Mets’ Late Rally Beats Phillies Again

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA — The flags in center field at Citizens Bank Park note that the Phillies are the five-time defending National League East champions, with a set of starting arms unequaled in baseball, on display in a ballpark that has sold out 216 consecutive games. It is taking a lot to keep reminding the Phillies of all that, though. Certainly the first fifth of this season has not been nearly as much fun for Philadelphia as it has been for the Mets . A four-run seventh inning sparked a 7-4 win for the Mets on Tuesday night, their fourth win in a row and another come-from behind victory at the expense of the Phillies’ bullpen. For the first time since 2008, the Mets (17-13) have won two series in Philadelphia. The formula, for the second night in a row, involved wearing down Philadelphia’s starting pitcher and pouncing on its beleaguered bullpen, which is last in the National League in earned run average. “We got down early and they just stayed with it,” Mets Manager Terry Collins said of his hitters. “They didn’t try to do too much. They just tried to put the ball in play and make things happen.” The Mets trailed, 4-2, when Phillies starter Joe Blanton was lifted in the seventh inning with two outs and two runners on. Chad Qualls allowed a run-scoring single to David Wright. Wright then was caught in a rundown between first and second, but when Kirk Nieuwenhuis started toward home, he drew a throw to third by second baseman Pete Orr that skipped past the bag. Wright advanced to third, Nieuwenhuis jogged home safely, and the score was tied. One pitch later, Lucas Duda singled to right field for the go-ahead run. He had two hits, both against left-handers. “I’ve struggled with lefties the last couple weeks,” Duda said. “It felt good to finally get a base hit off of them.” The Phillies (14-17) leapt ahead with a two-run homer by Hunter Pence in the first off Miguel Batista. The Mets fell behind by 4-0 after two innings. Batista, 41, making his second start of the season, threw 47 pitches in those first two innings, but settled down before exiting after five and a third innings. “I think as the game went on he got in a better rhythm,” Collins said. “And he made better pitches for sure.” Batista allowed eight hits, four runs (two earned) with two walks and a strikeout. He kept the Mets close enough to rally, and Collins said he earned at least another start as the team keeps looking to replace the injured Mike Pelfrey. “Before you know it, I might be in the pen getting ready to relieve again,” Batista said. “That’s my job, and that’s the way I have to take it.” There was more disheartening injury news for the Mets before the game: catcher Josh Thole was placed on the seven-day disabled list with a concussion sustained in a home-plate collision Monday night. The Mets are hardly strangers to adversity, and in that way 2012 is beginning to have the same snake-bitten feel as 2011. Last year the team went long stretches without Jose Reyes, Ike Davis, Johan Santana and Wright. Now Thole, outfielder Jason Bay and shortstop Ruben Tejada are all on the disabled list. That has only added to the improbability as the team continues to win. The Mets’ 10 come-from-behind victories are tied with Atlanta for the most in baseball. And the replacement parts in a patchwork lineup have come through with timely hits. “We’re going to battle throughout the whole nine innings,” Duda said. “Let the chips fall where they may.” On Monday, Tejada’s replacement, Jordany Valdespin, hit the game-winning home run. On Tuesday, Nieuwenhuis, Bay’s replacement, had two hits and two runs batted in. And with that, the Mets turned the tables on the defending division champions once again. “There are times they’re going to make you want to pull your hair out,” Collins said of his young team. “But for the most part, they fight back and play nine innings.”

Baseball
New York Mets
Philadelphia Phillies
Nieuwenhuis Kirk


Mattress Protest at Columbia University Continues Into Graduation Event

Abstract: Aided by four friends, and to the cheers of some of her classmates, the student who protested Columbia University ’s handling of her sexual assault complaint by carrying a mattress around campus all year hoisted it for the last time on Tuesday as she crossed the stage at a graduation ceremony. Until seconds before the student, Emma Sulkowicz, walked onstage, Columbia officials had asked her to leave the mattress behind. President Lee C. Bollinger turned away as she crossed in front of him, failing to shake her hand, as he did with the other graduates. Ms. Sulkowicz’s graduation, and the end of her protest, brought to a close a tumultuous year, in which Columbia became a focus of the movement to change how universities address sexual assault. A student group called No Red Tape has held protests, including one in which it projected the words “ Columbia protects rapists ” on the facade of a school library, and a number of students on Tuesday put red tape on their baby-blue mortarboards to show their support. In February, the university instituted a sexual respect education requirement , which obliges students in all schools to attend workshops or complete art projects on the theme of sexual respect. As a result of her protest, which is also her senior art thesis, Ms. Sulkowicz herself has become the face of a national movement to raise awareness about sexual assault. She attended the State of the Union address this year as the guest of Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, who is pushing a bill that would require every college to survey its students about their experience with sexual violence, create a uniform disciplinary process for accusations of assault and give law enforcement agencies a greater role. Minutes before Ms. Sulkowicz walked across the stage, Paul Nungesser , the student she has accused of rape, did so as well, to little response from the crowd. Mr. Nungesser, who was cleared by the university and has maintained that their sexual encounter was consensual, filed a federal discrimination suit last month against the school, Mr. Bollinger and the professor who approved Ms. Sulkowicz’s thesis project, saying he has been the victim of a harassment campaign. One of the rules Ms. Sulkowicz set for her project was that she would carry the mattress whenever she was on campus until Mr. Nungesser was no longer there. The ceremony on Tuesday was on Class Day for seniors at Columbia College. The universitywide commencement is Wednesday, but Ms. Sulkowicz said on Tuesday that she was done with her project. As for what will become of the mattress, which she bought online, she said she would hang onto it. “If some sort of museum wants to buy it, then I’m open to that,” she said, “but I’m not going to just throw it away.” Mr. Nungesser, who walked briskly away from campus immediately after the ceremony, declined to comment. The university had actively discouraged Ms. Sulkowicz from carrying the mattress. In an email sent to students on Monday, the university asked students not to bring “large objects which could interfere with the proceedings or create discomfort to others in close, crowded spaces shared by thousands of people” into the ceremonial area. Ms. Sulkowicz said that as students were lined up before the ceremony in Alfred Lerner Hall, a woman approached her and asked her to put the mattress in a room in the hall for the duration of the ceremony. Ms. Sulkowicz, who had stated she would not walk in the ceremony if she could not carry the mattress, refused. Later, as Ms. Sulkowicz and her friends approached the stage, the woman reappeared and again asked her not to take it onstage, saying it would “block the flow of traffic.” Even the dean who was reading out the names seemed to get nervous, stumbling over hers. As Ms. Sulkowicz and her friends ascended the stage, Mr. Bollinger, who had been shaking the students’ hands, turned his back and leaned down as though to pick something up from his seat. Ms. Sulkowicz leaned over the mattress, trying to catch his eye, then straightened up and kept walking, shrugging with her free hand. “I even tried to smile at him or look him in the eye, and he completely turned away,” she said later. “So that was surprising, because I thought he was supposed to shake all of our hands.” A spokeswoman for the university, Victoria Benitez, said that the mattress had been between Ms. Sulkowicz and Mr. Bollinger and that no snub was intended. However, the keynote speaker, Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles, alluded approvingly to Ms. Sulkowicz’s protest. Applauding student activism at Columbia, he told the students: “You felt outside of society, sufficiently determined to challenge hierarchy that you took risks. You held contrary opinions, held die-ins and sit-ins and carried mattresses. Most importantly, you have learned to empathize, to look out for others and to listen.”

Columbia
Emma Sulkowicz
College
Paul Nungesser
Rape
Civil Unrest
Lee C Bollinger


Blaze Sends Thousands Fleeing a Las Vegas Resort

Abstract: A fire on Friday swept parts of the top several floors of a hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip, but no one was seriously injured, a remarkably fortunate outcome given that thousands of guests and employees were inside when the blaze broke out around midday. As flames leapt across the stucco-and-foam-coated crown of the 32-story resort, the Monte Carlo, firefighters mounted the roof and suppressed the blaze in a little more than an hour. The cause of the fire is under investigation, but the Clark County fire chief, Steven M. Smith, said welders working on the roof might have played a role in it. The top of the building is where much of its air-conditioning machinery and other electrical equipment are situated. The blaze closed the Monte Carlo, which has some 3,000 rooms and a 90,000-square-foot casino that had operated continuously since the resort opened in June 1996 with a theme of stately European-style elegance. The Monte Carlo has been a middle-of-the-market option in the shadow of its more opulent, more expensive neighbor, the Bellagio. Thousands of guests were evacuated to the arena of the MGM Grand, a second property of the Monte Carlo’s parent company, MGM Mirage, to be offered accommodations at other company resorts, including the Bellagio and New York-New York. It is unclear when they will be able to return to their rooms at the Monte Carlo to retrieve their belongings, said a spokesman for MGM Mirage, Alan M. Feldman. The resort will remain shut, Mr. Feldman said, until county building inspectors can assess it and determine which areas can reopen when. Mr. Feldman said he thought the two top floors of rooms and suites were occupied when the fire broke out. A warning system alerted the staff to evacuate the guests, he said. He did not have an estimate as to how much the shutdown would cost the company, but did say, “We have a lot of work ahead of us.” It has been a little more than 27 years since 84 people were killed in a fire at the old MGM Grand, about a half-mile north of the Monte Carlo. Among the nation’s deadliest hotel blazes, that one remains second only to the Winecoff Hotel fire of 1946, which killed 119 people in Atlanta. The MGM Grand fire led to far stricter fire safety standards for the hotel industry here, and some experts credited them for Friday’s orderly evacuation and few injuries, all minor. “The lessons of that incident clearly came into play in this fire,” said David G. Schwartz, director of the Gaming Studies Research Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Meredith Frankel, 60, has lived for more than 30 years in a subdivision less than two miles east of the Strip and, until the construction of newer resorts, could see the Monte Carlo from her porch. “I can’t tell you how chilling it was to see the smoke and hear those sirens,” she said of Friday’s fire. “I thought, ‘Here we go again.’ But then it turned out O.K. I’m amazed.”

Casinos
Las Vegas (Nev)
Fires and Firefighters
Hotels and Motels


Clinton Leads Trump as Marathon Nears the Final Sprint

Abstract: The race for the White House enters its final stretch this week, with the two major-party nominees on decidedly unequal footing. Hillary Clinton extended her lead over Donald J. Trump to 12 percentage points in an ABC News tracking poll . Mrs. Clinton spent time in North Carolina on Sunday, urging people to vote early as she turned her attention to helping candidates further down the ballot. Groups supporting a Republican-held Congress signaled moves to have some of their candidates run as an explicit “check and balance” against a Clinton presidency, an acknowledgment from those groups that the race for the White House may be all but over. Mr. Trump seemed aware of that Sunday evening as he campaigned in Florida, where he owns properties but where polls also show him behind Mrs. Clinton. Unlike his recent and explicit vows of retaliation against congressional Republicans who have opposed him, Mr. Trump suggested that he needed Republican majorities to enact his agenda. The Trump camp conceded that it was lagging, but the campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said it still saw a path to victory. Mr. Trump’s schedule this week will take him to battleground states like Ohio. But he is also visiting places like Colorado, which few strategists believe he has a chance of winning. Mrs. Clinton faces an electoral map that is more in flux than Democrats had imagined even a few months ago. The website Real Clear Politics listed Texas , a reliably Republican-leaning state in presidential years, as a tossup. And polls show that an independent candidate, Evan McMullin, is competitive in Utah.

Hillary Clinton
Polls
Kellyanne Conway
2016 Presidential Election
Donald Trump
US Politics
House races
Congressional elections


As Some Iranians Register Dislike at Polls, Others Do So by Staying Home

Abstract: TEHRAN — Iranians in middle-class areas of the capital stood in long lines to vote in national elections on Friday, with many saying they supported the few candidates seeking change who were allowed to run. But in less prosperous areas, there was much less enthusiasm, and turnout seemed lower. “At least if I vote for a reformist, I will reduce the number of hard-liners,” said Shahin Hemati, a 28-year-old dentist, expressing a widespread attitude in the more affluent areas. “If the hard-liners are voted in, this will be a nightmare for me.” In a great number of cases, however, the outcome of the voting was predetermined, as the candidates were vetted by the Guardian Council, a panel dominated by hard-liners. Thousands of candidates, most of them reformists, were disqualified, assuring they would remain in the minority and limiting President Hassan Rouhani’s ability to make promised changes to end the country’s isolation and to expand personal liberties. Iranians were voting for two separate bodies , Parliament and the Assembly of Experts, a clerical council that could elect the successor to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei . He is 76 and has had some health problems, though he appears vigorous now. The semiofficial Fars news agency, quoting a source with knowledge of the situation, said that, by the afternoon, 17 million of Iran ’s 55 million eligible voters had cast their votes, a number that was bound to rise much higher. The Interior Ministry announced first that the polls would stay open an extra two hours, until 8 p.m., to accommodate the crowds; later, in deference to the growing lines, it said it would add another hour. Image Women in line at a polling station in Qum on Friday. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said a high turnout would “disappoint the enemies.” Credit Ebrahim Noroozi/Associated Press Ayatollah Khamenei voted early in the day and called upon all “who love Iran, the Islamic republic and people” to follow suit. A high turnout, he said, will “disappoint the enemies.” He appeared to be getting his wish in places, particularly in North Tehran, the most affluent section of town, where voters turned out in droves. People there tend to look at the parliamentary elections as a once-in-four-years opportunity to register their dislike for the hard-line guardians of the revolution who largely control the government. On social media, people in North Tehran shared pictures of themselves after voting, flashing victory signs and calling upon others to come out and vote. Families waiting in lines at school buildings and mosques could be overheard expressing their astonishment at the level of the turnout. State television focused on one popular polling station, Hosseiniye Ershad, a blue-tiled spectacle of Islamic architecture in North Tehran. Several well-known officials and actors could be seen waiting their turn in the lengthy lines, holding their identity cards. Many people came out to support Mr. Rouhani in his effort to break the stranglehold of the hard-liners and to begin to modernize the country. “I’m here to say yes to better relations with the world and the continuation of President Hassan Rouhani’s policies,” said one of them, Amir, 33, who like many others refused to give his surname, saying he did not want it to appear in a Western newspaper. Image A voter casting his ballot in Qum. Iranians voted for two separate bodies, Parliament and the Assembly of Experts. Credit Behrouz Mehri/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images “My vote is against those who have been in power now for over a decade; I want to give them a sign,” he added. “I don’t expect a miracle will happen. But doing nothing is not an option.” Another voter, Kasra, a 23-year-old student, said he was “shocked” by some names on the combined list of the reformists, including a former intelligence minister, Mohammad Reyshahri. “This man is no reformist,” he said. The student said he had debated whether to vote. “Now all my friends are voting, and I am joining them,” he said. “But I wish we had better options.” The disqualifications of the reformist candidates have gained a lot of attention, but the frustration of working-class voters with the economy is an equally important factor this year. Large parts of society are under pressure after years of sanctions and economic mismanagement. Despite the government’s efforts to rein in inflation, housing and transportation continue to be expensive, and the levels of disaffection are rising. “During the time of the shah, before the revolution, here in the south we had second-rate cars and second-rate schools,” said Hossein Soltani, a retired police officer who had come to a fruit and vegetable market in South Tehran. He said he did not see any difference now. “I do not vote because nobody has done anything for me.” Image Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, voted in Tehran on Friday and called on all “who love Iran, the Islamic republic and people” to follow suit. Credit The Office of Iran's Supreme Leader, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images That was a common sentiment among voters in the city’s poorer south side, many of whom decided to register their protest by staying home. Several customers interviewed at the market said they would not even think of voting, pointing at corruption and the poor state of the economy. “Uptown, they vote for reformists because they want to protest against the hard-liners,” said Saeed Taheri, who sells children’s clothes. “Here, people don’t vote because they feel left out.” At the Shahid Montazeri school near Shoosh Square in South Tehran, only a handful of voters filled in the 46 names that have to be written in for the two elections. In the school, children’s drawings decorated the walls. The images showed families waving flags saying “God is great,” accompanied by ideological slogans like, “In the spring of the revolution, we miss the martyrs.” Nader Karimi Joni, a journalist and analyst close to the reformist movement, said the reason for the different levels of turnout was simple. “The poor in the south have lost all hope for change,” he said. “But those slightly better off still expect change to come.” And there are still plenty of true believers, like Susanna Mohammadi, who is from the middle-class area of Geysha who was wearing a black chador. “I’m voting for those who stand tall against America and will protect our Islamic freedoms,” she said. “Unfortunately, the government of Mr. Rouhani is making a mess of the economy, so I’m voting conservative.”

Iran
Assembly of Experts
Ali Khamenei
Voter registration
Legislature
Guardian Council Iran


Some Clinton Fund-Raisers Are Still Simmering

Abstract: DENVER — A significant number of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton ’s top fund-raisers remain on the sidelines and unwilling to work for Senator Barack Obama , a nettlesome problem that appears to be contributing to the campaign’s failure to keep pace with ambitious fund-raising goals it set for the general election. The lingering rancor between the sides appears to have intensified at the Democratic convention, with grousing from some Clinton fund-raisers about the way they are being treated by the Obama campaign in terms of hotel rooms, credentials and the like. Tensions were already high, particularly in the wake of revelations that Mr. Obama did not vet Mrs. Clinton or ask her advice on his vice-presidential pick. Many major Clinton fund-raisers skipped the convention; others are leaving Wednesday, before Mr. Obama’s speech. More broadly, a consensus appears to have emerged among many major Clinton donors that the Obama campaign did not do enough to enlist their support, according to interviews with more than a half-dozen Clinton fund-raisers. “I’ve had more contact from the McCain campaign since the nomination than from the Obama campaign,” said Calvin Fayard, a New Orleans lawyer, major Clinton fund-raiser and longtime Democratic donor who is not in Denver this week. Mr. Fayard said he was considering supporting Senator John McCain, the Republican, citing what he perceived as Mr. Obama’s inexperience. After Mrs. Clinton suspended her campaign in June, the Clinton and Obama campaigns publicly vowed to work toward integrating Mrs. Clinton’s fund-raising apparatus with Mr. Obama’s. But it appears that much of that effort has fallen short, said former Clinton supporters who have decided to begin raising money for Mr. Obama. “I believe to date I’m a minority,” said Hassan Nemazee, a former national finance chairman for the Clinton campaign who said he had raised more than $500,000 for Mr. Obama in the last few months. “I still firmly believe there is a tremendous amount of untapped resources that can be tapped if the Obama campaign pro-actively engages people in the Clinton world.” Indeed, a New York Times analysis of Federal Election Committee records found that Clinton donors contributed roughly $2.8 million to the Obama campaign in July. The amount is not insubstantial, but it appears to fall short of targets originally envisioned by Obama fund-raisers. When Mr. Obama decided in June to bypass the $84 million in public financing for the general election, campaign officials calculated that to make it worth the additional time he would need to devote off the campaign trail to fund-raising, they needed to raise two to three times the $84 million. They set out a goal of raising $300 million for the campaign and $180 million for the Democratic Party, several fund-raisers said, or about $100 million a month. The targets hewed closely with what Obama advisers also cited in interviews as their anticipated budget for the general election, but a spokesman for the campaign insisted on Tuesday that its fund-raising was on target and denied that $100 million a month was ever a real goal, or that the campaign was having problems recruiting Clinton donors. In July, Mr. Obama and the Democratic National Committee took in about $77 million. That swamped the $53 million Mr. McCain and the Republican National Committee collected. But it was for a second straight month significantly off the pace Obama officials had set. In June, when Mrs. Clinton suspended her campaign, Clinton and Obama officials estimated they might be able to collect $50 million to $75 million or more from Clinton donors. They appear to be nowhere near that. And the prospects for the Obama campaign to wring more out of top Clinton fund-raisers who are inactive or unenthusiastic appears to be diminishing. There was much initial wrangling between the two sides over how to best draw in former Clinton fund-raisers, with some arguing that the Obama camp should alter its fund-raising structure to offer top Clinton bundlers titles parallel to those of their Obama counterparts. But Obama officials, who take pride in having less hierarchy in their campaign organization, resisted. In the end, they saw little need to change what was working, several top Clinton fund-raisers said. Another sore point remains Clinton fund-raisers’ contentions that Mr. Obama has not done enough to help Mrs. Clinton retire her debt. The analysis by The Times found that Obama donors gave $300,000 to Mrs. Clinton in July and $135,000 in June. Perceived snubs leading up to the convention have not helped. Only a handful of Clinton donors got rooms at the coveted Ritz-Carlton, where the biggest Obama fund-raisers are staying. The Times’s analysis of campaign finance records found fewer than 50 out of the more than 300 “Hillraisers” — who have bundled more than $100,000 for Mrs. Clinton — contributed to the Obama campaign in July, up from about 10 the month before. Just over 70 Hillraisers have contributed to Mr. Obama, meaning the vast majority of Hillraisers appear to have not.

Presidential Election of 2008
Clinton Hillary Rodham
Obama Barack


Violence Against Zimbabweans Resurfaces in South Africa

Abstract: POLOKWANE, South Africa — Men in Westenburg Township went hunting Zimbabweans. They prowled its dirt roads by the truckload as night fell recently, brandishing clubs and throwing stones. At dawn that day, the body of Steven Hamilton, a 24-year-old local man, had been found near a tavern. In a flash, word spread that drunken Zimbabweans had stabbed him in the chest. By the time people returned home from work, the township had erupted. Men shouted for the Zimbabweans to be killed, or for them to go back where they came from. Mike Mpofu, 34, a former high school art teacher from Zimbabwe who sells vegetables from a shed, saw the mob coming. Charneal Carelse, a South African teenager whose family had befriended Mr. Mpofu, happened to be walking by. “I told her, ‘There is war coming,’ ” he said. Charneal said she told him to hide in her house, and he took off running. In May 2008, South Africa ’s image as a home to people of all races and nationalities took a hard knock as xenophobic violence leapt from city to city, victimizing poor Africans who had sought asylum and opportunity in the region’s richest country. In the year and a half since, such attacks have flared periodically, but recent ones against Zimbabweans here, near South Africa’s northern border, and at its southern tip have brought the problem to the fore again. Last week, South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, pleaded with his people to “embrace especially our African brothers and sisters, who usually bear the brunt of ill-treatment more than foreigners from other continents.” Navi Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights and a South African, this month called attacks on foreigners in her homeland “gravely alarming.” The police here in the capital of Limpopo Province gathered up Zimbabweans that terrifying night two weeks ago and took them to the old Peter Mokaba stadium for safekeeping. About 30 are still there, hanging their laundry in the shadow of a spectacular new stadium built for the 2010 World Cup, where South Africa hopes to showcase itself. Thousands more Zimbabweans — many of them migrant farm workers and their families — were forcibly displaced from the community of De Doorns in Western Cape Province in a violent outburst in mid-November. South Africa had hoped the 10-month-old truce between Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, and the former opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, now prime minister, would stabilize Zimbabwe and slow an exodus in which millions have fled its poverty and repression in the past decade. But hundreds of Zimbabweans a day still seek asylum in South Africa at the border town of Musina , about 130 miles north of Polokwane, and uncounted others cross into the country illegally, United Nations officials say. “We don’t want Zimbabweans anymore,” said Roy Buys, as he mourned with his old friends Ronie and Stephaina Hamilton, parents of the young man whose murder set off the violence. “They kill our brothers, rape our sisters, break into our homes and take our jobs.” Over the past decade, as Zimbabwean migrants have settled in Westenburg, they have picked up odd jobs and rented backyard hovels, working long hours at low pay. Under apartheid, Westenburg was designated for Afrikaans-speaking mixed race or “colored” people — considered a notch above black Africans by the former ruling white minority — and they still predominate 15 years after apartheid ended. But resentments seethe beneath the surface of township life, particularly among idle young men who see the Zimbabweans working. Their sense of grievance deepened this year as South Africa’s own already staggeringly high unemployment rate rose further. After the killing of Mr. Hamilton, himself a young man who his parents said had never held a regular job, the anger boiled over in violence. “It was a release valve for the community’s frustrations,” said Larry Anderson, 64, a local ward committee member. Eleven people were hospitalized. A dozen people were arrested for public violence, but the charges have since been withdrawn for lack of evidence, according to Calvin Sengani, director of community relations in the provincial safety department. The police superintendent, Moatshe Ngoepe, declined to comment on whether any arrests had been made, saying charges would be filed once the investigation was complete. Dikeledi Magadzi, the provincial safety and security minister, said in an interview that the governing African National Congress, to which she belongs, had moved quickly to calm the situation in Westenburg. But advocates for migrants contend the lack of action against those who committed the violence was typical. Prosecutors have withdrawn 40 percent of the cases registered after the May 2008 violence, in which 62 people died, and only a few people have been convicted for the killings, according to Pieter du Rand, chief director of court services in the South African Department of Justice. The murder cases have proved difficult to prosecute because of insufficient evidence, he said by e-mail. The wounds of those attacked in Westenburg are healing. Tinashe Phiri, 20, a Zimbabwean laborer who needed stitches for a gash in his head, said he ran into a house with the mob at his heels. “I heard them tell the ladies outside, ‘Give us the keys. We want to beat your husbands,’ ” he said. The men broke down the door and pummeled him. Everson Hove, 26, who came to South Africa from Zimbabwe six months ago to work, was assaulted when he returned to Westenburg from his construction job. Men hit him in the mouth with a chair, loosening a front tooth, and beat him with wooden tools. Mr. Mpofu made it safely to 16-year-old Charneal’s house. Her mother, Bebe Carelse, 39, hid him under a mattress. She said a woman on her bus home from work that day said the Zimbabweans should be killed because of Mr. Hamilton’s murder. “I said, ‘It’s not right,’ you can’t blame all of them,’ ” Ms. Carelse said. “They’re innocent.” For now, Mr. Mpofu is living at the stadium, but next year, when tempers cool, he plans to return to the township and reopen the vegetable stand the Carelses let him set up in front of their house. “I feel I am part of this family,” he said. “If there was no Bebe, I could be injured or dead. It’s very rare to find someone who respects a poor person like she does.”

Zimbabwe
South Africa
Race
Assaults
Immigration and Emigration


Once Again, Chelsea Is Haunted by an Ex-Player

Abstract: LONDON — The season, along with an era, is over for Chelsea. It is only mid-March, but after being knocked out of the Champions League and the F.A. Cup in the space of three days, the club that transformed English soccer in terms of spending has no trophies left to play for in the remaining two months of this season. This is, in a way, the legacy of José Mourinho. The manager that Chelsea twice hired and fired helped raise the team with his style of winner-takes-all, loser-bears-the consequences. After winning the Premier League last May, Mourinho was dismissed by Chelsea’s owner, Roman Abramovich, when all was going sour seven months later. Last Wednesday, Chelsea was eliminated from the Champions League by Paris St.-Germain, who featured a defender, David Luiz, that Mourinho scorned and sold. On Saturday, when Everton expunged Chelsea from the F.A. Cup, the scorer of both goals in a 2-0 victory was Romelu Lukaku, whom Mourinho scorned and sold while at Chelsea. The first was perhaps the most beautiful goal that Lukaku will ever score. But it was the man Chelsea purchased to replace him, the Brazil-born Diego Costa, who managed to steal the headlines. Costa didn’t score. He was sent off for foul play and for fighting and, many believe, for biting the neck of an opponent, Dracula-style. The pictures of that supposed bite are inconclusive, and of course Costa denies that it was anything other than a hug and a kiss. What led to it was ugly. Costa, already with a yellow card for hitting Gareth Barry with a hand to the face, was kicked late in the game by Barry. An Englishman and a Brazilian trading blows was not the Beautiful Game, and what followed was unacceptable by any standards. Costa jumped up off the turf, got into the face of Barry, and like two demented stags, they butted heads. At that point, came the Costa bite (or affectionate kiss). The referee dealt with it by showing both players a yellow card for their violent posturing. Moments after Costa was sent off, Barry went as well, for a kick at Cesc Fàbregas in an unrelated event. That, alas, was the core of this contest. For more than an hour, two teams whose seasons depend on the F.A. Cup gave a performance dominated by a fear of failure. It was macho to the extent that it was full of players going for tackles that, in the English sense, are regarded as full-blooded and hearty. But with so many players who cost so much money failing to play anywhere close to top standards of Europe, the whole show was heading toward what Chelsea appeared to want: a boring draw and a replay down in London. Thank goodness, then, for Lukaku. After 77 minutes, he did something that transcended all that preceded it. The Belgian-born son of a Congolese international player, Lukaku demonstrated how anger can be turned into the real purpose of playing the game. He was angry because, as a center forward, he was being starved of the ball and the opportunity to score. Lukaku set off on his run from near the halfway line. He demanded the ball, pointing to where he wanted the pass. When it came, he was out on the left wing all alone, surrounded by four Chelsea defenders. Not a problem. Lukaku was on fire. A giant of a man — 6-foot-3 and built like a heavyweight boxer — he nevertheless has considerable gifts when it comes to movement, control and finishing. He raced with the ball between the first two opponents. He cut inside the penalty box and, at top speed, flummoxed Chelsea defender Gary Cahill by turning right, left, and right again. Then Lukaku finished off his own creation with a powerful, low shot with his left foot. Everton’s problems this season have centered on its inability to hold onto a lead — often one secured by Lukaku. It led Chelsea three times in a Premier League game in London in January, and three times it surrendered those leads in a game that ended 3-3. So Everton needed to score at least once more Saturday to be confident of anything. And before the Costa-Barry altercation, it was Lukaku who finished off the uncertainty. His second goal, struck through the legs of the keeper Thibaut Courtois with Lukaku’s other foot — his right — followed a judicious pass from Ross Barkley. Game over, bar the ridiculous, unseemly behavior of Costa and Barry. The authorities will probably have to accept Costa’s word that his teeth never entered the flesh of his opponent, and they will merely ban him for one game for his red card. Lukaku, on the other hand, is having by far his most productive period since Chelsea offloaded him, first by loaning him out and then by selling him to Everton in 2014. He has scored 25 goals in 36 games this season and said Saturday that he has nothing to prove to Chelsea. “I was there as an 18-year-old,” he said on television. “I will always be grateful to them.” And his wonder goal against Chelsea? “I didn’t know where I was going,” Lukaku said, disarming all our thoughts about great creativity. “Then I was in the box, I saw Gary Cahill didn’t know which way to turn either, so I shifted the ball to my left foot and hit it.”

Soccer
Romelu Lukaku
FA Cup
Chelsea Soccer Team
Everton Soccer Team
Diego da Silva Costa
Jose Mourinho


Youkilis Joins Star Pitcher’s Team in Japan

Abstract: Whether the Japanese star Masahiro Tanaka stays with the Rakuten Golden Eagles for the 2014 season or pitches in the United States remains unclear. But one established major leaguer has decided to leave the majors and join Rakuten, no matter where Tanaka ends up. Kevin Youkilis, a 34-year-old infielder who won two World Series with Boston and spent most of a disheartening 2013 season as one of many injured Yankees, is going to take a shot at Japanese baseball, his agent confirmed on Friday. The agent, Joe Bick, said Youkilis had signed a one-year deal. Plagued by back problems, Youkilis had back surgery in June and ended up with 105 at-bats for the Yankees. He hit .219, far below his career average of .281. Tanaka, 25, remains in limbo, hoping to be posted by his team so that major league clubs that bid $20 million can then begin negotiating a lucrative, long-term contract with him. He had a remarkable 24-0 record in the 2013 season. A number of Japanese newspapers have said Rakuten is intent on keeping Tanaka in 2014 and will not post him. Other reports have said the team remains undecided. YANKEES HIRE BULLPEN COACH The Yankees announced that Gary Tuck had been hired as the team’s bullpen coach for the 2014 season. He had three previous stints in the Yankees’ organization and was the Red Sox’ bullpen coach from 2007 to 2012. The Yankees also said that Trey Hillman would join the team as a special assistant for major and minor league operations. He was most recently the Los Angeles Dodgers’ bench coach and was previously the Kansas City Royals’ manager. ORIOLES PASS ON BALFOUR The Baltimore Orioles will not be signing the free-agent closer Grant Balfour. Dan Duquette, the Orioles’ executive vice president for baseball operations, said the club was not satisfied with the results of Balfour’s physical examination. Baltimore and Balfour came to a reported two-year agreement Tuesday, pending results of the physical. Duquette declined to identify the specific concerns. (AP) PATTON SUSPENDED 25 GAMES Baltimore relief pitcher Troy Patton has been suspended for the first 25 games of next season after a positive test for a banned amphetamine. (AP)

Masahiro Tanaka
Kevin Youkilis
Yankees
Baseball
Red Sox


Private Jet Industry Recovering Among Business Travelers

Abstract: The private jet industry has been a bit more optimistic lately, in part because of business travelers like Mark Dowley who use it to patch holes in the domestic air travel system. Mr. Dowley, an executive for a private equity firm and a marketing consultant, said he still flew commercial planes on the long, nonstop routes that airlines offer in abundance. But he will sometimes take a business jet to a smaller destination — the kind of place that could take an additional three hours or more to reach by commercial plane. So he may fly commercially from New York to San Francisco for a meeting in San Jose, and then fly by private jet to San Diego for more meetings. He said he used private jets “as a filler” to circumvent time-consuming airline schedules that often require inconvenient connections, even on short hops. He buys hourly flight time on a light jet through NetJets, the leading player in the fractional ownership market, which also sells per-hour private jet flying through its Marquis jet-card program. He said he flew more than 300,000 miles a year for business, about 90 percent on commercial jets and 10 percent on private jets. “Commercial air is more cost-efficient, but private is a massive timesaver,” Mr. Dowley said. “I’m very judicious with the private flying time, though, to manage the cost.” The industry has been struggling since the recession hit and criticism arose over corporate executives’ use of private jets. But deteriorating commercial airline service has underscored one of the rationales long cited for flying privately: the efficient use of business time. According to the annual forecast by Honeywell, deliveries of business jets this year will probably grow only slightly over last year’s total of fewer than 650 planes, which in turn was down about 15 percent from 2010. The peak year was 2008, when 1,139 jets were delivered. NetJets, a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, remains the market leader. But the second-largest company in the fractional-share market, Flight Options, reported that its business had grown for three consecutive years. Kenn Ricci, chairman of Flight Options, which operates a fleet of more than 100 private jets, said his company had a 53 percent increase in new fractional owners last year, when it took delivery of 14 new jets. Those were among the more than 140 it had on order. “We have stabilized the business and made Flight Options into a much better company than it was — a good alternative,” Mr. Ricci said. NetJets, which has more than 700 jets in its fleet, is also growing. In June, it announced orders and options to buy up to 425 new jets, which it called the largest airplane purchase in private aviation history. NetJets said the deal, with a value of $9.6 billion at list prices, included up to 200 Bombardier Challenger 300s , 75 Challenger 605s and 150 Cessna Citation Latitudes , with deliveries starting in 2014. All are in the supermidsize and midsize cabin categories, which typically carry eight to nine passengers. That transaction followed another big one last March, when NetJets announced orders and options for 120 Bombardier Global jets, with a total value of $6.7 billion at list prices. Aircraft in the Global series are large-cabin jets that typically carry about 13 passengers and cost $48 million to $58 million each. With flying ranges of up to 6,600 miles, these so-called heavy-metal jets are becoming increasingly popular as business aviation expands globally. Slightly more than half of global business-jet deliveries are made in the United States, with the next biggest proportion, about 17 percent, in Europe, where the industry has been battered by the economic downturn. “We take a global view, with our large operations in the U.S. and also in Europe, and expanding operations in China,” said Jordan Hansell, chief executive of NetJets. “We’re looking at more than just the U.S. aviation market, which is holding its own.” NetJets, Flight Options and a third big player, FlexJet, a unit of Bombardier, dominate the fractional-ownership market, which NetJets popularized starting in 1986. Rather than buying an entire airplane, fractional owners purchase a share, starting at one-sixteenth or one-eighth, of a certain model. Share ownership ensures a customer the availability of that model of plane on short notice for a specified number of hours a year. A one-eighth share typically equals 100 flying hours a year. Besides buying a share of the plane prorated on its overall price, customers pay an hourly fee when flying and a monthly maintenance fee. The companies offer other options, including so-called jet cards sold in hourly blocks, usually in increments of 25 hours, but without the same rights as ownership. Even at this less expensive end of the business, flying privately is not cheap. A 25-hour Flight Options card for a speedy, seven-passenger Hawker 400XP light jet, for example, costs $110,000, plus fuel and taxes. Jet cards are typically used by people who fly fewer than 50 hours a year. “It’s very hard to justify all the costs,” Mr. Dowley acknowledged, “but I’m in the service business and in the private equity business, where you have multiple clients and multiple issues.” “The commercial schedule is just so grossly inefficient,” he said, that augmenting it with private jets makes economic sense. Over all, the cheapest per-seat method of private flying is charter aviation, in which travel is usually sold on a per-flight, on-demand basis. ( XOJet , a leader in the on-demand charter business, said recently that its flight hours in the first half of 2012 were up 55 percent from the same period in 2011.) The most expensive private-jet option, of course, is outright ownership of a plane. This end of the market remains the most severely affected since the recession, both by basic economics and by the populist criticism that developed against the high-flying rich. Mr. Ricci estimated that while the fractional-share market was finally growing again, it had shrunk from about 450,000 hours a year just before the recession to about 350,000 hours now. “If you’re operating a business, it doesn’t take long for your employees to realize you’re still flying in the corporate jet,” he said. “That’s maybe not the example you want to set. We still have customers that will do business flying commercially, and they’ll have either a card or a small fractional share that they use for their personal travel, and they’ll ask not to have that go through their office. They still try to keep that low profile.”

Business Travel
Airlines and Airplanes
Private Aircraft


Microsoft Introduces Tracking Protection to Its Browser

Abstract: As the debate continues about a potential privacy system that would allow consumers to opt out of having their data collected online, Microsoft on Tuesday announced a feature for the newest version of Internet Explorer that would permit users to stop certain Web sites from tracking them. The feature, which will exist in Internet Explorer 9, available next year, will let users limit the ability of third-party companies to track them online. The announcement comes less than a week after the Federal Trade Commission advocated a “do not track” mechanism that could be built into a browser and alert Web sites that a user did not want to be monitored. Jon Leibowitz, the commission’s chairman, said in a statement that he was encouraged by Microsoft’s move. “Microsoft deserves enormous credit for taking a critical step toward providing consumers with more choice about who can track their online browsing,” Mr. Leibowitz said. “Just as important, this announcement proves that technology is available to let consumers control tracking.” A blog post issued by Microsoft said the company was applying the principles outlined in the F.T.C.’s report, including the idea that companies should build privacy features into their products. The new feature, called Tracking Protection, would rely on lists that users create that indicate which sites they do not want to share information with. Lists can be created by individuals or by organizations, like consumer advocacy groups, which can make their lists available for anyone to use. Once enabled, the tracking protection would exist for all Web pages the user visits and would take effect each time they start a new browsing session. The mechanism would identify and block third parties from collecting data through cookies and other mechanisms that track users. Jules Polonetsky, the co-chairman and director of the Future of Privacy Forum, said users would most likely decide to use lists published by Web sites they trusted instead of creating their own, adding that most people would likely ignore the option all together. “The average user is not going to have a list of 500 ad networks and 600 analytics companies,” Mr. Polonetsky said. “They end up relying on a privacy watch dog to give them a do-not-track list that the browser will respect.” Microsoft’s announcement comes at a time when some in the online advertising community fear that a government-mandated do-not-track system could have severe ramifications for their business models. Rik van der Kooi, the corporate vice president of the advertiser and publisher solutions group at Microsoft, said in a statement that the new privacy tools could co-exist with the growth of online advertising.

Privacy
Federal Trade Commission
Computers and the Internet
Web Browsers
Microsoft Corp


A Desire to Feed the World and Inspire Self-Sufficiency

Abstract: ROME FITTING easily into the most conservative wing of the Bush administration, Josette Sheeran was from the outset an unlikely candidate to run the World Food Program , the world’s largest humanitarian aid organization, which has frequently been at odds with Washington. She had already been appointed to senior roles in the government, with the A-list of connections common in that circle, from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Jack Kemp, the former New York congressman and free-market champion. But what made her more unusual was her long tenure as a major figure in the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church — she left it in the late 1990s — a conservative church that many Americans distrust. Facing questions about her background, Ms. Sheeran, now ensconced as the United Nations World Food Program’s executive director, sighs in exasperation. She notes that in the past year she has served on a high-level advisory panel studying United Nations reorganization. She makes it plain that she is passionate about her new position. “When you come to the U.N. you know you’re representing all countries, and when you see a hungry child you feel you represent all humanity,” she said, working late on a Friday evening in her new office on the outskirts of Rome. “That is a different perspective than representing a government, the U.S., and I understand that.” She said that her knowledge of the United Nations and her longstanding belief in “empowering people” to help themselves, rather than just handing out emergency food, is the right focus for the sprawling agency she inherited, and which she hopes to streamline. She refuses to discuss her affiliation with the Unification Church. “My faith is a deeply personal matter,” she said. She was appointed the World Food Program’s executive director in November, having been nominated and aggressively promoted by the Bush administration over vociferous objections from the European Union. But it was not until April that she assumed her position at the agency, which feeds 90 million people worldwide. SINCE her arrival at the World Food Program, Ms. Sheeran has generally impressed staff members with her enthusiasm and grasp of the issues. But many within the agency were initially “uncomfortable” and “nervous” about her appointment, thinking that her background was a “bad fit” for the mission of the agency, said one staff member who has worked in many postings over two decades. The staff member and all those contacted in researching this article spoke on condition of anonymity because they would be working under Ms. Sheeran. Many people favored Tony Banbury, an American who has had a long run with the group’s Asia operations, the staff member said, adding: “We know there’s a lot of politics behind the appointment. We’ve worked with all types, so we’re used to it.” The United States, as the largest donor, has traditionally exercised enormous influence on the selection of the group’s director. But this time around, the European nations were dismayed enough by Ms. Sheeran’s credentials that they tried to block the appointment. The European Union strongly favored a Swiss candidate, Walter Fust, a European diplomat said, speaking on the customary condition of anonymity. Much of the antagonism centered on aid policy. The World Food Program and the United States State Department have long crossed swords over Washington’s practice of donating surplus agricultural crops and requiring that they be shipped on American vessels and planes to the developing world — all in an effort to promote American commerce. The agency prefers cash donations that can be used for food purchases locally, which is cheaper and helps local economies. The European Union is the World Food Program’s second largest donor, and its donations are all in cash. After strong lobbying from the Bush administration, Ms. Sheeran’s appointment was approved, the diplomat said. Ms. Sheeran says that she was picked in a “rigorous process,” and that she has been well prepared for the post. “I made a case for my leadership to all stakeholders,” she said. “I think W.F.P. draws on so much of my background and many decades of thinking about how you break the cycle of poverty.” Ms. Sheeran is brimming with ideas about the terrain she has inherited, and she has been as good as her word on representing the poor, not just her government. She now says she “would prefer cash” donations to food aid, though, she adds, “We will take anything that will help.” She plans to expand the agency’s school-based meals for children, giving them food to take home for the evening as well. She is studying the impact that global warming and the diversion of crops to biofuels will have on the availability of food in the developing world. “There could be challenging times ahead, and we want to have an effective toolbox ready,” she said. MS. SHEERAN was born in 1954 and educated at the University of Colorado. Shortly after college she joined the Unification Church, and was a powerful figure in the organization until she left, moving up the mastheads of newspapers owned by the church, and finally of the conservative Washington Times, one of its holdings. She spent more than a decade at the paper, eventually becoming its managing editor. During that time, she gained a large measure of recognition, serving as a Pulitzer Prize juror for foreign news in 1996 and chairwoman of the cartooning jury in 1997. But her tenure was not without its quirks. In April 1992, she became the first and only American journalist to interview the North Korean dictator, Kim Il-sung, whom she described as a “reflective, confident elder statesman.” At that moment, Mr. Kim’s policies were propelling his country into a decade of famine, which ultimately killed at least half a million people. Before she left the paper, she was named by Washingtonian magazine as one of the capital’s 100 most powerful women. She says she was inspired to a life of public service by her father, Jim Sheeran, a highly decorated World War II veteran and New Jersey state official who died in July. In particular, she recalls how her father, upon returning from the war, organized a food drive to assist the same European villages he had helped to liberate. When Ms. Sheeran was sworn in to recent government jobs, her father was unfailingly at her side. But they did not always see eye to eye. A 1976 Time magazine article about distraught parents trying to deprogram children who had joined the Unification Church described Mr. Sheeran’s efforts to “rescue” Josette, then 21, from a church-run school that he accused of “cruel and exotic entrapment” of “minds, souls and bodies.” After leaving journalism, she became the head of Empower America, a Reagan-era conservative research organization that is dedicated to fighting poverty through free-market forces and individual responsibility. Later, she moved to the Bush administration, where she specialized in programs aimed at moving developing nations toward economic self-sufficiency. “This has been a passion of mine since I met Jack Kemp on a plane, about how economic policy ideas can have an impact in Harlem or in developing nations,” she said. She said, for example, that her agency needed to fill the chasm between emergency food aid — it feeds 2.1 million people a day in the Darfur region of Sudan, for example — and long-term development. “Once we have a peace, that doesn’t mean that grain is growing and roads exist for farmers to get crops to market,” she said. “We need to help people with returning to self-sufficiency, too.”

World Food Program
Food
Unification Church
Sheeran Josette
Foreign Aid


A Race to Capture a Bounty From Shipping

Abstract: SAVANNAH, Ga. — Port officials here are racing to dig six feet of mud from the bottom of the Savannah River by 2014. In the world of major waterway expansions, that is an impossibly tight timeline. Few can recall a civic project in Georgia that has had more unified support. Without the $625 million deepening project, a breed of huge ships loaded with foreign-made iPods, furniture and other goods that will soon be able to traverse a newly widened Panama Canal will head elsewhere. And with them would go potentially billions of dollars in business. Like Savannah, other East Coast ports from New York to Miami are scrambling like shoppers at a post- Thanksgiving door-buster sale, trying to become the go-to port once the canal is widened. “Everyone’s lined up, and the door is about to open,” said Bob Pertierra, vice president of supply chain development for the Metro Atlanta Chamber. But the battle is especially fierce here in the South, where several ports are competing to become the region’s top destination for the superships. They hope to cash in on the biggest shift in the freight business since the 1950s, when oceangoing ships began carrying goods in uniform metal containers. The Panama Canal, 48 miles of water connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, is undergoing a $5.25 billion expansion that is scheduled to be completed by Aug. 15, 2014, 100 years to the day after it opened. In what has long been considered a speed bump for major shipping companies, the canal is too small to accommodate a class of superships that came on the scene in the 1980s and went into heavy use a decade later when China became a powerful exporter. Some of the big ships can carry three times as many containers as the industry average. The expansion, though it still will not allow the canal to accommodate the largest of the ships, will enable products made in Asia to be sent directly to the East Coast instead of being unloaded on the West Coast and then sent east by train or truck. A result could be a shift in business worth billions of dollars to ports, and big savings for companies like Ikea and Home Depot, which are always on the hunt for more efficient ways to serve shoppers in the Eastern third of the United States, where a majority of the population lives. With so much on the line, the canal expansion has pitted city against city and is testing the mettle of lawmakers torn between their opposition to federal earmarks, which pay for the bulk of port projects, and the gold rush that is about to begin along their shorelines. “If you can imagine the crowded three- or four-lane highway you’re driving on suddenly getting expanded to 12 lanes, you can picture what’s about to happen,” Mr. Pertierra said. “It’s a global shift.” To capture some of the new traffic, almost every large East Coast port and those along the Gulf of Mexico have projects under way. Some ports that are too small to handle the giant ships are improving railroads and truck routes, making them more efficient in anticipation of an overall increase in the number of containers coming to the East. Others want to dig deeper channels and become the leading port in their regions for companies operating the big vessels, including Savannah; Charleston, S. C.; Jacksonville, Fla.; and Miami. Those projects, however, rely on a long process that requires Congressional approval, studies by the Army Corps of Engineers and, finally, a lot of federal money that usually comes as budget add-ons, or earmarks. The fight over federal money has ports feuding like estranged brothers. In an interview in his well-appointed office overlooking the Savannah port, Curtis Foltz, the executive director of the Georgia Port Authority, sounded as if he were the coach of a championship team talking about an underdog when Charleston’s expansion plans came up. “We’ve never looked at Charleston as a competitor,” Mr. Foltz said. “All you have to do is look at the numbers. The stats speak for themselves.” His port is the fourth-largest in the country; Charleston is the 12th, according to the American Association of Port Authorities. Nikki Haley, the incoming governor of South Carolina, is also on the offensive. “You now have a governor who does not like to lose,” she told a crowd at an annual dinner for the ports, which was held the same day last month that the Corps of Engineers announced the approval for the Savannah dredging. “Georgia has had their way with us for way too long, and I don’t have the patience to let it happen anymore.” Bill Johnson, the Port of Miami director, needs a $75 million federal appropriation and has gone to Washington to push for it. Meanwhile, his counterparts in Jacksonville are making their own case for deeper water, saying their port is geographically better suited than Miami’s and is one of the few American ports that have seen consistent growth in container traffic. Containers have become the name of the game in shipping. Although cruise ships and imports and exports of cars, oil and bulk agricultural loads like cotton and fertilizer still make up a good portion of port traffic, most of the growth is in containers filled with products that Americans like to buy. The newest, biggest ships can carry the equivalent of as many as 15,000 containers that are 20 feet long. But they are also heavier, wider and require deeper water. In Savannah, for example, the water is only 42 feet deep. That is enough, with tidal variations, to handle ships loaded with 5,500 containers. The port at Norfolk, Va., is 50 feet deep, and is the only one on the East Coast that can handle the biggest, fully loaded container ships. The navigation channel that feeds the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal in New Jersey is deep enough, but the Bayonne Bridge is not tall enough for the new container ships to pass under. As a result, officials at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey are pondering options. They might raise the bridge by 64 feet. A study by the Corps of Engineers this fall estimated the cost at $1.3 billion. As Savannah port officials are learning, digging up six feet of mud is not easy or cheap. Environmentalists are concerned that dredging will cause historic Savannah buildings along the shore to tumble into the water, suck sand from the shores of Tybee Island and ruin freshwater marshes. The Corps of Engineers’ environmental impact document, issued in November after 14 years of study, suggested deepening but not widening the channel to protect the buildings along the shore and adding 3,000 acres of wildlife preservation land to help offset the impact on freshwater marshes. Of course, no one really knows how much traffic will be diverted and whether the expected increase will make up for the costs of improving the ports. In Los Angeles, port officials dismiss any concerns. “The Port of Los Angeles is not expecting increased cargo diversion as a result of the Panama Canal expansion,” said Rachel Campbell, a spokeswoman. Some shipping companies and manufacturers have already shifted their supply routes from the West Coast to the East after labor problems and an influx of freight in 2004 that caused gridlock among ships in Los Angeles. Officials in Panama are also expected to charge higher tolls for the canal to pay off the national loan that is financing the expansion. Those costs to shippers could offset potential savings in improved logistics. For companies looking to get their products from one place to another, it is simply a matter of speed and price, said Eric Joiner, vice chairman of AJC international, one of the world’s largest marketers of frozen and refrigerated food. “What’s about to happen is what happened when airlines started flying the big Airbuses or the big, new Boeing jets,” he said. “You have to have the runways to take care of it. This is like anything else. Either you can play in the game or you can’t.”

Ports
Canals
United States
Freight (Cargo)
Ships and Shipping


Drug Firm Names Chief

Abstract: PARIS — Sanofi-Aventis , the French pharmaceutical company, said Wednesday that it had appointed an outsider with American experience to be chief executive, amid reports of friction among top management. Christopher A. Viehbacher, 48, who stepped down Monday as the head of GlaxoSmithKline’s North American drug business, will succeed Gérard Le Fur, the current Sanofi chief executive, on Dec. 1. Mr. Le Fur, 68, whose tenure has reportedly been marked by strained relations with the company’s chairman, will stay on in a scientific advisory role. Sanofi-Aventis said it was refining its strategy to cope with new regulatory and economic constraints.

S.A.nofi-Aventis S.A
Appointments and Executive Changes
Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)
Viehbacher Chris


Canada: Police Arrest Man Wanted in Attacks in Iraq

Abstract: Canadian police have arrested a man accused of helping stage suicide bomb attacks in Iraq, including one that killed five American soldiers, officials said Wednesday. The man, identified by Canadian authorities as Sayfildin Tahir Sharif, was arrested in Edmonton, Alberta, at the request of the United States, which wants to extradite him to New York to face terrorism charges. Canadian police said he was a Canadian citizen, but did not say how long he had been living in Canada. Mr. Sharif worked with a Tunisian group that staged a number of suicide bomb attacks in Iraq, including one at a United States base in Mosul that killed five soldiers in April 2009, according to the United States Justice Department. United States authorities said he had been recorded in Canadian wiretaps discussing the results of attacks with other members of the group based in Iraq and wanted to become a suicide bomber himself.

Canada
Iraq
Extradition
Iraq War (2003- )
Bombs and Explosives


Scottish Club Hamilton Academical Combines Soccer and Sobriety

Abstract: HAMILTON, Scotland — Twelve miles outside of Glasgow, at the tiny New Douglas Park soccer stadium , Colin McGowan was talking about divine intervention. McGowan is the chief executive of Hamilton Academical , a soccer club founded by a school in 1874. It has experienced little success in its 140 years; at the turn of the 21st century the club was close to extinction. Wages were unpaid, players went on strike and the team was relegated to the third tier of Scottish soccer. But this season, after an unlikely ascent to the Scottish Premier League, Hamilton Academical, or the Accies as it is known, had risen as high as first place. The club moved up to the top of the league with a surprise 1-0 victory over nearby Celtic, which, along with its Glasgow neighbor Rangers, has dominated Scottish soccer for three decades. While Celtic and Rangers can command 50,000 fans for a game — approximately the entire population of Hamilton — the Accies have the smallest fan base in the league. No more than a thousand home fans attend matches. “Something very special is going to happen here, things that could be close to miracles,” McGowan said as he walked through the stadium. One of the bleachers is sponsored by the Spice of Life, a local Indian restaurant. Another is adorned with a large green sign advertising Cocaine Anonymous. “The amount of good fortune we’ve had, it’s odd,” he added. “But as they say, good things happen to good people.” About 10 years ago a group of local businessmen bought the club for £1 (about $1.60) and committed to building a team with young players that was intimately connected to the community. McGowan vowed to use the club to help overcome what he saw as the biggest problem facing Hamilton — and, more broadly, the country. Image Jason Scotland, a Hamilton Academical forward, with fans. Credit Kieran Dodds for The New York Times “I’m a co-owner of the football club, but I’m also an alcoholic and a drug addict,” he said. “I’ve been in recovery for 31 years. I don’t forget the pain and suffering I caused others. I’m putting a wee bit back in.” Scotland has the highest rate, per capita, of cocaine use in the world, according to the United Nations’ World Drug Report 2014 . The club hosts regular meetings for recovering addicts, giving away hundreds of tickets for the families of those affected as well as providing meals for the homeless. One side of the stadium has been given over to a sculptured Serenity Garden, murals and a beach, built and maintained by children and by those in recovery. “Some people joke that they built a football pitch next to my office,” McGowan said. Hundreds of addicts have come through the club, he added. Not every case is a success. “Some relapse, some die, some take their own lives,” he said. “There’s always going to be casualties. But it’s the ones that make it.” Nearby, Hamilton Academical was training alongside its under-20 team. Both, at the time, were in first place in their divisions. “It is a bit of a bizarre feeling, being top of the league,” said the club’s chairman, Les Gray. “We’ve got a good young squad. They don’t play for a lot of money, they play for the opportunity.” Gray declined to discuss the team’s budget or players’ salaries, but it is safe to assume that Hamilton is not wealthy. With no strong revenue streams, the club has trusted in youth. Eight of the players that beat Celtic on Oct. 5 were from the academy. Two former Hamilton players, James McCarthy and James McArthur, have gone on to become national team players and play in England’s Premier League. The team’s current captain, Ziggy Gordon, 21, has already played almost 90 first-team games. Despite Hamilton’s storybook rise, generating interest in the team remains hard work, especially with two of the most established clubs in the world nearby. “The reality is that more buses leave here to go to Rangers and Celtic every week than come here,” Gray said. “We’re only 10 miles from the city. That’s what we are up against.” After training, the team’s coach, Alex Neil, returned to his small office to prepare for Hamilton’s league match, against Partick Thistle, last Saturday. Next to his desk was a wall planner with a card for each of his players, arranged to show who was injured and who was ready to play. Neil, 33, masterminded last season’s promotion to the top division. He still plays for the team. Image A courtyard next to New Douglas Park, the stadium of Hamilton Academical. Credit Kieran Dodds for The New York Times “The team’s been doing that well I’ve not been playing myself,” he said of his dual role of player and coach. “It’s a delicate balance. You pick yourself, you’re taking someone else out. At times it can be a wee bit tricky.” Neil arrived at the club 10 years ago to play in the midfield. Back then the team was at the bottom of the second tier. “I thought, Pfft, what am I doing here?” he said. “I thought, I come here, play one season, do well and move on to something bigger and better. But I fell in love with the place and stayed 10 years.” No one, not least Neil, is talking about winning the championship just yet, even if the club has already beaten the teams that finished in the top three last season. “Winning the league? That’s unthinkable, really,” he said. “We are the smallest club in the division. But if teams work as a unit we can overcome teams of superstars.” Neil chose not to play himself, and Hamilton Academical jumped to a 2-0 lead against Partick Thistle. A small group of enthusiastic Accies fans banged a drum and chanted. “We are winning games constantly and the other teams can’t stand it,” said one fan, Brandon Coshill, 19. “They sing: ‘You’ve got two fans and a Jack Russell dog.’ We sing back: ‘We’ve only got two stands!’ ” Partick staged a comeback and took a 3-2 lead into the final minute, seemingly consigning Hamilton to its second league defeat in a row. But a shot by the French midfielder Tony Andreu salvaged a point for Hamilton on the last play of the game. The draw meant that Hamilton dropped to second, but stayed ahead of Celtic in third. It has been 30 years since a team other than Rangers or Celtic won the title. The last team was Aberdeen, then coached by Alex Ferguson, who went on to fame as coach of Manchester United. For McGowan, the comeback was another example of the spirit of the club and the town. “If someone said we’d guarantee you’d win the Premiership if you give up your addiction stuff, I’d say I’d rather drop a division because we’d be traitors to the community,” he said. “Sometimes you have to surrender to win.”

Hamilton Academical
Soccer
Scotland
Colin McGowan
Drug Abuse
Alcohol abuse
Therapy


Cutting Men’s Programs Now to Stay Title IX Compliant Later

Abstract: When the University of Delaware announced this year that it was demoting its men’s track and cross-country teams to club status, the news was sad but not surprising to many who follow college sports. Delaware is one of dozens of universities that have eliminated low-profile men’s teams like wrestling, gymnastics and swimming in an effort, the universities say, to comply with Title IX, the federal law that bans sex discrimination in education. But in cutting the men’s varsity track team, Delaware took the practice a step further. The university did not make the argument that it needed to cut the team to immediately comply with the law — after all, it plans to add a women’s golf team in the fall. Instead, officials say they are ending the track program , which has its 100th anniversary this year, out of concern that they could not remain compliant in the future. Now, members of the men’s track team have taken an unusual step of their own: they have filed a complaint with the federal Office for Civil Rights, which oversees Title IX, alleging that Delaware is discriminating against its male athletes. The office decided to look into the complaint, and last week, the university agreed to enter into mediation with the track team to try to resolve the issue. Although Title IX has typically been invoked to protect the rights of women, cases alleging discrimination against men are not unheard of, said Russlynn H. Ali, the assistant education secretary who heads the civil rights office. Of the 96 Title IX complaints related to athletics received in the 2010 fiscal year, 11 involved allegations of discrimination against men, according to the office. In the previous year, they made up 10 of the 80 athletics-related Title IX complaints. Ali noted that women now made up a majority of enrolled students at colleges and universities. “Title IX protects against sex discrimination,” Ali said. “Traditionally, the underrepresented sex in institutions of higher education has been women. That is changing.” Universities can comply with Title IX in one of three ways: by showing that the number of female athletes is proportionate to the share of overall female enrollment, by demonstrating a continuing history of expanding sports for women, or by proving that the athletic interests and abilities of the female student body are being met. Rather than spend money on expanding sports for women, many universities have instead cut men’s teams in order to comply with the proportionality method. The practice is frowned upon by the Office for Civil Rights, but it is not prohibited. Ali said her office was aware of circumstances in which men are underrepresented when it comes to college athletic scholarships, even though they are overrepresented in their overall participation in athletics. And the University of Kansas recently resolved a discrimination complaint filed by a former male swimmer who alleged that the university had been providing athletic slots to a disproportionate number of women. Kansas agreed to reduce the size of its women’s teams and encourage more men to walk on to other men’s teams. Still, men who claim discrimination under the law have had a poor success rate, especially in the courts, said Allison Kasic , an advocate for reform of Title IX who is a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, a right-of-center research and education institution. One of the most high-profile examples involved the decision in 2006 by James Madison University to cut seven men’s teams to comply with the law. A coalition of athletes, fans and others sued to reverse the decision, but the lawsuit was dismissed . Tom Rogers, a former captain of the Delaware track team who graduated in 1989, said universities like Delaware were distorting the intent of Title IX. “How did we ever get to a place where a program that is supposed to be about creating opportunities for women is now being used in a way to create no opportunities for women and to cut men?” he said. Delaware officials declined to comment. But in a January statement announcing the decision, they said they had no alternative. “Continued expansion of our athletics program is not feasible in this financial climate, and given that reality, the university made the only decision it could,” Bernard Muir, Delaware’s athletic director, said in the statement. Kasic said many colleges used the proportionality method to comply with Title IX because it was seen as a permanent fix; the other two methods require continuing efforts to expand sports for women or to monitor interest on campus. By adding women’s golf, the university may be in compliance now, but “it’s still a short-term solution,” she said. But Corey Wall, a co-captain of the men’s track team who helped file the complaint , said Delaware was overzealous in applying the law, especially when there was no apparent threat of a lawsuit or an investigation challenging compliance. “We’re not fighting Title IX at all; we’re just fighting the misuse of it,” Wall said. Wall said he was optimistic about the news that the university had agreed to enter into talks with his team. “It’s definitely a step in the right direction for us,” he said, adding that until now, the university had been reluctant to discuss the issue. “We haven’t gotten a chance to sit down and talk with them about this.”

Title IX (Gender Discrimination Legislation)


Fear Spurs Support for Health Law as Republicans Work to Repeal It

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump and congressional Republicans appear to have accomplished a feat that President Obama, with all the power at his disposal, could not in the past seven years: They have galvanized outspoken support for the Affordable Care Act. People who benefit from the law are flooding Congress with testimonials. Angry consumers are confronting Republican lawmakers. And Democrats who saw the law as a political liability in recent elections have suddenly found their voice, proudly defending the law now that it is in trouble. Thousands of people across the country held rallies over the weekend to save the health care law, which Republicans moved last week to repeal with a first but crucial legislative step. A widely circulated video showed Representative Mike Coffman, Republican of Colorado, eluding constituents who had wanted to meet with him to express their concerns on Saturday at a community event in Aurora, Colo. Rallies on Sunday to save the health law drew robust crowds around the country. “We are here today — thousands strong in Boston, and at more rallies all across this country — because we will make our voices heard,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, told a crowd outside Faneuil Hall in Boston. “If Republicans try to rip health care out of the hands of millions of Americans, we will fight them every step of the way.” And progressive groups are planning a two-month cross-country bus tour to fight the repeal effort, starting Tuesday. With their quick strike on the law in the first days of the new Congress, Republicans had hoped to begin the repeal process before a backlash could develop or opposition could be organized. But congressional Republicans are at risk of losing the message war, especially since they are fighting on two fronts. On one side, the president-elect has repeatedly lobbed disruptive demands at them, such as his insistence that they prepare a replacement health bill almost immediately. To that, he added a new promise over the weekend: that the Republican version would provide “ insurance for everybody .” Image Health care activists rallied on Friday near Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan. Credit Drew Angerer/Getty Images On the other front, Democratic lawmakers have taken to quoting grateful constituents to personalize what can be an arcane legislative fight: Bryce in Seattle; Randy in Rhinelander, Wis.; Nicole in Hockessin, Del.; and many more. The focus of public attention appears to be shifting from the well-documented defects of the health care law to the plaintive pleas of people terrified of losing insurance if the law is repealed. “I want to thank President Obama from the bottom of my heart because I would be dead if it weren’t for him,” Jeff Jeans, a small-business man from Sedona, Ariz., who described himself as a lifelong Republican, told Speaker Paul D. Ryan on Thursday at a town-hall-style meeting televised on CNN. Republicans acknowledge their constituents’ concerns, but they say supporters of the health law are manufacturing them. Representative Rob Woodall, Republican of Georgia, blamed Democrats for “amping up anxiety” with “fear mongering.” “The anxiety is real,” Mr. Woodall said, “but it’s real based on the failures of the president’s health care law.” Republicans will soon face a new challenge: maintaining anger at “Obamacare” without Mr. Obama in the White House to stir their passions. Regardless of its provenance, the law’s support has until now received less attention. Appearing on the NBC News program “Meet the Press” five days after Mr. Obama signed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, predicted that as people learned about the law, “it’s going to become more and more popular.” Around 20 million Americans have gained coverage through the Affordable Care Act’s online insurance marketplaces or through its expansion of Medicaid, and enrollment has continued to grow. About 11.5 million people have signed up for marketplace plans or had their coverage automatically renewed for this year, nearly 300,000 more than at this time last year, the Obama administration said this month. But the popularity bounce never came. Public opinion remains deeply divided, with the law no more popular today than when it was passed. In December, according to a monthly tracking poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 46 percent of Americans had unfavorable views of the law, up from 40 percent in April 2010. The share with favorable views slipped to 43 percent, from 46 percent in April 2010. “In the short term, the A.C.A. has been a political disaster for President Obama and the Democrats,” Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a health policy adviser in the Obama White House from 2009 to 2011, said in a 2014 book. As Congress took a first step last week toward rolling back Mr. Obama’s signature domestic achievement, Mr. Trump celebrated. “The ‘Unaffordable’ Care Act will soon be history!” he said on Twitter . Some Democrats distanced themselves from the Obama administration after HealthCare.gov crashed on its debut in 2013. More recently, with premiums soaring and insurers defecting from the Affordable Care Act marketplace in many states, Democrats were hard put to defend the law, which was passed without any Republican votes. But as Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans race to repeal the law, Democrats are taking a more aggressive stance. Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, told the story of Sonja L. Podjan, a 55-year-old blueberry farmer in Watervliet, Mich., who was in pain for several years until she got insurance under the Affordable Care Act, which covered the cost of surgery to repair a severe tear in the meniscus of her right knee. In an interview, Ms. Podjan said she “started freaking out” after the election and sent an email to Ms. Stabenow. She said she was “flabbergasted” when she heard back from the senator’s office. Ms. Podjan said that the premium for an insurance policy covering her and her husband was about $1,000 a month, but that they paid just $62 after receiving government subsidies provided under the law. “I am scared to death we will lose our insurance, and what happens then?” said Ms. Podjan, who reported that she and her husband had medical expenses totaling $41,000 in the past two years. Image Demonstrators at a rally in support of the Affordable Care Act on Sunday in Denver. Credit Chris Schneider/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Senator Tom Udall, Democrat of New Mexico, told the story of a constituent, Kevin Kargacin, whose daughter Amber takes drugs costing more than $60,000 a year for multiple sclerosis. “Kevin is scared because the cost of treating Amber’s disease is so high,” Mr. Udall said. In an interview, Mr. Kargacin said he wrote to Mr. Udall because “we are terrified that without the Affordable Care Act, Amber could be denied insurance or run into lifetime caps on expenditures for her treatment.” Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, said: “Many Minnesotans have contacted me in the last few months, frightened about the future of their health care coverage. I heard from a man in Orono. His wife was diagnosed with cancer this year. On top of everything his family is now dealing with, he is terrified that his family will lose coverage if there is a repeal.” Whether such concerns reflect a change in public opinion is difficult to say. Over the past six years, Republicans have collected stories from hundreds of constituents complaining that their insurance policies were canceled, their premiums have shot up and their deductibles are so high that the insurance is nearly worthless. “Scott from Hickory has had his health insurance canceled three times now, disrupting his continuity of care,” said Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina. “Patricia from Kernersville now has a whopping $6,550 deductible.” Representative Pat Tiberi, Republican of Ohio, reported that a constituent named Kimberly had difficulty obtaining treatment for a brain tumor because, she said, “virtually no doctors take the marketplace insurance.” The differing accounts are not necessarily in contradiction. Some people have benefited from the law while others have seen their coverage disrupted. Republicans said the Obama administration had been slow to recognize and acknowledge problems with the Affordable Care Act. Administration officials said insurance rate increases of 25 percent or more were not a significant problem because low-income people could get subsidies to help defray the cost — even though millions of people buying insurance on their own do not receive subsidies. The administration insisted that insurance markets were “stable and vibrant” even as large insurers pulled out of Affordable Care Act exchanges where they were losing hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2015, the administration said that “claims data show healthier consumers” in the exchanges, but some insurers disputed that assessment, saying they had not seen an influx of healthy people to help cover the costs of sick people.

Republicans
HealthCare.gov
Health Insurance
Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
Donald Trump
Barack Obama
US Politics