Boies, Star Lawyer, Represents N.F.L. in Lockout Hearing

Abstract: Last week, during a lecture at the Yeshiva University Cardozo School of Law, David Boies was reviewing the case he helped argue against California’s Proposition 8 in that landmark same-sex marriage trial when he paused for a moment to compose himself. Earlier in the evening, Boies had called the fight for equal rights for gays the next step in moving closer to the ideals of the country’s founding fathers. As he recalled asking the four plaintiffs in the case why they wanted to marry, he was briefly overcome by what he remembered as the pain and despair in their responses. “The ‘we’ of our society has expanded,” Boies said that night. “We’re now at the point where essentially the only group outside the circle of ‘we’ is gays and lesbians.” Nothing that emerges from the antitrust case N.F.L. players have brought against the league will approach the emotional or historical resonance of the Proposition 8 issue. But the N.F.L. hired Boies for the same reason that he is involved in that case; in Oracle’s copyright-infringement lawsuit against SAP; in Jamie McCourt’s divorce from Frank McCourt, which is tangled up with the fate of the Los Angeles Dodgers; among the six trials he had last year. At 70, Boies is one of the country’s pre-eminent litigators, having built a long, storied career by arguing complex, high-stakes, often headline-making cases. In 2000, he represented Al Gore before the Supreme Court in the case that decided the 2000 presidential election. On Wednesday in St. Paul, he will present the N.F.L.’s argument against the players’ request for an injunction to stop the league’s lockout. “This seems right up his alley,” said Theodore B. Olson, the former solicitor general who represented George W. Bush against Boies in 2000 and is Boies’s co-counsel in the Proposition 8 case. “It’s a dynamic, challenging issue that affects a great deal of America. And it’s groundbreaking. He loves that sort of thing. It tests his skill, imagination and creativity. I just doubt there’s anything that excites him more professionally than that kind of intellectual challenge.” The N.F.L. declined to make Boies available for comment on the N.F.L. case until after Wednesday’s hearing. Boies’s work in sports has been overshadowed by his other closely followed cases, and much of his public profile revolves around his reputation as a liberal-leaning Democrat. But he has long advised the Yankees — it was his decision to represent the Yankees that spurred him to leave Cravath, Swaine & Moore in 1997 to form what would become Boies, Schiller & Flexner . He was on hand with the Yankees during the formation of the YES Network and during the building of the new Yankee Stadium. He defended Nascar against antitrust charges from Kentucky Speedway, and he represented Oracle’s founder, Larry Ellison, in a dispute involving the America’s Cup, during which Boies found himself reading sailing manuals from the 1800s. (Boies sails himself, and he enjoys going to Las Vegas to play cards.) The Yankees’ owner, George Steinbrenner, relied heavily on Boies’s advice, dating to the Yankees’ 1997 groundbreaking marketing deal with Adidas. “He’s brilliant,” said Randy Levine, the president of the Yankees. “He has great common sense. He’s an all-star.” Still, Boies’s reputation has been constructed on his ability to hopscotch across specialties, with a thirst for cases that shape industries — the N.F.L. case fits that mold — and move the law. He has represented both sides of issues. He defended IBM against antitrust charges brought by the Justice Department and later prosecuted Microsoft on the government’s behalf on antitrust charges; he defended Napster when the recording industry charged it with copyright infringement, then represented Oracle when it won $1.3 billion in damages from SAP, a record for a copyright-infringement verdict. His dearth of experience in a particular subject is not unusual for him. The closest he has come to delving into sports labor is probably representing Nascar cases with drivers who did not want to be drug-tested. When he defended CBS against a libel charge brought by Gen. William Westmoreland in the 1980s, it was the first libel case he had handled. When he defended Lloyd’s of London in an insurance case related to the attack on the World Trade Center, it was the first time he had dealt with insurance law. Those who have worked with Boies say that he draws on a remarkable memory — nearly photographic, they say — and relentless preparation, which he deploys in what have often been withering questionings of witnesses, including Westmoreland and Microsoft’s Bill Gates. “His capacity to cross-examine is like no one I’ve seen,” said Joel Klein, the former New York City schools chancellor and now the executive vice president, office of the chairman of News Corporation, who, when he was the head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, hired Boies for the Microsoft case. “It’s mesmerizing. If he read a document, he’ll remember it. If you say ‘X,’ he’ll say ‘Four years ago, you said Y.’ ” Boies, Klein added, “knows when people are trying to hustle you.” The impact of that reputation is undoubtedly part of what the N.F.L. hired, too, for the case that will determine who will have the upper hand in negotiations toward the next labor deal and when — if — the next season will begin. Those who have watched Boies note that he commands a level of attention in a courtroom that very few others do. That, Olson said, can make Boies an intimidating presence for opposing lawyers, but a thrilling one for those on his side of a case. “Like in a football game, there are favorite players you watch that have extra talent because something exciting is going to happen,” Olson said. “He is like a great matador. He’s part of a team, but he’s performing as an artist by himself. The spotlight is on him, and it really brings his talent to the fore. If you wanted to watch Michelangelo create a great work of art, in the legal field, that’s David.”

Lockouts
Football
Boies David
National Football League
Antitrust Laws and Competition Issues
Suits and Litigation
Boies Schiller & Flexner
Organized Labor
National Football League Players Assn


In Pursuit of the Korean Connection

Abstract: I MET a Russian guy a few years ago who told me that life is really not about the number of days you live. Rather, life is best defined by the number of days you remember. That always stuck with me. So last fall, my business partner and I came up with an idea for a Web site called LifeProfit.com . The idea was to create this social networking site for people to share ideas about breaking away from their normal routines and doing something out of the ordinary — something they would remember. Unfortunately, the domain name was already taken. I managed to track down the e-mail address of the man who owned the name, and I sent him a few e-mails to see if we could do some business. But I never heard back. To further complicate things, he lives in Pusan, South Korea, a long way from home in Cincinnati. I thought I would demonstrate the concept behind my Web site idea, so I set off for Korea to hunt him down. My colleagues, family and friends all thought I had lost my mind. I had about 24 hours of flight time, airport time and delays because of mechanical problems. By the time I arrived in Seoul, South Korea, I was questioning my own sanity, too. I spent a few nights in Seoul, and then made my way to Pusan. I didn’t have any hotel reservations outside Seoul, so I asked some people about a good place to stay. They recommended a Buddhist monastery that took in travelers. When I finally found the monastery, I immediately knew I was going to be a fish out of the proverbial water. That was especially apparent during meals. No one spoke while eating. And every meal included kimchi, a spicy, fermented cabbage dish. Plus, everyone sat on the floor, with their legs crossed. First, the minute someone tells me not to talk, I want to talk. Second, I didn’t grow up eating kimchi. Nor did I grow up sitting cross-legged on the floor ruminating about the reason for my existence. I was in awe of the hospitality of these monks, but I was miserable. My stomach was going nuts, and my back was killing me. I was glad I could entertain everyone with my incompetence, but I sure was glad to get out of there. I finally made my way to Pusan, where I met a young Korean woman who spoke English. She told me she would help me in my quest to track down the owner of the domain name. The fates did smile on me. We managed to find the gentleman’s phone number and he agreed to meet me the next day at an Internet cafe to hear my pitch. Long story short, we met. And after an awkward conversation, I managed to persuade him to give me the domain name. I like to think it was my savvy negotiating skills, but I think he just felt bad I had traveled so far to meet him. I was ecstatic. That is, until my flight back to the States. My bag, which contained critical bank account and domain information, went missing. I must have called the airline a dozen times, and each time I got a different answer as to the whereabouts of my bag. But after three days, it did finally arrive. It was beaten and battered but my paperwork was there. So at the end it all worked out. People ask me if I would go through all of this again. And my answer is an immediate yes. But next time, no kimchi. I try to be open-minded, but that stuff just doesn’t like me.

South Korea
Business Travel
Kimchi (South Korean Food)
Social Networking (Internet)
Iskandar Mike


Bloomberg Proposes Expanding Tax Credit to Fight Poverty

Abstract: WASHINGTON, Aug. 28 — Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took his antipoverty message to a national stage on Tuesday, proposing an $8.5 billion expansion of the federal earned income tax credit to bring more poor people, especially men, into the work force. In a meandering speech at a conference organized by the Brookings Institution, Mr. Bloomberg argued that because the antipoverty programs of the past decade, which focused on women with children, were reaching the limit in their ability to drive down poverty rates, it was time to focus on men. “If we are going to achieve another round of substantial gains like the kind we experienced post-1996, then we have to do more to connect fathers to jobs and to their families,” he said. “And we have to increase the rewards for work so that work pays, both for parents and individuals.” Mr. Bloomberg’s plan would allow 21-year-olds who do not have children living with them to qualify for the tax credit. The age limit is now 25. He also proposes raising the tax credit’s maximum qualifying income to just over $18,000 from $12,000. With those and other adjustments, Mr. Bloomberg said, someone who now makes $11,000 a year could see his or her tax benefits rise by nearly $1,000 from $86, with an additional $350 coming from the city and state. The plan, which would need Congressional approval, also would require recipients to keep up their child-support payments and to work at least 26 weeks a year. Mr. Bloomberg’s plan would apply to about 445,000 residents in New York, almost 80 percent of whom would be new recipients. Nationwide, about 19.7 million people would qualify, with 10.5 million of them newly eligible. Acknowledging the hefty price tag, Mr. Bloomberg said the economy would benefit from having more people working and more fathers paying child support. After delivering the speech, which sounded at times like a blueprint for a national campaign, Mr. Bloomberg fielded questions about his presidential ambitions. “I’m not going to run for president,” he said. The speech — which began with a joke about his visit here (no, he said, it was not part of a “stealth campaign” to become attorney general) — zigzagged among several topics, including public education, illegal immigration and the problems of “partisan bickering.” Pledging to work with New York City’s Congressional delegation to enact his proposal, Mr. Bloomberg said the city was designing a new way to measure poverty rates. Many poverty analysts consider the current measure, in use since 1964, to be antiquated.


A Value-Added Tax Offers Much to Love — and Hate

Abstract: THE policy world is abuzz with talk about whether a value-added tax should be part of the solution to our long-term fiscal problems. Most recently, Paul A. Volcker , head of President Obama’s economic advisory board, said a VAT was “not as toxic an idea” as it used to be. But is it actually a good idea? Regardless of whether your politics lean left or right, the VAT gives you some things to love and some to hate. Let’s start with the basics. Economists define a business’s “value added” as the revenue it gets from the sale of goods and services, minus the amount it pays for goods and services. So, for example, if a farmer sells wheat to a miller for $1, the miller sells flour to a baker for $2, and the baker sells bread to a customer for $3, each of the three producers has a value-added of $1. (For simplicity, I am assuming that the farmer does not buy anything to grow the wheat.) Now let’s invoke a piece of advanced mathematics: $1 + $1 + $1 = $3. That is, the value of the final product — the $3 bread — is the sum of the value-added along the chain of production. This leads to the first and most important insight about a value-added tax: It is essentially the same as a retail sales tax. The government could impose, say, a 10 percent retail sales tax, causing the baker to add 30 cents to the price of bread. Or it could impose a 10 percent tax on value-added. In this case, the farmer raises the price of wheat to $1.10, the miller raises the price of flour to $2.20 (reflecting both the tax and the higher price of wheat), and the baker raises the price of bread to $3.30. Either way, the consumer pays 10 percent more for the final product. Although a value-added tax is just another form of a retail sales tax, a VAT has the advantage of being harder to evade. Tax experts believe that large retail sales taxes lead to compliance problems, which we can avoid by collecting the same tax along the chain of production. So that’s what a VAT is. What is there to love and hate about it? For liberals, the main advantage of a VAT is that it would be a source of revenue to fund a robust, compassionate government. Over the past century in the United States, the federal government has expanded the social safety net, including programs like Social Security , Medicare , Medicaid and, most recently, the insurance subsidies in Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul. Yet Congress has been more successful promising benefits than finding the revenue to pay for them. A VAT could solve that problem. Yet liberals balk at the distributional impact of a VAT. The tax has the same effect on rich and poor, as gauged by a proportion of their spending. But because high-income households save a higher fraction of their income, they will pay a lower fraction of their income. Whether this distribution of the tax burden is fair is open to debate. (What is indisputable is that adding it without subtracting something else would violate Mr. Obama’s campaign pledge not to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year.) CONSERVATIVES emphasize an altogether different set of concerns. For them, the main disadvantage of a VAT is that it would be a source of revenue to fund a large, intrusive government. Western Europe is a case in point. Many nations there have large governments financed in part by value-added taxes. Europeans also typically work less than Americans and, as a result, have lower income per person. While sorting out cause-and-effect among these international differences is hard, many conservatives agree with Edward C. Prescott, a Nobel laureate in economics whose research suggests that Europe’s lower income is largely attributable to its higher tax rates. On the other hand, conservatives have long argued that the American tax system is grossly inefficient and impedes the economy’s ability to reach its full potential. They contend that taxing consumption is better than taxing income, and a value-added tax does exactly that. Moreover, a VAT is the twin of the flat tax that conservatives sometimes advocate. To see why, imagine that we started with a VAT. Then we add a wrinkle: We allow businesses to deduct wages, in addition to the cost of goods and services. We also require households to pay a tax on their wage income. Other than shifting the responsibility for the tax on wages from the business to the household, it might seem that we haven’t done anything significant. Indeed, we haven’t. But the new tax system would no longer be a VAT. It would be the flat tax that Robert E. Hall and Alvin Rabushka first proposed back in 1981. So why, if these two tax systems are really the same, are conservatives attracted to the flat tax and repelled by the VAT? It is because the flat tax is usually proposed as a substitute for our current tax system, whereas the VAT is often suggested as an addition to it. The bottom line, from both political perspectives, is that a VAT is neither blessed nor evil. It is a tool. We can use it to advance a larger government, a more efficient tax system or some combination of the two. That will be the key issue in the coming debate.

Value-Added Tax
Volcker Paul A
Politics and Government


Sidney Craig, 76, a Founder of Jenny Craig, Dies

Abstract: Sidney Craig, who with his wife, Genevieve, founded Jenny Craig Inc., the chain of weight-loss centers, which would eventually open more than 600 centers in four countries, died Monday at his home in Del Mar, Calif. He was 76. The death was confirmed by Patti Larchet, who is now chief executive of the company. Mr. Craig was a partner in a small chain of women’s weight-loss salons called Body Contour in the 1970s when he met Genevieve Guidroz Bourcq, who was working at one of those salons, in New Orleans. Soon after, she became national director of operations for Body Contour, and in 1979, they married. Three years later, the couple sold their interest in Body Contour and moved to Melbourne, Australia, where — using the diminutive of Ms. Craig’s given name — they opened the first Jenny Craig center. Emphasizing long-term weight reduction through lifestyle changes, and offering counseling as well as prepared calorie-controlled meals, the company eventually opened centers in New Zealand, Canada and the United States. There were 655 Jenny Craig locations in 2006, when the company was bought by Nestlé for $600 million. The Craigs were also owners of thoroughbred horses. In 1995, they bought a 237-acre breeding ranch in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. Five years ago, one of their horses, Candy Ride, won the $1 million purse at the Pacific Classic at the Del Mar racetrack. A longtime goal of Mr. Craig’s was to win the Kentucky Derby. To that end, in 1992, Ms. Craig bought her husband a $2.5 million present for his 60th birthday: a horse named Dr Devious. The colt finished seventh in the Kentucky Derby but went on to win the Epsom Derby in England. Sidney Harvey Craig was born in Vancouver, B.C., on March 22, 1932. His family later moved to California. For a time, Mr. Craig attended California State University, Fresno. Then, after serving in the Navy, he became an instructor for Arthur Murray Dance Studios. He eventually owned five Arthur Murray franchises. His successful investments led to his stake in the Body Contour chain and the meeting with his future wife. Besides his wife, Mr. Craig is survived by three daughters, Denise Merlone, Michelle Weinger and Susan McKenna; two sons, Steven and Jason; and 13 grandchildren.

Weight
Craig Sidney
Craig Jenny
Deaths (Obituaries)
Nestle SA
Horse Racing


Columbus Crew Change Hands

Abstract: The Columbus Crew announced that Precourt Sports Ventures LLC acquired the operating rights to the Major League Soccer club from Hunt Sports Group, which had owned and run it since its inception in 1996. Hunt Sports Group is still investor-operator of M.L.S.’s F.C. Dallas franchise. The Crew won the M.L.S. Cup in 2008.

Precourt Sports Ventures
Soccer
Columbus Crew Soccer Team
MLS


Brooklyn Hospital Lays Off 240

Abstract: A hospital in central Brooklyn laid off 240 doctors, nurses and other workers on Monday, signaling growing financial weakness in the hospital industry. Officials at the hospital, Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center , which serves Brownsville, East New York and Canarsie, blamed the bad economy for the layoffs. “The general economic downturn has not spared the community served by Brookdale hospital,” said Ole W. Pedersen, a hospital spokesman, in a written statement. Mr. Pedersen said that the layoffs affected union and nonunion workers, physicians and some managers. But he said the hospital, which has nearly 4,000 employees covering 530 hospital beds, a nursing home and clinics, expected to be able to continue to operate. Ken Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association , said that the Brookdale layoffs, which followed the closing last month of two hospitals in Queens — St. John’s Queens Hospital and Mary Immaculate Hospital, both run by Caritas Health Care Inc. — was an ill omen for New York City hospitals. He estimated that 2,700 health care jobs were being eliminated, and said that Gov. David A. Paterson’s proposed budget would cost $1 billion in Medicaid cuts and new taxes (including $32 million at Brookdale). “The health care system is in extremely fragile condition,” Mr. Raske said. “Facing the budget that’s being proposed in Albany, this will be the first of a chain car reaction.” George Gresham, president of 1199 S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East, which represents 3,400 workers at Brookdale, including 178 of those who received layoff notices, echoed Mr. Raske’s concern, saying: “Hospitals are hanging by a thread.” In their statement, Brookdale officials complained that the hospital had been hurt in payment disputes with insurance and managed care companies. The hospital says that insurers have a history of often denying payment for necessary medical treatment, leaving the hospital to absorb the costs. The hospital also said it had been hurt by rising drug, energy and malpractice costs.


Bird Watching - Noble Eagles, Nasty Pigeons, Biased Humans - Natalie Angier

Abstract: The other day I glanced out my window and felt a twinge of revulsion delicately seasoned with indignation. Pecking at my bird feeder were two brown-headed cowbirds, one male and one female, and I knew what that meant. Pretty soon the fattened, fertilized female would be slipping her eggs into some other birds’ nest, with the expectation that the naïve hosts would brood, feed and rear her squawking, ravenous young at the neglect and even death of their own. Hey, you parasites, get your beaks off my seed, I thought angrily. That feeder is for the good birds, the birds that I like — the cardinals, the nuthatches, the black-capped chickadees, the tufted titmice, the woodpeckers, the goldfinches. It’s for the hard-working birds with enough moral fiber to rear their own families and look photogenic besides. It’s not meant for sneaky freeloaders like you. I rapped on the window sharply but the birds didn’t budge, and as I stood there wondering whether I should run out and scare them away, their beaks seemed to thicken, their eyes blacken, and I could swear they were cackling, “Tippi Hedren must go.” In sum, I was suffering from a severe case of biobigotry: the persistent and often irrational desire to be surrounded only by those species of which one approves, and to exclude any animals, plants and other life forms that one finds offensive. It was not my first episode of the disorder, and evidently I don’t suffer alone. “Throughout history there have been vilified animals and totemic animals,” said John Fraser, a conservation psychologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society . “There are the animals you don’t like and that you dismiss as small brown vermin, and the animals whose attributes you absolutely want to own,” to be a tiger, a bear, lupine leader of the pack. Biobigotry is different from the impulse to avoid organisms that can hurt or sicken us, like yellow jackets, mosquitoes or poison ivy , or to fend off traditional household pests like mice and roaches. Rather, it is the dislike we direct toward creatures that live outdoors and generally mind their own business, but that behave in ways we find rude, irritating, selfish or contemptible. The squirrels are gluttons, the crows are schoolyard bullies, the house sparrows are boring and look like mice when they skitter along the ground. How we love those noble falcons and eagles that lately have blessed us by nesting on our skyscrapers and bridges. How we beg them to feast freely on the pigeons and starlings that curse us by nesting on our skyscrapers and bridges. Sometimes our biobigotry is merely attitudinal. In the course of an interview about spotted hyenas, for example, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, scornfully referred to the wildebeest that the hyenas frequently prey on as “wildeburgers.” Why? Because once a wildebeest has been caught, said the scientist, it just stands there with cowlike passivity and allows itself to be torn apart. Compare that with a zebra, the researcher said, which will go down fighting and kicking and cracking the predator’s jaw if it can. “Oh, we’re all of us prone to a massive over-interpretation of the things that we see,” said Marc D. Hauser, professor of psychology and evolutionary biology at Harvard University and author of “Moral Minds.” “I distinctly remember, when I first went to Amboseli National Park to study vervet monkeys, how quickly I developed strong feelings about the personalities of the monkeys — here were the great and brave ones, there were the lame ones that hid in the bushes and acted pathetic.” At other times, we take steps to favor our local heroes or thwart our chosen goats, whose greatest sin, as a rule, is being exceptionally good at their game. We try to squirrel-proof our bird feeders, yank weeds from our flower beds, call Animal Control, and when all else fails, reach for our guns. Stephen C. Sautner of the Wildlife Conservation Society cited the case of a friend and avid birder who has a colony of purple martins on his property. “He spends much of his time shooting and trapping starlings and English sparrows,” said Mr. Sautner, “both of which he describes as ‘evil.’ ” We always have a story to justify our most aggressive attempts at unwanted-animal control. The animal is an invasive species like the European starling, and it doesn’t belong here. Or it’s a native species like the cowbird but its range has been unnaturally extended through deforestation. Or it likes our garbage and our raggedy parks and thus has an unfair advantage over fussier creatures. Whatever the self-exculpatory particulars, said Marc Bekoff, author of “The Emotional Lives of Animals” and emeritus professor of biology at the University of Colorado, “I see it as a double cross that we create a situation where cowbirds spread, or red foxes eat endangered birds, and then we decide, well, now we’ve got to go out and kill the cowbirds and the foxes.” Our proneness to biobigotry, experts said, arises from several salient human traits. For one, we are equipped with an often overactive theory of mind — the conviction that those around you have their own minds, goals and desires, and that it might behoove you to anticipate what they’ll do next. We spin elaborate narratives out of the slenderest of observational threads: Look, the blue jay is trying to dislodge the cowbird from the feeder. Could the jay know the cowbird is a nest parasite and be trying to drum it out of town? “We interpret animal behaviors through a human lens and human morality,” said Mr. Fraser, the conservation psychologist. Related to the human impulse to see ourselves in nature is the persistent sense that nature belongs to us, and that we have the right and the means to control it. “In the past, when we talked about exploiting nature, that was seen as a good thing,” Mr. Fraser said. “Now we realize that that attitude is counterproductive to human success.” Nowhere is our sense of droit du roi over nature more manifest than in our paradoxical attitudes toward farm animals. On the one hand, they’re the beloved figures of our earliest childhood. On the other hand, many of our most pejorative comparisons were born in the barnyard — you lazy pig, you ugly cow, you chicken, what a bunch of sheep. Conservation groups, which keep track of public attitudes toward animals, acknowledge that they are ever on the lookout for the next Animal Idol — an ecologically important creature that also happens to be large, showy, charismatic and likable. If you have two important birds from the same region of Latin America, said Mr. Fraser, one a hyacinth macaw that looks like flying jewelry and can vocalize like a human, the other a storm petrel that is brown, squawky and cakes the coastline with guano, guess which face ends up on the next fund-raising calendar. Not that public attitudes can’t be changed. Bats, for example, were long considered vermin, but nowadays, in the wake of the wildly popular children’s book “Stella Luna,” they’ve taken on a magical air, as the mosquito-eating Tinkerbells that if you’re lucky will soon take up residence near you. Until then, step away from that bat house, sparrow. Don’t make me shoot.

Birds
Pigeons
Woodpeckers
Animals
Wildlife Conservation Society
Endangered and Extinct Species
Psychology and Psychologists


Trayvon Martin Shooting Prompts a Review of Ideals

Abstract: SANFORD, Fla. — Once again, a river of protest raged through Sanford this weekend to demand justice in the name of an unarmed black teenager shot dead. It gathered strength in front of the historic Crooms Academy, the first high school for black students in Seminole County; surged through the streets; and formed a flood of grief and outrage just outside the Sanford Police Department. Once again, thousands chanted the name of Trayvon Martin , 17, the youth killed with one bullet while returning to a home in a gated community where he was a guest. Once again, they cried for the arrest of George Zimmerman, 28, the neighborhood watch coordinator who has claimed self-defense under a Florida law with the assertive name Stand Your Ground. With five weeks’ passage, the fateful encounter between a black youth who wanted to go to college and a Hispanic man who wanted to be a judge has polarized the nation. And, now this modest central Florida community finds its name being mentioned with Selma and Birmingham on a civil rights list held sacred in black American culture, while across the country, the parsing of the case has become cacophonic and political, punctuated by pleas for tolerance, words of hatred, and spins from the left and right. The racial divide that once partly defined Sanford, with U.S. 17-92 serving as the inviolable line separating black and white, has faded over the decades, leaving a casually integrated downtown. Yet the sense remains among residents of both races that the Police Department has not come as far as the city as a whole. Velma Williams, its sole black city commissioner, calls Sanford “a small, friendly, good city.” But she said that a string of unsolved cases had raised questions over whether the police had a “cavalier attitude” whenever “a black male is murdered.” Nonsense, countered its acting police chief, Darren Scott, who is also black. “Everyone here in the city gets fair and equal treatment.” That assertion of justice for all — in Sanford and throughout the United States — has been challenged, though, by a progression of events that began so innocently, so ordinarily: A teenage boy in a gray hooded sweatshirt leaves a 7-Eleven’s neon brightness with his purchase of some candy and an iced tea, and heads back into the wet Sunday evening of Feb. 26, back to a residential complex with a forbidding gate and a comforting name. Trayvon Martin was more than welcome there; he was expected. With his hood up as the rain came down, Trayvon made his way to one gated community among many, the Retreat at Twin Lakes. Past a dozen storefronts, four of them vacant. Past signs and billboards shouting “Now Leasing!” and “Rent Specials!” His was a tour of a post-bust stretch of Sanford. For more than two years now, Trayvon’s father, Tracy Martin, a truck driver from Miami , had been dating Brandy Green, a juvenile detention officer in Orlando . She lived at the Retreat with her 14-year-old son, Chad , and it was not uncommon for the Martins to drive up from Miami for overnight visits. Over six feet tall and lanky, Trayvon was interested in girls, computer games, sports and the beat of the rap and hip-hop emanating from the ear buds of his smartphone. Sleeping in Miami Dolphins bedsheets, he was all teenage boy, and more. He called himself “Slimm” on Twitter , and used a handle, @no_limit_nigga, that echoed a song by the rappers Kane & Abel. On Facebook , he expressed interest in airplanes and “South Park”; Bob Marley and LeBron James . On MySpace , he posted snapshots of his young life: admiring an airplane; fishing with his father; displaying a cake decorated with the words “Happy Birthday Tray.” Easygoing, with a default mood set at “chillin’,” as one schoolmate, Suzannah Charles, put it. The kind of kid who made tiny cakes in an Easy-Bake Oven with his 7-year-old cousin; who spoon-fed a close uncle, Ronald Fulton, who is quadriplegic, when his nurse was unavailable; who was an integral part of a close-knit family — raised properly, family members say, by Mr. Martin and his ex-wife, Sybrina Fulton, who works for Miami-Dade County’s housing agency. Ms. Green described him as the kind of kid who did not bring attitude into a house, and who knew how to behave respectfully in the homes of others. “He was smooth, quiet,” she said. “He took care of his appearance. He had swag.” But Trayvon was a teenager, not an angel. In his last year at his high school in north Miami-Dade County, he had received three suspensions — for tardiness, for graffiti and, most recently, for having a baggie with a trace of marijuana in his backpack. This last suspension, for 10 days, was enough for Trayvon’s father, who stayed on top of him about his whereabouts and middling grades; after all, he wanted to go to college, just like his quiet older brother, Jahvaris Fulton, 21, a student at Florida International University. Mr. Martin said that he had taken Trayvon with him to Sanford to keep him from hanging around Miami, doing nothing, and to talk some sense into him. These recent problems, all nonviolent, hardly reflected the essence of Trayvon Martin, his family and friends say. He was kindhearted, even-tempered and very thoughtful. That night, for example, while his father and Ms. Green were out having dinner in Orlando, Trayvon asked Chad, Ms. Green’s son, if he wanted anything from the store. Skittles, the younger boy said. A Wary Community The teenager with candy entered the Retreat at Twin Lakes, either passing the front gate or taking a not-so-secret shortcut. Here was an orderly cluster of 260 or so sandy-colored, two-story town houses that illustrate an all-too-familiar American tale. According to David Johnson, the Seminole County property appraiser, the Retreat was being built just as Florida’s housing bubble was about to burst. When the first units came onto the tax rolls in 2007, he said, they were selling in the vicinity of $250,000, he said. Now, “I think those units are selling for about half.” The Retreat has had a “significant number” of foreclosures , Mr. Johnson said, which have prompted investors to buy the properties at a discount and then rent them out. “A lot of activity in and out of there,” he said. “Maybe you don’t know the neighbor, because the one who was there before, maybe they got foreclosed on.” Adding to the uncertainty and flux was the sense among some residents that this secured community was no longer so secure. There had been burglaries; at least seven in 2011, according to police reports. Strangers had started showing up, said Frank Taaffe, 55, a marketing specialist, originally from the Bronx , who works out of his home in the Retreat. He made it clear that he was not talking about just any strangers. “There were Trayvon-like dudes with their pants down,” Mr. Taaffe said. Last August, the homeowners association decided to create a neighborhood watch, and a Sanford police official came to the Retreat to explain the guidelines: volunteers do not possess police powers; they should not be armed; and they should be the eyes and ears for the police — but not vigilantes. The group chose as its neighborhood watch coordinator the very man who had invited the official to speak: a man with thinning dark hair and an average build named George Zimmerman. The next month, the newsletter for the homeowners association included a cartoon of a man peering through a magnifying glass, à la Sherlock Holmes, next to a call for help: “We have recently experienced an increased incidence of crime within the community, including three break-ins in the past month, which is why having residents committed to being members of the Neighborhood Watch and reporting suspicious activities is so important. We must send a message that we will not tolerate this in our community!” To get involved, the newsletter said, “Call George Zimmerman.” From Virginia to Florida Now, on this dark, wet night, the neighborhood watch coordinator for the Retreat at Twin Lakes — armed with a licensed, slim 9-millimeter handgun that he kept in a holster tucked in his waistband — was in his truck when he noticed a hooded figure walking through the complex. He may have been about to go on an errand to Target, as he later told his family, but his commitment to vigilance kicked in. This, it seems, was part of who George Zimmerman was. He, too, was from someplace else — the second of three children raised in a red-brick home in a cul-de-sac in Manassas, Va. His father, Robert, was a magistrate judge and a veteran of the Vietnam War, and Robert’s father worked in Army intelligence. His mother, Gladys, a Peruvian immigrant, worked as a deputy court clerk. They ran a disciplined household that emphasized service, responsibility and the Roman Catholic faith. “Some kids would have said, ‘That’s like a prison,’ ” recalled George W. Hall, a retired pastor who lived across the street. “But they were so polite. They always looked after you before themselves.” George was an altar boy looked upon so favorably by the priests that he became a receptionist in the rectory. He also joined a youth education program called the Young Marines , wearing a uniform, marching in step and learning about good citizenship. “He was very caring toward everyone,” his father said. “Toward anyone who needed anything.” But George could be a character. In middle school, a black boy named Anthony Woodson stumbled over a chair while walking into a classroom, prompting a student he did not know to joke, “Do you know how to walk, or did you trip over your lip?” From that jarring remark, a friendship was born. Mr. Woodson said that he knew that the student, George Zimmerman, meant nothing racist, mostly because of the friends sitting with him. “Two other black kids, an Asian kid and a Hispanic,” recalled Mr. Woodson, 30, now a pastry chef in Virginia. His new, bilingual friend seemed comfortable in a multicultural world. After graduating from high school in 2001, Mr. Zimmerman moved to Florida, into a home that his parents had just bought for their retirement in Lake Mary, near Sanford. He began working as an insurance agent with an uncle, but he became a mortgage broker when the real estate market started booming. According to his father, he was making at least $10,000 a month by his early 20s. When his parents retired to Florida around 2006, Mr. Zimmerman moved into an apartment in Lake Mary with a friend. Then the housing market went bust and, according to his father, George’s employer went out of business. After that, he held several jobs, including at CarMax and Target. He also talked about becoming a police officer. He seemed to be a young man in search of a path, one who could also show flashes of violence, according to court records detailing Mr. Zimmerman’s difficult summer of 2005. That July, he was arrested after pushing a state alcohol agent during a raid to root out under-age drinking at a popular college bar; the felony charge was reduced and then dropped altogether when he agreed to enter a pretrial diversion program. About a month later, Mr. Zimmerman and a woman who identified herself as his ex-fiancée traded petitions for injunction, both claiming that the other had resorted to violence: she said he “smacked” her; he said she hit him with a baseball bat. Both injunctions were issued and they expired a year later. Still, Mr. Zimmerman seemed to have a protective streak — a sense of right and wrong — that others admired. For example, Stephanie, a neighbor of the elder Zimmermans in Lake Mary and a family friend, recalled how George Zimmerman struck up a friendship with one of her sons, Douglas, who is autistic , swimming with him, taking him for car rides and letting him play with Mr. Zimmerman’s dog, Princess. “He just felt comfortable with George,” she said. “For Dougie, everything was ‘George, George, George.’ ” Stephanie also recalled a party in early December to celebrate Mr. Zimmerman’s graduation from Seminole State College (though he still needed a few more credits to receive his associate’s degree). He shared his hope to be a judge someday with a small gathering that included two black teenagers whom, she was later told by Mrs. Zimmerman, George was mentoring. It seemed in character. A 16-year-old boy named Austin, who for a long time has mowed the lawn at the Zimmerman home in Lake Mary, described George Zimmerman as a role model for younger boys, often providing advice while throwing a football around or shooting hoops. George would stick up for a chubby boy in the neighborhood who was being bullied, recalled Austin (who, like Stephanie, asked that his last name not be used). “And if George saw bullies walking by his house, he would pull out his hose and spray them down and tell them they were wasting their time and to go and do something else.” Mr. Zimmerman was also security-minded, Austin said. “He would knock on people’s doors at night and say that it was late and that ‘You better close your garage door.’ ” But not everyone saw Mr. Zimmerman as their protector. A 17-year-old African-American, Teontae Amie, who lives at the Retreat, recalled that Mr. Zimmerman once wrongly accused his friend of stealing a bike . “When you see him, you think automatically that he might try something,” said Teontae, who added that he kept his distance from the neighborhood watch coordinator. George Zimmerman seems to have taken a private vow to protect and defend — but, for some reason, he has not realized his stated desire to become a police officer. (In 2009, though, he was accepted into Seminole County’s Community Law Enforcement Academy, in which students take tours of the courthouse and jail, go on ride-alongs with Sheriff’s Department employees and visit a firing range.) “I don’t think it was safety that he was concerned with as much as people’s rights and people’s welfare,” his father said. “And where he was living has a lot of problems with people coming in and burglarizing. I think he became alarmed, and he helped organize the neighborhood watch.” Police records over the last several years suggest a man who was quite familiar with 911 dispatchers; who seemed, somehow, to be always in the middle of things. In October 2003, for example, on perhaps his greatest day in civic vigilance, Mr. Zimmerman chased after and assisted in the capture of a man who had stolen two 13-inch TV/DVD players from an Albertsons. Mostly, though, his calls were less exciting, more anticipatory. Dangerous potholes. Stray dogs. Speeding vehicles. Open garage doors. Suspicious characters. On Feb. 2, he reported seeing a black man in a black leather jacket and printed pajamas in the Retreat; nothing came of it. This is what George Zimmerman did. Married now to Shellie Nicole Dean, a cosmetologist who is studying to be a nurse, he was attending college and working full-time at Digital Risk, a fraud-detection company retained by financial institutions. The job seemed a natural fit. Digital Risk helps institutions like Bank of America and Freddie Mac to rid their balance sheets of the kinds of toxic loans that led to the 2008 banking crisis. Mr. Zimmerman was among hundreds of auditors who work in a four-story office building in nearby Maitland, mining borrowers’ files, sniffing out lies and scrutinizing hardship letters for any hint of deceit that would allow the lender to file a claim. The role of Digital Risk, as its chief executive likes to put it, is to be “the independent watchdog of the financial world” — though a more apt phrase might be “the independent watchdog for the financial world.” Mr. Zimmerman, then, was a watchdog — at work and at home, in the Retreat at Twin Lakes. And here in the night rain came another suspicious person, in a hood. Once again, George Zimmerman dialed 911. ‘A Real Suspicious Guy’ “Hey, we’ve had some break-ins in my neighborhood,” Mr. Zimmerman said to start the conversation with the dispatcher. “And there’s a real suspicious guy.” This guy seemed to be up to no good; like he was on drugs or something; in a gray hoodie. Asked to describe him further, he said, “He looks black.” “Now he’s just staring at me,” he said. The incomplete knowledge of the next six minutes, from about 7:11 to about 7:17, comes from recorded 911 calls; a few witnesses who often heard more than saw; Mr. Zimmerman’s account, as told to others; the police account, as told to the Martin and Zimmerman families; and a 16-year-old girlfriend in Miami who was on the telephone at the time with Trayvon. Mr. Zimmerman told the dispatcher that this “suspicious guy” was in his late teens, with something in his hands. He asked how long it would be before an officer arrived, because “these assholes, they always get away.” Mr. Zimmerman’s father said that what largely aroused his son’s suspicion was how this person was walking close to the town houses, and not on the sidewalk or in the street. Perhaps someone up to no good — or, perhaps, someone disoriented in a maze of identical structures, ducking the rain and looking for the house he had left less than an hour before. Around the same time, Trayvon told the girlfriend he was talking to by cellphone that somebody was watching him, according to Benjamin Crump, a lawyer for Trayvon’s family. The lawyer said that the girl, whose name has not been released, said she told Trayvon to run — and that Trayvon responded by saying, “I’m going to walk fast.” Mr. Zimmerman told the dispatcher that the hooded figure was now running. He jumped out of his car to follow him, the beep-beep of his car, as recorded on the 911 call, announcing the instant that he moved beyond his understood mandate as neighborhood watch coordinator. The wind could be heard whooshing through Mr. Zimmerman’s cellphone as he tried to keep the visitor in view. Also heard is a garbled epithet that some have interpreted to be a racial slur, though his father insisted that his son would never say anything like that. Dispatcher: “Are you following him?” Mr. Zimmerman: “Yeah.” Dispatcher: “O.K., we don’t need you to do that.” Mr. Zimmerman: “O.K.” He and the dispatcher arranged for Mr. Zimmerman to meet a police officer near the mailboxes at the development’s clubhouse, and the call ended with a “thank you” and a “you’re welcome.” Some of what happened next, along a poorly lighted path that runs between the back ends of two long rows of town houses, is lost to the night. According to what the girlfriend has told Mr. Crump, Trayvon asked the man why he was following him, and the man responded by asking what Trayvon was doing there. She said she heard what sounded like the earpiece to Trayvon’s cellphone falling away before the line went dead. There was no answer when she tried calling back. Mr. Zimmerman’s father provided a different account, based on his conversations with his son. He said that George Zimmerman had lost sight of the hooded figure and was beginning to walk back to his vehicle when Trayvon appeared from his rear left side. He also described a conversation that began far differently than the one recalled by the girl on the phone. “He did not see Trayvon until he was right there,” he said, at which point, Trayvon, cursing, asked if George Zimmerman had “a problem.” “And George said, ‘No, I don’t have a problem,’ or ‘No, there is no problem.’ And Trayvon said, ‘You do now,’ and he punched George in the nose.” Here even Mr. Zimmerman acknowledges that there is some confusion. He told an Orlando news station that George was reaching for his cellphone when Trayvon punched him. But, in a later interview with The New York Times , he said that he was unsure whether his son made that movement and that he might have conflated news media reports with what he thought his son may have told him. However it started, witnesses described to the 911 dispatcher what resulted: the neighborhood watch coordinator, 5 foot 9 and 170 pounds, and the visitor, 6 foot 1 and 150, wrestling on the ground. Screams for help echoed off the backs of town houses. Hearing those screams, now preserved on recorded 911 calls, Sybrina Fulton says they are the cries of her baby, Trayvon. And Robert Zimmerman says they are the pleas of his younger son, George. No one answered those calls for help. But several people called 911. A man reported, “They’re wrestling right in the back of my porch.” A boy said that he was about to help when his dog slipped his leash and he had to track the animal down. A woman called to report the screams, a report that was underscored by the plaintive wail in the background. “H-E-E-E-E-L-P!” “Does he look hurt to you?” the dispatcher asked. “I can’t see him,” the woman answered. “I don’t want to go out there. I don’t know what’s going on, so.” “So you think he’s yelling help?” “Yes,” the caller answered, over the calls for help in the background. “All right,” the dispatcher said. “What is your ...” The sudden crack of gunfire cut the night. A single shot. Then silence. Here is what Robert Zimmerman said is his son’s explanation: Trayvon was on top, punching and slamming his head into the paved sidewalk. When nobody answered his calls for help, he tried to slide onto the grass. But in doing so, the holstered gun in his waistband became visible. “It is a little bit cloudy,” the father said. “But George believes Trayvon saw the pistol, was going to get it, and said, ‘You are going to die tonight.’ Shortly after that, George drew the pistol and shot him.” The police have said that this account, at least in its broadest outlines, is backed up by witnesses, most of whom have not spoken publicly. But some witnesses have challenged it, including Mary Cutcher, 31, who said that she saw Mr. Zimmerman straddling Trayvon’s body in the grass, with his hands on the teenager’s back, moments after the shot was fired. Her roommate, Selma Mora Lamilla, 36, called out three times to Mr. Zimmerman, who did not appear to be hurt, Ms. Cutcher said. After the third call, he told her to summon the police. Soon, callers to 911 were describing the presence of police officers, and the beams of flashlights gliding over a section of grass a few dozen yards from Trayvon’s destination, where a boy inside was waiting for Skittles. Another woman, a former teacher, struggled with her words and her emotions as she told the dispatcher everything she was seeing from her window, as officers roamed around the area behind her back porch. “They were wrestling each other and then I heard the man saying, ‘Help, help.’ I would have helped if I ...” She began to sob: “Oh, my God! To see someone killed, lying in the grass. Oh my God. I want to know what happened. Why would this man just shoot him?” Differing Accounts Less than half an hour after Trayvon Martin died face down in gated grass, a privileged crowd of 17,000 rose to their feet at the N.B.A. All-Star game in Orlando, 20 miles to the south, to sing the national anthem. Then, while people enjoyed their after-parties, his body, not yet identified, was taken to the medical examiner’s office in Volusia County. Mr. Zimmerman, meanwhile, was taken to Sanford police headquarters, where, he told his father, the police took many photographs of his injuries. His father said that he had a broken nose , a swollen and cut lower lip, and two cuts on the back of his head. In a grainy police video that shows a handcuffed Mr. Zimmerman being led out of a police car and through the police station, he does not appear to be badly injured; nor is there noticeable blood on his clothing. To many who have been following the case, the video presents a crucial rebuttal of Mr. Zimmerman’s account. But Mr. Zimmerman’s father said that by that time, his son had been cleaned up at the scene by medics. “They were not huge gashes,” the father said. “When he went to the doctor the next day, he said he could stitch it, but that he would have to recut it since it had started to heal. He may not have gone to the hospital earlier than that because he was in police custody for a while, and was very shaken up afterwards.” Back at the Retreat at Twin Lakes, Tracy Martin and Brandy Green returned to her town house around 10:30 p.m. to find her son, but not his. Trayvon had gone to the store, Chad explained. The adults did not panic. Trayvon was 17, after all. Maybe he had gone to visit a cousin in nearby Oviedo, or maybe he had met a girl along the way, and was chatting her up. Mr. Martin called Trayvon’s cellphone, but it went straight to voice mail. Then he called the cousin, who did not answer, but he expected the young man to call back. They went to sleep. Early next morning, no sign of Trayvon, still. Mr. Martin called his son’s cellphone, which again went to voice mail. He then repeatedly called the cousin until he answered, only to share the distressing news that he had not seen Trayvon. Now it was Mr. Martin calling 911. He reported that his son was missing, and then described what his son was wearing. Soon he was outside, meeting a couple of responding police officers. One of them took out a photograph of a body from a folder. “Next thing I heard was a scream,” Ms. Green said. “I never want to see anybody in that kind of pain again.” Mr. Martin cried and cried. At the police station later that day, he said, detectives told him that they had not arrested the man who had shot and killed his son. They explained that George Zimmerman was claiming self-defense. “That was the first thing that came out of the detective’s mouth,” Mr. Martin said. “That he had a squeaky-clean record, a license to carry a weapon and is studying criminal justice.” Mr. Martin said he asked the officers whether they had checked his son’s record, and they said yes. He said that he asked because he knew that Trayvon had no record. “My son only had snacks in his pocket, no weapon whatsoever,” he said. “Not even a fingernail file.” The Sanford police have said that once Mr. Zimmerman declared that he had shot Trayvon in the chest in self-defense, they were barred from arresting him by the state’s now-famous Stand Your Ground law, the broadest protection of self-defense in the country. It immediately requires law enforcement officials to prove that a suspect did not act in self-defense, and sets the case on a slow track. Angela B. Corey, the state attorney for the Jacksonville area who has been appointed special prosecutor in the Trayvon Martin case, said that the controversial 2005 law has changed the rules for prosecutors. Making arrests, filing charges and securing convictions are more difficult and time consuming. Now, she said, “there is a different standard.” Ms. Corey said her office has handled hundreds of these self-defense cases — at least three or four every month. The law constantly challenges the authorities, with people citing it for conflicts like bar fights and road rage. “We’ve lost Stand Your Ground motions that in my experience showed the shooter should not have shot,” she said. “Stand Your Ground needs a second look.” But Mr. Crump and Natalie Jackson, the lawyers for Trayvon’s family, said that the law does not preclude the police from properly investigating a homicide: collecting evidence, thoroughly interviewing the suspect and aggressively questioning witnesses — much of which, they maintained, did not occur in the death of Trayvon Martin. For example, the lawyers said that as of late last week, no investigator had interviewed Trayvon’s girlfriend. Exactly what the police have been considering remains uncertain. Ms. Corey said the Sanford police had filed a request for an arrest warrant with the state attorney usually responsible for the Sanford area, Norm Wolfinger. But no warrant was issued. Above all, the lawyers for Trayvon’s family say, there is simply this: a young man shot dead, and a month later, still no arrest. The day after the shooting, George Zimmerman, according to his father, returned with at least three police officers to the Retreat at Twin Lakes, back to that grassy area where plaintive cries for help had gone unanswered. The investigators, accompanied by someone with a video camera, wanted him to re-enact the events of the night when the two strangers had stood their ground. Mr. Zimmerman’s father watched from nearby. “They started where his vehicle was,” he recalled. “They walked him down the sidewalk and to the end of the sidewalk, to the street where he got an address and then walked him back towards his vehicle, near where the incident occurred.” In the days and weeks to come, Trayvon Martin would be remembered as an easygoing young man who had simply gone to the store for some candy and a drink. And George Zimmerman would go into hiding, amid hundreds of death threats against him and his family. Both would become rhetorical devices in the heated, never-ending national disagreements about race and guns. All that lay ahead. For now, the neighborhood watch coordinator stood under the bright sun that had replaced the previous night’s obscuring rain and told his side of a two-sided story about standing ground, and losing it.

Trayvon Martin
George Zimmerman
Murders
Race and Ethnicity
Gun Control


Yankees’ Youkilis Says Bulging Disk Is Source of His Pain

Abstract: Kevin Youkilis revealed Wednesday that a bulging L4 disk in his spine was the cause of his back pain, forcing him onto the disabled list and necessitating an epidural. Youkilis met with Yankees’ team physician, Dr. Christopher Ahmad, on Tuesday and had an epidural, which relieved some of the pain. Youkilis was relieved to learn the injury was not more serious. “The first thing Dr. Ahmad said was, ‘This is nothing career ending, nothing surgery-wise,’ ” Youkilis said. “ ‘Nothing like that. It’s just a minor thing, you’re going to have to deal with it.’ ” General Manager Brian Cashman has acknowledged that the Yankees mishandled the injury when they allowed Youkilis to play Saturday. They placed him on the 15-day disabled list Tuesday, but could only backdate the transaction to Sunday, so Youkilis will not be able to return until May 13 at the earliest. On Wednesday, Youkilis took responsibility for the mistake. But he said playing Saturday did not change the course of events, because the disk was pressing on a nerve and needed to be addressed. “There’s no one to blame here,” he said. “I think I’m more to blame than others, because I probably should have said I’m not 100 percent. It was probably my mistake.” The epidural is supposed to reduce the inflammation in the back and Youkilis said his previous experiences with them have been successful. He said he was a little uncertain about the exact nature of the pain because it was on the right side of his back, whereas in the past he usually felt pain on the left. “Part of the crazy human body and how it works sometimes,” he said. “But they were very happy with it being just that. There are 100 different things that could have been way worse.” Image Kevin Youkilis will not be able to return until May 13 at the earliest. Credit Elsa/Getty Images A year ago, when he was with the Boston Red Sox, Youkilis missed 22 games with a similar injury, although he said he could have returned sooner. At the time the Red Sox were enamored with the rookie Will Middlebrooks and wanted to see if he could become the permanent third baseman, enabling them to eventually trade Youkilis. Friction between Youkilis and Bobby Valentine, the Red Sox manager at the time, may have contributed to the timing of his return, and Youkilis remained stewing in Class AAA Pawtucket waiting to get called up. “I was ready to go nuts in Triple-A,” Youkilis said. “There was a lot more going on there in Boston at that time, so getting people to get up there and play was a little different. I don’t think it will be a problem here.” The Yankees are in a far different position. There is no one else they are interested in looking at now, other than Youkilis. Youkilis is one of the few experienced right-handed hitters on the team, and his ability to play third or first base had given Manager Joe Girardi greater flexibility before Youkilis was injured in Toronto on April 19. Since then, Girardi has been forced to adjust his lineups, using Jayson Nix at third base and the left-handed hitting Lyle Overbay at first base, even against left-handers. Heading into Wednesday’s game against the Houston Astros, the Yankees were 6-4 without Youkilis. During that period, Overbay had a .212 batting average with a double, a triple and two home runs, including an important one in the eighth inning of the Yankees’ 7-4 victory Tuesday night. Nix batted .250 with no extra-base hits during that time. The Yankees are not certain Youkilis will be ready to play when he is eligible to come off the disabled list on May 13. “I hope so,” Girardi said, “but backs are tricky. You never know how they will react.” NEXT STEP FOR GRANDERSON Curtis Granderson played in an extended spring training game Wednesday in Tampa, Fla., Joe Girardi said, meaning the clock has started on his return. Granderson, who is recovering from a broken right forearm, said he needs between 50 and 70 at-bats before he is ready to rejoin the Yankees. That is roughly the number of at-bats he would get over six weeks of a typical spring training. But Granderson said he could accelerate the process by getting multiple at-bats in extended spring training before he advances to play in games as part of a minor league rehabilitation assignment. Girardi said he was hopeful that Granderson can return within three weeks. “The big thing to me is not the number as that he feels he is ready,” Girardi said.

Yankees
Kevin Youkilis
Curtis Granderson
Baseball


Officials Indict Texas Man in Tennessee Mosque Case

Abstract: A Texas man was indicted Thursday, accused of threatening to use violence to stop construction of a mosque that for two years has divided the community of Murfreesboro , Tenn., and has become a national barometer of anti-Muslim sentiment. The United States Justice Department said the indictment was an aggressive stance in support of religious freedom and was intended as a warning to people who might resort to violence and other illegal activity to prevent the mosque or any other religious institution to operate. “What we’re hoping is that this sends a very strong message to any would-be individual who would threaten a mosque or take an action that would result in an individual’s constitutional rights being violated,” United States Attorney Jerry Martin said Thursday afternoon. A federal grand jury indicted Javier A. Correa, 24, of Corpus Christi, Tex., accusing him of violating the civil rights of members of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro in connection with a long, threatening message he is said to have left on the center’s phone last September. Amid a slew of threats and profanity was this sentence: “On Sept. 11, 2011, there’s going to be a bomb in the building,” according to the indictment. Mr. Martin would not say how investigators connected Mr. Correa to the crime but said the man had used a cellphone. Charges include intentionally obstructing by threat of force the free exercise of religious beliefs and of using an instrument of interstate commerce to communicate a threat to destroy a building by means of an explosive device. The authorities said they were negotiating a surrender date with a lawyer for Mr. Correa. The Justice Department has been investigating threats and violence against the Islamic community in Murfreesboro, which is about a half-hour southeast of Nashville, for almost two years. Leaders of the congregation have been building a 12,000-square-foot mosque and community center, hoping to open it before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins at the end of July. Since the project began, the site has been repeatedly vandalized, construction equipment has been set on fire and residents have tried to block the project in court. The F.B.I. and other federal agencies are investigating a 2010 fire as a possible hate crime. Opponents’ arguments have ranged from assertions that it would increase traffic and damage water quality in the growing city of about 100,000 to concerns that the new center would serve as a cover for radical Muslims and Islamic law. Public hearings about its construction in 2010 turned into a trial of the validity of Islam, with residents arguing that the center was part of a plot to replace the Constitution with Shariah law . A protest and counterprotest drew nearly 800 people, and a local Republican candidate for Congress tried to link the center to the Palestinian group Hamas. Still, the building permit was granted. Opponents filed suit in state court contesting it, and were handed a victory this month when Chancellor Robert E. Corlew III ruled that the Rutherford County Planning Commission did not give sufficient notice of the hearing. County officials have appealed the ruling and construction is continuing, but officials cannot issue the final permits so the center can be used. Since the ruling, local Muslim leaders and the Council on American-Islamic Relations have been working with the Justice Department, which has filed a brief in support of the mosque in that case, and are watching the permitting process carefully.

Tennessee
Mosques
Vandalism
Muslims and Islam
Threats and Threatening Messages
Correa Javier A
Murfreesboro (Tenn)


Pakistan Says It Foiled Plot to Free Militant Behind Daniel Pearl’s Death

Abstract: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Pakistani military said on Friday that it had foiled an attempt to free Ahmed Omar Sheikh, the British-born militant who was convicted and sentenced to death for his role in the 2002 killing of the American journalist Daniel Pearl . Lt. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa, the military’s chief spokesman, said militants had planned to break into a prison in Hyderabad, a city in Sindh Province in Pakistan ’s south, to free Mr. Sheikh and other prisoners being held there. General Bajwa spoke at a news conference in the port city of Karachi, about 100 miles southwest of Hyderabad. Mr. Pearl , a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, was working on an article on militant Islamic groups in Pakistan with links to Al Qaeda when he was kidnapped, and subsequently beheaded, in Karachi. Mr. Sheikh was found to have masterminded the journalist’s abduction. General Bajwa said the prison break plan was 90 percent complete when intelligence agencies broke it up. He said the plotters had rented a house in Hyderabad and planned to breach the prison with the help of a jail constable, who has been arrested. At the news conference, General Bajwa presented a handmade map of the prison, which he said the plotters had drawn with the constable’s help. General Bajwa said the militants had planned to detonate two vehicles filled with explosives near two barracks housing prisoners. He said they planned to free about 100 prisoners, and to kill 35. He did not explain why some prisoners were to be killed. Two men who General Bajwa said were involved in the plot — Farooq Musanna, deputy leader of Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, and Naeem Bokhari, deputy leader of the Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi — were presented in handcuffs at the news briefing, along with a third man, Sabir Khan, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi’s deputy leader in Karachi. But the military spokesman did not specify when the men had been arrested or when the alleged plot was to have been carried out. Pakistan has seen at least two mass jailbreaks in recent years.

Pakistan
Daniel Pearl
Ahmed Omar Sheikh
Al Qaeda


Counterfeit Vehicle Inspection Stickers Are Seized at Kennedy Airport

Abstract: They are known as rovers: the United States Customs and Border Protection officers who patrol the baggage claim area at Kennedy International Airport, scrutinizing arriving passengers and looking for signs of illegal narcotics, food items or currency tucked away in pockets and luggage. This week, for reasons that agency officials did not reveal, a rover pulled aside a man who had just arrived on a flight from Santiago, Dominican Republic. An examination of his luggage turned up something highly unusual: counterfeit New York State vehicle inspection stickers. Customs officers found 935 of them hidden inside the man’s sneakers and a photo album, a haul that hinted at the possibility of an international counterfeit ring dealing in stickers. “As far as I’ve seen — it’ll be six years in April that I’ve been at C.B.P. — this is the first time I’ve seen anything like this,” Anthony L. Bucci, a spokesman for the agency’s New York field office, said Thursday. The passenger, Luis Jose Cabral, 34, a Dominican immigrant who lives in the Bronx, was arrested shortly after the discovery on Tuesday, and was arraigned in Queens Criminal Court on charges of second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument, a felony punishable by up to seven years in prison, officials said. Mr. Cabral did not respond to a request for comment conveyed through his lawyer. All vehicles registered in New York State must undergo an annual safety inspection performed by an inspector licensed by the Department of Motor Vehicles. Most vehicles are also concurrently inspected for emissions. Image Counterfeit New York State vehicle inspection stickers. Credit U. S. Customs and Border Protection Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, whose office is prosecuting the case, estimated the value of the stickers at more than $100,000 based on the average street price of about $125 each, even though the imitations were of very low quality, used the wrong font and coloring, and lacked certain security features. While inspections cost between $6 and $27 depending on the kind of procedure and the type of vehicle, the greater potential value of counterfeit stickers might be the savings for people facing expensive repairs to bring their vehicles into compliance. But officials say the cost-cutting can have serious public safety consequences. The stickers “were likely intended for individuals who knew that their vehicles stood a good chance of not passing inspection,” Mr. Brown said in a statement. “If this scheme had not been stopped, hundreds of unsafe or improperly equipped vehicles could have been operating on our streets.” While the black market in inspections stickers is not new, local, state and federal officials said they could not remember a haul this large of fake stickers in New York. In 1990 , officials discovered a proliferation of counterfeit inspection stickers throughout the New York metropolitan region, prompting the formation of a special task force that included the attorney general’s office, the Department of Motor Vehicles and state police. More recently, officials in Babylon, Long Island, have found nearly 100 fake inspection stickers on vehicles since August 2014. Other municipalities on Long Island have contacted them to find out what to look for, and some have reported finding fake stickers, too, said William Whittier, Babylon’s code enforcement coordinator. “Soon, wheels are going to fall off; people are going to get killed,” he said.

Counterfeit
New York
Department of Motor Vehicles
Car Crash
JFK Airport
Customs and Border Protection US
Richard A Brown


N.F.L. Playoffs: Who We Think Will Reach the Super Bowl

Abstract: Three of the quarterbacks in Sunday’s N.F.L. conference championship games have Super Bowl rings. The fourth is a leading candidate for this season’s Most Valuable Player Award. Advantage: no one in particular. The conference championships won’t be decided by the quarterbacks — Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger or New England’s Tom Brady in the A.F.C., or by Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers or Atlanta’s Matt Ryan in the N.F.C. The final round of Super Bowl LI qualifying will come down to the doings, or the undoing, of the 42 other starters on offense and defense. Spoils to the best supporting casts. Here is a look at Sunday’s matchups and who we think will win them. All times Eastern. Packers (12-6) at Falcons (12-5) Time: 3:05 p.m. Line: Falcons by 5 Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers has thrown 21 touchdown passes and one interception during an eight-game winning streak. Atlanta’s Matt Ryan has thrown 18 touchdown passes and three interceptions in his last eight games. The tiebreaker goes to the better pass rush, which is more an exercise in theory than an actual practice with these two bottom-floor defenses. Rodgers seems to do his best work when he is on the lam from the pocket, faking left and right until he can make a deep throw on the move; so flushing him outside the hash marks only worsens the situation. The Falcons — starting with the N.F.L. sacks leader, linebacker Vic Beasley Jr. — must trap Rodgers from the outside and either force him to throw the ball before he wishes or take him down before he escapes to his improvisational zone. Blitzing isn’t always the brightest idea, given Rodgers’s rapid release. But consider one weak link: Running back Ty Montgomery, a converted wide receiver who too often gives blitzing defenders the bullfighter’s wave and lets them race right by him. If the front seven can’t slow down Rodgers, no one will. The Falcons ranked 28th in passing yards allowed per game, and season-ending injuries to two starters have forced them to use an undrafted rookie, Brian Poole, in nickel packages. Atlanta’s task should be easier since Green Bay’s Jordy Nelson, who had 1,257 receiving yards in the regular season, has been sidelined by fractured ribs. But then, Rodgers threw passes of 25-plus yards to five other receivers in last week’s 34-31 victory at Dallas. Ryan does just fine without his own preferred target, Julio Jones, the league’s second-leading receiver (1,409 yards). But Jones’s playing time has been limited the last three games by the lingering effects of a foot injury that kept him out of two other games. Ryan threw touchdown passes to 13 teammates this season, an N.F.L. single-season record and a vivid illustration of why the Falcons led the league in scoring — for the first time in franchise history. The Packers’ defense, like its Atlanta counterpart, must find a way to pressure the quarterback into attempting regrettable throws. Green Bay ranked 31st, ahead of only New Orleans, against the passing game in the regular season, and its secondary simply does not have enough capable arms and legs to shut down Jones, Mohamed Sanu and Taylor Gabriel. If Green Bay over-invests in pass coverage, Devonta Freeman, who rushed for 1,079 yards, is sure to move the first-down sticks on delayed draws up the middle. Punters, stand down. Pick: Falcons. Image Pittsburgh Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell with the ball against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday. He has rushed for at least 150 yards in each of his first two postseason games. Credit Charlie Riede/Associated Press Steelers (13-5) at Patriots (15-2) Time: 6:40 p.m. Line: Patriots by 6 New England’s Tom Brady has four Super Bowl rings; Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger owns two. In terms of N.F.L. titles won, they are the most bejeweled pair of quarterbacks to face off in a conference championship game. How to beat them? Make each the only dimension in his offense. The Steelers have won nine consecutive games, sometimes in spite of Roethlisberger, who has thrown nine interceptions and only eight touchdowns in his last six starts. He has recently earned his keep with play-action passes to receiver Antonio Brown, a strategy that works best when the threat of a running game is credible. Le’Veon Bell is that credible threat. If the Patriots marginalize Bell, they can shift the workload to Roethlisberger. Four times this season, Roethlisberger has been pressed into making 40 or more pass attempts. Three of those times, the Steelers lost. Bell is the first N.F.L. player to rush for at least 150 yards in each of his first two postseason games. Making it three in a row will be a real chore against an industrial-strength Patriots defense that has not allowed a 100-yard rusher all season. Matchups on the offensive and defensive lines are a wash. It’s up to linebacker Dont’a Hightower and the hybrid safety Patrick Chung to meet Bell with open-field tackling. Covering him on passing routes is no easy day at the mill, either. The idea of forcing Brady to beat you in the playoffs sounds ridiculous, but remember that Patriots Coach Bill Belichick disdains an unbalanced offense. The Patriots ran the ball on 46.5 percent of their plays in the regular season — their highest proportion in six years. Their 482 carries left them 17 behind the Cowboys, who led the league. When these teams met on Oct. 23 (a game Roethlisberger missed because of an injury), running back LeGarrette Blount punctured the Steelers’ defense for 127 yards and two touchdowns on 24 carries in a 27-16 victory. All Brady had to do was throw 26 times for 222 yards in 19 completions. Force Brady to throw all day, and you create chances for the pass rush, which is the going book on how to beat him in the playoffs. Then again, Brady has more postseason wins (23) than any other quarterback in N.F.L. history, so that’s not much of a book. Pick: Patriots.

Playoffs
Ben Roethlisberger
Tom Brady
Aaron Rodgers
Matt Ryan
Packers
Steelers
Patriots
Football
Atlanta Falcons


Is ‘Do Unto Others’ Written Into Our Genes?

Abstract: Where do moral rules come from? From reason, some philosophers say. From God, say believers. Seldom considered is a source now being advocated by some biologists, that of evolution. At first glance, natural selection and the survival of the fittest may seem to reward only the most selfish values. But for animals that live in groups, selfishness must be strictly curbed or there will be no advantage to social living. Could the behaviors evolved by social animals to make societies work be the foundation from which human morality evolved? In a series of recent articles and a book, “The Happiness Hypothesis,” Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist at the University of Virginia, has been constructing a broad evolutionary view of morality that traces its connections both to religion and to politics. Dr. Haidt (pronounced height) began his research career by probing the emotion of disgust. Testing people’s reactions to situations like that of a hungry family that cooked and ate its pet dog after it had become roadkill, he explored the phenomenon of moral dumbfounding — when people feel strongly that something is wrong but cannot explain why. Dumbfounding led him to view morality as driven by two separate mental systems, one ancient and one modern, though the mind is scarcely aware of the difference. The ancient system, which he calls moral intuition, is based on the emotion-laden moral behaviors that evolved before the development of language. The modern system — he calls it moral judgment — came after language, when people became able to articulate why something was right or wrong. The emotional responses of moral intuition occur instantaneously — they are primitive gut reactions that evolved to generate split-second decisions and enhance survival in a dangerous world. Moral judgment, on the other hand, comes later, as the conscious mind develops a plausible rationalization for the decision already arrived at through moral intuition. Moral dumbfounding, in Dr. Haidt’s view, occurs when moral judgment fails to come up with a convincing explanation for what moral intuition has decided. So why has evolution equipped the brain with two moral systems when just one might seem plenty? “We have a complex animal mind that only recently evolved language and language-based reasoning,” Dr. Haidt said. “No way was control of the organism going to be handed over to this novel faculty.” He likens the mind’s subterranean moral machinery to an elephant, and conscious moral reasoning to a small rider on the elephant’s back. Psychologists and philosophers have long taken a far too narrow view of morality, he believes, because they have focused on the rider and largely ignored the elephant. Dr. Haidt developed a better sense of the elephant after visiting India at the suggestion of an anthropologist, Richard Shweder. In Bhubaneswar, in the Indian state of Orissa, Dr. Haidt saw that people recognized a much wider moral domain than the issues of harm and justice that are central to Western morality. Indians were concerned with integrating the community through rituals and committed to concepts of religious purity as a way to restrain behavior. On his return from India, Dr. Haidt combed the literature of anthropology and psychology for ideas about morality throughout the world. He identified five components of morality that were common to most cultures. Some concerned the protection of individuals, others the ties that bind a group together. Of the moral systems that protect individuals, one is concerned with preventing harm to the person and the other with reciprocity and fairness. Less familiar are the three systems that promote behaviors developed for strengthening the group. These are loyalty to the in-group, respect for authority and hierarchy, and a sense of purity or sanctity. The five moral systems, in Dr. Haidt’s view, are innate psychological mechanisms that predispose children to absorb certain virtues. Because these virtues are learned, morality may vary widely from culture to culture, while maintaining its central role of restraining selfishness. In Western societies, the focus is on protecting individuals by insisting that everyone be treated fairly. Creativity is high, but society is less orderly. In many other societies, selfishness is suppressed “through practices, rituals and stories that help a person play a cooperative role in a larger social entity,” Dr. Haidt said. He is aware that many people — including “the politically homogeneous discipline of psychology” — equate morality with justice, rights and the welfare of the individual, and dismiss everything else as mere social convention. But many societies around the world do in fact behave as if loyalty, respect for authority and sanctity are moral concepts, Dr. Haidt notes, and this justifies taking a wider view of the moral domain. The idea that morality and sacredness are intertwined, he said, may now be out of fashion but has a venerable pedigree, tracing back to Emile Durkheim, a founder of sociology. Dr. Haidt believes that religion has played an important role in human evolution by strengthening and extending the cohesion provided by the moral systems. “If we didn’t have religious minds we would not have stepped through the transition to groupishness,” he said. “We’d still be just small bands roving around.” Religious behavior may be the result of natural selection, in his view, shaped at a time when early human groups were competing with one another. “Those who found ways to bind themselves together were more successful,” he said. Dr. Haidt came to recognize the importance of religion by a roundabout route. “I first found divinity in disgust,” he writes in his book “The Happiness Hypothesis.” The emotion of disgust probably evolved when people became meat eaters and had to learn which foods might be contaminated with bacteria, a problem not presented by plant foods. Disgust was then extended to many other categories, he argues, to people who were unclean, to unacceptable sexual practices and to a wide class of bodily functions and behaviors that were seen as separating humans from animals. “Imagine visiting a town,” Dr. Haidt writes, “where people wear no clothes, never bathe, have sex ‘doggie style’ in public, and eat raw meat by biting off pieces directly from the carcass.” He sees the disgust evoked by such a scene as allied to notions of physical and religious purity. Purity is, in his view, a moral system that promotes the goals of controlling selfish desires and acting in a religiously approved way. Notions of disgust and purity are widespread outside Western cultures. “Educated liberals are the only group to say, ‘I find that disgusting but that doesn’t make it wrong,’ ” Dr. Haidt said. Working with a graduate student, Jesse Graham, Dr. Haidt has detected a striking political dimension to morality. He and Mr. Graham asked people to identify their position on a liberal-conservative spectrum and then complete a questionnaire that assessed the importance attached to each of the five moral systems. (The test, called the moral foundations questionnaire, can be taken online, at www.YourMorals.org .) They found that people who identified themselves as liberals attached great weight to the two moral systems protective of individuals — those of not harming others and of doing as you would be done by. But liberals assigned much less importance to the three moral systems that protect the group, those of loyalty, respect for authority and purity. Conservatives placed value on all five moral systems but they assigned less weight than liberals to the moralities protective of individuals. Dr. Haidt believes that many political disagreements between liberals and conservatives may reflect the different emphasis each places on the five moral categories. Take attitudes to contemporary art and music. Conservatives fear that subversive art will undermine authority, violate the in-group’s traditions and offend canons of purity and sanctity. Liberals, on the other hand, see contemporary art as protecting equality by assailing the establishment, especially if the art is by oppressed groups. Extreme liberals, Dr. Haidt argues, attach almost no importance to the moral systems that protect the group. Because conservatives do give some weight to individual protections, they often have a better understanding of liberal views than liberals do of conservative attitudes, in his view. Dr. Haidt, who describes himself as a moderate liberal, says that societies need people with both types of personality. “A liberal morality will encourage much greater creativity but will weaken social structure and deplete social capital,” he said. “I am really glad we have New York and San Francisco — most of our creativity comes out of cities like these. But a nation that was just New York and San Francisco could not survive very long. Conservatives give more to charity and tend to be more supportive of essential institutions like the military and law enforcement.” Other psychologists have mixed views about Dr. Haidt’s ideas. Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist at Harvard, said, “I’m a big fan of Haidt’s work.” He added that the idea of including purity in the moral domain could make psychological sense even if purity had no place in moral reasoning. But Frans B. M. de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University, said he disagreed with Dr. Haidt’s view that the task of morality is to suppress selfishness. Many animals show empathy and altruistic tendencies but do not have moral systems. “For me, the moral system is one that resolves the tension between individual and group interests in a way that seems best for the most members of the group, hence promotes a give and take,” Dr. de Waal said. He said that he also disagreed with Dr. Haidt’s alignment of liberals with individual rights and conservatives with social cohesiveness. “It is obvious that liberals emphasize the common good — safety laws for coal mines, health care for all, support for the poor — that are not nearly as well recognized by conservatives,” Dr. de Waal said. That alignment also bothers John T. Jost, a political psychologist at New York University. Dr. Jost said he admired Dr. Haidt as a “very interesting and creative social psychologist” and found his work useful in drawing attention to the strong moral element in political beliefs. But the fact that liberals and conservatives agree on the first two of Dr. Haidt’s principles — do no harm and do unto others as you would have them do unto you — means that those are good candidates to be moral virtues. The fact that liberals and conservatives disagree on the other three principles “suggests to me that they are not general moral virtues but specific ideological commitments or values,” Dr. Jost said. In defense of his views, Dr. Haidt said that moral claims could be valid even if not universally acknowledged. “It is at least possible,” he said, “that conservatives and traditional societies have some moral or sociological insights that secular liberals do not understand.”

Evolution
Ethics
Genetics and Heredity
Psychology and Psychologists


A Federer-Nadal Final That Is Made for Legends

Abstract: PARIS — Not only tennis fans mark their calendars when Rafael Nadal’s and Roger Federer ’s career paths collide in a final. Tennis legends do, too. “So far I didn’t miss one match, because they produced the best tennis you can play,” Bjorn Borg said at Roland Garros on Saturday, his once blond hair gone gray. “I’m looking forward to this final tomorrow because I know it’s going to be close.” That sentiment was hardly unanimous in the wake of Friday’s semifinals, in which Nadal was consistently brilliant against Novak Djokovic and Federer was good enough when he needed to be against the unseeded Frenchman Gaël Monfils. “It’s the best match Rafa has ever played at the French Open,” said his uncle Toni Nadal, who has been coaching him since he was a 4-year-old in Majorca still trying to decide whether it was better to hit his forehand with the right or the left hand. Unluckily for Federer, the Nadals chose the left, which is one of several reasons he is Federer’s bête noire in Paris. Nadal’s ability to whip his forehand in the direction of Federer’s one-handed backhand, forcing Federer to make contact above his comfort zone, has been one of the keys to Nadal’s domination on clay. On other surfaces, Federer holds a 5-2 advantage in a rivalry that is one of the best in any sport. On clay, Nadal leads, 8-1, with his defeat coming in three sets in last year’s Hamburg final, in which he won only two games in the final two sets and was clearly weary after having dominated another clay-court season. If he is weary in Paris this year, Nadal is hiding it beautifully. “Every round, since the start of the tournament, he has raised his level,” Toni Nadal said. At Roland Garros, in the clay-court matches that have mattered most, Federer has yet to push Nadal to a fifth set, losing in four in the 2005 semifinals and in the 2006 and 2007 finals. The stakes have not changed for Federer, now 26. If he can win the only Grand Slam title he lacks, he will have a strong case to make as the second-greatest player in history behind Rod Laver, who twice won the Grand Slam. Borg, a six-time French Open champion and five-time Wimbledon champion, said that if Federer won, he deserved to be considered the greatest. “I would say if he has the motivation and stays away from injuries, he has two or three more years to win this tournament,” Borg said. To improve his chances this year, Federer has hired José Higueras, the Spanish-born, California-based coach who was a redoubtable clay-court player in his era and had helped Michael Chang and Jim Courier win in Paris. “It’s obviously a lot different than the way I help or coach other people,” Higueras said last week with a laugh. “He’s done pretty well already. It’s a matter of having another set of eyes. If I can just bring just a little thing for a guy like that, it may be enough.” Higueras is intimately familiar with Nadal’s game and was once considered as a possible coach for him too. But Nadal’s tennis, for now, remains a family affair, and it is far from clear that he has reached his peak, even though he has won three times at Roland Garros. He is 22, and although Federer has never pushed him to a fifth set in Paris, neither has anyone else. His record stands at 27-0: a spotless tribute to his ability and also a historical quirk in that injury kept Nadal from playing here in 2003 and 2004, which were years when his game and his physique were still developing. “The way Rafael is playing, I think he’s probably playing his best tennis so far, if you compare to the other three years here in Paris,” Borg said. “He’s more confident. I think he looks stronger, hitting the ball better, moving well. Just feeling that if you have a lot of confidence and you go out on the court, you really feel twice as big as the other guy on the other side of the net.” Federer’s advantage and disadvantage is that he knows all this. It is an advantage because he must have an intimate understanding of what he needs to do to beat Nadal. It is a disadvantage because he has tried and failed so often and appeared to lack belief down the stretch in his two most recent matches against Nadal this season in Monte Carlo and Hamburg. But if Federer is unfortunate to be playing on what the French call terre battue in an era that happens to coincide with the player who could be the greatest clay-court player ever, Nadal is unfortunate, too, to be stuck at No. 2 in the rankings behind someone who could be the greatest player ever. “With the ranking points I have, I would have been No. 1 in many other periods in tennis history,” Nadal said. “I wouldn’t call myself lucky there.” But Nadal’s and Federer’s misfortune continues to be tennis’s gain, which is why Philippe Chatrier court will again be buzzing on Sunday as Federer and Nadal, friendly rivals in an individualistic sport, walk back on this grand stage in their headbands. It is also why Borg plans to be sitting in the front row.

Tennis
Nadal Rafael
Federer Roger
French Open (Tennis)