Florida State Drops Quarterback

Abstract: Florida State dismissed the freshman quarterback De’Andre Johnson from the team on the same day prosecutors released video showing him punching a woman at a bar. Johnson had been suspended since that episode, on June 24. In the security-camera video, Johnson and the woman appear to have an altercation, during which she swings at him. It is not clear whether she makes contact, but Johnson responds by punching her in the face. Johnson has been charged with misdemeanor battery.

College football
De'Andre Johnson
Domestic violence
Video Recordings
Downloads and Streaming
Florida State University


Hinckley’s Lawyers, Unpaid, Want Off Case

Abstract: Lawyers for John W. Hinckley Jr. , the man who tried to kill President Ronald Reagan more than 30 years ago, have asked to withdraw from the case, saying the Hinckley family can no longer afford to pay them. The six lawyers with the firm Dickstein Shapiro filed a motion to withdraw on Friday. Mr. Hinckley is asking for freedom to leave a Washington psychiatric hospital for more than 10 days at a time.

Reagan Ronald Wilson
Hinckley John W Jr
Murders and Attempted Murders


World Cup 2014: Greece Advances Past Ivory Coast on Penalty Kick in Added Time

Abstract: FORTALEZA, Brazil — Georgios Samaras scored on an added-time penalty kick to put Greece into the second round of the World Cup with a 2-1 win over Ivory Coast on Tuesday. Image Sio entered the match for Gervinho in the 83rd minute and committed the pivotal foul minutes later. Credit Bernat Armangue/Associated Press Samaras, who was ruled to have been tripped in the area by the substitute Giovanni Sio, calmly slotted in the spot kick for a victory that put Greece through to the knockout stage as the second-place finisher in Group C. Ivory Coast would have advanced with a draw. “Tonight, we had energy,” Samaras said, dedicating the win to Greeks suffering through a financial crisis. “We really hope we can make the people happy back home. We are a team. A team — that’s it.” The Greeks had taken the lead just before halftime on a goal by the substitute Andreas Samaris. Another substitute, Wilfried Bony, tied the score for Ivory Coast in the 74th minute, beating goalkeeper Pangiotis Glykos from close range after being set up by Gervinho. That goal seemed as if it would put Ivory Coast through until the late drama. Samaras received a cross in the area and went to shoot with his left leg, which got caught against the leg of Sio. Samaras’s foot then hit the ground and he fell to the turf, drawing a penalty. Image Georgios Samaras of Greece challenging Ivory Coast’s Kolo Toure during their Group C match. Credit Issouf Sanogo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images With his country’s hopes on the line, Samaras sent his spot kick past goalkeeper Boubacar Barry, who guessed the right way but could not reach the ball. The veteran striker Didier Drogba returned to the lineup for Ivory Coast. Yaya and Kolo Touré also started despite the recent death of their brother Ibrahim. The Ivorians wore black armbands as a sign of mourning. Greece had not scored in its first two games in Brazil and missed a handful of scoring chances against Ivory Coast, hitting the crossbar twice with outside shots. The Greeks were also forced to make two early substitutions after midfielder Pangiotis Kone and goalkeeper Orestis Karnezis were injured in the first half.

Greece
Ivory Coast
2014 World Cup
Soccer
Referee


Washington Wizards Stumbling Through Rough Season

Abstract: WASHINGTON — On Jan. 10, when the Washington Wizards won their first game of this truncated N.B.A. season after eight losses, the talk in the locker room was of relief, but also of candy and coins. Two weeks and one coach later, the talk after the team’s third victory was about cigarettes. If nothing else, the Wizards are keeping things unpredictable as they stumble along the bottom of the Eastern Conference. Washington’s first victory came on the night of the New Hampshire primary. At that point, the Wizards were as close to a sure bet as there was in the Beltway, where everyone was struggling to figure out the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Candidates were surging and falling back, but the Wizards were losing every game. That night, though, they soundly beat a Toronto Raptors team playing its third game in four evenings. Local reporters buzzed, asking various Wizards about a so-called Game Changer coin that was given to the Czech rookie Jan Vesely for his role in the victory. “It’s a big old coin that says ‘Game Changer,’ ” Wizards point guard John Wall said matter-of-factly to reporters hoping for more of a revelation. A few minutes before and a few feet away, Wall’s backcourt mate Nick Young, the team’s leading scorer, was talking about Twizzlers. “The Twizzlers helped today,” Young said of the snack he shared with his teammates. Except the candy was not authentic Hershey’s Twizzlers, but a knockoff brand. “But they’re original red,” Young said. So it goes in Washington, where the coach, Flip Saunders , was gone two weeks later, replaced by one of his assistants, Randy Wittman , who had a career winning percentage of 32.6 as a head coach. The last time the Wizards made the postseason was 2008, and it is far-fetched to think they will this season. Wittman himself seems bluntly realistic. When asked about his past struggles as an interim coach in the N.B.A., with the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2006-7, he said, “The last time, I tried to invent the game of basketball, and I learned from that.” When the Wizards picked up their third win of the season in his coaching debut against the woeful, depleted Charlotte Bobcats — flip-flopping the two teams at the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings — Wittman used cigarette smoking as a metaphor to describe his team’s reckless play and reluctance to make the extra pass. “If you’re a smoker, you ain’t going to drop those cigarettes the first day,” he said. “I’ve got to help them kick some of these bad habits that we’re into. That’s all it is. We’ve fallen into playing a way that is not conducive for us to win. So when I see them pull out a cigarette, I’ve got to take it out of their mouth. That’s basically what I’m trying to do.” The Wizards beat Charlotte again Saturday night, 102-99, and, at 4-16, have moved ahead of the Detroit Pistons, too, in the East. For the Wizards, the best thing about the season may be that there are only 46 games left. They are a team filled with young players whose mentors, for better or worse, are veterans with expiring contracts. It is a tough combination, and 10 games into the season the Wizards held a team dinner to straighten things out. A day later, as the Wizards prepared to play the formidable 76ers in Philadelphia, the veteran Mo Evans spoke of progress made at the dinner and said: “Now, if we criticize John Wall for not making the right play, he’s not going to backlash and retract and shut down for three plays, because he knows that we care about him. Because we spent that time, and invested it off the court.” “It’s a whole work in progress here in Washington,” Evans added. Hours later, the Wizards produced their worst loss of the season, 120-89, in a game that featured an 84-46 run by the 76ers and a postgame interview session with Saunders, then the coach, that lasted all of 75 seconds. That defeat came two days after the team followed up the initial Toronto victory by scoring a franchise-low 64 points against a Chicago Bulls team missing Derrick Rose. Left to explain what happened against Philadelphia, Wall said, “One game we might be together, the next four or five we might be separated.” Wall, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2010 draft, took only eight shots against the 76ers. “Trying to lead my team,” he said. The operative word for Wall is try. He is an ostensible franchise cornerstone backed into a creative corner, a lightning-quick point guard without knockdown shooters or even the slightest bit of consistently competent offensive help. Through 20 games, Wall was shooting just 39 percent and was second in the league with 4.2 turnovers a game, although he averaged 19.7 points in the nine games after taking eight shots against the 76ers. Speaking about the younger Wizards, the veteran forward Rashard Lewis observed: “You could say it over and over again, but I guess you’ve got to try to beat it into their head that we’ve got to play with each other. It’s not just a one-on-one game; it’s five on five.” Wittman said of his players, “They think: ‘Yeah, you know, I’m a young kid — they got to play me. I’m going to play the way I want to play.’ ” That, Wittman said, has to change. Perhaps little of this dysfunction comes as a surprise to those in charge of the team. Back when the Wizards were 0-5, their owner, Ted Leonsis, outlined the team’s rebuilding plans in a solemn yet straightforward blog post titled “ Going as I Expected .” “The process we are undergoing will be quite difficult — it is messy; it is painful; but we have no other course of action to pursue; we have chosen to build through the draft — manage our cap space wisely and build a team for the long term around young players,” Leonsis wrote. “We will make trades at the right time; we will keep our players that form our core long term; we will add free agents when we believe it is the right time. That is the plan.” Another plan might be simply to start over. If Wizards General Manager Ernie Grunfeld, whose contract is up at the end of the season, were to use the amnesty clause on power forward Andray Blatche , the Wizards would be presented with an unconventional option: they could conceivably let every player on the current roster walk by the summer of 2013, even if that meant not picking up the options on all six players now on guaranteed rookie contracts — Wall, Vesely, Jordan Crawford, Kevin Seraphin, Chris Singleton and Trevor Booker. For the moment, at least, uncertainty in the workplace has rarely been so certain. Youngsters and veteran role players battle for minutes and spare shots. Center JaVale McGee requested All-Star votes on Twitter and t hrew an alley-oop to himself in a loss against Houston. On a team on which no player averages 17 points a game, Young wants badly to be the go-to scorer in a contract year. Last Wednesday, with a small crowd in Washington standing and cheering as time wound down, Young drilled a 3-pointer that punctuated the first of the week’s two victories over the Bobcats. The meaningless shot took him from 17 points to 20. When it was inaccurately stated in a celebratory postgame interview on the court that he had 17 points, Young corrected the interviewer immediately. Then he tried to salvage the moment by saying, “It’s the Wizards against the world, baby!” Blatche, meanwhile, told his Twitter critics to “ shut up ” after he complained about not getting the ball down low on opening night. On Wednesday, he was booed while playing well against the Bobcats. And Lewis is the second-highest-paid player in the N.B.A., earning more than three times as much as any of his teammates, but is trying to rediscover his shooting stroke. Grunfeld has drafted an abundance of defensive-minded players (Booker, Singleton, Vesely, Seraphin) and plopped them into a survival-of-the-fittest situation. Two of their longest-tenured on-court team leaders (McGee, Blatche) reportedly got into a fight outside a nightclub last season. And looming in the not very distant past is the Gilbert Arenas era, which included guns in the locker room. Before that first win of the season, Young walked through the locker room and said, “I feel it in the air today.” Then he expounded on the idea of lots of shots falling through the net, an interesting proclamation given the Wizards’ shooting woes. Reminded after the victory that he had made something of a prophetic statement, Young responded in the only way that felt right. “I mean, Twizzlers, man,” he said. Better candy than cigarettes. Maybe it can become a team motto.

Washington Wizards
Basketball
National Basketball Assn
Wall John
Saunders Flip
Wittman Randy


Bartholomew I of Constantinople’s Bold Green Stance

Abstract: At a conference near Istanbul last June, the chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall spoke about the endangered habitat of what she called “our closest relatives.” Underlining the evolutionary link, she described her encounter with a senior male ape who had a “beautiful white beard.” With a smile, she turned to the 72-year-old man in the front row and added, “Very much like yours.” The man with the long white beard was Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians. Fortunately, he is known for his easy, affable manner, and he joined the laughter that followed. But his commitment to environmental activism is deeply serious, earning him the nickname the Green Patriarch. He has preached that caring for the environment is a religious imperative, and for more than a decade, he has made a point of bringing together theologians and scientists like Dr. Goodall for debates and briefings. This year’s reports of record melting of the earth’s ice sheets and extreme droughts have given a new urgency to Bartholomew’s messages about the degrading natural world. While economists and politicians prescribe more growth and consumption to overcome economic crises, the patriarch insists that the real crisis is cultural and spiritual, and can be overcome only by moving away from rampant materialism. All human beings, he has said, should draw a distinction “between what we want and what we need.” In September, he published a strongly worded encyclical calling on all Orthodox Christians to repent “for our sinfulness” in not doing enough to protect the planet. Biodiversity, “the work of divine wisdom,” was not granted to humanity to abuse it, he wrote; human dominion over the earth does not mean the right to greedily acquire and destroy its resources. He singled out “the powerful of this world,” saying they need a new mind-set to stop destroying the planet for profit or short-term interest. Other religious leaders, including Pope Benedict XVI, the Dalai Lama and the archbishop of Canterbury, have also called for responsible stewardship of the environment. But Bartholomew has gone further than most; some theologians call his stance revolutionary. “Traditionally in Christianity, sin was what you did to other humans,” said Kallistos Ware, a prominent Orthodox theologian based in Britain, “but Bartholomew insisted that what you do to the animals, the air, the water, the land can be sinful, not just folly, and that was quite a change.” Aides say that Bartholomew’s embrace of environmental issues is part of his agenda to modernize a deeply conservative church that can seem distant and insular, with its focus on long Byzantine rituals and mysticism. Speaking in defense of nature as a creation of God fits church teachings, and perhaps just as crucial, his aides say, it can also transcend the rivalries and nationalist rifts of the Eastern Orthodox Church. As a federation of 15 independent national churches, it lacks the central authority of, say, the Vatican. Still, Bartholomew’s seat, established 1,700 years ago, holds primacy among the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians. As “first among equals” in the church, he acts as convener and can set the agenda for discussion. Not all church prelates are inspired by his efforts to enlighten the faithful on the environment. “The patriarch is going against the current in much of Orthodoxy,” said the Rev. John Chryssavgis, an archdeacon of the church and adviser on environmental issues. “He has to preach and promote this constantly.” Aboard a ferry steaming toward Istanbul, Father Chryssavgis pointed out a sprawling church-owned building perched atop of the island of Buyukada. A former orphanage, it was seized by the Turkish government but returned to the church recently. Now empty and in disrepair, it will become an interfaith study center for the environment if Bartholomew has his way. “He wants a permanent institution,” Father Chryssavgis said. “When he passes on, there may not be the same concern for the environment.” The impact of the patriarch’s many sermons and conferences is difficult to gauge. There has been wide interest in a new book, “Greening the Orthodox Parish,” said Frederick Krueger, its American editor. Subtitled “A Handbook for Christian Ecological Practice” and with a preface by Bartholomew, it covers theology, special liturgies and prayers as well as science papers and practical advice. Numerous Orthodox monasteries and churches in Eastern Europe and the United States have switched to solar energy in recent years. Among them is the Chrysopegi monastery on the Greek island of Crete, where the nuns use the environmental texts of the patriarch and other theologians in their teachings. “More and more young people are coming to our courses,” Mother Theocheni, the abbess of the monastery, said at the conference at Halki, near Istanbul. “They come to find meaning. Many seem to find inspiration in ecology. It’s been growing fast for the last 10 years.”

Bartholomew I
Environment
Christians and Christianity


A Top Iraqi Official’s Advice to Karzai? Take America’s Deal

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — With one of the most important chapters of Afghanistan’s history open before him, President Hamid Karzai took time this month for a personal meeting with the longtime foreign minister of Iraq, Hoshyar Zebari. It had been years since an Iraqi official had been to Afghanistan, and the trip was nominally meant to ease the passage of Afghan Shiites to holy shrines in Iraq. But it came right as Mr. Karzai had chosen to dig in and delay signing a security agreement with the United States, leaving long-term Western military support, and billions of dollars in aid, hanging in the balance. In a moment of candor, Mr. Zebari offered a piece of advice to the president that would have been unthinkable from an Iraqi official just two years ago: Get over your differences with the Americans and sign the deal. “Don’t be under the illusion that no matter what you do the Americans are here to stay,” Mr. Zebari told Mr. Karzai. “People used to say that about the American presence in Iraq, too. But they were eager to leave, and they will be eager to leave your country as well.” When the last American troops departed Iraq in 2011, after the collapse of a similar security agreement, many Iraqis reveled in a moment of national pride, expressing faith in the government’s ability to maintain security. Since then, the country has fallen back into hellish violence, with thousands killed in sectarian attacks this year. The Iraqi government cannot even secure Baghdad anymore, despite billions of dollars in oil revenue and well-trained security forces, Mr. Zebari told the Afghan president, according to Iraqi and Afghan officials at the meeting. So how can the Afghan government, which can barely fund 20 percent of what it spends each year, hope to control the country without American help? The conversation was a resonant moment between two leaders at different points in their respective journeys — one pondering his country’s post-American future, the other contending with it. With the benefit of hindsight, Mr. Zebari reached out to a president he scarcely knew, seizing on their shared experience at the crossroads of American involvement in the Muslim world. Some of the parallels for Afghanistan are clear. As impasse has deepened into crisis, some of Mr. Karzai’s closest aides have seized on Iraq as proof that the Americans could just walk away, leaving the country’s security forces without military support and training in the middle of a war against the Taliban. Billions in badly needed international aid would also probably dry up, collapsing the economy. Worries about a return to civil war in Afghanistan would leap to center stage. But Mr. Karzai had heard it all before. American officials, in fact, have long used the withdrawal from Iraq as a cautionary example when talking with reporters and Afghan officials about the struggle to reach an Afghan security deal. And in the days after Mr. Karzai said he would put off signing the agreement , several senior American officials warned him that they would be forced to begin considering the “zero option” — a total and final troop withdrawal in 2014 — if he did not reverse course. And that was the way Mr. Karzai appeared to take Mr. Zebari’s words, to the chagrin of Afghan officials who had hoped that their president might take heed of Iraq’s troubles. “You see?” he told the small group of Afghan officials after the meeting ended. “The Americans want this deal so badly they are even getting the Iraqis to pressure me.” In a telephone interview, Mr. Zebari insisted that his advice had merely been an expression of good will, not water-carrying for the Americans. “Two years after the troop withdrawal, because of the rise of violence, we went back to Washington and asked them for continued support and military help,” he said, referring to a Nov. 1 trip by the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, after a huge surge in attacks by Al Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni militants. “One should really draw from that conclusion.” Image Mr. Zebari told Mr. Karzai that the Iraqi government could not even secure Baghdad, the site of a May car bombing, after the American troop withdrawal in 2011. Credit Karim Kadim/Associated Press In 2011, the deal effectively broke down over Iraqi domestic politics. But within Mr. Karzai’s response to Mr. Zebari’s plea lies one of the core reasons it might yet happen that the United States leaves Afghanistan outright, too, despite urgency within parts of the Obama administration not to see a decade of lost lives and treasure blown away. Facing a world of potential consequences, Mr. Karzai again seemingly reduced the moment to himself. And whether out of paranoia or justifiable suspicion, his reaction has increasingly been to express profound distrust of his American allies. “Even if they are not bluffing, we will not give in to the pressure to sign if our requirements are not fulfilled,” he told the French newspaper Le Monde last week. “What I am hearing these days, and what I have already heard, is typical of colonial exploitation.” Trying to understand Mr. Karzai’s intentions has become something of a parlor game in Kabul and Washington over the last few weeks. Has the bitterness over a failed 12-year war against the Taliban, and fear that the Americans will betray him, made him feel that he must finally take a stand? Is he, as he says, using brinkmanship to ensure the best possible deal for Afghans, as he has with greater frequency in recent years? “It might be a political game he’s playing, it might be for the sake of the nation or for his personal interests,” said Mohammad Homayoon Shinwari, an adviser to the president. “Politics is always what happens behind the curtain.” In any case, the specter of Iraq has not just been used as a threat. It has loomed over every step of the debate on a long-term troop presence, inside the White House and the Afghan presidential palace. For the Americans who want to see troops stay on, the Iraqi example has served as a fallback position. “You can point to what’s been happening in Iraq, and you can say, ‘We can’t allow that to happen in Afghanistan,' ” one senior administration official said. Those in favor of a total withdrawal have a sense of having avoided a debacle in Iraq — that leaving incurred almost no political cost at home and most likely saved American lives. The same would be true in Afghanistan, another American official said. Still, even those relieved at having avoided catastrophe in Iraq are reluctant to see Afghanistan descend into bloodshed. The outcome of a grand assembly of Afghan leaders last month , a loya jirga, was an expression of urgency to seal a security deal, just one indicator that at least some of the Afghan public wants continuing American support. And American officials do not want to “punish the Afghan people” because of Mr. Karzai’s intransigence, the senior administration official said. The officials asked not to be identified because they were describing internal discussions and delicate negotiations. Within the Afghan government, Mr. Karzai’s stance has started to create a sense that he is on the fringe. Even his most senior cabinet officials, including the ministers of defense and the interior, had no idea that he planned to insist on delaying the deal and push for better terms until the words had left his mouth, during a speech before the loya jirga on Nov. 21 that left the audience, and other officials, shocked, according to a range of Afghan officials. Some officials even suspect Mr. Karzai had not planned to, either: They say the words had not appeared in any drafts of the speech.

Iraq
Afghanistan
Hamid Karzai
Hoshyar Zebari
Afghanistan War
Iraq War
US Military


Small Businesses Take Tentative Steps Toward Online Networking

Abstract: BY choice or necessity, successful small-business owners are earnest networkers, gladly shaking hands, handing out cards and attending local meetings to find and keep customers, solve problems, seek feedback or support and bolster their bottom lines. Now, the Internet is starting to upend those long-established methods; online networking on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and newer niche sites can be instantaneous and far-reaching. The sites are efficient and free, which is especially important in an economic downturn, as owners scramble for new customers, said Rob King, vice president for strategic marketing at Sage North America, a unit of Sage P.L.C., a global supplier of business management software and services. Fast, free and efficient — those attributes appealed to Brighter Planet, a socially responsible start-up based in Vermont, which built social networking into its DNA. “There’s almost a grass-roots quality to it,” said Patti Prairie, its chief executive. “As a start-up, we can’t afford to be buying ads anywhere. We have to use our outreach.” For more than a year, the Brighter Planet team has been blogging, Tweeting, friending on Facebook and initiating viral marketing campaigns intended to help consumers reduce their carbon footprints. While most small businesses have not yet embraced social networks as Brighter Planet has, their numbers are growing. According to the April index of Discover Small Business Watch, compiled by Discover Financial Services, 38 percent of owners were a member of an online social networking community, up from 22 percent in October 2007. Charles H. Matthews, president of the International Council for Small Business, said the key was to view the sites as tools, not toys. “It can certainly help enhance the process of identifying customers, especially in niche markets.” For Brighter Planet, the niche is the environment. Before Earth Day , for example, it sponsored Earthtweet, an Earth Day Tweet-a-Thon, which has generated 4,200 conservation Tweets and 2,500 followers. Soon, BrighterPlanet.com will feature a portable social Web application that will allow visitors to calculate the status of their carbon footprints and share what they are doing on conservation on other social platforms like Facebook. Friends, family and colleagues can immediately see how saving the environment is important to BrighterPlanet members, Ms. Prairie said. “That’s what we find is the beauty of social networking, particularly for environmental-type causes.” A recent study for Sage North America found that 65 percent of small businesses that used social networking sites said that they felt more comfortable doing so this year than they did last year, and 51 percent said that they had acquired and retained customers because of it. More than 260,000 North American businesses currently use social networking to promote their businesses, Mr. King said. In April, Sage, which has 2.9 million small and midsize business customers, introduced its own networking site, SageSpark .com. “We know we’re not the first to the game,” Mr. King said. “Our twist really is the community, tools and services.” Other niche sites have sprouted recently, like Shustir.com . Last week, Shustir.com introduced its virtual marketplace, which was started by two former Lehman Brothers colleagues, Shu Kim and Khanh Pham. “It matters where you spend,” Ms. Kim said, echoing the site’s catchphrase. The goal, they said, is to keep Main Street U.S.A. alive. “We want you to spend with small businesses,” Ms. Pham said. “By doing so, 80 percent of the money goes directly back to the community.” The site is arranged so owners can create virtual storefronts with photos, video, blogs and store information, and communicate with customers. “Shustir gives consumers a one-stop destination,” Ms. Kim said, where they can buy from trusted businesses, post about their favorite shops and make recommendations. Businesses can exchange advice, ideas and information, and network on a site that provides them search optimization. In its second phase, Shustir will add Facebook and Twitter badges so owners can use other social media to build business. There will also be a shared community calendar. “The call to localism is existing across the country,” Ms. Pham said, “because small business is suffering.” PartnerUp has been around longer. It is a social networking site that helps entrepreneurs and small-businesses owners find partners or co-founders, network, ask for and offer up advice, find resources and create or join groups based on their interests. It was founded in 2005 and acquired by the Deluxe Corporation in 2008. PartnerUp has more than 100,000 active members, and more than 300,000 unique business owners and entrepreneurs come to the site every month, according to Steve Nielsen, its president. “We’re at an inflection point now,” Mr. Nielsen said, “where social media sites that are specific to a purpose for a market are going mainstream, and they’re not just for early adopters any more.” In late 2007, David Reinke joined PartnerUp for a specific purpose. He had quit corporate America to start a fashion rating Web site, StyleHop.com , but needed a partner well versed in technology. He posted a profile on PartnerUp, and a job description for a chief technology officer and said, “Let’s see what happens.” About a month later, Froilan Mendoza, who had 12 years experience building technology start-ups, contacted him and after a series of discussions, Mr. Mendoza quit his job to become chief technology officer of StyleHop.com. Turning to PartnerUp, Mr. Reinke said, was consistent with how he uses online sites. “I was looking for something specific. I go to the source where the experts are,” Mr. Reinke said. PartnerUp also allowed for a quiet search and limited exposure, he added, so thousands of people would not know about his start-up. To be sure, the majority of smaller concerns have not caught the online wave. In its monthly index, Discover noted that 62 percent of businesses still do not have Web sites. What’s more, when asked which networking opportunities they used most, 46 percent of small-business owners identified traditional methods like conferences, trade shows, local in-person groups or chambers of commerce. Of the remaining respondents, 16 percent cited “other” networking opportunities, 8 percent cited online sites, 7 percent said e-mail messages and 22 percent said they were not sure. Mr. King of Sage North America estimates that small businesses have a 12-month window to figure out online social networking. “I hate to say it, but if they don’t, they’ll get left in the dust,” he said. “It’s here to stay.”

Small Business
Computers and the Internet
Social Networking (Internet)


Afghanistan: Taliban Attack NATO Fuel Convoy, Killing 3

Abstract: Taliban fighters attacked a NATO convoy and killed three drivers before setting 13 fuel tankers ablaze in southeastern Afghanistan , an Afghan official said Friday. The attack occurred Thursday night in Zabul Province, according to the provincial governor’s spokesman. A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, claimed responsibility. Insurgents have intensified attacks on NATO supply convoys in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where one of the alliance’s vital supply lines begins.

Afghanistan
Taliban
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Terrorism


Dark Water, Silvery Salmon and a Paradise Worth the Trip

Abstract: HUMBER VALLEY, Newfoundland — The helicopter moved like a drunk descending a staircase, lurching and rocking while the backwash of its fiberglass blades whipped the tall, pale green grass along Newfoundland’s Main River into a frothy, snapping mass. We landed with a slight bump and four of us clambered out, clutching fly rods and waders, blinking in the bright morning sunlight. In less than four hours via jet and helicopter, we had traveled from the New York megalopolis to the Humber River Valley and a remote pine forest with a slash of black river running through it. My footwear was undefiled by a particle of dirt or blade of grass. Scuff up my spiffy new pair of outfitter-grade, Gore-Tex and Thinsulate backcountry boots? Are you nuts? Thankfully, there is an antidote to the existential dissonance that surrounds the harried, authenticity-seeking, consumer/outdoorsman of our time. It is the back country spike camp, manned by local guides — in this case Jim Kelly and Rich Wheeler, who darted over to the copter to unload our gear. The camp, tucked on the downwind side of a swale, featured an ancient, horizontal meat pole fixed to two spruce trees. In a deer camp, you could do chin-ups on the typical meat pole, but this was moose country; the pole was a good 10 feet off the ground. A dented kettle was hung on one of the numerous limbs and stumps that had been hacked and whittled away to create storage options the typical apartment dweller can only dream of. And what would a fish camp be without the obligatory, faded flannel shirt, flung like a discarded snake skin over a shrub to dry? As we rigged up, Kelly told us that the water was warm and the fishing difficult. But we did have a cooler full of beer and some delicious caribou meat shot out of Labrador’s George River herd. If that means nothing to you, I respectfully suggest that the oxygen you breathe could be put to better use. “We better get down to the river, boys, before she gets too hot,” Kelly said. “Then we can come back and get a good fry going.” It was a short walk to Keough’s, or Rock Pool, on the Main River, across a few nearly dry side channels and a jumble of honey-colored rocks. Kelly suggested I wade in at the head of the pool, where the amber-tinted water streamed in among some boulders to create a long pool. My companions, Dave Parker and Ullrich and Thurid Pulg, a young German couple representing the Bavarian Flyfishing Association, took up positions below me. “What should I fish?” I asked Kelly. “A bug,” he said, stabbing a finger at a small, size 8 Bomber — this one tied with orange hackle and white calf-tail fore and aft, which are part of the special Newfoundland options package (see your dealer for details). It is a tribute to the Bomber, the greatest of all dry flies for salmon, that in places as far flung as the Humber Valley it is simply known as the bug, much like Vince Lombardi was known to many as, simply, Coach. I lit a cigar and began to throw the Bomber here and there, slowly fanning out across the water in front of me. There wasn’t much of it, for in this stretch the Main is a thin river that meanders through boggy, relatively flat land, braiding up and reforming in the occasional holding pool. I knew there were salmon; the occasional fish rolled or porpoised farther down in the pool. It was not long before Ulli hooked a salmon, down in the frog water, and hollered out what I took to be the German equivalent of, “Whoo-ee! I got me a good ’un!” Kelly sloshed downstream to help Ulli, leaving Wheeler to nanny Dave and me. I chatted with him as I fished and learned all about his fall hobby, the ancient art of snaring rabbits. He confessed to using “modern” wire to make his snares, but I cut him slack on that, as the pastime itself is part of the old ways. Suddenly, an enormous boil near my fly turned the water silver, and we saw a deep, golden flash beneath the bug as the agitated salmon turned back to its lie. “You’d better catch him,” he said. What would we do without guides? I worked the fish for the next five minutes. He returned repeatedly, as salmon are wont to do. He nudged the fly with his nose, boiled under it with sufficient energy to drown the Bomber, slashed at it. But eventually, irritation seemed to get the better of the silver fish, and it crashed on my fly with intent to kill — something a salmon can only do with its mouth. Catching a salmon on a small river is a little like fighting a badger in a phone booth: an awful lot happens, very fast, in a small space. But somehow, the fish did not break me off, and soon I released it, pleased as punch with my first Newfoundland fish. Another fish would break me off later in the morning, and Thurid would lose a bright salmon of about eight pounds on the second jump. By then, Wheeler was frying up some caribou with onions and peppers on the bank. Dozing nearby, I fantasized that the helicopter would get called away on an emergency and we would have to spend the month. For that, I would get my boots dirty.

Fish and Other Marine Life
Newfoundland (Canada)


Whatever Its Flaws, the N.C.A.A. Tournament Can Appeal to Anyone

Abstract: Syracuse At least twice a year — during the bowl season in football and the N.C.A.A. tournament in basketball — there is a national debate about what to do with this crazy, quirky enterprise called intercollegiate athletics. We seem to be in an eternal search for the perfect model. A one-size-fits-all model that attracts students with a passion for athletics and athletes with a passion for scholarship. There is no perfect model; for all the flaws in intercollegiate athletics, imperfection is its beauty. The N.C.A.A. tournament is a great testament to diversity. If you favor diversity, you love the tournament and cheer for the day when it expands to 96 teams. For three weeks in March and a great weekend in April, the N.C.A.A.’s often-dysfunctional family comes together around basketball. Everyone can dream — universities with undergraduate enrollments of 30,000 and private colleges with enrollments of 3,300. State colleges, private colleges, historically black universities — for the tournament, they all come together. Whether a program dreams large or small, this tournament is the ultimate meritocracy. The best players play, and the hottest teams advance. There are no gifts — not for Cornell, not for St. Mary’s, not for Northern Iowa. They earned it on a relatively level playing field. The tournament, like the intercollegiate sports system, accommodates a variety of players and programs with a dazzling array of goals and horizons. For students who are great academic achievers and want to play a high level of basketball, there are universities like Cornell. For the Division I-caliber player who wants to play out West at a small Catholic college that can knock off a giant, there is St. Mary’s. For the blue-chip student-athlete who has realistic aspirations of playing professionally, there is a university like Kentucky and a coach like John Calipari , who has a track record of coaching N.B.A.-caliber talent. While this patchwork of programs seems uneven, the coaches and players seem surprisingly at peace with the diversity of it all. They embrace the challenge of competition. Early this week Steve Donahue, the Cornell coach, was asked how he could hope to compete for recruits against the likes of Kentucky, whose stock in trade is the McDonald’s all-American. Donahue smiled and said he wasn’t really looking for the fast-food-type player. He preferred diamonds in the rough. “We try to get kids that people overlook, and try to do it as hard as we can,” he said. Donahue pointed to Louis Dale, his 5-foot-11 senior guard from Birmingham, Ala., who was overlooked by the powerhouse programs of the Southeastern Conference. Donahue theorized about why Dale was available: “Maybe size, maybe he went to a small school, maybe he’s such a nice kid, maybe they don’t think he can compete.” Cornell’s approach can work both ways. There are student-athletes who are diamonds in the rough academically, who are not as mature in the classroom at age 18 as they will be at age 21. The tournament is about diversity of opportunity, and talk about reforming the system usually advocates a one-size-fits-all approach. There is no such animal; leave it alone. Before Thursday’s game in the Carrier Dome, the differences between Kentucky and Cornell were scrutinized. But as Donahue pointed out, “It’s not as drastically different as you think.” Mark Coury spent time playing at Kentucky and started there before transferring to Cornell. Jeff Foote spent a year and a half at St. Bonaventure, making its team as a walk-on before transferring. Donahue earns from $200,000 to $300,000 a year, while Calipari makes more than any other coach in Division I. Calipari has taken two programs to the Final Four, but both appearances were vacated because of rules violations. Although Calipari was not linked to the violations, critics wonder why he has been allowed to coach — and to be compensated at an astronomical rate. Why? Because the University of Kentucky ’s president believes that Calipari is worth the investment. Kentucky was the talk of the field this season, and its star freshman guard, John Wall, is the talk of college basketball. The N.C.A.A.’s greatest challenge is removing, or at least minimizing, the exploitation of the student-athletes who make these great moments possible. A system that is capable of paying a coach millions while placing suffocating restrictions on the student-athletes needs correction. Parents of the participants should at least have transportation and housing provided at the Final Four. Student-athletes in football who lead their teams to a lucrative bowl game should receive a share of the payout. These adjustments can be made by college presidents. The tournament itself can be left alone or expanded; it’s the human element that needs fixing.

University of Kentucky
NCAA Basketball Tournament (Men)
Cornell University
Calipari John
Donahue Steve
Rose Derrick
Amaker Tommy
University of Memphis


Turkey Seizes Newspaper, Zaman, as Press Crackdown Continues

Abstract: ISTANBUL — Backed by a court order, the Turkish authorities moved on Friday to seize Zaman, the country’s most widely circulated newspaper, in the latest crackdown by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on freedom of the press. The seizing of the newspaper also highlighted the government’s building campaign against those it perceives to be its two greatest enemies: opposition journalists and the followers of Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric affiliated with the newspaper who lives in exile in Pennsylvania. Mr. Gulen was once an ally of Mr. Erdogan’s but is now a bitter enemy. As news of the takeover became public Friday afternoon, supporters began gathering in front of the newspaper’s offices in Istanbul, and employees locked a door to the building. In a live-stream broadcast on the newspaper’s website , supporters were seen chanting, “Free press cannot be silenced.” Some carried Turkish flags and banners emblazoned with, “Do not touch my newspaper.” Columnists from the paper were also seen addressing the crowd. Later Friday night, Turkish police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse the crowd and forcibly enter the building. “We are going through the darkest and gloomiest days in terms of freedom of the press, which is a major benchmark for democracy and the rule of law,” read a statement issued by the editors of Today’s Zaman , an English-language sister publication to Zaman. “Intellectuals, businesspeople, celebrities, civil society organizations, media organizations and journalists are being silenced via threats and blackmail.” Image A woman crying in the street as Turkish anti-riot police officers used tear gas to disperse supporters in front of the headquarters of the daily newspaper Zaman in Istanbul on Saturday. Credit Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The move to seize Zaman and put it under the administration of a court-appointed panel of trustees emphasized what critics say is a rapid deterioration of free-speech rights under the Islamist government of Mr. Erdogan, who was prime minister for more than a decade before being elected president in 2014. The executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Joel Simon, said in a statement on Friday, “Rather than taking aggressive action to undermine the newspapers, Turkish authorities should be fulfilling their constitutional obligation to defend press freedom and rights of the journalists.” The crackdown on expression comes amid a growing sense that Turkey , once seen as a bastion of stability in a hostile region, is being enveloped by instability. A war with Kurdish separatists has turned cities in the southeast into rubble. The country is straining under the weight of more than two million refugees from Syria. And Islamic State militants, who have used Turkey to transit fighters and weapons to Syria and Iraq, have carried out deadly attacks on Turkish soil. As Turkey faces its domestic demons, critics say the government has been emboldened to target its enemies within the country because the European Union and NATO allies, in particular, have looked the other way as they seek Turkey’s support to contain the refugee crisis and pacify the raging civil war in Syria. “This pattern is appalling, and Turkey is galloping towards an authoritarian regime full speed ahead,” said Asli Aydintasbas, a prominent journalist who lost her column last year at the daily Milliyet under government pressure. “Unfortunately, the world, in particular the E.U., remains silent. The government here can sense the vulnerability in the West, especially since the beginning of the refugee crisis, and is pushing the boundaries to consolidate its power.” Image Zaman’s editor in chief, Abdulhamit Bilici, second from left, on Friday with journalists who came to offer support. Credit Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Ms. Aydintasbas added, using an acronym for the Islamic State, “Erdogan knows the West is vulnerable because of ISIS and the refugees and he is going to use this as much as he can.” Always thin-skinned, Mr. Erdogan has taken increasingly harsh steps in recent years to muzzle his critics. Dozens of journalists perceived as critical of the government have lost their jobs as officials have put pressure on their bosses. Academics have been targeted for speaking out against the government’s military campaign against Kurdish insurgents in the southeast. At the same time, the justice system has charged Turks of all stripes — authors, journalists, cartoonists, politicians and ordinary citizens — with “ insulting the president. ” All told, more than 1,800 insult cases have been brought, the country’s justice minister revealed this week. In some cases, such as with Zaman, and a broader crackdown on Mr. Gulen’s followers in business and the judiciary and the police, the government has applied the country’s antiterrorism laws. When Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials A.K.P., rose to power in 2002, one of its important allies was Mr. Gulen, a powerful, moderate cleric. The A.K.P. and Mr. Gulen’s followers in the police and judiciary cooperated in a series of trials against military officers on coup charges — later determined to be based on fabricated evidence — that ultimately removed the military’s influence over politics. But in late 2013, the groups had a falling-out over a number of issues, including the government’s handling of protests in the summer of 2013 and Turkey’s aggressive policy of supporting rebels in the Syrian civil war. Another point of friction was the growing hostility between Turkey and Israel, a country that the Gulenists were more sympathetic to than was Mr. Erdogan. At the end of 2013, a corruption inquiry targeted Mr. Erdogan and his inner circle, a challenge that Mr. Erdogan survived by removing police officers and judges. Since then, the two sides have waged an all-out war in which Mr. Erdogan has had the upper hand. The Gulen movement has been on the defensive, accused of being a terrorist organization that is plotting a coup. Its members have been subject to arrests, intimidation and court cases, while Mr. Erdogan has seemingly become more powerful. He has risen to the presidency, while his party, in national elections in November, secured four more years in power. Recently, there was one glimmer of hope for Turkey’s beleaguered journalists. Turkey’s highest court issued a ruling that freed two newspaper editors who were jailed on espionage charges. The editors, Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, of the daily Cumhuriyet, are being prosecuted for reporting on alleged weapons transfers by Turkish intelligence agents to rebels in Syria. The case is proceeding, but the editors were released from jail after the court determined that their constitutional rights had been violated. Mr. Dundar, in a text message, said Friday of the Zaman case: “It is the sign that fear has entirely grown in the halls of state. They do not have tolerance for even the tiniest criticism. But it is impossible to silence an entire society by disregarding the law. Turkey would not keep quiet.” Mr. Erdogan responded to that court ruling by saying that he did not respect it, and throughout the crackdown on Gulen-affiliated media — which did not begin with Friday’s seizure of Zaman, but has been continuing — government officials have framed it not as an assault on freedom of the press but as a determined effort to destroy a group it sees as an enemy of the Turkish state. Speaking on local television Friday, Mehmet Metiner, a lawmaker with Mr. Erdogan’s party, said, “We will go on fighting against the Fethullah terror organization, and their extensions in the media and business world within the range of the law.”

Turkey
Zaman
Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Freedom of the press
Fethullah Gulen
Justice and Development Party Turkey
Civil Unrest


As Farmers and Fields Rest, a Land Grows Restless

Abstract: JERUSALEM, Oct. 7 — As Israel ’s Jews start a new year, the country finds itself in the middle of a fierce religious dispute about the sanctity of fruits and vegetables. Rabbis are pitted against one another, the state and the religious authorities are in conflict, the Israeli Supreme Court is involved, the devout are confused and the cost of produce is rising. And a country in love with flowers and proud of “making the desert bloom,” in its own disputatious way, is letting much of its land go to seed. This year, 5768 by the Jewish calendar, is a shmita, or sabbatical year. Jewish-owned land is to be left fallow, whatever grows there is to be free and at year’s end, all personal debts are to be forgiven. Shmita occurs every seventh year, as a kind of sabbatical for the land, and it is mandated in the Torah. In Exodus 23:10-11, for instance, shmita precedes the injunction for individuals to rest on the seventh day. “Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its produce, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave, the beasts of the field may eat. In like manner you shall do with your vineyard and your olive grove.” That presumably worked fine in a primitive economy before decent fertilizer, but shmita presented problems for the new Jewish state. Zionism was founded on the notion of a return to the land, but a modern country cannot live on what falls to the ground. So respected rabbis from both the Ashkenazic and the Sephardic communities compromised. Charged with interpreting religious law, or halacha, they devised the “heter mechira,” or sale permit, which allows Jews to temporarily “sell” their land to non-Jews for the shmita year, so the land may be cultivated. It is similar to the practice during Passover, when lawyers do a big business “selling” leavened products to non-Jews, so they need not be discarded. In largely Arab East Jerusalem, the manager of Jafar’s Super Market and Sweets describes shmita this way: “It’s all about fooling the man upstairs.” For most Israelis, said Rabbi Yehudah Mirsky, a theologian, heter mechira “helped Zionism create a modern agriculture in the new state.” But for many especially observant Jews, this is a dodge too far. They insist their produce must be grown by non-Jews on non-Jewish land. “Heter mechira is a religious stretch, and the ultra-Orthodox are not ideologically invested in the enterprise of building a modern economy,” Rabbi Mirsky said. Today’s Israel is increasingly religious and the ultra-Orthodox sector, which is not Zionist and is ambivalent about the state, is more powerful. The Ashkenazic chief rabbi, Yona Metzger, is considered a puppet of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, 97, the leader of Israel’s Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox Jews and a renowned foe of heter mechira. The chief rabbinate, which controls the vital kosher certificates for food, declared this year that heter mechira was the rule, but it also said rabbis of local cities and towns could decide for themselves. The announcement resulted in confusion, anger, an unresolved suit before the Supreme Court, a rabbinical revolt and a declaration by the agriculture minister, Shalom Simhon, that he will forbid imports that compete with Israeli produce. In Jerusalem, Israel’s poorest city, heter mechira is not supposed to be recognized. But while the Supreme Court is deciding on a petition against the chief rabbinate’s ruling, some supermarkets are selling produce under the heter mechira dispensation. Since the ultra-Orthodox make up at least 30 percent of the city’s population, shops in areas like Geula and Mea Shearim are paying prices two or three times higher than normal for cucumbers and tomatoes grown only by non-Jews in the West Bank. The community is already among the poorest in Jerusalem, but the rulings of their rabbis matter far more to them than money. Still, a group of younger Zionist rabbis, known as Tzohar, have announced that they will flout the chief rabbinate and issue heter mechira certificates in cities where the local rabbis will not. Rabbi Rafi Freuerstein, chairman of Tzohar, said: “We believe it is important to strengthen Jewish farmers and provide reasonably priced produce to the Jewish nation.” Rabbi David Stav of Tzohar said: “We are trying to save the chief rabbinate from itself.” Yigal Yaacov of the Super Shuk grocery in the relatively secular Emek Refaim district sells heter mechira produce. “My tomatoes are greenhouse grown, but in the West Bank there are no greenhouses,” he said. “When there’s quantity, the price is low, and when there isn’t, the price is high.” There were expectations that much produce would, as happened seven years ago, come from Gaza, but since the Hamas takeover in June, Israel has not allowed any Gaza exports. Down the street, the manager at the Marvad Haksamim Yemenite restaurant, Mor Yehezkel, holds firm. “Our vegetables come only from gentile produce,” he said. The shmita year also affects gardens — even second- and third-story balconies of potted plants. Shabi Zevieli, 48, a gardener who has recently become religious, will observe shmita in consultation with his rabbi. “The point is like Shabbat — to let the land rest every seventh year, to let the agricultural workers work less and have time to study,” he said. “In a shmita year, also, all debts are supposed to be wiped out. But the rabbis say that’s not so relevant today, or banks wouldn’t give loans. This is the first time for me, so there are a lot of dilemmas.” Shlomi Taasa, another gardener who is religious, is less conflicted. “The main thing for me is that once in seven years, all people are the same. Whether you’re rich or poor, everything belongs to everyone, and in my garden, everyone can come and take the fruits that grow.” It is a time, he said, to learn more about his trade. “I can fertilize my brain,” he said, “if not the soil.”


Store Brands Lift Grocers in Troubled Times

Abstract: LOVELAND, Ohio — Linda Severin, a Kroger vice president, has spent the last two years dreaming up new products to sell under the chain’s store-brand labels. Her creations, while inexpensive compared to national brands, are often fancier than the store brands of old. They include Mediterranean-style pizzas and cake mix with edible images of princesses. Her timing could not have been better. As the economy plunges into a deep recession, grocery stores are one of the few sectors doing well. That is because cash-short consumers are eating out less and stocking up at the supermarket. And store brand products, which tend to be cheaper than national brands and more profitable for grocers, are doing especially well. Led by chains like Trader Joe’s, Kroger, Wegmans and Safeway, grocers have expanded their store brands beyond cheap generics and simple knockoffs of Cheerios, Oreos and Coca-Cola. Now, retailers are increasingly adding premium store-brand items like organics, or creating products without direct competition. For instance, the team led by Ms. Severin, Kroger’s vice president for corporate brands, developed three-minute microwaveable pizzas as an easy snack for children when they return home from school. “This is designed for moms,” Ms. Severin said. “This is a good example where we didn’t knock off the national brand, but we thought, ‘How can we deliver what our customers are looking for?’ ” Dollar sales of store brands increased 10 percent during the 52 weeks before Nov. 1, compared with a 3 percent gain for branded products, according to the Nielsen market research company. Store brands now account for nearly 22 percent of products sold at the grocery, up from 20 percent a year ago, Nielsen found. At Kroger, store brands account for 26 percent of grocery sales. In this economic climate, the numbers suggest, many shoppers are willing to try the newly developed store brands. They also say it is hard to resist the low prices of store brands for staple goods like milk, sugar and cheese. “They are less expensive and they taste just as good,” said Kim Dittelberger, 49, whose shopping cart at a Kroger store here on a recent day included store-brand “toaster treats,” aluminum foil, coffee filters and coffee. “Now even more so because the economy stinks.” Jan-Benedict E. M. Steenkamp, marketing professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, said past recessions had given consumers a reason to trade down from national brands. This time, he said, the gains may stick because the quality and consistency of store brands have improved. “Sometimes, it will be disappointing,” said Mr. Steenkamp, co-author of a book on private-label strategy. “More often, it will be better than expected.” Besides the weak economy, the growth of store brands reflects a historic shift in the balance of power between packaged food manufacturers and grocery retailers. As grocery chains have consolidated and grown bigger, they are increasingly able to stock their shelves with their own products, which bring higher profits and drive customer loyalty — all to the detriment of major food brands. “The brands aren’t as dominating,” said Alex Miller, president of Daymon Worldwide, a broker for store-brand products. “The retailer is much more in the driver seat about what goes on in their stores.” The increase in store-brand sales has been a boon for some manufacturers, too. Some store brands are made by major food companies like ConAgra Foods and Sara Lee, but many of the goods are made by companies that few customers have heard of, like Ralcorp Holdings (cereal, cookies and crackers), Johanna Foods (yogurt and fruit juice) and Treehouse Foods (soups, salad dressings and salsa). “Those who are winning at retail are those who have decided that rather than be a warehouse for national brands, they have to establish their own brand,” said Sam K. Reed, the chairman and chief executive of Treehouse Foods. A former chief executive at Keebler, Mr. Reed said he started Treehouse in 2005 because “private label was consistently growing at a faster rate than branded foods across many categories.” Of course, major branded food companies dispute the idea that store brands are just as good as their products. They argue that branded products offer better taste, consistency and innovation, justifying a premium price. “We’re committed to providing our consumers with great-tasting products that are a good value against any competitor,” said Michael Mitchell, a spokesman for Kraft Foods. Others argue that store-brand manufacturers have not been able to replicate some of America’s best-known brands, like Cheerios, Budweiser and Brawny paper towels. Grocers certainly sell store brands that look like Cheerios or like Heinz ketchup, but to many palates, the knockoffs do not taste the same. “A lot of it depends on what product it is,” said Sharon Frey, 42, a Kroger shopper who was trying Kroger premium ice cream for the first time because it was on sale. “If it’s eggs, it doesn’t matter. I would buy Heinz. I prefer Heinz ketchup.” Store brands have evolved over the years from homemade items like the sauerkraut that Kroger’s founder, Barney Kroger, stocked on his shelves to the plainly labeled generics that were sold in the 1970s. In the 1980s, a Canadian grocery executive, Dave Nichol, borrowed from a British grocer the idea of introducing premium store-brand products, like a chocolate-chip cookie with more chips than national brands. Mr. Nichol, then an executive and pitchman for the Loblaws chain, sold the cookies under the President’s Choice label. Within two years, the brand was the best-selling cookie in Canada. “That’s when the alarm bells went on and that’s when I realized this was the whole answer,” Mr. Nichol said. In the United States, a growing number of grocery retailers are embracing Mr. Nichol’s philosophy, including Kroger. The Cincinnati-based chain, the nation’s second-largest grocer after Wal-Mart, hired Ms. Severin two years ago to expand Kroger’s store brands, which include a value brand, a medium tier that competes directly against national brands, and a premium category. A veteran of major food brands, Ms. Severin said her model was not competitors in the United States, but grocers in Canada and Europe, where store brands account for as much as 40 percent of the items sold. She said her focus had been on developing products that offered something other than simply low prices, like premium ingredients or innovative packaging. During a tour of the Loveland store, she pointed to store-brand packages of cut vegetables that were microwave-ready, compact fluorescent light bulbs that were environmentally friendly and dog food made with natural ingredients. She said she was particularly proud of a curved, 12-ounce bottle of hand soap with scents like cherry blossom and coconut lime. The Kroger logo was barely visible. A typical shopper wants hand soap that “looks good and smells pretty,” Ms. Severin explained, but does not want a “big Kroger logo staring out at her.” The Kroger product was also cheaper, per ounce, than nearby Softsoap, a popular national brand. Even as it develops fancier products, Kroger is being careful to keep unadorned store brands on its shelves, too, recognizing that they appeal to many shoppers for the sole reason that they are cheap. One top seller in Kroger’s value line is four rolls of toilet paper in plain packaging for 77 cents. “It’s really a price that isn’t going to be beat,” Ms. Severin said.

Supermarkets
Generic and Brand Name Products
Retail Stores and Trade
United States Economy


Iran: President Yields on Oil Ministry

Abstract: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad withdrew as the caretaker chief of Iran ’s oil ministry and appointed an ally to the job, state television reported Thursday. A day after Parliament voted to take Mr. Ahmadinejad to court for taking over the ministry, the president handed the job to Mohammad Aliabadi, who has served as head of Iran’s Olympic committee. The skirmish over the ministry was the third public dispute in the last three months between Mr. Ahmadinejad and the hard-line establishment.

Iran
Ahmadinejad Mahmoud
Politics and Government
Appointments and Executive Changes


Israeli Coalition Divided on Military Conscription

Abstract: JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ’s supersize coalition was showing its first serious signs of stress on Friday in its quest for a more universal draft system in Israel . An effort that has so far focused on phasing out mass army exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jews suddenly became more charged as right-wing nationalist parties decided to press the equally — if not more — contentious issue of national or civilian service for Israel’s Arab citizens. The issue is highly provocative. While most Jewish Israelis, and Druze men, are conscripted at 18, Israeli Arabs are generally not required to perform mandatory military service, though they may volunteer. Many view the years of military service and reserve duty a burden, but the experience is often a requirement in the job market. and it affords certain social and economic benefits. Arab citizens are entitled to equal rights in Israel but, like minorities in many countries, many experience discrimination. And many Israeli Arabs identify in terms of nationality with the Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip more than with the country’s Jewish Zionist majority. There is still a month to go before the deadline by which the government must come up with an alternative to the Tal Law, passed 2002, which formalized exemptions for tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews engaged in religious studies. Israel’s Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional and invalidated it in February. But as the government struggles to come up with a new formula for a more equitable distribution of the burdens of citizenship, Mr. Netanyahu, whose recently expanded coalition commands a majority in the 120-seat Parliament, finds himself increasingly squeezed between the secular and religious forces in his government. Many analysts here saw the political wrangling as a sign of Mr. Netanyahu’s weakness and predicted that it was unlikely to result in any drastic change regarding the draft. “All that’s left is to be amazed by Benjamin Netanyahu, whom many call the king of Israel, who managed get into this mess,” Ofer Shelah, a well-known commentator, wrote on Friday in the Hebrew-language newspaper Maariv. After Mr. Netanyahu chose to stave off early elections by expanding his coalition, he finds himself “with elections ahead of him and not behind him, and with coalition party members who only have their eyes on the ballot boxes,” Mr. Shelah wrote. Mr. Netanyahu’s newest partner, the secular and centrist Kadima Party, is demanding a tougher line on drafting the ultra-Orthodox than the strictly religious parties in the coalition will probably tolerate. One Kadima legislator warned on Friday that the issue could tear his party apart. Meanwhile, the secular, ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu Party led by Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, is championing the cause of obligatory service for Israeli Arabs, who make up about 20 percent of the population of 7.8 million. Mr. Netanyahu is in favor of encouraging more Arabs to volunteer for civilian national service, in a gradual process and in dialogue with the Arab community, but he is opposed to compulsory service for Arabs, an aide said. The latest uproar began on Thursday, when Yisrael Beiteinu and the smaller, pro-settler Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) Party quit the committee responsible for drafting recommendations for a bill to replace the Tal Law. Yisrael Beiteinu said in a statement that it had quit after the committee decided “to positively discriminate in favor of the Arab public in Israel,” by limiting its recommendations to drafting the ultra-Orthodox. Mr. Lieberman’s party favors drafting all citizens for military, national or civilian service at the age of 18. The committee is headed by Yohanan Plesner, a Kadima legislator. Although Mr. Netanyahu originally agreed in principle to tackle the issue of Arab service along with that of the ultra-Orthodox, the committee decided that it was impractical to come up with solutions for both by the end of July. But Mr. Lieberman’s insistence has put the prime minister in a bind. On Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu spoke to Arab legislators by telephone and told them it was imperative to gradually increase the share of all sectors of society in the burdens of citizenship, according to officials in the prime minister’s office. But they added that it should be done in a phased manner and in coordination with Arab representatives. One of the Arab legislators, Ahmad Tibi, told Israel Radio on Friday that Arab citizens were not willing to be the victims of a coalition war among the Jews. He said that before talking about equally sharing the burden, there had to be equality for everyone — in infrastructure, in budgets, in land and in education. Recent polls have shown that despite a rise in the number of Arabs volunteering for civilian community service, a growing majority of Arab youth are opposed. A survey published in May by Haifa University found that 40 percent of Arab youths in Israel were willing to volunteer for civil service in 2011, compared with 53 percent in 2009. The Haifa University study also found that 90 percent of the Arab volunteers were girls providing educational and welfare services in their communities. The number of Arabs participating in civil national service has risen tenfold, to nearly 2,400 this year from 240 in 2004.

Israel
Arabs
Draft and Recruitment (Military)
Jews and Judaism
Defense and Military Forces
Netanyahu Benjamin
Muslims and Islam


Teenagers Charged in Harassment at Mosque

Abstract: A group of teenagers in western New York has been accused of harassing members of a mosque by yelling obscenities and insults during evening prayers for Ramadan , sideswiping a worshiper with a vehicle and firing a shotgun outside, the authorities said Tuesday. The teenagers were cornered by members of the mosque, who held them for the police. They were charged with disrupting a religious service, a misdemeanor. The obscenities episode occurred Monday and the shooting last Friday, both outside the World Sufi Foundation mosque in Carlton, N.Y., the authorities said. They said a 17-year-old fired the shotgun; no one was hit. “We have had occasions in the past,” said Joseph V. Cardone, the district attorney in Orleans County, “and it seems every three or four years we have some kids drive by the mosque and make comments and that sort of thing. We’ve had minor incidents, but nothing of this magnitude in the past.” The episodes occurred amid rancor over plans to build an Islamic community center and mosque two blocks from ground zero in Manhattan. The plans have prompted protests and a heated debate among politicians and commentators. It was unclear whether the episodes in Carlton, which is about 40 miles northeast of Buffalo, were related to that controversy. At about 11 p.m. on Monday, the teenagers in Carlton were at “some type of gathering,” Mr. Cardone said, when one of them suggested going to harass people at the “cult house” — what they called the mosque. The teenagers got in a Chevrolet Blazer and drove in front of the mosque, beeping the horn and yelling, said Scott D. Hess, the county sheriff. Mr. Cardone could not immediately say if the teenagers yelled anti-Muslim statements, and he said it had not yet been determined whether their actions would be classified as a hate crime. At one point, a worshiper, David Bell, went outside the mosque to see if he could spot the vehicle. “It came at him and brushed up against him,” said Mr. Cardone, who added that Mr. Bell had been treated for cuts and contusions at a hospital and released. Bilal Huzair, an imam at the mosque, said that the teenagers had yelled anti-Muslim statements and that congregants had become concerned about the possibility of violence after hearing the shotgun discharge. When a worshiper drove past a nearby boat launch on Lake Ontario after the episode Monday night and spotted the teenagers, congregants headed over in three cars, dialing 911 as they drove, Mr. Huzair said. They cornered the teenagers, who Mr. Huzair said were in two trucks, at the boat launch, holding them for 40 minutes until the police arrived. “For us it was extremely frightening,” Mr. Huzair said. “We had cornered people who had just fired at us and run us over.” The teenagers were taken into custody and also “acknowledged their involvement” in the Friday night episode, Mr. Cardone said. The five teenagers, Mark Vendetti and Tim Weader, both 17, and Dylan Phillips, Jeff Donahue and Anthony Ogden, all 18, who are all from Holley, N.Y., are scheduled to appear in court in Carlton on Friday, the police said. Mr. Vendetti, who is accused of firing the shotgun, was also charged with criminal possession of a weapon and faces up to four years in prison if convicted, Mr. Cardone said. Asked about the motive, Mr. Cardone said the teenagers used “very poor judgment.” “It’s just kids doing stupid things,” he said, “but it got more serious when they ran into a member of the mosque and they discharged a weapon. And we are taking it seriously.” Mr. Huzair said that the mosque, which opened in 1974, had a generally good relationship with the community, but that harassment episodes had happened on several nights this Ramadan. “The difficulty that we have is that we have difficulty in getting police officers to act more hastily in apprehending suspects,” he said.

Mosques
World Sufi Foundation
Islam
Hate Crimes
New York State
Discrimination


A Video Clip Goes Viral, and a TV Network Wants to Control It

Abstract: When a video clip goes "viral," spreading across the Web at lightning speed, it can help rocket its creators to stardom. Alas, the clip can also generate work for corporate lawyers. As anyone with an Internet connection and a love of cupcakes can tell you, "Lazy Sunday" is a tongue-in-cheek rap video starring Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg of "Saturday Night Live." NBC first broadcast the video, a two-and-a-half-minute paean to New York's Magnolia Bakery, Google Maps and C. S. Lewis, on Dec. 17. Fans immediately began putting copies of the video online. On one free video-sharing site, YouTube (www.youtube.com), it was watched five million times in a few days. NBC soon made the video available as a free download from the Apple iTunes Music Store. Julie Supan, senior director of marketing for YouTube, said she contacted NBC Universal about working out a deal to feature NBC clips, including "Lazy Sunday," on the site. NBC Universal responded early this month with a notice asking YouTube to remove about 500 clips of NBC material from its site or face legal action under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. YouTube complied last week. "Lazy Sunday" is still available for free viewing on NBC's Web site, and costs $1.99 on iTunes. Julie Summersgill, a spokeswoman for NBC Universal, said the company meant no ill will toward fan sites but wanted to protect its copyrights. "We're taking a long and careful look at how to protect our content," she said. YouTube and others in the new wave of video-sharing sites have so far managed to avoid major legal problems even though they often carry copyrighted material without permission. "This is an example of the copyright troubles that are waiting for YouTube, Google Video and all the other video hosting services that rely on user-posted content," said Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group. Several online commentators noted that NBC's response to YouTube, while legally justified, may have been short-sighted. The online popularity of "Lazy Sunday" has been credited with reviving interest in "Saturday Night Live" at a time when it is in need of some buzz. Ms. Supan said VH1 and other television and movie producers were increasingly putting their own clips, trailers and music videos on YouTube in hopes of jump-starting their own viral phenomena. "We got e-mails from college students, and a lot of them said it's the 'Lazy Sunday' clip that turned them on to potentially watching 'S.N.L.' again," she said. JOHN BIGGS

YOUTUBE
NBC UNIVERSAL
COPYRIGHTS
TELEVISION
UNITED STATES
NATIONAL BROADCASTING CO
RECORDINGS AND DOWNLOADS (VIDEO)
LAW AND LEGISLATION
COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE (TV PROGRAM)


Tearful Moment With Merkel Turns Migrant Girl Into a Potent Symbol

Abstract: ROSTOCK, Germany — She stared down Greece and embraced her role as the rules enforcer of the European Union. But one teary-eyed young asylum seeker from the Middle East turned the tables on Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany last week, raising questions about her compassion and focusing attention on Europe’s central humanitarian dilemma. It was a moment that almost never happened. “I wasn’t at all planning on talking to the chancellor about the refugee topic,” Reem Sahwil, a 14-year-old Palestinian , said in an interview in her family’s apartment here on Monday. But talk about it they did, at a public youth forum in this north German city on Wednesday, with the video of the exchange circulating widely on the Internet. The tears Reem cried upon hearing Ms. Merkel say that, no, not all asylum seekers can stay in Germany, have made the shy teenager the fresh face of Europe’s crush of recent arrivals. Reem is one of hundreds of thousands from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere who have arrived in Western Europe in recent years seeking safety or opportunity. Germany receives among the highest number of asylum applications in the European Union. It can be years until they are processed, and, as Ms. Merkel noted, many are denied. Applicants like Reem’s family, who came to Germany largely for economic reasons, are considered alongside those who are seeking a haven from persecution. Yet pending legislation is giving young, well-integrated asylum seekers like Reem new hope for a longer stay in their adopted countries. An overhaul of residency laws would allow certain under-age asylum seekers who have attended German schools and have been assimilated the opportunity to stay in the country permanently, along with their parents. For those foreigners, the legislation “finally offers the prospect of a lawful and humanitarian residency,” said Aydan Ozoguz, the country’s commissioner for immigration, refugees and integration, in a statement. These changes, Ms. Ozoguz continued, would “conclude years of uncertainty for many of those and their families who have temporary visas and have long since found their new homes here.” Reem counts herself among those recent arrivals who feel at home in Germany. “I’ve been treated well,” she said, perched on a pink bedspread populated by stuffed animals. She, her two younger siblings and her parents live in an anonymous housing block outside the city center. The apartment was provided by the government. Reem’s parents are prohibited from working while their asylum application is under review, and the family lives on a small government subsidy. Reem, speaking in fluent German after five years in the country, said she wished to study and to live permanently in Germany. She wants to work as an interpreter or English teacher so she can help others overcome communication barriers that she herself knows well. “I see how needed it is when immigrants arrive here,” Reem said. She was born in a refugee camp in Baalbek, Lebanon, in 2000. Her birth was two months premature, and she has a shortened Achilles tendon and cerebral palsy that has partly paralyzed her left side and made walking difficult. Image Medical care for Reem Sahwil, who has cerebral palsy and a shortened Achilles tendon, is among the reasons her family wants to stay in Germany Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times Her father, Atef Sahwil, struggled to pay her medical bills on what he made as a welder. In the summer of 2006, as the war between Israel and Hezbollah upended their lives in Baalbek, the Sahwils fled to Syria for a few months, living in another refugee camp. After the family returned to Lebanon, Reem broke her right leg in a car accident. “It had to be my healthy leg,” she said, laughing and pointing to a thick scar on her forehead, another reminder of the crash. After years of insufficient care, the Sahwils applied for a visa for medical treatment in Germany in 2010 and flew to Düsseldorf for an operation on Reem’s back. Her family paid for the trip with money lent by Mr. Sahwil’s employer, as well as with donations from the Red Cross, relatives and neighbors. “We approached strangers, just knocking on the door and asking for help,” Reem said. It was the first of many medical procedures she would undergo in Germany, prompting her family to stay and apply for asylum. “Papa just couldn’t deal with it anymore,” Reem said of the family’s difficult life in Lebanon. The Sahwils first applied for asylum in Sweden, but their application was denied because European Union regulations stipulate that the first union country that a refugee enters is responsible for processing the application. The family then returned to Germany and submitted an application for asylum. Reem said that although the application was rejected — as she told Ms. Merkel during their tearful encounter — the family is appealing for additional consideration. Regardless of the result of those efforts, Roland Methling, the mayor of Rostock, has said he will do everything in his power to help families in his jurisdiction like the Sahwils remain in Germany. “Germany, Europe and especially Palestine needs figures like Reem,” Mr. Methling wrote in an email. Reem attends a school with accommodations for disabled students. Her summer vacation began this week. “When I’m in school, I feel like I’m doing something for my life,” she said. She said that her favorite subjects are English and German, in which she was the only student in her class this year to receive a grade of 1, equivalent to an A. Reem was one of several students invited to participate in the public forum with the chancellor last Wednesday, part of a discussion series called Living Well in Germany. “Politics is sometimes hard,” the chancellor said, a remark that some commentators have said showed a lack of empathy. Others have applauded Ms. Merkel’s candor — including Reem herself. “She was honest, and I find that good,” Reem said.

Middle East and Africa Migrant Crisis,European Migrant Crisis


Princeton Tops Harvard and Ivy League Race Tightens

Abstract: Ian Hummer got his first double-double of the season to help host Princeton defeat Harvard, 58-53, on Friday night, tightening up the Ivy League title race. Hummer had 23 points and a season-high 14 rebounds as the Tigers (15-9, 8-2) avenged a 69-57 loss to the Crimson on Feb. 16. Harvard (17-8, 9-2), which went in having won four straight and eight of its last nine games, has three regular-season contests left and Princeton four. If both win out, that will set up a playoff for the league’s N.C.A.A. tournament berth.

Princeton
Harvard
Ivy League
College Sports
Basketball
College basketball


English Ivy, Spread by Admiring Humans and Hungry Birds

Abstract: What people like most about English ivy also happens to be its biggest problem. Like so many plants brought to North America, it is attractive and durable. English ivy is extravagantly green even in the worst winters, and it grows — like a weed — in disturbed areas. Under the right conditions, ivy can be found trailing along the ground where it forms thick mats that smother native vegetation. The vine also produces holdfasts, and is consequently an excellent tree climber, growing aggressively upward, eventually strangling its host. These modified roots also allow the plant to scramble over rocky ledges in its native landscape. Humans have found this characteristic especially useful as the plant gladly climbs walls, fences and posts in the sunniest exposures or the most dimly lit corners. There is no better time to observe English ivy than early winter, when the striking contrast between new snow and the plant’s thick, dark green foliage goes a long way to explain its ancient appeal. It is simply impossible not to notice ivy in a wintry landscape — in fact, it is probable that long before humans discovered that ivy could be cultivated, they pondered the miracle of its lustrous green leaves, which seem to be immune to winter’s freezes. In druidic tradition, ivy was often paired with holly; the ivy represented female elements of the natural world, and the holly manifested the male. Traditionally, a sprig of ivy was offered to newly married couples as an emblem of fidelity. Greek and Roman custom held that the plant was sacred to the god of wine, Dionysus (or Bacchus), who is often represented with a wreath of ivy around his head. These depictions are surely the source of the folk belief that a crown of ivy prevented intoxication. If you are not ready for this sort of fashion statement on your next night out, wine boiled with sprigs of ivy was also said to have a prophylactic effect. Unfortunately, though ivy is beautiful, most modern nature lovers find it a disturbing mark of a landscape out of balance. As its name suggests, English ivy (Hedera helix) originally occurred throughout the British Isles and Europe, as well as parts of northern Africa and western Asia. For better or worse, as its religious implications faded, humans continued to appreciate its evergreen beauty, and planted it where they settled. Ivy produces beautiful bluish-black berries in quantity when it matures. These berries are valuable wildlife food, and birds unwittingly spread the plant further, digesting the berries and excreting their seeds with a supply of fertilizer for good measure. Many cultivars of ivy can be found in and around gardens, some showing flashy variegation, others with finely dissected leaves. If you have ivy in your garden, please landscape responsibly, and dispose of any ivy prunings carefully, as many a ruined landscape began with unscrupulous gardeners discarding yard waste that included bits of ivy. It only takes a stem or two with a few leaves to transform a pretty plant into a pest.

Flowers and Plants
Gardens and Gardening
Invasive species


North Carolina Beats Duke to Win Conference

Abstract: DURHAM, N.C. — Duke season highlights were playing on the scoreboard above center court at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Saturday night before the Blue Devils took on North Carolina in the Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season finale. It was not hard to guess which play drew the loudest cheers: a 3-pointer at the buzzer by the freshman Austin Rivers that beat the Tar Heels in the teams’ previous meeting this season. Fans were not the only ones fired up by the replay. “With a little extra explicit language, I told my teammates I thought that was disrespectful,” North Carolina point guard Kendall Marshall said of showing the replay right before the game. “We need to come out here and make a point.” The Tar Heels not only made a point, they made a statement. With an 88-70 blowout of Duke, they captured the A.C.C. regular-season championship and the No. 1 seed for the conference tournament this week. Sixth-ranked North Carolina (27-4, 14-2), which has won seven in a row, put itself on the short list of possible top seeds for the N.C.A.A. tournament as well. Marshall had 20 points and 10 assists, one of three Tar Heels who had double-doubles, with Tyler Zeller adding 19 points and 10 rebounds and John Henson contributing 13 points and 10 rebounds as North Carolina posted its largest margin of victory at Cameron since 1989. Mason Plumlee led four players in double figures for No. 4 Duke (26-5, 13-3) with 17 points. His brother Miles, a senior, had 16 points and 11 rebounds in his final game at Cameron. Call it a redemption for the Tar Heels, who lost a 10-point lead in the final minutes in their previous meeting and fell, 85-84, at Dean Smith Center when Rivers hit that 3-point shot. Nobody felt that loss more than Zeller, who had inadvertently tapped in a missed shot by Duke’s Ryan Kelly in the closing seconds. He also missed two free throws and failed to get close enough to challenge Rivers on that final shot. It had weighed on Zeller for weeks. “I think you’ve got to be able to take your setbacks and make them motivate you and try to make you a better player,” he said after Saturday’s game. Perhaps to make a point, Zeller scored the first basket Saturday. And then the Tar Heels made sure Duke never gained the lead. North Carolina used an 18-1 run to build a 22-5 lead with 12 minutes 38 seconds remaining in the first half. Duke missed 15 shots in a row during that stretch, and never got their deficit under 10 points. “We didn’t come out to fight until the second half,” Kelly said. North Carolina had built a 48-24 lead, the lowest output in a half this season by the Blue Devils. Duke, the best 3-point shooting team in the A.C.C. this season (39 percent), was 2 of 11 from 3-point range in the first half. Seth Curry was 1 of 7 from the field in the first half, including 1 of 2 from 3-point range. Rivers was 1 of 3 on 3-point attempts in the opening half. “The key to this game was defensively,” Marshall said. “We made it tough for Curry and Rivers.” North Carolina’s grew as big as 26 points early in the second half. But Duke nearly made a game of it. The Blue Devils closed to 75-64 with 6:01 to go. It stayed that way for nearly two minutes, with Miles Plumlee and Curry both missing shots, and Rivers missing a free throw. That was when Zeller talked to his team. “It always kind of flashes in your mind,” Zeller said, referring to the first game. He said he told his teammates, “Just remember what happened last time and don’t let it happen again.” The Tar Heels did not. North Carolina pulled away again to close out a sweet, sweet victory. “I think we’ve won the one out of two that mattered the most,” Marshall said. “And we can call ourselves regular-season A.C.C. champs after this. So I don’t know if that shot will be shown so much more.”

Basketball (College)
University of North Carolina
Duke University
Zeller Tyler
Kelly Ryan


Nigeria: Gunmen Kill 27

Abstract: Armed robbers in northern Nigeria killed 27 people on Monday while attacking villages preparing for a market day, a local government official said. The official, Ibrahim Sidi, who works for the Maru government in Zamfara State, said he and other officials counted the dead after the attack. Talatu Mai Tasshi, a woman who escaped the violence, said she hid inside empty sacks as the gunmen stalked other people at the market. The police said they had begun an investigation.


Sun and Santana Gives Mets Fans a Warm Feeling

Abstract: No one can know for certain what fortunes await the Mets in 2010, but for one game, one significant game, things could not have gone much better. In spectacular spring weather on Monday, the Mets took the field for the first time this season and bathed their fans in the warmth of a well-executed 7-1 decision over the Florida Marlins . The pitching was terrific, the defense looked sharp and best of all, there were no injuries. After a desultory 2009 season marked by recurring medical problems and far too much poor play by those who were not hurt, the Mets put on a nine-inning demonstration of solid baseball that impressed, and maybe even surprised, the 41,245 fans at sold-out Citi Field. Much may change over the next 161 games, but at least the Mets took a purposeful first step. “Today was perfect,” outfielder Jeff Francoeur said. “Perfect weather, perfect game, perfect outcome. Not much more you could ask for.” The Mets’ ace, Johan Santana , set the tone with a strong six innings. He allowed one run on four hits, and David Wright carried a solid spring into the regular season by hitting an opposite-field two-run homer in his first at-bat. Wright, flummoxed by Citi Field’s expansive dimensions from left-center to right-center, hit only 10 home runs in 2009. But on Monday, he solved that problem by hitting one right down the right-field line. After the home run, Wright came into the dugout and pounded his teammates with demonstrative high-fives. “Maybe it was a collective sigh,” said left fielder Jason Bay, the Mets’ biggest off-season acquisition. “Not just for David, but for everybody. Obviously, it was huge for David after what happened last year.” But this was also a good day for General Manager Omar Minaya because it featured contributions from several of the players he brought in during the offseason. Bay had two hits, including a triple, and scored a run. Gary Matthews Jr., starting in center field in place of Carlos Beltran, who is recovering from off-season knee surgery, went 2 for 3 with a double and two runs. Matthews also made seven putouts, some of which were a little hair-raising because of a tricky, swirling wind. The new catcher Rod Barajas had two hits as well, including a double and a run batted in. The only similarities to 2009, in fact, were the absences of Beltran and Jose Reyes. Both are still in Florida, and still on the disabled list, where each spent much of last season. Santana showed no ill effects from the surgery on his left elbow that ended his season in August last year. He threw 103 pitches and used his entire arsenal of fastballs, changeups and sliders. His velocity, which had dipped in spring training, was back to 90 miles per hour. “We worked hard in spring training waiting for this day for many months,” Santana said. “It felt great.” The day started with only one reminder of last year, with the fans booing the training staff in the pregame introductions, a sarcastic salute to all the injuries that afflicted the team in 2009 and have lingered into 2010. But once Santana took the mound, the day turned more positive. He threw a called strike to Chris Coghlan at 1:11 p.m. with his first pitch, and a new season had begun. Santana set down the Marlins in order in the top of the first, and in the bottom half, Wright came to the plate with one out and Luis Castillo on first base. Wright took a ball from starter Josh Johnson, whom he had faced only five days earlier in a spring training game, then hit his first home run of the season. That left him just nine short of his total from last year. “Seeing him last week was a bit of an advantage for us offensively,” Wright said. Asked how he felt about starting the season with a home run after a 2009 season in which his power disappeared and he suffered a frightening beaning by Matt Cain of the Giants, Wright smiled and said, “It gave us two runs.” In the top of the sixth, the Marlins finally got to Santana for a run on a double by Jorge Cantu, but Santana limited the damage by getting Ronny Paulino to fly out to center to end the inning. When Matthews caught Paulino’s fly ball, Santana slapped his left hand into his mitt and jogged off the field, knowing he had done his job effectively. The Mets broke open the game in the bottom of the inning. Bay led off with a triple to the gap in left-center and scored on a sacrifice fly by Francoeur, and the Mets added three more runs to make it 6-1. The bullpen, which has been a point of uncertainty all spring, then took over and kept everything in order. Fernando Nieve pitched two scoreless innings before Francisco Rodriguez, who returned Sunday from Venezuela, where two of his brothers were in a car accident, pitched a perfect ninth. As the fans filed out, many started chanting, “Let’s go, Mets!” For one day, for a team that few have picked to be a contender, all was well. “It’s opening day, and everything is going to be magnified times 100,” Bay said. “It’s one game, one win. But it’s a lot better than losing.”

Florida Marlins
Baseball
New York Mets
Wright David
Santana Johan
Francoeur Jeff


Police Sergeant Is Shot in the Leg in Queens

Abstract: A New York City police sergeant was shot in the leg while pursuing a suspect on Wednesday night on a street in Queens, the police said. Authorities said that the sergeant was expected to survive. The shooting happened around 10:40 p.m. on Union Hall Street in the Jamaica neighborhood. The officer was taken to Jamaica Hospital in stable condition, the police said. As of midnight on Wednesday, the gunman remained on the loose. Grace Nathaniel, 46, a home health aide, said she was packing up after a barbecue on 107th Avenue when she heard gunshots. “I heard four or five gunshots,” she said. “I knew they weren’t firecrackers. They were too loud.” About a half-hour before the episode, Juanita Durant, 46, walked out of her church, Faith Tabernacle, which is around the corner from the site of the shooting, to find an altercation between the police and group of men. It was unknown whether the episodes were related. Ms. Durant said she saw group of people arguing with and shouting at police officers. A man was double-parked in front of a convenience store next to the church, she said. The police were trying to arrest him, and he was resisting their efforts to handcuff him, Ms. Durant said. The crowd of about 20 men were shouting at the officers, telling them not to arrest the man or tow his car. When the police did tow the vehicle, a group of men ran to another car and chased the police car carrying the arrested man. Minutes after the arrest, Ms. Durant said, she was in her car when she heard four loud gunshots and saw about 10 people sprinting. In the last month, the police have started foot patrols with three officers each in the neighborhood, Ms. Durant said. “It was always rough around here,” she said, “but lately it’s gotten a lot worse.”

Police
New York City
Police Department (NYC)
Jamaica (NYC)
Murders and Attempted Murders
Attacks on Police