Afghans Repatriate Son, 12, of Pakistani Indicted in U.S.

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — The 12-year-old son of a Pakistani neuroscientist indicted in New York on charges of attacking American soldiers and F.B.I. agents in Afghanistan was handed over to Pakistani diplomats on Monday by Afghan officials for repatriation to relatives in Pakistan . The boy, Ali Hassan, was detained with his mother, Aafia Siddiqui , in the town of Ghazni in July and has since been in Afghan government custody, officials said. Ms. Siddiqui had been listed since 2004 as wanted by the United States government for her suspected links to Al Qaeda , and had been missing since 2003 until she turned up in Afghanistan a few months ago. Her disappearance for five years, the accusations by her family in Pakistan that she had been detained all that time by American or Pakistani authorities, and the circumstances of her arrest have all been the cause of intense speculation. The release of her son did little to clarify the questions. He did not speak at a brief ceremony before the news media in which he was handed over to the Pakistani chargé d’affaires, Asif Durrani. Nevertheless, Afghan officials said that he had given an account under questioning that cast doubt on the family’s claims that Ms. Siddiqui was in United States military detention in Afghanistan for five years. The boy told them that he had lost his parents in Pakistan’s 2005 earthquake and that he was adopted by Ms. Siddiqui, the spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sultan Ahmad Baheen, said. That suggests that she was free and living in Pakistan in 2005. The spokesman for the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mohammed Sadiq, said, however, that the United States Justice Department had informed Pakistan in a letter that the “nuclear DNA of the boy matches that of Aafia Siddiqui,” indicating that he is her biological son. The boy also told Afghan investigators that he and his mother had traveled to Afghanistan from Pakistan only a few days before they were taken into custody, Gen. Abdul Manan Farahi, head of the counterterrorism directorate of the Interior Ministry, said in an interview. They were detained by the Afghan police and intelligence officials for acting suspiciously outside the governor’s office in Ghazni. The police found documents showing Ms. Siddiqui’s contacts with terrorist organizations, notes about bomb making, and maps and sketches of foreign bases in Afghanistan, General Farahi said. The next day she was wounded, apparently in a struggle with American military and F.B.I. personnel in the police station, and was transferred to American custody. In New York, she was indicted on Sept. 2 on charges including attempted murder. Afghan officials have said that Ms. Siddiqui seemed to be a militant jihadi. The Afghan security official who first approached her in Ghazni said she had acted aggressively and screamed to his police officers not to come near, calling them infidels. General Farahi said the boy appeared to have been “brainwashed” and eventually admitted that he belonged to the extremist Pakistani group Jaish-e-Muhammad. Originally formed to fight in Kashmir, the group has established training camps in the Pakistani tribal areas bordering Afghanistan and its fighters have been found in Afghanistan and in the valley of Swat. The boy also told investigators that Ms. Siddiqui had gone to Afghanistan to look for her husband, a story that she had made up, General Farahi said. “The boy was very smart as he did not want to reveal things like the woman’s activities and the organization that he was with,” General Farahi said. “He was speaking fluent English and Urdu,” the general said. “He was very brave, confident and courageous,” General Farahi said, adding, “He was aware of religious issues and about jihad and was well informed.”

Pakistan
Al Qaeda
Afghanistan War (2001- )
Siddiqui Aafia


Wearable Electronics Are Making a Statement - Novelties

Abstract: RHINESTONES, sequins and gold lamé can still add traditional glitter to evening wear. But if you really want to shine at your next dinner party, consider the sparkle that a jacket with light-emitting diodes or a corsage with fiber optics could provide. Wearable electronics are starting to dress up gowns, handbags and even tuxedos, and not just in one-of-a-kind costumes worn by the likes of Fergie, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga or other divas. For the rest of us, designers and others are starting to offer such merchandise online — giving it bling by way of conductive thread, sensors, batteries and small microprocessors. And daytime computerized wearables are on the way, like T-shirts and coats that can show full-length videos or use GPS to point you to your destination. Moon Berlin , a German fashion label of the company Franken & Bruns, recently opened an online shop that sells chiffon dresses with white LEDs beneath the sheer fabric. The LEDs twinkle softly at first, then shine more intensely as the wearer moves, says Christian Bruns, co-owner of Franken & Bruns. (The batteries are good for 8 or more hours. You can always turn them off if want to save power.) Already popular on the Web site are accessories like fiber-optic brooches and LED-illuminated clutch pocketbooks. And men’s dinner jackets with a touch of LED glitter are on the way, Mr. Bruns says. If you want to try your own hand at creating a computerized, electronic glow, Adafruit Industries , a New York company that makes and sells kits and components, will soon introduce a small, wearable microprocessor called Flora to control LEDs or other electronic adornments. Becky Stern, who leads the company’s wearable electronics group, will develop projects and kits based on it for crafters. “Pop stars have costumes made by ateliers at huge cost,” Ms. Stern says, adding that her company’s products would “let you make these electronic wearables at home for a fraction of that.” Electronics offer a new dimension to people who design and make clothing, says Kate Hartman , an assistant professor of wearable and mobile technology at OCAD University in Toronto. “Designers are accustomed to working with texture, color and form,” Professor Hartman says. “But now electronics gives us another avenue of expression.” In the last decade, the use of soft, flexible circuitry in clothing has grown as technology has improved, she says. Conductive fabric, thread or yarn, as well as microprocessors that can be sewn into cloth, can be found at Web sites like SparkFun.com . The Flora platform from Adafruit should spur the wearable-computer movement, Professor Hartman says. “It has built into it all of the hardware needed to program,” she says, as well as the ability to link to GPS and Bluetooth, among other components. One Flora kit, meant for a handbag, will offer a GPS sensor linked to a LED display. “You won’t have to take your cellphone out to check for directions,” says Limor Fried, an electrical engineer and founder of Adafruit. “The bag will have a big arrow to tell you which direction to go.” The kit’s price will be less than $100, not including the cost of the handbag, she says. A future kit based on Flora will create video displays on the back of a jacket, says Phillip Torrone, a senior editor at Make magazine and creative director at Adafruit. “The display will be low-resolution at first,” he says. “But it will be recognizable as video.” Adafruit will also develop apps for iPads, iPhones and Android devices, Ms. Fried says. Hobbyists can then make T-shirts for joggers, for instance, that include LEDs that glow red or orange when air quality is poor, with a Bluetooth connection to tweet the information to other joggers. Syuzi Pakhchyan, who has written “Fashioning Technology,” a book about electronics for clothing, and whose Web site keeps track of wearable-computer fashions, says she thinks many hobbyists will be able to use Flora. Even those without technical or programming backgrounds, she says, could receive step-by-step help from other users in an online community. Ms. Pakhchyan herself has created a video tutorial on how to make a faux fur set of headphones, a process she describes as “pretty addictive and super-easy.” Professor Hartman at OCAD says that one of many benefits of adding computers to clothing may be a change in attitudes toward technology. “As people begin to be able to create with technology,” she said, “they are less afraid of it.” Ms. Fried at Adafruit says she looks forward to a time when people will routinely modify the style of their shoes, jackets, T-shirts or handbags with circuitry. Then, she says, Bill Cunningham, the fashion photographer for The New York Times who has long roamed the streets for the latest looks, will have a new trend to cover: LED fashions.

Electronics
Light-Emitting Diodes
Fiber Optics
Fashion and Apparel
Global Positioning System
Computers and the Internet


Unilever and P.&G. Fined for Fixing Price of Detergent

Abstract: BRUSSELS — European antitrust authorities levied stiff fines on Wednesday on the household products companies Procter & Gamble and Unilever for price-fixing that arose during efforts to make greener packaging for laundry detergents. P.& G., the maker of detergent brands like Tide and Ariel, was ordered to pay 211.2 million euros, or $306 million. Unilever, whose brands include Omo and Surf, was fined 104 million euros. A German company, Henkel, escaped a fine in exchange for blowing the whistle on the cartel. The European competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, said that the companies had developed the cartel to make sure none gained a competitive advantage over the others while seeking to meet environmental goals. “They agreed to protect their respective market shares, they agreed also not to decrease prices when decreasing the size of the packages, and afterwards they even agreed on a price increase,” Mr. Almunia said. The companies formed the cartel after working on methods to reduce the weight of detergent powders and to reduce waste from boxes and bags through the Association for Soaps, Detergents and Maintenance Products, a trade association that includes other major home products companies. The cartel operated from January 2002 until March 2005, and it affected the price of laundry detergents in supermarkets in Belgium France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, the European Commission said. Mr. Almunia said there was no need to punish the trade association, which he praised for promoting environmental initiatives. Henkel said it detected the cartel in 2008 during an internal audit. The company “had to acknowledge concrete evidence of misconduct by employees” in several West European countries, Dirk-Stephan Koedijk, the chief compliance officer at Henkel, said in a statement . Henkel also said that it had taken measures to “avoid future misconduct.” Marina Barker, a spokeswoman for P.& G., said that the activity took place from six to nine years ago, and had been solely focused on some countries in Europe. She said that P.& G. had “previously taken an appropriate financial reserve,” and that the company had already strengthened its global compliance program. Unilever said that the size of the fine was in the range it had prepared for. Mr. Almunia said the companies admitted involvement in the cartel in exchange for a 10 percent reduction in their fines as part of a settlement procedure. Mr. Almunia said that where possible he favored settlements, as in two recent cases involving computer chips and animal feed, to speed up cartel investigations, but that that did not mean Europe was going soft on cartels. “The commission will pursue its relentless fight against cartels, which are the worst violation of competition rules by extracting higher prices from consumers than they would pay when companies compete fairly and on the merits,” Mr. Almunia said.

Fines (Penalties)
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)
Procter & Gamble Co
Unilever N.V


Turner's Late 3 Caps Career Night and Lifts UConn

Abstract: BRIDGEPORT, Conn., March 26 - Early in the game and late in the game, it appeared as if Connecticut was headed not to the Final Four but home after a disappointing N.C.A.A. women's tournament run. Barbara Turner did not let that happen. Turner, a senior forward, made an off-balance 3-pointer from the right wing with 1.8 seconds left to lift second-seeded Connecticut to a 77-75 victory on Sunday against third-seeded Georgia. It was the biggest shot she made on a night when she scored a career-high 31 points, including 19 in the second half. UConn (32-4) will face top-seeded Duke on Tuesday in the finals of the Bridgeport Regional; the winner advances to the Final Four on April 2 and 4 in Boston. Duke defeated fourth-seeded Michigan State, 86-61, Sunday. "Never in my basketball career have I had an opportunity that I just had with the ball in my hands with the game on the line," Turner said. "To be able to make the shot, there's no better feeling in the world." Turner said Connecticut's final possession turned into a broken play and that the ball was to supposed to go to Ann Strother. Instead, Turner was forced to take a very difficult shot. "Barbara said she knew it was in the minute she shot it," Connecticut Coach Geno Auriemma said. "She's told me a lot of lies over the last four years, but that's the biggest one I ever heard." Up until Turner's last-second shot, UConn had its hands full. The Bulldogs (23-9) had a 15-point lead in the first half, only to allow a 22-1 UConn run that changed the tenor of the game. Georgia trailed by as many as 7 in the second half, but got back into the game thanks to Tasha Humphrey, who had 27 points. She even made the last second interesting. Humphrey hit the front rim on a desperation heave at the buzzer that would have won the game for Georgia. "As I told the kids in the locker room, sometimes if you are lucky in life, fate taps you on the shoulder," Auriemma said. "You just want to be ready. Today, we were ready." When the Bulldogs took a 25-10 lead in the first half, it appeared as if Connecticut would have both of its basketball teams knocked out of the postseason in the stretch of a few hours. The UConn men lost earlier Sunday to George Mason in a regional final in the N.C.A.A. men's tournament. But Renee Montgomery gave the Huskies the spark they had been missing. She hit consecutive 3-pointers, and Chardee Houston followed with a conventional 3-point play after getting fouled. Connecticut was just getting started. Thanks to a 22-1 run, UConn had a 34-30 halftime lead. UConn extended its lead to 7 points on a Willnett Crockett basket with 14:30 to go in the game, but neither team could pull away. Strother connected on a 3-pointer for UConn with 41 seconds left to put the Huskies ahead, 74-72, but Alexis Kendrick answered with a 3-pointer with 20 seconds to go. After it was over, Georgia was left to wonder what might have been. "They're heartbroken," Georgia Coach Andy Landers said of his players. "I told them they have every reason to be disappointed. They also had every reason to be extremely proud of what they did out there tonight." No team in the tournament is playing better than Duke. The Blue Devils are averaging 89 points in their three N.C.A.A. tournament games while winning by a combined margin of 128 points. Sunday, they got a balanced attack with six players in double figures. Their leading scorer was Monique Currie, who had 17 points. "I think when we lost in the A.C.C. tournament, it was really tough for us, but very motivating," Duke Coach Gail Goestenkors said. "We knew that we had not yet peaked, so we made the decision we were going to work on the little things and get better."

BASKETBALL
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT
DUKE UNIVERSITY
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
NCAA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT


Clients Aided Health Fraud, State Alleges

Abstract: A broadening investigation into Medicaid fraud in New York State ’s home health care industry has revealed that patients as well as home health agencies and aides have been involved in schemes to bilk the state of tens of millions of dollars, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo said yesterday. Among 19 people whose arrests were announced yesterday were aides, supervising nurses and a patient accused of splitting Medicaid fees in a kickback scheme, Mr. Cuomo said. The investigation, which is bringing to light an ever wider web of fraud, had previously revealed fraud involving employment agencies, training schools and aides and centered on the buying and selling of false training certificates for aides who either worked without training or billed for services never provided. The investigation, called Operation Home Alone, has so far resulted in the arrests of more than 50 people, including the arrests announced yesterday, among them several aides accused of working scams with patients (a patient had been arrested earlier this year on a similar charge). The defendants have been accused of defrauding the state’s Medicaid billing system for services paid by the government to the elderly and disabled. All of the 19 accused in the latest arrests have pleaded not guilty. Among them was an aide accused of setting up other home health aides with patients willing to take part in the reported scheme, and charging a $2,500 finder’s fee. Another was Esfir Spitsyna, who agreed to pretend she was receiving services from a home health aide, investigators said. A supervising nurse was charged with larceny, accused of allowing the arrangement. Ms. Spitsyna, 73, and the aide split the aide’s Medicaid-financed salary, each taking a cut of $110 every two weeks, investigators said. In a statement, Mr. Cuomo, who has made Medicaid fraud an early focus of his tenure, said: “These aides, who possess little or no training, are supposed to take care of elderly and infirm people who are virtually captive in their homes. Sometimes, the aides don’t show up at all, and in many cases, their supervising nurses are in on the scam. The risk to patients and the waste of taxpayer dollars are immense.” A lawyer for Ms. Spitsyna, Howard Kirsch, said he had little information about the case and was beginning to review documents. He said that he had not had a chance to talk at length with his client, a Russian immigrant who speaks little English, but that she appeared frail, from a heart ailment, and seemed to him like someone who could use the help of a home health aide. “There are 73-year-old people who look great,” he said, “and she doesn’t.”

Medicaid
New York State
Frauds and Swindling


Low Growth in Earnings Is Expected

Abstract: Corporate profits have been among the brightest lights of the economic recovery, helping to lift the stock market more than 25 percent since October. But analysts predict that when the first-quarter reporting season starts in earnest next week, American companies will show the slowest rate of growth in operating earnings in three years. One widely used gauge of profits, the Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ survey, forecasts that earnings will have grown 0.93 percent in the first quarter, compared with the first quarter of 2011, for the companies that make up the S.& P. 500-stock index. That would bring the value of one share of the index to $23.85. In the same period last year, operating earnings per index share were $23.63, a result of 19.68 percent growth from the first quarter in 2010. “It is the lowest quarter of growth we have seen since the third quarter of 2009,” said Christine Short, the senior manager for S.& P. Global Markets Intelligence. Other surveys, by Thomson Reuters and FactSet, show similar trends of weak first-quarter growth compared with the year before. Many companies struggled through the difficult period since the 2008 financial crisis by trimming costs and laying off employees to help rebuild their bottom lines. Now analysts say that the cutbacks may have reached their limits and that profits could very well have peaked in the second half of last year. The euro zone debt crisis , slowing growth in Asia and emerging markets, and commodity price inflation are also expected to have hurt performance, analysts said. Analysts don’t expect the European debt crisis “to be fully dealt with in the first half of the year,” Ms. Short said. “There is too much uncertainty looming to say how it is going to affect corporate earnings.” Part of the reason the numbers will show weakness is also smoke and mirrors: profits were starting to grow a year ago as the economy rebounded from the financial crisis, so comparisons to 2011 will be relatively mild. “You still have growth, but it is at a slower pace,” said Lawrence Creatura, a portfolio manager at Federated Investors. Three of the 10 sectors of the S.& P. 500 index — the industrial, technology and consumer staples companies — will show earnings growth in the first quarter of 2012, according to the forecast. The energy industry is expected to show flat earnings. Of the other six, materials and telecommunications are expected to record the largest drops, partly because of shrinking global demand, according to Ms. Short. Among the companies with lowered forecasts are the steel companies Nucor and Steel Dynamics . Nucor said on March 15 that it expected first-quarter results in a range of 30 to 35 cents a share, down from 50 cents in the same period in 2011. Because investors are being prepared for what they might see in the coming season, analysts said they did not expect the lower growth to cause any major stock market retreat. But the guidance the companies will give investors for the current quarter and the rest of the year poses a much bigger risk to sentiment. Barry C. Knapp, the head of United States equity portfolio strategy at Barclays , said Barclays was estimating a retreat in the S.& P. 500 — albeit less than 10 percent — if investors were disappointed by companies’ guidance. Still, equities are inexpensive considering the current low interest rates, Mr. Creatura said. One of the first major companies to report its first-quarter earnings for 2012 will be Alcoa , the aluminum producer, on Tuesday. Investors view the company as something of a bellwether for global economic trends because its products are used for automobiles, airplanes and construction, and also because it has operations in Europe . Alcoa’s operating earnings per share are forecast to have declined about 3 cents in the first quarter of 2012, about the same decline as in the fourth quarter, according to a Bloomberg survey. Its most recent guidance in January included an outlook of market growth for aerospace and auto companies, with 7 percent global growth in aluminum. After Alcoa will be JPMorgan Chase , scheduled for next Friday. Average estimates for JPMorgan’s operating earnings per share are $1.14, compared with $1.28 a year ago and 93 cents in the fourth quarter of 2011. It, too, is considered a bellwether for its industry, because it is one of the largest banks in asset terms and because its leader, Jamie Dimon , is often seen as a spokesman for the industry, said Gerard S. Cassidy, a banking analyst for RBC Capital Markets. A recovery in overall earnings growth is expected in the third quarter, according to average forecasts, said John Manley, chief equity strategist at Wells Fargo Advantage Funds. “I suspect that Europe may have a little bit more of an impact on the bottom line, and the talk may be more measured in terms of growth expectations going forward,” Mr. Manley said.


To Build a Ski Resort Under U.N. Sanctions, North Korea Turned to China

Abstract: BEIJING — After North Korea ’s leader, Kim Jong-un , ordered his army to build a world-class ski resort, the imported equipment for it was soon at hand, including snowmobiles, snowblowers and even a mile-long cable car system manufactured by a leading Austrian company. By almost any estimate, the sale of such items appears to violate the intent of United Nations sanctions meant to punish the North for its nuclear weapons program — specifically, sanctions targeting luxury goods, intended to cover products like Champagne and caviar, yachts and expensive cars. But China , whose companies were involved in providing the equipment for the Masikryong ski resort, which opened in 2013, told a United Nations panel that those sanctions did not apply because skiing is a “normal activity” in North Korea, a country where most of the population is impoverished and food shortages are common. “Skiing is a popular sport for people, and ski equipment or relevant services are not included in the list of prohibited luxury goods,” the Chinese said, according to last year’s annual report from the United Nations panel , which monitors sanctions violations. Weeks after North Korea detonated its fourth nuclear bomb , and days after it said it would soon launch another long-range rocket , the United States and China are still at loggerheads over how — or whether — to deepen sanctions against the isolated nation. And as the example of the skiing equipment shows, even the sanctions currently in place often prove toothless. The United Nations sanctions, imposed in 2006 and tightened since then, still allow China to trade with North Korea in vital sectors like oil, banking and shipping — but billions of dollars’ worth of luxury items also manage to slip through. While luxury goods may seem a relatively minor issue, experts on North Korea say they help to ensure the loyalty of the tiny elite around Mr. Kim, helping to keep his government intact. Image A hotel complex at the Masikryong ski resort in Wonsan, North Korea, which was under construction in September 2013. Credit David Guttenfelder/Associated Press Tensions between Washington and Beijing over who is to blame for North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal burst into the open again this week, after the North said Tuesday that it would launch a satellite into orbit this month. The United States and its allies believe the true purpose of such launches is to eventually develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that can deliver a nuclear warhead. Daniel Russel, the United States assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said such a launch would be “an unmistakable slap in the face to those who argue that you just need to show patience and dialogue with the North Koreans but not sanctions,” a clear reference to China. In response, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Lu Kang, suggested Wednesday that it was the United States that had lost the most from the North Korean announcement. “As for whose face the D.P.R.K. slapped, the country itself knows well,” Mr. Lu said, using the initials for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. But on Friday, President Obama spoke by telephone with President Xi Jinping about the planned missile test, and in a summary of the call, the White House said that both leaders “reaffirmed their commitment to the complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” They agreed that a test would violate United Nations Security Council resolutions, and that a “strong and united international response to North Korea’s provocations” was important. The North’s announcement was an embarrassing setback for China, coming just hours after one of its senior diplomats, Wu Dawei, had arrived in Pyongyang . Both China and the United States had known, based on satellite imagery , that the North was planning another launch, and one of Mr. Wu’s main goals for the trip had been to persuade the North Koreans not to proceed, diplomats said. The dates the North gave for the launch suggested it was likely to occur as China celebrates its weeklong Lunar New Year holiday, starting Sunday. On his return to Beijing on Thursday, Mr. Wu conceded that China had little leverage over its recalcitrant ally. “I said everything that must be said. I did what must be done,” he told reporters. “But what the outcome will be, I don’t know yet.” Mr. Wu had an unpleasant task, said Cheng Xiaohe, an associate professor of international studies at Renmin University. “That the North Koreans carry on regardless and announce their launch plans makes it more embarrassing for China, which has been arguing against more crippling sanctions and urging countries to solve the problem peacefully,” he said. The Chinese hope to prevent tougher sanctions for fear that the North will become a hostile neighbor, a policy that diplomats said appears to have been shaped by President Xi Jinping last summer. In talks last week with his Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Secretary of State John Kerry made little headway in persuading China to toughen sanctions against North Korea, and he warned that the United States would most likely move ahead on its own. Tougher sanctions legislation is moving through Congress that, among other things, would target Chinese banks that do business with North Korea. The administration has been reluctant to call for such sanctions, known as secondary sanctions, and it is not clear what the White House would do about the legislation, American experts said. The luxury goods sanctions are one area where there is plenty of room to close loopholes exploited by Chinese middlemen and traders, to whom the government turns a blind eye, experts on North Korea say. Chinese customs data showed that North Korea imported $2.09 billion in luxury goods between 2012 and 2014, according to recent congressional testimony by Bonnie S. Glaser, senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Among the items that have slipped through the sanctions are Mercedes-Benz S-Class cars, photographs of which appeared in last year’s United Nations report. An unidentified American company armored the cars, the report said. It also said that a luxury yacht worth as much as $6 million, made by a British company, Princess Yachts International, made it into North Korea and has been used by Mr. Kim. In 2014, China exported $37 million worth of computers; $30 million of tobacco; $24 million of cars; and $9 million of air-conditioning equipment to the North, according to trade statistics from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. In all these categories, China was the top exporter, the United Nations said. The cable cars for the Masikryong ski resort, which are at least 30 years old and out of fashion on European ski slopes, were made by Doppelmayr, an Austrian company, and used for years in Ischgl, a skiing town in Austria. After the resort decided to install new cable cars, the old ones were sold to an Austrian secondhand dealer, Pro-Alpin, according to Ekkehard Assmann, head of marketing at Doppelmayr. Pro-Alpin, in turn, sold the cable cars to an unidentified Chinese company, according to Pro-Alpin’s website. The Chinese company then arranged for the equipment to be shipped to North Korea. The luxury goods sanctions have a glaring loophole: Each country is permitted to define what it considers luxury goods. The United States has published a detailed list, down to such items as vanity cases, binoculars and television sets larger than 29 inches. The European Union says “articles and equipment for skiing, golf, diving and water sports” are luxury goods and bans them from export to North Korea. But China has failed to publish such a list and has not honored those of other countries, the documents of the United Nations panel show. Because it has never defined luxury goods, China can argue that cable cars for Mr. Kim’s prestige resort were permissible, even justifying them as equipment for the masses.

Skiing
North Korea
China
Kim Jong-un
Nuclear weapon
Luxury Goods
Wu Dawei
Embargoes Sanctions
Cable Cars,Streetcars:Trams


23 Syrian Soldiers Reported Killed by Rebels

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — Nearly two dozen Syrian government soldiers were killed in intense clashes with the opposition over control of the central, rebel-held city of Rastan, opposition groups said Monday, deepening questions about the viability of a cease-fire engineered under United Nations auspices. The sectarian tensions that erupted in Syria also spilled over the border into Lebanon, setting off a third day of gun battles between Sunni Muslims and Alawites in the northern city of Tripoli, according to witnesses and local press reports. “Where are the monitors?” was the anguished cry of a Syrian man shown on an amateur video from Rastan as one bloody victim of government shellfire after another was rushed into a makeshift clinic. The United Nations has 189 of an eventual 300 unarmed cease-fire monitors in Syria, as well as about 60 human rights workers. In an attempt to unify the opposition for peace talks, Kofi Annan, the special envoy of the United Nations and the Arab League, was due to preside over a meeting of its leaders in Cairo starting Wednesday. But the Arab League issued a news release late Monday saying the meeting had been postponed at the behest of the main opposition groups. Unifying the fractious opposition is a crucial step toward beginning the political dialogue envisioned under a six-point peace plan. The cease-fire considered essential for such talks was shattered over the weekend by what rebel soldiers described as a government attempt to retake Rastan, near Homs, which the Free Syrian Army has controlled since January. Amateur videos posted online, which are impossible to verify independently, showed flames in the city and an entire street of badly battered concrete buildings. After enduring days of mortar fire from a government stronghold on Rastan’s outskirts, the rebel soldiers decided to attack the base, said Capt. Iyad ad-Deek, a commander there and a Syrian Army defector. They first used loudspeakers to encourage soldiers to switch sides, he said in an interview via Skype. Four soldiers tried to defect with a T-62 tank, he said, but the government forces focused their fire on the tank, killing the commander and wounding the three other men. Captain Deek said the rebel troops had overrun the base, capturing about eight soldiers but losing at least one junior officer. “We are committed to Annan’s cease-fire, but they leave us no choice when they attack,” he said. Losses on the government side included 23 dead soldiers and five armored personnel carriers either burned or captured, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Britain. There was no comment from Syria’s state-run media, and the government severely restricts the movement of independent reporters. But the toll would constitute one of the largest single-day losses on the government side since the start, 14 months ago, of what was a peaceful protest movement. There have been concerns from the beginning about the fighting’s spilling into Lebanon, particularly since the complicated tapestry of sects fighting in Syria overlaps those in Lebanon to some extent. Periodic clashes have erupted in Tripoli, where a Sunni Muslim neighborhood abuts one populated by Alawites, the minority Shiite sect that dominates Syria. It was a volatile place long before the current uprising. The latest clashes began after the arrest of a Lebanese man, Shady Mawlawi, an outspoken critic of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, and several foreigners. They were charged with supporting a terrorist organization, an accusation that their supporters said had been trumped up by Syrian sympathizers in the Lebanese security services. Protests in Sunni neighborhoods on Saturday escalated into exchanges of machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades, leaving at least eight people dead, said Tarek Chindob, the lawyer for Mr. Mawlawi, confirming Lebanese press reports. Mr. Chindob said his client was an activist who had been aiding Syrian refugees. “If you help the Syrian people, does that mean terrorism?” he said. The city remained tense late Monday, with gunfire echoing in the night and tires ignited in protest at key intersections, local press reports said.

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


Toyota Settles Over Death of Family in High-Speed Crash

Abstract: Toyota has reached an out-of-court settlement with relatives of a family killed when the Lexus sedan they were driving sped out of control and crashed, an accident that put a national spotlight on the sudden acceleration problems that later prompted the automaker to recall millions of vehicles. Toyota confirmed the settlement Saturday in a statement but did not provide the amount of the settlement or any other details. “Through mutual respect and cooperation we were able to resolve this matter without the need for litigation,” the statement said. The crash, which happened in August 2009 near San Diego, was documented with gripping evidence that drew nationwide attention. A backseat passenger called 911 to say that the driver, an off-duty California Highway Patrol officer named Mark Saylor, was unable to stop the 2009 Lexus E350, which went as fast as 120 miles per hour on a freeway before hitting another vehicle and landing in a ravine. Mr. Saylor, 45; his wife, Cleofe, 45; and their 13-year-old daughter Mahala died, along with Cleofe Saylor’s brother, Chris Lastrella, 39. It was Mr. Lastrella who told the 911 operator that the car’s pedal was stuck and ended the call by saying, “Hold on and pray.” The car was on loan from the nearby Bob Baker Lexus dealership while Mr. Saylor’s car was being repaired. The settlement, according to Toyota’s statement, resolves product liability claims by the Saylor and Lastrella families against Toyota and the dealership. The families have separate claims against the dealership that were not covered. Two months after the crash, Toyota began a recall that eventually covered 5.4 million vehicles globally in which the automaker said the driver-side floor mat could trap the accelerator pedal. It later recalled 4.5 million vehicles in which the pedals themselves were determined to be defective. Some vehicles were covered by both recalls, for a total of about eight million vehicles. In February, Toyota’s chief executive, Akio Toyoda, apologized to Congress and to the Saylors’ family, saying he would “do everything in my power to ensure such a tragedy never happens again.” The recalls hurt Toyota’s sales and damaged its reputation for building high-quality, reliable vehicles. Thousands of complaints poured in to federal regulators from drivers who said their Toyota-made vehicles accelerated suddenly. In April, the government fined Toyota a record $16.4 million for waiting too long to initiate a recall. The complaints are tied to at least 93 deaths. Toyota is continuing to defend itself against class-action lawsuits filed by Toyota owners and relatives of people who died in crashes alleged to have resulted from sudden acceleration. The company could face billions of dollars in liabilities if it loses the cases. Preliminary results released in August from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s investigation into the sudden-acceleration complaints revealed that in many of the crashes the vehicles’ on-board data recorders showed no evidence that the drivers had used the brakes. The findings suggest that some drivers were mistakenly pressing on the accelerator pedal instead of the brake.

Toyota Motor Corp
Accidents and Safety
Automobile Safety Features and Defects
Automobiles
Roads and Traffic
Suits and Litigation


The Waters That Drown Dreams

Abstract: CALAIS, FRANCE — On a clear day, England seems achingly close across the Channel, which marks more than just a geographic divide between Britain and France. It’s a last watery waypoint on the arduous and illicit voyages undertaken by those fleeing war, persecution and poverty in many parts of the world. From here, in a port that writers and historians have long cast as a gateway between cultures, the cliffs of southern England appear as a pale line, a rampart to be breached by undocumented travelers hoping for sanctuary in a land with, at best, an ambiguous reputation as a place where migrants are tolerated but are rarely offered an unqualified welcome. For lawful travelers, the passage is no hurdle at all. Huge ferries slide serenely between mainland Europe and its island offshoot, making easy headway even in those “mad March days” that inspired the British poet John Masefield. Earlier this year, aviators in antique flying machines re-enacted Louis Bleriot’s first flight across the waves in 1909 — a feat that took just 37 minutes, roughly the same time as the high-speed trains that now carry passengers, cars, trucks and buses through a tunnel below the churning waters. Earlier still, in the turbulent days of Charles Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cities,” his protagonist, Jarvis Lorry, inquires in 1775 after “a packet to Calais” and is told there will, indeed, be a crossing “if the weather holds and the wind sets tolerable fair.” For some these days, such assurances are more elusive. Last month, the French authorities dismantled and flattened a makeshift camp for illegal migrants in the brushlands outside Calais, arresting almost 300 men and boys from Afghanistan and other places of strife who had gathered to seek not so much a “packet” as a hiding place in a cross-channel truck. Some were in tears as they were led away. The police action illuminated a reality of modern-day Europe, where unlawful migration has challenged the Continent’s politicians for years. Each time a high-profile, televised moment offers the appearance of official resolve, subsequent events generally show such actions to represent no more than the politics of gesture. In 2002, Nicolas Sarkozy, then the French interior minister, built on his reputation as a tough-guy politician by ordering closure of a Red Cross camp for migrants near here at Sangatte. In 2007, Mr. Sarkozy, himself the son of a Hungarian immigrant, was elected president. In Calais, meanwhile, the number of undocumented travelers trying to reach Britain grew unabated. Even after their camp was bulldozed last month, hundreds of migrants were seen sleeping under bridges or in abandoned buildings. “As long we are the nearest town to England,” a French charity worker was quoted as saying, “nothing will change.” As soon as the politicians and the TV cameras move on, in other words, unlawful migrants simply sidestep the barriers set up to halt them, sometimes laying tripwires of their own. In Britain, the attorney general, Baroness Scotland, was credited with sponsoring laws to limit the hiring of illegal immigrants. Ignorance of the new regulation was not admissible as a legal defense. Last month, though, Baroness Scotland’s own housemaid, a 27-year-old Tongan named Loloahi Tapui, was found to be working without the requisite documentation, and the baroness was fined the equivalent of €5,500, or $8,000. The English Channel has always acted as Britain’s first line of defense — and attack. In the early stages of World War II, its watery width of 22 miles, or 35 kilometers, held back the German advance. In June 1944, the allied counterattack was launched with the massive amphibious assault on D-Day. But the Channel now marks a different frontier, notably between those European nations that have signed the Schengen agreement, permitting free travel across European internal borders, and those few — including Britain — that have not. Travelers within the Schengen area may crisscross member countries without so much as a passport, but that facility stops at the Channel. In return, of course, the 25 Schengen countries are supposed to protect their “external” frontiers. That does not or cannot thwart the stubborn efforts of migrants smuggled in trucks and boats to penetrate the Schengen zone — or, in some case, die trying. “We have put in place a common border without putting in place sufficient means to control this border,” the French immigration minister, Eric Besson, acknowledged the other day. The Schengen accord provides for migrants to apply for asylum in the first country of landing from their point of departure in Kabul or Mogadishu or elsewhere. Often, that means Greece or Italy. But there is little appetite in either country to take in the outsiders. In August, the U.N. refugee agency described conditions at a Greek detention center on the Aegean island of Lesbos as “cramped and unsanitary.” In May, the lower house of the Italian Parliament approved a law saying illegal immigrants entering or residing in Italy would be fined as much as €10,000 before being expelled. But the Channel also stands for a collision of perceptions that Europe has yet to resolve, evoked in a possibly apocryphal British newspaper headline, first cited decades ago but still apt: “Fog in Channel — Continent Cut Off.” Continental Europeans might think that, in such opaque weather conditions, it is the island off their coast that is isolated. British officials argue that France should accept more of the undocumented travelers. Yet from the migrants’ point of view, Britain’s labor market is better placed to absorb them, often in the gray economy, and often at the cost of abuse from conservative newspapers, and their readers, all too ready to blame foreigners for overloading Britain’s welfare state without contributing to its upkeep. For migrants themselves, who often pay smugglers as much as $25,000 just to get them as far as Calais, the last leap to Britain — however perilous — is a small surcharge for a dream. “It’s not a big dream,” Abdul Ahad, a 26-year-old would-be migrant told a reporter from The New York Times in Kabul earlier this year. “I just want to finish my studies and live normally.”

Europe
Illegal Immigrants
English Channel
Calais (France)
Great Britain
Immigration and Emigration


Judge Scolds Defendant for Fake Tale of Tragedy

Abstract: The defendant in a gun-trafficking case repeatedly told a compelling story from his time in the Navy: A jet fighter crash-landed near him on the deck of an aircraft carrier; the pilot was killed, and flames engulfed two fellow sailors. Years later, whenever he tried to kick his addiction to prescription pain pills, visions of burning bodies and violently mangled wreckage would haunt his sleep. The tragedy aboard the aircraft carrier George Washington, he said, and the post-traumatic stress it caused so tormented him that he eventually sold illegal guns to get more pills. But prosecutors uncovered a major problem with the war story: It never happened. That lie came back to haunt Jason Teneyck, 36, at his sentencing on Tuesday for his involvement in a ring that sold guns and prescription pain pills. Justice Edward J. McLaughlin sentenced him to 31⅓ years, longer than even the 20 years the judge had previously given to the ringleader, Ivan Chavez . Justice McLaughlin, of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, told Mr. Teneyck that his “cheap, stupid” perjury insulted the honor of veterans “staggering through life” because of the injuries and trauma they survived in service of their country. “It is a disgrace that you would try to saddle yourself to the pain and anxiety those people suffered for us,” Justice McLaughlin said, loudly emphasizing the final two words. “While you may not have had the wherewithal to stay in the Navy, you can’t walk away from your problems.” Not only did the crash never happen, but Mr. Teneyck had been court-martialed and discharged after deserting his post in 1999. He was convicted last month on 18 counts related to his involvement in the ring, which included a city police officer who stole guns from his colleagues’ lockers, and a former dot-com millionaire . Both of them also said they were addicted to pain pills. During the investigation of the gun and drug ring, Mr. Teneyck was captured on video selling guns to an undercover officer who he believed was a violent criminal, Mr. Prevost said. His lawyer, Kenneth Linn, said Mr. Teneyck was an unwitting “stooge” for the ring. Mr. Teneyck told his war tale to prosecutors at least twice before the trial. His lawyer repeated it during plea negotiations last year in an effort to get a short sentence. But when prosecutors contacted Navy officials, they were told there was no such crash aboard the George Washington during the approximately 18 months that Mr. Teneyck served before going AWOL. Mr. Teneyck had deserted after being sentenced to 70 days’ confinement by a military court for misconduct, including using marijuana. By the time of his trial, Mr. Teneyck knew that prosecutors had uncovered his lie and he did not mention the war story. On cross-examination, Christopher Prevost, an assistant district attorney, asked him about it and he admitted it was not true. But Mr. Teneyck continued to insist that he had been “discharged under honorable conditions.” Offered the chance to address the judge on Tuesday, Mr. Teneyck quietly apologized for misleading the court. “I was scared at the time,” he said. Justice McLaughlin said Mr. Teneyck came from a far more privileged background — he grew up in a middle-class suburban New Jersey home — than most similarly charged defendants. “The idea that you didn’t understand what you were doing is ridiculous,” Justice McLaughlin said. “And now you’re going to pay for it.”

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


A Review of ‘Annapurna’ in Hartford

Abstract: Ulysses is one major oddball. Not the hero of “The Odyssey,” in this case, or James Joyce’s novel, but the wreck of a middle-aged American man portrayed in Sharr White’s “Annapurna,” which is the strong and poignant opening production of Theaterworks Hartford ’s 2014-15 season. This Ulysses (Vasili Bogazianos) is standing in his cluttered trailer, wearing nothing but a very short apron, frying sausages, when his ex-wife, Emma (Debra Jo Rupp), whom he hasn’t seen in 20 years, turns up at his door, carrying enough luggage for a grand tour of Europe. The main reason for her visit is the imminent arrival of their son, Tom, who has hired a private detective to track down his long-lost father; Emma wants Tom not to be too horrified at what he finds. Emma has also just left her second husband, but that’s another story. Ulysses is dying of emphysema, but that seems almost irrelevant. Image Ulysses (Mr. Bogazianos), is a former professor and poet who, broke and dying, has retreated to a trailer park in the mountains. Credit Lanny Nagler What’s odd is that Ulysses frequently utters lines like “Nothin’ you ain’t seen” (when she objects to his bare quintagenarian buttocks, the first glimpse of which gets a hearty but sympathetic laugh from the Hartford audience) and “You don’t got to say it like that.” And then Emma says things like, “Your publisher won’t reveal anything.” It seems Ulysses, before drink and heaven-knows-what-else ravaged his life, was a poet, a New Yorker and a college professor, who taught — get this — English. Apparently, when a man runs away from civilization, he leaves behind any former aversion to double negatives. Granted, Ulysses was a cowboy type when Emma met him, but the character’s language comes off as ignorance rather than folksiness. Ms. Rupp, best known for her role as a Midwestern mom on the sitcom “That ’70s Show,” brings plenty of her own folksy persona to the game. She was delightfully believable as Dr. Ruth Westheimer when she starred in “Becoming Dr. Ruth” last year at Theaterworks (the production later moved to Off Broadway). But then Dr. Ruth specializes in a kind of Eastern European folksiness. Here, Ms. Rupp seems like exactly the kind of woman Ulysses might have been married to in his youth, but it’s almost impossible to imagine them at faculty teas at Columbia. Both Ms. Rupp and Mr. Bogazianos are thoroughly charming, and their emotional connection feels genuine. When Ulysses learns the truth about why his wife took their 5-year-old son and left him in the middle of the night all those years ago, Mr. Bogazianos rises to the occasion in his breaking down into sobs of sorrow. He may not reach to the bottom of his soul, but he makes it clear that Ulysses has one. Image Ulysses and Emma on stage. Credit Lanny Nagler And Rob Ruggiero has skillfully directed the characters and story he has been given. It’s the playwright who puzzles me. Mr. White’s first hit, “The Other Place,” earned glowing reviews and a Tony nomination for Laurie Metcalf when it moved to Broadway. It, too, focused on an educated spouse (a scientist) who, in the course of a serious illness (dementia), has to face the truth about what happened long ago to her child. “Annapurna,” which began its Off Broadway run just six months ago, was not met with equal praise, but it shows off Mr. White’s strengths, among them masterly exposition, a fine ear for the language of intimacy and a taste for universal humor. At one point, Emma is explaining her son’s resentment of her. Emma: “I didn’t! ... Ruin his life.” Ulysses: “Why’s he think you did?” Emma: “He’s in his 20s. They all think that.” Evan Adamson’s scenic design is all too realistically rustic. Don’t you imagine that if, God forbid, everything in your life fell apart and you ended up broke living in a trailer park somewhere in the mountains, that at least your trailer would be filled with books and art and a couple of treasured pieces of furniture from your past, somewhat more gracious life? Ulysses’ place is such a mess that when Emma starts setting out an army of brand-name cleaning products and a fresh package of paper towels on the kitchen counter, some of us wanted to cheer as she put on rubber gloves and started scrubbing away. Maybe the setting is the playwright’s comment on the precariousness, the liquidity, the elusiveness of identity. Maybe the grammar is, too.

James Joyce
Sharr White
Vasili Bogazianos
Debra Jo Rupp
Rob Ruggiero
Theater
Hartford TheaterWorks
Hartford Connecticut
Annapurna Play
Ruth Westheimer,Dr Ruth


China: Vietnamese Fishermen Detained

Abstract: China has detained 21 Vietnamese fishermen in the South China Sea, according to reports on Thursday that cited Vietnamese officials. An official from Quang Ngai Province, where the fishermen are from, told The Associated Press that they were detained on March 3 near the Paracel Islands, which are controlled by China’s military. Vietnam claims sovereignty over the islands, whose territory it once shared with China. The Vietnamese official said China was demanding $11,000 for the release of the fishermen. Tensions over the territorial disputes in the South China Sea have been rising in recent years.

China
Vietnam
South China Sea
Fishing Commercial


A Basketball Career Is Suddenly Stopped and a Teammate Is Embraced

Abstract: BERKELEY, Calif. — Tierra Rogers, the most heralded of the California women’s basketball team’s seven freshmen, did not feel well when she arrived at Haas Pavilion for a late-September conditioning session. She had not eaten, so when she became dizzy, she blamed hunger. Rogers, a 5-foot-11 guard , willed her way through the sprints and the stretching, but she collapsed as she was leaving the gym. She was hospitalized for two weeks, finally receiving a diagnosis of arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia, or A.R.V.D. This rare heart disorder, in which muscle tissue in the right ventricle deteriorates and is replaced by fat or scar tissue, causes abnormal heart rhythms that can lead to sudden cardiac arrest in instances of physical or emotional stress. At first, Rogers did not grasp the seriousness of the situation. She pleaded with her doctors to let her play basketball, saying she would wear a padded sports bra to protect her heart. Joanne Boyle, the Bears’ fifth-year coach, was in Los Angeles on a recruiting visit when Rogers phoned her in tears and babbled about needing a defibrillator implanted in her chest and possibly being done with basketball. Boyle, who met Rogers when she began attending California games with her father, Terrell, in high school, cut short her trip and flew home. She was with Rogers’s grandmother Ethel May Martin and mother, Dalonna Rogers, when a grim-faced doctor told Rogers she would have to give up competitive sports. It was another sorrowful note in what has been, for Rogers, a two-year dirge. In January 2008, her father, a community activist, was gunned down during halftime of one of her high school games at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory in San Francisco when he stepped outside. Rogers and her father were close, their bond strengthened by daily trips to the public courts near where they lived in Hunters Point, a rough section of San Francisco. In turn, he developed a rapport with Boyle, whom he called weekly to discuss his daughter’s play. After his murder, which remains unsolved, Rogers’s spirit was not in the game. Boyle spoke to her regularly during this time and was instrumental in talking her out of quitting basketball. Rogers, a high school all-American considered one of the country’s top 20 recruits, did not rediscover her passion for the game until late-summer pickup games with her new teammates at Cal. “She was playing great,” Boyle said, “and you could see she was thinking, ‘Wow, I have this whole new life about to happen for me.’ ” Rogers, 18, said she was devastated when she had to quit basketball. The university’s pledge to keep her on scholarship was small solace. “I thought, How can God put all this on me?” she said. “I just lost my dad and now you want to take away something else I love?” Once blinded by ambition and achievement, Rogers has slowly come to see that the real riches in basketball are the relationships. Boyle and the teammates who were virtual strangers a few months ago have become a second family. “Joanne has been like my mother,” Rogers said. “She calls me and texts me and makes me feel comfortable and safe.” She added: “I’ve thought a lot about if I had been at another school and this happened. I would have had to deal with it all alone.” Rogers spoke while leaning against a set of hidden bleachers at Haas, where the men’s and women’s teams play home games. It was midmorning on the last day of classes before finals and her teammates were practicing a few feet away. Some wore sneakers with Rogers’s initials and her jersey number, 1, written in permanent ink. “I can be sad, but then I really can’t because I have so much support,” Rogers said. “I love being around my teammates even though I can’t play. They make me feel happy.” Over Thanksgiving weekend, the Bears visited Ohio State. Rogers decided to accompany her teammates rather than go home to Houston, where her mother and younger brother recently moved. After a film session on Thanksgiving night, the players took turns counting their blessings. The senior guard Natasha Vital said she was grateful to have Rogers as a teammate. “Sometimes her situation is hard to talk about,” Vital said. “It’s a little awkward. She might feel alone sometimes so I wanted her to know she’s not.” Rogers gives her teammates perspective, her appearance at practices and games serving as a powerful reminder that playing basketball is a gift and not the grind it may sometimes seem. The Bears (4-4) play their next game on Monday at Long Beach State. “I get mad at people who don’t appreciate things and take their talents for granted,” Rogers said. “I want to shake them and say, ‘Get it together.’ ” She once aspired to be a W.N.B.A. star, but Rogers is now considering a career in journalism or counseling. Boyle said she would like to see her coach, but Rogers wrinkled her nose at the suggestion. “I think without everything I’ve been through, I’d be like any other immature girl running around thinking basketball is going to take me everywhere and make me a lot of money,” she said. Rogers kept hearing how lucky she was to be alive. Eighty percent of A.R.V.D. cases, she was told, are diagnosed post-mortem. “When you’re at my age, you do and you don’t feel lucky,” Rogers said. “I’m alive. I can still do things. So of course I’m thankful, especially as I’m finding out more about this condition. But I can’t do the thing I love the most. ...” Her voice trailed off. Although she can lead a relatively normal life except for athletic exertion, at times, Rogers said, she wondered if she would have been better off dead. “Yes, I thought about that,” she said. A tear rolled down her right cheek. “I only told that to my therapist. I always get emotional when I talk about this. You never want to take your life when God put you here for a reason. I thought about the people around me. I care about them. It would be pretty selfish of me to leave them.” Rogers, who remains on the Bears’ roster, sits on the bench during games in her Cal sweats with a clipboard in her lap. Her job is to keep track of plays by her teammates that show hustle or a lack thereof. She is a team captain for reasons that have little to do with ceremony or sympathy. “She has an unbelievable perspective that no one else has,” Boyle said, “and she’s mature enough to handle the responsibilities.” Rogers is not afraid to call her teammates out. DeNesha Stallworth, a 6-foot-3 freshman, missed a couple of practices and played poorly in the Bears’ 83-71 loss to Ohio State. Upon the team’s return to California, Rogers spoke to Stallworth about her effort. In the Bears’ next game, a 78-44 victory at home against Colorado State, Stallworth was the best player on the floor with 14 points, 7 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals and 2 blocks. “Coach was on me at practices, and I didn’t know how to handle it,” Stallworth said. “Tierra and I talked, and she told me to stay strong. Sometimes I don’t play hard. I really don’t know why, and we talked about that, too. We made a promise to each other. She comes to all the practices and games, and I always play hard.” Rogers struggles to keep her end of the bargain. Some days, she is too sad to step foot in the gym, then she feels guilty for not wanting to be there and for causing her teammates to worry. One day, Rogers missed practice but stopped by Boyle’s office after the rest of the staff had gone home. She heard that Boyle had had a rough day. “She became my therapist for 20 minutes,” Boyle said. “I told her, ‘This isn’t your responsibility because you have too much on your plate,’ but she wants that responsibility. It is her way to contribute.” She added: “I’ve talked to her psychologist, and he said he’s never had a patient that has more wisdom than her. He said he has patients in their 40s and 50s who don’t have as much depth as Tierra.” Boyle had her own health scare, a brain hemorrhage in 2001 , when she was an assistant at Duke. She has been able to counsel Rogers based on that experience. But Rogers has her own history to draw upon. “In some ways,” Boyle said, “her dad’s death has helped prepare her for the steps she’s going through right now.” During a recent checkup, Rogers’s doctor was reading her heart’s rhythms like sheet music. He said that between midnight and 1 a.m. on a Friday in November, her heart rate increased to 150 beats a minute and asked what she had been doing to cause the worrisome spike. Rogers, wide-eyed to learn that her defibrillator was a veritable G.P.S. tracker, glanced at a grinning Boyle. “I don’t care what you were doing,” Boyle quipped, “but I want to know who was with you because we had a game the next day.” She laughed and so did Rogers, who said she had been out dancing. As their peals filled the room, it was possible to believe everything was going to be fine.

Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia


In Russia, Medvedev Orders Crackdown on Violence

Abstract: MOSCOW — After an outburst of ethnic violence on the streets of the capital, President Dmitri A. Medvedev on Monday warned that nationalist attacks threatened Russia ’s stability and ordered law enforcement agencies to crack down on race-based clashes amid reports of further attacks on ethnic minorities here. Mr. Medvedev’s statement, delivered in steely tones on national television, attempted to rein in unrest that erupted over the weekend. Thousands of young men massed outside Red Square on Saturday, attacking both police officers and passers-by who had the dark complexions of migrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus. Since then, the police have reported beatings, stabbings and shootings of people who were not ethnic Russians, often by groups of young people. Mr. Medvedev ordered the police to prevent “chaos” on the streets, which was set off by self-described soccer fans two weeks after Russia was chosen to host the 2018 World Cup . He also called for a stop to all unsanctioned protest actions. “The recent events in Moscow, the pogroms, the attacks on people must be qualified as crimes, and people who commit them must be held fully responsible and punished,” he said. “Crimes aimed at fanning hatred and animosity based on race, ethnic origin or religion are especially dangerous. Such actions threaten the stability of the state.” Even with the police on high alert, there were more reports of attacks on Monday. Most violence appeared random, done by groups of young men and some women, who singled out victims because of their non-Slavic appearance, according to witnesses and Russian news reports. On Sunday, youths attacked a migrant from Kyrgyzstan, Alisher Shamshiyev, 37, at a bus stop. He was stabbed in the chest and died within 10 minutes, said Temirbek Asanbekov, head of a support group for immigrants from Kyrgyzstan in Moscow. “The most frightening is that our compatriot was killed at 8 in the evening at a newspaper stand,” he said. “I’m shocked how cold-bloodedly people stood by and looked on.” The police have opened a criminal case, but no suspects have been named. There have been more than 40 attacks reported against minority members in Moscow and at least one death, said Galina V. Kozhevnikova, who works for the Sova Center , which tracks racist violence. “It is clear that these are reverberations from what happened on Manezh Square, and it is clear that there are far more than we know about,” Ms. Kozhevnikova said, referring to the square outside the Kremlin where the weekend’s unrest was centered. “People were dragged from the subway cars and beaten right on the platform,” she said. Xenophobic attacks are not uncommon in Russia, particularly against people from the former Soviet republics in Central Asia and the Caucasus, as well as Russian citizens from the Russian North Caucasus, who flock by the millions to Moscow and other large cities to work. But the recent violence has been unusually acute and has prompted leaders of ethnic diasporas to advise compatriots to remain indoors or to travel outside only in groups until the police bring the situation under control. Others, like Mr. Asanbekov, have warned against revenge attacks. “This incident could provoke a much larger conflict,” Mr. Asanbekov said. “We are worried about this more than anything.” Amid fears of new violence, the police stepped up security around the Kremlin on Monday evening. Riot police officers in body armor moved in, and the authorities closed a shopping mall. It was there, just outside the Kremlin gates, that thousands, mostly young men, gathered on Saturday to mourn and rage over the fatal shooting this month of Yegor Sviridov, a soccer fan, by a man from the North Caucasus. Many of the demonstrators called themselves soccer fans, a subculture often infused with aggressive nationalism and xenophobia.


A Dilapidated Tract of Queens, and a Fight to Control Its Future

Abstract: With their patched zinc roofs and graffiti-covered walls, the auto repair shops are the most visible and unsightly presence in the bedraggled industrial triangle known as Willets Point. Squeezed between the Mets’ new stadium and the Van Wyck Expressway, near the No. 7 line’s penultimate stop in Queens, the area has no sidewalks or lights to brighten its unpaved roads, no sewers, piped water or heat. In most of the shops, and in the junkyards speckled among them, buckets double as toilets and kerosene torches serve as radiators, while the constant trickle from a hydrant functions as a communal sink. It gets so cold in winter that men who have worked there for a while, like Jorge Sabando, 56, a mechanic from Ecuador, wind up with arthritis and take over-the-counter painkillers to carry them through the day. “This,” Mr. Sabando said, “is not a place for the frail.” No one seems to disagree that Willets Point needs help. But when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled a plan last year to overhaul the area with a hotel, school and convention center, homes, offices, parks and retail stores, two distinct groups rose up in opposition. One comprises the owners of the area’s largest businesses, who own half the land in Willets Point and who have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbyists, consultants and political contributions to the City Council members who will vote on the city’s plan. The other consists of auto shop workers and shop owners who rent space in Willets Point. They are, for the most part, poor and Latino, and can afford to do little more than print T-shirts denouncing the project. In public, the two groups present a picture of perfect unity, waving signs and chanting, “Justice for Willets Point.” But in reality, each side is motivated by different concerns and fears about its survival. The Bloomberg administration has stepped up efforts in recent weeks to find new space for the big-business owners, offering above-market prices for some of their land. But most owners say they will not leave Willets Point and will fight the city should it try to seize their properties by eminent domain. The small-business owners, on the other hand, are willing to move, but city officials said that they could not relocate the renters until the city had acquired all the land in Willets Point. And even then, there may not be a place to put all of them. The small-business owners say they feel neglected by the deep-pocketed big-business owners and are unsure of their future. “This is a power game, and we’re the weakest player,” said Arturo Olaya, an immigrant from Colombia who has run an auto body shop for 15 years at a rented garage on 36th Avenue. There are an estimated 255 business in Willets Point and about 90 percent of them are thought to operate from rented space, according to city figures, which are imprecise because of the patchwork nature of the neighborhood. The larger companies employ about 1,200 people and have held billions of dollars in contracts with the city over the years — to provide sewer and water pipes, repair bridges and roads, and clean up the World Trade Center site after the Sept. 11 attacks. But now the owners say they feel betrayed by city officials. “The very hands that fed them are the hands they’re going to shoot,” said Daniel Feinstein, owner of Feinstein Iron Works, which produces most of the structural steel used in public school construction in the city. “But guess what: We’re fighting back.” The Bloomberg administration is already facing hurdles. In a letter to the city’s Planning Commission, 32 City Council members said they would reject the plan if the city did not take eminent domain off the table. And just as the city reached a handshake agreement with the owner of a waste management company, a previous deal with a junkyard owner hit a roadblock when it was discovered that zoning rules did not allow that kind of business at the site where it was to relocate. The area’s largest business owners, who have formed a group called the Willets Point Industry and Realty Association, have held weekly meetings to discuss strategy and, one person familiar with the meetings said, to compare offers they have received from the city. Since 2006, when the Bloomberg administration asked developers for proposals to revamp the area, Mr. Feinstein and the other members of the association have paid almost $200,000 to the lobbying firm of the former City Council speaker Peter F. Vallone Sr. and hired the public affairs firm that employs the former mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer, who will try to persuade the Council to reject the project this fall. The association also filed a federal lawsuit against the city in April for failing to provide basic utility and public works services in Willets Point. The group’s members have contributed almost $180,000 since 2006 to the campaigns of eight City Council members from Queens, including $45,000 to Melinda R. Katz, who chairs the Council’s Land Use Committee, and $60,000 between January and July to Councilman Hiram Monserrate, whose district includes Willets Point and who has been one of the development plan’s most vocal opponents. The auto repair shop owners and their workers, for their part, have had little beyond determination and $4,000 in cash to press their point. Earlier this year, Mr. Olaya, the Colombian immigrant, and Sérgio Aguirre, a community organizer who once repaired cars in Willets Point, started their own group, the Willets Point Defense Committee, with 40 paying members who contributed $100 apiece to finance their efforts. They have used the money to buy the white-and-green shirts they wear at protests, print signs and rent a bus that took them to a public hearing held last month by the Planning Commission, which will vote on the project on Sept. 24. One of the group’s members, Blas Olivares, an arthritic 52-year-old from Chile who has an auto-glass repair shop on 36th Avenue, said some of the lobbyists working for the big-business owners’ association have offered their services. “Five thousand dollars a month is one of the prices that I recall,” he said. “We wish we could have the help, but we can’t afford it.” Meanwhile, the city has set up a job training program that will be available even to illegal immigrants, who are believed to make up about 40 percent of the work force in Willets Point — an area that Mayor Bloomberg once called a “euphemism for blight, ” but which represents a lifeline to the barely trained men and women who toil in its automotive shops and to the vendors who peddle juice, socks and cellphone holders along its pockmarked streets. Robert C. Lieber, the deputy mayor for economic development, said the city was still in the “relatively early stages” of devising a relocation plan for the Willets Point tenants. For now, Mr. Lieber said, the priority is negotiating with owners of businesses and property in the area. Finding adequate land for the types of business found in Willets Point had been one of the biggest challenges, in part because of a scarcity of heavy manufacturing zones in the city, Mr. Lieber said. Another city official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the project, said that the city would probably not be able to relocate all the auto repair shops. The reason, he said, was that some neighborhoods might simply not want them.

Eminent Domain
Willets Point (NYC)
Area Planning and Renewal
Bloomberg Michael R
Retail Stores and Trade
Queens (NYC)
Relocation of Business


Stormy Honeymoons for Two New N.F.L. Coaches

Abstract: INDIANAPOLIS — An N.F.L. coach used to enjoy a honeymoon between the day he was hired and his team’s first loss. It is hard to rankle ownership or upset fans when all you are doing is hiring staff, evaluating prospects, and droning about “trying to get better at every position” at news conferences. Typically, a coach’s first decisions are viewed as “steps in the right direction.” Criticism and second-guessing come later. But for new coaches like Tampa Bay’s Greg Schiano and Indianapolis’s Chuck Pagano, the honeymoon has had almost Kardashian brevity. Schiano’s controversial staff makeover has taken weeks and is still not complete. Pagano is trying to go about his business while forces beyond his control — quarterback Peyton Manning’s health and the hefty contract that could force the Colts to release him — determine his fate. “It’s been kind of a crazy few weeks of trying to put together a coaching staff,” Schiano said Thursday at the N.F.L. scouting combine. Schiano, the head coach at Rutgers from 2001 through 2011, was hired by the Buccaneers on Jan. 26, late in the N.F.L. hiring cycle. He was denied permission by other teams to interview several coaches for the Buccaneers’ vacant coordinator positions. Schiano and the Buccaneers finally settled on the defensive coordinator Bill Sheridan, whose Giants allowed the third-highest point total in the league in 2009, and offensive coordinator Mike Sullivan, the Giants’ quarterback coach in 2010 and 2011. While searching for coordinators, Schiano hired Butch Davis, his former head coach at the University of Miami. Davis was fired by the University of North Carolina last July in the wake of N.C.A.A. violations. Davis was named “special assistant to the head coach,” so that he could continue receiving severance payouts from North Carolina; Davis risks losing the severance if he is involved in any on-field coaching. Schiano said Thursday that he was surprised to be denied access to his top coaching candidates. When he left the N.F.L. 13 years ago, “it was kind of an unspoken rule that if you had advancement, you could move from club to club,” he said. “But I also understand that abuse leads to restrictions.” Schiano noted that teams had kept their top assistants from interviewing elsewhere by granting them “half-baked titles,” an odd choice of words for someone who just hired a special assistant himself. Schiano contacted Davis the morning he accepted the Buccaneers position, with no specific role for Davis in mind. “We just batted around some ideas,” Schiano said. Davis, the former head coach of the Cleveland Browns, was involved in the selection process for assistant coaches, Schiano said, sometimes interviewing one candidate while Schiano interviewed another. He is also helping to evaluate prospects at the combine. “What I wanted was someone who could help the head coach be a head coach,” Schiano said. Schiano called Sheridan “an all-business guy — yet I think he has a great way about him with people.” Sheridan will call plays, but the Buccaneers will run Schiano’s scheme, which is a variation on Davis’s Miami defense. At his introductory news conference Tuesday, Sheridan seemed to think that Davis would also be involved in the defense (he referred to having Davis “on this side of the ball”), but Davis’s vague role becomes more clearly defined when it comes into conflict with agreements with his last employer. For added confusion, Schiano appointed Jimmy Raye as an offensive assistant to work with Sullivan. Special teams coordinator Bob Ligashesky, whose Steelers units allowed four kickoff return touchdowns in 2009, joined the staff Wednesday. Schiano slipped and announced the hiring of the secondary coach Ron Cooper before the paperwork was complete. The spotty résumés of the Schiano hires (Raye was fired by the 49ers in midseason in 2010), the nest-feathering implications of the Davis hire, and the sheer length of the selection process have drawn criticism, but Schiano said that he “would rather be a month late when hiring a staff than a day early,” adding that his failure to hire first-choice candidates could help the team by taking him out of his comfort zone. Meanwhile, Pagano and the new Colts general manager, Ryan Grigson, are struggling to maintain a “business as usual” attitude, with Manning battling back from neck injuries and due to make $28 million if the team does not restructure his contract or release him by March 8. “Everybody would like to have this nailed down, but there’s a lot of variables and factors involved,” Grigson said at the combine. Grigson deflected a barrage of Manning questions. Many of them pertained to Manning’s past and future medical evaluations, questions that Grigson could not answer without violating medical privacy laws, let alone the collective bargaining agreement. Pagano retreaded into the realm of coaching clichés when asked about Manning’s health and his contract status. “We’re evaluating everybody on the roster,” Pagano said, as if deciding the fate of a franchise quarterback had equal priority with breaking down film of Dan Orlovsky. Pagano did say that when he speaks to Manning, it is only about how he is throwing the football and the process of rehabilitation. Discussions of weightier topics take place between Manning and the Colts’ owner, Jim Irsay. Pagano busies himself with the switch from a 4-3 to a 3-4 defense and Grigson evaluates college talent, but even basic budgeting decisions cannot be made before the Manning situation resolves itself. Neither of the Colts’ new decision makers is publically expressing frustration, though Grigson’s heavy-shouldered body language and obvious exasperation were hard to ignore. Pagano, who was most recently the Ravens’ defensive coordinator, opened up about the stress that comes with the promotion to head coach. “I get so many things coming across my desk that are not football related, I can’t stand it,” he said. Pagano said that he tried to focus on the Colts’ on-field issues before 8 a.m. After that, the distractions take over. It is a bad sign when a football coach has a hard time squeezing football into his schedule.

Football
Schiano Greg
Pagano Chuck
Indianapolis Colts
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Coaches and Managers


Still No Expansion for Johnson & Johnson Blood Thinner

Abstract: Johnson & Johnson said that the Food and Drug Administration had rejected for a third time its application to expand use of the blood thinner Xarelto to reduce dangerous blood clots and related problems in patients with coronary artery disease. The condition occurs when narrowed blood vessels restrict blood flow to the heart, increasing the risk of heart attack and other problems. The company said the F.D.A.’s advisers said too much information was missing from company studies to accurately gauge the drug’s benefit.


M.L.S. Shuts Down Chivas USA and Will Start Over in Los Angeles

Abstract: Don Garber helped usher Chivas USA into Major League Soccer a decade ago, so it was not hard to discern a bit of sadness in his voice Monday as he discussed the decision to shut down the team. Chivas USA, which struggled on the field and at the gate for most of its 11 seasons in M.L.S., ceased to exist Monday. The league announced that the team, based in Los Angeles, would end operations “ effective immediately ” and that its players would be made available in a dispersal draft, probably before the end of November. Garber, the league’s commissioner since 1999, lamented the impact of the decision on the team’s players, officials and fans in an open letter posted on the league’s website . But in a telephone interview Monday afternoon, he said, “It’s the right decision for the league.” The shutdown was not unprecedented; Garber oversaw the closing of the league’s teams in Tampa, Fla., and Miami after the 2001 season. But now, perhaps more so than he could then, Garber stressed the positives in Monday’s somber news. The league has doubled in size since the 2001 shutdowns reduced the league’s membership to 10 teams; next year, M.L.S. will begin its 20th season with 20 clubs. M.L.S. plans to add two more teams in 2017, expanding in Atlanta and returning to Los Angeles under a new, deep-pocketed ownership group that Garber said had everything the league had sought in a buyer: local residency, the resources and connections to build a stadium and the commitment to rebrand the team for a wider audience. M.L.S. has another team, the Galaxy, in Los Angeles. According to a person in the league with knowledge of the sale, the new owners agreed to pay more than $100 million for the Los Angeles club. The group will be led by a Vietnamese venture capitalist, Henry Nguyen, and will include several limited partners with experience in sports management: Peter Guber, a movie producer who owns parts of the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Golden State Warriors; Tom Penn, an ESPN basketball analyst and a former Portland Trail Blazers executive; and Vincent Tan, a Malaysian businessman who owns the Welsh soccer club Cardiff City. The league and the new owners are scheduled to announce their plans for the market, including a new stadium for the rebranded and renamed team, at a news conference in Los Angeles on Thursday. “Ultimately, there is a silver lining to this whole announcement,” Garber said, “and that is after many years of struggling to embark on a strategy we now have the tools in place to turn this around very quickly.” M.L.S. took control of Chivas USA in February by buying out its Mexican owner, Jorge Vergara, and a league executive ran the team this season. Chivas completed its schedule Sunday with a 1-0 victory over the San Jose Earthquakes but missed the playoffs after finishing seventh in the nine-team Western Conference. The league said that it had met with 15 potential buyers who were interested in acquiring the Chivas franchise and that it had begun talks with Nguyen’s group in April. In September, Garber confirmed that the league was considering shutting down Chivas USA for at least one season to give its then-unidentified new owners a clean slate. The league consulted with its players union before shuttering the team on Monday, and the union’s executive director, Bob Foose, released a statement in which he largely agreed with the move to address the Chivas situation. Foose also said the entry of expansion teams in New York and Orlando, Fla., next season could give players who lost their jobs on Monday an opportunity to remain in the game. “The Los Angeles market can and will successfully support two M.L.S. teams, and we are confident that the new franchise will learn from the mistakes made by Chivas, and will be successful in every way,” Foose said in a statement .


Open House New York Allows Access to All Manner of City Sites

Abstract: In a landscape I could barely recognize, I stood balanced atop a 140-foot-high silver egg. The wind picked up as I traversed a narrow walkway to the top of another egg, apparently of the same bizarre species, and then another and another. Below me — very far below me — lay huge pools teeming with microbes. I saw bridges in the distance, rivers underneath and clouds above. The eggs were part of the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, which you have surely glimpsed from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway or the streets of Greenpoint. But seeing them up close forces you to appreciate the city as a complex machine, with interlocking processes churning away, unseen but unceasing. For that unique vantage, a slight whiff of stink was a small price to pay. Newtown Creek is one of rougly a zillion sites whose curtains will be pulled back on Oct. 10 and 11 as part of Open House New York , the annual weekend of urban exploration, architectural discovery and plain old voyeurism. Now in its seventh year, Open House offers 200 architecturally interesting sites to poke around (many of which are otherwise off limits) and 150 cultural events to experience; it takes 600 volunteers to produce and costs $0 to take part. Which may be part of the reason that last year 175,000 people joined in. It’s become so popular, in fact, that the announcement of each year’s lineup is now an event in its own right. At 9 a.m. Friday, devotees logged onto ohny.org to snap up reservations for those locations, like the Morgan Library and Museum or Ellis Island, where entry is limited (at most of the places, all listed on that Web site, you can just show up). Renee Schacht, the group’s executive director, said that two years ago someone bragged about making it to 16 sites in three boroughs during the weekend, but three or four a day seems to be the limit for most people. Running around from one spot to the next and getting to see things you might long have wondered about is half the fun; the other half is bumping into other curious people as you do it (and then bumping into them again three hours later) at well-organized and well-staffed sites. The folks who won the lottery for Barbra Streisand’s Village Vanguard show got a giddy insider’s thrill, but so does everyone on the behind-the-scenes tour of Masonic Hall on West 23rd Street. The architect and bon vivant Hugh Hardy could probably draw a crowd to a recitation of his laundry list. Instead, he gives tours of Radio City Music Hall , which he restored to its current splendor in 1999. Judging from a preview he gave me, 10 years have not dimmed his admiration for that “great people-watching machine,” nor softened his memory of what it took to, say, remove the polyurethane that was gunking up the mural. He sees Open House New York as a kind of focus group on the building’s continued relevance. “I’m very interested in how curious the public is about the place,” he says. “People still say ‘Oh, wow.’ ” Tours like his fill up quickly (if you can’t get a spot, some of them are available as podcasts on the Web site). But they mostly appeal to people interested in things like history, buildings, New York — obscure subjects compared to interest in other people’s apartments. This year’s Open House offers tours at 14 private residences, many of them led by the owners. There’s an obvious hazard to that arrangement: If the tour is boring, it’s really rude to walk out. Boredom is not a problem at the Duane Street home and architecture studio of Sandro Marpillero and Linda Pollak, though. They chopped eight feet off the back of the building (who makes their home smaller?), and the results, as well as the story they tell about it, are dramatic. But as I walked into their teenage daughter’s bedroom, with her personal effects in full view, I couldn’t help feeling a little uncomfortable. Why would anyone invite strangers to snoop around their stuff? On the way out I walked back through the couple’s busy architectural office, the part of the apartment that’s closest to the street door. Maybe if you’re the kind of person who invites your employees into your home, it isn’t that big a leap to invite New York in, too. Or if you’re the kind of person who has a glass-bottom bathtub and a toilet without a door, as Adam Kushner does. An architect and contractor, he also welcomes tours into his family’s home on Barrow Street. The first year, the line went up the block and around the corner. “My wife cleared out,” he recalled. “She said it’s your thing; if you want 400 people trooping through the apartment, go for it." After another year’s tours, he Googled himself and found that someone had written an unflattering blog post. “I felt like a D-list celebrity for a few seconds,” he said, laughing. Mr. Kushner lives a few blocks from Murray’s Cheese , which opened its caves for the 2006 Open House, and found so many takers that it now offers tours on its own. On the Open House weekend, Michael Anderson , a soft-spoken hipster who gives his title as affineur , will lead visitors — in hairnets and disposable booties — into the vaults where cheeses great and small come of age. As I followed him into Murray’s cool, cramped chambers, lined with shelves of wood and straw, I thought about how little the process had changed since the Middle Ages. Though back then the guys cutting and wrapping would probably have been French monks and the affineur probably would not have had such an impressive moustache. By the way, save your cheese jokes; he’s heard them all. And if you could avoid asking him his favorite cheese? Thanks. You wouldn’t ask Kate Gosselin which of her children she liked best. I stepped back out into modernity, and the city that was once again buzzing around me seemed subtly but fundamentally altered. No, I wasn’t still wearing the hairnet. To some degree New York forces everyone to live in public. The most famous residents jostle along the sidewalks with the rest of us, protected by nothing more than a baseball cap and some sunglasses. But we are always reminded of how much takes place beyond view — hidden behind velvet ropes and guarded by phalanxes of doormen. In one brief but exuberant outpouring, Open House New York does a lot to rectify that. Suddenly the city — or an intriguing fraction of it, anyway — is transparent, and anyone who wants to can hop those ropes and glide past those guards. Curiosity is all that’s required. But comfortable shoes help.

Newtown Creek
Ellis Island
Radio City
Buildings
Privacy


Safety Steps Urged as 2 More Die in New York City Fires

Abstract: A deadly blaze at a house in Brooklyn early on Wednesday was another frustrating reminder for firefighters of how many fire deaths are preventable. Since Friday, five people have died and four people have been injured in house fires across New York City. Candles were the cause of two of the blazes, including one on Friday in the Bronx that took the lives of three small children. An electric space heater sparked the fire on Wednesday morning in Brooklyn that killed a taxi driver and his mother. None of the homes had a working smoke detector, officials said. Cooler temperatures typically correspond to a spike in fires as people switch on old space heaters or even stoves and oven burners for additional heat in drafty homes. Smoking in bed, poorly wired electronics and cooking accidents remain persistent problems, according to the Fire Department. But it is the absence of smoke detectors that links most fire-related deaths, officials said. “Five people we lost in fires, and no smoke detectors,” Salvatore J. Cassano, the fire commissioner, said in a telephone interview. “In my mind these are preventable deaths.” Last year, 72 percent of fire fatalities occurred in homes where there was no smoke detector, according to the Fire Department. The deaths over the last week come as the number of fire fatalities in the city continues to fall. There were 58 in 2012. There have been 49 this year, including the two on Wednesday. Serious injuries among firefighters are also down 14 percent this year compared with 2012. Even so, Mr. Cassano said the department would increase efforts to educate the public on fire safety. This weekend, it plans to hand out 1,000 smoke alarms to city residents as well as 1,000 battery-operated candles in an effort to wean people off the wax-and-flame varieties that are popular around the holiday season. “We’re very serious and concerned about what has happened in the last few days,” Mr. Cassano said. “Our numbers are being driven so low that when we do have something like this, it sort of startles us back to the real world.” The fire on Wednesday broke out just after 3 a.m. and quickly engulfed the two-story brick home in Flatbush where Charleus Sejour, a 63-year-old taxi driver, lived with his extended family, officials and witnesses said. Several neighbors tried to enter the home but were driven back by intense flames and heat. One of the neighbors, Intazar Ali Dar, 55, said that at one point the windows of the home exploded and jets of flame shot from the openings. He said he and others were able to help Mr. Sejour’s wife, daughter and baby grandson to escape. But Mr. Sejour, known in the neighborhood as Charlie, and his 91-year-old mother, Dievlie Sejour, never made it out. Mr. Sejour and his family were from Haiti, neighbors said, and traveled there often, sometimes on relief missions with their church. Christopher Bischof, 62, who has lived in a second-floor apartment in the Sejour home for seven years, said Mr. Sejour’s brother died in the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010. Mr. Bischof was not in the home at the time of the fire. Nasir Ali, 29, a fellow taxi driver and neighbor, said Mr. Sejour was “insanely gentle and nice — I can’t even believe this.” Mr. Cassano said the fire was caused by a space heater that was plugged into an extension cord stapled to the floor. The staples had cut through the rubber coating on the cord and touched the wire, causing a spark, he said. “These tragedies are preventable,” he said again.

Fires
Brooklyn
Bronx
Smoke detector
Charleus Sejour
Dievlie Sejour
Fatalities,casualties
Salvatore J Cassano
NYC
Accidents and Safety


Racecar Driver Is Fourth in Handcycle

Abstract: Alex Zanardi, the Italian racecar driver who lost his legs in a crash in 2001, competed yesterday in the handcycle division of the New York City Marathon , his first marathon. Zanardi, 40, finished in 1 hour 33 minutes 17 seconds for fourth place. “I was so nervous that I don’t think I slept more than three hours last night,” he said. “Nothing hurts. I’ve been in better shape, but I’m not demolished.” Alejandro Albor of Elk Grove, Calif., won the men’s handcycle division in 1:17:48. Helene Hines of New York (1:57:18) was the only women’s finisher. The wheelchair winners were Kurt Fearnley of Australia (1:33:58), for the second consecutive year, and Edith Hunkeler of Switzerland (1:52:38), for the third time in four years.

New York City Marathon
Marathon Running
Handicapped
Zanardi Alex


DuPont Names a President, Later to Become Its Chief

Abstract: DOVER, Del. (AP) — The DuPont Company named Ellen J. Kullman as its future chief executive on Tuesday. Ms. Kullman will succeed Charles O. Holliday Jr. , who is stepping down after a 10-year term in which he shifted the company’s focus toward biotechnology and away from basic chemicals. Ms. Kullman, a 20-year veteran of DuPont, will become the company’s president and a board member on Oct. 1, and chief executive on Jan. 1. She eventually will succeed Mr. Holliday as chairman. “Having transformed the company, increased our profitability and returns, and developed a talented and strong next generation of leaders, now is the right time to make a seamless transition to new leadership,” Mr. Holliday said in a statement. Ms. Kullman, 52, is executive vice president and a member of the company’s office of the chief executive. Ms. Kullman said she wanted to build on the strong science foundation that DuPont had established during Mr. Holliday’s tenure, including its focus on biotechnology, and to heighten the company’s presence in emerging markets. Revenue in the company’s safety and protection segment increased to $5.5 billion from $3.5 billion while she was group vice president from 2002 to 2006. During Mr. Holliday’s tenure, DuPont completed more than $60 billion in deals that have changed the company while bolstering earnings. Ms. Kullman, a native of Wilmington, Del., where DuPont is based, said one of the key challenges facing the company was fostering innovation while continuing productivity gains. Despite high raw material prices, DuPont set an earnings record for the first half of 2008 on the strength of its agriculture and nutrition segment and growth in emerging markets.

DuPont Company
Appointments and Executive Changes
Holliday Charles O Jr
Kullman Ellen