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ny0282969

2016/07/21

For Donald Trump’s Big Speech, an Added Pressure: No Echoes

CLEVELAND — Until Monday night, Donald J. Trump’s biggest concern about his convention speech was how much to reveal about himself and his family in an address that is often the most personal one a presidential candidate delivers. But the political firestorm over his wife’s speech , which borrowed passages from Michelle Obama’s convention remarks in 2008, raised the stakes exponentially. Mr. Trump’s speech on Thursday night cannot merely be his best ever. It also has to be bulletproof. By Tuesday morning, word had spread throughout his campaign that any language in Mr. Trump’s address even loosely inspired by speeches, essays, books or Twitter posts had to be either rewritten or attributed. Mr. Trump’s chief speechwriter, Stephen Miller, reassured colleagues that the acceptance speech was wholly original, according to two staff members who spoke with him and described those conversations on the condition of anonymity. Mr. Miller also told campaign aides that he had looked closely at passages that Mr. Trump had contributed — handwritten on unlined white pages — and was confident they contained no problems. (Mr. Miller declined an interview request.) Even so, one of the staff members downloaded plagiarism-detection software and ran a draft of the speech through the program. No red flags came up. The intense scrutiny of Mr. Trump’s words added new pressure to a speechwriting process that has been one of the most unpredictable and free-form in modern presidential campaigns. A month ago, Mr. Trump began giving dictation on themes for the speech, and he tossed ideas and phrases to Mr. Miller or other advisers on a daily basis. On printed copies of each draft, he circled passages he liked, crossed out or put question marks beside lines that he did not favor and frequently suggested new words or phrases. Image Stephen Miller, left, Mr. Trump’s chief speechwriter, and Paul Manafort, the campaign chairman, before an event for the candidate at the Trump SoHo hotel in New York last month. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times “I’ve been amending the drafts big-league,” Mr. Trump said in an interview in his Manhattan office before the convention. “I get ideas from a lot of different places, a lot of smart people, but mostly I like language that sounds like me.” Yet in the aftermath of Melania Trump’s speech, campaign advisers have fretted that they do not know for sure where Mr. Trump gets his ideas and language — whether they are his own, in other words, or are picked up from Twitter, television, or, say, a best seller by Bill O’Reilly of Fox News, a commentator whom Mr. Trump likes. Borrowing or adapting may not always be tantamount to plagiarism, but several Trump advisers, who also insisted on anonymity, said that after the furor over Ms. Trump’s remarks, the campaign cannot allow a similar blowup. Ed Rollins, a Republican strategist who is advising a “super PAC” supporting Mr. Trump, said that the candidate could not afford any mistakes. “His speech is the whole game,” Mr. Rollins said. “Viewers have to watch it and say, ‘There is the next president of the United States.’” In the interview, Mr. Trump said his speech would center on his vision of a strong and secure America that “once existed and no longer does, but can again under a Trump administration.” Latest Election Polls 2016 Get the latest national and state polls on the presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump. His greatest challenge, he said, was “putting myself in the speech” — discussing his upbringing and early experiences and relating them to the hopes and aspirations of other Americans. “I was never comfortable getting personal about my family because I thought it was special territory,” Mr. Trump said, glancing at a picture of his father on his desk. “It can feel exploitative to use family stories to win votes. And I had a very happy and comfortable life growing up. I had a great relationship with my father. But my focus needs to be on all the Americans who are struggling.” He said he was unsure if he would discuss his older brother Fred, who died as an alcoholic in 1981 at 43 — and whom he has described as an example of how destructive choices can damage lives that seem golden. “Without my brother Fred I might not be here,” Mr. Trump said. “He was really smart, great-looking. I don’t drink or smoke because of what happened to him. I focused on building my business and making good choices. I may talk about that, but I don’t know if I should.” Acceptance speeches seldom seem complete without anecdotes about personal trials and triumphs: Mitt Romney, trying to persuade voters to see him as more than a rich businessman, devoted about a fourth of his 2012 address to his parents’ unconditional love, his Mormon faith and reminiscences about watching the moon landing. In 2008 , Barack Obama described how his grandfather benefited from the G.I. Bill and how his mother and grandmother taught him the value of hard work. And Bill Clinton’s 1992 speech vividly recalled the life lessons he learned from his mother about fighting and working hard, from his grandfather about racial equality — and from his wife, Hillary, who, Mr. Clinton said, taught him that every child could learn. Mr. Clinton finished his speech with a now-famous line tying his Arkansas hometown to the American dream. “I end tonight where it all began for me,” he said. “I still believe in a place called Hope.” James Carville, a senior strategist for Mr. Clinton’s 1992 campaign, said that if Mr. Trump hoped to change the minds of those who see him as divisive or bigoted, he would need to open himself up to voters in meaningfully personal ways in his speech. “If he’s really different than the way he seems in television interviews or at his rallies, Thursday’s speech will be his single greatest opportunity to show voters who he really is,” Mr. Carville said. Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chairman, said that Thursday’s speech would be “very much a reflection of Mr. Trump’s own words, as opposed to remarks that others create and the campaign puts in his mouth.” “He’s not an editor — he is actually the creator of the speech,” Mr. Manafort said. “Mr. Trump has given Steve Miller and I very specific directions about how he views the speech, what he wants to communicate, and ways to tie together things that he has been talking about in the campaign. The speech will end up being tone-perfect because the speech’s words will be his words.” Mr. Trump prefers speaking off the cuff with handwritten notes, a style that has proved successful at his rallies, where he has shown a talent for connecting with and electrifying crowds. But his adjustment to formal speeches remains a work in progress: He does not always sound like himself, and reading from a text can detract from the sense of authenticity that his supporters prize. One question is whether, or how much, he will ad-lib. He has sometimes seemed unable to resist deviating from prepared remarks, often to ill effect — ranting about a mosquito , or joking that a passing airplane was from Mexico and was “ getting ready to attack .” “Ad-libbing is instinct, all instinct,” Mr. Trump said. “I thought maybe about doing a freewheeling speech for the convention, but that really wouldn’t work. But even with a teleprompter, the speech will be me — my ideas, my beliefs, my words.”

2016 Presidential Election;Donald Trump;Republican National Convention,RNC;Speeches;Plagiarism;Melania Trump

ny0225578

2010/10/16

In Home Opener, Rangers Lose Gaborik and Drury to Injuries

There were silver linings to the Rangers ’ wild 4-3 overtime loss in their home opener at Madison Square Garden on Friday night. But the clouds they lined were huge, dark and ominous. Marian Gaborik left the game with a separated left shoulder in the second period after being boarded by Toronto’s Colby Armstrong. Gaborik, whose 42 goals led the Rangers last season, will be out of action for at least two weeks, Rangers Coach John Tortorella said after the game. Chris Drury also left with an injury in the second period after colliding with his teammate Michal Rozsival and falling into the boards. Drury, making his season debut after missing the first two games with a broken left index finger, broke the same finger in a different place. He will be out six weeks, Tortorella said. Vinny Prospal, the Rangers’ No. 2 scorer last season, will be operated on Tuesday to repair the right knee that has prevented him from playing so far this season. Tortorella said Prospal would be out indefinitely. The silver linings could be found in the Rangers’ ability to rally from a 3-1 second-period deficit, as well as a 30-12 shooting deficit, to tie the Leafs at the end of regulation and salvage a point in the standings. The star of the game for the Rangers was Brian Boyle, who scored both goals. Boyle, the fourth-line center, scored only four times in 71 games last season. But he was given extra shifts because of the injuries to Gaborik and Drury, and he made the most of the opportunity. “It’s great to get into the rhythm of a game,” Boyle said. “To get called on a few more times, that was a good feeling.” Henrik Lundqvist also deserved credit for the point, stopping 34 of 38 shots from the Leafs, who are now 4-0 — their best start since 1993-94. The Rangers are 1-1-1. “I’m happy about our resiliency, getting a point after not doing what we needed to do through the first two periods,” Tortorella said. “We’ll take the point.” Brandon Dubinsky tried to dwell on the positive, saying, “We found a way to come back from two goals and create something positive.” But the clouds cast a shadow over any positive developments. Particularly troubling was the second period, when the Rangers were overwhelmed and surrendered three unanswered goals. “They were screaming through the neutral zone,” Tortorella said of the Leafs. “We couldn’t catch them. I can’t believe they’re that quick.” Clarke MacArthur, Mike Komisarek and Phil Kessel scored for Toronto, all on plays that involved rushes down ice with Rangers chasing in futility. The Rangers also lost Gaborik and Drury in the second period. But their rally in the third tied the score thanks to Boyle and Sean Avery, who had about as mixed a game as any player can have. He had two assists, including the setup on the Boyle goal that tied the score, and went plus-3. Avery also took two needless penalties — one in which he dropped his gloves to fight Armstrong, who had not dropped his, and another in which he needlessly slashed Komisarek across the back of the legs during a stoppage in play. “Sean gave us some effective minutes,” Tortorella said. “But that’s where we’re going to have to continue working with him. He has to realize there are different ways to accomplish that.” Boyle’s goals, Lundqvist’s saves and the Rangers’ six penalty kills got them to overtime. But then the Rangers surrendered a seventh power play, after Marc Staal was penalized for interfering with Tim Brent. Kessel scored his second goal of the game on the ensuing advantage, 3 minutes 8 seconds into the overtime session. Tortorella said he was frustrated by Staal’s taking an unnecessary penalty. Now the Rangers — who have managed to avoid injury trouble the last two seasons — must figure out how to plug the holes opened by the loss of Gaborik and Drury. Erik Christensen, recovered from a groin pull, should be ready to take Drury’s place at center. Todd White may dress to take another vacant forward position, or the Rangers may try to call up Tim Kennedy, recently demoted to Hartford in the American Hockey League. But they could easily lose him to waivers, as he carries only a $275,000 cap hit for any claiming team. That is another big cloud hovering over the Rangers.

Hockey Ice;Toronto Maple Leafs;New York Rangers;Lundqvist Henrik

ny0118528

2012/10/14

The Role of Politics in Wealth Distribution

MITT ROMNEY has apologized for his depiction of 47 percent of America as wealth takers rather than wealth makers. But his blunder touched inadvertently on some discomforting truths about the importance of politics in income distribution in the United States. If Mr. Romney’s points were to be reformulated in a more defensible direction, the outline might look something like this: OF MAKING AND TAKING The correct distinction is not “makers versus takers.” The problem is that taking, rather than making wealth, appears to be growing in relative influence. Most of us are actually both makers and takers. Consider farmers who produce food and favor agricultural subsidies. The question is whether the role of wealth maker has more influence over our politics, at any given time, than does the taker role. Is public policy being adjudicated on grounds of ethics and efficiency, or is the real story about lobbying and the relative power of different interest groups? It isn’t easy to measure whether politics is less public-spirited these days, and we should resist the tendency to idealize the past. Still, job creation, median income and other measures of economic well-being have done poorly since the late 1990s. That suggests that America isn’t paying enough attention to creating wealth and increasing general prosperity. FOLLOW THE MONEY Seven of the 10 most affluent counties in the nation are near Washington, D.C. That means a growing number of educated people are making a very good living advising, lobbying and otherwise influencing the federal government. This is a talent drain. It’s far from obvious that we are getting better policy as a result, and true wealth creation has not kept pace. As Matthew Yglesias, a columnist for the online magazine Slate, has pointed out, there is also a subtler point about those wealthy Virginia and Maryland counties. They have high per capita incomes, not only because they attract educated, government-oriented professionals, but also because their zoning and building codes limit the supply of low-cost housing. That’s a significant government intervention that hurts lower-income people, who must pay more. Privilege-seeking through government is often most pernicious when it has a tidy front and a well-manicured green lawn. UNEQUAL INFLUENCE Politics based on lobbying stacks the deck against lower-income groups, who are often outmaneuvered. For instance, one of the biggest problems faced by the poor today is inadequate K-12 education. They need improved public schools, more school choice, or some mix of both. Over time, such improvements would help deal with many other social and economic issues, including global competitiveness, domestic unemployment, public health and the budget deficit, because quality education has many beneficial effects. Instead, the current system of transfers offers to the poor various sops in place of more effective reforms. Fundamental improvements to education would involve more challenging changes to residential zoning, teacher unions and certification systems, and might also take some educational finance and control out of the hands of local municipalities. It is no surprise that well-off families want to keep a system that has done very well by them, and that the poor often lose political battles over education. EVERYONE FEELS ENTITLED People tend to think that they have justice on their side, whether it comes to making or taking. For example, millions of homeowners have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the premise that the tax deduction for mortgages will be continued. If they support a continuation of that deduction they hardly feel like brigands, even though a bipartisan consensus of economists doubts the efficiency of this tax break. As years and decades pass, recipients of this deduction and other benefits start to see them as deeply and richly deserved. Furthermore, almost all of us reap one or more of these benefits, so few individuals are consistently opposed to all government transfers. It becomes difficult for a politician to articulate exactly what is wrong with this arrangement when the audience itself is in on the game and perhaps does not want to hear about its own takings. A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE The Founding Fathers were extremely worried about the threat to society posed by corruption and privilege-seeking. Drawing on examples going back to antiquity, they understood how unmitigated wealth-taking could create a negative and cumulatively self-reinforcing political dynamic. They also understood that the Constitution — or any constitution — would be an extremely imperfect remedy for this problem. • It is therefore correct to reject Mr. Romney’s depiction as off-base and misleading. Yet the fact that he didn’t present the truth is an indication that the problem is actually worse than many of us realize.

United States Economy;Romney Mitt;Income Inequality;Presidential Election of 2012;Lobbying and Lobbyists;High Net Worth Individuals;Poverty;Washington (DC)

ny0229743

2010/09/05

Timofey Mozgov of the Knicks Helps Russia at Worlds

ANKARA, Turkey — An international scout for the last 15 years, Kevin Wilson said that no matter how politically incorrect it is, he engages in profiling when analyzing European players. When scouting Russians, Wilson acknowledged, he casts a skeptical eye. Too often, he said, they have a poor work ethic and lack mental toughness. It is a stereotype that the Russian national team coach, David Blatt, said stemmed from a rule in the lucrative professional leagues there that requires teams to have two Russians on the floor at all times. But the back story of Timofey Mozgov, who signed with the Knicks in July , belies that of a typical player in the Russian system, which tends to usher top young players to pro teams and coddle them. Mozgov, 24, is an athletic 7-foot-1 late bloomer whose performance for Russia during pool play at the world championships has been one of the surprises of the tournament. Coming off the bench behind the former Kansas star Sasha Kaun, Mozgov scored 18 points in Russia’s victory over Greece on Thursday, has averaged 11.8 points over all and has helped lead a Russian team without any N.B.A. players to a 4-1 record. “I think it’s going to be easier for him in the N.B.A. than in Europe,” Blatt said. “He’s not going to have to be a lead player, and they’ll probably put him in a small area of the game where he has to pick and cut or run the break hard, which he does extremely well. “Still, it’s going to be a big adjustment for Timofey.” If Russia beats France and the United States beats Angola in knockout-round games Monday, the teams will play Thursday . The game would give N.B.A. players their first significant look at Mozgov. Last week in Ankara, he looked like a polished passer in Blatt’s hybrid Princeton offense and showed a soft touch on his jump shot. Tapping in putbacks against Ivory Coast is easier than boxing out his childhood idol, Kevin Garnett, but there are certain things that will not be lost in translation. “You can’t teach what he has — body, size and athletic ability,” said Tony Ronzone, the director of international player personnel for USA Basketball. “They’re hard to find in the world.” Mozgov said he was excited at the opportunity to come to the N.B.A. and described his only visit to New York as crazy. He said he planned on moving to New York with his girlfriend but did not know where he was going to live. Mozgov said he had been learning more English to help ease his adjustment, and at a recent interview he used an interpreter only about half the time. “I will have to prove myself, and I will try and show the coach that I can play,” he said. He added with a smile, “Because I want to play.” How much Mozgov plays will depend on his adjustment on and off the floor. Wilson said Mozgov was “kind of a maverick” by Russian basketball standards. He started playing late, never signed with a powerhouse Russian club and avoided signing with a Russian agent. Having to fight to be noticed helped him forge his work ethic. Mozgov spent most of his childhood near Krasnodar, a small agricultural city about 100 miles from the Black Sea. His family moved there from St. Petersburg, he said, because his father had health problems. The youngest of four brothers, Mozgov grew up in a working-class family. He said his father worked as a driver for a private company and his mother stayed at home to raise the family. “His family is definitely blue collar,” Wilson said. “He’s never had money, and he’s not money conscious the way a lot of poor kids are. That’s another thing that I like about him.” It is common in Europe for top youth players to sign with pro teams at young ages. But Mozgov said he did not start playing basketball seriously until age 15 when he went to a boarding school in St. Petersburg at the suggestion of a local coach. “I was playing only in my school, and it wasn’t a school that prepared me for basketball,” he said. That trip matured Mozgov’s game and also helped him handle his older brother, who he said roughed him around while growing up. “When I left and studied, and after my year I came back, my brothers couldn’t do anything,” he said with a smile. Mozgov never signed with a powerhouse Russian team like Dynamo Moscow or CSKA Moscow. He also did not play a lot for his club team, B.C. Khimki. Blatt said that Mozgov did not play much more than 15 minutes a game last year and compared him to a young pilot needing flight time. “His adjustment will be bigger than most, but his upside is great,” Blatt said. “I’m looking forward to Timofey making the jump. It’s not going to be easy for him. If he works hard and the New York people help him, he’s got a good chance to do something.” Part of Mozgov’s value to the Knicks is as an athletic big man who can alleviate some of the pounding that Amar’e Stoudemire, their prized free-agent signing , will take in the post. But to trade elbows with N.B.A. centers, Mozgov will need to continue to fill out his 269-pound frame. Because his most polished skill is his ability to use his athleticism to run the break, it is easy to see how he fits into Coach Mike D’Antoni’s up-tempo system. From his limited time working out Mozgov and seeing him on tape, D’Antoni said he was impressed with his ability to shoot the 15-footer, play pick-and-roll and run the floor. But he called Mozgov’s hands average and cautioned that success in individual workouts and Europe did not always translate to the N.B.A. “This kid, I’m excited about him; I want to see him play five on five,” D’Antoni said. “But what we saw of him working out, we’re excited. We think he can be really good.” He added, “He can be a good bookend with Amar’e. I do worry about his defense a little bit.” Mozgov signed a three-year deal with the Knicks worth about $9 million, but his impact may not be felt immediately. A classic late bloomer, Mozgov will need time to mature in New York. “He’s very raw, and he needs a lot of work,” said Wilson, the Knicks’ director of international scouting. “It’s unfair to him or anyone else to expect he’s a superstar out of the gate. “The best thing is if he could progress from a 5-minute guy to a 15-minute guy. If he can warrant being on the floor from 15 to 18 minutes, I think that would be a great first season for him.”

Basketball;Mozgov Timofey;New York Knicks

ny0047160

2014/11/11

Craig Spencer, New York Doctor With Ebola, Will Leave Bellevue Hospital

Craig Spencer, the New York City doctor who became the first person in the city to test positive for Ebola, is free of the virus and is set to be released from Bellevue Hospital Center on Tuesday, hospital officials said on Monday. Dr. Spencer, 33, who had been in Guinea treating Ebola patients with Doctors Without Borders, was rushed to Bellevue by ambulance on Oct. 23 after reporting a fever of 100.3 to the authorities that morning. He was placed in isolation in a secure ward, and within hours a blood test confirmed he had the virus. His infection set the city on edge and set off a race to find his contacts over the previous few days, when he went bowling , dined out and rode on the subway and in an Uber taxi. But to date, no one else in the city has tested positive for the virus. Dr. Spencer is scheduled to appear at a news conference on Tuesday at the hospital. Ana Marengo, a spokeswoman for Bellevue, said in a statement that “after a rigorous course of treatment and testing,” Dr. Spencer posed “no public health risk.” It was unclear on Monday whether Dr. Spencer would return to his Hamilton Heights apartment, where his fiancée, Morgan Dixon , is under quarantine. Two friends who had contact with him in the days before his diagnosis were initially held in quarantine, but were recently released. Dr. Spencer was given a range of treatments, including an experimental drug and blood plasma donated by a recovered Ebola patient, Nancy Writebol , a 59-year-old missionary who contracted the virus in Liberia. His condition was serious at first, but by last week, he had recovered enough that he asked for, and was given, his banjo and an exercise bicycle to pass the time while he was in isolation. Dr. Spencer’s recovery adds to the evidence that when treated in advanced American hospitals, Ebola has a far lower fatality rate than in West African field hospitals starved of doctors, nurses and equipment. While 70 percent of Ebola patients in Africa are dying, eight of the nine patients treated in the United States have survived. The only one who died was Thomas Eric Duncan , a Liberian, whose treatment was delayed when a Dallas hospital initially misdiagnosed his illness. The experience of the Dallas hospital — two nurses who treated Mr. Duncan there contracted Ebola, but survived — caused American hospitals and public health officials to re-examine how they responded to possible cases. Requirements for protective gear were revamped, and when Dr. Spencer was taken to Bellevue, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dispatched a team to New York even before tests confirmed he had the virus. In Dallas, the C.D.C. did not arrive until two days after it was called. A day after Dr. Spencer went to Bellevue, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that all travelers arriving in New York who had had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa would be quarantined for 21 days, even if they had no symptoms and thus were not likely to be contagious. That policy, which New Jersey and several other states also enacted, was criticized by some public health experts as an overreaction that would discourage doctors and nurses from traveling to Africa to help contain the virus. Mr. Cuomo said he preferred to err on the side of caution.

Ebola;Craig Spencer;NYC;Bellevue Hospital Center

ny0129811

2012/06/06

Bill Pascrell Defeats Steve Rothman in New Jersey

PATERSON, N.J. — In a hard-fought race that pitted two Democrats and onetime friends against each other, Representative Bill Pascrell Jr. won the primary in the Ninth Congressional District on Tuesday. With 90 percent of precincts reporting, Mr. Pascrell had 64 percent of the vote, beating Representative Steve Rothman, with 36 percent, according to The Associated Press. The Ninth District, in northern New Jersey, is one of a handful of newly shaped Congressional districts across the country with Democrats facing each other because of election maps redrawn after the 2010 census. The race was exceptional in that one of the candidates, Mr. Rothman, moved in order to challenge a fellow Democrat. And not just any Democrat, but one with whom he had shared dinners and commutes to Washington over 16 years together in Congress. A result was the kind of bitter campaign usually seen between two parties, with negative advertising, furious accusations of betrayal and voter suppression, and visits from prominent surrogates. Mr. Pascrell had a rally on Friday with former President Bill Clinton. And Mr. Rothman, the first in New Jersey’s delegation to endorse Barack Obama in 2008, campaigned with the president’s chief political adviser, David Axelrod. Taking the gymnasium stage to the theme song from “Rocky” at Passaic County Community College, Mr. Pascrell, 75, began simply, “We did it!” and then theatrically rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt. “My parents always told me not to start fights, but to know how to end them,” he said. “Tonight, we did just that.” In the nearby 10th District, which includes Newark, Donald M. Payne Jr. won a six-way race for the seat left open by the death of his father in March. His closest contenders were Nia Gill, a state senator who asked voters to make her the only woman in the state’s Congressional delegation, and Ron Rice Jr., who serves on the Newark Municipal Council, of which Mr. Payne is president. In November, Mr. Pascrell will face the winner of the Republican primary on Tuesday, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the author of “Kosher Sex” and a memoir of his time as spiritual adviser to Michael Jackson. Rabbi Boteach won a three-way race. But the district heavily favors the Democrat in the general election, and the party’s primary had become the state’s most closely watched campaign. Mr. Pascrell’s victory was a triumph of assiduous retail politicking and an aggressive get-out-the-vote effort, particularly in his hometown, Paterson, the state’s third largest city. The demographics of the newly configured district favored Mr. Rothman. Just over half its residents had been in the district he represented before the lines were redrawn. In Bergen County, where most voters in the reshaped Ninth District live, Mr. Rothman had the so-called line, the party blessing that translates into a favorable ballot position, with his name alongside President Obama’s as the official Democratic candidate. But analysts warned all along against counting out Mr. Pascrell and his love for a street fight. His campaign pinned its hopes on increasing turnout in Paterson, a largely poor, immigrant city where he had been mayor. The campaign said it had registered 10,000 new Democrats there. That strategy appeared to have worked, with campaign operatives reporting high turnout in the city and relatively low turnout in Englewood, where Mr. Rothman was once mayor. The two men, both elected to Congress in 1996, began their battle after New Jersey’s redistricting commission, faced with eliminating one of the state’s 13 districts, moved Mr. Rothman’s home in Fair Lawn into the Fifth District, which has slightly favored Republicans. It is now represented by Scott Garrett, who is almost invariably labeled “a Tea Party darling” in local papers and blog posts. Mr. Pascrell, who has extensive political connections in the state — his former chief of staff was on the redistricting commission — was given the Ninth, a heavily Democratic district. Rather than run against Mr. Garrett, Mr. Rothman, 59, opted to move and run against Mr. Pascrell. This caused consternation for New Jersey Democrats who thought both men had served the state well in Congress, and for national Democrats, who were trying to win 25 House seats needed to retake the majority. The party’s Congressional leaders beseeched Mr. Rothman to challenge Mr. Garrett instead of one of his own, arguing that even if he lost, he would be a hero to the party should he decide to run for the United States Senate, as he has said he would like to. Mr. Pascrell relentlessly accused Mr. Rothman of being too weak to take on the real fight, against a conservative Republican. Mr. Rothman argued that much of the Ninth District included his former constituents — even if his house and district offices were in the Fifth. He argued he was “the Democrats’ Democrat,” trying to paint Mr. Pascrell as aligned with Republicans on health care, abortion and taxes. But the two largest newspapers in the district, The Star-Ledger of Newark and The Record of Hackensack, both endorsed Mr. Pascrell. They criticized Mr. Rothman for fighting against a fellow Democrat rather than a Republican, and for running misleading ads that edited footage to suggest Mr. Pascrell had supported Republican positions on taxes.

Pascrell William J Jr;Rothman Steve;Elections;House of Representatives;New Jersey;Garrett E Scott;Redistricting and Reapportionment

ny0238819

2010/12/05

At Pulaski Meat Products, Kielbasa Is King

At Pulaski Meat Products in Linden, there’s a strong aroma of smoked meat from the countless kielbasi and hams that hang from the ceiling and fill the display cases. Shelves at this Polish specialty store are lined with an array of imported goods, like dried mushrooms, smoked fish and all sorts of sauerkraut and pickled preserves. The deli serves prepared dishes, including pirogi (50 cents apiece), stuffed cabbage ($2.99 each) and goulash ($5.99 a pound), among other takeout meals and sandwiches. “I never had any Polish food in my life but, boy, did I get the best,” said the store’s manager, Judy Preiss, 47. She was referring to the business started in the 1960s by the parents of her husband, Ron Preiss, whom she married in 1985. Over the years, the operation has expanded so that Pulaski now sells its meats wholesale. They are still made on site, in a large processing area taking up almost an entire block, and sent to grocery stores, delis and distributors nationwide. “We always make kielbasa daily, tons and tons of it,” said Mrs. Preiss, whose husband oversees the business along with his brother, Paul. The Preisses’ son, Jarred, 24, now works there full time as well. The 3,500-square-foot store sells 16 varieties of the sausage, 11 types of hams and nearly 30 different kinds of loaf meats. Sweets, like the beautifully wrapped boxes of chocolates, are also mainstays. An off-site baker makes plum cakes ($6.49 a pound) and babkas (cherry, crumb and cheese types; prices vary, from $2.99 to $30 for one weighing four pounds). A box of flaky chrusciki — angel wing cookies — would be apt for a Christmas party ($2.99 to $5.99). Pulaski Meat Products, 123 North Wood Avenue, Linden; (908) 925-5380. Open Monday and Tuesday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Wednesday and Thursday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Friday 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. pulaskimeats.com .

Ham;Meat;Cooking and Cookbooks;Restaurants

ny0295490

2016/12/16

Chinese Activist, Missing for Weeks, Is Said to Be in Custody

BEIJING — A well-known Chinese human rights activist who had not been seen or heard from for more than three weeks is in police custody, accused of possessing secret government documents and spiriting them abroad, state-run news outlets said on Friday. The activist, Jiang Tianyong, is a disbarred lawyer who has energetically supported the families of human rights lawyers caught in a crackdown that began in July 2015. Mr. Jiang’s family and friends lost contact with him on Nov. 21. The website of The Legal Daily, an official newspaper, said on Friday that the police detained Mr. Jiang when he tried to travel to Beijing by train from Changsha, a city in southern China. They accused him of using a fake identity card to buy a ticket. After he was in custody, much graver charges were lodged: Citing the police, the newspaper said Mr. Jiang “illegally possessed multiple secret state documents, colluded with overseas institutions, organizations and individuals, and is suspected of illegally providing state secrets abroad.” It appears likely that Mr. Jiang, 45, will join a long list of Chinese rights advocates who have been detained, discredited and in some cases imprisoned as a warning to others not to embrace dissent. About 250 lawyers and activists were detained in the crackdown last year. Most were released, but about 17 were arrested and in some cases tried and imprisoned on subversion and other charges, according to estimates by Amnesty International. The Legal Daily said Mr. Jiang was a “citizen advocate” who “meddled in some serious cases, wantonly fabricated and spread rumors on the internet, and incited petitioners and the families of people in legal proceedings to resist state agencies.” Patrick Poon, who researches Chinese issues for Amnesty International from Hong Kong, said in an interview that “without access to a lawyer of his own choice, Jiang Tianyong is at risk of torture or other ill treatment.” The Chinese news reports said Mr. Jiang had been held under “criminal coercive measures” since Dec. 1. Those measures give the police vaguely defined powers to hold suspects secretively. The reports said the police had notified Mr. Jiang’s family about his case. “That’s simply a lie,” Mr. Poon said. Mr. Jiang’s wife, Jin Bianling, who lives in California, denied in an emailed statement that his family had received any official notice. She said the authorities had concocted the allegations “to avenge and crush Jiang Tianyong’s long-running work in rights defense.”

Jiang Tianyong;China

ny0243384

2011/03/06

At Brooklyn’s Fish Tales, Friendly People. Noses Agree.

ONE of the first things you notice when walking into Fish Tales Gourmet Seafood Market is the smell. There is none. But the fish motif is definitely in the air, including walls strung with nets and traps and a whole fish mounted above the stained wainscot. The shotgun layout feels like the well-lighted hull of a boat. The bustling shop, near Court and Bergen Streets, leads to a pescatarian’s paradise, catering to home chefs and local restaurants. Between a tank with live lobsters and a freezer with frozen shellfish are racks stacked with sauces, seasonings, crackers, batters and peelers. Side-by-side coolers layered with house-prepared appetizers and salads sit opposite an assortment of smoked fish and caviar. A table piled with curled crustaceans is nearby. The corner spot, which fronts the busy but unseen kitchen, is a mountain of ice piled with clusters of sealed mussel and clam shells. And at the far end of the store are gourmet entrees and crocks of soups and chowders. But the highlight of Fish Tales is the colorful, fresh-cut fillets and whole fish — orange salmon, ruby tuna, china cod, opaque tilapia, striped bass, red snapper, speckled trout. The fish is so fresh and tenderly treated, it provides pleasure to the eyes with no impression on the nose. There’s a reason for this. The shop’s owner, John Addis, arises at 2 a.m. at his home on Staten Island to get to the Fulton Fish Market in the Bronx by 3. There, he spends two to three hours shopping for the best catch. After loading a refrigerated van, Mr. Addis is at the shop in Brooklyn around 6 to unload and to start filleting in preparation for a 9 a.m. opening. This is a neighborhood place run by neighborhood guys. Mr. Addis and his two longtime countermen, Lewis Spada and Alex Ortiz, provide high-end, exceptional service in a low-key, familiar way. They know names. They peel off plastic gloves to shake hands. Dialogue is constant and inclusive, but it’s not chatter; it’s conversation. And it usually revolves around fish and its preparation, which can easily become a group discussion among patrons and staff. After each purchase, customers are reminded to grab a few free lemons and to stop by the table near the door stacked with recipe print-outs. All three men work long hours, but their easy manners never tire. Over the years, Mr. Addis became a zealot for customer service. “I tell my guys, treat every customer the way you want your mother treated,” he said. Mr. Addis, a native of Bensonhurst, who has been in the restaurant business since childhood, became a partner in Fish Tales around 1998 and became the sole proprietor in 2001. When my wife and I moved to the area, we shopped there every other week or so. Mr. Addis knew my wife; he knew my name before I knew his. A few years later, we moved away, though I’d still pop in once or twice a year. By the time we moved back to the area, it had been almost five years since I had set foot in Fish Tales. The place was crowded and full of familiar conversations. I figured I had been forgotten. “Andrew,” Mr. Addis said without pause, peeling off his plastic glove to shake my hand. “How’s it going? How’s Pam?” It’s nice to be treated like somebody’s mother.

Cobble Hill (NYC);Seafood;Shopping and Retail

ny0027954

2013/01/31

E.M.T. Convicted of Sexual Attacks on 5 in Brooklyn

An emergency medical technician with the Fire Department was convicted on Wednesday of a series of sexual assaults in Brooklyn, including an attack on an 11-year-old girl inside an elevator. The technician, Angus Pascall, 36, was convicted of first-degree rape, among other charges, for five separate attacks on young women and girls ages 11 to 22 stretching to 2001. Most of the assaults occurred in 2009 and 2010, the year he was arrested, the Kings County district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said in a statement. Mr. Pascall’s lawyer, Edward Friedman, said his client would appeal the verdict. In each of the attacks, Mr. Pascall was armed, sometimes with a gun or a knife. In one attack on a 19-year-old woman in 2009, he used a machete, the district attorney said. In the assault on the 11-year-old, he used his emergency responder’s key to trap the victim inside an elevator. “Pascall then put a gun to her face and repeatedly sexually assaulted her,” according to the statement. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 13, and he faces up to life in prison. Mr. Pascall had worked for the Fire Department for five years when he was arrested in 2010.

Rape;Emergency medicine;Charles Hynes;Angus Pascall;Brooklyn;Decisions and Verdicts;NYC;Child Abuse

ny0241849

2011/03/27

Kaba Faces Suit Over Push-Button Locks Breached With Magnet

Yeshai M. Kutoff was house-proud, having bought a home in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, for his family of five. And as an Orthodox Jew, he bought push-button locks for the doors — an accommodation for the Sabbath, when many of the devout do not carry keys. When a neighbor told him that the locks he had bought could be opened by a powerful magnet costing about $30, Mr. Kutoff was perturbed. “It does bother me that other people could easily figure it out,” he said. Mr. Kutoff did not buy a magnet to see for himself. “It doesn’t interest me to know how to break into my own lock,” he said. If this were a problem with security software instead of errant bits of steel, a company could send out a patch. If this was someplace other than the United States in the 21st century, Mr. Kutoff might have called a locksmith. But because it is the United States in the 21st century, lawyers are involved. And now, in a federal courthouse in Ohio, 11 lawsuits have been consolidated into one against Kaba, a lock industry leader whose Simplex push-button locks are used by hospitals, airports, casinos, banks, the Department of Defense and police departments. The company markets the locks as part of their “strong, powerful security solutions ” and calls the push-button locks vandal resistant ; the plaintiffs’ lawyers say otherwise. In fact, they accuse Kaba of deceptive trade practices, common-law fraud, negligence and product liability. They say the locks, which can cost less than $200 or more than $1,000, depending on the model, are defective by design. And they are demanding that the company replace the locks, pay compensatory damages and even turn over all profits made from the locks over the years. Plaintiffs’ briefs suggest that the class includes “hundreds of thousands of persons and entities,” and the case already involves some big players in the legal community, including Richard J. Arsenault and Daniel E. Becnel Jr. of Louisiana and Mark J. Geragos of Los Angeles. Mr. Arsenault, the co-lead counsel for plaintiffs in the litigation, called the locks insecure and said the problem was a “slow-motion disaster.” Mark P. Miller , a lawyer for Kaba, has argued in court that the plaintiffs’ lawyers were “fear-mongering,” and he ridiculed the lawsuits as “another Happy Meals case ” — a reference to a much-belittled class-action suit filed in California in December that accuses McDonald’s of using toys to lure children into unhealthy eating habits. In court filings, Kaba argued that it had “never advertised or warranted in any way that any of its access control products are impenetrable.” Locksmiths learn techniques to defeat all kinds of locks, and “thieves and others who want to defeat locks can obtain the same tools and learn the same techniques locksmiths use,” the filings said. “Indeed, any thief — even the most clumsy — can use a sledgehammer, a pry bar or bolt cutter to bypass essentially any lock.” In a statement, Mr. Miller added that the company had “never received any confirmed report of a break-in” because of a magnetic bypass, and that it heard about the potential for magnetic mischief only in August 2010. Kaba is preparing a free kit to modify the locks and make them magnet-proof, he said. In an earlier hearing in the case, Mr. Miller argued that beating a push-button lock was not as simple or easy as the plaintiffs claimed. “My own personal research shows that it takes a magnet the size of a bagel to get the locks open,” he said. In fact, the magnet required is only a couple of inches square, and a video shows the magnet alongside a bagel for comparison. Mr. Miller also argued in court that the magnet was unwieldy and too powerful for most people to use. “It’s a big, heavy thing that if you have it in your pocket, and you happen to walk by something that’s made out of metal, you will get stuck to it and have to call 911 to get your pants somehow removed to save yourself,” he said. This month, lawyers for the plaintiffs showed a video in court as an informal briefing for the judge that countered some of Mr. Miller’s contentions. The video shows someone sliding a magnet against a lock and removing it with one hand. The magnet pulls a locking plate away from the mechanism, allowing the door handle or knob to turn freely. Once the magnet has been removed, the narrator says, the plate slides back into place, and there is no evidence that the mechanism has been bypassed. To Mr. Arsenault, Kaba’s argument that no one has been harmed by the locks is a weak one. He said that “there’s no way to know that,” and that even if no one has yet been harmed, “it’s obviously irresponsible to wait for criminal activity to occur before warning the public and taking immediate corrective action.” As for the company’s proposed fix, he said, “the devil is in the details.” And while many might look askance at a lawsuit over locks, this is not the first. Kryptonite, the maker of distinctive U-shaped bicycle locks, settled a class-action lawsuit in 2004 when it was revealed that its cylindrical locks could be defeated with the barrel of a Bic pen. The company redesigned the locks and offered customers exchanges or vouchers. Marc Weber Tobias, an expert on locks and security who is not working for the lawyers in the Kaba case at this time but has met with them, said, “This is a serious deal and affects lots of agencies.” He wrote about the locks in his blog for Forbes.com after sending an alert to law enforcement agencies, security professionals and locksmiths. “This is a very significant issue, because they are playing a game of jeopardy with the protection of property and lives,” he said. Mr. Tobias acknowledged that brute force could defeat any lock. But he said: “Nobody is concerned about someone walking into an airport or bank or credit card facility with a sledgehammer or crowbar. They are concerned, however, about an unauthorized individual or criminal bypassing the security of a facility in two seconds, covertly, with a magnet.” Meanwhile, Mr. Kutoff said he would simply like to get his locks exchanged for something safer. “It’s something that everybody wants to do — put a good lock on your house,” he said. “In a perfect world, the locksmith doesn’t have a job,” Mr. Kutoff said. “But it’s not a perfect world.”

Suits and Litigation;Magnets and Magnetism;Security and Warning Systems;Locks and Keys

ny0008159

2013/05/01

N.B.A. Playoffs — Celtics Rally Around Jason Collins

WALTHAM, Mass. — Doc Rivers said he received a phone call a few days ago. On the other line was Jason Collins, who had appeared in 32 games for the Boston Celtics this season before being traded in February. The way Rivers, the Celtics coach, recalled it on Tuesday before his team left for New York for Game 5 of its playoff series with the Knicks on Wednesday night, the call was a courtesy on Collins’s part. He was calling to tell his former coach that he was going to announce to the world that he was gay . “I thought we were past all this, but I said, ‘Great,’ ” Rivers said. Then he told Collins: “I wish you could have gotten me more rebounds. Because at the end of the day, that’s all I really care about.” One day after Collins publicly revealed something he had long kept secret, the Celtics gathered for what may be their final practice of the 2012-13 season. They trail the Knicks, three games to one, in their best-of-seven playoff series. The obvious, and inevitable, clichés held sway when the talk revolved around what might happen in Game 5. Jeff Green noted how “the playoffs are all about adjustments.” Jason Terry said he was approaching Game 5 “as if it was a Game 7.” To a man, the Celtics spouted the familiar party line: cut down on turnovers, try to beat the Knicks in transition and see if they might be able to crack the 90-point barrier. A more thoughtful, reflective tone prevailed, however, when the topic turned to the well-liked Collins. Paul Pierce lauded Collins for his decision to come out, and possibly open the door for more athletes to do the same. Kevin Garnett said he was happy that Collins could “be himself.” Green said Collins “showed me what it takes to be a pro.” Image Jason Collins signed with the Celtics as a free agent before the start of the season. Credit Bruce Bennett/Getty Images Terry said that he not only liked having Collins as a teammate but that he wished he still had Collins as a teammate. “We definitely needed his toughness,” Terry said. “We’d love to have it in this series. He’s one of the toughest guys in the N.B.A..” Pierce said he and Rivers had talked recently about the likelihood of a gay player’s coming out, but the Boston captain said he was nonetheless floored when Collins called him Monday morning to deliver the news. “I was definitely surprised,” Pierce said. “I had no idea. We don’t know what people do with their off-time.” Pierce added: “There are so many professional athletes, there are so many human beings that live a dark life and are scared to expose it because of what people may think. But I think what he did is a great thing — to open the door for a number of athletes who are going to have the courage to come out.” Collins signed with the Celtics as a free agent before the start of the season. He started 7 of the 32 games in which he appeared, averaging 10.3 minutes. Still, he made a big impression on his coach and his teammates for the way he handled himself, for the time and work he put in, and for being a positive force in the locker room. At the trade deadline, the Celtics traded him to Washington with the injured Leandro Barbosa for Jordan Crawford. Boston had wanted to keep Collins and instead trade Chris Wilcox, but it could not swing that deal. So Collins departed. He played only 54 minutes for Washington. “When we traded him, it was hard for me to let him go,” Rivers said, “because he was so good in the locker room and said all the right things. And when you say the right things and you’re not playing, that’s unusual.” Video The Times’s John Branch on reactions to Jason Collins and how the N.B.A. veteran has broken barriers in the sports world by publicly stating he is gay. Credit Credit Bruce Bennett/Getty Images Every Celtics player who talked to reporters Tuesday said he would welcome back Collins next season. “He set good screens and got me open,” Green said, joking. “That’s all you can ask for.” Rivers said that from his experience, players wanted to play and they wanted to win. “That’s all they really care about it and honestly, that’s all they should care about,” he said. He added that when Collins called him, he had a strong inkling of what his former player was going to say. “I said, ‘Jason, I could care less what you’re going to tell me,’ ” Rivers said. ‘’That’s how I feel. I could care less. It’s not a factor to me. I know it is a factor to a lot of people. I’ve just never understood why.” REBOUNDS In Greenburgh, N.Y., Jason Collins was also on everyone’s minds as the Knicks made t preparations on Tuesday for Wednesday’s Game 5. Significantly, two Knicks — Jason Kidd and Kenyon Martin — played with Collins on Nets teams that, a decade ago, twice went to the N.B.A. finals. Both were asked about Collins’s decision to disclose that he is gay. Like many other N.B.A. players, both were supportive. “Takes a brave man,” Martin said of Collins’s actions. “I commend him for having the courage to do it.” “And he was the first to do it, so you have to take off your hat to him,” he added. Kidd said: “He’s a true professional on and off the court, and it takes a lot of courage to do what he did. But it’s just going to make the world a better place at the end of the day.” Asked if he was surprised by Collins’s announcement, Kidd said: “I was caught off guard. He called me in the morning yesterday and wanted to talk to me about it and I fully support his decision. I think everything now will work itself out.” Asked if he thought that Collins, who is 34 and will become a free agent on July 1, would be signed by an N.B.A. team for the 2013-14 season, Kidd said: “I wouldn’t see why not. He’s a guy that can help and he’s a veteran guy. In this league, you need veteran guys.”

Basketball;Homosexuality;Jason Collins;Celtics

ny0076032

2015/05/27

Time Warner Cable Finds That Money Covers Charter’s Flaws

Time Warner Cable has concluded that one out of four ain’t bad. Last year, the cable operator rejected a takeover bid from a smaller rival, Charter Communications, balking at the price and the amount of leverage, cash and stock on offer. Most of the terms haven’t changed much in the deal it just agreed to, but the valuation has gone up appreciably, to more than $56 billion. It’s a stark reminder about what really matters in mergers. In January 2014, Time Warner Cable’s chairman, Robert D. Marcus, and his board rejected a “third grossly inadequate proposal” of $132.50 a share from Charter, backed by the cable mogul John C. Malone. Time Warner Cable didn’t like the amount of debt the combined company would carry. Mr. Marcus also wanted more cash and protection — so-called collars — for his shareholders against any swings in the Charter stock being proffered, because it was trading so richly. If nothing else, the tough stand bought Time Warner Cable the time that Comcast needed to swoop in with a higher bid. The offer was all in stock, at about $159 a share, and included none of the safeguards Mr. Marcus had wanted from Charter. It even lacked a provision for Comcast to pay a fee if the deal fell apart. That proved foolish, as regulators eventually killed the transaction. With the European telecommunications company Altice unexpectedly circling Time Warner Cable, Charter’s chief executive, Thomas M. Rutledge, and Mr. Malone delivered a knockout bid of almost $196 a share. It values its quarry richly at over nine times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, before the effect of any cost savings — worth about $6 billion today — compared with the seven times it offered last time. The deal includes the $100 a share in cash that Mr. Marcus originally requested, but this time it’s a lower proportion of the overall price. And the combined company, including Bright House Networks, which Charter is also buying for $10.4 billion, will carry hefty debt equivalent to about 4.5 times Ebitda. The huge premium Time Warner Cable has secured is impressive. Its shares were trading at about $95 each two years ago, before initial reports of Charter’s interest. It certainly helps distract from the complex ownership structure, high leverage, regulatory risks and rapid shifts occurring in customer habits. In financial transactions, money, not love, covers a multitude of sins.

Mergers and Acquisitions;Charter Communications;Time Warner Cable;Comcast;John C Malone;Robert D Marcus

ny0208547

2009/06/25

Iowa Football Coach Shot at High School He Helped Rebuild

Ed Thomas, the longtime coach who helped rebuild the Aplington-Parkersburg High School football program after the Iowa school was wiped out by a tornado last year, was shot and killed in a makeshift weight room near the school Wednesday. The gunman, identified by the authorities as Mark Becker, 24, who once played for Thomas at the school, was arrested. Thomas was airlifted to Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo, where he died, said a hospital spokeswoman, Andrea Barker. He was 58. Parkersburg, which is about 80 miles north of Des Moines, was devastated by a tornado on May 25, 2008. It killed eight people and leveled scores of homes, including Thomas’s. But Thomas set out to rebuild the football field in time for the season, and when the team went 10-0 and reached the semifinals of the state playoffs, it provided a lift in morale for a town laid low. “He embodied the essence of what a coach should be, and that legacy will endure,” Richard Wilkow, executive director of the Iowa High School Athletic Association, said in a statement. “He will be forever remembered not so much for his many wins on the field, but for the exemplary manner in which he coached kids and led the Aplington-Parkersburg community and school.” Becker was being held at Butler County Jail, charged with first-degree murder. On Sunday, he was charged by the police after a late-night, high-speed chase through two counties. Cedar Falls Police Chief Jeff Olson told the Associated Press Wednesday that the Butler County deputies who arrested Becker after the car chase agreed to take him to a hospital psychiatric ward and request that the Cedar Falls police be notified when he could be released. Olson said the Cedar Falls police did not hear anything more. Becker spent Tuesday night at his parents’ house, according to Jeff Jacobson, a special agent with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. Kevin Winker, assistant director of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, said Becker did not threaten anyone else in the weight room and was arrested without incident at home a short time after the shooting. The Des Moines Register reported that about 50 students were in the school, which was not in session, at the time of the shooting, around 8 a.m. Several football players were working out in the weight room at the time and witnessed it. Becker played football at the school, where the stadium is named after Thomas , whose 37-year coaching record was 292-84. Thomas was named by the N.F.L. as high school coach of the year in 2005, and four of his former players play in the N.F.L.: Green Bay’s Aaron Kampman, Jacksonville’s Brad Meester, Detroit’s Jared DeVries and Denver’s Casey Wiegmann. That alone is remarkable for a small high school with an enrollment around 250.

Aplington-Parkersburg High School;Coaches and Managers;School Shootings;National Football League

ny0223094

2010/11/10

Radioactive Material Leaks Into Mohawk River

WASHINGTON — Several hundred gallons of water contaminated with radioactive materials from a 1950s nuclear research site spilled into the Mohawk River near Schenectady on Oct. 25, prompting an investigation by the United States Energy Department. The site, part of the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory , in Niskayuna, was used to develop the technology for purifying plutonium for nuclear bombs. A rainstorm washed 600 to 800 gallons of water containing plutonium, uranium and trace amounts of two other radioactive substances, strontium and cesium, into the river, according to a letter sent by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to the Energy Department and to a contractor working to clean up the site. Officials said the amount of radioactive material released into the river was no more than the amount that would naturally flow by the site every two minutes. In a separate episode in September, workers tracked radioactive materials into clean areas on their shoes, according to the Energy Department. Neither event gave a significant radiation dose to anyone, according to federal and state officials, but the cleanup prompted by the two errors is likely to cost more than $1 million. The Energy Department is trying to quickly decommission the site, using money from the stimulus bill. The Energy Department’s principal deputy assistant, Dae Chung, said that the contractor, URS Corporation of San Francisco, might be fired. In addition, New York State could fine the company for unauthorized discharges into the river. “Obviously no system is perfect,” Mr. Chung said. “Every now and then, infrequently, we get into a contamination event.” He said the investigation would look for “root causes” to try to prevent a repetition. A spokesman for the contractor did not respond to a telephone message on Tuesday afternoon. The water that spilled was supposed to have been collected and pumped to a purification unit, but the pump failed, according to the state agency. The spill was reported Saturday by The Daily Gazette of Schenectady.

Radiation;Water Pollution;Environment;URS Corp;Schenectady (NY)

ny0189616

2009/05/16

Falling Gas Prices Deny Russia a Lever of Power

MOSCOW — As energy markets shrink, the same tactics that the Kremlin used to build Gazprom , the giant energy company, into a fearsome economic and political power that could restore Russian influence in the world are now backfiring, slashing both its profits and its influence. Throughout his eight years as president of Russia , Vladimir V. Putin pursued the strategic goal of dominating natural gas supplies to Europe and the pipelines that deliver them. His success was underscored in January, when for the second time in three years a pricing dispute with Ukraine disrupted the flow of natural gas, leaving hundreds of thousands in Eastern Europe shivering in the deep winter cold. But in his zeal to monopolize gas supplies, Mr. Putin, who is now Russia’s prime minister, committed Gazprom to long-term contracts with Central Asian countries for gas at a cost far in excess of current world prices. Now that the world economic crisis has sharply curtailed demand for gas, Gazprom is saddled with a glut of expensive Central Asian supplies that it is forced to sell at a loss. In a painful twist, the company also finds itself forced to close its own wells in Russia, which produce gas for a fraction of the cost of that from Central Asia, in order to balance its supplies with declining world demand. In effect, a strategy that made business and political sense in a time of high and seemingly ever rising prices is threatening to create years of losses and declining influence, if energy prices fail to rebound. “It’s an extraordinary turnaround from what everybody was expecting,” said Jonathan P. Stern, the director of natural gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Demand for Gazprom’s natural gas will plunge by about 60 billion cubic meters this year, according to Mr. Stern — about equal to the amount the company is contractually committed to import from the former Soviet states. The turnaround for Gazprom has been as swift as it has been devastating to the company’s business model. As recently as last September, Mr. Putin, as prime minister, flew to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, to wrap up a deal that consolidated Russia’s strategic gains after the war in Georgia. Under the deal, which Russia’s RIA state news agency has described as valid until 2028, Gazprom will pay, on average, $340 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas in 2009. The price is arrived at through a complex formula based on world oil prices with a six-month delay. But that same volume of gas sells in Ukraine for an average of about $230, while European prices have sagged to an expected average of $280 for all of 2009. Gazprom, in a written statement, acknowledged that it had lost money on the Central Asian contracts this year but said they would be valuable when demand recovered. “Gazprom’s contracts with its Central Asian partners are concluded for many years into the future,” the statement said. “The world economic crisis, without doubt, is negatively influencing demand for energy. In the long term, however, demand for gas in Russia and abroad will grow. “ The declining fortunes are creating unaccustomed stresses for Gazprom, which strutted onto the world scene during the energy boom and came to symbolize the new might and swagger of Russia under Mr. Putin’s leadership. Investors, in fact, once viewed Gazprom’s close ties to the Kremlin as good for business. For example, when Gazprom raised gas prices in Ukraine after the street protests known as the Orange Revolution, the move supported the Russian foreign policy goal of pressing a pro-Western government on its southern rim. It also made money for Gazprom. Now, the political goals of Gazprom’s business in the former Soviet Union will cost the company. That trend is already visible. Last week, the European Union signed an agreement with Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Egypt that could revive the long delayed Nabucco pipeline, which is intended to break Russia’s monopoly on Caspian Basin energy supplies. That was quite a turnabout for Azerbaijan, which after the war in Georgia last summer had offered to sell Gazprom its entire future output of gas from an offshore development. Another former Soviet supplier, meanwhile, has accused Russia of sabotaging a pipeline to shut down deliveries of expensive gas. On the night of April 9, a portion of the pipeline carrying Central Asian gas to Russia exploded in Turkmenistan , temporarily cutting off shipments. Turkmenistan’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement blaming Gazprom for closing the valve leading to Russia, preventing gas from flowing north and creating overpressure in the pipe. News reports are sketchy, but as of May 1 the pipeline was still out of commission. Gazprom has declined to comment, but a Russian energy expert, speaking on Russian state television, said the aging Turkmen pipelines were to blame. Turkmenistan responded with an immediate overture to the West on energy issues, signing an exploration deal with the German company RWE for a bloc in Turkmenistan’s sector of the Caspian Sea shelf. RWE is a participant in the Nabucco pipeline consortium. With the affairs of Gazprom and the Kremlin so intertwined, financial troubles at the company have immediate consequences for state finances. Gazprom earned profits last year of $30.8 billion on revenues of $160.5 billion, according to annual results released this month. This year, Troika Dialog, a Moscow investment bank, has estimated that Gazprom’s profits will drop to $16.7 billion on revenues of $104 billion. As the country’s largest taxpayer, Gazprom contributed $40 billion to the state’s coffers last year, including export tariffs, profit and mineral extraction taxes. This year, financial analysts who follow the company estimate, those payments will fall by nearly half, to around $22.5 billion. Gazprom’s profits are expected to remain under pressure as long as energy prices stay at or near their current level and energy demand remains subdued. Even if the purchase price of Central Asian gas trends downward, following the decline in world oil prices, Gazprom will still have to accept delivery of that gas while keeping its own reserves — which can cost as little to produce as $4 per 1,000 cubic meters — in the ground. The current problems also carry the potential to hamper the company’s future performance. Gazprom has budgeted capital expenditures this year of $27.46 billion, according to the company, and is still planning to spend $44.8 billion in 2010, even as its revenues shrink. If it maintains these spending plans, however, it will have a negative cash flow by 2010, said Alex Fak, an oil and gas analyst at Troika, and will be compelled to borrow. “Either the oil price will have to surge, or it’s not going to happen,” Mr. Fak said of the development program.

Russia;Gazprom;Natural Gas;Pipelines;Putin Vladimir V;Eastern Europe;Europe;Turkmenistan;Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)

ny0078151

2015/05/13

British Government Cuts Lloyds Stake to Below 20%

LONDON — Just days after the general election, the British government is making progress on its goal to end its ownership of some of the nation’s largest banks. According to a stock exchange filing on Tuesday, the government has reduced its stake in the Lloyds Banking Group to just below 20 percent through additional share sales, as part of a trading plan that will run through the end of June. The British government took significant stakes in Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland as part of a bailout during the financial crisis, but it is eager to end its holdings in both lenders. It had a 24.9 percent stake in Lloyds when the new trading program was announced in December, and it now holds 19.9 percent. “Today’s announcement shows the further progress made in returning Lloyds Banking Group to full private ownership and enabling the taxpayer to get their money back,” a Lloyds spokesman said. “This reflects the hard work undertaken over the last four years to transform the group into a simple, low-risk and customer-focused bank that is committed to helping Britain prosper.” The government held as much as 40 percent of Lloyds after the lender received a bailout in 2008 of 17 billion pounds, or about $26 billion at current exchange rates, but it has pared its holdings since September 2013 as the bank’s prospects have improved. Lloyds returned to an annual profit last year and will pay its first dividend this month since the government bailout. George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, vowed in the prelude to last week’s general election in Britain to sell a portion of the government’s Lloyds stake to retail investors, possibly this year. The government delayed plans in the fall to sell to retail investors amid turmoil in the markets. Newspapers over the weekend reported that the Treasury was also weighing the early disposal of its holdings in the Royal Bank of Scotland at a loss to taxpayers. Mr. Osborne told The Financial Times this year that he would like to return the bank to private ownership “as quickly as we can.” A Treasury spokesman declined on Tuesday to elaborate on the recent news reports, saying that there was no update beyond Mr. Osborne’s previous comments. The government owns a roughly 80 percent stake in R.B.S., but the lender has struggled to reshape itself into a Britain-focused retail and corporate bank. In February, R.B.S., which once had ambitions of being a global investment bank, announced plans to dismantle its investment bank and to reduce the number of countries in which it operates to about 13 from 38.

Great Britain;Lloyds Banking Group;Royal Bank of Scotland;Banking and Finance;George Osborne

ny0081025

2015/02/25

In Disguises, Spies Testify of Watching Terror Suspect

Federal prosecutors presented the testimony of British intelligence officers as some of the most important evidence in the trial of Abid Naseer in Brooklyn, saying it was “essential” to proving the terrorism charges and insisting that the officers be allowed to wear disguises and that their faces be blurred by courtroom artists. Yet on Tuesday, despite tantalizing the jury with cryptic code words for the investigation (“Operation Pathway”) and Mr. Naseer (“Small Panel”), the five officers from the spy agency MI5 testified to more mundane observations: watching Mr. Naseer ride buses around Manchester, England; go to a mosque; and visit an Internet cafe. At one point, one of the officers told the jury, Mr. Naseer shopped for fruits and vegetables, after which, the officer said, “he appeared tense.” Mr. Naseer, who is representing himself , passed up some opportunities to water down the officers’ accounts, or at least point out that visiting mosques and taking buses are presumably not unusual in his Manchester neighborhood. The case in Federal District Court accuses Mr. Naseer of material support for terrorism and of conspiracy to use a destructive device. It stems from a 2009 plot to bomb a Manchester shopping center uncovered by British authorities. Other linked attacks were planned for Copenhagen and the New York City subway system, the authorities said, though none of the three plots were carried out. Each of the MI5 officers who spoke Tuesday had a role in tracking Mr. Naseer over a few weeks in March and April 2009, they said. The case ended up in the United States after the British investigation was compromised . In April 2009, a top British counterterrorism official was photographed carrying papers marked “SECRET” that laid out plans to arrest Mr. Naseer and several associates. The photo was quickly shared on the Internet, and officials had to rush to arrest Mr. Naseer and his associates. British authorities later released the defendants because of a lack of evidence. In 2010, Mr. Naseer was indicted in New York under a law that allows federal prosecutors to pursue terrorism cases outside the United States. He was extradited to the United States in 2013. Image Abid Naseer The intelligence officers’ disguises in court on Tuesday were sober — some appeared to wear wigs — and all wore wire-rimmed glasses. Prosecutors, citing security concerns, had obtained clearance from Judge Raymond J. Dearie for the officers to testify without providing their names, and while wearing “light disguises.” The MI5 officers testified that in that 2009 period, they watched Mr. Naseer as he took buses around Manchester, shopped, went to an Internet cafe and visited a mosque. They logged observations like “S.P. handed an unknown male a mobile phone,” “S.P.” referring to “Small Panel,” the code name for Mr. Naseer. One officer spent time in the Internet cafe, pretending he was looking at online job listings and observing Mr. Naseer and other targets of the investigation, including one who appeared to work there and was code-named “Glass Pendant.” The officer wrote notes like “S.P. has stopped using Terminal 9” and “S.P. appears to be using the computer behind the counter.” He testified that at one point, Glass Pendant and another target of the investigation passed a cellphone back and forth; later, Glass Pendant retrieved a flash drive from his pocket and put it in a computer. The significance of these acts was unclear. “Did you notice anything unusual about these individuals behind the counter?” Mr. Naseer asked the officer during cross-examination. “No, I did not,” the officer replied. Prosecutors showed some surveillance video, though at least on its own, the footage did not appear damning. It showed Mr. Naseer and his friends walking on Manchester streets, talking on cellphones and chatting in the Internet cafe. “Did the defendant’s movements cause you any alarm or cause for suspicion?” Mr. Naseer asked the first MI5 officer to testify. No, the officer replied.

Abid Naseer;Terrorism;Al Qaeda;Security Service MI5;Brooklyn;Manchester

ny0103862

2012/03/28

Stanford Beats UMass in N.I.T. Semifinal

In his fifth season at Stanford, Josh Owens is a bridge to better times, when the Cardinal were still an N.C.A.A. tournament regular and a powerhouse in a strong Pacific-10 Conference. Owens’s career has stumbled through darker days — including a medical condition that cost him the 2009-10 season — but he is finishing it with a flourish. In the National Invitation Tournament semifinals on Tuesday at Madison Square Garden, Owens’s 15 points and 12 rebounds paced third-seeded Stanford’s 74-64 win over Massachusetts. In the championship game on Thursday, Stanford will face Minnesota, which outlasted top-seeded Washington, 68-67, in overtime. “Our guys just pounded away,” Stanford Coach Johnny Dawkins said. “Making plays when they had to.” As it has done all season, UMass relied on its 5-foot-8 point guard Chaz Williams for a physical and emotional spark. A native of East New York in Brooklyn, Williams, a sophomore, had been UMass’s fresh burst of coiled energy since he arrived from Hofstra as a transfer. After sitting out a year, he led the team in scoring, assists, steals and minutes. But Stanford focused on Williams’s strength, not letting him penetrate with his flash-quick dribble. He scored 19 points but was 7 of 18 shooting. “We tried to keep him out of the paint as much as we possibly could,” Dawkins said. Stanford (25-11) built a 26-14 lead in the first half as fifth-seeded UMass (25-12) began out of sync offensively. But UMass closed the half strong, trimming the deficit to 3. The Minutemen took a 50-49 lead with 8 minutes 2 seconds left on a 3-pointer by Freddie Riley. Stanford used its depth and maintained its composure. Anthony Brown scored 13 of his 18 points in the second half, including a devastating 3-pointer with 2:51 remaining to give the Cardinal an 8-point lead. Stanford, which has not been to the N.C.A.A. tournament since 2008, began the season 12-2, but faded. “To be playing in the finals game, that’s an accomplishment,” Dawkins said. In the second game, the sixth-seeded Golden Gophers (23-14) built a 15-point lead, but the Huskies (24-11) clawed back. A steal and a jumper by C. J. Wilcox with 19 seconds left sent the game into overtime tied at 61-61. But Minnesota’s defense prevailed, and Andre Hollins hit a key layup for his 20th point with 31 seconds left. Now Minnesota will face the Cardinal, which has been led all season by the 6-8 Owens, who as a freshman played with Brook and Robin Lopez as well as with Landry Fields, all now in the N.B.A. But two years ago, Owens had to give up basketball for undisclosed medical reasons. There were questions about whether he would feel fit to return. Owens declined to specify what ailed him, but he indicated it was serious. “I followed the steps of the doctors that were watching me and I made it back on the court, thankfully,” he said. And his Stanford career, once thought to be over early, will continue for one more game.

Stanford University;University of Massachusetts;National Invitation Tournament;Basketball;College Athletics;Basketball (College);University of Minnesota;University of Washington

ny0105292

2012/03/14

Debt Crisis Provisions Hurt Bundesbank Profit

FRANKFURT — The Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, said Tuesday that its profit plunged last year as it set aside money to cover risks from the sovereign debt crisis , a result that is certain to inflame a debate about the role the country plays in financing weaker countries in the euro zone. Profit in 2011 fell 71 percent, to 642 million euros, or $841.8 million, from 2.2 billion euros in 2010, the Bundesbank said. The bank said it had set aside an additional 4.2 billion euros to cover risk, bringing total provisions to 7.7 billion euros. The big falloff came as Jens Weidmann, the president of the Bundesbank, warned about the possible downside of easy credit that the European Central Bank has supplied to euro zone banks to help them survive the debt crisis . Mr. Weidmann said Tuesday that the European Central Bank’s money had eased tensions but might also have side effects. For example, he said, weak banks may face less pressure to confront their problems. “Everyone knows that the extra measures come with risks and side effects,” he said, adding that the E.C.B. should now be thinking about how to wean banks from the 1 trillion euros they have borrowed. Some of the risk comes from euro zone bonds purchased by the Bundesbank on behalf of the European Central Bank, Mr. Weidmann said. The Bundesbank has long been critical of the purchases of bonds from countries like Greece, Portugal and Ireland. Since taking office in May, Mr. Weidmann has continued the Bundesbank tradition of serving as the voice of prudence in the euro zone. But he denied reports that he had become isolated on the European Central Bank’s governing council, the body that sets official interest rates for the euro zone and includes heads of the national central banks. Mr. Weidmann also said there was no rift between him and Mario Draghi, the president of the E.C.B. “We respect each other and each other’s arguments,” he said. Many German commentators and citizens have become concerned about 547 billion euros that central banks of other euro zone countries owe the Bundesbank. Such a debate, involving the technicalities of the euro area’s internal system for large transfers of money, might be possible only in Germany, where the Bundesbank is regarded as a fortress of monetary stability. The Bundesbank is the largest bank in the Eurosystem, the network of central banks in the euro zone. As such it is one of the linchpins in a system known as Target 2 that commercial banks, stock exchanges and other large institutions use to make big transfers. Before the crisis began, countries like Greece and Spain that had large trade deficits would finance their shortfalls through commercial banks and capital markets. But as market financing dried up and was replaced by central bank credit, those shortfalls have been transferred to the books of central banks, especially the Bundesbank. Some economists have argued that stronger European countries are effectively financing the trade deficits of weaker countries while exposing themselves to huge risk. But others call the liabilities a predictable side effect of the increased role central banks have played as lenders of last resort, and argue they are not terribly worrisome. Mr. Weidmann said the risk of losses because of the payment system was largely theoretical. If one country like Greece left the euro zone, its central bank might have trouble meeting its obligations. In that case the other euro zone countries would share the losses, with Germany bearing the largest share as the biggest member of the zone. Mr. Weidmann emphasized that he did not expect any country to leave the euro zone. “That is not my scenario,” he said. The Bundesbank makes a profit from the interest and fees it charges commercial banks that borrow money from it or use its payment system or other services. The Bundesbank is also entitled to a share of the central bank’s profits. The Bundesbank’s profit is passed on to the German federal government. Risk provisions are deducted from profit, but if no losses materialize, the money will be added back in future years. The Finance Ministry said in a statement that the Bundesbank’s profit was less than the government had expected, but added that the money was “only a small piece of the budget.” News of the slump in profit is certain to heighten resentment among Germans who believe they are paying for mistakes made by others. At the same time, Mr. Weidmann gave a positive outlook for the German economy, noting that unemployment continued to fall. The ZEW survey of German economic sentiment, based on a poll of professional economists and analysts, rose to its highest level since June 2010. The data, published Tuesday, suggested that Germany was already recovering from a slowdown at the end of 2011. “The German economy is in remarkably good shape,” Mr. Weidmann said.

Banking and Financial Institutions;Germany;European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- );European Central Bank;Euro (Currency);Bundesbank

ny0007484

2013/05/21

Kepler Telescope’s Troubles, a Maya Pyramid in Ruins and More

The Kepler Space Telescope is 40 million miles from Earth, which makes sending a repairman difficult. Unlike the Hubble telescope, which was designed to be serviced by astronauts, Kepler was meant to live far from Earth, well beyond a wrench’s reach. And its Pauline-like peril and uncertain future lent some drama to this week’s scientific doings. Image A road crew in northern Belize needing crushed rock for gravel hacked at a Maya temple, dating from 250 B.C., leaving it a stump. Credit Jules Vasquez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Developments Archaeology A Maya Pyramid, Now Gravel A construction crew in Belize needed crushed rock for a road-building project, so it turned to a convenient mound nearby and went at it with excavators. Soon the Nohmul pyramid, a historically significant Maya temple near the Mexican border, was reduced to a stump. “Only a small chunk of the pyramid, which stood about 65 feet tall and was the center of a settlement of about 40,000 people in 250 B.C., remains after backhoes and bulldozers began removing the limestone slabs with which it was built,” as CNN put it . The government of Belize wants to find and prosecute those responsible, as do local archaeologists. “The Maya had to mine for this material using nothing more than stone tools,” Dr. Jaime J. Awe of the Belize Institute of Archaeology told a Belize news station , adding that it was “mind-boggling” that this treasured antiquity, which took centuries to build, had been wrecked in a day by machinery that could have quarried elsewhere. Public Health Remember Measles? More than 1,200 cases of measles have cropped up in Britain this year, on top of 2,000 reported last year, and public health officials say that parents who refused to vaccinate their children are to blame. “More than a decade ago, British parents refused to give measles shots to at least a million children because of now discredited research that linked the vaccine to autism,” The Associated Press reported . “Now, health officials are scrambling to catch up and stop a growing epidemic.” Although developing countries still struggle with measles, the disease has all but disappeared in richer nations, except where there have been vaccine resisters. The current outbreak, centered in Wales, puts Britain behind countries like Rwanda and Cambodia in combating measles. While the research linking autism to the vaccine against measles has been found to be fraudulent and the doctor who did it has lost his medical license, some parents still refuse to inoculate their children. Image An artist’s rendition of the Kepler telescope, which lost the second of four wheels that control its orientation in space. Credit NASA/JPL, via Associated Press Environment So Totally Our Fault In a glove tossed down to climate change deniers, a paper in the journal Environmental Research Letters looked at about 4,000 scientific articles about global warming and found that 97.1 percent of them concluded that rising temperatures were “anthropogenic,” or caused by humans. “Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary,” said John Cook, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Queensland, according to an article in The Guardian . Dr. Cook is a physicist, not a climate scientist, but he collects peer-reviewed papers on climate change the way some people do “Star Trek” memorabilia; he also maintains SkepticalScience.com , which includes a list of the “most used climate myths and what the science really says.” Myth No. 1: “Climate’s Changed Before.” No. 2: “It’s the Sun.” No. 3: “It’s Not Bad.” Space Exploration A Telescope on Life Support The Kepler spacecraft has been an astronomical marvel, sending down a steady drumbeat of information that scientists use to map exotic planets far outside our solar system. But now it is in trouble , and the prospects for repair are dubious. Kepler, which is only about 9 feet by 15 feet, has four reaction wheels that are meant to keep it pointed in the right direction; at least three of them need to be working properly, and right now only two are. NASA will try to wiggle them back to life, but astronomers are deeply worried that their window to the world of exoplanets may have snapped shut. Kepler has already found more than 100 planets , providing “a mother lode of planetary systems that we will be exploring for decades in the future,” as Dimitar Sasselov, a Harvard professor who is one of Kepler’s investigators, told The Harvard Gazette . “Kepler has already delivered beyond expectations,” he added. “So it was worth every penny.” Image A model of the truck that will carry a delicate 600-ton electromagnet from Brookhaven National Laboratory to Fermilab. Credit Fermilab Bennu or Bust Speaking of space: NASA’s plan to snatch a chunk of an asteroid and bring it back to Earth moved a bit closer to fruition last week. Under the current timeline, a play date with the asteroid in question — named Bennu — will take place in 2018, two years after a spacecraft is launched for this purpose. By 2023, that spacecraft will return with a piece of Bennu, no less than 2.1 ounces, after a round trip of more than 800 million miles. The project, known by the ungainly acronym Osiris-REx, might tell us a lot; as NASA put it bluntly: “Bennu could hold clues to the origin of the solar system.” So what’s with the asteroid’s name? The Bennu was a mythical heronlike bird in ancient Egypt; a third grader from North Carolina, thinking the mission’s equipment looked somewhat birdlike, submitted the name to an asteroid-naming competition and won. Coming Up Physics An Arduous Business Trip Not everyone has a 50-foot-wide electromagnet to spare. Fortunately for the scientists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory , who need just such an item, their colleagues at Brookhaven National Laboratory do have one sitting around. Both labs are run by the Department of Energy, and a transfer was arranged, which will be easier said than done: The 600-ton device, used to store subatomic particles called muons, will take a circuitous two-month, 3,200-mile journey from Brookhaven, N.Y., to Batavia, Ill. “The massive electromagnet must be transported in one piece,” according to a news release from Brookhaven. “It also cannot tilt or twist more than a few degrees, or the complex wiring inside will be irreparably damaged.” Popular Science said the electromagnet “will float from New York Harbor in June, down the East Coast, around Florida, up the Gulf Coast and up the Mississippi River by July.” After it arrives, the storage ring will function as a holding tank for muons generated by Fermilab’s particle accelerators, under an experiment called Muon g-2 that will look at odd properties of matter in the subatomic world.

Kepler Spacecraft;Climate Change;Global Warming;Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory;Measles;Outer space;Mayans;Belize

ny0223736

2010/11/30

Rugby's Best Wear Nothing but Black

WELLINGTON — By completing its fourth grand slam of the British and Ireland Home Unions with a 37-25 victory against Wales over the weekend, New Zealand cemented its position as the favorite for the Rugby World Cup next year. While the November internationals have seen Graham Henry’s team sweep all before them in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales for the third time in five years, those four teams as well as France, Australia and South Africa are still jockeying for position as 2011 looms. Australia and South Africa have had mixed success in Europe this month, but both ended their tours on positive notes with contrasting victories over France and England. Those victories left the two Southern Hemisphere teams as the front-runners to challenge New Zealand next year. The Wallabies dished out a 59-16 beating to the Six Nations champions, running the faltering French ragged in the seven-tries-to-one thrashing. By contrast, it was South Africa’s sheer physicality and its ability to do the basics well that undid England, 21-11. But what the matches of the past few weeks have highlighted is the fact that, at the moment, it is the team in black that is consistently producing the goods. That is not to say New Zealand cannot improve. It has been heavily penalized in the scrums throughout the tour to the chagrin of assistant coach Steve Hansen, and its poor discipline should have been more costly than it was against Wales. But, under the astute guidance of captain Richie McCaw, who along with Mils Muliaina overtook Sean Fitzpatrick for most appearances with the All Blacks, and navigator Daniel Carter (now the leading point scorer in international rugby after surpassing the 1,187 by Jonny Wilkinson of England), the All Blacks are showing more maturity and play the game at an intensity and speed that few teams can match for the full 80 minutes. Their defense is brutal, and it is rare that they do not take any half-opportunity presented to them. No longer can the opposition simply hoof the ball down field to relieve the pressure and wait for the mistakes to come, because more often than not they do not, and the All Blacks counterattack can be deadly. Wales learned that the hard way at Millennium Stadium, with three of New Zealand’s five tries the result of poor clearing kicks. Muliaina benefited in the first half. Then with the game in the balance, Wales fullback Lee Byrne failed to find touch from a penalty, and a few moments later Hosea Gear was going over in the corner for his second try, all while New Zealand was a man down with flanker Daniel Braid in the sin bin. Isaia Toeava benefited again late in the game before John Afoa’s try crushed any lingering Welsh hopes. “I think today’s game was ideal for us,” Hansen told Reuters after beating Wales. “At times we were in similar situations that we were in another game at Cardiff against another particular team,” he said, referring to the shocking World Cup quarterfinal loss to France in 2007. “Today we actually showed our maturity and ended up winning, I think reasonably comfortably, whereas in that game we didn’t and we all went home with long faces. Today we are smiling and feeling pretty happy.” That is not to say that Wales, which has lost its last seven test matches now, did not have its moments — and it needed to after its woeful 16-16 draw against Fiji on Nov. 19. It fought doggedly up front, and in the backs Tom Shanklin was able to break the gain line a couple of times to at least keep the New Zealand defenders honest. But the ability to regularly get across the advantage line was missing, and the decision-making, accuracy and composure must improve if they are to turn defeats against the Southern Hemisphere heavyweights into victories. It has been a similar tale for England and Ireland too. They played well in patches against New Zealand, but Scotland was ruthlessly outplayed by the Tri-Nations champions and bedazzled by the outrageous off-loading ability of the giant center Sonny Bill Williams. Australia’s record victory against France has done wonders for its confidence. The youthful back line was exposed by a rejuvenated England at Twickenham earlier in the tour, and it was noticeable then that when things went wrong, the players lost their composure and their heads dropped. There was none of that against France, which had an unimpressive campaign that brought earlier victories over Fiji and Argentina. But concerns still remain with the Australian scrum, goal-kicking and defensive lapses, and all need to improve drastically if the Wallabies are to succeed at the World Cup. South Africa has not looked like a world champion team this year, and its victories against Ireland and Wales were unconvincing. A loss to a limited Scotland side, which just sneaked a 19-16 victory against Samoa over the weekend, ended South Africa’s grand slam hopes and was a new low after the positive drug tests returned by Bjorn Basson and Chiliboy Ralepelle. But the Springboks’ 21-11 triumph against England showed that winning the set-piece battle remains an important part of rugby even in this new age of attacking enterprise. England stuck to its new attacking mantra but was simply outmuscled and turned the ball over too easily. With the line-out and scrum struggling and no platform to build off, the players simply ran into a big green wall. England’s move away from the kick-centric set-piece to set-piece brand of rugby to counterattacking with ball in hand has been refreshing. And at least now England has players in Ben Youngs, Toby Flood, Ben Foden, Chris Ashton and Mark Cueto able to assess situations in front of them rather than stick doggedly to the game book. The key in the coming months will be to do it consistently and more effectively. Ireland worked hard to beat Samoa and eased past Argentina, and it showed flashes of quality on attack against South Africa and New Zealand. Its swarming defense can be hard to break down too, as those two teams found, but the effort has to be maintained for the whole match, not just 60 or 70 minutes, if victories over Southern Hemisphere opposition are to be anything other than a rarity.

Rugby (Game);New Zealand;Australia;South Africa

ny0150933

2008/08/18

Suicide Bomber Kills 15 at a Sunni Mosque in Baghdad

BAGHDAD — The plaza in front of Baghdad’s famous Abu Hanifa mosque in the Adhamiya district has lately been a place of joyous celebration and worship. On Sunday evening it was a scene of terror, as a suicide bomber struck a crowded street in front of the mosque. The police and witnesses said the blast killed 15 people and wounded 29 others. Among the dead was Faruq Abdul Sattar, a deputy commander of Adhamiya’s Sunni Awakening council, the American-backed local force that guards the neighborhood, which is a Sunni stronghold. Witnesses said that the bomber, a man, may have been riding a motorcycle that was parked about 65 feet from a traffic light on the street. Mr. Sattar, a popular figure in the neighborhood who was known by the nickname Abu Omar, was standing on the median that divided the street with a group of other Awakening Council members when the bomb went off, about 7:40 p.m., witnesses said. “Abu Omar is gone! Abu Omar is gone!,” many in the crowd shouted when Mr. Omar’s torn body was identified by a silver ring he wore on his right hand and the distinctive green pattern of his uniform. “I sat down near the traffic light and I saw Abu Omar standing near the traffic light,” said Hassan Hadi, 37, a truck driver. “He talked with some of the neighborhood people, then one of my friends asked to go with him to drink a cup of tea in a shop across the street. “After a while I saw a guy driving a motorcycle,” Mr. Hadi said. “He parked the motorcycle 65 feet from Abu Omar’s location, and then he walked toward him. After that the explosion happened.” An Awakening Council official confirmed that the explosives were detonated by a male suicide bomber. The victims included other Awakening Council members and some civilians. After the bombing, a sheik who worked at the Abu Hanifa mosque became worried when the surviving Awakening Council members began firing their weapons in the air and called over the mosque’s loudspeaker for the crowd to disperse. Adhamiya, once the site of fierce fighting between insurgents and American and Iraqi forces, has been quieter in recent months. Last spring thousands of people, drawn by the reduced levels of violence, gathered at the Abu Hanifa mosque for the first time in years to celebrate the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday. Earlier on Sunday, two journalists from the Afaq television channel and their driver were wounded by a grenade thrown inside their car near Al Zawra park in Baghdad. Violence also erupted in Iraq ’s northern Kurdish autonomous region, where police in Erbil shot and killed two people, one a 14-year-old boy, after a demonstration turned into a small riot. The demonstrators, members of a Kurdish tribe from the town of Khliffan, were protesting inadequate water services in the town. Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Regional Government, said in a news conference that the police opened fire when the demonstrators began to attack government buildings.

Bombs and Explosives;Baghdad (Iraq);Iraq;Terrorism

ny0252598

2011/11/24

Skipping the Legal Partner Track for a Private Shingle

Five and a half years ago, after spending years as commercial litigation lawyers at Proskauer Rose in New York City, Sari Gabay-Rafiy and Anne Marie Bowler decided to strike out on their own. They started Gabay-Rafiy & Bowler more as a lifestyle choice than a money-making venture. The first year in business, Ms. Gabay-Rafiy said, she made “just enough to pay the babysitter.” Over time, Ms. Gabay-Rafiy and Ms. Bowler learned to re-evaluate their business practices continually to assess what was useful and profitable. That led to their decision in 2009 to move to smaller office space and to discontinue storing files offsite. Moving cut their rent 35 percent (they sublet two offices in the new space to nonlawyers) and storing files onsite saved them about $300 a month. They run a lean operation — just the two of them and one assistant — and they rely on their connections to an informal network of lawyers for everything from expert advice to case referrals. They sent announcements to every lawyer they knew when they left Proskauer, and they exchange business cards everywhere they go: seminars, continuing education courses, cocktail parties, networking events, even elementary school drop-offs. Today, despite the recession, the firm is thriving. The partners say they have exceeded what they were earning when they left Proskauer. And they are part of what appears to be a trend of lawyers in their mid-20s to early 40s leaving large firms to start their own small ones. Statistics are not easy to come by, but Margie R. Grossberg, a partner at the legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa , said she saw an increasing number of associates choosing entrepreneurship. “In the past, associates found if they worked really hard and did the right things, they made partner,” she said. “That’s not necessarily the case anymore. The odds are a lot slimmer, and it’s also not as coveted as it once was.” These lawyers want more control over their futures, Ms. Grossberg said, and they do not want to wait until they become partner to have meaningful relationships with clients. The economy is another factor. “There have been thousands of associates laid off because of the recession,” said Eric A. Seeger, a principal at Altman Weil , a legal consultancy. “We’re seeing more lawyers out there now taking risks, and that includes going out on their own.” Starting a law firm presents many challenges, especially for associates who have not had much experience running a firm. Michael Yim, Jane Chuang and a third lawyer, all former law school classmates, decided to start a firm in Manhattan last year, taking one large client with them. Three months later that client dropped them, taking 75 percent of the fledging firm’s revenue. Mr. Yim and Ms. Chuang’s third partner could not stomach the loss, and the relationship among the three became tense. He soon left, but Mr. Yim and Ms. Chuang soldiered on. “We started from scratch again, taking a long-term view of profit generation,” Mr. Yim said. The firm became Yim & Chuang and now, a year later, business is better than Mr. Yim had projected, although marketing has been difficult. “There aren’t a lot of people who know about us yet,” he said. Still, he and Ms. Chuang decided not to take work they could not handle or simply did not want, even when it was tempting. “You can get this sense of desperation where you’ll take any paying client that walks through the door,” Mr. Yim said. “We’ve learned the best clients are people we would socialize with, because the relationship is comfortable, there is trust and it’s far more productive.” In 2007 Joel Kauth and two of his colleagues left Christie Parker Hale in Irvine, Calif., to start Kauth, Pomeroy, Peck & Bailey with Kent Pomeroy, a lawyer and accountant. Mr. Kauth and his former Christie colleagues did not like the traditional billable-hours structure, so they decided to give clients a flat rate for services. “Clients love us because we give them predictability,” Mr. Kauth said. “It’s not some billable black hole.” The billing system has been profitable for the firm because its partners have enough experience to estimate their time, and they give specific prices for particular tasks. Still, once in a while, Mr. Kauth said, “if the court is being difficult or opposing counsel is crazy, the cost goes up and we just have to eat it.” The firm bills up front when the costs for third-party services like document production or expert witnesses is high. “Large firms have an infrastructure in place that can absorb big purchases for a large case,” Mr. Kauth said. “When you’ve got three or four people, it’s much tougher. I can’t front $300,000 on a project.” Clients are generally understanding, he said, and the firm gives them the vendor’s bill, so they see there is no markup. Shortly after the firm started, Mr. Pomeroy decided to pursue other career opportunities, but he provided financial guidance to the legal start-up and designed its accounting system. At first, he said, his former colleagues did not understand the costs involved in running a law firm. “These guys didn’t pay the bills at Christie,” he said. “They didn’t realize that lawyers are the last ones to get paid after rent, LexisNexis, paralegals, secretaries, utilities, workers’ compensation insurance, payroll taxes — all the things needed to run the firm.” Before Mr. Kauth and his colleagues left their jobs, Mr. Pomeroy insisted they come up with a budget for the new firm and estimate how long it might be before they would be able to pay themselves. The best case was two months. Mr. Pomeroy said lawyers going out on their own should be able to last a minimum of three months, but preferably six, without a paycheck. When Serena Minott started Minott Gore in Miami in 2007 with a fellow large-firm refugee, Keesonga Gore, she found that without a partner telling her what to do and when to do it, time management was difficult. Now, she reserves Monday through Wednesday for client work and Thursday and Friday for business development. “I also keep a daily to-do list with the top three to four things that must get finished that day,” she said. “I don’t leave until those are finished, and then I can run a couple of errands and have lunch. I’ve learned that once you leave the office, it’s hard to regain focus.” In 2010, Cynthia Gilbert, an intellectual property, or I.P., lawyer, left Choate Hall & Stewart and started Hyperion Law in Boston. She wanted to work with small companies. “If you’re a billion-dollar company, you have probably figured out your I.P. strategy,” she said. “Smaller companies don’t have the resources to hire a high-powered attorney to help with that.” At Choate, Ms. Gilbert tried to bring in small clients, but her 2,000 hours a year billing requirement left little time for business development. After leaving, Ms. Gilbert spent the next seven months networking, “going from coffee to coffee to lunch and then dinner, meeting anyone interested in having a conversation about opportunities for small businesses.” She was able to manage financially during this period by using some savings, doing contract work for other lawyers and working for two former Choate clients. Now she is learning to handle uncertainty. “Some months you do amazingly well,” she said, “and then for several months you’re slow. You have to stick it out and handle the anxiety. By the end of my first six months, I could see the ebbs and flows. I’m calmer about it now because I know it’s cyclical — it’s not that I’m failing.”

Small Business;Legal Profession;Hiring and Promotion

ny0019029

2013/07/19

Instead of a Sale, Hulu Concentrates on ‘The Awesomes’

MOST of the news about Hulu recently has focused on whether the popular video streaming site would be sold. Last week, the owners of Hulu — 21st Century Fox, the Walt Disney Company and NBCUniversal — provided a reprieve : instead of selling Hulu, they said it would invest $750 million in the site and increase competition with Netflix, which has had tremendous success with its slate of original programming, including a handful of Emmy nominations Thursday. With a sale averted, Hulu executives can now focus on more important matters — promoting the site’s highly anticipated animated series “The Awesomes,” which will make its debut Aug. 1. The show stars Seth Meyers as the voice of one of the main characters, Prock. Mr. Meyers is also a co-creator, executive producer and writer along with Michael Shoemaker, whose production credits include “Saturday Night Live” and “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.” “The Awesomes” is Hulu’s first original series this year and its first animated series. The show follows a team of less-than-stellar superheroes called “The Awesomes” who come together after the original team of elite superheroes by the same name is disbanded. In addition to Mr. Meyers, the show features the voices of other “Saturday Night Live” stars including Bill Hader and Taran Killam. In an interview, Mr. Meyers and Mr. Shoemaker described the show as a “passion project” that they shopped around to different networks until they found the right fit with Hulu. “Hulu was willing to turn it over to us creatively,” Mr. Meyers said. “Hulu was the first place that really understood it.” “The Awesomes” also secured a sponsor in Jack Link’s Beef Jerky. The brand partnership includes product integrations in the show and short episode extensions that involve the characters from “The Awesomes” and Sasquatch, the beef jerky mascot. There will also be traditional 30-second and 60-second ads with Mr. Meyers and Mr. Shoemaker writing the copy for the ads. In one episode extension, two of the characters are talking about the free food perks the group no longer receives. “No more lobster Mondays? Make-your-own-taco Tuesdays?” says Muscleman, a brawny character who wears a bright red wrestling leotard. “All gone,” says Prock, adding that he has, instead, “lots of Jack Link’s jerky.” Image Michael Shoemaker, left, and Seth Meyers are the creators, executive producers and writers of the animated series “The Awesomes,” which will start broadcasting on Aug. 1. Credit Brad Barket/Getty Images for Hulu “I love that stuff,” says Muscleman. But the characters also acknowledge, in a tongue-in-cheek way, that what they are doing is a paid advertisement. According to data from Kantar Media, a unit of WPP, Jack Link’s spent $13.1 million on marketing in 2011 and $8.8 million in 2012. Hulu spent $9.3 million on advertising in 2011 and $63.6 million in 2012, according to Kantar. Mr. Meyers said brand partnerships like this one were necessary. “I’m a realist and you have to pay for these shows,” he said. “It’s how this stuff works. I think it’s been helpful for me to work in TV for 12 years. No one’s paying to watch ‘Saturday Night Live’ but I still get a check every week.” Andy Forssell, acting chief executive and senior vice president of content at Hulu, said, “You want this to be a beacon to show how this can be done well,” referring to the brand integration. “You don’t want to have to make any creative sacrifices.” Jeff LeFever, vice president of marketing for Jack Link’s, said: “We want to become part of the everyday vernacular and everyday culture that’s out there, not just a transactional product. In this media landscape it takes everybody out of the traditional way of doing things. The studio, the media partner all leaning together.” Unlike Netflix, Hulu derives revenue from both subscriptions and advertising. Mr. Forssell said subscription fees and ad revenue from Hulu Plus, its paid subscription business, made up more than half of the company’s revenue. “Both businesses are critical and will be part of our identity for years and years to come,” he said. In addition to brand integration with Jack Link’s , Hulu has a separate plan to promote and market the show, whose target audience is adults ages 20 to 39. Digital banner ads promoting the show will run on Hulu and Hulu Plus, including personalized ads that prompt viewers who like a certain show — for instance, “Family Guy” — to watch “The Awesomes.” Digital ads will also run on sites like BuzzFeed, Pandora, the Onion, Yahoo and AOL. Hulu will show an episode of the show and host a panel with some cast members at Comic Con, a convention in San Diego on Saturday. On July 25, Xbox Live users will be able to watch an ad-free preview of the show. Billboards and other wall postings will be displayed in New York and Los Angeles.

Hulu.com;Web television;Seth Meyers;advertising,marketing

ny0287232

2016/08/18

After an Injury Scare, Neymar Strikes Back Against Honduras

Neymar scored the fastest goal in Olympic history and then added a penalty kick in stoppage time on Wednesday as Brazil beat Honduras, 6-0, for a spot in the gold medal match. Brazil has never won Olympic gold in the sport. Neymar scored in the first 15 seconds of the semifinal at the Maracanã stadium but collided with the Honduran goalkeeper Luis Lopez on the goal. Neymar was down on the field for several minutes, then staggered after getting up and was taken off the field on a stretcher. The crowd at Maracanã was stunned into quiet for a time before breaking into song to encourage Neymar, the country’s superstar, who returned quickly. Gabriel Jesus added to the drama with two goals, in the 26th and 35th minutes, for Brazil. Marquinhos scored in the 51st minute. Luan added a goal in the 79th minute before Neymar’s penalty kick in the first minute of stoppage time. GERMANY REACHES ANOTHER FINAL IN BRAZIL Lukas Klostermann scored in the ninth minute and Nils Petersen added a goal in the 89th to put Germany into the gold medal match with a 2-0 semifinal victory over Nigeria. The Germans will play Brazil on Saturday at the Maracanã stadium. The German senior team thrashed host Brazil, 7-1, in the 2014 World Cup semifinals. Nigeria will face Honduras in the bronze medal match. VOLLEYBALL American Men Sweep Into Semifinals The United States men’s volleyball team is on to the semifinals, beating Poland in straight sets for a fourth straight victory since a surprising 0-2 Olympic start. Bolt Is Back 13 Photos View Slide Show › Image Doug Mills/The New York Times The fifth-ranked Americans beat second-ranked Poland, 25-23, 25-22, 25-20, building some serious momentum at the Maracanãzinho arena after dropping their initial two matches to Canada and Italy. Now, both the United States men’s and women’s teams are on to the semifinals. BASKETBALL Parker Bids French National Team Adieu After a 92-67 loss to Spain, Tony Parker, a star point guard for the San Antonio Spurs, said that he is retiring from the French national team. Parker, 34, has played in France’s program for nearly half his life and said it was difficult to say goodbye. Despite all his accomplishments in the N.B.A., Parker has had limited success as an international player. France did not qualify for the 2004 Athens Games or the 2008 Beijing Games and finished sixth in London four years ago. France won its only Olympic medal — a silver — in 2000 when Parker was not on the team. BIRD HAS A KNEE SPRAIN Sue Bird, the United States women’s basketball team’s point guard and captain, has a knee capsule sprain and is day to day. A magnetic resonance imaging exam Wednesday showed the sprain, which was good news to Bird. Bird said in a statement through U.S.A. Basketball that, “Obviously I felt a huge relief.” She added that the hardest part was waiting and not knowing. Bird, 35, was injured in the second quarter and sat out the second half of Tuesday night’s 110-64 win over Japan. WATER POLO United States Women Will Play For Gold It will be the United States versus Italy for women’s water polo gold. Maggie Steffens scored four times and the United States beat Hungary, 14-10, in the semifinals. Maddie Musselman and Kiley Neushul had two goals apiece for the United States, which is trying to become the first country to repeat as Olympic champions in the sport. Italy advanced with a 12-9 victory over Australia in the first semifinal. Arianna Garibotti scored five goals and Roberta Bianconi scored twice as Italy improved to a perfect 5-0 in the tournament. Italy won the gold medal in 2004 but slipped to sixth in Beijing and finished seventh in London four years ago. The United States has won 21 in a row, including its five games in Rio by a combined score of 61-27.

Water polo;2016 Summer Olympics;Volleyball;Soccer;Tony Parker;US;Neymar;Brazil;Honduras;Records and Achievements

ny0066354

2014/06/23

Baylor Center Out of N.B.A. Draft

Baylor center Isaiah Austin will withdraw from the N.B.A. draft after having been found to have a rare genetic disorder. Austin has Marfan syndrome, a disorder that affects the connective tissue and can weaken the aorta. He announced in April that he was leaving Baylor to declare for the N.B.A. draft, which is Thursday.

Basketball;Sports Drafts and Recruits;Isaiah Austin

ny0174274

2007/10/28

Burress Gives London a Go

LONDON, Oct. 27 — Plaxico Burress had never been to London until this week, when he came with the Giants to play in Sunday’s game against the Dolphins . He had no interest in London, he admitted, and no plans to return later when he could take time to explore. On the field, Burress is a big-play receiver, but off it he is the type of person who would just rather be at home. Count him as one player who is not a fan of the N.F.L.’s global aspirations. But Burress had come this far. So, with a short window available on Saturday afternoon, he agreed to go on a 60-minute tour of London sights. That explained why Burress stood in a spitting drizzle near Marble Arch, waiting for one of those double-decker, open-topped tour-guided buses, the kind that snakes around the city in circles, swallowing and belching tourists at postcard spots along the way. The Giants, like the Dolphins, are viewed as ambassadors for the N.F.L. as the league experiments with how and where it wants to grow. But the teams this week were bent on trying to keep things as normal as possible. What resulted was a strange balance. Quarterback Eli Manning spent part of Saturday delivering a jersey to the prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street. The team released photographs of Manning standing at the door in his jersey, giving the jersey to a man in the doorway, then walking away wearing a T-shirt. They looked like time-lapse photos of a trick-or-treater handing in a costume. A visitor in the lobby at the team’s hotel noted the sour expressions many of the players wore as they came and went Saturday afternoon. The trip seems destined to be one far more appreciated in hindsight. That is probably how Burress will view it. “If he has a great game and the crowd loves him, he’ll say: ‘You know what? I do like London,’” his wife, Tiffany, said laughing. But now, Burress was standing under a bus shelter on a bleak English day, wearing a dreary expression. “Buckingham Palace,” he said. It was the one sight in London he could name. Well, that and the newly opened Wembley Stadium, which the team saw earlier Saturday. Burress declared it “the greatest stadium I’ve ever been in.” He was especially impressed by the bathrooms and the locker rooms, and said it still had that new-stadium smell. He did not seem impressed with the grass surface. He said it had little grab and he expected plenty of slipping during Sunday’s game, which could be played in rain. Of the four pairs of cleats he took, he will wear the ones with the longest spikes. A man recognized Burress at the bus stop and asked to take his photograph. Burress offered a tepid nod, and the man was unsure if that was a positive signal. Burress can be difficult to interpret; an uninterested look often masks an easy manner. This time, waiting for a bus on a loop to nowhere, Burress probably was truly uninterested. But he sat for the photograph. Tiffany came along for the ride — the couple’s 9-month-old son, Elijah, stayed home with family — and had a more enthusiastic attitude. The drizzle stopped, and the couple climbed the spiral stairs of the next bus. Down Regent Street and into Piccadilly Circus they went, to the strains of traffic noise and a guide with a microphone who explained what was zipping past. A newspaper photographer snapped countless photographs of the Burresses along the way, drawing the attention of other tourists away from London’s monuments. A woman asked, “Are they famous?” Down Whitehall from Trafalgar Square, Big Ben — actually the clock tower, which contains the bell called Big Ben — came into view. “That’s what that is?” said Burress, who knew Big Ben as his onetime teammate Ben Roethlisberger, the Steelers quarterback. “The one with the clock?” The bus crossed the River Thames at Westminster Bridge, and the party climbed out at the next stop. Burress turned the corner and saw the London Eye, the giant Ferris wheel-style observation deck that twirls slowly alongside the south side of the river. There. Now that was something he had seen before. “From ‘X-Men,’” Burress said, smiling. He might have meant the latest “Fantastic Four” movie, which has a prominent scene with the Eye. A breeze chilled the air, but Burress was warming up. He walked down to the Eye for a closer look, then back across Westminster Bridge, toward the clock tower and the Houses of Parliament. He stopped to buy a cup of hot caramelized peanuts from a vendor, and chomped them as he walked. “It’s cool, man,” he said as he looked around. “This is pretty nice.” Time was almost gone. From Westminster Abbey, a black cab took the tour around St. James Park, down the Mall and past Buckingham Palace. “It’s like a house in there?” Burress asked in wonder. “And this is all backyard?” he asked as the cab passed the walled gardens. Back at the hotel, a little more than an hour after he left, Burress seemed pleased, like the Dr. Seuss character who finally ate the green eggs and ham. Burress may come back after all. “Does the sun shine over here?” he asked. “Where’s the sun at? That would help a little bit.”

New York Giants;Football;Burress Plaxico;London (England);Miami Dolphins;National Football League

ny0056454

2014/09/28

Guardian of a Brooklyn Housing Project

Lisa Kenner does not think of herself as poor, though she lives in the poorest neighborhood in New York City. She is the self-appointed guardian of the Van Dyke I Houses, a rambling complex of 22 brick buildings scattered around courtyards, parking lots and a community center in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Residents do not choose their neighbors at Van Dyke. They are placed in the 1,603 apartments by the New York City Housing Authority based on low-income guidelines. The average rent is $430. The average length of stay, 19 years. For Ms. Kenner, being poor and living poor are two different things. She makes that clear to everyone, in a way that has caused conflicts with residents and housing workers at times, and brought herself trouble as well. She entered a building at 372 Blake Avenue on a recent afternoon, striding past the newly scrubbed lobby to get the elevator. She pressed 14. That has always been her method, start at the top and work down. The doors slid open to a sunlit floor. She sniffed. Urine. She studied the worn floor tiles: grungy, but passable. Then she headed down the stairwell to 13. Three hall lights out, a safety hazard. Down another flight, grease stains and cigarette butts. Ms. Kenner flipped open her cellphone to call the superintendent. “I’m doing the walk down in 372,” she said in a deep, rumbling voice. “This building is nasty.” Van Dyke sits at the heart of a nine-block area, known to census workers as Tract 910, that makes up the poorest neighborhood of significant size in the city, a 2014 analysis by the Queens College sociology department found. The 5,620 residents have a median household income of $11,220 annually from all sources, including welfare benefits and food stamps, compared with $51,865 for the city. About two-thirds are black, and one-third are Hispanic. Ms. Kenner has never lived anywhere else. As president of the Van Dyke Resident Association for 12 years, she has turned a volunteer position into a full-time occupation. She scours reports from the New York City Housing Authority in a cinder-block basement office that she mops and cleans herself. She keeps the heavy metal door propped open for any resident with a problem. Sitting at a conference table, she dispenses chilled water from a refrigerator, along with advice and emails for housing officials. Image The Van Dyke I Houses are visible from the Junius Street subway station. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times She is seen by some as their strongest advocate, and by others as unforgiving and difficult. Ms. Kenner was criticized by residents for canceling an annual Family Day celebration three years ago because she said people were not helping to organize it and were leaving their trash. The caretakers who clean the buildings have been heard to say, “Where does she think she lives, the White House?” In July, she had a confrontation with a caretaker who claimed that Ms. Kenner hit her. Ms. Kenner said she never touched the woman. The property manager for Van Dyke sent Ms. Kenner a letter warning that her lease was being considered for termination. The reasons cited were “non-desirability” because of “physical assault against a Nycha employee” and “chronic rent delinquency.” Ms. Kenner has paid rent late 10 times in the past year, according to Housing Authority records. In her defense, Ms. Kenner said she tried to pay her rent every month but sometimes did not have enough money to cover all of it. She said that she did not know she had been carrying a rent balance, and that she had not previously received late notices. Housing officials said Ms. Kenner’s monthly rent bill indicated the outstanding balance. Image Ms. Kenner, in the purple shirt. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times “They’re trying to get me out because I stay up on stuff,” Ms. Kenner said. “It’s not that I’m looking out for me. I’m looking out for everybody.” Van Dyke, which was completed in 1955, has been drawn into efforts to help alleviate the city’s shortage of affordable housing. The Housing Authority plans to sell an underused parking lot there to a nonprofit developer for a 12-story rental building with support services for low-income and homeless families. Housing officials said the proceeds from the sale, expected to be $1.8 million, would be reinvested in Van Dyke. The plan has angered some residents, who say that the complex is crowded enough and that it has become a “dumping ground” for the poor. Ms. Kenner sees a more complex equation. She said that while she hated to lose what little Van Dyke had, she could not oppose the plan. “Who am I to stop anyone from living in a decent place?” she asked. Pockets of Poverty in New York City A 2014 analysis of census data by Queens College shows that Census Tract 910, in Brownsville, Brooklyn, is the poorest in the city. Crime is ever-present in Brownsville , though it has declined significantly in the past decade, as in the rest of the city. This year through Sept. 14, there were 13 murders, 15 rapes, 276 robberies and 446 felony assaults recorded in the 73rd Precinct, which covers Ocean Hill and Brownsville, including Van Dyke. Some residents say they constantly fear being hit by a stray bullet, or getting caught in a gang fight. Just this week, a 12-year-old boy was accidentally shot as he got off his school bus. Dorothy Glover, 56, who lives with her son and three grandchildren, said she was worried about her family’s safety. She recalled that shortly after moving there in 2001 from a homeless shelter in the Bronx, she walked out of her building to find a bullet-ridden body on the ground. “I just turned back upstairs, and I prayed and I cried for that young man,” she said. Ms. Kenner, 55, grew up at Van Dyke, the third of eight children of a truck driver and a housewife from Virginia. She was the nurturing one in the family, she said, the one who picked the middle names of her younger siblings and acted as their protector. At 17, she became a single mother. She dropped out of high school when her own mother died of cancer. Her son’s father, a boy from a neighboring project whom she met at a party, was shot five times in a nearby park. Ms. Kenner sent her son, then 6, to the funeral in Puerto Rico, but stayed home herself because she could not afford two plane tickets. Image Ms. Kenner on her rounds of Van Dyke. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times She passed her G.E.D. exam on the second try and earned a degree in public administration from Medgar Evers College. She was a counselor at the former Spofford Juvenile Center in the Bronx and then a caseworker for the city’s Human Resources Administration. Unemployed since 2010, she lives on disability benefits for back and knee injuries. She declined to give her income. A stout woman with a pair of $2 sunglasses perpetually perched on her closely shaved head, Ms. Kenner walks around with a bullhorn to get people to meetings of the Van Dyke Resident Association, which has just 60 members. One of her ideas was a quality-of-life committee to help residents keep tabs on their own buildings. It has not worked out: Only 10 buildings are represented. “If you don’t complain, you don’t get nothing,” Ms. Kenner said. “I get up in the morning and I fight so much I’m tired. They want to beat me down, but I come right back.” Image Outside a deli on the northern edge of the housing project. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times At a June residents meeting, Ms. Kenner chided those who tried to slip in late and rapped a silver bell — the kind used to summon a hotel bellman — whenever someone tried to talk over her or another resident. She glared at a community affairs police official on his cellphone. “It’s the president of the United States,” the official said. “He’d tell you, ‘Courtesy,’ ” she snapped. Ms. Kenner has no patience for those who do not show respect to Van Dyke. After dirty diapers were thrown out the window of one building, she identified all the households with babies and asked management to send warning letters to each one. She even reports people for hanging laundry out their windows. “That looks ghetto,” she said. “They say we live in a poverty-stricken area. We don’t have to act like we live in no ghetto. I don’t know where the ghetto is.” Image Ms. Kenner mingling after a tenants’ association meeting. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times Luz Perez, a member of the association, called Ms. Kenner “the glue” that held their community together. “She doesn’t leave anybody out,” Ms. Perez said. “She even gives the knucklehead a chance. A lot of people don’t even see what’s happening.” A spokeswoman for the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio said city and housing officials had renewed their efforts to reduce residents’ waiting time for maintenance work and repairs in housing projects. At Van Dyke, the average response time for routine repairs was five days in August, down from 131 days in August 2013, according to housing records. At Housing Authority buildings citywide, the average response time was seven days, compared with 108 days the year before. Joan Lebow, a spokeswoman for the authority, said it had also drastically reduced its backlog of repairs and was “making rapid strides to improve residents’ quality of life by taking down construction sheds, upgrading security and adding new lighting.” “As Nycha moves forward, doing more with less, those who live and work in public housing share the aim to strengthen each community,” Ms. Lebow said. “And together Nycha and its residents are accountable for ensuring a vibrant future for public housing in New York where everyone can have the safe, clean, affordable home they deserve.” At 372 Blake Avenue, Ms. Kenner was fuming as she scraped dirt off the floor with her sandal. It was her third visit in six months, she said. After the first two, she launched a blitz of emails on housing officials. Now it was filthy again. “This floor hasn’t been washed in a month, you can tell, all this dirt,” she told Kenrick Duprey, an assistant superintendent, who trailed after her, jotting notes on a yellow pad. “Right, I got you,” he said. Mr. Duprey said later that he found Ms. Kenner helpful. “She’s tough because she wants the place to look the way it’s supposed to,” he said. But on this day, a second-floor resident came out to tell Ms. Kenner that she used to sweep the hallway to keep the mice at bay, but gave up because it got too dirty. “You need to call Housing,” Ms. Kenner replied. “You’re not supposed to live like this. I can’t come here every day.”

Brownsville Brooklyn;Public Housing;Lisa Kenner;NYC;Income;Housing Authority NYC;Queens College; City University of New York

ny0241997

2011/03/11

Chechnya: Women Forced to Wear Head Scarves, Report Says

Chechnya ’s strongman Ramzan Kadyrov is forcing women to observe an Islamic dress code, while the Kremlin remains silent, Human Rights Watch said Thursday. The New York-based organization said that women’s rights in the southern Russian republic had deteriorated to the point that they were not allowed to enter, much less work, in government offices without head scarves, long sleeves and skirts below the knee, and that girls and young women could not attend school or university if their heads were uncovered. Women are not allowed to enter movie theaters or concert halls or often even to be outdoors without head scarves, the Human Rights Watch report said. Tanya Lokshina, a Russia researcher at Human Rights Watch and the report’s author, said at a news conference in Moscow that the Chechen women shot with paintballs last summer for failing to follow the dress code were too frightened to file formal complaints. Some of the unidentified assailants were in uniform and thought to be law enforcement officials. Mr. Kadyrov has said that he was not behind the attacks, but that the assailants should receive awards for their deed.

Chechnya (Russia);Women and Girls;Muslim Veiling;Human Rights and Human Rights Violations;Human Rights Watch

ny0185178

2009/03/10

Pakistani Tribe Signs Pact to Cooperate With Officials

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A major tribe with close ties to the Pakistani Taliban signed an agreement with the government on Monday to hand over several of the militant group’s local leaders, to lay down arms and to stop harboring foreign militants. The agreement with the Mamoond tribe, the largest and most strategically placed in the restive Bajaur region, followed a military victory against the local Taliban last month. It was one of the first major successes of the Pakistani forces against the militants and their affiliates in Al Qaeda since they started operations in the tribal areas in 2003. Taliban forces in Bajaur then declared a unilateral cease-fire and the Mamoond, whose members live on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, decided to cooperate with the government. According to the 28-point agreement, a copy of which was made available to The New York Times, the Mamoond will stop harboring foreign militants and will close down militant training camps. The agreement also calls for the surrender of senior Taliban leaders in Bajaur, including a deputy, Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, and the group’s chief spokesman, Maulvi Said Muhammad, who also goes by the name Maulvi Omar. The entire Taliban leadership in Bajaur comes from the Mamoond, which has also been accused of harboring Qaeda operatives. “It’s the peoples’ victory more than a military success,” Maj. Gen. Tariq Khan, who led the recent military strikes in Bajaur, told the Pakistani newspaper Dawn . He promised to clear militants from a remaining small pocket in Bajaur within the next couple of days. The agreement was signed by tribal elders from the Mamoond and a government representative in Khar. Tribe members in Bajaur “will not indulge in terrorism activities in Pakistan, including the tribal areas, nor will they facilitate anyone in this regard,” the agreement states. “They will not allow the use of their territory for any subversive activities nor will they allow anyone to do so.” It also states, “Similarly, no local or foreign militant will be allowed to cross the border with Afghanistan.” The agreement also says that all religious schools will be registered with the government, and that no new ones will be set up in Bajaur without the government’s approval. Heavy weapons must be surrendered to the authorities within 30 days, the agreement says.

Bajaur (Pakistan);Pakistan;Afghanistan War (2001- );Taliban;Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Pakistan);Khan Tariq;Mamoond

ny0140978

2008/02/22

Joe Louis and Harlem, Connecting Again in a Police Athletic League Gym

It was the evening of June 22, 1938, and nearly everyone in Harlem was doing the same thing. Huddled around radios on their fire escapes and roofs, in their kitchens and living rooms, people were listening to the heavyweight boxing match between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling. “Harlem was in stereo,” said Representative Charles B. Rangel, who grew up in Harlem and was 8 years old at the time of the fight. “Everyone had on the same station, the same fight. You heard the same screaming and yelling when he was winning, and the same sighs when he got hit.” Louis once captivated the minds and hearts of New Yorkers, especially those in Harlem’s thriving black community. But as New York’s mantle as boxing’s premier stage ebbed over the past several decades, so too did Louis’s legacy in the city. On Thursday, HBO and Everlast, a company that specializes in boxing equipment, took a step toward rekindling the memory of Louis in New York City. They opened the Joe Louis Boxing Gym in the basement of the Police Athletic League building on Manhattan Avenue near 119th Street in Harlem. “I think it’s a wonderful tribute to my father,” Joe Louis Barrow Jr., Louis’s son, said by telephone. “It will continue to keep the Joe Louis connection to New York, and specifically Harlem.” Though he was born, as Joe Louis Barrow, in Chambers County, Ala., and lived most of his life in Detroit and Chicago, Louis rose to international prominence in New York. Louis’s first fight in New York was in 1935. His promoter brought him to the city because the owners of Madison Square Garden controlled the heavyweight title and he wanted to get his fighter a shot. Louis lost his first fight against Schmeling, who was from Germany, at Yankee Stadium in 1936. A year later, he won the heavyweight title for the first time, by knocking out Jim Braddock in Chicago, and returned to New York to defend his title. In 1938 came a highly anticipated rematch against Schmeling. This fight, also at Yankee Stadium, was billed as the United States versus Nazi Germany. It was a black American, of all people, carrying the torch for a country that was deeply segregated. Mr. Barrow called his father one of the true pioneers of race relations in the United States, saying that even white Americans cheered for him. “That was the single event that allowed him to transcend from a heavyweight champion to a true American hero,” Mr. Barrow said of the rematch. Louis knocked out Schmeling in the first round, and the streets of Harlem erupted. According to an article in The New York Times the day after the fight, people jumped on cars and pushed over traffic signs. The police commissioner ordered officers to reroute traffic on Seventh Avenue between 125th and 145th Streets, saying, “This is their night, let them have their fun.” People raced to the Hotel Theresa on the corner of 125th Street and Seventh Avenue, now known as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, trying to catch a glimpse of Louis returning from the fight. “It was madness when the fight was over,” Mr. Rangel said. Still, The Times reported, there were only 13 minor injuries and most of the celebration, including the one in Yorkville, the German-American quarter around East 86th Street, was peaceful. Louis, who died in 1981, later said a farewell of sorts to New York. In 1951, he was knocked out by the much younger Rocky Marciano at Madison Square Garden in his final professional bout. Many of Louis’s accomplishments in New York are captured in the documentary “Joe Louis: America’s Hero ... Betrayed,” which is to be broadcast on HBO on Saturday night. Today, it is difficult to find a relic of Louis’s time in New York, where he fought more than two dozen times. The area surrounding Madison Square Garden is known as Joe Louis Plaza, as noted on street signs that thousands of New Yorkers probably walk past each day without a glance. The Police Athletic League building in Harlem now has a plaque at its front entrance that reads, “Home of the Joe Louis Boxing Gym.” Inside hangs a painting of Louis by Duhirwe Rushemeza, a Brooklyn-based artist. The newly renovated boxing gym has fluorescent lighting, walls of bright red and glossy gray brick, a new ring with black canvas and a glass case holding pictures of professional boxers like Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield and Zab Judah. Mr. Barrow said his father often reminisced about the time he spent in New York, about the Harlem night life and the people who yearned for just a glimpse of him in the street. “He loved the energy in New York,” Mr. Barrow said. “He loved Harlem particularly because in those days it was a very hopping town. New York was a place where he really made his career.”

Boxing;Louis Joe;Harlem (NYC);Documentary Films and Programs;Home Box Office;Police Athletic League

ny0269024

2016/04/29

Discounts on Hepatitis C Drug Dent Gilead’s Earnings

WASHINGTON — Earnings for Gilead Science tumbled 17 percent in the first quarter as steeper discounts and rebates on its blockbuster hepatitis C drugs cut into sales. Gilead, maker of Harvoni, the first once-daily, single-pill regimen for hepatitis C, said on Thursday that sales of the best-selling drug fell 15 percent to $3 billion in the quarter, with the steepest drop-off in the United States and Japan. The drug maker attributed the decline to discounts given to private insurers and higher rebates for patients in government-controlled health plans like Medicaid. Harvoni’s decline was offset in part by higher sales for an older hepatitis C drug, Sovaldi, which grew to $1.28 billion. Gilead, based in Foster City, Calif., has grown into one of the world’s biggest drug makers because of its breakthrough treatments for hepatitis C, a liver-destroying virus estimated to affect about 185 million people worldwide. However, use of the drug has been slowing in the United States, where many of the patients who are eligible and able to afford the drugs have already received them. Additionally, many private insurance plans and government health programs have been limiting which patients they will cover, often waiting until the patients have suffered significant liver damage. But Gilead has also become an unwilling symbol of soaring drug prices because of the high list prices for the hepatitis drugs: about $94,000 for Harvoni and $84,000 for Sovaldi. Insurers in the United States have demanded steep discounts — as much as 45 percent — to cover the two drugs but, even so, the prices strain health care budgets. For the period that ended March 31, the drug maker posted revenue of $7.79 billion . Profit slipped to $2.53 a share, compared with $2.76 in the year earlier period. Adjusted for one-time costs and adjustments the company would have earned $3.03 a share. Gilead sells the top-selling H.I.V. treatments Truvada, Viread and Stribild, and others. Sales of those drugs continued to climb. The company reported $150 million for a single-tablet H.I.V. combination called Genvoya, which was released in November. The company’s shares have fallen 3 percent since the beginning of the year. The stock closed regular trading at $97 and shed more than 5 percent in after-hours trading.

Gilead Sciences;Earnings Reports;Pharmaceuticals;Hepatitis

ny0019802

2013/07/01

At Season’s Midpoint, Yankees Struggle to Score

BALTIMORE — The tarp was smothering the infield when the Yankees arrived Sunday afternoon at Camden Yards. It appeared to be a gloomy night for baseball, with dark clouds overhead, and the weather made for an easy metaphor. The Yankees have struggled in recent weeks, their prospects dimming by the day. Their meeting with the Orioles was to be their 81st game of the season, marking the midpoint of a trying year. The Yankees entered the game in third place in the American League East, and a glance at a handful of statistics — a collective .240 batting average and 80 home runs, to name two — made it easy to see why they had won just 42 games. Even before the game, the Yankees were assured of having assembled one of their worst first halves in recent history. They were scoring 3.9 runs on eight hits per game. Their O.P.S., a metric that combines on-base percentage and slugging percentage, was .682, which was on pace to be their lowest at a midpoint of a season since 1990, when it was .658. By comparison, the Boston Red Sox are leading the league with an O.P.S. of .795. Not coincidentally, they are in first place. Even when the Yankees were hobbling their way to a 40-41 record through the first half of 2007, they were producing a respectable 5.3 runs per game along with an O.P.S. of .787. Bolstered by improved pitching, that team caught fire over the second half of the season and won 94 games to make the playoffs. And in 2005, the Yankees were 42-39 through 81 games, with a .275 batting average and a lineup that was scoring 5.4 runs per game. They went on to win their division. Manager Joe Girardi continues to be a lonely voice of optimism. He has seen enough solid at-bats, he said before Sunday’s game, to feel confident that the team will improve. Plus, his pitching staff and its 3.86 earned run average had done what it could to keep the team from free-falling through the standings. “We’d like to be in better position, but that’s not the case,” Girardi said, adding, “It should be a very interesting second half.” The Yankees have been hindered by age and injury. Sunday’s lineup was again missing the big-name stars: Derek Jeter, Mark Teixeira, Curtis Granderson and Alex Rodriguez, all sidelined with various ailments. Their replacements went by the names David Adams, Lyle Overbay, Zoilo Almonte and Jayson Nix. Even Travis Hafner, a designated hitter and one of the team’s top off-season acquisitions, was having serious problems at the plate ahead of Sunday’s game, hitting .156 with four home runs since May 22. His woes underscored the team’s inability to hit the baseball very far. “I think you have to have the ability to hit home runs in our division,” Girardi said. “It’s hard when you’re not doing that to score five or six runs a night.” The Yankees last finished out of the playoffs in 2008, when they went 44-37 through their first 81 games. It was Girardi’s first season as manager, and that team also struggled to produce much pop, averaging exactly one home run per game through the first half of the season. For now, Girardi can only hope that his many fill-ins — the Overbays, the Nixes, the Almontes — can do an adequate job until the Jeters and the Grandersons return. “I think it’s probably fair to say it’s not real clear,” Girardi said of the team’s second-half prospects, “because you don’t know exactly when the guys are coming back or how they’re going to feel. You make the assumption that they’re going to come back and be good players. I mean, I make that assumption. There’s nothing that tells me they won’t be.” PHELPS KEEPS ROTATION SPOT Despite getting pummeled by the Orioles in Saturday’s 11-3 loss, David Phelps is keeping his spot in the rotation — for the time being, at least. Girardi said Phelps would start Thursday against the Minnesota Twins, even after he gave up nine runs in two and a third innings. Ivan Nova, who came on in relief and limited the Orioles to two runs in five and two-thirds innings, will continue to throw out of the bullpen, though Girardi said there was a chance he could find Nova a spot “somewhere else.” Nova said: “My mind is just on doing my job. I’ll take advantage of any opportunity that I get.” INSIDE PITCH Entering Sunday’s game, Mariano Rivera had pitched only once since June 22, thanks largely to the team’s losing ways. Joe Girardi said he was not concerned about Rivera’s inactivity. “Mo really knows how to prepare himself,” Girardi said. “When you’ve done it as long as he has, he knows what he needs to do to be sharp. Our biggest concern is always keeping him fresh. We’ve been able to do that for a number of different reasons. The way we’re doing it right now is not my favorite.” ... Girardi said Alex Rodriguez had three hits in six simulated at-bats Sunday at the team’s training complex in Tampa, Fla.

Baseball;Yankees;David Phelps;Joe Girardi

ny0040420

2014/04/24

Texas: Man in Nursing Home Is Charged With Murder

A Houston nursing home resident accused of using the armrest of his wheelchair to beat two of his roommates to death faces a capital murder charge, the police said Wednesday. Guillermo Correa, 56, is accused of killing Antonio Acosta, 77, and Primitivo Lopez, 51, at the Lexington Place Nursing and Rehabilitation Center on Tuesday night.

Murders;Nursing home;Houston;Guillermo Correa;Primitivo Lopez;Antonio Acosta

ny0114210

2012/11/10

Heavy Lending Creates a Surge in Chinese Economy

BEIJING — The Chinese economy grew faster than expected last month even as inflation slowed, official statistics showed on Friday, as the government continued heavy lending through its state-owned banks to rekindle growth. The latest data, including industrial production, retail sales, fixed-asset investment and electricity generation, were stronger than most economists had anticipated. They presented a consistent picture of an economy that is starting to show real growth again after a very weak spring and summer. “It has become increasingly clear that the Chinese economy is now moving in a better direction,” Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People’s Bank of China, the central bank, said at a news conference Thursday, before the October figures were publicly released. Bank economists increasingly agree. “October’s growth data delivered pleasant upside surprises across the board, providing fresh evidence that the economy has indeed bottomed out thanks to the filtering through of Beijing’s policy easing,” Sun Junwei, a China economist at HSBC, wrote in a research report Friday afternoon. To be sure, the economic statistics released by the government Friday showed a return to the fairly strong economic expansion that prevailed through much of last year and early this year, and not a return to the torrid, double-digit growth that China has enjoyed for much of the last decade. Australia & New Zealand Banking said in a research note that the latest figures were consistent with 8 percent economic growth in the last quarter of this year and even faster expansion in the first quarter of next year. Growth had weakened to 7.4 percent in the third quarter and 7.6 percent in the second quarter, according to official statistics. Many economists have been suspicious that even the figures from earlier this year might have been overstated, given the weakness in categories like electricity generation, which grew barely at all in the second quarter and only slowly in the third quarter. By contrast, the economic expansion this autumn appears more broadly based. Business executives have begun to describe recovering exports and domestic sales, and cranes have begun moving again on the skylines of big cities like Guangzhou and Beijing. Steel mills and concrete factories are busier. Power generation increased 6.4 percent last month from the same period a year ago, its strongest gain since March, although still well below the double-digit annual gains in previous years. But the renewed growth has been fueled by rapidly mounting debt, as state-owned banks and the central bank have funneled hundreds of billions of dollars in additional lending to state-owned enterprises and government agencies to finance further investment projects. Stock markets in China, Hong Kong, Australia and South Korea were all down about half a percent in late afternoon trading, or about half the loss Thursday on Wall Street, as good news from China seemed to partially offset global worries about the so-called fiscal cliff in the United States and economic troubles in Europe. The Chinese National Bureau of Statistics said Friday that industrial production had risen 9.6 percent in October from the same month a year earlier, compared with 9.2 percent in September and 8.9 percent in August. Retail sales were up 14.5 percent in October from a year earlier, compared with 14.2 percent in September, even though slower inflation at the consumer level was acting as a brake on the increase in retail sales. Fixed-asset investment was up 20.7 percent for the first 10 months of this year, after having been up 20.5 percent for the first nine months of this year. China releases only year-to-date figures for fixed-asset investment, partly because of the difficulty in tracking when money is actually spent on big construction projects. Consumer prices were up only 1.7 percent in October from a year ago, compared with an increase of 1.9 percent in September. Western economists had expected inflation in China to stay steady in October instead of slowing. Producer prices were down 2.8 percent in October from a year ago, a slightly faster pace than the 2.7 percent decrease that economists had expected but not as fast a decline as in September, when they were down 3.6 percent. China has begun a once-a-decade leadership transition at its Party Congress, which began in Beijing on Thursday and will last through the middle of the coming week.

Economic Conditions and Trends;China

ny0097622

2015/06/27

Andy Roddick Talks About His Life After Tennis

Since he retired from professional tennis in 2012, Andy Roddick has talked about all things sports in television studios and podcasts as a broadcaster for Fox Sports 1. He has not, however, done match commentary on the sport he knows best. That will change when he joins the BBC broadcast team for the second week of Wimbledon, where Roddick won plenty of fans but never a title despite three appearances in the singles final. Roddick, 32, was one of the game’s biggest servers and personalities during his career. He remains the last American man to win a Grand Slam singles title, which came at the 2003 United States Open . He and his wife, the actress and model Brooklyn Decker, are expecting their first child later this year. (This interview has been condensed and edited.) Q . So why now? Why the BBC? Why Wimbledon? A. Obviously with ESPN acquiring the Slams, that was never even really a conversation with my situation with Fox. And frankly, I wanted a little bit of space, and the opportunity to dive in and do other sports was appealing to me when I first stopped. I felt like that was a pretty unique offer for me and not one that normally presents itself to a tennis guy. As far as BBC, I told Brook for a long time that that was probably the only job I’d want to do as far as commentary, at least right now, just because of the prestige of it. I’ve had a love affair with Wimbledon for a long time. Q. What kind of tennis commentator do you want to be? A. I don’t know that I want to think about it that much. One of the things I’m lucky to have now, I’ve still played against 90 percent of these guys. I can talk about situational matchups, the business end of being at Wimbledon, the different kind of pressure that people will face. I have a pretty standard rule even when I’m on Fox. I’m happy to say something, even if it’s negative, as long as I would say it to the person sitting across from me if they were looking me in the eye. And I think that’s fair. I am certainly not going to shy away from anything. Q. What’s the learning curve been like on Fox? A. It’s fun to be around people from other sports and almost watch them watch these sports. You learn more doing that and asking questions, being in a room with baseball players like Frank Thomas and Jimmy Rollins while a World Series game is going on and asking them questions about certain pitch counts and when runners are on and everything else. You learn more in that space than probably anything else. Q. During your career, you would sometimes get exasperated with the media. You have a different perspective on that now that you’re a part of it? A. Not really. I always got the American tennis thing, and I feel like I answered it with an uptick in my voice 90 percent of the time, and on the days when I didn’t, well, everybody has bad days, right? The Monday morning quarterback thing ticked me off because everyone kind of knows a game plan, but I still just never underestimate how hard it is to execute something. I guess my frustration came from being a top-five guy in the world and having someone who hasn’t actually played tennis telling me how I should have played the match. That just ticked me off to no end and, frankly, that probably still would. Q. After three years away, you’re heading back to your old workplace. Do you feel you have enough distance now? Are you going to feel comfortable in a different role? A. I don’t know that I was ever going to be the guy who needed to go and be at every tennis event when he retired. I think I’ve been to two matches just because I had to do some sponsor stuff on tour, but I never stopped watching tennis. I never stopped playing when guys are through town. I never stopped talking about tennis. I still get calls all the time from guys on tour if they want to just rap about something or need a scouting report for someone I’ve played. So being visible and still being involved in tennis are two different things. Q. What images stick with you from Wimbledon? A. I still get asked about Wimbledon every two days of my life from somebody. I have zero bitterness about it all. I really don’t. It’s the place where I have some of my biggest heartbreak, but I certainly appreciated even the chance to get after it. I don’t harbor any weird feelings. That’s the biggest hole in my résumé. It’s one that I wish I could fill. I’m certainly aware of all the ramifications from it, but I don’t have a lot of pain from it. When I think of Wimbledon, my favorite time was the practice week when you could walk to the venue without anybody there and you didn’t have to take the tunnels underneath. And just every single year the first walk from the locker room out to Aorangi Park and back, it just floored me every year with the gravity of the place. I got all things Wimbledon from a very early age and always appreciated it. Q . Watching Novak Djokovic get that extended ovation after losing the French Open to Stan Wawrinka this year, I flashed back to the Wimbledon crowd’s reaction to you after losing the marathon to Roger Federer in 2009 . Did that cross your mind? A. It’s a feeling of respect, which is really meaningful in a moment like that. After I lost ’09 Wimbledon, in the moment the only thing I was thinking was: Don’t break down, don’t break down, just get through it. Because I knew once I started a little bit I was going to start sobbing uncontrollably, which I didn’t want. So the crowd tested me with that respect and with that ovation, and it does mean a lot. Athletes tend to get melodramatic in moments, but Novak, from what I heard, showed his appreciation, and that will serve him well as far as the way he’s perceived publicly. He showed something beyond being the No. 1 player in the world who is going about his business and kind of seems immune to everything. Frankly, it’s just nice to see a human moment after something like that. Q . You are 32. Federer is close to turning 34. Ivo Karlovic, who is 36, just reached the semifinals in Halle with his big serve. Honestly, do you ever have any second thoughts? A . [Long pause.] This is just a moment of honesty. Once I stopped believing I could win a major, I didn’t want to continue. I won two of my last five events on tour, and you hate to say that wasn’t enough because you want to respect people that that would be a dream summer for. But it changed the way I wanted to be able to play a little bit. For me, going out and playing guys in practice sets that are still 30, 40, 50 in the world and kind of getting a barometer of where I would be, that is kind of enough for me. I have a pretty good understanding of where I would lay in the landscape of tennis right now. Six Players to Watch at Wimbledon Geoff Macdonald, the women’s tennis coach at Vanderbilt University, analyzes which players have made a strong impression heading to the All England Lawn Tennis Club. Q. And it wouldn’t be deep in the second week of a major? A. Deep is one thing. Getting to the second week is fine. But I don’t know how that changes my legacy. Wait, legacy is too big a word for me. How about my history in tennis? I don’t know how that changes anything. You are putting in 45 weeks and to stay in neutral, I don’t know that that’s what I wanted. I would never want to coast home. The way that I kind of narrowed talent margins with the guys I was trying to beat — and I didn’t beat them very often — was just through working and being a psychopath about that. At a certain point, my body couldn’t do it. You look at Jim Courier. He did the same thing. Lleyton Hewitt did the same thing, and his body has been touch-and-go for a while. You are starting to see it with Rafa [Nadal] a little bit more maybe. It takes its toll with the guys who kind of have to narrow the margin by being physical. I don’t have any regrets about when I walked away. Do I have an ego about playing guys now that are ranked a certain level and still wanting to beat them? Yes, absolutely. Do I feel great when it works out on a given day? Yes, I feel fantastic about it. I love it. Have I ever toyed with going back and doing it full time? I have not. Q . You’re playing doubles with Mardy Fish in Atlanta next month. But no singles wild card? No cameo? A. Frankly, if I could go play a challenger or a small tour event without the fallout of what it would take publicly; if I could put on a mask and go play a challenger, that would be awesome. I would love it because I love playing and I love the competition, but dealing with everything else that would go along with it, I’m not sure that it would be worth it to have a good time Q. Still, as innately competitive as you are, it must be strange to watch tennis knowing that you could still be out there? A. It is and it isn’t. Beating a guy handily who is 60 in the world is a lot different than trying to play in the semis of a Grand Slam. So one makes me very happy, and I like it. It’s fun. I have an ego, but the reality of being able to do it time and time again is different. Every time I watch a Wawrinka-Djokovic final I’m going, “I’m soooo good where I’m at.” Q. Fifty-shot rallies can do that to a man. A. We are good here. Retirement is fantastic. Q . Are you surprised, three years after you stopped, that Federer is still No. 2 at his age? A. No, because unlike most people I never compared myself to Roger. It’s phenomenal, and it’s kind of what we were talking about earlier with the guys who are so physical and have to consciously try to do things. With Roger, it just seems like he thinks it, and it happens. It’s an insane ability. The racket in his hand seems to just make sense. I don’t think he’s as fast as he was in his prime. I don’t think a lot of the strokes are as good as they were in his prime, but he’s just such a good tennis player, and as long as he’s healthy he can figure it out. He can mix up his game on a given day. As long as someone is not just overpowering him like Stan did in Paris, Roger has so many options that he’s going to figure out how to beat people as long as they don’t come out and just throw haymakers and land them. Q . How about that other 33-year-old, your friend Serena Williams? A . The French Open might have been her most impressive Slam, because she didn’t have her A game and she might not have had her B game. It’s like when you see a pitcher pitch a good ballgame, give up some hits but not get burned on the scoreboard. I feel like that’s what she did, and if she’s the person who can do that now consistently and get through like she did in Paris, the only thing that makes us say, “How much longer does she have?” is her age. Nothing about her game suggests it. She hasn’t really lost anything as far as weight of shot, movement, anything. Q . I was watching your fellow Nebraskan, Jack Sock, reach the fourth round at the French Open and it struck me that the pressure on you following up on the Sampras-Agassi-Courier generation was so great, but enough time has gone by that the pressure on this next generation of American players seems much lighter. People are relieved to see any kind of young, promising American talent at this stage. A . Frankly the shadow of Andre, Pete, [Michael] Chang and Courier is a lot longer than my shadow, and for good reason. When I would lose in a Wimbledon final, it was generally viewed as a massive disappointment. If Jack made the semis of a Slam, it would be viewed as a massive, massive, massive win. And that’s a good thing for him. I just had fun watching him because I feel like there’s a sense of belief. I don’t feel like he’s scared of expectation now. I loved the fact that he got a terrible draw in Paris and went out and just owned it. It’s exciting to watch him. There’s no reason he can’t get into that top 10. Q . You essentially launched this “supercoach” trend when you hired Jimmy Connors. How do you feel about the fact that it has become so prevalent now? And does the fact that the two-coach model now exists give you any desire to play that role for a player in the future? A . Not surprising for top players to rely on the .000001 percent of tennis people who can relate to what they’re trying to achieve. I don’t have any interest in coaching like that right now. Q. Have you been able to get any of the structure or adrenaline rush that you got from the tour from what you’ve done afterward? A . I will never ever in my life replace that first 30 seconds after winning a big match. That’s gone. That’s not coming back. That adrenaline rush doesn’t exist for me anymore, although that’s before fatherhood. So I know I might want to walk that statement back in the next six months. But at this point, three years gone by, I don’t think I ever expected anything to replace that. Thankfully, I had it for the moments I did, but at no point in my life did I think playing golf was going to equate with winning a Wimbledon semifinal. Where the margins are filled is not with adrenaline. It’s time with friends, being able to have a glass of wine over dinner and have a legitimate conversation. On tour, every single meal I was so high-strung and intense, I’d be in and out of dinner in 45 minutes. Very rushed, selfish, next thing, next-thing kinds of obsessions. In my opinion, you lose the adrenaline moments, but you gain the quiet moments.

Tennis;Andy Roddick;Wimbledon Tennis,Wimbledon

ny0167169

2006/01/28

In Troubled Era, Housing Chief in Newark Sets His Retirement

The executive director of the Newark Housing Authority, whose agency was ranked among the nation's worst performers after a federal investigation last year found widespread mismanagement, will retire next month, according to the authority's commissioners. The director, Harold Lucas, 61, will leave his post Feb. 10, the commissioners said, after nine years leading the authority, first from 1992-98, and again starting in 2002 after a stint as assistant secretary of Public and Indian Housing in Washington, D.C. Zinnerford Smith, chairman of the authority's board, said in a statement yesterday that Mr. Lucas "will be sorely missed," specifically citing the construction of new town houses under Mr. Lucas's direction. But according to some city officials, residents of public housing and former Housing Authority employees, Mr. Lucas's retirement -- announced a day after the commissioners held their monthly board meeting -- has more to do with his failures than his triumphs. " 'Retirement' is an excuse," said Augusto Amador, a councilman representing the city's East Ward. "The pressure from either the federal government's housing office, or other federal entities, is enormous and therefore it has forced him to resign." A new federal audit is expected to be released in early February, said Michael Zerega, a spokesman for the HUD Office of Inspector General, around the time of Mr. Lucas's retirement date. One person familiar with the report said it would examine the use of authority money by the city. Mr. Lucas did not return several telephone calls seeking comment, nor did Mr. Smith or another commissioner, Fran Adubato. On Thursday night, a woman at Mr. Lucas's East Orange home who did not identify herself, said: : "He did not resign. He was not asked to leave." Mayor Sharpe James, who has been close to Mr. Lucas since the 1980's, also did not return calls seeking comment. On Thursday, at his annual fund-raising gala, Mr. James said that asking Mr. Lucas to leave his post was "the farthest thing from my mind." The trouble for Mr. Lucas, who has been working on and off with housing development in Newark since the 1970's, began last September when the authority laid off 84 people while completing a $1 million renovation of its headquarters. The New York Times reported at the time that the renovation included the purchase of a plasma television for an executive dining room and more than $14,000 in audio-visual equipment for the authority's main office. According to internal authority documents, four of Mr. Lucas's close relatives also worked for the agency, and the authority had awarded a contract for up to $25,000 to a nonprofit organization run by Mr. Lucas's daughter. His annual salary of more than $185,000 made him the city's highest-paid employee, according to the mayor. In October 2004, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and its inspector general's office began two separate reviews that found what officials called "very serious" problems with how the Newark agency was run. The reports, released in April and May, found that the authority frequently miscalculated rents, failed to inspect and maintain its properties, and illegally used $3.9 million meant for a rent assistance program to buy property in 2003 near the site of a downtown arena now being built for the New Jersey Devils, the professional hockey team. The authority restored the $3.9 million last spring, while Mr. Lucas personally paid $2,850 to cover the cost of the plasma television. Hector Corchado, a councilman representing the North Ward, said that Mr. Lucas' departure gave the authority an opportunity to turn itself around. "It's an extremely important step that will have an impact in the community," Mr. Corchado said. "We've had a lot of allegations made and people felt things were not being done for the residents. This will give the city and the housing authority a chance to get a new start." But Mr. Amador and former employees like Nelson Nieves, one of the 84 people laid off in 2004, disagreed. Noting that the April HUD report said that the authority's six commissioners -- who have served an average of nine and a half years and are appointed by the mayor -- should be subject to shorter fixed terms, Mr. Amador and Mr. Nieves said that a broader overhaul was necessary.

NEW JERSEY;NEWARK HOUSING AUTHORITY

ny0196661

2009/10/09

Anthony Marshall Convicted of Larceny in Astor Case

The son of Brooke Astor , the philanthropist and long-reigning matriarch of New York society, was convicted in Manhattan on Thursday on charges that he defrauded his mother and stole tens of millions of dollars from her as she suffered from Alzheimer’s disease in the twilight of her life. The jury’s verdict means that Mrs. Astor’s son, Anthony D. Marshall , 85, faces a sentence of at least a year and as many as 25 years. A co-defendant, Francis X. Morrissey Jr., a lawyer who did estate planning for Mrs. Astor, was also convicted of a series of fraud and conspiracy charges, as well as one count of forging Mrs. Astor’s signature on an amendment to her will. The verdict drew the curtain on a long trial that cast an unflattering spotlight on one of New York’s first families of high society. Henry Kissinger, Barbara Walters and Annette de la Renta, among others, testified that Mr. Marshall mistreated his mother in her later years and conspired to inflate his inheritance from her estate — largely to appease his wife, Charlene Marshall. Mrs. Astor died in 2007 at age 105. As the verdict was read, Ms. Marshall sat stone-faced; moments later, while her husband went to meet with a probation officer, she left the courtroom, saying, “I love my husband.” She and Mr. Marshall then held hands and ignored requests for comment before being whisked away in a black Town Car. Although prosecutors were still determining how stiff a sentence to recommend, they gave a hint after the verdict was read, when Elizabeth Loewy, an assistant district attorney, asked Justice A. Kirke Bartley Jr. to increase the defendants’ bail to $5 million from $100,000. Justice Bartley denied the request, and asked the defendants to return Dec. 8 for sentencing. Mr. Marshall and Mr. Morrissey, 66, staggered ashen-faced out of the courtroom without comment. The defense is expected to ask the judge to allow Mr. Marshall to stay out of prison pending an appeal, which could take more than a year because of a long trial — more than 19 weeks — that produced about 18,000 pages of transcript and thousands more pages of exhibits. “I’m stunned by the verdict, greatly disappointed with what the jury did,” Frederick P. Hafetz, one of Mr. Marshall’s lawyers, said outside the courthouse. “I think we have a strong appeal.” Mr. Hafetz did not elaborate on what the grounds might be, but motions by the defense lawyers throughout the trial offered some insight into what their next moves might be. They are likely to keep a close eye on what jurors say in the coming days, particularly in relation to one woman who had asked to be removed from the panel this week because she said she felt threatened by another juror’s comments. The defense may also challenge the judge’s decision to allow an independent expert on trusts and estates law to testify for the prosecution, as well as the strength of the evidence in the most serious charge Mr. Marshall was convicted of — first-degree grand larceny, for giving himself a retroactive lump-sum raise of about $1 million for managing his mother’s finances. Mr. Marshall was found guilty of 14 of the 16 counts against him. One of the acquittals was on the other first-degree grand larceny charge, for selling a Childe Hassam painting that his mother owned for $10 million and keeping a $2 million commission on the sale. The other was on a lesser charge of falsifying business records. The jury of eight women and four men sat through months of testimony and arguments in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, hearing detailed accounts of Mrs. Astor’s luxurious life of summers on an estate in Maine and dinners with diplomats. Deliberations went on for 12 days, and appeared strained. Thursday’s developments drew reactions from throughout the social stratosphere in which Mrs. Astor traveled. “The only reason we got involved in Mrs. Astor’s treatment was to ensure she lived the last months of her life in comfort and peace,” Mrs. de la Renta and David Rockefeller said in a joint statement released by their spokesman, Fraser P. Seitel. Three years ago, Mrs. de la Renta and Mr. Rockefeller helped put together the guardianship petition that first accused Mr. Marshall of mistreating his mother. “Thankfully that was accomplished,” the statement said. Betsy Gotbaum, the city’s public advocate and a friend of Mrs. Astor, testified for the prosecution and said that Mrs. Astor deserved better treatment from her son. “Clearly, the jury thought he did something wrong,” Ms. Gotbaum said. “I don’t think he should go to jail, frankly. He’s 85 years old. I think he’s probably suffered enough.” At its core, this case was a story of familial dysfunction, provoked in part by Mr. Marshall’s son Philip, who filed the guardianship petition three years ago. Philip Marshall was not in court on Thursday, but reacted with disbelief when told by a reporter of the verdict. “Oh my God,” he said. “Wow. Wow.” In a statement released later, he only indirectly mentioned his feelings toward his father. “I hope this brings some consolation and closure for the many people, including my grandmother’s loyal staff, caregivers and friends, who helped when she was so vulnerable and so manipulated,” he said. The prosecution portrayed Mr. Marshall as driven to squeeze his mother for money at the urging of his wife. Because many of the convictions were related to changes to Mrs. Astor’s will that prosecutors said the defendants procured through fraud, Mr. Marshall would seem to be compromised when the battle over Mrs. Astor’s estate — worth more than $180 million when she died two years ago — shifts to Surrogate’s Court in Westchester County. Of the changes to the will, prosecutors vigorously objected to one executed in January 2004 that gave Mr. Marshall outright control of $60 million of his mother’s estate upon her death. Paul Saunders, a lawyer for Mrs. de la Renta, said the main defense argument — that Mrs. Astor understood and consented to what her son was doing — had been undermined by the criminal verdict. “The jury clearly found that she did not,” he said. “That’s important because her mental capacity is the central issue in the will contest.” Much of the contention centered on when Mrs. Astor lost her competency. Some jurors concluded that did not occur until 2005, while others, like Yvonne Fernandez, believed it happened as early as 2002. One of the major points of discussion was the issue of the $1 million retroactive raise, with jurors eventually deciding that Mr. Marshall misused his power of attorney to take that raise. “How can he give himself a raise when he’s been abusing his power?” Ms. Fernandez said. “He was wearing two hats at that point.” The defense may argue on appeal that, by the letter of the law, the power of attorney gave Mr. Marshall the right to give himself that raise. When asked about the likelihood of Mr. Marshall’s serving time in prison, Ms. Fernandez said: “It is what it is. You make mistakes in life and you’ve got to take responsibility for them.”

Marshall Anthony D;Astor Brooke;Wills and Estates;Frauds and Swindling;Morrissey Francis X Jr;Decisions and Verdicts

ny0225186

2010/10/18

Disciplined Giants Beat Lions for Third Consecutive Victory

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — On the field before Sunday’s game, the Giants welcomed several dozen former players, a lineage that stretched from Andy Robustelli to Amani Toomer. Standing together, they represented decades of intimidating defense, a sturdy rushing attack and a timely, if controlled, passing game. Theirs was a methodical style of play, even predictable, and if it seems like something from another era, the game that ensued at New Meadowlands Stadium proved otherwise. With a smothering defense and a patient offense, the Giants won their third consecutive game, taking an early lead against the outmanned Detroit Lions , and holding on for a 28-20 victory . In contrast to the sloppy play that marked the team during its stumbling 1-2 start, the Giants’ offense had no turnovers and just two penalties. It showed a measured and prized balance, with the team’s 334 total yards evenly split between the run and the pass. And the pass rush once again knocked a quarterback out of the game — for the fourth time this season. “I think we are starting to understand what we can and cannot do as a team,” said quarterback Eli Manning, who completed 20 of 30 passes for 177 yards and 2 touchdowns. “We’re starting to understand how we play, which means not hurting ourselves with turnovers and sometimes not trying to do too much. It’s a kind of smart, patient style of play.” Manning’s words probably could have been echoed by many of his Giants predecessors at quarterback, from Simms to Conerly. Giants Coach Tom Coughlin, who was raised in upstate New York watching old-school Giants football, knew he was watching a modern equivalent of a familiar model. “It is a lot of hard work — stop the run, protect the ball,” he said. “We’ve battled our way back to 4-2.” While the Lions (1-5) were hardly the strongest measuring stick — they have lost 24 consecutive road games — the Giants have in the last three weeks turned their greatest weaknesses into strengths. The pass rush that had seemed lackluster is now a peril to every quarterback in its way. Detroit quarterback Shaun Hill was knocked down on nearly every pass play until late in the first half, when he left the game with a broken left arm. His backup, Drew Stanton, played well, but he also almost had to leave the game when he was slammed to the ground in the fourth quarter. The Giants’ safeties, who made up perhaps the weakest part of last season’s team and who appeared out of sync earlier this year, have since banded together as a perfect complement to the defensive front. Safeties Kenny Phillips, Deon Grant and Antrel Rolle combined for 23 tackles, and Rolle intercepted a pass late in the game to thwart Detroit’s last rally. When the Giants were 1-2, there was no player seemingly more out of sorts than running back Brandon Jacobs, who was unproductive and chafing at his second-string status. On Sunday, Jacobs blasted through for two short touchdowns and professed his happiness, even though the new starter Ahmad Bradshaw got the bulk of the carries (19) and rushing yards (133). “If I punch two into the end zone and we win,” Jacobs said, “I’m good with that.” An obvious part of the production by both Jacobs and Bradshaw was the Giants’ offensive line — also maligned three weeks ago. Center Shaun O’Hara returned from injury, and the unit played with aggression and cohesion. And finally, Manning, plagued by quirky turnovers in the opening games of the season, had a precise, deliberate game. He found an old target, connecting with Steve Smith six times, and moved the ball around to seven receivers. “Sometimes it’s about being willing to wait for the big plays to present themselves,” Manning said. “You can’t force it. You can’t try to score a touchdown on every play.” The one past problem that seemed to resurface for the Giants was the woes enveloping the rookie punter Matt Dodge, who dropped the ball attempting his first punt not once, but twice. That miscue led to an early 7-0 Lions lead, although Dodge did kick well for the rest of the game. Jacobs’s first touchdown tied the game, and Manning found an open Mario Manningham over the middle for a 33-yard touchdown in the second quarter. The Giants never relinquished the lead, even though the Lions cut the deficit to 4 early in the fourth quarter. But Grant forced and recovered a fumble that led to a spectacular, and increasingly typical, Bradshaw run. He made several cutbacks and changed speeds once or twice before being corralled 45 yards down the field . Jacobs’s second touchdown followed, restoring the Giants lead to double digits. Next up will be a Monday night game against the Dallas Cowboys on Oct. 25. Asked to assess the season, Coughlin wondered if he could have some things back and make the Giants record 6-0, then added: “But we’re not 6-0. We’re 4-2. We are controlling the things we can control, and let’s hope we keep it going.” Manning, a man of few words, had his own version. “Slow start,” he said. “More consistent now.” EXTRA POINTS In their new stadium, Tom Coughlin used to address reporters in a large glass-walled room that allowed certain fans to view, listen — and sometimes boo — as he made his postgame comments. On Sunday, for the first time, Coughlin talked to the news media in a small windowless room across the hall from the team’s locker room. The Giants said they would soon construct a new room for postgame news conferences, one away from the glass-lined setting. “I like the close quarters,” Coughlin said with a smile when asked of the switch. “It’s family like.”

Football;New York Giants;Detroit Lions