After World Series Win, Red Sox’ Beards and Memories Are Short

Abstract: FORT MYERS, Fla. — They are still a scruffy bunch, happily hirsute. A little more than a week away from opening day, a good number of the Boston Red Sox still sport beards. Last year, that was the Red Sox’ collective game face. This year, it’s just something on their face. David Ross, a catcher, stood in Boston’s clubhouse before the Red Sox played the Yankees in a spring game Thursday night and stroked his hand through his closely cropped beard. “I’ve had it this way for the last three, four years,” he said. “My wife likes it short. I’m not going back to where it was.” Where it was was about a half-foot long, gloriously scraggly, the envy of lumberjacks. It helped prompt a “Fear the Beard” rallying cry in Boston, national newspaper and magazine stories, T-shirts and posters. “All the beards even had their own nicknames,” said Ross, one of several Red Sox who decided during last year’s spring training to let their facial hair grow. And grow and grow. It is not uncommon for teams to have a slogan or ritual to rally around. The players said Boston’s clubhouse had camaraderie and chemistry almost immediately last spring, but the beards created an additional bond en route to the franchise’s third World Series title in 10 years. “I’ve been on teams where there’s a little quirky thing going on — a handshake or something,” Jonny Gomes said. “Last year, when the beards started, it just grew.” Soon the Red Sox looked like a collection of Civil War generals. Even David Ortiz, who has always worn a short, neatly trimmed beard, was allowing his facial hair to flow more freely. “They forced me,” Ortiz said of the inchlong beard he grew toward the end of last season. “I still didn’t grow it as long as some of those other guys. But for me, it was pretty long.” Next to Ortiz’s locker were framed posters awaiting player signatures. They showed the bearded mugs of Mike Napoli, Dustin Pedroia, Ortiz, Ross, Gomes and Jarrod Saltalamacchia. It was Gomes who signaled that the team was “turning the page” in 2014; many of the Red Sox players now wear T-shirts with that phrase , punctuated with an expletive, emblazoned across the chest. “Looking back on it, it was a rallying point for us,” Gomes said. “But I 100 percent think we still would’ve won the World Series even if we didn’t have the beards. That’s what we really need to get across.” He added there were “good ballplayers on this squad, and there still are.” But while most of those players still have beards, only Napoli has maintained his at a length that would need a ruler to measure. And even he has cut his beard several inches, leaving it about four inches long. “I’ve trimmed it up a lot,” he said. “But I still like my beard long. I’ve always had some scruff on my face. So I’m just going to keep it long, but it’s definitely trimmed up from last year.” He said he understood why some of his teammates had shaved or trimmed their beards. “Some of their wives were getting sick of all that growth,” Napoli said. “But I’m a single guy. I can do what I want.” And although some may grow a beard to go incognito, Ross said he shaved his to go unnoticed. “As long as it was, I’d go to the grocery store, and I’d stand out,” he said. “Everyone recognized me. It would take me three hours to get in and out of a store. When I shaved it, it made me a normal guy again. I blended in.” PROMISING START FOR PHELPS Francisco Cervelli hit a solo home run in the second inning that cleared the Red Sox’ replica Green Monster at JetBlue Park. It was the game’s first run and proved to be the difference in a 3-2 Yankees win. David Phelps, vying for the fifth-starter spot, pitched six strong innings, giving up four hits and two earned runs against a Boston lineup of mostly regular-season starters. “He faced a tough lineup and did a nice job,” Yankees Manager Joe Girardi said. Phelps said that a few days ago he adjusted his prepitch mechanics involving the placement of his hands, and he liked the results. “I felt a little more consistent with my control,” he said. “I’m happy with the way I’m throwing.” M.R.I. FOR ELLSBURY Yankees center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury missed batting practice to have a magnetic resonance imaging test on a tight calf muscle that has made him unavailable for six days. “The M.R.I. came back negative,” Joe Girardi said. “He’s day to day, and we want to make sure that he’s a 100 percent before he goes back out there.” Girardi said he expected Ellsbury to take batting practice and do light baseball drills Friday, but he stopped short of giving a date for when Ellsbury could play in a game again. Ellsbury, who signed a seven-year, $153 million contract in the off-season, has been troubled by injuries. Fractured ribs limited him to 18 games in 2010. A shoulder injury sidelined him for all but 74 games in 2012. Ellsbury played in 134 games last season, but he missed 16 games during the September stretch run with a fractured right foot. RYAN SCRATCHED Shortstop Brendan Ryan was scratched from the Yankees’ lineup just before Thursday night’s game, complaining of spasms in his upper back. Ryan has not played since March 4 because of what he said was lower back soreness. “It happened when I was throwing,” he said. “I rocketed one and felt spasms. Everything tightened. It’s just all knotted up.” Joe Girardi said he was concerned that Ryan might not be ready for the regular season, which begins April 1 at Houston. “You have to be concerned because of where we are right now,” Girardi said. “We’re running out of time. You want him to get his reps in before the season starts.”

Red Sox
David Ross
Baseball
Beards and Mustaches


Juneteenth Project Stalls, but Replacement Emerges

Abstract: The Tejano Monument , unveiled in March on the Texas Capitol’s south lawn, stands to honor the state’s early Spanish and Mexican settlers. But for some Texans, it is a reminder of the failed Juneteenth monument project, approved two years before the Tejano Monument. The bill to establish a Juneteenth monument — commemorating June 19, 1865, when federal troops arrived in Texas to declare slaves free — was pushed through in 1999 by former State Representative Al Edwards, Democrat of Houston. Though the five-statue monument was already built, it became clouded in controversy, preventing its installment on the Capitol grounds. There were objections to one of the statues, which appeared to resemble Mr. Edwards, and the historical accuracy of the other statues came into question. Last year, after 12 years and more than $1 million of taxpayer money spent, the Legislature voted to end the Juneteenth project and install an African-American Texans memorial monument instead. The Juneteenth project had “engendered such needless controversy,” said State Senator Rodney Ellis, Democrat of Houston, who co-wrote the new bill. The Juneteenth monument “was becoming a punch line instead of a poignant symbol of the journey of African-Americans in Texas,” Mr. Ellis said. “The legislation we passed in 2011 offers a fresh start so that we can get back to what that symbol stands for and away from the bickering.” The first controversy arose in 2005, when some legislators, including Mr. Ellis, suggested that one of the monument’s statues looked like Mr. Edwards and seemed to inappropriately glorify the legislator. The Juneteenth commission, which was responsible for completing the monument, sent that statue to Galveston, where it stands on a prominent city-owned site. The commission requested a replacement statue, but a similar problem arose. The new statue held a document labeled “House Bill 1016,” the legislation Mr. Edwards wrote in 1979 declaring Juneteenth a legal state holiday, instead of an emancipation document. There were also issues with the other statues — a farmer and his daughter, a preacher and a woman. The farmer wears bib overalls, and the woman wears a high-neck-collar dress, neither of which was typical of 1860s attire. Because of those inaccuracies, when the State Preservation Board, which oversees the Capitol, received a final installation proposal in 2009, the agency’s staff recommended that the executive director not submit the proposal to the six-member board, which includes the governor, lieutenant governor and House speaker. Another problem for the Juneteenth project was that its leading proponent, Mr. Edwards, lost his House seat in 2006, won it back in 2008 and lost it again in 2010. Amid delays and waning support, the Legislature repealed the project. The Juneteenth statues are stored in a foundry near Austin. The new monument, largely financed privately, is expected to be installed at the Capitol by 2014, said Bill Jones, an Austin lawyer who is leading the efforts to raise the $2.5 million needed. Mr. Edwards said what mattered is that a monument will stand at the Capitol. “We’ll have a presence on the Capitol, and I’ll always give credit to the Juneteenth commission and others,” he said. “The commission must be commended for starting the movement.”

Texas
Monuments and Memorials (Structures)
Blacks
Austin (Tex)
Law and Legislation
Ellis Rodney
Edwards Al


Metropolitan Laurus, Who Healed Rift in Russian Orthodox Church, Is Dead at 80

Abstract: Metropolitan Laurus, who led the overseas branch of the Russian Orthodox Church to a historic rapprochement with the Moscow mother church, from which it split after the Communist revolution in 1917, died Sunday at a monastery in Jordanville, N.Y. He was 80. Nicholas Ohotin, a church spokesman, said no cause had been determined. News reports from Russia made much of the day of his death: it was the Feast of Orthodoxy, when those who have given greatly to the church are venerated. Metropolitan Laurus’s most historic moment occurred last May in the great rebuilt Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, which Stalin had once destroyed to build a swimming pool. As leader of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, he exchanged kisses on the cheek with the Patriarch of Moscow, Aleksei II. The gesture symbolized a momentous step toward ending a feud that began three years after the Bolshevik revolution, as the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union wilted under intense government pressure. By 1927, the Moscow patriarch had pledged loyalty to the Communist authorities, and the overseas church, in disgust, cut all ties with its Russian parent. But last May, eight decades after the final break, the churches avowed spiritual unity. Bishops from the overseas church — which has 400 parishes in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Britain and South America — must now be approved by a council in Moscow. Metropolitan Laurus emphasized that the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia remained administratively independent. And some issues are still sticking points: prominent among them, there is no unity on how best to cooperate with other religions. Four years before the historic accord, other kisses dramatized the new, welcoming attitude of Russia’s post-Communist rulers toward the Orthodox Church. While visiting New York, the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, kissed Metropolitan Laurus three times. Saying that the Kremlin is Russia’s spiritual, as well as political, center, Mr. Putin invited Metropolitan Laurus to Moscow to lay the groundwork for reunification with the original Russian Orthodox Church. Orthodoxy arrived in Russia from Byzantium in 988 A.D. at the invitation of Grand Prince Vladimir, who had searched the world for a faith for his people. Russians loved their new religion, and after the Turks sacked Constantinople in 1453, they became the strongest defenders of Orthodoxy. In 1472, Ivan III, the grand duke of Moscow, married the niece of the last Byzantine emperor. Ivan then took the title of czar, an adaptation of Caesar, and Moscow called itself “the third Rome.” The Communist revolution changed everything. According to Nathaniel Davis’s “A Long Walk to Church: A Contemporary History of Russian Orthodoxy” (2003), there were more than 50,000 churches before the revolution and no more than 300 functioning ones by the late 1930s. More than 80,000 priests, monks and nuns were killed. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia became the defender and bearer of traditions that went beyond religion. The foreign church canonized Czar Nicholas II and his family in 1981, something the Russian church did only when it was absolutely safe, in 2000. That canonization helped pave the way for the churches’ rapprochement. Princess Olga Kulikovskaya-Romanova, a member of the House of Romanovs, said in an interview on Monday with Itar-Tass, the Russian news service, that the reunification owed much to Metropolitan Laurus’s “very delicate and cautious” approach. She said the cleric had “many opponents who didn’t want to part with their stereotyped perceptions of Russia.” Vassily Mikhailovich Skurla was born on Jan. 1, 1928, in present-day Slovakia. At 8 or 9, he went to a nearby monastery and asked to become a monk. His father — poor and a widower with three other children — agreed, a church biography said. By law, the boy also had to attend public school. He and other monks fled advancing Soviet troops and, by a circuitous route, arrived at the Jordanville monastery in 1946. He graduated from an associated seminary there and then taught the Old Testament and other subjects. He did the work of a monk, cooking, milking cows, packing books and digging graves. He also edited church publications. He ascended the church hierarchy, from dean of the seminary to bishop of Manhattan to archbishop to metropolitan of the eastern United States and New York. In 2001, he was elected first hierarch, or top leader, of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. He won on the first ballot, something that had not happened in 65 years. Metropolitan Laurus left no immediate survivors. Reports from Russia on Monday said church leaders there were pushing to name streets and a church, perhaps a cathedral, for him.

Metropolitan Laurus
Russian Orthodox Church
Patriarch Aleksei II
Leaders and Leadership
Deaths (Obituaries)


People Sought in Bangkok Bombing May Have Fled Country, Police Say

Abstract: BANGKOK — Thailand ’s chief of police said Sunday that those responsible for the deadly attack on a Bangkok shrine last week “may have already fled” the country, apparently trying to lower public expectations that the main person being sought would be caught anytime soon. “If the police are lucky, we may be able to arrest them,” Gen. Somyot Poompanmoung, the national police chief, told reporters. Hamstrung by a paucity of evidence, the police have stumbled over false leads and complained that they lacked the equipment and technology to gain sufficient insights from the grainy security footage and other images they have gathered showing the man’s movements before and after the explosion. The blast last Monday at the Erawan Shrine left at least 20 dead and created panic in Bangkok’s main shopping district. More than a hundred people were injured, including some who remain in critical condition. After saying that they were seeking three additional people seen in security footage as suspects, the police concluded they had no role in the bombing. Two were men who had stood near another man as he placed a backpack believed to contain the bomb at the shrine. Sriwara Rangsipramanakul, the commissioner of police, said the authorities had conducted a huge operation, searching 3,000 locales, covering everything from condominiums to seedy guesthouses. “We haven’t found any suspects with connection with the bombing at all,” he said. The Thai police say the motive for the attack remains unknown. They have left all possibilities open but played down the possibility of an international terrorist network , which they say is unlikely. The police are also investigating whether there is a link to an explosion that occurred on Tuesday, the day after the shrine blast, at a river pier in Bangkok. That blast caused no injuries. Security footage showed a man standing on a footbridge pushing a bag into the canal where the explosion occurred. A sketch of the man being sought in Monday’s explosion released by the Thai police has been distributed to airports and border posts. It has also been widely disseminated on the Internet and sent to Interpol, the international police agency. Thai news media and users of social media have criticized top officials of the military junta that runs Thailand for missteps, contradictions and quirks. Although the arrest warrant lists a “foreign man” as the main suspect, police officials said they were not ruling out that the man wore a disguise and was Thai. Thailand’s prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, has recommended that investigators watch “ Blue Bloods ,” a television police drama set in New York. “It can teach us ideas on procedure and achieving solutions,” he said. “Our country may not be able to follow it completely, but it could raise our awareness.” On Sunday, a police spokesman expressed frustration at what he said were constant calls for progress in the investigation. Addressing reporters, Prawut Thavornsiri, the spokesman, said the police were exhausted. “Look at my eyes, I haven’t slept at all,” he said. “My subordinates slept even less than me. We sleep at our desks. We’ve worked hard. This is not an easy case.”

Bangkok
Bombs
Police
Thailand
Erawan Shrine


Barcelona’s Late Goal Leaves Chelsea Aggrieved

Abstract: LONDON — The Champions League final was denied a second consecutive all-English Premier League showdown, but it will flaunt two of the behemoths of the game — Manchester United against Barcelona. Barcelona filled out the guest list for the May 27 final in Rome with Andrés Iniesta’s stunning strike in the third minute of second-half added time, forcing a 1-1 draw with Chelsea . The first leg of the semifinal ended scoreless in Spain, and Barcelona advanced by scoring an away goal, according to the rules of the European Champions League . Chelsea had played deliberately in last week’s first match at Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium, seemingly satisfied with the draw on the road. Barcelona, Coach Pep Guardiola said, had no such plans. “We tried to win the game, we tried to create,” Guardiola said Wednesday. “We were down to 10 men for 25 minutes, and still Chelsea stayed back. We continued pressing for a goal, and carried that threat until the final minute.” Chelsea felt aggrieved by the refereeing of Tom Henning Ovrebo of Norway, a country that has no paid full-time match officials. Ovrebo, a psychologist in his day job, seemingly struggled to keep up with the pace of two top European teams. Chelsea claimed, possibly with some justification, that Ovrebo denied it at least three penalty kicks. The team’s anger exploded at the end of the game, when Didier Drogba, Michael Ballack and John Terry all harangued Ovrebo, Drogba in particular shouting abuse. The Chelsea players claimed that UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, which appoints the referee and runs the tournament, wanted to avoid a second consecutive season in which the Champions League final was played between the same two English clubs, Manchester United and Chelsea. “I won’t say what we feel, but it’s an injustice,” Chelsea Coach Guus Hiddink told Sky TV. “It’s sad to see when there is a clear hand ball by Gerard Piqué, and when Malouda is grabbed inside the box, and no penalty is given,” he added, referring to the Chelsea wing Florent Malouda. “So, ya, there is a load of energy and adrenaline from my players. I can fully understand their emotion, but we should also have scored from open play.” The two goals that were scored were sumptuous. Michael Essien, who so often injects energy into Chelsea’s midfield, volleyed the first goal in the ninth minute. He used his left foot, not normally his best, to strike a shot from 25 yards that hit the underside of the bar and bounced over the line. It was reminiscent of a shot that Zinédine Zidane scored to win the 2002 Champions League final for Real Madrid. But if Essien, who is from Ghana, was the architect of that goal, he was also the culprit who gave the ball away for the tying score. Essien’s failed clearance fell to Lionel Messi, who instantly passed the ball to Iniesta. From the edge of the penalty box, in the blink of an eye, Iniesta lofted a shot into the top left-hand corner of the net. Goalkeeper Petr Cech, who did not make a save in the game, could not get near the ball. And with one perfect strike, Iniesta, a Barcelona player since boyhood, scored possibly the most beautiful and important goal of his life. “I’m very happy for Andrés,” Guardiola said. “He’s a great player who represents Barcelona in many ways. He gets a lot of criticism for not scoring enough. Hopefully that will stop from tonight.” For Barcelona, there is the joy of a final in Rome, but that joy will be tempered because it will be without four defenders. Rafael Márquez and Gabriel Milito were previously injured, and Dani Alves picked up his second yellow card of the tournament. And in the 65th minute, Barcelona lost Eric Abidal to a dubious red card after a seemingly innocuous collision with Nicolas Anelka. “We will have different players in the final,” Guardiola said, “but we will play the same way — move the ball and try to score goals.”

Champions League
Manchester United
Soccer
Officiating (Sports)
Chelsea Football Club


Melania Trump, Solo in Pennsylvania, Tries to Smooth Husband’s Rough Edges

Abstract: BERWYN, Pa. — Melania Trump made a rare appearance on the campaign trail in the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Thursday, seeking to soften her husband’s coarse image by proclaiming to voters that Donald J. Trump respects all Americans and promising that as president he would promote values of compassion and charity across the country. The deployment of Ms. Trump comes as her husband’s campaign is trying to extend a late burst of momentum before Election Day by swaying undecided voters and women who have been wary of the Republican nominee. Urging Americans to “find a better way to talk to each other” amid one of the most caustic presidential campaigns in recent history, Ms. Trump cast immigrants as patriots and lamented, in spite of her husband’s tough talk on Twitter, cyberbullying as one of the country’s worst problems. Mr. Trump needs the trove of wealthy and educated voters in the counties surrounding Philadelphia to succeed in turning the state red for the first time since 1988, but many of those former Republicans have been turned off by his comments about immigrants and women. Ms. Trump, who is trying to change that, spoke at a recreational center in this Main Line town about 20 miles west of Philadelphia. As her fans waved “Women for Trump” signs, Ms. Trump told her story of immigrating to the United States, emphasizing the arduous 10-year process that she went through, and described immigrants as the ultimate patriots. “I’m an immigrant, and let me tell you that nobody values the freedom and opportunity of America more than me,” Ms. Trump, dressed in pink and standing between six American flags, said. Despite signs of overall tightening in the race, a Quinnipiac University poll of likely Pennsylvania voters released this week showed the uphill fight that Mr. Trump is facing among women in the state. Hillary Clinton leads him with that demographic by 20 percentage points, as many female voters have been turned off by Mr. Trump’s proclivity to make sexist comments. The hope for the Trump campaign is that Ms. Trump, a former Slovenian model, can help smooth Mr. Trump’s rough edges. On occasion, she has even told him to tone down his habit of being on Twitter into the wee hours, and on Thursday explained that combating online bullying would be her top priority as first lady. “Our culture has gotten too mean and too rough, especially to children and teenagers,” Ms. Trump said. “It is absolutely unacceptable when it is done by someone with no name hiding on the internet.” She added, “We have to find a better way to talk to each other, to disagree with each other, to respect each other.” The comments were a sharp contrast from the vitriol of the campaign, and some on social media noted that Mr. Trump had attributed much of his political success to his ability to bully rivals and critics with cutting posts on Twitter. The calls for a more civil discourse also clashed with the tone of some of Mr. Trump’s supporters who came to see Ms. Trump. Before Ms. Trump arrived, chants of “lock her up” directed at Mrs. Clinton spontaneously erupted. Some Trump supporters carried signs labeling former President Bill Clinton a rapist and others wore shirts suggesting that Mrs. Clinton should be killed. Whether Ms. Trump’s late foray into campaigning will work remains to be seen. Many of the women who attended her rally in Pennsylvania said they were already committed to Mr. Trump and that they had been waiting to finally see his wife in person. “She’s a beautiful, classy woman,” Micki DiBella, 61, of Broomall, Pa., said. “And she’s an immigrant. To me, that means Donald Trump doesn’t care if you were born in America.” Susan Jane, of Gwynedd Valley, Pa., said that Ms. Trump was the most effective advocate for her husband because of her warmth and positive persona. “They try to paint him as a monster,” she said, “but if he was a monster, she wouldn’t be married to him.” Although Ms. Trump has tried to avoid the brutal combat of presidential politics, it has proved nearly impossible to escape. During the campaign, she has faced scrutiny of her immigration status, questions about her educational history and even accusations that she was once an escort. She has also had photographs of her posing nude strewn across the internet, and last month had to publicly accept Mr. Trump’s apology for talking, in a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video, about inappropriately grabbing women. Ms. Trump has been mostly absent from the campaign trail, aside from a handful of television interviews, since an address at the Republican National Convention in July. That ended in calamity after it was revealed that passages from Ms. Trump’s remarks were lifted from a speech delivered years ago by Michelle Obama. The episode became a surprising distraction at the convention, and Ms. Trump has largely receded from the spotlight since then to focus on raising her 10-year-old son with Mr. Trump, Barron. In welcoming Ms. Trump to the state, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party made light of the convention speech on Thursday, sending out an email that purported to contain “exclusive” excerpts from Ms. Trump’s remarks. The text, however, was of a speech that had been given by Mrs. Obama.

Melania Trump
Pennsylvania
Donald Trump
Speeches
2016 Presidential Election
Women and Girls


Netherlands Coach Selected

Abstract: Guus Hiddink will replace Louis van Gaal as coach of the Netherlands after the World Cup, coach through the 2016 European Championship and then be replaced by Danny Blind.

Netherlands
Coaches
2014 World Cup
Soccer


Cardinals Ride John Lackey and Two Home Runs to Win Over Dodgers

Abstract: ST. LOUIS — The veteran right-hander John Lackey wore a different shade of red last October when he pitched the Boston Red Sox to a World Series title in Game 6. His opponent that night in New England was the St. Louis Cardinals, the team that traded for him this summer. True to form, Lackey delivered Monday, tossing seven innings of one-run ball as the Cardinals beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 3-1 , to grab a two-games-to-one lead in this best-of-five National League division series. The Dodgers threatened in the ninth inning against closer Trevor Rosenthal. Hanley Ramirez and Carl Crawford hit back-to-back one-out singles before Juan Uribe and A.J. Ellis both flied harmlessly to right. The big blow of the game came from Kolten Wong, another key player from last year’s World Series. Wong, who was picked off first base to end Game 4, launched a two-run home run to break a 1-1 tie in the seventh. Lackey is no stranger to the bright lights of October. He burst onto the scene in 2002, winning Game 7 of the World Series as a rookie for the Angels. The years have passed, but Lackey continues to be a postseason master. He popped low-90s fastballs and mixed an array of breaking balls to keep the Dodgers off balance. He allowed five hits, walked one and struck out seven. “There’s definitely a different energy, a different adrenaline level that can take you to special places when you use it the right way,” Lackey said of postseason baseball. “The atmosphere tonight was great. You feel it and you feed off it and you channel it.” He was matched, though, for much of the night by Hyun-jin Ryu, who had pitched only a single inning over the last month because of a shoulder injury. Ryu nevertheless fared well without the benefit of a rehabilitation stint in just his third postseason start and first on the road. He allowed one run, his fastball sharp and his breaking ball looping for six innings. But as soon as Ryu turned the game over to the Dodgers’ suspect bullpen, the Cardinals’ bats came to life. Yadier Molina led off the seventh against the left-hander Scott Elbert, a Joplin, Mo., native, with a hard double to left. After he was sacrificed to third, Wong, a left-handed batter, delivered his home run on the first pitch he saw. “The pickoff last year definitely crushed me for a long time into the off-season,” Wong said. “I’m not thankful for it, but I know it made me stronger as a person as a player.” Image John Lackey pitched seven shutout innings Monday, using low-90s fastballs and an array of breaking balls to keep the Dodgers off balance. Credit Jeff Roberson/Associated Press Of Elbert, Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly said: “He’s in there to get lefties out. That’s why we put him on the roster.” Matt Carpenter, fast becoming a playoff legend, opened the scoring in the third inning when he deposited a 1-2 off-speed pitch from Ryu into the right-center stands for his third home run of the series. Carpenter’s homer stood until the Dodgers got to Lackey in the sixth. Yasiel Puig ended a stretch of seven consecutive strikeouts with a leadoff triple to right field. After Adrian Gonzalez flied out to shallow left field and Matt Kemp struck out, the Dodgers finally got a big hit when Ramirez lashed a double down the right-field line to tie the game. After the game, Kemp called the home-plate umpire Dale Scott’s strike zone the worst he had ever seen. Ellis, the Dodgers’ catcher, added: “He was really picking at that outside corner. They were getting a lot of calls out there.” Umpiring aside, the Cardinals, making their 11th trip to the postseason in the last 15 seasons, would advance to their fourth consecutive N.L. Championship Series with a victory in Game 4 on Tuesday night. The Dodgers played Game 3 knowing their ace, Clayton Kershaw, would take the mound in Game 4. Before the game, Mattingly announced Dan Haren would give way to Kershaw for the start, despite Kershaw’s having allowed eight runs and squandering a 6-1 lead in Game 1. The prohibitive Cy Young Award favorite, Kershaw now has a clear task: to extend the Dodgers’ season. Kershaw said Monday that he had not watched tape of Game 1 and that he did not learn anything new about the Cardinals. “Obviously, after as bad as I pitched in Game 1, I wasn’t going to go in there and say, ‘I want the ball,’ ” Kershaw said. “I was definitely ready for it and definitely wanted to do it, just waiting for the opportunity.” Added Mattingly: “You don’t get to where you are — you don’t win four E.R.A. titles, and it’s going to end up three out of the last four Cy Youngs — just by when anything goes bad, you curl up and go away. These guys go to work; they come back. They keep working, and they keep going. So this is a different cat.”

John Lackey
Dodgers
St. Louis Cardinals
Kolten Wong
Baseball
Hyun-Jin Ryu
Playoffs


Castro Seen in Public, Havana Residents Say

Abstract: MEXICO CITY — It is not unusual to see people exercising early in the morning in the exclusive Siboney neighborhood on the outskirts of Havana, Cuba ’s capital. But the old man recently spotted ambling along the side of the road wearing shorts, white socks pulled up high and a track jacket has stood out, neighbors say. He moved slowly, shuffling along while looking down at his feet, they said, and he was ringed by security guards and trailed by a dark Mercedes-Benz sedan. “It was the Comandante,” insisted one of those who spotted him, using the nickname of Fidel Castro , the convalescing 82-year-old former president who had not been seen in public since he underwent emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006. President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, a close friend of Mr. Castro, first disclosed in a speech last week that the former Cuban leader had emerged from the hospital and had begun walks through Havana. “Fidel went out and they saw him, Fidel walking in the streets in Havana,” Mr. Chávez said. “A miracle. The people cried.” It could not be confirmed whether there had been any crying, as Mr. Chávez said, nor did the Cuban state media provide their own account of Mr. Castro’s recent forays. But there was plenty of anxiety. Some of the Havana residents who had spotted him insisted that their names, sex, and even the exact day in which they saw Mr. Castro not be published to avoid running afoul of the government, which has declared Mr. Castro’s illness a state secret. Mr. Castro’s brother Raúl officially took over the presidency last February, after more than a year and a half as interim leader. On Monday, Raúl Castro took a big step toward putting more of his own imprint on the government, replacing or demoting several veteran leaders who had served in his brother’s administration and were considered possible successors in a post-Castro Cuba. Among the ousted, according to an announcement on state television, were Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque, a former personal secretary to Fidel Castro, and Economy Minister José Luis Rodríguez, as well as numerous others. Vice President Carlos Lage lost some of his portfolio, replaced as a cabinet secretary by an army general close to Raúl Castro. A State Department spokeswoman declined to comment on what the United States government, which has declared Fidel Castro to be on his deathbed in the past, knew about Mr. Castro’s current health. But a jogger said he saw an old man ringed by security two weeks ago walking slowly near the Center for Medical and Surgical Research, the state hospital that is widely believed to be treating Mr. Castro. Others said they had spotted Mr. Castro, with his trademark beard, early in the morning moving from the hospital toward Punto Cero, the nickname for Mr. Castro’s home about a mile away. One witness said Mr. Castro’s son Alejandro had been walking with him one morning. A third witness said that Mr. Castro had greeted some government workers whom he encountered on one of his walks. Brian Latell, a former C.I.A. analyst who has watched Cuba for decades, believes that Mr. Castro may well be walking, but that his health remains grave. “God knows, if I were in his condition I’d want a breath of fresh air,” said Mr. Latell, author of the book “After Fidel” and a researcher at the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies. “But I don’t believe there’s any reason to think his health is rebounding. He’s still severely, gravely ill.”

Cuba
Castro Fidel
Jogging
Medicine and Health


U.S. Says Parole of Jonathan Pollard, Spy for Israel, Will Follow Law

Abstract: WASHINGTON — United States officials said on Friday that they would not object to the scheduled parole of Jonathan J. Pollard, an American convicted of spying for Israel, who is eligible to be released in November after serving 30 years. The White House said that if Mr. Pollard is granted parole, the decision would have no connection to any efforts to calm tensions with Israel over the recent nuclear deal with Iran . “Mr. Pollard’s status will be determined by the United States Parole Commission according to standard procedures,” said Alistair Baskey, a spokesman for the National Security Council. “There is absolutely zero linkage between Mr. Pollard’s status and foreign policy considerations.” Video Jonathan J. Pollard, a former Navy intelligence analyst convicted of spying for Israel, is the only person in U.S. history to receive a life sentence for spying for an American ally. Credit Credit Ammar Awad/Reuters The statement was a response to a report in The Wall Street Journal indicating that American officials were pressing for Mr. Pollard’s release in the coming weeks, in part to allay Israel’s anger over the nuclear accord. By law, Mr. Pollard, 60, must be eligible for parole after 30 years, and a hearing is scheduled for November. Mr. Pollard, a former Navy intelligence analyst who is serving a life sentence in North Carolina for passing classified documents to Israel, could be released if the parole commission finds that he is not likely to commit further crimes and has no record of bad behavior in prison. “The Department of Justice has always and continues to maintain that Jonathan Pollard should serve his full sentence for the serious crimes he committed, which in this case is a 30-year sentence as mandated by statute,” Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for the department, said in a statement. Mr. Pollard’s case has been a perennial source of tension between the United States and Israel. The United States has steadfastly refused to release him, in part because of vehement opposition from its intelligence agencies. Last year, the Obama administration discussed releasing him as part of an effort to avert a collapse in peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. At the time, some administration officials noted privately that Mr. Pollard’s value as a bargaining chip was diminishing because of his parole eligibility.

Israel
Spying and Intelligence Agencies
Jonathan J Pollard


Leader Tries to Rally Greece for ‘Grueling’ Economic Battle

Abstract: THESSALONIKI, GREECE — Prime Minister George Papandreou said Sunday that the spending cuts and economic reforms that his government has pushed through since May were “a small revolution,” but added that much more work was needed to revive the sluggish economy. “The major task of reforming Greece has just begun,” the prime minister said during a news conference at the Thessaloniki International Fair. Mr. Papandreou insisted that his Socialist government was not planning any fresh austerity measures other than the implementation of a series of reforms already pledged to international creditors, including the streamlining of money-losing state enterprises like the Greek railroad organization and the deregulation of the electricity and freight transport sectors. On Saturday, on the sidelines of the trade fair, Mr. Papandreou declared that Greece had won a “relentless and grueling” battle to avoid bankruptcy but said more reforms must be pushed through to lift the struggling economy. “This is a battle of survival for Greece,” he told an audience of entrepreneurs and politicians in the northern port city. “In this battle, either we win or we all sink together.” Mr. Papandreou also appealed to Greeks whose salaries and pensions have been cut in an unprecedented austerity drive to “join a collective effort” so the debt-ridden country can make good on its commitments to international creditors and regain its fiscal independence by 2013. Outside the venue Saturday, thousands of Greeks congregated for a largely peaceful protest marred by small scuffles between police officers and youths wielding beer bottles. The opening speech at the trade fair traditionally has been used by Greek prime ministers to offer handouts, particularly before elections. Bound by the conditions of a €110 billion, or $140 million, rescue package his government received from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in May, Mr. Papandreou was obliged to break with tradition, despite impending local elections in November, the outcome of which will have a direct effect on the government’s ability to implement changes at the local level. Mr. Papandreou’s one concession was to companies that have been hit hard by a deepening recession. He said that reductions in corporate taxes, due to drop in 2014 to 20 percent from 24 percent, would be brought forward to next year. “Our aim is to boost businesses that are trying to survive,” he said. Despite all the sacrifices so far and the painful changes ahead, Mr. Papandreou said, Greeks had “every reason to feel hopeful,” noting that the country was on course to fulfill its commitments to the European Union and I.M.F. by 2013. In the meantime, he said, his government would “support the vulnerable,” especially the jobless. New statistics show that one in three Greeks younger than 24 is unemployed. The prime minister said that his administration would create at least 200,000 new jobs by issuing licenses for the operation of wind farms and solar parks. More jobs are to be created through the opening of traditionally closed professions — a disparate group including truck drivers and pharmacists — that have restricted new entrants for decades. Mr. Papandreou conceded that Greece’s huge debt burden was not going to go away easily: At €300 billion, it is significantly larger than the country’s gross domestic product of €250 billion. But he ruled out debt restructuring as an option, saying it would crush Greek households and lead to the collapse of the banking system. “It would be catastrophic for the economy, for our credibility and for the future,” he said. As for a revenue shortfall estimated at €3.2 billion, Mr Papandreou said, “It is not an insuperable obstacle,” noting that efforts to a plug a budget deficit that ballooned to 13.6 percent last year were progressing well. “We will have reduced the deficit by 40 percent by the end of the year,” he said. I.M.F. officials were due in Athens Monday to check whether the government was on track to hit this and other fiscal targets. Mr. Papandreou’s pledges were criticized on Sunday by Greece’s main conservative opposition party, New Democracy, as “confused, contradictory and incomplete.” Some analysts also were unmoved by the premier’s ambitious program. “He is still at least €4 billion short of revenue,” said Babis Papadimitriou, an economic analyst at the Skai radio and television group. He said the prime minister would have to cut state spending even more to offset the revenue shortfall and meet an E.U.-I.M.F. target of reining in the deficit to 8.1 percent by the end of the year. Mr. Papadimitriou joined other commentators in expressing disappointment that Mr. Papandreou failed to offer more specifics in the news conference Sunday on the reforms outlined the day before in front of the movers and shakers of the Greek business world. “Essentially, he took one step forward and two steps back,” Mr. Papadimitriou said.

Greece
Bankruptcies
Credit and Debt
Papandreou George A
Thessaloniki (Greece)


With Cows in Mind, Swiss Farmers Wage Litter Battle

Abstract: SOLOTHURN, Switzerland — Before he mows the hay he feeds his dairy cows, Hansueli Wyss performs a new ritual: He scours the fields of his 65-acre farm amid the rolling hills of this farming region, dotted with steep-roofed homes like his 150-year-old farmhouse, for junk — empty bottles and soda or beer cans, hamburger cartons, and much else. “It’s plastic bags, aluminum cans,” said Mr. Wyss, 50, who reared three children on the farm. “I make an effort to keep an eye on the cows, on the fields, but my machines shred this stuff in with the hay and the silage. That’s where the problem begins.” Hard as it might be to believe, the orderly Swiss have a litter problem. Oddly, though, it is not in their towns and cities, where you might sooner stumble over a meteorite than a flattened Coke can or empty cigarette pack. Out in the countryside here southwest of Basel, it is another story. So much litter is tossed out of cars that Swiss farmers have begun a campaign to fight it. They complain not just about the mess but about the danger the refuse poses to livestock. Litter can be fatal to ruminants. Four years ago, when one of Mr. Wyss’s cows died, he was convinced the cause was litter it ingested by accident. “The problem is, a cow’s stomach cannot always handle metal or glass,” he said. Farmers or their veterinarians sometimes use magnets to draw out metal objects like screws or nails before they damage a cow’s stomach, but magnets are useless with shredded aluminum, he said. Image Hansueli Wyss, a dairy farmer, said of litter: "My machines shred this stuff in with the hay and the silage. That's where the problem begins." Credit Daniel Auf der Mauer for The New York Times The problem persists, he said, and the litter basket overflowed in July of last year when six cows of a neighboring farmer had to be slaughtered after ingesting something that caused fever and a sharp drop in their milk output. “It was never proven scientifically, but the assumption was that it was the result of an aluminum can, or something similar,” said Urs Schneider, deputy director of the Swiss Farmers Union, in the capital, Bern, a half-hour’s drive south of here. “There was enormous national attention, even lacking hard proof.” Farmers hereabout are convinced that aluminum cans, or even glass bottles, tossed onto a field are picked up by harvesting machines, shredded and mixed in with hay or silage. Once swallowed by the unsuspecting cows, the shreds can prove fatal. “We get an awful lot of reports,” Mr. Schneider went on. “In the last four to five years, particularly along heavily trafficked roads, the problem has gotten continuously worse.” After the slaughter of their neighbor’s six cows, farmers like Mr. Wyss, who keeps about 40 cows, a mixed breed of Simmental and Red Holstein, demanded action. A local farmers union, a branch of Mr. Schneider’s national association, came up with the idea for a campaign against litter in the countryside, and the plan attracted followers everywhere. “What was essential for me,” said Peter Brügger, the local branch secretary, “was the way the public reacted to the news of the cows’ slaughter, and now in all of Switzerland.” He contacted two neighboring cantons, whose farmers immediately supported the idea for a campaign, which soon spread nationwide. Image Credit The New York Times The idea of cows dying of litter hit a nerve. Certainly, the Swiss cow does not enjoy the aura of sanctity of its Indian counterpart. Yet cows produce the cheeses, like Emmentaler and Gruyère, that are central to the Swiss way of life; cows dot the Swiss countryside as assuredly as do charming chalets and pointed church steeples. Most alarming to many Swiss was the idea that they might be a nation of litterers. And there is no mistaking that the culprits are Swiss, not tourists or immigrant workers, farmers say. “For once it’s not the foreigners,” Daniel Marti, who works for the local farmers association, said with a laugh. So last spring the national farmers association, together with antilitter groups, started a drive to alert the average Swiss to the dangers caused when bottles, cans, plastic bags or packaging is tossed thoughtlessly out car windows. Posters were distributed, like one featuring an orphaned calf bemoaning the death of a mother cow, over the words, “Litter Kills Animals.” Another, lighter in tone, shows a bottle tossed from a car window hitting a cow on the rump, with the text, “Litter Makes Me Sick.” Some companies that are the source of considerable litter, like McDonald’s and TetraPak, actively support antilitter groups. While the posters went up along roads throughout Switzerland, volunteers visited schools to alert children to just how dangerous a bottle or a can may be for a cow. The farmers are also seeking tougher antilitter laws and deposits on cans, a measure that retailers generally oppose. The farmers say it is not just about dead animals. Though no studies exist, the estimated cost to them in time and money to rid their fields of litter before seeding or harvesting “goes into the millions,” Mr. Schneider said. Not everyone is convinced the campaign is working. “I think the results are about equal to zero,” said Erich Walker, 58, who reared six children on his 205-acre farm, where he raises cows, pigs and chickens and grows corn, sugar beets and wheat. Yet he conceded the efforts might “sensitize people a bit.” Others are more optimistic. “One shouldn’t dramatize,” Mr. Schneider said. “The Swiss sense of order remains strong.”

Switzerland
Livestock
Waste management
Rural area
Agriculture
Solothurn Switzerland


Labor Pacts in Detroit Didn’t Ease Stocks’ Slide

Abstract: DETROIT, Nov. 30 — Detroit auto companies have long expected a quid pro quo from Wall Street when it came to their dealings with the United Automobile Workers union. Once the companies won labor contracts that improved their competitiveness, investors would bid up their share prices, or so they thought. Instead, shares of General Motors and the Ford Motor Company have been sliding since this summer when talks began on new four-year contracts. While the shares rose Friday, along with the market, the outlook for auto sales in 2008 is increasingly pessimistic as the broader economy struggles and the housing crisis deepens. That has gotten the 2008 model year off to a gloomy start for auto companies, which on Monday are expected to report lower sales for November. The carmakers are relying on new versions of vehicles like the Chevrolet Malibu and the Ford Focus to lure buyers into showrooms. G.M. shares have fallen by a third since reaching a 52-week high of $43.20 in mid-October, shortly after members of the U.A.W. ratified a contract that was reached after a two-day strike. Ford’s share price has fallen about 25 percent since starting talks with the union in July, even though it reached a deal without walkouts like the ones at G.M. and Chrysler. “Structural issues are clearly getting better,” an analyst at Morgan Stanley, Jonathan Steinmetz, said Friday in a research report, “but cyclical factors are clearly getting worse.” It is an especially abrupt reversal for G.M. Its share price rose 57.7 percent last year, making it the stock with the biggest increase among the Dow Jones industrial average. G.M.’s chief financial officer, Frederick A. Henderson, helped heighten the gloom Thursday night at a dinner with analysts in Manhattan. According to analysts’ reports, Mr. Henderson predicted that automobile sales in the United States, which are expected to be slightly more than 16 million this year, would fall to about 15.7 million in 2008. The news caused concern, analysts said, because G.M. based its reorganization plan two years ago on an annual selling rate of 17 million vehicles, the level in the early part of the decade. Mr. Steinmetz at Morgan Stanley said G.M. clearly expects “a tough near-term environment.” An analyst with Lehman Brothers, Brian Johnson, said the overall economy was simply too distressed for investors to feel upbeat about the Detroit companies. He said G.M.’s shares have fallen more than Ford’s because the company’s financing arm, the General Motors Acceptance Corporation, has been hit hard by the collapse of the subprime mortgage market. Ford has little exposure to subprime mortgages. “The good news is Ford and G.M. are no longer basket-case restructuring plays,” Mr. Johnson said. “But having turned themselves into a cyclical stock, they’re coming in at a point when investors don’t want to touch those stocks.” On Friday, shares of G.M. rose $1.09 to $29.87, and Ford rose 22 cents to $7.51. The deteriorating economic environment has led both G.M. and Chrysler to make more cuts. G.M. said it was eliminating shifts at three plants, and Chrysler said it would cut 11,000 more jobs, on top of 13,000 announced earlier. The news came five days after workers narrowly approved a contract, following a six-hour strike. The reductions might not end there. This week, Chrysler’s chief executive, Robert L. Nardelli, told employees that more layoffs could be needed if the market weakens more than expected. Separately, Chrysler’s vice president for North American sales, Steven Landry, told business students at his alma mater in Nova Scotia that Chrysler anticipated losing about $1 billion in the 2008 fiscal year, on top of a $1.5 billion loss in 2007. That was an unexpected disclosure for an executive from Chrysler, which became a private company this year and no longer has to disclose financial data. Mr. Landry, who was speaking at a ceremony to present a donation from Chrysler, said the company expected to break even in 2008 before becoming profitable in 2009, according to The Daily News in Halifax. A Chrysler spokeswoman, Lori Pinter, declined to confirm the figures. Mr. Landry “was speaking off the cuff and using some general examples from the standpoint of mentoring the students,” she said. Analysts are forecasting that all three Detroit carmakers will report sales declines on Monday, when they release November figures. Toyota, Honda and Nissan of Japan, which have fewer trucks in their lineups, are expected to post increases. Chrysler is expected to report a double-digit decline, according to Edmunds.com, which predicts an 11.2 percent drop, while Mr. Johnson expects a 17 percent decline. The analysts said they expected smaller decreases for G.M. and for Ford, whose sales have fallen for 12 consecutive months.

Labor
United Automobile Workers
Automobiles
General Motors Corp
Ford Motor Co
Stocks and Bonds
Layoffs and Job Reductions


Maine Takes 2nd Look at Social Security

Abstract: Lawmakers in Maine have found an unusual tool for tackling their state’s pension woes: Social Security . Just as workers in the private sector participate in Social Security in addition to any pension plan at their companies, most states put their workers in the federal program along with providing a state pension. Maine and a handful of others, however, have long been holdouts, relying solely on their state pension plans. In addition, most states have excluded some workers — often teachers, firefighters and police — from the national retirement system and its associated costs, 6.2 percent of payroll for the employer and an equal amount for the worker. Now, Maine legislators have prepared a detailed plan for shifting state employees into Social Security and are considering whether to adopt it. They acknowledge it will not solve their problem in the short term but see long-term advantages. Some variation on this idea could ultimately appeal to other states grappling with their own exploding pension costs and, in extreme cases, quietly looking for help from Washington. In troubled states, some employees have wondered whether they might be allowed to begin paying in and collecting from the federal system even before they have contributed a career’s worth of taxes. The potential effect on the Social Security program is hard to estimate. Maine’s proposal would mean new members and a small additional source of payroll tax revenue for the federal system. Even if it fully embraces the proposal, Maine will have to come up with a considerable sum to sustain its existing pension plan, presumably through some combination of taxes and service cuts. After a phase-in period, Social Security would cover part of state retirees’ benefits, with the state pension as the remainder. Many pension plans in corporate America coordinate their benefits in this way. The proposal has the advantage of not reducing promised benefits, guaranteed by the constitution in many states. The change would not be cheap, but it would reduce the role of Maine’s pension fund and thus the risk of having to suddenly cover giant losses down the road. A Social Security spokesman said the agency did not expect many of the holdout states to join, citing the cost of participation. The only other state known to have talked recently about adding Social Security is Louisiana. More than six million public employees work outside the Social Security system, including roughly 1.7 million teachers in California, Illinois and Texas, and nearly two million employees of all types in Alaska, Colorado, Massachusetts, Nevada and Ohio, as well as Louisiana and Maine. For years, these and other states have insisted they could provide richer pensions at a lower cost, both to workers and taxpayers, because of investments. Some of those states’ pension plans now have shortfalls so large that they need outsize contributions. Virtually all state pension funds have had big losses in the last two years, but the go-it-alone states appear especially vulnerable. Not only are these states trying to provide richer benefits with smaller contributions than the payroll tax for Social Security, but they have promised to do it for workers who can retire 10 and sometimes 20 years younger. With pension costs ballooning and taxpayers lashing out, many workers in states with deeply underfunded plans fear their benefits will be cut. Those being asked to put more into their pension funds complain they feel caught up in Ponzi schemes . Some wish they had been part of Social Security after all. “Had I known back then, I would not have stayed in Illinois,” said John Gebhardt, a university employee in that state, which keeps teachers and university personnel out of Social Security. He has even offered to pay both his own and his employer’s payroll tax to join Social Security, but was told no. Maine lawmakers who support shifting state workers into Social Security say they believe it would be fairer. Social Security may not be sexy, but it is portable. A recent study in Maine underscored the penalty paid by the mobile work force. Only one in five state employees stays around long enough to get a full pension. The majority leave, taking neither a pension nor any Social Security credits with them. This practice, not investment gains, has sustained the state’s pension system. “The current system is immoral,” said Peter Mills, who, as a state senator, started the push to join Social Security. “It takes younger people and feeds off of them. You can withdraw from teaching at age 40 and realize you’ve got nothing to look ahead to for your old age.” Dallas L. Salisbury, president of the Employee Benefit Research Institute, said he was surprised by how few public workers ever got pensions in Maine, where he provided advice on a pension overhaul. He said he checked and found similar turnover in other states. Whether Maine joins Social Security or not, painful choices must be made. The state pension fund lost $2.25 billion in 2008, and taxpayers will have to replace the lost money. But they have less time to do so than most states, thanks to tough financing rules in the constitution. Projections show that Maine will not have enough money to do much else in the coming years if it adheres to those rules. “It’s going to rip the guts out of our budget,” said Mr. Mills. “I don’t think you can find a budgetary parallel in my lifetime, and I’m 67.” Unlike laggard states, including Illinois and New Jersey, Maine had in recent years been making its required pension contributions annually, and it avoided the common mistake of sweetening benefits when markets were strong. Its looming fiscal crisis stems primarily from investment losses, points out Sandy Matheson, executive director of the state plan. “Maine is almost like a petri dish,” she said, showing how things can go awry even if a state is responsible. Mr. Mills, a Republican, initially envisioned shifting workers into Social Security and a 401(k) plan. But he now views Social Security combined with a traditional pension as a safer option. That puts him on common ground with Democrats in the statehouse. The proposal may meet resistance, however, because it does not fill the gaping hole in the state’s pension fund. A shift into the federal program is also hard to plan because Social Security has a financial imbalance — one that will worsen as the population ages. At some point, Congress is expected to either raise taxes or cut benefits. Still, Social Security’s future is easier to predict than that of a state pension fund, because its pressure stems from broad demographic trends, not the vagaries of the stock market. Social Security keeps its reserves in conservative Treasury securities . “You’ve got reviews taking place all over the country,” said Mr. Salisbury. Most places are asking painful questions about their investment strategies. But what Maine has discovered, he said, is just how expensive it really is to provide a guaranteed retirement benefit.

Maine
Social Security (US)
Government Employees
Pensions and Retirement Plans
States (US)


Sentencing Monday for Vick for Role in Dogfighting

Abstract: RICHMOND, Va., Dec. 9 (AP) — How much, if at all, will Michael Vick ’s role as financier of a brutal dogfighting ring hurt him? Will he benefit from his public apology or his cooperation with investigators? The answers to these questions, among others, will determine how much time Vick, the suspended Atlanta Falcons quarterback, will serve in prison. United States District Judge Henry E. Hudson will sentence Vick on Monday. Vick faces a maximum of five years in prison. Hudson is not bound by sentencing guidelines of a year to 18 months, or by the prosecutors’ recommendation. Hudson has sentenced two of Vick’s co-defendants — one to 18 months and the other to 21 months — to slightly more than what prosecutors recommended. Legal experts said that was a positive sign for Vick, but by no means a guarantee that he would receive similar treatment. For example, Vick acknowledged he bankrolled the Bad Newz Kennels dogfighting enterprise on a 15-acre property he owned in rural southeastern Virginia. He also gave his associates money to bet on fights. “The judge could say that but for the money, this might not have happened — or might not have happened on the scale that it did,” said Linda Malone, a law professor at the College of William and Mary. Malone said a bigger concern for Vick might be the extent of his involvement in killing dogs. Vick acknowledged that he helped kill six to eight pit bulls.

Dogfighting
Vick Michael
Football
Athletics and Sports


This Time, Knicks Aren’t the Ones Who Come Up Short

Abstract: MILWAUKEE — The only man standing between the Knicks and another night of intense psychic pain Saturday was Michael Ruffin, a well-traveled and not particularly skilled reserve forward for the Milwaukee Bucks . For the first time in two weeks, fate was kind to Coach Isiah Thomas’s bedraggled crew. The Bucks had thrived all night on the scoring of Michael Redd and Charlie Villanueva. But with seconds to play and a 1-point deficit, Ruffin got the ball and put up an awkward, errant shot from a few feet out. When Jamal Crawford corralled the rebound, the Knicks had a 99-98 victory, and a merciful end to an eight-game losing streak. For the first since Jan. 25, Thomas and his players left the court with smiles and happy feet. “I sprinted off the court like we won the championship,” said Crawford, who led the way with 30 points, 9 in the fourth quarter. “It feels good just to win one game right now and break the cycle that we’ve been in.” When the adrenaline wears off, the Knicks will still be 15-36, and facing a tough game at Boston on Wednesday before the All-Star Game break. But they earned one pleasant plane ride back to New York after overcoming a 17-point deficit to pull out the victory Saturday. They did it with Crawford’s usual scoring burst, 18 points from Fred Jones, a tireless effort from David Lee (17 points, 9 rebounds) and a surprising, throwback performance from Malik Rose, who contributed 7 points, 5 rebounds and 3 assists — all in the final 15 minutes 29 seconds of the game. Rose, the only Knicks player with a championship ring, had become a forgotten man in Thomas’s rotation, but his veteran savvy came through at the right time. Asked if it was nice to feel needed, Rose grinned. “Nice to have a microphone in front of me,” he said. Milwaukee (19-32) nearly blew the game open in the third quarter, using a 23-4 run to take an 81-64 lead. Then Crawford went into attack mode, sparking a 15-0 run from the third to fourth quarters to get the Knicks back in the game. Crawford’s 15-footer early in the fourth cut the deficit to a point, 86-85, but he missed a free throw that would have tied the score. The Bucks pushed the lead to 7 points on a 3-pointer by Redd with 6:14 to play, but the Knicks again charged back, with Crawford’s off-balance 3-pointer tying the score, 93-93. Then Rose went to work. He tipped in his own miss to give the Knicks their first lead of the fourth, 97-96. He fouled out Andrew Bogut on a questionable call that had the crowd booing. Then he hit a 19-footer for a 99-96 lead, giving the Knicks the final cushion they needed. The Knicks played the entire fourth quarter with Lee and Rose playing in place of the starters Eddy Curry (11 points) and Zach Randolph (12 points, 10 rebounds). “The group that was playing was doing an excellent job,” Thomas said. “I just rolled with it.” For two weeks, the Knicks had let winnable games slip away because of bonehead plays, untimely fouls and forced shots down the stretch. Thomas was so annoyed Saturday by his team’s lack of basketball IQ that he turned to his staff late in the first half and snapped, “We’re the dumbest team sometimes” — with a profanity mixed in. But after the comeback and the clutch plays late in the game, he praised their composure. “I give a lot of that credit to Malik, and also Jamal,” Thomas said. There was one notable glitch. Crawford nearly blew the game, losing the ball when he tried to fake out Charlie Bell. Bell grabbed the ball and sprinted to a breakway layup that cut the lead to a point with 31.1 seconds left. “I’d have walked home to New York if we would have lost that game,” said Crawford, who also missed a 13-footer that could have iced the game. But the Knicks crowded Bell on the Bucks’ final possession, forcing him to dump the ball to Ruffin. “I thought our defense was good,” Thomas said, “but sometimes you get a little lucky, too.” REBOUNDS A Knicks spokesman declined to confirm or deny a New York Post report that Stephon Marbury’s season is over — although that has been presumed to be the case for weeks. The spokesman also declined to give any other information about the surgery, which the Post indicated was more invasive than the team has disclosed. The Knicks have classified Marbury’s return as “indefinite” since he had surgery Jan. 22. “We still hope that it’s indefinite,” Isiah Thomas said. “We haven’t given up on him for the season yet.” ... Thomas left the team early in the day to attend to a family medical matter. He arrived at the arena at 6:30 p.m., an hour before tip-off. Out of respect for Thomas’s privacy, the team did not disclose details for publication. ... Quentin Richardson was back after a two-game layoff but still hobbled by a sprained right ankle. He had 3 points and 7 rebounds in 20 minutes.

Milwaukee Bucks
Basketball
New York Knicks


Ex-Monitor of Horse Racing Interviewed in Bruno Inquiry

Abstract: ALBANY, Sept. 29 — Federal prosecutors have interviewed the lawyer who oversaw the state’s horse racing franchise as part of their investigation into Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno ’s outside business dealings. The lawyer, Neil V. Getnick, was the court-appointed monitor of the New York Racing Association in 2004 and 2005, when the state’s thoroughbred racetracks were racked by corruption and mismanagement and lawmakers debated how to save them. Mr. Getnick said the prosecutors interviewed him this year seeking his knowledge on a variety of topics, including Mr. Bruno and Friends of New York Racing, a group with ties to the senator that was seeking to privatize the racing franchise. Mr. Getnick declined to elaborate on the content of the interviews. But according to a report issued in June by the state inspector general, Mr. Getnick was approached in 2004 by the group’s president, Timothy G. Smith, who sought his blessing for a plan to sell the franchise to private investors. Mr. Smith suggested to Mr. Getnick that the investors had Mr. Bruno’s tacit support, the report said. Mr. Smith and several of those investors are now partners in Empire Racing Associates, one of four bidders vying to take over the franchise when it expires this year. In an interview, Mr. Smith said he did not recall making those remarks during his meeting with Mr. Getnick. He declined to say whether federal prosecutors had interviewed him. Empire executives and Senate Republicans have disputed the contents of the inspector general’s report in recent weeks, calling it biased, and strongly criticized Mr. Getnick. John E. McArdle, a spokesman for Mr. Bruno, said the senator probably met with Mr. Smith around the time of the meeting with Mr. Getnick, which occurred in August 2004, but that Mr. Getnick’s monitorship had not been discussed. He declined to comment on the federal investigation and dismissed the inspector general’s report. “It’s not worth the paper it’s printed on,” Mr. McArdle said. Mr. Bruno, the state’s top Republican, has been under investigation by Glenn T. Suddaby, the United States attorney for New York’s Northern District, for more than a year. The investigation and what impact it may have on Mr. Bruno, and on his feud with Gov. Eliot Spitzer, remains a topic of interest in Albany. So does the future of the racing franchise, which takes in $2.7 billion in bets annually at the Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga Springs racetracks. Mr. Spitzer and Senate Republicans have clashed over the issue, and gaming and horse racing interests vying for the franchise have spent millions on lobbying and public relations to try to win it. Mr. Spitzer recommended this month that the racing association continue to run the three state racetracks as a nonprofit entity and receive substantial state aide to rescue it from bankruptcy and buttress its financial stability. But Mr. Bruno, who will play a crucial role in shaping the legislation that will ultimately determine who gets the franchise, suggested that other businesses should be given a portion of it. In recent hearings, Senate Republicans have questioned Mr. Getnick’s findings, issued two years ago and embraced by federal and state officials, that the racing association had largely reformed itself after years of problems. The Senate Republicans and Empire executives have also questioned the association’s recent decision to give Mr. Getnick a no-bid contract to serve as its private integrity consultant. Empire executives say that the inspector general’s report was unfair because some of its findings were based on interviews with Mr. Getnick and other people with connections to competing bidders for the franchise. Mr. Smith was never interviewed by investigators preparing the report. “Knowing now that Getnick is on N.Y.R.A.’s payroll, and knowing that that was in the works for some time — to my mind, it’s very much like a mobster putting a federal judge on the payroll after he acquits them,” said Jeffrey Perlee, Empire’s president. “Getnick has a tremendous incentive to make sure that N.Y.R.A. gets another 30 years of life.” In an interview, Mr. Getnick defended the contract and wondered why Senate Republicans had not invited him to testify on the matter. “It’s a lot easier to hurl baseless accusations than to outright oppose our successful fight against money-laundering, tax evasion, horse-drugging and race-fixing,” Mr. Getnick said. He added that the association’s decision to grant him a new contract was prompted by the release of the inspector general’s report in July and by Mr. Spitzer’s subsequent call for the use of enhanced integrity measures for bidders seeking the franchise. The contract was approved by a federal bankruptcy judge. C. Steven Duncker, the association’s chairman, said the $125,000-a-month contract met state rules and worked out to less than Mr. Getnick’s normal rate. “Neil does this because he believes in it,” Mr. Duncker said. Mr. Getnick said the inspector general’s report had accurately described his meeting with Mr. Smith in 2004. At the time, Mr. Getnick had been appointed by a federal judge to monitor the troubled racing association and recommend ways to overhaul it. Mr. Smith was seeking to become the racing association’s next chief executive. During his meeting with Mr. Getnick, the report said, Mr. Smith said he had been working with Churchill Downs Inc., Scientific Games, Woodbine Entertainment Group, and other entities on a two-phased plan to privatize the franchise. Outlining his plan, he said Friends of New York Racing would be set up to push for privatizing the association, and then investors would seek the franchise on terms recommended by the advocacy group, according to the report and Mr. Getnick. Mr. Smith also suggested that such an arrangement could be beneficial to Mr. Getnick, saying that he had recently played golf with Mr. Bruno, and that he and Mr. Bruno believed Mr. Getnick should continue as the association’s monitor past 2005. “How do you connect those dots?” Mr. Getnick said. “Well, let me just say those are really big dots requiring an awfully small line.” But Mr. Smith said he described for Mr. Getnick a “conceptual” discussion intended simply to frame and debate options for saving the franchise. “All I was really pushing was that there be a very high-level, thoughtful review of N.Y.R.A.’s structural problems,” Mr. Smith said. He said the golf game with Mr. Bruno had been arranged by Mr. Duncker and that he had attended because, believing he would be the association’s chief executive, he wanted to make a good impression on legislative leaders. “In no sense was I bragging to Getnick, ‘Joe Bruno and I were talking about you,’” Mr. Smith said. The association later decided not to hire Mr. Smith, believing that his relationship with the investors posed a conflict of interest. Charles Hayward, who became the association’s chief executive instead, later feuded with Mr. Smith over the franchise’s future. In an interview, Mr. Hayward said he believed the plan described by Mr. Smith was improper. “I think their goal was to get the franchise for a few million dollars, flip it, and sell it for a lot of money,” he said. Mr. Smith rejected that characterization. “This was meant to be an intellectually honest, policy-driven debate,” he said. Friends of New York Racing formed in late 2004, with Mr. Smith at its helm and a variety of backers from around the horse racing and gaming industries. They included Jared E. Abbruzzese, an Albany-area businessman and horse owner whose relationship with Mr. Bruno is at the center of the federal investigation. Later that year, the group arranged fund-raisers for Mr. Bruno and Senate Republicans. Mr. Bruno flew to one of the fund-raisers, held in Kentucky, with Mr. Abbruzzese and others on Mr. Abbruzzese’s private jet. That travel helped lead to an investigation into Mr. Abbruzzese and Mr. Bruno by the former State Lobbying Commission, records from which were subpoenaed by federal prosecutors last year. In September 2005, on Mr. Getnick’s recommendation, the federal charges against the racing association were dropped, a step that positioned the association to compete to continue running it. But financial problems remained. By November 2005, the association was considering declaring bankruptcy, threatening the racing season. That month, Mr. Bruno called Mr. Hayward to a meeting in his office to discuss the association’s future. There, Mr. Bruno criticized the association and its board. By Mr. Hayward’s account, the senator said he wanted the association to move more rapidly in transferring its horse racing franchise and to involve Mr. Smith in the effort. But Mr. McArdle said that, according to Mr. Bruno’s staff members who were in the room, Mr. Smith’s status was not discussed. The following month, Friends of New York Racing issued a report, written by Mr. Smith, urging state officials to hasten the sale of the franchise and proposing that it be owned and operated by a for-profit business, with the state as a minority partner, among other recommendations. “A massive amount of new capital needed to be raised, and the culture of the nonprofit had to be changed, to manage the assets in a much more modern way,” Mr. Smith said in the interview. The group later dissolved. Some members, including Churchill Downs, Scientific Games and Woodbine, formed Empire Racing Associates with Mr. Abbruzzese and other horse breeders and trainers. Mr. Abbruzzese sold his stake in Empire in December 2006, shortly after Mr. Bruno announced that he was under federal investigation, and is no longer involved with the group. Mr. Smith continues to be an investor in Empire, and defends the Friends of New York Racing. “To say that from Day 1 this was a stalking horse for Empire Racing — that’s just not true,” he said.

New York Racing Assn
Bruno Joseph L
Getnick Neil V.


Outcry Grows Against British Housing Plan

Abstract: LONDON — Depending on where one stands in the debate on the rising cost of housing in Britain, Paul Thomas and Abigail Walker, first-time home buyers, are either part of the solution or part of the problem. To buy a £248,000, or $386,000, two-bedroom house in Oxfordshire, west of London, Mr. Thomas, a 38-year-old electrician, and his 25-year-old partner, Ms. Walker, who works in an accounting office, are making use of a government program called Help to Buy. Through it, they are able to make a down payment of only 5 percent from their own funds, with the government giving them an interest-free loan to cover the other 20 percent of the deposit. The government of Prime Minister David Cameron has cast the program as a way to stimulate the country’s sluggish economy by helping consumers — skeptics might refer to them as voters — buy homes they could not otherwise afford. But critics say it could lead to a housing bubble and a spate of problem loans on which the government could be left to make good. Under Help to Buy, rolled out in March, the government either offers interest-free credit or guarantees part of the property loan. The resulting higher demand for homes is supposed to fuel construction and aid the economic recovery. “Help to Buy is a dramatic intervention to get our housing market moving,” George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, told Parliament in presenting the plan. “That is a good use of this government’s fiscal credibility.” But over the last month, the program has drawn a growing outcry from some lawmakers and economists, demanding an early end for Help to Buy. They note that the housing market has already been picking up and warn that the plan could create a housing bubble that would be likely to burst when the program expires in 2016, while driving price increases that will make homes even less affordable for many in the meantime. As evidence, they cite a report this month by the government statistical office that indicated that house-price inflation had risen in June at annual rate of 3.1 percent, up from 2.9 percent in May, bringing prices to the highest level in five years. Albert Edwards, an outspoken strategist at Société Générale in London, called the British plan “madness” and “truly moronic,” saying that “buyers need cheaper homes, not greater availability of debt to inflate house prices even further.” Critics also question the wisdom of enabling people to get a mortgage with a down payment of as little as 5 percent of the home value at a time when lenders are under pressure from regulators to reduce the riskiness of loans. It also means that Britain is increasing support to the housing sector just as the United States is seeking ways to reduce the government’s role and risk in the mortgage market. This month, President Barack Obama proposed winding down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two giant government-backed mortgage finance companies. “We do not want what the U.S. has, which is a government-guaranteed mortgage market, and they are desperately trying to find a way out of that position,” Mervyn A. King told Sky News in an interview a month before he retired in July as the Bank of England governor. The International Monetary Fund warned in May that Help to Buy would push up house prices if the government does not ensure that more houses are built. Fitch, the debt ratings agency, has raised similar concerns. The plan as announced in March by Mr. Osborne came in two parts. The first piece, in place since April, is limited to the purchase of newly built homes. The government offers a five-year interest-free loan worth 20 percent of the home value to help pay the deposit. Mr. Thomas and Ms. Walker are getting help through that portion of the program. The second and more controversial part of the plan, which is due to start in January, allows the buyers of any house to pay only 5 percent of the value of the home as a deposit. The government would then guarantee an additional 20 percent of the bank loan for any property worth as much as £600,000, effectively passing the risk from the lender to the government. “Using the government’s balance sheet to back these higher loan-to-value mortgages will dramatically increase their availability,” Mr. Osborne said when he presented the plan to Parliament in March. Mr. Thomas and Ms. Walker had recently moved in with Ms. Walker’s mother in Oxfordshire to save money for a deposit, which they said would have taken them 10 years to come up with on their own. But now they plan to move into their newly built home in the autumn. Instead of a £62,000 down payment on the £248,000 purchase price, they had to put down only £12,400. Help to Buy is coming up with the rest. “It really put a smile on my face,” Mr. Thomas said. Some economists said making voters like Mr. Thomas happy was the main motive for Mr. Osborne’s plan. About two years before the next general election, and with recent opinion polls showing the opposition Labour Party neck and neck with Mr. Osborne’s Conservative Party, Mr. Osborne is betting on the housing market. Not being able to afford a home is “a blow to the most human of aspirations,” he told Parliament. The government says the program has been a success so far. More than 10,000 people have reserved newly built homes since April, and the number of first-time buyers was at the highest level since 2007, the government said this month. Some property developers are also happy. Barratt Developments, one of Britain’s largest house builders, said sales had risen 35 percent in the three months through the end of June, from the comparable period last year, with “a significant amount” of the upturn a result of Help to Buy. Still, those gains are coming at a time when Britain’s housing market had already been improving. Helped by record low interest rates and demand from foreign buyers, especially in London, prices of homes nationwide rose 4.6 percent in the three months to July, the highest annual increase since August 2010, according to the mortgage provider Halifax. In London, the increase was 8.1 percent. Compared with the United States or some countries in Southern Europe, Britain’s housing market downturn after the financial crisis was relatively mild. House prices in Britain fell faster after their peak in 2007 but less steeply than those in the United States because of a combination of mortgage laws and a shortage of new homes. House prices have increased so much in London that the average first-time buyer now has to spend half of his net salary on mortgage payments, according to the Nationwide Building Society. “For a market that is already clearly expensive, the government is throwing petrol on an already inflated situation,” said Mr. Edwards, the Société Générale strategist. Mr. Osborne and the Bank of England’s new governor, Mark J. Carney, have rebutted criticisms of the housing program, saying Britain was still far from a housing bubble. But behind the scenes at the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority, which is charge of ensuring the safety of banks, there are concerns that Help to Buy conflicts with the regulator’s aim of reducing risk in the banking sector and applying stricter lending rules, according to a senior bank official, who declined to be identified because the concerns were not public. Banks that have signed up for the program include Lloyds Banking Group, in which the government continues to hold a stake after a bailout, along with Nationwide and Santander. Those banks and others are in talks with the government about how much lenders will have to pay to participate in Help to Buy and how much capital the banks will have to hold for those loans. Many economists are asking why, if banks are unwilling to take the extra risk of making such loans without government inducements, the government should be expected to backstop the program. Andrew Brigden, an economist at Fathom Consulting, said the program would make it easier for banks to make riskier loans. Help to Buy is a “reckless scheme” because it “uses public money to incentivize the banks to lend precisely to those individuals who should not be offered credit,” Mr. Brigden said. But Mr. Osborne has argued that the program is fixing a mortgage market that has been discriminating against people who can afford the monthly mortgage payments but do not have enough savings for a down payment. Passing part of the lending risk from the banks to the government does not worry him, he said. “Because it’s a financial transaction, with the taxpayer making an investment and getting a return,” Mr. Osborne said, “it won’t hit our deficit.”

Housing
David Cameron
Bank of England
Great Britain
Real Estate
Mortgage loan
IMF


Williams Sisters Find the Grass Is Greener

Abstract: WIMBLEDON, England — The epidemic of upset fever at Wimbledon this year has yet to prove contagious to the Williams sisters. Wobbly and out early on the red clay at the French Open, American tennis’s first family has yet to lose a set on its preferred surface — the power-enhancing grass at the All England Club. After Serena Williams beat Amélie Mauresmo on Friday to reach the fourth round, her older sister Venus joined her on Saturday with a 6-1, 7-5 victory over María José Martínez Sánchez of Spain. No. 1 seed Ana Ivanovic and No. 3 seed Maria Sharapova failed to reach the second week at Wimbledon. So did every American men’s singles player. But the Williamses have dodged the booby traps laid by the young and hungry set. They are also into the third round of doubles together. Serena has had by far the tougher draw, but the bigger challenges for both siblings are still to come, although perhaps not in the next round. The sixth-seeded Serena will be a heavy favorite Monday against her fellow American Bethanie Mattek, and the seventh-seeded Venus will be only slightly less of one against the 42nd-ranked Russian Alisa Kleybanova. “I think all the girls have desire,” Venus Williams, the defending champion, said of this year’s flurry of surprises. “I think they all want to be No. 1, no matter what her ranking is, no matter what her name is. I think that it’s good to have competition. I love a challenge, personally.” Martínez Sánchez, ranked 101st, did not appear capable of providing one in the early going as Venus’s power and precision left her lunging in vain. But a tactical shift at the end of the first set transformed this rout into something more entertaining, as Martínez Sánchez began following her first serves into the net, producing deft volleys in abundance. Venus eventually finished off the match with a 127-mile-an-hour ace, the fastest recorded by a woman at Wimbledon. “If I don’t have the power that I have, then I get a lot closer to average,” she said. “It’s a real blessing. One hundred twenty-seven’s a good way to end it.” With the tennis relatively straightforward, the Williamses have been questioned on numerous other topics, including the coming presidential election (as Jehovah’s Witnesses, they don’t vote) and the former player Justin Gimelstob’s crude and derogatory comments on an American radio show about Anna Kournikova and other women’s players. Gimelstob, who was elected to the board of directors of the men’s Tour on Saturday, is working here as a commentator. He has issued a formal apology and has been suspended for one match of the coming World Team Tennis season. “I love women’s sports and women’s tennis, and I feel the game is best served with men’s and women’s tennis working together,” Gimelstob said in an interview Saturday. “I’ve worked hard after my first career to work on other things, and I hate that this is adversely affecting it, but I’m 100 percent responsible for it, and I have to accept the consequences and appreciate the power of my words.” Venus Williams has won Grand Slam mixed doubles titles with Gimelstob. “I think that we should accept the apology and allow him to move on and continue to contribute to tennis,” she said. Jelena Jankovic, the No. 2 seed from Serbia, struggled against the rising Danish 17-year-old Caroline Wozniacki. Seeded 31st, Wozniacki is a former Wimbledon junior champion, and she hardly looked overwhelmed by playing on Centre Court as she took the opening set. Upset fever looked ready to spike again. “I was thinking maybe I was the next one,” Jankovic said. Jankovic also appeared to hyperextend her left knee early in the set. Injuries and other midmatch dramas are hardly unusual for Jankovic, who calls on trainers with regularity. This time, she waited until after winning the second set to be evaluated on court. Although she decided to have her knee heavily wrapped, she changed her mind five games later, complaining of numbness in the knee, and had the strapping removed. “I couldn’t move with the tape, because I am just not used to it,” she said. “So I took a risk to play without the tape, which the physio was really not happy about. But I had to do what I had to do to win the match.” Jankovic, who has yet to reach a Grand Slam singles final, is again in range of reaching No. 1 in the rankings. Ivanovic’s early loss means that Jankovic or Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russia could pass her here, depending on how far each one goes. If Wozniacki had a forehand to match her penetrating two-handed backhand, the suspense would probably be over. But Jankovic was the steadier player down the stretch, saving her limping until the points were over and eventually prevailing by 2-6, 6-4, 6-2. Grass remains her least favorite surface, and a possible quarterfinal encounter with Venus Williams is looming. But first, Jankovic will have to get past Tamarine Tanasugarn, a 31-year-old American-born veteran from Thailand who routinely saves her best tennis for Wimbledon and is into the fourth round for the seventh time in her career. The other Round of 16 matches in the bottom half of the draw will match Nadia Petrova of Russia against her unseeded compatriot Alla Kudryavtseva, and another Russian, Elena Dementieva, against Shahar Peer of Israel. Kudryavtseva built on her second-round upset of Sharapova by defeating Peng Shuai of China, 6-3, 1-6, 6-4. Peer defeated Dinara Safina, this year’s French Open finalist, in an emotional marathon, 7-5, 6-7 (4), 8-6. Safina, who had saved a match point in the second set, served unsuccessfully for the match at 5-4 in the third. But, struggling with leg pain, she was unable to push off the grass and produce her customary pace. She played the final stages of the match in tears and was unable to join her older brother Marat Safin in the Round of 16. Rafael Nadal, the No. 2 men’s seed, had no such difficulty, playing another fine, generally focused match to defeat Nicolas Kiefer of Germany, 7-6 (2), 6-2, 6-3. Andy Murray of Britain, the focus of local attention here, defeated another German veteran, Tommy Haas, in four sets and will next face the Frenchman Richard Gasquet. Nadal now faces Mikhail Youzhny of Russia, who beat him by the improbable score of 6-0, 6-1 in their most recent meeting in January in the final of the Chennai Open in India. Nadal was weary after having won a long semifinal the previous day, but even fresh at Wimbledon last year, he had to rally from a two-set deficit to beat Youzhny in the fourth round. “He’s always a tough player for me,” Nadal said. “I’ve got to push forward and not retreat.”

Tennis
Williams Venus
Wimbledon Tennis Tournament
Williams Serena


The Bears' Success Begins and Ends With Defense

Abstract: LAKE FOREST, Ill., Jan. 13 - The Chicago Bears play defense with such fury, it is intriguing that their head coach is named Lovie. There is nothing compassionate or forgiving about the Bears' defense. Allowing the fewest points in the N.F.L. this season and sending five defensive starters to the Pro Bowl, the Bears have the demeanor of a neighborhood bully. Asked to describe the personality of Chicago's defense, the backup linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo thought for a moment, smiled and said: "We smack you in the mouth. That's our personality." That approach will be on display Sunday, when the Bears play host to the Carolina Panthers in a second-round National Football Conference playoff game at Soldier Field. The city of Chicago has embraced Coach Lovie Smith and this version of the Bears, because their style reminds fans of the 1985 Bears team, which rode a dominant defense to a Super Bowl championship. Whether these Bears go that far depends largely on their defense, anchored by linebacker Brian Urlacher and his fellow Pro Bowl selections, defensive tackle Tommie Harris, linebacker Lance Briggs, safety Mike Brown and cornerback Nathan Vasher. They lead an aggressive, cohesive unit that sacked Carolina quarterback Jack Delhomme eight times when the Bears defeated the Panthers, 13-3, on Nov. 20. Will the Panthers fare better in Sunday's rematch? Not if the Bears' defense has its way. Smith, the second-year head coach, was a defensive coordinator with the St. Louis Rams. "Throughout the season, when our fans left the stadium, we wanted them to talk about how our defense played," said Smith, who learned many of his defensive concepts as an assistant on Tony Dungy's staff with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. "Our guys play hard every down. They're also physical. If you want to put a label on us, that'd be it." The Bears play a combination of defenses, and have the talent to play them all well. Their basic concept is the Cover 2 defense made popular by Tampa Bay, which Dungy still uses as head coach of the Indianapolis Colts. In the Cover 2, the defense divides the field into five zones across the field and two deep zones. The linebackers and cornerbacks cover the five zones across the field, while the safeties split the field in half and cover the two deep zones. It is a read-and-react defense that relies on speed, and the Bears have athletic players who cover enough ground to make it work. But what separates the Bears from many other teams is the individual skill of their players. Briggs and Urlacher are superb tacklers and have the speed to cover receivers. Brown hits as hard as most linebackers. Vasher, who had eight interceptions, has better hands than some receivers. And defensive ends Alex Brown and Adewale Ogunleye have generated a consistent pass rush that gives quarterbacks little time to throw. Because the Bears play their positions so well, the defensive coordinator Ron Rivera is not afraid to call blitzes, making the unit more unpredictable. "This is an aggressive, attacking defense," said Rivera, who was a linebacker with the 1985 Bears. "This system has been successful in Tampa, it was successful in St. Louis, they're using it in Indianapolis right now, and it's successful for us. "On that '85 team, we had a bunch of bullies. This team is younger, with a different type of swagger. But they're still learning, which means they should get even better." Bears quarterback Rex Grossman goes against his defense in practice, and he is glad he will not be facing it Sunday. In 8 of 16 games this season, Chicago held its opponents to fewer than 10 points. "A lot of quarterbacks who play against this defense get happy feet," Grossman said. "They throw balls they shouldn't." A key to the game will be the Panthers' running attack, and whether the Bears can control it. Last weekend, Carolina rushed for 223 yards while dominating the Giants, 23-0 The rushing attack was led by DeShaun Foster, who ran for 151 yards. In November against the Bears, however, the Panthers were held to 55 yards rushing, with Foster gaining 41 yards on 9 carries. On Wednesday, a reporter asked Urlacher a rambling question, describing how effectively the Panthers ran the ball against the Giants. Before the reporter could finish, Urlacher cut him off with a four-word response. "We aren't the Giants," he said. That type of feisty attitude permeates Chicago's locker room. The Bears have not won a playoff game since 1994, and they were not the favorites to win the N.F.C. North this season, particularly after they started 1-3. At that point, Smith's steady leadership was important, and the Bears responded by winning their next eight games. Smith's parents named him Lovie because they were expecting a girl, and they wanted to name the baby after Smith's great-aunt Lavana. His players admire Smith's even-keeled style, his ability to make his point without screaming. "I don't think I've ever heard him raise his voice," Vasher said. "But he just lets you know the deal, straight out. You've got to respect it." Smith said his message after the 1-3 start was simple. "You can't panic," he said. "The season was just a quarter over. Just think about being in the first quarter. The game hadn't even started yet. We had three quarters left. I knew we had a good team. We just needed to execute better and pay more attention to detail." The Bears have been unafraid to talk confidently about Sunday's game, believing they have many doubters across the country, including the Panthers. Urlacher was miffed when it was suggested that perhaps Carolina took the Bears lightly in their regular-season meeting. "I don't really care," he said. "We won. If they overlooked us, didn't play their best game, whatever. We didn't play our best game, either. They scored 3 points. They scored on us. They shouldn't have. They can say whatever they want. We still outplayed them." Spoken like a Bear in an ornery mood, which is how Urlacher and his defensive teammates intend to arrive against the Panthers. Regular-season performances are fine, but Urlacher knows that defensive legacies are made during the playoffs. After a bye week and much preparation, the Bears sound eager to make an impression. "I can't ever remember being this ready to play a game," Vasher said. "You know these guys. We're ready to hit somebody."

CHICAGO BEARS
CAROLINA PANTHERS
FOOTBALL
PLAYOFF GAMES
NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE