Ticket Sellers Promise Marquee Names, but the Comics Rarely Show

Abstract: Paige Kaden, who is new to town, stood on a frigid block in Times Square on Thursday afternoon, looking for a man named John. She was angry. John, she said, had sold her and her parents tickets to Stand Up NY , an Upper West Side comedy club, two days before at this very spot. He had shown them pictures of Amy Schumer and Tracy Morgan performing there, Ms. Kaden said, and he gave them a tip about that night’s surprise guest. “He told us Tina Fey would be there,” Ms. Kaden, 24, said. Thrilled, the family bought three tickets for $20 each, only to arrive at the club to find a two-drink minimum and a lineup of comics they had never heard of. “We didn’t stay,” Ms. Kaden said. She found two other men selling Stand Up NY tickets on Thursday, but they said John wasn’t around. The comedy hawkers of Times Square do not get as many headlines as the topless women or aggressive costumed panhandlers — Chewbacca and a Stormtrooper were arrested last week — with whom they share the crossroads. But the peddlers are out in greater numbers, with 15 or 20 people selling tickets to at least three clubs every day, greeting passers-by with a smile and a question: Do you like comedy? Image Sherif Hamoda, 32, told people in Times Square on Thursday that he was selling tickets to a Comedy Central taping, though no taping was planned. “That’s how I get them to stop,” he said. Credit Dave Sanders for The New York Times The sellers are facing new scrutiny. Last year, a task force announced a series of recommendations to improve Times Square, and among them were calls to regulate vendors. According to a 2015 survey conducted by the Times Square Alliance , a nonprofit organization, 40 percent of respondents, mostly New Yorkers, experienced “an unpleasant interaction” with solicitors. The percentage of those who felt unsafe during those interactions doubled from the year before. “They’re nasty and mean and say derogatory things to women,” said Caroline Hirsch, the owner of Carolines on Broadway , who said sellers sometimes hawk tickets to other clubs outside her own. In general, the ticket sellers do not work directly for the clubs. Most show up when they want to work and sign out stacks of tickets from middlemen who run the street teams, as they are known. Many clubs have similar arrangements with the street teams, whereby the sellers keep whatever they make from the ticket sales, while the clubs make their money from drink minimums. “I love this job,” said Stuart Titelbaum, 57, who said he started selling tickets in 2007 after an unpleasant career in accounting. He likes meeting tourists from overseas and cracking jokes. He doesn’t lie, he said, but it is common practice. By the time visitors realize they have been duped, there is little recourse beyond ranting on Yelp. (“He said that Tina Fey was going to be there,” one person wrote last year. Another wrote , “LIES, LIES, LIES.”) On Thursday afternoon, a man selling tickets to the Broadway Comedy Club could be overheard saying Ms. Fey and Chris Rock would be there that night. A couple visiting from Ireland, Declan and Sandra Halligan, listened patiently, brightening up when the seller said Lee Evans, the English comic, would also be there. When the seller dropped the price for two tickets to $30 from $60, the Halligans handed over the cash. When a reporter stopped them and broke the bad news that those comics were not likely to appear, Mr. Halligan said they wouldn’t have bought the tickets had they known. Image Paige Kaden, 24, returned to Times Square on Thursday after she bought tickets for a comedy show because she was told Tina Fey would be performing. Credit Dave Sanders for The New York Times Al Martin, the owner of the Broadway Comedy Club, said one or two customers complain every night, most having been promised Ms. Fey or Louis C.K. “Believe me, we hate this,” Mr. Martin said. He said his street team members write their initials on tickets, but that “three or four or 10 of these guys who do this” buy tickets from the legitimate sellers and “go rogue.” Sherif Hamoda, 32, who sells tickets for Stand Up NY, which is on West 78th Street, works in a sort of gray area. He says he doesn’t lie about Ms. Fey. But that does not mean he doesn’t lie at all. “Comedy Central taping!” he shouted to passers-by on Thursday. No such taping was planned. “That’s how I get them to stop,” he said. “I’m not saying it’s not dishonest.” Mr. Hamoda told a couple from London on Thursday that Caroline Rhea, the comedian and former host of “The Biggest Loser,” would appear that night. When asked about this claim, he said that while she was not on the schedule, he couldn’t say for sure that she would not be there: “A lot of times she shows up last minute.” Another seller, who gave only the name Lorenzo, said he was not above shouting out Ms. Fey’s name. “You say it to make them stop,” he said. “Then you start your pitch.”

Comedy
Times Square and 42nd Street Manhattan
Fraud


Flyweights, Yes, but Fighters Nonetheless: Fruit Flies Bred for Aggressiveness

Abstract: What can stand on its hind legs and duke it out with its front feet, boxing and tussling like a four-armed pugilist? The answer: a strain of laboratory fruit flies bred for shameless aggressiveness toward their own kind. These miniature gladiators flail at each other with a zeal and tempo that make professional boxers look like milquetoasts. A video, available here , shows a Drosophilan version of Mike Tyson forcing an opponent to fly the court. The fighting flies have been bred by Herman A. Dierick and Ralph J. Greenspan, two biologists at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego. Their goal is to discover the neural circuits that are genetically modified when flies develop aggressive behavior. Fruit flies in the wild are quite hostile toward one another. Males will fight off other males from prize real estate, like a rotten peach, where females like to congregate. But when kept in the laboratory, subsequent generations soon become domesticated. Dr. Dierick and Dr. Greenspan figured that since this behavior was easily lost, it should be easy enough to regain if the right selective pressure were applied. So they took a laboratory strain of tame fruit flies and set up pots of food that could be protected by single males. The males that fought the hardest in these encounters were sucked off their little arenas with a pipette and rewarded by becoming the fathers of the next generation. More aggressive males started to appear after only 5 generations, and by the 21st generation, Dr. Dierick found that the aggressiveness of male fruit flies had increased more than 30-fold, according to a scoring system he developed. At this point he was able to perform an experiment that would have been quite messy had he been working with larger animals. He chopped off the heads of 100 aggressive individuals, ground them up and ran a test to measure changes in the activity of their brain genes. About 80 genes — the fruit fly has about 14,000 — were either more or less active in the brains of the aggressive flies, compared with flies of the original population from which they were selected. Two of the most changed genes were ones involved in the detection of pheromones, the hormonelike scents with which fruit flies signal their activities. One of these genes seems to make the aggressive flies unusually sensitive to the pheromones emitted by other males. Another, which is repressed in the aggressive flies, mediates sensitivity to the pheromone with which male flies mark their territory. The aggressive flies seem less able to recognize others’ boundaries. Dr. Dierick hopes to identify the neural circuit in the fly’s brain that mediates aggressive behavior and that is modulated up or down by inputs from pheromones and other sources. Dr. Greenspan said an understanding of how genes set up circuits to govern behavior would be of broad significance in understanding what makes either flies or people tick.

Aggression
Insects
Genetics and Heredity


Robotic Gadgets Are Becoming Within Reach of Average Consumer

Abstract: BERLIN — Joseph Schlesinger, an engineer living near Boston, thinks robotic toys are too expensive, the result of extravagant designs, expensive components and a poor understanding of consumer tastes. So this year, Mr. Schlesinger, 23, began to manufacture an affordable robot, one he is selling for $250 to holiday shoppers. His creation, the Hexy, is a six-legged, crablike creature that can navigate its own environment and respond to humans with a hand wave or other programmable gesture. Mr. Schlesinger said he had been able to lower production costs by using free software and by molding a lot of the plastic parts locally in Massachusetts, not in China. Since setting up his company, ArcBotics, in suburban Somerville, Massachusetts, Mr. Schlesinger has built a backlog of more than 1,000 orders. His goal, he said, was to become “the Ikea of robotics.” “I think the market for consumer robotics is poised to explode,” said Mr. Schlesinger, a graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. “We are only at the beginning.” Since the 1960s, robots have assumed major roles in industrial manufacturing and assembly, the remote detonation of explosives, search and rescue, and academic research. But the devices have remained out of reach, in affordability and practicality, to most consumers. That, according to Professor Andrew Ng, the director of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at Stanford University in California, is about to change. One big reason, Mr. Ng said, is the mass production of smartphones and game consoles, which has driven down the size and price of robotic building blocks like accelerometers, gyroscopes and sensors. On the edges of consumer consciousness, the first generation of devices with rudimentary artificial intelligence are beginning to appear: entertainment and educational robots like the Hexy, and a line of tireless household drones that can mow lawns, sweep floors, clean swimming pools and even enhance golf games. “I’m seeing a huge explosion of robotic toys and believe that there will be one soon in industry,” said Mr. Ng, an associated professor of computer science at Stanford. The most advanced robots remain exotic workhorses like NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover, which cost $2.5 billion, and the LS3, a doglike robot being developed for the U.S. military that can carry a 400-pound, or 180-kilogram load more than 20 miles, or about 30 kilometers. The mechanical beast of burden, whose price is not public, is being made by a consortium led by Boston Dynamics. In Menlo Park, California, engineers at Willow Garage, a robotics firm, are selling the two-armed, 5-foot-4 inch (1.63-meter) rolling robot called the PR2 for $400,000. A video on Willow Garage’s Web site shows the PR2 fetching beer from a refrigerator, which while an engineering and programming feat, is an expensive way to get beer. “I think we’re still some years away from useful personal robots making pervasive appearances in our homes,” Mr. Ng said. Right now, for the masses, there is the CaddyTrek, a robotic golf club carrier that follows a player from tee to fairway to green through tall grass, up 30-degree slopes and in snow, for as many as 27 holes on a single charge. Players wear a remote control on their belts, which acts as a homing beacon for the self-propelled cart, which trails six paces behind the player. Golfers can also navigate the robotic cart, which is made by FTR Systems, to the next tee while they finish putting. “Someone ran up to me last week and said that my golf cart had broken free and was rolling through the parking lot,” said Richard Nagle, the sales manager for CaddyTrek in North America and Europe. “Most people just stop and stare. They’re not used to this.” FTR Systems does not disclose the proprietary technology it uses to power the CaddyTrek, which sells for $1,595, but Mr. Nagle said sales of the robot carriers had been strong, and the company had been rushing to meet orders in the United States and Europe. While one robot totes your golf clubs, another, the Polaris 9300xi, could be cleaning your swimming pool. The blue, four-wheel drone submerges in a swimming pool and pushes itself along the bottom and walls to dislodge and filter sediment. The device, which is made by Zodiac Pool Systems of San Diego, cleans pools as much as 60 feet long. Users can program the robot to clean a swimming pool at regular intervals or use a remote control to steer it by hand. The Polaris 9300xi sells for $1,379. A silent, four-wheeled grass cutter called the Automower, made by Husqvarna, a Swedish power tool and lawn care company that also owns the McCulloch and Gardena brands, can care for lawns as large as 6,000 square meters, or 64,000 square feet. The Automower cuts grass by staying within a boundary wire drawn around the perimeter, sensing and avoiding trees, flower beds and other obstacles. The mower, which is sold in Europe and Asia but not in the United States, cuts rain or shine and returns to recharge itself when its batteries get low. Advanced models use GPS and can recognize and return to narrow, hard-to-reach parts of lawns and gardens, ensuring that no areas are missed. The least expensive garden drone, the Automower 305, costs €1,500, or $1,965, and can mow 500 square meters on one charge. The top-end Automower 265AX sells for about €4,600 in Europe and is designed for hospitals, hotels and commercial properties. The Swedish company sold its first robotic mower, which was solar-powered, in 1995. But the device was too expensive and too unreliable in climates like that of northern Europe, where sunny summers are not guaranteed. About five years ago, the Husqvarna switched to battery power, which lowered the cost and eliminated weather as a factor. Henric Andersson, the director of product development at Husqvarna in Stockholm, said the company’s robotic mowers were getting extensive use in Scandinavia and Europe. “After being around for years, sales really began taking off about five years ago,” said Mr. Andersson. “The graph of sales looks like a hockey stick. The robotic mower has reached a tipping point. More people are now incorporating the device into their lives.” Other basic robots are beginning to work inside the home. iRobot, a firm founded by three former employees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, makes robots that vacuum, sweep and mop floors. The iRobot Roomba 790, which costs €900 in Europe, is a self-propelling vacuum cleaner that can sense and navigate interior spaces, adjusting by itself from carpets to hard floors, and wielding side brushes for corners and walls. The iRobot Scooba 390 cleans sealed hardwood, tile and linoleum floors, no pre-sweeping required. The device looks like a hovering bathroom scale and can hug walls and avoid staircases and other dangerous drops as it cleans, vacuums, wet mops and dries as much as 850 square feet of floor on a single charge. The Scooba 390 sells for €500. Theoretically, a house full of robotic gadgets can lead to more free time, which is where the AR Drone 2.0 quadricopter, a flying, smartphone-controlled helicopter, may come in. The AR Drone 2.0 is equipped with two onboard video cameras: one conventional and one high-definition, which can stream and store video of its flights. The AR Drone 2.0, which the user steers over the helicopter’s own Wi-Fi network, can be guided through looping maneuvers and fly as far away as 50 meters at speeds as high as 18 kilometers per hour. The craft can fly about 12 minutes before needing a recharge. The device, made by Parrot, based in Paris, costs €300 in Europe. Parrot has sold more than 250,000 of the drones since it was introduced in 2010.

Artificial Intelligence
Robots and Robotics
Gifts
Entrepreneurship
Remote Control Systems


The Barkley Marathons: Few Know How to Enter; Fewer Finish

Abstract: WARTBURG, Tenn. — On Friday night, in the Cumberland Mountains of eastern Tennessee, 28 men and 7 women will lie in tents half asleep in anticipation of hearing a conch shell being blown at Big Cove Campground in Frozen Head State Park. When they hear the call, which will arrive sometime between 11 p.m. that night and 11 a.m. Saturday, they will know they are 60 minutes from the start of an ordeal once referred to as a “satanic running adventure.” It is a 100-mile footrace that some say is actually 130 miles or more, through unmarked trails that have names like Meth Lab Hill, Bad Thing and Leonard’s Buttslide and that are choked with prickly saw briers. Temperatures often range from freezing to blistering on the same day, and there is a cumulative elevation gain of more than 60,000 feet, or the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest twice from sea level. A 60-hour time limit forces competitors to run, climb and bushwhack for three days with little or no sleep. They endure taunts from the race director, who deliberately keeps the competition’s entry procedure a mystery. It is a race in which there are no comfort stations, and runners cannot use a GPS device or a cellphone. Less than 2 percent of the nearly 800 ultrarunners who have subjected themselves to this punishment — 12 men, the same number as have walked on the moon — have finished the race in its current iteration. The only prize is that after 100 miles, they get to stop. This is the Barkley Marathons, the world’s toughest and most secretive trail race. “The Barkley is a problem,” Gary Cantrell, 59, the race’s director and creator, said recently. “All the other big races are set up for you to succeed. The Barkley is set up for you to fail.” As ultrarunning has increased in popularity, many of its signature races have evolved from low-key affairs to big-time events with corporate sponsors and entry fees of $1,000 or more. The Barkley costs just $1.60 to enter and has not grown because Tennessee park officials will not allow more than 35 runners a year. But with the sport’s popularity on the rise and the Barkley about to be featured in a documentary, many connected to it hope the competition known as the Race That Eats Its Young can maintain its eccentric, counterculture charm. Cantrell got the idea to create the Barkley in 1985 after learning that James Earl Ray, the man who assassinated Martin Luther King Jr., had managed to cover only eight miles in 54 hours after escaping from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. The prison, closed in 2009, is now part of the Barkley course. Runners wade into a stream that passes through a tunnel under the prison, and come out the other side, near the wall where Ray escaped. The derelict prison sits on the eastern edge of Frozen Head State Park, where Cantrell liked to hike with his friend Karl Henn, known as Raw Dog. Cantrell and Henn, who became a race co-director, thought they could fare better than Ray, who was found lying face down in a pile of leaves, cold, hungry, scratched to pieces and utterly defeated by the terrain. The next year, the Barkley, which Cantrell named after a friend and longtime supporter, Barry Barkley, was held for the first time. The course covered 50 miles, and there was a 24-hour time limit. None of the 13 runners came close to finishing. “A rousing success all around,” Cantrell said of that first race in a story for UltraRunning magazine. Ed Furtaw, a man known as Frozen Ed, became the first person to finish what was then a 55-mile race in 1988. The next year, Cantrell decided to make the Barkley more difficult by creating a 100-mile race, currently consisting of five 20-mile loops, while retaining a 60-mile Fun Run. Mark Williams, a Briton, became the first person to complete the 100-mile race, finishing in 59 hours 28 minutes in 1995. Only 11 others have completed the 100-mile race since. (There was no race in 2002.) Don’t Apply Early or Often Figuring out how to enter the race is an achievement in itself. “There is no Web site, and I don’t publish the race date or explain how to enter,” said Cantrell, an accomplished ultrarunner who has never come close to completing his own race. “Anything that makes it more mentally stressful for the runners is good.” (The start of the race involves a curious tradition in which participants try to refrain from letting Cantrell see them run. They will walk the first few hundred meters, until they turn a bend and begin running once they are out of his sight.) Because so few participants are allowed, the details of how to apply are a closely guarded secret. The first step is to figure out where and when to send a required essay on why one should be allowed to compete. “If you send it in five minutes early, he’ll delete it,” said Beverly Abbs, a 48-year-old environmental scientist from Red Bluff, Calif., who completed three loops in last year’s race. “We had to send the application at midnight on Christmas Day in Gary’s time zone, and you have to figure out which one it is on your own.” Image Runners in 2012 heading up an incline called Rat Jaw. Runners are required to complete a bizarre entry form with questions like, “What is the most important vegetable group?” Credit Geoffrey S. Baker Abbs submitted a poem reminiscent of “ ’Twas the Night Before Christmas” as her essay at 12:01 a.m. She feared her application had been denied after her husband, Alan, received, but she did not, the traditional “condolences letter” that warns accepted runners that they have a “very bad thing waiting.” It was signed by Lazarus Lake, Cantrell’s nom de guerre. A day and a half later, she received the letter and realized that the delay was an attempt by Cantrell to inflict “psychological torture” on her. This year’s application said that women were “too soft” to conquer the Barkley, but Abbs, who has completed 11 other 100-mile races, said she was confident in her ability to prove him wrong. “I will either be pulled off the course, or I will finish the race,” she said. The field is made up of those who have completed the race, athletes with impressive ultrarunning credentials and veterans like Leonard Martin, a dentist from Knoxville known as Buttslide. He has failed to finish in 17 attempts. Others are plucked randomly. And Cantrell selects at least one “sacrificial virgin” whom he believes has no chance of completing the race. (This year, it is Ryan Brazell of Rhode Island.) Runners are also required to complete a bizarre entry form with questions like, “What is the most important vegetable group?” In addition to the $1.60 entry fee, first-time entrants must bring a license plate for Cantrell’s collection, which he displays next to the race’s starting gate. Veterans who have never finished are required to bring him a specific article of clothing — this year it is a size 18 flannel shirt — while those who have finished need only bring a pack of Camel cigarettes, which Cantrell calls his “retirement plan.” Only after they have completed the entry form are runners given the date of the race. With a total elevation change of 121,560 feet this year, there are only a few flat sections on the course. To confirm that no one is cheating, Cantrell hides 10 books at various points, often ones with titles appropriate to a given section of the course: “Death Walks the Woods,” “Heart of Darkness,” “A Time to Die.” Runners have to rip out the page that matches their race number. If the page is lost, the runner is disqualified. Last year, 22 of 35 runners gave up on or after the first loop. Everyone who fails to finish experiences the indignity of listening to Cantrell play “Taps” on his bugle in a gleeful homage to the triumph of nature over man. “ ‘Taps’ rings out all night long on the first night,” said Cantrell, who sits by the starting gate with his dogs, Little and Big, smoking Camels and drinking cans of soda, often staying up all night. They Went That Way Six hours before the race starts, Cantrell posts a course map that runners must copy onto maps they purchase, and he gives runners a printed set of directions, which can often be hard to follow, even with a compass. (Runners are split up if they make it to the final loop, with alternating racers running in opposite directions.) Dan Baglione, a retired computer scientist and experienced ultrarunner, set a record for futility in 2006 at age 75 when he became hopelessly lost, eventually wandering into a different county on a 32-hour odyssey in which he was credited with covering just two miles of the actual course. “There is no trail,” said Baglione, who insisted he would try the Barkley again if he had not been barred from returning. “And the instructions are hopeless.” A documentary film crew was recording last year’s race when a camera operator became lost for 16 hours before a search party was dispatched to find him. “That experience endeared them to everyone,” Cantrell said. Brett Maune, a 34-year-old physicist from the Bay Area, finished the Barkley in 2011, then beat the course record by nearly four hours last year, when the Barkley had an unprecedented three finishers. No other runner has finished the Barkley twice. Brian Robinson, a 51-year-old from California who became the first person to hike the Appalachian, Pacific Crest and Continental Divide trails in a calendar year, in 2001, failed in his first two attempts at the Barkley, in 2006 and 2007, years when no one finished. But he completed it in 2008. “I wanted to test my limits,” Robinson said when asked to explain why he kept returning. “The Barkley is good for that because pretty much no one can finish it.” Cantrell said most Barkley finishers had a background in science or engineering and all but one had an advanced degree. Sleep-deprived runners who make it deep into the race tend to hallucinate, and the few who make it to the finish line are shattered when they arrive. Maune said he was incoherent after his first finish. Image Gary Cantrell, the Barkley Marathons creator, displaying license plates collected from first-time entrants. Credit Geoffrey S. Baker John Fegyveresi, a 35-year-old Ph.D. candidate in geoscience at Penn State who finished the race just minutes before the deadline last year, was told that he devoured an entire pint of Ben & Jerry’s chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream at the finish line. He has no recollection of that. “I couldn’t walk the next day, so I stayed in the campground for a day and a half,” he said. “Then I tried to drive home, but after 20 miles I was falling asleep, so I had to check into a hotel. I slept for 16 hours and then missed the checkout time.” Fegyveresi has also completed the Badwater in California, a 135-mile Death Valley marathon that bills itself as the world’s toughest footrace. He said the Barkley was considerably harder. “It was 120 degrees at Badwater, but it’s a flat road and you have a crew following you, so you don’t have to carry anything and you can’t get lost,” said Fegyveresi, who needed 21 fewer hours to finish Badwater. Cantrell claims, somewhat improbably, that he wants runners to finish his race. “Humans are made to endure physical challenges,” he said. “The real joy is seeing people who find something in themselves that they didn’t know was there.” Few would dispute the difficulty of the race, but some renowned ultrarunners avoid it, saying that because it involves navigation and an unmarked trail, it’s more of an adventure race than a true ultramarathon. Others, like Charlie Engle, who once ran 4,500 miles across the Sahara, have tried but failed to complete even the Fun Run portion. Running in Silence The top performers at the Barkley are far from household names and seem content to keep it that way. “I hope the race remains more of a secret,” said Maune, who will not compete this year because of a back injury, when asked if he hoped the running world would recognize his Barkley achievements. Fegyveresi said that older Barkley veterans wanted the race to remain obscure and were worried about the effect of the documentary, but some of the younger athletes want the race to receive more recognition. When this reporter announced his intention on the Barkley e-mail group list to write about this year’s race, some race veterans did not seem pleased. “Please don’t send us spectators, troublemakers or yuppies,” wrote one. “Don’t write about us. There is already too much information out there,” another said. Few would consider divulging the race date, and even among themselves, many runners, including Fegyveresi, would not confirm if they were competing this year. “You never know who’s going to be there until you show up,” said Martin, who was at Frozen Head training for this year’s race recently. Cantrell insisted that as long as he was alive, the race would stay as it is. But he too faces pressures. Two years ago, he lost his job as the treasurer of Shelbyville, Tenn., and has been out of work since. He has kept the race’s original entry fee, which represents a penny a mile for the 60-mile Fun Run and the 100-mile race. Cantrell said he had declined offers of up to $1,000 from those who want to get into the race, and maintains that the Barkley means too much to him and to others to sell entries. “You can’t buy the Barkley,” he said.

Marathon
Tennessee
Running
Gary Cantrell
Documentaries


Witness in Absentia Appears in Words

Abstract: Well before the Congressional hearing Wednesday, Andy Pettitte was viewed as being the most critical witness because he had acknowledged that the Mitchell report was correct about him, that Brian McNamee had injected him with human growth hormone in 2002. If Pettitte had validated McNamee’s truthfulness, how were we to believe Roger Clemens when he denied that McNamee had injected him with H.G.H. and steroids, as the former trainer told the Mitchell commission? Pettitte indeed was a critical witness Wednesday, but he was a witness in absentia. He and another former Yankees teammate, Chuck Knoblauch, who had not disputed McNamee’s assertion about injecting him with H.G.H., had been excused from appearing before the House oversight committee. That decision was unfortunate. Pettitte should have been there. He would have made a compelling witness and given the public, for whose favor Clemens is waging a fierce public fight, a convincing reason to believe that Clemens was lying. Pettitte, in effect, was there. At least his words were. He had sat for a two-and-a-half-hour, 101-page deposition Feb. 4, and it was placed in the record and was available for the committee members to read. But it didn’t have the same effect. Pettitte’s presence would have made a significant impact. The importance of what Pettitte told the committee was evident from the start of the hearing. Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, was the first committee member to question the witnesses who were there, and he slashed away at Clemens about what Pettitte had told committee staff members. Cummings zeroed in on the two conversations Pettitte said in his deposition that he had with Clemens about Clemens’s use of H.G.H. Clemens, Pettitte said, told him in late 1999 or early 2000 that he had used H.G.H. After securing Clemens’s agreement that Pettitte — his friend, former teammate and fellow Texan — was one of the most respected and honest players in the game, Cummings asked about the conversation. “Is this true?” Cummings asked. “It is not,” Clemens said. “You did not tell Mr. Pettitte you used H.G.H.?” “I did not.” Each time Cummings asked about the conversation, Clemens said that Pettitte had “misheard” or “misremembered.” But in a subsequent affidavit, Pettitte held to his stance that Clemens told him he had used H.G.H. The committee asked Laura Pettitte, Andy’s wife, to submit an affidavit because Pettitte said he had told her about that conversation and a subsequent one. In the second conversation, Pettitte said, he reminded Clemens that he had told him about his use of H.G.H. and “Roger responded that I must have misunderstood him; he claimed that it was his wife, Debbie, who used H.G.H.” In Laura Pettitte’s affidavit, Cummings read, she said, “Andy told me in a 2005 conversation Roger denied using H.G.H. and told Andy that Andy was mistaken about the earlier conversation. According to Andy, Roger said that it was his wife, Debbie, who used H.G.H.” “The time line is very important here,” Cummings said, noting that Pettitte said the first conversation occurred in 1999 or 2000. “But you told us that your wife did not use H.G.H. until 2003. That makes it impossible that you could have been referring to your wife’s use of H.G.H. in the first conversation.” Cummings used Pettittes’s words well, but hearing Andy’s words live at the hearing would have provided far more drama and substance. However, Phil Schiliro, the committee’s Democratic chief of staff, said the committee decided Pettitte’s sworn words were sufficient. Schiliro said the hearing was held because Clemens raised questions about the Mitchell report. “Knoblauch and Pettitte said the report was accurate,” Schiliro said in a telephone interview. “There was really no purpose having Pettitte there since he had done a sworn deposition. I’m not sure it would have made a difference.” Pettitte, who was given a few extra days by the Yankees to report for spring training, apparently didn’t want to appear at the hearing and have to testify against Clemens. The committee seemed to understand his position. All anyone had known was that McNamee said he injected Pettitte two to four times in 2002. In his deposition, Pettitte disclosed that he had injected himself with H.G.H. in 2004, when he was on the disabled list. He said he got that H.G.H. from his father, who had been using it himself. “My dad’s had a world of health problems,” Pettitte said. “In 1998, he had open-heart surgery. At this day, he has nine stents in his heart. He’s been on disability since he was 48 years old. Since he’s had heart surgery, he’s never been back. He’s had all kinds of different treatments and stuff like that. “He did a treatment called kelation therapy that I paid for to have him get it done for about eight months. And he had a couple different shoulder surgeries.” For about a year and a half, Pettitte added, “once a month it seemed like an ambulance was coming to the house to get him and take him to the emergency room.” Soon after, Pettitte was having his own physical problems. “I had asked my dad if he had had any of the H.G.H. that he had had before,” Pettitte said. “He ended up bringing me two syringes over to my house. And you know I injected myself once in the morning and once at night.”

Human Growth Hormone
Steroids
Pettitte Andy
Clemens Roger


Bruins Seize First Place

Abstract: Tyler Seguin and David Krejci scored early in the third period, lifting the visiting Boston Bruins to a 2-1 win over the Montreal Canadiens. The Bruins (7-1-1) moved into first place in the Northeast Division.


U.N. Chief Seeks More Climate Change Leadership

Abstract: VALENCIA, Spain, Nov. 17 — Secretary General Ban Ki-moon , describing climate change as “the defining challenge of our age,” released the final report of a United Nations panel on climate change here on Saturday and called on the United States and China to play “a more constructive role.” His challenge to the world’s two greatest greenhouse gas emitters came just two weeks before the world’s energy ministers meet in Bali, Indonesia, to begin talks on creating a global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The United States and China are signatories to Kyoto, but Washington has not ratified the treaty, and China, along with other developing countries, is not bound by its mandatory emissions caps. “Today the world’s scientists have spoken, clearly and in one voice,” Mr. Ban said of the report, the Synthesis Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “In Bali, I expect the world’s policymakers to do the same.” He added, “The breakthrough needed in Bali is for a comprehensive climate change deal that all nations can embrace.” Although Mr. Ban has no power to enforce members of the United Nations to act, his statements on Saturday increased the pressure on the United States and China, participants here said. Members of the panel said their review of the data led them to conclude as a group and individually that reductions in greenhouse gases had to start immediately to avert a global climate disaster, which could leave island nations submerged and abandoned, reduce African crop yields by 50 percent, and cause a 5 percent decrease in global gross domestic product. The panel’s fourth and final report summarized and integrated the most significant findings of three sections of a climate-science review that were released between January and April. Because the data had not previously been reviewed as a whole, scientists said the synthesized report was more explicit, creating new emphasis and alarm. The first section of the review had covered climate trends; the second, the world’s ability to adapt to a warming planet; the third, strategies for reducing carbon emissions. With their mission concluded, the hundreds of IPCC scientists spoke more freely than they had previously. “The sense of urgency when you put these pieces together is new and striking,” said Martin Parry, a British climate expert who was co-chairman of the delegation that wrote the second report. “I’ve come out of this process more pessimistic about the possibilities than I thought I would.” The panel, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last month, said the world would have to reverse the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 2015 to prevent serious climate disruptions. “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late,” said Rajendra Pachauri, a scientist and economist who heads the IPCC. “What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.” He said that since the IPCC began its work five years ago, scientists had recorded “much stronger trends in climate change,” like a recent melting of Arctic ice that had not been predicted. “That means you better start with intervention much earlier.” Saturday’s synthesis report was reviewed and approved by delegates from 130 nations gathered here this week. But unlike the earlier reviews, in which governments had insisted on changes that diluted the reports’ impact, this time scientists and environmental groups said there had been no major dilution of the data. For example, this report’s summary was the first to acknowledge that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet from rising temperatures could result in a substantive sea-level rise over centuries rather than millennia. “Many of my colleagues would consider that kind of melt a catastrophe” so rapid that mankind would not be able to adapt, said Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University who contributed to the IPCC. “It’s extremely clear and is very explicit that the cost of inaction will be huge compared to the cost of action,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. “We can’t afford to wait for some perfect accord to replace Kyoto, for some grand agreement. We can’t afford to spend years bickering about it. We need to start acting now.” He said that delegates in Bali should take action immediately where they agree, for example, on public financing for new technologies like capturing emissions of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, and pumping it underground. He said energy ministers should start a global fund to help poor countries avoid deforestation, which releases greenhouse gases and reduces the uptake of carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. United Nations officials pointed out that strong policies were needed, like increasing the energy efficiency of cars and setting up carbon markets, a system that essentially forces companies and countries to pay for the cost of the greenhouse gases they emit. The European Union already has such a carbon trading system in place for many industries, and is fighting to bring airlines into the plan. “Stabilization of emissions can be achieved by deployment of a portfolio of technologies that exist or are already under development,” said Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Environment Program. But he noted that developed countries would have to help poorer ones adapt to climate shifts and adopt cleaner energy choices, which are often expensive. Mr. Steiner emphasized that the report sent a message to individuals as well as world leaders: “What we need is a new ethic in which every person changes lifestyle, attitude and behavior.” Meanwhile, the Bush administration’s reaction to the report was muted. At a news conference Friday night after the report was approved, James L. Connaughton, the chairman of the president’s Council on Environmental Quality, said President Bush had agreed with leaders of the other major industrialized nations that “the issue warrants urgent action, and we need to bring forward in a more accelerated way the technologies that will make a lasting solution possible.” He declined to say how much warming the administration considered acceptable, saying, “We don’t have a view on that.” Mr. Connaughton acknowledged that the United States, like other nations, had tried to make some changes to the draft. Dr. Sharon L. Hays, the leader of the American delegation here, said the goal was not political but “to make sure the final report matches the science.” She noted that the United States had invested $12 billion in climate research since 2001. Stephanie Tunmore, a member of Greenpeace International who had observer status as the countries debated the text, questioned that explanation. She said, for example, that the United States had tried to remove a section of the report titled “Reasons for Concern,” which listed consequences of climate change that are either likely or possible. One was the melting of ice sheets, which the panel said could take place more rapidly than previously thought. The Americans argued that there was no reason to include the section, because all of it was contained somewhere in the previous IPCC technical documents, she said. But the section remained in the report.


Estate of Heiress Loses Fight to Recover Millions in Donations From Hospital

Abstract: The estate of the copper heiress Huguette Clark has lost a battle to recover more than $4 million worth of donations, including an Edouard Manet painting, that she gave the Manhattan hospital where she lived for the last two decades of her life. A Manhattan Surrogate Court judge, Nora S. Anderson, ruled last week that the statute of limitations had expired for the estate to argue that officials at the hospital, Beth Israel Medical Center, had manipulated Ms. Clark into donating. “We are gratified by the dismissal of the meritless claims against the hospital,” said Marvin Wexler, the lawyer for the hospital, which has been renamed Mount Sinai Beth Israel after merging with Mount Sinai Health System. Ms. Clark, who died at age 104 in May 2011, had no close relatives. The lawsuit was brought by New York City’s public administrator, which controls the estate, and lawyers for it. The ruling is the latest twist in a long-running conflict over Ms. Clark’s nine-figure estate. Her father, Senator William A. Clark of Montana, made his fortune with copper mines in his home state and real estate deals in Las Vegas. She was his youngest daughter. She spent the last 19 years of her life at the hospital, with round-the-clock private nursing, after she recovered from skin cancer, rather than returning to her Fifth Avenue apartment or her sprawling homes in California and Connecticut. While Judge Anderson dismissed the estate’s claims against the hospital, she said last week that a separate lawsuit could proceed against two physicians and a nurse who took care of Ms. Clark in her declining years and received about $3.6 million in gifts from her. The judge said she had been presented with two starkly different accounts of Ms. Clark’s mental state in her dotage. In court papers, the city’s public administrator portrayed Ms. Clark as weak-minded woman who suffered from mental illness and was easily influenced to write checks. But her doctors and hospital officials have asserted she was mentally sharp and intelligent and capable of deciding what to do with her money. They note she refused at least four requests for large donations from hospital administrators, including as late as 2007. “When she arrived at Beth Israel Medical Center, she needed hospitalization and received excellent care,” said Gregory Williams, a hospital spokesman, in an email. “She was subsequently cleared for discharge, but refused to leave and stayed of her own volition. Beth Israel’s practice was not to forcefully remove a patient from the hospital who refused to leave.” Judge Anderson said the trial against the physicians and nurse was needed to settle “the sharp factual dispute” between the parties. She wrote that the success of the lawsuit would turn on “whether or not the decedent possessed the higher level of mental capacity to support the ability to make valid gifts.” She added that “these disputes cannot be resolved on papers.” After Ms. Clark’s death, a bitter legal feud arose over her estate. She made two wills within six weeks. One left most of the money to distant relatives, and the second cut out her relatives and made bequests to arts foundations, the hospital and people around her, including her doctors and nurses. Ms. Clark donated $940,000 to the hospital between 1992 and 2002, giving large sums nearly every year in response to requests from hospital administrators. In 2002, she transferred to the hospital Edouard Manet’s “Pivoines dans une bouteille,” which later sold at auction for $3.5 million. That suit was settled out of court on the eve of trial in September 2013, creating a new $100 million arts foundation, donating $1 million to the hospital and leaving $10 million to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, where her father’s collection fills a wing. Ms. Clark’s distant relatives received about $34.5 million after taxes. The settlement allowed the estate to pursue the claims to recover gifts she made outside the will. However, Judge Anderson said last week that the law required the claims to have been made within three years of the last donation, in October 2002.

Manhattan
Beth Israel Medical Center
Lawsuits
Wills and Estates
Huguette M Clark


For Those Keeping Score, American Women Dominated in Rio

Abstract: RIO DE JANEIRO — The very idea of a medal count might seem contrary to the spirit of the Olympics, which are supposed to bring the world together for a couple of weeks and suspend the nationalism that keeps us apart. Yet keeping score is the essence of sport. And measured by the haul of gold, silver and bronze, the United States had an extraordinary Olympics in Rio, winning 121 medals, the most by an American team in a Summer Games free of boycotts. The size and depth of the United States team resulted in the most gold (46), silver (37) and bronze (38) medals of any nation. Only five countries have topped each medal category at the same Games. The Americans were the first to do it in 40 years, enabled in part by the barring of nearly a third of Russia’s team after revelations of state-sponsored doping. (Another reliable powerhouse, China, underperformed.) Image Katie Ledecky of the United States showed off her gold medal in the women’s 200-meter freestyle. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times “This has been an incredible Games for Team U.S.A. by any measure,” Alan Ashley, the chief of sport performance for the United States Olympic Committee, said Sunday at a news conference. Most striking was the performance by the American women. The American men won 18 gold medals, the same as Britain. But the American women were dominant with 27 (not including a gold in mixed doubles tennis). Had the women competed as a separate country, they would have ranked third in the overall medal chart (61), behind China (70) and Britain (67) and just ahead of the American men (60). There are two primary reasons for this pre-eminence. The United States is one of the few countries to embed sports within the public education system. And equal access to sports for women comes with legal protections, gained with the education amendment known as Title IX in 1972 and the Olympic and Amateur Sports Act in 1978. About one of every two American girls participates in sports in high school. Of the 213 American medalists in individual and team sports in Rio, according to the U.S.O.C., nearly 85 percent participated in university-funded sports. Video The Olympics coverage has been criticized for sexism on almost a daily basis. Female Olympians are described as “married” or “unmarried,” while men are called the “fastest” or the “strongest.” Credit Credit Matt Slocum/Associated Press.. “Those things don’t exist elsewhere in the world,” said Donna Lopiano, a former executive director of the Women’s Sports Foundation. “We have the largest base of athletic development. Our women are going to dominate, not only because of their legal rights but because women in other parts of the world are discriminated against.” In the United States, more women than men watch the Summer Olympics on television. Girls see role models to emulate, and success perpetuates success. The champion performances by three African-American athletes — Simone Biles, who won four gold medals in gymnastics; Simone Manuel, the first black woman to win Olympic gold in an individual swimming event; and Ashleigh Johnson, the goalie for the gold-medal-winning women’s water polo team — are certain to broaden participation in sports that have historically been white. Ibtihaj Muhammad, who won a bronze medal in saber team fencing, became the first Olympic athlete to compete for the United States while wearing a hijab. And it was a women’s team, in the 400-meter medley relay in swimming, that won the 1,000th gold medal for the Americans since the modern Games began, in 1896. Image The Olympic success of the United States women’s water polo team, which was led by a black goalie, Ashleigh Johnson, could broaden participation in the sport. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times “You get on a roll,” said David Wallechinsky, president of the International Society of Olympic Historians. “Girls are looking and saying, ‘Wow, I can do that,’ whereas 30 years ago, not so many American girls thought that. It builds and builds.” A country of 320 million, the United States ranked only 43rd in medals per capita, well behind small countries that won multiple medals, like Jamaica, New Zealand, Denmark, Croatia, Azerbaijan and Hungary, according to medalspercapita.com. Sixty-five of the medals won by the United States, more than half of its total, came in swimming and track and field, the two sports offering the most chances to win medals. It also surely helped that American athletes competed in a time zone only one hour ahead of Eastern Daylight Time and did not have to risk jet lag by traveling to an Olympics in Europe or Asia. Image From left, Ryan Held, Nathan Adrian, Caeleb Dressel and Michael Phelps won the men’s 4x100-meter freestyle relay. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times And some American success can be attributed to underperformance by other nations. Because of the doping controversy, Russia’s entire weight lifting team was barred, and so was all but one athlete on its track and field team. Australia won its fewest Olympic medals (29) since the 1992 Barcelona Games. With 70 medals, China finished second over all, but that was 30 fewer than it won at the 2008 Beijing Games. This fits a pattern of host countries’ ebbing two Olympics later, Wallechinsky said. “You have seven years to prepare for an Olympics, everybody gets pumped up, you put money into different sports, you do well at home, and you develop a bunch of role models,” Wallechinsky said. “But that doesn’t necessarily carry over twice. There’s a consistent pattern of the host doing well, then pretty well at the next Olympics, then back to normal.” Brazil won 19 medals, its highest total ever, but not as many as recent host nations like Britain (65) in 2012, China (100) in 2008 and Australia (58) in 2000. Home teams generally receive increased financial support in preparation for a Summer Olympics, but Brazil lacks an organized funding system for sports, and the Rio Games arrived with the country in an economic and political crisis. Image Brazil won 19 medals at the Rio Games, its highest Olympic total ever, including gold in the sport it prizes most, soccer. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Still, Brazil won the gold medal it prized most — its first in men’s soccer. More ambitious drug testing may have also affected the makeup of the Chinese team and others in Rio, Wallechinsky said. Several experts said that although enhanced international antidoping measures are far from perfect and have ensnared Americans, they might have particularly aided the success of the United States’ track and field team in Rio, as enhanced funding and training camps supported by shoe companies and U.S.A. Track & Field did. Michelle Carter became the first American woman to win the Olympic shot-put. And the United States, long a sprint power, won medals in middle- and long-distance running from 800 meters to the marathon, highlighted by Matt Centrowitz’s victory at 1,500 meters, the metric mile. He was the first American to win the event since 1908. “A level playing field benefits all athletes and helps our medal chances,” said Jill Geer, a spokeswoman for U.S.A. Track & Field. The ruthless nature of selecting a team at the Olympic trials, instead of by past performances, also appeared to be an important factor, Centrowitz said. Brianna Rollins, Nia Ali and Kristi Castlin of the United States swept the 100-meter hurdles in Rio while the world-record holder, an American named Kendra Harrison, did not make the team. “It’s not the three fastest people on paper; it’s the best three people on a given day,” Centrowitz said, describing team selection per event at the Olympic trials. “And that’s what you had to do here, perform on that specific day.”

US
Simone Biles
Simone Manuel
Ashleigh Johnson
Ibtihaj Muhammad
2016 Summer Olympics
Women and Girls
Matthew Centrowitz


Hillary Clinton to Girl’s Question on Body Image: ‘Let’s Be Proud of Who We Are.’

Abstract: HAVERFORD, Pa. — The teenager leaned into the microphone, pausing for a beat. She had a question for Hillary Clinton, about her high school and Donald J. Trump. “At my school, body image is a really big issue for girls my age,” began the girl, Brennan Leach, 15, who had a red bow in her hair. “I see with my own eyes the damage Donald Trump does when he talks about women and how they look.” How, she asked, could Mrs. Clinton help girls understand “that they are so much more than just what they look like?” Briefly, Mrs. Clinton appeared ready to rocket out of her seat. “Thank you!” the candidate shouted, as the crowd cheered Brennan. “Thank you!” Mrs. Clinton had been holding forth on Tuesday in a Haverford community center gymnasium, beside her daughter, Chelsea, and the actress Elizabeth Banks, for a town hall — a “FAMILY TOWN HALL,” according to the blue block letters behind her onstage — speaking to a largely female crowd in the kind of Philadelphia suburb that could decide this critical state. Brennan’s question was the first of the day and, for Mrs. Clinton, the most potent. Since last week’s debate, Mrs. Clinton has brought attention to Mr. Trump’s history of making disparaging remarks about the appearance of women, particularly his comments about the weight of the 1996 Miss Universe, Alicia Machado . Even before the debate, Mrs. Clinton’s team had released an evocative ad that featured girls looking anxiously in their mirrors, scored to a selection of Trump insults. On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton said she was “so proud” of Brennan for asking the question. Mr. Trump, she agreed, “has taken this concern to a new level of difficulty and meanness.” She reminded the room that “young women begin to get influenced at earlier and earlier ages” by social expectations of body image. Image Brennan Leach (in red bow) at a campaign event for Hillary Clinton in Haverford, Pa., on Tuesday. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times “My opponent insulted Miss Universe!” she said, to laughs. “How do you get more acclaimed than that? But it wasn’t good enough.” She went on. “We can’t take any of this seriously anymore,” she said, her voice building. “We need to laugh at it. We need to refute it. We need to ignore it. And we need to stand up to it.” She spoke of the “many young women online who are being bullied.” Some were hurting themselves, she said. It had to stop. “We’re not all going to end up being Miss Universe, I hate to tell you,” she continued, wrapping up. “So let’s be the best we can be. Let’s be proud of who we are.” Throughout the afternoon, the forum, which included many parents and their children, seemed to play to Mrs. Clinton’s strengths. While she can at times appear less comfortable at rollicking rallies, her campaign has long believed that more intimate interactions with voters suit her well. Fielding sympathetic questions from supporters, Mrs. Clinton brandished her range. She was wonky, true to form, engaging attendees in a less than catchy call-and-response exercise: “Do you have an interest rate on your student debt that is 8 percent or higher?” she said, asking for a show of hands. She was sympathetic, responding to a mother who said she had lost a son to gun violence, and then another to suicide after his sibling’s death. “Thank you for being so brave,” Mrs. Clinton said. And she was playful, smiling as a middle school questioner said she had won a recent mock presidential debate while arguing Mrs. Clinton’s side. “Thanks for winning,” Mrs. Clinton replied. “That makes us 2 and 0.” All the while, Chelsea Clinton sat at the ready, eager to chime in to trumpet her mother’s credentials. “I wish that people really understood that ‘Stronger Together,’ that putting families and children first, isn’t rhetorical for my mom,” Ms. Clinton said at one point, reciting her mother’s campaign slogan. “It’s what I’ve watched her do my whole life.” She was not the only daughter in the room talking up a parent. After the event, Brennan said that her father, a state senator, had helped her form the question that had so excited Mrs. Clinton. (The Clinton campaign said questions had not been vetted.) Brennan said she had lost a friend to suicide last year. Mr. Trump’s candidacy, Brennan said, has heightened her concerns at school. “It’s really hard for me throughout school to see the pain Donald Trump inflicts on my friends,” she said, citing examples of bullying, “especially at such an insecure time as middle school and high school.”

Hillary Clinton
Donald Trump
Alicia Machado
2016 Presidential Election
Women and Girls
Haverford PA


On a Mission to Mark Places of Long-Forgotten Historic Moments

Abstract: Forlornly unidentified and altogether forgotten, these sites have been literally lost to history. On Avenue of the Americas, there is a block where the first cellphone call was completed in 1973; on West 125th Street, where the old Blumstein’s department store stood, nothing marks the place where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was stabbed in 1958. Then there is the spot on Fifth Avenue where Winston Churchill , crossing against the light, was struck by a car in 1931 and nearly killed. And what about the old Winter Garden Theater at 671 Broadway? In 1864, on the very night that Confederate sympathizers singled out the Lafarge Hotel next door in their plot to burn down New York, the Booth brothers — John Wilkes, Junius Brutus Jr. and Edwin — starred in “Julius Caesar.” The benefit performance, which was billed as the brothers’ sole joint engagement, raised $3,500 for the Shakespeare statue that still stands in Central Park. Andrew Carroll, 39, an amateur historian, is embarking this week on a 50-state journey to uncover, memorialize and preserve these and other sites where history happened serendipitously, and which, for one reason or another, have been relegated to anonymity. “It’s sort of a reverse scavenger hunt,” he said. “Trying to find things that aren’t there.” His Here Is Where campaign, in collaboration with National Geographic Traveler, might seem quixotic, but so did two of his earlier efforts that proved to be immensely popular. In 1993, when he was an English major at Columbia, he founded the American Poetry and Literacy Project with Joseph Brodsky, the nation’s poet laureate. They distributed free poetry books across the country. Five years later, he launched the Legacy Project ( warletters.com ), a repository for soldiers’ wartime letters and e-mail messages home. Mr. Carroll’s latest crusade ( www.HereIsWhere.org ) was inspired by a story he read 15 years ago about a dramatic rescue that occurred during Abraham Lincoln ’s first term as president. The president’s son Robert Todd Lincoln was about to board a sleeping car at Exchange Place in Jersey City one night when he fell between the platform and the train as it started to pull out of the station. “My coat collar was vigorously seized and I was quickly pulled up and out to a secure footing on the platform,” Lincoln recalled years later. “Upon turning to thank my rescuer I saw it was Edwin Booth, whose face was of course well known to me, and I expressed my gratitude to him, and in doing so, called him by name.” Mr. Carroll hopes to install a marker at the site, now a PATH station. “We’re all attracted to great stories, and in that way history sells itself,” he said. If history is taught by rote, though, students will tune out, he said. “The more we make history about memorizing names and places and dates we’re going to lose the next generation.” Those great stories, he said, reveal some of the eternal truths about human nature, humanity’s brutality, heroism, resilience. “For every John Wilkes Booth,” he said, “there was an Edwin.” New York is rich in historic sites that have escaped the lore of the city. Kalustyan’s, the Middle Eastern and Indian food market at 123 Lexington Avenue, at 28th Street, is the only building in the city still standing where a president of the United States was sworn in. (On Sept. 20, 1881, Vice President Chester A. Arthur took the oath at his home there after President James A. Garfield died of gunshot wounds.) A small plaque in the locked vestibule for the apartments upstairs is the only hint of anything historic. In 1908, baseball’s greatest hit, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” was published by the composer’s company on West 28th Street and made its debut with a performance at the Amphion, an opera house on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. No marker identifies either site. Mr. Carroll’s exploration will take him to Fairfield, Conn., the home of Ely Parker, an American Indian lawyer who worked with Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and was credited with drafting the articles of surrender that Robert E. Lee signed at Appomattox. In Baltimore, he plans to visit the site of the shop where Mary Katherine Goddard printed the first copy of the Declaration of Independence that includes all of the signatories. Mr. Carroll discovered that hotels often have rich histories. He learned, for example, that Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X once worked at the Parker House in Boston. The Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, Mr. Carroll’s hometown, has agreed to install a marker that commemorates a moment on Nov. 27, 1925, when the poet Vachel Lindsay was timidly approached at dinner by a busboy who placed three poems he had written next to Lindsay’s plate. Lindsay was so impressed that he shared them with his audience at a poetry reading that night, prompting journalists to report on the “busboy poet.” His name was Langston Hughes. “What Andy’s doing is sensational,” said Keith Bellows, the editor of National Geographic Traveler, “in that he’s peeling back a layer of history to expose Americans where they live and where they travel to things they otherwise might not have been aware of.” Mr. Carroll begins his 50-state expedition with a trip to Maine to explore the sites of the 1855 Portland Rum Riot against Neal S. Dow, the prohibitionist mayor. “This trip is just the kickoff,” said Mr. Carroll, who is paying for his tour with a book advance. “I’m going to be doing this for life.”

History
Historic Buildings and Sites
Churchill Winston Leonard Spencer
King Martin Luther Jr
New York City
Lincoln Abraham
Carroll Andrew


A Rapidly Shifting Philosophy of Infield Play

Abstract: Chris Tillman pitches for the Baltimore Orioles, which means he can never assume the location of the infielders behind him. “I learned the hard way on a pop-up last year near the third-base line,” Tillman said. “I let the ball fall because I thought the third baseman was going to catch it — and there was nobody over there. It’s on me, but I’ve learned my lesson. I take a peek and see where my infielders are at.” The Orioles used 595 shifts on balls in play last season, the most in the five seasons tracked by Baseball Info Solutions . Teams shifted about 2,400 times in 2010 and 2011, said Ben Jedlovec, a vice president for the company, and about 4,500 times in 2012. Last season, the total jumped to about 8,100, and teams are on pace for 13,000 shifts in 2014. “Clint Hurdle said nine of 10 balls up the middle used to be hits — and now, two of 10 are,” said Detroit Tigers General Manager Dave Dombrowski, referring to the manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. “It just shows how different it is.” Dombrowski’s Tigers are using more shifts under their new manager, Brad Ausmus, but they are not alone. Entering the weekend, data showed that 23 of the 30 teams were on pace to deploy more shifts than they did last year. As teams compile more and more information on hitters’ trends, managers can predict more accurately than ever where ground balls are most likely to go. “As I told Brad when he joined us, we can supply you any statistical information you like, and it’s up to you to do what you want with it,” Dombrowski said. “He doesn’t want to force it down players’ throats, but he wants to show them why it’s important.” The Houston Astros entered the weekend on pace to use the most shifts this season, followed by the Yankees, the Milwaukee Brewers, the Orioles and the Chicago White Sox, who ranked 27th last year. Image Tampa Bay’s Matt Moore, center, is the latest pitcher who may face Tommy John surgery. Credit Orlin Wagner/Associated Press Bryan Price, the new manager of the Cincinnati Reds, said he watched a recent Yankees-Astros game and noticed the infielders shifting within the same at-bat. Price said that strategy seemed to disrupt the flow of the game, but he also acknowledged it could be smart. In the new frontier of defensive positioning, teams are learning as they go. “We’re getting a lot of data, and we’ve got some very creative minds out there that are looking at every aspect to enhance the quality of baseball,” Price said. “Managers are putting it in motion. There are some real pioneers out there that have taken the data and utilized it. “But it’s that age-old thing: Every time you’re burned by it, you remember that as opposed to the 10 other times it worked for you. And if you’re talking about percentages, you’re going to get beat. You’re going to have Matt Adams cue one right down the left-field line on a squibber.” Sure enough, just as Adams, of the St. Louis Cardinals, had beaten the Reds’ shift, the Mets’ Ike Davis did so last Sunday a couple of hours after Price spoke. The Reds won that game, though, and were ranked 10th in the majors in shifts, up from 13th last season. Price, who was promoted from pitching coach to replace Dusty Baker, said the Reds made sure their pitchers agreed with the strategy before using it behind them. If a pitcher is more comfortable with a traditional infield alignment, he said, the Reds will go with that, no matter what the numbers suggest. “In the end, this game’s such a mental game,” Price said. “If your heart’s not in it, chances are performance is going to suffer.” A stray pop-up aside, Tillman said he had no problems pitching with the exaggerated shift behind him. The job of the pitcher, he said, is the same as always. “It’s part of the game now,” he said. “If you make your pitches and execute the way you’re supposed to, then I think it works out in your favor.” Elbow Trouble Starts Early Matt Moore, an All-Star left-hander for the Tampa Bay Rays, last week became the latest pitcher to seriously injure his elbow, with reports indicating that he might have torn his ulnar collateral ligament . Moore may face Tommy John surgery, which would add him to the list of more than a dozen pitchers to have the procedure already this season. Image Milwaukee’s Scooter Gennett (2) came up with his nickname based on his favorite Muppets character. Credit Jared Wickerham/Getty Images Dr. James Andrews, the noted orthopedic surgeon, said the problem was not an anomaly but a troubling trend, mainly because of the popularity of youth travel teams and summer showcases. Last week, on MLB Network Radio, Andrews told Mike Ferrin and Jim Duquette that he had been “inundated” with high school and college pitchers needing elbow reconstruction. “The big risk factor is year-round baseball,” said Andrews, who saw Moore last week. “These kids are not just throwing year round, they’re competing year round, and they don’t have any time for recovery. More is better. So year-round baseball is No. 1. “No. 2 is playing in more than one league at the same time, where rules don’t count. And, of course, in showcases, where they’re pitching for scouts, they try to overpitch and they get hurt.” Andrews also cited poor mechanics and pitchers throwing breaking balls at a young age. But the main problem, he emphasized, was that youngsters were throwing too hard too soon. Anything beyond 80 to 85 miles per hour, Andrews said, is more than a developing elbow ligament can handle. “The radar gun’s a problem,” he said. Muppet in the Infield The Milwaukee Brewers returned home Friday after a 6-0 trip to Boston and Philadelphia. The Brewers feasted on the Red Sox and the Phillies for 42 runs and 78 hits, with some familiar names — Ryan Braun, Carlos Gomez and Aramis Ramirez — leading the way. Their second baseman is not as well known, but he might have the most fun name to say in baseball (at least, besides the mellifluous Arquimedes Caminero, who pitches for the Miami Marlins). He is Ryan Joseph Gennett, but everyone calls him Scooter. Gennett got the nickname when he was about 5, growing up in Cincinnati. As you might expect, there is a story behind it. “One day, I was in the car with my mom; she would always put on my seatbelt, and I would click it off,” Gennett said recently. “I was just a defiant kid, I always wanted attention, never really did what I was asked to do, just to see what would happen. So my mom actually took me to the police station to scare me a little bit. “The police officer, I remember he asked me what my name was, and I thought if I told him my real name, I’d get arrested. I was so young and scared. So I made up a name and said, ‘Scooter.’ That was the only name I really knew at the time. That was my favorite character. And I didn’t answer to Ryan for about a year because I thought I’d get in trouble and get arrested.” Scooter is a character from “The Muppet Show” — round glasses, orange skin, no nose and a mop of orange hair. He is not a headliner like Kermit the Frog, but Gennett — himself more a complementary player than a superstar — connected with him while watching reruns after school. Gennett is not the first middle infielder to go by Scooter; Phil Rizzuto, the Hall of Fame shortstop and longtime Yankees broadcaster, was perhaps the original. Gennett said it sounded good as a baseball name, but he uses it everywhere. “Some of the teachers were like: ‘What? I’m not calling you that,’ ” he said. “But eventually, they did. It started off as Ryan, but they ended up calling me Scooter. It just stuck.”


U.S. Prosecutor Defends Arrest of Indian Diplomat

Abstract: The federal prosecutor whose decision to charge an Indian diplomat in New York City last week touched off a furor in India made an unusual and robust public defense of that decision on Wednesday night, saying “there can be no plausible claim that this case was somehow unexpected or an injustice.” The prosecutor, Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the diplomat’s conduct showed that “she clearly tried to evade U.S. law designed to protect from exploitation the domestic employees of diplomats and consular officers.” The diplomat, Devyani Khobragade, 39, the deputy consul general in New York, had been accused of submitting false documents to obtain a work visa for a housekeeper. Indian officials have been quoted as saying she was arrested and handcuffed as she was leaving her daughter at school, and there had been accounts that she was strip-searched and then held with drug addicts before being released on $250,000 bail. The Indian government has complained bitterly about Ms. Khobragade’s treatment. In New Delhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the arrest deplorable, newspaper editorials expressed outrage and the police removed barriers meant to protect the United States Embassy. But Mr. Bharara, in his statement, said there had been “much misinformation and factual inaccuracy in the reporting” about the case, and the inaccuracies were “misleading people and creating an inflammatory atmosphere on an unfounded basis.” “Is it for U.S. prosecutors to look the other way, ignore the law and the civil rights of victims,” Mr. Bharara asked, “or is it the responsibility of the diplomats and consular officers and their government to make sure the law is observed?” “And one wonders,” Mr. Bharara added, “why there is so much outrage about the alleged treatment of the Indian national accused of perpetrating these acts, but precious little outrage about the alleged treatment of the Indian victim and her spouse?” Mr. Bharara noted that the diplomat had underpaid the housekeeper and made her work more hours than her contract called for. Image Devyani Khobragade, the deputy consul general in New York. Her arrest on charges of visa fraud has enraged Indian officials. Credit Mohammed Jaffer/SnapsIndia, via Associated Press Although his office did not take Ms. Khobragade into custody, Mr. Bharara said she had been “accorded courtesies well beyond what other defendants, most of whom are American citizens, are accorded.” He said that State Department agents had arrested her “in the most discreet way possible,” and that unlike most defendants, she “was not then handcuffed or restrained.” The arresting authorities had not seized her telephone as they normally would have, Mr. Bharara said, and allowed her to make calls for about two hours, including to arrange for child care. Because it was cold outside, Mr. Bharara added, the agents “let her make those calls from their car and even brought her coffee and offered to get her food.” It was true, Mr. Bharara added, that Ms. Khobragade was “fully searched” in a private setting by a female deputy marshal when she was taken into the custody of the United States Marshals Service, which handled her detention. But, he said, “this is standard practice for every defendant, rich or poor, American or not, in order to make sure that no prisoner keeps anything on his person that could harm anyone, including himself.” The tone of Mr. Bharara’s statement, issued in the evening in New York, seemed in marked contrast to an expression of “regret” made earlier in the day by Secretary of State John Kerry in a call to a senior Indian official, as Mr. Kerry sought to ease tensions with India over the episode. Mr. Kerry’s call to the official, Shivshankar Menon, India’s national security adviser, was disclosed by the State Department in a statement. “As a father of two daughters about the same age as Devyani Khobragade, the secretary empathizes with the sensitivities we are hearing from India about the events that unfolded after Ms. Khobragade’s arrest,” the State Department said in its statement. “He expressed his regret as well as his concern that we not allow this unfortunate public issue to hurt our close and vital relationship with India,” it added. Ms. Khobragade’s lawyer, Daniel N. Arshack, said Wednesday that his client would be pleading not guilty, that the allegations against her were “false and baseless” and that her diplomatic status protected her from prosecution.

India
Preet Bharara
Devyani Khobragade
New Delhi
John Kerry
Shivshankar Menon
US Foreign Policy
NYC
Diplomats Embassies and Consulates


U.S. Won’t File Charges in Trayvon Martin Killing

Abstract: MIAMI — The Justice Department on Tuesday closed its investigation into the shooting death three years ago of Trayvon Martin , the unarmed black teenager in a hoodie who became a symbol of racial profiling and the face of a protest movement, without filing hate-crime charges against the gunman, George Zimmerman. The department began its civil rights investigation shortly after a national furor erupted over Mr. Martin’s death in Sanford, Fla., which set off protests, demands for justice and an emotional response from President Obama. The shooting was the first in a string of racially tinged cases involving the deaths of young black men that have prompted a rethinking of the nation’s criminal justice system. Mr. Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder in a state court in 2013; some jurors said they believed that he had shot Mr. Martin, 17, in self-defense. The conclusion of the investigation came as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. neared the end of his tenure. The shooting was one of several racially fraught cases that Mr. Holder said the department would finish investigating before he stepped down. The Justice Department is also conducting two civil rights investigations into the shooting death of Michael Brown, another unarmed black teenager, who was killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in August. In that case, violent protests erupted after the shooting. A grand jury declined to indict the officer. Other police-involved deaths, including the choking of an unarmed man in Staten Island and the shooting of a Cleveland boy holding a realistic, airsoft-style gun, have fueled concerns about police conduct and racial profiling. The lawyer for Mr. Martin’s family, Benjamin L. Crump, said the parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, were badly shaken by the news that the federal government would not bring charges. The family met with Justice Department officials in Miami on Tuesday. “This is very painful for them; they are heartbroken,” Mr. Crump said. “But they have renewed energy to say that we are going to fight harder to make sure that this doesn’t happen to anybody else’s child.” Ms. Fulton and Mr. Martin have become national figures and, through their foundation , are trying to help reduce violence in black and Hispanic communities and expand educational opportunities for minority students. Since his acquittal, Mr. Zimmerman has had numerous run-ins with the law. Last month, he was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, accused of throwing a wine bottle at his girlfriend. In 2013, shortly after his acquittal, he was arrested after a heated fight with another girlfriend, but the woman asked prosecutors not to press charges. And in 2014, the police in Lake Mary, Fla., said a driver had told officers that Mr. Zimmerman threatened him during what was described as a road rage incident. The federal inquiry was started to pursue “an independent investigation” into the shooting after local police officials and prosecutors were slow to arrest and charge Mr. Zimmerman; they argued that Florida’s self-defense laws would make it difficult to prove a criminal case. Gov. Rick Scott then appointed a special prosecutor who eventually charged Mr. Zimmerman. Federal investigators interviewed 75 witnesses, reviewed all the material gathered by the State of Florida and examined evidence relating to Mr. Zimmerman’s encounters with law enforcement after his acquittal, according to a statement. But none of that was enough to prove that Mr. Zimmerman, who is part Peruvian, killed Mr. Martin because of his race. The bar for prosecuting hate crimes is high — proving negligence or recklessness is not enough — and Mr. Holder said the “standard for a federal hate crime prosecution cannot be met under the circumstances here.” Mr. Zimmerman’s former lawyer, Mark O’Mara, has said his client is not a racist, saying he has black friends and mentored two black youths. The Justice Department’s investigation into the Ferguson case is no less difficult, and is perhaps even tougher, because it focuses on a police officer who fired his weapon in the line of duty. Mr. Zimmerman’s case also swirled, to a large extent, around issues of race. Prosecutors said Mr. Zimmerman forced a confrontation with Mr. Martin on Feb. 26, 2012, because Mr. Martin was an unfamiliar tall black teenager in a hoodie walking around Mr. Zimmerman’s gated community one rainy night. Mr. Martin was in Sanford with his father, visiting his father’s fiancée. A rash of burglaries in the area had heightened Mr. Zimmerman’s concerns, and as the neighborhood watch leader, he said, he was suspicious of Mr. Martin. He got out of his car — ignoring the advice of a police dispatcher — and followed Mr. Martin, setting off a confrontation that led to Mr. Martin’s death, prosecutors said. Angry at Mr. Zimmerman and feeling threatened, Mr. Martin pushed him to the ground, punched him and slammed his head into the pavement, leaving visible wounds, defense lawyers said. Mr. Zimmerman, flat on his back, took out a gun and killed Mr. Martin. He told the police it was self-defense.

Trayvon Martin
Justice Department
George Zimmerman
Self-defense
Murders and Homicides
Black People,African-Americans
Sanford FL


Iran Asks Iranian-American to Salvage Its World Cup Bid

Abstract: Afshin Ghotbi is a man of the world in the world’s game. On Wednesday, news reports out of Tehran said Ghotbi, 45, was named coach of Iran’s national soccer team , the third person to be named to the post in a month. Iran is a team in turmoil, struggling to advance from the Asian confederation to next summer’s World Cup in South Africa. Ghotbi, who was born in Iran and moved to the United States at 13, earned a degree in engineering from U.C.L.A. He was the chief scout for the United States national team during the 1998 World Cup, in which the Americans lost to Iran. He served as an assistant for the South Korea national team under Guus Hiddink for the 2002 World Cup and was the former United States coach Steve Sampson’s assistant with the Los Angeles Galaxy of Major League Soccer. Most recently, Ghotbi returned to his homeland to coach one of the most fervently supported club teams, Persepolis, leading the club to a championship last May. He resigned that position in November and has been seeking a new job while living in Dubai. As incongruous as it seems, a theocratic nation whose government has been at loggerheads with the United States since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 has hired as the coach of its most coveted sports team a man who honed his skills as a soccer coach in the United States. “I am thrilled for an opportunity to guide Iran to the World Cup 2010,” Ghotbi said in an e-mail message Wednesday. “A life dream, a longtime ambition and a journey written in the stars is about to be realized. I have to thank all the people around the world who have cheered, supported and inspired me to have this opportunity. Iran is in a difficult situation in the qualification round, but with the quality of the Iranian players, the support of all 70 million Iranian fans around the world and a little football fortune, everything is possible.” Ghotbi said he thought he had a shot at the job after Iran lost at home to Saudi Arabia, 2-1, in a qualifier March 28 and Ali Daei, a former international star for Iran, was dismissed as the coach. “After the loss to Saudi and after Ali Daei was fired, I was by far the most popular pick by the public to become the national team coach,” Ghotbi said in a telephone interview from Dubai on Sunday. “In polls in newspapers, SMS messages, 85 percent of the people wanted me to become the national team coach. I’ve worked with some of the best coaches in the world, in the World Cup. I’ve had success with Persepolis. I know the players. I think I’m the best candidate. That I’m an Iranian-American, maybe at times that is not very interesting. “For Iranians, it really is only about the football. It plays a huge role in the society. When we played, there were 100,000 in stadium, the TV audience is 20 million watching each match. It brings happiness to the people and the love goes across generations.” Daei was replaced by Mohammad Mayelikohan , whose tenure lasted only two weeks. He resigned Tuesday. Iran, which is fourth in Asian Group B with 6 points from five games with three games remaining (including difficult matches in North and South Korea), turned to Ghotbi. Ghotbi was the subject of a recent video profile by the BBC. Salvaging Iran’s World Cup bid will not be easy, and it is clear that nothing short of 9 points from three victories will do it. “I think it is going to be very difficult,” Ghotbi said in the interview. “First of all, we only have 6 points, and to have a chance we need victories on the road in Korea. The environment around the team and whole psychology around the team has not been positive. It is all about synergy and creating a positive environment around the team from the fans and for the players.” At the 1998 World Cup, Ghotbi served on Coach Steve Sampson’s support staff, preparing tactical models and analysis for the United States, which played poorly and was eliminated in the first round. One of the opponents for the American team in the first round was Ghotbi’s native Iran. “The U.S.A. vs. Iran match was a special game for all involved,” Ghotbi said in an e-mail message. “It truly showed again the influence and magic of football, bringing nations and people together regardless of the political circumstances. Personally, to be part of a World Cup match involving two countries I care the most about was truly special. It brought emotions impossible to describe in English or Farsi.”


Exports Surge in China, and Imports Hit a Record Value

Abstract: China posted a $16.9 billion trade surplus for September, capping the largest quarterly excess since the financial crisis in 2008 as pressure mounts for a stronger renminbi. Exports rose 25.1 percent compared with a year earlier and imports climbed 24.1 percent, the customs bureau said on its Web site Wednesday. In August, the excess was $20 billion. Imports rose to a record value of $128.1 billion, limiting the surplus to the smallest in five months, while exports were $145 billion. The quarterly trade excess was about $65.6 billion. European and United States officials argue that a stronger Chinese currency would aid the global recovery by stoking demand within the nation and reducing international economic imbalances. Currency forwards surged to the highest level in more than two years this week on speculation that Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s government will yield to foreign pressure.

China
International Trade and World Market


Yahoo Profit Is a Footnote to Alibaba’s Huge Gains

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Investors were already salivating over the initial stock offering of Alibaba Group, the giant Chinese e-commerce company. On Tuesday, they got a glimpse of Alibaba’s tremendous growth that is sure to whet their appetite even more. Alibaba made $1.4 billion in profit for its fourth quarter, more than double the amount it made during the same period a year earlier. Revenue jumped 66 percent, to nearly $3.1 billion. The peek inside the private Chinese company came courtesy of Yahoo , which owns 24 percent of Alibaba and must disclose some of its financial data as part of its own quarterly reports. But Alibaba will soon provide much more information about its business, which dominates consumer online commerce in China in a way that Amazon and eBay could only dream of in the United States. It plans to file paperwork as early as next week for an initial public offering of stock on an American exchange. The sale could be the largest I.P.O. in American history if the company’s valuation reaches $200 billion, which some of the most optimistic analysts are suggesting. The offering is not expected to occur for at least a couple of months after the filing. For years, the only way to buy a piece of Alibaba’s growth story has been to buy Yahoo stock, which investors were snapping up on Tuesday. Yahoo’s shares rose to $36.50, up 6.7 percent, in after-hours trading after it released the Alibaba numbers along with its own results. Yahoo, which was reporting its first-quarter results, said that revenue and profit growth were flat, a slight improvement from previous quarters. However, from the perspective of investors, those figures were basically a footnote to the Internet portal’s investments in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan. “You can be a relative optimist like me about the core business and attribute $7 or $8 to it,” said Brian Wieser, an analyst with Pivotal Research. “But you can make an argument that the entirety of the value is Alibaba.” Despite turnaround efforts by its chief executive, Marissa Mayer, who was appointed nearly two years ago, Yahoo has continued to report lackluster financial results for its main business, which is selling search and display advertising to brands eager to reach visitors to the company’s sports, news, mail and other content pages. Ms. Mayer initially focused on creating new products and regaining lost user traffic, but largely ignored advertising, the company’s principal source of revenue. She has vowed to make advertising a priority this year, however, and the company showed some modest progress on that front in the first quarter. Revenue from display advertising grew 2 percent from the year-ago quarter, halting a long downward slide. Search ad revenue grew 9 percent. But in the hottest areas of Internet advertising — mobile, video and in-stream ads — Yahoo’s efforts so far are still nascent. “They are not material to our overall results,” Ms. Mayer said. Still, the stock has more than doubled since she was named to the job in July 2012, a rise that has been tempered only slightly in recent weeks as investors have widely pulled back from Internet stocks. Most analysts attribute those gains to Alibaba’s sizzling performance. Under terms of its investment agreement with the Chinese company, Yahoo must sell about 40 percent of its stake if Alibaba goes public. Depending on the valuation of Alibaba, which many analysts predict could range from $100 billion to $200 billion, Yahoo would reap at least $10 billion before taxes. Alibaba’s fourth-quarter results might push the valuation toward the higher end of the range. Some on Wall Street had worried that its enormous growth had begun to slow when it reported only a 51 percent gain in third-quarter revenue compared with figures in the period a year earlier. But Alibaba’s fourth-quarter earnings were helped by a few big shopping days, particularly Nov. 11 — known as Singles Day, China’s twist on Valentine’s Day and one of the busiest days for online shopping. Alibaba disclosed last year that its two main e-commerce platforms, Taobao and Tmall, sold roughly $5.75 billion worth of merchandise on Singles Day last year, an 80 percent gain from 2012. “These were pretty spectacular results, and they should assuage any fears around a slowdown,” said Ben Schachter, an analyst at Macquarie Securities who says he expects Alibaba’s valuation to be at least $160 billion. “It’s a reminder of what kind of growth story this is.” That growth has offered Ms. Mayer some necessary cover for her turnaround project, which remains a work in progress. For the first quarter, Yahoo reported net income of $312 million, or 29 cents a share, on revenue of $1.13 billion. In the same quarter a year ago, it reported net income of $390 million, or 35 cents a share, on $1.14 billion in revenue. Excluding one-time items and expenses for stock compensation, the company reported a profit of 38 cents a share in the first quarter, the same as a year ago. That essentially matched analysts’ expectations for 37 cents a share in profits on revenue of $1.08 billion. Eventually, though, Yahoo’s core business will matter to investors once again. To return the company to its former heights, Ms. Mayer has begun a series of initiatives to rebuild the company’s advertising business. In January, the company revamped its technology and food sites, abandoning Yahoo’s traditional hodgepodge of text and links in favor of large, visually rich panels reminiscent of magazines. Ms. Mayer is expected to announce similar digital magazines in categories like travel, entertainment and beauty in the coming weeks. Yahoo is also trying to become a bigger player in online video, developing new shows for its digital magazines and talking to Hollywood about original entertainment content. Advertisers welcome that spirit of experimentation, said Bob Rupczynski, vice president for media, data and customer relationship management at Kraft Foods Group. In March, Kraft Singles cheese was the first brand to use Yahoo’s new motion ad format, in which the image in the ad appears to be moving. When Yahoo users went to their login page, they saw an image of a grilled-cheese sandwich with steam wafting from it. Mr. Rupczynski said that the motion helped the ad stand out, and that Kraft intended to try other new Yahoo ad formats, such as sponsored articles on Yahoo Food . “We’re excited about the platforms we’re testing out with them,” he said.

Marissa Mayer
Yahoo!
Earnings Reports
Alibaba.com
IPO
E Commerce


Video: Testing the Camera on the iPhone 6

Abstract: The new iPhones have gotten almost as much attention for their cameras as for their larger screens and software updates- Both the devices, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, have a new sensor on the camera with something called Focus Pixels, an addition that enables significantly faster auto-focusing and more accurate colors. Other features include manual exposure controls, slower and crisper slow motion shooting, video stabilization and higher-resolution panoramas. The iPhone 6 Plus, the bigger of the two phones, also has optical image stabilization for reducing blur and allowing longer exposures in lowlight situations. As many an amateur photographer has discovered, however, simply owning a better camera doesn’t always produce better shots. So to determine whether the iPhone 6 cameras are a true improvement over their already good predecessors, I shipped my review units to Todd Heisler, a staff photographer at The New York Times. Mr. Heisler said the size of the iPhone 6 Plus made it too unwieldy to use on a daily basis, so he stuck to testing the iPhone 6. He said he didn’t miss the added features. Mr. Heisler said the camera on the iPhone 6 was closer to his professional gear than ever before, because of the slider that lets you fine-tune exposure even when you’re rolling video and built-in tools for fine-tuning light, exposure, contrast and color. And he said that because of those controls, there’s no need to turn to third-party camera apps that can be more complicated to use. Professional photographers like Mr. Heisler probably won’t be shelving their pro cameras for iPhones yet. But don’t be surprised if they pull one out on the job.


Operator Is at Fault for Fatal Crane Accident, City Finds

Abstract: The operator of a crane that collapsed and killed one person in Lower Manhattan in February failed to properly lower the boom and was responsible for the accident, New York City officials said on Friday. After an investigation by the city’s Buildings Department, officials suspended the license of the crane’s operator, Kevin Reilly, and moved to revoke it permanently. The giant crane collapsed on a gusty morning , leading the city to tighten rules for cranes operating in high winds. A man walking on the street, David Wichs , was killed, and three other people were injured. Mr. Reilly had failed to secure the crane the night before the crash and lowered the boom of the crane at an improper angle, causing the crane to become unstable, officials said. The department said it would work with the City Council on rules to improve safety, including tougher licensing requirements for crane operators. “The crane operator involved in this incident acted recklessly, with tragic results,” Rick D. Chandler, the city’s buildings commissioner, said in a statement. “The actions we’re taking should send the message to everyone in the construction industry that safety must come first.” A lawyer for Mr. Reilly, Stacey Richman, declined to comment on the findings, and said she had not finished reviewing the city’s report. Last month, a crane operator and a construction worker were killed in Queens when a steel beam fell from a crane on a windy day. Officials are investigating the accident and said it appeared there was a problem with the crane’s rigging, unrelated to the wind. In the February accident, a video captured the red crane falling and crashing on to the street below. The crane’s boom was 565 feet long, leaving debris scattered across roughly two blocks of Worth Street in TriBeCa. The city’s investigation found that the crane did not have any structural or mechanical failures, officials said. Mr. Wichs, 38, who emigrated from Czechoslovakia when he was a teenager, was heading to his job at a trading firm in Lower Manhattan when he was killed. He was married and had a degree in mathematics from Harvard.

Manhattan
Kevin Reilly
David Wichs
Accidents and Safety
Derricks and Cranes
TriBeCa Manhattan