Sooners’ Charismatic Coach, Sherri Coale, Built a Winner From Scratch

Abstract: OKLAHOMA CITY — Sherri Coale was a coach at nearby Norman High School in March of 1990 when she got disturbing news about the University of Oklahoma . “Did you hear?” someone asked her in the teachers’ lounge. “They just dropped the OU women’s basketball program?” “No they didn’t” Coale replied. “Title IX, they can’t.” They could, at least for a week. At the time, Oklahoma averaged 65 fans a game, a good number for a pep band, but scarce for a basketball crowd. Seven days later, officials quickly reinstated the team, feeling gender-equity pressure from players and the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association. By 1996, though, the revived Sooners were again in decline. In the meantime, Coale had won two state titles at Norman High. So Oklahoma made the rare choice of hiring a high school coach to run a college team. Here in the oil patch, it hit a gusher in terms of success and popularity. Tuesday night, the Sooners (32-4) defeated Purdue, 74-68, reaching the Final Four for the second time in seven years. Oklahoma will face Louisville on Sunday in a national semifinal in St. Louis. Point guard Danielle Robinson led Oklahoma with 23 points worth of dragstrip basketball. But it was the 6-foot-4 center Courtney Paris, a four-time all-American, who rescued her cold-shooting teammates with 19 points, 13 rebounds, 6 blocked shots, 3 steals, 3 assists and a pounding insistence that left Purdue’s front line in foul trouble. No longer does Sooners basketball resemble the friends and family nature of a cellphone plan. Tuesday, Oklahoma was serenaded by a loud, faithful crowd of 11,529, which left Coale admiring beforehand and which forced Purdue (25-11) to use cards to signal its plays from the bench. Before each game on campus in Norman, located 20 miles south, a video of Coale appears on the scoreboard as she emerges from a Cadillac Escalade in her cascading blonde hair and Stella McCartney stiletto heels. “Welcome to the Show” says the headline on the Oklahoma media guide. Coale, now 44, is not dissimilar from her counterpart and friend at Connecticut, Geno Auriemma. Both are theatrical, impeccably coiffed and dressed, garrulous and superb at motivating players and teaching uptempo basketball. In fact, it was Auriemma, on a recruiting visit to Norman High in the mid-1990s, who inspired Coale by telling her, “Do you have any idea how good you are at what you do?” Later, he recommended her to Oklahoma. Her alma mater was Oklahoma Christian University, but the University of Oklahoma was a kind of secular religion for Coale’s family in her tiny hometown of Healdton. On Saturdays in the fall, every television and radio in the house was tuned to Oklahoma football. She held up her hand, raising her index finger, and said, “When they sang the fight song, you stopped in the house and sang the fight song, the whole deal.” She accepted the Oklahoma job in 1996 when she was eight months pregnant, then asked how much it would pay. A school official said, “How does 80 sound?” “Thousand dollars?” Coale replied. She was making $30,000 at the time; in fact she and her husband were not making $80,000 combined on their teaching and coaching salaries. Yes, she would accept that offer. Now Coale makes ten times that. One of her first visits was to see Roy Williams, then at Kansas, to discuss hiring a staff, recruiting and techniques of the fastbreak and the motion offense. Coale followed Williams around to a series of basketball camps one day, getting in and out of the car what seemed like 50 times, talking as they rode, filling a legal pad with notes. “We went to Wendy’s and had a cheeseburger,” Coale said. “In the drive-thru, I picked his brain.” Later, she watched the Chicago Bulls practice to see how Phil Jackson ran the triangle offense. Then she set out to build her own dynasty, except that she did not have Michael Jordan. Her first two teams at Oklahoma finished 5-22 and 8-19. But by 2002, Coale’s sixth season, the Sooners reached the national championship game, losing to UConn. “Confidence pours out of her,” said Stacey Dales, one of Coale’s early recruits. “Roy Williams did it with stars. Coach Coale took no stars and built a team.” Eventually, the stars arrived. Courtney Paris watched on television from the Bay Area as Oklahoma defeated an opponent, only to see Coale make a barbed remark about missed layups. “I want to play for that coach,” Paris told herself. She brought her twin sister, Ashley, to Oklahoma and this season became the first college player, male or female, to collect 2,500 career points and 2,000 rebounds. Paris’s father, Bubba, won three Super Bowl rings as a tackle for the San Francisco 49ers. Soon the Oklahoma roster became full of daughters whose fathers and mothers were accomplished athletes. It is mostly coincidence, Coale said. “The only commonality I find is they tend not to be so blown away by the stage, by the media attention,” Coale said. Neither does she. Even with a home crowd on Tuesday, though, the Sooners trailed by 27-22 at halftime on a night when they would shoot 23 for 61. The fans were friendly, but the rims were not. Coale remembered the halftime admonition of former Oklahoma football coach Barry Switzer, who used to say, “If you’re not careful you can convince your team you can’t win.” So Coale tried to lift her players, telling them to slow down, quit rushing their shots. Courtney Paris demanded the ball for the second half and she prevailed with her will and a desperate resilience. She kept grabbing rebounds, blocking shots, drawing fouls, making clever passes to her sister Ashley to nullify Purdue’s double teams. Whitney Hand, the freshman guard, found her touch with three shots from beyond the arc. Oklahoma took the lead and did not surrender it. “I’m a senior; I don’t get another chance,” Courtney Paris said. “You want to make sure you leave everything on the court, whether you’re struggling or not.” On senior day in early March, Paris guaranteed a national championship and vowed to repay the cost of her scholarship if the Sooners felt short. In her three previous seasons, the Sooners had never advanced beyond the Round of 16. Now, Oklahoma has reached the Final Four and a possible rematch of the 2002 title game with UConn. When the celebrating was done, Coale added a new accessory to her black pantsuit. She slipped a net around her neck.

University of Oklahoma
Women
Basketball
College Athletics


There Comes a Time to Sell

Abstract: FEW investments go up forever, so as tempting as it may be to stick with a big winner, fund managers sometimes conclude that enough is enough. After a five-year bull market, there are plenty of winners to choose from and several potential catalysts for selling: concerns about earnings as a result of slower economic growth or company-specific factors; extreme valuations; better opportunities elsewhere or a desire to lock in a profit and limit risk. High valuation, relative to prospective earnings growth, recently compelled Jim Huguet, president of the Great Companies asset management firm, to close out his position in the investment bank Goldman Sachs and sell a piece of his stake in Coach, the maker of luxury goods. Goldman has fallen a bit since he sold it in the mid-$220s, and Coach has dropped sharply. “We’re not selling because we don’t like them,” he said, emphasizing that he finds both companies to be well run and have strong brands. Instead he decided that the stocks were “getting pretty pricey and that it was time to take something off the table.” That sums up why John Buckingham, chief investment officer of Al Frank Asset Management, sold some of his shares of Apple last month for about $170 apiece. He bought the stock at about $7, giving his investors a huge gain and a lopsided portfolio weighting in the technology darling. “When you’ve got a gigantic profit, it makes sense to peel some off along the way,” he said. Trimming his holding also conformed to his sensibilities as a value manager. He still owns the stock and expects it to hit $200 at some point, but he noted that it trades at roughly 40 times earnings, “and that ain’t exactly value.” Mr. Buckingham also sold some of his shares in Deckers Outdoor, the footwear maker, and DryShips, an operator of cargo vessels, companies that “have gone crazy on the upside.” That description might also be apt for Chinese stocks. Hugh Young, head of equities for Aberdeen Asset Management and another value manager, has been selling into the steeply rising market after having invested in it long before it was fashionable. “We have been steadily taking profits from China, especially China Mobile and PetroChina,” he said. Mr. Young is proud of the fact that he invested in the oil company before Warren E. Buffett did more than four years ago. Aberdeen picked up shares for roughly one Hong Kong dollar; today they trade for about 20. (One Hong Kong dollar is worth about 12.8 cents) A less satisfied Tim Guinness, co-manager of the Guinness Atkinson Global Energy fund, called his disposal of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation “my most recent less brilliant sale.” It was up about 25 percent in 2007 when he sold it, then it rose a further 75 percent. His regrets are tempered by the stock’s high valuation, around 23 times earnings. Two more rewarding sales have involved Tesoro and Sunoco, independent refiners whose shares were bid up amid high spreads between prices of crude oil and the products refined from it. Since he sold in July, the stocks have been flat to lower, he said. THE opposite happened to Ken Lee, a fund manager at Rice Hall James & Associates, after he sold his stake in Dynamic Materials, a specialist in a process known as explosive welding for the energy industry (its ticker symbol is BOOM). He bought the stock in the high $20s and sold it in the mid-$40s, believing it had become too expensive. It then passed $50. While he does not regret his decision, he realizes that it was premature. Mr. Buckingham confessed to a small case of seller’s remorse over selling Apple and seeing it rise. Shedding a stock too early is an occupational hazard, he acknowledged, but the alternative can be even more damaging. “A mistake investors make is to hold on to winners for far too long,” he said. “The overall weight of the winners in your portfolio can put you in grave jeopardy of loss once the tide turns.”


JPMorgan Posts Profit in Quarter

Abstract: JPMorgan Chase reported a $702 million profit for its fourth quarter on Thursday, topping forecasts. The bank posted the profit despite recording more than $2.9 billion in losses in a range of corporate and consumer businesses, from trading to credit card and mortgage lending, as it confronted the worst housing and job markets in decades. The profit was well short of the $2.97 billion JPMorgan earned in the fourth quarter of 2007, but it surpassed analysts’ expectations of flat earnings, if not a loss. More important, it provided a stark contrast to the fortunes of its major banking rivals, Citigroup and Bank of America, both of which are mired in billions of dollars in additional losses. JPMorgan’s results were helped by a one-time $1.1 billion gain related to the firm’s acquisition of Washington Mutual last fall. Without that accounting benefit, JPMorgan said its profit of 7 cents a share would have been a loss of 28 cents a share. “Our fourth-quarter financial results were very disappointing,” Jamie Dimon, the chief executive, said in a statement. In a sign of how badly the economy has faltered, JPMorgan nearly tripled its reserves against potential loan losses, to $8.5 billion. And Mr. Dimon hinted that the bank may have to prepare for even more pain ahead. “If the economic environment deteriorates further, which is a distinct possibility,” he said, “it is reasonable to expect additional negative impact on our market-related businesses, continued higher loan losses and increases to our credit reserves.” Nearly all of JPMorgan’s businesses were battered by the markets, though none as badly as its investment bank. Losses tied to mortgage trading and to loans meant to finance private equity deals swelled to $2.9 billion. Consumer businesses, like credit cards and mortgage lending, also produced hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. Shares of JPMorgan fell 6 percent, or $1.57, to $24.34.

Morgan J P Chase & Co
Company Reports
Banks and Banking


Sears Plans Stock Buyback of $1.5 Billion

Abstract: The Sears Holdings Corporation, the biggest United States department store company, said yesterday that it planned to buy back $1.5 billion in stock. Sears also said second-quarter profit dropped as much as 42 percent, within analysts’ reduced forecasts, after it cut prices on seasonal clothing. The stock gained $7.45, or 5.6 percent, to $140.55. Sears has already spent $3 billion on stock since 2005. Sales have declined at both the Sears and Kmart stores since the company’s chairman, Edward S. Lampert, combined them in 2005. Mr. Lampert has said Sears may buy other companies and may pursue targets outside the retailing industry. “He hasn’t found anything yet that he wants to buy, so why not invest in his own company?” said Scott Rothbort, president of LakeView Asset Management in Millburn, N.J., which owns Sears shares. Second-quarter net income was $170 million to $185 million, or $1.13 to $1.23 a share, for the three months through Aug. 4. In July, Sears forecast $160 million to $200 million for the period, or $1.06 to $1.32 a share. Analysts had estimated profit of $2.07 a share. Profit included a gain of $9 million, or 6 cents a share, from bankruptcy-related settlements, insurance claims and investments, the company said yesterday. For the second quarter of last year, Sears had net income of $294 million, or $1.88 a share. Second-quarter sales at stores open at least a year fell 4.3 percent at Sears stores and 3.8 percent at Kmart. Sears said it planned to release more detailed second-quarter results on or before Aug. 30.

Sears Holdings
Retail Stores and Trade
Company Reports
Stocks and Bonds


For Husband of Slain Staten Island Woman, a Grim and Uncertain Odyssey

Abstract: For six desperate days, Steven D. Sierra crisscrossed the city of Istanbul, by foot and by car, in trains and on ferries, in search of his missing wife, a 33-year-old Staten Island woman who had never before been overseas. At times, his wife, Sarai Sierra, seemed hauntingly close, appearing briefly in snippets of surveillance footage gathered by Turkish authorities. He retraced her steps, scanning crowds in the hope of seeing her among them. “I was looking at the face of every individual I passed, hoping to see the face of my wife,” he recalled on Monday. “I was hoping for a miracle every day — I was praying for that.” It did not end as Mr. Sierra had hoped; on his sixth day abroad, his wife was found dead , her head bludgeoned. He was taken to a Turkish morgue, where he identified her body. He flew home the next day; other tasks awaited. There was a funeral to plan, and the worst duty of all still to be performed: telling their two children that their mother was gone. The last several weeks have amounted to an unlikely odyssey for Mr. Sierra, 40, a city bus driver from Staten Island who was suddenly cast 5,000 miles away, an American frantically trying to find his missing spouse in Turkey. She had been excited about her trip overseas, and remained set on going even when a friend backed out. Image Steven D. Sierra, left, who searched Istanbul for his wife, said he found the city to be overwhelming, with its sprawling size, bustling crowds and warrens of narrow streets. Credit Robert Stolarik for The New York Times “When it turned out to be just for her, you’re concerned for that, you’re scared for that,” he said. “But I wanted to support my wife; she was excited. You want to do that for your wife.” Photography had become her passion in recent months, and meet-ups with new acquaintances from the photo-sharing site Instagram had grown common. She told him that, during her stay, she would be traveling with men she had met through Instagram, he said. “Prior to my wife leaving, she already mentioned to me who she would be meeting and where she would be staying,” he said. Of the men she met in Turkey, including one identified by officials as Taylan K., Mr. Sierra said they were to be his wife’s tour guides. He last spoke to his wife on Jan. 19, he said. She called again using Skype the following day while he was out, but she reached their children, two boys, 9 and 11. The day after that, she did not show up for her return flight to New York. Almost immediately, Mr. Sierra began planning a trip to Turkey with her brother, David Jimenez, to find her. Like his wife, Mr. Sierra had never been abroad. He packed a single change of pants, in a small bag. The two men arrived on Jan. 28. Despite having grown up in New York, Mr. Sierra found Istanbul overwhelming, with its sprawling size, bustling crowds and warrens of narrow streets. Friends of Mr. Jimenez introduced them to “friends of friends,” who put them up during their stay, Mr. Sierra said. They had their first meeting at the American Consulate on Jan. 29, and later met with Turkish police officials. “They had a whole room dedicated to just looking at many hours of videotape,” he said. He visited the building where his wife had stayed, in a gritty part of the city, and spoke with the man who had rented a basement apartment to her. “He was very apologetic,” he remembered. “I could see it in his eyes that he was broken.” Mr. Sierra did not go inside. Image Sarai Sierra Credit David Martinez, via Associated Press Mr. Sierra found himself in places, like a picturesque Istanbul mall, that had appeared on his wife’s Instagram account; seemingly virtual scenes that he had never expected to visit in person. The experience, he said, was “surreal.” While holding out hope that his wife would turn up — perhaps in a hospital, incapacitated but alive — Mr. Sierra suspected that his frenetic search would not end happily. “Sarai is a very street-savvy person; if she was lost, she would have known what to do,” he said. “I was full of a lot of fear and I asked the Lord to put a peace in me.” One video had shown her eating at a downtown food court, and so Mr. Sierra, sleepless and increasingly frightened, went there. It was then that he received the call he had been dreading: a woman had been found dead that day, Feb. 2, and the Turkish police believed it was Sarai. “I started to panic,” he said. A second call came: the police had found her identification on the body. “They brought me to where she was brought, to identify her,” he said. For Mr. Sierra, the discovery led to painful thoughts — “a fear of what she encountered” — and questions that remain unanswered. News reports in Turkey have suggested that his wife may have had an affair with at least one man in Turkey, but Mr. Sierra said he had trusted his wife completely. “I’m not aware of what rumors are going around; I could care less — I know my wife,” he said. Shortly before his wife’s departure on Jan. 7, Mr. Sierra reposted a message about marriage and infidelity that first appeared on a Facebook page to his Instagram account . Mr. Sierra, who had met his wife met in a Pentecostal church on Staten Island, said the posting was not an indication of any marital problems in his own life. “I just put those up just to encourage other marriages,” he said. He acknowledged that “it may seem coincidental, as far as how people would see it,” but insisted that neither he nor his wife had been unfaithful in their 14 years of marriage. A funeral service is planned for Friday, at the church where the couple met. The circumstances of her disappearance and death remain shrouded in uncertainty. Mr. Sierra said that he last spoke to the authorities in Turkey on Friday, but they have not given him much information because “a lot of it they have not been able to confirm.” He did not elaborate, but expressed frustration that a suspect had yet to be found. “As far as her going from being missing to being murdered,” he said, “certain things are not adding up just yet.”

Staten Island
Istanbul
Sarai Sierra
Turkey
Murders
Steven D Sierra


Detective in Fatal Crash Had High Alcohol Level, Test Shows

Abstract: The New York City police detective who has been charged with killing a woman while driving drunk early Friday morning had a blood alcohol level more than double the legal limit, according to a law enforcement official. The disclosure about the blood alcohol level of the detective, Kevin C. Spellman, 42, a 22-year veteran of the Police Department, came on the same day that Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly announced that he had appointed a committee to look into expediting the process of getting warrants for blood from individuals who refuse breath tests after they have been arrested on suspicion of drunk driving. Detective Spellman, who was given a blood test five and a half hours after the crash, had a blood alcohol level of 0.21 percent, according to the law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to be identified discussing material related to a continuing investigation. Police officials acknowledged that the detective’s blood-alcohol level was most likely higher at the time of the accident, but because individuals metabolize alcohol at different rates, it is impossible to say precisely how much higher. The legal limit is 0.08 percent. The accident involving Detective Spellman was the second in five weeks that involved a New York City officer who, the police said, was driving drunk and refused to take a breath test. On Sept. 30, police officials acknowledged it took seven hours to get a warrant after an off-duty officer, Andrew Kelly , is said to have struck and killed a woman in Brooklyn who was trying to hail a cab after a wedding. When blood was drawn from Officer Kelly, tests showed he had no alcohol in his system. Detective Spellman and Officer Kelly each face a charge of second-degree vehicular manslaughter; the detective is also charged with criminally negligent homicide. At a news conference at Police Headquarters, Commissioner Kelly — who is not related to Andrew Kelly — addressed the criticism that it took too long to get the warrants, saying that the average time it takes to get such warrants is about seven hours. The commissioner said that he has asked the committee, which is made up of several high-ranking police officials and is being led by the department’s deputy commissioner of legal affairs, to examine a citywide policy under which officers cannot ask for a warrant until an individual has refused two breath tests. The committee, which is expected to report back to Commissioner Kelly by early next week, will also look into creating a campaign to remind officers of the dangers of drunken driving. “We are going to look at that process to see if it can be accelerated for all D.W.I. with serious injury arrests and that’s ongoing now,” the commissioner said. “We had our first committee meeting this morning and hopefully we’ll have some results in the near term.” Commissioner Kelly said on Monday that there had been no delays involving Officer Kelly and Detective Spellman, and expressed no displeasure with how such cases have been handled. The Supreme Court ruled in 1966 that authorities need only probable cause to take blood from an individual in a hospital setting. However, New York State law has an additional provision that requires the authorities to get a warrant to obtain blood. How long it takes for the police to contact prosecutors can dictate how quickly a warrant can be issued, according to law enforcement officials. In some instances, police call the prosecutors once a suspect refuses to take a breath test at the scene of the accident. But the police may also wait until after a suspect refuses a second breath test at a police precinct house before notifying the district attorney’s office. Prosecutors said that although several hours could elapse between an accident and the time a suspect’s blood is drawn, it should have no bearing on a criminal case. Prosecutors can have experts extrapolate what the level would have been at the time of the accident. Mark Dwyer, the chief assistant district attorney in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, said that prosecutors can also use the “observations of the arresting officer about the defendant’s appearance when he was arrested” and the testimony of bartenders and people drinking with suspects. In New York City, each county maintains a list of judges who are on call between 1 a.m. and 9 a.m., according to Kali Holloway, a spokeswoman for the Office of Court Administration. Prosecutors will sometimes meet with the police officer and gather the information necessary to draw up a warrant and then take that to the judge’s home to be signed, law enforcement officials said. But to save time, a telephone conference among the prosecutor, the judge and the police officer is often the preferred method, authorities said. But obtaining warrants for blood by phone can still take hours, said Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, because certain information still must be gathered. He said investigators must establish “that the suspect was driving, there was serious physical injury or death involved, the suspect was intoxicated, there was use of alcohol or drugs or both and that the suspect was under arrest.” In Mr. Spellman’s case, the judge wanted to speak directly with the doctor who treated the woman who was killed in the crash.

Police
Spellman Kevin C
Drunken and Reckless Driving
Kelly Raymond W
Accidents and Safety
Police Department (NYC)


In Red Hook, Brooklyn, a Nighttime Bike Race With No Brakes

Abstract: The old cobblestones on the Red Hook waterfront in Brooklyn have felt the weight of many kinds of vehicles, from wagons to tractor trailers to the snazzy cars and S.U.V.’s of the neighborhood’s newer residents. But as a soft drizzle fell on Saturday night, the stones felt something new — a clandestine bicycle race. From shortly after 11 p.m. until nearly midnight, about two dozen cyclists hurtled over the bumps and around the tight turns of several blocks near the East River while spectators cheered from sidewalks. The race, called the Red Hook Criterium, was organized by David August Trimble to celebrate his 26th birthday, which had been a few days earlier. Among the participants were art dealers, bike messengers, graduate students and at least one man who said he was happily unemployed. All were riding track bikes — fixed gear bicycles fit with narrow tires and aerodynamic frames for racing. And no brakes. Before the race, bicyclists arrived at Mr. Trimble’ s home on Dikeman Street, where they pinned numbers to their shirts. Mr. Trimble, a designer for an architectural firm, explained that he had conceived of the criterium — a contest usually run on a short course on city streets — to draw together divergent strains of racers. “It’s a combination of two different scenes,” he said. “It’s part road racing and part fixed-gear alley cat.” As in road races — like the Tour de France or the Giro d’Italia — contestants followed a set course, riding in packs nearly wheel to wheel. But they also benefited from skills usually honed in outlaw messenger races, called alley cats, in which participants speed along urban streets weaving around potholes, pedestrians and moving vehicles. Mr. Trimble spread the word to friends, and the race aroused attention in the blogosphere, where the setting appeared to elicit nearly as much interest as the contest itself. Bikeblognyc.com , for instance, described the criterium as “an unsanctioned race through a desolate, postindustrial part of Brooklyn.” Perhaps drawn by the visual prospects, several photographers showed up. And a filmmaker named Kalim Armstrong arrived with a nine-person crew and eight digital cameras, including one mounted on a bike helmet that he hoped would capture the vertiginous feeling of speeding through dark streets. About 11 p.m., the racers left Mr. Trimble’s home and assembled on Beard Street, where the cobblestones studded the surface of the road and tall shipyard cranes loomed on the horizon. Although the organizers had not sought official permission, there were several police officers on hand. They did not try to stop the race but warned the riders to avoid the parking lot of the Ikea store on Beard Street. The race began with a sharp whistle, starting the cyclists on the first of 16 laps around a three-quarter-mile course running in a rough rectangle along Columbia, Van Dyke and Richards Streets. They sped past the Erie Basin Auto Pound, where the police keep vehicles that are being held as evidence, and past hulking brick warehouses and wood frame residences. They passed stacks of marble slabs in a dirt lot surrounded by a fence topped with shiny barbed wire and a mural on a sheet metal wall that depicted an unplugged television. Car traffic was sparse and the race course was nearly silent except for the hiss of rubber wheels and occasional cries of encouragement from small groups of spectators, some of whom had gathered at a spot where Sigourney, Ostego and Van Dyke Streets formed a treacherous stretch that included two sharp, swerving turns. The race ended 30 minutes after it began, won by Neil Bezdek, a 24-year-old management consultant. Mr. Trimble finished second, about 30 seconds behind. Then riders and spectators adjourned to Mr. Trimble’s backyard, where they drank from a keg of beer as Mr. Bezdek was awarded several prizes, including a jar of homemade granola, a bottle of olive oil and a cobblestone from Beard Street, which he victoriously hoisted above his head while standing on a winner’s podium of stacked milk crates. Nearby, the third-place finisher, John Kniesly, 27, analyzed the course. “The cobbles got dicey,” he said. “A lot of slipping and a lot of near falls.” Mr. Armstrong, the filmmaker, said he was looking forward to viewing footage from the helmet cam. “It’ll be dark and grainy and there’s going to be rain on the lens,” he said. “But that’s O.K. because our idea was to show this race how it actually is.”

Bicycles and Bicycling
Red Hook (NYC)
Contests and Prizes


Bobbie Handman, a Medal of Arts Winner, Dies at 85

Abstract: Bobbie Handman, a behind-the-scenes force in Democratic politics, a theater preservationist and the first person to be awarded the National Medal of Arts for advocacy, died on Thursday at her home in Manhattan. She was 85. The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, her daughter Laura said. Inspired as a teenager by the Roosevelts, both Franklin D. and Eleanor, Ms. Handman was, for decades, a fund-raiser for Democratic candidates and a lobbyist for Democratic causes, both in New York and nationally. She supported Adlai Stevenson for the presidency in the 1950s, Eugene McCarthy in the 1960s, Jimmy Carter in the 1970s and Michael Dukakis in the 1980s. In recognition of her defense of First Amendment rights for writers, painters and other artists, President Bill Clinton awarded her the arts medal in 1998. Ms. Handman’s signature issues were preservation and free expression. She was senior vice president and director of the New York office of the People for the American Way Foundation, a nonpartisan partner of the organization founded in the 1980s by the television producer Norman Lear and others. The foundation advocated freedom of expression, freedom of religion, voting rights and other issues. Married for more than six decades to Wynn Handman, an actor, teacher and the founder of the American Place Theater, an Off Broadway company, she often fused her early interest in politics with her acquired interest in the theater. In 1993, when a Tucson high school canceled a student production of Michael Cristofer’s play “The Shadow Box” because it depicted a homosexual relationship, Ms. Handman, working with People for the American Way, recruited professional actors, including Christopher Reeve and Mercedes Ruehl, to give a reading of the play in the same community. In 1998, when “Corpus Christi,” a play by Terrence McNally that depicted Jesus Christ as a gay man living in modern-day Texas, drew demonstrations and violent threats against the playwright and was canceled and then reinstated by the Manhattan Theater Club, Ms. Handman organized a demonstration. Called “A Quiet Walk for the First Amendment,” the protest was meant to remind both sides that the Constitution guarantees artists the right to express their ideas and that no one has the right to silence the expression of others. Perhaps most notably, Ms. Handman served on the community board in Manhattan that included the theater district around Times Square, and she was an especially prickly thorn in the side of theater owners who hoped to profit from development in the neighborhood. In 1982, she was in the forefront of a group that lobbied against the bulldozing of three theaters to make room for a hotel. Though she and her fellow advocates lost that fight, they succeeded six years later in persuading the Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate 28 Broadway theaters as landmarks. “She was a significant force in issues of New York City landmarking and preservation, particularly as it related to the theater district, and as a result she had adversarial relationships with Broadway theater owners,” said Jeremy Gerard, a drama critic for Bloomberg News and the author of a new book about Mr. Handman, “Wynn Place Show,” which prominently features Ms. Handman as well. “If Broadway landlords had an enemies list, Bobbie was proudly at the top of it.” Barbara Ann Schlein was born on March 11, 1928, in Philadelphia and grew up in nearby Elkins Park, Pa. Her father, Benjamin, was an engineer, and her mother, Sophie, was a homemaker. She attended Antioch College in Ohio, where she first became interested in political activism, and later graduated from Barnard, where she majored in philosophy. She met her husband, who was also a student, at a party; they married in 1950. In addition to her husband and their daughter Laura, a lawyer who is married to Harold M. Ickes, a former adviser to President Clinton, she is survived by a brother, Philip Schlein, known as Spike; another daughter, Liza Handman; and two grandchildren. “Bobbie was a lifelong lesson in perseverance,” Norman Lear said in a phone interview Thursday. “She made New York happen for People for the American Way. And she made everything grander. She dealt in grand.”

Bobbie Handman
Democrats
Theater
People for the American Way
Wynn Handman
American Place Theater
Obituary
Freedom of speech


FedEx Agrees to Pay $3 Million to Settle a Discrimination Case

Abstract: The United States Department of Labor has reached a $3 million settlement with the ground delivery unit of FedEx to resolve allegations that the company discriminated against 21,635 job seekers at two dozen FedEx facilities in 15 states. The Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs reached the agreement with FedEx Ground Package Systems after saying that it had found evidence of discrimination in hiring on the basis of sex, race and national origin. The office monitors employment practices at the nation’s 200,000 federal contractors, which employ roughly a fourth of the nation’s work force. Under the settlement, department officials said Wednesday, FedEx has agreed to make wide-ranging changes to correct any discriminatory hiring practices and to extend job offers to 1,703 of the people rejected for jobs as part-time package handlers as those positions become available. Patricia A. Shiu, director of the contract compliance office, said it was her office’s largest settlement since 2004, when it reached a $5.5 million resolution with Wachovia after finding that more than 2,000 of the bank’s female workers had been underpaid. “When you do business with the government, we expect you to do the right thing,” said Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis in a statement. “That includes giving all Americans an equal shot at a good job. It’s about more than just the law — diversity is smart for business.” Patrick Fitzgerald, a spokesman for FedEx Ground, said the company believed that the Labor Department’s position was not supported by the law. “The bottom line is we admitted no wrongdoing,” he said. “The allegations and the whole drive for the settlement were based on a computer statistical analysis, rather than on any individual complaints or investigation.” He added, “We agreed to the $3 million to avoid what would have been a prolonged and much more costly resolution process.” Ms. Shiu said her office first uncovered evidence of discrimination at FedEx seven years ago during a regularly scheduled review, finding discrimination against blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Native Americans compared with similarly situated white applicants. She said women also faced discrimination and were sometimes automatically ruled out for posts requiring the lifting of heavy objects. Ms. Shiu said “the beauty” of the 4,000 regular audits her office does each year was that they could find evidence of bias even when applicants had not filed complaints and did not realize they had faced discrimination. She said that of the 21,635 rejected applicants covered by the settlement, 61 percent were female, 52 percent African-American, 14 percent Hispanic, 2 percent Asian and 1 percent Native American. As an example, a department spokesman said that the audit of a FedEx facility in Grove City, Ohio, found that discrimination had affected 3,898 applicants. The department found that 29.8 percent of the 6,178 men who applied were hired, compared with 18.7 percent of the 2,277 women. It found that 33.2 percent of the white applicants were hired, 21.9 percent of the blacks, 18.7 percent of the Hispanics and 15.7 percent of the Native Americans. Under the terms of the pact, the spokesman said, the 3,898 rejected applicants at the Grove City facility will receive a total of $617,260 in back wages and will be extended 312 job offers. Ms. Shiu said the evidence was based on not just statistical discrepancies, but also interviews with applicants and FedEx officials. “This agreement will make a difference not just at the affected facilities but throughout the country so that this kind of hiring discrimination doesn’t happen anymore,” she said. Michael J. Zimmer, an employment discrimination professor at the Loyola University Chicago School of Law, said the $3 million settlement was modest, but more important was FedEx’s promise to revamp its hiring practices. “In employment discrimination, hiring cases are very unusual — almost all of the cases are terminations, sexual harassment or promotions,” he said.

Discrimination
Labor and Jobs
Hiring and Promotion
Fedex Corporation
Labor Department (US)


France, Too, Is Sweeping Up Data, Newspaper Reveals

Abstract: PARIS — Days after President François Hollande sternly told the United States to stop spying on its allies, the newspaper Le Monde disclosed on Thursday that France has its own large program of data collection, which sweeps up nearly all the data transmissions, including telephone calls, e-mails and social media activity, that come in and out of France. Le Monde reported that the General Directorate for External Security does the same kind of data collection as the American National Security Agency and the British GCHQ, but does so without clear legal authority. The system is run with “complete discretion, at the margins of legality and outside all serious control,” the newspaper said, describing it as “a-legal.” Nonetheless, the French data is available to the various police and security agencies of France, the newspaper reported, and the data is stored for an indeterminate period. The main interest of the agency, the paper said, is to trace who is talking to whom, when and from where and for how long, rather than in listening in to random conversations. But the French also record data from large American networks like Google and Facebook, the newspaper said. Le Monde’s report, which French officials would not comment on publicly, appeared to make some of the French outrage about the revelations of Edward J. Snowden , a former N.S.A. contractor, about the American data-collection program appear somewhat hollow. But French officials did say privately on Thursday that there was a difference between data collection in the name of security and spying on allied nations and the European Union. While French officials have said that they do not spy on the American Embassy in France, American officials are skeptical of those reassurances, and have pointed out that France has an aggressive and amply financed espionage system of its own. The French interior minister, Manuel Valls, said Thursday at the July 4 reception at the American ambassador’s residence in Paris that Mr. Hollande’s demands for clear explanations about the reports of American spying were justified because “such practices, if proven, do not have their place between allies and partners.” He said that “in the name of our friendship, we owe each other honesty.” Separately, in a statement, Mr. Valls said that France had received an asylum request from Mr. Snowden, but that it would be rejected. The European Parliament, meeting in Strasbourg, France, to debate the Snowden disclosures, overwhelmingly passed a resolution that “strongly condemns the spying on E.U. representations,” warned of its “potential impact on trans-Atlantic relations” and demanded “immediate clarification from the U.S. authorities on the matter.” The legislators rejected an amendment calling for the postponement of talks scheduled for Monday on a potential European-American free-trade agreement. France and Mr. Hollande had called for the talks to be delayed, but the European Commission said that they would go ahead in parallel with talks on the American spying programs. Many Europeans have been shocked and outraged less by the idea of American espionage than the sheer scale of the data-collection abroad. According to Mr. Snowden’s revelations, between 15 million and 60 million transmissions are collected by the Americans every day from Germany alone. American officials had privately warned French officials to be careful about speaking with too much outrage about American espionage given that major European countries like France spy, too, and not just on their enemies.

General Directorate for External Security DGSE


City’s New Fire Commissioner Vows a Push for More Minorities in the Department

Abstract: The new commissioner of the New York Fire Department vowed on Friday to put an end to an era of lawsuits and court orders over the department’s persistent lack of diversity and to lead an effort to attract more minorities. The commissioner, Daniel A. Nigro, a 33-year veteran of the department who retired a year after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, was officially appointed in a ceremony at the department’s training academy on Randalls Island. Flanked by diverse members of the newest class of recruits, Mr. Nigro, 65, described expanding diversity in the department, whose members are still about 87 percent white, as “a great challenge,” but one he would actively pursue. “We must no longer wait for a judge’s ruling to tell us what fairness means,” he said. “We must get out front. We must point the way to change.” Years of legal wrangling over the racial makeup of the department have led to a series of reforms in recent years, including a court-appointed monitor, a new entrance exam and an influx of recruiters into black and Hispanic neighborhoods. In March, that legal battle came to an end, when the city agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by the Vulcan Society, an African-American firefighters’ group, and pay $100 million in back wages and benefits to minorities thwarted from joining the department by what courts have ruled to be institutional biases. As part of the agreement, Mr. Nigro (pronounced NY-grow), in his new capacity, will oversee the selection of a chief of diversity and inclusion, who will act as a kind of internal monitor on issues of diversity and discrimination. Many who have led the push for greater diversity hoped that Mayor Bill de Blasio would appoint a minority-group member or a woman as commissioner. Mr. Nigro, who is white, grew up in Bayside, Queens, and like many in the department, is the son of a firefighter. His father, Daniel Nigro Sr., a former captain who is now 93, attended the ceremony on Friday. Brenda Berkman, who was among the first women to join the department following a series of legal battles in the late 1970s and early ’80s, said the mayor and new fire commissioner “need to take strong and immediate measures to end discrimination against women in the F.D.N.Y. that has been going on far too long.” Ms. Berkman, who remains an advocate for female firefighters, said that with 37 women currently in the Fire Department ranks, there are fewer today than when she joined in the early 1980s. At the ceremony, Mr. de Blasio said he chose Mr. Nigro because his “vision for the future of the department” aligned with his own. “He has been devoted throughout his career to the notion that everyone deserves opportunity,” the mayor said. “It’s a part of who he is as a human being, and he has a great ability to relate to people from every part of the city, and he wants to make sure this department reflects all that is great about this city.” Mr. Nigro joined the department in 1969 and earned accolades for his bravery during the tumult of the ’70s and ’80s. On Sept. 11, he took control of the rescue operations after the chief of the department, Peter J. Ganci Jr., a longtime friend, was killed in the collapse of the north tower. Mr. Nigro has been receiving a disability pension because of respiratory problems he suffered during the cleanup effort after the attack. Those benefits will end when he is sworn in, which officials said could occur within the next few weeks. At the ceremony, it was Mr. Ganci’s son, Chris, now a fire lieutenant, who delivered the opening remarks. “I am confident that the safety of the members of the field and the safety of the citizens of this city is as paramount to you as it was to my father,” Lieutenant Ganci said. He added that his father would be “beaming with pride to see you achieve this monumental achievement.”

Fires
Minorities
Daniel A. Nigro
Discrimination
Bill de Blasio
Race and Ethnicity
Fire Department NYC


Brian Rose and Edward Fausty’s Images of the Lower East Side

Abstract: Toward the end of 1979, Brian Rose and Edward Fausty began roaming the Lower East Side of Manhattan with a Japanese view camera attached to a tripod. New York City’s fiscal crisis was a fresh memory, and gentrification had not yet arrived. Tenements seemed to burn daily. But the frontierlike nature of the neighborhood and the availability of cheap rent encouraged an explosion of creativity. Mr. Rose decided the time was worth documenting, and for about a year the two men photographed the local landscape. People appear in those frames, but they are rarely the focus. Mr. Rose and Mr. Fausty instead concentrated on the structures and shapes that made up the neighborhood, including bridges, empty lots and buildings with bricked-up windows. “I really am interested in the spatial quality of where we live,” Mr. Rose said recently, adding that he was drawn to “the buildings we occupy and the physical containers that are critical to who we are.” Around 2010, Mr. Rose began documenting the neighborhood a second time, again using a view camera and sometimes seeking out the same spots he visited in 1980. Images from both projects have been made into a book called “Time and Space on the Lower East Side,” and on Thursday, an exhibition of pictures from the book will open at the Dillon Gallery in Chelsea. As the photographs show, much on the Lower East Side has changed over 30 years. But Mr. Rose sees an element of permanence in the physical grid of the area that has endured for a century or more. “I think this way we tend to look at things, as before and after, is really simplistic,” he said. “People should think more about the continuum.”

Brian Rose
Edward Fausty
Books
Lower East Side Manhattan
Photography


Sept. 11 Hearing Censorship Ordered Stopped

Abstract: FORT MEADE, Md. — The military judge overseeing the prosecution of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other detainees accused of aiding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks ordered the government on Thursday to disconnect the technology that allows offstage censors — apparently including the Central Intelligence Agency — to block a public feed of the courtroom proceedings at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The order by the judge, Col. James L. Pohl of the Army, followed an interruption on Monday of a feed from the military tribunal courtroom during a hearing on a pretrial motion. The episode brought to light that unidentified security officials outside the courtroom could censor a feed of the proceedings that the public and the news media receive on a 40-second delay. “This is the last time,” Colonel Pohl said, that any party other than a security officer inside the courtroom who works for the military commission “will be permitted to unilaterally decide that the broadcast will be suspended.” He said that while some legal rules and precedents governing the tribunals might be unclear, there was no doubt that only the judge has the authority to close the courtroom. Colonel Pohl made clear he would not tolerate anyone having control over a censorship button in the case other than his courtroom security officer. Separately on Thursday, Colonel Pohl ordered the Pentagon official in charge of the tribunals — Vice Adm. Bruce MacDonald, retired — to testify at a hearing next month. Defense lawyers are seeking to scuttle the charges and reboot the case, asserting that his original decision to refer the capital charges to the tribunal was flawed. One of several relatives of victims who traveled to Guantánamo to watch the hearing, Phyllis Rodriguez, whose son Gregory Rodriguez was killed at the World Trade Center, said she was disturbed by the limits on the openness of the proceedings and difficulties that defense lawyers had in gathering information that could mitigate against death sentences. Ms. Rodriquez said she opposed death sentences on principle and was opposed to prosecuting the case in a tribunal. But Matthew Sellitto, whose son — also named Matthew — was also killed in the attacks , called the process fair, saying the defendants would have already been executed by now in most countries. His wife, Loreen Sellitto, urged defense lawyers not to delay the proceedings, while describing the emotional experience of seeing the defendants in the courtroom. “I didn’t expect them to look normal and have normal faces,” Ms. Sellitto said. “That scared me.” In a related development, the Pentagon disclosed that earlier this week, Admiral MacDonald withdrew tribunal charges against three other detainees at Guantánamo. Accused of conspiracy and of providing material support to terrorism in connection with accusations related to explosives training, the three were among those arrested in a March 2002 raid in Pakistan that also captured a more prominent terrorism suspect, Abu Zubaydah. The validity of bringing charges of material support and conspiracy in a tribunal — at least for actions before October 2006, when Congress approved them as triable offenses in a military commission — has been a point of sharp contention inside the Obama administration. A federal appeals court recently vacated two such verdicts from tribunal cases because such offenses were not recognized as international war crimes. The chief tribunal prosecutor, Brig. Gen. Mark S. Martins, had asked Admiral MacDonald to withdraw conspiracy as one of the charges pending against the Sept. 11 defendants and focus on classic war crimes, like attacking civilians. But Admiral MacDonald refused, saying it would be “premature” to do so since the Justice Department — over General Martins’s objections — is still arguing in court that conspiracy is a valid tribunal offense. Most of the attention on Thursday, however, was focused on continuing fallout from the revelation that there were offstage censors — something that even Colonel Pohl apparently had not known — and his order to “unconnect whatever wires need to be unconnected.” Defense lawyers used the incident as new ammunition in their assertions that the tribunals were unfair. On Thursday they asked Colonel Pohl to stop any further consideration of motions in the case until they all could learn more about what kind of technology is in place in meeting rooms and in the courtroom, and whether their confidential conversations with their clients and one another are private.

Censorship
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
Terrorism
Military Tribunals
Guantanamo Bay
9/11,Sept 11
CIA
James L Pohl


Oil Spill Cleanup Workers Include Many Very, Very Small Ones

Abstract: Among the hidden stars of the gulf cleanup is an oil -hungry bacterium that Dr. Seuss could have named — Alcanivorax. It and fellow microbes are breaking down a significant amount of the oil that gushed into the environment from BP’s runaway well, scientists say. The microbial feasting is known as biodegradation. On Wednesday, a report released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said early observations showed that the oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill “is biodegrading quickly,” adding that scientists were working to measure how quickly and how much of the escaped oil the microbial hordes could consume. “Until it is biodegraded, naturally or chemically dispersed oil, even in small amounts, can be toxic to vulnerable species,” the report says in pointing to the importance of the microbes. The report said the swarms were dining on most remaining aspects of the spill — dispersed oil as well as oil forming a sheen on or just below the surface. “Colleagues who have been sampling tell me that the intrinsic biodegration rates are high,” said Ronald M. Atlas, a microbiologist at the University of Louisville and past president of the American Society for Microbiology . “I believe that most of the oil will not have a significant impact. That’s been the story with spills that stay offshore.” Dr. Atlas cautioned, however, that microbe degradation in polluted marshes “should be considerably slower.” And other scientists warn that the sudden appearance of swarms of oil-hungry microbes in the Gulf of Mexico could have drawbacks, saying they might consume so much oxygen that oxygen levels drop precipitously, threatening other sea life. Samantha B. Joye, a marine scientist at the University of Georgia, told a House science subcommittee this year that drops in oxygen could especially threaten an unusual class of creatures that also live on oil: communities of clams, mussels and tube worms that flourish in the sunless depths of the gulf. The gulf proper has an enormous ability to break down oil because thousands of natural seeps in the seabed leak oil and gas at a fairly steady rate, and have for millions of years. None are close in size to the Deepwater Horizon leak. But over the ages, swarms of microbes and other creatures have learned how to live on petrochemicals flowing from the fissures, giving the gulf some powers of natural recuperation. Scientists say a star of the feasting is Alcanivorax — its name alluding to its voracious appetite for alkanes, some of the main chemicals of natural gas and petroleum. In unspoiled environments around the world, the marine bacterium exists in limited numbers. But it rapidly multiplies in oil-contaminated waters, as scientists portray the usual state of the gulf. “It’s preadapted to crude oil,” said Roger Sassen, a gulf specialist recently retired from Texas A&M University who has long argued that natural remediation would cleanse its waters. “The image of this spill being a complete disaster is not true.” In the report on Wednesday, the federal panel echoed that optimism in diplomatic language. “It is well known,” the report said, “that bacteria that break down the dispersed and weathered surface oil are abundant in the Gulf of Mexico in large part because of the warm water, the favorable nutrient and oxygen levels, and the fact that oil regularly enters the Gulf of Mexico through natural seeps.” Wednesday’s report also highlighted the effects of oil dispersion — a strategy that some critics of BP had faulted, especially as the company pumped chemicals into the depths that were meant to scatter the gushing oil. The report said dispersion at the surface and in the deep “increases the likelihood that the oil will be biodegraded” by billions of oil-eating microbes. Dr. Atlas of the University of Louisville agreed. But he noted that “the extensive use of dispersants has been of toxicological concern.” Hopes for the natural remediation of oil spills at sea have grown in recent years as scientists have discovered a new class of microbes known as hydrocarbonoclastic, a group that includes Alcanivorax. The name hydrocarbonoclastic denotes the disassembly of hydrocarbons, the building blocks of oil. A 2003 report by the National Research Council , “Oil in the Sea,” called the biodegradation of hydrocarbons “one of the principal removal mechanisms in the aquatic environment,” as well as “a premiere research area.” That same year, a team of German scientists reported that it had deciphered the genome of Alcanivorax, shedding light on the microbe’s genetic structure and raising the possibility of enhancing its oil-eating abilities. Jay Lennon, a microbial ecologist at Michigan State University, said the gene sequencing helped show how Alcanivorax could break down the surface tension in fluids and attack oil. “Micro-organisms are pretty amazing,” he said. “If there’s a way for them to make a living, they’ll do it.”

Microbiology
Gulf of Mexico
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Accidents and Safety
Offshore Drilling and Exploration
BP Plc


States to Investigate Google Data COllection

Abstract: WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Connecticut’s attorney general said Monday that he would lead a multistate investigation into whether Google broke laws when it siphoned personal data off of wireless networks around the world. The company has said the data collection was inadvertent. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said more than 30 states had participated in a recent conference call on the issue. He said consumers had a right to know what information was collected, and whether states need to alter procedures to guard against such leaks in the future. Shares in Google slid 1.4 percent, to $492.81 in a relatively flat market. In May, Google said its cars photographing streets around the world had for years accidentally collected personal data — which a security expert said at the time could have included e-mail messages and passwords — sent by consumers over wireless networks. “My office will lead a multistate investigation — expected to involve a significant number of states — into Google’s deeply disturbing invasion of personal privacy,” Mr. Blumenthal said in a statement . “Consumers have a right and a need to know what personal information — which could include e-mails, Web browsing and passwords — Google may have collected, how and why.” Mr. Blumenthal said Google has cooperated but “its response so far raises as many questions as it answers.” “Our investigation will consider whether laws may have been broken and whether changes to state and federal statutes may be necessary,” he said. Google already faces an informal investigation over the matter by the Federal Trade Commission, a variety of inquiries overseas, and class-action lawsuits. Google has said the data was accidentally collected by its “Street View” cars, well known for crisscrossing the globe and taking panoramic pictures of city streets, which the company displays in its online maps product. “It was a mistake for us to include code in our software that collected payload data, but we believe we did nothing illegal. We’re working with the relevant authorities to answer their questions and concerns,” a Google spokeswoman, Christine Chen, said in an e-mail message. The company says it uses the location of Wi-Fi networks to enhance location-based services on smartphones. It first revealed that Street View cars were collecting wireless data in April, but said that no personal data was involved. After an audit requested by Germany, Google acknowledged in May that it had been mistakenly collecting samples of “payload data.” Mr. Blumenthal also released a letter sent to Google in mid-June asking for more details of the data collection. He had written to Google previously and the company had responded. In the second letter, Mr. Blumenthal asked the company when it realized that its Street View cars had collected the extra data, who audited or analyzed the Street View data collection program, and whether information was ever extracted from the payload data. He also asked what precautions Google takes to ensure that its engineers do not insert undesirable code into Google products, and which engineer or engineers inserted the payload data code into the Street View cars’ collection devices.

Privacy
Google Inc
Suits and Litigation
Wireless Communications
Computer Security


Review: Indian Kitchen in Allendale Leaves the Butter Behind

Abstract: The dal was the first hint that Nirvana Indian Kitchen wasn’t your typical generic curry joint. Fragrant with ginger and cilantro, the soupy yellow lentil stew with peas and bits of diced okra was a recipe from India’s Gujarat region, where my husband Mahir is from. After a few skeptical spoonfuls, he declared it to be as good as his mother’s. Both of us were born and brought up in India, but we rarely dine at Indian restaurants. The food is usually inauthentic. Much of it can also be heavy, as many dishes are laden with cream and a clarified butter called ghee. But Nirvana, in Allendale, is different. Its menu provides a mix of popular dishes and regional specialties, most of which are made with fresh ingredients and shine with flavor. In fact, this is the closest I’ve come to eating something similar to “ghar ka khana,” or home-cooked food, at an Indian restaurant stateside. Srini Rao, 39, and his wife Himani Pradhan, 33, opened the spot in April because they couldn’t find anywhere to have the healthy Indian food they craved. They both work in fashion (Mr. Rao is the owner of Refuel Jeans, and Ms. Pradhan is the owner of BluMoss, where she also designs its swimwear collection ), so the venture is their personal passion. “The idea was to create a kitchen like the ones we grew up with where nothing is frozen, the dishes have minimal oil, and the ingredients are good quality,” Mr. Rao said in a phone interview after my visits. Image Goan fish curry, featuring tilapia simmered with fenugreek, mustard paste and coconut milk. Credit Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times Meats, seafood and produce are delivered daily, and four Indian chefs are in charge of the cooking, including making every sauce. They even grind mixtures such as garam masala — here a blend of 32 spices including coriander and cumin seeds — several times a week. This attention to detail shows. The lunch buffet, a staple at Indian restaurants and normally an oily affair, was sparkling. The dozen or so options change daily. On our trip to the buffet, it was the Gujarati dal that stood out, as well as the chickpeas and diced potatoes seasoned South-Indian style with shredded coconut, mustard seeds and curry leaves, and the mushroom Manchurian, in which fried button mushrooms coated a spicy, sweet sauce of red chilies, onions and a mango powder-tinged tomato sauce. We also enjoyed two kinds of tender chicken breast kebab marinated overnight, in either a malai, a creamy sauce flavored with yogurt, ginger and white pepper, or a hariyali sauce with mint and cilantro leaves, ginger and garlic. Lunch at Nirvana tends to be each to his or her own, but the traditional Indian dinner here, and in general, is done family-style, which means that sharing is encouraged. We had fun sharing the appetizers, like the tamarind eggplant, thin half-dollar-size rounds of the night shade vegetable tossed with onions, chickpeas and yogurt, and topped with tamarind chutney. It was tangy and cooling. Bagari shrimp, four jumbo shrimp in a thick yogurt and tomato sauce, came with puri, puffy fried bread, to scoop every last bit of curry. It was soul food. And the calamari Cochin, flash-fried squid rings with a coarse black pepper and corn flour coating, was as addictive as good onion rings. Image Tamarind eggplant tossed with onions, chickpeas and yogurt. Credit Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times The first dish I tried from the main course spread, chicken chettinadu, was lackluster. Overcooked and bland cubes of breast sat in a black pepper and coconut curry that wasn’t spicy, as it was supposed to be, and didn’t taste of coconut. No matter this miss. Rogan josh, lamb shank cubes marinated in yogurt and spices and cooked in a curry redolent of garam masala, was deep with flavor and satisfying along with a scoop of the accompanying basmati rice. And the Goan fish curry, tilapia simmered with fenugreek, mustard paste, fennel seeds and coconut milk, a specialty from the coastal state in Western India, had the right balance of sourness and heat. The aloo gobi, cauliflower florets and diced potatoes in a gingery tomato curry, was simple like it should be, but the tandoori prawns wooed us the most. For the dish, seven jumbo tiger prawns are marinated overnight in yogurt, red chili powder and ginger garlic paste, and are then baked in a tandoor, a clay oven. The prawns arrived sizzling on a cast-iron dish. It takes a mindful eye not to overcook shrimp, and these were soft, almost buttery and perfectly seasoned. To accompany the entrees, there are tasty flatbreads like whole wheat roti, also baked in the tandoor. Don’t save room for dessert. The selections like the ras malai, cottage cheese patties in a condensed milk sauce, and kulfi, Indian ice cream made with milk, dried fruit and cardamom, are too sweet and nothing special. After all, when there are so many other highlights, why bother?

Nirvana Indian Kitchen
Restaurant
Allendale NJ


How Can Hillary Clinton Sell Herself to Voters Who Already Know Her?

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA — Few conventions were as successful as when Democrats gathered in 1992 in New York to nominate Bill Clinton for president. There was the Hollywood-produced “Man From Hope” video. A dramatic Midtown Manhattan stroll by Bill and Hillary Clinton from Macy’s to Madison Square Garden. And a six-day post-convention bus caravan that drew crowds all the way through its end in St. Louis. As Mrs. Clinton arrives here for her own nominating convention, she faces many of the same problems her husband encountered in 1992: She, too, is damaged after a bruising campaign and shadowed by a cloud of mistrust stirred by her actions. While Mr. Clinton was a relatively new if battered face, ready for his reintroduction in 1992, Mrs. Clinton is a political institution. With one exception, she has spoken at every Democratic National Convention since 1996. “If you don’t know the Clintons by now, you are never going to know them,” said Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker. Donald J. Trump entered the Republican National Convention last week in Cleveland with the opportunity to recast the way Americans viewed him, a moment he arguably failed to seize, but Mrs. Clinton’s task in Philadelphia is decidedly harder. She has been a fixture on the American political scene for a generation, subjected to endless attacks, examination and analysis. Hillary Clinton Broke One Glass Ceiling. When Were Others Broken? Milestones in politics when women and minorities were first elected to federal, state and local government. She is a proxy in debates over feminism and political power and a recurring subject of parody on “Saturday Night Live.” Views about her — particularly on issues of trust after the F.B.I. investigation into her handling of emails as secretary of state — are seared in place with many voters, pollsters say. After 25 years, her days of reinventing herself are almost surely gone. And yet these four nights in the public eye, particularly coming after Mr. Trump’s often chaotic convention in Cleveland, offer her a chance to persuade important segments of the electorate to take another look at her, to consider parts of her life that have been lost in the glare of scandals and investigation, and to judge her candidacy in contrast with the dark image Mr. Trump presented last week of himself and the nation. That would start with supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, many of whom, particularly younger ones, learned much of what they know about Mrs. Clinton through the prism of Mr. Sanders’s attacks and have been steadfast in their opposition to her — potentially all the more so after her choice of Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, a moderate, as her running mate. But just as crucially, Mrs. Clinton might also find an audience with independent voters struggling between two candidates they do not like, who will have an opportunity after this week to make a direct comparison between the visions being offered by Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump. For nearly a year, Mrs. Clinton has struggled to answer questions about her use of a private email server, particularly after her conduct was excoriated by the F.B.I.; Republicans have accused her of negligence, criminal mishandling of classified information and even treason. Rightly or wrongly, the most recent controversy is what has defined her most. Image Bill and Hillary Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea, with supporters in Midtown Manhattan during the 1992 Democratic National Convention. Credit James Estrin/The New York Times “She is someone with a long record in public life, but people forget,” said David Greenberg, a history and journalism professor at Rutgers University. “Younger voters, who don’t have the memory — or older voters with short memories.” From that perspective, there is much that Mrs. Clinton may be able to do as she controls the convention stage for the next four nights. A parade of Democratic stars, including a sitting president, a former president and Mr. Sanders, stand ready to offer a remedial course in Hillary Clinton. “We have a cavalry who are fully armed,” said David Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008. “For Trump, it was all on him.” Mrs. Clinton also has the advantages of following the turbulent Republican gathering and of having a team far more experienced than Mr. Trump’s at producing sophisticated conventions, giving her an opportunity to contrast a presumably more united party and a more consistent message with what was displayed in Cleveland. Rob Reiner, a Hollywood director and actor, who is a longtime supporter of Mrs. Clinton, said she should use the convention to tell the story of her life. “She has been an advocate her entire life for women, for children, for all the causes that we care about,” he said. Image Mrs. Clinton at an event in 2000 announcing her candidacy for the Senate. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times “I know she has a lot of baggage and all that stuff,” he added. “But a lot of that is unfair.” So what might Mrs. Clinton do? Uniting the party is the easy part. Yes, she needs to galvanize her party entering the general election — and Mrs. Clinton may be aided greatly both by Mr. Sanders, who is set to trumpet his endorsement of her, and by Mr. Trump, who has proved to be a great mobilizing force for Democrats. But unity is not enough. Considering the passion that Mr. Trump’s supporters have shown, Mrs. Clinton — who is not known for her ability to light up a room — would be well advised to figure out a way to have Democrats, to borrow a phrase, fired up and ready to go. “The one thing that needs to happen coming out of the Democratic convention is for the Obama coalition being very enthused about her candidacy — not just beating Trump,” Mr. Plouffe said. “She has to give a speech that makes people as excited about her as they are about beating Donald Trump.” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, a Democrat who served with Mrs. Clinton in the Senate, said the convention would offer her an opportunity to debunk what he called the conservative caricature of her. Image Mrs. Clinton with President Obama in 2009, when she was secretary of state. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times “The right-wing media has tried to portray her as something she’s not,” Mr. Schumer said. “The convention is a great way to undo some of that media image. People will see her up close. They will see her the way she is. I think their minds are open.” Age is a virtue. The demographic differences between Clinton and Sanders supporters underline one of Mrs. Clinton’s biggest challenges: He crushed her among younger voters, whom she will need in November. The convention will give her a shot at winning them back. Even before arriving here, Mrs. Clinton had taken steps to close that gap by, among other things, moving toward Mr. Sanders’s position in favor of free tuition at public colleges. There are other ways she can extend her appeal. “Eighty percent of her speakers should be under 40,” Mr. Gingrich said. “She has to convince the younger generation that she is an acceptable leader for that generation.” Younger voters have much to learn about Mrs. Clinton, be it her record in the Senate or her years as first lady. (An added bonus for Mrs. Clinton: Many of them have managed to come this far in life without knowing the political meaning of the word “Whitewater.”) One thing to watch: whether Mrs. Clinton avoids decades-old references, like her reaching back to “voodoo economics” — a 36-year-old attack line that George Bush used on Ronald Reagan — at the event this month where Mr. Sanders endorsed her . Do not forget Trump. Conventions are about drawing contrasts, and Mrs. Clinton has shown no reluctance to highlight her differences with Mr. Trump. Philadelphia will provide an enormous stage to refine those arguments and respond specifically to how Mr. Trump tried to sell himself to voters in Cleveland, particularly on immigration and the threats of terrorism and crime. “She’s in a position where she can be the safer choice,” said Stuart Stevens, a Republican consultant who ran Mitt Romney’s campaign for president in 2012. “In times of instability, voters tend to look for safety.” And Mrs. Clinton will benefit from timing: If the back-to-back conventions somewhat resemble a slow-motion debate between the candidates, Mr. Trump has had his say, and Mrs. Clinton can make a closing argument that, if done right, could stick in the minds of many voters. “For her, the convention speech is the opportunity to have the final two words of the summer political season,” said Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to John McCain when he ran for president in 2008. “The race is going to freeze in place a couple of weeks after those conventions.”

Hillary Clinton
Philadelphia
Donald Trump
2016 Presidential Election
Democratic National Convention,DNC
US Politics
Voting
US


Poll Finds Strong Acceptance for Public Surveillance

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Americans overwhelmingly favor installing video surveillance cameras in public places, judging the infringement on their privacy as an acceptable trade-off for greater security from terrorist attacks, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll. A week after the Boston Marathon attack, which was unraveled after the release of video footage of the two suspects flushed them out of hiding, 78 percent of people said surveillance cameras were a good idea, the poll found. The receptiveness to cameras on street corners reflects a public that regards terrorism as a fact of life in the United States — 9 out of 10 people polled said Americans would always have to live with the risk — but also a threat that many believe the government can combat effectively through rigorous law enforcement and proper regulation. For all that confidence, there are lingering questions about the role of the nation’s intelligence agencies before the attacks, with people divided about whether they had collected information that could have prevented them (41 percent said they had; 45 percent said they had not). The murkiness of the case — the Tsarnaev brothers’ ties to the Caucasus; the warnings from Russian intelligence about potential extremist sympathies — has clearly left an impression on the public. A majority, 53 percent, said the suspects had links to a larger terrorist group, while 32 percent said they had acted alone. President Obama, in a White House news conference on Tuesday, defended the performance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security, saying the agencies had done their job, while acknowledging, “This is hard stuff.” The poll suggested that Americans are willing to tolerate further tough measures to foil future attacks. Sixty-six percent said information about how to make explosives should not be allowed on the Internet, where it would be available to aspiring terrorists, even if some would view that as a form of censorship. Thirty percent said it should be permitted in the interest of free expression. More broadly, only 20 percent of people said they believed the government had gone too far in restricting civil liberties in the fight against terrorism, while 26 percent said it had not gone far enough and 49 percent said the balance was about right. In 2011, the share of those worried about losing civil liberties (25 percent) was larger than that favoring more intrusive government approach (17 percent). “I know some people are paranoid about the government intruding on their privacy,” Judith Richards, a retired teacher from New Paltz, N.Y., said in a follow-up interview. “But with all the horrible things that have been happening, I think you have to trust this as a way to protect our well-being.” Jennifer Lopez, 26, a saleswoman in Pembroke Pines, Fla., said: “There are cameras in stores and supermarkets. Our families would be safer and surveillance cameras would provide evidence to help agencies pursue people, like they just did in Boston.” The nationwide poll of 965 adults was conducted on landlines and cellular phones from April 24 to April 28, five days after the manhunt for the surviving suspect in the Boston bombings, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, ended with his capture in a backyard in Watertown, Mass. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. Polls taken in the aftermath of terrorist attacks often show spikes in the public’s fears of another attack. In a CBS News poll a year ago, just 10 percent of people said another attack in the United States in the next few months was “very likely,” while 27 percent said it was “somewhat likely.” In the most recent survey, 24 percent said it was very likely and 42 percent somewhat likely. There is also evidence that fears about immigrants have increased modestly. Forty-nine percent said the risk of terrorism had risen in the United States because of legal immigration. The last time that question was asked, in 2007, the percentage was 42 percent. Still, other responses were unchanged since the Boston bombings: Twenty-three percent said they were very concerned about a terrorist attack in the area in which they live, about the same as said so in 2010. Fifty-six percent said they approved of Mr. Obama’s handling of terrorism, essentially unchanged from a CBS News poll in February. Mr. Obama said the law enforcement system had functioned as it should in the days after the bombings. He also said the F.B.I. had properly handled the information it received from Russian intelligence agencies about the older of the two suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, even as Mr. Obama conceded the difficulty of preventing attacks. “People, I think, understand that we’ve got to do everything we can to prevent these kinds of attacks from taking place,” Mr. Obama said. But he added, “We’re not going to stop living our lives because warped, twisted individuals try to intimidate us.” Underscoring the president’s point, a large majority of those polled, 72 percent, said they did not plan to avoid large public events to reduce their exposure to potential terrorist attacks. That confidence came even as people were divided about whether their state and local authorities were prepared to deal with such an attack (48 percent said they were prepared; 41 percent said they were not). Federal and local law enforcement agencies won high praise in the poll for their handling of the bombings — 84 percent approved — and some people in follow-up interviews seemed to regard the way the F.B.I. worked with the Boston and other police forces as a template for the future. “If we’re going to have to live with the threat of terrorism, I think it is incredibly important that it be controlled at the local level,” said Lynn Francis, 52, a retired insurance agent in Rowlett, Tex. “If there is national intelligence, it needs to be shared with local government as quickly as possible and followed up on. National and local authorities should work together.” Kath Buffington, a retired teacher from Rochester, N.Y., said she was rattled by the images of a locked-down Boston, even if it was warranted in this case. But she said that in a country dealing with the threat of terrorism since the September 2001 attacks, the fight against it should not be a pretext for more pervasive forms of surveillance. “I don’t have a problem with cameras as long as they are public,” Ms. Buffington said. “But wiretapping without a warrant goes too far, now that the immediate 9/11 crisis is over.”

Polls
Video
Terrorism
CBS News
Boston Marathon Bombings
Government Surveillance
The New York Times


Turkey to Investigate Images of Dead Kurdish Man Being Dragged

Abstract: Responding to outrage on social networks, Turkey’s prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, ordered an investigation into images that appeared to show the body of a Kurdish activist being dragged along the streets of a town in the country’s southeast, where Turkish security forces battled Kurdish militants late last week. The prime minister’s announcement, posted on Facebook early Monday, came after graphic images of the episode last week in the province of Sirnak were widely shared on social networks, including by Selahattin Demirtas, the co-chairman of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, or H.D.P. Bu fotoğrafa iyi bakın. Önceki gün Şırnak'ta çekildi. Kimse unutmasın, biz unutmayacağız çünkü. pic.twitter.com/ZrK6Z0cynk — Selahattin Demirtaş (@hdpdemirtas) October 4, 2015 #Demirtaş : Look at this photo very well. It was taken in Şırnak the day before. Nobody should forget about this photo, because we will not. — HDP English (@HDPenglish) October 4, 2015 The opposition H.D.P. identified the dead man as Haci Lokman Birlik, 24, an actor and brother-in-law of a member of Parliament for the party, Leyla Birlik. The circumstances of his death were described very differently by the government and opposition activists. According to the prime minister , he was killed “while attacking the police with a rocket launcher” during clashes between the security forces and militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which Turkey and the United States consider a terrorist group. The H.D.P. had a different explanation, asserting on its English-language Twitter feed that Mr. Birlik was “ executed by police ” on Friday as the security forces tried to fill in trenches that Sirnak residents had dug to keep the police out. After the H.D.P. gained representation in Turkey’s Parliament, a first for any Kurdish party, in elections in June, a two-year cease-fire collapsed between the Turkish government and rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K. With new elections expected next month, Mr. Demirtas has accused the government of inciting violence against Kurds to win over nationalist voters and push his party out of Parliament. Government supporters initially argued on social networks that the first image of the episode to appear online was fake, and even resorted to airbrushing the man’s body out of the photo. That theory seemed to collapse, however, after leaked video of the man’s body being dragged along the pavement, apparently recorded from inside the police vehicle, was also published online. Although that video was subsequently removed from social networks for violating policies against graphic or disgusting imagery, copies of the clip were preserved by opposition activists and politicians, including Tuncay Ozkan of the secularist Republican People’s Party, or C.H.P. Mr. Demirtas of the H.D.P. called for the interior minister to resign, and there were signs that the government’s investigation might not satisfy the opposition. Ayla Jean Yackley of Reuters reported later on Monday that the prime minister wanted investigators to determine how images of the man’s body had been leaked, not why it had been dragged through the street. The importance of social networks in offering glimpses of the fighting in southeastern Turkey has been amplified by a virtual information blackout imposed by the authorities on independent reporting in the region. A viral video over the weekend demonstrated the situation in dramatic fashion. In it a police officer in plain clothes is seen pointing a gun at the head of a photographer for a Kurdish news agency as he ordered him to stop filming in the city of Diyarbakir. Video of the episode was recorded surreptitiously by a journalist from a local channel, Ozgur Gun TV, which posted the footage on Facebook .

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Wilfried Martens, Belgian Statesman, Dies at 77

Abstract: Wilfried Martens, a grand statesman of Belgian politics who led nine Belgian governments and helped shape what became the European Union, the world’s biggest trading bloc, died on Wednesday at his home in Lokeren, in East Flanders. He was 77. His death was confirmed by Kostas Sasmatzoglou, a spokesman for the European People’s Party, the center-right grouping in the European Parliament that Mr. Martens helped found and that he led for 23 years. No cause was given. Mr. Martens had long been treated for heart problems. A Flemish Christian Democrat, Mr. Martens was prime minister of Belgium from 1979 to 1992, except for a brief interruption in 1981. He is credited with keeping together his linguistically divided country, split between Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south. He sought greater autonomy for the regions, yet he remained an ardent federalist, even as the country became increasingly polarized by nationalists pressing for separation. Mr. Martens was a member of the generation of European leaders, including former Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany and former President François Mitterrand of France, who worked for greater European integration and laid the groundwork for today’s European Union. His European People’s Party is the largest grouping in the European Parliament. Image Wilfried Martens, the former prime minister of Belgium, in Brussels in July. Credit David Stockman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Born to a family of farmers on April 19, 1936, in Sleidinge, in East Flanders, Mr. Martens became politicized at a young age, advocating from the age of 14 for the creation of a “civilized Flemish” language that would help empower Dutch-speaking Belgians and enable them to compete with the French-speaking elite that was then dominant. In the early 1960s he organized two important marches in Brussels for Flemish rights. A polymath, he held a doctor of law degree and degrees in notarial studies and philosophy. After becoming prime minister at 42, he presided over coalitions on both the right and left and helped shepherd the country through a period of economic crisis in the 1980s. He promoted major institutional changes, including the establishment of Flemish and Walloon regions, which put the country on the path to becoming a federal state. An advocate of fiscal austerity, he is also credited with preparing the groundwork for Belgium to join the euro, the single currency, in 1999. In his later years he remained a statesman and chief counsel of sorts to the nation. When Belgium was torn by political crisis in 2008, after the government resigned amid allegations that officials had sought to influence a high-profile court case, the Belgian king, Albert II, turned to Mr. Martens to resolve the conflict. Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo of Belgium praised Mr. Martens as a “true statesman and one of the fathers of federal Belgium.” Colleagues said he remained an avid cyclist, even during his later years. He is survived by his third wife, Miet Smet, and five children.

Wilfried Martens
Belgium
European People's Party
Obituary


Vonn Set to Race for First Time in 10 Months

Abstract: Lindsey Vonn declared herself ready to race for the first time in 10 months and said she would return to competition in a World Cup downhill Friday, the latest step in her push to get ready for the Sochi Olympics. She has not raced since crashing at the world championships in February, when she tore ligaments in her right knee and broke a bone in her leg.


Seymour Lazar, 88, Dies; Flamboyant Entertainment Lawyer, and More

Abstract: Seymour M. Lazar, a swashbuckling entertainment lawyer, stock trader and serial litigator whose lifetime of adventures took him from the legal tangle surrounding the estate of Howard Hughes to involvement in a colossal fraud case that threatened to bring down one of the biggest shareholder class-action law firms in the United States, died on March 30 at his home in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 88. His death was confirmed by his daughter, Tara Lazar. Mr. Lazar was a flamboyant renegade. As a hip young lawyer in Los Angeles in the 1950s and ’60s he represented a colorful list of clients that included the comedian Lenny Bruce, the jazz musicians Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley, and emerging pop stars like Johnny Rivers. He took LSD with Timothy Leary. He strolled through Haight-Ashbury with Allen Ginsberg. He offered career advice to Maya Angelou, then a struggling young cabaret singer whom, he said, he dated for a time. “I was very shapely and nice to look at, but Seymour saw more than that,” Ms. Angelou told The Wall Street Journal in 2006. “He knew I was always writing and encouraged me to be more than a cocktail singer.” On the acknowledgments page of her book “All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes,” she thanked him “for belief in my youthful ambition.” Bored with the law, Mr. Lazar jumped headfirst into the stock market. He became one of the largest independent traders in the United States, buying and selling more than $300 million in stocks in 1967, most of it related to mergers and acquisitions. “I was an in-and-out trader,” he told New York magazine in 1976. “If I bought a stock in the morning, and still owned it at noon, that was a long-term investment.” His wild deals and even wilder personal style — he had a long ponytail, refused to wear socks and was on occasion seen in a Pierre Cardin leather suit with no shirt — earned him a walk-on role as Seymour the Head in “Supermoney,” George Goodman’s 1972 account of the global financial game, written under the pen name Adam Smith. Working with the celebrity lawyer Marvin Mitchelson, Mr. Lazar invested $250,000 in efforts to prove that a mysterious document discovered in the headquarters of the Church of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City represented the final wishes of the reclusive tycoon Howard Hughes, who died in 1976. The Mormon Will, as it was known, left millions to an unusual collection of beneficiaries, most peculiarly to a gas station owner named Melvin Dummar. Mr. Dummar said he had earned Hughes’s gratitude after giving him a ride when he was wandering in the desert. A Nevada jury pronounced the will a fake. “If I lose, I’ll just go on to something else,” Mr. Lazar said at the time. The something else was class-action lawsuits, filed scattershot against companies large and small, claiming offenses large and small. In 1980 he filed suit against Hertz, claiming that it had overcharged him for gas on a rental car, to the tune of $11.15. That claim was denied, but others, often connected to the poor performance of stocks he owned, succeeded. Mr. Lazar eventually pushed his luck too far. In 2005 a federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted him on multiple counts, including mail fraud and money laundering. He was accused of taking $2.6 million in kickbacks over 25 years from the law firm of Milberg Weiss to initiate suits on its behalf in his own name and the names of relatives. Image Seymour Lazar in the early 1970s. In 2007, as part of a plea bargain, he pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, filing a false tax return and making a false declaration. He was sentenced to six months in home detention and ordered to pay a $600,000 fine, on top of a previously ordered $1.5 million forfeiture. “Seymour was living in an unregulated age,” Sheridan Hill, who is completing a biography of Mr. Lazar, said in an interview on Tuesday. “He was engaging in arbitrage before anyone called it arbitrage. The same with entertainment law. He was doing deals because he saw they were there to be done.” Seymour Manuel Lazar was born on June 14, 1927, in Brooklyn and grew up on a ranch in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. His father, Nathan, an accountant, moved the family west in 1933. His mother, the former Rita Tannenbaum, came from a family that ran a wholesale meat business in Beverly Hills. By the time he was 12, Seymour was keeping the books for his father’s accounting business. After graduating from Los Angeles High School in 1943, he took a job at Lockheed, which trained him as an electrical engineer, before enrolling in the pre-law program at the University of California, Berkeley. Drafted into the Army Air Corps, he served two years before resuming his studies. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Berkeley in 1949 and a law degree from the University of Southern California in 1951. After setting up in private practice, Mr. Lazar found his niche when a Hollywood producer walked into his office and asked if he specialized in entertainment law. He did not, but he said yes and played catch-up. He also bought the Café Gala, just off the Sunset Strip, which generated a stream of clients. In the 1960s he somehow managed to combine two personas: Wall Street shark and dharma bum. He drove a Rolls-Royce and pushed vast sums through offshore accounts in the Bahamas. His gains and losses were staggering. When a proposed merger between Armour and General Host fell through in 1969, he took a $10 million hit. At the same time, while soaking up the sun in the expatriate community in Cuernavaca, Mexico, he amassed a serious collection of pre-Columbian art. He later collected African and Oceanic art as well. He financed an ashram in Arizona and a monastery in Nepal. It was in Cuernavaca that Mr. Goodman, quite skeptical of the Lazar lore he had heard so much of, met the man behind the myth. “Seymour was real,” he wrote, describing him as a “formerly respectable lawyer with a respectable wife and child, who discovered arbitrage, mind-blowing chemicals and a new lifestyle all at the same time.” Mr. Lazar’s first marriage ended in divorce. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his wife, Alyce Lou; two sons, Job and Adam; a sister, Eileen Russell; and six grandchildren. Mr. Lazar remained defiant after being indicted and in the stressful period that ensued. He languished for months at his home in Palm Springs, wearing an ankle bracelet that he was allowed to remove only when he had to undergo triple-bypass surgery. The so-called kickbacks, he insisted, were referral fees and perfectly legal. The court disagreed. It rankled. “I swear, they treated me like an absolute thug,” he complained to The Wall Street Journal. “Did I hurt anybody? Who did I cheat? Did anybody get screwed?”

Lawyers
Los Angeles
Hollywood
Obituary
Seymour M Lazar


Moses Malone’s Death Explained

Abstract: Moses Malone’s death was caused by cardiovascular disease, the Virginia medical examiner’s office said. Malone, 60, was found dead in a hotel Sunday.


Skinnier and Chillier

Abstract: Q. I used to be heavy and was always warm. Now, after losing weight, I am always cold. Why? A. The general answer probably involves the loss of part of the body’s insulation in the form of unwanted body fat, but the answer in any specific case could be far more complicated. Cold intolerance is a frequent complaint among those who have lost a considerable amount of weight. The body’s core has lost a significant part of its protection against heat loss. The problem is usually worse for those who become very thin, especially small women. While someone is losing weight through severe calorie restriction, the metabolism may slow down to protect the body’s heat-producing store of calories, leading to a cold feeling . And anyone who suffers inordinately from the cold , whether thin or not, should be checked for medical problems that can interfere with thermoregulation or slow the metabolism. Such problems include blood vessel disorders, which can impede warming circulation from reaching the extremities; an underactive thyroid gland, which interferes with heat production by slowing the metabolism; anemia, which involves a shortage of oxygen-carrying red blood cells; and problems with the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that normally acts as the body’s thermostat. question@nytimes.com

Weight
Thyroid
Weather
Medicine and Health
Temperature
Anatomy and Physiology
Nutrition