Miguel Cabrera Helps Tigers Overpower Yankees

Abstract: Last season, when Texas won the American League pennant, Josh Hamilton of the Rangers was the league’s most valuable player. Hamilton, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, traveled most of the time with Johnny Narron, a personal coach assigned to monitor his behavior and be his companion. This season, a potential candidate for the same award is in similar circumstances. He is Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera, who hit two of the game’s seven home runs Sunday to help the Tigers beat the Yankees , 10-7 , at Yankee Stadium before 40,574 fans on a sunny afternoon. Last season, Cabrera finished second in the M.V.P. voting after starting 2010 by acknowledging he had problems with alcohol and said he was addressing them. But after a successful season at the plate, Cabrera showed up at training camp this year after a February arrest in Florida for suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol. So the Tigers and Cabrera’s agents decided to give Cabrera a personal minder: Raul Gonzalez, a 20-year baseball veteran who uses the locker next to Cabrera and travels with the team. The returns on the field have so far been good. Cabrera hit a pair of two-run homers against Yankees starter Phil Hughes (0-1). Cabrera also singled in the ninth inning Sunday. He went 5 for 11 and drove in five runs in the three-game season-opening series. Last season, Cabrera hit .328, with 38 homers and 126 runs batted in. The Yankees’ designated hitter, Jorge Posada , also had two home runs, both off starter Max Scherzer, who won despite allowing six runs and nine hits in five innings. Scherzer (1-0) surrendered four home runs on a day when the wind was blowing out. The Tigers have been keeping such a close watch on Cabrera this season that they are telling reporters that he will talk only about “baseball subjects.” They have not permitted any interviews with Gonzalez. When the television broadcaster Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports tried to interview Cabrera about his personal life before Saturday’s national game of the week, Rosenthal was rebuffed by the Tigers, he reported on the network’s telecast. After Sunday’s game, a public-relations person stood near Cabrera as he gave interviews in English and Spanish. As is often the case when Cabrera is in a good mood, he spoke softly and smiled frequently before putting on a gray suit, a pinstriped shirt and a blue necktie. “It’s good to beat a tough team like the Yankees,” Cabrera said. “You score a run, and they score the run back. You can’t make mistakes against these guys.” As Brennan Boesch emerged from the shower, Cabrera was still in the clubhouse, one of the last players to leave. Upon seeing Boesch, who had four hits and four R.B.I., clad in only a wet towel, Cabrera walked in front of him, smiled and told a reporter: “Take my picture and tweet it.” Boesch smiled. The tone of conversation was much different in February, when according to a sheriff’s report in St. Lucie County, Fla., Cabrera told the arresting officer: “Do you know who I am? I play for the Detroit Tigers!” The police also said Cabrera drank from a bottle of Scotch in his Range Rover and repeatedly refused to cooperate, at one point directing an obscene gesture at the police, even going so far as to tell the police to shoot him. Cabrera is listed as 6 feet 4 inches and 240 pounds, but he appears somewhat larger this season. After Sunday’s game, as Cabrera dressed, Gonzalez waited for him, wearing sunglasses and a tailored suit. It was the end of a road series, so Cabrera walked about the locker room, handing out tips and handshakes to the clubhouse assistants. Then, with his guardian following, he departed the building, a big-time pro, on the road and on the go, at the end of a good afternoon, playing games one day at a time. INSIDE PITCH Yankees starter Phil Hughes worked only four innings Sunday in his first appearance of the season, giving up five runs and five hits and throwing 9o pitches. “He was up in the zone, Manager Joe Girardi said. “His stuff wasn’t real sharp.” Bartolo Colon came in relief of Hughes, throwing 69 pitches over four innings. He allowed four runs and six hits, but struck out five. ... Jorge Posada hit his first two-run homer in the second, and his second in the fifth. The Yankees also got third-inning solo shots from Mark Teixeira (his third of the season) and Robinson Cano .

Baseball
Detroit Tigers
New York Yankees
Cabrera Miguel
Hughes Phil
Posada Jorge
Teixeira Mark
Cano Robinson
Boesch Brennan


Salome Gluecksohn-Waelsch, 100, Geneticist, Is Dead

Abstract: Salome Gluecksohn-Waelsch, a geneticist who had fled Nazi Germany to pursue her studies and whose subsequent research in New York shed light on fundamental questions of development in mammals, died Nov. 7 at her home in Manhattan. She was 100. Her death was confirmed by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, where Dr. Waelsch had been a professor emerita of molecular genetics. In 1993, Dr. Waelsch was awarded the National Medal of Science for her work in developmental genetics. More than half a century earlier, as a newly arrived researcher at Columbia University, Dr. Waelsch (pronounced welsh) and others began to look at the effects of naturally occurring genetic mutations in mouse embryos. They studied in particular a group of genes, known as the t-complex, that govern the development of mouse tails. The scientists were interested in mice born without tails and in other mutations that sometimes result in lethal spinal defects. Working with the geneticist L. C. Dunn and others, Dr. Waelsch described mutations affecting the spine and skeleton and observed other inherited abnormalities as they appeared. In papers published in the 1940s and ’50s, the scientists were able to “define the mutations genetically, how they acted on the mouse’s development and related to the larger genetic map of the t-complex,” said Rudolf Jaenisch, a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The findings, Dr. Jaenisch added, have had “broad implications for mammalian genetics” and helped explain the causes of inherited defects found in species other than laboratory mice. In its broadest effect, the research applied genetics to the field of embryology and “brought forth a new field, that of developmental genetics” — a field that “Salome Waelsch was really responsible for putting into people’s minds,” said Lee M. Silver, a professor of molecular biology and public policy at Princeton. Dr. Waelsch later investigated the inheritance of different types of hemoglobin in mice and other mammals. She and others also studied a lethal chromosomal defect that disrupts the normal function of the mouse liver. In 1993, still at work on mice at the age of 85, Dr. Waelsch explained an element of her research this way: “With fertilization, cells divide, forming exact copies of themselves, but then at some point become blood cells, nerve cells and so on.” She continued: “How does it happen?” Salome Gluecksohn was born on Oct. 6, 1907, in Danzig, Germany . In 1932, she earned her doctorate in embryology at the University of Freiburg but left Germany shortly thereafter, one in a tide of Jewish academics in flight from Nazism. She became an American citizen in 1938. Dr. Waelsch was a research associate at Columbia from 1936 to 1953. She then joined Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where she became a professor of anatomy. From 1963 to 1976, she was chairman of Einstein’s department of genetics. Although she officially retired in 1978, Dr. Waelsch continued her research into the 1990s. Her husband, Heinrich Waelsch, a neurochemist at Columbia, died in 1966. Her first husband, Rudolf Schoenheimer, a biochemist, died in the 1940s. Dr. Waelsch is survived by a daughter, Naomi Kerest, of Block Island, R.I.; a son, Peter, of Melrose, Mass.; three grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. In 1982, Freiburg, her alma mater, recognized Dr. Waelsch with an honorary doctorate marking the 50th anniversary of her graduation, an award she accepted in absentia and with reservations. “I regret the tendency to forget and deny the tremendous human and political upheavals of the past half-century and to celebrate anniversaries as though nothing had happened,” she wrote to the university’s deans. “To give expression to this regret is my duty towards all of those who suffered under the Nazi regime.”

Germany
Genetics and Heredity
Deaths (Obituaries)
Gluecksohn-Waelsch Salome


An American Household Name in Venezuela

Abstract: CARACAS, Venezuela — Squinting under the Caribbean sun, Buddy Bailey reminisced about a minor-league odyssey that began in the Appalachian League and took him to places like Durham, N.C.; Kingsport, Tenn.; and Pawtucket, R.I.; far from the baseball diamonds of Venezuela . But nowhere along this meandering career as a baseball manager has Mr. Bailey, 52, found the success he has here. His team, Tigres de Aragua , has won five championships this decade in Venezuela’s professional league, where the season runs from October to January. This record makes him a household name in this baseball-obsessed nation, worshiped by some, reviled by others but ignored by no one with a notion of the game. Mr. Bailey’s fame also makes him among the rarest of persons here: an American who has attained public success and admiration in President Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela. His feat stands out in a country where the government makes distancing itself from the United States and quarreling with Washington central features of its existence. “At first it was like, ‘What in the world are you doing?’ ” said Mr. Bailey, referring to the reaction of family and friends when he moved to Venezuela in 2002. “But baseball is baseball,” he explained. “Everywhere I go, the pitcher’s mound is at 60 feet 6 inches, and the bases are 90 feet, so it’s the same everywhere.” Baseball does seem, at first, immune to the deterioration of political ties between Caracas and Washington. American scouts still venture to villages deep in the interior to find talented ballplayers. Venezuelans like Johan Santana are still plucked from obscurity to become stars in the United States. The exchange goes both ways. Some aspiring American players and managers, going back at least to the 1960s when Pete Rose played second base for Leones del Caracas, still spend their winters here polishing their skills and earning salaries that rival or top those in the American minor leagues. This season, the Leones will be in the playoffs under another American manager, Dave Hudgens, a veteran who worked with the Oakland A’s. Even the language of Venezuelan “béisbol,” introduced here by Cuban émigrés in the 1890s, seems phonetically impervious to politics. A strike is still “estraik.” A hit is “jit.” A foul is “faul.” A home run is “jonrón.” And a manager, as any Venezuelan fan will tell you, is simply a “manager.” Still, Venezuela has few managers quite like Mr. Bailey, who will also manage the Daytona Cubs in Florida this year. He chews tobacco as if he were still in his hometown, Amherst, near Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. He refrains from peppering his southern American English with Caracas slang, even when he hauls his stocky frame onto the field to argue with umpires. And in a country that prizes an informal approach to many aspects of daily life, Mr. Bailey is anything but informal. He does not befriend the players in his dugout. He does not make time for small talk. Sportswriters here scoff at his jovial sounding nickname, knowing that behind it lies his given name, Welby Sheldon Bailey. “Maybe he’s not very friendly, maybe he’s not very easygoing with his teammates, but he’s a leader who knows how to win,” said Alfredo Villasmil, a baseball columnist for the newspaper Últimas Noticias . “Since baseball is a religion to Venezuelans, that’s what matters in this country, no matter what your politics are.” Such are the passions surrounding him that Mr. Bailey has various Facebook pages devoted to him here. One is for those fans who think he is Venezuela’s best manager , with many of them expressing sadness last week after the Tigres lost their chance to be in January’s playoffs. Another is for the fans of opposing teams, who cannot stand him . Yet another is for fans who want him to manage the national baseball team instead of Luis Sojo, a former major leaguer who was part of four World Champion teams with the Yankees and who held the job this year. Not long ago, before Mr. Chávez began nationalizing foreign-owned companies and expelling some Americans, including missionaries and Drug Enforcement Administration agents, the atmosphere for those from the United States willing to try their luck in Venezuela was far more welcoming. For instance, Robert Moses, New York’s master builder, helped design the highway system in Caracas. Nelson Rockefeller financed agricultural projects. Geography encouraged this engagement: an oil tanker leaving the Venezuelan port of Maracaibo is closer to ports in the northeastern United States than is a ship in Galveston, Tex. Caracas — with its baseball stadium, gas guzzlers and shopping malls — felt more American than almost any other city in Latin America. Americans from various walks of life, though largely in the oil industry, made up the largest postwar American expatriate community in the world at one point, according to the historian Judith Ewell. Those days, eclipsed by Mr. Chávez’s socialist-inspired revolution and soaring levels of violent crime, are gone. But baseball remains. The game, too, has taken some blows. Some major league teams have shut down training academies in Venezuela. A regional governor threatened to nationalize a leading team, the Navegantes del Magallanes, before Mr. Chávez, a Magallanes fan, stepped in to reject the idea. The New York Mets expressed alarm about the personal security of a catching prospect, Josh Thole, playing this year with Leones del Caracas, after the mother of a former Mets pitcher, Victor Zambrano, was kidnapped before being rescued in a commando-style raid. It was only the most recent example of crimes aimed at professional players or their families. “Obviously, you read about it, certain players, or certain people being kidnapped or carjacked,” said Mr. Bailey in an interview as the sun set before a night game pitting the Tigres against Tiburones de La Guaira. He said Maracay, a city of army garrisons where he lives, was calmer than Caracas and other big cities. “It’s a big military town, so there’s protection and the security is a little bit better,” he said. Still, few events in the world of professional sports in the United States approach the intensity of regular season games in the Venezuelan league, according to Mr. Bailey and other Americans playing here. Some compare the Venezuelan games to a traditional rivalry in American sports, like an Alabama-Auburn college football game. And many in the stands sip not beer but whiskey, adding to the passions. They spew vulgar epithets without quarter, sometimes touching off brawls. It is an environment in which Mr. Bailey has learned, in his own way, to thrive. In a society in which so many values have been turned on their head, he described a personal philosophy that sounds almost revolutionary here. “If you’re being paid to be a professional, you have to put your nose to the grindstone and go hard all the time,” he said. “I believe in hard work.”


Even E.U. Having Trouble on Climate Agreement

Abstract: BRUSSELS — Negotiations to save the planet from catastrophic climate change are heading for trouble, five weeks before the U.N. conference in Copenhagen to tackle the problem. The European Union has been at the forefront in pressing for binding, internationally monitored reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and for securing the financing from industrialized countries to help developing nations switch to clean energy. “We can now look the rest of the world in the eyes and say ‘we have done our job. We are ready for Copenhagen’,” the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, said Friday after E.U. leaders papered over differences on how to finance environmental policies in the developing world. But even in Europe, which adopted ambitious goals last year to cut the output of carbon dioxide by at least 20 percent by 2020, signs of climate fatigue are setting in. This is partly because the Europeans have raised unrealistic expectations for a global treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol on climate change when it expires in 2012. The United States never ratified or implemented the 1997 Kyoto deal, nor did the main emerging countries. The unresolved struggle in the U.S. Congress over a climate bill and the reluctance of China and India to accept binding international curbs on carbon emissions mean the most that can be expected in Copenhagen is a political agreement based largely on voluntary national pledges. And even that is uncertain. So the European Union risks being stranded on its moral high ground. The wrangling among the leaders of the 27 E.U. countries last week over how to share the cost of helping poorer nations fight climate change was a glimpse of the discord likely during the U.N. negotiations in Copenhagen from Dec. 7 through Dec. 18, in which 193 countries will participate. The Europeans agreed that it would cost about €100 billion, or $150 billion, a year by 2020 to help developing countries reduce carbon emissions and that as much as half of that sum would have to come from public money, mostly from the industrialized world. But when it came to deciding who would pay how much within the E.U., they stalled, largely because of Europe’s own wealth gap. Poland led a cluster of nine Central and East European countries that said they could not afford to contribute in proportion to their emissions, which are high because of their dependence on coal-fired power stations. They demanded that the Union apportion the burden instead on the basis of national income. That would leave wealthier West European states like Germany, Britain and France bearing more of the cost. Unable to resolve the dispute, the E.U.’s leaders decided to create a working group to examine members’ “ability to pay.” The Germans, the biggest contributors to the E.U. budget, are worried that Europe is seen as a soft touch. Chancellor Angela Merkel opposed setting a firm figure for European climate aid but said the Europeans would have to pay about a third of the cost of public financing if there were a deal in Copenhagen. Many in Berlin feel that Europe has made enough concessions in advance and that it is time for the other major players — particularly the United States, China and India — to do their part. There is also concern that the U.S. Congress, which is struggling to create a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions, will be unnerved by European estimates of the scale of international financing required to pay for a global deal. The administration of President Barack Obama has requested $1.2 billion to finance efforts to reduce emissions in the developing world. The E.U. estimate implies a cost to the United States of at least 10 times that much. The Europeans papered over another internal dispute about how to shield energy-guzzling industries like chemicals, glass, concrete and steel from unfair competition from countries that do not curb carbon emissions. The E.U. has agreed in principle to give free carbon emission allowances to those energy-intensive sectors exposed to global competition, instead of making them buy pollution permits at auctions, in the absence of a comprehensive climate deal. But France has led calls for Europe to go further and levy a carbon tariff on imports from countries with lower environmental standards, an idea that E.U. critics like Britain and Sweden consider protectionist. So, if the Europeans cannot agree among themselves on how to share the burden, what hope is there for reaching a global accord at the Copenhagen meeting?


Brooklyn Senator Told Friend Not to Show Check Register to Investigators

Abstract: After a witness testified on Tuesday that he was urged by State Senator John L. Sampson to withhold evidence, prosecutors presented the jury with the conversation itself, which had been secretly recorded by the government. In the wiretapped conversation with the witness — Edul Ahmad, a friend of Mr. Sampson’s who was cooperating with the government — the senator described a check register that the prosecutors say documented improper payments as a “problem” and urged his friend to say nothing about it to investigators. Charged with witness tampering, conspiracy to obstruct justice and other offenses, Mr. Sampson, a Democrat from Canarsie, is on trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, and the evidence presented on Tuesday was a key part of the prosecution’s case. In his testimony, Mr. Ahmad spoke of Mr. Sampson’s efforts to prevent investigators from obtaining a check register that listed a 2006 loan of $188,500 from Mr. Ahmad to Mr. Sampson. Prosecutors say Mr. Sampson used the loan to repay money he had stolen. In exchange, Mr. Sampson promised to provide political favors to Mr. Ahmad, who has testified that he made the loan to help preserve his relationship with the senator. At the direction of the government investigators, Mr. Ahmad told Mr. Sampson that the check register had been subpoenaed, when in fact it had not been, Mr. Ahmad testified. Since a judge dropped two embezzlement counts , the case against Mr. Sampson has shifted from accusations that he embezzled $440,000 of state funds to charges that he sought to cover up the theft. Mr. Sampson’s lawyer, Nathaniel H. Akerman, has said that his client was entrapped by people cooperating with the government. “This case is about overreach and government entrapment,” Mr. Akerman has said. Mr. Ahmad, who was charged with mortgage fraud and released on bail in July 2011, began cooperating with the government in the case against Mr. Sampson in November of that year by agreeing to record in-person and telephone conversations that he had with Mr. Sampson. Excerpts from the recorded conversations were played in court on Monday and Tuesday, including one encounter between Mr. Sampson and Mr. Ahmad at the Vetro Restaurant in Howard Beach, Queens, on Feb. 22, 2012. Mr. Ahmad testified on Tuesday that he met Mr. Sampson in the lounge area of the restaurant and showed him a copy of the register that listed the $188,500 loan to Mr. Sampson. He said that he told Mr. Sampson that the government had subpoenaed all of his records and then asked the senator what he should do with the check register document. Mr. Sampson said, “That’s a problem,” adding that it “opens up a can of worms,” according to the transcript and Mr. Ahmad’s testimony. When Mr. Ahmad asked the senator what he should do about the check register, Mr. Sampson said, “I don’t think you show it to them,” according to the transcript. “Don’t say you don’t have it. Just say you don’t know,” Mr. Sampson said. “I don’t want you to lie, just say you don’t know.” Mr. Sampson then offered Mr. Ahmad some possible explanations if investigators asked about the check register, including that the money was payment for many years of legal representation by Mr. Sampson for Mr. Ahmad, which Mr. Ahmad said was not true. Mr. Ahmad testified that at one point in the approximately 45-minute conversation Mr. Sampson took the copy of the check register and put it in his jacket pocket. Just a few minutes after the two men parted, Mr. Sampson called Mr. Ahmad and asked him if he was “making copies of everything” and Mr. Ahmad replied, as he was instructed by the government investigators, that the check register he brought to the restaurant was the original, according to the transcript of the recorded conversation. While Mr. Sampson again told Mr. Ahmad that he needed to “make copies of everything,” he never returned the copy of the check register that listed the loan, Mr. Ahmad said.

Brooklyn
Witness
Edul Ahmad
Politics
Embezzlement
Fraud
John L Sampson
New York
Wiretapping Eavesdropping
Canarsie Brooklyn


Streelman Lifts U.S. Team

Abstract: Kevin Streelman, representing the United States for the first time, birdied five of the first six holes on the back nine for a share of the first-round lead at the World Cup in Melbourne, Australia, with Thomas Bjorn of Denmark. Each is at five-under-par 66. The team of Streelman and Matt Kuchar was tied for the team lead with Denmark. ■ Morgan Hoffman took the first-round lead at the Pebble Beach Invitational, shooting a seven-under 65 at Spyglass Hill. (AP)


BP Makes Deep Concessions in Agreement With Russian Partner

Abstract: MOSCOW — In a deal that will allow BP to keep a crucial asset, but at a cost of ceding some control, the company came to an agreement with its Russian partners Thursday over its joint oil venture here, ending months of acrimony and threats. In the end, BP agreed to dismiss the American chief executive it had appointed to head the joint venture and give some board seats to its Russian partners. In exchange, BP will retain its stake in the joint venture, TNK-BP, and with it, access to the large oil fields of Siberia. Although BP ceded to every demand from its partners, analysts said the outcome could have been worse for the company. Indeed, for months it looked as if BP would lose all or part of its Russian assets in a forced sale to a state company. Now that prospect looks less likely. But the relief is relative. “Just like when somebody comes and puts a gun to your back and says, ‘Your wallet or your life,’ and you are glad you got out with your life,” Caius Rapanu, chief analyst at Kit Finance in Moscow said in a telephone interview. Both the Russian oil giant Yukos and Shell’s Sakhalin Island development were part of forced sales to state companies. BP’s stock climbed more than 3 percent on news of the compromise. Though BP was compelled to make concessions, senior Russian officials were quick to cast the deal as a positive signal to Western investors in the wake of the war in Georgia, in a move meant to counter a slide in the Russian stock market and in investor confidence. But the resolution of the conflict — for now at least — also underlines Russia’s significant sway over Western interests, 17 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its joining the world economy. Like China, another country that sometimes falls from favor politically, trade has made it integral to the profits of many American and European companies, even outside oil and gas. Boeing and Airbus, for example, rely on Russia for more than 50 percent of the titanium in their airplanes, including such critical parts as the landing gear on the new 787 Dreamliner, scheduled to make its maiden flights this fall. “Russia wants to have an open economy, believe it or not,” Roland Nash, head of research at Renaissance Capital, said. “Russia really wants to have foreign investment.” Since the war in Georgia, though, relations with the West have grown increasingly contentious. The first warnings of a possible trade war came soon after the guns went quiet. Russia bowed out of negotiations to join the World Trade Organization and will remain the world’s largest economy that is not part of the group. Frozen chicken thighs, a major American export to Russia, quickly rose to the attention of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, who said suppliers including Tyson Chicken of Arkansas would be banned, ostensibly on health grounds. The Bush administration signaled it would halt work on a deal to allow Russia to export nuclear reactor fuel to the United States. Yet current customers of Russian nuclear reactor fuel, including Switzerland, France and Germany, did not raise the prospect of halting this business. Russia’s Tvel company supplies 17 percent of the world’s low-enriched uranium fuel, mostly to Eastern Europe, China and India. Thanks to globalization, Avisma, a formerly closed military plant in the Ural Mountains, now supplies titanium to both Boeing and Airbus, and is a major supplier to the jet engine makers Pratt & Whitney, General Electric and Rolls-Royce. “Severing the business would be catastrophic for either side,” Marina V. Alekseyenkova, an industrial analyst at Renaissance Capital in Moscow, said. “There is mutual dependence.” The European Union, which has a generally softer line on Russia than the United States does, accounts for 50 percent of Russia’s trade, principally gas and oil; the United States accounts for 5 percent. But Russia’s vulnerabilities are longer term. The country is pursing an economic diversification plan called 2020, hoping to escape the boom and bust commodity cycles that plagued the Soviet Union and Russia for decades. To do so, its businesses must both globalize and attract foreign investment and expertise into Russia. Energy revenue now accounts for 70 percent of exports and 60 percent of the budget. The oil wealth, however, has made Russia a major buyer of dollar bonds for its Central Bank and sovereign wealth funds , including bonds of mortgage backed securities. The country has the largest reserves after China and Japan, and dumping these bonds could weaken an already troubled American banking system. “I don’t think Russia would suffer much,” Ivan Tchakarov, vice president for emerging market research at Lehman Brothers, said in a telephone interview of the outcome of any trade war after the real war. “The West would suffer more.” Under the BP deal, the American chief executive, Robert Dudley, will resign before the end of the year. He will be replaced by a director nominated by BP and approved by the board under a memorandum of understanding BP signed with the consortium of Russian billionaires that owns 50 percent of the joint venture, known as TNK-BP. In addition, there will be three independent seats on the board, though how they will be appointed is unclear. BP and the Russians partners will each appoint four other representatives. The value to BP of retaining the licenses held by the joint venture could hardly be overestimated at a time when oil companies are struggling to find new reserves. TNK-BP is Russia’s third-largest oil producer and accounts for about a quarter of BP’s worldwide oil output. It is also one of Russia’s most high-profile foreign investments. Russian authorities said flatly the deal should signal to investors that Russia welcomes their business. “The participants in the talks arrived at an agreement on the level of shareholders, without the involvement of third parties, such as the government,” deputy prime minister Igor I. Sechin said in a statement released by the Russian partners. “This is the right signal to the whole market.” Mr. Sechin, when he was a member of Mr. Putin’s presidential administration, was seen as instrumental in the dismantling of Yukos. To be sure, businesses are still on edge. The RTS stock market dropped to a two-year low on Thursday. And the government’s bellicose tone is spooking investors, at a time when dropping oil prices are already making Russia a less attractive investment case. “They’ve thrown the rule book out the window,” said one banker, who did not want to be quoted criticizing the government. “Now they say, ‘If you don’t like it, what are you going to do about it?’ ” Many big investors were skeptical that this dispute was really over. “It’s a neat compromise, but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating,” said Alan Beaney, a senior fund manager at Principal Investment Management in Sevenoaks, England, said of the BP settlement. “Whether the new C.E.O. will satisfy both sides is a big question,” he added. “In essence it’s a good company, but do you want to be caught in between those two sides? I don’t think we’ve seen the end of it yet.”

Russia
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
BP Plc
Appointments and Executive Changes


Regaining Swagger, Tigers Force a Game 5

Abstract: DETROIT — The Detroit Tigers slug, period. Manager Jim Leyland never asks his power-laden team to manufacture runs, because it is not its nature. So when the Tigers collectively slump, like the spell that began the final week of the regular season, they look listless. And there is not much Leyland can do about it. On Tuesday, Detroit trailed by three runs to Oakland in the fifth inning and faced elimination in Game 4 of the American League division series when the long slumber ended. Jhonny Peralta, the suspended shortstop turned left fielder, tied the score with a three-run homer, Detroit’s first in eight games. Victor Martinez added a controversial homer in the seventh, the first of five runs Detroit scored its final two innings. And with relief help from the 21-game winner Max Scherzer, who pitched two tension-filled innings on three days’ rest and escaped a bases-loaded, none-out jam in the eighth, Detroit won a wild one, 8-6. The series now goes back to Oakland for a deciding Game 5 on Thursday, with Justin Verlander — who shut out the A’s in last year’s deciding game — set to start again. “Nobody said it was going to be easy,” said Martinez, who had three hits Tuesday, a day after his ninth-inning shouting match with A’s closer Grant Balfour. “It’s always good when you put runs on the board. Now we go to Oakland and play another game.” The A’s rookie starter Dan Straily took a no-hitter to the fifth before the Tigers rallied. That foiled the prediction of the 78-year-old Oakland owner, Lewis Wolff, who told USA Today before Game 3: “I’m confident we don’t have to go back to Oakland. I think we’re going to win it here.” And it gave A’s fans, and maybe a few players, troublesome thoughts. Since 2000, Oakland has won only one of seven playoff series, losing five consecutive division series Game 5s. “It’s very frustrating,” right fielder Josh Reddick said. “We go up with a 3-0 lead, we feel like we’ve got a great chance to clinch this ballgame the way Dan was throwing, and one pitch turns the game around. But we can’t dwell on it. As hard it’s going to be, we’ve got a long enough flight to let it slide. That’s what we’re going to try to do.” The Detroit breakout ended more than a week of feebleness. In seven games going into Tuesday, the Tigers had scored 10 runs and hit .202 with no home runs while being shut out twice and no-hit by the Miami Marlins’ Henderson Alvarez. Before Tuesday, Detroit had scored in only 2 of 27 innings in this series while batting .219. Looking for a live bat, Leyland gave Peralta a second consecutive start in left field. Peralta’s 50-game suspension for his involvement with the Biogenesis anti-aging clinic in Coral Gables, Fla., cost him the shortstop job, but Detroit added him to the postseason roster for his hitting. Image Max Scherzer after getting out of a jam in the eighth inning. He earned the victory. Credit Leon Halip/Getty Images “I feel grateful for the opportunity,” he said. Peralta singled in two of Detroit’s three runs in Game 3. And Tuesday, after Prince Fielder and Martinez singled in the fifth for Detroit’s first hits, Peralta homered to left on a full count. The Tigers had gone 72 innings without a homer. The score was still 3-3 when Scherzer ran out of the bullpen for the seventh. With one out and a runner on second, Coco Crisp singled in the go-ahead run off Scherzer with the third of his four hits. Martinez tied the score in the bottom of the inning with an opposite-field drive to right off reliever Sean Doolittle that was out of the reach of Reddick. A fan in a Tigers sweatshirt reached over the railing, which is above the yellow home run line, and touched the ball. The home run ruling stood after video review. “It was clear he was not going to catch the ball, so it was clearly going to be a home run,” the umpire crew chief Gary Darling said. “There wasn’t any other evidence on replay to turn it any other way.” Reddick said: “Really nothing I can do but be mad and upset at the fan that actually did it. I just hope Victor Martinez paid him decent money for it.” It was the first run allowed by Oakland’s bullpen in the series. More runs followed after Peralta doubled. With two out and two on, the struggling Austin Jackson — 1 for 14 in the series with 10 strikeouts — blooped an 0-2 pitch into right for the go-ahead single. “I’m just glad it fell,” Jackson said. Scherzer wondered if Leyland might pull him in the eighth after Brandon Moss walked and Yoenis Cespedes doubled. Instead, Leyland ordered Scherzer to intentionally walk Seth Smith to load the bases with no outs. “I hated to load them up,” Leyland said, “but Smith has been hot and Max is a strikeout guy, so you take your shot.” Reddick, anticipating a fastball, struck out on a full-count changeup. And, Stephen Vogt struck out, too. The pinch-hitter Alberto Callaspo lined a fastball to center, hard enough for Jackson to snag. Detroit scored three more in the eighth to counteract a shaky ninth from Joaquin Benoit, who gave up two runs. “Maybe it’s not the ninth inning,” Scherzer said, “but that’s the stuff you dream of.”

Detroit Tigers
Jim Leyland
Jhonny Peralta
Max Scherzer
Coco Crisp
Baseball
Oakland Athletics


Price Increase for Knicks Tickets May Drive Fans Away

Abstract: Long before he claimed what most would consider a prize courtside season ticket for Knicks games at Madison Square Garden — one with a direct view of the back of Woody Allen’s head — Lewis Dorf was spoiled with the best seat in the house. As a teenager in the mid-1960s, he was a ball boy assigned to the visiting team bench at the Garden’s previous location on Eighth Avenue and 50th Street. “I’m 59 and I still tell people it was the best job I ever had,” he said. Since then, the privilege of remaining close to his beloved Knicks has come at a significant cost. But through a decade when the team was not only unwatchable but often unlikable, Dorf hoped for better days and faithfully renewed his two seats, for which he paid $330 per ticket per game this season. This weekend, with the Knicks playing their first home playoff games since 2004, Dorf is clinging to an identity that shaped his adult life, to the point where friends have suggested he put on his tombstone, “He had great seats.” Next season, those seats will cost $825 each, or a combined $1,650 per game, as part of a sweeping price increase that will average 49 percent across the arena. Although prices did not rise in recent seasons, Dorf, a small-business owner from South Orange, N.J., was clearly stunned by the increase, especially in a time of financial stress. “It’s hard to make people feel sorry for you when you’ve been sitting in a $330 seat, but this has really changed the landscape,” he said. “A normal person cannot afford almost $2,000 to go to a basketball game 44 times a year.” When Dorf — who watched the Knicks get routed by the Celtics in Game 3 of their first-round series Friday night — returns for Game 4 on Sunday, he and many courtside fans he has known for 40 years will be contemplating the end of their era with the May 13 deadline for renewal approaching. “Everybody is in the same boat, the same quagmire,” Dorf said. “We ask each other, ‘How are you dealing with this?’ My answer is I’m talking to as many people as possible, trying to find someone who will help with the costs and take a lot of the games off my hands. If I let these seats go, I’ll never get them back.” That is the problem for the oldest courtside fans, who have invested abundant time, money and emotion but now face the biggest markups for what the Knicks have described as beachfront property. “I don’t know what I’ll do,” said Burt Ross, a 41-year ticket-holder and retired commercial real estate developer from Englewood, N.J., who lost $5 million to the Bernard L. Madoff Ponzi scheme . “I certainly can’t take $80,000 and put it down on Knicks tickets. But I’m not blaming the Dolans; it’s a private enterprise system. If they can get it, more power to them. If they can’t, the seats will be empty.” Given the largely white-collar courtside clientele, several season-ticket holders grudgingly acknowledged the Knicks’ right to charge as much as the market will bear. But some complained about the timing of the increases, announced so soon after the trade for Carmelo Anthony and before the Knicks had even qualified for the playoffs. “Couldn’t they have won something first?” said one four-decade fan, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by owners who have been notoriously contentious. “What kind of loyalty is that?” Michelle Musler of Stamford, Conn., has been going to the Garden for 34 years, sitting behind the Knicks’ bench through thick and thin, and in recent years through back surgery, two knee operations, a stubborn case of shingles and a bout with cancer. Most of her treatment was purposefully timed during the off-season, allowing her to miss only the games she sold off to defray the cost of her tickets. “It’s been a big part of my life, and I’ve made so many good friends,” said Musler, whose seats, now priced at $330, will rise to $900. Seldom have the members of her extended Knicks family — scattered about the lower bowl — socialized outside the Garden. But during pregame dinners at Garden restaurants, they watched one another’s children and grandchildren grow up, shared news of triumphs and travails — the team’s and their own. While networking to hold on to her tickets, Musler chafes about the fine print of the new deal. “They’ve segregated the sections,” she said, meaning that she — as a holder of premier seats — will have access to what the Garden is calling the Delta 360 Sky Club while friends who sit behind the basket will be relegated to a less prestigious club. Huibert Soutendijk of Bronxville, N.Y., is one of those friends she will be separated from because of the Garden’s continuing renovation and gentrification. Soutendijk, better known as Hup, has attended Knicks games for 35 years and has renewed with his group. Although each of his seats in the third row behind the basket has increased only to $280 from $240, the addition of two rows in front will turn them into fifth-row seats. “We fully believe this is just the beginning,” he said. “If they fill up all the seats, they’ll do it all again, and that will be it for us. All these people have stuck with them through the last decade — that’s what smells bad.” It’s a sad and familiar American story retold in the context of professional sports, said Steffi Berne of Manhattan. She has been a Garden regular since the 1960s with her husband, Bob. Their seats behind Musler’s will rise to $675 per ticket from $330, and she has suggested to her husband that they not renew. “What it has been is a community, a funny kind of family and a really important part of our lives,” she said. “And for those of us who go all the way back to the championship teams, that made it more special.” Berne’s two most cherished possessions — “what I’d grab first if our apartment was on fire,” she said — are a dollhouse her daughter made in fifth grade and an authentic Walt Frazier game jersey. How do you let go of something of such intangible consequence, and at a time of your life when there tend to be more losses than wins? “This is not like losing your parents or your kids growing up and moving away,” Ross said, adding that he was considering moving to California, where his children live. “Leaving the Garden will be a big change, but from the Dolans’ point of view, someone else will sit in those seats.” If that is to happen next season, Ross said he would leave with the belief that those who do go will not care about the Knicks as much as he does.

Madison Square Garden
Basketball
New York Knicks
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)


Russia: Steel Maker Expands in U.S.

Abstract: A Russian steel maker, the Evraz Group, announced its second acquisition in the United States this year, the purchase of Claymont Steel Holdings, a steel-plate maker based in Delaware, for $564.8 million. Evraz, Russia’s largest steel maker by domestic volume, said it would pay $23.50 a share for Claymont, valuing the company at a 6.8 percent premium to its close on Friday of $22.

Russia
United States
Steel and Iron
Claymont Steel Holdings Incorporated


We’re Stuck With Dollar as Reserve

Abstract: PARIS — China's proposal isn't about wobbly exchange rates. It's about making a statement before this week's Group of 20 summit meeting. China, together with Russia and others, wants to let Washington know that it is going to have to share the head table in what used to be an exclusive club. China's ascendancy was a fact before the financial crisis. Now its political clout is catching up with its economic might. But when it comes to currency, the dollar is still king, and it will probably remain so for some time. Think about it. Who seriously expects to see commodities - from gold to cotton to oil - priced in anything but dollars anytime soon? There have been times when Russia, Iran and Venezuela considered pricing crude in euros, but that idea evaporated for one simple reason: Depreciating the dollar ends up harming those countries that hold them in reserve. The first victim would be China, now the largest holder of U.S. Treasury securities - about $740 billion worth, more than a third of its entire foreign reserves. The truth is you can't dictate which reserve currency countries will use, any more than you can make people speak Esperanto, a universal language invented 112 years ago that still hasn't taken off. The euro is a common currency that did take off, although its track record is heavily debated. Frugal Germans fret about having to pay for spendthrift Greeks, while countries like Italy long for the days when they could get out of trouble by devaluing their currencies. The euro, now shared by 16 countries, is here to stay, but so far it hasn't been copied anywhere. Kazakhstan is pushing for the ''acmetal,'' while China wants its yuan to be accepted throughout Southeast Asia. Neither project is ready to leap into life. A plan by the Chinese central bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, posted on the bank's Web site last week, was even more ambitious. He wants to move to a global reserve currency with a stable valuation benchmark that belongs to no individual nation. If the euro zone has trouble managing 16 European nations, imagine the nightmare of managing a currency on a worldwide scale. So far, no one has come up with a good idea for an alternative to the dollar. China and Russia propose expanding the use of the International Monetary Fund's special drawing rights, or S.D.R.'s, a cumbersome vehicle whose value is set by a basket of currencies. Russia has added the idea of putting gold in the basket as a stabilizing element. The I.M.F.? Is that really the institution we want to manage complex international monetary politics? Critics have already questioned how the I.M.F. would go about setting the value of the S.D.R.'s and how it would resist political pressure to change the valuation. For its part, the United States will obviously defend the dollar's dominance as long as it can. Its status as the No. 1 currency means the United States doesn't have to repay debts in foreign tender, keeping borrowing costs down. A weaker dollar would make it harder to sell the Treasury securities the government needs to jump-start the economy. ''A strong dollar is in America's interest,'' the U.S. Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, said last week. Both France and Japan have said they would spurn talk of currency reform at the summit meeting in London on Thursday. Still, China has succeeded in putting everyone on notice, which was probably its goal. Like Russia, it has political reasons to challenge the United States. China wants to divert attention from its own undervalued currency - a sore point in U.S.-Chinese relations - while Russia seethes with resentment over U.S. influence, which it refers to as ''the obsolescent unipolar world order.'' Given the size of its U.S. holdings, China's proposal got everybody's attention. The message is plain: You can't print the world's dominant currency and not keep the world in mind when you start running the presses on overtime. Holding onto the world's reserves carries special responsibility. Back in 1971, when the United States went off the gold standard, the Treasury secretary, John Connally, warned European finance ministers: ''The dollar is our currency, but your problem.'' That will remain true for some time, no matter what China says.


Mets Recall Two Prospects, but Veterans Carry the Day

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA — With their offense slumping and their playoff hopes flagging, the Mets went back to the formula that they believe worked so well in June, when they were one of the surprise teams of the season. They went back to the players of their future. Citing the team’s inability to score runs and the need to regain the youthful energy that propelled the team two months ago, General Manager Omar Minaya shook up the fringes of the Mets’ lineup Saturday by calling up two minor league prospects at the expense of three veterans popular in the clubhouse. After a devastating loss here on Friday, the Mets recalled infielder Ruben Tejada and outfielder Fernando Martinez, their former top prospect, from Class AAA Buffalo. They released Alex Cora and sent Jesus Feliciano back to Buffalo, but several veteran players, concerned that no trades were made at the deadline, were left wondering if the moves were designed to improve their chances in the current playoff race, or if the front office was conceding. “Of course you wonder,” David Wright said. “I assume there is a plan. It obviously doesn’t look all that good when all of a sudden, after a tough loss, you hear that they want to start playing the young guys. So you kind of get mixed signals about that. You want to make sure that there is a plan and that if this is the case, then so be it and we go out there and do the best you can. But, obviously, it sends mixed signals when something like this happens.” Although Tejada and Martinez had little impact on the outcome of the game, three veterans, including one of the recently displaced, led the way as the Mets beat the Philadelphia Phillies , 1-0, in front of 45,194 fans at Citizens Bank Park. With his teammates struggling to score runs, Johan Santana , the 31-year-old left-handed starter, summoned all his talents to throw seven and a third shutout innings. Jeff Francoeur hit a solo home run off Cole Hamels just hours after he discovered he would see limited playing time the rest of the season, and Francisco Rodriguez got the final five outs to earn his 24th and most challenging save of the season. After the game, Francoeur said he and other veteran players were dismayed and confused earlier in the day to learn that Cora, the popular veteran whom he considered his friend and a mentor, had been released. (Cora was let go needing to play in only 18 more games to vest a $2 million option for next season.) “Guys were upset,” Francoeur said. “He was a big presence here, and he understands, and we understand, it’s a business and that stuff happens; people come, people go. But he told me to hit a rocket, and it was nice to be able to do that.” Francoeur, who could end up being traded this month, had what he called a difficult conversation with Manager Jerry Manuel in the afternoon about his reduced role, but went out and hit his third big home run of the last two weeks to help Santana win the game. He hit a home run in the ninth inning to lead the Mets to a victory over the Braves in Atlanta and did the same against the Cardinals at Citi Field last week. He said knowing that he had been playing well lately made it harder to accept a demotion. “I know I’m swinging the bat well and I want to be here and I want to help the team win,” Francoeur said. “But that’s not up to me and it’s not my decision. All I can do is show up when I’m ready to go and help.” When asked if he felt the moves were designed to help the team now, or in the future, Francoeur stammered and smiled before evading the question. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I don’t make those decisions. I show up and see if my name is in the lineup.” Knowing that anything less than a gem these days could result in a loss, Santana allowed only five hits and three walks and struck out six before leaving in favor of Francisco Rodriguez, who escaped a bases-loaded jam in the eighth and then threw a perfect ninth. Santana did not allow a hit for five and two-thirds innings. In the bottom of the sixth, Placido Polanco’s ground ball rolled into center field for a single after Raul Ibanez reached base when he struck out on a wild pitch. The ball got away from catcher Henry Blanco, allowing Ibanez to reach first. Tejada started at second base in place of Luis Castillo and went 0 for 3 with two strikeouts. Martinez came into the game in a double switch for Francoeur in the eighth and grounded out in the ninth. Before the game, General Manager Omar Minaya insisted that the moves did not mean the Mets were giving up on this season. The Mets’ front office, he said, felt that youthful energy could revitalize the team’s playoff hopes. “This is about trying to find something different to get us to score some runs,” Minaya said. “So it’s not only developmental here. It’s always developmental when you bring young kids up. We still feel we’re in the pennant race and we feel that we’re bringing him up here to help us win some games.” For one night, the Mets won, although it was the veterans who played the most important role.

Philadelphia Phillies
Baseball
New York Mets
Santana Johan


Audits Find Widespread Waste in Albany Spending

Abstract: ALBANY — More than a million square feet of state office space, roughly enough to fill the Chrysler Building, sits vacant, yet some state agencies were signing new leases as recently as December. State agencies are paying millions of dollars to operate 850 toll-free numbers, almost half of which have not been dialed in months. And while the government’s four major computer data centers are supposed to back up one another in the event of a crippling natural disaster or a terrorist attack, there is just one problem: All of the centers were built within a few miles of one another. Two are within sight of the State Capitol. Albany’s well-known dysfunction, it turns out, is not limited to the legislative coups, indictments and resignations that have dominated headlines in recent years. State government’s daily operations — the $3 billion in goods and services New York buys every year, the real estate that state agencies own and lease, and more — are plagued by waste and often bewildering inefficiency, according to a series of audits nearing completion under Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo . Eliminating unnecessary spending has taken on new urgency as Mr. Cuomo and his aides seek to cut roughly $1 billion a year from New York’s operations budget and to bring new discipline to state spending. Half of the savings is scheduled to come out of spending on real estate, office supplies, computers and even groceries: The state spends $105 million a year on food to serve at prisons, youth homes and other institutions, including $938,000 on kosher hot dogs. “We’re a $100 billion-plus corporation that has squandered its buying power, has no standardization across business units and does not reward efficiency,” said Howard Glaser, the director of state operations, who has been charged by Mr. Cuomo with wringing dollars out of the state’s bottom line. Some of the problems became clear to the administration before it took office, when Mr. Cuomo’s transition team moved to the vacant half of a floor leased in a building on the Upper West Side by the State Department of Taxation and Finance. Curious about why the department had so much excess space, Mr. Glaser asked state officials for an inventory of all real estate leased or owned at taxpayer expense. The answer: No such inventory existed. Mr. Glaser imposed a statewide freeze on new leasing while UGL Equis , a real estate consulting firm, conducted an audit of the state’s real estate holdings. The firm discovered that more than a quarter of the state’s office space in New York City and in the capital region was vacant. In Albany, at least 10,000 state office workstations sat idle, and Corning Tower, the imposing 42-story marble edifice that anchors the capital’s skyline and once symbolized modern state government, is one-third empty. The administration has since ordered what is known in the private sector as a “restacking” of its real estate, in which different agencies will have to consolidate and downsize office space across the state so that the government’s physical footprint matches the size of its work force. Duplication is another major cause of inefficiency. A staggering 1,719 vendors are paid to supply New York’s sprawling state government with pens, paper and paper clips. The state owns 4,800 computer servers, which on average are at half-capacity, yet agencies that are short of data storage space continue to order new servers. The state pays three companies to run 27 call centers at a cost of $115 million a year. Such problems are a symptom, Cuomo administration officials said, of New York’s gradual government sprawl. Over decades, individual agencies have taken more responsibility for decisions like office leasing and purchasing, with little pressure to coordinate or to share costs. One result is that the state’s hundreds of agencies now pay widely varying prices for the same goods and services. State correction officials, who provide health care and prescription drugs for prisoners, buy blood-test strips for $8 a vial from AgaMatrix, while the state’s public health programs pay $25.51 for nearly identical vials from Roche Diagnostics. In some cases, an agency pays different prices to different suppliers for the same product. One agency paid a vendor $325 for a package of printer toner cartridges, and another vendor $511 for the same package. One company, Unisys, provides similar technical support services to 19 state agencies at 19 prices, under 19 contracts. That costs the state money, officials said, while creating headaches and needless paperwork for Unisys. “A Java programmer is a Java programmer,” said Naren Patel, an official at Unisys. “But every agency has their own different requirements. From the vendor perspective, it’s difficult to monitor.” An audit of the state’s procurement practices, authorized by Mr. Cuomo’s predecessor, Gov. David A. Paterson, and conducted by Accenture, found 500 state employees who work to procure goods and services for agencies. The Cuomo administration expects to establish a centralized procurement agency, which state officials say could reduce that head count by half, as well as empowering an existing State Office for Technology to force changes in computer system contracts. The new administration, in the meantime, has deployed in-house “SWAT teams” to different agencies to renegotiate procurement contracts with vendors. The goal is to reduce spending on goods and services by roughly $600 million over the next five years. “New York State is the equivalent of a Fortune 100 company,” said Robert Friess, an Accenture executive who worked on the audit. “We were surprised, given the spending power the state has, at the very decentralized way in which they operate.” Some previous cost-saving efforts have resulted in more waste, the review found. The State Office of General Services, which manages much of the state’s real estate holdings and vehicle leasing, formed an in-house bureau to provide architectural and construction services to other state agencies. But the bureau charges so much for its services that the state saves no money, according to one audit. The Office of General Services bills other state agencies as much as 38 percent of a project’s total cost for management and design work — two or three times the industry standard — and then outsources the work to private contractors at a lower cost. The agency is allowed to keep the difference. Still, no example is more emblematic of the state’s administrative problems, Mr. Glaser said, than a continuing effort by the State Office of Children and Family Services to develop a new computer system for tracking children in foster care . The program was begun in 1993, Mr. Glaser said, when Mr. Cuomo’s father, Mario M. Cuomo, was governor. The system has yet to be completed. The total price tag so far? It is $351 million. “My daughter was born that year,” Mr. Glaser said, “and she’ll be off to college by the time this thing is done.”

Office Buildings and Commercial Properties


LeBron James’s ‘Slight’ Headache a Big Deal in the N.B.A. Finals

Abstract: CLEVELAND — LeBron James called it a “slight” headache, though nothing involving the game’s best player is ever minor. So when James got a cut on his head after falling into a TV camera in Game 4 of the N.B.A. Finals, it led to questions about how the N.B.A. treats head injuries and whether someone taking pictures should be close enough to cause one. The league tried to deal with both issues long before Thursday night. Baseline photography positions were already reduced last summer, and a concussion protocol was previously put in place. But according to the league’s policy, a cut on the head alone is not a trigger for it. The protocol requires concussion evaluation when a player is suspected of having a concussion or exhibits signs or symptoms of one. Based on the player’s response, teams make the clinical judgment call whether to evaluate. James was bleeding but not showing concussion symptoms. He was thinking clearly, saying he was aware he needed to stay in the game to shoot his free throws after being fouled by Andrew Bogut, or he would not have been able to re-enter, according to league rules. “No, I didn’t have to go through any concussion protocol,” James said at his postgame news conference. “I had a slight headache, which I think every last one of you guys would probably have if you ran into a camera. You might have a little bit more than that. “But I didn’t go through any protocol. I’m fine. Like I said, I got a few stitches and I got a little slight headache right now, but I’ll be fine with that.” The Warriors dealt with the concussion questions in their last series. Both Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson suffered head injuries in the Western Conference finals, with Thompson diagnosed with a concussion after their Game 5 victory over Houston and having to be cleared to play in the N.B.A. Finals. Commissioner Adam Silver said last week that he was confident in the league’s protocol and in the way it was followed with the Warriors. “Right now we talked to the other leagues,” Silver said. “We’ve talked to medical advisers everywhere about the best way to approach this. As I said, we think the best way we’re approaching it now is best in class in terms of medical and science information that’s available to us. But we’ll continue to look at it.” The league had already been looking at player safety behind the baselines over the previous five years. New rules last summer mandated an extra foot of open space on both sides of the basket stanchion. The “escape lanes,” the unoccupied area on either side of the stanchion to the closest photographer spot, increased from 3 to 4 feet, and only 20 camera positions, 10 on each baseline, remained, down from 24 in 2013-14 and 40 during the 2010-11 regular season. Social media was already flooded with cries to move the photographers further even before James’s bleeding had stopped. But at least one person seems to believe enough space had already been created. Bogut claimed James’ actions after the foul caused the injury. “I think he jumped into the cameraman,” Bogut said. “I think he came down and took two steps and then fell on the cameraman.”

LeBron James
Concussion
Basketball
NBA Championship
Golden State Warriors
Cavaliers


Belgium: King Says He Will Abdicate

Abstract: King Albert II of Belgium announced Wednesday that he would abdicate in favor of Crown Prince Philippe on July 21. The move had been rumored for weeks and will end a reign of nearly two decades over a fractious kingdom that has been increasingly torn by political strife between Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south. King Albert, 79, will hand over the throne to his son Philippe, 53. The king, who is frail, said his age and health no longer allowed him to carry out functions as he wished. Belgium is enjoying something of a political lull as it prepares for potentially bruising national and regional elections next spring. The country has had six kings since it came into being in 1830. After he succeeded his late brother, Baudouin, in 1993, Albert became embroiled in a major royal scandal when he had to acknowledge the existence of a daughter he had with another woman. Image King Albert II Credit Eric Lalmand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


Gillibrand, Menendez and Lautenberg Vote Against Higher Cap

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Breaking with her party, Kirsten E. Gillibrand of New York was among six Democratic senators who voted on Tuesday against legislation that will cut trillions of dollars in federal spending and give the government new borrowing authority to avoid default. The Senate passed the bill, 74 to 26, only hours before the government’s authority to borrow was set to expire. The bill, which was approved by the House on Monday, was sent to President Obama, who signed it into law. The legislation was produced after a protracted standoff between the major parties over the federal deficit, with Republicans demanding steep cuts in spending and Democrats seeking a combination of tax increases and spending cuts. Senator Gillibrand sharply criticized the legislation , saying it did not contain the balance of spending cuts and new revenues that many Democrats had demanded. She also indicated she was disappointed the legislation did not include new taxes on the wealthiest Americans and the elimination of loopholes benefiting corporations. “We could have gone further in reducing America’s debt with a sensible compromise that both cut discretionary spending and raised revenues,” Ms. Gillibrand said. “It is unfortunate Congress missed that opportunity.” New York’s other senator, Charles E. Schumer, who is part of the Democratic leadership in the Senate, voted for the bill. In the end, the measure was widely derided by liberals. Ms. Gillibrand’s opposition to it comes as she seeks to generate enthusiasm among her party’s base in advance of her re-election bid next year. Ms. Gillibrand, a former House member from a conservative upstate district, was something of an unsteady figure in her own party when Gov. David A. Paterson appointed her to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton in January 2009. Her potential problems stemmed from a number of stances she took while in the House, including her support for gun rights and for cracking down on so-called sanctuary cities like New York that do not enforce all immigration laws. But in the Senate, Ms. Gillibrand, who won election last November to serve out the remainder of Mrs. Clinton’s term, has taken a prominent role on a number of issues important to liberals, shoring up their support. In December, for example, she played a lead role in winning Congressional approval for legislation to end the 17-year-old ban on gays’ serving openly in the military. In New Jersey, both senators, Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, who are Democrats, cited grounds similar to Ms. Gillibrand’s in opposing the bill to cut spending and raise the federal debt ceiling . “There is no balance in this agreement, no compromise,” Senator Menendez, who is up for re-election next year and must also energize his base, said Monday on the Senate floor. In a statement issued on Tuesday, he said, “I cannot in good conscience support a plan where soldiers, seniors, students and working families must endure trillions in cuts, while oil companies, billionaires and corporate jet owners are not asked to pay their fair share.”

Senate
Gillibrand Kirsten E
United States Politics and Government
National Debt (US)
Federal Budget (US)
Law and Legislation


Libyan Rebels Repel Qaddafi Forces Near Tripoli

Abstract: BENGHAZI, Libya — Rebels seeking to overturn the 40-year rule of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi repelled a concerted assault by his forces on Thursday on cities close to the capital, removing any doubt that Libya ’s patchwork of protests had evolved into an increasingly well-armed revolutionary movement. The series of determined stands by rebel forces on Thursday — especially in the strategic city of Zawiyah, near important oil resources and 30 miles from the capital, Tripoli — presented the gravest threat yet to the Libyan leader. In Zawiyah, more than 100 people were killed as Colonel Qaddafi’s forces turned automatic weapons on a mosque filled with protesters, a witness said. Still, residents rallied afterward. Colonel Qaddafi’s evident frustration at the resistance in Zawiyah spilled out in a rant by telephone over the state television network charging that Osama bin Laden had drugged the town’s youth into a rebellious frenzy. “ Al Qaeda is the one who has recruited our sons,” he said in a 30-minute tirade broadcast by the network. “It is bin Laden.” Colonel Qaddafi said, “Those people who took your sons away from you and gave them drugs and said ‘Let them die’ are launching a campaign over cellphones against your sons, telling them not to obey their fathers and mothers.” The violence on Thursday underscored the contrast between the character of Libya’s revolution and the uprising that toppled autocrats in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia . Unlike those Facebook -enabled youth rebellions, the insurrection here has been led by people who are more mature and who have been actively opposing the government for some time. It started with lawyers’ syndicates that have campaigned peacefully for two years for a written constitution and some semblance of a rule of law. Fueled by popular anger, the help of breakaway leaders of the armed forces and some of their troops, and weapons from looted military stockpiles or smuggled across the border, the uprising here has escalated toward more violence in the face of increasingly brutal government crackdowns. At the revolt’s starting point, in the eastern city of Benghazi, Fathi Terbil, 39, the human rights lawyer whose detention first ignited the protests, drew a map of rebel-held territory in striking distance of Tripoli. “It is only a matter of days,” he said. A turning point in the uprising’s evolution was arguably the defection of the interior minister, Abdel Fattah Younes al-Abidi, an army general who had been a close ally of Colonel Qaddafi. The break by General Abidi, who has family roots near the revolt’s eastern origins, encouraged other disaffected police, military and state security personnel to change sides as well. “We are hoping to use his experience,” said Mr. Terbil, who some called the linchpin of the revolt. Opposition figures in rebel-held cities like Benghazi have been appearing on cable news channels promising that opponents of Colonel Qaddafi are heading toward Tripoli to bolster the resistance there. Their ability to carry out those assertions remains to be seen. In parts of the country, the revolutionaries, as they call themselves, appear to have access to potentially large stores of weapons, including small arms and heavy artillery, automatic weapons smuggled from the Egyptian border and rocket-propelled grenades taken from army bases, like the Kabila in Benghazi. Tawfik al-Shohiby, one of the rebels, said that in the early days of the revolt one of his relatives bought $75,000 in automatic weapons from arms dealers on the Egyptian border and distributed them to citizens’ groups in towns like Bayda. So far, at least in the east, many of the weapons appear to be held in storage to defend against a future attempt by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces to retake the territory. At a former security services building in Benghazi on Thursday, men in fatigues prepared to transport anti-aircraft and antitank weapons to what one said was a storage depot. Like their counterparts in Tunisia and Egypt, the rebels in Libya have shown tech-savvy guile in circumventing government efforts to block their communication. To sidestep the government’s blocking of the Internet and curbing of cellphone access, for example, some of the more active antigovernment protesters distribute flash drives and CDs with videos of the fighting to friends in other towns and to journalists. Mr. Shohiby began helping lead an effort this week to shuttle foreign journalists from the Egyptian border to towns across eastern Libya. His network of contacts was built on the Internet: not on Facebook, but on a popular soccer Web site. “I have friends from east to west, north to south,” he said. “There are two guys in Sabha, one in Zawiyah, three friends in Misurata, for example,” he said, speaking of towns that were the scenes of some of the clashes on Thursday. Still, Mohammed Ali Abdallah, deputy secretary general of an opposition group in exile, The National Front for the Salvation of Libya, said the government’s fierce crackdown made organizing the spontaneous uprising a continuing challenge, especially in heavily guarded Tripoli. “It is almost like hit and runs,” he said. “There are almost no ways that those young guys can organize themselves. You can’t talk on a mobile phone, and if five people get together in the street they get shot.” Nonetheless, protesters in Tripoli were calling for a massive demonstration on Friday after noon prayers, residents of the city and those fleeing the country said. In recent days, witnesses said, Colonel Qaddafi appears to have pulled many of his militiamen and mercenaries back toward the capital to prepare for its defense. But despite the encroaching insurrection, Colonel Qaddafi appeared determined on Thursday to put on a show of strength and national unity, a stark turnabout from his approach so far. Since the start of the uprising, his government had shut out all foreign journalists, cut off communications and even confiscated mobile phone chips, and other devices that might contain pictures, at the border from people fleeing the country. Libya had warned that reporters who entered the country illegally risked arrest and could be deemed collaborators of Al Qaeda. But on Thursday, Colonel Qaddafi’s son and heir apparent Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi announced on television that the government would allow teams of journalists to visit Tripoli. Witnesses said preparations for the visit were already under way. The soldiers and mercenaries who had previously roamed the streets had largely disappeared by the late afternoon, leaving only traffic police officers, and the capital’s central Green Square — the scene of violent clashes earlier this week — had been cleaned up. Two banners, in English, now adorned the square. “ Al Jazeera , BBC , don’t spread lies that reflect other’s wishful thinking,” one read. The other: “Family members talk but never fight between each other.” But the rebels’ unexpected strength was undeniable on Thursday as they appeared to hold or contest several towns close to Colonel Qaddafi’s stronghold in Tripoli in the face of a coordinated push by his mercenaries and security forces. In Misurata, 130 miles the east of the capital, Colonel Qaddafi’s forces struck at rebels guarding the airport with rocket-propelled grenades and mortar shells, The Associated Press reported. But the rebels seized an anti-aircraft gun used by the militias and turned it against them. In Zuwarah, 75 miles west of the capital, the police and security forces had pulled out and a “people’s committee” was controlling the city, several people who had fled across the border reported. “The people are taking care of their own business,” said Basem Shams, 26, a fisherman. In Sabratha, 50 miles west of the capital, witnesses reported that the police headquarters and offices of Colonel Qaddafi’s revolutionary committees were all in smoldering ruins. “We are not afraid; we are watching,” said a doctor by telephone from Sabratha. “What I am sure about, is that change is coming.” In Zawiyah, an envoy from Colonel Qaddafi had reportedly arrived to warn rebels on Wednesday: “Either leave or you will see a massacre,” one resident told The A.P. About 5 a.m. Thursday, Colonel Qaddafi’s forces fulfilled their threat. Witnesses said a force that included about 60 foreign mercenaries assaulted a central mosque where some of the roughly 2,000 protesters had sought refuge. One witness said the protesters were armed mainly with rifles, sticks and knives, but after four hours of fighting they managed to hold the square. About 100 people were killed and 200 were wounded, this witness said. During a telephone interview with him, a voice could be heard over a loudspeaker in the background telling the crowd, in an area known as Martyrs Square, not to be afraid. “People came to send a clear message: We are not afraid of death or your bullets,” one resident told The A.P. “This regime will regret it. History will not forgive them.” Meanwhile, the violence sowed concern across the region and beyond. President Obama spoke Thursday, in separate calls, with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and the prime ministers of Britain and Italy , David Cameron and Silvio Berlusconi . The White House said the leaders expressed “deep concern” over the Libyan government’s use of force and discussed possible responses, without specifying what steps they were prepared to take.

Libya
Mercenary
Muammar Kaddafi
Arab Spring


Anti-Semitism Rises in Europe Amid Israel-Gaza Conflict

Abstract: BERLIN — Across Europe, the conflict in Gaza is generating a broader backlash against Jews, as threats, hate speech and even violent attacks proliferate in several countries. Most surprising perhaps, a wave of incidents has washed over Germany, where atonement for the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes is a bedrock of the modern society. A commitment to the right of Israel to exist is ironclad. Plaques and memorials across the country exhort, “Never Again.” Children are taught starting in elementary school that their country’s Nazi history must never be repeated. Even so, academics say the recent episodes may reflect a rising climate of anti-Semitism that they had observed before the strife over Gaza. This week, the police in the western city of Wuppertal detained two young men on suspicion of throwing firebombs at the city’s new synagogue; the attack early Tuesday caused no injuries. In Frankfurt on Thursday, the police said, a beer bottle was thrown through a window at the home of a prominent critic of anti-Semitism. She heard an anti-Jewish slur after going to the balcony to confront her assailant, The Frankfurter Rundschau reported. An anonymous caller to a rabbi threatened last week to kill 30 Frankfurt Jews if the caller’s family in Gaza was harmed, the police said. The string of incidents comes after Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned anti-Semitic chants from pro-Palestinian demonstrators and President Joachim Gauck called on Germans to “raise their voices if there is a new anti-Semitism being strutted on the street.” But even as the police have clamped down on demonstrators, banning slogans that target Jews instead of Israeli policies, a spike in violence has spread fear among Jews, not only in Germany but also in other European countries. More Jews have begun leaving France in recent months, following anti-Semitism that has spilled onto the streets since the start of the Gaza conflict almost a month ago. While most of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been peaceful, a small number of violent protesters, many of them young Arab men, has targeted Jewish businesses and synagogues. French authorities have strongly condemned the violence and, citing public-safety concerns, have refused to authorize a small number of pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Others have spoken of a need to counter anti-Semitism among certain segments of the country’s Muslim youth. Prime Minister Manuel Valls spoke last week of a “new,” “normalized” anti-Semitism. “It blends the Palestinian cause, jihadism, the detestation of Israel and the hatred of France and its values,” he told the National Assembly. Even in historically tolerant Italy, anti-Semitic smears have appeared on the streets of Rome. Jewish shop windows in several neighborhoods were defaced this week with swastikas and tags reading “Torch the synagogues” and “Jews your end is near.” Police suspect that right-wing extremists, possibly along with pro-Palestinian activists, carried out the acts. Riccardo Di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome, said he believed that the threats were linked to tensions in the Middle East. “There is cyclically a common thread running between the dramatic tensions in the Middle East and the increase of anti-Semitic episodes,” he said. In Austria, a preseason soccer match between the Israeli team Maccabi Haifa and Germany’s Paderborn was moved to a more secure location last weekend after a group of youths bearing Palestinian and Turkish flags stormed the field and attacked players during a previous match. Prominent newspapers, politicians and popular stars in Austria and Germany have responded to the anti-Jewish outburst with a campaign called “Raise Your Voice,” in support of their countries’ Jewish communities. But Samuel Salzborn, a professor of political science at Göttingen University, does not believe that the effort has shifted public opinion. “The official line of the German government is happily, clearly against anti-Semitism, but that is resulting in far too little,” Mr. Salzborn said. “There is a startling indifference in the German public to the current display of anti-Semitism.” To many of the more than 100,000 Jews in Germany, the outburst of anti-Semitism since the conflict flared in Gaza has a troubling undertone and has stirred especially painful memories. The Central Council of Jews in Germany has received hundreds of calls from members asking whether they should pack their suitcases and leave the country. “I have not heard that for many years,” said Dieter Graumann, the council president. “When calls for Jews to be gassed, burned and murdered are bawled on the streets of Germany, that no longer has anything to do with Israel’s politics and Gaza. It is the most abhorrent form of anti-Semitism.” Academics who study anti-Semitism say the acceptance of disparaging remarks about Jews has become increasingly common in the educated middle class over the past two decades. Especially on social media, where hashtags such as #HitlerWasRight have appeared, there has been a significant jump in slurs against Jews. Monika Schwarz-Friesel, a cognitive scientist at Technical University, has spent 10 years tracking anti-Semitic comments from educated Germans in letters to editors, in Internet chat rooms and on social media. She said such comments in public forums had served as kindling for the most recent outbreak. “Violence always starts in the mind,” Ms. Schwarz-Friesel said. “Attacks like that on the synagogue in Wuppertal are not just pulled out of thin air.” Carola Melchert-Arlt, an elementary school principal in Berlin and mother of three, said she felt afraid for the first time in her decades of living in Germany. She said her mother had asked her to stop wearing a Star of David, a family heirloom from her grandmother’s bat mitzvah, around her neck. Friends have taken down their mezuzas, Ms. Melchert-Arlt said, and she no longer stifles a smile when a fellow Jew wonders if they are really welcome in Germany. “We have all always felt the latent anti-Semitism here,” Ms. Melchert-Arlt said. “But what we have experienced in recent weeks and days, not only in Germany but across Europe, is a prevailing mood of outward anti-Jewish sentiment in the streets.”

Europe
Israel
Germany
Antisemitism
Hamas
Gaza Strip
Judaism
Holocaust and Nazis
Discrimination


Tunisia Attack Kills at Least 38 at Beach Resort Hotel

Abstract: SOUSSE, Tunisia — At least one gunman disguised as a vacationer attacked this placid Mediterranean resort on Friday, killing at least 38 people at a beachfront hotel — most of them British tourists — before he was shot to death by the security forces. The slaughter at the Imperial Marhaba Hotel in Sousse, a palm-flecked town on the northeast Tunisian coast, was among the worst terrorist attacks in the country’s history and the second in a little more than three months aimed at the tourist industry, which depends on European vacationers. It sent shock waves through the country, which was still recovering from the massacre of mostly foreign tourists at a museum in Tunis, the capital, in March. Roaming from the beach to the pool to the reception area of the hotel, the assailant appeared to have methodically targeted guests with a Kalashnikov rifle he had hidden in a beach umbrella, according to accounts by witnesses, including terrified hotel workers. He was shot and killed by police officers who witnesses said arrived about 30 minutes after the attack began. There were conflicting accounts on whether the gunman acted alone. The Interior Ministry identified him as a 23-year-old Tunisian student with no police record. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, according to statements released Friday night on Twitter. Image Visitors on the hotel terrace after the attack. Credit Zoubeir Souissi/Reuters There had been speculation almost immediately that the Islamic State might have played a role, partly because it had taken responsibility for the museum attack in Tunis, which the group had described as a siege on “citizens of the Crusader countries.” Tunisian officials said they knew of only one gunman, although the police were searching for possible accomplices. President Beji Caid Essebsi rushed to the resort and promised tough new procedures to thwart any further mayhem. The speaker of Tunisia’s Parliament, Mohamed Ennaceur, proclaimed in Tunis that “terrorism is targeting the state and the interests of the people.” Britain’s deputy ambassador, Rufus Drabble, who arrived here within hours of the assault, said many of the victims were Britons, but he declined to specify a number. He said two teams of British officials were checking the stricken hotel and nearby resorts to ensure that other British citizens were accounted for. “This is sickening,” he said. Prime Minister Habib Essid of Tunisia said at a news conference early on Saturday that most of the victims were British. Witnesses said some children were among the victims. The BBC reported that “Tunisians, Britons, Germans, Belgians and at least one Irish citizen were among the dead.” At least 20 people were wounded in the attack, including five British tourists and five Tunisians, who were being treated at a city hospital, Tunisian news media reported. Hours after the assault, many of the vacationers in Sousse, traumatized and tearful, were packing to leave. “We were planning to stay for a week, but we’re cutting our trip short because we’re scared,” said a woman from Belgium accompanied by her daughter, who had been staying at the al-Mouradi Hotel next to the Imperial Marhaba. She asked not to be identified by name. The audacity of the assailant suggested a sharp escalation from the relatively low-level political violence that has bedeviled Tunisia since its Arab Spring revolt four years ago. Some said it took the police and security officers at least 30 minutes to respond after the shooting started just before noon, as the gunman targeted guests on the beach, at the pool and in the lobby. “I can’t understand why they didn’t arrive earlier,” said Khmais Bouzayane, 45, a longtime employee of the hotel. “I lived in an unimaginable terror. I hid near the pool, in the engine room below the ground.” Hours after the assault, he said, police officials were still combing through the hotel grounds and medical crews were “still picking bodies from the sea — the sea has the biggest number of bodies.” The Tunisian authorities have struggled to suppress a small but violent Islamist insurgency that has sprung up since the uprising that forced out the former president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, and set off the Arab Spring. But Islamist extremist groups have been threatening attacks against the Tunisian government, its security forces and its institutions. They have frequently mounted attacks against police and army units over the last two years, but appeared to turn their focus recently to the tourism industry, which offers easy targets and is vital to the local economy. Mr. Essid, the prime minister, said in a recent interview that the aim of the extremists was to damage the economy and derail Tunisia’s democratic transition. He announced a number of additional counterterrorism measures at his news conference early Saturday, including the closing of 80 mosques and enhanced security at Tunisian hotels and resorts. The attack in Sousse, Mr. Ben Ali’s hometown, comes just over three months after two gunmen killed 22 people — 21 of them foreign tourists — in a mass shooting at the Bardo National Museum in Tunis. The two men had been radicalized in Tunisia and trained in an Islamist militant camp in Libya in the weeks before the attack. In Sousse, the assailant who was killed wore black shorts and a T-shirt, and his body lay sprawled on the street, his assault rifle beside him. He had dressed as a tourist. The tourism minister, Salma Elloumi, who has worked conspicuously to support the industry and encourage foreign visitors, said on national radio that the Sousse attack was a “catastrophe” for Tunisia.

Tunisia
Sousse
Imperial Marhaba Hotel
Terrorism
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State


Exelon’s $6.2 Billion Bid for NRG Would Create Largest Power Utility in U.S.

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Exelon Corporation ’s unsolicited bid to buy NRG Energy , a power generator based in Princeton, N.J., would create the largest power company in the country, in terms of assets, market capitalization and generation capacity, and would benefit shareholders of both companies, Exelon said on Monday. “There is simply no doubt that scale is important in turbulent times, and it’s important as the costs of growth continue to rise,” Exelon’s chairman, John W. Rowe, told analysts in a conference call, in which he cited the current credit crisis . But the deal would raise credit challenges; Exelon is assuming that because of bond covenants, sale of NRG would require Exelon to refinance $8 billion in debt and that interest rates would run into double digits. Executives held out some hope, though, that they might be able to renegotiate with the current bondholders, rather than refinance. The transaction would depress Exelon’s credit rating but it would remain investment grade, company executives said, and would return within two or three years to its current level. NRG, with 44 generating stations spread across Southern California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York and Connecticut, had no immediate comment except to say that it was evaluating the offer with its advisers. The $6.2 billion bid is an all-stock offer, 0.485 share of Exelon for each share of NRG. The offer is a 37 percent premium over NRG’s closing price last Friday, Exelon said. While the market tumble has lured various bargain-seekers into the utility business, one analyst on the call, Steve Fleishman, of Catapult Capital Management, said that the ratio in stock price between the two companies had not changed much between the beginning of the credit crisis and last Friday, when the offer was priced. Both prices are now depressed, according to analysts. Exelon, already one of the nation’s largest electric companies, covers a broad swath of the Midwest and Middle Atlantic states, combining the assets of Commonwealth Edison and Philadelphia Electric. A successful deal would require Exelon to sell some assets in Texas and in the Pennsylvania or Delaware areas. But it would give the company very broad geographic diversity, Mr. Rowe said, and access to plants using a variety of fuels. According to the Edison Electric Institute, the trade association of the investor-owned utilities, Exelon ranks sixth nationally in generating capacity and fourth in megawatt-hours produced; the merger would make it No. 1 in both categories. It has assets of $49.5 billion as of the end of last year, ranking third; combining with NRG’s $19.3 billion in assets, it would also rank first, the institute said. Exelon’s operations focus heavily on nuclear- and coal-fired plants. NRG has several coal-powered plants assets in Texas, a major share of a twin-unit nuclear plant there and plants fired by natural gas and oil. Joelle Frank, a spokeswoman for NRG, said the company had advised its shareholders to “take no action, pending review by NRG’s board.” NRG has hired Citigroup and Credit Suisse to advise it, she said. Exelon said the combination would produce an enormous combined entity with investment-grade credit ratings and the financial strength to build new power plants. NRG ranks well for creditworthiness among independent power producers, but many experts say they think that its plan to build two new nuclear reactors adjacent to its South Texas reactors faces challenges. “NRG’s South Texas Project nuclear plant and the very valuable expansion rights could be worth more in the hands of Exelon,” said John Kiani, a senior utilities and power analyst at Deutsche Bank. A year ago, NRG asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to build two nuclear reactors at a site 90 miles southwest of Houston, the first time since the mid-1970s that anyone had sought permission for a new nuclear power plant in the country. Exelon is one of the nation’s largest and most successful nuclear operators. But the promised resurgence of nuclear power has been thrown into some doubt because of the credit crisis. Mr. Kiani said the offer “materially undervalues” NRG. Both NRG and Exelon have sold their output in advance and will probably realize higher cash flows once those contracts expire, he said. Another looming uncertainty is regulation of carbon emissions. Exelon, anticipating such regulation, has begun a project to lower emissions substantially within its service territory by 2020, and said it would devise a similar program for NRG. NRG is part of a coalition of companies seeking such regulation. If a schedule of emission limits is imposed, that could help Exelon, which has a huge fleet of zero-carbon nuclear plants. It would also create certainty for NRG.

Exelon Corp
NRG Energy Inc
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Energy and Power


Local Incumbents Re-Elected in Easy Races

Abstract: INCUMBENT candidates in local State Senate and Congressional races easily held onto their seats, according to unofficial results released by the Westchester Board of Elections last week. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the first-term Democrat representing the 35th State Senate District, defeated John Murtagh, a Republican Yonkers city councilman, with 61 percent of the vote. Suzi Oppenheimer, a 12-term Democrat from the 37th District, defeated the Republican Elizabeth N. Feld, the mayor of Larchmont, with 62 percent of the vote. The county’s other three state senators were also re-elected: Ruth Hassell-Thompson, a Democrat representing the 36th District; Jeffrey D. Klein, a Democrat representing the 34th District; and Vincent L. Leibell, a Republican representing the 40th District, who ran unopposed. The 34th and 36th Districts represent portions of Westchester and the Bronx. Those seats were among those considered important not only locally, but also as part of the Democratic strategy to gain control of the Senate. Unofficial results show that Democrats now control 32 of the 62 seats, with significant representational power for Westchester County, although four dissident Democratic senators from New York City raised the possibility that they might ally with the Republicans in a coalition majority. Ms. Oppenheimer said that the consolidation of power in Albany would help propel legislation in areas of the environment, women’s health and reform among others. “So many good bills have languished for years,” she said. In Congressional races, all three Democratic incumbents won. Nita M. Lowey, who represents the 18th District, earned her 11th term by defeating Jim Russell, a computer consultant, with 69 percent of the local vote. John Hall, the first-term representative from the 19th District, defeated Kieran Lalor, a Republican from Peekskill, with 63 percent of the vote, and Eliot L. Engel, representing the 17th District, was elected to his 11th term by defeating his Republican opponent, Robert Goodman, with 82 percent of the vote. A surge in newly registered voters from April through October may have helped secure those outcomes, election officials said. There were about 20,000 newly registered Democratic voters compared with 3,400 newly registered Republican voters, said Reginald A. LaFayette, the county’s Democratic election commissioner. Over all, the county has about 243,200 registered Democrats and 138,676 registered Republicans, Mr. LaFayette said. Final election numbers, including voter turnout, will not be available until sometime this week, election officials said, but election inspectors and officials reported heavy turnout at polls. Adelaide DiGiorgi, vice president of the League of Women Voters of Westchester, worked as an election inspector in the town of Eastchester on Tuesday. Of the 693 registered voters there, 540 turned up to vote, including one resident who obtained a court order allowing him to vote after he discovered his name was not registered at the site, she said. High turnout was also reported in Mount Vernon. Of the approximately 33,000 registered voters, 25,000 turned out to vote by 7 p.m. Tuesday, said Mayor Clinton I. Young Jr., who predicted that number would grow to 90 percent or more of registered voters once tallies were in for the whole day. The polls closed at 9 p.m. “This is the greatest turnout in our history,” Mr. Young said. He described the enthusiasm of his constituents as “the most compelling evidence of the principles of democracy.” Election officials said there were few polling problems. Those that arose were minor, Mr. LaFayette said. They included first-time voters who tried to close the old-style mechanical-lever voting booths — in use for the last time this election — by pulling on the curtain instead of the lever inside. “Those things are always going to happen during any election,” Mr. LaFayette said. Last weekend, county officials moved quickly to correct an error involving a mailing intended for Spanish-language constituents in Westchester that listed the wrong date of the election. The bulk of that mailing was stopped, and county staff members made rounds of phone calls to correct the misinformation. “The county did quickly follow up,” said Graciela Heymann, director of the Westchester Hispanic Coalition. “There was no issue of people not being counted.”

Elections
Westchester County (NY)
Legislatures and Parliaments