Lawmakers in Venezuela Approve Expanded Power for Chávez

Abstract: CARACAS, Venezuela , Nov. 2 — The National Assembly approved a constitutional overhaul on Friday that would enhance President Hugo Chávez ’s authority, allowing him to be re-elected indefinitely and giving him the power to handpick rulers, to be called vice presidents, for various new regions to be created in the country. The 69 amendments still need to be approved by voters in a Dec. 2 referendum before they take effect. Tensions ahead of that vote are increasing; protesters clashed with the police on downtown streets here this week and capital flight is accelerating. The currency, the bolívar, touched a low value of 6,800 to the dollar on Friday in unregulated trading, compared with the official rate of 2,150. In addition to potentially strengthening Mr. Chávez’s grip on power, the measures approved by lawmakers on Friday have heightened economic uncertainty. The new amendments would facilitate expropriations of private property. Managers at private companies are also alarmed about a proposed reduction in the workday, from eight hours to six. “Venezuelan democracy was buried today,” said José Manuel González, the president of Fedecamaras, Venezuela’s main business association. Still, some political analysts here say the changes proposed by Mr. Chávez would not significantly alter political life in the country. Followers of the president, after all, already control the legislature, the Supreme Court, the federal bureaucracy, the oil industry, every state-owned company and nearly every state government. Mr. Chávez, moreover, has carried out nationalizations of foreign companies with ease this year. The new Constitution would end the central bank’s autonomy, but that institution effectively stopped being independent some time ago. The breadth of Mr. Chávez’s proposed Constitution, however, has given pause to human rights groups. One measure creates new rules for declaring states of emergency, allowing security forces to round up citizens without legal protections. Mr. Chávez’s supporters hailed the National Assembly’s vote as a step toward creating a socialist society. Just a handful of the body’s 167 lawmakers declined to approve the amendments, reflecting the president’s support in the legislature, which has drawn scorn here for its hesitance to engage in debate with the president’s critics. But the vote also reflects a bumbling political opposition, which boycotted assembly elections in late 2004, ceding their space to Mr. Chávez’s followers in what might be the country’s most important forum for discussion. Even today, members of the opposition are divided as to whether they should vote or abstain in the referendum. As rising oil prices strengthen Mr. Chávez’s ability to give subsidies to the poor, even opponents of the new Constitution see it winning approval. With an air of resignation, Roman Catholic leaders here called the changes “morally unacceptable.” With his customary flourish, Mr. Chávez accused the bishops of forgetting their principles. “If Christ was alive, was here physically,” the president said this week, “he would drive them away with the crack of a whip.”

Venezuela
Constitutions
Chavez Hugo
Demonstrations and Riots


New Push Is Made to Free an American While Iran Is at the Negotiating Table

Abstract: Advocates for a former Marine imprisoned in Tehran more than two years ago are seeking to use a diplomatic window created by the temporary nuclear agreement with Iran to gain his release. In a letter to President Obama released on Wednesday, four top former American defense and security officials urged “immediate action” to expedite the release of the Marine, Amir Hekmati, who has been held in Evin Prison with no publicly disclosed charges against him. “Mr. Hekmati has committed no crime,” read the letter, signed by William S. Cohen, a former secretary of defense; Gen. Peter Pace, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. James L. Jones, a former national security adviser; and Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, a former allied commander in Europe. They wrote that Mr. Hekmati had “conducted his life with unyielding honor and courage.” The letter followed the official start on Monday of a six-month accord between Iran and world powers in the protracted dispute over the country’s nuclear energy program, which the Iranians insist is peaceful despite widespread suspicions that it is a cover for developing a nuclear weapons capability. Under the temporary agreement, Iran halted most uranium enrichment in exchange for limited relief from Western sanctions. The accord was intended to allow diplomats time to negotiate a permanent solution to the dispute, one of the biggest obstacles to improvement in an Iranian-American relationship fraught with decades of mutual hostility. “As Iran and the United States attempt a formal accord in the next six months, now is the perfect time for the release of Mr. Hekmati,” the letter reads. “Freeing him is indeed in both nations’ best interests.” Mr. Hekmati, 30, an American of Iranian descent from Flint, Mich., was taken into custody while on a visit to see his maternal grandmother and other relatives in 2011. He was accused of espionage, tried and sentenced to death , but the verdict was overturned and a new trial was ordered in March 2012. That trial has never happened, and the Iranian judiciary has never explained why he remains incarcerated. His family has repeatedly said Mr. Hekmati is innocent and has pleaded for his release so he can return home while his father, stricken with brain cancer, is alive. Dan Kildee, Mr. Hekmati’s Democratic congressional representative, who has made the effort to free him a priority, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that the letter was part of a broader effort to raise attention to the plight of Mr. Hekmati, whose lack of access to legal counsel in Iran has illustrated what critics call its harsh and blatantly arbitrary justice system. The United Nations Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has said Mr. Hekmati has been deprived of his rights. Timeline on Iran’s Nuclear Program Whether Iran is racing toward nuclear weapon capabilities is one of the most contentious foreign-policy issues challenging the West. “This letter is another important statement that there are people across the country who feel strongly about this,” Mr. Kildee said. Mr. Hekmati is one of two, and possibly three, Americans in Iranian custody. The others are Saeed Abedini , a pastor who was sentenced in January 2013 to an eight-year prison term, accused of unlawfully creating a network of Christian churches in private Iranian homes, and Robert A. Levinson , an American intelligence operative and retired F.B.I. agent who has been missing for seven years. American officials have said privately they believe that Mr. Levinson is in the custody of a group tied to Iranian religious leaders. Iran’s government has maintained it knows nothing of his whereabouts or fate. American officials have also said that the imprisonment of United States citizens in Iran is among the issues that have been raised in the negotiations over the nuclear dispute, which are expected to resume in the coming weeks. Iran has given no indication that it is prepared to release Mr. Hekmati, although his Iranian relatives have been allowed to visit him in prison. There has been a modest increase in optimism about the Hekmati case since the election last year of President Hassan Rouhani, considered a relative moderate whose overtures helped create the basis for the nuclear diplomacy. Mr. Rouhani has said he wants to end Iran’s isolation and ease the severe restraints on personal freedoms that shaped the tenure of his conservative predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Nonetheless, human rights activists and other critics of Iran say Mr. Rouhani’s government has done little, so far, to change Iran’s reputation for judicial abuses and heavy punishment of criminals and dissidents. In Geneva on Wednesday, United Nations human rights experts reported a surge in Iranian executions this year, with 40 people hanged in the first two weeks of January, 33 of them in the past week. “We are dismayed at the continued application of the death penalty with alarming frequency by the authorities, despite repeated calls for Iran to establish a moratorium on executions,” said Ahmed Shaheed , the special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, and Christof Heyns , the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Iran is second only to China in the application of capital punishment, and most Iranian executions are of drug offenders. Although there has been much discussion on possible changes to Iran’s penal code since Mr. Rouhani took office, Mr. Shaheed said, “it looks as if his pledges of reform have fallen on deaf ears in Iran.”

Iran
Prison
Nuclear weapon
Sanctions
US Foreign Policy
Amir Mirzaei Hekmati
US Marines
US Military
Spying and Intelligence Agencies


Milt Campbell, Olympic Decathlon Champion, Dies at 78

Abstract: Milt Campbell, an outstanding all-around athlete who was the first African-American to become an Olympic decathlon champion, died on Friday at his home in Gainesville, Ga. He was 78. The cause was prostate cancer, said his companion, Linda Rusch. Campbell, who won the decathlon at the 1956 Summer Olympics and had also played football professionally, sometimes expressed frustration that he was less well known than the four other Americans who became Olympic decathlon champions from 1948 to 1976: Bob Mathias (twice), Rafer Johnson, Bill Toomey and Bruce Jenner. Each of those four was acclaimed the world’s greatest athlete and received endorsement contracts and acting roles. Mathias became a five-term congressman, Johnson a confidant of the Kennedy family. Campbell, in contrast, remained relatively unknown. “I’ve probably been the greatest athlete this country has ever seen,” he said, immodestly but perhaps not inaccurately, in a 1980 interview with The New York Times. And yet, he added, he had not been invited to appear at a recent televised tennis tournament that featured Toomey, Johnson and others billed as “America’s greatest athletes.” “I guess I sound angry about it,” he said. “I think I have a right to be. I’ve paid my dues, but the advertising and commercial worlds don’t call me.” There are various explanations for Campbell’s relative lack of glory after his victory at the 1956 Melbourne Games. One is that the Olympics were not televised as extensively as they would later be. Another is that he spent a large part of his career playing football in Canada. Yet another is that he alienated some people with his outspokenness about racial discrimination. Campbell, who stood 6 feet 3 inches and weighed about 220 pounds, spent 1957 in the National Football League with the Cleveland Browns. He was a backup to his fellow rookie running back Jim Brown, who would go on to become one of professional football’s most celebrated players. Just before the opening game in 1958, he later recalled, he was called in to the office of Paul Brown, the team’s coach, who wanted to know why Campbell had just married a white woman. Campbell said he told Brown that was not the coach’s business. The Browns cut Campbell the next day. He went to Canada, where he played pro football with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, the Montreal Alouettes and the Toronto Argonauts until 1964. Before that, at Plainfield High School in New Jersey, Campbell was world class in track and a champion swimmer. At Indiana University, where his career was interrupted by Navy service, he starred in track and football. He also excelled in tennis, bowling, judo, karate and wrestling. The Olympic filmmaker Bud Greenspan once said, “Campbell was, to me, the greatest athlete who ever lived.” Campbell’s first decathlon came in 1952 in the United States Olympic trials. He finished fifth in the hurdles but made the team in the decathlon. (Later in his career, Campbell returned to the hurdles, setting world records in the indoor 60-yard high hurdles and the outdoor 120 high hurdles in 1957.) His second decathlon came weeks later: while still in high school, he finished second to Mathias in the Helsinki Olympics. In 1956, two days before Campbell’s Melbourne competition began, he was visited by Johnson, his teammate and the Olympic favorite. As Campbell recalled for The Star-Ledger of Newark in 2011: “Rafer sat on the bed and said, ‘So how do you think this is going to turn out?’ And I just said: ‘This is a bad year for you to show up. Because this could be your two best days, but I’m still going to walk away with it.’ And Rafer looked at me like I had hit him with a bat.” Campbell’s prediction was correct. He won that gold medal and set an Olympic record of 7,937 points for the 10 events. Johnson won the silver medal that year; without Campbell as competition, he won the gold in 1960. Milton Gray Campbell was born on Dec. 9, 1933, in Plainfield. When race riots broke out in Newark in 1967, he returned from Canada, where he had been living and working, to help quell the tension in New Jersey. In 1968, he co-founded a community center and an alternative school there. He later became a motivational speaker, with failure in business as his own motivation. “When I lost all my money in the meat-trucking business in 1976,” he told The Times in 1980, “I realized that I understood about success and failure. I realized that it had nothing to do with anyone else, only me.” Campbell’s marriage of 25 years ended in divorce. In addition to Ms. Rusch, he is survived by a daughter, Julie Campbell; two sons, Justin and Milton III; a granddaughter; a great-grandson; and a sister, Sandra Smith. His son Milton Jr. died in 1987. Campbell was elected to the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1989 and the United States Olympic Hall of Fame in 1992 . In his 2011 Star-Ledger interview, Campbell recalled a conversation he had with his high school track coach when he was 14. “He asked me what I wanted to be. I told him, ‘The best athlete in Plainfield.’ Then it became ‘the best in New Jersey,’ and ‘the best in America,’ and ‘the best in the world.’ ” He became, he said, “determined to be the greatest.”

Decathlon
Football
Campbell Milt
Olympic Games
Deaths (Obituaries)
Blacks


Supreme Court Rules Against Worker Pay for Screenings in Amazon Warehouse Case

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled unanimously that a temp agency was not required to pay workers at Amazon warehouses for the time they spent waiting to go through a security screening at the end of the day. The workers say the process, meant to prevent theft, can take as long as 25 minutes. Justice Clarence Thomas , writing for the court, said the screenings were not “integral and indispensable” to the workers’ jobs, which involved retrieving products from warehouse shelves and packaging them for delivery to Amazon’s customers. That meant, he said, that no extra pay was required. The decision was a big loss for workers challenging the security checks, which are common among retailers. According to a brief filed by the agency, there have been 13 class-action lawsuits against Amazon and other companies involving more than 400,000 plaintiffs and seeking hundreds of millions of dollars. The case that the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday turned on the meaning of a 1947 law, the Portal-to-Portal Act , which says that companies need not pay for “preliminary” or “postliminary” activities, meaning ones that take place before and after the workday proper. The Supreme Court interpreted the law in 1956 in Steiner v. Mitchell to require pay only for tasks that are an “integral and indispensable part of the principal activities for which covered workmen are employed.” The case decided Tuesday was brought by Jesse Busk, who worked in a Las Vegas warehouse, and Laurie Castro, who worked at one in Fenley, Nev. They sued Integrity Staffing Solutions, the temp agency, seeking to represent a class of workers and to be paid for the time it took to remove their wallets, keys and belts and to pass through metal detectors. The plaintiffs said the screenings would not have taken long had the agency added more security screeners or staggered the ends of work shifts. In practice, they said, the waits approached half an hour. Amazon has disputed that assertion. In a statement in October, when the case was argued, an Amazon spokeswoman said “employees walk through postshift security screening with little or no wait.” The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, had allowed the case to proceed , saying the screenings were for the company’s benefit and were a necessary part of the workers’ jobs. That was enough, the appeals court said, to make the screenings “integral and indispensable.” Image Jesse Busk, who worked in an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, helped start the case that the court decided on Tuesday. Credit Isaac Brekken for The New York Times Justice Thomas disagreed, saying the appeals court had “erred by focusing on whether an employer required a particular activity.” The right test, he said, was whether the activity “is tied to the productive work that the employee is employed to perform.” Justice Thomas said Tuesday’s ruling was required by the 1947 law, which was a reaction to Supreme Court decisions that had required pay for a broad range of work-related activities and gave rise to “a flood of litigation” seeking nearly $6 billion. Congress responded by tightening the standards, saying the alternative would have been the “financial ruin of many employers.” Since then, Justice Thomas said, the court has required pay for activities that were “an intrinsic element of the job” and could not be skipped. Under that test, battery-plant workers had to be paid for the time spent showering and changing clothes because the materials they worked with were toxic. And meatpackers had to be paid for the time it took to sharpen their knives because dull knives would slow production. Security screenings are different, Justice Thomas wrote. “Integrity Staffing could have eliminated the screenings altogether,” he wrote, “without impairing the employees’ ability to complete their work.” Justice Thomas noted that the Obama administration had sided with the temp agency, adding that the administration’s position was consistent with a 1951 letter from the Labor Department that did not require pay for screenings at a rocket-powder plant. Workers there were screened for matches and lighters on the way in and to prevent theft on the way out. Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined the court’s opinion but added a concurrence to stress its limited scope. Activities related to worker safety and efficiency remained covered, she said. But in the warehouse case, she wrote, “employees could skip the screenings altogether without the safety or effectiveness of their principal activities being substantially impaired.” She added that, as its name suggests, the Portal-to-Portal Act was “primarily concerned with defining the beginning and end of the workday.” “The searches were part of the process by which the employees egressed their place of work, akin to checking in and out and waiting in line to do so,” she wrote, adding that those were activities that Congress clearly meant to make noncompensable. Justice Elena Kagan joined Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence in the case, Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk, No. 13-433.

Amazon
Clarence Thomas
Jobs
San Francisco
Supreme Court,SCOTUS
Wages and salaries


Libya Rebel Leader to Visit China in Setback to Qaddafi

Abstract: BEIJING — The chairman of the Libyan opposition’s executive board, Mahmoud Jibril, will visit Beijing for talks on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced on Monday, in the latest sign that China is hedging its bet on the survival of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi ’s government in Tripoli. The Chinese government has criticized NATO’s air campaign in Libya as excessive and called for a cease-fire, although China abstained instead of exercising its veto when the United Nations Security Council voted in March to authorize the NATO action. China has a record of insisting on international respect for the sovereignty of all countries, including pariah governments in Zimbabwe, Sudan, Myanmar and North Korea, all of which are trading partners for China. The Chinese government has long resented foreign criticism of its own human rights record, particularly the Tiananmen Square military crackdown in 1989, and generally opposes criticism of what other countries do within their borders as well. Chinese official news media have produced a steady drumbeat of reports from Tripoli that give prominence to the government’s claims that NATO warplanes have hit many civilian targets in the city. Other foreign reporters in Tripoli have been skeptical of many of the claims, pointing to signs that some of the damage may have been caused by the Libyan’s own ordnance. Chen Xiaodong, the director general of the West Asian and North African Affairs Department of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, had said on June 9 that China would welcome a visit by Libyan opposition envoys, while China’s ambassador to Qatar, Zhang Zhiliang, met another opposition leader in Doha on June 2.

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


Man Found on Q Train; Probably Died Hours Earlier

Abstract: A 64-year-old man was found dead during the morning rush yesterday inside a subway train, the authorities said, and had apparently been riding for more than six hours before anyone noticed. The man, whom the police identified as Eugene M. Reilly of Midwood, Brooklyn, was a mail handler who had worked for the Postal Service for 35 years. Mr. Reilly's body was found in the last car of a northbound Q train near the 14th Street-Union Square station at 7:11 a.m., according to New York City Transit. The passengers were let off, the police and emergency medical workers were called, and the train was moved to Times Square at 7:28 a.m. while the authorities investigated. Northbound N and Q trains were rerouted to the local track, slowing those lines and also the R and W lines, which use the same track. At 9:40 a.m., the Q train in which Mr. Reilly had been found was moved to an unused track north of 57th Street, and normal service resumed. If Mr. Reilly boarded a Brooklyn-bound Q train at 34th Street at 1 a.m. after going straight to the station from work, as was his routine, he could have traveled back and forth on the line six times before someone realized he had died, according to the published schedule for the subway line. It takes 50 to 54 minutes for the Q to travel between its northern terminus, at 57th Street and Seventh Avenue, and its southern terminus, at Stillwell Avenue-Coney Island. The police said there was no sign of trauma or foul play. An autopsy is scheduled for today. Mr. Reilly was overweight and had had heart bypass surgery about a decade ago, said his wife, Patricia Reilly. Mr. Reilly worked on weekdays, from 4 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., at the Morgan Processing and Distribution Center, a huge mail center on Ninth Avenue between 28th and 30th Streets, a Postal Service spokeswoman said. His wife said he always went straight home from work. The ride on the Q train from 34th Street in Manhattan to Kings Highway in Brooklyn usually takes 35 minutes. Mrs. Reilly said in a telephone interview that she did not usually wake up when her husband came home. When she awoke about 7 a.m. to prepare for work and noticed his absence, she said, she panicked and called several hospitals. In the afternoon, she identified her husband's body at Bellevue Hospital Center. "I didn't even get to say goodbye to him," she said. Mr. Reilly grew up in Canarsie, Brooklyn. He served in the Army from 1963 to 1965 and was a military policeman in Vietnam, his wife said. He is survived by two daughters, 21 and 20, and a son, 16. Yosef Y. Zaklikowski, who lived next door to the Reillys until November, described Mr. Reilly as quiet and private. "He kept his property very clean," Mr. Zaklikowski said. Compared with deaths on the tracks, deaths inside subways and on buses are quite rare. In June 1999, Ignacio Mendez, 36, a migrant farm worker from Ecuador, was found dead on a No. 1 train on the Upper West Side during the morning rush. His body was not identified for three days.

SUBWAYS
NEW YORK CITY
REILLY EUGENE M
TRANSIT SYSTEMS


How Privacy Vanishes Online, a Bit at a Time

Abstract: If a stranger came up to you on the street, would you give him your name, Social Security number and e-mail address? Probably not. Yet people often dole out all kinds of personal information on the Internet that allows such identifying data to be deduced. Services like Facebook , Twitter and Flickr are oceans of personal minutiae — birthday greetings sent and received, school and work gossip, photos of family vacations, and movies watched. Computer scientists and policy experts say that such seemingly innocuous bits of self-revelation can increasingly be collected and reassembled by computers to help create a picture of a person’s identity, sometimes down to the Social Security number. “Technology has rendered the conventional definition of personally identifiable information obsolete,” said Maneesha Mithal, associate director of the Federal Trade Commission’s privacy division. “You can find out who an individual is without it.” In a class project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that received some attention last year, Carter Jernigan and Behram Mistree analyzed more than 4,000 Facebook profiles of students, including links to friends who said they were gay. The pair was able to predict, with 78 percent accuracy, whether a profile belonged to a gay male. So far, this type of powerful data mining, which relies on sophisticated statistical correlations, is mostly in the realm of university researchers, not identity thieves and marketers. But the F.T.C. is worried that rules to protect privacy have not kept up with technology. The agency is convening on Wednesday the third of three workshops on the issue. Its concerns are hardly far-fetched. Last fall, Netflix awarded $1 million to a team of statisticians and computer scientists who won a three-year contest to analyze the movie rental history of 500,000 subscribers and improve the predictive accuracy of Netflix’s recommendation software by at least 10 percent. On Friday, Netflix said that it was shelving plans for a second contest — bowing to privacy concerns raised by the F.T.C. and a private litigant. In 2008, a pair of researchers at the University of Texas showed that the customer data released for that first contest, despite being stripped of names and other direct identifying information, could often be “de-anonymized” by statistically analyzing an individual’s distinctive pattern of movie ratings and recommendations. In social networks, people can increase their defenses against identification by adopting tight privacy controls on information in personal profiles. Yet an individual’s actions, researchers say, are rarely enough to protect privacy in the interconnected world of the Internet. You may not disclose personal information, but your online friends and colleagues may do it for you, referring to your school or employer, gender, location and interests. Patterns of social communication, researchers say, are revealing. “Personal privacy is no longer an individual thing,” said Harold Abelson, the computer science professor at M.I.T. “In today’s online world, what your mother told you is true, only more so: people really can judge you by your friends.” Collected together, the pool of information about each individual can form a distinctive “social signature,” researchers say. The power of computers to identify people from social patterns alone was demonstrated last year in a study by the same pair of researchers that cracked Netflix’s anonymous database: Vitaly Shmatikov, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Texas, and Arvind Narayanan, now a researcher at Stanford University . By examining correlations between various online accounts, the scientists showed that they could identify more than 30 percent of the users of both Twitter, the microblogging service, and Flickr, an online photo-sharing service, even though the accounts had been stripped of identifying information like account names and e-mail addresses. “When you link these large data sets together, a small slice of our behavior and the structure of our social networks can be identifying,” Mr. Shmatikov said. Even more unnerving to privacy advocates is the work of two researchers from Carnegie Mellon University . In a paper published last year , Alessandro Acquisti and Ralph Gross reported that they could accurately predict the full, nine-digit Social Security numbers for 8.5 percent of the people born in the United States between 1989 and 2003 — nearly five million individuals. Social Security numbers are prized by identity thieves because they are used both as identifiers and to authenticate banking, credit card and other transactions. The Carnegie Mellon researchers used publicly available information from many sources, including profiles on social networks, to narrow their search for two pieces of data crucial to identifying people — birthdates and city or state of birth. That helped them figure out the first three digits of each Social Security number, which the government had assigned by location. The remaining six digits had been assigned through methods the government didn’t disclose, although they were related to when the person applied for the number. The researchers used projections about those applications as well as other public data, like the Social Security numbers of dead people, and then ran repeated cycles of statistical correlation and inference to partly re-engineer the government’s number-assignment system. To be sure, the work by Mr. Acquisti and Mr. Gross suggests a potential, not actual, risk. But unpublished research by them explores how criminals could use similar techniques for large-scale identity-theft schemes. More generally, privacy advocates worry that the new frontiers of data collection, brokering and mining, are largely unregulated. They fear “online redlining,” where products and services are offered to some consumers and not others based on statistical inferences and predictions about individuals and their behavior. The F.T.C. and Congress are weighing steps like tighter industry requirements and the creation of a “do not track” list, similar to the federal “do not call” list, to stop online monitoring. But Jon Kleinberg, a professor of computer science at Cornell University who studies social networks, is skeptical that rules will have much impact. His advice: “When you’re doing stuff online, you should behave as if you’re doing it in public — because increasingly, it is.”

Privacy
Computers and the Internet
Identity theft


Flyers’ Victory Ends Penguins’ Winning Streak at 12

Abstract: Scott Hartnell’s power-play goal broke a 2-2 tie midway through the third period, and the host Philadelphia Flyers ended the Pittsburgh Penguins ’ 12-game winning streak with a 3-2 victory Tuesday night. The Penguins, who fell a point behind the Flyers atop the Atlantic Division, had not lost since a 3-2 overtime defeat to the Rangers in Pittsburgh on Nov. 15. A playoff atmosphere pervaded the sellout crowd of 19,824. “It doesn’t matter how many you win — losing is not where you want to be,” Penguins Coach Dan Bylsma said. “We’re disappointed in the first period in particular. Philadelphia dictated the pace.” Pittsburgh center Evgeni Malkin returned after missing four games with a knee injury and scored his 9th and 10th goals. Sidney Crosby assisted on both those goals, extending his point streak to 19 games. Crosby has 20 goals and 18 assists in matching his career-long streak from Oct. 6 to Nov. 17, 2007. In the third period, less than a minute after Malkin was called for interference, a wrist shot by Chris Pronger from just outside the face-off circle was deflected by Hartnell over Marc-Andre Fleury’s shoulder. “I parked myself in front of the net and I was able to get my stick on it,” Hartnell said. Claude Giroux and Nikolay Zherdev also scored for the Flyers, who have won five of six games. MAPLE LEAFS 4, OILERS 1 Kris Versteeg had a goal and an assist as Toronto won the first of three games on a trip through Western Canada. Dion Phaneuf, Mikhail Grabovski and Phil Kessel also scored for the Leafs, who have won two in a row and four of their past six. Toronto moved into a three-way tie for 10th in the Eastern Conference with Buffalo and Carolina. Jordan Eberle scored for Edmonton, which has lost three of four and remains in last place in the West. DEVILS WAIVE ROLSTON The Devils, who have lost five straight, placed the veteran left wing Brian Rolston on waivers. If he is not claimed by noon Wednesday, the Devils can assign him to their American Hockey League affiliate in Albany or keep him on the roster for Wednesday night’s game against Phoenix. The Devils would get no salary-cap relief in sending the 37-year-old Rolston to the minors. He was older than 35 when he signed his contract, so his $5 million salary will count against the Devils’ cap whether he plays for them or heads to the minors. His salary would come off the cap only if another team claimed him, and that seems unlikely.

Philadelphia Flyers
Pittsburgh Penguins
Hockey Ice
National Hockey League
Hartnell Scott
Malkin Evgeni
Crosby Sidney
Rolston Brian
McDonald Andy


Elections Could Shift Power in Nassau

Abstract: THE balance of power in the Nassau County Legislature is at stake in the elections on Tuesday. The Democrats hold a 10-9 majority in the Legislature, but that could easily change. In an election year of local races only, which political experts predict will bring a turnout of 25 to 30 percent, both the Democrats and the Republicans have been stepping up their efforts to get their voters to the polls. Because the county executive, Thomas R. Suozzi, is a Democrat, if the majority in the Legislature were to change, it would probably mean political gridlock, said Lawrence C. Levy, executive director of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University. “This would be a good or bad thing, depending on which side you’re on,” he said. In an election expected to have a low turnout, getting the Independent line is a key, Mr. Levy said. He referred to three races: the 3rd, 13th and 18th Districts, where John J. Ciotti (Republican), Norma L. Gonsalves (Republican) and Diane Yatauro (Democrat), respectively, have also won spots on the Independent ticket. “If the Republicans win back the Legislature, it will be either because they did a better job at turning out voters or that there is more energy behind the issues of immigrant licensing and tax assessments,” Mr. Levy said. “They may call it a rejection of Tom Suozzi, but I don’t believe that’s the case.” There are several races to watch. In the 14th District, where the Republicans have a 3-2 edge in registration, the G.O.P. candidate, Joseph Belesi, a retired Nassau County police sergeant from Farmingdale, is challenging the incumbent, David L. Mejias, a Democrat from Massapequa, who is a close political ally of Mr. Suozzi. Joseph N. Mondello, the state and Nassau Republican Party chairman, said: “We expect it to be a very competitive race. We have a great candidate, have put up a lot of money and think the issues are connecting with Republican voters.” But the county’s Democratic chairman, Jay S. Jacobs, said that the Republicans were focusing the race on freezing the property tax assessment for five years, which he said would violate a state court order that mandates an annual reassessment. “They know it’s a phony promise, but it’s selling, and giving us a difficult challenge to make a complicated rebuttal to a simple issue,” Mr. Jacobs said. In the Third District, the incumbent Republican, Mr. Ciotti, faces a rematch from 2005 against Ali Mirza, a special assistant to Mr. Suozzi. The district includes many newly registered Democrats, who do not have a history of turning out in off-year elections, said Mr. Jacobs, calling that a possible “saving grace” for Mr. Ciotti. But Mr. Mondello said of Mr. Ciotti, “He won the Conservative ticket as a write-in candidate, and while the Democrats have moved heaven and earth to beat him, they haven’t been able to, and won’t again.” In the 18th District, in Glen Cove, the Democratic incumbent, Ms. Yatauro, faces the Republican Elizabeth Faughnan, and in the 7th District in the Five Towns, Howard Kopel, a Republican, is challenging the incumbent Democrat, Jeffrey Toback. There is one open seat, in the 10th District, where Lisanne G. Altmann, a Democrat, decided not to run again. Judi Bosworth is the Democratic candidate; her Republican opponent is Harry Demell. In the Fourth District, Denise Ford is running unopposed on all party lines.

Long Island (NY)
Politics and Government


Tea Party, Its Clout Diminished, Turns to Narrower Issues

Abstract: The Tea Party might not be over, but it is increasingly clear that the election last month significantly weakened the once-surging movement, which nearly captured control of the Republican Party through a potent combination of populism and fury. Leading Congressional Republicans, though they remain far apart from President Obama , have embraced raising tax revenues in budget negotiations, repudiating a central tenet of the Tea Party. Even more telling, Tea Party activists in the middle of the country are skirting the fiscal showdown in Congress and turning to narrower issues, raising questions about whether the movement still represents a citizen groundswell to which attention must be paid. Grass-roots leaders said this month that after losing any chance of repealing the national health care law , they would press states to “nullify” or ignore it. They also plan to focus on a two-decade-old United Nations resolution that they call a plot against property rights, and on “fraud” by local election boards that, some believe, let the Democrats steal the November vote. But unlike the broader, galvanizing issues of health care and the size of the federal government that ignited the Tea Party, the new topics seem likely to bolster critics who portray the movement as a distraction to the Republican Party. “People in positions of responsibility within the Republican Party tolerated too much of this,” said Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party. He blamed a backlash against “tinfoil hat” issues pushed by the Tea Party-dominated legislature in New Hampshire for the loss of a Republican majority in the State House last month and a near loss in the State Senate. Republican leaders “looked the other way too often,” he said. “They sort of smiled, winked and nodded too often, when they should have been calling ‘crazy, crazy.’ ” The movement is not going away — most Republicans in the House have more to fear from primary challengers on their right than from Democratic challengers. An unpopular budget deal could reignite the Tea Party, as the antitax crusader Grover Norquist predicts. But surveys of voters leaving the polls last month showed that support for the Tea Party had dropped precipitously from 2010, when a wave of recession-fueled anger over bailouts, federal spending and the health care overhaul won the Republicans a majority in the House. The House members elected with Tea Party backing in 2010 forced onto the national agenda their goals of deep cuts to spending and changes to entitlement programs, embodied by the budget blueprints of Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, who became Mitt Romney’s running mate. And some of those lawmakers led the revolt last week that prompted Speaker John A. Boehner to cancel a House vote on a plan to avert a year-end fiscal crisis by raising tax rates on household income above $1 million. “The Tea Party put a lot of steel in the spine of the Republican Party,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma. But the Tea Party activists have not been front and center in the fiscal fight. And Mr. Cole added that Tea Party leaders now excoriating Mr. Boehner for offering higher taxes in a budget deal did not recognize political reality. “These guys want instant success,” said Mr. Cole, a member of the House Republican leadership. “If they want to see a better result, they’ve got to help us win the United States Senate. We’ve thrown away some seats out of political immaturity.” But a number of Republican leaders said the Tea Party seemed headed toward becoming just another political faction, not a broad movement. It may rally purists, but it will continue to alienate realists and centrists, they said. “I think the Tea Party movement is to the Republicans in 2013 what the McGovernites were to the Democrats in 1971 and 1972,” said Don Gaetz, a Republican who is the president of the Florida Senate. “They will cost Republicans seats in Congress and in state legislatures. But they will also help Republicans win seats.” Because the Tea Party comprises thousands of local groups, it is impossible to determine whether its ranks shrank after the many electoral defeats last month, which activists said caused grief and deep frustration. Greg Cummings, the leader of the We the People Tea Party in rural Decatur County, Iowa, said his group had picked up 12 members since the election, for a total of about 50. “If you were in a fight and someone gave you a good left hook, it doesn’t mean the fight is over,” he said. But Everett Wilkinson, the chairman of the Florida Tea Party in Palm Beach County, said the number of active Tea Party groups statewide “has diminished significantly in the last year or so, certainly in the last couple of months,” with only a third of what there once was. “A lot of people gave their heart and soul to trying to get Obama out; they’re frustrated,” he added. “They don’t know what to do. They got involved with the electoral process, and that didn’t work out.” FreedomWorks, a national group that has played a crucial role in organizing Tea Party activists and backing insurgent candidates, has been riven by turmoil, leading to the departure last month of its chairman, Dick Armey, a former Republican majority leader in the House. Mr. Armey said in news accounts that he questioned the ethical behavior of senior officials in the group, though others told of a power struggle. He was eased out with an $8 million consulting contract, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. FreedomWorks spent nearly $40 million on the 2012 elections but backed a string of losing Senate candidates, including Richard E. Mourdock of Indiana, Josh Mandel of Ohio and Connie Mack of Florida. Some Tea Party firebrands lost their House seats, including Allen B. West of Florida and Joe Walsh of Illinois. One notable success for the Tea Party was the Senate victory by Ted Cruz of Texas. Mr. Cummings, who is the Midwest coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, a national group, said a major issue he would be focusing on now was Agenda 21, a United Nations resolution that encourages sustainable development. It has no force of law in the United States, but a passionate element of the Tea Party sees it as a plot against American property rights. Billie Tucker, an activist with the First Coast Tea Party in Florida, said she and others suspected that corruption on local election boards had led to Mr. Obama’s victory in the state. Activists want to investigate. “Some people say it’s just a conspiracy theory, but there’s rumbling all around,” she said. “There’s all kinds of data, and no one’s talking about it, including, hello, the mainstream media.” Another issue boiling is the “nullification” of the Affordable Care Act. Angry that Mr. Obama’s re-election means that the health care law will not be repealed, some activists claim that states can deny the authority of the federal government and refuse to carry it out. At a Florida State Senate meeting this month, two dozen Tea Party activists called the law “tyrannical” and said the state had the right to nullify it. Mr. Gaetz, the Senate president, a conservative Republican, said in an interview that he, too, disagreed with the Supreme Court ruling that upheld the law. But he called nullification “kooky.” “We’re not a banana republic,” he said. It is “dangerous to the foundation of the republic when we pick and choose which laws we will obey.”

Republican Party
Tea Party Movement
FreedomWorks
Presidential Election of 2012
House of Representatives
Federal Budget (US)
Obama Barack


Leaders of N.B.A. Players Union in Power Struggle

Abstract: Five months after settling a damaging lockout, the N.B.A. players union is facing a more existential threat: an internal power struggle that has thrown the association into chaos. Derek Fisher, the elected president of the Players Association, is demanding a far-ranging audit of its finances, staffing and business practices — a move that is viewed as an assault on Billy Hunter , the union’s longtime executive director. The audit was rejected by the eight other players on the union’s executive committee, who in turn have asked Fisher to resign. Fisher is standing firm, leaving a vast rift that is consuming the union’s attention just as the N.B.A. is wrapping up a surprisingly successful regular season after the 149-day lockout. “I think the relationship has suffered seriously, suffered a severe injury,” Hunter, referring to himself and Fisher, said in an interview. “And the question is whether or not we’ve suffered irreparable damage. And it may very well be that that’s the case. “I’m sure he doesn’t trust me,” Hunter continued, adding, “I don’t want to be in a situation where I got to look over my back every five minutes.” The remarks were Hunter’s first since reports of union infighting surfaced last week, starting with a Yahoo Sports article that revealed Fisher’s push for a so-called business review . Fisher declined to comment for this article. He has been largely silent, other than issuing a statement in which he rejected the call for his resignation. Fisher, a 16-year veteran and five-time champion with the Los Angeles Lakers who is now with the Oklahoma City Thunder, has been the union president since 2006. Hunter has been the union’s executive director since 1996. In an hourlong interview Monday night at the union’s Harlem offices, Hunter was by turns relaxed, defiant, feisty and defensive. He alternately welcomed the audit and dismissed the need for it. He denied any role in the board’s vote of no-confidence in Fisher (“I had nothing to do with that”). Hunter also defended himself against charges of nepotism stemming from the union’s employment of his daughter and daughter-in-law, and of two outside firms that employ his son and another daughter. Each hiring was vetted and approved by the executive committee, he said. “Let me say this to you: My children are highly credentialed,” Hunter said. “In many instances, they’re being paid at or below the market.” Fisher has never raised the nepotism charge publicly and has generally remained mum on his motives for the audit. But Maurice Evans, a union vice president, provided some insight last week when he referred to nepotism and “misappropriation of funds” as issues that the committee had addressed with Hunter in response to Fisher’s concerns. “Billy answered those questions to our satisfaction,” Evans told reporters in Washington. Those remarks triggered a flurry of articles detailing the employment of Hunter’s children. ¶ Robyn Hunter, his daughter, is the union’s director of player benefits. ¶ Megan Inaba, his daughter-in-law, is the union’s director of special events and partnerships and a lawyer who was involved in the labor talks. ¶ Todd Hunter, who is married to Inaba, is a principal at Prim Capital, a Cleveland-based firm that provides financial-planning seminars for N.B.A. players. ¶ Alexis Hunter, another daughter, is special counsel at Steptoe & Johnson, a Washington law firm that handled the union’s unfair-labor-practice charge against the N.B.A. last year. She was among the lawyers who worked on the case. “There’s nothing illegal,” Hunter said, “and you’re not going to find anything illegal, you or anybody else, if that’s what you’re looking for. I’m not afraid of that.” Hunter explained in detail the qualifications of each relative and how each one came to be employed by the union. Prim — the firm that employs Todd Hunter — has been working with the union since the early 1990s and was originally retained by Charles Grantham, the union’s previous executive director. Todd Hunter has worked for Prim for 10 years, and has worked on the union account for the last four, Billy Hunter said. He said that Inaba joined the union’s staff in 2000 — six years before she married his son. Robyn, who holds an M.B.A. from Syracuse, worked for the Dallas Mavericks before joining the union staff in 2008. At Steptoe & Johnson, Alexis works for a partner, James Hibey, who has served as an outside counsel to the union, both with Steptoe and a previous firm, Howrey, where Alexis also worked. Hunter said the executive committee had not raised any concerns over the years, with one exception: Pat Garrity, then with the Orlando Magic, lodged the only vote against hiring Robyn. Hunter said the union had administrative “firewalls” to prevent any conflicts stemming from his relatives’ employment. “My kids have been vetted; the players have seen them,” Hunter said, adding, “They’re probably more competent than most of the people on my staff.” Roger Mason Jr., a union vice president, said that he was aware of the family connections but that “I never paid much mind to it, to be honest with you.” There is nothing illegal or perhaps even unethical about Hunter’s hiring family members, as long as he received approval from the executive committee, said John Coffee, a law professor at Columbia University, who specializes in corporate governance and white-collar crime. Still, Coffee called it “poor governance” and said, “I think this does deserve some attention.” Regarding the audit, Hunter said the union already submitted to annual financial audits and conducted a more thorough audit of its operations after each of the previous two labor deals, in 1999 and in 2005. “And every audit’s been clean,” he said. But the business review that Fisher is seeking would be more exhaustive, covering not only finances but staffing, procedures, the hiring of third-party vendors and even the union’s bylaws. Patton Boggs, a firm hired by Fisher, planned to begin its review April 16, but the executive committee voted that day to cease the effort. Hunter and other committee members say that Fisher did not receive proper authorization to hire the firm. But a quorum of the board — five members — voted unanimously during an April 13 conference call to proceed with the audit, according to the minutes of that meeting, a copy of which was distributed to all committee members and obtained by The New York Times. That day, Fisher sent an e-mail to all eight members confirming what they had decided. The other players on the April 13 call contend they did not approve anything, and they are distributing a memorandum with their version of events to the 30 player representatives. That memo asserts that Keyon Dooling left the call before a vote was taken, that Mason and Chris Paul abstained, and that James Jones voted only to appoint a subcommittee to review the matter. Hunter said he sent an e-mail to the committee stating that he would not oppose an audit, “But I urged them to investigate Derek’s motives.” Three days after the initial meeting, the board voted unanimously to kill the audit and asked Fisher to resign. “Nobody is saying it’s not right to audit,” Mason said. “Nobody is saying it’s not right to look at whatever Derek is charging Mr. Hunter with. What we’re saying is, there’s a certain way it has to be done.”

Finances
Nepotism
National Basketball Players Assn
Hunter Billy
Fisher Derek
Labor and Jobs
Hiring and Promotion
Basketball
Organized Labor


Undercover Video Targets Abortion Doctor

Abstract: An anti-abortion group released an undercover video on Wednesday showing what it says were offensive and inhumane remarks about abortions by one of the country’s most prominent abortion doctors. The release, by the activist group Live Action, is part of a new effort by abortion foes to portray clinics that perform later abortions, in the second or third trimester of pregnancy, as being riddled with illegal or cruel practices. They also assert that the grisly and illegal practices alleged at the trial of Dr. Kermit B. Gosnell in Philadelphia, which include evidence of unsterile tools and untrained workers and charges that he killed babies born live by snipping their spines, are typical more widely. The new video captures the doctor, LeRoy H. Carhart, using some imprudent phrases while discussing the process of a late-term abortion with women posing as patients. At one point he describes a fetus that has died after an injection in the womb as softening like “meat in a Crock-Pot.” But the video provides no evidence of illegal action or subpar medical techniques. Other medical experts as well as defenders of abortion rights said the comparison with Dr. Gosnell, who seemed to show blatant disregard for his patients and the law, was misleading and unfair. “Comparing an offensive and inappropriate comment to Gosnell’s horrific crimes is politics at its worst,” said Eric Ferrero, vice president of communications for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In the tape of two visits to a Nebraska clinic run by Dr. Carhart, dated Dec. 7 and March 28, a woman described as 22 weeks pregnant and another described as 26 weeks pregnant tell him that they want abortions, and they question him in detail about how it would be done. Both secretly taped the conversation and did not intend to have abortions. Dr. Carhart did not respond to a request on Wednesday for comment. Dr. Carhart is known for his widely reported vow to carry on the work of Dr. George R. Tiller, who performed late-term abortions in Kansas and was killed in 2009. In part to prevent Dr. Carhart from doing late-term abortions, Nebraska banned them after 22 weeks from a woman’s last menstrual period, with few exceptions. He has continued to practice in Nebraska, performing earlier abortions, but he also opened a clinic in Germantown, Md., where the rules for late-term abortions are less stringent. In the video, Dr. Carhart repeatedly emphasizes that he must abide by the law, telling both women that at their late stages, they would have to travel to Maryland for him to help them. He makes it clear that in the extremely unlikely event that a fetus emerges alive, the law requires trying to save it. He describes his procedure for second- and third-trimester abortions, which take two to four days and involve first giving an injection to kill the fetus, then dilating the cervix, trying to induce labor and, if that fails, pulling out the fetus “in pieces.” But in a few spots, Dr. Carhart seems to be trying to find simple metaphors, and uses language that his critics called grossly inappropriate and revealing. When asked what tools he uses to extract a fetus, he first tries to joke, saying, “A pickax, a drill bit,” but then becomes serious and says, “No ... there’s just instruments that have been developed.” “The abortion lobby claims that the Gosnell clinic is an outlier, but the footage released this morning by Live Action reveals once more that the abortion industry treats women and children as mere pieces of meat,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group. Tracy Weitz, a medical sociologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who viewed the video, said people should not be quick to pass judgment on a doctor based on a few phrases on a videotape. “Doctors struggle to find terminology to help a client understand what’s happening, and while it may seem wrong to us, it may be appropriate for that conversation,” she said. In the video, Dr. Weitz said, Dr. Carhart shows compassion for the women and concern for their medical safety. “That’s so different from what Dr. Gosnell is accused of,” she said. Dr. Carhart at one point counsels a woman that “it’s your life that’s going to be affected by this pregnancy and be affected by the termination.” “I mean, this baby is a part of you forever,” he says. The president of Live Action, Lila Rose, called Dr. Carhart a “grave threat to women and children,” citing the death in February of a 29-year-old patient who was having an abortion at later than 30 weeks, apparently because the fetus had severe deformities. The Maryland medical examiner said the woman had died of natural causes from a rare complication of delivery. The anti-abortion group Operation Rescue filed a complaint with the Maryland Board of Physicians, charging that Dr. Carhart had mismanaged the case and should lose his license. The board, according to a letter on Operation Rescue’s Web site , said it would undertake a preliminary inquiry to see if a full investigation was warranted. The board, reached Wednesday, said its activities were confidential.

Video
Abortion
Live Action
LeRoy H Carhart


Ruben Diaz Jr. Building Profile Beyond the Bronx

Abstract: As Ruben Diaz Jr. stepped onto a sidewalk in the South Bronx, his shiny black shoes the color of his air-conditioned Tahoe, a flock of violins began to play. Mr. Diaz, the Bronx borough president , beamed as rows of second-grade girls standing outside their charter school serenaded him during a recent visit. He stood just blocks from the housing project where he used to hang out in the courtyard in a neighborhood far more welcoming today than when Mr. Diaz would sweep glass off a basketball court as a youth. But while the Bronx is no longer the symbol of urban blight it was a generation ago, it remains mired in poverty. That is why Mr. Diaz is leading a campaign for legislation requiring that workers at all development projects receiving city subsidies be paid at least $10 an hour with benefits, well above the minimum wage. The bill , before the City Council, faces an uncertain fate — Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the real estate industry and business leaders all say it would scare off employers. But the battle, no matter the outcome, provides Mr. Diaz a high-profile platform to promote his political appeal and talents beyond the confines of the borough president’s office. And though he has been in power only since May 2009, Mr. Diaz is already being talked about in some political circles as a candidate for higher office, including as a potential mayoral candidate in 2013. Mr. Diaz has raised eyebrows by taking on Mr. Bloomberg and winning, helping to defeat a plan last year to turn the long-vacant Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx into a shopping mall because the mayor and the project’s developer refused to require all prospective employers to pay more than the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. “To the members of my union who are clamoring for attention by city government, Ruben Diaz Jr. is becoming a rock star,” said Stuart Appelbaum, who leads a powerful retailing workers’ union . City Hall may be a long way from the Grand Concourse, where Mr. Diaz has his office, but political analysts say Mr. Diaz’s record of advocating for low-income, minority communities, his largely progressive politics and his appetite for political scuffles make him someone to watch. “He’s handsome, he likes to campaign, he’s got a good field organization, and he’s smart,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a political consultant who worked on Mr. Diaz’s campaign for borough president. “He understands the streets, and he can raise money. It means he can run for anything he wants.” Mr. Diaz, 37, was predictably coy when asked about running for a citywide position. “Having ambition for higher office, it can’t be some self-fulfilling drive or ambition,” he said. “It has to come from the fact that you’ve done well.” With his hair always neatly trimmed, his mustache just so, and his demeanor unflappable, he exudes something of a feline swagger. On a recent whirlwind day, he visited a kindergarten class, spoke to an auditorium of middle-school students, danced with senior citizens and posed for countless photos — all before lunch. Mingling with constituents is required of all elected officials, but Mr. Diaz seems to relish it. Mr. Diaz, a Democrat, served 12 years in Albany as an assemblyman representing Hunts Point and Soundview before winning a special election for borough president last year. In New York’s political world, the office can seem like a distant outpost, a position more about ribbon-cuttings and proclamations than actual power. But Mr. Diaz has managed to use the office as a pulpit to draw attention to pet causes — and to himself. In April, he held a “green jobs” conference to discuss the viability of a local environmental conservation industry. In May, he hosted workshops and other meetings to address obesity in the borough and its ties to health and employment problems. Along the way, Mr. Diaz has attracted powerful opponents. Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said Mr. Diaz’s stance on the Kingsbridge Armory would hurt his political prospects in the long run, saying, “I think it’s going to be difficult for him to attract support from the business community if he’s going to be taking these types of positions.” Whatever Mr. Diaz’s aspirations, they will undoubtedly be complicated by his father, the Rev. Rubén Díaz, a well-known evangelical preacher and a Democratic state senator from the Bronx who revels in his reputation as a political troublemaker. The relationship between father and son is immensely complicated, their points of disagreement abundant. The son, who is often referred to as Rubencito, has worked to build bridges; the father is known for setting them on fire. The elder Mr. Díaz, with a reputation for fervent sermons and an impolitic tongue, is one of Albany’s most outspoken opponents of abortion and gay marriage. He once likened stem cell research to Hitler using “the ashes of the Jews to make bars of soap.” In a reversal of the usual history of political families, the younger Mr. Diaz won his first election, in 1996, for an Assembly seat, five years before his father won his first election, for the City Council. Since entering political life, the two have maintained a tricky balance that has kept them personally close — they recently got together to see Ruben Diaz III off to his high school prom — but politically distant. “I love my father,” Mr. Diaz said. “My father and I disagree on social and moral issues. He’s not going to change my stance. We have a split household.” His father said his son should be judged on his own merits. “It would be unfair and unjust for people to take it out on my son what they have against me,” said the father. Ruben Diaz Jr. grew up in politics, so steeped in it that he now ticks off the names of Bronx titans from generations past as if he were listing the Knicks’lineup. “Gilberto Gerena-Valentín, Louis Nine, Bobby Garcia, Ramón Velez,” he said while driving through the South Bronx. “This was their area.” He was 7 the first time his father ran for office, and he remembers licking envelopes, knocking on doors and pasting campaign posters on to street poles. “There were summers when we ate White Castle every night,” he said. “Campaigns are expensive.” He first won public office at a tender age. He was 23 when he took his seat in the Assembly in 1997, already married to his high school sweetheart and the father of two boys. In Albany, he focused on health and environmental issues — he cites asthma legislation and laws promoting green roofs among his biggest accomplishments. But it was his role as a spokesman for the family of Amadou Diallo, the man killed in a fusillade of police bullets in 1999 in the vestibule of an apartment building in Mr. Diaz’s district, that gained him widespread attention. At the time, some critics accused him of being too shrill, but he says he has always supported most police officers — his sister, after all, is a police sergeant. In Albany, he sat next to Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, one of the Legislature’s more experienced hands, and the two worked together on legislation. “He’s smart and he gives a damn,” Mr. Brodsky said. “When you start with those two things, you can acquire the rest of the skills, and that’s what he’s doing.”

Minimum Wage
City Councils
Elections
Diaz Ruben Jr
Politics and Government
South Bronx (NYC)


How's Business? Picking Up, With a Smile

Abstract: IT'S not just his flashy white-rimmed sunglasses, his sparkling dice earrings or the way he makes the sidewalks as neat as his crisp blue uniform. What makes Cortez Jackson stand out on this stretch of the Upper East Side is his I-just-won-the-lottery attitude toward a job many people take for granted. Mr. Jackson, a street cleaner, moves efficiently up the block, working his well-worn dustpan and broom across the gray sidewalk. He is focused, and his fluid movements hint at the athlete he once was. Despite the wind, he manages to dig out the cigarette butts from crevices, sweep them into the pan and transfer the unruly pile into his trash barrel on wheels. Every now and then, a familiar face greets him or a passer-by compliments his work, breaking his meditative spell. He responds with a wide smile and an easy laugh. "You would think that this is a menial job, but it's really not," said Mr. Jackson, 48, leaning over his matching blue barrel near 82nd Street and Second Avenue. For him, it is a path to redemption. Less than two years ago, he was in a cell at the Attica State Correctional Facility, reflecting on what had gone wrong with his life. After a knee injury in high school dashed hopes kindled by a basketball scholarship to the University of Florida, Mr. Jackson wound up dealing drugs on New York's streets in the 1970's. Addiction took over, and he lurched between prison terms and homelessness for almost 20 years. "I made a conscious decision that I need to get my life together," he said. In prison, he stopped using drugs and found out about Ready, Willing and Able, a program run by the Doe Fund that emphasizes self-sufficiency to homeless men and women, many who have histories of jail time and drug addiction. He owes his job to the charity. "As much dirt as I've done in New York City, it's about time I pick up a little," he said, now near the end of the nine-month program, which tries to instill self-respect and a sense of community. "It's more than a bunch of guys just sweeping the streets," Mr. Jackson said, halfway through a final inspection of his 10-block domain. "The feeling you get having this blue suit on, it's deep." A bus pulled away from a curb, blowing some papers on the sidewalk he had just cleaned. Without a hint of frustration, he went back to pick them up.


Small Investors Flee Stock Market Even as Companies Recover

Abstract: Renewed economic uncertainty is testing Americans’ generation-long love affair with the stock market. Investors withdrew a staggering $33.12 billion from domestic stock market mutual funds in the first seven months of this year, according to the Investment Company Institute, the mutual fund industry trade group. Now many are choosing investments they deem safer, like bonds. If that pace continues, more money will be pulled out of these mutual funds in 2010 than in any year since the 1980s, with the exception of 2008, when the global financial crisis peaked. Small investors are “losing their appetite for risk,” a Credit Suisse analyst, Doug Cliggott, said in a report to investors on Friday. One of the phenomena of the last several decades has been the rise of the individual investor. As Americans have become more responsible for their own retirement, they have poured money into stocks with such faith that half of the country’s households now own shares directly or through mutual funds, which are by far the most popular way Americans invest in stocks. So the turnabout is striking. So is the timing. After past recessions, ordinary investors have typically regained their enthusiasm for stocks, hoping to profit as the economy recovered. This time, even as corporate earnings have improved, Americans have become more guarded with their investments. “At this stage in the economic cycle, $10 to $20 billion would normally be flowing into domestic equity funds” rather than the billions that are flowing out, said Brian K. Reid, chief economist of the investment institute. He added, “This is very unusual.” The notion that stocks tend to be safe and profitable investments over time seems to have been dented in much the same way that a decline in home values and in job stability the last few years has altered Americans’ sense of financial security. It may take many years before it is clear whether this becomes a long-term shift in psychology. After technology and dot-com shares crashed in the early 2000s, for example, investors were quick to re-enter the stock market. Yet bigger economic calamities like the Great Depression affected people’s attitudes toward money for decades. For now, though, mixed economic data is presenting a picture of an economy that is recovering feebly from recession . “For a lot of ordinary people, the economic recovery does not feel real,” said Loren Fox, a senior analyst at Strategic Insight, a New York research and data firm. “People are not going to rush toward the stock market on a sustained basis until they feel more confident of employment growth and the sustainability of the economic recovery.” One investor who has restructured his portfolio is Gary Olsen, 51, from Dallas. Over the past four years, he has adjusted the proportion of his investments from 65 percent equities and 35 percent bonds so that the $1.1 million he has invested is now evenly balanced. He had worked as a portfolio liquidity manager for the local Federal Home Loan Bank and retired four years ago. “Like everyone, I lost” during the recent market declines, he said. “I needed to have a more conservative allocation.” To be sure, a lot of money is still flowing into the stock market from small investors, pension funds and other big institutional investors. But ordinary investors are reallocating their 401(k) retirement plans, according to Hewitt Associates, a consulting firm that tracks pension plans. Until two years ago, 70 percent of the money in 401(k) accounts it tracks was invested in stock funds; that proportion fell to 49 percent by the start of 2009 as people rebalanced their portfolios toward bond investments following the financial crisis in the fall of 2008. It is now back at 57 percent, but almost all of that can be attributed to the rising price of stocks in recent years. People are still staying with bonds. Another force at work is the aging of the baby-boomer generation. As they approach retirement, Americans are shifting some of their investments away from stocks to provide regular guaranteed income for the years when they are no longer working. And the flight from stocks may also be driven by households that are no longer able to tap into home equity for cash and may simply need the money to pay for ordinary expenses. On Friday, Fidelity Investments reported that a record number of people took so-called hardship withdrawals from their retirement accounts in the second quarter. These are early withdrawals intended to pay for needs like medical expenses. According to the Investment Company Institute, which surveys 4,000 households annually, the appetite for stock market risk among American investors of all ages has been declining steadily since it peaked around 2001, and the change is most pronounced in the under-35 age group. For a few months at the start of this year, things were looking up for stock market investing. Optimistic about growth, investors were again putting their money into stocks. In March and April, when the stock market rose 8 percent, $8.1 billion flowed into domestic stock mutual funds. But then came a grim reassessment of America’s economic prospects as unemployment remained stubbornly high and private sector job growth refused to take off. Investors’ nerves were also frayed by the “flash crash” on May 6, when the Dow Jones industrial index fell 600 points in a matter of minutes. The authorities still do not know why. Investors pulled $19.1 billion from domestic equity funds in May, the largest outflow since the height of the financial crisis in October 2008. Over all, investors pulled $151.4 billion out of stock market mutual funds in 2008. But at that time the market was tanking in shocking fashion. The surprise this time around is that Americans are withdrawing money even when share prices are rallying. The stock market rose 7 percent last month as corporate profits began rebounding, but even that increase was not enough to tempt ordinary investors. Instead, they withdrew $14.67 billion from domestic stock market mutual funds in July, according to the investment institute’s estimates, the third straight month of withdrawals. A big beneficiary has been bond funds, which offer regular fixed interest payments. As investors pulled billions out of stocks, they plowed $185.31 billion into bond mutual funds in the first seven months of this year, and total bond fund investments for the year are on track to approach the record set in 2009. Charles Biderman, chief executive of TrimTabs, a funds researcher, said it was no wonder people were putting their money in bonds given the dismal performance of equities over the past decade. The Dow Jones industrial average started the decade around 11,500 but closed on Friday at 10,213. “People have lost a lot of money over the last 10 years in the stock market, while there has been a bull market in bonds,” he said. “In the financial markets, there is one truism: flow follows performance.” Ross Williams, 59, a community consultant from Grand Rapids, Minn., began to take profits from his stock funds when the market started to recover last year and invested the money in short-term bonds, afraid that stocks would again drop. “We have a very volatile market, so we should be in bonds in case it goes down again,” he said. “If the market is moving up, I realized we should be taking this money and putting it into something more safe rather than leaving it at risk.”

Mutual Funds
Stocks and Bonds
United States Economy
Personal Finances


Commuter Cycling in New York Stays Flat in 2012

Abstract: After years of growth in bike ridership, commuter cycling in New York remained flat in 2012 during the typical riding season, according to counts conducted by the city at six commuter locations last year. From April through October, an average of 18,717 people were recorded , at the locations on weekdays from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., down slightly from 18,846 in 2011. Over the three previous years, cycling had increased by 26 percent, 13 percent and 8 percent in the same period. But the city’s Transportation Department pointed to the bike ridership from December of last year through February, when the figures suggest an increase of 23 percent over the previous year, as evidence that cycling in the city had continued to grow. “It’s just a different kind of growth,” Ryan Russo, the department’s assistant commissioner for traffic management, said in a phone interview on Thursday. Amid the Bloomberg administration’s aggressive expansion of bike lanes, the question of how many cyclists use the infrastructure has remained at the center of the mayor’s transportation legacy. In the past, the cyclist counts have often been released in the fall, and are relied upon to demonstrate growing demand for a robust bike network. Seth Solomonow, a spokesman for the Transportation Department, said Hurricane Sandy had contributed in delaying the 2012 figures’ release. The report was published online on Monday, he said, though the department did not announce its release publicly. In a statement, Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s transportation commissioner, lauded cycling as “four-season transportation” and noted that “more and more New Yorkers are building bikes into their everyday routines.” Officials suggested that with the introduction of a bike share program, scheduled for the coming months, the figures were likely to increase again this year. The city also noted that the counting locations — the Staten Island Ferry, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, the Williamsburg Bridge, the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge and the Hudson River Greenway at 50th Street — did not include many newly built bike passages where ridership had increased. But even among some advocates, the stalled momentum during the traditional riding season appeared to signal a change. “The fabulous increase in cycling in the past half-dozen years has leveled off,” said Charles Komanoff, a transportation economist and longtime cycling advocate. “To some extent, the D.O.T. has done or is doing everything it can do.” Expanding cycling, he said, was now largely incumbent on the Police Department, which has faced persistent criticism from advocates over its inconsistent enforcement of traffic laws.

Commuting
Biking
NYC Transportation Dept
NYC


Hernandez’s Apartment Is Searched by Police

Abstract: A police search of a secret $1,200-a-month apartment in Franklin, Mass., rented by the former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez turned up ammunition and clothing that the police believe could be evidence in the murder case against him, according to documents at Wrentham District Court. The police said they learned of the apartment from Carlos Ortiz, who prosecutors say was with Hernandez the night he is suspected of arranging the shooting of Odin Lloyd.

Hernandez
Patriots
Aaron
Murders
Odin Lloyd
Massachusetts
Football


Texas: Prosecutors in Sniper’s Death Rest

Abstract: Prosecutors rested their case Tuesday in the trial of a Marine veteran charged with killing the “American Sniper” author Chris Kyle and another man. The defendant, Eddie Ray Routh, is accused of killing Mr. Kyle, a former member of the Navy SEALs, and Mr. Kyle’s friend Chad Littlefield at a rural shooting range in February 2013.

Texas
American Sniper
Chris Kyle
Eddie Ray Routh
Chad Littlefield
Murders and Homicides


Getting on Base a Lot Helps a Team Only So Much

Abstract: Every batter approaches the game differently, but in the end, a solid goal for every at-bat is not to make an out. In August, no one in baseball has been better at not making outs than Mets first baseman Ike Davis. He reached base in eight consecutive plate appearances over the course of his last two games before striking out in the ninth inning Sunday, and entered Monday leading the major leagues for the month with an unimaginable .706 on-base percentage. To say that this turn of events is unexpected would be an understatement. In the first half of this season, Davis had gone from being one of the team’s building blocks — a young, homegrown power hitter who had rebounded from some tough times in 2012 — to a punch line who was sent down to the minor leagues to find his swing, if that was even possible. The prodigal son has returned, and although there are signs that his hot streak might be a mirage, the Mets must be happy to have anything positive to say about him. When Davis returned from his 25-day stint with Class AAA Las Vegas on July 5, he predicted that a change in his approach would shake up his season, and he was right. “It’ll be noticed,” Davis told reporters. “Obviously, it’s not like I’m standing on my head. It’s going to look remotely close, but there are just little things that we changed.” Since his promotion, Davis’s batting average had climbed 44 points (to .205 from .161) through Sunday, and his on-base percentage had increased 83 points (to .325 from .242). He had reached base safely in each of his previous 12 starts. His ability to draw walks, once a strength of his game, one that disappeared last season, has returned: through Sunday, his 14 walks since Aug. 1 were second in the majors to Los Angeles Angels outfielder Mike Trout. He has even turned on a little speed, stealing three bases in 31 games, tying his career high. But two things the Mets should be concerned about are his lack of home runs — he has one in 110 plate appearances since returning from Las Vegas after averaging one in every 23 plate appearances in his first three seasons — and his batting average on balls in play, which has been an unsustainable .414. Through Sunday, his B.A.B.I.P. in August was a ridiculous .667. When luck starts to even out on the balls he puts into play, Davis’s batting average is very likely to take a hit. For now, Davis can hardly be blamed for a cautious approach that is getting him on base. At some point, however, the Mets will need him to trade in some of that patience and placement for good, old-fashioned home runs. When he does, if he does, they will have a player who would again seem to be a part of their future, a status he does not quite have at the moment.


Santa? Don’t Be Silly. But Still ...

Abstract: MY husband, Frank, and I had been waiting for The Question for a few years already, and while our son Sean may have thought of it a year or two before he finally asked it, he did not bring it up until he was nearly 10. “Some kids at school say it just can’t be true,” Sean said one evening in early December. “I mean, the whole world in one night, in a sleigh, with reindeer — that’s just unbelievable. Right, Mom?” Sean waited for me to answer. I swung my head around the corner to be sure his 6-year-old brother, Paul, was still playing a computer game, earphones on. I knew I had to say something. Yet I was pricked with sadness that my first-born was already too old for childish pleasures. I also recalled with chagrin that this was, after all, what I had lobbied for years ago when Frank and I had discussed — heatedly — whether to spin the Santa tale for our children: Total honesty at all times, I had naïvely declared. Frank called me a Scrooge, I relented and Santa moved in. Now, I took a breath — and hedged, in the most modernist parenting-speak. “Well, Sean, what do you think?” I asked, willing Frank to come through the door from work early, hoping the soup might boil over and need attention. “I get what I want every year, and once there was ash all over the living room carpet from the fireplace,” Sean began. “And lots of strange things do go on in the world — right, Ma?” “Yes, lots of things are not easily explained,” I agreed emphatically as Paul charged in, asking what was for dinner. Sean went silent and gave me a knowing look that made me wonder if he had already thrown in with the children at school. Two weeks went by, and the subject did not come up again. The stockings went up. We saw Santa at Willowbrook Mall in New Jersey, and greeted Santa when he came around our Cedar Grove streets on the fire truck as usual, but even Paul understood that these were “Santa-helpers,” not the real thing. “Santa is way too busy at the North Pole in December,” he explained to a younger cousin. Paul wanted a Lego train set. Sean was counting on a weather station. And both were rabidly overinvested in getting the Arkansas state quarter to complete their commemorative quarter map for that year. In the four years that special state quarters had been issued, we had never had any trouble snaring the newly released coins every few months. But not Arkansas. I had asked everyone I knew to study their change, pestered my local bank and even called my mother in coin-rich Las Vegas to be on the lookout, but no luck. I promised myself that if it did not show up by the 15th, I would have to pay that questionable Web site I had found the full $1.25 for the quarter, plus $5.50 for shipping. Sean took to giving me wise, sideways glances whenever Paul talked about Santa, as if he and I were members of some secret club. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell Paul,” he whispered one day. I kept silent. A formless sorrow descended, yet at the same time, an equally puffy pride, as Sean suddenly seemed to add another reason to be, in his little brother’s eyes, right up there with the moon and Spiderman. “Let’s go to William Street,” Frank suggested one evening. Ever since Frank and I had been children ourselves, the family on William Street in nearby Little Falls had annually transformed their suburban home into a holiday paradise. The oversize double garage was propped open to reveal a vista of crisscrossing trains and miniature villages, battery-powered figures, animatronic reindeer, artificial snow scenes, robotic elves, snowmen, polar bears and cable cars. Colored lights of every size and from every decade adorned the house, and the lawn was covered with life-size plastic lighted figures. In the glassed-in side porch, an enormous tree and boughs of pine glinted with sparkly lights. Inside the garage, on a velvet armchair, at precisely 7:30 each evening, a traditionally clad Santa welcomed children onto his lap. “He’s the only one that really is the real Santa,” Paul said as we drove over. “He looks exactly right, and I know he’s not one of the helpers — right, Dad?” Frank nodded gravely. “He’s the real deal.” Sean gave me a smirk. Paul was first to take a turn in Santa’s lap, snagging a candy cane, and then looked expectantly at his older brother. “It’s your turn, Sean,” he said. “Come on, hurry.” Sean grinned, gave a slight shake of the head, and then sat down. Reluctantly? “Well, son, what are you hoping for this year?” “I want the Arkansas state quarter,” Sean challenged, arms crossed, jaw set. Santa looked at me, eyebrows raised. I held out my hands, palms up, shrugged and shook my head slightly. “Arkansas you say?” “Yeah, we have all the others,” Sean explained. “Arkansas is impossible to get.” Santa gently pushed Sean off his lap, gestured for us to wait and mounted three steps from winter wonderland to suburban kitchen. He returned seconds later, hand behind his back. “Tell me, son, do you believe in me?” he asked Sean, and before he even got an answer, he was handing Sean something small and silvery. “The Arkansas quarter! Wow, is it for me?” “Of course it’s for you. Already had it set aside, son.” Santa winked at me, and Sean stared at his palm. “Paul, look, the Arkansas quarter. Can you believe it?” Sean asked. “Sure, he’s Santa,” Paul said solemnly. Sean put the quarter under the tree, and on Christmas Day, he showed it to each newly arrived relative, relating his Santa story. “Sure are lots of strange things in the world — right, Mom?” he said at bedtime. I agreed. “More than you know.”


Unmet Vows Tied to Ebb of a Truce in Nigeria

Abstract: DAKAR, Senegal — A militant group’s announcement that it was ending a cease-fire in Nigeria is linked to the government’s failure to keep promises to the oil -producing region, analysts and activists said Sunday. Despite pledges of retraining for thousands of militants and development aid for the impoverished Niger Delta region, little has been done since the government announced an amnesty program for militants in August, they said. The militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, warned that it would resume attacks on oil company pipelines and personnel, a threat analysts said was credible. On Sunday, Royal Dutch Shell announced that a crude oil pipeline in the delta had been sabotaged the day before. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. “It is a quite predictable but unfortunate development,” said Ledum Mitee, president of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, an activist group in the region. “There has been a growing frustration as to a lack of any discernible program. No attempt has been made to deal with the fundamentals.” Thousands of fighters from MEND and other militant groups ostensibly laid down their weapons last fall in return for cash payments from the government. But now, analysts said, there is a risk they will return to the 43,000-square-mile region, from which as much as 12 percent of United States crude oil comes, to continue crippling attacks on the oil industry. The analysts put much of the blame on the prolonged absence of President Umaru Yar’Adua, who is being treated in Saudi Arabia for a heart ailment and has been gone since late November. “The amnesty agenda of the federal government is neither here nor there,” said Anyakwee Nsirimovu, executive director of the Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in the delta’s main city, Port Harcourt, and a former member of a special government committee set up to study the region’s problems. “Since the departure of the president, nothing has happened. No progress has been made.” Bestman Nnwoka, a member of the presidential amnesty panel, said the program was “still being worked out” when the president left the country. “We are faced now with the absence of the president, which has delayed implementation,” he said. He called for MEND and other militant groups to “be a little more patient.” “Any resumption of hostilities would be uncalled for and may prejudice other attempts on resolving militancy in the region,” he said. Attacks on oil company facilities and kidnappings of workers have been going on for years in the restive region; MEND is one of the newer groups, and it is unclear how many militants it controls, or whether nonaffiliated groups are also considering resumption of attacks. Perhaps as many as 15,000 militants may never have disarmed at all. In a statement issued late on Friday, the group warned of more pipeline attacks, saying that if oil companies did not halt operations, “any operational installation attacked will be burnt to the ground.” The statement also chastised the government for doing too little for the region. “It is sufficiently clear at this point in time that the government of Nigeria has no intentions of considering the demands made by this group for the control of the resources and land of the Niger Delta,” it said. Last summer’s peace overtures by government and rebels aside, little has changed in the delta’s underlying conflict, activists in the region said in interviews on Sunday. “The so-called repentant militants, they can be tempted to go back to their former life because of the failure of the amnesty process,” said Patrick Naagbanton of the Center for Environment, Human Rights and Development, in Port Harcourt.


McCann’s Dramatic Homer Is Welcome Sight for Yankees

Abstract: Just before Brian McCann left the dugout for the on-deck circle in the 10th inning, he handed Brett Gardner his sleek red-and-white sunglasses. For good luck, Gardner promptly put them on and watched perhaps the best moment of the Yankees’ season through McCann’s lenses. And yes, they were actually rose-colored. McCann, signed during the off-season in part to hit home runs over the short right-field wall at Yankee Stadium, has not had the season he was hoping for. But on Sunday against the Chicago White Sox, he produced one of the signature hits of his career. The Yankees had blown a lead in the ninth inning, but in the 10th, with the team hoping to extend its winning streak to four games before a crucial trip, McCann came to the plate to pinch-hit for Francisco Cervelli with two outs. He worked the count full and then drilled a changeup from White Sox reliever Jake Petricka that was up in the strike zone and that cut back over the plate just enough. The ball sailed over that right-field wall, just inside the foul pole, for a three-run homer and a 7-4 Yankees victory. “A few days ago, I said that was our biggest win,” Gardner said. “But this is our biggest win.” McCann rounded the bases with as much vigor as he has had all season. He pumped his fist numerous times, tossed his batting helmet down in delight and then jumped into a pile of his teammates at home plate. As the celebration continued, Gardner came up behind him and doused him with a bucket of Gatorade. Then he took off the sunglasses and put them back on McCann’s face — although at that point nothing could shade the sparkle in McCann’s eyes. “That was so big, not only for the team but also for him,” Gardner said. “He hasn’t had the season that maybe he envisioned. But he hasn’t stopped working hard and never stopped playing hard and pulling for his teammates, so I know it was really special for him.” The home run was McCann’s 15th of the season — his first game-ending homer for the Yankees and the third of his career — and it helped the Yankees keep pace in the American League wild-card standings. Video The Yankees retired Joe Torre’s number in a ceremony at Yankee Stadium. The New York Times’s Tyler Kepner recently interviewed Torre about his long baseball career. Credit Credit Reuters “Rounding the bases, that was definitely a moment I’ll never forget,” McCann said. “I’ve been able to do some cool things in the game, and that ranks right up there at the top.” It was a buoyant way to finish a homestand that began with two miserable losses to the Houston Astros. Now the Yankees, who are three and a half games behind the Seattle Mariners for the second American League wild-card spot, play seven games on the road, mostly against playoff contenders. They travel to Kansas City for a game against the A.L. Central-leading Royals on Monday (a makeup for a rainout June 9) and then play three games at Detroit and Toronto. “It’s a good feeling going on the road,” Manager Joe Girardi said. “You’re going on a strange trip where you’re going into a city to play one day, but it’s a much better feeling when you’re leaving.” That good feeling did not arrive, though, until after David Robertson had blown his third save opportunity. He also had a loss on the homestand. The Yankees trailed, 3-0, against Chris Sale, the White Sox’ ace left-hander, who is particularly tough on left-handed hitters. That is why Girardi had only one left-handed batter — Ichiro Suzuki — in the starting lineup, with McCann, Gardner, Jacoby Ellsbury and Stephen Drew all left on the bench (although all but Gardner played). Suzuki, though, had two hits, including a two-out, two-run single off Sale in a four-run sixth that gave the Yankees the lead. They kept it until the ninth, when Avisail Garcia homered to left off Robertson. David Huff came in for the Yankees in the 10th. With runners on first and second and two outs, he struck out the rookie Jose Abreu, who has 33 home runs and 94 runs batted in. Huff acknowledged he was trying to pitch around Abreu, but he got the benefit of a called third strike. In the bottom of the 10th, Petricka struck out Martin Prado and Mark Teixeira, but Carlos Beltran hit a hustling double to the gap in left-center field. Petricka intentionally walked Chase Headley, and the next batter was McCann, his focus set and his eyes clear. “Pinch-hitting is not the easiest thing to do,” McCann said. “To lay off some tough pitches and get a pitch up in the zone with the game on the line was pretty special.” INSIDE PITCH Brett Gardner, who fouled a ball off his right ankle Saturday, was not available Sunday because of the injury, but he hoped to be able to play Monday at Kansas City. ... Masahiro Tanaka, who is trying to return from a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow, will pitch another simulated game Thursday in Detroit.

Yankees
Brian McCann
White Sox
Baseball
Ichiro Suzuki


Theater Adapts a Show for Families With Autistic Children

Abstract: When Lisa E. Cooney, director of education for the Paper Mill Playhouse , called a meeting last November to discuss the particulars of “Stone Soup and Other Stories,” a children’s show to be presented June 11, there was crying at the conference table. The attendees moved to tears were two Maplewood mothers who had contacted Paper Mill, in Millburn, last spring about adapting a show for autistic children, said Ms. Cooney, 45, of Woodbridge. “Just the idea that we were asking, ‘What can we do to help prepare your kids for this performance? How can we be helpful?’ meant so much to them that they got very emotional,” she said. “These are people who would love to bring their children out, but they hold back.” Together with Linda Meyer, executive director of Autism New Jersey, which is based in Robbinsville, Ms. Cooney held the meeting to piece together a program to encourage children on the autism spectrum, or with developmental disabilities, to go see live theater in a nonjudgmental environment. Challenges multiply for parents who receive a diagnosis of autism for their child. “Not only do you have to deal with the emotional stress, you become like a business manager,” said Ms. Meyer, 57, of Fair Lawn. “You have to make so many decisions about the various systems and agencies that will or will not support your child. For those parents, having Paper Mill listen to them and respond was just such a gift, because this is going to be an opportunity for them to come out and enjoy something with their entire families.” Such opportunities, Ms. Meyer said, were few and far between. She knew of no similar performances that had been held anywhere, she added. To meet the needs and quell the anxieties of up to 1,200 ticketholders, the Pushcart Players of Verona, which has collaborated with Paper Mill to put on the show, adjusted the script of its “Stone Soup,” which presents tales from around the world, to make it more literal. “Kids with autism don’t necessarily get sarcasm and innuendo, and they’re not great with body language,” Ms. Cooney said. The day before the show, Paper Mill will hold an open house called “Meet Your Seat” to help those uncomfortable in new environments get familiar with the theater. And during the matinee, the lights will be left halfway up, the volume in the theater will be lowered, and children will be free to leave their seats at any time under parental supervision. The show will be broken up into two 20-minute halves, with a 20-minute intermission. “We’re not going to shush people or put any restrictions on them that aren’t safety-related,” Ms. Cooney said. “Sensory-friendly” shows with the Pushcart Players have also been scheduled for October and for next April, despite the fact that ticket sales so far have not been robust, Ms. Meyer said. “But Paper Mill has made a commitment, and they’re going forward with these shows,” Ms. Meyer said. “I have to give them so much credit.” TAMMY LA GORCE

Theater
Paper Mill Playhouse
Autism
Art
Millburn (NJ)
Children and Youth


FIFA President Pledges $100 Million to Brazil

Abstract: Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA, soccer’s governing body, has responded to protesters criticizing the high cost of staging the World Cup in Brazil by pledging to give at least $100 million in profits back to the country. FIFA gave South Africa $100 million for development projects after the 2010 World Cup but had not said it would establish a similar “social fund” after the 2014 tournament to Brazil. The Confederations Cup, a World Cup warm-up event, has been marred by protesters denouncing the cost of hosting the World Cup — money some say should be going toward improving services.

FIFA
Sepp Blatter
Soccer
Confederations Cup