Breaking Down the N.C.A.A. Tournament Upset

Abstract: An upset in the first round of the N.C.A.A tournament requires a perfect storm of good fortune. Six coaches who crafted indelible victories shared their magical ingredients. Luck of the Draw Steve Merfeld, the former Hampton coach, said that in 2001 his 15th-seeded team could not have succeeded offensively and defensively against any No. 2 seed except the one it faced, Iowa State. Hampton won, 58-57. George Mason Coach Jim Larranaga noted that his 11th-seeded Patriots made their surprising run to the 2006 Final Four against teams that rarely double-teamed post players, allowing his players Jai Lewis and Will Thomas to thrive in single coverage. The Patriots beat Michigan State, North Carolina, Wichita State and Connecticut. Coppin State Coach Fang Mitchell, whose 15th-seeded Eagles defeated second-seeded South Carolina by 78-65 in 1997, said his team’s matchup zone defense kept South Carolina’s quick guards from penetrating and forced them to settle for outside shots. Tom Brennan, who was coach of 13th-seeded Vermont in 2005 when it upset fourth-seeded Syracuse, 60-57 in overtime, said a team that pressed full court for 40 minutes could have overwhelmed Vermont. But Syracuse’s 2-3 zone, while effective, was not overly intimidating. THIS YEAR’S HOPE Cornell. The 14th-seeded Big Red is facing third-seeded Missouri, which loves to keep the pace frenetic. But so does the Big Red. Power Point Point guards are able to control the pace of a game more than any other player, so having a good one can go a long way. “You need a guy who can create and make big shots when the shot clock is running down,” Valparaiso Coach Homer Drew said. Drew’s son Bryce drained a buzzer-beating 3-pointer to send the 13th-seeded Crusaders past fourth-seeded Mississippi, 70-69, in the 1998 tournament. In 1993, 15th-seeded Santa Clara withstood second-seeded Arizona’s attack because it had two guards who could handle the ball and break a press. The point guard was John Woolery and the shooting guard was the freshman Steve Nash, who would become a two-time N.B.A. most valuable player. “We had two point guards on the floor,” said Dick Davey, Santa Clara’s former coach. THIS YEAR’S HOPE Ben Woodside, North Dakota State. A senior who averages 22.8 points and 6.3 assists a game, he scored 60 this season against Stephen F. Austin. Experience Pays Vermont and Valparaiso reached the tournament in each of the two years before they pulled off first-round upsets. Coaches said the experience gained during those games was invaluable. “By the third year, we really knew we were good,” Brennan said. “We really believed we were going to win a game in the tournament.” THIS YEAR’S HOPES Two double-digit seeds not only have tournament experience, they have won games: 12th-seeded Western Kentucky advanced to the Round of 16 last year, beating Drake and San Diego, and No. 11 Virginia Commonwealth upset Duke two seasons ago. An Unlikely Source An underdog’s star player is no secret. But sometimes, an unlikely hero emerges. Vermont guard Germain Mopa Njila entered the 2005 N.C.A.A tournament averaging 5 points a game, but against Syracuse he made 9 of 10 shots from the field and finished with 20. “Eight of the nine we didn’t want him to take,” Brennan said, laughing. “But the guy was on a roll. You need someone to be special.” THIS YEAR’S HOPE Cedric Jackson, Cleveland State. A senior transfer from St. John’s who averages 10.5 points, he has shown a knack for the big shot. Jackson made a 60-foot buzzer-beater to lead his team past Syracuse, 72-69, on Dec. 15. Touch From the Line Free throws are especially important for an underdog. In 1998, Valparaiso went 18 for 21 from the foul line in its win against Mississippi. “Especially in the last minute,” Drew said. “Free throws in the last minute is absolutely crucial.” THIS YEAR’S HOPE Utah State. The 11th-seeded Aggies are shooting 73.9 percent from the foul line, 30th in N.C.A.A. Division I. Keeping a Balance In 2006, George Mason ranked in the top 20 in field-goal percentage on offense and defense. “That balance is very important,” Larranaga said, “because you’re facing teams that are so good they can take things away.” THIS YEAR’S HOPE American. The Eagles rank 22nd in field-goal percentage on defense and 48th on offense. Withstanding a Run Higher-seeded teams inevitably go on a scoring run. The lower-seeded teams that do not crumble have a chance to advance. When George Mason faced third-seeded North Carolina in the second round in 2006, the Tar Heels burst to a 13-2 lead. But the Patriots pushed back, taking a 28-27 lead early in the second half. “The crowd went nuts,” Larranaga said. “I told my players: ‘You hear that? That’s for you.’ ” Vermont held a 6-point lead over Syracuse with less than 10 minutes left in regulation. Syracuse stormed back to take the lead, but Vermont held on to win. Brennan said, “One of the ways I settled our guys down was by saying, ‘Hey, we knew they were going to have a run — it was just a matter of stopping it.’ ” Don’t Change It might be tempting for a low-seeded team to install a strange defense at the last minute, hoping to catch its opponent off guard. But these coaches cautioned against that. “The most important thing is do what you’ve done all season,” Merfeld said. “If you change, you’re telling your team they’re not good enough to win.” Staying in the Game Everyone loves an underdog as long as the underdog keeps a game close. If the lower-seeded team falls too far behind, the fans can lose interest. “It was important for us to keep it close in the first half to show the crowd we were worth cheering for,” Coppin State’s Mitchell said. “The fans gave us a huge lift.” Be Ready for the Moment Teams that take advantage of opportunities and shift momentum to their side with one big play can have a chance. “Almost every play can become a momentum play,” Drew said. “Diving on the floor for a loose ball and getting it to a teammate for a fast break can give you momentum.”

NCAA Basketball Tournament (Men)
Basketball
Coaches and Managers
College Athletics


Football Team’s Success Detracts From Urgent Concerns at L.S.U.

Abstract: If Louisiana State wavers Saturday, my sister will sprinkle her television in pursuit of divine intervention. “Haven’t had to do it yet this year,” she said. “But I’m thinking, Alabama, I’m going to need the holy water.” As obsessed kids in Cajun country, we listened to L.S.U. games on Saturday nights, our sleeping bags set around the stereo as if it were a campfire. The first time I ventured from home, it was to see L.S.U. play Iowa State in the 1971 Sun Bowl in El Paso. My feet got so cold, I poured hot chocolate in my boots. My mother won season tickets in a raffle at the Dairy Queen in 1959, the season that Billy Cannon won the Heisman Trophy. The night Cannon made his famous punt return against Ole Miss and became everybody’s all-American, my father sat in a row just below Cannon’s wife at Tiger Stadium. In celebration, she tossed her earrings into the crowd. Decades later, when Cannon heard the story, he said, “I hope they weren’t good ones.” I am forever grateful to L.S.U. for the opportunities given to me and countless other rural children, many of us the first in our families to attend college or graduate. Yet, 35 years after leaving campus, I worry that football success has obscured L.S.U.’s escalating academic ambition and its struggle to maintain excellence over the past three years in the face of about $50 million in state appropriation cuts and the loss of a tenth of its faculty. “If we sent the football team out with only 10 players, how would people feel?” said John M. Hamilton, L.S.U.’s executive vice chancellor and provost. Let’s be clear: budget cuts are not the football team’s fault. L.S.U. has one of the few self-sustaining athletic departments. It does not use state tax dollars or student fees. Instead, the athletic department contributes 5 percent of its budget to the university annually — about $4.25 million at this point — and has spent millions to help finance a band hall and business school. There is nothing like Saturday nights at Tiger Stadium. Tailgating summons the best of Cajun culture — geniality, cooking and storytelling. And football success buoys a state sagging under the weight of poverty, educational lethargy and high rates of cancer, obesity and infant mortality . “When we’re No. 1, it’s usually for something bad,” an L.S.U. fan named Rudy Penton once told me. Yet I don’t buy the belief at L.S.U. and elsewhere that athletics serve as the front porch of a university, drawing attention to the academic kitchen. It is a hopeful sentiment, but I don’t see any supporting evidence. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. Football does not appear to provide an open window but rather a closed shade, reinforcing L.S.U.’s athletic standing while secluding its academic reputation, however inadvertently. In my travels, I cannot remember a single person outside of Louisiana knowing or mentioning that L.S.U. aspires to be as competitive in the classroom as on the football field. That is regretful. As noted by J. Gerald Kennedy, one of my former English professors, L.S.U. has gone from a sleepy, regional institution to a nationally prominent university since I was there. Four years running, L.S.U. has been named to the top tier of national universities by U.S. News & World Report. Currently, it ranks 128th over all and 63rd among public universities, an imprecise but encouraging measure that is far more heartening and far less known than its No. 1 ranking in the Bowl Championship Series standings. Since the 1980s, L.S.U. says, its six-year graduation rate has risen from 30-something percent to 62 percent for the overall student body — about the national average and a drastic increase matched only by the University of Maryland. L.S.U. also brags that its university press is the only one to produce Pulitzer Prizes in fiction and poetry. According to the N.C.A.A., the football team’s graduation rate is second in the Southeastern Conference to Vanderbilt’s. Still, there is a bread-and-circuses aspect about football that detracts from more urgent concerns at L.S.U. The faculty has gone three years without raises. State budget cuts have sliced through fat into muscle. An outcry would ensue if the football team was underfinanced. But gutting of the foreign language department generates only a comparative whisper. “In many ways, I greatly admire Les Miles as a coach,” said Professor Kennedy, a football season-ticket holder. “But it’s just discouraging that so many people in the state don’t see beyond the football team.” Admittedly, my family has indulged as much as most in the craziness of L.S.U. football. Once, in elementary school, a friend and I were drinking soda from a thermos at a game, the same kind of thermos from which our fathers were drinking bourbon. A confused man sitting next to us said, “You shouldn’t be giving alcohol to kids.” My father looked at us two boys, dressed in coats and ties and brimmed hats, and said, “These are not kids, these are midgets.” In the retelling, my father lectured the man about discrimination, and he never caught on, perhaps because his own thermos was filled with something stronger than was officially available at the concession stands. When I edited the student paper in 1976, we did an April Fool’s issue, superimposing Coach Charlie McClendon’s head onto the body of a reporter, who lounged on a tiger rug wearing nothing but a strategically placed pennant borrowed from the bookstore. McClendon’s gracious response: “Look at the size of that pennant!” The centerfold was a big hit (except in the bookstore, which refused to take back the pennant). If only people generated as much enthusiasm about L.S.U.’s academics. My sister doesn’t have enough holy water for that. “We’re starting to move toward very high-quality public institutions, like the Big Ten,” said Hamilton, the executive vice chancellor. “The question is, are we going to get there, or will there be budget cuts to the point where we end up being a mediocre school with good football?”

Football
Bowl Championship Series
Graduation Rates
Louisiana State University
College Athletics
Colleges and Universities
Budgets and Budgeting
Football (College)


Spain Adjusts Deficit-Reduction Target at European Summit

Abstract: BRUSSELS — Spain announced Friday that a deepening recession meant it would have to abandon its deficit-reduction targets for this year, and a European summit meeting that had looked to be surprisingly routine after two years of crisis ended with another test for the credibility of the euro zone. Coming on the day that 25 European leaders signed a new fiscal pact meant to further entrench budgetary discipline, the unexpected announcement from the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, illustrated how many European economies remained trapped between the need to repair their finances and an opposing pressure to restore economic growth. Although markets have calmed in recent weeks, largely because of the action of the European Central Bank, leaders gave differing verdicts on whether the crisis was behind them or whether the euro zone had just bought time to shore up the currency. Spain’s predicament is a reminder of how, in several countries, the austerity measures that evolved from the debt crisis have eroded confidence and reduced growth, making it harder to escape a downward spiral. Without discussing his budget plans in detail with fellow European leaders, Mr. Rajoy set himself a target for 2012 of a deficit equivalent to 5.8 percent of gross domestic product, arguing that this was more realistic than the original goal of 4.4 percent. Mr. Rajoy said he was acting within guidelines because Spain still intended to hit the European Union’s public deficit goal of 3 percent of G.D.P. in 2013. On Monday, the Spanish government said its budget deficit in 2011 was 8.5 percent, well above its 6 percent goal. “I’m backing austerity and aim to reduce the deficit from 8.5 percent to 5.8 percent; that’s significant austerity,” Mr. Rajoy said after a two-day summit meeting in Brussels ended Friday, adding that he did not consult other European leaders about a step he described as a “sovereign decision by Spain.” Although there was some support for Mr. Rajoy, on the grounds that he still intended to hit the 2013 target, his decision to make an announcement, rather than negotiating first with the bloc’s executive branch, the European Commission, was seen by some as a political misstep. In 2009, Spain was given an extra year to meet its targets, and the unilateral move now could make it more difficult for the commission, which polices budget policy, to show further leniency when countries like Germany are preaching strict adherence to the rules to preserve the euro . “Rajoy is still a bit inexperienced,” one official not authorized to discuss the issue said. “He thinks that most of the people around the table are political allies who will support him. But here you put your political considerations away because the dynamic that counts is that of national interests.” In recent months, governments within the European Union have negotiated what at least on paper amounts to an even tougher fiscal compact, promising to write into their national law a commitment to balanced budgets. They have also rewritten the euro zone rule book to make it more difficult for countries that break the rules to avoid financial sanctions. Since the old rules were repeatedly flouted, the credibility of this new system is now very much under scrutiny. So far, the commission has said it cannot rule on the Spanish case until it has more information about why the country will miss its deficit targets and until it has seen its next budget proposals. On Thursday, however, the commission took a tough line with the Netherlands, which also announced that its budget shortfall next year, at 4.5 percent of G.D.P., would miss its goal. That would match the expected outcome for this year, but is off its original target of 3 percent. The controversy over Spain’s public finances cast a shadow over a meeting that some leaders had tried to present as a return to normalcy after a series of frenzied meetings over the last two years, some of which ended around dawn. This time, leaders wrapped up their discussions, which began with dinner, by 11 p.m. on Thursday and concluded the Friday session by midday. When asked whether she was relieved to be at a summit meeting where she could be in bed by midnight, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany joked that she was “with you all until midnight,” referring to her late-night, off-the-record discussions with German journalists. “It could have been worse,” she added. Leaders struck a somewhat different tone over the extent to which they believed the crisis had abated after the injection of some 1 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) into euro zone banks in recent months by the European Central Bank, and a provisional agreement on a second package of loans for Greece worth 130 billion euros ($173 billion). “It is not a 100 percent guarantee,” President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said, “but we are in the process of coming out of the crisis.” Mrs. Merkel struck a more cautious note. “We are not living in ordinary times; we are in a fragile situation,” she said. Much progress has been made, she added, “but to say the situation is not all that dire would be wrong.” Final agreement on the Greek bailout is still required, and Germany itself is under pressure to agree to expand the euro zone bailout fund . One proposal, to run the temporary fund alongside its permanent 500 billion euro ($666 billion) replacement, had been scheduled for discussion at the meeting but was postponed. A decision on this idea, which could generate a total fund of about 700 billion euros ($933 billion), is now likely before the spring meeting of the Group of 20 finance ministers, according to one senior official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Spain
Germany
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
Euro (Currency)
European Financial Stability Facility


U.S. Album Sales Fell 9.5% in 2007

Abstract: LOS ANGELES (AP) — Album sales in the United States plunged 9.5 percent last year from 2006, as the recording industry had another weak year despite a 45 percent surge in the sale of digital tracks, according to figures released Thursday. A total of 500.5 million albums in the form of CDs, cassettes, LPs and other formats were purchased last year, down 15 percent from the unit total for 2006, said Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks point-of-purchase sales. The decline in album sales drops to 9.5 percent when sales of digital singles are counted as 10-track equivalent albums. The number of digital tracks sold, meanwhile, jumped 45 percent, to 844.2 million, compared with 588.2 million in 2006, with digital album sales accounting for 10 percent of total album purchases. Overall music purchases, including albums, singles, digital tracks and music videos, rose to 1.35 billion units, up 14 percent from 2006. Music sales during the last week of 2007 totaled 58.4 million units, the biggest sales week ever recorded by Nielsen SoundScan. The recording industry has experienced declines in CD album sales for years, in part because of the rise of online file-sharing, but also because consumers have spent more of their leisure dollars on other entertainment, like DVDs and video games. An artist with the Warner Music Group, Josh Groban, had the best-selling album, “Noël.” The album, a collection of Christmas songs, sold around 3.7 million copies. A soundtrack for Walt Disney’s “High School Musical” franchise was second with about 2.9 million units sold. The Eagles’ comeback album, “Long Road Out of Eden,” was third, selling about 2.6 million copies, despite being independently released and available for purchase only at Wal-Mart. The recording industry continued to benefit from mobile music, with mobile phone owners buying 220 million ring tones, the firm said.

Sales
Music
Recordings and Downloads (Audio)


In a Birthday Song for a Cherished Parrot, a Note of Melancholy

Abstract: At first glance, the parrot wearing a tiny paper party hat and gorging on a cake made of birdseed, as a jazz band played “Happy Birthday to You” in Washington Square Park on Saturday, looked like another example of charming New York City quirkiness. A closer look, though, revealed that the quirkiness came with an edge: The parrot, a white cockatoo named Lolo, was tattered, and the woman whose shoulder he preened on, Hellen Castiglione, struggled to smile. Her blond hair was perfectly done, but her sweater was smeared with dirt. Ms. Castiglione and Lolo are homeless, and frequently sleep in the Manhattan park, the bird nestled in her backpack for warmth, she said. He has become something of a fixture in Greenwich Village, and his admirers were throwing him a 21st birthday party. As the band played and Lolo groomed the bare spots beneath his wing, Ms. Castiglione, 52, spoke of battling mental illness, of Lolo’s distaste for sleeping on the subway when bad weather forces the two of them underground, and of how the bird, whom she has had since he was a chick, soothes her soul. “I’m able to study myself” because of Lolo, she said, as the cockatoo hung from her collar. Ms. Castiglione says she has bipolar disorder and manic depression, which makes her prone to bouts of rage. When Lolo nips her, she said, he triggers that emotion; his mere presence then helps to quell it. She explained: “I’d stop myself, and say, ‘Wait, it’s only a little bird. Be gentle. It’s just a little creature.’” She said she became homeless about three years ago after a fire destroyed her New Jersey home. That she lives on the streets surprised many of the 20 to 30 people who filtered in and out of the festivities — she keeps it secret. Those in attendance included other homeless people as well as animal lovers like Suzan Goren, who identified herself as a rehabilitator of urban wildlife and handed out business cards that read “Squirrel Whisperer,” and Erika Siegel, who came with her pet hedgehog, Meatball, wrapped in a pastel-blue blanket. Few of those on hand knew that Ms. Castiglione took showers at a gym, storing Lolo in a locker while she cleaned up and hoping he did not make his presence known with an errant “hello.” Nor did they know that she survived by charging tourists $5 apiece for a photo with Lolo on their shoulders. “It’s a good ray of light,” Ms. Castiglione said of the party. “I’ve just never had so many people around me.” The party was the idea of Joy Pape, 63, a nurse practitioner who lives near the park and became transfixed by Lolo, visiting him regularly and making his picture the background screen on her phone. Ms. Pape and her husband, Brian, 71, an architect, advertised the party in a local newspaper, the WestView News, and persuaded a birdseed company to provide the cake. “I know everything about this bird,” Ms. Pape said. “The only thing I don’t know is his favorite color.” “He doesn’t have a favorite color,” Ms. Castiglione said. After Lolo, with some help, had blown out the cake’s 21 candles, the band, Rasheed & the Jazz Collective , played an extended version of “Happy Birthday” while Ms. Castiglione swung Lolo around on her wrist. The band is a Washington Square Park mainstay, having played there for 18 years. That longevity is a point of pride for Doris Diether, 87, a veteran park advocate who has repeatedly fought city officials’ efforts to curb noise in the park, arguing that they stifled its creative spirit. She surveyed the group gathered to honor Lolo — some who live around the park, others who live in it — and suggested that it represented the Village’s dog-eared, beatnik days, before the neighborhood became glossy. “They were all part of the character of this park,” she said, gesturing to the small crowd. “And they are all that’s left.” As the party wound down, Fatima Morris, 46, who said she, too, was homeless, stopped to wish Lolo well. “He makes me smile because he lives day to day and I live day to day,” Ms. Morris said, scratching the cockatoo’s chin. Ms. Castiglione offered a half-smile. Though Lolo is indeed 21, few of those gathered on the birdseed-strewn benches knew that Oct. 15 was not actually his birthday. She said it was her late mother’s, making the event a reminder of both a beloved woman and a more secure time in Ms. Castiglione’s life. The band played on. She took the little red hat off Lolo’s head and smoothed down the crest of yellow feathers underneath.

Birthday
Birds
Homelessness
Washington Square Park Manhattan
Greenwich Village Manhattan


For N.F.L., Lockout Would Be a Risky Strategy

Abstract: The N.F.L. has never been more popular. Both conference championship games last Sunday drew more than 50 million viewers, or twice the number who tuned into the season debut of “ American Idol .” The N.F.L. has never generated more revenue — commanding $4 billion from its broadcast partners and raking in nearly $9 billion in 2010 for what is inarguably the nation’s favorite sport. When Green Bay meets Pittsburgh in Super Bowl XLV next Sunday in Arlington, Tex., it is a good bet that it will become the most-watched television show in American broadcast history, surpassing last year’s record 106.5 million viewers who tuned in to watch the New Orleans Saints win their first Super Bowl. But to hear N.F.L. officials describe it as a March 3 deadline approaches to reach a collective bargaining agreement with its players, the league stands on an economic precipice. “The time to address the adjustment in your business model is now, not when you are driving off the cliff,” said Jerry Jones , the Cowboys ’ owner, who built the $1.2 billion Cowboys Stadium that is hosting the Super Bowl. It is not only the first time in the history of the N.F.L.’s labor strife that owners are willing to lock out their players, but also the first time they have acknowledged that they made a bad deal. The owners are on the offensive because they want to reclaim 18 percent of the revenue — or $1 billion — that they currently share with the players, as well as lengthen the season to 18 games. To veterans of these sports labor battles, it is a risky strategy because the N.F.L must explain to fans who have paid exorbitant sums for personal seat licenses and season tickets why it is willing to risk closing down its business when business is good. “What happens in these disputes is that economic issues are presented as moral issues — good versus evil,” said Fay Vincent , a former commissioner of Major League Baseball who presided over the 1990 lockout. “But it’s hard to look at these circumstances and not see a case of owners’ wanting their cake and eating it, too.” The three previous N.F.L. work stoppages, in 1974, 1982 and 1987, were prompted by the players who went on strike. The arguments then were centered on free agency and were more theoretical, according to Michael MacCambridge, the author of “ America’s Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation .” “Since ’93, of course, one of the strengths of the N.F.L. was that there was very little posturing at all,” he said. “The ’93 deal had a poison pill for both sides, giving each an incentive to renew prior to the deal going into its last year, and so the deal was often renewed before the time it would become a public concern. “This was a very good thing for the league, because it’s spared the N.F.L. all of the self-inflicted wounds that the other leagues suffered over the same period.” In 2008, N.F.L. owners unanimously voted to opt out of the current deal and have been raising the specter of a lockout ever since. Lately, they have been taking the fight to their fans. Commissioner Roger Goodell warned five million N.F.L. fans in an e-mail that the economics “have changed dramatically” since the last contract was negotiated in 2006 and a “10 percent unemployment rate hurts us all.” Goodell has vowed to cut his salary to $1 if a settlement is not reached before the current deal expires. The league and the union have employed Twitter, Facebook and Web sites devoted to the possible lockout in an effort to win the hearts and minds of the fans. Just as the union has struggled to keep its 1,500 members in line, the N.F.L has struggled to keep the owners of its 32 teams on message. The Pittsburgh Steelers ’ Dan Rooney , one of the most respected owners in the league, said last week that he was against the management position that an 18-game regular season is necessary and that the extra revenue it would generate would facilitate a deal. “We play enough games,” said Rooney, the United States ambassador to Ireland . “You have a system that works. Why add them?” And for every hard-line owner like Jones or Jerry Richardson of the Carolina Panthers , there is an Arthur Blank, who owns the Atlanta Falcons and wants to build a stadium to replace the 18-year-old Georgia Dome . “It’s not a matter of it being sick,” Blank said of the N.F.L. “It’s a matter of creating a model that is a sustainable one for the long-term health of the industry and for the game for all the fans and stakeholders.” Currently, 10 N.F.L. stadiums are 100 percent publicly financed and 19 are at least 75 percent publicly financed. Next Sunday, however, a global audience will get a look at Cowboys Stadium, which is also commonly referred to as the Death Star. Owners see their own stadium as a way to improve their business and generate more revenue, but they risk alienating fans who see a monument to the N.F.L.’s boom times. Jeff Pash, an N.F.L. executive vice president and the lead negotiator, said that the league expected the fans to grasp what — up to this point at least — the union has not: “We have healthy revenue, but it’s not endless.” The Green Bay Packers are publicly held and the only franchise to release its financial records . The team’s operating profit fell 71 percent to $9.8 million in the year ended last March 31 from $34.2 million in the year ended March 31, 2007 — the start of the current collective bargaining agreement. Even though revenue rose 18 percent in that period to $257.9 million, player salaries and benefits swelled to $160.8 million from $110.7 million and reduced overall profit. “Every fan in America sits down every night and balances their budgets and expenses,” Pash said. “I think fans understand that the worst thing you can do is pretend that the problem doesn’t exist and kick the can down the road five years. We’re saying the status quo is not acceptable.” John Clark, a professor of sport management at Robert Morris University near Pittsburgh, says he is not certain average fans can equate how they manage their own budget with owners trying to claw savings out of an average N.F.L. franchise, which is now worth $1.02 billion, according to Forbes. “They have enumerated their points to people’s sense of running a more sound business,” Clark said. “When you talk about that much money, I’m not sure anyone is buying it.” Whether the N.F.L owners are grandstanding or indeed willing to sideline their golden goose remains to be seen. But for N.F.L. fans who are the engine of the league’s growth, their last look at an N.F.L. game for the foreseeable future might come next Sunday. Vincent, the former baseball commissioner, wondered if the risk they appear willing to take is truly worth it. “The N.F.L. is the premier sports business in the country by a large margin,” Vincent said. “There is only one way to go, and that is down. It’s pretty dangerous to tamper with fans’ passion and good will.”

Jerry Jones
Fay Vincent
Michael MacCambridge
Football
Roger Goodell
Dan Rooney
Jerry Richardson
John Clark
NFL Super Bowl Super Bowl 2015
National Football League Players Assn


An Unusual Appearance at the Big Clock

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Ohio Clock, in a long corridor of the Capitol, is where senators go to make news. Or, at least, to appear before the television cameras and microphones that routinely set up there. But on Tuesday afternoon, it was President Obama who planted himself there for the second of two stops to address reporters as he worked his way across Capitol Hill in search of votes for his economic recovery plan. It was, at least to those who watch the legislative branch, a curious sight. Presidents seldom travel to Capitol Hill. Protocol generally holds that Congressional leaders come to the White House — at the president’s invitation — when it comes time to negotiate legislation. But there Mr. Obama was, standing before an array of microphones without a presidential seal anywhere in sight. Had the hallway not been swarming with extra security, it might have seemed that Mr. Obama was back in the Senate. “Hello, everybody,” Mr. Obama said. “We had a very constructive meeting with the House members, members of the Republican Caucus. I’m a little bit late for my Senate colleagues.” A moment later, he corrected himself, saying, “My former Senate colleagues.” In his four years in the Senate, Mr. Obama seldom stood at the Ohio Clock, a fixture in the Capitol since 1817, which was once known as a good place for keeping whiskey. Does spending nearly three hours in the Capitol — and speaking to reporters first from the Capitol basement and then at the Ohio Clock — burnish Mr. Obama’s credentials as a president making good on his word to bridge the partisan divide? Or did it diminish his stature? The former, his advisers said, adding that the president would be back soon. “Stand by,” Ray LaHood, a longtime Republican congressman from Illinois who is the new transportation secretary, told reporters as they waited. “The big man is coming.”

Senate
Obama Barack
United States Politics and Government
Capitol Building (Washington DC)
Obama Stimulus Plan
House of Representatives


New York City F.C. and Orlando City S.C. Play to a Draw

Abstract: ORLANDO, Fla. — Midway through the first half of the first game in New York City F.C. history, David Villa, who had not received a pass he called for, clasped his hands to his face and tilted his head skyward. It was an obvious expression of frustration from a player used to a much higher level of soccer. The service he had grown accustomed to seeing from teammates in Spain was nonexistent, and the technical level of the game was several notches below his standards. His teammates fought hard, for sure, and things improved a little in the second half as Villa and Mix Diskerud, the other player of note on this embryonic team, combined for a fine inaugural goal to open their scoring ledger. But this is very much a work in progress. There was one other high-profile player on the field, too, the Brazilian playmaker Kaká of Orlando City S.C., who made his mark with his team down to 10 men and only a few minutes of stoppage time remaining. Trailing by a goal in the first minute of injury time, Kaká drove a 20-yard free kick off the chest of N.Y.C.F.C. defender Jeb Brovsky and into the back of the net to salvage a 1-1 draw in the Major League Soccer debut of both teams as a majority of the 62,510 mostly ecstatic fans who were listed in attendance roared their approval. With that, M.L.S. ushered in a new era with its latest expansion teams, as sloppy, bloody and disjointed as it was. Nerves, lost possession, ugly tackles and cards red and yellow characterized the day, along with the pulsating contribution of the purple-clad fans. “Both teams showed that they are not finished products,” N.Y.C.F.C. Coach Jason Kreis said. “It wasn’t one of the most beautiful soccer games in the world. But I’m thinking both teams are going to improve a lot as the season goes along.” N.Y.C.F.C., the offspring of Manchester City in England’s Premier League and of baseball’s Yankees, hopes to add Frank Lampard in July after his season with Manchester City ends. He would help considerably. Until then, the team will rely on its work rate and a high ceiling for development to remain competitive. “On the soccer side, we showed we need improvement,” Kreis said. Villa, as frustrated as he seemed to be at times with the errant passes, did not complain publicly. “In the second half we played well,” he said. “It’s a shame we didn’t get the win.” Orlando felt much the same way. “For sure, the result was not what we wanted, but everything tonight was incredible,” Kaká said through an interpreter, then added, “We have a lot to improve.” Image New York City F.C.’s Adam Nemec, left, and Orlando’s Cristian Higuita fighting for a header. The official attendance in Orlando was 62,510. Credit Alex Menendez/Getty Images In the league’s 20th season, the two teams made their debuts with much fanfare. The region around Orlando, starved for another major sports franchise to join the Magic of the N.B.A., is all-in with its new team. Fans bought all the tickets for seating days before the game, so an additional 2,000 standing-room-only tickets were put on sale Wednesday, and they were said to have sold out in 24 hours. It was the largest audience for a soccer game at the Citrus Bowl, including games at the 1994 World Cup, and the second-largest attendance for an inaugural game in M.L.S. Hours before the game, scalpers were asking $150 for tickets with face values of $60, and some fans arrived five hours before the 5:15 p.m. kickoff time, tailgating and playing games in the parking lots. Most were dressed in the new purple jerseys of Orlando, but not Carlos Villacreses, a 25-year-old I.T. worker, who went to four stores that were sold out of the shirts at affordable prices, he said, leaving him in a white T-shirt. But he planned to buy a purple shirt soon. “I’ve been waiting a long time to have a team of our own here,” he said. “I expect to come to every game.” Kevin Ma, a consultant from Toronto, said he spent so much time working in Orlando that he had bought season tickets for $400, and he said he was already a season-ticket holder for Toronto’s M.L.S. team. “Even though Toronto is my first team, I’m really enjoying this,” he said. “The fans are so into it.” When the game kicked off, it was the Orlando fans who had the best time, watching their team control the run of play and apply pressure behind Kaká, Kevin Molino and midfielder Cristian Higuita, son of the former Colombia goalkeeper René Higuita. The N.Y.C.F.C. defense was on its heels for much of the first half, disorganized and rattled at times, and goalkeeper Josh Saunders suffered the most. In the 15th minute, he sustained a contusion on his head when he became entangled with Orlando defender Seb Hines and collided with the goal post. He remained in the game after receiving medical attention, with blood seeping down the side of his head. According to M.L.S. Commissioner Don Garber, who spoke to reporters at halftime, Saunders went through the league’s concussion protocol, and Garber said he was satisfied that Saunders did not sustain a concussion. “I am happy with the protocol,” Garber said. “We take concussions seriously.” Garber was much happier to discuss the general events of the day, with the festive atmosphere before and during the game, and its implications of future profits. “The city has been painted purple for a week,” he said. “It’s a great way for us to kick off our 20th season. We have two new teams, three new television partners and a lot of great new players in the league. But boy, it gives you a bounce in your step after so many years to see 62,000 people here.”

David Villa
Soccer
Mix Diskerud
MLS
Kaka
New York City Football Club Soccer Team
Orlando City Soccer Team


Charter Lowers Quarterly Loss

Abstract: Charter Communications, the cable TV provider, said Monday it narrowed its first-quarter loss on a 13 percent increase in average revenue per user and a rise in subscribers. Charter, controlled by Paul G. Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, posted a loss of $358 million, or 97 cents a share, compared with a loss of $381 million, or $1.04 a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 9.8 percent, to $1.56 billion. The mean estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters was for a loss of 75 cents a share on revenue of $1.55 billion. Video unit revenue rose 2.4 percent, while digital-video customers rose 6.6 percent from a year earlier, to 3.02 million. The high-speed Internet segment made broad-based gains, while phone revenue and subscribers nearly doubled from a year earlier. Charter fell behind its peers in offering bundled TV, Internet and phone service because of its heavy debt load and liquidity issues. The company was also sidetracked by an accounting debacle that led to the resignation of senior management members.

Charter Communications Incorporated
Company Reports
Computers and the Internet
Allen Paul G


Griner Leads No. 1 Baylor Past Iowa State

Abstract: Brittney Griner scored the game’s first 5 points and finished with 23 as host Baylor led throughout in its first game since taking back the No. 1 spot, defeating 25th-ranked Iowa State, 67-39. Griner already had 11 points as Baylor (13-1, 3-0 Big 12) jumped out to a 16-3 lead in just over eight minutes. Nikki Moody had 11 points for Iowa State (11-2, 2-1). ¶ Kelly Faris scored 15 points and No. 3 Connecticut survived a sloppy outing to beat host Georgetown in a game that included 45 turnovers. Sugar Rodgers had 23 points for the Hoyas (10-5, 1-1), who have not beaten the Huskies since 1993.

Iowa State
Brittney Griner
College basketball
Baylor University


Afghanistan’s Supreme Court Sentences Journalist’s Killer

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s highest court has ruled that a police officer convicted of murdering an Associated Press photographer , Anja Niedringhaus, should serve 20 years in prison, according to documents sent to the country’s attorney general on Saturday. The final sentence for the officer, a commander named Naqibullah, who uses only one name, was reduced from the death sentence imposed by a lower court last year. Twenty years in prison is the maximum jail sentence in Afghanistan, said Zahid Safi, a lawyer for The A.P. who was briefed on the decision by the Supreme Court. The court’s ruling upholds an intermediate court’s decision. Mr. Naqibullah opened fire on Ms. Niedringhaus and an A.P. correspondent, Kathy Gannon, without warning on April 4, 2014, as the two were covering the first round of the country’s presidential election outside the city of Khost, in southeastern Afghanistan. Ms. Niedringhaus, 48, was a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer from Germany. Ms. Gannon, a senior correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan from Canada, was hit by six bullets and is recovering from her injuries. Kathleen Carroll, The A.P.’s executive editor, said, “We are glad the judicial system in Afghanistan has completed the case against their attacker and trust the sentence will be carried out in full. And as the sad anniversary approaches, our thoughts and care are with Anja’s family and with Kathy.” According to witnesses and court testimony, the two women were in the back seat of a car parked in a crowd of police officers and election officials at a police station when Mr. Naqibullah walked up to the vehicle, shouted “Allahu akbar,” and shot them with an assault rifle. He surrendered immediately. Witness and official accounts suggested that the shooting was not planned. Mr. Naqibullah, believed to be 26, was convicted of murder and treason. During his trial, he did not offer a reason for the shooting, but said at one point that he was “not a normal person.”

Afghanistan
Anja Niedringhaus
Murders and Homicides
News media,journalism


After Hurricane Sandy, Cleaning Up Sand and Returning It to Beaches

Abstract: Hurricane Sandy’s toll — already well-documented in power failures, forced evacuations and insurance losses — can also be measured in grains of sand. There were the mounds of it piled along avenues, raked into backyards and poured into basements, giving the landscape along the New York and New Jersey coasts a strangely Saharan quality in the storm’s wake. And now, it needs to be cleaned before it can be replaced on area beaches. That is a job so big that, in one stretch of the Rockaways alone, the process has been going on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for more than a month — truckload after truckload of sand being poured through super-size versions of children’s toy sifters. Image At Jacob Riis Park, nearly a dozen perfect cones of gleaming sand stood after being cleaned of debris from Hurricane Sandy. Credit Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times The Army Corps of Engineers, which is overseeing the operation on behalf of the city’s parks department, says that in the six weeks leading up to New Year’s Day, the crews in Queens had filtered 94,000 cubic yards of sand. That is enough, the agency estimated, to fill a football field to a depth four feet higher than the goal posts — or 44 feet — said Robert Schneider, an engineer technician for the corps. In the late afternoon light at Jacob Riis Park this week, front-end loaders took turns depositing lumpy, darkened sand into the top of the equipment. Giant vibrating screens shook the sand, extracting all manner of flotsam, which was then dumped unceremoniously from one conveyor belt, while clean, or relatively clean, sand fell to the ground from another belt. Surveying the most recent piles of rubbish bound for landfills, Philip Sparacio, the parks department’s deputy chief of operations in Queens, said: “You’ve got everything from boardwalk slats, trash cans, the trash that was in the trash cans, mailboxes, telephone poles, household debris. It’s a nice assortment.” Indeed, as one of two machines sifted a fresh infusion of soiled sand, an unseemly mixture plopped from the conveyor belt onto the parking lot: cinder blocks, a woman’s shoe, chunks of plywood, a six-foot piece of metal pipe, a plastic barrel, a store sign, a swatch of fabric and videotape from a VHS camera. “I can’t help but think that a lot of people’s lives are out on the curb here,” said George Kroenert, a parks official who is helping with the city’s recovery effort. Image A tractor operator put sand filled with all manner of flotsam into a sifter as part of the cleaning operation to restore the sand to the beaches in the Rockaways. Credit Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times The items plucked from the sand have been part of the 10,800 truckloads of debris that have rumbled out of the city to landfills in upstate New York and in Pennsylvania. Strung end to end, the tractor-trailers would extend from New York City to Albany. Across the lot at Jacob Riis Park, which is part of Gateway National Recreation Area, stood nearly a dozen perfect cones of gleaming sand, rising 20 feet. A herring gull perched at the top of one cone looked toward the ocean across Rockaway Beach Boulevard, which was calm on an unseasonably warm January day. The filtered sand looked downright silky compared with its earlier condition. But the machines, though impressive, are not perfect. A small piece of PVC tubing, three-eighths of an inch, for example, had managed to slip past the mesh screen, landing in the clean pile. “It gets 99 percent of the debris and 100 percent of anything over three inches,” Mr. Schneider explained. But were it not for the mechanized sand filters, which look like something out of “Star Wars,” the beaches might never achieve their pre-hurricane glow. “It would take a lot of people walking on the beach and picking up debris and putting it in a barrel,” Mr. Schneider said. Image In the last remaining pile of sand with debris, a training wheel for a child’s bicycle. Credit Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times The filtered sand is being trucked by the city to the beaches up and down the Rockaways, where two-thirds of the five-mile boardwalk was torn from its concrete stanchions during the storm. Until the boardwalk can be fully replaced, which could take a few years, parks workers are pouring piles of clean sand in between the stanchions, in part to create a bulwark against future storms. Whether there is enough to fill all the bays, or gaps, between the stanchions remains to be seen. Each bay measures about 20 feet wide. The sand cleaning is now winding down, with the Army Corps expecting to finish the Rockaways job by Monday. “We’re keeping our fingers crossed,” Mr. Kroenert said. “It’s an imperfect science, but when you eyeball it, it looks like we will have enough.” Over on Beach 97th Street, Tanyia Christian, a local resident, walked past the piles of freshly deposited sand on Shorefront Parkway and onto the beach, which was sprinkled with clam shells. She admired the progress of the sand replenishment, but worried about the missing boardwalk. “We’re not going to recover by summer,” she said glumly. Parks officials caution that coming back from Hurricane Sandy is a marathon, not a sprint, and they vow that summer will arrive, as always, in the Rockaways. “People will be able to use the beach,” Veronica White, the parks commissioner, said on a recent visit to the battered boardwalk. “It won’t be what it was or what it will be. But it will be pretty and safe.”

Hurricane Sandy
Beach
Sand and Gravel
Rockaway Peninsula Queens
NYC Parks and Recreation


A Mother Overcomes Obstacles by Focusing on Her Children

Abstract: Sitting in her mother’s lap in a day care classroom in Harlem in November, Savaun Jones, 3, grabbed a toy phone, dialed and held the wrong end to her ear. “I’m calling Daddy,” she said, smiling at her mother. The simple act of calling her father was not always so easy for the family. Every two weeks for a year, her mother, Latoya Farquharson, would leave her cleaning job and take an eight-hour overnight bus ride upstate to visit her boyfriend and the father of her children in prison. Since the couple started dating 12 years ago, Vasaun Jones, now 31, has been arrested 10 times, often on charges of drug possession and sales, according to police records. During that time, he has been in and out of jail nine times and shuffled to five state facilities, spending almost half of their relationship behind bars. “You drop your whole soul in a bucket when you get to Rikers,” Ms. Farquharson, 40, said of her visits to the jail complex, adding that she preferred the quality time spent at state prison to the short and demoralizing visits at Rikers. The couple built a family during his returns. By the end of his last prison stint, in 2014, their children, Lasaun, now 8, and Savaun were also taking the bus for visits to the Mid-State Correctional Facility in Oneida County. “It was important for them to get to know each other,” Ms. Farquharson said. “The way I saw it, Vasaun gave to his family when he was out, and so I was giving it back to him those years in jail.” But Ms. Farquharson struggled to make ends meet, earning $622 a month cleaning office buildings in Midtown Manhattan. Unable to afford its Bronx apartment, the family was evicted, and Ms. Farquharson and her children moved into a shelter in early 2013. Mr. Jones has remained out of jail for the past two and a half years. He has held several jobs since his release, including one cleaning commercial buildings. After Ms. Farquharson increased her annual wages to $19,000, the family could afford to move out of the shelter system in the fall of 2015 and into a two-bedroom apartment in the Bronx, where the family pays $233 a month in rent, with the rest covered by a city subsidy. But without money to buy furniture, the family shared a queen-size bed and ate meals sitting on the floor, the plates atop crates. Much of the rest of the apartment was bare. “We didn’t have anything, but we were so happy to have our own space,” Ms. Farquharson said. “We made it work.” Desiring a positive family environment for her children, she decided to contact the Children’s Aid Society, one of eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. It gave the family $1,800 to buy bunk beds for the children, as well as a kitchen table, dressers, a lamp and a television stand. “It made it home,” Ms. Farquharson said. Her own childhood has informed her hands-on mothering, she said. As a teenager and self-proclaimed “wild child,” Ms. Farquharson often fought peers in the streets, and when at 16 she had her eldest child, Quanelle, the city’s Administration for Children’s Services threatened to take her son away, she said. Her mother was granted custody. Years later and in a committed relationship with Mr. Jones, she hoped to have more children, but doctors said she would not be able to have any more because of a blockage in one of her fallopian tubes. Still, the couple kept trying. And in 2008, doctors told her that she had defied the odds. At first she did not believe she was pregnant, but later that year she gave birth to Lasaun, and four years after that she had Savaun. She considered the birth of her children — “my two miracles, walking” — a chance to raise the family she dreamed of as a child. The family often picnics at Central Park and plays board games around the new table. Both parents take care of the children between work shifts. Ms. Farquharson is also the secretary of the parents’ committee at Taft Day Care Center in East Harlem, where Savaun attends early childhood programs. Volunteering at the Children’s Aid Society’s education site, Ms. Farquharson participates in bake sales, attends weekly meetings and provides classroom help, providing her the chance to take the active role in her daughter’s life that she often wished from her own mother. Now, with her children’s future in mind, Ms. Farquharson, who has earned her high school equivalency diploma, is looking toward college, aiming for a higher-paying job and an opportunity to get off food stamps, while enabling her to fund her children’s college tuition. The family receives $68 in monthly food stamps and no other public assistance. “If I die tomorrow, the most important thing is that my children know I loved them unconditionally,” she said of refocusing her life on the interests of her children. “We only have one person in our lives — our mother — that can love us no matter what we’ve done. And I want to be as much a part of their lives while I’m here as I can.”

New York Times Neediest Cases Fund
Children's Aid Society


On Screen and in Class, Tales of Heroism

Abstract: FAIRFIELD TONY Andrade, an eighth-grade social studies teacher at Tomlinson Middle School, dimmed the lights as his students prepared to watch a documentary that was written, directed and filmed in Connecticut. On the screen, the students saw Frederick Douglass as a young slave, being taught the alphabet by a relative of his master. Just before viewing the documentary, Mr. Andrade had asked his students to create their own online graphic novels predicting what would happen next to the young Douglass. Two students, Kelly Zullinger, 14, and Elizabeth Waldvogel, 13, predicted the relative, Sophia Auld, would continue to teach him. John Grant, 13, wrote that she would stop after being admonished by her husband. The students were anxious to know who got it right. John was correct about what would happen to Douglass, who fled to freedom in 1838 and became a famed abolitionist. He did not continue his studies with Mrs. Auld and learned to read by asking white children every chance he got to teach him in exchange for food. Watching the film, the students heard the slave’s description of his escape. The film, part of the pilot for a series called “Young American Heroes,” produced by Docere Palace Studios based in South Norwalk, is packaged with a Web site and a middle-school curriculum that features primary source documents examining slavery. Frederick Douglass’s story is the first of a series the studio wants to produce for the Public Broadcasting System about Americans — with an emphasis on young — who made critical and heroic decisions. “There are two or three things we are trying to say,” said Chris Campbell, co-managing partner of Docere. “History isn’t about adults, it’s not dull, and kids aren’t helpless. There are kids throughout history that have had a tremendous impact. We want kids to feel empowered.” The film was financed by a $600,000 competitive grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It will be shown on Connecticut Public Television in February, Black History Month, and then made available to other PBS stations. Its middle-school curriculum, which was tested in Fairfield as well as at schools in Stamford and Waterbury, will be evaluated by educators to determine whether the students who watched the movie and used the Web materials had a better understanding of Douglass’s life than those who were taught using conventional methods. Mr. Andrade, a teacher for 38 years, said he was interested in the Douglass curriculum because it attracted students with different learning styles. “You are engaging lots of different creative aspects,” he said. “This has a lot of promise.” “It’s better than just learning through a text book,” said a student, Brent Warde, 13. “It incorporates so much new technology,” said Kelly Zullinger. “It’s a lot more interactive.” The scriptwriter, Tim Smith, the president of Docere Digital Studios, said youngsters often struggle to connect history to their own lives or decisions they have to make. “No one takes children seriously enough, so they are lost to history,” said Mr. Smith. “Adults write history, so they write about adults.” Mr. Douglass is portrayed by three actors, two of whom are Connecticut students. Malik Goethe, 6, of South Norwalk, a pupil at Jefferson Elementary School in Norwalk, plays Douglass as a young slave separated from his mother. Kendall Jones, a seventh grader from Hamden Middle School, portrays him as an older child trying to learn to read. Jamie Hector, who was featured in the HBO series “The Wire,” plays Douglass as a young man who escapes to New York from Baltimore. The studio, taking advantage of a 30 percent state tax credit, filmed the Douglass pilot at several historic locations in the state, including Mystic Seaport, the Dennison Homestead Museum, and the Essex Steam Train. Students at Roton Middle School in Norwalk got to be extras when the studio filmed classroom scenes there in the spring. “The resources here in Connecticut are amazing,” said Deborah Weingrad, an editorial director of the studio, and Mr. Campbell’s wife. “We’ve been able to find all we needed.”

Slavery
Public Television
Television
Douglass Frederick
Education and Schools
Documentary Films and Programs
Norwalk (Conn)


Space in Altria’s Former New York Headquarters for Rent

Abstract: When the Altria Group moved its headquarters from New York earlier this year, it left behind a distinctive piece of real estate. Altria, which was in the midst of a corporate restructuring, moved its headquarters to Richmond, Va., in March, and spun off Philip Morris International. On Monday, the Altria Group, which still owns Philip Morris USA, announced it would acquire UST for more than $10 billion in cash. Somewhat overlooked in all of this corporate churn has been the tobacco company’s grand, but also quirky, former headquarters building in New York, which is directly opposite the main entrance to Grand Central Terminal. In the early 1980s, the company built a lavish new skyscraper at 120 Park Avenue, at 42nd Street, which was initially called the Philip Morris Research Center and Headquarters. The building was designed in the International Style by the prominent New York architect Ulrich Franzen and constructed on the site of a low-rise building known as the Airlines Terminal Building.. Until this year, the company was the sole occupant of the 26-story, 650,000-square-foot tower. So, although the building sits at a highly visible crossroads in Midtown Manhattan, its interior largely remained a mystery in real estate and business circles. But that changed this summer, when brokers began leading tours through 120 Park Avenue, where 440,000 square feet of office space is available for rent. Altria and Philip Morris International have leased back the fifth through eighth floors, around 100,000 square feet altogether. The lower four floors hold the lobby and public spaces. Most floors from the ninth up are exactly as Altria left them, including the ceiling fans to accommodate smokers in the days before strict antismoking laws. “We bought a private building,” said Michael Alter, president of 120 Park Avenue Associates, a unit of Global Holdings, which is part of the family interests of Eyal Ofer, an Israeli-born, London-based global real estate investor. “This building did not belong to the office inventory in New York City, so we need to introduce it to the market.” Altria sold the building for $525 million in March, and the closing was timed to coincide with its corporate restructuring that month, according to an Altria spokesman, David Sutton. The company reported a pretax gain of $404 million from the sale of the building. Mr. Ofer has spent three decades building a global real estate investment portfolio. Mr. Alter said the potential tenants were expected to be primarily financial and law firms. He said he was confident that the building would command the rents being sought. Brokers say the asking annual rents are $110 to $120 a square foot for space up to the 21st floor and $130 to $150 a square foot for the former Altria executive suites on the 22nd to the 26th floors. Professionals say such rates are above average for Park Avenue office rents south of Grand Central Terminal. But 120 Park Avenue is an unusual building. Philip Morris executives enjoyed some perks that brokers say could appeal to hedge fund managers, corporate executives and law firm partners. For example, there is an executive parking garage four levels below ground with 15 private spaces. If a single large company rented all of the available floors in 120 Park Avenue, it would be given the use of this garage. If the building were split up among several tenants, each of them might get one or more spaces, said Paul N. Glickman, the vice chairman of Cushman & Wakefield, who is the leasing agent for this building. Three other levels below ground have more than 70,000 square feet combined. Altria used these floors for its company cafeteria, mailroom, copy center and other back-office functions. Mr. Glickman said new tenants might get to use some of this space for similar purposes, depending on how much space they leased. At the other extreme of the building, each of the executive offices on the 22nd floor has sliding glass doors to balconies wrapping around three sides of the building, which have sweeping views of the Chrysler building and south across Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Mr. Glickman said another appealing feature was the potential branding opportunity, which includes the possibility of adding a facade sign on the Park Avenue side of the building and a flag at the 41st Street entrance. The owners also plan to renovate the lobby, which is entered from 41st Street. The 42nd Street entrance leads to an open space, which must be reserved for public use, in accordance with zoning variances issued when 120 Park Avenue was built. Until recently, the Whitney Museum, of which Altria was a major supporter, had a gallery here. Mr. Glickman said a major corporate tenant might use this public space for a similar charitable purpose. Given the building’s prime location and its unusual features, real estate experts say that the $525 million price seems like a bargain. When the deal was struck, it was difficult to estimate the yield — or the capitalization rate, which is the measure of a building’s net operating income divided by the purchase price — because there were no tenants. But if the owner succeeds in leasing the 540,000 square feet, including the space already taken by the previous owners, at an average rent of $100 a square foot annually, the deal would yield around 8 percent, experts say. When Global Holdings signed the contract late last year, towers in New York were selling with yields around 5 percent. But price was not the only consideration for Altria. Bill Shanahan, the vice chairman at CB Richard Ellis, the real estate brokerage company that represented Altria in the sale of the building, said the company had a very narrow window of time to close the deal to coincide with its restructuring plan. “We picked the buyer who we knew was going to be able to close even if conditions changed,” Mr. Shanahan said.

Office Buildings and Commercial Properties


Juventus Serves Notice That It Belongs in Mix for the Title

Abstract: TURIN, Italy — Massimiliano Allegri does not have Carlo Ancelotti’s three Champions League titles or his seemingly limitless payroll or his squad of stars like Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale and Toni Kroos. What Allegri does have, at least for the moment, is a lead. Allegri’s Juventus, unlikely underdog in a Champions League semifinal round full of juggernauts, outplayed Ancelotti’s Real Madrid on Tuesday night, beating the Spanish giants by 2-1 in the first leg of their two-game aggregate series. The return match will be played next Wednesday in Madrid. On that night, Allegri may well have his players bundled together and trying to hang on. On Tuesday, however, he saw them move the ball with verve and energy as Carlos Tevez created the first goal and scored the second in a victory that has fans of the Old Lady, as Juventus is known, fantasizing about the club’s first European final appearance since 2003. “We played with extraordinary intensity,” Allegri said. “This is deserved.” For Ancelotti, the evening was disappointing but not a total loss. With away goals serving as a tiebreaker should aggregate scores end equal, Real Madrid’s goal here means that Los Blancos need only to win by 1-0 at home to advance and try to become the first club to win back-to-back Champions League titles. Given Madrid’s considerable firepower, that is hardly unreasonable. Still, Juventus appears primed and, more important, altogether unmoved by its stature among the final four teams. Indeed, if it seems strange that Juventus — winner of Italy’s top division 31 times, including this season — entered the semifinals as an outsider, one need only consider the résumés of the Champions League competition. Image Real Madrid's Dani Carvajal, right, battled Juventus's Arturo Vidal for the ball. Credit Marco Bertorello/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images On Wednesday, Bayern Munich, which has made shredding Germany’s Bundesliga a virtual rite of spring, will face Barcelona, which is in the Champions League semifinals for the eighth time in the past 10 seasons. Madrid is merely the defending champion, whom Juventus would have to beat first to get a shot at either of them. Still, there was no shiver or shake from Juventus on Tuesday. With a veteran core that includes the captain Gianluigi Buffon in goal, Giorgio Chiellini in defense, and Claudio Marchisio and Andrea Pirlo in the midfield, Juventus’s spine is as sturdy as it is grizzled. Paul Pogba, one of Europe’s fastest-rising stars, was absent because of injury, but Juventus played fearlessly from the first whistle. “They were intense at the back,” Real Madrid’s James Rodriguez said. “It’s a cliché to say Italian teams are strong in defense, but it’s true.” Ancelotti had seemed worried about his own team’s back line — “It’s clear we must defend better than we have been defending recently,” he said Monday — and those fears looked justified early on, as Tevez led a Juventus attack that peppered goalkeeper Iker Casillas’s penalty area. Tevez ultimately manufactured the opening goal after just eight minutes when he unleashed a rifled blast from the right side that Casillas deflected straight into Álvaro Morata’s path. Morata tapped the ball in, and the fans, who seemed to sense the importance of the home team’s early surge, erupted. Morata, however, did not. He used to play for Real Madrid, and despite the fact that Los Blancos seemed perfectly willing to cut him loose last year, he chose to follow the soccer tradition of not celebrating a goal scored against a former club. Ronaldo, on the other hand, has never played for Juventus and celebrated loudly and openly when he evened the score about 20 minutes later. Rodriguez created the goal with a delicious dinked lob across the face of the goal, and Ronaldo needed only head it into the net. Image Carlos Tevez (10) scoring for Juventus on a penalty kick against the diving goalkeeper Iker Casillas of Real Madrid. Credit Giuseppe Cacace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images It was Ronaldo’s 54th goal of the season and his 76th in Champions League competition, pushing him, for the moment, past Barcelona’s Lionel Messi as the tournament’s career scoring leader. That goal steadied Madrid, and it finished the first half in command, nearly going ahead when Isco’s header from a few yards out smashed off the crossbar. Buffon had no chance on the play, and, as the ball eventually was sent upfield, he wiped his brow in relief. His face was ashen. Ten minutes after halftime, though, Buffon’s expression was remarkably brighter. Morata and Tevez took off on a break into the Madrid half and Tevez, after a slinky shimmy, was taken down in the area by Dani Carvajal. Even from 100 yards away, Buffon knew how critical the ensuing penalty kick would be. Tevez did, too. Unruffled after a short delay, he unleashed a cannon of a penalty down the middle that was past Casillas before the goalkeeper had finished his helpless dive. Carvajal hung his head. Chiellini danced with glee. “We needed to show ourselves that we could compete at the top level,” Buffon said. Madrid pushed hard over the final 20 minutes, with Bale finally making an impact as part of a few decent breaks, but there was no reward. Kroos had a shot from long range that wasn’t close. A scramble in front of goal petered out. Sergio Ramos wasted a long cross. Finally, one last ball lofted in from the wing, and Buffon charged out to claim it. He clutched the ball to his chest for a few seconds before tossing it toward the referee as the final whistle blew. On the sideline, Allegri pumped his fist. He and Juventus had the victory they craved. With 90 minutes to go, the underdogs are ahead.

Massimiliano Allegri
Carlo Ancelotti
Cristiano Ronaldo
Real Madrid
Carlos Tevez
Soccer
UEFA Champions League
Juventus Soccer Team


Washington National Cathedral to Rid Windows of Confederate Battle Flag

Abstract: The Washington National Cathedral, one of the nation’s most prominent houses of worship, said on Wednesday that it would remove two images of the Confederate battle flag that have been part of its stained-glass windows for more than 60 years. The windows that depict the two flags were installed in 1953 to pay tribute to Gen. Stonewall Jackson and Gen. Robert E. Lee of the Confederate Army. The cathedral said in a statement that, while the flags will be removed shortly, the windows would remain to “serve as a catalyst for the difficult and uncomfortable conversations about race that we need to have on the road to racial justice.” “Instead of simply taking the windows down and going on with business as usual, the cathedral recognizes that, for now, they provide an opportunity for us to begin to write a new narrative on race and racial justice at the cathedral and perhaps for our nation,” the Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, the cathedral’s canon theologian, said in the statement . The two small areas of the bay of windows that depict the Confederate battle flag will be removed “as soon as we can do it,” said Mariann Edgar Budde, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and the interim dean of the cathedral. She said it would take no longer than a few weeks. Bishop Budde said that neither she nor the previous dean, the Very Rev. Gary Hall, knew that the windows contained images of the flag until last summer. It was a shock to learn they were there, the bishop said, and Father Hall called for their removal last year. “They were brought to our attention after the Charleston massacre last year,” Bishop Budde said, referring to the mass shooting by a white supremacist who killed nine people at a historically black church in South Carolina. “That’s when it resurfaced in our consciousness that the Confederate flag was part of our stained-glass artistry.” The cathedral is one of many prominent institutions in the United States that have grappled in recent years with the legacy of racism and slavery. The Confederate battle flag was removed from the grounds of the South Carolina Statehouse one month after the shooting, and Georgetown University, which is not far from the cathedral in the nation’s capital, has publicly struggled with the fact that it sold 272 slaves to southern plantation owners in 1838. The windows depicting General Lee and General Jackson were installed in the cathedral almost a century after the end of the Civil War with the financial assistance of the Daughters of the Confederacy and a donor from the North, Bishop Budde said. She described it as part of “the way the Civil War memory was encoded in American history in the 20th century.” “At the time it was publicized as a reconciliation effort between daughters of the North and the South — basically white people on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line — coming together to memorialize heroes from the Civil War in heroic, and in Lee’s case really mythic, language,” she said. The decision to remove the images was made after a six-month study by a five-person task force , the cathedral said. That group also recommended an audit of all art and iconography on the premises, it said. The cathedral will also devote “significant liturgical, artistic and programmatic resources” over the next two years to a series of discussions to decide whether the entire bay of windows should be removed. “Whatever the chapter’s ultimate decision, the windows will not live in the cathedral in the same way they have in the past,” the task force wrote in a report that was published online Wednesday.

Washington National Cathedral
Flags
American Civil War
church,churches
Washington DC


U.S. Ambassador to Leave Afghan Post

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — The leading American diplomat in Afghanistan, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker , will leave his post this summer for health reasons after serving here less than a year, a State Department official said Tuesday. His departure comes as the American-Afghan relationship enters a new stage, with thousands of American troops beginning to come home and the Afghans taking on increasing responsibility not only for security but also for governance. “Today, Ambassador Ryan Crocker confirmed to the Afghan government, U.S. Mission Afghanistan, and the ISAF community that he intends to depart his post for health reasons in midsummer, following the Kabul and Tokyo conferences,” said Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman. ISAF is the International Security Assistance Force. She said his 10-month tenure had included “enormous achievements” and cited the completion of a strategic partnership agreement between the countries as well as two memorandums of understanding, one on the transfer of responsibility of American detention operations here to the Afghans and the other on night raids carried out by Special Operations forces. Mr. Crocker, 62, a career Foreign Service officer, negotiated the latter two agreements despite months of crisis and deep tension over the issues, which had to be worked through as side deals before the partnership agreement could be signed on May 1. That broader deal charts a continuing relationship between the United States and Afghanistan for the next decade, and Afghans consider it a shield against the powerful and often hostile interests of its regional neighbors. Mr. Crocker had come out of retirement at the request of President Obama to lead the embassy at a time when the United States’ relationship with President Hamid Karzai was rocky, with Mr. Karzai often angry at the Americans — in part because of deep distrust fueled by leaked embassy cables that questioned his fitness as a partner. Mr. Crocker’s mandate was to rebuild the relationship, and he often said that people needed to appreciate that “President Karzai has the toughest job in the world and he has been doing it for 10 years.” The Afghan government credited Mr. Crocker with playing a crucial role in bringing the strategic partnership negotiations. “He was vital, absolutely vital to the successful completion of the strategic partnership between Afghanistan and the United States,” said Janan Mosazai, the spokesman for the Afghan Foreign Ministry. “He will be missed a lot.” Mr. Crocker’s decision — he had originally said he expected to serve for two years — comes as the other senior diplomat in the region, the American ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, has also said he will step down. His departure is likely to influence the timetable for appointing a new commander for the Afghanistan mission as well, Pentagon and military officials said. The current senior officer in Afghanistan, Gen. John R. Allen of the Marine Corps, is expected to be named commander of NATO forces, which would include leading the American military’s European Command. But officials said that the administration might not wish to change both the top diplomat and the top commander in Afghanistan at the same time, and so General Allen’s appointment might not come for months. In the meantime, the current NATO commander, Adm. James G. Stavridis, could be asked to extend his tour beyond its scheduled conclusion this year, officials said. American civilian government workers are set to begin leaving Afghanistan as well. Hundreds of civilian State Department employees serve in the provincial reconstruction teams in provinces as well as in local districts in some of the most dangerous areas of the country. Mr. Crocker occasionally mentioned that when he retired in 2009, after serving for two intense years in Iraq, he had not planned to return to public service and to posts where he could not bring his family. He had, however, unique qualifications for the Afghanistan post. He already knew Mr. Karzai from when he reopened and briefly led the American Embassy in Afghanistan in 2002. And he had a deep knowledge of Pakistan from his service there from 2004 to 2007, which gave him an appreciation of the two countries’ antagonistic but also deeply intertwined relationship. All that made him able to “open a new chapter” with the Afghan government, said Fawzia Koofi, a leading Afghan member of Parliament. Mr. Crocker worked particularly hard to build relationships with many individual Afghan leaders, a quality that is particularly important here, said several Afghan officials and politicians. “I know the U.S. diplomats’ positions are based on policy rather than individuals, but individuals make a difference, especially in Afghanistan,” said Ms. Koofi, one of the leading female political figures in the country. “Especially that is true now, because we are not sure what is going to happen next, especially on reconciliation and negotiations with Taliban.” “With a new person, yes, the U.S. government’s commitment doesn’t change, its highlighted points on sovereignty rights and women’s rights,” she said. “But there are a lot of questions, and getting things done here depends on how the diplomats make themselves influential.” It was not clear who would succeed Mr. Crocker. One likely candidate would be his deputy, James B. Cunningham, who came to Kabul with him when he took the post last summer. Mr. Cunningham has worked closely with Mr. Crocker on the intense strategic partnership negotiations and has been closely involved in all policy decisions in the embassy, according to Western and Afghan diplomats here.

Diplomatic Service Embassies and Consulates


Mayor Tony Mack of Trenton Is Found Guilty of Taking Bribes

Abstract: TRENTON — The mayor of New Jersey’s struggling capital city was convicted of bribery, fraud and extortion on Friday, joining a long list of the state’s mayors to have been found guilty of corruption in recent years. A federal jury found that the mayor of Trenton, Tony F. Mack, and his brother, Ralphiel, had participated in a scheme to take money in exchange for helping get approvals to develop a downtown parking garage. The deal was fictitious and part of a government investigation. The mayor, a Democrat, was convicted of official extortion conspiracy, attempted extortion, accepting bribes, mail fraud and wire fraud. Ralphiel Mack was convicted on the extortion and bribery counts but acquitted on the others. The jury deliberated for one full day before reaching its verdict. Jurors rejected the mayor’s defense that he was unaware of the nature of the building project and had never accepted any bribes. Neither defendant testified during the trial. Mr. Mack has remained in office since his arrest more than two years ago. Since 2000, mayors of the New Jersey communities of Asbury Park, Camden, Hamilton, Hoboken, Newark, Orange, Passaic, Paterson and Perth Amboy, among others, have been convicted or have pleaded guilty in corruption cases. In Mr. Mack’s case, prosecutors portrayed the mayor as an eager participant in the bribery scheme. They said he agreed to sell city-owned property assessed for well over $200,000 for just $100,000 in exchange for bribes. The authorities said that $54,000 was passed to Joseph A. Giorgianni — a Trenton restaurant owner and political deal maker known as Jo-Jo, who pleaded guilty in the case last year — in 2011 and 2012 and that an additional $65,000 was agreed on. He was to pass the money to the mayor, authorities said.

Mayor
Fraud
Tony F Mack
Bribery and Kickbacks
Extortion and Blackmail
Trenton NJ


At Taste of Crete, Beyond Ordinary Treats

Abstract: Esther Luongo Psarakis may have a familiar-sounding story, but what she sells at Taste of Crete , her specialty food company and store in Hillsborough, is out of the ordinary. The treats include a spread called tomato caviar ($8.99 for a 7.6-ounce jar) and a dessert topping of figs in honey with chocolate and ginger ($8.99 for 14.1 ounces). “I’m like the ‘Big Fat Greek Wedding’ in real life,” said Ms. Psarakis, 50. A New Jersey native of mostly Italian heritage, she embraced all things Greek, including speaking the language and converting to the Greek Orthodox religion, after meeting her future husband, Takis, who is from Crete; the couple married in 1988. The olive-oil cookies Ms. Psarakis makes are named for her mother-in-law, Evangelia, who still lives on Crete. They are similar to biscotti, contain no egg or dairy and come in three flavors: orange juice; white wine; and petimezi, a grape-must syrup (cookies are $3.49 for a five-ounce container). Ms. Psarakis opened a small retail shop in September as an extension of the online business and wholesale and importing company she started about five years ago. Her first product was extra-virgin olive oil; in addition to stocking boutique brands, she works with farmers on Crete who pick and press Koroneiki olives. She bottles the oil under the Taste of Crete label ($13.99 for 500 milliliters). Ms. Psarakis is developing a line of prepared Greek foods that she hopes to introduce to groceries soon. Some dishes like moussaka and pastitsio ($6.99 for a single serving, $11.99 for a portion for two), meanwhile, are available to pick up at the shop. Taste of Crete, 400 U.S. Highway 206 South, Hillsborough. Open Monday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (until 8 p.m. on Thursday); Sunday, noon to 4 p.m.; tasteofcrete.com ; (908) 685-2035.

New Jersey
Cooking and Cookbooks
Restaurants


Dogs’ Evidence Stands as Woman Waits in Jail

Abstract: COLDSPRING — At 16, Megan Winfrey dreamed of being a country music star. She was boy-crazy and rebellious, obsessively primping and monopolizing the family phone. “She ain’t got a bashful bone in her body,” said her father, Richard Winfrey Sr. At 23, she is serving the third year of a life sentence for a brutal murder that rocked this tiny East Texas town more than seven years ago. Ms. Winfrey; her brother, Richard Winfrey Jr.; and their father were charged with conspiring to murder and rob Murray Burr, a longtime custodial worker at the high school the Winfreys attended. Both the father and the son are free after courts decided the state’s key evidence — obtained in scent lineups — was not enough to establish their guilt. Ms. Winfrey remains in a Gatesville prison despite the fact that her conviction hinged largely on the same dog-sniffing evidence. “She’ll be an old lady before she’s eligible for parole, and Megan is innocent,” her father said. Mr. Burr’s body was found on the floor of his trailer home on Aug. 7, 2004. A 51-year-old janitor, who people remember as mentally slow but kind, Mr. Burr was stabbed 28 times in the head, neck and face. Streaks of blood outlined a trail across the house where the killer had dragged his body. Sheriff Lacy Rogers of San Jacinto County suspected the Winfreys almost immediately. A young neighbor said he had seen Ms. Winfrey and her brother at Mr. Burr’s house from time to time. They lived nearby, and their father had a decades-long criminal history that included assault and involuntary manslaughter. At the time of the murder, he had been out of prison on parole for nine days. “My past ain’t pretty,” Mr. Winfrey Sr. said. “But I ain’t no damn killer.” There was no eyewitness and no physical evidence linking the Winfreys to the crime scene. Investigators tested dozens of DNA samples, but they all excluded the Winfreys. Sheriff Rogers called on Deputy Keith A. Pikett, a self-trained canine handler from the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Department whose bloodhounds had a reputation for helping police link suspects to unsolved crimes. Less than a month after the murder, Deputy Pikett brought his dogs to Coldspring. They sniffed the clothes Mr. Burr wore when he was murdered. Then they smelled samples from Ms. Winfrey, her brother and other potential suspects. The dogs “alerted” to the smells of Ms. Winfrey and her brother, indicating their scent profiles matched what was on Mr. Burr’s clothes. Without other evidence, though, the case against the siblings was not strong enough, and the investigation came to a standstill. Two years later, when Mr. Winfrey Sr. was back in jail on unrelated charges, his cellmate told authorities that Mr. Winfrey had talked about guns being taken from Mr. Burr’s house. Only the perpetrator would have known about the guns, Sheriff Rogers said. “It wasn’t like I just picked them out of the clear blue sky,” the former sheriff said recently, referring to the Winfreys. Sheriff Rogers secured capital murder arrest warrants for all three of the Winfreys and brought back Deputy Pikett and his bloodhounds to do another scent lineup. This time the dogs — James Bond, Quincy and Clue — “alerted” on the father’s scent too. The father was the first to face trial in 2007, with a state-appointed lawyer. Deputy Pikett told the jury that his bloodhounds were nearly perfect performers. Quincy, he said, had returned only two wrong responses in 1,483 scent lineups. The jury found Mr. Winfrey guilty, and he was sentenced to 75 years in prison. Ms. Winfrey’s trial was next, and she was also represented by a state-appointed lawyer. On the stand, she admitted she knew Mr. Burr from school but insisted she had nothing to do with the murder. She was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. When Mr. Winfrey Jr. finally went to trial, after two and a half years in jail, the family had scraped together enough money to hire a private lawyer. And the case against the Winfreys began to come apart. Mr. Winfrey Jr.’s lawyers attacked the scent lineup evidence, telling the jury that Mr. Pikett’s testimony and his dog’s sniffing skills were a sham. They presented experts who discredited the deputy sheriff’s methods and said he had rigged dog scent lineups. The jury took just 13 minutes to acquit Mr. Winfrey Jr. At the same time, Deputy Pikett’s methods were coming under scrutiny in other cases. In 2006, when Deputy Pikett worked on a murder case in which his dogs implicated a retired police captain, defense experts lambasted his work. Steven Nicely, a professional dog trainer and police dog consultant, submitted an affidavit describing him as “an unprofessional charlatan.” The City of Houston was sued by two men who were wrongfully charged in a 2007 triple murder when Deputy Pikett’s dogs identified them. And Calvin Miller sued Deputy Pikett after the dogs identified him in a 2009 rape and robbery in West Texas. DNA evidence later exonerated Mr. Miller. Deputy Pikett declined to comment for this article, citing continuing litigation. Mr. Winfrey Sr. appealed his conviction in 2009, arguing that the evidence was insufficient. In a landmark ruling, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed. “We conclude that scent-discrimination lineups, when used alone or as primary evidence, are legally insufficient to support a conviction,” Justice Barbara Hervey wrote in the court’s opinion granting the acquittal. Mr. Winfrey Sr. left prison in October 2010. With the acquittals of her brother and her father and the court’s ruling on dog-scent evidence, Ms. Winfrey’s lawyers argue that she should also be acquitted, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has agreed to review her case. Ms. Winfrey’s lawyers would not make her available to comment for this article. District Attorney Richard Countiss of San Jacinto County filed a perfunctory brief opposing Ms. Winfrey’s appeal. In an interview with The Texas Tribune, he said he is not convinced that Ms. Winfrey’s brother and father were not involved in Mr. Burr’s murder. “The conclusion of their cases is not that they are innocent,” said Mr. Countiss, who was not the district attorney when the Winfreys were prosecuted. “It is that they were not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” And there was more circumstantial evidence against Ms. Winfrey than against her father and her brother, he said. Prosecutors also allege that she attempted to thwart DNA testing by shaving her pubic hair and that teachers at her school overheard her make threatening remarks about Mr. Burr and his money. “What I’ve seen so far is enough to support the jury’s decision,” Mr. Countiss said. Briefs have yet to be filed in Ms. Winfrey’s case, which may not be resolved for months. In the meantime, Ms. Winfrey’s father and her brother have said they will not truly feel free until she is. They are now living in North Dakota, working in the state’s booming natural gas industry and saving money to pay for Ms. Winfrey’s lawyers. “It ain’t nothing till we get her home,” Mr. Winfrey Sr. said. “I mean, there’s no rejoicing in anything.”

Dogs
Texas
Sentences (Criminal)
Decisions and Verdicts
Murders and Attempted Murders
Forensic Science


Protest March in Chokehold Case Is Moved From Verrazano Bridge to Staten Island

Abstract: The Rev. Al Sharpton, seeking to defuse political and logistical concerns over his proposal to lead a protest march across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, said on Saturday that the march against aggressive policing would instead be held on Staten Island, where a man died last month after an encounter with the police. Under the new plan, announced at the headquarters of Mr. Sharpton’s National Action Network in Harlem, the protesters will ride across the bridge on Aug. 23 in “justice caravans” of buses and cars, he said, and meet at the spot where Eric Garner, 43, fell to the ground after an officer put him in a chokehold. The New York City medical examiner ruled that Mr. Garner died from the chokehold and the compression of his chest. The protesters will then march to the office of the Staten Island district attorney, Daniel M. Donovan Jr., who is under escalating pressure from black leaders to bring charges against the officer, Daniel Pantaleo. The earlier plan, which would have most likely required blocking lanes of traffic onto Staten Island, had become overshadowed by safety concerns, the potential for a clash between the police and marchers, and confusion over which city agency was responsible for approving the march. Comparing the imbroglio to “surgeons arguing about how to do an operation and leaving the victim laying on the table,” Mr. Sharpton said that conversations with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio informed his decision to keep the focus on Mr. Garner by abandoning the plan to walk across the bridge. “Our goal is not to slow folks down,” he said, referring to the traffic concerns. “Our goal is to speed justice up.” Speaking beside Mr. Sharpton, Mr. Garner’s widow, Esaw Garner, echoed that sentiment, asking for attention to remain fixed on her husband’s death. They will march, she said, “so that people don’t forget that Eric was a victim of brutality, homicide.”

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Greece May Not Be as Rich as It Looks

Abstract: GREECE is a relatively wealthy country, or so the numbers seem to show. Per-capita income is more than $30,000 — about three-quarters of the level of Germany. What the income figures fail to capture is the relative weakness of Greece’s economic institutions. They are not remotely comparable to those of Germany and some of the other better-governed European Union nations, which is why the current crisis will prove so difficult to solve. The European Union and the International Monetary Fund have arranged an enormous bailout package. But it’s not just a question of supplying funds to get Greece through a short-term debt crisis, or of cutting the Greek government budget, but of whether the country will see much future economic growth. Consider the World Bank’s Doing Business index , which ranks countries according to the quality of their regulatory environment for commerce. The index places Greece at No. 109, just behind Egypt, Ethiopia and Lebanon. For the category of “high-income countries,” the Greek ranking is next to last, ahead of only Equatorial Guinea, which has oil wealth. Greece has a malfunctioning fiscal system in which the shadow economy is estimated to be roughly 20 to 30 percent of the reported economy and tax evasion may run at $30 billion a year. Simply collecting taxes that are legally due would help bring Greece’s books into balance, yet even this simple remedy does not appear imminent. As the World Bank index suggests, government funds are often spent hindering production rather than supporting it. This gives one clue as to why the numbers make Greece appear richer than it really is. Public expenditures are valued at cost when measuring gross domestic product, yet arguably the quality of Greek public services, per dollar spent, is less than that of many wealthy countries. Nonetheless Greece plunged ahead and joined the euro zone in 2001, with some unfortunate consequences. Greece’s currency, the euro, is stronger than that of its neighbor Turkey, so a holiday in Greece is more expensive. Yet Greece has not built enough luxury hotels, golf clubs and resorts to justify the cost difference. Over all, the greater expense of Greek goods and services, which are paid for in euros, lowers the country’s international competitiveness. Ideally, they should be priced in a weaker currency, which would be appropriate for a poorer country. Over time this problem will worsen if productivity in Germany and France grows at consistently higher rates and the value of the euro puts Greek exports increasingly out of sync with market realities. One painful way out of this dilemma would be for Greece to engineer a continuing deflation of wages and prices, but Greek voters have already taken to the streets to pressure their government to preserve salaries and benefits, and planned deflation is difficult to sustain in any case. The Germans and the French have been complicit in treating Greece as a wealthier country than it really is. The strong euro keeps exports from the poorer euro zone nations noncompetitive and also makes it easier for Greece and other lower-income euro zone nations to buy German and French exports; both tendencies benefited German and French commercial interests. To make matters worse, following its accession to the euro zone, Greece began spending and borrowing as if its future productivity would be high. The European Central Bank treated Greece as a fiscally responsible nation by buying some Greek bonds, which were then highly rated. Many European banks followed suit, and this meant an unjustified credit boom for the Greek state. Greece was able to pursue unsustainable policies; for instance, many Greeks retire before age 60 with benefits at three-quarters salary. Such a luxury is uncommon even in far wealthier countries like the United States. At this stage, it’s a moot point whether Greece is a poor country masquerading as a wealthy country or vice versa. The announced bailout requires that an ailing Greek economy borrow and repay even greater sums of money. If the old illusion was that Greece was a wealthy country, the new illusion is that Greece will, in short order, become wealthy enough to pay back ever-growing sums of debt. Since the Greek economy accounts for only about 2 percent of the euro zone gross domestic product, in theory it could be made a permanent recipient of largess. Yet that’s hardly an appealing solution, both because Portugal, Spain and others might want the same deal and because Europe doesn’t have much social solidarity across national boundaries. The United States has rich and poor regions, but the 50 states are forced to run balanced budgets, and there is greater mobility within the nation, based on a shared language and culture. Major national policies, like President Obama’s health care plan, are not judged primarily in terms of which states win and lose; in fact the largely opposed “red states” get a lot of the benefits through higher Medicaid subsidies. GREECE is not the only country that suddenly feels poorer. Britain faces budget deficits at about 12 percent of G.D.P., and Italy has a debt-to-G.D.P. ratio of 110 percent. In the United States, the housing and job markets are recovering only in fits and starts and we face significant future Medicare liabilities. This is the era of the rude economic awakening, and Greece is simply an extreme manifestation. The new European bailout plan is a denial of this truth rather than recognition of the new reality that a lot of countries, most of all Greece, aren’t as rich as we used to think.

Greece
International Trade and World Market
Credit and Debt
Economic Conditions and Trends