Only Thing in Leonard Fournette’s Way: N.F.L. Rule Book

Abstract: There was a rare moment of stillness at the beginning of Louisiana State’s 45-21 rout of visiting Auburn on Saturday. The Tigers — purple version — handed off to Leonard Fournette, and he stalled with some careful stutter-steps, letting L.S.U.’s offensive linemen clear his path. They did, and he sprinted 71 yards. The brief hesitation was the least frenetic moment of Fournette’s explosive day, when he vaulted himself to the top of the Heisman Trophy conversation with 228 yards and three touchdowns on 19 carries as L.S.U. improved to 2-0. His 8.2 yards per carry over two games put him firmly among the leaders in the Football Bowl Subdivision. Fournette, a 20-year-old sophomore, displayed the complete package. Patience in those stutter-steps; speed in his runs past Auburn’s secondary; grace in his balletic slaloms; creativity in his judolike hurling of safety Tray Matthews over him; strength, as when he dispatched safety Blake Countess with a casual shoulder-butt. Rudy Ford, a safety for Auburn who had said earlier in the week that stopping Fournette “shouldn’t be difficult, that much of a challenge,” blatantly chose to stay out of Fournette’s way on at least one play. Gil Brandt, a former Dallas Cowboys player personnel executive who now works as an analyst for N.F.L. Media, compared Fournette to Adrian Peterson and Herschel Walker. He said that while the N.F.L. draft was heavily influenced by the positions that are perceived as important and by specific teams’ needs, Fournette “would be the first guy picked in the draft if you just say, ‘Who is the best player?’ ” Brandt added, “He’s ready to play.” But there is a catch: Fournette will not be eligible for the league next year. The N.F.L. requires draftees to be at least three years removed from high school, regardless of whether they are ready to play. As a result, the soonest Fournette could suit up on Sundays is two years from now. From the N.F.L.’s perspective, the rule helps ensure its players are up to the task. “The majority of underclassmen are not physically or mentally prepared to enter the N.F.L.,” the league states in a guide for college head coaches. “Most would benefit significantly from another year of college football.” Rather than let individual teams size up the players and decide for themselves whether an underclassman is ready for the next level, the league codified a rule. It does not take into account that some 20-year-old sophomores — Fournette? — might be more prepared for the N.F.L. than some 22-year-old seniors. Nor does it appreciate one big benefit for N.F.L. players: a salary. In Fournette’s case, the rule seems to make little sense. He is already as close as it gets to a sure thing. Impressive as it was, his outing was hardly the most surprising thing in college football on Saturday. Alabama (2-1), which dropped to No. 12 from No. 2 this week, ran 100 offensive snaps and, for the second year in a row, lost to Mississippi (3-0), which jumped to No. 3 from No. 15. (The last time the Rebels beat the Tide in consecutive games was never.) Texas (1-2) lost to California (3-0) by missing a last-second extra-point attempt. Playing at home, No. 1 Ohio State (3-0) benched the starting quarterback Cardale Jones for poor play and needed an interception return for a touchdown from linebacker Darron Lee to beat Northern Illinois (2-1), 20-13. 2015 Heisman Trophy Watch A look at the top players in contention for college football’s highest honor. Fournette is a 230-pounder who last year ran a 4.35-second 40-yard dash and last season, as a true freshman, averaged 5.5 yards and scored 10 touchdowns on 187 carries. Les Miles, coach of the No. 8 Tigers, offered him a scholarship when he was a high school freshman in New Orleans. If Fournette is ready to compete as a professional, it raises the question of whether he should sit out until the rule catches up to him. In the past, some highly regarded prospects, like the former South Carolina defensive end Jadeveon Clowney, threatened to sit their junior seasons in order to avoid risking an injury or anything else that would damage their draft prospects. And though players may purchase loss-of-value insurance to protect against that risk, it has a poor track record of paying out. Brandt, who has studied football for decades from the professional side, supports the rule. He cited the N.F.L. season’s length, which is longer than college’s, and the need for many players to have extra years before the N.F.L. to bulk up. And then there is the mental grind. As bright a spotlight as big-time college football can be — and hardly anywhere is it brighter than under the lights of Death Valley — supporters of the eligibility rule are probably right when they say that the N.F.L. imposes an extra level of pressure. In fact, Fournette himself has cited this issue. Before this season, ESPN’s Joe Schad reported that Fournette said that rising juniors “may be physically but not mentally ready.” With a few more games like Saturday’s, Fournette may have a different outlook.

Leonard Fournette
College football
Sports Drafts and Recruits
NFL
Super Bowl
Super Bowl 2015
Louisiana State University


For Myanmar’s Neighbors, Mutual Needs Trump Qualms

Abstract: BANGKOK, Oct. 1 — For two decades, Myanmar ’s neighbors have grappled with how to respond to the unrelenting repression of the country’s people by its ruling generals. In Thailand, the answer comes each time anyone pays an electric bill. Natural gas from Myanmar, which generates 20 percent of all electricity in Thailand, keeps the lights on in Bangkok. The gas, which this year will cost about $2.8 billion, is the largest single export for Myanmar’s impoverished, cash-strapped economy. Thailand’s gas imports highlight the difficulty facing China, India, Singapore and Malaysia, among other countries, as they vie for Myanmar’s hardwoods, minerals and gems — and access to its market of 47 million people. At a time of rising energy prices, the prospect of extracting resources appears to override the embarrassment and shame of dealing with a junta that has attracted worldwide condemnation. For that reason, the countries with the most leverage over Myanmar seem the most reluctant to use it, analysts say. For Myanmar’s generals, the gas purchases by Thailand are only the beginning of what promises to be a significant infusion of cash. Myanmar will soon announce the winner of a concession in the Shwe gas fields off the western coast. Companies from India, China and South Korea have bid for those contracts. In eastern Myanmar, Thai companies are building hydropower plants and have contracts to pay the government billions of dollars for electricity from them. “For a country that’s used to a hand-to-mouth existence there is suddenly a bonanza of foreign exchange,” said Sean Turnell, a specialist on the Myanmar economy at Macquarie University in Australia. “Burma is now getting the wherewithal to tell the world to bug off.” The cash has allowed the generals who run Myanmar to buy weapons from China and helicopters from India, order a nuclear test reactor from Russia and construct their new administrative capital north of Yangon. “The natural gas drastically changed the military government’s fiscal position,” said Toshihiro Kudo, director of the Southeast Asian Studies Group at the Institute of Developing Economies, a research organization run by the Japanese government. Myanmar’s gas reserves are small by global standards. BP, the oil company, estimates the total at 538 billion cubic meters, or 19 trillion cubic feet, far less than the reserves of nearby Malaysia or Indonesia. But the billions of dollars those gas fields will produce is valuable to the ruling generals, whose sources of financing are extremely limited because of American sanctions. Largely because of the gas deal, Thailand now accounts for more than 40 percent of Myanmar’s total exports and has become its biggest trading partner, not China, as is widely reported. “Thailand and Myanmar are increasingly integrated, increasingly dependent on each other,” Mr. Kudo said. As a result, “I don’t think that Thailand is applying any very serious pressure on the military government.” At the United Nations last week, the Thai prime minister, Surayud Chulanont, called the Myanmar crackdown unacceptable. Thai newspapers have run scathing editorials about Myanmar’s generals. And Thailand remains a refuge for dissidents from Myanmar. But the bottom line, Thai officials say, is that Thailand is competing for the world’s energy resources, and if it does not buy the gas, someone else will. Gen. Sonthi Boonyaratglin, the army chief who led Thailand’s military coup last year, said last week that Thailand should stay engaged with Myanmar. “There are many friendly nations who help Myanmar like China and Korea because Myanmar is a country with plenty of natural resources that the powerful nations want to obtain,” he said. For China, the attraction of Myanmar is both economic and geostrategic. As part of its bid for the gas fields off western Myanmar, China has proposed building a pipeline from the Bay of Bengal through Myanmar and into Yunnan Province. Another pipeline could carry crude oil delivered by ships from the Middle East. For Myanmar, the gas fields would mean more cash. Mr. Turnell estimated that gas pumped from Shwe platforms would have a value of $2 billion a year.

Myanmar
International Relations
Embargoes and Economic Sanctions
Gas (Fuel)


Detroit House Preserves Memories of a Little-Known Part of Rosa Parks’s Life

Abstract: When Rosa Parks stayed there in the late 1950s, the house on South Deacon Street in southwest Detroit was modest — two stories high, with white shutters and a chimney peeking from the top. In recent years, it suffered the same fate as thousands of other houses in blight-stricken Detroit: abandoned, ransacked by thieves looking for scrap metal and inhabited by only a few friendly raccoons. In September, it was demolished. Yet there may be an afterlife for one of Ms. Parks’s former homes. The house’s materials have been shipped to an artist in Berlin, who wants to reconstruct the house to honor Ms. Parks’s life and her extraordinary role in the civil rights movement. “The idea was to repurpose the home and turn it into a work of art,” said Rhea McCauley, Ms. Parks’ niece, who helped arrange the project. The interest in a previously unknown home, where Ms. Parks spent only a short while, comes at a time when issues of race and identity are at the forefront in the United States — including a focus on African-American history, with the opening of the long-awaited National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. Image The house that Rosa Parks lived in for a time after moving to Detroit in 1957. Credit Fabia Mendoza But interest in Ms. Parks’s story has been high for years, even internationally, and her courageous refusal to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955 has been honored in books and films, museums and works of art. What is unusual about the exhibit, planned by the artist Ryan Mendoza, is that it sheds light on a part of Ms. Parks’s life that is not widely known: her time in Detroit, living with family, and her struggle to find both work and an affordable place to live after she had fled the South. It was a time, Ms. Parks later said, when she faced a northern style of discrimination, prompting her to describe Detroit as “the Northern promised land that wasn’t.” “It’s a window into her life in Detroit,” said Jeanne Theoharis, the author of “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” and a professor of political science at Brooklyn College. “The fact that she lived there some of the time is a window into the fact of how hard it was when they moved to Detroit, how much trouble they had finding housing, how much trouble they had finding work. To me, that’s what this house offers us: the real story of Rosa Parks and the real story of the North.” Image “She was very kind, and she was a quiet type person,” Nelline Baldwin said of Rosa Parks, her former neighbor. Credit Brittany Greeson for The New York Times The house was believed to be one of Ms. Parks’s first stops after fleeing the South and making Detroit her adopted home. After Dec. 1, 1955, when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus in Montgomery, Ala., she was besieged by threats, spurring her move in 1957 to Detroit, where her brother, Sylvester McCauley, was living. She later lived elsewhere in Detroit, and died there at 92 in 2005. Douglas Brinkley, an historian and Rosa Parks biographer, said the house was “not brimming with historical importance,” and added, “it’s simply a way station in Rosa Parks’s life.” The first years in Detroit were marked by poverty. Ms. Parks lived with family members, including Mr. McCauley, her niece and neighbors have said. “She was running from abuses in the South, and she was penniless,” Ms. McCauley said. Ms. Parks spent many days leaving the house in the morning, wearing a proper hat and gloves — “always neat as a pin,” her niece said — catching a city bus and looking for work, to no avail. She sometimes helped with the cooking, preparing baked chicken with paprika and blueberry cobbler. She worked from the basement of the house tailoring clothes to earn money, said a next-door neighbor, Nelline Baldwin, who is now 87. Ms. Parks taught her how to sew, Ms. Baldwin said. Image The house on South Deacon Street in Detroit has been demolished, but will be rebuilt as an art exhibit by an artist in Berlin. Credit Fabia Mendoza “She was very kind, and she was a quiet type person,” Ms. Baldwin said. “She spoke very softly. And at the time, she would come over and we’d chitchat. I was interested in sewing, so she taught me how to lay out my pattern. We made quilts and lots of cotton dresses, which is what we wore at the time. She was just my neighbor, not a celebrity.” In recent decades, the house fell into disrepair as Detroit suffered from cascading job loss and depopulation. Ms. McCauley, who lives in Ann Arbor, Mich., learned the house was facing demolition and, in 2014, bought it for $500. She cleaned it and dreamed of turning it into a museum. But she did not find enough financial backing for the project, and turned instead to Mr. Mendoza, an American artist in Berlin. Mr. Mendoza had already repurposed the facade of another empty Detroit home and displayed it at an art fair in the Netherlands. “She couldn’t find anyone to help her economically to save the house,” Mr. Mendoza said. “I was astonished that such a house would end up on the demolition list. I began to ask myself: ‘Is this house worthless or is this house priceless?’” He believes it will take him three months to reconstruct the house, piece by piece, though he is not sure what the finished product will look like. He dreams that Michelle Obama will arrange to install it on the White House lawn. “It has to echo and respect the spirit of Rosa Parks,” he said. “This is the house that carries her legacy.”


Kuroda Is Stung by Two Early Homers, and a Line Drive Off His Calf

Abstract: BALTIMORE — Hiroki Kuroda had already given up two home runs when he proved incapable of avoiding a heat-seeking line drive off the bat of Manny Machado in the second inning Wednesday. The ball ricocheted off Kuroda’s right leg and bounced toward third base for a single. Joe Girardi, the Yankees’ manager, made a beeline to the pitcher’s mound from the dugout, a team trainer in tow. It was the beginning of the end for Kuroda in the Yankees’ 6-3 loss to the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards, where Kuroda — so reliable this season — got completely battered, in more ways than one. Kuroda, who sustained what the team called a bruised right calf, left the game in the third. He gave up five runs on eight hits, his earned-run average swelling to 2.67 from 1.99. His record dipped to 6-3 as the Yankees capped their three-game series by losing their second straight. Girardi said he would be shocked if Kuroda missed his next scheduled start. Still, when Machado’s line drive struck Kuroda on the fleshy part of his calf, Girardi could not help but have flashbacks of the comebacker that sent Andy Pettitte to the disabled list last season with a fractured ankle. Kuroda was fortunate. “It was a precaution,” Kuroda said of his early exit. “If I had to push myself, I might have continued to pitch.” For the seventh time this season, the Yankees (28-18) turned to Kuroda after a loss, and Girardi had no reason to expect anything less than another sturdy effort. In his last outing, Kuroda allowed two hits in eight innings as he guided the Yankees to a win over the Toronto Blue Jays. But after leaning on pinpoint control throughout the early part of the season, Kuroda lacked his usual precision against the Orioles. “He made some mistakes,” Girardi said. Most of them came in the first inning. It was a sign of things to come when Machado, hitting second, flew out to the warning track. Nick Markakis promptly stepped to the plate and demolished a slider, sending the ball over the center-field wall for a home run. After Adam Jones singled, Chris Davis turned on a sinker and delivered a two-run homer. Kuroda had not allowed a home run since May 7. Suddenly, only five batters into Wednesday’s start, he had given up two. Image Hiroki Kuroda, who sustained a bruised right calf and left the game in the third inning, gave up five runs on eight hits. Credit Doug Kapustin/Reuters When Matt Wieters extended the inning with a double, Girardi felt it prudent to have the pitching coach Larry Rothschild pay Kuroda a visit. While Kuroda was able to escape without any additional damage, it was clear that he was dancing along the edge of a blade, with little margin for error. Though his poor first inning was an anomaly, Kuroda has had a tendency to be more effective as games wear on. Opponents are hitting .299 against him in the first three innings this season. From the fourth inning on, however, they are hitting a microscopic .147. Unfortunately for Kuroda, he never got the chance to work deep into the game against the Orioles. In the third, having already taken Machado’s line drive off his leg, Kuroda gave up a double to Jones and a single to Davis. That hit ended Kuroda’s night after 55 pitches, as Girardi summoned reliever Preston Claiborne to face Wieters with runners at the corners. Wieters pounced on Claiborne’s second pitch, a fastball, and hit a three-run homer for a 6-1 lead. After the two teams split a pair of 10-inning games, Wieters’s blast put a premature end to any drama. “I didn’t execute the pitch,” Claiborne said. “If I’d put it where I wanted it, I more than likely would’ve gotten a good result.” The Orioles (25-21) got a quality start from Jason Hammel, a right-hander who went six and two-third innings, surrendering six hits and two runs while striking out six. Hammel’s only problem was the emergence of Curtis Granderson, who entered the game with four hits in 23 at-bats since making his season debut last week. Granderson, who fractured his right forearm in spring training, went 3 for 3 with a walk, a double and a home run. “I liked how he was swinging the bat, and I felt like it was only a matter of time before he started getting some hits,” Girardi said. With Kuroda starting on the mound, Granderson’s one-man show at the plate figured to give the Yankees a fighting chance. Kuroda has not needed much run support this season, but the Orioles had other plans. INSIDE PITCH Mark Teixeira (wrist) and Kevin Youkilis (back) both got six at-bats Wednesday in a simulated game, while Joba Chamberlain (oblique) pitched an inning in his rehabilitation assignment and felt “good,” according to Joe Girardi.


South Koreans Say They Fled to North Korea for Better Life

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — Six South Koreans repatriated from North Korea over the weekend said that they had fled to the North through China in recent years to escape bankruptcies and family troubles in the South and in search of a better life in the North, the South Korean news media and government officials said on Monday. North Korea handed over the six men , ages 27 to 67, at the border on Friday. It was an unusual gesture from the North, which had in the past welcomed defectors from the South and used them for propaganda. Some analysts saw the repatriations as a North Korean overture to ease tensions with the South. After returning home, all six men told investigators that they had entered the North through its border with China between 2009 and 2012, said a South Korean government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity until the investigation was over. He also said that the remains of a woman returned on Friday from the North were of the wife of one of the men. The South Korean news media quoted anonymous government sources as saying that one of the six had posted pro-North messages on the Internet while in the South. When North Korea’s main party paper, Rodong Sinmun, quoted one of his online postings, he reportedly decided to defect to the North, hoping that he would be treated well there. Another man hoped for treatment for kidney stones in the North, the Yonhap news agency and other South Korean news media said. But all six ended up going through between 14 and 45 months of interrogations by the North Korean authorities and living in virtual house arrest in guesthouses, the reports said. Investigators said the 65-year-old husband of the dead woman told them that he strangled her and tried but failed to kill himself in what he described as an aborted suicide pact. The press officers at the Unification Ministry and intelligence service of the South Korean government said they could not confirm those details. On Friday, North Korea said it had “leniently pardoned” the South Koreans on humanitarian grounds. South Korean officials had said earlier that the six would likely face prosecution for violating the National Security Law, which bars South Koreans from visiting the North without approval. About 25,000 North Koreans have defected to the South in the past two decades to escape hunger and political repression. Nearly all of them fled through China because the North-South border is tightly guarded. The South Korean news reports said the six men entered North Korea by swimming across rivers from China or by walking when the rivers froze in winter. Kim Eui-do, the Unification Ministry spokesman, said last week that it was impossible to determine how many South Koreans had entered the North through China. But it is widely considered rare for South Koreans to defect to the impoverished North.


Dispute Jeopardizes New Posting System for Japanese Players

Abstract: A last-minute dispute placed the new posting system for Japanese players in jeopardy as small-market teams in Major League Baseball tried to put into effect a rule that would inhibit big-market teams, particularly the Yankees, from spending large sums on prospective Japanese stars like the ace pitcher Masahiro Tanaka. After M.L.B. officials presented their Japanese counterparts with a proposal for a new system, which was ratified by the Japanese players union and was expected to be approved by Nippon Professional Baseball, the revolt emerged Thursday at the baseball meetings in Orlando, Fla. A new deal is still expected to emerge in time for teams to make posting offers on Tanaka this off-season. But if it does not, Japanese teams could allow their players to negotiate with specific teams they choose and then receive some kind of compensation from the major league team, perhaps in the form of a joint cooperation agreement. According to two people at the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Frank Coonelly, the president of the Pittsburgh Pirates, proposed that the posting fee, which can exceed $50 million for a top player, should count against the bidding team’s luxury-tax figure. Image Masahiro Tanaka during the Japan Series. Several major league clubs are expected to bid for him. Credit Kyodo News, via Associated Press That proposal seemed to be aimed directly at the Yankees, who are planning to bid for Tanaka but are also concerned about staying under the $189 million luxury-tax threshold. Randy Levine, the president of the Yankees, objected to Coonelly’s proposal and asked rhetorically if other rules for international player procurement — like the way Cuban stars have been signed — should be changed midstream as well. Rob Manfred, baseball’s chief operating officer, explained in the meeting that the players union had rejected proposals that would have tied the fee to the luxury tax. The union has no interest in rules that limit a team’s ability to spend. Under the rules of the old posting system, which recently expired, the fee did not count against the luxury tax. After the deal fell apart in Thursday’s meeting, Manfred told reporters that the delay by the Japanese in approving M.L.B.’s proposal allowed for the divisions over the new posting system to emerge. Under the proposal submitted to the Japanese, the major league team with the winning bid would pay the average of the top two bids. “In today’s meeting there was discussion that will require us to go back to the Japanese and have some further conversation about the proposal we made to them,” Manfred said. “It sat out there for a long time. They couldn’t give us an answer, and we’re going to have to go back to them and talk to them about where we are right now.” But the underlying reason for the breakdown was that M.L.B.’s small-market teams wanted to penalize the big-market teams. Tanaka is the property of the Rakuten Eagles in Japan, and several teams are expected to bid for him. Many people in baseball expect the Yankees to make an extremely high bid, especially if the posting fee does not count against their luxury-tax figure.

Japan
Baseball
Masahiro Tanaka
Nippon Professional Baseball
MLB


Mining Executive Held by China Is Seen as an Unlikely Pawn

Abstract: SHANGHAI — Stern Hu always looked dapper at steel industry forums, where he mingled easily and liked to talk about soaring demand for his company’s product, iron ore, a key ingredient in steel. Mr. Hu, a high-flying executive working for the British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto , seemed to be well liked by his industry colleagues, including those who fought with him over the price of iron ore. “He was quite impressive, elegant and calm,” said Hu Kai, an analyst at UMetal.com who met Mr. Hu at industry conferences. But on July 5, Mr. Hu, a naturalized Australian citizen, and three Chinese colleagues were taken into custody by the authorities here on suspicion of stealing state secrets and harming China ’s economic interests. The high-profile arrests have already strained relations between Australia and China, touched off an investigation into corruption in the world’s biggest steel industry and turned Mr. Hu, now in his 50s, into an unlikely pawn in a power struggle over who controls the price of one of the world’s most valuable commodities. The arrests have also struck fear into foreign businesses doing deals in China. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia has warned China that the world is watching what happens to Mr. Hu and his colleagues. Also, some Australians view the detentions as retaliation because Rio Tinto played hardball this year in iron ore negotiations with China and recently scrapped a deal that would have given a Chinese company, Chinalco, a sizable stake in its operations. Rio Tinto insists its employees did nothing wrong. And many legal experts say they doubt Mr. Hu will get a fair trial under China’s vague state-secrets law. But China, which considers its steel industry a vital national interest, says Mr. Hu and his colleagues bribed steel officials for access to confidential documents that may have given them an edge on Chinese steel mills during this year’s annual iron ore negotiations. Now there is a diplomatic standoff over the fate of Mr. Hu, who friends say always avoided the spotlight, particularly after a photograph of him taking part in demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989 threatened his first job, at a large state-owned company in China. “It was easy to recognize his face,” one friend recalled of the 1989 photograph. “After that he had a bitter time.” Mr. Hu and his three colleagues have not yet been formally charged with a crime. But two weeks ago they were essentially denounced as traitors by a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry and condemned in China’s state-run news media, which published allegations that Rio Tinto bribed executives from 16 large Chinese steel mills. Until charges are filed, Mr. Hu may be prevented from seeing a lawyer, legal experts say. He has been visited only by an Australian consular official, the Australian government has said. In a brief telephone interview on July 18, Mr. Hu’s wife, Julie, also a naturalized Australian citizen, said, “We are doing fine,” referring to her and her two children. She declined to say much more. “This is not the time for me to talk,” she said. Rio Tinto has declined to release even the most basic biographical material about Mr. Hu, like his age. But in interviews over the past two weeks, friends and former colleagues described Mr. Hu as a hard-working executive who they doubted was capable of espionage or bribery. “He was as honest as the day is long,” said Ron Gosbee, who has known Mr. Hu for nearly 20 years. “Everything he did was legitimate.” Mr. Hu was born Hu Shitai in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin (he later adopted the English name Stern), and he grew up during the tumultuous Cultural Revolution. During that period, a friend said, his parents were forced to work in the countryside as peasants. But in 1979, after China began opening up its economy, Mr. Hu won admission to the country’s top school, Peking University, where he studied history and met his future wife. In 1986, he earned a master’s degree from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. After college, Mr. Hu found work at the China International Trust and Investment Company, a large state-owned corporation known as Citic. But friends say he was pressed to leave in 1990, after his bosses discovered that he was pictured in a Western publication taking part in the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. Two friends, both Chinese citizens, said he joined the demonstrations, but they declined to say more about his activities. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared government retribution. After Citic, he joined AWA, an Australian company, helping it sell traffic-management systems in China. During that time, he lived briefly in Australia and gained citizenship there, Mr. Gosbee said. In 1996, Mr. Hu found work at Hamersley, the iron ore division of what later became Rio Tinto, helping feed China’s growing appetite for iron ore. As a star salesman, Mr. Hu was often invited to conferences hosted by the China Iron and Steel Association and grew increasingly popular with steel mill executives. At a 2007 conference, Mr. Hu made a presentation highlighting Rio Tinto’s power in China by pointing out that President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao made visits to Rio Tinto’s Australian facilities. He also had charts showing the profits Chinese steel mills made by doing business with Rio Tinto. But by then, analysts say, Rio Tinto’s relations with China’s state-controlled steel mills were already beginning to sour. Rising iron ore prices meant huge profits for Rio Tinto but were a threat to big Chinese mills, particularly after an 85 percent price jump in 2008. This year, when the world’s big-three iron ore producers, led by Rio Tinto, balked at a sharp price cut demanded by China’s steel association, things turned ugly. Talks ended in a deadlock in late June. “Rio believed there was no imperative for them to do the Chinese any great favors,” said Peter Phillips, an industry consultant based in Australia. “And the Chinese side took that as an ultimatum. So they decided to show who’s in charge. And there’s no doubt who’s in charge in China.” Less than a week after talks broke off, officers from China’s state security bureau detained four Rio Tinto employees in Shanghai, including Mr. Hu, on suspicion they used confidential documents to get an unfair advantage in those negotiations.

China
Australia
Rio Tinto PLC
Hu Stern
Steel and Iron


Korean Star’s Suicide Reignites Debate on Web Regulation

Abstract: SEOUL — Choi Jin-sil, a movie star, was the closest thing South Korea had to a national sweetheart. So when Ms. Choi, 39, was found dead in her apartment on Oct. 2 in what the police concluded was a suicide, her grief-stricken homeland sought an answer to why the actress had chosen to end her life. The police, the media and members of Parliament immediately pointed fingers at the Internet. Malicious online rumors led to Ms. Choi’s suicide, the police said, after studying memos found at her home and interviewing friends and relatives. Those online accusations claimed that Ms. Choi, who once won a government medal for her savings habits, was a loan shark. They asserted that a fellow actor, Ahn Jae-hwan, was driven to suicide because Ms. Choi had relentlessly pressed him to repay a $2 million debt. Public outrage over Ms. Choi’s suicide gave ammunition to the government of President Lee Myung-bak, which has long sought to regulate cyberspace, a major avenue for antigovernment protests in South Korea. Earlier this year, the Lee government was reeling after weeks of protests against beef imports from the United States. Vicious antigovernment postings and online rumors on the dangers of lifting the ban on American beef fueled the political upheaval, which forced the entire cabinet to resign. In a monthlong crackdown on online defamation, 900 agents from the government’s Cyber Terror Response Center are scouring blogs and online discussion boards to identify and arrest those who “habitually post slander and instigate cyber bullying.” Hong Joon-pyo, floor leader of the governing Grand National Party, commented, “Internet space in our country has become the wall of a public toilet.” In the National Assembly, Ms. Choi’s suicide set the country’s rival parties on a collision course over how to regulate the Web. The governing party is promoting a law to punish online insults; the opposition parties accuse the government of trying to “rule cyberspace with martial law.” The opposition says that cyberspace violence is already dealt with under existing laws against slander and public insults. But the government says that a tougher, separate law is necessary to punish online abuse, which inflicts quicker and wider damage on victims. To battle online harassment, the government’s Communications Commission last year ordered Web portals with more than 300,000 visitors a day to require its users to submit their names and matching Social Security numbers before posting comments. The police reported 10,028 cases of online libel last year, up from 3,667 reported in 2004. Harassment in cyberspace has been blamed for a string of highly publicized suicides. Ms. Choi made headlines when she married a baseball player, Cho Sung Min, in 2000. But tabloids and Web bloggers were relentless in criticizing her when the marriage soured and she fought for custody of her two children. TV producers and commercial sponsors dropped her. The general sentiment was that her career was over. But in 2005, she made a comeback with a hugely popular soap opera called “My Rosy Life.” In it, she dropped her cute-girl image and played a jilted wife who throws a kick at her errant husband, but reconciles with him when she learns she has terminal cancer. This year, she broke another taboo by successfully petitioning a court to change the surname of her two children to her own. But in an interview with MBC-TV in July, which was broadcast after her death, she said she “dreaded” the Internet, where posters had insulted her for being a single, divorced mother. The police said she had been taking antidepressants since her divorce. In South Korea, volunteer counselors troll the Internet to discourage people from using the Web to trade tips on how to commit suicide and, in some cases, how to form suicide pacts. “We have seen a sudden rise in copycat suicides following a celebrity death,” said Jeon Jun-hee, an official at the Seoul Metropolitan Mental Health Center, which runs a suicide prevention hot line. Mr. Jeon said the hot line had received 60 calls a day, or twice the usual number, since Ms. Choi’s suicide.

Choi Jin-sil
Suicides and Suicide Attempts
Computers and the Internet
Libel and Slander
Grief (Emotions)


Suicide Bomber Kills Dozens on Pilgrimage in Iraq

Abstract: BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber attacked a bus carrying Shiite pilgrims home from Samarra on Saturday, killing at least 33 people in the latest of several recent assaults on pilgrims. It was the second attack in three days against Shiite pilgrims near Samarra, whose gold-domed shrine was damaged in a 2006 bombing that led to waves of sectarian killings between Iraq ’s Sunni and Shiite populations. The bombing happened at one of about 40 checkpoints that line the road between Samarra and Baghdad, highlighting how easily attackers are able to exploit security flaws at the remote outposts. The checkpoints often cause traffic to back up, leaving vehicles open to attack. According to security officials, the bus was stopped at a police checkpoint about seven miles south of Samarra on Saturday afternoon when the bomber strode through the checkpoint and walked up to the vehicle’s open front door. One report on Iraqi television said the attacker had been speaking with police officers seconds before he detonated his explosive vest. There were no claims of responsibility, but security officials quickly blamed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a Sunni group, and said the bombing highlighted flaws in Iraq’s intelligence-gathering. “Checkpoints cannot prevent such operations,” said Falah al-Naqeeb, a former minister of the interior and a candidate to become Iraq’s next defense minister. “We have a problem in our security strategy. It really depends on intelligence to prevent such attacks.” On Thursday, a car bomb killed nine pilgrims heading to Samarra’s Askariya Shrine , where two revered Shiite imams are buried. Every year, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Iranian pilgrims flock to Samarra to visit the shrine. Saturday was the anniversary of the death of one of the imams, an occasion that drew large crowds. After the attack, religious leaders from Samarra asked citizens to donate blood. At the city’s main hospital, some of the 28 people wounded in the attack seethed at the government’s inability to prevent attackers from striking groups of pilgrims. “No one is doing anything to stop the killing,” said a man who gave his name as Abu Amjad. “Why do we always have to be the sacrifice?” Millions of pilgrims have flocked to shrines in Iraq since the American invasion in 2003, but militants have exploited the displays of faith — banned under Saddam Hussein — to sow unrest. Attacks against buses of Iranian pilgrims are common. In late January, suicide car bombers struck lines of Shiite pilgrims marching to a revered shrine in Karbala to celebrate an annual Shiite holiday. Also on Saturday, the police said that a mass grave discovered a day earlier in northeastern Iraq contained the bodies of as many as 153 men, women and children. Officials said they believed that the victims were civilians who had been executed by Al Qaeda in 2006, when the militant group controlled large parts of the area. Security officials said the grave was the largest of the 13 that had been uncovered in Diyala Province.

Iraq
Terrorism
Iraq War (2003- )
Shiite Muslims


Curlin Repeats as Horse of the Year

Abstract: Although he never faced Big Brown or Zenyatta on the racetrack, Curlin found a way to beat them. Curlin won the three-horse race for the 2008 Horse of the Year in a romp. Curlin was named during the 38th annual Eclipse Awards ceremonies Monday night at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, winning the award for the second straight year. He becomes the first horse to win back-to-back titles since Cigar, who did it in 1995 and 1996. Big Brown, who won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes , and the star filly Zenyatta each had outstanding years, and the vote was expected to be close. Instead, Curlin received 153 votes, 84 more than Zenyatta. Big Brown received only 13. The voters were no doubt impressed by Curlin’s overall performance in 2008. He won five of seven starts, including the Dubai World Cup, the Woodward Stakes and the Jockey Club Gold Cup. In the Gold Cup, he became the first North American-based horse to top $10 million in career earnings. He finished the year, and his career, with a fourth-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita, where he might not have cared for the synthetic racing surface. “We all know Curlin’s 2008 record: he raced against the best, winning five of seven races and becoming the all-time highest-earning racehorse in North American history,” Jess Jackson, his owner, said last week when asked why he thought Curlin deserved to be named the Horse of the Year. “Curlin showed the heart of a champion in every race. He did everything we asked of him and more — taking on ever-more difficult challenges. He won going away, he won coming from behind, he won in the heat and in the rain.” Curlin, now retired and standing at stud at Lane’s End farm in Versailles, Ky., was also named the outstanding older horse. Zenyatta was named the champion older filly or mare. She was undefeated in seven starts in 2008, which included a victory in the Breeders’ Cup Ladies Classic. Big Brown was an easy winner of the 3-year-old male title. Curlin’s trainer, Steve Asmussen, was the winner of the award for top trainer. He set a record in 2008 with 622 victories. A total of 242 votes were cast for Horse of the Year and divisional honors. Voters for the Eclipse Awards represent the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, The Daily Racing Form and the National Turf Writers Association. The voting was close in a number of categories, none more so than the award for outstanding owner. Stronach Stables won by a single vote over I.E.A.H. Stables, which owns Big Brown. In the 3-year-old filly division, the Kentucky Oaks winner Proud Spell won by 19 votes over Eight Belles , who finished second in the Kentucky Derby before pulling up with two broken ankles; she had to be euthanized on the track. Larry Jones trained both fillies. Benny the Bull, another horse owned by I.E.A.H., was named the champion sprinter after receiving 21 more votes than the Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner Midnight Lute. Midshipman, the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner, was named the 2-year-old male champion, with Vineyard Haven the runner-up. Both are owned by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum and have been sent to Dubai to prepare for this year’s Kentucky Derby.

Curlin (Race Horse)
Horse Racing
Awards Decorations and Honors


College to No Longer Consider Test Scores in Its Decisions

Abstract: Hampshire College, in Amherst, Mass., said on Wednesday that it would no longer consider SAT or ACT scores in admissions or financial aid decisions. Meredith Twombly, the dean of admissions, said Hampshire had been “test optional” since it opened in 1970 but would become “test blind,” both for greater fairness and because Hampshire favors assessment through written work, projects and discussions, not test scores. Robert Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest, said Hampshire would be the only test-blind college: Sarah Lawrence College was test-blind for several years, but it reverted to test-optional two years ago after U.S. News and World Report stopped ranking it because of the lack of test scores.

College
Hampshire College
SAT
School Admissions
ACT test
Amherst Massachusetts


Colorado Towns Work to Preserve a Diminishing Resource: Darkness

Abstract: WESTCLIFFE, Colo. — As people around the world stepped into their backyards or onto rooftops to peer up at the annual spectacle of the Perseid meteor shower early on Friday morning, few of them had a view like Wilson Jarvis and Steve Linderer. At 2:30 a.m. as the light show was peaking, the two men sat on a grassy bluff here in the Wet Mountain Valley of southern Colorado, swaddled in blankets against the chilly mountain air and looking up at the stars in the torrent of the Milky Way. Every few seconds, a tiny chunk of space ice cast off by Comet Swift-Tuttle would blaze through Earth’s atmosphere, silently streaking through the darkness. “There’s one!” the men called out. “And another!” “I saw that.” Night skies like this one are disappearing across much of the world, nibbled away by the ever-expanding glow of city lights. American skies are no different. Four out of five Americans live in places where they can no longer see the Milky Way. But here, the tiny neighboring ranching and railroad towns of Westcliffe (population 568) and Silver Cliff (population 587) have decided to tap into the dwindling natural resource of darkness. The old silver mines that once made Silver Cliff Colorado’s third-largest town are long closed, and many ranchers are retiring. But there is still the night. Image A meteor streaked above the town of Westcliffe, Colo., a dark-sky community, on Thursday. Credit Nick Cote for The New York Times So for more than a decade, the two towns and a local dark-sky nonprofit have been dialing down the dimmer switch. They have replaced streetlights and passed rules requiring that outdoor lights point down. The group built a small observatory with star guides who tee up its telescope and take people on a tour of the night. They coax homeowners to hood their porch lamps or dim a bright light outside their house. “People out of ignorance go with whatever’s cheap or whatever’s brightest,” said Ed Stewart, a board member of the local dark-sky group. “You multiply that by 200, 300, and there goes the sky.” He said advocates met with homeowners’ associations and held stargazing parties to sell the virtues of the night. When they gaze over the valley and see winking floodlights on a ranch or home in the hills, they see their next targets of persuasion. “You can’t just go up to someone and say, you’ve got a bad light, and legislate the problem away,” he said. “People resist that, especially in Colorado.” The mayor of Westcliffe, Christy Patterson, said she once got a phone call complaining that her garage light was too bright. “I didn’t even have the light on,” she said. Image The town of Westcliffe has replaced streetlights and mandated that outdoor lights must point down. Credit Nick Cote for The New York Times In 2012, Mr. Stewart said a new store opened in town that flouted the area’s nighttime sensitivities and became a glowing eyesore. He said people in the community wrote letters to the editor, urging the store’s manager to change the lighting until, finally, the store relented. “We feel like they’re a part of the community now,” Mr. Stewart said. Last year, the International Dark-Sky Association , a nonprofit working to stop light pollution, rewarded their efforts by designating the two towns among a handful of dark-sky communities . Lovers of the night cheered — they had put their community on the map by blotting themselves out. A trickle of amateur stargazers have taken notice and have started to visit, telescopes in tow. When you drive into either town, the streets are not pitch-black. Streetlights and porch lights glow along the main street, where photos of 40-acre ranches are posted on the front windows of real estate offices. But viewed from the mountain pass above the towns, Westcliffe and Silver Cliff look less like an island of light than a constellation in the dark valley. “There aren’t many towns, even small towns, where you can stand in town limits and see the Milky Way like that,” Mr. Linderer, 69, said from his camping chair. He and his wife, Margaret, who baked chocolate chip cookie squares for Friday’s stargazing, moved here a decade ago. “I moved here because of this,” said Mr. Jarvis, 71, who retired here from Houston three years ago. “So did I,” said Mr. Linderer. To the west, toward the Sangre de Cristo range, a pack of coyotes yipped as another streak flashed across the sky.

Colorado
Lighting
Lighting
Space
International Dark-Sky Association
Galaxy
Light


Dwight Hardy: From the Bronx to St. John’s, With a Few Stops

Abstract: As St. John’s has returned to national prominence, the senior guard Dwight Hardy has been the star, a dazzling scorer who chose to play for his hometown Red Storm at a time when that was not fashionable. But what has made Hardy’s ascent so compelling is the circuitous route he took to arrive at a university only a subway ride away from where he grew up. Hardy was raised roughly a mile from Yankee Stadium, in housing projects in the Bronx, in a complex that squeezes seven buildings and two basketball courts between Courtlandt and Park Avenues. But Hardy’s path to St. John’s took him to a prep school in North Carolina and then to a junior college in rural Iowa in an effort to qualify academically. All roads led back to New York. “I’m finally at my home, where I wanted to be for all those years,” Hardy said recently at the St. John’s campus in Jamaica, Queens. “It’s a special moment. It’s something that I embrace. I’m just happy I stuck with it and never gave up my dream. I think about it every day.” Whether it was his 33-point performance in a victory over Connecticut or his game-winning layup against Pittsburgh , Hardy has provided many of the clips in a St. John’s season full of highlight-worthy victories. Hardy leads the 17th-ranked Red Storm with 17.9 points a game. He was a first-team all-Big East performer by being at his best in big moments, averaging 20.4 points and shooting better than 50 percent in five games against top-10 competition, four of them victories. Regardless of the outcome, this week’s Big East tournament at Madison Square Garden will be something of a coronation for the fifth-seeded Red Storm, poised to make its first N.C.A.A. tournament appearance since 2002. After an opening-round bye, it will face 13th-seeded Rutgers on Wednesday. In making its abrupt turnaround, St. John’s (20-10, 12-6) has captured some of the city’s attention, with a new coach and nine active seniors awakening a program that had slumbered through much of the past decade. “To me, the most rewarding part of coaching is working with people that experience breakthroughs,” the coach, Steve Lavin, said. “Dwight is emblematic of the entire senior class in terms of finishing their careers on a high note at St. John’s.” From the beginning, Hardy intended to go to St. John’s because he wanted to help rebuild the program. He grew up in the Andrew Jackson Houses in the Melrose section of the Bronx and played at nearby John F. Kennedy High School, where he averaged 39 points as a senior. He received his basketball education on the playgrounds, waiting until he was a senior to join an Amateur Athletic Union team. But Hardy did not meet the N.C.A.A.’s minimum qualifying requirements because of a poor standardized test score. So he had to leave home. Hardy’s first stop was the Patterson School, situated in a tucked-away valley near Lenoir, N.C. His test score did not improve enough for him to qualify, so Hardy had to move, again. After a year at Patterson, Hardy enrolled at Indian Hills Community College in Ottumwa, Iowa. Coach Jeff Kidder had instructed Hardy, who was steered to the junior college by the staff at St. John’s at the time, to find it on a map. With brutal honesty, Kidder told Hardy to consider whether it was for him. “There is no social life,” Kidder said in a telephone interview. “There’s no clubs. We’re about an hour and a half from Des Moines. You’re pretty isolated out here.” But that left more time for basketball. Kidder would show up in the morning and hear from his assistants about the midnight games of one-on-one between Hardy and his teammate Dwight Buycks. (Kidder also occasionally received late-night calls from the gymnasium’s security guard asking if he should tell Hardy to go home. Kidder let him play.) In two years at Indian Hills, Hardy firmed up his body and concentrated on his defense by working on improving his footwork and fighting his way through screens. But his habits away from the court mattered most, whether it was attending classes or the team’s study hall. “He worked hard with everything,” Buycks, now the point guard at Marquette, said by telephone. “He always wanted to get better.” Hardy cried tears of joy the day he signed with St. John’s. After the faraway detours and the lonely hours putting up shots, Hardy had his scholarship, and he was finally headed back to New York. Hardy’s first season at St. John’s, his junior year, ended when a sprained knee sidelined him for the final four games. The Red Storm lost in the opening round of the National Invitation Tournament, and Coach Norm Roberts was fired two days later. When Lavin took over, he moved Hardy to point guard, away from his natural position at shooting guard. Hardy said he spent four hours a day during the off-season preparing for his new role, dribbling with two basketballs and working on his crossover. The assistants Rico Hines and Tony Chiles have also helped to sharpen his game. All the work has paid off. The Red Storm has benefited from having Hardy in the point guard role, which capitalizes on his athleticism. The unforgettable moment of Hardy’s remarkable regular season was his up-and-under layup with 1.2 seconds left to give St. John’s a win over Pittsburgh, then ranked fourth, in front of a rollicking crowd at the Garden. He has also had four 30-point performances. “I was waiting on this,” Kennedy Coach Johnny Mathis said in a telephone interview. “It was delayed that people realized Dwight could play basketball. But I knew from high school, so I’m not really shocked about what he’s doing. I expected this.” And now, after following a winding path before leading a revival at St. John’s, Hardy is at the doorstep of his next destination: the N.C.A.A. tournament.

Basketball
College Athletics
St John's University
Big East Conference
Basketball (College)
Hardy Dwight


Iraq: Third Day of Blasts in Baghdad Neighborhood

Abstract: Three explosions shook the neighborhood of Dora in south Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 10 and wounding 28, according to a local security official. It was the third straight day in which Dora had been attacked. Dora is predominantly Sunni, although the attack on Tuesday evening occurred in a Shiite area. Improvised explosive devices and magnetic bombs were detonated on Sunday and Monday, injuring 12 people, including four police officers and a government official. Members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia have said they would increase attacks after Osama bin Laden ’s death.

Iraq
Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia
bin Laden Osama
Defense and Military Forces


New Pilot Program Added as Public Transit Shrinks

Abstract: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced a yearlong pilot program on Tuesday that will allow commuter vans to pick up passengers in parts of Brooklyn and Queens with limited access to public transportation or where bus service cuts will take effect next week. The announcement signals that the Bloomberg administration is open to reviewing the van industry’s tight regulations, which the City Council passed in 1994 under pressure by bus drivers, who see the vans as a potential threat to their jobs. It also signifies a small yet significant victory for commuter van drivers, who have lobbied for years for permission to pick up passengers along bus routes without having to prearrange the fares. To commuters, there are advantages and disadvantages. The vans will provide them with a means of reaching transportation hubs or other parts of the borough. But because the vans are privately operated, passengers who are connecting to a subway or bus will have to pay $2 to ride the vans as well as public transportation fare, which is $2.25 for a single trip. “The issue here is not whether it’s more expensive or less expensive; it’s whether the service exists or not,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference near Queens College in Flushing, by a stop for the Q74 bus, one of the lines that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will eliminate on Sunday. Bus drivers huddled across the street, saying that they felt slighted by a plan that could fill the void left by discontinued bus lines in some areas at a time when hundreds of them are set to lose their jobs. Mr. Bloomberg faced off with the group before the announcement, saying, “Nobody has been out there screaming for more money for the M.T.A. more than I have.” Later, he criticized lawmakers in Albany for jettisoning his congestion pricing proposal, which could have created an additional source of revenue for the transportation agency. The pilot program will establish three to six new commuter van routes in Brooklyn and Queens. The routes will be determined in the coming weeks, said David Yassky, the city’s taxi and limousine commissioner. It is scheduled to last a year, but it could be expanded depending on the results, he said. In an interview, I. Daneek Miller, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1056, which represents bus drivers in Queens, said the program was “clearly not the answer” because it exposed passengers to the dangers of an industry that had operated with little oversight over the years, allowing for unregulated vans to proliferate to where they probably outnumbered the 330 vans that were licensed. Mr. Yassky said enforcement would be a key to the pilot program, as well as to all of the industry, which carries an estimated 15,000 passengers daily from outlying areas of Queens and Brooklyn to transportation hubs, the financial center of Manhattan, a mall in Nassau County and other locations. Last week, during a few hours in central and southern Brooklyn, taxi inspectors and officers from four police precincts seized 35 illegal vans and issued 73 summonses to unregulated drivers. Similar operations are planned with more frequency than in the past, Mr. Yassky said. Hector Ricketts, who started out as a van driver when the business emerged during the 1980 public transit strike and who now has a fleet of his own, said he believed that at least 400 illegal commuter vans circulated on city streets on any given day. Mr. Ricketts said legal drivers were just as concerned about the risks to passengers, and to their reputation. “It is unfortunate that the unions have this on an either-or situation,” he said, noting that vans “will never replace bus service” and can “coexist in harmony.” Mr. Ricketts added that the city had to enforce the rules. “We won’t be successful if illegal activity is not addressed,” he said.

Commuting
Vans
Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Transit Systems
Queens (NYC)
Brooklyn (NYC)
Bloomberg Michael R


UConn and Adrien Dominate Rutgers

Abstract: PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Connecticut does not need Jeff Adrien to dominate a game, but he did so anyway Tuesday night. Adrien, a junior forward, had a career-high 27 points and pulled down 11 rebounds as No. 15 Connecticut defeated slumping Rutgers, 79-61. It is rare for one player to take over a game for Connecticut, a deep team without a dominant scorer and one that can win games with its defense. But Adrien seemed to be everywhere Tuesday, making UConn (22-6, 11-4 Big East) that much better. He made free throws, jumpers, dunks; he rebounded and played suffocating defense on Rutgers’s leading scorer, J R Inman, holding him to 4 points. The end result was an easy win for UConn against an overmatched Rutgers. “The performance by Jeff Adrien was special,” UConn Coach Jim Calhoun said. “It was his career high, but the greatest thing he did was play Inman on defense. I’ve been trying to get Jeff to play ‘40 full.’ He always does play great defense coming down the stretch, but he played the entire game tonight. We always try get him the ball early and he scored early, and that’s great him for him psychologically. He played terrific for us.” The loss was the eighth in a row for the Scarlet Knights (10-19, 2-14). With only two games left on their regular-season schedule, they will not make the Big East tournament. The Scarlet Knights last won Jan. 26, when they beat Pittsburgh, which was ranked No. 13. UConn’s Jerome Dyson returned from a nine-game suspension, playing for the first time since Jan. 23. Dyson, who had failed a drug test, was the team’s leading scorer when he was punished. Normally a starter, he came off the bench Tuesday and scored 3 points in 15 minutes. The Huskies were 8-1 in the games he missed. “Sometimes I wasn’t really in sync with my teammates,” Dyson said. “Energy-wise, I felt like I was there. I didn’t feel tired. I felt like I could have played much more if I needed to. It was tough being out. Watching them win all those games, you want to be a part of it. It’s tough watching that and not being out on the court.” UConn was coming off a 67-65 loss at Villanova on Saturday that ended a 10-game winning streak, and the Huskies seemed intent on getting back on track quickly. With Adrien scoring 8 points in the first five minutes, they jumped to a 15-6 lead. “Today, it just felt really good,” Adrien said. “Everything I threw up at the rim was going in. I had a personal goal. My mind-set was to score 30 and to get 10 rebounds. I came a little short, but that was all right. That’s what I’ve been doing lately, trying to play mind games with myself.” UConn led at halftime, 43-37, but Rutgers played well in the opening minutes of the second half. When Anthony Farmer made a 3-pointer with 17 minutes 12 seconds left, UConn’s lead was down to 47-45. But the Huskies quickly regrouped with an 11-0 run to regain control. Stanley Robinson also had a strong game for the Huskies, with 18 points and 13 rebounds, and Craig Austrie scored 18 points. UConn outrebounded Rutgers, 41-24. The lone bright spot for Rutgers was the play of the freshman Earl Pettis, who had a career-high 18 points. He came into the game averaging 2.6 points.

Rutgers The State University of New Jersey


Yemeni Army Fights to Retake Town

Abstract: ADEN, Yemen (Reuters) — The Yemeni Army battled militants linked to Al Qaeda in the southern town of Zinjibar on Saturday, recapturing important positions in the rebel-held city and killing at least 62 Islamist fighters, a military official said. The official said four government soldiers died and four were wounded in the fighting, part of an offensive that began this month to uproot Islamist militants from southern Yemen. He said many of the dead militants were Somalis. The militant group Ansar al Shariah, which is allied with Al Qaeda’s local branch, has exploited last year’s antigovernment protests and captured swaths of territory in the southern province of Abyan, including the provincial capital, Zinjibar. The group brought the fight to the capital, Sana, last Monday, claiming responsibility for a suicide bombing of a military parade rehearsal that killed more than 100 soldiers. Yemeni forces recaptured parts of Zinjibar last week and fought militants in the city of Jaar, another militant stronghold, leaving 33 militants and nine soldiers dead. The Yemeni military official said eight soldiers were killed on Saturday when a roadside bomb ripped through their vehicle near Jaar. In Zinjibar, troops found the bodies of 25 militants killed in earlier clashes, he said.

Yemen
Al Qaeda
Defense and Military Forces


Congressman Shown on Video Kissing Aide Won’t Seek Re-election

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Representative Vance McAllister, Republican of Louisiana, who was caught on camera kissing a female staff member who was not his wife, will not seek re-election to the seat he has held for only five months, his office said on Monday. Mr. McAllister, 40, who won a special election in November after pledging to “defend our Christian way of life,” had resisted bowing to demands that he step down after a video of him kissing the aide late last year appeared this month on the website of The Ouachita Citizen, a weekly newspaper. The Monroe News-Star in Louisiana, which reported earlier on Monday that Mr. McAllister would not seek re-election, said that he intended to finish his term. The newspaper interviewed Mr. McAllister and his wife, Kelly. “I’m behind him 100 percent,” Ms. McAllister told the newspaper. In November, Mr. McAllister, an Army veteran and business owner who had never held public office, came seemingly out of nowhere to beat a state senator who had been favored to win the seat formerly held by Representative Rodney Alexander, a Republican who quit to go to work for the Louisiana governor, Bobby Jindal. Mr. McAllister used hundreds of thousands of dollars from his personal fortune to finance his campaign. Before taking office, he had never been to Washington. Mr. Jindal said in a written statement, “While we still believe the best course of action would have been for Congressman McAllister to resign so he can focus on his family, we are pleased Congressman McAllister and constituents in the district can begin the process of putting this unfortunate situation behind them.”


South Korea Accuses North of Hacking Senior Officials’ Phones

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — Nearly a year and a half after North Korea was accused of mounting a sophisticated cyberattack against Sony Pictures Entertainment, South Korea’s intelligence agency accused the country of hacking into the smartphones of dozens of senior government officials, and suggested that the North could be preparing a major cyberattack. The early descriptions provided by the agency, the National Intelligence Service, indicated that the cyberattacks directed at South Korean officials were not as sophisticated, or destructive, as the attack on Sony in late 2014. That assault left 70 percent of Sony’s computers inoperable. The South Korean attack — or at least the first stage of it — involved stealing text messages, contact information and voice conversations, seemingly more focused on espionage than on destruction. Yet the agency said that South Korea faced a growing threat of major online attacks from the North, possibly in retaliation for the latest international sanctions over Pyongyang’s nuclear arms and missile programs. Seoul imposed new sanctions of its own against North Korea on Tuesday, including a ban on ships that have stopped in North Korea within the past six months. Perhaps the most notable part of the announcement by the agency was the disclosure that North Korean hackers had successfully gained access to the network of a company that provides security software for an online banking system used by more than 20 million South Koreans. That is often the prelude to larger attacks, and the North is believed to have been behind several attacks on banks, government websites and media companies in the South since 2008. Image South Korean soldiers during a military exercise on Monday in Paju, near the demilitarized zone. Credit Reuters In this case, the agency said that the attack on the security firm took place in February, and was detected early. It said there was no major disruption to banking services. But that assumes the North would conduct its attack right away, rather than waiting to mount a larger operation — which is what it did in the Sony case, which took months to engineer. North Korea has increasingly turned to cyberweapons as a way of exacting a price on its adversaries without provoking a major counterattack. It is under particular pressure now after its fourth nuclear test, which it claimed involved a hydrogen bomb. American officials have said there was no evidence a hydrogen weapon was involved. But the Pentagon has also warned that the impoverished North might see hacking attacks as “a cost-effective way to develop asymmetric, deniable military options.” While that nuclear test provoked United Nations sanctions, passed last week , countries have been uncertain how to respond to cyberattacks. Whatever price the North paid for the Sony assault appeared to be fairly modest. Nonetheless, its cyberwarfare units appeared to stand down for much of 2015. But between late February and early March of this year, the agency said, North Korea tried to infiltrate the smartphones of senior South Korean officials by sending them text messages designed to activate a virus. About 20 percent of those phones were infected with the virus, according to the agency, which did not identify the officials. Image A photo released by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, purportedly showing railway workers in West Pyongyang protesting last week against United Nations Security Council sanctions. Credit Korean Central News Agency, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The intelligence service did not explain how it had concluded that North Korea was responsible. South Korea has been a leading advocate for the tougher penalties on the North, to cut the funding that enables it to keep its weapons program alive. Many of the new United Nations sanctions single out luxury goods, which analysts believe are used to ensure the loyalty of the North’s ruling elite. Yet for the past several years, South Korea rarely imposed unilateral sanctions. The ban it announced on Tuesday would prohibit all ships visiting North Korea from making port calls in the South for six months. Japan announced a similar measure last month. Last year, 66 ships from other countries made a total of 104 port calls in South Korea after visiting the North, carrying steel and other goods, the government said. South Korea also said that 40 individuals and 30 entities, most of them North Korean, would be prohibited from financial transactions with the South because of ties to Pyongyang’s weapons programs. It also urged its people not to eat at any of the 130 restaurants abroad that North Korea runs to earn foreign currency. Seoul had already banned most direct trade with North Korea after the sinking of a navy ship in 2010, which it attributed to a North Korean torpedo attack . On Wednesday, Pyongyang’s state-run news agency quoted North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, as boasting that the country possessed standardized small nuclear warheads for ballistic missiles. The North said last year that it had already begun building small nuclear weapons. Such claims carried in the nation’s propaganda-filled media are impossible to confirm independently.

National Intelligence Service South Korea


China Accuses Dissident of Subversion

Abstract: HONG KONG — After six months in detention, one of China ’s best-known dissidents, Liu Xiaobo, has been formally arrested and charged with subversion, the state news media said Wednesday. Mr. Liu was detained in December after signing Charter 08, which calls for democracy in China. Citing the Beijing police, the official Xinhua news agency said Mr. Liu, 53, had been arrested for alleged “agitation activities, such as spreading of rumors and defaming of the government, aimed at subversion of the state and overthrowing the socialism system.” Human rights activists are commonly accused of seeking to subvert the state, but it is unusual for the government to include an allegation that someone is seeking to overthrow the Socialist system. Xinhua said Mr. Liu had confessed during a preliminary police investigation; prisoners in detention have few legal rights and are subject to pressure.

China
Liu Xiaobo
Freedom and Human Rights


Officials Lash Out at Abandonment of Barges in New York Waters

Abstract: More than two decades after the infamous garbage barge of 1987 moored in Brooklyn after haplessly floating to six states and three foreign countries in search of a dump, barges and abandoned vessels are again trashing New York waterways, city and state officials said. On Monday, two City Council members and a state assemblyman announced their disgust with what they called a growing problem: abandoned construction barges and other vessels left to rust, buckle, leak and eventually sink to the bottom of remote corners of rivers and tributaries feeding Jamaica Bay. In January, the National Parks Service estimated that about 190 abandoned vessels — many of them small boats, apparently privately owned — had been left to rot in the 25,000 acres that make up Jamaica Bay. Since then, about 40 vessels have been removed, said Brian Feeney, a Parks Service spokesman. In a news conference held by the East River in Manhattan on Monday, City Councilmen David Yassky and Eric Gioia said that abandoned industrial barges had become a threat to the health of city estuaries. “For too long, it’s been the Wild West in New York Harbor,” Mr. Yassky said. Since 2006, the officials said, one company in particular has repeatedly tugged barges into Newtown Creek, in Brooklyn, and other New York rivers and bays, to let them rot. Mr. Yassky said the company, Pile Foundation Construction Co., of Hicksville, N.Y., was pursuing what he called an intentional “abandon-and-sink strategy” within the city, and must be stopped. Pile Foundation Construction has been cited in the past for allowing its barges to sink or remain unsupervised for extended periods, records show. In 2007, for instance, the state Environmental Conservation Department levied a $10,000-a-day fine on Pile for two barges that sank to the bottom of Barbados Basin, within Jamaica Bay. The company is appealing the fine. In 2006, a Pile company barge sank in the Hudson River, near 57th Street, Mr. Yassky said, leaking an oily substance into the river. A Coast Guard investigation was required to determine who owned the barge and to get it removed, Mr. Yassky said. In an interview, Anthony Rivara, Pile Foundation’s owner, said the company had been responsible for its barges, and that Mr. Yassky and other elected officials had their facts wrong. For one thing, he said, none of the company barges were abandoned or sinking. “Those barges can’t sink, they’re full of Styrofoam,” said Mr. Rivara, referring to material built into the barges. He added that some Pile barges are sitting in New York waterways waiting to be tugged to New Jersey, to be recycled. “So it’s not like we abandoned them,” Mr. Rivara said. “You can’t abandon anything in New York City, it’s impossible.” Mr. Rivara said city officials had never contacted him to complain about his barges. “If somebody had said something to me, said, ‘Take them out of there,’ I’d be glad to.” Mr. Yassky raised questions about whether the city should award contracts to Pile; the company has a $53 million contract with the parks department to build a walkway under the Williamsburg Bridge. Barges and their travels around New York rivers and harbors have been a recurring theme in the city’s history, most famously in 1987. In March of that year, a barge carrying 3,100 pounds of garbage from Islip, N.Y., spent five months at sea, traveling 6,000 miles to North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Belize and the Bahamas — searching for somewhere to dump its flyblown load. After a few diplomatic rows and at least one court order, the barge’s payload was eventually burned in a Brooklyn incinerator, to the chagrin of many late-night talk show comedians of that era.

Barges
Jamaica Bay (NYC)
Boats and Boating
Yassky David
Gioia Eric N
Waste Materials and Disposal


Frank Stranahan, Top Amateur Golfer and Ardent Fitness Advocate, Dies at 90

Abstract: Frank Stranahan, one of golf’s greatest amateur players, and a fervent advocate of bodybuilding and healthy living well before fitness became the rage in the pro game, died on Sunday in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was 90, falling some 30 years short of his goal for longevity. His death, after a brief illness, was announced by his son, Lance. Stranahan seemed to have it all in his golfing prime. Arnold Palmer called him “muscles” for his impressive physique. He was Hollywood handsome and an heir to a family fortune. He won more than 50 amateur tournaments in the 1940s and ’50s and six PGA Tour events while devoting himself to muscle-building, something that athletes of his era shunned, fearing it would restrict their flexibility. Stranahan was a two-time winner of the British Amateur when it was one of golf’s majors, and he was a runner-up once at the Masters and twice at the British Open. He was considered the world’s top amateur golfer in the period between Bobby Jones in the 1930s and Tiger Woods (like Stranahan, a weight-lifting devotee) in the 1990s. His father, Robert A. Stranahan, and his uncle Frank D. Stranahan were co-founders of the Champion Spark Plug Company of Toledo, Ohio, whose technology supplied the United States’ emerging auto companies in the second decade of the 20th century. At his father’s behest, he was tutored as a teenager by Byron Nelson, one of the greatest golfers of his time and the club pro at the Inverness course in Toledo. Stranahan embarked on what became a passion for fitness when he turned to another sport, hoping to play high school football. “His coach told him he was too small — he was probably 140 pounds — and we have a lot of burly kids,” Lance Stranahan recalled in an interview Thursday. He said his father enrolled in the popular Charles Atlas fitness course , ate lots of steak, got to 170 pounds and made the team. Frank Stranahan later developed a specialized weight-lifting regimen that would be suitable for a golf swing by making sure he did not overdevelop his chest muscles or biceps, though his son recalled that when his weight lifting became known, “he was told if he wanted to pursue golf, this was a major mistake — in golf, it was unheard-of.” Stranahan persisted, taking weight-lifting gear to tournaments because there were few fitness centers for workouts on the road. He relished telling of his favorite gag: he would ask bellhops to carry his luggage to his hotel room, then watch them stumble under the weight of his unseen barbells. “We look at the athleticism of our players today and can say that Frank was truly before his time when it came to golf and fitness,” Tim Finchem, the PGA Tour commissioner, said in a statement. In a Twitter post after Stranahan died, Gary Player, a nine-time winner of golf’s majors who was also devoted to fitness, called Stranahan “my fitness mentor, friend & inspiration.” After retiring from competitive golf in 1964, Stranahan took up running. He competed in the New York and Boston marathons and took midnight jogs in Central Park while managing an investment firm during the day. Image Frank Stranahan, right, with Arnold Palmer during an amateur event in Pinehurst, N.C., in 1949. Palmer called him “muscles.” Credit Associated Press He celebrated his 78th birthday by dead-lifting 265 pounds; he shunned meat in favor of whole grains, fresh fruit and vegetables; and he sometimes fasted for several days at a time, drinking distilled water, to purify his system. He worked out at a local gym until shortly before his death. “I feel I’m going to live a lot longer than most people dream of living,” Stranahan told The Palm Beach Post in 1999. “I think it will be very easy for me to make 120.” Frank Richard Stranahan was born on Aug. 5, 1922, in Toledo, whose Inverness course became a prep school for his golfing career under Nelson’s tutelage. “There were very small greens, and with the balls and clubs we played in those days, Inverness was a great test of golf,” Stranahan once told The Toledo Blade. “It rounded your game so that you could do almost anything.” After serving as a pilot in the Army Air Forces during World War II, Stranahan gained notice throughout the golf world as an amateur. He tied Nelson for second at the 1947 Masters, two shots behind Jimmy Demaret. That summer, he finished in tie for second place, one shot behind Fred Daly, in the British Open, when his shot from 110 yards on the final hole stopped three inches short of the cup. Stranahan won the 1948 and ’50 British Amateur and was beaten in the championship match of the 1950 United States Amateur, which, like the British event, was a major at the time. He also played on three victorious Walker Cup teams. Stranahan finished in a four-way tie for second in the 1953 British Open, four shots behind Ben Hogan. He lost to Arnold Palmer, the eventual champion, in match play at the 1954 United States Amateur — the tournament he never could capture — and then turned pro. His most notable victory on the PGA Tour came at the 1958 Los Angeles Open. Stranahan worked for his family company for a time and had played golf at the University of Miami. After he retired from competitive play, he earned a master’s degree in business from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, then pursued a second career in finance. His son is his only survivor. Stranahan’s wife, the former Ann Williams, who became an outstanding amateur golfer, died in 1975. Stranahan’s wealth may have kept the pressure off on the course, but it could also prove problematic, as he viewed it. When he was barred from the 1948 Masters after officials at Augusta National maintained that he had misinterpreted the course’s rules for hitting balls during practice, he felt he did not get sufficient support from fellow players. “I’m sure the players were jealous,” he told Sports Illustrated in 1998. “They had every right to be. My dad was bankrolling me, and I could play every week without worrying.” But Nelson told the magazine that the tour players liked Stranahan: “The only comment I heard was, ‘If I had his father’s money, I’d play for fun, too.’ ”

Frank Stranahan
Golf
Bodybuilding
Obituary


Elliott Sells Shares of Samsung C&T After Losing Merger Battle

Abstract: HONG KONG — The activist hedge fund Elliott Associates has sold shares in Samsung C&T, the South Korean construction company, after Elliott failed to block an $8 billion merger with another Samsung affiliate, Cheil Industries. Under South Korean law, Samsung C&T investors who opposed the deal can sell their shares back to the company by Thursday for 57,234 won, or $49, per share. Elliott confirmed that it had exercised its so-called appraisal rights. It said the decision had been made “in light of, among other things, the continued overvaluation of Cheil Industries, which Elliott believes to be wholly unjustified.” The American hedge fund declined to say how many shares it had sold, but it exercised appraisal rights on about two-thirds of the stake of 7.12 percent that Elliott held, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deal. Elliott’s efforts to stop the merger of Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries, a Samsung holding company, was a test of shareholder activism in Asia. The move exposed concerns about shareholder rights and succession planning in South Korea, where business is dominated by family-controlled conglomerates known as chaebols. Elliott Associates said the deal grossly undervalued Samsung C&T and was an unlawful attempt by the Lee family to consolidate its hold over Samsung companies. It used its 7.12 percent stake to try to block a restructuring, which would transfer more power to Lee Jae-yong, the son of the Samsung conglomerate’s ailing chairman, Lee Kun-hee. The hedge fund’s campaign against the merger followed its losses in two lawsuits in South Korea seeking to block the shareholder meeting. Samsung fought back by depicting Elliott as out to make a quick profit. In the end, 69.53 percent of the shareholders voted to back the merger. “Elliott continues to evaluate all of its options to uphold its rights and to protect the value of its investment, including in relation to the outcome of last month’s” shareholder vote, a spokesman of the fund said. Samsung C&T shares were down 3.5 percent on Thursday afternoon, trading at 55,200 won a share, and are down about 18 percent since the merger was approved.

Samsung C&T
Samsung
South Korea
Cheil Industries
Shareholder Rights
Lee Jae-yong
Lee Kun-hee
Elliott Management
Mergers and Acquisitions


Spring Training Pilgrimage Amid Changing Times

Abstract: Decades ago, friends of my parents in New York would book an annual spring trip to Florida, brimming with anticipation about baseball adventures ahead. The fun of the trip was its casual itinerary, with a stop at the Pittsburgh Pirates’ base in Bradenton and a drive up to St. Petersburg, where the Mets’ camp was. When the couple returned north, they would tell stories about chance meetings with famous hitters and fielders and retired players, about savoring the sunshine and the slow pace of spring training games. In a relaxed way, they absorbed baseball’s history while enjoying the performances of current players. But as in so many areas of sports, the informal, spontaneous and inexpensive aspects of baseball are fading fast. Spring spectators can still obtain tickets well below what they would cost for a regular-season game, but prices have leapt for big-name teams. For tickets to especially popular games, a buyer may need to spend hours online or resort to calling brokers who offer seats for hundreds of dollars. But it seems the greatest loss for spectators is their more limited contact with players, a quintessential joy of spring training. With business pressures and security concerns, the men on the field have less inclination to autograph a program for a child or to toss a ball to a fan. That said, I have seen many players being generous with their time. With those memories in mind, my 11-year-old son, Alex, and I will head to Florida, as we have every March in recent years. As we nestle into a ballpark a fraction of the size of a major league stadium, the sun will feel as welcome as ever after the winter cold. The smaller, sometimes older ballparks, especially in southwest Florida, remain alluring for their architecture and unusual features. At Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers , the spring quarters of the Minnesota Twins since 1991, we were taken by the palm trees lining the entrance and the waterfall near the gates. Unfortunately, fewer players hang around at many ballparks, and the connection between spectators and the team has become more distant. It used to be easier for fans to receive acknowledgment — a nod, a tip of the cap — as they called out to players on the field. Although training camp has changed, it still provides a way to see professional baseball in the winter. Even if it means trying harder for tickets, paying more for them, it’s a chance to watch Alex Rodriguez in drills or to see Andy Pettitte wave to a friend before warm-ups. Spring training, organized as the Grapefruit League in Florida and the Cactus League in Arizona, generates increasing revenue for Major League Baseball, as well as tourist income for the towns and cities that host the teams. I don’t begrudge the fact that spring training has become significant business. But what a boon it would be if the teams could restore the feeling of informality to practice and play, and embrace fans more warmly, as in the past. As we prepare to travel to games around Florida, I still imagine the old touches of spring training. I can’t wait to slide into my seat for a game in Tampa next to my son, dressed in pinstripes, and to cheer on old and new Yankees . We will arrive early and scan the grounds for a close glimpse of our favorite stars. We know we will watch the Yankees play again in the Bronx. But they will be walled off by a phalanx of security guards there, farther out of reach.

Spring Training
Florida
Baseball
Minnesota Twins
Major League Baseball
New York Yankees


Tigers End Lincoln Jinx

Abstract: LINCOLN, Neb. — Chase Daniel is the quarterback of the Missouri Tigers, the trigger of one of the nation’s most potent offenses. He also is perhaps the front-runner to win the Heisman Trophy. So it was little wonder that he came here to Memorial Stadium and ignored his university’s history of futility against the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Daniel knew Missouri had not beaten Nebraska here since 1978. He knew what the Cornhuskers’ 63-35-3 record against the Tigers over the years was emblematic of: Nebraska was used to playing for first the Big 12 title and then, possibly, the national championship while the Tigers had last won a conference title in 1969, and were usually thrilled to secure a minor bowl bid. This season, however, things were different. Missouri came here averaging 595 yards of total offense and 53 points a game. The Tigers were 4-0, ranked No. 4 in the Associated Press poll and believed they were better than last year’s Daniel-led 12-2 team. In fact, they fancy themselves contenders for the national championship. Daniel said so, more or less. Earlier in the week, he was respectful of the Cornhuskers but had sent a signal to his Tigers teammates of what he expected from them. “If we play our B game, maybe we’ll win,” he said. “But we don’t want to leave it to maybe.” It took Daniels barely 54 seconds to replace “maybe” into a certain Missouri victory when, on the third play of the game, he delivered a pinpoint pass to Jeremy Maclin, who streaked untouched for a 58-yard touchdown. It was merely the first strike in a rigorous 52-17 thumping the Tigers put on the Cornhuskers. Daniel was discovered last year when he threw for a team-record 4,306 yards to go with 33 touchdowns — numbers that were eye-popping enough to land on the Heisman podium last year and finish fourth in the voting. Against Nebraska, Daniel demonstrated that he was, indeed, better than last year and that Missouri was a title contender. It was not just his numbers — 18 of 23 for 253 yards and 3 touchdowns. It was the array of passes that he showered on the Nebraska defense. There were rockets to Maclin, precise timing routes to tight end Chase Coffman, and a soft 26-yard fade to Danario Alexander in the end zone that came with 1 minute 32 seconds left in the third quarter. It put the Tigers ahead, 52-10, and ended the night for Daniel, who was replaced by Chase Patton when Missouri got the ball back in the fourth quarter. He was hardly a one-man show; tailback Derrick Washington slashed for 140 yards on an economical 14 carries. “It was homecoming,” Washington said. “That’ll teach them to schedule us for homecoming.” His night was done early, too — he popped off-tackle for a 43-yard touchdown, his second of the night, late in the third quarter, and took a seat on the bench with the rest of the first team. In all, the Tigers amassed 462 total yards to the Huskers’ 369. The Cornhuskers (3-2) were dreadful. They are 0-9 against top-10 teams since 2001, and showed why as they were intercepted, lost a fumble and repeatedly penalized. Coach Bo Pelini, who is in his first year of rebuilding a program that was a mediocre 27-22 over the last four years under his predecessor, Bill Callahan, was clearly disheartened as he stood on the sideline. After the game, Pelini said he was embarrassed, and he apologized to the state of Nebraska. “We got outcoached,” he said. “We got beat. We got beat soundly. It was my fault.” It was clear that even Missouri’s C game might have been good enough to beat the Cornhuskers. It was Daniel, however, who made sure Nebraska was overwhelmed by the Tigers’ A game.

Football
College Athletics
University of Nebraska


Elly Peterson, 94, a Leader of Moderate Republicans, Is Dead

Abstract: Elly Peterson, who started out as a secretary for the Michigan Republican Party , rose to become the national party’s assistant chairwoman and advocated a big-tent brand of Republicanism that was reflected in her impassioned support for the Equal Rights Amendment, died June 9 in Grand Junction, Colo. She was 94. Her death was confirmed by Ella Franzitta of La Villa Grande Care Center, where Mrs. Peterson lived. Called Mother by the young workers she attracted to the Republican Party, Mrs. Peterson rose rapidly as an organizer in Michigan, projecting a dynamic, inclusive image for the party as she crisscrossed the state. In 1963, just six years after taking a secretarial job for the state party, she became assistant chairwoman of the Republican National Committee . When she retired from the committee in 1970 after having returned for a second two-year term, the columnist David S. Broder wrote in The Washington Post that she would almost certainly have been named to lead the party “were it not for the unwritten sex barriers both parties have created around the job.” Elly McMillan was born June 5, 1914, in New Berlin, Ill. She attended William Woods College in Fulton, Mo., then a two-year women’s institution, and Suburban Business College in Oak Park, Ill. In 1935 she married William M. Peterson, who died in 1994. She leaves no immediate survivors. With her husband in the military in World War II, Mrs. Peterson volunteered for the Red Cross and spent two years in England, France and Germany. After the war, she and her husband moved to Charlotte, Mich., near Lansing, where she began working for the state party. Outgoing and energetic, she proved to be a superb saleswoman for the party, whose reach she tried to extend to new constituencies. In Detroit and other cities, for example, she established party offices and service centers in black neighborhoods. Her active support for George W. Romney in his successful governor’s race in 1962 was rewarded with a suicide mission: to run against Senator Philip Hart, a popular Democrat, in 1964. She ran a spirited campaign, but was buried in the Democratic landslide of that election year. At the time, Governor Romney liked to say, “She thinks like a man, looks like a woman and works like a dog.” Mrs. Peterson later said that she appreciated the thought but not the phrasing. Mrs. Peterson was an ardent supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion rights. Sara Fitzgerald, who is at work on a biography of Mrs. Peterson, wrote in The Detroit Free Press that her commitment to feminism crystallized in 1965, when, as she prepared to become chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, she was informed that her salary would be $6,000 less than that of her male predecessor. Mrs. Peterson was a charter member of the National Women’s Political Caucus and in the late 1970s was a chairwoman of ERAmerica, a nonpartisan organization created to build support for the rights amendment and, Mrs. Peterson said, to counter “the lies and misrepresentations of the opposition.” That battle threw her, once again, into the lists with Phyllis Schlafly, whom she had blocked in 1972 from seizing control of the National Federation of Republican Women. In a statement, former Gov. William Milliken of Michigan said Mrs. Peterson “made the Michigan Republican Party of her day a concerned and compassionate party, expanding the role of the party in dealing with human and social issues.” Mrs. Peterson grew disillusioned with her party in the Reagan years. She eventually declared herself an independent and, more recently, a supporter of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Michigan
Republican Party
Equal Rights Amendment
Republican National Committee
Deaths (Obituaries)
United States Politics and Government
Peterson Elly