African Diet May Lead Away From Colon Cancer

Abstract: A change in diet for just two weeks alters gut bacteria in ways that may reduce risk of colon cancer, according to a new study in Nature Communications. Researchers asked 20 African-Americans in Pittsburgh and 20 rural South Africans to switch diets for two weeks. The Americans ate a traditional African diet, high in fiber and low in fat, with plenty of fruits, vegetables, beans and cornmeal, and very little meat. The Africans ate the equivalent of American fast food — a diet high in fat with generous quantities of meat and cheese. “We made them fried chicken, burgers and fries,” said Stephen J. D. O’Keefe, a gastroenterologist at the University of Pittsburgh and one of the study’s authors. “They loved it.” After the swap, the researchers performed colonoscopies on all the volunteers. African-Americans who ate the traditional African diet had reduced inflammation in the colon and increased production of butyrate, a fatty acid that may protect against colon cancer. Conversely, after two weeks, Africans who ate the Western diet experienced changes in gut bacteria consistent with an increased cancer risk. In Western countries, colon cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer deaths. It is diagnosed in 150,000 Americans annually; African-Americans are disproportionately affected. The disease affects few people in rural Africa. Rural Africans eat food that they grow themselves, because it is less costly. But as populations increasingly move into cities for work, diets will change, Dr. O’Keefe noted. “We’re trying to find out what aspects of their diet should be maintained,” he said.

Africa
Fast food
Colorectal cancer
Nutrition
Nature Communications Journal
South Africa
Black People,African-Americans


Texas A&M Fans Are Fluent in the Science of Yelling

Abstract: If a crowd’s cheers bolster players’ resolve and lead to better performances, that is usually a bonus. Cheers are intended primarily for the fans’ benefit: to make them feel helpful or, failing that, to give them something to do. But Texas A&M regards cheers differently. Its crowd is considered the 12th Man; the Seattle Seahawks license the trademarked phrase from the university for $5,000 a year. So stubborn is the utilitarian spirit of the Texas A&M cheers that when Aggies fans gather at midnight before a game, the event is referred to as yell practice because the real rally is reserved for the game. “If we’re not going in, maybe we can affect it,” Kyle Kelly, the student body president and a senior, said of a game’s outcome. There is another thing, Kelly said: “We don’t have cheers. We have yells.” (This is not purely semantic; the Aggies do not have cheerleaders.) Before home games, midnight yell practice, which was first held in 1931, draws tens of thousands to Kyle Field in College Station, Tex. Yell practice before Saturday’s home opener against Lamar drew more than 50,000, an exceptionally large crowd because the renovated and expanded stadium was open to the public for the first time. Although the turnout is smaller for practices held at a designated site in each opponent’s city, the spirit is no less apparent. A couple of hundred Aggies fans gathered on the steps of the South Carolina State House in Columbia on Aug. 28 before Texas A&M faced the Gamecocks for the first time. A crowd of South Carolina fans also showed up and chanted, “Where is Johnny?” in reference to Texas A&M’s previous quarterback, Johnny Manziel. Good Southern hosts, South Carolina troopers insisted that they leave the steps to the Aggies. And the yell practice commenced. Five yell leaders — three seniors and two juniors elected to one-year terms by the student body — wore blue-jean overalls bearing phrases like “Farmers Fight,” the name of a yell. The juniors did push-ups for about a minute before the group fanned out on an upper step and guided the crowd through several yells and songs, including “The Spirit of Aggieland,” punctuating the proceedings with impromptu exhortations and jokes at the home team’s expense. Before engaging in most yells, Aggies fans are told to assume a hump-it position: hands on knees, chest out, face forward. This, too, is meant to optimize execution. “There is a science,” Kelly said. “The ‘hump it’ is the best way to project your voice.” The yell leaders communicate mainly by hand gestures in which true Aggies are fluent. Members of the crowd repeat the gestures to “pass back” the instructions. It helps that most A&M fans are well acquainted with the yells. “It’s not a practice,” said Pat Streder, class of 1984. “Everyone knows what to do.” The Aggies in Columbia performed other rituals: They draped their arms around one another’s shoulders, singing and swaying, and people on dates were told to kiss. After 20 minutes, interrupted by occasional shouts from stray Gamecocks fans, yell practice was complete, and the crowd dispersed peacefully. “I didn’t expect this many people,” said Ben Ritchie, a junior yell leader. He added, “Our job is to get everybody fired up and motivated.” So, is it about winning the game, which the Aggies did, upsetting the Gamecocks, 52-28? “Yeah,” he replied, “I guess so.” THE DAY’S BEST CONNOR KACSOR : The Dayton senior running back rushed 34 times for a team-record 301 yards and scored a touchdown to help the host Flyers hold off Georgetown, 23-14. COOPER RUSH AND THOMAS RAWLS : Rush, a sophomore quarterback, threw for two touchdowns, and Rawls, a senior running back, ran for two more, giving Central Michigan a surprising 38-17 victory at Purdue. The Chippewas (2-0) beat a Big Ten team for the second time in three seasons. DAK PRESCOTT: The junior quarterback threw for 211 yards and four touchdowns and ran for 111 yards and a touchdown to lead host Mississippi State past Alabama-Birmingham, 47-34. JARED GOFF : The sophomore quarterback matched a career high with four touchdown passes as California beat visiting Sacramento State, 55-14. KENNETH SCOTT AND DRES ANDERSON: The junior and senior wide receivers each had two scoring catches to power host Utah over Fresno State, 59-27. NEWS AND NOTES CAVALIERS END FRUSTRATION : Quarterback Matt Johns led two touchdown drives to help Virginia end a 10-game losing streak with a 45-13 home victory against Richmond. Defensive end Eli Harold returned a fumble 22 yards for a touchdown for the Cavaliers. Johns, whose effectiveness last week in relief of the starter Greyson Lambert reopened the Cavaliers’ quarterback competition, threw a 4-yard touchdown pass to Canaan Severin and hit Darius Jennings for 45 yards to set up another score. Virginia (1-1) won for the first time since beating Virginia Military Institute last September. B.Y.U. CRUSHES TEXAS : Brigham Young quarterback Taysom Hill ran for three touchdowns in the third quarter, hurdling a defender near the goal line on a 30-yard score, to lead the visiting Cougars to a 41-7 rout of Texas. B.Y.U. rolled up 550 yards rushing in a win over Texas in 2013. This time, the Cougars stuffed a Longhorns offense that started the new quarterback Tyrone Swoopes behind a line missing three starters because of injury or suspensions. The Cougars (2-0) allowed Texas (1-1) just 249 total yards. FOOTBALL NOVICES CATCHING ON : Kalif Phillips ran for three touchdowns, and Charlotte posted its largest margin of victory in the program’s short history, defeating Johnson C. Smith, 56-0, at home. The 49ers (2-0) are in their second season of football, playing as an F.C.S. independent before competing in Conference USA next year. Phillips ran for two touchdowns in the first quarter as the 49ers took a 23-0 lead and cruised from there over the Division II Golden Bulls (0-1). Phillips ran for multiple touchdowns for the fourth consecutive game. Matt Johnson completed 13 of 18 passes for 285 yards, including a 24-yard touchdown toss to T. L. Ford. The 49ers added another score on Prince Mayela’s 48-yard interception return and had five field goals. Charlotte had a 546-197 advantage in total yards. HURRICANES HONOR KELLY: The University of Miami paid homage to Jim Kelly’s fight against cancer, posting a banner inside Sun Life Stadium bearing an image of Kelly and the words “We Are KellyTough.” The banner is part of the signage ringing the lower deck of the stadium at Miami home games this season. Kelly was informed last week that he no longer showed signs of having sinus cancer. The phrase KellyTough became popular on social media as Kelly, a former quarterback for the Hurricanes and the Buffalo Bills, fought the disease. Kelly played for Miami from 1979 to 1982 and is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the Hurricanes’ Hall of Fame. (AP)

College
Football
College football
College Station TX


Malcolm Smith Accused of Bribery for Spot on Mayoral Ballot

Abstract: You could drag Malcolm A. Smith out of bed at 6 in the morning, and he’d still look like a million dollars. Or whatever the cost of a few hundred yards of road in New York State is these days. Mr. Smith, a state senator from Queens, sat in the front of a federal courtroom in White Plains on Tuesday afternoon, there for ritual anointment in a fabulously convoluted corruption case in which he is the marquee name among six accused. Slim, unmoving, clad in a blue blazer with gold buttons, dark corduroy pants and a striped dress shirt, he said little beyond, “Yes, Your Honor,” when asked a routine question about understanding his rights. No surprise that Mr. Smith was the picture of calm: The man has been swinging like a shutter in a hurricane for much of the last decade, seated along the hinges of power in Albany. Once general elections are held and the voters have spoken, those results are heaved out the window as legislative majorities are bought and sold by each of the two parties. At one stage, Mr. Smith was part of a Democratic power troika that lavished goodies on an openly crooked state senator, Pedro Espada Jr., in the process of getting Mr. Espada to vote with them. Mr. Smith himself recently jumped with a small group of Democratic senators to shift power to the Republican minority. Along the way, an inspector general’s report said he had finagled a casino land deal in Queens. The F.B.I. was also investigating nonprofit groups that he helped obtain government funds. Undaunted, Mr. Smith set his ambitions on becoming the Republican candidate for mayor of New York City. Strictly speaking, as a Democrat, Mr. Smith had no business on a Republican ballot, but, understandably for a person practiced in the customs of Albany, that seemed like a small obstacle. In fact, he could get a spot on the primary ballot by special dispensation from three of the city’s five county Republican leaders. These not-so-longish-shot hopes brought him into a series of negotiations that, a federal complaint charged, moved beyond the horse-trading of ordinary legal-graft politics into the realm of outright bribery. Video The Times’s Michael Barbaro on how the arrest of two lawmakers and a half-dozen other politicians could shake up New York’s Republican Party. What it seems to boil down to is that federal authorities claim that Mr. Smith swapped road improvements in Rockland County for a spot on the ballot in the Republican primary for mayor in New York City. How? Life had brought Mr. Smith, officials say, into the acquaintanceship of a crooked real estate developer who wanted $500,000 in state money to improve a short stretch of road serving a development in Spring Valley, N.Y. The criminal complaint quotes a tape on which the senator explained how such money could be easily found: “Multimodal money,” Mr. Smith said, “is outside the budget and it’s always around.” He was not unschooled on budget or road business: he is the vice chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and a member of the Transportation Committee. That same developer was given the task of persuading the Republican city leaders to grant Mr. Smith the permission he needed to appear on their primary ballot. He was wearing a wire for most of these conversations, according to the federal authorities, and quietly pleaded guilty last month. Some of Mr. Smith’s fellow defendants, like City Councilman Daniel J. Halloran of Queens, did not present themselves in court with the same sense of sartorial ease that radiated from the senator. Mr. Halloran, a bulky man, had just about managed to throw on a long-sleeve T-shirt and bluejeans when he was taken into custody. The tapes of Mr. Halloran, one of the few elected Republican officials in New York City, are described as blunt statements of venality: “Money is what greases the wheels — good, bad or indifferent,” the complaint quotes him saying during a restaurant meeting at which, it is charged, he was given $7,500 in cash. In dribs and drabs, about $71,000 in bribes was paid to officials, along with a share of a fictional real estate company. On these investments were promised returns of $500,000 in state road money, about $80,000 in social service contracts and a spot on the ballot. Those who have placed their hopes for better politics in bipartisanship may find them dashed if the charges hold up. Mr. Smith and Mr. Halloran, Democrat and Republican, respectively, were joined in the dock by two other Republicans and two Democrats. Mr. Halloran, who once served as a police cadet, saw visions of grandeur in his ecumenical partnership, the complaint states: He believed he would be rewarded with the job of deputy police commissioner if Mr. Smith were elected mayor.

New York
Corruption
Primaries
Malcolm A Smith
NYC
Mayoral races


U.S. Voting Flaws Are Widespread, Study Shows

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The flaws in the American election system are deep and widespread, extending beyond isolated voting issues in a few locations and flaring up in states rich and poor, according to a major new study from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The group ranked all 50 states based on more than 15 criteria, including wait times, lost votes and problems with absentee and provisional ballots, and the order often confounds the conventional wisdom. In 2010, for instance, Mississippi ranked last over all. But it was preceded by two surprises: New York and California. “Poor Southern states perform well, and they perform badly,” said Heather K. Gerken, a law professor at Yale and a Pew adviser. “Rich New England states perform well and badly — mostly badly.” A main goal of the exercise, which grew out of Professor’s Gerken’s 2009 book, “The Democracy Index,” was to shame poor performers into doing better, she said. “Peer pressure produces horrible things like Britney Spears and Justin Bieber and tongue rings,” Professor Gerken said. “But it also produces professional peer pressure.” The project includes an interactive tool that allows rankings by individual criteria or clusters of them. Some states, for instance, lost very few votes because of shortcomings in voting technology and voter confusion, with the best 10 reporting failure rates of 0.5 percent or less in 2008. In West Virginia, by contrast, the rate was 3.2 percent. Natalie Tennant, West Virginia’s secretary of state, said she was not happy with that result and would look closely at Pew’s data and methodology. But she added that “2012 went really well, even with Sandy,” referring to the hurricane that disrupted early voting. “We were humming,” she said. “You’re only as good as your next election,” she added. The Pew study focused on the 2008 and 2010 elections, the most recent ones for which comprehensive data were available. The study also found wide variation in how easy registering to vote can be. North Dakota does not even require it, and Alabama and Kansas reported rejecting less than 0.05 percent of registration applications in 2008. But Pennsylvania and Indiana each rejected more than half of the registration applications they received in 2010. On Election Day, the voting experience can also vary. The 10 states with the shortest waiting times at the polls in 2008 averaged six minutes, the study found. In South Carolina, the wait was more than an hour. The shift to voting by mail, which now accounts for some 20 percent of all ballots cast, tends to eliminate lines. But it has also produced new problems, especially in places where mail voting has soared because the state does not require an excuse or a new ballot request for each election. Arizona and California, where voting by mail is commonplace, had among the highest rates of problems with voter registration and absentee ballots. In 2010, California rejected absentee ballots 0.7 percent of the time, a higher rate than any other state. Dean C. Logan, the registrar for Los Angeles County, said the rate was partly a byproduct of the popularity of voting by mail in California and partly a function of how the state defines rejected ballots. Its definition includes ballots that voters requested but that the Postal Service returned to election officials as undeliverable. “Voter behavior is changing and evolving,” Mr. Logan said. Young people do not sign their names as consistently as older ones, he said, and mail delivery is becoming less reliable. He also cautioned that statewide results can mask the fact that “the elections process is extremely decentralized.” Colorado, where some 70 percent of voters cast their ballots by mail in 2012, rejected absentee ballots 0.4 percent of the time in 2010. Pam Anderson, the clerk of Jefferson County, Colo., defended that rejection rate. “It’s not 10 percent, and it’s not zero,” she said. “We do a very rigorous signature verification process.” Charles Stewart III, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Pew adviser, said that high provisional ballot rates were an important signal of potential trouble. “Nationwide, a bit over 1 percent of voters are given a provisional ballot,” he said. “In Arizona in 2008, the rate was 6.5 percent. In the battleground state of Ohio, it was 3.6 percent. While these numbers may seem small, in a recount or election dispute, they would be huge.” In both 2008 and 2010, Arizona had the highest rate of rejected provisional ballots, though the rate dropped to 0.8 percent in 2010 from 1.9 percent in 2008. Tammy Patrick, an elections official in Maricopa County, Ariz., said that last year “65 percent of people voted by mail, which is grand.” Ms. Patrick said that voting by mail gave voters the benefit of convenience, and also the ability to reflect on their choices. “We have a fairly long ballot,” she said, “and this allows the voter a full month to vote that ballot.” But the trend also led to problems, Ms. Patrick said, partly as a result of grass-roots misinformation about whether and how such votes would be counted. Many people voted by mail and nonetheless turned up at polling places just in case, where they would often cast provisional ballots. “We had a 20 percent increase in our provisional ballots over all,” Ms. Patrick said, and many of those ballots were rejected. She said that the Pew data reflected “a piece of what we do,” but that the local political culture also played a role. “Arizonans don’t feel their elected officials represent them,” she said. “They don’t participate in their neighborhoods and civic activities. There’s a detachment in the sprawl.” Professor Gerken said that other cultural factors may affect voting rates. “States in the Deep South with high obesity problems seem to be having a problem getting people to the polling place,” she said. Absentee ballots from members of the military and Americans living overseas were also rejected at varying rates, the study found. In 2010, New York rejected a quarter of the 22,000 such ballots it received. Pennsylvania rejected just 2 percent of the 8,000 ballots it received. Professor Stewart said the study should focus attention on the infrastructure of democracy. “Among all important areas of public policy, election administration is probably the most episodic and prone to the problem of short attention spans,” he said. “What would the world be like if we only gave intense attention to education, corrections, transportation and public health problems for a one-week period every four years?”

Voting
Pew Charitable Trusts
Voter registration
Absentee ballot
US Politics
US
US states


Schumer to Recommend Brooklyn Prosecutor for U.S. Attorney Post

Abstract: Robert L. Capers, a longtime federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, has won the critical support of Senator Chuck Schumer to be the next United States attorney for the Eastern District, which covers Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island. Mr. Schumer confirmed that he would recommend that President Obama nominate Mr. Capers to succeed Loretta E. Lynch , who became the United States attorney general in April. If Mr. Capers is nominated, he will have to be approved by the Senate. “He rose to the top on the merits,” Mr. Schumer, a Democrat, said of Mr. Capers, who joined the office in 2003 and currently prosecutes public corruption cases. “He’s really smart, he’s very hardworking, nose to the grindstone, not flashy, gets the job done and gets it done superbly.” Mr. Schumer also said that Mr. Capers’s family ties to law enforcement — his father was a noted New York Police Department detective, and his brother is retired from the force — meant he “fits the times perfectly.” Former colleagues and fellow lawyers described Mr. Capers, 44, as sincere, levelheaded and detail-oriented. “He’s a good lawyer with common sense and practical experience,” said Sterling Johnson Jr., an Eastern District judge for whom Mr. Capers interned 20 years ago. “He’s not in it for self-promotion,” said Morris J. Fodeman, now a partner at the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, who started at the United States attorney’s office around the same time as Mr. Capers. “He’s a career prosecutor who’s in it for all the right reasons and is fair-minded.” If confirmed, Mr. Capers would take on an increasingly high-profile job. For years, the federal prosecutor’s office in Brooklyn has been the Prince Harry to Manhattan’s Prince William: a little scrappier, a little less prominent, and always looking for the respect accorded its better-known sibling. Prosecutors in Brooklyn grumble that though they successfully try notable terrorism, fraud and gang cases, they do not receive the same credit that their Manhattan counterparts do. The office has become more prominent lately, though, in part because of Ms. Lynch’s appointment, and also because prosecutors have handled a raft of big cases. Recently, the office has prosecuted former United States Representative Michael G. Grimm, former Assemblyman William F. Boyland Jr. (a case Mr. Capers handled), several people accused of being members of the Shabab and Al Qaeda, and the man said to be behind the 1978 Lufthansa jewel heist that is a central plot point in the film “Goodfellas.” Image Robert L. Capers is Senator Chuck Schumer's choice to be the next United States attorney for the Eastern District. Credit U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York It is also investigating a potential civil rights case in the 2014 death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man on Staten Island who died after a police officer placed him in a chokehold. Like Ms. Lynch, Mr. Capers is black. Mr. Schumer said he believes that, like Ms. Lynch, Mr. Capers will be able to take on difficult cases involving minority communities and have all sides feel they were treated fairly. Mr. Capers was born in the Bronx and lives in New Jersey. He graduated from New York University, where he was co-captain of the basketball team, and from Albany Law School. While many New York prosecutors leave government work for law firms, where they can make several times as much money, Mr. Capers has worked for the government his entire career. He was a prosecutor for the Manhattan district attorney’s office and for the office of the city’s special narcotics prosecutor before moving to the Eastern District. Other candidates for the job included people who had left the office for more prestigious Justice Department positions, making Mr. Capers’s promotion from inside the office noteworthy. “It’s nice to see career prosecutors given the opportunity to lead a significant and prominent office in the city,” said Anthony M. Capozzolo, a lawyer who worked in the office until last year. Stuart N. Kaplan, a lawyer for Mr. Grimm and for Mr. Grimm’s friend Diana Durand, said that when Mr. Capers joined the Durand case partway through, he “brought a totally different approach.” Other prosecutors had wanted Ms. Durand to testify against Mr. Grimm, but she had maintained she did not know much of anything. There was “an impasse where we couldn’t advance the case,” Mr. Kaplan said, but once Mr. Capers got involved, “his demeanor and his style was much more receptive,” and the lawyers quickly reached a plea agreement for Ms. Durand. Robert M. Morgenthau, the former Manhattan district attorney, said Mr. Capers, who was once a prosecutor in his office, “not only has the credentials, but he has the ability to make an outstanding United States attorney.” A recommendation from Mr. Schumer does not ensure that Mr. Capers will be nominated by the White House, but in making such appointments, presidents typically consult with their party’s top political leaders in a state. In New York, Mr. Schumer, as the senior senator, has played a major role in selections of United States attorneys and federal judges. The acting United States attorney in the district is Kelly T. Currie. Nellin McIntosh, a spokeswoman for the United States attorney’s office in the Eastern District, declined to comment on the recommendation. Mr. Capers did not respond to a request for comment.

Brooklyn
Chuck Schumer
New York
Robert L Capers
US Attorney


G.M. to Invest $1.3 Billion to Upgrade 5 Midwest Factories

Abstract: DETROIT — After a year of big profits and surging sales in the United States, the American automakers are investing heavily in their domestic operations in anticipation of more good times to come. General Motors, the nation’s largest auto company, said Monday it would spend about $1.3 billion to upgrade five factories in the Midwest, including a major overhaul of one of its highly profitable truck plants. The news followed Ford Motor’s announcement last week that it was hiring 5,000 new workers next year and introducing 16 new vehicles in North America. The investments show confidence in the continued growth in 2014 of the automotive sector — one of the economy’s bright spots this year. “Today’s announced plant upgrades continue the momentum of a resurgent auto industry,” Mark Reuss, head of G.M.’s North American division, said on Monday at the company’s pickup truck plant in Flint, Mich. G.M. said it would invest $600 million in the Flint facility, including building a new paint shop that would make its trucks more competitive in the expanding pickup segment. The company is also spending $493 million at another Michigan factory to produce a new transmission that increases fuel economy and to expand capacity for a high-tech V-6 engine. The rest of the new spending will be at plants in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. G.M. said the investments would create or preserve about 1,000 manufacturing jobs, and position the company to take advantage of more growth in the critical American market. Image An assembly line at a G.M. plant in Michigan. G.M. said would spend about $1.3 billion to upgrade five factories in the Midwest. Credit Bill Pugliano/Getty Images “Today’s announcement is a win for American workers,” said Joe Ashton, an official of the United Auto Workers, which represents 7,500 employees at the five affected plants. The new investments are being made after the strong performance of the American auto market this year. Manufacturers sold 14.24 million new cars and trucks through November, an 8.4 percent rise from a year ago. The industry is on pace for its best annual sales since 2007. And analysts are predicting that the year could close out with exceptionally healthy results in December. “Floor traffic surged during the opening half of the month, nearly 18 percent higher than a year ago,” said a report issued Monday by the marketing firm CNW Research. For G.M., the investment announcement helps it end the year on yet another high note. Last week, the Treasury Department said it had sold the last of the G.M. stock it took in exchange for the government’s $49.5 billion bailout of General Motors in 2009. And the company also made history by naming Mary T. Barra to take over as chief executive in January, becoming the first woman to rise to the top of a major automaker. G.M.’s departing chief executive, Daniel Akerson, said on Monday that Ms. Barra’s promotion was an important step in the company’s reinvention since its bailout and bankruptcy four years ago. “On that day, for the first time in decades, all eyes at General Motors pointed toward the future,” Mr. Akerson said in a wide-ranging speech at the National Press Club in Washington. Industry analysts expect sales in the United States to be even better next year and automakers — particularly G.M., Ford and Chrysler, the third Detroit manufacturer — are introducing new products to keep pace. G.M. is expected to show its new midsize pickup truck, the GMC Canyon, at the Detroit auto show in January. Chrysler, for its part, will take the wraps off a new Chrysler 200 sedan. Image Daniel Akerson is the departing chief of G.M. Credit Win McNamee/Getty Images And while it will not confirm its plans, analysts predict that Ford will show off the latest version of the top-selling vehicle in America, the F-150 pickup. Ford executives said last week that despite the steady growth in overall sales, it was still difficult to gain even the smallest amount of market share. “The most important thing for us is to have vehicle choices for all these consumers,” said Mark Fields, Ford’s chief operating officer. The company is adding capacity at a number of plants, including its big truck factory in Kansas City, Mo. All automakers are stretching the limits of their existing plants rather than building expensive new ones as sales surge. Ford said it would add about 5,000 jobs in the United States, most of which will be engineers and salaried employees working on fuel-efficient engines and new technologies. The automaker is also building two new factories in China and one in Brazil. “This is the fastest and most aggressive manufacturing expansion the company has undergone in 50 years,” said John Fleming, Ford’s global manufacturing chief. The Detroit companies and their Japanese and German rivals gain a sizable portion of their corporate profits from sales in the United States, where the market appears to be healthier than it has been in decades. By drastically downsizing in recent years, the industry is matching its production to demand far better than in the past. It is avoiding building large inventories of unsold cars, which can prompt sales discounts that eat away at profits. G.M. has reported 15 consecutive profitable quarters, which allows it the financial latitude to spend more money on new products and plant improvements. “We are in a capital-intensive business that demands steady and significant investment,” Mr. Akerson said.

Ford Motor
Manufacturing
Cars
US Economy
GM


U.S. Men and Women Olympic Volleyball Groups Are Set

Abstract: The top-ranked American women’s volleyball team is in a pool with No. 2 Brazil and No. 5 China for the London Olympics. The American men, ranked sixth, are in a pool with both top-ranked Brazil and No. 2 Russia.

Volleyball
Brazil
China
Russia
Olympic Games (2012)


Honduras Releases Jailed Florida Crew

Abstract: Six Americans who traveled to the Mosquito Coast of Honduras last month planning to dredge a river but instead ended up in jail were released Thursday. Robert Mayne, who runs a Florida marine salvage company called Aqua Quest International, had an agreement with the impoverished town of Ahuas to clear the Patuca River of old hardwood logs buried in the sediment. But the police arrested Mr. Mayne and his five-man crew after they arrived at Puerto Lempira, telling the authorities that the men had five guns on their boat. Mr. Mayne’s brother Stephen Mayne said that an appeals court had ordered the six released, reversing a decision by a local judge to try them on weapons charges. They still hope to go ahead with the dredging project, Stephen Mayne said.


Suicide Attack at Pakistan Court Compound Kills Over a Dozen

Abstract: PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Sixteen people were killed Monday morning, including two police officers, when a bomber detonated his suicide vest after shooting his way into a court compound about 20 miles north of Peshawar, a senior police official said. The bomber forced his way through the main entrance of the subdistrict court in the town of Shabqadar around 11:30 a.m., the police said. Once inside, he shot an officer who tried to stop him for a search and then set off his suicide vest when another constable tackled him to prevent him from entering the more crowded family court. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, an offshoot of the militant group Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, took responsibility for the attack. In an email, its spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said the bombing was retaliation for the hanging of Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri , a former security guard who shot and killed the governor of Punjab Province, Salman Taseer , in 2001. Mr. Qadri was sentenced to death by the court and hanged on Feb. 29. Image A victim of a suicide bombing was taken to a hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Monday. Credit Hasham Ahmed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images “We would have had more casualties had the bomber proceeded towards the family court,” the deputy inspector general of police, Saeed Wazir, said in a telephone interview. “Mondays are reserved for court hearings of family disputes, so there were more people there.” “Our officers showed exceptional bravery and gave away their lives to save others,” Mr. Wazir said. A district police officer, Suhail Khalid, said by telephone that the officer who had been shot had tried to wrestle the bomber to the ground despite being wounded. More than 20 people were wounded in the explosion, some of whom were in critical condition, said Dr. Farhad Khan, a health official in Charsadda, the district where the attack took place. This is the second deadly attack in the district this year. On Jan. 20, four suicide bombers struck a university campus .

Suicide
Pakistan
Bombs
Attacks on Police
Terrorism
Pakistani Taliban
Fatalities,casualties


Little-Known New Yorkers, Honored for a Day

Abstract: They honor stickball tournaments and dance teachers, doughnut-store openings or New Yorkers reaching the century mark. They spread good will, honor bravery and service, and cement political alliances. Every year, writing in formal prose with 14th-century flourishes, the presidents of the five boroughs distribute hundreds of proclamations and citations declaring such and such day for so and so. It is a ritual little noticed by anyone other than the honorees. Few know, for example, that in Brooklyn, Oct. 23, 2009, was dedicated to Gerald Menditto, the manager of the Cyclone roller coaster , who, according to the proclamation, watched “wigs, car keys, pocketbooks, false teeth, worries and breakfast get routinely lost on many a hair-raising ride.” Or that in Manhattan, Dec. 30, 2009, was set aside to celebrate Ralph and Rose Hittman for being married 70 years, and for passing the “extraordinary model” of their union to their sons and grandchildren. The certificates can be dismissed as local, bureaucratic pomp. But taken together, the stories behind them provide a particular portrait of the city. And for the recipients, recognition from an elected official they may have never heard of can be strangely moving. “Your attachment to the place you were born a long time ago is abstract,” said Gary Schwartz , an art historian who left New York in 1965 to live in the Netherlands, and was honored by Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn borough president, after winning a prestigious Dutch humanities award. “This made it real again, and very meaningful.” For the borough presidents, whose exact powers and responsibilities are a bit hazy, the proclamations are easy gestures that generate enormous good will, a way to reach out to citizens, to court business groups or ethnic constituencies, to cement bonds with campaign donors and political groups. No one dispenses as much good will as Mr. Markowitz, the exuberant, tireless Brooklyn cheerleader. He signs about 15 proclamations or citations a week: that is maybe 700 a year. By comparison, the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, issued 150 proclamations last year; Staten Island had about 100. The Bronx borough president, Rubén Díaz, Jr., is closest to Mr. Markowitz with perhaps 10 a week, while Helen M. Marshall, in Queens, averages one a day. Last year, Mr. Markowitz honored a Red Hook librarian and the Little People of America (Mr. Markowitz, who is 5-foot-5, noted that he is a card-carrying member). He signed proclamations or citations extolling the work of Pakistani merchants, the alumni of the Gowanus Houses and the chief executive of the Sing Tao Newspaper Group . He set aside one day in September for the “87th commemoration of the Asia Minor Holocaust,” and another for the Arab Muslim American Federation’s 13th annual Ramadan iftar. He gave several proclamations to campaign donors: one honored the 50th birthday of Matthew Pintchik, the co-owner of a beloved Park Slope hardware store, who has given at least $9,000 to Mr. Markowitz’s campaigns since 2001, according to the city’s campaign finance board. And he dedicated June 30, 2009, to Michelle Harris, a home health aide, for being Utopia Home Care’s “caregiver of the year.” Mr. Markowitz was honoring Ms. Harris’ work, but also her singularly tragic past. In 1982, when Ms. Harris was 19 years old, her brother Michael, apparently angered over his inheritance, fatally stabbed four relatives, including their mother, their 4-year-old brother and Ms. Harris’s 3-year-old daughter. Ms. Harris discovered the bodies in their apartment on University Avenue in the Bronx. Her brother is serving a life sentence in an upstate prison, and she has not spoken to him since. After the killings, Ms. Harris moved in with an aunt, and then to Canarsie, Brooklyn, to live on her own. She followed her mother’s example and pursued a nursing career, becoming a certified aide, had another daughter, and now, at 46, is engaged to be married. A public relations agency that works with Utopia Home Care requested the proclamation from Mr. Markowitz. Ms. Harris said the award, which was given to her on the steps of Brooklyn Borough Hall, was a “shock.” She had always taken her work seriously, and said she loved that someone noticed. Her elderly patients, at a nursing home in Brighton Beach, “look forward to me coming in the morning,” she said. “It makes me feel great.” The proclamations are printed on imitation parchment, and include Brooklyn’s seal and its motto, in old Dutch: “In Unity There is Strength.” Mr. Markowitz’s office drew some recent criticism when it advertised, in tough financial times, a $42,000-a-year job for a proclamation writer; a spokeswoman later said the person who handled the honors had other responsibilities. In a written statement, Mr. Markowitz explained his proclivity to proclaim by saying the process drew more New Yorkers into civic life. “I have been honored to be able to present them, to express to people the respect, to give credit where it is due — ‘koved,’ as we say in Yiddish — to the individuals and organizations that make Brooklyn one of the most vibrant, wonderful places on earth to live.” One of those people is Officer Joseph Cracolici, who, at age 78, may be the oldest working law enforcement officer in New York, if not the country. “There’s some guy out in Texas who’s 77,” Officer Cracolici said. In long and colorful career, Officer Cracolici served in the Navy, delivered a stranger’s baby and, during a lengthy stint as a Sanitation Department police officer, chased more than a few people illegally dumping trash, one of whom attacked him with a sledgehammer. “Most of these guys were ex-cons,” he said. “They always carried knives and guns.” His current job with the Seagate Police Department, which patrols a gated community in southern Brooklyn, is more sedate. He serves environmental summonses, which he sees as vital work. “People have snow and ice on their sidewalks, I’ll ring their bell,” he said. “I like to catch people who don’t pick up their dog poop. I have no mercy for them.” After a little bit of research into whether he was actually the oldest living law enforcement officer, some of Officer Cracolici’s colleagues at Seagate sent a request to the borough president. The proclamation arrived in July. “I was in headquarters,” Officer Cracolici said. “The lieutenant called me in, and said, ‘I’ve got something for you.’ I said, ‘Wow.’ It was beautiful. I was thrilled. “I didn’t expect anything,” he said. “I just go to work.”

Awards Decorations and Honors
New York City


Daily Report: When Employees Want to Cash Out Private Stock

Abstract: It has become common wisdom among tech start-ups that an initial public offering of shares is something that should occur only after all other options have been exhausted. The start-ups have reasons for this — they don’t want to suffer the quarterly prodding of profit-hungry Wall Street investors, for example. But more often than not, it’s because they don’t want to deal with the financial scrutiny required of a publicly traded company. Image This can be a problem for employees of those start-ups who are often compensated in company shares that can be worth a lot of money if the company goes public. As Katie Benner writes , now some companies are giving employees “controlled opportunities” to sell shares. Last month, Airbnb gave its employees an opportunity to sell some of their stock to investors. In return, the employees had to agree not to sell or trade the rest of their shares. Reaching deals like this are important to young companies like Airbnb, which is based in San Francisco. Frustrated employees are apt to leave if they believe a promised payday in the form of a stock sale isn’t going to happen. And in an area where employee retention has become a major issue, it’s all too easy for workers to defect to the next, hot start-up.


Church Rejects Sale of Building for a Mosque

Abstract: The board of trustees of a Roman Catholic Church on Staten Island, whose members include Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan , has formally rejected a controversial proposal to sell a vacant convent to a Muslim organization that planned to use it as a mosque. The Islamic group, the Muslim American Society, said Thursday that it would seek a new location in the borough. The vote this week by the board of St. Margaret Mary Church, which was announced Thursday by the Archdiocese of New York, brings an end to a tense three-month standoff. On one side, neighbors who opposed the mosque claimed it might become a front for terrorism. On the other, members of the Islamic group, some of whom live in the neighborhood, said Muslims on Staten Island sorely needed a new mosque — and chafed at being labeled terrorist sympathizers because of their religious affiliation. When neighbors’ opposition led the church’s parish priest, the Rev. Keith Fennessy, to withdraw his support for the sale last month, the mosque’s backers vowed to insist on enforcing the terms of what they said was a legally binding contract. Protests both for and against the proposed mosque continued. But on Thursday, the group said it would look elsewhere for a place to build. “We hoped this would turn out better, but the archdiocese certainly is within its right to vote not to sell us the convent,” said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the society, a nonprofit group whose officials had signed an agreement with Father Fennessy in May to buy the convent. Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said the church’s trustees had “voted to ratify the pastor’s decision.” Archbishop Dolan is one of the board’s five members, Mr. Zwilling said, but he would not say whether the archbishop had attended the meeting or cast a vote. “The Archdiocese of New York has enjoyed a good relationship with the Islamic community in the past, and looks forward to continued dialogue, friendship and understanding in the future,” Mr. Zwilling said.

Mosques
Muslim American Society
St. Margaret Mary Church
Terrorism
Staten Island (NYC)
Muslim-Americans
Dolan Timothy M


These Mammals Pack a Toxic Punch

Abstract: What’s black and white, with a skunkish look to its cover, And from bark wrests such bite it makes lions fall over? Meet the African crested rat, or Lophiomys imhausi, a creature so large, flamboyantly furred and thickly helmeted it hardly seems a member of the international rat consortium. Yet it is indeed a rat, a deadly dirty rat, its superspecialized pelt permeated with potent toxins harvested from trees. As a recent report in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B makes clear, the crested rat offers one of the most extreme cases of a survival strategy rare among mammals: deterring predators with chemical weapons. Venoms and repellents are hardly rare in nature: Many insects, frogs, snakes, jellyfish and other phyletic characters use them with abandon. But mammals generally rely, for defense or offense, on teeth, claws, muscles, keen senses or quick wits. Every so often, however, a mammalian lineage discovers the wonders of chemistry, of nature’s burbling beakers and tubes. And somewhere in the distance a mad cackle sounds. Skunks and zorilles mimic the sulfurous, anoxic stink of a swamp. The male duck-billed platypus infuses its heel spurs with a cobralike poison. The hedgehog declares: Don’t quite get the point of my spines? Allow me to sharpen their sting with a daub of venom I just chewed off the back of a Bufo toad. Other mammals chemically gird themselves against smaller foes: Capuchin monkeys ward off mosquitoes and ticks with extracts gathered from millipedes and ants, while black-tailed deer rub themselves liberally with potent antimicrobial secretions produced by glands in their hooves. According to William Wood, a chemistry professor at Humboldt State University in California , these secretions have been shown to be effective against a broad array of micro-organisms, including acne bacteria and athlete’s-foot fungus, which could explain why teenage deer are especially diligent with the hoof-rubbing routine right before the annual deer prom. For each newly identified instance of a chemical fix, researchers seek to identify its benefits, drawbacks and evolutionary back story, and to compare it with other known cases of chemical arms. Distinctive themes have emerged. For example, whereas poisonous insects tend to advertise their unpalatability in bright colors like red, orange and yellow — the better to warn off their major predators, the diurnal, keen-eyed birds — most mammals and their mammalian predators are nocturnal or crepuscular, dawn and duskular. Color is wasted on them, but strong contrast between dark and light is not. This is why skunks, zorilles (also known as polecats) and the African crested rat have independently converged on a similar pelage theme of black against white. The pattern is unmistakable in very low light, and its message is too: You’ve seen me. I’m noxious. Now buzz off. In their fetchingly titled paper, “ A Poisonous Surprise Under the Coat of the African Crested Rat ,” Jonathan Kingdon and Fritz Vollrath of Oxford University and their colleagues described the complex of traits that give rise to the rodent’s rottenness. The researchers determined that the rat spends many hours gnawing on the bark and roots of the Acokanthera tree, from which it extracts the same curare-type heart toxin that African hunters have traditionally used to kill elephants. The rat then slavers the toxic masticant onto tracts of specialized hairs running along its flank. Those hairs, when observed under a scanning electron microscope, look very different from ordinary fur, Dr. Vollrath said. Each outer shaft is stiff and full of holes — like a dead cactus, he said — and inside are a series of long, fluffy microfibers. The researchers showed that the applied toxin seeps through the outer holes of the hairs and is wicked up and stored by the fibers, lending the rat twinned flank strips of doom. One little nip is all it would take to sicken or even kill a predator, and the crested rat is well equipped to endure exploratory bites, Dr. Vollrath said: Its hide is unusually thick, and its head is helmeted like a turtle’s. Whether through trial and error or by following an enlightened elder’s example, Africa ’s many carnivores give the rat a wide berth. So, too, do Lophiomys researchers. “Jonathan is a highly enterprising researcher, and he normally eats every animal he studies,” Dr. Vollrath said of his colleague. “But he admitted he would rather not eat this one.” The researchers don’t yet know why the rat is itself immune to the toxin, or how its fate came to be bound up with the Acokanthera tree. Dr. Vollrath looks to basic rat nature for ideas. “The rat eats a lot of things that other animals won’t,” he said. “If it eats something disgusting, it tries to spit it out, clean it off, using its skin as a napkin.” If an early crested rat, while sampling and gagging on a toxic tree, incidentally end up protected against predation, well, evolution has a way of turning a contingency into a necessity. The crested rat is now anatomically and behaviorally dependent on tree toxin for protection, and should Acokanthera go extinct, its little chiseler would soon follow. In contrast to the crested rat, skunks synthesize their toxins from scratch, yet they, too, have taken chemical defense to a highly derived, almost mannered extreme. Skunks stand alone in mammaldom, and though they once were considered a kind of weasel, the world’s 10 or so species have recently been assigned a family plaque of their own, the Mephitidae, from the Latin for “bad odor.” Through anal scent glands just inside the rectum at the base of the tail, skunks generate an extreme version of the familiar spray with which carnivores mark their territory, wildly accentuating the chemical components that we and most other mammals judge to be very bad news. At the heart of skunk spray is a thiol, the signature of nasty environments high in lethal hydrogen sulfide and low in oxygen — places like mines, swamps, and oil and gas wells. “Our nose is able to detect thiols at extremely low levels, parts per billion,” Dr. Wood said. “We needed to stay away from areas with low oxygen, where we could die.” Skunks, he added, “have come along and capitalized on this.” Capitalized and canonized — or maybe cannonized. The skunk’s scent glands have evolved into structures that look like swollen nipples, each able to swivel independently of the other to take perfect aim, and to perfectly calibrated effect (as can be seen in spectacular video on the PBS program “Nature”). To deter a predator chasing behind at an unknown distance, the skunk goes for the atomized mist effect; if the harasser is within view, the skunk may choose a straight stream to the face. Skunks are confident in their repellent prowess, but nowadays their swagger can prove fatal. Researchers suggest that one reason skunks constitute a large proportion of roadkill is that they see cars as another predator in need of a lesson: Come ahead, pal, I’ll just stand here and spray. A good defense means never taking offense. Researchers have been impressed by the ardor with which monkeys in the field prospect for novel forms of insect repellent, and their willingness to withstand extremely irritating chemicals for the sake of rebuffing the bloodsuckers that plague them. “Capuchin monkeys are notoriously generalist and destructive in their sampling,” said Jessica Lynch Alfaro, the associate director of the Institute for Society and Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles . “They break everything open, and you have to watch out or they’ll drop branches on your head.” Every so often, they come upon a product that looks or smells promising, at which point they crack it open and start anointing themselves. They tear up chili peppers to release the capsaicin, rip apart millipedes to procure a few droplets of searing benzoquinones. If they find a nest of carpenter ants, pay dirt! The monkeys plop down on top and roll every which way, to soak up the ants’ formidable formic acid supply. Such treatments are clearly painful. “Capuchin monkeys get very agitated when they’re anointing themselves,” said Dr. Lynch Alfaro, who with colleagues recently reviewed capuchin anointing behavior for The American Journal of Primatology . “But they’re keeping off parasites, and they seem to have a high threshold for pain.” Besides, it’s not all pain and suffering. Anointing is a supremely social affair, and one rubbing monkey soon attracts others. “They get into such a frenzy that the social order breaks down; everyone is anointing with everyone else,” Dr. Lynch Alfaro said. “It’s like a big, wild party.” They may be black and blue, but the magic potion is spread all over.

Mammal
Rat
Chemicals
Poison
Research
Science and Technology


Former U.S. Occupation Official Pleads Guilty in Bribery Case

Abstract: WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 - A former American government official in Iraq who is at the center of a bribery and corruption investigation pleaded guilty to five counts in federal court here on Thursday, but not before asserting that an American businessman who has also been arrested had set the scandal in motion. The former official, Robert J. Stein Jr., pleaded guilty in quick succession to counts of conspiracy, bribery, money laundering, unlawful possession of machine guns and being a felon in possession of a firearm. Mr. Stein admitted stealing at least $2 million in cash and taking enormous bribes from the businessman, Philip H. Bloom, in 2003 and 2004 in exchange for accepting rigged bids on construction contracts that Mr. Bloom was guaranteed to win. Reference was made to Mr. Bloom in the courtroom only as co-conspirator No. 6, but his identity was clear from the context. Two senior Army officers who were also government officials in Iraq and are accused as conspirators have been arrested, and more arrests are expected. When the judge asked Mr. Stein who had been in charge of the apparent theft and bribery ring within the American-led occupation, he replied, "I'd have to say myself, yes, ma'am." But asked how the scheme had begun, Mr. Stein said, referring to Mr. Bloom, "He approached us." As to how the other conspirators had become involved, Mr. Stein said, "They just came into play, your honor." Mr. Stein, who was arrested on Nov. 14, is the first to enter a plea in the case, and his words are certain to resonate as other defendants work their way through the courts. Wearing white sneakers, an orange jumpsuit and wire-rimmed glasses on Thursday, he seemed at times to be disconnected from his surroundings, appearing to study the carpet or the big semicircular overhead lights as Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly at the United States District Court for the District of Columbia read the extensive and sometimes lurid charges against him. In response to a question from the judge, Mr. Stein said he was taking medications to control his emotions, as he had at times in the past. But when the judge asked if Mr. Stein was aware of what was taking place at the plea hearing, he answered firmly into a microphone, "I know exactly what I'm doing, your honor." Mr. Stein, who made his plea with the understanding that he would cooperate with prosecutors, could receive up to 30 years in prison, according to a statement by the Justice Department. The judge set his sentencing hearing for May 12.


Hillary Clinton Supporters Push to Define Donald Trump Early

Abstract: Latest Line of Attack: Defining Trump’s ‘Soul’ To voters in New Hampshire, the video of Donald J. Trump seemingly mocking a reporter with a disability was well known by the time the Feb. 9 primary arrived. The “super PAC” backing Hillary Clinton is banking that it will be unfamiliar and off-putting to a general election audience in several swing states, and it is using the video in an ad called “Grace.” THE MESSAGE The ad tells the story not through news reports, but through the eyes of a family with a disabled daughter. Pictures of Grace, a girl born with spina bifida, show her at birth and through childhood, smiling broadly in her wheelchair. As her parents, notably from Ohio, a major swing state, tell the story of her early life, the ad segues to video of Mr. Trump flailing his arms before cutting to a photo showing the reporter he was criticizing at the time, Serge Kovaleski of The New York Times, who has a condition that limits the functioning of his joints. “When I saw Donald Trump mock someone with a disability, it showed me his soul,” Grace’s father says in the ad. “It showed me his heart. And I didn’t like what I saw.” THE IMPACT The ad feels a little over-focus-grouped, as variations of the phrase “mocked a person with a disability” come four times in about 30 seconds. But the ad was also deemed highly effective when it was tested before various audiences. THE TAKEAWAY Priorities USA, the super PAC that placed the ad, was obviously confident that it would resonate, putting $4.5 million behind it for its first week on air. The group seems determined to define Mr. Trump early and often, much as the Obama campaign did to Mitt Romney in the summer of 2012. What remains to be seen is whether the group can have an actual impact on Mr. Trump; similar lines of attack fell flat during the Republican primary. Air Support While Mr. Trump eschewed super PACs and, to a lesser extent, television advertising during the Republican primary, he is now getting the support of both. At least four super PACs have sprung up to support him, and one, Rebuilding America Now PAC, has already gone on air with an ad linking Mrs. Clinton’s email scandal to her husband’s impeachment in the 1990s. The group, which recently hired Alex Castellanos, a Republican ad maker who was once in the “Stop Trump” movement, aims to counter Priorities USA throughout the election. Sight Gag Politics is often overloaded with warlike rhetoric — “launched an attack,” “battleground states” — so it’s unsurprising when political ads reach for warlike imagery. The latest example: Eric Greitens, a former Navy SEAL running for governor of Missouri, saying he will take “dead aim at politics as usual,” literally takes aim with an assault rifle and fires off live rounds into an empty field, somehow creating a billowing explosion. Hold the Onion The advertising battle between Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Katie McGinty, his Democratic challenger, is getting cheesy. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce ran an ad for Mr. Toomey featuring a faux focus group’s reaction to the choice between two cheesesteak toppings: Cheez Whiz, the preferred sauce of Philadelphians, or Silly String. The group was then asked to choose between a sandwich with ham and one with a live hamster, before it was offered a choice between the “bipartisan” Mr. Toomey and the “polarizing” Ms. McGinty. Numbers $2.4 million total ad spending on the Democratic presidential primary in California. $117 million total spending on the nationwide Democratic race. NICK CORASANITI

Hillary Clinton
Donald Trump
PACs
Priorities USA
Rebuilding America Now
2016 Presidential Election
Campaign advertising


Supreme Court Won’t Intervene in North Carolina Election Fight

Abstract: RALEIGH, N.C. — The United States Supreme Court declined late Friday to stay a lower court ruling that has forced North Carolina’s Republican-dominated legislature to redraw its congressional electoral maps on the grounds that the original maps amounted to racial gerrymandering. As a result, the state must now follow a contingency plan, also devised by Republican lawmakers, that tries to comply with the lower court’s ruling by making significant changes to the boundaries of the some of the state’s 13 congressional districts. The changes take effect less than one month before the originally scheduled March 15 primary, which has forced the legislature to set up a second election dedicated exclusively to the congressional primaries, which will now take place June 7. The contingency plan was approved by the state legislature on Friday, hours before the Supreme Court announced that it had rejected North Carolina Republicans’ application for a stay. But the approval of the contingency plan came over the strenuous objection of Democrats, who claimed that the new congressional maps were hyperpartisan — giving Republicans 10 safe districts to the Democrats’ three — and still failed to protect black voters’ interests. Such resistance was to be expected in this deeply divided swing state, where other battles over election laws can potentially affect presidential elections. Since Republicans took control of the legislature five years ago, Democrats and their allies have complained that Republicans have been illegally changing the rules of the voting game and effectively suppressing minority voting power. They have mounted numerous legal challenges, which Republicans have largely dismissed as desperate attempts by Democrats to regain their faltering political strength. But North Carolina now faces a chaotic situation just when some voters have already begun sending in absentee ballots under the old congressional districting scheme. Under the new plan, two members of Congress, Representatives George Holding, a Republican from Raleigh, and Alma Adams, a Democrat from Greensboro, will be drawn into new districts. Barring some other intervention by the courts, a congressional primary will take place on June 7, and the previously established March 15 primary date would still go forward for the presidential race and other contests. And more than 2,000 residents who have already turned in absentee ballots to the state board of elections will not have their votes counted in the congressional races, although they would be free to vote again in the June 7 race. No one is quite sure where this all ends up. “If you figure this out let me know,” said Carter Wrenn, a longtime Republican operative who is serving as the campaign consultant for Mr. Holding. “Whenever you mix politicians and judges,” Mr. Wrenn added, “you get a mess.” Like many recent election law lawsuits here, race was at the heart of the legal challenge to the 2011 congressional map that was drawn up by Republicans after the 2010 census. The plaintiffs, residents of North Carolina, brought the lawsuit in 2013, alleging that congressional Districts One and 12 had been drawn up in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. They argued that lawmakers, in creating the 2011 boundaries, used the Voting Rights Act as a pretext to pack black voters into the two districts, thus making surrounding districts safer for Republicans. Republicans said they were making a good-faith effort to comply with the law. But in its Feb. 5 ruling, a three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina sided with the plaintiffs, finding “strong evidence that race was the only nonnegotiable criterion and that traditional redistricting principles were subordinated to race.” The court ordered the legislature to redraw the maps, and this week, lawmakers set about their work in a special session. But this time, there would be a key difference: Race would not be factored into the mapmaking at all. “Race was not considered, and is not present in these reports,” State Representative David R. Lewis, a Republican and co-chairman of the redistricting committee, told his colleagues on the House floor Friday. But Democrats argued that Republicans erred in ignoring race altogether. Representative G. K. Butterfield, an African-American, wrote to state legislative leaders, saying that the court “stated that race should not be the predominant factor in drawing the districts. However, the court did not say that race should not be a factor at all.” Mr. Butterfield added that drawing districts that “do not protect the voting interest of African-American communities” was a violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In an interview Friday, Mr. Butterfield said the proposed new boundaries for his district, which covers most of urban Durham County, had not changed so much that he would have to seriously alter his election strategy. Under the proposal, the district would still have a large number of African-American voters. House Democrats on Friday also assailed Republicans for stating that the new map was drawn up to ensure that they would enjoy a partisan advantage. While Democrats also acknowledged that their party had engaged in its share of partisan gerrymandering in the many decades that it controlled the legislature, they argued that Democrats did not engage in the practice to the same degree. State Senator Josh Stein, a Democratic candidate for attorney general, noted that North Carolina was the state that President Obama most narrowly won in 2008 and most narrowly lost in 2012. “North Carolina is a 50-50 state, and yet this map all but guarantees 10 out of our 13 congressional delegations will be Republican,” he said. “We live in North Carolina, not North Korea. The voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around.” Some Democrats were also hoping that the three-judge panel of the lower court would now reject the altered map on the grounds that it violated the Voting Rights Act. Republican legislators had held out hope on Friday that the Supreme Court would issue a stay. But a statement released by the justices late Friday tersely advised that the state’s application for a stay had been denied. Richard L. Hasen, a voting-rights expert and professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, wrote on his blog Friday that it was “quite possible that there could be a Voting Rights Act violation now.” “The problem with the last plan was that North Carolina took race too much into account. But now perhaps N.C. did not take race enough into account to assure that the districts comply with Section 2 of the Act, which requires the creation of minority opportunity districts under certain circumstances,” he wrote. Mr. Hasen also raised the possibility that the new plan could be challenged as a “partisan gerrymander,” though he said it was unclear if the Supreme Court would be open to such an argument. “What a mess in North Carolina,” he wrote.

North Carolina
gerrymandering
Voting Rights Act
Supreme Court,SCOTUS
Redistricting and Reapportionment
Black People,African-Americans
House races
Congressional elections
Voter registration
George Kenneth Butterfield Jr


Florida Farmworkers Win Pay Increase

Abstract: IMMOKALEE, Fla. — After fighting for more than a decade for better wages, a group of Florida farmworkers has hashed out the final piece of an extraordinary agreement with local tomato growers and several big-name buyers, including the fast-food giants McDonald’s and Burger King, that will pay the pickers roughly a penny more for every pound of fruit they harvest. Farm laborers are among the lowest-paid workers in the United States, and the agreement could add thousands of dollars to their income. Though the hamburger chains and others agreed to the increase years ago, the money they have been paying — an estimated $2 million now held in an escrow account — could not be distributed to tomato pickers until the state’s largest trade association, which acts as a middleman, agreed to lift a ban preventing their farms from passing along the extra wages. That happened in November, when the farmworkers’ group, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, a trade association, completed details of a code of conduct that included not only the wage improvement but also guarantees of increased workplace protections — like minimum-wage guarantees and a zero tolerance policy on forced and child labor — for the laborers. Some labor experts said the agreement could set a precedent for improving working conditions and pay in other parts of the agriculture and food industries, nationally and worldwide. “This can and will be extended to other areas of the agricultural industry,” said Chris Tilly, director of the U.C.L.A. Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, who said this type of agreement was uncommon. “There are potentially interesting implications for supply chains that reach outside this country.” Tomatoes are a $1.3 billion industry in the United States, and Florida farmers lead the nation, producing $520 million worth of the crop, followed by California. Workers earn, on average, an estimated $10,000 to $12,000 a year. The new agreement could increase earnings to about $17,000 if new buyers come to the table. At least nine major buyers — including the Whole Foods Market supermarket chain, as well as McDonald’s and Burger King — have been paying the penny-per-pound price increase. Still, some in the industry worry, the unusual agreement could be undermined if enough buyers turn to competitors in California and Mexico willing to sell tomatoes at a cheaper price. “We hope that socially responsible businesses will purchase tomatoes from our growers and not cheaper tomatoes from Mexican farm competitors,” said Reggie Brown, executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, a trade association that represents 80 percent of the state’s tomato farmers. “Everybody in the system has to be invested for it to work.” Whole Foods supported the coalition because helping laborers earn a better wage was in line with the company’s core values and did not cost much, said Karen Christensen, a regional vice president. “The impact of the penny per pound is a minimal addition to our purchase,” Ms. Christensen said. “We have not seen a noticeable impact on the consumer.” Maisie Greenawalt, vice president of the catering company Bon Appétit, which serves hundreds of colleges in the United States, said her company was paying more for tomatoes because it had a policy to work with agricultural companies that follow ethical practices. “Having a food system that keeps prices artificially low by enslaving workers is not acceptable,” Ms. Greenawalt said. But not everyone is on board. Maria Brous, a spokeswoman for Publix Super Markets, based in Lakeland, Fla., said the extra money farmworkers want to be paid should come from the growers who employ them. Regardless, Ms. Brous added, whatever the tomatoes cost, “customers will make their own purchasing decisions.” The Immokalee agreement is a result of a 15-year campaign for better pay and working conditions for the roughly 33,000 tomato pickers in the state. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers represents about 4,000 of those workers, but the agreement will cover all tomato pickers who work for growers that are members of the trade association, as well as those employed by independent farms participating in the agreement. The agreement between laborers, growers and buyers is unique because it resembles a legally binding contract that includes an accountability mechanism to ensure that tomato pickers will be treated and paid fairly, said Prof. Caroline Bettinger-Lopez, director of the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law. Cruz Salucio, a member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, said the agreement had created a new feeling of respect between workers and growers. “In the past, the companies would shift blame to the contractors and wipe their hands clean of any complaints of abuse,” Mr. Salucio said. “With these agreements, the growers have to work with us, and the workers can report abuses without fearing reprisals.” Immokalee, about 30 miles southeast of Fort Myers, has been drawing workers, many of them from Latin America, since the 1950s. The workers gather nearly every morning before dawn in a dusty parking lot in front of the La Fiesta No. 3 market waiting to board the buses that will ferry them to the fields. Leonel Perez, a 25-year-old from Guatemala, has worked on farms since 2005, often pulling 16-hour days for relatively little pay. For the last four years he has also worked with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to organize his peers. “Even though it’s a small increase, we see that they’re treating us fairly,” Mr. Perez said. “Now we’re working comfortably, and contractors can’t abuse their power or reprimand us unfairly.”

Florida
Tomatoes
Coalition of Immokalee Workers
Agriculture
Farmers
Labor and Jobs
Wages and Salaries


Councilwoman’s Strategy for Open Government: Sue and Sue Again

Abstract: HOBOKEN, N.J. Beth Mason filed her first lawsuit against the city in March 2004. She filed her second just six months later. Then she filed another, and another, and four more after that. Even after winning a seat on the City Council here in May 2007, Ms. Mason, 47, has continued to press her cases, leading other officials here to complain that she is a one-woman litigation machine, costing the city time and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Ms. Mason, a management consultant, contends that the suits she filed before her election are simply intended to better understand how this city on the Hudson River is spending its $79 million budget. Steven W. Kleinman, the city’s corporation counsel, says Ms. Mason has made no fewer than 125 requests for records in 12 months under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act, and has cost the city about $200,000 in legal fees. He says that one request seeking every permit granted by the city’s Construction Office would have resulted in the production of about 70,000 documents. The request was denied. “She has an addiction to lawsuits,” Mayor David Roberts said in a recent interview. “Beth can’t stop suing — she loves it.” A spokesman for the city said that an appeals court’s decision in January compared Ms. Mason’s actions to “a fishing expedition.” But the way Ms. Mason, a Democrat, sees it, she is simply trying to get answers from a hidebound and historically corrupt city that drags its feet when asked to provide answers. To that end, Ms. Mason — the president of the New Jersey Foundation for Open Government, an advocacy group — tapes meetings of the Board of Education and posts documents like the city budget on her Web sites, masoncitycouncil.org and wethepeoplereports.com . “We know corruption sits in these hidden places,” said Ms. Mason, adding that officials should be able to produce whatever information she asks for. “If I ask for all of City Hall, what’s the problem?” she said. Both the American Civil Liberties Union and the New Jersey Press Association have filed briefs on her behalf, and supporters say that Ms. Mason’s legal odysseys could lead to significant changes in the state’s public records laws. An affable pit bull, she tears into her targets with a smile. After a Supreme Court hearing on a records request case last Wednesday, she approached one opponent, Assistant Attorney General Lewis Scheindlin, with a grin and a handshake. “You’re a good man,” she told him. Mayor Roberts, who appointed Ms. Mason to the Planning Board in 2001, acknowledged that she was right in at least one instance: When Ms. Mason requested the city’s general ledger (essentially all of its financial transactions) in 2004, she received a letter from the business administrator explaining that “corrections” needed to be made before the information was released. “When you throw enough stuff against the wall, sometimes it sticks,” said Mr. Roberts, adding that the business administrator’s response was a mistake. Ms. Mason has also successfully sued to lower the copying costs that the city charges per page: from 16 to 7 cents. Grudgingly, Mr. Roberts conceded that Ms. Mason’s litigiousness has also done some good, and that whenever “publicity is given that makes the government more transparent, it’s good and it’s positive.” Mr. Kleinman said that she had made the city more careful in its responses. “We’re forced to look at OPRA in a very careful light,” he said of the records act, “because we know if she’s unsatisfied, she’ll sue.” As for the 70,000 construction documents, Ms. Mason said she had a good reason to request them. “The mayor had made statements about how many construction permits had been given during a time frame,” she said. “What, are we supposed to take someone’s word for it?” Last week, Ms. Mason reached a settlement with the school board, in which it acknowledged violating both the Open Records and the Open Public Meetings Acts. So far, she has been successful in two of her eight cases, and has settled parts of others. She got a hearing — and a lot of wary questions — on one of her cases before the state’s highest court last week for arguing that anyone denied records should be given a two-year statute of limitations to sue, instead of the current 45 days. Her lawyer, Jeffrey Kantowitz, also argued that lawyer’s fees should be paid by a municipality if a litigant wins a case. But the seeming skepticism of the justices does not necessarily mean that her days before the court will be over. Before leaving Trenton, Mr. Kantowitz and Mr. Kleinman talked about the possibility of a return trip on another of Ms. Mason’s cases. “We might be back here,” Mr. Kantowitz said. “I have a feeling we will,” Mr. Kleinman replied.

Courts
Hoboken (NJ)
Suits and Litigation
Budgets and Budgeting
United States Politics and Government


Hospital Flooded in Storm to Cut Its Staff by a Third

Abstract: GALVESTON, Tex. — Still struggling to recover from Hurricane Ike , the battered economy of Galveston Island has suffered another severe blow with the decision by the University of Texas to lay off 3,800 people next week from the medical center, the largest employer on the island. “It’s a gut shot,” said Jim Yarbrough, the chief executive of Galveston County. “It has longer term ramifications than Hurricane Ike, for sure.” The university’s board of regents voted unanimously on Wednesday to dismiss the 3,800 people, a third of the work force at the hospital, the University of Texas Medical Branch. The goal is to staunch losses of almost $40 million a month since the hurricane flooded the school’s buildings and shut down most of the John Sealy Hospital, the main hospital of the branch, which has for decades provided care for indigent patients from across the region. The decision will drastically shrink the 435-bed Sealy Hospital and other parts of the regional medical center, which before the storm had one of the best trauma centers in the country, a children’s hospital and a well-regarded burn hospital. The complex is centered on Texas’s oldest medical school and a new national laboratory devoted to finding defenses against biological weapons. But Hurricane Ike flooded many of the medical center’s buildings, causing $710 million in damages. The main hospital’s pharmacy, blood bank, radiological department and kitchens were destroyed. Only the maternity ward is open; the rest of the hospital remains eerily empty. Several regents said the only way to ensure the survival of the medical school and hospital in the long run was to slash the staff now and start rebuilding slowly. But local officials have pointed out that in six months, under the regents’ plan, the island of nearly 60,000 residents will have, at best, only a 200-bed hospital with limited capabilities. They said the loss of so many well-paid jobs would hurt local restaurants, stores and other businesses, many of which are still trying to clean up and reopen after the storm. “To rebuild our economy after Ike was difficult enough, and this just compounds the economic impact,” Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said. Karen H. Sexton, vice president for hospitals and clinics, said the medical center was caught in a trap. It cannot begin to take on patients, open up wings and generate revenue until it repairs critical operations like its blood bank, pharmacy, kitchens and radiology department, but it lacks the millions needed for the repairs, and so far the federal and state governments have not come through with aid. She said the institution hoped someday to return to the size it was before the storm, but she acknowledged the cutbacks might be permanent. “We can’t make any promises,” she said, “because we don’t know what’s going to happen. We are committed to getting back into the health care business. We know we have to be a lot smaller right now.” The hospital was losing money before the storm, she said, in part because the state Legislature in recent years had cut back on paying for charity cases, a major portion of its caseload. It ended its last budget cycle with a $35 million deficit and had planned some cuts. “We expected a tough year, but certainly we didn’t expect Ike,” Ms. Sexton said. In the halls of Sealey hospital, worried nurses and doctors went about their jobs, wondering if they would be out of work next week or working in a much smaller and less prestigious hospital. Some lost their homes in the storm and now faced losing their jobs as well, in the teeth of a national economic recession. “It’s terrible,” said Deborah Warren, a surgical technician who was born at the hospital, went to school there and has worked for the last 13 years in its neonatal unit. “It’s a hard time for the hospital, our city and our state. I’m just curious to know if they can bail out Wall Street, why they cannot bail out U.M.T.B.,” referring to the medical center. Some doctors worried that it would be hard to continue teaching young doctors with a smaller caseload. As a regional magnet for poorer patients, the hospital was a great training ground, presenting its interns and residents with a wide array of cases, diseases and complications. The layoffs will affect hundreds of orderlies, janitors and other menial laborers, hospital officials said. Luz Maria Cisneros, 62, an orderly who was cleaning rooms, said she lost her home in the storm and had been living in a motel with her son and two granddaughters. If she was laid off, she said she would leave the state and start over elsewhere. “I will find some kind of work cleaning houses,” she said. Even those who had learned they would keep their jobs said they knew their departments would shrink. Several pediatric nurses said they had been told their wing would open with only 10 nurses, down from 55. Without an intensive care unit, they could not take any dangerous cases, they said. “It’s not going to be the same, like it was,” said Kathleen Lund, 46, a veteran in the department. “We had a great department. It’s very very sad.” Others at the hospital said they had resigned themselves to the possibility of looking for work. “I guess I will just have to look for another job,” said Beverly Zingrich, 50, an administrative assistant. “I don’t think it’s going to be easy because this area is going to be flooded with people looking for jobs, and a lot of businesses have gone out of business.”

Hospitals
Hurricane Ike
Galveston (Tex)
Medicine and Health
Layoffs and Job Reductions


With a 65, Steele Leads at the Canadian Open

Abstract: Brendan Steele topped the Canadian Open leader board at seven-under-par 65, birdieing five of the first seven holes on his back nine at Glen Abbey in Oakville, Ontario. Matt Kuchar, a two-time winner this year, was a stroke back along with Scott Gardiner and Scott Brown. ■ Gene Sauers mastered a stiff breeze to shoot a three-under 67 for a one-stroke lead after the first round of the Senior British Open in Southport, England. Four players were at 68, among them Bernhard Langer. (AP)

Brendan Steele
Gene Sauers
Golf
Canadian Open Golf


Hindu-Christian Violence Flares in India

Abstract: NEW DELHI — The remote, destitute state of Orissa, marred for years by Hindu-versus-Christian violence, erupted in a retaliatory killing on Monday after the murder of a Hindu leader led a mob to burn small Christian churches, prayer halls and an orphanage that had housed 21 children. The police said a woman’s body, charred beyond recognition, was found inside the church orphanage. The church’s pastor, whom the police did not identify and who was injured in the fire, told the authorities that the body was that of a nun working there. No children were injured. The attack on the orphanage on Monday, in an isolated district called Bargarh, came after the killing Saturday of a Hindu leader who had been associated with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council, and who was leading a drive to wean local villagers from Christianity. Radical Hindu groups like the council are vehemently opposed to conversions to Christianity, which in India tend to focus on traditionally downtrodden lower-caste and indigenous groups, and have lately taken to conducting mass ceremonies to convert them back to Hinduism. The Hindu leader who was killed, Laxmanananda Saraswati, was among five people slain by unidentified armed men who stormed a Hindu school in the nearby district of Kandhamal. The police blamed Maoist insurgents who prevail in the area. Mr. Saraswati’s followers, however, blamed Christians, and called for a statewide strike on Monday. The state government ordered all schools closed. The Press Trust of India reported that Hindu activists, defying an official curfew in the area, paraded through the streets, attacking Christian churches and homes. Fights broke out in Orissa last Christmas Eve, when one person was killed and churches and temples were damaged. In 1999, a Hindu mob burned an Australian missionary, Graham Staines, and his two children while they slept inside their car. A Hindu has been sentenced to life imprisonment in their deaths. Eleven others who had been convicted were freed by an appeals court in 2005 because of insufficient evidence. Mr. Staines ran a hospital and clinics for leprosy patients.

India
Hinduism
Christians and Christianity
Murders and Attempted Murders


Hunting for Answers in Fatal Bronx Shooting

Abstract: The detectives investigating the puzzling killing of a Massachusetts woman in the Bronx on Sunday are working to zero in on the gunman who shot her and her boyfriend as they pulled over on a quiet street with their infant son, the police said on Monday. A day after the woman, Chelsea Frazier, 18, died in the 4 p.m. shooting in the Castle Hill neighborhood, detectives accompanied her injured boyfriend, Carlos Cruz, from a hospital to a Bronx station house, where he tried to provide a description of the assailant, the police said. The couple’s 14-month-old son, Alijah, was not harmed. The shooting occurred on Barrett Avenue, about 100 feet from Torry Avenue, in a secluded neighborhood of newly constructed two-story homes bordered by a park and an inlet, Pugsley Creek, that leads out past Clason Point to the East River. Residents said they were baffled that a family from Massachusetts could wind up in so remote an area and that criminals would strike on such a little-traveled road. According to a law enforcement official, a witness heard shots fired, followed by shouts, and then saw Mr. Cruz chasing an armed man who turned, fired his gun and hopped into a green sport utility vehicle and drove away. The witness saw Mr. Cruz fall down, bleeding, in the street, the official said. “Much of that matches with what the living victim says,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing. “That is what we are working with now.” Mr. Cruz, 36, told investigators and his relatives that he and Ms. Frazier and their son had driven from Southbridge, Mass., for a day of shopping in the Bronx. They also wanted to visit relatives and spend quality time together because their relationship had become distressed. “They were on and off,” said a cousin of Mr. Cruz’s, Jermaine Miller, 35, of Queens. “I believe they were getting back together, and that is why they were here. They were taking an outing and spending time together and stuff, and doing some shopping.” He added, “This is tragic, man.” According to what Mr. Cruz told his relatives — an account he has also given to investigators — he and Ms. Frazier had gotten lost after visiting a few stores, including an Old Navy. The couple were getting hungry, and their infant son was “fussing in the back” of the car, a 2009 Toyota Camry, Mr. Miller said. “So, he pulled over so she can tend to the baby and so she can have a cigarette because she doesn’t smoke in the car with the baby,” said Mr. Miller. An armed man approached and tried to rob them, according to Mr. Miller and an uncle, Harry Miller, 51, who lives close to the site of the shooting. “He thinks maybe somebody followed him from Old Navy,” said Harry Miller, who accompanied Mr. Cruz to the 43rd Precinct station house. Investigators believe that the gunman was standing by the passenger side of the Toyota, the police said, according to an account given by Mr. Cruz. They said they believe that Mr. Cruz was in the passenger seat and Ms. Frazier in the driver’s seat. “He said the guy asked for property, a chain, and then there was a struggle,” said the law enforcement official, citing Mr. Cruz’s account. At one point, the assailant fired a 9-millimeter gun, the police said. Ms. Frazier suffered three injuries: one to her shoulder, one to her back and one, a defensive wound, to her hand, the official said. At least three shell casings were found inside the Toyota, the official said, and three more were outside the car, though the ballistics check is not yet complete. Mr. Cruz was shot in the leg. It was not immediately clear whether the assailant was successful in stealing Mr. Cruz’s chain. It was also unclear what transpired between Mr. Cruz and the assailant before the shooting began. Jermaine Miller said his cousin, a trucker who lives with his grandmother in Southbridge, was wracked with guilt. “He said everything happened so fast,” Mr. Miller said of Mr. Cruz, whom he spoke to from Jacobi Medical Center on Sunday. “If the guy would have just snatched the chain, and if he didn’t grab the gun, things might not have happened that way.” In Southbridge, which is about 60 miles southwest of Boston, those who gathered at Ms. Frazier’s home declined to speak to a reporter. About 5 p.m. on Monday, a car pulled into the driveway of the wood-paneled house. A woman emerged from the car and embraced another woman who was standing outside the home, and both wept.

Massachusetts
Bronx (NYC)
Murders and Attempted Murders


Fitting End to a Tumultuous Season

Abstract: MORGANTOWN, W. Va., Dec. 1 —West Virginia Coach Rich Rodriguez stood before reporters Saturday night with a dazed look and cracked voice. In the aftermath of Pittsburgh’s 13-9 victory against the Mountaineers, the final salvo in a season defined by inexplicable upsets, Rodriguez’s comments provided a fitting description for the college football world. “It was a nightmare,” he said of his team’s squandering the opportunity to play for its first-ever national title. “The whole thing was a nightmare.” The folks who oversee the Bowl Championship Series could be saying the same thing, as losses by No. 1 Missouri and No. 2 West Virginia on Saturday ensure another controversial finish to a college football season. Their losses open the way for Ohio State (11-1) and probably Louisiana State (11-2) to play for the national title. The Buckeyes should be a near consensus No. 1 in the polls, according to the independent B.C.S. analyst Jerry Palm. Palm projected L.S.U. in the No. 2 spot, which is where the controversy comes in. Both of L.S.U.’s losses came after three overtimes, and its 48-7 blowout of Virginia Tech should be the decisive factor in the polls. Virginia Tech (11-2) projects to have a better computer ranking, especially after beating No. 12 Boston College on Saturday. Georgia entered the day No. 4 in the B.C.S. rankings, but Palm said it was unlikely the Bulldogs would move up in the polls because they did not play Saturday and L.S.U. won the Southeastern Conference title game over Tennessee. “Once again, we’re counting on the voters,” Palm said. “Good luck with that. We’ve been through this before, although never quite like this.” In the 100 meetings of the rivalry known as the Backyard Brawl, there has never been a meeting as surprising and relevant nationally as Saturday’s. One week after racking up 624 total yards and 66 points against Connecticut, West Virginia mustered only 183 yards of total offense and 12 first downs. West Virginia played about half of the game without its star player, the junior quarterback and Heisman trophy candidate Pat White. He dislocated the thumb on his right (nonthrowing) hand with a little more than five minutes remaining in the first half. Even at that point, though, West Virginia had not scored. “We picked a bad time to play our worst game offensively in years,” Rodriguez said. White came back for the game’s final two drives with West Virginia trailing, 13-7. But each drive ended with a busted play on fourth down in Pittsburgh territory. Tailback Steve Slaton was stuffed on fourth-and-3, and White overthrew Wes Lyons on a fourth-and-17 desperation heave. The Mountaineers’ players struggled to sum up their emotions. “Not without using a four-letter word,” fullback Owen Schmitt said. There were two chilling signs that the Mountaineers, who were favored by four touchdowns, could lose. The first came last week after that Connecticut game when Huskies Coach Randy Edsall issued this missive. “The only way they lose is if they turn the ball over,” Edsall said. “If you don’t get turnovers on them, ain’t nobody going to beat them.” The Mountaineers lost three fumbles. The most costly came when Vaughn Rivers fumbled the opening kickoff of the second half. That led to Pittsburgh’s only touchdown, a Pat Bostick 1-yard plunge set up by a fake punt on fourth-and-1. “Some days you can’t take back,” West Virginia defensive lineman Johnny Dingle said. “It wasn’t meant to be.” Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese chatted with reporters before the game he issued a warning to anyone expecting a blowout. “U.S.C. lost to Stanford at home,” Tranghese said of this season’s most unexpected result. “I believe anything can happen.” And it did. West Virginia will still head to a B.C.S. bowl, probably the Orange Bowl against Virginia Tech. But this loss will sting in these parts for a long time, especially since Pittsburgh is 75 miles from here and this rivalry is considered one of the most heated in college football. “It’s pretty depressing,” Schmitt said. It is a familiar story line for teams ranked No. 2 in the Associated Press poll this year. Pittsburgh became the sixth unranked team to knock off a team ranked No. 2, a carousel that has helped define this wacky season. The big winner is likely to be L.S.U., which had a giant emotional swing Saturday. The day began with ESPN reports that Coach Les Miles was going to take the Michigan job, reports that Miles rebuffed before and after the Tigers’ game. It ended with L.S.U. as the leader in the clubhouse for a spot across from Ohio State in the national title game. “Ultimately when people sit down and think about it, they will remember L.S.U. beat Virginia Tech, 48-7, back in September,” Palm said, “and that they’re going to vote L.S.U. far enough ahead of Virginia Tech.” In this season where the unexpected became almost expected, the national title game still retains some cache. If L.S.U. does indeed play Ohio State, the game will feature two of college football’s hallmark programs. But L.S.U. is not a shoo-in for that final spot. And if this season has taught us anything, it is that things have rarely fallen into form. Fittingly, there will be suspense until the final minutes of the B.C.S. poll announcement on Sunday night.

Football
Bowl Championship Series
Big East Conference
West Virginia University
College Athletics
Pittsburgh (Pa)


A Busy Romney Sets the Pace

Abstract: LACONIA, N.H. — Mitt Romney is enough of a student of politics to avoid the dreaded moniker of front-runner at this stage of the campaign. But he sure did play the part on Monday, literally jogging from voter to voter over miles of parade routes, getting every last ounce from his well-worn Reeboks. The message seemed to be “I’m energized” as he zipped to and fro with a bedraggled group of photographers and reporters in his wake. There he was, signing the shirt of Bobby Grogis, 11, (“Awesome!” the lad exclaimed) or whipping supporters into a rousing rendition of “Hooray for Romney,” adding, “This is the song they sang during my dad’s campaign, and it worked.” (Mr. Romney’s father, George Romney, was the governor of Michigan and ran for president in 1968.) But it was one hot and sometimes muggy day, and by the time Mr. Romney finished his first parade, in Amherst, his blue Boston Red Sox shirt and brown pants were soaked. “Maybe next time I won’t wear my long underwear,” he joked to his supporters. Not to worry, though. By the time Mr. Romney arrived here in Laconia, he was in a fresh blue shirt and khakis and could pose with confidence beside JoAnn Marchant, who was wearing a tiara and a “Mrs. Woman New Hampshire” sash. As he came to the end of the parade route after 4 p.m., he was even ready for more. “Where’s the next parade?” he asked. But there were no more, so he could go home.

Romney Mitt
Presidential Election of 2012