Together, a Family Endures Assault, Evictions and Heartbreak

Abstract: In the Cordis family, the two daughters, Judy, 20, and Christina, 19, do most of the talking. Their mother, Patricia Cordis, 53, keeps a silence that masks a mountain of pain. Their brother, David, 15, sums up his place in the tightknit clan: “I don’t have a role; they overpower me,” he said of his sisters. Christina, the unofficial spokeswoman, says they merely try to shield David from the harsh realities of life. “We say: ‘All this we can handle,’ ” she said. “ ‘You still have time to be a kid. Don’t try to grow up as fast as we did.’ ” “All this” includes a death, evictions, a sexual assault, a mental breakdown and the surreal experience of living in a home that also served as the entrance to two neighbors’ apartments. Sitting around a table with their mother in an office of Brooklyn Community Services recently, the Cordis children recalled living in the Manhattanville housing projects in the early 2000s. “It wasn’t 6 o’clock dinners at the table or the best Christmas,” Christina said, “but we were family, and there was nothing getting between that.” Back then, their father, Moses Cordis, a retired security guard, was very much a part of the family. But things fell apart when he left their home because the city said his name was not on the lease and the family could lose the place, Christina said. Without their father’s presence, their mother’s gambling problem spiraled out of control, Christina said. In 2005, they were evicted because they could not pay rent. In 2006, they went to a shelter. Patricia Cordis, then a caretaker for the New York City Housing Authority, often took her children to her job at the Amsterdam Houses near Lincoln Center. It was there, in 2006, that Christina was raped by one of Ms. Cordis’s co-workers, she said. Her attacker was sentenced to one to three years. But the assault helped set off her mother’s mental decline, Christina said. At the mention of the attack, Patricia Cordis began to speak slowly, as if surfacing from a deep sleep. She said that after the assault, she was assigned to work in the same compactor area where the attack occurred. “Every time I go there to work, I also remember the incident,” she said quietly, in her native Guyanese lilt. She said she would emerge crying, saying she could not work there. “They used to laugh at me,” she said of her co-workers. The Housing Authority confirmed the past employment of Ms. Cordis and the man who Christina said had raped her, but when it came to Ms. Cordis’s account of her treatment, a spokeswoman for the agency, Sheila Stainback, said in an e-mail that it would not comment. Later in 2006, Mr. Cordis, 76, died of prostate cancer, and Ms. Cordis had a nervous breakdown. She was institutionalized for the first of “10 to 15 times,” said Christina, who never sought therapy herself after the attack but dropped out of high school in 2009 and had a son with a boyfriend. That year, the family moved to East New York, Brooklyn, and rented a first-floor unit in a house that was divided into apartments. Behind the Cordises’ apartment was a patio, and beyond the patio were two other apartments. The only way the tenants in the back could get in and out of their homes was through the Cordises’ place. The Cordises said they did not know that when they signed the lease. “We’d be in the living room, chilling, and they’d walk right past,” Christina said. “One of them smelled bad and pushed a cart usually filled with bottles.” The family withheld rent and was evicted in October 2010. The Cordises, along with Christina’s son, Moses Garcia, 2 1/2, now live in a shelter in Bushwick, Brooklyn. David stays with an aunt in Brownsville to be near his high school, Teachers Preparatory. With disability benefits, Christina’s wages from recent work and support from Moses’ father, the Cordises’ monthly income was about $1,300 late last year. They also get $618 a month in food stamps. Transportation is a major concern: they pay about $200 a month for taxi and car service — including for visits to the doctor — because Ms. Cordis gets anxiety attacks on buses and subways. Over the past year, Brooklyn Community Services , one of the seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, has given the family $200 for transportation. In May, the agency provided $110 for David’s graduation fees from Intermediate School 137 in Brooklyn, and in October, he got $140 to buy a high school uniform. Judy is eager to work, but for now she looks after her mother and her nephew. On Nov. 15, Christina started working at the Toys “R” Us in Times Square as a saleswoman, earning $8.50 an hour, but after the holidays, she was let go. She expects to get her G.E.D. in February and hopes to go to college. Her dream: New York University. David wants to be a professional basketball player. But Christina tells him, “Get yourself into a great school.” She says she knows he will do better in school than she did because as a teenager she had adult responsibilities. “I’ll do better because I’m smarter,” David retorted. Christina took it in stride.

Evictions
Brooklyn Community Services
New York Times Neediest Cases Fund
Philanthropy
Sex Crimes


Foreclosures Hit a Snag for Lenders

Abstract: A federal judge in Ohio has ruled against a longstanding foreclosure practice, potentially creating an obstacle for lenders trying to reclaim properties from troubled borrowers and raising questions about the legal standing of investors in mortgage securities pools. Judge Christopher A. Boyko of Federal District Court in Cleveland dismissed 14 foreclosure cases brought on behalf of mortgage investors, ruling that they had failed to prove that they owned the properties they were trying to seize. The pooling of home loans into securities has been practiced for decades and helped propel real estate prices in recent years as investors sought the higher yields that such mortgage trusts could provide. Some $6.5 trillion of securitized mortgage debt was outstanding at the end of 2006. But as foreclosures have surged, the complex structure and disparate ownership of mortgage securities have made it harder for borrowers to work out troubled loans, in part because they cannot identify who holds the mortgage notes, consumer advocates say. Now, the Ohio ruling indicates that the intricacies of the mortgage pools are starting to create problems for lenders as well. Lawyers for troubled homeowners are expected to seize upon the district judge’s opinion as a way to impede foreclosures across the country or force investors to settle with homeowners. And it may encourage judges in other courts to demand more documentation of ownership from lenders trying to foreclose. The ruling was issued Oct. 31 by Judge Boyko, and relates to 14 foreclosure cases brought by Deutsche Bank National Trust Company. The bank is trustee for securitization pools, issued as recently as June 2006, claiming to hold mortgages underlying the foreclosed properties. On Oct. 10, Judge Boyko, 53, ordered the lenders’ representative to file copies of loan assignments showing that the lender was indeed the owner of the note and mortgage on each property when the foreclosure was filed. But lawyers for Deutsche Bank supplied documents showing only an intent to convey the rights in the mortgages rather than proof of ownership as of the foreclosure date. Saying that Deutsche Bank’s arguments of legal standing fell woefully short, the judge wrote: “The institutions seem to adopt the attitude that since they have been doing this for so long, unchallenged, this practice equates with legal compliance. Finally put to the test, their weak legal arguments compel the court to stop them at the gate.” A spokesman for Deutsche Bank declined to comment on the ruling. But the inability of Deutsche Bank, as trustee for the pools, to produce proof of ownership at the time of the foreclosures will fuel borrowers’ concerns that they are being forced out of their homes by entities that may not even hold the underlying loans. “This is the miracle of not having securities mapped to the underlying loans,” said Josh Rosner, a specialist in mortgage securities at Graham-Fisher, an independent research firm in New York. “There is no industry repository for mortgage loans. I have heard of instances where the same loan is in two or three pools.” The process of putting together a mortgage pool begins when a home loan is originated by a bank or mortgage lender. That loan is typically sold to a Wall Street firm that pools it with thousands of others. Once a pool is packaged, it is sold to investors in different slices, based on risk. A trustee bank oversees the pool’s operations, ensuring that payments made by borrowers go to the appropriate investors. Lawyers who represent troubled borrowers complain that trustees overseeing home loan pools often do not produce proof, usually in the form of a mortgage note, that their investors own a foreclosed property. And a recent study of 1,733 foreclosures by Katherine M. Porter, an associate professor of law at the University of Iowa, found that 40 percent of the creditors foreclosing on borrowers did not show proof of ownership. Such proof gives a creditor standing to foreclose against a borrower and is required by law. “The big issue in all these cases, whether we are dealing with a bankruptcy court, a state court or a federal court, is who really owns the mortgage note, and that is allegedly what they securitized,” said O. Max Gardner III, a lawyer who represents borrowers in foreclosure in Shelby, N.C. “A collateral question is, has that mortgage note really been transferred and assigned to the securitization trust? If not, then they really don’t have standing. It’s Law School 101.” When a loan goes into a securitization, the mortgage note is not sent to the trust. Instead it shows up as a data transfer with the physical note being kept at a separate document repository company. Such practices keep the process fast and cheap. Because most foreclosures proceed without challenges from borrowers, few judges have forced trustees like Deutsche Bank and Bank of New York to prove ownership by producing a mortgage note in each case. Borrower advocates cheered Judge Boyko’s ruling. The plaintiff’s argument that “‘Judge, you just don’t understand how things work,’” the judge wrote, “reveals a condescending mindset and quasi-monopolistic system where financial institutions have traditionally controlled, and still control, the foreclosure process.” The cases could be filed again in state court, however. April Charney, a consumer lawyer at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid in Florida, who has been practicing foreclosure law since the late 1980s, said she rarely sees proof of ownership in cases involving securitization trusts. Her group has 30 to 50 such cases and not one of the lenders’ representatives has produced proof of ownership predating the foreclosure action. “We see a trend toward judges having enough of this trampling of the rules and procedure and care and reverence with which lawyers and litigants and participants in the judicial process should comply,” Ms. Charney said. “Hopefully this will convince everybody that the time to work out these home loans is now.”

Foreclosures
Mortgages
Federal District Courts
Boyko Christopher A


No Charge for Officer in ’07 Killing

Abstract: A grand jury decided not to indict a police officer who killed a driver in a road-rage confrontation last fall but left and did not report the shooting for 19 hours, the Manhattan district attorney said Thursday. The decision may indicate that the grand jury considered the shooting by the off-duty officer, Sean Sawyer, justified. According to the district attorney’s office, the shooting occurred during an argument after the second driver, Jayson Tirado, 25, reached toward the floor of his car, said, “Want to see my Ruger?” and then brought his arms up as if holding a gun. Officer Sawyer fired twice, hitting Mr. Tirado once, prosecutors said. Mr. Tirado managed to drive a few blocks, and Officer Sawyer has testified that he did not know that Mr. Tirado died until the next day. Officer Sawyer, 35, said in a telephone interview from his home on Staten Island that the grand jury’s decision was “bittersweet, because this young man did lose his life, and you can’t take that lightly.” The victim’s mother, Irene Tirado, said she would not accept the grand jury’s decision. Speaking in her home on the Lower East Side as she held a blue box with her son’s ashes, she said, “Something’s got to come of this,” adding, “He can’t go free.” Officer Sawyer, who has been suspended with pay, is likely to face departmental charges, according to his lawyer, Richard H. B. Murray. Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, declined to comment on the case in detail but said, “As in all cases where the department has deferred to the decision of a grand jury, the case would now be the subject of an administrative review.” In the past, officers whose acts are taken before a grand jury have suffered departmental penalties, ranging from loss of pay to dismissal, even when the courts take no action. Mr. Murray said the grand jury made “the appropriate decision based on the facts as my client recounted them and the friends of Mr. Tirado who were in the car.” “It was a justifiable shooting under unfortunate circumstances,” he added. The district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, said Officer Sawyer broke no law by leaving the scene, since the only possibly applicable law concerns vehicular accidents. “I’m sure that most people would be shocked to learn that it is not a crime for a police officer to leave the scene of a shooting without reporting it as soon as practicable,” Mr. Morgenthau said on Thursday. “I share their outrage. But that is the law. As a result of this case, we will be submitting legislation to change that.” Ronald L. Kuby, a lawyer for Mr. Tirado’s fiancée, Lisa Claudio, and his daughter, Jaylene, said he believed that because the defendant was a police officer, the district attorney’s office tried only half-heartedly to obtain an indictment. “When they don’t want an indictment, they claim it was the grand jury that made the decision,” Mr. Kuby said. The confrontation started early in the morning of Oct. 21, as Officer Sawyer was driving south on Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive after spending time at a bar in Woodside, Queens. Mr. Tirado was driving in the same direction after drinking with friends at a park in Upper Manhattan, the district attorney’s office said. Traffic was being diverted onto 116th Street from the highway because of an accident, prosecutors said, and Mr. Tirado, driving a purple Honda Civic, cut in front of Officer Sawyer’s yellow Nissan Xterra, causing the two men to exchange words as they left the highway. Officer Sawyer told the grand jury that Mr. Tirado started it by saying he was going to “knock him out,” prosecutors said. A friend who was in the car with Mr. Tirado testified that Officer Sawyer started the argument by telling Mr. Tirado he needed to learn how to drive and threatened to shoot him, prosecutors said. Officer Sawyer sped away and Mr. Tirado followed, prosecutors said, eventually catching up on First Avenue near 117th Street. After Mr. Tirado made his remark about a gun and brought his arms up, Officer Sawyer fired. One shot hit Mr. Tirado, who was able to drive three blocks before his car slowed and he slumped over, prosecutors said. He was pronounced dead at Harlem Hospital Center. No gun was found in the car he was driving. Mr. Murray said Officer Sawyer “reasonably believed Mr. Tirado was about to pull a gun.” “A regular citizen licensed to carry a gun would’ve been justified,” he added. “The fact that he was a police officer under these circumstances is totally irrelevant.” Mr. Kuby said Mr. Tirado’s actions did not provide a credible threat that he had a gun. “Of course, he got preferential treatment because he was a police officer,” Mr. Kuby said. “If a civilian had killed a police officer under those circumstances, that civilian would be looking for bail money right now.” A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, Barbara Thompson, declined to comment on Mr. Kuby’s assertion that Officer Sawyer was shown preferential treatment. Since grand jury proceedings are secret, it was not clear exactly what charges the district attorney’s office presented to the grand jury. In similar shooting cases, the first question addressed in a presentation to the grand jury is whether the shooting was justified. If the grand jury votes that the shooting is justified, then murder and assault charges cannot be sought. Officer Sawyer testified that he did not learn until the next day that Mr. Tirado had died. After hearing the news on television, he left home for a nearby police station, prosecutors said, and told a police sergeant he encountered on the street what had happened. Mr. Murray said his client had not reported the shooting immediately because he was in shock. “He was somewhat overwhelmed by it,” Mr. Murray said. “He did not believe initially he had struck anyone. It was just a moment of poor judgment.” That moment could cost Officer Sawyer his job. Both leaving the scene of a shooting and failing to report it are violations of the department’s Patrol Guide, its policy manual. Mr. Murray said he expected the department to file charges against Officer Sawyer, who had been assigned to the Queens narcotics bureau. “If he’s brought up on charges for failing to make a timely report, there’s not much of a defense to that, to be honest,” Mr. Murray said. “It’s clearly in violation of the Patrol Guide, but then the question is, what is the appropriate action for that? And there are a lot of factors that go into that determination.” Mr. Murray said his client should keep his job because of his overall good performance as a police officer. Officer Sawyer joined the force in 2004 and moved quickly through the undercover ranks. Officer Sawyer said he was sure the department would “make the right decision.” “It’s a great job and something I’ve wanted to do since I was 10 years old,” he said. Mr. Kuby said no decision had been made on whether to file a civil lawsuit. He said it was unlikely that the federal authorities would investigate civil rights charges because Officer Sawyer was not acting as a police officer at the time of the shooting, a necessary factor for a case brought under federal jurisdiction. On the Lower East Side on Thursday afternoon, the victim’s fiancée, Ms. Claudio, stood with 5-year-old Jaylene and pleaded for a different ending. “They let cops get away with a lot of things,” she said. “Just for letting Jayson die on the street, he should be indicted.”

Police
New York City
Sawyer Sean
Tirado Jayson
Decisions and Verdicts


Bosh Misses Heat’s Game After Birth of Daughter

Abstract: Chris Bosh was unavailable for the Miami Heat’s game in Toronto against the Raptors after the birth of his daughter, Dylan Skye Bosh. Shane Battier got the start instead. Bosh is expected to return when the Heat host the Los Angeles Clippers on Thursday.


A Musical Collaboration That’s Making Noise Beyond Bridgeport

Abstract: BRIDGEPORT SAINT BERNADETTE, the retro-flavored jazz-rock band that has been gaining the attention of national music critics, takes its name from a line spoken by its lead singer, Meredith DiMenna, in a high school production of “Grease”: “They call me Cha Cha because I’m the best dancer at St. Bernadette’s.” Though Ms. DiMenna’s Cha Cha days are long gone, Saint Bernadette, which is playing Bridgeport’s Seaside Park Arts Festival on Saturday, is fast becoming a star vehicle for her. “Of course I’d really love to be a rap star, but the demand is just not there,” joked Ms. DiMenna, 34, whose husband and bandmate, Keith Saunders, a k a Touch, produces several local hip-hop acts, including Rain and Jelk$. Ms. DiMenna met Mr. Saunders, 34, at Carriage House recording studio in Stamford in 2001 and they now share an apartment in an industrial-looking artists’ residence here. Saint Bernadette includes Mr. Saunders on guitar, Brian Anderson on bass, Kevin Saunders (Mr. Saunders’ brother) on drums, Brandy Ruelas on keyboard and Joe Novelli on slide guitar. The couple formed the band in the summer of 2006 when Ms. DiMenna was in a rush to put out an album that, unlike a string of earlier solo efforts, would capture her Grace Slick-meets-Edie Brickell vocals at their most haunting. The clock was ticking: “I found out I had to have my thyroid removed, and the thyroid is right next to the laryngeal nerve,” she explained. “If they hit that nerve when they’re operating, you can’t sing.” With days to go before the 2006 surgery, Mr. Saunders and Ms. DiMenna rallied. “We found this old ballroom in downtown Bridgeport, the Bijoux, and recorded the whole thing in three days,” said Ms. DiMenna, who came through the surgery unscathed. “It sounded great, but the circumstances made it easy for people to talk about, too,” she said. “That we did the whole thing in the ballroom, that we did this cool thing in this up-and-coming city — that made it a lot more interesting than if we were just some Connecticut band that had made some really good music.” When the CD, “In the Ballroom,” was released on Ms. DiMenna’s and Mr. Saunders’s label, Bridgeport-based Exotic Recordings, nearly a year later in October 2007, plaudits poured in. Harp magazine wrote that Ms. DiMenna had an old-school femme-fatale voice perfect for James Bond themes. (Not surprising, given that her mother, Lynn DiMenna, is a cabaret singer and the host of WVOF’s “At the Ritz!” radio show in Fairfield.) Paste magazine featured “In the Ballroom” as a recommended CD in its music store kiosks. South by Southwest , the annual music-industry conference in Austin, Tex, recruited the band to perform. Even Bridgeport, described by Mr. Saunders as a city that’s slow to embrace midtier talent, has taken notice. “There seems to be more of an appetite here for mainstream, popular music,” he said, referring to crowds that jam the Arena at Harbor Yard for shows like the American Idol tour and Bruce Springsteen. But hometown fans have started to venture to Cousin Larry’s Cafe in Danbury for Saint Bernadette shows, as well as to Manhattan clubs like Mercury Lounge, he said. And as a still-vital player in the city’s humming hip-hop scene, Mr. Saunders sees Bridgeport becoming more of a music hub: “People are starting to come out to restaurants to hear local music. There are so many good bands here, hip-hop and rock,” he said. Even Ms. DiMenna has her share of hip-hop cred; since 2006, she has given voice to the spoof MTV character Chunky Pam, a rotund, outspoken New Jersey rapper played by the actress Ashlie Atkinson who has racked up more than half a million YouTube views. “Everybody is really jealous of my identity as Chunky Pam,” said Ms. DiMenna, whose rap-star ambitions are a direct extension of the ongoing Pam gig. “I rap stuff like, ‘I’ve got a crew/We’re called the Fat Pack,’ where, instead of this Rat Pack group holding martinis, they’re holding chicken wings. “Rap is about bravado; it’s a song of the self. What white girl doesn’t want to be a rapper?” That said, she added: “I could go on being Pam forever. But Saint Bernadette is the best thing I’ve ever done.”


Giants Enter Bye Week Liking Where They Are, and Where They’re Going

Abstract: The final five minutes of the Giants’ 27-24 win over the Buffalo Bills might end up being recalled for changing the tenor of their season. Heading into their bye week, the Giants (4-2) have forged an air of toughness from a few close finishes and are, perhaps improbably, atop the N.F.C. East. This week should only help: the time off could benefit a cast of injured players, adding to a sense of optimism even as the Giants brace for the toughest part of their schedule . And the note of hopefulness that permeated the locker room Sunday was a direct result of the mettle the Giants displayed in the victory, which was their fourth straight game in which the decisive score came in the last nine minutes. “It was a huge win for us,” left guard David Diehl said in a conference call with reporters Monday. “If you lose that game going into the bye week, you have that bad taste your in mouth, and when it’s the bye week, there’s nothing you can do with it.” For the Giants, the drive that led to Lawrence Tynes’s winning field goal could have taken them one of two directions. And it nearly sent them into 14 days’ worth of hand-wringing and second-guessing, the less desirable of the outcomes. A crucial interception by Corey Webster gave the Giants possession with the score tied at 24-24 and 4 minutes 2 seconds remaining. From there, the galloping Ahmad Bradshaw helped lead the Giants 80 yards to the Bills’ 1. After Bradshaw was stopped for a 4-yard loss, Eli Manning made a throw that caused the crowd at MetLife Stadium to gasp. On third-and-goal from the 5, Manning’s attempt to pass to Mario Manningham inside was batted away by Leodis McKelvin. The play might have given fans flashbacks to a week earlier, when Seattle cornerback Brandon Browner intercepted Manning and ran 94 yards for a touchdown with about a minute to play, sealing a win for the Seahawks. Had McKelvin caught the pass, he might have been on his way to the end zone, too. Instead, the ball fell harmlessly to the turf, and Tynes made a 23-yard field goal to give the Giants a victory that featured drama similar to the team’s tense victories over Philadelphia and Arizona. “I think it’s very valuable,” linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka said of the team’s string of narrow wins. “Having come off a tough loss and looking into the bye week, especially with a lot of younger guys, to step up was big for us to put that kind of a game together.” The education of some of those younger players has been forced because of the injuries that have ravaged the Giants’ roster. But the team could get a number of injured players back after the bye week. Among those who could return after a week of rest: defensive end Justin Tuck , who has missed all but two games with neck and groin injuries; running back Brandon Jacobs, who has missed the past two games with an injured left knee; and right guard Chris Snee, who sat out Sunday’s game with a concussion. The rookie cornerback Prince Amukamara, who has been sidelined since breaking his foot in training camp, could make his debut shortly after the bye. And receiver Ramses Barden, out with an ankle injury, and lineman Adam Koets, recovering from knee surgery, may come off the physically-unable-to-perform list. “I think it’ll be a nice boost in the arm,” Coach Tom Coughlin said. “I don’t know exactly when the individuals will be cleared. But hopefully we’ll be in a position where they’ll be ready to go when we’re talking game week and we’re getting ready for our next opponent.” The Giants’ schedule after the bye week includes trips to play the New England Patriots, the San Francisco 49ers and the New Orleans Saints, and a visit from the undefeated Green Bay Packers. And that says nothing of their N.F.C. East opponents. For now, the Giants are in a position few would have expected in the preseason, after injuries ransacked the defense and free-agent defections stung the offense. Another gritty win has left them comfortable and confident, and they have a week off to enjoy it.

Football
New York Giants
Tynes Lawrence
Tuck Justin
Jacobs Brandon


A Year After US Airways Flight 1549, Many Promises to Keep

Abstract: It is something of an unwritten rule, with the exception of ham-fisted Hollywood scripts, that anyone who walks away from a plane crash is supposed to have made a deal with a higher power in exchange for that walk. It has been a year to the day since passengers on the Miracle on the Hudson, US Airways Flight 1549 , took just such a walk — not to mention a swim and a ride on a ferry — after their plane hit a flock of geese and lost power in both engines. They had had 90 or so long, long seconds of descent — ample time for grim reflection and if-I-live promises. But many passengers have said they thought only of preserving, and not improving, their lives as the plane glided toward the icy water. “I can confirm the prayer part,” said one passenger, Theresa Leahy. “But changing my life? No. I’m a very forward-looking person. I do believe things happen for a reason. I’m not looking for some great path to be revealed to me through all of this.” No, the vows toward self-improvement, of deals to do better in their lives, came later — hours, days or weeks later. Several passengers, looking back over the last 12 months, said their promises seem to be holding up — but not all of them, and not always as much as they had hoped. Vincent Spera, 40, started with a simple goal: carry less stuff. So far so good. He recently got a Kindle and does not even carry books on his frequent business trips anymore. Then, like many other parents on Flight 1549, he looked at his family — he has a 10-year-old daughter and a 7-year-old son — with an eye toward looking at them all a bit more. “Committing to specific things to do on a weekend or a day when I get home,” he explained. “Committing, almost in writing. Different games, practices. Making their tae kwon do practice — and that’s just practice. Forget about belt testing.” A sales manager for Pacific Life Insurance Company, he works hard to keep his job out of the house on weekends. “A year ago I might have said, ‘Well, I’m busy, I’ve got to prepare to leave Monday,’ ” he said. “Well, the heck with leaving Monday. I’ll prepare for that now. I’ll spend the weekend with you.” His vow is not as easy as he makes it sound, and he said it hurts when he sees himself backsliding. “Let’s say my son would say, ‘Hey, Dad, can we go throw the ball?’ ” Mr. Spera said. “But it’s Wednesday, and I’ve got a conference call in 30 minutes. Watching him walk out, you say, ‘Oh, man, I shouldn’t have done that.’ You almost need a rubber band. Had I gone out and thrown the ball for 15 minutes, I still would have had 15 minutes before the call. Those slippages can be disappointing. You look at their face.” Many passengers surely promised themselves that they would not take another minute around loved ones for granted. Maryanne Bruce, 49, a mutual fund investor in Charlotte , N.C., the flight’s destination, has taken that pledge a step further, and has made it a point to convey it every chance she gets, believing most people say nice things about others only after they die. “Why does everybody rush to go to a funeral?” she said. “It’s too late.” So as not to spook an old friend with sudden and unexpected outpouring of love, she has a little preamble to set it up. She last delivered it to a former colleague just last week, when they had lunch. Ms. Bruce had been her boss, and the woman had just received a promotion. “Since I’ve been in a crash, I try to do things a little differently,” Ms. Bruce explained. “I told her how much I enjoyed working with her and how proud I was that she got this new opportunity.” The woman was surprised. “She cried,” Ms. Bruce said. “She had always looked up to me and she didn’t realize how much I meant to her.” But Ms. Bruce, like everyone else, sometimes takes out her frustrations on those closest to her, and she continues to struggle with that, as she did after a recent road trip with her family when her husband ignored her directions and added three hours to the drive by relying on dashboard technology. “I’m a work in progress,” Ms. Bruce said. She and several other passengers shared their stories of relief and rebirth in a new book , “Brace for Impact: Miracle on the Hudson Survivors Share Their Stories of Near Death and Hope for New Life” (H.C.I. Books). One passenger, Barry Leonard, 56, the chief executive of a home fashion company, heard the now famous announcement from the cockpit — “Brace for impact” — and did not think about asking God for anything. Rather, he thought he was getting an answer. “My wife was getting tests back from a result for cancer ,” he said. The day before the flight, he prayed and asked God, “If you’re going to take anybody, take me,” he said. “When the plane was struck by the birds and it started to go down, I actually thought about that,” he said. “For some reason, he decided to react much quicker than I thought he would. “I remember, as the plane is going down, thinking about that and getting a smirk on my face. I was O.K. with that. I would take that deal for my wife or my children any day of the week.” Asked, in hindsight, what his fellow passengers might have thought about his “deal,” which could have inadvertently cost them their lives, he laughed. “We have a tendency of personalizing this for ourselves,” he admitted. His wife’s tests came back negative. James McDonald, 40, knew his way around what he called an “if I can get out of this, dear Lord” foxhole prayer. He was found to have a brain tumor in 2006, and beat the diagnosis. After cheating death a second time three years later, he concedes that his changes in his lifestyle were not extravagant. “I traveled a lot less in the last year than previous years,” Mr. McDonald, a software salesman from Charlotte, said. “But I’m not giving it all up to be an organic farmer or join the Peace Corps or anything noble. I’m just a guy.” A guy with three children under age 6. “In the past, I’ll work until 6 or 7 at night,” he said. “On innumerable occasions in the past year, I’ve pulled the plug at 4 and taken the kids out in the backyard to swing on the swing set.” Still, like his fellow passengers, he has found it’s not always easy. After all, he was speaking from a business trip in Fort Lauderdale , Fla. “Meetings end Thursday night,” he said. “I am averse to flying at night if I can avoid it, so I decided to stay until Friday. Now I’m beating myself up, because I’m not going to see my kids until Friday, and should I change my flight?” Brad Wentzell, 32, dried himself off after the crash, made it home to Charlotte, and thought about changes — “Being a better father, better husband” — for about a minute, until he realized he was already pretty darn good at those roles. “There’s only so much you can do,” he said. “You try to live a better life, but at the same token, I guess it depends on how bad a life you were living before.” He finds himself now eavesdropping on planes during the boarding process, as his fellow passengers gripe about the lack of overhead space or feeling rushed. “I kind of smile to myself,” he said. “Things could be a lot worse.”

US Airways
Airlines
NYC
Accidents and Safety
Hudson River


Syrian Official Says in Video He Is Joining Uprising

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — In a video statement denouncing what he called the “brutal” government of President Bashar al-Assad , a senior official in Syria ’s Oil Ministry announced on Thursday that he was switching to the opposition, in what appeared to be the highest-level defection of a government official since the start of the Syrian uprising nearly a year ago. British and American officials, who have supported the overthrow of Mr. Assad’s government, spoke about the defection of the deputy oil minister, Abdu Hussameldin, as a potentially significant event. Prominent Syrian opposition figures were more cautious about the development, with some saying it was unlikely to hurt the government seriously. “I don’t consider such a defection a strike for the regime,” said Samir Nachar, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council. “It’s more a political and moral message for loyalist figures and regime symbols who are still hesitant to declare their defection. It’s just the beginning.” Haytham Manna, a Syrian dissident based in Paris , said the defections of bureaucrats would not be enough to topple the government. “The most important thing is the army,” he said. The inability to attract high-level defectors has been a continuing source of consternation for Mr. Assad’s opponents and an enduring sign of the government’s resilience, despite its growing international isolation. While the Libyan opposition was able to attract high-level government and military defectors days after the uprising began there — and myriad other officials, from ambassadors to the foreign minister, as the conflict wore on — the Syrian opposition is still waiting for one well-known person to step down and denounce the government. Even so, a State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said the defection of Mr. Hussameldin, while not confirmed, could be significant and that he could be “privy to a lot of information about what Assad has really done to his country.” “He would be well placed, this particular individual, to understand the impact that the international sanctions that we, that the Europeans, that the Arab League , that other countries are now beginning to put on Syria,” she said. The video of Mr. Hussameldin, which first surfaced early Thursday in the Middle East , did not specify where or when it had been made, and he could not be reached to verify its authenticity. In it, Mr. Hussameldin, a deputy assistant to the minister of Oil and Mineral Resources, said, “I declare I am joining the people’s revolution, which will not and will never accept oppression and the brutality practiced by the regime.” Saying the country’s economy was about to collapse, Mr. Hussameldin condemned Russia and China , contending that they were “partners” in the government’s killing of civilians. “I don’t want to end my career in the service of this regime’s crimes,” he said. Eiad Shurbaji, a prominent Syrian dissident and journalist who said he had worked with Mr. Hussameldin in 2004 and 2005, when Mr. Shurbaji was head of the Oil Ministry’s media department, confirmed that Mr. Hussameldin was the man in the video. Mr. Shurbaji said that Mr. Hussameldin was a friend and had served as a deputy under at least four ministers. Mr. Shurbaji said that when he worked at the ministry, the two men had long conversations over coffee that mostly focused on Mr. Hussameldin’s complaints about corruption in the ministry. “He was a clean person,” said Mr. Shurbaji, who left Syria for the United States several months ago after he had been arrested and released by the authorities. “I am so pleased to hear about this defection. He became aware where things are heading in Syria.” The news of the defection came amid signs of other challenges to the government, which has seen the country’s currency plunge to roughly half the value that it had a year ago. Comments in Washington in recent days, most notably by Senator John McCain , the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, calling for aerial bombardment of Syria’s military, apparently contributed to a demand for dollars by nervous money traders in Syria. That demand put new pressure on the Syrian pound, which has been eroding for months. Although senior Obama administration officials said they opposed military intervention in Syria, they did not rule out the option. Quoting currency dealers in Damascus who were reached by telephone, Reuters reported that the Syrian pound had lost about 13 percent of its value in the past few days and was trading around 100 pounds to the dollar , compared with 47 pounds to the dollar last March, when the antigovernment uprising began. International diplomatic efforts in Syria on Thursday focused mainly on how to provide emergency relief to civilians in Homs and other cities that have been upended by the violence. Several parts of the country are bereft of food, water and medical supplies, activists said. Valerie Amos, the top United Nations relief official, who arrived in Syria on Wednesday to assess those needs, said she was overwhelmed by the destruction she saw from a monthlong military assault on Homs, an epicenter of armed resistance to Mr. Assad. She said she saw very few residents, particularly in the ravaged neighborhood of Baba Amr, and she wondered where they had gone. Ms. Amos was preparing to leave Syria as Kofi Annan , the new special envoy on Syria representing the United Nations and the Arab League, was scheduled to visit on Saturday. He told reporters in Cairo that he would urge Mr. Assad and his opponents to stop fighting and seek a political solution.


Russia Defeats Slovakia to Claim World Title

Abstract: Russia won the world championship by defeating Slovakia, 6-2, in Helsinki, Finland. Alexander Semin scored two goals and had an assist for Russia, which scored three times in the second period. Zdeno Chara of the Boston Bruins scored Slovakia’s goals.


A Chinese Company in India, Stumbling Over a Culture

Abstract: SHINDE, India — When a Chinese truck company wanted to open a factory in India, its president looked at sites that had a mountain in back and a river in front — especially auspicious locations in the traditional practice of feng shui. The company, Beiqi Foton Motor, found a seemingly ideal spot, securing 250 acres of farmland in this western Indian village. Foton wants another 1,250 acres nearby to build an industrial park for suppliers. But the mountain here is sacred to many Hindus. For at least 2,000 years, the cliffside caves have been home to generations of monks. One of the most revered Hindu saints is said to have attained a pure vision of his god during the 17th century while meditating in the highest cave overlooking what is now Foton’s site. The culture clash was immediate. Foton erected barbed-wire fences and hired uniformed guards to keep out trespassers. Cattle herders and Hindu pilgrims have repeatedly trampled the fences. The monks do not want a noisy neighbor. “In today’s life, spirituality and science are both important, and neither should deny the other,” Kailash Nemade, a monk, said during a pause from chanting religious poems. “But this factory should not come here, because it will ruin the spirituality of the mountain.” Chinese companies have embarked on ambitious overseas expansion efforts, snapping up land in dozens of countries to build factories, industrial parks, power plants and other operations. While the investments provide critical support for many economies, Chinese businesses are struggling to navigate complex cultural, political and competitive dynamics. The World According to China China’s enormous overseas spending has helped it displace the United States and Europe as the leading financial power in large parts of the developing world. China’s economic slowdown this year, along with a stock market plunge and a currency devaluation, have not deterred the country’s companies. Many have accelerated their global shifts as their home market becomes less attractive. But Chinese enterprises lack the experience of their Western counterparts, which have spent decades developing international operations. As Chinese companies have built their businesses largely at home, they haven’t had to address the same challenges. In China, companies with strong Communist Party connections can bulldoze communities and religious sites. The Chinese government bans independent labor unions. While strikes and other labor protests are becoming more common, they are quickly squelched by the government if they show signs of spreading. As Chinese companies now venture overseas, they are dealing with a wave of resistance. In Africa, workers at Chinese-run oil fields and copper mines have gone on strike over low pay and dangerous working conditions. The Myanmar government halted China’s construction of a hydroelectric dam there after protests over environmental damage and the displacement of villagers. And in Nicaragua, residents have resisted the planned resettlement of villages to make way for a canal proposed by a Chinese businessman. In India, Foton’s experience provides a look into the internal struggle that countries face. India desperately needs outside investment to support the 13 million young people entering its labor force every year and to begin relieving chronic unemployment in its countryside. Indian and Western factories within a few miles of Foton’s site have created thousands of jobs. Western companies have tried to tread more carefully in India, in some cases learning from past mistakes. They have worked closely with communities, explaining their projects to residents. The companies have typically sent teams of executives, often with overseas experience. Foton strongly defends its plans. The company says that its plant and supplier park will create a much-needed economic boost. “Because of these projects, the employment of thousands of people, even tens of thousands, will be accomplished,” said Zhao Jingguang, Foton’s executive vice president. But Foton keeps revising production plans and delaying construction. With the project stalled, the promised jobs have not materialized. Foton’s corporate style has also caused friction. It managed the project mainly from Beijing, sending executives to India for two-week visits. When Foton’s Indian managers needed to work with the main office, they sat through videoconferences that lasted hours, with Chinese executives often speaking at length in Chinese. Mr. Zhao denies that the company picked the location for its feng shui, which the Chinese government condemns as superstition. Still, he acknowledged that “there is a river, should be good feng shui.” But the land deal has been less than harmonious. Regulations mandate that factories be located at least 500 meters from temples, preventing construction on half of Foton’s site. A state agency also reserved land for a 15-yard-wide dirt access road to help pilgrims reach a footpath to the caves. Image “This factory should not come here, because it will ruin the spirituality of the mountain,” Kailash Nemade, a monk, center, said about Foton's arrival in Shinde. Credit Atul Loke for The New York Times Despite Foton’s efforts, many villagers and monks say the factory would still be too close. Pilgrims, who can number over 5,000 during religious festivals, would have only a half-acre site to pitch their tents. Sitting cross-legged in a pink-painted cave, the monks’ leader, a Hindu holy man named Vishwanath Maharaj, listened closely when asked for his view on Foton’s plans. But he merely gave a slight smile and shrugged his shoulders, preserving his 35-year vow of silence. The Land Grab When President Xi Jinping of China arrived in India a year ago for a visit, he was welcomed at each stop by gleaming military honor guards, including a row of turbaned cavalry lancers on horseback. Mr. Xi and his host, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, smiled as a succession of deputies and executives exchanged more than a dozen commercial and cultural agreements with one another. One of the agreements called for the creation of the supplier park, where Foton would rent out space to Chinese parts manufacturers. China and India both want to strengthen their economic ties, even as their militaries remain wary of each other. The $300 million Foton project, including the plant and the industrial park, is one of China’s largest investments in India. “Your vision cannot be too small,” Mr. Zhao said. “Nowadays, people say you must have an international vision.” Image Foton erected barbed-wire fences and hired uniformed guards to keep trespassers out of the farmland it acquired in the village of Shinde, India. Credit Atul Loke for The New York Times Following the lead of the United States, Japan, Europe and other big economies, Chinese companies are diversifying overseas to find new customers, markets and opportunities. A decade ago, China’s overseas purchases of companies, land, equipment and other physical assets totaled just $20 billion a year. Last year, China’s total was $120 billion. It trails only the United States, and American overseas investments have been heavily aimed at limiting taxes. Pune and its environs have long been a hub of foreign investment, tracing their industrial roots to a munitions factory built in 1869 under British rule. Big assembly plants now churn out Chevrolets, Mercedes, Mahindras and other cars. A Corning plant makes fiber-optic cables. A General Electric factory creates wind turbines. For Foton, India offered cheaper labor than its home country and a strong market for its products. India’s position between Southeast Asia and Africa provided a natural hub to supply other developing markets as well. Even without the supplier park, Foton has leased the biggest site in the area, 250 acres, for 95 years. Corning, G.E. and others nearby have less than 100 acres apiece for their factories. A Bridgestone tire factory occupies 185 acres. In Shinde, speculators have bid up the price of land, expecting that the state government will buy it and lease it to Foton. But many villagers are opposed to selling, since the deal would eliminate much of the farmland that is left. Image The state government paid landowners for their fields in Shinde and leased them to Foton, but sharecroppers got little or nothing. Chhaya Shinde, 18, had to drop out of school after her father, a millet farmer, lost much of his income. Credit Atul Loke for The New York Times Kaluram Kendale, who grows onions and raises buffaloes, does not want to sell. He is upset that the state government already forced him to sell five of the 12 acres that his family farmed for generations. “If I sell the land, it’s one-time money,” he said. “But my land is beautiful, it’s fertile, and it’s a permanent source of income for my family.” A Village Divided Chhaya Shinde, who grew up in a mud-walled sharecropper’s cabin with dirt floors, was a star student, learning to read and write Hindi and Marathi, the local tongue. Her father, unlike most in her impoverished hamlet, wanted his daughter to get an education. He paid $16 a year for Ms. Shinde to attend a school in a nearby village. She dreamed of becoming a social worker to help the elderly. Ms. Shinde’s education ended after Foton came to town. While landowners got paid for their fields, sharecroppers got nothing. Ms. Shinde’s father, a millet farmer, lost much of his income. Ms. Shinde had to drop out of school a year ago. “I had no money,” said a tearful Ms. Shinde, 18. “I was at home, so I had to be married off.” Since the arrival of Foton, the gulf between the rich and the poor here has widened. The Panmands, who owned the land where Ms. Shinde’s family farmed, sold half of their 58 acres for the Foton factory and two other factories. With the proceeds, they built a 10-bedroom villa with a large courtyard and a fish pond. “For people who are rich, it’s beneficial because they can buy a lot of things,” said Vijay Panmand, 28. “But for the poor, it is not good. Where will they work?” When Suresh Ghanwat sold land, he invested a portion of the money in a three-story apartment building, renting out the top and bottom floors. He also set up a concrete-block business, producing a daily profit of $80. But many families are like Ms. Shinde’s, trying to survive in cramped, dark cabins. Indian laws on land deals are fairly generous by developing-country standards, calling for compensation for tenant farmers and sharecroppers. But to qualify, they need to live on the land or record the arrangement in official logs. Ms. Shinde’s family did neither. Ms. Shinde, who wears a pair of simple barrettes to hold back her dark hair and slim golden bangles that encircle each wrist and ankle, now labors part time on one of the Panmand family’s remaining fields. “I wish they had never come here,” she said of Foton, wielding a hand-held scythe to cut pearl millet. “Those who were rich became richer, and the poor, poorer.” Image Many villagers, including Kaluram Kendale, are opposed to selling further land. He is upset that the state government already forced him to sell five of the 12 acres that his family farmed for generations. Credit Atul Loke for The New York Times Foton vs. the Civil Servant When Foton acquired the land here three years ago, young babul trees sprouted as soon as the farmers left. Today, Foton’s site has roughly 12,000 full-grown babul trees, a widely loathed plant with two-inch thorns. Their height, up to 10 feet, brings a tree preservation ordinance into play. When Foton eventually starts building, it will have to get permission from the forestry ministry to cut the trees down. As the babul trees flourish, Foton’s leadership has agonized over what to build, according to five former executives. The original plan called for welding, assembling and painting heavy-duty trucks. The plan shifted to building delivery trucks, and then to assembling sport utility vehicles and cars. In that time, Foton’s Indian operation has had four chairmen and at least three executive vice presidents. Mr. Zhao of Foton said the company hoped to start building the factory by early next year. The first vehicle most likely will not roll off the factory line until at least 2017. The supplier park looks less certain. Both the Beijing government and the New Delhi establishment regard the deal as important. But Foton did not enlist the support of local bureaucrats, and a civil servant in Mumbai could ultimately derail the project. The state land agency, the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation, has to approve the deal. And the agency’s chief executive, Bhushan Gagrani, has resisted, citing a dearth of farmland and earlier disputes with families like the Ghanwats. He wants to steer the supplier park farther inland, where unemployment is more acute and farmland abundantly available. But the alternative sites would require supply trucks to haul parts for several hours. Foton, Mr. Gagrani said, did not send anyone even to look at them. The Indian prime minister, accompanied by an entourage that included Mr. Gagrani, traveled to China in mid-May. Chinese officials pressed the case for the Foton supplier park again. But a deal may not be possible now. Foxconn, the Taiwanese contract manufacturer, has decided to build a mobile phone factory nearby. Foxconn negotiated its deal directly with the state government. “Any land left,” Mr. Gagrani said, “we are giving to Foxconn.”

India
China
Construction
Jobs
Foreign Investment
Beiqi Foton Motor Company
Land use
Agriculture


Illumina Creating Company to Develop Early-Stage Cancer Detection Test

Abstract: Some people see it as the holy grail in oncology — a simple blood test that can detect any kind of cancer at an early stage, when it is easiest to treat and possibly cure. Illumina , the world’s largest maker of DNA sequencing machines, said on Sunday that it was forming a company to attempt to develop such a test. The company, called Grail, has raised over $100 million, mostly from Illumina and the venture capital firm Arch Venture Partners, but also from Microsoft’s co-founder, Bill Gates, and Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon. Grail, which is majority-owned by Illumina, has also assembled a prominent roster of advisers. “If this pans out, this could be a real game changer,” said Dr. José Baselga, the physician in chief at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, who will head the company’s science advisory board. But some experts said that developing such a test would be a daunting task. Even Dr. Baselga seemed skeptical that a pan-cancer screening test could be ready by 2019, the goal of Illumina’s chief executive, Jay T. Flatley. Screening for particular types of cancer may be easier, Dr. Baselga said. The approach to be used takes advantage of the fact that DNA from cancerous cells can be found in the blood, albeit in minute amounts. The blood test, using intensive DNA sequencing, would look for patterns of telltale mutations. Many companies are developing similar tests, known as liquid biopsies, that use a blood sample to replace or supplement a conventional biopsy , in which a sample of the tumor is extracted from the body by needle or surgery. In just the last week, one company, Guardant Health, said it had raised nearly $100 million in its latest funding round while another, Exosome Diagnostics, said it had raised $60 million. But so far, liquid biopsies are mainly used for patients already known to have cancer. The tests help determine the particular mutations in the tumor to help select the best drugs to use. Or they are used to monitor whether treatment is effective or to check for a recurrence. Image Illumina’s chief executive, Jay T. Flatley. Detecting early-stage cancer, although an eventual goal of many liquid biopsy companies, is considered more difficult. Many cells, not just cancerous ones, shed DNA into the bloodstream, and many noncancerous cells have mutations that are also found in tumors. “As you age, you have mutations,” said Dr. Luis A. Diaz Jr., associate professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins and co-founder of three companies developing liquid biopsies. Polyps, moles and benign growths also have mutations that resemble those in tumors, he said. Moreover, Dr. Diaz said, current liquid biopsy technology is often not sensitive enough to pick up multiple mutations at once. Yet another issue is that some early-stage cancers will never actually cause harm. But once the cancers are found, patients are often treated and exposed to side effects from the treatments. This is an issue that has driven a debate about whether some forms of screening, like PSA testing for prostate cancer or mammography , are even advisable. “Patients ought to be hesitant until there is really good data that this actually helps people, and they should remember that it could harm people,” said Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, professor of medicine at Dartmouth and author of the book “Less Medicine, More Health.” One company, Pathway Genomics, last year began offering a liquid biopsy test aimed at detecting early-stage cancer. The Food and Drug Administration almost immediately challenged the company, saying the test needed regulatory approval. The agency, in a letter to the company in September, also said that it had not found “any published evidence that this test or any similar test has been clinically validated as a screening tool for the early detection of cancer.” Mr. Flatley said that Grail would overcome those problems by doing intensive DNA sequencing on 30,000 to 50,000 people over time, some of whom would have, or would develop, cancer, to figure out the mutation signatures indicating cancer. The screening test for each patient would also use the “deep,” or intensive, sequencing, to check for numerous mutations. Mr. Flatley said a screening test would have to cost no more than $1,000 to be economically feasible. Sequencing a whole human genome now costs about $1,000 for big users of Illumina’s sequencing machines. But costs are dropping and Grail, which does not have a chief executive yet, will get a special discount from Illumina. “None of our customers can afford to do this today — only Illumina can,” Mr. Flatley said in an interview. “We have a sense of urgency to make it work.”

Illumina
Cancer
DNA
Venture capital
Tumor
Medical test


In Asteroid’s Aftermath, a Sigh of Relief

Abstract: Using an eclectic mix of crowd-sourced video, information from Google Earth and data from nuclear test-ban sensors, scientists have gotten a much more accurate picture of the small asteroid that exploded near the Russian city of Chelyabinsk last month. But what is most clear is that while Chelyabinsk did not exactly dodge a bullet on Feb. 15, the city was fortunate to be only grazed by it. “The people of Chelyabinsk were very lucky,” Edward Lu, a former astronaut who now leads the B612 Foundation , a private initiative to detect similar asteroids, said at a Congressional hearing last week about the space threats. The Russian meteor — which, according to the latest estimates, was about 60 feet in diameter and came in undetected at roughly 42,000 miles an hour — was almost 15 miles high when it blew apart. There were no deaths, and most of the 1,500 injuries were from glass as windows shattered when a shock wave hit the city 88 seconds later. “If it had detonated closer to the ground, it would have been worse,” said Margaret Campbell-Brown, a member of a team of researchers at the University of Western Ontario who have analyzed the meteor’s orbit and characteristics of the blast. It also helped that the meteor was a stony one — what scientists call an ordinary chondrite — and not a rarer iron-nickel one, in which case it might have reached the ground before exploding. The blast was the largest fireball since the Tunguska event of 1908, and as videos from surveillance, car-mounted and cellphone cameras quickly began to be posted online, it became apparent that this explosion would be studied like no other, with scientists and amateur bloggers alike rushing to analyze the images. Image Crowd-sourced video, information from Google Earth and data from nuclear test-ban sensors provided information about a small asteroid that exploded last month near Chelyabinsk, Russia. Credit Images from Stefan Geens and Ogle Earth via Google Earth and YouTube (top and bottom rows); NASA (center); Jorge Zuluaga and Ignacio Ferrín via arXiv (middle row sides) The Tunguska event involved the detonation of what is generally thought to be a meteor over a remote part of central Siberia. That object may have entered the atmosphere at a steeper angle than the Chelyabinsk meteor — which came in at an angle of less than 20 degrees from horizontal — and exploded about five miles above the ground. The lower altitude, as well as the larger size of the Tunguska rock, help explain why it had a much greater impact, flattening trees over an area the size of metropolitan Washington. Still, the Canadian team has calculated that the energy released in the Chelyabinsk explosion was the equivalent of about 440 kilotons of TNT, or about 30 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. That calculation was made with the help of data from a network of acoustic sensors set up to monitor compliance with the treaty to ban nuclear weapons testing. There are about 45 of the sensors worldwide, detecting so-called infrasound at frequencies well below the range of human hearing. Thomas Mützelburg, a spokesman for the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization , which is based in Vienna, said the explosion was detected by more than 20 of the sensors, including one in Antarctica nearly 10,000 miles from Chelyabinsk. Low-frequency sounds do not dissipate easily, so some of the detectors picked up the explosion more than once as the sound circled the globe several times. With knowledge of the energy and information about how fast the meteor was traveling, researchers were then able to calculate the mass of the meteor, about 11,000 metric tons. “It’s all about the kinetic energy of that body,” which is related to its mass and velocity, said Richard P. Binzel, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The meteor has a certain amount of energy as it enters the atmosphere, Dr. Binzel said. As it hits the air, it starts to decelerate quickly, and then the stress differential between the superpressurized air in front and the less-pressurized air behind causes the rock to break apart violently. “All that kinetic energy has to be released,” he said. Only small fragments of the meteor reached the ground, and some have been brought to laboratories in the United States, including the Institute for Rock Magnetism at the University of Minnesota, where a Russian scientist is studying their magnetic properties. Video In a small Siberian village, residents are finding that rock fragments that rained down after Friday’s meteor over Russia have monetary worth. Like other teams, the Canadian researchers have used video images of the meteor’s east-to-west trail above Chelyabinsk to help calculate its trajectory and orbit. Since the explosion occurred in daylight, Dr. Campbell-Brown said they asked a colleague there to take night photographs from the same locations. By superimposing the images of the meteor’s path over the night images containing stars, the researchers should be able to plot the path even more accurately. For now, though, they and other teams, including one from the University of Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia, have established that the meteor originated in the inner part of the asteroid belt, in a regular, harmless orbit around the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. How it came to have an irregular Earth-crossing orbit is not known, but like other Earth crossers it was probably affected by the gravity of Jupiter or another planet at some point. It then circled the Sun every 18 months in a highly eccentric orbit — more than two and a half times the Earth-Sun distance at its farthest, close to the orbit of Venus at its nearest — before it smacked into the Earth’s atmosphere. Jorge Zuluaga, a member of the Colombian group, said he was inspired by work done soon after the event by Stefan Geens, a blogger in Stockholm. Mr. Geens used several videos — including one from a camera in Revolution Square in central Chelyabinsk — to triangulate the path. The video does not show the explosion directly, but rather the shadows of lampposts (and of a huge statue of Lenin), which moved like the shadow on a sundial as the fireball crossed the sky. Using Google Earth, it is easy to pinpoint the coordinates of the Revolution Square camera and others. Dr. Zuluaga said that his team, which included Mr. Geens as a co-author on its most recent paper, is working to improve its calculations by, among other things, learning about the optics of the various video cameras. “We are trying to understand the distortion we have,” he said. Dr. Zuluaga thinks that eventually it will be possible to reconstruct the rock’s orbit so precisely that researchers may be able to detect it retroactively, by poring over images from sky-surveying telescopes taken the last time it flew near the Earth. “Then we can assign it a name,” he said. “It doesn’t have one now, because it’s a dead asteroid.” In addition to helping scientists plot the meteor’s path, the videos that were posted online contributed to a surge in interest in projects to detect asteroids before they strike Earth. In an interview after his Congressional testimony, Dr. Lu said his foundation, which wants to put a privately financed telescope in space within five years, had seen an increase in donations since the explosion. “It made it more real to folks,” he said. “There’s nothing like a hundred YouTube videos to do that.”

Asteroid
Russia
Research
University of Western Ontario
University of Antioquia
Meteors and Meteorites
Chelyabinsk Russia
Outer space


Liberty Win in Overtime

Abstract: Essence Carson scored 21 points and Alex Montgomery scored 6 of her 13 points in overtime to help the Liberty beat the defending champion Indiana Fever, 75-68, in a matinee game in Newark. The Liberty earned their second straight overtime victory.

Essence Carson
Indiana Fever
Basketball
New York Liberty


Knicks Contain Blake Griffin, but Not Rest of Clippers

Abstract: Blake Griffin did not venture outside the laws of gravity. He did not bend minds or rims or emasculate any Knicks on Wednesday night in his Madison Square Garden debut. There were a few dunks here and there, but when Griffin was surrounded in the fourth quarter, it opened space for the mostly anonymous Randy Foye to decide the outcome. Foye scored 17 points in the fourth quarter, lifting the Los Angeles Clippers to a 116-108 victory. Griffin compiled 21 points (4 in the fourth) and 6 rebounds, along with five ordinary — by his elevated standards — dunks. For the Knicks, it was another evening when they spent the game buried under a large deficit and were forced to mount a too-little-too-late comeback. Amar’e Stoudemire (23 points) picked up his fourth foul with 9 minutes 38 seconds remaining in the third quarter and did not return until 10:18 of the fourth. He made up for lost time and scored 8 quick points after Toney Douglas chipped in 7 straight to bring the Knicks within 106-102. But Foye answered with jumper after jumper. Timofey Mozgov had 18 points and 6 rebounds for the Knicks and extracted some token, personal revenge after his first posterizing meeting against Griffin in November when Griffin dunked over him twice in a 44-point outburst. The Knicks (26-25) won that game, but their defense unraveled on Wednesday as the Clippers drove through gaping paths in the lane. Baron Davis picked them apart with 16 assists and 16 points, and DeAndre Jordan had 17 points and 8 rebounds. Danilo Gallinari had 21 points, but accumulated most from the free-throw line where he made all 14 attempts. He shot only 3 of 13 from the field.

Los Angeles Clippers
Griffin Blake
New York Knicks
Basketball


Alabama Gets Strict Immigration Law as Governor Relents

Abstract: Only a day after calling a special session and urging the Alabama Legislature to make more changes to the state’s immigration enforcement law than the modest ones they had passed, Gov. Robert Bentley on Friday signed the bill into law anyway. The governor’s decision was arguably the quickest of several reversals that have taken place in recent weeks as politicians in Montgomery, the capital, debated the need for changes to Alabama’s immigration enforcement law, considered the strictest and most sweeping in the country. The Legislature had seemed poised just weeks earlier to pass a bill that would make a number of changes to the original law that were intended to address complaints by business groups, local law enforcement officials and legal Alabama residents. But in the last few days of the session, which ended Wednesday, another version of the bill gained steam, one that preserved more of the original law and also added some controversial provisions, like one requiring the state to publish the name of every illegal immigrant who appears in court for a violation of state law. After that bill was passed, Governor Bentley added the immigration law to the list of topics lawmakers were to consider during a special session that began on Thursday. Declining to sign the bill that was passed, Mr. Bentley specifically recommended that they revisit the new provision concerning illegal immigrants in court and a provision from the original law, currently barred by a federal court, that required schools to ascertain the immigration status of enrolling students. Lawmakers immediately responded by filing bills nearly identical to the one that passed the day before, only now requiring the state to publish photographs of immigrants in court in addition to their names. Saying that he still had concerns about the law, Governor Bentley acknowledged in a statement that “the Legislature did not have the appetite for addressing further revisions at this time.”

Alabama
Illegal Immigrants
Immigration and Emigration
State Legislatures
Bentley Robert J
Law and Legislation


A.I.G. Reports a Loss and Increases Its Reserves

Abstract: The American International Group said on Friday that it lost about $11 billion last year, surprising analysts and showing the long-term risks inherent in the types of large, complex insurance coverage that the company once pioneered. To increase its reserves to pay future claims, the company set aside $2.7 billion on a pretax basis, accounting for a big portion of its loss. This indicates that A.I.G. is experiencing significantly larger claims than it expected when it sold the insurance, most of it more than seven years ago, long before its government rescue in late 2008. Fitch Ratings responded by putting the company’s property and casualty subsidiaries on a negative watch for their financial strength ratings. Financial strength ratings are indicators of an insurer’s ability to pay claims, and are separate from credit ratings. Shares of A.I.G. fell nearly 10 percent Friday, or $2.74, to close at $24.77. Officials of A.I.G. said claims were growing faster than reserves in just two lines of insurance and emphasized that it still had ample resources over all to pay claims. A.I.G.’s chief executive, Robert H. Benmosche, said in a statement that despite the losses, “Our team has made great progress during the year in executing our strategic restructuring plan.” The plan involves shrinking the sprawling company to a more manageable size, and generating money to repay the federal government. As a bright spot, Mr. Benmosche cited a rebound in the annuities sold by its life insurance companies. The insurer’s 2009 result was just a small fraction of the record-breaking loss of $100 billion that it reported for 2008, when its large derivatives portfolio nearly toppled the company, leading to the government bailout. Much of last year’s loss came from a fourth-quarter charge taken to reflect a restructuring of its bailout — a one-time charge that A.I.G. has been warning about for months. As part of a debt-for-equity swap with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the company removed part of its Fed loan as an asset on its balance sheet, producing a pretax charge of $5.2 billion. That charge was not connected with the company’s core insurance operations. But the increase in reserves shifts attention to the insurance business. When insurance companies find that the reserves that they have set aside to pay future claims are inadequate, they take money from earnings to add to their reserves. A.I.G. said it was advised to do so by its own actuaries and outside consultants after a thorough year-end review. The step seemed to vindicate, at least in part, a study last November by the Sanford C. Bernstein & Company research firm, which found a big shortfall in A.I.G.’s reserves for its property and casualty businesses. Those businesses have been renamed Chartis and are expected to be the backbone of the company after its revamping. The company said the additional reserves were all for Chartis. The Bernstein analyst, Todd R. Bault, had predicted that A.I.G. would have to “take some kind of a reserve charge” before it could offer shares of Chartis to investors, as it has said it would do to help raise money to pay back the government. He said the shortfall appeared to be in lines of insurance where claims develop slowly, over many years, like workers’ compensation. Two lines of business accounted for about 90 percent of the addition to reserves, according to Robert S. Schimek, Chartis’s chief financial officer. They are excess workers’ compensation and excess casualty insurance. When a company writes excess insurance, it offers to stand behind a primary insurer, and pay claims if something so serious happens that the primary insurance is exhausted. Such events are notoriously hard to predict, and Mr. Schimek called it “among the most complex lines of business to reserve for.” Mr. Schimek said that the company significantly reduced selling excess workers’ compensation in the early 2000s. But the claims from business already on its books will take years to reveal their true cost, he said. The company’s best estimate of the reserves needed for all property and casualty business is now about $63 billion, he said. The addition to the reserves and the restructuring of its federal rescue package caused A.I.G.’s fourth-quarter results to be well off those earlier in the year, when the company had even swung to quarterly profits. For the fourth quarter, A.I.G. lost $8.87 billion, or $65.71 a share. That compared with a loss of $61.66 billion, or $459 a share, in the period a year earlier. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had forecast a loss of just under $4 a share. In his statement, Mr. Benmosche said his team was “increasingly confident” over the long term and the sale of its other businesses was still on track. A.I.G. plans to sell shares in its biggest international life insurance company, the American International Assurance Company, on the Hong Kong stock exchange this year. It has also been negotiating the sale of another international life insurance company, known as Alico, to MetLife. The talks have proceeded slowly because of questions about a possible tax liability and who would pay it, according to people briefed on the negotiations. The first $25 billion in proceeds from those sales will be directed to repay the New York Fed.

American International Group
Company Reports


Brazil: Police Suspected in Killings of 18

Abstract: The authorities in São Paulo said Friday that they were investigating whether police officers were involved in a series of execution-style killings that left at least 18 people dead. The shootings were carried out by gunmen wearing balaclavas during a span of about three hours on Thursday night in the metropolitan area of São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, according to video images captured on security cameras and witness accounts. “When we get to the suspects, whether they are police or not, we’ll act quickly to detain them,” Alexandre de Moraes, the top security official in São Paulo State, told reporters. He said investigators were examining whether the killings were reprisals for the recent shooting deaths of two police officers. The killings added to concern among human rights groups over a spate of similar episodes in Brazil that have left dozens dead in other cities, including Manaus and Belém. Police officers killed at least 2,212 people in Brazil in 2013 , though the actual number of such killings around the country is thought to be much higher because some states do not report them.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Social Snacking Next to a Size Zero

Abstract: It is well established that we look to others for cues about how much food to eat. Break bread with a glutton, and you’ll most likely eat a big portion too. But a paper soon to be published in the Journal of Consumer Research explores the way that these choices are affected by the body type of the other person eating. Researchers at the University of British Columbia recruited female undergraduates to participate in a dummy study, wherein they watched a video clip while eating M&Ms they had scooped into a bowl. Before each subject took her M&Ms, a trained confederate, supposedly a fellow student also doing the experiment, first took 108 grams of M&Ms, or five heaping teaspoons, into a bowl of her own. The confederate was 5 feet, 2 inches tall; weighed 105 pounds; and wore a size zero. Half the time, she wore an elaborate “ obesity prosthesis” that made her appear to weigh about 180 pounds and required size 16 clothing. Students who saw the obese confederate took far fewer M&Ms than those who saw the thin confederate. In another experiment, the researchers found that the obese confederate’s portions always inspired less mimicry than those of the thin confederate, even when small. “If you see a thin person order a salad for dinner, it kind of reminds you, ‘If I’m going to look like that, I’d better get something very small,’ ” said Brent McFerran, an assistant professor at the university who was one of the paper’s authors. “If you see such a portion ordered by someone who’s very obese, you think, ‘well, they need to eat that little, they’re on a diet , but I’m not like that.’ ” ALEX MINDLIN


19 Hostages Rescued by Nigerian Forces

Abstract: LAGOS, Nigeria (Reuters) — Nigeria ’s military rescued 19 hostages held by militants in the Niger Delta oil region on Wednesday, security officials said. Among those freed were two Americans, two French citizens, two Indonesians and a Canadian who had been abducted from an oil rig, as well as eight Nigerians taken hostage from an Exxon Mobil platform and four others, two officials involved in the operation said. “It was a land, air and marine assault,” said one of the officials, who requested anonymity because of the delicate nature of the operation. President Goodluck Jonathan, who is the first Nigerian head of state from the Niger Delta, brokered an amnesty with militants in the region last year. The continued unrest risked undermining his credibility. The military task force responsible for security in the vast wetlands region, which is the heartland of the country’s oil and gas industry, said earlier that it was carrying out several operations simultaneously in the Niger Delta, but declined to provide details. A military spokesman declined to comment on the operation or to confirm whether the hostages had been freed, saying a statement would be issued Thursday.

Hostages
Nigeria
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Exxon Mobil Corp


New York Police Inspector Is Charged With Sexually Abusing Female Officer

Abstract: A deputy inspector with the New York Police Department was charged on Friday with sexually abusing a female officer he supervised as the commanding officer of a Bronx precinct, the authorities said. The inspector, Keith Walton, 44, was charged with sexual abuse, forcible touching, official misconduct and harassment in connection with an episode around 1 p.m. on Nov. 6 in his office at the 49th Precinct station house on Eastchester Road, according to court records. At the time, Inspector Walton was the commanding officer of the precinct, which covers the East Bronx neighborhoods of Allerton, Morris Park and Pelham Parkway, among others. Inspector Walton forcefully pulled the officer’s hair, tried to kiss her and placed his hands on her genitals over her clothing, the complaint states. He also grabbed her hand and twice placed it on his erect penis over his clothes, court records say. The woman repeatedly attempted to push his hand off her and told him to stop, according to the records. Louis C. La Pietra , the inspector’s lawyer, said in a statement that his client “vehemently denies these allegations and is looking forward to his day in court.” Inspector Walton could not be reached on Friday night, and Mr. La Pietra could not be reached for additional comment. The inspector was relieved of his gun and badge and placed on paid modified duty, J. Peter Donald, a department spokesman, said on Friday. Inspector Walton became commanding officer of the 49th Precinct in July . He was promoted to deputy inspector from captain in September, according to a post on Twitter by the precinct. A month before the promotion, he received attention for helping to raise money for a 7-year-old boy’s trip to Walt Disney World after the boy’s father killed himself and the boy’s mother, according to The Bronx Chronicle .


GTT ★

Abstract: Our quirky, discerning picks for the most interesting things to do around the state this week. HOUSTON Practical Zen Although Zen, or a state of mindfulness, is a Buddhist discipline, practicing it can benefit people of many faiths. In fact, the Houston Zen Center counts an Episcopal priest and a Baptist minister among its members seeking enlightenment through regular classes and group meditation. “I don’t want to get ‘woo woo’ here, because it’s not at all,” said a veteran member, Rick Mitchell. “Zen is very rational, but there is kind of a shared energy that you can just sometimes pick up on. Like this calm will descend on the room and there’s people sitting in silence for 30 or 40 minutes.” Visitors can try to attain this glorious stasis through the “Zen and Zen” meditation offering at the 25th anniversary of the Houston Zen Community, also the 10th anniversary of the Houston Zen Center. The center grew out of the community around the time that Gaelyn Godwin of the San Francisco Zen Center was appointed resident abbot and the group set up shop in the Heights neighborhood. A number of the panels, like “Zen and Housekeeping” and “Zen and Parenting,” offer practical ways to apply calm and insight to everyday life. Houston Zen Center, Sept. 29, 11 a.m., houstonzen.org. AUSTIN Out on a Limb Trees are a go-to medium for artists responding to nature’s wicked mood swings. After Hurricane Ike hit Galveston in 2008, ravaged trees were carved into profiles, like that of the early-20th-century boxer Jack Johnson; earlier this year, trees in both Houston and Galveston were painted blue to call attention to their devastation by hurricane and drought. This Sunday in Austin, a 35-foot-tall dead cedar elm painted white will appear on Lady Bird Lake for the “Thirst” exhibition, a memorial to the 300 million trees lost in the 2011 drought. The installation, which will be illuminated at night, is meant to look as if it were hovering above the water, its roots unable to grasp the nutrients below. There will be 14,000 “prayer flags” lining the surrounding trails. The Women & Their Work gallery commissioned the piece with funds from a $50,000 Artistic Innovation and Collaboration Grant from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. “The tree is a symbol of the drought,” Beili Liu, the lead artist, says in the promotional video. “It’s also the symbol of life and the hope to overcome the drought.” Lady Bird Lake, Sept. 29-Dec. 20, womenandtheirwork.org. DALLAS Big Guy Perhaps the only thing at the State Fair of Texas that can trump the far-out fried-food concoctions — this year turkey, stuffing and creamed corn will be rolled into a deep-fried ball — is the unveiling of the new Big Tex, the fair’s gigantic cowboy symbol. The old one, which was 52 feet tall, went up in flames last fall after an electrical short inside his size-70 boots. Details about the new Big Tex have been kept secret, and what has leaked has set off controversy. Apparently, State Fair officials will no longer employ Bill Bragg, the longtime voice of Big Tex, citing “creative differences” with him. Larry McMurtry, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Texas novelist, took to his blog, Flash & Filigree, to express annoyance. “What exactly is ‘creative’ about Big Tex waving his animatronic arm?” he asked. “Bill Bragg said his heart was broken, and thousands of his equally heartbroken fans are ready to give battle.” Then again, everyone could fall silent after the first taste of fried bubble gum. Fair Park, Sept. 27-Oct. 20, bigtex.com. GALVESTON Endless Shrimp Sometime after midnight, the 75 or so boats docked at Galveston’s Pier 19, known as the Mosquito Fleet because of their large protruding nets, set off in search of the Gulf shrimp that are served throughout the world. Visitors can taste them at their freshest, right out of the water, during the three-day Galveston Island Shrimp Festival. Imagine shrimp available in all the forms mentioned by Forrest Gump’s pal Bubba and then some, with five competition categories, including best shrimp burger. Various locations, Sept. 27-29, yagaspresents.com. SAN ANTONIO The Other Salsa The inaugural Alamo City Salsa Extravaganza, hosted by the Latin Dance Society at the University of Texas at San Antonio, may not help you perfect the “quarter-beat Copa in-and-out crossover double hand slip” move, but at least you can get close to your partner and burn a lot of calories. Hermann Sons Ballroom, Sept. 27 at 7 p.m. and 28 at 10 a.m., alamocitysalsa.com. AUSTIN Blood Ties At the Austin Film Society’s screening of “Machete Kills,” a sequel to the Austin filmmaker Robert Rodriguez’s “Machete,” the cast will be present, affording fans a glimpse of their fresh faces before those same fans are subjected to the actors’ blood-splattered images on screen. The Paramount Theater, Oct. 1, 7 p.m., austinfilm.org.

Houston
Austin
Dallas
San Antonio
Art
Seafood
State Fairs County Fairs


To Some in Gillibrand’s Old District, Her Evolution Is a Betrayal

Abstract: SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — Now that Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand represents all of New York rather than one conservative swath outside Albany, she has described her shift on hot-button issues like illegal immigration and gay marriage as a broadening of her position. But in the 20th Congressional District, which first sent Ms. Gillibrand to Washington in 2006, many are taking it as an abandonment of the principles that persuaded them to support a Democrat in this predominantly Republican area. “I don’t think it’s right when you say one thing and do something else,” said Michelle Boyea, 44, as she sat in her car after running errands around town. If you have a position, and this is what you feel, why would you change it just because you got a new job?” Ms. Boyea was unhappy with Ms. Gillibrand’s sudden change of heart, after being appointed to the Senate, on issues that had won her re-election in November. She liked the voting record that had earned Ms. Gillibrand a 100 percent rating by the National Rifle Association (Ms. Boyea’s husband owns several firearms). She approved of Ms. Gillibrand’s hard line against illegal immigration and her opposition to gay marriage. “I’m Catholic,” Ms. Boyea said. But Ms. Gillibrand has softened some of her positions in the weeks since her appointment. She declared her support for gay marriage, not merely civil unions. She assured Latinos and Asians in New York City that she would work to enact a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. And she let Senator Charles E. Schumer, who had enthusiastically supported her selection, reassure downstate voters that she would “evolve” on gun control, too. To which Ms. Boyea, one of many Republicans here who voted for Ms. Gillibrand in November, offered this rebuke: “I don’t believe you should say things just to make yourself sound better. Don’t follow. If you’re going to be a leader, then lead.” Across much of the 20th District, which wraps around Albany from Hudson to Glens Falls, reaches into both the Adirondacks and the Catskills and has 200,000 registered Republicans and 125,000 Democrats, Republicans said they liked Ms. Gillibrand’s fiscal conservatism, her work ethic, her frequent town meetings and her attention to farming. But they especially liked her independence from liberal ideology and from party leaders like Mr. Schumer and the State Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver. “I respected the fact that she came out and said she was going to back up the guns, and hunting,” said Keith Disbrow, 53, a retired correction officer. “I’m an avid hunter and fisherman. But as soon as Schumer and Silver got to her, I watched her change her tune. She was doing a decent job, but now that she’s going to be a statewide senator, I think they’re going to make her fold. She’s not going to have the Democratic Party’s backing if she doesn’t.” At a Home Depot store in Wilton, Ray and Tina Morris were buying light bulbs for the steakhouse they own. “She is a Democrat, but she had some conservative positions,” Mr. Morris said. “A little less government, a little less taxation. I was with her on the Second Amendment, for hunting. And on immigration. My feeling is we should probably stop people coming in, find out who’s who, and sort people out. “But we’re not sure where she’s going now,” Mr. Morris added. “I think she’s hanging around with the wrong people.” In nearby Greenfield, Chris Franco, 34, a mechanical engineer, said that although he had not voted for Ms. Gillibrand, he liked much of what she had said, including her previous stands on immigration. “It’s time to take a stand,” he said. “I’m a Navy veteran, and I didn’t fight for my country to have illegals coming here.” He also said he opposed gay marriage. “I’m completely against it,” he said. “What you do in your own home is up to you, but I’m not for taking it into the institution that God created between man and woman.” Mr. Franco was not pleased with Ms. Gillibrand’s recent statements, but he said he was not surprised. “She’s like all the politicians,” he said. “Either she was lying then, or she’s lying now. Either way, she’s lying.” Elizabeth Snyder, a pharmaceutical sales representative, was sitting in her car talking about the fiscal stimulus package pending in Congress, which she opposes. “I called Schumer and Gillibrand’s offices just this morning,” Ms. Snyder said. “I said, ‘I hope she sticks with her fiscal conservative roots up here in upstate New York. I hope she doesn’t let Senator Schumer roll over on her.’ ” Ms. Snyder, who had not voted for Ms. Gillibrand, said she was resigned to her political evolution. “I think we can count on her voting the party line, to prove to the naysayers on the left that she is their gal,” Ms. Snyder said. Not everyone was downbeat. Judd Storm, 56, a mill shop owner who owns rifles and was applying for a pistol permit, said Ms. Gillibrand had done a fine job delivering for upstate communities. And she still had his support, he said. “I don’t care who it is, they all say whatever it takes to win,” Mr. Storm said. “What are you going to do? But she helped the farmers out. She’s working hard to bring jobs. I learned to trust her.” In South Glens Falls, as the sun set on the steam-spewing paper plants that bracket the Hudson River, Gayle Osborn and her sister, Elaine Kerner, who both work at a local utility company, were drinking wine at a neighborhood bar. “I liked Kirsten because she’s very hands-on, she’s an upstater, she’s conscientious about the kinds of problems we face,” Ms. Osborn said. “I like her stands with the N.R.A. This is an area where that’s important to people. But she’s getting twisted. “I think a lot of that is because Schumer is behind her,” she added. “You get that good-old-boy thing going on, and they start changing their positions. But it’s like, ‘No! We voted for you because of your positions.’ ” Ms. Kerner put down her glass. “I want new, fresh people,” she said. “Gillibrand started out that way, and I see her flipping.” Ms. Osborn agreed, but added that she was proud to have another woman in the Senate: “I’m not dumping her yet.”

Senate
Marriages
Firearms
Gillibrand Kirsten E
Homosexuality


Maybe Canadians Have More Friends

Abstract: Canadian Internet users are far more likely than Americans to use a social networking Web site, according to September figures released by the research firm comScore. That number is consistent with Canadians’ generally heavy use of sophisticated Internet features like online video. “We joke that it’s because of those long winter nights up there,” said Andrew Lipsman, a senior analyst at comScore. But it also reflects the broader truth that the popularity of such Web sites, and which services are at the top, can vary sharply in neighboring countries. “One site may catch on in a certain country, and another may catch on elsewhere,” said Mr. Lipsman. “Often it’s whichever one gained prominence in the early phase of the game.” For example, Google ’s Orkut service, which has a third of Facebook’s traffic in the United States, is the dominant social networking site in both India and Brazil. ALEX MINDLIN

Social Networking (Internet)
Canada
Computers and the Internet
Google Inc


Rep. Bill Owens of New York to Retire From Congress

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Representative Bill Owens, a Democrat who has clung to his seat in a politically divided district along New York State’s Canadian border by narrowly winning his last two re-election fights, said on Tuesday that he would not run for a third full term. Mr. Owens is the latest Democrat whose decision to leave Congress may hurt his party’s chances of gaining in the House in November. Democrats have now lost several incumbents in districts where the party is vulnerable to Republican challenges — including one in Utah and one in North Carolina, both of which the Democrats are expected to lose. “Every time Democrats take a small step forward, it seems as if they are jolted a few steps back,” The Cook Political Report, which analyzes congressional races, said last week. It ranks Mr. Owens’s district as one of only 15 true tossup House districts. Democrats did not identify an immediate replacement candidate for Mr. Owens in New York’s 21st Congressional District but said they were confident they would only be helped by divisions in the Republican Party. “While Republicans are already fighting a bitter and divisive primary, I have no doubt that another common-sense Democrat will fill his shoes,” said Representative Steve Israel of New York, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Mr. Israel’s Republican counterpart, Representative Greg Walden of Oregon, predicted that Republicans would prevail in the 21st District. “Clearly, vulnerable Democrats would rather exit Congress voluntarily than be forced out by voters,” he said. Mr. Owens’s victory in a special election in 2009 represented a major coup for Democrats as they fought off forces from inside and outside New York that had begun to coalesce around the Tea Party banner. A bitter Republican intraparty feud between a moderate with establishment support, Dede Scozzafava , and a conservative with Tea Party backing, Douglas L. Hoffman, led Ms. Scozzafava to pull out and endorse Mr. Owens. He narrowly won re-election in 2010 and 2012. Mr. Owens, in a statement on Tuesday, did not say what his next career move would be.