A First-Time Winner Flattens a Tough Field

Abstract: CHARLOTTE, N.C. — During a stroll on a sunny Carolina afternoon, Anthony Kim came out of the woods Sunday. He won his first PGA Tour event, the Wachovia Championship, by five strokes, grabbing victory by the throat, shaking it for 18 holes and never looking back. Against a formidable field that included 18 of the top 25 golfers in the world, the 22-year-old Kim shot a 69 and set a tournament scoring record of 16-under-par 272 on the difficult Quail Hollow Country Club course. His five-stroke margin over Ben Curtis, who charged into second with a 65, was the widest in tournament history by three strokes. “I’m a little bit numb right now, but that walk up 18 was the best feeling in my entire life, and I’ll never forget that feeling,” said Kim, who is the 13th player since 1970 to win a PGA Tour event before turning 23. “I had chills going up and down my spine. I want to recreate that as many times as possible now, so I’m going to really work hard.” Until this year, working hard was not atop Kim’s to-do list. Last season, he was the youngest rookie on the PGA Tour, a three-time all-American at Oklahoma, brash enough to confuse potential with results. He rarely practiced and openly acknowledged it. After a 66 put him in contention briefly at the 2007 Byron Nelson Championship, he said he understood other professionals were “a little threatened that there’s someone at 21 coming out taking some of their money away from them.” Between then and now, Kim has had an epiphany. He said he learned that winning was not easy and trash talking never made it easier. When his expectations of winning in his first year went unrealized, he learned to listen to the advice of more experienced players like Mark O’Meara, Mark Calcavecchia and others. And he started working diligently to hone his immense talent into a PGA Tour-level game. “I think if I had won last year, my practicing would have gone down to even less, and there wasn’t much to go down,” Kim said. “It might have been the best thing for me, just to get slapped in the face and realize that I can’t win out here without practicing and giving it my all and focusing on every golf shot and on every practice round.” Only then could Kim make winning look easy. He started the day with a four-stroke lead, and that was as close as anyone got to him. He drove his opening tee shot in the right rough, but hit a pitching wedge to 5 feet and made birdie. He barely missed a downhill 30-footer for birdie at the second hole and had a 5-footer for par at the fourth. He then birdied three of the next four holes. By then, he was slapping palms with fans, many of them children and teenagers, who reached across the gallery ropes. He was smiling and doffing his cap to acknowledge the cheers and applause that greeted him at every green. By the time he made the turn, his lead was seven strokes over Curtis. He rarely stopped smiling from that point, even when he bogeyed the 13th after flubbing a chip shot from the right rough — his first bogey in 36 holes. There was no one to stop him. Not Jason Bohn, who finished third after a 71 put him at 10-under-par 278. Not Heath Slocum, who was paired with Kim and shot a 73, finishing eight shots behind. “He’s young, very talented and fearless,” said Slocum, 34, a top 30 player. “He put his foot on the gas at the first hole and he never let up.” Phil Mickelson, who tied for 12th with a 283, had finished his round by the time Kim was working his way to the final three holes, among the toughest closing holes on the tour. “Great playing by Anthony Kim, and this looks like it’s going to be the first of many for him,” Mickelson said. Standing on the 18th tee with a five-stroke lead is one of the best feelings in golf. After ripping his tee shot in the middle of the fairway and hitting an 8-iron into the middle of the green, Kim found out what the best feeling is: a long walk to the final green with his putter and a five-stroke lead in hand. “It was so special, and I’ll never forget that feeling,” Kim said. “It’s just all these emotions were starting to run through, and I realized what I had done, and all the hard work is paying off.”

Golf
PGA Tour Inc
Kim Anthony
Charlotte (NC)
Wachovia Corp


Group Backing John Kasich Likens Donald Trump to Hippo in New Ad

Abstract: New Day for America, a “super PAC” supporting Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio, is aggressively attacking Donald J. Trump, now with a mocking commercial titled “Hippo-Crit” that suggests Mr. Trump belongs in the White House about as much as he belongs in a zoo. On Screen Mr. Trump and a hippopotamus, their mouths agape, alternate or share the screen, as a visual device resembles the bars of a cage. Both are seemingly “voiced” by the snorts and grunts of an indeterminate off-screen mammal. Unflattering images of Mr. Trump flip or spin away before surveillance-style images show Trump-brand neckties made in China and his “palatial D.C. hotel” being built by “illegal immigrants.” Available to save the day in the end is Mr. Kasich, shown in a contemplative pose beside an American flag and a large, Oval Office-like window. The Message Other attacks on aspects of Mr. Trump’s background have whiffed. But this ad pungently goes after Mr. Trump on two of the red-meat issues that have made him so popular with rank-and-file Republicans: illegal immigration and the outsourcing of American jobs. Fact Check Mr. Trump’s name-brand ties are indeed made in China, a decision he defended on grounds that China “has manipulated their currency to such a point that it’s impossible for our companies to compete.” The Washington Post found several workers at Mr. Trump’s Washington hotel project who had entered the country illegally. His campaign says the project is following all applicable laws. Where On New Hampshire television stations as part of a $2.5 million ad campaign against Mr. Trump. Takeaway Attacking Mr. Trump on immigration and jobs — issues on which he has based much of his campaign — and with the sort of ridicule that Mr. Trump has used on others, could gain Mr. Kasich some much-needed attention.

Donald Trump
PACs
New Hampshire
2016 Presidential Election
Campaign advertising
John R Kasich


Paladino Seeks More Digging Into Cuomo’s Life

Abstract: In a sharply personal attack, Carl P. Paladino , the Republican nominee for governor, said in an interview published Wednesday night that the private life of his Democratic opponent, Andrew M. Cuomo , deserved more scrutiny from the news media than it had received. Mr. Paladino, who has shown increasing anger in recent days over press inquiries about the daughter he fathered during an extramarital affair with a former employee 10 years ago, made the comments in an interview with Politico that was posted online. Mr. Paladino said the press had been far more aggressive in covering his marriage and family than in covering Mr. Cuomo’s former marriage to Kerry Kennedy, and suggested without substantiation that Mr. Cuomo had had affairs of his own. “What are they doing intruding on my life?” Mr. Paladino said, according to Politico. In a statement, Josh Vlasto, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, said Mr. Cuomo would not “descend into the gutter” with Mr. Paladino and his campaign. “The people of New York deserve a better dialogue from their candidates and journalists,” Mr. Vlasto said. Hours after the phone interview was conducted, Mr. Paladino nearly came to blows with a New York Post reporter who confronted him about the comments at a conference in Bolton Landing, N.Y., where Mr. Paladino had spoken. According to a cellphone video of the encounter posted online by Capital Tonight , a statewide political program that runs on the YNN network, the reporter, Fredric U. Dicker, confronted Mr. Paladino aggressively about his criticism of Mr. Cuomo. Mr. Paladino responded in kind, cursing at the reporter and accusing Post photographers of harassing his family. “You send another goon to my daughter’s house and I’ll take you out, buddy,” Mr. Paladino said, according to the video. The argument grew so heated that aides to Mr. Paladino moved in between the two men and escorted Mr. Paladino to a nearby restroom.

Paladino Carl P
Cuomo Andrew M
News and News Media
Governors (US)
Elections
New York State


Defense Goes From Liability to Asset for Patriots

Abstract: FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Over the course of the regular season, the New England Patriots won 13 games and earned the top seed in the A.F.C. , and did so without beating a team with a winning record and with a defense ranked dead last in the conference. The Patriots were viewed as a team that would outscore opponents to win rather than one that would stop them to win. The numbers bore that out. New England’s explosive offense was ranked No. 1 in the A.F.C. It is safe to say that somewhere between the season-ending victory over Buffalo, in which New England trailed, 21-0, before scoring 49 straight points, and the playoff opener 13 days later against Denver, something happened to the A.F.C.’s statistically worst defense. It started to stop people, harass quarterbacks and make game-changing plays, including some huge ones Sunday in a 23-20 A.F.C. title victory over the Baltimore Ravens . “The offense has been bailing us out all year,” defensive end Shaun Ellis said after the victory over the Ravens. “It was our turn to return the favor.” Maybe the players simply tired of hearing and reading about their supposed shortcomings. Maybe the return of linebacker Brandon Spikes and safety Patrick Chung solidified things. But during the regular season, teams averaged 411.1 yards a game against the Patriots. That has dropped to 325 in the playoffs. Rodney Harrison, a former Patriots defensive back who is now a commentator for NBC, offered up the following after New England’s victory. “They are really showing a mental toughness that wasn’t there in the regular season,” Harrison said in comments distributed by NBC, which will broadcast the Super Bowl on Feb. 5. “They aren’t perfect, but they are playing a lot better. I think what Bill Belichick has done is to tell the unit that the regular season is over and now they have an opportunity to prove themselves based on what they’ve done in the playoffs. They are playing loose and having fun.” The Patriots’ defense smothered Denver’s Tim Tebow in the divisional round in a 45-10 rout. The only touchdown the Broncos scored came after an interception put the ball deep in New England territory. The defense was not as suffocating against Baltimore, but four plays in the fourth quarter serve as a rejoinder to the naysayers. Lineman Vince Wilfork, who played spectacularly and was on the field for all but 3 of the 70 defensive snaps, made the first two. With the Ravens facing third-and-3 at the New England 30, Wilfork broke through and stopped Ray Rice for a 3-yard loss. Rice, a big concern before the game, managed only 67 rushing yards, or 16 fewer than he had on the first play of the Ravens’ 33-14 victory at New England in the playoffs two years ago. The Ravens elected to go for it on the next play, eschewing a potential game-tying field-goal attempt from Billy Cundiff. It would have been a 50-yarder, and Cundiff was 1 of 6 from 50-plus yards in the regular season. As Joe Flacco dropped back to pass, Wilfork got to him, forcing a wild incompletion. But the player being credited with the real game-changing plays in the final 27 seconds is the unheralded defensive back Sterling Moore. He was on the team’s practice squad as late as Dec. 18 and appeared in only six games all season. He did not start Sunday and in the third quarter was beaten for a touchdown by Torrey Smith. But Moore stripped Ravens wide receiver Lee Evans in the end zone after Evans had his hands on the ball. On the next play, Moore knocked the ball away from tight end Dennis Pitta, setting the stage for Cundiff’s missed 32-yard field-goal attempt, which sealed the win for New England. The Patriots’ defense against the run was decent all season, ending up No. 8 in the conference. It was the revolving-door secondary (13 players) that was routinely shredded. The highest-paid member of the secondary, Leigh Bodden, was unceremoniously released Oct. 28, almost two months after the same fate befell Brandon Meriweather, the team’s No. 1 pick in 2007. Now, it does not seem to matter whom Coach Bill Belichick puts out there on defense. Even wide receiver Julian Edelman was in on the action at slot cornerback Sunday. The defense has made enough plays to get the Patriots to the Super Bowl. Not too long ago, that seemed an unlikely season-ending destination for New England.

New England Patriots
Baltimore Ravens
Playoff Games
Football


Woodland Tied With Kuchar Atop Barclays

Abstract: JERSEY CITY — The good news for Gary Woodland is he is tied for the lead at the Barclays with Matt Kuchar at 12-under-par 201. The better news is there is one round left to play in the first event of the FedEx Cup playoffs at Liberty National Golf Club, affording him a prime opportunity to reverse a disappointing trend. Woodland’s highest rounds this year in 72-hole stroke-play events generally have come on Sundays, when his average is 72.5 strokes, two and a half strokes more than on Thursdays. Woodland, who carded a 68 to Kuchar’s 70 on Saturday, started working recently with a mental coach, Julie Elion, who has helped him, in his words, “get out of my own way and relax.” He added: “I knew I was playing well and put myself in position and just tried to force it on the weekends. Now working with Julie the last couple weeks, I’ve really let my game take over.” Alone in third, a stroke behind, is Kevin Chappell, who bettered Keegan Bradley’s day-old tournament course record by a stroke with a bogey-free, nine-under 62. Chappell hit 15 greens and had 24 putts. Bradley’s score followed Kevin Stadler’s 64 on Thursday, raising the question: How low can Sunday’s pacesetter go? Tiger Woods, tied for fourth with David Lynn at eight under, said: “The greens are perfect. And with it being a little windy, the fairways are fast and you can get the ball way down there. If you’re feeling pretty good and pretty frisky, you can drive it all the way down there where you have a lot of wedges in.” Wincing all the way because of pain in his lower back, Woods carded a 69 that included 30 putts. The hardest part of his day, he said, was picking the ball out of the cup and the tees out of the ground. “You just figure out something to get it around and I did,” he said. “I figured out some shots that I knew I could play today and just relied on my putter.”


Rockies Sweep Phillies to Keep Up Memorable Run

Abstract: DENVER, Oct. 6 — Someday, this will all sink in for the Colorado Rockies . Someday, they can pass around a photo album or a filched rally towel and tell their kids, their grandkids, that yes, this truly happened. Because even now, even after a 2-1 victory Saturday against the Philadelphia Phillies that completed a three-game sweep in the division series and propelled them into the National League Championship Series for the first time, the synapses aren’t firing as quickly: Seventeen wins. Eighteen games. “We can analyze all this later,” Matt Holliday said. “Right now, I just want to take it all in.” And he did. The Champagne flowed, the beer sprayed, and the team that has cut a purple-and-black swath through the N.L. rejoiced in what had seemed impossible only three weeks ago. Then the Rockies won, again and again, 11 straight times, in fact, before losing on Sept. 28. They have not lost since, and there is no telling when they may lose again. After dominating the N.L.’s other hottest team with splendid pitching and a relentless lineup, the Rockies move on to face the Arizona Diamondbacks for the N.L. championship. “I don’t think anybody’s going to be excited about us and Arizona, but that doesn’t really matter,” Troy Tulowitzki said. In an unlikely pitchers’ duel at Coors Field fueled by a 23-year-old rookie right-hander, Colorado’s Ubaldo Jimenez, and a 44-year-old left-hander, Philadelphia’s Jamie Moyer, the score remained deadlocked at 1-1 until the bottom of the eighth when pinch-hitter Jeff Baker drove in Garrett Atkins with a two-out single to right field off J.C. Romero. Manny Corpas set down the side in order for his third consecutive save, setting off a rowdy celebration behind the mound and a round of fireworks that could be seen from Highlands Ranch to Fort Collins. As the Broncos won Super Bowls and the Avalanche sipped from the Stanley Cup, the Rockies remained on the fringe of the city’s sporting culture, making the playoffs only once (1995) before this season and finishing with a losing record every year since 2001. Not even a World Series title could shift the attention away from the Broncos, but the Rockies, with its band of homegrown players and a dynamic bullpen, seem built to contend next year and beyond. “We need to establish our own identity, and I think this was a huge step in doing that,” Colorado Manager Clint Hurdle said. The Rockies’ season turned, Hurdle said, with how they responded from a 1-9 June trip through Toronto, Chicago and Houston. Upon returning to Coors, they swept three games from the Mets and won two of three against the Phillies heading into the All-Star Game break. Their 46-29 record afterward ranked best in the N.L. “They didn’t point fingers, they didn’t feel sorry for themselves,” Hurdle said. “All they did is get angry and try to find a way to get it done better. And they did.” The Rockies dominated the Phillies in all facets. They outscored the Phillies, 16-8, outhit them, 27-16, and held them to a .172 average. Chase Utley, Pat Burrell and Jimmy Rollins all went 2 for 11 in the series. Aaron Rowand went 1 for 12. Ryan Howard had three hits, tied with Carlos Ruiz for most on the team. “That’s as good of a lineup as you’re going to face every day,” Hurdle said. “We don’t want to face them anymore. Three games was enough.” A sellout crowd of 50,724, energized for the city’s first playoff baseball game in 12 years, roared when the sons of Mike Coolbaugh, the first-base coach of the Rockies’ Class AA affiliate in Tulsa, Okla., who was killed by a foul ball on July 22, threw out the ceremonial first pitches. It got only louder when Jimenez, revered in these parts for his stirring performance in last Sunday’s must-win regular-season finale against Arizona, took the mound. Complementing a 96-mile-an-hour fastball with a sharp slider and a slow curve, Jimenez allowed only one hit through the first six and a third innings, his groove interrupted — then restored — by a 14-minute delay caused when a computer malfunction knocked out the lights in the top of the second inning. “That wasn’t in the itinerary I was handed before the game, but isn’t it the Marine saying that says, ‘adapt, improvise and overcome?’ ” Hurdle said. “That’s the thing we said when the lights went out: adapt, improvise and overcome.” The year Jimenez was born, 1984, was when Moyer threw his first professional pitch, for the Chicago Cubs’ Class A affiliate in Geneva, N.Y. His fastball occasionally touches 80 miles an hour, the same speed as Jimenez’s slider, but, a month shy of his 45th birthday, Moyer matched Jimenez. He allowed five hits and one run through six innings, giving the Phillies time to come back from a 1-0 deficit created in the fifth when Kazuo Matsui, whose grand slam in Game 2 sucked the life out of Philadelphia, ripped a triple to left-center that scored Yorvit Torrealba. To the Phillies, a 1-0 deficit in a game they had to win paled in comparison to what they had already faced. They started out 4-11. They lost two starting pitchers, Freddy Garcia and Jon Lieber, for the season. They trailed the Mets by seven games on Sept. 12 and stormed back to win the division. And so with one out in the seventh, the Phillies finally tagged Jimenez as Shane Victorino crunched an 0-2 slider over the right-field scoreboard, pumping his fists as he left the batter’s box, to even the score at 1-1. The home run silenced the crowd, but just that once. The fans here will see more October baseball — Rocktober, as it is dubbed — but not for a while. Game 3 of the N.L.C.S. is scheduled for next Sunday at Coors, and the Rockies have three whole days before they play again, Thursday in Phoenix in Game 1. What to do with the time off? “Tomorrow, I’m going to watch football,” Tulowitzki said. “After that? Just take it as it comes.”

Colorado Rockies
Philadelphia Phillies
Baseball


Rehab, Degree, Playoffs. Two Down, One to Go.

Abstract: PAWTUCKET, R.I. — Marcus Stroman cried when a doctor told him in March that he had torn his anterior cruciate ligament after falling in a spring training fielding drill. He called his father, his mother and Ryan Bahnsen, his best friend from high school on Long Island. “I couldn’t hear what he was saying, because he was in tears,” Bahnsen said. “He was so devastated.” And then Stroman, a top young starter for the Toronto Blue Jays, made a plan. From the same hospital room in Palm Harbor, Fla., he called his mother again. “Within two hours,” his mother, Adlin Auffant, said Monday from her seat behind the plate at McCoy Stadium. “He was like, ‘Mom, I’m going back to Duke.’ I was like, ‘O.K.’ That’s just Marcus. He always wanted to get that degree.” By the time the Class AAA Buffalo Bisons and the Pawtucket Red Sox finished their season, with a 10-2 victory for the home team, Stroman was on his way to Boston to join the Blue Jays. He needed 79 pitches to wade through three innings for Buffalo, allowing eight hits and three runs. But he said he could refine his command in the bullpen and pronounced himself fit to throw more than 100 pitches in the majors, perhaps as early as this weekend at Yankee Stadium. Image Marcus Stroman in spring training this year. Last season, he went 11-6 with a 3.65 E.R.A. for the Blue Jays. Credit Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press “I’m not even worried about it,” Stroman said. “I know my arm is ready, I know my knee is ready and I know I’m ready to dominate.” Alex Anthopoulos, the Toronto general manager, said the Blue Jays had not decided whether to activate Stroman from the disabled list or give him another start with Class A Lansing. They do not know whether he will return as a starter or a reliever. But Stroman is on the verge of returning less than six months after surgery on his right knee, which absorbs his weight when he lands after every pitch. It is an admirable comeback made more so by what he did along the way. Stroman made good on his goal, completing his Duke education by taking five courses as he recovered in Durham, N.C. “I’ve never wanted to be one-dimensional,” Stroman said. “If baseball’s not there for me, I want to be able to do well for myself. Obviously, having an education is extremely important in society as far as being able to go further. I never want to have to say that baseball is Marcus. I don’t want baseball to define me.” Stroman had prepared for this. College players are eligible for the draft in their junior season, so he crammed three and a half years’ worth of courses into his first three years at Duke. Stroman reasoned that he would be much more likely to finish his degree if he were so close to completing it. In his Florida hospital room, Stroman said, he imagined the drudgery of rehabilitation: up early for physical therapy — and then what? He wanted to stay busy, and even with an aggressive recovery schedule, he could still have time to finish his degree. He invited Bahnsen to join him at Duke, for friendship and support, and signed up for classes. “He tells us all the time: That’s the hardest thing he’s ever done, between school and rehab,” said Marcus’s father, Earl Stroman, a police investigator in Suffolk County. “But he got it done, and I’m so proud of him. My only thing was school, and he did that. The kid works.” In the first summer semester, Stroman said, he took a course on 17th-century slavery; a sociology course in which he wrote a 25-page paper on the portrayal of male and female athletes in media; and an elective on hip-hop cinema. In the second summer semester, he took Introduction to Acting and Creative Renewal in Markets and Management Studies. He hopes to walk with the other Duke graduates in ceremonies next May, if the Blue Jays allow it. For now, Stroman is eager to join the pennant race. There has never been a doubt, for Stroman or his family, that he could do it. His mother said she had watched Blue Jays games all summer so she would know their new players when Marcus returned. Monday might have been the final test, and about 20 friends and relatives came to see it. “You hope it’s going to work out, but you always want to make sure, because he rushes back,” Earl Stroman said before the game. “Marcus is a go-getter, and you want to make sure he’s being honest with himself. You worry a little bit, but he knows his body, and he’s got complete confidence in it.” Monday’s start felt like spring training, against a lineup of mostly anonymous Pawtucket hitters. Stroman’s fastball reached 94 miles an hour but averaged around 91. He said he wanted to face adversity in the minors before doing so in the majors, and he got his wish — Stroman walked four and even fielded a chopper to the third base side of the mound, the same kind of play that caused his injury. He fired to third immediately for the out. “The results didn’t say so,” Stroman said, “but my stuff felt unreal.” Stroman started 20 of his 26 games for Toronto last season, when he was 11-6 with a 3.65 earned run average. He said he wanted to start now, but added that he would do whatever the Blue Jays needed as they chased their first postseason berth in 22 years. “I made it a point to say to myself that I need to get back,” he said, “because I realize what we have is extremely special.” With a rebuilt knee, a completed Duke education and a chance to make a difference, Stroman is almost there.

Marcus Stroman
Blue Jays
Duke
Baseball
College


Obama Seeks to Double Funding to Fight Antibiotic Resistance

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama on Friday urged Congress to double the funding to confront the danger of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, calling it a major public health issue that, if left unchecked, would “cause tens of thousands of deaths, millions of illnesses.” The administration also issued a new plan for attacking the problem, part of a national strategy that Mr. Obama laid out in an executive order in September. The plan calls for improved surveillance of outbreaks, better diagnostic tests and new research on alternative drugs. It also urges government agencies to bolster systems to track the consumption of antibiotics and to reduce inappropriate use in people and animals. “We take antibiotics for granted for a lot of illnesses that can be deadly and debilitating,” Mr. Obama said after meeting at the White House with members of his council on science and technology. “Part of the solution is not just finding replacements for traditional antibiotics, but also making sure we use antibiotics properly.” When the executive order was issued last year, experts praised the administration for finally focusing on a problem that infectious disease doctors had been warning about for years. But many said the strategy should have recommended tougher measures against the overuse of antibiotics in agriculture, which, they argue, is a substantial part of the problem. The new plan’s strength, experts said, is its actions to curb use in humans. It calls on federal agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to create a tougher surveillance system to monitor the use of antibiotics in hospitals and other medical settings. It includes specific steps that hospitals participating in Medicaid and Medicare must take to reduce inappropriate use. “The news here is that the administration is setting specific, annual milestones for tackling the problem,” said Allan Coukell, the senior director for health programs at the Pew Charitable Trusts, a Washington-based research and advocacy group that contributed to the administration strategy outlined in September. Americans use more antibiotics than people in other industrialized nations, with rates more than twice those in Germany and the Netherlands, according to Pew. The White House said the president wanted to double the amount of federal funding for combating and preventing antibiotic resistance to more than $1.2 billion. Health advocates and many experts, however, remained unimpressed by the proposed actions on antibiotic use in animals. The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, said in a statement that the plan “continues to allow the routine feeding of antibiotics to animals that live in the crowded conditions endemic to industrial farms.” Researchers have been warning for years that antibiotics — miracle drugs that changed the course of human health in the 20th century — are losing their power because of overuse. Some warn that if the trend is not halted, the world could return to the time before antibiotics, when it was common for people to die from ordinary infections and for children not to survive ailments like strep throat. One problem has been a lack of data, but the plan released Friday lacks specifics on how that would be addressed. More than 70 percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States goes to chicken, pigs, cows and other animals that people eat, yet producers of meat and poultry are not required to report how they use the drugs — which ones, on what types of animals and in what quantities. This makes it difficult to document the precise relationship between routine antibiotic use in animals and antibiotic-resistant infections in people, scientists say. The plan calls for “enhanced summary reports on the sale of distribution and antibiotics” used in food animals, but without spelling out how that would be done. “What’s being presented is so vague that it’s hard to tell how useful it would be,” said Keeve Nachman, the director of the Food Production and Public Health Program at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. “There’s nothing really novel being presented.”

Antibacterial
Federal Budget
Barack Obama
CDC


Valeant Reports First-Quarter Loss and Cuts Its Forecast

Abstract: Joseph C. Papa, the new chief executive of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, strove to signal on Tuesday that the company’s worst problems were behind it, telling analysts that the company’s future was “bright,” despite what he repeatedly described as “speed bumps.” But Valeant’s first-quarter earnings report , released Tuesday after more than a monthlong delay, told a different story, revealing trouble in core business areas, including its dermatology, gastrointestinal and ophthalmology units. And it suggested that the company’s troubles were not limited to the legal issues and investigations before it. A big loss of nearly $374 million in the quarter — and lower guidance for the rest of the year — raise particularly difficult problems for the company. Valeant is weighed down with $30 billion in debt and has said it will no longer rely as heavily on price increases and big acquisitions to drive profits, its strategy in the previous few years. In comments to analysts, Mr. Papa, who took over as chief executive in May, said that he realized that the company’s business was encountering challenges but that he was optimistic. “I believe we have a solid future ahead,” he said. Investors did not appear to agree. Valeant’s stock, which has plunged about 90 percent over the last year, fell about 13 percent in midday trading. The company’s first-quarter earnings report was about a month later than usual, after the release in April of an equally delayed annual report in the face of a series of earnings restatements. Over the last year, Valeant has faced questions about its business and accounting practices, including investigations by Congress, federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission. In recent months, the company has taken steps to emerge from its struggles, getting rid of its chief executive , J. Michael Pearson, who had led Valeant since 2008 and was the mastermind of the company’s now-pilloried practice of buying up companies, slashing costs and raising drug prices. It replaced him with Mr. Papa, previously of the Perrigo Company, and shook up the board. William A. Ackman, whose Pershing Square Capital Management is one of Valeant’s biggest investors, took a seat on the board and pledged to Congress that the company would take a fairer approach to setting its drug prices, a practice that had come under harsh scrutiny by regulators and others. To truly recover, however, many analysts have said that Valeant must get back to the core business of selling its drugs, focusing on its most promising products. The earnings report on Tuesday showed the company still had a long way to go. Revenue in its dermatology unit fell 43 percent in the first quarter of 2016 compared with the same quarter last year, and its prescription ophthalmology business fell by 30 percent. Sales of Xifaxan, a gastrointestinal drug that is Valeant’s top product and was acquired last year when the company bought Salix Pharmaceuticals, reached $208 million in the first quarter. But those sales were lower than expected, the company said, and that was one reason Valeant lowered its guidance for the year. The company said it was lowering its revenue guidance for the year to a range of $9.9 billion to $10.1 billion, down from $11 billion to $11.2 billion. It also lowered its earnings forecast to $6.60 to $7 a share, compared with its previous guidance of $8.50 to $9.50. Mr. Papa said the dermatology unit’s poor performance mainly stemmed from problems with the company’s new deal with Walgreens, a prescription program that was intended to replace its relationship with Philidor, a mail-order pharmacy. Philidor’s ties to Valeant are now being investigated by federal authorities, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Papa said on Tuesday. After a flurry of questions from analysts, Mr. Papa said that some patients had been receiving drugs before it was learned whether the patients’ insurer would pay for them, resulting in a loss. “Every time a prescription goes out the door, we are taping dollar bills to that prescription,” he said. “That is something we have to get fixed.” Valeant executives said they were confident that the company’s challenges could be overcome, saying they were working with insurers to secure better coverage of crucial drugs like Xifaxan and Jublia, which treats toenail fungus. Mr. Papa also said he believed the “speed bumps” with the Walgreens deal would be fixed soon. But some analysts did not seem to be persuaded, noting that because Valeant was so deeply in debt, it had little room for error. “If the business stays the way it is, or continues to deteriorate, we believe Valeant will be challenged in making those debt payments,” said David Maris, an analyst for Wells Fargo. “Based on this quarter’s cash from operations, we do not see debtholders being enthusiastic about restructuring Valeant debt.”

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International
Pharmaceuticals
Earnings Reports
Joseph C Papa


A Poet With Words Trapped Inside

Abstract: Can computers talk black vernacular? This is a question that haunts Ntozake Shange. On a recent evening, three days before her 65th birthday, Ms. Shange sat at the front table of the Nuyorican Poets Café in the East Village, listening to rich vernacular lines pouring from three characters who were all versions of her. Ms. Shange, best known for her 1970s verse play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” wore a red dress and sat in a wheelchair facing the stage, her hands and feet dancing involuntarily in front of her. The show, called “Lost in Language and Sound: Or How I Found My Way to the Arts,” was her first new theatrical work in more than a decade, and the words onstage were unmistakably hers, attuned to the rhythms of the jazz musicians and dancers on stage. “I can’t count the times I viscerally wanted to attack, deform and maim the language I was taught to hate myself in,” one of the characters said. “The language that perpetuates the notion that causes pain to every black child.” No one else writes like that. But for Ntozake Shange (pronounced en-toh-ZAH-kee SHAHN-gay), who once made a point of writing a poem every day so she would have fresh material to present at readings, the new lines came laden with an unfamiliar struggle. For the last decade, health problems have buffeted her relationship with language. First a pair of small strokes left her temporarily unable to read; then, in 2011, a neurological disorder called chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy took control of her hands and feet, leaving her unable to type or write without difficulty. Until recently, she could not even stand or walk. In between, Ms. Shange moved from the West Coast to Brooklyn to be near family members who could care for her. “I can’t work on a computer and I can’t write very well, either,” she said the other day, her words still slightly slurred from the strokes. “It sort of feels empty, not like I’m swollen with words. I feel like there’s an astringent being applied to my body so that everything is getting very tight and I can’t release it right this minute.” All of this has shaped the new work, which she calls a “choreoessay,” in the same way that “For Colored Girls” was a “choreopoem,” said Claude Sloan, a longtime friend and director who shares a brownstone with her in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. “Her body is conspiring against her,” Mr. Sloan said. “Her art has always told the story of people who are suffering, and given meaning to their struggle. Now she’s looking back and asking, ‘What is art going to be for me in the body that I have now?’ ” On a recent afternoon, Mr. Sloan wheeled Ms. Shange into the house of a neighbor, Evette Lewis, where she drank soda and talked about her adventures with voice recognition software. Image Ms. Shange in 1977. Credit Marilyn K. Yee/The New York Times “Spell-check ruins my work,” she said. “It fixes all my slang and dialect into standard English. So I’m caught in a tangle of technology that feels very foreign to me. My characters don’t talk necessarily in a normal American way of talking. They talk a little different. So I’m having a struggle with the grammar.” The day before, Ms. Shange had walked upstairs for the first time since her illness; earlier, she said, she tried dancing to a mambo song on the radio and was in pain for two weeks. “But I’ve still got my characters in my head, and I can still hear them,” she said. “When I go to the grocery store I hear them. Or we went to the San Gennaro Festival a couple weeks ago in Manhattan and I could hear all those voices again, and that invigorated me, because I said, ‘Wow, they’re still here, I can do it again.’ So I feel optimistic about my writing career. I just was not capable of doing it for some years.” “Lost in Language and Sound,” which Ms. Shange adapted from a collection of her essays, represents her next step back into the world — an experiment to see if the essays held together dramatically, and to test the interest of producers. Ms. Shange, the daughter of a surgeon and a social worker, has lived a life as bumpy as those she writes about. After the explosive success of “For Colored Girls,” which she developed during poetry readings in San Francisco, she struggled to find her way. Fame hit her hard. “It was pretty arduous,” she said. “I never intended to go to Broadway. I was very happy being in an Off Broadway theater and having an Off Broadway life. What it did to me is try to fit a round peg — that’s me — into a whole bunch of square buildings. I just didn’t fit. And some black men had made really wretched statements about me, so there was all this controversy going on that I was trying to stay out of. It was difficult and very unpleasant to do interviews, because they always were trying to paint me as a woman who hated black men, and I didn’t and don’t. But that was a difficult time for me.” She battled bipolar disorder, substance abuse and a publishing world that expected her to repeat a successful formula, said the writer Gerald Nicosia, who is working on a biography of her. At one point, described in “Lost in Language and Sound,” she nearly joined the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Since moving to Brooklyn, she has given occasional readings at colleges and has been befriended by neighbors who bring her meals. Bedford-Stuyvesant, she said, is rapidly changing outside her windows, but she sees many of the same problems — racism, family pathology — that have informed her work for decades. Image Cassandra M. Cato-Louis, center, played the role of Ms. Shange. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times “I see a lot of children with no one taking care of them,” she said. Before the nerve disorder, she wrote a novel with her sister, the playwright Ifa Bayeza , called “Some Sing, Some Cry,” that received warm reviews, but nothing like the success she had with “For Colored Girls.” A theater around the corner recently staged her play “A Photograph: Lovers in Motion,” but the group did not contact her, and by the time she learned about the performance, it had passed. She still hoped to adapt her 1994 novel, “ Liliane: Resurrection of a Daughter, ” into a stage show, she said. She writes a few words in her journals, in script that she says she does not like to look at. For Ms. Shange, these are the pieces of a life. “I thought I was being punished because I hadn’t kept doing the writing I wanted to do,” she said of her illness. “Then I decided that it was just fate, and my aunt had Parkinson’s, so even though one side of the family was having heart attacks, the other side of the family was having nerve disease, so I got the worst of both sides, I guess. “I thought, I’m just going to be this way for the rest of my life. Which isn’t that bad, now that I’m used to being numb all the time. But it’s such an inconvenience. It’s very inconvenient not to be able to use your hands.” In “Lost in Language and Sound,” a character played by Mr. Sloan asks, “What if poetry isn’t enough? What you gonna do then? Paint? Dance?” Three days later, at a birthday dinner in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, Ms. Shange sat with a few friends and considered the question: What if poetry isn’t enough? “You have to keep acting like it is enough,” she said. “You have to keep affirming it, and bringing yourself to it. You have to keep hoping that it will move the mountain.” She stood from her wheelchair and beamed over the table.


Attackers Storm Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — Several heavily armed attackers stormed one of the capital’s fortified premier hotels on Tuesday night, and sporadic shooting and at least two loud explosions were heard as Afghan security forces battled insurgents for hours afterward. Coming within a week of President Obama ’s announcement of troop withdrawals from Afghanistan , the attack underscored the still precarious nature of security, even in the capital, as the transfer of responsibility to Afghan forces is about to begin in several areas of the country, including Kabul . In the early hours of Wednesday morning, three attackers on the roof of the Intercontinental Hotel were killed by NATO helicopters, a NATO spokesman said. In addition to the three killed on the roof, two others were killed by hotel guards at the beginning of the assault and another was killed either in the attack by the NATO helicopters or by Afghan security forces, The Associated Press reported. At the end of the fighting at 5 a.m. on Wednesday, Afghan security forces found that there had been eight suicide bombers, said a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Sediq Sediqi. All were dead. Eight other people were killed, including one police officer, and eight were wounded, but the police were still going through the hotel room by room, and the final toll could rise, Mr. Sediqi said. All of the dead found so far were Afghans, he said. The attack was one of the largest and most complex to take place in Kabul, although others had higher death tolls. The heavily guarded Intercontinental Hotel, which sits on a hill on the western side of Kabul, has police guards at its base and intelligence officers stationed at the top of the hill and near the entrance. It was not clear how so many attackers could have breached the building’s defenses. Attacks in Kabul have been relatively rare, although in May there was an attack on a similarly soft target: a bomber detonated his explosives on the grounds of a military hospital , killing six people. In announcing the troop withdrawal, Mr. Obama said he could reduce the number of American forces because the influx of about 30,000 troops that he ordered more than a year ago had succeeded in pushing back the Taliban . Although the insurgents have been set back, particularly in their strongholds in the south, they have proved themselves still capable of carrying out assassinations and suicide bombings, even in urban centers. Also on Tuesday, the White House’s nominee to become the next American commander in Afghanistan faced tough questioning from a Senate panel about President Obama’s plan to pull troops from the country. The nominee, Lt. Gen. John Allen, said that “surge” of more than 30,000 American troops had halted the Taliban’s momentum in southern Afghanistan, but he added that the fighting remained intense as insurgents were trying to regain lost territory. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Allen echoed comments by other top commanders in recent days, saying that military leaders advised a more conservative drawdown of troops over the next year than Mr. Obama’s plan. In the Kabul attack, a NATO spokesman said that the international forces tracked the situation through the night but left the fighting to the Afghans until early Wednesday when the International Security Assistance Force was called in. “Two ISAF helicopters circled the roof of the hotel and then identified three individuals believed to be insurgents on the roof, and the helicopters engaged the individuals with small arms,” said Maj. Tim James, a NATO spokesman. “They were all wearing suicide vests and were armed, and there were at least two explosions which we believe were the suicide vests detonating. Then Afghan National Security Forces who were in the hotel and were clearing the hotel worked their way onto the roof and were securing the roof.” Samoonyar Mohammad Zaman, a security officer for the Interior Ministry, told The A.P. that the insurgents were armed with machine guns, antiaircraft weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. Mr. Zaman said there were 60 to 70 guests at the hotel. One guest, Jawid, told The A.P. that he had jumped out of a first-floor window to flee the shooting. “I was running with my family,” he said. “There was shooting. The restaurant was full with guests.” The Taliban took responsibility for the attack, saying they intended to kill foreigners and Afghans, said Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman for northern and eastern Afghanistan. “Our muj entered the hotel,” he said, referring to the Taliban mujahedeen fighters, “and they’ve gone through several stories of the building and they are breaking into each room and they are targeting the 300 Afghans and foreigners who are staying.” His claims could not be immediately confirmed. At least six stories high, the Intercontinental is one of the largest hotels in the city and is frequented by foreigners as well as Afghan officials who stay there while they are in Kabul on business. It is also often used for conferences and political gatherings. A major conference starts Wednesday in Kabul on the transition of NATO military and civilian control to the Afghan government, but none of the official meetings were scheduled to take place at the hotel. The attack was reminiscent of several other recent ones in which multiple insurgents have converged on a public place. More than 27 attackers converged on downtown Kandahar in May, killing four people, and in February seven gunmen wearing suicide vests entered the Kabul Bank branch in the eastern city of Jalalabad and killed 18 people.

Kabul
Taliban
Zabiullah Mujahid
Terrorism


Burris Now Says He Was Asked to Donate

Abstract: CHICAGO — Senator Roland W. Burris of Illinois acknowledged in documents made public Saturday that the brother of former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich sought campaign fund-raising help from him in the weeks and months before his appointment to succeed Barack Obama as the state’s junior senator. Mr. Burris said he provided no money to Governor Blagojevich’s campaign in response to the brother’s request. The disclosure was different from Mr. Burris’s earlier descriptions, including one under oath, of his conversations with those closest to the former governor. It raised new questions about events that preceded Mr. Burris’s unusual appointment in late December and prompted some Republican lawmakers in Illinois to immediately demand an inquiry into whether Mr. Burris committed perjury. In a sworn affidavit he sent this month to the leader of the state legislative committee that investigated whether to impeach Mr. Blagojevich, Mr. Burris said that the former governor’s brother, Robert, had called him three times in October and November, seeking assistance in raising campaign money for the governor, who was then in his second term. The senator, who had been a past donor to Mr. Blagojevich, a fellow Democrat, said he gave no money and had, in the final conversation, advised the governor’s brother that he could not contribute “because it could be viewed as an attempt to curry favor” with the governor as he made a decision on whom to send to the United States Senate . Mr. Burris did not mention those conversations last month when he was testifying under oath before the legislative committee considering impeachment for Mr. Blagojevich, who was charged on Dec. 9, in part, with trying to sell President Obama ’s former Senate seat for campaign contributions, a high-paying job or a federal cabinet post. Nor did Mr. Burris tell the committee about conversations he had with the governor’s chief of staff (who now faces federal charges along with the former governor) and with one of the governor’s top advisers about the status of the Senate seat. The committee asked Mr. Burris directly whether he had discussed his desire to be appointed to the seat with anyone on a list of Mr. Blagojevich’s top confidants; Robert Blagojevich’s name was specifically mentioned. At that time, Mr. Burris cited an earlier conversation with a former aide to Mr. Blagojevich but mentioned nothing of Robert Blagojevich’s more recent calls seeking campaign contributions, which his affidavit suggests alluded at least twice to the Senate seat but does not make clear whether Mr. Burris ever told the governor’s brother of his wish to fill the post. Mr. Burris and his aides said that he had truthfully testified before the state panel in January — just before he was seated in the Senate — but that the “fluid nature” of the questions and answers had led him to be “unable to fully respond to several matters.” They emphasized that once Mr. Burris had reviewed a transcript of his testimony, in late January, he had voluntarily submitted the new affidavit this month “so everything was transparent.” But some lawmakers here said they were concerned and disturbed by the new revelations. Democrats, both in Springfield , Ill., and Washington , said they were trying to digest the details of Mr. Burris’s disclosure and would withhold further comment. Some Republicans said they believed local prosecutors should pursue a perjury investigation against Mr. Burris, and some suggested that his disclosures might actually have been prompted by concerns that some of his conversations with Mr. Blagojevich’s allies were recorded by federal authorities during the corruption investigation that led to the former governor’s political downfall. “I can’t believe anything that comes out of Roland Burris’s mouth anymore,” said Jim Durkin, a Republican state representative who served on the impeachment committee and posed the original line of questioning. “I just don’t know how to reconcile this. I don’t accept that this is a lapse in memory. How would you forget talking to the governor’s brother? This is the third variation of him describing his relationship with the governor and the circumstances of his appointment.” Mr. Burris’s description of his contacts with Mr. Blagojevich’s allies has repeatedly evolved. On Jan. 5, Mr. Burris voluntarily submitted a sworn affidavit to state lawmakers saying that before he was selected for the Senate seat days earlier “there was not any contact” between himself or his representatives and those of Mr. Blagojevich about his appointment to the seat. Then, during his testimony under oath in the State Capitol on Jan. 8, he said he recalled a conversation months earlier about his interest in the Senate seat, which was still occupied by Mr. Obama, with a former Blagojevich chief of staff, Lon Monk. The disclosure Saturday marked the first time that Mr. Burris has acknowledged any contact with Blagojevich confidants during the period when federal authorities say Governor Blagojevich was trying to figure out how much he could get in return for the Senate seat. Mr. Blagojevich, who was removed from office last month, has proclaimed his innocence on the federal charges. The Chicago Sun-Times first reported the new disclosure by Mr. Burris on Saturday, saying that he had provided a copy of the sworn statement to the newspaper on Friday in response to questions about his contacts with the Blagojevich camp about fund-raising. Mr. Burris was appointed to the Senate in December by Mr. Blagojevich, who was, by then, already facing federal corruption charges. Most argued at the time that Mr. Blagojevich should make no appointment, but he pressed ahead and picked Mr. Burris, who was praised as a veteran Illinois Democrat who could not be accused of any ethical stain. Mr. Blagojevich’s surprise nomination of Mr. Burris on Dec. 30 brought outcries from both sides of the political aisle in Springfield and in Washington. On Capitol Hill, the Democrats who control the Senate — including the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada ; and Illinois’s senior senator, Richard J. Durbin — threatened to block Mr. Burris, or any other Blagojevich nominee, from being seated. But after meeting with the nominee, the Democratic leaders relented, and Mr. Burris was sworn in Jan. 15. The new affidavit from Mr. Burris was dated Feb. 4, and his aides said it was sent the next day to State Representative Barbara Flynn Currie, the chairwoman of the impeachment committee. But most lawmakers in Springfield said they were unaware of the new affidavit until they read about it in The Sun-Times. Ms. Currie, a Democrat, acknowledged that her office received the affidavit shortly after Feb. 5. But she said she had not read the documentation and did not realize that the package contained the new information. “We’ll look at it,” Ms. Currie said Saturday evening. “I’m not at this point prepared to say there’s something wrong. He has consistently said there wasn’t pay to play.” But Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan government watchdog group, said: “People should be concerned. It sounds as if Senator Burris was less than truthful when previously asked about this matter.” In a statement issued by Mr. Burris, whose aides said he declined all interviews on Saturday, the senator emphasized that he had given no money to Mr. Blagojevich since a donation last June. “I was asked to raise money by the governor’s brother and made it unequivocally clear to him that it would be inappropriate and pose a major conflict because I was interested in the Senate vacancy,” Mr. Burris said. “I did not donate or help raise a single dollar for the governor from those conversations and would never consider making a donation through a third party.”

Senate
Illinois
Perjury
Roland W Burris
Rod R Blagojevich


Hanging Stockings, but Expecting Budget Coal

Abstract: There is to state budget time in Albany a delightful sense of anticipation, like that of a child awaiting Christmas morn. Note: This assumes Santa Claus is a round dude with a sick sense of humor. We have two poor upstate school districts filing civil rights lawsuits against the state, charging that their cities are so shortchanged in the state budget as to deny their children such basics as counselors, all-day kindergarten and the advanced courses that could help their best students gain admittance to a fine college. And Mayor Bill de Blasio finds himself shaking his tin cup and asking his perhaps-not-so-great friend, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, for a wee wording change that would allow the city to start a small voucher program to help working homeless families. The upshot? The schools will probably get precious few of their needed dollars. The governor has gone “Lord of the Flies” on the mayor as of late, nearly demanding subservience. Just this week, he administered a slap, suggesting the mayor’s request to excise a few regulatory phrases was akin to asking to alter the wording in Magna Carta. How, the governor asked, could the mayor’s people have asked for so much so late in the game? Put to the side that the mayor’s people talked with state officials about this for weeks. This is where Albany’s cognitive dissonance kicks in. Year after year, there is little or no discussion of the most lucrative items in the Albany budget stocking. This year, the governor has championed, without really explaining why, a change that would exempt those with estates of less than $5 million from any taxation when they die. (It’s worth noting that the governor’s own tax commission found no basis in fact for this tax cut.) The cost of this inheritance tax break would pay for prekindergarten statewide. Then the governor’s helpmates in the State Senate tucked a handsome, 3 a.m., $300 million tax break to the hedge fund and charter school crowd into their budget resolution. If this goes through, the Fiscal Policy Institute noted in an analysis, a wealthy woman who gives $1 million to the charter school of her choice could end up making money on her contribution once she finishes writing off her contribution on her state, local and federal taxes. THAT’S a nice return if you can afford it. “It’s not charity when you don’t actually spend a dime,” State Senator Liz Krueger, a Democrat, noted. The Daily News has thrown an impressive editorial tantrum on this point. It accused Ms. Krueger of seizing on a “glitch” in the legislation, which displays a touching faith in the good faith of the State Senate. She has, the editors frothed, disappointed “his eminence,” Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan. That is a wonderfully antediluvian retort. “I’m not at war with Cardinal Dolan,” Ms. Krueger said. “The rich have every right to put their money into charter schools or yeshivas or parochial schools. They just don’t have the right to put my tax dollars there.” Let’s circle back to those homeless vouchers. Not so long ago, the state paid $65 million a year for vouchers for homeless families in New York City. Advocates of helping homeless people complained that this voucher, known as the Advantage program, was penurious and favored working homeless families. (This latter point strikes me as a foolish objection, as working families are most likely to be ready to move out on their own.) Their opposition helped along those at the state level, including Governor Cuomo, who killed this program. Now the city wants to revamp the voucher program, albeit without any state money for now. But members of the governor’s staff complain that the mayor’s people have violated Albany’s court politics, which are intricate. You can bow this way and that and, if you forget a powerful duke, your point is lost. In this case, Mr. de Blasio’s deputy mayor talked about the voucher often with state officials, but may have neglected to do so in person. Or an aide texted when she should have called. Mr. de Blasio played it right. He just apologized for “miscommunication” and reinforced that he really wanted his good friend the governor to help him. Our governor understands that to be mercurial is a force multiplier. His aides let it slip Wednesday that Mr. Cuomo was an expert on homelessness, and that he would labor hard to help the mayor. So just maybe the governor will produce the language needed to allow the city to spend its own money on a voucher for its most desolate. In Albany, that passes for Merry Christmas.

Tax Credits Tax Deductions Tax Exemptions


Flight 1549 Pilot Tells of Terror and Intense Focus

Abstract: The picture painted of Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III has been one of steely calm in the moments before he guided US Airways Flight 1549 into the Hudson River, but inside, he was terrified, he said in his first in-depth interview since the Jan. 15 crash landing. “I can’t believe this is happening,” Captain Sullenberger thought, he told Katie Couric on Sunday night’s broadcast of “60 Minutes” on CBS. “This doesn’t happen to me.” Asked to explain, he said, “I had this expectation that my career would be one in which I didn’t crash an airplane.” He said he knew the plane was in trouble when he heard birds hit the engines. “Loud thumps. It felt like the airplane being pelted by heavy rain or hail,” he said. “Losing thrust on both engines, at a low speed, at a low altitude, over one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. Yes, I knew it was a very challenging situation.” He quickly ruled out turning back to La Guardia Airport or trying to make it to an airport in New Jersey, and turned instead toward the Hudson. He said he was concentrating so intensely that he did not say a prayer: “I would imagine somebody in back was taking care of that for me while I was flying the airplane.” The landing had to be perfect in several ways, he said. “I needed to touch down with the wings exactly level,” he said. “I needed to touch down with the nose slightly up. I needed to touch down at a — at a descent rate that was survivable. And I needed to touch down just above our minimum flying speed, but not below it. And I needed to make all these things happen simultaneously.” After the plane splashed down, he turned to his first officer. “We said, ‘Well, that wasn’t as bad as I thought,’ ” he said. The plane was evacuated and Captain Sullenberger, “after bugging people for hours,” said he finally learned that all 155 people on board had survived. “I felt like the weight of the universe had been lifted off my heart,” he said. A flight attendant, Doreen Welsh, described for Ms. Couric her own harrowing experience, sitting in the rear of the plane as it struck the water violently and began to sink, the coffee pots and garbage cans floating. “A passenger had come back and pushed back me and opened the door, just enough that the water came flooding in,” she said. “And I went back twice and tried to reclose it. It would only go so far. It wouldn’t stop, and the water was just rising.” “And things were flying,” she said. “It was crazy back there.”

US Airways
Hudson River
Sullenberger Chesley B III
Airlines and Airplanes
Accidents and Safety


Recapturing a Game and Days Gone By

Abstract: BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — A mild night here in summer can feel like a little miracle. “A great gift,” Ann Keith called it as she sat watching baseball in her hometown for the first time in 20 years. She wore a hot pink jacket for comfort, not style. Ann, my mother-in-law, is 77. She gets around with a walker and spends much of the scorching Alabama summer holed up with central air-conditioning, a half-hour outside the city. But on this night she was watching the Class AA Birmingham Barons in their downtown stadium, Regions Field, which opened last year, luring the team back from a southern suburb after a quarter-century of expatriation. The visiting Mississippi Braves wore old-fashioned black stirrups, rising to the knees of their road grays. “They look like baseball players to me,” she said. Birmingham’s ballpark is one in a wave of stadiums that have opened in the downtowns of minor league cities across America, in the hope of spurring economic growth. Teams moved into new homes in 2000 in Memphis; in 2009 in Columbus, Ohio; and this year in Charlotte, N.C., and El Paso. The Barons’ lineage is traceable to the 19th century. Ann was 11 when she attended her first Barons games, in 1948, when the team was affiliated with the Boston Red Sox. This was at Rickwood Field, in the time of seating segregated by skin color. Ann and her family would ride a streetcar to the ballpark, taking sandwiches for lunch. At Rickwood , fans could stretch over a railing and call out to the players, begging them for autographs as they emerged from the clubhouses. “My mother made me sundresses with matching bloomers,” Ann recalled, “because I was always leaning over.” She watched a fading, over-40 Bobo Newsom, who won 211 games in the majors (and lost 222). She saw Norm Zauchin, who later hit 27 home runs one year for the Red Sox. Ann saw Jimmy Piersall in his two stops at Birmingham: in 1951, making his way up through the minors to Boston, and then the next year, when his erratic behavior on and off the field drove the Red Sox to send him down. “The same people came night after night,” Ann said, “and sat in the same place, and became kind of like a family.” Rickwood was also the home of the Black Barons, a Negro leagues team that spent more than 40 years in Birmingham, through 1963. The Black Barons won three championships in the 1940s, and their most famous player was the Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige, who made his major league debut with the Cleveland Indians at age 42. Ann, who is white, attended Black Barons games as well. She recalled that the right-field corner of the grandstand was a black seating section during Barons games and a white seating section during Black Barons games. Her recollection was confirmed by David Brewer, a baseball historian in Birmingham, who added that the far-right outfield bleachers were similarly segregated. Segregation at Rickwood ended in 1964, two years after the team was shut down, ostensibly for low ticket sales. That year, a new Barons team, a franchise relocated from Nashville and affiliated with Charles O. Finley’s Kansas City A’s, fielded Alabama’s first integrated baseball team, as recounted in the recent book “Southern League,” by Larry Colton. Integration at Rickwood was hardly the crest of a social wave. Congress was still debating the law that would become the Civil Rights Act. Ann was long absent from Rickwood by the 1960s. She listened to Barons games on the radio, but she quit going after she turned 16 or 17. “I guess I was more interested in friends who didn’t have that interest,” she said. Image Ann Keith, 77, the author’s mother-in-law, attended games at Rickwood Field. Credit John Oudens/The New York Times In the 1980s, the Rickwood crowds for another in a series of resurrected teams were anemic, and much of Birmingham had been subject to white flight. For the 1988 season, the team moved 18 miles to suburban Hoover. Ann briefly reacquainted herself with the Barons in 1994, the summer Michael Jordan played for them, trying to fashion himself into a professional baseball player . Curious about Jordan’s experiment and about the Hoover field, known then as Regions Park, she braved the sellout crowds for two games. Jordan was a graceful outfielder, but Ann was underwhelmed by the ballpark. “It was just a big concrete stadium,” she said. Rickwood Field, the charming wooden park of her youth, has remained open, hosting amateur games and, since 1996, one Barons game a year. A few movies have been filmed there, among them “Cobb,” the 1994 Ty Cobb biography, and “42,” the 2013 Jackie Robinson biography. A preservation group, led by the historian Brewer, is renovating the 104-year-old park and keeps it open daily to the public. Ann and I drove there one day this summer. We were the only visitors. She stood beside the infield, leaning on her walker and taking in the vintage outfield advertisements (recreated for one of the movies), the seats close to the field, the concrete dugouts and their wooden benches. “It’s still beautiful,” she said, smiling. And then, with a hint of wonder, “I never thought I’d be on the field here.” Told of Ann’s history at the park, the groundskeeper, Alvin Harris, remarked that he had grown up across the street and knew the park well as a boy, when his grandfather worked on the grounds crew. Now he sat trading memories with Ann and telling her of his work at the park, referring to Brewer and himself as essentially a two-man crew. “It’s not so bad,” he said. “It’s like cleaning up your house.” Ann walked into the concourse behind home plate, where the walls bear framed photos of alumni and noteworthy visitors, like Ted Williams, in a pristine Red Sox uniform, showing a bat to a local high school star during a 1950 exhibition. White wooden concession booths stand vacant beneath signs promising refreshments and souvenirs. “It just feels right,” Ann said, gesturing toward the turnstiles. “They ought to be beginning to come in now.” That night, Ann went to another game at the new park, which has three decks of seats, a grassy slope for families along left field and a children’s playground with a bouncy house. The game was an 8,500-seat sellout, as the occasion was one of the season’s four Thirsty Thursdays, when beer and wine are $2. For each of the many empty seats, it seemed, someone was wandering the concourse, a plastic tumbler in hand, chatting. Just as on the night before, young parents milled about with children in arms or in tow. The Barons, a Chicago White Sox affiliate, led the Southern League in attendance by a wide margin in their first season at the new stadium, drawing nearly 5,700 fans a game, and this year the average was 500 higher, again the league’s highest. Ann was there for the baseball. She applauded enthusiastically when the Barons turned double plays, scored and won. The night before, on Ann’s first trip to the park, the game plodded along into its third hour, showing no sign of ending soon, so I asked if she would like to call it an early night. “Somehow, that’s against my religion,” she said with an emphatic nod. So she stayed until the end.

Birmingham
Baseball
Birmingham Barons
Minor league
Stadiums Arenas


Events in Connecticut

Abstract: Comedy HARTFORD Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts “Ha! Ha! Hartford!” featuring Joe DeVito, Billy Garan and Brian Kiley. Jan. 23 at 8:30 p.m. $18 to $25. Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, 166 Capitol Avenue. (860) 987-5900; bushnell.org . STAMFORD Rich Forum, Stamford Center for the Arts “Inauguration Comedy Show,” featuring Jason Andors. Proceeds will be donated to the Urban League of Southern Connecticut . Jan. 17 at 8 p.m. $38.50 to $50. Rich Forum, Stamford Center for the Arts, 307 Atlantic Street. (203) 325-4466; stamfordcenterforthearts.org . Film RIDGEFIELD Ridgefield Playhouse “Real Women Have Curves,” featuring a discussion with the director, Patricia Cardosa. Jan. 23 at 7:30 p.m. $5. Ridgefield Playhouse, 80 East Ridge Road. (203) 438-5795; ridgefieldplayhouse.com . STAMFORD Ferguson Library Main Branch “The Duchess,” featuring Keira Knightly and Ralph Fiennes. Jan. 18 at 2 p.m. Free. Ferguson Library Main Branch, 1 Public Library Plaza. (203) 964-1000; fergusonlibrary.org . For Children BRIDGEPORT Downtown Cabaret Theater “The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon,” musical based on the book by Mini Grey. Ages 3 and up. Jan. 17 through Feb. 22. $15. Downtown Cabaret Theater, 263 Golden Hill Street. (203) 576-1636; downtowncabaret.org . BRIDGEPORT The Discovery Museum “The Little Star That Could” and “Dawn of the Space Age,” full-dome planetarium shows. Through May 1. Free with museum admission. Hours: Mondays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. The Discovery Museum, 4450 Park Avenue. discoverymuseum.org ; (203) 372-3521. GREENWICH Bruce Museum “Digging for Dinosaurs,” featuring fossils and a hands-on excavation area. Through July 26. $7; seniors and students, $6; children under 5, free. Hours: Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 5 p.m. Bruce Museum, 1 Museum Drive. (203) 869-0376; brucemuseum.org . MADISON Scranton Memorial Library Jeff Kinney talks about his latest book, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw.” Wednesday at 4 p.m. Scranton Memorial Library, 801 Boston Post Road. (203) 245-7365. POMFRET CENTER Connecticut Audubon Society at Pomfret “Trail Wood After School Nature Club,” a hike with some lessons on wild life. Through Mar. 4. $35 and $45. Connecticut Audubon Society at Pomfret, 189 Pomfret Street. ctaudubon.org ; (860) 928-4948. RIDGEFIELD Ridgefield Theater Barn “Nobody Loves A Dragon,” live theater for preschool and elementary school children. Jan. 18 at 1:30 p.m. $10; family of four, $35; under 2 years old free. Ridgefield Theater Barn, 37 Halpin Lane. (203) 431-9850; ridgefieldtheaterbarn.org . STAMFORD Stamford Symphony Orchestra “Dancing Feet,” interactive mini-concert for children. Kids sit among symphony musicians, ask questions and try out instruments. Jan. 11 at 1 and 2:30 p.m. Stamford Museum and Nature Center, 39 Scofieldtown Road. (203) 325-1407 Ext. 10. stamfordsymphony.org . WINDSOR LOCKS New England Air Museum “Open Cockpit.” Visitors climb into the cockpits of 12 vintage aircrafts as well as a full-motion flight simulator and two static flight simulators. Adults, $10; seniors, $9; children ages 4 to 11, $5; ages 3 and under, free. Jan. 18. Daily, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. New England Air Museum, 36 Perimeter Road, adjacent to Bradley International Airport. (860) 623-3305. Museums and Galleries BRIDGEPORT Housatonic Museum of Art “Art/Place 25th Anniversary Exhibition,” multimedia, works by 27 members. Through Jan. 30. Hours: Mondays through Wednesdays and Fridays, 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Thursdays, 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 4 p.m. Housatonic Museum of Art, 900 Lafayette Boulevard. (203) 332-5052; hctc.commnet.edu/artmuseum /. COS COB Bush-Holley Historic Site “Carved With Rasps and Chisels: The Sculpture of Margaret Brassler Kane.” Through Jan. 11. $4 to $6; children under 6, free; Tuesdays, free. Tuesdays through Sundays, noon to 4 p.m. Bush-Holley Historic Site, 39 Strickland Road. (203) 869-6899; hstg.org . GREENWICH Bowman Observatory “Public Night at the Bowman Observatory,” hosted by the Astronomical Society of Greenwich. Tuesday, 7 to 9 p.m. Free. Bowman Observatory, 180 East Elm Street. (203) 869-6786, ext. 338; seocom.com/asg/bowmap.html . GREENWICH Bruce Museum “That Liberty Shall Not Perish: World War I Posters.” Through Feb. 1. “Setting the Stage: Twentieth-Century Theater Models,” featuring more than 20 scaled versions of sets designed for dance, opera and theatrical productions, including shows on Broadway this season and next. Through March 15. $7; seniors and students, $6; members and children under 5, free. Hours: Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 5 p.m. Bruce Museum, 1 Museum Drive. (203) 869-0376; brucemuseum.org. GREENWICH Flinn Gallery “Counterpoint: Gail and Ken Resen,” abstract landscape paintings. Through Jan. 21. Hours: Mondays through Wednesdays and Fridays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 5 p.m. Flinn Gallery, 101 West Putnam Avenue. (203) 622-7947; flinngallery.com . GREENWICH Greenwich Arts Council “Frank Smurlo: Landscapes,” contemporary landscape paintings; “David Webber: Animals” new photographs. Through Jan. 31. Hours: Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 4 p.m., or by appointment. Bendheim Gallery, Greenwich Arts Council, 299 Greenwich Avenue. (203) 862-6750; greenwicharts.org . HARTFORD Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art “Who Was Anna Tuels? Quilt Stories, 1750-1900,” celebrating quilting in America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Through Jan. 25. “What Lies Beneath: Revealing Painters’ Secrets,” using X-radiography and infrared imaging. Through March 31. $5 to $10; members and children 12 and under, free. Hours: Tuesdays through Fridays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; first Thursdays of the month, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 600 Main Street. wadsworthatheneum.org ; (860) 278-2670. KENT Kent Memorial Library Susan Forbes, oil paintings. Through Feb. 28. Free. Hours: Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Kent Memorial Library, 32 North Main Street. (860) 927-3761; kentmemoriallibrary.org . NEW BRITAIN New Britain Museum of American Art “New/Now Michael Theise: Trompe l’Oeil,” paintings. Through Jan. 24. “Judith Leiber Handbags,” from the collections of Melinda and Paul Sullivan and Sharon and Henry Martin. Through Feb. 1. “Double Lives: American Painters as Illustrators, 1850-1950.” Through Feb. 22. $9; seniors, $8; students, $7; members and children under 12, free. Hours: Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. New Britain Museum of American Art, 56 Lexington Street. (860) 229-0257; nbmaa.org . NEW CANAAN New Canaan Library “Sonia Lynn Sadler: Colorist,” exhibit of paintings, linocuts, wax-resist works and illustrations. Jan. 11 through Feb. 16. Reception, Jan. 11, 3 to 5 p.m. New Canaan Library, 151 Main Street. (203) 594-5000; newcanaanlibrary.org NEW HAVEN City Gallery “HOT/medium/COOL,” encaustic and mono-prints by Freddi Elton. Through Feb. 1. Hours: Thursdays through Sundays, noon to 4 p.m., or by appointment. City Gallery, 994 State Street. (203) 782-2489. NEW HAVEN Peabody Museum of Natural History “Travels in the Great Tree of Life,” exploring relationships among organisms. Through Feb. 22. $7; seniors, $6; children under 18 and students, $5. Hours: Mondays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Peabody Museum of Natural History, 170 Whitney Avenue. yale.edu/peabody ; (203) 432-5050. NEW MILFORD Gregory James Gallery “Small Treasures and More,” group show. Through Jan. 17. Hours: Mondays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and by appointment. Gregory James Gallery, 13 Main Street. (860) 354-3436; gregoryjamesgallery.com . OLD GREENWICH Arcadia Coffee Company David Edelson, photographs. Through Jan. 31. Hours: Mondays through Wednesdays and Fridays, 6:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Thursdays 6:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Arcadia Coffee Company, 20 Arcadia Road. (203) 637-8766; arcadiacoffee .com. OLD LYME Florence Griswold Museum “The Road Less Traveled: Thomas Nason’s Rural New England,” prints. Jan. 17 through May. 12. $4 to $8; children under 6, free. Hours: Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 5 p.m. Florence Griswold Museum, 96 Lyme Street. (860) 434-5542; flogris.org . OLD LYME Lyme Art Association Gallery “17th Annual Associate Artist Show.” Nearly 250 works of art will be exhibited and on display for sale. Friday through Feb. 28. Reception on Friday, 5 to 7 p.m. Hours: Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 5 p.m. Lyme Art Association Gallery, 90 Lyme Street. lymeartassociation.org ; (860) 434-7802. RIDGEFIELD Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum “Harry Shearer: The Silent Echo Chamber,” multiscreen video installation. Through Feb. 8. “Peggy Preheim: Little Black Book,” drawings, paintings, sculptural objects and photographs. Through Feb. 9. “The Soul: Journey to America,” sculptures by Kwang-Young Chun. Through May. 24. $4 and $7; members, kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers and children 18 and under, free; Tuesdays, free. Tuesdays through Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, 258 Main Street. (203) 438-4519; aldrichart.org . ROXBURY Minor Memorial Library “Birds From the Hand,” works on paper by Audrey Anastasi and sculpture by Deborah Menzell Dressler. Through Feb. 23. Hours: Mondays, noon to 7 p.m.; Wednesdays, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Thursdays and Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Minor Memorial Library, 23 South Street. (860) 350-2181. TORRINGTON “AquaFlora,” part of the performance “Botanica” staged by the Momix dance troupe at the Warner Theater, 68 Main Street, Torrington, Jan. 11 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $29.50, $39.59 and $50. (860) 489-7180; warnertheatre.org . WEST CORNWALL Northern Exposure Photographic Gallery at the Wish House “Photographer’s Choice,” group show. Through Feb. 15. Hours: Fridays through Sundays, noon to 5:30 p.m., and by appointment. Northern Exposure Photographic Gallery at the Wish House, 413 Main Street. (860) 927-3319; northernexposurephotogallery.com . WESTPORT Amy Simon Fine Art “Inaugurating Dreams: Jung Hyang Kim and Eleanor Miller,” exhibition of a New York-Korean artist, Jung Hyang Kim, and a Connecticut artist, Eleanor Miller. Through Feb. 14. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and by appointment. Amy Simon Fine Art, 25 Post Road East, Play House Square. (203) 226-8232; amysimonfineart .com. Music and Dance FAIRFIELD Fairfield Theater Company Altan, traditional Irish music. Jan. 11 at 4 and 7:30 p.m. $22 and $27. Vienna Teng with Alex Wong, pop and alternative. Thursday at 7:30 p.m. $17 and $22. Al Di Meola, jazz guitar. Friday at 7:30 p.m. $42 and $52. Aztec Two-Step, performance of the Simon and Garfunkel sSongbook, hosted by Peter Fornatale. Jan. 17 at 7:30 p.m. $32 and $42. Enter the Haggis, rock. Jan. 22 at 7:30 p.m. $17 and $22. Jim Weider’s Project Percolator, progressive blues-rock. Jan. 23 at 7:30 p.m. $17 and $22. Dwele, rhythm and blues and soul. Jan. 24 at 7:30 p.m. $37 and $47. Fairfield Theater Company, 70 Sanford Street. (203) 259-1036; fairfieldtheatre.org . FAIRFIELD Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University “La Rondine,” simulcast of Metropolitan Opera performance featuring Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna. Jan. 10. Encore, Jan. 11. $15 and $22. Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Road. (203) 254-4010; quickcenter.com . HARTFORD Hartford Symphony Orchestra “Living the Dream: 10th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Tribute Concert,” with Clayton Penrose-Whitmore, violinist. Presented by the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, in collaboration wih the Hartford Chorale, the Connecticut Opera and The Hartford Stage Company. Jan. 17 at 4 p.m. General admission, $20; reserved seating, $40; students and seniors, $10. Hopewell Baptist Church, 280 Windsor Avenue, Windsor. (860) 244-2999; at hartfordsymphony.org . RIDGEFIELD Ridgefield Playhouse Patty Smyth and Scandal, rock. Jan. 17 at 8 p.m. $50. Joshua Redman, jazz. Jan. 18 at 8 p.m. $60. Ridgefield Playhouse, 80 East Ridge Road. ridgefieldplayhouse.com; (203) 438-5795. STAMFORD Palace Theater, Stamford Center for the Arts “American Voices,” classical, featuring the violinist Tai Murray. Jan. 24 and 25. $27 to $70. Palace Theater, Stamford Center for the Arts, 61 Atlantic Street. (203) 325-4466; stamfordcenterforthearts.org. WATERBURY Fine Arts Center “A Russian Spectacular,” presented by the Waterbury Symphony Orchestra. Jan. 18 at 3 p.m. $40. Fine Arts Center, 750 Chase Parkway, Naugatuck Valley Community College. (203) 574-4283; waterburysymphony.org . WESTPORT Steinway Piano Gallery of Westport “Mozart and Friends” recital with Julia Pilant and Julie Bridge, horns, and Jennifer Tao, piano. Jan. 18 at 4 p.m. Steinway Piano Gallery of Westport, 501 Post Road East. stamfordsymphony.org; (203) 227-8222. Outdoors CHESHIRE Lock 12 Historical Park Year-round biking trail in restored section of Farmington Canal. Park also includes museum, lockkeeper’s house, helicoidal bridge, 2.9-mile hiking and biking trail and picnic area. Ongoing. Free. Lock 12 Historical Park, 487 North Brooksvale Road (Route 42). (203) 272-2743. NEW CANAAN New Canaan Nature Center “Saturday Explorers Club: Winter Survival.” Learn the basics of winter survival techniques including shelter building, animal hunting and fire building. Jan. 24, noon to 3 p.m. $15; members, free. New Canaan Nature Center, 144 Oenoke Ridge. (203) 966-9577; newcanaannature.org . NEW HAVEN New Haven Bird Club “Milford Birding Tour.” Visit Mondo Ponds, Caswell Cove, Milford Point, Silver Sands State Park to look for waterfowl, rare gulls, birds of prey and wintering shorebirds, Meet at the commuter parking lot at Exit 35 off I-95, just south of the highway. Jan. 18 at 7:30 a.m. Membership, $15; students, $5; families, $20. New Haven Bird Club, (203) 389-6508; newhavenbirdclub.org . Seasonal CLINTON Sylvan Gallery “Small Pleasures,” holiday exhibition of oil, watercolor and pastel works. Through Jan. 25. Hours: Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 4 p.m., or by appointment. Sylvan Gallery, 121 West Main Street. (860) 669-7278; sylvangallery.com . FAIRFIELD Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University “Peace Festival,” part of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday observance. Jan. 22 at 3 and 5 p.m. Free. Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Road. quickcenter.com; (203) 254-4010. GREENWICH Bruce Museum “Celebrating a Life of Love,” annual celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, featuring the Messiah Baptist Gospel Choir from Bridgeport. Jan. 19, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Bruce Museum, 1 Museum Drive. (203) 869-0376; brucemuseum.org. NEW HAVEN White Space Gallery “Trees and Arches on Chapel,” seasonal group show featuring 14 New England artists. Through Jan. 31. Hours: Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. White Space Gallery, 1020 Chapel Street, 2nd floor. (203) 495-1200; whitespacegallery .com. Spoken Word FAIRFIELD Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University Olympia Dukakis, lecture with Academy Award- winning actress. Jan. 25 at 3 p.m. $45. Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Road. (203) 254-4010; quickcenter.com. GREENWICH Bruce Museum “Traditions and Transformations: Southeast Asian Ceramics,” with Denise Leidy, curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Monday at 1:15 p.m. sponsored by the Greenwich Antiques Society and the Connecticut Ceramics Study Circle. $15 for nonmembers. “ Global Warming : Some Science and Solutions,” with Rob Jackson, the Nicholas Professor of Global Environmental Change and professor of Biology Earth and Ocean Sciences at Duke University. Jan. 25 at 3 p.m. Free to members and students with ID, $5 for nonmembers. (203) 869-6786, Ext. 420. Bruce Museum, 1 Museum Drive. brucemuseum.org; (203) 869-0376. HARTFORD Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts “An Evening with Kevin Smith,” question and answer session with the filmmaker. Jan. 24 at 7:30 p.m. $36.50 to $42.50. Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, 166 Capitol Avenue. (860) 987-5900; bushnell.org. NORWALK Norwalk Public Library Jim Powell, Westport author, discusses his book, “Greatest Emancipations.” Thursday at 7 p.m. Free. Norwalk Public Library, 1 Belden Avenue. (203) 899-2780; norwalkpubliclibrary.org . STAMFORD Ferguson Library Main Branch “On the Road to Rajasthan: The India Less Traveled,” with travel writer Margie Goldsmith. Jan. 11 at 2 p.m. Ferguson Library Main Branch, 1 Public Library Plaza. (203) 964-1000; fergusonlibrary.org. Theater EAST HADDAM Goodspeed Opera House “Fourth Annual Goodspeed Festival of New Artists,” staged readings of “Life on the Mississippi,” “Band Geeks” and “Factory Girls.” Friday through Jan. 18. $10 and $15. Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main Street. (860) 873-8668; goodspeed.org . FAIRFIELD Fairfield Theater Company “Play with Your Food,” buffet lunch with a staged reading of three new plays and a post-show discussion. Jan. 20 at noon. $40. Fairfield Theater Company, 70 Sanford Street. (203) 259-1036; fairfieldtheatre.org. FAIRFIELD Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University “Favorite Shows,” live re-creations of vintage and original radio dramas, with live music, commercials and live sound effects. Jan. 23 and 24. $25. Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, 1073 North Benson Road. (quickcenter.com; (203) 254-4010. HARTFORD Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts “Avenue Q,” musical. Book by Jeff Whitty, music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx. Tuesday through Jan. 18. $20 to $65. Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, 166 Capitol Avenue. (860) 987-5900; bushnell.org. HARTFORD Hartford Stage “Dying City,” drama by Christopher Shinn. Through Feb. 8. $40 to $57. Hartford Stage, 50 Church Street. (860) 527-5151; hartfordstage .org. NEW BRITAIN Hole in the Wall Theater “Heaven,” comedy by Jenny Lecce. Friday through Feb. 14. $20 suggested donation. Hole in the Wall Theater, 116 Main Street. (860) 229-3049; hitw.org . NEW HAVEN Long Wharf Theater “Coming Home,” world premier of a play by Athol Fugard, a legendary figure in his native South Africa. Wednesday through Feb. 8. For ticket price call the theater. Long Wharf Theater, 222 Sargent Drive. (203) 787-4282; longwharf.org . TORRINGTON Warner Theater “Capitol Steps,” musical political satire. Jan. 24 at 8 p.m. $19.50 to $39.50. Warner Theater, 68 Main Street. warnertheatre.org; (860) 489-7180. WESTPORT MTC MainStage “Mothers and Sons,” musical by Kevin Connors and Joe Landry. Jan. 23 through Feb. 1. $25 and $35. MTC MainStage, 246 Post Road East. (203) 454-3883; mtcmainstage .org.


Unions Rally, Vowing Strike at Verizon

Abstract: The unions representing 65,000 Verizon workers on Saturday resounded a pledge to strike if demands for higher wages, caps on health care payments and limits on outsourcing jobs are not honored. With one week to go before a contract expires, several thousand telephone workers affiliated with the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers gathered at Verizon headquarters in Lower Manhattan. They chastised Verizon executives for proposing sharp increases in health care payments and reductions in coverage for retirees. Some held signs reading “Hands Off Our Benefits,” vowing to take to the picket line on Aug. 3 if the two sides did not reach a settlement. Joe Connolly, president of Local 1101 of the C.W.A., said that the union was pushing for a 5 percent annual wage increase, larger pensions and expanded medical benefits. “Right now, employees have to make a choice: Are they going to eat or get benefits?” Mr. Connolly said. In light of the slow pace of negotiations, a strike was likely, he said. “There’s been nothing resolved on any level at this point.” Eric W. Rabe, a spokesman for Verizon, however, remained hopeful that a deal would be reached. He declined to comment on the specifics of the negotiations. “I think everybody recognizes that it is in the interests of all sides to get the contract resolved,” Mr. Rabe said. A major point of contention between the unions and Verizon is the outsourcing and subcontracting of jobs. Union members have said that work like telephone technical support and laying new wires should go to union laborers. But Verizon has said that awarding some jobs to outside firms gives the company the flexibility to create, for instance, a new call center on the spot, or to quickly find laborers for a one-time construction job.

Strikes
Labor
Telephones and Telecommunications
Verizon Communications


Napier Takes Center Stage as UConn Upsets Villanova

Abstract: BUFFALO — Connecticut led second-seeded Villanova by 5 with less than four minutes remaining Saturday, but Shabazz Napier — the Huskies’ best player and the team’s indisputable heart and soul — sat crumpled in a heap on the bench, his face buried in a towel. Napier winced as UConn’s trainer rubbed his right shin and ankle and the Huskies forged on without him. He checked back in with 3 minutes 22 seconds remaining, treading carefully. But the Huskies sure looked happy to have him on the court. Behind a gutsy performance by Napier, a senior who scored 25 points, seventh-seeded Connecticut upset Villanova, 77-65, in the East Region at First Niagara Center, moving on to the Round of 16 for the first time since 2011, when the Huskies won their last national championship. The Men's Bracket View and print our N.C.A.A. tournament bracket. Napier was on that team, a dynamic role player who still needed a few years of seasoning. By Saturday, his time on center stage had arrived. Back in the game, still limping, Napier cut through a throng of defenders and made a layup, bringing UConn’s lead to 9 and his point total to 22. His face was flushed; he seemed barely able to move laterally. It did not matter. “He’s just tough-minded,” Connecticut Coach Kevin Ollie said. “He does whatever we need to win.” On Friday, Ollie said Napier possessed a “moxie” from nearly the moment he stepped on campus, with Napier telling Kemba Walker at practice what he needed to do. N.C.A.A. Tournament: Who Do You Hate (and Love)? Which team do you think will win? Eh, never mind that. Tell us which teams’ losses would give you the greatest joy, and which team’s success would make you most happy. Ollie may have been partly kidding. “He had a confidence, like I’m supposed to be here,” Ollie said Friday. Napier scored 4 points in the first half Saturday as Villanova controlled the opening minutes, building a 19-9 lead. But the Wildcats’ shooting ability let them down for a third consecutive game. Villanova went 11:24 without hitting a field goal as UConn went on a 16-1 run in the first half. Still, the Huskies went into halftime ahead by only 25-24. N.C.A.A. Round of 32: The Day in Pictures 14 Photos View Slide Show › Image Jeffrey Phelps/Associated Press “We felt in good shape at halftime,” Wildcats Coach Jay Wright said. In the second half, Connecticut came out with more energy, hitting 7 of its first 12 shots from the field to hurry out to a 42-36 lead. After two 3-pointers by Napier, UConn led, 54-45, with less than five minutes remaining. A minute later, Napier went down, which seemed as if it might give Villanova a chance to close the gap. But Connecticut stalled enough to allow Napier some time for recovery, and he re-entered the game after only 36 seconds of playing time had elapsed. “I was trying to get open for the ball, and I think it was Hilliard that kneed me or kicked me in the shin,” Napier said, referring to Villanova’s Darrun Hilliard II. “The pain was excruciating.” Napier added that an athletic trainer “put that biofreeze on it, and I was ready to go.” The Wildcats shot just 35 percent from the field and were outscored, 26-5, off the bench. Despite a regular season with the most wins in program history (28), Villanova has yet to reach the Round of 16 since 2009.

Villanova
Shabazz Napier
University of Connecticut
College basketball
NCAA Men's Basketball,March Madness