Anchorage Gay Rights Measure Is Set Back by Mayor’s Veto

Abstract: The mayor of Anchorage on Monday vetoed a ban against discrimination based on sexual orientation, saying it was unclear that such discrimination existed. The mayor, Dan Sullivan, a Republican who took office on July 1, added that “the vast majority of those who communicated their position on the ordinance are in opposition.” The ordinance, which would have prohibited such discrimination in employment, housing, education and other areas, was approved by the Anchorage Assembly last week on a 7-to-4 vote. Eight votes are necessary to override a mayoral veto. The Assembly’s approval of the ordinance, a topic of impassioned public debate at its meetings for much of the summer, followed decades of efforts to pass similar measures. Mr. Sullivan’s father, George Sullivan, who also served as mayor, vetoed an initial proposal in 1976. Then, as now, the ordinance met with vocal opposition among Christian conservatives. “This ordinance was going to force small-business owners particularly to accommodate people who choose a certain lifestyle,” said the Rev. Jerry Prevo, pastor of the Anchorage Baptist Temple and a leader of the measure’s opponents. “Once you give special rights to homosexuals,” Mr. Prevo said, “then the next step is you legalize homosexual marriage and so forth.” The measure’s supporters dismiss the argument that there is no evidence of discrimination, noting that there is no formal means under current law for gay men and lesbians to file complaints. “The mayor uses interesting circular logic,” said Patrick Flynn, an Assembly member who sponsored the proposal. Another member who supported it, Sheila Selkregg, said the issue had become entangled by questions like whether employers could prohibit men from using women’s restrooms and whether they would have to provide separate restrooms for transgender people.

Discrimination
Homosexuality
Sullivan Dan
Anchorage (Alaska)
Local Government


High Income, Low Taxes and Never a Bad Year

Abstract: For the superrich, 2009 was supposed to be the “annus horribilis.” That’s the year that market averages hit their post-financial-crisis lows, and prices of nearly all assets plunged. Since the superrich depend disproportionately on assets, rather than earned income, they suffer more during hard times for financial markets since more of their assets are at risk, or so the theory goes. Plenty of people did get hit in 2009, including people at the very top. But all things are relative. The fortunate 400 people with the highest adjusted gross incomes still made, on average, $202 million each in 2009, according to Internal Revenue Service data. And this doesn’t even count income that doesn’t show up as adjusted gross income, such as tax-exempt interest. Yet the top 400 paid an average federal income tax rate of less than 20 percent, far lower than the top rate of 35 percent then in effect. They also paid a lower rate than the top 1 percent, which were people with adjusted gross incomes in 2009 of at least $344,000. These affluent but hardly superrich taxpayers paid on average just over 24 percent of their adjusted gross income in federal income tax. Even the top 0.01 percent, people earning at least $1.4 million, paid 24 percent. “The top 400 have enormously high incomes even after the dip,” said Leonard E. Burman, director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center and a professor of public policy at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. “It’s still over $200 million each. And yet they’re still paying at a lower rate.” Even in a bad year like 2009, the federal tax code at the very top is regressive, not progressive. Of course, the top 400 are a tiny fraction of the overall population (there were over 140 million returns filed in 2009). But I’ve always found them to be a useful window to the otherwise hidden world of the ultrarich. And if the tax code is perceived as unfair to the wealthiest citizens, is it any wonder that there’s widespread resentment at lower rungs of the prosperity ladder? It may seem surprising that some of the country’s richest people had a banner year in the depths of the recent recession, but recall that 2009 was a year that Wall Street paid itself big bonuses even after taking billions in government rescue money. And while the stock market bottomed in March of that year, it went on to rack up impressive gains. These were especially favorable conditions for nimble hedge fund managers. The I.R.S. doesn’t identify the members of the elite 400, but they surely include some top hedge fund managers. In 2009, the minimum income required to make the top 25 in the annual ranking of top-earning hedge fund managers by AR: Absolute Return+ Alpha magazine was $350 million. That suggests that all of them would have been among the top 400. Among those at the top of the rankings that year were David Tepper, founder of Appaloosa Management, who earned an estimated $4 billion; George Soros, who earned $3.3 billion; James Simons of Renaissance Technologies, who made $2.5 billion; and John Paulson, at $2.3 billion, who famously bet against mortgage-backed securities and cashed in on the housing collapse. Most of the income of hedge fund and other managers of investment partnerships — so-called carried interest — is treated as capital gains rather than earned income, and is taxed at a low preferential rate, which was 15 percent in 2009. This much-criticized loophole has survived repeated attempts to remove it, and was left untouched by the Obama administration’s 2009 tax increases. The success of hedge fund managers as well as others who bet on both market declines and gains may help explain why members of the top 400 still managed to report average net capital gains of over $92 million in 2009. That was significantly lower than the peak year of 2007, when net capital gains for the top 400 averaged $228.5 million. Still, it represented 46 percent of their income, which is much higher than for most people. This tiny sliver of taxpayers accounted for an astounding 16 percent of all capital gains in 2009, the highest percentage by far since the statistics started to be compiled in 1992. Image In 2009, global markets bottomed out, but hedge fund titans barely felt the bump. David Tepper, made an estimated $4 billion. Credit Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News, via Getty Images A similar phenomenon occurred in 2002 and 2003, after the dot.com collapse, when the share of all capital gains earned by the top 400 also hit what was then a record. This suggests that the superrich do relatively better — not worse — in bad years, and goes a long way toward explaining why their tax rates have stayed so low, since capital gains are taxed at a preferential rate. Dividend income for the superrich also hit a record in 2009, at an average of $10.6 million each, which accounted for 13 percent of the top 400’s total adjusted gross income. With interest rates hitting new lows, many superrich people apparently shifted more of their assets to stocks paying higher dividends. Dividend income is also taxed at a preferential rate. “They’re still paying much lower rates because their income is dominated by capital gains and dividends,” said Edward Kleinbard, a professor at the University of Southern California School of Law and a former chief of staff for Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation. “As long as those forms of income are taxed at a preferential rate, the rich are going to benefit the most.” It remains a pillar of Republican orthodoxy that taxes on unearned income, especially capital gains, should be low, or even eliminated. But it was Ronald Reagan who as president championed taxing capital gains at the same rate as earned income. This was a crucial part of his 1986 tax reform, which lowered overall rates by broadening the tax base. “Capital gains have taken on a totemic significance to the Republicans,” said Professor Kleinbard. “But they’re just another way that you earn a return by investing capital in productive activity. There’s nothing magical about capital gains from an economic point of view.” The view that it’s fundamentally unfair to tax capital gains and other unearned income at preferential rates has been gaining traction, even among the superrich. This week, Pimco’s co-founder, Bill Gross, wrote in his November investment outlook , “The era of taxing ‘capital’ at lower rates than ‘labor’ should now end.” Mr. Gross, whose net worth is estimated at over $2 billion, wrote, “A fair economic system should always allow for an opportunity to succeed,” but pointed out that many of the superrich were fortunate to benefit from buoyant financial markets, low interest rates and a credit boom. “You did not create that wave,” he said. “You rode it. And now it’s time to kick out and share some of your good fortune by paying higher taxes or reforming them to favor economic growth and labor, as opposed to corporate profits and individual gazillions.” He noted that two fellow billionaires, Warren Buffett and the hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller, recently advocated a similar approach. In the wake of the recent government shutdown, tax reform is back on the table, and should something significant result, it might emerge as a silver lining to the crisis. Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan, and Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, have been working on a much-anticipated bipartisan approach to tax reform, and the House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan has said, “They agree on the fundamental principles: Broaden the base, lower the rates and simplify the code.” But, Professor Kleinbard said, “You can’t have reform if you can’t agree on what the problem is.” He continued: “There’s no agreement what federal tax revenues should be as a percent of G.D.P. Everyone agrees that tax expenditures” — the economists’ term for tax breaks — “are out of control, but do you eliminate or reduce those in order to increase revenues or only to reduce tax rates?” Most Republicans want lower rates and are adamantly opposed to higher revenue; most Democrats are willing to lower rates, but also want higher revenue. Professor Burman was also pessimistic. “Tax reform is difficult under the best of circumstances. After the bruising battle we just went through, it’s even more difficult,” he said. Still, he said he hoped some good ideas could emerge. “Maybe a few years from now, we’ll get a president for whom tax reform is a priority. That’s what happened in 1986. Those plans came out 10 years earlier.”

Federal Taxes
Capital gains tax
HNWI,Wealth,Billionaires,1 Percent


A Site to Help Get Wedding Bells Ringing and Ringing and Ringing

Abstract: Add this twist to the panoply of websites that promise to fill the holes in your love life: Sites that are aimed at married men who want to add wives, and single women who’d be happy sharing a spouse. Certain that there were plenty of people in the world who’d be interested in such a service — and willing to pay for it — Azad Chaiwala , a 33-year-old British entrepreneur of Pakistani origin, created what he said were the world’s first matchmaking sites for aspiring polygamists. He started SecondWife.com , aimed specifically at Muslims, in late 2014, followed by Polygamy.com , which is open to anyone, this year. Image Credit www.secondwife.com Image Credit www.polygamy.com The sites now have tens of thousands of members, Mr. Chaiwala said. Most registered users are in Britain or the United States, even though bigamy is a crime in both countries. But some members log in from India, Pakistan, or other countries in Asia or Africa where it can be legal. While he has no way to know how many polygamous marriages his sites may have facilitated, Mr. Chaiwala said he had received more than 100 letters from users thanking him for guiding them toward multiple-marital bliss. Mr. Chaiwala speaks of his sites with an evangelist’s fervor, hoping to spread the idea that polygamy offers a pro-family antidote to promiscuity, prostitution, divorce and broken homes. He dismisses those who criticize polygamy as anachronistic, saying it is better than adultery or one-night stands facilitated by apps like Tinder . “I am saying, ‘Marry two or three, and be loyal to them,’ ” he said. Creating a profile on either site is free, but to browse profile photos, you need to upgrade to a paid membership of $20 a month or $45 for three months. Three-quarters of the users on SecondWife.com are men, Mr. Chaiwala said, but most of the profiles on Polygamy.com are posted by women. He guesses that many women don’t want the obligation of a full-time husband, or consider it a plus that a man is already married. “If they are capable of taking care of one wife, perhaps they are capable of taking care of me,” Mr. Chaiwala said, speculating on what women might be thinking. One thing the sites are not intended to do is to help women seek out multiple husbands — a practice known as polyandry. This is not because Mr. Chaiwala opposes the idea, he said, but because it is “not a viable business proposition.”


As California Water Use Rises, Some Ask: Were Limits Eased Too Soon?

Abstract: EAST PORTERVILLE, Calif. — This state slashed urban water use over 25 percent in the face of a punishing drought last year, exceeding a mandatory order issued by Gov. Jerry Brown and turning California into a model of water conservation. Californians tore out lawns, cut back landscape watering and took shorter showers as they embraced Mr. Brown’s call to accommodate what he warned were permanently drier times. But this year, after regulators lifted the mandatory 25 percent statewide cut following a relatively wet winter, water use is up again, a slide in behavior that has stirred concern among state officials and drawn criticism that California abandoned the restrictions too quickly. In August, water conservation dropped below 18 percent compared with August 2013, the third consecutive month of decline. “The lifting of the mandatory conservation targets was a big mistake,” said Peter H. Gleick, a founder of the Pacific Institute , a think tank dedicated to water issues. “It sent the wrong message, it stopped the implementation of a growing set of effective urban conservation and efficiency programs, and it took pressure off both utilities and individuals to continue to improve water-use efficiency.” Felicia Marcus, the chairwoman of the Water Resources Control Board , said the state could not continue to ask Californians to take emergency measures amid evidence that the situation had eased. Still, she said she was concerned by the rise in water use and warned that the state may reimpose mandatory cuts if conservation continues to decline and California endures another dry winter. “It’s not clear whether it is an understandable and reasonable relaxation or a turning away from the effort,” she said. “You can see it as people still saving two-thirds of what they were saving in the worst water moment in modern history, or you can worry that people are saving one-third less than last year. It really appears to be a mixed picture.” “I worry about the slippage,” Ms. Marcus said. “But folks are still saving a lot of water without the state giving them a number.” By any measure, California is confronting a complicated new chapter as it enters the sixth year of a drought that has forced it to balance huge demand for a sparse resource — water — from farmers, residents, municipalities and developers. For one thing, the situation is not as dire as a year ago after a relatively normal rainy season. Some of the most searing symbols of the drought, such as near-empty reservoirs, are harder to find. Image The home of Sebastian Mejia and his family in East Porterville. They were provided a water tank when their well ran dry. Credit Stuart Palley for The New York Times The improvement can be seen in and around this Central Valley farming community that became a national symbol of the drought. For nearly two years, Sebastian Mejia, a truck driver who lives here with his wife and four daughters, had to haul buckets of water to his home so his family could take showers, flush the toilet and wash the dishes. No more. “I just took a shower right now,” Mr. Mejia said, standing on his dusty street on the edge of a community where many homes, including his, have temporary water tanks perched on their lawns. A few miles away at the Drought Resource Center, no one was in line on a recent afternoon to use the temporary showers that were set up last year. But the drought shows no sign of ending. Meteorologists say it would take five years of normal to heavy rain to replenish depleted groundwater supplies and reservoirs. Last year, after forecasts of a heavy El Niño weather system that would soak the state, California ended up with average rainfall, concentrated in the north of the state. And a number of environmentalists say this is not a typical cyclical drought that is part of life here, but rather the beginning of a more arid era created by global warming. “We’ve had less than 39 inches of rain in five years in L.A. County, which is absolutely unprecedented in our history,” said Mark Gold, an environmental professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The timing of the rollback and the mixed message could have severe consequences. The public did their part in responding to the emergency. We are still under emergency conditions.” Even in places like this community, improvement in the availability of water has been limited. Elva Beltran, who runs the Porterville Area Coordinating Council, which provides emergency water to families who run out, said that while the pace had slowed, people were still coming in for help. “I never know from one day to the next when a family is going to come by and say, ‘Mrs. Beltran, we are out of water.’” In suspending the cutback, the board instructed the state’s 411 water agencies to determine whether conservation measures were necessary in their districts. (By easing the rules, the board was also acting in response to financial problems that some agencies suffered as drops in consumption led to decreased revenue.) A vast majority of districts declared that they did not need to impose rationing, relying on consumers to restrict use on their own. Image A Drought Resource Center on the grounds of a local church. It provides showers, restrooms and drinking water for residents facing water shortages because of the drought. Credit Stuart Palley for The New York Times Mayor Eric M. Garcetti of Los Angeles said he feared that that sent a confusing message to water users, signaling that it was fine to return to old habits when it was not. Ms. Marcus agreed that it was a challenging argument to make. “It’s less easy to message, that’s for sure,” she said. Tracy Quinn, a policy analyst with Natural Resources Defense Council, said the easing of the rules had come amid evidence that people were recognizing the severity of the situation and changing their habits. And some changes — such as replacing lawns with drought-tolerant plants — produced permanent reductions in water use. “You had people willing to change their behavior altogether,” she said. “Watering their lawns less often. Taking shorter showers. I think people were making a lot of strides, and conservation was truly becoming a way of life.” “We had one normal, average precipitation year among five,” she said. “We certainly don’t know what the next few years will bring.” But Jeffrey Kightlinger, the general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which provides water for about 19 million people, said the state would have undercut its credibility if it had left the rule in place. He said that while conservation was down in his area, the agency had been able to build up its reserves by bringing water down from the north. “If you tell people it’s an emergency and you had an average water year, people get cynical and say you are only playing with numbers,” he said. “The tension is: Do you continue to push an emergency message when it’s really not an emergency?” Ms. Marcus said she had been encouraged by the way the public had rallied during the worst months of the drought and was confident that people would come through again if conditions grew worse. If not, under the original drought order issued by Mr. Brown, the state can reimpose mandatory conservation with 10 days’ notice, though Ms. Marcus said the board would probably hold hearings to give the public a chance to comment. “We’re not planning on surprising anyone,” she said. David L. Sedlak, a director of the Berkeley Water Center at the University of California, Berkeley, said that in lifting the rules, the state risked having people return to old habits. “But we have to balance that risk against the risk of crying wolf,” he said. “If we make the drought restrictions permanent, what do we do the next time the drought becomes severe? There will be no more buttons to push.”


G.O.P. Accelerates, but Speed Bumps Remain

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Democrats virtually conceding House races. House Republicans sensing real chances for victory in contests that seemed far out of reach only weeks ago. Third-party groups putting millions of dollars behind Republican contenders, eliminating one last big Democratic advantage. By nearly every indication, Republicans stand to make big gains in the midterms and could sweep dozens of Democrats out of the House. With less than three weeks to go, there are only a limited set of variables and last-minute imponderables that could substantially alter the course of the election and give Democrats a better chance of holding off possible Republican control of the House and near parity or better in the Senate. Democrats, while throwing in the towel in a few places, note that some of their vulnerable candidates are running close or ahead in polls, giving them hope that their firewall will hold. Yet if they are to retain the House and Senate, Democrats need help on multiple fronts and from Republicans themselves, who must still avoid serious mistakes, misjudgments and a sense of complacency if they intend to occupy the speaker’s office. THE VETTING CHALLENGE Among the lingering questions remaining for Republicans is whether their many untested and unvetted challengers can navigate the next few weeks without an embarrassing disclosure, public gaffe or brutal debate slip-up as voters focus more closely on the battle for Congress. New revelations of a candidate who occasionally dressed up as a Nazi officer and the high-profile filing of a sexual harassment lawsuit against another already have Republicans pessimistic about their chances for two Democratic seats in Ohio they had hoped to swipe from Democrats. Similar episodes could take more seats off the table and also hurt Republican hopefuls elsewhere by reinforcing an overarching Democratic theme that Republicans are unqualified and not ready to govern. Many Republicans remember how the late fall House page scandal dashed their chances of holding the House in 2006. THROW THEM ALL OUT Another unpleasant thought nagging at Republicans is that more of their own incumbents than believed could be at risk from voters eager to toss out established politicians of both parties, not just majority Democrats. In the House takeover years of 1994 by Republicans and 2006 by Democrats, no incumbent of either triumphant party lost. Democrats say they believe they can pick off four or five Republican seats and perhaps more, increasing the overall number of seats Republicans would need to claim a majority and conceivably making the difference between majority and minority. Republicans say they expect surprises on Nov. 2, but not enough to change the overall outcome since they predict some Democrats will be caught unaware as well. “I fully expect that we will wake up after Election Day and have lost an incumbent or two or a seat that we didn’t expect and so will they,” said Carl Forti, a former top aide at the National Republican Congressional Committee who is serving as political director at the advocacy group American Crossroads. THE OTHER CHOICE The rise of the Tea Party and other activist groups, while generally a boon to Republicans this year, is also threatening to limit the party’s gains as Election Day looms. Third-party candidates who refused to make way for Republican hopefuls could siphon voters away from them and throw some close races to Democrats in places like Virginia, Florida and Colorado. FIRING UP THE BASE As for Democrats, they still have some ways to influence the outcome. President Obama is set to begin a coast-to-coast campaign swing on Friday in hopes of rallying the voters who flocked to Democrats in 2008 and closing the enthusiasm gap that has favored Republicans this year. Democrats also have a get-out-the-vote effort that even Republicans acknowledge is superior, though they say its benefits will be limited in a year when Republican voters are already so highly motivated that they need no prodding to vote. David Plouffe, a political adviser to the Democratic National Committee who ran Mr. Obama’s campaign two years ago, acknowledged the difficult headwinds facing the party and its candidates for the House, Senate and governor. But he said a well-organized turnout operation and a closer inspection of Republican candidates could cause many races to tighten. “I don’t think any of us would like the election to be called for tomorrow,” Mr. Plouffe said. “If we show progress, we’re going to win some of these close elections.” HOLD THAT LINE Lastly, Democrats have always had a core strategy of doing all they can to protect just enough seats to preserve their House majority. But the aggressive way Republicans are moving into what was just days ago viewed as safe Democratic territory has made it much harder for Democrats to figure exactly what to defend. “Every time they think they’ve plugged a leak in the dam, another bursts open,” said Ken Spain, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “The playing field is actually bigger today than it was three weeks ago.” Even the possibility of last-minute missteps seems does not seem to daunt Republicans when compared with the expanding canvas of winnable House races they see coming into view, leaving some operatives wide-eyed with the possibilities. While Republicans believe that they have locked down about 25 of the 39 net seats needed to win control of the House, at least three dozen other races are moving into play, many of which are leaning in their favor, and more seem to be cropping up every day. In New York, at least four Democratic seats are up for grabs. In Pennsylvania, Republicans are taking aim at as many as six Democratic districts. In Ohio, Democrats are working to defend five seats. In Indiana, Republicans are trying to win three Democratic seats. Four Democratic seats are threatened in Florida while across the South, at least a dozen Democratic districts could turn over. In Western states, where Congressional Democrats have added to their majority in the past two election cycles, outside advocacy groups are taking aim at Democratic incumbents in an effort to help challengers with smaller bankrolls. Top Republicans say they believe the election trajectory is pretty well set. “I just think the reality at this point is that, barring some major screw-up or international incident, the Republicans are very likely to take the House,” said Tom Davis, a former Virginia congressman who ran the House Republican political operation from 1998 to 2002.

Elections
Republican Party
House of Representatives
United States Politics and Government


Of Love in the City, and Black History

Abstract: IT’S not for nothing that there’s a heart in the “I Love New York” logo. With all due respect to Virginia, New York, too, is for lovers. And, just in time for Valentine’s Day , Ariel Sabar , who wrote an award-winning autobiography, offers up “Heart of the City: Nine Stories of Love and Serendipity on the Streets of New York” (Da Capo Press, $24). Mr. Sabar begins by recounting how his parents met, serendipitously, in Washington Square Park. It turns out that his father spotted his spouse-to-be on the street, but was afraid to approach her. If she had veered away from the park, his father would never have gone up to her. “It was, he said, like stepping into a village,” Mr. Sabar writes. “The park shrank the city. It slowed time. With its roving paths, its fountain and trees, it filtered away the facelessness and noise of the street. Once inside, he said, people ceased being strangers. For a fleeting moment, they were on common ground.” The apparent connection between personal passion and public place inspires a beguiling romp into environmental psychology, which then leads to nine couples whose first encounter (and illuminating, sometimes bittersweet postscripts) represent “an affirmation of the everyday miracle that is New York.”  If “Heart of the City” needed illustrations, they could be plucked randomly from “New York: A Photographer’s City,” edited by Marla Hamburg Kennedy (Rizzoli, $45). This lush collection, which includes works by Berenice Abbott and Stephen Wilkes, offers fresh perspective on the “physical uniqueness” of the city’s familiar venues, mostly captured in color. Though identifying less familiar haunts would have been a welcome addition, the images here do succeed in going beyond the concrete to capture what Elisabeth Sussman describes in her foreword as the image of the city, both permanent and transitory, that “haunts past and present photography of New York.”  New York was at the vortex of the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad — and also of slavery. At least until the 1863 Draft Riots drove many blacks away, it was also home to an African-American elite. In “Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City” (Yale University Press, $32), Carla L. Peterson, a professor of English at the University of Maryland, explores her own family’s heritage here in the decades before the Civil War . Part detective story, part social history, “Black Gotham” deftly recreates the world of her great-great-grandfather Peter Guignon and a forgotten community that included his son-in-law Philip White, the first black member of the Brooklyn Board of Education, and the indomitable T. Thomas Fortune, editor of The New York Age.

Blacks
Photography
Books and Literature
Underground Railroad (19th Century)
Sabar Ariel
Abbott Berenice
Wilkes Stephen


In Giants’ Rout of Mets, the Biggest Hit May Be to Colon’s Trade Value

Abstract: As the trading deadline approached last week, Mets Manager Terry Collins sought out the veteran pitcher Bartolo Colon to see if the constant trade rumors about him had become a distraction. Colon, considered the Mets’ most marketable and available asset, simply shrugged his shoulders. Rumors are part of the game, he told Collins. The deadline passed, and Colon remained a part of the rotation, with the Mets hoping he will have an opportunity to pitch for them in the playoffs. But the team is surely keeping an eye on Colon’s perceived value: He could still be sent to a contender if he is placed on waivers. Colon did nothing to make his case in a mostly unimpressive outing Sunday, his first since the deadline, allowing six runs in four and two-thirds innings in a 9-0 loss to the San Francisco Giants at Citi Field. “I never pay attention to that stuff,” Colon said in Spanish about the trade rumors. “I’m a member of the Mets, and whatever they choose to do, that’s their decision.” The loss kept the Mets on the fringes of the National League wild-card race. The team is now six and a half games behind San Francisco and St. Louis and six back of Pittsburgh, which lost to Arizona, 3-2, on Sunday. Colon was trying to become the third active pitcher with at least 200 wins, after the Giants’ Tim Hudson (213) and the Yankees’ C. C. Sabathia (208), and the third Dominican-born pitcher, after Juan Marichal and Pedro Martinez, to reach the mark. He was also trying to become the third pitcher, after Martinez and Orel Hershiser, to hit the milestone as a member of the Mets. “For me, it’s very important because I want to be in the same club with Marichal and Pedro,” Colon said. He entered the start on a bit of a hot streak, having allowed three runs in his past 15 innings, in starts against Seattle and Philadelphia. Before the game, Collins praised Colon’s improved fastball command, saying it was a main factor in his success. Yet Colon, who would have to be dealt away by Aug. 31 in order to be eligible for the postseason with another team, seemed to lose that control Sunday. After starting the game with two scoreless innings, Colon fell into trouble in the third. He allowed a leadoff single to Brandon Crawford, who moved to second on Madison Bumgarner’s sacrifice bunt. Hunter Pence followed with a line-drive home run that struck the black railing above the fence in left-center field. Brandon Belt extended San Francisco’s lead to 3-0 with a fourth-inning home run that just cleared the right-field wall near the foul pole. Colon was pulled after he conceded three more runs in the fifth. Image Colon waiting for the Giants’ Brandon Belt to round the bases after his solo homer. Colon allowed six runs. Credit Kathy Willens/Associated Press “Today, he just didn’t have his good stuff,” Collins said, adding: “When he’s really on, you can see guys start to swing and then hedge because there’s late life. It wasn’t there today.” The Giants padded their lead with two runs in the seventh off reliever Carlos Torres and a run in the ninth, on Pence’s second home run of the game, off Dana Eveland. The Mets’ offensive woes in the series continued as well. The team had only two hits as Bumgarner threw a complete game with just 94 pitches. The Mets have managed a combined two hits through the first six innings of the games in this series, one on Friday against Ryan Vogelsong (in the sixth) and none on Saturday against Jake Peavy. In addition, the Mets have scored in two of the 27 total innings in the series. In fact, one could argue that the Mets have had just one good inning — a four-run seventh against Peavy — in the series. At one point on Sunday, Bumgarner had a higher batting average (.271 after his fifth-inning single) than all but two Mets in the team’s starting lineup. The Mets’ chances of a turnaround in Monday’s series finale seem grim: They are set to face Hudson, who has a 2.71 earned run average. “They, top to bottom, have quality arms, and then when you’re struggling to consistently put runners on base and you have some guys in funks, you get the results that you’ve gotten the last three days,” Mets third baseman David Wright said. “We were lucky to have that good inning yesterday to pick up the win. I got to get it going. And we have some guys that need to get it going.” Wright had one of the two hits off Bumgarner, a broken-bat single in the seventh, but he is mired in a 4-for-28 slump. “I just need to stop fouling off pitches I should be hitting,” Wright said. “I need to swing at some better pitches — stop chasing. I think I’m chasing a little much right now.” Colon could have Mets opponents chasing after his services. But owed $11 million next season, those odds grew a bit longer on Sunday. Colon said he put the loss behind him the moment he was taken out of the game. After all, bad outings, like trade rumors, are part of the game.

Mets
Bartolo Colon
San Francisco Giants
Madison Bumgarner
Hunter Pence
Brandon Belt
Carlos Torres
Baseball


Park Slope Education Council Approves Rezoning Proposal

Abstract: A Park Slope Community Education Council on Wednesday evening approved an elementary school rezoning proposal designed to relieve heavy overcrowding in the neighborhood’s well-regarded public schools — a measure that council members called an imperfect but necessary solution. The District 15 council’s 7-to-0 vote in favor of rezoning ends several years of hand-wringing over Public Schools 321 and 107, both so desirable in Park Slope circles that home buyers in the area pay a premium to live within the schools’ attendance zones. The decision followed months of acrimonious debate. “This is a tough one,” said Valerie Price Ervin, the council’s secretary, who acknowledged receiving passionate appeals from both sides. She seemed to sum up the feelings of several council members, saying, “I think it’s the best solution, for now.” The rezoning plan transfers the blocks west of Fifth Avenue in P.S. 321’s zone into that of a new elementary school, to be opened in the former St. Thomas Aquinas school building on Eighth Street and Fourth Avenue. It also shifts some of P.S. 107’s southern and western blocks to the zone of another school, P.S. 10. Unlike in the original proposal, P.S. 39, whose zone lies between P.S. 107 and P.S. 321, will not be affected. Under the plan, which will take effect in the 2013-14 academic year, children who already have a sibling enrolled in a school will receive priority at that school. A crucial last-minute compromise allowing the proposal to go forward was reached on Wednesday, when Jim Devor, the council’s president; representatives from another area district; and the Education Department agreed to a proposal in which 30 percent of the spots at P.S. 133 in northern Park Slope would be reserved for low-income and minority students in overcrowded Sunset Park. Without that agreement, Mr. Devor said, he would not consider the rezoning. P.S. 321’s enrollment has risen 17 percent over the past six years, while P.S. 107’s has increased 37 percent, according to the Education Department.

Zoning
Education (K-12)
Devor Jim
Park Slope (NYC)


Mets Have to Rely on a Replacement for Neil Walker, but He Comes Up Big

Abstract: Manager Terry Collins had just watched the Mets claim a dramatic victory over a division rival they are fighting for a playoff spot, but he knew that the win was somewhat soured because the injury bug that has repeatedly bitten the club this season had claimed another vital piece. So after the Mets’ 5-2 win over the Miami Marlins at Citi Field on Wednesday night, with Collins aware that second baseman Neil Walker would most likely have season-ending surgery to fix a herniated disk in his back, he addressed his team with a brief, poignant message. “I told them we aren’t having any more meetings,” Collins said. “I took 30 seconds and told them how proud I was of the fact that they’ve hung in there.” Despite the losses of Matt Harvey, Lucas Duda, David Wright and a host of other key pieces from last season’s World Series run, the Mets are only one and a half games behind the St. Louis Cardinals for the final wild-card spot in the National League. The journey has been arduous and could become even more challenging without Walker, who at times was the Mets’ best offensive player this season, hitting 23 home runs in 113 games and tying a career high. Walker did not speak to reporters after the game, but Collins said Walker would discuss the operation Thursday. “After all the evidence has been gathered, he thinks that’s probably where he’s headed,” Collins said. In Walker’s place Wednesday, Kelly Johnson drew the start, and he came up big for the Mets, breaking a 2-2 tie in the eighth inning with a bases-clearing, two-out, full-count double. Jeurys Familia then pitched a perfect ninth inning for his 44th save, a single-season franchise record. Before the game, Collins had another simple but potent message for his team: “You hit, you play.” Johnson had an outstanding August, hitting six home runs in 24 games. He and Wilmer Flores are likely to see the majority of the time at second base the rest of the season. Flores, who played first base Wednesday, is another hitter who has been sizzling at the plate. He entered the day batting .309 with 17 R.B.I. in August, and he added a two-run homer in the second, giving the Mets an early 2-1 lead. Bartolo Colon provided the Mets with seven strong innings, allowing two runs, one earned. Addison Reed picked up the win by pitching a scoreless eighth inning, and the victory secured the Mets’ first month with a winning record since April. After the game, the Mets’ clubhouse was not celebrating with thumping music, as it usually does after a victory. Johnson called the loss of Walker “a massive hit.” Through much of the season, Walker assessed the pain in his back with the scrutiny of a scientist measuring samples on a triple-beam balance scale. He has dealt with lower-back discomfort for much of his career, and he understood what levels he could tolerate and when he needed rest. But recently, Walker’s balky back evolved into more than a nuisance. He has not played since Aug. 27. “The issue is that the herniated disk is causing weakness in one of his legs,” Collins said before the game. “The weakness is causing numbness in one of his feet. The numbness is keeping him from playing.” Walker will become a free agent after this season and may have played his last game for the Mets. Johnson mentioned Walker’s positive influence in the clubhouse and said he hoped Walker would remain around the team as it seeks another playoff berth. With the Mets having won nine of 11 games, they have seemingly found a balance amid all of their injuries. Despite losing Walker, Johnson was confident that better days lay ahead for the Mets, with an obvious caveat. “I would like to think that our best baseball is still ahead of us,” he said, “and if we can keep everybody healthy, that will be key.” INSIDE PITCH The Mets were to recall Michael Conforto , Ty Kelly , Kevin Plawecki and Gabriel Ynoa from Class AAA Las Vegas on Thursday, when rosters expand. … Terry Collins said that Steven Matz would play catch the next few days in an effort to loosen up his left shoulder but that the team had “no plans to start him in the near future.” … The Mets acquired reliever Fernando Salas from the Los Angeles Angels for the minor league pitcher Erik Manoah .

Mets
Neil Walker
Miami Marlins
Kelly Johnson
Baseball
Sports injury


Yunel Escobar Suspended for Gay Slur Written on Eyeblack

Abstract: The Toronto Blue Jays suspended shortstop Yunel Escobar on Tuesday for three games for wearing eyeblack tape during Saturday’s game on which he had written a gay slur in Spanish. Photographs of Escobar during the game circulated Monday on the Internet, prompting swift action from the Blue Jays, who consulted with Major League Baseball, Commissioner Bud Selig and members of the Players Association. Escobar is also required to attend sensitivity training, the Blue Jays said, and he will participate in educational outreach to promote tolerance based on sexual orientation. The money that Escobar will lose to the three-day suspension, roughly $83,000, will be directed to the You Can Play project, which works to ensure athletes are treated the same regardless of sexual orientation, and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation . The Blue Jays also held a team meeting Tuesday at Yankee Stadium, according to Manager John Farrell, to inform the players of Escobar’s punishment, warning them to be more careful and respectful. Escobar, who is from La Habana, Cuba, spoke to reporters in the Yankees news conference room. He sat at a table alongside an interpreter provided by the Blue Jays, and was joined by Farrell, the Blue Jays coach Luis Rivera and General Manager Alex Anthopoulos. “I don’t know if there is a right way to deal with these things,” Anthopoulos said. “You’re never going to satisfy everybody. But it’s ultimately how we move forward. Taking away from all of this, there is a problem not only in sports but a problem in society, and how do we move forward to help with that problem?” Escobar apologized for writing the slur on the tape, but gave only vague reasons for why he did it, saying it was a joke and that it was not meant to offend anyone. He said the word he used was frequently uttered in baseball clubhouses, and claimed it had no meaning. “It didn’t have significance to the way that’s being interpreted right now,” he said through the interpreter. “That’s not the significance that I put into it. That’s a word used often within teams. It’s a word without meaning, the way we use it.” Escobar went on to say he has nothing against homosexuals, and cited a list of gay friends. When asked to specify, he said: “I have friends who are gay. The person who decorates my house is gay, the person who cuts my hair is gay. I have various friends who are gay. Honestly, they haven’t felt as offended about this. They have just a different understanding in the Latin community of this word.” Escobar, 29, was drafted by the Atlanta Braves in 2005, but Braves management grew weary of his frequent disregard for the fundamentals of the game. He was traded to the Blue Jays on July 14, 2010. He has written other statements on his eyeblack, which were characterized by the Blue Jays as inspirational and motivational. Farrell, who said he did not believe that homophobic sentiments were a problem in baseball, said he felt that no one stopped Escobar from wearing the offending eyeblack because no one noticed it. “Because it’s frequently done on his part,” Farrell said of Escobar writing on his eyeblack, “really, no one paid attention to it.” Selig issued a statement noting that baseball’s diverse fan base deserves respect and sensitivity. Escobar said he agreed with the suspension and was embarrassed by the incident. “If at the end of the day the Blue Jays become a vehicle and Yunel becomes a vehicle to improve things and make them better,” Anthopoulos said, “as unfortunate as this is, hopefully some good will come from it.”

Toronto Blue Jays
Baseball
Homosexuality
Discrimination
Suspensions Dismissals and Resignations
Escobar Yunel


Healing Hearts and, Possibly, Divisions in Guatemala

Abstract: GUATEMALA CITY, Nov. 5 — Heart surgery might not appear to have much in common with politics, especially the bare-knuckle brand practiced in Guatemala . But this country’s newly elected vice president, a prominent cardiologist here and in Houston, has long dabbled in both worlds. For decades, Dr. Rafael Espada has been the heart surgeon to Guatemala’s political elite. No matter whether they were military dictators, cabinet members on the take or straight-as-an-arrow public servants, he cleared their arteries, repaired their valves and asked no questions. He has also repaired the hearts of Guatemala’s poor, starting a cardiac hospital here and shuttling back and forth every month between his home in Texas and his homeland of Guatemala to perform difficult operations. “When you save someone’s life, they don’t forget you,” he said. Now, Dr. Espada, 63, is putting down his scalpel to practice politics himself. He campaigned as the running mate of Álvaro Colom, a center-left businessman who defeated a retired army general, Otto Pérez Molina, in Sunday’s presidential election by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent. Mr. Colom made social justice and fighting poverty a centerpiece of his campaign. As he told a local radio station on Monday, “I plan to convert Guatemala into a social democratic country with a Mayan face.” Dr. Espada shares those goals, saying in an interview that when he starts his new job in January he wants to close the gap between wealthy and destitute Guatemalans. Mr. Colom said he chose Dr. Espada in part because he had credibility among the elites in Guatemala that may be suspicious of him, and that decades of living in the United States reduced the likelihood that he was corrupt. “I’m certain that he’s not tainted,” Mr. Colom said in an interview. It remains to be seen how effective the new team will be. During the campaign, critics pointed to Dr. Espada’s lack of political experience as a major shortcoming. Guatemala’s rich live an insulated existence, buffering themselves from the deteriorating conditions around them by paying for their own security, private schools and health care. But the poor, most of whom are indigenous Mayan, have no such option. They live in a country that has one of the highest murder rates in Latin America and the highest level of chronic malnutrition. More women and their babies die during childbirth than anywhere else in the region. Crime victims have little chance of justice because only a small percentage of crimes are ever solved. “We have two Guatemalas,” Dr. Espada said. “We have a prosperous part with tall buildings and Porsches going around. Then 10 blocks away, there’s misery.” Dr. Espada himself represents those two worlds. His mother, shunned because she got pregnant out of wedlock, raised him by herself. His father was from high society, but did not recognize him until later in life. Thanks to government scholarships, Dr. Espada earned his medical degree from Guatemala’s San Carlos University and later trained under the noted heart surgeon Michael E. DeBakey in Houston. He eventually became deputy chief of cardiothoracic surgery at Methodist DeBakey Heart Center, which is affiliated with the Baylor College of Medicine. Because he is Guatemala’s most famous doctor, Dr. Espada, who has dual American and Guatemalan citizenship, has long received overtures from politicians. The current president, Óscar Berger, offered him the health minister position last year after Dr. Espada helped negotiate an end to a doctors’ strike. He turned down the position, partly because his half brother, Carlos Vielmann, was security minister at the time, and the presence of two blood relatives in the Cabinet is not allowed by the Constitution. Mr. Pérez Molina also made an overture to Dr. Espada. But the doctor said he turned that offer down because he did not feel comfortable with the conservative polities of the former general’s Patriot Party. Even as he was gearing up for his new career on Monday, Dr. Espada was nostalgic about the one he was leaving behind. “Hearts are what I’ve been doing my whole life,” he said, indicating that, if he could, he would not mind sneaking out of meetings now and then to mend another.

Guatemala
Doctors
Politics and Government


U.S. Open 2015: Mood Turns Serious After Jason Day’s Health Scare

Abstract: UNIVERSITY PLACE, Wash. — The 115th United States Open had the wind briefly knocked out of it Friday afternoon when one of the leaders, Jason Day, fell in a heap on the ninth green. Day, sitting two strokes behind the pacesetters after a birdie at the eighth, was walking toward his ball, which had landed in a back bunker. One second, Day was upright. The next second, he was not. Normally, the sight of a man down on a golf course would elicit swift reaction. But at Chambers Bay, built on an old sand and gravel quarry, the tumbles have not been restricted to players dropping down the leaderboard. If nobody was quick to act at first, it was because already this week, the caddie of the Scot Stephen Gallacher had been sidelined when he slipped on the slick fescue grass. Henrik Stenson’s bagman, Gareth Lord, was working despite a cast on his left hand after taking a nasty fall on the 16th tee in a practice round. And earlier in the round, Tiger Woods, the 14-time major champion who was playing in the threesome directly behind Day, lost his footing and landed on his backside, adding indignity to his ignominious 36-hole score of 16 over. Day fell on his side and rolled onto his back, and his hand flew to his face. Day’s caddie and coach, Colin Swatton, was the first to arrive at his side. Day missed time last year with wrist and back injuries. The fear, at first, was that he had slipped on the side slope and reinjured his back or hurt his wrist trying to break his fall. The reality, in a way, was scarier. Image Jordan Spieth, watching his shot on the first hole, warded photographers away from Day as he was recovering. Credit Harry How/Getty Images Day told the first two emergency workers who arrived at the scene that he had experienced another episode of the vertigo that forced him to withdraw from the Byron Nelson tournament in Dallas last month. Earlier in the week, Day said he recently had submitted to three sleep studies, undergone extensive blood work and had a magnetic resonance imaging test done on his head and neck to try to pinpoint the cause of tingling in his arms and “the shakes,” as he described it. All the results came back negative, Day said, leading his doctors to conclude that he was suffering from sleep deprivation and dehydration. Day had been getting plenty of sleep this week, making this episode unsettling. Day, a 27-year-old Australian with three top-four finishes in the past four Opens, was playing in a threesome with Jordan Spieth and Justin Rose. As the paramedics gathered around Day, Spieth played traffic cop, shooing away photographers and asking the television camera operators to stop taping. Two more pairs of emergency workers ran onto the green, and they were joined by Day’s manager, Bud Martin, and Day’s wife, Ellie, who is pregnant with the couple’s second child. Ellie leaned over and asked Day if he had been feeling lightheaded before he began the walk from the elevated ninth tee to the green, a drop of 105 feet. She said he told her that he had not, that he felt fine one moment and dizzy the next. Image Day was helped out of a bunker on the ninth hole by Swatton after having collapsed earlier on the same hole. Day finished at two under. Credit Ted S. Warren/Associated Press Day lay on his back for roughly five minutes while his blood pressure was taken. He was helped to his feet, and as he rose, the fans in the grandstand behind him applauded. Day walked unsteadily to the bunker, blinking unceasingly and shaking his head as if he were seeing more than one in the sand. Once in the sand, he tried to remove a pebble that was behind his ball, as allowed by the rules, but was afraid of accidentally moving his ball because his hand was shaking. The rules official walking with the group stepped in and moved the impediment for him. Day hit out of the bunker, and his caddie helped him out. He knelt and leaned on his club while Rose lined up and missed a 24-foot birdie putt. Day two-putted for a bogey 4, kneeling with his head down between putts, for an even-par 70. As Spieth studied his eight-foot birdie putt, Day walked off the green, with the help of emergency workers, and was whisked in a cart to the scoring trailer to sign his scorecard. Day was taken away in a Pierce County Sheriff’s Department van to the players’ locker room. An unbroken line of fans clapped and yelled well-wishes at Day as the vehicle disappeared down an asphalt path. Spieth, who drained his birdie for a three-under 67 that left him tied for the early lead at five-under 135, walked off the green looking awfully serious for someone who had placed himself in contention at the halfway point of his national championship. Image Justin Rose watched his tee shot on the ninth hole. He and Spieth were in Day’s group. Credit Harry How/Getty Images “I was walking with him,” Spieth said, referring to Day, “and the next thing I know, I turned around and I think he got dizzy and slipped and fell. So at that point, how can we help him out and kind of clear the scene and try to keep the cameras off and let him just rebound?” There is precedent for a player recovering from a scary on-course episode in the second round of a tournament to end up in the winner’s circle two days later. In 2012 outside Orlando, Charlie Beljan staggered through 18 holes with a racing pulse caused by a panic attack. After signing for a 64, he was driven to the hospital in an ambulance. Upon being released the next morning, Beljan finished the tournament and held on for his first PGA Tour victory. Beljan teed off three groups ahead of Day. Woods, who is good friends with Day, was standing on the ninth tee when play came to an eerie standstill. “I know he was laying down there,” Woods said, adding, “I hope he’s O.K. I’ll call him as soon as I’m done here and see if he’s all right.” In a statement, Day’s manager, Martin, said that doctors told Day he had benign positional vertigo and that Day was hopeful he would be able to compete this weekend. Martin said Day was resting comfortably after being treated on the grounds. The 115th United States Open continued, but the events of the day had left everybody feeling a little wobbly.

Jason Day
Golf
Falling
Jordan Spieth
US Open Golf


Were You Swept Up Under Britain’s Anti-Gay Laws? We’d Like to Hear From You

Abstract: Decades after homosexuality was decriminalized in Britain, the government recently announced that it would posthumously pardon thousands of gay and bisexual men who were convicted of having or seeking gay sex. Since 2012, men with such convictions who are still alive have been able to apply to have their names cleared. The New York Times would like to hear from any of the men found guilty under the old laws who are willing to share their story with a reporter.


Danny Duffy Strikes Out a Team-Record 16 as Royals Defeat the Rays

Abstract: Danny Duffy pitched eight innings of one-hit ball and had a team-record 16 strikeouts to lead the Kansas City Royals to a 3-0 road win over the Tampa Bay Rays on Monday night. Duffy was on the verge of the Royals’ first no-hitter in nearly 25 years before giving up a line-drive double to Desmond Jennings leading off Tampa Bay’s eighth inning. Jennings came off the disabled list Monday after missing July with a strained hamstring. Kendrys Morales’s 18th home run, over the center field wall off Rays starter Chris Archer, got the Royals on the scoreboard in the seventh. Alcides Escobar and Lorenzo Cain drove in runs in the eighth for Kansas City, which won for the second time in 10 games. Kelvin Herrera pitched the ninth for his second save. ROOKIE SHINES FOR TWINS The rookie Max Kepler had three two-run homers and six R.B.I., leading Minnesota to a 12-5 win over the Indians in Cleveland. Kepler homered off the All-Star Danny Salazar in the first and third innings, and he hit another off Cody Anderson in the sixth. Kepler became the first Minnesota player to homer three times in a game since Justin Morneau in 2007. He also had a single. Joe Mauer went 4 for 4 and homered in the eighth off Andrew Miller, who was making his first appearance with the Indians after being acquired from the Yankees on Sunday. Jose Berrios (2-1) retired 15 straight after a three-run first inning. Berrios, a rookie right-hander who was recalled from Class AAA Rochester before the game, allowed four hits in six innings. The right-handed Salazar (11-4) lost for the first time since May 22. Before the game, Cleveland acquired outfielder Brandon Guyer from the Tampa Bay Rays for two minor leaguers: outfielder Nathan Lukes and the right-hander Jhonleider Salinas. Guyer, 30, a right-handed hitter, is batting .241, with seven home runs and 18 R.B.I., in 63 games. AUTO RACING Sprint Cup Rookie Wins at Pocono The Nascar Sprint Cup rookie Chris Buescher waited out foul weather on pit road and was declared the winner of the Pennsylvania 400 on Monday at Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, Pa. Buescher, who drives for Front Row Motorsports and had not finished better than 14th this season, was the beneficiary of bad weather during a rare Monday race that had been postponed a day by rain. Nascar waved the red flag with 22 laps left and parked the cars on pit road. Buescher could only sit and wait in the No. 34 Ford, though Nascar allowed drivers to leave their cars after about 10 minutes as they waited out the weather. Buescher was named the winner after a delay of over an hour. He was doused with beer and water in an impromptu celebration in a garage. Buescher is still 6 points behind David Ragan for 30th in the Chase for the Sprint Cup standings, with five races left before the playoffs begin. Race winners qualify for the Chase only if they are in the top 30 in the standings. Brad Keselowski finished second, followed by Regan Smith, Kevin Harvick and Tony Stewart. Jeff Gordon finished 28th while driving for the injured Dale Earnhardt Jr. COLLEGES Former Coach Has Alzheimer’s The family of the former University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney said he was recently given a diagnosis of late-onset dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Family members said in a statement that McCartney, 75, was “still the same Coach Mac — biking, golfing, supporting the Buffs and being an active member of his church.” “We are making this public to ask for your understanding and patience as we know he frequently runs into fans, friends and former players,” the statement said. “This is a frustrating and confusing disease, and if he appears disconnected or unknowing, please don’t take it personally.” McCartney, who led the Buffaloes to their only national championship, in 1990, has the most wins in Colorado football history with a record of 93-55-5. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2013. SOCCER Argentina Names New Coach Edgardo Bauza, a former Argentine player who has been the coach of the São Paulo soccer club in Brazil, was named to head Argentina’s national team. Bauza will replace Gerardo Martino, who, along with the star Lionel Messi, quit the team in July after Argentina lost the final of the Copa América tournament for a second consecutive year.

Danny Duffy
Kansas City Royals
Tampa Bay Rays
Chris Buescher
University of Colorado
Bill McCartney
College football
Soccer
Baseball
Car Racing


Euro Zone Economy Skirts Recession

Abstract: FRANKFURT — It’s way too early to call a turning point. But while Greeks were marching in the streets against austerity, their economy may actually have been growing for the first time since 2009. That surprise news resided deep within first-quarter economic data for Europe released Tuesday that also showed, to everyone’s mild relief, that the euro zone as a whole has still avoided slipping into a regional recession. Greece, where the economy has been in free fall, “grew” only after adjusting for seasonal effects — a calculation made by economists at Barclays. The Greek government did not provide an official figure. “I cannot imagine this is really a new spring,” said Fabio Fois, European economist at Barclays in London. Nor is news of technically defined growth likely to offer much consolation to ordinary Greeks. Not while one in five people in the work force are out of work. Still, along with growth in Germany that was much better than expected, the data provided mild respite from the gloom that has pervaded Europe in recent days. Despite the figures, major stock indexes retreated Tuesday in Europe, and Spanish and Italian bond yields, or interest rates, edged up on news that those two countries’ economies continued to contract. Indexes in the United States, however, were modestly higher in afternoon trading. The euro zone, by not slipping into recession in the first quarter of 2012, ran counter to expectations. Growth in the region was zero compared to the previous quarter, according to the figures, from Eurostat, the E.U. statistics agency. “In the current context, zero growth in the euro zone in the first quarter is relatively good news,” Marie Diron, an economist who advises the consulting firm Ernst & Young, said in a statement. “It suggests that the economy is not falling off a cliff under the burden of fiscal austerity.” In the fourth quarter of 2011, gross domestic product in the euro zone had declined 0.3 percent. A second consecutive quarter of decline would have met the general definition of a recession. Germany’s economy expanded 0.5 percent in the first quarter, more than analysts expected. But France did not grow at all, Spain’s economy slipped 0.3 percent, and Italy experienced a 0.8 percent decline in output. The divergence in the numbers, which officials adjusted for seasonal effects, showed that there remains a wide gulf between Northern and Southern Europe. “Even if the euro zone as a whole narrowly escaped technical recession in the first quarter, there is no sign of a strong, sustained economic bounceback on the horizon,” Martin van Vliet, an economist at ING Bank, wrote in a note to clients. The data, he said, “offers scant consolation for the peripheral economies, where the recession is deepening and whose economic fortunes look bleak at best and downright depressing at worst.” The growth numbers arrived hours before François Hollande, newly sworn in as French president, traveled to Berlin, where he was to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel. She was likely to see the data as vindication of her position that growth must be the product of sound government finances and economic restructuring, not the stimulus advocated by Mr. Hollande. The Greek economy has shrunk by more than a quarter since 2008, and continued to plunge at the beginning of the year without adjusting for seasonal effects, although at a slower velocity. While Greece’s official statisticians do not make such adjustments, statistics agencies in most countries adjust quarterly data to reflect the fact that economic activity typically picks up at the end of a year and slows at the beginning of the next. Another euro zone trouble spot, Portugal, also performed less dismally than expected. Its economy shrank 0.1 percent in the first quarter from the previous quarter, compared with a 1 percent decline that analysts had forecast. Portugal, which is seen as having done more than Greece to improve economic performance, may have benefited from stronger exports. But Mr. Fois of Barclays said a recovery probably remains distant. “Expecting sustained growth in the short term would be a bit optimistic,” he said. “You still have a lot of fiscal austerity to come through.” Germany has benefited from the European Central Bank ’s low lending rate of 1 percent, a benchmark that is set with the euro zone as a whole in mind but is probably too low for German conditions. While credit is tight in much of Europe, it is still available in Germany at inexpensive rates that have pushed up real estate prices in urban areas. German wages are also likely to rise as companies have trouble finding skilled workers, fueling inflation which is already above the official target of about 2 percent. Higher wages and inflation in Germany are likely to trouble some policy makers and segments of the German public, but may be good news for other countries in Europe. They would have an easier time competing with Germany for investment, while higher wages might increase German demand for their products. “Robust German demand is essential to help offset falling domestic activity in the peripheral countries,” Ms. Diron said. Germany depends on trade with other euro zone members, and in coming months there is a risk its economy may suffer from problems in countries like Italy and Spain. “The highly competitive German economy has not entered a recession,” Jörg Krämer, chief economist at Commerzbank, wrote in a note. “Still, it is unlikely to expand at the same pace in the next few months.”

Europe
European Central Bank
Economic Conditions and Trends
European Union
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
Euro (Currency)


A Lesson in the Cost of Resilience From a Mother Securing Her Family’s Future

Abstract: Protecting her family has come with costs that Yolanda Peguero is willing to pay. They are part of parenthood. Getting her children to understand them, however, has proved more challenging. She has conducted her family’s pizza and movie nights with one parent, and uprooted her children to a new home, a taxing two-hour train commute from their school and from Ms. Peguero’s job. “In a sense, it’s good because I don’t want them to think that anything is easy in life,” she said. “Things are hard. You don’t want your children to struggle, but they have to learn, too.” Since last year, Ms. Peguero, 36, and her family have been living where the father of her children cannot find them, where he cannot threaten or hurt them, as he has in the past. “For me, he died,” said Ms. Peguero, who has no knowledge of her ex-boyfriend’s whereabouts. “I only get the scars and the psychological traumas for me and my children.” Ms. Peguero is raising her children — two daughters, ages 11 and 9, and a son, age 4 — largely on her own, with occasional help from her mother and a sister. To help cope with years of abuse, Ms. Peguero attended regular therapy sessions for two years. “I want to live a normal life, but it’s hard,” she said. “I don’t trust anyone. I still have flashbacks and I have nightmares.” In 2000, Ms. Peguero came to the United States from Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, and then met the man who would father her children. He was not abusive in the beginning, she said, but in 2008 he broke her nose. In 2009, she said, he coerced her to move back to Venezuela. While she was pregnant with her youngest child in 2010, the abuse reached its peak. “One of my sisters told me, ‘You don’t want to become a number, a statistic,’ ” Ms. Peguero recalled. She plotted her escape, instructing her mother, who resided in New York City, to purchase plane tickets for her and her children. Then she told her boyfriend that her father was dying and she had to travel to the United States. “It was a lie, may God forgive me,” Ms. Peguero said. The Neediest Cases The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund provides direct assistance to struggling New Yorkers. Tap for information about how to donate. She and her children made it safely to the city, where she gave birth to her son. Her ex-boyfriend, also a native of Venezuela, tracked her down and threatened her, she said. He was arrested and deported, but he returned to the United States. Ms. Peguero filed an order of protection against him but still feared for her and her children’s safety, because he knew where they lived. An agency that helps victims of abuse placed Ms. Peguero and her family in a new, rent-subsidized apartment last year. The Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, one of the seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, allotted $1,500 from the fund to purchase furniture for the family’s new home. Ms. Peguero, who receives $365 a month in food stamps, earns roughly $870 a month working as a visiting nurse. She received her licensed practical nurse degree in 2007, and is enrolled at LaGuardia Community College, pursuing her registered nurse degree. Ms. Peguero says she has ambitions to teach when she retires from nursing. For now, her finances allow for her to take only one course a semester, which has its advantages. Just one night a week, her children stay late at their grandmother’s house when Ms. Peguero attends class. “I feel sorry for them because they’re tried,” she said. “I tell them it’s for our own good. Mommy’s going to make more money. It’s going to be better.” Her own outlook has improved immensely. Her stomach is in knots less often, her inner turmoil is quieting, and she is learning to trust again. Ms. Peguero also recently became engaged. “This is not going to get in my way,” she said of her past. “Some people go into drugs, some people go into alcohol. When I feel depressed, when I feel down, I look at my children. And they give me courage.” “I have plans for the next 50 years,” she said.


City Offering Hepatitis Vaccinations for Patrons at Restaurant Where Bartender Was Infected

Abstract: The city’s health department is offering hepatitis A vaccinations “as a precautionary measure” to patrons who may have been exposed at Socialista, a West Village lounge and restaurant where a bartender was found to have the disease. Socialista is popular among celebrities, and Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore were photographed leaving it on one of the three nights the health department says the bartender was working. The restaurant said on Thursday that it was cooperating with the health department. “We are grateful for their efforts, and we will continue to support them in every way possible,” said Armin Amiri, the owner of Socialista. The department said on Thursday that it had learned of the case on Tuesday and on Wednesday had sent an inspector to Socialista, at 505 West Street, between Jane and Horatio Streets. Hepatitis A is rarely fatal, the department said. Symptoms include jaundice, fatigue, nausea and diarrhea. The department issued what it called a “precautionary notification” after the inspector reported that no soap was available for hand washing at the restaurant. Hepatitis A can be spread by people who do not wash their hands. Officials said the virus could have been contracted by anyone who was there on three nights when the bartender was: after 8 p.m. on Feb. 7 and Feb. 8, or after 10 p.m. on Feb. 11. Dr. Don Weiss, director of surveillance for the department’s Bureau of Communicable Disease, said that as many as 1,000 people might have been at Socialista on those nights. He said that the restaurant had turned over lists of names from 30 to 40 reservations but that the department had not gone through credit card receipts. He also said confidentiality rules prevented the department from providing specific information, including how the bartender might have contracted hepatitis. The department will give vaccinations at Public School 41, at 116 West 11th Street on Friday from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m., on Saturday from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. and on Sunday from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Hepatitis
Restaurants
Vaccination and Immunization


Baltimore Is Quiet, but Residents Are Pensive

Abstract: BALTIMORE — The Rev. C. D. Witherspoon, minister at the Judah Worship Center, paced a West Baltimore street corner late Wednesday night, imploring a small group gathered around him to stave off a feeling he believed city leaders wanted residents to have: apathy. “They wanted this to douse the fire,” Mr. Witherspoon had shouted into a microphone hours after a judge declared a mistrial in the first trial of a police officer charged in Freddie Gray’s death. “They wanted the people’s morale to get low. They wanted us to disengage.” With the unexpected turn in the case of Officer William G. Porter, this harbor city remains very much engaged in the tale of Mr. Gray, however quietly. Under a steady rain on Thursday, residents across the city, from the boarded-up townhomes on the west side to the sprawling manicured lawns in the north, found themselves caught in limbo. Some were cynical. Some were fearful. Some just wanted this slow-motion drama to end. Almost all, it seemed, were working through emotions as complex and unsatisfying as a mistrial. “I want it over,” said David Rugolo, 47, whose family has run a tavern in a largely white section of North Baltimore for nearly four decades. “I want peace. I think everybody does. I want peace from a business point of view, and I want peace from a social point of view. We’ve never had this before.” This was just one of many cities across the country roiled by protests over police killings over the past year and a half. Demonstrators have lobbied for greater scrutiny of how law enforcement treats blacks. Even as they fight for change, many critics of police misconduct say they have come to expect that officers accused of wrongdoing will go unpunished. Image The police blocked the entrance to City Hall on Wednesday after news of a hung jury in the case of Officer William G. Porter. Credit Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times Many Baltimoreans have been hopeful that the case of Mr. Gray, 25, would be different. His death from a broken neck after the police arrested him in April sparked unrest that some say ultimately raised public awareness about the treatment of blacks. But the accountability many want is proving harder to obtain. “I feel like I’m losing hope,” said Tiffany Cameron, 34, who lives here and manages a Popeyes. “I don’t see what’s going to be different. If it was a conviction, I’d feel a whole lot different — it means we’re getting somewhere.” Prosecutors and lawyers for Officer Porter met privately with the judge but no announcement was made about if and when a new trial would be held. In addition to Officer Porter, five other officers have been charged in Mr. Gray’s death, with the second trial scheduled for next month. Regardless of their view of the prosecution, many saw the mistrial as a dispiriting reminder how long the proceedings could plod on. The absence of a definitive verdict means “a cloud that’s going to put things on edge in this town,” Mr. Rugolo said. Yet that tension was not readily apparent on Thursday. A street near police headquarters downtown had reopened to traffic after the police blocked it Wednesday. And by early Thursday afternoon, nearly a dozen people were waiting outside a movie theater for a screening of the new “Star Wars” movie. Antonio Drummond, 15, said he had been trying to get the Gray case off his mind, but it had been difficult because it was always on the news and because of the protests. He just wants to look “to the future, hoping things get better,” he said. Across the city, people were relieved that for now, there was no repeat of the mayhem in April , when the police and protesters got into rock-slinging and tear gas-filled skirmishes. There has been a concerted effort throughout the city to urge calm. Personalities on 92Q, a local hip-hop and R&B radio station, warned Wednesday that unrest might give the defense grounds to get the trials moved out of Baltimore. Baltimore Mood in 12 Tweets Many Baltimoreans were disappointed yet unsurprised at the outcome of Officer William G. Porter’s trial – though some are urging those fighting for change not to give up. “There’s a lot of pain” among black residents, said Eddie Curbeam, a chef working as a private caterer. “It’s been here for some time. Of course we do want a resolution.” He said he would allow the legal process to play out, though he was unsure how other residents would react. “There’s a process,” said Mr. Curbeam, 43. “We have to allow the process to do what it does. You cannot make a decision on the first outcome.” Though, he added, “I wouldn’t be surprised if they all walked.” Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said on Wednesday night that justice did not mean a particular verdict. “The protesters were very clear that they supported this trial being held in Baltimore City,” she said. “That means that they put the case in the hands of Baltimore City residents.” She later said, “Justice is a process that we have to protect.” However, justice will depend on whether locals believe the verdict is fair. “This city is not stupid and they know that they’ve been cheated,” Shai Crawley, 20, said during a gathering of protesters outside City Hall on Wednesday. At least one person there said that the mistrial declaration left him vaguely optimistic. The hung jury, said Noah Mayfield, 18, demonstrated that at least a fraction of the jury believed that Officer Porter was guilty, and that future jurors could reach a similar conclusion. “I have confidence now that he may be convicted, but 50 percent of me is saying he might not be convicted,” said Mr. Mayfield, a West Baltimore resident. “I think we do have hope. We may have hope. They might convict him. And I pray that they do convict him because I love my city to death, and I don’t want my city to cause another riot and burn down things.”

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Women’s Final Is Appropriate Conclusion to Illogical Tournament

Abstract: WIMBLEDON, England — A pair of unlikely hands will hoist perhaps the most coveted prize in women’s tennis Saturday, when one of the most unpredictable Wimbledon tournaments in memory culminates with a final between No. 15 Marion Bartoli of France and No. 23 Sabine Lisicki of Germany. Before this tournament, Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova and Victoria Azarenka had combined to win every Grand Slam and premier mandatory event in the previous 15 months, as well as the year-end championships and the Olympic tournament, both won by Williams. But Bartoli and Lisicki withstood a Wimbledon marked by upsets and injuries, and they will face each other in only the second Wimbledon final in the Open era between two women who have never won a Grand Slam title. The previous time was 1998, when Jana Novotna defeated Nathalie Tauziat to win her first major title in her 45th Grand Slam appearance. Bartoli, 28, is competing in her 47th Grand Slam event, which would break Novotna’s record for most appearances before a title. Bartoli briefly hired Novotna as a coach in March, but the partnership lasted only a few weeks because of disagreements about coaching techniques. This is Bartoli’s second Wimbledon final; she lost to Venus Williams, 6-4, 6-1, in 2007. Bartoli used her two-handed forehand and backhand to beat No. 3 seed Jelena Jankovic and top seed Justine Henin in that tournament, but her draw has been far less daunting this year. The highest-ranked player she faced in her first six matches was No. 17 Sloane Stephens in the quarterfinals. Bartoli has not lost a set, and she routed No. 20 Kirsten Flipkens, 6-1, 6-2, in the semifinals. In contrast, Lisicki has had an extremely difficult path to the final. Lisicki, 23, opened with a victory over the former French Open champion Francesca Schiavone, then beat Elena Vesnina, the champion of the largest Wimbledon warm-up event in Eastbourne, in the second round. Lisicki came from a set down to beat No. 14 Samantha Stosur, the 2011 United States Open champion, in the third round, before shocking top-seeded Serena Williams, 6-2, 1-6, 6-4, to make the quarterfinals for the fourth straight time. After beating Kaia Kanepi in the quarterfinals, Lisicki ousted No. 4 Agnieszka Radwanska in the semifinals in what may have been the best match of the women’s tournament, winning, 9-7, in the third set. “It’s been a great journey,” Lisicki said. “It hasn’t finished yet. You know, from the start of the tournament I had great matches and good challenges, which prepared me for tomorrow, in my opinion. I think I’m really ready.” Lisicki has won over the British crowd with her near-constant smile and emotional reactions to victories in the last five years, but she has been far more self-confident and feisty off the court this year. With her booming serve, powerful forehand and underrated foot speed, Lisicki has been the oddsmakers’ favorite to win the title since the quarterfinal round, even though she was ranked second lowest among the eight remaining players. Lisicki has won three of her previous four matches against Bartoli. The two have split their previous Wimbledon meetings, with Bartoli winning in the first round in 2008 and Lisicki winning in the 2011 quarterfinals. They have not played since that match, and neither has won a singles title since 2011. “I think, first of all, it will be a battle of nerves and who is able to come up with the best game on that day,” Bartoli said Friday. “Again, as I said, a final of a Grand Slam is always a matter of details. Maybe a point here, a point there will make the difference. Maybe someone who is a bit more gutsy than the other player, someone who is having a better day than the other’s. We are very close in terms of level, I believe. It will be, I’m sure, a pretty good match.”

Tennis
Marion Bartoli
Sabine Lisicki
Wimbledon Tennis,Wimbledon


Parents Defend School’s Use of Shock Therapy

Abstract: Nearly a year ago, New York made plans to ban the use of electric shocks as a punishment for bad behavior, a therapy used at a Massachusetts school where New York State had long sent some of its most challenging special education students. But state officials trying to limit New York’s association with the school, the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, southwest of Boston, and its “aversive therapy” practices have found a large obstacle in their paths: parents of students who are given shocks. “I understand people who don’t know about it think it is cruel,” said Susan Handon of Jamaica, Queens, whose 20-year-old daughter, Crystal, has been at Rotenberg for four years. “But she is not permanently scarred and she has really learned that certain behaviors, like running up and hitting people in the face, are not acceptable.” Indeed, Rotenberg is full of children who will run up and hit strangers in the face, or worse. Many have severe types of dysfunction, including self-mutilation, head banging, eye gouging and biting, that can result from autism or mental retardation. Parents tend to be referred there by desperate education officials, after other institutions have decided they cannot keep the child. While at Rotenberg, students must wear backpacks containing a device that allows a staff member to deliver a moderate shock to electrodes attached to the limbs, or in some cases palms, feet or torso, when the students engage in a prohibited behavior. Both the children’s parents and a court must consent to the shocks. Michael P. Flammia, the lawyer for Rotenberg, defended the practice in an interview. “People want to believe positive interventions work even in the most extreme cases,” he said. “If they did, that is all we would use. Many of these kids come in on massive dosages of antipsychotic drugs, so doped up that they are almost comatose. We get them off drugs and give their parents something very important: hope.” But for state officials, many behavior experts and even some former Rotenberg parents, the shock therapy at the school represents a dangerous, outdated approach to severe behavioral problems, reminiscent of the electric shock helmets used on some autistic patients into the 1980s and now discredited. They say Rotenberg does not use shock punishments only for dangerous self-mutilation, but rather for a wide variety of actions, including shouting profanities and spitting, which are known to be effectively treated with less extreme punishments. And critics of the school say that unlike the more widely known electroconvulsive therapy, which has been used successfully in cases of severe depression and is being used experimentally on severely autistic people, applying shock as a punishment is not widely supported by the scientific community. “People don’t use it anymore because they don’t need to. It is not the standard of care. There are alternative procedures that do not involve aversives like electronic shock,” said William Pelham, a behavioral specialist and director of the Center for Children and Families at the State University of New York at Buffalo. “And I am not talking about drugs as an alternative. I am talking about other behavioral treatments.” Still, the parents say the shocks are making a difference in their children’s lives as nothing else has. In 2006, after New York issued an immediate ban on electric shock for behavior modification, Ms. Handon was among the parents of more than 40 children who sued and won a court injunction to keep treatments going. In January, the state, which pays for treatment of all New York students at Rotenberg to age 21, enacted a new ban on the treatment for those students, to take effect in 2009; it also set new restrictions on who can begin the therapy in the interim. But the parents amended their suit, and a trial beginning in 2008 will decide the issue. “The point is that at Rotenberg, they still manage Crystal to control what she needs to do,” Ms. Handon said. “Her behaviors were not acceptable for society. Now I think I can bring her home.” The Rotenberg Center, which says it is the only school in the nation using electric shock, has been the subject of many critical reports by the news media and state investigators. Just last week, Massachusetts investigators issued a report saying a child at the school was shocked 77 times in three hours last summer as a result of a prank. The report, by the Department of Early Education and Care, found that a former student pretending to be a school official demanded the punishment of two students, and that counselors administered shocks without double-checking. One of the children suffered first-degree burns. “Our kids should not be sent there, and we will act immediately,” Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York said in response to the report. But unlike many special education schools, Rotenberg, as a matter of policy, never rejects or expels a child, except an adjudicated sex offender. As a result, it continues to get referrals from around the nation. Currently, nearly 100 of the more than 200 children at Rotenberg are from New York State, down from roughly 140 in 2006. The school says that it also has children from 10 other states, including California and Illinois, and that it has had students as young as 10. At a cost of about $228,000 per child per year, the students receive a range of therapies, including, in the case of more than 40 of the New Yorkers, the use of electric shocks. Just how painful those shocks are has been an area of particular debate. Technically, the lowest shock given by Rotenberg is roughly twice what pain researchers have said is tolerable for most humans, said James Eason, a professor of biomedical engineering at Washington and Lee University. The highest shock given by Rotenberg is three times the lowest amount. The lawyer for Rotenberg, Mr. Flammia, said the current has to hurt to work. He described the highest shock as “a hard pinch.” But a former teacher from the school, who asked not to be named because he signed a confidentiality agreement as a condition of employment and fears he could be sued for speaking to a reporter, said he had seen children scream and writhe on the floor from the shock. Mr. Flammia called the accusation false. If a teacher saw such things, he should have reported it, the lawyer said. No teacher ever has made that sort of report, he added. Ms. Handon said she does not care what the critics say, not even those perturbed by the report of the prank shocking. She said her fierce loyalty to her daughter’s school was not hard to understand. Crystal developed slowly as a baby. She was eventually found to be mentally retarded and placed in special education. But by the time she was 13, the local schools could no longer hold her and Ms. Handon, a divorced mother of five, was having troubles as well. She described her daughter as “the sweetest person,” a child obsessed with Michael Jackson who loves to dance to “Billie Jean.” But Crystal’s condition led to peculiar antisocial behavior, her mother said. Even after her adolescence, she would strip off her clothes and park herself naked in the living room. She would bite herself on her arms and legs until she bled, and then would peel off the scabs until she left deep black scars. Then there were her rages. Denied something, she would throw furniture and shatter windows. Once, she ripped the door frames out of the plaster walls of her family’s apartment. “I was always afraid the landlord was going to evict us,” Ms. Handon remembered — not an inconsequential fear for a woman like her who had once been homeless. As a young teenager, Crystal was moved to residential placements, but even those special education schools could barely handle her. They would use restraints and psychotropic drugs. Crystal grew to 180 pounds and was “so doped up,” her mother said, “that she could barely walk straight.” When she was 16, education officials recommended Rotenberg. At first Ms. Handon wouldn’t consider a place that used shock as therapy, but over time she began to see advantages. Rotenberg would take her child off the medicines. They would punish her only for behavior in her control, like spitting, not for bedwetting. And while the shock hurt, Ms. Handon said she believed it caused no permanent damage or health risk In their lawsuit, the parents contend that none of the other options have been satisfactory and that other schools have simply drugged their children to remove the bad behavior, without teaching them how to behave differently. The state’s perspective, however, is that Rotenberg uses shocks too capriciously, that shocks are used to curb trivial behaviors, like cursing, and that positive reinforcement would often provide similar results. “The use of electronic skin shock conditioning devices as used at J.R.C. raises health and safety concerns,” state evaluators wrote in 2006 after a surprise inspection. They also “compromised” the “privacy and dignity” of the students, the evaluators wrote. Ms. Handon, however, does not share these qualms. She said she likes the fact that the school will let her visit any time, unannounced. From her computer, she can monitor Crystal’s progress. One green bar chart keeps track of the number of times her daughter has engaged in prohibited behavior; another, the number of times she was given a shock. In the past month, it appears that her daughter has been given shocks only four times, down from the 200 a month she received at first. To Ms. Handon, this is a sign that her daughter is learning to control herself. When Crystal is too old for special education, her mother plans to keep her at home for good. In the meantime, however, she says her daughter is having too much fun. “She loves that place,” Ms. Handon said. “If she knows she is returning from vacation on a Monday, on Saturday she will pack her bags and start begging to go.”

Judge Rotenberg Educational Center
Electroshock Therapy
Special Education (Handicapped)
Education and Schools
Spitzer Eliot L


Small Merchants Gain Large Presence on Web

Abstract: MOM-AND-POP retailers have helplessly stood by over the last decade as big-box merchants steamrolled over them. Online, though, small merchants are not going down without a fight. The number of small- and medium-size retailers selling online has swelled in the last two years, from 21 percent to 32 percent, according to a survey by IDC, a consulting firm. Aided by less expensive and more sophisticated technology, stores like RealmDekor.com , CleanAirGardening.com and SitStay.com are competing with retailers as well as bigger sites like Amazon . These businesses lack the huge marketing budgets of their bigger peers, of course, but they are unearthing cheap advertising methods that, in some cases, help them compete with million-dollar promotions. The retailer of quirky home goods, RealmDekor.com, has experienced occasional sales increases not because of catalog shipments or television commercials, but because it formed relationships with bloggers and posted its products on new “social shopping sites” like ThisNext.com and StyleHive.com . “People started posting about my goods and it snowballed from there,” said Lisa Mathisen, RealmDekor’s owner. “I know people think these sites are new and underground, but they’re becoming more mainstream. Even my mother checks them out to find gifts.” Social shopping sites emerged last year as places for dedicated shoppers to exchange tips on popular items or designers. Tens of thousands of users list their raves and vie for trendsetter supremacy, while the site owners collect dollars for referring customers to retailers. Gordon Gould, chief executive of ThisNext.com, said the site features more than one hundred thousand products, with a majority of the items coming from smaller retailers. “Social shopping sites help the smaller retailers surface their products and open people up to their specific point of view,” he said. CleanAirGardening.com, an online retailer of environmentally friendly gardening supplies based in Dallas, recently began posting product demonstration videos on YouTube and other sites, along with links to the site. According to Lars Hundley, the company’s owner, visitors who arrive from video-sharing sites purchase goods 20 percent more often than those who come from elsewhere. Most online shoppers are so experienced that they feel safer venturing away from Amazon to buy from lesser-known sites, said Ray Boggs, an IDC analyst. Part of the reason, perhaps, is that the Web sites now built by many small merchants lack the amateurish feel of a few years ago. Companies like Yahoo , Amazon and thousands of independent Web developers have become considerably better at building slick sites for merchants, sometimes within a few minutes, for less than $100. Yahoo Store merchants, for instance, pay $40 to $300 a month, and a commission of 0.75 percent to 1 percent on each sale. Merchants on the Amazon WebStore pay $60 monthly, along with a 7 percent commission. Jimmy Duvall, who oversees the Yahoo Stores service for Yahoo’s small business division, said the company recently introduced a series of enhancements, intended to simplify the site-building process and improve merchandising. For instance, Yahoo merchants can now automatically offer a shirt to match a pair of slacks a customer bought previously, or a tablecloth to complement silverware a customer placed into the shopping cart. (In retail parlance, these techniques are called cross-selling or up-selling.) “They can do some pretty advanced merchandising now, without having to dedicate staff to picking items,” Mr. Duvall said. In some respects, Yahoo’s cross-selling improvements are a response to Amazon’s entry into the market last year. The Amazon WebStore service began with technology that mimics Amazon.com’s recommendation feature, which displays the purchases of customers who searched for items similar to those on a given page. In Amazon’s latest quarterly results, 32 percent of the goods sold on Amazon’s sites were offered by other merchants. Those numbers could climb after a technology failure by Yahoo last week left its 45,000 merchants without functioning Web sites for much of the big Cyber Monday holiday shopping day. Matt Williams, who oversees the Amazon WebStore division, said his company had calls from Yahoo clients who were looking to transfer their stores quickly to his service. Like Yahoo, Amazon helps its clients attract customers by listing its products on the site, and by helping ensure the stores appear on search engines. Such help is critical for beginners, but for more seasoned merchants hoping to reach the upper tiers of online retailing, it is not enough. SitStay.com, an online retailer of goods for dog owners, grew steadily since its began in 1996. It now operates from a 20,000-square-foot facility in Lincoln, Neb. The owners of the 13-employee company, Darcie and Kent Krueger, invested slightly less than $100,000 in new Web site technology from I.B.M. that, starting last month, allowed them to more quickly post sales and product recommendations, among other things. But because the new technology required SitStay to replace all of its old Web pages with new ones, search engines no longer rank the site’s products near the top of the results. Because few consumers click to the second or third page of search results, the effect was significant. Bigger merchants like Petco and Petsmart, meanwhile, can easily outbid SitStay for prominent ads. “And more and more sites are coming out all the time, some with a lot of money they can invest in their search ads,” Mr. Krueger said. “So we’ve got everything in place to handle a lot more customers. Now, we’ve just got to find ways to bring them to us.”

IDC
Retail Stores and Trade
Computers and the Internet
Advertising and Marketing
Amazon.com Inc
YouTube.com
Yahoo Inc