples was the case involving ABC News and Food Lion, in which the supermarket chain sued the network, claiming fraud and trespassing. Producers for the program “Primetime Live” lied on job applications and obtained jobs in the back rooms of Food Lion stores, where they recorded employees engaging in unsanitary and dangerous practices like bleaching spoiled meat. As the case made its way through the courts, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press asked in a 1997 poll whether people thought it was acceptable for reporters to use potentially deceptive tactics like hidden cameras. Large majorities said no. The Chicago Sun-Times found itself snubbed by the Pulitzer Prize board in the 1970s after it set up a sting operation at the Mirage bar, where they caught city inspectors accepting bribes. Tom Rosenstiel, director of Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, said that newspapers subsequently pulled back from such techniques. “Because,” he said, “it was hard to try and suggest you’re telling the truth when you’re lying.” | O'Keefe James E III;National Public Radio;Planned Parenthood Federation of America;United States Politics and Government;Landrieu Mary L;Walker Scott K |
ny0122422 | [
"us"
] | 2012/09/28 | California: Desalination Clears Hurdle | The San Diego County Water Authority announced a tentative agreement Thursday to buy all of the output of what will be the Western Hemisphere’s largest seawater desalination plant, clearing a major hurdle for construction. The plant in Carlsbad will produce 50 million gallons a day, enough to supply about 7 percent of the San Diego region in 2020. If the deal is approved by the water authority board, the developer, Poseidon Resources, would sell bonds to finance 82 percent of the project, estimated at $900 million. San Diego would pay $2,042 to $2,290 for an acre-foot of water, more than twice what it pays to buy water from outside the region. | Desalination;San Diego (Calif);Water |
ny0291324 | [
"us",
"politics"
] | 2016/01/06 | Steve Israel of New York, a Top House Democrat, Won’t Seek Re-election | WASHINGTON — Representative Steve Israel, a New York Democrat who led political messaging for his party in the House, said Tuesday that he would not run for re-election, citing the unrelenting demands of fund-raising among the reasons behind his decision to retire. “I don’t think I can spend another day in another call room making another call begging for money,” Mr. Israel said in an interview in his congressional office. “I always knew the system was dysfunctional. Now it is beyond broken.” Mr. Israel, 57, who in 2014 published a well-received satirical novel on politics, also said that he wanted more time to devote to writing and that he was planning a new humorous book on the gun lobby. An eight-term congressman from Long Island with centrist leanings, Mr. Israel led the campaign effort for House Democrats in the 2012 and 2014 election cycles and was seen as one of his party’s top strategists. He is a close political adviser to Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democrats’ leader in the House, and will continue to develop the party message during his remaining time in office. Under his stewardship, House Democrats gained eight seats in 2012 but struggled in 2014 and lost 13 as Republicans built a formidable majority in the midterm election of President Obama’s second term. “Steve is a tremendous resource in articulating Democrats’ work on behalf of hard-working families,” Ms. Pelosi said in a statement. “He will be a critical resource for our caucus in the remainder of his term and into the future.” Mr. Israel was elected in 2000 to a Republican-held seat and said he did not expect to be re-elected. His ability to win repeatedly in a difficult district was considered a major advantage when Ms. Pelosi picked him to head the campaign committee, where he proved to be a strong fund-raiser. Video Representative Steve Israel, Democrat of New York, says during an interview in October 2014 that strict campaign finance reform would help fix Washington. His House district remains competitive, and the congressman said that by retiring in this election cycle, he will give a leg up to the eventual Democratic candidate since the district favors Democrats in a presidential election year. Waiting until 2018 could have made it more difficult for Democrats, he said. “For me and my party, sooner is better than later,” said Mr. Israel, who formerly owned his own public-relations firm. “It is the absolutely right decision at the absolutely right time.” He becomes the sixth veteran Democrat to announce his retirement from the House; an additional nine are leaving to pursue other offices. Lawmakers generally begin to make their decisions on whether to stay or not early in the year as candidate filing deadlines approach, and to give potential successors an opportunity to assess their chances. He said his decision had been aided by the recent retirement announcement of Representative Richard Hanna of New York, a rare moderate Republican, whose departure drove home to Mr. Israel the rapidly shrinking ranks of centrist lawmakers from either party. “There are so few moderates left to work with,” Mr. Israel said. Democrats expect a crowded field of candidates in Mr. Israel’s district, which stretches from Queens across suburban Nassau County and into more conservative Suffolk County. Party leaders were caught off guard by Mr. Israel’s announcement, but early speculation turned to a handful of well-known Long Island Democrats, including Thomas R. Suozzi, the former Nassau County executive, and Assemblyman Charles D. Lavine. On the Republican side, State Senator Jack M. Martins is believed to be interested in the race and would be a favorite to win the party’s nomination. Mr. Israel said he intended to remain active in politics as a Democratic sounding board but would devote significant time to completing his second book. “I may not have a seat in the House, but I will be able to observe Washington with my tongue planted firmly in cheek as a satirist,” he said. | Steve J Israel;New York;US;US Politics;Election;House races;Congressional elections;Long Island |
ny0296958 | [
"world",
"middleeast"
] | 2016/12/25 | Aboard a U.S. Eye in the Sky, Staring Down ISIS in Iraq and Syria | ABOARD A JOINT STARS SURVEILLANCE PLANE, Over Northern Iraq — Flying at 30,000 feet, the powerful radar aboard this Air Force jet peered deep into Syrian territory, hunting for targets on the ground to strike in the looming offensive to seize Raqqa, the Islamic State’s capital. It was on a mission like this several weeks ago that analysts discovered a hiding place in the central Syrian desert where the Islamic State was stashing scores of oil tanker trucks that provide the terrorist group with a crucial financial lifeline. Acting on that tip and other intelligence, two dozen American warplanes destroyed 188 of the trucks in the biggest airstrike of the year, eliminating an estimated $2 million in oil revenue for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Even as the American-led air campaign conducts bombing missions to support Iraqi troops fighting the Islamic State in Mosul, American commanders said the air war would probably play an even greater role in Syria over the coming weeks in the battle to retake Raqqa. Newly recruited Syrian Arab militia fighters, allied with experienced Kurdish fighters, are encircling Raqqa. But they need allied bombing to weaken and dislodge enemy forces dug in there, and to cut off the ability for the Islamic State to rearm, refuel and reinforce its fighters. But with few spies in the city, American officials say assessing the enemy is difficult. “We’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand the situation on the ground in Raqqa,” Lt. Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, the air war commander, said in an interview from his headquarters in Qatar. “It’s improving. It’s still not at the level we’d like it to be.” The air operation is a pivotal component of a military campaign that has cost $12.5 million a day in Iraq and Syria. The effort has destroyed hundreds of tanks, artillery pieces, military vehicles, command centers and fighting positions, and killed more than 50,000 fighters, according to American estimates. Since the air war began in late summer 2014, American and allied aircraft have conducted about 17,000 strikes in both countries. The Islamic State has lost about half of the territory it seized in Iraq and Syria in 2014. But as ISIS loses ground in its physical caliphate, or religious state, the threat of hundreds of foreign fighters returning home and of the expansion of its virtual caliphate through social media is certain to accelerate, American and European officials say. That raises fears of more terrorist attacks in cities outside the Middle East. For instance, the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for last week’s truck attack on a Christmas market in Berlin even though the links between the group and the main suspect, Anis Amri, a 24-year-old Tunisian, are not completely clear. After Mr. Amri’s death, the Islamic State released a video of him pledging allegiance to the group. President Obama has vowed to deal the Islamic State crippling blows in Mosul and Raqqa before he leaves office. This month, he ordered 200 more American Special Operations forces to Syria to help local fighters advancing on Raqqa, nearly doubling the Pentagon’s boots on the ground there . Commanders are uncertain, however, about the level of support President-elect Donald J. Trump will maintain for rebel groups in Syria combating the Islamic State. Image Images of fuel trucks targeted by American airstrikes on Dec. 8. Credit U.S. Military The military march on Raqqa is complicated by the predominant role played by Kurdish militia members, who make up a majority of the 45,000 fighters bearing down on the city. They are the most effective American partner against the Islamic State in Syria, providing logistics, command and control, and fierce fighting prowess. But the Kurdish fighters are viewed by Turkey — a pivotal American ally — as a terrorist threat. These lingering diplomatic and military questions leave some congressional leaders voicing skepticism about a swift, decisive attack on the Islamic State capital. “It’s hard to see anything is imminent,” said Representative Adam Schiff of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. With a prewar population of about 220,000, Raqqa is about one-tenth the size of Mosul, but commanders still face the same challenges of waging an air war while minimizing risks to civilians in a congested city. There are other reasons to go slow. Some Islamic State headquarters buildings have been spared attack for now so the Americans can monitor their communications and movements of their personnel in and out to learn more about the enemy operations, General Harrigian said. Still, allied airstrikes have picked up as the Arab and Kurdish fighters have moved closer to the capital, and as commanders seek to pressure Mosul and Raqqa simultaneously. About 30 percent of the 1,300 strikes in and around Raqqa since the war began in 2014 have been conducted in the past three months. “The pressure in Raqqa is bearing fruit as ISIL leaders come out of hiding, which allows us to kill them,” Brett H. McGurk, Mr. Obama’s envoy to the international coalition fighting the Islamic State, said this month. Tracking the enemy’s ground movements falls largely to the crew of the Joint Stars plane, a 1960s-era, reconfigured Boeing 707 jetliner packed with sensitive electronics that is part of an eclectic and unsung mix of odd-shaped surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft with names like Compass Call and Rivet Joint. These planes suck up some enemy communications, jam others and help paint a picture of the Islamic State on the ground for American fighters and bombers to attack. Bulging from the belly of the Joint Stars is a canoe-shaped, cloud-piercing radar that can see ground targets — and even some low-flying planes and helicopters — as far as 250 miles away on either side of the nearly windowless fuselage. Aboard the plane, the crew of 19 Air Force and Army personnel — an unusual mix of active-duty and Georgia National Guard specialists — track clusters of dots on their screens that could represent groups of hostile fighters and their vehicles, friendly forces or just routine commercial traffic. Much depends on where they are and what time of day it is. From its high-flying, wide-area perch, the radar can track moving vehicles; low, slow-flying aircraft; and smaller potential targets such as people, said Lt. Col. William B. Hartman, 39, of Irvine, Calif., the Joint Stars squadron commander. The operators on board can change the filters on their systems to show different-size targets or their direction of travel in different colors, all of which is relayed back to operations centers in Baghdad and Erbil, in northern Iraq, he said. Image An E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint Stars) receiving fuel from a KC-135 tanker plane in 2004. Credit Suzanne Jenkins/U.S. Air Force, via Getty Images Flying from a base in the Persian Gulf, a typical Joint Stars mission over Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan can last about 11 or 12 hours. Crews pack snacks in their flight bags but also fire up the plane’s oven to prepare an in-flight order of chicken wings. The Joint Stars is not equipped with cameras to identify specific images on the ground. When the crew members see something suspicious, they direct a Predator or Reaper drone to zoom in for a closer look. The Joint Stars is also valuable because a rotation of aircraft and surveillance crews can monitor a particular area for days, weeks or months, watching Islamic State activity to understand what the military calls the enemy’s “pattern of life.” Islamic State fighters know from experience that they are being watched and often try to deceive the surveillance planes, hiding in schools or mosques or using camouflage. At one point, analysts said, ISIS even appeared to be trying to smuggle weapons strapped to the bellies of herds of sheep. “They’re extremely smart,” Master Sgt. Caylon Kimball, 31, an airborne intelligence technician from Anadarko, Okla., said of the militants. Several weeks ago, as the air campaign intensified against the Islamic State’s oil-production and distribution network, analysts noticed an intriguing development in the central Syrian desert, about 35 miles north of Palmyra. Comparing months-old radar data from Joint Stars and other surveillance imagery with newer versions, analysts discovered that the Islamic State was moving much of its oil tanker truck fleet to an obscure area of sandy gullies, about 20 miles by 20 miles in size. “They were trying to hide from us,” General Harrigian said. “They were adapting to what we were doing. They were going into the desert and just parking.” For several more weeks, analysts watched the clandestine desert truck stop grow, wanting to ensure it was the Islamic State trucking fleet. Confident in that assessment, General Harrigian ordered an attack plan, code-named Olympus. In two waves of strikes — on Dec. 8 and 9 — about two dozen Air Force and Navy warplanes destroyed 188 of the trucks. Empty truck cabs were struck first to scare off drivers sleeping in their rigs, and General Harrigian said it appeared there were no civilian casualties. Besides wiping out a sizable portion of the Islamic State’s tanker truck fleet and depriving the group of over $2 million in oil sales, commanders said the strike was also meant to cripple the enemy’s morale. “There would be a larger strategic message we sent to them: Nice try. We found you,” General Harrigian said. “Keep trying to hide, we will hunt you down again.” | Military aircraft;US Military;ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State;Mosul;Raqqa Syria;Brett H McGurk;Jeffrey L. Harrigian;Syria |
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