The Benefits of Easing Climate Change

Abstract: On Tuesday, more than 100 world leaders gathered at the United Nations to open a climate summit meeting that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hopes will provide momentum to a new round of negotiations toward a global environmental agreement to be signed in Paris next year. You’re forgiven if you hold your applause. World leaders have been trying without success to cut such a deal for almost two decades, crashing time and again into the fear that slowing the emissions of carbon that are inexorably changing the climate carries an economic cost that few are willing to bear. This time, though, advocates come armed with a trump card: All things considered, the cost of curbing carbon emissions may be considerably cheaper than earlier estimates had suggested. For all the fears that climate change mitigation would put the brakes on growth, it might actually enhance it. Whether this can tip the balance toward the global grand bargain that has eluded world leaders so many times depends on a couple of things. The first is to what extent it is true. The second is whether this is, in fact, the issue that matters most to the people making the decisions. The most recent salvo came in “The New Climate Economy,” a report issued last week by an international commission appointed by a handful of rich and poor countries to take a new look at the economics of climate change. “There is now huge scope for action which can both enhance growth and reduce climate risk,” it reads. Efficient investments could deliver at least half of the emission cuts needed by 2030 to keep global temperatures in check. And they could do so while delivering extra economic gains on the side. At first blush, the proposition that replacing fossil fuel with more expensive energy could produce a net economic gain seems implausible. Until now, even many supporters of tough action accepted the idea that there would be a necessary price to pay initially to achieve the long-term goal of avoiding catastrophic climate change. But the new thinking turns that on its head by taking more careful account of the hidden benefits of mitigating climate change. “The cost of action is well known,” said Helen Mountford, director of economics at the World Resources Institute, which worked on the “New Climate Economy” report. “The co-benefits, like reduced health costs, are less known.” The findings are not isolated. Research published this month by Ian Parry and Chandara Veung of the International Monetary Fund and Dirk Heine of the University of Bologna concluded that almost every one of the top 20 carbon emitters would reap economic gains by imposing a hefty carbon tax , if they deployed the revenue to reduce taxes on income. A tax of $63 per ton of CO 2 , for instance, would not only cut China’s emissions by some 17 percent, it would also cut the number of Chinese sickened or killed by pollution from coal. If Beijing used the money to cut other taxes, it would increase economic efficiency, adding up to a net economic gain — on top of any climate impact — of more than 1 percent of China’s gross domestic product. This finding does not depend on any technological breakthroughs. It happens whether solar energy is cheap or expensive. “It’s only recently that policy makers are beginning to appreciate the power of fiscal instruments like environmental taxes,” Mr. Parry told me. “And it’s only fairly recently that we’ve been able to value the health and other environment impacts so we’ve only recently got some sense of the substantial and pervasive undercharging for environmental damages.” Image President Obama with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, right, and General Assembly President Sam Kutesa, after Mr. Obama’s U.N. address. Credit Richard Drew/Associated Press While this is all theory, some empirical research also supports the finding. In 2008, for instance, the Canadian province of British Columbia unilaterally imposed a carbon tax that rose from 10 Canadian dollars per ton of CO 2 in 2010 to 30 dollars in 2012, using the money to reduce personal and corporate income taxes. An assessment of the experience published last year by economists at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that fuel use declined, but economic growth remained on the same trajectory as the rest of Canada’s. Notably, British Columbia ended up with the lowest income tax in the country. Could this new understanding change the debate over climate change? At the very least, the belief that there is a climate-related free lunch out there might provide welcome harmony to negotiations that usually end in acrimonious finger-pointing. The new research might even help move the debate away from the failed strategy of seeking legally binding emissions targets on every country, providing a blueprint for countries to voluntarily take on ambitious goals because it is in their own self-interest regardless of what other nations do. Not everybody buys the math , though. And even those who do acknowledge that these efficient pathways to a low-carbon future are very narrow indeed. “Not all climate policies are win-win, and some trade-offs are inevitable,” notes “The New Climate Economy.” For even if every country reaped net benefits from embracing a low-carbon development path, governments still must allocate costs and benefits within individual economies, mediating between winners and losers. “Health is a social benefit that is not included in the accounts of private investors,” noted Zou Ji, deputy director of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy, a research institute affiliated with the government’s National Development and Reform Commission. “But abatement costs will be felt by private investors.” Navigating these distributional issues will be tricky. Getting it wrong can be expensive. For instance, Mr. Parry and his co-researchers found that if carbon revenue was not used to reduce other income taxes, the net gain from a carbon tax evaporated and became a net cost. Germany — perhaps the country most committed to developing an economy powered with renewable energy — has struggled with the trade-offs. First it exempted its export-oriented, energy-intensive industries from the surcharges levied to pay for subsidies to solar and wind generators. More recently, alarmed at the rising cost of power, it has begun reducing its subsidies for renewables, which has led to a drop in the rollout of solar power. So maybe it’s no surprise that few countries have been willing, at least so far, to commit to take the promised high growth/low carbon path. Last July, Australia’s newly installed conservative government repealed the carbon tax introduced by the Labor government before it, and the country’s carbon emissions quickly shot up. “If the Chinese and the Indians found it much more economically efficient to build out solar, nuclear and wind, why are they still building all these coal plants?” asked Ted Nordhaus, chairman of the Breakthrough Institute, a think tank focused on development and the environment. China’s CO 2 emissions increased 4.2 percent last year, according to the Global Carbon Project, helping drive a global increase of 2.3 percent. China now accounts for 28 percent of the world’s total emissions, more than the United States and the European Union combined. “I don’t think the Chinese and the Indians are stupid,” Mr. Nordhaus told me. “They are looking at their indigenous energy resources and energy demand and making fairly reasonable decisions.” For them, combating climate change does not look at all like a free lunch.

Climate Change
Economy
Renewable energy
UN
Global Warming
Greenhouse gas
Carbon dioxide


Like Politics? Broadcast Your View for Only $6

Abstract: Saysme.tv didn’t invent the loudmouth, but, as the company’s logo indicates, it sure hopes to sell him a megaphone. The business plan works like this: Saysme.tv offers a service over the Internet that streamlines the submission process for homemade television advertising and offers cheap slices of cable-TV time — perhaps as little as $6 for a 25-second spot, assuming you are O.K. with appearing on CNN Headline News sometime next week in parts of Charlotte, N.C., in the wee hours. The hope is to get commissions from the legions of small-time commentators, political bloggers and local advertisers, who may have as strong opinions as T. Boone Pickens on renewable energy, but do not have his millions to bombard the public with them. Instead, the dream goes, there would be millions of individual commentators placing ads a few at time, market by market, either by uploading their own ads YouTube style or choosing from those already hosted at the site. Let the buckshot bombardment begin. The Web site is a new example of an online phenomenon once considered powerful enough to have its own buzz word — disintermediation — which has been applied to auctions, entertainment and classified ads. In the cable-TV advertising version, no longer would placing an ad be expensive and time consuming, with its own arcane rituals and legal boilerplate. Instead, the path from computer screen to TV screen could be nearly smooth, efficient if you prefer, and in a generally accessible prices range, though more likely to be around $60 than the occasional $6 slot that one can hunt for on the site. Combined with video hosts like YouTube, large blogging farms like Blogger and homegrown online news sites, perhaps saysme.tv could cause the incisive adage — freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one — to lose some of its bite. If it all sounds like the cacophony of the Internet, or a busy commercial street on rush hour, is creeping into offline media outlets, saysme.tv’s chief executive, Lisa Eisenpresser, pleads guilty, only she prefers other words: democracy, marketplace of ideas. “We are trying to push free speech,” she said, while acknowledging that the ads would still have to conform to the cable companies’ restrictions on content. “I’ll put out the cacophony, and the cream will rise to the top.” Since it is the beginning of the political season, the site, which declines to reveal the number of ads it has handled, has been playing up ads on the strengths and weaknesses of various candidates, and reaching out to the politically committed. But in some ways, the founders say, those groups don’t use the strongest element of the inexpensive advertising: hyperlocality. Morgan Warstler, the company’s chief marketing officer, said he expected that businesses and civic groups would benefit from speaking to neighbors, and only neighbors. A bar, working with a beer company sponsor, could promote a local band that is playing in the next few weeks, he suggested. Or, “Your daughter is in the Girl Scouts and there are not a lot of kids in her group,” he said. “It should be easy to go to the Girl Scouts Web site and create an ad and put out the message and get other parents to call.” The company, which is based in Los Angeles and has about 20 employees, announced in April that it had received an undisclosed amount of financing led by Intel Capital. Ms. Eisenpresser and members of her team come from other well-known stalls in the marketplace of ideas, including infomercials and direct mail. In essence, Mr. Warstler said, the company was acting as “a very large advertiser” that sells the time it buys to individuals — a vending machine for TV ads, to use the company’s favorite analogy. The business plan includes paying creators of popular ads each time they are shown and rewarding large issue-oriented sites that drive business to the site. Saysme.tv says it is still working out arrangements with the cable-TV providers to add to the 20 or so cities available on the site. Depending on the cable provider, there can be a minimum of $100 on ad purchases. “We knew technically we could put it together,” Mr. Warstler said, “but it took a year’s worth of hand-holding. We had to convince the cable companies that we could handle all the details.” The details he mentioned include complying with Federal Communications Commission rules on tracking who paid for an ad, as well as the more detailed reporting required by the Federal Election Commission for political advertising. So far, saysme.tv ads appear in Comcast and Time Warner markets. Among the first to step into saysme.tv’s world of self-made, small-scale advertising is a coalition of left-wing bloggers who expect to make a $5,000 purchase in the next week or so in communities in states considered up for grabs in the presidential election, like Ohio, Florida and North Carolina. The coalition’s first ad was created by an admitted amateur, Mike Stark, the activist director of BlogPac who has made a reputation by confronting right-wing radio talk show hosts and Republican politicians, and taping those confrontations. It accuses the news media of not paying sufficient attention to John McCain’s divorce decades ago and revels in as many of the particulars of that divorce as 25 seconds will allow. “Bloggers will comprehend what saysme can do,” Mr. Stark said. “This ad, I made at home, with no experience at all. Others will come together to make an ad and people can pay for that ad.” Mr. Stark is also unabashed in trying to use saysme to manipulate cable news outlets by getting “free advertising” from reports on the coalition’s advertisement — a common tactic among political campaigns whose most controversial ads often barely appear as paid advertising. “We are still dependent on the larger media to amplify our message — to bring what we are trying to say to the rest of the world that doesn’t read our blogs,” he said. Ms. Eisenpresser has sought out bloggers and the politically outspoken — while stressing that saysme.tv is a neutral platform open to all parts of the spectrum — as perfect guinea pigs for the business. They represent, she said, the starting point for a “perfect loop.” An ad is conceived by an Internet group and played on TV. It is seen on TV and discussed online, which leads to more TV ads. Politics, however, is a relatively small part of the TV advertising market. “I think it is going to be $3 billion or $4 billion,” Mr. Warstler said. “More money gets spent on gum.” Charitable giving, he said, was more than $300 billion last year, and it is that area — as well as religion and advocacy on issues like animal rights and global warming — that could prove more lucrative and dependable. In the short term, saysme.tv has sought out provocative material to add to its library. It encouraged the makers of the popular online satirical ad “I’m Voting Republican” to cut it into 25-second segments and place them on saysme.tv. Charlie Steak, the director of the video, says his production company, SyntheticHuman Pictures, negotiated a separate royalty agreement with saysme.tv “because they came to us.” But he adds: “We wrote it without any intent of making money. We wanted to make a short film that would become a viral video that would cause as many people to think about whether their vote could make America a better place for other people.” Nonetheless, he said he was pleased with the 25-second versions and happy to be reaching “people who will not have found it on the Internet, who may see it on TV.” Saysme.tv also produces its own videos — most recently, a pro-Barack Obama ad using a professional skateboarder — that it hopes will break out on the Internet. “We want to be the place for people to air their grievances, promote their products or beliefs,” Ms. Eisenpresser said. “Come see my kid’s school play, buy my car, protect a women’s right to choose.” Of course, there is still the freedom to cover your ears.

saysme.tv
Television
Advertising and Marketing
Online Advertising
Computers and the Internet
Politics and Government
Blogs and Blogging (Internet)
Cable Television
Cable News Network


Mosquito Screens to Be Used at Rio Games to Curb Zika Virus

Abstract: Even as athletes grow increasingly concerned about the outbreak of the Zika virus in Brazil, the organizing committee for the August Olympics in Rio de Janeiro said it would charge national delegations to have mosquito screens on athletes’ rooms. The screens, one measure Brazilians are using to help ward off the mosquito that is the primary transmitter of Zika, will be installed in communal areas “where required,” but affixed to lodging only if national delegations decide to pay for it, said Philip Wilkinson, a spokesman for the Rio 2016 organizing committee.

Mosquito
Zika Virus
Rio de Janeiro
2016 Summer Olympics


From Example to Excess in Silicon Valley

Abstract: I CAN remember a time when technology, and the people behind it, routinely filled me with a sense of wonderment — like the first time I logged into a chat room and, later, the first time I swiped open an iPhone. Another memorable moment for me happened roughly six years ago, when I tried Goog-411, an experimental phone service from Google. At a time when smartphones were far from ubiquitous, the service allowed people to call a toll-free number and obtain business listings by using voice commands. It was partly an effort to improve Google’s own internal software, but it left me marveling at its combination of technological brilliance and public service — completely in keeping with the company’s motto of “Don’t be evil.” Since then, such technological good will has faded into a kind of disillusionment, and not just for me, it seems. It feels as if the promise of the tech world — its utopian ideals and democratic aspirations — has dissolved into much more selfish pursuits of power and wealth. And the promising developments or companies that do emerge are often dimmed by their flashier peers, who tend to get a majority of the attention. Just look at Google’s impressive and much-hyped new product, Google Glass. While undoubtedly representing a technological leap, it has been criticized as a plaything for the geeky elite. And now the September issue of Vogue , in a 12-page spread, is positioning the product as a high-end style accessory. At the same time, Google’s business practices are under intense scrutiny, with critics saying the company unfairly blocks rival search engines and advertisers. Then there is Facebook. Over the last few years, the company has been accused of valuing profits over privacy and the public good. So last month, when its chief, Mark Zuckerberg, announced an effort called Internet.org to expand Web access in the developing world, some contended that the plan was motivated mainly by self-interest. Also last month, it was reported that Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, sold 2.37 million shares of company stock for $91 million. Eyes rolled when, shortly thereafter, a listing appeared online calling for an intern to work unpaid at her nonprofit foundation. (The organization has since said it will pay its interns .) If there was a single event this summer that symbolized the perceived excess of Silicon Valley, it was the wedding of Sean Parker , the co-founder of Napster. He threw a multimillion-dollar “Lord of the Rings”-themed wedding in the redwoods of Big Sur, complete with a nine-foot-high cake and custom-made costumes for the attendees. Evgeny Morozov, author of “ To Save Everything, Click Here : The Folly of Technological Solutionism,” said that events like Mr. Parker’s wedding reflect “the kind of attitude that people find repelling.” Although it’s easy to find similar behavior in other sectors, like finance and real estate, its appearance within tech companies can be particularly galling, given the industry’s humanitarian rhetoric, he said. “Wall Street people don’t claim to be saving the world,” he said. “They are very cynical about what they do: make money and take nice weekends in the Hamptons.” He also noted that many residents of the Bay Area, where much of the tech world is based, are struggling to find jobs and affordable housing as an influx of highly paid tech workers has pushed housing prices skyward. In May, protesters in San Francisco — upset about rent increases — beat a piñata shaped like one of the Google shuttle buses that takes workers to the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Veterans of the technology world who have seen this pattern before — in the 1990s bubble that preceded the 2000-01 bust — say the outcry over the industry’s excess seems particularly loud this time around. Maybe that’s at least partly because the tech elite has a much larger platform for bragging, preening and complaining. Popular social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr did not exist in the ’90s, after all. Now any ill-advised photographs or posts on those sites are fair game for critics, who can fan the flames of outrage with posts of their own. Peter Shih, co-founder of a payment site called Celery, for example, recently posted a satirical tirade against San Francisco on a blogging site that included complaints about the city’s homeless population. A storm of protest around the Web ensued; Mr. Shih apologized and the post was removed. Mr. Morozov thinks that there may be a hint of a silver lining in recent expressions of displeasure over tech executives’ behavior. Until now, he said, the debate about the role of the modern tech industry has largely been limited to topics like online privacy. “The virtuality of the debate has made it difficult for us to grapple with the consequences of the proliferation of the world outside of this bubble,” he said. “Now that the effects of the tech world invade the physical environment, we have to figure out the necessary philosophical and intellectual framework to deal with it.”

Silicon Valley
Google
Facebook
Social Media
Tech Industry
HNWI,Wealth,Billionaires,1 Percent
Computers and the Internet


Cuomo Misses Point, Homeless on Streets Say

Abstract: Bundled in blankets and enduring the frigid temperatures that arrived in New York City this week, homeless people said Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo was missing the point with his executive order directing authorities to pull them off the streets when temperatures fall to 32 degrees or below. Homeless people need housing, “not someone telling them when to sleep and what to eat,” Sheila Turner, who is in her 50s and has been homeless for 30 years, said on Monday in East Harlem. Ms. Turner and others who would be subject to Mr. Cuomo’s executive order called on the governor and Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, to create more units of permanent, affordable housing. Ms. Turner said she feared the governor’s directive would encourage harassment. The order instructs local governments across the state to remove people, with force if necessary, when the temperature drops to 32 degrees or below and says “involuntary placement” is an option. The governor’s chief counsel later said people who are deemed to be mentally ill and a danger to themselves or others could be removed, but such action would not be taken against other homeless people — a distinction the de Blasio administration said it is already making. Image Charles Anthony Hill Credit Dana Ullman for The New York Times But Mr. Cuomo’s order angered the street homeless community. Charles Anthony Hill, 55, who was pushing his handcart at the Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn, talked about his time as a foster child, addiction and his stints in every shelter for men in the city. He said he has been homeless since he was 6 years old and was currently staying in a subway station in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where he said transit workers have given him food and warnings about approaching police officers. “Right now, I’m not ready to go into a place,” he said. The city estimates that about 3,000 homeless people live on the streets, a small but highly visible share of the city’s homeless population, which totals about 57,000. The accuracy of the counts, particularly of the street homeless population, has been challenged, but the visibility of such people has drawn attention to the near-record levels of homelessness in the city. Most of the homeless people interviewed said they preferred the streets to shelters because of poor conditions and theft. Teri LaRocca, 53, who has multiple sclerosis and spinal arthritis, uses a wheelchair and said there was little accessibility for disabled people in the city’s shelters for women. Ms. LaRocca said she would consider staying in a more welcoming shelter. “The elevators don’t work,” she said. “There’s nothing that makes it easier.” Ms. Turner, a member of Picture the Homeless , which advocates civil rights for homeless people, said she has watched the city become more unaffordable under past mayors. “This mayor and this governor aren’t helping,” she said. “You want to take people, snatch them up, put them somewhere they don’t want to be, like an animal?”


Left-Handed and Left Out at Catcher in the Majors

Abstract: The letters keep coming. Every few weeks, Benny Distefano will open his mail and find a letter from a Little Leaguer, or a parent of one, asking for advice. He is the only person they know who understands. Twenty years ago this Tuesday, Distefano, then a hanging-on major leaguer, served as a left-handed catcher in a major league baseball game. No one has done so since. Like Ladies Night and pitchers named Wilbur, left-handed catchers are effectively extinct — for reasons on which there is bizarrely little consensus. “I have no idea,” said Joe Mauer , the Minnesota Twins’ All-Star catcher (right-handed, naturally). “Is it because there are more right-handed hitters?” offered Atlanta Braves catcher Brian McCann . “There’s been nobody come into a game for 20 years? Really?” said a nonplussed Joe Torre, an All-Star catcher throughout the 1960s. “Well, first off, left-handed pitchers don’t throw the ball straight.” Major league teams have been panting for more catchers since shinguards, begging for mothers to allow their sons to play there, and yet they cut off an entire stream of talent that happens to throw left-handed. In the last 100 years, Dale Long caught two innings for the Chicago Cubs in 1958, Mike Squires the same for the 1980 White Sox. And since Aug. 18, 1989, when Distefano caught for the last time, baseball has embraced retro uniforms and even revenue sharing — but not the likes of Distefano. The minor leagues do not have one left-handed catcher right now. “It’s a slow-changing game,” said Distefano, now the hitting coach of the West Michigan Whitecaps , a Detroit Tigers Class A affiliate. “It takes a creative manager that’s willing to go with something that might be a little outside the box.” Distefano had that in late 1988, when he asked his Pittsburgh Pirates manager, Jim Leyland, if he could become the team’s emergency catcher. Distefano had adored catching as a boy on Brooklyn ball fields but was moved to the outfield. Leyland recalled how the world did not spin off its axis when his old boss Tony La Russa used Squires that way, so he allowed Distefano to attend instructional league that fall to relearn the position. The next spring, when an experiment with 24-man rosters cost teams flexibility, Distefano stuck as a backup outfielder, first baseman and, yes, catcher. He was brought into three games for six innings. The only runner to attempt to steal on him was the Braves’ Oddibe McDowell on Aug. 18. “Curveball in the dirt,” Distefano said. “Fairly close. I had as good a chance of getting him as anybody else.” No lefty has strapped on the gear since. Few people know why. Youth leagues see the occasional left-handed catcher — gloves for them are readily available in local sporting-goods stores — but never in pro ball. Distefano understands better than anyone which theories make sense and which do not . None is more specious than the Right-Handed Hitter Conjecture, which holds that on steal attempts left-handers have to throw around righties, who outnumber hitters from the other side. But right-handed catchers do not seem to struggle throwing past lefties; besides, while right-handed hitters made 62 percent of major league plate appearances 50 years ago, it is now almost even, 56 percent to 44. Torre’s Wayward Southpaw Thesis was immediately dismissed by his fellow catcher turned manager Don Wakamatsu of the Seattle Mariners. “There’s a lot of left-handed pitchers who don’t reach the major leagues because their ball is too straight,” Wakamatsu said. To the extent that a left-hander’s throw to second would generally tail away from the runner rather than into him, Distefano countered, “You can still fade it back into the base with more experience.” Snap pickoff throws to first are less important than throws to third — as Torre put it, “The runners only go in one direction” — and on the latter, right-handed hitters would impede a left-handed-throwing catcher. But Distefano brushed that back, too. “When I had to throw to third, I cheated a little bit — I sat a couple of inches farther back and my left foot was a little open,” he said. “I didn’t have to shuffle my feet because I had good arm strength. And when guys steal third, 9 of 10 times it’s on the pitcher anyway.” Distefano offered two explanations. Bunts toward third base, he said, cause problems for left-handed catchers. In scampering to grab the ball, transferring it to their left hand and throwing to either first or second base, their bodies get closed and clumsy. Throws for right-handers are far more open and natural. But the primary problem Distefano encountered was with plays at home. Because his glove was on his right hand, every accurate throw to the runner’s side of the plate would have to be reached for backhanded, impeding a quick tag. And on outfielder throws up the first-base line, reaching out with his right hand would leave his throwing shoulder wide open to the runner. “If there’s going to be a bang-bang play, the left-handed catcher’s going to get hurt,” he said. Distefano did manage to parlay his newfound versatility into a better-paying job in Japan in 1990. He attended the Houston Astros’ spring camp in 1992 — with the pitchers and catchers — and made the team in part because he could serve as emergency catcher. He never got into a game behind the plate, but they needed an extra body with Craig Biggio moving to second base. Come to think of it, speaking of second base, why don’t any lefties get to play there, either? And not at shortstop, nor at third? “I guess all the lefties end up as pitchers,” Astros shortstop Miguel Tejada said. Apparently so. About 15 years ago, a left-handed teenager for the Lumps Gas Station summer-league team in Clifton, Tex., played one game at short before, he recalled, “They said left-handers aren’t supposed to play there” and was moved. That teenager was Zach Duke , now an All-Star left-handed pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Not one left-handed thrower has played an inning at shortstop in the majors in 100 years. As for second base, there have been only three since World War II: George Crowe for the 1958 Cubs (for two outs), Sam McDowell for the 1970 Cleveland Indians (for two right-handed batters before returning to the mound) and Don Mattingly (by an incensed Billy Martin for the last out of the infamous 1983 pine tar game). “Second basemen can’t do it left-handed — you can’t turn a double play like that, because you’d accept the ball and have to turn all the way around,” said Texas Rangers third baseman Michael Young, who before this season played exclusively in the middle infield. “Shortstops, you’d still have trouble throwing the ball on a D.P. I’ve never seen it. And I don’t expect to, either.” Which brings us to third base and the versatile Squires, who was one of the aforementioned southpaw catchers. A few lefties have briefly filled in at third (including Mattingly in 1986) but Squires played there in 13 games for the 1984 White Sox. Left-handed third basemen have to backhand all plays in the shortstop hole to their left, which restricts their range — unless their coordination is so spectacular that they would be playing shortstop in the first place. Squires, now a scout for the Reds, said that left-handed third basemen get eaten up on bunts, because flinging the ball quickly to their left while charging is virtually impossible. But left-handed catchers? Squires doesn’t see why not. “You’re talking about old-timers who don’t want to change,” he said. “I always wanted to be a catcher growing up. But I was not allowed to.” Distefano became a catcher solely to extend his career. Instead, he lengthened his legacy, not only among baseball trivia buffs but within the left-handed catching community, for whom he remains a hero. “I didn’t know the 20th anniversary of my last time out there was coming up,” Distefano said. “I definitely will celebrate now. It’s nice. It’s really rewarding to be remembered in a positive way.”


North Korea Claims Border Marker Was Moved

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea accused the South of tampering with a border marker on Wednesday and warned of a possible clash along the heavily fortified frontier. The warning comes as South Korea’s relations with the North are at one of their lowest points in years. A day earlier, the two nations held their first official dialogue in more than a year. But the meeting ended in 22 minutes, during which North Korea told the South that if it wanted to continue to run factories in a joint industrial complex in North Korea, it should pay more for the North Korean labor. On Wednesday, North Korea accused the South Korean military of moving one of the 1,292 borderline markers several dozen yards to the north. In the latest bombastic blast, it called the move a “serious military provocation” and said it would take an unspecified “measure for self-defense and the South Korean warmongers will be held entirely accountable for all the ensuing consequences” unless the marker was restored. The South Korean military dismissed the North Korean claim and called it part of a tactic to raise tensions. In 1999 and 2002, North Korea used border disputes to launch naval skirmishes with the South. Over the weekend, North Korea warned that South Korea “should not forget that Seoul is only 50 kilometers,” or about 31 miles, from the border and within the range of what Gen. Walter Sharp, the commander of American forces in South Korea, called on Wednesday “the world’s largest artillery force.” North Korea has about 8,500 artillery pieces and 5,100 rockets aimed at South Korea, many of them deployed just north of Seoul, according to the Defense Ministry in Seoul. Since President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea took office last year with a pledge not to provide free aid until the North cooperated on its nuclear disarmament, the North has steadily raised tensions along the border. It tried to show the South that Mr. Lee’s tough line on the North had a cost — a tactic the North demonstrated again during the inter-Korean talks on Tuesday at Kaesong, a North Korean border town that is the site of the joint industrial park. During the meeting, the North spurned a South Korean demand for the release of a South Korean worker who has been held for almost a month in Kaesong on charges of denouncing the North Korean government. Instead, the North called for talks to raise the wages of 39,000 North Koreans working for the South Korean factories there. They are now paid about $70 a month. Unification Minister Hyun In-taek said Wednesday that his government would “carefully study” the North Korean demand. Rising tensions present a test for Mr. Lee. He wants to do something his predecessors had refrained from out of fear of provoking the North: join an American-led operation to crack down on the North’s suspected illicit arms trade. Mr. Lee said he would join the so-called Proliferation Security Initiative when the United Nations asked for tightened sanctions on North Korea after its recent rocket launching. But he has delayed an announcement as North Korea warned that it would consider such a move a “declaration of war.” Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia is to arrive in Pyongyang, the North’s capital, on Thursday. He was expected to discuss the North’s threat to boycott nuclear disarmament talks and restart a plant that made weapons-grade plutonium.

North Korea
South Korea
International Relations


Before Signing, Big Stars Seek a Prize Beyond Fortune and Glory

Abstract: After weeks of excitement, rumor and surprise, the N.B.A. free-agency frenzy has cooled. The two-week window around the beginning of July when most transactions occur is a special time for the players, a majority of whom did not have a say in which team drafted them or where they could be traded. Free agency is when players have almost complete control over where they will play and live, and for what price. At the zenith of the period, ESPN and local sports talk shows offer no shortage of people ready to tell athletes what they should do. The opinions focus on where a player can earn the most money or have the best chance at a title. That is the binary: wages or wins. If a player is lucky, he earns well and wins, and does not have to make a trade-off. But the quandary is that often the best teams do not have much to spend, while the worst have deep coffers and shallow talent. This off-season complicated that framework, as the game’s most powerful stars chose their teams based on more nuanced factors. Start with the biggest move: LeBron James’s decision, surprising to many, to take his talents back to Northeast Ohio, as James, an Akron native, characterized his return to his near-hometown Cleveland Cavaliers. James acknowledged that after four straight trips to the N.B.A. finals on rosters laden with veterans, he would need to be patient with his inexperienced new teammates. Any team that includes James is a threat to make a championship run, but the Cavaliers have serious ground to make up, having won just 33 games last year. Had James remained in Miami with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, the Heat would have been all but guaranteed a trip to the finals. In a statement published by Sports Illustrated, James cited a number of reasons for returning to the Cavaliers. Conspicuously absent were financial concerns, or a lust for as many championships as possible. His stated goal is to capture just one title, and generally to help revitalize Northeast Ohio: the greatest basketball player in the world professing a calling beyond the game. Nearly as shocking as James’s leaving was Bosh’s decision to remain in Miami. Bosh took the maximum salary available to stay in Miami, but the Houston Rockets, closer to Bosh’s hometown, Dallas, were in hot pursuit and offering only slightly less on an annual basis. Had Bosh gone home as James did, he could have teamed with Dwight Howard and James Harden to anchor the best starting lineup in basketball. But Bosh turned down the opportunity because, simply, he loves the life he has in Miami. As Bosh told ESPN’s Tom Haberstroh: “My heart was in Miami. I wanted to be there and keep my family there and build relationships and really keep building on something special.” Bosh is unlikely to win a title with the Heat anytime soon if Wade is his top teammate. The future would undeniably have been brighter in Houston. But like just about anyone else lucky enough to have a choice about where he works, Bosh made his decision based on factors beyond how much money he could earn and whether he could be at the pinnacle of his industry. He did what he thought would make him and his family happy. For James, that meant going home. For Bosh, it meant staying. A third major free agent in the 2014 class also spurned the Rockets to stay put. Carmelo Anthony received overtures from two teams that could be in the title hunt next season, but he decided to remain in New York despite knowing that the Knicks would be hard-pressed to pair him with a second star until next year’s free agents become available. Instead of the feisty Chicago Bulls, who signed Pau Gasol, or the Rockets, Anthony chose to stick it out with the first-time coach Derek Fisher and the rest of the Knicks’ misshapen roster. Under the win-or-wage equation, the reason would have to be money. Maybe that is all there was to it, and who could blame someone for seeking the maximum compensation that the market would bear? Ultimately, what motivated Anthony to stay in New York might have been as idiosyncratic as the reasons millions of other people have for living here.

LeBron James
Chris Bosh
Basketball
Free agent
Carmelo Anthony
Wages and salaries
NBA


Their Numbers Are Dropping: the Cellphone Refuseniks

Abstract: Not so long ago, we all lived in a world in which we decided where to meet friends before leaving the house and we hiked to the nearest payphone if we got a flat tire. Then we got cellphones. Well, not everyone. For a hardy few that choose to ignore cellphones, life is a pocketful of quarters, missed connections and a smug satisfaction of marching to a different ring tone. For Linda Mboya, 32, who lives in Brooklyn and works on arts and education programs at a nonprofit group, it also involves never letting sleeping dogs lie. A friend who lives on the top floor of a house in Brooklyn has a perpetually broken apartment buzzer. So Ms. Mboya makes noise to disturb the dogs who live on the first floor, who then bark and announce her arrival to her friend. “This system works pretty well,” Ms. Mboya said, though the dogs’ owners might disagree. For many people, cellphones have become indispensable appendages that make calls, deliver e-mail messages, locate restaurants and identify the song on the radio. After 20 years, 85 percent of adult Americans have cellphones, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project . According to the Federal Communications Commission , cellphones caught on faster than cable TV and personal computers although, by some accounts, broadband Internet service was adopted faster. Those who still do not have them, according to Pew, tend to be older or less educated Americans or those unable to afford phones. “These are people who have a bunch of other struggles in their lives and the expense of maintaining technology and mastering it is also pretty significant for them,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew project. But there is also a smaller subset of adults who resist cellphones simply because they do not want them. They resent the way that ring tones, tiny keyboards and screens disrupt face-to-face conversation. They savor their moments alone and prize the fact that no one knows how to reach them. “It’s a luxury not to be reached when I’m out and about,” said Gregory Han, a 34-year-old writer and editor living in Los Angeles . Life for him is a lot more planned than most, the consequence of not having a cellphone — or even a landline — at home. When his mother recently went to the hospital, the family’s communication plan went into action: his mother called his sister, who sent him an instant message on his computer, to which he replied with a call using Skype over the Web. When he travels for work, he prepares his boss with a list of ways to reach him and colleagues to call if he is unreachable, a modern-day version of Tony Roberts ’s neurotic character giving minute-by-minute updates of where he would be reachable in the pre-BlackBerry era of Woody Allen ’s “Play It Again, Sam.” Far from being technology-resistant, Mr. Han makes a living blogging about interior design and tech gadgets. He initially got rid of his cellphone to save money, but “I feel I benefit by living in the moment and not having a ring or a buzz or an inclination to always look at the screen.” These cellphone “refuseniks” probably account for less than 5 percent of those who do not have cellphones, said John Horrigan, consumer research director at the National Broadband Task Force. Though many cellphone owners express growing displeasure about cellphones’ intrusions into their lives, according to Pew, a tiny and most likely shrinking number actually manage to resist them completely. “Ambivalent networkers bristle at all their gadget-facilitated connectivity, but don’t give it up,” Mr. Horrigan said. “The cell refuseniks are making a statement that they control their availability.” The painstaking plans that people without cellphones must make to navigate the world show just how dependent the rest of us have become on our phones. Ms. Mboya always picks a time and a landmark to meet friends and carries quarters in case she has to use a payphone. Still, her friends are not used to planning their social lives in advance. A recent brunch date required several three-way planning phone calls among Ms. Mboya and two friends. “I can only do that periodically,” said Sheila Shirazi, one of the friends. “I don’t have the time and energy to coordinate to the extent it takes with somebody who isn’t mobile. It’s just not something I’m used to.” And even the best-laid plans falter. Jenna Catsos, 22, does not have a cellphone because she thinks the idea of always being reachable is “scary” and prefers to keep in touch with handwritten letters. While at college in rural Vermont , Ms. Catsos decided to drive to Massachusetts to surprise her father for his birthday. Halfway there, her car’s transmission broke down. She walked half a mile to the nearest gas station and called her parents from the payphone, but because they were not expecting her, they were not home. After leaving a message with the payphone number, she stood in the gas station parking lot for an hour waiting for them to call back. “It’s situations like that when I would really love to have a phone,” she said. That might happen sooner than she would like, because she will start looking for a new job this winter and stay on friends’ couches for a few weeks, without her own landline. “It’s really getting impossible not to have one.”


Earnings Fall, but J.C. Penney Raises Sales Outlook

Abstract: J. C. Penney Company, the department store retailer, reported a 78 percent drop in its third-quarter earnings on Friday, in part because of an expense for its pension plan. The company upgraded its profit and sales outlook, however, because it is selling more goods at regular prices and doing less clearance discounting, though sales remain weak. The increases got investors’ attention, driving the stock up $1.51, or 5.1 percent. The retailer, which is based in Plano, Tex., said Friday that it earned $27 million, or 11 cents a share, for the period ended Oct. 31. That compared with $124 million, or 56 cents a share, a year ago. The third-quarter results included a charge of $73 million, or 19 cents a share, to write down the value of the company’s pension plan assets. Excluding that impact, adjusted income from continuing operations was $72 million, or 30 cents a share. That was down from $103 million, or 46 cents a share, in the quarter a year ago, excluding a pension plan benefit. Revenue was down 3.2 percent to $4.18 billion, from $4.32 billion a year ago. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected 12 cents a share on revenue of $4.18 billion. Sales at stores opened at least a year, a crucial indicator, fell 4.6 percent in the quarter. Like other retailers, Penney has been cutting inventory in response to tepid spending. It also has been expanding its assortment of exclusive brands. In other earnings on Friday, the preppy clothing seller Abercrombie & Fitch said that it would add new items at lower prices and continue expanding internationally — where sales are stronger than the United States — to combat declining profit. The company reported Friday that its third-quarter profit fell 39 percent, but that was less than expected. Revenue fell 15 percent. Abercrombie & Fitch’s sales have slumped, and it has lost market share to lower-priced competitors like Aeropostale as it kept prices high and invested abroad during the recession. In recent quarters it has bowed to the recession and begun marking down items, but the chief executive, Michael S. Jeffries, said Friday that the company planned to add lower-priced inventory in the first quarter, rather than relying on markdowns that he said might hurt its image. Profit in the quarter fell to $38.8 million, or 44 cents a share, or 30 cents a share excluding one-time items. That beat the average expectation of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters for adjusted earnings of 20 cents a share. Revenue fell to $765.4 million, squeaking past analyst expectations of $764.5 million. Expenses fell 16 percent. Sales in stores open at least a year, a crucial measure of a retailer’s health, dropped 22 percent.

Sales
Company Reports
Penney J C Co
Shopping and Retail


Trial Begins in Société Générale Trading Scandal

Abstract: PARIS — It took Jérôme Kerviel , the celebrity rogue trader who stands accused of losing billions of euros at the French bank Société Générale , 10 minutes to make it through the scrum of microphones and journalists outside a courtroom Tuesday. The media onslaught on the first day of the opening hearing of his long-awaited trial — a three-week marathon of cross-examinations and expert hearings — set the stage for a national event with running commentary on topics as diverse as the body language of the lawyers (celebrities in their own right) to the color of the stripes in Mr. Kerviel’s tie (pink). Mr. Kerviel, 33, is charged with falsifying documents, breach of trust and unauthorized use of computers. He faces up to five years in prison and a fine of 375,000 euros (nearly $450,000) for secretly betting more than the entire value of his bank in several risky trades. The unwinding of an estimated 50 billion euros of open trade positions in late January 2008 cost Société Générale 4.9 billion euros. The bank says it wants to recoup that sum in damages, a symbolic request as Mr. Kerviel has no hope of repaying it. Television vans lined the street outside the stately Palace of Justice, near the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, on Tuesday afternoon. Ninety-one media outlets are accredited to follow the trial. Judge Dominique Pauthe spent more than 90 minutes summarizing the case and defining trading terms like “turbo warrants” and “forwards” — modern Anglicisms that sounded oddly out of place in this historic French setting. A pale Mr. Kerviel answered a string of questions about his personal and professional history. He told the bench that he was single and now worked as a computer consultant, earning 2,300 euros a month. When asked if he was an ordinary man, Mr. Kerviel answered, “Absolutely.” He said he “hid nothing” from colleagues at Société Générale, in keeping with his primary line of defense that the bank turned a blind eye to his work as long as they made money. Olivier Metzner, Mr. Kerviel’s lead lawyer, described his client as a “pawn — a pawn that they used and made money with and then they didn’t need him anymore, they dumped him.” Claire Dumas, who was speaking on behalf of the bank Tuesday, described Mr. Kerviel as “extremely uncooperative” after his fraudulent trades were discovered. Mr. Kerviel spent five weeks in pretrial detention and recently published a memoir, depicting himself as a regular guy from a modest background.

Societe Generale
Kerviel Jerome
Suits and Litigation
Stocks and Bonds
Banks and Banking
Subprime Mortgage Crisis


Need a Virtual Swing Coach? Try Tiger Woods

Abstract: Tiger Woods , who has been battling problems with his swing, unveiled a mobile application Wednesday called “Tiger Woods: My Swing” for iPhone and iPod users. The app gives hacks and crackerjacks alike a chance to evaluate their golf games by offering them instruction and an opportunity to compare their swings to Woods’s through video analysis. “I have always enjoyed helping people learn how to play golf,” Woods said Wednesday in a telephone interview. “Everything about this app is based on how I practice. To be able to do something like this, which wasn’t possible 10 or 15 years ago, is a win-win for everyone.” The face that once launched a thousand sponsorships, Woods has been struggling to recapture his game, his earning power and his image since revelations about his extramarital affairs surfaced late in 2009. Perhaps those are some of the reasons Woods, who is now divorced, has embarked on this new venture, which, he said, “will give me a closer connection to golf fans.” “Tiger Woods: My Swing” costs a rather steep $9.99 and is available in 12 languages. Among the application’s features is the ability to capture one’s swing online and evaluate it over time in a side-by-side comparison to Woods’s swing. In the role of virtual coach, Woods also offers analysis, updates, how-to demonstrations and personal tips. Users can also exchange feedback on the Web site Golfshot.com . “I’m excited that through this app I can take this technology on the road with me and that golfers around the world can now do the same to improve their game,” Woods said. Woods said all proceeds from the mobile application would benefit the Tiger Woods Foundation . “From the funds raised we can continue to give many more young people a shot at college,” he said. Woods has gone through three major swing changes since becoming a professional in 1996. His early swing, a sound, athletic and upright stroke with a lot of speed, evolved into a more refined, compact swing. Woods’s new swing, the one used in the app, and which he has been working on with the swing coach Sean Foley, emphasizes more ball coverage. “I’ve rebuilt my swing a number of times over the years and use this technology to gauge my development and help with my swing transitions,” Woods said. “I have swings on there using every club and from two different angles, down the line and at 90 degrees. I explain my swings with each club, and anyone watching can compare and contrast my swings with theirs. A lot of times what you’re feeling on a golf swing and what you’re actually doing is not the same thing, so I think this benefits everyone.” Including Tiger Woods? “Oh, yes,” Woods said. “I’ll use it on an everyday basis as a way of keeping an eye on my swing.” LEVIN LEADS AT BAY HILL Spencer Levin is atop the leader board after the opening round for the third time this year, so that’s nothing new. It was his score Thursday afternoon at Bay Hill that surprised him and everyone else. In warm, blustery conditions on a course in Orlando, Fla., that allowed only three rounds in the 60s and the most rounds in the 80s in nearly two decades, Levin had a six-under 66 and a three-shot lead over Rickie Fowler and Hunter Mahan in the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Tiger Woods and his power group of Dustin Johnson and Gary Woodland provided the entertainment everyone expected, although not this variety. Woodland hit a tee shot onto another golf course, Johnson wound up 80 yards over a green and onto the next tee, and Woods angrily tossed his wedge. Their scores weren’t impressive. Woods missed a 10-foot par putt on the last hole for a 73, his highest opening round since 1999 at Bay Hill, where he is a six-time winner. Johnson and Woodland, coming off a win last week at Innisbrook, each shot 77. Levin built the largest 18-hole lead of the year on the PGA Tour, but even that doesn’t illustrate how well he played. His 66 was nearly nine shots better than the average score at Bay Hill. Fowler and Mahan played in the morning, as did Phil Mickelson, who opened with a 70. The tough conditions showed themselves more at the bottom of the leader board. The United States Open champion Graeme McDowell had an 80, as did the Bob Hope winner Jhonattan Vegas and Brandt Snedeker. Ricky Barnes shot an 82. (AP)

Mobile Applications
iPhone
iPod
Golf
Woods Tiger


A Yellow Light for the Jets, but No Color-Coded System

Abstract: FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — At his 2 p.m. news conference Wednesday, Jets Coach Rex Ryan, perhaps thinking aloud, floated the idea of asking the rookie quarterback Geno Smith to wear a color-coded wristband Monday night against Atlanta. It would be a teaching aide to ease Smith’s decision-making burden, with plays coded as red (conservative), yellow (use caution) and green (aggressive). It is a Ryan original but not a first — he did the same thing with Mark Sanchez in 2009, his rookie season. But if the idea sounded overly simplistic, Ryan might have felt so, too. He rejected the idea several hours later, in his weekly appearance on ESPN Radio New York. Did Ryan see something from Smith in practice Wednesday, without wristwear, that demonstrated better awareness? That could be. Or his flip-flop might underscore the tight-wire act he has to tread to avoid trampling Smith’s confidence. At his news conference, Ryan referred multiple times to the “fine line” between maintaining aggressiveness and stumbling toward carelessness. “We want to be aggressive, there’s no question,” Ryan said. “But you don’t want to do something to the detriment of the football team.” Ryan first introduced the color-coded wristband for Sanchez in late November 2009, after he had thrown 17 interceptions in his first 11 games. With the aide, Sanchez did not throw a pass that was intercepted in three of his final four games of the regular season. Smith, who is tied for the N.F.L. lead with 11 turnovers, said he had not discussed the wristband with Ryan but did not sound opposed to the idea. “If it helps the team, if it helps me get better, then I’m all for it,” Smith said. Thus far, Ryan has stuck by Smith, but his four-turnover performance in Sunday’s 38-13 loss at Tennessee tested Ryan’s patience. Giveaways by Sanchez and Smith have hampered the Jets the past two seasons. “Clearly we have some things that we have to fix,” Ryan said. “And protecting the football is the No. 1 thing, alongside penalties.” In practice Wednesday, Smith participated in a circuit of drills with the running backs in which defenders tried to strip the ball. He described his performance against the Titans as frustrating but added that he understood there would be growing pains. “At this point in my career,” Smith said, “I’ve got to look at everything, good or bad, as a learning experience.” Adding to the concern, Smith may be without his top two receivers, Santonio Holmes and Stephen Hill, both of whom did not practice Wednesday. Holmes (hamstring) could miss several weeks, and the status of Hill, who sustained a concussion, is unclear. The Jets signed the veteran wideout David Nelson, who was cut by Cleveland in August, and he practiced for the first time Wednesday. He could be joining Jeremy Kerley, Clyde Gates and Ryan Spadola as the only active receivers for Monday’s game. It is an all-too familiar reminder of the attrition the team went through last season because of injuries to their receiving corps. And Ryan desperately does not want a repeat of the turnover-plagued year that resulted. EXTRA POINTs Coach Rex Ryan said that the backup guard Brian Winters would receive more playing time with the first team this week, replacing Vlad Ducasse, who has struggled. “We’ll see how that goes,” Ryan said.


Cavaliers Extend Lead on Scrappy Celtics

Abstract: LeBron James scored 30 points, Kyrie Irving added 26, and the Cleveland Cavaliers finally shook off Boston in the fourth quarter, beating the visiting Celtics, 99-91, on Tuesday night to take a two-games-to-none lead in their opening-round playoff series. James scored 15 points in the fourth quarter, moving past the Hall of Famer Jerry West on the career playoff scoring list, and made sure the Cavs did not slip up at home. James and Irving combined for all of Cleveland’s 24 points in the final period. “I’ve been in this moment before, and a lot of our guys haven’t,” James said. “I thought it was important for me to put a stamp on this game.” Timofey Mozgov added 16 points, and Tristan Thompson had 11 rebounds for Cleveland, which has had a tougher time than expected with a young Boston team. Isaiah Thomas scored 22 points for the Celtics, who scrapped and clawed until the final minutes. Boston’s bench outscored Cleveland’s by 51-7. Game 3 of the best-of-seven series is scheduled for Thursday night in Boston, where James’s first stint with Cleveland ended with a playoff loss in 2010. Leading by a point at halftime, and having played as poorly as they had in weeks, the Cavaliers came out energized in the second half and used a 17-4 run to open a 14-point lead. The spurt was capped a lob pass from Irving to James, who dunked and swung on the rim. But the Cavs could not shake the Celtics, who pulled to 79-77 behind on a 3-point play by Thomas. However, James, as he has so often done in his brilliant career, made big shots down the stretch, none bigger than his driving layup with 1 minute 13 seconds left, giving the Cavs a 97-89 lead. WIZARDS 117, RAPTORS 106 John Wall had 26 points and 17 assists, Bradley Beal scored 28 points, and Washington won at Toronto to take a 2-0 lead in the first-round series. Marcin Gortat scored 16 points, Otto Porter had 15, and Paul Pierce added 10 for the Wizards, who host Game 3 on Friday night. Jonas Valanciunas had 15 points and 10 rebounds, and the Sixth Man Award winner Lou Williams scored 20 points for the Raptors, who have lost four straight playoff games over the past two seasons. Washington lost 15 of its final 19 regular-season road games but has won seven of eight away from home in the playoffs over the past two years. ROCKETS 111, MAVERICKS 99 Dwight Howard scored 28 points and James Harden added 24 to help host Houston coast to a 2-0 lead in the Western Conference playoff series. Howard and Josh Smith dominated early in the fourth quarter to help theRocketspull away. The Mavericks scored the first four points of the fourth quarter to take a three-point lead. But with Harden on the bench, Houston scored the next 11 points, powered by three alley-oop passes from Smith to Howard, to take a 92-84 lead with about 8 minutes left. Smith finished with 15 points, nine assists and eight rebounds. Monta Ellis had 24 points for Dallas, which hosts Game 3 on Friday night. Image Mike Budenholzer, right, with his assistants after learning of the coaching award. He led the Hawks to the best record in their history. Credit John Bazemore/Associated Press HAWKS COACH HONORED After leading the Atlanta Hawks to the top seed in the Eastern Conference coming off a tumultuous summer, Mike Budenholzer beat out Golden State’s Steve Kerr for the N.B.A. coach of the year honors on Tuesday. Budenholzer, in his second year as coach, was honored after the Hawks went 60-22 during the regular season, the best mark in franchise history. They won their first division title since 1994, which was also the last time they held a No. 1 seed.

Cavaliers
Celtics
LeBron James
Playoffs
Wizards
Raptors
Mike Budenholzer
Atlanta Hawks
Basketball


A Landmark Restored, From Mosaic Marble Floor to Grand Dome

Abstract: As sumptuous as a jewel box suspended 110 feet over the mosaic marble floor, and as radiant as a peacock’s plumage, the great dome of the former Williamsburgh Savings Bank headquarters at Broadway and Driggs Avenue once again inspires awe. And all around the landmark building, intricate “WSB” monograms — some original, some re-created — once again inspire astonishment. They are molded into every landing of the grand iron staircase, etched into all 20 oval windows around the drum of the dome, and cast into each ornamental brass doorknob and door hinge. None of this is, however, in the service of depositors. Not those of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, which opened the building in 1875, nor those of its corporate successor, HSBC, which sold the building in 2010 . Instead, like many of the grandest banking quarters in town, the Williamsburgh Savings Bank has been turned into an event space. It is now called Weylin B. Seymour’s, after a fabricated 19th-century character whose initials could compose the bank’s monogram . The $27 million project was begun by Juan Figueroa, developer of the New York Loft Hostel in Brooklyn, and is now directed by Carlos Perez San Martin, his cousin. Mr. Figueroa has sold his shares in the venture. Asked why investors would lavish so much money on an abjectly decrepit building — even one across Broadway from the celebrated Peter Luger Steak House — Mr. Perez San Martin said the event space was, in essence, the bridgehead for development on an abutting parcel that he and his partners also own. They are planning a slender but conspicuous hotel, 420 feet high, on what is now a parking lot and vacant parcel where a bank annex once stood. The new building would draw on unused development rights from the bank site. Another incentive for the developers is a credit against federal and state income taxes of an amount equaling up to 40 percent of their qualifying construction costs. This tax policy is intended to encourage substantial rehabilitation of commercial properties, like this one, that are on the National Register of Historic Places . The bank’s 1929 tower near Barclays Center, now a condo known as 1 Hanson Place , is much more prominent on the skyline — visible even from the smaller neighboring borough of Manhattan. But the older headquarters in Williamsburg is every bit as spectacular. (Its dome inspired the one at the top of the Hanson Place tower.) Image The building's exterior. Credit Michael Nagle for The New York Times George B. Post was the architect of what the Landmarks Preservation Commission called “ a bank building of imposing grandeur ” when designating it in 1966. Thirty years later, the commission extended the designation to the main banking hall, on which Post worked with Peter B. Wight, calling it “ one of the most monumental public spaces surviving in New York from the post-Civil War era.” What makes the space even more remarkable is that it has a companion rotunda, with a different dome; one crowned by an oculus of stained-glass skylights. This was added in 1908 so that men and women could bank in separate halls. The two halls were divided by Sheetrock when Mr. Figueroa and Mr. Perez San Martin took over. The newer hall had been leased to Williamsburg Family Services in the late 1970s or early ’80s, but was long abandoned and strewed with debris. The few surviving panels of the skylight had been taken down to the basement. Sandstone walls were painted white. Decorative walnut and mahogany woodwork was painted green. The hand-cut mosaic floors of the two banking halls were badly damaged, as were floors of encaustic tile elsewhere in the building. Most of the decorative hardware was gone. The bird-cage elevator was stilled. Dust had accumulated so exactly along the lines of the framework behind the dome that Mr. Perez San Martin thought the dark spokes were part of the original mural. A cleaning and restoration by Sandra Spannan of See Painting revealed otherwise. New encaustic tiles were ordered from the English firm Craven Dunnill & Company , which still had the molds and colors necessary to match the existing floors, Mr. Perez San Martin said. The walls and woodwork were stripped and restored. It was too expensive to have giallo Siena marble hand cut into mosaics in Italy, so the developers bought large blocks of the stone and shipped it to Lebanon for cutting. Reproductions of the “WSB” doorknobs and hinges were made in India from wax casts taken of the originals in Brooklyn. Even the bird-cage elevator was revived, after the developers agreed to install sprinklers around the open enclosure, at the request of the Buildings Department. Only a few such elevators are still operating in the city, agency officials said. The New York Landmarks Conservancy is so impressed that it not only is giving the project one of its Lucy G. Moses Preservation Awards , but also is holding the May 6 award ceremony under that jewel box of a dome.

Williamsburgh Savings Bank
Carlos Perez San Martin
Landmarks Preservation Commission
New York Landmarks Conservancy
Restoration and Renovation
Williamsburg Brooklyn
Historic preservation
Architecture


Toiling to Bring Rwanda Genocide Suspects to Justice

Abstract: REIMS, France — ABOVE his desk in a peaceful and tidy townhouse with pots of geraniums hanging from the windowsills and walls covered with photos of his children, Alain Gauthier keeps 24 files labeled with the names of some of the men and women accused in one of the most appalling crimes of the 20th century. Mr. Gauthier and his wife, Dafroza, have been collecting information for 13 years on each of the 24 Rwandan men and women they suspect of having participated in their country’s 1994 genocide. The suspects are members of the Hutu ethnic group who now lead comfortable lives in France and deny any involvement in the slaughter of more than 800,000 people — most of them Tutsi — in just 100 days. “Here, the fugitives live in denial,” said Mrs. Gauthier, 59, a chemical engineer and a Tutsi from Rwanda. “They’ve always denied, they have created another story, they have completely erased that part of their lives. They were obliged to do so, otherwise you end up in a mental institution. You can’t live with a crime like that.” “What drives us is that the killers be judged, for history, for the victims,” Mrs. Gauthier said. “It is our turn, us as alive people, as survivors to claim for justice because if we don’t do it, nobody will, and nobody will make amends for what happened.” But most important, by bringing civil lawsuits against Hutus suspected of being fugitives, the couple has challenged French authorities and the news media over the country’s longstanding protection of Rwandan fugitives. France, which has long been accused of providing weapons and military training to the Hutus before the genocide, has never convicted anyone accused of complicity in the Rwandan genocide. But after restoring diplomatic relations with Rwanda in 2009 — they were broken in 2006 when a French judge accused a group of Rwandans of having plotted in 1994 to shoot down the plane of Rwanda’s president at the time, touching off the genocide — Paris appointed five judges to investigate the matter of the Rwandan fugitives and opened a police section specializing in crimes of genocide. Next month, the judges are scheduled to bring their first criminal case against a Rwandan fugitive accused of genocide. For the Gauthiers, these are crimes that cannot be erased. They say that only by bringing the accused to justice can they help the victims and their families to forgive and move on. In France, they are frequently likened to Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, the couple who pursued Nazi criminals in the 1950s. Mrs. Gauthier, a graceful woman from Butare, one of the largest cities in Rwanda, lost her mother and about 80 relatives in the genocide. Mr. Gauthier, 65, is a retired high school principal who lived in Rwanda as a young man, teaching French at a local junior high school, which is how they met. FOR the Gauthiers, the news that French authorities were prepared to bring their first genocide case was vindication for 13 years of labor. They had found the defendant, Pascal Simbikangwa, five years ago, at his home in the slums of Kaweni, a city on the island of Mayotte, a French territory in the Indian Ocean. “They were alone, they fought, and their work is colossal,” said Maria Malagardis, a journalist for the newspaper Libération, who wrote a book, “On the Track of the Rwandan Killers,” about the couple. The Gauthiers consider themselves amateur investigators, in that neither studied criminal law and both have spent their working lives in unrelated fields. Born in 1954, Mrs. Gauthier grew up in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, where she met her husband. From 1973 to 1977, she was forced to live as a political refugee in Belgium, where she studied chemistry. In 1974, she went to visit Mr. Gauthier in southern France, where he had moved after his years in Rwanda, and they married in 1977. Some years later, the couple settled in Reims and had three children, Violaine, Emmanuel and Sarah. They were never to live in Rwanda again, although they would go there about once a month for their investigations. In most respects, they were living a typical middle-class life until that day in April 1994, when the calls started coming. “We were glued to the telephone all day,” Mrs. Gauthier recalled. “People would tell us, ‘At X’s home, they’re all dead. They’ve been killed this morning.’ It didn’t mean anything anymore. I can’t express it with words. We were lost, we wondered whether it was true. Once we were there, we realized the magnitude of things when people we knew weren’t there anymore, and even their houses had disappeared.” Mrs. Gauthier learned that her mother had been shot by a Hutu general who later fled to Cameroon, where he died a free man, she said. She promised herself that even if she had failed to find her mother’s killer, she would seek justice for the thousands of Tutsi victims who were killed because they were “scapegoats, undesirable people.” In 2001, she traveled with her husband to Brussels for the trial of four Rwandans convicted of committing war crimes during the mass killings in 1994. There, the couple met the head of an association that searched for Rwandan fugitives in Belgium. “He told us, ‘Why don’t you do this in France? There are hundreds of them there,’ ” Mr. Gauthier said. “And so we did.” That year, the Gauthiers set up an association, the Collective of Civil Plaintiffs for Rwanda, to have legal standing to file civil cases against fugitives. The French police detained three of the 24 fugitives in the country at the time, and about a dozen of them were put under formal investigation. Only one was convicted by the United Nations’ International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which was established in 1994 by the Security Council to prosecute people accused of genocide. Today, Mr. Gauthier says he believes that more than 100 Rwandan fugitives live in France. “But as long as we don’t have names, it’s hard to know,” he said. HE and his wife have worked feverishly since then, interrogating prosecutors, prisoners and victims of the genocide in Rwanda. They have gathered information online and through archival research and interviews with former prefects, magistrates and doctors — people with the wealth and connections to flee their homeland. The couple established that many of the fugitives, some of whom were wanted by Rwanda, Interpol and the tribunal, had become respected French citizens. In 2004, the couple unmasked Dominique Ntawukuriryayo, a former prefect who had settled in Carcassonne, in southern France, after the genocide. Mr. Ntawukuriryayo worked in a church there and founded Future Geniuses, a nongovernmental organization to help children in Rwanda. Mr. Ntawukuriryayo, who played a major role in the killing of as many as 25,000 Tutsi refugees in April 1994, was eventually extradited to Tanzania, where the tribunal was sitting and where he was convicted on genocide charges in 2010 and sentenced to 25 years in prison. The couple also tracked down Sosthène Munyemana, a respected gynecologist who lives in the southwest of France and has never been convicted. In Rwanda, he is sometimes called the “butcher of Tumba” (Tumba is a district south of Butare) and is accused by local authorities and Interpol of murder and being involved in his country’s extermination plan against the Tutsis. Mr. Gauthier, who listened carefully to his wife’s dark recollections, has devoted much of his time and energy to the hunt for criminals, often sleeping only a few hours a night. In the last 13 years, he has never missed a court hearing involving a fugitive. On a recent day in Paris, Mr. Gauthier sat at a cafe outside the tribunal where he had attended a hearing for one suspect, Claude Muhayimana , a former driver who is charged with participating in several massacres in 1994. When Mr. Muhayimana, dressed in a white tracksuit, came to sit with his family a few steps from Mr. Gauthier’s table and glanced at him with an air of disdain, Mr. Gauthier looked away, almost untroubled. “I know those looks,” he said. “I’m used to them now.”

War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity


At Once-Promising Brooklyn Arts Center, Creative Hopes Are Dashed

Abstract: Crowding into the tasting room of the Brooklyn Brewery , in Williamsburg, the nearly 200 painters, metalworkers, writers and self-styled entrepreneurs — all former members of 3rd Ward , the Bushwick arts center, D.I.Y. haven and creative network that collapsed in October — sounded a little like refugees. Part continuing-education center, part incubator, 3rd Ward , in a 35,000-square-foot former warehouse on Morgan Avenue, was the first, and, it seemed, the most successful of the arts-and-entrepreneurship meccas springing up around the gentrifying parts of Brooklyn. Its co-founder, Jason Goodman, 34, had predicted that within a few years, every big city in America would have one. He told one interviewer that 3rd Ward would be a household name by 2018. And he seemed on track: A Philadelphia 3rd Ward opened in April, a Las Vegas project was germinating, and the organization had received a $1.5 million grant for a “ kitchen incubator ,” a program designed to support new food enterprises, elsewhere in Brooklyn. Then, on Oct. 9, Mr. Goodman announced that 3rd Ward was closing, crippled by financial losses. A failed start-up is nothing new. But 3rd Ward was not an app or a website, but a physical space with hundreds of stakeholders — people who had paid as much as $3,200 for lifetime unlimited memberships, which included free bicycles, free Intelligentsia coffee and unrestricted access to studios, workshops and classes, and who were told by Mr. Goodman that they would not receive refunds. There were also teachers who would not be getting their last paychecks and professionals who had seen it as a kind of creative utopia, now deprived of space to work. Many of them turned their anger at Mr. Goodman, once seen as a visionary who could charm Bushwick woodworkers and wealthy investors alike. Former members speculated online and off about what had driven 3rd Ward under. In an interview immediately after the closing, Mr. Goodman said, “We really fought down to the wire to preserve everything that we built, everything that we stand for, over the years. Some of us wanted to continue fighting. But at the end of the day, I think this was the right thing to do.” He declined to comment further. Mr. Goodman founded 3rd Ward with a friend, Jeremy Lovitt, in 2006 so artists, craftspeople and other creative types — “makers,” in the parlance of 3rd Ward — could band together, share studio space and equipment that they could not afford on their own. Mr. Lovitt was the less visible of the two, former employees said. Mr. Goodman did most of the talking. With its industrial-chic exposed brick and beams, the building on Morgan Avenue percolated with energy, as professional photographers and amateur carpenters mixed in state-of-the-art workshops. Pickup soccer games broke out in the lobby. People wandered the area carrying cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon. At night, 3rd Ward hosted drink-and-draw events, art shows featuring members’ work and parties featuring cocktail blenders powered by bicycle. “You walked in, and there was an environment that things were happening and things were getting done,” said Robin Grearson, a Brooklyn-based writer and former teacher at 3rd Ward. At first, Mr. Goodman concentrated on attracting more members and students to make 3rd Ward profitable; for a while he busied himself with outside projects, but as they failed or fell away, he focused on helping 3rd Ward grow. People as far away as Chicago had been asking Mr. Goodman how to replicate 3rd Ward’s seeming success in other cities since its first year. He and Mr. Lovitt would often spend all day sitting around a back office, chain-smoking and tossing around ways to expand, recalled Elias Ragues, an early employee who worked at the front desk for five years. Image Jason Goodman founded 3rd Ward with a friend, Jeremy Lovitt. Credit Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times “If Jason had just been, like, ‘Hey, let’s just have a cool company in one location in Brooklyn that breaks even and employs 25 people and everyone gets a decent salary and we create a lot of value in the community,’ that could’ve sustained itself for sure,” said one longtime employee who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was concerned about becoming enmeshed in the company’s legal problems. “That’s never been his goal. His goal’s always been bigger.” In March 2010, Matthew Blesso, a real estate developer, bought a third of the company for $700,000, becoming its first major investor. The partners embarked on a top-to-bottom renovation of the building and secured a loan from Next Street , a merchant bank that specializes in urban small businesses. Later that year, Mr. Blesso and Mr. Goodman bought out Mr. Lovitt, with Mr. Blesso paying about $400,000 to increase his stake and become half owner. Mr. Lovitt left. Before long, 3rd Ward was beginning to draw notice from other investors and local tech moguls, like Perry Chen, the co-founder of Kickstarter , who introduced Mr. Goodman to Joanne Wilson, the wife of the prominent venture capitalist Fred Wilson, and Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos . Mr. Goodman offered tours of the building, talking animatedly of the “maker movement.” In 2012, Ms. Wilson led a round of financing, bringing in between 10 and 15 investors, she said. The new investors committed a total of at least $4 million — $2.5 million to pour into the company, and around $2 million to buy out Mr. Blesso and pay off loans. Mr. Hsieh and a group of investors he led contributed a majority of that money. Mr. Goodman, with 30 percent of the company, was the largest individual shareholder. Another real estate developer, David Belt, offered to help Mr. Goodman build another 3rd Ward in Philadelphia in 2011. Mr. Hsieh was so enamored of Mr. Goodman’s vision that he made plans for a 3rd Ward in Las Vegas, where Zappos is based. And last year, 3rd Ward won the $1.5 million Economic Development Corporation grant for the kitchen incubator . Mr. Goodman, dazzled, kept saying yes. And he did not listen to doubts from within 3rd Ward, even from Mr. Blesso. Mr. Blesso said he made a substantial profit when he was bought out by other investors last year, though he declined to be specific, and said he left because he felt the company was growing too fast. “He’s a very compelling guy, and very persuasive,” Mr. Blesso said of Mr. Goodman. “But he had much more aggressive plans for growth than I thought were feasible.” As the company’s expansion accelerated, the original 3rd Ward, never fully stable, fell further into disarray, in part because the Next Street loan materialized later and smaller than promised. (A spokesman for Next Street did not respond to a request for comment.) Barry Pousman, 29, who was hired to oversee classes in Bushwick in the summer of 2012, said that though Mr. Goodman had pressured the staff to devise more classes — “product,” he called them — to increase revenue, there never seemed to be enough students, a problem made worse by the building’s relatively remote location several blocks from the nearest L subway stop. Image Becky Carter, left, a woodworking teacher at the 3rd Ward center, during a class in June 2010. Credit Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times As former teachers, students and staff members recalled in interviews, the financial strains that had marked the company’s early years became more evident, even as 3rd Ward raised more money. Teachers were often paid late. Machinery went unfixed. Policies were often revised to add fees. Within the past year, 3rd Ward gutted the “unlimited” memberships, charging fees for classes that were formerly free and raising prices, and driving some longtime members away. The company said in its final fund-raising plea that it had had $3.6 million in revenue in 2012, but former employees said that after spending money for renovations and expansions, the Bushwick location had consistently barely broken even or operated at a loss. When Mr. Pousman was hired, along with about 15 other new employees, Mr. Goodman gave a party to introduce them to 3rd Ward’s instructors. Within six months, he and the others were laid off, leaving most jobs to be done by members who worked in exchange for studio time or class credits. As attention and money poured in, Mr. Goodman’s lifestyle edged closer to those of the tech chief executives who had befriended him. Some of the changes were modest: he exchanged his bike for a motorcycle and dressed better. Some were more eye-catching: he began traveling to Art Basel Miami and taking Fridays off to fix up a pair of cottages in Montauk as a weekend home. But he remained popular with employees and members alike, hosting an all-night pig roast and a retreat to Montauk within the last year “When I met Jason, he was covered in dust” from building parts of 3rd Ward by hand, said William Etundi, a promoter who helped throw 3rd Ward parties in the early years. “And he wasn’t that same guy later. But I think at heart, he’s still that maker guy.” Though his ambitions — and the company’s financial troubles — grew, his improvisational management style evolved little: changing his mind from one day to the next, tossing out bold ideas that he could not execute or trivial ones, like knocking down a wall or changing bits of the website, that required disproportionate time, effort or money, according to many involved with 3rd Ward. One particularly unpopular gambit involved compensating teachers based on how many students they were able to recruit, a structure that made several instructors decide to quit, they said. As 3rd Ward hemorrhaged money this summer, Mr. Goodman and the board cast about for ways to save it, approaching several investors, Ms. Wilson said. A crowdsourced investment drive on the website Fundrise received only $375,000 in pledges out of the $1.5 million needed to cover operating costs and was shut down just days before 3rd Ward closed. Even as Ms. Wilson and other board members realized 3rd Ward could not survive, Mr. Goodman believed someone — Mr. Hsieh or another investor — would offer more money. Not until the last investor he had asked to step in called to say no did he agree to suspend operations, on Oct. 8. It is unclear what will happen to the studios. The Economic Development Corporation is seeking a new operator for the kitchen incubator, which was scheduled to open in the spring. Applications are due Thursday. A spokesman for the Economic Development Corporation, Patrick Muncie, said 3rd Ward had only received a portion of the $1.5 million grant after reaching progress markers such as signing the lease, with the rest reserved for other milestones. At the Brooklyn Brewery gathering, the talk was not of finding money to reopen 3rd Ward, but of recreating its network elsewhere. One leader of the effort has been Jen Messier, the co-founder of Brooklyn Brainery , which offers one-of-a-kind hobbyist classes. She and her co-founder started the Brainery after taking classes at 3rd Ward. “It never really occurred to me when I was in college that I could one day learn how to weld just for fun, or bookbinding, or take a six-week painting class,” she said. The 3rd Ward opportunities, she said, “helped us realize that, oh yeah, there are lots of possibilities for ways to learn things and really, do whatever you want.”

Art
3rd Ward
Closings
Real Estate
Housing
Bushwick Brooklyn
The arts


Envisioning the Next Chapter for Electronic Books

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 5 — Technology evangelists have predicted the emergence of electronic books for as long as they have envisioned flying cars and video phones. It is an idea that has never caught on with mainstream book buyers. Two new offerings this fall are set to test whether consumers really want to replace a technology that has reliably served humankind for hundreds of years: the paper book. In October, the online retailer Amazon.com will unveil the Kindle, an electronic book reader that has been the subject of industry speculation for a year, according to several people who have tried the device and are familiar with Amazon’s plans. The Kindle will be priced at $400 to $500 and will wirelessly connect to an e-book store on Amazon’s site. That is a significant advance over older e-book devices, which must be connected to a computer to download books or articles. Also this fall, Google plans to start charging users for full online access to the digital copies of some books in its database, according to people with knowledge of its plans. Publishers will set the prices for their own books and share the revenue with Google. So far, Google has made only limited excerpts of copyrighted books available to its users. Amazon and Google would not comment on their plans, and neither offering is expected to carve out immediately a significant piece of the $35-billion-a-year book business. But these new services, from two Internet heavyweights, may help to answer the question of whether consumers are ready to read books on digital screens instead of on processed wood pulp. “Books represent a pretty good value for consumers. They can display them and pass them to friends, and they understand the business model,” said Michael Gartenberg, research director at Jupiter Research, who is skeptical that a profitable e-book market will emerge anytime soon. “We have had dedicated e-book devices on the market for more than a decade, and the payoff always seems to be just a few years away,” he said. That disappointing history goes back to the late 1990s, when Silicon Valley start-ups created the RocketBook and SoftBook Reader, two bulky, battery-challenged devices that suffered from lackluster sales and a limited selection of material. The best selling e-books at the time, tellingly, were “Star Trek” novels. Hopes for e-books began to revive last year with the introduction of the widely marketed Sony Reader. Sony’s $300 gadget, the size of a trade paperback, has a six-inch screen, enough memory to hold 80 books and a battery that lasts for 7,500 page turns, according to the company. It uses screen display technology from E Ink, a company based in Cambridge, Mass., that emerged from the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and creates power-efficient digital screens that uncannily mimic the appearance of paper. Sony will not say how many it has sold, but the Reader has apparently done well enough that Sony recently increased its advertising for the device in several major American cities. “Digital readers are not a replacement for a print book; they are a replacement for a stack of print books,” said Ron Hawkins, vice president for portable reader systems at Sony. “That is where we see people, on the go, in the subway and in airports, with our device.” Book publishers also seem to be preparing for the kind of disruption that hit the music business when Apple introduced the symbiotic combination of the iPod and its iTunes online service. This year, with Sony’s Reader drawing some attention and Amazon’s imminent e-book device on their radar, most major publishers have accelerated the conversion of their titles into electronic formats. “There has been an awful lot of energy around e-books in the last six to 12 months, and we are now making a lot more titles available,” said Matt Shatz, vice president for digital at Random House, which plans to have around 6,500 e-books available by 2008. It has had about 3,500 available for the last few years. Amazon has been showing the Kindle to book publishers for the last year and has delayed its introduction several times. Last fall, a photograph of the device, and some of its specifications, leaked onto the Web when the company filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission to get approval for its wireless modem, which will operate over a high-speed EVDO network. Several people who have seen the Kindle say this is where the device’s central innovation lies — in its ability to download books and periodicals, and browse the Web, without connecting to a computer. They also say Amazon will pack some free offerings onto the device, like reference books, and offer customers a choice of subscriptions to feeds from major newspapers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the French newspaper Le Monde. The device also has a keyboard, so its users can take notes when reading or navigate the Web to look something up. A scroll wheel and a progress indicator next to the main screen, will help users navigate Web pages and texts on the device. People familiar with the Kindle also have a few complaints. The device has a Web browser, but using it is a poor experience, because the Kindle’s screen, also from E Ink, does not display animation or color. Some also complain about the fact that Amazon is using a proprietary e-book format from Mobipocket, a French company that Amazon bought in 2005, instead of supporting the open e-book standard backed by most major publishers and high-tech companies like Adobe. That means owners of other digital book devices, like the Sony Reader, will not be able to use books purchased on Amazon.com . Nevertheless, many publishing executives see Amazon’s entrance into the e-book world as a major test for the long-held notion that books and newspapers may one day be consumed on a digital device. “This is not your grandfather’s e-book,” said one publishing executive who did not want to be named because Amazon makes its partners sign nondisclosure agreements. “If these guys can’t make it work, I see no hope.” For its part, Google has no plans to introduce an electronic device for reading books. Its new offering will allow users to pay some portion of a book’s cover price to read its text online. For the last two years, as part of the Google Book Search Partner Program, some publishers have been contributing electronic versions of their books to the Google database, with the promise that the future revenue would be shared. The service could be especially useful to students and researchers who find information they need through a Google search, but it is also likely to include material suited for leisure reading. It will be separate from an effort called the Google Book Search Library Project, which is digitizing the collections of some libraries. That program has angered publishers and led to several pending lawsuits over copyright issues. Both the programs of Google and Amazon are drawing attention, and some skepticism, from traditional book retailers. Barnes & Noble, the largest bookseller in the United States, once invested in early e-book creator NuvoMedia and sold its RocketBook in stores before getting out of the business in 2003. Stephen Riggio, chief executive at Barnes & Noble, argues that for most people the value of traditional paper books will never be replicated in digital form. Nevertheless, he plans to compete with Google and Amazon. Mr. Riggio said in an interview that the full texts of many books will become available on the company’s Web site over the next year to 18 months. He also said that Barnes & Noble was considering introducing its own electronic book reader — but only when it can sell one at a low price. “If an affordable device can come to the market, sure we’d love to bring it to our customers, and we will,” Mr. Riggio said. “But right now we don’t see an affordable device in the immediate future.”

Computers and the Internet
Books and Literature
Amazon.com Inc
Google Inc
Book Trade


Frank Robinson Hospitalized for Tests

Abstract: The Hall of Famer Frank Robinson was taken by ambulance to a Paradise Valley, Ariz., hospital with dizziness and a rapid heartbeat. He had tests and returned to a hotel where baseball owners met. Commissioner Bud Selig said tests on Robinson were negative for any serious problems. Robinson, 75, is senior vice president for baseball operations in the commissioner’s office.

Baseball
Robinson Frank
Baltimore Orioles
Selig Bud