Players Face Ejection for Helmet-to-Helmet Hits

Abstract: With the N.F.L. focused on concussions and head injuries, officials have been instructed to eject players who deliver flagrant helmet-to-helmet hits, beginning today. In a memo sent yesterday to the league’s 32 teams, the N.F.L.’s head of officiating, Mike Pereira, wrote that “our commissioner and this office remain focused on the safety of our players.” The edict comes during a season when the N.F.L. has put in guidelines for the way teams treat concussions. The long-term effects of repeated concussions have become a particular concern, with recent reports of the struggles of former players who sustained multiple concussions during their careers. The memo also seems to be an acknowledgment that while the league created rules against helmet-to-helmet hits years ago, the size and speed of today’s players make the hits particularly dangerous now, especially for players in vulnerable positions when they are hit. Two weeks ago, San Diego cornerback Drayton Florence was fined $15,000 for a helmet-to-helmet hit that gave Houston quarterback Matt Schaub a concussion. The Texans complained that Florence’s fine was not enough, given the severity of Schaub’s injury. Two players were fined after last weekend’s games for hits on players who the league determined were in defenseless positions. Washington safety LaRon Landry was fined a game check for his helmet-to-helmet hit on Jets quarterback Kellen Clemens, a blow that left a three-inch mark on Clemens’s helmet. Philadelphia defensive tackle LaJuan Ramsey was fined a game check for spearing Dallas running back Julius Jones.

Concussions
National Football League
Football
Fines (Penalties)


South Africa Freezes Tuition Fees After Student Protests

Abstract: JOHANNESBURG — President Jacob G. Zuma agreed on Friday to freeze tuition fees at South Africa ’s public universities, yielding to widening protests by students who streamed into the capital, Pretoria, by the thousands and protested outside his office. In a short televised statement, Mr. Zuma said he had made the decision after meeting with student leaders and top university administrators, but did not elaborate on his thinking. “Government understands the difficulty faced by students from poor households and urges all affected to allow the process to unfold to find long-term solutions in order to ensure access to education by all students,” he said. In the largest protest organized by university students this year, thousands from campuses across the country rallied Friday at the Union Buildings, the seat of power in South Africa , chanting and holding signs demanding a freeze on tuition and criticizing Mr. Zuma’s administration. Most students protested peacefully. But some started fires and tore parts of a fence around the Union Buildings, hurling rocks at riot police officers and demanding that Mr. Zuma address them directly. The police responded by firing stun grenades and using a water cannon to disperse the crowds, and unfurled barbed wire to prevent protesters from moving inside. Students celebrated outside the Union Buildings as they learned about the tuition freeze. “I’m so excited,” said Nonsikelelo Nako, 24, a student from the University of South Africa who participated in the march. “We’ve been crying for this. Our struggle at the end of the day became a new freedom for us.” Protests have erupted across many of South Africa’s public universities this year, with anger focusing on the deep-rooted economic and racial cleavages remaining a generation after the end of apartheid. Video After meeting with student leaders and university administrators, President Jacob G. Zuma of South Africa said that there would be no tuition increase for 2016. But in recent days, the protests have spread outside the campuses, as students have leveled their ire directly at the government. Students and police officers clashed outside the Parliament building in Cape Town , and students marched on Wednesday to the headquarters here of the African National Congress, the liberation movement that has governed the country since the end of apartheid in 1994. Ramabina Mahapa, 23, president of the University of Cape Town’s student government, said he and others had initially taken their demands about freezing fees to university administrators. “We wanted them to put pressure on government,” said Mr. Mahapa before he was scheduled to join a student delegation to meet Mr. Zuma. “Then we quickly realized that their hands were tied and that in fact they were to a certain extent sympathetic towards us. Then our efforts changed and were now directed towards government.” Clashes between the police and some students continued even after Mr. Zuma made his announcement, suggesting lingering anger at the government. The protest in the last few days widened to include students who had not participated in previous demonstrations. Thando Khumalo, 25, a communications major at the University of Johannesburg, said she first became involved on Wednesday. Ms. Khumalo said she grew angry last week as discussions over the tuition increases were going nowhere. Her parents, who work as teachers, have paid her fees but would struggle to put her younger brother through college, she said. “That’s when I realized we’re bring robbed here,” Ms. Kkumalo said after fleeing from the police’s stun guns and water cannon. “That’s when I realized I needed to be part of this. “People are struggling to pay for higher education in South Africa,” she added. “It’s become a commodity where only the elites are able to access something that’s able to move us from — let’s say if you come from the middle class — move you up higher so that you can do well for your family.” Image Officers used stun grenades, a water cannon and rubber bullets to disperse the demonstrators outside the Union Buildings. Credit Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters Referring to the post-apartheid nation of opportunity and equality that the African National Congress had pledged to create, she said, “Why are we still struggling after we were promised so much in 1994?” Though many South African blacks share deep dissatisfaction with the governing party, there have been few signs so far that the student protests are drawing wide, active support. Unions have expressed solidarity but have yet to offer assistance. Neither have the students received support yet from the vast majority of poor blacks who remain the A.N.C.’s backbone of support. The A.N.C. and the country’s two main opposition parties have tried to jump onto the protest movement. But students firmly rejected the overtures. After meeting with students on Wednesday, Gwede Mantashe, the group’s secretary general, urged party members to join the march in Pretoria on Thursday. “It should not be seen as a march that is against the A.N.C.,” Mr. Mantashe said. But because the organization has nearly single-handedly shaped post-apartheid South Africa, the march on Friday and the yearlong campus protests have amounted to an indictment of it. The A.N.C., especially under Mr. Zuma, has come to be seen as a corrupt political machine more interested in enriching its members than in lifting up the poor blacks who supported it before and after apartheid. Though the party’s national standing remains unchallenged, its support has been declining. Party leaders have publicly expressed fears that the A.N.C. might suffer significant losses in next year’s elections in metropolitan areas, home to the kind of educated, middle-class blacks that have been leaving the party. Universities, which say they are underfunded by the government, had proposed significant increases. The University of the Witwatersrand, a flash point of the demonstrations, had planned a 10.5 percent increase in tuition for next year. In 2015, tuition at the university ranged from $2,400 to $3,500 for a full year at the undergraduate level. Early this week, Blade Nzimande, the minister of higher education, offered to cap increases for 2016 at 6 percent. But students insisted on no increase.

South Africa
College
Civil Unrest
Tuition payments
Jacob G Zuma


Unearthing War’s Horrors Years Later in South Korea

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 2 — Shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, Kim Man-sik, a military police sergeant, received an urgent radio message from the South Korean Army’s Counterintelligence Corps: Go to local police stations, take custody of scores of Communist suspects held there and execute them. Mr. Kim complied. What he did and saw in those days is etched permanently in his mind. “They were all tied together with military communications wire,” said Mr. Kim, now 81. “So when we opened fire, they all pulled at each other to try to escape. The wire cut into their wrists. Blood was splattered all over their white clothes.” That Mr. Kim’s story has emerged after half a century is a testament to this nation’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, modeled after the South African group set up in the 1990s to expose crimes and injustices committed during the apartheid era. Unlike the situation in South Africa, where the truth commission started work soon after the collapse of the apartheid government, South Korea’s commission was not created for decades. During most of that time, the country was ruled by anti-Communist authoritarian governments that wanted to keep buried the history of violence against people who had been accused of being Communists. It was not until after President Roh Moo-hyun was elected that the country created the commission in 2005, starting a nationwide investigation to uncover the history of atrocities by each Korea. Handicapped by a budget considered too small for such a vast task, the commission’s work has been slow. Beyond that, it can neither force people to testify nor offer immunity for testimony, so few veterans have been willing to come forward. Some victims have stayed away as well, unwilling to open old wounds between neighbors caught up in the ideological struggle decades ago. Still, the commission has made progress in confirming long-suppressed stories of mass executions and in recovering the remains of victims. South Korean troops executed tens of thousands of unarmed civilians and prisoners as they retreated in advance of the North Korean invaders during the war, according to historians. The victims were often accused of being Communist sympathizers or collaborators. The commission’s investigators have discovered the remains of hundreds of people — including women and children — who were killed without trial. They have also identified 1,222 probable instances of mass killings during the war. The cases include 215 episodes in which survivors say American warplanes and ground troops killed unarmed civilians. On Saturday, Lt. Col. Almarah Belk, a Pentagon spokeswoman in Washington, said she did not “have any information on investigations into new findings as it relates to deaths of Koreans during the Korean war by U.S. military action.” In 2001, the Pentagon acknowledged that American soldiers shot and killed unarmed civilians near the South Korean hamlet of No Gun Ri in 1950, but said the deaths were a result of confusion, and even fear. South Korean investigators in July began digging at 4 of 160 sites believed to have been used for mass burials, places that were off limits under the country’s authoritarian rulers. They have unearthed the remains of 400 people. Skeletons were found stacked on one another, with bullet holes in the skulls and hands still tied by rusting steel wire. The remains confirmed witness accounts that the police often made victims crouch at the edge of a trench, their hands tied behind their backs, before shooting them in the head and pushing them in, said Park Sun-joo, who leads the excavation team. “The fact that these bones have remained abandoned so long and so close to where we live means that our society is still at its barbarian stage,” said Kim Dong-choon, a commission member. At one burial site, in Cheongwon, in central South Korea, 110 bodies have been found. “I think they killed up to 7,000 people there,” said Park Jong-gil, one of the commission’s witnesses who said he saw the killings at Cheongwon as a teenager. “Every day for seven or eight days, I saw four trucks in the morning and three trucks in the afternoon coming loaded with people.” In one of its strongest rulings so far, the commission said in July that killings in the village of Hampyong, in the country’s southwest, were “a crime against humanity.” Chung Nam-sook, 80, one of the witnesses who spoke to commission investigators, said in a later interview that in December 1950, soldiers of the South Korean 11th Army Division stormed the village to hunt Communist guerrillas but instead attacked innocent villagers gathered in a field. “They told us to light our cigarettes,” said Mr. Chung, who lived there. “Then they began shooting their rifles and machine guns. After a while, an officer called out, ‘Any of you who are still alive can stand up and go home now.’ Those who did were shot again.” Mr. Chung, who was shot seven times, survived by pretending to be dead under the heap of bodies. The commission’s work showed that the war was particularly calamitous for civilians because the rival armies swept up and down the peninsula, with each side trying to determine who was on whose side. In one 1950 atrocity, according to evidence presented to the commission, South Korean police officers intent on ferreting out Communists disguised themselves as a North Korean unit before entering villages around Naju, near Hampyong. When people welcomed them with Communist flags, they killed 97, the commission said. As their town changed hands between the rival armies, historians said, villagers who had lost family members were quick to settle scores. More than 50 years later, families still hold grudges. Despite the successes in uncovering mass killings, some victims and their relatives say they feel cheated because the commission was not granted the right to prosecute those who committed atrocities. Its mandate is to uncover the truth for the record, recommend corrections to textbooks and other records and aid reconciliation through compensation or services for the victims. Ja Yong-soo’s father was among 218 victims of what the commission finally ruled last month to have been “unlawful killings” by Korean marines on the southern island of Cheju in 1950. After being repeatedly ignored by previous governments, Mr. Ja and other victims’ relatives were rewarded last month when the commission finally ruled the killings unlawful. But any move to enact a special law to prosecute these atrocities is likely to set off protests by Korean conservatives. (The law would be needed because the statute of limitations has run out.) “Many of those human butchers and their children are now rich and powerful,” Mr. Ja, 65, said. “What am I going to say when I die and meet my father in the heaven and he asks, ‘My son, what have you done to restore my honor?’” Mr. Kim, the former soldier, admitted that he was in charge of executing 170 people at Hoengsong and Wonju around June 28, 1950. He said some of those killed, the “Class A” group of active Communists, were “enemies” who had attacked police stations. “But those categorized as Class B and C were innocent peasants who were lured by the Communists’ promise to give them free land,” he said. “Till today, I feel guilty for killing them,” he said. “I bow my head in contrition.”

Korean War
Police
Seoul (South Korea)
United States Armament and Defense


Prince Mohammed bin Saud, Former Saudi Defense Chief, Dies at 78

Abstract: RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Prince Mohammed bin Saud, a former Saudi defense minister, died on Sunday. He was 78. The Saudi Press Agency announced his death but gave no other details. Prince Mohammed was not in line for the Saudi throne but wielded influence as part of a council of royal family members that helps select the heirs to rule the country. He served as defense minister in the early 1960s and managed to remain an important political figure after his father, King Saud, was forced from the throne in 1964. He was also governor of Al Bahah Province in southwestern Saudi Arabia from 1986 to 2010. His death came less than a month after the death of Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, the Saudi interior minister.

Mohammed bin Saud
Saudi Arabia
Deaths (Obituaries)


Suspended Again, Hill Is Cut by Giants

Abstract: Will Hill, an athletically gifted safety for the Giants who has failed three drug tests in three seasons, was released by the team Monday. Hill had been expected to add depth at safety, especially since starting free safety Stevie Brown is recovering from reconstructive knee surgery. But Friday, the N.F.L. announced that Hill would be suspended for the first six games of the season. The Giants, who assisted Hill with rehabilitation programs and counseling during and after his suspensions in previous seasons, decided not to wait for Hill to be reinstated. Hill, 23, has the talent to eventually be a starter in the league. This season, he was going to at least be a valuable option should the team want to employ a three-safety alignment. Hill played in 24 games in the last two seasons and made 20 starts. He had 100 tackles (87 solo), two interceptions and two fumble recoveries, and he was credited with five pass breakups and three forced fumbles. A high school all-American growing up in East Orange, N.J., Hill was signed as a free agent in 2012 after he played three seasons at Florida. Hill’s departure may require the Giants to add another veteran safety before the season begins. For now, they will most likely wait and see how Brown’s comeback progresses. Fortunately for the Giants, safety is one of the positions the team bolstered in the off-season. In addition to Brown, who missed all of 2013 because of a tear of an anterior cruciate ligament sustained last August, the Giants have Antrel Rolle; Quintin Demps, who was signed as a free agent; and the recent draft picks Nat Berhe and Cooper Taylor.


Israel to Allow Building Materials Into Gaza

Abstract: JERUSALEM — Under pressure from the United Nations amid a mounting economic and humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip , Israel has agreed to restart the transfer of construction materials to Gaza on Tuesday after an eight-week hiatus. But the building supplies will be allowed in only for United Nations projects, which employ a fraction of the thousands of construction workers who have been idled, and negotiations to resolve Gaza’s fuel shortage have not yielded significant results. “We are increasingly concerned about the situation in Gaza deteriorating,” Robert H. Serry, the United Nations’ special envoy for the Middle East peace process, said in an interview. Mr. Serry, who worked with Israeli officials to resume the import of construction materials, acknowledged that “it is only one part of the constraints we are facing in Gaza.” He added, “Without also addressing the political underlying issues, everything we’re doing in Gaza is tenuous.” Gaza, home to 1.7 million Palestinians and controlled since 2007 by the militant Islamic Hamas movement, has been struggling since the summer to cope with the current Egyptian government’s closing of hundreds of smuggling tunnels through which the strip received steel, gravel and cheap diesel fuel, as well as consumer products. The situation worsened on Nov. 1, when Hamas shut down Gaza’s lone power plant because of a shortage of electricity and cheap fuel from Egypt, stretching blackouts up to 18 hours a day and causing raw sewage to flood some streets because pumping stations could not operate. Late last month, Turkey donated about $850,000 in fuel, which is being used for 100 critical spots, including pumping stations, schools and hospitals. But Palestinian and United Nations officials said that the fuel was not enough to address the broader energy problems plaguing daily life, and that in any case it would run out by February. Mr. Serry’s office estimated that Gaza needed an infusion of $6 million to $8 million a month to address the fuel shortage. Qatar has expressed willingness to donate the money, but political friction between Gaza and the Palestinian Authority — which is dominated by Hamas’s political rival, Fatah — over taxes and other matters concerning the fuel’s importation have stymied the deal. On Sunday, despite the cold and rain, the Hamas power authority asked residents not to turn on their heaters to conserve electricity. Israel suspended delivery of construction materials in mid-October after discovering a 1.5-mile tunnel from Gaza into its territory that it feared would be used to kidnap or attack Israelis. Guy Inbar, a spokesman for the Israeli agency that coordinates interaction with the Palestinian territories, said the transfers would resume on Tuesday with a new “supervision and control mechanism” to ensure the materials would be used only for United Nations building projects. Gisha, an Israeli organization that promotes access to Gaza, said Israel began allowing some construction materials in three years ago for international projects, and last December, after the cease-fire agreement that ended eight days of cross-border violence, permitted 20 truckloads of gravel daily for the private sector. In September, after Egypt’s crackdown on the tunnels, Israel increased the allowance to 70 truckloads daily and added cement deliveries. “The international community is appropriately worried about Gaza’s humanitarian situation, but Gaza’s dependence on foreign aid stems in large part from Israeli restrictions on economic development,” said Gisha’s director, Sari Bashi. “If people in Gaza were permitted to maintain and grow their economy, they would need far less humanitarian assistance.” Nabil Abu Muaileq, head of the contractors’ union in Gaza, said that there were $200 million in projects currently idle, leaving 30,000 people who work directly on the buildings and an additional 40,000 carpenters, plumbers, blacksmiths and others connected to construction without income. He estimated that based on the limited imports Israel now plans to allow, 3,500 of them would return to work. “The ordeal is huge, and its disastrous effects will appear soon,” Mr. Abu Muaileq warned. “This will not resolve any crisis, but we hope it paves the way for a full lifting of restrictions.”

Israel
Gaza Strip
Palestinians
Hamas
Palestinian Authority
UN


Senate to Debate 3-Year Delay for Rail Safety System

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Two months after the high-speed derailment of an Amtrak train killed eight people and injured hundreds more in Philadelphia, a Senate transportation bill headed for debate this week calls for a three-year delay of the deadline for installing a rail safety system that experts say would have almost certainly prevented the Pennsylvania accident. Lawmakers from the Northeast and train safety experts expressed outrage over the provision, which is included in the 1,000-page legislation to finance highway and transit projects for the next three years. Several lawmakers vowed to fight the extension of the deadline to install the safety system, called positive train control, beyond December 2015. “It should be done immediately. There shouldn’t be an extension,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York. “Given the high number of accidents, and given the fact that P.T.C. is really effective, they should stick with 2015.” Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said he was “deeply disturbed about yet another delay in a potential safety measure” until December 2018 and said the provision in the transportation bill “essentially makes the deadline a mirage.” In 2008, after decades of delay, lawmakers gave railroad companies, including Amtrak, seven years to complete installation of the safety system, which monitors the speed of trains and automatically slows them down if they approach curves at dangerously high speeds. The Amtrak train that derailed in Pennsylvania was going 106 miles an hour, more than twice the speed limit, when it careened off the tracks. Since the accident, Amtrak has said it will meet the existing deadline for installing and activating the safety systems in the busy Northeast Corridor. Craig S. Schulz, a spokesman for the railroad, said Thursday that Amtrak “remains committed” to making good on that promise. But many railroads across the country still have not installed and activated the necessary equipment and would face federal fines and other mandates if they continued operating past Dec. 31 without it. The transportation spending measure in the Senate would require railroads to submit plans to the secretary of transportation that include installation of positive train control by the end of 2018. The willingness to give railroads more time is especially galling to lawmakers from the Northeast, where the Pennsylvania accident highlighted the dangers to millions of riders in the most heavily traveled train corridor in the nation. Mark V. Rosenker, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board , which investigates train accidents, said he was outraged by the provision and blamed railroads’ lobbyists for pressuring lawmakers to include it. “Obviously, the railroad lobbyists have gotten to Congress,” Mr. Rosenker said. “We just had a horrible accident. People died and people ended up becoming paralyzed when that technology was available to the railroad. I am very disappointed.” Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, also commented on the timing of the proposal. “The idea that a provision to delay positive train control was slipped into this bill just a short time after the Amtrak 188 derailment is shocking and wrong,” he said. “Delaying P.T.C. is a bad idea, and this provision should be stripped out immediately.” Officials at the Transportation Department are continuing to insist that railroads meet the current end-of-the-year deadline. And at the White House, the press secretary, Josh Earnest, spoke of concerns “about some of the safety provisions that are included in the bill” and said the administration would take a close look at those provisions. But pressure is mounting in both parties to pass the transportation bill before the Highway Trust Fund runs out of money for road projects across the country. That could happen this summer if Congress does not approve a new long-term authorization for transportation spending. If the Senate passes its measure, it still must win passage in the House as well. Several senators said concern about the rail safety provision could become a central part of the debate over the bill in the days ahead. Mr. Blumenthal said he disliked the language extending the deadline for railroads to install positive train control. But in an interview, he said he might be able to accept a new deadline if Congress agreed to dedicate money from the Highway Trust Fund specifically for installation of the rail safety systems, especially for commuter train systems that are struggling to afford the equipment. Mr. Blumenthal said he intended to propose amendments that would dedicate $570 million a year for three years to commuter-rail safety improvements. He said it was unclear whether Republicans, who control the Senate, would allow the amendments to be offered. And he said it was not certain how hard the Obama administration was willing to fight for them. “I’m hoping they will lend the full weight of their authority,” he said. “It would make a difference.” Backers of the deadline extension say they need it because the equipment is costly and time-consuming to install across thousands of miles of track. They also say the provision gives the transportation secretary authority to reject railroad improvement plans on a case-by-case basis, which they said could leave some railroads subject to the current 2015 deadline. And they said the bill authorized the Transportation Department to prioritize money for rail safety even though it does not guarantee a specific amount of money to be spent from the trust fund. Ed Greenberg, a spokesman for the Association of American Railroads, which represents freight and commuter systems, praised the provision, saying in a statement that it “sets a rigorous case-by-case framework with enforceable milestones that guarantees sustained and substantial progress, complete transparency and accountability, and a hard end date for full installation by 2018.” But advocates of greater safety measures for trains said the railroads had been under orders to upgrade their safety systems for years and should have been able to meet the 2015 deadline, which was set by Congress after a California derailment in 2008 that killed 25 people. Mr. Rosenker, who was acting chairman of the transportation safety board when the crash happened, said the seven-year deadline set by Congress after that crash should not be extended. “Seven years, in my judgment, is a long time and an adequate time to do it,” he said. “The technology is out there. Let’s put it in.”

Senate
Amtrak
Legislation
Congress
Train wreck
NTSB


Betting on Wimbledon Match Raises Eyebrows and Initial Concern

Abstract: The Wimbledon men’s first-round match between Jürgen Melzer, an Austrian ranked 30th in the world, and Wayne Odesnik, an American ranked 109th, is being reviewed by tennis officials after a sudden rush of money poured into online betting services and London betting shops. The bookies, however, said they had not found any evidence of match fixing and blamed nothing more than sharp gamblers discovering the news of an injury. Odesnik, who had strained a thigh, lost to Melzer, 6-1, 6-4, 6-2, on Tuesday in Odesnik’s second match on grass of the year. “There appears to have been a lot of prematch speculation about Odesnik’s fitness and possibly injury concerns going into the match,” said Robin Marks, a spokesman for the online betting exchange Betfair. “It was clearly information that was available — in fact, a commentator mentioned it. And people took a gamble on it, and it paid off.” Odesnik, who was born in Johannesburg and now lives in Weston, Fla., said he was unaware of any betting on the match. “That’s a surprise,” he told The Guardian on Tuesday. “I’ve no idea of that. This is only my second time to play here. I don’t know why somebody would bet on me to lose. He was the favorite.” Odesnik also said that he had strained his thigh in a grass-court tournament before Wimbledon. “I thought it would be fine,” he said. “As the match went on, it got worse. I ran for a ball and tweaked it. Never a question that I couldn’t play.” Marks emphasized that Betfair kept the market open, in contrast to a match in 2007 when it voided $7 million in wagers because of irregular betting patterns as Nikolay Davydenko lost to Martin Vassallo Argüello. Davydenko, the world’s No. 4 player at the time, retired because of an injury with the 87th-ranked Vassallo Argüello ahead, 2-6, 6-3, 2-1. During the match, Betfair notified the ATP that its security team had recognized irregular betting. Davydenko’s manager, Ronnie Leitgeb, said that ATP investigators told Davydenko’s camp that nine Betfair accounts traced to Russia stood to make $1.5 million if he lost and that two other unknown account holders were to make nearly $6 million. Davydenko was later cleared of wrongdoing. Betfair has become a focal point for the growing list of match-fixing scandals. Over the past eight years, it has alerted dozens of sports governing bodies about suspicious betting activity, leading to investigations in horse racing, soccer and tennis. In the Melzer-Odesnik match, Marks said there were no irregular betting patterns, though he said the amount of money wagered was higher than usual for a first-round match at Wimbledon. Betfair received about $990,000 of wagers on the match, Marks said; the average for a first-round match at Wimbledon is about $165,000. “There was not a single big bet,” he said. “A lot of people had heard the American was hurt and they moved on it.” Still, Betfair will make its data available to the Tennis Integrity Unit, which was formed last year in the wake of the Davydenko furor and the allegations by several players that they had been asked to throw matches. In May 2008, a report commissioned by the major tennis governing bodies recommended that 45 matches played in the last five years be investigated because betting patterns gave a “strong indication” that gamblers were profiting from inside information. Those matches, the report said, might be only an indication of the depth of the problem. The bookmaker Ladbrokes suspended betting on the Melzer-Odesnik match but also said it did not see evidence of match fixing. “We were aware of a bit of injury news,” a spokesman for Ladbrokes, Robin Hutchison, told Agence France-Presse. “As far as we’re concerned, there doesn’t appear to be much of a problem.” He added, “We took more money on Melzer than on Odesnik and we heard he was carrying an injury, and it’s prudent in these circumstances just to sit out the dance.” The bookmakers at William Hill continued to accept bets on the match. “We haven’t made any complaint and we saw nothing untoward at all in the betting patterns,” a spokesman for William Hill, Graham Sharpe, told Agence France-Presse.

Tennis
Gambling
Wimbledon Tennis Tournament


Dark Wall Stains May Signal Indoor Pollution

Abstract: Q. What could be causing black stains on the walls above each segment of our radiators? Could the heating fuel be leaking from the radiators into the air we breathe? A. The stains are coming from the air, not the radiators, and while the furnace and the chimney should be checked, there are other possible sources besides heating fuel for the black material. Such stains, called ghosting by building engineers , are caused by deposits of soot, dust or ordinary dirt carried by the air and then deposited on the walls or ceilings. The pattern of the deposits depends on factors like air currents, gravity, electrostatic attraction and temperature and humidity differences. For example, the reason the stains mirror the radiator segments is probably that the wall temperature varies with the shape of the radiator. One of the most common sources of soot is partly burned carbon fuel, but soot could come from cooking fumes, cigarettes and fireplaces as well as the furnace. A surprisingly big source of the carbon that causes ghosting stains is perfumed room candles, a 2001 review of previous studies found . As for health risks, they are related to the size of the particles; the smaller the particles, the higher the risk, the Environmental Protection Agency says . The visible soot can be a signal of the presence of the more dangerous microscopic particles, less than 10 micrometers in diameter, that can penetrate deep into the lungs and cause heart and respiratory illnesses. question@nytimes.com

Radiator
Heater
Air pollution
Construction
Respiratory disease


In Areas Fueled by Coal, Climate Bill Sends Chill

Abstract: ST. LOUIS — Chatting with a visitor about energy issues in the back of the Greater Mount Carmel Baptist Church here, a group of women exploded in laughter at the idea that their electric rates were among the lowest in the nation. “We can barely afford what we have now,” said Renee Daniels-Hanner, 48, an office manager who lives with her husband, a postal employee, and their teenage daughter in a three-bedroom brick home in the city’s Baden neighborhood. The house, built in 1953, has central air-conditioning to ward off the heat and humidity of Mississippi River summers, a double-door refrigerator, a washer and dryer, six televisions, three computers and an iron (“We iron all the time,” Ms. Daniels-Hanner said). The family’s monthly electric bill averages $160 in winter and $250 in summer. From the wheat fields of the north-central region to Kansas City’s necklace of industrial parks to the brick street fronts of St. Louis, Missouri’s reliance on cheap electricity is deeply ingrained. But few pay attention to the origin of their little-noticed savings: 21 coal -fired power plants that emit more than 75 million tons of carbon dioxide annually and generate 80 percent of Missouri’s electricity. Even residents who endorse wind and solar energy have grown accustomed to the benefits of state policies that favor coal by putting a premium on low-cost electricity. So the idea of federal climate legislation that could increase electricity bills by putting a price on emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide is unsettling. For Missourians, said Robert Clayton, chairman of the state’s Public Service Commission , “the consequence of using more power hasn’t been great.” Missouri is hardly alone. Nebraska , Indiana and Iowa are also states where coal turns on most of the lights. That is why, even before Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats, proposed legislation that would put a price on carbon-dioxide emissions, Senate and House Democrats from coal-using states began to push back. They are concerned that the new costs would get passed on to consumers, to Ms. Daniels-Hanner, to farmers from rural Missouri and to employers like the energy-hungry Noranda aluminum plant in New Madrid in the southeast of the state, which has 1,000 workers. And they worry that in an already wounded economy, increased costs could turn one of the relatively few economic blessings into a blight. Here in Missouri, economic incentives built into the state’s laws, history and habits encourage burning as much coal as possible. Peabody Energy started as a local business a century ago and now promotes itself as the world’s leading coal merchant. Trainloads of Wyoming coal cross Missouri daily. The cars arrive at places like Meramec, a 56-year-old, 850-megawatt power plant in south St. Louis County. The cost of building the sprawling plant has long since been paid off by its owner, AmerenUE , an investor-owned utility. Because Meramec generates electricity from cheap fuel, it produces cheap power. And because Meramec’s operational costs are low and most equipment-replacement costs have been recouped, AmerenUE often underbids competitors in selling excess electricity out of state. These profits give Missouri consumers an extra discount. From 1987 to 2007, AmerenUE and its predecessor, Union Electric, did not raise electric rates, while power production rose about 65 percent. Estimates of the effects of the proposed federal climate legislation on electric rates vary. The central thrust of the Waxman-Markey bill is to make carbon-dioxide emissions expensive by capping them and creating allowances that utilities must acquire to function. In Washington, the measure is seen as a starting point and has little Republican support, which would make the backing of coal-state Democrats like Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri critical. Jaime Haro, AmerenUE’s director of asset management and trading, said his company paid $30 to produce a megawatt-hour of electricity. The coal burned emits roughly a ton of carbon dioxide. If federal legislation effectively prices emissions at $30 a ton — estimates have varied from $20 to $115 — “my costs could double,” Mr. Haro said. Those costs probably would be passed on to customers. For now, Missouri ranks among the lowest five states in retail electricity rates — about 6.3 cents per kilowatt hour, compared with a national average of 8.9 cents . Ms. Daniels-Hanner and LaVerne McCoy find that surprising. Ms. McCoy, who works for a community-based group, ADE Consulting Services, has spent $4,000 weatherizing her split-level home in Richmond Heights, just west of St. Louis. Her bills still average $320 monthly. About 130 miles to the northwest, Wendi Wood, a teacher, and her husband, Lee Wood, a fourth-generation farmer, live near the small town of Clarence with their three teenagers. Their six-bedroom house is four years old, and they, too, have many appliances, including seven televisions. Electricity costs them about $280 in winter, $360 in summer. After the fall harvest, they dry grain in a silo; then the bills run $600 a month. “Electricity is a major factor in what we can afford,” Ms. Wood said. She wants Washington to fight climate change , but said, “Don’t hurt the rural farmer and rural America to do it.” The state is taking some steps to reduce its dependence on coal, like legislation pending in the General Assembly to give financial incentives for conservation . In November, voters approved expanding renewable-energy options . State utilities have varied plans. AmerenUE talks of building a companion to its nuclear power plant. Kansas City Power & Light is buying more wind power to offset emissions from a coal plant under construction. Springfield’s municipal utility is experimenting with underground storage of carbon dioxide. Associated Electrical Cooperative Inc. offers energy-saving light bulbs to its 800,000 rural customers and subsidizes home energy audits. “Ultimately, there’s going to have to be a re-evaluation of Missouri’s future,” Mr. Clayton said. Like Ms. Wood, Ms. Daniels-Hanner and Ms. McCoy worry about the effects of climate change. “We want to help our grandchildren,” Ms. McCoy said. “My problem is that the brunt of the improvement is going to be put on the backs of those who can’t afford it.”

Coal
Missouri
Carbon Dioxide
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Electric Light and Power


Missouri: University Ties Drop in Students to Ferguson

Abstract: The University of Missouri-St. Louis on Wednesday announced a hiring freeze in response to an unexpected enrollment drop that campus officials are linking to the fatal police shooting in nearby Ferguson. Chancellor Tom George announced the hiring freeze in a campuswide email that cited a $2 million budget shortfall created by “widespread anxiety about the region in general,” and the northern part of St. Louis County in particular. Bob Samples, a university spokesman, said that some new and returning students had told the university that they had decided not to enroll because of the fallout from the Aug. 9 police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown. The university, with an enrollment of about 12,000, expects to have 600 fewer students in the spring semester compared with spring 2014. A projected 4 percent enrollment increase in the fall semester turned out to be just 1 percent. The campus is four miles from where the Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shot Mr. Brown two weeks before the start of fall classes.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


U.S. Concerned About Weak Yuan but Stops Short of Accusation

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The U.S. Treasury has said that China’s policy of keeping its yuan weak and its piling up of foreign exchange reserves were “serious concerns,” but it stopped short of saying China was manipulating the currency. In a semiannual report to Congress on currency practices of major trade partners, the Treasury said it continued to believe that the yuan was undervalued. But it concluded that no U.S. trade partner was a deliberate currency manipulator, a designation that could lead to negotiations resulting in the possibility of trade sanctions against an offender. Treasury said that China, which pumped stimulus funds into its economy during the recession, had played an important role in anchoring the global economy this year. It warned that lack of flexibility in the exchange rate for the yuan might be damaging as stimulus was withdrawn and overseas demand for Chinese-made goods returned. An undervalued yuan makes Chinese consumer goods cheaper in foreign markets. Beijing has powered the country’s growth by aiming at the United States and other consumer markets with its exports, putting many producers in those markets out of business because they could not compete. At the September meeting in Pittsburgh of the Group of 20 leaders of major economies, participants agreed on the importance of developing a “framework” for rebalancing global growth by having the United States save more and countries like China encourage domestic consumption. The chairman of the House Ways and Means trade subcommittee, Representative Sander Levin of Michigan, said after the report was issued that he felt some countries were manipulators and had caused imbalances. He did not name any particular country. “I hope that with strong leadership from the United States, the G-20 nations and our international institutions will undertake what has been missing — a focused, sustained and meaningful multilateral engagement to address currency manipulation and current imbalances,” Mr. Levin said. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has praised China in the past for its actions in stimulating its economy during the economic downturn and has tempered prior U.S. calls for Beijing to let the yuan rise more freely. But the report noted that China had about $2.1 trillion worth of foreign reserves and that the total had risen $186 billion in the first half of this year alone. It also said the United States would continue pushing Beijing for more flexibility in its currency, which is formally known as the renminbi. “Both the rigidity of the renminbi and the reacceleration of reserve accumulation are serious concerns which should be corrected to help ensure a stronger, more balanced global economy consistent with the G-20 framework,” the report said. Under a 1988 U.S. law that requires semiannual reports to Congress, Treasury is required to initiate negotiations “on an expedited basis, in the International Monetary Fund or bilaterally” if it cites a country for currency manipulation.

China
Yuan (Currency)
International Trade and World Market


As League Starts and Stops, Draft Picks Keep Coming

Abstract: The second day of the strangest draft in N.F.L. history continued with the same patterns as the first. Fans showered Commissioner Roger Goodell with boos. Quarterbacks went flying off the board. Da’Quan Bowers and Ryan Mallett continued their waits, with Tampa Bay landing Bowers late and Mallett headed to New England to apprentice under Tom Brady. Labor uncertainty provided the surreal backdrop again. Yet even when the N.F.L.’s lockout was temporarily reinstated by an appeals court midway through the round, the spectacle at Radio City Music Hall continued uninterrupted. Perhaps Virginia Tech running back Ryan Williams best encapsulated what it meant to draftees, labor strife or not. On his visit to Arizona earlier this month, Williams said the Cardinals all but pinkie-swore they would draft him at pick No. 38, despite decent depth at his position. When they did, Williams walked across the stage with tears streaming down his cheeks. He wrapped Goodell in a bear hug, and they stood there for 10, maybe 15 seconds. It was a Kodak moment. Soon after, Williams and all N.F.L. players were locked out again. Yet at almost the exact moment that happened, after he celebrated with a large contingent of friends and family on stage, he was still crying. “Words can’t describe,” he later said. Williams grew up rooting for the Dallas Cowboys, and he studied star runners like Walter Payton, Barry Sanders and Marshall Faulk. After he regained his composure, he oozed confidence. Williams told reporters that his Madden video game rating should be 100. He said he plays “10 feet tall.” He called himself a playmaker on roughly a half-dozen occasions. By age 8, Williams knew he wanted to play football, and all those years, all the work, the pain, the sacrifice, came pouring out. “I don’t like crying,” he said. “But today, it’s an excuse.” Williams planned to call Beanie Wells, his competition in Arizona, for help with the playbook. The early portion of the second round held no shortage of solid prospects. While several players originally projected to be chosen earlier remained on the board, none had slipped further than Bowers, whose knee injury apparently raised concerns across the league. New England held the first pick, but while the Patriots entertained trade offers, they ultimately grabbed Virginia cornerback Ras-I Dowling, who was injured for much of last season. The surprise selection quieted the crowd. Buffalo also went with a cornerback, drafting Texas’ Aaron Williams. With that, the great quarterback gold rush of 2011 resumed. On Thursday, four quarterbacks went like dominos in the first 12 picks. On Friday, with the third and fourth slots in the second round, teams continued the trend. Without free agency, without trades, this strategy made sense. Teams in need of quarterbacks could not be certain they could fill that position any other way anytime soon. So they took them, early and often, as expected. It was a notion reinforced when the lockout went back into effect late Friday. At No. 35, Cincinnati selected Andy Dalton, the redhead from Texas Christian whose stock rose in recent weeks. During the off-season, the Bengals were confronted by two disgruntled franchise cornerstones, quarterback Carson Palmer and receiver Chad Ochocinco. With Dalton and receiver A. J. Green (their first pick, fourth over all), the Bengals found potential replacements for both in the same weekend. Next, San Francisco traded its second-, fourth- and fifth-round picks to Denver to take Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback who surpassed 10,000 passing yards and 4,000 rushing yards at Nevada. The 49ers passed on Missouri’s Blaine Gabbert, a rumored dance partner, on Thursday. Gabbert went to Jacksonville and the quarterback musical chairs continued. “It’s great to have another quarterback for Jim Harbaugh to choose from,” said the former 49ers wide receiver Dwight Clark, who announced the pick. It seemed as if the entire league felt that way this draft. Yet the quarterback with the strongest arm, with perhaps the most potential, waited far longer than the others. His name was Ryan Mallett, and he fell faster than one could say “character concerns,” fell all the way into the third round, where the Patriots picked him. Tampa Bay took Bowers with the 51st pick. As the night wore on, teams traded as if swapping baseball cards instead of draft picks. At one point, Washington held 11 picks. Thus the strange draft continued, with more boos delivered, more quarterbacks taken and more labor twists.

Lockouts
Football
Draft and Recruitment (Sports)
National Football League
Free Agents (Sports)
Goodell Roger
Williams Ryan


Sanford C. Sigoloff, Corporate Turnaround Expert, Dies at 80

Abstract: Sanford C. Sigoloff, a corporate turnaround expert who called himself the Skillful Scalpel as he sought to preserve the value in failing companies, died on Saturday at his home in Brentwood, Calif. He was 80. The cause was complications from pneumonia, said Michael S. Sitrick, who worked for Mr. Sigoloff during the restructuring of the Wickes Companies in the early 1980s — the largest Chapter 11 case outside the railroad industry at that time. Mr. Sigoloff also had Alzheimer’s disease, Mr. Sitrick said. Although Mr. Sigoloff started as a chemist and physicist, he switched careers and spent the 1970s and 1980s restructuring severely troubled companies. He became a familiar face to television viewers in the Midwest and on the West Coast in the early ’80s when, as chief executive of Wickes, he played himself in a series of commercials, much as Lee Iacocca did in Chrysler commercials around that time. Mr. Sigoloff talked tough in the ads, exhorting his workers to cut prices and bolster service on behalf of Wickes retailers like Builders Emporium, Wickes Furniture, Red Owl Supermarkets and Snyder Drug Stores. The employees always responded with a chorus of “We got the message, Mr. Sigoloff!” The ads were credited with rallying morale and increasing Wickes’s retail sales by 25 percent, according to a profile in The Los Angeles Times Magazine. Mr. Sigoloff sometimes said his science background had given him the ability to unravel complex business failures and make unsentimental choices. He had a reputation as a perfectionist who calculated every move, mapping out his progress on charts. Asked why he and one of his troubled companies, the Republic Corporation, had parted ways, a board member replied, “Too many damned charts.” In addition to the Skillful Scalpel, Mr. Sigoloff liked to call himself Ming the Merciless, after the evil ruler of the planet Mongo in the Flash Gordon comic strip. During the reorganization of Wickes, he had his entire management team adopt names from the strip, and urged them to think of themselves as fighting a science-fiction war to win back the company’s lost respectability, which he called Princess Aura. At another company, the Los Angeles-based retailer Daylin, he outlined his strategy in a 260-page report known internally as the I.B.B., or Infamous Black Book. It called for dismissing more than half of Daylin’s 16,000 employees and selling or closing numerous manufacturing units and distributorships. But those who managed to hang on were rewarded. Mr. Sigoloff got 3 percent of the company’s new stock when it emerged from bankruptcy and kept only a third of it. The rest, worth more than $2.5 million at the time, was distributed to Daylin’s employees. “The people who work with you to help turn around a troubled company put forth a superhuman effort,” he told The New York Times. “All during the trouble they get no rewards, but they endure the stress and strain. They deserve something for that.” Among the other distressed companies Mr. Sigoloff worked on were the L. J. Hooker Corporation, an Australian-owned retail enterprise whose holdings included the Bonwit Teller, B. Altman and Sakowitz chains. That company proved impossible to turn around, and most of its department store holdings had to be liquidated. Sanford C. Sigoloff, known as Sandy, was born on Sept. 8, 1930, in St. Louis. His father became an Army physician during World War II, and the family had to move from town to town, finally settling in Los Angeles when Mr. Sigoloff was in high school. He earned a degree in physics and chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles, working part time for the Atomic Energy Commission while completing his studies. He stayed on with the commission after graduation, and during the Korean War became a researcher for the Air Force, studying the effects of nuclear explosions. He told an interviewer that while working on those research projects, he realized he would rather “put up the money and manage the projects” as a business executive. In 1963 he joined Electro-Optical Systems, a Pasadena company that later became a division of Xerox. He left in 1969 to avoid a promotion that meant a transfer to Rochester. He founded an investment company but was soon recruited to the Republic Corporation as a troubleshooter. He replaced the chief executive there in a matter of months. Mr. Sigoloff is survived by his wife, Betty; two sons, John and Stephen; a daughter, Laurie; a sister, Roberta Silverman; and six grandchildren.

Wickes
Daylin
Executives and Management
Shopping and Retail
Deaths (Obituaries)
Sigoloff Sanford C.


Facebook to Simplify Privacy Controls

Abstract: PALO ALTO, Calif. — Ever since Facebook was founded in 2004, Mark Zuckerberg, its chief executive, has pushed its users to share more information about themselves. Time and again, users have pushed back, complaining that some new feature or setting on the site violated their privacy. But the reaction has rarely been as strong as in the last few weeks, as users, privacy advocates and government officials in many countries lobbed a series of increasingly vociferous complaints against the company. On Wednesday, Mr. Zuckerberg responded, unveiling a set of controls that he said would help people better understand what they were sharing online, and with whom. “It has been a pretty intense few weeks for us,” said Mr. Zuckerberg, who added that he had been huddled with other senior executives for the last two weeks to help shape Facebook’s response. The back and forth between Facebook and its users over privacy is gaining importance as the company’s growth continues unabated. It now has nearly 500 million users around the world, and its policies, more than those of any other company, are helping to define standards for privacy in the Internet age. The new settings would simplify a system that required users to sort through about 150 options. “Facebook is trying to change privacy on the Internet, and users are pushing back,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which recently filed a complaint about Facebook’s privacy practices with the Federal Trade Commission. “This is about who controls the disclosure of data. Facebook cannot make that decision for users.” Mr. Rotenberg and other privacy advocates said the changes that Facebook announced on Wednesday were generally positive ones, but they said they hoped for further changes and for more oversight from Congress and regulators. Mr. Zuckerberg announced the changes during a press conference at Facebook’s headquarters here. He appeared contrite and conceded mistakes, but he did not apologize to users. He said the new privacy settings, which will show up in users’ accounts over the next couple of weeks, would make it easier for users to understand how much of their personal information was publicly accessible. “The settings have gotten complex, and it has become hard for people to use them effectively,” he said. Facebook said it would give its users simple controls to determine whether their information was visible to only friends, friends of friends, or everyone on the Internet. Those settings will be applied retroactively to everything users have already published on Facebook. In addition, Facebook said it was changing its directory of users to show only minimal information when people search for others, like name, profile picture and gender. It had earlier required users to make more information public. Facebook will also include an easy way for users to turn off its new and controversial “instant personalization” feature, which allows partner sites like Yelp and Pandora to gain access to their personal data. The latest crisis for Facebook began to build shortly after its conference for software developers in late April, where it unveiled new features and a plan to extend Facebook functions across the Web. The company argued, as it has for some time, that more and broader sharing makes the site better for everyone. While getting more information about users also helps Facebook customize the advertising it displays, Mr. Zuckerberg said none of the changes affecting privacy were financially motivated. Some critics say the company was slow to respond to the resulting criticisms. But internally a debate was brewing, with some executives arguing that Facebook might be able to get away with making no changes to the site, said Facebook employees who asked not to be named. Earlier user rebellions had eventually died down, and despite some defections publicized by technology blogs, Facebook users were not canceling their accounts any more than at any other time. But eventually the amount of bad publicity became impossible to ignore. “No one likes to see the amount of feedback that we are getting,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in an interview. “A lot of the blogs and feedback were really negative.” Once he decided to make changes to the privacy settings, he and some of the company’s top executives, product managers and senior engineers huddled for nearly two weeks. Working virtually around the clock and through two weekends, they worked out the controls announced Wednesday. Mr. Zuckerberg also personally met with some of his harshest critics. “We’ve been working nonstop on this for a few weeks,” he said. “There are lot of people who have not eaten or slept or changed clothes a lot in the last couple of weeks.” Mr. Zuckerberg said Facebook’s biggest mistake was failing to notice that as Facebook added new features and its privacy controls grew increasingly complicated, those controls became effectively unusable for many people. “We probably should have been more sensitive to this issue beforehand,” he said. Mr. Zuckerberg, 26 said the crisis was challenging, but not as stressful as fending off billion-dollar acquisition offers from the likes of Yahoo and Viacom when he was 22. “That was definitely the most stressful situation I had at the company,” he said. Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who pressed Facebook on privacy, said the new settings were a step forward. But he said that Facebook should not push users into the instant personalization feature without their consent. “This is a change in how data was used that was different from the expectations that people had when they gave the data,” he said. Mr. Opsahl also said Facebook did not appear to offer a good way to manage settings that allow third-party applications like the game FarmVille to have access to personal information. Users can open either all of the applications or none of them. This latest tussle between Facebook and its users could affect the privacy policies of other technology companies, said Ray Valdes, an analyst with Gartner. “Facebook is a very large canary in the coal mine,” he said. “Competitors are watching to see how much Facebook can get away with and what are the limits that are considered acceptable by government and users.” During the news conference, Mr. Zuckerberg said this would be the last overhaul to privacy controls that the company planned to make for a while. He said the preferences that a user expressed with the new settings would apply to all future products and site changes. “The big takeaway is, don’t mess with the privacy stuff for a long time.”

Privacy
Facebook.com
Social Networking (Internet)
Computer Security


Thaksin Back in Cambodia to See Release of Thai Man Held for Spying

Abstract: With Thailand ’s fugitive former prime minister standing by, Cambodia on Monday released a Thai citizen convicted of spying, in what Thaksin Shinawatra has called a Thai plot to kill him. Mr. Thaksin arrived in Cambodia on Sunday for the second time in a month, an appearance that seemed to be a calculated insult to his own nation. This time he presented himself as a mediator, meeting with his countryman as he was released from prison. The Thai citizen, Sivarak Chutipong, 31, worked for a Thai air services company in Phnom Penh and was sentenced to seven years in prison last week after passing on to his embassy the flight details of Mr. Thaksin’s earlier visit to Cambodia on Nov. 10. Mr. Sivarak was pardoned Friday by King Norodom Sihamoni of Cambodia. Mr. Thaksin claimed that Mr. Sivarak had been part of a plan by Thailand to shoot down his plane. During that first visit, Cambodia rejected a request by Thailand for Mr. Thaksin’s extradition, intensifying tensions between the two unfriendly neighbors. Thailand and Cambodia have both withdrawn their ambassadors and first secretaries in a sign of deteriorating relations. For more than a year, both nations have stationed troops at a disputed temple on their border, and brief firefights have taken several lives. Mr. Thaksin was convicted last year of corruption and abuse of power during his tenure as prime minister. He was ousted in a coup in 2006 but has continued to rally his supporters with speeches and defiant gestures like his trips to Cambodia. As The Nation, a Thai English-language newspaper, put it in a front-page caption on Monday, “The man who set off the Thai-Cambodian diplomatic crisis goes gleefully back to Phnom Penh yesterday to, ironically, oversee the release of a man he claimed was part of a plot to kill him.” Cambodia’s minister of information, Khieu Kanharith, said that Mr. Thaksin had telephoned Prime Minister Hun Sen requesting the release. Along with the caption, The Nation printed photographs of Mr. Thaksin grinning as he stepped down from an aircraft Sunday and sitting with Mr. Sivarak with Cambodian flags displayed in front and behind him. It was a complicated image, associating Mr. Thaksin with the release of a fellow citizen but also with the nation that had arrested him, setting off a new wave of nationalist anger in Thailand. Mr. Hun Sen has stoked this anger with antagonistic statements directed at the Thai government, which Mr. Thaksin’s supporters say they want to topple. “Cambodia will have no happiness as long as this group is in power in Thailand,” Mr. Hun Sen said earlier this month. Underscoring that political bias, Phay Siphan, spokesman for the Cambodian Council of Ministers, said the government was to receive a delegation of four members of Thailand’s Puea Thai party, which supports Mr. Thaksin. “This is to show the good atmosphere and the good ties between the Puea Thai party and the Cambodian government,” Phal Chandara, a government lawyer, told The Phnom Penh Post. Thai officials said they would renew their demand for Mr. Thaksin’s extradition. Mr. Hun Sen has invited him to visit as an “economic adviser,” and officials said that Mr. Thaksin planned to give seminars about the economy while he is there. On his last visit he stayed five days. In Bangkok on Monday, Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban said it would be difficult to restore good relations if Cambodia continued to refuse to extradite Mr. Thaksin. “I’m deeply concerned if Cambodia refuses to extradite Thaksin, because I don’t know how to continue relations between the two countries,” he said.

Cambodia
Thailand
Thaksin Shinawatra
Hun Sen
Phnom Penh (Cambodia)


Sunday’s Matchup: Philadelphia Eagles (9-6) at Giants (6-9)

Abstract: 1 p.m., Fox Matchup to Watch: The Giants’ linebackers against the Eagles’ running backs When these teams last met in October, the Giants’ linebackers combined to make only 8 of 50 tackles. Philadelphia’s LeSean McCoy and Darren Sproles ran wild through the Giants’ front four, which was bad enough. Then they also ran away from the Giants’ linebackers. Not surprisingly, Giants defensive backs made 25 tackles in that game. The Eagles had 203 rushing yards, and the Giants’ defense is still having trouble with opposing teams’ rushing attacks — it ranks 30th in the N.F.L. against the run. But it will be a different set of linebackers on the field Sunday, and it will be interesting to see if they can stop the Eagles’ powerful running game. The rookie Devon Kennard has brought some speed and youthful enthusiasm to the linebacker corps, but he will miss the game with a toe injury. Number to Watch: 2 for 14 That was the Giants’ performance on third-down conversions in their Oct. 12 loss to the Eagles. Ben McAdoo’s offense has been far more efficient lately. Sunday will be a chance to see just how much progress the Giants have made offensively in the last two months. Quotation of the Week: ‘I think we’ve grown a lot since that game. We’ve been through more as an offensive unit. There’s probably a little better understanding of the offense and what we’re trying to do and everybody’s assignments and the timing and rhythm.’ Quarterback ELI MANNING, when asked how the Giants are different since they lost, 27-0, to the Eagles earlier in the season.

Philadelphia Eagles
Giants
LeSean McCoy
Devon Kennard
Ben McAdoo
Football


California Highway 1 to Open Tunnel After Decades of Debate

Abstract: PACIFICA, Calif. — After a half-century of debate, motorists early Tuesday will be able to drive onto a bridge suspended 300 feet above land and through a tunnel dug into a verdant mountain 20 miles south of San Francisco. The federally financed $439 million project skirts the treacherous Devil’s Slide slice of California Highway 1 in one of the most scenic stretches of highway in the world. The two-bore tunnel is the largest of several recent projects — including a viaduct, a tightrope bridge and an oddly shaped rock shed — that have taken creative approaches to improving a perilous highway perched on rocky cliffs along the serpentine, earthquake-prone California coast. Compared with Interstate 5, the major inland route that stretches the length of the state, Highway 1 is more of a picturesque meander, cherished by Californians and tourists in convertibles. Devil’s Slide sits five miles from where the Pacific and North American tectonic plates move past each other at the San Andreas Fault. The earth’s movements, which cause coastal landslides, are also responsible for its beauty. The West Coast, unlike the East, “is geologically much younger so that tectonic processes are more active,” said Robert McLaughlin, a geologist with the United States Geological Survey . “Mountains are going up all the time. As a consequence, we have lots of landslides.” The California Department of Transportation, known as Caltrans, builds walls and barriers and installs wire mesh draperies — which work, said John Duffy, Caltrans senior engineering geologist, until pickup-truck-size boulders fall. Since the highway opened in 1937, thanks in part to San Quentin State Prison inmates who did much of the shoveling, landslides at Devil’s Slide have led to periodic closings. Since the 1950s, Caltrans has wanted to build a bypass through bucolic mountains and a state park. Zoe Kersteen-Tucker, an environmental activist, said it was to be part of a network of highways “to support large scale housing developments.” Her fear was “If you build it, they will come.” In the 1970s, the Sierra Club and other organizations filed lawsuits. The dispute continued until 1995, when winter rains caused the road to collapse, shutting part of the highway for months. Everyone agreed that something had to be done. Residents proposed a smaller footprint; a tunnel. The state said that was not feasible. Environmentalists were undeterred. In 1996, Ms. Kersteen-Tucker and other environmentalists in San Mateo County, which includes Devil’s Slide, placed an initiative on the ballot. Their motto: “Think Tunnel.” It passed with 74 percent of the vote. Image A two-bore tunnel at Devil’s Slide was built to protect the highway and motorists from landslides. Credit Eric Risberg/Associated Press Since then, Ms. Kersteen-Tucker said, Caltrans has “worked with us every step of the way.” Because the bridge approach to the tunnel was going to shade a man-made irrigation pond favored by the California red-legged frog, a threatened species, Caltrans, with oversight by state and federal agencies and local environmentalists, dug a new pond and moved the frogs. Federal Highway Administration emergency funds paid for the tunnel, which is named for the man who secured initial financing —Tom Lantos, a congressman who died in 2008 — but which many residents call “the people’s tunnel.” For Ms. Kersteen-Tucker, it has been a long haul. She remembers having her daughter “on my hip while talking to a reporter” in 1996. On Monday, her daughter, now 22, will drive through the tunnel in a parade. Other projects will be completed with less fanfare. About 130 miles south of San Francisco, close to the Bixby Creek Bridge, one lane of Highway 1 washed away two years ago. Construction crews are building the $11 million Rocky Creek Viaduct, a bridge over land, to avoid slides. An hour’s drive south of there, at Pitkins Curve in a section aptly called Rain Rocks, Caltrans used to regularly shove fallen rocks into the ocean, said David Rasmussen, a Caltrans project manager. After the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary was created in 1992, Caltrans negotiated new standards, agreeing not to toss rocks and boulders overboard. Instead, drivers trucked them away, a costly effort, Mr. Rasmussen said. Public meetings were attended by 60 “stakeholders,” Mr. Duffy said, including the Sierra Club , the California Coastal Commission , local restaurants and other businesses, and individuals representing groups concerned with protecting indigenous flowers, condors and sea otters. Attendees suggested that the state consider a rock shed, which Mr. Duffy likened to an awning, shielding drivers from falling rock. Contractors are now completing a tightrope of a bridge that swings over the ocean, leaving the old highway to capture falling rocks. Adjacent to it, they are building the inelegantly named Rock Shed. With a slanting roof, the Rock Shed will allow tumbling rocks to continue their descent into the ocean. Guided by residents, Caltrans designed an impressive-looking entry with faux keystone and real arches that resemble a Roman aqueduct. “California’s coastline is constantly changing and continually presents us with challenges,” said Malcolm Dougherty, the director of Caltrans. “Through hard work and determination, we continue to keep this scenic highway open.”

California
Federal Highway Administration
Highway 1 CA
Transportation Department Calif
Roads and Traffic
Bridges,Tunnels


At Whiskers Holistic Pet Care, a Different Breed of Advice

Abstract: “PLEASE pay attention to little paws!” The warning sign taped to the front door is the first indication that Whiskers Holistic Pet Care is very, very concerned about the health of your pet. And it’s certainly not the last. Inside, the East Village shop stocks everything the Birkenstock set could possibly need to care for a four-legged friend: floral essences, organic catnip, collars made from soy, fresh and frozen raw food, biodegradable dog beds and “natural calmatives.” Fat glass jars bearing labels like “kelp powder,” “slippery elm” and “cystitis mix” sit on a high shelf at the back; below them, rows of nutritional supplements and vitamins cover the rest of the wall. If the earnest atmosphere, eccentric inventory and quirky clientele recall a health food store, they should. Whiskers may be the pet world’s closest approximation of the Park Slope Food Co-op. Evangelism is a key part of the business. Cashiers present new customers with “homework,” a pamphlet that includes a lengthy article about holistic pet food written by Phil Klein, who has owned the shop with his wife, Randy Klein, since 1988. (The couple also own a second branch of Whiskers in Astoria, Queens.) “Phil calls us an educational center which happens to sell products,” Ms. Klein, 55, said. “We’re not a store.” The Kleins became interested in holistic healing after their dog Tiffany-Anne became sick with bone cancer. Today, they make their own line of pet food and thoroughly research everything else they sell. Mr. Klein, 70, said he wouldn’t carry anything in the store that he wouldn’t be willing to eat himself. On a sunny Friday in June, several customers gathered in front of the store’s enormous outdoor mural, which depicts the Kleins’ cats and dogs (along with a few birds and a rabbit) against a backdrop of lush foliage. As pets have passed on, their dates have been inscribed by Antonio Garcia, the artist, a k a Chico. The crowd was there to speak with Dr. Marty Goldstein, a celebrity holistic veterinarian (there are such things), who was inside filming a demo reel for a television show he was preparing. Among those waiting were Sky Claudette Soto and Vlad Marco, fire performance artists who had come with their 120-pound Rottweiler, Prometheus. “People love him here,” Mr. Marco said. “He’d be spoiled rotten if he wasn’t already.” Health advice is one of Whiskers’ calling cards: Mr. Klein and the store’s nutritional support specialist, Joseph Rahey, spend much of their day counseling customers. On another recent afternoon, Mr. Rahey, who has worked at Whiskers for a decade, sat among the pills, herbs and ointments, taking all comers. The basic foundation of people’s questions, Mr. Rahey, 45, said, is food: “That’s where everything starts.” While he spoke, a steady trickle of customers approached him. One was concerned about fleas: Mr. Rahey recommended an herbal spray and raw garlic. Another was feeding his cat a raw-chicken diet but didn’t think the cat sitter could handle it while he was on vacation. Mr. Rahey prescribed prepared cat food and a multivitamin — “but it goes in the fridge because it has flax in it.” He then took a moment to expound upon kibble’s drawbacks, among them tooth decay, bad breath and gas. “God made dogs and cats to eat raw food and veggies,” he said. “We get every question under the sun,” Ms. Klein said. “We just had a woman who wanted to get her male cat neutered but wanted him to still look like a male. She was very concerned about the aesthetics of how he would look. “We try to gently guide people,” she continued. “To us it might sound funny, but to that person, it’s a serious issue.”

Whiskers Holistic Pet Care
Pets
Pet Foods
East Village (NYC)


Kenya: Bus Passengers Defy Militants Seeking to Target Christians in Attack

Abstract: Somali militants sprayed a Kenyan bus with bullets on Monday, killing two people, but a passenger said he and fellow Muslims had defied demands from the attackers to help identify Christian travelers. The attack took place in Mandera, in northeast Kenya. Abdi Mohamud Abdi, a Muslim who was among the passengers, said that more than 10 Shabab militants had boarded the bus and ordered the Muslim passengers to split away from the Christians, but that they had refused. “We even gave some non-Muslims our religious attire to wear in the bus so that they would not be identified easily,” he said. “We stuck together tightly. The militants threatened to shoot us, but we still refused and protected our brothers and sisters. Finally they gave up and left but warned that they would be back,” he said. Julius Otieno, the deputy county commissioner, confirmed the account, saying that the militants “were trying to identify who were Muslims and who were not” and that the Muslim passengers had refused to help.

Kenya
Bus
Christianity
Al Shabab
Islam
Fatalities,casualties
Terrorism


Forsberg Steps Into a Time Tunnel

Abstract: DENVER — Peter Forsberg is wielding his hockey stick like a magic wand again. And his latest trick is turning back time, bolstering the appeal of the Colorado Avalanche as both a box-office draw and a suddenly dangerous sixth-seeded Stanley Cup contender. The Pepsi Center seats were full for Sunday’s regular-season finale against the Minnesota Wild, Colorado’s first-round opponent in a best-of-seven series that begins in St. Paul on Wednesday. It was the seventh sellout in the 10 home games since the Avalanche re-signed its longtime star after four wayward seasons away. Before Forsberg was enticed from his home in Sweden, the Avalanche had six sellouts in 31 home games. He entertained the fans Sunday with three on-ice sleight-of-hand tricks that should worry the third-seeded Wild and other potential opponents. First was the quick centering pass that Paul Stastny banged in for a goal. Next was the feed across the edge of the crease that Joe Sakic took before flipping in a wrist shot for another score. And, finally, there was the deft backhand pass to Milan Hejduk, who scored, too. Three assists, a full arena and a flashback to better days. The Avalanche is 6-0 when Forsberg notches at least a point, and he had points in the final five games he played. “It’s the old Pete,” Avalanche defenseman Adam Foote said after Colorado’s 4-3 shootout victory. The question about to be answered is whether the old Forsberg, 34, can turn the Avalanche into the same old Stanley Cup contenders. On Feb. 25, Colorado was 4 points out of a playoff spot, in 10th place in the Western Conference, when it signed Forsberg to a prorated one-year contract worth $5 million. It was widely viewed as a publicity ploy, a desperate reach by a middling team to resurrect faded cheers. Because of a chronically sore right ankle — he had surgery on it again last year — Forsberg had not played a game of any kind in 10 ½ months. “I wish I had played 40 games instead of 9, but that’s just the way it is,” Forsberg said in the locker room Sunday. “On the other hand, I should be pretty rested coming into the playoffs.” Ploy or not, fans have found themselves attracted, again, to Forsberg’s rare blend of grit and artistry. He played his first nine N.H.L. seasons with the franchise, helping to lead it to Stanley Cup championships in 1996 and 2001. His vaunted place in local lore was cemented when, during the 2001 playoffs, he had his ruptured spleen removed after helping the Avalanche clinch a spot in the conference finals. He then watched his teammates, including Sakic, Hejduk, Foote, goalie Patrick Roy and defenseman Ray Bourque, clinch the Stanley Cup a few weeks later. Forsberg was the league’s most valuable player in 2003, but the Avalanche, needing to rebuild and cut costs, let him slip away during the league’s lost lockout season of 2004-5. The Avalanche has been unable to build itself to prominence since. Forsberg played most of two seasons with the Philadelphia Flyers, then was traded to the Nashville Predators last spring. His balky ankle kept him from signing with anyone this season until the Avalanche, with little to lose but money — certainly recouped in ticket sales — outbid other contenders to sign Forsberg as a booster shot. “I thought it was kind of easier for me to come here, instead of going somewhere else with a lot of pressure and stuff,” Forsberg said. “The people here, I think they know that I’m not just trying to milk it.” His comeback has not been without hobbles and strains. After sitting out three games preparing for the rigors ahead, Forsberg played three games, averaging more than 20 minutes. Then he missed four games with a sore groin, played a game and missed two more. He returned to play three times — notching seven assists in three victories — before sitting out another game. But he played the last two, and finished with a goal and 13 assists in nine games. “When it comes to the playoffs, it’s going to be much harder and much tougher,” said Forsberg, declining to discuss his current aches and pains in detail. “I’m just hoping it’s going to hold up, the body’s going to hold up. We’ll see what happens. I’ll definitely give it a shot and do my best.” Colorado spent much of the regular season clinging to playoff contention while waiting for several star players — Sakic, Stastny and Ryan Smyth among them — to return from injuries. Relatively healthy and fortified by defensemen Foote and Ruslan Salei, acquired in separate trades the day after Forsberg signed, the team inched up the standings and finished 3 points behind the Wild. But no player gets the Avalanche moving the way Forsberg does, on the ice and in the stands. Seats are filled. Jaws are dropped. Opponents are worried. “When he’s been in the lineup,” Coach Joel Quenneville said, “he’s been very dangerous and fun to watch.”

Colorado Avalanche
Forsberg Peter
Hockey Ice


Contaminated Water Escaping Nuclear Plant, Japanese Regulator Warns

Abstract: TOKYO — Highly contaminated water is escaping a damaged reactor at the crippled nuclear power plant in Japan and could soon leak into the ocean, where some radioactive materials have already been detected. The discovery, announced by the country’s nuclear regulator on Monday, is a further setback to efforts to contain the crisis. In another new finding, Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power station, said late Monday that it had detected higher levels of plutonium in soil samples taken from within the compound a week ago, raising fears of yet another dangerous element that may be escaping the crippled reactors. It was unclear where the plutonium had come from. The reactors could be a source, and tests of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, which ended in 1980, left trace amounts of plutonium around the world. The highest levels in the soil, of plutonium 238, were found about 500 yards from the most heavily damaged reactors, the company said. Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, said early Tuesday that the makeup of the plutonium in the soil suggested that traces could be escaping the reactors. Together with the highly radioactive water, he said, this could be more evidence that fuel rods inside some of the reactors may be damaged. “There is a high possibility that there has been a slight melting of the fuel rods,” he said. A full meltdown of the fuel rods would be catastrophic, releasing great amounts of radiation. The trick now, Mr. Edano said, is to keep pumping enough water to ensure that these fuel rods do not overheat, at the same time trying to minimize the overflow of contaminated water. Shares of Tokyo Electric were offered at 566 yen, or $6.93, early Tuesday on the Tokyo Stock Exchange after plunging 18 percent on Monday to 696 yen, or $8.52, the lowest in more than 30 years. The newspaper Yomiuri on Tuesday cited anonymous sources as saying the government would temporarily take a majority stake in the company, effectively nationalizing it, to help it pay for the enormous damages from the accident. But Mr. Edano denied the report, saying, “We’re not currently considering that.” All the reported readings are within the safe range of plutonium levels in sediment and soil given by the United States Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. But Tokyo Electric said the highest reading was more than three times the level found in Japan compared with the average over the last 20 years. American nuclear experts expressed confusion on Monday about the company’s latest report that one form of plutonium was found at elevated levels at the Fukushima plant while other forms were not, and suggested it could be a measurement error. The contaminated water threatening the ocean had radiation measuring 1,000 millisieverts per hour and was in an overflow tunnel outside the plant’s Reactor No. 2. The maximum dose allowed for workers at the plant is 250 millisieverts in a year. The tunnel leads from the reactor’s turbine building, where contaminated water was discovered on Saturday, to an opening just 180 feet from the sea, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. The contaminated water level is now about three feet from the exit of the vertical, U-shaped tunnel and rising, he said. Contaminated water was also found at tunnels from the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors, though with much lower levels of radiation. “We are unsure whether there is already an overflow” of the water out of the tunnel, Mr. Nishiyama said. He said workers were redoubling efforts to first remove the water from the Reactor No. 2 turbine building. Government officials have said that the water is probably leaking from pipes inside the reactor, from a breach in the reactor’s containment vessel or from the inner pressure vessel that houses the fuel. The nuclear safety agency also reported that radioactive iodine 131 was detected Sunday at a concentration 1,150 times the maximum allowable level in a seawater sample taken about a mile north of the drainage outlets of reactor units 1 through 4. It also said that the amount of cesium 137 found in water about 1,000 feet from plant was 20 times the normal level, roughly equal to readings taken a week ago. Mr. Nishiyama said there were no health concerns because there would be no fishing in the evacuation-designated area within about 12 miles of the plant, the Kyodo news agency reported. The disclosure about the escaping contaminated water came as workers pressed their efforts to remove highly radioactive water from inside buildings. The high levels of radioactivity have made it harder to get inside the buildings, slowing the effort to cool the reactors and spent-fuel pools. Workers pumped less water into the reactors Monday to minimize the overflow, slowing the cooling, Tokyo Electric said. While the source of the plutonium found at the plant was unclear, all three kinds of nuclear fuel at the complex could leak plutonium. Reactor No. 3 is fueled partly by mixed oxide fuel, or mox , which is made from plutonium and uranium. Most reactors’ fuel is uranium . But plutonium is a regular byproduct of a reactor’s splitting uranium atoms in two. Some of the speeding subatomic particles of the fission process turn uranium into plutonium. So fuel rods that undergo fission get riddled with plutonium, though less than in mox fuel. Thus any of the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi could leak plutonium, as could spent fuel rods in cooling pools. Mr. Nishiyama said that while the detected plutonium levels were low, they pointed to the gravity of the crisis at Fukushima Daiichi. Plutonium is a heavy element and not easily dispersed, he said, so higher levels outside the reactor suggested a wider leak. “This detection from the soil speaks to the importance and seriousness of the situation,” he said at a news conference Tuesday morning. Alarm over radiation levels grew Thursday when two workers were burned around their feet and ankles after they stepped into highly radioactive water inside the turbine building of Reactor No. 3. A third worker, who was wearing higher boots, did not suffer the same exposure. Naoki Sunoda, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric, said that since the crisis began, 19 workers had been exposed to radiation levels of 100 millisieverts. No workers were evacuated after the high radiation levels were discovered, and he said that workers were still trying to determine a way to approach the turbine building of Reactor No. 2 to extract the contaminated water.

Japan
Radiation
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster
Japan Earthquake Tsunami


Seton Hall’s Jeremy Hazell Shows Grit, On and Off the Court

Abstract: SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. — In his first three seasons at Seton Hall , Jeremy Hazell established a reputation for his shooting range but not necessarily his resilience, even though he never missed a game or visited a hospital. After the past three months, that legacy may be flipped. His teammates look at him as inspiration — a rapid recovery from a gunshot wound will do that — while lamenting that they now better have a really good reason to miss a game. “You’d have to get hit by a car and be out because you can’t walk or something,” guard Keon Lawrence said, joking. Mostly, they are happy simply to see Hazell back in uniform a month after he was shot under the right armpit following an attempted robbery on a Harlem street. For Hazell, a 6-foot-5 senior, it was a random brush with fate that nearly ended badly. Instead, he was thankful that the bullet narrowly missed two of his vital body parts: his heart and his shooting hand. On Jan. 12, only 18 days later, Hazell was back on the court for the Pirates, scoring 23 points in a win over DePaul. “I was blessed,” Hazell said. “A little inch this way or that way, it could’ve been worse. I’m just happy that I’m here right now.” It has been a trying season for Hazell, who was a preseason Big East first-team selection after withdrawing from the N.B.A. draft in May. He broke his wrist in the Pirates’ third game, an injury some thought would cost him his season. And near his home in Harlem, late on Christmas Day, Hazell was on East 104th Street after leaving a party when four men approached him, demanded he take a seat on a bench, threatened his life and motioned to a handgun tucked in one of the men’s pockets. Hazell turned and ran. He heard three shots and felt a fourth pierce his right side. Still running, Hazell managed to flag down an ambulance that happened to be turning the corner. He was taken to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital and released the next morning. The bullet had passed through his side but missed the major nerves and the axillary artery running down his arm. If the artery had been severed, it could have been life threatening and almost certainly would have ended Hazell’s basketball career. Shortly after leaving the hospital, Hazell received a call from his teammate Herb Pope, who was shot four times when he was a high school senior. Pope knew the emotional toll could be more damaging than the physical one and did not want Hazell to be fearful. “I was trying to tell him that he’s got to understand that was just an unlucky, unfortunate event that occurred, and you can’t hold everybody accountable for that,” Pope said. “He fully understood. He’s just a strong person.” Hazell, who grew up close to where the shooting occurred, said he had had never experienced a violent encounter. He also said he did not recognize the four men. An investigation into the shooting is continuing. “It was just a bad situation that happened,” Hazell said, adding that as soon as he realized he was O.K., his thoughts moved to continuing his rehabilitation, saying, “I was really thinking about getting my hand better.” For a week, the team trainer Heather Worthy cleaned and wrapped the wound, watching for infection. Meanwhile, Hazell carried out motion exercises for the left wrist that was injured when his hand hit the ground awkwardly after a rebound attempt on Nov. 19 against Alabama in the Paradise Jam in the Virgin Islands. After an X-ray revealed a fractured scaphoid bone — an injury for which it is often difficult to determine the recovery time — Hazell was told his season might be over. He opted to have surgery three weeks later and sped through the rehabilitation process, which included daily stimulation of the wrist bone, calcium supplements and movement exercises. Then came the shooting. That did not stop him, either. Hazell was cleared to play shortly before Seton Hall faced DePaul, surprising his teammates when he started suiting up in the locker room. “I was just praying that hopefully he was going to be able to walk and play basketball again,” Lawrence said of Hazell’s return. “I was shocked.” Last Saturday against Rutgers , Hazell, wearing a brace on his left wrist, started slow but played 38 minutes and scored 15 points in a 66-60 loss. “He’s still trying to get his way back a little bit,” Coach Kevin Willard said after the game. It did not take him long. On Tuesday, Hazell scored 28 points in a 90-68 upset of No. 9 Syracuse at the Carrier Dome. Hazell is fourth in career 3-pointers in Big East games and is poised to become the fourth Seton Hall player to score more than 2,000 career points. But his durability has often been overlooked. During a game last season, Hazell discovered he was bleeding from a cut between his fingers and asked Worthy for a bandage. She smiled and shook her head while leading him to the locker room, where he received eight stitches. And even after breaking his wrist in the second half against Alabama this season, he kept playing. “The crazy thing is, we never thought it was as serious as it was because he finished out the game,” Pope said. It is one of the many reasons Hazell is becoming known around the Big East as much for his toughness as for his still-smooth shooting touch.

Basketball
Seton Hall University
Hazell Jeremy
Willard Kevin
Lawrence Keon
Pope Herb


Saratoga’s Peppermint Pig Is an Unusual Holiday Tradition

Abstract: SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — At Christmas, horses in this historic racing city take a back seat to another celebrated creature, its legs designed to be somewhat fragile and far stubbier. And pink. The Peppermint Pig, a local hard-candy confection about the size of a pig’s foot, has become an unusual holiday tradition around the world — its popularity rooted in peppermint and a nickel-plated hammer. As the candy pig is passed around the dinner table, each person uses the hammer to break a piece off, and then shares a bit of good fortune from the year just passed, with hopes of good luck and prosperity for the new year ahead. The pig dates to the 1880s, when Saratoga Springs was a thriving resort town with two of the world’s largest hotels and lively casinos. It is believed that chefs from Europe who came to work at the hotels influenced Jim Mangay, the originator of the pigs, to make something that approximated marzipan candy. But marzipan was not readily available, so Mr. Mangay adapted, using peppermint oil from his father’s apothecary. Years later, the casinos would close, Saratoga’s popularity would slightly wane and the pigs would be no more — driven out by sugar rationing during World War II . Some 40 years later, a candy maker, Mike Fitzgerald, brought them back. Shortly after starting his business, Saratoga Sweets , Mr. Fitzgerald was encouraged by several of the city’s older residents to resurrect the pigs. That first year in 1988, using an original mold someone had saved, Mr. Fitzgerald made his first run of about 60 to 70 pigs. “It was Christmas Eve,” he recalled. “Caroline Street was packed with old people standing under umbrellas. It was a cold, rainy day. We didn’t have enough, but it didn’t matter. People were just as happy because the pigs had made a comeback. “One man came with his grandson. He told me, ‘The last time, I was the little hand holding the big hand. Now I’m the big hand holding the little one.’ ” Saratoga Sweets holds and is renewing a trademark on the Peppermint Pig, although the candy is sold online and through popular catalogs, as well as in about 200 museum shops and retail stores primarily on the East Coast. Dawn Oesch, the owner of the Candy Company in Saratoga Springs, said she can tell Christmas is nearing when orders for the pigs start coming in. “I’d say we go through a few thousand,” she said. “We usually run out of them. We have so many visitors. They all want a piece of Saratoga, and it brings you good luck. Who doesn’t want good luck?” As the pigs enjoy their 25th Christmas this year, sales are expected to top 130,000. The pigs, which are packaged with a small red pouch and the hammer, come in different sizes — none of them particularly large. But for those who may now want a whole pig, bite-size pieces of pink “poop” are also offered. The candy is essentially made the same way it was a century ago, with the identical ingredients and copies of the original molds. Batches are boiled up in small quantities, using teakettles — five pigs to a kettle — to ensure quality control. After cooking, the pink liquid is poured into aluminum alloy molds and left to cool. Each pig takes about 90 minutes to make. The hot, steaming kitchen is like a peppermint-scented sauna. “You leave here candy coated,” a cook, Blaine Serven, said. The pigs’ popularity led Mr. Fitzgerald to move to a larger space in nearby Halfmoon about a decade ago. Catherine King Eddy, who was born and raised in Saratoga but lives in New Britain, Conn., said she buys Peppermint Pigs for friends and loved ones each year. “The farthest I have sent one is to Pakistan,” she said. “I started buying them when my mom told me about the renewed tradition in the early 1990s. Depending on when we can all get together, we will break it after a meal anywhere from Thanksgiving through New Year’s, but we try to do it on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day because the little ones always look forward to it.” Parking spaces at Saratoga Sweets are lined in pink, and there’s a Pig Wall of Fame filled with porker paraphernalia. The newest addition to the store is Willie, Mr. Fitzgerald’s live Kunekune pig who greets customers at the front door. The 9-month-old pig is celebrating his first Christmas this year. “He’s getting a new sweater and boots,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “I had to get two pair of boots because he’s got four feet. It’s not like buying shoes for your aunt.”