A Continent Mired in Crisis Coins a Language of Economic Pain

Abstract: MADRID — The Portuguese have a new word, “grandolar,” which grew out of the euro crisis and means “to subject a government minister to a singing protest using a revolutionary hymn.” But now, after three years of austerity, even Portuguese children “grandolate” their parents if they do not want to take a bath. The Italians, who now track the spread between German and Italian bond yields with a passion once reserved for soccer, toss around words like “spreaddite,” wryly defined by La Repubblica, a daily newspaper in Rome, as the “intensification of the suffering caused by the high spread.” In Greece, crisis-born phrases pepper conversations in cafes and offices and on subway trains, particularly the ironic use of expressions or slogans uttered by political leaders, like a claim in 2009 by George A. Papandreou, then the prime minister, that there was money, when clearly there was not. “Don’t worry, I’ll get it,” a Greek man celebrating his birthday at an Athens taverna told his friends recently when they reached for their wallets. “Hey, there is money. Remember?” The long economic crisis in Europe has ushered in record unemployment and boisterous protests, but there are also many subtler ways to gauge its effect. In country after country, the crisis has also spawned a language of its own, brought once exotic financial terms into popular use and generated a slang that reflects the dark humor used by many to cope with their enduring troubles. Crisis slang has even been embraced by those at the top layers of government and society. Seeking to allay concerns that Spain, like Greece, would need an international bailout, Cristóbal Montoro, Spain’s budget minister, promised nervous Spaniards last year that “los hombres de negro” — or the men in black, as the European Union officials have become known — would not be arriving. The changes in language are numerous enough that in June the Spanish Royal Academy, guardian of the Spanish language, put the finishing touches on an updated dictionary with 200 words that have been added or given new meanings. They include the worrying “prima de riesgo” (risk premium), with a common sentence to illustrate: “The risk premium of our sovereign debt rose several points.” Spaniards, many of whom had never heard such terms before the start of the financial crisis in 2008, now use them with such regularity that they are just as likely to come up in conversation with a taxi driver as to be heard on the evening news. When it comes to language there is “poukou,” which the Greeks use to refer to the pre-crisis era, and there is now. “The crisis is having a huge impact on society and its usage of the language, making people speak about the economy in a way that had no relevance to them just a few years ago,” said Darío Villanueva, the secretary general of the 46-member Spanish Royal Academy, which includes mostly writers but also scientists, historians, economists and lawyers. To update the Spanish dictionary, the academy relied on a computerized data system to measure the frequency of millions of words used on television and radio and in newspapers as well as other writings. It also agreed to the changes with sister academies, mostly in Latin America, to harmonize linguistic developments across the Spanish-speaking world. Among the words durable enough to make the cut was “bonus,” which had not been commonly used in Spanish until the spotlight shifted to Spain’s troubled bankers and the money they made. There was also “burbuja,” or bubble, like the one that burst in the housing market, and “población activa,” or the population old enough to work, which came into use because a sizable share of it is not working. Similarly, several terms rooted in the economic crisis were among the 5,000 words added to the updated version of the Duden, the definitive work of the German language, which came out in July. They include “schuldenbremse,” literally “debt brake,” and “eurobond,” a reference to proposals for the European Union to issue bonds to cover the debt of euro-using nations; Germans fear that such bonds would place onerous obligations on them. While the word may exist, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has done its best to make sure the bond does not. Not to be left out, a French sociologist, Denis Muzet, recently published a book, “Les Mots de la Crise,” or “The Words of the Crisis,” analyzing the terms that have entered the language since the economic downturn. His list includes “perte du triple A,” or loss of the triple A (as in France’s bond rating); “suppressions d’emploi,” or job cuts; and “choc de compétitivité,” meaning competitiveness shock — all measures of the rude awakening the crisis has presented. “The way we talk about the crisis contributes to the panic; it contributes to the national depressionnisme,” said Mr. Muzet, coining a word of his own. The sense of austerity is so pervasive that the word itself is applied in some places to almost anything. If a Portuguese woman wears a short skirt, she might playfully be asked by an admirer if she is in “austerity,” and saving the rest of the cloth. Europe’s crisis has gone on so long that it is defining a generation, which has been given names like the “Ni-Nis” in Spain for the legions of young people who are neither studying nor working. Or the “geração à rasca” (distressed generation), as they are called in Portugal. “I’m sadly all too familiar with the Ni-Nis because I’ve had to cope with one at home,” said Carmen Blanco, 43 and unemployed, referring to her 20-year-old daughter, who dropped out of high school and has been living with her. The expression, Ms. Blanco said, “really makes clear this situation of nothingness and hopelessness.” “Without any kind of school certificate, I’ve made it clear to her that she risks being a Ni-Ni for the rest of her life,” the mother said. The nomenclature for the distressed does not end with the young. In Greece, where salary cuts and 27 percent unemployment have forced a broad new class to scale back to the very basics, people talk of the “neoptohi,” or the new poor — a play on the Greek word for nouveau riche. Names for types of protests and protesters run the gamut. In Spain, the protesters refer to themselves as the “indignados,” or the indignant. Elderly protesters have become known as “yayoflautas,” or old flutes. “Marea blanca,” or white tide, describes the waves of doctors and nurses in uniform who have demonstrated against cuts to public health services. The one word that nearly everyone across Europe shares is “troika,” referring to the three international creditors — the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission — that hard-pressed citizens from Lisbon to Athens blame for their troubles.

Language
Portugal
Euro Crisis
Greece
Europe
Slang
Spain
France
EU
Italy


Couldn’t the Yankees Have Waited a Day?

Abstract: On opening night, the cheat hit cleanup. Of course he did, as the center of a circus that Alex Rodriguez was widely accused of foisting upon the poor (ha!), victimized (ha! ha!) and — more tellingly — offensively undernourished (aha!) Yankees. The same Yankees who immediately ceded to Rodriguez the most glamorous position in their lineup only hours after Major League Baseball set the parameters for his exit from the sport. The same Yankees who made the snap, dubious judgment that Rodriguez was a better bet to deliver runs after major hip surgery and nine months absent from the major leagues than Alfonso Soriano, who had 18 homers and 55 runs batted in. Understand this: the Yankees didn’t have to be so accommodating to Rodriguez on Monday night in Chicago or Tuesday night, when he moved up to third in the order. They didn’t have to play him, much less fuel his fantastic notions of quasi normalcy days after he essentially accused them of complicity with baseball in seeking to bar him from the game. The Yankees didn’t have to make Monday night a spectacle on steroids, so to speak. But they couldn’t help themselves any more than baseball for years as it turned a blind collective eye while players made an institutional farce out of the sport. You could argue that making him sit a day or two or batting him sixth or seventh would have proved nothing, practically speaking. Symbolically, at least, it would have sent a message to A-Rod that he was no longer — and shouldn’t count on again being — the man he once smooched in the mirror. Would he have even been rushed into the prestigious four hole or the lineup at all had Kevin Youkilis had a healthy and productive season as his replacement and the offense had remained formidable enough to keep the Yankees at the top of the American League East? One might also say they had to be sensitive to Rodriguez’s allegations that had predictably gained traction in some news media outlets without a shred of evidence to support them. More cynically, and likely, the Yankees were doing what faltering entertainment businesses do: grabbing onto an increasingly rare promotable occasion. Image The return of Alex Rodriguez to the Yankees lineup on Monday was a spectacle that harked back to baseball’s steroids era. Credit Joel Kowsky for The New York Times Much like A-Rod, they needed attention and a compelling new story line in an effort to reverse plummeting television ratings and attendance in a fast-deteriorating season. His debut Monday night brought the highest Yankees rating on YES this season. And they could certainly use a few extra base hits if he could provide them in their faltering pursuit of a wild-card playoff spot. Hence, Rodriguez’s return, for however long it lasts, has become a microcosm of baseball’s steroid era dating to the late 1990s. Like the drug-enhanced and now-disgraced blokes who pumped millions into the owners’ pockets, it is a marriage based on self-interest and without much regard for overriding principle. Rodriguez has good reason to appeal Commissioner Bud Selig’s 211-game suspension. It was arbitrary enough to make an arbitrator at least consider reducing it by about a third. Meanwhile, the Yankees find themselves in a no-lose position they don’t really deserve to be in. If Rodriguez loses his appeal and is out all of next season, they will find themselves with a get-out-of-payroll-jail-free pass just when an owner-imposed $189 million cap was supposed to limit their options. If a ruling is delayed until after the season, the Yankees will have the A-Rod spectacle to sell in a season when Derek Jeter can’t stay on the field and only Mariano Rivera’s pending retirement will give fans reason to watch if their team is out of the race. In a bizarre derivative of the term, Rodriguez has become the Yankees’ M.V.P. — most valuable product — for the immediate future. He and the other players suspended Monday for their involvement in the Biogenesis case remind us of how self-serving and hollow Selig’s declarations have been about baseball’s having moved past the steroid scourge. In the way terrorism is not an enemy, cheating is not any one player or generation of players. It’s a concept that is not going away, especially with baseball so invested in developing talent in less-forbidding Latin American countries. Rodriguez is a symptom of the problem, but no greater a cheat or teller of untruths than others who came before him. As he dares to use the collectively bargained system in a calculated effort for a better deal, he becomes the easy piñata here, the target impossible to miss with a Louisville Slugger. But make no mistake: the Yankees will take what his bat can give them for however long they can get it. They will hit him in the middle of the order, make him the center of attention and squeeze every last dollar out of the antihero known as A-Rod. It has been that way for all of baseball’s steroid era, from the owners on down. Do what you must, get what you can. Drug compensation for all.

Yankees
Alex Rodriguez
Baseball
Doping
Biogenesis of America


Russia Not Allowed to Compete in Paralympics

Abstract: RIO DE JANEIRO — Paralympics officials have done what Olympics officials chose not to do, barring all Russian athletes from their Games after an elaborate cheating scheme. The head of the International Paralympic Committee, Philip Craven, on Sunday decried Russia’s “thirst for glory” and “medals over morals” mentality. He called the government-coordinated cover-up of doping among Russia’s top disabled athletes “abominable.” The committee barred the country from global competition by a unanimous vote; Paralympics officials had announced their intention to do so last month. The decision, issued Sunday, was effective immediately, Mr. Craven said. Russia’s Paralympic Committee said it planned to appeal the decision within 21 days to world sports arbitration court in Switzerland. In choosing what the Olympic committee president called “the nuclear option,” Paralympic officials have broken from their Olympic counterparts, who recently expressed approval, 85 to 1, of not barring all Russian athletes from the Olympics. The Paralympic Games begin here on Sept. 7. At the last Games, hosted by Russia in Sochi, Russia had the largest delegation. The country captured a majority of the medals, winning 80. Germany, the country with the next-highest medal count, won 15. The chemist who ran drug-testing in Sochi said he swapped out the urine of Russia’s top Olympians and Paralympians who were doping at those competitions. He said he did so at the direction of government officials and with help from Russia’s internal intelligence service. A subsequent investigation confirmed that account, producing evidence that cover-ups of illegal drug use dated to 2012, according to the World Anti-Doping Agency. In choosing what the Olympic committee president called “the nuclear option,” Paralympic officials have very unusually broken from their Olympic counterparts, who this week expressed approval, 85 to 1, of not barring all Russian athletes from the Olympics. Many Olympic officials said doping problems went beyond Russia. They called for broad reform and not the punishment of a single country. Mr. Craven, however, said Sunday that Russia’s doping violations were unique. “This situation is not about athletes cheating a system,” he said, “but about a state-run system that is cheating the athletes.” Antidoping officials who had criticized the Olympic committee for a lack of leadership in allowing a sizable Russian delegation to compete here praised Paralympic officials Sunday. “Their unanimous decision goes a long way towards inspiring us all,” said Travis Tygart, head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency. “Most importantly clean athletes.”

Paralympics
Rio de Janeiro
Olympics
International Paralympic Committee
Doping
World Anti-Doping Agency
2016 Summer Olympics
2014 Winter Olympics


Ilya Kovalchuk Leads New Jersey Devils Into Stanley Cup Finals

Abstract: NEWARK — The main concourse at Prudential Center is just one long escalator ride up from the floor of the glass atrium where Ilya Kovalchuk , shaven and wearing a dark suit, was the focal point of a news conference 22 months ago to herald his gigantic contract with the Devils . The contract had to be shortened and lightened (originally 17 years at $102 million) because the N.H.L. said it was against the rules, but Kovalchuk still became a very rich man, signing a 15-year, $100 million contract. On Tuesday, Kovalchuk, wearing a red hooded sweatshirt and a thick black beard, sat in the arena and talked about playing in his first Stanley Cup finals. “It’s good to be where we’re at,” he said, “but we’ve still got some job to do.” No more than 20 minutes after Kovalchuk left the concourse, the Los Angeles Kings , wearing black hooded sweatshirts and thick beards, strolled in. Kovalchuk could have been one of them, too. The Kings wanted to sign him as an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2010, but the Devils acquired Kovalchuk the previous February in a trade with the Atlanta Thrashers. He played 27 regular-season and five playoff games that year. The idea of playing in Los Angeles was appealing, but Kovalchuk, an unrestricted free agent, stayed put. “The way people treated me here, I really liked it,” he said Tuesday. Now Kovalchuk, the forward with a league-leading 18 playoff points, will try to help the Devils win their first Stanley Cup in nine years when the series opens Wednesday. He is thrilled to be participating, and he said he was motivated to win it all. The Devils say he is a different player — a different person — than he was said to be during his seven and a half seasons in Atlanta. They say he is selfless, not a statistics padder, and can be physical, the forward David Clarkson said, “especially when you get him wound up.” “He’s a big leader,” Clarkson said. “He’s someone who has a very big heart.” The Kings, too, have moved on, with their general manager, Dean Lombardi, saying Tuesday of losing the Kovalchuk sweepstakes, “I still thought we had to find some other pieces.” With the forwards Mike Richards and Jeff Carter, they did. Kovalchuk scored a team-high 37 goals in the regular season and has seven more in the playoffs, but, quite notably, he also plays defense. Peter DeBoer, the Devils’ first-year coach, has had Kovalchuk killing penalties, which has made him more responsible in his own zone. DeBoer has lightened Kovalchuk’s penalty-killing load as the playoffs have worn on because he uses him in so many other key situations — all two minutes of a power play, for example, and in the last two minutes of a one-goal game, with either goalie pulled. DeBoer likes to think that the Devils are undergoing a constant learning process, and said of Kovalchuk, “He’s no different than anyone else.” Dainius Zubrus, a veteran forward, said Tuesday of Kovalchuk: “Part of it was in Atlanta he was the guy. If he didn’t score two goals, they might not win. He basically was the guy who had to carry the team and win the games for them. Our team is a little bit different. With other guys scoring, we can win the game.” Zubrus then said: “So I think he’s become obviously more complete as a player. I think he’s way better in his own zone. He’s way more responsible both ways. I’m sure he’ll tell you the same thing himself. I don’t think there’s huge changes, but there’s some adjustments for him, and he’s doing way better than before.” Zach Parise and Travis Zajac have also scored seven goals each in the playoffs, and three others — Clarkson, defenseman Bryce Salvador and the rookie center Adam Henrique — have 10 or more playoff points apiece. The 40-year-old goaltender Martin Brodeur’s save percentage and goals-allowed averages are much better in the playoffs than they were in the regular season. Kovalchuk still has played in only 26 playoff games — all but seven this year — but the Devils have others who can supply knowledge to younger players about what the playoffs are like. Brodeur has played in 199 playoff games, and the 36-year-old forward Patrik Elias in 156. “After nine years, you forget how good it feels to be back here,” Elias said Tuesday. Kovalchuk, then 11 and growing up in Russia, recalled that he watched his first Stanley Cup finals game in 1994, when the Rangers won it all. He saw, in person, the Dallas Stars beat the Devils in triple overtime, 1-0, in the 2000 Cup finals: “It wasn’t a fun game,” he said. Now, apparently healed from a back injury that sidelined him for one game of the second-round series against Philadelphia, he is in the finals with an organization that he likes (and pays him well) and teammates he enjoys. He does not plan to relax until he finishes the job. “It’s like I’ve said a lot of times: we didn’t accomplish anything yet,” he said.

New Jersey Devils
Stanley Cup
Los Angeles Kings
Hockey Ice
Kovalchuk Ilya


Seoul Asks China to Not Repatriate North Korean Refugees

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea urged China on Wednesday to follow “international norms” in its treatment of North Korean refugees, as his government shifted to a more aggressive diplomatic effort to persuade China that it should not arrest and repatriate North Koreans who have fled there. Human rights activists, South Korean lawmakers and teenage North Korean defectors have held a series of rallies in front of the Chinese Embassy here since last week, calling on Beijing to free 30 refugees they said were recently arrested in China and were about to be sent back to North Korea . Park Sun-young, a South Korean lawmaker who has long spoken out for the rights of North Korean refugees, started a hunger strike on Tuesday to highlight their plight. In a nationally televised news conference marking the beginning of the final year of his five-year term, Mr. Lee said, “As long as they are not criminals, I think the Chinese government should treat them according to international norms.” His comments came a day after South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said it would seek international support at a United Nations Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva next week for its efforts to rescue North Korean refugees under Chinese detention. More than 20,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea since a famine hit their homeland in the mid-1990s. Almost all of them traveled through China, with the help of Christian missionaries, human rights activists or smugglers. But Beijing considers them illegal migrants, and the Chinese police often round them up for repatriation. Those who are sent back are treated as “traitors” and are incarcerated in re-education camps, where corporal punishment, forced labor and other human rights abuses remain rampant, according to North Koreans who have survived the camps and defected to South Korea. Mindful of Beijing’s close ties with the North Korean government, South Korea has seldom confronted China over the issue of refugees. But in recent days, it has expressed frustration after low-key bilateral talks with Beijing failed to free the North Koreans. By Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry in Seoul said that it would take the matter to the United Nations Human Rights Council meeting next week. South Korean diplomats are expected to call for the safety and humane treatment of North Korean refugees living in hiding in China. Activists say that North Korea has toughened punishment for fugitives as its new leader, Kim Jong-un , has sought to assert his control. Mr. Kim took over after his father, Kim Jong-il, died in December. In Beijing on Tuesday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry reiterated that North Korean fugitives in China were not refugees because they had crossed the Chinese border illegally and for economic reasons. In his news conference, Mr. Lee looked back on his four years in office, saying that he felt “speechless” about corruption scandals involving his associates. On Wednesday, a Seoul court sentenced a former spokesman for Mr. Lee to 18 months in prison for taking bribes from a businessman. Mr. Lee also vigorously defended some of his major policy decisions, like a free trade agreement with the United States and the building of a naval base on the southern island of Jeju. After years of delay, the United States Congress and South Korea’s National Assembly approved the free trade deal last year. Both governments agreed on Tuesday that the deal would take effect on March 15. South Korea’s main opposition party insists that the deal be renegotiated to better protect the country’s interests; otherwise it will withdraw from the agreement if it gains a legislative majority in elections later this year. Mr. Lee said the naval base was needed to protect busy sea lanes off the southern coast of South Korea. But critics say it has harmed the environment and raised tensions with China by allowing the United States more ways to project its naval power in the region. “Most of those who oppose them now are those who supported them aggressively and positively,” Mr. Lee said, referring to the top opposition leaders who served in the previous government, negotiated the free trade deal and decided to build the naval base. Mr. Lee said he was ready to talk with North Korea “with an open heart” if the North showed a “sincere attitude.” The North has repeatedly vowed not to talk with his government.

China
North Korea
South Korea
Kim Jong Un
Refugees and Displaced Persons


Telling the Story of the Brain’s Cacophony of Competing Voices

Abstract: ST. HELENA, Calif. — The scientists exchanged one last look and held their breath. Everything was ready. The electrode was in place, threaded between the two hemispheres of a living cat’s brain; the instruments were tuned to pick up the chatter passing from one half to the other. The only thing left was to listen for that electronic whisper, the brain’s own internal code. The amplifier hissed — the three scientists expectantly leaning closer — and out it came, loud and clear. “We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine ....” “ The Beatles ’ song! We somehow picked up the frequency of a radio station,” recalled Michael S. Gazzaniga, chuckling at the 45-year-old memory . “The brain’s secret code. Yeah, right!” Dr. Gazzaniga, 71, now a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara , is best known for a dazzling series of studies that revealed the brain’s split personality, the division of labor between its left and right hemispheres. But he is perhaps next best known for telling stories, many of them about blown experiments, dumb questions and other blunders during his nearly half-century career at the top of his field. Now, in lectures and a new book, he is spelling out another kind of cautionary tale — a serious one, about the uses of neuroscience in society, particularly in the courtroom. Brain science “will eventually begin to influence how the public views justice and responsibility,” Dr. Gazzaniga said at a recent conference here sponsored by the Edge Foundation. And there is no guarantee, he added, that its influence will be a good one. For one thing, brain-scanning technology is not ready for prime time in the legal system; it provides less information than people presume. For another, new knowledge about neural processes is raising important questions about human responsibility. Scientists now know that the brain runs largely on autopilot; it acts first and asks questions later, often explaining behavior after the fact. So if much of behavior is automatic, then how responsible are people for their actions? Who’s driving this submarine, anyway? In his new book, “Who’s in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain,” being published this month by Ecco/HarperCollins, Dr. Gazzaniga (pronounced ga-ZAHN-a-ga) argues that the answer is hidden in plain sight. It’s a matter of knowing where to look. The Split Brain He began thinking seriously about the nature of responsibility only after many years of goofing off. Mike Gazzaniga grew up in Glendale, Calif., exploring the open country east of Los Angeles and running occasional experiments in his garage, often with the help of his father, a prominent surgeon. It was fun; the experiments were real attempts to understand biochemistry; and even after joining the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity at Dartmouth (inspiration for the movie “ Animal House”), he made time between parties and pranks to track who was doing what in his chosen field, brain science. In particular, he began to follow studies at the California Institute of Technology suggesting that in animals, developing nerve cells are coded to congregate in specific areas in the brain. This work was captivating for two reasons. First, it seemed to contradict common wisdom at the time, which held that specific brain functions like memory were widely — and uniformly — distributed in the brain, not concentrated in discrete regions. Second, his girlfriend was due to take a summer job right there near Caltech. He decided to write a letter to the director of the program, the eminent neurobiologist Roger Wolcott Sperry (emphasizing reason No. 1). Could Dr. Sperry use a summer intern? “He said sure,” Dr. Gazzaniga said. “I always tell students, ‘Go ahead and write directly to the person you want to study with; you just never know.’ ” At Caltech that summer after his junior year, he glimpsed his future. He learned about so-called split-brain patients, people with severe epilepsy who had surgery cutting the connections between their left and right hemispheres. The surgery drastically reduced seizures but seemed to leave people otherwise unaffected. Back at Dartmouth, he couldn’t stop thinking about it: Totally unaffected? Combing the literature, he found that the best attempt to detect an effect had found no changes in thinking or perception among 26 patients who had had the surgery at the University of Rochester . Could that be possible? Mr. Gazzaniga was so eager to test the patients’ perceptions himself that he wrote another letter, this time to the surgeon — and got permission to do so. “It’s spring break, I get all my gear together, I get all the way over there, and the guy changes his mind,” Dr. Gazzaniga said. “Like, ‘Hey, buddy, go home!’ ” After graduating, he headed straight for Caltech. “It wasn’t just ambition, it was something else — he was gutsy,” said Mitch Glickstein, who was in Dr. Sperry’s lab at the time and is completing a book, “Neuroscience: A Historical Introduction.” “Here’s this junior in college, he knows all about the split-brain patients, and he’s ready to do original research. At 20 years old.” Caltech in those days was like a frat house for Nobel Prize contenders. Here’s Richard Feynman, the physicist, parking himself in the lab unannounced and making wisecracks about the experiments. There’s Dr. Sperry, annoyed, wondering how to one-up Dr. Feynman. One afternoon Dr. Sperry’s young student scrambled out into the hallway on all fours after an escaped lab animal and nearly kneecapped Linus Pauling, the eminent chemist. (“Why don’t you try anesthetizing a bowl of jelly instead?” Dr. Pauling remarked icily.) And then there were the experiments, each one a snapshot into the dark box of the brain. In the early 1960s, Dr. Gazzaniga, then a graduate student, teamed with Dr. Sperry and Dr. Joseph Bogen, a brain surgeon, to publish a string of reports that dramatically demonstrated hemispheric specialization in humans. The researchers devised a way to flash a picture of a bicycle to the right hemisphere alone. When split-brain patients were asked what they saw, they replied, “Nothing” : Because of the severed connection, the left hemisphere, where language is centered, got no visual input and no information from the right hemisphere. So the right hemisphere — which “saw” the bike — had no language to name it. But here was the kicker: The right hemisphere could direct the hand it controls to draw the bicycle. In other studies, the three scientists showed that the right hemisphere could also identify objects by touch, correctly selecting, say, a toothbrush or a spoon by feel after seeing the image of one. The implications were soon clear. The left hemisphere was the intellectual, the wordsmith; it could be severed from the right without loss of I.Q. The right side was the artist, the visual-spatial expert. The findings demolished the theory that specific functions were widely and uniformly supported in the brain. It also put “left brain/right brain” into the common language, as shorthand for types of skills and types of people. Still, in a field defined by incremental, often arcane advances, the Caltech team had achieved a moon shot. Dr. Gazzaniga, now all of 25, could write his own ticket. He soon had a grant for a study to record the electronic chatter between the two hemispheres in the brain of a cat. The Interpreter The Beatles song that surged through the receiver in that experiment provided Dr. Gazzaniga with something almost as valuable as insight: a good story. Yet it also served as a rude reminder that he and his colleagues were missing something important in their assumptions about the brain. “The question, ultimately, was why?” Dr. Gazzaniga said. “Why, if we have these separate systems, is it that the brain has a sense of unity?” Even as he built his early triumph into a career, moving from Caltech to U.C. Santa Barbara and eventually to Dartmouth, with several stops along the way, the same question hung in the air, without a satisfactory answer. In the late 1970s, with the psychologist and linguist George A. Miller, he founded the field of cognitive neuroscience, a marriage of psychology and biology aimed at solving just such puzzles. It didn’t happen, at least not quickly. In the decades to follow, brain scientists found that the left brain-right brain split is only the most obvious division of labor; in fact, the brain contains a swarm of specialized modules, each performing a special skill — calculating a distance, parsing a voice tone — and all of them running at the same time, communicating in widely distributed networks, often across hemispheres. In short, the brain sustains a sense of unity not just in the presence of its left and right co-pilots. It does so amid a cacophony of competing voices, the neural equivalent of open outcry at the Chicago Board of Trade . How? It turned out, yet again, that people who’d had the split- brain surgery helped provide an answer. Dr. Gazzaniga, now at Dartmouth, performed more of his signature experiments — this time with an added twist. In one study, for instance, he and Joseph LeDoux, then a graduate student, showed a patient two pictures: The man’s left hemisphere saw a chicken claw; his right saw a snow scene. Afterward, the man chose the most appropriate matches from an array of pictures visible to both hemispheres. He chose a chicken to go with the claw, and a shovel to go with the snow. So far, so good. But then Dr. Gazzaniga asked him why he chose those items — and struck gold. The man had a ready answer for one choice: The chicken goes with the claw. His left hemisphere had seen the claw, after all. Yet it had not seen the picture of the snow, only the shovel. Looking down at the picture of the shovel, the man said, “And you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed.” The left hemisphere was just concocting an explanation, Dr. Gazzaniga said. In studies in the 1980s and ’90s, he and others showed that the pattern was consistent: The left hemisphere takes what information it has and delivers a coherent tale to conscious awareness. It happens continually in daily life, and most everyone has caught himself or herself in the act — overhearing a fragment of gossip, for instance, and filling in the blanks with assumptions. The brain’s cacophony of competing voices feels coherent because some module or network somewhere in the left hemisphere is providing a running narration. “It only took me 25 years to ask the right question to figure it out,” Dr. Gazzaniga said. “One of the toughest things in any science, but especially in neuroscience, is to weed out the ideas that are really pleasing but unencumbered by truth,” said Thomas Carew, former president of the Society for Neuroscience and dean of the New York University School of Arts and Sciences. “Mike Gazzaniga is one of those in the field who’s been able to do that.” Dr. Gazzaniga decided to call the left-brain narrating system “the interpreter.” The storyteller found the storyteller. Emergent Properties Knowing the breed well, he also understood its power. The interpreter creates the illusion of a meaningful script, as well as a coherent self. Working on the fly, it furiously reconstructs not only what happened but why, inserting motives here, intentions there — based on limited, sometimes flawed information. One implication of this is a familiar staple of psychotherapy and literature: We are not who we think we are. We narrate our lives, shading every last detail, and even changing the script retrospectively, depending on the event, most of the time subconsciously. The storyteller never stops, except perhaps during deep sleep. But another implication has to do with responsibility. If our sense of control is built on an unreliable account from automatic brain processes, how much control do we really have? Are there thresholds of responsibility, for instance, that can be determined by studying neural circuits? Dr. Gazzaniga and his wife, Charlotte, raised six children, so like any parents they had to determine levels of responsibility on the fly, just to get someone to set the table. Yet questions like these became increasingly difficult to ignore for Dr. Gazzaniga, as he took on a more prominent role advising policy makers on the applications of brain science. He was appointed to a Congressional technology panel in 1991; in 2002, he took a position on the President’s Council on Bioethics. And in 2007, he became the founding director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ’s Law and Neuroscience Project, which tracks and evaluates applications in the legal system. There, in particular, brain science has had a growing impact. In recent years lawyers have begun to present brain images as evidence, usually to mitigate responsibility for a crime or to test veracity of testimony, as in a polygraph; increasingly, those images have been admitted. And more are coming: In imaging studies, for instance, neuroscientists have identified cortical areas that are highly active when people suppress impulses or other behaviors. But there are clear shortcomings in the application of each of these methods in courtrooms. Brain images are snapshots, for one thing; they capture a brain state at only one moment in time and say nothing about its function before or after. For another, the images vary widely among people with healthy brains — that is, a “high” level of activity in one person may be normal in another. Can brain science tell exactly where automatic processes end and self-directed “responsible” ones end? Not now and not likely ever, Dr. Gazzaniga argues in his book. Social constructs like good judgment and free will are even further removed, and trying to define them in terms of biological processes is, in the end, a fool’s game. “My contention is that, ultimately, responsibility is a contract between two people rather than a property of the brain, and determinism has no meaning in this context,” he writes in “Who’s in Charge?” Like generosity and pettiness, like love and suspiciousness, responsibility is what he calls a “strongly emergent” property — a property that, though derived from biological mechanisms, is fundamentally distinct and obeys different laws, as do ice and water. Dr. Gazzaniga is not the first scientist making this case. It is far from a settled matter, in part because researchers do not yet have a complete picture of how automatic and deliberate systems interact biologically. “I see Gazzaniga’s point, and it would indeed be easiest if we could ignore conclusions derived from brain science and psychology when it comes to legal issues,” said Ap Dijksterhuis, a psychologist at Radboud University Nijmegen, in the Netherlands , in an e-mail. “However, I do not think we can do this forever, and at some point, some key legal concepts such as accountability or responsibility will have to be redefined.” Until then, Dr. Gazzaniga’s advice is to look for them where they’ve always been: in the hearts and moral intuitions of human beings, in their laws and customs. And, it should be said, in their stories.

Brain
Psychology
Books
California Institute of Technology
Michael S Gazzaniga
University of California Santa Barbara


Bojan Bogdanovic Gets Familiar With the Nets

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — There was a visit to the Barclays Center basketball court and lunch at the Peter Luger steakhouse Friday, dinner with Coach Lionel Hollins on Saturday night and a news conference Monday morning. Bojan Bogdanovic, a 25-year-old forward from Bosnia and Herzegovina and an intriguingly unknown quantity, has been on a whirlwind introductory tour since signing a three-year contract with the Nets last week. Curiosity about Bogdanovic and questions about whether he can help the Nets handle the departure of forward Paul Pierce should only continue to build, though, until the start of the season. And he still needs to meet his teammates. “We have some of the best players in the N.B.A.,” he said Monday while touring the team’s practice site in East Rutherford. “I can’t wait to meet them and start to play with them.” Bogdanovic, who is ethnically Croatian, has played and thrived the last three seasons with Fenerbahce Ulker of the Turkish league, but he acknowledged that the N.B.A. represented a new, difficult challenge. Familiarizing himself with the league and the players will be the first step. He met point guard Deron Williams during the N.B.A. lockout, when Williams signed for a brief stint with Besiktas, a rival of Fenerbahce’s. And he knows forward Mirza Teletovic, who hails from the same town, Mostar, in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina. (Amazingly, the Nets have had three players from Mostar since drafting Zoran Planinic in 2003.) Bogdanovic is relatively unknown to many fans in the United States, but he has been on the N.B.A.’s radar for some time. In 2011, the Miami Heat selected him with the 31st overall pick in the draft. On draft night, he was traded twice, going first to the Minnesota Timberwolves and then to the Nets, who gave up a second-round draft pick and some cash. The Nets retained his rights while he played three more seasons in Turkey. It seemed as if he might join the team last summer, but the Nets were unable to come to a buyout agreement with Fenerbahce. “They drafted me three years ago, and every summer I thought they would bring me over,” he said. “This time, it finally came, and I’m very happy and proud about it.” Bogdanovic has been playing professional basketball since 2004, when he joined Zrinjski Mostar, in his hometown, as a 15-year-old. He averaged 13.7 points per game over the last three seasons in the Turkish league. “Of course, it’s not going to be easy,” he said of playing in the N.B.A. “I have to do some adjustments, especially because it’s a lot of games, much more than Europe. But I am ready, and I think that I can help immediately.” Pierce became a free agent this summer and signed with the Washington Wizards. He averaged 13.5 points, 4.6 rebounds and 2.4 assists per game last season. Replacing his production will represent one of the Nets’ early tasks in the 2014-15 season. Bogdanovic said he was ready to help right away. “First of all, I’m a shooter,” he said. “Last year, I improved a lot with my game with the ball, pick-and-roll. I think I’m good enough for one-on-one. I think I am ready.”

Bojan Bogdanovic
Basketball
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Brooklyn Nets


It’s Still Bill Clinton, but the Old Magic Seems to Be Missing

Abstract: MASON CITY, Iowa — Bill Clinton came to vote-rich Mason City on Wednesday night and recounted his wife’s life experiences, recited her policy ideas, and ripped into the Republicans a bit. But what Mr. Clinton used to do so well, and what Hillary Clinton needs only days before the Iowa caucuses on Monday, was nowhere to be found: a polished, piercing critique of an opponent, in this case Bernie Sanders. At an event in Las Vegas last week, Mr. Clinton, 69, looked smaller and his voice seemed weaker than in past campaigns, and people had to strain to hear him at times. He was at his best as he finessed the intricacies of politics and policy, but he occasionally meandered, leaving the audience, including some who had lined up for hours to see him, seeming more politely attentive than inspired. At a critical moment when the former president is again answering the call to try to energize his wife’s campaign, even some of his admirers are wondering if he has lost some of that old Clinton magic. “He seemed perfunctory, looked gaunt, didn’t seem to captivate the crowd,” said Jon Ralston, a veteran political commentator in Nevada, who attended the Las Vegas event last Friday. “I have seen him speak many times, and he just didn’t seem to be the same guy. He could still summon stats and an anecdote or two, but not with the same verve.” Mr. Clinton still shows flashes of brilliance. On Wednesday night, he acknowledged the appeal of the fractious Republican race in one breath, then eviscerated its candidates in the next. “It may be entertaining, but it doesn’t have a lick of impact on how you live,” Mr. Clinton said, emphasizing those last three words and pausing between each one. Image Former President Bill Clinton at a campaign event for his wife in Mason City, Iowa, on Wednesday. Credit Max Whittaker for The New York Times It is still early enough in the race for Mr. Clinton to warm up. (And he can take some time to warm up.) A more subdued Bill Clinton may not be such a bad thing either, say some Democrats, who cringe as they recall the distraction of his piping-hot words about Barack Obama in the 2008 race. Yet the Clinton of lore, the once-in-a generation political natural who fought back to win his party’s nomination in 1992 and came through in clutch moments with great speeches over the years, has yet to appear. In 1992, in a speech at a New Hampshire Elks lodge just before the state’s primary, he drove grown men to tears as he described their economic struggles. He memorably promised that if voters supported him, he would fight for them as president until “the last dog dies.” Friends of Mr. Clinton’s who have seen him on the trail recently say that the ebullient energy he is known for — whether addressing a crowd or spending an hour on a rope line with voters — has matured into an elder statesman’s self-assurance. He may not electrify a room the way he once did, they say, but he is still an effective advocate for Mrs. Clinton. “His age, his heart surgery, his veganism — I think it’s all brought a calmness into his life,” said George Bruno, a former Democratic Party chairman in New Hampshire and longtime ally of Mr. Clinton, referring to the former president’s quadruple bypass operation in 2004 and his strict plant-based diet . While some friends say Mr. Clinton would look zippier if he ate the occasional cheeseburger — an old favorite — others say he has never been healthier, with his weight down and his heart in excellent condition. “He’s not as fiery as he once was, but he has an air of real self-confidence,” Mr. Bruno said. Charismatic and soulful, and with an emotional force that could transfix voters, Mr. Clinton was among the most gifted of modern presidents at reading an audience and making points in a plain-spoken yet artful way. He thought of his speeches as “little talks,” he told friends, in which he could tell stories and share ideas in a conversational manner that people could relate to while never feeling condescended to. He was not a shouter, as Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders can be. Rather, he would squeeze every word for maximum effect, mixing in humor and smiles, and train his eyes on audience members to make them feel that he was talking directly to them. He could also shrewdly dismantle an opponent, but so far, Mr. Clinton does not seem to be relishing the fight. He has chosen to shrug off recent attacks from the leading Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump, and has been relatively mild in his critiques of Mr. Sanders. Who Is Leading the South Carolina Polls A look at the latest results for Iowa and New Hampshire, and how this year compares to previous election seasons. Allies say that he does not see any need to fully engage either man, believing that Mrs. Clinton can handle them. And he wants to avoid giving any grist to her opponents, recalling how the Obama campaign exploited Mr. Clinton’s remark in 2008 describing Mr. Obama’s statement that he opposed the Iraq war as “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.” “I think he’s become more cautious, more tentative and less unabashed,” said Doug Schoen, a former adviser and pollster to Mr. Clinton. “Going negative just isn’t his strength in her races. His strength is developing a positive and empathetic narrative for why Mrs. Clinton should be president.” Yet some voters who have listened to Mr. Clinton’s speeches over the decades, on television or at small-scale campaign events, said he had less magnetism recently than they remembered. “He’s more low-key than he used to be, really keeping to the facts rather than making that old emotional connection,” said Karen Janes, 67, of Exeter, N.H., after listening to Mr. Clinton speak there this month. These days, Mr. Clinton’s remarks can be plodding, even rambling at times. By the 30-minute mark on Wednesday night, some people were yawning and others checking their phones as he mentioned raising the minimum wage (with far less intensity than Mr. Sanders’s passionate plea for $15 an hour) and described Mrs. Clinton’s plans for new Wall Street regulations. After the Mason City event, several Clinton supporters said the former president had made a good case for his wife, while other voters said they had not heard anything to pull them away from Mr. Sanders, who also held a rally in Mason City on Wednesday night, drawing 1,110 people, about triple the size of the former president’s crowd. “I’ll probably still go with Bernie,” said Courtney Johnson, 23, a social worker from nearby Osage. “I just didn’t hear how Hillary would take the country in a new direction.” Still, as Mr. Clinton starts a campaign swing through Iowa leading up to Monday night’s caucuses, he remains very popular among likely Democratic caucusgoers, with 87 percent viewing him favorably in a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll this month. Nationally, however, Mr. Clinton’s favorability rating has fallen since he became more visibly active in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll. Thirty-nine percent of Americans viewed him favorably in the mid-January poll , compared with 50 percent in a similar survey in early November. Over that time, Mr. Trump has tried to make an issue out of Mr. Clinton’s sexual history and stir unease among some Americans about Mr. Clinton returning to the White House. The Clintons have mostly chosen not to respond to his attacks. Paul Begala, a former political adviser to Mr. Clinton and a friend of the couple’s, said that the former president’s greatest strength now is as “Hillary’s authenticator, in part because he’s actually had the job that his wife is seeking.” “Most people, not just Democrats, feel President Clinton was really good at being president,” Mr. Begala said. “And all the hand-wringers and bed-wetters who will say, ‘Oh, he’s going to make a mistake’ — give me a break. He’s still the best natural politician there is.” As an example of Mr. Clinton’s skills, Mr. Begala pointed to a recent campaign stop in Concord, N.H., where the former president thanked the state’s voters for being good to the Clintons and teaching them about the issues facing America. Then, in an amiable, unhurried tone, with gentle waves of his hands, Mr. Clinton reached for a metaphor to describe the hopes and anxieties of voters in presidential election years. “The American people are like a great composer — the words are always the same, but they are rearranged like notes, and they write a new melody and then they decide who they want to sing it,” Mr. Clinton said. Mr. Begala said: “I love that where so many analysts see cacophony, he sees a symphony. Classic Clinton: optimistic, unifying.”

Bill Clinton
Iowa
Hillary Clinton
Democrats
2016 Presidential Election
Bernard Sanders,Bernie Sanders


Cuomo Vetoes Bill on Placement of Special Education Students

Abstract: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo vetoed a bill on Tuesday requiring public school officials to take into account the “home life and family background” of special education students when placing them in schools, a measure that would have given religious parents more power to demand that the public pay for private education. In a message accompanying the veto, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said the bill would have created “an overly broad and ambiguous mandate” to send more students to private schools, burdening taxpayers with “incalculable significant additional costs.” Opponents of the measure, including the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and many school board associations, had argued that it would force school districts to pay for far more students to attend religious schools. But the bill’s chief sponsor in the State Assembly, Helene Weinstein, Democrat of Brooklyn, issued a statement vowing to “continue the fight,” suggesting she would try to muster the two-thirds majority required to override the veto. The bill passed the Democratic-led Assembly with 93 votes, just 7 short of that threshold, and sailed through with more than two-thirds of the vote in the Republican-controlled Senate. Supporters said the veto would disappoint thousands of families whose children would be better equipped to learn in surroundings compatible with their families’ practices and values, like Orthodox Jewish children who are not used to secular settings. “There is a lot of misunderstanding about the legislation and what it would do,” Assemblywoman Weinstein said in a statement. “It is about parents of children with special needs not having to get a lawyer every year to fight for that which had been granted the previous year. It is about ensuring that parents of children with special needs are not waiting indefinitely for tuition reimbursements.” James Cultrara, education director for the New York State Catholic Conference, said that if the veto were not overridden, supporters would push for a new version of the bill, perhaps drawn more narrowly to win over some opponents. “We will work with everyone involved to craft it in a way that’s acceptable,” Mr. Cultrara said. But he added that he would have preferred the governor to approve the bill and then clarify it through corrections in the next session, rather than start the process over, disappointing some families who had hoped for new placements in the coming school year. Courts have expanded parents’ rights to demand that school districts pay for private special education if public schools cannot meet a student’s needs. The bill would have expanded the definition of needs to include compatibility with the student’s home life, wording that opponents said could cover religious practices as well as food and clothing preferences. In his veto message, Mr. Cuomo said his administration was committed to providing “the best education and assistance to every child in New York, including children with disabilities.” “However,” he added, “this bill unfairly places the burden on taxpayers to support the provision of a private education.” New York City now spends more than $100 million a year on private schooling for about 5,000 special education students. In a statement, Mayor Bloomberg said the bill would have constituted a new unfunded mandate for school districts across the state. “With his veto,” Mr. Bloomberg said, “Governor Cuomo has once again shown his commitment to fiscal responsibility and to protecting both the city and state from unsustainable financial burdens.”

Special Education
New York State
New York City
Private and Sectarian Schools
Cuomo Andrew M
State Legislatures
Law and Legislation
Education (K-12)
Weinstein Helene E


Some See Beetle Attacks on Western Forests as a Natural Event

Abstract: MISSOULA, Mont. — When Ken Salazar — then a senator from Colorado, now secretary of the interior — called the attack on millions of acres of pine forests by the bark beetle the Katrina of the West, he was expressing the common view of the explosive growth of the beetles as an unmitigated disaster. But not everybody sees it that way. Some environmentalists and scientists support the beetles. While they acknowledge the severity of the problems the beetles are causing, they argue that the insects, which kill only mature trees larger than five inches in diameter, are a natural phenomenon, like forest fires, and play a vital ecological role. “It’s not the end of the forests, and they are not destroyed,” said Diana L. Six, a professor of forest entomology and pathology at the University of Montana here, who has studied the beetle for 16 years, as she walked in a beetle-infected forest near here recently . “Lodge pole pine evolved to go out with a stand-replacing event, such as fire or beetles, then regenerate really quickly,” she said. “When they hit 80 or 90 years of age all of a sudden the beetles become a player — the trees are big enough for the beetles to attack. They reset the clock on the stand.” Dr. Gregg DeNitto, a forest health specialist with the Forest Service here, said the beetles were not “an exotic like the emerald ash bore.” “This is a native insect in a native host, and these are normal biological processes that have happened for millennia,” Dr. DeNitto said. Nothing can or should be done to halt the spread of the beetle, experts say. After they kill the mature trees, the soil becomes more fertile as nitrogen levels increase, sometimes tripling. The growth rate of surviving trees increases when the infestation ends. After dead trees fall over or burn, grass grows and provides elk habitat, and slightly more diverse forests rise up. Beetles help by breaking down fallen trees, as well. “They digest the wood and are valuable in terms of nutrient recycling,” said Dr. Ken Raffa, an entomologist at the University of Wisconsin who studies the beetles. “And they introduce micro-organisms that further break down the wood.” Still, it is a grim time for people who work, play and live in the woods. Mountain pine beetles affect nearly 6.5 million acres, an expanse more than 50 percent greater in 2008 than in 2007. If all types of bark beetles are included, the figure is 8 million acres — a level of destruction not seen in 150 years — and the number is expected to grow this year. The Forest Service’s chief forester, Rick Cables, who oversees the Rocky Mountain Region, told Congress in June that fire in vast acreages of downed timber could burn so hot in places it would bake the soil, causing extreme erosion and runoff, and pollute water supplies to millions of people in the Southwest. “People in Phoenix and Las Vegas depend on the water, and I have to balance that with an ecosystem trying to reset itself,” Mr. Cables said. Prescribed fire or mechanical thinning of dead trees are being considered to reduce the risk of fire in beetle-killed stands in some watersheds. There is virtually no research on fires in an outbreak this large. “We’ve never seen this many trees dead on the landscape,” said Dr. Barbara J. Bentz, a Forest Service entomologist. “We don’t know what the ramifications are.” Both Dr. DeNitto and Dr. Six allow that the current outbreak is not entirely natural. Human intervention in the form of fire suppression and large-scale clear cuts mean that many forests are simultaneously vulnerable. Under natural conditions a forest is a patchwork of different-age trees, which means the beetles also create a patchwork of dead trees. “If they come up against a young patch, they’ll quit,” Dr. Six said. “If it’s old, they keep on going. But we’ve lost that mosaic, so they keep on going.” The major human-caused element of the current outbreak, though, is a warmer climate, which has opened new territory to the beetles. And this has caused some experts to view the beetle infestations as unnaturally severe. “The absolute minimum temperatures are 6 to 10 degrees higher now,” said Dr. Steve Running, an ecologist at the University of Montana who is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and is studying the effect of warming on Western ecosystems. In the 1950s, minimum temperatures were 42 to 47 degrees below zero. The last decade, the minimum was 35 below, with fewer days at minimum. The rise in minimums is important, Dr. Running said, “because at the lower temperatures it only took a couple of nights for the larvae to freeze to death.” The growing season in the West has also grown longer by two weeks, Dr. Running said, while the precipitation has stayed the same, which translates to a drought. Trees stressed by drought cannot effectively fend off the beetles. Dr. Six argues that this outbreak is so extreme in duration, intensity and scope that the beetles are behaving like an exotic species in some places and may damage a critical Western ecosystem based around the white bark pine. High altitudes, where the insects’ life span was very limited, are warming, and the beetles there have gone from a two-year life cycle to one year. There are so many more beetles that in combination with a disease called blister rust, they will probably wipe out white bark pines in many areas. Dr. Six says she remains amazed at the beetles’ adaptation. “It’s impressive something could evolve such a complicated and effective way of living in the woods,” she said. “It’s awesome.” When the beetles hatch, they mass for an attack on the next tree by sending out a chemical signal that tells other beetles it is time for an assault. They need to have sufficient numbers to overwhelm the tree, and need to do it within three or four days, or the tree will win. If the beetles lay eggs and they hatch, they eat a nutrient-carrying membrane and kill the tree. The tree is not that nutritious, though, so the beetles bring carry-out. “They carry fungus from tree to tree in pockets and inoculate the trees with it,” Dr. Six said. There are so many insects now that some behaviors have changed. They often go after trees that are smaller and younger than trees they have attacked in the past, or after healthy trees. Beetles used to hatch during two weeks in July, Dr. Six said, and “now they hatch beginning in May and go until October.” “The whole ecosystem is changing,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” While more than 6 million acres in the United States have been affected by mountain pine beetles, the number is 34 million acres in British Columbia. “It’s a continental-scale phenomenon,” said Dan Tinker, a professor of forest and fire ecology at the University of Wyoming, referring to the total of the beetle kills. “We’re all taken aback right now.” There is no forseeable end to the outbreak, Dr. Six said. “If it’s climate-driven,” she said, “we have to reverse climate change .”

Insects
Forests and Forestry
Environment
Science and Technology


Fred Kavli, Benefactor of Science Prizes, Dies at 86

Abstract: Fred Kavli, a physicist who left Norway for California as a young man and made millions manufacturing sensors for appliances, automobiles and aircraft, then late in life began donating much of his fortune to science, establishing a major prize he intended to rival the Nobel, died on Thursday at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 86. The cause was cancer, according to the Kavli Foundation , which Mr. Kavli started in 2000. The foundation has given more than $200 million to establish 17 scientific research institutes at universities around the world for work in astrophysics, neuroscience, nanoscience and theoretical physics. In 2008, the first Kavli Prizes were awarded, with recipients in each of three categories splitting $1 million. The prizes are awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo in September every other year. “The point is to create visibility for science,” Mr. Kavli said in an interview with The New York Times in 2005. “The Nobels do a good job. It might take us 100 years to catch up.” Mr. Kavli, who as a child marveled at the Northern Lights from his family’s farm on a fjord, earned a degree in applied physics at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in 1955 and arrived in the United States the next year. Two years later, after putting an ad in a newspaper saying he was an engineer seeking financing for a new company, he created the Kavlico Corporation. Kavlico developed a series of sophisticated sensors that help control a wide range of mechanical functions, whether helping car engines save fuel and limit pollution or operating dishwashers. They have been used on the space shuttle, the International Space Station, and Trident and Poseidon missiles. By 2000, the company had 1,500 employees. Mr. Kavli sold it that year for $340 million. He knew he wanted to establish a philanthropic foundation to benefit science, but he was unsure of how to do it efficiently. He consulted with several top university leaders, who told him that while they might have staff and facilities, they often lacked seed money to allow their researchers to explore experimental ideas — ideas that might fail. Image Fred Kavli inside his home in Santa Barbara, Calif., in 2005. Credit J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times The 17 Kavli institutes — they are scattered from Delft to Beijing to Berkeley — are intended to provide the seed money. The foundation has given each institute at least $7.5 million, with the assurance that the university hosting it will find another source to match the money. The money serves as an endowment that returns about $400,000 per year toward research. The foundation plans to expand the contribution to each institute to about $10 million, which, when matched, would provide about $1 million annually for research at each location, said Robert W. Conn, the foundation’s president. Several scientists affiliated with the Kavli institutes have gone on to win Nobel Prizes. “It is unrestricted funds,” Mr. Conn said, “which is indispensable in discovery science.” Mr. Kavli was born on Aug. 20, 1927, in Eresfjord, Norway, near the country’s southwest coast. During much of his childhood, Norway was occupied by German forces. Food and gas were in short supply, and he and his brother, Aslak, risked their lives stealing fuel oil from the Nazis. The boys were entrepreneurs, running a lumber business. A lifetime later, Mr. Kavli’s passions included his 12,000-square-foot-house on a bluff overlooking the Pacific. Survivors include two children from a marriage that ended in divorce. Science leaders have praised Mr. Kavli and other newer philanthropists, including Paul W. Allen, the Microsoft co-founder, for making large donations toward research at a time when many university research budgets have declined. The Kavli Foundation has supported a wide range of work. Among the seven winners of the Kavli Prizes in 2012 were, in nanoscience, Mildred S. Dresselhaus , a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose research helped usher in the age of nanotechnology; in neuroscience, Cornelia Isabella Bargmann of Rockefeller University, who studies the neural circuits of Caenorhabditis elegans, a worm with only 300 nerve cells, to learn how the brain processes information from the environment; and, in astrophysics, scientists who discovered the Kuiper belt , a cloudy disk of ice and rock near Neptune. In 2005, when Mr. Kavli announced that he planned to start the prizes, he recalled skiing in the Norwegian mountains as a boy. “At times,” he told a gathering in New York, “the whole sky was aflame with the Northern Lights shifting and dancing across the sky down to the white-clad mountaintops. In the stillness and loneliness of the white mountains, I pondered the universe, the planet, nature and the wonders of man. I’m still pondering.”


Paterson Criticizes Panel for Its Judicial Selections

Abstract: Gov. David A. Paterson on Wednesday blasted the state commission that recommends candidates for chief judge, saying it was an outrage and an injustice that not one of the seven people presented to him was a woman. Mr. Paterson asked the state attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, to examine whether the pool of candidates might be expanded and whether the process by which candidates are selected should be revised — even though the law makes it clear that the governor is bound by the candidates the commission chooses. Mr. Paterson said he would not ignore the recommendations of the bipartisan Commission on Judicial Nomination, which according to state law names the slate of candidates from which the governor must select a chief judge. But he did make clear that he was profoundly disappointed in the commission’s selections. “It seems highly unusual,” Mr. Paterson said during a press conference at his Midtown Manhattan office. “I don’t accept that there wasn’t a woman in this state that wasn’t qualified to serve on the Court of Appeals.” Mr. Cuomo, who appeared with the governor at the press conference, also registered his outrage. “To circumscribe, limit the governor to only men, and for the commission to say, ‘We searched the state, we couldn’t find a single, solitary qualified woman to serve on the bench’ — something is wrong,” he said. “We will be exploring the available legal options, discussing it with the governor and his team and deciding where to go from here.” But the commission’s chairman, John O’Mara, issued a statement on Wednesday saying that the legal process must be respected. “We welcome the opportunity to work with the governor to analyze the process by which the commission selects candidates,” Mr. O’Mara said. “However, it is imperative that the commission maintain its independence in order to ensure that the merit selection process works properly.” The conflict between Mr. Paterson and the commission is the latest echo of a long-running dispute over the influence governors have in selecting judges for the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. The 12-member commission was established after a 1977 amendment to the State Constitution ended the popular election of the state’s top judges. Four members of the commission are appointed by the governor, four by the chief judge and one each by the four leaders of the State Legislature. Former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo was frustrated by the commission’s recommendations in 1983 when it presented him with a list that contained no women. But he was ultimately bound to choose from the commission’s slate of candidates. People familiar with the applicants the commission reviewed for the chief judge position, which will become vacant when the current chief, Judith S. Kaye, retires at the end of the year, said that about a dozen candidates were considered. Among them were several women. Some officials said privately that they were surprised that Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick, a judge on the Court of Appeals whose application was reviewed by the commission, did not make the final cut. Ms. Ciparick is of Hispanic heritage, and her nomination as chief judge could have helped Mr. Paterson defuse tensions with some Hispanic political leaders, who believe they are underrepresented in the highest ranks of state government. But for now, it appears that Mr. Paterson will have to live with the seven people the commission recommended. The Paterson administration does not believe the commission would be open to revisiting its choices, said Peter J. Kiernan, Mr. Paterson’s chief counsel. “I think we have some indications that they wouldn’t entertain such a request,” he said.


London Is Counting the Votes in Its Tight Mayoral Contest

Abstract: LONDON — Mayor Ken Livingstone campaigned hard across London on Thursday as voters went to the polls to decide whether to let him stay in office for another four years. Meanwhile, seats on 159 local councils across England and Wales were up for grabs in elections widely seen as a referendum on the popularity of Prime Minister Gordon Brown ’s floundering Labor government. The final results will not be known until Friday afternoon, but predictions were that the Conservative Party would win the most votes by as much as 11 percentage points to take or maintain control of a number of local governments. “Although local elections aren’t as serious as national elections, because local authorities have limited powers, people use them to express their displeasure with national parties,” said Julia Clark, director of political research at the Ipsos MORI Social Research Institute. “Local elections in this country are basically treated as opinion polls on national parties as well as individual political events on their own.” In London, the race was too close to call on Thursday, at least according to the contradictory predictions generated by the largest opinion polls. Mr. Livingstone, a stalwart of the left and an intermittent irritant to the Labor establishment who has been in office for eight years, was facing a formidable opponent in Boris Johnson. Mr. Johnson, a well-known media personality and blunt-spoken Conservative member of Parliament, has tried with surprising success to shed his image as a lightweight jokester. Supported by the Conservative apparatus, he has turned into a viable candidate who has appealed both to natural party supporters and others tired of the often abrasive Mr. Livingstone. In a race turning in large part on personality, both candidates are universally known by their first names, and both provoke high passions, for and against. “We’re seeing a lot of people planning to come out and vote because they really hate Ken or they really hate Boris,” Ms. Clark said. “Ken has been in office for a long time, and he’s initiated and sustained some unpopular policies. With Boris, there is a lot of anti-Boris sentiment out there. He’s made some very inappropriate off-the-cuff comments in the past.” Mr. Johnson’s greatest strength lies among traditional Conservatives: older people, richer people, people who live in the suburbs rather than the inner city. Mr. Livingstone has been polling better among young people and ethnic minorities, but those groups are also less inclined to show up at the polls and may be put off by factors like the rain squalls that buffeted London intermittently on Thursday.

England
Wales
Elections
Livingstone Ken
Johnson Boris
Politics and Government
Brown Gordon


After Serious Accident, His Time to Beat? 3 Years

Abstract: On Sunday, Matthew Long, 42, finished the New York City Marathon in 7 hours, 21 minutes. He was well back in the pack of tens of thousands of entrants, yet his finish was, in its own way, a first. Mr. Long, a firefighter and former competitive marathoner and triathlete, was nearly killed after being hit by a bus while riding his bicycle on the East Side of Manhattan during the New York transit strike in December 2005. His life and limbs were saved by extensive blood transfusions, more than three dozen operations and nearly half a year of hospitalization. Depression nearly crushed his spirit, until he began training again, teaching his body to walk and then run through a blinding wall of pain. On Sunday, two of Mr. Long’s closest friends ran alongside him, urging him onward whenever he voiced his desire to stop. He gave himself breaks, walking over most of the five bridges, before resuming running, even after the pain in his hip and feet bordered on unbearable after Mile 23. After the race, he took a shower, then an ice bath, and then planned to head to one of the pubs his family owns, on Third Avenue in Manhattan, to celebrate. “It’s a great feeling. I did it to show the power of the human spirit,” he said in a telephone interview after the race. “I’m an athlete again.”

New York City Marathon
Manhattan (NYC)
Accidents and Safety
Marathon Running


Alabama Blows Out Arkansas in SEC Matchup

Abstract: FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Tyler Wilson, Arkansas’s No. 1 quarterback, marched into the auditorium where the Razorbacks hold their postgame news conferences still in his shoulder pads and still wearing his No. 8 jersey. He did not play in Saturday’s humiliating 52-0 loss to No. 1 Alabama because of a concussion, but he had plenty to say in a 67-second rant. “First of all, it wasn’t very pretty to watch,” Wilson said. “Do I feel that we at times gave up out there? Yeah. Absolutely.” He went on to say that he was disappointed “to see people not do their jobs and things go wrong.” He added, “There’s been a lot of things gone that way.” Wilson was sitting at a table in front of members of the news media, but he stopped reporters from asking questions. He was going to open all the vents. “No, sorry, we’re not doing questions today,” he said. Then he went on. “There’s been a lot of people jump off the bandwagon. It’s my responsibility as a leader to keep everybody in this organization in that locker room together. I’m going to make sure of it going forward.” He got up and marched out. The Razorbacks, once ranked No. 8, committed five turnovers and were trampled by the Crimson Tide (3-0, 1-0 Southeastern Conference), who outgained Arkansas, 438 yards to 137, in an SEC game at Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium. Arkansas (1-2, 0-1) was held scoreless at Razorback Stadium for the first time since a 7-0 loss to Baylor in 1966. Six months ago, this was an anticipated matchup, with special events being planned around the date and tickets being sold for four times their face value. The Razorbacks, who were set to play their SEC Western Division rivals Alabama and Louisiana State at home this season, had a high-powered offense returning after an 11-2 season, and there were high expectations for the team. Since the end of last season, the Razorbacks have endured one calamity after another. On April 10, their coach, Bobby Petrino, was fired after a motorcycle accident led to revelations that he had an affair with a university employee. Several months later, John L. Smith, the coach hired to replace Petrino, announced he was in bankruptcy proceedings. Then, last Saturday, in their second game, the Razorbacks led Louisiana-Monroe of the Sun Belt Conference by 28-7, but they lost the lead and then the game, in overtime, 34-31. Wilson was knocked out of the game with a head injury, and Arkansas fell like a rock out of the top 25. On Saturday, the Razorbacks showed they had more holes than just a missing quarterback. Wilson warmed up before the game, apparently in a ruse to keep Alabama guessing about his status, but Arkansas was overwhelmed tackle to tackle, and it kept making mistakes in every phase of the game. “I really don’t know what to say; I didn’t know what to say to our team as well,” Smith said. “It’s kind of hard to say anything at this point.” Arkansas had trouble with even the simplest of chores. On their second possession, the Razorbacks were in a punt formation when the snap sailed over the head of punter Dylan Breeding. After Breeding kicked the ball through the end zone (an illegal kick), Alabama got the ball on the Arkansas 6 and scored immediately on a run by Eddie Lacy. Smith said he made the decision to switch long snappers before the game to improve Arkansas’s punt coverage, but the move backfired. The Razorbacks played without Petrino and the talented Wilson, but their linemen were overwhelmed by Alabama’s front seven. Over and over, the Razorbacks’ defense had to defend short fields because of turnovers, and it finally collapsed. Still, the Razorbacks were highly regarded before the season, and this result raises the question of just how good this Alabama team is.

University of Alabama
University of Arkansas
Smith John L
Football (College)


Billy Eppler Leaves Yankees to Become Angels’ General Manager

Abstract: Billy Eppler, the assistant general manager of the Yankees, has been named general manager of the Los Angeles Angels, the team announced Sunday night. Eppler, 40, who signed a four-year contract, had been with the Yankees for 11 seasons, having previously served as director of pro scouting and director of pro personnel. He replaces Jerry Dipoto, who resigned July 1 after a series of disagreements with Angels Manager Mike Scioscia and is now the Seattle Mariners’ general manager. The Angels were eliminated from the playoffs Sunday when they lost to the Texas Rangers.

Billy Eppler
Yankees
Los Angeles Angels
Baseball
Appointments and Executive Changes


Steelers Place Dennis Dixon on Injured Reserve

Abstract: The Pittsburgh Steelers placed quarterback Dennis Dixon on the injured reserve list Saturday with a meniscus tear in his left knee, ending his season. Dixon started the Steelers’ first two games in place of the suspended Ben Roethlisberger . He was injured on a run during the first quarter of a 19-11 victory at Tennessee on Sept. 19. Charlie Batch took over, and Dixon had surgery later in the week. With Dixon unable to play until next season, the Steelers will apparently keep Batch and Byron Leftwich as backups. Roethlisberger’s suspension ends Monday. JETS STILL MISSING PACE Jets linebacker Calvin Pace has been ruled out for the fourth straight game with a broken right foot that has sidelined him since late in the preseason. Pace practiced for the first time on a limited basis Friday and was listed as questionable for the game at Buffalo. But he was left off the trip Saturday so that he could continue his rehabilitation. COLTS DOWN TWO ON OFFENSE Indianapolis receiver Pierre Garcon and running back Donald Brown did not travel with the Colts to Jacksonville and will miss Sunday’s game. Garcon and Brown missed practice all week with hamstring injuries. Garcon also sat out last week’s game. SAINTS ADD A RUNNING BACK The New Orleans Saints signed running back DeShawn Wynn from their practice squad, a move Coach Sean Payton had suggested he would make if Pierre Thomas were unable to play against Carolina on Sunday. Thomas, listed as questionable, hurt his left ankle during the Saints’ 27-24 loss to Atlanta last Sunday.

Pittsburgh Steelers
Dixon Dennis
Roethlisberger Ben
Batch Charlie
Football
National Football League
Sports Injuries


A Couple Is Struck While Hailing a Cab in Midtown Manhattan

Abstract: She met her future husband nearly four decades ago, on West 34th Street. It was a beautiful summer afternoon, and they were both trying to hail a cab. “I was gorgeous, exquisite; he was handsome and wonderful,” Denise Baum recalled, admitting that her initial motive may not have been entirely romantic. “I was trying to steal his taxi,” she said. There was some playful banter, she recalled through tears on Sunday. And although he was 20 years her senior, she joked that he should marry her, and that she would bear him a daughter. Three months later they married, and nine months after that, their daughter, the first of their two children, was born. The family that grew out of that chance meeting was devastated on Saturday night by another random street encounter. Mrs. Baum and her husband — this time hailing a cab together on a Midtown corner — were struck when two cars collided in the intersection. The impact, the police said, sent one of the vehicles spinning into them. Mrs. Baum suffered minor injuries to her leg. Her husband, Rubin Baum, 80, was pinned under the car and died from his injuries. “The car, it came so quickly I didn’t know what hit us,” Mrs. Baum said. She said her husband pushed her out of harm’s way at the last second, a family member said. The police on Sunday were still investigating the 10:30 p.m. crash at East 59th Street and Park Avenue, but said a preliminary inquiry suggested that no crime had occurred. A 2011 silver minivan, driven by a 47-year-old man and carrying a Pakistani diplomat, was heading north on Park Avenue when it was struck by a 2000 black Mazda driven by a 20-year-old, the police said. Mr. Baum, who was called Ruby, had run several successful companies in the garment center, manufacturing women’s clothing and financing other businesses until he retired, according to a close friend, Howard Hauptman, who said the two had known each other for 35 years. Mr. Baum wanted to stay active and went back to work, alongside Mr. Hauptman, about five years ago, at a residential real estate company called Anchor Associates. On the company’s Web site, the white-haired Mr. Baum, with a half-smile, is pictured on his profile page wearing a black shirt and a pink tie. “He wore a black shirt every Wednesday,” Mr. Hauptman recalled, though he could not say why. He did say that when Mr. Baum worked in the garment center, he always wore a red tie, and was thus known as Ruby Red Tie. An Army medic during the Korean War, Mr. Baum was awarded two Purple Hearts, his wife said. “He had plasma,” she said. “Everybody else had guns.” Mr. Hauptman said of his friend: “He touched everybody in a wonderful way. From the moment you met him, you got this real good feeling. Ruby was full of life, and he loved interactions with people, and for an 80-year-old guy he was remarkably vibrant.” Mr. Baum’s son-in-law, Jeff Rossen, a national investigative correspondent for NBC News, said in an e-mail that his wife’s father “had the body of an 80-year old, but the heart and soul of a 25-year old.” Mr. Baum, he wrote, was devoted to his four grandchildren, who idolized him. “Ruby was my daughter’s N.Y.C. tour guide,” Mr. Rossen said. “From the park, to the zoo, and everywhere in between, he took Sloane to everything.” A devoted New York Giants fan and a season-ticket holder since 1952, Mr. Baum missed three chances to see his team play in the Super Bowl because he lost out in the lottery used to distribute tickets to season-ticket holders. In 2008, a ticket broker who read about his plight in the New York Post gave him two tickets . Mr. Baum, according to Mr. Hauptman, was born in Albany, the son of a rabbi who was in charge of enforcing laws on kashrut for the New York State Department of Agriculture. The family moved to New York City when Mr. Baum was a child. His father, Rabbi Shepherd Z. Baum, was struck and killed by a car in 1977, Mrs. Baum said.

Denise Baum
Rubin Baum
New York City
Traffic Accidents and Safety
Midtown Area (NYC)


The iPad App Derby Gets Under Way

Abstract: It can be difficult to write software for a gadget without being able to touch it. But that has not stopped developers from rushing to create applications for the Apple iPad . For small start-ups and big Internet and media companies alike, the iPad, and tablet computers in general, beckon as the next wide open technology frontier. For many of them, getting apps onto the iPad will be a challenge, at least at first. Apple has provided only a few companies with iPads on which to design and test their software before the device’s release on April 3. The rest have had to make do with software running on a Mac that mimics the iPad, a disadvantage when dealing with a device that Apple is pitching as a new way of interacting with media. The few companies that did receive the device — including Major League Baseball, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times — have been subject to Apple’s long list of rules. The companies must agree to keep the iPad hidden from public view, chained to tables in windowless rooms. This although the basic look of the iPad stopped being a secret in January. And Apple has told all other developers who have downloaded its iPad programming tools to remain silent about their apps until later this month. Apple’s addiction to secrecy does not seem to have damped enthusiasm among developers. “There’s something about the newness of the iPad that’s driving an even greater level of excitement than what existed in the last year for the iPhone ,” said Raven Zachary, president of Small Society, an iPhone software company in Portland, Ore. Mr. Zachary has organized workshops for iPhone developers and plans to do the same for the iPad. “People see this as an opportunity to do things that have not been done before and get that first mover’s advantage,” he said. Some companies are even opening up and talking about their iPad plans, risking Apple’s reprisal. Sure, they are salivating at the prospect of the iPad’s 9.7-inch screen and fast processor — but also at the demonstrated willingness of Apple customers to pay a few dollars to get apps onto their devices. Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble are working on apps for buying and reading electronic books, even though both companies sell their own e-reading devices and Apple will offer its own iBooks app. The expectation is that the iPad will give a big lift to the e-book market, benefiting the whole industry. Neither company was given an iPad for testing. “We have actually developed a tablet-based interface that redesigns the core screen and the reading experience,” said Ian Freed, vice president for Kindle at Amazon. “Our team had some fun with it.” The Kindle app for the iPad, which Amazon demonstrated to a reporter last week, allows readers to slowly turn pages with their fingers. It also presents two new ways for people to view their entire e-book collection, including one view where large images of book covers are set against a backdrop of a silhouetted figure reading under a tree. The sun’s position in that image varies with the time of day. At the offices of Barnes & Noble’s digital unit in New York, 14 developers have occupied a windowless room since January, completely redesigning the company’s iPhone app for the iPad, according to Douglas Gottlieb, its vice president of digital products. The developers hunch over Macs around a big table, and printouts and notecards are taped up on the walls. The new app will let users flip through books quickly with finger swipes and customize fonts in multiple colors and sizes. Mr. Gottlieb said the company was talking to publishers about adding multimedia to digital books. Apple said last week that it was starting to accept submissions from iPad developers who want the chance to get their apps into the App Store before the iPad’s release. But both Amazon and Barnes & Noble say they plan to wait and test their software on an actual iPad before submitting it for Apple’s review. Developers know from experience how important timing can be. Some of the earliest developers to release programs for the iPhone were also the most successful. Then the number of apps in the App Store — currently 150,000 — became overwhelming. A developer who is out in front with an application that is tailored for the iPad stands a better chance of getting noticed. But there is the chance that an app that ran just fine on the simulator will have glitches or just feel wrong on a real iPad. Many developers say they do not want to take that risk. “As much as we’d love to be there on Day 1, a misstep could kill the train before it even gets out of the station,“ said Wade Slitkin, chief executive of Panelfly, which makes a digital comic-book reader for devices like the iPhone and has deals with publishers like Marvel Comics and Sterling. There are real-world factors that may go undetected with a simulator, like the weight of the device and how people hold it. To compensate, engineers have been printing out sample pages and pasting them onto magazines, “to get a feel for holding it in our hands,” said Stephen Lynch, chief technologist at the company. Shervin Pishevar, founder of SGN, a mobile gaming company, tried to get a jump on the competition by attending the iPad’s unveiling in San Francisco in January, then spending every possible moment using one in a demonstration area. Mr. Pishevar said he believes that the large iPad screen will allow families to sit around the device and play turn-based Monopoly-type games. His company is also developing games that players will operate by linking an iPhone or iPod Touch to the iPad over a wireless network and using the smaller device as a game controller — somewhat like the motion-sensitive remote for the Nintendo Wii. “We are going to be able to build games and entertainment applications that are as good as a console-type game,” Mr. Pishevar said. Among large media companies, The Journal, The Times, Time magazine and NPR will have apps for the iPad available when it goes on sale, according to people briefed on those companies’ plans. Natalie Kerris, an Apple spokeswoman, declined to comment. Most of the existing apps for the iPhone will run on the iPad as is, either stretched to fit the screen or in a smaller window. But many developers are focusing on revamping their most popular iPhone titles for use on the iPad. Neil Young, co-founder and head of the iPhone gaming studio Ngmoco, said his company was updating several games, including a multiplayer game called Charadium where players draw items and take turns guessing what the picture is. It will get new controls and a roomier blank pad to draw on. “There are so many more places to touch on the screen,” he said. “We can have a lot more fun with it.”

iPad
Software
Tablet Computers
Apple Inc


Russian Ruling Party Loses Mayoral Seat in Yaroslavl

Abstract: YAROSLAVL, Russia — Just weeks before Vladimir V. Putin again assumes the presidency in Russia, scattered political insurgencies against local governments have begun to expose cracks in his near monopoly on power. Political dark horses and ruling-party defectors have run up a string of electoral victories lately, including here in Yaroslavl, where on Monday, Yevgeny R. Urlashov, an anticorruption crusader supported by a panoply of opposition leaders, declared a landslide victory over his Kremlin-backed opponent in an election for mayor. The successes, while modest, have injected new life into a protest movement against the Kremlin that has struggled to find purpose after large demonstrations failed to prevent Mr. Putin’s victory in a presidential election last month. Most of his opponents now acknowledge that he will remain in power for many more years, but say that does not mean politics will return to normal. “We have something to say to Mr. Putin,” Mr. Urlashov said amid a scrum of voters and journalists outside a polling place here in this medieval town about 165 miles from Moscow . “Change is coming. Let democracy spring from the city of Yaroslavl.” Mr. Urlashov’s win follows the victory of opposition candidates for mayor in other large cities, including Toganrog, an industrial hub in the south, and Togliatti, the heart of Russia’s automobile industry. Independent candidates won 10 out of 15 mayoral elections held across Russia in March, according to the Central Election Commission. Whether they will remain independent or be co-opted by the system they are about to join is unclear. But their victories have exposed weaknesses that Mr. Putin’s opponents are now keen to exploit. In the future, they might even benefit from a new Kremlin-backed legislation designed to make running in local elections easier for outsiders. The victory in Yaroslavl, a city of 600,000, is especially significant because it will usher in the first transfer of authority there since its departing mayor came to power over two decades ago, before the Soviet collapse. The impetus for change here grew out of tragedy: tens of thousands of people took to the streets and then a sports stadium in September to mourn the death in a plane crash of the local hockey team . Many residents blamed the authorities, at least indirectly, because the hockey team was forced to play a match out of town to accommodate an international conference organized by President Dmitri A. Medvedev at their home arena. As polls opened for the election on Sunday, hundreds of volunteer monitors, many of them veterans of the recent protests in Moscow, took up positions at polling places around the city, keeping watch for the ballot stuffing, vote buying and other electoral skulduggery that have become commonplace in Russian elections. Many, like Anastasia Pshenichnaya, a 24-year-old advertising agent from Moscow, said they had come to Yaroslavl as a way to remain involved in politics, now that it looks as though the carnival-like protests in Moscow have come to an end. “I got experience during the presidential election, and when a request went out for us to help our colleagues in Yaroslavl, I thought, ‘Why not?’ ” Ms. Pshenichnaya said. “When my children ask me what I did under the Putin regime, I will be able to say that I took action and achieved results.” Mr. Urlashov said the presence of so many independent monitors did help to ensure his victory. Observers, he said, helped to thwart attempts to stuff ballot boxes, as well as to expose voters who had been paid to cast ballots for his opponent, Yakov Yakushev, a prominent local businessman who was backed by the Yaroslavl Region’s governor, the departing mayor and other prominent officials. A woman at one polling place said that she had been promised $10 to vote for Mr. Yakushev, but could not figure out how to get paid. Mr. Urlashov spoke of other challenges, including difficulties securing airtime on television and radio as well as booking halls for meetings with voters. On election day, Mr. Urlashov and his campaign staff were forced to buy new cellphones and SIM cards after their phones became inundated with unceasing calls from unknown Moscow phone numbers. Nevertheless, on Monday, election officials announced that Mr. Urlashov had won with nearly 70 percent of the vote. “People are sick,” Mr. Urlashov said in an interview outside a polling place on Sunday. “We have massive corruption in Yaroslavl and the surrounding region. It’s like a mafia.” Once mayor, Mr. Urlashov has vowed to fire corrupt officials and reform the local election law to prevent mayors from serving more than two terms. Then, he says, he will take on public works projects like transportation, parks and especially roads. (“Here you can only drive normally in a truck, jeep or armored personnel carrier,” he said.) His lofty ambitions to shake up the city’s calcified government have been met with some skepticism, especially since he was once a member of Mr. Putin’s ruling party, United Russia , and spent eight years on the city council. He quit the party in September after the public outrage that erupted over the crash of the hockey team’s plane. Igor V. Blokhin, one of Mr. Urlashov’s campaign managers, said his candidate was “no revolutionary,” but rather responding to a new political awareness in the Russian electorate. “People have found out that not all is decided for them, that they can make their own choices,” he said. The opposition hopes the success in Yaroslavl will offer a road map to victory elsewhere in the country and perhaps even in Moscow, where on Sunday the authorities responded to an attempt to hold an opposition rally by shutting down Red Square and detaining dozens of people. “The main conclusion from the elections in Yaroslavl is that if we unite and together stand up for our rights, we can achieve our goals,” Mikhail D. Prokhorov , the billionaire businessman who ran against Mr. Putin in the recent election, wrote on his blog . “Large cities are passing the baton and the number of centers of political activism is growing,” he said. “This is only the beginning.”

Russia
Election
United Russia
Vladimir Putin
Yevgeny R Urlashov
Mikhail D Prokhorov
Yaroslavl Russia