Patriots Were Questioned on Videotaping Claims

Abstract: PALM BEACH, Fla. — Coach Bill Belichick and other members of the Patriots ’ staff were interviewed by N.F.L. officials in the days after the Super Bowl in February as part of the league’s investigation into allegations that a former Patriots employee had videotaped an opponent’s walk-through before a previous Super Bowl. Belichick, speaking to reporters Tuesday morning at the league’s annual meeting, said that he spoke to as many as five league officials in Foxborough, Mass., five days after the Patriots lost to the Giants on Feb. 3. The Patriots’ chairman, Robert K. Kraft, among others, was also questioned. On the day before the Super Bowl, The Boston Herald reported that an unnamed person said the Patriots had videotaped the St. Louis Rams’ walk-through before the 2002 Super Bowl. The day the article was published, league officials interviewed three members of the Patriots’ staff at a hotel in Arizona: Scott Pioli, the head of player personnel; Jimmy Dee, the video director; and Stacey James, the vice president for media relations. It was at least the second time Belichick had been questioned by the league about his videotaping practices since the Patriots were caught taping the Jets’ defensive signals during last season’s opener in September. “I’ve answered so many questions so many times in so many ways from so many different people, I don’t know what else the league could ask,” he said. “Whatever the allegations are, I’m confident that’s not true,” Belichick said. “I’ve never seen a tape of another team’s practice, ever, in 34 years of coaching, and certainly not that one.” Commissioner Roger Goodell confirmed that the league went back to the Patriots after the new allegations surfaced. “We followed up on other things because certain things had been tossed out,” Goodell said. Belichick and the Patriots’ videotaping incident have dominated much of the talk at these meetings, and both Kraft and Belichick addressed team owners and executives after Goodell spoke about the integrity of the game Tuesday morning. Kraft stood before the group and said that the incident involving the Jets was not what the Patriots or his family were about and that his organization made a mistake. He pledged to make sure it did not happen again, and apologized. When he was finished, the room broke into applause. “I felt it was very sincere and very heartfelt, and I appreciated what he had to say,” Colts Coach Tony Dungy said. Belichick explained from his point of view what happened, but did not say he made a mistake and did not apologize. He also told reporters he had almost no interaction with Matt Walsh, a former Patriots employee who has intimated that he has evidence of the team’s videotaping practices. He said he never asked Walsh, or anyone else, to tape the Rams’ walk-through. “It totally came out of right field,” Belichick said of the allegation. Belichick’s appearance here was highly anticipated because he rarely attends the annual coaches breakfast with reporters. But he seemed relaxed in answering questions about videotaping for about a half-hour. When he arrived at a table where a dozen reporters waited for him, Belichick joked about a potential rule change, “Want to talk about the force out?” At the opposite end of the room sat Jets Coach Eric Mangini, whose team caught the Patriots videotaping in the first week and turned them in to the league. Their tables were originally next to each other until an official moved Mangini’s table a few minutes before the breakfast began. During the session, Belichick offered his interpretation of the rule that prohibits videotaping. He said his reading was that the rule prohibits taping of defensive signals for same-game use. Even after a memo was sent before the 2006 season reminding clubs that videotaping defensive signals for use at any time was a violation, he said he thought he was still in compliance. Belichick, perhaps trying to put the best possible spin on the embarrassing situation, said that getting caught helped the Patriots in the long run. They have streamlined and reorganized aspects of the organization — presumably those involving the video department — to “make sure a situation like this never comes up again,” he said. The Patriots’ imbroglio had one tangible impact on the league, too: owners approved a measure to put a coach-to-defense signal-calling system into one defensive player’s helmet for next season. The measure had failed in two previous tries, last year by just two votes. This year, it passed with 25 teams in favor (the seven teams that voted against it have head coaches with offensive backgrounds), including the Patriots, who had previously voted against it. The rule means that a designated player on defense, and one backup, will have the system in his helmet. Quarterbacks have had the system since 1994, but the radio system is not expected to eliminate defensive signaling entirely because many teams — including the Patriots — rarely have one player on the field for every defensive snap, and the system will be cut off with 15 seconds remaining on the play clock. EXTRA POINTS The “hair rule” — the proposal by the Kansas City Chiefs that a player’s hair should not be allowed to cover the name and number on his jersey — was set aside until at least the May meeting so that players could be consulted.

Recordings and Downloads (Video)
New England Patriots
National Football League
Belichick Bill


U.S. Women Open With a Victory in Algarve Cup

Abstract: Abby Wambach scored her 154th goal, leaving her four short of Mia Hamm’s international scoring record, and Rachel Buehler scored in her 100th appearance as the United States beat Iceland, 3-0, in the opener of the Algarve Cup in Faro, Portugal. The Americans will play Friday against China, which tied Sweden. ¶ Juventus beat visiting Celtic, 2-0, to seal its progression to the Champions League quarterfinals, 5-0 on aggregate.


Wayne Bryant, Ex-Lawmaker in Trenton, Is Found Guilty of Fraud

Abstract: TRENTON (AP) —Wayne R. Bryant, the former chairman of the New Jersey State Senate’s powerful Budget Committee, was convicted on Tuesday of bribery and pension fraud after an eight-week trial. Mr. Bryant, a Democrat, was accused of taking money for a job that required no work at a scandal-ridden state university in exchange for securing state funding for it. He was also accused of using that job and two others where he did little or no work to fraudulently increase his state pension. Mr. Bryant stood quietly as the verdict was read. His wife, sitting behind him in the front row, sobbed loudly as each of the 13 counts against him were read. He left the courtroom without speaking, flanked by lawyers and a bailiff. Carl D. Poplar, a lawyer for Mr. Bryant, declined to comment on the verdict or say whether his client, who faces several years in prison, would appeal. Also convicted Tuesday was the former dean at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey ’s School of Osteopathic Medicine. The former dean, R. Michael Gallagher, was accused of creating a phony job for Mr. Bryant, using the legislator’s influence to become dean and devising phony profits on financial statements to receive bonuses. He was convicted of five counts of mail fraud and acquitted on one count of mail fraud. Both Mr. Bryant and Mr. Gallagher remain free until their sentencing hearing, set for March 20. Mr. Bryant, 61, joined the Assembly in 1982 and became a senator in 1995. He represents Camden, and had a national reputation for pushing welfare reform. He was indicted in March 2007 and retired from politics this year. Authorities said he was paid $200,000 over four years by the Gloucester County Board of Social Services, yet worked less than 15 hours total. He was also accused of holding down a job at the state university that had no responsibilities at all. A judge dismissed charges related to another job at Rutgers University’s Camden campus, where he gave a handful of lectures each year. Authorities said the extra jobs would have increased Mr. Bryant’s state pension to $81,000 a year from $30,000.


Siemens Reports Huge Loss

Abstract: PARIS — Siemens, the German industrial conglomerate, reported a huge quarterly loss on Thursday as it wrote off the cost of divesting itself of its troubled business telecommunications unit. Siemens posted a net loss for its fourth quarter of 2.4 billion euros, or $3 billion, which included a loss of about $1.49 billion for divesting its 51 percent stake in Siemens Enterprise Communications. The company said its revenue rose 7 percent in the latest period, to 21.7 billion euros ($27.02 billion), and said orders rose 4 percent from a year earlier. In a letter to shareholders, Peter Löscher, the chief executive, said the company would try to raise its market share amid challenging conditions, but that reaching the company’s targets for 2009 “has become clearly more ambitious.” Siemens, which is fighting to restore its reputation amid a criminal bribery scandal, also said that it had set aside about $1.24 billion related to legal and regulatory matters. German prosecutors are investigating more than 300 past and present Siemens employees on suspicion that they used a companywide system of slush funds and illicit payments to win business.


A Review of ‘Odd Volumes: Book Art From the Allan Chasanoff Collection,’ in New Haven

Abstract: Some of the greatest works in global art history are books: Mayan codices, Persian manuscripts, Ireland’s Book of Kells. What makes the objects in “Odd Volumes: Book Art From the Allan Chasanoff Collection” at the Yale University Art Gallery interesting is the contemporary approach to the subject. Covering 1960 to the present, those objects — more than 100 artworks by over 80 artists — were made at a moment when the future of books was threatened by television, film and digital technology. Not surprisingly, given those conditions, destruction, or creative deconstruction, reigns throughout the show. Artists have taken pre-existing (“found”) books and reconfigured them into sculptures. Reading is generally secondary, or impossible. Mary Ziegler’s “Necessity of Friction” (1994), installed at the entrance, introduces this idea. For the work, Ms. Ziegler took a found copy of “How Much Is Too Much?” — a 1984 book by Leonard Gross about the effects of social drinking — and clamped it onto a rotating disc covered with sandpaper. The result: a slow grinding away of the book, and a predictably disturbing noise, as well. Image John Roach’s “Pageturner” (1997), with works by Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain. Credit Image courtesy of the Allan Chasanoff Book Art Collection, Yale University Art Gallery Found books are carved into sculptural mounds, towers, stones, undulating landscapes and the contours of a human body by, respectively, Guy Laramée, Isabel Barbuzza , Pamela Paulsrud , Megan Williams and Long-Bin Chen . Sitting on a table of books you can handle, Keith Lord’s 2004 altered version of Webster’s Third International Dictionary has a peephole you can peer into, where he has carved an ingenious little chamber, lit with a miniature lamp and reflected with mirrors. Other books have been scorched, rolled, waxed, glued together and filleted into fanciful creations. Jonathan Callan ’s “Rational Snow” (2002) has a found copy of “Marvels of the Universe,” Volume 1, flattened under a rectangular block of aerated concrete; Susan Rostow’s 1995 book with handmade paper has active fungus growing on it. Some works include funny conceits, like Denise A. Aubertin ’s “Michel-Ange (Cooked Book)” (1988), a paperback book literally cooked with flour and peppers that plays on a cookbook. (For non-Francophones: Michel-Ange is French for Michelangelo.) Others include hackneyed descriptions, like Byron D. Clercx’s “Axiom” from around 1993, an ax whose long handle is made, as the catalog entry states, with “found newspaper and theory books on postmodern art criticism.” (As this review demonstrates, the critic, even in the so-called postmodern period, generally has the last word.) Although most of the books here subvert the practice of reading, a couple highlight and enhance it. John Roach ’s “Pageturner” (1997) is a suitcase with a motor, fans, a motion sensor, security cameras and a monitor that would facilitate reading (copies of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Poetry and Tales” and Mark Twain’s “Mississippi Writings” are included) — except that the mechanism wasn’t functioning on my visit. Image Detail from Byron D. Clercx’s “Axiom” (circa 1993). Credit Image courtesy of the Allan Chasanoff Book Art Collection, Yale University Art Gallery Mr. Roach, who was born in 1969, is part of a revival of Fluxus, the ’60s movement that relied on absurdity, chance and playful gestures — sometimes inspired by Buddhist concepts — to question everything from traditional art making to global politics. An artist involved in the original movement, Yoko Ono , is represented here by what might be her masterpiece: “Grapefruit” (1964). Counter to most Western notions of art, it is a small, flimsy paperback book that contains “event scores” for actions and performances. Taking the idea of the musical score and replacing the art object with events conceived for audience participation, “Grapefruit” is also an early example of conceptual art. “Odd Volumes” was organized, it should be mentioned, by Yale students: four undergraduates and two graduate students from a variety of disciplines who were “born digital,” as the catalog says — from a generation that approaches text as something that can be circulated far beyond printed-book form. The exhibition is drawn from the collection of a Yale alumnus, Allan Chasanoff, who has tried his own hand at book art. His 1971 work here is made with ring binders holding together various papers and also smacks of Fluxus or Marcel Duchamp, whose “ Box in a Valise ” (1935-41), a leather valise containing color reproductions of his own artworks, inspired many Fluxus artists. The title of Mr. Chasanoff’s work, an absurdist spoof on scientific or academic research and texts, is also the longest of any work in the show: “A Self-Conscious Effort, Continuously Progressing, on and About the Release and Reintegration of Content Through Formal Means Thus Altering the Discreteness of and Permitting the Relating of Information: A Proposal, a Prototype, a Policy.” The printed catalog accompanying the show was designed by current and recent Yale art students and is divided in half and can be flipped over and read from either side, furthering the exhibition’s efforts to show a range of experimental thinking around books. A theoretical background might include texts, like “The Gutenberg Galaxy” (1962), by Marshall McLuhan, which considered the origins of print in relation to our current mass media condition, or “Does Writing Have a Future?” (1987), by Vilem Flusser. Both books employed design and technology in their equations: McLuhan’s, a “mosaic” layout of the text, and Flusser’s released on the now-obsolete floppy disk. The works in “Odd Volumes” exaggerate that, since in art, books may function as mere metaphors, raw material or springboards for objects untethered to the text.

Books
Art
Allan Chasanoff
Yale University Art Gallery
Yoko Ono
John V Roach
New Haven CT


Overhaul of Solitary Confinement Is Approved for New York’s Prisons

Abstract: A federal judge on Thursday formally approved a class-action settlement intended to overhaul the way solitary confinement is used in New York State’s prisons. The settlement resolved a suit filed on behalf of thousands of prisoners who had challenged the practice, used as a punishment for prison offenses. The judge, Shira A. Scheindlin of Federal District Court in Manhattan, wrote that the agreement, reached in December , “should end the use and conditions of solitary confinement in New York as they have existed for decades,” and “will greatly reduce the frequency, duration and severity” of the practice. The result, Judge Scheindlin said, will be conditions that are “more humane and more just.” The settlement, for example, caps the length of time an inmate may be placed in solitary confinement — some inmates spend years there — and provides alternative programs to address “the underlying causes of an inmate’s disciplinary issues,” the judge noted. The agreement can also be enforced in court. Alphonso B. David, chief counsel to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, said that with the judge’s approval, the state had directed the corrections department “ to move swiftly in implementing all provisions of the agreement.” “We anticipate the results will be a safer, fairer and more humane correctional system,” Mr. David added. The plaintiffs were represented by the New York Civil Liberties Union; the law firm Morrison & Foerster, which donated its services in the case; and a prisoners’ rights expert, Alexander A. Reinert, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Taylor Pendergrass, a lawyer for the civil liberties organization, said the judge’s approval “officially starts the clock running” on the state’s responsibility for beginning the reforms. “In many ways,” Mr. Pendergrass said, “the hardest part is yet to come.” Judge Scheindlin said she had received 164 letters from inmates about the settlement, with most expressing support but some raising concerns about the state’s ability to carry out the terms of the deal.

Solitary Confinement
New York
Prison
Shira A Scheindlin


France Upsets Canada in Worlds Opener

Abstract: France stunned Canada in their first game of the world championships, winning, 3-2, after a shootout in Minsk, Belarus. Pierre-Édouard Bellemare scored the only goal in the shootout for France. The United States brushed aside Belarus, 6-1, in their opener.


South Dakota Shelves Bill on Killings in Defense of the Unborn

Abstract: A state bill to expand the definition of justifiable homicide in South Dakota to include killing someone in the defense of an unborn child was postponed indefinitely Wednesday after an uproar over whether the legislation would put abortion providers at greater risk. The House speaker, Val Rausch, said that the legislation had been shelved, pending a decision on whether to allow a vote, amend the language or drop it entirely. A spokesman for Gov. Dennis Daugaard said, “Clearly the bill as it’s currently written is a very bad idea.” The bill , approved by the House Judiciary Committee last week on a 9-to-3 party-line vote, establishes in part that “homicide is justifiable if committed by any person in the lawful defense of such person, or of his or her husband, wife, parent, child, master, mistress, or servant, or the unborn child of any such enumerated person.” The phrasing caused concern and disbelief on both sides of the abortion debate, with activists in the abortion rights and anti-abortion movements calling the language poorly conceived at best, and perhaps an incitement to violence. The bill was cheered, though, by those anti-abortion activists who argue that the use of violence is justified to stop doctors from carrying out abortions. Dr. Marvin Buehner, of Rapid City, S.D., who is the only doctor in the region to provide abortions for women whose health and safety are at risk, said he was shaken by the measure. “Once you get the sense that the Legislature will tolerate violence against abortion providers, even if the legislation is not enacted, it crosses the line into intimidation,” he said. Troy Newman, leader of Operation Rescue , an anti-abortion group, said he was “shocked” when he read the bill, which he worried could encourage violence. “The pro-life movement, by definition, is in favor of protecting human life from the moment of conception to natural death, and we reject all forms of violence,” he said. Republican supporters of the legislation said it was being misinterpreted as an anti-abortion measure, The intent, they say, is to afford equal protection to unborn children in existing law. But Sarah Stoesz, president of the local Planned Parenthood chapter, said she also doubted the sponsors’ claims that the legislation was not intended to be an anti-abortion measure. “It’s a very clear shift in the conversation,” she said. “We have never had a public conversation about whether it’s right to kill a doctor.” Several people convicted of killing abortion providers have tried unsuccessfully to use the justifiable homicide argument. Dave Leach, an Iowa anti-abortion activist, praised the bill, saying it could end abortions in South Dakota by scaring away doctors or by establishing grounds for someone to kill those who stay. “There may be something I’m overlooking, but from all appearances, this bill would certainly justify an individual taking the life of an abortionist in order to save human lives,” he said.

South Dakota
Abortion
Law and Legislation
Murders and Attempted Murders


Fairness an Issue, Even After Azerbaijan Votes

Abstract: BAKU, Azerbaijan — The slogan of Jamil Hasanli’s long-shot campaign to unseat Azerbaijan’s longtime president, Ilham Aliyev, in elections on Wednesday was “Enough!” Or, more specifically, as the red and white stickers plastered all over his headquarters and around this capital city made clear: enough corruption, enough monarchy, enough unemployment, enough stolen oil money, enough low-quality education and health services, enough disrespectful officials, and enough war over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Yet, with early results showing Mr. Hasanli headed to a resounding defeat — a loss that appeared preordained from the moment a referendum was adopted in 2009 clearing the way for Mr. Aliyev to seek a third five-year term — the more relevant issue was fairness, which seemed to be lacking in the election. In an interview, Mr. Hasanli said his bid was hampered by a rushed campaign calendar, a lack of money and exposure in the state-controlled news media, and the indifference of the rest of the world. International observers indicated they would largely affirm his complaints in a report to be issued Thursday. “In this election, the biggest shortage we had was time,” said Mr. Hasanli, a historian and history professor. Changes in election rules compressed the campaign to just three weeks. But Azerbaijan, an important American ally perched strategically between Russia and Iran, has 85 regions, most of which can be visited only by long car rides. “Within 21 days, it’s physically impossible to cover all these regions,” Mr. Hasanli said. His most formidable obstacle, however, was Mr. Aliyev, who inherited the presidency 10 years ago from his father, Heydar Aliyev. Huge pictures of the elder Aliyev can still be found throughout Baku, and each year the younger Mr. Aliyev oversees an elaborate celebration of his father’s birthday on May 10. Image Youth in Baku, Azerbaijan's capital, celebrated on Wednesday after the announcement of exit polls, which showed a strong lead for the incumbent. Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times “It’s a coronation,” Mr. Hasanli said, with a hint of exasperation. Supporters of Mr. Aliyev say he has presided over the steady political development of the country after years of Soviet domination, cultivating one of the world’s few predominantly Muslim nations with a secular political tradition and relatively liberal social views. They also say he has used the country’s oil wealth to raise living standards, including a glittering revival of Baku, which is now dotted with luxury homes built from elegant stone, skyscrapers and an array of new cultural sites. “I voted for my president,” said a 65-year-old retired doctor leaving a polling station in a Russian-speaking section of downtown Baku. Like many Azerbaijanis, she did not want to give her name when discussing politics, even though she backed Mr. Aliyev. “He is young, energetic; he speaks Russian and English. Those parameters fit my requirements. I do not know other candidates and did not even try to know about them.” “Look at this city,” she added. “It is beautiful because of him and his wife.” Critics, however, say Mr. Aliyev is a heavy-handed autocrat in a country that has a poor record on human rights. In February, two political opposition leaders were arrested on charges of inciting riots in the city of Ismayilli, northwest of Baku. Lawyers for the men said the arrests were politically motivated and that their clients were merely visiting the city when protests broke out. Outside the same polling station in downtown Baku, a 69-year-old retired lawyer said that the fear of political reprisal by the Aliyev government was genuine. “I voted for Jamil Hasanli because his campaign established some trust,” he said. “Ilham Aliyev is fine, but he does not care to gather smart people around him. He ignores corrupted officials.” After securing the referendum in 2009 that lifted term limits, Mr. Aliyev portrayed his re-election as a foregone conclusion. He did virtually no campaigning and did not participate in debates, sending representatives in his place. In the debates, the 10 candidates each received six minutes, even as Mr. Aliyev dominated the state-controlled news media. Image Azerbaijan has 85 regions, most reachable only by long car rides. Credit The New York Times Many voters said they viewed Mr. Aliyev as the only choice. In a poverty-stricken neighborhood in the Yasamal district of Baku, several people displaced from the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which Azerbaijan and Armenia have been at war over for more than 20 years, said they supported Mr. Aliyev. “Even if Ilham Aliyev’s presidency did not affect the welfare of my family, it did help the nation,” said Vusala Ahmedova, 33, who lives in a room with her husband and three children. “I would like him to get our lands back so that we can move to our land that I left when I was 11.” With more than 74 percent of precincts counted, the Central Election Commission said Mr. Aliyev had received nearly 85 percent of the vote, and Mr. Hasanli 5.2 percent. Shortly afterward, Mr. Aliyev thanked voters for their trust in a recorded statement on state television. “I would like to assure the Azeri people that, in the future as well, I will serve them worthily and will always protect the state interests of Azerbaijan,” he said. Mr. Aliyev also praised the election as “free and transparent,” calling it “another serious step toward democracy.” Even before results were announced, a victory celebration erupted outside the headquarters of Mr. Aliyev’s New Azerbaijan Party. Streets were closed as jubilant supporters danced and waved flags. Nonetheless, the Hasanli campaign issued a statement accusing the government of widespread election fraud, including accusations of ballot-box stuffing and interfering with election monitors. Initial reports from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the European Parliament suggested that they would declare the election as failing to meet international standards. The groups scheduled a news conference for Thursday.

Azerbaijan
Jamil Hasanli
Election
Heydar Aliyev
Ilham H Aliyev


Transferring the Taped Past to a Hard-Drive Future

Abstract: It started with a call from Steve Jobs . In October 2008 , I wrote about my alarm that Apple had removed the FireWire jack from its latest laptops. “FireWire is how you connect tape camcorders to the Mac,” I wrote. “I’ve got 100 MiniDV tapes carefully stored — of my children growing up, of my TV appearances, of our trips and memorable moments. For 15 years, I’ve intended, someday, to edit those tapes down into a series of cherished DVDs. Maybe when the kids get married.” But if FireWire goes away, I wrote, “my tapes will be stranded and uneditable.” Apple got us into this hobby in the first place. Apple developed and popularized FireWire, Apple installed a video editing program on every Mac — and now it was yanking the rug out from under us. So Mr. Jobs, chief executive of Apple, called to tell me how wrong I was. “You’re not going to edit those tapes,” I remember him telling me. “You don’t have the time.” I was offended. How dare he be so direct, so presumptuous — and so right? “When were you planning to edit all those tapes?” “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe when I retire.” “You know what? By the time you retire,” he said, “there won’t be a camcorder left that can play them. Ten years from now there won’t be a camera left that can play them.” He told me that the electronics companies had already stopped developing tape camcorders. In eliminating the FireWire jack from Macs, Apple was just reflecting the new reality. Since that phone call, a lot has happened. Apple restored the FireWire jack to the next generation of MacBook Pro laptops, a concession to the public outcry (though Apple’s two lower-powered models are still FireWire-free). And sure enough, one by one, the camcorder companies eliminated tape camcorders from their lineups. Today, for example, Canon sells only a single tape model — which has been essentially unchanged for three years. Apparently, tapeless camcorders are the future. But I’d always had three beefs with tapeless. First, the video quality wasn’t as good as tape. Second, once the camcorder’s hard drive filled up, you were dead in the water. You couldn’t record anything more until you got home from your vacation and emptied the video onto your computer. Finally, you no longer had cassettes as a handy backup; you had to store your videos on a hard drive and hope that nothing went wrong with it. But here’s what else has happened since November 2008: the quality of some tapeless camcorders now matches tape. (I’ll be reviewing them soon.) You don’t have to worry about filling up your camcorder anymore, because dirt-cheap memory cards take the place of cassettes. And hard-drive prices have dropped so much that hard-drive video storage (at about $1.20 an hour of video) costs even less than tape ($4 an hour). In fact, even two hard drives — a master and a backup — costs less than tape. So last summer, reluctantly, I bought a 1-terabyte drive and began transferring all my MiniDV tapes onto the computer, one at a time. Little by little, my intern and I worked through the huge stack of original tapes (140, to be precise). Each one-hour tape takes one hour to transfer, but you can do other things in the meantime, either on the computer or around the house, pausing every now and then to change tapes. I had decided to use Final Cut Pro; since that app is for pros, I figured the quality of the transferred video would be pristine. But one day in late summer, when we had transferred 85 hours of tapes, I was inspecting the transferred video when I received a horrible shock: there were no date stamps. Every MiniDV camcorder invisibly imprints the date and time on every frame of video. For home movies, it’s indispensable. You can’t see it on your TV, but it’s available to see in just about every video editing program on earth. Except Final Cut. Final Cut ignores this information — doesn’t import it with the video. (Apple asserts that professional TV and film editors don’t need to know when something was shot. But I’ll bet they’d like it if they had it.) I finally decided that there was no solution but to start all over again — this time, using iMovie . Yes, iMovie, the simple video app that comes on every Mac. It may not be Final Cut, but it does store the video at full quality (in the same DV format the camcorder uses) — and it does preserve the date and time information. Better yet, iMovie has a completely automatic mode. Put in the tape, type a title and click Import. The program automatically rewinds the tape, plays/imports it completely, then rewinds it again. You’re ready for the next tape. (The equivalent procedure in Movie Maker, Microsoft ’s free video editor for Windows, is almost as easy. Open the File menu and choose Import from Video Device. Type a name, choose a location, choose a format and click “Import the entire videotape to my computer.”) Handily enough, iMovie auto-files each video in a folder list, labeled by year: “2002,” “2003” and so on. You can’t create folders manually and you can’t drag the videos around within the year folders. But having them grouped by year is workable enough. The terabyte drive filled up. Fortunately, hard-drive prices had dropped again; I bought a 2-terabyte drive for the same $180 I’d paid for the 1-terabyte drive six months earlier. Along the way, I was crestfallen to discover that about 10 percent of the tapes had stretches of garbled video. After only a few years, the tape itself was already deteriorating ; I was rescuing them just in time. This week, we finished the job. I can now call up a video on my computer with the same one-click ease you might call up a photo on yours; instant access to 15 years’ worth of memories. Someday, I’ll edit these things down into 10-minute highlight reels — but already, the payoff has been enormous. Whenever my children wandered into my office during the transfer process, they went wide-eyed in delight and amazement. Such funny haircuts! Oh, I remember this! Did I really talk like that?” Most of these tapes were recorded and never looked at again. They’re seeing the light of day for the first time. Now, my work isn’t completely finished. I have yet to transfer my older, analog camcorder cassettes and even VHS tapes. (My options: send them out to an expensive transfer company; buy an analog-to-digital converter for about $40; or use my MiniDV camcorder’s analog pass-through feature, which turns the camera itself into a signal converter.) I still have to back up my two video drives. I still have to edit these videos, which I’ll probably wind up doing in iMovie 2045. And above all, I have to steel myself for a lifetime of format migration. The DV format imported by iMovie (or the .WMV files created by Movie Maker) will eventually be replaced by newer, better file formats, and today’s files will be orphaned. I’ll have to be vigilant, converting my stash every 10 years to whatever’s in vogue at the time. I don’t like that idea. I don’t like putting all my videos in one or two baskets. I don’t like the expense and inconvenience of switching to a tapeless camcorder. But having been through the transfer task, I can tell you that it wasn’t, in the end, unpleasant. It brought joy to anyone who wandered into my office. And it means that my lifetime of video memories have a new lease on life. I urge you to consider a similar project of your own.


N.F.L. Talks Spill Into Frustration as Hopes for Deal Fade

Abstract: WASHINGTON — On the eve of the labor bargaining deadline, the N.F.L. appeared to be teetering on the brink of its first work stoppage since 1987. The negotiations on the financial issues that divide owners and players are at a virtual standstill and representatives of both sides are trading barbs in public. By late in the evening, the meltdown in relations seemed nearly complete, playing out on television and on Twitter. Negotiators met on Thursday for the 15th day of mediated sessions, but members of the players union were irate that they never met directly with the nine members of the owners’ labor committee. The union leader DeMaurice Smith announced on Twitter that he would update players on negotiations at 2 p.m. Friday, a move interpreted by some in the league as a signal that the union was prepared to walk away from the negotiating table and begin the process of decertifying, which would plunge the N.F.L. into the court system and imperil the start of the 2011 season. The owners are expected to then lock out the players, who would seek a temporary injunction to block the move. The two sides are still far apart over what financial documents owners would turn over to players. The owners have offered to allow independent auditors to review full team financial data and then verify it for the union. The union has rejected that offer because its advisers have indicated that would be no help. The owners and union members have not narrowed the gap in the revenue split, which now stands at less than $700 million per year of the deal. But the lack of activity — players sat at union headquarters waiting to be called back for negotiations, while the N.F.L. conducted a conference call with the 32 owners before finally going home at about 6 p.m. — unleashed frustration from both sides. It was a strong indication that there was not enough goodwill remaining, or enough progress, to make another extension of the deadline likely. Just after 6:30 p.m., the N.F.L.’s lead negotiator, Jeff Pash, emerged from the mediator’s office and questioned the sincerity of the union’s commitment to negotiations. “We really do believe in the value of collective bargaining,” Pash said. “We really do believe in our relationship with the players association. And I’ve said it many times, if both sides have an equal commitment to getting this deal done, it will get done.” Smith was listening on his car radio as he drove home, then turned around and headed for the bank of cameras set up outside the mediator’s office to respond. He invoked last week’s court decision that found the N.F.L. violated terms of the collective bargaining agreement when it negotiated television contracts that paid the league even in the event of a lockout. It was a decision made by the same judge, United States District Judge David S. Doty, who will receive the request for an injunction from players. “We’re committed to this process,” Smith said. “We have been committed to this process. But for anyone to stand and turn to the American people and say that they question that ... uh, look. I understand that there’s probably some things that Jeff Pash has to say. But this is the truth.” What followed was a remarkable exchange of digs and taunts on Twitter from both sides, revealing how much bile had built up in negotiations that have seemingly gone nowhere after the second extension was granted a week ago. In one remark, George Atallah, the union’s top spokesman, said that if owners continued to question the players’ commitment to negotiations, the union was prepared to make public all of its unanswered proposals. That prompted the N.F.L. spokesman Greg Aiello to say , “That won’t take long.” Later, Aiello wondered in a Twitter message when the union was going to respond to more than 150 pages of draft collective bargaining agreement provisions that he said it received eight days ago. The acerbic level of discourse reflected what have long been strained negotiations, but ones that in recent days have devolved into the hardened bargaining positions that both sides appeared to leave behind when they made some progress late last week. On March 3, the union’s outside counsel, Jeffrey Kessler, walked into the league’s small room at the mediator’s office and issued an ultimatum to Commissioner Roger Goodell: if he did not accept a contract extension immediately, the union would decertify moments later, according to a person briefed on the exchange. The extension was granted, but gaining momentum on substantive issues, including how to divide $9 billion in annual revenue, seems to been elusive this week. If there is no last-minute deal, those disclosures will probably come in court this spring and summer because star players like Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Drew Brees are likely to put their names on antitrust lawsuits aimed at owners. The courts may order the N.F.L. to impose rules that allow the games to be played in the meantime, providing a balm for fans. But America’s most popular sport will be on trial. And the gloves are only now coming off.

Lockouts
Organized Labor
Football
National Football League
National Football League Players Assn


Management Shake-Up Continues at Disney

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — The Walt Disney Company continues to slash and burn through the management ranks of its struggling motion picture studio as it works to return the division to profitability. Oren R. Aviv, the studio’s top movie production executive, resigned under pressure on Tuesday. Mr. Aviv, who had been at Disney for 19 years, was responsible for the development and production of live-action movies like the forthcoming “Alice in Wonderland” and “Tron Legacy.” In a management realignment in November, Rich Ross, the recently installed chairman of Walt Disney Studios, ousted a dozen managers, including top marketing and publicity executives. Mr. Aviv was spared and given a public vote of confidence, with Mr. Ross praising him for his “terrific filmmaker relationships and creative expertise.” But it is now clear that the retention of Mr. Aviv was more about keeping a modicum of stability atop the studio as Mr. Ross installed other changes. Mr. Ross has been charged by Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, with rethinking matters such as how the company markets its movies in the digital era and how it schedules the release of films on DVD and on-demand services. Another reorganization — focusing on the home entertainment division — lies ahead. Mr. Ross is expected to hire a new production chief shortly. A search for a new marketing president is continuing. “I’m proud of the hundreds of movies I’ve helped to make and market, especially the studio’s upcoming films,” Mr. Aviv said in a statement. “I wish Disney, Bob Iger, Rich Ross and their new teams great success.” Mr. Aviv, well liked in Hollywood’s creative community, was particularly instrumental in pushing the “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “National Treasure” franchises. Mr. Ross said in a statement, “Oren’s significant contributions to the Walt Disney Studios are well documented.” The studio, which lost money in the last two quarters, has a busy few months ahead. Aside from “Alice,” directed by Tim Burton, and the “Tron” reboot, coming films include “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” and “Toy Story 3.”

Disney Walt Co
Executives and Management
Suspensions Dismissals and Resignations
Aviv Oren R.


7-Eleven Finds a Niche by Adapting to Indonesian Ways

Abstract: JAKARTA — As night falls, groups of twenty-somethings gather at a trendy hangout, chatting at tables laden with beer, iced coffee and nachos. Some couples cuddle over chocolate pudding, while others groove to music on their iPhones. The nightspot has live bands, Wi-Fi and a growing clientele. It also has a familiar green-and-orange sign hanging overhead: 7-Eleven. “It’s a new concept of hanging out,” said Oka Dharmawan, 21, an engineering student who meets friends at 7-Eleven almost every night to log onto the wireless hot spot and drink Slurpees. Ten years ago, young people in Indonesia gathered at street-side food stalls called warung to hang out and gossip. But with rapid economic growth has come social change. “People still like to talk about their lives, they like to gossip,” said Henri Honoris, president director of Modern Putra, 7-Eleven’s Indonesian franchisee. “Now we give them an alternative. It’s a warung with better quality.” The franchise’s strategy has been to blend a small supermarket with inexpensive ready-made food and seating, which attracts customers in a city desperately lacking outdoor recreation space and snarled by traffic jams that often restrict mobility. “The neighborhood 7-Eleven has become recreational,” said Debnath Guharoy, Asia director for Roy Morgan Research, a market research company based in Australia. Sixty-five percent of the franchise’s customers are younger than 30, and to reach them, it relies on another defining feature in Indonesia: a love of social networking. In one of the world’s most plugged-in countries, 7-Eleven has 57,000 Twitter followers and more than 44,000 Facebook fans. Many of them spend hours surfing the Internet at 7-Eleven, which never closes, allowing young people to gather late into the night. When the store plays host to local bands, customers update their social networking statuses and help draw bigger crowds. And now that many Indonesians have more disposable income, they are looking for what Mr. Honoris calls “affordable luxury.” The store’s appeal to both the lower middle class and the nouveau riche becomes apparent to anyone just looking at the parking lot, where motorbikes sit next to Mercedes-Benzes. In many ways, the convenience store’s evolution was a given in a country like Indonesia, where the penchant for hanging out runs so deep that there is a word for sitting, talking and generally doing nothing: nongkrong. Mr. Honoris said that he had seen the demand for a revamped 7-Eleven early on, but that it had taken two years to persuade the company, which has its headquarters in Dallas, to grant him the franchise. When 7-Eleven finally opened its first 20 Indonesian stores in 2009, its first expansion into a new country in 16 years, he found his knowledge of the market paid off. Since then, Modern Putra, which is also the national distributor for Fujifilm, has seen its sales jump fivefold, reaching 320 billion rupiah, or about $35 million, in 2011. The company recorded a net profit of 57 billion rupiah last year. “Before you had a dirty, sweaty little street shop, and that’s all there was,” said Mr. Guharoy of Roy Morgan Research, referring to the warungs. “Now you can go to a clean, air-conditioned shop and it’s a better experience.” To appeal to local tastes in the world’s most populous Muslim country, 7-Eleven had to rethink its sales strategy. The store offers ready-made fried rice, doughnuts and its signature Big Gulp soft drinks and flavored-ice Slurpees. Most outlets also sell beer and wine coolers — though each new shop conducts neighborhood surveys to get community approval first. Meals can cost less than 23,000 rupiah, which appeals to families that might once have gone to McDonald’s, a close competitor. Novi, a 37-year-old travel agent who, like many Indonesians, goes by only one name, said she liked the comfort of being indoors and the international food options. Her favorite is chicken katsu, a Japanese-style fried cutlet. “There is a different kind of atmosphere, a different kind of food,” she said, in comparing 7-Eleven with the food stalls she used to frequent. “There is air-conditioning here and there are no buskers to bother you.” The store’s Big Bite hot dogs and cafe items — coffee and cappuccino — bring in the most sales. Small snacks like chips and pillow bread, tiny sandwiches filled with cheese or chocolate, are also popular. With 69 stores in Indonesia, all of them in Jakarta, 7-Eleven lags behind its closest competitors, including McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts and KFC, which together have more than 600 outlets. But 7-Eleven is expanding much faster, having added 36 stores last year alone. In Thailand, 7-Eleven has one store for every 10,000 people. If the same ratio were applied in Jakarta, Mr. Honoris said, the city could see 2,000 outlets. The swift growth of the middle class shows the enormous potential for expansion. From 2003 to 2010, about 50 million people entered the middle-income bracket, with disposable income of $2 to $20 per day, according to the World Bank. Indonesia’s gross domestic product per capita is now more than $3,600, exceeding that of India, the second-largest consumer market in Asia, after China. The success of 7-Eleven, which was acquired by a Japanese company in 1991, has drawn attention from foreign fast-food retailers and other convenience store chains, all eager to take advantage of Indonesia’s seemingly insatiable consumption. Lawson, based in Tokyo, which entered the country in July 2011, is on its way to opening 50 new stores by June. FamilyMart, also from Japan, announced in January that it would open 300 stores by 2015. Local convenience stores are also expanding into special niches. Bao Bao Express, a chain set up in 2010 by a local Chinese-Indonesian businessman, caters to office workers by offering a laundry service and allowing people to pay their electricity and water bills at the register. It operates in office buildings and apartment towers, a strategic move that keeps it from running up against a zoning bylaw that prevents convenience stores from being too close to traditional markets. For 7-Eleven, positioning itself as more of a hangout and less of a convenience store has made both its owners and its customers happy. Rendie Sumadilaga, 26, said the store was even a decent place to meet girls. “There’s lots of good eye candy,” he said, nodding toward a nearby table. And that is just one of many factors Mr. Honoris is banking on. “You can’t find these kinds of customers in other countries,” he said. “This is what Jakarta needs now.”

7-Eleven
Indonesia
Modern Putra
Franchises
Convenience Stores
Jakarta (Indonesia)
Advertising and Marketing


Scarcella Coached Robbery Victim Before Lineup, Lawyer Says at a Hearing

Abstract: A defense lawyer testifying in the hearing of a man fighting to overturn a murder conviction from the early 1990s made new allegations on Wednesday of misconduct by Louis Scarcella, a retired detective whose casework with the New York Police Department in the 1980s and ’90s has already prompted a large-scale prosecutorial review. The lawyer, Robert Massi, testified at a hearing for John D. Bunn, who was convicted of murder in 1992 in a case investigated by Mr. Scarcella. Mr. Massi had represented Rosean Hargrave, Mr. Bunn’s co-defendant in that murder case, and told a State Supreme Court judge on Wednesday that Mr. Scarcella was part of a team of detectives who coached the victim of a robbery before conducting a lineup that included Mr. Hargrave. Mr. Massi said that the experience with the robbery case had given him an impression of the detective by the time of the murder trial. “I was aware of his misbehavior,” he testified. Mr. Bunn served 16 years for the killing of an off-duty correction officer, Rolando Neischer, who was shot along with another officer, Robert E. Crosson, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 1991, when Mr. Bunn was 14. His co-defendant in the case, Rosean Hargrave, spent 23 years in prison before a judge overturned his conviction and released him in April. Mr. Massi, delivering his testimony by video connection from his home in Fishkill, N.Y., told Justice ShawnDya L. Simpson’s courtroom in State Supreme Court that he had represented Mr. Hargrave on an earlier case stemming from a robbery charge, which he said was thrown out after the victim testified under oath that either Mr. Scarcella or a partner had shown the victim a photograph of the suspect before having her pick him out of a lineup. “The witness submitted on the stand that either he or his partner had showed her the picture before the identification,” Mr. Massi testified. The disclosure was a fresh allegation of misconduct connected to the police work of Mr. Scarcella — a flashy detective who once bragged about his methodology to Dr. Phil and whose work has come under a microscope for accusations that he relied on a crack-addled prostitute for eyewitness testimony and produced written confessions that defendants later denied they had given. Mr. Bunn’s lawyers from the legal assistance organization Exoneration Initiative contend that their client was a victim of ineffective counsel from a public defender in addition to misconduct on the part of investigators. Mr. Massi’s testimony on Wednesday appeared to bolster both of these claims. He described Mr. Bunn’s lawyer at the time, Harold Venokur, as a septuagenarian who was no longer fit to practice. (Mr. Venokur is deceased.) Image Mr. Bunn with a lawyer, Rebecca Freedman. His defense lawyers questioned Mr. Bunn’s previous lawyer’s competence. Credit Pool photo by Jesse Ward “He should have never been allowed to try homicide cases,” Mr. Massi told the court. “He was just losing it, basically.” Mr. Massi maintained that the defense was never aware of an audio recording of Mr. Crosson — the sole eyewitness — made shortly after the shooting, where Mr. Crosson allegedly contradicted details he would later testify about and, according to Mr. Massi, sounded out of sorts. Mr. Massi also said the authorities never released the test results for blood gathered from the crime scene. Mr. Scarcella took the stand after him, flanked by two lawyers. One of Mr. Bunn’s lawyers, Glenn A. Garber, questioned the retired detective about conflicting reports made regarding Mr. Bunn’s arrest in 1991, with one indicating that Mr. Bunn had been arrested at his mother’s house for a robbery, the other noting he had been arrested at the 77th Precinct’s station house in Crown Heights for an attempted murder on the same date and the exact same time — Aug. 14 at 11:10 a.m. Mr. Bunn’s lawyers maintain that he was detained on false robbery charges as a pretext for police to build a case for murder, beginning with his identification by Mr. Crosson in a lineup later that day. The case is one of more than 70 being reviewed by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office that are connected to Mr. Scarcella, whose methods were the subject of a 2013 investigation by The New York Times. To date, the office has sifted through about 35 of these cases, overturning convictions in six of them. Mr. Scarcella, looking at the documents as he was being questioned by Mr. Garber, acknowledged that his office had indicated two arrests for separate crimes in different places on the identical date and time, but gave few other answers during his brief testimony, responding mostly with clipped affirmatives. Under cross-examination from prosecutors, Mr. Scarcella noted that his name was not on either report. Mr. Garber talked to reporters after the hearing, saying the two reports showed that police had improperly arrested his client. “You can’t be at two places at the same time,” he said, calling the reports “corroborative evidence” that the authorities were “engaging in inappropriate police procedures to arrest him for a murder they had no basis to arrest him for.” Mr. Bunn, his eyes moist as he spoke to reporters outside the courtroom, said he had been dreaming about having his name cleared ever since his trial in 1992. He said he felt in the moments after his murder conviction as though he and his co-defendant were “the only two people there.” “It wasn’t until now,” he added, “that I actually feel like I had a voice.”

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Tape That Freed a Convict Turns Out to Be Fake

Abstract: Kareem Bellamy, who was released from prison two months ago after spending 14 years behind bars for a murder conviction, appeared in a courtroom in Queens on Friday morning — with his freedom again on the line. Roughly four months ago, a judge vacated Mr. Bellamy’s conviction after the defense produced an audiotape in which another man confessed to the crime. In mid-August, the judge, Justice Joel L. Blumenfeld, released Mr. Bellamy on bail, pending a new trial. But the informant who supplied the tape has since told the authorities that he staged the recording to “create this false evidence because I was paid thousands of dollars by the attorneys for Kareem Bellamy.” Mr. Bellamy’s lawyers acknowledged in court on Friday that the tape was fraudulent, but said they did not know it was fake when they received it. Prosecutors asked Justice Blumenfeld, of State Supreme Court in Queens, to reinstate the guilty verdict and send Mr. Bellamy back to prison. The judge, however, allowed Mr. Bellamy, 41, to remain free on bail and set a hearing for Nov. 13 to resolve questions about the recording and to determine whether Mr. Bellamy belonged back in prison. In the meantime, Mr. Bellamy must wear an electronic monitoring device on his ankle, the judge said. “No fraud has been proven yet,” Justice Blumenfeld said. “We haven’t had a hearing.” Justice Blumenfeld allowed Mr. Bellamy to remain free over the vehement objections of the assistant district attorney Brad A. Leventhal, who argued that the defendant had been freed because of fabricated evidence. “This court was duped, this court was misled, this court should be incensed,” Mr. Leventhal said. The case has become a complex one , complete with the sort of behind-the-scenes dealings that people see most often in movies. Both sides have become passionate as they ask themselves how the case came to turn on a fraudulent tape. The prosecution argued in court papers that Mr. Bellamy’s lawyers told them that an informant, Michael Green, said that his friend, Levon Melvin, confessed to the 1994 murder of James Abbott, for which Mr. Bellamy had been convicted. Prosecutors said they planned to place a secret recording device on Mr. Green to get a taped confession from Mr. Melvin. But prosecutors said they decided they could not tape Mr. Melvin secretly because he told one of Mr. Bellamy’s investigators that he had a lawyer and did not want to speak about the case. Instead, the defense team arranged with Mr. Green to make the recording in February and used it to appeal Mr. Bellamy’s conviction. Prosecutors have always been skeptical of the tape, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office said. They did not try to verify it before the murder conviction was vacated because the tape had made Mr. Melvin a suspect in the murder, the spokesman said. After Justice Blumenfeld vacated the conviction, Mr. Melvin learned from an article in The New York Law Journal that he had been mentioned as the confessed killer, prosecutors said. His lawyer contacted the district attorney’s office, prosecutors said, and said that Mr. Melvin had not killed Mr. Abbott and that he had never made a confession. Prosecutors said they then interviewed Mr. Green, who told them he had fabricated the tape because Thomas Hoffman, one of Mr. Bellamy’s lawyers, as well as two private investigators, told him that Mr. Bellamy was innocent. Mr. Green said it was not Mr. Melvin on the tape but a man he paid $100. Mr. Leventhal said the district attorney’s office planned to give Mr. Green immunity for testifying that he had fabricated the tape. He could have faced perjury charges. In an interview after the hearing, Mr. Hoffman denied that he paid Mr. Green to create the tape. In fact, Mr. Hoffman said, the defense team did not know who Mr. Green was until he went to one of Mr. Hoffman’s private investigators and said that a friend, Mr. Melvin, confessed to the murder. After the tape was made, Mr. Hoffman said, Mr. Green asked for money to relocate because he feared for his life. Mr. Hoffman said that the defense gave Mr. Green money to move and that they told the district attorney’s office, as well as Justice Blumenfeld, about the payment. Mr. Hoffman, along with the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, which also represented Mr. Bellamy, stepped down as his counsel on Friday because they could be asked to testify about the tape. Justice Blumenfeld assigned a public defender, Steven W. Silberblatt, to represent Mr. Bellamy. Stuart Gold, a lawyer for the firm, said it denied any wrongdoing. As he left the courthouse, Mr. Bellamy smiled. “Right now,” he said, “I’m just going to focus on being free.”

Courts
Bellamy Kareem
Murders and Attempted Murders
Decisions and Verdicts


New Video in ISIS ‘Lecture Series’ by John Cantlie

Abstract: As American airstrikes began raining down on the de facto capital of the Islamic State in Syria on Monday night, the militant group issued a new installment in its “lecture series” delivered by a British hostage, John Cantlie. In the propaganda video, Mr. Cantlie is again seated at a table wearing an orange jumpsuit, in a reference to the outfits worn by Muslim prisoners at American detention centers at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He reads from a script, explaining how the United States’ involvement in the Syrian conflict will mirror its misadventures in Vietnam. “In this program, we’ll see how the Western governments are hastily marching towards all-out war in Iraq and Syria without paying any heed to the lessons of the recent past,” Mr. Cantlie says. “Not since Vietnam have we witnessed such a potential mess in the making.” The 5-minute, 55-second forced “lecture” is the second in less than a week; the first circulated on Thursday. Of interest is how the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, seems intent on using Western figures to try to sway American opinion. Mr. Cantlie begins by quoting a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, Michael Scheuer, whom he praises for his knowledge of the Middle East. How ISIS Works With oil revenues, arms and organization, the jihadist group controls vast stretches of Syria and Iraq and aspires to statehood. “So, let’s get straight to the point with a quote from former- C.I.A.-chief-turned-vigorous anti- intervention-campaigner Michael Scheuer: ‘President Obama does not have the slightest intention of defeating the Islamic State,’ ” Mr. Cantlie says. Later on, he quotes Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey governor, who he says acknowledged that intelligence officials failed to anticipate the growing threat. “Western governments,” Mr. Cantlie adds, were “caught napping by the sheer speed of the Islamic State’s growth.” A freelance journalist who has worked for The Sunday Times of London and The Telegraph, Mr. Cantlie was traveling with James Foley, an American reporter, when they were kidnapped on a Syrian road just 25 miles from the Turkish border on Nov. 22, 2012. They were the first of nearly two dozen foreign hostages abducted over the next 14 months who ended up in the same jail in Raqqa, Syria, the capital of the Islamic State. They included 19 men and four women, and starting in March, the Europeans were released for ransoms averaging two million euros, or about $2.6 million, per captive, according to one former hostage. Britain, like the United States, is one of the only countries that has held to a strict, zero-concessions policy, and by June, the only prisoners left in the jail on the outskirts of an oil installation in Raqqa were three British and four American citizens. The Islamic State began beheading them in August, starting with Mr. Foley , and videos of their murders were posted on YouTube. Mr. Cantlie is one of only four hostages, including another British man and two Americans, from the original group still in captivity. Mr. Cantlie ends by inviting viewers to watch for the next installment: “Join me again for the next program.”

John Cantlie
Islam
Syria
Propaganda
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Kidnapping and Hostages
Video Recordings
Downloads and Streaming
Terrorism


Ex-Lion Ordered To Return $6.1. Million

Abstract: The former receiver Charles Rogers , who was suspended for substance abuse in 2005 and was released by the Detroit Lions the next year, must repay $6.1 million to the team, Judge Julian Abele Cook of United States District Court in Detroit ruled. The team has been trying to recoup two-thirds of his $9.1 million signing bonus. Rogers, the second pick in the 2003 draft, was sentenced to 93 days in jail in January for violating a court order to stay sober.


Buying Upstate New York Land, V.A. Closes Chapter in Building Cemeteries

Abstract: WASHINGTON — As the Allies gathered in France on Friday to honor the Americans who stormed the beaches of Normandy 70 years ago, a final resting place for World War II veterans had just been carved out of fields of grasses and clover in upstate New York. Last week the Department of Veterans Affairs completed the purchase of 132 acres of undeveloped farmland near the small town of Pembroke, about halfway between Buffalo and Rochester, for what is planned as the last national cemetery for veterans to be built for the next 40 years. The cemetery near Pembroke is the end of a nearly two-decade building spree, when veterans’ burial grounds were built at a more rapid pace than at any time since the Civil War. The cemetery building boom came during a period when the veterans of World War II started to reach their 70s, 80s and 90s in greater numbers. Those cemeteries will not only be the last to serve that generation, but will probably be the last for the generations of veterans who served in Korea and Vietnam. Veterans deaths peaked in 2006, when 665,000 people died. Deaths have been declining since then, but the National Cemeteries Administration, which is part of the V.A., projects that 560,000 veterans will die in 2020. The cemeteries administration anticipates that there will be enough burial space until around 2050, when 2.6 million veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan begin entering their twilight years. The Pembroke cemetery was spurred by a 2011 Veterans Affairs policy that is intended to bring more cemeteries closer to areas with large populations of veterans. At this point, the closest national cemetery for veterans in Buffalo is 100 miles away, in Bath, N.Y. “Having a national veterans cemetery within a drivable distance of a large number of vets, it’s an honor,” said Roger Woodworth, an Iraq war veteran who served in the Army and who now runs the Veterans One-Stop Center of Western New York , in Buffalo. The families of veterans “will be able to pay their respects without having to travel over 100 miles,” Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a statement. “That can be a tremendous burden for many families.” The Pembroke cemetery, on land now shaded by willows, maples and pines, will be one of five national veterans cemeteries under construction, adding to six that were built in 2009. When the five cemeteries and other smaller projects are complete, the V.A. says that 96 percent of veterans in the United States will have a burial option at national, state or tribal burial grounds within 75 miles of where they live. “Most of large veteran populations will be covered across the country,” said Ronald E. Walters, the department’s acting principal deputy under secretary for memorial affairs. “Our focus will more than likely become: What do we do for the remaining 4 percent?” Currently, about 13 percent of veterans have chosen to be buried in a veterans cemetery, which they view as an honor. “Personally, I would love to be buried next to my brothers and sisters that wore the uniform,” said Todd Baxter, an Army veteran and executive director of the Veterans Outreach Center in Rochester. There are 3.2 million grave sites in the 131 national cemeteries run by the Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as 33 department-maintained lots in private or municipal cemeteries around the country. This does not include Arlington National Cemetery , in Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington. It is run by the Department of the Army, and more than 400,000 people are buried there. The largest Veterans Affairs graveyard is Long Island National Cemetery , in Farmingdale, N.Y., where more than 340,000 people are interred. Nearby Calverton National Cemetery , farther east on Long Island, has the most acreage and will someday overtake its neighbor with the most interments. The veterans cemeteries offer a burial, headstone or marker, and care of the grave at no cost to veterans’ families. Spouses and dependents of veterans are also eligible for these benefits. The Department of Veterans Affairs determines the location for new cemeteries based on where large populations of veterans are unserved. Until 2011, there needed to be 170,000 veterans in a 75-mile radius of any new cemetery location. To expand access to national cemeteries, the population threshold was reduced to 80,000. Beyond Pembroke, four other new cemeteries will be in Colorado Springs; Omaha; and two areas in Florida, one near Tallahassee and the other near Cape Canaveral. For the 4 percent of veterans who will not have a veterans cemetery within 75 miles when the new ones are completed, the V.A. is exploring other options. In states like North Dakota and Wyoming, the department is acquiring smaller plots of land, sometimes in existing cemeteries. Cremation has also become a more common option in recent years, and the department is looking for locations, particularly near urban areas, where it can build columbariums, or structures designed to house cremated remains.

Cemetery
Veteran
Veteran Affairs
Funerals
US Military
Fatalities,casualties
Pembroke NY


Sailor Falls Ill After Rio Event

Abstract: Organizers of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics said they were “extremely concerned” after the German sailor Erik Heil became ill after his third-place finish at a test event there. Heil, who was being treated in a Berlin hospital for several infections, said he was convinced that they had been caused by the polluted water, piling more pressure on organizers to secure the safety of the athletes in next year’s Olympic sailing, swimming and triathlon events.

Sailing
Rio de Janeiro
2016 Summer Olympics
Water pollution


Rob Manfred and M.L.B. Must Address Baseball Games’ Long Length

Abstract: The fundamental problem facing Major League Baseball and its next commissioner, Rob Manfred, is that attention spans are getting shorter while games are getting longer. Confronting these clashing realities may be Manfred’s top priority when he takes office in January. It will be the first transition at the top of baseball’s hierarchy since Bud Selig replaced Fay Vincent in 1992. “The job is much more complicated,” said Larry Baer, the chief executive of the San Francisco Giants. “You’re dealing with a 20- or 25-channel world, maybe, in 1992. Now you’re in a 500-channel universe and the Internet. You’re communicating with people that are walking down the street consuming baseball. And that’s a good thing; that’s positive. But we have to figure out ways to make it relevant to that 12-year-old.” Go to any major league park or Little League diamond, and you will still find 12-year-olds enjoying the game their parents loved. But those smiling faces, owners fear, are disappearing. As the owners filed out of the Hyatt Regency in Baltimore on Thursday after electing Manfred, several stressed the importance of appealing to a younger demographic. “We need to do a good job at capturing the youth,” said Tom Werner, the Boston Red Sox’ chairman and the runner-up to Manfred. “We can always do better.” Jim Crane, the owner of the Houston Astros, added: “We’ve got to work on getting more kids in the game in all areas. The way media’s going, we’ve got to be more interactive with the younger kids.” Mark Attanasio, the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, said a brisker pace of games, better use of social media and more participation on the field would be crucial to engaging younger fans. “I think it’s a priority for all of us, and Rob is leading us,” Attanasio said. “We’re faced with an aging demographic, and there’s any number of metrics which point to that. So it’s an issue we need to address.” With some exceptions, the game is thriving. Revenues are high; ballparks are modern and fun; attendance is strong, if somewhat stagnant; and neither the owners nor the players union seems eager to revisit old labor wars. But this, the owners said, is when you act. “It’s good, but we can’t sit,” Crane said. “The best time to get some stuff done is when you’re out front. And that was a theme, too. We just can’t sit on our laurels. We have to keep moving forward as a group, and a unified group.” A signature strength for Selig has been unifying the owners through his political clout and decades of experience. Manfred took office over initial opposition from a small group of owners backing Werner, including some with an appetite for labor confrontation. But a vast majority recognize that baseball’s fundamental economic structure is sound — and that a hard salary cap is unrealistic. Labor issues are never easy to resolve, and some parts of the 2011 collective bargaining agreement, like qualifying offers to free agents and the changes to the draft, may need to be revisited when the agreement expires after the 2016 season. Nobody seems to fear a strike, though, and Manfred’s perfect negotiating record — three labor deals without a work stoppage — helped him get the job. “I think that’s a piece of it, but certainly not the biggest piece,” said John Ellis, the chairman emeritus of the Seattle Mariners. “Rob’s an excellent executive.” Manfred’s versatility as Selig’s top lieutenant, including his lead role in the Biogenesis investigation and the sense that he would be sensitive to individual teams’ needs, was appealing. And while Manfred did not reveal the issues that mattered to him, he was convincing to the owners about his plans to modernize the game. That includes improving the pace of play. Thirty years ago, the average time of a game was 2 hours 35 minutes. This season, through last Sunday’s games, it was 3 hours 2 minutes 47 seconds, which would be the longest on record. Players sense the problem. The Yankees’ Mark Teixeira, when asked what the new commissioner’s top priority should be, said: “From a fan’s perspective, getting kids interested in the game again, watching the game. I just know that kids don’t watch the game like I did, and pace of play doesn’t help that.” Doug Glanville, an ESPN commentator who played in the majors from 1996 to 2004, said he had heard all the remedies — forcing hitters to get into the box, calling more high strikes and so on — without seeing game times reduced. Restricting catcher-pitcher conferences, enforcing a time limit between pitches, reducing the time for instant-replay reviews — everything, owners say, will now be considered. But Glanville also touched on a more fundamental issue. “The kids coming up, are they playing it?” he asked. The cost of playing at the youth level, with the rise of travel leagues and summer ball, is prohibitive for many. Baseball has sponsored a youth outreach program, Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities, since 1989, and players like Teixeira, who donated $1 million to the Harlem chapter in 2011, have helped it grow. Yet the game, for many reasons, still struggles to reach the broad demographics it needs for the future, on the field and among fans. Owners have not ruled out expansion, which could open new terrain, such as Mexico City, and push the game internationally. But on a more fundamental level, they just need more young players. More children playing baseball means more future customers for M.L.B. Increasing participation, then, is a vital task for Manfred’s administration. The Hall of Famer Joe Torre, a sage hand in Manfred’s office, agrees. “I think a challenge in the commissioner’s office is to make sure that we find a way to engage young people — and I’m not talking about bells and whistles,” said Torre, M.L.B.’s executive vice president for baseball operations. “I’m talking about the game and a way to create an interest in the game for kids that’ll make them want to play. I think it’s our responsibility to look where the future is, and that’s in the young people. But in order for them to be interested in the game, they’re going to have to play it.” And to play the game, they first need to like it. Tailoring a slowing product to a generation craving speed is no easy task, but that is Manfred’s challenge.

Rob Manfred
Baseball
Bud Selig
Jim Crane
MLB


A Wild Idea: Making Our Smartphones Last Longer

Abstract: When Apple unveiled the iPhone 5 late in 2012, it was the fastest and most capable smartphone on the market , a highly intricate collection of electronics that had been miraculously forged into a single sturdy slab of aluminum and glass. Unlike most ephemeral gadgets, this phone felt as if it were built to last for ages. I kept on thinking that for about 12 months, when I promptly ditched my nearly flawless iPhone 5 for its successor, the 5S, which promised a few more cheap thrills. In my defense, it’s my job to adopt the latest and greatest blinking thing. But what’s your excuse? On average, Americans keep their smartphones for about two years before jumping to a new one, according to the NPD Group, a market research firm. Until recently, that’s been a wise strategy; carriers’ contracts encouraged frequent upgrades , and the smartphone business was advancing so rapidly that old phones just couldn’t keep up with the state of the art. But that aggressive upgrade cycle is taxing to the environment and to our wallets, and is unsustainable over the long run. Image Credit Stuart Goldenberg “There are 5.6 billion adults in the world, and one day they all should have a cellphone,” said Kyle Wiens, the co-founder of iFixit, a site that publishes repair manuals for electronics. “To make that happen, we’re going to have to make sure that any phone manufactured today lasts for 10 years.” Despite their small size, smartphones are expensive, resource-hungry goods, and they deserve a better life cycle than two years of use followed by an eternity in a forgotten desk drawer. It is possible to buy smartphones with an eye to longevity — a strategy that will save money and global resources and give you the snooty self-satisfaction of knowing you’re shunning gadget consumerism. The main points are: Use your phone for more than two years, ideally three; when you run into trouble, try to repair, not replace it; and when you’re done with it, trade it in. When you’re looking for a new phone, don’t just consider the latest high-end devices; many people will find last year’s best phone just as useful as the newest one. You might even consider buying a used phone instead of a new one. Sound complicated? It’s not. Let’s dive deeper into this plan: KEEP YOUR PHONE LONGER. It’s become a cliché among tech critics that smartphones have crossed the threshold from amazing to boring. High-end phones seem to have hit an innovation plateau, with each new iPhone or Samsung Galaxy just incrementally better than the last. Image A Gazelle employee removing batteries from traded-in devices. Credit Gazelle.com This is bad news for gadget nuts like myself, but it’s great for people who just want a nice phone. The innovation plateau means that for most people, in most cases, the latest and greatest phone won’t be all that much better than the one you’re using now, so there’s less pressure to upgrade. Sure, phones’ microprocessor brains keep getting faster, but for ordinary uses — web browsing, email, Facebook — those gains are difficult to notice, especially when you’re on a spotty mobile network. The latest phones might offer nice extras like a fingerprint scanner or a better camera flash, but few of these are really necessary. You can wait for them. But what about obsolescence? Won’t your phone lose its power as it ages? Yes, but that’s easy to fix. The main thing to worry about in an older phone is a dying battery; after two years, you’ll notice your phone struggling to keep a charge. Some phones, like Samsung’s Galaxy line, let owners swap the battery; you can just buy a new one and pop it in. Replacing the iPhone’s battery requires special tools, but it’s a relatively cheap and easy fix. IFixit’s iPhone 5 battery kit, for example, sells for $30, including tools. “Anyone who isn’t totally clumsy can do it in about 20 minutes,” Mr. Wiens said. There are also thousands of phone repair techs across the country who’ll do it for a small fee. One service, iCracked, will even send techs to your home or office to fix your phone while you wait, or buy it from you. TRADE IT IN. Apple, Samsung and other smartphone manufacturers sell their top phones for more than $600 each without a contract. But with a two-year mobile contract, that price gets baked in to the cost of the commitment. So many people don’t understand the true cost of their smartphones — or their true value. “One thing I’ve learned in this business is that everything has value — everything, even broken devices, which we use for parts,” said Israel Ganot, chief executive of Gazelle, one of the oldest and largest gadget trade-in services. That value is determined by simple economics: Demand for the world’s best phones far outstrips supply, so devices that seem outdated in the United States still carry cachet in the developing world. When you sell your old phone to Gazelle, the staff reviews its physical condition and checks it against a database of phones that have been reported lost and stolen. Then Gazelle shuttles your device on a path to its new life. Most end up in huge markets in Asia where they’re purchased by traders from across the globe, then fixed up to look as good as new, and shipped to points far and wide. “In many countries, a new iPhone can cost a thousand dollars,” Mr. Ganot said. “We’re providing the equivalent of a certified pre-owned BMW, for less than half the price.” The global demand for old smartphones has prompted a boom in trade-in services like Gazelle. Yet the supply of used phones remains low; only a quarter of smartphone users trade in their devices. Many smartphone owners are worried about the safety of their data (though erasing it works fine ). Others never bother because they think their devices are worthless. But that’s wrong. Two years after you first bought it, Gazelle will give you about $150 for your old iPhone. That’s a very nice dinner for two. And if you don’t need the money, do it for the planet. A smartphone that isn’t sitting in your drawer is one less smartphone that has to be manufactured anew. BUY A USED PHONE. As I explained a couple weeks ago, America’s largest mobile carriers are now offering contract-free wireless plans that separate the price of your device from the price of your service. These plans offer incentives to buy from the secondary market; if you get a cheap used phone, you might save a bundle on your monthly bill. Here’s how: According to data from Gazelle, phones lose most of their value in the first year. After a year of use, an iPhone will sell for about half of its original price. After two years, it’s worth about a quarter of its original price. After that, prices stabilize and depreciation slows way down. For top Android models, like Samsung’s Galaxy line, the pattern looks similar to the iPhone’s, with price levels slightly lower. This suggests a strategy for staying ahead of the costly upgrade cycle. Avoid buying a brand-new top-of-the-line device. Instead, when a new phone comes out, you can get a good deal on last year’s model. Then, when you trade it in after two years, you’ll recoup much of the cost of your phone. Ultimately, this strategy will let you save about $20 a month per phone. How many nice dinners is that?

Smartphone Apple Environment iFixit Samsung Gazelle.com


‘Clown Hysteria’ Spreads to Britain

Abstract: LONDON — There was the student who spread terror this week by running across the campus of Brunel University in west London dressed as a killer clown and wielding a chain saw. There was the creepy clown in Leicestershire, in the Midlands, who frightened a resident strolling through a cemetery next to a school. The clown was brandishing an ax, according to a Facebook post accompanied by a blurry photograph. And there was a pair of male clowns in a black van who approached two girls on their way to school in Essex, inviting them to a birthday party. As a result of that scare, Clacton County High School in Essex forbade students to leave the school premises during their lunch hour, The Guardian reported . The clown craze, a mix of childish pranks and more serious menacing, appears to have migrated to Britain from the United States, where the novelist Stephen King warned on Twitter this month that it was “time to cool the clown hysteria” after a spate of appearances by terrifying clowns. Dozens of clown episodes have been reported across Britain in recent days, the police say, including a clown jumping out from behind a bush or climbing onto a car at a traffic light. So far no injuries have been reported, though the police said anti-clown patrols had been increased in some areas. Prof. Mark Griffiths, a psychologist at Nottingham Trent University who studies behavioral addictions, said several traumatized children had been kept home from school after recent clown scares. Clown sightings in the United States took on a sinister edge in August in Greenville County, S.C., with reports that people dressed as clowns were offering money to children to try to lure them into the woods. At least a dozen people from across the country have since been arrested. The sudden appearance of frightening clowns has also raised alarm in Australia , where an ax-wielding clown was arrested Tuesday in Victoria, in the southeast of the country, after accosting a woman in her car. Why clowns are suddenly spooking people in Britain remains a mystery. The police said copycat pranksters incited by social media and the approach of Halloween could be the spur. Others have suggested that the trend is being fueled by the demonic clown featured in Mr. King’s novel “It,” which is being remade in a new Hollywood film. Professor Griffiths favors the copycat explanation for the sudden proliferation of fake “killer clowns” in Britain. He said the pranks were tapping into a fear of clowns fueled by popular culture, from Jack Nicholson’s depiction of the Joker in “Batman” to graphic comic books. “There is an evil clown trope running through popular culture,” he said. “With their exaggerated features, big feet, hands and noses, white makeup and wildfire hair, clowns are scary because they are caricatures. Like mannequins or androids, they are human but something is not quite right and this can make people feel uncomfortable.” A fear of clowns, never mind one wielding a fake machete, is no laughing matter. Clowns have a centuries-long history of delighting Britons, but “coulrophobia,” a fear of the jesters, can also cause panic, difficulty in breathing and sweating. The police warned that the clown pranks were disturbing the peace, taking up valuable police resources and, in some cases, breaking the law. On Sunday, the police in the Thames Valley, which covers the areas of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, said they had received calls about 14 scary clowns intimidating people across the region over the previous 24-hour period. Chief Superintendent Andy Boyd, the head of neighborhood policing at Thames Valley police, said that while he did not want to ruin anyone’s fun, there was nothing amusing about scaring someone half to death. “While we do not want to be accused of stopping people enjoying themselves, we would also ask those same people to think of the impact of their behavior on others and themselves,” he said. “Their actions can cause fear and anxiety,” he added, noting that intimidation and threats could lead to public order offenses. True clowns, meanwhile, are outraged at the clown rampage. “This plays on the fear of a certain type of clown,” said Suki Jobson, who studied at the École Philippe Gaulier, a celebrated theater school where aspiring clowns train in France. She noted that clowning is an art form that is meant to bring joy and comfort. “It is easy to scare people,” she said. “It is harder to communicate and bring pleasure.”


North Carolina: Scrutiny of Governor Widens

Abstract: Gov. Bev Perdue said Friday that federal authorities were investigating her 2008 campaign for governor, the third election-related inquiry to involve her since she took office less than two years ago. North Carolina’s Bureau of Investigation recently opened an inquiry about the governor, a Democrat, after the district attorney in Wake County, also a Democrat, said he had lingering questions about her campaign’s airplane flights. The State Board of Elections fined Ms. Perdue’s campaign $30,000 in August for failing to report in a timely fashion private flights going back to 2005.

North Carolina
Perdue Beverly E
United States Politics and Government


U.S. Depth Is Evident in Gold Cup Victory Over Honduras

Abstract: CHICAGO — With the United States’ soccer stars absent from the Gold Cup, understudies have rushed from behind the curtain to eagerly take their turns on center stage. Six players have scored their first international goals in this regional tournament. The latest was the central defender Clarence Goodson, who headed home a corner kick late in the first half in the semifinals Thursday, providing the decisive moment in a 2-0 win over Honduras. Jimmy Conrad, who sustained a concussion in Saturday’s quarterfinal victory over Panama, was held out of the semifinals and was replaced by Goodson, who plays professionally in Norway and rose to the occasion before a crowd of 55,173 at Soldier Field. So again did the emerging midfielder Stuart Holden of the Houston Dynamo, who has scored twice in the Gold Cup and who assisted on both American goals against Honduras with his accustomed flair and pluck. Holden delivered the corner kick that produced Goodson’s goal. In the 90th minute, Holden’s cross in the penalty area was one-timed into the net by the substitute forward Kenny Cooper, who had delivered the decisive penalty kick in the quarterfinals. Nearly a month after reaching the final of the Confederations Cup in South Africa, the United States has reached the championship of another tournament, this time with essentially a different team, which attests to growing professional depth provided by Major League Soccer. Sunday, the Americans will face Mexico in the Gold Cup final at Giants Stadium as the United States attempts to defend its title as champion of the North American, Central American and Caribbean region. Mexico tied Costa Rica, 1-1, on Thursday night and advanced on penalty kicks. “I consider the United States to be a very collective team,” said Reinaldo Rueda, the Honduran coach. “It is known for teamwork, which does not allow any one player to stand out. What is notable is their intelligence, the way they conceptualize play and their maturity.” Thursday, the United States controlled play through the first half by pressuring Honduras, which often seemed unnerved by the compact and organized American defense. Goalkeeper Troy Perkins remained sharp throughout as Honduras awakened in the second half. Although the United States had a 10-1 edge in shots by halftime, it appeared that Honduras might get to the break with a scoreless tie. But in extra time, Goodson ran onto Stuart’s outswinging corner kick and headed the ball high into the net from six yards for a 1-0 American lead. “It was a momentum change for sure,” Goodson said. “It gave us a psychological lift, a huge boost. For them to come away with nothing, I think they went into the locker room pretty depressed.” Several early chances to score in the second half went unrequited for the United States. On other nights against more skilled opponents, “you pay for it,” Coach Bob Bradley said. Perhaps, but not against a Honduran team that had to play this tournament with one eye toward the unstable political situation back home. Perkins smothered all of Honduras’s threats in the second half, rushing off his line several times. Finally, in the 90th minute, Holden found Cooper in the penalty area and the American lead became insurmountable. Once again, the understudies seemed perfectly comfortable in their hopeful auditions for a spot on the 2010 World Cup team, should the United States qualify as expected. “It’s a big opportunity for us,” Goodson said, referring to both the replacement starters and the team’s Confederations Cup success. “We’re all trying to make the most of it.”

Soccer
Gold Cup (Soccer)
Goodson Clarence
Cooper Kenny
Conrad Jimmy
Perkins Troy


Clyde Lovellette, Hall of Famer Who Brought Size and Skill to Basketball, Dies at 86

Abstract: Clyde Lovellette, a bruising Hall of Famer who was one of the first big men in basketball and the first player to win an N.C.A.A. championship, an Olympic gold medal and an N.B.A. title, died on Wednesday at his home in North Manchester, Ind. He was 86. The cause was cancer, his daughter Cynthia Heckelsberg said. Lovellette’s triple feat — playing on N.C.A.A., Olympic and National Basketball Association championship teams — was later matched by Bill Russell, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan, among others. Lovellette (pronounced loh-VEL-et) won three championships altogether in his 11 seasons in the N.B.A., from 1953 to 1964: one title with the Minneapolis Lakers and two with the Boston Celtics. Both teams were already dynasties by the time he joined them. At 6 feet 9 inches and 234 pounds, the fair-haired Lovellette was part of an emerging generation of big men who transformed the game, bringing not only greater size to the court but also scoring power and a degree of athleticism that the professional ranks had seldom seen in its centers. (Old-timers were still deriding centers as clumsy, bulky “goons.”) Some fans, sportswriters and basketball officials were for the first time urging (in vain) that the hoop be raised, from 10 feet to 12. Lovellette arrived in Minneapolis in 1953 as one of the N.B.A.’s most sought-after recruits. At Kansas, where he was known as “the Great White Whale,” he had been an all-American, averaging almost 25 points a game at a time when basketball was a slower, lower-scoring pursuit. And he had starred on the 1952 Olympic squad that took the gold for the United States in Helsinki, Finland. He joined a Lakers team that had just won two consecutive N.B.A. titles, led by the league’s most dominant player, the 6-foot-10 George Mikan , another future Hall of Famer. “Lou Gehrig has been added to Babe Ruth,” the sports columnist Arthur Daley wrote in The New York Times after the Lakers signed Lovellette. The Lakers went on to win their third consecutive title in Lovellette’s first season, defeating the Syracuse Nationals in the finals with a deep roster that included still another future Hall of Famer, Vern Mikkelsen . At 29, Mikan was showing signs of wear, and Lovellette would spell him at center. But Lovellette could also shift to the wings and complement Mikan as a towering scoring threat. “He has the delicate, feathery touch in his shot-making of a seamstress threading a needle,” Daley wrote. In its biography of Lovellette, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., described him as “one of the first big men to move outside and utilize the one-handed set shot, extending his shooting range and offensive repertoire.” It continued: “This tactic allowed him to play either the small forward, power forward or center positions, forcing the opposition’s big man to play out of position.” Image Clyde Lovellette in 2012 when he was inducted into the college basketball Hall of Fame. He starred at the University of Kansas. Credit Rich Sugg/The Kansas City Star, via Associated Press Lovellette developed a bad-boy image on the court. “It reached a point where Wilt Chamberlain flat out decked him in a one-sided game and didn’t receive as much as an ejection,” The Kansas City Star wrote in 1993, recalling the physical play in the N.B.A. decades before. “Why? As Chamberlain said recently, ‘Because everybody hated Clyde Lovellette.’ ” Lovellette, by his own account, didn’t mind if they did: He enjoyed the tough-guy image. “My strength was I could shoot, I was strong, I was not going to be intimidated and I was so mean,” he told The Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1987. “I caused a lot of controversy as far as roughness goes. I took my lumps and gave them.” Clyde Edward Lovellette was born on Sept. 7, 1929, in Petersburg, Ind., and moved with his family to Terre Haute as a boy. He was tall and awkward then. “His mother made him jump rope and do exercises to develop agility,” HickokSports.com reported. After starring for a powerhouse team from Terre Haute Garfield High School, he was courted strenuously by Indiana University and the University of Kansas. The Kansas coach, Dr. Forrest Allen, better known as Phog, told him that the height on Mount Oread, where part of the campus, in Lawrence, is situated, would be good for his asthma. (That claim was disputed in 1986 by the Times sportswriter Malcolm Moran, who wrote, “The fact is that Mount Oread is not high enough to stop a speck of Salina dust from settling beneath a Kansas City eyelid.”) Lovellette chose Kansas, and from 1949 to 1952 he played three seasons for the Jayhawks, averaging 24.7 points a game. He was twice named an all-American. His last team won the N.C.A.A. championship when he scored 33 points against St. John’s University in an 80-63 victory in Seattle. He averaged 35.2 points in four N.C.A.A. tournament games and was named the tournament’s most valuable player. After earning a bachelor’s degree in 1952, Lovellette played one season for the Phillips 66ers (also known as the Oilers), an amateur-league team in Oklahoma sponsored by the Phillips Petroleum Company. Playing for them preserved his eligibility for the all-amateur 1952 Olympics. (Allen was an assistant coach for the squad.) Lovellette was so keen on playing in the Games that he turned down a three-year, $80,000 professional contract, it was reported at the time. After his stint with the Lakers, 1953-57, he played for the Cincinnati Royals (1957-58), the St. Louis Hawks (1958-62) and the Celtics (1962-64). He won titles with Boston in each of his two seasons there, playing on rosters that included Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Tom Heinsohn and Sam Jones. Over his N.B.A. career Lovellette averaged 17.0 points in 704 regular-season games and 14.0 points in 69 playoff games. He made the N.B.A. All-Star team three times. Lovellette was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in 1988. That night, he lost by 12 votes in a bid for a spot on the Republican ticket for the Wabash County Council in Indiana. He married Sally Wheeler in 1951. That marriage ended in divorce. In addition to Ms. Heckelsberg, he is survived by two other daughters from his first marriage, Linda Mcleaish and Cherie Doyle; his wife, Judy Lovellette; a stepson, Robb Lovellette; 13 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren. In later years Lovellette was a sports broadcaster, auto salesman, teacher, counselor, gift-shop entrepreneur and the sheriff of Vigo County, Ind. In 1967 he had the task of blocking 55 protesters from entering an arena in Terre Haute, where George C. Wallace, the former governor of Alabama and an avowed segregationist, was preparing to speak. Lovellette was also the director of vocational rehabilitation and the eighth-grade basketball coach at White’s Institute near Wabash. Winning was not his main concern there, he said. “If you come here for a winning record or to win the state championship, forget about it,” he said in 1982. “It’s a school for delinquent children having problems at home. We try to show them and teach them that the world is a great place, and it’s what you make of it.”

Clyde Lovellette
Basketball
Minneapolis Lakers
Celtics
University of Kansas
Obituary