After Devouring League, Warriors Remain Hungry

Abstract: The Golden State Warriors have been defined by 3-pointers, artistic ball movement and underrated defense. But at their core, they may be powered by something more abstract: an ability to motivate themselves just when they are being doubted. With the playoffs set to begin on Saturday and the Warriors coming in as heavy favorites after winning a record 73 games, the question is whether a tightly knit group of players that has come to dominate basketball the last two years can keep that edge through the next two months. In all likelihood, they can. Just consider how the regular season concluded: After a shocking home loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on April 5 left the Warriors with a 69-9 record, Golden State needed to win its last four games to break the 72-10 mark established by the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls in the 1995-96 season. Stephen Curry’s 3-Point Record in Context: Off the Charts This chart contains 752 lines — one for each N.B.A. player who finished in the top 20 in 3-point attempts made in each season since 1980. Sitting atop it is the Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry, who finished the regular season with a record 402 3-pointers. Because two of those last four games would come against a very tough Spurs team, including one in San Antonio, where Golden State had not won since 1997, the consensus seemed to be that the Warriors would fall short — especially with Warriors Coach Steve Kerr talking about the importance of resting key players before the playoffs. But Draymond Green, Golden State’s do-everything forward and emotional leader, had other ideas. He became intensely vocal about his desire to get the wins record, and pressure from him and Stephen Curry seemed to get to Kerr, who allowed his starters to keep playing as long as the Warriors kept winning. And they did, including a difficult victory in San Antonio that broke the Spurs’ seasonlong home winning streak. The rest was history, as the tough-minded Warriors snatched the wins record and Curry almost assuredly locked up his second consecutive Most Valuable Player Award. Now comes the postseason. Can anyone really challenge this Warriors team and somehow rattle it? The Cleveland Cavaliers, despite the murmurs of internal strife, can never be discounted as long as LeBron James is around. The Spurs had one of the best regular-season teams in N.B.A. history, even if it went somewhat unnoticed. Still, if the Warriors, a team perfectly constructed to succeed in this era, play to their potential, it is hard to see any team keeping up with them. Image Warriors guard Stephen Curry averaged 30.1 points this season and could become the league’s first unanimous M.V.P. Credit Monica M. Davey/European Pressphoto Agency Jalen Rose, a 13-year N.B.A. veteran who will be providing playoff analysis for ESPN, said one of the biggest reasons for that is Curry’s killer instinct. Rose called Curry a “baby-faced assassin” and said Curry is set apart by his ability to maintain an edge as a defending champion and defending M.V.P. “He is not playing around,” Rose said. If Curry is looking for slights to motivate him, he may find one if he is not the first N.B.A. player unanimously named M.V.P. (Shaquille O’Neal and James have come the closest, each falling one vote short.) Chris Webber, a five-time All-Star who will be part of TNT’s broadcast team, said a few M.V.P. voters may choose someone other than Curry simply to be contrarian. Image Oklahoma City Thunder’s Kevin Durant, right, and Russell Westbrook celebrate their team’s 100-99 win against the Los Angeles Clippers in December. Credit Jae C. Hong/Associated Press “I don’t see how a true, humble basketball fan can vote against Steph,” Webber said. Curry is likely to be the dominant story line of the playoffs after leading the N.B.A. in scoring average along with total field goals, 3-pointers and steals despite playing in the fourth quarter in just 60 of his 79 games. The Warriors complement him with incredible depth in Green, Klay Thompson and Andre Iguodala on a roster that is largely unchanged from last season. Asked to imagine a team that could compete with the Warriors, Rose said that the Spurs are contenders but that people should also consider the star power and depth of the Oklahoma City Thunder. Beyond Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, the Thunder also have a defensive ace in Serge Ibaka and an offensive/defensive rotation at center in Steven Adams and Enes Kanter that can be remarkably effective. “If they’re clicking on all cylinders, I give them a punter’s chance obviously to put the kind of firepower out on the floor to go head to head with the Warriors four quarters,” Rose said, while acknowledging that Oklahoma City struggled in the fourth quarter this season. The quality of Oklahoma City’s front line could be a pivotal issue if it should face Golden State. Rose cited points in the paint as the Warriors’ biggest weakness and said teams would be wise to attack them inside. “While they defend really well, one of the best in the league, they’re short,” Rose said of Golden State’s so-called Death Lineup in which Green plays center. “Draymond Green, when they have that lineup out there, he’s 6-7, Harrison Barnes is 6-8 or 6-9, so you have to take advantage of that, try to get to the free-throw line, get them in foul trouble.” For now, the Warriors will focus on the Houston Rockets, whom they beat in five games in last season’s Western Conference finals. It is a matchup that may not extend any longer this time around. But if an uninspiring first-round matchup was not providing the team with the proper motivation, Jordan may have inadvertently put the chip right back on Golden State’s shoulder. When the Warriors broke the Bulls’ record earlier this week, Jordan issued a statement of congratulations. But he also included a line that seemed to be part jab and part reminder that their legacy is not yet secure. “I look forward to seeing what they do in the playoffs,” he said. For Curry and Green, that may be enough of a challenge to carry them all the way.

Golden State Warriors
Playoffs
Basketball
Stephen Curry
Steve Kerr
Draymond Green


General Assembly Judiciary Committee Finds Itself Under Heat

Abstract: HARTFORD AT lunch a few weeks ago, State Senator John McKinney spotted State Representative Michael P. Lawlor approaching a bank of polished brass elevators in the Legislative Office Building, his smile widening as Mr. Lawlor drew close. “Thank you for getting me every Catholic vote in the Fourth Congressional District,” teased Mr. McKinney, a Republican from Fairfield who is Episcopalian. Mr. Lawlor, a Democrat from East Haven who is Catholic, had little choice but to glumly tolerate the gibe from Mr. McKinney, the Senate minority leader. After years of deftly threading his way through a thicket of social issues as co-chairman of the General Assembly’s judiciary committee , Mr. Lawlor had stumbled into a religious war. And he blamed himself. Through their work in the committee, Mr. Lawlor and his fellow co-chairman, State Senator Andrew J. McDonald, Democrat of Stamford, infuriated Roman Catholics and surprised colleagues this month by scheduling a public hearing for March 11 on a bill that would have forcibly reorganized Catholic parishes in the name of financial accountability. Mr. McDonald said the bill was written in response to requests from a Catholic constituent who wanted more transparency in church financial management in the wake of cases of questionable use of money at St. John Church in Darien and St. Michael the Archangel in Greenwich , both in the Diocese of Bridgeport . The legislation would have made changes in the state’s religious corporations act , which governs the corporate structure of several denominations. The proposed changes would have effectively shifted control of parish finances from the bishop and pastors to the congregations, heresy to the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Denounced by the state’s Catholic bishops as an unconstitutional and politically motivated intrusion into church affairs — Bishop William E. Lori of the Bridgeport Diocese called it payback for the bishops’ opposition to gay marriage — the bill stirred up an already difficult session and reinforced the judiciary committee’s reputation as a magnet for controversy. Mr. Lawlor and Mr. McDonald abruptly canceled the hearing in the face of overwhelming opposition, including a rally that drew several thousand opponents to the Capitol the day the hearing was to be have been held. The bill was killed by a unanimous vote of the committee on March 19. A week later, legislators were still trying to calculate the effects of an outcry that has changed the political dynamic in Hartford, at least temporarily, by energizing Catholics, the largest religious denomination in Connecticut, and by putting the influential judiciary co-chairmen on the defensive. “I think it has jeopardized some of the things they wanted to do on that committee, because you’re just seeing this tremendous backlash,” said the House majority leader, Denise W. Merrill , a Democrat of Mansfield. A plan to explore support for assisted suicide in Connecticut already has been abandoned. Uncertain is the fate of a bill that would codify in state law last fall’s state Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage . Both are opposed by the bishops’ lobbying arm, the Connecticut Catholic Conference. A chastened Mr. Lawlor said his colleagues had told him that he and Mr. McDonald had handed the bishops their best opportunity in years to rally Catholics against some elements of a social agenda that had put Connecticut at the forefront of progressive politics. Over the opposition of the church, the state has adopted a string of gay rights laws, most notably legalizing same-sex civil unions in 2005. Once the home of some of the nation’s strictest prohibitions on contraception, the state has codified abortion rights granted by Roe v. Wade into state law and has regularly rejected perceived obstacles to abortion, like requiring 16- and 17-year-olds to undergo counseling before they can terminate pregnancies. During an interview in his office, Mr. Lawlor seemed stunned at how he had fallen into a fight with the Catholic Conference, which has supported other elements of the progressive agenda, including health care reform and the abolition of the death penalty. “This is a fight I don’t need to have,” Mr. Lawlor said. “Only bad things happen when politicians wade into religious doctrine.” In Mr. McDonald’s view, one of those bad things includes Bishop Lori accusing him and Mr. Lawlor, who are both openly gay, of using the bill to intimidate the bishops over their opposition to gay marriage. “It’s inaccurate,” Mr. McDonald said. “It is unfair. And it was dangerous, because it engendered deep feelings of hostility and stirred homophobic responses from many people that resulted in very serious threats.” The Capitol police arrested and charged Timothy Kane, 26, of New Britain, with harassment over an e-mail message sent to the co-chairman that said, “You better hope that myself and other Catholics don’t find out where you live, cause there’s hell to pay for your attack on the church.” In an interview, Bishop Lori said he stood by his accusation. He also bristled at Mr. Lawlor’s suggestion that the bishops “hit the panic button” by quickly mobilizing thousands of Catholics to rally in Hartford. “We didn’t hit the panic button,” Bishop Lori said. “We tapped into grass-roots anger that surprised, perhaps, even us.” The bishop called the bill “a direct assault on the First Amendment and on religious freedom.” Even scheduling a hearing for such a bill could only be seen as a deliberate provocation, he said. The judiciary committee and its co-chairmen are no strangers to controversy — or to criticism. “We view it as a renegade, radical committee,” said Peter Wolfgang, executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut , a conservative group. “It is the most radical committee of an already very liberal legislature.” Over just the last few weeks, the committee’s public hearing agenda has included bills on gun control, gay marriage, transgender rights, the death penalty and the decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana. “The judiciary committee is the legislative cauldron for all of that,” Mr. McDonald said. And the cauldron gets hot. At a hearing on abolishing the death penalty, the committee heard from Dr. William A. Petit Jr., the survivor of a 2007 home invasion in Cheshire that left his wife and two daughters dead. “My family got the death penalty, and you want to give murderers life,” Dr. Petit said. “That is not justice.” Michael C. Culhane, the executive director of Catholic Conference, followed Dr. Petit. “The moral teachings of the Catholic Church mandate that we must respect all life from conception to natural death,” he said. Even issues that garner no publicity can be wrenching. Sherri Therrien recently drove from her home in Bangor, Me., to ask the committee for help finding the son she gave up for adoption 18 years ago, when she was 14 and lived in Bridgeport. Without the consent of both biological parents, state law prohibits the Department of Children and Families from giving her contact information to her son, even if he requests it. The father has refused. Ms. Therrien testified that she was not trying to force her way into her son’s life; only to allow the department to notify him that she is willing to be contacted by him. “He was not thrown away,” she said. “He was placed gently. He would at least know that.” “We have taken your story to heart,” Mr. Lawlor said. It was a quiet moment in a noisy month.

United States Politics and Government
Christians and Christianity
Hartford (Conn)
Legislatures and Parliaments
McKinney John
Lawlor Michael P
Roman Catholic Church


U.S. Women Need to Win to Make Soccer World Cup

Abstract: The United States women’s soccer team, recognized as a world powerhouse for at least the past 20 years, must win a home-and-home total-goals series against Italy to qualify for next summer’s Women’s World Cup in Germany . The opening game of the qualifying series will be played Saturday at Euganeo Stadium in Padua. The second game will be played Nov. 27 near Chicago. “When you talk to people, be it journalists, coaches and people around the world, this is an important game,” Coach Pia Sundhage said Thursday on a conference call. “The fact that we’re playing in this game — everyone is very interested in how it will go. The journalists here are asking a lot of questions about the team and it’s exciting.” Sundhage has taken 24 players to Italy. Each team can dress 18 players for the matches. The American team finds itself in this predicament because of a 2-1 loss to host Mexico in the semifinals of the Concacaf qualifying tournament. Mexico and Canada earned the region’s two automatic berths; the United States advanced to the playoff series against Italy by defeating Costa Rica in the third-place game. Before that, the United States had a 19-0 record in Concacaf qualifying matches for the Women’s World Cup. A loss to Italy would make this the first American team not to qualify for the Women’s World Cup since the tournament’s inception in 1991. The United States last won the championship as host in 1999. The American team’s precarious position has brought it attention, but perhaps not the right kind. “The irony of the whole thing is that when the U.S. men win, they get the coverage, but when the U.S. women lose, we get the coverage,” striker Abby Wambach said. “The problem with that is that we are good enough and we do deserve to be in the World Cup in Germany, but we need to prove it. “The joke among us is that we planned it this way and that we knew this was the only way to get the coverage that we think we deserve. That’s obviously a joke. Moving forward, we feel like so many people have put so many hours into this team. We’re going to do out part, win this game on Saturday, go home to Chicago and win that game.” If the teams are tied on total goals after the two games, away goals will count double. If the teams are tied on goals and have scored the same number of away goals, or neither team has scored over the 180 minutes, two 15-minute overtime periods will be played. If that still fails to determine a winner, penalty kicks will decide the series. The final draw for the Women’s World Cup will be held Nov. 29 in Germany.

Soccer
World Cup (Soccer)
Wambach Abby
Sundhage Pia


In Lagunitas, Calif., a Fight Over Worms and Moats

Abstract: LAGUNITAS, Calif. — To find David Lee Hoffman’s front door, take a right at the bell tower and proceed past the moat with a boat named Titanic II. Step — gingerly — through the stone tunnel, then follow the brick steps up to the Worm Palace and the breathtaking view of the Solar Power Shower Tower. You can’t miss it. For the last 40 years, Mr. Hoffman, 67, an entrepreneur who specializes in rare aged tea leaves, has been building a Chinese- and Tibetan-inspired compound on a steep hill in this unincorporated hippie holdover in western Marin County where the general store has a community piano and sells clothing “made with peace and love.” The village has long prided itself on its pristine beauty and live-and-let-live attitude. But that was before the bitter dispute that pitted Mr. Hoffman, with his unconventional techniques for living in what he calls a sustainable way, against county code enforcers whose demands for permits he has repeatedly ignored. The case, which is now in the hands of a state administrative judge, has riven his neighbors in the wooded glen they share. Until recently, the loudest voices to be heard had been only the native frogs, whose cacophony Mr. Hoffman can rouse at will by yelling “Ribet!” into the papyrus plants of his upper moat. Mr. Hoffman, who has been called the Indiana Jones of tea, may be the ultimate do-it-yourselfer. But the county has issues with the 30 or so structures he has built over the years. Chief among its concerns is his method of disposing and recycling waste. It is called vermicomposting, in which colonies of worms, micro-organisms and carbon-rich leaves turn waste into humus. Water from the shower and kitchen sink flow into the upper moat, along with food scraps digested in Mr. Hoffman’s copper-shingled Taj Mahal for worms. The resulting “gray water” passes through filters before being piped into the garden to nurture Peruvian potatoes, French sorrel and other vegetables. Mr. Hoffman and his wife, Ratchanee Chaikamwung, who is known as Bee and is from Thailand, forgo soap, washing dishes with a mix of wood ash and oyster shells. In place of a conventional toilet, they use self-contained chambers with a worm-composting system. Compost privies are not allowed in Marin County. The possibility of the moats overflowing into a nearby salmon creek is yet another concern. “We have given David notice many times about requiring construction permits,” said Debbi Poiani, the county’s senior code-enforcement specialist. “But even through red tags, he’s just continued on his merry way,” she added, referring to the code violation stickers. Mr. Hoffman’s pursuit of handmade teas and artisanal growers in China was the subject of a 2007 documentary, “All in This Tea,” by Les Blank and Gina Leibrecht, filmmakers who are documenting the rise of his compound, which he calls the Last Resort. Complete with a cave for aging Pu-erh leaves in long bamboo containers and a tea house, it is part Himalayan kingdom, part Dogpatch rife with construction debris. “I wanted to show that there are distinctive nonpolluting ways to live on the planet,” Mr. Hoffman explained over tea and chapatis made from his heirloom wheat. “In my mind, I thought I could demonstrate to the county that these systems work.” The county remains unconvinced: it gave the couple notice to “cease occupancy” until an approved septic system is installed and the buildings, walls and moats are brought up to code. Mr. Hoffman also faces roughly $200,000 in fines for building without permits and for running the Phoenix Collection , his latest tea business, on the premises. To his supporters, Mr. Hoffman’s improvisational architecture is a woodsy Watts Towers , the mosaic-encrusted concrete and steel cultural landmark in Los Angeles. Like George Lucas and the Grateful Dead, Mr. Hoffman “helps to put Marin on the map as a place of unique creativity and originality,” a neighbor, Vernon Castle, argued in a letter to the county (although Mr. Lucas is not without his own issue, having just scratched a plan to build a digital technology complex in West Marin after intense opposition). The son of a wallpaper manufacturer, Mr. Hoffman grew up in Oakland, Calif., and was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. He spent a decade backpacking through Tibet, Nepal and elsewhere in Asia before settling in Marin in 1973. He started a business based on a process he invented for cleaning ancient textiles using sound vibrations. “I was cleaning pieces that were worth more than my house,” he said. “Tea was easy and quiet.” But his fanatical construction project reflects a soft-spoken intensity. To build the tea house roof, for instance, Mr. Hoffman, who is afraid of heights, recruited former Cirque du Soleil performers to teach him how to suspend safely in midair. He insists that he thought he had the county’s unofficial blessing. “I did what I felt was right,” he said. He added, “My love of the planet is greater than my fear of the law.” The travails of Hoffman began when Chuck Ford, a neighbor, accused him of building over the property line. Mr. Ford said he agreed to sell the land to Mr. Hoffman for $4,000 — money he says he has yet to receive. A legal dispute played out over 17 years. “I think he honestly felt that because he wanted our property, it was rightfully his,” Mr. Ford said by e-mail. Sim Van der Ryn , a specialist in sustainable architecture who is consulting with Mr. Hoffman, said the only way to bring the buildings into compliance would be to tear everything down. Steve Kinsey , a Marin County supervisor, said the affair may require some alternative thinking. “It’s an expression of complete and blatant disregard for collaborating with authorities,” he said. “But it is also the life work of a creative individual.” He added, “Marin has a history of nonconformity. We want to keep it that way.”

Sustainable Living
Marin County (Calif)
Hoffman David Lee
Building (Construction)
Waste Materials and Disposal
Recycling of Waste Materials


Trump Orders Broad Hiring Freeze for Federal Government

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday ordered an across-the-board employment freeze for the federal government, halting hiring for all new and existing positions except those in national security, public safety and the military. In the two-page order, Mr. Trump said the directive was a stopgap way to control the growth of government until his budget director recommends a long-term plan to significantly reduce the federal work force through attrition. “In carrying out this memorandum, I ask that you seek efficient use of existing personnel and funds to improve public services and the delivery of these services,” Mr. Trump wrote in the memorandum, one of his first acts as president. “Accordingly, this memorandum does not prohibit making reallocations to meet the highest priority needs and to ensure that essential services are not interrupted and national security is not affected.” The largest public employees union blasted the president’s action, saying it will force federal agencies to rely on more expensive contractors to deliver the services that Americans have come to expect from the government. “This hiring freeze will mean longer lines at Social Security offices, fewer workplace safety inspections, less oversight of environmental polluters and greater risk to our nation’s food supply and clean water systems,” said J. David Cox Sr., the president of the group, the American Federation of Government Employees. Mr. Trump’s memorandum addressed that point directly by saying that “contracting outside the government to circumvent the intent of this memorandum shall not be permitted.” Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said on Monday that the president’s decision to freeze hiring was the result of a desire to show greater care for taxpayers’ money. “What the president’s showing through the hiring freeze, first and foremost today, is that we’ve got to respect the American taxpayer,” he told reporters in his first briefing at the White House. “Some people are working two, three jobs just to get by. And to see money get wasted in Washington on a job that is duplicative is insulting to the hard work that they do to pay their taxes,” Mr. Spicer said. The decision to freeze hiring has precedents in American presidential history. In 1981, Ronald Reagan issued a similar hiring freeze within minutes of finishing his inaugural address, making good on a promise that he had made throughout his campaign against President Jimmy Carter. Mr. Reagan’s freeze went further than Mr. Carter’s decision to allow only one federal employee to be hired for every two that departed government service. In February of that year, a federal judge ruled against a challenge to the freeze, saying that it was neither unconstitutional nor illegal. “This begins the process of restoring our economic strength and returning the nation to prosperity,” Mr. Reagan wrote in his 1981 memorandum putting the freeze in place. In his own campaign, Mr. Trump had pledged to “drain the swamp” in Washington, and he had repeatedly said that there was plenty of “waste, fraud and abuse” to be found in government agencies. That campaign message put government workers and unions on notice that a freeze was possible. On Monday, Mr. Trump’s action confirmed that he intends to put pressure on agencies to justify their work forces. The action applies only to the civilian work force in the executive branch; the Office of Personnel Management reported in 2014 that there were about 1.36 million civilian employees. In addition to military members, Mr. Trump’s action does not affect positions that require presidential appointment or members of the noncareer Senior Executive Service, who are generally political appointees in the agencies. That will allow Mr. Trump to continue his political appointments during the next several months. The action also allows agency heads to seek exemptions for positions that are necessary for national security or public safety, the memorandum says.


U.S. Open: After Storm Exits, Paths Lead Back to Tennis

Abstract: After all the bluster of the storm, it was wonderful to see a great orange glow lighting up the United States Open , right on schedule. Oops, that was Bud Collins’s pants. Normalcy returned to tennis and in many places to life itself Monday, after what had been Hurricane Irene rolled northward, and all the flower pots and sound equipment, to say nothing of the players and the fans, were back in place. So was the flamboyant garb of Collins, a noted tennis journalist, yet another fixture at this event. The first day of the Open can sometimes have the urgent feel of a homesteading stampede in the Old West. After all, people have been waiting 50 weeks for this and want to get their money’s worth. But when the gates opened this time, the mood was sweet and reserved, almost like that pleasant little interlude in the middle of the second week, when the kids and the workers are where they ought to be. Further north in Vermont and other states, people were suffering after Irene’s rampage Saturday night into Sunday. But in Queens, it seemed like a tiny miracle just to be out and about in brilliant sunshine after being threatened by it. It took a small but well-prepared army to protect the grounds of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, and it took a somewhat larger army to clear most of the roads and most of the train tracks leading toward the tennis center near the brackish waters of Flushing Bay. “Piece of cake,” Jeremy Green said about his drive from Fairfield, Conn., escorting five visitors from Oxfordshire in southeast England. Green, also English, was asked about the damage in Connecticut. “A branch came off,” he said. “I have no power.” He added, “It’s nice to be where there is something to do.”  Not knowing what to expect, Bernadine Hoffman of East Meadow, N.Y., cast her fate to the reawakened Long Island Rail Road, which whisked her from Hicksville to Jamaica to Woodside, where she caught the revitalized No. 7 elevated train to the station known as Mets-Willets Point . In this modern age, the municipalities around the region had prepared for a hurricane, calling in a flotilla of electric and tree maintenance trucks and stationing them about, with hard-hat workers waiting for Hurricane Irene to do her thing. Government doing what government should do — think ahead, spend money to protect people. Bravo. With the roads better than anybody had the right to expect, Denise Crump drove to the Open from the Bronx with her 9-year-old son, Caleb, who said his favorite player was Rafael Nadal. Drivers discovered that branches had been cleared from the highways, more easily than last September when a rogue tornado blasted through Brooklyn and Queens, leveling trees and damaging the tennis center. Still remembering the destruction from the tornado, Open officials planned. In charge of preparation was Daniel Zausner, the managing director of the center (no relation to the Zausner family , of the prominent Port Washington Tennis Academy). Zausner had the Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day scheduled for Saturday but was leery about asking people to throng to Queens with highways and public transit in jeopardy. And hey, he did not look forward to dismantling after Kids’ Day. “I could see having a soundstage on center court on Monday afternoon,” Zausner said. So they called off Kids’ Day on Friday afternoon and began battening down the hatches. One little item nobody might connect with tennis was a fleet of 125 cars (Mercedes-Benzes, to be precise) that are available to chauffeur players, officials and guests during the Open. It did not make sense to have the autos sitting in the groves surrounding the center, so a friendly dealer found room for them in his showroom and garage. Then the workers began securing the grounds — taking down 1,000 green screens from the fences around the courts, putting sandbags around the premises, moving thousands of flower pots indoors, protecting the machines and wiring for various broadcasting, statistics and electronic eye companies. Zausner counted 250 workers under seven team leaders, and he and about 25 assistants (“a few plumbers, a few electricians”) stayed Saturday night, with Zausner catching a few naps on his couch. The accurate storm predictions from CompuWeather helped him prepare, and as soon as the storm passed Sunday at midday, they began putting everything back. To their relief, the thousands of honey locust trees, which have grown so handsomely over the years, were safe. So was the expensive hardware. For those who could not make it because their rail service or flights were canceled, the Open will exchange tickets for Tuesday or Wednesday, or next year. By Monday morning, it seemed as if the storm had never existed. A duo billed as Jay and Elysa Rumba Flamenco was greeting the fans in the midway. Ryan Harrison, the American, was pitching the first but not the last tantrum of this Open. Out on the main pathway, Leslie Allen, the former tour player who runs the Arthur Ashe Endowment Fund , was setting up the booth for another year. And look, there was Martina Navratilova, fresh from broadcasting a match for the Tennis Channel, walking through the crowd, a visible link to other great eras. The Open was back. All was right with the world.

Tennis
United States Open (Tennis)
Hurricane Irene (2011)


Mixed Reviews for Brownsville Ban on Plastic Bags

Abstract: BROWNSVILLE — While buying groceries at the A&V Lopez supermarket this week, Rosie Orozco also spent 79 cents on something to put them in: a reusable bag emblazoned “Keep Texas Green.” “I have a whole bunch of these in my truck,” she said, noting that she often forgets to take them in when she shops. Ms. Orozco’s collection of tote bags stems from a recent ordinance in Brownsville, one of Texas’ poorest big cities: a ban on plastic checkout bags in virtually all businesses. The policy , which took effect in January, has eliminated more than 350,000 bags per day, according to Mayor Pat Ahumada, who said in an e-mail that it has “transformed our city from littered and dirty to a much cleaner city.” Two other Texas communities, Fort Stockton and South Padre Island, have also approved bans on plastic bags , which will take effect in September and January, respectively. Several large cities, including Laredo and El Paso, have previously considered bans, and even the small town of Poteet, south of San Antonio, plans to assess its bag-banning options. Brownsville’s policy, the first of its kind in Texas, has stirred controversy. While Ms. Orozco said she liked reusable bags because they helped the environment, others have concerns. Edmundo Arizpe, 84, who left the A&V Lopez store clutching two small bags of peanuts, said that when he needed to buy lots of groceries, he often went to the nearby city of San Benito. By driving, “I’m doing worse to the climate,” Mr. Arizpe said. He wishes the ban exempted customers spending more than $50. The ordinance also worries Duro Bag, a large maker of paper bags with a factory in the city’s port, because, unlike bans elsewhere in the nation, it also restricts paper bags, said Christopher Klein, manager of strategic initiatives at the company. Paper bags at many Brownsville checkout counters must be extra sturdy and have handles, which Mr. Klein calls “somewhat counterintuitive to reducing trash and litter.” (The requirement is intended to make paper bags reusable.) Duro Bag’s Brownsville factory does not make this kind of bag, but it plans to add equipment so it can; currently Duro Bag ships bags with handles in from another plant for distribution in Brownsville. Legislation being considered by state lawmakers would encourage shoppers to recycle plastic bags by requiring large retailers like Walmart to place bag recycling bins prominently in their stores. It would also pre-empt local ordinances, however, and that worries advocates of bag bans who fear that it could derail local policies already in existence or under consideration. Senator Troy Fraser, Republican of Horseshoe Bay, who sponsored the Senate legislation, said that his bill was “not moving” right now, but that a House version had made more progress. Mr. Fraser said he did not intend to overturn policies of cities with existing bans. In the long run, he said, “we would like to wean people off the using of not only plastic but paper” and shift Texans toward reusable bags. Walmart has backed Mr. Fraser’s legislation, which it sees as more workable than all-out bans. “Walmart is committed to reducing its plastic bag waste, but we would rather see voluntary programs to reduce plastic bag use” instead of stricter policies like Brownsville’s, said Daniel Morales, a company spokesman in Texas. At one Brownsville Walmart, customers could be seen carrying bottles of juice or even prewrapped lettuce to their cars — without a bag. Walmart shoppers can still get plastic bags for $1, which is the standard fee established by the ordinance and which goes into a fund to clean up the city. Others opt to buy reusable blue bags for 25 cents, or take bags in with them. Rose Timmer, executive director of Healthy Communities of Brownsville, which pushed for the ban, said tourists had called plastic bags “Texas wildflowers.” In South Padre Island, the Surfrider Foundation strongly endorses the town’s ban, partly because plastic bags besmirch the dunes and harm seabirds and sea turtles. “Using reusable bags is good,” said Rob Nixon, chairman of the group’s South Texas chapter. “They’re not only great shopping bags; they’re great beach bags as well.”

Shopping Bags
Law and Legislation
Waste Materials and Disposal
Recycling of Waste Materials


Barcelona Newspaper Casts New Doubt on 9/11 Account

Abstract: A woman who was removed as the president of a Sept. 11 survivors’ group after questions emerged about her dramatic account of escaping the twin towers came from a wealthy family in Barcelona, Spain, where she worked as a secretary and told a colleague that she had been badly injured in a car accident, a Spanish newspaper reported yesterday. The woman, Tania Head, has claimed that she survived the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and was badly burned as she escaped the south tower. She said that her fiancé, a man named Dave, was killed in the north tower, and that her life was saved by a man who stanched the flames on her burning clothes. But no part of Ms. Head’s account, which she shared with reporters, friends and visitors to ground zero, has been verified. Relatives and friends of the man to whom she claimed to be engaged say they have never heard of her, and Merrill Lynch & Company, where she told people she worked at the time of the attack, has no record of employing her. Organizations with which she has been affiliated have questioned her story in recent days, after learning of inquiries from The New York Times, which published an article about Ms. Head on Thursday. Yesterday, La Vanguardia, a newspaper in Barcelona, reported that Ms. Head had been known there as Alicia Esteve Head. Ms. Head told colleagues in New York that scars and marks on her arm were from the terror attack. La Vanguardia quoted an unnamed former colleague as saying that Ms. Head said the scars were from a high-speed crash in a Ferrari. “She used to say that they had to look for the arm and reattach it,” the colleague is quoted as saying in the article. Among other descriptions of her parents, Ms. Head has said that she is the daughter of a Spanish diplomat. La Vanguardia reported that Ms. Head’s family was well known and that her father and brother had served prison terms for their roles in a financial scandal in 1992 in the Catalonia region of Spain. The board of the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network, a nonprofit group for which Ms. Head had helped to raise money, voted last week to remove her as president and as a director of the organization. Officials at the Tribute W.T.C. Visitor Center, for which Ms. Head had long led tours of ground zero, said that at this time, she would no longer lead such tours. The Times had sought to interview Ms. Head about her experiences on 9/11, but she canceled three scheduled interviews and declined to provide details to corroborate her story. Her lawyer, Stephanie Furgang Adwar, said in an e-mail message, “With regard to the veracity of my client’s story, neither my client nor I have any comment.” Neither Ms. Head nor Ms. Adwar returned calls seeking comment yesterday.

Terrorism
World Trade Center (NYC)
Head Tania


Settlement Bars Misleading Health Claims by Tanning Salons in New York State

Abstract: New York’s attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, will announce a settlement on Thursday that bars Hollywood Tans NYC, an indoor tanning salon in Chelsea, from making misleading health claims, such as “sunlight prevents skin cancer” and “the American Cancer Society doesn’t want you to know the truth about tanning beds.” The salon’s parent company has six other franchises in the state, and the attorney general will also announce a settlement with that company, HT Franchising Management L.L.C., said Melissa Grace, a spokeswoman for the attorney general. Under the settlement, that company, which has more than 100 franchises across the country, will no longer be able to make health claims at any of its Hollywood Tans salons in New York. The settlement also prohibits it from offering “unlimited” tanning packages and aiming its marketing at high school students. Health experts say indoor tanning has helped drive a rise in skin cancer rates among young women. A few states, including Texas, have toughened rules, forbidding minors to use such salons. But indoor tanning is still legal for minors in most states and researchers say they are most vulnerable to the health risks of tanning, as well as advertisements extolling its virtues. New York amended its law in 2012, banning the practice for teenagers under 17 and requiring parental consent for 17-year-olds. But many health officials say salons tend not to enforce parental consent rules. About 28 million Americans use tanning beds each year, and about two million of them are teenagers, according to the American Academy of Dermatology. The settlement on Wednesday is the culmination of an investigation that began last year into what Mr. Schneiderman said was misleading advertising in the industry. The office found that Hollywood Tans NYC, on Avenue of the Americas in Chelsea, was making false health claims on its website and Facebook page. In one claim, according to the office, the salon said, “If you want to reduce cancer by as much as 80 percent, you want to reduce the risk of heart disease, you want to reduce diabetes, reduce obesity, reduce mental health disorders, then all you need to do is get people into the tanning booths in the winter months combined with good nutrition.” Another claim involved Susan G. Komen, a national breast cancer advocacy group, which the salon claimed “doesn’t want you to know the truth about tanning booths because if women were in tanning booths they wouldn’t be growing breast cancer tumors during the winter months.” “It was that swirl of public health evidence and flat-out lying by these businesses to young people that made us very concerned,” said Lisa Landau, chief of the health care bureau for the attorney general’s office. “We decided that this was definitely a problem.” A lawyer for the Chelsea salon, Frank Rossi, said that the salon owner, James Stamulis, had posted links and summaries to articles on the salon’s website’s blog, and that some of them included health claims about tanning. Mr. Stamulis did not compose any of the language himself, Mr. Rossi said, and agreed to delete all references upon meeting with officials from the attorney general’s office in December. “Mr. Stamulis cares deeply about his customers’ health,” Mr. Rossi said. “He complied immediately when concerns were raised.” HT Franchising Management, which is based in Sewell, N.J., did not respond to calls for comment. It was not the first time government officials took on the tanning industry. In 2010, the Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with the Indoor Tanning Association, which represents tanning facilities and equipment suppliers, forbidding it to make what the commission said were false claims, such as that indoor tanning is approved by the government and is safer than tanning outdoors. Skin cancer rates for women in their early 20s have doubled over the past two decades, said Alan C. Geller, a senior lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health, and health experts believe indoor tanning is a factor. The American Academy of Dermatology has said that the risk of melanoma increases by 75 percent for people who have been exposed to ultraviolet radiation from indoor tanning. “It’s cheap, it’s easy to do, and there are few rules against it,” Professor Geller said. Federal survey data has shown that more than 40 percent of 17-year-old white girls have used a tanning bed, he said. Last year, the Food and Drug Administration proposed new regulations for tanning beds that would require their makers to affix labels warning young people not to use them. The regulations have not become final. Many public health experts argue tanning beds should be prohibited altogether for minors, but only a handful of states have done so. A spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office said two other tanning salon companies,in western and central New York, had been notified that they might face similar lawsuits.

New York
Hollywood Tans NYC
HT Franchising Management
Sun tanning
advertising,marketing
Susan G Komen for the Cure
Eric T Schneiderman
Consumer protection
Teens


Hans Tietmeyer, Banker Who Led German Transition to Euro, Dies at 85

Abstract: FRANKFURT — Hans Tietmeyer, the central banker who led Germany’s transition from the deutsche mark to the euro despite reservations about a single European currency, died on Tuesday. He was 85. The Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, announced his death but did not give the cause or say where he died. As president of the Bundesbank from 1993 until 1999, Mr. Tietmeyer was the most powerful central banker in Europe and a leading advocate of policies that prized price stability above all else. But in contrast to some of his more dogmatic predecessors, he was also known as a politically savvy pragmatist capable of compromise. In the years leading up to the creation of the euro in 1999 , the Bundesbank under Mr. Tietmeyer set the tone for other central banks in Europe because of Germany’s status as Europe’s largest economy and the stability of Germany’s currency. When the Bundesbank raised or lowered its benchmark interest rates, the central banks of France, Italy and other European countries had little choice but to follow suit. Mr. Tietmeyer played a leading role in the years of negotiations that preceded the euro. He was among those insisting that countries joining the new currency union should be held to strict spending limits, and that the European Central Bank’s top priority should be to contain inflation. After the Bundesbank and other central banks in the eurozone ceded power over monetary policy to the European Central Bank in 1999, Mr. Tietmeyer remained a visible and influential speaker and commentator. In a 2004 book, “Herausforderung Euro” (“The Euro Challenge”), he lamented that many countries — including Germany — had violated the spending limits he had worked so hard to establish. Mr. Tietmeyer expressed doubts about whether the euro could be sustained without a strong European central government to enforce fiscal discipline. “One must not underestimate the risk to the euro of faulty budget discipline ,” he told the German magazine WirtschaftsWoche in 2007. His views seemed to be vindicated in 2010, when the government of Greece was discovered to have systematically concealed its runaway public debt, provoking a crisis that nearly destroyed the euro and remains a source of tension. Mr. Tietmeyer was born on Aug. 18, 1931, in Metelen, a village northwest of Münster close to Germany’s border with the Netherlands. He was one of 11 children of Helene and Bernhard Tietmeyer, a financial inspector for the local government. There was no immediate word on his survivors. When he completed secondary school in 1952, Mr. Tietmeyer initially studied Roman Catholic theology. But after three semesters he switched to economics and went on to earn a doctorate from the University of Cologne in 1960. At the same time, he became expert at table tennis, winning medals at national championships. In 1962, Mr. Tietmeyer took a post at the West German Ministry of Economics, beginning a long career in Civil Service, often in jobs that involved coordinating economic policy with other European countries. As European leaders were beginning to discuss the idea of a common currency, Mr. Tietmeyer, in 1982, became a state secretary in the Finance Ministry, a position just below the minister. The job included responsibility for issues related to what was then known as the European Community. In that role, he became a close adviser to Chancellor Helmut Kohl, preparing for West German participation in international summits. Mr. Tietmeyer was powerful enough to become a target of terrorists. In 1988, members of the far-left Red Army Faction fired at his Mercedes-Benz outside Bonn, striking the car numerous times but leaving Mr. Tietmeyer and his driver uninjured. Mr. Kohl’s government nominated Mr. Tietmeyer to the Bundesbank’s board in 1990, and he became president three years later. After his retirement from the Bundesbank, he remained something of a spiritual godfather to German economists and policy makers who have insisted — to much international criticism — that fiscal austerity is the cure for countries, like Greece, with too much government debt. “Monetary stability is not everything,” Mr. Tietmeyer said in a 2008 speech, “but without it there is nothing.”

Hans Tietmeyer
Euro
Germany
Bundesbank
Banking and Finance
Obituary


Driver of Sanitation Truck Faces D.U.I. Charges

Abstract: The driver of a New York City Sanitation truck was arrested and charged with driving that truck while intoxicated early Tuesday evening, the police said. He was driving it on the wrong side of the road on Grand Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn, when he crashed into a Hyundai Elantra. The driver of the Hyundai, who is 34, and a man sitting in the passenger seat, 57, were taken to Elmhurst Hospital Center. They were listed in stable condition. The truck driver was not injured. The identities of people involved in the accident were not released.

Accidents and Safety
Trucks and Trucking
Sanitation Department (NYC)


Drone Strikes Are Said to Kill Taliban Chief

Abstract: LONDON — American drones on Friday killed the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, dealing a major blow to a militant group that has terrorized Pakistan and that tried to set off a car bomb in New York City in 2010, according to Pakistani intelligence officials and militant commanders in the tribal belt. The death of the leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, is a signal achievement for the covert C.I.A. program at a time when drones themselves have come under criticism from human rights groups and other critics in Pakistan and the United States over the issue of civilian casualties. While prior reports of Mr. Mehsud’s death have proved false — ultimately serving only to burnish his credentials as an untouchable renegade — within hours there was a strong sense from multiple sources, including two American defense officials, that this time he had not escaped. “Hakimullah has been martyred,” said a local Taliban commander, speaking by phone from the tribal belt on the condition of anonymity. Pakistani officials backed up that assessment. The death offered relief to many Pakistanis. In recent years the Pakistani Taliban — who are related to, but operate independently of, the Afghan Taliban — have killed thousands of people, mostly through suicide bombings. The group has drawn the Pakistani Army into a grinding conflict in the tribal belt, and it has destabilized the rest of the country through a relentless campaign of violence. To the C.I.A., the demise of Mr. Mehsud, a showy man in his mid-30s with a flair for publicity as well as bloodshed, represents a payback of sorts. He orchestrated a suicide attack on a spy base in eastern Afghanistan in 2009 that killed seven American C.I.A. employees, and later trained Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American who tried to attack Times Square in May 2010. Mr. Mehsud had a $5 million United States government bounty on his head. But Mr. Mehsud’s death also comes at a delicate time. Just last week Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan, who strenuously opposes drone strikes, met with President Obama at the White House to express that opposition. Mr. Sharif’s plans to engage in peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban have also been thrown into disarray — and possibly rendered unnecessary — by Friday’s attack. Instead, enraged Taliban commanders have vowed to repay Mr. Mehsud’s killing in bloodshed. “Our revenge will be unprecedented,” Abu Omar, a Taliban commander in North Waziristan, said by phone on Friday. Mr. Omar said he considered the Pakistani government “fully complicit” in the drone strike. “We know our enemy very well,” he said. Friday’s strike occurred in Danday Darpa Khel, a small village and well-known militant stronghold in the North Waziristan tribal agency, near the Afghan border. Pakistani officials said C.I.A.-operated drones had fired at least four missiles at a compound that had been built for Mr. Mehsud about a year ago and that he had used intermittently since then. One Pakistani official, citing intelligence reports, said that besides Mr. Mehsud, three other people were killed in Friday’s attack, including Mr. Mehsud’s uncle and a bodyguard. Two other people were wounded. The Pakistani official said Abdullah Behar, Mr. Mehsud’s deputy, also had died in the strike. Mr. Behar had just taken over from Latif Mehsud, a militant commander who was detained by American forces in Afghanistan last month. Caitlin M. Hayden, a White House spokeswoman, said in a written statement that the Obama administration was not in a position to confirm reports of Mr. Mehsud’s death. But if true “this would be serious loss for the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP),” the statement said, using the official title of the Pakistani Taliban. And while the C.I.A. declined to comment, two American defense officials with knowledge of the strike said the United States was confident that Mr. Mehsud was dead. The Americans tracking Mr. Mehsud were “nearly certain” of his location ahead of the strike, the American official said, and collected intelligence afterward that led them to conclude he was dead. Tribesmen said they planned to bury Mr. Mehsud on Saturday, when Mr. Sharif is scheduled to return to Pakistan from London, where he has been holding talks with British officials and the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. Elsewhere in Pakistan, reports of Mr. Mehsud’s death met an uneasy welcome. Some celebrated the demise of a ruthless militant who was responsible for much suffering and had evaded longstanding Pakistani efforts to capture or kill him. “All peace-loving Pakistanis should be satisfied that a monster who had unleashed terror in Pakistan and elsewhere is dead,” said Pervez Musharraf, the former military leader, who is under house arrest. But the interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, described the American action as a calculated blow against the fledgling peace process. A delegation of three clerics from Punjab Province whom Mr. Sharif handpicked had been scheduled to travel to the tribal belt on Saturday to begin talks with the Pakistani Taliban and two other militant groups. The group has now been stopped from proceeding, a senior security official said. And on the heated television talk shows, where public opinion is shaped, conservative politicians vigorously condemned the strike. Imran Khan, the former cricket player whose party rules Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, said he would seek to block NATO supply lines in retaliation; one of his deputies called for the Pakistani military to attack American drones. “Now, one thing is proven,” Mr. Khan said in a television interview. “Whenever Pakistan has attempted talks, drone attacks have sabotaged them.” On Twitter, Bilawal Bhutto, a leader of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party, mocked Mr. Khan’s stance, telling him he was “so sorry for your loss.” Many ordinary Pakistanis, however, voiced fears of a violent backlash led by militants carrying out suicide attacks across the country. Seth Jones, a militancy expert at the RAND Corporation in Washington, said such a reaction was likely. He noted that just after the C.I.A. killed the Pakistani Taliban’s previous leader , Baitullah Mehsud, in August 2009, the group then put together the plot to explode a bomb in Times Square. While Mr. Mehsud’s death is a serious blow to the Pakistani Taliban, Mr. Jones said, this time it is more than able to replace him. “This won’t be lethal for the TTP,” he said. Although the Pakistani leadership regularly condemns drone attacks, a growing body of evidence suggests that it has quietly cooperated with at least some strikes over the years. Still, after the strike on Friday, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry issued a pro forma condemnation, employing the usual language about the American action’s being a violation of Pakistan’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Hours before the strike, three American congressmen and the American ambassador to Pakistan, Richard G. Olson, met with Sartaj Aziz, the prime minister’s adviser on national security and foreign affairs, in Islamabad. In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said Mr. Aziz had “expressed satisfaction at the upward trajectory in bilateral relations between Pakistan and the United States.” The leader of the American congressional delegation, Representative Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, would not explicitly confirm Mr. Mehsud’s death, but in a statement after the strike, he said, “I congratulate the hard work of those protecting us and mourn the loss of those killed in past attacks by this man.”

Drones
Taliban
Pakistan
Pakistani Taliban
Hakimullah Mehsud
Waziristan
Targeted Killings
Miram Shah Pakistan
CIA


That Shot Was Out? A Clue on When to Challenge a Call

Abstract: When a line judge at Wimbledon rules on a hair-splittingly close call and says the ball is out, the inevitably disgruntled player should not only consider challenging the call for review by digital replay system. He should consult a recent issue of Current Biology. A vast majority of near-the-line shots called incorrectly by Wimbledon line judges have come on balls ruled out that were actually in, according to a study published in October by researchers at the University of California-Davis. To a vision scientist, the finding added to the growing knowledge of how the human eye and brain misperceive objects moving at high speed. To a tennis player, it strongly suggests which calls are worth challenging and which are best left alone. The researchers identified 83 missed calls during the 2007 Wimbledon tournament. (Some were challenged by players and overruled; others were later identified as unquestionably wrong through frame-by-frame video.) Seventy of those 83 calls, or 84 percent, were on balls ruled out — essentially, shots that line judges believed had traveled farther than they actually did. Called perceptual mislocalization by vision scientists, this subconscious bias is known less formally to Wimbledon fans as “You cannot be serious!” — John McEnroe’s famous dissent when, yes, a 1981 shot was ruled out . Now that players can resort to a more evolved appeal procedure, the researchers’ discovery suggests that players should generally use their limited number of challenges on questionable out calls rather those that are called in, because the out calls have a far better chance of being discovered as mistaken on review, then overturned. “What we’re really interested in is how visual information is processed, and how it can be used to a player’s advantage,” said David Whitney, an associate professor at U.C.-Davis’s Center for Mind and Brain, who is the paper’s lead author. “There is a delay of roughly 80 to 150 milliseconds from the first moment of perception to our processing it, and that’s a long time. That’s one reason why it’s so hard to catch a fly — the fly’s ability to dance around is faster than our ability to determine where it is.” This is the third Wimbledon in which players can challenge questionable calls for review by the Hawk-Eye system, which uses high-speed video cameras to record balls’ flight. (About 25 percent of all challenges result in overturned calls.) There is no penalty for an unsuccessful challenge, but after three such episodes in a set, a player may not challenge again. Whether through strategy or residual tennis etiquette, most players leave many challenges unused. Theoretically, line judges should be equally likely to call an out ball in as they are an “in” ball out. But when objects travel faster than humans’ eyes and brains can precisely track them — for example, Andy Roddick’s 150-mile-per-hour serves — they are left having to fill in the gaps in their perception. In doing so, they tend to overshoot the object’s actual location and think it traveled slightly farther than it truly did. Successful challenge calls and the overlooked mistakes that the researchers later identified were several times more likely to come on “long” calls than “in” calls. (The same pattern existed at Wimbledon last year, Whitney said, although the paper did not present that data.) So players are better off using as many challenges as possible on balls called out, because those are the calls most likely to be wrong; if a player thinks an “in” call was wrong, chances are his own eyes were as fooled as line judges’ sometimes are. Without knowing it, tennis officials are already told to try to compensate for this mislocalization effect. Published instructions for United States Tennis Association line judges tell them to “focus your eyes on the portion of the line where the ball will land,” rather than attempt to track the ball in flight. “Get to the spot well before the ball arrives,” they are advised. Rich Kaufman, the association’s director of officials who was a linesman and chair umpire from 1976 to 1997, said that “one of the hardest things to teach new linesmen is to take their eye off the ball.” “I once asked an eye doctor, Then what am I seeing on a bounce?” Kaufman said. “The doctor said, That’s your brain working — you think you see the initial point of impact, but it’s the blur of the entry and exit of the ball.” A player using knowledge of this effect in challenging calls could receive a benefit of about one or two overturned points per match, Whitney said, and any psychological boost from feeling vindicated rather than robbed. But Whitney added that understanding how the brain misperceives visual stimuli could help in more real-life matters, as with the design and placement of high-speed safety equipment, automobile brake lights and warning signs. As for Wimbledon, it appears as if the new information can only help players, not the judges who vex them. Kaufman said: “You have to call what you see. Or what you think you see.”

Tennis
Wimbledon Tennis Tournament
Officiating (Sports)


After Tyler Clementi’s Suicide, His Parents Make Painful Changes in the Search for Why

Abstract: RIDGEWOOD, N.J. — When Tyler Clementi told his parents he was gay, two days before he left for Rutgers University in the fall of 2010, he said he had known since middle school. “So he did have a side that he didn’t open up to us, obviously,” his mother, Jane Clementi, said, sitting in her kitchen here nearly two years later. “That was one of the things that hurt me the most, that he was hiding something so much. Because I thought we had a pretty open relationship.” In her surprise, she had peppered him with questions: “How do you know? Who are you going to talk to? Who are you going to tell?” Tyler told a friend that the conversation had not gone well. His father had been “very accepting,” he wrote in a text message. “Mom has basically completely rejected me.” Three weeks later, he jumped off the George Washington Bridge after discovering that his roommate had used a webcam to spy on him having sex and that he had sent out Twitter messages encouraging others to watch. An international spotlight turned the episode into a cautionary coming-out story, of a young man struggling with his sexuality and the damage inflicted by bullying. His roommate, Dharun Ravi , was tried and convicted of intimidation and invasion of privacy; he served a short jail sentence. But the trial never directly addressed the question at the heart of the story — what prompted a promising college freshman to kill himself? It is that question that lingers over the household here on a tidy street in this prosperous suburb. The Clementis continue to blame the bad luck of a roommate lottery and the cowardice of students who failed to step up and say that the spying was wrong. But their son’s suicide has also forced changes, and new honesty, upon them. They have left the church that made Ms. Clementi so resistant to her son’s declaration. Their middle son, James, acknowledged what the family had long suspected and said that he, too, was gay. The family is devoting itself to a foundation promoting acceptance with the hope of preventing the suicides of gay teenagers. Most of all, Ms. Clementi has had to grapple with her own role in Tyler’s death. “People talk about coming out of the closet — it’s parents coming out of the closet, too,” she said. “I wasn’t really ready for that.” At the time Tyler sat down to tell his parents he was gay, she believed that homosexuality was a sin, as her evangelical church taught. She said she was not ready to tell friends, protecting her son — and herself — from what would surely be the harsh judgments of others. “It did not change the fact that I loved my son,” she said. “I did need to think about how that would fit into my thoughts on homosexuality.” Yet it did not occur to her that Tyler would think she did not accept him. She had long talked with him about how his brother James was gay — though at the time James had not said he was. “Tyler knew we weren’t going to reject him or stop paying for college for him or not let him come home, because James had done all those things and we had a good relationship,” she said. Tyler’s father, Joe Clementi, characterized the last month in his son’s life as a “rough spot.” But Ms. Clementi said she believed he was “confident, comfortable” in his decision. He left for Rutgers telling his parents about plans to attend events for gay students. He reported having gone to New York with new friends to see plays; his parents took this to mean he was adjusting well. During a phone call one afternoon he sounded different. “A little sad,” Ms. Clementi said. “I thought maybe it was adjusting to being away. I told him how much I missed him, he got a little teary and told me he’d missed me, too. I thought he’d been away too much.” That evening, Joe Clementi was awakened by a call from the Port Authority police, saying they had Tyler’s wallet and phone, that he’d been seen — then not seen — on the bridge. In the months after Tyler’s death, some of Ms. Clementi’s friends confided that they, too, had gay children. She blames religion for the shame surrounding it — in the conversation about coming out, Tyler told his mother he did not think he could be Christian and gay. “I think some people think that sexual orientation can be changed or prayed over,” she said now, in her kitchen. “But I know sexual orientation is not up for negotiation. I don’t think my children need to be changed. I think that what needed changing is attitudes, or myself, or maybe some other people I know.” She decided she could no longer attend her church, because doing so would suggest she supported its teachings against homosexuality. And she took strength from reading the Bible as she reconsidered her views. “At this point I think Jesus is more about reconciliation and love,” she said. “He spoke more about divorce than homosexuality, but you can be divorced and join a church more than you can be gay and join churches.” What has troubled her most is the thought that Tyler believed she had rejected him. Joe Clementi argues that his son was speaking with classic teenage exaggeration to a friend, that the remark was taken out of context by people who did not know the family, or the facts. “Just to be clear: Tyler had two parents, and I didn’t have any problem with it,” he said. “He had support.” But Ms. Clementi can’t dismiss it that easily. “Obviously he felt that way, he needed to tell his friend that.” Sitting in the courtroom every day during Mr. Ravi’s trial this winter, the Clementis often looked brittle, and rarely spoke. But here in their home, next to the elementary school that all three of their boys attended, they spoke openly. They have also been speaking to school and corporate groups about their experience. And though she supports the prosecution’s appeal of the 30-day sentence Mr. Ravi received on the ground that that it was too short, Ms. Clementi said, “It won’t change my life one way or another.” It is a relief to have come out of the closet, she said. “It is not something I would have done on my own.” She thinks often about her last phone call with Tyler, hours before he went to the bridge. “I was sitting right over there,” she said, pointing to a corner of the kitchen. They had what seemed like an innocuous discussion about whether his parents should take Tyler’s bike to Rutgers for him. It was expensive and beloved, and he had not wanted it stolen. “He got very teary and wistful — ‘Oh, my bike, I forgot about my bike,’ ” she recalled. “After the fact I think about it in different terms, but at the time, I didn’t. He said, ‘No, keep it at home.’ ” She cannot recall how they said goodbye. “It was probably the way we said goodbye all the time,” she said. “ ‘Goodbye, I love you,’ ‘I love you more.’ That was the way we usually ended it. I’m sure that’s how we ended it that time, too.”

Parenting
Homosexuality
Suicides and Suicide Attempts
Clementi Tyler
Ravi Dharun
Teenagers and Adolescence


Lloyds Bank Is Discussing Purchase of British Lender

Abstract: LONDON — The British mortgage lender HBOS said on Wednesday that it was in talks to be acquired by the Lloyds TSB Group after shares of HBOS collapsed this month on concerns that it might fail. Lloyds, a bank based in London that is looking for ways to expand its mortgage business, envisions a purchase of HBOS as a way to profit from the falling valuations of financial services firms. HBOS has lost about 43 percent of its market value over the last month, and its shares are now worth £7.7 billion ($13.9 billion). HBOS shares fell 19 percent, to £1.47, in London on Wednesday. The shares had been off as much as 52 percent earlier in the day before Lloyds made its interest known. Among the challenges that HBOS faces, the British government on Wednesday reported the biggest monthly leap in unemployment in 16 years, and the head of the Financial Services Authority, Hector Sants, warned that consumers in Britain faced “potentially severe implications” from the deepening credit crisis, which “presents a credit management challenge for financial firms.” The economy of Britain, and of London in particular, depends heavily on the financial sector. Financial and business services companies employ about 6.6 million people in Britain, according to the Center for Economics and Business Research. Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street giant that filed for bankruptcy on Monday, had more than 4,000 employees in London. “It is evident that the fallout from the credit crisis is not over,” said Robert Thesiger, chief executive of Imprint, an executive recruitment company. “These momentous events of the last few days have changed the landscape of not only London’s but also the global financial services sector.” To alleviate some pressure on consumers, the Bank of England could cut interest rates, now 5 percent, but its hands are tied because inflation continues to accelerate. The British economy is expected to shrink in the third and fourth quarters and enter a recession, the European Commission said this month. Some economists predict that the central bank will cut interest rates in the coming months, once inflation slows as oil and commodity prices decline. In the meantime, the pressure on Prime Minister Gordon Brown is growing as he faces calls from members of his own party to step down. On Wednesday, Michael Ellam, the prime minister’s spokesman, said at a media briefing that the government was in close contact with the financial services industry and was ready to intervene to ensure stability. “We will do whatever is appropriate to maintain the integrity of the U.K. financial system,” Mr. Ellam said. HBOS shares have been sliding this week on fears that the effects of Lehman’s collapse would further tighten credit markets, making it more difficult and costly for HBOS to raise the money to run its business. HBOS obtains about half of its financing from the capital markets. Northern Rock, a British lender that was even more dependent on the credit markets, was forced to seek a government bailout a year ago. Lloyds, by contrast, depends mostly on fees generated by its lending in Britain. “I don’t think anyone would have bracketed these two banks together until today because of competition reasons,” said Keith Baird, an analyst at Oriel Securities in London. “It just indicates the extremity of the situation.” A takeover of HBOS would follow Barclays’ planned purchase of Lehman Brothers’ investment banking, fixed-income and equities sales, trading and research units in the United States for $1.75 billion. Barclays, based in London, will take on the units’ 10,000 employees and also buy the company’s New York headquarters and two data centers. Barclays said on Wednesday that it also might buy other parts of Lehman in Europe. “The winners are clearly the consolidators like JPMorgan, Bank of America and other European giants, which have not been substantially affected by the credit crunch,” said Christoph Riniker, a senior strategist at Julius Baer in Zurich. “Although caution is still the order of the day in the financial segment, winners resulting from the downsizing are starting to emerge.” Lloyds had a profit of £576 million in the first half of this year, down 63 percent from the period a year earlier, because of bad loans and write-downs. The bank wrote down £585 million in credit-related assets, less than many of its rivals. In June, the bank took over some home loans from Northern Rock to expand its mortgage business. Shares in Lloyds ended unchanged at £2.79 in London on Wednesday, after climbing as much as 15 percent during the day. HBOS, which is also helping to finance commercial property, employs about 72,000. The bank raised £4 billion in a share sale in July, but a lackluster reception from investors meant the underwriting banks were left with some of the stock. HBOS has a 20 percent share of the British mortgage market; it predicted in June that mortgage lending nationwide would drop 45 percent this year.

Lloyds TSB Group Plc
HBOS Plc
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Banks and Banking


On Staten Island, More Deer and Few Solutions

Abstract: There will be no deer hunting on Staten Island. Not anytime soon, probably not ever. But there are deer aplenty, and in growing numbers, on Staten Island, the closest thing New York City has to a suburban borough, browsing in people’s yards, drawing double-takes at highway interchanges, getting hit by cars. There are so many deer that the state decided it needed to study them and figure out what to do about them. According to the study, released on Friday, there are at least 24 deer, concentrated on the western side of the island, including at least two fawns. It is enough to constitute an unusual pest-control challenge in the nation’s largest city. “Deer are beautiful animals, and we love to see them in the wild,” Suzanne Mattei, the regional director for the State Department of Environmental Conservation, said at an outdoor news conference at the Greenbelt Nature Center in the island’s lushly wooded heart. “But when they come into urban areas, we have to manage them carefully.” The proposals made in the study are modest ones: more deer-crossing signs (eight were installed along the West Shore Expressway last year at the urging of Assemblyman Michael Cusick), some fencing and a public-education campaign. “We want Staten Islanders to be deer-savvy,” said the deputy borough president, Ed Burke. Officials warn that in addition to endangering drivers, deer are host to the ticks that carry Lyme disease. And if unchecked, the deer could put a serious dent in Staten Island’s greenery, which is already threatened by development, said Joseph Pane, the state biologist who conducted the survey by traipsing through the woods for most of January and February. “They’ll eat everything within reach, to the point where you have nothing growing,” Mr. Pane said, as if describing an attack by 350-pound rats with antlers. “They go after things as soon as they sprout and you have no seed source.” While the survey took in only a fraction of the island’s wooded areas, Ms. Mattei said the department felt that 24 deer counted represented most of the herd. “At least now we have data,” she said. “We have something more than just, ‘Golly gee, I saw a deer.’ ” Deer sightings began to be reported with some frequency on Staten Island around 2000. State officials say the deer swam across the Arthur Kill from New Jersey, decades after having been wiped out on the island. But old-timers in the island’s rugged southwest corner say the deer never left. “There have always been deer on Staten Island,” said Cherryl Mitchell, who runs a stable called Richer Farm in Charleston, just north of the Outerbridge Crossing. “My husband is a native Staten Islander, he’s 66 years old, and he’s seen them since he was 6 years old.” Mrs. Mitchell, 57, said that when she moved to Charleston in 1979, she would see deer tracks, but after a wave of construction nearby, she started to see deer. She said she had been spotting one deer, which she named Grandpa, recognizable by a distinctly crooked nostril, for 18 years. Mrs. Mitchell said she had also seen men with bows and arrows hunting the deer in Clay Pit Ponds State Park, adjoining her property. Last year, the conservation department received a spate of complaints about hunters shooting at deer. Hunting, whether with bow and arrow or firearm, is illegal in New York City, which is why a harvest is not among the management options the state is considering. And though deer have natural predators elsewhere in the state, there are no plans to introduce bears or coyotes to Staten Island either. “I think it’s going to be challenging enough dealing with the coexistence of the deer and the people,” Ms. Mattei said. The deer survey, which will become an annual event, was based on sightings called in by residents in January and February. The sighting log reads like a tour of the island’s back roads and parking lots. “Three deer, gully behind Target near Englewood Ave.” “1/27/2008, six deer, skating pavilion, Arthur Kill Road.” The sightings were concentrated in four areas: near Howland Hook in the northwest corner of the island, near Clay Pit Ponds State Park, near Mount Loretto and Tottenville at the southern tip, and around the Greenbelt. Mr. Pane bundled up, took clipboard in hand and went on the prowl. Friday afternoon, Mrs. Mitchell led a reporter on her own deer tour in the woods just beyond her riding ring. In five minutes, she pointed out the tracks of at least six deer: does with rounded hoofprints, bucks with big pointy prints the length of a man’s finger, fawns with little prints. Mrs. Mitchell had little use for the state and its scientist-bureaucrats. But she said she agreed with the conclusions of the study. “They need to just properly put some fences along the highways, put some signs up and leave them the hell alone,” she said.


Judge Rejects DNA Test in Trial Over Garrett Phillips’s Murder

Abstract: A judge presiding over a trial in the 2011 murder of a 12-year-old boy in northern New York State said on Friday that the prosecution could not use a cutting-edge and controversial method of analyzing DNA data, dealing a blow to its efforts to convict a former soccer coach accused of the crime. In late July , Judge Felix J. Catena of St. Lawrence County Court held a hearing on the admissibility of a computer program known as STRmix in the trial of Oral Nicholas Hillary, who is accused of strangling Garrett Phillips in the village of Potsdam . The police have testified that there is little, if any, physical evidence against Mr. Hillary, 42, who has maintained his innocence since suspicion first fell on him shortly after the murder. Mr. Hillary, a black Jamaican immigrant who dated Garrett’s mother until shortly before the crime, has contended that he is being targeted in part because of his race. Garrett was white, as is much of Potsdam and the surrounding county. Earlier this year, the prosecution team indicated that it would use STRmix to analyze a minuscule scraping from one of Garrett’s fingernails, and it later suggested that Mr. Hillary was one of eight people in the nation who might match the sample. The defense rebutted those assertions and challenged the reliability of the program, which uses an algorithm to determine probabilities for usually unusable data. On Friday, Judge Catena agreed with the defense, finding that the data could not be used at trial, a finding hailed by Mr. Hillary’s lawyers. “We believe it to be the correct decision because it recognized what happened here was unreliable and improper,” said Norman Siegel, a veteran civil rights lawyer who has recently joined the defense team. Image Oral Nicholas Hillary, accused in the murder of Garrett Phillips, 12. Credit Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times The court’s opinion outlined previously unsuccessful efforts — starting in 2013 — to match Mr. Hillary’s DNA to that of the fingernail scraping. That analysis, done by a company called Cybergenetics , based in Pittsburgh, was inconclusive. Seeking evidence, the prosecution in the Hillary case had the asked one of the creators of STRmix, a scientist from New Zealand, John S. Buckleton, to analyze and develop a statistic for a possible match. Dr. Buckleton testified at the hearing in July, which was followed by another hearing on Aug. 17. In his decision, Judge Catena said the state crime lab initially analyzed the DNA in the case and sent it to a New Zealand government institute that helped develop STRmix. But because the state crime lab was not authorized to generate data for STRmix analysis, the judge wrote, Dr. Buckleton “was forced to pick and choose data from different ‘reliable sources’ and input parameters into the program in such a way that he believed the system would tolerate.” The judge concluded that “the lack of internal validation by the New York crime lab, as candidly admitted” by Dr. Buckleton, “precludes the use of the STRmix results.” The decision to deny the evidence is another setback for the St. Lawrence County district attorney, Mary E. Rain, who is dealing with a largely circumstantial case and unrelated challenges, including a recent no-confidence vote from the county’s Board of Legislators. Ms. Rain did not return a request for comment on Friday, nor did William Fitzpatrick, an experienced prosecutor from nearby Onondaga County who is assisting in the case. The use of new computer programs to analyze mixed — and extremely minute — portions of DNA has allowed the use of some samples that were previously considered inconclusive. But there is still ample scientific debate about the use of such programs in cases where only a few cells may have been recovered, and indeed, in the Garrett Phillips case, the extremely small amount of material available was part of the defense’s argument against its use. In a telephone interview on Friday, Mr. Hillary said that he was “happy that the judge came to the right conclusion.” The trial, however, is still scheduled to begin on Sept. 6 in Canton, the county seat.

DNA
Garrett Phillips
New York
STRmix
Oral Nicholas Hillary
Potsdam
Murders and Homicides
Forensic science
Mary E Rain


In Israel, Bloomberg Shows His Support

Abstract: SDEROT, Israel — Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was touring this rocket-battered town on Sunday when a public-address system warned of a fresh attack. Chairs were knocked over and frantic shouts — “Get inside now! Move!” — could be heard in Hebrew and English as the mayor was whisked by Israeli guards and his own security detail into a protected room. The rocket, and a second one, missed the town. But they gave the mayor a visceral taste of the conflict the world has been watching from a distance for more than a week: rockets fired from Hamas -controlled Gaza, and Israel’s sweeping air and ground assault in response. Calm but somber as he emerged from the safe room, Mr. Bloomberg played down the moment of panic. “I feel exactly the same way I do when I’m in New York City,” he said. “You are worried about it, you turn to the professionals, and I think what is obvious is that the Israelis are as well trained as the N.Y.P.D. ,” he said. “Let’s not overstate the risks to me,” he added. “The risks are to the people of Sderot, on the ground in their homes, in their businesses.” Mr. Bloomberg, who came here to express his backing for Israel and — like other New York mayors before him — to enhance his standing with Jewish voters back home, flew in at dawn on his private jet, the morning after Israel’s punishing air assaults segued into a ground war. “I think I speak for an awful lot, almost all Americans, who think that Israel is doing the right thing in defending itself,” he said during a stop in the southern city of Ashkelon, offering a message of unequivocal support he would sound throughout the day. Traveling with him were Raymond W. Kelly, the police commissioner, and Representative Gary L. Ackerman of Queens. They spent most of their day in the southern part of the country, first in Ashkelon, which has become a main target of Hamas rocket fire in the last week, and then in Sderot, a town on the Gaza border that has suffered most of the attacks. They later met with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. They left for New York on Sunday night. Mr. Bloomberg’s stops included the pediatric department of the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon, which has been transferred to an underground, bombproof ward. There he met with children, including Palestinians from Gaza whose illnesses were being treated. He passed out stuffed toys — Cookie Monster, Big Bird and Elmo. “Do you have ‘Sesame Street’ here?” he asked a Palestinian toddler who looked at him blankly as the mayor tucked Big Bird next to his small hands. In Sderot, Mr. Bloomberg visited a house that suffered a direct hit just four hours earlier. He walked through shards of glass and chunks of rubble that blanketed the living room. Most of a bedroom ceiling had collapsed, and a soot-covered microwave and two television sets were upended on the floor, along with a tangle of mattresses and artificial flowers. A burnt smell hung in the air. Sunday’s visit was Mr. Bloomberg’s seventh to Israel since he entered public life, and it comes as he works hard to secure support for re-election this year. He stayed on message, declaring that Hamas was to blame for the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian violence. Israel maintains that its actions are defensive, a response to the crumbling of a six-month cease-fire with Hamas that dissolved when cross-border rocket fire increased. But Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip see Israel as the aggressor. On Sunday, the reported death toll of Palestinians passed 500, including about 100 civilians, in the week of air raids and 24 hours of ground combat. Israel has reported the death of one soldier in the ground attack and four civilians from rockets since Dec. 27. Asked about the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, Mr. Bloomberg replied sharply: “That they are putting people at risk is an outrage. If Hamas would focus on building a country instead of trying to destroy another one, then those people would not be getting injured or killed.” In Ashkelon, far from New York City politics, Marty Davis, a former New Yorker who now lives there, said he was moved by the mayor’s presence. “It lets us know we are not alone,” he said.

Israel
Hamas
Palestinians
Bloomberg Michael R
Sderot (Israel)
United States International Relations
Jews


The Lawn Wore White: Giant Hail Crashes a Wedding in Minnesota

Abstract: I love strange weather. My bookshelf holds such must-haves as “Tornadoes, Dark Days, Anomalous Precipitation, and Related Weather Phenomena,” which chronicles things like giant snowflakes and clouds that hiss like snakes. Not to mention big hail, a personal favorite. As an adult, living in the East, I have suffered hail deprivation, which, from a practical point of view, is just as well, given the damage hail can cause. But still, I have missed it, until recently. Over Memorial Day weekend I attended a wedding in rural Minnesota . The day of the ceremony was hot, the air moist and still. The bride, my sister Carole Anne, and her groom, Steve, are meditators and halfway through the outdoor ceremony asked the guests to close their eyes at the sound of a chime. Distant, rolling thunder began a moment later. Then, far off, came the wail of a storm siren to warn of possible danger. People shifted in their chairs. The wind and the ceremony picked up speed. The wedding party and most of the guests got to the reception hall before the sky darkened and the downpour hit. Ominously, the power had already gone out. Candles were lit, making the party quite festive, even though we were told of tornado warnings and where to take shelter if need be. Amateur weather scientist that I am, I went outside onto the spacious lawn of the Dunrovin Christian Brothers Retreat Center, in Marine on Saint Croix. I stood alone watching the ragged clouds. The center sits on the banks of the Saint Croix, and moist surface winds had been blowing across the river from east to west — seemingly an unusual flow at such latitudes. Now, things reversed. A dark frontal system approached from the west, the line of clouds churning, bolts of horizontal lightning flashing from cloud to cloud like something out of a Frankenstein movie. I’d never seen anything like it. Meteorologists say horizontal lightning is common, but often hidden in the clouds. A cool wind came up. The thunder grew louder. Carole Anne joined me on the lawn. We watched the front approach and exchanged an intimate word or two. We hugged. Just then, hail began to fall, hard and fast. Hailstones form in the updrafts of thunderstorms as rain soars into colder regions, freezing and growing larger as droplets fuse. The stronger the updraft, the larger the hail. When hailstones become heavier than the lifting force of the updraft, they fall. The wide open spaces of the Midwest aid the formation of storms with big hail and tornados. We ran for the awning of the center and huddled with guests and children. The hail came down bigger and bigger, first the size of peas and marbles, then golf balls and finally tennis balls. The larger pieces of ice bounced quite high, ricocheting off the lawn. The green expanse started to turn white. With a groan, a tall cedar crashed down, as did other trees in the high winds. The pond at the bottom of the grassy slope boiled as thousands of ice balls hit the water, each making a splash, some seemingly a foot or two or three high. I had never seen hail like this. Not thinking that ice balls falling from the sky could cause serious injury — in fact, not thinking at all — I ran to gather up some of the larger hailstones and pass them back inside the hall. Children followed my bad example, giggling, rushing in and out of the hard rain. Guests went outdoors as the day settled down. My brother Chuck, an electrical engineer by training, picked through the hailstones and noted some of the internal structures. In one, a large teardrop of ice had many delicate layers of clear and cloudy ice, similar to tree rings. They chronicled a long journey through the upper atmosphere. Kids threw iceballs. Adults took aim at trees. Damage reports came in. The wife of the director of the retreat center had been caught outdoors and suffered a head wound that bled — though not bad enough to send her to the hospital. “I’ve never seen hail that big,” said Jerome Meeds, the director and a lifelong Minnesota resident. “It was huge.” The world’s largest hailstones are about four inches wide, or baseball size, according to “A Field Guide to the Atmosphere.” If so, the hailstorm we experienced on that Sunday — actually, cloud day — showcased one of nature’s icy extremes. Our vehicles had many dents but no cracked windshields. At the time we had no idea tragedy had struck just 10 miles west, in Hugo, where a 2-year-old boy was killed and his 4-year-old sister was critically injured. It was only in the aftermath of the excitement that my daughter Julie, 15, mentioned that she had seen two funnel clouds forming over the Saint Croix, poking down from the dark clouds, moving around before pulling back into the churning gray mass. “It was pretty cool,” she recalled. “Plus, it was at a wedding.”

Hail
Minnesota
Weather
Tornadoes
Weddings and Engagements


U.S. Revels in Victories and Its Rising Status in a Sport

Abstract: BEAVER CREEK, Colo. — When the Alpine world ski championships came to the United States this month for the first time since 1999, the 13-day event was quickly defined by two competitive challenges taking place simultaneously. Could American ski racers back up their strong performance at the 2014 Sochi Olympics with another convincing showing, even with the worldwide ski community watching more closely than ever? And could a coalition of United States ski racing leaders show that the sport — aided by sophisticated broadcast technology — could capture a larger foothold in the crowded American sporting marketplace? Image The Alpine world championships in Beaver Creek, Colo., drew many fans. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times With the world championships ending Sunday, the United States ski team, led by a mix of new and established stars, will leave Colorado with five medals, the second most of any country. Only the perennial ski power Austria, which won nine medals, will have more. International ski officials were impressed by the more than 200,000 fans who flocked to the resorts of Beaver Creek and Vail in the last two weeks, and encouraged by record television ratings for ski racing in the United States. They concluded their visit to the Rocky Mountains by talking about staging the championships in America more often. They may add more World Cup tour stops here, as well. Even a race in the Northeastern United States is being considered. “With full stadiums and pioneering television coverage, we were thrilled with the championships,” said Sarah Lewis, the secretary general of the International Ski Federation, ski racing’s ruling body, known as FIS. “They certainly exceeded expectations and were a great step forward for ski racing in North America.” With the American stars Ted Ligety and Mikaela Shiffrin each winning gold medals in dramatic fashion in the final days of the event, the United States ski team will go out on a high note, matching its medal total in Sochi. Image Ted Ligety won the men’s giant slalom at the Alpine world ski championships. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times Ligety also won a bronze medal in the super combined, and on the first day of the competition, Lindsey Vonn won a bronze medal in the super-G. The most symbolic outcome for the American team might have been Travis Ganong’s surprising second-place finish in the downhill. The breakout silver medal performance by Ganong, 26, came just two days after the longtime king of American ski racing, Bode Miller, 37, had a horrific crash that may have ended his career. The Austrian men’s team, led by the three-time defending World Cup overall champion Marcel Hirscher, appeared poised for a medal bonanza at the championships. But in the end, the Austrian men did the same as they did at the 2014 Winter Games, winning two races and finishing second in another. Among the women, the duel for overall supremacy between Tina Maze of Slovenia and Anna Fenninger of Austria continued to heat up. Fenninger, who showed her promise at last year’s Olympics, continued to impress in big races, winning the super-G and the giant slalom and finishing second in the downhill. Maze countered with three medals, including gold in the downhill and the super combined. Off the racecourse, a chief development at the championships involved innovative broadcasting methods, which might have attracted new American viewers and prospective young ski racers. The Sounds of the Downhill Some of the top ski racers in the world describe the sounds of a World Cup downhill. In addition to more than 70 hours of live coverage on American television (ski racing in Europe is almost always shown on a tape delay in North America), the broadcast crew for this year’s world championships used as many as 200 camera positions to capture the racing over the two weeks. Broadcasters used five super-slow-motion cameras, which displayed images at a rate of 2,500 frames per second, about 100 times the standard rate used in television. A camera affixed to an overhead cable also followed racers down the racecourses for more than 800 yards. “I never got to watch a world championships in this way growing up,” Shiffrin said. “I think a lot of kids sitting in living rooms across America will be inspired to try our sport. It’s been so engaging — you can feel the speed, the terrain and the tactics. This kind of mainstream television exposure could be huge.” Lewis said that the 2015 world championships would leave a legacy for broadcasting of ski racing and that the Vail/Beaver Creek organizing committee had set a new standard for the championships in a variety of ways. FIS is expected to discuss bringing the event back to Colorado in the future. Since many national teams travel to Colorado to train in November, Lewis said there would be discussions about adding another World Cup race or two early in the season. There are currently two World Cup stops in the United States: two women’s races in Aspen, Colo., in late November and three men’s races at Beaver Creek in early December. Image Mikaela Shiffrin captured the women’s slalom in dramatic fashion. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times “There are many U.S. ski resorts who would want to host a World Cup race,” said Tiger Shaw, the chief executive of the United States Ski and Snowboard Association. “And many that would do a great job.” Shaw added that he thought there were several ski areas in the Northeastern United States that would be suitable sites for World Cup races. As early as the 1960s, World Cup Alpine races were held in New England and upstate New York, but it has been many years since one has been held in the Northeast. At the final competition of the championships on Sunday, the men’s slalom , fans packed a four-story grandstand. Virtually every race drew capacity crowds, and in many cases, a few thousand fans hiked up the hill to get even closer to the action. Standing in the snow alongside the racecourse Sunday, one spectator held a sign above her head. It read: “Thanks for the thrills! Come back soon.”

Skiing
International Ski Federation
Ted Ligety
Lindsey Vonn
Bode Miller
Tina Maze
World Cup Skiing
Alpine skiing