Pope Ends Trip With Plea for Korean Reconciliation

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — Pope Francis wrapped up his five-day visit to South Korea on Monday with calls for forgiveness and renewed dialogue on the divided Korean Peninsula and for more humanitarian aid for North Korea. “Let us pray, then, for the emergence of new opportunities for dialogue, encounter and the resolution of differences, for continued generosity in providing humanitarian assistance to those in need, and for an ever greater recognition that all Koreans are brothers and sisters, members of one family, one people,” the pope said during a Mass in Myeongdong Cathedral, the center of South Korean Catholicism. The Mass was attended by President Park Geun-hye. Shortly after Francis’ appeal on Monday, the South Korean government issued a statement asking North Korea to accept its proposal from last week for high-level dialogue. The proposal said that if North Korea behaved responsibly, South Korea would be ready to “discuss any subject,” including the possible easing of economic sanctions imposed after the sinking of a South Korean warship in 2010, for which the South blamed the North. The South Korean government has maintained that those sanctions, including the suspension of inter-Korean trade, will stay until North Korea apologizes for the sinking, which killed 46 sailors. The North has denied involvement. Image Worshipers watch as Pope Francis arrives for a Mass at Myeongdong Cathedral in Seoul, South Korea, on Monday. Credit Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images On Monday, the North Korean Foreign Ministry warned that the country would take an “unpredictable, high-level” counteraction against the joint annual military drill that the United States and South Korea had begun earlier in the day. Although the two allies called their exercise defensive in nature, the North called it a rehearsal for nuclear war. Speaking at the same altar from which Korean Catholic leaders of the past often influenced government policy with appeals for tolerance and criticism of dictatorships, Pope Francis ended his visit with an impassioned plea for forgiveness and reconciliation with North Korea. “Peter asks the Lord: ‘If my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?’ To which the Lord replies: ‘Not seven times, I tell you, but 70 times seven,’ ” the pope said. “Unless we are prepared to do this, how can we honestly pray for peace and reconciliation?” “In telling us to forgive our brothers unreservedly,” Francis said in reference to Jesus, “he is asking us to do something utterly radical.” Timeline on North Korea’s Nuclear Program The country’s nuclear weapons program and its development of long-range rocket systems have angered many in the West, including in the United States. Such a message usually is not received very well by right-wing Protestants in South Korea, some of whom have protested the pope’s visit. Although Protestant groups have led efforts to ship aid to North Korea, they also constitute the most vocal activists against the Communist government in Pyongyang. During outdoor rallies, they have burned in effigy its leader, Kim Jong-un, and they have released large balloons that were timed to distribute anti-Kim leaflets over the isolated North. Many South Korean Protestant missionaries work undercover in northeastern China, smuggling North Koreans to the South and sneaking Bibles into the North. South Korea’s proposal last week requested high-level government talks with the North like the ones held in February, when the rival governments arranged a round of reunions of aging relatives who had been separated in the early 1950s by the Korean War. Such reunions are a highly emotional issue on the divided peninsula, and South Korea had hoped to arrange a new round in time for the traditional family gatherings of Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving on Sept. 8. So far, North Korea has not responded to the overture, instead reiterating its demand for the lifting of sanctions. “If the North has a demand, it must first come to the table of dialogue,” the South’s Unification Ministry said Monday in a statement. “If the North shows a responsible attitude, we are ready to discuss anything for the improvement of South-North relations.” Image Pope Francis greeted seven women who said they were forced or deceived into working at front-line brothels for Japan’s army during World War II. Credit Yonhap/European Pressphoto Agency The South Korean Catholic Church had asked the North to send a delegation to the pope’s Mass for peace and reconciliation on Monday, but the North rejected the offer. North Korea tolerates only government-approved churches and temples, which are widely dismissed as an attempt to hide state persecution of religious worshipers. The separated families have long served as a symbol of the torturous modern history of Korea, which the pope on Monday called “a people dispersed by disaster and division.” At the beginning of the Mass, Francis greeted and consoled seven women who have said they were forced or deceived into working at front-line brothels for Japan’s army during World War II. Historians estimate that Japan mobilized as many as 200,000 such women across Asia, many of them from Korea, a Japanese colony at the time. The seven women, in their 80s and 90s, are among 55 surviving “comfort women,” who have demanded an apology from Japan and compensation for sexual slavery. They have said that they were sometimes violated by dozens of Japanese soldiers a day. Some of the women have held weekly demonstrations in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul for more than 20 years. The South Korean government supports the women’s demands, while Tokyo has insisted that the matter was settled under a 1965 treaty that re-established diplomatic ties between the two nations. Invited to sit in the front row during the Mass, the seven women delivered the pope a gift: a painting by a former sex slave who died in 2004. The work, showing a downcast Korean girl in a traditional white-and-black dress with contrasting pink flowers, was titled “A Flower That Did Not Blossom.” Many of those who survived sexual slavery stayed unmarried or hid their wartime backgrounds because of the shame.

South Korea
Pope Francis
North Korea
Catholic Church


Russia Puts Pressure on Election Monitor, Golos

Abstract: MOSCOW — With parliamentary elections only days away that are expected to reflect dwindling public support for Vladimir V. Putin’s party , Russian prosecutors have opened a case against the country’s only independent election monitoring organization. The organization, Golos , has already posted reports of more than 4,500 violations of election law in the prelude to the voting on Sunday. Golos receives financing from Western governments, including the United States, and some Russian officials have suggested that the organization’s real aim is to incite an Arab Spring-type revolution in Russia . Pressure on Golos, an 11-year-old group whose name means “vote” in Russian, began mounting last Sunday, when Mr. Putin attacked “so-called grant recipients” that he said were interfering with elections on behalf of foreign governments. “Judas,” he said, “is not the most respected biblical figure among our people.” The accusations became specific this week, when lawmakers from three parties appealed to the federal prosecutor to investigate Golos. Blistering attacks appeared in several pro-government news outlets. In one article, a leader of Mr. Putin’s party, United Russia, likened Golos to a group announcing that “we got money from Al Qaeda, and now we want to see how elections in Tatarstan are going.” The mood at Golos’s Moscow office was jumpy on Thursday. Grigory A. Melkonyants, the organization’s deputy director, said he was worried that the group’s 3,000 monitors would be excluded from polling stations, and that they might even be in danger, after Mr. Putin’s use of the word “Judas.” He said it was possible that Golos would be shut down by the authorities before Sunday. “We cannot predict what will happen tomorrow, or what will happen in an hour,” Mr. Melkonyants said. “This is already an open war that they have declared on us, and the overwhelming weight is on their side.” A letter delivered by prosecutors on Thursday said that one of Golos’s most popular features — an online “map of violations” where people can post reports — violates a Russian law against publishing data, especially polling results, during the five days before voting. This is an administrative violation punishable by a fine of up to 100,000 rubles, or about $3,200. The letter also accuses Golos, which has been preparing for Sunday’s election for years, of “dissemination of rumors under the guise of trustworthy reports, with the goal of defaming a party as well as its individual members.” Though United Russia, which now has a commanding majority in Parliament, faces no powerful competitors in the election, opinion polls suggest that it will lose 50 to 60 seats, reflecting growing weariness with leadership that has not changed in a decade. State officials at all levels have been told to guard against significant losses. Meanwhile, amateur observers are pushing back, using the Internet to expose violations that include offers of cash and threats to cut off financing. Dmitri Merezhko, Golos’s communications director, said that events this fall — including the collapse of a pro-business party, Right Cause , and Mr. Putin’s announcement that he will run for president again, after a stint as prime minister and two previous terms as president — “ignited something in the most active part of the public.” “Maybe someone thinks we are the reason,” Mr. Merezhko said, referring to Golos. “But we are not the reason.” Golos’s critics in the Russian government say its work is tainted by the money it receives from two American agencies, the National Endowment for Democracy and the United States Agency for International Development . A promotional video clip for a report scheduled to be broadcast on Friday on the NTV channel, owned by the Russian energy giant Gazprom, features images of suitcases stuffed with $100 bills juxtaposed with footage of Golos’s leaders as a portentous voice asks, “Who is behind these ‘independent observers?’ ” A pro-government blogger has posted what appears to be paperwork showing that Golos received $92,653 from the United States government for the month of February. Russian officials have invoked the memory of the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, which many people here believe was propelled by American agents. Maksim Rokhmistrov, one of the three lawmakers who signed the appeal to the prosecutor, said he was worried that Golos’s reporting could provoke civil unrest. “A girl dances with the guy who takes her to dinner, as they say,” Vzglyad, a daily newspaper, quoted Mr. Rokhmistrov as saying this week. “The question of maintaining stability in the state worries everyone at election time. No one here wants to see the beginning of our own Egypt, or our own Libya.” Mr. Melkonyants has given a number of interviews with the news media since the critiques began to appear, arguing that the foreign financing does not compromise Golos’s objectivity or violate any Russian law. He told the radio station Ekho Moskvy that much of Golos’s money came from European donors like the Helsinki Committee and the European Commission. He said Golos had submitted to rigorous audits by Russian tax authorities and the Ministry of Justice, and had repeatedly tried to secure financing from the Russian government but had been refused. Mr. Melkonyants is scheduled to appear in a Moscow courtroom on Friday at the request of prosecutors. Though every election monitoring mission has come under pressure from government officials, “it has never been so high in my memory,” he said, adding that he could not blame Golos’s partners for keeping their distance now. “There is no need to say that they are cowards,” he said. “Believe me, all of us — including the political parties — we’re all in a situation that is not simple, not simple at all.”

Russia
Elections
Golos
United Russia
Putin Vladimir V


Daffy’s, Discounter of Clothes, Promotes a Rental Bargain

Abstract: IT has been 22 years since Irving Shulman shortened the name of his discount clothing chain from Daffy Dan’s to Daffy’s in a bid to class up the brand, which was known for goofy marketing stunts like perching mannequins on the roof so passers-by would run in to warn of suicide jumpers, then hopefully stay for the bargains. Today Daffy’s is one of the oldest operating discount chains in the Northeast. But lately it has found itself in competition with some unlikely rivals: luxury department stores like Saks and Neiman Marcus that have started advertising on Daffy’s turf, stressing low prices over fashion or luxury. “If you walk down the street, every shop window’s got a discount sign on it now,” said Jan Jacobs, co-founder of Johannes Leonardo, Daffy’s new creative agency, which is backed by the WPP Group. Daffy’s has had a firm hold on the off-price market since it was founded 48 years ago, he said, “but because of the economy and everyone offering discounts, they are disappearing into the background.” Looking to reclaim the discount mantle, Daffy’s is starting a quirky marketing campaign centered on a contest that will award one person the kind of value not generally associated with a clothing store: a one-year lease on a fully furnished $7,000-a-month apartment in Manhattan’s West Village neighborhood at $700 a month.  Starting July 23, people can go to select Daffy’s locations and create a 30-second video explaining why they deserve the apartment. The company will post the best videos on its Web site, eventually nominating five finalists from which the public will choose a winner by Sept. 16. Daffy’s, which is based in North Bergen, N.J., will advertise the contest in some nontraditional (read: inexpensive) ways. The company will post ads for the apartment in the housing section of Craigslist and tape handwritten fliers around the city with tear-off tabs bearing the number of a contest hotline. More traditional prints ads — featuring glamour shots of the apartment from inside and out—will appear in magazines like New York and Time Out New York, and promotional materials will appear in all Daffy’s stores. The company will also operate a pop-up store for the length of the campaign out of the ground floor of the building in which the apartment is located, which is One Seventh Avenue South. The apartment will be open for tours by the public, and a sign in the window will identify it for people on the street. The hope is that the wildly discounted apartment will strike a chord with rent-conscious New Yorkers, and generate conversation about Daffy’s. “One thing we all have in common in New York is that we all pay too much to live here,” Mr. Jacobs, whose agency is based in the West Village, said. “Real estate is sort of the No. 1 dinnertime conversation in New York, and we wanted to engage that.” Will Bracker, director of marketing at Daffy’s, said the campaign was “beautifully fused to what this brand is all about,” and furthered Daffy’s tradition of marketing efforts that focused on creating buzz. (In addition to the mannequin stunt, Daffy’s once sold silver dollars for 88 cents.) “The mannequin on the roof, that got the cops involved,” Mr. Bracker said. “We don’t expect that to happen this time around, but the idea did make us uncomfortable in a good way.” Daffy’s operates 17 stores in New York and North Jersey, and one in Philadelphia. People wanting to enter the contest will be encouraged to check the store’s Web site to find out which stores will have video booths and when. It’s not hard to understand why Daffy’s chose now to hire an agency and produce a coordinated marketing effort — things it has done only sporadically during its history. Since the economy took a nosedive last year, shoppers have sought out stores that they believe give them more for their money. In the last 12 months, sales at discount retail chains like Daffy’s, T. J. Maxx and Filene’s Basement have risen 0.6 percent, while department store sales have dropped 6.3 percent and specialty store sales have dropped 5.5 percent, according to the NPD Group, a market research firm. Of course, a sales bump of less than 1 percent hardly translates to boom times for any company. Filene’s Basement filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this year, and Mr. Bracker said that while “this is the year to be in the off-price business,” Daffy’s was “striving to hold our own” against increased competition and scaled-back spending.  Still, the numbers suggest that discount shopping has, at least for now, lost its stigma among more upscale customers, said Marshal Cohen, an NPD analyst, in part because luxury brands themselves have been flying the discount flag, creating opportunity for Daffy’s. “It is no longer a necessity to keep it a secret if you shop at these discount, off-price retailers,” Mr. Cohen said. “In fact, it has almost become more fashionable” than shopping at luxury brands. He also said Daffy’s knew what it was doing by focusing on buzz over traditional advertising. “By far the No. 1 influence on why a consumer will shop in an off-price store is word of mouth,” he said. “The kind of conversation where someone says to a friend, ‘Hey, great jacket you’re wearing. Where did you get it?’ ” Daffy’s may not need to fight for the discount title much longer, however. Unlike luxury and department stores, companies like Daffy’s and Filene’s Basement are able to offer steep discounts by buying leftover inventory that manufacturers’ warehouses are unable to sell to department stores. Mr. Cohen said that stores like Neiman Marcus and Saks would soon have to return to higher prices to stay solvent. “Daffy’s will have an opportunity when other retailers go back to try and get full price if they can keep this momentum alive,” he said. “The pressure will be on them to stay front-and-center in the consumer’s mind when the economy turns around.”

Daffy's
Discount Selling
Shopping and Retail
Advertising and Marketing
Contests and Prizes


Lynn Pressman Raymond, Toy Executive, Is Dead at 97

Abstract: Childhood in the 1950s was an endless series of vaccinations and booster shots. A routine visit to the doctor could mean a trip to the hospital for a tonsillectomy, the era’s favorite procedure. Doctors loomed large for the baby-boom generation — powerful figures only too willing to inflict pain. Lynn Pressman sensed the angst in her own three children and came up with a prescription: the Doctor Bag and the Nurse Bag. These professional-looking kits, with their toy stethoscopes and syringes, took some of the mystery out of medicine and became huge best sellers for the Pressman Toy Corporation , which her husband, Jack, founded in 1922 and she helped run for 30 years, 20 of them as its chief executive. Lynn Pressman Raymond died July 22 at her home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She was 97. The death was confirmed by her son, the film producer Edward R. Pressman. Mrs. Raymond, who used the name of her fourth husband, Michael Raymond, brought style and showmanship to an industry that, she once complained, “had no fashion sense at all.” At her instigation, Pressman led the way in advertising toys and games on television, and she pioneered the development of tie-ins to popular television shows and stars. She was fond of big-statement hats designed by Mr. John (she had nearly a hundred of them), elaborate theme parties and old-fashioned, Barnum-style publicity stunts. To whip up excitement over two new memory games, Names and Faces and Things and Places, she arranged for an elephant to appear in front of the Toy Building in Manhattan during the annual Toy Fair. “She was very astute,” said Norman Fabricant, a toy inventor who sold Mrs. Raymond a card game called Tough Luck and a puzzle game called Daffy Dials in the mid-1970s. “I’d present an activity game with a lot of complications to it, and she would not only get it very quickly but would immediately suggest ways to improve it.” Mrs. Raymond was born Lynn Rambach in the Woodhaven area of Queens, where her parents, immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ran a general store. The family moved to Brooklyn when she was a girl and she attended Erasmus Hall High School. After graduation, she became secretary to the training director at the Abraham & Straus department store in Brooklyn and rose quickly through a variety of positions in personnel training and advertising. At McCreery’s, a small department store on Fifth Avenue, she started as assistant to the fashion coordinator and later held top positions in merchandising. “She was very clever,” said Norman Oshin, a cousin. “She put on these little fashion shows and one time had me wear an usher’s uniform and walk in with a stack of hat boxes.” These, she announced grandly to her McCreery’s audience, were the latest arrivals from Paris. “The boxes were empty,” he said. An early marriage ended in divorce. In addition to her sons Edward and James, both of Manhattan, she is survived by a daughter from her first marriage, Ann Markelson, also of Manhattan; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Her third husband, Dr. Martin Gray, died in 1970, and her fourth husband died in the early 1990s. In 1942, she married Mr. Pressman, known as the Marble King for his mysterious ability to obtain stocks of children’s marbles despite wartime shortages. More notably, he had put Chinese checkers in millions of American homes, after spotting the game on a sales trip to Colorado in 1928. In the late 1940s, Mrs. Raymond persuaded her husband to take her on as a business partner. As his health began to fail, she took a dominant role in the company and assumed command after his death in 1959. She was in for a rude surprise. “When I took over the business when Jack died, the bank threw me out,” she told the trade journal Toy Book in 2007. “It was because I was a woman; that’s the only reason.” The National Bank of North America had offices below the company and extended credit. Mrs. Raymond shook things up. She hired artists from the fashion industry to bring a little visual flair to the packaging of Pressman toys, and for much of her television advertising, she turned to a fashion industry agency. At a time when nearly every American boy played with cap pistols and Army toys, Mrs. Raymond took a pacifist stand: no rifles or bayonets would be sold by Pressman. She also insisted that all the company’s products be manufactured in the United States. Her shrewdest moves came in the licensing area. She signed Roger Maris at the height of his fame and put his face on the box of the company’s Action Baseball game. Carl Yastrzemski and Tom Seaver succeeded him. Drawing on television, she developed “Beanie and Cecil” beanbag and ring toss games and games linked to Shari Lewis’s puppets. Disney’s television programs offered a particularly rich vein to mine. In the 1950s and 1960s, Pressman sold a Davy Crockett board game, Mouseketennis (a Mouseketeers table tennis set), a Mickey Mouse Fun Tray and a Mickey Mouse Counting Jump Rope. An equal-opportunity employer of rodents, Mrs. Raymond also put Mighty Mouse to work. In retirement, she cut a dashing figure on the Upper East Side, and she eagerly took walk-on parts in several of her son’s films, including “Wall Street.” Well into her 90s, she would watch the passing parade from a chair in front of her apartment building near the Whitney Museum. There she looked, and was looked at: at 94 she was hired to appear in a print ad for Juicy Couture.

Toys
Pressman Raymond Lynn
Shopping and Retail
Deaths (Obituaries)
Fashion and Apparel
Advertising and Marketing
Pressman Edward R


Events in New Jersey for Jan. 25-31, 2015

Abstract: A guide to cultural and recreational events in New Jersey. Items for the calendar should be sent at least three weeks in advance to njtowns@nytimes.com. Comedy MONTCLAIR Wellmont Theater George Lopez. Feb. 7 at 8 p.m. $70.50 to $119. Wellmont Theater, 5 Seymour Street. 973-783-9500; thewellmonttheater.com. MORRISTOWN Mayo Performing Arts Center “Pinkalicious, the Musical.” Jan. 25 at 1:30 and 4 p.m. $12 and $15. Mayo Performing Arts Center, 100 South Street. 973-539-8008; mayoarts.org. Film RED BANK Count Basie Theater “The Theory of Everything,” a 2014 film directed by James Marsh. Feb. 4 and 5. $5. Count Basie Theater, 99 Monmouth Street. 732-842-9000; countbasietheatre.org. WEST ORANGE AMC Essex Green 9 West Orange Classic Film Festival: “Flying Deuces,” directed by A. Edward Sutherland. Jan. 25 at 2 p.m. $10. AMC Essex Green 9, 495 Prospect Avenue. 973-731-6692. For Children CAMDEN Adventure Aquarium “Hippo Haven.” Continuing. $18.95 and $25.95; children under 2, free. Adventure Aquarium, 1 Riverside Drive. adventureaquarium.com; 856-365-3300. ENGLEWOOD Bergen Performing Arts Center “Sid the Science Kid,” a live performance based on the PBS Kids television show, produced by the Jim Henson Company. Jan. 25 at 2 and 5 p.m. $10 to $25. Bergen Performing Arts Center, 30 North Van Brunt Street. 201-227-1030; bergenpac.org. MORRISTOWN Mayo Performing Arts Center “Sid the Science Kid,” a live performance based on the PBS Kids television show, produced by the Jim Henson Company. Jan. 27 at 12:15 and 4 p.m. $12 to $25. Mayo Performing Arts Center, 100 South Street. 973-539-8008; mayoarts.org. NEW BRUNSWICK State Theater “Stella, Queen of the Snow,” based on the children’s book series by Marie-Louise Gay. Feb. 2 at 10 a.m. and noon. $8. State Theater, 15 Livingston Avenue. 732-246-7469; statetheatrenj.org. TENAFLY JCC on the Palisades “The Sleeping Beauty,” an opera performed by its 15-year-old composer, Benjamin Wenzelberg. Jan. 25, 4:30 to 6 p.m. $8 and $10. JCC on the Palisades, 411 East Clinton Avenue. 201-408-1409; jccotp.org. Music and Dance ENGLEWOOD Bergen Performing Arts Center Vince Gill and Lyle Lovett, guitarists. Jan. 28 at 8 p.m. $59 to $129. Bergen Performing Arts Center, 30 North Van Brunt Street. 201-227-1030; bergenpac.org. MONTCLAIR Outpost in the Burbs The 6th Annual Concert for Haiti, featuring Steve Forbert, Zing Experience and Bohio Music to benefit the Edeyo Foundation, Lamp for Haiti, and Haitian Education and Leadership Program. Feb. 7 at 7:30 p.m. $22 and $25. Outpost in the Burbs, 67 Church Street. 973-744-6560; outpostintheburbs.org. NEW BRUNSWICK State Theater The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra presents “West Side Story,” with Sarah Chang, violinist, led by Jacques Lacombe. Jan. 25 at 3 p.m. $20 to $90. For tickets: 973-624-3713; njsymphony.org. Black Violin, Wil Baptiste and Kevin “Kev Marcus” Sylvester perform a blend of classical, hip-hop, rock, R & B and bluegrass. Feb. 4 at 8 p.m. $25 to $30. State Theater, 15 Livingston Avenue. 732-246-7469; statetheatrenj.org. NEWARK Prudential Hall, New Jersey Performing Arts Center The Philadelphia Orchestra performs Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and a pair of works by Shostakovich, led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor. Jan. 29 at 7:30 p.m. $25 to $139. Prudential Hall, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, 1 Center Street. 888-466-5722; njpac.org. PRINCETON Miller Chapel, Princeton Theological Seminary “Bach Cantata Fest,” a Dryden Ensemble concert in memory of William H. Scheide, featuring Ah Young Hong, soprano, and William Sharp, baritone, in Cantatas 32 and 49 and selected arias. Jan. 25 at 3 p.m. $10 to $25. Miller Chapel, Princeton Theological Seminary, 64 Mercer Street. drydenensemble.org; 609-466-8541. RAHWAY Union County Performing Arts Center Natalia Zukerman, singer-songwriter performs folk, bluegrass, jazz and blues. Feb. 7 at 8 p.m. $20. Union County Performing Arts Center, 1601 Irving Street. 732-499-8226; ucpac.org. RED BANK Count Basie Theater “In the Mood: 1940s Musical Revue.” Feb. 7 at 2 p.m. $20 to $45. Count Basie Theater, 99 Monmouth Street. 732-842-9000; countbasietheatre.org. RIDGEWOOD West Side Presbyterian Church West Side Concert Series — El Sistema Simon Bolivar Big Band Jazz. Jan. 31, 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. $10 suggested donation. Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. West Side Presbyterian Church, 6 South Monroe Street. 201-652-1966 ext. 7137; westsideconcerts.org. RINGWOOD Ringwood Public Library Dar Williams, pop/folk. Jan. 25 at 2 p.m. $30. Ringwood Public Library, 30 Cannici Drive. 973-962-6256; ringwoodlibrary.org. Image EWING A photograph of Sheriff Jim Clark arresting two demonstrators in 1963 at a federal building in Selma, Ala., is part of “Danny Lyon: Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement,” on view at the College of New Jersey’s Art Gallery, 2000 Pennington Road, Jan. 28 through March 1. 609-771-2633; tcnjartgallery.tcnj.edu . Credit Danny Lyon/Magnum Photos, Courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery SOUTH ORANGE South Orange Performing Arts Center Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Feb. 5 at 7:30 p.m. $38 to $58. South Orange Performing Arts Center, 1 Sopac Way. 973-313-2787; sopacnow.org. WATCHUNG Watchung Arts Center Lauren Hooker and Friends, performing selections from her new CD, “All for You — My Heart and Soul,” and more. Jan. 31 at 8 p.m. $16 and $20. Watchung Arts Center, 18 Stirling Road. 908-753-0190; watchungarts.org. WEST LONG BRANCH Pollak Theater, Monmouth University David Lindley, rock, and John Hammond, blues. Jan. 30 at 8 p.m. $25 to $50. Pollak Theater, Monmouth University, 400 Cedar Avenue. 732-263-6889; monmouth.edu/arts_events. Spoken Word PATERSON Hamilton Club Building The 2014 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards. Poetry reading and award ceremony by winning and honorably mentioned writers. Feb. 7, 1 to 3 p.m. Free. Hamilton Club Building, 32 Church Street (at Ellison Street). 973-684-6555. Theater CAMDEN South Camden Theater Company, Waterfront South Theater “Agnes of God,” drama by John Pielmeier. Through Jan. 25. $20. South Camden Theater Company, Waterfront South Theater, 400 Jasper Street. southcamdentheatre.org; 866-811-4111. LONG BRANCH New Jersey Repertory Company, Lumia Theater “Swimming at the Ritz,” by Charles Leipart. Through Feb. 1. $25 to $43. New Jersey Repertory Company, Lumia Theater, 179 Broadway. 732-229-3166; njrep.org. MANASQUAN Algonquin Arts Center “The Glass Menagerie,” by Tennessee Williams. Through Jan. 25. $20 to $36. Algonquin Arts Center, 173 Main Street. 732-528-9211; algonquinarts.com. MILLBURN Paper Mill Playhouse “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” comedy by Christopher Durang. Through Feb. 15. $36 to $91. Paper Mill Playhouse, 22 Brookside Drive. papermill.org. 973-376-4343. MONTCLAIR Studio Playhouse “Other People’s Money,” a drama-comedy by Jerry Sterner. Through Jan. 31. $20. Studio Playhouse, 14 Alvin Place. 973-744-9752; studioplayhouse.org. MORRISTOWN Mayo Performing Arts Center “Sister Act,” musical comedy. Jan. 31 and Feb. 1. $39 to $79. Mayo Performing Arts Center, 100 South Street. 973-539-8008; mayoarts.org. NEW BRUNSWICK George Street Playhouse “The Whipping Man,” by Matthew Lopez. Through Feb. 15. George Street Playhouse, 9 Livingston Avenue. 732-246-7717; gsponline.org. PRINCETON McCarter Theater Center “Sizwe Banzi Is Dead,” a play by Athol Fugard, written with two South African actors, John Kani and Winston Ntshona. Through Feb. 15. $25 to $70. McCarter Theater Center, 91 University Place. 609-258-2787; mccarter.org. RAHWAY Hamilton Stage “Tick, Tick ... Boom!” a musical by Jonathan Larson. Jan. 28 through Feb. 8. $35. Hamilton Stage, 360 Hamilton Street. 732-499-8226; ucpac.org. RED BANK Count Basie Theater Mummenschanz performs, with costumes and expressive masks. Jan. 31 at 8 p.m. $25 to $39. Count Basie Theater, 99 Monmouth Street. countbasietheatre.org; 732-842-9000. RED BANK Two River Theater “Absurd Person Singular,” comedy by Alan Ayckbourn. Through Feb. 1. $20 to $50. Two River Theater, 21 Bridge Avenue. 732-345-1400; trtc.org. SOUTH ORANGE South Orange Performing Arts Center A staged reading of “Helen of Troy,” presented by Midtown Direct Rep. Jan. 25 at 7:30 p.m. $15. South Orange Performing Arts Center, 1 Sopac Way. 973-313-2787; sopacnow.org. WEST ORANGE Luna Stage “A Perfect Ganesh,” by Terrence McNally. Jan. 29 through Feb. 22. $30 and $35. Luna Stage, 555 Valley Road. lunastage.org; 973-395-5551. WEST WINDSOR Kelsey Theater, West Windsor Campus, Mercer County Community College “Into the Woods,” musical. Through Feb. 1. $14 to $18. Kelsey Theater, West Windsor Campus, Mercer County Community College, 1200 Old Trenton Road. 609-570-3333; kelseytheatre.net. Museums and Galleries ASBURY PARK Palette Gallery/ArtsSpace Bob Wheeler’s playful surreal paintings. Through Feb. 28. “Mixtape,” a collaborative art project in which Joseph Borzotta and two other artists from a rotating ensemble work on the same canvas. Through Feb. 28. Palette Gallery/ArtsSpace, 716 Cookman Avenue. 201-981-2395. ASBURY PARK Where Music Lives “Light of Day — The Amazing Journey Through the Photography of John Cavanaugh.” Through March 1. Where Music Lives, 708 Cookman Avenue. asburyparkmusiclives.org; 732-775-8900. Image ENGLEWOOD The country singer-songwriter and actor Lyle Lovett performs with the guitarist Vince Gill at the Bergen Performing Arts Center, 30 North Van Brunt Street, on Jan. 28 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $59 to $129. 201-227-1030; bergenpac.org . Credit Michael Buckner/Getty Images BERNARDSVILLE Studio 7 Fine Art Gallery “Wildlife Watercolors,” works by James Fiorentino, American sports artist, that include wildlife. Through Jan. 31. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Studio 7 Fine Art Gallery, 5 Morristown Road. 908-630-9770; studio7artgallery.com. BEDMINSTER The Center for Contemporary Art “Line, Color and Surface,” works by Harry Naar, Sue Ferguson Gussow, Geoffrey Dorfman and Tracey Jones, curated by Mel Leipzig. Through Feb. 21. Mondays through Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Center for Contemporary Art, 2020 Burnt Mills Road. ccabedminster.org; 908-234-2345. BOUND BROOK Hamilton Street Gallery “The Imagination of a Boy and a Girl,” works by Rita Herzfeld and Peter Arakawa. Through Feb. 26. Hamilton Street Gallery, 6 Hamilton Street. 732-748-2092; hamiltonstreetgallery.com. CLINTON Hunterdon Art Museum “Contemporary International Tapestry,” highlights the works of three generations of artists from nine countries. Through May 10. Donation: $5. Tuesdays through Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Hunterdon Art Museum, 7 Lower Center Street. 908-735-8415; hunterdonartmuseum.org. ENGLEWOOD One River Gallery “Lady Macbeth’s Bat Mitzvah,” a multimedia show featuring works by emerging artists that celebrate the creativity of childhood. Through March 7. Mondays through Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. One River Gallery, 49 North Dean Street. 201-266-5244; onerivergallery.com. EWING The College of New Jersey “Danny Lyon: Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement.” Jan. 28 through March 1. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, noon to 7 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 3 p.m. the College of New Jersey’s Art Gallery, 2000 Pennington Road,. 609-771-2633; tcnjartgallery.tcnj.edu. FREEHOLD Monmouth County Historical Association Museum and Library “Farm: Agriculture in Monmouth County, 1600-2013.” Through Feb. 28. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monmouth County Historical Association Museum and Library, 70 Court Street. monmouthhistory.org; 732-462-1466. GALLOWAY Stockton College Art Gallery “Charles Santore: Alice and the Narrative Picture Book,” selection of Mr. Santore’s children’s literature illustrations and a preview of drawings from his coming publication of “Alice in Wonderland” in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the original. Through March 28. Mondays through Saturdays, noon to 7:30 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 4 p.m. Stockton College Art Gallery, 101 Vera King Farris Drive. 609-652-4214; stockton.edu/artgallery. HALEDON American Labor Museum/Botto House National Landmark “New Haven’s Garment Workers: An Elm City Story,” an exhibition by Joan Cavanaugh and the New Haven Labor History Association. Through April 17. $5 suggested donation. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 1 to 4 p.m., or by appointment. American Labor Museum/Botto House National Landmark, 83 Norwood Street. labormuseum.org; 973-595-7953. HAMILTON Grounds for Sculpture “Seward Johnson: The Retrospective,” 150 works by the sculptor at the 42-acre park he founded. Through July 1. “Michael Graves: Past as Prologue,” seminal architecture and product design projects, and original artworks, including sculpture and paintings. Through April 5. $10 to $15; members and children under 5, free. Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Grounds for Sculpture, 18 Fairgrounds Road. 609-586-0616; groundsforsculpture.org. HOBOKEN Monroe Art Center “PAX,” a group exhibition. Through Feb. 1. Monroe Art Center, 720 Monroe Street. 201-795-5000; monroecenter.com. JERSEY CITY New Jersey City University “Laura Kina Blue Hawaii Exhibition.” Ms. Kina explores memories of her paternal Japanese ancestors through evocative oil paintings. Jan. 27 through March 3. Reception: Jan. 29, 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. New Jersey City University, 2039 Kennedy Boulevard. njcu.edu/dept/art/galleries; 201-200-3246. JERSEY CITY New Jersey City University Galleries Ayana V Jackson, “Archival Impulse” exhibition, performance-based photographs. Ms. Jackson confronts the stereotype and projected desire found in the late 19th and early 20th century imagery of African female subjects. Through Feb. 27. Reception: Feb. 3, 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. New Jersey City University Galleries, 100 Culver Avenue. 201-200-2496; njcu.edu/visual_arts_gallery.aspx. JERSEY CITY Victory Hall Drawing Rooms “The Big Small Show Fund-Raiser.” Small works by almost 100 painters, collage artists, printmakers and sculptors. Through Jan. 25. Victory Hall Drawing Rooms, 180 Grand Street. 201-208-8032; drawingrooms.org/events.html. LAMBERTVILLE The Artists’ Gallery Holiday Exhibition. Through Feb. 1. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Artists’ Gallery, 18 Bridge Street. lambertvillearts.com; 609-397-4588. MADISON Drew University “Coming Home,” installation by Valerie Hegarty. Through Jan. 30. Tuesdays through Fridays, 12:30 to 4 p.m., selected weekends and by appointment. Drew University, 36 Madison Avenue. 973-408-3758; drew.edu/korngallery. MADISON Museum of Early Trades and Crafts “The American Revolution in New Jersey: Where the Battlefront Meets the Homefront.” Through Feb. 1. $3 to $13; free for members. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Museum of Early Trades and Crafts, 9 Main Street. 973-377-2982; metc.org. METUCHEN St. Luke’s Episcopal Church “Revelation/Revolution,” paintings, photography, mixed-media and sculptures at Nails in the Wall, the Gallery at St. Luke’s. Through May. 31. 17 Oak Avenue. 732-322-6512; nailsinthewall.com. MONTCLAIR George Segal Gallery at Montclair State University “Art Connections 11,” group show. Jan. 25 through Feb. 21. Reception: Jan. 25, 2 to 5 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursdays, 12:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. George Segal Gallery at Montclair State University, 1 University Promenade. 973-655-3382; montclair.edu/arts/university-art-galleries-george-segal-gallery. MONTCLAIR Montclair Art Museum 100 Works for 100 Years: A Centennial Celebration.” Through May 17. $12 adults, $10 seniors and students; members and children under 12, free. Wednesdays through Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Montclair Art Museum, 3 South Mountain Avenue. 973-746-5555; montclairartmuseum.org. Image BOUND BROOK “Party-3 watercolor” (2010), ink and acrylic on Arches paper by Rita Herzfeld, is in “The Imagination of a Boy and a Girl,” an exhibition also featuring works by Peter Arakawa, at the Hamilton Street Gallery, 6 Hamilton Street, through Feb. 26. 732-748-2092; hamiltonstreetgallery.com . Credit Brian McCormack MORRISTOWN Atrium Gallery Art in the Atrium’s 23rd Annual Exhibition, “Ancient Rhythms Remixed,” works by Bisa Butler and more than 20 other African-American artists. Through March 15. Mondays through Fridays, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Atrium Gallery, 10 Court Street. artintheatrium.org; 973-540-0615. MORRISTOWN Macculloch Hall Historical Museum “The Civil War Through the Eyes of Thomas Nast.” Through Aug. 23. $6 to $8; children ages 6 to 12, $4; children under 5, free. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, 1 to 4 p.m. Macculloch Hall Historical Museum, 45 Macculloch Avenue. 973-538-2404; maccullochhall.org. MORRISTOWN Morris Museum “"Brick by Brick,” innovative works by artists, architects and engineers using Lego pieces. Through March 15. $7 to $10. “Chairs of Inclusion,” 10 life-size chairs by professional artists, in honor of the 10th anniversary of the Jewish Service for the Developmentally Disabled’s WAE Center. Through Feb. 1. $7 to $10. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; second and third Thursdays of each month, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Morris Museum, 6 Normandy Heights Road. 973-971-3700; morrismuseum.org. NEW BRUNSWICK Museum of American Hungarian Foundation 26th annual “Festival of Trees,” trees decorated by many ethnic groups sharing their holiday traditions. Through Jan. 25. Donation, $5. “Rubik’s Cube and Its 40th Anniversary,” from the collection of Andre Farkas. Through Jan. 31. “Eva Zeisel: Life, Design and Beauty.” Through Jan. 31. $5. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 4 p.m. Museum of the American Hungarian Foundation, 300 Somerset Street. ahfoundation.org; 732-846-5777. NEW BRUNSWICK Zimmerli Art Museum “Bugs and Frogs and Toads! Oh My!” Children’s book illustrations by Nancy Winslow Parker. Through June 21. “A Place in America: Celebrating the Legacy of Ralph and Barbara Voorhees,” prints and drawings. Through Feb. 8. “Picturing War: Selections From the Zimmerli Art Museum Collection.” Feb. 7 through July 5. Free. “The Doctor Is In: Medicine in French Prints,” an exhibition that explores how European artists documented and interpreted health issues and medical practices of their time, with works by Honoré Daumier, Hermann-Paul and Charles Maurin. Feb. 7 through July 31. Closed for the month of August. Tuesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Zimmerli Art Museum, 71 Hamilton Street. 848-932-7237; zimmerlimuseum.rutgers.edu. NEWARK The Newark Museum “Korea, Land of the Diamond Mountains,” decorative arts, clothing and works on paper. Through Jan. 25. “Gone Fishin’: Aquatic Imagery in Asian Art,” folding screens, hanging scrolls, ceramics and sculpture. Through March 1. Free with museum admission, $7 and $12; children under 2 and members, free. Wednesdays through Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. The Newark Museum, 49 Washington Street. 973-596-6650; newarkmuseum.org. NYACK Museum of the Historical Society of the Nyacks “Toys of the Past: Our Childhood Memories.” Through Feb. 28. Saturdays, 1 to 4 p.m. Museum of the Historical Society of the Nyacks, 50 Piermont Avenue. 845-418-4430; nyackhistory.org. OAKHURST Gallery 45, The White House in Oakhurst “Tea Is Hot,” an exhibition of two local artists expressing their passion for tea and art. Through Feb. 28. Gallery 45, The White House in Oakhurst, 45 Monmouth Road. thewhitehouseinoakhurst.com; 732-483-4600. PRINCETON Bernstein Gallery “Call and Response,” digital collages by Andrew Ellis Johnson. Through Jan. 29. Mondays through Fridays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Bernstein Gallery, Robertson Hall. 609-497-2441; wws.princeton.edu/about-wws/bernstein-gallery. PRINCETON Morven Museum and Garden “Hail Specimen of Female Art! New Jersey Schoolgirl Needlework, 1726-1860.” Through March 29. $5 and $6. Wednesdays through Fridays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 4 p.m. Morven Museum and Garden, 55 Stockton Street. 609-924-8144; morven.org. PRINCETON Princeton University Art Museum “Chigusa and the Art of Tea in Japan.” Through Feb. 1. “Kongo Across the Waters,” examining 500 years of cultural exchange among Congo, Europe and the United States. Through Jan. 25. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 5 p.m. Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton University campus. 609-258-3788; artmuseum.princeton.edu. PRINCETON Princeton University Library “Nova Caesarea: A Cartographic Record of the Garden State, 1666-1888,” maps and atlases of New Jersey counties. Through Jan. 25. Mondays through Fridays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Firestone Library and Museum, Princeton University, 1 Washington Road. 609-258-1470; library.princeton.edu. SHREWSBURY Guild of Creative Art “All-Member Edgy Exhibit,” group show. Through Jan. 28. Tuesdays through Fridays, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Thursdays, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Guild of Creative Art, 620 Broad Street. guildofcreativeart.org; 732-741-1441. SOUTH ORANGE South Orange Performing Arts Center “Precious Memories,” photography, collage and constructs by Mansa K. Mussa. Through Feb. 15. South Orange Performing Arts Center, 1 Sopac Way. 973-313-2787; sopacnow.org. TEANECK Puffin Cultural Forum “Retrospective Outrage,” works by Hak Vogrin and contemporary political cartoons from The Cagle Post by Daryl Cagle. Through Feb. 26. Tuesdays through Thursdays, noon to 4 p.m. Puffin Cultural Forum, 20 Puffin Way. puffinculturalforum.org; 201-836-3499. TENAFLY JCC on the Palisades “The Fabric of Life,” colorful handmade wall hangings. Through Jan. 28. JCC on the Palisades, 411 East Clinton Avenue. 201-569-7900; jccotp.org. TRENTON Mala Polska “Dreams & Meditations,” paintings by R J Haas and Katarzyna Iwaniec, followed by an artists’ discussion of the works. Through March 9. Mala Polska, 1046 Brunswick Avenue. 609-610-4575. TRENTON New Jersey State Museum “America, Through Artists’ Eyes,” works by contemporary New Jersey artists. Through April 5. “A Shadow Over the Earth: The Life and Death of the Passenger Pigeon,” through June 2015. Suggested donation, $5. Tuesdays through Sundays, 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. New Jersey State Museum, 205 West State Street. statemuseum.nj.gov; 609-292-6464. UNION TOWNSHIP The Karl and Helen Burger Gallery at Kean University “The Mill Street Salon: Beyond the Image,” works by New Jersey photographers. Through Feb. 13. Mondays through Thursdays, 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Fridays, 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Karl and Helen Burger Gallery at Kean University, 1000 Morris Avenue. 908-737-0392; kean.edu/~gallery/. WESTFIELD Gallery U Works by members of Contemporary Art Group. Through Feb. 2. Gallery U, 439 South Avenue West. gallery-u.blogspot.com; 908-232-1895.


English Get Aggressive and Win a First Title

Abstract: England, the first cricketing nation, ended its long wait for a world championship in the sport when it took the World Twenty20 title in Bridgetown, Barbados, beating Australia by seven wickets in the final. England had reached four previous finals — losing three World Cup finals between 1979 and 1992 and a Champions Trophy final, to West Indies in 2004. This outcome could scarcely have been anticipated less than a year ago, when England was humiliated on its historic home ground, Lord’s, by the Netherlands in the opening match of the 2009 World Twenty20. One of England’s tormentors then was back Sunday. Dirk Nannes, a dual-national, saxophone-playing, Japanese-speaking left-arm fast bowler who played for the Netherlands in 2009, bowled for Australia in Bridgetown. Australia had won all its matches before Sunday, but there was little doubt England was the strongest team by the end of the 17-day tournament. After struggling in the pool stage, it won its next five matches resoundingly. It won Sunday with three six-ball overs to spare, a huge margin in a format where each team bats for only 20 overs. “They outplayed us today,” said Michael Clarke, Australia’s captain. England seized the initiative from the start, taking 3 wickets for 8 runs. The manner of those early dismissals epitomized the change in England’s style, with attacking field-placing by captain Paul Collingwood and aggression from the fielders. Shane Watson was out in the first over because Collingwood, unusually in this format, placed a slip fielder alongside wicket-keeper Craig Kieswetter. When Kieswetter fumbled a catch, Graeme Swann, caught the rebound. Then Michael Lumb hit the stumps with a direct throw to run out David Warner. Australia had staged an incredible comeback to beat champion Pakistan in Friday’s semifinal. On Sunday, its middle-order batsmen — the Hussey brothers, David and Mike, and Cameron White — responded to their country’s need, dragging the final total to a respectable 147 runs for 6 wickets. “We didn’t score enough runs,” Clarke said. “The way England played, we probably needed 200.” When Shaun Tait claimed the early wicket off Lumb, England did not panic. Kieswetter and Kevin Pietersen — both, like Lumb, South Africa-born — took the score to 118 with 7 overs remaining. Kieswetter was made Man of the Match for his innings of 63. Pietersen, only a few days after flying to England and back for the birth of his first child, won Man of the Series for his consistent scoring. Less than two weeks after a British election in which the main parties vied to prove themselves tough on immigration, only 12 of the runs that gave England a world title were scored by a British-born player. That was Collingwood, who struck the winning runs and was mobbed by the rest of his 15-man squad. Collingwood also displayed a dry sense of humor, replying, “We’re playing better,” when asked to explain England’s transformation before going on to pay tribute to the team spirit, work ethic and cricketing intelligence of his players. Only five, including Collingwood and Pietersen, remain from the team defeated by the Netherlands 49 weeks ago. The victory is a triumph for them, for Coach Andy Flower and the strategic rethink that led to England’s going for power at the top of the order and aggression both in running between the wickets and in the field. The change in strategy led to a new self-belief. Ian Chappell, a former Australian captain who first played against England in 1965, said during his television commentary: “This is possibly the most confident England team I’ve ever seen.” Australia had some compensation later Sunday when its women’s team won its tournament, beating New Zealand by three runs. New Zealand’s Sophie Devine, whose fierce hitting had revived an apparently lost cause, could have won the match by striking a six from the final ball delivered by Australia’s Ellyse Perry, but managed only one run.

England
Barbados
Australia
Cricket (Game)


G.D.P. Revised Down Slightly for 4th Quarter

Abstract: WASHINGTON (AP) — The economy shrank at a 6.3 percent pace at the end of 2008, the worst showing in a quarter-century, and probably is not doing much better now. The Commerce Department reported on Thursday that the economy was sinking a bit faster than the 6.2 percent annualized drop for the October-December quarter estimated a month ago. Consumers are cutting back as unemployment rises, home values fall and investment portfolios shrink, forcing companies to slash production and jobs. The negative forces are affecting one another in a vicious cycle that has deepened the recession, now in its second year. Economists were bracing for a 6.5 percent annualized drop in the government’s third and final estimate of gross domestic product. Still, the results were dismal. The economy started 2008 on feeble footing, picked up a bit of speed in the spring and then contracted at an annualized rate of 0.5 percent in the third quarter. The main factor behind the G.D.P. downgrade was a decline in business inventories that was bigger than estimated a month ago. That shaved 0.11 percentage points off fourth-quarter G.D.P., rather than adding 0.16 percentage points in the previous report. Builders also cut spending on commercial construction more deeply than previously thought. In another report, the government said Thursday that initial jobless benefit claims rose slightly last week while the number of people continuing to claim benefits set a record for the ninth consecutive week. The figures indicate the labor market remains weak even as some other economic indicators come in better than expected. First-time claims for unemployment insurance rose to a seasonally adjusted 652,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 644,000. That is slightly above analysts’ expectations. The total number of people claiming benefits for more than a week jumped 122,000, to 5.56 million, exceeding analysts’ projections of 5.48 million and the highest on records dating to 1967.

Gross Domestic Product
Economic Conditions and Trends
Subprime Mortgage Crisis


Texas Attorney General Invites New Yorkers to Bring Their Guns

Abstract: AUSTIN, Tex. — Attention New Yorkers: Texas wants you. And your guns. Last week, the day after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York approved a broad package of gun-control measures that made New York’s tough gun laws even tougher, the Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott , began running Internet advertisements in Manhattan and Albany asking New York gun owners to consider moving to Texas. The two ads — displayed on news sites and aimed at Web users with Manhattan and Albany ZIP codes — promote the state’s low taxes and gun culture, with one asking, “Is Gov. Cuomo looking to take your guns?” The other reads, “Wanted: Law abiding New York gun owners looking for lower taxes and greater opportunity.” When clicked on, the ads lead users to a Facebook page where a letter from Mr. Abbott , the state’s chief law enforcement official, promotes Texas’s strong economy and lack of an income tax, allowing transplanted gun owners “to keep more of what you earn and use some of that extra money to buy more ammo.” The ads are a rare burst of political theater from Mr. Abbott, a former State Supreme Court justice who has built a reputation as a gentlemanly yet fiercely conservative litigator eager to challenge the Obama administration, and who, in a speech last year, described his job this way: “I go to the office. I sue the federal government. And then I go home.” Image After New York enacted new gun laws, Greg Abbott, Texas's attorney general, ran ads inviting New Yorkers to move to Texas. Credit Eric Gay/Associated Press Mr. Abbott has been laying the groundwork and raising millions of dollars for a possible run for governor in 2014, regardless of whether Gov. Rick Perry, his ally and fellow Republican, decides to seek re-election. Mr. Abbott’s ads were paid for not by the attorney general’s office but by his political campaign, Texans for Greg Abbott . A campaign spokesman, Eric Bearse, said the ads began running on Wednesday and were “interest targeted” to those in Manhattan and Albany who visited several news sites, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Mr. Bearse said the ads were created in response to New York’s new gun-control laws as well as the executive actions that President Obama announced the same day to curb gun violence. He declined to say how much they had cost Mr. Abbott, whose campaign account has grown to $18 million. “It’s a somewhat unconventional method to weigh in on a very serious issue,” Mr. Bearse said. “It makes the point that Texans value freedom, and specifically their freedom to protect themselves. Our state has experienced the largest population growth in the country from places like California and New York because our culture does value freedom.” Image The ads, aimed at Manhattan and Albany residents, sent web users to a page saying they have "extra money to buy more ammo." The ads illustrate the extent to which the debate over guns and gun violence since the mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., has played out differently in Texas than it has in other parts of the country. In Texas, guns and the right to carry them continue to be closely linked to the state’s self-image. Those licensed to carry a concealed weapon can do so in restaurants, shopping malls and even the Capitol building here in Austin. Responding to Mr. Obama’s gun proposals, Mr. Perry said in a statement that he was disgusted to see the political left and the news media use the school shooting to advance a pre-existing agenda, and he suggested that prayers rather than laws were in order. A day after the president unveiled his proposals, a different sort of gun debate unfolded here, after a Republican state senator from Granbury, Brian Birdwell, filed a bill to allow those with a concealed handgun license to carry their firearms on college campuses. Image The ads illustrate how the gun debate has played out differently in Texas than it has in other parts of the country. Mr. Abbott posted his ads on his Facebook page, creating an impromptu cross-state forum and occasional shouting match between New Yorkers and Texans on both sides of the issue. A woman from Jarrell, Tex., called the ads “another embarrassing example” of politicians in the state. Another woman in Texas complained of Yankees and their liberal attitudes, adding, “Stay up North we don’t want you in Texas.” And one Republican New Yorker wrote that she was sick of Mr. Cuomo, ready to move to Texas and would greatly appreciate “any info, regarding employment, schools, and city to live in.” New Yorkers moving to Texas might find that the two places have more in common than they expect: each is as much a state of mind as it is an actual state. The century had barely gotten started when Mr. Perry declared in his inaugural address in 2011 that historians would look back and call it “the Texas century.” New Yorkers are as New York-centric as Texans are Texas-centric. And there is at least one place where newly arrived New Yorkers might feel strangely at home: New York, Tex., an unincorporated community amid the green acres of East Texas, about 1,500 miles from Times Square. It is made up of a handful of houses, a cemetery, a church and Reynolds New York Store. Carolyn Reynolds, who runs the feed and fertilizer store, paused when asked for the population. She started counting under her breath. “Right now, I’d consider it 11,” she replied. Still, Mr. Abbott said in a statement, because of the state’s low taxes and gun laws, “our New York is better than their New York.”

Texas
New York
Greg Abbott
Gun Control
Online advertising
Andrew Cuomo
Campaign advertising


The Best Player on Earth Is Looking for a Job

Abstract: LONDON — Marta Vieira da Silva is unrivaled at what she does, but a person of no fixed abode, with no certain future. She has scored goals galore in Brazil, Sweden and the United States. On Monday, FIFA once again acknowledged her as overwhelmingly the best female player on earth, for the fifth year in a row. She is still only 24 years old. And yet right now, she has no club or contract to her name. The problem isn’t Marta. It is that women’s soccer cannot gain a permanent footing even for a young woman who has proven she is willing to perform magic from the rural plains of Brazil to the foothills of the Arctic Circle. She loves the game and lives for it. But she struggles to earn a stable living. And if Marta struggles, you have to believe that women’s soccer has yet, even in 2011, to be fully accepted in the sport that remains very much a man’s world. Yet when she took her photo opportunity on stage alongside Lionel Messi, who was named the best men’s player for the second successive year, the Brazilian woman and the Argentine man looked like a matching pair. He is a year her junior, and he didn’t cry when he made his acceptance speech. But he can look, Little Leo, quite youthful and unworldly in a formal setting. He’s only a few inches taller than Marta, and although Messi has been a Barcelona star since his teens, though his scoring record is extraordinary, it would not eclipse Marta’s. In the one place where she was able to settle for four consecutive seasons, Umea in Sweden, she scored 111 goals in 103 games. Goals, however, are only part of her repertoire. For Marta has that balance, that movement, that touch and imagination that makes her an artist on the field. I confess, I don’t say this often about the women’s game, but Marta could, apart from the brutality, play in most men’s leagues in the world. It’s almost heresy to admit it. Soccer, from the FIFA executive office on down, is a chauvinist’s bastion. It pays lip service to the female game; there is even a 16-nation Women’s World Cup coming in Germany in June and July. But from Brazil — Marta’s roots are near Dois Riachos, where she was born and raised in the arid cane-cutting country 1,600 kilometers, or 1,000 miles, north of Rio de Janeiro — to California, where she now lives, the struggle of women’s soccer has been one of high ambition meeting bankruptcy. Even in her childhood, Marta was as good as the boys playing on the grassless fields, but as welcome as a pariah. Girls don’t play, she was told. Worse, she took physical beatings from her brother until her mother intervened. Her skills extended to the guitar, and to the possibly protective instinct to involve herself in an Afro-Brazilian martial art, capoeira, that combines music, dance and futebol, as they say in Portuguese. But it was soccer that captivated her, and at 14 a soccer scout took her down to Vasco da Gama, a Rio club 1,600 kilometers away that against all the macho trends ran a women’s team. That, for a girl born seven years after a complete ban on female soccer in Brazil was lifted, was heaven on earth. But heaven soon folded. Vasco da Gama could not financially sustain its women’s section, and after a period at Santa Cruz, Marta went out into the cold, moving to Sweden, which has a much more advanced attitude toward female sports. There she flourished, but eventually came the call to help from the Women’s Professional Soccer League in the United States. Her first team, Los Angeles Sol, signed five terrific Brazilians, but it didn’t have the cash to stay afloat. Her move to F.C. Gold Pride south of San Francisco met a similar end in November when it went bankrupt, leaving the world’s finest female football player without a club or a contract. Since Marta adapted to the American lifestyle, and kept on charming audiences and scoring her goals, the failings would not appear to be remotely her fault. And in Zurich on Monday, those national team coaches and captains and journalists from around the world who know more about women’s soccer than the rest of us were quite clear on her position in the sport: Marta received more than 32 percent of the votes. Germany’s captain Birgit Prinz polled 15 percent in second place, and Fatmire Bajramaj, Kosovo-born but also a German national team player, was third, with just under 10 percent. The leading American, Abbey Wambach, was fifth, with 6 percent. So Marta’s tears, this time, were those of a young woman almost made an orphan within her game. “It’s almost too good to be true,” she said of her five-time award. Later, in media interviews, she said she was a lady in waiting. Her agent is working on the case, and she may know in February or March which team will take her. America is her choice of where to play — there still are six teams left in the league there — and though the money is less than a tenth of what Messi earns with Barcelona, a woman has got to earn a living to pursue her right to play. She has come a long, long way from the child abused by her own brother for wanting to join the boys playing in the backlands of Brazil. The title given to her by a filmmaker for Swedish television — “Pele’s Kusin” — has yet to prove a sustainable career for what undoubtedly and almost indisputably is the finest female version of the Beautiful Game. “Its harder for women,” Marta said on FIFA’s Web site on Monday. “The men earn a lot of money, and they have a lot of clubs they can choose to play for. We work very hard, but we’re always thinking about what might happen next year — if there’s going to be a team or a place for me.” She dedicated her award to family, and to the struggle for women’s soccer.

International Federation of Association Football (FIFA)


Hard Lessons for Ex-Islander Brandon Sugden

Abstract: SYOSSET, N.Y. — The call came Sunday morning for Brandon Sugden as he sat on the Islanders ’ bus for a trip to meet the team’s season-ticket holders. It was General Manager Garth Snow on the line, summoning him to his office. There, the 30-year-old Sugden, a career minor league enforcer, was cut from another N.H.L. training camp, his seventh. At 6 feet 4 inches and 230 pounds, with a gnarled right hand that hits like a sledgehammer, Sugden has created nightmares for opponents wherever he has played. But he was the one who slept poorly the last two weeks while fighting all comers and long odds to make the Islanders’ roster. He worried that every telephone call would deliver news that he had been cut. Or worse, it would be about his father’s flagging health at home outside Toronto, where he is dying of cancer. Sugden has never played in a regular-season N.H.L. game. And after he did not play in the Islanders’ two most recent preseason games, he braced for the latest hit to his dream. “To tell the truth, I was kind of expecting it,” Sugden said Sunday by phone from a hotel room, where he said he would wait to hear from teams interested in signing him. “Hopefully, a couple of months in the minors and then I’ll get another sniff,” he said. Sugden’s career has been a testament to second chances. When he was younger, he displayed a shortsightedness that did not extend much beyond the reach of his fists. He would arrive at training camps drunk or on drugs, and would regularly break curfew. “If I would have not drank so much and smoked so much and done all that crap, I could have played in the show for 10 years already,” he said. “I regret a lot of things, but I’m also thankful that things turned out this way, too.” Sugden has been sober for seven years. He is married and has two sons. And he has resumed a close relationship with his father, Travis Sugden, 64; doctors told his father in the spring that he had only months to live because cancer had spread to his liver from his colon. A former professional boxer and trainer who sparred with Muhammad Ali, Travis Sugden taught his son to box when Brandon was 4. When Brandon Sugden showed up at his first N.H.L. training camp with Toronto, he bobbed and weaved like a prizefighter, earning the nickname Sugar. Sugden showed some of that form during the preseason. In a 3-0 loss to the Devils on Wednesday, Sugden played 5 minutes 17 seconds during nine shifts. He had no goals, assists or shots, and he was minus-1. But he made several hits, and halfway through the first period, he pummeled Devils defenseman Bryce Salvador, landing a solid uppercut and several punches on the back of Salvador’s helmet before linesmen intervened. Both players received five-minute penalties for fighting. His greatest victory, however, has been resuming his quest to play in the N.H.L. In 2006, Sugden retired from the Columbus Blue Jackets’ farm team. His father had just learned he had cancer and needed help running the family’s label-making business. Sugden supplemented his income by playing in a semipro league in Quebec on weekends, earning $500 a game to batter opponents. Because he had retired, an obscure rule in the N.H.L.’s collective bargaining agreement required that he sit out a full season of hockey or gain approval from all 30 teams to be reinstated. When the Islanders invited him to training camp this summer, four teams objected. Sugden’s case seemed to revive a timeless debate about fighting and violence in hockey. He was known for rampaging through the minor leagues. In 2001, he was barred for life from the ECHL for throwing a stick that hit a fan in the stands. The decision was later overturned. Sugden said the stick-throwing incident was a wake-up call that led him to get sober. Seeking reinstatement, he appealed to representatives from the players union and to the N.H.L.’s deputy commissioner, Bill Daly, for help. An online petition with more than 1,000 signatures championed his cause, and the four teams eventually dropped their opposition in time for Sugden to attend training camp. The experience had been a series of pinch-me moments for Sugden. He became friendly with the All-Star and team captain Bill Guerin and flew on the team jet. “We all know the road he’s traveled,” said the veteran defenseman Brendan Witt, 33. “And at that age, to be here as long as he has, it’s a big credit to him. “It’s tough to go out there day in and day out and be a fighter and make money with your knuckles.” Sugden competed in camp with the 6-7, 242-pound left wing Mitch Fritz for the roster spot vacated by the tough-guy Chris Simon, himself a controversial figure. Simon received lengthy suspensions in each of the last two seasons: for striking an opponent in the face with his stick late in 2006-7, and for stamping on the foot of a player in December. In the end, Fritz, 27, a fearsome fighter, appeared to win out and will probably be on the opening-night roster Friday, when the Islanders visit the Devils. For young players like the rookie forwards Kyle Okposo, 20, and Josh Bailey, 19; and forward Jeff Tambellini, 24, Sugden’s experience in camp was instructive, Witt said. “The way you conduct yourself at an early age, you set your reputation of what kind of person you are on and off the ice,” Witt said. “That can be good or sometimes that can blackball you from other opportunities. There’s a fine line.” This time, there were no drugs, alcohol or regrets for Sugden. “I really gave this everything I had,” he said. But with his 30-year-old legs, perhaps it was inevitable that the dreaded phone call would eventually catch up with him.

Sugden Brandon
National Hockey League
New York Islanders
Hockey Ice


Erskine Takes the Mound, and Suddenly It’s 1955

Abstract: Many of the white-haired fans who showed up on Sunday came with hearts that still ached, even after all these years, for their long-gone Dodgers team that packed up its cleats and left in 1957. The man on the mound was Carl Erskine, the star pitcher of the 1955 World Series championship Dodgers, and his presence on the field sent the old fans on a bittersweet trip down baseball memory lane. At KeySpan Park in Coney Island, Mr. Erskine, who was emblematic of the team’s golden years, was winding up, ready to throw his classic over-the-shoulder heat as he wore a Brooklyn Cyclones jersey with his old number, 17. KeySpan, the youthful home of the minor league Cyclones, played host to a “Salute to Sandlot Baseball” event, and paid tribute to the Dodgers and to Mr. Erskine — one of fewer than a dozen surviving players from that championship team. Mr. Erskine — who was known as Ersk, or Oisk in the Brooklynese tongue — threw the ceremonial opening pitch, played the national anthem on his harmonica and walked the grounds of KeySpan as old Dodgers fans shouted “Welcome Back to Brooklyn.” Mr. Erskine spent his entire career with the Dodgers, winning six National League pennants with the team between 1948 and 1959, alongside players like Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese. A right-handed pitching phenom from Indiana, he was known for throwing two no-hitters and leading the National League in 1953 with 20 wins and six losses. On Sunday, Mary Peruffo, Arlene Yohe and Toby Balbi sat eagerly in the stands. The three native Brooklynites had cheered for Mr. Erskine as teenage high school students and founding members of the Erskine Fan Club, but now, as grandmothers, they had returned to see him. They would often leave school to catch Dodgers games and, from the stands, would talk to Mr. Erskine and other Dodgers players on the field, who, they said, were far more accessible to fans in that era than players are today. Besides loving Mr. Erskine, now 81, for his friendliness and fastballs, Ms. Peruffo said she started the Erskine fan club for another reason: “I saw a good-looking man and I went crazy.” Then, pulling out a black-and-white photo of a 20-something Mr. Erskine, her friend, Ms. Yohe, turned sentimental as she remembered the day the team announced it was leaving. “Grown men cried in the streets,” she said. “My father was always home at 4 o’clock on the dot. But that night he didn’t get home until 11. I said, ‘What happened?’ And he said, ‘I heard it on the radio and I had to get off the highway and have a drink.’ ” Several rows away, John Calamia and the brothers Jeff and Howard Eisenberg wore Dodgers jerseys. They had grown up watching Dodgers games on television, and were now representing the Brooklyn Dodgers of the Men’s Senior Baseball League. Dr. Calamia, a dentistry professor at New York University, said he was hoping to ask Mr. Erskine some questions. “I wanted to know what the team was thinking when they moved — what some of the players had to say,” he said. “We always hear what the management was thinking, but not the players. A lot of those guys really lived in Brooklyn.” When Mr. Erskine addressed the fans and spoke to reporters, he did not hold back. “To be back on the field with fans in Brooklyn is a tremendous thrill,” he said. “There’s just nine of us left today from the ’55 team.” Later, he added, “There are guys in the Dodger organization that just ache to come back and do what I did tonight.” Mr. Erskine called Brooklyn “a historical place,” and said an overriding part of that was its willingness to do something that no other baseball town seemed eager to do: embrace a black player, Jackie Robinson. “That taught the whole nation a lesson,” he said. “Brooklyn has a special place because America became more inclusive and more accepting.” Asked if there was anything he regretted not doing during his time at Ebbets Field, Mr. Erskine said, “Never hitting more than one home run.” But even that small memory was mixed with good feelings. Mr. Erskine said he had made a bet with another teammate, Duke Snider, that he would hit a home run before Mr. Snider, a center fielder, ever pitched a shutout game. Smiling, he added, “Duke lost that bet.”

Baseball
Brooklyn Dodgers
Erskine Carl
Brooklyn (NYC)


Appeals Court Rules Against Bloomberg Beverage Restrictions

Abstract: An appeals court on Tuesday unanimously upheld a decision striking down New York City’s restrictions on the sale of large, sugary drinks, dealing a serious blow to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s hopes of reviving the rule before his term runs out. The court, the First Department of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, concurred with a lower court’s ruling that the city’s Board of Health, appointed by the mayor, overstepped its bounds as a nonlegislative body by approving the rule. The justices also said that the various exceptions and carve-outs in the rule demonstrated that the board was concerned with matters beyond its core mission to improve public health. “Such mechanism necessarily looks beyond health concerns, in that it manipulates choices to try to change consumer norms,” Justice Dianne T. Renwick wrote. The board, the decision stated, “violated the state principle of separation of powers.” Seeking to reduce runaway obesity rates, the rule was announced by Mr. Bloomberg in May 2012 and approved by the health panel in September. The measure would have prohibited the sale of many sweetened drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces, but the appeals court wrote that the rule was laden with confusing loopholes and exemptions. Only establishments that received inspection grades from the city’s health department, including movie theaters and stadium concession stands, would have been subject to the ban. Those with self-service drink fountains, like most fast-food restaurants, would be prohibited from stocking cups larger than 16 ounces. Meanwhile, vending machines and some newsstands would be exempt, along with convenience stores. The signature 64-ounce Big Gulp at 7-Eleven would escape the soda ban unscathed . Image Mayor Michael Bloomberg at the grand opening of a Manhattan hotel on Tuesday; he called a ruling a “temporary setback.” Credit Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times The rule also would not have affected fruit juices, dairy-based beverages like milkshakes and mixed coffee drinks, no-calorie diet sodas or alcoholic beverages. Opposition to the limitations has been vocal, as city business owners and consumers deemed the rule and its loopholes unworkable and unenforceable. These concerns were voiced by Justice Milton A. Tingling of State Supreme Court in March, when he struck down the soda ban a day before it was scheduled to go into effect, calling the restrictions “arbitrary and capricious” and an overreach of the Board of Health’s power. Justice Tingling said the City Council would have to approve such a measure. The argument against the ban has raised questions about the power held by the health panel, which has traditionally enjoyed a broad purview; the board has placed restrictions on lead paint and prohibited trans fats in food at city restaurants. The Bloomberg administration has argued that the city’s unchecked obesity epidemic should be similarly categorized as a broad and serious public health matter. The ruling on Tuesday could mean the end of a signature effort of the Bloomberg administration and a centerpiece of the mayor’s third-term public health agenda, and leaves little time for the city to bring the plan back to life given Mr. Bloomberg’s waning time in office. The city plans to appeal to the Court of Appeals, the highest appellate court in New York State. Officials in the city’s legal department could try to have the appeal argued — and, potentially, decided — before the end of the year, when Mr. Bloomberg’s term ends. But such an expedited appeal would be dependent on a number of procedural factors breaking in the city’s favor. Lawyers for the soda industry may also try to drag out any proceedings so the case would spill into the administration of a new mayor, and none of the current candidates for City Hall have expressed significant interest in continuing to fight for the restrictions. In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Bloomberg called the ruling “a temporary setback” and referred to “the irreversible health impacts of obesity and Type 2 diabetes — both of which are disproportionately linked to sugary drink consumption.” He said his office would “continue the fight against the obesity epidemic” and appeal the case. Critics of the ban, however, do not seem to think that such an appeal would stand a chance. “With this ruling behind us,” said Christopher Gindlesperger, a spokesman for the American Beverage Association, “we look forward to collaborating with city leaders on solutions that will have a meaningful and lasting impact on the people of New York City.”

Soda
Board of Health NYC
Mike Bloomberg
Dianne T Renwick
NYC


Christie’s Grip on Republican Politics in New Jersey Shows Signs of Slipping

Abstract: At the height of his political celebrity, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey persuaded dozens of Democratic officeholders to back his 2013 re-election campaign. The implied transaction seemed simple: Support a well-liked Republican and win a measure of good will from him, perhaps even some acclaim by association. One such attempted deal went notoriously wrong in Fort Lee, leading to the indictment on Friday of two former Christie appointees, and a guilty plea by another former associate. Now, as Mr. Christie fights for his political future, it is New Jersey Republicans weighing how closely to associate with a governor whose popularity has faded in the polls. The issue is not some distant abstraction: The state’s entire General Assembly is up for election this year, and the next governor’s race looms in 2017. Mr. Christie’s support is no longer an unalloyed asset to Republicans. State Senator Michael Doherty, a conservative lawmaker who has been critical of the governor, said the recent scandal would clearly affect the party in upcoming elections. “It’s going to be relevant to the reputation of the statewide Republican Party , and whether a Republican’s going to have a shot of being elected governor in 2017,” Mr. Doherty said. Not so long ago, Republicans hoped that Mr. Christie’s electoral victories would provide a durable boost to the party. After nearly a decade out of power, Republicans were offered a toehold in Trenton and help competing in difficult areas of the state, including populous northern New Jersey. Yet over the last year, some of the governor’s signature political trophies have been stripped away. A landmark pension-reform deal was struck down in court, denting Mr. Christie’s image as a problem solver. Mr. Christie, who was first elected thanks in part to his profile as a clean-cut prosecutor, is now stuck parsing legalisms in an effort to play down his administration’s culpability in the events that led to the federal indictments last week. The aide and appointees were accused of a conspiracy in shutting several lanes of traffic approaching the George Washington Bridge to punish the mayor of Fort Lee for his failure to endorse the governor’s re-election. Mr. Christie, who is considering a run for president, has denied any wrongdoing and disavowed any knowledge of the retribution scheme. Paul J. Fishman, the United States attorney for New Jersey who announced the indictments, said there were no plans to charge anyone else in connection with the bridge inquiry based on the evidence gathered so far. The governor is still expected to play an important role in the legislative elections this year, as the party’s most visible figure and its most formidable fund-raiser. Jack M. Ciattarelli, a Republican member of the Assembly, called the indictments “infuriating and sickening.” He said he would take Mr. Christie at his word that he was not involved in the lane closings, but criticized the governor’s selection of associates. “People who work in his administration seem to have been intoxicated with his popularity, or their power, and they abused it,” he said. Mr. Ciattarelli, who is viewed as a possible statewide candidate, added that Republicans would be wise to prepare for life after a Christie administration, likening the governor to a pair of presidents who largely defined their parties. “Every party needs to move on and out from under the shadow of as dominant a figure as Kennedy was, as Reagan was, and here in New Jersey, as Christie is,” he said. Image Mr. Christie on election night in Atlantic City in 2013. Credit Richard Perry/The New York Times Even a gentle inching away from Mr. Christie would represent a significant departure for New Jersey Republicans, who have tied their fortunes to the governor’s, for better or worse, since his election in 2009. Most New Jersey Republicans have remained publicly supportive of the governor throughout the ordeal of the long investigation. But there have been scattered signs that Mr. Christie’s once-firm grip on the state Republican establishment may have slipped along with his approval ratings. As Mr. Christie has publicly entertained the notion of a run for the presidency, several prominent New Jersey Republicans once aligned with the governor have instead supported Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida. Among them are Woody Johnson , the owner of the Jets, and State Senator Joe Kyrillos, the party’s 2012 nominee for the United States Senate. Mr. Kyrillos, once one of Mr. Christie’s most enthusiastic supporters, also broke with convention when he publicly rebuked the governor last winter for mismanagement at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Despite periods of intense personal popularity, Mr. Christie has had only limited success at lifting the prospects of other Republicans. In 2013, the party made a major push to win control of the State Senate, hoping to ride Mr. Christie’s political coattails as he romped to re-election. Though he won a second term by more than 20 percentage points, Republicans failed to pick up a single seat in the chamber. Still, the sheer breadth of Mr. Christie’s victories appeared to hold out the possibility of a larger political shift. In 2009, he won his first election by a wider margin than any Republican since Thomas H. Kean’s landslide re-election a quarter-century earlier. National Republicans, reeling after their defeat in the 2012 elections, looked to Mr. Christie as a model for expanding the party’s electoral reach. Indeed, in his re-election campaign, Mr. Christie did the seemingly impossible, for a Republican: He won a clear majority of female and Hispanic voters, and split the youth vote almost evenly with his Democratic challenger, Barbara Buono, a state senator. In his victory speech, Mr. Christie embraced the role, urging his fellow Republicans to campaign “in the places where we’re uncomfortable,” to court voters traditionally wary of conservative candidates. Republicans, including Mr. Christie’s admirers, now say that the hope for a lasting realignment in their favor has waned. In places, the party’s gains have already been reversed: In last year’s elections, amid a national Republican landslide, voters ejected a Republican county executive, Kathleen A. Donovan, from the top post in Bergen County, the ultra-diverse population anchor of northern New Jersey. Ms. Donovan, who had first won the job in 2010, a year after Mr. Christie’s first election as governor, said he had supported her energetically in her second, unsuccessful campaign. But other forces were decisive in the race, Ms. Donovan said. “The demographics continue to change and trend toward Democrats,” she explained. “The governor has done the very best job he could, in terms of helping Republicans overcome Democrat numbers, but there are structural problems in New Jersey.” The Democrats are not without their own challenges, having done little to fix the woes that allowed Mr. Christie to win office in the first place: high state and local taxes, a budget deep in the red and a lingering perception of ethical lapses after a long string of corruption cases. (Many were prosecuted by Mr. Christie, in his days as a United States attorney.) Jon M. Bramnick, the Republican leader in the State Assembly and a potential candidate for governor, said the party planned to put Democrats on the defensive by focusing on their long record of tax increases. The main issue in this year’s legislative election, he said, would be making New Jersey an affordable place to live, and the Democrats’ record of doing the opposite. Mr. Christie has agreed to play an active role in this year’s campaign for control of the legislative chamber, Mr. Bramnick said. “I think the overwhelming theme is not going to be Chris Christie,” Mr. Bramnick said. “I think the overwhelming theme is: Do you send back the same team that’s been there more than a decade?” Representative Bill Pascrell, a Democrat who represents Fort Lee in Congress, cautioned Democrats not to grow overconfident about Mr. Christie’s downfall. After all, he noted, many of the party’s officeholders endorsed the governor for re-election and cooperated with his agenda in Trenton. “There’s a lot of baggage out there on everybody’s shoulders,” Mr. Pascrell said. “Neither party is privy to virtue in New Jersey.”

Republicans
New Jersey
Chris Christie
State Legislature elections
GW Bridge
Fort Lee NJ


Canadian Universities Explore Range of Real Estate Careers

Abstract: TORONTO — When Catherine Klostranec tells acquaintances that she will be taking real estate courses at Ryerson University in Toronto this fall, they assume she is planning to become a residential real estate agent. “Everyone thinks of real estate brokers when they think about real estate,” said Ms. Klostranec, a fourth-year student at the university and president of the student organization Real Estate Ryerson. “I get questions about it all the time and I’m trying to break that barrier.” It is a barrier that Ryerson, too, is attempting to break by introducing an undergraduate real estate program at its Ted Rogers School of Business Management, making it only the third university in Canada — along with the University of Guelph in Ontario and the University of British Columbia — to offer a formal real estate program for undergraduates. By comparison, approximately 70 universities in the United States offer undergraduate real estate programs. “Even accounting for the difference in size between the two countries, that is a big disparity,” said Prof. Cynthia Holmes, a real estate economist who designed the Ryerson program. “It’s hard to understand why it doesn’t get more academic attention.” Dr. Holmes said the Ryerson program resulted from consultations between administrators at the management school and industry executives in the area, who identified real estate education as a gap in the undergraduate program. Ryerson followed through, and the response has been positive. The Introduction to Real Estate class has 135 students and “filled right up within a few days after registration began,” Dr. Holmes said. Like their counterparts at Guelph and the University of British Columbia, Ryerson real estate students will get a background in business along with specialized knowledge in real estate. Course offerings will include such subjects as real estate law, real estate development, valuation and real estate economics and finance. Students will also have the option of taking planning courses or online mapping courses. Upon graduation, they will receive a bachelor of commerce degree in real estate. “They’ll get a broad business background and broad real estate industry knowledge,” Dr. Holmes said, which will make them better equipped to compete in the real estate job market. “It’s a degree that is more for people who want to work in real estate management.” Prof. Avis Devine teaches an appraisal course and an investment course in the undergraduate real estate program at Guelph. Before joining the faculty, she was employed by a large bank as the assistant vice president in charge of real estate underwriting and valuation. “I was working in a market without an undergraduate real estate program, so potential employees had no training in real estate,” Professor Devine said. “I had to train people on the different nuances, even if they had a business background. If you can hire someone who has real estate training it makes a major difference, and if students come out of university with those skills in hand, it elevates the whole profession.” Prof. C. Tsur Somerville, who teaches real estate economics at the University of British Columbia and supervises Ph.D. students in the field, agrees that the industry benefits from a pool of students with undergraduate real estate degrees, though his reasoning is different. “Universities try to provide an education, not just serve as polytechnics to teach job skills,” Professor Somerville said. “We force our students to get a much better understanding of the context of real estate and ensure that they become something more than just field specific.” An undergraduate degree program also serves to popularize real estate career options that are not well known. “So much of the general public knows nothing about careers in real estate,” said Professor Devine, of Guelph. “Real estate has a huge range of careers and they all need support,” she added. “Students can pursue development, real estate law, appraisal, property management and real estate finance, for example. A lot of people have no idea that these are even career options.” Harrison Diamond, a 2012 Guelph graduate, is an example. “I thought I wanted to be a residential real estate agent, but once I went through school, I thought the commercial side would be more interesting,” said Mr. Diamond, who works as a senior analyst in research and valuation for Altus Group, a real estate consulting firm in Toronto. “I took a class in appraisals and decided I wanted to do them.” For Professor Somerville, the variety of career possibilities makes it a good field of study for a wide range of students. “There is enough diversity of careers that there is a place for lots of different types of personalities to be able to express themselves,” he said.

Real Estate
Canada
Education
Careers and Professions
Commercial Real Estate
Housing


As New Jersey Tightens Its Belt, Horse Racing Industry Holds Its Breath

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Meadowlands Racetrack has had some of the highest-quality harness racing in the country and dozens of the sport’s most important races. But in recent years, the track has become a money-losing drain on the state of New Jersey, which now threatens its survival. A report issued this month by a committee put together by Gov. Christopher J. Christie before his inauguration to come up with solutions to the financial problems of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority made several suggestions that, if put in place, could all but gut the state’s racing industry. The suggestions included possibly closing Meadowlands Racetrack and drastically reducing the number of racing days at Monmouth Park. The Sports and Exposition Authority is a state-run agency that owns the Meadowlands, Monmouth Park and portions of the state’s off-track betting system. The committee projected that the Meadowlands and Monmouth would lose a combined $22 million in 2010, a loss some lawmakers find difficult to justify given the state’s fiscal crisis. In the report, the committee insisted that “the status quo is not sustainable” when it came to New Jersey racing. “We know that the frankness of that report will have raised fears with certain interested groups and constituencies,” said Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for Christie. “In a sense, we’re glad that happened because if it wasn’t clear to everyone that these are the realities, it should be clear.” The report calls for live thoroughbred racing in the state to be reduced to 50 days, 91 fewer than were run in 2009 at Meadowlands and Monmouth. Monmouth is scheduled to conduct a 93-day meet in 2010. The report also calls for the state to consider closing the Meadowlands track and selling the property for commercial development or turning it into a Nascar facility. It goes on to warn that “without outside financial resources, the authority will be forced to discontinue racing operations in 2010.” John Campbell, the leading driver in career wins and earnings at Meadowlands, said that “anybody who takes this report lightly is sadly mistaken.” Campbell said, “The governor put the committee together for a reason, and if this is what they are recommending, this is a scary situation.” With racing dates set for 2010 and with contracts with thoroughbred horsemen’s groups guaranteeing 141 racing days, it may be difficult to make any major changes this year. Horsemen expressed worries about the future, however. “If they follow through with some of these recommendations, is it the end of racing in New Jersey? Yes, it will be the end of racing in New Jersey,” said Tom Luchento, the president of the Standardbred Breeders and Owners Association of New Jersey. “They’ll be leaving New Jersey in caravans for tracks for other states.” Horse racing has been struggling throughout the country, but some states, including New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware, have improved the quality of racing with subsidies from slot machines. That has helped funnel gambling dollars away from the New Jersey tracks. New Jersey tracks have not been allowed to have slot machines, largely because of the political clout of the Atlantic City casino operators, who do not want in-state competition. Neither Christie nor his predecessor, Jon S. Corzine, has been a proponent of racetrack slots. The report implored the industry to come up with additional means of financing to save itself, but it made no mention of adding slots at Monmouth or Meadowlands. Mike Gulotta, a harness horse breeder, was the only member of the 13-member committee with ties to the racing industry, which, some critics maintain, is why the final report held out so little promise for the industry. “The report favored what has traditionally been the casino’s position, which is nothing for horse racing,” said Barbara DeMarco, a lobbyist who represents thoroughbred owners, trainers and breeders in the state. With slot machines nowhere on the horizon and with Christie likely to demand that the tracks find a way to stem their tide of red ink, Meadowlands and Monmouth officials may have to consider large reductions in racing schedules and drastic cuts in purses, industry officials say. But that could lead to poorer-quality racing and only accelerate declines in betting handles at both tracks, industry officials say. “Everybody understands the situation and how serious it is,” said Bob Kulina, the general manager for thoroughbred racing at Monmouth and Meadowlands. “What we have to do now is come up with some sort of solution.”

New Jersey
Horse Racing
Meadowlands Racetrack
Monmouth Park


Nets Near a Contract Extension With General Manager Billy King

Abstract: Nets General Manager Billy King is close to completing a multiyear contract extension to remain in his current position, according to a person with knowledge of the negotiation. King, who is in his third year with the Nets, brought the team to Brooklyn with a new identity and roster, re-signing center Brook Lopez and point guard Deron Williams and trading for the All-Star guard Joe Johnson during the off-season. The moves transformed the Nets from a last-place franchise to one that finished fourth in the Eastern Conference. Game 3: Nets vs. Bulls 9 Photos View Slide Show › Image Jim Young/Reuters News of his renegotiation was first reported by Yahoo Sports on Thursday. A Nets spokesman said the team had no comment. There had been speculation that the Nets might pursue Phil Jackson to lead their front office, after trying to attract Jackson to coach following the firing of Avery Johnson in December. But King, who signed a three-year deal in July 2010, has apparently earned another deal. King traded for Williams from the Utah Jazz and re-signed Lopez, who blossomed into an All-Star this season. He also traded five players to the Atlanta Hawks for Johnson. After Williams flirted with signing with the Dallas Mavericks, King persuaded him to re-sign with the Nets, completing an All-Star triumvirate that proved capable of competing in the Atlantic Division. King’s next big decision will be about whom he will hire as head coach over the summer. He could extend an offer to P. J. Carlesimo, who has coached the team since Avery Johnson was fired, or seek a coach elsewhere.

Billy King
Coaches
Basketball
Brooklyn Nets